SICK HEART

by Huss, JA

  “It’s just us!” she says. “We’re just trying to get away.”

  I look her up and down with disgust. “Get all that on film, did ya?”

  “That’s my job,” she sneers back at me. “I tell stories.”

  “No.” I shake my head. “You steal stories. And you’re not a part of this one, so you can’t have it.”

  More gunshots ring out in the distance. More yelling. The reporter looks over her shoulder, very nervous about what’s happening in that direction. Then she looks back at me. “I’m just as much a part of this story as you are. I see the way you look at me. I know what you fighters think of me. And fuck you, Sick Heart. Fuck you. This is my story too.”

  I shrug. “You’re a footnote. Maybe. You’re not coming with us. I don’t care what you’ve been through, you’re not coming with us. I will not be your rescue. You didn’t earn it.”

  She flips me off. “Go fuck yourself. I can start wars with my footage. I can change the world with my stories.”

  “Then go do that, bitch. Don’t waste your time telling me about it. Because I don’t care.” Then I turn my back to her and start running for the ship.

  But she calls out, “Who do you care about, Sick Heart? That little girl with your gray eyes? Is she the only one who matters to you now? Is she the only one who gets a rescue?”

  I slow down, turn and walk backwards, shaking my head. “You really don’t get it, do you?”

  “Get what?”

  “The only way people like us get saved is if we rescue ourselves. And if a pack of disposable kids can come up with a plan to take on an elite cabal in the middle of a jungle, then you should be able to do it too.”

  Then I turn around again, and this time, when she calls my name, I don’t stop.

  I do not look back.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN - ANYA

  I catch up with Udulf at the parked cars. And everything about this moment is ironic.

  There are ten limos. These powerful men all came in their fancy cars. Didn’t even think to carpool, but whatever. All the mercs are doubling as drivers today but they are all back in the center of the base camp, fighting with a pack of warrior children.

  Udulf is going from car, to car, to car looking for keys—desperately holding on to the idea that if he just searches hard enough, he’s going to stumble into an escape plan.

  I slowly walk up to him.

  He’s got a gun, so he’s feeling pretty cocky when he points it at me. “Find me some keys. Now!”

  I just scoff. “Like I know where the keys are? I don’t live here, Udulf. I have been with you for the last three days, remember? I don’t have any keys. So if you want to escape—” I nod my head to the road as I continue to slowly walk up to him. “You better start running.”

  Gunshots ring through the camp behind us and Udulf laughs. “I better start running? Do you think you’re winning, you pathetic, worthless little whore?”

  “So shoot me.” I am still walking towards him. “Go ahead. If I’m no threat to you… if I’m just a pathetic, worthless little whore, what are you so afraid of, Udulf? Hmm?”

  He scoffs. “What are you doing? You think you’re going to fight me?”

  Fight him?

  I mean, everything about that is just stupid and his gun is only the first reason.

  No. This moment with Udulf isn’t about fighting him. I don’t need to fight him. I just want him to see me. I want him to be thinking about me when he dies.

  Because he is going to die today.

  My eyes dart to the jungle behind Udulf just as Zoya slips between two ferns.

  Udulf turns, automatically firing into the trees. But his aim is too high. Zoya is barely three feet tall. He realizes his mistake as his gaze finds hers. She is a fierce-looking girl, for sure. But not really a threat to a full-grown man. And Udulf knows this.

  So he chuckles. And not some nervous chuckle, either, but like this is actually funny. “Her? That’s who’s gonna save you today, Anya Bokori?”

  “Try again,” Rasha says, coming out of the jungle from another direction.

  Udulf looks confused for a moment, but still doesn’t realize what’s happening. “Two of you!” He guffaws. “Plus you!” He’s looking at me when he says that.

  And that’s why he doesn’t see Irina slip out of the jungle, come right up behind him, put her knife to his throat, and slit it open.

