by Amie Kaufman
His smile eases my tension for a few breaths, and I’m able to grin back at him as I lead the way. The base is busy, as it always is in the evenings. The patrols are changing, one watch giving way to another.
I turn to face Merendsen, wanting nothing more than to let the events of the past two weeks come pouring out of me. But instead I say quietly, “Are you hungry, sir? I thought I’d bring you to Molly’s for something to eat.”
He lifts an eyebrow. “I was thinking we ought to take a look around the base, see what’s going on. Things got a little hairy on the descent, it looks like you’ve got a bit of a stalemate happening outside the perimeter.”
There’s nowhere else quiet enough, unexpected enough, to have the conversation we need to have. For all I know, if I’ve aroused anyone’s suspicions, my room could be bugged. So instead I say, “Molly’s got some good stuff hidden away in his back room, sir. Sure you’re not hungry?”
Merendsen lifts a hand to rub it over the back of his head. I recognize the gesture from when he used to keep his hair cropped close. Now his hair is longer—not quite standard, but he’s not subject to regulations these days. He’s watching me closely. “On second thought, I am feeling a bit peckish. Lead the way, Captain.”
I pick my way through the crowds, avoiding the worst of the mud puddles and quagmires along the way. One of many reasons we rarely ever get up in our dress whites on the base. They never stay white for longer than five minutes, unless you stand perfectly still, indoors, and don’t think too hard about the swamp. We have to take the muddier, more crowded route through the middle of the base, making sure to keep rows of buildings between us and the swamps beyond the fences. I didn’t bring Merendsen all the way here only to have him picked off by an errant bullet from a trigger-happy rebel. As we walk it starts to rain, first only a few drops that patter off the prefab roofs, and then more. I quicken my steps.
The back door to Molly’s storeroom is locked, but I know where he keeps the key. I reach in under the bottom step, feeling for the indentation in the wood and then prying the key out with my fingernails. I fumble awkwardly with the lock, aware of Merendsen’s eyes on me. It’d be so much easier if the buildings here were fitted with standard thumbprint scanners, but with the constant power surges from storms and the length of time it takes for replacement electronic parts to get here when something breaks down, low-tech is better. And at least this way, Molly doesn’t have to explain to anyone why he added me to the list of stockers and deliverymen who’d have reason to have access to the bar.
Finally the lock gives way. I stow the key again and lead Merendsen up the wooden steps, shutting the door firmly behind him. The light’s on, but the room’s empty, no sign of Molly or any stock workers. Good.
I turn to face Merendsen again, but my explanations die on my lips. He doesn’t look at me the way Flynn did—he doesn’t see me covered in blood. He doesn’t look at me and see a murderer. He’s grinning at me, in that same way he used to when I screwed up in the field, when he was my captain a year ago—and suddenly it’s like no time has passed and nothing has changed. My mouth goes dry.
“All right, Lee.” His voice is soft, but firm. He has a way about him I’ve never managed to emulate, an ability to be confident, even stern, while still being pleasant and encouraging. “I’ve only got two days here—the military kicked up a fuss over a private auditor coming in with no warning, so that’s the limit. We have to work fast. Start at the beginning.”
I want to answer, but my throat is too tight, my mouth refusing to open. How can I begin to tell him how lost I am?
“Everything’s messed up, sir. Everything…” I drop my head, shutting my eyes and hating that he’s seeing me this undone. But then his hands come to rest on my shoulders, squeezing tight, and when I look up he’s gazing down at me, unwavering.
“Nothing we can’t fix,” he murmurs, words I’ve heard from him a thousand times.
I nod, not trusting my voice, and the lines of his face soften as he breaks every protocol we’ve ever known and draws me into a hug. He’s warm and solid, and smells a good sight better than anyone else on Avon, having not showered yet in badly filtered swamp water. I cling to him, trying to banish the thought of green eyes and pain, and the realization that his arms aren’t the ones I want around me.
I’m holding on so tightly that I don’t properly register the sound of the back door easing open. Merendsen does, though, and he lifts his head. An instant later he squeezes me, but this time it’s a warning. I pull back so I can look at the door.
