Reintegration

by Eden S. French

  “Her and Riva make a hot couple, but I’m sad I wasn’t invited.” Callie wiped her hands on her shorts. So that was how the grease traveled. “Min says you were handling paperwork.”

  “We’re finished,” Kade said. “Now it’s time for me and Amity to go into hiding. She’s sworn to be my full-time bodyguard.”

  “That’s reassuring news,” said Callie. “Nobody’s going to mess with you and the A-Bomb. Where is she? Do we get to say goodbye?”

  “She can’t make it, but she wishes you well.”

  “Aww, really?” Zeke’s lower lip drooped. “But I was just getting to know her. I swear she was warming to me.”

  “This is kinda hard on me, Kade.” Callie fixed him with her soulful eyes. “You’re in trouble now, and I can’t help you. I won’t even know if something happens to you. That’s not how I like to part from my friends.”

  Parting. The word felt real now, a concept with solidity, a bitter taste. “It’s going to be rough,” Kade said. “But this is the fight I chose.”

  “It’s my fight too,” said Mineko. “I’ll be back someday to join you.”

  “Don’t come until you’re ready. You made it this far by biding your time.”

  “Speaking of time.” Mineko took an old-fashioned watch and a tiny key from her pocket. “Lately, the ticking of this watch has been more real to me than the beating of my own heart. It’s something from an uncodified place and time, and it’s beautiful. Truthful. Just by being real, ticking in my palm, it proves Codism to be a lie.”

  She held out the watch and key. “Wind it every morning and think of us.”

  Kade accepted the watch, studied its embossed surface, and opened the cover. Two slender hands glided over a pale white face decorated by a series of gold digits. One more gentle motion of the hands and, suddenly, it became too beautiful to endure. He shut his eyes for a moment until the pain passed. “I don’t know if I can take your watch, Min.”

  “Most of us had some prior connection with Project Sky. Lexi wields the implant. Zeke installed it. Callie stole it. My people built it. But you became involved purely by choice. It wasn’t money, power, or survival that drove you, but loyalty. Friendship. I only wish my father was the man you are. Please take the watch, Kade.”

  Kade closed his fingers over the watch and nodded. “Thank you.”

  Mineko glanced at Callie. “That’s okay, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” Callie smiled—the same dimpled, roguish smile that had secured Kade’s affection all those years before. “It’s exactly right.”

  * * *

  The sound of raucous laughter led Kade to a barracks crowded with young revolutionaries. Lexi lounged in their midst, her deep purr commanding the room’s attention.

  She raised her handsome head and smiled at him, her eyes seeming to glow beneath her lashes. She was never more otherworldly than when exerting her seduction. “Join us, comrade.”

  “Be warned,” Kade said. “She’s notorious for stretching the truth.”

  “Says the journalist. I suppose you’re here to spoil everyone’s fun.”

  “No. Just to say goodbye.”

  Lexi’s smile faded. She made a languid gesture with her fingers, and the revolutionaries trouped from the barracks—bizarrely, given that it was their room to begin with. “So say goodbye, then.”

  “If it were that simple, you wouldn’t have sent them away.”

  They contemplated one another in silence. Kade had once been so envious of her appearance, the way she confused assumptions of gender. Everything about her sustained that ambiguity—the lithe, assertive way she walked, the graceful gestures she made when she spoke, her sprawled manner of sitting with boots apart and legs outstretched. A delicate performance of strength.

  For years, Kade had tried to copy her elegant swagger, yet for him the feminine had been far more than just a suggestion. He’d had the wrong hips, the wrong torso, and as he’d matured, it had only become worse. All the while, Lexi had stayed tall, narrow, and flat-chested. It said a great deal about their friendship that he had never once resented her for it.

  “Remember that bomber jacket?” said Kade. “The one from the bar?”

  “I remember. You wanted it so badly.”

  “It was far too big. Ash was right to give it to you.”

  “You were a late bloomer. You sure did bloom, though.”

  “Thanks to you.”

  “I just got you the drugs. The hard work, that was all you.” Lexi inspected her fingernails. “Is it weird that I miss those fucked-up days?”

