“Jarek.”
Rose sat down next to Jarek and traded a weak smile with him as Frank ducked into a back room for a few seconds.
“That’s an interesting, uh, suit you have there, Jarek,” Frank said as he emerged from the back carrying a few cans and a container of what looked like rice.
“Uh-huh,” Jarek said, his heart beating a little faster.
Frank set his cargo down on the counter behind the bar and turned to look at him. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to pry, it’s just—I’ve never seen anything like it, even before”—he waved a hand toward the window—“you know.”
“It’s okay,” Jarek said. “I just…” He trailed off, considering. A few little details probably wouldn’t hurt. “I didn’t steal it or anything,” he said. Frank held his hands up to indicate he hadn’t been implying any such thing. Jarek looked out the window. “My dad was an engineer. Before all of this.”
“Gotcha,” Frank said. He pulled out a can opener and set to work in the little kitchen space behind the bar. “He still around?” he asked a minute later.
Jarek studied Frank for a long moment before answering.
“He seems harmless enough,” Al said quietly in his ear. “No need for particulars, though.”
Jarek nodded, then realized Rose was watching him. As a rule, on the rare occasions he interacted with people, Jarek kept Al’s existence to himself—mostly to avoid drawing unwanted attention, but also in part to avoid shocking the bejesus out of them. He’d have to be careful.
“Uh, no,” he finally said to Frank. “He died when the bombs fell.”
Frank nodded, not looking the least bit surprised by the news. “Sorry to hear that.”
Frank continued on, asking the usual questions, clearly wanting to delve deeper—probably a common trait for an innkeeper, Jarek thought. Jarek did his best to produce polite, coherent answers from his exhausted mind until Rose came to the rescue.
“Dad…” she said after several minutes, conveying both exhaustion and exasperation with the word.
“Right,” Frank said. “Sorry. You two have been through a lot tonight. Let’s just get you fed and rested.”
On both accounts, Frank delivered. After woofing down a dish of black beans and rice, Jarek was already plenty full. His years on the streets hadn’t taught him to turn down food, though. He took seconds, and he ate until he was ready to burst. Rose nibbled beside Jarek, watching him with a concerned look, and Frank came to sit with them and make a pass at light conversation.
When Jarek couldn’t eat any more, they showed him to one of the open rooms of the inn (which was really just a spacious house). Frank saw to it that Jarek knew where the essentials were, then he left him to rest. Rose lingered, looking like she’d say something, but then she turned and followed her father.
As exhausted as he was, Jarek didn’t feel like sleeping. His body hummed with nervous energy, his mind racing again and again over what had happened—what he’d done to Nate.
Al tried to talk him down, but words were of limited value against the thought of the man lying dead in the alley a block away.
After a while, Jarek decided to try a warm shower to calm his nerves.
The water felt exquisite. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a shower. Fela processed whatever waste Jarek’s body produced and technically kept him clean, but that didn’t even begin to hold a candle to the luxury of basking in the warm downpour of the shower.
He stood in the falling water until the novelty faded then clambered out and hurried to towel off. Leaving Fela’s secure embrace left him feeling exposed enough; being wet and naked in a stranger’s house only amplified the effect.
Jarek paused when he caught sight of himself in the mirror. His dark hair hung in wet, shaggy strands next to equally dark eyes, and his face was gaunt—stretched thin between prominent jaw and cheek bones. He looked wild. And he’d grown so pale… everywhere except for his face, which had seen the light of day just often enough to emphasize the pastiness of the rest of his body.
“Gross,” he muttered, going to get dressed.
The clothes Frank had given Jarek didn’t really make him feel any less naked. Sweatpants and a t-shirt just didn’t seem to cut it next to an exosuit. Al expressed his own discomfort at Jarek’s vulnerability, speaking quietly enough through Fela’s speakers that no one outside of the room would hear.
Jarek spent the next fifteen minutes lying in bed staring at the collapsed exosuit beside him—the closest thing he had to a home. Collapsed as it was, it didn’t seem like much to look at, but when he donned the suit, it was a different matter completely.
