by Joe Hart
Lee glances around, his senses returning as if he is waking. He stands in the center of an intersection a block from the Space Needle, its dark shape looming like something out of one of his father’s stories. He must’ve walked here instead of up the hill without thinking. The urge to climb the Needle’s stairs and stand in the clean, rain-washed air is strong, and the thought scares him because he doesn’t know what he would do once he reached the top of the tower.
Instead he turns east and slogs up through the drenched streets, passing into and out of the sickly light cast by the odd-powered lamp. Hiraku’s guards stand on nearly every corner, most not visible until he is within a stone’s throw of them, their dark clothes blending in with the night. They watch him warily as he trudges by, knowing if it were an hour later they would be escorting him home at gunpoint since the curfew is strictly enforced.
He ponders the conundrum of the munitions factory as he slogs onward. There is a part of him that doesn’t care if Hiraku and his army raid the ARC. After what Reaper and the rest of those in charge have done, they deserve to be gunned down. But another part of him remembers the friendships that were made in his years growing up in the facility. Other clerics’ sons, many members of the engineering department—they are decent men and boys, unaware of the people and purpose they serve.
And if Hiraku gets the ammunition he wants, they will all perish. For nothing.
But no matter which angle he approaches the matter from, there is no solution. None without bloodshed.
A sound stops Lee in the middle of the street and he glances around.
The nearest soldier stands nearly a hundred yards away beneath a streetlamp, large hood pulled up obscuring his features. Lee looks the other way, but the road is dark and empty without a soul in sight. The sound had been close and strange. Almost like a scratch and a yelp of pain.
Lee looks up into the rain, sees he’s standing under the city’s derelict monorail system, its twin beams two darker ribbons against the leaking sky. For some reason he takes a step back, the hairs on his arms rising as if statically charged.
There is something above him on the closest rail.
21
Zoey steps from the last stair onto the third level of the building.
Many of the structure’s windows are missing or shattered, the remaining jagged edges like broken teeth. Wind stirs garbage that layers the floor, casting cardboard containers across marble in a hissing whisper.
She turns in a circle. Water drips from a cracked pane of glass overhead. There is a shout somewhere outside on a distant street. Then only the night and the patter of rain.
She moves forward, satisfied she is alone. The east side of the building is open to the weather and she stops at the drop to the street some twenty feet below. A sagging steel grate leading out over open air extends before her.
And beyond that, the rail.
When she first spotted it from the street below, it looked like one of the railroads they’d crossed many times while driving, only hoisted high above the streets and much larger and without any ties between the two beams. Now, standing beside it, she sees that it is even wider than she first estimated.
Glancing up at the surrounding buildings, she searches their roofs for the outlines of men stationed there. She sees none, but it is hard to tell for sure through the weather, though she reminds herself it is to her own advantage as well.
Below, a guard on the next corner paces out into the street, and a second later he is lit by headlights that brighten until a vehicle appears beside him. Another guard climbs out of the passenger seat and the first takes his place. The truck accelerates away, leaving the new man in the prior’s position. Zoey studies the nearest rail. It’s plenty wide enough to walk on, and if she moves slow she’ll be able to stay low and hopefully out of sight from the guards below. She eyes the rail again before looking down at her shoes. Quickly she unlaces them and puts them in her pack, the wet floor chilling her already-cold feet through her socks.
She takes two steadying breaths before moving.
With a leap she crosses the empty air between the building and the rail.
She lands solidly and crouches, the rain resuming its assault on her back. Without waiting she begins to run, bent over and taking little steps.
The guard on the right turns toward her and she halts, sinking down to her knees. He scans the area beneath the rails and continues to pivot, looking back the way she came.
Zoey rises and runs again.
Past the end of a towering skyscraper.
Over another guard who stands directly below her path, a rain hood covering his head.
Trees streak by in the dark, their branches so close she could touch them.
Her socks squish wetly with each step, but the sound is barely audible to her ears with the rain pounding down.
Another man steps out from beneath an awning across the street and for a terrifying moment she thinks he’s seen her. He freezes, hands moving to his slung rifle as she halts, drawing her handgun out.
He leans back, head coming up, looking straight at her.
And sneezes twice in quick succession.
She sags with relief as he shakes himself and treads to the street, spitting a wad of phlegm into the gutter.
Then she’s up and moving again, noting a man’s outline on the roof of the building beside her destination.
She slows, unsure if he is facing her or not, and comes to a stop over the center of a street. Thankfully there are no lit streetlights here, the closest one nearly a block up the hill to her right.
She waits, a cramp beginning to tighten in her hip and upper thigh, the low throb of pain in her back like a chiding voice. The man doesn’t move from his post, and she’s sure now that he doesn’t see her or he would’ve shot by now, but she still doesn’t know which way he’s facing.
Ahead, the nearest cover is a large tree with skeletal branches reaching high above the beams. If she can make it there without being seen she can climb down it to street level.
