Chapter 2: It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

That night Lily heard dogs howling somewhere out in the deep, dark cold. She heard 74 sit up with a sharp inhalation, heard the mechanical click of his pistol as she held her breath and herself and waited.

Nothing came. Especially not sleep.

For a week they lived around each other like stepping around a sinkhole in the road. It felt like they were the only two people alive in the world, and that was almost worse than being alone.

Lily pried words out of 74 like splinters, like bullets. His battalion had been four months in the backcountry northwest of their current position, recruiting from the mining towns. A few dozen Regulars. One hundred conscripts. Four Operatives.

“Where’d the rest of them go,” she’d demanded, sure they’d burst from the tree line at any moment.

74 had lifted one shoulder. “East.”

It had taken another three days of picking to get the rest. He’d refused a direct order. 86 shot him. He ran. He found the town by chance, and the healer’s wood alcohol and unsterilized rags had done more harm than the bullet.

He had been unmoved to hear that the healer had been killed; protecting him, no less. When asked why the old man would feel compelled to do that, he’d only shrugged again.

Lily did not press him. Gut-shot men weren’t supposed to rise from their deathbeds and march over hard country, so if he could do that, he could do worse.

The sight of smoke rising finally from the chimneys of the border settlement filled Lily with numb relief. The Coalition State ended at the fence line of the last grey, leaning house.

They stopped under a copse of dead trees and 74 consolidated their supplies in silence as Lily prepared to protest. He handed the pack to her. Then he strode away without a word.

Stunned, Lily watched him disappear into the trees to the north. She didn’t remember to exhale until he was out of sight.

“You’re welcome,” she muttered, hugging herself against the cutting wind.

The town didn’t deserve the word. It was a collection of filthy buildings inhabited by people with hungry faces and eyes like black holes. All the open land left her unbalanced.

Years ago she’d tasted coffee and chocolate and wine, but never free air; not on Omaha Base and certainly not after. She’d assumed she would feel different. She’d assumed she would feel.

Hundreds of miles and seven years behind her, though, the sky was still red and blistered and the earth was fresh around a shallow grave. Time had hardened around that night like tree sap.

Wood splintered. Someone screamed. Lily remembered that she had a body, and that it had been too long in one place, but this time it was the recent past that had caught her.

Regulars scoured the marketplace, overturning stalls, ripping off hats and face-coverings. The Operative moved among them like a bad dream, searching faces.

Lily froze, heart seizing. They never stopped. The Coalition’s perfect killing machines, always finding their mark — but the mark in question was walking north. This had nothing to do with her.

She melted away, waiting to hear a cold voice commanding her to stop. They didn’t want her; she repeated this in time with her steps, in between each breath.

No one followed.

It was strange to be back in the Unincorporated Territories. She’d been born on this land, but she refused to die there.

When Lily turned to look the bleak landscape behind her was empty. That was three times she’d been driven out of town with the Coalition snapping at her heels. There would never be a fourth.

The forest had tapered off and vanished. Suggestions of ancient roads and crumbling buildings dotted the windswept expanse before her, overtaken by the slow advance of time and nature. The UT hadn’t been blasted or burned in the Collapse; it had rotted like a gangrenous limb.

She ignored the pain shooting up her leg until the dull ache blossomed into agony, and as the sun dropped into the wilderness ahead of her Lily accepted that she couldn’t march through the night.

A hulking mass of concrete loomed over the road, an upright section four times her height with a slight overhang. She hobbled under it, swallowing a whimper of pain as she hit the ground.

Lily wondered what this lichen-speckled thing had been. She’d seen plenty in the east; most of them had paving on top. They couldn’t all be bridges. They couldn’t have lost so many rivers.

Maybe it had been a wall, but she hoped not. She wanted to believe that the world before the Collapse had been better than the one that followed after.

--

Lily was hauled up out of a dreamless sleep by a hand on her collar. She fought automatically, bitterly, kicking and clawing before the details registered.

Regular. Regulars. From the settlement She sank her teeth into the soldier’s wrist and he cursed, calling on the vague shapes of his comrades for help as they laughed at him, unconcerned.