When Jarek donned Fela, he went from a scraggly kid to an armored titan, the suit’s dark gray exterior giving him the look of a large, well-built man who’d been skinned to reveal muscles of layered graphene (and who knew what else) rather than flesh and blood. Add in Fela’s sleek, silvery faceplate and the single, horizontal slash that housed many of its sensors, and when he donned the suit, Jarek thought he looked pretty damn badass indeed.
After several more minutes spent trying to convince himself that he was fine as he was, Jarek rose without a word, stripped back down to his underwear, and stepped feet-first into Fela’s open form. The exosuit came to life and folded around his body from the legs up in precise motions—the smooth, almost gelatinous membrane of Fela’s interior settling snugly against his skin.
In their first several years together, Jarek had been an extremely poor fit for Fela. The exosuit’s membrane was adaptable enough to allow a good deal of wiggle room in operator size, but Jarek had simply been too small. Now that he was finally growing into the exosuit, he almost shuddered in relief as Fela snapped shut around him.
Feeling infinitely more secure, Jarek lowered himself to the carpeted floor and laid out next to the bed, no longer having any need for it. Weariness settled on him like a lead blanket, but the image of Nate’s broken body lying at the base of the dumpster hung over him, barring entrance to the realm of sleep.
Jarek let out a heavy sigh and was just giving up on the idea of sleep when there was a sound at the door. He scrambled to his feet, moving quickly enough that his feet made soft thumps on the carpeted floor as the door began to swing open with a tiny creak. Jarek clenched his fists, his heart beating faster.
Then he caught a glimpse of copper hair, and the tension flooded out of his chest as Rose stepped into the room, eyebrows raised and a single finger pressed to her lips in a shushing gesture.
“Jesus,” he said, his hand moving to his chest as she closed the door. With a careful thought toward the suit’s neural interface, he opened Fela’s faceplate.
Rose turned to him, apology in her eyes, but she didn’t say anything—only stood there, searching his face for a long moment. Jarek felt his heart pick back up as he met her gaze and held it for far longer than he was accustomed to (especially where cute girls were concerned).
He swallowed, trying to formulate words through the buzzing in his brain. “You can’t sleep either?”
She shook her head, her lips drawn tight. She looked close to tears.
Jarek ran a hand over the back of Fela’s helmet. “Are you, uh… are you okay?”
The question sounded a bit ridiculous considering the night they’d had, but he didn’t know what else to say.
Rose shook her head again, tears welling up in her eyes. Her lip quivered, and then, without a word, she was crossing the room. She drew up just short of Jarek, looking up at him with teary, pale green eyes, suddenly hesitant. Jarek searched her face, looking for some sign. Slowly, he reached out—more opening himself up to Rose than actually reaching for her. It was enough. She stepped in and planted her head against his chest, wrapping her arms tightly around him as a series of light, breathy sobs clutched at her.
Jarek wasn’t exactly used to hugs anymore, but he soon found his body responding anyway, curling her into a careful embrace with Fela’s strong arms. As foreign as human tou
ch was to Jarek, he was surprised to find that holding Rose felt perfectly natural—good, even. Through Fela’s sensors, she felt warm and soft and, above all, real. So he held her as she cried, bowing his head down to rest gently on the top of hers.
They stayed that way for a long time. At some point, Jarek realized he’d begun to cry as well—silent tears whose origin he couldn’t rightly explain. He didn’t try to; he just rubbed Rose’s back and enjoyed the unfamiliar feeling of closeness.
After a long while, she began to stir against him. Without really thinking about it, Jarek stooped to plant a soft kiss on the crest of her forehead as he loosened his hold on her. She leaned back, her brows knitting together together as she looked up at him with puffy eyes. Jarek distantly noted the intriguing flecks of yellow that speckled the pale green of her irises before the closeness of their faces and the warmth of her breath jolted his brain to a dead stop.
