by Allen Zadoff
We are at a stalemate.
Two minutes until Aaron returns, perhaps five minutes before Moore becomes convinced something is wrong and sends someone to find Francisco. By then there will be eyes on the situation and multiple people between me and Moore.
I cannot let that happen.
“Francisco won’t be back,” I say.
“Why is that?”
“He’s dead.”
“Is that right?” Moore says unflinchingly. “How did he die?”
“I killed him and left his body in the woods.”
Moore is silent for a moment, watching me.
“Why?” he says.
He aims his weapon at my chest, the largest target of opportunity. From this distance, he will not miss.
“Because he was a traitor,” I say.
“To your Program?”
“Yes. And also to you.”
His eyes narrow. The first real reaction I’ve gotten out of him.
“He was plotting against you. He disagreed with your political ideas, and he wanted us to take over the camp together.”
Moore looks at me, the aim in his gun hand unyielding.
“You disagreed with that approach?”
“Obviously,” I say.
Moore pauses for a moment, and then he laughs. A deep belly laugh that causes him to fold at the waist.
“Would you like to tell me why you disagreed?” Moore says.
“Lee and Miranda,” I say.
“What about them?”
“I like them. I trust them. And they believe in you. I thought I might just try it myself.”
“You really killed Francisco,” he says.
“Sorry about that,” I say. “But I saved you the trouble.”
Moore lowers the gun to his side, his face stricken.
“I trusted him,” Moore says, his face going slack.
“That was a mistake,” I say, and in one motion I step forward, detaching the temple arm from my glasses. I arc them through the air, pressing the point into the side of his neck and depressing the plunger.
He doesn’t flinch, only looks at me with a confused expression on his face.
He stumbles as the poison hits him. He drops to one knee.
I step toward him, removing the pistol from his hand and helping him to balance. I don’t want him falling in a way that will create a blood splatter or anything else that will look strange to his people.
Our faces are close, too close.
“You—” he whispers.
I lay him back on the floor. I replace the pistol in its holster at his waist.
He gasps for air. Two more seconds—
“You’re the traitor,” he says.
“I’m a patriot,” I say, and I watch him die.
Twenty seconds have gone by, far long enough for Moore to pass beyond hope of resuscitation. I hear footsteps in the hall outside, coming toward the room.
This is it. I’m out of time.
“Help!” I shout.
The footsteps speed up. Aaron rushes into the room.
“We were talking and he collapsed,” I say, making my voice shaky.
Aaron scans the room quickly, checking for a weapon, checking for any sign of foul play. I can see him looking and finding nothing. His attention quickly returns to Moore.
“I think he’s having a heart attack,” I say.
“Where is Francisco?” Aaron says.
“I don’t know,” I say.
Aaron leaps down onto the floor next to Moore, checks his vital signs, then begins CPR. He’s not skilled enough to know that it’s too late.
“There’s a walkie on my belt,” he says. “Tell them we have an emergency. We need medical up here immediately.”
I USE THE CONFUSION OF RUSHING BODIES TO GET OUT OF THE HOUSE.
A light rain is falling outside. The news spreads quickly. By the time I make it across the camp, teens are already rushing out of their houses, their faces panicked as they run toward the main house with umbrellas or plastic bags over their heads.
A few people look in my direction as they notice me moving away from the main house rather than toward it, but no one challenges me. I keep my head down, not allowing anyone to engage with me.
I sense the fear and confusion coursing through the crowd, along with a growing panic. Moore is the glue that binds this group together. Without him, that glue will begin to dissolve. The kids will wander away, returning to their homes and families on the outside, looking for some semblance of the life they once knew.
I will be the first to leave, but I won’t be the last.
I move toward the parking area. I turn the corner, and I see Francisco’s black truck is there. The keys will be in the ignition, as they are with all the vehicles here. I head toward it.
Suddenly Sergeant Burch steps out of the woods behind the parking area. I notice something in his hands that he quickly slips into a pocket when he sees me.
It’s an iPhone.
What was he doing with a phone in the forest?
He walks slowly across the lot, his eyes weary.
Choices:
I can engage him, try and talk my way out of the situation.
Or I can neutralize him. I’m younger and stronger than him, but there’s no doubt he knows how to fight, and he will not give up willingly. I’ll have to kill him.
Another soldier, another death. Burch is a good man. I’d like to avoid this if I can.
He comes closer. We stare at each other.
He nods to me, just the slightest shift of his head. Some glimmer of understanding passes between us, and I know not to stop or ask questions.
Whatever he was doing with the phone is none of my business.
I keep moving and so does he.
Neither of us says a word.
I DRIVE THROUGH THE RAIN.
The truck’s tires fight for grip on the steep mountain road that leads up and out of Camp Liberty.