A ring of lanterns turned midnight to dawn. All the laughter died as one of the backlit figures sharpened around the edges, solidifying.

It became a man in black.

The Operative pulled off his gloves, straightening the fingers one at a time. The silver numbers on his collar gleamed. “Where is Operative 74.”

Lily shook her head as Operative 86 leaned closer, expression unchanging.

“You knew,” he said. “Strange.”

“He’s gone,” Lily whispered.

86’s knife was longer than her forearm, arrow-straight until the curving tip. He pressed the point into the soft tissue under Lily’s eye.

“Which way did he go.”

All her nerve drained away. The Regulars tightened their grip on her arms. “North.”

The tip of the knife dug in and dragged down. A line of fire followed and she screamed through her teeth.

“Which way did he go.” The knife stopped. Blood rolled hot down Lily’s cheek.

“North, I told you, please—”

The world flashed white and red as the knife stopped at Lily’s jaw. She imagined it slitting her throat and held very, very still.

“North,” 86 said. He flicked the blade away from her face and wiped the tip on her shoulder. Then he waved his hand in a tight circle, calling in his troops.

None came.

74 stepped into the light instead, his face empty and dangerous beneath a smear of blood. A red-bladed knife hung loose in one hand. He looked even less human than 86.

86’s pistol was in its holster — then it was pointed at Lily’s head.

“Stand down,” he said.

74 lunged anyway.

Instinct saved Lily’s life. She flung herself sideways as the gun fired and 86’s bullet ricocheted off the concrete where her skull had been.

74 hadn’t even paused—

Another shot cracked the night apart and Lily stumbled unevenly over the hard-packed earth, blood singing in her ears and burning as it dripped down her cheek.

Morbid curiosity made her hobble to a stop and look back, sucking in lungfuls of panicked air.

They were indistinguishable from a distance. They fought like forces of nature but one was clearly on the defensive. 74, maybe, guarding his injured stomach. In the glow of the lanterns they circled, came together, sprang apart. Identical black shapes, fighting in eerie silence. A knife flashed.

A pistol fired, the muzzle flash a starburst in the void. One of them went down, folding over gently. The other leveled the pistol again and took aim.

Two reports sounded. Then a third. Lily flinched at each one, remembering a faint pulse beneath her fingers.

She’d been there too long watching. She made it a few halting yards before a glance over her shoulder showed the lantern circle standing empty.

Footsteps sounded behind her, and Lily let out a shuddering breath as a darker piece of black detached from the surrounding shadows.

In the moonlight 74’s face was a pale, vague circle. “You’re injured.”

Adrenaline had kept the pain at bay, but now it bit into her like a starving thing. “I’ll live.”

74 motioned for her to follow him, and Lily couldn’t see another choice. She pressed her sleeve to her face and trailed him at a safe distance.

The remains of a building reared up before them, scarred with gaping holes and jagged edges. 74 ducked inside and she followed warily, blinded by the little lantern unfolding in his palm, banishing shadows.

Every muscle and joint in her body screamed as she slid down the wall. Blood trickled down her chin and landed on her thigh. She had to do something about that, but she’d left everything behind when she ran.

There was a rustle of movement. Lily opened her eyes and recoiled.

74 knelt next to her, far too close. He smelled like blood, and held a medkit; her pack lay against the wall. Lily almost laughed. She almost vomited.

He threaded a needle with practiced motions and prepared an antiseptic wash, laying everything out with terrible precision.

Then he reached out as if to grab her by the face.

Lily jerked away sharply, smacking her head against the wall. “Don’t touch me!”

“It needs stitches. It needs to be cleaned. You can’t do it.”

“Yes I can.” She tried to snatch the kit away. “Give it to me!”

“I have training.” 74 waited. “And there’s no mirror.”

Lily held her breath. She let it out slowly through her nose. Then she grudgingly motioned for him to proceed, clasping her shaking, bloody hands in her lap and wishing she could hide her emotions as neatly as he did.

74’s hands were steady, but that didn’t take away the sting, or her revulsion when he touched her. Lily looked him over while he worked, trying to ignore the pressure and the tugging in her cheek. The blood on his face was someone else’s.

