-1-

The Inner Mojave train station is empty since most of the town was at the funeral afterparty. I board the train going toward the Sprawl and get off at the first stop. It’s in the Outskirts—the strange little area right where the Sprawl meets the desert.

I sprint down the station steps and out the station door but she's not there. I pace a little, staring at the space where the gravel gives way to baked sand.

I start to walk towards a bench to wait when a brilliant blue motorcycle starts circling me, the engine is so powerful I can feel the  vibrations in my throat, the wheels kicking up sprays of dust in my face.

The sleek motorcycle comes to a  stop less than a foot away from me. My nice black velvet dress was now covered in fine bits of sand and debris. I should have changed clothes. 

The iconic blue jacket looked like all the other Covalcotti Rider jackets--leather, midnight blue and form fitting--but hers had a cursive threaded on the back in gold.  

Don’t Call Me Baby

When Colette removes her motorcycle helmet, the dark hair that escaped her ponytail sticks to her olive toned face.

I walk to the edge of the station and sit on the ground, my back against the building. She leans her bike back on it’s kickstand, locks it and  slumps down to sit next to me. She immediately looks down and picks at pieces of gravel, flicking them out into the desert in the distance.

“It was awful,” I tell her, choking up a little.

Colette is silent.

“Rias just...did it,” I continue. “He killed--”

“It’s not that hard,” Colette cuts me off, her voice is soft and husky.

I shake my head.

Maybe not for her.

I watch people making a wide berth around her parked bike as they hurry to the station. There weren’t many Covalcotti Riders left, but whispers of the vicious motorcycle riding assassins for the Santoro Family lingered.

“It’s fucked up. No one says it… but it’s so fucked up.”

She nods.

For three generations some unknown genetic brain bacteria has been responsible for the death of the Washington men. Some called it a curse since it only seemed to affect the ones who were in direct line of succession. It slowly ate away their brains and slowly shut down their bodies system by system.  

Rayne had spent half of his life looking for a cure but no one could help. Not even the best doctors around the world. Not even Alan Gray,  the bodyhacker who could supposedly beat death, could stop it.

 When Rayne knew he only had days left he had done as his father had done and willed his son to end his life. 

Nobody expected to lose him so soon. The apex of the disease hit Rayne nearly twenty years earlier than it hit  his father and thirty years earlier than it had hit his grandfather.

“What happens now?” Colette asks.

“More partying I guess.”

“I mean for Zacharias,” she says. “Is he the cartel leader now?”

I’m surprised by the question. Colette has big  deep set dark eyes and her face was all wide sharp features that hid very little. I could usually always read her intention in her facial expressions.

But not this time.

Colette and I don’t usually talk about business. Ever. 

We don’t talk about how this wasn’t allowed. 

 We don’t talk about how for the last decade her family had been trying to kill mine and even though there had been a cease fire it was still bitter for both sides.  

“Ornamentally,” I respond echoing Aunt Minnie’s words.

 

***

 -2-

Not many teenagers would travel all the way to Fort Perch to see an experimental short film made in the authentic silent movie era style.

But I was obsessed with the history of silent film and Colette liked one of the actresses in the film—she was a friend of one of Colette’s many cousins.

The film was terrible. 

We were the only two people in the theater house and we’d started laughing at the same parts and then started whispering about how terrible it was a quarter of the way in. We kept talking over the movie and the film house staff kicked us out  so they could close early. I impulsively invited Colette to the tea shop next door and she agreed.

I didn’t have many friends who weren’t secretly after my brothers ( in both the murder-y and non-murder-y ways) and in her ruffly white top and lavendar capris  she looked like potential best friend material.

 I’m not sure what I would have done if I’d know who the girl I’d been making penis jokes at the movies really was.

That she hated the color lavender and usually wore a motorcycle jacket. That she was Nicoletta Santoro, mafia princess, the only daughter of  Nico Santoro, the Santoro Crime Family patriarch.  The same Santoro Crime Family that had been feuding with the Shy Cartel since I was a baby.

But, no. That wasn’t enough twist of fates for the universe.

She was also the youngest and only female Covalcotti Rider in the Santoro Family.  She’d taken up the training against her father’s wishes and had only been allowed to continue because it turned out she was damn good at it.  

It wasn’t until a few months into our friendship that the truths of our circumstance were revealed. We were both private and danced around our family and histories up to that point. But one night she saw Daddy’s Shy Cartel ring that I wore around my neck.