Then I see it. The roadblock is up ahead.
I speed right up to it, hoping they will open the gate without question, then I have to skid to a stop at the last moment when they do not. I roll my window down as one of the guards runs toward me with his gun drawn.
“Jesus, you scared me,” he says when he recognizes my face.
“You heard?” I say.
“How is he?” the boy says.
“Bad,” I say. “I’m going for meds.”
“I can’t open the roadblock until I call it in,” he says.
“Do whatever the hell you want,” I say, “but hurry. If he dies, it’s on you.”
His eyes roll back into his head for a second as he takes that in.
“Open!” he shouts to his partner, they yank the tire strip out of the road, and I race away.
I take the long curve that heads out of sight around the mountain. The second I know my brake lights are beyond the view of the compound below, I pull to the side and snatch my iPhone from my pocket.
I put it in secure mode and dial Father’s number.
This is standard procedure after a mission: Call Father, report the successful conclusion of the mission, and receive follow-up instructions.
The Program has been offline since the night at the community center, but maybe that was a test, some kind of challenge designed to measure my ability to act independently. If so, Moore’s death will be the test’s logical conclusion. Father will answer now, The Program will be back online, and everything will return to normal.
The line rings on the phone, but nobody picks up.
Father is not there.
My hope fades.
I feel foolish now, but I dial Mother’s number. The master line. I have to see this through.
The line does not connect.
It was stupid of me to use this phone again, even dangerous. If The Program has suffered a security breach, then I may have just telegraphed my location to whoever is responsible for the breach.
I slam the phone down sharply,
the front right corner impacting with the dashboard of the truck. This is a failsafe action built into the software of my phone. The accelerometer measures the angle and force of the blow and sends a signal to the battery that causes it to overheat. The battery burns through the interior of the phone, destroying it.
I roll down the window and fling the neutralized phone into the woods. It will never be used again.
I have completed the mission, but what now?
That’s when I think of Howard and the multiple text messages he sent to me.
I’M EXPECTING SILENCE.
That’s what I realize as I knock on the hotel room door in Manchester. I’m expecting silence or worse, a strange face to appear in the door, asking me what I want.
Nothing has been right this mission. Nobody I can trust.
I knock and move away from the door, bracing myself for whatever may come while moving my body into a strategic position from which I can strike most effectively.
Mother has taught me to react to situations as they arise, preparing ahead of time then improvising based on the facts on the ground.
So when the door opens, I am ready for anything.
Anything except what I find.
Howard, blinking as if I’ve awoken him from a nap.
“Thank God,” he says when he sees me. “Did you get my texts?”
“Things got complicated. I couldn’t respond.”
“I thought something bad had happened to you.”
I shake my head, but then the memory of Francisco pops into my mind.
Howard is looking at me strangely.
“Did something happen?” he says, tension appearing around his eyes.
I try to respond, but I cannot.
I don’t know what Howard sees exactly, but his smile fades.
“You’d better come in,” he says, and he steps back from the door, giving me a lot of space.
I walk past him into the hotel room. As I do, I scan him for weapons. I do it automatically, my mind registering the fabric of his shirt under the arms and around the waist, the flow of material around his ankles, the weight of objects in his pockets.
I treat him like he is a potential danger to me. And then I do the same with the room, bracing before turning corners, checking both hotel suites and their bathrooms, then inspecting window and door locks.
Howard stands back and lets me do it, watching me the whole time.
In fact I do it twice, two full passes through the space, double-checking and searching my brain for anything I might have missed.
When I’m done, I stand in the middle of the room, not knowing what to do next.
“Maybe you should sit down,” Howard says.
I realize I’m rocking on my feet, unsteady.
I look at the chair. It doesn’t look right to me. There’s something about chairs that I do not like, something dangerous flagged in my memory.
I sit on the edge of the bed instead.
“I’ll get you some water,” Howard says.
“I’m okay,” I say, but he goes anyway, rushing to the bathroom and coming back with a glass of water. I drink it down in one long swallow, and he gets me another. I drink that, too. I hand him back the glass.
“It’s done,” I say.
“Done?”
“My mission. I finished.”
“Are you talking about Moore?”
“He’s dead.”
“Did you—”
I nod.
“That means you can go home, Howard, and I can go…”
I try to think of where I will go next, but the truth is I have no place to go. Without The Program giving me instructions, I have no direction.
“I have to tell you something,” Howard says, his face growing troubled. “The reason I was texting you.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t respond to you.”
“Listen to me,” he says. “I decoded the micro SDHC card.”
I forgot about the card, the one I took off the leader of the freelance team.
“What did you find?”
“The card contains a file with information about the location of your safe house.”
“Who would have access to that information?” I ask.
Howard doesn’t say anything.
