Again I wait. Less long.
“She let them take her. She could have run, she could have killed them all, but she let them take her.” His voice catches, is forcibly smoothed. “To protect me. She sat there and let them torture her because they knew what she’d done, and she wanted to make sure they didn’t think I was in on it too. So that I would still have a home there. In that place.” He spits the word. It comes to me that he is sitting here in this field because he wants them to find him. He’s looking to die. “If I decided, finally decided, that was what I wanted.”
Waves of pain visibly crest and break on his face, minimally signaled. How much is Stellaxis and how much is guilt? Does it matter?
They were protecting each other. Both of them, each in their own dumbass way, protecting each other.
Which is worse: To take your shot and miss, like 06 did? Or to hesitate too long, like 22, and miss your chance to take the shot at all?
I open my mouth, close it. I don’t know how to respond to any of this, how to keep him talking, how to keep him from deciding he’s done monologuing at me and walk away. Or worse. It’s not that I’m afraid of him hurting me. I’m afraid of him hurting himself. So I sit, and I listen, like I’m feeding out a line to a drowning person, inch by inch, and I hope to all fuck it’s enough, because I don’t know what else to do.
“Yes, I wanted out. As you say. At least I thought I did. But when it came to it—” Another shiver briefly overwrites that studied calm. He picks up a rock in one fist, squeezes. It falls as powder. I swallow. “Leave and go where. Everything we had left in the world was in that building. I don’t even know how long it’s been.”
“Twelve years,” I try to say, and my voice cuts out. I clear my throat. “It’s been about twelve years. Since they took you.”
Another rock. If he were to wring his hands, every bone in both would shatter. “Twelve years.”
“You were eight when you went into that building?”
He’s watching me steadily, sidelong, like he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing. “I think so,” he says. “That sounds right.”
“They took me, too,” I add, and he turns to regard me full on at that. He doesn’t look like a person waiting for a punchline, but I’ve got one chambered anyway. “Guess I wasn’t special enough to keep.”
No reaction. Just that look, like he’s x-raying the folds of my brain. Who knows. Maybe he is.
“I wish,” I say, and pause because my voice is doing something ominous, and by god I will keep my shit together in the face of this, “I wish I could have helped you both find somewhere to go.”
In response to that, he pulls one of the swords out of the ground, uses it to tap the grave mound lightly. “No need,” he says in this voice like he’s putting out cigarettes on his arms. “She found it on her own.”
I think of that other interrogation cell. The blood on suit guy’s sleeve. The chair ripped out of the floor. I think of the short work 06 would have made of nanofilament cuffs. Of the strength of will required to sit and let a person torture you if you could just get up and walk away at any time. If you’d only been willing to leave alone.
If the long game your partner was running hadn’t run just a little too long.
“They shot her,” I hear myself say. “I saw.”
The silence at that goes on for so long that the sky darkens several shades. A star comes out. Another.
“I came to get her out,” he says. “Once I realized what they were doing to her, I…” Another silence. “I killed them all. Everyone in that room. They were shooting at me, but…”
I look at him. Hard to tell if he’s injured. At a glance, I’m not sure any of the blood on him is his. “They didn’t hit you?”
How is that possible? He must have, I don’t even know what. Moved too fast for bullets?
“I don’t know if they meant to shoot her, too. She was cuffed to a chair. She ripped the cuffs free and stood up and.” The sword’s tapping the dirt again. How long has he been doing that? “Fell.”
I don’t have anything intelligent to say to that, either. 06 dead. It’s unbelievable. My mind is glancing off the fact of her there in the ground. The grave. I can’t make it sink in. 06, who helped those people against orders. 06, who has always stuck her neck out for civilians. Heading up evac teams from strike zones. Accompanying emergency response teams when the evacs don’t take. Hand-delivering masks and water when a zone gets pinned down. Just last year she and 22 pretty much single-handedly rescued twelve hundred people when the New Liberty Mall ate the cluster-bombing meant for that transport hangar. The company always took credit, but now I’m not so sure it was orders that sent her there. I think she sent herself.
