by Fonda Lee
Donovan turned the screen back around. Despite their mutual interest and commitment to human Hardening, neither of the men in the photograph had had a protective exocel of his own. A single bullet had ended each of their lives. In the picture, Donovan’s father wore a small, polite smile as he gazed into the camera. His face carried the same serious expression that Donovan remembered so well—a senior statesman projecting competence and authority—but he looked a little more relaxed, less careworn than he’d been shortly before his death.
Donovan shut the screen back inside his locker. At least it was easy to find photos of his father. His mother, on the other hand … he had no pictures of her.
When he and Jet were back in the hallway, a voice called out to them from behind. “Officer Reyes.” Donovan turned. It took him a few seconds to recognize the approaching man. He took a stunned step backward, his exocel layering involuntarily. “Brett?”
Brett—Kevin Warde’s sycophantic sidekick, the Sapience lackey who’d filmed Donovan’s torture and driven him to the Warren in the Black Hills where he’d been held captive—was here. On SecPac property.
Donovan’s hand jerked toward his holstered sidearm. Brett came to an abrupt halt, as if realizing it had been a mistake to approach Donovan while he was heavily armed. Startled by his partner’s sudden reaction, Jet took two steps forward, exocel bristling defensively.
Brett raised his open hands; they shook slightly. “Please … someone told me I could find you here. I know about the mission tonight. I was on the intelligence team that made the call.”
Only then did Donovan remember that “Brett” wasn’t real. The sape he knew had been a cover identity. This man was an undercover SecPac agent, responsible for last year’s destruction of the Warren and for Donovan being rescued in one piece. Now that Donovan studied the person in front of him more closely, it seemed plain that he was not Brett the terrorist stooge. His hair was cut shorter and he had a slight growth of beard, but those were not the changes that made Donovan stare. Gone was the Sapience recruit with the dimly worshipful grin, the bland expression, the quick, slightly twitchy subservience. In his place was an unsmiling, nondescript man with dark civilian clothes and vaguely haunted eyes.
With effort, Donovan dropped his hand from his pistol grip and forced his armor down to a more trusting level. It was still hard to shake his visceral distrust. “Why are you here, Brett?”
The man flinched at Donovan’s tone. “My name’s not really Brett. There was a person named Brett Sullivan who died years ago. They gave me his identity when I went undercover. My real name is Jonathan Resnick.” Even his voice sounded different; slower. He cleared his throat hesitantly. “I … wanted to wish you good luck tonight.”
Jet’s gaze flicked between the two men. “You’re the agent who was passing us intel from inside Sapience last year.” Jet straightened as comprehension dawned on his face. He brought his armor down and stepped forward, extending his hand. “Thank you for saving my partner’s life.”
Brett/Jonathan looked taken aback by Jet’s gesture. He shook the proffered hand wordlessly. Donovan, no less stunned, saw that the backs of the agent’s hands were banded with markings, dark as wet ink. Erze almighty, Brett really was a fellow stripe.
Donovan couldn’t quite bring himself to follow his partner’s lead. His mind kept flicking between his memory of Brett and the not-Brett in front of him. It was like looking at one of those picture puzzles of two images with small dissimilarities. Can You Spot the 5 Differences?
“Could I …” Jonathan said, turning to Donovan, “talk to you alone for a minute?”
When Donovan failed to answer right away, Jet said, “You can talk to both of us, if you want to talk.” His armor stayed at a friendly level, but his tone brooked no argument.
Jonathan’s throat moved in a swallow and he nodded. “I realize it’s been a while, and you probably don’t want to see me. But I finally got the papers retiring me from undercover work. SecPac’s moving me to a new identity. I’ll have proper erze status and a nice, quiet desk job, I hope.” The agent rubbed the back of one of his hands nervously, as if he was still unused to the markings. “I spent two years of my life being someone else, and now I’m not that person anymore. I wake up in the morning and I’m not sure who the hell I am.”
The man’s bitterly glum tone gave Donovan pause. Self-doubt was something he understood. “At least you’re done with all that now,” he said, his voice softening a fraction.
