Unwilling to Back Down (Survival of the Fittest Book 2)

by Shawn Keys

  She shook her head, rejecting the whole idea. “This is all theoretical, Kyle. Come on, things aren’t like that. I mean, I am a doctor. I’m not unaware that certain people get a leg up in life. Why do you think I went to jail in the first place? Why do you think I’m working here? It’s not out of guilt or anything. I worked hard to get what I have. They tried to give me the better deal because they want me working out of hospitals again. It has nothing to do with… with…” She searched for the right words.

  “… breeding you for your intellect and good looks?” Kyle provided.

  She smirked as he didn’t bother mincing words. “Yes!”

  “Sorry, Soo-Yun. I really am. We don’t know how much of the FDPC’s policies are driven by what I’m talking about. It’s possible the post-prison incentives you are talking about are exactly what you say. But I doubt it.” Time for the next secret, he decided. “I’m Persterim-negative.”

  She blinked again at the surprising comment. “What?” She checked her display.

  “Don’t bother. My implant is off. The one I’m carrying isn’t real, either. It’s broadcasting a fake ID.”

  “Are you crazy? That’s…” She was at a loss.

  He had to smile. “We stopped trying to figure out how long we’d spend in jail a while back. I’ve been racking up quite a few bounties on my head. You see, Soo-Yun, I’m one of the anomalies. I don’t know why I don’t measure up to this precious baseline of theirs. I mean, I didn’t think I was that hideous.” He smiled as he said it. He really didn’t lack for any sort of confidence. How could he, living with so many women who clearly wanted him. In their more honest moments, they had admitted that they found him roguishly cute. He was willing to take that and leave the “gorgeous handsomeness” to others like Frederick Noble back at college. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m too thin, or maybe I have a heart defect I don’t know about, or… well, hell, I have no idea why I’m not their sort of person. One thing I am sure about is that they are serious about being the lifeguards for the gene pool.”

  “They tried to hurt you?”

  “Me. My friends. My family. They framed me for murders I didn’t commit. I might be their number one fugitive right about now.”

  Soo-Yun listened, shocked to her core. “The FDPC?”

  Kyle wasn’t sure if it would be crazier to implicate an entire governmental department, or some unseen shadow organization inside of it? He said, “Not all of it. We know that for sure. But we don’t know how far the rot spreads. That’s part of the problem. We don’t know where the good guys end and the bad begins. But if I’m right, and all these public population measures are hidden ways to augment and push a eugenics agenda… they have to control a lot of it.”

  Trying to swallow that, Soo-Yun struggled with it all. “Lily isn’t crazy. She isn’t even paranoid.”

  Kyle smiled. “I think she finally bought it after digging a bullet out of my stepfather after he was shot by an FDPC agent.”

  She huffed, seeing the humor in it without really being able to laugh at that moment. “So crazy.” A sudden thing occurred to her. “Bullet holes… wait a sec, that’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

  Considering he had had no idea how he was going to raise this with her, he figured a rambling conversation leading up to it couldn’t be all that bad. “Yes.”

  “Where’s Lily?”

  “Looking after some others we both care about. They’re still in hiding.”

  “Why aren’t you?”

  Well, there’s that line again, Kyle thought. Time to cross it. He said, “Because we’re sick of being hunted. A few of us decided to try and answer a few of these questions we don’t know. We’ve found an ally inside the DOJ. She’s willing to listen. But she won’t listen for very long and she’s going to need real proof. I don’t have to tell you that there is a really good chance that getting proof like that is going to get dangerous. Lily couldn’t be here. So, she suggested I come talk to you. She thought you might be tempted to get in on uncovering how big a mess this all is.”

  Soo-Yun let her head thump back against the wall, stunned at the hugeness of it all. Her eyes unfocused, absorbing it. Then, she whispered, “She isn’t wrong.”

  Hope surged inside Kyle. “Really?”

  Her focus narrowed again. Her lips tightened as she visibly took hold of herself. “Lots of grand ideas. Lots of huge, great, massive, daring ideas.”

