by Martha Adele
He looks to the ground, blushing. As I walk away, he calls out to me, “Do you think that, um, that I’ll get to see you again?”
I look back to him and shrug with a smile. “Maybe.”
With that as my final word, I walk out of the park and a few miles through the city to get back to the Fabric Room. When I enter the building, the familiar chime of the bell rings; and I make my way over to Zane.
“Did you get it?” he asks me.
I nod and earn a large smile from him.
Zane points to the entrance and heads to one of our back rooms. “Go ahead and lock the doors and close the blinds.”
Once I close the shop down for the night, I follow him to the back to find a room full the computer systems, with only one screen that Zane is really paying attention to. He logs into some sort of program and runs different systems and numbers, none of which I understand. After a few minutes of downloading and processing, the screen we are looking for finally pops up as a wavepad.
“Here we go.” He types in a few different things as I watch the sound waves move and wonder what I am missing.
The speakers scream to life with the sound of a mob of news reporters, shouting questions at Chancellor Oswald. “What do you know about the assassinations in State Three?”
“What do you have to say about the accusations that you are part of this?”
“How do you plan to deal with this?”
“Are these the acts of Amiable rebels?”
“What about all the missing citizens?”
Oswald’s voice speaks over all the others not loudly but with a quiet, confused, and concerned voice. “What? Assassinations? Missing citi—”
His question to the news reporters cause them all to shout as loud as they can, furthering their questioning. Zane and I listen to the sounds of his bodyguards forcing people out of the way so that they can take him into the capitol building, and we wait for something we can use.
“So,” Zane breaks the silence between us as we listen to the guards force Oswald into the building, “where did you put the microphone?”
“Under his coat collar,” I tell him.
“Yeah? How’d you get it there?”
A quick smile rises back up on my face as I think back to Chancellor Oswald catching me as we fall. As he approaches the age of forty, I never expected him to feel that firm or be that quick to react.
“Thank you,” Oswald says. We listen to him march through the building and walk into a room. His coat shuffles against the microphone as he clears his throat. “Riley, Madden.” Another shuffle takes over as, I assume, Oswald takes his coat off. “What is going on?”
Zane looks to me and writes down on a sheet of paper, sliding it over to me. “Jonathan Riley and Phillip Madden. Two of Oswald’s advisors.”
One of the voices speaks up, “What are you talking about?”
“There is a mass of news reporters outside, and they all—”
Oswald is cut off by another voice, “Yes, Ozzy, there is always a mass of news reporters outside. This is why you are asked to take a car out of the fence rather than walk it.”
“No, no,” Oswald resumes, “you don’t understand. They were asking me about … about assassinations and … and missing citizens. Have either of you heard about these?”
We watch the sound waves disappear for a moment as the three men wait for an answer. One of the two men speaks up, “No. I haven’t heard anything about that.”
“Neither have I,” the other voice says.
“Well, I surely haven’t.” Oswald’s voice fades out as he finishes with the men. “I am going to go and see what is going on.”
Zane and I look to each other, not sure what to make of this. Isn’t Oswald the one orchestrating all this? Oswald and Wilson?
“The plan can’t take place soon enough.”
“Just wait, Riley,” Madden says to him. “Have patience. We have waited this long. We can wait one more week.”
Riley groans, “I don’t know if I can stand him one more week. He is so ridiculously clueless.”
“Just one more week. Seven days exactly. We’ll have him then.”
Logan
Third mission.
This is the third mission I’ve been on.
Each of them has been at night.
Night.
The only time that people can’t see me.
I continue to wear my suit through the town, which allows me to move much easier than I feel I have ever been able to move before.
The only thing I don’t appreciate about this suit is how it seems to trap me with myself. I can hear my wheezing much more clearly than I can without the suit on; but when I pointed it out to Elloise, she told me that I was the only one who could hear it better, which I guess is a good thing.
No one else should be subjected to my wheezing. It is a horrid noise.
I continue to follow a man through the backstreets of the city, creeping around and avoiding being seen by anyone. I have been following him for about ten minutes now, and he still hasn’t noticed me. My assignment is to tranquilize him and then place the tracker they gave me on him. After doing that, they will come and get the man.
This isn’t a bad mission.
I was told that I wouldn’t be assigned to do any bad missions. I would only do the ones that I would be comfortable with. So Elloise gave me a choice of three missions. This was the only one that made sense. The other two choices involved me killing people. When I asked Elloise what those people did to deserve the death sentence, she said she didn’t know. But when I asked her what this man did, she said that he was a child abductor and has been caught on camera multiple times abducting children. They want to find out where those children are being held, so they need me to get the man alive so they can question him.
This is something I can do.
This is a good mission.
A good assignment.
I would take on this assignment even if I wasn’t being forced to. This man does horrendous things and has to be stopped.
