-1-
3AM
February 16th 2100
“It is with remorse
that I report to the citizens the state of politics in this time of our great loss. These catastrophic attacks
were an unwarranted show of power from our prosperous and
privileged neighbors. The Eastern State Chief of Arms, Cyril Porter, claims the military was unaware our Border was being guarded by actual men and
women and did not predict the loss of life. My office is still investigating
this information and will report each step faithfully to you.
In the meantime, The Eastern Military has called an order for us to unfortify, which is also being taken under advisement by this department. I will be back in an hour with an update of the death and aid information for victims.”
I am never getting home.
The world has gone to shit. The sun is barely in the sky before the Republic has sent a decree through the upper echelons of the Republic government to officially declare a state of conflict with the Eastern government.
They are hungry for attack and not for feeling. They announce the declaration before even the death count is given.
1100 enlisted Border Patrol dead and 700 civilians wounded, by the way.
I don’t know if I can feel anymore.
I see the memory of lines and lines of people eagerly waiting for a spot on The Border Patrol. They hoped for a decent job and money, not to be torn apart by heartless fabricated soldiers.
I want to believe the Eastern Military didn’t know there were people there.
I really want to.
It doesn’t matter.
Sara has been silent while we've been in the shelter. She can’t get in touch with Rayne using Minnie's Syndicate because the blast temporarily short circuited most tech. She sits by the door all night and the minute there is an “all clear” we are driving to Mojave.
Sara didn't even want to go back to the hotel room, but thank God for Jean. He reminds her we left weapons there and gave us time to pack our stuff. When we do finally get to the car, Jean has to practically threaten to kill her to let him drive.
Our trip is silent and the empty desert is spotted with checkpoints and Republican Police who look scared shitless. They look at us with suspect since no one in their right mind is leaving Fort Perch’s protective barrier but they don’t stop us.
The closer we get to Mojave, the more the checkpoints thin out and I start to think nothing this far out was affected. But as we approach the outskirts I can see the ground is scorched.
When we breach the Mojave limits, I look up to see the train tracks have melted and twisted from the heat and the train lays underneath them in a melting heap. People in white coats are standing by the train, trying to help but they don’t look like official help from the government.
The skyscraper where I first met Rayne has been leveled and took half the street with it. There is a group of people setting up a parameter and moving traffic around the collapse.
“Where to ?,” Jean asks we come to what was once a streetlight, but is now a single LED panel hanging on a piece of wire.
“Let’s try his house,” she says
As we weave through the streets, I see that the bulk of the damage is to structures. Most everything is abandoned and the busiest building is the clinic with a long line of people wait outside. It’s the birds that make it all make sense. Everywhere, there are bird corpses that were caught in the blast and just ripped apart.
From day one in school, when we are taught about The Serial Wars. We are told that being out in the open is the worst place to be during a nuclear attack. Any kind of building protection is the difference between a few blisters and being torn apart by the blast.
Jean steers the car into a gated community and pull up to a large, all glass house built into the dry landscape. As we drive up the long driveway I see an expansive tropical garden and waterfall pool in the backyard. Much of the house is still standing and I wonder how the glass stood up to the blast, but I assume it must be some kind of super expensive material.
I would have liked to see the house in it’s usual state. As it sits now, it’s been covered in black soot and white ash. A palm tree from the garden has blown through the top window.
As soon as the engine cuts out , Sara runs across a marked stone path and to the front door, ignoring any sense of decorum or procedure like she did in the skyscraper. We all jog to catch up with her and she actually kicks in the door to get inside.
“Rayne !” she calls. “It’s me ! Where’s Luce ?”
An intercom in the front hallway buzzes.
“In the basement,” I hear Rayne’s voice say.
She swipes an access key at a black door in the far corner of the house and storms down a plush carpeted spiral staircase, where we enter Rayne Washinton’s version of a panic room. It looks like a lounge, all lush and carpeted in black and silver.
