“And you think you can… teach it to me?”
He slammed deep into her, feeling a rush of masculine power as Rachel let out a soundless cry and arched her back.
“I do,” he said. Rachel let out a high pitched, involuntary cry of pleasure as he began his onslaught.
She started to wrap her legs around him and then seemed to think better of it, keeping her thighs wide and open for him. Her breasts bounced with each of Archer’s thrusts. He kissed them, for his amusement, rather than hers.
It was hard for him to know if what he was doing was revenge for her lies, or just another situation that Rachel had orchestrated. She might very well have another camera, hidden somewhere in her clothing, recording the sounds, if not video footage, of what they were doing.
And if so, she could spin that any way she liked, far more effectively than any of my words.
Rather than cooling him off, the idea flared his emotions, fanning the flames of his passion and lust. He slammed into Rachel harder, holding her down on the couch. He whispered things into her ear, some of them dirty, some of them demeaning.
He thought of Leigh, and how much he missed her.
“Oh god!” Rachel shivered underneath him, her entire body contorting with pleasure, and then went as limp as a dead fish. Archer pulled his cock out of her and slid up so that he was straddling her chest. He took her hair in his hand and lifted her face forward, and she began to suck.
“There you go,” he said. “That’s a suitable apology, don’t you think?”
She glared up at him. He thrust forward a bit, feeling her hot, wet tongue sliding along the underside of his shaft. She had amazing lips, and knew what she was doing with them. Archer urged them on, until she was sucking faster and faster, and then pulled back as he found his release.
His load blasted out across Rachel’s pretty, heavily made up face. She didn’t seem overly put off by it, continuing to lick and caress his cock throughout Archer’s orgasm. The pleasure of it was bitter sweet. He enjoyed it, but as it faded, all he could think about was Leigh.
“That was interesting,” said Rachel.
Archer didn’t say anything. He pulled on his boxers and t-shirts and poured himself another glass of wine. Rachel took her time getting dressed, as though expecting that he’d eventually say something, or ask something else of her.
“Alright then,” she said. “I’ll be checking for my camera outside, and heading on my way. The memory card might still be good even if the device is wrecked.”
Archer was totally silent. He didn’t care what kind of impression he was giving off.
Is this my life now? I would have thought I’d enjoy living like this, but it’s so… pointless.
“You’re more like your brother than you know,” said Rachel. She left the apartment.
CHAPTER 34
Archer waited up for Leigh for a little while, but it became clear to him that she wouldn’t be back until late, and he was tired. He drank another glass of wine and then passed out.
He woke up late the next morning, and Leigh was still gone. It felt odd to pick out clothes on his own, and that fact annoyed him. He’d become more than a little spoiled since leaving the coal district and gaining his new status.
Am I that reliant on her now, or am I just being ridiculous?
Archer ate a quick, depressingly cold breakfast of cereal and soy milk, and then headed out. It was cold enough to justify keeping his hood up, and he managed to get to the North Compound without being recognized. In the time since he’d popped into the public eye, he’d forgotten how good anonymity felt.
Ada was waiting for him in the armory, along with Vivian, dressed in casual clothing. Archer frowned, and it took him a couple of seconds to realize what that implied.
“You’re aren’t healed up yet,” he said to her. “Are you?”
“Close enough to it,” said Vivian. “Besides, I’ll be driving the rambler. I’m coming along in a non-combat capacity.”
“Exactly,” said Ada. “And I’m giving her the lead, Archer. You won’t be in direct radio contact the entire time. Follow Vivian’s orders as though they came from me.”
“I know how the chain of command works,” said Archer. “I won’t give her any trouble.”
He headed to the locker room to put on his undersuit. He’d expected to put on his armor skin immediately after that, but it wasn’t where it usually was on the rack.
“It’s already loaded into the rambler,” explained Ada. “There’s no reason for you to be in it unless the two of you run into danger. Which, if you keep a solid pace, I don’t think you’ll have to worry about.”
Archer nodded.
“Alright,” he said. “So… you mentioned a vehicle that we’ll be taking?”
“It’s down in the tunnels,” said Ada. “Vivian has been trained in its operation. You’re to head straight to Syprus and find Ambassador Amalia at our embassy there. Spend the night in the city, and then return tomorrow morning.”
Archer nodded slowly.
“Understood.” He scratched the back of his head, frowning slightly.
I really wish I’d gotten a chance to say goodbye to Leigh. Just what the hell is she doing, anyway?
He walked over to the elevator slowly, as though expecting her to pop out from around a corner, or behind a door. She didn’t.
Vivian was already waiting for him on the platform. She had on jeans, a grey t-shirt, and a blue windbreaker. Her hair was pulled back into a pony tail, and she held her injured arm still against her side, clearly still in a little bit of pain.
“You sure you’re up for this?” he asked.
She looked at him blankly, as though not really understanding his question. Finally, she followed his gaze to her arm and seemed to get his meaning.
“I’ve worked through worse injuries than this, Archer,” she said. “I was still recovering from a broken ankle on that first day we started training.”
