“I think it’s worth a try, Carl,” Stefani said.
“It’s risky . . . And it would require a lot of pressing. Even for a single community, it would be strenuous, let alone repeated over and over.”
“We could do it,” Jeff said.
“No, we couldn’t,” Carlee said. “We press too much as is.”
“We could—”
“Let me finish, Jeff,” Carlee said softly. “We are going to need more vagrants—many more—if we’re going to do this right. We’ll need to recruit . . . But growing our ranks is something I have thought about for years. Perhaps now is the time.”
“There would be no one better to teach them than you,” Stefani said. “I mean, if you can turn Jeff into a vagrant, you can help anyone learn to press.”
“I resent that,” Jeff said with a smile.
“It was a compliment.” Stefani winked at him.
“I’ll accept it, then. So, does that mean we have a plan?”
“I’ll think on it,” Carlee said. “I really will. I think it has some merit, but like I said, I feel like it’s risky.”
“I trust your judgment,” Jeff said.
Carlee stood up and stretched.
“I’m heading to bed,” Carlee said. “Don’t stay up too late. That’s an order.”
Jeff shared a smile with Carlee before she left the room. She hadn’t mentioned his advances again, and he could tell she was putting effort into keeping things natural between them, although Jeff could tell their relationship had subtly changed. And not just on her end; he felt markedly different for such a short period of time. He still admired her and wouldn’t turn her down if she changed her mind, but her rejection had opened his mind. Evaluating their compatibility with an objective lens gave him great perspective.
“Not bad work, Handsome. I think she’s going to go for it.” Stefani moved from her seat on a crumbling chair to the door, where her gun was resting against the wall. “Fancy a walk?”
“I’m going to try to get some rest.”
“You sure? I can be mighty fine company . . .” She smiled hopefully, and Jeff almost gave in. But the events of the day, both physical and emotional, suddenly rested on his shoulders.
“Next time.”
“I’m counting on it.”
31 A GAME
“I think she’s dead,” Jeff said. “Only explanation.”
“Carl wouldn’t just die on me. I’d kill her if she did that. She’s just meditating.”
“Is that some sort of requirement to be captain or something?”
“Only if you want to be good at it. She’s trying to catch glimpses of other paths, to make sure she doesn’t lead us in the wrong direction. Jane did that pretty much all day every day.”
“I thought you weren’t a huge fan of Jane . . .”
“I wasn’t.”
“And it doesn’t worry you that Carl is trying to be like Jane?”
“First off, you call her Carlee. Second, no, I’m not worried. Carlee should have been in charge of the vagrants for years. Jane was a mistake.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Did you forget what happened in Dallas already?”
“Of course not . . . I was just wondering if there was more to the story.”
“Of course there is.”
“Like what?”
Stefani sighed the way that Jeff had when his nephew Everett had worn down his resistance and had eventually succeeded in getting him to play warlords with him. It was still early enough that he couldn’t think of anything witty to say, and Stefani’s reaction bothered him.
“How about we play a game instead of talking?” Stefani said.
“Carlee told me never to play games with you.”
“Oh, did she?”
“Yeah, one of the first things she ever taught me.”
“That’s strange . . . She must have been joking.”
“I don’t think so,” Jeff said. He could count the number of jokes Carlee had made since they had been together on one hand. And none of them had been funny.
“Come on—she could be up there all day.”
“The fact that you are excited about it makes me nervous.”
“Look at big, tough, champion fighter Jeff, scared to play a game with an innocent girl,” Stefani said with a roguish smile. “You’ll be fine. Besides, it’ll be good for your training.”
Her assurances were anything but reassuring, but he followed her out of their decaying temporary home. She led him down to a street that was in good condition compared with many roads he’d seen.
Stefani stopped in the middle of the street, which felt recklessly exposed to him, but he didn’t comment on it. She pulled the handle of a force-field knife from her side where it was connected to her uniform. Stefani squeezed the hilt, and the blade activated. An impossibly sharp and strong dagger glowed to life with a deep maroon hue.
Jeff frowned. He knew he wasn’t going to like this game already.
“This is a force-field blade,” Stefani said.
“I know what it is.”
“Good.” Stefani tossed the knife high into the air and didn’t follow the blade with her eyes; instead, she remained fixated on Jeff. “Then you know that it’s so sharp that it is impossible not to cut yourself by touching it.”
“Uh . . . yeah.” Jeff followed the blade as it spun around in the air. Stefani winked at him as her hand shot out and grabbed the knife before it cut into the ground.
“And you know that it’s hard enough to cut through literally anything. Including metal arms and legs.”
“That feels oddly specific . . .”
“Don’t worry, though. It won’t cut you. If you’re good at the game, that is.”
“This sounds exactly like the reason Carlee didn’t want me to play games with you.”
“She’s a softy.”
“And I have a feeling this is the game you played with the twins . . .”
“I’ll go easy on you,” Stefani said. “Now stop being such a scared little boy. You’re a vagrant now. You need to act like one.”
