by Megan Lynch
Bristol cringed as he passed the teahouse on his way home. His picture was still there, on the windowless brick wall. It was only graffiti. He never thought to be critical of his own work, at least not at this level, before Cindy introduced him to real artists. He was self taught, and it showed. He wasn’t sure why the pictures he drew seemed to resonate with people who saw them, but he had the feeling that if he was going to continue this lifestyle, he’d better start putting out better work.
But he had no time for better work. The pace of his life overwhelmed him, and everywhere he turned, different groups of people seemed to show up and ask for more. The people who’d come to his shows, dripping in diamonds, would ask him questions about art and politics that they’d obviously spent a lot of time crafting, only to find him unprepared to answer. The Red Sea constantly battered him with talking points to change the public perception of refugees when he did interviews. Even Denver droned on about dishes and dirty laundry, though she and Stephen lived in the flat rent free.
By the time Bristol reached the front door of his building, he was fuming with undirected frustration. He turned the knob and threw open the door, looking forward to plopping down on his leather sofa. He was surprised to find Samara walking across the lobby toward him. He caught his breath.
She smiled at him under the brim of her hat. “Just the person I wanted to see.”
“You came here to see me?” In an effort to not sound too excited, he realized he came across as bored. He was quick to correct himself. “It’s good to see you.” He started to reach his arms out for a hug, but Samara was already looking down at the lobby seating areas. Bristol scratched his chin instead.
“Good to see you too. Anyway, look at this. There’s a new public perception poll out. The public’s opinion of Clovinger took a slight lean in the other direction.”
“Clovinger?”
“Cara Clovinger.”
“Cara—?”
“The first minister of Scotland? The woman who is still fighting for us to stay here after four years while even members of her own party are lobbying to have us sent back to the USA and also implement a Metrics-like version of government here?”
“Yeah—okay, I know. So, opinion of her has changed?”
“Just a little bit. Swaying away from her. This doesn’t exactly mean their perception of refugees has turned away from us as well, but it doesn’t look good. Can you mention something supportive about her when you guys do that magazine interview?”
“Sure.”
“That’d be great, because I think phase one of this plan to infiltrate Metrics is going to be fine, but I’m glad they’ll only be there a few weeks to start off. We were in simulation training all day and most people did beautifully but I’m worried about Jude…”
As she talked about the minute details of her worries, Bristol sat basking in her presence. Sometimes he liked to imagine that he’d time travelled to this place where they were now, in a part of the world he never knew existed, with this dazzling woman who’d risen to the challenge and had become the Red Sea’s liaison with Parliament and the first minister. When they’d met, she was just a girl with interesting thoughts dressed in a drab, dust-covered jacket against the backdrop of her own slum neighborhood. Now, she sat poised at the marble table in this ornate lobby and talked about international politics. Her unruly curls broke away from her bun and formed a cinnamon halo on her head. Some things never changed.
“Maybe you could practice with Jude sometime,” she said.
“Practice?”
“Yeah. He was just a kid when we left, so he needs some more practice acting like a Metrics citizen.”
“Samara, I was never a Metrics citizen.”
She looked at him for a moment like a frightened deer, having been caught in a potentially embarrassing mistake, but when he smiled, she laughed. “I’m so sorry, Bristol. I forgot!”
Bristol laughed too, savoring the release. “If you want him to practice looking at his watch twenty-four/seven, may I suggest my sister as a trainer?”
Samara wiped a burgeoning tear from her eye, still giggling. “I’ll talk to her about it. I think she’s pretty annoyed with Jude after today, though.”
“She’ll be home all night. Send him over.”
“Okay.”
“Maybe you and Jude could both come, and we’ll just leave Jude and Denver to practice and we could go out for dinner.”
“I’ll just send Jude.”
“I want to have dinner with you.”
“I’ll just eat at Olympic Village. It’s chili night.”
“But there’s a new seafood place three blocks from here. I’ll pay.”
“I like chili.” She got up and tugged her hat over her ears. “Do you need me to write up something for you about Clovinger?”
“Yes,” he said quickly. “Come over tonight and we can work together on it.”
“Bristol—”
“Is seven o’clock good for you?”
“Bristol, we’ve been through this.”
He sighed. “Okay. I’ll see you when I see you, Samara.”
She gave him a little half-smile and a side hug and was on her way. The way she walked out the door with an understated little swing of her hips as she pulled the door open suggested she knew she was being watched. Bristol watched. When she was gone, he walked to the corner to continue watching as she crossed the street.
When she was really gone, he stepped back, the familiar stench of self-disgust rising inside. The two of them had been a couple briefly, too briefly, back at St. Mary’s, the abandoned monastery where the Unregistered hid from the relocation. Back then, they’d had to keep their relationship a secret, and looked forward to the day they could be together, not sneaking around and living in fear, but in the sunlight. But Bristol had come on too strongly too quickly, inexperienced as he was, and Samara had retreated to focus more on making sure they stayed free.
