Space Invaders

by Amber Kell

  Somehow it never happened.

  Right. Somehow.

  I knew exactly why Armise and I danced around our orders and continued to seek each other out. I just didn’t like to acknowledge the reality of our continued, and blatant, insubordination.

  It was as simple as undeniable attraction. As complicated as an instinctual tether that should have been too theoretical and hokey for either of us to believe in, but that neither of us seemed to be able to free ourselves from. It was as base as the primal force of having your release gripped with a firm, commanding hand that straddled the line of agony, urgency and necessity. As existential as our one desperate claim to freedom in a life that was predetermined, years in advance, by men in uniforms who would never see the real-life implications of the orders they gave.

  Armise and I, in another world and another time, might have been inevitable. Inseparable.

  I just couldn’t imagine what that would even entail.

  Even after the disastrous standoff in the DCR, I’d been unable to deny him. And I couldn’t, I wouldn’t, regret one moment of that time. The hours—days?—spent with him hadn’t knocked me off the course of my life. I was steadily working towards my final mission. Step by coordinated step.

  Because nothing in my life would ever be more important than the mission.

  It was hard to think of anything else. I knew there were people in the world who, while survivors of the war, had never fought in it. I realised there were people who didn’t consider tactical arrangements when they left their house. People who had a home.

  People who had never killed.

  I didn’t understand that level of innocence still existing in this world. My morality had long been wiped away.

  Maybe that was another harsh truth of my relationship with Armise Darcan.

  He and I were searching for a connection to humanity that we would never be able to rediscover. Because it had never existed within either us.

  We were soldiers above all else. Living, breathing weapons set loose on our targets.

  It wasn’t in either of our natures to give up.

  I’d fucked Armise more times than I could count, yet he’d never submitted to me willingly. He fought me for control every time.

  It was this fight that kept me engaged—no, addicted—too.

  I never sought him out. But just when enough time had passed for me to think that I had him out of my system, he would find me, like wildfire blazing through my front door and burning my resolve to ashes. I would use his body to wipe all sense from my brain and we wouldn’t stop until both of us were sated enough to remember this could never happen again. But it always did.

  And our encounters were quickly becoming too frequent, moving too close to the emotion of need, for me to deny that our relationship was still only about release.

  Never love though.

  Even the thought of it made me want to burst out in hysterical laughter.

  That emotion didn’t exist in our world.

  Armise caught my eyes across the arena and I kept my expression disinterested and clinical. He sneered until all I could read on his face was contempt. One thing had always been clear between Armise and me—no matter how much time we spent in each other’s beds, in competition and in battle we were enemies. There was no middle ground.

  I scowled and tipped my head back in a greeting of sorts. Armise’s lip turned up in disgust and he put his back to me.

  The press corps went unnaturally quiet and I worried that my emotions had played too obviously as Armise and I postured, but then I noticed that the entire arena had gone silent. The mass of people on the course and in the seats came to a halt and heads turned towards a figure descending the arena steps. The President of the Continental States had appeared in the stands.

  President Kersch’s physical appearance gave no indication of the unassailable power he commanded in his seemingly delicate hands. He was a small man in stature. Middle-aged, greying, just on the cusp of paunchy. But I knew better than to be fooled by his innocuous image. And if I was reading the undercurrent of fear threading through the crowd well enough, everyone else saw through it as well. Or at least knew enough about his brutal reputation to understand that staying out of his focus should be their primary goal. It was survival instinct at its basest—the hunted recognised the hunter when he appeared in their midst.

  Everyone in the artfully designed range waited to see what the President would do, the silence spreading and dragging on for an uncomfortable amount of time. The President wasn’t oblivious to the stir he was causing. Everything he did was calculated to spread fear and keep his opponents guessing what he was going to do next. It was the only way he’d stayed in power for almost three decades.

  And not just as the leader of the Continental States. President Wensen Kersch was the also the commander of the Revolution. That an underground movement existed, completely separate from the formalised power structure, was the inevitable result of the Borders War.

  There were only five countries in the entire world. In response to that extreme consolidation of power, the Opposition had arisen almost a half century ago. The Revolution formed a decade later as counter to the aristocratic inclinations of the Opposition. In other words, class warfare.

  Some things in human history never changed.

  Then there were the Nationalists. People who were the most vested in seeing the five countries remain in control of their territories and keep their citizens under strict rule. Of course, most Nationalists also tended to play the ambitions of Opposition and Revolution against each other.

  Opposition, Revolution, Nationalists. It felt like no one had a true loyalty to any one of them—country, people or ideology. My life had been about orders, as long as I could remember, and I was confident in where my loyalty was owed. Not only that, but also what ideals I fought for.

  I didn’t understand the wringing of hands. Those who couldn’t take a side in the War—even if we were in a truce.

  And I knew the President had no doubt in his own path either.