“How do we play?” Jeff asked, but his voice was weak. He had never been timid, but this game seemed like an incredibly bad idea. He looked over to the door of the house, hoping Carlee would come out and put an end to Stefani’s game without him having to look scared.
“It’s simple. We’re both vagrants. Which means we can both sense other time lines, where our opponents have taken their turns at different times. We take turns throwing the knife at each other, and the first person to miss loses.”
Stefani burst out laughing after looking at his face. He had no doubt his expression had earned the mockery. He checked the house again and regretted not going on a walk with Stefani the previous night.
“Don’t worry, Handsome,” Stefani said. “No throwing the blade at heads, torsos, or other places adults might want intact. You can duck out of the way if you are scared, but then you lose.”
“I think I’m starting to understand why you don’t have very many friends . . .”
His heart beat in his chest, and he tried to calm his breathing. Every fight had been an adrenaline rush, but he had never felt like this before a match. Stefani smiled and took ten large steps backward, placing a healthy distance between them. She juggled the knife between her hands, and Jeff watched the deadly blade dance through the air.
He closed his eyes and emptied his mind, letting his instincts take over. He opened his eyes just in time to see Stefani hurl the blade at him, but his mortal hand was already moving. The blade streaked for his shoulder on his metal side before it came to a sudden stop in his hands.
He let out a long, measured breath, and Stefani cheered for him. He turned the knife over in his hands, careful not to let the edge catch his skin.
“Your turn.”
“Fun game,” Jeff said. He clutched the knife and looked up at Stefani, who was grinning like a child on the day the trade envoys returned. He di
dn’t understand her one bit, of that he was certain. But her eagerness made him smile.
“Thanks, I invented it.”
He readied himself to throw the knife, deciding to throw it at her left leg, then realized what he had just done. He’d made a decision, which would allow her to know where he was going to throw it. Jeff paused, understanding the subtlety of the game for the first time. It wasn’t just a test of the person catching the blade but of the person throwing it as well. He pulled the knife back, picking a number of targets and constantly changing his mind about where was going to throw it until he let go.
The knife flew from his hands, heading straight for his original target. Stefani spun as the blade reached her, grabbing it with one hand and flicking it back at him in a single motion. He froze for a split second as the blade came racing for his body. He stumbled out of the way just in time for the knife to fly past his vision before cutting a deep scar into the road. Only the handle of the knife kept it from cutting meters into the earth.
“That game is still off limits,” Carlee announced.
Jeff looked up to see that she was standing on the mound of broken concrete that had once been a sidewalk. She looked more rested and stable than she had in days. The cloak on the back of her vagrant uniform caught the wind, as did her short hair. She was stunning, but Jeff forced himself to think of her as his commanding officer and nothing more.
“He begged me to play,” Stefani said. “I told him it was a big no-no, but he wouldn’t relent.”
“There’s no doubt that’s exactly how it happened. She didn’t cut you, did she, Jeff?”
“Nope,” he said. His heart was still racing from the split second where he knew he wasn’t ready to catch the knife. “All parts of me, organic and pressed, are accounted for.”
“I did win, though,” Stefani said to Carlee before repeating it to Jeff.
Some stray dogs broke out in a fight a few houses down, which drew their attention for a moment until it ended. Carlee used it as a natural transition to what Jeff assumed was the reason she had come outside in the first place.
“I’ve decided to give it a try. We’ll supply trusted communities with the resources they need to protect themselves and thrive. There is something to giving people the tools they need to build a better life. I wish that didn’t mean weapons, but it does.”
“And the other side of things?” Stefani asked.
“We’ll try to negotiate with warlords. Share our vision of a stable human environment and ask them to consent to it peacefully.”
“So, we’re going to kill them when they say no?”
“We will help to defend the people we supply,” Carlee said. “As peacefully as possible. There has already been enough death.”
“When do we start?” Jeff asked.
“Today,” Carlee said. “But not here. We’re too close to communities. We’re going to have to press in a transport and all the supplies. There is no question that something of that magnitude will draw a considerable amount of attention.”
“I say we head south,” Stefani said. “Toward Jeff’s homeland. It was his idea, and in a way, it was his community’s inability to protect itself that started all of this.”
Jeff kept his vision locked on Carlee as she thought it over. Stefani had made the suggestion in order to give Jeff the opportunity to find his revenge, he was sure of it. His fire for revenge didn’t burn as bright as it had the day Dane had left him for dead. He felt almost as if he had taken his eyes off his goal for the past several days.
“That would mean a lot to me,” Jeff said.
But he hadn’t avenged his brother, community, and self yet, and that was important to him. He knew he’d never be able to focus entirely on building a better future for his species until he resolved all of his business.
“I had been thinking about going west . . . But if you two are finished with your game, we can head south.”
32 SOUTH
“AND SOME FORCE-FIELD GENERATORS,” JEFF said. “Turning those things on might be enough to scare most warlords away if the guns and turrets don’t.”
“We can do that,” Carlee said. “I’ll press in our transport if you press in our packages.”
