by Allen Zadoff
“There’s no way to call,” he says, biting his bottom lip.
“They didn’t give you a walkie?” I say like I can’t believe it.
He looks toward the ground, embarrassed. “I’m not C2,” he says. “I don’t get comms gear.”
C2. Military slang for “command and control,” the officer elite charged with directing battle plans and defining strategy. That means only the top guys have comms, and the rest of the kids stand at their stations until otherwise notified.
“What do you want to do?” I say impatiently.
If you put too much responsibility on a nervous guy who isn’t used to it, he’s likely to mess up.
“You say Lee needs you?” he says.
“That’s what he told me.”
He looks to his fellow guard, uncertain.
“You’d better hurry,” he says, stepping aside.
“Will do,” I say. “Thanks.”
I take the stairs two at a time. Near the top I miss a step, my toe slipping down and almost causing me to lose my balance. I catch myself without going down and pull myself to the top of the stairs and around the corner.
I pause there for a moment. I don’t make mistakes, not when I’m operating at full capacity.
I remind myself to slow down a bit, not let myself go faster than sleep deprivation allows.
I just came up the staircase to the second floor, but the stairs end here. I know it’s a three-story building, but there seems to be no way to get to the top floor.
I’m confused for a moment, and then I remember something from my training.
There’s an old and maze-like section of Tokyo called Edo that was the former seat of power for the shogun. It’s said that it was intentionally laid out in a confusing manner, so if enemies ever penetrated into the city, they would become lost and could be slaughtered.
I’m guessing this building has been designed with alternating stairwells to make it tougher to get up or down quickly. I turn down the second-floor hallway, trusting my instinct, looking for the hidden staircase that will lead me up to Moore.
I go only a few steps when I feel it. Someone is shadowing me.
I pause in the middle of the hall, trying to sense whether the shadow is behind or in front of me. It’s like the moment I felt Miranda behind me in the woods that first night, only now when I stop, I’ve lost him.
No shadow. Nothing at all.
For some reason I think of the dead soldier and the things that might have happened to him inside the camp. Was he tracking Moore one morning, just like I am? Did he get close? And if so, what went wrong?
I should not be thinking about this. Not now, when I am moving toward Moore, when I might have an opportunity to get him alone at last.
I focus my energy and continue down the hall.
The shadow, or whatever I thought it was, is gone now.
Now there is only me, moving toward my target.
I round a corner and note a staircase up ahead, tucked into the corner of the building. There are two guards, both of them armed, one of them shouting into a walkie-talkie. I can’t risk having him call my information in to Lee or Sergeant Burch.
I quickly reverse direction, walking toward another hallway in a more deserted section of the house. I’ve come up fast enough that it’s possible not every soldier has gotten into position. Sure enough, there’s a staircase in the far corner.
It is unmanned. I turn the corner and head for it, and then I stop.
My intuition is telling me something is wrong.
An unmanned staircase, all the way in the far corner of the house.
Part of me feels it is a lucky break. Part of me senses a trap.
The problem is I am too tired to know which part to listen to.
Move forward or abandon the mission and wait for another opportunity?
I quickly assess the risks, and I decide this is not the time to hesitate. So I make it to the stairs and keep going, taking stairs two at a time, accelerating as I ascend, not stopping until I’ve arrived, undetected, on the third floor.
The command floor.
HE IS HERE.
Moore.
I hear his voice coming from a room at the end of the hall. He is giving orders, adjusting the position of forces throughout the main house.
A moment later two men step out of the room carrying rifles. They rush away from me, not bothering to look back, where they would certainly see me.
I take a long, centering breath, and I step into the room.
It’s a war room, maps pinned to one wall, a schematic of the compound on the table with troop positioning marked out with colored pins.
A man with long hair is studying the wall map, his back to me.
He turns. It’s Francisco.
“What are you doing up here?” he says.
“I thought I heard Moore.”
“You did hear him, but he’s gone. Now answer my question.”
“The alarm went off when I was at breakfast. Lee and Miranda told me to wait.”
“Wait downstairs?”
“Yes.”
“Then why are you upstairs?”
“I was curious,” I say.
He doesn’t seem surprised.
“You’re a very talented guy,” he says.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You made it past all the security checkpoints, and if I’m not mistaken, a locked door.” He takes a step toward me. “I find that remarkable.”
“I just wandered up here,” I say. “Besides, everyone’s running around like chickens with their heads cut off. I don’t know how remarkable it was.”
“Let’s take a walk,” Francisco says. “Just you and me.”
“Where to?”
“I have to fix a relay station. You can help me.”
“I was hoping to finish breakfast,” I say.
He takes another step toward me. His voice is firm but steady.
“Grab a protein bar and eat it on the way,” he says. “But now I’d like you to come with me.”
