Chapter 33: Long & Wasted Years

Delphi of the past had been tunnels, concrete slick with slime, walls smoke-stained, air heavy. Up top was dead concrete; this was fitting too. Destruction, brutality, and sparseness were qualities she’d always associated with the Coalition.

Inside Alpha Base every surface was glossy and vaguely mirrored, and blind white to boot. Lily’s reflection marched along in step beneath her.

It wasn’t right that the Coalition was capable of creating beautiful things, but this wasn’t unprecedented. She found herself thinking of his hands, cleaning a weapon or coiling rope as they broke down camp.

If she didn’t find him. If he was lost to her.

She’d come to Delphi the first time in a fugue state. How many miles and how many weeks she’d traveled she didn’t know, but she’d drifted east, weakened and numb, until she washed up against the gates.

There had been some vague idea of vengeance until she saw the enormous wall towering over that plain of scorched earth and pitiful tents. Looking at it, she’d surrendered with an exhausted finality. Bowed her head, bared her neck, and waited for the killing blow.

But there were bigger things. More powerful things. She understood that now.

Taken by thoughts of love and hands and death, Lily found herself at a crossroads.

The cubicle was so polished Lily wondered if it was even there. Inside, a sallow Regular with red-rimmed eyes stared at monitors that lit her face unkindly.

She glanced at Lily’s face, then her sleeve. “Business, Sergeant Davis?”

“Operative 74,” she said, trying to sound as bored as the Regular looked, even as she gripped the knife so hard her arm shook.

The woman — three chevrons, as opposed to Lily’s five — didn’t move. “Who sent you?”

A tremor passed through the worn soles of Lily’s boots, and the ceiling lights dimmed faintly. “I have an urgent message for him.”

But she lacked Aiden’s easy comfort, the way he wore his uniform like a second skin. The Regular touched the machine, glancing up uncertainly at Lily, and Lily’s rank.

“All Operatives have been called Topside,” she said. “Everyone has.”

The lights flickered again. The Regular stared at them, chewing her chapped lip. The name on her shirt was short, just three letters; Lily wished she knew what it was.

“How do I find him,” she said. “How do I find out where he was sent?”

“I’m sorry, Sergeant Davis, I can’t—” The Regular’s hand was moving. She was reaching for something. “I’ll just—”

Lily shot out the glass. She fired again, and there was no more Regular. The air smelled of hot plastic and hot copper, but the wetness on Lily’s face wasn’t blood.

She kicked out the shattered pane and climbed over the desk. Data crawled across the screens, as inaccessible to her as the bottom of the sea. The controls were splattered with blood. And the wall.

Lily wiped her face on her shoulder, trying to ignore the smell. The red. The rising panic.

If he was out in the city she would never find him. Something massive was happening up there, and the unknown aggressors would have no way of knowing he wasn’t really an Operative.

Maybe he didn’t know either. He would die not knowing if she didn’t get to him.

Her stomach heaved. She braced her hand against the desk and retched, but nothing came up.

Holding her breath, Lily gripped the back of the Regular’s rolling chair and pushed her out of the booth and over to the panel at the mouth of the hallway. The barriers opened at the touch of her limp hand.

Then she wiped her face again on her sleeve and went in search of a lift.

—

Alpha Base was inert and sterile. Bright lights, clean lines, smooth edges — no corners, no seams.

No people. For all she knew she’d killed the only other living soul in the entire place, apart from the other two, on their own mission. Or just on Aiden’s mission.

Lily’s mouth felt like it had been packed with raw wool. There was a blood on her sleeve, and on the knee of her trousers. A small splatter.

She heard their voices before she saw them; men conversing in low tones, indistinct words carried to her along the gleaming curve of the wall. She’d walk on and act like she belonged. No reason they should look twice at her.

There were two of them, in Regular grey with unfamiliar darker grey epaulettes. They stood on either side of the hallway.

If she showed any emotion she was dead. She reached for the cold, dead thing that lived in her chest and let it fill her.

“What are you doing down here,” the leftmost Regular asked. He was shorter than his compatriot, darker complexioned, lean. “You look like you’ve seen combat.”