Sitting near the dining room area of the basement I see Rayne’s guards, a few men and women who strongly resemble his wife, an older couple and a few people in what look like service worker uniforms. There is a bar in the corner and beyond that what looks like a billiards parlor with walls are covered in flatscreens.
I scan the group of people again and they all seem to be avoiding making eye contact with any of us.
No Luce.
Rayne is sitting in an armchair wearing loose fitting black pants and a robe over his bare chest. There are series of tattoos curving around his collar bone and stopping just where the collar of his shirt would be. Rayne is not the gentile office man I thought he was, his body is fit and hard around the edges.
He stands to receive us as we step closer and Sara stops short of him. After a brief pause he hugs her and she is silent for a moment.
“It’s okay,” he says softly, “He’s okay. He’s alive.”
“Luce !,” she calls, reeling from Rayne's hug and scanning the room. “Where is he?”
Rayne holds her shoulders
“Sara, I wanted to call you first. Some things happened--”
“What ?,” she asks meekly, her voice is trembling. “You said he was okay--”
“ He is. It happened before these bombs went off. Before you see him, I need to tell--.”
“Luce, where are you ?,” she calls past him
“Sara let me tell--”
“Luce!,” she calls shoving Rayne away. “Let me see him. Now.”
I hear a sound in the distance and Ivy Washington comes out of one of the bedrooms with Luce close on her side. She wearing a black lace negligée with a silk robe that goes down to her feet. She looks freshly showered, her hair is in a perfect bun and her skin is bright, but it's clear her left cheek is swollen red. She wears a small splint is on her nose and a dark bruise is yellowing near her eye.
And something is off.
At first, I think she and Luce are holding hands, but then I see Luce is leaning on Mrs. Washington. His hand is grasping her shoulder and her arm is steadying his waist.
And his leg is gone. His cybernetic leg, anyway.
His sweatpant leg is rolled up to his mid-thigh, exposing gauze with wires poking though.
“Hey, Ma,” Luce says when he looks up and sees Sara.
He looks like his is going to go for her, but he… can’t so she goes to him. She wraps her arms around him and kisses his neck. With only a look, Rayne’s guards bring over chairs and Sara eases him into the chair, but she stays standing.
She looks from Rayne to his wife.
She is pissed.
Mrs. Washington steps away from them and into a corner where she looks like she is trying to disappear.
“How could you ? What the fuck is wrong with you ?,” she sneers at them
“Look at my face ! He tried to steal my gun and when I asked for it back he tried to kill me--” Mrs. Washington says pointing at Luce.
She says it like she’s been waiting forever to defend herself about this.
“He wasn’t going to kill you, you fucking cunt--,” Sara starts.
“Stop,” Rayne interrupts, the congenial smile on his face. “Let’s do this in private, ladies.”
“No, Rayne,” Mrs. Washington says. “Enough of this. Anything either of you want to say to me you can say in front of my family.”
“Fine with me,” Sara retorts in a condescending voice. “Tell me, Ivy. Tell me how you decided to take a disabled child’s leg away ? Is this how the Donnelly’s did things ? No wonder you are all broke, dying in prison or rotting in hell--”
“Sara, please,” Rayne says
“Fuck you, Sara,” Mrs. Washington shouts and her face is turning red. “Don’t you dare turn this on me. Who the hell do you think did this to my face ? Who ? I tried to be nice, I always try to be nice, but he is psychotic--”
“Stop acting like you aren’t just a jealous, vengeful, motherfucking bitch--,”
“Enough !” Rayne yells, his voice booming and steely. “Sara, I made the final call about Luce and you have no right to be upset with me or my wife. You work for me and in turn her. Everything that is yours is mine. His leg is my leg. I gave it to him and I can sure as hell take it away when I see fit.”
Sara pauses and judging by her stillness, I’m guessing Rayne is right.
“Which ripper uninstalled it?,” she asks through gritted teeth.