  For some reason, Kyle wasn’t sure she was handing out compliments. “I guess. I mean, I don’t know what I’d call it. I’d say we’re just trying to do what we need to do.”

  Soo-Yun met his eyes. They slipped down, taking in his shirt with droplets of water scattered over it. Her gaze skimmed over the bulge of the gun tucked into his jeans. “Willing to use that gun? Or do you just carry it around to look tough?”

  Kyle squashed any instinct to be insulted. He had walked in with an insane request. He could understand if she wanted to challenge him a little. “I haven’t fired this one. But others… well, the road hasn’t been all smooth.” He shook his head. “Not going to sit here bragging about it all. Wish it hadn’t been necessary, to tell you the truth. But it was.”

  Soo-Yun didn’t just listen to the words; she looked intent on his tone, absorbing every bit of his body language like a woman who had learned and trained to be able to do it well. “People inside used to call me the best bullshit detector on the cell block,” she confessed.

  “How’m I reading?”

  She didn’t answer. “All this… if you’re right, there’s no simple fix in all this.”

  “Not even a little bit, you’re right. We don’t even know our way through all this garbage. We can see what might be the next right step, but for all we know we’ll end up in quicksand and sink as soon as we take it.” He shrugged. “But we gotta try.”

  Soo-Yun weighed him a little longer. Long enough Kyle started to wonder if she was deciding where to bury his body to make this all go away. He had no doubt she could take that step if needed.

  Coming to a sudden decision, she slipped off the counter. “Come on. We need to talk in private.”

  From across the kitchen, Chianne saw Soo-Yun toss her head and head for the door. She called out, “Oh, no! He’s not done! I ain’t letting him out of my sight!”

  Soo-Yun flashed her a warm but reprimanding smile, “Oh, shush, Chia! You’ve made him suffer enough already. Find someone else to badger.”

  Chianne’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t go trusting him, Soo!”

  Soo-Yun canted her eyes back at Kyle, obviously still judging him. “I don’t. That’s why we need to talk.”

  Kyle pulled his hands from the water, wiping them dry on a towel. “Alright.” He had no idea what she wasn’t willing to say in the loud kitchen after all they had talked about, but they were well over the line for turning back. “Lead the way.” He avoided looking Chianne’s way, not needing to see her silent threats to know they were there. He reminded himself not to come down without Soo-Yun, even if Soo-Yun ordered him to leave. If he came back down alone without any sign that Soo-Yun was perfectly fine, Chianne was probably going to take his head off with a meat cleaver before he could explain.

  Soo-Yun lead the way, heading into the back past her make-shift clinic, then gestured at a set of creaky old stairs. “Second and third floor are rooms for the homeless to stay. We only open on nights where the temperature falls below zero. Going to see a lot of those soon. I rent the fourth-floor loft.”

  “Cheaper than a halfway house?”

  “Way cheaper. Free, as long as I help them in the clinic.” She started her way up ahead of him.

  Kyle couldn’t resist tracing the lines of her legs as they flexed and bent to propel her up the steps. He was a legs man, as Megan well knew. So did Lily. Hell, he thought, all of the women sleeping with him knew it and liked to show off whenever they got the chance. I forget how blessed I am, sometimes. But even with that blessing, watching Soo-Yun’s athletic limbs launching he
r from stair to stair with dynamic power was a thing of beauty he couldn’t ignore.

  Following her up, it was only a minute later that he was watching her key open her lock and open the door onto her private retreat. Once they went in, he realized why she had called it a loft instead of an apartment or room. It was an older building without a proper attic. The steepled roof’s rafters were visible overhead, ten feet at the walls and higher than fifteen at the peak. There were four large supporting pillars that started way down at the foundation spearing up through the open space, reaching up to support those rafters.

  There were no other interior walls, and the outer ones weren’t finished, left as exposed drywall at the mudding stage to ensure all the cracks were sealed. Someone had cobbled together a four-piece bathroom, but it was segmented from the room only by a portable partition. Two tables were propped against another wall with a microwave, a toaster, and some dishes. Any cleaning would have to be done in the bathroom sink, by the look of it. There was a futon laying on the hardwood floor further down, with lamp standing on the ground on one side and a small set of shelves overladen with books on the other.

