***
She laughed sometimes, which honed my own laughter into common use. Her smile, though it faltered often, was perfect. It had only been weeks since her episode, and she was improved. I knew that it was something that I had said to her because she smiled often for me – more often than she had, more than for others. I felt a small twang of pride that she had found it in her to smile at something like me. Every time she did, I thought that the color of her eyes was the most beautiful color in the world.
Pierce and Ali came to me one day. They entered and sat in the back room, expecting to speak. I found myself hiding that necklace, shoving it beneath my shirt as they approached. Their wariness of me had long since wilted and died, so they did not catch it.
“We have a problem, Dark,” Pierce said.
My eyes narrowed dangerously.
“I do not appreciate being strung along,” I said coldly. “What is it?”
“Remember those batteries the Deviant found?” Pierce asked.
“Yeah, what of them?”
“We were able to get them to power our radio. We just intercepted what I think is a Probe beacon.” Pierce threw me our radio. I looked up at him, feeling my heart race.
“Why didn’t you come get me?” I asked him angrily.
“Couldn’t find you,” was all he said, shrugging. “Go ahead – play it.”
I turned the knob for the radio to work.
“Hailing all callsigns. This is FPAP. Do you copy, over?”
I recognized FPAP as Freedom’s Progress Aviation Patrol. The color drained out of my face. They were responsible for all militant aviation outside the Wall in the Traverse.
“Roger, FPAP, this is Bravo Two Niner. We have you five by five, over.”
“This is Echo Two Niner, loud and clear, over.”
“Charlie Three Six, reading you five, over.”
“Roger, all callsigns prepare to copy order codes, over.”
“Ready to copy, FPAP, over.”
The same was repeated by the callsigns of the other two.
“Transmission order code 7-15-18-10,” FPAP crackled. “Confirm transmission, over.”
“Transmission order code 7-15-18-10. Transmission confirmed, over.”
There was crackling, but in the distance we heard the other two callsigns confirm the order code.
“Execute last order code at 0400 hours in 30 days. Can you comply?”
“Wilco, FPAP,” the voice of Bravo Two Niner said.
Again, the same was repeated by the other two transmittees.
“All callsigns, end order code transmission. FPAP, over and out.”
“What’s the order code?” I asked them both as a pause ensued.
“Just wait,” Pierce said, nodding to the radio.
“Bravo Two Niner, this is Echo Two Niner, do you copy?”
“Copy, Echo Two Niner, What did you need, over?” Bravo replied.
“Last transmission, kill code to execute in 30 days. Is that what you have, over?”
“Wait one, Echo Two Niner.”
There was another long pause.
“Echo Two Niner, this is Bravo Two Niner, affirmative, we have kill codes to execute in 30 days, over.”
“Echo Two Niner, this is Charlie Three Six,” Charlie piped in with a crackling voice. “We think we might have some mistakes over here. We’re detecting kill codes over the Quarantine Zone, over.”
I looked up at the other two.
“Wait two, Charlie Three Six,” Echo Two Niner replied. Another pause. “No, we’re all getting the same thing. Must be some mistake.”
“Your call, Echo Two Niner,” Charlie Three Six replied. “Over and out.”
Echo Two Niner hailed FPAP.
“We read you Echo Two Niner, this FPAP.”
“Hailing FPAP-Actual, over.”
Another pause.
“This is FPAP-Actual,” a commanding voice said.
“FPAP-Actual, this is Echo Two Niner in Traverse Sector 15. We received transmission order codes that we just wanted to clarify with you, over.”
“Go ahead, Echo Two Niner,” the voice replied.
Echo relayed the transmission code.
“This is a kill code over the Quarantine Zone, and we just wanted to make sure it was the right one, over.”
“Affirmative, you have the right order code, over,” FPAP-Actual replied.
“FPAP-Actual, be advised that we have boots on the ground in the Quarantine Zone awaiting pickup.”
Hesitation now.
“Say again, Echo Two Niner?”
“There are boots on the ground in the Quarantine Zone awaiting pickup, over.”
“We’re seeing that here, Echo Two Niner, it seems they’ve about run out of time. They’ve been there for months and are assumed dead, over.”
