He nodded and turned to leave.
“Jarek.”
Jarek paused with his hand on the door and turned back to Conner.
“We might need you to stow the suit for the meeting. Guy we’re meeting is a bit of a gearhead from what I’ve heard. He might get… undesirably interested if he sets his eyes on that caliber of pre-Catastrophe tech.”
The alarm must have showed on his face, because Conner held up his hands and added, “We can talk about it tomorrow. Just wanted to give you a heads-up.”
Jarek nodded slowly. “Right. Thank you, sir.”
He turned to leave, mind churning. After growing used to Fela, walking into a potentially dangerous situation with nothing but standard gear would probably feel to Jarek like walking into a war zone in nothing but boxers would feel to the rest of the Iron Eagles. And where would he even leave Fela? Here? He sure as hell didn’t want to just leave the exosuit sitting in the truck while they were in Newark. He’d have to talk to Mark.
Al waited until Jarek had made it outside and found a private corner of the dark yard to say, “I think this is a horrible idea, sir.”
“I don’t like it either, buddy, but…” Jarek shook his head. “I don’t know—I don’t wanna turn my nose up at Conner. He wants to help me.”
“Are you sure about that?”
Jarek frowned. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Silence. Was Al hesitating? “What are you thinking in there?”
“Today doesn’t add up, sir. None of this does.”
“I might need something a little less vague, Al.”
“Why non-lethals?” Al said, almost immediately. “The Iron Eagles shoot to kill when it comes to marauders. Why hold back today? And where is this ‘client’ that Conner referred to? We still have no idea how these people are working behind the scenes, sir. We’re delivery boys. What if…”
“What if what, Al?” Jarek said, an uneasy feeling gnawing at his stomach.
“You won’t like it.”
“That’s never stopped you before.”
“Sir, what if the Iron Eagles aren’t who we think they are? What if today wasn’t an accident at all? What if Conner’s orchestrating this entire thing?”
“Al, you seriously think—”
“What I think, sir, is that food is the closest thing to universal currency that exists right now, and Conner has found a viable way to mine it.”
“That’s ridiculous, and you know it,” Jarek said, shaking his head. “Conner’s planning on putting on our first soup kitchen next week, for Christ sake.”
“Did you know that drug dealers often give free samples of their wares to hook new business? I believe it’s called a taste.”
Jarek almost laughed. “Sure, yeah. And what the hell are starving Bostonians gonna pay Conner with when they come around for seconds? It’s not like he has much use for money right now.”
“Few people do,” Al agreed. “Which is exactly why now is an opportune time to accrue it. And people have other ways of paying—goods, services.”
Jarek did laugh this time. “Al, just because you’re a robot doesn’t mean that everyone else has to be heartless logic machines. Conner’s got a vision. He wants to rebuild society, man.”
“Maybe so,” Al said, “In fact, I think you’re right. But remember, sir, our society was ruled by the rich. There’s a reason the phrase, ‘no such thing as a free lunch,’ stuck around for over a century.”
Jarek didn’t have anything to say to that, nor was he particularly in the mood to think about it, so he decided to go find comfort elsewhere.
8
Jarek had continued seeing Rose since he’d joined the Iron Eagles (almost always late at night and without her father’s knowledge). As much as Jarek enjoyed his work, his midnight trysts with Rose were still easily the high points of his weeks.
The sight of her never failed to set his heart soaring, just as her touch never failed to set his head spinning.
She was his comfort. She was his emotional ground. And she was, much to his frustration, wholeheartedly in agreement with Al as he held her in his bare arms and recounted the day’s events.
He shouldn’t have been surprised.
Jarek had introduced Rose to Al around the time that he’d fallen for her (which hadn’t taken long). It had been a huge relief to share Al’s existence with someone else, but the two of them also had a rather frustrating tendency to come to mutual agreements against Jarek. Any time one of them thought he was off-kilter on something, it was a safe bet the other would agree.
At least Rose gave him kisses—sometimes more. All Al did was yap.
