“Well, Juema is a nice planet to kick back and relax,” he says. “She probably thought this was a safe place. Maybe she has family here?” He pauses. “Coreno? That’s on the other side of the galaxy. You’re sure she doesn’t have family here? Any friends or close ties?”
The doors open and he grabs his computer case and steps off. The doors slide close and we’re moving again. I grip the armrests on the seat. He knows I’m here, on this planet. Juema is fair in size, but with the technology the Corps have, I’m surprised he didn’t know I was right behind him.
The next stop isn’t too far away, short enough that it wouldn’t be too much of a problem to walk to Eli’s wife’s house. The airbus pulls up to the station, and I hop off. Two women get on, both chatting to someone on the other end of their tablet lines. Their lives seem so simple, so safe. Safe, I feel, will never be a reality for me.
I feel a rush of air behind me as the airbus leaves the station. The cool breeze has me pulling my light jacket around me, keeping the warmth from escaping.
The Northeastern Ward is much different than the Central Ward. The houses are bigger and way more spread out. On average, the closest neighbors live about a half a mile away from each other. I check the sheet with her address on it one more time and make my way over to a shuttle service.
“Where do you want to go?” the driver asks. I show him the slip of paper. “May I keep this until we get there, for direction purposes?”
“Sure,” I say. “No rush.”
He punches the coordinates of her address into a medium-sized tablet and pulls away from the station. The ride is smooth and short. We pull up on the opposite side of the street from her house. He hands me back the paper and I slip out the side door. I hand him three Stoneians and he drives away. I glance at the paper one more time to make sure the address is right and shove it back into my pocket. I smooth my hair and tuck in my shirt. I probably should have showered before coming here and put on new clothes. I can’t turn back now so I cross the street.
Her house is big. More than enough for four people. I walk up the large staircase that leads to the front door of the house. The patio is nice; it extends around the entire house. I knock on one side of the double wooden doors and wait for someone to answer. My nerves remind me of a few weeks ago when I was standing on the doorsteps to my own home. I was nervous then too but for a different reason.
Finally, footsteps sound from the other side of the door. As if in slow motion, the knob slowly turns and is pulled away from me. “Can I help you?” a woman, who I assume to be Eli’s wife, asks.
“Are you Andrea Parker?” I ask hesitantly.
“Yes,” she says just as hesitantly.
“Who’s at the door?” a voice calls from behind her.
“Some girl,” Andrea yells back. I hear footsteps approach and a man shows up behind her, half of his face covered up by the door. Then he steps out from behind the door and I almost faint. It’s the man from the airbus. The one looking for me. I duck my head and peer at the ground.
“What’s your name?” Andrea asks.
My mind is foggy. I can’t think straight. “Callie,” I say, still looking at the ground.
“Can I help you with something Callie?” Andrea says.
“I was wondering if I could talk to you about something, something personal,” I say.
“Um, sure. Do you want to come inside?”
“Oh, I have to go soon. Could we do it on the porch?”
“I suppose so,” she says hesitantly. She steps over the doorway barrier and pulls the door until it’s ajar. “What’s up?”
“I have two things I need to inform you about,” I say. “One, Eli’s dead.” It’s blunt, I realize, but I don’t really care at this point.
I wait for her reaction, but she doesn’t even flinch.
“We knew each other from the Corps.”
“You work with the Corps?” she says, outraged by this new news.
“No,” I say. “I was a spy. So was Eli. His dying wish was for me to tell you that he loved you.”
“You must have the wrong person,” she says. “Because the Eli I knew didn’t love me. At least not when it mattered.”
“He did though,” I say. “He was trying to protect you.”
“By abusing me and turning me over to the Corps?”
“He did it because otherwise they would have killed you, and he thought that he could save you,” I explain.
“I don’t understand,” she says.
“Anyone who doesn’t believe in what the Corps stands for will be killed,” I explain slowly. “And since you didn’t, you would have been killed. As twisted as it sounds, he beat you to save your life and your children’s lives.”
“What’s the second thing?” she asks after a few moments.
“What?”
“You said there were two things you had to tell me, what’s the second one?”
“Oh,” I say, somewhat stunned that she doesn’t care to know more about Eli. “Well, I have reason to believe that the man in your house right now works for the Corps. Just making sure you’re aware.”
“My husband?” she says, bewildered. “James wouldn’t hurt a fly. What makes you think he works for the Corps? I mean, he hates it about the same amount I do.”
I lower my voice. “I escaped from the Corps’ headquarters last night. I saw him on the airbus this morning. My face was on his computer screen, and he was talking to someone on his tablet about me. There was the Corps’ logo in the background of his computer screen.”
“Look, I don’t know who you are, or what you want, but you can’t just come here and claim my ex-husband is dead and my new husband works for the Corps,” she says raising her voice. “You need to leave.”
“Fine,” I say. “But I know how much you’ve endured. I’m sure you want it to stop. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” I turn on my heel and bounce down the steps. I can tell she’s still looking at me. From the wavering tone in her voice, I know she is questioning what I’m saying, whether what I told her was true or not.
