by Natalie Reid
Glancing down to the paper in her hands, she took the pen and scribbled another note, telling Ritter that she had made contact with Nel, and that his daughter was safe. She stuffed it back into the bird and then came back out onto the streets.
She looked up at the sky, towards the southwest. If she was going to find Ritter, then he most likely would live in the west-end where most government officials lived. Her mind went back to the conversation she had with Nel. She had said that they lived on the top floor of an apartment complex. If she remembered correctly from when she flew over the west-end to get to Ual’s house, there weren’t many apartment complexes on the west-end. Most people lived in large houses or mansions. In fact, she could only remember spotting four apartment buildings, yet only one of them faced east. That had to be Ritter’s building. If Nel said that the sun came through her front windows in the morning, then the building had to be pointed east.
With this knowledge in mind, she downed her bottle of water and took off down the street, refueled and ready to kick down Ritter’s door. Soon she was in front of the apartment complex, staring up at its top windows. The building was only three stories high, and Jessie figured that each tenant probably took up a whole floor. Going inside, she rushed up a marble staircase to the top floor. She placed her ear to the wood but couldn’t hear anything. If Ritter had Tom inside, she imagined there would be some sort of scuffle going on. Still, her only option was to get inside that apartment.
Taking Red’s forged ID card from her pocket, she swiped it in the door’s scanner, and the lock clicked open. Opening the door, she found the apartment still and quiet. There was a grand piano in the front room, making her believe that she was in the right place. She ran through to find the bedroom, but that too was empty. Ritter was already gone. Panic started to build up in her mind, but she forced herself to remain calm. If Ritter wasn’t here, then she could still reach him, all she needed was the number of his tablet.
In the corner of the bedroom, she saw a small computer. She remembered Trid telling her once that a person could connect their computer and their tablet together so that if a person received a message on their tablet, it would also appear on their computer. If that was the case, she hoped that the number for the tablet would be stored somewhere on the computer.
Turning it on, she scanned through the various files. She wasn’t very good with computers, but she found the program she needed easily enough, along with the tablet’s information. She stared at the numbers on the screen, quickly memorizing them. Now all she needed was a tablet in which to call him. She glanced around, but Ritter did not have a spare tablet anywhere. It pained her to realize, but the fastest way she was going to get one was to steal it off of someone.
She had learned the art of pickpocketing while she was on the streets, but Jessie felt it was the worst skill she ever had to learn. She didn’t like herself for being so good at it. Yet, if it meant saving Tom’s life, she would need to get over it just one more time.
Stepping out of the apartment, she began to make her way down the stairs. Just after the second floor landing, she spotted a young man coming up. This was about as good a chance as any to steal a tablet. She kept the cuff of her jacket up high and her head down low as she descended towards the man. She was a wanted Bandit, and she didn’t need this guy recognizing her before she could steal his tablet.
As she passed him coming up on the stairs, she made like she was going to turn out of his way, when she stepped in the other direction and rammed right into him.
“Excuse me,” she mumbled politely, reaching a hand inside his jacket at the same time.
The young man gripped tightly to the railing of the marbled staircase. “N-not at all,” he stuttered.
It was a strange response, and Jessie glanced back at him to make sure he hadn’t suspected her of stealing his tablet, but he had already turned forward and started up the staircase. She shook her head, silently apologizing to the young man. He seemed nervous about something, and she hoped that stealing his tablet would not put him in a difficult situation. Still, this was the west end she was in. If anyone could afford to buy a new tablet, it was a west-ender.
The second Jessie exited through the building’s doors, she took out the man’s tablet and dialed in Ritter’s number. Her fingers tapped against her leg in nervous energy as she waited for him to pick up.
Finally there was a click on the line, followed by, “Whoever this is—not a good time!”
“A little birdie told me to give you a message,” Jessie quickly blurted out. She knew better than to speak directly about their business in case one of Ritter’s bosses might be listening in.
Ritter was silent for a moment. She hoped she had not made him even angrier by calling his personal line.
“Well this birdie should have given me the message directly,” he growled out in a low whisper.
“It got hung up, as birds tend to get.”
“Then this bird should be more careful next time.”
“It knows.”
“It had better!” With that, Ritter hung up the line.
Jessie closed her eyes and tilted her chin to face the stars. She didn’t know how narrowly she had saved Tom, but she had to trust that he was alright now. In the future, she would need to ensure that she never let him get that close to danger ever again.
* * *
Griffin faltered on the marbled staircase. His hands were wet with the anxiety of what the man with the mustache would do to him once he realized that he had been followed home. And it didn’t help that he had made a fool of himself to one of the building’s tenants. Who says Not at all? after someone says excuse me? He was immensely glad when the young woman continued down the staircase. Griffin knew he looked suspicious at best, and it would have been just his luck to be reported before he even reached the man’s apartment.