  President Kersch didn’t react outwardly to the absolute stillness filling a building crammed with athletes, coaches and press. Instead he took a seat on the stands and talked with a man at his side, an aide most likely from the simple grey suit he wore. The President threw back his head and laughed, the high and tight sound ripping through the chemically cleaned air. The sharpness of the sound made people jump and served to set everyone’s nerves on greater edge.

  No one knew what to expect when the President made an appearance and this time, only hours away from the start of the first Olympic Games in over three centuries and the first major public gathering since the treaty, they appeared to be even more unsure. President Kersch’s gaze slipped past the man at his side and went to me without hesitation. He dropped his chin in a quick nod and, just as abruptly, went back to speaking with his aide.

  Armise’s words from weeks earlier rushed back to me. They’re too wrapped up in pomp and circumstance to notice us. We’re a decoration, Merq. Nothing more.

  No. Armise was wrong. He didn’t know this President the way I did. President Kersch had survived this long because he didn’t rely on any one person to protect him or his agenda. The President knew everything that happened within the boundaries of his country. He was either in control of every moving piece or aware of where they were headed next. There were no decorations in President Kerch’s world, only pawns at the ready to serve his interests. That the leaders of the five countries controlled every aspect of our lives was the harsh truth of our world, whether we wanted to acknowledge it or not.

  If I’d been at all unsure about my mission, dread would have started to creep through me at the President’s unscheduled appearance and his public recognition of me. But I’d never been more sure about what I was meant to do.

  The President lifted his head again, searched the packed room, and smiled when he saw who he was looking for. The smile—thin, crooked and otherworldly—le
eched any last pretences of the President’s humanity away. “Armise Darcan,” he called out over the silence. The President’s tone was neutral, hovering on bored.

  My stomach dropped from anticipation. I took in a ragged breath. This was the next moving piece that needed to fall into place for me to end up the sole front-runner for that bullet. But I couldn’t have anticipated that President Kersch would pick Armise for this role.

  Armise shouldered his rifle instead of leaving it with his coach. It was a small act of defiance, but enough to make his point.

  This President wasn’t his.

  Armise sauntered towards the stands, his steps slow and unaffected. His eyes gave nothing away. But I could see the slight tic in his jaw, nearly hidden by his greying beard, and I knew he was nervous. That tic was Armise’s only tell. It was the same one that had told me it was time to attack when we’d met last in battle and he’d ended up with one fewer finger.

  The crowd didn’t clear for Armise. He had to manoeuvre around the slack jaws, bated breath and downcast eyes of those occupying the space between him and the President. The guards unlatched a door on the field level allowing Armise to climb into the stands. He took the time to nod to both of the guards as he passed by without handing over his weapon. It was exactly what I would have done were I in his place. And for the briefest of moments I felt a connection to Armise that was more than an all-consuming need for release.

  I saw the soldier in him and respected that.

  The President didn’t stand when Armise approached him. He beckoned Armise with a waved hand, and Armise bent at the waist, putting his ear almost to the President’s lips. From my vantage point I could no longer see the President’s face, just the profile of Armise as he listened.

  Armise dwarfed the President. The guards that surrounded the States’ leader shifted uneasily, watching Armise with careful eyes. With one word they would be on him, but Armise didn’t look threatened. Emotions only I could recognise played across Armise’s face—a tipped lip of curiosity, his almond-shaped eyes wrinkled with focus.

  The President gesticulated, and Armise stood stock-still. After a long moment—the room eerily silent and with every eye transfixed to the conversation happening in front of us—Armise breathed deeply and started to laugh.

  A low, guttural chuckle.

  Genuine.

  I knew it was real because I’d heard that same laugh only once before.

  And that was when my gut clenched.

  Chapter Five

  Seventeen years ago—Year 2541

  Bogotá

  Armise and I met through the eye of a rifle scope.

  I was eighteen years old. A Peacemaker new to the war but not new to death. I was shipped off to the front lines in the American Federation with the assignment to locate and eliminate the general who had just taken over operations for the continent.

  I wasn’t part of a team. I had little to no communication with my superiors and handlers. But that didn’t matter. I was confident in my tracking ability. I knew the language, and not yet as muscled as I would become, I could disappear into the ranks of soldiers who were waterlogged and on the verge of exhaustion. The AF was on its last legs. It had taken almost everything they had to drive the United Union forces from their sodden continent. But the analysts had learned the new general wanted to make a push into the Continental States territory. It was my job to make sure he never got around to giving the order.

  I was transported into the cloud-covered mountains outside of Bogotá. It took me only hours to locate the safe house where the general was holed up. Watching his routine, to make sure it matched up with the background information I’d been given, and finding a suitable place to set up my sniper rifle, took more time than locating the man had. Not even twenty-four hours later I lay on the top of a crumbling concrete building in the heart of the war-ravaged city, my respirator filtering the errant clouds of Chemsense that drifted down from the mountains, ready to push the button on a shield disruptor and fire my sonicbullet. It would only take one shot directly to the heart or brain to explode either organ and leave the general’s body whole but irreparably damaged. There would be nothing to outwardly mark the violence inside.

