Page 475 of Eight of Swords, Part Two

The rain is a fucking nuisance.

Danya used to like it.

But then he used to like a lot of things.

Mimi tilts her head to listen, dark hair spilling over one shoulder. She’s been binding red cotton she unravelled from an ugly sweater through Danya’s curls for almost an hour. She adds a few small charms from the rubbish she likes to keep. Ring pulls, bottle caps, matchsticks.

‘Corner six says they’re missing a pen,’ she murmurs in Russian.

Danya checks the monitor again. ‘You want a pen, sweetheart?’ he answers in kind. Mimi has been able to speak Russian for years now, having learnt it for him when he forgot how to speak English.

‘The mice need messages. I told them we’d trade.’

Their refuge has no address.

No windows, no registered access point and no presence on any municipal plan produced within the past fifty years. Danya found the place by comparing obsolete infrastructure surveys with old utility maps, searching for a discrepancy large enough to live inside.

‘We’ll trade whatever you want,’ he answers, distracted but always half-listening. Talking keeps her grounded. Grounded keeps them hidden, and hidden keeps them free from Helixx. Mimi has slept against him every night since they escaped. She’ll only eat when he does, but that’s not new. Danya holds fast to what matters.

Keeping her safe.

‘The locks and the keys are singing,’ she sighs, turning her attention to the radio components spread across the floor. ‘It’s a bad night for stars.’

‘Are you hungry?’

‘No. Papa, when can we see the sky?’

‘Not yet, princess.’

‘I promise to be careful.’

‘I trust your promise. It’s others I don’t trust.’

Danya has confirmation that Lachlan is out of prison, but beyond that, little else. Coming up for air to gather updated information is too great a risk. The equipment he has is shit. The food he manages to scrounge for them is worse than the slop they forced down his throat during the early years of Reso-training. He needs to find Lachlan soon, but he also needs to keep Mimi hidden from the Resets combing Varrow.

Mimi rests her cheek against his shoulder.

‘He’ll open the box soon. You’ll see.’

Danya drops an absent kiss onto her hair, his own braided with Mimi’s treasures. ‘And what will we do? What treat first?’

‘Cookies.’

‘Uh-huh, and?’

‘Ice cream.’

‘While at the fairground.’

‘While doing cartwheels.’

He snorts. ‘While throwing up, I think.’

Mimi giggles.

Rain drums harder overhead.

They have to hide from it.