Motherland

by Russ Linton

  "What?" he asks.

  "Mom. She wants a job."

  He tries a smile. "Mrs. Harrington...uh, just watch this screen." He points her toward the chat window he's set up for Charlotte.

  "Okay."

  "Not okay, Eric. Something else."

  An eye roll fit for an anime. "You think of something then."

  The tactical screen continues to display the countdown. T minus fifty-eight minutes. Neither Mom or I can keep from staring.

  "Why don't we grab some lunch?"

  She agrees. She hasn't said much since Dad left. Aside from our disastrous family road trip, this is maybe the first time she's been forced to watch his deployment in real-time instead of catching it on the news. With his current lack of invulnerability, it can only be harder, but she seems to be taking it well.

  We make our way down the wrecked hall, and I help her over the rougher patches. Probably isn't necessary, but she gladly lets me. I need to keep searching for that closeness we'd found instead of focusing on all the wrongness. As we reach the lobby, I've got her by the forearm, helping her clear the worst part when the lights flicker once and go out.

  Emergency lamps glare in the darkness. We both look wildly about, drawn to daylight streaming through the front doors. Security plates slam into place, cutting off our only beacon.

  "Eric?" I call toward the ceiling. Mom and I start to retreat from the killbox lobby.

  "Power fluctuation," he says, the clatter of keys underlying his response. "Main plant. Don't worry, we got backup generators. Online in a second."

  Mom and I huddle closer in the cycling, bloodied glow.

  "I don't think I like this place, Spencer."

  "What's to like?" I say. "They made it to be a prison, an internment camp for their wayward weapons. Still is, in a lot of ways."

  "But you want to be here, don't you?" she asks. "You don't feel...trapped?" That's a tough question to answer. Over the past few days, I've been back and forth on how I feel about all this. She's onto me before I can stutter through an answer. "Tell me you don't feel trapped."

  "Is that a rhetorical question?" I indicate the sealed exit.

  She frowns in a Mom-disappointed-way Charlotte could never manage. "Be serious."

  "Honestly? I have no clue. The danger, the excitement, it does something. I feel focused, needed. All those skills I honed in a funky basement and tech labs suddenly have meaning. Then there's those times where it all goes wrong. Our first mission in the desert..."

  Mom crosses her arms and draws a step away, the sting of a memory placing its own barrier between us. "Getting caught by those men. All those guns."

  "No, smacking my mother. Terrorists, I guess I have a way with..." Her hardened mask crumbles into a sympathy I don't deserve. "I'm so sorry about..."

  "Don't," she says. "I spent more time with Charlotte than you ever did." She examines her hands as though they're alien extensions of another person. "She was dangerous. Maybe still is."

  "I had an idea earlier," I admit. "Us, a normal family."

  "Spencer." She half-smiles, finally squaring up with me again. "We were never a normal family. Maybe this is normal for us."

  "I've had those exact thoughts lately. But if this wasn't our normal, what would you do?"

  She tilts her head in thought. "I'd thought about culinary school before, you know? A chef. But the hours weren't something a single parent could pull off."

  "Seriously? After all the shit we gave the dad in Swiss Family Robinson for building his wife a kitchen so she could be the island sandwich maker while he and the boys went out to adventure?"

  "You and your father can have the night ops and acronyms." She says it blithely as if it's the most natural thing in the world.

  Me. Dad. Out on "night ops" together. Depending on one another.

  "What?" She notes the silence. "You have a problem with my cooking?"

  "Not in a million years."

  She raises those thin eyebrows. "Brussels sprouts? The dramatic gagging."

  "C'mon, they're the testicles of the vegetable world."

  "Spencer!"

  She laughs, and in the lightness of the moment, I hear the right timbre, the precise rhythm of breath. Charlotte melts completely, utterly away once more. This is Mom. Dad's around more often too, and more mellow than I've ever seen him, ready to trust in my own less-spectacular abilities and those of my goofy friends. Who says we can't save the world and make it home in time for Mom's famous pancakes?

  "All this talk about your cooking and I'm getting hungry. Let's head to the kitchen. Eric should have the generators up by then. With him, if it wasn't born in a microwave, it isn't a food group."

