by Amber Kell
Armise stared at where my right hand was curled around his bicep. His arms were massive and yet my hand could nearly circle around the muscle. I waited until I could hear Neveed’s heavy footfalls passing through the door before I asked Armise, “How long?”
Armise didn’t have to ask me to clarify. He knew I was asking how long he’d been working for the States. He stood stock still as he answered. “Since the DCR standoff.”
I sucked in a breath. Twelve years. He’d been my ally for twelve years. Of everything today, this moment was the first where I struggled with what to say next.
I stared at him for a minute that dragged on even though I knew I was wasting time. There was just too much I wouldn’t know until this was all over. When we could finally be alone again. And knowing the hell we were walking into, Armise and I probably wouldn’t have a chance to be alone for weeks. Possibly months.
If we survived that long.
Suddenly I ached to go back in time. For it to be last night, when he had his arms wrapped around me and the world wasn’t falling apart around us. Regret was not an emotion I was familiar with and one that I quickly decided didn’t suit me well.
I dropped my hand from his arm and turned my back on him. It had been years since I’d worried about exposing my back to him. Which for some reason, my teetering sanity being the most likely culprit, I found very funny. I chuckled loudly. My laughter was tinged with nerves, more pressure release than happiness, and the oddest thought struck me.
I turned and pointed at his left hand where my escape from that standoff in the DCR was forever marked. “Did you start working for the States before or after I chopped off your finger?”
Armise held up his hand and grinned. “Before.”
Shit.
My laughter was cut short and disappeared into the blackness surrounding us. We were left with silence.
I remembered the aftermath of that standoff. Of the people who had taken me in and given me medical treatment that had saved my life. The same people who had ensured I made it back to the States alive, with the infochip in my possession.
I remembered that vision of a bandaged hand, caring for me after my collapse in the desert. A vision I had been sure at the time wasn’t real.
“It was you who got me out,” I whispered.
“Barely,” Armise ground out.
I could tell there was more to that story. A story we didn’t have time to discuss.
I ran my fingers through my hair. My body was a ball of exposed nerves and anxious energy.
I hated not being fully informed. How much more was there that I didn’t know?
Armise started to walk away again, but I couldn’t let him go yet. My next question burst out of me without thought. “How did they know you would turn?” I called after him, certain that it had been Neveed or one of the Revolutionaries who had recruited him.
Armise’s jaw ticked and I could tell he was considering lying to me. But then he scratched at his beard and his face softened. “Because I came to them.”
I furrowed my brows and played with the ring in my lip.
I came to them…
His confession blasted a path through my ears and into my brain, shorting out the electric flashes—receptor to receptor, synapse to synapse—that should have interpreted Armise’s words into something that made sense.
Armise ducked his head down and closed the space between us in two steps that put him chest to chest with me.
I wanted to ask how much had been real between us, and how much had been manufactured. But I already knew the answer. He lifted my chin, his silver eyes washed out, reflecting the whites of the light in the tunnel. To anyone else they would be unreadable, but I could see it all.
There were words said between us. Ones that were unspoken but unmistakable. And I knew why I’d grown to trust him.
Because I could.
Armise leant forward and kissed me, softer than he ever had before. It was jarring. Familiar and yet unexplored territory.
And then he spoke two words that made my stomach drop, even though I’d known for most of my life they were coming.
“It’s time.”
Chapter Ten
The roar of the crowd was deafening, even behind the thick glass separating me from the festivities outside. Over five hundred thousand people filled the stadium where the Opening Ceremonies were being held. Residents of each country gathered together peacefully in one place for the first time in over three centuries.
The excitement from the crowd was palpable—like that split second moment of a sonicrifle charging, subatomic particles coalescing, just before it popped. But instead of diffusing in one sharp blast, the energy of the stadium built, layer by raucous layer, as each voice clamoured to be heard, to give sound to emotions that had been suppressed for too long. Or maybe oppressed. I couldn’t be sure anymore.
The sky above the glass ceiling of the stadium shone brightly with stars and the fat roundness of a golden moon distorted by wisps of the pollution haze. The night outside the stadium was quiet. Still.
The images broadcast by the press corps on screens in the stadium showed celebrations across the globe. People congregated on streets to watch this historic moment.
When the image flipped to the States, to the areas surrounding the government buildings and the Olympic Village, the streets of the capital were conspicuously bare.
The commentators remarked on the citizens hunkering down, preparing for yet another electrical storm.
I could read the expanse above the stadium and know they were lying. There would be no storms rolling through the capital tonight—at least not from the sky.
Since Armise and Neveed had brought me up to speed, I couldn’t tamp down the surety that there was more I wasn’t being told. More that was actively being hidden from me, for reasons I wasn’t privy to. The part of me that was a soldier first accepted this reality without question. It wasn’t my job to know everything. It was my job to act when ordered.