  It’s over so fast I feel like I missed it. And I have a moment of regret for not doing it myself. For missing out on the heat of his sticky blood all over my hands.

  But Irina shakes her head at me from the other side of the road. She points her bloody knife at me and says, “You are mental ninja, Anya Bokori.” Then she points to herself. “I am real ninja. And I am big sister here. Don’t you ever forget that.”

  I have never killed anyone.

  Not really. Cort is the one who finished Pavo off, not me.

  And even though if you had asked me just ten seconds ago if I wanted to kill Udulf van Hauten, I would’ve said yes… ten seconds later I would’ve regretted it.

  I am not a killer.

  And now, I will never have to be.

  So I accept Irina’s unexpected rescue with a silent bow.

  Irina bows back and then we all meet up in the middle of the road and look down at Udulf. He’s not quite dead yet, still choking on his own blood. And I’m sure we’re all thinking we should feel something about this… but we don’t.

  Zoya says, “I’m hungry.”

  Rasha says, “Should we go to the ship now?”

  Irina tsks her tongue and huffs. “It kinda pissed me off that they never see us coming. What does a girl have to do to get respect around here?”

  I say, “Me too. Let’s go,” and then I give Irina’s shoulder a squeeze. “Being underestimated can be a good thing. Just embrace it.”

  Then we all enter the jungle, make a wide circle around the base camp, and jog towards the cliffs.

  Irina stops us before we get to the path that leads to the rock where we got off the ship just a few days earlier. She whispers, “There are men up there, look!”

  We all follow her pointing finger and, sure enough, we can see some of the mercenaries are on the rock. Shooting at the ship.

  But someone is shooting back.

  “Rainer,” Rasha says. “And the ship security.”

  “There is no gangplank,” I say.

  “So what do we do now?” Zoya asks.

  “This way,” Irina says.

  And we run again, our feet pounding on the jungle floor, until we run out of jungle. We stand there, on the edge of the trees, looking out over the water towards the ship.

  “It’s leaving,” Zoya says. Her fierce calm suddenly cracking in panic. “It’s leaving without us.”

  And she’s right. The ship is moving. We are the last ones and—

  “Warriors!” The yell cracks through the jungle and we all turn in that direction. “This way!”

  The mercs hear the call as well and stop shooting at the ship.

  They start shooting at us.

  “Run!” It’s Cort calling to us. He’s running towards the cliff carrying Ainsey in one arm and pointing at the ship with the other. “Jump!”

  And we do.

  Because Maart might be our teacher, but Cort is our leader.

  And when your leader tells you to jump off a cliff—you jump off a cliff.

  We hit the edge of the rocky ledge at the same time, but Cort and Ainsey are about thirty yards down the shoreline.

  And none of us hesitates.

  We’ve been here before.

  We’ve spent our whole lives living on the edge of a cliff.

  So we jump into the deep water and we swim through a literal firefight as the ship security takes on what’s left of the Ring cabal, bullets snapping the water around our heads.

  Zoya gets hit in the shoulder, and we pull her, against the rolling waves, until the rescue boat picks us up out of th
e water.

  I fall back into a pile of rope, thinking… Huh. I got rescued twice today.

  And then I smile.

  Because that’s a happily ever after right there.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT - CORT

  THREE MONTHS LATER

  CIMA HOSPITAL – ESCAZÚ, COSTA RICA

  It’s been a helluva week.

  Anya and I cling to each other as we wait in the children’s ward reception for the nurses to bring Ainsey out. She had open heart surgery six days ago to repair an atrial septal defect, the cause of her frequent pneumonia, and today she is well enough to go back to the little apartment we’re renting just a few blocks away.

  We’ve been here for seven weeks and even though the small neighborhood is starting to feel like home and we’ve made friends with the hospital staff and the people who live nearby, the three of us are very ready to get back to the ship.

  That won’t happen for at least three more weeks because of Ainsey’s recovery, but it’s closer now and my sick heart is starting to feel better about things.

