Author's Note: *sigh* Okay, it has come to my attention that I screwed up something in my last chapter—when Logan is speaking about Colorado's military budget, he means Wyoming. (A brain fart—sorry.) And, though no one has called me on it, there's a mistake in the prologue—when Max is talking about her siblings breaking down the door and mentions Jondy coming back from Mexico, she means Jace. (Either that, or she IS talking about Jondy and meant to say that she's coming back from San Francisco… Take your pick!) I know that not many people care, but I do! And since I can't just edit these darn chapters without having to jump through hoops… I figured I'd just announce it!
Thank you everyone, for your generous and encouraging reviews… I take them all to heart. This is for you.
Chapter 5: Sheherazade
It wasn't cold inside the warehouse—but then again, I'm not the kind of person who would care. I have only been cold twice in my life--being stuffed full of bear DNA does that to a person.
It wasn't cold inside the warehouse—but it was empty. Syl had left hours ago to try to find more weaponry—we'd need it in the coming weeks—and the knowledge that it would be hours more until she came back weighed on me. The hours loomed ahead of me, even though there was plenty to do.
Plenty to do, but still I sat, unable to coerce myself into rising and cleaning up the already-respectable amount of firepower we'd been able to stockpile.
C'mon, Krit, up and at 'em… You haven't stayed alive this long through sloth…
I rubbed my eyes with my hands, still wiping away exhaustion, though I woke up in the early afternoon. It was simple tactics to sleep so late, working at night would leave fewer witnesses to wonder what's going on in an abandoned warehouse… Questions would compromise security, compromised security meant having to set up shop somewhere else, and setting up shop somewhere else meant wasted time.
I couldn't waste time if I wanted revenge for my sister.
I couldn't waste time if I wanted to find and save my brother.
With these thoughts to move me, I rose in one fluid motion with grace any dancer would envy. Any regular human who could move like this would be told that they had a gift… What is it for me?
I thought of Zack, waiting in a cell in Manticore—waiting to be turned. Wondering how long it would be until he—our trusted CO, our beloved big brother—betrayed us willingly.
I guess you would call it a loan.
***
Cleaning weapons is a mindless job, all mechanical practiced motions for me. All my life I have depended on guns, and heavier machinery when needed, just like the rest of my siblings. This wasn't new to me, and I didn't need to concentrate, so my mind just kind of went—blank. Unlike most of my other siblings, I have this… problem. We were made with minds that were supposed to be brilliant, we were supposed to be tacticians as well as murderers, assassins and soldiers.
I'm not like the rest of my siblings.
I'm reasonably intelligent, slightly above average, which is uncommon enough now that public schooling has been shut down in most major metropolitan areas, but I am nowhere near and never will approach the intelligence of my brothers and sisters.
Sure, I can talk fancy, when I feel like it, but I'm smart enough to know that most idiots can.
Anyway, so instead of using my time to think of useful things, like how to penetrate Manticore or how to fix Zack if they had managed to turn him or where to go if we needed to run, I just sat and cleaned out weapon after weapon. Though it was the work of a mindless drone, it was comforting in its own way, familiar like teddy bears and ice cream were to other children…
Outside, the wind picked up, and the lock we'd chained across the door rattled. I stopped my work for a second, my head up, ears straining, thinking that it might be Lydecker, coming back to meet with us again. For a few moments I listened, but the wind just whistled eerily through the rafters for a minute then was silent again, and the lock didn't move after that. I wondered if I was thankful for it. After all my running during my childhood, you'd think I would get used to being alone, but I hate being solitary. My favorite strategy was always to hide out in the open, among people. Even Lydecker—such a recent, unwilling ally—was an improvement over the whispering of the wind.
If I were more upset and distracted, I'd almost think that it was Max trying to speak to me, whispering her questions through the holes in the roof, trying to tell me how to avoid whatever it was we were all walking into.
"Sorry, little sister," I whispered into the gloom, "This is something that we gotta do." Almost in response, the wind picked up again, and I couldn't suppress an involuntary shiver. I opened my mouth to call my sister's name, before I realized that it was silly, after all, she didn't have ears to hear anymore, did she? Manticore has probably harvested them by now…
Hot tears bloomed in my eyes and spilled down my cheeks. Putting down the gun I was cleaning—I couldn't see it through my tears—I let the wave of anguish wash over me, not resisting, needing to clear it out of my system before I continued. It carried me along for a few minutes, wracking me with a few hoarse sobs, but all in all, I was a good deal better then I had been a night or two ago…
When it was obvious that I had no more tears to cry I picked up my work and continued.