“… It was an act of passion," he responds
“You just ripped it off ? You didn’t even get a doctor--,”
“Who was I going to get ? Very few doctors can take that off any better than I did. You need to stop coddling him, he’s fine. Everyone in this room is fine. It’s the rest of the world we need to be worried about---
“Don’t insult me with the “there are bigger problems” act,” Sara snaps. “What about crutches ?, You couldn’t get him crutches ? I know you must have some here.”
“I don’t,” he says, “And even if I did, it would kind of defeat the point.”
Sara unfolds her arms and motions for Jean to come over. They silently put Luce between them, his arm around each of them, and she leads them to the staircase.
“Stop! Sara Grace, don’t you dare be this bullheaded ! ” Rayne calls after her. His voice is desperate. “ You need to stay here, if something else happens you’ll be safe here-”
“Don’t talk to me,” she barks as they begin to ascend the stairs. Minnie, Saint and I follow behind
“Sara,“ he calls. “We have business to attend to.”
“No anymore. Not right now,” She says dryly.
She is halfway up the steps before he speaks again.
“Well, is the job done ?,” he asks. His voice is defeated.
“Yes,” she calls over her shoulder as they turn the corner
of the spiral.
“Thank you,” is the last thing I hear him say before we make it up the stairs
With the train not being an option we take the car back to the Sprawl. Luce is in the back seat between me and Jean, who has Minnie sitting in his lap. His missing leg is right in my line of vision and all I see through the gauze wrapping is just metal, circuits and what could be either rust or dried blood.
He seems calmer, instead of looking off into space he is looking down and I wonder if maybe the leg was the source of all of his anger.
After less than a mile, Minnie’s Syndicate starts blinking a rapid purple, letting her know she has a call.
“It’s Rayne.” She reports. “Should I put it on speaker ?”
“Tell him to fuck off.” Sara says
And she does
And he doesn’t
As we drive, Minnie reads updates in a monotone voice from the Sprawl.
This building gone
That building gone
This many people died in the collapse
But overall the Sprawl survived. Just as it had in the Serial Wars. Back when it was country versus country and not one neighbor slaughtering the other.
When we reach the outskirts I see the city is being showered in ash. Fat, white chunks that twirl as they cover the city and land softly on the slick black pavement. The ash must be from the Border because save for a few of the older buildings that couldn't take the pressure, the skyline looks the same.
The streets have been deserted, the stands for Border Patrol recruitment have been torn down and vandalized with words like “daughter/son killers” “Murder Patrol” “Fuck You Julian”
The sidewalks are sprinkled in glass from windows that were blown out, and a few crews have started clean up. There are a few medic stations set up, but not nearly as many as were near Fort Perch.
“Sara, he left me 14 messages,” Minnie sighs. “My inbox is going to fill.”
“Delete them,” Sara responds
Sara navigates the streets easily, having to only make a few detours around fallen buildings. We pull up to the house and it seems to still be standing. The street is quiet, I imagined an attack like this would bring out the looters, but even they are scared.
“Go open the door,” Sara orders me as she turns off the car.
I jog up the steps and fumble with the lock, while Jean and Sara help Luce out of the car. Minnie trails behind them holding Luce’s bag over her shoulder. As I watch them come up I examine the falling ash up close. It’s less pure white and more pale gray. When I reach my hand out it feels warm and tingly, and when I rub it between my fingers it burns.
“It hurts,” Luce says to Sara as they get on the small porch. I step inside to give them room.
“What hurts ?,” she asks
“My leg.”
“Well, stop putting all your weight on it. Jean and I have you.”
“No, my other leg. It hurts bad. I told the Washingtons and they didn’t listen,” he says
“Luce, what other leg?,” she asks, frustrated already.
“The one you’re crazy ass boyfriend ripped off.”
Minnie stifles a laugh with a cough, while Sara and Jean share a concerned look.
“Luce what the hell are you talking about ? That leg is gone,” Sara reminds him quickly.
