The Designate

by J B Cantwell

  Lydia was gone.

  Chapter Six

  My heart fell into my stomach, and I fought the urge to go back to look for her. The rest of the team had eyes on me. I knew I had already pushed the rules by helping her after she had been hit.

  Had she fallen? Had she been struck by a stray bullet while we had been running?

  “Good riddance,” Hannah said.

  I stared at her, and for a moment I saw her differently than I had before. Since fighting had begun, there were people on our teams I hadn’t liked. Even back in the tunnels as we crawled our way up through the earth and into battle. But I had never wished them dead.

  “I see you’ve lost some of your team,” Fowler said.

  His statement was really a question, one I wasn’t sure how to answer.

  I paused, unsure, staring into space as I tried to think of what to say. Hannah looked at me expectantly. I had to speak now if I wanted to maintain my position.

  “Yes,” I said slowly, trying to wrap my head around everything that had happened.

  Talk, you idiot.

  “Yes, we had five casualties today,” I said. “Dane, Marsden, Reynolds, Dixon, and … Davis.”

  “Davis, you say?” Fowler asked.

  I found the question odd. I frowned up at him.

  “Yes,” I said. “Davis was injured in the shoulder. She followed us as long as she could. We’re not sure what happened to her. We lost her on our way here.”

  Fowler grimaced. Then he got on his radio.

  “Parker,” he said. “Davis is missing.”

  On the other side of the building, another Prime rose his finger to his chip, listening.

  Alex.

  They listened for some time. His radio must have had different channels. I couldn’t hear Turner’s response in my earpiece.

  “Copy,” he finally said.

  I looked at him expectantly, but he gave no indication that anything unusual had just happened.

  “Take the stairs and go to the third floor apartments for a half hour rest and chow. The people in this building evacuated before the fighting began. They left plenty of food behind.”

  Behind. Where had they all gone, anyway? Clearly some of the citizens had remained, holed up with the Fighters in the secret places only they knew of in their city. But what of the others? Were they perhaps camped out somewhere on the outskirts of the city? Had they fled somewhere else, far away from the fighting?

  I tried hard to act normal, to pretend I had been decidedly in charge of my group all along. That I still was. I released the clip on my pack and let it fall to the ground. I opened it to show Fowler. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Alex approaching.

  “We were able to load up at the last location,” I said, showing Fowler my stuffed pack full of things I had never seen, much less eaten, before.

  “Ok,” he said. “Take it with you and add it to the pile. There’s plenty to go around here.”

  I looked at the space we were holed up in, and immediately decided to not follow his orders. We could be blown out of this building with a few well-aimed grenades, or maybe just one bomb from the drones above. I was going to keep what food I could carry with me.

  “Yes, Sir,” I lied. Then, looking around, I asked, “Are the elevators working?”

  “Yes,” he said. “There are several apartments on that level and above that have plenty of food. Take your pick.”

  I nodded and slung my pack over my back.

  Alex was walking toward us now, tall and covered head to toe in body armor.

  “You survived,” he said to me, his tone hard and official.

  “Yes,” I said. “And you.”

  He nodded.

  I wanted to wrap my arms around him, to be comforted by the friend I had known for so long. But the distance between us seemed to grow as each day passed. I wondered if we would both survive our tours, and if we did, if I would be able to reach him again, to make him forget the lies he had been fed.

  The sound of shooting came from the far side of the lobby, catching his attention. He strode away from me as if I were no more than any ordinary soldier.

  “Let’s go,” I said to the others.

  As I approached the elevators, my exhaustion hit. The sun was coming up somewhere up in the sky, hidden by the tall buildings on every side. Thirty minutes, Fowler had said. I suddenly remembered the injury I had sustained to my face when I fell. Now the skin was peppered with a combination of pebbles and blood.

  Two of the apartments right in front of the elevator doors on three had already had their doors busted down. I walked into one but found the pantry raided. Fowler hadn’t been specific, so I decided to find a door that hadn’t been broken through. Just one apartment to the right still had the door locked tight. I aimed my gun at the wood just below the lock.

  And then I wondered. What would I do if I found someone inside? Had all the residents of this building, the Pearl, had they all escaped before our forces had taken over their homes?

  My stomach rumbled.

  My head ached.

  One problem at a time.

  I shot three rounds, and the door opened easily before us.

  Rachel, Hannah and Mark pushed against my back, eager to get in and eat. But I was cautious, insisting that they wait to check for people who might still be here hiding.

  It soon became obvious that, at least in this apartment, no one remained. Clothes were strewn on the unmade bed. Books were toppled from their shelves. I imagined the people who had lived here scurrying to grab what they could of their possessions and evacuating.

  Luckily, the kitchen was stocked. One sniff in the fridge told us to leave it be, but the pantry was full of crackers, boxes of milk, jerked chicken, and a variety of other snacks I had never seen before. We each grabbed boxes, mine with a picture of an elf on the front. “Fruity-Os,” it read. I opened it and found that it was a type of cereal. I popped a few into my mouth and instantly started cramming the stuff in. Sickly sweet and light, I had never tasted anything like it before in my life.

