Chapter 18: Only a Pawn in Their Game

He was young. Or at least he was very new.

Going back that far was like grasping at soap bubbles. The memory of the rifle was sharp, though: it was too heavy for his hands, too large. The recoil numbed his shoulder. Blood ran down the wall.

Predators sometimes dragged prey back to the den half-dead for their young to finish off. He would learn that later and think back to this moment, heart pounding and hands trembling as he stared at the sagging body bound to the chair, the black sack over the head, the wet stain on the chest.

He reported his symptoms and was issued two red pills instead of one.

The symptoms stopped. He was an excellent shot.

—

His nose was broken, three of the fingers on his left hand dislocated. Had it really started so early? It must have. 63’s shadow fell across every memory he had.

23 worked everything back into place, crouching over him on the barracks floor. Medical was a trap; 35 shattered her leg and never came back, 89 got sick and disappeared…

“He won’t hurt you again,” she promised.

Something about the way she said it made him pause, calculating. He knew what he was supposed to do. He knew how to make the report.

He stared at his swollen hand. It didn’t hurt. He felt nothing at all.

Later she beat 63 bloody and broke his hand, and 74 did feel something: a sensation in his stomach like he was hurtling downwards. He felt it again in reverse every time he heard 23’s voice, but he did not make a report.

—

“I wash them down the sink,” 23 whispered.

She was confessing to treason. He didn’t know what to say. His voice had never felt like a part of him, and the mechanics of speech often failed. If not for her he would forget how to talk entirely.

“I just pretend,” she went on. They sat on the floor between two bunks. Doing…something. Studying, perhaps. There had been studying. “It isn’t hard.”

She couldn’t say things like that. They would take her away like they’d taken 14, who’d slammed her head into the wall over and over again, eyes vacant, back straight. 14, at least, had been returned. But she came back different.

Sometimes he dreamed that they’d already taken and changed 23. Made her into a machine. Who would talk to him then?

“Teach me,” he said.

—

They had black uniforms and long knives now, and private quarters. Separate quarters. He hadn’t found any cameras, but it still terrified him when they committed sedition together in the scant hours of rest between rotations.

There had been two campaigns. He had seen the sky, and Memphis, and a third place he could no longer name.

“I’ve picked out names for us,” 23 said, her faded blue eyes gleaming. That was the clearest part of the memory: the way she looked at him. “I’m Angelina, you’re Michael. Don’t argue with me.”

She could be Angelina. She could have anything she wanted, because when the nightmares came she held him close, her hand pressed tight over his mouth to keep him from screaming.

He loved her.

He couldn’t remember her face.

—

The child was almost smaller than his rifle. He was barefoot and bloody-faced. They stared at each other, frozen, while the city burned around them.

74 lowered his weapon. “Run.”

A rebel flag still hung from its pole. Flames licked at the corners, blackening the stars and stripes.

The child was gone when 74 looked again, but he thought he saw him later — facedown by the side of the road, a maroon stain across his back. It might not have been him, though. There were so many dead children. They all looked the same.

—

“There’s a ferry,” said 23. Angelina. Angie. The illicit map rustled as she traced the blue line of the Mississippi with her finger. “It would get us to New Columbia in a month.”

They were at war with New Columbia. They were at war with everyone.

74 tried to listen as she painted a picture of golden fields under a warm sun, tried to believe it was possible to live there in peace. To be human beings.

He thought every day about the child with the rifle. He thought about going to war that night with three full magazines and leaving with all three empty.

No one had forced him to pull the trigger; he’d just done it. He didn’t deserve peace.

Angie took his hand. This part of the memory was very clear: she guided his hand to the map and pressed his palm to the ancient paper. “It’s almost over.”

He would follow her anywhere, but he didn’t believe her.

—

He no longer felt real.

That was the goal. To make them machines. He hated that the Coalition had won, but he also hated what he became when he was clean. So he took half-doses, just enough to avoid detection and the hell of withdrawal.

He liked it. That was the truth. Too often he took full doses, and floating in the calm, black void he was all action and no thought. No memory. No guilt.

74 practiced a blank face in the mirror. “He’s watching us.”

“So?” Angie kissed his cheek; he wanted to remember what that felt like, but it was gone. Everything good was gone.

“He knows.”

She snorted. “No he doesn’t, or we’d both be dead. He’s a jealous little rat who hates being second-best, that’s all. Let him watch.”

74 had gotten very good at pretending. He saw no fear in the face staring back at him.

“We’re almost done,” she promised. “We’re almost free.”

The face in the mirror did not smile.

—

Remembering this was like pinching out a candle: illumination, pain, darkness.

There had been a heavy door. Yellow light. Heat. Ten rows of ten. Angie screaming, pounding her fists on the glass, falling to her knees.

He put his arms around her and dragged her away. “Someone’s coming. Angie. Angelina. 23—”

“This is sick,” she cried, straining to break loose. “This is insane, we—”

The memory splintered. There were stairs. Then back in his quarters, the harsh light above the mirror hollowed out his face as his shaking hands gripped the sink. The shower ran behind him. Angie’s quiet sobs were not quite muffled by the water.

They had to leave.

—

It all went wrong.

74 tried to make them kill him. He fought all the way to the chair.

Had he used the wrong word, moved the wrong way, relaxed just a little at the wrong time? Had he smiled? He hadn’t known then. He didn’t know now. Whatever it was, 63 had seen it.

Whatever it was, he knew it had been his fault.

A stabbing pain at the base of his skull. A spreading liquid cold.

He didn’t know where Angie was. In another room, in another chair. He had to remember her name. He had to remember her.

Remember Angie. Remember Angie. Remember