It’s Flynn.
I freeze, going rigid in Merendsen’s arms, unable to speak.
“Can I help you, friend?” Merendsen’s voice is cheerful as he eases back from me, slowly enough not to arouse suspicion. Nothing to see here, his actions say.
Flynn doesn’t even look at him. His eyes are on me, his face devoid of emotion. He’s breathing hard, like he’s been running, but now his muscles are rigid and tense. He’s soaking wet, his hair dripping—his hair. I stare at him, suddenly noticing that in the days we’ve been apart he’s acquired a tan and that his dark curls are now bleached platinum and plastered to his head by water. He looks so different. He looks exactly the same.
My throat closes, my mouth going dry. I can see nothing in his face. No sign of forgiveness. No sign of revulsion. No sign of anything, except that he can’t seem to look away either.
A tiny sound breaks through to my brain—it’s no more than a scrape of fabric, but I’d know it anywhere. Merendsen’s pulled his gun out of its holster, slowly. When I jerk aside to look at him, his gaze is flickering between me and Flynn, his friendly smile gone.
“Stop,” I gasp, as though I’m the one who’s been running. “Don’t.”
Merendsen holds, though the gun doesn’t drop back into the holster. “What’s going on, Lee?” he asks, his voice low, demanding an answer.
But Flynn’s still ignoring him, as if he hasn’t even noticed we’re not alone. “Your note,” he manages. His voice is rough and broken, bearing the signs of whatever he’s faced since we parted. “I came.”
“I told you to wait,” I reply, my voice coming out sharp. Tense, like a taut wire.
The muscles stand out visibly along his jaw before he speaks. “Would you have waited?”
For that, I have no answer. Or rather, I do—but it’s not an answer that would help my argument.
Finally, Flynn’s eyes shift, and I realize he hadn’t missed Merendsen’s presence at all. His gaze is chilly at best as he looks over my former captain. “Sorry, friend,” he says, echoing the word Merendsen chose. “I was startled. Just shipped in. Looking for work.”
He can’t lie convincingly—not here, not now. “It’s okay,” I tell him. “Merendsen and I go way back. We can trust him.”
Flynn doesn’t answer, glancing from Merendsen to me, and it strikes me that Merendsen still looks like a soldier, despite the civvies. He stands like one, reacts like one. It’s impossible not to know he’s military.
Merendsen looks no more convinced than Flynn, eyeing him and taking in the bleached hair, the faux tan. The disguise works, and the fact that he looks ridiculous enough to brush aside is a good thing, but the desire to defend him from Merendsen’s unspoken judgment surges up anyway. I push it back down.
“Merendsen, this is Flynn. Flynn Cormac. Orla Cormac’s little brother.”
Flynn’s breath catches as I betray his true identity. But his reaction is nothing to Merendsen’s, whose dubious half smile vanishes as his expression goes cold. There’s not a soldier on Avon, past or present, who doesn’t know that name.
The air is thick with tension. Merendsen doesn’t lift his gun, but I can tell by the way he steps back on the balls of his feet that he’s poised to fight if necessary. I can’t help but wonder what happened to him while he was marooned, that his instincts are as finely honed as when he was on active duty.
“Okay, Lee. Tell me what’s going on. I assume we�
�re not all here to kill each other.”
Flynn’s watching me too, his eyes narrowed, his own muscles tense.
You’re not handling this awesomely, Lee.
I brace myself. “Flynn, this is Tarver Merendsen, my former captain when he was posted here. I called him to come help us.” I can tell from the blank look on Flynn’s face that he doesn’t recognize the name. And how could he? They don’t have HV news coverage out in the swamps. They aren’t going to know about the crash of the spaceliner Icarus. So I add, “Lilac LaRoux’s fiancé.”
Flynn’s gaze swings from Merendsen’s face to mine, accusing, horrified. Underneath his fake tan, his face has gone pale. “What the—” He jerks back, smacking into the stacks and making the bottles rattle. The noise makes Merendsen tense further, ready to act, his eyes not leaving Flynn’s face.
