by Amanda Cyr
“Hey, is anyone back here?” I called out after I dropped the two attendants. “I’m here to help. Peter Cook sent me.”
Peter Cook was the snitch for Seattle—an otherwise ordinary, well-liked bakery owner hired to keep an ear to the ground and help maintain the cover story for my mission. Special Forces often paid substantial amounts of money to buy one or two people’s discretion when they didn’t have a mole already placed in the city.
The revolutionary emerged from behind a stack of metal crates halfway across the cabin. He had one hand behind his back as if to indicate he was armed. For a long, stoic moment, he just stared at me. I flashed a smile and showed him my empty hands to let him know I was unarmed and meant no harm.
“Cook?” he asked, sounding a bit winded.
“Old family friend,” I told him. “Said you guys could use a hand.”
“And so you came running to the rescue?” He looked me up and down again and shook his head with an unimpressed scoff. If he knew how quickly I could kill him if I wanted, he probably wouldn’t laugh.
His attitude would take some getting used to, especially if I remembered his sparse profile sheet correctly. According to the file I’d been given, this brat was the ringleader of the group I was supposed to collect data on. “It’s Valery, right?”
I watched him stand up straighter and roll his shoulders back. It was like he was trying to make himself bigger than he actually was, even as he drowned in the clothes he wore. “Sorry, wrong guy,” he said.
He was lying. The way his eyes flicked up to focus on mine and the tightness visible in his jawline indicated as much. Valery Grey—five-foot-nine; 142 pounds; found guilty of drug trafficking back in March of 2074, according to his profile.
“Look, I’m just here to help. Sort of looked like you needed it back there,” I said, throwing a thumb over my shoulder toward the three unconscious attendants.
Valery, which was a terrible name for a boy in my opinion, shrugged and offered me a confused frown as a response. He seemed content to go on pretending not to know anything about the bodies in the corner.
I hadn’t expected to run into any revolutionaries this far from Seattle. I certainly hadn’t expected to run into their obnoxious leader. This was my chance to make an impression and get a foot in the door with them, though, so I thought quickly on my feet to trick him into trusting me.
“You always this ungrateful when people give you a hand?” I asked, baiting him carefully. His brow furrowed and his eyes narrowed. The best way to deal with a jerk was to give him a dose of his own medicine.
Valery took the bait. He crossed his arms and strode right up to me as he asked, “You say Cook told you ‘bout us?”
“Sure did.”
“How much?”
“Enough to make a bored college student come across the country to lend a hand.”
“Funny guy. Great.” He sneered. Clearly Valery wasn’t a fan of sarcasm unless he was the one using it.
His hand dove into his jacket, and he took out a beat up phone. As he dialed a number and brought the phone to his ear, Valery studied my face like he was waiting for me to break under pressure and confess to a crime. I stood there calmly with my hands in my coat. It didn’t take a genius to guess who he’d called, and I wasn’t the least bit concerned with what might happen next.
Valery rocked back on his heels as the person on the other end of the line picked up to answer. Nice and clear he said, “Hey there, Mr. Cook. Got a minute? There’s a guy here who says he knows you… On a train, of all places, right? Haha. Yeah so this guy, his name is—” Valery pressed the phone against his chest to cover the microphone, addressing me deliberately as he asked, “Sorry, what’s your name?”
“Nik,” I replied, pulling a hand out of my pocket and giving a wave. “Nik Maslow.”
Valery repeated the name back to Peter, and I watched his smugness fade as my cover story solidified. Their conversation was brief, and Valery hung up a minute later. His fingers tapped against the cover of his phone, like he was trying to decide how to proceed. “So, you’re from D.C.?” he asked, finally.
If that was the first question out of Valery’s mouth, I could only imagine what else Peter managed to tell him about me in their short conversation. I didn’t skip a beat, though, familiar enough with my latest alias that I could recite the details in my sleep.
“Born and raised,” I said proudly.
