by Natalie Reid
She turned and saw tears falling down Katherine’s cheeks as she listened in silent respect.
“It’s not painless like they tell you,” Jessie strained out, feeling her throat tighten up with emotion. “It’s not like falling asleep or floating on a cloud or whatever else they make up in advertising campaigns. It’s a panicked, ugly death. And it’s the one you chose for him.”
Katherine’s hands shook as she grasped them together. Her pale and wrinkled hands stood out like lumps of scar tissue on the bedspread.
“You are here to kill me then.” She nodded, as if accepting her fate and deciding that it was best. “I won’t fight it.”
Jessie could feel the temperature rising in her head. The ceiling felt like it was weighing down on her, and up above somewhere was her mother, watching. For the first time in a long while, she felt her mother’s presence growing. It was like the feeling someone gets just before it rains and they can feel the weight of the water while it’s still up in the clouds.
“This isn’t right,” Jessie finally said. “It shouldn’t have to be like this. Why should I have to do this? I was supposed to be one of the good guys. I promised her I would be.”
“Your mother?” Katherine asked softly.
The older woman reached her hand out and grabbed Jessie’s wrist. She could feel her own heart beating so harshly against her skin that she knew the vibrations were probably pounding straight through Katherine’s fingertips as well. Jessie’s skin felt like it was on fire from the contact, but a moment later she realized that the hand clasped around her wrist was icy cold.
Jessie pulled away from her and walked across the room. “You’re freezing cold,” she mumbled. “I’ll start a fire.”
Then, it was as if something inside of her shut off. She went to the corner of the room where there was a small furnace with a few pieces of wood and cardboard inside. She found a box of matches off to the side and lit one to start the fire. Closing the furnace back up, she stared at the small vents and the delicate fire that danced on the other side.
When she turned to face the bed, her head was pointed down, and she felt ashamed once more. She didn’t know why she had just done that for Katherine, and she didn’t know which was worse—that she had acted to help this woman, or that she had once tried to hurt her.
Katherine said nothing as the young girl slipped out of her apartment once more. The room was a little warmer, but the death of a little boy still gripped at both their hearts like a strong hand of malice.
Chapter 5
The Jardo
Commander Vin tapped his hand on the stretcher in front of him. He was on the top floor of Task Force headquarters, in an empty conference room. Inside the stretcher, through the thick plastic cover, he could see the sleeping face of a man. He knew who this man was, but he had seen so many pass this way that even his face started to blend with the others.
There was a knock on the door, and Vin called for whoever it was to come in. The door opened and Ritter strode towards him with his usual air of confidence.
“You wanted to see me?” he asked, coming to stand on the opposite side of the stretcher.
“I need you to escort him up to The Fulcrum,” Vin said, tapping a hand on the plastic dome of the stretcher’s cover. “And I also felt a congratulations was in order. You executed your plan with Jessie perfectly. Now all of us at Task Force can breathe a sigh of relief.”
Ritter shrugged. “I did let the little racker get away though.”
Vin slapped his sergeant’s arm in a gesture of friendship. “That wasn’t on you. Besides, things have been going rather well ever since the people think there’s a new Bandit on the loose. People are scared, so suddenly we’re not the bad guys anymore. I’ve had westers asking me to place men in their houses. It’s this racking Bandit, they keep telling me. It’s gonna murder us all in our sleep.”
“I heard she already killed an east-ender,” Ritter added with mock seriousness. “Who knows where she could strike next? These Bandits are tricky creatures.”
Vin smiled and clapped him on the arm twice more in a sign of a job well done.
“So I’ll just drop this guy off for you then,” Ritter said, looking down at the stretcher.
“Yeah, hold up,” Vin started to say, then pointed up to his chin and asked, “What happened to you there?”
Ritter shook his head in contempt. “Racking military hot-head. Took a swing at me.”
“What was his name?”
