Drawn

by David Alan Jones

  “Bubble, you got incoming. Looks like Red and Orange secured the tower but came up empty. They’re doing a house-by-house now, and they’re moving in force since they see no resistance.”

  “You okay, Ox?”

  “Fine here but pinned down. They’ve dispatched at least twenty to take us out. How’s the prize?”

  “Still wrapped,” Rose said. “But Moss is working on it.”

  “Good. Don’t let me down, Carver.”

  “Roger Wilco.”

  Rose put her head against the glass to peer down the street. A cadre of at least thirty armed soldiers jogged her way. Divvied up into clearing teams of five to seven, they worked in unison to search every corner of the faked-up town.

  “Moss?”

  “It’s coded,” was all he said.

  “Yeah, I think I got that. But how long is it going to take for you to break it.”

  Moss gave her a withering look over one shoulder and got back to work.

  “Charlie, does this door lock?” Rose asked.

  “Go screw yourself. I’m dead.”

  Twelve armed succubi turned their eyes on the actor. He shrank back against the wall. “No. It doesn’t lock, okay? Damn.”

  CRACK!

  Rose’s team turned nervous eyes on her. They all knew that sound from countless tac team drills. Someone had just kicked in the door on the fake restaurant beside the bank.

  Rose set her jaw, firming her resolve. “First bastard comes through that door, light ‘em up.” She pressed her rifle to her shoulder and felt a surge of pride when the others did likewise, their faces grim but determined.

  Voices approached, followed by a heavy boot that kicked the bank door off its hinges. A lithe woman wearing red-tinged fatigues charged into the room, greeted by a hailstorm of blue paintballs. They slammed her backward onto her butt. She couldn’t suppress a surprised yelp but, playing by the rules, fell immediately still in the doorway.

  Nevertheless, her faux death alerted the combined teams outside. A cry of alarm rose, and several of the clearing teams abandoned their assigned tasks to assault the entrance.

  After that came chaos.

  The gunfire threatened to deafen Rose. She rolled to one side of the counter for cover and clicked the noise dampening button on her earbuds. Then she rolled back and opened fire. Despite her poor angle of attack, she thought she tagged at least three of the enemy in the first five seconds of the assault. The rest of Blue fared better, taking out scads of red and orange enemies as the room began to fill with an inky haze of smoke mixed with paint fumes.

  But the numbers were against them. For every red or orange they took out, two more took their place. Myra caught a red pellet in the face shield. A round exploded on Leslie’s shoulder. Per the rules, she was out and so had to hotfoot it to a safe corner of the bank. In the next twenty seconds, four more of Rose’s remaining defenders fell to enemy fire. No amount of speed or intuition could overcome such a volley.

  Someone yelled from inside the tunnel. Rose pulled out an earbud and heard gunfire echo through the gap Moss had opened.

  “They’re coming in behind us, too!” she screamed, though she doubted anyone could hear over the den of coughing guns and splattering pellets.

  “GOT IT!” Moss abandoned the electronic lock. He stood and spun an oversized knob on the bank vault door.

  Rose bounded over the bank counter, rolled, and came up in time to see the door inching open. She put her shoulder to it, drawing strength, and it finally gained momentum. The thing must have weighed tons.

  Inside the vault stood five draw sergeants dressed in colored fatigues matching their respective teams.

  Behind Rose, her last team member fell with a cry. She didn’t need to look; she felt it through her discernment. Red and orange soldiers were swarming into the bank, screaming commands, calling for her surrender.

  “Sergeant,” Rose said to Torres, as an orange pellet struck Moss in the back of the head. “Duck.”

  Rose drew more speed than she had ever gathered in her life. Unlike intellect, where her limit had been hit and well measured during draw training, she had no idea how fast she could go. Without waiting for Torres to completely drop from view, she painted the other four captains, one blue splatter each. Only then did she flinch, first left then right, avoiding every paintball that came her way, moving faster than her enemies could counter.

  She dove backward into the room, gun thrumming in her hand, her body a blaze of speed and dexterity. Moving this fast, she would have thought time slowed. It didn’t. Instead, she raced after time, chasing it between jellified blobs of paint, letting not one mar her clothes, her hair, her skin. She crossed the room in seconds, having marked every soldier in her path, kicking off this one, flipping over that one, and putting blue paint on chests and backs, thighs, and arms.

