Women of War

by Alexander Potter

  She shoots a glance at Suzanne, and the glance is filled with anger. I resist the urge to sit between them, but the air crackles with a potential fight.

  “Think she’s gonna regret it?” I ask.

  Amber shrugs. “That’s Robbie’s problem.”

  Suzanne breaks the toast, sets the crust on her plate, then shoves the plate away. There’s black crumbs around her mouth.

  “I didn’t mean to scare the bitch,” Suzanne says. “She hit me first.”

  “So you say.” I can’t quite keep the sarcasm out of my voice. Suzanne likes picking fights. She even likes staging them. But she is making progress and I’m not quite willing to send her away.

  “Look,” Suzanne says, “I’m sorry about the ration card. I was just trying to teach her a lesson.”

  “About what?” Amber asks, sounding curious. I know she spoke up before I did. Amber’s better at the subtle stuff, which is why she gets the door. She can wheedle and charm and manipulate. Me, I go right through people, and usually don’t care.

  “About sharing,” Suzanne says. “This House is about sharing, right?”

  “You hit her in home,” I say, even though it’s a guess.

  Suzanne flushes. Hitting someone in home means that you whacked the protect button, found their weak point, and made them go all berserker on you.

  “Didn’t mean to,” she says, but her words tell me she knows it.

  “You got the bathrooms cleaned?” I ask.

  She nods.

  “Next time Carla’s in, you talk to her,” I say.

  Suzanne nods again. Then she picks up her plate and disappears into the kitchen.

  “That’s her fifth infraction,” Amber says. “You usually toss them out on three.”

  “I know,” I say.

  “You’re thinking potential again, aren’t you?” Amber asks.

  We all got weaknesses. Potential is mine. Sometimes I can see what these women would be if we can just control their demons, if we can tame them just enough to return to society.

  The problem is the smart ones are the toughest to mold. Their minds have already rebelled, and won’t take much more. They’re usually my lost causes.

  “I didn’t say potential.” I sound petulant and I know it.

  Amber grins. “But you’re thinking it.”

  I nod. The other women eat in silence, their spoons clanking on the bowls. The peppery scent of the chili makes my stomach rumble, but I don’t reach for the food.

  That too is part of my bizarre discipline. We can learn to function again, but we never really become whole.

  “One more infraction, we’ll have to have a House vote,” Amber says.

  I grab the corn bread, rip it up like Suzanne ripped up her toast. House votes always end badly. The recruits don’t get along. They’re team players in combat, but outside of it, they’ve become such rugged individualists that they don’t get along with anyone.

  The votes always reflect that. My candidates always lose.

  Zoomer creeps into the dining room.

  “Wena,” she says, “Robbie needs you.”

  He’s not, like I expect, in my office with Davi. He’s in his office, a little box of a room—probably a coat closet in the House’s first incarnation—and he’s behind his desk.

  This is serious, then.

  “We need to send for Carla,” he says as soon as I close the door.

  “Davi’s that damaged?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “I don’t think she’s military.”

  I let out a small breath of disbelief. “She’s got the tattoos, the quirks. She’s tried to enter three times, failed, and had to be coaxed inside.”

  “This isn’t PTSD,” Robbie says. “I’d stake my career on it. And that girl’s not violent. I’d stake my career on that too.”

  I don’t understand. “Then what’s she doing here? A wannabe?”

  I’d heard of them: women who pretended to be macho, pretended to have had service just to get the benefits—benefits none of the rest of us willingly claim. Or some just do it for the glory, using the various media outlets to tell their made-up stories. Sometimes doing it to get a lover—usually male—who’s attracted to a woman with a violent, but sanctioned, past.

  “I don’t think she’s a wannabe,” he says.

  “What then?” I ask.

  He shakes his head ever so slightly. “I’d rather have Carla answer that.”

  “I’m not calling her,” I say. “She’s really clear about her hours, and I’m not hearing anything that convinces me she’s needed.”

  “This Davi,” he says, “I did the usual blood tests, ran them through my handheld, twice as a matter of fact.”

  He slides the handheld toward me. I see numbers, a few graphs, nothing I can read.

  “I didn’t know you took blood,” I say to cover my ignorance. I shove the handheld back at him.

  “We always have to rule out the organic cause first,” he says. “Blood, temperature, a few other things. A lot of things cause violent and/or irrational behavior, from a high fever to certain kinds of drugs.”

  “And what’s she got?”

  “Nothing,” he says, frowning at me.

  “I don’t get it,” I say.

  “She’s clean,” he says.

  I stare at him.