“Do I have a choice?”
I measure the distance between us, use my peripheral vision to scan the room for weapons.
“There’s always a choice,” Francisco says.
He spreads his arms wide. I can’t tell if it’s a gesture of friendship or an invitation to fight.
I look at him, judging whether I should go with him or whether I should end this now.
One-on-one, I believe I could take Francisco. But that’s not the issue.
The issue is Moore. If I take on Francisco, it’s sure to attract attention, and I’ll have a lot of explaining to do. My cover could be threatened, or even blown.
That’s assuming it’s not blown already.
I look at Francisco staring at me from across the room. His face is frustratingly neutral, betraying nothing.
Moore is gone, and Francisco is offering me a carrot.
“Let’s take that walk,” I say. “Where’s the relay station?”
“It’s in the mountains.”
“I guess I’ll need hiking boots, then, won’t I?”
“We’re about the same size,” Francisco says. “You can borrow mine.”
WE STOP BY FRANCISCO’S ROOM IN THE MAIN HOUSE.
I wait outside in the hall as he gathers some things for the journey. He leaves his door open, and I glance in to see a bare room without decorations on the walls. Either Francisco lives like a monk, or he moved in here not too long ago.
A minute later he comes out with rope, a tool kit, and an extra set of boots.
“These should fit you,” he says.
“How do you know my size?”
“Your profile.”
“What profile?”
“In the game. I looked at your stats. And we just happen to be the same size.”
“Convenient,” I say.
“Very,” he says.
We walk together toward the edge of the encampment. The sirens stopped
a while ago, signaling the end of the defense drill, but the grounds of Camp Liberty are still empty. We are alone with the exception of a solitary figure, a single sentry in the distance.
Francisco pauses at what was the edge of the laser perimeter last night. He removes a square gray device from his bag and presses a button.
“What’s that for?” I say.
“We have some security provisions. This turns them off for a few seconds.”
He’s talking about the lasers, but I don’t want him to think I know about them.
“Are you ready for an adventure?” he says.
“Always.”
“Then let’s do it.”
He moves forward through the perimeter. I follow him up a path into the mountain. It’s a different path from the one I used the other night, one that begins cloaked in trees at the base of the hill behind the encampment but quickly opens into a narrow and well-defined trail.
“How are you keeping up?” Francisco says after we’ve gone a few hundred meters.
“I’m fine.”
“New boots can be tough.”
“I can be tough,” I say.
My foot hits the ground wrong, twisting my ankle as I stumble.
Francisco stops.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he says. “The climb gets more difficult up ahead,” he says.
I walked through these woods silently two nights ago, but now I am unsteady on my feet, lack of sleep breaking my concentration and affecting my stride.
“I can handle myself,” I say to Francisco.
He glances at my feet and grunts, and then he starts out again.
He stays ahead of me on the trail, legs strong, sweat appearing around the neck of his flannel shirt, then under his arms, then across his entire back. He sips from a canteen as he hikes, but he never complains about the heat or effort, never even rolls up his sleeves.
I do my best to keep up with him, making sure I drink two sips for his every one, keeping myself hydrated as limited defense against my exhaustion.
We hike for another hour before he pauses at a place where the trail splits in two directions. He takes a moment to judge both ways, then confidently moves to the left.
I’m watching the whole time, doing my best to memorize terrain, not knowing whether I’ll need to get back home alone.
Or get away from him.
We come out onto a clearing on the ridge, open to the sky.
It’s midafternoon now, but the elevation has caused the temperature to drop several degrees.
Francisco stops by a large tree with a small satellite dish about halfway up hidden among the branches.
“That’s the satellite uplink,” he says. “You want to spot me?”
“I can do that,” I say.
“I’m going to clip us together,” he says.
He snaps a rope into a carabiner on his belt, knotting one end, then does the same on my belt. He hands me the section of rope in the middle.
“I can trust you, right?” he says.
“Trust me not to throw you off the mountain?”
“Trust you to hang on if I fall.”
“You can trust me,” I say.
I’ve got no reason to harm Francisco. Not unless he gives me one.
He climbs halfway up the tree, makes a few adjustments on the satellite uplink, then climbs down without incident.
“Look there,” he says.
I turn, and I can see the entire basin beneath us, the encampment laid out like toy buildings, and the road beyond that winds up the mountain and disappears out of sight.
Two days. It’s only been two days since I came to this place. It feels like a lifetime.
“What do you think of our home?” Francisco asks.
“It looks small from up here.”
“It’s small, but it’s ours. How many people can say they have something like that in their lives?”
He steps closer to the edge, inadvertently kicking a stone that rolls for half a meter then falls off the edge.
“You can step out farther,” he says, tugging lightly at the rope on his belt. “I’ve got you.”
I notice we’re still clipped together.