Hesitation from Echo.
“FPAP-Actual, we have directives for extraction at planned coordinates every forty eight hours, over.”
“Echo Two Niner, you can assume your directives until 30 days have passed, at which point your directives are null and void, over.”
“Roger, FPAP-Actual, over and out.”
Chills from all unpleasant things reminded me of who I really was, of what my world was really like. I was sure they heard my heart racing.
“When was this?” I asked them both.
“This morning,” Pierce said.
“They didn’t say anything about Fisher,” I pieced together quickly.
“We think they don’t know about Fisher,” Ali replied immediately.
I blinked in surprise.
“What? Why not?”
“Way I see it,” Pierce said, “the second she dies, we sign our own death warrant. And they probably know that. But we’ve gone dark, so they have enough wiggle room to kill us because we’re dragging our feet. We’ve got 30 days to extract or we’re going to fry with everyone inside.”
I felt sick.
“So, if we’re going to do what we came her to do,” Ali snapped, “we need to do it now.”
I tried hard to think of a reason why I could countermand the order besides the fact that I didn’t want to carry it out.
“We can’t,” I whispered.
I sat up stiffly.
They were going to bomb the whole place.
Everyone we had met was going to die.
“We have to,” Ali said to me emphatically.
“Bright, we can’t,” I snapped at her.
“Why? Because you’re pathetic or because you’re weak?”
“You sound just like My Master,” I snarled, waving this aside.
“What?” Pierce asked.
“I’m an Exterior, okay?” I snapped at the air in front of me, and the words hung malignantly in the air.
There was instant silence. It was the first time that I had confessed the great and terrible secret to anybody, said the words out loud. A weight both unraveled and tightened in my chest in a strange fashion as I saw the look of fear pass over both of their eyes.
Pierce took a noticeable step away from us both. The room was so cramped, however, that the action made me feel like I was a plagued animal. I used to feed off of people’s fear and hatred. I used it to do what nobody else was willing to do. I prevented awful things from happening so that they would not need to be afraid. But I’d forgotten what that look felt like.
“He was,” Ali snapped, smirking.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I asked her loudly.
She looked supremely satisfied.
“I’m an Exterior too, sunshine,” she stated matter-of-factly.
I blinked. I felt as if I slammed into a wall. How did I not know that? How did I not see that? I looked her up and down. How did she hide it? But, more importantly, why hadn’t Probe or the High Council or My Master told me about it?
“What?” I asked her.
She snorted with disgust.
“Obviously, you need to be reeducated,” she snapped at
me with disdain. “You’ve forgotten everything we stand for. We are tools, not brains. We don’t get to think these people deserve mercy. We just get to act on behalf of our Masters!”
I opened my mouth but nothing came out.
“You don’t get it, do you?” Ali asked. “We are incompatible. As long as she lives, people will die!”
“You don’t know that,” I suggested for the first time, softly.
“I do know that humans are the less dominant species on the planet now! I do know that she’s part of the dominant half! Remember that, Ollie? Or has she brainwashed you that much?”
“She was brought up thinking she was human,” I said dismissively.
“She is an abomination!” Ali said louder.
It was the exact phrase My Master had used. The same one I’d agreed with, so long ago.
“We could give them all soldier’s deaths,” Ali suggested, cold and professional now. “Execution style. It wouldn’t have to hurt. They could keep their precious honor, or whatever you want to call it. The Great Deviant from legend would die. The rest would die. And we could move on with our lives.”
“That’s impossible,” I finally admitted.
I didn’t know what would happen after this, if we even survived, but I knew it would never be the same. Ali just made a disgusted noise.
“It isn't impossible to distance yourself from your work. But you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you, Ollie?”
I hated her so much that I had to close my eyes and look away to avoid assaulting her.
“That was a long time ago,” I said darkly.
“And yet we are here,” she said with a scowl. “I thought maybe they’d taught us at least not to turn our back on our Masters. You betray your own kind, Dark.”