I continue to stalk the man until he makes his way out of town. I take my time, keeping my distance as I follow him and, every now and then, reaching up to Sam’s gem to make sure it is still there. I have it tucked within the suit, but the pain of it pressed up against my skin is something I only want to bear when I have to, so I leave it out dangling until I get close enough to actually finish my assignment.
When we are out of the town’s main area, I tuck the jewel back into my suit and pull the pistol out Elloise gave me. I have it loaded with the tranquilizers, aimed and ready to fire, but I wait. I wait until he turns around, away from me, and toward the woods.
The moment he attempts to change his pace to a sprint, I shoot him in the spine. He falls face-first onto the ground and slides, having only his fluffy brown hair to land on as comfort. Pulling my tracker out of my pocket, I press the button, head over to him, and place it inside of his jacket.
When I get back to the headquarters, I use the ladder on the side of the building and sneak in through my window just as I have been for the last three missions. When I enter back into my hospital room, I pull Sam’s necklace out and close the window. They know not to have the air-conditioning on in my room; so I pull my mask off and take a deep breath, feeling the relief of not having to listen to my wheezing magnified. When the air in the room hits my face, it hurts but not nearly as bad as it used to. With the constant strings of medication Elloise has me on, I am managing to deal with the pain.
I wait in my room for over an hour before Tony enters with Elloise. I immediately rise to my feet and face him. I know I could have completed the mission sooner, but I wanted to make sure to keep him out of the busy part of the city. I didn’t want anyone who wasn’t supposed to see him to find him.
Tony stares at me for a moment befo
re a smile rises on his face, relieving the tension that was strangling me more than my shriveled skin. He comes over to me and nods. “That was exceedingly … adequate.” He turns to Elloise and gestures to the door. “Ms. Holly, please go retrieve our new recruit something to eat and tell Young I will meet him in the commons in half an hour or so.”
Elloise nods to him and leaves the room. By the time she comes back, I feel a small sense of pride and yet inadequacy. I could have done better. But at the same time, if Tony, a man who knows I’m worthless, thinks I did an okay job, then I must have done well.
When Elloise returns with a tray of food, Tony leaves the room. She straps me back into the IV machine and allows me to eat with a small sense of satisfaction.
And yet, a sense of hatred.
Hatred for myself.
I could have done better.
June
If this plan of ours doesn’t succeed, there is no going back. The only way that anybody will ever be safe again is if we get to Chancellor Oswald first. His advisors have all plotted to kill him; and if they take over after he is gone, there will be nobody who can stop it.
After listening to their plan, we have come up with a plan of our own. We have run through the different scenarios and come up with answers and ways to work with each and every one of them. It has been a week since we found out what the advisors plan is, and we have finally come up with a foolproof way to save the chancellor.
“So,” Zane says to Van and me once more, “Van will have already taken out the driver and taken his place. She will be waiting with the car at the designated spot. At this designated spot, there will be four buildings surrounding us. I will be waiting behind the office, and June will be waiting on top of the Laundromat with the gun, ready to take out Oswald’s so-called guards. Once June takes out the guards, I will force Oswald into Van’s car, and we will drive him back to our interrogation room.”
“Exactly,” she confirms.
“And I will meet you two in the IR after disposing the guards’ bodies by dumping them behind the office and covering them with the tarp we have planted there.”
Van looks down to the aerial-view map and chuckles. “Will you be able to drag them behind the building by yourself?”
I can’t help but raise an eyebrow. A million snarky remarks and comments come to mind, but I swallow them all and nod.
Van looks from Zane and back to me. “Then let’s get ready.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Logan
In my room, I wait. I wait, pacing back and forth. I love being able to move freely with the skeleton and my suit, but I don’t like to be kept waiting. I prefer being in my room over being out where people can see me, but sometimes I just really feel the need to get out.
When Tony finally arrives, he enters the room with a serious expression, immediately causing me to think I have done something wrong. The last mission he had me do was days ago. Was that because it was only adequate? Is my adequacy something that is going to get me in trouble? I can’t have them take in any more civilians to torture.
“Mr. Forge, your assignment for tonight is something much more important than any other assignment we have given you.”
“What do you mean?” I take a deep breath and ask him in my gravelly voice, “Do I not get to choose?”
He shakes his head at me. “Not tonight. I have a good feeling you will be comfortable with this job.” Tony holds out his cuff and brings up a three-dimensional map, starting at one of the shops in the city. “Do you know where this is?”
I nod.
“Then watch carefully.” Tony slowly moves the map through the city, showing me which roads to take and how to get to my mission. When he finally stops, it lands in between four separate buildings in an obscure part of the town. “Here is where I need you stationed tonight. Your assignment is to protect Chancellor Oswald as he changes from one car to the next.”
I look back to Tony. “Where is he going?”
