by Adam Bender
Seven tried to smile, but couldn’t figure out how to make the expression look genuine. Something about the incident had left a sour taste in his mouth. He knew that he would have had to tell Eve about Talia eventually, and yes, he wanted her to know he was an independent person…but it was weird–something just didn’t feel right.
The swirl of gloom around Seven’s head apparently escaped Talia’s notice. “This is great news,” she chattered on. “Now she’ll leave you alone!”
“I don’t know how I feel about it,” he confessed.
All the warmth drained from Talia’s eyes, and they looked almost black. “But…”
“I mean,” he corrected, “last night was great. But it must be hard for her to–”
“Hard for her? It’s been hard for you! You’ve been in the dumps since the moment we met, and I’m fucking sick of it. It’s about time you had a little fun. You had fun, right?”
He nodded, but the expression on his face betrayed him.
Talia’s jaw dropped. “Oh, my God, you still have feelings for her! Don’t you?”
“No,” said Seven. “I don’t know,” he added after a few seconds of consideration. “Look, I like you a lot, and honestly, I want to make this work, but–”
“Make what work?” She shook her head in disbelief. “Seven,” she scolded. “It was just sex!”
He blinked. “What?”
Talia shrugged. “S-E-X. Who cares? Maybe we’ll do it again sometime. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to tidy up and get ready for the day. See you at breakfast.” And she slammed the door in his face.
Seven sighed in resignation as he took the long walk back to his room. Turning the corner, he noticed the cellar door was ajar. He stopped short as a tan face with short-cropped hair peered out from behind it.
Rodriguez took one look at Seven and got moving. He swung the door just wide enough to block the amnesiac’s path, and darted off down the hall. Acting on instinct, Seven charged the obstacle like a bull, and the door splintered off its hinges. He saw Rodriguez several paces down the corridor, tearing left around a corner toward the mansion’s front entrance.
“They’re loose!” Seven yelled at the top of his lungs. He heard some stirring behind closed doors but no one came out to help. Seven rounded the corner in time to see Rodriguez pull the front door closed behind him. Seven tore it open and plunged forward.
Now Rodriguez was running for the road. It was a long trek to the nearest town, so Seven presumed the Elite was seeking the vehicle in which he and Eve had arrived. Seven continued chase, but Rodriguez, stretching his legs like an Olympic runner, kept widening the gap.
No matter, thought Seven. Even the fastest man in the world couldn’t get into a parked car, start the engine and pull out in the time it would take Seven to catch up. He knew he could stop him.
Seven leaped over a pothole and slid over some small rocks on the landing. He barely maintained balance and continued on. Suddenly the black sedan was in sight, and Rodriguez was nearly upon it. Seven gritted his teeth and pumped his legs hard. About ten paces from the vehicle, Seven lunged and tackled Rodriguez to the asphalt.
The escapee writhed violently but Seven held him tight against the black pavement. Finally Seven lifted an arm and delivered a right hook that hit solidly against Rodriguez’s jaw. The Guard stopped moving.
Seven relaxed his grip and looked around. Still no one else from the house had come. He wasn’t looking forward to dragging Rodriguez all the way back. The guy wasn’t huge, but he would be all dead weight. He sighed and glanced backward again. Hadn’t anyone heard him? What, were they all sleeping?
When he turned back, Rodriguez’s eyes were open. Before Seven could react, a huge gob of spit shot from the runaway’s mouth into Seven’s eye. Rodriguez got a hand free. He flipped Seven onto his back and squirmed free.
Seven got to his feet just as the other man pulled open the car door. Rodriguez leaned into the vehicle but didn’t sit down. When he came back out, he had a gun in his hand.
Seven felt a sharp pain in his left shoulder and the forest flashed white. As he stumbled forward, he felt a rush of panic like that he’d felt when he first woke up in this world.
Rodriguez drew closer, lining up a shot that Seven knew would be impossible to miss. “You ruined two good agents, you know,” the Elite said.
“What?” choked Seven, heaving to catch his breath. He knew his best chance would be to keep the man talking.