After all, what else was there to do?
***
We had four hours and thirteen minutes until the sun rose when the lock rattled on the doors again, only this time without the accompaniment of the wind to punctuate it. My hand struck out to clasp one of the cleaned, loaded guns. With it's comforting weight familiar in my hand I inched towards the door, but I was met with only what I had expected, not what I feared.
"Hey, Krit, open these doors all the way for me? I gotta back this damned hunk of bolts into there—" She left me to yank open the massive doors while she stepped back into the drivers seat of the van we'd been using. It was a pitiful excuse for weapon transportation what with all that damned circuitry in the back, but beggars couldn't be choosers. Besides, for what we would use, it held enough.
"Get anything good?" I asked, once the van was inside and the doors safely closed. Thank God that Syl was smart enough to drive with the lights off, at this hour, no one would notice our comings and goings.
"You mean anything illegal?" Syl asked, a smile tugging her lips upward, "Yeah—you know that new model sniper rifle we were talking about? The XE-815?" She set about unlocking the backdoor of the van without ripping the door off its hinges.
"The one with telescopic sights—shoots true up to and sometimes past a mile—can punch a hole through five feet of solid steel? Yeah, I've heard." I told her, watching her at work.
"Well—" She finally managed to maneuver the door open and unloaded an inconspicuous wooden crate; "Ever wonder what it felt like to shoot one of those babies?"
I could feel my brow furrow, "Every single day for a full week after I heard about it… why?"
Smiling with the uncontainable glee of a kid Christmas morning, she ripped open the top of the crate with her bare hands, "You're gonna get to." Eyes sparkling, she removed a black case from inside the straw that lined the crate and laid it on the ground, "You wanna do the honors?" She asked, one hand already on the lock.
"You found it, you should get to check it out first." I offered.
Her response was to smile joyfully and bend over the lock, listening to each number as it locked in place, "And… There! That should do it!" The case sprang open to reveal a deceptively small, light gun, the long barrel black and gleaming with polish.
I whistled with appreciation, "No wonder international security is going bonkers over this thing… I could have it as a carry-on!"
"Yeah—you could slide this baby under a desk at work and it'd go unnoticed for days!" she leaned over it again, lifting the foam the gun rested on to reveal another layer of foam and the massive telescopic lens it employed along with an equally large silencer. She set about constructing it.
"You're not—gonna try to shoot that nightmare in here, are you?" I asked, knowing the answer, but needing the reassurance anyway.
"Of course not, dummy! But I've got to feel it—see how it handles—naw, don' worry, we're test driving this thing back at the old house…" I was lucky that she had her back to me, I didn't want to see the way her eyes were gleaming mercilessly. All I could see was her fine blond hair as she leaned over the object of her desire.
"Where—did you find it?" I asked tentatively.
"Where you find EVERYTHING in Seattle—at the docks. Another 'old, abandoned warehouse' just like this. Jackasses didn't know that they had someone with enhanced hearing lying in wait outside the door and they spilled all the beans about everything they had! Most of it was the really big stuff—nothing we could have used, seeing as this op is gonna be covert—well, compared to the last one, anyway—but they mentioned the XE, and I just had to, Krit."
I nodded, feeling slightly sick, "I woulda done the same." I responded, knowing that, under the same circumstance, I would. But there was a reason Syl went out alone to gather resources… I might be the man, but I still don't have the balls to steal something with that much power behind it. I'd be to worried about who I'd have to outrun to keep it. This didn't seem to bother Syl at all, though.
"Probably don't even know you're gone yet." She crooned to the rifle. Slowly, she screwed the silencer in place, not that it would do that much good, but it'd keep you from going deaf if you didn't have the ear protection you needed. "There!" she whispered, holding it up for inspection, "Now, if that's not beautiful, I don't know what is…"
It was an incredible weapon, I could tell, even though she hefted it easily, that it must have weighed a hell of a lot, "Hey," she began, "Open up the other case in that crate? I won't load this baby yet, but I wanna check out the ammo."
Wordlessly, I did as she asked, glancing at weapon she held, still uneasy. You could line up twenty people and shoot through all of them at once with that gun, and the bullet wouldn't even loose momentum. It was a weapon for terror; not for stealth, and not for honor. It was a weapon of death.
You'd think I'd be used to things like it by now.