Then we created The Rules.

No talk of family

No talk of business

No killing each other.

 

***

 -3-

My father, Lachlan Banner, had been one the Shy Cartel's best hitman. My mother, Sara Banner, was the only one who could beat his kill count.

So she married him.

And a year later she had me.

I know that having me made Daddy soft.  And I know it made him sloppy.  And I know that is what got him killed on a job when I was ten.

I think that’s why Luce kept everyone at arms length. Luce liked the blood on his hands too much to complicate it.

To most Luce Grace was  the ruthless, coldhearted cyborg assassin with a sure shot and a lethal berserk button. But to me he was just my slightly overprotective and very annoying older brother.

Luce is sitting bare chested and  backwards in one the new black leather dining room chairs, his legs straddling the seat and his head resting on his thick folded arms. 

Pretty Boy straddles Luce’s back, carefully shading and articulating the lines of the tattoo Luce was getting to commemorate Rayne’s death.  The run off ink from the needle runs in rivulets down his bare back and collects in an inky puddle on a thick  towel on the floor.

Luce wanted the tattoo positioned at the top of his back, right above all his kill marks. It was a small cherry blossom branch. Apparently in Shinjuku, the city Rayne’s family came from, there was once a large park where people came from all over just to see the flowers. People had come for centuries until the bombs from the Serial Wars took it out.

There were far easier ways of getting inked than with a needle, but Luce liked the bone deep coloring that came from one of Pretty Boy’s notorious needles to the skin. Rumor had it that when they looked at Shy Cartel skeletons you could still see traces of his ink.

Living with Luce, tattoos in the middle of the living room were a common occurrence in our split level penthouse. Even more common were kill mark tattoos being done while Alan was patching up Luce’s cybernetics and Aunt Minnie was barking orders directly from Rayne.                                             

Luce had started killing when he was 14. Zacharias had been groomed to lead the cartel since before he could read.

But I’d had a choice about the cartel life and for the most part I had made it.

I was out.

I knew there was an expectation that I would always be loyal to cartel members but I wasn’t like my parents. I couldn’t hack or kill.

I was good at school and I like studying history. And for the most part that made me happy.

 Which was all Mother said she wanted.

 The thin strip of LED light that bordered the baseboards and ceiling in the living room blinks in  pale rainbow colors as a soft bell chorus rings through the loft.

“GET THE DOOR!” Luce shouts from the dining room to where I was doing my schoolwork in the living room.

“Okay!” I call back

“AND CHECK WHO IT IS !” 

“Yeah, yeah,” I say even though there were only a handful of people who could even make it to our penthouse floor without being killed by the security guards downstairs.

I flip through the windows on my screen as I walk to the door until I patch to the camera in the hall so I can see who is waiting on the other side of the front door.

“I think my needle wants some virgin skin,” Pretty Boy says when I walk past his impromptu tattoo studio in our family dining room. “I’ve got so many ideas for your baby sister.”

“Why don’t you concentrate on not fucking me up so I don’t have to fuck you up,” Luce grumbles.

“Also, I can hear you,” I remind them as I get to the door.

I have to remind people of this a lot

“I know you can,” Pretty Boy replies in a sing song voice and goes back to inking.

I enter the code to open the front doors and the opaque doors defrost and slide open to reveal Haley standing on the other side.

Despite the oppressive Mojave heat he wore long gray pants  with a long sleeve beige track jacket, the asymmetrical zipper pulled to his chin. He always kept his body covered when he wasn't working.

Haley defied categorization. He was probably closer in age to Luce but most days he still looked like he could be a student in my school. His was prettier than every woman I knew, with sunkissed blonde hair that fell down his chest and long lashes so dark it was like he was always wearing the perfect amount of eye makeup. If I ever got brave enough to dye my ridiculously orange hair, I was cutting of a lock of his blonde hair to take for the colorist.

He’d come to Rayne’s door a few years ago, eager to join the cartel and take down the Federation. It was bad timing though. My Dad had died around that time and Rayne was just starting to show signs of the disease. Rayne had made Haley a cartel associate, not  a full member. Rayne didn’t think he had enough leverage to really trust Haley. 

Rayne occasionally sent him to go undercover to gather information that couldn’t be hacked by Luce. He was a good liar and people trusted him.

He used to work on the line at the Mojave Blade Company but Uncle Jean convinced him to join his brothel as an escort a few years ago, something about RLA fetishes getting  popular.