I think about the chip, the sophistication of the design that Howard described to me. The idea of hiding a device inside another device. It’s The Program’s MO.
“Of course, The Program had the information,” I say without Howard asking, “but they would never share it with anyone outside our circle.”
He opens his laptop and turns it toward me. “The data on the chip was encoded with a digital watermark. I tracked it back to an anonymous communications control hub.”
“What does that mean?” I say.
“It’s the same hub that is the source of the secure numbers you gave me from you iPhone.”
My mind is racing, trying to find a flaw in Howard’s logic.
“The Program,” Howard says. “It hired those men to go to the safe house.”
“That’s impossible,” I say.
The Program is my employer, my commander, my life.
They’re not good people, Francisco said.
He tried to warn me. He tried to give me an option.
“You’re sure?” I ask Howard.
“I triple-checked,” he says. “The Program transferred all the information to the SDHC card.”
I sit there trying to think of a reason why.
“What do we do now?” Howard says.
“I don’t know,” I say.
Howard’s face goes pale.
“But you always know,” he says.
I lean back on the bed. My body feels heavy.
“Are you all right?” Howard says.
“I haven’t slept,” I say. “I can’t think straight.”
I lie down on the bed. I try to keep my eyes open, but it’s a struggle.
I suddenly see my father’s face in front of me. He’s leaning over me, tucking in the covers around me.
I open my eyes to find Howard pulling a blanket over me.
“My father,” I say. “You have to help me find him.”
“You mean your commander from The Program?”
“No. My real father,” I say. “Mike told me he was alive at the end of my last mission.”
“Who?”
I try to make Howard understand me, but for some reason I can’t communicate properly through the fog.
“Help me.” That’s all I can say.
“I’ll help you,” Howard says. “Whatever you need.”
Exhaustion overtakes me, and I fall into a deep sleep.
I OPEN MY EYES NOT KNOWING WHERE I AM.
A strange room, a strange city, a mission I can’t remember.
The room is lit by the laptop screens that line the desk. I hear snoring across from me.
I sit up in the bed, and I remember.
I am in a hotel room in Manchester. Howard is sleeping in a chair across the room from me, his face glowing blue from the computer open on his lap.
Then I remember other things. Things that I have done in the last day. Things that have been done to me.
I slip out of bed, looking for some way to judge the time. I peek out between the blinds and see it’s nighttime. The position of the moon tells me there are a few hours left until dawn.
I walk quietly to the bathroom in the adjoining room. I close the door and flip on the light.
I’m still wearing my clothes from Liberty: a T-shirt and camo pants.
I lean over to turn on the water, and I wince in pain. I take off my T-shirt. There are black-and-blue marks forming along my ribs from the fight with Francisco. Damage under the skin that is only now showing.
I feel along the length of my ribs until I find the source of greatest pain, I wince as I probe there, but I determine that nothing is broken. I reverse the process, feeling along the other side. Then I run my hands up my chest, across my
shoulders, performing an impromptu battlefield wound assessment on myself.
I finish without finding any serious injuries, but I keep going, probing where there is no pain, in the flesh between my elbow and humerus.
Francisco said I would search there for the chip, and he’s right. I need to know.
I examine the area, but I do not find anything.
If something was implanted in me, there will likely be a scar, even a tiny one. Yet there are a thousand places to hide a chip on the human body. I see an illustration of the body in my mind, and I charting the places where the chip might be, assigning each one a percentage of likelihood. I focus first on areas of soft flesh bordered by hard structure that could keep a device anchored in place.
Next I use the schematic to search my body, feeling for gaps, probing as deeply as I am able with my fingers.
I don’t find anything.
I lean across the sink to get closer to the mirror, and something hard knocks against the porcelain. Something inside the pocket of my camos.
The knife from the freelance team’s truck.
I pull out a black knife handle with silver screws.
I flick the handle and a silver blade slides out.
I press the blade in the joint between the humerus and elbow. A half inch deep, then slightly farther. I detach myself from the pain, placing it far away from my consciousness, as I’ve been trained to do.
I feel flesh and skin, but no foreign bodies. I slit down, opening the wound farther toward my wrist, making sure not to nick the radial artery. I probe for a minute with the tip of the knife, but I can’t find anything.
Next I check the inside of my elbow, the bony growth with an indentation between it. I push the blade in there, more gently this time. I don’t cut deeply, just enough to pop through skin and the thin layer of fat just beneath. Again I probe with the blade.
I find nothing.
I strip off the rest of my clothes, stand naked with the blade ready in my hand.
I glance up and catch sight of myself in the mirror—a boy with crazed eyes, blood flowing down both arms, holding a knife.
I am insane, I think. Just like Francisco.
But I can’t stop thinking about the chip, where it could be, how such a device might be implanted.