”So ? It hurts I can feel it. It hurts,” he whines.
They exchange worried looks again.
“Maybe it’s a phantom pain ? That happens,” Jean suggests. “C’mon little brother, let’s get you inside.”
They struggle to get him in the house and then Luce insists on using the stair railings to get down to the basement by himself.
“Make sure he doesn’t fall on his arrogant little face,” Sara says to Jean and turns to me “I want to talk to you alone. Follow me.”
I follow her down a short hallway and to what was once her bedroom. I’ve never really been allowed to see this side of the house. There are a few photographic prints on the walls, but most of it is empty.
In Sara’s bedroom, the big hole in the wall from the false alarm last month hasn’t been repaired and is still covered in patchy duct tape and the floor smells moldy from the burst pipe. The room still has a certain decadence to it, there are landscape oil paintings on the walls, the remnants of a high tech computer system and her bare mattress sits on a massive onyx bedframe with an ornate silver tipped headboard.
She motions for me to sit on the bed and I do. She sits across from me and I make sure to stick to the edge, my feet dangling a few inches off the floor.
“Alan, I know we got off on a bad start--”
“You kidnapped me,” I remind her.
I hope she can hear the deliberate edge in my voice because suddenly I’m not afraid of her anymore. Maybe it’s because now I know you can use robots to kill thousands of people. Maybe it’s because I know that war still exists. Maybe it’s because I know that gangs are having wars and people will blindly kill you just for a payout.
But mostly it is because in just this last week, hell in the last 24 hours, she has let her guard down in front of me. I can see her hardness and anger is mostly just an image.
“I didn’t want to kidnap you,” she tells me. “That night I was just going to kidnap that Allison girl, ransom her, rough her up a bit and give her back.
But then you saw my face and Luce started shooting and the police were coming and I didn’t know if you grabbed my DNA... I should have just shot you, but…. what can I say ? I know you may not believe this, but I don’t always just let people live. “
She pauses and brushes off a laugh.
“But you were innocent, technically. You’re young, you remind me of my son….my husband…I panicked and just decided to bring you. And once you were here I didn’t know what to do with you.”
“Is that an apology?,” I spit at her.
I’d had a life, family and friends. It’s not fair I had to be taken away from it just because she panicked.
“No. It’s an olive branch. It’s me saying I will do everything I can to try and get you home, but you have to give me time. I get it now, okay ? For those few hours I didn’t know where Luce was….let’s just say I get what I am doing to your mother.”
“Will you let me contact my parents?”
She bites her lip.
“I don’t know.”
“Why-”
“I mean I don’t know if I can. It was always damn near impossible to hack Eastern communication and I imagine with these attacks it’s only gotten harder. But, I’ll try. Fair enough ?”
“Be honest with me.”
“I am,” she says, but her voice tenses
“ There is a war going on. Do you really think I can get home with both borders on alert like this ?”
“I don’t know. ” She stands. “Honestly, I think once they figure out whose dick is bigger, this little 'conflict' will end and it will all go back to resigned contentment. It’ll probably be an arms race at worse.”
“So, let’s say this war ends next week. How long until you can get me home ?,” I ask hopeful.
“Look, I have a project I’m working on. It’s not important to you, but once I get it done I think it may help me get you back. Like I said, give me time.”
She gets off the bed and wanders in to the en suite bathroom, I hear her going through a medicine cabinet.
“Well, can I help ? What is the project ?”
“No, it’s high level shit for Rayne, so don’t even ask me about it because I can’t say,” she says and her voice echoes off the bathroom walls.
“How can you work on a project for Rayne when you aren’t even talking to him ?”
"Rayne and I have an agreement. I'm not going to let my personal feelings get in the way of the work I do for him.”
She comes out of the bathroom with a bottle of HydrocodoneX-4. I recognize the bottle because I watched Minnie fill the bottle with placebos a few weeks earlier.
