by Meli Raine
“Do you like living in Pittsburgh?”
“Like? What does The Mission have to do with liking something?”
It's as if I've struck her.
Cold eyes meet mine.
“If I didn't like what I do, Callum, I couldn't have survived the last nine years. You had your mission. I had mine.”
“It's been one hell of a mission, too. We've all contributed. We're everywhere now, Kina. Since Glen and I left, Stateless has found its way into the highest levels of governments around the globe. Dictatorships. Communist regimes, chaotic socialist governments, Western democracies. We have Social Democrats and Republicans and Green Party candidates in elected positions. Caliphates and kingdoms. It’s glorious.” Pride makes me speak too much, stumbling over my words like a fumbling fool.
Or maybe it's the horror of learning she's never left this compound. Not once.
Ever.
Or–wait.
We were told we came here at age four. Technically, she has been out of the compound. Just not for twenty-three years.
“Everywhere,” she echoes.
I lean in. “Do you remember when Angelica was gone for four years?”
“Yes. She was given a field assignment.”
“Do you know where?”
“No. And even if I'd asked, no one would ever have told The Mule anything.”
It hurts to hear her old nickname. “They've truly kept you in the dark.”
“Until I saw Glen on that television screen, I had no idea where she was.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. Shit.” She blinks. “Where was Angelica?”
“At the mental hospital where Lindsay Bosworth was kept for four years by her parents.”
“She was?”
“Yes. Made her way into Lindsay's primary therapist role under a different identity. We consider it a huge success.”
“How? Angelica?”
“Angelica is a licensed mental health therapist.”
“She is?”
I nod. “And Stateless used that in the plan surrounding Bosworth.”
“Plan?”
“To take him down.”
“Take the president down?”
“Yes.” Instinct makes me trust her. “But it's more complicated than that.”
“Because he's part of Stateless, isn't he?”
Thought threads inside me move swiftly to form a strong band, like a rope, woven by her nimble mind. “What a waste,” I mutter.
“Hmmm?”
“You.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. They should have sent you into The Field. God, Kina, you'd be brilliant out there.”
Tears fill her eyes.
“I've found a way to serve.”
A cry pierces the space between us. Jumping up, she's at the door before I can blink, moving down the hallway on the balls of her feet, making no sound.
It's clear she's done this before.
I follow to find her in a room with eight cribs, already holding a whimpering toddler. Motioning with her other hand, she urges me back out the door. She’s right behind, passing me in the hall to take the baby into her apartment. One hand is on the toddler's forehead. It is snuggled into Kina's chest, face flushed, eyes wide, mouth open as if it's about to wail again.
I’m never this close to a tiny toddler, other than the rare times a co-worker at my firm brings their child in for a company event. Most employees use the daycare facility on the first floor. Unlike some Stateless operatives, I have not been tasked with finding a wife and producing children.
Romeo told me that would come in my mid-thirties, like him.
Somewhere right now, his wife is being told of his honorable death. She is not Stateless.
Their child will grow up without a father.
Until Stateless assigns a man to meet all her needs. To step in and adopt their two-year-old.
Kina's obvious love for the little one is wrenching a muscle inside my chest, pulling it, like weeding a tenacious vine. I shouldn't be so touched by how she strokes the little boy's head, how she kisses his temple, how she calms him down with what seems like magic. Rocking her hips, she moves with a slow grace that lulls him.
He looks up, suddenly, and reaches for me. “Ba?”
I look to her, nonplussed. A smile, motherly and warm, fills her face.
“He wants a bottle.” Turning to the tiny kitchen, she opens a cabinet door, balancing the child on her hip. He watches as she finds a small cup with a lid, the kind you give children who cannot be trusted not to spill.
“Ba!” he insists.
“Cup,” she says. “You can have a cup, Jay.”
“Jay?” I ask as the little boy turns toward the sound of his name.
“Who dat?” he asks her, pointing to me.
“That's Callum.”
“Cam.”
“Yes! Cal-um,” she over-enunciates.
“Cam.”
“Close enough,” I say with a laugh.
Without asking for help, she pours the milk into the cup, uses one hand to attach the lid, and in seconds, his chubby little hands eagerly pull the cup to his mouth. Sucking hard, he drinks.
“Jay's going through a growth spurt,” she says softly. “And has a new tooth coming in. He wakes up most nights. I'm not supposed to give him milk like this. It's bad for his teeth. But this is only the second time, and we brush first thing in the morning.”
“Okay.” I have no idea what to say to all that.
It's clear she can tell, laughter tinging her next words. “What I just said to you is a work conversation, Callum. In your job, it's all about anti-hacking protocols and finding security problems in the hardware and the software. In my job, it's about potty training and social skills and vegetables.”
“You're a daycare worker.”
“I am the director of the nursery. I earned an online degree in early childhood development,” she counters. “Please don't denigrate what I do.” The please is gratuitous. Her steely resolve is a forcefield around her. This is a demand for respect.