“Don’t worry about it.” He knocked on the stretcher and started pushing it towards the door. “I took care of him.”
Vin watched him go, but before he could make it all the way through the door, he called out, “The military were down here?”
Ritter stopped and glanced back towards him. “No, just one man. It was nothing really. Like I said, I took care of it.”
Vin nodded for him to go, but continued to stare at the door long after his sergeant had left, his arms folded and a look of contemplation over his face.
* * *
The pages of the old book threatened to crumble in Griffin’s hand, reminding him of a delicate cookie his mother used to make that was so thin it would break apart just by blowing on it. The light from the back room of the repair shop didn’t help matters either. There were work lamps designed to light a small area in intense light, and larger lights on the ceiling that were barely more than a dim flicker. The intensity of the first irritated Griffin’s eyes, and the lack-luster of the second made him frustrated. Normally he was not like this. Usually he could work in the back of the shop in peace and accomplish a lot of intricate and difficult work. Now he didn’t seem able to even read a book.
“Step five,” he read aloud to himself. “Make sure your hair is parted and neatly combed.”
Griffin looked in the mirror that jutted out from the wall by a bendable pole. His brown hair wasn’t parted in any set direction. It seemed to be moving in all directions at once. He angled his neck to try and look at the back of his head, but the mirror only showed him a stupid vision of himself twisting his head to the side. He let out an exasperated sigh and settled on running his fingers through his hair a few times. It didn’t look any different, but at least he felt he could move on.
“Step six. Make sure you know at least three interesting topics to talk about while on your date. Try discussing something fun your family did over the weekend, or brush up on the latest facts of the war. If you’re really serious, try learning a few German phrases and—”
He stopped abruptly as the door that led to the front opened.
“Kane!” Griffin exclaimed, shutting the book closed. “What are you doing back here?”
His boss chuckled. “I own this place, Griffin. I came back here to ask what you were doing. It’s not your shift, and you don’t seem to be working on anything.” He walked up to the table and looked at the cover of the closed book. “What’s this one about?” he asked.
Kane lifted the book in his hands, and Griffin raised a hand in objection, stuttering, “Oh! Uh, please don’t…”
Kane studied the first page up and down. “What is this language?” he asked, coughing at the dust that rose up into his face.
“That one’s English.”
“That’s the one they used to speak here, right?”
Griffin nodded. “Yeah, yeah. That’s the one.”
“It looks like gibberish to me,” Kane said with a shake of his head. “What’s it about?”
“Oh! That’s not…” he stuttered uncomfortably, rubbing the back of his neck.
Kane looked down at Griffin’s work table and saw a plastic bouquet of flowers and a bottle of cologne. He started chuckling, making the young man even more irritated.
“Never mind. I can see it’s about a girl.” He put the book down and then asked, “Did you finally ask that friend of yours out? The one with the, uh, the computers and the conspiracies…”
“Harper?” he asked, feeling his throat co
nstrict and his face heat up.
“Yeah, that’s the girl. I thought she might have held a bit of a sweet spot for you.”
Griffin’s face fell and he stared fixedly at the wood of his work table. He hadn’t seen Harper ever since their argument three days ago. In that time, she hadn’t come back to the apartment and hadn’t returned his calls. He figured she must be sulking and trying to make him feel worse. It was one of the reasons why Griffin didn’t want to get ready in his apartment. It now seemed terribly empty and infuriatingly messy. He was already on edge as it was for having a real date with Melissa; he didn’t need to add one more thing to mess with his nerves. He just wanted to forget about Harper.
“N-no. It’s another girl,” he finally told his boss.
“I see.” Kane rocked back and forth on the balls of his feet with a look of understanding. “Well, there’s nothing I can do for you, is there?”
“Nope!” he said quickly, gathering the book and sliding it towards himself. “No, I’m good. Thank you though. That’s very…” He smiled, looking a little sick, and then nodded his head several times.
