by Red Harvey
Her footsteps echoed in the 5,000 square foot space. “Seems damn excessive to me. But it does make for a great practice area.”
One afternoon, Darcy asked Shylar a random question, but it he suspected it wasn’t really random at all. “What are the Sammies going to do with my father?
“First, they’ll try to use him as an operative. If that fails, he’ll be studied for potential military applications.” It wasn’t in Shylar’s personality, even before the re-wire, to put things delicately.
Her face fell. “You mean dissected?”
“Yes.”
A few days into the sisterly bonding and training, Darcy began to change her attitude for the worst. Instead of talking to Ada, she would call her mother. When she did talk to Ada, she would try to bring up Moretz. Ada shut her down by snapping at her or ignoring her. Shylar, with his unbiased point of view, could see where the present course of events was moving toward. He watched and waited.
His waiting came to a halt during dinner on the fifth night of their stay in the townhome. After dinner, the two women had gone to the other townhome for training. Customarily, they would be gone for two hours or more, but this time they re-appeared in Kressick’s living room ten minutes after leaving.
Ada walked through the front doorway of the dissipating door looking angry. Darcy followed, and he could see they were in the middle of an argument that had cut their training short.
“Why won’t you even consider it?” Darcy yelled at Ada’s back.
“Let’s just say I had a different childhood than you did.”
Ada put up the dissipating barrier in her bedroom to end the debate.
With slumped shoulders, Darcy stood at the door. The barrier remained, and she walked away to join Shylar on the living room couch. He didn’t speak, and neither did Darcy. In mock concentration, he flipped through the virtual pages projected from his wristlet. She threw a pillow at him, which he caught with one hand without looking up.
“Nice job pretending not to see that,” she said.
“I’m here to protect, not to judge.”
They sat in silence. In the background, he could hear Ada slamming drawers around in her bedroom.
Darcy tried initiating another exchange. “She hates him so much.”
“Yes, she does.”
The him in her sentence did not need to be elaborated upon.
“Why does she hate him?”
Shylar kept quiet.
“You know, I know you do! You know everything.”
“You’re family.” He was wired to be honest, but something held him back on this. “You should work it out between yourselves.”
“Tell me, you goddamn robot!
He commanded himself not to grin. The more time Darcy and Ada spent together, the more their shared traits became obvious. They were two women who had no trouble being rude or name- calling when they were angry. The urge to smile disappeared when he thought about how best to explain Ada’s dislike of Moretz. It was a delicate subject, and if Shylar explained it fully to Darcy, it would forever change her view of her father.
Limiting his use of euphemisms, he quickly highlighted the sexual abuse Ada suffered at the hands of Moretz.
While he spoke, Darcy began to cry and shake her head. “No, that’s not true. He never touched me.”
She was rationalizing. Moretz hadn’t touched her, and so he couldn’t have touched Ada.
“His political career put him under more scrutiny than he was used to,” Shylar said. “He held himself back. Are you sure there was never an instance when you felt uncomfortable with him?”
She continued to shake her head, but her eyes said something different.
~*~
Ignoring the understanding in Shylar’s eyes, Darcy thought back to her childhood, thought back to a few months ago, and there were times when her father’s proximity warranted awkward feelings. One instance stood out more than the rest, when she was twelve years old. She had exited the shower and forgotten to close her bedroom door. A towel was wrapped around her hips and around her head, but her chest was exposed. Her father walked past her open door. Instead of continuing on his way or closing the door, he went inside the bedroom. Immediately, she covered herself with her arms.
“Dad, get out!” she squawked.
He beamed. “You’re growing up, I know, but you’ll always be my little girl.”
And he took her unyielding body in for a tight hug. She didn’t reciprocate the affection because her arms were occupied in preserving her modesty. The hug lingered for minutes, with him stroking his hand up and down her back, and she was extremely confused. Finally, he released her and left the room, the same smile still on his face.