Zoey watches the man’s outline. The longer she stays here the more likely she’ll be seen.
Move.
But even as she starts to rise, she hears it.
The scratch of boots below.
She freezes, halfway between kneeling and standing, and sees the figure closing in on the street beneath her. Watches the figure draw near as the cramp that was only a mild threat before flexes into a sickening knot of pain.
Her leg trembles and her sock slips off the rail.
Steel bites into her shin and her sprained wrist flares bright with pain as she catches herself. She teeters, unable to keep the quiet cry of pain from escaping her lips.
Zoey hugs the beam, praying the man below didn’t hear. But now there is nothing but the rain. No footsteps drawing away.
He’s stopped underneath her.
22
Lee studies the shape above him on the monorail.
It is only a slight bulge in the steel, unmoving, unchanging, but he still feels the cold gaze on him, making his stomach turn. If there were only lightning along with the rain he would be able to see that it is some debris or other harmless object on the rail, but here in the dark with the storm pounding down he is sure he is near death.
He tries to make his legs work but they are frozen in place, the seconds stretching out into hours as he stares, trying to discern if the shape just moved or not.
23
Zoey brings the pistol over the side of the beam, centering on the figure below.
If he yells or makes a sudden move she’ll have to shoot him, she won’t have any other choice. She turns her head enough to see the guard on the building’s roof has disappeared. The next closest man is a hundred yards away. She can be gone by the time he hears the shot and comes running.
Rain drips off the gun’s barrel and her finger tightens on the trigger.
24
Lee tenses, every sense screaming for him to run.
&
nbsp; He’s about to sprint forward, away from the rails, when a shout comes from his right.
“Hey! What’re you doing?” The guard from down the street stalks toward him, flashlight shining in his face. “It’s almost curfew. You’re not supposed to be on the streets.”
“I’m sorry, I’m just—” Lee glances back up to the beam.
The shape is gone.
He glances left and right, searching the rails but there’s nothing there.
“Hey asshole, I’m talking to you.” The words are punctuated with a rough shove and he stumbles to the side. “The hell are you looking at?”
“I don’t know. Something on the rail,” Lee says, pointing upward.
The soldier shines his light across the beam. Only smooth concrete and glistening steel. “You drunk?”
“No, I’m just trying to go home. My house is right up the street.”
“Then get there.”
The guard’s radio crackles. “Everything okay, Vince?”
He looks up at the nearest building top across the street to the figure standing there. “Yeah. You see anything on the monorails?”
A pause. “Clear. No movement.”
“Good.” The soldier eyes Lee again and makes a shooing gesture. “Get going.”
Lee nods, giving the rails a last cursory glance before jogging under them and up the hill toward his house, leaving the guard to study the beams before returning to his post.
25
Zoey drops to the ground beneath the tree, wet bark covering her hands and her pants.
Her lungs burn and her shin aches from where she fell. The man below her doesn’t know how close he came to death. When the other guard called out, her finger nearly twitched on the trigger, but instead she used the distraction to move and was climbing down the tree before she could hear any of their conversation.
She scans the area, picking out the shape of another man down the sidewalk, sheltering beneath an eave. He’s facing away from her, and she jogs across the street, into an alley without hearing any cries of alarm.
The alley is long with gaps between each of the buildings it threads behind. Zoey slows at each one of them, glancing out to gather her bearings. She’s close.
The next gap shows her a slice of the structure across the street, and she stops.
There it is. Seattle Medical Center.
It is at least a dozen stories tall and made of brick. The uppermost windows glow with light while the levels below are dark and streaked with rain. The main entrance is composed of glass, only half of it visible to her. Two men stand before it, rifle barrels pointing at the ground.
Finally, after all of the traveling and risk, she’s here. One hand goes unconsciously to her pants pocket, fingertips tracing the outline of the blood vial there. She sidles into the narrow gap, venturing as close to the street as she dares.
The hospital’s sides are nestled close to the neighboring buildings, and she sees no stairs or ladders. Someone moves past a window on the top floor, their shadow there and gone. Instinct tells her that is the place she has to get to. Up there she will learn the truth about the child she saw in Vivian’s video message.
She will find out if she truly is a mother.
Zoey’s about to move to a different vantage point to see if there is another access to the medical center when a figure appears in the street, heading up the hill. Trudging is a more apt word. His head is down and he’s soaking wet. It takes her a second to realize he must be the man who was underneath the rails a few minutes before. He doesn’t appear armed and the guards at the hospital doors watch him enter the halo of dim light thrown by the nearest working streetlamp.
He’s there, framed for half a second before moving out of her line of sight.
And in that moment it’s as if someone’s struck her.
The solid wall beside her tilts as she presses a hand to it.
Her mouth goes dry.