I walk down the block and circle back to her house. This time, I enter the porch from the opposite side of the house. Through the windows, I can see her and her husband. She’s crying. He has his arm around her, comforting her. I can make out some of the things she says.
“Why did this have to happen?” she says. “All of the memories are coming back.”
“Just do what you did before and don’t think about him,” her husband says.
“You don’t understand,” she says. “He was my best friend. It’s because of him that I hate the Corps. They turned him on me. They made him something he wasn’t. That girl just reminded me of everything I hate about the organization.”
I shouldn’t be here. Every minute that I stand here watching them is a minute that I’ll never get back. He could have sent an army after me. He probably knows I’m standing here right now. He probably knows exactly what I’m thinking. And yet, I don’t move. Not a muscle twitches. I am frozen.
His head moves. His eyes turn up and catch mine. A pull, like a magnet. I can’t take my eyes off him. He knows I’m here. Neither of us moves. Andrea still sobs, but he’s no longer focused on her. He knows me. He knows that I’m a valuable asset to the Corps, yet he doesn’t even acknowledge I’m here except for the fact that he won’t take his eyes off me. Is he a spy, like Eli was? Or is he waiting for the right moment? Why can’t I move? If I run, he’ll know something is up, and if I stay still any longer, he’ll know something is up.
Then, his lips part. He says something. What is he saying? I step toward the window. He says it again. Then his body jolts to the left and men fill the room. Andrea stumbles as James falls to the ground. Then she stands up and slowly turns so her gaze meets each of the men in the room in turn. They all have the same logo on their backs. The same logo that was on James’s computer screen. Before my brain even connects all these things together, my feet switch directions, and
I run as fast and hard as I can.
My pulse climbs into my throat. My heart races. I don’t know the exact way back to the airbus station, but I run in the direction I came from earlier. My legs hurt and my chest burns. I try to gulp for air but the wind stings my throat.
I don’t know if James is dead or alive, and at this point, I’m not sure I care. Even if Andrea didn’t believe me, she was still the ex-wife of Eli, and I had to honor his wish. Andrea might be dead now too for all I know. And if she is… I stop. If she’s dead and James is dead, who is going to watch out for her children? They’re too young to take care of themselves.
But I can’t go back. But I should. I told Eli his kids were safe and I intend to keep it that way. Even if I don’t take them back to Coreno, I at least have to get them out of that house. Despite every muscle in my body telling me to get as far away from that house as I can, I start running back to that dreaded house. My last thought before I break into a full-on sprint is I hope I can get there before the Corps’ guards do.
I return to the house, silent and still. It’s eerie enough as it is to be walking into a house that may contain people who want me dead, but the silence is unsettling. I don’t even make it onto the back porch before I hear a gunshot and a scream. I peer inside the window where the Corps’ guards have formed a semicircle around Andrea and James’s lifeless bodies. Then, one by one, the guards disband and make their way to the front door. I hide behind the back of the house until I hear the screeching of tires on pavement, and the military style truck is nowhere to be seen.
I enter through the backdoor, which is slightly ajar. The stillness of the air in the house is enough to let me know that it’s empty. Andrea lies on her side, a few feet away from James. I check their pulses, both were nonexistent. The color from their faces drained, lifeless. I step back and survey the house. Open, spacious. Enough for two children to play.
Pictures line the walls, some taken professionally, others drawn most likely by the kids. One in particular draws my attention. It’s of Andrea with the kids, sun surrounding them, the breeze blowing back Andrea and her daughters’ hair. They look peaceful, calm, almost like nothing bad could touch them. It reminds me of Kyle and my mother and how happy they seemed while I was gone. I need to get back to them.
I go up the stairs on the left which leads to a small loft. The loft has a ladder that leads to another small room in the attic of the house. I look around the small loft and find that it’s empty except for a few toys scattered across the floor. I check the attic and find that it too is empty. My heart starts to race. What if they took the children? What if they’re dead? What if they’re still alive and don’t know what to do? I start pacing in the small, dark attic and try to think of where they could be.
Then, the creaking of a door. Somewhere downstairs. I freeze. If whoever is here finds me, they’ll probably kill me either for trespassing or something else entirely. I climb down the ladder to the loft and grab one of the toys on the ground. I position it over my head as the bottom stair cracks underneath the weight of a person. Then there are whispers.
“Someone could be upstairs,” someone, a girl’s voice, whispers.
“We should go back to the barn,” someone else, a boy’s voice this time, whispers back.
“Mother told us to come back to the house when the truck left,” the girl says.
“She also said to stay there until it’s safe,” the boy points out.
“It is safe,” the girl says back, louder than a whisper.
I step forward and the floorboard creaks. The whispering stops.
“Someone’s here,” the girl whispers. Shoes slap against the stairs, and I move toward the door. I can’t lose them. I owe it to Eli.
I chase after them, down the stairs and almost out of the house before I yell, “Wait!” The boy turns around, a small blanket in his arms. He can’t be older than three years old.
“Come on Cody,” the girl says, pulling on his arm. She looks to be about five. “Cody, we have to go, now!”
