That’s true. Most of our plan was suggested by me, and for the last week I have, now that I think about it, been the one guiding the plan, asking questions, trying to identify potential problems. But …
“That’s admin. It’s a lot different to being team leader on a life-and-death mission,” I say.
“C’mon, Blue. We’ll follow you.” Bruce thumps one beefy fist into the other, clearly eager for some action.
“No,” I say. My heart has started to beat faster.
“Jinxy, we need you to do this,” Robin says simply.
“Oh, puleeze. Here we go again,” Evyan sneers. “Everyone trying to pressure the biggest coward to take the lead.”
“I’m not a coward!”
“She’s the bravest person I know,” Quinn says fiercely.
“No, she’s not. She’s chicken-shit. Oh, she’s not afraid of facing guns and diseased rats and M&M’s, or risking her own life, but those things don’t actually scare her. She’s a complete coward when it comes to facing up to what does scare her stupid.”
“Oh yeah? And what’s that supposed to be?” I demand.
“Responsibility. Making decisions and living with the consequences,” Evyan says. “Guilt. It paralyzes you.”
My heart is hammering, my mouth is dry. I can’t think what to say, how to deny this. But she doesn’t wait for me to speak anyway. She steps up to me and looks me in the eye.
“You’re the most skilled fighter here. You’re the best-equipped to lead this team today, but … You’re. Too. Scared.” She pokes me in the chest on each goading word. “You’re afraid to call it in case it goes wrong, and then you’ll have to wallow in your self-serving, self-indulgent, miserable guilt again. I call that cowardly.”
I stand frozen, unmoving, unspeaking as her accusations strike to the core of me. No one else says anything either. The kitchen is so quiet that you could hear a rat’s whisker twitch. I look around at the bank of faces turned to me.
Bruce and Cameron don’t defend me. I remember our conversation in Neil’s backyard, when Bruce told me that my doing nothing was no guarantee that people wouldn’t get hurt. He’d used the same word as Evyan: chicken-shit. Cameron had said that my refusal to make a decision was a decision.
“Jinx, you’re not to blame for Dad. Or my arm. Or Sarge,” Robin says now, giving me a sad smile.
“It’s a kind of narcissism, or megalomania,” Neil weighs in. “You think you’re responsible for everyone else’s decisions and lives. But you’re not nearly as powerful as you think you are. We have our own minds and our own wills.”
Hot tears are brimming in my eyes. I look up pleadingly at Quinn. He’ll defend me. He loves me — surely he’ll rescue me from this?
But he loves me, so he doesn’t.
“We’re not fools. We know the risks. But we have enough faith in you to follow you,” Quinn says.
“On condition I don’t shoot?”
“No conditions. You do what you need to,” he says.
Well, that was unexpected.
“The truth is that you are a leader. It’s time to step up and own it.” His voice is soft, his tone infinitely gentle. But his words are implacable.
“Hah!” Evyan snorts derisively. “But she won’t. Because she’s cowardly and selfish.”
The words hit me like the one-two blows of a prizefighter.
Because they’re true.
I have been both cowardly and selfish. I’ve been too terrified to take action, to make decisions — real ones, ones which put people’s lives at risk — and take the lead. Because doing so means I have to take responsibility for how it all pans out. Even if it ends badly. I’ve always known I don’t want to hurt anyone, but ever since Dad died and I felt the pain of losing him, and saw how Mom and Robin suffered, I don’t want anyone hurt. In any way, by anyone, and especially not by me. I’ve thought that by not using my deadly skill and by retreating from the fight, I was protecting the ones I cared about. But that’s not true.
There’s no way to keep everyone safe. And not taking action, not embracing it, just because I’m afraid of making mistakes and feeling more guilt? That’s not wise, it’s weak. And it’s cowardly.
Less than a month ago, when Quinn came to fetch me from this shelter so we could go rescue Robin, I was clear on who the enemy was, certain about what I had to do, and confident about my ability to do it. But what happened to Robin and Sarge, and what Robin told me about Dad — all that guilt derailed me. I need to get back on track.
