by D. J. Molles
Why am I crying?
It’s just the wind.
It’s the wind and the dust.
But it wasn’t that his eyes were watering.
He was crying. His chest was hitching. He was sobbing.
What is wrong with me?
The deep things. The things in the ocean abyss.
Changing tides.
Changing polarities.
Then they reached the open door and Roy was pulling him into the gunship, and he was out from under that downdraft. The cabin was still horrendously loud, but at least the wind wasn’t in his ears anymore. He could still hear the voice chirruping at him, and as he clambered aboard, it clarified.
“…you motherfucker!” Bobbi screamed. “Tell me what’s happening! Walter, Getty, can anybody hear me right now? What the fuck is going on?”
Walter and Getty’s eyes crashed together.
They’d been so caught up in what was happening that they’d forgotten about Bobbi.
Beside Walter, Roy was speaking into a comm unit of his own. “Secure! Let’s get the fuck out of here!”
Getty was looking with sudden and uncharacteristic panic at the New Breeds, and at the one normal human being, which was Roy, who the New Breeds had called “El-Tee” which Walter knew meant “Lieutenant.”
“Bobbi,” Getty belted out. “We gotta get Bobbi! We can’t leave her!”
He tried to lean forward.
The New Breed that had carried him stiff-armed him back into a sitting position.
“Sit the fuck down,” the soldier barked.
Walter spun to Roy and grabbed his brother by the shoulder. “Roy! Hey, Roy! We got a friend still on the ground! She’s in the building…”
Roy was shaking his head. “No, Walter. No.”
“We can’t leave her!”
Underneath them, the deck rolled, and the bird was airborne, rising rapidly into the sky.
“Sorry,” Roy continued to avoid eye-contact.
“Roy!” Walter shook him.
Roy jerked back, cleared his shoulder of Walter’s grip, then looked at him. “We got about two minutes to clear this airspace or we’re going down in a ball of flames, understand? Our fast movers saved your ass but they can’t stick around with the interceptors inbound, and neither can we.” He shook his head, managed, somehow, to look put-off. “Everyone on this bird just risked their life for you, little brother, just be happy you’re alive!”
Walter stared.
Funny, he could feel the tears drying on his skin in the wind that was rushing through the open gunship doors.
Funny, he could feel himself drying up with them, like mud in a hot sun.
Funny, how brothers have the unique ability to turn you from love to rage in a hair’s breadth of time.
“Put the bird down,” Walter said.
Roy took a half-second to evaluate the look in Walter’s eyes. Then he shook his head. “I’m sorry, Walt, but we just don’t have time.”
The gunship was moving now, not just rising up, but tilting, slightly, it’s nose downward, but it’s forward motion pinning everyone to the deck like artificial gravity. Out of the corner of his eye, Walter watched the world tilt in a disorienting way, but he was crystal clear for the first time in the last ten minutes.
He didn’t really want to do what he was about to do.
But he had already decided.
And when you’re decided, it is best not to hesitate.
He backed up a half step and snapped his rifle up.
Roy had partially turned away, but at the movement, he jerked back around.
He saw the muzzle of the rifle staring at him, and then he looked at Walter with disbelief in his eyes. At first that was all there was, but then there was a note of fear in them as well.
He had looked on the wounded man that they’d dragged aboard the gunship and he’d seen his little brother.
But things had changed, hadn’t they?
Walter wasn’t himself anymore. He wasn’t even the person he’d been the last time the sun rose. He had only just begun to realize these violent catalysts being activated in himself, these cataclysmic shifts, but it seemed that Roy abruptly saw them in their fullness and when he looked at Walter it was not the look that you give a person you are familiar with because you have known them all your life.
It is the look you give a person when you realize that you don’t know them at all.
But it couldn’t just end there.
Of course not.
Even as Walter opened his mouth to speak, he heard a bark from one of the New Breeds, and out of the corner of his eye, he could see the soldier raising his rifle up to point at Walter.
Walter completely ignored the New Breed pointing the rifle at him. “We got a fighter stuck in a building and we are not leaving her.” Walter said, and his voice was cracked and worn and ground to shreds. “She’s the only reason we’re still alive. Tell them to put this bird on the roof of the SoDro offices.”
“You gonna shoot me?” Roy asked, holding his gaze.
Walter opened his mouth to respond.
Then he heard a sound from behind him.
It was the pop and crackle of a stun gun.
And then the sound of someone uttering a cry of surprise.
Walter spun to look behind him, and saw Getty and Rat, slumped into the arms of the New Breeds that had taken them aboard the craft. Stuck to each of their necks was the bolt from a stun gun, still crackling out blue arcs of energy.
The two New Breeds held the stun guns in one hand, and lowered Getty and Rat’s bodies to the ground with the other.
Walter already knew the mistake that he’d made.
He knew it as he turned back to Roy.