  Kyle turned in a slow circle, his footsteps echoing in the huge space. In another segment of the loft, there was a large set of impact mats, looking like they could be equally practical for doing yoga or wrestling or even his own jiu jutsu. He saw a few skipping ropes, a set of medicine balls, a variety of kettle bells, and a radio for playing whatever music might inspire her. He saw a hand-written scrawl on the exposed drywall of one wall:

  I Fucking Hate Love Burpees!

  Underneath the exclamation, there was a series of hash marks grouped into counts of five. They extended line after line, numbering into the thousands. Installed in the wall was a chin-up bar right over the counting zone.

  Kyle gave a gruff laugh. “Truer words were never spoken. Though it was hand-stand wall kicks I hated most, back at my dojo. What’s your count?”

  Soo-Yun said without any ego, not bragging, answering only because he had asked. “Hundred a day in sets of twenty, unless I get interrupted. Guess I’ve been here just over eight months. Pushup and jumping into a chin-up at each end.”

  Honestly impressed, Kyle realized he might have underestimated how dedicated this woman might be once she set her mind to something. “This what you wanted me to see? Because if you wanted to convince me that you can set you mind to something and be trusted to finish it, I’m sold.”

  Soo-Yun paced to one side, shaking her head slowly. “No. I guess I wanted to let you see where I’m at right now. I know it doesn’t look like much, but it’s mine. I’m trying to figure out what next. But that doesn’t mean I don’t love what I’m doing right now, understand? It’s nice to be needed.”

  “Sure, I get it.”

  Soo-Yun paced a little further, working her way through what she wanted to say little by little. “You have a lot of big ideas.”

  She had said the same thing below. Kyle nodded. “The whole situation is daunting, to say the least. I’m trying my best not to make light of it. I don’t want you getting in over your head before you realize you’re there.”

  “Thanks.” She meant it, but from the way she said it, Kyle could tell that wasn’t her main concern. She was still searching for how to spit out what she wanted to say. “When you were coming in, did you see any of the people who come to the hospice?”

  “Yeah, a few. I was serving there for a while at the tables, so I talked to a few of them.”

  “And?”

  “And what? Not the first time I’ve seen people who don’t have a spot in the world.” Kyle shrugged. “Some of them make your heart break because you can picture yourself in their shoes. Sane, a little dirty, but just in a bad spot. On the other end, have to wonder why some others aren’t in a mental facility somewhere. Plus, everything in between.”

  Soo-Yun nodded. “Most of them don’t have a lot of hope. Chianne might be hard to take, but she’s worked here and dealt with that sort of thing for a lot of years. If she’s hard-nosed and tough as nails, you can guess why.”

  Kyle nodded, not sure he would have that sort of patience. “Alright, I get it.”

  “Do you? Do you see what would happen if I wasn’t here? I’m not trying to sound self-important. But I’ve thought about this.”

  Kyle nodded again. “This isn’t just about attitudes. I’ll bet you’re breaking rules of some kind doing what you do here. I’ll bet that clinic is pretty much off-the-books, and all your supplies are bought from random pharmacies by Chianne, spread around to stop anyone from asking questions. If you go, that means the clinic shuts down.”

  Soo-Yun said, “But you want me to run off and sew closed a few gun-shot wounds? I heard your story, Kyle. It terrifies me how much I believe it all. How easy I would find it to accept it all. But this is what I’m weighing you offer against.”

  There was something else. Kyle didn’t think she was lying, but this wasn’t the whole story of why she sounded like she was a heartbeat away from telling him to get out. Giving her time, he answered the concerns she had managed to get out, “not going to lie to you. Yeah, these people probably won’t get the help they need. Not unless someone else follows in your footsteps. You’d know better than I if there’s anyone you can call to take over your role.”

  She issued a bitter laugh. “Umm, no. Most of my colleagues were all too happy to ignore me after what I did.”

