The Volunteer

by J B Cantwell

  Once I made it to the bottom of the stairs, I made a beeline for my bed, already stripping down out of my wet clothes and relieved to be the only one back. Maybe the police didn’t care, or even the military, but Hannah was never too far away, and I knew she would put two and two together and snitch on me at the earliest opportunity.

  But what was the point for her, for the people who sought out her services? If they thought I was guilty of something, why bother letting me live at all?

  I quickly changed into my dry Service uniform. I hadn’t realized it, but I had become chilled wearing my wet clothes all day. Now, my own body heat was insulated by the heavy canvas fatigues, and I sat down, relishing the feeling of being dry and warm.

  Tomorrow. I would meet them again, learn more about my purpose among them.

  But did I really want to go? One slip up and I was dead, just as dead as Lydia. I wondered who would hold the gun to my head, who would be the one to do the deed if I was the one caught in a lie. Then my designation would read quite differently.

  Riley Taylor

  Designation: Black

  Terrorist.

  Almost on cue, Hannah bounded down the stairs, and, once in the barracks, her eyes moved all around the room, looking for someone. I had a good idea whom.

  I lay back onto my cot with a quiet groan.

  “Hey, Pink!” she shouted across the room when she saw me. She approached. “Where you been?”

  I knew I had to lie, but I wasn’t sure which lie to tell. I hadn’t counted on being peppered with questions the moment I’d arrived back. I curled up in my bed, not even needing to feign tiredness.

  “Out,” I said simply.

  “Yeah?” she asked, sitting down on the bunk opposite me, bouncing slightly. “Where?”

  My heartbeat quickened as I tried to think of what to say, and I felt relieved that I’d stuffed my wet clothes into a pile behind my duffel bag. I made a mental note to throw them away at the next opportunity. Being caught with them might’ve been okay, but the wet, dirty mud that was smeared across the bottom of the shirt would raise questions, questions I didn’t have answers for yet.

  “Nowhere that would interest you,” I said, trying to remain vague. She didn’t know that I knew about her working with the Service, about how she had been spying on me from the start.

  “Oh, come on. Throw me a bone here.”

  “Why? Where were you today?”

  “Oh, I went all over. Times Square, the Empire State Building, Grand Central Station.”

  I wondered if she had put two and two together yet, if she’d realized that it had been Kiyah with my chip information and not me. It must have been a game of cat and mouse today up above.

  Had she seen me?

  Maybe Hannah had learned my secret, but I suspected not. If she had, and reported back, I wouldn’t be facing her down right now. Instead, it would be military police I’d be meeting on my return back to base.

  But there were no police, not here. I took a quiet breath and calmed myself. She didn’t have anything on me. Not yet.

  I played nice. We went to dinner together, and I tried to cover up the fact that she was a traitor to me, to what I’d thought was our friendship. I was hungry, but it was hard for me to keep my attention on my meal with her sitting next to me.

  Hannah was babbling, but I wasn’t paying attention. I was wondering where Alex was. Prime Williams. Was he in a battle right now? Had he taken a bullet to the face, the way I had taught the Fighters in the forest to take down the Primes?

  Maybe. Or maybe he was in a different sort of battle. Perhaps he had changed his mind at the last minute, come home to make a go at connecting with his family. He would be the big, strong one now, and by a long shot. Whatever abuse his father had doled out when Alex was a kid, there was no way he would try anything like that now, his son as big as a truck.

  “So, you know, when I got to the top, I felt sort of sick—” Hannah said, her words just barely registering in my brain.

  “Wait, you got sick? Where?”

  “Haven’t you been listening? The Empire State Building! It was crazy high up there, and I nearly lost my breakfast.”

  “Hmm.”

  “What is up with you, Pink?”

  I stared down at my mash and opted for a nutrition square instead. May as well eat the sweetest thing first.

  “I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about going to see my mother, but I’m nervous.”

  “But didn’t you?”

  “Didn’t I what?”

  “Go see her. I thought I saw you today getting on the train to Brooklyn.”

  There. Proof that she had been following me. I wondered if Hannah had picked up on the fact that it hadn’t been me she was tracking. Kiyah and I really did look a lot alike, at least at a casual glance.

  “Anyway, it’s good to see you,” she lied.

  Maybe her interest in my whereabouts, and her assured willingness to report, was good for her status with the Service. I couldn’t think of any other reason she would have to keep tabs. I wondered whom she was reporting to. Or maybe she was doing it just for fun to mess with my mind.

  I remember seeing the smile on her face as she held out her rifle, ready to take down the young man on the firing line. Hungry. Those days of her tearing up over a murderous battle seemed to be over. Or had it just been a show for me? To make me believe in her, in her humanity?

  I would have to be more careful. We would have to be more careful.

  And then, all at once, I understood that I, myself, had become a Volunteer. A spy against my country. A terrorist.

  I smiled a little bit to myself, fear mixing with excitement in my blood. From Green to Black. They didn’t know yet that I was gone. That I was, essentially, an enemy of the state.

  I didn’t exactly have a list of things to do. And I didn’t know what awaited me tomorrow. I just hoped I would be able to keep the secret long enough to help them. To count myself among their numbers. To take the system down for good.

