JACKAL
The chevrotain is an animal that looks like a tiny deer with fangs.
The way she looks at me...I haven’t been eyed like that since Ashton Trent’s Rottweiler chased me naked through her house and almost ripped off my balls. Phoenix’s hostility turns me on—call me a masochist, but I like a challenge. I thought it was over; she walked away and that was the last of it, but then I see a commotion where the governor is standing with Lourdes. A few moments later, Phoenix breezes right by me, the curve of her lips triumphant. I stare after her as she makes her way to the door, the graceful dip between her shoulder blades moving sensually. There’s a barely noticeable weight in my right pocket. I reach in casually and my fingers touch cold metal studded with hard round objects that can only be rubies. I find Lourdes in the crowd and see that her wrist is bare, the bracelet gone. There are a dozen women around me, but I start laughing.
I excuse myself and go outside, hoping I’m not too late to catch her leaving. A few people are milling around outside, and a lone guy stands a few feet away from my car. It’s a good thing Selfish is still inside. She’d have him arrested just for looking dirty near something of mine—all about appearances, that one.
He shifts and the streetlight shines on his face, just enough that I make out that it’s the man from the night before. I motion for him to follow me and step into the shadows of the alley behind the hotel.
“Where did you get that cap?”
He doesn’t respond and I step closer, towering over him.
“Do you know where Folsom is?”
He shifts side to side and peers around me cautiously. “He needs your help,” he says.
“Did he send you? Where is he?”
Since his little jailbreak out of the Red Region, none of us have heard anything. The Society had been quick to send their muscle to question us, but we all played dumb. I suspect Kasper knows more than he is saying, but in times like these, it’s difficult to ask questions without being overheard.
“He’s safe,” he says. “He needs your help finding Gwen.”
“Gwen?” I scratch the back of my head, frowning. “Gwen is in prison.”
Despite my indifferent demeanor, my gut clenches when I say her name. Gwen has been the voice that started the rebellion, what some people are now calling the Revolution. It is because of her that Folsom got out of the Red Region after the Society almost killed him. In the mess of a rescue mission, there had been shots fired, killing his firstborn son, Laticus, who was next to be initiated into the End Men. Gwen sacrificed herself for her sister, giving up her seat on the helicopter and thus being taken into the Region’s custody. I’ve wondered if she’s even still alive.
“She’s not in the Red Region’s penitentiaries. We’ve checked. We have people on the inside. Folsom needs your help finding out where she is. Word out there is she might be in Admax, which would be virtually impossible—”
“How the fuck would I find out? I’m not even sure where Folsom is. I haven’t heard from him all this time. Who are you working with?” I ask.
He backs off and looks like he’s about to scurry away, but I grab his arm and look behind me. Selfish is standing at the end of the alley, watching us. I let go of the guy’s arm and he runs the other direction. I wouldn’t wish Selfish on anyone. I walk toward her, heart heavy.
“Everyone’s waiting on you,” she says, hands on her hips. “Time for the toast. What were you doing out here with that vagrant?”
“He’s my drug supplier. I was scoring some excellent coke. Would you like some?”
We turn the corner and Selfish takes my arm. “Everything you do is my business, Jackal,” she says before we walk inside. “Smile.” She smooths down my hair and I feel like a trained monkey.
I turn on the smile and act interested in the many conversations I’m forced to listen to, all the while thinking about how to get information on Gwen. Later, as I’m with two women who look so similar I can’t keep them straight, I’m balls deep and trying to speed things along. They want to take their time, one of them looking in the mirror at herself riding me, while the other tries to sit on my face. I’m not in the mood for that...too much on my mind. The pretty little thief is niggling my thoughts and this business with Folsom and Gwen... I have to get out of here.
Normally, I’m game for whatever is expected of me. It’s my job, I aim to please. I pull the girl off of my face and finger her instead, and when I finish in the other girl, I point at the one who just came from my fingers.
“You two finish up the party.” I smile apologetically. “I’ve gotta go.”
“But, Jackal,” the one pouts.
I don’t doubt she wants my cock, but it’s really all about a potential chance at pregnancy going down the drain.
“Not tonight,” I tell her and get out of there before some other desperate woman can corner me.
