by Allen Zadoff
“He said he was headed for New Orleans,” Howard says.
“It’s only a matter of time,” I say.
“Tanya searched the area and found this summer house that had already been closed up for the season. Wi-Fi and cable are turned off. Electricity and water are fine.”
“I’ve been watching for activity outside,” Tanya says. “Nothing unusual.”
“Nothing you can see. But they might have drones.”
“Are you injured?” Howard says.
I do a quick scan of my body, head to toe and back again. I flex muscle groups, move my joints. My body aches, but I’m functional. My head is another matter. I have a headache and double vision.
“I’ve got a mild concussion,” I say. “But I’ve had a lot worse.”
My mind is racing as I think about what The Program will do now. They may know I was on board the helicopter, or they may not. The crash is likely to have confused the issue. Bodies burned beyond recognition, an explosion that spreads the remains. It will take time to sort through all of it, to test the DNA and determine if anyone got away.
I think about the moments after the explosion. The image of Howard dragging me across the grass.
“You saved me,” I say to Howard.
“I helped,” he says. “But I think she was the one who saved you.”
He points to Tanya.
Then I remember. Tanya hovering over me, giving me mouth-to-mouth.
I reach out and touch her arm.
“Thank you,” I say.
Her skin is warm. It feels good to touch her.
I take my hand away.
“I wish I needed mouth-to-mouth,” Howard says.
He’s jealous.
Tanya feels it, too. “It’s not like we kissed,” she says. “It was medical attention.”
“Whatever,” Howard says. I can sense that he’s upset, but there isn’t time to discuss it now.
“Pack everything and let’s get ready to leave,” I say.
I crawl out of bed, and I almost fall. Tanya steadies me.
“Let’s talk about this,” she says. “You need rest, and your body needs time to heal.”
“We don’t have time,” I say.
Tanya considers the situation. “You think we should move on?” she asks.
“I think it would be best.”
She pauses, mulling over the scenario just as I would do.
After a moment she nods. “Okay, then. There’s a Jeep in the garage. Keys above the driver’s visor and a full tank of gas.”
“You prepped it?”
“Prepped and ready to roll.”
“Nice work,” I say.
“I kept myself busy while you were passed out.” She turns to Howard. “Fill the back of the Jeep with as much food as you can. Dry goods preferred, things that will last without refrigeration.”
“Okay. What are you going to do?” Howard says.
“I’m going to take a shower,” Tanya says. “I’m disgusting.”
“Women,” Howard says, shaking his head.
“You smell pretty bad, too,” Tanya says to him. “We’re going to be in that Jeep for a while.”
Howard sniffs at his shirt.
“It’s a fifty-percenter,” he says.
“What’s a fifty-percenter?” Tanya asks.
“It’s how I smell when I’m halfway through a hacking marathon.”
“How about everyone does what they need to do and we get the hell out of here?” I say.
They nod. Howard leaves the room and Tanya follows.
I take a few moments to stretch and gauge my strength. I flex my legs. I clench my fists, checking the power in my grip.
I turn to find Tanya standing in the doorway watching me.
“For real,” she says. “Are you okay?”
I crane my neck, bounce up and down on the balls of my feet.
“Seem to be,” I say.
“I don’t mean physically,” she says. “I saw what happened to Father.”
“He’s not my real father. Or yours.”
“He was still important to you. To us.”
“Are you angry?” I say.
“Yes. But I’m other things, too.”
“Like what?”
“Relieved.”
She studies my face.
“Are you surprised by that?” she asks.
“I am.”
“Like I said earlier, I’ve had my own issues with The Program,” she says. “At first, the idea of carrying out missions without knowing why was easy. No information meant no reason for doubt. But a few years in, I started to wonder why I was doing it. That’s when the questions began.”
“Sounds familiar.”
“And it’s not like there’s a Q&A session after each mission.”
“Not yet. But I put it in the suggestion box, so you never know.”
She laughs. Then she says, “I noticed you didn’t answer my question about Father.”
Her eyes are gentle. She’s not angry, only trying to talk to me about what happened.
“It’s not a big deal,” I say.
“I don’t believe you,” she says.
“Maybe I don’t want to talk about it.”
She nods. But she still doesn’t leave.
“I’m a lot like you,” she says.
“How’s that?”
“I keep it all inside. Or I used to. It’s different now.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
She lowers her voice. “Without the chip,” she says.
“You know about the chip?”
“I had a first gen. It was removed when the upgrade became available.”
“I didn’t know there were different versions,” I say.
“They keep innovating. But I never got the upgrade.”
“Why not?”
“It turns out that I’m more effective without it. At least on my particular kinds of missions.”
“What are your missions?”
“They’re more—I guess you’d say—emotional in nature.”
“You’re a chameleon.”
“We’re all chameleons,” she says. “But I have to do things that you don’t have to do.”
