by Natalie Reid
Jessie didn’t understand this line of thinking, but then again, she had never really felt like she was a part of Aero City. One of the things that had bugged her the most was the name. She knew that the workers in Aero City were the ones that first built the planes and the airbase that eventually went into forming the military. But now the city had nothing to do with Aerospace. That aspect had been successfully separated from it in a bitter rivalry between the city’s government and the self-governing military. However, through the years, the name had stayed, for one reason or another.
Now, as Jessie walked the streets, she felt an irrational irritation at seeing the word Aero etched into so many of the signs. It was almost as if the city was trying to take credit for everything they did up in the battlefield. It was stupid to think such a thing, and she knew it. But she had grown sick of the Aero City government taking credit for things that the military actually did. Ward and all of his subordinates controlled the news inside the city. If he said that Bandit presence was growing less and less due to the diligence and hard work of his Task Force agents, then how was the military going to refute that? They were way up in the sky, separated from all the people they were trying to protect. How were they going to spread the word of their victories before Ward could take credit for it?
This was a fact that she had to live with for many years, yet she still could not grow comfortable with it. It always sprang back up in her mind every time she visited the city, like the ache of an old wound in the cold. The looks she received by some of the people that noticed her green military uniform didn’t help matters either. They stared longer and harder at her than they would have to any other stranger passing them on the street. Jessie forced herself to ignore them. Why should it matter if people she had never met before didn’t like her? Why should it matter if people knew whether it was the government or the military that saved them, so long as they were safe?
Jessie kept her emotions calm and collected as she casually walked through the streets. At one point, she passed by a Protector and her Potentian, a little boy of around six, who looked up at her with a wide face full of wonder. She smiled down at him as she passed, and he gave her a toothless grin. She kept the image of that in her head as long as she could to remind herself that not everyone in Aero City was against them.
It was just before lunch when she reached the eastern part of the city that Ben had described as his neighborhood. Gray, powdery snow blew at the hard edges of the buildings as she searched the faces of those around for any trace of Ben’s features. No one had his bright blue eyes and strong stare. In fact, not one person would look her in the eye as she passed.
Down the block a little ways, she found a building that had its bottom window smashed in. She carefully peered inside and saw a woman with long and tangled black hair sweeping up the mess. She couldn’t see her eyes clearly, but her expression was one of subdued defeat.
Jessie went up to the door and gently knocked on the fragile wood. Her hands hummed in anxiety as she waited for the woman to open up. If this was Katherine, Ben’s old Protector, she didn’t know what she would say to her. Jessie had only known Ben for a month, but already she felt a deep hatred for the woman that had given him up to the Desolar Complex.
When the door finally opened, she found the black-haired woman standing in the doorway. She stared at Jessie in a mixture of mild paranoia and dismissive disinterest. It seemed as if this woman knew to be scared at anyone knocking at the door, yet just couldn’t find the energy to show it. After taking this all in, Jessie’s eyes moved to stare at the right sleeve of her jacket. There were recent stitch marks on the upper arm of the fabric, indicating where the bond between the Protector’s arm and the Potentian’s neck would have been connected.
When Jessie did not say anything, the woman blinked down at her in annoyance, saying, “This is an apartment complex. You did not need to knock to get in. Just visit whoever it was you needed to see and get on with it.”
The woman moved away from the door to go back to her sweeping, and Jessie took a single step inside. It was dusty and cold inside, hardly any warmer than out in the elements, and the walls gave off a grayish blue color that reminded her very much of the dirty cold of winter.
“Miss?” Jessie said, looking over at the woman. She did not turn away from her job.
Jessie shut the door behind her in an attempt to block out at least some of the cold, and then took a few steps towards the stairs in front of her. This apartment complex, since it was on the east side of town, did not have all of the modern conveniences of the other apartments in Aero City, one of them being an elevator. She looked up to the ceiling and saw vents for a heating system, but she figured it was probably too expensive to run all the time.
The constant sweeping of the bristles against the stone floor and the tinkling of the glass as it was dumped into a waste-bin filled the small downstairs common area with a quiet rhythmic sound. Jessie added to it by carefully walking to the stairs and stepping on the second step. Ben had told her that it was the second step that was the squeakiest, because many times people would sit on this step with their feet on the ground floor, resting in quiet contemplation.
When she placed her weight on this step, it gave a loud creak! She stepped off of it quickly, as if her ears were burned by the sound. She knew squeaky steps were common in the east side of town, but somehow, hearing this one, she knew she was in the right place. This was where Ben grew up. And she was almost positive that the woman ignoring her in the corner was his mother.
“Excuse me,” Jessie asked, stepping away from the stairs and coming into the tiny, square living-room.
The woman glanced up. Her eyes swept over Jessie’s uniform, as if trying to brush her away and into the waste-bin along with the shattered glass.
“What is it?” she asked.
Jessie voiced the only thing that would come to her mind. “How did your window break?”
She eyed her sternly, asking, “The military is concerned about a broken window in the east end? I thought they would have better things to do.”