I dash a hand across my eyes and straighten my back, blow out a slow breath.
“Okay,” I say.
“Okay? You’ll lead?” Sofia looks surprised.
I nod.
Quinn and the rest look relieved, but Evyan, I notice, is wearing a sly, self-satisfied grin.
“It’s time to go. Everybody got what they need?” I say, and I’m pleased that my voice sounds clear and strong.
Sofia fetches the handmade signs that she and Quinn designed last night. Evyan grabs the long duffle bag filled with camera equipment, a lighting stand, a reflective photographer’s umbrella, the bipod for my sniper’s rifle, and extra magazines of ammunition.
Bruce and Cameron pat their concealed weapons. Cameron gives me a nod to indicate that he’s ready. Bruce slips an extra item into the slit he’s cut into one leg of his padded foam costume, then roars, “Hulk smash!” and pounds both fists on a nearby table.
“Yeah, that’s going to grow old real fast, moron,” Evyan says.
Robin and Neil check their pockets for the umpteenth time. They each have a small thumb drive loaded with the malware that we aim to upload into PlayState’s data center servers. In a few hours’ time, when the Go!Game goes live and millions of people download the new software, they’ll also be downloading a hidden virus intended to paralyze the game and to broadcast an announcement about what has truly been happening in The Game, as well as the truth about the plague — Quinn insisted on that. He’d said, “It’ll be a new kind of PSA — one that truly is in the interest of serving the public.” And it won’t end with the SEE-SAY jingle that encourages us to suspect and rat on each other.
Admitting that she had neither “the stomach nor the skills” for this fight, Beth has decided to sit it out at the shelter. She’s taking her new role as unofficial house-mother seriously and has grown very attached to the kids living here.
She’s serving milk and cookies to a cluster of her charges in the games room when I go to tell her we’re leaving. Carlos doesn’t lift his eyes from the cookies, but one of the younger girls gives an involuntary yelp when she lays eyes on me.
My choice of soul-harvester costume suddenly seems like an omen. A chill of premonition ripples through me. Lives may well be claimed today.
Will mine be one of them — or will I be doing the killing?
Chapter 34
Outfits
Go!Game!
Go Prez Hawke!
We ♥ The Game!!
“What do we want? The Go!Game. When do we want it? Now!”
We wave our signs and chant our cry in a bizarre Halloween pack outside the gates of PlayState’s headquarters, down the lane from ASTA. Despite the chill breeze, I’m feeling hot and stuffy in my robes and mask. The lenses of my spectacles are fogging up, the hairpins holding my bun in place are digging into my scalp, and the new shoes are starting to pinch. But it can’t be long now until Hawke arrives — we’ve already been going at it for over an hour since Neil dropped us off and then went to hide the van.
My pirate mops his face with a red handkerchief and mutters to me, “You think it’s going to work?”
Hell, no. I’m not sure of anything.
“It has to,” I say. “It’s the only plan we’ve got.”
The perimeter fence is as high as I remember, topped with razor wire and electrified strands. The gate itself is a heavy black palisade barrier that slides on a rail, powered by a gate motor on the inside of the fence. Surveillan
ce cameras mounted on poles inside the compound point in various directions. One is aimed at the gatehouse — where two armed guards control access to the compound — and the spot where the gate opens.
That camera is going to be a problem. I could take it out — it wouldn’t be a difficult shot — but if the monitor showing the video feed of the gate suddenly went blank in the security surveillance room, someone would surely come to investigate. And if they see it’s been shot, they’ll sound the alarm, and our mission will be over before it starts.
I borrow Quinn’s pirate spyglass. Inside the fake wood-and-brass housing, the telescope is real enough. I look back down the road. There’s still no sign of Hawke. I take another look at the camera aimed at the gate. It’s mounted on a screw-tightened, swiveling bracket. If only I had a paintball gun with a white paintball, I could splat it directly on the lens, and it would look like bird poop. There might not even be any immediate urgency to fix it. But today, our weapons and our ammunition are real.
Both guards emerge from their quarters and take up position at the gate.
