Obsidio

by Amie Kaufman

  Within a few minutes, he’s pulling into a dogleg alley and dismounting, boots crunching in the snow. The faint buzz of an aerial drone can be heard in the distance. He threads through the backstreets on foot, past the colony geeball field, the words We Remember daubed in red paint on the wall. Dodging another drone and the slow, trundling rumble of an APC, he finally arrives at the ruined Kerenza cineplex. There, in the shadow of a collapsed wall, waits a familiar figure, wrapped in cold-weather gear, mirrored goggles over her eyes.

  “You’re late!” Asha Grant hisses, breath steaming through her balaclava.

  “I couldn’t get away,” Lindstrom whispers in reply. “Had to wait for a convincing hand to clean myself out. They can’t play cards for **** here.”

  “You were supposed to be here ten minutes ago. Our diversion’s gonna start any—”

  A bright flash lights the night skies to the east, followed by a rumbling boom. A moment later, the high-pitched whine of a siren splits the air, vibrations knocking snow loose from the awnings above Lindstrom’s head. The low, pulsing glow of the surrounding streetlights sputters, the lit windows in the distant apartment stacks flicker and go out, and power across the colony suddenly dies.

  “****, that’s it, we have to move!” Grant snaps.

  The pair dash out into the pitch-black street, Lindstrom leading them toward a stretch of wall near the town hall. Several sheds are set up beside it—the kind of easy-to-assemble, easy-to-break-down structures a quick-moving invasion force would use for temporary storage. Among them sits an insulated rectangular structure, studded with aerials, a small short-range transmission dish on its snowcapped roof—BeiTech’s secondary communications array. A sign warns:

  DANGER—PROXIMITY MINES. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

  The metallic din of soldiers and machinery is ringing over the distant siren. APCs and skibikes are rolling toward the smoke rising to the east, swarms of flying drones lit from beneath by the flames, like fireflies on a midnight wind. Reports will later show that a small explosive charge was set on four of the wind turbines at the power plant—not nearly enough to destroy them outright, but sufficient to disrupt power to over 60 percent of the colony. The report will show the explosives were a homemade mix of detergents and other household items. Some DIY chaos, courtesy of the “nonexistent” insurgency.

  But meanwhile, the BeiTech forces are distracted enough for Lindstrom and Grant to make a break from cover, dashing toward the secondary comms array. Lindstrom knows where the mines are laid, and he takes Grant’s hand as they weave across the snow until they reach the sealed door. The structure is dark, only a few pinpricks of light from the gear inside showing through the frost-crusted windows. Lindstrom uses his tech access pass, tugging hard to break the frost on the seal.

  “Won’t they know you used your card to get in?” Grant hisses.

  “I can access the security records, delete my entry. Hurry up, go, go.”

  Grant hustles inside, Lindstrom on her heels. The kid seals the door behind him, shutting out the wind, the distant sirens, the engines and tromping boots. He hauls off his helmet, sloughs off his gauntlets and runs one hand through his quiff, keen gray eyes surveying the instrumentation before him.

  “This is gonna take a while,” he says. “Keep an eye out.”

  “I’m not here for my charming personality,” Grant says, already peering out the window.

  “Good thing, too,” Lindstrom mumbles.

  Grant turns from the window to glare. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  The kid kneels among the hardware. The backup communications rig is set out on a foldable metal bench top, still housed in travel cases of scuffed plasteel. I know **** about tech stuff—it basically looks like a long tangle of computers, fat cables snaking across the bench. After a moment studying the equipment, Lindstrom pulls out some tools, pops the housing and gets to work.

  Grant is watching the BeiTech military machine at work outside the window. She pulls down her goggles and balaclava, shakes her head.

  “Look at them,” she says. “They’re like ****ing robots.”

  “I hope your friends know what they’re doing,” Lindstrom says, elbow-deep in circuitry and hardware. “They get caught, they’re against the wall.”

  “My friend can take care of herself,” Asha says. “Nobody else to watch her back, since your people murdered her husband.”