“Hold on,” he says. “I saw her talking to Mother earlier.” The girl looks up at me.
“Who are you?” she asks.
“I’m a… friend of your father,” I say. “The one that left a while ago. Do you remember him?” I move down the staircase and the girl takes a step back.
“Not really,” she says. “Mother doesn’t talk about him.”
“He made some mistakes,” I explain. “But he loved you both very much.”
“Where is he?” the boy, Cody, asks.
“He’s… gone,” I say.
“Gone where?” he asks. His soft blue eyes, looking right through me, make it hard to lie to him. So I tell him what I hope to be the truth.
“Heaven,” I say. “Or so I hope.”
“He’s dead?” the girl asks. She looks at the ground and then back to me. No emotion registers on her face. I can tell she doesn’t know what to feel. She doesn’t know enough about him to make a judgment.
“Did you know he saved my life?” I ask her. She shakes her head. “He was brave. And helped the galaxy out a lot. You may not understand this yet, but your father probably saved trillions of lives.”
“How did he do that?” Cody asks.
“Well, he…” I trail off. He killed Kelton, but I don’t want these kids to think he’s a murderer. “He helped me fight against the bad guys.”
Gregory’s voice rings in my head. I think back to what he said about people being evil. “Are they bad because they do evil things, or are they bad because their views don’t align with yours?” I didn’t know how to answer then and I don’t know how to answer now. Of course the Corps is evil. But then I think about Kelton and how he believed he was doing the right thing by siding with the Corps. When I first got to know him, he didn’t seem evil, just mixed up in bad things. When I found out who he truly was, I was shocked, but I still believed there was good in him. Maybe the real question is what, in their heart, do they believe is the real evil?
“Did you guys win?” Cody asks, interrupting my thoughts.
“Not yet,” I say. “Which is why we have to get back to my home planet.”
“Can we come with you?” he asks.
“Of course,” I say. “That’s why I came back.” I begin walking toward the front door, footsteps padding on the ground behind me. When I turn to look back, I find that the girl hasn’t moved an inch. She bites one of her nails and looks at her deceased parents lying on the ground.
“I’m not going,” she says.
“Come on Lila,” Cody says. “You have to come.”
“No, I don’t,” she says. “I’m staying here until someone comes for Mother and Father.”
“I don’t think anyone is going to come,” I say slowly. “I think the bad guys will make sure no one finds out that they’re dead.”
“Why?” Cody asks looking up at me.
“Because the bad guys don’t care about people who don’t work for them,” I say although it isn’t entirely true. They just care about a select group of people.
“I’m still not going,” Lila says.
“But you promised Mother that you would watch out for me,” Cody says. “How can you do that if we aren’t together?”
“She can watch out for you,” Lila says back.
“Lila,” I say softly. She turns her head up to me. “I’m taking you both to a safe place, one where the bad guys won’t be able to hurt you. If you stay here, they could hurt you, and that would leave Cody all alone.”
“I don’t want to leave Mother and Father,” she says, reasoning with herself why it would be a good idea to stay here with her parents.
“You won’t,” I say. “They will always be a part of you. But staying here won’t make them come back to life.”
She looks at me, her soft eyes reminding me of Eli’s. “Okay,” she says. She looks at them one more time and walks over to Cody and me. “Where are we going?”
I smile. “Home.”
/>
The trek back to the airbus station doesn’t take too long. The streets are mostly empty with the occasional aircar. Aircars are more common on Coreno and other surrounding planets than they are here. They were invented on Techario about a century earlier.
The station is slightly more packed than it was when I got here. Three men holding briefcases stand next to one another talking. One man motions to the sky and the other two laugh. An older woman sits on the bench to my left holding two stitching needles and a roll of fabric. The fabric is loosely woven, the colors merging together then separating. The woman stares off into space, her hands shaking slightly and her knee bouncing up and down quickly. She looks tense but at the same time calm.
A younger woman approaches us and taps my shoulder. “Are these your children?” she asks enthusiastically.
I look down at them and then back up at the woman. “No,” I say. “I’m just a family friend taking care of them for the day.”
“That’s nice of you,” she says. “They are adorable little kids.”
“Thank you,” I say. “I’m lucky to have them for the day.”
The woman nods and walks over to where the older woman sits on the bench and begins talking to her. The older woman shows the younger lady her loosely woven fabric, and the younger woman examines it. They begin discussing other parts of the fabric, and then they turn to the stitching needles. The older woman no longer seems tense as she smiles at the younger woman.
“That woman is our neighbor,” Cody says.
“Which one?” I ask.
“The older one,” he says. “She brings us treats sometimes.” He waves at her and she smiles back.
The airbus pulls up and we hop on, finding a place to sit near the front. Cody points out the window, naming things he sees as we go past. In a way, he reminds me of Kyle because he was like Cody when he was his age. Even though Kyle is older, I still see some resemblances.
I look over at Lila who sits with her head propped against the window. She stares out at the open farmland, her eyes vacant and tired. I scoot over next to her and she looks at me. “Hey,” I say.
“Hi,” she says back.
“What are you looking at?” I ask.
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