  “I don’t miss them.” Not the days when his clothes didn’t fit, when his body seemed to belong to someone else, when meeting someone new was an exercise in humiliation. “I just miss you, Lexi. Sometimes I miss you more than I miss Ash. At least she died still loving me.”

  “It’s funny being in her old workplace. It wasn’t Nicky running the show back then, though, was it?”

  So they were finally going to talk about her. Well, it was about time. “No. Her commander was Nathan Bastian.”

  “The old boss. I vaguely remember the name.”

  Kade couldn’t—refused to—forget. It was Bastian, that ruddy, sweat-stinking beast, who had ignored Ash’s report that an Open Hand shelter was being used for forced prostitution. Kade, idiot that he was, had suggested they could expose the ringleaders by going undercover. Just like the journalists of old.

  “We were naïve,” he said. “We never imagined it might end the way it did.”

  “What always gets me is how fucking stupid you both were. Playing detective when lives were at risk. Like you were making a game of it.”

  “Yes. I was fucking stupid, Lexi.”

  A tear spilled from her left eye, cresting her high cheekbone, cutting through her dark eyeliner. “It was me who brought you two together. I introduced you to her, and I helped her to understand that you were a man. Not just any man, but her man. I did that, did it all for you, and what did I get? I lost you both. You chose her, while she came to hate me.”

  “She never hated you. And I never chose against you. You and I, we simply grew apart.”

  “She never mentioned me to Amity. Not once.”

  “You know why that is. Because you told her not to. Not because she was ashamed of you.” Kade steeled himself. “On the subject of Amity. We detained the killers, intending to try them. I went to visit them that same night, only to find that Amity had gotten there first. She was in a frenzy, soaked in gore. When I told her to stop, she broke down and cried.”

  “She’d killed them herself?”

  “Yes. And the next morning, Nikolas admitted he’d given her the key.”

  “Nikolas? I thought he was opposed to that sort of thing.”

  “It shows you how much they loved her. Afterward, Nikolas challenged for the leadership, blaming Ash’s death on Commander Bastian. He won, not because everyone admired him, but because we had all respected Ash. She’s a hero in the underground, and she’s still part of it, fighting through us. Even in private, she called me ‘comrade.’ It’s why I keep going. She’d never have wanted me to walk away.”

  “You two should have come to me. I’d have sorted those fuckers out.”

  “Vassago and his cronies are our enemies as much as the Codists are. Ash blamed them for the suffering of children. That was what drove her. The thought of little Kades and Lexis she couldn’t keep out of trouble.”

  “Sometimes when I wake up, I think I see her at the foot of my bed. Watching over my sleep the way she did when we were little.” Lexi gave a wan smile. “Back before we had you.”

  “She always read everything I wrote. I couldn’t write for a year after she died. It seemed pointless.” Kade tried to take another breath, but his lungs refused him air. “I was in the middle of an essay when it happened. She was so excited to see how it would end, and she never—”

  It was the breaking point, but Lexi was there. She held him to her chest while he sobbed ag
ainst her shirt, each breath convulsive and futile. Her body was warm, her embrace unyielding, her murmurs gentle.

  “It’s okay, Kade. I’m here now.” She ran her fingers through his hair. “We’re strong together, remember?”

  Be careful in there, he’d said. Ash had smiled at him. Given him a thumbs up. And he’d laughed, and he’d never seen her again.

  “The day you came to me with your secret, I was wrestling with telling you mine,” Lexi said. Still holding him tight, still stroking his hair. “You spared me having to get it out, but I never did let myself fall in love again.”

  She smiled, her eyes distant. The same way she’d looked at him when they were kids, sitting by the old tracks at evening, passing bottles and sharing little secrets. Finding covert ways to admit to the big ones.

  “I’m taking Riva with me,” she said. “I don’t want to lose her. Do you know why?”

  “Because she reminds you of Ash. I feel it too.”

  “No, stupid.” Lexi spoke with a tenderness he’d never expected to hear again. “She reminds me of you.”

  She kissed him on the forehead, a light imprint of her lips, and walked away with a confident stride. She didn’t once look back. Just like the Lexi he knew.