  We both step toward the lobby. She stops, the smile erased.

  "Did you see that?"

  I squint down the far hallway. It's a blind alley of strobing red, and at first, I don't know what she's talking about, but between the cadence of illumination, there's movement. Processing the shadowy figure is tricky as it leaps in and out of existence. The lighter patterns in his camo shirt glow like they're black-lit. We're both frozen until a loud clack resonates through the halls and the lighting returns to normal.

  "Well, whata we got here?"

  "Spence," Eric blares over the intercom. "We've got a containment breach!"

  No shit. I stare eye to eye with the breach. Destructo. He's sauntering toward us. A blink and he could be right here.

  "No kill box," I shout. "No kill box!"

  Mom pulls insistently and leads us out of the lobby. Destructo grins and his pace quickens ever so slightly. My steps lengthen, and Mom's tugging becomes more urgent. His footfalls sharpen, echoing, and his center of gravity drops. Our backward shuffle frantic, we reach the uneven ruins of the hall. Destructo crouches.

  "Killbox! Killbox now!"

  Weapons ignite the lobby in fiery bursts, disappearing behind the leading edge of the closing security doors. We're scrambling, stumbling, clawing, then running in hops and missed steps as a concussive wave tears past us. Debris rains and I'm tossed to the ground. Mom ragdolls further away, skipping painfully across loose tile and shards of concrete. Blackened, crushed stone tears into my palms and forearms. I roll over, expecting to see Destructo's raised boot, ready for a curb stomp.

  "Muther fuhker!"

  The human cannonball cleared the closed door and writhes about an arm's length away in the rubble, grabbing his ankle. Somebody should have roped off the construction—that's a lawsuit waiting to happen. I don't wait to see how badly he's injured. I'm on my feet, helping Mom up, and racing down the hall.

  "Don't y'all run, now!" Anger edges every word, his shouts cracked and broken. "Y'all gonna piss me off." Another concussive burst rattles the doors and more loose rubble sprays, but only lasts a second. "Sumbitch!"

  We hit the comcen full tilt. Numb to the world, adrenaline coursing, I feel the full extension of Mom's arm as I yank her through the door and skid around the corner. Eric's huddled behind the captain's chair. Relief washes over him as he lowers the repulsor ray gun in his shaky grip.

  A run for the exit on the opposite side puts us in a direct path with Destructo. He's attempted to get the clearance for his speed burst a few times, but the wrecked hallway continues to keep him at bay. Mom tries to direct me toward the far exit, calling for Eric to follow. I fight back and head for the control panel.

  "Behind the monitors," I say as loud as I dare. "Eric, kill the lights."

  The overhead fluorescents click and extinguish. With no easy way to shut off the monitor banks, I switch them to blank screens, and we circle behind into the shallow stacks of the operations nerve center.

  "I know y'all are in here." By the sound of it, he's right at the door. "Just wanna talk, that's all. What Shortwave always wants." He ends on a soft whisper. The steady purr of equipment masks his footfalls. I edge toward the control panel with Mom still latched to my arm and find a gap. In the room beyond, the LCD screens aren't as true black as advertised.
Destructo's got the pseudo-darkness to navigate. With a mostly empty command center, it's obvious where we are.

  "Come on out, now," he says. A grin splits his face as he stoops and checks under a table against the wall. "Mask ain't here. He'd a come runnin'. Ain't nobody here, far’s I can tell." It's a game. He's playing dumb even as he heads straight for our spot.

  I signal to Eric to indicate the opposite side then motion toward mine, point to myself, and raise my open palm. This isn't official special ops hand jive, but hopefully he gets the picture. I'll come out first, distract Destructo. Eric can then repulsor gun him into a wall.

  Waddling, trying to stay low, Mom stays attached to my hip. At the corner, I hold up a hand, and she shakes her head vigorously. I can't let her come. If Destructo sees her as Charlotte, he might blast off hoping to catch her before his brain is puddinged. If he sees me though, chances are he won't even register a threat. I give another signal, both hands this time, just trying to placate her. As my hands come down, I catch sight of Eric.

  He's on the move.

  I skirt the corner. On my feet, arms in the air, about ready to give a long, distracting, concession speech, when Destructo's lanky form coalesces into a sphereish blur.