  When she landed in the corner, breast heaving, gun raised, she became suddenly aware of Sergeant Torres screaming her name.

  “You will stand down, NOW, Carver. Do you understand me?”

  Rose stood. “Yes, Sergeant.”

  People lay groaning on the floor, many of them unable to rise. Rose stared at them in horrified amazement. Had she done all this? The man nearest her nursed a broken wrist, his hand jutting out at a peculiar angle. As her awareness enlarged, taking in those around him, she saw others with similar injuries: broken legs, dislocated shoulders, fingers misaligned from sockets. Realization at what she had done crashed in on Rose like a falling sky. She had cut a path of destruction through the enemy. Though she had intended to tag them, her kicks and pushes, meant to redirect her momentum, had pulverized bones, ripped muscles, and torn ligaments.

  “Oh, God. I’m sorry.” The marker dropped from her hand.

  “No, Carver,” Torres said, murder in her eyes. “You’re not even close to sorry yet.”

  13

  No Pomp, All Circumstance

  Five weeks later, Rose and Leslie stood third and fourth in a line of at least fifty recruits inside the main foyer of Links, waiting their turn to declare their intentions with the Order.

  Graduation had been a near thing for Rose. Sergeant Torres had fought to recycle her into a junior class, claiming she needed more training after the field exercise incident, but Gunny Lipe had overridden the sergeant. Unfortunately, Lipe hadn’t interfered when Torres insisted Rose fill in for all the people she had put in the infirmary. That meant a lot of sleepless nights playing guard and endless evenings spent mopping floors and scrubbing toilets. On top of that, Torres had insisted Rose could not heal herself for the remainder of training, as a reminder not everyone can draw heal. Her hands were still red and tender from all the extra cleaning duty.

  Thankfully, graduation had finally arrived, and with it, the big choice: remain with the Order, or return to the real world?

  Most trainees had no choice. Now that they had graduated, the Order could no longer afford to feed, clothe, and house them in perpetuity. As monodraws of no significant depth, they had little to offer the Order. A few would return to their old lives with excuses as to their prolonged absences. But the majority would simply go back to slinking—no explanation necessary.

  Some monodraws, like Leslie, possessed significant skills. She had graduated top of their class in marksmanship, and second in Camp Den history. If she wanted to hire on with the Order, they would take her, and gladly.

  For polydraws, especially simes like Rose, the Order poured on the pressure. First, with guilt. If they chose to leave, it would be a slap in the face to all those who had been taken by the Breathers—a much more horrifying truth for Rose than most others, who knew nothing about the fear factory. Who knew how many innocents a sime might save by joining?

  Then came the offers of money. While the Order wasn’t immense, it had plenty of cash, owing to several corporations it owned, all of them almost exclusively staffed by succubi. Rose would earn more than six times what she made during her best years waitressing.

  T
he best part? Deciding without the influence of charm. The all-encompassing wave had ceased shortly after the Emily Stone debacle. No one had said anything to Rose about it, but she took pride in having gotten through to Robin on the matter.

  “Yeah, what are you going to do, Carver?” Moss held Leslie’s hand, no doubt a delicious privilege now that they had graduated.

  “Don’t you want to be surprised?”

  “I just hope we get a dual assignment.” Leslie bumped her shoulder against Moss’s.

  “We will, don’t worry.”

  “Did you do something?” Leslie’s eyes narrowed.

  “How could I? Camp Den has a closed and completely secure network.”

  The line moved forward. It was Leslie’s turn. She gave her name to the bored-looking sergeant behind a metal desk outfitted with a tablet computer and micro-printer.

  With Leslie’s attention elsewhere, Moss gave Rose a wink. Though computer skills weren’t a draw per se, Moss’s deep pull on mental acuity seemed to run that direction, as if intelligence came in different flavors, and his had an extra dose of electronics extract.

  “What did you get, hon?” Moss asked when Leslie stepped away with her printed assignment sheet.