“What am I supposed to do in the meantime. Just wait around ?”
“No. I want you to look after Luce—“
“Are you kidding me ? He’ll kill me in my sleep first--”
“You don’t even have to tell him; just make sure he doesn’t leave the house by himself. That’s it. Maybe start drinking. It helps.”
***
-2-
Here is something I hated.
Now that Sara has told me there is a chance I can go home, it’s all I want. It’s all I care about.
But, it shouldn’t be. I mean the world has bigger problems.
Because there is no truce.
And the only semblance of a military the Republic had is dead.
It doesn’t take long for the words compulsory draft to enter the equation.
Sure, those who volunteered got paid 30 percent more, but, when you know you could be blown to bits by your enemy no one wants to go anywhere near the military.
The Republican Liberation Army
That’s what they called it. The RLA
Liberation from the Eastern’s Imperial rule.
No more of Eastern businesses using the Republic’s citizens for experiments in exchange for tax breaks, no more taxes to The Eastern government, no more embargos against people from the Republic living in the East. These messages were blasted by Julian Walker’s propaganda machine.
For now, the RLA had spared women and started with all men between the ages of 17 – 40. They keep track of the eligible men through their coded brain implants. Apparently everyone in the Western Republic had one, even if they never got SINdicates to use it with.
Each man is assigned a number and is required to go to a recruitment center every other day to see if their number is called. If their number is up, they have a week to report to boot camp. Evaders were easily tracked down by their implant and forced to report.
There were endless stories on the The Daily Republic News about men being left dead from trying to have their implant removed. The only way to really get it out was to practically have a full lobotomy.
Unless you are Jean Dory, I guess.
Jean told me he had his implant ripped out when he decided to leave home. I didn’t ask for details at the time, but now I’ve grown more curious
There were a few exceptions to the draft. Jean went out a lot to work and if anyone ever questioned him about his draft status he would tell them he had a terminal disease, which was kind of a shitty thing to do, but everything was going gray for me anyway.
I wasn’t a citizen, so no one was looking for me, but Sara had scrambled my implant anyway. Which you aren’t supposed to be able to do, but I’ve notice she’s good at doing things you aren’t supposed to be able to do.
In the week after the nuclear bombs, the air was deemed unsafe to breath since most of the falling ash was, disturbingly enough, human remains. Sara had stowed away some old brown liquor and vodka some years back and started a drinking game between she, Jean and I during this time. At first I refused to join, I didn’t think I had the stomach for unidentified liquor. It was harsh and burned my throat and stomach. Then I started to really like it. I liked the way it helped make the days blend together.
Sara was right.
It helps.
After going through all of the unidentified brown liquor I learned Sara’s wine has the same effect and it tastes better. It’s some novelty brand that isn’t red or white or some shade in between, but a deep black. It smells noxious out of the bottle, but when it touches my tongue it has a deep heat that is like inhaling a cigarette then it peters out to the tiniest bit of sweetness and vanilla. At first I felt bad about drinking her wine and I’d fill the bottle with juice and water until it looked the same. But then I remember that she ruined my life and sharing her wine with me was the least she could do.
When the air was deemed “acceptable (enough)” Jean and Minnie spent the day and most of the night in whatever bars were still open looking for work. Sara had moved some large computer systems and a desk upstairs to her bedroom along with an air purifier to make a makeshift office. She locked herself up inside working on whatever secret project she had going with Rayne. She only ever came back downstairs to check on Luce every now and then and to sleep.
I’m lying in what I’ve come to call my bed, paging through one of Jean’s paper books when I hear Luce retching and vomiting outside the door. I know I will never be drunk enough to want to deal with this. I close my eyes and try to ignore the sound, but then I hear him choking and get up to inspect.
Peeking out the door I can see he threw up all over his bed, which was surprising because he was always too nauseous or too tired to eat anything. I see the mess, and hear the muffled sounds of rock music, but I don't actually see him.