Jarek wasn’t sure whether he covered the last few inches or she did, but by some law of attraction, their lips met, and for a long moment, nothing else really seemed to matter. Jarek had never kissed a girl before, and he marveled at the softness of her lips as she deepened the kiss. He pulled her closer, tasting the salt of spilled tears and, beneath that, the subtle sweetness of her own warm mouth.
Eventually, she pulled back to look up at him. She bit her lip, a hint of uncertainty in her eyes, and said, “I just wanted to say thanks, I guess.”
Jarek blew out a breath of laughter, not entirely sure why that seemed funny to him right just now.
They sat for a long while after that—Rose on the bed and Jarek on the floor just beside her—and talked at great length about nothing in particular. He asked her about life at the inn and about what she’d wanted to do before the Catastrophe. She asked him about Fela and about how he’d survived for nearly six years all on his own. The subjects of the attack and the dead man back in the alley, they avoided at all costs. It wasn’t easy, but Rose was good company—at least from what little Jarek knew on the matter.
At some point, Rose slid down to sit beside Jarek on the floor, her shoulder pressed up to his arm, and Jarek found himself regretting his decision to put the suit back on. Despite everything that had happened that night, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so far removed from the loneliness that had followed him since the Catastrophe.
He did his best to enjoy it, and eventually, sitting there with Rose at his side, Jarek nodded off into mercifully blank sleep.
Chapter 4
The next morning, Jarek woke on the floor to find Rose gone.
He lay there for a long few minutes, just thinking. Last night merited more than a few minutes of reflection. He hadn’t expected any part of it—least of all Rose showing up in his bedroom at what must’ve been two or three in the morning.
She’d only come to talk, but thinking back to the warmth of her lips against his, Jarek was rather glad things had worked out as they had. Glad, at least, until his anatomy began responding to the memories.
“Is that a flashlight in your briefs or—”
“I swear to god, Al…” Jarek said, suddenly and uncomfortably aware of the intimacy of their shared space in Fela. Sure, Al technically wasn’t a living, breathing person, but that didn’t make it any less awkward. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t seen their fair share of erections come and go—Jarek was sixteen years old, after all—but this was somehow different, and beneath Al’s joke, Jarek could sense that the AI construct was every bit as uncomfortable as he was.
“Let’s just, uh,” Jarek said, his face growing hot, “pretend everything’s all normal, dammit.”
“Right, sir,” Al said, a hint of amusement in his tone. “A flashlight poking against our pelvic plate, it is.”
Jarek huffed a short laugh. “Jesus, Al, do you have to call it our pelvic plate right now?”
“Eh, right…” Al said. Then, in a much more urgent tone, “Sir, I think I’m picking up new arrivals downstairs. At least two—maybe more.”
All traces of pleasant thought promptly evacuated Jarek’s head, leaving behind only the image of Nate lying dead in the alley. He thought about the two men that had scrambled off and left him there. Had they come back to settle the score? He faced the door, struggling to think through a tide of nausea and panic.
Last night had certainly been a night of firsts—wonderful and terrible in equal parts—and now he was utterly unsure what came next.
“What do I do?”
“It might be nothing,” Al said. “Customers or friends. Those men last night didn’t seem keen on being anywhere near you after… Well at any rate, we should be safe enough.”
“At least we know we’re bullet proof now,” Jarek said.
“I already knew that, sir. For small arms fire, at least. But that doesn’t mean the armor won’t degrade with abuse. We don’t want to make a habit of getting shot.”
Jarek didn’t argue with that. “Alright,” he said. “Easy does it then.”
He made his way quietly down the hall and down the stairs. Frank turned to glance at him as he descended, as did the two men who sat on stools at the bar.
Both had dark hair—medium length and well-kept on the one and a short buzz on the other—and both sported worn, dark leather coats. They had a hard look to them, and as they turned to face Jarek, he got the impression they wouldn’t have fled from him in a dark alley.
Jarek paused as the closer of the two assessed him with dark eyes, scratching thoughtfully at his well-trimmed beard. After a moment, his expression warmed. “I take it you must be the man we’re looking for,” he said in a smooth baritone. “That’s a hell of a getup you got there.”