  Leslie wrinkled her nose. “Team Dog Ears. Sounds butch. I hope it’s not a bunch of macho guys flashing their hardware around.”

  Rose and Moss stared at her, deadpan.

  “You two are sick. I meant guns, bozos.”

  “There’s an offer here,” the clerk said when Moss gave his name. “You want to hire on?”

  “Yes, Sergeant. Team Dog Ears, please.”

  “It’s a random draw, son. Needs of the Order and all.”

  “I have a good feeling.” Moss gave the clerk a million-dollar smile.

  The printer spit out a form. The clerk puzzled over it for nearly half a minute, his jaw working in consternation. “That’s crazy. You called it. Dog Ears. You must have quite the draw on discernment.”

  “Been practicing.” Moss took the paper, his smile wider than ever.

  Rose gave her name, chose to hire on to the cheers of Leslie and Moss, and got her form.

  “Son of a bitch,” the old clerk said. “I’ve never seen this thing spit out three of the same team in a row.”

  “Dog Ears?” Rose asked, amused.

  “Yep. That’s Lord Snow’s outfit.”

  Rose tilted her head. “Lord Snow?”

  “You know, the Night’s Watch? Rightful king of Winterfell?” He raised a questioning brow at Leslie and Moss.

  “She doesn’t nerd,” Moss said with a shrug.

  Rose checked her form. Team lead for Dog Ears was Matt Snow. A typed message at the bottom invited her to meet him in private at an office in Links at 1730.

  He wanted to meet with her? In private? She reread it. Were her cheeks growing warm?

  This had to mean something. Matt refused to date recruits, which had seemed like a stupid rule to Rose six weeks ago, back when she wanted nothing more than to escape Camp Den. Now it made sense. A lot of things did.

  But Rose had finally graduated, and Matt wanted a private meeting.

  They headed for the exit walking side by side, Leslie and Moss chatting animatedly. Rose’s mind wandered, harkening back to a hundred illicit smiles and winks she had shared with Matt during her final weeks of training. He hadn’t shown up often after their fight with Lord, but he always seemed to have an eye out for Rose whenever he turned up at one exercise or another. She had half convinced herself those stolen glances lived solely in her imagination. Basic training amounted to extended deprivation after all, even for a natural introvert like Rose, which tended to make the stoniest of hearts pine for romance.

  Rose read the invitation a third time. No. She hadn’t imagined things. He wanted to see her. Alone.

  “What time is your appointment with Snow?” Leslie asked with the sort of offhand cruelty dealt by a bitter enemy or an uninformed friend. “I’m seeing him at 1530.”

  Something deflated inside Rose. The meeting wasn’t special. Matt hadn’t been waiting for her to graduate so that he could pursue his feelings for her. He wanted to discuss Order business. Of course, he did. What else? Rose felt like a dolt for assuming anything more.

  “Rose?” Leslie peered at her, chin dropped, eyebrows raised. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Uh, mine’s not till 1730.” Why did Rose feel like the whole world had caught fire beneath her? Matt had said he liked her. So what? That had been weeks ago. And what of it? Was he in like with her? What did that even mean? Nothing. Right?

  “Great, you want to grab some chow with us, Anna, er, Rose?” Moss shook his head at his mistake, though Rose hardly noticed. “I’m helping Leslie move to Teams Housing after our interview with Snow. We can help you if you like.”

  “No thanks.” Rose kept her voice bright, her face as clear of expression as she could manage. “Everything I’ve got fits in one backpack.”

  “Who’s your roommate?” Leslie flicked a hand at Rose’s orders. “It’s printed at the bottom.”

  Rose scanned her printout, thankful for anything to distract her from thoughts of Matt Snow, at least until she saw the name printed next to hers. “It’s Satterfield.”

  “Ew. Sorry.” Leslie made a face like she smelled rotten fish. “Wish we could have roomed together. Maybe they’ll let us later, once we’ve been in Teams for a while.”

  “Hope so,” Rose said, though she had a sneaking suspicion Moss would invite Leslie to move in with him as soon as their probationary period ended.

  “Anyway, you should come eat,” Leslie said. “Seems like I’ve hardly seen you these past few days.”

