Kingmaker

by Christian Cantrell

  The dynamics of the two drugs in Alexei’s bloodstream are confusing. The depressive effects of the opioid have been more than countered by the adrenaline, but not the high. He is surging and murderous. He stands, holsters his pistol, and smiles at the man who is backing away from him. The canister on the man’s back is digging into the grass and pulling it up in great divots. When Alexei takes a step toward him, the man’s face contorts further out of anticipation of what’s to come.

  “Shoot him!” the man screams. He looks around at the drones, but they hover impassively. “Goddamnit, somebody do something! Somebody fucking shoot him!”

  Alexei puts a knee on the man’s chest, grasps the hose at the point where it enters the canister, and follows it out to the nozzle. The man is slapping and scratching at Alexei’s face, but Alexei does not feel anything. He inserts the nozzle below the man’s visor and opens the valve with his thumb. The foam is thick and fills the cavity between the man’s face and visor almost instantly. The man’s screams are rapidly muffled as the foam fills his nose and mouth, and then he is quiet. His hands go from Alexei’s face to his visor, but the foam has already set and the visor cannot be lifted. His fingers go beneath the visor and claw frantically at the wall of epoxy. The pale yellow of the foam becomes red and slick when the man’s fingernails buckle and separate from his fingertips as he digs. His body begins to shudder, and then it finally relaxes and falls still.

  Alexei gets to his feet and walks boldly among the drones. They dip and weave in perfect coordination to keep him illuminated as he finishes crossing the lawn. There are too many of them for him to take out with just his pistol, but after he has secured the children, he will visit the weapons locker in the basement of the dormitory beside the indoor range. A gas-operated, fully automatic twelve-gauge with a thirty-two round drum is the perfect tool for cleaning up the lawn.

  He makes no attempt to surveil or infiltrate. He is enraged and invincible. The sliding glass doors admit him and he walks across the cold stone floor directly to the stairs and ascends with unwavering resolution and absolute focus. There are rooms all along the upstairs hallway. The first three are for the children’s caregivers, and the rest full of bunks for the children themselves. The room at the end is a common area—a combination play space and classroom. It is the only room with the door cracked and the lights on. Alexei does not bother with the others.

  Everyone is inside. The nannies are face-down on the carpet beside shelves of plastic bins and neatly stacked boxes of puzzles and board games, their hands bound behind their backs with zip cuffs and their mouths duct-taped. The children are all at the back of the room, sitting as a group on the floor in their pajamas at the feet of five armored soldiers. There are two bulky black rifles raised, and when Alexei looks down, he sees two green laser dots jittering on his chest. He looks again at the rifles and knows that the dots are not for aiming; the lasers are creating an electrically conductive plasma channel in the air between Alexei’s chest and a series of step-up transformers housed in the bodies of the rifles. At any moment, he can be shocked unconscious.

  The soldier directly in front of Alexei is not wearing his helmet. He is sitting on a table that has been pushed against the wall and his feet are crossed at the ankles. The man is young and handsome with trimmed black hair, a caramel complexion, and a smile that is disarmingly warm. He has a black throat mic strapped to his neck like a collar and a pair of video goggles in his hands.

  “I watched what you did out there,” he says. His teeth are perfectly straight and very white. “I wish you and I were on the same team. That was impressive work.”

  Alexei looks at each of the soldiers, then back to the man in charge. “You have until I count to three to get the fuck out of my house,” he says.

  The commander raises his eyebrows. “Mr. Drovosek, before you start counting, let me explain something to you. You are coming with us. Alive or dead. Conscious or unconscious. My orders are to keep you breathing if the opportunity presents itself, so I’m doing my very best not to kill you tonight, but make no mistake. All of this…” He indicates the children, the nannies, the classroom—the compound in general. “It’s all over.”

  Alexei takes a step further into the room and enunciates very carefully. “One.”

  The commander wags his finger between the rifles to either side of him. “We can take you down right now if that’s the way you want to play this, but it’s possible with the state you’re in that we’ll send you into cardiac arrest, and given what you’ve done to some of these men’s friends tonight, I can’t guarantee they’ll try very hard to resuscitate you.”

  Alexei places his hand on his pistol. “Two.”

  The commander pushes himself up from the table. He isn’t smiling anymore. He draws his sidearm and places the muzzle against the top of the head of a little girl sitting at his feet.

  “Let’s try this another way,” he says. “Lay down on the floor. Now.”

  The sweat on Alexei’s head and face is mixing with blood from the scratches, and the solution runs pink down onto his vest. He is smiling and his breaths come in great heaves.

  “Three.”

  Alexei’s hand moves and there is a flash followed by a tremendous crack. The kids are screaming and there is smoke in the room. The air has the metallic odor of ozone. Alexei’s body is half inside the room, and half out in the hallway. The commander shakes his head as he holsters his pistol.

  “Rowe, go see if he’s still alive. Everyone else, start getting the kids ready to move.” The commander reaches up and touches his throat mic. “Target secured. Extraction in five minutes. I want every single child on the premises accounted for. Copy?”