06 was pretty much everyone’s favorite operative. Hell, even her fucking NPC would go out of its way to help player characters in trouble, spawning out of nowhere to back them up and resupply and heal them. And all we ever did for her was use her. She was the closest thing to a real-life superhero that I for one am ever going to see. And now for the same reason she was so universally beloved, she’s dead.
Because she stuck her neck out. Because she planted herself in the path of something bigger than herself and said no.
“Come back to old town with me,” I say all in a rush. “I can hide you from them. Get you some normal clothes. Someplace to clean up. Some smart bandages. A place to sleep. Until you figure out what to do next. How much of that blood is yours?”
“I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying here.”
“They’ll find you. They’ll—”
“Then let them.”
“They’re not going to kill you. You’re the last one left. They can’t afford to lose you. They’re going to bring you back there. To Stellaxis.”
“They are welcome,” he says in a voice like desolation, “to try.”
At that moment something flashes high above the trees. Something white. A remembrance flare. We both turn to regard it over our shoulders as it screams upward and blossoms, then falls, scattering.
I wait a ten-count, breath held, for a second one. Please, I think at that empty space of sky. Please.
It doesn’t come.
“They won’t give up,” I say at last. “You know that.”
Silence. His face is the thinnest possible sheet of ice over the deepest, darkest lake. He is going to sit here in this field until he drops his guard and they feed him a fucking drone strike. It’s infuriating. All the more so because there’s fuckall I can do to stop it.
“I’m going in there,” I say, pointing at the house. Now that I’m really looking at the roof, it hasn’t fallen in at all, it’s been blasted in. Somebody’s smart bomb missed. It happens. “See if there’s anything left we can use.” I pause, knowing the answer before I ask. “You coming?”
But he surprises me. In one fluid motion he gets to his feet and pulls the second sword from the dirt. “Lead on,” he says, and follows.
* * *
WHOEVER USED TO live here either evacuated before the strike hit or their bodies have long since been taken care of by local wildlife. There’s no sign of anyone. I make a quick sweep before the daylight dies. 22 isn’t much help. He stands sentry by the big living room window, staring out at the backyard and 06’s grave.
I don’t press matters. I wasn’t expecting to get him through the door.
The house turns out to be fully stocked, as long as you’re okay with ignoring expiration dates. There’s food in the kitchen and clothes in the closets. The water doesn’t run, of course, but I find a sealed package of baby wipes, use a few to clean up sparingly, and give the rest to 22. He needs them more than I do. Along with those I hand him a change of clothes I found that looks to maybe fit him. Jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, a hoodie. It’s cold as shit in here. In a different bedroom I dig up a similar outfit for myself. It doesn’t fit perfectly, but it’s a hell of a lot better than a dead man’s suit.
Dressed, I realize I still have no idea whether 22
’s been wounded. I double back to the bathroom. Smart bandages and antibiotic cream in the medicine cabinet. Score. But he’s not in the living room where I left him.
Shit.
It’s not a vigil I’m keeping precisely, but after the day he’s had, I’m finding it difficult to let him out of my sight for long. But there he is, standing with his armload of clothes and baby wipes in some teenager’s bedroom that’s been practically wallpapered with SecOps posters. The door’s open, so I walk in to find him studying them, like a Martian anthropologist just landed here on what remains of Earth. From the look on his face, he’s finding its relics bewildering. Dead kids on a dead kid’s wall.
“Didn’t you know?” I say. “You’re famous.”
22 doesn’t turn. He’s staring at a picture of himself. He looks a lot more dangerous in the poster. “For what?” he asks. “For following orders? For being good at war?” He doesn’t wait for a response, which is good for me because I doubt I have one that’s adequate. Because you’re pure, I want to say. Because everything else is corruption and fuckery to the horizon, and you and poor goddamn assassinated 06 are the rock around which it passes. But that’s not any kind of answer. It’s my answer, maybe. They’re famous because a corporation that controls everything wanted to sell its customer-citizens a war. Even the swords, I realize belatedly. They weren’t taught to fight with blades because it’s efficient. They were taught to fight with blades because it looks appallingly fucking cool.
