Chapter 2

Once the world was fat and green.

Anya was a little fuzzy on history, having been schooled in two opposing versions of it, but everyone agreed that the time of abundance eventually came to an end. As the earth fevered and died, the United States Defense Coalition launched its final solution. One hundred of them.

It was a war of machines, of automatic responses. Less than half an hour later the old world was gone, and from its corpse a new one was born, bloody and screaming.

For a century the Coalition waited out the nuclear winter underground and prepared to remake the world in their image. Why? Hardly mattered. Dwelling on the past did no good.

This did matter. When the hatches opened and grey-clad regiments marched squinting into the sunlight at last, they were met with a nasty surprise. Instead of a clean slate to colonize, they found new maps with new borders. They found themselves unwanted.

So they’d fucked off back to their secret bases in a snit and locked the doors again. That was Anya’s theory, anyway. Probably they’d been less emotional about it. More tactical.

Regardless of motive, they’d gone to ground. Not for very long this time, just a decade or so. When they returned it was with a new weapon, a thing shaped like a human being. Not born, but grown in incubators.

One hundred of them.

Anya was number 23. Michael was number 74. Rubber stamp soldiers, copies of copies. A cadre of bespoke freaks. Unquestioning, unfaltering killers.

In her dreams she saw the tanks. She felt the heat of the room. In her dreams, the thing floating in a sea of viscous yellow liquid opened its eyes and lunged at her, over and over, bashing itself to death against the glass. Her eyes. Her face. Her blood.

But she dreamed about all kinds of things. Saw all kinds of things. None of it mattered, nothing did now.

The sun was coming up. Anya kept the brightening sky behind her left shoulder, monitoring the terrain map and the low fuel alert and the check engine indicator and the tire pressure warning and her bloody, muddy hands clutching the wheel.

The road went in and out. So did Lily, drowning in delirium and her own blood. Michael had given her painkillers and another pint of O negative. Her labored breaths were audible over the rattling of the engine.

Neither of them had told her they wouldn’t make it. Anya doubted she would live long enough to find out, and in the deep pit of her soul she was able to acknowledge a flowering of slow-blooming grief.

Of course she wanted Michael to be happy, and he would only be happy if Lily lived. And it wasn’t that she wanted Lily to die; not at all. That wouldn’t be like her.

The world was shit. It was a bottomless pit into which goodness and kindness were tossed like tribute. No one got to be happy and nothing was fair.

To punish herself for earlier uncharitable thoughts, Anya made herself think about Aiden.

Here were the facts:

He had saved her life once, years ago. Interceded for her. Then he’d attached himself to her like an annoying, charming little barnacle and tricked her into loving him.

He had been a polyglot, probably a genius, but he’d played dumb so convincingly that Anya herself had sometimes been taken in by his stupid folksy accent and disarming grin.

And he was a fucking liar. He’d deceived her. They were supposed to be a team, but he’d had some kind of secret allegiance to an entity she did not understand. It had given him tools and knowledge to enter Alpha Base, access its computer, and do…something.

A computer drive wrapped in waxed cloth weighed down Anya’s pocket. His last gift to her. He’d handed it over after she shot him.

Movement in the back.

“Where are we going?” Lily’s voice sounded like paper tearing.

“To the river.”

“We did that before. You and me.” The foil blanket rustled. “I wish you remembered.”

The rain had turned to fog and the road was long gone. Out here the land was marshy and liked to swallow things; it would not be hard to dig the grave. Anya would have to do that herself too. Michael would be no help.

“I will remember. Once you remind me.”

A sharp, pained breath; they’d bumped over something. Anya winced.

“Careful,” Michael said. There was even an edge on it.

Lily told him something, but Anya didn’t catch it. Sounded like an admonition.

After that there was silence, apart from Lily’s labored breathing and the rattling engine. To Anya’s immense and lasting surprise the engine died first.

The Courser lurched and bumped over hummocks of rough grass as the steering wheel froze in her grip and they coasted to a halt.

Lily did not stir. She was grayer than her stolen Regular’s uniform, the skin under her eyes dark as a bruise. Sweat plastered her thick, curly black hair to her scalp.

Michael’s hollow-eyed reflection replaced the HUD in the windscreen, staring over Anya’s shoulder with a familiar intensity. He looked like his own ghost. He looked like Owen. “How close are we.”

Ten, fifteen miles. Maybe more. The distance remaining had vacillated wildly as they drove; the onboard navigation system didn’t like being this far from home.

Wait, Anya signed. Battle shorthand this time; a sign he knew. She grabbed a rifle and kicked the door open, stepping down into sucking mud.

The sky was the color of old bathwater. She couldn’t see through the clammy spring mist that curled like smoke through the razorgrass, thick enough to cut with a knife. Like smoke on the war-torn streets of Delphi.

The eastern sky swirled red and orange; the perfect post-storm sunrise. Anya felt it on the back of her neck.

“She won’t wake up,” Michael said, through the open door. There was some emotion in it.

Lily whimpered as he felt her forehead. She looked very small and almost translucent.

I’ll carry her, Anya signed, but he just frowned absently, stroking her cheek, smoothing the hair back from her face. Saying her name.

“She’s breathing but she won’t wake up,” he said again, as if he needed to explain himself. His pupils were unevenly dilated.

He proceeded to try and lift her. Anya could do nothing but watch as he failed twice, then overbalanced and went to one knee in the mud.

Anya grabbed his shoulder. She felt the heat of his skin even through layers of wool and cotton, and sweat poured down the back of his neck.

She forced him to look at her, and when his eyes focused she pantomimed what she intended to do.