By the time he finally got up to his door, his hands were sweating in streams. He feared that his fist might slide right off the wood if he tried to knock. He shook his head to clear away his fears and clenched his hands. He raised his fist and quickly knocked on the door before he could change his mind. He waited only a few seconds before the door opened, and the man with the mustache stared down at him with mild amusement.
“You must have a death wish to follow a government worker back to their house, kid.”
“I need to know,” Griffin replied, clenching onto the ends of his jacket. He was preparing himself to burst through the door or dodge an oncoming punch, when the man stepped aside and opened his door up wider.
“Well, if you feel that strongly about it,” he said, waving him in.
Griffin blinked at the man in confusion. Was it really just that easy? He took a tentative step inside, afraid that the man might be hiding sinister intentions. Looking around, the first thing he realized was that this man’s apartment was spotless. The whole place was filled with clean, sharp edges and meticulously arranged furniture. A large square light hung from the ceiling of the kitchen, lighting up the front room, but leaving the rest of the apartment in symmetrical shadows.
“You want something to drink?”
The man shut the door behind him and headed for his kitchen. He reached up to a cabinet and took out a crystal glass.
“N-no, I…” Griffin stepped closer to the kitchen, surprised at this man’s hospitality. “I don’t drink. Not since I accidentally ordered something called a Saturn Wheel.”
The man gave out a short brief laugh. His voice came out in a perfect pitch, and he realized that this man kept his laugh as meticulous as he kept everything else.
“Have a seat,” he said, glancing back from the kitchen counter and motioning to a square table that sat in the corner of the room.
Griffin sat down in a chair, but kept his eyes on the man. “I’m sorry, why…why did you let me in?”
The man reached for another cabinet and pulled out a jar of something golden. “I didn’t hate your dad like a lot of the other guys in the Exp
edition Branch did. Didn’t like him either.”
“But…?” Griffin coaxed.
The man opened a drawer and pulled out a long utensil with an abnormally small spoon at the end. “I always knew Danny the Wizard was different.” He shrugged. “I guess I just accepted that. I see enough weird stuff on expeditions to know that there must have been a lot of strange people before the Contamination, so why not now?”
He turned around towards the table and had a glass of clear liquid, a jar of something thick, and the thin spoon in his hands.
“Take this one guy for example,” he said, placing the golden jar and spoon in front of Griffin. “We were searching a suburban area not far from one of the old major cities. Then one of the guys on my team radios me and tells me to come take a look at the house he’s entered. I get there. I see the entire place is covered head to toe in cans of food. There are stacks of the stuff everywhere, leaking and rotting all over the ground. The smell was unbelievable.” He shook his head. “Then my friend tells me that’s not even the half of it. So he takes me through the house and leads me down some stairs into the basement. That’s when I find a whole bunker full of these jars.”
He opened the lid of the jar of golden liquid, and dipped the spoon inside. When the silver utensil lifted, a thick stream of the stuff trailed down, and he spun the spoon several times, wrapping the trail around and around until it formed into a ball. He handed the end to Griffin, and he took it, unsure of what he wanted him to do with it.
“Few things ever surprised me on expeditions,” he said. “I’ve seen hundreds of skeletons in underground tunnels. I’ve seen the last moments of a thousand lives played out on the space around them so that I can look back and see exactly how it happened. Suicide, mass hysteria, suffocation. None of that surprised me as much as this stuff did.”
Griffin looked down to the golden spool of thick syrup in his hands and then gave him a quizzical expression.
“When I realized what it was, what the man that had owned the house had done.” He shook his head and tweaked the corner of his mouth. “Up top, up where the piles and piles of canned food had been stored, that was all for him. If the poor fellow had made it more than a week past The Contamination, it might have been a great comfort. But down in his basement, now that…” He knocked his hand on the table. “…that was for us. Thirty years of expeditions, and that was the first time I ever saw something left specifically for us, like he knew eventually someone would come for it.”
He pointed to the spoon in Griffin’s hands and took a sip of the drink in his own.
“You can eat that, you know.”
Griffin’s face contorted in disgust.
“Isn’t it over two hundred years old?”
The man smirked. “I was surprised too. I didn’t know any food could last that long.” He paused to study him before continuing. “Your father figured out what it was. He used to read any book he could get his hands on. So when he saw the stuff, he knew exactly what it was.”
The man reached over and turned the jar in his hands so that it was resting perfectly at the center of the table.
“He called it honey,” he explained. “He said, back before the Contamination, before so many of the flowers died out, there used to be a lot more bees. So many that people could hoard them and scoop up this stuff they made. He said, in all the foods in all the world, honey was the only one that would never go bad.”
He smiled to himself and shook his head.
“I thought he was mad, but then he stuck his finger in a jar and put it in his mouth. When he convinced me to do the same, I was glad I did.”
Griffin looked back down at the honey, and then timidly placed the very tip of it on his tongue. It was sugary sweet and tasted as golden as it looked. He imagined what his father had looked like when he had placed it in his mouth for the first time.
The man swirled his drink in his hands and then downed the last of it in a quick decisive swig.