“Ah dun!” Jay announces suddenly, handing the empty cup to Kina.
“Bed now,” she says to him simply.
“Bed,” he repeats, then yawns.
Triumph shines in her eyes as she caresses his head. “Yes, bed.” She looks at me. “See? I know what I'm doing.”
“You do. I’m sorry,” I add, knowing she deserves it. “I didn’t intend to make you feel lesser for this.” I motion around the apartment. “I'm piecing together the lies I've been told and remembering the Kina I once knew. You had so much potential.”
“I channeled all that into a deep attachment to the children, Callum. That potential did not go to waste. There are nine-year-olds here who I’ve raised from the day they were born. Seventeen-year-olds who were my charges when I first started at the age of twelve. Remember Sela?”
“She was the first child you comforted. The reason you worked one shift a week in here back then.”
“Yes. She graduates next year. All the children here have been my responsibility, even the teenagers, to some extent.”
“You should be proud.”
“I am.” She looks at Jay. “Now you need a change and to go back to sleep.”
“Seep,” Jay says, eyelids drooping.
I jut my chin in a gesture for her to go. When she leaves, I sag into the couch, elbows on my knees, heart in my hands.
Holy shit.
Nothing I thought about the last nine years is true.
Not one damn thing.
Chapter 20
Kina
* * *
My hands shake as I change Jay's diaper, my movements swift, as fast as my racing heart. Once I'm done, I tuck him in. He's practically asleep before I'm out the door. None of the other babies in the room stir, and I'm so grateful for that.
Once I close the door to their room, I press my back against the wall and try to control my breathing.
Callum is in my apartmen
t. We're alone.
And now we are unraveling lies. So many lies.
Why wasn't he told of my true mission? What purpose did lying to him serve? What about Glen–does she even know where I am? What my fate was?
Seeing her on television was a brief glimpse of how different our lives are. I'm hungry to know more.
But I'm hungrier to spend time with Callum.
With Jay settled and my heart starting to relax into my chest like a scared child finally trusting the comfort, I breathe for a few minutes, hoping Callum doesn't leave. What must he think of me? It's clear he holds tremendous disdain for what I do.
I do, too.
Not for the children. For my failure to measure up to Stateless, to be useful enough to the cause to be sent into The Field.
Failure is easy to push away when you have no one you care about to compare yourself to.
“No,” I whisper aloud. “No.”
“No, what?”
My eyes fly open to find Callum right there in the hall with me, watching my face intently.
“I'm–I–I feel like such a failure,” I blurt out.
He crooks his finger, beckoning me to come to him. We enter my apartment. He closes the door.
“Kina, you're far from a failure. That child is getting exactly what Stateless wants you to give him.”
“He is?”
“Brain development and intelligence correlate to attachment. Emotional intelligence, too. I took a couple of psych courses in college, but it’s more than that. Trust me when I tell you that nine years in The Field has demonstrated to me that emotional intelligence is the single most important trait in a good operative.”
“It is?”
“Which means you will make a great field operative.”
“Will? What do you mean, will?”
“I've just been promoted to Romeo's position. Svetnu said so at our meeting.”
My gasp can't be contained–it’s so loud, I'm sure it's waking the babies. “Callum!”
How can a face look proud and ashamed at the same time? He manages it, somehow.
“I know.”
“That's unbelievable.”
“Why? You think I haven't earned it?”
“How would I know? I haven't seen you for nine years! I have no idea whether you've done the work. Whether you've earned it. But clearly Dr. Svetnu and the leaders believe you have. With Romeo gone, who will lead in his place?”
“Me.”
“Yes. You. Congratulations.”
“Thank you. I have more power now. Real power. And the first thing I plan to do tomorrow is to set you free.”
“Free?”
He looks around. “You don't belong here. You belong out there. In the real world. There is so much more beyond these fences, Kina. Have they ever let you leave?”
Discomfort floods my bones. I know this conversation is recorded, and yet he doesn't seem to care.
Did Romeo care? As people ascend the levels of leadership, do they get more daring? Or do I have it backwards? Maybe the more daring you are, the more leeway you get?
“I've never left, no.”
“Not once?”
I shake my head. “The children don't leave. Therefore, neither do I.”
“Tomorrow you do.”
“Absolutely not.”
His neck snaps up at my words, eyes narrowing. “Excuse me?”
“I cannot leave the children.”
Callum looks around my apartment, pulls out two slim devices from his pants pocket, and grabs my arm. Placing the thin rod along my chip, he adds a wide elastic band to hold it there. Duplicating his actions on his own arm, he then relaxes, shoulders dropping.
“This will last about ten minutes before any sensors go off.”
“Sensors?”
“Alerts for the tech team surveilling us. The computer records everything but humans don't monitor it live. When the algorithm detects an anomaly, though, a report goes to a live team and they investigate.”
“Oh! This is better than a waterfall in Woods!”
