He wipes the water off his face and gazes at me. Something is ticking in his head. He opens his mouth, closes it again, takes a deep breath, and then says, ‘I’ll be your student. I need to know how you can hold your breath for such a long time, how you swim and dive without producing noise. And you have to teach me how you swam across the swamp. I want to be able to use the water the way you do.’
Here comes the strategist and effective killer. No more fear, only tactics. With a sudden shiver, I remember the night when he told me that he’s a sniper and a strategist, and that people call him The Executor. ‘I execute decisions and people,’ he’d said. No doubt he will learn to use the water to his best advantage.
‘It’s all about trust. Trust me now. Then learn to trust the water. Ready?’
He gives me a nod and I dive. The blurry underwater world is rushing past my vision. The turbulences produced by the waterfall and the bubbles of air are tickling my skin and give the impression of the pool tumbling this way and that. I grab a rock and search for Runner. He’s just behind me and right next to me a moment later. I point at my ears, pinch my nose and squeeze my eyes shut. He does the same, loses his grip, and floats up. I follow.
‘The pressure on your ear drums can be equilibrated in two ways,’ I tell him. ‘You can pinch your nose shut and blow gently. Yeah, like this. Or you make a yawning movement at the back of your throat. I prefer the latter, because it’s gentler on the ears and I have both hands free.’
Now, it’s he who dives first. I watch him hold on to a rock for a long moment, then he comes up again. ‘I think I got it. What’s next?’
I grin. ‘If you feel somewhat comfortable with diving, we dive all the way through the waterfall and to the other side. The waterfall will force you down and you’ll lose your orientation if you don’t focus on swimming straight through. I’ll be right at your side. Ready?’
He assesses the distance, and nods. He doesn’t look at me.
‘One. Two. Three,’ I say, inhale deeply and we jump together. I dive next to him and watch his moves. He’s unsteady but his strokes are strong. He swims straight into the white mass of boiling water and I lose sight of him. When I come out on the other side, he’s gone. I kick at the water to reach the bottom of the pool and there I glimpse a hand and a leg flailing in the white turmoil. I grab his wrist and pull. A second hand comes down on my upper arm. There’s panic in his iron grip. I yank him closer, and box his chest. He looks at me, eyes darting around, unsure where is up and where is down. I yank his arm again. Only a short moment later, he meets my gaze; his senses seem to be coming back. We both kick at the ground and shoot upwards.
‘Hold on to this,’ I cough and slap my hand against the rock wall. That was what I meant about panicking and the two of us drowning.
‘I’ll do this again. You wait here.’
He doesn’t even give me enough time to tell him to breathe, and to calm down first. Off he swims, around the waterfall and to the other side of the pool. Through the curtain of water, I see him dive. I dive straight down to meet him. But he’s not there. I swim into the white and don’t see a trace of him. The water presses me down to the bottom and there I find something smooth and warm. And not moving. Shocked, I grab his waist and pull. I’m so relieved when I feel him swimming with me.
‘What the heck happened?’ I splutter.
‘I tried to count to twenty. You interrupted.’ He tries to look disappointed, but there’s pride glittering in his eyes just before he takes yet another plunge.
I swim and dive and roll around in the water, pretending to be a fish, while keeping an eye on him. He’s growing bolder with each dive. Odd, how proud this makes me.
When the clouds gradually thin, and I begin to feel like an icicle, it’s time for us to leave.
‘That was probably the shortest teacher-student relationship in the history of humankind.’ I shake the water from my hair and wring out my shirt.
‘I have a lot to learn,’ he replies. ‘You swam through a swamp, with your rifle, no less. I’ve never even heard of anyone doing that, let alone coming out alive, or coming out at all.’ He regards me with a boyish grin and taps his knuckles to my shoulder. I could get used to this. ‘You are a good teacher, Micka. Quite relentless.’
‘You, too,’ I stutter, half-ashamed. ‘Your other apprentices must be very good at tactics and sniping and…’ I break off when I see his scowl.
‘The only apprentice I ever took stands before me.’ He strolls off before I can ask another question.
I find him back at our fireplace, digging out the roasted chestnuts with a stick.
