Divided We Fall

by Adam Bender

  Seven blinked. “What do you mean he’s gone?”

  “The guy you shot. He’s not here. There’s not even any blood.”

  “Are you sure you’re in the right room?”

  “I checked the entire floor, just in case you blew up any other windows during your firefight. This is the room, I’m sure of it. The guy either got up and walked out, or someone moved his corpse.”

  Seven was sure he’d hit his target. He’d seen the black-robed man slump over. He had to be dead.

  “Okay, do a full search of the area. Maybe something will turn up that will help us. I’m going to check with Shaan, see if he’s found anything.”

  “Roger,” she said.

  Seven pulled the phone from his ear and dialed the engineer.

  “Bit busy right now,” Shaan complained.

  “Have you traced that call?”

  There was an incomprehensible mumble on the other end.

  “What?”

  “No,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like this. I still have a trick or two up my sleeve but I’m not optimistic. Will let you know if anything changes.”

  “Okay, well if you–” A beep stopped Seven from finishing the sentence. He looked at the phone and saw that Shaan had hung up.

  With a sigh, he stuck the device in his pocket and entered the press conference.

  “Fear has run this nation for too long,” Danny Young was telling the media. “Well, it’s not going to run my campaign, and it’s not going to run my presidency.”

  The keys slipped from Seven’s hand and bounced with a jingle on the gray carpet. As he reached down to retrieve it, he felt a dull ache in his shoulder and groaned.

  This bout of clumsiness wasn’t the worst thing to happen today, he supposed. But what was that saying about the straw and the donkey’s back? Well, at least he was home.

  “Home,” Seven muttered to no one. As he looked into the apartment the term seemed a bit of a stretch. Sparkling clean walls, glowing wood floors; he knew it was better than he deserved. He spent the past few months moving from place to place with only a few changes in clothes. It was weird to be in a place all his own with no plans for the evening.

  Seven trudged into the living room and fell into a maroon leather sofa. He glanced at the television remote control but felt too tired to reach for it. He thought about going to the bedroom, but the orange sunlight streaming through the window indicated it was too early to sleep.

  It occurred to him that he hadn’t had supper and that this would not be easy to remedy. There was nothing in the refrigerator, and just about all the restaurants this close to the shore were still closed. People were still too scared to come to the site of the Enemy attack.

  He thought about calling Talia, but decided against it. It was difficult enough dealing with all the memories by himself. Talia was good at distracting him from the past, but the bliss never lasted. Afterward he would feel empty and confused. For Talia’s sake, he would try to force a smile, but Talia always saw through it. In the end, she would look just as miserable as he.

  Picking up a pen and pad of paper from the coffee table, he began to write:

  My name is Seven

  He stared at the sentence for a long time, mouthing the written words over and over.

  But Seven couldn’t control the dreams. Last night, after falling asleep with Talia, he had seen Eve. He had seen her and he had felt her and he had wanted her.

  “Stop it!” he snapped.

  There was no point even considering trying to see Eve again. He was too different from her now. They believed in different things. Even if they had been in love, even if they had been engaged to be married, it was based on something that was no longer true. They had no foundation to stand on anymore. There was nothing there.

  This isn’t fair to Talia, he realized. He should stop seeing her at once. Maybe he would be better off on his own.

  He needed fresh air. Seven grabbed his key from the coffee table and headed for the beach.

  Eve felt terribly alone as she pulled into the lighthouse parking lot on the Luna Coast. She was driving a rugged four-wheel-drive vehicle that the Guard had given her as a sort of parting, “sorry-we-almost-dropped-you” gift. It was a machine built for off-road driving, and after bouncing up the war-torn coast, Eve was glad to have it. The once romantic road winding alongside the shore now was full of potholes. Vultures circled overhead, presumably surveying the area for fallen soldiers.

  Eve had stopped for only a few minutes at her apartment. She hadn’t been there since the attack, and now the place stunk of sour milk and rotting vegetables. Her first orders of business were to clear most of the refrigerator into a trashcan and toss the filth down the building’s garbage chute. Discovering the stench lingered when she returned to the flat, Eve tore open a few windows and hastily walked out the door.

  At first she didn’t know where to go. Most of the stores, bars, and restaurants had been shuttered since the attack. All her friends were in the Guard, and she’d lost track of their whereabouts after the attack. She couldn’t even call them because she’d lost the cell phone with all their numbers. Upon her release from prison, the Guard issued her a new one–a heavy old clamshell built for fighting outdoors–but she hadn’t yet gotten around to rebuilding her contact list.

  Still without any clear direction, she jumped in the buggy and just went. Eve found herself driving to the place she had gone her whole life to clear her head–the ocean.

  The tall white beacon on top of Luna Coast survived the attack but was not unscathed. Eve touched a particularly deep bullet hole on the concrete exterior. Stepping back she saw many similar pock marks.

  “Poor thing,” she whispered.

  The sculpture garden had fared worse. One statue she remembered in particular–a somewhat abstract man made of black wire–was missing its head. She found crumbled granite and twisted iron scattered around the grounds.

