by David Estes
Harrison’s hand goes up, pressing against his forehead, his eyes closing into his palm. When they open again, he knocks over the chair and stalks away, ignoring Michael’s and Janice’s simultaneous plea of “Son.”
Janice squeezes Benson’s hand, and he squeezes right back. “This is hard for him,” she says.
“I know, Mom.”
“Benson, I’m so sorry,” Michael says. “I only wanted to keep both of you safe. Give you each a chance for happiness.”
“I know, Dad.”
“You’re not angry?”
Benson thinks that based on the RUSA’s laws, he should be. After all, he was technically a legal citizen and should’ve been matched with the Birth Authorization. But if he was angry, then he’d be a hypocrite. Because regardless of their order of birth, they both deserve the chance to live, to be brothers. It wasn’t his father’s impossible choice that stole that from them. It was Pop Con. “No,” Benson says. “Well, not at you guys. And I don’t think Harrison’s angry at you either, not really. He’s mad at himself. Even before he knew, he thought he’d stolen my life from me, by being stronger and faster and pushing his way to the front. It’s worse for him knowing he didn’t win his life fair and square.” Benson stands. “I need to talk to him. I need to make this right.”
“We should,” his father says.
“This is between us,” Benson says, patting his father’s arm. He turns and kisses his mother on the cheek. “Get some rest.”
~~~
Benson finds his brother sitting on his hoverboard outside a second story window. A cool breeze is wafting inside and micro-droplets of rain mist from the sky, but Harrison seems oblivious to both, wearing only shorts and a t-shirt. Perhaps he’s warmed by the ferocity of his own temper, Benson guesses.
“Want some company?” Benson asks, poking his head outside. He rubs his hands down his arms rapidly, hugging himself.
“Whatever,” Harrison says, staring absently at the night sky.
Benson carefully clambers onto the board, which wobbles slightly. He tries not to look down, but can’t help it, the potential fall making his head spin. Clearly heights don’t bother his brother as much as him. Or at all.
He clamps his hands to the sides of the board, and it stops bobbing. Taking a deep breath and forcing himself not to look down, he follows his brother’s gaze skyward. Thin clouds drift aimlessly, streaking the full moon before moving on. The rain is so fine it’s almost pleasant, a far cry from the pelting thunderstorms that are typical to Saint Louis. And even the cold isn’t as bad as Benson expected, which makes sense considering it’s raining and not snowing.
“There are no answers,” Harrison says.
“Not for us,” Benson agrees.
“How do you not hate me?”
Benson thinks about it for a moment, and although he has a dozen answers, he chooses his own question instead. “Would you hate me if our positions were reversed?”
It takes his brother far longer to answer than he expected. “No. I guess not. We were only babies. In some ways, we still are. We’re ignorant to so much.”
“Not anymore,” Benson says. “We get to choose our lives from now on. We get to choose what and who to fight for, and whether we want to accept the world we’ve been given.”
“I feel stupid. Stupid and naïve and angry. So angry.”
“At Dad and Mom?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” Harrison’s fist is in his palm, and he’s massaging his knuckles. “Dad was doing what he thought would give us both a chance. And he probably made the right choice, you know.”
Benson’s laughs. “Are you admitting I’m stronger and faster than you? Better fit for life on the streets?”
“You wish. I’m admitting you’re way smarter than me. You pick your battles wisely. I wouldn’t have survived five seconds out there.” He waves in the general direction of the city lights.
“I think you’d do better than you think. Your perception would be different if it’s all you’d ever known.”
Harrison raises his face to the mist, as if the rain can help him absorb his brother’s words.
“You know, our lives, our insanely insane situation is the perfect example of the absurdity of the laws. That one of us could be born two bot-lickin’ minutes earlier and live a completely different life. Or that Dad could pick one of us to be legal and the other not, only society can’t really tell which of us is allowed to be alive and which isn’t. Pretty ridiculous when you really think about it.”