There aren’t many places in the upper end where you can get useful information. The Regions, once America, are divided into two classes: the filthy rich and the desperately poor. Desperate for food, desperate for resources—not desperate for information. They’ve learned how to talk to each other, while the other end has learned to stay quiet. Tell me who’s free and who’s not? The wealthy, as I’ve come to understand them, prefer to wear rose-colored glasses, believing everything they’re told. Third-generation narcissists don’t want to admit the world has gone to shit due to their lack of empathy. One class is bound by their greed, the other by the law. Some of the End Men like it that way, some of us like the dirty truth. I belong to anything that has the word dirty in it.
I ask my driver, Yvonne, to take me to the lower Blue. We leave the city at dusk and head east along the river. Blue reminds me of Cruella De Vil; a colorfully dressed-up bitch. We have art! it says. We make old things live! But at what expense? The Blue only pays for the most popular End Men. They need us to make enough money to sustain their beautiful illusion. Foley spent five tours here. There are probably more little Foley bastards running around here than any other Region. A steel-hearted city wrapped in silk and fur.
The city drains of color as we drive, graphite and neons fading to an indistinguishable wash of brown. The billboards that once advertised the End Men have been vandalized, sprayed over with the words BABY KILLERS. There are posters of Laticus’ face everywhere, tagged with the word: Remember. I bow my head when I see those. I’d been the one to tell his mother where he was after the Red Region and the Statehead seized him from his home in the Black and took him to the Genome Y lab. It was a complete coincidence that Folsom, who had fathered the boy, was also there recovering from a heart attack. I pass a long stretch of graffiti where people have tagged Blue rebels and the line Free the Men is everywhere. Gwen’s name is there too with Free the truth teller! You can’t keep us quiet. Gwen, a little rich girl from the upper Red incited a rebellion and because of that they took her baby and imprisoned her. Gwen Allison became a household name, and not because she did something, it was because she said something—something no one else was willing to say. The fact that a privileged woman said it had incited the lower end to cry out. One voice, where it mattered, could change the course of history. For Gwen, it had destroyed her life.
I rub a hand across my jaw as we pass through a tunnel. We’re getting close. There’s a bar in the lower Blue where you can buy almost anything, even information. Foley told me about it after his last tour here. We might not all be tight, but the men keep each other in the loop regarding the Regions—where to get things and how. While my black market buying usually consists of recreational drugs, I’ve occasionally needed information too. I glance out of the back window. My security detail trails the car as I tap my knee impatiently. Folsom only asked about Gwen. Has he heard about his son? Word has been circulating that The Red Rebel is being raised by another woman.
The Dive is lit in blue neon lights. Inside, there is a haze blurring the edges of the tables. I narrow my eyes and look around. There are low hanging bulbs over the tables and a long bar to the right. Everyone in the place stops talking when I walk in, resuming once I pull up to the bar.
“What do you need to feel?” the bartender asks me. Her voice is bored; she plucks absently at the piercing on the bridge of her nose. Ah, a feelings bar—my favorite.
“I would like to feel…” I tap my fingers on the bar top, considering my options. “Numb.”
She juts her chin at me once. “What do you want that in?”
“Shot of tequila.”
“Aye aye, captain.”
She moves away to make my drink, and I turn around to survey the rest of the space. It’s a motley crew of interesting types. None of them seem to care that I’m here. Foley had said nothing about who she was or what she looked like, just that I’d know her when I saw her. When the bartender comes back with my drink, I lean toward her.
“I’m looking for a woman—”
“Yeah? Me too.”
“Maybe we have the same type,” I say, leaning forward.
She stares at me, her expression blank. “Oh yeah? What’s your type?”
“I like a woman who knows things. Someone who has access to hard-to-get items…”
“You End Men all have the same taste,” she says.
“Yeah?” I ask, livening up.
Her chin lifts toward the back right of the bar.
I throw back the rest of my drink and toss a few bills on the bar top before standing up.
The booth sits on its own in the back of the bar, the leather seats high around it creating a cocoon. She has a guard dog; he stops me as soon as I get close.
“Nature of business?” he asks. His voice is gruff.
“Information.”
“She’s busy,” he says. “You need an appointment.”
I lick my lips. “All right then. I’d like to make an appointment.”
I glance over his shoulder and see her staring at me, an amused smile on her lips.
“She doesn’t have any availability.”
He gets close to my face and I can smell his dinner on his breath.
“I’ve been wanting to try the stew here, but judging by your breath, they’re using way too many onions.”
