“Please.” Mason pointed to Alix. “Turn it off.”
“We aren’t,” Alix whispered, tapping on a tablet while balancing the radio on it. “I think he’s only here to see the video. He knows there’s no guarantee we deleted every copy.”
Mason reached over and switched the radio off. “He doesn’t know.” Mason cleared his throat again. “He’s a clone.”
Every guard turned away from Prince to look at the group. The smiles on Jill and Alix and Clint’s faces made Sam’s body relax in Penny’s arm. Even her sister cracked a smile.
“What?” Alix said.
“Gray Altar’s been lying to him,” Mason explained. “There’s no way he would have faked that. He had no idea when I told him.”
“He doesn’t know…,” Jill said.
Mason looked back at Prince. “He brought me back here as soon as I told him about the video. He’s… pretty mad.”
“Holy shit,” Clint muttered.
“Yeah,” Alix said. “Okay. I say let him see it.” She held the tablet like an empty plate, ready for sometwo to take. “I guess we didn’t talk about how.”
One of the guards stood from crouching. “I’ll do it.” He walked over with his hand out.
“No,” Penny said, letting go of Mason and making sure Sam could stand on her own. “I’ll bring it to him.”
“Pen…,” Jill said.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Clint butted in.
Penny shifted her stare from him to Alix to him. “Record it. For the series. I want people to see this too.”
Alix turned to Clint. “She’s got a point. That image, people won’t be able to get it out of their heads if she hands him the video.”
“But what if…?” Jill interrupted. “Don’t you think you’ve been manipulating us long enough? I’m not putting my daughters in harm’s way. Not any more than I already have.”
Before anytwo could react, Penny snatched the tablet from Alix. The radio fell to the ground. Behind her, she could see Prince with his hands cupped to his mouth, shouting, “Your radio working? Can you hear me?”
“I can do this,” Penny said.
Clint stepped to her and met her wild eyes. Fist clenched, maybe he was stopping himself from saying something he would regret. He stared through her. Into her. “Hand it to him,” Clint said so low only she could hear it. “Don’t say a word to him.”
Every guard tightened their grips on their rifles. Aimed at Prince’s head and chest and heart.
“Go slow. Don’t make him think you’re attacking him,” Clint said.
“Please,” Jill said. “Don’t.”
“I have to,” Penny said, holding Sam’s hand. “I need him to know that we’re not scared of him.” She met Sam’s eyes. “For us.”
Her sister lowered her head before looking back up. All her strength focused on not crying.
Jill looked to Sam and nodded, tears in her eyes.
They walked together, Jill and Clint, Sam and Penny, Mason beside them. Alix took cover behind a guard. Penny held the tablet close to her chest with her natural hand. At the edge of the open gate, the black-dark night felt enormous, like the eyes of the world were on her. Clint switched the radio on. “One of us will bring it to you.”
“Ah,” Prince crooned. “A classic handoff.”
“The video is cued up,” Clint said into the radio. “Take the tablet and destroy it if you want.”
“Bring it,” Prince demanded. An arrogant voice of privilege.
Mason squeezed Penny harder than he ever had before, whispering, “You don’t have to.”
She held onto his gaze and tried not to cry. Stomach-gripping pain seized her, but the stoked anger made it manageable. “You know I do.”
Mason kissed her cheek. Waited and breathed into her ear. “I love you.”
She kissed his cheek back. “Me too. I love you too.”
The first time she had ever said that to him. And the first time he had said it to her. Penny’s knotted stomach loosened into a blooming wreath. Tingling underneath her ribs and breasts as Mason kissed her again. He loved her. There was no doubt.
Prince’s voice whined through the radio. “I’m not really good with the whole waiting around thing.”
“Pretentious prick,” Jill murmured and turned to Penny. “I don’t like this.” She held Penny by the shoulders and hugged her, voice low. “When did you become the rebellious one?”
