by Makansi, K.
Vale coughs, gasps, sits up. I can only just see him out of my peripheral vision. My eyes are locked onto the airship, the ship that just moments ago was hailing fire and death down onto the people we were trying to save. Was Luis down there? I wonder desperately. Was Rose?
Anger, the same rust-red color as the burning field below, clouds my vision. But it’s tempered by gratitude. Thank you, Vale, for doing what none of us could. For taking down that airship. The damage has been done, but you did what you could.
Then an elbow connects with my ribs, and in one astonishingly fast motion Evander knocks my knife arm up and safely away from his throat, twists around to land an open palm in my diaphragm and a gleaming blade squarely in Vale’s shoulder. I double over, the air in my lungs gone. Vale, who had been struggling to his feet, is back on the ground, blood already staining his clothes. Evander dives for his Bolt, slings it over his shoulder, and turns away, sprinting.
Come back and face me, you fucking coward!
Vale sits up again, his face a mask of anguish and concern. I run over and kneel beside him. I lay my hand on his chest, and he looks at me almost bashfully, blinking back tears of pain and yet somehow a smile teases the corner of his mouth. Then he reaches up to grasp the hilt of the knife buried in his shoulder and wrenches it free, grimacing from the pain. He falls back on his elbow, gasping.
“I’m fine,” he manages. “I’ll be fine.”
I nod at him, briefly, meeting those sea-green eyes and thanking all the fates that it’s not him I’m facing on this battlefield. I draw in a deep breath, clench my knife in hand, and set off after Evander.
I can’t think of anything except The Dragon. I knew that he would be violent, but I underestimated his capacity. That double-barreled airship, the flamethrower, torching people—men, women, children—before my very eyes. Their screams, their limbs flailing helplessly, trying to beat out the flames. The way they eventually, inevitably, crumpled to the ground like puppets with their strings cut. They were innocent, and they died.
I couldn’t help them.
Like Evander’s flames, the hatred grows, an inferno flickering into life in my belly. Sparks flying, it towers upward into my chest, spirals into my breath, ignites my eyes. Everything is at once more lucid, more real, than it has ever been, and yet this is not me. Someone else, something else, is in possession of my body, propelling my legs forward, pumping the blood through my veins till I am deaf with the sound of it. A power I’ve never felt before overwhelms me, and I can only watch as this new creature hunts for justice.
I lob a few low-energy shots at him. My first two are misses, and he jumps to the side and starts running again, but my third connects solidly and brings him spinning to the ground. Another shot and he flops like a fish out of water, convulsing from the electrical pulses. Then I am on him, my knee drilling solidly into his diaphragm, preventing him from drawing breath or fighting back. I place my Bolt against his gut and fire again. He goes still, but at low energy the strike is not enough to kill him.
My mind is fully disengaged from my body, as if I am floating above myself, watching as I press the Bolt into his throat, grab my knife, and pull it up to his cheek.
“A is for Alexander,” I whisper, saying it aloud even though he’s unconscious, drawing shallow breath. He doesn’t stir as I draw blood. My words echo in the stillness around us, the bedlam from the battle behind us has faded to nothingness. I carve a thin, light A into his flesh and draw a circle around it. The crudest image you’ve ever drawn, Remy. Droplets of blood collect on my knife and run down his cheek.
“For my sister, Tai Alexander. For my mother, Brinn Alexander. For my father’s heartache, Gabriel Alexander. For Eli, my chosen brother. For Sam, who asked too many questions. For my grandfather’s secret.”
Blood runs back toward his hairline, tracing its way around his ear and dripping into the grass. The blood is quick to congeal. I turn his cheek and slice an “R” into the skin of his left cheek, drawing a circle around it, too. “For the Resistance. For Remy. For Revenge. You won’t ever forget me, now.”
He opens his eyes and gasps, and the roiling inferno blazes so hot in me I want to retch. He doesn’t yet know what I’ve done. He can only feel the pain—thin, hot lines traced into his flesh.
“You’ll pay,” he chokes out, then he spits in my face, and I pull the Bolt back and crack it up against the side of his head.