  Lindstrom stops what he’s working on to look up at Grant. “If they were my people, would I be here helping you? They catch me here, I’m against the wall too.”

  Grant stares long and hard, saying nothing. Finally turns back to the window and resumes her watch. Lindstrom returns to work, shaking his head.

  “I mean, I’m not asking for a medal or anything,” he mutters. “But I’m here. I’m helping. Wasn’t so long ago I was your everything. We were going to be together forever. I used to have your name tattooed on me, for crissakes.”

  Grant turns from the window, frowning. “What do you mean, ‘used to’?”

  “I mean I got it burned off.” He shrugs. “I got the message. You don’t speak to a guy for three years, he’s not gonna keep your name inked on his skin, right?”

  Grant turns back to her watch, staring out through the frosted glass with narrowed eyes. “I kept mine.”

  Lindstrom falls still. Vague hope flaring in his voice. “You did?”

  “Yeah,” she nods. “To remind me.”

  “…Of us?”

  “Of who I never want to be again.”

  The hope in Lindstrom’s voice dies as quick as it was born. His murmur is so quiet you can barely hear it over the ruckus in the distance.

  “It wasn’t that bad, was it?”

  Grant glances at Lindstrom, at those gray prettyboy eyes watching her. Her own eyes are unreadable.

  “I missed you, Ash,” he says softly.

  “You better hurry.” Her voice is cold as the snow outside. “They’ll be blowing the fuel dump at the motor pool soon. We need to use that as cover to get away.”

  The kid sighs, returns to work. No more words, no more questions, working in silence as a handful of minutes stretch into ten. Deftly, he splices the tiny wireless transmitter into the array. The device looks like an insect of wires and parts, indistinguishable at first glance from the rest of the internals. You’d need to be a chiphead to scope it. Looking over my shoulder, my fellow analyst (who’s a little more technical-minded than I am) tells me, “Prettyboy knows his ****.”

  His job finally finished, Lindstrom packs up his gear silently. He reseals the plasteel case, sighs. “Done. So now we just wait for your friends to—”

  “Oh, ****,” Grant hisses.

  The kid looks up. “What?”

  “****, ****, ****.” Grant ducks low. “BT goons. Heading this way.”

  “You mean like wandering in this direction or—”

  “I mean like marching toward the ****ing building we are in right now.”

  “****.” Lindstrom finishes resealing the computer stack, scrambles to his feet and joins Grant at the window. “****, ****, ****.”

  “I already said that.” The joke does little to cover Grant’s obvious panic. Her pupils are dilated, breath coming in sudden, deep gasps as she scans the room around them, looking for another exit, a ceiling hatch, a place to hide. Anything.

  But there’s nothing. “Shouldn’t your buddy be blowing those fuel tanks by now?” Lindstrom whispers.

  Grant is breathing quick, eyes wide, clearly wondering the same thing.

  “Have you got a weapon?” she asks.

  “A pistol,” Lindstrom says, patting his standard-issue sidearm.

  “Give it to me.”

  “Asha, they’re wearing ATLAS rigs, it’ll barely make a scratch.”


  Grant looks around the room for some stratagem, something. The reality of it is starting to sink in. Even if they burst out the door and run for it, the bullets in those goons’ rifles are all gonna run faster.

  “We’re ****ed,” she says.

  Lindstrom is still peering out the window, watching the two ATLAS-clad pounders approach the secondary array, burst rifles up and ready. The pair are already on alert from the explosion, taking no chances. One of them is calling for backup, and they’re only five meters from the door.

  His breath catches, softly.

  Four meters.

  “****,” he whispers.

  Three.

  “Do you trust me?” he asks Grant.

  “What?” She blinks.

  Two.

  “Asha, do you trust me?”

  “I…”

  No time to wait for her answer. Lindstrom pops the seals on his ATLAS, sheds the breastplate like old skin. And as Grant’s confused frown deepens, he steps in closer, takes her by the waist and plants his lips square on hers.