“We knew we’d lost you, but we had hoped Agent Parker would stay true to God and country. But it’s clear to us now that your refusal to return has…damaged her…irreparably.”
Seven couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You mean you were watching her!”
Rodriguez pressed his weapon into Seven’s forehead. “My orders were to find and terminate you. If Eve refused to go along with it, I was to terminate her as well.”
“You should have made me first on your death list,” inter-rupted a familiar female voice.
Rodriguez’s head spun wildly toward the trees just as a deafening crack cut through the gentle breeze. The fugitive’s gun hand burst red and the weapon clattered to the ground. With a low bellowing yell, Rodriguez ducked for cover behind the door of the black car. Another bullet smashed the vehicle’s driver-side mirror.
Seven heard the engine rev. The car started with a screech and then roared away. The back window exploded in a burst of glass but Rodriguez kept driving and the vehicle soon disappeared down the road.
Seven squinted into the thick forest where the shots had come. It was getting harder to stay awake, and the trees blurred with every blink. He saw a rifle sticking out of a patch of brambles, and then a blond woman emerging from the greenery. She was running toward him and screaming a name that wasn’t his.
“Jon!” yelled Eve, dropping the hunting rifle. She ran as fast as she could but, as if in a nightmare, felt she was moving through molasses.
Seven was lying on the cracked pavement, looking up at the sun. Dark crimson ooze dripped from his shoulder, but if he was in pain, his face didn’t show it. For an instant, his eyes seemed to register her presence. But then they shut and his head fell to the side.
Eve fell on her knees next to him and verified he was breathing. Next, she tore Seven’s shirt off and checked his shoulder. It was a mess, but she knew he would survive if she could manage to stop the bleeding–she just needed a tourniquet. Briefly, Eve considered using Seven’s black T-shirt, but she decided against it because it was already so soaked with blood and sweat. Finally, she grabbed her own blue tunic by the bottom and pulled it up over her head.
“Damn it, Jon,” she said, tying the shirt around his wounded arm. “What the hell were you thinking?”
It was only then, when she was satisfied with her treatment for Seven’s wound, that she considered her former partner, Agent Rik Rodriguez. He was obviously no rookie. She had figured the Elites didn’t trust her when they set her up with a partner, but she couldn’t believe they’d actually asked someone to take notes on her. The one mystery she couldn’t figure out was how Rodriguez had passed himself off so convincingly as a rookie. Eve thought she had met most of the Elite Guard–well, the good ones, anyway. The Guard would not have sent just anyone after her.
A gentle breeze brushed through the trees. Eve held her arms over her chest and shivered.
It occurred to her that she’d have a fine mess on her hands explaining all this to her superiors. She had just tried to kill her partner, Rodriguez, in order to save her Heretic fiancé. The government and the Church could form only one rational explanation, which was the same explanation that had apparently led them to watch her in the first place. Eve loved Jon more than she loved her country.
Eve jumped at the blast of another gun. She looked up the road and saw Shaan racing toward her with pistol outstretched. The rebel had fired a warning.
“Step away from him and put your hands where I can see them!”
E
ve raised her hands but not very high. It looked more like a shrug.
Shaan looked at her accusingly. “You shot him.”
“No!” Eve protested. She struggled to explain. “Rodriguez shot Jon–Seven.”
“Then where’s Rodriguez?” he demanded.
“I tried to stop him, but he got away. If I hadn’t been here, he may have killed Seven.”
Shaan’s eyes narrowed. “Why isn’t either of you wearing shirts?”
Eve glanced down to verify she was still wearing the sports bra. “There’s nothing funny going on. I used my shirt to stop his bleeding. It’s standard issue from the Guard and made of a cloth that’s particularly absorbent, so–”
“Fine,” he interrupted. Shaan tapped a button on his ear piece and spoke. “Danny, it’s me. Our prisoner Rodriguez is gone and Seven is out cold.”
There was a question on the other end.
“No, she’s here with Seven–claims she saved his life. Just send Ana out here right away with a stretcher.”