Tonight, though, as he finished his story, Jarek got the impression he wasn’t in store for anything good from either of them.
Rose sat up and turned to stroke his cheek, searching his face with concerned eyes. “You’re changing, Jarek,” she said softly. “Every time you come back to me, I feel like it’s a new person. And most of it’s good, but I…”
“You what?”
“I love that you want to use Fela to help people.” She placed a warm hand on his chest, just over his heart. “You’re an amazing person, Jarek…” Her gaze scanned across his face, her eyes moistening with unshed tears. “But you almost killed an innocent kid today.”
Jarek drew a sharp breath and moved to sit up, but Rose bowed down to press her forehead to his, stopping him halfway as she cradled the back of his neck with her hands.
“I’m not attacking you,” she whispered, tears spilling over to run down her cheeks. “I just don’t want to lose you.”
“You won’t,” Jarek said, his own voice close to a whisper.
The homestead business had been an accident. Why couldn’t she see that? It didn’t forgive them, or let him off the hook for hurting that kid—far from it. But accidents did happen, right?
“I’m yours, Rose,” he said, glancing over at Fela’s collapsed form in the corner and feeling, as he always did, a little self-conscious that Al could hear them. He pushed the thought aside and focused back on her. “You’ll never lose me. I love you.”
Her face scrunched up as fresh tears fought their way free. She met his eyes. “I love you too. I do…”
“Why do I feel like there’s a ‘but’ coming?” He said it with a light tone—even managed to force a half-believable smile—but in truth, he felt like an ice figurine perched underneath a heavy hammer.
“I don’t think I can do this,” Rose said, her tone suggesting that she’d just come to the conclusion that very moment. “I don’t think I can watch you fall into… whatever this is—this place where you can hurt innocent people and then brush it off like it was just an accident.”
“I’m not brushing anything off! And it was an accident.”
“Does that really matter?” she said. “So what if it was an accident? Where do you draw the line next time? When do the accidents become too much?”
“This is ridiculous. It was…” He shook his head. “You’ve never appreciated what we’re trying to do. The world is a shitty place, and we’re doing our best to make it better.”
“By attacking innocent homesteads?”
Jarek clenched his jaw and was surprised to hear his own knuckles cracking. “It’s not like we could walk in and go, ‘Hey, are you guys marauders? ‘Cause if so, we’re gonna take your base here!’ You don’t know what it’s like out there.”
“No,” she said, her jaw quivering beneath a dark look. “What would I know about the dangers of the world these days? I just live my sheltered perfect life here under my daddy’s protective blanket, right? It’s not like I almost became one of those victims you keep using to justify everything.”
“You did almost become one of those victims,” Jarek said, his voice rising. “And who saved you?”
She looked at him with bleary eyes, her nose wrinkling uncontrollably as a round of sobs threatened to take her. She took a semi-steady breath and said, “Not this person,” shaking her h
ead. “Someone like him, maybe, but not you.”
Jarek stared at her with an open mouth, feeling as if she’d just reached through his abdominal wall and clamped down on his intestines with her bare hands.
He was silent for a long while, his mouth working wordlessly.
How could she say that? How could she… He was trying to do a good thing here. Couldn’t she see that? Didn’t that count for something when the shit hit the fan? There were countless people in the world these days who would do what he’d done that day and not bat an eye over it, but he wasn’t one of them. He might’ve messed up, but he was still one of the good guys…
Right?
“What do you want me say?” he finally asked, his voice barely a whisper.
She cupped his face in her hands, stroking at his cheeks with soft, thoughtful motions. Her face was marked with tear trails and her eyes were bleary, but she’d stopped crying for the moment.
“Say you’ll leave it behind,” she whispered after a long silence. “Say you’ll come be with me. We could go somewhere else—anywhere.” She made an airy sound somewhere between a sob and a chuckle. “We could move west and start our own homestead. Just say you’ll come away with me.”
Jarek searched her beautiful, green, tear-soaked eyes.
