He actually caught himself muttering under his breath as he descended the slope, but then he hit the beach and it was so stunning that it was impossible to stay upset. It looked like a brochure photo for visiting paradise, an impossibly perfect beach with soft white sand that the resort imported at tremendous expense. That it was located in the heart of genuinely communist nation whose name was synonymous in his mind with war and horror and Agent Orange was difficult to reconcile.
Anastasia flicked her eyes lazily over in their direction as they approached, holding up one hand to shade her eyes from the sun. Alex felt a stab of pity for the girl, who had never looked more like a child than she did in her prim little slip, and he could only hope that the sun behind him prevent her from seeing it in his face.
“Hello, various boys,” Anastasia said neutrally.
“Hello yourself,” Timor said cheerily. “I’m going in the water. You wanna come, Ana?”
Anastasia sighed reluctantly and stood up.
“I suppose,” she said, following along behind him. Renton stood there, his smile frozen, while Svetlana looked up at him hopefully. Alex vacillated for a moment, before deciding that anywhere was better than with those two, pulled his shirt off and hurried after at a discreet distance.
He had some ideas about diving directly in and swimming away from everyone, buying himself a couple of minutes in the surf to compose himself, but that didn’t happen – the water was colder and rougher than the day before, and he had to time the intervals in between the small but abrupt breakers to get into the water. He was only waist deep when Emily caught up to him.
“Hey,” Emily said, wading into the water after him.
“Hey,” Alex said weakly, willing himself to keep his eyes on her face, at least as long as she was looking at him.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Emily asked, waiting for a wave, the water lapping at and channeled between her trim thighs.
“Yeah,” Alex said emphatically. “And you… you look amazing, Emily.”
She seemed genuinely happy. He wasn’t sure, because right about that time, a wave hit and she lost her footing, ending up in water up to her neck and squealing in surprise. She was pulled back by the undertow, and Alex bent and lifted her back to her feet, catching her by her waist and setting her on her feet. That left her standing close to him, and as much as he intended to open his arms and let her go, that didn’t happen.
“Hey, cut that out,” Emily said, smiling as she shrugged out of his arms. “Do you want to swim?”
“Yeah,” Alex said with relief.
Emily was a strong swimmer, much more so than himself, and after the first few minutes she slowed her pace so he could keep up. They made it past where the swells started, out at the edge of the area protected by the cove. Ahead of them, deeper blue waters ran with the current south, away to the China Sea. They stopped at the edge of the cove by unspoken agreement, treading water and looking around. Alex was doubly nervous – he had only started swimming in the ocean a few days ago, and he still wasn’t a confident swimmer. Despite the clarity of the water he couldn’t see all the way to the bottom, and in the shadows there, he wondered if there were sharks and other shark-like things.
She smiled at him, and for once, it didn’t seem to be for his benefit. It could have been that she enjoyed swimming, or because she was happy to be there, on the island. Alex rolled onto his back, floating with his face pointed up at the late-afternoon blue of the skies, bobbing along with the swells. He glanced back in the direction of the shore, and saw Timor forcing his way through the break, pulling Anastasia along behind him. He was surprised to see that she was wearing a black bikini, and that she looked better in it than he could have ever expected. Then he realized what he was staring at, and decided to dive, more out of embarrassment than anything else. He bobbed up thirty seconds later, much closer to Emily than he’d intended. He went to swim away but she caught onto the upper part of his arm.
“You’re stronger now,” she said shyly, treading water with such ease that he felt like a child, splashing about beside her. “When you first came to the Academy you were so skinny.”
“Thanks,” Alex said, suddenly afflicted with cottonmouth. “You seem like you are in a good mood, today.”
“Oh,” she said, looking away and smiling cryptically. “Maybe something good happened.”
“Okay,” Alex said, uncertainly, wondering how long he could tread water before he drowned.
“Can I ask you something?” Emily asked, looking worried.
“Sure,” Alex panted, trying to suggest with his eyes that this was a conversation that they could have on land. Emily wasn’t biting.
“Are you having fun here? At all?”
“Sure!” Alex said, working hard to keep his head above the water. “No, this is awesome. I don’t think I’ve ever left California, you know?”
“That’s good,” Emily said, not looking too happy about it. “Anastasia told me about a path up to the top of the hill, where there is a good view of the stars. I wondered if you felt like going for a walk with me tonight.”
“Uh, yeah, sure, that would be great,” Alex said, with obvious strain.
“You don’t sound too happy about it…” Emily pouted.
“No,” Alex protested, “it’s just that I’m kind of starting to drown…”
Emily laughed and Alex tried, but he had already swallowed too much water. He hoped she couldn’t tell how desperate his swim back to shore was, but by the time he made it to the shallows where he could stand, his legs were shaking beneath him. Anastasia glided by, riding along the foam of a dwindling wave, and smirked at him.
“Poor Alex,” she said cheerfully. “Always in over his head.”
21.
“I don’t get it.”
“What a total surprise,” Katya said tiredly. “I am starting to get the impression that the number of things you do understand can be counted on one hand. Now tell Auntie Kat what it is you don’t get.”