  One of the soldiers has left the cover of the children and is approaching Alexei with caution. He kicks at Alexei’s bare and dirty feet, and when Alexei doesn’t react, the soldier bends down, grasps the ankles in front of him, and drags the body fully into the room. Alexei’s eyes are closed and his head bounces as it crosses the wooden threshold. His arms are limp, and pivot into a position above his head. The soldier moves to Alexei’s side, gets down on his knees, and checks for a pulse by pressing his fingers to the side of Alexei’s neck.

  “I don’t feel anything,” the soldier says. “I think he’s dead.”

  The commander is helping to zip the children’s hands behind their backs. “Check if he’s breathing.”

  The soldier pulls off a glove, holds his palm over Alexei’s nose and lips, and waits. “I can’t tell. I don’t think so.” He removes his helmet and leans down to place his ear above Alexei’s mouth when Alexei’s head snaps up and meets the soldier’s temple with a sharp hollow popping sound. The soldier’s eyes are wide and he is expressionless as he teeters for a moment, then falls over on his side. Alexei’s hand moves down toward the pack strapped to his leg.

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” the commander says. He stands and pushes through the children to make a direct path to Alexei. Alexei is sitting up now and his pistol is out of its holster. The commander’s composite-toed boot smashes Alexei’s nose, and the back of Alexei’s head hits the floor. Alexei tries to raise his pistol, but the commander steps on his hand and pins it down.

  “If you refuse to be taken alive,” the commander says, “then so be it.”

  He draws his sidearm and points it down at Alexei’s torn and bloody face.

  “Sir,” one of the soldiers behind him says. “We need to get a clean ID scan.”

  The commander does not look back at the soldier. He stares down his pistol’s sights into Alexei’s eyes for a long moment.

  “Fucking bureaucratic bullshit,” he finally says.

  The commander holsters his weapon, takes a step back, then slams the toe of his boot into Alexei’s ribs. Alexei groans and begins to slowly curl up around the blow. He has released his pistol and the commander kicks it away, sending it spinning across the hardwood floor. The commander kneels over Alexei, shoves him down flat against the floor, and begins
removing his vest. He rips back the Velcro straps, heaves the flexible armor up over Alexei’s head, then tosses it casually out into the hallway.

  The commander stands. “Last chance to come peacefully,” he says.

  Alexei lunges for the man’s groin but he is weak and slow and the commander steps easily out of reach. The commander draws his sidearm, holds it steady, and looks down at the man on the floor. Alexei looks up and thinks he sees a flash of something in the man’s face. It is subtle and fleeting, but it is there, and it is something Alexei knows he has seen before. Something he once detected when looking up into another man’s eyes when he was a boy. It suddenly seems important to remember who and when, and as soon as Alexei closes his eyes, he has it. It was after all the arguing between his parents late at night, and after he found the hole in the wall behind the books and the prototypes of the earth-orientation instruments with the modifications for the aluminum microfilm canister. He brought one of the devices to school and showed it to his teacher. He then explained everything again to two men who took him out of class and asked him questions in a room he had never seen before.

  But it was not in any of these men’s eyes that Alexei found the hint of sympathy and humanity. It was in the cool, slate-blue eyes of the man who later came to take Alexei away; who told him that his parents were gone and that they were not coming back; who reassured the boy that he had done the right thing, and that as long as he was faithful to his country, he would always be taken care of.

  Alexei opens his eyes. “Florian,” he whispers to the commander. He swallows and tries to clear his throat. “It was Florian, wasn’t it?”

  He believes he now sees just a hint of genuine regret in the commander’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” the man says, then fires a single shot directly through the spot where Alexei’s heart once was.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Andre is awakened by the shrill clamor of multiple bolts sliding inside the thick metal door of his cell. The sound reverberates throughout the concrete enclosure and then settles into a silence that buzzes and rings in the boy’s ears. There is the groan of heavy hinges as the door is pushed open, but it is not until he hears the unmistakable clank and shuffle of another prisoner’s timid gait that he is curious enough to open his good eye. The other eye is swollen and infected and glued shut with dry yellow puss.

  The other prisoner in his cell is a young Asian girl. Her hands and feet are bound by heavy chains and she is wearing the same paper-thin orange clothing that he is, though hers is in much better condition. She looks more intrigued than frightened as she inspects the room, though her expression changes when her eyes finally find the boy curled up in the corner. She moves urgently to his side and kneels, her chains rattling as they gather on the concrete floor beneath her.

  The girl’s head is cocked to the side as she reaches for Andre’s face. She is startled when the boy slaps her hand away and pushes himself up against the wall.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he spits out.

  “It’s OK,” the girl tells him. “It’s me. It’s Ki. From the compound.”

  She watches him while he internalizes what is happening and what he is seeing—while he tries to reconcile the two worlds which have just been unexpectedly thrust together. Although the compound is almost all he has talked about since he’s been here, it has somehow become distant and abstract like a book he can’t quite remember reading, or a dream he struggles to recall the next morning. But the girl in front of him is real. She is not a trick. Her presence is proof that he once had a life before all of this; that something good had once existed; that there was a time when he knew what it was like to not always be afraid.