“Thousands of years of human technology and information piled on top of each other, and racking bees are the only ones that can make food last forever.” He set the glass down on the table, giving off the sound of a single knock. “Your dad just ate that up.”
Griffin let the spoon drop in his grasp. It hovered a few inches from the surface of the table. “Why did everyone hate my dad so much?”
The man huffed. “That’s an easy one. He didn’t live here with us in our time period. He was way too old-fashioned, naive, optimistic, whatever you want to call it. He put too much trust in people and didn’t understand the way the world actually worked. He was too busy trying to reconstruct the past, living in those books of his. But books didn’t do him any favors, did they?”
“So, is that why he died? Nobody liked him so you had him killed?”
Griffin gripped a fist on the table and stared coldly at the honey on the spoon.
“Look, kid,” the man said sharply. “I let you into my home because I found your guts to follow me here amusing. If you start accusing me of murder…”
“No,” he stuttered. “I didn’t mean—”
“And not everybody hated your dad, by the way.”
Griffin unclenched his fist and gave him an expectant expression.
“There was a girl on our team,” he explained. “Her name was Sarah. Beautiful woman. She always looked out for your dad. She listened to his stories and paid attention to every little thing he would point out on an expedition.”
“What happened to her?” he asked hopefully.
The man looked down to his hands and sighed. Then he reached out and took the stick of honey from him.
“I guess you could say she ended up a lot like your dad.” He walked over to his sink and began rinsing the honey off the spoon in methodical swipes. “People that work for the government or any branch of it aren’t supposed to have children.”
“Are you saying she’s dead?”
He turned the facet off and stared down at the spoon. “No. I’m saying that’s why your father is. You were never supposed to exist.” He shook his head, mumbling, “Thought you would have been able to put two and two together.”
“So it’s my…” he stared at his empty hands and shook his head. “It’s my fault then?”
The man turned from the sink.
“Go home kid,” he said with the barest whisper of remorse. “Cry about it tonight. Wipe your eyes in the morning, and then forget about it. If you want revenge from the government, you can’t get it.”
Griffin stood up from the table in a trance. All these years he had thought that his father had died because of an unfortunate accident, a malfunction in an oxygen mask. That maybe the government had given him a light scolding for having a child and had left it at that. But now—now he realized his death was on him. If he had never been born, then his father would still be alive.
Without saying a word to the man, he rushed out of his kitchen and through his front door. When he plunged out of that building and onto his bike, he didn’t know where he was going. He knew he didn’t want to do what the man had said and go home. Home was empty right now. Home only held the promise of a room full of tormented thoughts. He couldn’t go back there.
It was half an hour later when Griffin knocked on the door to apartment number forty-three B. He knew he looked a mess, but he figured that Melissa probably liked that. And with the news that he just received, he knew she would be the only person that could make him forget.
When the door finally opened, he nearly moaned in disappointment at finding Saturn at the door. Her name brought back bad memories of too many drinks on a spinning wheel.
“Hey, it’s bird man,” she said, wiping the back of her hand across her eyes and stepping aside. Her voice was pinched with sadness as she tried to put on a cheery face. “Come on in!”
He took a fragile step inside the apartment and looked around. He tried to avoid looking at Saturn’s face. He was certainly no mind reader, but even he could tell tha
t she had been crying before he knocked on the door. “Uh, is Melissa here?” he asked.
She sniffed and brushed her black hair out of her eyes. “Nah,” she said lightly, shaking her head. “It’s just me here right now.”
She walked over to the couch in the front room and glanced back at him as if asking him to follow her. He cleared his throat and scuffed his shoe on the ground. He wanted to ask her where Melissa was, but he knew that would have been rude when she was clearly dealing with issues of her own. Though he didn’t really know this girl and therefore didn’t owe her anything, it would still upset Melissa if she found out that he had been rude to her roommate.
Taking a seat a few safe feet away from the couch, he asked, “Is, uh… is everything alright with you?”
Saturn quickly nodded her head, pursing her lips together in a tight line to keep them sealed shut. However, her act didn’t last long before she shook her head no and reached a hand up to her mouth to stifle her crying.
“Oh!” Griffin exclaimed, painfully ignorant of what to do. “T-that’s alright.”
She shook her head harder and strained out the words, “Five years. My little girl would have been five years old.”
He leaned forward in his chair, clasping his hands in front of him. “I’m sorry?”
She swiped a hand across her nose and looked over at him with puffy red eyes. The smallest amount of high quality black eye-makeup leaked down her cheeks, reminding Griffin of a costume mask he had once found in an Expedition Depot.
“Six years ago today I had a level one termination over at…” she couldn’t finish her sentence as she began crying into her hands again. When she stopped, she shook her head, saying, “I don’t know why I’m telling you this.”
Griffin was about to suggest that he go, when she started talking again.
“It had been six o’clock at night, and I went to work right afterwards. It was over so quickly.”
Her back shook with her sobs, and he looked around helplessly.
