by K. T. Hanna
There is only duty to those who let her live.
Sai lies on her back, staring at the ceiling, but as usual it doesn’t have much to say. She throws and catches a jagged little ball in her hands. It’s taken a while and a certain blend of psionics, but she can catch it without a scratch by reinforcing her skin. Bastian calls it fine-tuning.
A tear runs down her cheek, and she scowls as she wipes it away. There’s no time to feel sorry for herself. It’s not her life to live, nor her choices to make. Even Nimue was only trying to find a foothold to ingratiate herself to her own mentor.
Everyone who matters knows who she is. Why did she ever, ever think it was as simple as redeeming herself?
For your own safety, please do not leave your designated areas. Report any unauthorized personnel immediately. Remember, the future of GNW depends on you.
She wants to shout at it for interrupting her thoughts, but the words come out plaintive and resigned. “Shut up. Shut up...”
Everything around her, from the walls to the clothes on her back, was given to her at the sufferance of GNW. They forgave her wiping out one of their blocks in exchange for her servitude. Simple. Logical. It all makes perfect sense. As fond as Bastian occasionally appears to be of her, everything is clear now. He is happy with her progress. It takes a load off his shoulders.
She catches the spiked ball again and closes her eyes, going over every word of the previous day’s conversation again.
Sai is a Rare. Her specific talents make her more lethal than the others. Like she didn’t know that already.
It’s probably a very good thing there aren’t more of them, even though she can’t help wondering why. Surely not every Rare dies during their awakening?
She sighs and turns over, grabbing her pillow and hugging it, fully aware of the self-pity she’s dancing so precariously on the edge of. How is she supposed to deal with preparing herself to kill someone? How the hell does anyone deal with that?
She sits up and punches the bed. Anger is the only way she can motivate violence, and it’s not her natural instinct. Given the choice, Sai prefers to be left alone, to be invisible and go around talking to and harming nobody. It’s why she fled from her parents’ apartment. It’s what started this whole mess.
She was perfectly fine being alone in the facilities until Dom and Bastian stuck their noses into her life and pretended to give a crap.
“Dammit!”
She stands up and throws the pillow on the ground. Blood trickles out of her left fist, and she sighs. She forgot she was still clutching the ball.
A bit of exertion, and the pain stops; a few minutes more and the marks are faint, receding even as she watches. She smiles. Healing is a neat trick, and one she’s getting better at. No matter what else happens, at least healing will be a positive in her life.
Maybe a jog will make her feel better. She glances at her watch and realizes it’s later in the day than she thought. Everyone will be inside at classes or training. With the news of her latest assignment, she begged off contact with other people in order to mentally prepare. Bastian seemed only too happy to comply. Maybe the slight compassion proves him human after all.
It’s been two days since they told her. Two sleepless nights. Too much adrenaline. Too many thoughts warring for space in her brain. Far too many memories begging to break down the shoddy barriers she’s erected against them. Lock the past away and forget about it. Better to spend time with the one person she can trust—herself. How had she ever thought these two were any different than the Shined-up idiots who bore her into the world?
She grins as she pulls on her shoes and does a few stretches. It feels good to move. For a moment as she closes her bedroom door behind her, she stops and stands perfectly still, tracing over the corridor routes in her head. Then she takes a deep breath and sets off. If she mistimes any of these phases, it’s going to hurt badly.
“No pain, no gain,” she tells herself. Her laugh is slightly hysterical, even to her own ears.
One phase. Three steps. One phase. Two steps. Another phase—barely avoids people. Four steps to regain her composure and push the laughter to the back of her throat. It’s better than any drug they could give her. Endorphin rush. The speed she phases around the building is amazing, until Dom catches her mid-stride as she drops out of one.
“Dammit!” She glares at him, jumping back only to stumble slightly. “You scared the crap out of me.”
“You shouldn’t waste energy like that.”
“I...” She takes a breath and her legs almost buckle beneath her. “I need to sleep. I can’t sleep, Dom.” Her words are soft and her eyes start to feel heavy. He moves in to help her.
“Don’t!” she snaps at him. Regardless of how tired she’s feeling, no one can touch her. No one is allowed to get close and make her feel. Not even Dom. “Don’t touch me.”
She wonders if it’s hurt she can see in his eyes, or just another shade of color. He nods, and she realizes that while he might not touch her, he’ll follow her back to make sure she gets to her room.
Sai doesn’t even say goodnight as she closes the door and collapses thankfully onto her bed.
“Should have done that days ago,” she murmurs as her head hits the pillow.
For the first time she can remember, Sai doesn’t dream.
Bastian is flipping through his reader when Sai walks in. She barely looks at him as she walks to a spot in front of his desk. Shoulders back, head high, she stands to attention. She’s been trying not to think about today for the last week. Knowing you’re supposed to kill someone and having to actually do it are two entirely different things, but neither are things Sai wants.
Her efforts at keeping a distance between Bastian and herself don’t work like she’d hoped. He closes the space between them, his eyes locked onto her. “You have to remember one thing.”
She glances at him, her expression schooled into indifference. The cold impenetrable wall he’d tried to get her to master since the beginning has finally cemented.
