Chapter 34: Fixin' to Die, Pt. 1

The lift opened. Lily limped out, trembling like a plucked string. It had stopped on Level 49, and a machine voice had asked her for clearance before beginning a countdown that only ended when she used the key.

Numbered doors with no obvious lock or handle marched down the walls, 01 on her left, 02 on her right, uniform and cramped. The rooms beyond had to be scarcely larger than coffins.

The quiet, too, would put a graveyard to shame. Alpha Base was empty. She felt it in the soles of her feet. They really had been called to the surface; not just for a truck bomb, not just for a few dead soldiers.

Lily picked up the pace, counting under her breath. She couldn’t stop thinking of Aiden, the way he’d peeled back one mask after another like a carnival performer, all without revealing his true face. His accent, his device, the sly, charming way he’d wormed into the mission—

She rounded a bend and stopped dead.

Operative 74 stood in the center of the hallway, neither coming nor going; a nameless cold thing, a weapon of war, a vacant-eyed machine.

But she would know him anywhere. There was the little white mark on his forehead from the incident in the river, the roughened scar tissue on the back of his right hand and wrist, mostly hidden by his sleeve. It was him, it wasn't him, she should have listened to Owen. This was worse than seeing him dead.

He looked at her and did not know her.

She shouldn't have come.

A great thing like a dam was crumbling in Lily's heart. A flood was coming. He stared at her with his hand hovering over his sidearm and he didn’t recognize her.

"You aren't supposed to be here.” It was his voice but not his voice. Even in the beginning he hadn't sounded like that.

Lily wasn't sure what would come out when she opened her mouth, but fortunately it wasn't a scream. “Neither are you.”

He acted like he didn't even hear it. 74. Not her Michael.

“I have to report this.” He ground the heel of his hand roughly into his eye socket. “You can’t be here.”

The hurt was unbearable. His hair was cut down short and the shadows under his eyes were so pronounced they might as well have been thumbprint-shaped bruises.

“I came to get you,” she said.

74 — maybe Michael, maybe, around the eyes — stared at her. His hand brushed the butt of his pistol, then settled there.

Lily opened and closed her mouth. She hadn’t really thought it would happen like this. In spite of everything, all the warnings…

“Your name is Michael.” It was hollow, futile. “You came west with me. We were…please, please try to remember.”

Lily took one small step forward and he clutched the gun tighter, but she didn't care. All her plans ended here, one way or the other. “Don't you know me? Even a little?”

Nothing. 74 regarded her like an object. Then a tic pulsed at the corner of his eye; he rubbed it abruptly and said, “Of course I do.”

This was indescribably worse, so awful that whatever else she meant to say was just erased.

Footsteps, purposeful, sounded from around the junction. Both of them looked, but 74 did it in such an unnerving, sharp way that Lily had to bite down on her tongue.

It was a lone Operative, a square, bald brick of a man, battle-damaged and dangerous. A ropy red-purple scar twisted across the hairless dome of his skull and down his neck, bisecting the ear. A silver 55 winked on his collar.

He took in the scene with a single dispassionate, automatic glance.

“Regulars are not authorized to be on this level,” he said, adding to 74, “Why hasn’t she been detained.”

Just like that 74 was gone. There was only Michael, confused and tired. “You can see her?”

The question was so obviously bizarre that 55 wavered. “Yes?”

74 blinked a few times, rapidly. Then he shot the other Operative twice in the chest and once in the head, and before the body hit the floor his pistol was trained on Lily. She hadn’t even seen him draw.

“What are you,” he said. His voice shook but his hand was steady. “Why could he see you? You can’t be here.”

“But I am.” Lily was at a complete loss. “Just put the gun down, ok?”

“Prove it,” Michael demanded. “Tell me something I don’t already know. Tell…tell me your name.”

“Lily,” she said. “And you’re—”

Before she’d finished speaking he closed the distance between them and grabbed her arm. He looked from his hand to her face like he’d expected something to happen.

“How,” he asked, voice cracking. “How, how are you—”

An alarm blared, shrill and demanding. Three shrill blasts, then silence, then three more. Lights flashed red. The gunshots, the bodies, 63, the other unknown variables she’d introduced into the base—

“This way,” Michael said, transferring his grip to her hand. “Quickly.”

—

The hallway terminated in a dead end.

Michael dug his fingers into the grooves between the metal plating on the wall. A section came free, revealing a dim crawlspace behind.

Lily heard shouting from around the corner as she ducked inside. He followed her, fitting the panel back into place, and they were left crouching in the black as running feet pounded by on the other side.

Then it all went quiet, save for the distant alarm buzzing faintly through layers of steel and concrete.

She reached out frantically in the dark and pulled him into her arms, clenching her teeth against a sob of sheer relief. Michael pushed his face into her shoulder and Lily sat abruptly, dragging him down with her.

They held tight to one another and breathed.

Orange service lights buzzed to life. They were on a landing, narrow spiral stairs curling above and below them. Pipes pressed in close from the ceiling and walls, some of them hissing steam.

Michael lifted his head, features barely visible in the dim glow. His face was wet, his expression unsteady. “You’re real?”

“Last time I checked.” Lily touched his cheek with her uninjured hand and he leaned into her palm, closing his eyes. She wanted to scream.

“I saw you die.”