  The repulsor beam is a thing heard, not seen, traceable only by the ripples in the dimness. A rumble of a bass line dropping in reverse followed by the high-pitched hum of the weapon recharging. Already at his top speed, the beam merely checks Destructo's sprint. Eric hits the ground with a painful slap against the tile. Destructo crouches over him, panting. Before I can reach them, he's plopped down on Eric's chest crushing out a whine of protest and pain.

  Destructo sweeps the gun off the floor and dangles it over Eric's forehead. "Now. 'Bout that talk."

  Chapter 33

  DESTRUCTO HAS US SEATED back to back in a couple of plastic chairs. No time wasted tying us up, but he's got the gun and knows it. Mom peeks out into the room. He's too close to the panel to see her, but my heart skips a beat each time she does it.

  Once more I'm at the mercy of a possibly deranged man wielding way too much power. Funny, I could blame Augments, but Beetle wasn't one. Neither is Xamse. I know what he would tell me in this situation. He'd tell me he'd never be in this situation to begin with. The once kid has ice in his veins. Me? I've spent all my time trying to get warm.

  Eric, on the other hand, is more like me. Less ice in the veins, more soda.

  "What were you thinking?" I ask.

  He cocks his head as he tries to squeeze out an answer. "You gave the 'go' signal."

  Leave it to him to remember actual tactical hand signals and read them into my attempts to keep Mom in hiding. I'd be more pissed with him, myself, if he wasn't legitimately hurt. My first thought was he got the wind knocked out of him, but it's something worse.

  Destruco hobbles to the left side of the panel. Sprained ankle or not, he got up a pretty good burst when he careened into Eric. Probably that and the repulsor blast saved my friend from a broken spine.

  A little searching and Destructo scratches his head with the butt of the pistol "How y'all turn this sumbitch on," he says, leaning on the panel, mashing random buttons.

  “Wish we knew. Tech support has had us on hold for the past twelve hours.”

  He's coming at us, none too happy. Mom shifts into view again, and I watch the floor, shaking my head hoping she stays hidden. Destructo stops inches away and presses his greasy head against the top of mine. I keep my eyes down

  "Just a joke," I say, mostly to divert any of the incoming wrath away from Eric.

  "I ain't laughin'." The words form in a yellowed mouth of crooked teeth and a stained gum line the color of a cockroach. Cold metal presses into my skull and grinds, twisting my hair. He eases up and taps me on the forehead with the barrel. "You laughin'?"

  "No," I say, glancing up for Mom. She must have missed that, not sure. Keep calm. Control the emotions.

  "Good. I don't know what this here fancy gun can do, but I reckon it'll hurt. You’re gonna show me what y'all do here." He paces to the panel and flips on the monitors. "Ain't all about watchin' the news. You know them computers. You can break into 'em, right?"

  "Yeah," I say.

  Destructo waves me over with the gun.

  Eric's clutching his arm to his side and doing his best just to stay in the chair. His breathing wafts in shallow, quick bursts, enough to keep him from protesting as I stand and follow instructions.

  "Don't get no dumb ideas." Destructo emphasizes his request by holding the gun a few inches from my temple. "I'll be needin' you to get me some Salariums. Do that, and I'll be gone. You and your friend won't ever need see me again."

  "Sure. No problem." I set about doing pretty much exactly as he asked. "I'll need your wallet. For the transfer."

  "Get me an Internet Explorer."

  God. IE? He is a hillbilly. And he'll likely have no clue what I'm doing. At least I think this means he's already got a cryptocurrency wallet.

  He grabs the controls long enough to access an email account and helpfully forces me to look away by digging the gun into my cheek as he enters his password. This close range, that repulsor's gotta cast Mass Root Canal. He's wasting his time protecting the password. Eric logs every keystroke.

  I take this uncomfortable opportunity to check once more for Mom, and my eyes meet hers. She's crouched at the corner tight with fear—scared for me. I raise a palm as carefully as I can and hope I'm not signaling for a takedown. She slips out of sight.

  "Ow!" The metal barrel cracks my skull hard enough I hear the impact inside and out.

  "Got it. My wallet passcode. Just sitrl and vee."

