by Schow, Ryan
“I told you he was dead,” Logan said.
“You sure?” she asked. “I thought that was a metaphor.”
“For what?”
“Never mind,” she said. “Is he dead or not?”
“I saw his head blasted open,” Logan barked, too rattled from the entire afternoon to want to think too much about his friend. “Even Jesus Christ couldn’t come back from that.”
“Don’t say his name!” Ms. Yeung roared, causing him to reel.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Yeung,” he said, groveling. “It just slipped out. A holdover from the last government.”
“Who’s blood is that?” she asked pointing at his shirt.
“I don’t know.”
“You ate lunch, but now you have take out?”
He’d been expecting this. “I…I ordered before she left. Harper, I mean. I followed her to lunch thinking I could find something.”
“What did you order?”
“My head,” he said, touching his temples. The headache was forming fast, a result of either the blast or the smoke. “I…I can’t…some things aren’t exactly clear, Ms. Yeung.”
She handed Logan a Styrofoam container that was heavy with cashew chicken and fried rice. Ms. Yeung left, but before disappearing, she said, “No excuses for bad production. Get me something!”
He sat down, used a fork to push the rice aside. A small note wrapped in plastic was laying on the bottom. Logan pulled it out, wiped it off and opened it. The note read: WHATEVER YOU DID, UNDO IT.
He couldn’t.
Whatever he had seen was now on Han’s computer and he was dead so there was no erasing it. Inside his chest, his heart began to thump, thump, thump louder and louder with what he was thinking.
“No,” he said to himself.
You have to.
When he got on the computer, he looped a recording of him working then took control of Harper’s computer.
He typed in the message. She’d know who it was from.
I can’t undo what’s been done. If you show up to work tomorrow, you’ll be Last Chanced. I’m sorry.
She took the cursor and typed in a message of her own.
You aren’t one of them but you just handed them a major victory. Congratulations ASSHOLE.
Chapter Five
When he got home that night, Skylar looked at him with so much disdain, he didn’t know how he could take it without asking half a dozen questions burning holes in his brain.
There were things to do, however—no time for conversation.
They both set their phones down on the tiny dots left by a black Sharpie marker. Her dot was on the counter top and his was on the coffee table. The second they both did this, they activated the audio and video loop while cloning the dummy phones, effectively dumping internal surveillance.
Both went into their respective rooms and changed into exercise clothes. Without saying a word, they left the apartment together, went outside and walked with their heads down to the warehouse location they’d memorized for the underground Krav Maga class two nights ago. They had never been there before, but after the explosion and the Chicom assassinations that day, the police were out in force. They had to be careful. That meant they couldn’t train in one place and they couldn’t choose the same place twice.
A ruckus behind them had them scuttling up against one of the brick building’s walls. Five horses with policeman on their backs galloped by, kicking people out of the way, and bumping into a few of them, knocking them down. A heavyset woman collapsed on the street, her groceries spilling. Logan helped her pick them up, then took the crook of her arm and helped her up. Smiling, she said nothing and everything. Her head was bleeding.
“Get that looked at as soon as you can,” he whispered.
She nodded. He caught up with Skylar.
The best thing any of them could do right then was hide their emotions. He glanced over at Skylar. She was looking at the fallen people left in the wake of the police. He could see her emotions creeping in fast.
“Don’t,” he warned her.
She straightened her back and bled the expression from her face. They rounded a few corners, walked three city blocks, then headed down an alley, past a city dumpster and four homeless people. Two of them were shooting up heroin, one of them was flopped over dead and the last was just staring at the wall with a blank, wasted expression.
Skylar spit on the nearest man. The glob smacked his face. He didn’t blink.
“Junkie,” she said.
Logan held his tongue. When they got to the warehouse, Logan knocked twice regularly, then three times fast, and then he slapped the metal with the flat of his palm.
The door opened up and they slipped inside, quickly and without a word. The second they got inside, Skylar unloaded on him.
“What were you thinking?” she said, shoving him.
He brushed her off and said, “I’m just doing my job and everyone’s yelling at me for it. And why didn’t you tell me you knew Harper Whitaker?”
The guy who let them in, he said, “You’re the last of them,” then he left them alone.
“Do you even understand what we’re doing here?” she stepped forward, hissing.
“Learning to fight.”
“Not here here,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m talking about here—this, work, our home, staying in this God awful city?”
“I work and I let you know what’s going on so you can make sure we don’t get caught up in whatever it is you’re afraid of getting caught up in.”
“Being dead, Logan. That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“That’s why we fight in this underground…whatever, resistance—although the only thing I’m resisting is a good night’s sleep and a body that’s not being beaten down every other day.”
Grinding her teeth, she paced the small space twice then stopped and leveled him with a frown chock full of emotion. He drew back, never having seen this look before. She was usually a congenial person—tired, but pleasant and occasionally distant. They ate together, watched state sanctioned TV together, she let him kiss her most nights, and they shared responsibilities together. But this…this was different. He could see things shattering inside those gorgeous, smoldering eyes of hers.