Nik Maslow. A young political science major recently accepted to Georgetown University. He had parents who were successful architects, a deep love for soccer, and a bad habit of getting caught up in all sorts of political protests. If Valery somehow managed to run a background check on Nik Maslow, he’d even find two arrests for partaking in disorderly rioting.
“And you came all the way out here to help us?” Valery said, stressing the last word like he didn’t believe anyone would want to help them.
I chuckled and used my go-to excuse. “What can I say? I’m impulsive.” I never passed up the chance to play the I’m-a-reckless-seventeen-year-old-boy-making-poor-life-decisions card. It was the easiest one in the deck, especially when used against someone my age.
“Well, you don’t look that tough to me,” Valery said, giving me another once-over.
He was still trying to play tough guy. If I planned on gaining any sort of respect from him, I couldn’t let a remark like that slide. “No offense,” I said as I crossed my arms, “But with a last name like Grey, you’re not really one to talk.”
Grey was the last name given to bastard children fathered by the Grey Men occupying large cities and maintaining the peace. Grey bastards tended to be large, brutish human beings, inheriting the laboratory-manufactured genetic makeup of their monstrous fathers. Valery, in stark contrast, was a wispy looking boy who might get blown over if a strong enough gust of wind hit him.
Valery let out a dry sort of laugh which turned into a cough. A smoker, I noted from the way he wheezed when he took in another raspy breath. “Fair enough… Call me Val,” he said, holding his hand out to shake.
“Nik,” I said, taking his hand to introduce myself properly. “Wasn’t expecting to bump into you all the way out here. What are we, three hours from Seattle?”
“Something like that. Jobs usually don’t take us this far out of the city.”
I glanced over at the bodies in the corner and asked, “That why those guys were chasing after you? A job?”
Val’s eyes lit up, like he’d forgotten about the unconscious attendants until I mentioned them. He cursed and rubbed a hand over his mouth. “Yeah, they caught me going through a private cabin when the guy occupying it stepped out.”
Before I could ask what he’d been looking for, Val began unbuttoning his coat. I didn’t think much of it until he tossed it on the ground and pulled his shirt over his head. Completely caught off guard by the abrupt change of pace, I tripped over the start of my sentence. “Erm, what are you doing?”
“Changing clothes,” he said, like it should have been obvious. “I’ve already been seen, so it’ll cut down on the risk of being recognized later.”
Once I got over the initial shock, I had just enough time to digest how obscenely pale Val’s skin was before he started to undo his belt. He looked up and must have seen the stiffness in my shoulders, because he had the decency to turn his back before dropping his pants. Brazenly, Val walked across the cabin wearing nothing more than a pair of green and blue striped boxer shorts and rummaged through the luggage stacked along the wall.
With his back turned, I caught sight of my first warning sign that Val wasn’t someone to underestimate. Old scars, at least a dozen, marred his pale skin. They were long, and the crude shapes could have only come from a whipping. Forever scar tissue, edges lined in pink where old skin met new. I had my share of those.
A series of numbers were tattooed along his right shoulder, their black ink warped with the scars. I tried to make out the combination and what it could possibly represen
t. A gang sign? A significant date?
“It’s rude to stare.”
I looked away so quickly the bones in my neck popped. Numbness crept up the side of my face. I worked my jaw to shake the discomfort and kept my gaze on the bodies in the corner until I heard the clink of Val’s belt as he secured a new set of jeans around his waist. Unlike the pair he’d been wearing before, this one didn’t look like it would fall off if he jumped around too much. He grabbed a navy sweater and yanked it over his head before turning back to me.
“All right, we’re good,” Val said, picking his coat up and folding it over his arm. He shoved his old clothes into the suitcase he’d stolen from. He ruffled a hand through his short hair, ten times less tamable than my own, as he headed for the door. I followed him into the empty passenger car as I asked, “So, what were you looking for when they caught you?”
“There’s a guy on the train who’s delivering… Shit,” Val said, throwing his arm out to stop me as we stepped into the passenger car I’d been in earlier. Two train attendants made their way through the door at the front of the car.
Interrogation Block 02, Eisenhower Building—Washington, D.C.