Weird kind of strategy to win a war, but goddamn if the image hasn’t moved billions worth of merchandise.
22 lifts his chin at the poster array. The motion hitches partway as he hits that invisible limiter again. He’s pushing past it better now. Given what he told me outside, he’s got years of practice in so doing. I can’t even begin to imagine what that took to overcome. Is taking now. “All these people are dead.”
“Not all of them.”
He doesn’t respond.
“I found smart bandages and antibiotic ointment,” I say in my best subject-changing voice. “They’re old, but that stuff keeps.”
“I’m fine,” he says.
“You’re bleeding on the floor.”
22 glances down. There’s blood running out his left sleeve, down his wrist and hand, dripping from his fingertips. He looks back up at the poster. His expression doesn’t change.
“What about that thing you had, that you healed those people with in the alley?” I ask. “Can’t you use that?”
Something snags in his face now, snags and is ironed back out almost immediately. This one looks less like pain and more like anger, but I don’t think it’s at me. “That won’t be an option.”
I want to press the question. Something inane about how it might be worth at least a try. But this is 22, and I know better.
Then I realize why he doesn’t have it. Who he tried to use it on and failed.
I make a double handful of smart bandages and ointment and shove them at him. “Here.”
He looks at the bandages, then at me. He takes them wordlessly and vanishes into the bathroom.
While 22 is off getting cleaned up and changed, I check out the kitchen. Field mice have gotten to it long before and stripped it of any food in packages they could gnaw through. And I’m not touching some rancid fridge. I manage to excavate a sealed jar of peanut butter, a few cans of beans and vegetables, some soup. On top of the freezer is a bottle of something with no label, but is definitely home-brew booze of some description. It takes the tossing of four drawers to find a can opener.
I take the peanut butter and cans and bottle and put it all on the coffee table in the living room. I take the remaining snacks out of my pockets and add them to the pile. I throw a couple of dusty couch cushions on the floor as seats.
When 22 comes back out to the front of the house, I almost start laughing. I can’t help it. It’s not that he looks funny. It’s that he looks normal. He looks like a human person my age. Which, of course, he is. If he wasn’t—if he were anything like what Stellaxis has been trying to convince us he was all along—neither of us would be here.
It’s an interesting thought.
Even harder than getting him to bother bandaging his wounds is getting him to eat. I’ve eaten practically nothing since before the white room, so this is not a problem for me. He mostly sits and stares out the window while I shovel beans into my face. I notice he’s brought the two swords over at some point and has stabbed them into the moldering carpet beside him.
It isn’t that one sword is shorter, I see now. It’s that one of them has been broken in half. Not too hard to guess whose it was.
The only liquid in this entire house is the contents of that bottle. I take a couple of sips and immediately hit pause on that endeavor. Whatever it is, it’s a whole lot stronger than the stuff I used to make, and probably going to do more harm than help in the hydration department. I put the bottle down and watch 22 not eat for another minute or so.
“Hey,” I say eventually. “Calories are calories.”
He blows a little air out his nose at that. It’s not exactly a laugh, but I’ll take it. I slide a candy bar across the table to him. He looks at it. “What is that?”
“Calories,” I say. “Lots of them.” You absolute fucking alien. “Eat it, it’s good. It’s fuel. Anyway I still owe you a meal, so…” I gesture expansively. “You are the one who didn’t want to go back to old town. This is kind of on you.”
He unwraps the candy bar, sniffs it, takes a bite. Chews thoughtfully, swallows. “Hmm.”
“They didn’t let you out much, did they?”
22 gazes at me for a long moment. Then he reaches over and swipes my bottle. Gives that the sniff test also. Takes a drink. Treats the bottle to the same scholarly regard he did the candy bar. Takes another drink. “What did you do?”
