by J. L. Lyon
301 had to admit, when expressed like that it did seem like a long string of unlikely coincidences. He didn’t blame McCall for his suspicion, but he also knew he had to keep him from delving any deeper. Though McCall had proven himself one of 301’s greatest advocates, he could never learn the truth of what had happened that night.
“Just another day,” 301 sighed, and then went on lightheartedly, “I don’t suppose I could have tomorrow off?”
The admiral shook his head, “The last half of training will be the most intense of all, and I need you at the top of your game. If I let you fall behind, the others will fall further. I’ll expect you in the courtyard at 06:00 for sparring. Which reminds me, you still haven’t returned the prototype I sent you.”
“Right,” 301 took the Gladius prototype from his weapons belt and handed it to McCall. “Very wise, Admiral, sending those to us. If you hadn’t Blaine and Aurora would probably be dead.”
“Yes, I surmised as much from Blaine’s report,” McCall turned the prototype over in his hands. “But unfortunately this prototype did not have a casing, which among other things protects the weapon from being damaged by an EMP.” He tried to activate the Gladius, and a shower of sparks burst from the hilt instead of a blade. McCall looked at 301 again with discerning eyes, “Strange that you were in the Hall of Advisors, far out of the EMP’s range. I wonder if I won’t find the same issue with Specter Aurora’s weapon.”
301 felt his heart pound. McCall held proof in his hands that he had been within range of the EMP upon detonation. How could he explain that?
“But I suppose,” McCall went on thoughtfully, “an isolated flare of the EMP could have reached the Hall of Advisors, powerful enough to affect this prototype but not to damage the Crown Section electrical system.” 301 could tell the admiral didn’t believe a word of the theory, but it was his way of giving 301 an out.
“Thank you, sir,” 301 nodded.
“Don’t thank me,” McCall replied, back to his usual gruff voice. “I’m going to work you harder than ever after this whole Collins business. You’d better hope we can find this man he told you about…this Right Hand. If not I doubt even I will be able to keep the MWR off your back. You’re lucky, Specter Captain—blessed, perhaps—that Sullivan interceded before Alexander got a hold of you. He was ready to tear you apart…maybe still is.”
“Then why doesn’t he?”
“Don’t know,” McCall answered. “Probably doesn’t want to draw attention to the fact that he let a rebel walk right into the palace—or rather, that the grand admiral brought her here. To take you down he would have to sacrifice Grand Admiral Donalson as well, and he can’t afford to do that in the current political climate. Even so, I would advise you to steer clear of him for the next few weeks. Let him cool down a bit…maybe hand him a few key victories.”
“I’ve always heard that the MWR never forgives.”
McCall snorted, “That’s probably true—Alexander does not forgive. But sometimes, he does change his mind. Just try not to do anything foolish, and you’ll be fine.”
301 thought again of his pledge to Sullivan, and that same feeling of dread overcame him. Perhaps he had already made his next foolish move.
“That will be all for now, Specter Captain,” McCall said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “You may go.”
301 returned to his suite after that, but despite the late hour and his mounting fatigue he could not find it in him to sleep. Now that his life was no longer under threat, thoughts of Grace ran continuously through his mind. He could still taste her kiss, still smell her scent lingering in the air around him, still feel her presence in the room… Part of him believed that he might turn around to see her at any moment, that the events of that day had been nothing but a dream.
But when he did turn, she was not there. He watched the place where she normally sat at night for a long while, a deep sense of loss filling his chest. Grace would be fine now, he knew—because of his actions, she would be safe. But to him, it really was no different than if she had died. Their paths were not likely to cross again…he had seen her for the last time.
A sudden knock on the door jarred him from thought, and he sighed in frustration. Was there no end to this night? Why couldn’t everyone just leave him in peace?
He went to the door but refrained from opening it. The last thing he wanted was to be berated by someone else—Derek Blaine and Napoleon Alexander came to mind. He put his ear close to the door and asked, “Who’s there?”
“It’s me,” Liz answered uncertainly. “Can I come in?”
301 rested his forehead on the cool slab of steel that separated them. He should have known. When he first arrived back at the palace, Liz had been the one person he wanted to see. But after what had happened in the Hall of Advisors he no longer knew if she could be trusted. She saved him, yes—but betrayed him in the process. It was only because she risked so much to help him that he decided to open the door.
She stood there waiting with an uneasy expression, arms crossed and tense as though fearing he might lash out at her any second. But 301 was not in the mood to argue. He stepped out of the way and motioned for her to come inside. She did so, and as soon as the door closed she turned back around to face him, running a hand uncomfortably through her hair, “Listen, 301—”
“Don’t,” he said, holding up a hand. “I know you must have reasons for what you did, Liz, but I don’t really care what they are. I don’t like being blindsided, but the fact is I asked you to provide me a distraction and an alibi for tonight. You came through on both of those, even if it was not quite on the scale that I imagined.”
“I had to make it convincing,” she said. “If you were a rebel in the palace, wouldn’t you try to wreak some havoc before you left?”
