Chapter 4

The engine was off and the crew’s long poles were stowed. All was quiet. They stood side by side on deck, watching the current.

On either bank the lifeless land slumped off into a cold morning haze. Fog pooled around hillocks of damp earth. Flocks of resting birds darkened the skeletal trees.

In New Columbia they called this region the Midlands, which was kind. Everywhere else it was the UT, which meant any number of things. Unincorporated Territories. Unclaimed. Union still, to some, although those days were long past.

Anya thought ‘Ugly’ was the most apt. Ugly, poisoned, and dead. She looked at Michael, who had asked her a question.

His eyes were shadowed and he had not shaved in a week. He blinked at her owlishly, then repeated himself. “Do I know you?”

Rising inflection; he’d clearly been practicing.

Anya nodded. She shook her head. She sighed and pushed the heels of her hands into her eye sockets.

“Lily said I knew you,” he went on, rubbing his neck like he was trying to remove the skin, or maybe just the round scar at the base of his skull. “She said we were close.”

Once again Anya was the recipient of charity. Lily knew what she had and was not at all threatened, which almost made Anya want to make a pass. But she was too worn out for spite.

Since we were in training, she signed instead.

After a polite and uncomprehending pause, Michael looked away. “Sorry. I keep forgetting.”

Anya patted down her pockets automatically, but she was in borrowed clothes and on borrowed time. No notepad. Nothing. Less than nothing. What would she even tell him? That Operatives 23 and 74 had planned to defect together, that they’d loved and lost each other?

That wasn’t even true. They’d been caught. Anya was sure it had been her fault. Afterwards the Coalition told her Michael had been too weak to survive Reconditioning, a chemical erasure of the self that made rogue Operatives fit for duty again.

She had gone unthinking and unquestioning back to her work, shedding the last pale memories of him like snakeskin. Grief came later. Much later, when the first sight of Owen’s too-familiar face ripped every old wound open again.

Anya wondered if it would be inappropriate to give him a hug, something she’d never been able to do openly but had often thought about.

If I had known you were alive I would’ve come for you, she told him instead.

He watched her hands uncomprehending, then sighed and glanced toward the hatch that led below.

Hating the fact that she was reduced to charades, Anya made an L with her fingers and raised her eyebrows. How is Lily, that was what she was trying to ask.

Michael got half of it. “Lily? Lily. She’s resting. She told me to…” with one uncertain gesture he indicated the sky, the water lapping the hull, the whole dead world. “She said I should come up here and talk to you.”

Charity.

“She thinks we’ll be safe where we’re going.” He dragged his eyes away from the eastern bank. “She also thinks I know you. But I don’t. I don’t remember you.”

Each word was leaden. Anya squeezed his shoulder, and he nodded like she’d actually done something.

“I don’t remember anything. I think I was on a boat like this before, but not with Lily.” Michael leaned on the uneven, rough-welded railing. “I think I left her behind. Why would I do that?”

You’ll have to ask Lily, Anya signed, slumping next to him. Being unable to communicate was a torment. The bad old days had come again to trap her in her own head, thoughts ricocheting.

He blinked at her again in that distracted sort of way and shifted his weight to lean into her, an automatic gesture that about stopped her heart. He’d done it all their lives.

“We should find a way to talk,” he said.

Traveling by boat was leisurely. They had three more weeks before they reached Memphis, the end of the line.

Then what? She could never go back to New Dallas. She’d deserted in a time of war and gotten the golden child killed. Anya had vague ideas of getting a job out in the Mojave and lying low for the rest of her life. There were oilfields and refineries there, and they always needed security.

Every single future she envisioned for herself was brief, miserable, or both. In all of them she was alone.

The river curved ahead, slow and indifferent. Maybe it would shift its banks and take them around and around forever.

Houston scholars claimed the Border War was in its eighty-ninth year. No one could agree on which side had started it, or who was winning. New Columbian forces had once penetrated as far northeast as the Carol Islands and the Coalition had barely been stopped at Red River, but all conquered territory was soon taken back.

