by J. J. Holden
Yes, it was definitely turning into one of those days.
* * *
Jaz wandered among the wounded outside of Johnstown while the sun rose higher in the morning sky. Those Johnstown peeps had no walls built, and she didn’t get why they didn’t just let the Free Republic fighters take some buildings in the empty parts of town, but they had been adamant about keeping the fighters outside of town. She understood why they worried about disease and all, but how they treated the fighters was totally uncool. At least they had coughed up their first aid supplies, once someone explained to them that it was give them or have them seized. A lot of the units she and Choony had retreated with were shot up pretty good.
Walking beside her, Choony said, “We should sleep. You are exhausted, just as I am. You can help no one if you’re asleep on your feet, and the Mountain will probably be here in a day or two, if not sooner. However long it takes them to mop up Nestor’s rear guard, they’ll be here right afterward.”
He was right, of course. Jaz could only see out of one eye at a time. She was so tired that if she tried to keep both peepers open at once, one eye wandered off, so she totally had to one-eye it as she walked. She was staggering like she was smashed, too, from sheer exhaustion. “Fine. Let’s get some sleep. I’m totes wiped out, and my shoulder kills.”
“Yes, I’m sure it aches terribly.”
Right again… “Let’s head into town and squat a vacant. I can’t sleep out here with all these peeps around, and the wounded moaning and stuff. Plus, the sun will be up real soon.”
“They can’t help it, you know,” Choony said. “They’re injured. Many of these fighters probably won’t survive until morning.”
“Another reason to get out of here. I’ve seen enough people die.”
Choony slid his arm into hers, and they walked arm-in-arm into Johnstown. “Funny,” he said, looking at the town’s antique construction in the neighborhood through which they walked. “Parts of this town are older than America is. Johnstown saw America’s birth, and was still around to witness its death.”
“Well, that’s just morbid. Way to cheer a chick up, Choon.”
He laughed, which brought a smile to her weary face. He had an amazing laugh, rich and full of life, and it sounded kind and decent. Or maybe that was her feelings affecting how she saw him. She didn’t care, though.
Choony said, “Did you know that over half this town was vacant even before the war? It got flooded for the third time in the ’70s, and never really recovered. People gave up on it.”
Jaz only nodded. She was too exhausted for small talk or history lessons.
“Unemployment here was over ten percent before the war. The Dying Times hit this place hard, since the people had so little. They say only about a thousand people live here now. Over ninety percent had died off before it joined the Empire.”
“Fantastic. Let’s get some sleep. This pad looks cushy,” Jaz said, pointing at a nice single-story home. It was relatively newer construction than the others in that neighborhood, even among those that weren’t historical buildings. The house had been boarded up, but there was no indication that it had been broken into.
She said, “It looks like they secured it as best they could and then headed out of town, probably early in the war. I’m sure they won’t mind if we crash.”
“Coolness,” said Choony.
Jaz giggled. He sounded so stupid when he tried to talk like normal peeps. It was cute, though, not like, embarrassing or anything.
They tested the windows and doors, but all the windows were securely boarded and the doors were locked. They went around back, and Choony checked under the doormat. A key. “I could have kicked it in, but better not to damage the things we borrow, right?”
She didn’t care, but nodded. It was his way, and the key was easier anyway. They stepped inside as the sun crested the horizon, and found everything inside was covered in sheets. The air smelled stale, but there was remarkably little dust on the counters. It must have had good weatherproofing. “Nice. Let’s head upstairs and find a bed to sleep on.”
They walked up the stairs, Choony in the lead, and checked the first door. It was a bathroom. He closed the door, and they checked the next one. It was a small room with a single bed. The next room, however, was the big one. Inside was a Queen-sized mattress, thick and comfy-looking, which had been stood in one corner.
“Bingo.” First night in a bed in a long-ass time, she was going to enjoy it. She grinned as Choony yawned and practically dove into the bed to get under the covers. Jaz took her time and stopped to stretch before climbing in; Choony looked like a cute little deer in headlights, unable to look away as she stretched out.
She grinned at him. “Don’t worry, Choony. You’re safe with me. I won’t take advantage of you.”
He chuckled, but it sounded awkward, which made her laugh again. For a minute, they just teased one another and laughed, at each other and at themselves.
It was nice to just relax like that, she mused. No fear of someone stumbling across their camp as they slept, no worries about the war rolling over them before they could pull up stakes and bail. And the house was cozy, as was lying in bed together and having a laugh. She wondered if that was how normal people felt all the time.
“Ever wonder what your life would have been like without the war? Do you think you’d be happy? Married?”
Choony stuffed a pillow under his head.
“No, contemplating such things would be pointless. There is the war, and pretending otherwise—wishing for the world to be different—would help no one. Anyway, I doubt I’d be married. My parents wanted me to marry a nice girl from Korea, and even had one picked out for me like some off-the-rack jacket, but I didn’t want to marry her. I never saw the point of maintaining old traditions.”