  We all started trading our found treasures. Mark had taken one of the packages that read “Jerk Chicken,” and was happily gnawing at a strip of the stuff. He passed the bag to me, the smell coming from it making my mouth water. I took a hunk and stripped away at it with my back teeth.

  This was meat, I realized. I quickly rummaged through the pantry, looking for more. Instead I came upon a jar of nuts, another delicacy I had never tasted. I opened the seal on the lid and it gave a swishing noise as the pressure in the package was released. I popped a few into my mouth and was delighted by the hearty sweetness of the stuff. I found a bowl in the cupboard and put half cereal, half nuts into it and started eating the two foods together.

  Soon, all of us had eaten our fill. My stomach still rumbled, but this time I suspected it was because of the variety of unknown foods I had just stuffed into it. We had been surviving on rations, just a few nutrition squares each day. Everything I had just eaten had been intense, so full of flavor compared to my regular diet.

  I checked my watch. 0645. We had fifteen minutes left to rest and eat. Outside, the sound of guns firing and grenades exploding didn’t bother me. This was a rare moment where we could relax. I wasn’t going to give up the opportunity.

  I made my way to the bathroom and, turning on the bright lights, got a good look at my cheek. The concrete had stripped away a layer of skin, nothing more than a bad scrape. A big, bad scrape.

  I started the water in the sink, which was ice cold. Filling my dirty hands with it, I slowly cupped the liquid up to my skin, hoping to clean it out as best I could without scrubbing. I rinsed it again and again, but the most stubborn of the tiny rocks held onto my flesh. My fingernails were strong and long, but I wasn’t able to remove the stones without scraping the skin harder. I fished around a drawer and found a pair of tweezers.

  As I plucked at the rocks, I wondered about Alex. I wasn’t sure if he thought of me at all anymore. Th
e last time I had spoken to him it was clear that he remembered our friendship, that I was still at least a little important to him. But the Service had stuffed his mind with lies I couldn’t grasp as they had put him through phasing after phasing. One day of drugs, one day of brainwash. For weeks and weeks they had molded him, recreated him into a lumbering, giant weapon.

  I looked up in the mirror and realized I was crying. The tears stung as they ran into my wound.

  I had to get out alive. I had to survive until the end of my three year term. And I would, I felt sure of it. But what would be waiting for me on the other side? Alex and I hadn’t made any plans beyond the Service, knowing that the likelihood that we would both survive was grim. But what about now? What if I did manage to stay alive? Would a big, fancy apartment like the one I was in now be enough?

  I set down the tweezers and gave my cheek one last splash, wiping away the tear marks that had streaked through the dirt on my face. I fanned the injury, trying to get the blood to dry so that the sting wouldn’t be so bad. I wondered what it would be like to live in a place like this. To be clean. Above water. With exotic foods in the pantry and a warm featherbed awaiting each night.

  I flicked off the light and went back to the others, collapsing onto one of the plush couches in the living room. Such luxury was so new to me, even though this space was nowhere near as opulent as the penthouse we had left before. The velvety feeling of the pillow on my uninjured cheek was so delicious that I wanted to melt into the couch for the next few days, or maybe years, certain that a sleep had on such pillows would renew me. And maybe after a rest I would be able to put the pieces together of everything that had just happened.

  Hannah plopped down on the ground near my head. She had found a can of chili and was eagerly eating it cold with a fork. The smell was appetizing, but I had already stuffed myself to bursting.

  “So, what do you think?” she asked. Mark and Rachel were still rummaging around in the kitchen, and Hannah kept her voice low.

  “About what?” I asked. The battle? Losing Jim? Josh? Lydia?

  “About your little friend taking off like that,” she said.

  “Taking off?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, come on,” she said. “It’s not like she couldn’t keep up with us. I mean, I was irritated by you bringing her along, and she did slow us down. But when she bailed …”

  “Bailed? You mean she—”

  “Of course she did!” Hannah said, shoving another huge bite of the chili into her mouth.

  “How do you know?”

  I had been at the head of the group as we had fled, fought our way here. All I knew about Lydia was that she had vanished. My heart still clenched painfully as I imagined her, slowly dying in the smoke-filled street. We had started enemies, then became cautious allies. But were we, had we become, friends?

  “I saw her do it,” she said, her voice light and incredulous.

  “You did?” I sat up on the couch. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  Hannah shrugged. “Why should I have?”

  I felt anger rising in my throat.

  “Maybe because she was on our team,” I said.

  “You know as well as I do that she was in no shape to fight,” she said.

  Maybe that was true. But I had seen a fire in Lydia that outmatched anyone else I knew. Even Hannah. That had to count for something.

  “You withheld information from me,” I said. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Oh, please,” she said, scraping the last bits of chili from the can.

  I stood up, no longer tired.

  “I want you off this team,” I said, livid.

  Hannah dropped her fork into the can. It rattled as she slammed it down on the table.

  “You what?” she said.

