Page 122 of Coldwire
A quick splutter of rain sprays down while we’re accelerating, then stops before the droplets have barely finished gliding along the windshield. Middle Medaluo is polluted enough already, but with this shaky weather, the sun is nothing more than a faint circle through the clouds.
“Maybe this is a design choice across all the cars,” Nik says after a while. My mind has long wandered off, but he’s still on the same topic. “Many people get attached to their self-cleaning vacuums. This bonds them to their car.”
I prop my arm up on the door, leaning into my hand. “They need a bit more charm than only an emoticon. Think about misshapen fruit. Self-cleaning vacuums have nothing on them.”
Nik sniffs loudly. “I cry every time the lumpy apple gets left behind.”
I’m taken aback for a second. I can’t imagine Nik Grant eating his fruits and vegetables, never mind crying in the grocery aisle. It doesn’t occur to me that Nik has cracked a joke until I meet his gaze when he glances over, and he allows the faintest smile through.
The car says its fifteen degrees Celsius outside. While my arm is pressed to the window, it collects the condensation gathering there, keeping my skin cool.
“What did you do before this?”
The question falls out of its own accord. Nik returns his attention to the road. The steering wheel shifts under his hand, making a slight turn in the curving highway.
“Before I set you up for treason?”
“No.” I know already what he did before he set me up for treason. I did my research. “Before all of it. You weren’t born a domestic anarchist, were you?”
He must think I’m picking at something.
“Maybe I was,” Nik says evasively. “Maybe I was born to criminals.”
“I doubt it.”
Nik narrows his eyes. “Why?”
“You once made your escape off the top of a mountain base by skiing away. You put your shoes on as though you received formal teaching on the most polite way to manage it, and”—Nik’s shoulders are already tight as I speak, but when I tap his nose, he must realize that I’ve been watching very carefully—“your freckles are permanently burned off. I can see the lighter patches where they used to be.”
He’s silent for a long moment. Then he mutters, “You’re an astute detective, aren’t you?”
“I went to school with many people like you. It’s not detective work.”
Nile Military Academy was a strange place. There was no in-between. There were the kids born to parents who were some of the highest-ranking people in Atahua, attending the school as a matter of prestige, and then there were the kids whose enrollment was government-mandated for no reason other than being a Medan orphan, banned from full adoption by Atahuan parents. There were kids who were troublemakers from day one after years in the foster care system, and they were either straightened up by punishment or kicked out before long, the headmaster making the call that they wouldn’t be useful for NileCorp forces upon graduation even if they tested well enough in national entrance exams to grant their initialenrollment. Those cadets inevitably ended up on the streets, because they’d still owe the debt of the academic year they started. There were always a few with every incoming class.
Nik focuses on keeping the steering wheel straight.
“Fine, you’ve identified the signs correctly,” he says. “That’s not going to help you narrow down my background, unfortunately.”
“I know.” We’ve entered the rural parts of Medaluo, the elevated expressway transforming into wide country roads. “Where did you grow up?”
“Atahua.”
“Button City?”
“Button State.”
He’s been nearby, then. Even before his crimes, he has always circled my vicinity.
“And your parents?” I ask.
“Irrelevant.”
“Hmm.” I shift in my seat. We pass a copse of trees, gnarly and dust-covered, most of the leaves so waxy that they appear fake. Not so pretty on the eyes, but that’s the sort of greenery surviving through the worst climate crises. “Atahuan?”
“Obviously.”
“You almost don’t look classically Atahuan, though.”