It wasn’t until the elevator doors closed in front of Bristol’s face that he slapped himself on the forehead. Stupid. That interview that she was talking about had ended an hour ago.
Chapter Three
Denver Steiner tugged at the fabric of her husband’s shirt in her lap. If you folded things correctly, she had read in a homemaking magazine recently, you didn’t have to iron. She was willing to try, not because she wanted to be a better homemaker, but because she dearly loved her time and didn’t want to waste it. The more steps that could be taken out of something meaningless, like laundry, the better.
The sound of a key entering the front door scraped the air, and Denver’s back straightened automatically. Stephen entered, looking at his watch. Denver sagged back into the chair.
“I wish you’d stop wearing that thing.”
“Hmm?” He kept his eyes on his wrist.
Denver rose, and Stephen’s shirt fell to the floor. She put a hand over his watch, covering it. He snorted and kissed her nose.
“It’s good for us,” he said.
“It’s not.”
“Well, it’s terrible for us. But we have to practice. There could be an alert that appears for a fraction of a second while we’re over there. We have to stay vigilant.”
“You know you weren’t practicing for the mission.”
“That’s the reason I married you. Smart as a whip.”
“The reason you married me is the same as the reason I married you. Metrics assigned us.”
“Even a broken clock is right once a day.” He flung his watch on the chair she’d been sitting on and wrapped his arms around her waist. She threaded hers along his back and closed her eyes for a moment, slowing down time. He cleared his throat. She ignored it.
He spoke into her hair. “Jude is coming by tonight to practice.”
She tightened her grip on him. “Practice what?”
“Doing things, having conversations—”
She finished his sentence for him, “While looking at a watch.”
“And
watching for alerts and responding to orders, yes.”
“It seems so strange to me that he grew up wearing one and yet can’t remember how it’s done.”
“Muscle memory isn’t perfect, I guess.”
She sighed, looking toward the basket of yet-to-be-perfectly-folded clothes. “When is he coming?”
“Should be here any minute. I can help you fold.”
She resisted the urge to say no—after all, she had a certain way she wanted them done now, and she’d definitely have to redo his sloppy work if he helped. But then the reason she wanted them done that way in the first place—pulled and pressed, like little cloth soldiers standing upright—was so she could have more time with the man she loved before he went to America with the others on the liberation mission.
She picked up the shirt from the floor and nudged the basket toward him with her foot. “Are you just looking for an excuse to touch my underwear?”
He tackled her onto the couch, locked her waist in his arms and turned at the last moment so she would fall on top of him. “We’re married. I don’t need one.”
She laughed and told herself to let them have this moment. It was the least she could do. Still, she longed for reassurance that this wouldn’t be the end. “Stephen?”
“Mmm?”
“Promise me something.”
“Anything.”
“Promise you’ll come back.”
Stephen cradled her jaw in his hands and pressed his forehead against hers. “I promise.”
Immediately, Denver felt disgusted with her words and the overly sentimental, ooey-gooey self he always seemed to bring out of her. “No. You can’t promise that.”
“But I can! I’ll either come back whole and healthy and ready to ravish you—”
“Charming.”
“Or I’ll find another way.”
Denver crossed her arms. “Are you going to haunt me?”
“Oh, like no one’s ever been haunted before. Moaning, groaning, rattling chains, the whole thing. I’d just follow you around all day. You better not bring any other guys home, or I’m making some plates fly.”
…
Bristol was the one who opened the door for Jude, and even though Denver didn’t exactly hear what happened next, she suspected bad news. She knew he was in the mood to sulk after that, because instead of going into his studio, he crept into his bedroom and quietly closed the door. There was a time, long ago, when she could barely keep him in their childhood bedroom that they shared. He’d sneak out almost every night. There was no need for sneaking now.
“Hi, Denver.” Jude was unraveling yards of scarf from around his neck. He pulled it a little too tightly, but it stayed put. He coughed. He pulled harder. He coughed again.
“Stop.” Denver Ray did not suffer fools. She resisted the urge to march over and tighten it around his neck herself, as opposed to watching him butcher the job. “Let go of the ends. Loosen it at the throat first, then pull it over your head.”
Jude hesitated much too long for Denver’s liking, but he did follow her instructions and lifted it over his dark curly hair. “Sorry.”
“Let’s just get to work. Do you have your watch?”
Jude held out his wrist.
“Okay. Stand there. It’s really not that hard, Jude. You just have to be more interested in what’s on the screen than what’s actually going on around you.”
“How can I be? Everything inside me is telling me the exact opposite. I feel like it’s more important to be aware of my surroundings and—”
“Of course you have to be aware of your surroundings, but you can’t stop there. Maybe if we were going on a mission a hundred years ago it would have been important to do that, but now there’s more to think about. Being aware of physical danger is just a baseline task now. And you’re going to look completely out of place off you’re not staring at your watch most of the day.”
“It makes my neck hurt.”