He shoves me. I shove back. We have a little shoving match before she finally calls out— “Enough!”
We step away from each other, glaring.
“Let him through,” she says. I pat Brutus on the back as I walk by.
She’s younger than I was expecting, long blond hair, maybe forty. Sexy as hell, and she’s giving me a thorough once-over.
“An End Man,” she says. “My, my, you boys certainly have a way of finding me…”
“It’s like we all know each other or something,” I say, sliding into the booth.
“So, Jackal,” she says, voice nearly as low as mine. “What brings you to the dark?”
“My favorite color is dark blue.”
She pulls a case out of her bag and offers me a slim cigarette. “Your favorite color is pink. That’s why you fly around in that ridiculous jet.”
“I was just trying to make you feel special,” I say.
“For someone as beautiful as you, it’s only fitting that you’re not very bright,” she says.
I laugh, and to my surprise, so does she. And then just as quickly, she sobers.
“Quit wasting my time and tell me what you want.”
“Information.”
“About?”
“Gwen Allison.”
The cherry burns between her lips as she considers my request.
“No one knows where Gwen is,” she says finally.
“Someone has to…”
She rolls her tongue over her teeth, looking at me with hooded eyes.
“Why do you want to know?”
“That’s information you’d have to pay me for,” I say.
I watch as she stubs the cigarette out on the tabletop and picks a piece of tobacco from her lips. “All right,” she says slowly. “Come back in a week. I’ll see what I can find out.”
We settle on a price, and I’m about to stand up, when I spot a familiar gait moving across the room and toward the door. She must have been here all along. How could I have missed her? I want to see where she’s going.
“Who do I ask for when I come back?” I turn to my informant. She shrugs.
“See you around, End Man.”
I glance at her once more before turning to follow Phoenix. She’s past the bar and through the door in a matter of seconds, her black hair braided down her back in a long rope. I mean to call out to her when I see her in the parking lot, but there’s something about the way she’s moving that makes me hold my tongue. I’ve seen her move like that before. I watch as she pulls up her hood, obscuring her face almost entirely. With her hands in her pockets, she jogs toward the street, head down.
I follow her for a few blocks, before she takes a sharp turn down an alley emerging onto another street, this one rougher than the last. The houses lean, collapsing in on themselves, windows held together with boxes and duct tape.
I stand in the shadows and watch as she stops at a house that was once painted green, the only remnants of the color clinging defiantly on a few places near the door. The steps are falling apart, and she dodges the uneven spots as she jogs up the stairs to the front porch. I watch as she looks around quickly and then tucks a bag between the screen and the door. When she takes off running down the street, I try to catch up but quickly lose sight of her.
I walk back toward the house eyeing the windows and street for any onlookers. There would be no mistaking me if I was caught. The stairs creak and I’m almost there when a voice sounds, almost making me jump out of my skin.
“Sir, can I help you?” Cody, one of my security team, comes up behind me.
I wave her away, looking around to make sure no one is watching.
“I’m fine. Wait for me in the car, please.”
“It’s not safe out here, Mr. Emerson.”
“Fine. Stand there and be quiet.”
She nods and folds her hands in front of her while I pick up the bag. It’s worth the trouble. Inside the brown paper bag is a heavy gold bracelet. I weigh it in my hand, confused.
“Sir…” Cody says.
I tuck the bracelet back in place and wedge the envelope where Phoenix left it. Who is this woman? And what is she up to?
Back at the compound, I pull up everything I can find on Phoenix Moyo. A sperm bank baby, they call them The Last Ofs...the solution before the Society took over with The End Men. Her mothers are Sylvia and Bisa, lesbian by birth and not circumstance. She’s been dancing since she was five. Attended Julliard. Her friends call her Bird, and she has a tendency online to talk more about what she doesn’t like than what she does, which I gather as: other women, sushi, greed, traffic, tardiness, dumb questions, cats, the Brown Region, friends who borrow things and don’t return them, and last but certainly not least, the End Men. That one makes me laugh. I read about her until late into the night and watch a few videos of her dancing. She’s something special off the stage, but on it, she becomes vibrant, an energy that I can’t look away from. I watch for a few minutes before buying a ticket to one of her performances. Selfish will just have to rearrange my schedule accordingly. I’m already considering how I’ll see her, talk to her again.
And then it’s there at the bottom of the screen, a banner, information that makes me smile, and I know exactly what I have to do.