Metal Heart: Book 1: The Metal Heart Trilogy

by Melinda Crouchley

“Garza, you—”

  “Rabbit, you coming or what?” Clinton's voice crackles over our helmets.

  Fuller’s his best friend—the notorious Clinton Fuller. The only truly noteworthy thing about Fuller is how he’s managed to survive this long in National Service without being booted due to failing grades. It probably helps that Edmund Fuller has deep pockets and is a healthy contributor to the Fort Columbia Endowment Fund. And Rabbit Santiago’s here barreling through National Service, dragging wealthy Fuller along fluttering in his coat-tails.

  Santiago sighs, his shoulders falling. I’ve never seen him fail to respond when Fuller calls. It’s Pavlovian. “You should get your nose checked out, you’re bleeding everywhere,” Santiago mutters before jogging back towards the EMP tank.

  I shoulder through the main SIM door into a dimly lit metal corridor colored with dull amber light. Phosphorescent rays of silver dash over me, scanning my limbs and the SIM suit, verifying I’m not smuggling out any unregistered tech. Making sure whatever exists in the SIM stays there.

  A clipped female voice shivers out of the walls. “All clear Eleni Garza.”

  A row of lockers rolls down from the ceiling and I remove the individual pieces of gear from the haptic suit - the chest plate, the pads, the heavy boots, the helmet and the slick blue one piece that zips from my neck to the bottom of my torso. Extracting these clothes is so cumbersome, a small pool of the blood dripping from my nose builds at my feet.

  I’m staring at my own reflection in the blood pool when the door next to me clicks open and blinding silver rays brighten the hall. The hulking form of Clinton, followed by the tall, reedy body of Santiago emerge from the lights and enter into the locker room.

  I stand in the gloom wearing nothing but a sports bra and underwear, a silver metal necklace bearing an ornate coin dangling between my breasts. Santiago clears his throat and averts his gaze. Clinton stares at me lasciviously, offering an approving nod.

  “Nice panties Garza,” he chuckles, elbowing Santiago.

  “You wanna borrow them?” I ask. “They’re probably your size.”

  Santiago chokes out a laugh like dry leaves rustling, and heads to his locker on the other side of the hall. He always dresses with his back to the room, a bizarre form of modesty on a military base where no such thing exists.

  “You’re still bleeding,” Clinton accuses from two doors down, jamming his helmet into the top rack with an unnecessary display of force.

  “I’ll get it checked out,” I mutter, retrieving my off-duty green cargo pants, black shirt and hooded jacket from the locker. I step into the pants, pulling and zipping them up as quickly as possible. I want to get out of here. I’m not used to being in the locker room alone with two male residents.

  “Did you go crazy in there or what?” Clinton asks, shedding his elbow pads. “Are you cracking up?”

  Fuller bends down to unlace his boots. I contemplate delivering a swift kick to his head to end his crude interrogation, but decide against it. Fuller needs what little brain cells he has intact and fully operational.

  “I'm fine,” my voice wavers, betraying me. “Everything is fine.”

  “You’re cracking up. What about you Rabbit? You think Garza’s cracking up? You think she can’t handle the pressure?” Clinton gazes up at me from his perch. The light shadows his face and bared teeth, giving him a feral appearance.

  “I don’t know. She seems upset,” Santiago says, not turning.

  It’s a pointed and diplomatic statement designed to reveal nothing to no one.

  “Why are you guys out here anyway?” I ask, pulling the hooded sweatshirt over my head with a mental sigh of relief. Nude and vulnerable with Fuller around is not my preferred state. Nude and vulnerable with Santiago? I don’t even let myself entertain the thought. Not now. Not today. Not ever.

  “Rabbit couldn't concentrate after your mental breakdown. He bombed the wrong target and almost wrecked his drone. Corazon was so pissed. Said her pilots are a bunch of fuck ups and ordered Rabbit out. I left in solidarity.” Clinton stands six feet away, naked except for boxers, studying me with bemusement. Santiago says nothing. “You two need to get your shit together.”

  “You alright?” I direct my question to Santiago’s back.

  He pivots his neck slightly like some kind of prehistoric bird, and raises his brows in surprise.