Logan took a step back; she stepped forward fast.
“You need to be in better shape than this,” she growled, grabbing a small flop of his belly fat and squeezing to the point of pain.
Wincing, he slapped her hand off him and said, “I get it, I’m not in shape.”
“You’re not even close,” she said with something he recognized as hatred. Looking at her, seeing how ridiculously in shape she was, he tried to tell himself he was trying, that she had a good two years on him.
He told her this before, but she said all his excuses made her sick. She said, “Losers are always making excuses for themselves. Are you a loser, Logan?”
“No,” he’d replied.
“Then stop acting like one.”
Now he was feeling like making excuses again, but he wouldn’t. He vowed not to do that. Not after the tongue lashing he had last received.
“The only reason you’re here learning to fight is because I tell you to fight,” Skylar snarled. “And the way you fight here will determine whether or not you’ll die. You decide your own fate every day and yours…your fate sucks, Logan.”
“Why do you do it?” he challenged. “I mean, I know why, but what do you think about?”
This stilled her.
“I imagine I’m fighting for my life, even when I’m not. Learn to fight like that and you won’t be so much of a pushover,” she said, popping off a shot to his ribs on the way to the main floor. He held his side where she’d punched him. He was still amazed at the hurt those little fists of hers could put on a person.
“Are you two okay?” their instructor asked when they joined the others. There were thirty people there, at least.
Logan nodded that they were fine, even thou
gh he was starting to think he’d gotten in over his head with this woman. He looked at her, frowned again. What was it about Harper that her treason affected Skylar the way it did? And how was any of this his fault? She could have warned him. Now it was too late. He didn’t want to see anyone Last Chanced. Not now. With so much mounting unrest, the Chicoms were executing anyone who wasn’t dropping to their knees and kissing the communist boot, let alone remaining loyal to the communist state.
With a burning pain in his skin where Skylar had grabbed his belly fat, and the deep ache where she hit him in the ribs, he forced himself to focus, to fight like his life depended on it.
For the next two hours, as he sweated all over the floor, as he huffed and puffed his way through another grueling night of Krav Maga, he thought about Skylar, wondering how long she’d been formally conspiring against the Chicoms. The way she was behaving, she had to be Blue Lark. He was sure of it.
But what does that mean?
Again, he needed to know her. He needed to see this woman for what she was. If she was part of the Resistance, was he just a means to an end? That was the only explanation.
She was using him.
He started to get pissed off inside, to let this woman’s deception build to the point that it felt like a bomb was primed to explode inside his chest. He channeled all of his anger into his last ten minutes of sparring. That’s when he ratcheted things up.
Skylar thought he was soft, a milquetoast, but he wasn’t. He killed a man just that afternoon! Shot him in the head as easy as if he were buying butter at the corner market. The thought repulsed him, but like every other forceful emotion, he let this drive him to fight harder and harder, until he cracked his sparring partner too hard and knocked him out.
For a second he stood there, fists at his side, trying to catch his breath. What did he just do? Sweating like crazy, he stared at his partner.
Did he go down easy, or did I hit him too hard?
The next thing he knew, his instructor was screaming in his face, but Logan didn’t care because his sparring partner’s eyes had rolled up in his head and his body was stiff as a board. Ignoring the incessant yelling, he dropped to a knee to check on the downed man, but his instructor kicked him in the shoulder, jarring his entire body and knocking him away.
Skylar walked by and said, “This just isn’t your day, is it?” She was damp with sweat, lean and glistening, a look on her face he could not stand.
“No thanks to you,” he grumbled.
“Get it together,” she turned and hissed, not trying to hide her temper.
He just looked up at her, unable to please her, unable to even prove himself to her. He wasn’t her boyfriend, he knew that now. He could walk in between raindrops with the Chicoms, but every second he was with Skylar was like an eternity in front of a firing squad waiting to be shot.
Chapter Six
When class was done that night, at the warehouse’s back door, Logan’s instructor reluctantly handed him the card with the hand-written location of the next class. He felt Skylar watching to see if he would get the invite.
Logan went to take it, but his instructor held on.
“Know your power enough to keep it in reserve for your friends and only unleash it on the enemy,” he said, deadly serious.
“Yes, sir,” he said, suddenly ashamed of his behavior.
The man let the card go and Logan walked out. Skylar joined him but they said nothing. There were cameras everywhere, cameras with face-scanning technology. He knew right now the cameras were dissecting his and Skylar’s expressions, looking for any signs of hostility, something that might give the AI systems running the surveillance grid reason to report them.
He forced a smile on his face, but it was fake, which was probably worse than if he were frowning.
He went back to neutral, fought to relax his eyes and mouth.
Skylar took his hand. He let her. He didn’t want to touch her at first, but it was smarter that way. Especially being emotionally volatile. If he could hold her hand, to the AI watching them and the city, that meant she trusted him. It meant he wouldn’t be reaching for a weapon. That he was safe. At least, that was the assumption they presumed AI was programmed to make.