  I’m starting to breathe a little easier.

  Starting to let myself calm down.

  Starting to feel normal, whatever that is, for the first time ever.

  We got away that day back at base camp. But it wasn’t clean. Oscar and Sammy, another one of my little boys, were both shot. Both made it to the ship and Oscar lived, but Sammy didn’t. He lost too much blood and we didn’t have time to find a match and give him a transfusion in the ship’s clinic.

  Peng died back in the camp and Maeko refused to leave him behind, so he carried him back to the ship while Paulo covered him with a gun stolen from one of the slave owners. We had a sea burial for Peng the next day and Maeko hasn’t been the same since.

  Ling and Zoya both took a bullet in the shoulder. Zoya is weirdly proud of this. I think we need to have a chat about that at some point. Rainer took one in his upper arm, Jafari actually drowned because he and Budi also had to jump off the cliff to get to the ship, but Lilith—my oldest girl fighter in the camp—pulled him into a rescue boat and brought him back.

  Maart, Cintia, and Sissy didn’t sleep for forty-eight hours, they were so busy trying to glue our kids back together.

  And of course, Ainsey came down with another case of pneumonia less than a week later and even though we didn’t have seventy-two thousand dollars for the surgery in a private Costa Rican hospital, Sergey, my oldest boy in camp, took a legitimate fight in Rio and earned enough for a down payment with his win.

  Ainsey is going to be fine. She won’t be training for several months, but even though Anya has pointed out that it isn’t normal for four-year-olds to train, I have been having a hard time giving up the life. All of us have.

  What does life look like without training? We don’t know, but we’re trying to figure it out.

  The platform ship isn’t really the money-maker we had hoped for. Udulf, Lazar, and every other Ring slave owner at that last fight—they are all dead. And with their deaths came a bizarre in-between world of uncertainty.

  At least no one came looking for us.

  I don’t know why. Maybe they all knew I had bought my freedom. But that’s not likely, so it’s… luck? Maybe?

  Or maybe they are afraid of us?

  We did take down a lot of very important people. Plus almost all the mercenaries died too.

  But whatever the reason, we’re not taking it for granted.

  The downside is that we have to find our own contracts now. And while that’s not really a bad thing, it’s definitely a lesson in the meaning of the words ‘fresh start.’

  The ship is the new home base. It’s only rated to house fifty-two crew members and we’ve got a total of sixty-seven—all of us from camp, plus the ship’s regular crew—but it works for now.

  Money is tight, especially since Anya and I have been paying rent in Escazú for two months. But even with all these bitter setbacks—the deaths, the injuries, the open-heart surgery, the challenge of starting a new business and taking care of thirty other people at the same time… freedom still tastes very, very sweet.

  “Here she is!” I turn to find a nurse pushing Ainsey towards us in a wheelchair.

  I bend down and smile at my daughter. My daughter. It feels real now.

  Well, not the part about her being my daughter. That’s always felt real. The part about me being her father. That took some getting used to.

  Anya bends down too. She touches Ainsey’s cheek. “You ready to go home?”

  Ainsey nods, but says nothing.

  “She’s got your eyes.”

  I look up at the nurse. “Yep. She sure does.”

  “No,” the nurse says. “I mean, yes, of course, she has the same color eyes as her daddy. But otherwise her eyes are all Mommy, aren’t they?” The nurse smiles at Anya and me. And we smile back.

  Because, of course, Ainsey isn’t Anya’s daughter. But that’s not a story we’re going to tell. Ever.

  “I mean,” the nurse clarifies when we don’t respond, “neither of you talk much.” She points to Ainsey and Anya. “Not with words. But your eyes…” Her words trail off and she shakes her head. “They say all the things your lips don’t.”

  Anya and I stand up, agree with the nurse, and then take our daughter home.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE - ANYA

  SIX MONTHS LATER

  Lençóis Maranhenses National Park, Brazil

  Stepping onto the shore of the park is exactly like stepping into the pages of a fantasy book.