He could say yes—should say yes, even. Rose was the best thing he’d found since the Catastrophe. Nothing was more important than her and Al.
But…
His gaze flicked over to Fela’s form in the corner of the room.
But what about everyone else?
With Fela, Jarek had the power to stand up for what was right and win the fights that others couldn’t. He had the power to help people.
Could he really walk away from that to go seek out a life of peace and quiet with the girl that he loved? Could he be that selfish?
For a brief moment, he wished he could talk to Al about the thoughts going through his head, but… no. No, these were decisions that he had to make on his own. Jarek, and Jarek alone, got to decide what kind of man he was going to be.
“I can’t,” he heard himself say. “I can’t just give up on this operation because of one slip-up. I can help people, Rose. I can’t turn away from that.”
She looked like she’d just watched her childhood pet being hit by a truck. Her entire body quivered with the looming storm of a fresh cry, but finally, she blew out a breath and found some modicum of calmness.
“I think you should go then,” she said, “as long as that’s your answer.”
He didn’t go—not at first, at least.
They went on like that for another hour, rehashing the same sentiments over and over again in new ways—each iteration punctuated by steadily lengthening periods of painful silence. Slowly, the awful realization of finality crept into Jarek’s awareness, and finally, they said their tear-filled goodbyes—shitty and dissatisfying as they were.
Jarek lurked in the shadows outside the inn for another thirty minutes after that, stopping himself from rushing over and climbing back up to Rose’s window at least a few hundred times before he finally turned and walked off into the night.
On the walk home, he ruminated in silence.
As good as things had been going, it made a sick kind of sense that things had just crashed so spectacularly with Rose. How could he have expected anything else? Every part of his life couldn’t just always be sailing into the land of sunshine and rainbows. That wasn’t how it worked.
You took what you could get.
So the next morning, he went to find Mark.
Jarek had finally found a family when he’d joined the Iron Eagles—a family that was good and honorable—and he had no intention of letting that slip through his fingers too.
9
“This is the place,” Mark said, powering down the SUV and stepping out to the dilapidated street somewhere on the western outskirts of Newark. “C’mon.”
“This is madness, sir,” Al said for maybe the thousandth time in the past hour, his tone pleading.
Maybe he was right, but Jarek was tired of hearing it. “For the last time, Al, it’s fine,” he said quietly as he hopped out of the SUV. “We’ll be back in a couple hours.”
“And what if you’re not, sir? What if this is exactly what Conner wanted from the start?”
Jarek turned away from Mark, pretending to look around, and whispered, “If he wanted a crack at us, he’s had chances before. Stop worrying.”
“Not until you start.”
Jarek turned back to Mark, trying to put on a smile. “Your friend, what is it that he does again?”
Mark pursed his lips. He’d been uncharacteristically somber the entire ride down. “He’s a bit of a… maybe tinkerer is the right word. Does a lot of this and that, repairing odds and ends, that kind of stuff. Also curates a little bulletin for all kinds of stuff. Keeps his ear to the ground.”
They crossed to a plain gray metal door, which Mark pulled open for Jarek.
“My hero,” Jarek said as he stepped through. He heard more than felt Mark rap a knuckle on the back of Fela’s helmet and smiled in spite of himself.
The small room they entered was clean but mostly empty, save for the large paper-and-pen bulletin board on one wall and the counter that barred the way to a gray door at the back of the room.
“Charming place,” Jarek said.
Mark wiggled his eyebrows, but his heart wasn’t in it. “He keeps all the fun stuff in the back.”
As if on cue, the door at the back of the room opened, and a man that looked a bit older than Mark said, in a high, warbling voice, “And now if anything goes missing, I’ll know who to blame it on.”
The guy looked like a mad scientist. He might’ve been in his early fifties, but his puffy hair was already well-grayed. He kind of reminded Jarek of Albert Einstein, if Einstein had been balding on the top and strapped a pair of round welding goggles across his forehead. The leather work apron he wore only added to the mad scientist look, packed to the brim as it was with a range of tools and knick-knacks.
