by C. A. Gray
“Are you calling me inflexible?” Jackson raised an eyebrow at me, teasing.
I gave a weak laugh. “Well, Will certainly was. So far I don’t think that of you, though. You just… have a very firm sense of self.”
He searched my face. I dropped my eyes. “You say that as if you don’t,” he observed.
For some reason, that did it. Tears choked my throat, and I bit my lip as hard as I could, trying to stop them. It was no use, though. It was like somehow the floodgates opened, and everything I’d been suppressing since the night Will died and I ran—the loneliness, the exhaustion, the overwhelm of learning that the Republic I thought I knew was a lie—all of it hit me at once, and something inside me just cracked. I was sobbing.
I felt Jackson’s arms around me, strong and reassuring. The harder I cried, the tighter he held me, stroking my hair with his free hand.
I don’t know how long I cried before my tears ran out. When the sobs began to subside, he gently kissed the top of my head.
Without thinking about it, I turned my face up to him, and kissed his lips.
He froze for a minute, and I could taste the salt of my own tears. For half a second I felt his lips begin to respond to mine—but then his hands found my shoulders, and he pushed me away, very gently.
“We can’t,” he whispered. “Not like this.”
I felt my cheeks burning, and I wiped the tears away from them hastily, disentangling myself from him and standing up as quickly as I could. “I’m sorry,” I mumbled, hot shame pooling into my stomach. “I don’t know what came over me.”
“I do,” he said. “You just finished telling me I reminded you of your dead fiancé.” His eyes were so tender, like he felt sorry for me.
I hugged myself with my arms, and turning away from him, whispered, “Will you please leave me alone now?” He was right, but I was too humiliated to acknowledge it.
Jackson didn’t reply right away. When he did, he just said, “Sure. Of course.” He hesitated before he left, though, and then said, “I hope you won’t hold this against me.”
I didn’t move, just listened to his receding footsteps until they were gone. When I was sure he wasn’t watching or listening anymore, I sank down and sat on the banks of the stream, wrapping my arms around my knees and resting my chin on them. I didn’t have any energy left to sob the way I wanted to, but a few more quiet tears streamed down my cheeks.
I had to admit, on some level the release of sobbing had felt good. Cleansing.
Just like he told me it would.
The wind tousled my hair and rustled the trees, and for a long while I thought of nothing at all.
Chapter 21: Jackson
I’m not at all sure pushing Kate away was the right move. I didn’t want to, but I mean, for heaven’s sake, she met me a couple of days ago, and her fiancé died last week. I don’t know a whole lot about the concept of rebounds, but I’m pretty sure this would qualify.
More than anything, I wished Uncle Patrick were here to reassure me that I made the right call. Grandfather was always a little too lofty for such personal affairs; he’d tell me the whole thing didn’t ultimately matter either way. To him, it wouldn’t. Grandfather saw the world on a grand scale. Things like an individual’s happiness…
Well, that’s not true, I stopped myself. I’d been about to think that an individual’s happiness didn’t really matter to Grandfather, but if that were the case, he’d never have noticed my restlessness in Frjósöm, nor cared. At least my desire for purpose mattered to him. Although perhaps that was only because he saw me the way I saw myself: as uniquely poised to do something with the abilities he’d taught me. Maybe to him, it was never about me at all.
Probably Uncle Patrick would have thought the same, in the sense that ‘it’s not about me.’ But he, at least, would have understood the desire for love and companionship.
You met her three days ago, I told myself severely. Knock it off.
The sounds of laughter from the camp ahead drifted back to me as I approached the firelight. Apparently the confrontation between Nick and the Crone was over, and the atmosphere had relaxed again. Or maybe the people were just trying to forget about it.