He laughs. “Yes, it is. But not as beautiful.”
As he says the word beautiful, our gazes lock.
A rippling feeling tears through my body, a sensation I haven't felt in nine years. I lick my lips.
He stares.
“I've missed you,” I blurt out, not meaning to take that leap.
“I've missed you, too.” His hand is still on my wrist. Fingers tightening, he leans toward me.
A blast of memory, of our kiss so many years ago, takes over my body and soul. When he talks about freedom, of letting me leave, of giving me a new assignment, I'm terrified.
Thrilled and terrified.
I'm also heartbroken.
I can't leave the babies. And frankly, I won't.
But for a few moments, I can let myself dream.
Hands touching, we sit for a few beats.
“Tell me what your life is really like.”
“I'm sure you've been told,” he says.
I shake my head. “No one talked about you or Glen with me. I asked. I was told it was confidential.”
He mutters a curse word. “They kept you in the dark.”
“Yes.”
“Why?” we say in unison. We shrug in unison, too.
“I know more than you, Kina, but I don't know that.”
“You knew where Glen was the whole time? That she was working her way toward the Oval Office?” The words give me a thrill of pleasure.
“Yes. Not that she would make it, but that she had a mission to infiltrate.”
“She succeeded.”
“Indeed. Just like you.”
“Me?”
“Watching you with Jay makes it clear you're fulfilling your Stateless mission as well. He is bonded to you.”
“They all are. To me and Philippa.”
“Philippa?”
“My assistant. We have trainees who rotate in and out for help, but otherwise, it's me and Philippa. The leaders want it that way. Fewer people for the children to attach to.”
“And at four they leave? Like we did?”
“We came here at four, Callum. Remember? We never left the nursery because we were never in it.”
“Right.”
“Have you learned anything about your, uh, the family you were born into?”
“Why would I?”
“You never investigated?”
“No. That's not my mission.”
“You've never been curious?”
Eyes jumping around, he leans in. I can smell some kind of tea on his breath. Perhaps chamomile? “Yes. I'm curious. But our files are locked up tight.”
“Oh.”
“And there's nothing I can access on the outside that leads me to any information. I have no compass. No breadcrumbs. Asking me to find the information is like standing at the top of Mount Everest and asking for directions to the best taco truck in the world.”
“What's a taco truck?”
A long, low chuckle comes out of him as he squeezes my hand, but doesn't let go. “I really need to get you out of here.”
I give him a flat smile.
And then he asks, “What is your life like here? Tell me everything.”
Everything.
I can't. I can't tell him the rest.
My body and mind, so well trained, respond in the only logical way.
I elevate.
Chapter 21
Callum
* * *
She goes blank.
The change is extraordinary. Half of me admires it.
Half of me feels like she's dead. Alive in front of me, but soulless.
Trained so well, my old friend slips into a mode that no baby in her care has ever seen.
I hope.
Because when we elevate, we're detached from our own humanity.
So why in the hell would Kina do it now?
A bird chirps outside, the first of two, then three. A sliver of grey light
comes through the curtains in her living room window, the first sign that our middle-of-the-night meeting is turning into an early dawn discussion.
“Kina?”
She turns away and walks out of the apartment, not bothering to close the door after her. Scrambling, I jump up and follow.
She breaks into a run.
Letting her clogs fall off her feet, she sprints. I strain to keep up, at a disadvantage in more formal shoes, but faster than her overall. By the time I overtake her, we're in Woods, close enough to the old waterfall where we used to meet that I can hear it in the background, a noise machine.
A tool.
The elastic band holding her chip blocker is askew, but the slim rod is still intact. She moves closer to the waterfall, slipping the device off.
Good call. We're easing in on ten minutes. I do the same.
In Woods, anything can happen, I remind myself. Every bird call is heightened for me. Romeo's body isn't even cold, the trauma from yesterday ricocheting in my mind and memory. We're expected to recover swiftly, to pivot, to process and regroup.
And I would be fine if it weren't for Kina.
“What the hell are you two doing here?” calls out a female voice I know too well.
Angelica emerges from the bushes, dressed in all black, mouth set in pursed disappointment.
No. Worse.
Pure disgust.
“None of your business.”
“She's my report. You damn well bet it's my business.”
Ah. So the challenges to my authority are starting now, and starting with the big guns.
“And you are my report. So stand down.”
The gape-mouthed look I get in return makes it clear Svetnu hasn't announced my promotion. “You've got balls, Callum.”
“Yes. I do. That's a biological fact.”
“You think the leaders would choose you to fill Romeo's shoes?”
“Too late, Angelica. They already did,” Kina says, her voice robotic. She sounds like Glen in the attack. It's chillingly effective.
“How would you know? You're just The Body. The Mule.”
The Body?
“She's right,” I snap. “Svetnu told me himself. An hour or so ago.”
“He doesn't have the authority,” she sneers.
“He wasn't alone.”