Jonathan raised his eyes to Donovan in sudden pleading. “Please, you have to understand: My mission was to infiltrate Sapience’s main base of operations and get to their senior leadership. SecPac was committed to cracking the cell; my orders were to not compromise my position for anything, not even to save lives. My cover identity had to be airtight. I couldn’t make one misstep anywhere, or they’d kill me. Kevin would kill me.”
Sweat began breaking out on Jonathan’s brow as his words came faster. “Kevin was a paranoid bastard. He was also a damn good operative, and he was … noble in a way, generous to anyone who needed help. But he made me do things, to prove that I was really one of them. He made me film those videos. And I did it, I did whatever he told me to. We—”
Jet cut him off. “That’s enough.”
“Why are you telling us this?” Donovan demanded, his voice abnormally high and coarse.
Jonathan looked frantic. “I want you to know that I’m not him. I’m not that person.” He took a halting step toward Donovan, who backed up involuntarily. “SecPac still needs unmarked operatives, you know. People who can blend in, who can do what exos can’t. But I’m not Brett.”
Jet took a firm step toward the man. “I’ll always be grateful to you. But you should go.”
Though his exocel was thickening uneasily up his arms, Donovan put a hand on Jet’s shoulder and drew his partner back. “Look … Jonathan … I get what you had to do. I don’t think I can accept it, but I get it. You had orders and you had to follow them. No matter how terrible they were or how much you didn’t want to.” Tamping down his screaming discomfort, he stepped past his partner and offered his hand. “I know you deserve your stripes—probably more than I do. You saved my life. And a lot of other lives, with what you did.”
Jonathan’s face loosened a little, not all the way down to Brett’s usual slackness, but to something less tormented. Weakly, “You’re the only one I could say this to. The only one who could understand. I can’t escape the ghosts I’ve created, but maybe I can quiet them.” He clasped Donovan’s hand tightly and shook it. “Please … catch him for me tonight.”
A biting springtime wind was racing across the fully dark sky as Jet and Donovan jogged toward the T15 stealthcopter waiting on the tarmac across the road from SecPac’s main buildings and campus training fields.
“There’s something seriously messed up about that guy.” Jet still sounded agitated. “He had some nerve coming up to you. Erze almighty, that was the last thing you needed right now.”
Donovan slowed, then stopped, causing his partner to do the same. “After the things he’s been through, you can’t blame him for needing closure. Jonathan Resnick’s been working to bring down Warde longer than we have. I get why he felt like he had to be here tonight.”
Jet blew out a resigned breath and came back toward his partner. “You made your point back in the car. I trust you, all right? We’re doing it. We’re going to end this.” He gave Donovan a firm clap on the back, his usual grin only partly forced.
Donovan nodded, and they ran together the rest of the way. Support crew were making final checks on the stealthcopter. “Load up!” Thad shouted over the wind and the rising whine of the spooling micro-fission engines. “Where’s Vic?” he asked, shooting Jet a teasing smirk.
“Not with me.” Jet spread his hands in a gesture of innocence. “She’s your partner, Lowell.”
“She’s over there,” Donovan said, as Vic hurried up and joined them at the T15. Cass, Leon, Luci
us, and Tennyson were already taking their places inside.
“No hanky-panky in there, you two.” Thad smacked Jet on the shoulder. “I know it’ll be dark and cozy inside, but just remember we’ve all got state-of-the-art night vision tech.”
Jet flipped Thad the middle finger as he climbed through the cabin doors of the T15. Vic adjusted the hold on her rifle and paused before following, pursing her full lips in an expression of mock thoughtfulness. “I suppose it would be a breach of protocol if I pushed the mission leader out of a moving stealthcopter?”
“Tate might be pissed—extra paperwork and all,” Donovan agreed, though he shot Thad a grin. Jet and Vic always acted entirely soldierly with each other when on the job, never betraying their off-duty relationship. They really ought not to be surprised that their friends took to teasing them mercilessly about their out-of-uniform activities.