“These missions have a greater purpose. However much your own morals might tell you what you’re doing is reprehensible, you have to realize your targets pose a very real threat to GNW as a whole.”
She nods. As much as she’s distanced herself from him, it’s nice to hear a justification from someone else. It makes her feel less like a monster.
Bastian watches her for a few seconds more and shrugs slightly before reaching into one of his pockets and pulling out a reader. “This is his dossier. His work touches on aspects of chemical warfare, and it seems to have gained sympathy with the cause in UCs 20, 21, 22, and 25. His name is Franklin Jarvs.”
Sai looks up at him sharply. “He’s not tagged?”
“None of the Exiled are tagged.”
“How?” Despite herself, she’s curious. Most people are tagged at birth, and the information is stored in the bands beneath their skin. Thanks to her parents leaving the hospital before Sai was registered, she was only tagged when enrolled in the training facility. She’s always hated the stark reminder.
Bastian frowns. “They’re not born in the UCs. Why would they be tagged?”
She shrugs and waits for him to continue.
“Franklin will be traveling between these cities. The only time we can pinpoint with a narrow enough window is between UCs 22 and 25. It will be far easier for us to sideline him and complete the mission during that time.”
Sai nods and accepts the dossier as she blinks back the burning behind her eyes.
“I expect you to have read and understood this by the time you reach your destination.”
“Is that all, sir?” Despite the catch in her throat, she refuses to let her expression give.
“No. I have some advice for you. It helped me. I hope it’ll help you.” Bastian pauses and takes a deep breath. “Lock down your shields. Make sure you don’t leave yourself open to hear a dying man’s thoughts. Sometimes they can be confusing or psionically trapped
. If you’re really that morbidly curious, make sure there is no way for them to get a foothold in your mind.” He pauses as if waiting to make sure she processes it. “Understand?”
Sai nods. “I understand perfectly, sir.”
Bastian’s jaw clenches, like he wants to say something else, but Dom enters the room and stands by the entrance. “Everything ready?”
Dom nods.
“You’ll be taking a speed transport. The only one of her kind. Less comfort than last time, I’m afraid.” He smiles at her apologetically.
“I’m about to kill someone. Comfort isn’t the foremost thing on my mind.” Her words are tinged with bitterness despite her best efforts. She makes sure her tone is even before speaking again. “If that’s all, I need to pick my things up from my room.”
“Fine.” Bastian waves her away, looking more irritated than she’s ever seen him. “Oh, and Sai?”
“Yes?” She pauses at the door, Dom already swinging behind to follow her.
“Next time I have to send Dom to stop a phasing marathon that you’ve decided is a good idea just because you can, I’ll have some much better ways to make sure you exhaust yourself, instead of letting everybody bear witness to one of the best kept secrets I have.”
The threat hangs in the air for a moment, and Sai finds it difficult to swallow.
“Of course, sir,” she answers and leaves the room.
Sai drops her backpack onto the ground in the cabin of the new transport and gapes. Bastian certainly wasn’t kidding when he said he was sorry the standard of comfort would be less than on previous assignments.
A holding cage takes up about a third of the craft. There appear to be no conversion possibilities. The front two seats are the usual type—one pilot and one passenger chair. There are two tiny middle benches between those and the cage. The small bathroom in the rear has a convertible shower-toilet cubicle.
Sai puts her hands on her hips, barely noticing the strangely familiar humming beneath her feet. “This is going to be impossible.”
“The passenger side reclines,” Dom says as he climbs into the vehicle.
“That won’t be necessary.” Sai closes off her expression and pulls back again. Small talk isn’t necessary. Nothing but her duty is necessary.
Dom stands in the doorway, arms crossed. “Are you really going to keep this up with me? When it’s just us?”
She can’t hold his gaze for long and makes looking away coincide with moving to the passenger seat. “I need to study the dossier,” is all she says before turning her back on him.
He’s not supposed to be human. So why can she see hurt in his eyes? The dossier stares back at her from the reader’s dull screen, hiding any answers it might possess.
It’s easy enough to tell herself she can keep up appearances. It’s easy enough to be cold and distant when she can leave thirty minutes later and let herself recuperate. But it’s going to be a challenge to be unfriendly for the few days allocated to this mission.
There was a time it would all have been easy. She’d have grabbed a reader and leaned back to read a book, not caring whether or not she might hurt someone’s feelings in the process. After all, that’s how she survived in the training facility.
Sai cringes as she hears Dom prepare the transport for launch. It’s hard not to notice him as he moves about. The tight quarters means he brushes against her back or arms on more than one occasion during the preparation, and she knows her shortness of breath isn’t only related to claustrophobia.
“Might want to buckle in.”
“Why? I’ve never had to do that before,” she grumbles, wrestling with the harness in strangely warm comfort of the seat.
“I’d say just trust me, but right now it’d be redundant.” Dom doesn’t even glance at her. He swings the steering around abruptly before shifting the gears and easing the vehicle out.
Sai gasps in surprise, momentarily forgetting Dom’s snarkiness. The transport moves so smooth and fast, she’s shocked. There’s no way anyone will catch them in this if, for some reason, they have to make a run for it.