  “She’s a Sky Vet,” he says. “If nothing else, she should have antibodies to just about every known disease. She doesn’t. I think she’s gonna get sick from that—plunger, was it?”

  “Scrubber,” I say, trying to assess what he’s telling me. “You’re saying she wasn’t on the front lines?”

  “I’m saying she hasn’t been off-planet. She’s not inoculated for anything remotely Moon-based.”

  “So she’s a wannabe,” I say.

  “With official tattoos? A great cover?” He shakes his head.

  I’m cold. “What do you think she is?”

  “I think Carla should decide.”

  I can feel it, building, that insane desire to rip out his spleen just to get him to talk faster. I clench my fists.

  “Sometimes Carla isn’t the most rational person,” I say.

  He nods, and something in his gaze tells me he understands that I’m getting angry.

  “I think she’s government,” he says. “I found this on her as well.”

  He throws a bag at me. It’s filled with more bags. Each one holds small items—a toothbrush, strands of hair, a scab.

  DNA.

  “Son of a bitch,” I say, and fight the urge to stick my fist through the wall. “What the hell are they doing?”

  “Trying to identify everyone,” he says. “They requested it with the last grant.”

  “And we fought them,” I say. “We won.”

  “Still,” he says. “They’re not letting Sky Vets back to Earth anymore. They’re talking about rounding up street people. Haven’t you been listening?”

  I don’t pay attention to the media. It betrayed me years ago. It got me all fired up about that first war, and it turns out that the battles I thought I was fighting weren’t the ones I really fought.

  “So?” I say.

  “So the anonymity is what’s bothering them,” he says. “They want to know where all the Vets are, particularly the Elites. I thought you knew this.”

  “I worry about the House,” I mumble. And that’s partly true. The other part is that I can’t deal with the government. It makes me crazy.

  Still.

  “You were right,” I say. “Call Carla. It’s time for a meeting of the principals.”

  “I thought you were going to—”

  “Just do it!” I snap, and let myself out of the room.

  I play by the rules because I ask my people to play by the rules. If you want to return to society, I tell them, you have to understand that the rules exist for a reason: they exist so that we can all get along, live together in close quarters, and not kill each other.

  I actually believe tha
t.

  The rules here at the House are simple:

  Names aren’t necessary.

  Details aren’t necessary.

  A willingness to work is essential.

  A willingness to follow the daily rules of living—clean yourself, your room, your assigned area—also essential.

  Heal at your own pace.

  Learn nonviolent ways to resolve disputes.

  No weapons allowed.

  The rules here have no particular order because they’re all important. And in some ways, none of them are important. Because the House changes depending on its makeup. Sometimes we let recruits get violent. Sometimes we let them slack off work. Sometimes we let them go weeks without bathing.

  But we never ever ask names. It’s safer to talk to people who think they know you rather than people who have read an official history and assume they do.

  The next thing I know, I’m back in my office, Davi’s off the couch, and shoved against the wall, my hand against her throat. She’s flailing, and there’s fear in her eyes.

  She’s trembling.

  I’m not.

  “Boss,” someone says behind me. “Put her down.”

  I squeeze a little tighter. Bitch has messed with my House. Bitch has invaded my territory, threatened my people, trespassed in my world.

  “Boss.” The voice sounds a little panicked.

  Maybe it reflects Davi’s eyes. They’re bugging out. Her skin’s turning purple.

  “Wena!” Zoomer has her hands on my shoulders. She’s trying to pull me away.

  “Rowena, stop.” And that voice, official and barking, belongs to Carla.

  But dammit all, I respond to official. I respond to barking. It goes deep into the training, activates the controls, and I open my hand.

  The bitch drops like a dirty blanket.

  Zoomer’s got her, takes her away from me, does something for the neck. Robbie helps, his soft hands trying to soothe that imposter as if she’s someone important.

  Carla takes me back into my bunker. Amber follows.

  The principals.

  Carla makes me put my head down, take deep breaths, calm, calm, calm. I’ve seen her use this technique before on someone who’s lost it, on someone who’s one step away from leaving, on someone who might not be rehabbed.

  “She’s a fucking invader,” I finally say.

  “She’s probably not the first,” Carla says.

  “Son of a bitch.” This time, my hand does connect with the wall. But I reinforced those fuckers myself. My hand bangs back toward me, bruised; the wall isn’t damaged at all.

  “We expected it, remember?” Amber says. “You even mentioned it.”