Jaz nodded. In a way, she understood. It was like when her dad wanted her to sleep with his best friend when she was fourteen, because he was going to pay her dad enough money to get their rent caught up. She had bailed with a quickness—she had enough of his friends’ attentions and took off before the dude got there. Boy was her dad pissed! But that was totally his problem. Even if her dad never saw beyond the messed up way he had been raised, she wanted more out of life. She wanted the life the other kids at school had, where they didn’t worry about eating and didn’t have to get on their knees to pay the rent for their parents.
“Besides,” Choony added, interrupting her thoughts, “I wouldn’t have met you. I’d trade the world to be here with you right here, right now.”
She loved the things he said. She knew deep down that he meant every word. This man saw her how she wanted to see herself, not how she and the world actually did see her. It made her want to be a better, stronger person so she didn’t disappoint him. For some reason, when he was disappointed in her, it felt like her world was coming apart. She hated it. “I know you would. I don’t know why, but I do know you’re honest. It’s why I feel the way I do about you, too. Wherever I go, whatever I do, I know I’ll be okay if you’re with me. Plus, you keep me honest.”
“Ha. I’m glad for that. You’re a hurricane on your own. A force of nature. All this wonderful energy, but lacking focus. It’s beautiful like a lightning storm, but it would burn you out so fast… You’d roll on by, leaving wreckage behind you, until you had spent all your force and just faded.”
“I’m not that bad,” she said, laughing, and lightly hit his arm. She never hit him hard, because she knew he wouldn’t play-fight with her and that would just make her feel like a bully.
“Not bad. Just like Nature, neither good nor bad, but you would leave a trail of wreckage behind you without even realizing it. Broken hearts, broken trusts. But you’re better than that. I feel like I might help you focus all that power. You have a mighty aura, Jaz.”
“You believe in auras? Like, witchcraft and stuff?” She raised an eyebrow. Of course he didn’t, but she didn’t know what he meant.
“No. It’s jus
t that… You know how when some people enter a room, you just know they’re there, even if you haven’t seen them yet? They come in and the attention shifts to them. The very air seems to change, and they own the room just by being there. That’s you, Jaz. That’s your aura.”
She flopped from her elbow onto her back and looked up at the ceiling. Someone had once painted it a beautiful, peaceful cerulean blue, like an ocean sky. Or how she imagined an ocean sky looking. “You know, it makes me feel weird when you say stuff like that. I like it, though. And I like that you think about this stuff. Most guys aren’t thinking about that when they’re with me. They got other ideas.”
“I’ve thought of that, certainly,” Choony said, and she could hear the smile in his voice.
She was surprisingly glad. Everyone seemed to think of her in that way, so it would have thrown her off balance if he hadn’t—and it would have broken her heart. She quickly grabbed that last thought and stuffed it deep inside, though. That was her vulnerability showing, and she didn’t need that. Not now, not ever again.
Choony continued, “You are beautiful, and you know it. Like the most beautiful flower I’ve ever seen. When other people are around, looking at you is like seeing a rose centerpiece at a bouquet. The other garnish in the vase may be present, but all I see is the rose.”
Jaz felt her heart racing, and a weird feeling in her stomach. It was desire, she knew, but not the kind she had grown used to feeling. It wasn’t that raw, animal thing. If lust was a plain sheet of paper, then her feelings around Choony were more like origami, she thought, trying to make sense of her feelings. They were complicated, with many folds and turns, but in the end that plain sheet of paper had become something much greater.
“You’re a good man,” she blurted. “You see something in me I don’t. I want it to be there, this girl you see, but I don’t see it. I just try to live up to it. I don’t even know why I care, but I do.”
There was a long pause, and Jaz was content to merely lay in bed feeling his closeness, his warmth. It would be so easy to just give in, too. She was almost naked. He was almost naked. Why couldn’t she just… Do something? Jump on him. Anything. Usually, sex was easy. It was just a thing people did, nothing more. But with Choony, she just couldn’t treat it that way. And, she realized, she didn’t want to. Not because she wasn’t attracted to him—the warmth she felt at the moment was proof of that—but because it wouldn’t be the right way. It would be like stepping on that origami swan, destroying the beautiful and leaving only a mangled sheet of paper. She let out a long breath, feeling frustrated, happy, confused, content. She was a jumble of all those things. Thankfully, Choony never pressured her.
Choony finally responded, thankfully taking her mind off those alien thoughts. “Often, when we look at ourselves, we see only the reflection we believe will be there. The one people have told us is there. We don’t see that which is truly there under the disguises, the scars, the masks we wear. Like when you read something with a typo but don’t notice it, because you know the word that is supposedly there.”
Dude, that was deep. She found herself nodding, though. He made sense. She did see the broken street kid even now, not whatever she really was. The things she had done in the past were things she had been forced to do for survival, not who she truly was. Her reflection in the mirror was really just an adjective, not a noun…
That thought made her laugh. “It’s like the masks we wear. What I see in the mirror, it’s just a description, right? Like, it’s not who I am inside, just what I did. That’s what I mean though, you make me feel like I can be more than what I see. I can be the person I want to be, when I’m with you. Not the chick my dad said I was, not the girl his friends saw when they looked at me.”