  “I said I want you out. If you’re going to lie to your superior, I don’t want any part of it.”

  She stood up now, too. Her face had gone from casual amusement to red hot anger.

  “My superior?” she said. “You’re just the same as you’ve ever been. Weak and alone.”

  “If I’m so weak, why have you been hanging around all this time? Why bother with me at all?”

  She just stood there, glaring. I felt certain she might break them all into pieces if she clenched her teeth any harder.

  “You can’t kick me out.” Worry had crept into her features. “I’ll tell them what really happened. You could go to the Burn for what you did.”

  I took a step back, surprised.

  “I chose you for this team because I thought you were strong. I didn’t play you for a snitch.”

  This hit her where it counted. But as righteous as I felt, she had brought up a valid point. I wasn’t sure what would happen to me if Fowler found out what had gone on when I had helped Lydia. Was it really a Burn-worthy act?

  I remembered the note from Lydia, so many months ago now, warning me to stay away from Hannah. Now that Lydia was gone, I had no way of finding out why. I had ignored her warning at the time, thinking it ridiculous next to everything that was going on with Alex. But since that time, my problems had multiplied far beyond those I had had back in boot camp. Now, making such an accusation would have been irrelevant.

  We were stalemated.

  “Fine,” I said. “Go ahead and stay if that’s what you want. But don’t come to me looking for any favors.”

  “Believe me,” she said, “you’re the last place I would look for favors in or out of this place. I’ve learned that already.”

  Chapter Seven

  The next hours were difficult to weather. Sun up, bullets fired, grenades tossed. The air around us seemed to be constantly vibrating with the power of war, though we were as safe as we could be behind thick plywood barricades. On the other side of the building, shops lined the street. I didn’t know if there were hidden entrances into the Pearl, but we had taken over the lush, wide lobby.

  Hannah set up shop on the other end of the space, as far from me as it was possible to be. I wondered what this meant for our team. If we still were a team at all.

  Mark glanced over at me. “Don’t worry about her. We all know you did the right thing.”

  “It didn’t really feel like the right thing.” I frowned. The truth was that I had known all along that I was breaking protocol.

  “Which part?” he asked. “The part where you saved your friend? Or the part where you armed a man down who was defenseless? Or was it the part where you led us here, to the headquarters of the operation?”

  I stared up at him, wanting to believe, but not quite able to. Hannah’s words had cut me open, and suddenly I felt without a friend in the world. Tears threatened again, and I swallowed hard. I put my face up to the plywood, not wanting him to see.

  As I watched, small pairs of eyes would occasionally pop out from behind a building, small hands held tightly as the adults who hadn’t yet left the city tried desperately to flee.

  I thought of the apartment above, how it had clearly been empty for weeks. The way the refrigerator smelled of rotting food. The people who had lived there had clearly taken the opportunity to get out while they still could. Facing down our army, they scooted out of the way.

  But what of the others? It seemed unlikely that every single apartment in this building had been emptied as the fighting began. I couldn’t imagine an attack from those who might be hiding up above, but they would have to come down sometime.

  I was surprised as a grenade exploded feet from where I was shooting. I was knocked onto my back, my gun rattling against the shiny, tiled floor. What was left of the glass windows blew out, but the wood structure still remained.

  Mark and Rachel were up and firing before I was even able to get my bearings.

  “Come on, Pink!” he shouted. “Don’t make me wrong about you!”

  His words were barely audible over the ringing in my ears. I scrambled to my feet and shoved the barrel of my gun through the firing hole.

&nbs
p; A group of Fighters had assembled behind the facade of the building across the street. They seemed to materialize out of thin air, tossing grenade after grenade. Soon, every gun on our side was unleashing on them. I held down the trigger of my rifle as it sprayed round after round into the street. The Fighters went down one by one as if I were playing nothing more than a computer game. They blurred together in my vision until human lives seemed nothing more than pixels on a screen.

  And then it was over. Bodies littered the street. Had it been worth it to them? Was it worth their lives to toss a few explosives in our direction?

  I sat back, breathing hard.

  And so it went.

  As evening slowly came on, it seemed that all sides were too tired to continue fighting. The sounds of gunfire ebbed, and soon it was only the shooting of the drones above that pierced the night.

  Fowler stopped his pacing at last and seemed to relax for the first time since our arrival.

  “Taylor,” he said. “Take your team up above for chow and rest. Be back down at 1200.”

  I looked around at what had become of my “team.” Mark and Rachel looked at me expectantly. I stood up and stared after Hannah. I wanted nothing more than for her to refuse to follow me.

  But hearing the command, she jumped to her feet, grabbed her pack and joined us at the elevator. We got in and went again to the third floor. I didn’t feel like searching for enemies in the halls tonight, and I took the chance that nobody but soldiers occupied our floor.

  I was tired. And not just tired because I hadn’t slept. Killing had become tiring. At first, I was so terrified of taking a life that, in the forest, I had purposely shot my bullets into the trees, doing all I could to prevent a Fighter being killed by me. I was wild, untrained, outraged, and frightened.