18% Gray

by Anne Tenino

They’d all been trained since birth on what to do, but only James had the calm to get everyone coordinated to set a big back-burn surrounding them, then get everyone down in their fire shelters to wait it out.

  Matt had been dripping with sweat, but ice cold inside. Covered in soot, with goose bumps and chills sweeping over him. The tinfoil fire shelter that had been in his family for fifty years arched over his head, hooked under his thumbs by the corner straps. His heartbeat was echoing around inside it, or maybe that was just in his head. Matt was so scared he was sure he was going to puke all over the shallow depression he’d scraped into the sod before he could lie down in it.

  He’d felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked up from under the edge of the shelter into James’s face. “Lie down.” That was the first thing he could remember James ever saying to him.

  So Matt lay down, and the fire burned around their back-burn and never got close to them.

  Matt pushed the memory away and refocused.

  James ran a hand across his jaw, rasping his stubble. He must not have a sonic razor here. Then his hand traveled up through his hair, absently yanking on it. He blew out a big breath, puffing his cheeks out. Matt didn’t need a psychology degree to read James’s body language. He didn’t want—or didn’t know how—to tell him something.

  “So, you know what Psi-force does, right?”

  It took Matt a second. “Psychological warfare, right? Confusing the enemy, luring them into situations where we have the advantage, hearts and minds, stuff like that.”

  “Yeah, we do stuff like that. What I do more is predict enemy behavior. Individual and group behavior.”

  He seemed to need an acknowledgment. Matt nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  “Yeah, so mostly we deploy with other SF as requested, maybe one to three of us per battalion, and we predict the way the firefight might go, and how best to end it fast. And usually we fight alongside everyone else while we do it.

  “But it’s the fucking military, and somebody did some research somewhere and a bunch of someones came up with a plan to turn soldiers into a new kinda weapon. How unusual, huh?” James rolled his eyes and gave a disgusted—and kind of unhappy—snort. “And so they experimented on some Psi-Force troops. I don’t know how many. But of course they didn’t give them any choice in the matter. Just implanted something in their heads. And then they sent the altered Psi-force troopers out with bio-rhythm trackers and built-in uplinks implanted in them and started conducting their real-world experiments.”

  Matt groaned. “So you’re telling me….” He made the “go on” motion with his hand.

  “I’m telling you I’m one of the Blue’s guinea pigs. And the Red had to have found the extra tracking info on me when they disabled my chip. They know there’s something different about me.”

  “How much do they know?” And what was there to know?

  “The RIA knows I have tech implanted they’d like to figure out. I don’t know if they’re keeping that to themselves, or if they’ve let the whole Confederation of Red States in on it.”

  “Jesus Howard Christ.” Matt groaned at the ceiling. “I thought this was going to be easier than normal since you’re SOUF. Fuck. I’d rather bring that lesbian couple with the two toddlers out of Utah again.”

  “So would I.” James cracked half a smile. It was kinda cute, the way he could quirk up just one side of his mouth like that. And the golden stubble was kinda sexy. Matt sighed and shook his head.

  “So, are you going to tell me what this implant does?”

  “Sorta gave me a sixth sense, I guess.” James’s voice was flat, and his face was extra blank. “It’s like there’s another sensory organ hooked up to my brain. I can decipher emotional states and intent. Like an empath plus some. I know when someone is deceiving us to lure us into an ambush. Or when someone’s remembering what an asshole I was in high school.”

  “But I wasn’t,” Matt said, lamely, after a moment of silence. That was all he had.

  “Yeah, but I was.” James cleared his throat. “Sorry,” he added gruffly. “For being a dick about finding you, you know. With Steve.”

  Matt stared. He had to deal with the news that James had some kind of implanted ESP, and his apology? He decided to deal with the easier issue first.

  “You can’t really read someone’s mind, though, right? That’s what you said. You only pick up their intent?” It wasn’t like the idea of implanted ESP was unheard of. Gramma Anais had been talking about it for years. And they could hook up com equipment directly to your brain, now.