  But fate had other plans for me. No. Technically, Armise Darcan had other plans for the general and me.

  I was doing one last sweep of the area—a fading neighbourhood on the outskirts of downtown—preparing to set off a shield disruptor, when I heard him.

  A deep, confident rattle of laughter that shattered the silence of the dark city.

  I put my eye to the scope and scanned for the source of the sound. It took me only seconds to train my sights on him. He was less than two hundred metres away, set up on a rooftop almost directly across from me. How long he’d been there or how I’d missed his presence until this pivotal moment I didn’t know. Even though I didn’t know who he was, every instinct within me recognised him for what he was—a soldier, a sniper and a threat to me and my mission.

  Even then he was massive. Broad-shouldered, muscles flexing as he subtly shifted his aim. I’d never forget the image of his silver-blue eye, magnified in the scope, trained directly on me as his finger went for the trigger. I rolled without thinking, moving out of position, surrendering my shot to the silver-eyed man. His sonicbullet whizzed over my head, the blast whining past my ear, so close that I could feel the sound waves against my skin. Even then I was faster than him. I didn’t see him take the shot that eliminated the general, but I heard the chaos that followed.

  That general should have been my first kill as a Peacemaker.

  Instead Armise Darcan claimed another life and almost took mine.

  It would be another year before I found out who he was. Three more years before he kissed me for the first time.

  I’d now known him for almost half my life.

  Armise and I had met through the scope of our rifles and sometimes I wondered if that was also where we’d end.

  In other moments, like this one, with Armise’s laughter rumbling through me like an aftershock, I was sure of it.

  * * * *

  The President finished speaking and Armise stood, his shoulders snapping proudly back, drawing himself up to his full intimidating height. He found me in the crowd immediately, as if he was always aware of where I was. A dangerous grin stretched across his scarred face. That was when my anticipation moved into dread.

  The President quickly moved on to other tasks. He stood, glanced past Armise as if the behemoth next to him didn’t exist now that their conversation was finished, and moved up the stands, stopping to greet other dignitaries. The whole encounter had taken less than five minutes, but in that time I’d gone from a front-runner to prey and everyone knew it.

  The press corps swarmed Armise as soon as his feet touched the arena floor. They asked him what the President had said to him. Why he appeared so confident.

  I was forgotten in the rush.

  I’d known this moment was coming, but it didn’t make it any easier. The President wasn’t going to kill me outright. That solution was too suspicious even for a man as powerful as the President. Not devious nor cruel enough. He was going to have me beaten into submission, my fingers crushed, so there would be no way I could fire the first bullet. That he was choosing Armise to take the power from my hands was fitting in more ways than I could count.

  Throwing Armise into the mix was going to make my mission that much more difficult. My own President had just publicly turned his back on me. But it only made sense. If rumour was true, I was the hired gun of the Opposition. The same Opposition seeking a permanent end to the President’s rule and hoping to deliver a fatal blow to the Revolution.

  And, unfortunately for the President, the rumour was true.

  I just hadn’t expected for Armise to be the one standing between my target and me. Or expected him to be so gleeful at the prospect.

  But it was a scenario I was more familiar with than not.

  Armise ignored
the press as they crowded in against him seeking a soundbite. He crossed the space between us in wide, determined steps, his uniform showcasing a body that projected strength and dominance.

  For a moment all I could think of was the taste of sweat on his skin when he’d showed up unannounced in my room last night. The curl of my fingers into hard muscle as I dragged him close, thumbs digging into that defined line that ran from his waist down to his uncut cock. His hot breath at my neck while he demanded that I fuck him.

  To hold that power in my hands, to challenge it, consume it and have control over it, was my addiction. One that I knew was killing me, but I hadn’t been able to combat. And with my death only hours away, none of that mattered anymore.

  Armise’s black hair was slicked back, his beard neatly trimmed and professional. The grey streaks in his hair and beard glinted against the arena lights. His eyes were bluer today than I’d ever seen them, reflecting back the cobalt panels of the People’s Continent of Singapore, as if he had been born to be inexorably tied to that country.

  I watched the President stop in the stands to greet the Premiere of Singapore—the leader Armise was sworn to protect. Armise noted the exchange, too, and stopped to recognise the Premiere. He took the sonicrifle from his shoulder, placed the stock next to his right foot in the at-ease position and then bowed deeply. Both the President and Premiere acknowledged him with a nod.

  The press corps swarmed around Armise like a hive around its queen—at a respectful distance that recognised the power before them. He handed his rifle over to a trainer that appeared at his side and disappeared just as quickly. I was thrown when I didn’t notice the sign he gave to make that happen. I couldn’t afford to miss anything. Not now. Armise knew me too well. Knew my fighting style almost as well as he knew his own. If I was going to survive to complete my mission then I had to be stronger than him. Faster. Smarter.