301 shook his head, walking back to the sitting room, “Maybe so. But that still doesn’t explain why you got the Premier involved.”
She followed him, arms still crossed and eyes averted, “Sullivan cares about us, 301, and he cares about the future of our world. He knows that if the rebellion is allowed to have its way, the world will fall back into the chaos made by the collapse of civilization. Specter is a large part of that, and you are a large part of Specter. I knew he wouldn’t let you go down for something like this.”
“But now we’re beholden to him, you and me both,” 301 protested. “Now we owe him.”
“We’re beholden to the Ruling Council anyway,” she said. “Nothing has changed about that.”
He sighed and turned away from her, looking out the window at the back of the room, “I suppose not.” Nothing has changed, he thought. But then again, everything has.
Liz stepped up beside him, “Remember Rowan Dobbs?”
301 tilted his head slightly in her direction, surprised by the sudden change of subject, “Rowan? From soldier training?”
“That’s the one,” she smiled. “I was sixteen at the time, he was a couple of years older, close to achieving active duty, and I was…enamored. As the only female soldier around for miles I never ran short of men trying to take advantage of me. I thought Rowan was different somehow, that he cared about me, maybe saw something beyond what lay on the surface. But you didn’t think so.”
301 smiled despite himself, remembering that time. “No, I didn’t. Not at all.”
“At the time I thought you were jealous,” she went on. “The way you always tried to tear him down in my eyes, always looked at him scornfully when we were together…I was sure you hated him.”
“I didn’t hate him,” he said seriously. “I just wanted to stop him from adding you to his list of conquests. But in the end…you had to make that choice on your own.”
“And I chose wrongly,” she frowned. “You had been right about him all along. From then on, 301, I always knew I could count on you to protect me, that no matter what happened I could turn to you for help. But this time I finally got the chance to protect you…to aid
you in your hour of need.” She paused for a moment, and then continued in a quieter, almost melancholy tone, “This past year without you has been difficult, but I had hoped things might get back to the way they were then. Our bond of trust, our friendship…our affection. That’s what tonight was about for me.”
301 swallowed, trying to rid himself of the lump in his throat. Being separated from Liz had not been easy for him either. When he heard she was going to be a part of Specter, he thought that perhaps they might rekindle their relationship. But then Grace had come along and showed him how to feel something more powerful than he’d ever imagined possible. His feelings for Liz were but a shadow of that power, and seeing it—feeling that distant affection, as he once did—only served to remind him of what he had lost.
Liz reached out and touched his arm softly, “I’m sorry, 301.”
His skin warmed to her touch, memories of what they once shared growing to prominence in his mind. “You don’t have anything to be sorry about, Liz.”
“I meant about her,” she said, taking a step closer to him. “I’m sorry you had to let her go. I can see it in you—how much you cared for her. And how difficult it was to tell her goodbye.”
301 turned to look at her, and she met his gaze with those deep blue eyes—eyes that in his adolescence he had dreamed about constantly, but that now were only a pale reflection of the blue-green he desired to see. Yet still, his feelings for Liz were not quite gone. The way she looked at him, lips slightly parted into a longing smile, made his heart race.
She moved in even closer—too close for normal conversation—and whispered, “After Rowan, you comforted me. I think now it’s my turn to comfort you.”
He accepted her invitation not in lust, not in desire, but in desperation. He needed to be rid of that aching pain in his stomach. He needed to drown out the memory of Grace’s touch, the smell of her hair, the taste of her kiss. If he could erase it all and forget that it had ever happened, perhaps he could simply return to the man he had been before. That man would never have said the things he had said while leaving the Collins estate. That man would never have committed treason and then covered it up just to save a slave.
So he kissed Liz passionately, drinking her in as he had done years ago, and waited for the clock to turn back and free him from this prison of emotion. His feelings for Liz might only be a shadow of what he felt for Grace, but he would take that over the pain of regret any day.
His body acted in passion, and his heart recoiled in guilt. Grace’s face flashed in his mind, tearing the void a little wider, but he pushed it away. I do not love her, he insisted. I do not.
But he did. He really, really did. And love changes everything.
301’s lips broke away from Liz, and he quickly untangled his arms from her, stepping back to put some distance between them. She came at him again, no doubt believing he was playing some kind of game, but he put up his hands to stop her.
“I’m sorry, Liz,” he shook his head. “But I just can’t.”
“You can’t,” she repeated, disbelieving.
“I just need…time.”
All warmth between them evaporated as Liz realized he was serious. She nodded, eyes smoldering with anger and hurt at the rejection, “Sure. I understand. Maybe some other time.”
“Liz, I’m sorry, I…”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, and the tension turned to awkwardness. “I shouldn’t have…I just thought…” She sighed. “I think I should go.”
301 didn’t know what to say. Before he knew it, she was gone.
But the pit in his stomach still remained, as strong as ever. He slammed his palm against the wall so hard that he felt the pain shoot up his arm. Before Grace, he had never been able to say no to Liz. What was happening to him?
