by Schow, Ryan
The light remained upon him even as his lungs grew desperate for air. Then the light disappeared and he drew a short, subtle breath. If he could get enough oxygen, he could hold his breath again, if needed.
Instead of leaving, the two men started talking amongst themselves. Then one of them started laughing. That’s when Logan felt one of them kick the body underneath him. Lying face down in the bodies of the men he killed, he smelled blood, the rot of others, and someone’s aftershave.
Finally the two men walked away, radioing out to whomever they were talking to on the two-way. They got in their jeep and sat there for a moment. Were they leaving? He wasn’t sure. In truth, they probably sat there for thirty seconds, maybe even a full minute. But to Logan, it felt more like ten minutes. And then the engine turned over and the jeep found a gear.
Thank you, God!
The sound of the departing jeep was perhaps the sweetest sound he’d ever heard.
Logan rolled off the bodies, found his feet, then wasted no time hanging around there. Peeking around the building, checking both sides of the street, things had returned to the eerie silence of before.
He hustled back to his apartment, to the dead man face-planted into the asphalt. One leg sat against the apartment tower’s brick wall. The other was bent at the knee, heel down. His back looked strangely arched, his arms flopped out and lying on the ground. There was a big pool of what he was sure was blood all around him.
Shaking his head in both disgust for what he was seeing, and revulsion for what he was about to do, Logan grabbed that free leg and pulled the man over. The sticky sound his face made peeling off the ground had Logan’s guts jumping.
Twice he dry heaved, his eyes watering.
There wasn’t much in his stomach in the way of dinner, but what was there was definitely at a hearty boil. When his stomach settled back down, he stood and took a few deep breaths.
You can do this!
Getting under the man, he hoisted him onto his other shoulder, the one that didn’t hurt from carrying the last guy, and then he headed back to the stack.
He made the two block trek without concern. When he was in the alley, he cut away the corpse’s clothes and situated him amongst the others. His only hope was that the Chicoms would pile on more bodies in the morning, effectively covering up the evidence. If they did what they always do—and that’s have prisoners haul the dead bodies to the stacks—then everything would be okay.
Standing back, appraising his work, he thought about what would happen next. The way they lit the stack was the same every time. He’d seen it firsthand. From a few feet away, they sprayed the bodies with some sort of accelerant, soaking them and all the crevices around them.
Once they lit the pile, a fireball shot into the air, and then everything burned where it stood. After the bodies were reduced to a pile of ash, the Chicoms left it for a week as a reminder to other dissidents thinking of betraying the state.
When he got back home, he found Kim in the same place he’d left her. He took off his clothes, put them in a bag he’d dispose of on the way to work, then took a quick shower and hopped back into bed naked.
Chapter Eighteen
The next morning Logan woke up to a still undressed, still asleep Kim. Studying her for a moment or two before getting up, he wondered so many things about her. He wondered about the scars on her body, and the bruising he saw around her arms and on her ribs.
Was this from the Krav sessions, or something darker?
Over the last decade, the horrors of life in America only deepened before leading them into the oppression of the Chicom occupation. Their freedoms didn’t merely erode, they were snatched up wholesale with no remorse, no explanation, not even a PR rollout to ease the masses into such broad and sweeping changes. If this wouldn’t have happened, would there even be people like Kim? Or Skylar, who had a similar roadmap of abuse on her body?
Would there be people like me?
He crawled out of bed, made some lousy coffee, coffee that was more a fuel source than an enjoyable morning beverage.
He imagined the strong smell would wake her, but Kim continued to sleep soundly. He went into the bathroom, shaved his head, washed his armpits and crotch, conserving on both water and time.
Meanwhile, he was lost in the wonder of the message Skylar left. Of course, he couldn’t think of the message without also worrying about her. Was she even alive? What was she being put through? Would she eventually break and lead the Chicoms there?
Treason was an immediate death sentence carried out at will. He was no one important enough to spare, or to really even pause on. Two bullets, it was all done.
That’s how they killed you.
Clearing his mind, he took a fresh cup of coffee to Kim, who was just waking up.
Sitting up in bed, no sense of modesty—or perhaps just a sexual freedom he never experienced with Skylar—she sipped her coffee, her eyes low, studying the brew.
“Are you staring at my boobs?” she asked, her voice groggy, her hair a bit of a mess, but in a way he found attractive.
“Intently,” he said with a grin, even though he wasn’t. He was actually looking at all that curly black hair. When she glanced up and saw where he was looking, she said, “I look ugly in the morning. I was hoping you were staring at my breasts.”
“If that makes you feel better, I suppose I could pacify you,” he said.
“It would,” she said without humor.
“How’d you sleep?”
“Like the dead,” she said, yawning. “This coffee is terrible.”
“I know.”
“Then why’d you bring it to me?”
“Because I feel appreciative,” he said truthfully.