Jarek glanced at Frank, who gave him an uncertain look before turning back to the food he was busy preparing. The guy with the buzz cut watched Jarek with stony blue eyes as he approached the bar, trying to keep his expression neutral. The guy reminded Jarek of a bulldog. His buddy stroked once at his carefully groomed beard then stood to offer Jarek his hand, his face breaking into an easy smile.
“Conner Moseley,” he said. Then, flipping a thumb back toward the bulldog of a man, he added, “This is Doug Stetson. Pleased to meet you.”
Jarek slowly took Conner’s hand. “Uh, Jarek. Nice to meet you too.”
The last part came out sounding like more of a question than a statement.
Conner sat back down, still smiling. “You hungry, Jarek? We were hoping to have a little chat if you’ll join us.”
Just then, Rose appeared from the room behind the bar. Jarek’s heart leapt up at the sight of her. A faint frown settled on her face as she regarded the two men, but then she met Jarek’s eyes, and her features shifted into a smile. Jarek fought to wrestle the mile-wide smile attempting to parade across his face down to something more reasonable. The effort became a lot easier when he noticed how Conner was studying them.
“Yeah…” Jarek said. “Always happy to eat. But, uh, what do you want with me?”
Frank set plates of pancakes in front of the two men. Stetson tore into his stack while Frank added a third plate in front of the stool at the end of the bar. Conner’s first bite was much neater than Stetson’s. Rose shot Jarek a faintly concerned look then disappeared into the back room as he sat down to eat.
Conner watched Jarek, taking his time to finish his bite before he replied. “You killed a man last night.”
Jarek froze, his first bite halfway to his mouth and his brain suddenly buzzing with adrenaline. He looked at Conner and debated whether to attack or bolt or just sit there and see what happened. He went with option three by default.
“Easy, sir,” Al said quietly in his ear.
“No need to look so worried,” Conner said, taking another bite. Next to him, Stetson grunted but didn’t look away from his pancakes.
“Nathan was under my employ,” Conner continued, wrinkling his nose as if the notion was distasteful, “but he wouldn’t have stayed there after last night, so we can consider th
e waters cleared as far as I’m concerned.”
With that, Conner went back to work on his pancakes.
“I’m not sure I trust this man,” Al said quietly.
Jarek stared at Conner for a long moment, not disagreeing. “Why’d you want to talk to me then?” he said finally. His face heated up at the look that Stetson shot him between bites. “I mean, if it’s all… okay.”
Conner took his time finishing a bite and wiping his mouth. “Where did you get that suit, Jarek?”
Jarek glanced at Frank, who still hovered nervously behind the bar, then back to Conner. “What does that have to do with—”
“Jarek,” Conner said, arching a steep eyebrow. “Our guys aren’t some poorly-trained little daffodils, not even the… less promising ones, but you took one down and sent two more running for the hills. I’m assuming this thing”—he reached out and tapped on Fela’s solid forearm—“had something to do with it.”
Jarek pursed his lips, then finally said, “My dad helped make it. Before the Catastrophe.”
Conner held his gaze for a moment, then nodded. “No shit… Huh.”
“Is that why you wanted to talk to me?”
“I wanted to talk to you,” Conner said, that easy smile returning, “because you faced down three armed men to protect an innocent girl. Those are the kinds of stones we’re looking for.”
Jarek searched his face. “I didn’t know they were armed.”
Stetson snorted through his last mouthful of pancakes, and Conner chuckled. “That’s not really the point, Jarek.”
“The point?”
Conner set his fork down and turned to fully face him. “Jarek, have you ever given any thought to what you want to do with your life?”
Jarek looked through the window to the dreary, crumbling street outside. “Surviving seems like a good place to start.”
Conner gave a short laugh. Behind the bar, Frank leaned back against the counter, seeming to relax a bit.
“Not bad at all,” Conner agreed, nodding. “But wouldn’t you rather have someplace to hang your helmet at the end of the day? Someplace where you wouldn’t need to worry about scavenging for food every day just to stay alive?”
Soldier of Charity: A Prequel to the Harvesters Series Page 2