by Drew Avera
“Yes, I do.” Nate had raised a palm to halt her and now, in retrospect and in two dimensions, she thought she saw the hand shaking. “Get back in your Hellfire and get out of here now. That’s an order.”
On the screen, Roach of the past slid her knife back into its sheath and turned back to her mech.
“Fuck you, man.” In the recording, the words were barely audible, muffled by distance. Inside her head, they echoed like the tolling of a bell. They were the last words she’d said to Nate.
“Okay, here we go,” Ramirez said, settling in and scooting his office chair closer to the screen. She scowled at him. The only thing missing was a bag of popcorn. “We’re taking off in the Hellfires now and this is where it should show us what happened.”
“You really gonna do it, man?” Patty had asked, looking at the muzzle of Nate’s Glock. “You really going to kill me?”
Roach wanted to go back in time and slap him in the back of the head, tell him to shut up. Maybe if he hadn’t run his mouth, he’d still be alive.
“It feels like I kill people every day,” the Nate of several days ago had responded, his voice quiet. She strained to understand him over the distant grumble of their generator several rooms down, over the gentle patter of rain on the windows. “I just killed two men a few minutes ago. Your Russian buddies. Does that make you sad?”
“Whoever won, I was going to wind up dead. These guys don’t put up with people failing.” Patty had squeezed his eyes shut for a second, as if it was all finally catching up to him. “Can you try to make sure they don’t hurt my mom?”
“Aw, Jesus,” Ramirez murmured, crossing himself. “His poor family.”
“Fuck,” Nate had said, lowering the gun from Patty’s chest before raising it back up again. “Goddammit, Patty, why’d you have to do this? Why’d you put me in this fucking position?”
“I’m sorry, Nate.” And it seemed as if he really was. There was genuine pain on his long, country face. “They get you a little at a time and by the time you figure out what’s really going on, it’s too late and there’s no way out.”
“Shit.” Nate had closed his eyes and let the gun fall to his side. “Shit, Patty, I can’t do it. Just go, man.”
Roach frowned in confusion.
“What the hell?” Ramirez echoed her thoughts, waving at the screen. “But if he let Patty go, then why…”
“Wait,” she snapped. “Shut up.”
There was a flicker of movement just off to the side of the screen behind Nate, something she couldn’t quite see, and then he was spasming, arms rigid at his side, collapsing forward with his whole body frozen, every muscle taut. She’d seen the look before; someone had tased him.
“Whoa!” Ramirez exclaimed. “Who did…”
“I said, shut up!” she yelled at him, not looking away from the screen.
“You’ve been a bad boy, Geoffrey.”
The voice was female, Roach could tell that much even distant and muffled as it was. She had stepped over Nate’s still-spasming body and had bent down to pry the Glock from his frozen fingers. She was blond and tall and Roach remembered her face. She’d been the one they’d seen Patty talking to at the entertainment district in the ruins of downtown Norfolk, the place people called The Fry.
“You let them sniff you out,” the woman had said, stepping closer to Patty, the Glock extended in front of her. “Treachery, I would expect. You’re a traitor, after all. Incompetence is unforgivable.”
The report of the handgun was hollow and oscillatory in the tiny speakers of the tablet, the flash muted and barely visible. Roach jerked alongside Patty as the shots hit home and she fought down a sudden wave of nausea as she watched him fall. Images of his body from the next day intruded on the footage in the recording, pieces of him stripped away by coyotes or wild dogs…
“Madre de Dios,” Ramirez hissed.
“Get him up.” The voice was male, coming from just off to the right of the screen. Roach peered closer at the display, as if she could somehow see past the edge of it, but the video remained elusive. “I have been waiting a long time for this moment, Nathan. It has cost me much in lives and treasure, but I know it’s going to be worth it.”
“What the fuck?” Ramirez just would not shut up. “He knows Nate?”