She took another sip and said, “It’s starting to taste better.” Looking at him over the rim of the cup, she said, “Why don’t you look tired?”
“You met me tired,” he responded. “You’ve never actually seen me looking rested.”
“What are you doing today?” she asked.
“I have to run down that lead Skylar gave me,” he said, dispassionate.
“Are you worried about her?”
It turned out there was a very thin veil between what he was trying to project and what he actually felt. He wasn’t worried about her, he was terrified for her.
“More than you know,” he said.
She thought about this for a moment, took another contemplative sip of the coffee, then said, “How is it that you can feel what you do for her when she feels nothing for you?”
“Who says she feels nothing for me?”
“After her grandmother, after what they did to her and her mother, she doesn’t feel anything other than the need for retaliation.”
“She’s different around me.”
She gave a dismissive snort, then said, “In what way?”
“I see the cracks in her armor.”
“And that’s why you’re holding out for her?” she asked. “Because right now I’m in your bed and she’s…wherever she is.”
“Is it that hard to find some humanity in this world?” he asked, his temper peeking through like a face between the drapes. “Is it so hard to forget about the Chicoms for one night?”
“You talk like a victim, trying to find joy in the thirteen seconds of freedom you experience every so often.”
“I am a victim,” he said. “So are you. All of us are. But we have to find things in this world to feel good about. It’s hard, but it’s possible. That’s how we take control and stop being a victim. Otherwise I’d just be like one of those poor saps each week that jump out of a skyscraper, or step in front of a firing squad.”
“How would you do it?” she asked. Sitting up, leaning forward and taking one of his hands, she said, “Be honest. You have one shot and that’s it.”
“How would I kill myself?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I’d go out like a gangster, but not half-assed like a thug gangster. I’m ta
lking high body count, the kind of massacre that makes the news. Guns, knives, bloody fists.”
“God, that’s hot,” she said, grinning. Her fingers reached out to him, touched his chest. “How would you die?”
“A few dozen rounds, enough lead to make me dance a jig before I’m pulled down to hell.”
Her smile faded a bit and her hand shrunk down. “Do you really think we’re going to hell?”
“For what we’re planning? I don’t know. I just assume I will because I refuse to stand around and be a victim anymore. It’s been too long.”
“I had no idea you were like this,” she said, setting the coffee on the nightstand and getting out of bed. “If all this world has for us is carnal pleasures and vengeance, would it be okay if I sleep in your room again?”
“Just don’t steal any of my stuff,” he said. “That’s all I ask.”
Walking naked to the shower, she said, “I’m going to steal a little water, some soap and shampoo, maybe even a bolt of electricity for the hair dryer.”
“I can live with that,” he said.
“Are you staring at my ass right now?” she called out over her shoulder.
“Yes, I am,” he said back.
“Good.”
A few minutes later, the shower started. He popped his head in the bathroom and said, “The house will be wired with eyes and ears as soon as I leave. I should be back by five-thirty, barring my arrest, detainment and/or execution.”
“Good luck then,” she said from behind the plastic shower curtain.
Logan left for work carrying the bag of bloody clothes. He kept his head down, his eyes low and his senses on high alert.
Traffic was heavy that morning, the exhaust fumes thick.
He walked the crowded sidewalks with a thousand other pedestrians, keeping pace with the herd, not bumping into those beside him or stepping on the heels of those in front of him.
Fortunately nothing was blown up, no one was killed and he didn’t have to start the day as witness to a firing squad. That didn’t mean everything was bright or cheerful.
It most certainly wasn’t.
The air was so damp and congested with the stink of the morning burns, you could practically taste the pollution. Ash fell from the sky like morning snow. Except these weren’t icy flakes of atmosphere as much as they were the remains of the dead. He thought of Auschwitz. It was hard not to make the comparison.
He once read that the furnaces of Birkenau devoured hundreds of thousands of bodies each year in operation. The ovens ate women and children who were gassed in the showers. They ate men who dropped dead in the fields from exhaustion, or succumbed to the affects of poor health. They ate those who fell asleep but never woke up.
As a result of the supply of bodies and the demands of the ovens, the survivors often spoke of the air and how it always seemed to be raining ash.
To Logan, it was as though the dead rose right into the rejections of God, only to drift back down to earth where they became one with the tainted land—their names, their history and their memories at risk of being lost, stamped into the ground and forever forgotten.
It was the same thing again.
The bodies were burning, their remains feathering off his head, settling onto his shoulders, becoming the very ground he walked upon. It sickened him to know the air was full of people who once had names, a purpose for existing, freedom.
Releasing the tethers on his mind, he let himself drift back to last night’s affair, to the blissful event that still felt impossible, surreal. God, what a night! He kept his smile in check. His eyes, however, softened to the memories. These were memories that would remain with him his entire life. Memories that might even serve as a flame to ward off the darkness.