  Takes me a second to realize he's loaded his Salarium wallet address on the clipboard and all I need to do is paste it. Control V. I start digging around for someplace to siphon a few coins.

  "Sure you don't just want cash? I can do a credit card or a bank account in half the time."

  "Them ain't worth shit no how."

  "Oh yeah?" I try to keep him talking while I skim through mining pool data. Fastest way for me to do this is simply transfer some from Eric's account. Coming up with a Salarium scam on the fly is no easy feat. A public ledger with every transaction logged and continuously verified, it makes hacking a near impossibility.

  "There's a storm a comin'." A sinister grin plasters his face. Must be he didn't tell Dad and Hound quite everything he knew. "Changes to the order of things. Us meek are finally gonna inherit the earth."

  "You must be pretty important to the Collective."

  "Reckon I am," he sniffs.

  "How much you want?"

  "Don’t know. Million maybe? How much they worth?"

  "Eight hundred and some change." I double check the Salarium exchanges. "Wait...over a thousand." There's been a spike. A big spike in the last few hours. I try to focus on one of the news stations and end up with another rap on the head for the effort.

  "Whatever it takes to make a million greenbacks, then. Buy me the good life."

  "Coming right up," I say, trying to look busier than I am. While we've got him here, might as well try to find out what he left out of his interrogation. "A million is good, but maybe that depends on where you want to go."

  "I’ll go where I damn well please." I brace for another pistol whipping that never comes. Destructo starts to sound a little sentimental. "Do whatever I want. Buy me some pussy and beer. If'n I got any leftover, I'll start my own shop."

  "Shop?"

  A wistful expression is replaced by suspicion, and he considers the gun before answering. "Gonna make my own automobile. A real classic. Nothin' but steel and gas-o-line. None of that goddamn corn. You put corn in bread, not cars." He slides close, and I flinch as he drapes an arm over my shoulder, painting a picture of his future in the air with his gun. "The Rattler," he says with more than a bit of flourish. "On account it'll rattle your windows when it goes by. Gonna make 'em like they used to in Detroit."

  Mom edges close
r to the corner. Even Eric has quieted, his groaning diminished. If Mom was waiting for the right time, that would be now. However, I'm getting more convinced this guy will just walk away as soon as I make the transfer. Please, nobody move.

  Suddenly, Destructo slaps me on the back.

  Confused, I notice he's focused on the screen. In his wallet are one thousand, one hundred and eleven Salariums plus change. All without me doing a thing. I check Eric, still slumped in his chair.

  Destructo steps away. "Tell your Pa, no hard feelings." He stops short of the exit and scratches his temple with the gun. "Know what? Maybe you should come with. Keep my wallet nice an' fat."

  "I'd only eat into your hooker binge," I say. "Go on, man. All you."

  He taps the gun on his skull. "Naw, you really should. Might be good if Crimson Mask knows we're good friends and such."

  Fuck. What was this guy? Diamond class? Even crippled, without the space age gun, I don't have a good out.

  "You're not taking him anywhere." Mom steps from behind the control panel.

  She perfectly mimics the very voice which used to worm its way inside my skull. Destructo's heard it too, from his days at Killcreek. He quickly goes from smug to "oops, I shit myself." His hand flexes around the gun grip then relaxes. I know what he's thinking. He's not sure if he can get it aimed before she makes him turn it on himself.

  "I ain't goin' back," he says.

  "Leave," says Mom. "Take your money and go. I won't offer again. Just leave. And I won't make you go back. To your cell. To Killcreek. Nowhere."

  Her threat is steadily dulled by a nervousness I hope I'm the only one able to detect. We're amateurs. Letting ourselves feel the danger instead of compartmentalizing it is natural.

  But Destructo, for all his backwoods bullshit, isn't an amateur. He's a predator. A bully shaped into his own weapon. His shoulders drop. I can tell he senses her hesitation.

  "Mom!"

  Destructo's a blur.

  Eric kicks his chair out, sending it skidding into Destructo's path. His valiant attempt to trip up the human bullet only has him eating linoleum. I'm within a slim chance of putting myself in front of the charge. Two steps, Mom sees me. Her eyes widen. She raises a hand, desperate.