  “Wish I could, but I’ve got a medical appointment. I’ll catch up with you soon, promise.”

  Rose did have an appointment, though it wasn’t at the infirmary. She crossed the now-familiar main road between Links and Teams Housing, a block of six long, gray buildings that reminded her of World War II-era slums. Each contained forty apartments, two to every shower-toilet combo. Luxury accommodations they were not, but they beat sleeping in barracks rooms filled sixty deep with steel bunk beds.

  Rose headed for the apartment at the end of the block. The surrounding rooms stood empty, awaiting new graduates, but not the last one. She heard voices emanating from inside as she drew near, arguing, not heatedly, but with insistence. She knocked, and they fell silent.

  Luke Pruett opened the door, his face cracking into a cheesy grin the instant he saw her.

  “Rose!” he bellowed, taking her by the hands, dragging her bodily into the room. “Look at you, all rugged chic. You are smoking those jeans, girl.” He turned to his brother, a look of shock on his sharp-featured face. “Brendan, would you look at her arms? We’ve got them all wrong. They’re toned, not ripped. That entire second set has got to be redone.”

  Brendan sat on the bed, a large sketchpad balanced on his knees. “Hi, Rose,” he said.

  “I got your invitation.” Rose held it up, a large sheaf of fine vellum embossed with silver and gold. One side bore her name and the apartment number. The other featured a highly stylized heart, its outer line snaking down to form a curled devil’s tail.

  “You like the sigil?” Luke pointed at the heart.

  “It’s beautiful,” Rose said.

  “It’s the motif. I drew it first, just noodling around on a legal pad while trying out concepts for the book. Everything else sprang from that.”

  “Everything else?” Rose hadn’t seen the twins in several days. They had met with her three times immediately following the Emily Stone catastrophe, pumping her for every scrap of information she could remember, both about the mission and her life in general. Then their requests for meetings had ceased until a lower classman delivered Luke’s handmade invitation this morning before graduation. The only other contact she had related to this “mission” had been the tech team outfitting her with body cams in her training uniforms. No one questioned any of her comi
ng and going since she had been sent all over the campus running extra duties waiting for people to heal enough to leave the infirmary.

  Brendan opened a large portfolio case on the bed. “Have a look.”

  The first page featured a sketch of Rose lugging a serving tray weighed down with dirty dishes—charcoal on white paper, but exquisitely detailed. Matt Snow sat at the bar, telling an animated story to a crowd of rapt onlookers in the background. Off to one side, two men in suits hunched over platter-sized steaks, their eyes glued to Rose.

  “You like it?” For once Luke’s voice held no mirth, only honest curiosity. He watched her minutely, his face expectant.

  “God,” Rose said. “How did you get the bar down so well? I never told you about the Budweiser hoods over the pool tables.”

  “We went there,” Brendan said. “We went everywhere.”

  Rose stared at him for a moment, speechless. Then she said, “I don’t think anybody has ever said this about Pete’s, but it’s gorgeous. Just gorgeous.”

  “Thanks,” Brendan said. He turned the page.

  The next image depicted Rose sitting on her butt in the moonlight, lips spread in a sudden smile, eyes crinkled, two Dobermans licking at her face and hands.

  The next showed her standing in the middle of a darkened road, three bodies strewn at her feet, her hands covering her mouth. Somehow, the twins had captured her unspeakable fear at that moment when Matt had stolen her courage.

  Every page brought with it memories, feelings she could live again through the twins’ artistry. She shuddered when she reached the Stone house.

  Melody sat on the couch, pressing a pistol into Emily Stone’s ribs while Lord, smirking at Matt, caressed Satterfield’s face, Mr. Stone dead at his feet.

  Unexpected tears rolled down Rose’s cheeks. She brushed them away for fear of marring the charcoals. The twins watched her, smiling, obviously taking pleasure in her reaction.

  The last set of sketches were from this morning: graduation, two hundred men and women standing on the training floor in Links. Proud. Triumphant. They had each gone forward to receive a fake certificate stating they had graduated the Camp Den basic training fitness boot camp. But everyone knew what that embossed piece of cardstock really meant.