  “Yeah. I'm fine.”

  “You seem fine.” I lift the corner of my mouth. “Aside from hanging out with Fuller.”

  “Fair point.” He turns to face us.

  He’s pulled on a tight white shirt, exposing the half sleeve tattoo on his left arm. An inky black phoenix bird chasing a rabbit up to the moon, the whole image curling up and around his bicep. My gaze moves to his face. The corner of his mouth lifts to mirror mine.

  “Take care of yourself, Garza. We need good pilots.”

  The metal heart in my chest constricts, as it does from time to time, and I suck in my breath a little too sharply. The corner lift of his mouth deepens. His nose crinkles. I’ve been staring at him longer than is socially acceptable, especially since he’s not wearing pants.

  I whirl away from him, slamming my locker door shut and hitting a soft key button on my wristband to connect with the SIM security system. Silver light pours into the hallway, casting an eerie pallor over us.

  Behind me Fuller says, "I'm a good pilot.”

  A swollen silence passes in which neither Santiago or I respond to Fuller. The sudden emptiness of words crackles between us. I hesitate at the door, waiting for someone else to speak. Waiting for Santiago to speak.

  “Not better than Garza.”

  Another prolonged silence, another cascading moment where the hairs on my arm tingle and rub hot against the fabric of my hoodie. Ozone scent climbs into my nostrils. I breathe it in deeply. Not better than Garza. Santiago thinks I’m good. I know for a fact I’m good, but it’s different when someone else says it.

  “Neither are you,” Fuller says. “You’re not better than Garza.”

  One more moment. I can only linger one more moment in the locker room without being too obvious. I just need to hear the last thing Santiago says before I go. He thinks he’s better than me. Doesn’t he?

  “Nobody’s better than Garza,” Santiago says, his tone irritatingly neutral.

  The crisp feminine voice reports, “No Prothero SIM technology detected. You may exit.”

  With a cushiony exhalation of air and a wash of green flickering in the dark corners of the hall, the far wall slides open. The floor beneath my feet shifts and rolls forward, dumping me out into the raw, blustering January air. The door seals tightly shut behind me. Winter rain splashes down, mixing with the blood trickling over my chin. I pause for a moment and draw in a sharp painful breath.

  I haven’t seen Mateo Alvarez in four years.

  And I just killed him.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ANNIVERSARY WEIRDOS

  There’s not much time to contemplate the mysterious and terrifying SIM appearance of Mateo. Not today. After a brief visit to the medical wing for a scolding from Nurse Esperanza, I skip dinner and make my annual pilgrimage to the non denominational chapel Prothero erected on the Fort Columbia base. It was constructed within the last five years and the walls and floors retain a fresh chemical smell I associate with military installations.

  An ordained priest leads services here twice a week, Wednesdays and Sundays. A rabbi Thursdays and Saturdays. They both commute in from Portland by train. The Buddhist monk sleeps in the only quarters the chapel provides. He performs all the other services, maintains the building, makes sure to douse the candles in the evenings.

  I've only passed these doors half a dozen times. There are a few times of the year where I need solace. I find it here. Amongst the smell of fresh paint and treated wood and the streaming winter sunshine from the floor length windows. The church is mostly glass. The Prothero government has reservations about surveillance cameras in churches,
but people in glass chapels can’t hide.

  I pull the door open and the quiet assaults my senses first. Anywhere else on Fort Columbia there is always noise. Coughing, snoring, chattering, rustling. The sound of water flowing through pipes and floors, the hum of electricity, doors closing and opening, footsteps in the hallways.

  In the Chapel it’s silent. The steps of my booted feet are loud and disruptive to the peace. I survey the room. A wooden confessional with decorative panel doors is built into the left wall. An image of Jesus Christ crucified on the cross hangs on the wall behind a raised stage and podium. To my right is a basin of holy water and behind that, tucked into the wall is a display of white candles, with eight rows and ten candles in each row. A sprinkling of candles are lit and the tiny flames dance, their spark reflected on the glass around them.