Wednesday, November 25th, 2076—10:16 a.m.
he tattoo on Valery Grey’s shoulder,” Dr. Halliburton said, drawing out her words as she paged through the folder in front of her, “I’m sure you’ve since learned what it means.”
“Figured it out, yeah. Don’t see how it’s related to this,” I mumbled. I used her interruption to roll a crick out of my neck. The vertebrae cracked and sent a visible shiver through the doctor, which made me chuckle. It was satisfying to know I could make her uncomfortable even when I was the one under the microscope.
The scowl on Dr. Halliburton’s face suggested she didn’t enjoy being laughed at. She flipped to Val’s profile and tapped her finger on the picture paper-clipped to the corner. The file had been a sparse, two-page piece when it was first handed to me two and a half weeks ago. After all the data I’d collected, it was now eight pages thick.
“I’m just curious,” the doctor began, “About whether or not you’d have been so eager to help him and his friends on the train had you known who he was earlier.”
My mind wandered as I stared at Val’s mug shot. He was alive somewhere in this building. As hard as it was to believe, Val was alive.
“Mr. Zhukov?”
I looked up at the doctor. She had an impatient look in her eyes. I knew she’d asked some kind of question, but I had zoned out. “What was the question?”
Dr. Halliburton huffed. Using one long finger, she pushed the bridge of her glasses further up her nose. Even the frame was an unpleasant shade of magenta. “Did you even enjoy your years of service with the Y.I.D.?”
“What?”
“Well, while your fellow officers described you as an upstanding soldier, several also suggested you were showing symptoms of depression,” she said with a small gesture toward the screen of her tablet.
“Depression?” I laughed. “Right, because a seventeen-year-old who’s spent almost his entire life getting shot at and doing The Council’s dirty work should be all smiles and sunshine.”
“So, you were depressed?”
It really irritated me the doctor kept using that word. She didn’t know a thing about the sort of work I’d done in my seventeen years. What right did she have to assume anything? “No, I was overworked and under slept like every other dog risking their neck to keep people like you safe.”
Dr. Halliburton pressed her lips into a line and flicked her eyes at me over the top of her glasses. “You’re defending the same people you betrayed, Mr. Zhukov.”
What a relentless woman. Fine. If this was how she wanted to play, then I would just have to win her evil little game. “Have you ever watched someone die, Doctor?” I asked with a calmness to my voice nobody in my position should have.
“I can’t say I have.”
“The first time I saw someone die, I was four-years-old.” I told her in the same composed, almost nostalgic, tone. “Shortly after my parents divorced, my father decided it would be more beneficial for me to travel with him on his missions. You know, learn in the schools abroad and see the world for what it was, not what the textbooks wanted us to believe. It was Christmas break. We were stationed in Berlin at the time. I had just returned home from a violin lesson when he said we had an errand to run before dinner.”
“Did you know at the time what your father was?” Dr. Halliburton interjected.
“I knew he was one of the Special Operations Regiment’s most valuable men, if that’s what you’re asking,” I said.
My father used tales from his time in the field as bedtime stories, assuring me I would someday be able to tell my own son of my endeavors. The way he was determined to make me into a soldier like him, and the way I eagerly latched onto his dream, was part of the reason our family broke apart. I didn’t tell the doctor that.
“We rode right into the heart of the city,” I said, continuing my story without falter. “I didn’t know a lick of German back then, but my father assured me we had nothing to worry about. Our car stopped at this huge house, and he told me to follow him to the front door. The man who lived there greeted us, all smiles and friendly, German nonsense. He welcomed us inside. My father took out his gun and…”
I raised my hand and bent two fingers back to mime shooting a gun at her. Something twisted in my chest. My ears rang with Val’s last words.
“Wait! Nik wait a—”
The way his body collapsed was different from the countless others I’d watched. It felt slow, agonizing. I could see his gray eyes dilate. His chapped, bleeding lips hung open as they were robbed of their final words, and over the din around us, I heard the last raspy breath leave his lungs. Veins in his pale, blood-soaked hands bulged in the most beautiful shades of blue and purple I’d ever seen. I reached to seize the hands extended toward me. He fell forward into my arms, and everything within me shattered under the weight of his limp body.