  “I’m sorry, Soo-Yun. I’m going to sound a little cold, here. A year ago, I couldn’t have been this harsh. But I’ve learned a few hard truths.” He pointed downward, as if he could pinpoint the homeless people milling about outside on the streets. “Each one of the people you want to help are clearly below the so-called baseline these bastards have established. If this ‘shadow-FDPC’ has its way, none of them would survive to the morning. Sure, I get that not everyone is going to make it out of the gutter, but I think we agree they all deserve a shot at it. The shadow-FDPC would just put them down like dogs. If you help us expose these people, you’ll be helping save a lot more than a few homeless people on the back streets of Olympia. My history teacher once said people called this ‘the cruel calculus of war’ or something like that. To let a few extra die today but save thousands tomorrow. Hell, maybe millions. But bigger than numbers is our chance to save our right to be different. We need to stop these faceless pieces of garbage from getting the privilege of choosing who passes some arbitrary grade.” He clenched his hand into a fist, wishing he could drive it into the face of Agent Niles all over again just to work out some frustration. “Yeah, I know what I’m asking. I know it sucks. But that’s the way it is.”

  “Huge ideas. Great plans,” Soo-Yun whispered.

  Kyle was about to say something –

  She jumped back in, “– Maybe ideas worth fighting for.”

  Kyle shrugged. “Not my ideas. I’m not a patriot by nature. Never been one to wave a flag on parade. But that’s sort of how this country got started, right? Whatever other choices we’ve made around the world, that’s the one thing we keep saying we want to export, isn’t it? The right for everyone to have their shot. Life ain’t fair, and it ain’t certain. But people should get a shot, whatever that means to them.”

  Soo-Yun raised her eyes, staring at him now. She spoke with an intensity that surprised him, “Might not be the ideas I’m worried about.”

  Kyle was caught by that. “What do you mean?”

  “I see what you’re saying here, Kyle. I’m putting an awful lot of trust in your claims here, but only a fool would say half of what you said without some sort of evidence to back it up. Assuming it’s all true, then I can see why something needs to be done about it. Lily was right to think of me.”

  Kyle could hear a ‘but’. So, he provided it. “But?”

  Soo-Yun’s eyes narrowed on him. “How do I know you’ll go the distance in this fight?”

  Kyle felt the power behind the question. He felt in his bones that this was what s
he had really wanted to ask him. Rather than be flippant, he turned what might have been a joke into a serious reason. “Because I don’t have a choice.”

  Soo-Yun didn’t buy that. “But you do. How long did you say you were hiding? You said months. Lily is still there. If you didn’t stir up trouble and this shadow-FDPC thought you had wandered off into the wilderness, how many years could you hide? You have proof they aren’t fallible. So, when things get hard, what are the odds of you taking the safe bet, crawling back into that same hole, and pulling a lid over yourself until the dust settles?”

  “Listen, Soo-Yun –”

  She darted back in, “– because when I saved those children in that hospital, I wasn’t doing it on a lark. We hid it for a long time. When things got hard, I went to jail because I wasn’t smart enough to know the others had all cut deals or bailed on me. In jail, I guess I was being even more stupid. Should have guessed someone in that hellhole would turn me in. Hoped a couple might stand up and speak out on my behalf.” She got a little quieter, remembering. “Only one did. And she ended up with three extra years.”

  After a sigh, she went on, “Shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. Especially when I found out the one who turned me in was the one whose chest I pounded on until she started breathing again. But it got her off a life sentence. Maybe after nearly dying, the chance of breathing free air before she died was too much to pass up. Who knows?” The pain of betrayal lurked behind her eyes.

  She took a couple of strong steps toward him, reaching out and poking him in the chest. “I want to know if you’ll be in this to the end. How committed are you to this?”

  Kyle grimaced. “You don’t know what we’ve already been through. I wish we had time for the whole story, but I’m not sure I’d be able to piece it all together anyway. I have kids on the way. I want to protect the people I love from this insanity. A person doesn’t get any more committed than me.”