Two days, max. That’s how long before they’d know if Danvar had been discovered. No harm in waiting and getting in on the action late. No harm in that. She had plenty of places she could dive that no one else could. Hell, it might get nice and quiet around Low-Pub for a couple days once everyone cleared out. That would be a pleasant change.

Vic stood under the beam she used for pull-ups and jumped up and grabbed the palm-worn wood. She held herself with one hand while she patted for the key. Securing it, she dropped back down and removed the padlock from the hatch in the living room floor. Grabbing the black case full of clothes, she lowered it down to the slope of drift below. The silver case she left out; Vic wanted to take a peek before she got some rest.

Opening her icebox, she grabbed half a shriveled lime and a jar of homebrew, squeezed the former into the latter, and sipped on her breakfast. She set the Samsonite up on its edge and tried the latches. Stuck. Both of them. She took another swig of the beer, stale but cold, and was wiping her mouth when there was a knock at the door.

“Begging won’t make me change my mind—” she started to tell Marco, when the door opened and two men barged into the room. Brigands, by the smell and look of them. Vic recognized one of the men. Paulie. He used to run with the Low-Pub Legion. Couldn’t hack it as a diver and took to muscling people. The red Legion ker was gone, though. Both men sported the golden kers of the northern wastes. Vic wondered what the hell these guys were doing this far south. And then she saw that the bigger man had a gun on his belt. Probably didn’t work—as most of them didn’t—but the problem was in the probably.

“Hey, wrong house, assholes.” Vic stood up and blocked the view of the Samsonite. “If you’re looking for Danvar, it’s not in my cellar—”

“Save it, Vic,” Paulie said. “Where the fuck is Palm?”

“How the hell should I know? And you guys are tracking sand in.”

The larger man with the gun stomped toward the bedroom and peered inside.

“He’s not here,” Vic said. “You’ve got the wrong fucking house.”

“Well, we hear he spends time all over the place.”

“He’s probably in Springston,” Vic said, trying to throw them off.

“We already checked Springston,” Paulie told her.

“Yeah? Look, I don’t care what he owes you. Dusting up my place is gonna get you in my debt—”

“Chill with the tough act,” the big guy said. He pointed a finger at her. “Where the fuck is he?”

“Even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you.”

The large brigand made a move in her direction, but Paulie held the man back. “She don’t know. She’s just fucking with you.”

The brigand spat at Vic’s boots.

“Lovely,” she said. “I’ll tell my brother you boys are wanting him to come out and play.”

“Do that,” Paulie said. “Seriously. Your brother is tied up in shit beyond your comprehension. If you see him, tell him to come in. It’ll go easier on him this way.”

“Shut the door behind you,” Vic said.

The large brigand took one last look around the room. His eyes fell to the locked hatch. But Paulie guided him back toward the front door, and the large man relented. They left the door open. Vic crossed the room and shut it. She spun the latch and rested against the hammered tin. What the fuck was her brother into this time? It was that asshole, Happy. Gonna get her brother killed, running around with that group, trying to impress people. She’d talked to Palmer about that, about needing to find a different dive partner. And what the hell could he have gotten into that would have brought a couple of scavengers this far south? That would have them running all over Springston and Low-Pub when everyone else was out looking for Danvar—?

“No way,” Vic said. She paced a small circle around her living room. “No fucking way. Palmer, you didn’t.”

She glanced at her dive bag. Damn, she was tired. Too tired for this. But her brother had come to her a week ago asking if he could borrow her visor. She’d laughed and told him to fuck off. He’d then asked her about a two-tank valve, which she’d given him. She remembered the conversation like it was yesterday. Remembered the way he’d hugged her before he left. He never did that. Couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that.

“What’ve you done, Palm? What the fuck have you done?”

Vic crossed the room and grabbed the jar of stale beer with its shriveled green lime. She chugged the bitter breakfast down and grabbed her dive bag. Damn, she was tired. But hopefully Marco hadn’t left town without her.

24 • A Mad Dash

Palmer

Dive light and diver were extinguished as one. Palmer felt the wild man sag lifeless to the ground, and the light around his neck threw out one last spurt of red rays before it too gave up the ghost. He was left shaking and terrified in the pitch black. His dive knife felt heavy in his hand.

Palmer wiped the blade on his thigh and placed a hand over his belly, holding the coins there. He remembered that a coin had spilled out, and bent down, patted the floor until he found it. There was a tear in his suit. He felt to see if any of the wires had been severed—couldn’t be positive but didn’t think so. The knife went back into his boot. He arranged the folded map in his belly pocket so it was against the tear, outside of the coins, stanching the costly wound.

Reaching for his dive light, he switched it off, shook it, and tried it again. Popping the battery out and touching its leads to his tongue didn’t resurrect it. He felt for his visor, wanted to check the charge in his suit, then remembered it getting knocked off. Palmer felt around in the darkness and tried to retrace his steps. The air was fucking awful in there. It was the stench of the dead mixed with the stale and too-weak oxygen. His knees were wobbly. He bumped into a desk. Felt around the corner. Went too far and placed a hand in the gore of the other diver.

“Fuck. Fuck.”

Palmer backed up, wiped his hand on the ground, wiped again on an office chair, was bumping into things and making noises, ghosts everywhere. He practically crawled on his belly, swept his arms across the floor, found random knick-knacks, lost a coin from his pocket and chased after it, wasn’t able to find the damn thing, when he bumped into his visor.

Tank of air, the madman had said. Tank of air but no charge. Palmer had some battery left but no air. Fucking Hap. He tried to remember where the tanks had been. Couldn’t see shit. Couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. His fins were back in the other room. Vic always made fun of him for using fins, said only beginners wore them, that once you really learned how to flow sand you could do it in your boots. You could do it barefoot.

Palmer strained with his other senses. He listened for the sound of sand tumbling across sand, little tiny rocks the size of pinpricks whispering in diminutive avalanche. He searched for that noise of his life, of his entire goddamn existence: sand on sand.

He heard a sigh. A hush. Barely more than a rustle, maybe the sound of him breathing or his heart thrumming or the brush of fabric between his trembling knees.

But no—it was sand moving. Sliding toward him.

Palmer slid toward it in return.

He crawled through the desks, straining to remember the layout of the room, where the tanks had been, where in relation to the drift. There were chairs and desks everywhere. There were tangles of wires and a keyboard. Palmer considered trying his visor, using it to navigate, trying to see by the pulsing purples of open air, but the dead dive light around his neck was a reminder to not waste his charge. His suit had held enough juice to get him down to that building and back to the surface, and he was only halfway through that dive. This is what he told himself as he fumbled around in the darkness: he was only halfway through this dive. He had stopped for a few days, a few hours, who knew how long? He had starved at the bottom of his plummet, had scrounged longer than any living soul ever had, and he wasn’t through. Weak and exhausted and terrified, he wasn’t through.