It took far too long for him to comprehend and even longer for him to agree. But finally Michael nodded and took the rifle, holding it in low ready as if sleepwalking.

Anya scooped Lily up and slung her easily across her shoulders. It wouldn’t be long; her clothes were soaked through with sweat and blood. It had been a mistake to give Michael the gun, but he had to have something to do.

They marched west.

One more thing about Aiden, whom Anya had loved very much: down there in the tank room, standing side by side, he had looked up at her and said, “Everything is going to be okay.”

Anya had been thinking about Lily, who was angry and insane enough to march across the continent for something—or rather someone—that no longer existed in any meaningful way.

She’d been wondering whether Aiden would do that for her. If she’d do it for him. Yes, she’d just decided; even though she was pissed at him for keeping secrets from her. Because the worst thing anyone could be was alone.

That’s when she’d realized he’d wandered off. He’d wandered off and killed the next generation of Operatives in their tanks with the push of a button.

It shouldn’t have bothered Anya, but it did. It felt like something the Coalition would do, and weren’t they supposed to be better than the Coalition? Wasn’t that the whole miserable goddamn point?

So she’d shot him. And left.

There had always been an understanding between the two of them that being taken alive was not an option. But even so. She’d left him there.

Lily gasped once. It was soft, quick, like something had surprised her. A slow exhalation followed. Then nothing.

Now that the spark of life had departed it, the body felt weightless. Anya kept walking. Kept her steps measured. A fucking shame, she thought. Pointless and cruel.

The fog refused to lift. The cold, moist air clung to them like a shroud. How was she going to dig a grave without a shovel? Shit. Michael would notice soon. Then Anya would have two problems.

She chanced a look and saw him marching doggedly behind her, eyes fixed on nothing. He’d slung the rifle and grasped the strap with both hands; no way to get it away from him.

Once she’d left him behind too. Now he’d been left behind again.

Draped like a scarf across Anya’s broad shoulders, Lily sucked in a short, pained breath.

“Ow,” she whimpered. “Michael?”

Then she lapsed back into unconsciousness, and seemed to get heavier.

Anya plodded on doggedly. Sweat rolled into her eyes. There was a real possibility that, without a compass, she had gotten their heading wrong and they would miss Freeport completely. They’d hit the river, at least, but then what?

Some ancient culture had done river burials, dropping corpses straight into their drinking water. Others had deposited bodies in bogs and swamps. Her favorite, though, was the society that had left their dead out on mountain peaks for eagles and carrion birds to consume. A sky burial, it had been called.

Exhaustion was making her morbid. Lily could not weigh more than one-twenty in her boots, but Anya’s back and knees were starting to hurt. She was old for an Operative, even though they couldn’t measure their years like everyone else.

Owen was older still. Properly old, with grey hair and a seamed face. This might kill him. Her coming back without Aiden, it might…

“Do you hear that?” It was Michael, asking a real question. Rising inflection and everything.

Anya did not. She bent her head and shoulders to summit a rise, focusing on her boots, clutching her burden with sweat-slicked hands. All this for someone who despised her.

She crested the hillock and stopped dead. Michael joined her a few moments later and likewise paused, swaying a little, breathing hard.

Fog gathered around the stilted legs of little toy houses. Smoke curled from a hundred matchstick chimneys. A broad expanse of thick brown water snaked across the flat and ugly earth, and beyond it, dead and forever, the Wasteland could just be glimpsed through the haze.

Freeport was maybe half a mile northwest of them. Downhill.

Anya blinked sweat out of her eyes. That was all it was, sweat. Now the adrenaline came, kickstarting her heart and turning her bones to gelatin.

Michael exhaled. It was getting easier to look at him. Not easy, just easier. He felt Lily’s cheek and forehead, then clasped one of her dangling hands in his. Then he felt under her jaw, moving fast.

Shit. Come to think of it, Anya could no longer feel the slight heartbeat against her shoulder. Couldn’t hear respiration.

“Put her down.” He was cold, now. Awful.

Anya tried to be gentle, even though it hardly mattered. Michael shouldered out of the rifle sling and knelt, dropping the weapon unceremoniously on his way down; she scooped it up at once. It would be harder to get his sidearm, but she could easily overpower him in his current state.

She turned her back to them like an honor guard and waited to hear the click of a round being sent into the chamber of a Coalition-issue service pistol. She’d have to move fast. Wrench it out of his hand.

Crows were circling.

Anya lay in the wreckage for three days. Or rather Operative 23 had lain there. Bleeding, immobilized, dying slowly as she watched vultures and crows wheel above her. Coyotes came too. Flies. After the first day she no longer had the strength to shoo them away.

One enterprising beast had gotten close enough for her to smell its carrion breath. Blood streaked its chops and throat; she and the animal were the same.

She blinked away these memories. Felt her wet feet and aching muscles in the present again.

“I’m sorry,” Michael said, behind her. He had regained enough of himself to weep. “I’m so sorry.”

Anya folded her arms across her chest and ducked her head. She had only ever been a soldier. Death was part of the business. This, though…she would keep this pain a long while, she thought. It would come back to worry at her like a fucking coyote.

None of them deserved this.

“Shh,” Lily whispered. “No. It’s ok.”

Anya whipped around, almost overbalancing. After all the miracles of the past twenty-four hours she shouldn’t be surprised, but a sort of holy terror still filled her stomach with lead.

On the ground, Lily clung on to life by her fingertips. She clung to Michael the same way. Her lips were blue, her eyes heavy-lidded. Each breath diminished her.

Michael’s eyes were red, his skin blotchy. He wiped his face, looked up at Anya, and said, “Help me.”