“Mr. Zhukov?”
Inhale.
“Val! Val, no! Christ, please… No, no, NO!”
Exhale.
I fought the memory back into its cage. An uneven breath left my lips as I looked at the doctor again. I would not let her see through me. I refused to let her know how I wanted to scream. How just thinking about the way Val felt in my arms, so cold and heavy, was worse than any physical or mental torture I’d ever suffered through.
“My father took out his gun, and he blew the German man’s brains all over the wall,” I said, smiling just slightly as I shrugged one shoulder. Every painfully stiff muscle in my body ached with the movement. “It really ruined the rest of dinner for the wife and kids. Did I mention they were in the room, too?”
Dr. Halliburton blinked several times, mouth hanging just slightly agape. She cleared her throat and reached for the glass of water on the table between us. The entire time she fidgeted, I kept on smiling. I refused to let her see how badly I wanted to tear into something with my bare hands, how I craved an outlet for the unbearable memories ripping me apart as I replayed them over and over.
I couldn’t snap, yet. Not until I got Val away from this place.
With the shrink recovering from my morbid Christmas story, I knew I couldn’t pass up the chance to ask a question of my own. “So, did you bring any of the others back from Seattle or was it just Val?”
“The rest of that mangy bunch you keep calling your friends were dealt with,” Dr. Halliburton said icily. She glared at me over the top of her glasses, sneering in a way which warned me I wouldn’t like what came next. “Of course, there were the ones still in the city below when everything hit the fan. We won’t know about them until rescue teams start pulling the bodies out.”
Under the table my fingers curled back, digging through the jumpsuit and deep into my thighs. I fought to keep them still and the chain between the handcuffs from rattling. My smile faded as the doctor’s grew.<
br />
“Let’s continue, shall we?”
7 Empire Builder Train—Spokane, WA
Tuesday, November 10th, 2076—7:22 a.m.
was ready to pull Val into the empty passenger car we’d just come from, thinking, back there, we’d be able to bide time to plan or find a hiding spot. However, just as I grabbed his arm, a girl standing in the aisle, going through the overhead compartment, collapsed. It was the same girl I’d given the newspaper to. My grip slipped off Val’s arm, but he threw it in front of me to keep me from rushing to check on Anya. He shot me a sideways look and winked.
“Anya!” An enormous boy with dark skin and a square face leapt from his seat and dove to check on her. I remembered every single passenger who had been in the car with me earlier, and he wasn’t one of them. It would have been impossible to overlook someone I almost mistook for a young Grey Man. Clad in a puffy, off-white coat, the boy looked more like a marshmallow monster than a soldier. Any hair he might have had atop his head was hidden in a poorly-knitted green cap which, like its wearer, looked to have seen better days.
The two train attendants hurried down the aisle toward them. They were so absorbed with the well-staged distraction, Val and I were able to slip into a set of seats a few rows from the back, unnoticed. We watched on like the other passengers as the stocky boy cradled Anya’s body in his lap. Their size difference reminded me of a scene straight out of King Kong.
As I stared at Anya’s dramatic show of coming back into consciousness, something clicked together in my mind. I looked from her face to Val’s. With almost identical hair color, narrow jawlines and bone structure, there was no doubt in my mind they were siblings. There hadn’t been any mention of a sister in the file Aiden had given me, but even he admitted the reports were lacking.
Anya’s eyelids fluttered. She gave a weak moan as she reached a hand out to cup the large boy’s cheek. “Tibbs?”
“Is she okay?” one of the attendants asked.
“My friend’s got blood sugar issues. She needs to eat something,” the boy, Tibbs, said. Both attendants rushed back the way they’d come, assuring him they’d be back with whatever snacks they could find. Tibbs helped Anya to her feet and led her to the seats across from me and Val. The entire walk, she remained shaky and woozy, like she would collapse again at any second. Once they were out of the aisle and out of sight, the facade crumpled.