Memphis was no different. Molly Montgomery had won it for New Columbia, and it had been lost again in the sweeping offensive that killed her and thousands of other unlucky bastards a generation later. It had only been back in New Columbian hands for a few months, but it seemed to be doing all right.

Over the years Anya had fought for it on behalf of both sides. It was odd to see it when it wasn’t burning.

Kudzu had regrown over the charred old ruins and some of the new builds too. The river boiled past crumbling bridges before tumbling, diminished, over the lock and dam. They drifted past an open-air market and a collection of houseboats. Old men fished off a crumbling flood wall.

Anya spat into the water. It was unsatisfying. Here the river was fat, brown, and placid, like a milk cow.

Uneven footsteps shuffled across the deck. Someone joined her at the rail. “Did it insult you?”

Despite the temperate weather, Lily was bundled into a shapeless canvas coat. Her skin was a warm brown now instead of grey, and she’d been walking unsupported for a week and a half. This was not the first time she’d been shot. Michael had seen the scar.

When Anya didn’t answer, or move, Lily cleared her throat and looked away. “Michael wants you.”

No he didn’t. No one did. That was the problem. Even so, Anya found him at the stern, watching the crew work.

A month’s rest had done him good too; he also no longer looked like he was dying. In fact his whitish-blonde hair was growing in curly, just like Owen’s, and he’d gotten himself a sunburn. He still held himself like an Operative, but nothing could be done about that.

We came here on campaign, she told him, gesturing at the buildings crawling by on either side of the river. For the wrong side. When we were young. Remember that?

“I’m supposed to invite you to come west with us,” Michael said. “I’m supposed to say it was my idea.”

Anya smacked his arm. He ducked his head to hide a thin smile.

She couldn’t go with them. It would be selfish and mean. And Anya was both those things, admittedly, but she was trying to improve herself. Her life was over, theirs was starting. She had to be…

Wait.

Michael noticed it too, almost simultaneously. They’d been a good team. “Is that normal?”

Two dozen soldiers loitering around the customs inspection docks, smoking and leaning? No. Anya shaded her eyes as the crew propelled them out of the current with long poles, readying ropes and hooks, muttering to each other.

“It’s like the fuckers never left,” one man grumbled, and was promptly elbowed by his crew mate. “What?”

A hushed argument followed, punctuated by worried glances toward Michael and Anya, whose faint amusement died when she noticed the actual impetus for this little exchange: Victor stood on the dock at parade rest, watching the ship come in.

This was a welcoming committee.

Find Lily, Anya signed, smacking Michael’s arm again. Go. Enemy.

That last was in shorthand. All were signs he knew.

There was a signal for ‘stand down’, but not for ‘negotiate’; Operatives rarely did either. Anya showed Michael the first as they were boarded. It upset her how frightened Lily looked, the way she clutched at his arm. Frightened for him? Or of him.

“Please,” Anya heard her whisper, and understood that it was both.

The captain’s paperwork was brushed aside. Heavy boots trod the gangplank. A buffoon appeared - Victor, in all his sad glory.

Anya didn’t know how he got away with it; lightweight black body armor over NCA fatigues, knife strapped down to his thigh. Not the knife, just a knife. One he’d had custom made to look like the one he’d lost when he defected.

Lily made a harsh, quiet sound at the sight of him, her hand flying to the wicked scar that ran down her left cheek from eye to jawbone. Knife-edge straight.

Victor ignored this. He hooked his thumbs behind the scuffed vest as he addressed them, projecting his voice too loud. Per usual; he was quite deaf.

“Colonel Montgomery has ordered me to bring you back to Dallas. I also have orders to…” He paused, registering Michael’s face for the first time. The rest of that sentence did not come. “Operative 74.”

Michael mirrored Lily’s displeasure. “Operative 86.”

Victor adjusted his plates again, obviously buying time. “The Colonel didn’t mention you.”

They were processed with bureaucratic efficiency and taken into NCA custody; a thing Anya suffered calmly in order to set a good example, although her resolve was tested. Lily whispered something soft and urgent to Michael, and he went quietly too.