  I can’t see her face in the shot anymore—Lindstrom’s armor cam is now on the floor. But I’m gonna take a guess at the rapid train of thought running through this girl’s brain as, mere seconds from Death By Firing Squad, the ex-boyfriend she professes to hate decides it’s a good time to make with the smoochies.

  Surprise.

  Disbelief.

  Outrage.

  And maybe something more?

  She doesn’t try to pull away, that’s for sure. Maybe she’s twigged to Lindstrom’s scam. Maybe she doesn’t hate the kid as much as she pretends. Maybe there, surrounded by frost and snow, pressed up against the warmth of him, mouth open to his, his hands unzipping her jacket and roaming the curve of her hips, the small of her back, a part of her remembers when this boy was her everything.

  And maybe a part of her missed it, too?

  They press against the wall, their bodies remembering this heat, this old familiar thrill. The way they used to fit together so perfectly. The door slams open. Heavy footsteps. Barked orders, distorted through the vox units of an ATLAS helmet.

  “Freeze! Get your ****ing hands in…”

  The first voice drifts off as a second soldier speaks.

  “You gotta be ****ing kidding me…”

  The two new arrivals are fully armed, fully armored, just a crossed word away from a whole lot of spent shell casings. A glance at the names on their breastplates shows the idents of Corporal Kazim Ali and Private Linden Lewis—two members of the squad that executed little Huang Ying over a few packs of stolen ration packs.

  Yeah, those ***holes.

  As they burst in, they see Lindstrom half out of his armor, Grant in his arms, pressed against each other. The two break apart, looking shocked. Grant’s lips are flushed, hair in mild disarray, Lindstrom’s hands tangled up under her jacket. Doesn’t take a hyperspatial-reality theorist to figure out what they were up to.

  “You gotta be ****ing kidding me,” Lewis repeats.

  “Ah.” Lindstrom extricates his hands from Grant’s clothes long enough to give a feeble wave. “Hey, chums.”

  “Are you dusted?” Ali says. “Bringing your sugar to a restricted area?”

  “Christ…,” the other says, tapping her commset. “Nest, this is Lewis, that’s a false alarm over at the secondary array. Repeat, negative alarm. We are gold, over.”

  “Roger that, Lewis. Continue sweep, over.”

  “Affirmative.” Shaking her head, the pounder looks at Lindstrom, eight insectoid eyes glowing on her helmet. “Chum, get a room next time, huh? We could’ve blown y—”

  “Hold up, hold up.” Ali tilts his head at Lindstrom. “Is that who I think it is?”

  “Who?” Lewis asks.

  “That little cherry **** who sucker punched the sarge!” Ali looks at Lindstrom’s breastplate on the floor, the ident on the chest. “It is him. Oh, you little *******, you’re done. Bringing a civi into a blue zone just to get your rocks off? I’m gonna get your *** nailed to the ****ing wall for th—”

  “Is that the way we do it round here, Corporal?”

  Lewis and Ali turn at the sound of another voice, Lindstrom peering over their shoulders. And there, standing in the swirling snow with her flechette cannon slung over one shoulder, is a female figure in an ATLAS rig. Eyes glowing red. THOU SHALT NOT KILL stenciled in neat letters above her ident: OSHIRO, YUKIKO. SGT.

  “I asked you a question, Corporal,” Oshiro says. “Is that the way we do it?”

  “This is a restricted area—this little **** shouldn’t be in here.”

  “ ‘This little **** shouldn’t be in here, ma’am.’ ”

  Ali glances at Lewis, who simply shrugs. The math is simple. He’s a corporal, Oshiro is a sergeant. Just like when MSG Marcino pulled rank on Oshiro, Oshiro is now dropping the same striped hammer on them.

  “You don’t wanna be that guy, do you, Ali?” Oshiro asks. “Don’t wanna be the kind to rat out fellow pounders just for getting a little sweet?”

  “…No, ma’am,” Ali finally replies.

  “So why don’t you kids go find the rest of your squad and let me chew out this stupid ****ing rookie in peace.”