A pair of muscular goons had stepped in from the side and yanked Nate to his feet, securing him by each arm even though he hadn’t seemed as if he were even capable of moving after the shock. His face had been screwed up in pain, but as he finally saw the man they couldn’t not, confusion had played out across it. The man stepped forward, just barely into view for a moment, a flash of a lined, gaunt face and grey hair pulled back into a ponytail and an expensive suit.
“Bob,” he’d said, the words a whisper Roach had to fight to hear. “But you’re dead.”
“Indeed, I am,” the older man had agreed in a cheerful tone. “And so are you, Nate. But nothing lasts forever.”
Without another word, the two goons had dragged Nate away off to the right side of the screen. The woman with the Russian accent hesitated for just a moment, staring down at Patty, before she bent down and picked the shell casings up off the pavement before following the others.
Then, there was nothing. Roach grabbed her tablet and fast-forwarded the video, tapping the control over and over, impatiently, until it became clear nothing else had been captured. Then the first of the coyotes showed up, sniffing around Patty’s body and she cursed and shut the tablet down, smacking it down on the desktop. She stalked back and forth in front of the monitor, fists clenched, the muscles in her shoulders tightening until she felt as if her chest was about to explode.
She looked around, desperately needing to smash something and not wanting to break anything she might need in the future. Finally, she couldn’t hold it in anymore and grabbed the desk chair, swinging it over her head and throwing it across the room. It crashed into the far wall, cracking the plaster and sending two of the wheels from the swivel chair flying off in opposite directions before the bulk of the thing landed with an anticlimactic thump.
Ramirez was staring at her, shoulders hunched protectively, eyes wide.
“We should have fucking known!” she snapped, as if it were an explanation. “I should have known, Hector! I should have known he wouldn’t just run off on us! Someone took him and we’ve been sitting around on our asses, feeling sorry for ourselves! Goddammit!”
“What are we gonna do, Roach?” Ramirez asked. The kid looked like he was about to cry.
“The hell if I know!” she shouted, still furious, at herself and whoever the grey-haired man was in the video. “You said it yourself, Mule, there’s just two of us!”
“Well, we gotta…” Ramirez stumbled over his words, his mouth working faster than his brain. “We gotta get help then!”
“Thank you, General fucking Eisenhower. Who the hell would we get to help us? DoD said they’d send someone, but they aren’t even supposed to be here yet and I don’t even know if I should call them! They might just tell us to back off and let them handle it, and there’s no way I’m leaving Nate’s life in the hands of some damned paper-pushers!”
Ramirez was on his feet now, rubbing thoughtfully at the back of his neck like he was trying to massage a memory into place.
“There was a guy,” he said, nodding. “This guy at the bar that night we went out, before everything went to shit. Older dude, but he was talking real quiet with this woman about piloting mechs. He sounded like he knew what he was talking about, like he was the real deal.”
Roach cocked an eyebrow toward him doubtfully.
“You want to go recruit some old fart you think might have mech experience? You really think that’s a smart idea?”
“Dude!” Ramirez protested, holding his hands palms-up in surrender. “That’s all I got! If you got a better idea, let’s go do it!”
Roach wanted to yell at him—for calling her “dude” if nothing else—but she realized he was rig
ht, and she had nothing better to suggest.
“All right,” she conceded. She shook her head. “God help me, but I don’t know what else to do. Let’s go find this old guy and see if he’s stupid or desperate enough to help us.”
Ramirez grabbed the whiskey bottle and poured out a shot, handing it to her. She looked at it, frowning in confusion until he offered a toast, holding the bottle like a glass.
“Here’s to desperate and stupid people.”
She chuckled and downed the shot. Yeah, cheap-assed homebrew.
“I’ll drink to that.”
Nathan Stout was doing pushups.
He wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was some idea of keeping his strength up in case the opportunity came to break out, maybe it was just a way to pass the time, or maybe it was the sheer joy of not feeling lethargic and drugged anymore. He didn’t know why they’d stopped drugging him. Hell, I don’t know why they bothered in the first place. But it seemed like an opportunity not to be wasted.
