by C. G. Watson
I finally had the chance to become Worthy.
And I wiped.
20.5
Mason tries to comfort me with soft words and kindness, but I won’t let her. She doesn’t know me—what a failure I am, what a worthless son, brother, friend.
I can’t even finish this one single mission without wiping.
Don’t follow me, I tell them inside my head. I don’t deserve a buff.
I shrug them off and head down the road alone.
21
I don’t make it very far.
Haze and Mason come trotting up, fall in alongside me, flank me like a couple of dps.
But I don’t want them here. I don’t even want to be here. I just wish I could discard my body on the side of the road like a dirty T-shirt and let whatever blip of energy is left inside me just dissolve into the cosmos.
I look around as we walk, try to absorb the magnitude of destruction from an earthquake that was powerful enough to wreak havoc across this kind of distance.
The sound of gravel and glass crunching underfoot fills the space around us. Bits and pieces of things that used to be whole, reduced to fragments insignificant enough for the three of us to walk on top of without giving it the slightest thought.
“That was weird back there,” Mason finally says. “With the bug trucks.”
Haze comes in, right on cue. “I know, right? We have bug trucks just like that back home.”
“No kidding?”
“Yeah. In fact, Tosh and I—”
But a low rumbling in the distance shuts him up before I can stop him from finishing the thought myself. The three of us spin in our tracks, disoriented as we watch and wait. I shade my eyes against the brightest part of the sky, but the rumbling just gets louder, cuts through the air like a machete-wielding psychopath. My heart drops into my feet, my feet bolt themselves to the road, and the road buckles and jolts beneath us as the military convoy we thought we’d fled back on that other map rolls into view in the distance.
“Shit,” Haze whispers.
By now we’ve walked far enough down the road that there’s nothing left to hide behind. We’re down to one option.
Crouch.
I’ve seen the crouch maneuver before, usually in movies or on TV—it always looks like an exercise in futility. But I challenge you to walk down a deserted highway in the middle of the Boneyard and have a convoy of paramilitary militia descend on you that would just as soon see you dead as breathing, and not crouch in the middle of the road.
It doesn’t end with the convoy, though.
The rumbling gets louder, more dissonant, and before we can sort out one sound from another, a swarm of Chinook helicopters sweeps the horizon, heading straight for us like a flock of militant blackbirds.
There are too many to count.
A vein of jagged, steely terror rips the length of my spine.
“The UpRising,” I say, at the same moment Mason says, “It’s the Showdown.”
Haze swings on her. “The Showdown?”
“I’m not even on that expedition,” I tell her.
“Yes, you are,” she says in a whisper. “You’ve been on it the whole time.”
I want to argue the point. I should know what battle I’ve been fighting, right? I mean, it’s my battle. But when she turns to me, her hair kicking up around her face under a Chinook-generated wind, all I can think about is how her eyes remind me of pictures of Earth taken from outer space: same shade of blue, filled with clouds and water.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” she says. “I did this. I never figured out how to stop it from coming.”
The words echo-stutter inside my head. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve told myself the same thing.
I watch as Mason uses her fingertips to wipe tears from under her eyes, and I ache to reach out, wipe the tears away for her so she doesn’t have to touch her own sadness. But I can’t. I can’t move, can’t speak, can’t help her, can’t comfort her, can’t think, can’t act, just like the day my mom left—I just stood there and watched the truck drive away and did nothing.
Mason shudders.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Haze says. “They’ll probably open fire any second.”
But I don’t budge. Instead I frantically dig around inside my coat pocket until I find the blackbird feather, run it between my fingers, wonder why it ended up on my Trade Screen in the first place. The only purpose that feather serves is a reminder. A terrible reminder of that one moment in time.
When the known ceased to exist.
“C’mon, Tosh!” Haze shouts as a swarm of Chinooks fills the sky overhead.
A message vibrates right through my back pocket. I can’t even be sure it’s Turk anymore, since I don’t seem to be raiding for UpRising now. I take it out, open the app to check.
“Tosh!”
“I’m coming!”
The worthy shall sacrifice the lamb.
A rapid-fire series of snapshots follows. Devin. The cockroach. A dead bird.
Holy shit.
Haze is right; we have to get out of here, fast.
But where? How?
By now we’re flanked on one side by a brigade of militia vehicles and on the other by a squadron of hovering Chinooks.
We’re trapped.
I tap Haze on the arm to get his attention since it’s too loud to even hear my own thoughts, show him the new message, hope he knows what it means. But all he does is wave for us to follow him. We start jogging down the highway. I’m sure we look ridiculous, trying to outrun both a massive paramilitary convoy and a fleet of dual-propeller helicopters.
The worthy shall sacrifice the lamb.
I’m dripping with terror and sweat.
The Chinooks have stopped flying and are now hovering above us, blanketing the entire area between us and the convoy. That is, until the lead chopper breaks away, threads a route back through the others, and begins to track us.
My panic meter shoots off the charts.
We bust into a sprint, ducking and weaving, even though I know damn well there’s no way to outrun a helicopter. But I also know we have to try, because the alternative to trying is giving up, and I can’t do that. I’ve failed so many times, lost so many breaks. . . . This could be the last chance I ever have to get this right.