Penny laughed to herself. “Two, mom.” And gently pulled away, knowing this was the most inappropriate time to correct a Singular about Set slang.
The corner of Jill’s mouth curled into a partial smile. She held Sam close, all three of them touching. “Two.”
Penny stepped back. A quick glance to Sam. A new terror in her sister’s eyes.
“Pen…,” Sam said.
But before she could say anything else, Penny turned and kicked off the concrete to a full jog. Her sister might have reached out for her, but Penny didn’t see. Her foot sank to the dirt. Damp grass tickled her ankles. She ran, gripping the tablet, eyes locked on Prince. Cricket and bullfrog chatter had returned after the battle. And besides the wreckage and the looming gunship, the night was still as she approached the ghost—the undead thing that used to be a man.
Penny slowed as she got within a few yards. Though he wore black fatigues, Prince’s sharp silhouette was distinguishable against the gunship’s dark plating and she could make out every detail of his armored uniform. This was the first time she had seen him clearly. Handsome wasn’t the word, though he had all the cliche features of a man hardened by constant war. This sickened her. The smugness. The way he stood and what he stood for. He extended his arms and hands out from his sides again to show that he was unarmed. He said, “I’m surprised they sent you.”
Penny’s chest fluttered. She couldn’t believe she was about to speak to him. “I sent myself.”
Prince half-smiled. He moved his tongue under his bottom lip like he might be digging something out. “They say you’re the only non-Set kids in the world. That true?”
Penny didn’t know what to do with this oddly idle conversation. She squeezed the tablet and tried not to look back at the base. Radio chatter and boot stomps were all she could hear above the crickets. Guards must be outside now, flanking, watching. Instead of answering Prince, she handed the tablet over with her claw.
He smirked and looked down at her. “That’s some weapon.”
Hate swelling, she said nothing as he took the tablet.
Seeing this kid’s arm up close, Prince finally had time to consider that he had done the damage that necessitated her prosthetic. This teenage girl, although weaponized, was still a teenage girl. Her hair was different. A scar was dug into the side of her head. My bullet, he thought and waited for her to say something—anything—but she stared at him like she wanted to use that claw in creative ways on his body. Without his pistol or cloaking armor, nothing could stop her. All she had to do was lunge.
Prince took the tablet, studied the screen, and tapped the play button.
Heart racing, he glanced back to the girl and then back down.
One Nation was courteous and edited the video down to its essential, yet familiar scene. Prince saw himself from overhead, speaking to Jill Van Best who was inside the R.V. There was no audio. Just his somewhat pixelated body leaning against the vehicle and talking into the side door. He had seen some of these clips before, used in One Nation’s two episodes. How weird it was to see himself from the perspective of his own drones, almost as if a higher power were watching and making him replay the event.
Prince looked up again to see Penny watching him too. See, he could hear her thinking, see me kill you. See me and my sister end your life.
After half a minute, the figure on the screen—the man that used to be Prince, but was still Prince—turned his attention away from Jill Van Best. This must be the girls, he thought. The figure on the screen said something Prince couldn’t rem
ember saying and was quick to raise his machine pistol. Now the video showed them, Penny and Sam, rifles aimed at him. Any sane person would do the same. Their mother was being threatened. Their boyfriends should have been slaughtered. And now the figure in the video was saying a lot and moving closer to the twins and Prince couldn’t take his eyes off the screen.
And still, he knew that Penny stared at him.
“My bullet,” she said.
Prince was concentrating so intently on the video that, when she spoke, he jerked up to see her face. In the few seconds he looked at her, the figures on the screen fired. When Prince turned his gaze down, his pixelated body was on the ground. Most of his head was gone. His dead body lay motionless.
Prince tightened his lips. Tried his absolute hardest not to show expression. His finger slid to rewind the footage.
“My bullet hit you first,” Penny said.
Eyes back on her, the bitch was smiling.
