Freedom

Chapter 16

A day or two ago you wouldn't have been able to convince me that I'd be spending another night in the same place as Velvet and the Biker of my own accord. I've since learned that the Zone is the sort of place where you don't know where you'll be one hour in the future, much less one day. Trying to make prediction is a waste of time.

Like everything else had so far, Day 4 came at me at a thousand miles an hour. I hardly closed my eyes and it was dawn. I wasn't a part of Freedom, but I was working for it in an official capacity now. You wouldn't have been able to convince me I'd be working for a faction – but there I was.

I'd been up half the night fretting about the wisdom of what I was doing. Aligning myself with the little guy. It wasn't the best long-term survival tactic, and in the Zone, a year was a long time. My job was to stay alive. I wondered if I was making the right play. Well – I'd told Velvet the truth. Presumably, she'd know better than to think I'd play the hero.

The four of us – the Biker, Velvet, Sagaris, and myself – were walking east, straight toward the sunrise. I didn't even know where we were going, but I wasn't worried, and that had nothing to do with my exhaustion. You'd think the sky is just as wide wherever you are, but now I know better. That morning in the Zone, it was wider than I'd ever seen it. Streaks of pink shot across the horizon.

Sagaris seemed remarkably at ease, considering his predicament. Understandably, the Biker was keeping a close eye on him. Things should have been tense, but they weren't. He strode along like he did this every day. Maybe he did.

Velvet had her MPL slung across her back, and a gas mask around her neck, ready to be donned at a moment's notice. It wouldn't do to have someone recognize her – she was supposed to be dead, and she had to stay that way, at least until the opportune moment.

I wondered if I would be around long enough to see that moment. I hoped I would be. That alone was enough, I know now. Staying with Velvet wasn't the brightest move. I wasn't doing it because I should have, but because I wanted to. I'd seen the Zone, and I'd seen her. I couldn't deny that I was curious to see what happened when you put the two together.

I was going to have a front-row seat.

"Where are we going?" I asked, slowing my gait to fall in alongside her.

Velvet's eyes were fixed squarely on the horizon. "Do you know what we need?"

"Need?"

"For Freedom to challenge Duty. To bring back balance."

"Besides a lot more people?"

"Weapons. Ammunition. Premises. Vehicles. Supplies. Personnel. Intelligence. A medic, a mechanic, a quartermaster, officers. All of it has to be funded. You think it's hard starting a small business out there, wait until you try it in here."

"You need money."

"Lots of it."

She had a lot of cash – I'd seen that firsthand. But I knew she meant a different kind of money. She was talking real income streams, something I happened to know a little about – but not in this context.

"Where does it come from?"

"People, ultimately."

"And where do you get the people?"

"The people are all around. But it's convincing them to follow me that makes it difficult. I'm a joke, Mist. I ran Freedom's rookie camp. I was a commander, but you know what people thought about that. You probably thought it yourself. It's not true, but I'll never convince anyone of that. No stalker will follow a woman unless she can prove she can deliver."

"Can you?"

"Deliver?"

"Prove it."

"No. Not in the timeframe I'm working with."

"Then what do you do?"

"I cheat." She glanced over at me. "No one will follow me. But what if there was a Freedom officer, one with enormous credibility. A proven track record. A man beyond doubt, beyond reproach. A man that everyone who doesn't like what they see Duty doing right now could believe in. What if a man like that had survived the Incursion?"

"All Freedom officers were confirmed dead."

"I know that and you know that." She smiled grimly. "But I'm supposed to be dead, too."

"You have someone in mind."

"I might have a hunch." She patted the pouch containing her PDA.

"You want to set up a puppet."

"It's the most efficient way."

"It also puts another layer between you and Duty."

"The best plans always have unintended benefits."

We walked in silence for a moment. "We're going to find this person?"

"No, we won't be able to find him without a guide."

"Are we going to get the guide?"

"No, we're going to get the muscle that we'll need to live long enough to get to the guide, and the guide will take us to the man."

I looked down at her, studying her face in an effort to determine whether or not she was kidding. I couldn't tell. "You still haven't told me how you're going to keep Duty off our backs once this thing starts picking up speed."

"I just won't give them a reason to come after us."

"They don't need a reason – the fact that you're Freedom is enough."

"Suppose they don't know that."

"You want to put on a different name?"

"It's a thought. Unless you want to face off with them right now."

"We can't face off with them at all. If we do, we're dead."

"And we won't have to."

"You have a plan."

"I always have a plan."

God help me, I believed her. "Why are you doing this?"

"You've been here long enough to know that it wouldn't be right to let one group of people own this place." I'd asked a big question, and she'd answered it with one sentence. I pulled down my mask and rubbed my chin.

"And you're willing to die for that?"

"It's not like I have anything else going on."

We spotted a pack of dogs as we crested a hill, and changed course to avoid them. The sky overhead was perfectly blue, but in the east it was black as night. I still wasn't used to it.

"Was it always like that?"

"So dark?" Velvet shrugged. "No. Apparently it's sunny in the center."

"The center? I thought no one had ever gotten there."

"Three have that I know of. Two of them are still alive. But it might not really be sunny. They saw things there that weren't real. They saw Chernobyl crumbling, but to the rest of us outside, it's still there. So who knows what it's really like in there."

"The power plant?"

"Yes. Pay it a visit before your year's up. It's on the must-see tour list."

I snorted. "What's the average life-expectancy in those parts?"

"Now that Monolith isn't around? If you know how to handle your mutants and you have a working Geiger counter, there's no problem. You still can't get to the center."

"Why not?"

"The barrier. It's what the Military was trying to bring down during the battle. They only got it open for a moment, and everything was lost by then." A pause. "Or so I've been told."

"You weren't there?"

"I was there. But I wasn't paying attention."

I got the feeling it was better not to ask. "Barrier," I said aloud. "Why?"

"To keep people from the Wish Granter."

"You think it's real?"

"I've spent a lot of time thinking about it. I still don't know. I always thought that someday I'd find out for myself, that things would just fall into place, and I'd find myself on my way to the center. That isn't going to happen now."

"Even if you have the best plan in the world, bringing Freedom back isn't going to be easy."

"Thank you, Commander Obvious."

"It's Captain Obvious."

"What did you say?"

"Nothing. It's him, isn't it?"

"What?"

I let my gaze flick to the Biker. "He's been to the Center."

Velvet's eyes narrowed. "How can you tell?"

"I can feel it."

She looked up at me, expression unreadable. "There really is something different about you."

"I don't know about me, but there's definitely something different about him. Who's the other one?"

"The other man who made it out of the Center?"

"Yeah."

"Don't trouble yourself over him."

"Why not?"

"Because he's with Duty now. Let's change the subject."

"In that case I'd like to hear your miracle scheme. You still haven't told me how you're going to fund this operation – not really."

"Money doesn't just fall out of the sky, Mist."

The thudding of rotors reached us. We stopped and turned to see a chopper roar past overhead, flying incredibly low.

"Where's he going in such a hurry?" Velvet wondered aloud, but I wasn't listening, because I was sprinting after the helicopter.

I recognized that chopper. It was the same guys that had sold me out.