by Natalie Reid
“Go!” she said, shoving him forward.
Before the agent could see her face, she quickly spun around and started walking in the opposite direction as Alex. She could hear both men’s footsteps. They intersected, and Alex turned the corner, just a few yards from freedom.
“Hey, excuse me,” the agent suddenly called out. “What’s—”
She didn’t give him a chance to finish his question as she started to break out into a run. She dashed down the corner and could hear him running after, his steps hindered by the object in his hands.
Checking the doors of the hallway, she finally found one at the end that was unlocked. She rushed inside and closed the door, looking out the small window on top. The agent rounded the corner but slowed down when he realized he couldn’t see her. He glanced in the first room on the right, and then moved to the one on the left.
Jessie came away from her door and bit her lip in thought. She could go out right now and try to outrun him. But if she went any further through the basement, she would surely run into other agents. And if she tried her luck with running straight towards him, she ran the risk of setting off whatever was in the box. The man in the room had warned that it could kill if it wasn’t held properly.
An idea struck her, and she took out the tablet that she had stolen off the unconscious agent. The idea she had wasn’t a very good one, but she had to try it before she risked her life. Thinking back to that night she had broken into Ritter’s apartment, she recounted his number and dialed it into the tablet.
When the line clicked, Jessie quickly whispered out, “Ritter, it’s me. I don’t have time to explain, but I need your help.”
“Are you racking out of—”
She ignored him and continued. “In five seconds I’m going to need you to yell at me. Scold me for not being in full uniform and for trying to hide from you. Three seconds now.”
She didn’t know if Ritter responded, for she took the tablet away from her ear and stole a peek outside. The agent was still checking doors. She turned back to the tablet and hit the button for the speaker. There was silence. If Ritter didn’t do this, she would need to get ready to run.
“You’ve gotta be racking out of your mind, if you thought you could hide from me!”
Jessie let out a sigh of relief. On the phone, Ritter continued.
“Out of uniform is one thing, but you just racked yourself trying to run!”
Jessie took a peek out of the door’s window. The agent outside had stopped. He shook his head at his folly, glanced almost sympathetically at her door, and then turned around and started for another hallway. She closed her eyes and rested her back against the door in relief. Ritter was still yelling through the line. Without giving him a word of thanks, she hit the button to end the call, and stuffed the tablet back in her pocket.
When she finally rejoined Kurt and the others, they said little and asked only if she had been followed. She shook her head no and began to take off her stolen Task Force shirt. Bending down, she lifted the tarp away from the two men, but stopped when she saw what was hiding underneath. Both agents’ faces were bruised, bloody, and swollen. They had certainly not been like that when she had left them.
She looked back up to Kurt, silently demanding an explanation.
“They woke up,” he told her simply.
She forced herself to turn back to the brutalized faces, and suddenly felt very sick. She was a part of this, she told herself. In order for her to do her job, these men needed to be beaten. And for what? So that they could discover that they still didn’t know where The Thirty were being held? How was this justice?
She reached out and gripped the shoulders of one of the men, gently turning him on his side so she could slip his shirt back on. His head lolled back and forth like a limp weight as she did this, and she couldn’t help but stare at the purple lumps covering his face—a token from the Resistance. She wondered if the man she was looking at had known what he was in for when he signed up for this. Did he plan to use his position to get rid of his enemies? Was he just another agent like Ritter, manipulating and bullying until he got what he wanted? Or was this someone that thought that being a Task Force agent meant saving people from Bandits?
Her thoughts brought her to Aaron. He had once confessed to her that, if he hadn’t planned on joining the military, he would have become an agent so that he could help people like the agent that had helped him when his mother had given into the Bandit.
Jessie gulped down hard and got to her feet. She grabbed a bottle of water from her jacket pocket and greedily guzzled it down. Her eyes immediately returned to the men. If things were different, the face of the young man below her could have belonged to Aaron. She wouldn’t have known the honesty and kindness behind his uniform. She would have allowed him to be beaten, not knowing the person she was hurting.
On the walk back to Bunker City, she didn’t utter a word, letting her thoughts eat at her like acid eroding metal. She began to realize why these three other men said so little. They did the dirty work of the Resistance. They were the ones willing to cross the line between the justified will of the oppressed and the gray zone where right and wrong became almost relative. That’s what irked Jessie so much. There should be nothing relative about it. Right should have been right, no matter what. But her thoughts kept coming back to those two men. When they woke up, they would think about the people that did this to them. They would clean their wounds and put ice on their bruises and say that the people that did this were ruthless criminals. Jessie, Kurt, Liam and Alex—they were the bad guys. And what did they have to say otherwise? Just a futile trip down to a basement and one more check off a list of hiding places. It didn’t seem like much proof of innocence to her.
The next day, she came back out with them again. She wanted to tell Kurt that she wouldn’t do it anymore, to tell him that she didn’t agree with how he did things, but her mind went back to her mom and those thirty people that were undergoing who knows what behind closed doors. If she didn’t help find them, each day longer in captivity could mean another day of torture. A few bruised cheek bones and bloodied lips had to be worth the price of ending that.