But the part of me fixated on Armise—and this part was growing more demanding every day—wondered why Armise’s involvement with the States had been hidden from me for so long. I was sure Neveed was behind that decision, and not President Kersch. The history between Neveed and me was sordid at best since he was the first man I’d ever slept with and also the first man I’d ever beaten with bare fists. Then he’d been assigned as my handler—my mission as much his responsibility as mine—and everything between us had changed. I had no doubt that Neveed had kept Armise a secret just because he could.
I narrowed my eyes and turned towards Neveed. “You shaved your head for me,” I mused, framing my words as fact instead of a question. I didn’t want to give him any room to evade me.
The head-shaving ritual was part of this faith. An ancient mourning practice that came from his ancestors, from a country no one in his family had resided in for generations. And yet Neveed held onto those beliefs and traditions.
Neveed ran his palm over his head as he nodded, looked around to make sure no one was listening. “I didn’t trust that Armise would come through.” He hesitated. Cleared his throat. “I still don’t.”
My anger flared. “And so you think of me as already dead,” I bit out.
Neveed shook his head. “No. I pay respect for your willingness to give your life.”
I crossed my arms. “What aren’t you telling me about him?”
Neveed waved off my blustering tone. “You wouldn’t listen to me even if I told you. You’re blinded by him. Make it out of this alive and we’ll talk. I’ll show you what I know. Yes, I kept Armise’s involvement secret from you, but that wasn’t solely my choice.”
I gave a guttural huff of displeasure.
I understood, or at least thought I could understand, the reasons for Armise keeping his allegiance hidden from me. We, Armise and I, were still in the midst of active negotiations. We had been for over thirteen years. Circling around each other. Touching. Tasting. Testing.
To admit his loyalties out loud was to lose his strategic advantage. So Armise had waited until outing himself was inevitable. If I had been in his place I would have done the same.
Either way, now that I was standing metres away from that real bullet, looking out at the Olympic torch that soared, unlit, above the stadium, I felt like I had when I’d woken up in the hospital after the DCR standoff—I had a mission to complete and I needed to move.
I was in a holding area separate from the athletes who were parading through the arena. The sergeant who’d given me the spreading purple bruise on my jaw was glaring at me from his position in front of the set of one-way mirror doors leading into the stadium. He hadn’t said a word since I’d walked in with Neveed and greeted the Olympic Committee members by name, my patented Peacemaker smile in full effect.
The Committee waited with me passing around drinks, talking loudly. An air of victory filled the room. Of celebration. The twelve Committee members wore lavish coats and gowns that had to cost more than most citizens made in a lifetime, and spoke openly about the fight against tyranny as they sipped on kettleberry cocktails in glasses made of thinly chiselled stone.
Their arrogance could only be matched by the spectacle I saw building outside on the field.
The stadium was garish. Too bright. Colourful. Gaudy.
A distraction.
And just as Armise had said, we were the decoration.
The opening ceremony venue was a show of elitism and impropriety. A visual example of everything wrong with our world today. The stadium itself could be seen for kilometres. The Olympic torch, if it was ever going to be lit, would be visible from the dronebots hovering just outside the planet’s atmosphere.
I overheard two Committee members commenting on their belief that the President was grandstanding. They spoke of his blatant flaunting of his power and the unassailable position of the States as the superpower. They condemned him for his immorality and lack of humility.
And they were right. But not for the reasons they chose to believe.
The President was mocking them and they didn’t even know.
I tried to look over the sea of athletes congregating on the field in areas cordoned off for their respective countries. The colours for each country swirled together as the athletes paraded for the gathered crowd. The cobalt blue of the People’s Continent of Singapore. The royal purple of the United Union. The emerald of the American Federation. The gold amber of the Dark Continental Republic. And the vermillion of the Continental States.
Five countries, five leaders. Two warring causes. One bullet to bring them all into a collision course.
Four hundred million citizens of the world standing in their way.
And me, with one breath, one bullet, sending them careening into each other.
I knew what type of rifle they were giving me. The Committee had sent a message to Neveed to make sure I was prepared before I entered the holding cell. As if there was any doubt. They’d chosen a gun I was more than proficient in. It was a Winchester rifle built in 2058. One that I’d practised on countless times in my life. In fact, the first real gun I’d ever fired.
The bullet inside this gun wouldn’t be the standard .22 calibre. The Committee had ensured it would be loaded with a specialised explosive hollowpoint. More cannon than rifle in its power to destroy. There would be no question to the intention of my shot. And no escape for my victim.
“We’ve been waiting a long time for this,” a voice at my shoulder stated.
“As have I,” I answered, turning towards Ahriman Blanc, the Chair of the Olympic Committee and the Opposition’s second in command.
He was dressed in the traditional uniform of the States—vermillion jacket and trousers with yellow piping. The stars and bars on his left shoulder proclaimed his rank as General. It had been Ahriman who had personally recruited me ten years ago as a double agent for the Opposition when the treaty was formally signed. And like the press corps, being in Ahriman’s presence unsettled me, no matter how much time I spent with him. He was emotionless, his eyes a black void that missed little and gave up none of his secrets.