“Hi, Twyla,” Haley greets me quietly.

I go to hug him in a greeting and he steps back. I shake it off like I was just stretching my arms.

I always forget that he didn’t like to be touched. I'm not sure exactly what he did with his clients at the brothel. Aunt Minnie says I should be lucky I don't know because she can't forget.

“Is Luce here ?,” Haley asks.

“MOTHERFUCKER!,” Luce curses.

Both of our heads snap in the direction of the dining room.

We hear Pretty Boy laugh. “Hey, hey, I told you that you can’t move while I’m doing this.” 

“Yeah,” I smile, stepping out of the way to let Haley in. “He’s here.”

Haley follows me into the dining room and as he  pulls up a chair next to Luce. Pretty Boy’s eyes land on him, examining Haley's every move. Pretty Boy stops inking and pretends to wipe the needle while he stares at Haley.

“Now, there is some beautiful virgin skin for my needle,” Pretty Boy laughs.

Haley cuts his  eyes up to glare at Pretty Boy's obnoxious statement. He jerks open the zipper of his jacket to reveal the shredded gray tank top he wore underneath. The top had barely enough fabric to technically  be considered a shirt, it showed off most of his body and with it the RLA tattoos that started at his neck and disappeared into the waistband of his pants.

Pretty Boy narrows his eyes and whispers a name like a curse under his breath. He stares at Haley, then shakes his head in disbelief before going back to inking silently and Haley zips his jacket back up to his neck.

I’d seen Haley’s  tattoos once before and vaguely  knew there was some terrible violent past to them but they still always unnerved me. The RLA and any iconography from those days is a sensitive subject. A few of the loser boys in my class were suspended just for drawing the RLA insignia on their wrists in glow in the dark pen.

“What do you want, Lex  ?,” Luce asks

Haley kneels in front of the chair Luce is draped over so they are eye to eye. Haley taps his syndicate and it projects an image of a beautiful Smith and Wesson. The gun is elegant, slim, showy and expensive as hell but even I know it has no kick.

“I want to buy this,” Haley says softly.

“You want money ?,” Luce asks, a rare smile playing at his lips

“I have the money. I want to know if this is a good gun.”

“For who ?,” Luce asks, amused.

“Me.”

Luce stops smiling.

"The Federation Day parade," Haley says. "They never have security on the parade floats...I can get close I just need--”

“So what ? You’re just going to do it in the middle of the fucking Federation Day parade ?”

“Maybe…they let citizens on the float, I could get on it--”

“What did Rayne fucking tell you--”

“Rayne is dead and we both know I'm never going to make enough money to pay for the hit--"

“So, what ? You’re going to kill him in front of his husband and kids ? You’ll have to be real fucking  close and if you’re that fucking close Justice will catch you and then you’ll be put in some underground cell again--”

“You can break me out--”

“The husband's got stock in Rayne's company. If you  fuck it up Minnie wouldn’t let anyone go after you--”

“You follow Minnow's rules now ?”

“No. I’m following my own sense of a good plan and a shitty plan. Your grip sucks and you’d choke and fail…But fine, go kill someone and get caught. I don’t give a fuck.”

“You could do it. You never get caught,” Haley says, stroking Luce’s ego.

 “I’m not your fucking assassin for hire. I go where I'm told.”

“That’s a lie,” Haley says,  pulling away the projection of the gun.

Luce smiles again.

“It’s not worth it. There are other ways. It’s like Rayne said, you have to be patient,” Luce says, grunting out the words as Pretty Boy presses the needle in harder.

“It’s been over 4 years years. I’ve done so much for you—for the cartel, I mean,” Haley says. “This is all I want. I don’t want to wait anymore. I'm not going anywhere. I’ll work for the cartel for free for the rest of my life if you give me this. Can you tell your brother tha--”

“Really ? Is this my fucking  life now ?,” Luce snaps. “People dropping by to get a direct line to my baby brother’s influence ? Fucking hell. ”

“No,” Haley says balling his  hand into a fist.  “But I’ve just been  patient, Luce. I’ve been so loyal… I’ll always be loyal. I just want what I was promised.”

“Nobody promised you anything, Rayne never made promises to anyone,” Luce says. “If that is all you wanted you can leave.”

I'm surprised I got to hear that much. They’re careful to never use names or titles  when talking about hits around  me but I know who they’re talking about. Haley had come into the cartel asking for only one specific thing; the now Attorney General, Kenneth Maxwell, to be tortured and killed. Rayne agreed to arrange it, but you never got anything from the cartel without giving something first.