  The two pounders glance at each other, back to Lindstrom. They’ve got no cards to bluff with. Time to fold. They salute the sergeant, trudge back across the snow toward the slowly dying ruckus to the east, leaving Lindstrom, Grant and Oshiro staring at each other in the biting chill.

  “What’s your name, civilian?” the sergeant asks.

  “G-Grant,” the girl stammers. “Asha Grant.”

  Oshiro checks her digipad to make sure Grant exists in the colony database. Satisfied, she taps a few commands, stabs a button. The device spits out a small sliver of plastic, time-stamped and dated. The sergeant hands it to the girl, her glowing stare locked on Lindstrom.

  “That leave pass is good for twenty minutes. You want to make it back to the domiciles by then, you better run.”

  Grant glances at Lindstrom briefly. Snatching the leave pass out of Oshiro’s hand with a mumbled thank-you, she’s zipping up her jacket and is out the door, hurrying off into the snow, head bowed, hood pulled low.

  The kid opens his mouth to speak. “Thank—”

  “Don’t thank me, you little ****,” Oshiro hisses. “Christie made me responsible for your stupid ***. Do you understand the world of **** that would rain down on the pair of us if you got caught ****ing about with a civi in a restricted area? I warned you about cruising on the locals, didn’t I?”

  Lindstrom turns his eyes to the floor, mutters under his breath.

  “What was that, Specialist?”

  The kid clenches his jaw, struggling to keep his mouth shut.

  “I said, I guess we’re not supposed to get too attached, huh?” he finally snaps. “Because when we bug out, we’re burying all of these civis in the Hole, yeah? Or are you gonna try to tell me we’re bringing them all with us?”

  To her credit, Oshiro doesn’t try to deny it. Lindstrom searches her face, maybe looking for some hint of softness. But her expression is hidden entirely behind her armor.

  “We’re gonna kill them all, aren’t we? You can’t think it’s ri—”

  “Enough!” Oshiro shouts. “I’ve had it! I don’t want to hear any more of this bleeding-heart bull****, Lindstrom. This is an illegal operation, they’re all criminals. This is a war, and you’re a soldier, so do your goddamn job like the rest of us. And hear this: From now on, you don’t leave my ****ing sight. You want to take a ****, you ask my permission first. You want to **** off, I want an application in triplicate. You read me?”

  Lindstrom stares a moment longer, but it’s clear from her tone Oshiro is in the mood for zero flak. And so finally,
he nods.

  “Ma’am, yes ma’am.”

  “Get your ****ing ATLAS back on before you freeze to death. I’ll be outside.”

  The sergeant turns and stalks out the door, slamming it behind her and cutting out the chill. Lindstrom sighs, obviously uneasy at the confrontation. But it served its purpose, diverting Oshiro’s attention from the rows of computers at his back. The kid glances to the doctored comms array, the tiny receiver hidden inside. It’s safely hidden now, just waiting for the data packets to be sent. But still…

  “That was close,” he sighs.

  Yeah, Cherry.

  Too close.

  Some days, I wonder if all this is worth it. If anyone is even going to read these transcripts. Sifting through this footage, it’s hard to imagine anything good is actually gonna come of all this. Even if the truth comes out, is it really going to matter? It won’t bring anyone back to life. It won’t undo any of it.

  But the other option is to just sit back and take it, right? And that’s no kind of option at all. The murdered can’t bear witness. The dead can’t speak for themselves. So I suppose I should quit *****ing and get on with it.

  Just be warned: I’m not great at funerals.

  So. Some context:

  Flipping back through history, you learn real quick that burial rites have pretty much been the same since humanity was banging rocks together to make fire. Basically, they do two jobs.

  The first is pretty damn simple. See, your body isn’t really your body. In sum total, you’re actually about 10 percent you and 90 percent bacteria. There’s around a hundred trillion other organisms that call your body theirs, and when your body dies, those organisms don’t just stop doing their thing. So, not to put too fine a point on it, but dead bodies rot. And keeping them around while they rot is a good way to get more dead bodies.