Her stomach clenches, and her temples pound. The overwhelming feeling of self-doubt gnaws at her regardless of the confidence placed in her.
She sits in her chair, watching clunkier transports and pieces of the city she’s never seen before fly past. Block after block of identical concrete tower complexes, just like the ones she grew up in.
She leans forward and places her hands on the glass, trying to get a closer look. Not just similar, exactly alike. Sets of four concrete monstrosities with a brief glimpse of green between them as they pass by. She hasn’t been to visit a botanica since she obliterated hers. She hasn’t dared. Advertisements flit in and out of her vision as they race past.
Sai closes her eyes for a second, and the memory washes over her. The fire around her. The crashing. The devastating realization of what she had done. That painful, empty feeling in her gut. The throaty whispers near her. The silhouettes that danced on the edges of her vision clamoring to get rid of her—until he came and took her hand.
Despite everything else, Bastian has been there for her. He’d saved her, regardless of his motivations. And she knows she would be dead without him. He’d chased away the demons, and they’d retreated, scared of him.
Whether it was the police or some other agency, her neighbor, or the strange silhouettes hovering at the edge of her memories—anyone else would have put the world out of danger and done away with her. A normal person would have. But Bastian wasn’t normal.
Neither was Dom. Sai yawns. Behaving distant and controlled takes a toll on her energy. Perhaps letting the new wall down isn’t going to kill her.
The chair is clingy and somehow conforms to her position. Being restless isn’t helping either. She switches her position around until she finally finds a comfortable spot facing Dom.
Screw it then, she says to herself and relaxes for the first time in days, her eyes watching him as she drifts off into the nap waiting to claim her.
It’s not a long nap, but she feels refreshed when she wakes from it and glances down to realize she’s been clutching Dom’s hand.
“Ack!” She jerks back in embarrassment and looks up at him in horror.
“You’re awake.” He flips a few switches, moves a few dials. “I was beginning to need it and didn’t want to wake you.”
She sits back and crosses her arms to gauge him. “Are you serious?”
“Partially. I really...” He glances over at her and shrugs. “...didn’t mind at all.”
She feels her face flushing and scrambles to pick up the dossier that fell from her lap while she slept. It takes long enough to retrieve that the color drains from her face.
“Why did you react this way to your mission, Sai?” Dom asks in that weirdly soft way of his. His tone implies he already knows the answer, but wants her to say it out loud.
She looks at him for a moment and decides to ask a question in return. “Were you aware that my assignments would eventually include killing?” The words are hard to get out, but she needs to know.
“Of course I knew.” It hurts more than she thought it would, until he finishes and adds, “What I didn’t know is that Bastian hadn’t told you.”
“Oh...” Sai sits still for a few moments, running numerous conversations through her head. It wasn’t like Bastian deliberately misled her. Nor did he ever tell her exactly what enforcement entailed.
All he’d left her with was the vague sense that eventually she’d be able to atone for her past and relieve the guilt she lived with every day. Except for the razor rabbit discussion. In his own way, he’d actually asked her if she’d be okay with killing when told to. She’d been the one to read into it what she wanted to hear. But he’d never once lied to her.
“Damn.” Sai buries her head in her hands. “Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn.” She groans and seriously contemplates bashing her head against the dashboard. Why did he leave things so ambiguous?
“Something the matter?” Dom asks, his tone light.
“Shut up,” Sai snaps and immediately feels like a heel for doing so. Bastian told her through omission, in a roundabout way. She should have come straight out and asked him what the rabid bunny reference actually meant.
“That man is a complete ass,” she mutters into her hands, rocking herself back and forth to keep the building hysteria at bay.
“I take it you’ve met Bastian then.” Dom fishes the reader out from under his heel.
Sai groans. “Why on earth didn’t he just tell me?”
“Bastian has a lot to lose. You’ll understand one day.” Dom dangles the reader in front of her until she takes it.
“Do I have to? I’m not sure it’s safe to understand him.”
Dom doesn’t correct her.
They pull to a stop just outside UC 22. The vehicle hovers just high enough for Sai to see into the bowels of the city if she looks through her field binoculars. Children play in the brown, sludgy water that trickles from the pipes overhead. The fading chill in the morning air makes the scene resonate pitifully. Memories threaten to assault her, but Sai gulps down the misery and sets her jaw.
The crumbling remnants of what were once the same type of high-towered concrete apartments her family occupied are barely enough to provide crude shelter from the worst of the elements.
She’d heard about the scandal. The builders cut corners when rebuilding after the meteors struck in 2172, wiping most of the habitable coastal settlements out, shattering cities between them, and destroying the ozone and much of the atmosphere.
They rebuilt along the Mid-American strip despite Oklahoma City being a danger zone. When the cost ate into the profits as they reached the outskirts, many of the builders cut corners and used compounds of lesser durability in the outlying blocks of every city.
Watching the children play in the refuse, clutching threadbare garments to their too-thin frames, their hollow cheeks and sunken eyes easily visible, Sai’s gut clenches and threatens to make her lose her breakfast.