She set her jaw and forced a breath from her nostrils. “Have you considered that you may not be up for this job?”
“No! I want to help.”
“Act like it. Let’s start with something easy.” She looked down at her watch and opened a game, stacking jewels on top of themselves until they fell over. It had been a favorite before Stephen came along and changed her life. “How was your day?”
“My day was—”
“Open up an easy game first, then talk.”
“Oh,” Jude fumbled for his wrist. “Uh…Okay. My…day…was…yellow.”
“Your day was yellow?”
“Sorry, there are just yellow lasers on here. No, good. My day was good.”
Stacking purple on top of green and red on top of purple, Denver asked, “What’d you have for breakfast?”
“Breakfast?”
“Yes. Most important meal of the day. What was it?”
“It—oh, man—it was good.”
“I asked what you ate, Jude.”
He threw his hands in his lap. “I can’t do this. I actually feel myself getting dumber the more I do this.”
“That’s the idea, little boy. Metrics gave us these, loaded with mindless games, and told us they’d make everything convenient—buying things, gaining intel, connecting with friends. And they did. But they also made us dull. You have to override that. You have to compartmentalize in your brain so your eyes and hands stay down, but your attention stays up.” She wanted him to get this so badly. “My husband’s life is going to be in your hands. And yours in his. He’s really working hard to protect you. Please do the same for him.”
Jude sniffed, looked down, and nodded.
They practiced until ten. Jude seemed more energized by the hour, not quite getting the splice between eye, hand, and awareness, but getting much closer. Stephen did a few rounds with him, and Denver watched, conscious of the worry lines deepening in her face but not currently concerned about them.
There was a moment when both of them looked completely natural—both hooked over their watches, carrying on a conversation that was slow but still full of content. A thought struck her. What if their brains betray them and they do, for a critical moment, care more about the game than paying attention to the danger around them? To find out, Denver lunged for Stephen, ready to jab his shoulder.
Stephen immediately put his hand up to catch her first, and put her in a headlock. Denver grinned.
“Finally!” He kissed her head in his arms. “I thought you’d never test me.”
Denver wiggled out and turned to Jude. “I’ll try to get you next time. Come over tomorrow.”
“I don’t think I’m ready.”
Denver and Stephen spoke at the same time. “Get ready.”
Chapter Four
Inside her room at Olympic Village, Samara polished her shoes. She shivered as she held the nude pump in her hands, but her room was so small that she’d opened the little half-window above her twin bed and told herself that she could bear the cold spring air so the entire room wouldn’t smell like polish.
She had noticed subtle differences in the way she was treated at Parliament based on the way she looked. Because her cause was of the utmost importance to her—after all, she was saving her own life here, among others—she put the effort in. She polished her shoes, wore lipstick, and painted her nails. She borrowed simple jewelry from the girls at work and used products to smooth her defiant curls into hairstyles similar to how the women wore it here—pale and limp and brushed tightly away from her face.
When her heels were shiny enough—they had been donated, but she felt she wore them well—she put them in the corner and pulled out a giant manila folder of paper. An immigration bill sponsored by a very conservative member of Parliament. Everything she knew about it so far was archaic—not only in content, but also the physical matter. If this were America, the documents would have been hologram projections hovering in the air in front of her nose, not heavy paper that took up most of the space in her bag. Then agai
n, if this were the United States, she wouldn’t be able to review legislation at all.
In fact, she was only now just getting used to calling her mother country “the United States.” They’d all been told that Metrics was a worldwide government, monitoring every aspect of individual citizens’ lives for the greater good of the world. They’d never been told the truth. That the Metrics government had cut off their country and citizens from the rest of the world and managed all the media and connections in order to keep up the illusion.
She’d been naive. After learning about the lies, and even after arriving here in Scotland, she mistakenly thought that all would be well here and she’d finally be free. But there were citizens here—free citizens who had the same access to information she did—who believed their own country would be better off with the isolation and social engineering policies of America. Now, she worked every day to make sure that those citizens didn’t get their wish. They didn’t understand.
The first day she’d met Cara Clovinger, she was shaking with excitement. She’d been invited back to a semi-private meeting, with the first minister’s entourage listening in the background of her expansive office. Clovinger should have been intimidating to Samara. She was dressed that day in subtle Chanel, her suit perfectly tailored to her matronly body. Samara had never smelled perfume like hers on anyone else, but it smelled like money. Behind all of her physical indicators of power, Clovinger had kind eyes that reminded Samara of her own mother. She hoped, one day, to ask Clovinger what had happened to her parents. Were they together? Free? Alive? By now, Samara and Clovinger had built enough of a rapport that she could ask, but she wouldn’t just yet. The more she thought about it, the more she wanted time to prepare herself for an honest answer.
Clovinger, in the beginning, had sat down in a floral upholstered chair across from Samara on the love seat. Between them lay an ornate, high-pile rug that was soft even under Samara’s shoes.
“Samra?”
Samara cleared her throat. “Actually, Samara.”