Steal the Stars

by Mac Rogers

“Everyone has assholes.” She tried to shrug.

  “Yeah. They shit all over everything,” I commiserated.

  “It’s boring.”

  “So I’ll yawn.”

  “Love just … always ends up making you ask yourself if it’s worth it, doesn’t it? I guess it’s like any other drug. You get the high, you get the crash.”

  “Was it worth it?”

  She took a sip of her margarita and smiled ruefully. “She had a British accent, so…”

  “Oof. Well. You know I kill people, right? If you wanna give me her name…”

  I regretted the joke immediately. Not just because it’s a truth I genuinely don’t enjoy, but because the silence that followed was her way of saying, “I remember.” That silence draped over us. It lasted long enough for me to consider excusing myself for the night and trying again tomorrow.

  “God,” she said finally. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could, you know, actually catch up on things? Like, I could tell you what was going on in my life and you could tell me what was going on in yours?”

  “Well, I told you about the fucking—”

  “Sex gossip is fine, Dak, but it’s also kid shit.” Kid shit I could lose my life over, I thought, but I followed her. “You and I both know we have plenty of other things we could talk about. The things going on at your”—she swallowed, chose her words carefully—“place of employ? The speed at which things are changing in this town? It’s getting bad, Dakota. I mean, it’s getting not-funny-bad. And now here you are…” Working for them, she didn’t say.

  There was poison in her voice. I know she’d made an effort to keep it from seeping in, but poison doesn’t discriminate.

  Eleven years ago (around the same time Moss landed, actually), Lisa had been a low-level diplomat and Mandarin translator. This would have been a stressful enough job given the relationship between the US and China at the time—a trade war looming over the horizon, disagreements over certain irradiated peninsulas. But then Lisa had agreed to hand off a tablet with what she thought was minor stuff on it to a Chinese intel guy to get herself out of a bind. The next thing she knew, her life was over, though her body didn’t get the memo. Her tiny act of indiscretion kickstarted a clusterfuck among United States intelligence agencies: one wanted to flip her, another one wanted to kill her. Neither wanted to communicate with the other. Unfortunately for the agents assigned to take Lisa out, my team of rangers had been hired to keep her safe. For about six months she and I were practically roommates. Only instead of arguing over dishes, I was fighting off assailants until the situation was finally reassessed. One of the many side effects of our increasingly privatized world: governmental oversight positions went purposefully understaffed. It takes a long time for shit to get straightened out. It’s by design.

  Sierra’s design.

  “Look,” I tried to explain, “I didn’t know where else to go after—”

  “I’m not saying I blame you, Dak—”

  “Everyone who ends up with them is wrecked, it’s—”

  “It’s what they do, I know, it’s—”

  It all tumbled out like snatches of old melodies. So many things having to stay unsaid. So many redactions out of our mouths. How do you explain to someone you used to protect that now you work for the bad guys?

  “There’s so few safe conversations we can have,” she said, reading my mind.

  I nodded. “Even so. Night like this? Girls’ night? It’s sorta like the sex. Had no idea I needed it so bad.”

  She gave me a wry half smile. “You don’t have a, like, a ‘best girlfriend’ back in … whatever sort of facility they have you in?”

  I thought of Patty. Wondered how her first day running solo went. Maybe Moss had woken up and flown everybody to a distant planet and out of my hair. “I do, kinda, but this … not possible with her.”

  “Those Sierra contracts are the stuff of legend.”

  “That, yeah, plus … we’re both kinda broken in the same way? So … I think we’d just make each other bored and sad.” The margarita in my hand was melting, sweating, and starting to taste cloying. Judging by Lisa’s expression, she was starting to feel the same way about hers. We still drank, though. We knew a thing or two about mission commitment.

  “So I haven’t made you bored and sad?” she asked with a rueful grin.

  I shrugged. “I mean, this margarita mix is making me sad.”

  “Give a girl a warning next time. You’re getting the emergency cache.”