“I’m — I was sent with a message for Operative 74. An urgent message. I have to find him.” Lily tried to push past them, but the second Regular held out his arm to block her passage. “It’s urgent.”

“It’s urgent sir,” the taller Regular said, fishing out a device that was disgustingly similar to Aiden’s, to 86’s. “Stand still.”

She didn’t know what else to do. There wasn’t enough time to think; a brief flash of orange light in her eye, a muted beep — then a frown creased the Regular’s forehead.

“You’re not in our databanks, Sergeant…” his eyes flicked up to her nametape. “Davis.”

“Sorry,” she managed.

He was studying her uniform more closely now. “Isn’t the 48th deployed to Memphis? What are you doing back in Delphi?”

“We…got orders to return,” Lily hazarded, wishing she had Aiden’s quick tongue and skill for manipulation, and his foresight to remove identifying markers from the uniform.

The Regular kept looking her over.

Two of them. Both armed, both a head and a half taller than her at least. She was armed only with desperation and a sharp blade, and months of practice that seemed very lighthearted now with the benefit of distance.

“The 48th,” the first Regular said, calmly, “no longer exists. It was lost four months ago, along with Memphis. Which makes you a deserter — or something else.”

Lily got the knife half-drawn.

What was that he’d said? The only way to win a knife fight was not to participate. But the problem was solved for her; one of them disarmed her, the other restrained her. Reliable Coalition efficiency. She’d almost missed it.

“How did you get this,” the first Regular asked, examining the numbers below the pommel in disbelief. “Isn’t he—”

Lily grabbed for it reflexively, and he swung — a casual backhand that shocked her vision into a white starburst. She tasted copper.

“I can take her downstairs,” the Regular with the knife sighed as his comrade fitted her expertly with handcuffs. He was still studying the blade.

“Alone?”

“I’ll just hand her off. Someone has to stay up here.” He sheathed the knife and slit it behind his belt before grabbing Lily by the collar and shoving her unceremoniously back the way she’d come. Back towards the lifts. “Move.”

—

Blood trickled down Lily’s chin. The numbers above the lift doors counted up slowly as they descended. 70. 71. 72. The whole car shook. Lights flickered.

73. 74. 75.

Two drops splattered the top of Lily’s boot. She sniffed. “Hey.”

The Regular ignored her. He was examining 63’s knife, testing the edge against the hairs on his forearm. He’d shaved away a little coin-sized patch.

There was a round red button on the wall panel, unmarked and prominent. Lily shifted her feet, gauging the distance.

“Hey,” she said, louder, rotating her wrists within the cuffs.

He looked up. “If you can’t be quiet, I’ll shut—”

Lily kicked the red button.

The lift stopped with abrupt violence, sending the Regular staggering into the wall. Lily threw herself to the floor, landing hard on her shoulder, and kicked his legs out from under him. They wrestled for the knife as the lights flashed like the beat of a dying heart.

He stabbed down at her face. Lily flung her hands up, screaming through clenched teeth as the carefully honed metal bit deep into her palm—

The lights went out.

If he hadn’t cuffed her in front he might have lived. Her muscles remembered lessons in the Wasteland. Her hands knew what to do.

Lily let go and twisted, and heard the knife strike the floor by her ear and skitter away. The Regular panted with exertion, groping uselessly at her face as they struggled in the dark. He was heavy and slow.

The lights blinked to life again, and the knife was in Lily’s hand.

“Wait,” the Regular gasped.

She stabbed him in the throat.

Even once she felt him die, Lily didn’t move. She couldn’t. She stayed there, sprawled out on her back next to a corpse, as the lift began to move again.

When the doors opened with a gentle ding on Level 100 she took his keys and the scattergun, sheathed the knife, and hauled herself to her feet. But she felt nothing at all.

—

There was no one stationed down on the detention level either; just a deserted glass cubical, door ajar.

Lily checked inside, holding her sleeve against her bleeding nose. The chair was cold, the screens black and dead. Whoever was on duty here had gone in a hurry.

She looked over her shoulder at the lift, then back at the long line of cells. Then at the lift again fast enough to make her neck hurt. The numbers above the door were rapidly counting up.