She slammed the door shut after he left. She sat on the bed and wiped herself with her hair towel, over and over. Days, weeks, and years later, she had forced herself to categorize the incident as a minor one. After hearing her father’s actions toward Ada, the incident did not seem minor anymore.
Darcy thought she was lucky he had chosen to leave her bedroom that day. “Oh my god.”
Large tears formed and fell as she absorbed the enormity of what her father was capable of. Through the disgust and sadness, she couldn’t rid herself of love for him. It was even greater than it had been in the past because of how he seemed to change for the better.
“But he’s different now. He would never...”
“You’re right,” Shylar said. “He is different now. But Ada doesn’t see it that way. Yet. As you can imagine, it’s going to take time.”
~*~
Darcy nodded, cried and nodded. Shylar would lose her to grief if he didn’t move things along. Her eyes were glazing over with comprehension; the father she thought she knew had been a pedophile.
To get her on board with his plan, Shylar had to make her understand the old Moretz was gone and would never hurt anyone again. It took nearly an hour, but she learned more about her grandfather’s abilities and what it meant for Moretz.
“You.” She stared at Shylar with new eyes. “You used to be an IT, Ada told me. Grandpa changed you like he changed my dad, didn’t he?”
“I—” Shylar didn’t know what to say.
He couldn’t remember his life from before, only shadows came through at odd moments, like when he was zipping up his pants, he thought about his old apartment. Yes, the place was filled with stolen goods, but books too. He loved to collect really old—as the kids called them these days—or banned tomes. His other life belonged to someone else now. He couldn’t remember not caring about others, not wanting to protect others.
Yet, there was more than his life than Atlanta. He hadn’t been born here, he knew that, but he couldn’t remember what his mother looked like or the name of his street growing up. His entire childhood was a hazy cloud of misinformation.
“My father may have been a horrible person, but he’s good now, like you are. He doesn’t deserve to die. Even the previous version of him didn’t deserve what he’s probably going through now. We have to get him out.”
He admired the maturity of her summations. “Is that what you and Ada were fighting about?”
She nodded. “Ada doesn’t want to help me, and I can’t get him out by myself.”
“I’ll help you.”
Thirty Three
Ada stayed in her bedroom and didn’t come out. She didn’t want Darcy’s pleading eyes to force her into saying yes. Moretz may have changed, but Ada’s feelings about him as a person never would. Whenever she thought about his name, she felt dirty, angry, then dirty again. Rescuing her former aggressor from a fate she believed he justly deserved was asking too much. Dissecting the lecherous leech sounded like fair payback.
Her stomach growled, reminding her of the consequence of locking herself in a room for hours. She was both afraid of Darcy’s persuasion and the guilt. After August, Ada’s guilt reservoir was full, and she didn’t want to test the limits of her sanity by adding more.
Another st
omach growl shook her resolve. Just ignore Darcy, grab something to eat, and come back to the room, she told herself.
Great plan, a voice inside her mocked. Gonna stay locked in here forever, coming out only to eat and shit?
Door open. The electro-polycarbonate barrier disappeared. She anticipated finding Darcy and Shylar in the living room where she last heard them talking, but the area was empty. In the kitchen, the lights were off. Where were they? It was past midnight, but Darcy could normally be found in the living room, laughing at the latest speakers on the wall panel.
“Darcy?” Ada called out from the living room. She went to Darcy’s room which was dark, like the kitchen. “Shylar?” His room was empty too. Ada’s heart thudded rapidly. Swallowing back the overwhelming panic, she activated her interface. Locate.
“Locating,” the device said. Different scenarios were playing out in her head and all of them seemed unlikely: There went out to get more supplies—but no, the house was too well-stocked with food and weapons; they went to rescue Moretz without her—but no, they weren’t that stupid; the Sammies had probably found them—but no, because they would have taken Ada too. Or, and she hoped this scenario was the most unlikely because the probability of it being real scared her, Moretz found them and was programmed by Sammies to kill them.
