The 13 th tribe

2

Nevaeh knelt and grabbed the security guard’s hair, yanking his head sideways as she brought her dagger to his neck. A firm hand gripped her shoulder and pulled her back.

“Nevaeh,” Ben said behind her. “He’s an innocent.”

The blade shook under the strain of her anger. “He got in our way,” she said, her gaze focusing on the man’s carotid artery, pulsing just below the skin. “He shot Elias.”

“NEV-ee-ah.” Enunciating it with that deep orator’s voice of his, like a father warning a child.

She sighed heavily and jerked her shoulder out of his clasp. She plucked the gun from the man’s limp hand and cracked it across his temple to make sure he stayed down, then tossed it away. Her eyes met Ben’s. “Happy?” she said.

From behind Ben, Phin’s voice came at her: “Come on, come on.” His eyes bounced in the doorway, and she knew his invisible body was bouncing, his arms jittering in front of him the way they did when he was excited or agitated, which pretty much defined his constant state of mind.

She glanced at the camera above and to the left of the door. It was slowly panning away from them, toward the darkness. It had captured the fallen man, but clearly no one had noticed; anyone who had would have overridden its automatic movement and held the focus on them. MicroTech made products that required both sterility and security, meaning lots of hermetically sealed barriers and doors, even in the corridors. She doubted the sound of the gunshots had reached anyone’s ears.

She rose, brushed past Ben, and crouched where blood appeared to float a foot away from the wall. She touched it and moved her fingers over Elias’s body and down his arm. She slid a switch sewn into a tight cuff around his wrist, turning off the power to his suit, and he suddenly popped into existence, clad in a jumpsuit that appeared to be made out of sharkskin, scaly and gray. Something like a mouth-less ski mask made of the same material covered his face and head, hands and feet. Constructed of negative index metamaterial, the suit effectively bent light around the wearer’s body, rendering him-or her-invisible. The technology had something to do with each tiny scale transferring light to the adjacent scale, but Nevaeh didn’t care how it worked, as long as it did. Ben had the brain for such things; she was much more interested in using it to rid the world of people who’d abused the life they’d been given by harming others. The mission at hand would go a long way toward that goal, and she didn’t need Phin telling her to hurry.

But this was Elias He’d been shot in the chest. She pulled off a glove, careful not to detach the cord that kept it invisible. She probed the wound, and her finger slipped in. Something pulsed weakly against the tip, and she thought it was his heart.

“Nevaeh,” Phin said, his voice squeaky.

“All right, all right.” She brushed her fingers over Elias’s facemask, leaving a streak of blood, and stood, slipping her hand back into the glove. She looked across the parking lot toward the trees, depressed a button in her own mask by her earlobe, and said, “Jordan.”

The boy’s voice came through an earbud. “What happened? Is that Elias-?”

“He got shot. I need you to hide him and the guard. Hurry.”

“Both? I can’t-”

“Wait.” She leaned over and turned Elias’s suit on again. He vanished. No way a camera would pick up the hovering bloodstain. “Okay,” she said. “Just the guard. Drag him out between the cars, and don’t let the camera catch you. Move it.”

She watched the tree across the lot until she saw the silhouette of Jordan’s eleven-year-old body descend from a branch and drop. Speaking to Ben’s eyes, she said, “Let’s go,” then stepped toward the doorway. Phin turned away, taking his bouncing peepers with him. Nevaeh and Ben entered the hallway and shut the door behind them.