  I stood up, stepping in place. “Actually, there’s an emergency cache about to happen in my drawers. This is, like, all water now.”

  “I’d tell you where it is, but there’s no way you don’t still have this layout memorized, is there?”

  “It’s like I never left,” I said. “Be right back.”

  * * *

  I PISSED for like a century. It gave me plenty of time to look around the bathroom and remember.

  That’s where I stood guard while she showered.

  Over there’s where I put the guy’s face into the floor enough times that “face” stopped being the right word.

  I washed my hands and tried to avoid looking at myself too closely in the mirror.

  * * *

  WHEN I stepped back onto the balcony I knew even with her back to me that the party was over.

  “Lemme guess.” I joined her looking out over the garden below. “Me plus this apartment equals every corner filled with memories. It’s sure happening for me.”

  She took another sip from her glass and grimaced at the taste. The neon drink wasn’t a treat anymore, it was a tool. “How many people did you have to kill to keep me alive?” she asked flatly.

  “You want a number?” She nodded. “Four.”

  “Four,” she repeated. “All Americans?”

  My turn to nod. “It was a pissing match. It should have all been reined in by people at the top, and it wasn’t, and there we go.”

  “There we go.”

  “It was my job to protect you, Lisa. And it was their job to kill you. I was just better. We don’t need to—”

  “No, I know. I know.” I could tell she had more to say, so I let her think. “That feeling never goes away, though,” she said at last. “Of being hunted. Of … pursuit. Even when you know it’s over, it’s never really over.”

  I guess I’ll find out soon enough. “But they lost interest. It happens,” I offered. And it was true. It was true. “It wasn’t personal, it was just a job—for everyone. The people assigned to you have probably all been transferred two or three times by now and I guarantee you none of them are bored with where they’re at now. They’ve moved on.”

  She was nodding. “That makes sense. Turnover is the order of the day. Sierra’s the only constant.”

  “Exactly. All hail the lifesaving cracks in the bureaucracy.”

  “But you haven’t forgotten. And I haven’t forgotten,” she said.

  “That’s true.”

  “In fact,” she went on, “I think the reason you’re here tonight is because you were counting on it not being forgotten. I owe you a debt.”

  I prepared myself for what I was about to ask. “One thing would square the books for me.”

  “One thing … but you’ve needed all night to work up to it. Do you want another drink?”

  “Shit, no,” I said.

  She put her glass on the ledge of the balcony and turned to face me.

  “Then I think it’s time you tell me what you need.”

  * * *

  IT WAS the kind of drunk that worked on a slow release. When I left Lisa’s apartment I could have passed a competency exam with flying colors … but by the time I was halfway back walking to my car I felt like I was a UHF channel barely coming in. My ligaments began to waver, desolidify, melt—

  I’m underwater

  Blue and green

  I could have risked driving to a hotel—even trashed I had confidence in my motor skills, if you can pard
on the pun—but the infinitesimal chance of being pulled over, my name being run through a computer that would then be intercepted by someone at Sierra, contradicting everything I’d told them, made the whole idea distinctly not worth it. I poured my liquefying self into the driver’s seat of my parked car.

  I’ll sleep for a little bit, until I’m solid matter again, and then drive my hungover ass to a room somewhere

  First I gotta think

  Did I really say what I think I said

  I did. I know I did.

  But I didn’t use the word. That’s a victory.

  “I need a sit-down,” I’d told her, the two of us standing on the balcony with the muggy, warm air suddenly feeling very heavy around us. “With whoever the guy is.”

  “The guy for what?” she asked, even though she might have known.

  I told her. Crossovers, the lingo had dubbed it.

  “Oh,” she exhaled. “Dak.” It sounded like a eulogy.

  “For two people,” I added.

  “Two people,” she repeated, awash in piteous understanding.

  “Yes. Give whoever handles that my name and tell him to contact me.” I was writing the number to my burner phone on a slip of paper.