  CHAPTER 36

  It was a treat to see how deftly Callie worked on the van, a pleasure to hear her lively comments and explanations. And yet…

  Petrified of appearing childish, terrified of saying the wrong thing, Mineko did little more than stare, nod and mumble. It turned out that catching a dream was far easier than knowing what to do with it.

  “See here?” Callie held up a stick taken from the van’s cryptic inner workings. “It’s called a dipstick. It measures the oil level.”

  “Oh. What is the oil for?”

  “It keeps the engine from wearing down. The parts create friction when they move, and if they’re not oiled, the engine doesn’t last long.”

  “Yeah, I get that problem too,” said Zeke. “Gotta go heavy on the lube.”

  Callie laughed, though Mineko had no idea why. “Grow up.”

  Mineko faked a smile. Perhaps one in ten of Zeke’s interjections made any sense to her, but they did prevent the conversation from lapsing into an awkward silence. For that much, she was grateful.

  “So what happens when we have to stop for a toilet break?” Zeke said. “Do I get a bottle to piss in? I don’t want to go in the desert and have to worry about some hyena eating my dick.”

  “Relax,” Callie said. “No animal is that desperate for food.”

  “Callie, I’m curious,” said Mineko. “How did you learn to drive?”

  “I taught myself.” Callie rummaged in her toolbox as she spoke, only briefly glancing up. “When I was fourteen, I traded everything precious I’d scrounged for a shit-heap of a car. A rusted hatchback with all these faded Christian bumper stickers. This Car Runs On Faith, that sort of thing. Even a little cross hanging off the rear-view.”

  With a pious smile, Zeke pressed his palms together. “Praise the Lord.”

  “Well, not to brag, but a few girls did find God in the back seat.”

  Zeke sniggered, and heat rushed up Mineko’s neck. With Callie’s attraction to women so casually confirmed, her every glance and interaction now seemed fraught with sexual significance.

  She jumped as Callie nudged her. “You’ve gone bright red.”

  “Of course she has,” Zeke said. “She ain’t gonna shake off the shut-in thinking overnight. They don’t even fuck each other, I don’t think. They grow babies in hydroponic pods.”

  Mineko stared at him. “That’s not true.”

  “You’re right. It’s probably vats. Big, dripping vats.” Zeke shot up his hand, startling Mineko yet again. “Sexy babe alert!”

  Riva Latour approached them with a box in her arms. Her hair had been shaped into a bizarre series of spikes that divided her shaved scalp—the most uncodified hairstyle Mineko had ever seen. The dark makeup around her eyes was smudged, and faint lines scored her cheeks.

  “What’s in the box?” said Zeke. “Tell me it ain’t a head.”

  “Are you okay?” Callie hurried to her. “You’ve been crying.”

  “I’m sorry,” Riva said. “I should be happy, but…”

  Callie took the box, set it down, and put an arm around Riva. “Come here. Tell me what’s wrong.” She steered Riva to the back of the van, where they sat between its open doors.

  Riva inhaled a short, sharp breath, pressed her forehead to Callie’s neck and wept. “I said goodbye to Amity,” she said between sobs. “And Nikolas too. I’ve always relied on them both. Now Nikolas has given me a huge responsibility, and I have to do it all myself…”

  Was this woman seriously mewling about having responsibilities? Mineko dealt with that every day.

  “Oh, chickadee.” Callie cupped Riva’s cheeks and leaned close—any observer might have assumed they were about to kiss. “You’ll be just fine. You’re smart and brave, and on top of that, you aren’t alone. I’ll be here for you no matter what. That’s a promise.”

  What was this chickadee nonsense? Why did Riva get a pet name? Maybe they really were about to kiss. Callie certainly looked like she wanted to, the way she was stroking Riva’s face and gazing into her eyes.

  “It’s just so sudden,” said Riva. “I don’t know if I’m ready.”

  Pathetic. Mineko had sacrificed everything. She’d even lost her parents. Where was her comfort? Her caresses?

  “I have a feeling you’re coming with us,” Callie said. “And you have no idea how happy that makes me. You’re going to see the world now. We’ll do it together, okay?”

