The Final Trade

by Joe Hart

  The first thing she sees when the lights come on are open file cabinets, their interiors toothless mouths. The floor is littered with dozens of sheets of paper. There is a desk in one corner, a large computer screen taking up most of its top. Against the opposite wall is a graveyard of circuit boards, computer screens, jumbled and twisted wires.

  “This is where I got some of the replacement parts for the vehicle upstairs. Most of its circuitry was fried. Some kind of high-energy surge got it. Maybe EMP. Not sure. They never left me alone in here, but while I worked I always got a look or two at the stuff on the floor. Most of them have the NOA symbol on them somewhere.”

  The room smells of still air and time. Zoey bends down and gathers a handful of the papers. Lyle is right. The NOA symbol she knows so well emblazons the top of nearly every document.

  Most of the pages are filled with meaningless notations, numbers attached to the bottom of paragraphs whose words look almost out of order. She pores over the sheets, trying to make sense of them, connect one to the next, but there is nothing that jumps off the page. The only thing she latches onto are names, but each one is attached to a military title.

  She drops the pages on the floor, letting them scatter before moving to the open file cabinets. She pulls each drawer fully open, the emptiness of each one like a slap to the face. She turns in a slow circle and leans against the desk.

  “Are there any other rooms like this? Any others that have NOA documents?”

  Lyle shakes his head. “I’ve never seen any. This is really the only room that has any papers in it. I think most of the others were storage for tools, maintenance supplies, that sort of thing.”

  Zoey’s head drops forward.

  Nothing. After coming all this way. The wasted days. The danger. The risk.

  All for nothing.

  She wheels on the file cabinet and shoves it. It clangs to the floor, handles bending flat, paint scraping. She breathes hard, wanting something else to destroy, to ruin. Anything to keep the pressing knowledge at bay.

  You’ll never know who your parents were.

  Never know your last name.

  Never know your heritage.

  Never know who you are.

  She clenches her jaw. Teeth grinding.

  “Zoey. Honey. It’s okay,” Tia says, standing on the other side of the downed cabinet. Her face is soft. Hand outstretched. Zoey hesitates, the anger widening the void within, trying to swallow reason, calm, anything that fights it. She reaches out, grasps Tia’s hand.

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for bringing us here. I’m sorry for risking everything.” Zoey looks over Tia’s shoulder at Merrill. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. We’re here because we want to be,” Tia says. “You and Rita and Sherell, you’re important. Don’t be sorry. I’m not.” She smiles.

  “Thank you.” She squeezes the older woman’s hand before releasing it. “I thought it would be here. Right out in the open. Stupid. Nothing’s ever that easy.”

  “What were you looking for?” Lyle says, finally stepping into the room.

  She looks at him for a long time. “We were trying to find records.”

  “Of what?”

  “Information on women that NOA took into their research systems.”

  Lyle lets out a small laugh. “Well no, you’re not going to find things like that lying around here.”

  “Thanks. I know that now.”

  “No, no, that’s not what I mean. I’m saying they wouldn’t have printed that type of information out. Not unless it was in the most secure place they could keep it.”

  The ARC surfaces in Zoey’s mind. “I can guess where that is.”

  “Well regardless, they wouldn’t have used dead trees to keep track of most of that stuff. I’m sure they wanted it multi-accessible. The information would’ve been classified, especially after all the shit hit the fan. It’s harder to burn a stack of papers than it is to wipe a hard drive.”

  Zoey frowns. “What are you talking about?”

  “Data. Electronic data to be exact. I’m sure NOA had dozens of access points like this one. Probably several staff assigned here along with the missile techs.”

  Zoey glances at the computer screen sitting atop the desk. “You’re saying the information might still be there? It might be stored electronically somewhere.”

  “Not somewhere. Here,” Lyle says, pointing with his bound hands at the floor. “I would wager this is one of the remaining operational missile facilities in the western United States. Power comes from geothermal generators, built to last. That’s why we have running water, lights, everything.”