  “We said we’d keep privacy. They didn’t get to know which one of us heals and which one doesn’t. If it’s the worst of us, then they’ll use it as an excuse. They’ll keep doing this, they’ll keep creating Elites, and—”

  “And maybe they’ll have a program to get us back into society.” Carla’s voice is soft. “That’s all they want, Wena. They want something that works. They think you have the secret and aren’t willing to share.”

  She and Amber are staring at me.

  “We’ve been in existence ten years,” Amber says. “Do you know how many people have reintegrated? How many women we’ve helped return to their lives?”

  “No.” I clutch my throbbing hand with my other one. “We’re not supposed to know, remember. Government keeps statistics. Facts, figures, we’re not about that. We’re about healing.”

  “So why not let people know the system? We can patent it or whatever so that they have to follow our rules. Let them know, so others can be helped.” Amber says this as if she’s just thought of it.

  But I know Carla’s set her up to say it. Amber used to support me. Carla’s been the advocate for letting the House’s systems out. Carla thinks we can save the world.

  “No,” I say, and turn my back to them.

  They sit in silence for a long time. We’re good at silence.

  Finally, Carla says, “This girl, she hit you in home.”

  I let out a small breath. “I don’t have a home any more.”

  “We all do,” Carla says. “I just thought yours was House. And I thought you had remarkable control. Every time a recruit infracts, I thought how impressive it was that you didn’t kamikaze all over her. But you just did. Home to you isn’t the House. It’s the method. You think we’re the only ones who can do this. Maybe you’re the only one. Don’t you?”

  I reach for her before I even have a chance to think. Amber restrains me. She’s strong. Not as strong as I am, but I’m not entirely gone. I let her hold me back.

  I’m shaking this time.

  “I should’ve seen it,” Carla says, more to herself than to me. “I should’ve realized it was the method, not the building.”

  “Have you ever thought that I’m right?” My voice sounds harsher than I want it to.

  “About what?” Carla asks. She’s using her shrink voice. I hate that voice, all reasonable and calm and mommylike.

  “About the method. What if we are the only ones?”

  “Then other experiments’ll prove it,” she says. “I think it is a mixture of personalities that makes this work. But I have to remind you, Wena. Our culture’s good at personalities now. That’s how they found us in the first place. Maybe we should give in. Maybe they’ll use this for good.”

  I shake myself free of Amber. She cringes.

  So does Carla.

  But I’m calm again. I have finally understood what I’m protecting.

  “Yeah, they’re good at personalities,” I say. “And for a while, government facilities’ll use our methods. Then they’ll find other uses. Our good work’ll get twisted. We’ll have created new kinds of monsters.”

  “We won’t,” Amber says.

  “We need to keep something pure,” I say. “Just one thing. We have to hold one thing sacred. If we don’t ...”

  They’re staring at me, but I can’t finish. The words—those words—I said them just before I led my troop—my real troop—into the worst fight of our lives. The purity I was referring to then was our friendship, which I had thought to protect, because the training was that deep—I had to pick something, something to protect, something that elicited that deep, violent response ...

  “Shit,” I whisper, and put down my head.

  They’re right. Carla and Amber are right. I’ve been hit at home, and I’m not rational.

  But it feels like I am.

  And that’s the scary part.

  We can agree on a few things: We’re going to press charges against Davi and whoever’s behind her. We’re going to keep identities in the House private. And we’re going to find someone to replace me, for a week, six months, a year.

  As long as Carla can convince me to stay away.

  She thinks it’s not healthy for me to remain. The House has helped others, she says, but then I insist that they leave. They grow outside, and become real people.

  I never have.

  I’m not sure she’s right, but the only way to prove her wrong is to step out into the world. And not for short ceremonies or speeches at VA Hospitals.

  For some significant time. On my own.

  The idea scares me and exhilarates me at the same time. And my shrink—my original shrink who approves of Carla’s ideas—says those emotions are normal.

  But I don’t like normal. And I think Carla’s wrong about a few things. I’m not protecting the method. I’m believing in our uniqueness.

  I don’t think anyone else can create the right environment. I don’t think anyone else would know when to break the rules and when to enforce them.

  I don’t think anyone else can nurture like we do.

  Only I don’t admit that to Carla. She’d say I’ve got a mother complex that is part of the Elites distinctive psychology. She’d say I have to get it repaired.

  I’m openminded enough to think that she might be ri
ght. But I’m wary enough to know that if she’s wrong, we lose everything.

  The House, our home, our community. The women we’ve been helping and the ones we haven’t helped yet.

  Fifteen years of success, based in part on my own particular pathology.

  And I keep thinking the House has gone beyond potential. I’m not fighting for what might be.

  I’m fighting for what is.

  It’s our last stand—and I seem to be the only one who knows it.