Kane patted him on the shoulder and turned around to leave. “I’ll just leave you to it then.” From the doorway, he called back, adding, “A word of advice. If you put on that brand of cologne, don’t get too close to an open flame. You might burn your head off. Good luck!”
Griffin’s shoulders fell, and he looked back to the cologne with disdain. He flipped the book back open, reading the foreign words as easily as if they were his own language.
“Seven. Make sure never to smell your own breath while on the date.”
He placed his hand in front of his mouth and breathed out. Bitter coffee.
“Eight. Talk about your siblings fondly. Nothing will drive a girl away faster than a guy that bullies his younger brother.”
He closed the book and rested his forehead on the table. It was obvious this book was written in another time, another age when all this stuff might have worked. Now it was embarrassingly outdated and irrelevant.
One nervous breakdown, a couple pints of tea, and several hours later, Griffin knocked on the door to Melissa’s apartment. He heard footsteps coming towards the door and held his breath in hopes that it wouldn’t be her room-mate Saturn. When the door opened, he almost found himself wishing for the opposite, for he was not prepared for the sight that awaited him.
Melissa stood in the doorway, wearing a sparkling blue dress that left little to the imagination. It was so completely unlike the green dress she had been wearing the day of the Resistance attack. Griffin found himself frozen to the spot while she looked up at him in perfect innocence. Maybe she knew what kind of affect her dress would have on him, but if she did, she showed no signs of it on her face.
“Hey, hi,” he blubbered. He extended the bunch of plastic flowers towards her, saying, “These are for Melissa. I mean you! These are for you.”
She took them in her graceful hands and gave him a coy smile. “You’re a man from another time, Griffin.”
“Yeah,” he replied awkwardly, not knowing what she meant, but still feeling compelled to agree anyway.
Melissa turned to place the flowers on a wooden stand in her apartment and then stepped out to take Griffin’s arm. “Where are we…” she started to ask, but Griffin had also started speaking at the same time.
“I brought the bike,” he said, glad that he had something good to report. Then, realizing he cut her off, he turned red, saying, “Oh, sorry. Uh…”
She laughed softly and gave his arm a gentle squeeze of reassurance. “I’m sure whatever you have planned will be perfect.”
The restaurant that he had chosen was called The Jardo. It was located in the business sector inside a prominent square called Wings Courtyard. Normally he wouldn’t eat at any place near there for two reasons. One, he felt that it was filled with stuffed up government officials and bland-tasting dishes that left you even hungrier than when you first started (or at least, so he was told). And two, he didn’t exactly have the right connections to get in.
When he called over to make reservations, he had placed them under Melissa’s name and number, and found that, since she was an employee of Division Bank, that got them a table. Griffin felt rather proud of his plan to get in, and was willing to set aside his previous misgivings about business sector food in order to treat Melissa to the kind of dinner he thought she expected. However, when they arrived at the front lobby of The Jardo, he suddenly felt very self-conscious.
There was a woman in an immaculate white dress standing at a front desk, waiting to take their name for the reservations. Suddenly he realized that he would have to tell her that he had placed it under his date’s name. Then Melissa would know that he wasn’t good enough to get a table himself. Maybe she would even think that he only wanted her for her connections.
His palms began sweating, and he knew he had to think of a plan quickly. With little time, he decided that the best plan was the simplest plan. He walked up the lady in the white dress, placed a casual arm on her desk, and then leaned in close to her ear and whispered, “Melissa Fifty-Sixty-one.”
He pulled away and smiled at the lady. She glanced disapprovingly at his over-sized suit and wrinkled her nose. Griffin saw this and wondered if his breath had smelt bad. He was even about to check when he remembered the instructions of the book. He let out a quiet laugh, realizing that the manual actually did come in handy.
Melissa took his hand, drawing attention to herself. “What is it?” she asked.
“N-nothing,” he stuttered.