I opened my mouth again but decided I couldn’t speak. Not to her. Not to an Exterior. I hated her too much. I walked out of Fisher’s back room, through her front room, and into the lower courtyard where weeks ago Skate had been killed. Fisher was just entering. She passed me and smiled, but I walked quickly by her into the darkness. I decided I would go up to the tower that she’d shown me. People were rarely up there in those days.
The thought of Fisher made me ache inside.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, beside me suddenly.
Her voice really cared. I considered for the briefest moments if maybe she did too.
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
It was true. I wasn’t sure what I felt anymore.
I didn’t want to tell her. It seemed unfair to her. I couldn’t let myself look at her because she deserved so much better than me.
I fell a little, distractedly, and my hands were both sliced open. I didn’t have time to look at it or feel the pain.
She sounded a little more accusatory as I continued to avert my eyes.
“Ollie?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said defensively.
Fisher climbed ahead of and above me, like a monkey who’d done it a thousand times.
“Liar,” she said. “What’s bothering you?”
“I don’t know,” I said again.
I finally sat at the highest point of the foundation. Fisher impatiently shifted beside me but she said nothing, and I appreciated it. Until,
“What’s your problem?”
I threw up my cut hands.
“Why do I have to have a problem? Why am I always the one with the problem?”
Fisher was surprised.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean –”
“Why is this all on me? Why am I always the one at fault here?”
“Why are you so defensive? I was just asking a question! Dammit!”
She shrugged, shook her head, and looked into the now dark horizon angrily. There was a pause in which I felt foolish, in which my anger melted into remorse. I looked up at her and noticed a stream of crimson on her cheek.
“What happened?” I asked after a still moment.
My voice was soft – softer than I ever remembered it being.
Fisher just smiled a little.
“A dog got me, I guess. Am I bleeding?”
I motioned right under her chin to her neck. Wordlessly, she started to go about healing it, retrieving medicine from her bag, dabbing it onto the wound with a cloth until the bleeding stopped.
“Thanks,” she finally said. “You got a cut there, too – look.”
I glanced down at my hands to see where she was pointing.
“Can I?” she asked, extending her rag hesitantly towards me.
I hesitated and then nodded. Her hands entered mine. Her fingers were unbelievably gentle and soft. And, suddenly, she became real. It was the first time I had ever felt something so small, so delicate. She noticed how quiet I was.
“Are you alright?” she asked, looking up at me.
I felt as if I was a bug trapped in a jar. She was my light, my air. Without her hand, I was back to being just another bug in a jar – confused, lonely, and frightened. But with it, I felt calm and safe. I felt like I was home.
“Ollie?” she pressed. “Are you okay?”
“Your hand,” my mouth said before I could stop it.
Her entire face flushed as she yanked it away. I felt foolish and empty at its lack of presence, at everything it had represented, at letting her know that it was her bare skin that made me feel that way at all.
“No – it’s fine,” I said hurriedly. “Your skin just feels strange, that’s all.”
“What?” she asked, bringing her hands together self-consciously, turning away with a wide-eyed, horrified expression.
“I mean, no. Not bad strange, just regular strange.”
I wanted to slap myself. What kind of sentence was that? I tried to recover.
“Not in a bad way. Not like…just not what I’m used to. Not the regular strange either.”
Dammit, shut up, I thought to myself.
So ordered, my hands flew to hers in a moment of impulse, and I guided her to begin her ministrations once more.
“You don’t have to stop,” I whispered to her.
She blinked at me before continuing, more tentatively than ever before. I saw the pain behind her eyes that she would hide from everybody when she looked at you directly, but when she was focused on other things, it was as plain as day.
“How are you holding up?” I finally whispered to her.
“Fine,” Fisher said dismissively, refusing to look up into my eyes.
When she turned away, like out of the corner of my eye, I saw the agony that was still there, festering, wilting. She wasn’t fine at all.
“Are you, uh…you sure?” I asked nervously.
“Just fine,” she said, standing to dismiss herself hurriedly.
As she disappeared, I was left alone, and I felt so bitter, so achingly sad. I wanted her to know that I knew she wasn’t fine. I thought of leaving her behind. The pain was profound. I watched her climb back down away from me, and I smiled bitterly.
She was going to be my first, only, and last friend.
***