  Eve stepped through the uncut grass toward the cliff’s edge. She tripped over something hard but caught her balance, saving herself from a spill. Squinting into the vegetation she saw that her foot had caught on a marble-white hand. She guessed that it had broken off of one of the statues, but she couldn’t figure out why so many flies were buzzing about. All at once she understood. It was not stone but bone, and the insects were eating the bits of human flesh that remained. As calmly as she could manage, Eve lifted her foot and pushed on toward the water.

  In prison she had found peace with a number of things, including what had seemed to be her imminent death. She had even accepted that she would never have her fiancé back–that he would always, from now on, be Seven. For so long she blamed Seven for this, but she realized now that it was the Guard who had taken her fiancé. There was no point in being mad at Seven.

  She had to admit, though, that it had been far easier to accept they didn’t have a future when Death waited just around the corner.

  No, she scolded herself. It’s time to let go and to move on. They had been engaged, but they were not engaged anymore. They weren’t going to get married, and that was final. Jon, for all intents and purposes, was dead. She would have to be okay with that.

  Eve shivered as she looked down into the waves crashing blue-and-white into the rocks many meters below. She fell to one knee and began to pray. The ocean breeze filled her nostrils and she felt reinvigorated, like a weight was lifting. She was still alone, but now remembered how strong she had been on her own before she met Jon. She knew that she could be strong again.

  In the corner of her eye she saw a man walking up the shore, but he was too far away to make out any features.

  A sudden beep turned Eve’s attention to her pocket. Tugging the thick phone from her snug jeans required some force, but she managed to get the device open and to her ear by the third ring. “Hello?” she said.

  “Agent Parker?” said a man on the other end of the line. Eve could tell instantly by his tone that he was with the Guard.

/>   “I’m here.”

  “I’ve got President Randall holding on the other line,” he said. “Do you have a couple minutes to accept his call?”

  Seven watched a seagull swoop down from the sky and dive into the sand. It shot back up into the air with a clamshell in its mouth. The bird rose high over a jetty and dropped the shell to shatter on the black rocks. The gull dove back down to retrieve it.

  He had to be careful to avoid stepping on shrapnel and other remains of the battle fought here with the Enemy. It was strange to be here after the fact. Seven had only seen video and heard reports. While the Underground sent many of its members into battle, he had stayed back and watched from afar. Seven had volunteered to fight but Danny Young wouldn’t allow it. The chairman of the Underground said Seven was too important to risk his life as a foot soldier. He was needed for bigger things.

  Seven later helped to fuel the riots in Loganville, but when the revolution grew more violent, Danny again asked him to hang back on the sidelines. He hid with Young and the others while the protesters swarmed into the Capital.

  Once, Seven tried to organize a rescue mission to save Eve. After all, she had helped the Underground–while she had done plenty of wrong, he didn’t think she deserved to die. Young agreed with him and promised to help her, but asked for patience. They would not let her be executed, he said, but there were bigger things to deal with first.

  It was frustrating to sit around doing nothing. Seven was possessed by the deplorable memories of Jonathan Wyle. He remembered arresting and killing “Heretics” for things that barely seemed like crimes at all: skipping church, questioning the government, defending friends and family who did either of the above. He tried to remind himself of all the good he had done since awakening as Seven. Talia told him the same, but he could not be convinced. The guilt pressed against him like a heavy boulder on his shoulders.

  Seven looked far up the shore to the cliffs of the Luna Coast, and considered the white lighthouse towering above it all. He re-membered Danny’s advice about a path that wound up the hill.

  He wasn’t sure why he had come to the spot where he had first fallen for Eve. Why did he want to risk reliving that moment?

  He went ahead anyway.

  It was slow going on the sand but after twenty minutes he found the trail, or what was left of it anyway. Someone’s army had blown the mountainside to bits, and a huge rock blocked any hope of ascent. With a sigh, Seven moved back toward the water and sat down in the sand. He sank his hand into the earth, dug out a large clump, and let the warm granules fall gently through his fingers.

  Eve found it difficult to believe she was actually talking to the president. He was only the interim president, of course, but he was still the president. Eve had never talked to a president before. This was–

  “Are you still there, Agent Parker?” Randall asked politely.

  “Yes, sorry, Mr. President. I’ve just been a little out of it since I’ve been back I guess.”

  “I understand perfectly,” he replied. “You’ve had a hard month.”

  Eve suddenly remembered she was talking to the man who saved her life. “And I thank you so much, sir, for your pardon.”

  “You don’t need to thank me. We are in your debt for helping us obtain the vital information necessary to expose the Patriot ID program. Young told me everything, including how you saved a young man’s life.”

  She couldn’t recall saving any boy. “Excuse me?”

  “Young’s aide. He is called Seven, I believe.”

  “Oh, him,” she said. She supposed Seven was a young man compared to Randall.

  “Now Agent Parker, I must ask if you are still willing to serve your country.”

  She sat down on the cliff and picked up a stone from the ground. She rolled it around in her palm. “I suppose it depends on who in my country I would be serving.”

  “I want to reform the Elite Guard,” Randall said. “But it’s going to take more than flipping a switch, and it’s likely going to take longer than my short interim presidency will allow. If we’re going to keep this thing going after I step aside, we’re going to need someone in charge who understands what must be done.”