He was very close to her eye, he was touching her with both hands…

Lily swallowed hard. Her fingernails dug into her palms. “You followed me.”

“I followed 86.” 74 swiped her cheek with something that burned hot and then cold. He discarded the needle and taped gauze over her stitches. “It’ll scar.”

Good. Lily wanted to be a cottonmouth; people should know at a glance not to mess with her, not to touch her. She wanted to grow fangs but a scar would do.

The huge, empty black space inside her expanded, threatening to blot out all light.

“We’re even now,” she said. “Time for you to move on.”

“In the morning.”

“No. Now.”

It felt odd to give an Operative orders. Stranger still was the way he stood and brushed dirt off his trousers without argument. He’d repacked her things neatly, and stepped over them as he left.

Lily stared out into the dark after him until her eyes burned. Satisfied at last that it was finally over, she let go.

--

Soft metallic sounds woke Lily from a dream of suffocation, dirt in her mouth, a silhouette against an orange sky—

Her cheek throbbed, and the present rushed in to sweep away the past. It was almost a decade on from Omaha. An Operative had carved her face open and a different one had sewed it shut.

Grey light filtered through holes in the ceiling. It fell on the bloody rags, the assorted rubble, and 74, sitting cross-legged with a disassembled rifle on a cloth in front of him.

Lily had slept upright, tucked into a corner. As she stiffly unfolded his eyes flicked up, then back down.

“I told you to leave,” she said. It dragged on the stitches and made her head throb.

He gestured. Another rifle, a handgun, and an orderly stack of magazines waited next to an egg-shaped grenade and a bulging, bloodstained canvas sack. “I did.”

Lily felt slightly more charitable when she realized the sack was full of slick brown packets stamped with faded letters. Coalition field rations. She chose one at random and ate mechanically, trying to use only the right side of her mouth.

As she ate she watched the second rifle fly apart in 74’s hands, becoming a collection of parts and then, steadily, a rifle again.

She swallowed. “You knew 86 would come after me.”

74’s hands lost none of their precision as he started on the pistol. “Yes.”

“I should’ve let you die.”

He didn’t react to that, unless maybe he jabbed the wire brush a little harder than necessary down the barrel. Maybe not.

Lily noticed the long-bladed knife strapped to his belt. Her skin crawled; was it still bloody? Or had he cleaned that too.

“I’m leaving,” she said, unable to take her eyes off the knife. “Once I’m done eating.”

It wasn’t a question, but it wasn’t a statement either. 74 nodded without looking up from his work.

“Where are you going to go?”

74 paused. He set the brush down. “New Columbia.”

The Republic had been at war with the Coalition as long as there had been borders and people to die for them. Their soldiers had come to Omaha Base and died with everyone else.

Down there they worked their slaves to death and plowed the corpses under to fertilize the vast acres of farmland. That could be suitable work for something like 74, unless they shot him on sight. It was obvious what he was. He’d never be anything else.

“Where are you going,” 74 said, without looking up.

Lily wished he hadn’t asked. “That’s my business. You were walking the wrong way, you know. New Columbia is south.”

74 tapped a magazine against his palm. “There’s a ferry down the Mississippi. North of here.”

If it was a river, Lily had never heard of it. “There’s a ferry at Freeport, but you’re still going the wrong way. That’s dead west.”

Clearly this was new information. 74 sat perfectly still, his face empty; then he blinked, and looked at her in a way she didn’t care for. “You’re going west.”

Could Lily really stop him from following her? It hadn’t worked yet. What if she woke tomorrow morning and he was just there, sitting by the fire like a wood carving of a man, and she couldn’t get rid of him?

If he came with her, though, she could point him at whatever needed killing and stand back. It would be temporary. Once he realized where she was really going he’d change his mind.

Lily cleared her throat. “Yeah. Actually I’m going to Freeport too, so…”

74 shifted his weight like he meant to stand, or lunge forward. Lily’s heart raced as he extended his hand, but that was all he did.

He waited, gravely. “To the river.”

Lily hesitated, then shook. He’d cleaned off the blood but she imagined she could still feel it, slippery against her palm. “To the river.”