  Chapter Five

  Shots rang out. I spun around, trying to locate my attacker. Another bullet whizzed by my right ear, and I dropped to the ground.

  “We have to go now!” I called to the rest of my team. But when I turned, I found no one was there waiting for my order. I was left on a large boulevard in Edmonton, completely alone.

  Another bullet flew by, this one clipping my shoulder. I grunted with pain, feeling as thought I’d been hit hard with a hammer.

  “Damn.”

  I got up and ran toward the closest building, a hail of bullets following my every step. Finally, I was able to take cover behind one of the steel beams that made up the facade.

  I knew this building.

  The Pearl.

  I turned, searching for a way in. This was it, the meeting place for the rest of my unit. Where was everybody? Maybe on the other side? I was confused, dizzy from the pain in my shoulder.

  It wasn’t until I heard the click of the gun pointed against my head that my blood ran completely cold. Slowly, I turned around, but nothing could have prepared me for what I saw there.

  Alex.

  I might have hugged him, clung to him like a small animal fighting for its life. But that huge, muscled arm held the gun now pointed at me.

  Behind his eyes, he must have been there, inside somewhere.

  “Alex?”

  His eyes flickered at the sound of my voice, and for a split second I thought I might be able to talk him down.

  But the flickering stopped, and a moment later all recognition was gone.

  Everything happened in slow motion, then. I dropped halfway to the ground as the first bullet was released from the chamber.

  Then I ran. Ran on my bad leg, no longer fixed by the phasing, by Chambers’ intervention that day.

  Bullets followed me as I bolted around the side of the building, searching for a way in. It took me several long moments to realize that the beams holding up the building were be
ginning to buckle. Glass started popping from the window frames and fell, broken, the shards littering the street.

  The bullets were behind me now, their threat unable to follow me around the turn.

  The building groaned. I ran flat-out, as fast as my legs would take me. I had to get away from here.

  It was coming for me. Death. In every bent piece of steel, in every piece of broken glass. Then, two hard hammer hits on the backsides of my thighs and I fell to the street, screaming in agony. The groaning sound grew louder, and I rolled over onto my back to watch as the inevitable happened, as the Pearl started its relentless fall to the earth.

  Someone was shaking me, yelling at me. I looked up and saw Hannah, the sight of the Pearl framed now behind her head.

  “Wake up, Pink!” she yelled.

  Slowly the image of the falling building was replaced by the ceiling of the barracks room. My breath heaved in and out of me as I fought her to sit up. Sweat drenched my body, stars popping in and out of my blurred vision.

  “What … what happened?”

  I stared around the room, shaking and terrified. The scraping of a bed against the concrete floor on the other side of the room had me jumping out of my skin.

  “Geez, Pink. Take it easy.”

  But I wasn’t going to take it easy.

  “No, no, no.” I sprang up from my bed, searching desperately for a weapon, any weapon, to defend myself. It was only after my third trip around my bunk that I started to shake off the feeling of imminent danger, a remnant from a different time.

  It was a dream. Just a dream.

  The dreams were new to me. I hadn’t had them at all when I was still in battle, but since my break had started four days ago, I had been battling them every night, memories of all that had transpired out in the field.

  I wondered if they would follow me to my next assignment.

  “You shake it off?” Hannah asked.

  “What?” I asked, still looking around for something to defend myself with. Against the memories, the dreams, Hannah.

  “Alright, girl, I think you’ve had enough. No more sleeping in for you.”

  She put both of her hands on my shoulders, and I shrugged away.

  “Hands off. I’m fine.”

  I grabbed a fresh set of fatigues and headed for the shower. Hannah’s voice followed me.

  “Don’t take too long in there. You’ll miss breakfast!”

  I kept walking, unwilling to engage her any further. There was nothing I would have liked more than to see Hannah sitting at one of the mess tables, alone. But no, that wouldn’t happen. If I refused her company, she would simply strike up a conversation with someone else in the room and keep her eyes on me from a distance.

  But I had a trick up my sleeve. One that nobody there would have guessed.

  That room full of hackers, typing furiously away at their keyboards, fighting to take the system down with each keystroke, fighting to keep me alive. And then, Jonathan, Kiyah, Owen, Chambers. All of them able to evade the scrutiny of the government.

  And now, me.

  I hadn’t really intended to go see my mother. But I wasn’t supposed to meet Kiyah until two o’clock, and I had some time.

  I knew in advance how the visit with my mom would turn out. It would be like any other meeting with her, nasty and cruel. She was the devil in my world, of my childhood. But there was still a small part of me that hoped things might’ve changed. Maybe she was sober now. Maybe she’d returned to being the nice woman I had known only in my early years.

  And then there was Alex. Maybe he had come home, too, and I just hadn’t realized it. The only way for me to find out was to knock on his family’s door, an action that was nearly as fear inducing as visiting my own home.

  My boots were still wet from the day before, and I squeaked myself down Park Avenue to the waiting train to Brooklyn.

  I would just look in on her, make sure she was okay.