“Why are you suddenly acting like you’re older than me?” Alex asked, his arm extended self-consciously in front of him, as if he were a traffic cop gesturing for the foliage in front of him to stop. “Never mind. Why do I have to hold my arm out like this? I feel stupid.”
“You need to learn to gauge distance,” Katya said, reluctantly setting her rice paper-wrapped spring roll down on the table and walking over to where Alex stood. “Depth is the hardest part of aiming a protocol. It’s not like a gun; you don’t aim in two dimensions. Everybody can get the other two axis’s down, but the last one is a bitch. With your arm out – what’s your reach, anyway?”
“I think it’s, uh, like, seventy inches or something…”
“Right, so your arm is about half the distance to the glass,” Katya said, shrugging. “Near enough. Go ahead and try your protocol out up close, to get a sense of how it works. Activate your protocol a couple inches in front of your hand. Only a little, mind you. Don’t go freezing your arm off.”
Alex grumbled, but settled into the focusing routine Michael had taught him, staring hard at the point in space where he was focusing all of his efforts.
“Is this some sort of focusing exercise?” Katya asked doubtfully. “Because you look like you are having a really hard time going to the bathroom.”
Alex ignored her. Not that it mattered. It still took him the better part of a minute to activate his protocol at the end of his hand. Then he felt pain, and he jerked his hand back reflexively, like a child from a stovetop, the tiny breach into the Ether collapsing instantly.
Katya finished the last of her spring roll while cursed and jumped, clutching his frost-burnt hand, where round, white patches were forming on the pads of skin below his fingers, that would eventually bloom into hard, yellow blisters.
“Not bad,” Katya allowed, wiping her mouth delicately with a napkin. “Kinda slow.”
“Not bad? I burned the shit out of my hand! Didn’t you see that?”
“Yeah, the breach you opened was too big, so it was too cold, too much vacuum, and it took you too long,” she said, shrugging. “We’ll have to fix all of that. But the depth was pretty close. That’s one point for you. Score three points, and I’ll give you a prize.”
“Um... okay. But it better not be something painful...”
“You have a strange concept of the word ‘prize’. Let’s move on to the second target,” Katya suggested. “Use your arm as a guide again, but this time, instead of trying to open the breach right in front of your hand, I want you to stand on the line I drew, and open a breach as close to twice the length of your arm as you can. And a smaller breach this time. Much smaller. I don’t want you to freeze it solid.”
Alex looked at the target propped on a tree stump at roughly at shoulder level, and then the crude line in the moss on the rock that Katya had made by dragging the toe of her sandal through it.
“It’s a glass of water.”
“Right.”
“You want me to make ice?”
Katya nodded, digging in her army surplus rucksack for a moment, before coming up with tonic water and a number of miniature bottles of Bombay Sapphire.
“I need ice,” she explained, smiling and leaning her chin on her hand, watching him.
“I should’ve known,” Alex muttered, turning back to the target and extending his hand again, trying to draw an invisible line between the glass and himself, about twice as far as he could reach. He tensed his body and closed his eyes.
“Not like that.”
Alex was startled by Katya padding up silently behind him, one arm wrapping around his waist, the other forcing his elbow to unlock. “Loosen up. Tensing your muscles won’t help you operate a protocol. Bend your knees. Relax your back. You aren’t trying to tear reality to pieces; you don’t have to murder that glass of water. This may be a first for you, Alex, but I think you might be trying a little bit too hard.”
He tried to relax, knowing he could have done a better job if she hadn’t had been standing right there. He could feel her chest brush against his back, and it was a terrible distraction. Still, he had to try, so he closed his eyes briefly, visualized the distance, raised his arm, and tried to punch the smallest hole into the Ether he could imagine, so small that he imagined a single molecule struggling to fit through the breach. The effect was subtle to the point that at first he didn’t think it had worked it all. Then the glass cracked in two places, but didn’t shatter. The water in the glass had a shard of ice in the center an inch think, running from the top to the bottom.
Katya yelled encouragement and slapped his back while he hurriedly shut the breach. She practically skipped over to gingerly collect the ice from the fractured glass, breaking pieces into the two plastic red cups that she had brought with her. She hummed to herself happily as she filled them with a restrained amount of tonic, and a more generous helping of gin.
“Cheers,” she said, handing him one and offering hers up for a toast. He tapped the plastic rim of her cup with his own. “Good job. I think you are starting to get it. And that’s another point for you.”
“Thanks to you, Katya,” Alex said, sampling his drink, making a sour face, and then adding more tonic water. “Really. I’m sorry I was such a jerk to you at first. I completely misjudged you. You’ve done nothing but look out for me, and teach me, and I’m grateful for it.”
Katya smiled, blushed, and then looked unhappy in an impressively quick array of emotional responses. She sat down on the bench behind her and then patted for him to sit down next to her.
“Not bad,” Katya said quietly. “That’s three points. You win the prize. First, though, Alex, I’m not sure you totally understand something. Do you know why Anastasia assigned me to look after you?”