  It is a beach.

  It is a desert.

  It is an oasis.

  There are almost no words to describe the beauty of this place because it’s all very inexplicable. Deceptive mounds of pure, soft sand dunes hide hundreds, if not thousands, of small freshwater lakes.

  But it’s not the dark, dank, dangerous freshwater you normally find in Brazil. It’s not the kind filled with piranhas, or worse, waiting to eat your toes if you just think about taking a dip. It is the kind of lake you find at the tippy-top of mountains.

  Because these lakes are the color of a perfect Fijian beach. The seafoamiest green-blue you’ve ever seen in your life.

  And it makes no sense. None at all. How do these lakes get here? Rain, I guess. But why doesn’t the water just seep into the sand, the way it does on the shore?

  I haven’t looked it up yet so I don’t know.

  I might never look it up. I don’t want to spoil the fairy-tale fantasy of it all. I just want to enjoy it.

  We are on vacation. The entire camp.

  Well, we’re here for two reasons really. One, we’ve saved up enough from the supply ship runs and the legitimate fights that Sergey, Lilith, Ivano, and Kioshi—the four oldest kids in camp—have been taking in the nearby city of São Luís, and we’ve bought a small collection of nearly falling-down houses deep in the jungles north of Rio de Janeiro.

  So we’re leaving this part of the continent and we might never sail by Lençóis Maranhenses ever again.

  We’ve told ourselves hundreds of times, at least, every time we did sail by, that we would come out here and enjoy it up close. But we never have, until now.

  The second reason we’re here is to say a formal goodbye to all the warriors who came before us. And even though I wasn’t a kid in Cort’s training camp, and never really did fight for my life, I still count myself as belonging to this camp and these people.

  We belong to each other, really. All of us. And I feel the loss of the fallen warriors as acutely as anyone.

  Besides, I do have someone to honor.

  Someone I wish could be here, but isn’t.

  We bring rocks with us. Backpacks filled with rocks. We have collected them from all up and down the beaches of Brazil. We have collected them from the beaches of Central America, from the Bahamas, and Mexico, and even some from the forbidden land of Cuba. We wrote names on them and painted them up with pictures. And we have spent the entire day erecti
ng small monuments around the lake we’re camped next to, so that now, lying under the light of a full moon, we can see the shadows of the kids who died fighting.

  I made Bexxie’s monument myself. It’s a tower of nine flat rocks. Alternating color. Black, white, black, white. I painted something on each one and wrote her name on top. And then I sat next to it and told her everything that happened since we last saw each other. I didn’t leave out a single detail, even though she’s not really old enough to hear the sexy parts, I told her anyway because this was the first time I have ever talked to her. It was the first time she ever heard my voice. And if I stopped talking, I wasn’t sure I’d ever want to speak again.

  I wasn’t sure I’d ever get over the sadness.

  So I just kept going and finally, the entire camp was listening to my tale. Even Maart was listening when I described the last breakfast I had with Udulf and how I had figured him out.

  Irina pointed at me and said, “Mental ninja,” and this made Cort laugh, and Cort’s laugh made everyone laugh even though we had tears in our eyes.

  Then… it was over and we were all ready to say goodbye.

  Every lost warrior has been accounted for.

  Not a single one of them has been forgotten.

  And maybe some park ranger comes along in a month and kicks them all down, we don’t care. We did this. And that’s all that matters.

  We are all huddled together in a pack. I’m in between Maart and Cort, kinda snuggled in between them, in fact. Maart’s hand is resting lazily on my leg and Cort is absently playing with my wild hair.

  I don’t know what we are. A couple? A threesome?

  Not sure.

  Don’t care.

  We just are.

  None of us have sleeping mats and we’re not on the platform of the Rock, but the entire camp points up at the moon with a single finger at the same time.

  We have locked the past up in the rock shadows of the fallen warriors around us, and that’s where it will stay forever.