I opened the case with little trouble and tossed a bullet over to her, it was practically the size of a baseball, only long, and it was about half the weight of a lead shot.
She caught it easily, even still holding the rifle with her right hand, "I wonder how many souls you could pin with this?" Syl breathed, almost to softly for me to hear.
"Does it matter? So long as you can tag Renfro?" Renfro, it was a new name, but it had almost replaced Lydecker's name… She was the one to blame… If Lydecker was responsible for us, then she was responsible for him. She was the greater evil, and after what I'd seen at Manticore a few days ago, I didn't doubt it.
Syl's eyes lost all their mirth, and turned stony, "No. No, it doesn't." Suddenly cheerless and silent, she unassembled the gun and put it away.
***
It was one hour and twenty-seven minutes before the sun rose, and the sky was gray. Syl and I--tired by the night's activities, duty wearing on us, grief rising as our strength ebbed—sat back to back under the consoles on top of the raised platform in the center of our temporary home. We'd sat there for at least a half an hour, not saying a word, not daring to interrupt each other's thoughts, but not daring to move away from each other's warmth to attempt sleep.
Finally, it was Syl's voice who broke the darkness, "D'you think it was Eva that kept Max from using a gun?" Using a gun that could have saved her life, Syl's voice implied.
"Probably. Max was always the closest to her—" I shifted, uncomfortable with the topic, and felt her shoulder blades against my back.
I felt Syl's hair brush my barcode as she nodded, "Yeah…" We were silent for a contemplative moment, "It could've kept her with us…" She whispered.
"I know it." I responded, "Can't do anything about it now." I said.
"We didn't have more then a day with her—wish I could've gotten to know her better. And that boyfriend of hers—"
"Boyfriend?" I asked, confused.
Syl sighed, "Boys are so thick." She muttered, "Yeah, the hacker. C'mon, you didn't see the way they eyed each other?"
"Uhh…"
Syl sighed again, "No matter how observant they made us, they still made you male—" I understood that pain was making her sharper tongued then usual, so I didn't protest, "I wonder how he's doing?" she added softly.
"Probably about as well as us—maybe worse." I offered, knowing that it must be harder for the people who actually knew her. Syl and I had to mourn for something we'd never really had.
"Yeah…"
We were silent again.
One hour and nine minutes before the sun was supposed to come up, Syl broke the silence again, "Has life been good to you?" she asked, "I haven't seen you since you were fourteen, you know."
"I remember." I reminded her gently, "It's been… alright, I guess. As well as it can be."
"Do you ever wonder if it might have been better to stay at Manticore? I mean… not to have to run… to hide… I mean, we all do what they meant us to do anyway. We all fight and steal and some of us kill…" That prompted a painful memory of Ben when he was younger, but I pushed it out of my mind, I had enough grievances to contend with for now, "What's the point?"
"Freedom." I said simply, "They made us human. Human's want freedom… It's worth it to be able to run if you can choose your own direction."
She leaned her head back to rest on my shoulder, absently, I reached one hand up to stroke her hair, "What if you don't want to run in the first place? What if you just decide to stop running?" she asked me quietly. That question startled me, coming out of her. When I'd last seen her, we'd been in Tuscon and she'd been a blond-haired imp of a girl, and devil-may-care about her attitude. She'd been living in a cardboard box and carrying a gun, swearing she'd never go back to existing in a house again. That wasn't who I saw here, and her maturity frightened me more then anything.
"Then at least you had the freedom to make that choice." I told her, knowing that I wasn't being the least bit reassuring.
"Do you want to go to sleep?" Her head lifted from where it rested on my shoulder.
"I guess so." I admitted, "I'm starting to feel—" I couldn't find the proper adjective, so I let the sentence hang in the air, unfinished.
Wordlessly, she rose, slender body weaving slightly as she walked to where we kept our sleeping bags. She'd set us up for bed by the time I'd managed to get up and walk over. Exhausted, we both laid down, but after seven or eight minutes we found ourselves staring at each other, unable to drift off.
"Can't sleep?" I asked, stating the obvious.
She shook her head, her eyes luminous in the dark, "No… I keep thinking about Max."
"Yeah…" I whispered, staring off into the gray starting to lighten the rest of the room.
There were a few seconds worth of a pause, and I could sense her gathering her strength to ask one, final question. I waited patiently.
"Krit?" She asked, her voice timid and hollow with lack of sleep.
"Yes?" I asked, still staring at her.
"Could you—tell me a story?"