‘Let them cool down a little and keep half of them for dinner.’ He holds out the stick to me and I start digging while he places our ghillies on the forest floor.
‘I’ll take the earbud for now. There’s the water in our ears from diving and we should switch more often,’ I say.
He removes his earbud and sticks it into his shirt pocket, then gives me one earbud from his ruck. Silently, he bends over his ghillie and begins replacing some of the grass tufts with green leaves and twigs from a bush. I modify my camouflage similarly to his. He’s perfect at this. People could walk right past him without knowing he’s there, while they’ve been in his crosshairs ever since they entered his one kilometre radius. You own them; you own their lives, echoes in my head. That was what Runner said to me the first day I gazed through the scope of his rifle. Whoever shows up in my finder, I own them.
Somehow, owning someone feels more wrong to me than owning someone’s life. But the difference might be too subtle for the owned ones to notice.
Later today, we’ll bury much of our equipment here. One MedKit, eighty percent of the ammo we carry, the hammocks, mosquito nets, and blankets, two water filters, the hacksaw, and two squeeze lights, plus the fire starting kit. We’ll need the stuff when we return. Lighter, we’ll travel much faster. Once our ghillies have been adapted to the vegetation farther down, we’ll travel the last stretch to the meeting point during bright daylight, then wait for the machine’s arrival at nightfall.
The small airplane touches down, kicking up a trail of dust that scatters in the night wind. We run towards the machine, and jump in before it even comes to a complete stop.
‘Welcome to Mad Hatter Airlines. Strap your asses down and hold on to your bowels. Here we gooooo!’ Ben hollers, twisting his head around and grinning at us. I wish he would at least look where he’s flying.
Runner slams the door shut and secures it. ‘How’s Kat?’
That brings me up short. I would have expected him to ask about Yi-Ting first.
The machine’s upward tilt and speed increase sharply. It feels as if someone yanks at my rucksack and I almost fall on my butt.
‘Kat’s pissed. Big time. One might think she’s scared,’ Ben says when he brings the solar plane’s nose down a bit. I feel much safer when the thing is more horizontal than vertical. He won’t say any more — Kat’s orders. Runner doesn’t bug him. And so, after twenty minutes of small talk, we are back on Itbayat. Only this time, it feels different. Unsafe.
‘Meeting in ten,’ Ben tells us before we dash off to our tents.
I drop my pack and rifle and walk to the comm tent. A silent buzzing fills the room — the relief that everyone returned unscathed combined with the tension of new things learned.
Runner sits on a chair, long legs stretched out in front of him. ‘How did your paper airplane project go?’
‘Believable to anyone watching,’ Yi-Ting answers. Kat nods consent.
‘Good. The council and your special friend?’ He looks at Kat, then at Ben.
‘They had problems believing it, as you can imagine. The BSA hacking our satellite system — what’s bigger and more absurd than that? But they agreed to your plans; better safe than sorry. The mission’s first step is set in motion in…’ Ben checks the time on his SatPad. ‘Whoa, two hours ago. We’ve been slow.’
Runner pinches the bridge of h
is nose and stares at his knees for a short moment. I know this gesture: he’s decided, has a plan, and now fine-tunes the precise order of actions in his head. When he’s unsure, he taps his fingers on whatever surface is available, preferably his thighs or knees. ‘Early tomorrow morning, you’ll continue your flights over Taiwan. Follow your usual pattern, but be prepared. The BSA will know when you are due, they’ll be observing your movements and will be able to predict when you’ll be approaching. In this, they have a clear advantage. Meanwhile, we go about our usual business.’ He nods to me.
That’ll be training. Good.
Kat’s been tense since we entered the tent. Now she raises a hand to silence us. ‘I’ve got news. While Ben picked you up, I looked through the data he brought back and found…something.’ She reaches out and taps at the screen. ‘Not many Sequencers are experts in satellite control, even fewer are able to hack their way into a high-security system. Of these few, I looked for the ones who were reported dead or missing in the past twenty years. It’s a generous time window, but I don’t want to miss anyone. I expected the sample size to be larger, but…’
Photos of three men and four women pop up. Slowly, we all lean forward. Runner’s hand drops from his chin. He turns and looks at me as if I just stuck a knife into someone’s ribs. I’m growing sick to the bone.
