by Darr, Brian
“I don’t think you have a choice,” The Guide said. “I can’t trust you and I’m tired of listening to your resistance. Everyone here agrees that you were the wrong choice for this, including you. All you would need to do is hide until we get the job done. Then you’ll be free from this. You’re safe now Troll—and you’ll be safer when we get to our destination. I’m asking nicely that you let us take it from here.”
“I can’t,” The Troll said, backing away and putting his hand over his pocket to protect the flash drive.
The Guide and Iris looked at each other worriedly, as if deciding how to handle the next step.
“I’m sorry I brought you into this,” Iris said. “I just thought you’d be more like your board persona in person. I was clearly wrong.”
The Troll felt very small—smaller than he’d probably ever made anyone feel. Even asking to come along seemed useless now. He weighed handing it over and knew his mind was spinning toward that possibility.
“You will never be in the good graces of The Moderator,” The Guide said and extended his hand, palm up.
“Sure he will,” The Acrobat said unexpectedly with a wide smile. “All he has to do is transmit and destroy the thing. If he does that, he joins us in Chicago.”
The Troll closed his eyes in defeat but felt the eyes of his companions burning through him.
“What?” Iris asked, in disbelief. “How?”
“The Moderator gave him a transmitter,” The Acrobat said. “He can opt out at any time.”
And suddenly, every action The Troll had made, made sense to them. He’d always intended on saving himself. If not for that opportunity, he would have gladly rid himself of Rainbow a long time ago. He wasn’t just fearful. He was an outright traitor.
“You have a working transmitter?” The Guide asked.
“Yeah…” The Troll said, but his voice cracked and fell to a whisper.
“We can use it to recruit,” The Guide said, his eyes wide. The Troll was relieved he wasn’t angry. He was hopeful…eager to use the transmitter for their cause. Except, The Troll had no intention of allowing that to happen.
“No,” The Troll said, backing himself into a corner and guarding his pockets protectively.
“Excuse me?” The Guide said.
“I said no.”
“What did they tell you in Prime?” The Guide asked. “They tell you that you’re actually one of them? To turn on your mission?”
“I already told you,” The Troll said. “I never had a problem with Psi. I still don’t.”
“You son of a bitch. You have no problem with the innocent lives lost… You know where I was when Psi took over? I was in my cab, watching a man choke to death on chewing gum lodged in his throat. If he had control over his nerves, he simply would have moved it to the left or the right, like people do every day. That was one guy and a stick of gum. Everyone in the world who simply needed to react in that moment was gone within two minutes and the aftershocks were worse. How can you have a conscience and tell me that you want to opt out and save yourself and support that man?”
The Troll shook his head, searching for words. He saw Iris at The Guide’s side, a tear falling from her eye.
“I don’t want to die,” were the only words he could offer.
“And you won’t, but you’re going to give me Rainbow and the transmitter, or I’m going to take them from you.”
“Then you’ll have to, because this wasn’t your thing to do. It was mine. And you don’t make the rules. You feel one way. I feel another. In my world, when you can’t win a debate, that’s called agreeing to disagree.”
“In my world, when you can’t win a debate, we handle it with our fists.”
“Well, I don’t have muscles,” The Troll said. “I have fairly brittle bones and I’m not a fighter, so since we both can use words, that’s the only logical course of action.”
He couldn’t help but sound condescending, and he saw The Guide’s eyes go dark as he spoke and knew he was making a mistake. He realized he’d been shadow typing, which was never a good thing. It usually meant his fingers were speaking for him and he was translating their words. Usually, when his fingers spoke, they didn’t play nice, and The Guide’s reaction was good proof of that. His fingers began shadow-typing again and before he could find his filter, The Guide lashed out, spinning and landing a roundhouse to the side of The Troll’s face.