The Chinook stays on our tail. It doesn’t corral us or block us by landing on the road; it just trails us for what seems like an eternity. In the distance, I can hear the exchange of rifle and mortar fire between the Humvees and tanks on the ground and the helicopters hovering above them. At least we managed to avoid that melee.
I feel like we just ran ten miles, but I bet it’s only a fraction of that. Still, it seems like I should be more winded than I am, more fatigued, on the verge of collapse. But I’m not. I’m full green and still running—probably on pure adrenaline.
It isn’t until we’re out of earshot of the gunfire that the helicopter begins dropping. It sinks lower and lower until it’s close enough to grab, and I’m seriously tripping out, darting all over the road while the three of us braid a line of confusion in one final, futile attempt to throw them off.
As the chopper lands in front of us, we try crouching again.
That’s when a trio of soldiers clad in black, gray, and purple camouflage piles out of the Chinook, sweeping their weps in a panoramic arc around us, their bowl-cut hairdos flapping in the wind.
My relief at seeing the commandos is so far off the charts, I swear I want to run up and hug them. But my elation is short-lived. There’s no glint of recognition on their part, no welcome committee, no “Thank you for getting things this far, Tosh,” no “We knew we could count on you.” No “You are Worthy.”
“Mason Emily Barshaw,” one of the soldiers calls out. “You are ordered to board this aircraft.”
“On whose authority?” Haze barks back.
The soldier goes max-red stance, and I glance over my shoulder, sure he’s about to
draw aggro and we’ll all get caught in the crossfire. “On the authority of—”
“That is classified information!” his comrade cuts in.
“On what grounds, then?”
“That is classified.”
I flick a nanoglance at Mason, who looks pound for pound as confused as I am.
I’m heading into a full-body sweat-shake.
“Who sent you?” she shouts over the noise, but the commando just waves us toward the chopper. “Let’s go! We can only hold ’em off for so long.”
Against my fear and better judgment, I push Mason toward the helicopter, where the other two commandos help us climb aboard. We lift off the second the last commando’s foot leaves the ground, speeding in the opposite direction of the raid raging a few miles behind us.
Mason swings toward the rifle-wielding soldier. “How did you know where to find me?” she asks. “How do you even know who I am?”
She has to shout over the noise inside the Chinook. Something about the rhythmic rotation of the propeller blades shakes me down to my bones.
“Your signatures,” he shouts back. His buddy flashes him a look of warning.
But Mason doesn’t understand the answer, and I’m not sure I do either.
“Where are you taking us?” Haze asks.
“That is classified information.”
I don’t get it. I thought these guys had been tracking me this whole time, watching my progress. Prepping me for battle. I thought they were loading my Trade Screen with rations and weps, all the things I’d need to Ascend. Only, here they are on Mason’s expedition. They don’t even seem to recognize me. Jesus, it’s like looking at Devin—complete blank screen. I don’t know what to think anymore, except that maybe I got massive hacked.
Mason leans over, puts her face right up to the side of my head, whispers so the commandos can’t hear, “No worries. We’re both going the same way. I promise.”
I arc in a semicircle toward her, lock eyes with her for a long, questioning moment. Her face mimics the hills and valleys of the landscape below us, and I wish I could reach over, smooth out the lines of worry on her forehead, upturn the corners of her mouth, flatten the ridges of fear between her eyebrows. If I could just force my hand to make the short trip from my lap to her cheek . . .
I shift in my seat like I’m going to rest my arm on the metal bar behind us, but instead I let it brush against her hair. She looks at me without flinching, and I’m caught in that space between breathing and not, between knowing everything and knowing nothing. I hold my breath, move my fingertips lightly across her forehead, run my thumb over her folded brow, brush a strand of hair out of her eyelashes before I pull away again. She smiles, just barely, but enough to make those tiny dimples show up next to her chin.
“And yes,” she whispers. “I know who you are.”
I lean in to Mason Barshaw, Militiababe, as she turns to look out the window. No wonder she wants to go to the healing grounds of the spiritual West: she’s a Medic. Her whole job is healing.
I shudder with the inexplicable relief of knowing I was finally right about something.
Except now I know that being right could prove deadly. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the last message I got, about how the worthy shall sacrifice the lamb. My ears start to fill with the bleating cries of lambs being led to the slaughter. One by one, taken unknowingly to some unseen place, only to disappear forever.
I hope to God that’s not what the old man did with Devin.
I shudder, let my gaze drift through the inner cavity of the Chinook. Haze hasn’t taken his eyes off the chopper pilot for one second, Mason’s scouting the landscape below, probably looking for signs of the Showdown, and I have no idea how long this nine-hour UpRising expedition has actually gone on, only that it feels like forever.
That’s the kicker about loss. It does strange things to time, stretching it out long and wide so it becomes this eternal, bloated entity.
I pull out my phone, check my home screen. The clock reads ten to four.
Ten to four? But that would mean—
The pilot calls out from up front, “Prepare to land!”