Regrettably, I step in to the room and follow the small gasping breaths to the floor, where he is curled on his side under the bed with a blanket over his head watching an endless loops of music videos on a screen. He’s wearing a stained white undershirt and I can see Freedom under his head and Chaos stroking the space where his leg used to be.
The inky black words are wrapped around his pale forearms in a scripted calligraphy. I was pretty sure he hadn’t had the tattoos when Sara left him with Rayne, because when she took the black track jacket that he always wore off she was pissed, but quickly let it go.
“Don’t touch me. Don’t fucking touch me,” he mumbles now, his eyes flicking up to me.
“ I wasn’t going to,” I say. Which is true, I keep a constant 5 foott barrier between us.
“Imna kill you…I’m…I am,” he slurs before falling asleep.
Sara had figured out pretty quickly that Minnie had taken nearly every pain pill in the house, so Sara had taken some liquid morphine from Minnie’s “rainy day” stock. Sara had yet to figure a dosage that didn’t make him loopy and vomit everywhere.
As if on cue, she storms down the stairs in a pair of black boots and Luce’s eyes pop back open. The already oddly large bluish-green pupils look more dilated than usual.
She casts a glance at Luce, but is coming straight for me.
“Alan, I need you to go to the Luxor for me. It’s a bar downtown. It’s shiny and black so, even you can’t miss it.”
I freeze because I think it’s finally time for me kill someone and clean it up.
“Talk to El at the bar, tell him I need a case of New Rose Black Noir,” she says handing me a credit card.
“No problem,” I say. I'm excited because it gives me a reason to leave the house.
Also, alcohol.
She walks past me to the makeshift kitchen and I turn and follow her.
“Hey, have you had any luck with finding a way for me to contact-”
“No.” she says tersely taking a bowl of noodles out of the cooler and putting it in the microwave.
“Well, I was thinking, maybe if you just contacted Tempus--”
“Why would I contact Tempus ? Do you know anyone who works at Tempus ?,” she asks, raising an eyebrow.
Oh, right. My cover story.
I considered telling Sara the truth about who I was and who
my parents were when she agreed to help me get home, but I decided not to
because my identity was all I had. Besides I’d had this feeling she knew I was lying anyway.
She walks past me with a smirk and crouches down next to Luce on the floor, balancing on her the balls of her feet.
“Jesus Christ, Luce,” she says, looking at the bed.
He grabs her wrist gently
“Mama…” he smiles. “I missed you...”
“I see the morphine is working wonders,” she says amused. “Is all the pain gone ?,”
“My leg still hurts, I told you,” he whines. “My leg hurts. Why aren’t you listening to me ? I want a doctor… I want a doctor….I-”
“Stop it. The pain isn’t there.” she snaps at him.
His face slowly flushes and his eyes get wet before he closes them and a tear rolls down his face.
Sara rolls her eyes and picks up one of the morphine needles. Pulling Luce's hand off of hers, she sticks the needle in the thin skin between his thumb and pointer finger. “Did you feel that ?,”
“….Feel what ?,” he says opening his eyes and staring at the needle.
“Luce, it’s all in your head. Just don’t think about it and it will go away.”
He pulls at the edge of her shirt and I glimpse her tattoo and scar. “I miss Dad too.... I want Dad to come back too. Do you miss Dad too ?”
“Yes, I miss him. Just go back to sleep,” she says standing up.
“When are you going to fix me, Mama ?,” he cries. “You said you would.”
“I’m working on it, I promise.”
When she stands up and sees I’m still there she looked pissed off.
“Did I tell you to fucking do something ?,” she asks.
I head for the door, and she calls after me.
“Alan, tell him I want two cases. And if you want some you’d better clean this up when you get back.”
I nod and swing open the door.
----
A/N - I kind of want to go back to doing these. Hmm, not much to mention with this chapter. There's no cliffhanger because it is essentially a 10,000 word chapter I chopped in half.