Haley picks himself up from his kneeling position and sits in the chair next to Luce. He slowly unfurls his fingers to lay his hand flat. He’s wearing fingerless gloves today but if he wasn’t I’d see the “X” stigmata tattooed on his palm.

The stigmata used to be in place to mark people each time they donated vital organs for money so they wouldn’t over donate. The symbol quickly turned to a permanent symbol of shame and weakness and was disbanded with the Federation.

Now organ selling was more or less a free for all.

“Does that hurt bad ?,” Haley asks Luce, watching Pretty Boy’s needle drill against Luce's flesh.

“Like a motherfucking bitch,” Luce grunts.

Haley holds his hand out to Luce, I catch a brief glimpse of the stigmata tattoo Luce had gotten a few years ago before their hands meet and their fingers lace.

I wander out of the dining room and turn back to the calculus study guide on my screen trying to concentrate on finishing the last few equations. I can hear Luce and Haley trading sparse  sentences over the buzz of the needle.

The Mojave penthouse wasn’t extravagant, but it had enough room for our family of five and the occasional guest to have some privacy.

 If I wanted to really focus I could go to my bedroom or Luce’s rooftop garden but I liked being around the noise. I liked having the privilege of hearing the occasional piece of Shy Cartel gossip. Pretty Boy inked everyone in the Shy Cartel so he knew most of the members and Luce had personal opinions about everyone. Most of them unkind.

A soft ping sounds on my screen and I look down to see a message from Pola Negri, the code name I put in for Colette in my contacts. The real Pola Negri played femme fatales in the silent film era so it seemed like the perfect code name.

I dismiss my math assignment to open the message. It’s just a music file.

I smiled. She did this a lot, sent me songs with absolutely no context.

I connect the file to the loft’s speaker system and press play. The entire loft is filled with a raw drum solo followed by an upbeat synthesized drum sound. At the crescendo a female voice comes over the music. She’s rapping about a boy she’s been staring at from across the rave dance floor. The beat is fast and soulful, the woman’s voice is erotic and desperate.

“Turn that shit down !,” Luce shouts. “I thought you were studying,”

“I like it!” Pretty Boy says. I turn around to see him moving his head to the music. He lifts both his arms to dance with the music. “Is this what the kids are listening to, Twyla ?”

I could never put an age on Pretty Boy under all the ink. He hadn’t been a boy for a long time but his body was sinewy and it moved effortlessly over the music. I put my tablet down and dance over to him, miming that I’m rapping even though I don’t know the words.

I catch Haley  smiling at us but he keeps his concentration on game he was playing, unscrambling letters against a clock. Pretty Boy takes my hand and spins me around the dining room in dizzying circles, keeping his hand with the needle aloft.

“OFF,” Luce says to the speakers and the music halts

“We were listening to that,” I tell him.

 “If you take any longer on this tattoo I’m going to snap your neck and have Twyla do the kill mark,” Luce barks to Pretty Boy.

“Come on. It was too quiet. Why do you like the silence ?,” I challenge him.

“I like to think.

“About what ?”

“About whatever I want,” he retorts. “Go get me a bottle of water,”

“No, I’m not your maid,” I tell him.

“I’ll get it,” Haley says and he is up before I can say I was just joking.

Luce scared me sometimes but when he was in a sparring mood I liked to play along. He was practically old enough to be my Dad and  he was a professional thug so he had to protect me. Our fights could only go so far and I liked the frustration it brought him.

Haley comes back with four glass bottles of rosemary lemon sparking water  and quickly passes them out. Pretty Boy tenses when Haley passes him the bottle, but smiles it off.

“For the record I’m not your maid either,” Haley says unscrewing the bottle and giving it to Luce.

“Thanks,” Luce grumbles.

I go back to the living room and see a new message from Pola Negri

Pola Negri: Do you like the track ?

Twyla B: Tried to start a dance party but my brother is being an a-hole

Pola Negri: They’re a Dutch group and they’re playing at Beverly Hell tonight. I want to go, can you come ?

Twyla B: Of course. What time ?

Pola Negri:  They go on at midnight. Maybe we meet at 10PM ?

Twyla B: Sounds good.

Pola Negri:   Wear those white boots.

Twyla B: No, they’re hideous

Pola Negri:   They are not.