The woman in white glanced at the two of them suspiciously, looked down to check her tablet, and then motioned to a man standing in the corner. The man promptly came up to them, saying, “Right this way!”
As he began to lead them through the restaurant, Griffin found himself increasingly nervous, passing by all the tables. Everyone in the room could lay claim to the fact that they were better dressed than him. The fact that most of them were probably government employees and Task Force agents made him feel even shabbier. If one of them was in a bad mood, they could have him disappear just for the sheer fun of it.
By the time they were seated in a cozy table in the far left corner of the room, Griffin’s mind was miles away in some dungeon in the deep bowels of Task Force headquarters.
“Griffin?” Melissa asked.
His eyes remained glazed and staring at the spoons near the edge of the table. How many spoons did they need, he wondered. Were they really all for eating, or would he be expected to participate in some spoon tossing ceremony before dinner?
“Did you know that woman back there?” Melissa asked timidly. “The hostess?”
“What?” he asked, jerking his head up in a sudden motion.
“It’s just,” she started carefully. “You were laughing at something she said.”
“Was I?” He didn’t remember her saying anything at all to him.
He looked across the room, avoiding Melissa’s curious gaze, and locked eyes with a man sitting by himself in the opposite corner of the room. The man was well dressed, but his hair looked disheveled and his chin was beginning to develop stubble. The man’s eyes glanced from Griffin to Melissa. Then he shook his head, muttered something under his breath, and went back to eating his food.
Melissa turned to follow Griffin’s gaze, but seeing nothing of consequence, reached a hand across the table to give his wrist a gentle shake. “Are you okay? You seem worried about something.”
He looked down at her hand. There was a candle lit at the center of the table, and its flickering light cast across her skin and danced in his eyes. For a moment, he thought he was back at his work-station, trying to find the right degree of light to work by. The wavering, fickle light that came from the candle wasn’t right either, he decided. No one would be able to get any work done in that kind of light.
“Griff?” she asked again, rubbing her thumb across his wrist.
He
looked up and forgot what the question was. He knew he was acting like an idiot, but for the life of him he couldn’t think of anything to say. He looked across the room. The man in the corner was downing a blue drink with a wave of purple going through it. It reeked of coolness. He needed to look that cool. Maybe he should order that drink with the purple wave. But what would something like that be called? The wave? The cosmic wind? Purple slide? Harper would probably be able to find the name if she was here.
Melissa’s face slowly fell at his lack of response, and he knew he needed to say something quick. He opened his mouth and blurted something out. She scrunched her brow and tweaked her head in confusion. In his haste, he realized that he had spoken in English.
“Sorry?” she asked.
“Uh, that was English,” he explained.
There was a napkin folded into the shape of a bird sitting on his plate, and he suddenly felt uncomfortable with its face staring at him. He quickly lifted his hand up and grabbed it, flicking it so that the napkin was just a flat plane once more.
“What did it mean?” she inquired.
Her face brightened, and he could tell he had stumbled onto something good in his panic. Maybe the book had been right about saying something in another language.
“Evening light,” he lied. What he had really said was: I have to use the bathroom.
“That’s beautiful,” she smiled.
Soon the waiter came to take their order, and Griffin looked through the drink menu to try and find anything that looked like the one the man in the corner had ordered. He ended up asking the man for a “Saturn Wheel,” but when it came out, he found that it was an actual wheel with six or seven drinks fitted into it. Melissa had looked shocked and a little impressed when the waiter placed it in front of him, and he tried to play it cool, commenting on how he liked variety.
Then the waiter asked what they would have to eat, and Griffin grew nervous that he would order the wrong thing again, and they would end up bringing a whole buffet to their table on a conveyor belt. Instead of ordering, he got up from his seat, muttered the word bathroom (this time in the correct language) and started walking away. After taking a few steps, he hurried back and grabbed two of the drinks on the Saturn Wheel. Then he threw a smile at the waiter and rushed off to the door in the back with the sign for the men’s room.