He spun and his body slammed against the wall and he lost his balance and hit the ground after. His world spun and everything turned into a blur. He was trying to find his footing and focus when The Guide’s hands were on his shirt, pulling him into the air and tossing him across the floor with a roll. He was stopped when his body hit the bars of a cell. He looked up to find The Guide coming at him again, and quickly spun and kicked wildly at him, hoping something would connect and send him away.
The Guide grabbed one of his feet but only had it for a moment before his other foot kicked his hand. The Guide’s hand let go, but easily grabbed his other foot and pulled him to the center of the room. The Troll grasped at the bars, but he missed, and found himself in the center of the room, being circled as if by a shark.
“Get up!” The Guide shouted.
The Troll brushed off his pants and pushed himself up to face The Guide.
“You don’t have a choice!” The Guide shouted.
The Troll’s fingers started to move. Shit, he thought. “Iris didn’t choose you. She chose me. Probably because you and The Surfer and Wigeon ran your revolution like it was a lemonade stand. Go back into hiding with the twelve of you left who can’t fight Psi.”
The Guide lunged and wrapped his hands around his neck and slammed him against the bars again. The Troll winced as the pain shot up his back and then focused on his neck. He tried to speak, to beg for mercy, but he was losing his vision, losing the world around him. Iris watched in horror and The Troll heard her shouting something to the effect of letting him go. Luckily, The Guide understood and did, if only because she was saying it.
The moment The Troll was free from his grip, he twirled to the side and stepped into the cell that was adjoining The Acrobat’s cell. He slammed the door closed, which locked itself, and in one swift motion, backed against the wall, far from The Guide’s grip. Before The Guide fully understood the severity of his position, The Troll also held up a ring of keys and shook them as if taunting him.
“So what?” The Guide said. “You locked yourself in. You’ve got nowhere to go.”
“All I have to do is transmit and they’ll come for me,” The Troll said and pulled the transmitter from his pocket.
“All I have to do is leave,” The Guide said and held up Rainbow. The Troll’s eyes went wide and he reached for his pocket, but it was empty. The Guide had only one goal in their fight and it was to extract it from his pocket. He’d succeeded and devalued The Troll completely. The Troll lunged through the bars, but The Guide pulled back with a smile. Then, he grabbed a pair of handcuffs from the desk, approached the bars, and locked one side to the door, and the other to the bars. A second pair of handcuffs, he stuffed in his sock in case he'd need it later.
“Now you really have nowhere to go,” he said. “Except through The Acrobat. Feel free to kill him if you want,” The Guide said to The Acrobat, and started toward the door.
“Wait!” The Troll said. “What are you doing?”
“So we can’t transmit,” he said with a shrug. “We’ll still finish this thing, and you? Someday long after Psi is destroyed and the world is free and the revolution is talked about, you’ll look back on your role and you’ll know you did what you did. That you had a chance to do something better and you were a coward who locked himself behind bars to avoid having a purpose. So go ahead and transmit, and pray that The Moderator doesn’t just walk in here and kill you and let the world watch while he does. Or you can use that door…” He pointed to a single door that separated The Troll’s cell from The Acrobat’s. “You can try your luck
with him, but something tells me he doesn’t see you as such a threat when you’re on your own. Either way, you’re no longer my problem. I took down a helicopter you coward. What have you ever done that’s even come close to that?”
With that, The Guide and Iris walked toward the exit. The Guide never looked back, but Iris did, and her eyes spoke volumes to The Troll. She looked hurt, disappointed, pained, to see what had ultimately become of the man she’d chosen—the man she’d believed in.
The Troll stepped forward and found her eyes and his own pleaded with her to forgive him. “I’m sorry,” he said. She quickly turned away and she couldn’t look at him any longer. In a moment, she was gone.
The Troll hurried to the cell door and unlocked it. He tried to open it, but the handcuff held securely. He kicked at it, shouldered it, slammed his whole body into it, but it didn’t budge. Finally, The Troll stumbled back, breathless, and fell into a sitting position, facing The Acrobat. The Acrobat approached the wall of bars between them and stared through.