“Things?”
“Relationships. Sex.”
“Because you’re a woman.”
I see a flash of pain behind her eyes.
“We’ve all done things we didn’t want to do,” I say.
“I believe that,” she says.
She steps toward me.
“What about now?” she asks. She reaches up and puts a hand on my chest. “Is this something you don’t want to do?”
“That depends what we’re doing.”
She leans in and kisses me.
“Does that answer your question?” she says.
“One of them.”
“You have more? Go ahead and ask.”
“All right,” I say. “Am I kissing you or am I kissing an assassin?”
“Maybe a little of both. You want to search me again? For your own safety?”
“That sounds like a good idea,” I say.
We reach for each other, and the talking stops.
WE LIE IN BED AFTER, WRAPPED IN EACH OTHER’S ARMS.
Tanya traces the scar on my chest, running a finger over the mark between my pec and my shoulder.
“Can I ask you a question?” she says.
“It’s a knife scar,” I say.
Graduation day. My first real fight with Mike.
“I don’t care about the scar,” she says. “It’s a different question. I want to know what happened to you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“How is it possible for you to go against orders? I’m trained just like you. I know what you’ve been taught and how powerful that teaching is.”
“It didn’t happen all at once. A series of missions, a series of questions. Looking back, I can see that the questions were always there. I just ignored them for
a long time. Eventually, I guess, they got too loud to ignore.”
I stroke the soft skin on the side of her cheek and down her neck. She shivers under my fingers.
“What about you, Tanya? You’ve deviated from your mission. At least I think you have.”
“You’re not my mission,” she says, and she pinches my arm playfully.
She lies back and stares at the ceiling.
“I saw you and Howard together, I saw the way you cared about him. I’ve never seen that before. Then the three of us spent a lot of time together and we started to have fun, and it got in my mind somehow.”
“So now we’re both in trouble.”
“In more ways than one,” she says, and she slides her leg between mine, so we’re twisted together like a pretzel.
“This is nice,” I say.
“Yeah,” she says with a sigh.
“Maybe too nice.”
I feel her tense in my arms.
“What’s that mean?” she says.
“I just mean it’s inconvenient.”
She pushes away from me, digging her knuckle into my bruised ribs as she goes. The pain flares.
“Inconvenient?” she says. “I’m sorry having sex with me doesn’t fit comfortably into your briefing folder.”
“Our lives are in danger, Tanya. And I have to find my father. It’s not a good time to get distracted.”
“To hell with you,” she says, and she jumps out of bed, throwing on clothes as she goes.
“Wait a second!” I say, but she’s not listening.
She rushes out the door and slams it behind her. I sit in bed for a minute, trying to figure out what went wrong.
Women.
There’s not a lot of information about them in the training manual.
I WALK INTO THE KITCHEN.
Howard is eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
“Howard, have you seen—”
“She just ran past me. She said she needed to take a walk. And she looked pissed.”
I stand there, trying to figure out whether I should go after her.
He chews the sandwich, watching me.
“Are you in the doghouse?” he says.
“Where did you hear that expression?”
“That’s what my dad used to say after he had a fight with my mom. I’m in the doghouse big-time.”
“Then I guess I’m in the doghouse,” I say.
He nods like it’s obvious.
“Are you hungry?” he says. “You haven’t eaten in a while.”
He offers me a peanut butter sandwich on a plate.
I’m thinking about next steps, what The Program’s reaction might be to Father’s death, and how I can keep us safe. But I have to have enough energy for what comes next.
“Definitely hungry,” I say, and I take the sandwich he’s given me, spread peanut butter on the top of it, and lay on another piece of bread to turn it into a triple-decker. When I’m finished constructing, I dig in.
“Wow. That’s a lot of sandwich.”
“I need energy to heal,” I say.
“And to kick ass,” Howard says. “I mean, if the need arises.”
I smile. “That’s right.”
We eat in silence, but Howard keeps glancing up at me, then looking away.
“Just say it, Howard.”
“I heard some noises upstairs before.” He still won’t look at me directly.
“What kinds of noises?”
“Those kinds of noises,” he says. “I’m not stupid. I know what they mean.”
“Things got a little complicated between me and Tanya.”
“It’s just—I don’t know. It’s kind of weird.”
I can see he’s uncomfortable. And I think I know why.
“Don’t you have a girlfriend?” I say. “The one in Osaka. I saw you chatting with her on the computer in New York.”
“That’s Goji,” he says. “She’s my girlfriend online. But I’ve never had one in real life.”
“And you thought Tanya was going to be your girlfriend.”
“No!” he says, his face instantly turning red. “But she was really nice to me when we were locked in that room. And then we slept in the backseat together. I thought maybe she liked me. I guess it was just an act, huh?”
“She likes you for real. I know she does.”