“Y’all need to clear off, now,” says the one, a middle-aged man with a receding hairline and an expanding waistline.
“Yeah, they’re on their way,” says the other, a rat-faced woman with tightly curled hair.
“OOH-RAH!” Bruce shouts, sounding more like a marine than a comic character.
“Let the games begin,” Robin says.
“Go, go, Go-Go-Game! Go, go, Go-Go-Game!” the rest of us chant.
Quinn dances a little jig which makes his fake parrot wobble drunkenly.
I peer down the road through the telescope and see the approaching convoy.
“Here we go,” I say. “Three vehicles. I reckon the president’s in the middle one.”
“Come on, y’all. Move out of the way there!” The security guard flaps his hands at us, but all our attention is on the convoy.
Two black Chevy Suburbans with tinted windows come to a halt about ten meters away from us. A black van, also unmarked, pulls up behind them.
“What do we want? The Go!Game! When do we want it? Now!”
Bruce roars, Robin bounces, Sofia cackles, and Quinn pats his parrot. Beside me, Evyan flexes her fingers and rolls her shoulders, limbering up for what comes next.
Cursing the narrow eye slits of my death mask, I study the figures who emerge from the front vehicle. Two men and one woman walk toward us, their hands hovering cautiously near their holstered weapons. They’re secret service agents, members of the president’s own guard.
“Nailed the outfits,” Quinn whispers to me.
The agents are indeed wearing suits and shoes very like the ones we sourced from clothing suppliers on the net.
“We need more of them to get out,” I say, loud enough for our group of eight to hear. “We need six.”
“What’s going on here?” one of the agents demands.
“We want the new game!” Sofia says.
“We’re demonstrating in support of the Go!Game!” I say, trying to sound girlish and excited. It’s not hard because my voice is already high from nerves.
“You need to move off, all of you, so we can get past. This is an illegal gathering in terms of Emergency Regulation 2021.2.35.”
We laugh loudly at this and take up our chant again. Even Cameron joins in.
“Go, go, Go-Go-Game! Go, go, Go-Go-Game!”
The agent is visibly annoyed and more than a little perplexed. I don’t expect there’s a chapter in his how-to-guard-the-prez manual that deals with herding cats and Hulks.
“We want to see the president,” Sofia says. “We’ve got Halloween candy for him.”
“Just you stay well back, ma’am!”
The agent stretches out his hands to the side to block her way and, with the help of his colleagues, starts pushing us back and off the road.
I give Robin’s hand a squeeze, and he bounds off to the side, flanking the agents. When they spin to try to net him, Quinn runs in the opposite direction, calling, “Land ahoy!” Bruce can’t walk fast with his stiff leg, so he circles on the spot, adding to the mayhem by bellowing and beating his chest. Sofia ducks around the agents and runs toward the middle vehicle holding her basket in front of her and screeching, “Trick or treat! Trick or treat! We’ve got something good to eat!”
Before she’s taken more than a few steps, three more agents bail out of the Suburban and storm directly at her. One grabs her by the waist, thumps her to the ground and pats her down, checking for weapons, while another seizes the basket and examines the contents suspiciously.
“Hey!” I yell, lifting my mask up onto the top of my head. “Stop manhandling her, you brute.”
“Hulk smash!”
“Shiver me timbers!”
“Ow! What’d you do that for?” Sofia complains when she gets her breath back. “I just wanted to give President Hawke some candy, that’s all.”
“What’s in the basket, Wilson?”
“Just candy,” the agent who examined it replies. “Here” — he shoves it at Sofia — “get back with your friends.”
Complaining loudly about police brutality, Sofia gets to her feet and slowly retreats to where Bruce, Cameron, Evyan and I are. We keep moving as the agents close in and try to hustle us off the road. Robin bounds around and around in a way that’s got to be hurting his arm, and is pursued by an increasingly annoyed female agent. Cameron pretends to take up a guard position at the gate, yelling, “No game, no entry!” And I stalk about, swooshing my scythe in long arcs until the biggest agent snatches it out of my hand and flings it away. We create as much movement, noise and confusion as possible.