I blink. “Sorry?”
“You were in an interrogation cell. You must’ve done something they didn’t like.”
He has no idea what I’ve been through these past weeks. Nothing since what I told him in the elevator. I suppose it’s a reflection of how desperate he and 06 were to find a way out of that place that he’s trusted me this far.
Not desperate enough, apparently, some asshole part of my mind chimes in. Or else 06 would be here with us, or none of us would be here at all.
I wonder, in 22’s position, how hard it would’ve been for me to leave the facility and try to make my way out in a world I never got the chance to know. If I would have hesitated. If 06 would be in the ground right now because I waited too long to get up the nerve.
I’d like to say I know what I would’ve done. But I don’t. I’ve never left old town to look for something better. I’ve never even tried. All my life I’ve gone through the motions of survival. Kept my head down. Done what I’m told. Because of this war. Because of Stellaxis. It’s twelve solid years since either of us has been free.
So I tell him. I tell him everything. The game. B. The coffee shop. The day I met him and 06. And everything that came after.
“You showed people the footage you took,” 22 says. “Of the facility. The Director made sure we knew.” He seems to realize what he’s saying. “That’s why they had you in the cell. I’m sorry. I brought you into this. I didn’t mean—” He breaks off, tries again. “I didn’t know.”
The same almost-laugh again, and this time I recognize it. He’s furious with himself. “That’s two people I managed to land in those cells. Trying to help me.”
I would do it again, I think. And so would she.
Instead of that I say, “Did I get you in trouble?”
He shrugs a little. “No more than usual.” Another drink.
“Nobody knew what Stellaxis did to you. I wanted people to know. I wanted to make them pay. It wasn’t enough. I didn’t do enough. All I did was make things—” My voice fails. I try again. “Looks like we put each other at risk.”
“We were already at risk,” he says. “Eve
ry day. All Kit ever wanted was to finish it. Shut down the Director’s project. End the war. It’s what she died trying to do.”
“Kit?”
“Kit. Catherine.” He pulls the broken sword out of the floor, stabs it back in. “06.”
Catherine.
“Broadcasting that footage is exactly what she would have done in your position, if she’d had the means and opportunity. I guess I saw how that worked out for you.”
The white room. The chair. The burns on my face. I nod.
“And yet,” he says, “you did it anyway.”
“I guess we have a common enemy,” I say.
22 looks at me. His eyes are bottomless. He looks away. “Yes,” he says. “I think we do.”
I reach a hand out and crook two fingers at the bottle. He passes it over. I sip and hand it back. Nycorix and 22: Drinking Buddies. If only Jessa were here to see this. If only 06 were sitting here on this disgusting carpet with us, on her way to anonymity and freedom instead of lying out there under six cold feet of somebody’s bombed-out yard. If only I hadn’t managed to screw old town out of its water supply. If only someone else could have exposed the company’s lies before me. Someone who would have done it better. Smarter. Gotten fewer people hurt. Actually made some kind of fucking difference.
22 drinks and passes the bottle to me. To Catherine, I almost say, because Kit seems like an inner-circle thing that is light-years from my business, but then I realize: it’s an inner-circle thing, but the fact I even know it is because 22 let me in.
“To Kit,” I say, and pour a shot out on the carpet, then drink and hand the bottle back, wiping my mouth angrily on my sleeve.
Only the slightest possible hesitation before 22 follows suit. “To Kit.”
I don’t know how to say the next thing gently, and I’m just drunk enough to say it anyway.
“It fucking sucks that they got her. I mean. It’s horrible. I can’t imagine what you must be feeling. But, I mean, I didn’t know her well at all, obviously, but the impression I got is that she wouldn’t want you to do anything stupid. She’d want you to get the fuck out of here. She’d want you to live. For all the rest of the operatives—the stolen kids—who never got the chance. And for her.”
Firebreak Page 33