“Ouch,” he said. The elevator started down. “I guess Ada isn’t big on letting people off on medical leave?”
Vivian’s expression was almost insulting in its sharpness.
“Have you forgotten how the armor skins work?” she asked. “We don’t have replacements if we get injured, or killed.”
She hesitated, and Archer saw her eyes flash with a brief, burning anger.
Most of us don’t get replacements. But Trevor did, regardless of how anyone felt about it.
Archer hadn’t realized there were so many tunnels underneath the North Compound. Besides the ones that made up the rail network, there were others the led to storage rooms and garages for armored vehicles. It was one of the latter that Vivian led him toward, her auburn pony tail bouncing from side to side as she walked in front of him.
The rambler was parked underneath a heavy, fluorescent spotlight hanging from the ceiling. It wasn’t at all what Archer had been expecting. It looked a bit like the rail cars on the surface, except wider, and at least fifty feet long. It had a dozen wheels, each of them large enough to come almost up to Archer’s waist, with massive, metal studded treads.
“You know how to drive this thing?” asked Archer. “Like… without it being attached to a rail?”
Vivian chuckled and nodded.
“Your armor skin should be in the back,” she said. “Take a look, just in case. And then make sure the back door is completely shut.”
Archer nodded and moved toward the back of the vehicle. There was a handle on the metal door and he lifted it. The door swung open revealing a wide open space on the other side. The metal walls of the boxy interior reminded him of the acoustics inside the old shack he had once called home.
His armor skin, standing upright in a travel harness, was leaning against one of the inside walls. A Frequency Claymore lay on the ground next to it, along with a box that Archer assumed contained any emergency supplies they might need. He closed the door, made sure that it was completely shut, and then headed up front to take his s
eat next to Vivian.
“All set?” She flashed a cavalier smile at him.
“Good to go,” said Archer.
She worked a mechanism next to the steering wheel and the rambler roared to life. Archer expected her to go slow, at least until they were out of the darkened tunnel, but she almost immediately floored it.
“Hey, easy,” he said. “This isn’t a-”
Sunshine flooded in ahead of them as the metal doors opened onto the wasteland outside. There was a small incline right before the exit and the rambler’s speed launched it airborne as they went over it. Archer grabbed onto the bottom of his seat, eyes wide, and then bounced forward against the dashboard as they landed.
“Sorry,” she said. “I should have warned you. I tend to get a little crazy when I’m behind the wheel.”
She smirked at him, as though daring him to question or complain. Archer shrugged and acted as unaffected as he could manage.
“Are we really at top speed?” he asked. “This doesn’t actually feel that fast…”
Vivian let loose some colorful language and increased their speed even further, kicking up dust in their wake as they sped across a flat landscape of scorched earth and nothingness. Archer couldn’t keep a grin from spreading across his face.
The sound of the rambler’s engine made it difficult for them to make conversation, at least not when Vivian was flooring it. They passed the first few hours in relative silence before breaking for lunch. Archer hadn’t realized how hungry he was, and was grateful to get something else besides cold cereal into his stomach.
He was in the middle of wolfing down two thick slabs of bread stuffed with cheese and roast beef when Vivian held a hand up to her mouth and smirked at him. Archer swallowed and shook his head.
“What?” he asked.
She shrugged.
“It’s just… the way you eat,” she said, as though that explained everything.
“What about the way I eat?” he asked.
Vivian ran a hand passed a few unruly locks of red hair, sliding them into place behind her ear.
“It’s straightforward, and efficient,” she said. “No fancy frills. It’s like a metaphor for who you are, isn’t it?”
Archer just stared at her.
She can’t expect me to answer that, can she? Wasn’t it rhetorical?
They were back on the road as soon as they finished eating. Hours passed by, and it was late in the afternoon when Vivian slowed the rambler to a stop and Archer snapped out of a doze and back into attention.
“This isn’t good,” she muttered.
They were facing a large river, probably about a hundred feet across, with unnaturally clear water. It was the Judas River. Archer had heard of it before on the news.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“It’s not normally so wide, or so deep. It must have been flooded by storms, or meltwater, or something.”
Vivian opened her door and hopped out onto the wasteland, and Archer followed after her. The two of them came within a couple feet of the riverbank’s edge. The river was sterile, devoid of life, and radioactive. It was also beautiful. Archer had seen pictures and paintings of rivers from before the purge and knew that he probably shouldn’t think so.
“What’s the issue?” he asked.
“The path we’re supposed to take involves fording this river,” said Vivian. “It’s usually not any deeper than about three feet at the most, which would have been a piece of cake for us to push through with the rambler.”
She slipped back into the vehicle and booted up the communications system. Archer listened to one side of a very scratchy conversation between her and Ada. Radio transmissions were another casualty of the modern age, at least at ranges beyond a couple of miles. He wondered about why that was, but doubted that Vivian would just give him the answer, even if she knew it. She’d have to dress him down for his ignorance, and he wasn’t sure he was up for that at the moment.
