“Leader of what?” I said, because there weren’t many of us left.
But the corp—whatever corp we were now—still had a use for us.
We got to round up the bodies. Shoot people who left quarantine. Hunt down deserters. I spent six weeks driving truckloads of the dead out of Fortaleza to a mass grave site. The smell was overpowering. The work, numbing. The flesh comes right off the bones when a body has gotten ripe enough. The scalp slides away from the skull.
I remember baby shoes and tattered men’s ties. I remember how there weren’t enough medical staff to help civilians with gangrene. We took off their limbs: arms and legs. You ever carried a limb? It’s like carrying a baby. Hunk of dead weight, still warm.
I was standing with Omalas at an all-night takeout diner, picking through the canned goods in the back to feed our squad when the news came on a flickering LED film in the main dining area. A lot of the power still worked in the places the military went. Our engineering corps made it a priority.
“Thank you for your patience, TenisanaCom,” the company spokesperson said. It was just her up there, a young kid, maybe twenty—shit, I thought, what am I, twenty-two?—and I felt sorry for her. Thin hands folded on the table in front of her. Dark hair swept back from a severe face. She wore makeup, but I saw the telltale raw pink patches on her throat and wrists: one of the early signs of the illness we called the Martian pox, though by then most of us doubted there was anything Martian about it.
“The fortitude you have all shown is truly extraordinary,” the spokesperson said.
Outside, a tank rolled past. The spotters up top wore night vision goggles and gas masks. A few of the locals blamed the military for the sickness—they were probably right—and had been attacking us with Molotov cocktails and homemade pepper spray.
The bubbly spokesperson continued, “Our CEO, Papa Martin, assures you that our liberation is nearly at hand. A violent Martian traitor has been arrested in Saint Petersburg. We will have answers soon.”
“Bet that Martian is glad to hear that,” Omalas said. She picked at her teeth.
“You like spiced cabbage?” I held up a can of it from the cupboard.
“Only with vodka.”
I nodded and added the can to my pack. Anything in a can was bound to taste better than MREs. I was so goddamn sick of MREs.
“When did this go wrong?” Omalas said, gazing at the screen.
The spokesperson gave a weather report, like anyone cared. “And now,” the woman chirped, “we have more soothing programming from our cultural affairs committee.”
Our new corporate logo filled the screen.
“It was always bad,” I said. “That’s what I’m just getting, you know? Feels like something changed but it didn’t. It was always rotten. Just took a long time to see.”
“Could it have gone another way?” She scratched at something on her arm.
“Don’t know.”
I grabbed two more cans of beets and a jar of cocktail olives. I hefted the pack and came over to her. “Anybody out there?” I asked. The tank rumbled in the distance.
“No.”
I saw the raised pale patch on her dark skin, then; the flaking wound. We had all been inoculated by then, but the virus was mutating rapidly. Like the flu, different strains of it were moving through population centers, sometimes taking out every last person, sometimes leaving half, sometimes only taking the old and the young. Then it would mutate again, and the cycle continued.
She met my look. Shrugged. “Irony, yes?”
“None of this was our fault. Why are we suffering for it?”
“We pay for the sins of those that came before.”
“That’s bullshit.”
We made our way to the truck. I’d parked in the back. There were no bodies in the truck bed, but the smell still permeated everything. I drove us to the rec hall we were using as a base of operations. I needed a shower, even knowing the smell wasn’t going to come off.
Tanaka met us as we got waved in through the makeshift gates.
“What’s going on?” I asked. He had his rifle out.
“Captain V needs volunteers for a drop,” he said.
“Nobody’s dropped since—”
“We got clearance for a drop.” He met my look. We hadn’t spoken since the coup, not really. I didn’t trust him any more than I trusted myself at this point.
“Where?”
“Captain Norberg needs backup for a project,” Tanaka said. I gazed at him, trying to keep my expression neutral. “There’s been some chatter. She thinks there may be a Masukisan squad trying to infiltrate one of her interrogation sites. You up for it?”