  Oh, yes. They’d take a bike ride and watch the sun set over the basin. They’d sit cuddled close, fickle Callie Roux and this bitch of an intruder. Fucking Riva Latour with her stupid angular face, obnoxious piercings and infuriating hair. A sanctimonious idiot. To think she had tried to lecture Mineko—an ethics student, for God’s sake—on morality…

  A hand touched her arm, and she flinched.

  “Take a breath,” said Zeke, his voice low. “If Callie were to look over here right now, she’d have a fucking heart attack. You look ready to kill someone.” He gave her shoulder a squeeze. “We’re gonna take a little walk. Maybe have a beer or two.”

  Mineko frowned at him. He wasn’t without charm, despite the spikes and his perpetually frantic manner, yet it was hard to admire him the way she did Kade. Codists valued the impression of emotional indifference, and Zeke’s excess would have been deemed a mark of immaturity.

  And yet his eyes were so very kind…

  “Come on, Min,” he said. “We’ll catch up, just you and me. Before we’re stuck in a van with a bunch of weirdos.”

  It was impossible not to smile, and when Zeke grinned back, her anger abated. “Okay.”

  * * *

  The revolutionaries relaxing in the recreation room seemed unhappy about Mineko’s arrival. One of them, a muscular man with a scarred cheek, blocked the doorway and crossed his arms.

  “You got a problem?” said Zeke. “You’re kinda in our way.”

  “We don’t want that Codist in here. Go somewhere else.”

  “Hey, I’ve been using this room all morning. Amity even told me I could help myself to the fridge. You telling me you got higher authority than her?”

  “It’s the Codist we have a problem with, not you.”

  “Listen to me, fuckface. Yesterday, I survived a car chase, fought in the streets with shut-ins and bunkered down in what was practically a fucking sewer. This morning, I smashed a gangster over the head and killed him. An hour later, I performed surgery to save the life of a second one. Plucked a bullet out of his goddamn lung. So if you want to fuck with me, go ahead and do it now, because I’m one busy son of a bitch.”

  The revolutionary backed down, and Zeke nodded. “Yeah, good choice.” He directed Mineko to a pair of facing armchairs. “Sit down, kid.”

  Mineko settle
d into the frayed chair. It didn’t seem to have any springs, and its cushion had been permanently indented. Still, a lack of comfortable furniture was presumably among the least of the things she’d have to become accustomed to.

  Zeke opened a bar fridge, took out two cans, glanced at the action on the television—a man was somersaulting over a tank while several robotic soldiers unloaded machine guns—and returned to Mineko’s side.

  “I’ve never had beer before.” Mineko tasted the frothing liquid. Her mouth puckered shut. “It’s bitter.”

  “Yeah, real nasty shit. You drink it to spite yourself.” Zeke sat and cradled the can in his lap. “Let me remind you of something. Riva and Callie just risked their lives to get you out of that enclave. They didn’t have to do that. They don’t know you from anyone. Coulda ended up wiped for it.”

  “I feel like you’re accusing me of something.”

  “I’m only telling you to slow down and think. Sure, you’re jealous because Callie thinks Riva is the best thing since sliced bread fucked a toaster and gave birth to self-toasting bread. But don’t take it personally. Those two click, that’s all.”

  “They click?”

  “Yeah, click.” Zeke snapped his fingers. “Don’t compare yourself to Riva. She knows how to flirt and make Callie laugh, while you’re scared just to open your trap. She can look Callie in the eye, while you struggle to stare at the tips of your fucking shoes. That’s part of your charm, kid. Quiet, shy, friendly. That’s you. The more you give Riva them fucking death stares, the more likely Callie’s going to get second thoughts about you.”

  “Why do you swear so often?”

  “Some people pause for breath. Me, I pause for fucks. And that’s another thing you gotta learn. A lot of things that you’ve thought of as forbidden, we do without even thinking.”

  “So I’ve noticed.”

  “Physical contact is gonna throw you. Hugging, kissing. It ain’t strange for us. I know it’s different in shut-in land, where you only touch somebody if you’re trying to shake a black widow off their sleeve, and even then you ask nicely first and wear a fucking condom on your hands to do it.”

  “You think I’m jealous.” Mineko took another mouthful of beer. Somehow, the bitterness was more palatable now. “I do think Riva was being melodramatic, but I’m not jealous.”