So she followed them out of the dampness of their cave and into the cold harsh climate of Aero City. Methodically they chose their victims and carefully impersonated them. They chose different entry points inside of Task Force headquarters, growing slightly bolder with each progressive day, yet still finding no trace of The Thirty. Each day more agents were sent home with bloody lips, and each night Jessie dumped a bucket of water over her head, trying to wash away their images. Even in her dreams she tried to convince herself that what she was doing was justified. She would see The Thirty in cages or on fire or on operating tables with their hearts exposed like hers once was, and when she woke up she would be ready to try again. The mystery of what could be happening to them seemed to fuel her even more, and proved to be stronger than the whispering voice in her head, telling her each morning that she wasn’t okay with this.
In that time, she had received a note from Ritter, saying that he wanted to meet up with her. He had chosen to meet at the bird statue during a time in the evening, when the sun would have gone down, and people would be walking home from work. When Jessie had returned from searching buildings in the business sector, she had to sneak right back out again.
As she walked through the dark streets towards the Expedition Depot, she found it took next to little effort to get around without being noticed. Officially the search for the Bandit Jessie was still underway. There were a few pictures of her face posted around the city, and Task Force still kept a visible presence. But she could tell they weren’t really trying. In fact, she got the impression that, if they spotted her, they might even turn the other way, hoping to keep the public scare up for a little while longer.
When she reached the side of the Depot where the statue stood, she saw a figure leaning on the wall next to it. Without saying a word, she walked toward
s him and leaned on the opposite wall. They were both in the shadows now, and could talk to each other safely without being overheard.
Ritter was the first to speak, asking, “You found where she’s being held?”
She nodded in reply.
Though his face was masked in shadows, she could sense his urgency. His hands jostled in his pockets, and his shoulders were tensed inward.
“Then get her out of there. You’ve had plenty of time to devise a plan.”
Jessie shifted her weight from the wall to her feet and cleared her throat. “You don’t understand. The situation is a bit more…delicate than that. I can’t just storm in and grab her.”
She knew she couldn’t tell him the truth. It wasn’t that she was afraid of hurting his feelings, of telling him that the daughter he longed for hated him and everything he stood for. What she was afraid of was that he would call the whole thing off if he understood how things really were.
“I don’t really care what you have to do,” he said. “If you have to kill every single person holding her captive. It doesn’t matter. Just bring her here soon, or I’ll make a trip up to your air-base and inform Captain Hender that his Lieutenant and one of his Sergeants have been using their spare time to help aid a wanted criminal. And then when I come back down, I’ll pay Tom a little visit, and ship him off to join the rest of The Thirty.”
Jessie tensed at his words. If he had to be shipped off to join The Thirty, that meant they weren’t nearby, maybe even outside the city. She remembered what Teresa had said about the box they had taken from the top of Division Bank. She had hinted that it might be receiving signals from outside the city. It was a scary thought. Aero City had been isolated from all other human contact for over a hundred years now. If someone else was out there, it would be huge.
“I’ll get her out, don’t worry,” she told him, hoping to draw attention away from the slip of tongue he had just made. Then again, Ritter had proven to be exceedingly cunning. It was possible he had said that just to throw her off track.
“You got five more days,” he said.
She nodded, but inside she was quietly groaning. She had no idea how she was going to convince Nel in five days to come up top with her to see her father. What was worse was that she knew it would be wrong to do so. No one should be left to the care of a murderer, least of all a young and fragile girl. She had to hope that she could think of some plan to trick him into telling her where her mom was, and then return Nel back to the Resistance. Double-cross Ritter. If there was a way to do it, she had to think of it fast.
Ritter stepped out from the shadows, coming closer towards her. “I’ve been hearing reports about a few of my men being attacked, knocked out and then waking up several hours later.” He paused. “You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
She took a step away from her wall as well, responding, “You put me down in the Resistance to bring your daughter back, not to be your spy.”
“You weren’t supposed to turn into their weapon either,” he growled.
“Unless you want me to get kicked out and lose your daughter forever, I have to do what they want,” she reminded him. “I think a few bruises on some men you don’t even care about are worth getting your daughter back.”
“Don’t push me,” he said, coming closer so that he was just a step away. “I’ve been very generous in the leeway I’ve given you. But if I think you’re trying to trick me or play me in any way, I’ll start taking it back. And you won’t like what happens when I do.”
Jessie bit her tongue and gripped her hands into fists to keep from lashing out at him. It took tremendous self-control not to hit him. She still woke up in the night, seeing Ben frantically gasping for air. It was Ritter’s scheming that had sentenced him to death. Now she found herself under Ritter’s thumb again. If he took anymore from her, she didn’t know if she would have the strength to take it.
“I promise,” she told him firmly. “You’ll get your daughter back.”