Jessie saw a stray piece of glass near her foot, so she bent down to retrieve it. Going over to the bin, she said, “Someone told me your name was Katherine.”
The woman’s back stiffened and she looked out the shattered window. “Who told you that?” She tried to sound indifferent, but was not able to hide the fear in her voice.
Jessie lowered the glass into the bin, and it gave a satisfied clink! as it hit the other pieces.
For a moment, she debated telling Katherine the truth about where she learned her name, but in the end decided against it. She figured that most women did not want to be reminded of the Potentian they gave up. They would probably become defensive and unfriendly, and Jessie did not want to be thrown out just yet.
“Your name is Katherine?” she asked, ignoring the woman’s question and probing for more clarification.
She threw a handful of glass into the bin in an angry motion. “Yes,” she replied curtly. “Is there a point to this?”
“I’m sorry to waste your time, miss,” Jessie said politely, afraid of offending her. “But I’ve been ordered by my superiors to get to know the people of Aero City a little better. The…” She cleared her throat. “… the military feels as if it has too greatly separated itself from the city, and we want to try and establish a closer relationship with it.”
Katherine narrowed her eyes at her in suspicion. “The military is ordering you to establish a relationship with me instead of fighting Bandits that are out there killing innocent people?”
Jessie looked down and cleared her throat again. “I would fight if I could. I was in a pretty bad crash not too long ago. They deemed I was unfit for duty and assigned me this.”
Katherine turned back around and swept her broom fiercely on the floor in front of her. “The military should stay up in the skies and mind its own business. They’ve got no right to ask me to babysit a wounded soldier.”
>
“Katherine,” Jessie said, trying to put more conviction behind her voice. “I’m here to help you. They gave me your name because they realized that the battle’s not just up in the skies, but down here in every apartment complex, living room… in every tired woman picking up pieces of glass that some drunk kicked in on his way back from Mercury’s.”
Katherine’s head slowly turned to face her. She seemed to be regarding everything that Jessie had just said and deciding on an opinion. Finally, she turned her face back to the ground and muttered, “I don’t want anyone’s sympathy.”
From behind them, the stairs creaked, and an older female voice stated, “I could do with a spot of sympathy.”
Jessie turned around to see a woman, probably about fifteen years older than Katherine, standing there with her hand on the shoulder of her Potentian. This Potentian was a boy that looked to be only a year or so from evolution. He had blondish, red hair, freckles smattered across the bridge of his nose, and a lanky, bony figure that didn’t seem to want to stand still. His mother had blonde hair and a kind face that was creased with fatigue. Her eyes were unassuming as she looked over to Jessie with hope.
“I’m not proud,” the woman said. She shook her son’s shoulder, saying, “This one here gets into too much trouble, even with him strapped to my arm. I’m working all day, and when I stop, I’m cooking. That leaves no time for cleaning or anything else.” She nodded her head. “I could do with a spot of sympathy from the military.”
Jessie glanced back to Katherine for a moment, then over to the lady. She didn’t plan on this, but she had told a lie, and now she had to live with it.
The Potentian at the woman’s side kept stepping down from the bottom stair and then back up, as if marching in place. Jessie went over to him and gave him a smile.
“What’s your name?”
The boy’s eyes darted to her and then looked down to the floor. His mother nudged him, and he mumbled to the floor, “Mick.”
“I’m Rosie,” the woman said, hastily extending her hand out to her.
She accepted it, saying, “Jessie.” Then she looked down to Mick and extended her hand to him, adding, “But my friends call me Chance.”
Mick put his hand in hers for one second, quickly taking it away before he could even shake it. Then he looked up into her face and asked, “You’re a pilot?”
“No, she used to be,” his mother corrected. “Now’s she’s going to help us around the apartment.” After she said this, she threw Jessie a small questioning look, hoping she didn’t overstep her boundaries.
“Until I get my wings back, that is,” she said, addressing Mick.
He smiled at that, and then went back to stepping up and down on the bottom of the stairs.
Jessie looked back to Rosie, explaining, “I don’t know how long it will be before I’m called back in for duty, and I have to report back to base every night at six. But as long as I’m here, I’m willing to help in any way I can.”
“Amazing!” Rosie exclaimed, putting a hand on her heart. “I never would have thought, when I lifted my head up from my pillow this morning, that this was what the day had in store!” She allowed herself a moment to revel in her good fortune, before putting on an apologetic look and saying, “Our chimney’s a mess. Do you think you could take a look at it?”
Rosie and Mick’s apartment was on the very top floor. It didn’t have much in the way of furniture, yet somehow it managed to still appear cluttered. There was a patched up couch in the center of the narrow living-room, and it looked as if someone had taken a piece of charcoal and had tried to draw on the walls. Rosie clicked her tongue in disapproval when she showed Jessie this room, and Mick had dashed out of the room, pulling on the bond between them so that the elastic tube stretched as long as it would go. Rosie didn’t allow this to continue on, and with a commanding voice, ordered Mick back by her side.