I take him up on his offer, stepping forward. The ledge is narrower than it first appeared, dropping off suddenly into nothingness.
I stand at the very edge. I think back to a time just a few days ago up at the sports camp in Vermont. I stood at the edge of the cliff, looking down at the water below. With Peter watching, I took the plunge into the cool water below.
But there is no water here. Instead there are a thousand meters of rugged cliff face.
A single wrong step and I would plunge off the side. If Francisco is strong enough, he could stop my fall. If not, we’d both plunge off the edge together.
“You could have taken anyone up here with you,” I say.
“But I chose you,” he says.
“Why is that?”
He looks out over the valley. “Perspective,” he says. “Sometimes you need to see what you’re up against to understand who you really are.”
“What are you up against?”
“Not, just me, Daniel. Us.”
He points to the vista in front of us, a small valley surrounded by mountains on all sides.
“We’re up against the world,” he says.
“It looks like these mountains will keep out the world.”
“For a time maybe. Not forever.”
I track his position behind me, looking for any indication of a move toward me, an adjustment of his body that might portend danger to me.
“You haven’t been here for long, have you?” I say.
“What makes you say that?”
“The way Lee spoke to you last night. He talked to you like you were an outsider.”
“He’s envious of my position with his father. I’m relatively new. And I rose fast.”
“You’re new, but you call this place your home?”
“Home is a choice,” he says. “We’re home when we decide we’re home.”
I hear a click behind me. I look back and see that Francisco has unclipped his end of the rope from his belt. That means I’m alone on the edge, untethered.
The wind whips up, strong enough that I have to lean back to steady myself.
Francisco drops the end of the rope on the ground and without a word, he turns and heads back up the trail that leads into the forest.
Just before he disappears, he motions for me to follow him.
I unclip the rope and coil it around my arm.
Then I do.
FRANCISCO LEADS ME DEEPER INTO THE FOREST.
We walk for ten minutes or so in silence, when suddenly he stops.
“Where are we?” I say.
“Someplace where we can talk,” he says simply.
The area is deep shadow, the foliage blocking out all but individual beams of sunlight. I look around us, but I see no markings, nothing to distinguish this place from any other.
“It’s a long way to come for a conversation.”
“I wanted to talk to you outside of Liberty, away from the electronics, the distractions, everything.”
Francisco squats and picks up a pinecone. He peels it with a fingernail.
“You were sent to Camp Liberty.”
He says it simply, like it’s a fact he already knows.
“I was invited,” I say.
“I don’t think so.”
I subtly edge backward, working to create enough distance to maximize my options.
“You’re right,” I say, going with him rather than resisting. “My father sent me. He wanted me to have the experience.”
“I don’t mean your father.”
“Who, then?”
Francisco drops his hands to his sides. The gesture might appear casual to the outside observer—a relaxing of the shoulders, a lowering of the arms with palms open and turned out toward me—but it’s more than it seems.
Because
as he does it, his energy changes entirely.
“You were sent here by the same people who sent me,” he says.
I see his power, his training. I see what he’s capable of, and what he’s been hiding.
Francisco is a Program soldier.
He is the dead soldier, very much alive.
I look at him, standing across from me, unblinking, revealing his true self.
“It was about four months ago that I came to Liberty,” he says. “I was sent as an assassin. Just like you.”
There are four meters between us. I can cover that distance in a second and a half if need be.
“If what you’re saying is true, Francisco, why did you let me into camp?”
“I knew they would send another assassin after I disappeared. The only question was how he would come….”
He steps forward. Four meters becomes three and a half.
“And whether I would know who he was before it was too late. With Moore’s permission, I staged the recruiting event in the community center.”
“Staged it?”
“I wanted to provide an opening outside the compound where it would be easier for someone to get to Moore, and for us to get to whoever that was.”
“What about the woman who tried to kill Moore?”
“The English teacher? That was my idea, too,” Francisco says. “A test of sorts. I knew the scenario would be too tempting for a potential Program assassin. He could do nothing and see if she succeeded—”
“Or he could be a hero and try to use that to get in with Moore.”
He smiles. “And flush himself out in the process.”
The English teacher was a trap. That’s why she was coming into camp in the van the other night.
I feel anger flooding my chest, along with shame at having made a mistake. I should have let the woman shoot if she was going to. I should have kept my cover, even if it meant losing Moore.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Francisco says, like he knows what I’m feeling. “Even after it happened, I couldn’t be sure you were the one. You might have been some brave, crazy kid off the street.”
“So you brought me closer. And you watched me.”
“That’s right.”
“Quite a risk.”
“I had my reasons,” he says.
He’s not showing any aggressive intent, but I don’t trust what I’m seeing. As a Program operative, he should be able to control his surface emotions, misleading me and getting me to drop my guard.