by Amie Kaufman
But only for a heartbeat.
They pull away simultaneously, remembering where they are. Four bodies on the bloody floor around them, four soldiers in ATLAS rigs with locator beacons to show exactly where they died. Various hospital staffers have crept out to see what the commotion was about, now the shooting has stopped, and there’s not a one of them who doesn’t look gobsmacked to find Grant kissing a BeiTech soldier among the head-shot corpses of four of his own people.
“What the hell…,” a doctor named Morton whispers.
“I’ve gotta get rid of these bodies,” Lindstrom says, realizing the situation they’re in, the hustler in him coming back to the surface. “Can you clean up this mess?”
Grant nods, looking slightly shell-shocked. “I think so. Yeah.”
“Who the hell was that up in the ceiling, Ash?”
She blinks, eyes coming into focus. “Is now really the time for that?”
Lindstrom clenches his jaw. Slips his ATLAS helmet back on. “I’ll take their APC. Drive it into one of the ice ravines. Maybe the brass will think they got lost in the storm. Clean up this mess and stay here, okay? You bail now, you’re only gonna raise suspicion, and there’s search parties everywhere. They’re tearing the place apart looking for that Thermex. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“…Okay.”
They stare at each other. Still so many secrets between them. He climbs to his feet, takes one last glance at the ceiling. Leans down to hoist Marcino’s body over his shoulder, then marches out into the storm.
Grant watches him go. Licking at bloody lips. His kiss already forgotten.
Like I said, it was never gonna end well for these two.
RADIO TRANSMISSION: BEITECH PLANETSIDE COMMS—ATLAS CHANNEL L:0091
PARTICIPANTS:
Rhys Lindstrom, Specialist, BeiTech Ground Forces
Duke Woźniak, Corporal, BeiTech Ground Forces
DATE: 09/04/75
TIMESTAMP: 20:51
WOŹNIAK, D: Hustler, you read?
LINDSTROM, R: Yeah, Duke, I read you. Listen, I’m—
WOŹNIAK, D: Sorry to keep you waiting, the Duke got caught up. Pacat’s squad had a runner, the Duke had to pound ground to catch the slippery ****er. He’s on his way to barracks now. You done at the hospital yet?
LINDSTROM, R: …Yeah.
LINDSTROM, R: Yeah, I’m done. What the ****, chum, I been waiting for five minutes and it’s cold out here. Oshiro’s gonna have my ***.
WOŹNIAK, D: Untwist your pantaloons, Hustler. The Duke said he’s sorry. He’ll talk Oshiro down, it’ll be fine. He’s at the barracks now but there’s nobody here.
LINDSTROM, R: Nobody?
WOŹNIAK, D: Not a goddamn soul. Everyone must be out on search and seizure. Where would the Duke find these IR units?
LINDSTROM, R: They’re in primary storage. Locker B-4, I think. I’ll send you a pic via battlenet so you know what to look for. Bring an extra just in case.
WOŹNIAK, D: Roger that.
WOŹNIAK, D: How’s your sugar? Get it straightened out?
LINDSTROM, R: Yeah. Yeah, five by five. Thanks for understanding, chum.
WOŹNIAK, D: Never let it be said the Duke isn’t a romantic.
LINDSTROM, R: After that tongue story? Not a chance.
WOŹNIAK, D: [laughs]
WOŹNIAK, D: Chum, this place gives the Duke the crawls. Nothing in the ’verse weirder than a totally empty school.
WOŹNIAK, D: …The Duke hated school.
LINDSTROM, R: Yeah, I didn’t have much fun, either.
WOŹNIAK, D: You okay, Hustler? You sound…Well, hello there.
LINDSTROM, R: Hello who? Me?
WOŹNIAK, D: This is a restricted area, civilian. The Duke would get his hands in the ****ing air mighty quick if he was you.
LINDSTROM, R: Duke? You okay?
WOŹNIAK, D: Did we?
WOŹNIAK, D: I think you better get your hands up, little man.
LINDSTROM, R: Duke? Report status, over?
WOŹNIAK, D: Hustler—
—TRANSMISSION INTERRUPTED—
LINDSTROM, R: Duke?