“Pryce!” Mark said. “It’s been a while, man.”
Pryce considered them, his light brown eyes inquisitive. His gaze lingered on Fela, studying the exosuit from head to toe. There was no trace of the “What the hell is that?” reaction Jarek had grown to expect; Pryce just analyzed Fela, excitement growing in his eyes as his face pulled into a faint smile. Jarek frowned. Mad scientist, indeed.
“Mr. Adams,” Pryce finally said. “What can I do for you?”
Mark glanced at Jarek. “My friend here needs a place to store something. Shouldn’t be more than a few hours.”
“I see,” Pryce said, finally tearing his gaze away from Fela to focus on Mark. “And you don’t trust your Iron Eagles to keep an eye on this ‘something’?”
“It’s not like that,” Mark said. “We just want it out of sight while we meet a contact.”
Pryce arched an eyebrow. “Ah.” His eyes flicked back to Fela. “And would I be right in assuming the item in question is humanoid and in plain sight right now?”
Jarek gave a weak grin. “You must be killer at twenty questions.”
Pryce smiled, holding Jarek’s gaze. “Speaking of questions,” he said, “why on Earth would you want to leave such a precious piece of hardware with a…” Pryce’s eyes drifted away for a second, then he huffed, “Ha! Hard-wear… Sorry. With a complete stranger, I was saying. Why?
Jarek shifted his weight. “I, uh—”
“You’re hardly a stranger, Pryce,” Mark said, rolling his eyes.
Pryce gave him a dubious look, then nodded toward Jarek. “To him, though.” He turned his gaze back to Fela and started tapping at his chin with a single finger. “You know… it reminds me a bit of that exosuit they were prototyping over at MIT back before the world went boom—”
Jarek’s heart beat faster.
“—The one everyone was raving about,” Pryce said. “What were they calling it, again?”
&nbs
p; “Say something, sir,” Al said in his ear.
Jarek pulled his slack jaw closed. Something told him Pryce knew exactly what they’d called it. Jarek glanced at Mark. Maybe this had been a bad idea.
“I don’t know,” he said, shrugging. “I was too young to be reading Science Weekly back then.”
“Back then?” Pryce said, his eyes twinkling. “No worries. Just thought you might be a fellow enthusiast. Speaking of which,” he said, wiping his hands off and extending one to Jarek, “I’m officially Jay Pryce.”
Jarek took his hand. “Officially Jarek Slater.”
“Right then.” Pryce turned for the back room. “I’ll show you where you can leave it, if you so choose.”
Jarek traded a look with Mark, who shrugged and followed Pryce. The guy was a little kooky, and he’d lightly brushed against a few warning bells in Jarek’s mind, but he also didn’t strike Jarek as untrustworthy. Of course, talented con men never did… but the fact that Al expressed a similar sentiment made Jarek feel a bit better. Al didn’t really trust anyone, after all, aside from Jarek himself.
The back room was much larger than the one they’d come through, and it was fairly overflowing with stuff. It had the immediate feel of a workshop, but as eclectic as the room’s contents were, it took Jarek a few seconds to move beyond the universal label of stuff and begin sorting things out.
The front of the room boasted an impressive collection of conventional hand and power tools, all neatly arranged on wall racks or under the workbench that spanned the wall to the right and wrapped around to the next wall in an L shape. Two large wooden tables occupied the floor space ahead of them, hosting several half-finished projects ranging from wood carvings to half-assembled (or disassembled) electronic gadgets.
Behind the tables stood several metal shelves, loaded with everything from batteries, wires, and breakout boards to garden fertilizers and bulk chemical supplies. Next to the shelves, a staircase wound in a tight spiral to another room above. Behind the shelves, a workbench sat at the back wall, loaded with scales, some fancy-looking machines that Jarek could only guess at the function of, and enough glass tubes and flasks for any respectable mad scientist.
The Complete Harvesters Series Page 134