“She likes me as a friend. But she likes you a different way.”
“Yeah.”
“It figures,” he says.
“Sometimes it happens like that. You like someone but they don’t like you back. Or someone likes you that you don’t like.”
I’m thinking about Miranda on top of the building in Boston. I thought there was something special between us, but that didn’t keep her from wanting to die. Or trying to kill me in the process.
“So you never know how it will go,” I say. “I don’t have a ton of experience with all this, but I think it’s special when it happens for two people at the same time.”
“So it’s not a bad thing that she doesn’t like me in that way?”
“Not if you don’t make it a bad thing.”
He nods, chewing on his sandwich.
“I’ll do my best,” he says. “Thanks for talking to me about this stuff, Zach.”
I reach out and squeeze his shoulder.
“I don’t think I’ve given anyone advice before,” I say.
“You’re good at it.”
I finish off my sandwich and gulp down a glass of milk.
“Do you mind if I give you a little advice, too?” Howard says.
I shrug.
“You have to get out of the doghouse fast,” he says. “If you stay there too long, it sort of becomes permanent. I think that’s what happened to my folks. It started with one fight, then two, then they didn’t talk to each other for fifteen years.”
I think about how Howard was when I first met him, always home alone. I never did meet his parents or see them interact together. Now I know why.
“Good advice,” I say.
I put down the empty glass and go outside to look for Tanya.
I PASS THROUGH THE GARAGE.
There’s an old Jeep Wrangler there, keys hidden above the driver’s visor where Tanya said they’d be.
I start the engine and find the tank full, just as Tanya said it would be, with no warning lights on the dash.
I turn off the car and leave the keys in the ignition.
I step out the side door of the garage to look for Tanya, but she’s nowhere to be found.
I pause in the front yard and look around. We are in a rural area, no other houses in view. A plan is already forming in my mind. First, I need to recon the area, and then I have to ascertain my status with The Program.
I take three deep breaths to oxygenate my system, and I set out at a jog. I’m careful to make light contact with the pavement, attempting to keep my injured head from receiving too much vibration. Eventually my jog becomes a run. I use motion and blood flow to clean out my system and bring my senses back online. The peanut butter sandwich helps. The fresh air helps, too.
I scan the area in front and behind as I go, checking the main road that leads to the house, moving like someone out for his usual morning run. When I’m sure I’m not being watched, I dart into the woods that line one side of the street.
I run at a diagonal for about fifteen minutes until I pop out on a different road on an adjacent block. Then I do it again, cutting into the woods and running for five minutes. Twenty minutes of running at a moderate pace should put me three and a half miles from our location.
I stop at an area where the woods are most dense, and I turn on The Program phone. It instantly buzzes with a series of 911 text messages that I’ve missed. Messages from Mother trying to get in contact with me.
That means one of two things. She knows I’m alive and she’s looking for me. Or she doesn’t know whether I’m alive and she’s trying to find out.
If there’s a ch
ance Mother thinks I’m dead and I call her, I’m putting myself back on the radar. But without speaking to her, I can’t find out how much she knows and what her plan might be.
Every mission has turning points, moments of decision that will lead the proceedings in one direction or another.
I make such a decision now. I call Mother.
MOTHER SOUNDS WORRIED.
“You’re alive.” That’s the first thing she says to me.
“Alive and well,” I say.
“You look tired,” she says.
That means Mother has remotely turned on my phone’s camera. She’s watching me, but I cannot see her. Knowing this, I do not change my facial expression at all. I will allow my face to reflect the feelings I want her to see, nothing more or less.
“I am tired. It’s been a difficult few days,” I say.
“We have a bird down,” she says.
“I know.”
“You were supposed to be on that helicopter, yet you’re alive and others are not,” Mother says.
“I imagine you have questions you want to ask me.”
“I’m not going to ask. You can tell me what you want me to know.”
It’s possible Mother already knows what happened during the crash, and she wants me to incriminate myself. It’s also possible that she doesn’t know, and she’s digging for information. I decide to stay as close to the truth as I can.
“I saw the helicopter go down,” I say. “I watched it crash, but I couldn’t do anything to stop it.”
Technically true.
“We sent a team out there,” Mother says. “Do you know what they found?”
“A mess.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
A moment later my screen flashes and Mother’s image appears on the phone.
She’s wearing a dark gray business suit and the same stylish glasses I saw before. Beneath them, her eyes are tight with rage.
“Let me explain how this looks from my side of the board,” she says. “I get a call from Father telling me that you are walking toward the helicopter. My next call is from our tech-surveillance people informing me that a 911 operator is reporting smoke rising above a river in southern Pennsylvania. And this helicopter I sent—”
She hesitates for a moment, steadying herself before continuing.
“This helicopter I sent to pick you up and bring you home is a burning hulk on the ground. And the man—”