Or maybe he was doing pushups because he’d watched a lot of movies, and the heroes always did pushups when they got thrown into a cell. He was in the down position when he heard the food slot slide open. He looked up, across the floor and saw a tray scraping its way into the room. Something smelled good. Hot food, not protein bars. He pushed himself to his feet, stepping slowly over to the tray, then kneeling down in front of it.
It smelled like beef stew. There was a plastic spoon beside it, the kind so bendy you couldn’t break it to use it as a weapon. He nearly laughed at the thought of rampaging through the place, taking out guards with half a plastic spoon. Instead, he used it as God and his captors had intended and began shoveling food into his mouth.
It was beef stew. From a can, likely twenty years old, but he’d take it. It was hot, and anything hot tasted a hundred times better.
He was so entranced with the food, he didn’t even notice the upper window opening until he smelled the perfume. There wasn’t much left of the stew, but he made sure to mop up the last of it before he dropped the foam bowl back to the light, plastic tray and looked to the door. There was a little more light than usual, enough to see the faint glow of long, blond hair. Feral hate surged in his chest but he tamped it down. Losing his temper wouldn’t accomplish anything, especially dealing with a spy who was trained in judging people’s reactions.
“Thanks for the food,” he said, trying not to sound grudging. He opened the water bottle and chugged it down, giving her the option to continue the conversation. She said nothing.
Nate shrugged. Maybe she was just here to observe. He tossed the bottle on the tray and shoved it toward the slot at the bottom of the door with his foot.
“You know who Helen of Troy is?” he asked. No response. All right, be that way. “She was a queen back in ancient Greece, married to a king named Menelaus of Sparta. The legend goes, she was incredibly beautiful, so beautiful she attracted the eye of Prince Paris of Troy and they ran away together. Menelaus gathered all the armies of all the Greek city-states together to go to war with Troy to get her back.”
He leaned against the wall beside the door. “Now, the story makes it sound like she was kidnapped, that she had no agency in the matter. I’ve always thought that was a bit sexist. I don’t believe for a second she didn’t know exactly what she was doing. She hated her husband and her arranged marriage and the world that made her into a trophy for a man, and she used the only weapons she had to get revenge.”
He took an angle toward the door that gave him a good look at her eyes, at the glimmer of sunlight reflecting off of them.
“What do you think?” he asked her.
“I think revenge is a waste of effort,” she said, finally, her accent not thick but noticeable. “It leads to chaos and discord and never gives you what you want. Killing is business. Business should be conducted by professionals.”
“So, all this is business, then? Nothing personal?”
“Not to me.”
“What about Bob? Is it personal to him?” Now there was an edge to his tone, one he couldn’t quite control. “How the hell is he still alive, and what does he want with me?”
“He is obviously a genetic duplicate, Captain Stout.” She sounded disappointed he hadn’t already thought of it. “The same as you. As far as anyone knows, it is the only afterlife we can verify scientifically, and certainly the only one Robert Franklin believes in.”
“Is that what all this is about?” Nate’s expression twisted in a scowl of disbelief. “Some half-assed scheme for eternal life, twelve years at a time, one dupe after another?”
“This is about many things, Nathan. One of them is an attempt to end that twelve-year cycle, for him and for you. And yes, I would say for him, this is personal.” She paused, as if letting it sink in. “He cares about you, Nathan. In many ways, you are the only friend he has left.”
“Then why keep me in here?” Nate demanded. “Why not just come to me and explain himself?”
“You are, perhaps, blessed, Nathan Stout.” She was close now, very close to the window. “You’ve only been allowed to remember what is important to you. You do not have to recall the disappointments, the heartbreaks. You do not have to relive every second of how your marriage fell apart and your wife left you and went home to Kansas without so much as a note.”
Nate grunted as if he’d been gut-punched. He had vague memories of the Prime’s wife, a sort of general warmth and a feeling of emptiness from her absence. She’d been something he could hold onto, a totem from the distant past. She was probably dead now.
