The crew filled the cramped space, edging around the aluminum interrogation table and chairs as best they could without bumping into one another. They avoided each other’s eyes. Tension filling the air like mustard gas.

As soon as Hollingsworth’s footsteps were no longer audible, Mara rounded on Shay. Her bloodshot eyes glittered with that same manic rage as when she’d yelled at the officer. “What the fuck,” she said, too slow for comfort, “is going on?”

Shay gathered herself. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I really didn’t think it was important for you to know who Drew was.”

“So he was a cop,” Thanh interrupted. “Big whoop. Forget the fact that she lied to us — which, by the way, definitely not fucking cool, and I am absolutely ready to throw down about that. I just want to know what makes that little detail so important here.”

“You…?” Mara stared in disbelief. “We’re being chased around the city by a notorious gang of criminals because your brother found out about something illegal enough to murder him over, and you don’t think him being a fucking cop might be relevant?”

Thanh’s lips pursed. She turned on Shay, realization morphing into anger.

“I’m sorry,” Shay repeated. She shook her head in frustration. “I just got caught up in everything that was happening, and by the time I remembered — I mean, I said it already. I didn’t want you to associate me with…them.” She gestured vaguely at their surroundings.

“Okay, but you understand why that makes you look suspicious?” Mara seemed caught halfway between fury and bafflement.

“We just want to trust you,” Inna added. He hadn’t spoken in a while, and, seeing him now, Rede could understand why. He leaned against the wall with his shoulders hunched, dark circles rimming his eyes and a dusting of ginger hair lining his upper lip. Rede felt fatigued just looking at him.

“I get it.” Shay took a seat on the edge of the interrogation table, feet dangling comically far above the floor. She folded her hands in her lap and stared at the ground. “I really didn’t mean anything by it, I promise. I know I should’ve said something. I’m really sorry.”

Rede eyed her companions, expecting someone to snap — Thanh, maybe, with one of her yelling fits, or the sudden unleashing of whatever horror Mara was carrying pent up inside her. But no one did. Either they knew they had to keep Shay on their side at least until the police talked to them, or they just couldn’t muster the energy.

“If Drew was a cop,” Rede said into the silence, “and you know these people…?”

Shay cut her off with a shake of her head. “No, I don’t have any special strings to pull. I used up all my favors after Drew died, and when that got me nothing, I didn’t react awesome. Besides, I let slip I’d been talking to Ronan.” She hesitated. “Okay, in the spirit of full disclosure, you should probably know that Ronan used to be an officer, too. There’s, uh. Bad blood.”

“Yeah, I kind of saw that one coming,” said Rede.

“Well, I didn’t,” Thanh snapped. “Are you serious? Do you think they know we went to him, too?”

“They knew Lacey was in with all the brokers in town, and they left us alone,” Rede pointed out. “I think we’ll be okay.”

“Yeah, well, her connections with the pigs are probably the only thing that’s saving our asses right now,” Thanh said. “And we don’t even know enough about these people to get leverage.”

Rede winced. She hadn’t considered that. When the crew went to ask for protection from the police, it had been right after they set up camp in the Barn and just a few weeks post-quake. They had been exhausted, scared out of their minds, and generally too scatterbrained to do much besides back Lacey up with well-placed comments and pitiful expressions. Lacey hadn’t visited the station very often after that initial encounter, and when she did, the crew didn’t usually listen in.

“Great.” Mara rubbed her temples. “We’re going in blind, and the one person who could have helped us burned all her goddamn bridges.”

“What exactly did you do?” Thanh pressed.

“I wanted my brother back,” Shay said simply. “I knew I couldn’t get that, so the best I could hope for was justice. He always talked about that sort of stuff.”

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

“Let me guess,” Thanh said, rolling her eyes. “This guy was an all-American, goody-two-shoes idealist who made every fucking interaction into a morality lesson. Probably really racist, too.”

“He wasn’t a racist, and I don’t know why you make the rest of that stuff sound so bad.” Shay tugged anxiously at a stray curl. “Drew was exactly the type of person this station should have been full of. He joined up because he was sick of watching people like those jerks out there being lazy and pushing everybody else around.”

Thanh rolled her eyes far enough back to see her own frontal lobe. “God, that’s nauseating. Do you know how arrogant you have to be to look at something as fucked up as this-” she threw her arms wide to indicate the station in general “-and think you can fix it? All by your little fucking self? I mean, fuck, the pretentiousness there is just baffling.”