A minute or so went by, and then she waved for him to climb back into the rambler. Archer crouched down and stared at his reflection in the slow moving water. He thought he saw the surface shift for the briefest instant. He shook the sensation off and decided he’d seen an optical illusion. He took his seat next to Vivian.
“What’s the new plan?” he asked.
“We head downriver,” said Vivian. “There is a bridge. A very, very old, mostly rusted thing. We don’t usually use it because it’s considered to be too dangerous.”
Archer frowned.
“I don’t like the sound of that,” he said. “Is it really so important that we get to Syprus tonight?”
“We won’t make it tonight, either way,” she said. “But the mission is that important. We’re getting it done, regardless of what it takes.”
They traveled south for a time. The terrain close to the river became steep and rocky. Vivian swore under her breath and took a route that brought them further out, backtracking a bit to take a sloping hill rather than the jagged ledges.
Sunset was upon them when they reached something truly incredible. The river went from smaller, surmountable drops, to a single several hundred-foot-high, open stretch of waterfall. They could see the bridge a half mile or so down from them, but Vivian parked the rambler near the falls, both of them getting out so they could take in the complete sight of it.
The sun was setting across the river to the west, and it seemed to sink almost into the point where the waterfall landed. Its tumultuous waters became a mixture of blood red and warm orange. Archer and Vivian sat on the rambler’s hood in silence, watching it. And then, as though for their entertainment, a rainbow burst into existence amidst the swirling mist.
“It’s the angle of the sun,” said Vivian.
“It’s beautiful,” said Archer.
Vivian chuckled.
“Yeah, I guess it is.”
CHAPTER 35
They watched the sunset for a while, letting the last remnants of daylight fade. Archer wondered about whether it was the best idea for them to travel through the night, but Vivian seemed to be ahead of him on that.
“We’ll have dinner here,” she said. “And sleep in the back of the rambler. It’s too risky to try to cross the bridge in the dark, let alone navigate the wasteland from there.”
“Sounds good to me.” He walked beside her, and the two of them lifted up the rambler’s metal sliding door and climbed into its rear. Archer was going to leave it open, but Vivian turned on a small LED light in the roof and told him to close it.
As soon as he did, he felt an odd tension settle over the enclosed space. He told himself it was just because of the nature of the mission. Him and his dead brother’s fiancée, both out on dangerous recovery operation together. It was only natural for him to be feeling the urge to look, to stare at her.
“We can’t risk a fire for a hot meal, obviously,” said Vivian. “The scientific consensus is that the fabricants can detect intense infrared light sources at a ridiculous distance.”
“That’s fine,” said Archer.
“We do have this, though, if you feel like you need something to warm you up.” She grinned at him and pulled a medium sized bottle of whiskey out of their supplies. Archer couldn’t help but chuckle at it.
“I’m game if you are,” he said.
Their meal was similar to what they’d had for lunch, but Archer didn’t mind much. He fixed himself a simple sandwich and accepted a handful of chips from Vivian as she passed the bag over to him.
“What was your life like before this, Archer?” she asked.
“Uh…” He hesitated, caught off guard by the question. “That’s a little direct, isn’t it?”
Vivian took a swig of the whiskey as though in response. Archer ate a chip, and thought about how to answer.
It was a mess. A dirty, painful struggle. But that isn’t what she wants to hear.
“It was like anyone else’s life in the coal district,” he said. “I think it’s easy for
people who live in the inner city to forget that it’s a totally different world, even though technically still part of the haven.”
Vivian offered him the whiskey, and Archer took a generous sip of it. True to what she’d said before, the warmth it sent through him was effective and instant.
“My turn,” said Archer. “How did you end up as a member of the Metal Squad?”
Vivian looked at him like she didn’t really understand what he was asking.
“I… was born into it, I guess,” she said. “I was young. My father was a captain in the Rangers and my mother was a developmental assistant on the armor skin project. They didn’t know whether the artificial nervous system would have a preference for men or women, so they tried to have some of both in that first group.”
Archer nodded, and waited for her to continue. She drank a little more whiskey.
“I think they thought they were protecting me,” said Vivian, in a soft voice. “It wasn’t any different, at the time. Everyone thought that the end of the world was right around the corner, just like they do now. I guess my parents figured if they could get me into one of the armor skins, I might stand a better chance at surviving.”
“That’s kind of dark,” said Archer.
“Maybe from the way you’re looking at it,” she said. “I think it was sweet of them.”
They ate and talked some more, their conversation veering into lighter territory.
“You know, there was a news story about you yesterday,” said Vivian. “I was in bed for most of the day with nothing to do but watch TV, so I saw everything the media had to offer.”
“There were a bunch,” said Archer. “I’m surprised at how many times they can retell a single fight and still expect people to care.”
“No, not that,” said Vivian. “It was from one of the streamcasters at XYZ. Something about you and Priscilla Favereau…?”
Archer rolled his eyes, but couldn’t stop a grin from spreading across his face.
“Whatever you’re imagining is probably exaggerated,” he said. “Besides, I don’t kiss and tell.”
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