by Natalie Reid
* * *
The snow stopped falling on the east-end as the group of people lined up on the streets, staring with wide fright at the men in gray Task Force uniforms. The air was still, and in the far distance a small line of smoke could still be seen rising up from the center of the city.
Most of the people in the line were men, with an occasional woman or boy that looked just old enough to be considered an adult thrown in. The line numbered thirty people in total. Thirty people who were dragged out of their homes or picked off the street and shoved into this slowly migrating line, inching towards the center of the city. None of them were bound or restrained in any way. The unspoken threat of the Task Force agents and their weapons kept them in line.
When the explosion had gone off, word had spread through Aero City like a howling wild-fire on a windy day. Numbers were recited. Thirty dead. At least, that’s the number that was being given.
The people in the line knew why they were there. It didn’t take them long to count their numbers and put two and two together. And it didn’t take a genius to figure out where they were being led. The real question was what would happen to them once they got there.
Task Force agents stood like sentries on either side of the street, watching with blank faces as the solemn line trailed by. Passer-byes and relatives of those taken came up to the side-walks to watch them pass, but no one was stupid enough to try and cross the invisible wall that the agents created. The fate of The Thirty, while probably grim, was still a mystery that kept tempers at bay and told the rational to hold their tongues for fear of making it worse.
The line finally stopped in front of Task Force headquarters, and The Thirty waited in cold dread as an agent broke away from the rest and made his way up the steps to the entrance of the building.
From one of fifth-floor windows, Ritter looked out on the scene below. When he saw the procession filling inside and disappearing into the concrete structure, he turned away.
Vin was at his desk with his tablet to his ear. He wasn’t saying much, but it was never Vin’s custom to do the talking. After a moment more, he nodded his head, a habit that he couldn’t stop even when speaking on the phone, and told the voice on the other line that it would be done. Then, ending the call, Vin tossed his tablet onto his desk in a tired swing.
Ritter stuck his hands in his pockets and walked over to him. “Let me guess. That was Ward,” he said casually.
Vin glanced up at him from where he sat at his chair. His face looked exhausted, but every bit the able Commander he was. “He wants you to implement your plan tonight,” Vin stated. “People have started to talk. And with everything that’s happened today… he thinks it would make sense to do it now.”
Ritter grinned. “Guess that means you’ll be having all the fun with our guests down there.”
His boss stood up and pocketed his tablet. “I won’t remind you what happens if your plan doesn’t work.”
“Trust me, when it’s done, there will be no doubt of what happened to him. She’ll be finished, and we can take her out and have done with it. Maybe even get a racking minute of peace and quiet.”
Ritter was about to step away, when his boss called him back.
“I need your head in this,” Vin said firmly. “Forget about the people down there. Forget about whatever it is you’ve been doing behind my back. You get this done right, or you won’t just lose your job; we all will.”
* * *
The white room flashed in a small burst of purple as the screen on the tablet replayed the day’s events. Once more in the history of Aero City, Ual and S had been summoned to Ward’s room. Ward himself was particularly silent as he watched Division Bank fill up with smoke and shattered glass. Ual, however, wore a face stricken with grief and apprehension.
“Ward,” he said, coming before him and laying his hand on the tablet so that he blocked part of the screen from his view. “Please reconsider what you’re doing. Most of the people you’ve rounded up have nothing to do with this. All the public will see is that you are irrational and revengeful.”
Ward’s eyes darted with anger to his advisor. “Irrational?” he demanded. “Is that how you see me? Because it’s beginning to be how I see you! In fact, it seems that every time I take your advice on something, it ends up coming back to bite me. But every decision I’ve made without your helps seems to be going by remarkably well. Tell me, why is that?”
Ual shook his head, at a loss for words.
“Wasn’t it you that told me not to be so harsh on Sarah?” Ward continued. “And then again with her daughter? If I hadn’t listened to you, we wouldn’t have that mess on our hands! What I can’t understand is why. Why try and protect a mother and her daughter? Unless it wasn’t just them you were protecting.”
Ward tapped his finger on the desk in rhythmic beats. Behind Ual, S came up and brought forth a disk. Ual stared at it in growing dread. It didn’t have a title, but he knew what it was. There weren’t many CD’s in Aero City; most people stored information on flash drives. But this hadn’t come from within the city.
“Have you heard what’s on this?” Ward asked suddenly, as if inquiring about the latest trend in footwear. Without waiting for an answer, he exclaimed, “Of course you have! You were standing right next to me when you did.” He scratched a finger on his nose to give a display of casual countenance. “Quite frankly, I couldn’t really get into it. I find the English language, oh… grating on my nerves.”
Ward picked up the disk, turned it over in his hand several times, and then slammed it back down on the table. Ual flinched at the heartless treatment of it.
“Why so nervous?” Ward asked. “This isn’t the only copy.” He studied Ual’s expression before adding, “But you already knew that, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know what act you think I’ve committed against you,” Ual said with a steady and careful voice. “When Sarah found those disks, we were all exposed to them, like you said.”
S gave an incredulous snort behind him.