Prince said nothing and focused on the screen. Again, shots fired. His machine pistol rattling into Penny. Penny and Sam firing two perfect shots. Blood and skull fragments and brain hammered. His body collapsing to the ground with such force that he must have died instantly. The video scrambled. Penny down too. Sam over her body, but Prince could not take his attention away from his own crumpled form.
I died.
“I killed you,” Penny said.
I’m nothing but a copy. A cloned Set of myself.
Slowly looking back to Penny, her smile persisted.
I’m no better than all of them.
Prince swallowed. He wanted to touch the fake scar on the side and back of his skull, the one that so closely resembled the one that Penny had. The tablet’s glass strained between his tightening grip. Composing himself, he struggled to speak. “This is the only copy?”
Penny nodded.
“And One Nation won’t release this to the public,” he said.
Penny eyeballed him, his face and chest and the rest of him. “That’s the agreement.”
Prince dropped the tablet and started to chuckle. Rolling his head to the sky, the chuckle turned to an outright laugh. He had seen plenty of people die. First on the internet when he was a young teenager. More in college where classmates had secret files that their cousins or uncles or even fathers showed them, but promised never to show anyone else. There were men and women he saw die firsthand and men and women he killed with his own hands—hundreds now, far too many to count—so many of them blurred into abstraction. Watching videos as a youth meant nothing to him. Killing terrorists and other assassins filled him with prideful adrenaline and, depending on the target, fulfilled a part of him that nothing else could.
Witnessing his own death, seeing his face and head all but disappear and see the reliable body that he trusted for over 40 years collapse like a dropped puppet, made him want to puke. Never in his life had death provoked a response like that. And here he was, standing in front of a teenage girl, more vulnerable than he had ever been. All he could do was laugh.
Penny backed away. “Are you going to destroy it?”
Prince held his thighs and bent forward and let his laughing continue. He scooped the tablet off the ground and gestured for the gunship’s side door to open. “You got me,” he said, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. “Y’all fucking actually killed me.”
Penny stepped back further and raised her claw at him. “If you come back, I’ll kill you,” she yelled. “No matter how many times it takes.”
Prince held onto the gunship and smiled. “That’s a deal, young lady.” He turned to the pilot and swirled his finger in the air in a circle. The large rotors began to spin. “Tell your sister thank you.”
“What?” Penny yelled. Though the rotors were near silent, the rushing wind made the old arthritic trees creak and snap. Still-wet puddles of blood sprayed upward.
Prince tossed the tablet into the ship, cracking it. The rest of the Van Best family and the guard, Clint and his son, they stood stoically at the base’s entrance as he hovered above the grass. He waved to them. Wide arcs and a wide grin. No one waved back. Penny’s befuddled face watched him rise.
Sam was running now that it was safe. The gunship was only a few yards in the air, but her sister was there, sprinting to her. Penny turned and caught her as she skidded to a stop.
“That was…,” Sam panted. “That was insane.”
Penny couldn’t take her eyes off the ship. It rotated slightly, almost aiming at the base, but then banked away. Prince could easily send two dozen rockets into the open main gate and kill everytwo, yet he didn’t. The undead man had kept his promise.
“Are you okay?” Sam asked. “What did he say to you?”
The gunship’s side door slid closed. Prince would be sitting down now, tablet in hands, rewinding and playing and pausing and rewinding. She couldn’t believe she actually told the bastard that it was her bullet that hit him first.
“Pen…?” Sam said, shaking her by the metal socket of her prosthetic.
Penny turned to Sam thinking this might be the last time she saw her. She looked into her face—every feature a mirror image of her own. They were finally done bickering after sixteen long years. Their differences were strengths. That wasn’t just obvious, it was admired by One Nation and now millions of strangers, people that wanted to know more about both of them as individuals. Either pride or traumatic stress prevented her from caring before, but now the rage allowed Penny to channel an untapped basin of courage. She wasn’t Penny Van Best anymore. That Set was useless now. She was something else, something so much stronger.
She stared at the slowly rising gunship.