She then showed Jessie into the kitchen. It had a simple oven and stove, an oval table with three chairs, and, in the corner of the room, what looked to be a black mass of soot and jagged metal. It took Jessie a moment to realize that this was the chimney that she had been talking about. The thing was, it looked completely home-made. The bottom was some sort of cast-iron basin that was overflowing with soot and debris, and over this was a square metal pipe that was nailed to the wall. Her eyes followed it up to the ceiling, and by the small cracks of light that came in from the sides, she figured that someone had punched out a hole in the roof and stuck the make-shift chimney through.
Rosie explained that her husband had done it when they first moved into the place. He realized how cold it could get, and that the land-lord never put the heater on, so he figured that they would stay warmer if they had a fire-place. Rosie’s face darkened when she explained that her husband, Roger, was gone nearly all day working. When he got home, he was dead tired and didn’t even notice how cold it was in the apartment. She had then walked over to a counter in the living room and brought back a picture. In it, she could see Rosie standing next to a man with red hair and bright green eyes. She explained that Roger didn’t look quite as young now.
Jessie wanted to change the subject to something less sad, and was about to ask how they were able to afford the wood to keep the fire going, when she noticed an un-burnt piece of cardboard sticking out of the ashes in the basin. She realized that they probably didn’t use wood at all, but trash or anything left lying around that would burn. That was why there was so much soot spilling over the fire-place, into the flue, and even migrating into the kitchen.
The sight reminded her of when she was little and came down with a bad fever. Since she and her mom were by themselves, they had no way of going for a doctor or medicine. It was in the winter, and Jessie lied shivering in front of the fire all day. Soon they ran out of wood, so Sarah had taken anything she could find around the house—books, furniture, even a rocking chair that she had spent nearly a year painting delicate flowers around the handles—and threw them all into the fire. Jessie suspected that her mom would have chopped up the whole house if it had come to that.
Back in the kitchen, Rosie excused herself for a moment as she left to get a large bucket, stick, and washcloth. Then she left Jessie to it, saying that she had to be off to work. When Rosie and Mick had left, she stared at the black mass, wondering what she had gotten herself into. She dumped all the loose soot into the bucket, causing it to coat her entire uniform. She had turned away in time so none got on her face, but before the day was done, that was certainly remedied.
When Rosie got back at five-thirty, most of the soot was gone, but it seemed to have ended up on Jessie. Rosie had given a short laugh of surprise when she saw the state she was in, and had promptly taken her outside to help get the soot off. She asked Mick to wave a thick blanket in front of her, and the young and energetic boy swung the blanket around wildly, swerving in plane-like maneuvers, and even caused the tube from his Potentian Bond to wrap around her middle several times. It was a strangely warm sensation, reminding her that the tube linking the mother and son was not much different from the umbilical cord that had first linked them together in the womb.
During this whole ordeal, several other people in the neighborhood came to watch. Some were cautious, some looked amused, and some were very curious as to why Jessie was there. She didn’t mind their stares, and laughed as Mick tried to mimic the sound of a jet engine by gurgling in the back of his throat. Once the people around them caught her laughing, they seemed to relax and find amusement in the whole thing as well.
After Mick was done, most of the soot still stayed on, but at least now she could see the green of her uniform underneath. She wiped at her face, trying to get at the grit, but there were still several patches that did not want to come off.
Then, Jessie found herself promising to come back the next day around eleven, and took off for home. As she walked the streets, she received more than a few stares, but somehow they were easier to take knowing that they w
ere only staring at the mess she was in, and not mocking her uniform.
When she finally reached the station for the transport ship to pick her up, the pilot inside eyed her with an amused expression, but did not say a word. As the ship ascended in the sky, she looked off in the distance to where BLES stood. She had told Rosie that she needed to report back to base earlier than she actually did because she had wanted time to go visit Ben. But she knew that there was no way she could sneak around BLES covered in soot. She would just have to hope that the job she was given the next day wouldn’t be as messy.
Once she was home, she shuffled out of the transport ship carefully, trying not to leave a trail of ashes. Walking through the hangar, she saw that it was fairly empty, except for the personnel that were always on duty. She wiped at her cheek with the back of her wrist as she walked. She knew that she was a mess, and that it was an unacceptable state to come back to the base in. She just hoped that she could make it to her room before someone could inform Carver.
Unfortunately, her rooms were on the other side of the air-base, and she would need to go through the much larger portion set aside for the men’s living quarters before she reached the woman’s. She debated running through the halls, knowing she could make it there in no time with her speed. But that would draw more attention to herself. So she started through the halls at a normal pace, keeping her head high and resigning herself to the fact that she would probably get caught.
Halfway through the men’s quarters, she heard footsteps coming down the next hall. Carver’s voice shouted out to a soldier that he wanted to see him in his office. Jessie suddenly froze and looked around her. Though Carver and the unfortunate soldier were still down a hall that was perpendicular to the one she was in, she knew that they would need to pass down this way in order to get to his office.
Before she could decide what to do, a voice from behind her called out, “Jessie?”
She turned to see who spoke and breathed out a sigh of relief. “Aaron,” she whispered out in a grateful smile.