“Users located.” Anxiously, she studied the screen. The locations of the red dots relaxed her. Darcy and Shylar were only a few miles away, and the way the dots were moving indicated they were on their way back home. Then, Ada saw a blue dot in their vicinity.
She touched the dot and said, “Identify user.”
“User unidentifiable.”
“That’s impossible.”
“User shares commonalities with a past user.”
“Who?”
“Brontes Moretz.”
Her next words exploded, “Well, slap my ass and call me Ginger.”
“I don’t recognize that command.”
Confounded hob-knockers—or one who partakes in confounded hob-knockery, as Kressick liked to say. They had gone behind her back and rescued Moretz. Either that or he held them hostage. Ada would find out what was going on when they walked through the doorway. Until then, she would wait with her gun pointed at the entrance.
~ * ~
They came through the doorway fast. Ada had to resist the urge to shoot because Darcy was the first face she saw, smeared with dirt and blood.
“What happened?” But her question became obsolete when Shylar walked in carrying Moretz in his arms.
“We have to go,” Shylar said.
He dumped Moretz on the living room couch without much care. Moretz was out, and she sent a small bolt of electricity his way. His body arched, but he didn’t wake.
“Darcy tried that,” Shylar told her as he rushed from room to room throwing things in their luggage bags. “The Sammies sent an EMP pulse, and the car wouldn’t work. He used himself to power the car, and it took a lot out of him.”
The situation sounded familiar. Her heart changed a slight direction as she thought about the implications of Moretz’s sacrificial actions. She also considered that he might never wake and that he had drained himself into a coma. When she powered her electric car, she wanted to sleep for days. Since she only had to power her vehicle for five minutes, she had been able to shake off the weariness. He had likely powered the car for twenty minutes, maybe more.
She stopped Shylar by grabbing him roughly. “I wasn’t trying to wake the bastard. Why did you let Darcy do this?”
“Because Kressick ordered me to protect you both. If I hadn’t gone with her, she would’ve gone alone. Plus, she was phenomenal, blasting Sammies from a quarter mile away.” He resumed packing.
“Big fucking deal.” She sneered at his back. “What I care about is being on the run from Sammies with a man I hate, a man who—” Her sentence choked off. To her embarrassment, she was crying.
“Hey.” Shylar caught her chin in his hand. “I’ll tell you what I told your sister, and then decide if you’re going to come with us. I don’t remember much of anything about my life before I met you.” He let that hang for a moment before saying, “If Kressick re-wired your father like he did to me, then the Moretz who wakes is going to be different from the one you knew. Can you give him a chance, for your sister?”
Ada slapped his hand away. “God damnit.” She swallowed a sob. “What choice do I have? They’ll be looking for all of us now. There’s no way you two idiots got him out without being spotted on surveillance.”
He didn’t deny her theory. “Hey!” Darcy called. She was staring out of the window in the living room that overlooked the street. “While you two were fighting it out, the Sammies were setting up a perimeter around the building. What do we do now?”
As if in answer, a booming voice from the hallway said, “This is the State Authority. Surrender yourselves to us peaceably or be prepared to face lethal consequences.”
“Great, we’re all fucked because you had to rescue that douche bag,” Ada whispered angrily.
Instead of panicking, Shylar continued packing in silence. Darcy whispered that she could take all the agents out easy, but Ada gestured for her to shut up. She asked Shylar what he was doing, and his answer was they would need everything they could take. There was no air of denial about him while he spoke or even while he kept throwing clothes and weapons into their bags. The Sammie made the same announcement for a second time, but Shylar didn’t stop getting ready to leave.
“Is there a trapdoor in here I don’t know about?” Ada murmured.
“I’ll explain when they leave,” he mouthed. The man was crazy. When they left, the Sammies were taking all of them along for the auto-piloted ride. Ada leveled her pistol at the entrance again and waited. He shook his head.