Perhaps it was the guard returning from his errand, perhaps something worse. She turned and headed down the long row of cells. Runner lights edged the hallway but everything else was dark, including the cells themselves.

Limping, she picked up the pace. Droplets of blood followed her down the aisle. The palm of her hand stung and throbbed; she clenched it, breathing around the pain, and walked faster.

She hadn’t come all this way to be trapped like a rat, but there were no more lifts, no exit, nothing but a long hallway punctuated by right angles. She was caught in a maze, turning and turning towards nothing.

VAgue forms moved behind the glass cell doors. They shifted to watch her pass, and in the half-light they became inhuman Wasteland creatures, faceless freaks. Lily felt her gorge rising. Then something made her pause and double back.

A figure sat on a hard bench in one of the cells, out of the light, unmoving. She saw black boots, black trousers. The pale suggestion of a hand.

Hope got the better of her.

“Michael?” Nothing. No movement. She swallowed, mouth dry. “74?”

He moved, light fell across his face, and she knew it like she knew her own hands — it was burned into the backs of her eyelids. She saw him in the periphery, in every shadow.

He rose in a smooth, impossibly fluid motion. His face was calm as chiseled stone, but his eyes were bright and clear.

“Troublemaker,” 63 said. "It's you."

Then he giggled.

Nonplussed, Lily drew the knife. No need to prepare herself; she'd seen this, too. She'd dreamed it. "You know what this is?"

"Is it mine?" He swallowed another laugh. “Did you come to kill me with my own knife?”

She blinked a few times. The hand with the knife trembled.

“No, that’s not why,” 63 continued, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. “You’re not here for me.”

He leaned perilously far forward, turning the momentum of his fall into a lurching step. Lily took one back — then remembered the cell door between them.

"You're too smart to be this stupid," 63 chided. “I know what you want. I can give it to you.”

Lily bit her tongue until she could be sure of herself. Then, carefully: “I want to kill you.”

He giggled again; it was a perverse, mad sound. “No, we must be honest with one another. I know where he is.”

“So do I. He’s on the surface.”

63 shook his head slowly, deliberately, from side to side. His eyes gleamed sharp and blue. “Let me out.”

Lily considered the dead Regular’s keys. She sheathed the knife. “Then what.”

“We both get exactly what we want. You get your lover back and I get to gut this place.”

She didn’t move. “Why.”

“Because,” 63 snapped. “I only ever followed orders, but when I came back triumphant — they put me in the chair. Tried to empty me out.”

The key wasn’t a key at all, just an oblong piece of black plastic. It felt heavy. “Tried?”

“It comes back,” he whispered. His eyes glinted like flakes of ice. “Like a cancer, it comes back. Open the door.”

There had been a snake in one of the stories her mother used to tell her. It lived in a peach tree and whispered promises, offering sweet-sounding deals that inevitably turned poison. Her mother had probably intended the snake to be Castor, but that was only because she’d never met a thing like this.

The lock didn’t look like much, just another panel. She assumed that was what it was only because it was the only feature in the glass door. She touched the key to it and heard the whisper of scales over stone as the light turned green. The door unlocked with a click and a faint hiss.

Lily stepped back as 63 slid out. He seemed to uncoil and expand, preparing to strike. “Where is he?”

“I’m a man of my word,” 63 said, interrupting himself with a hoarse little laugh. “Well, not a man, really. But I have a sense of duty still. Operative billets are on Level 50. He didn’t report for duty today.”

They regarded each other. Lily wanted it to be real, wanted to believe that she could pluck the fruit without feeling fangs in the back of her hand. “How are you going to do it?”

“I’ll start by destroying the air filtration system. After that…who knows.” 63 pointed down the long line of cells in the direction she’d been heading. “Good luck, Troublemaker. Use your key in the lift.”

Lily wondered why he hadn’t reported, if he was sick or hurt. In a moment of weakness she almost asked, but she recovered quickly and set her shoulders. “If I see you again I’m killing you.”

63’s grin went on and on, a desolation of teeth and gums. “I look forward to it.”

She watched him leave, because putting your back to a predator was never wise. Nothing she’d just done had been wise.

Then she gripped the knife for comfort and summoned enough willpower for a shuffling jog. This time she was careful to keep her eyes straight ahead.