Turned back to his brother and saw the muzzle of a stun gun.
Behind the stun gun, Roy looked stern, but apologetic.
“I’m sorry, Walter.”
The stun bolt struck him in the forehead.
Chapter 33
His mind bobbed in shallow consciousness for a while. A timeless while, like some segment deep in space where time is relative and reality has sped along ceaselessly without you, decades flying by in the span of seconds.
He became conscious a few times.
The first, was a start.
He jolted, gulped air, wanted to fight.
He thought he was still in the gunship. He couldn’t feel the wind anymore, and thought that maybe they had closed the doors. When he looked up it was the same dark gray ceiling, the stability joints of the aircraft standing out like ribs, like he was in the belly of a whale.
There was also a New Breed.
He had his battleshroud undone. He was a broad-faced man, which was typical of the body-mods. He had a fiery red beard and Walter thought he looked like some sort of Norse god, with eyes that twinkled with mead and mischief.
The Norse god was applying an IV pack to Walter’s arm and telling him to hold still. Walter stared, blinked rapidly, trying to focus, and came to the sludgy realization that this muddling of his mind was beyond what should have happened with the stun gun, and as his vision cleared enough, he realized that the IV pack—just a little black box strapped to his arm—had already been fed into his veins, and what the Norse god was doing was pushing a tranquilizer or an anesthetic into his bloodstream.
He didn’t want to go down again.
He wanted to fight. He was very angry.
And then, he just couldn’t find the energy to be angry.
He was swallowed in an enveloping warmth, like being sunk into a hot bath, but without the initial, bracing sting.
As he sank again, he tried to look around, and he wanted to ask, “Where’s Rat? Where’s Getty? What the fuck is going on?” but his mouth wouldn’t move, nor his throat make any sound. He couldn’t see them at all, but then, he was finding it hard to turn his head.
The last he heard was his brother’s voice: “Walter, don’t be scared. I’m here.”
He thought
that someone was holding his hand.
Maybe Roy, but he couldn’t be sure…
***
Walter, don’t be scared. I’m here.
Walter, don’t be scared.
I’m here.
Walter.
I’m here.
Don’t be scared.
I’m here.
I’m here.
I’m here.
***
Awake again.
Kind of.
He tried to move again, tried to do it with violence. But he was stuck in a place between sleep and awake. And in this nightmare place his greatest efforts garnered him only the slightest twitches of his limbs.
He tried to cry out. He felt a slight moan come out of him. He tried again and got the same result. He buckled down, and this time just tried to scream as loud as possible, desperate to either wake himself up, or have someone wake him up, anything to get out of this nightmare place.
He let out a loud noise.
Roy’s voice: “Chill out. You’re okay. Don’t be scared.”
Walter blinked a few times.
Yes, it was sky above them.
Bright sky.
He could actually feel the sunshine on his face.
Or was that the warmth of the drugs?
What are you doing to me, Roy?
“Nothing bad is happening to you,” Roy’s voice assured him, although Walter could not see his face. “So don’t be scared.”
What about the others?
Too late, back under.
***
Weird dreams.
He was standing in a barren, shitty trailer. He looked around it. He thought it was the one where Virgil had kept Captain Kuai Luo for questioning.
The same trailer. But different.
In only the way that dreams can be in places that are not the places they are supposed to be.
Walter got the sense that the small cramped living area where he’d stood, banished from the room where Virgil was doing his work, smoking a cigarette with Getty, was much larger, much more expansive than it had been in real life. Something like a ballroom.
And then, of course, it was filled with people. Some sort of social occasion. They were all lounging along the same wall with Getty. They were all laughing and sharing drinks.
Walter didn’t feel happy at all.
He felt pissed that no one was taking things seriously.
Getty smoked his cigarette and smiled at him. “Maybe you don’t really mind it that much,” Getty said. “Maybe you just think you should mind it, and you don’t, and maybe that’s really what scares you. Huh?”
“No.” Walter just shook his head.
Getty pointed with two fingers and a cigarette pinched between them, his eyes on Walter’s chest. “Look at that.”
Walter looked down at his chest.
Which was not a chest at all.
He was looking into muddy waters. But they were deep.
The longer he stared, the deeper he went. The darker the muddy water got. Almost until it was pitch black. And then it was. He was still plunging into them, and he had the crazy image in his mind of his head bowing down and into his chest, delving into himself, some backwards version of a snake eating its own tail.
There was something down there in the dark.
He wasn’t feeling it necessarily. Just knowing it.
Down there in the deep, deep dark.
In the deep, muddy dark that is black.
He was drowning in it.
His lungs were clawing for air.
Too far from the surface now.
He was going to die down there…
***
Blip.
Back to reality for a wakeful second.
Someone was doing something to his face.
There was a great deal of pain.
He heard something beeping manically.
Someone was speaking rapidly, urgently.