  “Yeah. But by knowing someone’s intent and emotional state, I can usually make an educated guess about what they’re thinking.”

  “You just woke up from brain surgery an empath? Didn’t that fuck with your head?”

  Another disgusted snort. “Oh, yeah. I almost went insane at first. Took me months to get used to it. It was like I had an exposed nerve and everyone nearby was jumping on it. After a while I learned to ignore it. Like being in a crowded room and everyone’s talking, but you don’t listen unless you pay attention.

  “I had to be sort of… tuned, I guess. If I worked with the same guys for a while, I knew who was feeling what, but there was this process I went through to ‘introduce’ them to my implant. So I’d know them. God, this makes no fucking sense, does it?”

  “Yeah, it does. If you ran into someone you didn’t know when you were surrounded by guys you did, you knew what their intentions were?” James nodded. “But when you were thrown into a situation where you were around all new guys, you were lost?”

  James looked thoughtful. “People’s brain waves can be just as distinctive as their voice. So I could actually get to know someone pretty fast, because the waves are directional. Like, if I knew someone was feeling ‘annoyed’, I also knew it came from that corner of the room. And then once I was familiar with their ‘voice’, I could ID that person.”

  “How did that work in prison camp?”

  “Same.” James paused. “I was part of a Ranger platoon when I was captured, and they separated us once we were detained.” James cleared his throat. “I met my, um, ‘friend’ in POW camp. He was AirSF.”

  Matt’s timepiece chimed suddenly, breaking his intense concentration on James. He didn’t want to know about James’s lover, anyway. “We have five minutes. Listen, just tell me this. Is this what got fucked up in re-education? Your ability to sense people’s emotions and intentions?” James gave a sharp nod. “So, how fucked up are you?”

  “My range and ability got more acute. When I’m outside, any guy walking down the street even two blocks ahead might be feeling or intending anything I pick up, and I don’t know where it’s coming from without more info. I’m pretty sure it’s line of sight. Solid masses seem to block reception.”

  “And they didn’t before?”

  “I think they did, but range did, also. Like, I might see a guy a hundred yards away, but I couldn’t pick him up. Now I can.”

  “Fuck,” Matt sighed. “And you want out of here, right? I’m not fucking with some secret mission by being here?” Although that was unlikely, since they’d been contracted by SpecOps HQ to get James out. ArmySF SubCom and SOUFCOM should have both signed off on the contract, first. Unless they had one of their famous miscommunications.

  “I want the fuck out of here. But there’s another consideration: someone comes and checks on me from the RIA daily.”

  “This just keeps getting better. So what time do they check on you?”

  “It’s a surprise, usually. Sometimes someone comes to the door, sometimes a guy talks to me at the coffee kiosk, once I got a vid com. I think we should wait until right after my next check and take off. I think we should go through Hells Canyon, and I think you should turn off my chip altogether.”

  “It’ll take longer, increase the risk for both of us and our operative in Colorado.”

  “Militia patrols are a huge risk, my face could be all over the militia band within minutes of disco
vering me gone. And parts of Hells Canyon might be rugged enough to block the tracking satellites. They aren’t going to write me off as another Enforced Emigrant, Matt.”

  It was true, and Matt knew it. The entire point of his career was to ensure the Enforced Emigration law worked—a law his great-great-grandfather Aaron McEvoy authored and shepherded through the new Blue States of America Congress in 2058.

  QESA was the first and largest military contractor that sent agents in to extract moral refugees in the Red. Most people had to petition through the Blue underground for assisted extraction before the BSA Federal Court would approve the mission, but members of the military were different. Since James was no longer in a POW or re-education camp, he had to be extracted by QESA or get out on his own. But the BSA could still contract for his extraction without a Federal Court order since he was military.

  “You really want out of here, huh?”

  “It’s changing, Matt.” James stared off into space, rasping his cheek with his hand again.

  God, he could be confusing as hell. “James! Snap out of it. What’s changing?”