  “Are you telling me you could find the information we’re looking for?”

  “I think if I can get access to the installation’s mainframe, yes. Yes, I think I could find it if it’s there.”

  She leaps over the downed cabinet and grabs Lyle’s upper arms, squeezing them hard. He flinches. “Please,” she says. “If you can do it we’ll let you go.”

  “I can do it. I’ll need some supplies and a little time, but I don’t think it will be a problem.”

  “Thank you,” Zoey says, releasing him.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “What do you need?”

  She spends the next hours helping Lyle, Merrill, and Tia gather the supplies the computer tech needs. Most of the equipment is foreign to her. Terms like processor, RAM, and terabyte, a language she’s never heard before. She collects what seems like miles of data cable, stringing it down the lower hallway to another room that is cooler than any other in the installation. Tall black boxes with blinking lights stand behind sealed glass doors and give off a burnt-dust smell. It reminds her faintly of the fire she saw on the plains before encountering Ian and Seamus.

  Curiosity gets the better of her as she’s returning to the NOA file room, and she takes one of the tunnels leading farther away from the building. The sense of weight above is palpable. Tons and tons of earth pressing down, waiting for its chance to crush through the concrete and bury her.

  She comes to a platform ringed by a steel bannister, the light from the hall ending in the space beyond the handrail. Zoey senses the openness, the echo of her footsteps, and stops, hand brushing the wall and finally finding a panel of switches.

  She flips one.

  A cone of light snaps on somewhere to her right, cutting through the darkness past the bannister. She steps up, placing her hands on the cold steel.

  The missile is over twenty feet tall, its top ending in a gleaming tip. It is mostly white with strips of black along certain panels on its rounded sides. Wide fins are barely visible at the bottom of the silo, mere suggestions in the gloom.

  “They were mostly for protection from other missiles,” Merrill says from behind her, and she nearly jumps. She hadn’t heard him approach. He comes up beside her and leans over the railing, gazing down at the weapon’s length. “Antiballistic. They’d launch if a bigger, badder missile was coming toward the United States. It was their job to cut down the threat before it took everyone out.”

  Zoey looks at the smooth lines, the silence in the silo almost deafening. “Kind of like a protector.”

  “Kind of. But there was talk in the last days that the government was considering using some of these for strikes against the rebels since they weren’t nuclear but had enough punch to kill an entire battalion if they locked on a location.” They stand side by side for a while in the semidarkness before Merrill glances at her. “I saw the look on your face after you came out from talking to Ken. I know what you’re thinking and you have to stop.”

  “I wasn’t thinking anything.”

  “You were blaming yourself.”

  She is quiet for a time, fingernail tracing a peeling patch of paint on the railing. “Maybe if I’d tried escaping sooner . . .”

  Merrill looks down through the darkness. “You would’ve died. It was a miracle you made it out when you did. It happened the way it was meant to. As hard
as it is for me to accept that, it’s the truth. You can’t keep bearing all the weight. In the end, if you try to save everyone you’ll only lose yourself.”

  He reaches out and squeezes her shoulder before returning down the hall. Zoey stands at the railing, looking into the silo, tracing the smooth lines of death in the darkness.

  10

  “Okay. Everyone keep their fingers crossed,” Lyle says.

  He sits at the desk in the NOA storage room, computer screen dark before him. Two small, white towers rest on the floor beside the desk, a multitude of wires and cords running from their backs, out the door, and down the hall to what Lyle calls “servers.”

  Zoey stands behind the chair the computer tech sits in. Merrill, Tia, and Eli form a tight semi-circle to her right. When Lyle deemed the setup ready to try, the humming excitement had returned to her, a warmth almost like stepping from shade into the sunlight tingling on her skin. Her stomach turns with nervousness as Lyle reaches down, touching a button on the front of one of the towers.