“Fuck you,” I hiss and wipe his spittle off my chin with my sleeve.
I glare down, the fearsome Dragon, unconscious for the moment, my bloody marks carved into his face. But instead of pride, the usual reaction I have as I step back to admire my work, I feel nothing but shame. What did I just do? How could I have done this? How could I be filled with so much hatred, and think its power was beautiful? My insides are scorched, charred. I press a finger lightly to the edge of the “R” and feel the bead of blood on my fingertip. With a heave, I pull off him and pocket my knife.
I leave him lying in the grass, and turn away, seeking peace and stillness and understanding. What have I done?
In the distance, the fighting seems to have quieted. A lull. Bodies lie strewn among the grasses, some moving, others not. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot two soldiers following me, creeping through the grass. I see a flash and dodge their Bolt fire by skidding then rolling on the ground in front of me, but then I’m on my knees firing and catch one of them in the hip. It’s enough to send him down. The other stops to aim at me, but the shot is off by a few inches.
But before he can reload, he gasps and crumples. I look in the direction of the Bolt that took him down and see Vale, kneeling behind a blossoming cherry tree, watching me.
The tree, a cloud of white-pink flowers and fragrant nectar, untouched, somehow, by the fighting, seems totally out of place amidst the death and destruction at my feet. The stark contrast between the serenity of the tree and Vale, decked in his military garb and with a gun cocked against his shoulder, makes me want to cry.
I turn a three sixty, looking around for any remaining soldiers, but I see none. Most have retrenched or evacuated—for now. They’ll be back, though. And in full force.
Reaching up, I touch the camera still attached to my headband, and I pull it off, turn off RECORD, and stuff it in my pocket. The world seems to have gone quiet and still as Vale approaches. I swing my Bolt back over my shoulder so it rests on my pack. He reaches out his hand to help me up, and I think back to the raid, the night he captured me and Soren and took us back to Okaria, prisoners of the Sector.
“Are you okay?” he says. He’d asked me that same question that night. And then he’d said, I’m not going to hurt you … Remy, I’d never….
Today he saved my life, just as I saved his.
“Yeah,” I say, and put my hand in his. He pulls me to my feet, and, without saying another word, we run toward the Resistance rendezvous point to join the others.
“...Might not make it.”
Might not make it. Jahnu might not make it. Jahnu is injured. Jahnu might not make it. Jahnu might leave me, too. Jahnu, dying. Jahnu, my best friend. I never worried about Jahnu. He was quiet, patient, careful. He was supposed to make it. He was safe.
I lean on Eli’s shoulder, and feel the medic’s words echo in my mind, over and over again. I can’t process it, I can’t move forward from that, I want to hold on to it as a possibility, as a ‘might,’ and never ever let it go further. It’s impossible. He can’t leave. He can’t die. He’s been my best friend since we were in diapers. We were going to grow old together. We were….
But he might make it. I cradle that thought like a baby. If I nurture it enough, it could grow into a reality, it could come true. In the next room, the surgeon cuts through muscle and bone to keep Jahnu alive, and it could happen, it could.
Beside me, Soren’s got his arms wrapped around Kenzie, rubbing her back in slow, methodical circles. She looks into the distance as if nothing exists. I, too, feel as if nothing exists
anymore except the vague comfort of Eli’s presence and the thread keeping Jahnu in this world. The Farm certainly doesn’t exist anymore. Many of the workers fled into the woods, including Luis and Rose, and many others died. The rest are under lockdown. The second decisive battle in Resistance history, and, just like at Thermopylae, we were utterly caught off guard by the severity of the Sector’s response. Evander Sun-Zi, true to his nickname, brought to Round Barn the flaming wrath of a dragon.
I sit and stare at the floor waiting for news, vaguely aware of people coming and going. Someone puts a blanket around my shoulders. Someone else puts a drink in my hand.