“I got shot. I’m ok now. Here, it’s…” She pulled her shirt up. “It’s healed. See?”

He touched the scar with a trembling fingertip. “I don’t understand.”

Lily folded her hand over his. His pulse raced, and he seemed to be holding his breath. “It’s ok. Do you…do you remember me?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I see you everywhere. You speak to me. You told me — you said it was my fault.”

“It wasn’t,” she interrupted, making him look at her. “I would never say that. That wasn’t me.”

He swallowed hard, started to say something, then just nodded and embraced her. It was sudden enough to make her heart rattle the bars of her ribcage in a panic, but if he felt it he said nothing.

The alarm spun back up, its persistent wail muffled by the thick walls, and Lily let out a deep, shaky breath. If they didn’t go now they would never go. “I came in on Level 20. Can we take these stairs back up there?”

Michael sat back. He looked at her like he was trying to commit her to memory. “I’m not sure.”

“That’s ok.” She forced calm into her voice. “We’ll be fine.”

Through the wall behind her she heard shouting, a door slamming. Commotion. He staggered to his feet, reaching for a weapon—

Lily stepped between him and the access panel. “Michael. Michael, it’s ok. Look at me.”

He wouldn’t, and he was shaking, and the enormity of what she’d just done struck her square in the chest, hard enough to knock the wind out of her.

She folded her hand around his. After a moment he let her take the pistol. There was silence again, hot and thick.

“Let’s get out of here,” Lily said. “You stay close to me.”

—

They weren’t in the stairwell anymore; they were in the walls, in a long passageway. The ceiling was low, and pipes wrapped in yellowing plaster jutted from all angles. Steam hissed. Water dripped.

Michael took her hand. He did it so casually that Lily’s breath caught sideways in her throat. Sweat plastered his shirt to his skin and he looked profoundly unwell, much worse than he had when they started.

If only there were a way to skip this ordeal, to close her eyes and wake up back in Laketown — or even just a hundred miles outside Delphi, on the barren plain, safe together by a small fire.

Lily stared down the barrel of the tunnel. Suddenly she wanted very much to live. “Can you make it?”

“Yes,” he said, too quickly. “I’m operational.”

Her heart clenched and spasmed. “But are you alright?”

He was fading in and out. Sometimes he was 74, sometimes he was Michael. The light came and went from his eyes. He was fighting it, but he was 74 when he looked at her and repeated, “I am operational.”

Lily wiped at her face. The blood had dried tacky. “Ok.”

He let go of her hand to fuss with a wall panel, painted around with a border of black and yellow slashes. With it cracked he paused to listen, eyes distant; then he nodded, took the panel down all the way, and stepped out.

Lily followed, squinting against the light reflecting from the milky, polished floors. Someone had to mop them. Some unlucky Regular. She tried not to remember the stark vividness of the blood, the broken glass, the bodies.

“Want your pistol back?”

He took it with a wordless nod of thanks, automatically checking the magazine, the chamber. He was a familiar stranger. “What’s happening on the surface.”

“I…I’m not sure. There was an explosion, a truck bomb. I fell through the street into the Undermarket.”

A small flinch. “There was a deployment order.”

“But you didn’t go.”

A small smile disturbed the calm, empty surface of his face like a rock thrown into a pool of water. “No.”

There was a small, deep ache at the center of her, like a stone lodged against a tender place. She didn’t properly believe he was real, either.

“So you’re a Regular. That’s how I know you.” It was toneless. He was distracted, listening for signs of life as they advanced.

The uniform, Lily realized with a fresh wash of grief. He really didn’t remember. “No, I’m not. I’ll explain as soon as I can.”

A few more steps. Then, “Why not now.”

She chanced a look. He was looking back. “I don’t know how to start. I don’t even know where the middle is.”

Michael would’ve smiled at that. 74 almost did; it hovered around the corners of his eyes instead. “What about the end.”

“Hopefully this isn’t it,” Lily muttered. She didn’t know how to explain. He would ask a single, obvious question at some point during her retelling and she still wasn’t sure she could correctly phrase the answer.

“How long did we know each other.” He kept his eyes on the expanse of hallway ahead.

“Almost a year.”

“How long ago.”

“About that long.”

He faltered a little, and wiped perspiration from his forehead. “And we were…somewhere else.”

“On the other side of the Wasteland. We’d finally gotten to somewhere we could…” She swallowed. “63 caught up. Took you back. I rode out after you, and now…I’m here.”

“Why?”

“To get you. To bring you home.” The question was coming. Like an electrical storm, she tasted it in the air.

Michael stopped walking. He shook, a faint but persistent tremor; she wanted to lay him down and smooth it away with her hands. “Why.”

It was so quiet, not even a whisper. Lily palmed a single tear off her cheek. After everything, she still couldn’t say it. So she settled on the next best thing. “It wasn’t home without you.”

He embraced her, letting his head rest against hers. She was struck by how insubstantial he felt, how much like a dream it all was.

Lily let go first. She wiped her eyes futilely and managed a watery smile, saying, “We’ve been here too long.”

Just like that he was a soldier again. Not an Operative, not all the way. He checked for her over his shoulder every few steps. After a minute or two of indecision Lily took his free hand, and he squeezed tight before lacing his fingers through hers.

They had to live.