Donovan and Thad leapt in after their partners, wedging into the dark, cramped space. As soon as everyone was inside and seated, the doors slammed shut and the stealthcopter rose straight into the air with a deep vibrating thrum, ascending so quickly that Donovan felt, as usual, as if he’d left his stomach on the tarmac. A few seconds later, the T15 slowed its rise and began speeding south. Donovan couldn’t see anything in the pitch-black of the cabin, but he knew they were flying out of Round Three and racing, nearly silent, over the sprawling lights of the densely inhabited Ring Belt, which stretched for miles outside the walls of the circular city.
It took less than thirty minutes to reach Denver. Not enough time to zone out or sleep, but just enough time to start feeling overly warm and restless in the tight quarters. Donovan kept his armor at a low, resting state to save energy and concentrated on taking deep, steadying breaths. The encounter with Brett—dammit, Jonathan—had shaken him up more than he’d let on with Jet. He was grateful the immediacy of the mission wouldn’t give him time to mull. At times like these, when he was forced to focus on impending danger, he felt capable and normal, deeply and reassuringly connected to his fellow stripes. In erze.
“Three minutes.” The message from the cockpit piped up in their comm unit earbuds. There was a rustle of tight movement as people shifted, readying themselves. Donovan made sure his E201 was securely attached to the front of his body before opening the stealthcopter door and sliding the fast-roping bar into place. He checked to make sure the ropes were secure, then leaned out slightly. The airstream blasted his face as the streets and buildings of Denver passed underneath the T15. In the distance, the Rocky Mountains loomed, a long stretch of jagged dark mass on the nearly invisible horizon. Much closer, but still appearing like a small model in a diorama, Donovan could see the magnificently lit Capitol Building, surrounded by the artificially lush green lawns of Restoration Park.
Donovan had visited Denver several times. His father had maintained an office in the Capitol and had traveled between it and the Round frequently. Much of this city, the Prime Liaison had explained to him, had been destroyed in the War Era, but after the establishment of the Accord of Peace and Governance, the closest major human city to Round Three had been rebuilt as the capital of West America. There had been disagreement about how much the Capitol Building ought to reflect human versus zhree architectural styles. The final structure was a hybrid—the wings of the building were long and low and fronted with straight white columns, but the central structure rose in a cluster of connected spires like the Towers in the Round. The largest, central one was topped incongruously with a golden dome: a historic relic, hundreds of years old, salvaged from the rubble of the war.
Donovan pulled his gaze away from the cityscape and focused on the tracts of suburb below: houses with yards and fences, shopping centers, office buildings, parking lots, stretches of green space and sparse woodland. On the surface, the capital city was a burgeoning metropolis, a shining testament to human resilience and the proud result of more than a hundred years of peace and partnership. But an ongoing war simmered underneath, as it did everywhere else. Donovan caught sight of their target: a two-story redbrick house behind a high, wrought iron fence. None of the lights were on.
The vibrations of the T15’s engines changed as it came to a hover over the property. Donovan tossed one rope down; Vic threw the other. “Go, go, go!” Thad’s shout rang double—in the confines of the cabin and in Donovan’s earbud. He went to full armor instantly, his exocel knitting the near-impenetrable microscopic lattices that raced from node to node over his body like a second skin. Jet slapped his shoulder, and Donovan grabbed the rope and dropped toward the ground below. The rope whipped between his hands as he descended in a controlled plummet. He caught a whiff of the distinctive smell of scorched panotin—the friction from the rope burning the surface layer of his armored hands. It didn’t hurt him, but it didn’t smell good.
He hit the lawn almost at full speed, bending his knees as he connected with the ground, his exocel shuddering up his legs and spine in a wave as it absorbed and dissipated the force of the impact. Donovan flipped his night vision goggles down over his eyes, hefted his E201, and sprinted toward the house, knowing that Jet would be dropping right behind him and on his heels. As he ran, a harsh spotlight beam fell onto the building from the hovering stealthcopter, bathing the roof and curtained windows with stark white light. “This is SecPac!” an amplified voice called down from the T15. “Come out of the house with your hands up!”