“Jackson!” called Alec when I came into view of his bonfire. He drank some amber liquid out of a shot glass no doubt pilfered from an abandoned home, and held a fan of cards in his hand with some kind of strange red design on the backs of them. “Come and play poker with us.” Brian, whose face had some color again, sat next to him, and he scowled at me. I assumed he hadn’t forgiven me for the implication that his injury was all in his head. Jacob, Kenny, and Pete were there too, sipping the same beverage from matching chipped glasses. Nick was missing. I wondered if he was in a meeting with the Council.
“I never learned how to play,” I told him.
“It’s easy, c’mere,” said Kenny. He dealt me in and showed me his cards. “Rearrange them as soon as you get them,” he told me in a low voice. “Similar cards together, similar suits, and in a row is even better.”
I copied him, sorting my king and queen of hearts and the ten of hearts together.
“You have the making of a royal flush there,” Kenny whispered to me. “You just need the jack and the ace of hearts. The royal flush is the best hand in poker.”
“Then what?” I whispered back, as Pete said, “Brian, pour him some whiskey, will you?”
“Then you win,” Kenny shrugged.
I had a feeling ‘winning’ in this case was much like ‘winning’ in the tribal competition for shooting the first game of the day. Bragging rights only.
The hunters bet with a stack of plastic chips, probably also pilfered, and I learned that the different colors meant different numbers—of what, I didn’t know, but they represented different levels of confidence in one’s own hand relative to the others.
I accepted the glass of whiskey Brian handed to me with his good hand, casting me a sour expression all the while. I smiled back at him, to no avail.
I thought of Kate, probably still crying by the creek. I hadn’t seen her come back yet. Then again, maybe she returned the back way on purpose, so she wouldn’t have to meet my eyes. It might have been paranoid, but every few minutes I involuntarily glanced toward the edge of the forest.
I took a sip of the whiskey and grimaced as it burned all the way down. No doubt about it, this stuff was home-brewed.
“There’s your jack!” Kenny whispered to me, and gave a low whistle. “Bet high!”
“As if we can’t all hear you,” Alec told him dryly. “Jackson’s poker face is decent enough, but Kenny’s the worst.”
“He’s probably bluffing, and Jackson doesn’t even know it,” Pete chuckled.
I raised my eyebrows at Kenny questioningly.
He smiled. “I might’ve been known to do that,” he conceded, “but I’m not doing it now!”
I put in three of the red chips, which Kenny told me were worth ten each, and Kenny nodded at me with approval.
“Fold,” scoffed Brian, flopping his cards down on the log beside him.
“Fold,” echoed Alec.
“No way, I think he’s bluffing. Call,” said Pete, shoving in three red chips to the pile in the middle and taking a swig of whiskey.
Jacob folded too, and Kenny called.
“Oh!” shouted Pete exultantly. “Kenny knows he’s got nothing too!”
“All right, show ‘em,” said Kenny, grinning.
“Three of a kind,” said Pete, laying down his cards. “Jackson?”
I revealed mine to him, and he started hooting and laughing.
“Isn’t this most of a royal flush?” I asked.
“Yeah, but ‘most of’ a royal flush does you no good if you don’t have the whole thing,” said Brian, who now seemed to be enjoying himself. “Kenny?”
“Full house!” he declared, showing his hand of two kings and three nines. He leaned forward and scooped the
chips toward him. “Sorry, Jackson,” he grinned at me mischievously.
“Maybe you’d better let me teach you from now on,” Pete laughed.
I laughed too, and drained my whiskey glass in one shot, feeling warm down to my toes. The buzz that came over me felt liquid and slippery, like the air around me was suddenly thinner and less restrictive than it had been before. I glanced at the edge of the forest again just as Kate slipped into her cave and out of sight. Kenny saw me looking, and glanced back in her direction.
“You got good taste,” he murmured approvingly as he dealt me in again. Alec snorted and said nothing.
I picked up the game quickly, once I learned not to trust Kenny, who couldn’t hide his excitement for anything. Brian didn’t let on much, but when he had a good hand, his eyes grew shifty; when he didn’t, he deflated. Alec bit his lip when he had something. Jacob started fidgeting more than usual. Pete was the hardest to read, but by the third hand I saw that he took in a deep breath when he saw something that made him happy.