Alex looked away for a moment, considering both what he thought to be true, and what saying it aloud might do to their suddenly improving relationship. In the end he decided he wasn’t smart enough for anything except the truth.
“Because you are an assassin,” Alex replied, suddenly shy for no specific reason. “Because I need someone watching over me who is willing to kill.”
Katya laughed mirthlessly and drained her cup, pausing to refill it.
“Not hardly, boy,” she scoffed. “Anastasia has lots of people who are willing to kill, and plenty of trained assassins. She sent me for two reasons. The first is that I am completely loyal to Anastasia, and Anastasia alone. I can’t be bribed, persuaded, or threatened, my trust can’t be shaken. I do whatever she says, no questions asked, no compunctions, no moral scruples, no trouble sleeping at night. I owe her everything. Literally.”
“Okay,” Alex said, rattling the ice in his cup, taking a certain satisfaction at having made it. “What’s the second reason?”
“Because I don’t give a fuck about anything or anyone else,” Katya said sweetly, looking at him with a mixture of pity and affection. “I’m not like the other people at the Academy, Alex. I don’t want power or money. I don’t have any hidden motivations or secret agendas. My outlook on life is simple. If Anastasia told me to screw you, Alex, I would have you flat on your back before you had time to reach for your rape whistle. And if she told me to kill you, well, I don’t need any other reason to fill that vacant head of yours with pointy metal bits. And it wouldn’t even mess up my afternoon.”
“Huh,” Alex said, trying to thaw his brain out of its induced freeze. “You feel like trying that out?”
“What? No,” Katya said, shaking her head. “I’m not Alice Gallow. If I go through the rest of my life without having to kill somebody, then that’s fine with me. I don’t like killing people, I just don’t mind it particularly. Besides, I’m supposed to be teaching you.”
“No, I meant the other part,” Alex said, grinning. “I think maybe I forgot my rape whistle back with my other pants.”
Katya laughed, long and hard, and Alex felt good about it. He was pretty sure it was the first time he’d really ever gotten her approval.
“Cute, but I’m afraid you aren’t at all my type,” Katya said, digging in her pocket, and then tossing him something. Alex caught it in midair and examined it. It looked like a hacky-sack knitted from red and blue colored yarn with something heavy and dense at the core. “Present from Eerie for the big winner.”
“Really?” Alex asked, examining the object closely. He was starting to think it was maybe actually a small pillow, or something similar. “Wait a minute, Katya. You know Eerie?”
“Did you think the sewing needles were an affectation?” Katya asked, looking surprised. “Never underestimate the power of the Academy’s Sewing Circle. We are a force to be reckoned with, and Eerie is a charter member. She taught me to cross-stitch, so I owed her a favor. She asked me to give you that before we left.”
“Great. Um, what is it?”
“I don’t know,” Katya said. “But it comes with two instructions. She said to put it underneath your pillow, when you sleep if you miss her. Isn’t that too cute? And she said that if you are ever in deep trouble, and you need her help, you’re supposed to squeeze it really hard.”
“Okay…” Alex said thoughtfully. He held it up close to his face, and it smelled vaguely familiar, some kind of heady incense. He weighed it thoughtfully in his palm, wondering what was inside it, wondering what Eerie had thought when she had made it, if it had been before their fight, if there was in fact something for him to come back to at The Academy. By the time he finished considering, Katya had replaced the water in the damaged glass out on the step and was shaking her red cup at him expectantly.
“Okay, big guy, whenever you’re ready,” she said, grinning, “I need a refill.”
Alex sighed, stretched out his arm, and started to range in on the target.
* * *
Most of the time, when a day went completely wrong, Chris only realized the problem in retrospect. Looking back on the day, often from bed, he would think to himself, ‘That was a very bad day,’ and catalogue t
he various mistakes that had made it so. But on this particular day, he knew the precise moment the day went bad without a shred of doubt in his mind. It would require very little preamble in his daily report, assuming he managed to survive to submit it. It would read simply:
‘Alice Gallow walked around the corner while we were still in the outskirts of Portland, hours before the plan was supposed to start.’
And that would be an exact record of the events as he watched his chances of having the kind of day that ended comfortably in the arms of his favorite Slovakian prostitute fall into the ground, through the crust of the earth, and stop somewhere uncomfortably close to hell.
“You fucking piece of shit,” Alice snarled, starting toward him, clutching her shotgun. “Christopher Feld. You undead asshole. How is it that you are walking around and nobody told me?”
Chris wasn’t stupid enough to try to argue. He ran, which, upon further reflection, was almost as stupid. He went tumbling through his own shadow, and then fell out of one in front of Alice, but about five feet off the ground. He hit the ground hard, right on his tailbone, and he had barely started to writhe before Alice got her hands on him.
“Explain,” Alice hissed through gritted teeth. “Explain good or I gut you right now.”
“Do you even remember, Alice?” Chris asked, laughing like someone with nothing to lose. Which, at this juncture, was probably an accurate description of his present circumstances. “You cried over my body, you know. It was a very touching scene, even if you didn’t know why you were doing it.”
Alice lifted him by the lapels of his very expensive jacket, pulling him close to her there-and-then-gone-again smile.
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