Harrison manages a wry smile. “But no one does think about it. They teach us not to in school. They stuff our heads full of statistics and history and fear. They tell us that we’ll all be starving in a month if we let illegals mooch off our food. Hell, I believed it until I became a wanted criminal.”
“Fear is a powerful motivator,” Benson says.
Harrison shoves his knuckle in his mouth and bites down on it, growling in frustration from the back of his throat. When he withdraws his hand, his eyes are sad. “I lived your life,” he says, his voice a whisper.
“From the sounds of it, I didn’t miss much,” Benson says, attempting a joke.
Harrison shakes his head. “You missed everything. You missed out on childhood. You were living on the streets, Bense.”
“Hey, our crash pad was nicer than you might think.”
“You had to steal to survive.”
“But I did. I survived. It’s okay.”
“It’s not.”
“Okay. It’s not,” Benson agrees. He marvels at the twistiness of life. One split-second decision, in the heat of the moment, can send the lives of dozens of people spiraling off in completely different directions. “But neither would it be okay if you had to survive on the streets while I went to school and was forced to live without a real mom or dad. So what does it mean if there wasn’t a ‘right’ path either way?”
Harrison raises his eyebrows, and for the first time in their conversation he genuinely smiles. “It means this world is a screwed up place, I think.”
“You said it. Then let’s change it. Let’s not dwell on the past, and let’s do something about it. Mom and I can’t do it without you.”
“Obviously,” Harrison says. Benson feels a swirl of exhilaration in his chest, because that’s the brother he prefers. The witty, charming, somewhat cocky and enormously noble brother who will go to any lengths to protect the ones he loves.
Chapter Thirty
Destiny awakes with a start, the dream fading into the early light of a pale white morning. No, not a dream, she realizes. A memory. A ghost of a thought, haunting her. A truth, appearing and then disappearing, as if wanting to be seen and wanting to hide all at the same time.
The Destroyer on a slab. The doctor holding a gun to his own head. Scared of…
The president, the president, the president…
The moment she peels herself away from Harrison’s sleeping form, she feels colder, as if stripping away a warm blanket. He’s like a space heater; she could get used to sleeping next to him.
Pulling on socks, she pads downstairs, anxious to see if anyone else is awake. She needs to talk to someone, anyone.
Minda is sitting at Michael’s bedside, speaking in hushed tones. Simon is cross-legged on the floor, his hands at his sides, his eyes closed. He appears to be meditating. Lola is near his feet, just sitting there staring up at him, as if trying to figure out a puzzle with no solution. But when she sees Destiny, she races over, leaping up on her legs, her tail moving as fast as a hummingbird’s wings. She scoops her up and presses her cheek against her soft fur. It’s so strange to her that a machine can be so loving, and so easily loved. She puts Lola down and the dog returns to her watchful position at Simon’s feet.
Janice and Benson apparently haven’t come down yet, as exhausted as Harrison.
Tiptoeing past Simon so as not to disturb him, Destiny makes her way to Michael and Minda. Their conversation seems private, and she doesn’
t want to intrude, so she stops a few meters away and clears her throat.
Minda turns and sees her, and though she tries to smile, there’s a grimness belying her easygoing expression. “Good morning,” she says.
Although she knows she’s being rude, Destiny has too much on her mind for pleasantries. “Did Michael tell you what the Destroyer’s doctor told us about the president?”
Minda nods.
“What do you think it all means?”
“I wish I knew. We feel like we have all the clues, but they’re for three or four different puzzles. But the truth will come out in the end. It always does.”
Destiny knows she’s right, but that doesn’t mean they can’t do something to speed it along. “Can I borrow your holo?” she asks.
Minda shrugs. “Sure. Why?”
“Research.”
She hands her the holo and Destiny carries it to the couch. An hour later, when Harrison stumbles down the steps, she’s so immersed in old news articles and holo-blogs that she’s barely aware of the kiss he plants on her forehead or the distance he seems to keep from his father.
~~~
Harrison dumps Lola in Simon’s lap and his eyes fly open. He blinks a few times, shaking his head. “Oh. Hey,” he says.