“Actually,” said Eve, clearing her throat, “Ana might be passed out in the basement.”
Shaan’s eyes widened.
“What?” she asked innocently. “I didn’t do it.”
Eve frowned at her shackled wrists. “And why are handcuffs still necessary, exactly? You’re going to have to take them off me for the mission anyway.”
Ana, sitting next to her in the first back row of the purple minivan, replied, “You ever consider we might trust you more if you didn’t do things like steal a hunting rifle and run away?”
Eve was flabbergasted. “I stole that gun to save Seven’s life!”
Shaan’s eyes appeared in the rear-view mirror. “And we appreciate it. But please understand we have to take every precaution. In some ways, Agent Parker, you are even more dangerous in a moving vehicle.”
The Elite cackled. “What am I going to do? Jump over the seat, grab the wheel and steer us into oncoming traffic? I’m not the one here with a history of dangerous driving.”
Eve intended the jibe for Shaan, but he failed to respond. His sister, however, suddenly perked up. She was perched over Eve’s shoulder one row behind. “That’s actually a good point, Shaan. Which is why I should be driving. It’s my van, anyway.”
“It’s not your van,” responded Shaan. “You stole it.”
“Oh, whatever,” snapped Talia.
Eve fought back the temptation to push the girl by the forehead back into her seat. She glanced at Ana for possible support, but the Underground agent was busy blowing hot air into her glasses.
“Hey, don’t I get a little credit for the van?” Seven said weakly.
Eve, Talia, and Ana turned excitedly. Up until now he’d been slumped unconscious in the seat next to Talia.
“How are you feeling?” Eve asked.
Seven rubbed the bandages on his shoulder. “Could be better, but I guess I’m alive, so that’s good.”
“You’re lucky it was your left arm. You’ll still be able to shoot.”
Talia laughed. “Seriously? Who says that?”
He brushed the comment aside. “Where we going?”
“Engine Valley,” replied Ana. “We’re going to expose Patriot ID for what it really is.”
“Great. Well, I’m sure someone will brief me later.” He turned to Eve. “Thanks, by the way.”
His smile was warm and contagious. But then Talia laid a hand on his neck. Going red, Eve turned quickly back to the front of the car. She bit her lip to keep the emotions at bay.
Danny Young, riding up front, pushed his seat back and lifted his legs onto the dash. The seat bumped into Ana’s knees but she didn’t protest. “Sorry to keep you in the dark, Seven. I was going to brief you last night but you’d already gone to bed.”
Talia coughed awkwardly.
Danny continued. “So then I was going to talk to you this morning, but you got shot.”
“So can you tell me now?”
“Well, it really would be better to brief you one on one,” Young replied. “I think it’s best that we wait until we get to the Valley. In the meantime, let’s all just enjoy this luxurious ride in the stolen minivan. You know, it’s been a while since I’ve been on a proper road trip. Kind of makes me miss my college days, when…”
Eve tuned him out and focused instead on a steel suspension bridge rising over the horizon. It seemed to hang from the clouds by a trio of dirt-caked towers. The bridge stretched long into the distance toward a smoky black blur of factories. She remembered the Engine Valley was ugly, but she’d forgotten just how ugly. For a second, she wished that the Enemy had directed its attack here rather than the Capital, but she immediately felt guilty for thinking it. “God help me,” she murmured.
The car’s tires produced a deep, echoing grind as the vehicle transitioned from the highway to the bridge. Eve looked down at the brown river for inspiration. “By the way, Shaan,” she said, interrupting Young’s story. “Don’t you dare drive us into the water. Not all of us are so good at cheating death.”
In the rear-view mirror Shaan’s cheek bones rose just high enough that he might have been smiling. Eve immediately felt like a bitch for bringing it up again.
Finally, Shaan responded. “It makes you angry that I escaped you.”
Hot despair overtook her as the memories flooded back. She could see that static, black-and-white CCTV image of Shaan’s back as he drove the motorcycle straight off the edge of the Luna Coast cliff. The bike lifted briefly into the air…and she had not been able to watch the rest. When she finally looked there was only sky and endless ocean.