“Indeed,” he mused as he took a drink from a champagne flute that looked too delicate in his talon-like hands.
“Any last-minute instructions?” I asked.
“I think the desired outcome is quite clear at this juncture,” he responded.
I nodded.
“Anything new from Ying?” he asked casually as he sipped from the glass.
I’d been feeding the Opposition with information about the infochip and the person tasked with decrypting it since I’d turned double agent. That it was false intel, misleading cues supplied to set them in the direction the President wanted to steer them, was a source of personal pride for me. I was determined that even if we were unable to decode everything contained on the chip, the Opposition would never take possession of its secrets either.
I gave a forlorn shake of my head, drawing my lips into a frown. “Nothing,” I responded. “Ying is stuck. Whatever key we thought we had has only gotten us partway. Ying has only touched the surface of the data.”
“I’m beginning to think the chip may not be what we are looking for,” Ahriman noted.
“What else is there?” I asked. “All the paper records were destroyed. Electronic as well after the nuclear detonation.”
Ahriman shrugged. It was a gesture that appeared much too casual and familiar for his wire-thin, lanky frame in that perfectly pressed and buttoned-up uniform. “Perhaps that old knowledge is lost. It wouldn’t be the first time. We are, quite literally, unable to catalogue what we aren’t aware ever existed.”
Except we were, in a way. There had been thousands of years of documented history before the paper purge. Decades more of time that had passed before those targeted electromagnetic pulses had fried the servers housing the records of our shared past. That nothing had survived those two cataclysmic events, except the fabled infochip, seemed impossible to me.
And who was to say that individual citizens hadn’t spirited away with their own collections of what remained? What they could carry and conceal even under the threat of death.
At one time information had been produced at a rate that saw the collective knowledge of the world doubled every day. That this vast resource of human history and experience had been successfully wiped clean, in a brutal bid by the Nationalists to restart civilisation from equal footing, was nonsensical.
Knowledge didn’t cease to exist because it was no longer documented. And humanity didn’t have a default setting button.
People remembered. They shared. Wisdom passed from generation to generation on hushed lips couldn’t be silenced. No matter how powerful the Opposition became. They wanted to possess the infochip so they could control its almost bottomless well of information.
While the Revolution wanted to free it.
Real bullets would be our first line of defence, but knowledge would be the lasting one.
Ahriman stood at my side for a heartbeat more and then took another drink. I wondered what he was thinking about, and if he had any idea what my true intentions were when I let that bullet fly. But Ahriman was as unreadable as ever.
“We’ve left a gift for you on the rifle,” he said cryptically. But before I could respond he started to turn away. Then he stopped and spoke over his shoulder, loud enough for the other Committee members around us to overhear. “Your parents are safe, Merq.”
My blood froze and I couldn’t restrain the involuntary straightening of my spine or the fact that I was holding my breath.
Ahriman rested a hand on my right shoulder. “Is there a problem?” he coolly asked.
I steeled myself and returned the plastic smile to my face. “Of course not. I wasn’t aware you knew they were still alive. But I’m grateful you’ve offered them sanctuary.”
Ahriman raised an eyebrow. “Sanctuary,” he said as if he was considering the word. “I suppose that word fits
.” And with that he left me staring into the stadium, unblinking.
I didn’t have time to consider the overt threat of Ahriman’s words. The Opposition was holding my parents as insurance. And there was nothing I could do about it now. When I shot the Premiere instead of the President there was a good chance I was also ending their lives.
But the choice to save them had never been mine.
And I knew they would be willing sacrifices for the Revolution.
So I couldn’t worry, couldn’t grieve. Ahriman thought that by taking them he was buying my compliance. He couldn’t have been more wrong. He’d solidified my resolve. I wouldn’t allow the Opposition to grow in power.
The sergeant approached me, a scowl marring his face. “It’s time,” he said in a twisted mirror of Armise’s last words to me.
I ignored the expectant faces of the Committee and followed him to the glass doors. They were swept open in a flourish of music that assaulted my ears. The crowd cheered and waved flags. The athletes parted, revealing a blood-red carpet that led to the stage one hundred metres away. Flashes went off all around me and people reached out to touch me as I passed. But I couldn’t focus on anything besides the table looming in front of me.
I felt Armise’s eyes on me. As always. But this time it was different.
I didn’t know where he was in the crowd, but that didn’t matter. Despite Neveed’s misgivings, I knew Armise would be there when I needed him the most. I supposed a part of me had suspected that for a while now. Hope didn’t take hold in a void. I’d seen enough of it in those around me to know that much.
It was freeing to acknowledge that when I became the most hunted man on the planet, Armise would be there.
I was able to tear my gaze away from the rifle long enough to study the gigantic layers of rounded silver stages that appeared to ripple down the natural slope of the stands, like a waterfall over boulders or a rushing riverbed descending from the side of the stadium. In the middle of the elaborate arrangement, at least thirty metres in the air, the heads of the five countries were seated in oversized titanium thrones that were angular and sleek.