Ward nodded his head in silent thought. “A few weeks ago I would have believed you were sincere. But then there was this…” He dug his hand into the inside pocket of his suit jacket. When he pulled it out, he was holding a folded piece of paper. It looked to have been ripped out of a book, for one of the edges was rough and jagged.
He handed it to Ual, who opened it with shaky fingers. Immediately he recognized the photograph of Sarah and knew that the book on his front porch hadn’t been a happy accident. Still, he tried to keep his composure.
“I gave a sad young girl a picture of her mother,” he admitted. “I don’t see how that was going against you.”
Ward sighed and took the photo back. “No, Ual, maybe it wasn’t.” He seemed tired as he placed the folded paper back in his pocket. “Maybe you are every bit the loyal advisor I’d imagined you to be all these years.” He shook his head in remorse. “Maybe my Task Force agent was wrong. Maybe the spy he had up on the air-base misread your exchange together. But the fact still stands; whether Jessie means anything to you or not, you certainly mean something to her. And I can’t afford to ignore that right now.”
Ward nodded to S, who put a firm hand on Ual’s shoulder. Ual turned around to face her and found nothing but long anticipated pleasure in her eyes.
Chapter 14
The Best of Friends
It was dark and way past dinner time when Griffin opened the front door to his apartment. Inside he found Harper sitting on the floor of the front room, resting her back against the rear of the couch. It was a rare moment when he found her not buried inside of a computer or rummaging through a pile of scrap metal.
When Harper saw who it was at the door, she sprang up to her feet and rushed over to her friend. “I was so outrageously worried!” she exclaimed, grabbing onto his shoulders and giving them a shake.
“Outrageously?” he asked, throwing his eye-brows up.
“Well I had been sitting by the door for lik
e three hours, trying to figure out what I’d say to you.” She shook her head and pressed her palm to her forehead. “That was the best I could come up with.”
Griffin laughed softly and then winced, placing his hands on the doorframe to give himself support. Harper glanced down and saw that there were rips in his pants. Underneath the fabric she could make out the white material of a bandage.
“You’re hurt!” she exclaimed. She rushed behind him and slung one of his arms over her shoulder. “You idiot,” she said, helping him inside and closing the door with her foot. “You should have never gone after Melissa. I knew she was trouble from the minute I spied on her.”
Griffin twisted his head to look at his friend, and his mouth widened into a smile that he could not stop from growing wider and wider.
“Well, I’m sorry you feel that way,” he said, trying to remain serious, but failing to retain even the slightest bit of solemnity. “Because I’ll probably be seeing a lot more of her.”
“What? You and her finally…?”
He gave her a goofy grin, and she scrunched her face in a smile, saying, “That’s… great, Griff! Good for you!”
“Something about saving her life I guess.”
She nodded and looked away, shielding her face from him. “Yeah, yep, girls can be like that. You save their life once and they’re stuck to you like glue from then on.”
With her free hand she hastily wiped at her eye and then turned back to Griffin. “Have you eaten anything? I made cheesy rice.” She motioned to the kitchen. “Though it’s probably two hours old by now.”
She tried to steer him over to the kitchen, hobbling through a maze of junk on the floor. Before they could get too far, Griffin placed his hand on Harper’s arm.
“Actually, Melissa and I already ate.”
One of Harper’s portable computers was on the ground by their feet, and she kicked it out of their way. “Oh, good,” she said, nodding her head so that the small black strands of her hair brushed against Griffin’s arm from where she had it slung around her shoulders.
“I kind of just feel like going to bed actually,” he said.
“Mhhm,” she hummed politely, steering him towards the hallway that led to his bedroom.
As they made their way over, they tripped on several old CPU monitors, one discarded key-board, and half a dozen nuts and bolts. They had just made it in front of Griffin’s open doorway, when Harper stepped on a thick metal pole and began to lose her balance. She let out a small exclamation of shock and grabbed onto the only solid structure nearby…Griffin.
Her arms reached out for him and wrapped around his neck, but he did not have the strength in his legs to support both of them. He grunted softly in pain and leaned his body forward so that Harper’s back was thrown against the hallway wall. When it was all over, he realized that he was pinning her to the wall. Harper’s eyes were wide with shock as she stared at his face, and she was so stiff he didn’t even think she was breathing anymore.
Quickly Griffin drew away from her and reached out to hold onto the doorway post.
“I think I can see myself from here,” he said, giving her a smile that somehow seemed awkward in his mouth now.
“Right,” she said, breathless. She swung her arm up from her side and gave him the thumbs up. “Probably best.”
Harper waited until he hobbled into his room and she heard the creak of his mattress springs before she slowly slid to the floor and buried her face in her knees.
* * *
On the far west-ward facing side of the military air-base lied a small patch of grass with clear, thick walls surrounding it to keep out the high winds that howled at their extreme elevation. The Patch was no bigger than a tiny garden and contained nothing but browning blades of grass. However, for many pilots in the military, it was their favorite spot on the ship.