Anyone with an ounce of common sense would’ve split them into separate vehicles, but this was Victor’s command. So all three of them rode together on a bench seat, facing a row of their insultingly young captors.

Clearly no one had expected them to come by river; this had been a contingency. Anya drew a small measure of happiness from that. No important work for Victor, only babysitting. It made her wish they’d come by land and denied him the satisfaction.

Engines roared to life.

They were at the head of the convoy, which was also stupid. With Michael’s help it would take about two minutes to kill or incapacitate everyone inside. Then they could floor it. Haul ass for Nola, beg asylum.

But the drive was still in her pocket. Aiden’s dying wish had been for her to…actually, she didn’t know what she was supposed to do with it. She hadn’t asked. Bigger issues had immediately presented themselves.

And critically, Michael wouldn’t do a damn thing unless Lily approved it. Anya had picked up on that pretty quick. So she’d probably have to commandeer the vehicle all by herself, which would honestly still be easy.

Anya settled for inaction. Nola was too humid. She was too tired.

Victor drove, of course. It felt like he made a concentrated effort to hit every pothole. No one could remember which side had destroyed the roads out of Memphis, but the consensus was that the Coalition had blown the bridges.

Farmland unrolled around them as they left the ruins and checkpoints behind. Off in the distance a combine sunned itself like a great beast under an improbable expanse of cornflower blue sky.

Anya figured they would hang her for desertion. For Aiden, Owen would’ve made it all go away, but once he figured out what had happened he’d probably try to hang her twice. Or do that thing with the four horses, one for each limb.

A couple hours into the endless drive Lily laid her head down on Michael’s shoulder and went to sleep, just like that. Anya wanted to puke.

None of the soldiers escorting them would meet her gaze. They did steal glances, though, flicking their eyes away if she tried to catch them at it.

One of them leaned over and whispered to her seat mate, who giggled into his sleeve.

Focus returned to Michael’s eyes. “Undisciplined.”

“Who said you could speak?” The soldier’s nametape said Spencer. Her tone said she aspired to more than the lone chevron on her sleeve.

“I don’t take orders from lance corporals,” Michael said evenly. Lily stirred, but quieted under his hand.

“I don’t take orders from Operatives,” Spencer shot back.

Michael looked pointedly at the sliding metal hatch separating them from the driver’s compartment.

“What a joke,” Spencer spat. “This op. My entire life. They put you in the same uniform good men died in, made you fucking officers, even—”

Spencer’s cohort, Jimenez, gave her a shove. Everyone was silent, waiting to see if the hatch would open.

Anya took advantage of the distraction to put her foot over Michael’s and press just hard enough to make him look at her.

Stand down, she signed again. He looked at her hand like it was an insect, then faced front.

“We’re at war,” Spencer continued in an undertone. “We should be at the front killing things like you. Instead your daddy had us sit and wait in Memphis just in case you came by boat.”

Anya’s heart sunk into her boots; surely Lily had warned him about what was waiting for them in Dallas. Not his literal father, since that was biologically impossible. No, it was something so much worse and even less possible: another Operative 74.

“My what?”

Spencer’s lip curled back. “You deaf? Your. Daddy.”

“I don’t have a father,” Michael interrupted. And did Anya detect a hint of disdain? There was hope for him yet.

“Your momma lied to you then, because you look exactly like ‘Colonel Montgomery’.” Spence made air quotes with her fingers around the rank and name. “Fuckin’ sick how they all got made officers. Got us saluting the enemy.”

“Spence,” Jimenez groaned, flapping his hand towards the driver’s compartment again. “Shut up, you know how good they can hear.”

“Fuck you too. Kissing their asses like this.” But Spencer settled back, arms folded. “Someday there’ll be a reckoning. Mark my words.”

They were getting bold. Anya had heard such grumbling before, but only from officers and senior NCOs. If the rank and file had the confidence to express sentiments like this openly—

Michael had turned to look at her over Lily’s sleeping head, signing, 74?

She nodded.

He let out a long, slow breath, and stared at nothing for a while. Then, subtly: 63?

Anya grinned and shook her head.