“No, I should do it all,” Stefani said. “You need to keep your head clear.”
“That’s not fair. I won’t let you do all of the pressing. It’s a burden we will all share.”
“That’s not how Jane did things.”
“Well, I’m not Jane, am I?” Carlee sounded like she was finished with the conversation, but Stefani ignored the social cues.
“We can’t have our leader losing her mind.”
“And I can’t have my best friend and trusted advisor going crazy,” Carlee said. “There’s only one way I know how to lead, and that’s by example. If that means we get jumped a few more times, or we make a few more mistakes, then so be it.”
“Aye, aye, captain,” Stefani said. The words were far more sarcastic than Stefani said them. Jeff could tell Stefani felt the same about Carlee’s decision as he did. For his entire life, the leaders of their community had preached equality and sharing the load, but they had never actually done it. He felt that Carlee was the first person he had ever met, outside of his family, who deserved his loyalty.
“I want to help,” Jeff said. “Just tell me what to do.”
“Thank you, Jeff,” Carlee said. “But we can handle it this time.”
“No,” Jeff said. “If I can manage to press enough explosives to blow half the shoreline to pieces, I can help here.”
“It’s nothing personal,” Stefani said. “You’re still learning your limits. A new vagrant is a dangerous vagrant.”
“And throwing force-field knives at people is dangerous, but it didn’t stop you.”
“All right,” Carlee said. “You can press in our personal supplies once I have the transport ready. How is that?”
“Our supplies?” Stefani protested. “No, no, no. I have to eat that stuff. Have him press in something unimportant, like the crates of energy weapons or lifesaving medicine.”
“Think of eating Jeff’s food as a new sort of game. Since you are so fond of dangerous pastimes, I’m sure you won’t mind.”
Carlee walked a few feet away from them to where an ancient piece of farm equipment had shut down for the final time. She put her hand out, and the realities in front of her collided.
Jeff had seen Jane summon carriers that could carry fifty people, but he had never seen anything like this. The air twisted and then crystallized before shattering into innumerable pieces of nothing. A transport that looked like it could have been a formidable member of the old navy fleets Jeff had seen on history videos hovered just off the ground. It had anti-aircraft guns, energy cannons, laser turrets, a drone bay, and a dozen other weapons cramped onto its hull.
The front of the vehicle was full of boards of glass, lit up with a wealth of information that Jeff assumed was from scanners of various types. Detachable bikes caught his eye next, followed by huge shield generators. It looked like it could have comfortably fit all the previous vagrants onto it with room to spare for new recruits. It was an absolute floating fortress.
Carlee lowered her arm and collapsed to the ground.
“Carlee!” Jeff screamed as he dashed forward, but Stefani was already ahead of him. She reached Carlee first but not by far. She cradled Carlee’s head while Jeff looked her over, searching for injuries, before realizing the futility of it.
“Bobby, I . . . the flagship of the . . .” Carlee blinked profusely as she mumbled to herself. Already she was showing signs of coming back to a single reality.
“Carlee, it’s OK. We’re here,” Stefani said.
“Stefani . . . where is . . . hmm . . .”
Jeff’s heart sank watching her like this even though he knew her state was temporary. It was horrifying to think this was the potential permanent future they faced. He didn’t fear himself being stuck mentally between endless
realities, but he finally felt the true burden of the vagrants. If you became one of them, all your friends were going to face it someday, if they didn’t die violently first.
“I thought you said it wasn’t supposed to affect people that much after they got used to it!” Jeff said.
“Did you see what she just did?” Stefani shouted at him. “Look! It’s a battleship! The complexity, the size, I couldn’t do it, and if I could have managed it somehow, it would have broken me for good. The connection between worlds to do something like that . . . I can’t even imagine.”
“You could do anything, Stef,” Carlee said with a stupid grin on her face. The fact that she had understood the conversation was a positive sign.
“I’m sorry—I wasn’t angry with you . . .” Jeff backed off the anger he felt, realizing he had unintentionally pointed it at Stefani. “It was just . . . scary.”
Stefani nodded, but she focused on Carlee, running through a quick set of medical checks to make sure she was fine. Jeff watched as Carlee followed fingers with her eyes and made various facial expressions. By the time she was answering Stefani’s questions about who they were, she was well enough to cut the exercise short.
“I’m fine!” Carlee sat up and looked at the massive floating vehicle she had just pressed into existence in her own time line and cursed. “I might have overdone it.”
“Might have? Look at that thing—it’s like we’re going to be riding on the back of an Apostle,” Stefani said.
“I wanted it to be a sign. Inspire confidence from other humans, make them trust us, even join us.”
“Well, you’re never going to do it again even if something takes that thing out. And they might! Something that big is going to have every leech within a hundred miles taking shots at us.”
“If I pressed it right, it should be fully stealth equipped from a more advanced time line. If not . . . oh well. We are going to be killing a lot of leeches anyway.”
Vagrants (Vagrants Series Book 1) Page 21