He thought of her hair, her skin, the way her bruised, scarred body felt against his. The smile got away from him. But only for a moment. Realizing where he was, he tempered his emotions and made sure he hid most of his face from the street cameras, lest the Chicoms find a way to criminalize the masses for their happiness.
The smile he had—for the brief moment it existed—was something exceptional. He tried to hold on to that emotion, even as he suppressed it for his own safety.
Such were the contradictions of life.
Perhaps his luck was changing, for in the midst of so much ugliness and animosity, he’d managed to grab onto a few precious moments. Moments like these were in short supply. Yet thankfully, he found his.
Chapter Nineteen
Work was work, except that the body count he was responsible for was nearing serial killer levels. All’s fair in love and war, he told himself.
Inside the dark, closet-sized office, with the brilliant glow of two monitors taxing his retinas, he watched the split screens intently. There were four different viewing feeds. Two on each monitor. He was now the one watching the watchers. He was the necessary evil.
There was a lot of sabotage going on in the world today. More than the Chicoms wanted to deal with. Before SocioSphere’s new servers came online, hackers were able to physically attack the system from the inside, burning out so much of the original infrastructure, half the business nearly burnt down.
That’s why they brought in Ming Yeung. She controlled the watchers, and people like him—the overseers.
He’d always wondered how many watchers there were. He still didn’t know. Now that he was an overseer, he wondered how many overseers there were.
Was he the only one? Were there more?
If he did something out of the ordinary, would Ms. Yeung have something to compare to? Another overseer? Ten more overseers?
Thinking of Skylar’s message, understanding what he had to do for her, and for the Resistance, he knew there would be considerable risks. He prayed they were worth it. On the upside, at least he had a place in Oregon to bug out to if things went sideways.
There was just the matter of avoiding custody, or summary execution.
When it came to SocioSphere and other Chinese tech firms, if you were found working against the state, you were shot dead at your desk. No questions, no warnings. Just a single bullet to the back of the head.
“You can do this,” he told himself.
After lunch, mustering up his courage, he went to Ms. Yeung’s office. She looked up, surprised. He rarely set foot in her office. She never asked him there. This was her sanctuary, her way of insulating herself from people like him—white slaves of the corporate and Communist variety.
“What are you doing away from your monitors?” she asked, peeved.
“I think I found something.”
“Like what?”
“I would’ve called you,” he said to her, conspiratorially, “but this is a…sensitive matter. One best discussed in person.”
“Time is money,” she said, snapping her fingers.
“First, no it isn’t. Not now. Second, I think one of the servers has been compromised.”
“Compromised, how?”
“How much do you know about the dark web?” he asked.
“As much as anyone, I suppose,” she said, hinting about how little she knew of it. “I didn’t think it was still active.”
Now he knew she was clueless.
“The thing you need to know about the dark web is that if the entire indexed internet burns to the ground, the dark web will survive. That’s how the internet started and that’s how it will forever remain.”
“Unless the servers are compromised,” she said.
“No, not the servers,” he said dramatically. “All servers. For the internet you see and know about, the one where each website has a clear, indexed address, there is a single, corresponding server that acts as that website’s home address. This is where all the operational files are stored. All of our files are stored on our main servers downstairs, but also on our backup server location across the city.”
“So what’s the problem?” she asked, making the “hurry up and tell me” motion with her hands and eyes.
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“To put it as plainly as possible, the dark web uses all available servers as their data points. They aren’t indexed. That means they can hop from server to server using them as they see fit with almost no trace.”
“Almost?” she said.
He nodded, then he smiled. “One of my watchers is actually using one of our servers—at least that’s what I suspect based on the data I’m reading—for one of those spots. It’s called an exit relay.”
This wasn’t one hundred percent accurate, but he didn’t need to go into specifics with Ms. Yeung because she wouldn’t know the difference anyway.
“So how can you find out?” she said, now interested. “We need to find out.”
“You need to do a physical inspection at the server.”
“No way,” she said.
“Okay,” he replied, acting put out. He looked at her. Eyes flat with a heavy frown. “Whatever happens from this point on is your responsibility.”
“I know that!” she snapped.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he added.
“There has to be something else,” she said. “Figure it out.”
“What suggestion do you have?” he asked, almost thoughtfully, like he’d appreciate her help and guidance.
“We pay you a lot of money to do this,” she said.
“No you don’t.”
“You have better title,” she said, getting frustrated, as evidenced by the degradation of her English.
“My title doesn’t mean squat if we’ve been penetrated internally.”
“Your title means you have better ideas,” she said, reaching for something, anything.
“Ms. Yeung?” he asked, deadpan. “When was the last time you were penetrated? Internally?”
She looked at him with a dumb look. Almost like she wasn’t sure how to interpret the question.
“Because last time this happened,” he said, “we almost lost SocioSphere. It was an eighteen year old software engineer who did that. He was brilliant. His hack is the reason you have a job in the first place. It’s how I have a job. We can’t be too hasty or too dismissive…”