  I side-step the holy water basin and move towards the illuminated wall. My business here will be brief. I try to avoid seeing the priest or rabbi or monk whenever I make a quick jaunt in. I don’t want to hear about God. I just want to light a candle.

  I’m about to pick up the incense burner when the door behind me whooshes open on its well-oiled hinges. I turn as a familiar, stooped shape enters. I spin away, flipping the hood up over my head. I hear him stride to the basin, the soft plink of his fingers dipping into the liquid, the rustling of his clothing as he makes the sign of the cross, and moves into the pews. He takes a seat on the sparse wooden bench. I let out a watery sigh and grab the incense, setting it against the wick of a candle. It sparks.

  I rifle in my pocket and pull out a letter from one of the weirdos. The people who remember the anniversary just like I do. They remind me I am loved and cared about by complete strangers who sympathize with my plight. I touch the incense burner to the bottom of the letter and a flame catches, crackles, and licks up the paper material. I watch it burn and feel nothing but the gravity of Rabbit Santiago watching me across the distance.

  “What are you doing?” he asks while flames consume all those senseless, comforting words, turning them to ash. Finally the fire touches my fingers and I close my palm around it fast. It burns.

  “Stop. Stop!” Santiago calls out, scrambling out of the pew, down the short hallway and over to the basin. He grabs my hand and, with no other option available, dips it into the holy water.

  Another sigh escapes me as the cool liquid counteracts the false pain. The scorched skin isn’t real, but my brain tells me it is. The nanos send the warning signals and the heat registers in my phantom limb.

  “What are you doing?” he asks again, scowling down at the basin of fouled holy water.

  “Minding my own business.” I pull my hand away from him and jam it in my pocket. There’s another letter in there from another secret admirer who refuses to forget the past.

  “Not wanting to die in a fire kinda makes it my business.”

  Hard to argue with that logic.

  “I’m not lighting the church on fire. I get these letters once a year. I don't like them. So I burn them,” I say, narrowing my eyes at him. “I’m just burning letters.”

  “Not that you asked my opinion, but it doesn’t seem like a great ritual.”

  “You’re right. I didn’t ask your opinion.”

  Santiago's lips twitch but he stays put. My rock solid wall of sarcasm will be no deterrent here. He’s dug in his heels. “I’ve never seen you at Mass. Didn’t realize you were religious.” Santiago tips his head towards the sparsely decorated, cavernous ceiling.

  “I’m not.”

  “So you hang out in churches burning letters for fun?” he asks, his lips twitching again.

  “Just once a year. Just today. The day my parents died.”

  His face falls, and his brows pivot up in an expression of concern that I recognize from the SIM earlier. I’ve succeeded in rattling him twice today. It’s a new personal record. I'm not sure why I’m telling him any of this. Maybe it’s the loneliness in my chest, the emptiness of the chapel, the confessional mood all these religious trappings inspire.

  Or maybe it's Santiago, who I’ve been trusting with my virtual life for the last five months. Santiago who I see almost everyday. Santiago, the patron saint of confined spaces and pilot simulations and mysterious tattoos and comfortable silences.

  “The Paris bombing,” he says. “That was today.”

  “It’s not exactly something you forget.”

  I pull my burnt hand from my pocket—studying it. It’s raw, but the wounded flesh heals itself, the nanos stitching the pale pseudo dermis back together with swiftness and precision that could only be engineered by man and carried out by robots.

  “Not something you forget,” Santiago echoes. The weight of his gaze burns on my cheeks but I don’t lift my head.

  “What are you in for?” I ask, nodding towards the front of the church, changing the subject. “You don’t seem religious either.”

  “My mom guilts me. She waved me about mass the other day and I haven’t gone in a couple weeks. I told her I'd go today and we synched our bands for the same time. It's kinda like being in the same place. The same time zone—” He shrugs and fires off a loose smile, letting it hang in the air like the end of his sentence.

  “What time zone is your Mom in?” I ask. “North America?”

  “A little further than that.” His nose wrinkles again. “A lot further, actually. Haven't seen her in five years.”

  “Do you miss her?”

  “Of course I do. Do you miss them?”

  “Of course I do.”