Michael shrugged, carefully. Then he rested his cheek against the crown of Lily’s head and closed his eyes too.

Fortunately for all of them, Victor had fired too many guns too close to his face for too long. Still, if he’d miraculously heard any part of that conversation he had deigned to ignore it.

Anya settled in, keeping an eye on their dubious honor guard.

It was strange to encounter him in this context. Victor usually did for New Columbia what he’d once done for the Coalition - clear rooms, buildings, even battlefields. But maybe he’d been put out to pasture. Connor was deep undercover and no one else was field-ready.

Except Anya herself.

Oh shit, what if Owen decided she was too valuable to execute? What if, to punish her, he made her dye her hair brown and sent her to relieve Connor? What if she had to eat bugs and record the movements of dissatisfied civilians until she went insane and started drinking swamp water?

There were worse postings than Nola. That’s what Aiden would say, if she hadn’t gotten him killed. The Paradice Observatory, for one; they had no booze, no topless bars, not even a projector theater. Just pinheads tracking weather patterns and atmospheric radiation levels.

Anya felt like crying, but she wouldn’t. She felt like screaming, but that relief had been taken from her.

After a few hours they blew past signposts for The Battle of Red River Memorial Site. Then signs for Ashville (Fuel, Food, Lodging). While they refueled at the garrison there, Spence and company broke out MREs. Lily woke to split one with Michael, but Anya had no appetite. Victor was inside. Sending word ahead to Owen.

Finally the wall around New Dallas coalesced. Home sweet home. The end of the line.

The giant mural painted on the riveted steel beside the north gate was faded. Fresh, it had depicted settlers from the Dallas vault shaking hands with ragged surface survivors, the sun rising behind them as they handed over baskets of gourds and root vegetables. Time and weather had eroded their faces. Settlers and scavengers alike looked grotesque, mutated.

The sounds of the checkpoint woke Lily with a start, but Michael whispered something to her and she nodded, face blank. Anya had to reassure herself.

She prepared to be delivered to the MPs on the spot, but instead they entered the city and crawled steadily up Constitution Avenue.

Shit.

Finally the transport slowed to enter the Farm and came to a stop on the pavement outside the Library. Anya’s pleasant daydreams of court martial and the gallows evaporated into the afternoon sunlight. She’d expected to face Owen at the trial, or maybe from her cell. Not like this.

For all their youth and lack of rank the soldiers were very efficient — they had their charges out the back and onto the dead grass while the engine was still running.

“Take us both together,” Lily said quickly, as they were separated.

It fell on deaf ears.

The first soldier to touch her was on the ground a heartbeat later, and there was a bristling of guns and shouting as Victor drew his sidearm—

“Wait!” Lily was trying to twist free. “Michael, stop. We’ll go with you, all right? Don’t shoot.”

In all the fuss Anya had been neglected.

She shouldered her way into the middle of the mess, where a heavyset sergeant with a bloody mouth and fucked up nose was righting himself, wheezing. Five of his comrades had managed to restrain Michael, who was complying now that the magic words had been spoken.

She ignored them all and went straight to Victor, who wanted to kill so desperately he was quivering like a sick dog, and planted herself so he’d have to shoot through her to do it.

“We’ll cooperate,” Lily said. She sounded so tired. “Please.”

Victor would not look at Anya. He holstered his pistol and stepped around her. “Prove it.”

They did, with varying amounts of grace, and were marched across the lawn in separate directions.

Then it was just Anya and Victor standing next to the trucks, listening to the engines tick and cool.

He still had his hand on his sidearm, and Anya wished he’d try something. It’d been a long time since she’d fought someone her own size, as it were; he was visibly grey at the temples and his face looked like a dry riverbed. Probably slower than he thought he was.

“I’ve never liked you,” he said.

Anya choked on a laugh.

“The 23 from my batch was also insufferable, but she had the good sense to die in combat. Where is Aiden?”

The laughter died. She shook her head.

There was nothing at all on Victor’s sunburnt face. He kept that hand on his pistol, and motioned to the white marble building ahead of them with the other.