  “The implant. It didn’t just change when they started exposing me to their re-education and stabilization. It keeps changing.

  “You’re good at remaining unnoticed, Matt. I knew you were tailing me because I could feel you back there.”

  “I thought you said that was normal—”

  “It’s not normal for me to know you were directing that intent at me. You could have been tailing anyone. Little things like that have been developing regularly. I don’t know what th’fuck this thing in my head is, or what it’s gonna do to me in the end. I want to go back and get the fucking thing out.”

  “Gah!” Matt was reaching new levels of frustration. “Okay, we have to move. Go home, pack, and as soon as you’re contacted, signal me visually. What’s a good signal I could see from a hiding spot?”

  “I live in an older part of town, one of those multi-use building areas. In the brick-and-mortar across the street behind it there’s an empty storeroom on the third floor, northeast corner. You should be able to get in from the roof—I’ve done it. Scale the drainage system on the building to the north and climb over the shared wall. When I’ve been contacted, I’ll turn on the light in the third window from the southeast side of my place.”

  “Been planning ahead?”

  “Wouldn’t you have every escape possibility mapped out?”

  “Hell, yes. Okay, you go and I’ll be about thirty minutes behind you. I have to make another quick contact.”

  “I assume my address was in my file?” Matt nodded. James stared at him a second before standing up. “Thanks, Matt,” he said quietly, tapping his knuckles on the table. Then he walked out.

  Oh, this was going to fucking suck balls.

  Chapter 4

  JAMES had known they couldn’t leave him here. He’d known someone would be coming, and even that it might be a contractor. The legalities around Enforced Emigration weren’t clear to him and he wasn’t sure they could send a team after him. But Matt Tennimore? He never saw that one coming.

  It wasn’t like he held a grudge against Matt. He’d been the dick, there. He was so grateful he wouldn’t have cared, anyway. He just wanted out.

  He’d been starting to get more sensitive to the implant. There were times he felt he could barely keep his brain in his head. In crowds, he could feel the intentions of other people pressing in on him so strongly it felt like his head might collapse. He avoided crowds when possible, but the job he’d been assigned as a re-educated former POW made it impossible. James was doing crowd control at religious rallies, of all things.

  He didn’t have to work that much, fortunately. Maybe three or four events—fewer than twenty hours a week. He didn’t know what was with the light workload, but he’d take it. He’d thought that Red states liked to make their moral criminals make retribution to society through hard labor. Not in his case apparently. Busting up big rocks into little rocks did not appear to be in his future.

  Maybe the RIA knew he was cracking up.

  Or they wanted to coddle him, bring him over to the Dark Side. Which could also explain the cushy living situation. No one fresh out of queer re-education got a roommate: couldn’t give them a same-sex roommate in case they “slipped”; couldn’t give them one of the opposite sex in case the re-education actually worked. Fornication was as illegal between hets as homos, after all.

  But did other parolees get a two-bedroom apartment in a halfway decent part of the city? It was a neighborhood from around the beginning of the millennium, not too run-down like most of the former middle-class neighborhoods. It had lots of brick-and-mortars in the area. Wealthy women from the hills above town came on weekends in their hydrogen sportsmobiles and shopped there, for God’s sake.

  The only thing he’d miss about this pit was his apartment.

  Okay, there was one other thing he would miss. He was walking right past Basha’s, so he stopped to order a chicken shawarma to go. May as well get the good stuff while he could.

  Almira, Basha’s granddaughter, chatted with him a minute since there weren’t any other customers. Aside from the food, he liked Basha’s because the family didn’t care about the pink triangle on his chest. Most people looked right through him unless he forced them to pay attention. It made his job in crowd control a mite difficult at times.

  James made it to his front door by 1725 with his takeout bag in hand. There was a pizza delivery bike out front, and a guy waiting on his doorstep with the standard flat box. He knew from half a block away that the guy was an RIA agent of some kind. A nervous one, full of bravado.