“That person is dead, Jaz. You are blessed to have been reincarnated while you still live, transformed into this girl, beautiful inside and out. I am pretty sure I’d choose to follow you to the ends of the Earth, just to be with you.”
Jaz smiled to herself. “The fact is, I’m just not willing to be a victim anymore, or to see myself that way. I’m stronger, or I took some inner strength I already had and decided, screw all this. I was tired of being weak. How many battles have I been in?”
“You spend your days being hard outside, because the world is hard. It’s always been hard, but in this new version of the world, you get to be who you are truly meant to be. You’re the Warrior. But when we’re alone like this, with the world out there and us in here, you can let your walls down even if just for a little while.”
Jaz felt her flesh goosebump. Despite the chaos around them, she fell asleep draped across his chest, and for the first time in a long time, she had happy, pleasant dreams instead of nightmares.
* * *
1400 HOURS - ZERO DAY +382
Ethan logged on again and allowed his many slave computers to upload to his computer the data his worms had diligently acquired. From there, he compiled it with his existing data, then transferred the new, larger file to a USB drive. That was the only way to get the file out of his virtual machine safely, since he wasn’t willing to connect the VM to the real system.
He was about to terminate his connection when his “DRyder” email dinged. He saw from the popup alert that it was from Watcher One. He also noticed that it was an hour old, but had only just finished downloading… The internet wasn’t what it used to be. It was a bit odd, though, because Watcher usually used the chat box to talk to Ethan, using email only for delivering files. That could only mean it was important enough that he didn’t want to wait until they were both online at the same time. The beauty of email was that it would be received whenever the other party logged on, even if it had been sent in the middle of the night.
Ethan clicked the email icon to open the message, and read it aloud.
From: WatcherOne
To: DRyder
Subject: Retirement Notice
Hello “Dark Ryder”,
I spoke with HR about the early retirement option you suggested. I am both pleased and sad to inform you that HR has approved your early retirement, effective only within 72 hours of receipt of this email. You will need to get your affairs in order and depart the office premises within that time. Should you decide not to vacate said premises by then, your employment will be terminated immediately after the 72-hour window. Assuming you choose the retirement option, please remember that your non-compete and nondisclosure agreements remain binding.
On a personal note, I will miss our sparring at the office. Being your supervisor has been both a challenge and a pleasant diversion from my other responsibilities in these turbulent times. I hope you understand that anything that happened between us at the office was purely business, and not personal. I for one wish you well. Perhaps I’ll see you online sometime and say hello. I’d like that.
From all of us, and especially from me personally, we wish you success in your future endeavors.
Sincerely,
Watcher One
Ethan was stunned. He actually hadn’t expected to get permission to walk away from all this. Granted, they might just Predator his ass on the way out of town, but regardless, their agreement would spare the Clan from getting bombed by planes or drones, right? His mind raced, trying to look several steps ahead. How would this play out, his leaving?
First and foremost, he’d have to leave Amber, and his farewell could only be via a note. If he told her in person, she’d either beg him to stay or she’d insist on coming with him. Neither option was workable. He couldn’t take her away from the Clan, because she had a daughter and life on the road would probably be both brutal and short. He wouldn’t subject a child to that. And he couldn’t stay, or it invited retaliation on the Clan itself.
But… would Houle really leave the Clan alone if he left? The Mountain had intervened in the Empire’s secessionist troubles, but then again, the Empire was their client state. But the Mountain had also conquered the Gap and was busy building a fort there. That was a
direct act of war against the Confederation, and by extension, against Taggart’s New America. Would that aggression stop when Ethan “retired”?
He was doubtful. Houle wouldn’t just walk away from that fort. He was too invested, had spent too many resources on the conquest and the construction. Ethan’s discussions with the 20s couldn’t be the reason for Houle’s invasion at the Gap. The more he thought about it, the more he decided that Houle wasn’t going to let up on the Confederation if he left. Had the Mountain not occupied the Gap, Ethan’s course would have been clear, but with that new development, the lie was even more clear.
And that must be the reason they finally replied to his retirement offer… It would remove Dark Ryder from the situation with no expenditure of resources or effort on their part, yet it would change nothing in the long run.
Goddamn it all, he was being played. The Gap was proof. Ethan shouted obscenities and threw his coffee mug, the sharp clang hurting his ears as the metallic cup bounced away, splashing hot liquid all over the floor. He clenched his jaw and his fists, took a deep breath, and then went to pick up his cup. Throwing it had been way less satisfying than he thought it would be. Metal cups didn’t shatter.
He settled his thoughts and went back to considering his next move. He had three days to come up with something, and if he failed at that, he would have to leave anyway on the off-chance it would actually help the Clan. They were his family. Even if he died out there in the wilderness, the Clan would go on, right? That was the point of leaving. If it wouldn’t accomplish that, then he needed to figure something else out.