  She was nodding, but not in agreement. In comprehension. In sympathy. “So all the sex you’ve been having…”

  “Give him my real name,” I continued.

  “… is not just sex.” She sounded like she was repeating a bad diagnosis she’d just received from the oncologist. I kept talking, before I lost my nerve.

  “Let him look me up. Won’t be much there, but enough to take an interest. Let him know I can pay my way with Premium Content. Let him know I don’t just say things.”

  “Dak, my God, please.” She wasn’t even talking to me. It was a prayer to the universe.

  “I go back Tuesday,” I pressed on. “The meeting will need to happen in the next three days.”

  After a moment, she set her jaw and looked at me. “It would be irreversible. You know that, right?” I stared back at her: yes, I knew it. She sank into herself a little. “I believe you know yourself.” She sighed. “I’ve always thought that about you. So just … answer me and that will be enough. Do you love him this much?”

  “More,” I said. And again, so I could hear it: “More.”

  She nodded, sadly. “Then I’ll make it happen. I’ll get you in a room with the guy. You’ll have to do the rest.”

  But I didn’t really say the word, I thought, as I melted away.

  18

  I WOKE up in my car about five and a half hours later. I was slimy with sweat and as cramped and knotted as a broken fist. The inside of my mouth felt like stale bread and tasted like staler shit and the world looked like it’d had a transparent copy of itself laid over incorrectly, an image double-exposed.

  I’m going to puke my fucking tits off.

  Fucking margaritas.

  I gotta get to a hotel.

  I ran a quick mental check to make sure I was functional enough to drive the streets of D.C. (counting backward from seventeen, an old trick from the service), tried to crack the stiffness out of my back and neck, then started the car.

  * * *

  THE CHIRPY chicken behind the front desk of the first cheap-looking hotel I found was doing a C-plus job of masking her dismay at my raggedy-assness as I approached her. I’m sure she had a mental Rolodex of platitudes to say to someone checking in under all sorts of circumstances but she probably couldn’t tell quite what I was. Hungover? Beaten up? Just naturally disgusting? So she lifted her upper lip in an attempt to smile politely as I told her I needed a room.

  “I’m afraid check-in’s not for another three hours, though,” she clucked.

  “Then point me in the direction of your nearest diner.”

  * * *

  PREPARING FOR a battle means two major considerations: tactics and logistics. Tactics are the fun part—the on-the-ground, semi-improvisatory call-and-response between expectation and reality. Logistics are the nuts and bolts. The inventory. I was still fuzzy on the former (hell, with this hangover I was fuzzy on everything), but I sat in a booth as far away from the door as I could get and tried to nail down the latter.

  The diner was busier than I would have expected this early, probably full of staffers and interns and all sorts of other Washington busybodies fueling up for their various exploits of good and evil. The noise was just below unbearable. The coffee and veggie omelet were dissolving into a poisonous stew in my gut.

  Logistics: I knew I needed to finish up with Lisa—that was most important; nothing could go forward without that. I knew I needed to find time to meet with Nikki. And then … one last meeting, the one I went to that hotel for …

  It’s really fucking risky, Dak.

  But is it too risky?

  What does “too risky” look like if it doesn’t look like that?

  Sometimes you have to run the Charge. Be a madman.

  But it never works.

  That’s why you do it. That’s why it could work.

  That doesn’t make s—

  Okay. I stuffed all the debating voices down. The floor was closed. The plan was forming. The “what”s were falling into place. I just had to figure out all the “how”s.

  “Anything else?” the waiter asked, driving by to refill my coffee.

  I ordered a bearclaw. It sounded disgusting but I still had time to kill. Assuming time didn’t kill me first.

  I looked at all the bodies coming in and out of the diner and wondered if one day you and I would ever get to enjoy a meal together, in a booth, in public, without one or both of us constantly looking over our shoulders.

  A few minutes later, the poisonous humming in my guts, like the Harp, reached a crescendo. I made my way to the bathroom and laid waste to everything.

  I’ll leave them a good tip, I thought.