“Due to no response, we are entering the premises. Prepare for lethal consequences, citizens!”
Heavy footsteps followed the warning. They sounded as if they were right inside the house, and she wasn’t sure why she wasn’t seeing any agents though she could hear them well enough. Next door, she realized. They’re storming into the place next door.
Things crashed against the walls, pieces of furniture were tossed around, and more boots could be heard trampling in and out of the other townhome. After a minute, they heard the agents announce the building to be “all clear”, and the footsteps receded. Ada expected an agent at their doorway, but no one came.
“They’re leaving,” Darcy said softly, still perched at the window.
Ada waited a few minutes before asking Shylar, “How did you know they wouldn’t come in here?”
He slung three bags of luggage over his shoulder. “Because this house isn’t registered in Kressick’s name, but the one next door is.”
“You mean to tell me those idiots are so bureaucratic they’re not gonna check every townhome in this neighborhood simply because those homes aren’t registered to the assailant?”
Shylar laughed. “People think the State is a lot more efficient and powerful than they actually are. If they were to go searching everyone’s home, private citizens would be outraged. Atlanta may have stop-and-search laws and an exhaustive network of citizen surveillance, but it’s a Tramp-haven when compared to other cities.”
Ada’s hometown of Aurora, Colorado was beautiful, but heavily militarized. The two cities were very different in comparison.
“Searching homes with a warrant, homes registered to the offender, that’s a law the State couldn’t get around here in Atlanta.”
Moaning from the couch drew their attention. It was Moretz waking from his deep sleep. The drugs had left him disoriented, probably with a headache that part of which surely came from the bolt she slapped him with earlier.
Act like an asshole and asshole things are bound to follow you, Ada thought as she watched her father cradle his head. It was another one of her mother’s saying and a fitting one for her father. He deserved to be in pain. She didn’t care if his persona
lity had been converted to mirror Mother Theresa—the man still had debts to pay.
She was thinking of the ways she could make Moretz pay while she watched Darcy bring him water and prop him comfortably. August’s death had cured her of a lot, but not of her hate for her father. When he put his arms around Darcy for a feeble hug, Ada rushed to break them apart. Her second act was to strike him across the face. Darcy and Shylar were yelling, and Moretz stared at Ada with eyes that held little of his previous malice. She looked him over. He seemed older. There were lines where before there was smooth skin, gray streaks had replaced his black hair, and his dark complexion was a pale wax color. She wondered how much of his personality change had contributed to his physical transformation. In a glance, she assessed Shylar. The insolent thief she met half a year before was an honest man, and his demeanor and dress screamed as much. Moretz’s appearance told the story of torture and abuse, but she saw a resilience and kindness beneath the bruises.
“You’re...different. Who are you?”
He was slow to respond. His mouth opened, but no words came out. He shook his head, licked his lips, and tried to speak again. “I’m still Brontes Moretz, but you can call me Dad.”
He moved to hug Ada, who scrambled away as if he was infectious. She was shaking. Instinctually, she went to Shylar’s side and took his hand in hers.
The physical contact with him lent her some strength. When she sapped enough of it, she let go of his soft grip and crossed her arms.
Darcy was crying, smoothing down her father’s displaced hair. “Stay away from my dad until you can forgive him.”
“Then I’ll never be able to be around him,” Ada said.
“You all need to leave. You can’t...” He coughed, and they were deep, racking spasms. Just when it seemed he would pass out, he continued speaking, “...have me slowing you down. Just go.”
“Dad, no!” Darcy cried even harder. Shylar flexed his fingers, his face holding a perplexed expression even as she asked, “Aren’t you coming with us, sir?”
With great effort, Moretz shook his head. “It’ll be faster if you go without me. I’ve done something to hurt my daughter, and I would hate to keep her pain constant with my continued presence.”