  James stopped halfway up his walk and hooked a thumb in his waistband. “Musta forgot all about the pizza I ordered.” The guy just looked at him. James sighed and came to the door, pressing his thumb to the reader, disengaging the lock. He wondered why they didn’t wait inside for him. He knew they could get in without his thumbprint. He could feel the guy’s impatience while he unlocked the door, like he thought it was a useless gesture.

  He waved the silent “delivery” guy inside, then followed him in. “Is there even anything in the box?”

  “No,” the guy said. He looked at James and waited. James smiled. He could play this game better than this yahoo. He stared, unblinking, until the guy began to fidget.

  “You’re supposed to be in for the evening at 1730,” he finally blurted.

  “Right now, it’s,” James checked his timepiece, “1727.”

  “Cutting it close, weren’t you?”

  James stared some more. The guy fidgeted a little then made a visible effort to still himself. Or maybe it was a mental effort. Sometimes James couldn’t differentiate what sensory info he was picking up anymore. “I’m here to take your report.”

  “First day on the job?” Yes. He could practically hear it.

  The guy flushed. “Second,” he said, seeming to recognize the futility of bluffing. Much. “I’ll be your regular liaison for a while. You’ve been assigned a new caseworker. You need to report to her office by 0845 tomorrow morning, address in your hookup under ‘Caseworker’.”

  James blinked. “Is that normal?”

  “I’ve given you all the information I’m allowed. Just report to her in the morning,” the liaison snapped. He started for the door, wanting out.

  “What’s your name?” James asked. He didn’t care, but he’d bet the guy wasn’t supposed to share info like that with him. He tried something he’d been working on and gave the guy a little mental push.

  “Joel,” the guy responded. Then he froze mid-step. “Shit,” he said under his breath, and without looking at James, he slammed the door and left, more scared than angry.

  James snorted softly. Now to decide whether it was better to wait until 0845 tomorrow or leave tonight. He went to snap on the light in the spare bedroom, then to pack.

  IT WAS barely dusk when there was a knock on the door. James opened it to find
Matt in a Basha’s Restaurant shirt.

  “Good evening, sir,” Matt’s voice was all calm professionalism. His face was all smirk and mischievous glint. James’s gut tightened in reaction to seeing him, just as it had this afternoon, when he had landed on Matt with that flying (literally) tackle. He didn’t get enough full-body contact with attractive men lately. “It appears you left your hat when you stopped by our establishment this afternoon.”

  James stopped cataloguing all the changes Matt had undergone—he wasn’t exactly baby-faced anymore, but he was still punch-in-the-gut attractive—and glanced down at Matt’s empty hands. He raised an eyebrow, looking back up. Matt gave him a minuscule “it’s your line” kind of gesture.

  “Uh, no. That doesn’t look like any hat I’ve ever seen.”

  Matt rolled his eyes. “Yes, sir, sorry for the misunderstanding. Almira thought it looked like one you had worn and asked me to stop by.” He smiled like he’d done something especially clever.

  James gave Matt the two-handed “now what?” shrug. Matt continued. “Lovely evening, isn’t it?”

  “Uh, yeah. Sure.” Belatedly, James realized he couldn’t get a feel for where Matt was going with this. He couldn’t get a mental read on him at all.

  “Exactly the kind of evening I like to be at home, sitting in my yard. With a beer.”

  Matt stressed “beer” just a bit. James rolled his eyes. “Yeah, well I hope you get the chance for that, later. Bye.” He said a touch gleefully, shutting the door in Matt’s face. He made his own smirky face while he gave Matt time to go down the walkway and onto the street before walking to his cool-cabinet and grabbing a couple pouches of beer.

  Out the back door, James had his own little yard and tiny patio. It was walled on both sides, with a shorter fence facing the brick-and-mortar across the road. Between the walls and the small pine tree, he had a yard that could only be surveilled from a few spots. He knew them all and checked them out visually. No sign of mobile surveillance, either. Flying micro-bugs were nearly unheard of in Idaho. He pulled a chair behind the pine, next to the fence, and pulled the tab on his beer.