Donovan took the three steps up to the front entrance and pressed himself against the wall next to the doorframe. Jet and Cass stacked up next to him. Leon performed a quick check for explosives, then pounded on the door with his armored fist. “SecPac!” Leon’s command was loud and harsh, bearing no resemblance to his usual soft voice and calm demeanor. “Open the door and surrender peacefully. No one will get hurt. This is your final warning.” No sound or movement from within.
Leon tried the door handle while Cass covered him. It was locked and dead-bolted. Leon clasped a hand over his fist, thickening his armor, then swung his arms down like a sledgehammer. He left a battered knob, but the solid-metal door didn’t budge. “Going explosive,” he announced, pulling a palm-sized breaching charge from his vest pocket and peeling the backing off the adhesive strip. Leon slapped it to the door, pushed the detonator into place, and retreated to the wall next to Cass. Donovan and Jet backed up several feet. Donovan counted five slow seconds in his head.
The explosion blew the door off its hinges and sprayed shards of wood and metal everywhere. Donovan didn’t wait for the debris to clear; bits of shrapnel glanced off his arms and shoulders as he plowed through the smoke-filled opening, breaking right and taking first position in the corner of the room. He felt no fear or anxiety—just a single-minded desire to get the job done. It was a good feeling, easier to handle than a lot of other ones.
He expected to be greeted by enemy gunfire and was mildly surprised when nothing happened. He was in a large sitting room adjoining the entryway. The gritty, monochromatic vision of his night goggles showed him the shapes of furniture and a staircase, and the figures of Jet, Cass, and Leon, who’d flowed into their places right after him and were sweeping field of fire through their rifle sights. No one else moved. No sapes. “A1 breached,” Donovan said into his comm unit. “No contact, no shots fired.”
“B1 breached,” came Vic’s voice, sounding slightly concerned. The other four team members were handling the guesthouse and the outbuilding. “No contact here either.”
“C building is secure,” Lucius said. “Storage. Plenty of supplies.”
“So where the hell are the sapes?” Tennyson growled. Donovan wondered the same thing. Were they all hiding? It wasn’t like Sapience to give up without a fight. While talk was going on over the comms, he and Jet kept moving, clearing the ground floor room by room. Cass and Leon took the stairs to the second level carefully, wary of ambush. “Hey, Kevin Warde, come out!” Cass called. “How about you, Javid? You cowering up there?”
“Coffee machine still running,�
�� Jet murmured as they swept through the kitchen. Donovan checked over a small bedroom. The sheets were unmade; there were clothes strewn at the foot of the bed. People were living here, all right.
“Keep searching,” Thad ordered. “B building is now secure. We’re headed your way.” Donovan heard the low bass thrum of the T15 landing outside the gates of the property.
Cass and Leon met Donovan and Jet back in the foyer. “Basement,” Donovan said, and began to descend the stairs to the one area of the house that hadn’t been cleared yet. He took a few steps before Leon reached out and grabbed him by the vest, yanking him back so sharply that Donovan nearly fell onto his teammate. Leon’s eyes were wide with alarm; he pointed down to the foot of the stairwell. At first Donovan didn’t see it. Then he did: strands of nearly invisible fishing line strung across the final stair, attached to wires running along the baseboards and up the walls, connected to bundles of explosives lashed to the basement’s support beams.
A cold sweat broke out on Donovan’s neck. Leon had saved his life, maybe all their lives. If Donovan’s boot had snagged the trip wire, it would have blown up the entire house and caved the basement in on them. Anyone not killed in the explosion would be buried in the rubble. The sapes had been clever: killing exos one at a time was hard. Better to trap them all in a narrow stairwell and drop the entire building on them. With that brutal realization came another: They knew we were coming.
“Erze almighty,” Jet said, shaken. They retreated up the stairs.
“I could use Lucius over here,” Leon said into his comm. Leon and Lucius were the best on the team when it came to explosives. A minute later, the two of them were crouched on the stairs, examining the deadly setup and discussing. After some nodded agreement between them, Lucius calmly bladed his thumb and forefinger and pinched one of the wires, severing it. He cut another wire, snipped the trip line, and stood back up. Raising their rifles again, he and Leon descended into the basement, stepping slowly and staying alert for more booby traps. Cassidy and Tennyson watched their partners anxiously from the top of the stairs.