“It wasn’t so much the escaping as how you went about it,” Eve said. “I thought you had…well I thought you had killed yourself…and that maybe I…”
“You blamed yourself for my death?” prodded Shaan. There was a hint of pride in his voice.
Eve searched for the right words but came up empty.
He nodded. “That’s good. That’s what I wanted.”
Ana, who had been looking lost the entire exchange, tapped Shaan suddenly on the shoulder. “Wait, you drove a motor-cycle?”
“Yes,” he exhaled with apparent perturb.
“That’s sexy,” she said, smiling like a girl in a candy store. “I’ve always wanted to ride.”
Shaan didn’t respond.
“Do you still have it?” she continued.
“Do I still have what?”
“The motorcycle.”
“No.”
Ana gave a frustrated sigh and slumped back into her seat.
Eve reached for her phone and came up empty. She’d forgotten they had taken it from her.
“Agent Parker,” said Shaan, “you said Rodriguez was an Elite Guard like you, correct?”
She looked up in surprise. “Right. I mean, I think so.”
“You have suspicions?”
“Well, they told me he was a rookie. But he was obviously more than that. But I never met or heard of him before.”
“Interesting,” he said enigmatically.
“Why?”
“Without going into details, the Underground has ways to identify undercover agents. You came up in our database; Rodriguez did not. At first I assumed it was because Rodriguez was new to the Guard and our records were out of date. But now I’m not sure.”
Eve frowned. “Well, without going into too many details either, the Guard has ways to erase people from government records. We did it to Jon. I mean, Seven.”
“Hmm,” pondered Shaan. “But why would they erase Rodriguez? If anything, they should have modified his entry in the database so that you yourself would have no suspicions he was anything but a rookie.”
Eve shook her head and sighed. “I don’t know.”
The group was quiet for many minutes. Finally, Danny disrupted the silence.
“Why do they call the front passenger seat ‘shotgun,’ anyway?” he asked. “Is it because my body would shoot out the windshield like a bullet if we
stopped suddenly and I wasn’t wearing my seatbelt?”
Eve ignored the question. “So tell me again, Mr. Young, we’re meeting who in Engine Valley?”
“No,” corrected Danny, “his name is Haru. He leads a team of Underground operatives down in the Valley. He knows the area, and he’s providing some clothes and equipment we can use for the mission.”
“He’s cute,” noted Ana, “but also…kind of an asshole.”
The radio volume went way up. Danny’s hand was on the tuner as the booming baritone voice of a local news anchor replaced the chatter.
“…the Luna Coast about an hour ago. The Guard has so far kept the invaders from entering the city proper, but the Enemy is putting up an impressive fight on the beach. Casualties are heavy on both sides. Let’s go to Roger Phelps, our war correspondent, who’s currently high above the scene in the WCCN chopper. What’s it look like out there, Roger?”
A rush of crackle and the thunk-thunk-thunk of a heli-copter filled the speakers.
“It’s…it’s absolutely horrifying,” Roger Phelps yelled over the din. “There are bodies everywhere. The Enemy came in by boat so most of the corpses near the water are theirs, but they’ve been steadily working up the coast. Some of them have handheld missile launchers and have simply been blowing through the Guard’s defenses.”
“How are the Guard holding them back?”
“Well, I talked to one of the commanders for the Guard, and he told me we have snipers set up in the cliffs. They’ve been doing a good job targeting the invaders carrying heavy weaponry and limiting that kind of damage.”
“Is the Guard planning to bring in any more air support?”
“Well, it’s too dangerous to our troops to have our planes targeting the invaders on the beach, but the Guard’s jets are further out at sea dogfighting the Enemy’s airplanes. It’s difficult to see the planes, but we can certainly hear and feel every explosion out there.”
“At this stage, on the coast, does it look like one side or the other has the advantage?”
“It’s still hard to say. The Enemy has made pretty stunning progress up the beach, but we’re told the Guard has reinforcements on the way, so the situation could change in a heartbeat.”