I peer out the window, notice a large rectangle of dirt with two metal-roofed hangars down at one end. The commandos make no announcement about where we are or what the landmark is below us, but it sure as hell doesn’t look like a helipad. In fact, if this is an airbase, it’s the most illegitimate airbase ever.
As we fly over, I notice the rotors sound different. Not good different. Bad different. Grinding metal-on-metal different.
Haze notices it too.
“Is something wrong with the—”
“Stay seated. Be sure you’re buckled in,” the pilot barks. “Touchdown is going to be rough.”
He cuts off the last word, because the chopper has started listing, kicking up a flurry of activity in the cockpit and a huge amount of dust below. For a second I worry about what happens if those clouds of dirt get caught in the rotor blades, and then I realize that we’re in shit up to our elbows already—a little extra dirt isn’t likely to change that fact.
Mason grabs on to my hand, and the three of us brace ourselves for impact.
“Rough” doesn’t begin to cover it.
The chopper hits the ground with a deafening thud, dropping immediately onto its side, where the propeller blades spin themselves into oblivion against the dirt. Chunks of metal go flying everywhere; some even break through the fuselage of the Chinook, sending a spray of glass through the helicopter like a shaken soda bottle.
It takes forever for the pilot to cut the engines, so long, in fact, that I wonder if they’re actually trying to kill us.
My internal alarms go Code Orange when I realize I’m not the slightest bit hurt.
As soon as the motors and rotors have groaned into silence, one of the commandos rushes up to Mason, unbuckles her, and throws her over his shoulder, carrying her out to safety. So much for me and Haze, apparently.
I look around the dust-choked interior of the helicopter, but I don’t see anyone else inside.
“Haze?” I call out, wait for something to come back.
Outside the wreckage, I hear Mason shouting at the commando.
“Get off me! What the hell just happened?”
“This area is known to experience energy fluctuations,” he says. Even from my seat, where I’m stuck struggling to free myself from these ridiculously complex military harnesses, I hear something in his voice that chills me. “Sometimes those fluctuations confuse the machinery.”
I don’t believe him for a second.
I have to free myself, see what’s going on.
“Yo, Haze?” I call out again. He couldn’t have gone too far; the guy was sitting right here two seconds ago.
By now I really wish I hadn’t lost my goggles—I can barely see anything in all the smoke and dust. All I know is, Haze must have hopped out already. I’m not sure how.
I reach for my gear and . . .
Face mask.
Haze’s face mask is attached to the strap of my bag.
Only Haze is still nowhere to be seen.
I panic-fight to untangle myself from the safety harness. The second I’m free, I clamber to get to the door of the sunny-side up helicopter.
“I demand to know where we are,” Mason says, her tone low and firm, like she’s used to being in charge.
“We did not make it all the way to the airbase.”
“Where’s my friend?” I yell, stumbling out of the Chinook.
Mason cocks her head at me like a confused puppy.
The commandos stand in mute attention. Before they were purposefully vague, but now they’re blatantly refusing to answer me.
“Where’s my friend?”
Mason puts her hand on my arm, but I shrug her off.
“Tosh—”
“No! My friend . . . Haze . . . was on the helicopter with us. He was on the helicopter with us, and now he’s not!”<
br />
The commando fingers his rifle. “I’m going to have to ask you to calm down.”
“Tosh,” Mason says, trying to soothe me, trying to placate me, like she’s in on it somehow, like this is the conspiracy.
I lunge at the commando, but she holds me back. It stops me cold for a second, how strong she is. I was not expecting that.
“Where. Is. My. Friend?” I’m panting, leeching sweat and spit everywhere.
The commando elbows me aside, leans in to Mason closer than she’s clearly comfortable with.
“Ms. Barshaw,” he says in a half whisper. “A few moments from now, a vehicle will come by to pick you up. They’re going to take you to a safe house. We need to get you off the radar.”
She gazes into the distance, her deep blue eyes filling with tears that she quickly blinks away. She nods without looking at him.
They’re starting to break her down.
“I’m going to need your phone,” he tells her, holding his hand out, palm up.
Wait a minute. She didn’t do anything—why is she losing weps? What kind of platoon leader strips you of your battle gear for no legitimate reason?
“No!” I call out, body-blocking Mason. “You don’t have the authority to—”
Mason’s grip tightens so hard around my arm, it starts to tingle. She turns her head, speaks to me over her shoulder.
“If you don’t stop talking crazy, you’ll get left behind. We can’t afford to lose each other.”
She comes back a half turn, holds my gaze a few seconds before letting me go. Without taking her eyes off me, she fishes her cell phone out of her bag and hands it over.
The airman pries open the back, digs out the battery and the SIM card, pockets them, hands the phone back to her the way the commandos handed me that dead bird in Sandusky. She reluctantly takes it.
Seconds later, a VW van chugs up next to us. It’s painted the same black-gray-purple motif as the commandos’ fatigues, only the van sports tracks instead of tires, like an armored tank. The commando ushers her into the front seat. I stand there, checking and rechecking for Haze over my shoulder, until the commando impatiently waves me over and points to the back. I’m not even all the way in before the van takes off again.