One man has a frizzly crown of grey hair, wrinkles around his eyes and mouth from laughing, slightly too large ears, and light brown eyes — Cacho.
‘What’s he doing there? I thought he’d retired,’ I mutter. No one answers. Kat’s gaze travels from my face back to the screen. There’s a man with a shock of orange hair. He has my nose — slender and freckled, and my eyes — grey like a thunderstorm. But his mouth is compressed and unyielding, very unlike mine. Where I have lips, he has a line buried in a yellow beard.
‘This is no coincidence.’ Kat points her thumb at me. ‘What do we know about her?’
‘Fuck you!’ I jump up and get ready to fight, but no one attacks. Not physically. ‘How do you even know he’s my…my…whatever? He’s most likely not my—’
‘The paternity test says he is,’ Kat answers coolly.
‘What? What paternity test?’
‘When I tested you for tuberculosis — before I offered you an apprenticeship — there’s a routine paternity test included,’ Runner begins. ‘We want to avoid the practice of Sequencers suggesting their own children for apprenticeships.’
‘You told me all Sequencers have contraceptive implants,’ I cut him off. My own implant — a small copper chain — leaks metal ions into my womb and kills everything that might want to settle down there.
‘Yes, that is correct. But the implants for males are hormone-based and lose their effectiveness after five to seven years, more or less after we’re done with puberty. We can then choose to get a fresh implant, control our urges, or get our spermatic ducts severed. Most Sequencers decide for the first option, but there’s no guarantee they actually do it in time. So we always test if potential apprentices are the offspring of the Sequencer who suggested them.’
‘You knew this…’ I jab my finger at the man on the screen, ‘…is my father?’
‘No, I didn’t. Matching a potential apprentice’s sequence data against our entire database takes too much time and is unnecessary. All we want to know is if the Sequencer who recommended you is in any way related to you. So I matched Cacho’s DNA against yours. The results were negative and there was no reason to tell you about it. Kat must have compared this man’s genomic data with yours today.’
She gives him a single nod.
Runner’s hand closes around my wrist. ‘Micka, sit down. Kat, focus on the problem. My apprentice is not the problem; these two men are.’
I lower my behind on the chair and stare at Kat. Her gaze doesn’t soften.
‘Why’s Cacho on this list?’ I ask.
‘Because he was his mentor,’ Runner answers. ‘Kat, pull up everything we know about them. Now.’
She opens a file from her database. ‘Cacho Bresson worked at the Swiss satellite control centre for thirty years and asked to be retired two and a half years ago. He went into retirement eight months ago, shortly before you took Micka into probation. Erik Vandemeer…’ Kat points at the other man, ‘…became Cacho’s apprentice when he was a boy of fifteen years. They worked together for seven years until Erik disappeared without a trace. The timing fits. Her mother ran into the young Vandemeer and had her fun with him before he received his implant and became an apprentice. And your apprentice chooses to keep her mouth shut. She’s either extremely stupid, or extremely stupid and a spy.’
Slowly, Runner leans back. ‘You have many qualities, Kat. A healthy trust to mistrust ratio is not one of them. You should think twice before you make that our problem. Would you trust me to suck up a bullet for you? No? I wouldn’t trust you, either. You know why? Because you don’t trust anyone. And why would you give your life for people you don’t trust? Of course, you wouldn’t, and that’s how you make that my problem, because I would step into the line of fire to save your ass, knowing you wouldn’t return the favour. But I know Micka would risk her life to save mine. She already did. So next time you feel the need to voice your mistrust, think of it as your private little problem that will one day cost you your life, or worse, the lives of your friends. Can you live with that?’
Kat is frozen. We all are. I’ve never heard Runner speak like this. The taste of metal spreads at the back of my tongue — the flavour of danger — of a knife carving letters into my back. I swallow.
‘I’m not the daughter of…my mother’s husband,’ I hear myself say.