“Only way out is through me,” he said, taunting The Troll.
“No…” The Troll said, his eyes finding the transmitter sitting on the bench. Neither decision looked good.
Doing nothing and starving to death sounded worse.
He slowly got to his feet and stood on the bench. Pangs of pain shot through his body as he stood on his toes and looked through the window. The Guide and Iris started their journey away from him, with only their skills and Rainbow. He wished again that he had whatever courage they had.
“You transmit now,” The Acrobat said, “And I will see to it that The Moderator knows you tried to fight them. They’ll be dead soon. The Rainbow will be destroyed. This is your last chance to be with us.”
The Troll silently sat again and stared through the bars. He closed his eyes and weighed his options.
Part 3
Chapter 1
The feel of Rainbow in the palm of his hand made The Guide feel powerful. They’d walked for two days and were convinced no one could be on their trail. The Moderator believed he could control The Troll and track him easily, and he was right, but he hadn’t counted on The Guide to find him and take control of the mission. In hindsight, he realized it couldn’t have gone more perfectly. There had even been perks: Like Iris.
They talked every step of the way, getting to know everything about each others lives before Psi. Iris avoided the topic of her father, but The Guide could see it on the tip of her tongue throughout the journey. She wanted to tell him everything. He sensed she felt guilty for having been so close to him once without the ability to stop The Moderator before that fateful day. He wanted to tell her not to blame herself, but he could only wait for the topic to come up.
They walked across the plains of Illinois, once in a while hearing an engine in the distance. They’d duck down somewhere and hide until it was gone. The more time that passed, the easier it was to believe that The Moderator would pull all stops to find them. Or maybe they’d find The Troll and it would be over. Except, The Troll wouldn’t have Rainbow on him. The Acrobat would tell The Moderator about them and the hunt would shift in their direction. As far as he knew now, Iris and him were still unknown.
Iris noticed The Guide staring at Rainbow with fascination. “The Surfer would be proud of you,” she said.
“I hope so,” The Guide said. “I don’t think this is how he saw things happening. I was his soldier. I was just a backup plan in the case of combat, but most of us believed in The Surfer to one day get the job done by stratifying.”
“You’re not so bad for a backup plan,” Iris said.
“Well, I kinda wish it had been him though. He’s believed in this from the start. He saw what Psi was long before it took everyone over. Me, I just didn’t get Psi because I didn’t care about technology. I wrote everything in notebooks and saw a phone as a way to contact my parents to say hi. Not as an organizer or browser. I joined The Surfer because I had the distinction of being able to. I was off the grid, so I figured ‘why not’?”
“But you believe in what you fight for…” Iris said.
“Damn right I do. Maybe not as much at first, but The Surfer is a great man. Wigeon is too, but The Surfer and I grew close. We only talked strategy half the time. The other half, we got to know each other, played cards and chess. He saw potential in me and tracked down everything he could find to teach me how to fight. I watched training videos, read books like The Art of War. I woke up every morning and did push-ups until my arms wouldn’t move. I did the same before bed. He wanted me to have value. He was the face of the revolution and he was building his army, small as it was, and he wanted a soldier to lead them if the day ever came that we stormed Chicago.”
“But that day never came…”
“No, because we didn’t grow like he’d hoped. For every act of defiance against Prime, they’d execute people to remind them who really had the power. We couldn’t recruit from those who had Psi because all The Moderator had to do was shut that person down from the comfort of his office. We hoped for a new generation of non Psi users, but then they began monitoring pregnancies and inserting Psi in all kids when they were six years of age. Psi can read the body—detect pregnancy or illnesses, so we couldn't secretly have babies either. Those of us without Psi are too small in number to repopulate. We realized we’d never have the ability to win with numbers.”
“My father didn’t need numbers to take over.”
