Throwback Thursday: ‘And in the Arcade, Ego’ by Kate Heartfield

Luz torches the Fugax right after we roll out of it, before I even hit the floor of the landing bay. She lights it up like an offering with one of her chemical grenades, holding on to a bay-grip with one hand, and kicks the speedcraft, all sparking and spinning, out into space.

I cringe when it explodes. The smoothest ride around, so pretty and sleek. Worth more denari than I’ll make in my lifetime. But Luz just pumps one fist as the Fugax silently pops, and all that’s left is this sparkling, expanding blue sphere.

Must be weird to be rich.

Not that it was ours to begin with, but just once I’d like to keep one of the things we steal long enough to sell it. 

She can’t see me rolling my eyes inside my helmet but I do it anyway as I start climbing the grips up to the airlock.

Luz is still laughing when we scramble up into the station and take our helmets off.

“I’m your tight friend,” she says. “It’s my job to make you do things you don’t want to do. When else do you get to have this kind of sin?”

Pretty well never is the answer to that. Life is going to be grim for a while, that’s what I’m thinking at this point. Everything I make from my cleaning job goes to pay my dad’s indulgence debt and my brother’s prison keep, neither of which are shrinking.

If I can’t make rent this month, I’ll have to beg mercy. Ask the Consilium to put me to work, doing something I don’t want to think about. Doing its dirty work on the prison stations, or helping them put people there. It’s that or starve to death — or martyrdom as the posters call it. Make myself useful in Heaven since I can’t be useful here.