“Isn’t that exactly what you did?” Shay countered. “You guys don’t even take real payment half the time, for crying out loud.”

Mara’s hands had started to rhythmically clench and unclench. Her eyes darted around the room like a stray dog in the corner of an alleyway.

Inna seemed to sense her bristling energy. With a grunt of effort, he pushed himself off the wall and put a hand on Thanh’s shoulder. “Guys,” he started.

Thanh shrugged him off. “We are not the same,” she insisted.

“Oh, really? Haven’t we all been messed up by the same stupid system?” Shay slid off the desk and crossed her arms, facing Thanh. “These people practically raised me. Drew spent all his time here, and I was always with him, ‘cause our parents wouldn’t bother getting sober long enough to take care of me. That internship he had here was the only thing that got him through high school, and the only reason he got a job after he graduated. These people were our family. And then what? He dies and leaves me all alone, and I come here expecting them to help, and they do nothing.” Her voice had started to wobble. “And, sure, I yelled and threw stuff and broke some things, which isn’t great, but, I mean, my brother had just died. And the worst part was, they didn’t even try and stop me. They all just…watched. And I left, because I was so tired, and they weren’t even angry. They were all looking at me, and there was nothing there. Nothing on their faces. I didn’t…”

Shay trailed off. Her eyes shone, but no tears fell. Her shoulders were slumped, lip trembling, arms folded across her chest as if to ward off a cold wind. It was the same posture Rede adopted when she sat at the entrance to the Barn to watch the sun rise and think of Lacey.

“We’re after the same people,” Inna said quietly. “We’ve all suffered. Can we all just agree to trust each other?”

“She lied to us,” Thanh repeated.

“By omission,” Rede muttered. “Technically not the same.”

Thanh shot her a withering glare.

“I’m sorry,” Shay said, for what felt like the thousandth time. She glanced up. “I can make it up to you.”

“Fat chance,” Thanh snorted. “What do we even need you for, anyway? We brought you here, that was our agreement.”

Rede’s stomach started to churn. “We finally have a chance at finding out what happened to Lacey,” she said. “Don’t you want that?”

Thanh threw up her hands and let out a guttural groan. “Aren’t you so fucking tired of thinking about that?” She let her hands fall and looked Rede in the eye. “Look, it fucking hurts to think about her. Every day it hurts. I’ve been in pain for so long.” She took a deep breath. The air rattled as it escaped her lungs. “Aren’t you all tired of it?”

Rede hesitated. The whole room seemed to hold its breath; everyone’s eyes darted from face to face, unsure of whose example to follow.

There weren’t words to answer Thanh, at least not yet. All Rede could think was that, yes, it did hurt, but she didn’t know how to let it stop.

Shay’s eyes dropped to her mud-streaked sneakers, hand absently drifting toward the handgun under her jacket. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to. Somehow, Rede knew that the two of them were thinking the exact same thing.

Inna crossed his arms protectively over his chest. “What if it’s not about us?”

Thanh frowned, a wordless question written across her face.

“All of this,” Inna clarified. “The same people who went after Lacey also went after Drew, and now the cops won’t help us. Don’t you think that’s going to happen to someone else eventually? ‘Cause I can’t think about anything else. That’s what’s hurting me.” His eyes were puppy-wide, his freckles standing out against the pallor of his skin like dried blood.

Mara rubbed both hands across her face. “Fuck,” she muttered.

There were a thousand excuses they could go with: other people weren’t their problem, it was just a hypothetical anyway, they couldn’t guarantee that the situation was still going on, they didn’t even know who was behind all this, everything was fucked anyway so what did it really matter.

But an odd kind of gravity hung in the air, a smoke-like weight warning them of those phrases’ convenient fragility. If what Shay said was true, then her goody-two-shoes brother would have kept fighting to protect everyone else. Regardless, she was right: the crew did what they did not for profit, but because they knew the people of this crumbling, half-drowned city needed it. They needed this, too. Rede knew with choking certainty that she wouldn’t wish this suffering of hers on anyone.

Why did she inflict it on herself, then, she wondered? But that was a question for another time.

“So,” Inna said.

Thanh nodded numbly. “So.”

“We find Mimi first,” Mara said. “Then we fuck some shit up.”

Thanh grabbed a chair, spun it around, and sat down with her arms crossed over the backrest. “Okay, blondie. Before the pigs come in, let’s hear everything you know about ‘em. We need a game plan.”