“That’s right,” The Guide said. “So it became about building a better mousetrap, but that’s what we’ve been unable to figure out. How do we beat Psi? That became the question, but it made me somewhat useless. His plan to make me into a leader of an army was pointless when the realization that an army as strategy was out the window. So then, The Surfer treated me as a confidant. He didn’t want to lose me, but he didn’t need the muscle. Just a better mousetrap. When it came to that, I wasn’t helpful. I never beat him in chess…not once. If The Surfer couldn’t think up a plan, he knew he didn’t need to pick my brain either.”
“I would say the journey to Vegas is right up your alley then,” Iris said. “This wouldn't be the right task for Surfer. In the end, it really did come down to muscle. You’re the guy.”
“We’ll see,” The Guide said. “The odds are still seriously stacked against us.” He thought for a moment and finally asked a question that had been weighing on his mind. “Do you regret picking The Troll for this?”
Iris gave it serious consideration. “Any other way and we might not have gotten this far. It’s like when you shoot pool and you’re aiming for one ball but knock another in.”
“So I’m your slop…” The Guide said with a smile.
“I didn’t even know you existed a week ago,” Iris said. “With Wigeon and Surfer out of action, I didn’t know a whole lot of anyone who I thought could do this, so I picked the only person I’ve ever crossed paths with who impacted my thoughts in any way.”
“The Troll isn’t going to change any minds.”
“No, but it’s that stubborn way about people that I miss. My father took the stubborn out of everyone. We’re all so scared all the time and so no one is willing to fight. The Troll was a fighter. Maybe only in his own environment, but he still had that quality the world needs.”
The Guide didn’t like how Iris felt about The Troll, but he understood, and on some level, he agreed. What The Guide really wanted was people who could stand up and face their fears. The Troll only fought under cover of a user-name No one could be touched when they sat behind a keyboard and shouted insults. But then again, The Guide had spent most of his time in hiding the last few years too, waiting for his moment. It made him feel as if they weren’t so different. He made a mental note to stand up and say what he believed if he ever came face to face with The Moderator. He wanted to do it to prove he was better than The Troll, to hurt the father who hurt his daughter—a girl The Guide admired.
Suddenly, The Guide wanted to steer t
he conversation to something else. He wanted to talk about them—the undeniable chemistry between them. He felt his hand brush against hers. It had been happening a lot on their journey. Their arms would swing as they walked and once in a while, they’d touch and both would fall silent for a moment as if registering how it felt.
“So Iris…” he started.
Before he could say more, a shadow crossed their path, belonging to someone who couldn’t be more than five feet behind them. He turned to find The Coach barreling toward him, a determined look on his face. He tried to step out of the way, but The Coach’s meaty hands were on his shoulders and pulling him backward with his force.
Before Iris could react, The Mortician was approaching her quickly, cornering her where she stood. She got into a fighting stance and as The Mortician reached for her, she easily deflected all his blows. A couple of times, his skin would touch hers and she'd feel burning. She didn't have time to think about what The Mortician was, but made a point not to touch him.
The Mortician took a step back and regrouped, sizing Iris up. “Come with me darling,” he said. “I won’t hurt you.”
“Bullshit,” The Guide said. He struggled against the grip of The Coach who had his arm wrapped around his neck. “Let her go. We didn’t do anything wrong.”
The Coach spoke close to The Guide’s ear in a harsh tone. “You think I don’t recognize you? You ran from me at the barn.”
“We were in the area when all that went down. We tried to help you guys. We were trying to catch that Troll you’re hunting.” The Guide knew they wouldn’t believe him but had to try.
“You helped him back there,” The Coach said. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know,” The Guide said. “I ran off alone.”
The Mortician tried to move in on Iris and she deflected him every time, keeping her eye on The Coach and Guide. If only he could slip free, they could run, but their enemy had the advantage. She found The Guide’s eyes and he was giving her a panicked look and mouthing for her to run. She shook her head at him, refusing to leave him behind. She noticed The Mortician using a hand-held device and punching in numbers. After a few moments, he looked up at The Coach. “Neither has Psi,” he said.