“Pen?” Sam yelled, gripping her.
Penny hadn’t realized tears were in her eyes until she said, “I love you, Sam. Always remember that.”
“What?” Sam screamed.
Shoving Sam with her natural hand and raising her claw, Penny focused on the gunship and felt her titanium arm vibrate.
Sam tumbled to the ground, screaming, “No!”
But before her sister could scramble to snatch her, Penny lifted off the ground, feet dangling, arm humming. Stomach dropping, she shot upward as if some invisible force had yanked her. She controlled the intensity of the magnetic pull so that she slowed her approach. Straining to keep her eyes open, her open claw banged the bottom of the ship, allowing her to hook her hand into a side panel’s recess. The impact trembled through her arm and shoulder. Penny heaved and shook, gripping the gunship so tightly it hurt.
Below her, Sam collapsed in the grass and screamed.
Her family rushed from the base, all of them, hands in the air, yelling. She couldn’t help but cry. Accelerating wind drying her tears. The rumble of the gunship’s massive engine threatening to shake her off. Penny grit her teeth and held tighter. She powered down her arm to conserve energy and clamped her claw into a panel.
The neon lights of the diner glowed in the distance.
One of her boots had come untied. Laces whipping in the wind.
And along the roadway, she saw something she never expected to see. Lines of cars, two lanes wide, blocking the highway she had walked. Thousands. And people outside of vans and pickups hanging out in the breakdown lane. They couldn’t be there for any other reason other than to be close to One Nation, to see what had happened, to stand in solidarity with their cause.
“My gods…,” she said.
“We shot a fucking secretary!” Prince thought he heard the pilot yell.
Prince’s attention was on the cracked table screen, replaying over and over and over. His video-head splattered. His video-body as limp as a picked over rotisserie chicken. He looked up and yelled, “What!?”
“We got a fucking dingle berry!” the pilot said. “Girl’s clamped onto the ship!”
Prince lowered the tablet. “You’re kidding me.”
“Didn’t you hear that bump?” the pilot asked.
Prince stomped over to the side door, but hes
itated. Maybe he didn’t want her to know he knew she was there. Maybe she was meant to be there. With him now. Both of them joined forever. Touching the side of the gunship, he said, “Slow down. We don’t want her falling off.”
“Roger that,” the pilot said.
She’s coming for me, Prince thought. Like an angel of death. Coming for me like she should.
Message after message crawled across Prince’s forearm display.
Merrick: Did you land? What’s your status?
Merrick: Why are the cams disabled?
Merrick: What did I tell you about documentation? We need this all recorded to cover our asses.
Merrick: Do you have the mother? What’s your status?
Prince wiggled his fingers over this forearm display as if tickling it and typed: Have the package. Returning now.
He hit send.
Looked down at the paused tablet. The screen as cracked as his dignity.
Merrick: That is very good news.
“Very, very good news,” Prince said to himself as he slid on his backpack and pulled out the bullet belt. The belt clipped into the machine pistol with a familiar snap. A new StiffArm hung, clasped inside an open cabinet. Prince took it out and flexed the joints before clipping it onto his own right arm. Synched with his forearm display, the robotic enhancement sprang to life. He extended that right arm and the pistol locked with it. Aimed at an invisible target on the wall. “Very, very, very good.”
“Are you talking to me?” the pilot asked. “Sir?”
Opening compartments of grenades, Prince clipped two to each hip and one to his chest, over his heart.
“We still have our little castaway?” Prince yelled.
An infrared silhouette of Penny appeared on a monitor. Her little body clinging to the side of the gunship.
“Yes, sir,” the pilot said.
Prince walked to the front of the ship. “When we get to base, I want you to hover above the pad. Don’t land.”
The pilot looked back. “You got a plan for her?”
Prince smiled. “Sure do.” He wrapped his knuckles on the doorframe. “I’m going to close this for a minute. A little privacy.”
Two Girls Book 2: One Nation Page 18