  Eve wound up her arm like a softball pitcher and flung the rock underhand into the sea. “Young?” she asked.

  “Yes, Young,” Randall said. “But he’s in danger. About an hour ago someone–a professional–tried to kill him.”

  Eve blinked a few times. “What’s his condition?”

  “A little shaken up, but otherwise in good health. That Seven fellow saved him just in time.”

  “So what’s this have to do with me?”

  “Young got lucky this time,” said Randall. “In the future I don’t want an assassin to even come close to lining up a shot on the future president. That’s why I want to put you in charge of his security.”

  “Me? I’m not a bodyguard. Can’t you just surround him with a squad of Guard?”

  “Yes, and we will, but putting up walls of defense will only stop the symptoms of the problem. You won’t be a bodyguard–perhaps I phrased the contours of this mission poorly. What I want you to do, Agent Parker, is to find out who was behind the assassination. You will report directly to me.”

  “What about the Headmaster? I can’t see him approving.”

  Randall paused awkwardly. “The Headmaster doesn’t know, and I don’t plan to consult him. Since this matter ties to the election, and the Headmaster has made clear his support for Susan Levi, I don’t wish to involve him. I’m sure you understand the need for discretion?”

  “Believe me, Mr. President–after my last meeting with his holiness, I would rather keep him out of it.”

  Randall laughed curtly. “I thought as much.”

  “Do we have any leads?” she asked.

  “I can’t afford to engage in speculation at this time. But the best place to start is Young’s political headquarters. I want you to survey the crime scene and talk to the witnesses.”

  Eve saw where this was heading. She was going to have to deal with Seven again.

  The target had not seemed especially dangerous. A young clergyman, Paul Roland, taught a Sunday School class at the Northeast Capital Church. A clever cover, but not enough to slip past the all-seeing eye of the Guard.

  It was communications records that finally flushed out Roland as a possible Heretic. The phone company reported several calls a week by Roland to people on the Watched list. After running the evidence by a judge, the Guard obtained the authority necessary to add Roland to the Watched list. The classification allowed the government to assign an Elite to the case.

  Agent Jonathan Wyle got the job. He had another Watched on his plate already–a young reporter named Joanna–but it wasn’t unusual these days for Elites to have more than one target. Things were moving slowly with the Joanna case anyway, and Wyle was glad for the change of pace.

  Jon watched Roland off and on for about two weeks from an unmarked black van parked about a block from Roland’s church. The Elite hung out for hours each day in the vehicle’s roomy back cabin, spending most of his time staring at a laptop computer. He also had a small TV, but Wyle found it distracting and kept it turned off. A small coffee machine helped keep him awake.

  Roland had a relatively new office computer with the latest version of Blue Wall installed, so it was cake for Agent Wyle to turn the workstation into a live television camera. Jon didn’t even have to touch Roland’s PC to commandeer its webcam and microphone. The A/V feed flowed straight to the Guard’s cloud network, which was accessible through Wyle’s laptop and mobile devices.

  A simple scan of Roland’s web browser history alerted Jon to a violent plot. Roland was reading information about building explosives and comparing prices at online gun stores. The young priest had also entered a chat on a suspicious discussion group called . Jon hadn’t personally heard of the network before, but he recognized the name Fink–a reference to a religious cult leader
from the days of the Great War. A quick call to HQ revealed that the network was under investigation for possible ties to the Underground.

  All of this was suspicious, but in the eyes of the law it wasn’t enough to get a conviction. Rather, it was just another compelling reason to keep Roland on the Watched list.

  Jon got his break on the Friday of his second week watching Roland. He had been thinking about his mission-turned-pizza-date with Eve when an unmarked truck pulled up to the church. A dusty-haired man in a brown uniform popped out holding a large cardboard box. None of this would have been particularly suspicious except that the guy’s uniform didn’t match any of the major national package carriers. After some deliberation, Wyle got out of the van and shadowed the courier through the tall wooden doors of the church.

  Inside, the deliveryman approached a woman carrying a stack of books and asked for Roland. She pointed him down a corridor where all of this church’s priests kept their offices. Wyle followed him part of the way there but stopped at a water fountain a few doors down from Roland’s office.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Jon watched Roland’s door swing open. The priest greeted the courier. He took the package without signing and retreated into his room. Jon drank from the fountain and let the deliveryman pass. Then he followed him back to the main entrance.

  A few steps from the courier’s truck, Jon cleared his throat. “Excuse me, sir?”

  The man turned halfway and looked at him with a sideways glance. Jon saw the name Bob written in cursive on his brown shirt. “Hi, Bob. Quick question for you. I was just a little curious which shipping company you’re with? I don’t recognize your uniform.”

  The courier smiled slightly. “DAY Shipping.”

  “Weird,” said Wyle, staring him in the eyes. “I thought they wore blue.”

  “New uniforms,” Bob returned with a menacing look.

  “They got rid of the DAY logo, too, huh?”

  “Glad to report you’ve got 20/20 vision,” the man returned. “Look, man, I’ve got to run. I’m on the clock.”