Chapter 15: Don't Think Twice, It's all Right, Pt. 3

Lily tilted the knife back and forth, admiring the bloody tint cast by the armory’s emergency lights. A small 86 was etched just above the hilt, but it was inconceivable that this same blade had carved into her cheek.

“I want a knife like this knife,” she said.

Michael gestured with the bottle. His cheeks were flushed, and Lily decided she liked the loose way he moved when he was drunk. He was usually always so stiff. “Keep it. I lost mine, you know. Well. I left it.”

It took two tries to get it back in the sheathe. “Left it where?”

“In a Regular.” Michael shrugged. “Angie made the plan. I had to improvise. I’m not…tactically, not good.”

Lily wrinkled up her face. “Who’s Angie?”

He passed her the bottle and watched in unfocused fascination as she took a healthy swig. “We were going to defect together. I got her killed.”

“Shit. Sorry.”

The armory floor swayed and the walls pulsed to the beat of a giant heart. Michael made a noncommittal gesture.

Now he looked sad. She had to cheer him up.

“I will keep this knife,” Lily announced, propping her elbow on his shoulder and pointing across the room. She had stopped counting. “We’ll trade. You can have that."

Michael looked at the grenade launcher and its bandolier of fist-sized shells. He smiled. “All right.”

“You need it, because you really are tactically not good,” she said, and to her surprise and delight he laughed. Just a little, quietly, like he was winded. “Throwing yourself at things. Did they train you like that?”

“Yes,” Michael said, very serious now. “Operatives do not die of old age.”

“You’re going to,” she assured him, patting his knee. Oh, she shouldn’t have done that. Too late now. She slumped against him and allowed herself to like the recklessness of it. Touching. Being touched.

He sighed. His cheek moved against her hair, and Lily allowed herself to like that too.

“It’s just a waste,” she sighed. “Bottle.”

Michael handed it to her. “What is.”

The whiskey tasted like smoke. “Everybody dying all the time.”

“Well. Angie might be alive. I don’t remember.”

She lifted her head. He was very big and very close. “You say that a lot. What’d they do to you?”

“They made us,” Michael started. His jaw worked. “I was made…to feel nothing. To be a killer.”

Omaha, Castor’s hands, a shovel biting through the permafrost. Lily pinched herself. “Did you have a family?”

“They train Operatives in batches of one hundred, but we were not family.”

Lily hiccuped. “Fuck.”

“That was against regulations.”

She succumbed to a burst of snorting laughter, and he gave her a lopsided smile that made her heart try to beat sideways.

“What about you,” Michael asked as she wiped her eyes. “Do you. Did you have anyone?”

Lily stopped laughing. “I’ve been alone since I was eleven. How come you don’t remember anything?”

A very, very long pause. She put the bottle back into his hand, folding his fingers around it. Usually he wore gloves, but not just then.

“S’fine,” she said. “Mostly I’m jealous. There’s things I want to forget.”

Michael moved his arm around her back. He was warm. His heart beat quick against her shoulder. As long as he didn’t try anything else…

“Like Castor?”

Lily jerked away, upending the bottle and sending the remaining amber liquid crawling across the bare concrete.

“How the fuck do you know that name,” she spat, no longer invincible or warm and drunker than she wanted to be.

“You talk in your sleep.” Michael watched the spilled liquor creep toward the drain. “I’m sorry.”

Lily hugged her knees to her chest. “I dream about him every night.”

Slowly, Michael shifted position until they sat side by side again, not quite close enough to touch. “I know.”

“I want…” Something was happening in her chest, a tearing sensation like a silent scream. She wanted Michael to put his arm back around her. She wanted to hold his hand. She wanted to cry. She didn’t want anyone to touch her ever again.

Doors were opening that she thought she’d lost the keys to. Lily was drunk, and she was reckless, and she looked at Michael and saw something in his eyes that should’ve terrified her.

“I want to tell you,” she finished. “Can I tell you?”

“Yes,” he said, immediately. Gently.

She dug out the other bottle so she could have something to hold. “Don’t say anything until I’m done. Not one word.”