When Jessie had arrived back from BLES, looking rumpled and beaten and, for some reason, thoroughly defeated, Trid had brought her here. There had been a couple occupying the space when they got there, but Trid merely took a photo of them with his tablet, showed it to the girl, and then shooed them away like they were a couple of flies.
When they sat down in the grass, Jessie looked up at the stars, trying to ignore the moving spots of light that reminded her of the war, trying to ignore the throbbing in her chest and the confusion muddling her brain.
Trid plopped down in the grass next to her and pulled out a flask from his jacket pocket. He swirled it in front of her face, and she looked over at him warily. He reached in his other pocket and procured two paper cups that looked vaguely as if they had been used before. He poured her a glass, and a silvery liquid spilled out.
Jessie took it in her hand and stared down at it. She had never been to Mercury’s and never really liked drinking alcohol. She had had a glass on the night that she was officially accepted into the military as a pilot, and one when Trid had killed his first Bandit, but she didn’t like how it made people act. Still, there was an ache in her chest and a voice in her mind that told her she was so thirsty and had to fill up on something.
Trid smiled at her with his goofy grin and held his glass up in a mock toast before taking a sip of his drink. She took a sip as well. The burning it created going down helped soothe her chest. The air around them felt less tense, and the two friends leaned back on their elbows so they could better see the stars.
“You ever wonder if the Bandits do this on their ships up in space?” he asked.
Jessie took another sip of her drink and blew out a puff of frosty air into the cold night. “What? Lie on a scratchy piece of grass and drink horrible boot-leg liquor in paper cups that you rummaged out of the garbage?”
“I did not get these from the garbage!” he defended, leaning over to look at her.
She chuckled through closed lips. “Well, it tastes like you did.”
“I’m trying to have a serious conversation here, and you’re bringing up garbage!” He tried to sound offended, but it was rendered impossible with the humor that always managed to pervade his voice.
She took a third sip and breathed out. The drink erased the image of Carver from her mind.
“No,” she said. “I’ve never wondered what Bandits do up there.”
“Cause they’re not fighting all the time,” he said, carrying on with his musings. “So what do they do? Just hang around grunting at each other? I mean, they used to be just like us. Does their human urges to just relax and kick around ever take over when they’re not, you know, trying to kill stuff?”
“That stuff being us,” she reminded him.
He laughed and took a swig of his drink. “Yeah, we’re all just stuff, aren’t we?”
“No, if I’m stuff, you’re double stuffed,” she said with a laugh.
She almost stopped when she heard the laughter escape her lips. She felt guilty somehow, like it was her duty to feel miserable right now. But she buried that thought in her head and told herself it was ridiculous. She was alive tonight. She was with her friend. And they could laugh and be alive and shouldn’t have to feel guilty about it.
So Jessie listened to the deep philosophical musings that came out of Trid’s mouth every time he had a drink in his hands. She listened and watched the stars and looked down at her drink, wondering why it always seemed to be higher than when she last saw it. And soon she forgot what Tom had told her earlier that day. She forgot about Carver and the secret he had kept from her, and all those people on the bus that expected some sort of salvation out of her. She forgot about the artificial lung in her chest and her fear that the black was hiding behind a vessel in her heart, or between two of her ribs. And she even forgot about the sad face of the boy named Ben, lying in bed and trying to picture himself on the back of a finch in the woodland sky.
She could have fallen asleep like that, chuckling and listening to Trid’s easy voice as the stars filled up the space in her eyes. A slow feeling had crept up on her like sticky syrup, and it was only thr
eatened when a clean and clear face broke through the haze in her mind.
“Aaron!” Jessie said with a smile.
Trid had called out his name in exactly the same way so that they sounded like a pair of synchronized twins.
Trid shifted in the grass and smiled lazily up at Aaron. “We were just solving the enigmas of the earth. How did you know we were here?”
“I was told,” he said, speaking as if to a small Potentian. His gaze then shifted to Jessie. “I didn’t know they were going to release you from BLES tonight. I would have come to find you sooner.”
“You found me now,” she said, patting the spot of grass beside her.
Aaron eyed the offered space, but then shook his head. “You should get to bed. It’s late.”
He bent down and grabbed Jessie’s hand, hoisting her up. He slung her arm around his shoulder and began to walk away, when she turned her head to look back.
“What about Trid?”
Trid waved sluggishly to a spot up in the sky like he was greeting an invisible friend in the stars.
Aaron grunted. “Trid can find his own way back. He is the one that got you drunk.”
“I guess I am a bit drunk.” She smiled and leaned further on him so that he had to slide his arm around her waist to keep her up. “You know, it’s a first time. Trid’s been trying for yeeears!”
“Well I’m glad you’re happy about it,” he said with an amused chuckle.
“Very happy. I’ve been having the night of my life. You know, they say each night, though you may think you’re having a night, apparently not. Apparently there is only one night of your life. I didn’t know that! I thought I had gone through thousands of nights already. But I guess you only get one. You only get one!”
By this time they had reached the hallway that led up to Jessie’s room, and Aaron walked her over to her door and leaned her back against it to help keep her up.