“Were you asleep sitting up?” Harrison asks.
“Uh, no. No.”
“You were somewhere.”
“Yeah. Somewhere.”
“Let me guess, you were concentrating on growing your brain as big as your biceps? I’m right, aren’t I?” All Harrison wants to do is joke around so he doesn’t have to look at his father or feel the tension that seems to coat everything and everyone—except Lola—in the safe house.
“I’m not sure that’s possible,” Simon says, flexing his enormous arm. The fuzzy, uncertain look is gone, replaced by his usual French-Canadian confidence and flare.
“Seriously though,” Harrison says. “You meditate often?” He doesn’t think he could ever sit still for that long. Nor would he want to be lost in his own thoughts for more than a minute or two.
“No,” Simon says. “Just once a year.”
“And it happens to be today?”
“It’s always today.”
“Why?” Simon looks away, and Harrison says, “Don’t worry about it. I didn’t mean to pry.” He’s never seen him look so hesitant. Like Harrison, Simon is a man of action.
“No, it’s okay. Today’s the anniversary of my wife’s death.”
“Oh, bots, I’m sorry man, I didn’t know.”
“I don’t talk about her much.”
Harrison is stunned. He’d never really thought about Simon’s past. Everything he’d ever heard about him started with his miraculous crossing beneath the Border Wall via a tunnel, fighting his way through dozens of guards at the end of the line, the only survivor in a large party of illegals trying to sneak in. The story has become a major part of Digger lore. But of course Simon existed before—had a life before. And, apparently, a wife. A wife who died.
“What was her name?” he asks, wondering if he should just shut his mouth.
Simon seems startled by the question, as if he expected Harrison’s inquiries to be of a much darker nature. A smile creeps onto his lips. “Hattie,” he says.
Harrison laughs. “Simon and Hattie. Sounds like one of those comedy duos that perform late-night on the holo.”
“She had a good sense of humor,” he says, pursing his lips. “She was a good woman. I was lucky to have found her.”
“Yes. You were,” Harrison says, smirking. “And even luckier she didn’t run away from you screaming.”
“Don’t I know it,” Simon says. “Don’t you want to know how she died? That’s usually the first question I get.”
“Morbid curiosity is part of human nature, I think,” Harrison says. “But no, that’s your story to tell or your secret to keep.”
Simon nods thoughtfully. “You want to know something really stupid?”
“Sure, I’ll add it to the collection I recently started.” He can’t help glancing at his father, who’s listening to their conversation. His gaze drops to his hands, and Harrison feels bad right away. Michael Kelly could’ve taken his secret to the grave, but he didn’t. He wanted to start fresh and let his sons come inside the wall he’s had up around himself for so long.
“I was well off in Canada,” Simon says, and it’s the last thing Harrison expected to hear.
“Like, rich?”
“Filthy,” Simon says. “I was in the army for ten years and then switched over to the private sector, doing security work. Everyone was scared and my company made a killing. When Hattie passed though, I lost myself. I couldn’t live in the same walls, so I moved. It didn’t help. So I turned to thrill-seeking. Jumping out of planes, hover-climbing, train riding—I tried it all. I took tons of stupid chances but survived every fall, every broken bone. I became addicted to the rush, because for those few seconds where all I could feel was the line between life and death growing thinner and thinner, I forgot what I’d lost. It was like a drug for me. The highs got lower and the lows were like being buried alive. Finally, I ran out of thrills, so I took the greatest risk of all and crossed the border.
“The others in my group thought I was like them—poor, desperate, willing to risk everything for the idea of a better life—but I was just in it for the rush of danger, for the moment of forgetfulness. And yet I was the one that survived.”
“You deserved to survive,” Harrison says, and is surprised at how genuinely he means it.
“They did, too. They were just people trying to live, and they were mowed down like wild beasts.”
“Then how did you…”
“I was shot four times,” Simon says. “I think my anger was the only thing that kept my heart from stopping. I killed a dozen guards that day. And then I slipped away. It was more luck than skill that led me to the Lifers. They patched me up and put me to work. Even if I don’t exactly agree with their methods anymore, I’ll always owe them. They gave me a new lease on life.”