LINDSTROM, R: Duke, this is Hustler, you read me?
LINDSTROM, R: …Duke?
These events happened simultaneously, so I’m splicing footage and radio conversations together as best I can. I’m going to use italics to denote Woźniak’s sections, just to make it easier on us. I’m not ****ing Shakespeare, all right?
Lindstrom’s ATLAS radio squawks just as he’s loading Private Lewis’s faceless corpse into the back of his squad’s APC. It’s pitch dark outside. As Lindstrom turns, you can catch a glimpse of Asha Grant and her fellow hospital staffers furiously mopping up the pools of blood and brains left in his wake.
WOŹNIAK, D: Hustler, you read?
LINDSTROM, R: Yeah, Duke, I read you. Listen, I’m—
WOŹNIAK, D: Sorry to keep you waiting, the Duke got caught up. Pacat’s squad had a runner, the Duke had to pound ground to catch the slippery ****er. He’s on his way to barracks now. You done at the hospital yet?
The kid looks at the four dead bodies he’s dumped in the APC. As he glances down, we see his ATLAS is drenched in blood. Sleet and snow are glued to the gore.
LINDSTROM, R: …Yeah.
LINDSTROM, R: Yeah, I’m done. What the ****, chum, I been waiting for five minutes and it’s cold out here. Oshiro’s gonna have my ***.
Woźniak strides in through the front doors of McCaffrey Tech and scans the empty hallways. Outside the doors, the growing storm is scratching and clawing at the glass. The optics on Woźniak’s helmet are blood red, a cluster of eight scarlet dots glowing in the gloom.
WOŹNIAK, D: Untwist your pantaloons, Hustler. The Duke said he’s sorry. He’ll talk Oshiro down, it’ll be fine. He’s at the barracks now but there’s nobody here.
LINDSTROM, R: Nobody?
WOŹNIAK, D: Not a goddamn soul. Everyone must be out on search and seizure. Where would the Duke find these IR units?
Lindstrom has jumped into the driver’s seat of the APC now. He eases his foot onto the pedal, rumbling out of the parking lot and into the night at a nice, relaxed speed that completely belies the nature of his cargo. Through the windshield and falling snow, you can see countless dots of light across the Kerenza colony—squads of pounders roaming door to door looking for Admiral Sūn’s stolen Thermex.
The kid nudges the wheel, turns onto the road leading out of town and off toward the hermium refinery. Ahead of him, BeiTech’s makeshift bridge spans the kilometer-deep crack in the glacier that forms the colony’s foundations. He presses on the accelerator a little harder as he talks into comms.
LINDSTROM, R: They’re in primary storage. Locker B-4, I think. I’ll send you a pic via battlenet so you know what to look for. Bring an extra just in case.
WOŹNIAK, D: Roger that.
WOŹNIAK, D: How’s your sugar? Get it straightened out?
LINDSTROM, R: Yeah. Yeah, five by five. Thanks for understanding, chum.
Woźniak is wandering the halls, stopping occasionally to check inside a few of the classrooms. But his initial assessment seems spot on. The place is a ghost town.
Lindstrom is still driving, snow pounding the windshield, storm howling. He’s close to the ravine now, reaching down to jam Master Sergeant Marcino’s VK-85 burst rifle against the accelerator. He glances across to the passenger seat and the dead master sergeant sitting beside him.
He shrugs an apology.
WOŹNIAK, D: Never let it be said the Duke isn’t a romantic.
LINDSTROM, R: After that tongue story? Not a chance.
WOŹNIAK, D: [laughs]
WOŹNIAK, D: Chum, this place gives the Duke the crawls. Nothi
ng in the ’verse weirder than a totally empty school.
WOŹNIAK, D: …The Duke hated school.
Woźniak has reached the hallway to the storage area, which is actually the repurposed school gymnasium. There’s no heavy ordnance or armaments kept here, but much of BeiTech’s day-to-day operating gear and spare parts have been neatly arrayed in long stretches of military-issue lockers that strangely mirror the high school lockers in the hallways outside.