“That is confidential. All you are being told to do tonight is to make sure he gets from one car to the other safely. Got it?”
I shrug but am slapped across the face with a terrible amount of force. Not even the suit can help mask the amount of pain his slap brought upon my skin. Holding myself off the ground with my elbow, I nod violently. “I got it.”
Tony’s head cocks, and he gives me a small smile. “Good.”
Quickly, I scurry out of the window, down the ladder, and out of the area. With a deep burning still in my cheek, I shed a few tears, causing even more pain. The salt streams down my face under the mask and feels like acid rolling down my skin. I quickly wipe them off with the fabric on my cheek and continue to the checkpoint.
When I arrive, I hide behind one of the buildings and wait. I see no vehicles at first; but just as one of them pull up to the rendezvous point, something else catches my eye.
Something peeks off the roof of one of the buildings.
June
Everything is set and ready to go.
I have my gun perched and held on my shoulder, ready to take out the guards as soon as they exit the vehicle. So I wait.
I wait in that position for over half an hour.
When the second vehicle pulls up beside Van’s, I tense up, ready for the plan to commence.
I listen to the sound of the ground crackle underneath the approaching car’s tires and the whistling of the wind as it blows against my face wrap. The dark and flowy fabric blows in the wind in all directions, but never once do I let it get in the way of my sight.
When the two guards exit the van, Oswald follows. After the chancellor gets out, he is followed by two more guards. I allow my sights to find their way onto the first guard’s head but am slightly startled by a noise of something moving behind me.
Someone is moving behind me.
I have to move quickly.
I shoot the driver of the first van and off every guard in seconds. I watch the horror on Oswald’s face as his guards all drop dead around him followed by the shock he expresses when Zane rushes him into the new vehicle.
Spinning around, I pull the pistol out of its holster and aim it at the large black figure running directly at me.
Logan
I swing my leg up and over the person’s legs, forcing the hand holding their pistol onto the ground. My boot stands on their wrist until they release the gun, but I am quickly caught off guard by the person swinging their legs behind mine and then kicking me in the torso.
I stumble back but return to the person in a matter of milliseconds. When she rises to her feet, it becomes apparent that I am fighting a woman about a foot shorter than me but seemingly almost as heavy as me. I leap forward to try to get the pistol from the ground, but I am forced to dodge her kicks and punches. The third punch she throws lands right on my throat, causing me to stumble back once more. The tightness of my skin along with its sensitivity causes me to believe I may have just had my throat torn apart.
Forcing myself to act quickly, I kick the pistol off the roof and manage to get by her to the other gun. Just as I kick it off the side of the building, I see her out of the corner of my eye coming at me; so I swing a hit at her. She manages to grab my wrist, squeezes it tightly, and twists my arm to a position I cannot return from. I immediately shout in pain as her grip burns my skin but am silenced when her leg swings up to kick me in the throat.
I manage to block her kick with my left hand and pull her leg out from under her, causing her to fall to the ground and giving me a moment to recoup from the burning. I watch her hop back to her feet and stare at me. Some of her dark hair peeks out of her face mask, along with a small amount of her cheeks and eyes.
The familiarity of this figure causes me to focus too much on trying to figure out who she is and results in her lunging at me before I get the chance to do the same. The sound of my wheezing as we
throw punches and kicks and dodge each other’s shot becomes more and more distracting as we fight.
She throws another punch, but I manage to dodge it and grab her arm. Immediately, I knee her in the stomach twice.
The woman wraps her free arm around my knee the second time I kick and launches herself at me, causing us both to go down but me first.
The burning on my back takes over for a moment as she forces her arm back on my throat. I swing my legs up and wrap them around her body, forcing her on her back, leaving us both stumbling again to our feet.
I ignore the intense pain and look back to the woman as she pulls a knife out of another holster on her thigh.
I have to bring her in alive for questioning. If I kill her, we may have just lost Oswald for good; but if it comes to it, and she forces me to kill her, I think I just may.
I take a step toward her as she slowly walks over and see her face without the mask. I look to my left to see the wrap blowing in the wind over the other buildings and look back to see a ghost.
No.
It can’t be.
This woman is much fuller than Mavis ever was. Her hair is darker and shorter.
Mavis would never do any of this. She would never have killed those men.
She would never have done any of this.
Her pace speeds up toward me; but just before she reaches a sprint, the name croaks out of my mouth. “Mavis?”
She freezes.
But only for a moment.
She lunges forward, coming at me with the knife; and that is when I see it. The small scar on her cheek underneath her bright-green eyes, the same scar I noticed when we first met.
She swings the knife across at me, but I lean my head back and manage to keep my throat intact. Just as she swings it back, I grab her arm and force the knife out of her hand. As I toss the knife over the side of the building, just as I did to her other weapons, she elbows me in the face and puts me into a chokehold.