“Mr. Franklin had no such luxury. He arranged his own duplication and thus preserved every single memory of a life stretching over a century now. Every memory from his Prime and from every dupe, every betrayal, every disappointment, every knife to his back. Is it so hard to believe a man such as this might not be hesitant to trust?”
“But he trusts you.” He was close to her now. Close enough he could have reached through the window, grabbed her by the hair and smashed her face against the door.
And then what? I don’t even know she has the key to this door, even if I could reach it.
“He trusts me as far as he trusts me,” she allowed. “And how far that is, I am free to guess. But he trusts no one with his life, with his fate, except himself. Time and painful experience have taught him this much.”
“Why are you here?” he demanded. It might not have been smart, particularly if he wanted more hot meals, but he had to ask. “Why did you come here to talk to me in person?”
“Killing is business, Captain Stout. Compassion is a luxury.” Her smile was thin, barely visible, more a shifting of her head than any expression he could see. “And yet, what good is it to be the victor if we can’t afford luxuries. What is going to come next may not be pleasant for you, I fear.”
A cold trickle of fear went down his back, along with trite old phrases he’d read about fates worse than death.
“What’s he going to do with me?”
“A good thing,” she assured him, beginning to slide the window closed. “But nothing good comes without sacrifice.”
Chapter Five
Night in the Fry always felt like another world to Roach. The destruction was there, the signs of the wasteland encroaching around what had been Norfolk, Virginia, but the Fry district seemed to be a little slice of the past stubbornly clinging to this new, chaotic reality. People went out to eat and sat down to drink and listened to live music and pretended everything was normal.
It was proof that life goes on and part of her found it oddly hopeful. The other part, the sensible part, realized the Fry was also full of the dregs of society, men and women who’d survived by preying on others. She touched the handle of her pistol where it hung beneath her left armpit under her BAMF jacket, feeling the strength coming from it like a totem. It was a modern weapon, an Army-issue M20 .40, not the damn antique Glock Nate had carried. She’d pulled it from the portable locker where they kept their
issue weapons, the ones the DoD had handed over with their mechs and their contract money. Technically, she wasn’t supposed to have a key, but Nate had given her one after Dix died.
“Why couldn’t I have a gun?” Ramirez murmured, eyes dancing around the Friday-night crowd, staring down every face as if he thought they were all Russian spies.
“Because you can’t shoot for shit,” she told him. “Now shut up and take me to this bar you were talking about.”
“It’s on the right.” He pointed up ahead. “Just at the end of this street.”
Almost none of the establishments in the Fry bothered with signs. Everyone local knew what they were and what they offered, and if you weren’t local, you could ask someone who was. There was only one exception, one of the luckier businesses who’d happened upon a building that wasn’t about to topple over, that hadn’t been burned in one of the dozens of fires that had swept through the downtown area with depressing regularity.
It hadn’t been a favorite of Nate’s because he thought it was too pretentious and overpriced, but it was the preferred hangout of those who’d flourished in the burgeoning black and grey markets of the ruined city…and of those who wanted people to think they had. The sign hung over the open entrance, cracked and faded and taunting the denizens of what was left of the city with its memories of lost opulence.
“Chartreuse” was what everyone called it, though there’d been a second word after it on the sign once upon a time, before a shotgun blast had erased it. What it had served when Norfolk had been a thriving military town was a mystery as no menus had survived, but now it was renowned for the best steaks in the city, and likely the only ones which came from actual cows.
Where the hell do they keep the cows? They must have twenty-four-hour security for them.
The restaurant itself had ample protection in the form of four large, professional-looking gentlemen in dark suits, their weapons much like gravity, not visible but certainly present. No metal detectors, so she walked in unmolested. The clientele was as well dressed as the bouncers, generally. Suits or at the very least clean and well-kept work clothes were the norm, with one military uniform or another a distant second. She kept an eye on those as she followed their server to a table, noting the insignias on chests and sleeves.