Lindstrom opens the door to the APC, one hand on the wheel. Jamming another burst rifle against the steering column to hold the wheel in place, he takes a last look at Marcino’s corpse and raises his middle finger, then leaps out of the still-moving APC. He hits the ground with a flurry of snow and a soft grunt, the shock absorbers in his ATLAS taking the brunt of the high-speed landing. The APC trundles off down the road, veering slightly left until it finally clips the bridge stanchion, rides up onto two wheels and plummets clean over the edge of the ravine.
The storm swallows the explosion utterly.
LINDSTROM, R: Yeah, I didn’t have much fun, either.
WOŹNIAK, D: You okay, Hustler? You sound…Well, hello there.
Woźniak comes to a dead stop. In front of him stands a teenager. Kind of short. Reasonably thin. He’s got dark curls and dark eyes and a ****-you swagger to his walk, but the picture is kinda ruined by his dirty overalls and the grubby covered cart he’s pushing in front of him.
A plumber’s cart.
LINDSTROM, R: Hello who? Me?
Bruno Way’s momentary surprise dissolves into something quieter. Darker. His hands creep down the side of his cart. Woźniak raises his burst rifle, aims it in Way’s direction. Maybe he doesn’t want to appear too threatening. Maybe he doesn’t really register the kid as a threat—he’s a ****ing plumber, after all. But there’s still more than enough iron in his voice as he speaks.
WOŹNIAK, D: This is a restricted area, civilian. The Duke would get his hands in the ****ing air mighty quick if he was you.
Lindstrom picks himself up off the snow, the evidence of his murder of four fellow BeiTech pounders now a flaming wreck at the bottom of a chasm of prehistoric ice.
LINDSTROM, R: Duke? You okay?
Bruno Way sighs. Offers Woźniak a conciliatory smile.
“Well, I was gonna just try to leave this in your supply cache on a timer and run for it. But I knew I was on borrowed time after you ****ers got Steph. I think we all knew how this was going to end, didn’t we?”
Woźniak raises his rifle a little higher.
WOŹNIAK, D: Did we?
“I heard she got out on the shuttles,” Way says in a small, sad voice. “I could’ve lived with that. Even if it meant never seeing her again. But about a month after the invasion, you had us clearing rubble near the day care center, and…” Tears shine in the boy’s eyes. “That’s where she worked, see? Jenna loved kids…”
WOŹNIAK, D: I think you better get your hands up, little man.
LINDSTROM, R: Duke? Report status, over?
“But I told Asha I’d be seeing Jenna again soon.” Bruno Way pulls aside the tarp covering his plumber’s cart. Underneath it, rigged with a tangle of wires and a homemade detonator, is around sixteen kilos of BeiTech’s stolen Thermex.
His smile is as cold as the snow outside.
“You wanna come with me?”
WOŹNIAK, D: Hustler—
The explosion cuts Woźniak’s feed to a wash of gray static, but I can watch it bloom through a few of the security cams scattered around the colony. Tearing through the high school in the blink of an eye, shattering windows and walls and ripping the roof to pieces. It blossoms upward like some burning orange flower, black smoke and fire melting the snow to steam. Ashes tumble from the rolling black skies, falling back to the burning gravesite that is McCaffrey Tech.
LINDSTROM, R: Duke?
Lindstrom presses his hand to his helmet to deaden the roar of the storm.
LINDSTROM, R: Duke, this is Hustler, you read me?
And then he sees the flames and smoke rising from the center of town.
His hands curl into fists, fury creeping into his voice.
LINDSTROM, R: …Duke?
INCEPT: 09/04/75 20:48
Asha GRANT: Joran, Bruno, u there?
Joran KARALIS: Break just started, I’ve only got a few minutes.
Asha GRANT: wheres bruno
Joran KARALIS: No idea. I heard about Steph. Jesus Christ what was she doing ****ing around with Thermex? And where were you earlier?
Asha GRANT: Ok, Joran, stop stop.
Asha GRANT: I need you to listen to me.
Asha GRANT: We got a reply, Joran. There’s a ship in the system who heard our distress call.
Joran KARALIS: WHAT THE ****?