Something pushed into his veins again.
Oh well.
***
Carolyn was tied to the chair.
In the trailer that was defunct.
That was a ballroom.
That was filled with people.
Carolyn was in the chair, but she was asking the questions.
She seemed very serious.
“Who’s been kidnapping New Breed soldiers?” she asked, seeming to be a little irritated with Walter, as though he knew the answers and was refusing to give them.
“I dunno,” Walter answered lamely.
“The Honeycutts?” She prodded. “The Linklaters? The Eudys?”
Virgil’s voice from beside Walter: “The Eudys are extremists,” he asserted.
Walter turned to look at him.
Virgil was looking back at Walter. Half his head was gone. He was smiling. Or was it just that his lips had been ripped off by the bullet? A few teeth were missing, shattered to jagged roots by the path of the projectile. His eyes twinkled merrily.
“Extremists,” he said again, his gory mouth dribbling blood, loose flaps of skin moving as he spoke. “They’re all extremists and they’re Not To Be Trusted.”
Walter turned back to Carolyn, disturbed.
“Why?” she asked.
“Why what?” he answered.
“Why are they kidnapping New Breeds?”
“I dunno,” he said again.
“Who got broken out of DTI?”
“The Eudys,” a voice announced.
Walter looked in that direction.
It was Captain Kuai Luo. He was lounging on the wall with Getty. They were passing Getty’s last cigarette back and forth. Captain Kuai Luo let out a stream of smoke and nodded at Walter, pointedly.
“The Eudys,” he repeated. “Carolyn’s parents.”
“Extremists,” Virgil stated again. “Fucking extremists.”
Chapter 34
Walter came to more evenly this time.
And this time there were no drugs.
He felt himself rising up. Felt the light of reality piercing the deep strangeness of his dream world, but the questions and the images clung to him even as he surfaced and opened his eyes. As he was waking he had the pressing feeling that the dream was important, that the questions raised were important, and that he should not forget them.
He opened his eyes, and he knew he was fully awake, and he stared up at a ceiling of white polyboard tiling, and identical walls. There was a circular light above him, and it was dimmed to a tranquil blue.
The dream was still there.
It still made sense.
The urgent need of those questions still clutched his stomach. He turned them over in his mind like a puzzle in his hands, waiting for them to dissolve into the stuff of dreams—that nonsense stuff that falls apart in the light of reason much like a sand sculpture will crumble when it has fully dried and the wind strikes it.
Who has been kidnapping the New Breed soldiers?
Hadn’t Virgil asked that question?
He had. When he’d first begun to question Captain Kuai Luo.
The captain hadn’t had an answer.
But…he’d known the answer to another question.
Who was broken out of DTI?
The Eudys.
Carolyn’s parents.
And who was going to do extreme things, like kidnapping New Breed soldiers?
Why, the extremists, of course.
Carolyn’s parents.
But why?
Just to torture and interrogate?
It seemed like much trouble for not much gain.
The resources that would have to be committed to getting multiple New Breeds in custody would be large. The intelligence that they had would likely not outweigh that cost.
Why?
Why kidnap them?
And where was Carolyn’s parents now?
And where was he sitting at this very moment?
And most importantly…
Carolyn.
The concept
of her like a bone-deep ache.
He heard something stir in the room with him, and he leaned up. He was lying on a bed. It was pushed to the side of a room. The room was small. A sink and a toilet opposite him.
His heart hammered.
Cell, he thought, suddenly. I’m in a cell.
And then, with positivity, with conviction that squeezed his innards to mush: DTI, oh God, I’m in DTI.
As he came into a semi-sitting position, propped up on his elbows, he saw who else was in the room with him.
“Roy,” he rasped, and in the one word there was something like a longing and something like a hatred. But brothers were unique that way. They could have both in equal measure. “What the fuck—”
Roy raised one hand, cutting him off.
He was sitting in a chair, and he looked cleaned. Scrubbed. He wasn’t wearing his softarmor anymore. His dark hair, which looked like it was on the shaggy end of being close-cut, looked like it had been wet recently. All the dirt and smoke was scrubbed from his face, but there was a notable cut that ran from the bottom of his left earlobe over to about halfway across his cheek. It was a minor cut, but red and angry.
Roy held his brother’s gaze, and Walter pumped anger back at him, and for a brief moment, in the silence of their looks that managed to say so much, Roy looked regretful. But not entirely remorseful.
Roy lowered his hand, and spoke, evenly, quietly. “Don’t freak out right now. You’re not detained.” To make the point, he gestured to Walter’s wrists. “You have no restraints on you.” Then he gestured to the door—a plain gray rectangle. “And the door’s not locked.”
Walter forced himself into a more upright position. “You left one of my people—”
“One of your people?” Roy scoffed. “Tell the truth, Walter. How long have you known any of them? Hm? How long?”