It can’t be. Not in a thousand years. She’s dead wrong. Mistaken. A trick of the rain and bad light. A hundred different assurances run through her mind as she wheels back into the main alley and sprints to the next gap nearly bowling over a stack of pallets before ducking into a side lane that’s cluttered with large cans and humped shapes beneath torn tarps.
She slows, then stops, hanging back a dozen feet from the sidewalk, nerves tingling because she’s too close and being foolish because it can’t be, it can’t be—
And then he is there, walking faster now, head still down and hands shoved in his pockets.
It is almost too much for her and she shrinks back, stumbling on something under her feet and catching herself on the wall, because she would know his outline anywhere, know his walk and how he holds himself, even after all the months apart.
One hand comes up to cover her mouth, maybe to keep herself from speaking, but it fails miserably.
“Lee,” she says, and watches as he continues through the rain.
26
The blue house with the white shutters is cool and quiet when he steps inside, shaking himself of the rain that’s soaked him through.
Lee closes the door, dripping and shivering, and leans against it for a moment. His muscles are still trembling and he can’t escape the feeling that burrowed inside him beneath the monorail. It was as if a cold hand had closed around his heart, sending frigid knowledge through his veins that he had been on the brink of something terrible.
He pushes from the door and strips off his dripping jacket, as well as the shirt beneath, and moves into the laundry room. Throwing the clothes inside the dryer he sets the machine and turns it on.
Something thumps deeper in the house.
His hand fumbles to shut the dryer off, his jacket buttons clanking a last time before everything is quiet again. What had the sound been? Something falling over? Lee steps into the hallway and peers down its length into the dark kitchen. Only a faint strip of light falls across the floor from the streetlamp outside. Beyond the kitchen is the living room, which he can’t see at all, and past that the rear entry.
He moves silently down the hall and into the kitchen, listening intently the whole way. Had he imagined the sound? A residual jangling of his nerves now that he’s alone in a home that isn’t truly his own?
The floor creaks in the darkness of the living room.
Lee’s heart seizes as something moves there, a swirling of shadow.
His hand fumbles in the nearest drawer and he ignores the biting pain of the knife blade as it slides across the pad of one finger before he grasps the handle and draws it out.
“Who’s there?” he asks, pointing the tip of the knife at the dark.
A figure takes shape at the border of the two rooms, and suddenly his weapon feels woefully insignificant.
“Who are you?” he says, trying to muster the courage to step forward. Instead he reaches out and flicks the light switch beside him.
27
Zoey stands with her hands at her sides, rain dripping from her fingertips as the light washes over her.
She absorbs the look on Lee’s face as he sees her, this particular moment one she’s imagined more than once, more than a hundred times. Slowly she reaches up and pulls the hat from her head.
His eyes narrow and his expression changes.
Confusion.
Shock.
Realization.
The pitiful knife he holds drops to the floor.
“Zoey?” he whispers. She says nothing, only watches him, watches and wonders what he is truly feeling. Lee takes an unsteady step forward. Then another. “Are you . . . are you here?” His eyebrows draw down below the hair that’s plastered against his forehead. His hand reaches out to her, reaches for her face.
Zoey winds back a fist and punches him. Hard.
The blow catches him on the side of the jaw and he is completely unready for it. His head rocks back and she feels his teeth bite into her knuckles.
Lee stumbles away from her, feet trying to keep him upri
ght. He bounces off the cupboard behind him and steadies himself, bringing a hand up to the split in his lip that seeps blood.
“Zoey, what—” But that’s all he has time to say as she launches a kick at his chest.
“How could you?” she says as her foot connects and sends him reeling back over the countertop. He lets out a short cry and flips to the floor, landing mostly on his feet.
“Zoey!”
“How could you leave?” she says, the unbidden anger overwhelming her. All of the days without him coalesce and fill her up.
The loneliness.
The abandonment.
The love.
She throws another punch that he ducks.
His hands come up, palms out, as he backs into a side hallway. “Zoey, please. Stop. Listen to me.”
“I did listen to you. I listened to your voice in my head for the past seven months.” She kicks at him again, and he dodges away.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry I left. I had to.”
His words are like a bellows to the fire inside her. She makes an inarticulate sound and swings her fist again, catching him on the temple. Lee’s eyes widen and he sags against the wall before shaking his head. He reaches out to her.
“Stop, Zoey. Please.”
She’s beyond words, only movement now, blind fury driving her forward.
She tries to throw a knee into his stomach, but he catches her leg and pulls her forward, wrapping her in a tight hug.
“Zoey. Please.” She struggles, trying to shrug him off, break the hold he has on her, but in the distant regions of her mind she knows she can’t, because the hold goes far beyond physical.
She tries to get her arms free but he clamps her tighter to him, and she can smell his skin, wet from the rain, intoxicating even as she lunges to the side, desperate to be free, to keep the anger alive and burning.
Lee loses his balance and they collapse to the floor. He lands on top of her, pinning her to the floor, his breathing harsh in her ear.