Glancing at Skylar, he knew he wasn’t her type, that he wasn’t the Resistance fighter she wanted. He couldn’t spar like her, be afraid like her, get riled like her. His job was as a snitch for the Communist state-run tech giant rather than a patriot for the dying Republic. She hated that about him, but that was why they were together, wasn’t it? For what he could do for her? For all the things he could see having the kind of access SocioSphere provided?
He had nearly given up when she asked him into the shower with her. That’s when she had shown him her blue lark. After that, she let him have her. The sex brought him to this point in his career, his life, but he doubted he would get it again. The sex was a consolation gift. Payment for services rendered.
This bothered him.
That she would give away something he felt was so precious just to further the cause while seemingly feeling nothing in the act of doing so was a testament to her struggle.
At first, he was on top of the world. Being with her made him want to be better for her, to try harder to become the man she needed. So he dug down deeper, but it still wasn’t enough. Would it ever be enough?
The way she treated him said it would never be enough.
When they hit a dead zone between buildings, she stopped and—in the cold light of sunset—she said, “Harper told me you helped her with one of her improvised tasks.”
The killing.
“How do you know her?” he asked.
“Later,” she said. “I want to know if you killed anyone today.”
He swallowed over the lump in his throat. What if this wasn’t a dead zone anymore? What if the Chicoms plugged this hole? She squeezed his hand hard, prompting him to answer.
“I did,” he whispered.
“Why?”
“It needed doing.”
“Let’s go,” she said. They walked a few more blocks, stepped back into an alley as they saw a Chicom patrol jeep driving down the road.
“She could have handled it,” she whispered into his ear, so close he could feel her breath upon him. “You didn’t have to put yourself out like that.”
“But I did,” he said.
“I was both pleased by your behavior today and monumentally disappointed,” she told him. Judging by the look on her face, she was being forthright.
“You made that clear.”
“They’re going to kill her, you know,” she whispered, biting his ear kind of hard.
The sting burned bright for the longest time.
“Who is she?” he asked as armored police vehicles rolled by on the street in front of them. Night was falling fast. They quickened their pace, kept their heads low.
He imagined himself having an RPG, blowing every last one of those patrol vehicles to smithereens as they drove through the city, unaware someone like him existed. He stamped down the thought, careful not to let that kind of emotion on his face.
“She’s like me, but better,” she said. “If you were smart, you would have asked a different question. A better question.”
“Such as?”
“What value was she to us on the inside,” she said.
That’s when it dawned on him. He had blown it by sending out a message to Han, who then sent and received a message from Tristan.
“If you were as smart as you think you are, you would have been able to see this ahead of time,” she continued. “But you can’t because you’re always one foot in, one foot out.”
“Okay…”
“There’s a heaviness in the air,” she said, lost for a second in the moment, “so much ugliness all around us.”
“This isn’t exactly breaking news.”
Her eyes clearing, in a firm but quiet voice, she said, “With this newest development, you’re going to have to
step up things on your end.”
“Why is that?” he said, not sure what she was referring to.
“Because if you don’t, we’ll all die. As will the cause,” she replied. “For what you did today, for this big pile of crap you stepped in, you’re going to clean it up.”
“Oh? And how do you suppose I do that?”
“You’re going to get Harper out of the city. My uncle, Connor, has a stretch of property just over the border, in Oregon. Over a hundred acres with a small house and a barn. There are plans and instructions for you and Harper there.”
“I’m not leaving,” he said.
“Oh yes you are,” she said, her voice taking on a more authoritative tone. “Just after midnight is when you’re leaving.”
He couldn’t believe the things she was saying.
“Am I coming back?”
“Yes, if you want,” she said, resolute. “Harper is ready to do her part. She’s what’s most important right now. Stay there or leave, it doesn’t matter. Just get her there.”
A queasy, unfurling feeling spread throughout his organs and he wondered if he was going to be ill. He didn’t want to leave. His absence and Harper’s absence would be a giant red flag in the eyes of someone like Ming Yeung.
“What the hell is in Oregon besides a hundred acres and a mule?”
“A hundred acres and a barn. When the shit hits the fan, and it’s going to, we need a bug out location and this is it.”
“So it’s this barn and a bunch of bare land?”
“My aunt, uncle and cousin have a house there. The barn, however…you’ll see. That’s basically going to be our new headquarters.”
He laughed, sure he was going to puke now.
“A barn? Really?”
She looked at him, unblinking, and said, “Why do I hear an echo? Am I the only one hearing this?”
“You’re becoming too intense. I’m just trying to keep up.”
“You’re impossible.”
“I’m impossible?” he said, taken aback. “Why? For wanting a girlfriend. For trying my ass off to please her? Because that’s all this ever was. As for all this cloak and dagger BS…this isn’t the circus I signed up for.”