  There is a terrible moment of silence in which her hopes teeter, then the sound of a small fan whirs from the back of the unit and lights appear on its front. The computer screen flashes, going bright, dark, and bright again before an insignia she’s never seen before appears in its center.

  “We’re up and running,” Lyle says. “Okay. Let’s see what we have here.” He bends forward over the keyboard, fingers moving slowly at first, then faster, until the steady tap fills the room like falling rain. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve done this? But it’s still there. Like riding a bike.”

  A series of boxes open up on the screen, letters and numbers configured inside each of them. Lyle navigates his way through several before homing in on a single one that he begins typing in.

  “How will you find the information?” Zoey asks, squinting at the gibberish filling the screen.

  “Oh the trick isn’t finding the information. The trick is getting access to the system that has the information. Once we’re inside it will be a piece of cake.”

  “And you know how to get inside?”

  “Well, in theory, yes. I did do a little hacking for fun when I was younger. And our firm took on several government contracts, which exposed me to some of their operating systems, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “But you have to realize, it’s been decades since I’ve even touched a computer, let alone tried to slip around firewalls and administrator passwords.” Lyle’s typing slows and tapers off until he’s simply staring at the screen.

  Zoey steps around the side of his chair and waits until he looks up at her, the screen’s glow reflecting in his glasses.

  “You used to love doing this, right? You were passionate about it?” she says.

  “Yes. It was my life outside of my mother and father.”

  “Then you’ve dreamed of it. You’ve imagined being able to do this again.” Lyle blinks. He opens and closes his mouth. “Haven’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then let yourself remember.”

  “I can’t promise you anything.”

  “I’m not asking you to. I’m asking you to try.”

  Lyle swallows, eyes glancing from her to the screen before he pulls himself toward the desk again, setting his fingers on the keys.

  Another set of boxes appears on the display and he discards them. A new menu drops down, the words meaningless to her, but Lyle readjusts himself, his shoulders tightening in his shirt. He types for nearly a minute straight before the screen changes again and the largest box she’s seen yet materializes, a string of code layered in descending levels that reminds her of plateaus dropping away toward a river.

  “Got it,” Lyle says. “This is where I need to be.”

  “You’ve got access?” Zoey says.

  “No. I just found the correct path. Now I can begin.”

  “How long do you think this will take?”

  “I don’t know. A while. I’ll need some time.”

  She glances at Merrill, who nods. “I’ll sit with him. We’ll relieve each other in shifts.”

  She observes Lyle to see what his reaction is to still being treated as a prisoner, but the man is lost in his own world, oblivious to all but the screen before him. “Thank you,” she says, but he doesn’t acknowledge her. His typing speeds up.

  Zoey makes her way into the main hall with Tia and Eli. “I’m going up to check on Halie.”

  “I’ll go relieve Ian,” Eli says. “Catch you ladies at dinner.”

  “Guess I’m cooking tonight,” Tia says.

  “Never mind dinner,” Eli calls over his shoulder. “Rather eat dirt.”

  “That can be arranged!”

  Eli’s laughter peals back to them as they make their way toward the stairs. At the top, they part ways, Tia toward the entrance, while Zoey continues up the flight of stairs to the next level. She pauses at the second doorway on the left, fighting against the sudden surge of vertigo.

  Halie lies on a low mattress in the far corner of the room. A dark blanket is pulled up to her chin, her white skin contrasting so much with the fabric that it nearly hurts Zoey’s eyes. Her face, now clean of filth, appears even more gaunt and sunken than before. A clear tube runs out from beneath the blanket, extending up to a fluid-filled baggie attached to the wall above the mattress.

  Chelsea sits on the edge of a short table, hands clasped together, head lowered.

  For a terrifying second Zoey thinks the worst but then hears the faint whistle of Halie’s breathing, and steps into the room. Chelsea sits upright, glancing over one shoulder.