“You’re sending me?”
“Who else would I send, Dietz?”
I noticed, then, that he had the marks on his throat too. He wiped his nose on his sleeve. Made a little bloody smear.
The end of all things, I thought. When was there going to be a mutation that took me out, too?
“I’m sending you down with a squad Norberg picked. Most of ours are in quarantine.”
“Whole world’s in quarantine,” I said.
“Sandoval won’t last the night,” Tanaka said.
I had no idea what to say to that, so I said, “Can I eat first?”
“Think you’ll come back?”
“Here? I don’t know.”
What would Andria tell me to do? Take control of the construct. Might as well tell me to just take control of the world. The world didn’t work that way.
“Then eat first.”
I slid out of the truck and went to the makeshift kitchen with my canned goods. Laid them out for the kid in charge of rations. He awarded me a can of beets for my troubles. Even opened it for me.
“You’re a doll,” I said, and sat up next to the barred window with a plastic fork jammed into my can of winnings. I saw things when we broke apart. Heard things. I remembered breaking up over the Cape, the long serpentine tail of the mountains there. I closed my eyes. Sipped at the beet juice.
“You all right?” Tanaka asked.
I didn’t turn. Watched his reflection in the window. “No,” I said. “None of us is all right.” I stabbed a beet.
“I’m not the bad guy.”
“No. We all are.”
“I don’t think that’s true.”
“Whatever helps you sleep.”
We hadn’t been stationed in our barracks for a long time. I’d lost count of the days. No way to tally them up on the bed frame. I could have cut my arm or something, but I was worried about infection. Medicine had become harder to come by, including antibiotics. I had visions of surviving this whole war only to get murdered by flesh-eating strep.
“I told you some things a long time ago,” he said. “They were all true.”
“You afraid Norberg’s listening in? You think she’s got time to flip through our boring lives now?”
“If anyone would, it’d be her.”
“All right, Tanaka. Why do you give a shit what I think?”
“You still don’t have that scar, do you?”
I turned to look at him. While he watched, I rucked down the tab at my collar, pushing my armored padding away to reveal the smooth skin just above my heart.
“Maybe you remember wrong,” I said. I folded the tab back; the slick came together easily, like a second skin.
“Come out to the deployment room at oh-nine-hundred,” he said, and left.
• • •
I didn’t sleep well that night. I didn’t sleep well any night. I dreamed of Norberg, her pale hands around my throat, her eyelashes covered in shards of glass that ground into the seams of my face.
I woke at oh-four-hundred, sweating on the makeshift bunk in a room I shared with Omalas and a young kid named Ross who jerked off twice every night without fail. Who had the time or the energy? I wanted to yell at Tanaka, have him tell the kid to run laps for an hour every night before bed. Why did I feel so old?
I to
ok a shower. The water smelled faintly of sulfur. It ran cold for ten minutes before I decided to just go for it. The weather felt like spring. I had seen a few calendars around on people’s desks, depressing things that told me that I’d been at war for more than three years. A lot of time had passed after the coup. Are you as old as your physical body, or as old as your memories?
I’d have to ask Ross.
I got dressed and went down to the cafeteria, but the cook wasn’t up yet. I wanted some coffee. Someone had left the filter in one of the industrial coffee makers overnight. I poured more water in the thing and drank it cold. Tasted like old socks.
I climbed up the back staircase. A track ran along the second floor, all ringed in windows. I watched the sun come up, sipping the terrible coffee.
As the sun rose pink against the far horizon, I realized how much this felt like my childhood. Secondhand coffee, scavenging for food, watching sunrise from some building we were squatting in. It was like I’d come full circle.
What had my father said . . . ? Something about how I swallowed all the corporate bullshit, and how it would keep me safe, but I shouldn’t believe it once I got older.
The corporations fucked us over. He was right. All their scheming and manipulating, all the propaganda and fearmongering led by people like Norberg. And yeah, me. I was part of this too. I was the fist attached to the arm of the corp.