  * * *

  FINALLY I was able to drop myself onto the tightly made bed of my cheap hotel room. I felt shellacked with grime and sweat. It was hot and stagnant enough that I was even willing to give a cold shower a try.

  * * *

  I DIDN’T hear back from Lisa until Monday morning, the day before I had to leave, but I was fine with that; it gave me two whole days of rest. I stayed in my hotel room—no sightseeing, no potentially visible trips outside unless absolutely necessary. This was a utilitarian adventure, but I might as well try to get some rest.

  Of course, it did mean a lot of things had to go down in one day.

  An hour or so after daybreak, as I finished a particularly strenuous set of crunches on the dingy carpeted floor of my room, my burner phone chimed in my bag. For the briefest of moments my heart lurched at the thought that maybe it was you. But of course it wasn’t you. You knew better than that. And anyway, someone else had this number now.

  A text message from an unknown caller. A single numeral: “9.”

  So that meant 9 a.m., I would meet with Lisa’s contact. There was no location given so that would mean it was back at Lisa’s haunted house.

  Perfect. I’d been planning on meeting Nikki at some point today, so I might as well see if I could squeeze her in first.

  * * *

  I USED the hotel phone to give Nikki a call. It was early, but she’d be up—she was a runner and a churchgoer, both of which meant she rose traumatically early. When she answered the phone, I chirped, “What’s up, Q?”

  She knew right away who I was—she even knew not to use my name just in case anyone was listening. We set up a meet right away, timing it out for the end of morning rush hour. At L’Enfant Plaza, I transferred to the Orange line, squeezing through the crowds until I could find a comfortable place to stand. She spotted me across the car, but we rode a few more stops so she could make her way to me naturally, without pushing.

  When she finally made her way to me:

  “God bless everything: Dak.” She said it quietly enough that I wasn’t sure if it meant “It’s good to see you,�
�� or “I thought I was done with your ass.” But her eyes were bright and excited.

  “Fuck you for not looking a day older,” I muttered back.

  “I don’t get a lot of sun,” she shrugged.

  She asked if I was back with the Seventy-Fifth and I shook my head. My new squad was a more informal one, I told her.

  “As long as it’s for the real stuff,” she intoned.

  To Nikki, “real stuff” meant America, civilians, people who can’t protect themselves. Nikki was the sort of patriotic do-gooder who was really rather pathological about it. Like, she probably drank out of a mug with a flag on it. She cried when she heard the national anthem. I don’t wanna begrudge anyone their crushes, but frankly the amount of goodness in her heart, particularly for the downtrodden and helpless, always made Nikki and America seem like a strange couple.

  I would have preferred not to straight-up lie, but she’d boxed me in a bit. So I set my brow and nodded, looking as serious as I could.

  “Always the real stuff, if I can help it.”

  Neither of us looked at each other while we spoke, only quick glimpses while the other was speaking.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  “Hallucinogenic. Reasonably fast acting. Discreetly applicable.”

  “Would topical work?”

  “Whoa, is that a thing now?” Fuck, I could talk to Nikki all day about the gadgets and toys she had access to as a researcher and developer in the Quartermaster Corps. She actually worked for the same outfit that brought me and my team in to guard Lisa. Whenever we’d needed toys, Nikki was the person to see.

  The loudspeaker interrupted us, though. Next stop was Potomac Avenue. Once we got past the Armory the crowds were gonna thin out.

  “There’s another rush hour at the end of the day,” Nikki said. “Let’s do this again going the other way.”

  “Hotness.”

  The train stopped and she became an entirely different person.

  “Getting out, people! Getting out!” She marauded her way through the walls of people—the real stuff—and I thought, You and me both, sister.

  * * *

  I BUZZED Lisa’s apartment and made my way to her door, where I found a man waiting for me. The no-nonsense way he frisked me and took my bag suggested training; probably PLA Special Forces. When he was done he pointed me to the living room, where Lisa and another man, handsome and tall, were waiting.