  “Hi,” Zoey says, approaching the bed.

  “Hi.”

  “Did I wake you?”

  “No. I was praying.”

  “For what?”

  Chelsea smiles sadly. “For lots of things, but mostly for her to recover.”

  “You think it helps?”

  “It helps me.”

  Zoey opens her mouth to ask why she would pray to someone or something that would allow this to happen. What kind of god would accept praise and thanks while letting suffering and injustice continue? Instead she focuses on Halie.

  “How is she?”

  Chelsea sighs, giving the prone woman a quick glance. “Honestly, not too good. I managed to rig up a rudimentary IV drip. It’s working for now. But after giving her a closer examination I found a pretty bad contusion on the back of her head. She was hit with something hard. And . . .”

  “And what?”

  “She might have bleeding on her brain. Of course I can’t know for sure, but if that’s the case . . .” Chelsea lets her words trail off.

  “Could I have a few minutes with her?” There is a slight tremor to her voice and she clears her throat.

  “Of course. I’ll be in the hall if you need me.”

  Chelsea moves past her, shutting the door slightly on her way out. Zoey watches Halie breathe for several minutes, the slow rise and fall of her chest beneath the blanket, before kneeling beside the mattress.

  She wants to hold her hand but is afraid of disturbing her, afraid of seeing the bruises again, the cuts, lacerations, all the depictions of what Halie endured. Instead she settles for placing her palm on the other woman’s forehead. Her skin is cool and dry.

  “I’m here, Halie. You’re safe now. I don’t know if you can hear me, but no one’s going to hurt you anymore.” She struggles for a second, trying to control her voice. “Guess you’re wondering what I’m doing here. I got out, escaped from the ARC. Rita and Sherell are here too.” Zoey swallows, bringing her hand back from Halie’s forehead. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “So sorry for everything.” She tries to go on but tears clog her voice. There is nothing she can say, nothing that will take back the torment Halie’s gone through. So much pain and violence. And why?

  The void inside her widens.

  Her hand shakes as she places it on the grip of her handgun to steady it.

&
nbsp; “You’re going to be okay,” she manages finally. “Everything will be okay.”

  They eat in what could’ve only been a lunchroom at one time. Two long tables are shoved together in its center, a row of empty lockers built into one wall. It reminds her of a miniature version of the cafeteria at the ARC. They gather enough chairs so they can all sit around the tables to eat the stew Tia made.

  The warmth of the food melts the cold knot in Zoey’s chest that’s stayed with her since visiting Halie. She listens to the others talk, only giving one- or two-word answers when someone asks her a question. Ian keeps glancing at her, trying to hold eye contact for more than a few seconds, but she looks away, finishing her meal as quickly as she can.

  Leaving the others behind, she descends to the lower level again, stopping before the door that’s ajar, light spilling out along with the rattle of a keyboard. Newton sits against the closest wall tapping his long fingers on his knees in a complex rhythm, a handgun on the floor beside him. Lyle is in the same position as she left him hours ago: head thrust forward, shoulders drawn back, spine bowed. His hands are in constant movement and she hears him swear under his breath.

  She leaves the doorway without saying anything and finds herself walking down the same corridor she explored earlier. She didn’t shut the light off, and its glow still drapes against the missile’s length. She sits down, dangling her legs over the edge of the platform, and rests her chin on the lowest rung of the safety railing.

  It is a noble instrument, she decides. What better purpose than to cut down a terrible threat before it harms anyone? Something inherently deadly and violent that serves a higher purpose.

  She taps a fingernail against the steel, the ringing soft and sad in the large space, an echo that fades to silence.

  That’s all I am. An echo. Something left behind, no way of knowing where I came from.

  She straightens, pulling her legs up away from the drop. That isn’t true. She has people that care for her, who love her. She has purpose and will.

  But what if I find my origins and don’t like where I came from? What if there’s nothing left of me by the time I realize who I am?