‘See?’ Kat waves her hand in my direction. ‘She kept relevant information to herself until we discovered it and she can’t deny it any longer. I wonder what else she knows and doesn’t tell.’
‘I never heard you tell anyone how many men your mother had! Does that make you a spy?’ My middle fingers want to be in her stupid face; I curl my hands into fists.
Runner exhales a growl. ‘Do you know this man, Micka?’
‘This is the first time I’ve seen his face. All I ever heard was that my mother ran away with my brother and returned a few months later. She was pregnant, I was born, and I was not allowed to ask questions, because it wasn’t becoming.’ My skin is hot and itching. I want to yell at Kat, shake her, and make her understand how much her accusations hurt. But I remain in my chair, turmoil hidden behind my orange bangs.
‘The funny thing is that there’s not a single redhead in my village, so they all had to pretend I’m an aberration. So… Is this Erik a spy or what?’
‘These two are my top candidates to have leaked satellite control knowledge to the BSA. Ah!’ She presses both hands to her face then drops them to her lap. ‘What am I saying? Knowledge? We are talking about two of our best experts! They can enable the BSA to work more effectively and cover their tracks. I wouldn’t call them spies; I’d call them mass murderers.’
My abdomen cramps. I want to puke. My skin crawls and feels like it’s about to rot off my bones. I’m growing cold. From the corner of my vision I see Runner. His eyes are trained on me. Ben looks at Yi-Ting who looks down at me. Kat appears triumphant. I could kill her right this second. Neither of us moves. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’m glad no one asks me how I feel.
I reach for my water canteen and take a sip just so I don’t have to look at anyone. Gradually I empty it, washing the acid from my mouth.
Yi-Ting’s hand flutters down onto my shoulder, her palm slips around my back and she pulls me into a gentle hug. ‘I am sorry, Micka.’
‘Hmm,’ I manage when she blows a kiss in my hair.
Runner pulls his knees up to his chest. He squats more than he sits. His jaws are working. ‘We have to corroborate this assumption. But so far it… Oh shit!’ He slaps his forehead. ‘I’m such an idiot. Did you ever ask yourself how Cacho convinced me to take an apprentice?’
‘I
have wondered about that since I met her,’ Kat supplies.
‘He said, “That boy is the key to bringing down the BSA.”’
‘What?’ I squeak.
‘He lied to me, he knew I’d never take a girl as an apprentice. I’ve never had an apprentice in my life. He knew I wouldn’t even bother considering a girl. So he told me Micka was a boy. That I’d see she’s a girl the moment we met, must have been clear to him. I’m not sure why he believed I would offer her a probation. Unless…’ He squints and tips his head at me. ‘What does he know about you? Could he have guessed…’
I know what Runner is referring to. Could Cacho have guessed I was suicidal? Oh yes, he could have. He was probably one of the few who had an idea of the situation. I give Runner a single nod. His eyebrows are still drawn, his gaze is skeptical.
Runner tips his chin and turns back to Kat. ‘He knows me well enough, the old man,’ he muses. ‘But I still don’t understand why he said that Micka would be a key to the BSA’s demise. Except…’ he points at Erik. ‘Except, of course, if that man has a leading role — not too implausible given his expertise — and he’s still fond of his daughter.’
‘Come now. That’s a little too far-fetched, even for you,’ Ben says.
Kat nods at Ben, and points her index finger at Runner, then twiddles it against her temple in a you have a screw lose way.
For once, I have to agree with her.
‘I’m just exercising my brain,’ Runner says.
‘Or your imagination,’ Ben quips.
‘One needs imagination to put puzzle pieces together.’
I’m tired of the banter. ‘What’s next?’ I ask.
Runner folds his hands under his chin. ‘Kat, find out what Erik did in the past nine or ten years. Find a way to talk to Cacho.’ He turns to me and explains, ‘We can’t use satellite communication because it might be tapped, and we can’t use our amplifier for radio communication, because it works only one-way, sending signals from Taiwan to Itbayat. Kat insisted on it and I agreed, because it’s in enemy territory and safer that way.’
Fog: The Climate Fiction Saga Page 7