Asha GRANT: survivors from the colony. Some people from a UTA ship. I don’t know all the details. But my cousin’s with them. They have a plan, I’m sending you and Bruno the deets now. FOR GOD’S SAKE DELETE THE FILE ONCE YOU’VE READ IT
Joran KARALIS: jesus
Joran KARALIS: okay, I understand. Just…
Asha GRANT: I know. Believe me. But that’s not all of it. Soldiers just raided the hospital looking for that missing thermex and four of them got killed. By Rhys
Joran KARALIS: WHAT?
Asha GRANT: He’s dumping the bodies now, we’ve cleaned up the mess but it’s only a matter fo time before they’r emissed and there’s gonna be a world of **** coming down on us. Not sure how much we’ll get to talk again so read that plan CAREFUL
Joran KARALIS: Jesus chrsit he killed fellow pounders? What the hell for?
Asha GRANT: It was my fault, I
Asha GRANT: did you feel that?
Joran KARALIS: Feel what
Asha GRANT: Oh ****, there’s an explosion in the middle of town Joran
Joran KARALIS: Where? Not near the detention blocks?
Asha GRANT: no i
Asha GRANT: Joran I gotta go.
Asha GRANT: Keep your head down. Read the plan. We’re counting on you.
Joran KARALIS: Ash, you still there?
Joran KARALIS: ASHA
It’s been thirty-seven minutes since Master Sergeant Ray Marcino and his squad of ***holes got murdered in the foyer of Kerenza IV hospital, and aside from a sticky splinter of skull stuck to the lens of Camera F-ii, which obviously got missed in the cleanup, there’s zero sign of the massacre that took place here.
Asha Grant is seated behind the front desk, eyes straying constantly to the windows and the dark outside. The glow of flames still light the clouds above the ruins of McCaffrey Tech, but except for a repeat of the curfew warnings blaring over the colony public address system, there’s been no word from BeiTech about what caused the blast or exactly where it happened. Grant’s repeated attempts to raise Bruno Way on IM have failed, and she’s returned to duty, chewing on her lip and watching the storm rage outside.
She also checked up in the ceiling, but there was no trace of her clever little mouse. Grant obviously is torn between waiting for Lindstrom and going to look for Katya. The kid could just be hiding in a sub-basement or access tunnel, bound to return in time. But still, you can almost see the memory of another little girl in Grant’s eyes. Stare locked on that tattoo at her wrist. What-ifs running on a constant loop inside her head.
She brightens a little as a BeiTech armored personnel carrier pulls to a hard stop outside the front doors and a tall figure in an ATLAS climbs out. The word HUSTLER is scrawled on his chest next to some battle scarring and a cluster of card suits. But Grant’s smile evaporates as more figures bail out of the vehicle, five in total. Among the group, you can make out a female form with THOU SHALT NOT KILL on her breastplate and the hulking figure of Lieutenan
t Jake Christie.
The latter slams through the front doors, steam rising off his ATLAS. He’s the only BT goon not wearing a helmet, seemingly oblivious to the cold. His eyes are dark, the tattoo on his face twisting as he spies Grant behind the counter. The other pounders stomp in behind him, Lindstrom beside him.
“That her?” Christie asks.
“That’s her,” Lindstrom replies.
“Wha—” Grant rises half out of her chair as Lindstrom hurls something small and shiny at her head. She ducks aside only barely, the object hitting the wall behind her with a crack. “Hey!”
The squad members have their weapons out, all aimed squarely at Grant.
“Get on the floor,” Oshiro growls.
Grant looks to Lindstrom, terror in her eyes. “Rh—”
“GET ON THE ****ING FLOOR!” he bellows.
Grant shrinks visibly, sinks to her knees. Before she can get herself flat, Private Markham is storming behind her, slamming her to the deck with his boot. She grunts as she hits the linoleum, face to face with the object Lindstrom threw at her head a few moments before. Shiny. Metal. Slightly charred.
A set of dog tags, stenciled with a dead man’s name.
WOŹNIAK, DUKE. PRIVATE. 4TH PLATOON.
“I warned you,” Lindstrom snaps. “You ****ing *****. I asked if you knew anything about that Thermex and you lied right to my face.”
“I do—”
An armored boot to her ribs shuts her up, and she curls into a groaning ball.
“One of your people just used it to kill my friend, Asha!”
“Lindstrom, ease up,” Christie growls. “We need her alive for interrogation.”