  But Alex. Would I see him there? Maybe he’d be settling his score with his father, just like I intended to settle things with my mom.

  I stared into space as the train flew over the river, no longer impressed by either Manhattan or Brooklyn. I had my sights set higher now.

  As I got off the train at the Brooklyn station, all the streets surrounding the tracks were flooded. It was soon going to be too late for these people, clinging to life in their apartments, hoping that next time the water wouldn’t come up so high. They would become just like the people in the Stilts, only no Black designation would follow them. They would simply be seen as they were, a poor group of men and women, enduring life as the sea slowly encroached upon their town.

  I turned back and looked at the Manhattan Wall, large and looming, even from a distance.

  There would be no wall to protect the people on the other side of the river.

  Where would they all go?

  I made my way through the three inches of water that covered the streets in every direction. It was only a matter of time until all of Brooklyn flooded with much more water than three inches. Just like in the early days of the Manhattan flood. There, the water had quietly crept up, filling in a few subway stations, nobody losing anything more important than a few hours at the office. But when it happened again and again, people started noticing, protesting.

  Those people were gone now. Off to some dry land somewhere else. Philadelphia, maybe. Or maybe even the Stilts. Protests were no longer allowed. The rallies of the early days had ended in violence every time, and eventually the protesters backed down and decided to flee instead of fight. They got out of Brooklyn as soon as they realized that it was only a matter of time before their designations were changed to Red. For their troubles, they would be jailed, then sent into the Service in shackles, just like that line of men and women who had passed me in the waiting room back on the day I’d signed up.

  So they got out.

  I wondered if Alex was still doing the Service’s bidding. I kept an eye out for him as I sloshed through the streets, but I didn’t see a single Prime. I moved toward our old apartment, toward the three little rooms where I’d been raised.

  I’d briefly considered bringing along something nice for her, but all I could think about that she would want was liquor, and somehow that seemed like a bad idea.

  So I didn’t bring anything.

  When I got to the front door of our tiny apartment, I paused, unsure. It was early, too early for her to be awake. But I didn’t have time later in the day; I had promised Jonathan I’d meet him at a shopping mall right in the middle of the city. He’d assured me that it would be easy to make the chip transition there, that the signals got scrambled in the middle of the place, so many shoppers that the system couldn’t keep up.

  But that was later.

  I stood in front of the apartment building, trying to will my legs to carry me up the stairs. That old pain, still lodged deep within my bones, screamed as I made my way, step by step, to the top floor.

  But that pain was nothing but a phantom, I knew. A remnant from the dream I’d had that morning. I ignored it as I made the landing.

  I didn’t know what I would say to her, and I waited for several minutes at the doorstep, wondering if I should go in at all. Finally, I tried my old key in the lock, and it still spun around, unlocking the door with a click. I tentatively pushed it open and stepped inside.

  The state of the apartment surprised me. Where there had been liquor bottles and nutrition square wrappers littering the floor, now there was nothing but clean carpet and a couch devoid of her drunken body. Straight. Tidy.

  For a minute I thought I’d walked into the wrong apartment, that I was intruding with all my nerves and baggage onto someone else’s life.

  But, no. There it was: the small painting that had hung over the couch for as long as I could remember. One of the few that Mom had never smashed in a fit of drunken rage.

  “Jim, is that you?” came her voice from the kitchen.

  I looked a
t my watch, surprised that it was only nine and that she was up at all.

  Then she walked out from behind the cabinets that obstructed her view of the front door. She froze, standing there looking at me. And I looked at her, too. Clean jeans and an old t-shirt, battered sneakers on her feet.

  “Oh, Riley,” she said, approaching me.

  I would have moved away, but the only place for me to go was back out the door.

  She put her arms around me, and I stiffened.

  What was going on?

  She pulled away from me and put her hands on my shoulders. “What a relief. They haven’t called or sent mail or anything.” Her eyes were welling up with tears now. “There was no way for me to tell if you were dead or alive, and now …”

  I frowned, confused. Was this real? I smelled the air, searching for the familiar scent of liquor on her breath, but all I smelled was cleaning chemicals masked by the scent of a lit candle on the kitchen table. I noticed only two chairs remained. She must have sold the other ones. Or broken them in one of her rages.

  I couldn’t think of what to say, and suddenly I couldn’t remember why I had come at all. To confirm what I already knew about her? That she hated me? That she hadn’t loved me since I was a little child? That she had been using me all these years?

  She backed up, looking confused. It was like looking at a stranger, someone I only vaguely remembered.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, rubbing her hands against her jeans nervously. “I guess maybe you were expecting something different.”

  She turned and moved back into the apartment. Over the small television, she straightened a small selection of knick knacks, some of the only things that remained in the nearly empty room.

  “Well, I’m sober. I don’t know if that’s any consolation to you.” She crossed her arms over her chest anxiously and turned to face me again. “But you can say what you want to me now. You probably have a lot to say.” She cast her eyes down, ashamed.

  Suddenly, I didn’t have anything to say at all. I took a few steps into the apartment and entered the kitchen. Everything was neat and tidy, the dirt that had collected in the cracks of the countertops over the years had been scrubbed clean.