  He pauses and rubs a hand across the back of his neck, diverting his gaze up to the ceiling. Still nothing of interest to look at up there. “Is that why you saw those ghosts in the SIM?” he asks, not making eye contact.

  It didn’t occur to me the two might be related, but it’s not a bad supposition. They’re not related though. This is the third anniversary of the bombing. If I was gonna have a nervous breakdown, it would have happened before now. Right?

  Santiago watches me now, waiting for an answer to his question.

  “I saw what I saw.” I sidestep the basin between us and move past him. “I’m not crazy.”

  “I didn’t say you were. You don’t have to be crazy to see ghosts.”

  “Sure. Well you and Fuller—”

  “I’m not Fuller,” he says quickly, voice tinged with the slightest hint of anger. “Just because Clint says something, doesn’t mean I agree. Come on Garza, give me a little credit.”

  “Why should I? You didn’t listen to me in the SIM when it mattered.” I turn away from him and head towards the door. “Now you’re just here to mock me.”

  “Don’t. Don’t go,” he says, holding out a hand to stop me. It does. Stops me right in my tracks. Something about the new tone in his voice. The difference between him ushering me out of the SIM earlier and asking me to stay now. Maybe Santiago isn’t Fuller. “I’m not here to mock you. I’m supposed to be repenting my sins. And besides, you haven’t finished burning things.”

  He points down at the letter in my hand. A lopsided grin blooms on my lips, in spite of the anxiety and irritation pecking at my insides. He’s right. I haven’t finished my mission.

  He grins back. It’s not the first time he’s ever grinned at me, but it’s the first time he’s done it when we’re alone together. It’s the first time we’ve ever been alone together.

  “You’re not gonna stop me this time?” I ask.

  “No. Just don’t light yourself on fire.”

  “I’m not gonna light myself on fire. That only happened the one time. Three years ago.”

  He winces. “That’s not very reassuring. How’s your hand?” He gestures toward the red, angry skin rapidly losing its crimson color. The computer is almost repaired.

  “It’s fine. It’s not like real pain. It’s simulated, the kind of sensory shock a droid might receive if it bumps into a wall.”

  “But you’re not a droid,” Santiago observes. It’s hard to tell i
f that’s a question or a statement.

  “I’m not.”

  “You’re not a droid.” Santiago holds up a closed fist and lifts one finger. “And you burn letters in churches.” He lifts another finger. “Now I know two things about Eleni Garza.”

  He closes his fist back up and offers me a genuine smile, not one of those ghost grins. It lights up his whole face. The first time he’s fully smiled at me when we’re alone together. The crinkle around his eyes makes my toes itch to take a step back. I curb the urge to flee from his smile. This is OK. We’re squadmates. This is OK.

  My metal heart shudders. “Are you making a list?”

  He chuckles. “I am. It’s a pretty short list. You gonna finish those letters?” He taps on one of the paper envelopes. “You didn’t open this one.”

  “I don’t need to. They all say the same thing. Anniversary weirdos filled with useless pity. I don’t want their pity or their gifts. I just want to forget.”

  “Does it help you forget?" he asks. “The burning?”’

  “A little.”

  “Does it help you feel?”

  “A little. I told you—I don't feel pain. Not the way you do." I pull the damaged hand from my pocket and hold it up for him to inspect. Nanos healed all the wounds. "Prothero took care of that for me.”

  His mouth twists and he reaches towards me with his long fingers, then draws them away as if he would be burnt himself.

  “Must be nice,” he says. “Not to feel anything.”

  “You think so?” I narrow my eyes at him. No one really wants to feel nothing, do they?

  He looks away. “Maybe not.”

  He moves to jam his hand in his pocket and I notice a beaded rosary bracelet cinched around his wrist. A tiny red cross dangles down between two white beads. A bolt of recognition shoots through me, but I can't place it. Maybe because whenever we're in close proximity he’s clothed in a uniform. But it looks so familiar, I must have seen it before and forgotten.

  “What’s that?” I gesture towards the bracelet.

  “It’s a rosary.” He tucks it down into his sleeve. “I wear it so I don't forget to go to church and catch people trying to light themselves on fire.”