“Drink this,” Rhinehouse says. Rhinehouse? When did he get here? He hands me a cup of something vaguely brownish. I stare into it, watching the liquid swirl and lap up against the edges like tiny tides against the seashore. Not that I’ve ever seen the seashore. It’s only something I know from my dad’s poems. Oh, Lake Okaria has waves, he used to say, but it’s not the same. Now Jahnu may never see the seashore. Never feel the ocean tide rushing over across his skin. Never grow old with Kenzie. “It’ll help you sleep,” Rhinehouse says.
“Come on,” my dad says. Dad? My father gathers me into his arms and ushers me down the hall to a dimly lit room and a rickety bed where Kenzie is already asleep. He pulls the covers up over both of us, sets the cup on the floor beside me. “I love you,” he whispers and brushes my hair back from my cheek. I remember the feel of my knife on the Dragon’s cheek.
I roll over and stare up at the ceiling.
“You okay, Little Bird?” Eli asks. Where’d my father go?
“Yeah,” I say. No, I think.
“Remy?” Soren asks, his voice hushed. When did he get here? I look over at him, sitting gingerly at the foot of the mattress. Next to me Kenzie is sleeping, a few stray red curls peeking out from under the blanket. “Did you kill Evander Sun-Zi?”
“No, I didn’t kill him. At least, I don’t think I did.”
“What do you mean, ‘you don’t think you did’?” Eli says. He’s kneeling beside me, eyes tired, hooded with worry. “Either you did or you didn’t.”
They’re both whispering, but their voices pound against the inside of my skull like drums. I shake my head. “I’m sure he looked dead, but I didn’t kill him.”
“We’re expected at a briefing in ten minutes,” Eli whispers. I push myself up.
“All of us?”
“You don’t have to attend. You can rest.”
For once, I’m glad he offered me an out. I don’t think I could talk if I tried. I can barely understand my thoughts, my actions. I don’t understand who I was out there. Who I’ve become.
The droplets of blood collecting around the knife as I carved my initials into his cheeks.
“Okay. I’ll stay here with Kenzie.”
Eli leaves my side. Kenzie moves slightly, and Soren gently eases himself up and moves to sit next to me. He takes my hand in his. I stare at his whirlpool-blue eyes and wish I could lose myself in them, just disappear, drown in the depths of those irises, forget everything, and swim in them forever. But I can’t.
“I want you to know—” he hesitates. “While we were out there with Bolts flying and everything on fire … I saw you standing over Vale. I saw what happened.” I nod numbly. “And then Vale, taking down the other guard … I want you to know, no matter what happens … with any of us … I really care about you, and I want you to be happy. I want us both to be happy someday. Okay?”
I don’t understand, so I just nod.
“I just wanted to say that.” He strokes the back of my hand.
“Okay. Thank you. I want you to be happy, too, Soren. Can you hand me my cup?”
I drain it and hand it back. He leaves the room, and as the sleeping draught takes effect again, I move closer to Kenzie. In her drugged sleep, she pulls me near, and even though everything hurts and nothing exists but the possibility of Jahnu not being with us anymore, I feel warm and safe next to her. We retreat to our own sanctuaries of unconsciousness, refugees from the pain of possibly living in a world without the brilliant, patient, kind, loyal, funny, sweet, peaceful man we both love.
It’s the smell that pulls me halfway out of sleep. Rhinehouse has hung rosemary, thyme, lemongrass and bags of dried rose petals everywhere to try to mask the scent of dead flesh coming from the burn victims.
“Can’t this wait? They’re still sleeping.” Vale. I recognize his voice, but in the fog of my drug-induced sleep, panic grips me and all I see is Evander’s boot on his throat, Evander’s bolt pressed against his temple, Evander’s knife in his shoulder.
I gasp, sitting up and throwing the covers off. “Vale!” I cry out. Then I remember that he is okay, that we are still here, I calm down. Beside me, Kenzie moans.
“No it can’t wait.” It sounds like the Director’s voice, but I’m not quite sure. “Get her up and bring her to the meeting room. Now.” Definitely the Director. And whatever they gave me, they must have given twice as much to Kenzie. I attempt to run my hand through my hair, stand, and pull the blanket back up over her shoulder. The taste in my mouth is horrendous. What was in that stuff? I push the door open and step out into the hallway. Vale’s standing just outside as if he’s on sentry duty.