Unsurprisingly, it was the echo of Grace’s voice that answered him:
You are a man at war with himself.
30
IN THE DARK OF EARLY morning, Grace followed closely on General Crenshaw’s heels as they made their way through the back alleys of Southwest Alexandria. With little more than a thin brown cloak to shield her from the morning chill, her extremities were almost to the point of numbness and her breath was shallow—made worse by a constant need to bite down and keep her teeth from chattering. In the back of her mind she couldn’t help but wonder whether she would even be able to defend herself if someone tried to stop them, but in a way she didn’t care. All she cared about was how it would feel to sit in front of the fire at her father’s new base of operations.
As they wandered from street to street, people slowly began to emerge from their homes, ready to make the journey to government-operated transit centers that would shuttle them to their occupation areas. The World System forbade ownership of vehicles for all outside the ruling class to prevent unauthorized migration between divisions. Mass transports provided by the government were the only way to travel, and workers were expected to arrive regardless of weather conditions, sickness, or fatigue.
Grace shook her head sadly as she watched them pass, nearly all downcast at the prospect of yet another day in an occupation that the System’s central computer had chosen for them. Suddenly her hard life in the Wilderness didn’t seem so bad.
Much to her chagrin, Crenshaw doubled back through the streets several times to make sure no one was following them—a worthy precaution, to be sure, but one she would prefer to forgo. Nonetheless, he moved with distinction and an apparent sense that he knew where they were headed. That at least gave her confidence.
“So how is it you know how to find them?” Grace’s voice wavered in the cold. “Do you always know where we are?”
“Not always, no,” Crenshaw spoke quietly and kept his eyes on the road. “But there is a man in Alexandria who does. He coordinates my team, Silent Thunder, and the benefactor supply network so the resistance can be organized without the risk of one party compromising another.”
“Who is this man?”
“None of us know his name,” Crenshaw replied. “But we call him the Right Hand.”
“If this man is so important, why doesn’t Silent Thunder know about him?”
“Your father knows.”
Grace gave the general a harsh look, “Aside from being his daughter, I’m also his second-in-command. If he knew about something like this he would tell me.”
“I wouldn’t take it personally,” Crenshaw went on, unfazed. “The leader of each major group is sworn to secrecy to keep the balance of the resistance from being upset. The fewer people there are who know of the Right Hand, the less likely it is that the World System will learn of him. Napoleon Alexander would focus much more of his energy into defeating us if he knew how organized we really were.”
“But is that really wise, entrusting so much to one man?” Grace asked. “What if he isn’t who he says he is? What if he dies?”
“As to whether it’s wise, I can’t say. We all do the best we can with what we are given, and to be honest the Right Hand is the only advantage we currently have. I have it on good authority that he is who he says, for he reports to someone above him in the chain of command just like everyone else. And if he dies, there is a protocol to replace him, just as there is one to replace me, your father, or the Benefactor.”
“The Benefactor?” Grace asked.
Crenshaw paused for a moment to look around a corner. They needed to go against the main flow of foot traffic, which might draw suspicion from any soldiers or System loyalists nearby. Grace got the feeling from the general’s demeanor that they were getting close; he seemed somewhat nervous about taking her back to her father.
“Yes, the,” he replied, deciding to continue on against the flow. “Contrary to what most in Silent Thunder are led to believe, there is one man at the head of the supply network. They are, in turn, led to believe that each Silent Thunder commander is independent from the next. Or at least they were, until your father ambushed that te
am in the Northeastern Ruins and announced Silent Thunder’s return.”
“You don’t sound like you approve,” Grace observed.
“Like I said, we all do the best we can with what we are given,” Crenshaw paused for a moment before going on. “But for my part, I wish your father had been given a little more patience. His actions nearly got the Shadow Soldier killed.”
“Rosalind told me she passed 301’s designation along to my father so that he would recruit him.”
Crenshaw sighed, “Ros has a tendency to say too much without saying quite enough.”
Grace grinned, “So I learned. But it’s true, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but she didn’t tell him the full truth of what we suspect,” Crenshaw said. “Your father has no knowledge of what I told you back at the safe house, and we must keep it that way. For a time, at least.”
“You can’t honestly expect me to keep something like this from him. It might be the single greatest discovery in all the time that the World System has reigned.”
“And that is exactly why you must not breathe a word of it to anyone,” Crenshaw pulled her aside into an alley and faced her with a grave expression. “I’ve known your father for a long time, Grace, and if he learned the truth he would move swiftly to act on it. To do so might tip off our enemies and create disaster. He will be told at the appropriate time, but until then it must stay between you and I. Your friend’s life could depend on concealing this as long as possible.”
“So you want me to lie…to my father…”
“Under no circumstances is he ever going to ask you point blank about this,” Crenshaw said. “But on the off-chance he does, yes, I want you to lie. Sometimes we must choose the lesser offense over the greater, my dear. When you’ve lived a little bit longer I’m sure you’ll figure that out.”