“Come on!” shouted Brian, throwing his cards down when I revealed my hand: a flush. “Who invited this guy to play, anyway? I’m going to bed.” He staggered off, and nobody bothered to stop him.
“Ignore him,” Kenny rolled his eyes at me. “He’s always been a sore loser. He’s also mad he’s not allowed to go with us.”
“Probably time to call it a night, anyway,” said Alec, straightening to reach for the pail of water to douse the fire. “Long day ahead of us tomorrow.”
“Oh?” I looked around at the faces of the hunters.
“He wasn’t here,” said Kenny to Alec. “He was off in the woods…” he trailed off, glancing at Kate’s cave, and winked at me.
I caught the trace of disapproval on Alec’s face, but it vanished as soon as it had appeared. “Nick and the Crone had it out. You saw that much, I think. The Council assembled and voted on whether or not we should risk going back on the grid to rescue the two people Jean wrote down from the government hit list.”
“And?” I asked.
“They approved it.” Pete grinned. “Nick’s in bed already and told us we should turn in early too—it’s gonna be an early day, and we’ve got a long way to go.”
“The targets live on opposite sides of the Republic,” Kenny told me. “One’s a thirty-five-year-old contractor named Nelson Armstrong, and he’s clear to the east; it should take the team two hours by bullet train just to get to where he lives.”
“Bullet train?” I interrupted. Nothing so high-tech sounding as that belonged in my picture of the Republic. “But the place is in total squalor, who paid the money to build a bullet train?”
Alec shrugged, and said bitterly, “The Potentate keeps all the profits from every industry in the entire Republic. He only doles out a living ration for the workers, and it’s the bare minimum. He’s got plenty of money.”
“I know what you mean, though,” Kenny chimed in to me, “why would he bother spending it on any kind of public service project? Because Ben Voltolini is impatient, that’s why. He doesn’t like spending time in transit. He wants to get where he’s going, and fast.”
“The people who can afford to ride the bullet trains besides him and the agents and the Tribunal are all the upper echelons of society,” put in Alec. He couldn’t seem to resist adding, “People like Kate used to be.”
“She’s not wealthy anymore,” I pointed out, searching his face.
“So anyway,” Kenny continued, “the other potential victim is a female executive of a factory, Brenda Halfpenny. She’s on the far west. Nick said we’ll have the best chance if we keep the groups small enough to avoid notice, so four per team. You’re with me, Alec, and Nick,” he told me, “and we’re going for Brenda.”
As I headed for my cave, Jacob caught up with me and grabbed me by the arm. I turned to him, surprised, and saw the urgency in his face.
“You’re not gonna be on my team tomorrow,” he said. “You need to teach me how to not see those bullets tonight.”
“Now?”
He gave a short laugh. “We leave first thing in the morning, and we’re going farther onto the grid than any of us have ever been before, trying to rescue high profile people right out from under the agents’ noses. So, yeah. Now would be good.”
I shrugged, reluctant. “I don’t know how much I can teach you in one night. I learned this stuff over a period of years.”
“I’m a quick study.”
“You’d better be,” I agreed. “Come on, we need to be far from everyone else. You have a weapon on you?”
He looked up at me hopefully. “A weapon?”
“Like a knife or something.”
“I’ve got a sword back in my cave!”
“Good. Go get it and a machete or something and meet me…” I tried to think of somewhere secluded enough for what we needed to do. “Near the outpost.” This was where the nightly lookout kept watch for potential invaders. It was a boring job, but it was far enough away from the rest of the camp that there should be no noise, except from the sentry on duty. I wasn’t sure who that was tonight, but we’d keep out of his way.
“You got it!” Jacob jogged away energetically. I guess the mention of weapons engendered a lot more faith in me than when I told him about asu and the life force.
Jacob met me in a clearing near the outpost, a sword in one hand and a machete in the other. He handed me the machete.