“How is Jahnu?” I ask.
“Hanging in there, but….”
“But?”
Vale looks away. “It doesn’t look good. He’s stable, but the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours will make all the difference.”
Suddenly, the idea of Kenzie passed out while Jahnu’s life hangs in the balance really pisses me off. “Maybe Kenzie should be in there with him, instead of sleeping in here with me. Whose idea was that?”
“Doctor’s orders. He said she needed to get some sleep. We can wake her up before heading to the briefing, if you want. Did you sleep well?”
Vale reaches up as if to touch my face, but catches himself midair and instead lets his arm drop awkwardly to his side. He clears his throat.
“The Director wants to see you.” He looks like he wants to say something else, so I wait. I place a hand on his forearm. His skin is warm under my fingertips, but he pulls back, just out of my reach, nervous, or jumpy, or something. He takes my hand then and leans forward, and I almost think his lips might touch my forehead, but he stops and looks down.
“I want to thank you.” His voice is thick and soft, with an intimacy that both confuses me and sends me tumbling into unfamiliar territory. The space between us feels wildly different than before. I find I cannot move. I am drawn to his warmth like iron filings to a magnet. “You saved my life.”
“And you saved mine. The shooter. You took him down.”
He nods, and then asks, “What did you do to Evander?”
His question, though there’s no hint of accusation or disgust in his voice, brings me up short and I pull away, breaking the moment, feeling the accusation and disgust well up inside myself. I say, perhaps too defensively, “I didn’t kill him. I didn’t even really hurt him.”
“I know that now, Soren told us, but—”
I look at the wall. I can’t bring myself to say it and look at him at the same time. “I cut him.”
His hand instinctively moves to his face where his fingers rub over his chin, as if he could feel the ghost of the pain. “On his face?”
I nod “He’ll have the letters ‘R’ and ‘A’ scarred permanently into his cheeks.”
He draws in a slow breath. “That explains everything.”
“What happened between you and Evander?” the Director demands even before I’m through the door.
“Why does everyone keep asking me that? I didn’t kill him. Though he doesn’t deserve to live.”
She’s glaring at me, and even though she’s about a centimeter shorter than me, her ferocity combined with the drugged haze makes her look about three meters tall.
“Evander and Corine made an official Sector broadcast yesterday denouncing you as the leader of th
e group of rebels that destroyed Round Barn.”
“I cut off the power supply to their illegal meat factory, but beyond that, all destruction at Round Barn was Evander’s doing.”
“They say they have video of you carving the ‘symbol of the Resistance’ into Evander’s cheek.”
My cheeks flush. “They’re lying about the footage, there weren’t any drones nearby.” I don’t mention that the video footage I took captures that moment in excruciating detail.
“Answer me!”
“Yes, I cut him.” I say, trying to keep my voice even.
“What the hell did you do that for? And what symbol are they talking about?” she demands.
“It was the letter A for Alexander and the letter R for the Resistance. And for ‘Remy.’”
She studies me for a moment. “That’s not all.” She takes a step toward me and out of the corner of my eye, I see my dad flinch. “Tell us everything that happened, Remy. Everything. We need to know what we’re dealing with.”
The pain etched into my father’s face cuts me as surely as my knife cut Evander’s flesh. Would he rather I killed him? Everyone stares at me, waiting. The heat from Vale’s body warms me, and I realize he’s stepped closer, and I’m glad he’s there.
“That’s all,” I say, shaking my head. “Some part of me wishes I’d killed him. But I didn’t. I’m glad I didn’t.”
Carving into Evander’s skin was primal. It was an out-of-body experience. The act arose from a place so deep within me I don’t even recognize it now. Cutting him solved nothing, I know that. But I don’t regret it, either.
“What made you think it was a good idea to carve your initials into the Dragon’s face? By all that’s sacred, Remy, what were you thinking?”
He deserved it, after what he did to the workers at Round Barn. He would have killed Vale. He would have killed me. How can the Director not see that? A little scar on his cheek won’t ruin his life. She shakes her head at me as if I’m a wayward child. The rage bubbles up again, nearly choking me.