“Both of you, stop.” I snap the words, my voice cutting. “The last thing I need is you two trying to ice each other. Just—just listen to me, okay? Flynn, I trust him. I’d trust him with my life. We served together here, he knows Avon. He’s a good man, and even if he’s marrying Lilac LaRoux, that doesn’t change who he is. He’s our way in—he can help us.”
God, I hope I’m right about that.
“And sir.” I turn to face Merendsen. “He’s—Flynn isn’t…” I struggle, searching for some way to explain my connection to Flynn in a way that makes sense. That doesn’t sound like I’ve completely lost my mind.
Who says you haven’t?
“He’s not what you would think,” I say lamely. Next to my testimonial to Merendsen’s worth as an ally, it’s a sad, sorry statement. But how can I begin to describe what Flynn’s come to mean to me? My mind shies away from that thought, that truth it’s been avoiding for days. For once, I’m glad I don’t dream, for fear of what my dreams would say of Flynn. I shiver. “Will you guys promise not to kill each other long enough for me to explain what’s been happening here?”
Merendsen’s the first to answer, straightening a little and leaning back against the wall. The pose looks nonchalant, but my trained eye can still pick out signs that he’s alert, still ready for action. “Of course,” he says.
Flynn’s attention jerks back from Merendesen to me. I can see the hurt in his gaze, the anger there at being left out of my plans. Even though both of us know we were supposed to never see each other again.
“Fine,” he mutters.
I take a deep breath. “Okay. Sir, you might want to sit down. I’m pretty sure you’re going to think I’ve lost my mind, but I promise you I haven’t. Well. Not in the last day or so, anyway.”
I start with the night I met Flynn, and I stabbed him in the leg with a cocktail skewer, and we went in search of a secret facility that doesn’t exist.
The girl stands in front of the classroom, and all eyes are on her. The students sit in rows, and the walls are decorated with posters colored by hand. This week it’s the girl’s turn to talk about her family. Her mother gave her a silk jacket, but she hid it in the bottom of her bag and has a holo-picture instead. It shows the three of them, the girl standing between her mother and father, smiling and waving as the picture loops over and over.
“But who is that?” the teacher asks, pointing at the photo, and when the girl looks at it again, there are four figures. A boy has appeared, dark-haired and handsome, with dog tags gleaming around his neck.
“Who is that?” the teacher repeats, and the girl stares at him, willing the answer to come, wanting to be sure she gets a good mark. It’s not the green-eyed boy. This boy has brown eyes.
The boy stands between the girl’s mother and father, and suddenly she remembers.
“He’s my big brother,” she tells the class.
“I’m not her brother.”
She looks up, and the boy is sitting in the front row of the class.
He shakes his head. “I’m not her brother. Don’t you know what she did?”
She casts her gaze down, burning with embarrassment, and finds the photo in her hands is bleeding, the red trickling down her fingers to her knuckles.
I CAN’T STOP WATCHING HER body language as she talks to him, leaning in to drink in his every reaction, eyes locked on his. I don’t want to see it, but I can’t look away. Watching them, watching her, is a torture as unbearable as listening to my people fighting without me. She’s not alone anymore, surrounded by her platoon, her commander, her old captain. She’s found her way out.
But I still need her, and I hate myself for it.
She starts with the night we met and talks him through our attempt to find the vanished base, her escape, then Davin Quinn’s suicide. She’s quiet, objective—she gives me more credit than I expected, and she holds it together to give a military-style report. That is, until she catches up to the night I left the hospital and she ended up out in the swamps. Then her voice gives out, and I see an echo of her shell-shocked horror when she woke to find herself surrounded by death.
I can barely stand to hear her tell it, and I turn away, gripping the shelf I’m leaning against until my fingertips ache. The grief in her voice should help, should remind me she hasn’t forgotten; but all it does is make me long to touch her, to find stillness and quiet in the way our wounds mirror each other’s. She hasn’t been out of my mind the last few days. Hiding out in the swamps, holed up in town with Sofia, Jubilee’s been my constant companion.
I thought it would be better once I saw her, but it’s still here, this tug-of-war between wanting her, and just wanting her gone.