“Thanks,” I said, and walked toward the forest. He followed me.
“You’re having your first lesson in meditation,” I told him, gesturing to a broad, flat rock. I couldn’t resist glancing at Jacob’s face when I said this. Predictably, it fell. Mine had too, when Grandfather had said this to me.
“Why the sword then?”
I told him exactly what Grandfather had told me when I’d asked the same question. “Because life is unpredictable. You must always be ready.”
He rolled his eyes at me. “You know we’re like the same age, right? You don’t have to talk to me like you’re my grandfather.”
I grinned, but ignored him, gesturing to the rock again. He moved toward it. “Make sure you sit comfortably, in a position that doesn’t require you to shift your body much. Sit straight, and breathe deeply.”
“And let me guess. Close my eyes?”
“You got it. But one hand on the hilt of the sword. And clear your mind.”
“Just like that, huh?”
“No. It’s gonna be hard at first,” I told him. “No one has a quiet mind without practice. Allow the thoughts to come and then release them. Don’t expect perfection, just accept where you’re at. The harder you fight it, the harder it will be. It’s like trying to fall asleep at three am when all you can think about is how mad you are that you’re not sleeping.”
“Okay. I’m sitting on a rock on the eve of eminent death, with a nutcase telling me to ‘clear my mind’,” Jacob said, only half kidding. “And I accept that.”
“Good start,” I smiled.
We fell silent then, and I stood behind Jacob, watching him fidget. I knew what was going through his mind right now, more or less: he was probably wondering how long I’d have him sit like that before something happened, anticipating what I was going to do to require the sword. Then when I waited longer than he’d expected me to, he’d start thinking about the raid today, and worrying about the raid tomorrow.
It took me months before I could sit still without intruding thoughts for even ten minutes at a time. But eventually I didn’t keep track of time anymore. I simply inhaled: in and out, listening to my breath, listening to my heart beating, listening to the wind, listening to the birds. Feeling the biting chill as it crept into my fingers and toes, but not letting it matter. “Just feel it and let it go,” Grandfather had taught me. “Notice it the same way you would notice the dew on the grass: as a fact, nothing more.”
It was time.
With one step and a whoos
hing sound, I barely missed Jacob’s hand, clanging the machete against the metal of his sword. He’d managed to raise it just a little bit, but not enough to ward off my attack, had it been a real one.
“What the hell!” Jacob swore at me.
I decided not to give him the line about ‘always having to be ready’ again. Figured that wouldn’t go over well. “You at least started to sense it. That’s good.”
He huffed angrily. “All right, all right. Do it again.”
I shook my head. “If I waited long enough for the adrenaline to wear off and for you to stop anticipating the attack, we won’t sleep at all tonight. This is just your first lesson. Get on your feet now.”
Warily, he obeyed, brandishing the sword.
“I assume you know how to use that thing?” I asked. He nodded, and I said, “Good. Close your eyes.”
“You are a freaking maniac!”
“I’m not going to kill you,” I promised. “The idea is to sharpen your senses enough that you can move on intuition. Remember, you can feel, hear, and know what your opponent is going to do before he does it—if you tune in. You will have no such advantage with your eyes.”
“How is this supposed to help me not die tomorrow?” he demanded.
“The more you tune in to reality, the less susceptible you’ll be to the control center’s signals,” I told him. “Let’s begin.”
I circled him, my eyes open, remembering what it was like to be in his shoes. Right now he’d be frantically trying to recall to mind the terrain around us. Where were the trees? Where were the rocks and the stumps? Was he about to fall and impale himself?
“Stop thinking about your limitations,” I said. “You can move much faster than that. Let go of your fear! Fear is your enemy.”
“But I don’t know where—”
“Trust, Jacob!”
I struck, near his left arm. He moved to block it, but he was too slow. I saw him brace himself for the impact, but I stopped the swing abruptly, and the blade did not touch him. He gasped for air and fell to his knees.