Finally he stepped back from her. “Five days,” he repeated. “In five days, at eleven o’clock at night, I’ll be waiting at the north entrance of the city. Bring her there, and then I’ll tell you how to find your mom.”
* * *
Vin strode through Task Force at an angry pace. He was far too busy for his own good. Whether it was Bandits, Resistance, or the incompetence of a new recruit, there was always something demanding his attention. Swinging his office door open, he marched to his desk and reached underneath for the bottle of Mercury’s he kept stashed there. Before he could raise it to his lips, a voice interrupted him.
“E-excuse me, uh, Commander Vin?”
His eyes darted sharply to the corner of his office. A new recruit was standing there, fidgeting with his fingers, keeping him from his one moment of solace. His face was a painful display of color, and it was obvious he had been recently beaten.
“S-sorry to interrupt sir, it’s just—”
“I would appreciate it if you could get to the point as quickly as possible,” Vin cut in. “And if I catch you stuttering again, I will give you something to truly stutter about!”
The recruit nodded in respect. “Yes sir. What I came to show you is this.” He took out his tablet and laid it on his desk. “Someone made a call with my tablet.”
“This is what you have to tell me?” he asked harshly.
“Sir, it was made when I was unconscious.”
Vin’s head perked up at that. He looked from the tablet to the recruit.
“It was Resistance, most likely,” the recruit continued. “And I know for a fact it was during the time I was unconscious, because I made a point of looking at the time when I woke up, to see how long I had been out. It wasn’t until today that I noticed the call in my logs.”
“And who was the call made to?” Vin asked.
The recruit stared at the tablet. The part of his face that wasn’t covered in bruises looked as white as a sheet. “That’s the thing. It wasn’t a very long call, and of course I have no way of knowing what was said. You know, if it was hostile or not.”
“Answer my question!” Vin demanded.
The man clasped his hands and nodded. He took in a breath before admitting, “Sergeant Ritter. The call went to Sergeant Ritter.”
Chapter 12
The Sakana
The small house on Aileron Street looked dark and unoccupied from far away. Most people living on the block ignored it as they walked past and never thought to look closer for hidden signs of life. But to the trained eye, they would be able to see the small indicators of recent movement. The snow that fell on the lawn was ruffled as if to cover up footprints, and the blinds of each of the windows were pulled shut.
When Jessie saw the house, her heart began to pound faster. She knew that Tom was held up inside. And there was a big chance that Denneck and Carver were inside as well. She almost didn’t want to go in. It would be so easy to point her feet in the other direction and go back underground. For once, the outside air was not a welcome reprieve from the enclosure of Bunker City. Now it felt harsh and uncertain, as if it blew in from a distant land.
But she didn’t turn around. She knew that the people inside deserved to know she was alright. And seeing Tom again didn’t sound so bad, even if her stomach would twist into violent knots at the sight of him…at the memory of his kiss. She tried hard to forget about what had happened the last time she saw him. All she wanted, she told herself, was to see his face and to know that he was alright.
Slipping to the side of the house, she saw a small balcony extending from the second-floor. The balcony was only as wide as the door that led into the house, and a few more feet in length. No light escaped from the cracks of the door, but the moon shown bright enough so she could see a figure sitting on the ground with their back pressed up to the railing of the balcony.
Jessie ran quickly from the bottom of the house, grabbed the top ledge of a bottom window, hoisted herself up, and then
grabbed onto the bottom railing of the balcony. With one more final effort, she swung over the railing and dropped down into the landing with the quietest of thuds.
“Jessie?” Tom whispered from the corner.
He stood up and his chest rose and fell in a sigh of relief.
“Sorry if I scared you,” she whispered. She didn’t know if it was possible to feel any more nervous than she felt right now.
“Are you alright?” He didn’t come any closer to her, keeping his post at the side of the railing.
“I’m fine. I just came to check on you.”
He nodded and then walked over to the door. He waved her inside, and she reluctantly followed. She would have preferred to stay outside, but she realized that if they stayed there, they ran the risk of being seen.
The room he led her into was a bedroom. The bed looked modest and comfortable, and a few pieces of furniture were placed around it for comfort. The walls were a soft wooden color, the furniture a deep red, and everything about the place epitomized the home of a peaceful family. She studied the objects of the room, wondering to whom they belonged and the story that went behind each one.
“We should move to the other room,” Tom said, gesturing to the door leading to the hallway. “There are too many windows here.”
She wordlessly followed him out, aware of the distance he kept between them, and came to another room. This one had only one window, its shades pulled so tightly shut, they almost looked glued together. There was a table in the center with a map and a computer, and off to the far wall was a bookcase, filled with more printed books than she had ever seen.
“Are you sure you’re alright?” Tom asked, drawing her attention back to him.
He was quiet as he stared at her, and she found she couldn’t take it. She couldn’t lie when he was looking at her so sincerely. Slowly she shook her head no.
“The…the truth is,” she said, swallowing down the words. “I’m not so sure about what I’m doing. I…” She bit down on her lip and ran a hand through her hair. “I feel like I’m losing myself.”