She stops trying to explain the massacre of my people and finishes abruptly. “And then Flynn helped me get back here. He’s been in hiding since then, because his own people will kill him for protecting me, and I’ve been here, trying to find some trace of what’s happening. That’s why I called you. Because you’re close to LaRoux Industries, and you’re the only one I know who won’t think I’ve simply cracked. You’re the only one I know who won’t kill him on sight.” She nods at me for that.
“He’s thinking about it.” I can hear the edge in my voice, sounding like everything I try not to be. Combative. Like McBride.
He shrugs. “If you needed killing, Lee would have taken care of that.” He finds a crate to haul up and sit on. “All right, so the Fury is getting worse. Taking people like Lee, who used to be immune, and civilians, who were always safe before.”
“And we think it has something to do with LaRoux Industries.” Jubilee’s focused on Merendsen. “They shouldn’t have any interest in Avon, but they have a presence here for some reason. Or had, anyway. The ident chip I found won’t be enough proof for the higher-ups, but it’s enough for me.”
“You think the facility that Cormac saw was LRI? I wouldn’t put it past Monsieur LaRoux, he’s arrogant enough to think he’s untouchable. Mostly because he is.” Merendsen rakes his fingers through his hair. “God, what a mess. LaRoux is dangerous, Lee. You can’t go up against him alone.”
“That’s where I’m hoping you can help,” Jubilee admits. “Given your new connection.” I can tell by the way her jaw squares there’s more coming, and it looks like Tarver Merendsen knows her as well as I do, because he waits too. It shows up in one quick, short burst: “Why in God’s name are you marrying Lilac LaRoux?” She’s chagrined a moment later, but lifts her chin, defying him anyway.
Merendsen dissolves into laughter, holding up one hand to bid her wait as he recovers enough to talk. “Oh, I knew that was coming,” he mutters. “Because I like the cushy lifestyle, Lee. You know me, I like my luxuries. Why the hell do you think I’m marrying her?”
“I honestly don’t know, sir. I keep trying to…But it’s Lilac LaRoux, for God’s sake.” She spits the name, as though it’s an argument all on its own, like he’ll see his mistake if he hears it one more time. “She’s one of them.”
Merendsen just grins. “Because I’m in love with her, Captain. Because she’s stubborn, and kind and strong and smart, and I don’t want to go a day of my life withou
t her, not ever again.”
Jubilee crosses over to where he’s seated on the crate, dropping to a crouch in front of him like a supplicant. “Tell me I haven’t lost you to them, Tarver.”
The first time Jubilee used my first name, I was betraying everyone I care for and realizing I was falling in love with the girl who killed my family. But now, his name rolls off her tongue with ease. I clench my jaw and avert my eyes, unable to watch her gazing up at him any longer.
Merendsen lets out a soft, slow breath. “Lee, I left what precious little time I have alone with Lilac and volunteered to get myself dropped on this ball of mud—no offense, Cormac—and here I am. Remember me?”
“Sorry, sir.” But she doesn’t sound sorry. I hear grief in her voice instead. “I’ve missed you.”
“I get that a lot,” he replies easily. “Now, my girl’s exactly who we need if we’re going to do a little digging. Where’s the most private comscreen we can access?”
“My quarters.” She pushes to her feet and seems to remember me, tilting her head to beckon me along behind them. “I’ll show you.”
Her former captain simply nods, and we both follow her out the door, me trailing behind the two of them. I can hear the sound of distant gunfire as we walk—the sound of my people fighting for their lives, without me.
The girl and the green-eyed boy are racing each other, sprinting through the alleys and byways of November. The girl slows just enough that the green-eyed boy will think he’s catching up, and then she darts up a side street. He slips while trying to follow her and goes crashing to the ground.
The girl hears him cry out and runs back to his side as fast as she can. He’s skinned both his knees, and blood is dripping onto the cracked pavement below. She tries to bandage the scrapes, but they won’t stop bleeding, no matter what she does; when she looks up, the boy’s face is draining of color.
“You did this to me,” he whispers, reaching toward her face. But before he can touch her, his fingertips crumble away into dust.