  Andre can see in the girl’s face how he looks to her, and he realizes what the stench inside his cell must be like. He is embarrassed and ashamed, and there is a part of him that wants to scream at her to get out, but another part of him wants to reach out and grasp her, and pull her to him, to hold on to her forever.

  “Ki,” the boy finally says. His voice is weak and dry.

  The girl nods and gives him a sympathetic smile. “It’s OK, Andre. Everything is going to be OK.”

  “I need to know.”

  “Know what?”

  The boy clears his throat and forces himself to swallow. “Was it real?”

  “Was what real, Dre?”

  “What I did on the Megalodon. What happened in Sierra Leone. Was it all real?”

  “Yes,” the girl tells him. “It was real, Dre. All of it was real.”

  “Did it work?” the boy wants to know. “Are they free?”

  The girl watches him but does not answer. Gradually, Andre begins to understand the meaning of her silence. He looks away.

  “Then it was all for nothing, wasn’t it?”

  “No,” Ki assures him. She touches his arm and this time the boy does not pull away. “They were free. And they will be free again. You gave them everything they need to keep fighting. You inspired them, Andre. You gave them hope.”

  The boy lies back down on his mat. “I shouldn’t have done it,” he says. “I shouldn’t have done any of it. I should’ve just stayed in Baltimore.” When the girl does not answer, he looks up at her. “Do you regret what you did?”

  “No,” Ki says. “I don’t regret anything. Not for a second. No matter how all of this turns out, I will never regret anything that I’ve done.”

  “Did he make you do it?”

  “Of course not,” Ki says. There is a touch of sensitivity in her tone. “You know he wouldn’t do that.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” the boy says. “I mean did you do it for yourself, or did you do it for him?”

  The girl thinks about the question. “I don’t know,” she finally says. She leans to the side and transitions from kneeling to sitting Indian style. She gathers the chains in her lap. “Sometimes I can’t tell where my thoughts end and his begin.”

  “I still can’t figure out if I did it for him or for me,” the boy says. “I still don’t really even understand what happened. It’s like I was someone else—like all I could do was stand there and watch myself do it. I knew I was going to end up in someplace like this, but just for those few seconds, I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything but taking the shot.”

  “You know what I think?” the girl says. “I don’t think you did it for Alexei or for yourself. I think you did it for the people. And in the end, I think that’s all that matters.”

  The boy nods. He watches the girl. The thick chains that bind her hands and feet are disproportionate to her slight frame.

  “What happened?” he asks her. “Why are you here?”

  “We’re all here,” she says. “They raided the compound.”

  The boy watches Ki for a moment longer before he asks his next question. “It was my fault, wasn’t it?”

  “No,” the girl tells him emphatically. “Absolutely not. Alexei was betrayed by someone named Florian Lasker. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. I should have killed him when I had the chance.”

  The boy shakes his head. “See, that’s what I still don’t get,” he says.

  “What?”

  “How do you know when to take the shot and when to walk away?”

  The girl shrugs. “I wish I knew.”

  “I mean, it’s like there’s just too many variables—too much you can’t know. There’s no way to predict how things are going to turn out until they just happen. It’s like it’s all random.”

  “I don’t know,” the girl says. “If Alexei were here, I suppose he’d tell us that you can’t know—that you just do what you can, when you can, and hope for the best.”

  The boy looks around them. “This ain’t exactly the best,” he says.

  “No,” the girl agrees. “Not exactly.”

  The boy pushes himself back up and leans against the wall.

  “How long have I been here?”

  Ki hesitates. “You don’t know?”

  Andre shakes
his head. “At least a month. Maybe two.”

  “Andre,” the girl says, “you’ve been here over six months.”

  “No,” the boys says. He looks confused.

  “My God, Andre, what have they done to you?”

  The boy closes his eye. He is still and silent for a time, and then his body quivers with weak sobs, though he is unable to produce tears.

  “I want to go home,” the boy says. “I want to go home.”

  “Dre, you need to know that Alexei did everything he could for you. He did everything in his power to try to find you.”

  The boy shakes his head. “That’s bullshit,” he says. “I’m just collateral damage to him.”

  “You are not collateral damage,” the girl insists. “He told me that himself. He said that if he knew where you were, he would come in here and kill every last one of these motherfuckers himself to get you out. He said he would die before he left you in here one second longer than he had to. Do you understand me, Andre? Alexei did not abandon you.”

  The boy opens his eye and looks at Ki, then looks away. As dehydrated as he is, he has managed to shed a single tear which leaves a dark trail on his dry skin. He reaches up and wipes it away with the back of his hand.

  “We shouldn’t be talking about him,” the boy says.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s what they want. It’s why they let you in here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’re listening.” He looks up at one of the cameras in the corner. “They’re hoping we’ll say something that will help them find Alexei. He’s all they care about.”

  The girl does not respond. Andre studies her expression.

  “What?”

  The girl looks down and her dark eyes fill with tears.

  “He wasn’t at the compound, was he?” the boy says. “He knew they were coming, right?”

  Ki shakes her head.