Harrison doesn’t know exactly why, but the story seems to haunt him, pooling like shadows around his feet. Maybe because Simon seems so capable of protecting himself that it seems weird to think of him seeking out danger. Or maybe it makes complete sense. He’s not sure which.
“Thank you for telling me,” he says. “I guess we should call this place The House of Sucky Lives.”
“Hey, at least we all made a few friends out of it.”
“At least,” Harrison says, turning away, silently thanking Simon for giving him the strength he needs to face his father.
~~~
“I thought there might be answers in the rain,” Janice says when Benson approaches her. She’s sitting by the rain-streaked window, staring out at the gray and dreary neighborhood.
“Are there?” Benson asks, somewhat hopefully. On a day as monumental as today, they all need answers to questions that seem bigger than the universe.
She shakes her head. “It’s just rain.”
He gives her a half-hug and plods down to the first floor. Everyone’s already up. Destiny is poring over Minda’s holo-screen. Simon has the full extent of their weaponry—six guns, eight knives, and something that appears to be a grenade, although Benson’s not sure where he got that—lined up on a counter. He’s cleaning each item meticulously, probably because of the way Harrison’s gun had misfired during the fight with the Destroyer. Minda is writing on the wall with a thick black marker, diagramming the full plan that she and Benson have been over a hundred times, including backups.
And Harrison, to Benson’s utter shock, is sitting with their father, Lola sitting under his chair. They’re not laughing, like they were the night before, prior to hearing their parent’s revelation, but Harrison also doesn’t look like he wants to kill Michael. Benson counts it as a win.
He makes his way over to Minda, acutely aware of how thick the tension is. They’re all on edge, for good reas
on. “Are you ready for tonight?” she asks, not looking away from her work.
“Prepared? Yeah. But I’m not sure it’s possible to be ready for something like this.”
Minda nods and writes Destiny next to Harrison’s name. It seems to fit perfectly next to his, like they were made to be written in tandem. Harrison’s Destiny. It certainly sounds better than “Destiny’s Harrison.”
Benson drops his voice to a whisper. “So she’s going with us?”
“I’m pretty sure we can’t keep her away, although I bet Harrison will try.”
“My dad will be all alone then?”
“He’s a big boy. He can handle it. Plus he’ll have Lola to keep him company.”
“I think the hardest part for him is not being able to help,” Benson says. In that way, he feels the Kellys all have something in common. They aren’t sideline sitters.
“He just knows what I know: That it’s very unlikely we’ll all make it through tonight—or even any of us. The most we can hope for is that Janice will complete the mission. Everything else is sprinkles on the sundae.”
The conflicting messages—death and destruction versus ice cream and sprinkles—seem so at odds with each other. Which will it be for them? Somewhere in the middle, is the logical answer, but he’s tired of being logical, is tired of using the rationalities in his well-organized mind to come to painful conclusions that usually turn out to be right. Today he wants to be optimistic.
“We’re all going to make it through,” he says. “And if not, we’ll honor the fallen by surviving and winning.”
Minda doesn’t seem to have the heart to respond, as if unwilling to give into hope even when she desperately needs it. Benson watches as she goes back to diagramming. A few minutes later, he picks up a pen and helps her.
Chapter Thirty-One
Check has to go all the way to the topmost corner of the building and hang his arm out the window to get the borrowed holo to connect to the broader network. The Lifers have some kind of signal jammer set up, probably to protect the security of their own information and communication, but Check isn’t about to let that stop him. Not after he woke up in the middle of the night in a sweat. Although he can’t remember exactly what his dream was about, he can distinctly remember Benson’s voice in his head. Check, he’d said, like a ghost from the past. Benson’s not dead, he chides himself. Not a ghost. A living friend, regardless of the distance or politics or agendas that separate them. The voice came three times in the dream, saying nothing more than “Check” in each instance. For some reason, he knows his friend wasn’t saying his name.