Twyla B: Fine. But You have to wear the gold sandals your mom gave you for your birthday.  And no ponytail.

Pola Negri: How can I ride in sandals ? Maybe I’ll get one of those colorful wigs

Colette had this gorgeous princess length, wavy, dark hair she’d inherited from her Italian mother but she never wore it down. I was about to tell her to try getting one of those straightening treatments on her real hair when the speakers in the house suddenly go off and the LED panels around the house start lighting up in blue and white.

“Hello ?,” I call to the speakers and the line connects.

“Twyla, is Luce there ?,” Mother's voice asks over the speakers.

“Yes… He’s getting a tattoo--”

“A kill mark ? You didn’t have a kill mission, Luce,” Mother says sternly. “Who did you take out--”

“It’s not a kill mark, Ma,” I hear Luce say from the dining room.

“Zacharias is having stomach pain and forgot his pills,” Mother says.  “Can you bring them here ?”

“No.” Luce snaps. “I'm busy. Didn’t he inherit Minnie as a gopher?”

“I am not a gopher!” I hear Aunt Minnie shouts  in the background.

“I can bring them,” I offer. I’d have to sneak out to go to Beverly Hell with Colette so I needed to store up some Good Daughter Points.

“Don’t you have homework ?,” Mother asks.

“It’s just extra credit and I’m almost done,” I say.

“Thank you, Twyla but I’m telling Luce to do it.”

“Isn’t Ri the boss now ?,”  Luce says. “Pick some guard or joygirl  to be his errand bitch--”

“Enough Luce. We’re in the warehouse. Goodbye, Twyla.”

“Bye,” I say.

The line makes a pinging sound as she hangs up.

“I’ll go get the pills,” I offer since I can tell Luce was still upset about being given the job.

“Whatever,” he grumbles getting up from the chair, practically knocking Pretty Boy over in the process.

I run up the steel spiral staircase to Zacharias’s room. He had the largest room in the loft since they knocked down a guest bedroom for his office last year. 

His bedroom and office are industrial and Spartan and always felt eerie to me

Like all the rooms in the loft the walls are brick, he had a black wrought iron king sized bed with two matching night stands, a dresser and a small table with two chairs. On the wall is a small shelf with two framed images; our family photo and a photo of a younger Rayne with his brother, Hotako and their mother before she died.

Rias' office is in an alcove built off the bedroom. The wall to wall bookshelves  were empty now, but would soon house the antiques and books Washington’s had been keeping for generations. There was a simple flat plane-shaped desk with several suspension screens hovering at eye level. The most startling piece in the office was the mural on a far right wall.

It was a rendering of Zacharias, his arms folded, his eyes darkened in shadow and a slight smirk on his  face. A crooked crown sat on his head. The mural had been commissioned by Rayne Washington and done in a style that looks liked someone had blown gunpowder at the wall and formed the effigy of my brother.

All the surfaces in his room and office are bare aside from Rayne’s cartel ring that lay on his nightstand. I find the pill bottle easily, the orange bottle stood out in the room as out of place

I quickly swap out my school uniform for white shorts and a sheer bright yellow tank top and sandals. When I get downstairs Pretty Boy is gone but Haley is still there staring at his game.

Luce is standing by the door twirling the flame shaped car key in his hand.

“Can I come along ?,” I ask

“Fine, but no music,” Luce says raising the door to the garage.

“Ew, you’re not going out like that, are you ?,”

He still hadn’t put his shirt back on. Luce never had a problem showing his kill marks. He’d walk right past a Justice Officer with them on display. And while I was generally grossed out when my brother walked around without a shirt on, seeing the still bloody tattoo on his back added another level of gross.

“Get in the car,” he says as the doors of his green Vulcan swivel up and open.

The limited edition tear drop shaped car was his new toy, it was supposed to create energy off heat and make it possible for Luce to make long trips across the desert without worrying about fuel or charging the car.

Luce drives so quickly that the world turns into a blur as we leave the town of Mojave and jet across the desert, through the Sprawl and into The Outer Sprawl Valley, towards the Mojave Blade Company factory and warehouse.

---

A/N

I literally just realized Colette may have been subconsciously inspired by Clara DeLune. Also, I may have stolen some of Lile's tattooing mojo.

Some of these chapter divisions are going to be weird because this is all one document that I saw as one story that got longer. Twyla's origins are mentioned briefly in Arkham Academy during this exchange between Sera and Luce...I'm surprised none of you asked why this character gets named.