“Abracadabra,” Sofia cackles.
“The end is nigh. Death waits for no man!” I drone.
“Avast, me hearties! Stand and deliver!” Quinn shouts, and laughs maniacally, while Bruce, Cameron and Robin chant about tricks, treats and games.
And all the while, a meowing Evyan slips between us and the agents, circling them and pawing their lapels like a cat, moving from one to another in a graceful prowl.
Chapter 35
On the outside looking in
“Shut up!” the lead agent eventually bellows above our noisy commotion.
I turn my masked face to Evyan, and when she nods, I start backing up, and the others follow suit.
“We were just having some fun, dude. No need to freak out so majorly,” I say.
We allow the agents to propel us to the side of the road.
“Why are you kids out anyway? Don’t you know it’s not safe?” one of the female agents asks. She looks a little less fierce than her colleagues.
“Not safe!” Bruce roars. He walks stiff-leggedly over to the gate, grabs the bars and gives it a good rattle. Is he testing its weight?
“Hey, now. You stop that,” says the rat-faced guard. She unhooks the baton off her belt and tries to whack Bruce’s knuckles with it.
“We just wanted to be part of today’s big reveal,” Quinn says. “You know, the Go!Game launch and all? Today is going to be mind-blowing! Everything’s going to change.”
“You kids need to head off home,” the agent replies and adds, in a mutter, “Before I shoot you just to shut you up.”
“All right, all right,” I say. “Someone forgot to take his chill pill this morning.”
“Ma’am?” Sofia approaches the least-scary agent. “If you won’t let us present our beloved president with these Halloween treats, will you at least give them to him?”
“No way,” the agent says.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” her colleague snaps.
It would’ve been fun if they’d taken the candies, but we never expected them to. Our real targets are not inside the cars.
“Now are you lot going to back up, or am I going to arrest you for disturbing the peace, convening an illegal gathering, and jeopardizing the security of a government official?”
Mumbling and grumbling, we shuffle off the road. E
ach time we pause, the irritated agent gestures for us to retreat further. When he’s finally satisfied, all but two of the agents climb back into the Suburbans. The black gate slides open, and the convoy enters. We wave and shout supporting slogans to the middle vehicle as it passes by, but can’t see anything through the darkly tinted windows. It would have been great to have one of us slip in after the convoy, but the two remaining agents follow on foot, walking backward, all the while keeping their vigilant gazes on us. The gate clangs shut behind them.
“Did you get them?” I ask Evyan.
“Of course.”
I take the small black cloth bag she removes from around her waist, slip it under my robes and tie it around my own.
We groan and sigh in mock disappointment, huddle at the gate and crane our necks as if keen to catch sight of the president. The rat-faced guard walks up and down the gate, rattling her baton along the bars, seeming eager to smash some fingers. Sofia pulls off her witch’s hat, removes the false nose, and ruffles her black hair. Then she smiles sweetly at the other guard who — judging by the size of his paunch — is probably fond of candy.
“We were hoping to give these to President Hawke,” Sofia says, holding the basket toward him. “But they wouldn’t let us. Would you guys like some?”
“Well, now,” Big-Belly says, with a sideways glance at Rat-Face. “We’re not supposed to take food from outsiders.”
“Phhf, it’s not food. It’s just some Halloween candy.”
“Whatever it is, it’s not permitted,” Rat-Face says, and Big-Belly shakes his head sadly at Sofia.
Hulk sidles up to me and mutters, “We’re going to have to shoot them, Blue. Want me to do it now?”
“No.”
I’m not out of ideas yet. Somehow, we’ll get them to take the candy.
“Eh, look, it’s the president,” Rat-Face says, turning her back on us to watch as the occupants of the cars climb out. This would be a great moment to sneak Big-Belly a few treats unseen, but he goes to stand beside his colleague.
I peer through the bars of the gate using Quinn’s spyglass, examining the suited figures one by one.
The Recoil Trilogy 3 Book Boxed Set: Including Recoil, Refuse and Rebel Page 66