When Tanaka sent us all out, where were we going to go this time? Or, rather, where was I going to go? And what would happen to my squad?
I felt stuck here, endlessly repeating mistakes, a loop on repeat.
I reached into my trousers and pulled out the pocket watch Andria had thrown to me. It didn’t keep the time. I’d even tried winding it, but the winding mechanism was the part that turned on the scrambler.
I stuffed it back into my pocket. Made up my mind. I trudged down to Tanaka’s room. Knocked.
He was already awake and dressed. Hair combed back. Eyes still bloodshot. Unshaved.
I held up the pocket watch. “You know what this is?”
“Yeah,” he said.
I turned on the scrambler. Lost coms.
“Andria gave that to you?” he said. “I was looking for it.”
“She did. Before one of you shot her.”
“It wasn’t me.”
I motioned him back into the room. These had once been offices for the rec center staff.
“Send me alone,” I said. “Just send me on the drop.”
“Norberg’s expecting a crew.”
“Maybe she’ll get one. Listen, people who travel with me . . . If I fuck something up, I don’t want to murder them too.”
“Like Muñoz?”
I prickled at that. I still didn’t want to believe Muñoz or the rest of my first squad was dead. “Yeah.”
“You think you can control it?”
“Yes? No.” I sighed. “Maybe. There’s just me, right?”
“Far as we know.”
“And we’re probably all going to die here, eventually.”
Barely perceptible nod.
“Then fuck it,” I said. “It will get Norberg, too, eventually. Send me.”
“I have to send you with a team. Sorry. You still don’t know what will happen when you go. What if you really go there? You don’t always jump out of order. Someone needs to have your back. You could go . . . shit, anywhere. Forward, back. Shit, I hope there’s a forward.”
“Then I’ll tell her I went rogue or some shit.”
“You think you can stand up to a Norberg interrogation?”
I thought of my father. “I’m sure she’ll be pleased to meet me.”
“Norberg handpicked a team to go. I’m telling them you were a last-minute request. That’s all I can do. I do that, and we’re even.”
“Were we not, before?”
He shook his head but didn’t elaborate. A few hours later, just before oh-nine-hundred, he came back to our nearly empty barracks and waved me over. He led me down to the rifle lockers. Signed out my weapon. We walked down to the deployment area behind the rec center—a giant overgrown football field scattered with plastic wrappers, old chip bags, solar cells, and tattered clothing.
A team already waited there. As I approached them, Tanaka said, “You don’t know Akesson and her team. They’re from a different division.”
The sound of that name hit me like a sledgehammer. The tattered group of four turned to watch me approach, and it was déjà vu all over again.
“No,” I said softly, “I know them.”
Dirty blond Akesson, pale and soft-jowled. Tall, dark Chikere chomping on bubble gum, giving me the once-over with her piercing eyes. Sharpe, standing awkwardly on one foot while she dug something out of the bottom of her tattered boot. And of course, Toranzos, who stood there wolfing down what remained of a greasy sandwich that I knew he was going to be vomiting up on a beach in Southern Africa in just a few minutes.
A roaring filled my ears. My pace slowed, and I stopped ten meters away.
“Tanaka, I’ve done this before.”
“What do you mean?”
“I know what happens.”
“What?”
“I already did this jump, with this team. Norberg. Shit, it was Norberg we were looking for. It went bad, Tanaka.”
“How bad? Did you die?”
“I . . . don’t know. Fuck.” What if this was my last jump? What if I’d already been to the end? “What if I don’t go?”
“Then nothing changes.”
“What if nothing changes anyway?”
He put his hand on my shoulder. Met my look. “Then you make sure it does.”
“Tanaka. I want to know—”
“You already know too much. If you see me, tell me not to be an asshole.”
“You think that will work?”
“No.”
“If you don’t remember me saying it, I must not have.”
“I have no fucking idea how any of this works. Maybe you jump around and make other futures. Better ones? Maybe in that one I won’t be an asshole.”
He strode forward. I followed, though my stomach hurt and my hands shook.
“Akesson,” Tanaka said.
“Sir,” she said.
“This is Corporal Dietz. Last-minute addition from Norberg. Has bad drops sometimes. Be extra vigilant on this run.”
Akesson raised her brows. “You’re Bad Luck Dietz?”
“Sorry,” I said, because I knew how this turned out.
“No big deal. You listen to me, and this will be just fine.”
I got into position just behind her.
“Logistics? This is Corporal Tanaka. I have a team in place for deployment. Stand by for coordinates.”
I began to tremble.
Tanaka moved away from me, like I was some giant bomb about to go off. Maybe I was. Maybe we were.
My vision stuttered. I went taut as a wire.
The last thing I remembered was Tanaka looking past me, behind me, with a look of terrible fear and awe. But there had been nothing behind me but the trash-filled field.
Nothing at all.
His chest burst open, spilling viscera. His body blew back. The world rumbled. A shock wave.
Everything burst apart.
26.
How do you keep living through the present when you already know the future?
Can you change the future if you’ve already experienced it, or only ensure that you live the future you were promised?
It’s a goddamn mindfuck, is what it is.
You’re not supposed to see things, when you become the light. I know that. I say it every time, but it doesn’t help, because I keep seeing things.
I heard Andria’s voice this time: “Take control of the construct.”
Reality is made up. Reality is what we agree on. Had I agreed to this?
Darkness, this time; a constant buzzing.
I want to tell you there’s a humming sound, when you sta
rt to break apart, but they all say that’s impossible. Light doesn’t hear things. They tell us that we can’t see or feel anything either, but that’s a lie. I was starting to think that anyone who’s been through it and tells you they don’t see or hear anything is lying because they don’t want to get grounded. We all see things in transit. It doesn’t mean you’re bad or crazy. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad soldier.
I don’t want to be a bad soldier.
I don’t want to be part of the Light Brigade, either.
But here we are.
Knowing the future, heading forward? Or back?
I would know soon.
No, no—I needed to make it so. I needed to control it. What had I missed? Mars. I wanted Mars.
I wanted to be a goddamn hero.
I dropped, I dropped . . .
Cold. Ice cold, like huffing dry ice.
Wheezing. Grabbing for the oxygen mask hooked to my shoulder. My body heaved. I vomited. The mask didn’t come off in time. I sank to the dusty red dirt and kept gagging, forgetting about the soiled mask, but nothing else came out. My body: light, springy, alive! As if I were a child again. I felt infinitely younger. Gravity. Something about the gravity.
Where’s . . . ?
Mars.
On Mars I’d be half the . . . wait, no, just 38 percent of what I was on Earth. I was about seventy-seventy kilos on Earth; which meant I weighed twenty-nine kilos now, plus my gear, if this red soil . . . I flipped up my visor. Stupid. The grit blew into my face. Even with my lenses in, the dust collected at the corners of my eyes and made them water madly. I snapped my visor shut.
I hadn’t weighed twenty-nine kilos since long before we got residency. Shit, I’d been starving so long it was a wonder I got up to an adult weight.
“This is nice,” Omalas said over the squad channel.
Before the end. Must be. Right?
Or did we go back to Mars after the Sick?
The heavy whomp-whomp of artillery roared from just ahead of us. I hit the dirt behind Omalas.
“The fuck!” I said.
“Sound off!” Jones said.
Jones. My eyes filled. Dumb reaction, but an honest one. Jones still here, still squad leader. I had gone back, after all. Not forward.
“Dietz here.” My voice broke.
“Prakash.”
I tried to find her on my heads-up map, but coms weren’t online yet. I wanted to wrap my arms around her. Squeeze her hard. I’d kiss her if I didn’t smell like vomit.
The Light Brigade Page 20
