Chương 35: Heartless / Mindless / Loveless / Lifeless (1) [July 30th, Age 14]

Prochazka's office, ten-thirty in the morning. As usual as it ever got for us. The only deviation from the norm was that every single person in Unit 6 had something to do except me—although, given my presence in Prochazka's office, I assumed that was about to change. I took a seat in one of the more comfortable chairs—quietly thankful I didn't need to use the spare—and after a brief exchange of banal pleasantries, he cut to the chase.

"It's been a busy few days," he said.

"To the point where if I didn't have housekeeping things to do, I'd probably have to put myself on this mission with you." With Prochazka, "housekeeping" meant something between "ensuring all the other units were doing their jobs," "literal housekeeping," and "shooting a possible traitor in the head while they sorted mail." It was just one of his terms. All it really meant was "something I can't, or don't want to, tell you about." So I shrugged and said okay.

"Personal policy says I never send people on missions like this by themselves, but you've had a good track record on solos so far, and this is urgent, so…" He grimaced.

"Times like these make me wish I had the budget for another hire." I'd always wondered where Unit 6 got their money from. My understanding was that it was Unit 1's job to secure funds, or maybe Unit 4's. I wasn't sure. It wasn't ever important to us. Maybe Prochazka had a big hedge fund or something and we all lived off the interest. Maybe Unit 1 was another group of clandestine operatives just like us, a bunch of bank robbers and jewel thieves making something from nothing. That sounded way cooler than what I did.

It could've been anything, really. There was very little about Prochazka or the workings of his organization that would've surprised me. Another note—my "track record" on solos was only good because I did so few of them. In all fairness to myself, it was a perfect success rate, but one-hundred-percent in this case was only three out of three, and all of those were simple hits that were hard to mess up.

It turned out that it was very hard to send me on solo missions because I couldn't drive, and there was little for public transportation around the factory.

"What am I doing?" I asked him.

"Rescue," he replied. I blinked. That was far from my usual, which I supposed I should have been expecting given the circumstance. Prochazka grimaced.

"I never send people alone on rescue missions. One person can't really be trusted to keep eyes on all sides of their head at once. That being said, you've been ambushed unsuccessfully…what, four times now?"

"Eight," I said, sitting up a little straighter. I was really proud of that stat. It was a nice number to remember whenever I was having a bad day.

"I suppose you only tell me when you've been ambushed half the time, then," he said, expressionless. I faltered.

"Sorry."

"Don't hold that kind of information from me," he said.

"Knowing you've been ambushed eight times makes me…even less thrilled about the fact that I have to send you on this one alone anyway."

"None of them worked, though," I said.

"True." He went quiet for a moment.

"Well, whatever. I just have to trust you. I don't get to second-guess this." Business time. I nodded.

"We've got a mentally-unstable fire-key outside of Syracuse that apparently abducted some little girl. We're don't want to make a scene—we're almost certain that if she isn't there, this guy's not going to lash out or anything. He's unstable but he's not outwardly violent." If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. I shrugged. It didn't matter. Prochazka went on.

"He's convinced this kid is the antichrist. He's got the child in his house somewhere, but he hasn't figured out what he's going to do yet. That's…all the intel we have, really. What I want you to do is just remove her from this guy's presence. Bring her to the bus terminal—her family is going to be on the bus arriving at 1: 12 AM from Buffalo. Have her get on the bus and don't let her family see you."

"That's it?" He nodded.

"Yeah. Head over there tonight. Cut it close but not too close—try and get there while he's sleeping, but make sure you leave enough time to walk a small child to the bus stop." All of that trust in me. I swallowed.

"Okay." 0 0 0 So that night at around ten-thirty, I drank a cup of coffee and put another in a disposable paper cup for the road, since I figured it was going to be a late night, and the last thing I wanted was to crash in the middle of a skirmish. Then I walked down to the bus terminal. It was about a twenty-minute walk, all things told, including the time I spent getting out of the factory.

Down the driveway and along that slumped row of highway-facing buildings down to a gap in the town, a hole in the development scooped out by God, where there was nothing for twenty feet around or more but a black-painted steel and glass covered bench and a bunch of signage depicting where one was and where one could be. I caught some odd glances from late-night walkers as they went by, but nobody stopped to ask me any questions.

I sat down on the bench, rolled the sole of my shoe over the tube of a syringe on the ground. It was a warm enough night—right around the temperature where you don't even notice that there is one. Fairly dry; it hadn't rained in a week, which was another reason to keep the coffee on me. It was an emergency source of water in case I needed to make something happen. Kicking my legs back and forth, waiting for the bus. Sitting just outside the cone of light from one of the dim lamps on the roof of the bus stop.

I was nothing and no-one. And then it arrived, the headlights announcing the noise and the procession of advertisements plastered along the side of it. The doors opened and white light cascaded out, revealing steps to heaven. I stood up, went inside. Paid for my fare, took a seat somewhere secluded, and watched the town fade into the rhythmic passing of streetlights on the highway. 0 0 0 I was sent on solo missions so rarely that it the gravity of being on one always stuck with me.

I didn't feel the presence of a teammate on missions so much as I felt the absence of one—there was a void shaped like Yoru or Ava or Cygnus sitting in the aisle seat next to me on the bus, and every time I looked away it shifted rapidly between the three in the corner of my vision. It made me acutely aware that I had no backup. No recourse. 11: 15 PM. Dark as it would get. I took a sip of the coffee I'd brought, cupping it between my hands as if it was my only source of warmth.

I think knew it was going to be a long night. Prochazka only put me on overnights once in a blue moon, which made this task being mine all the more alien. He liked putting Cygnus on stuff like this—often alone. And I think Cygnus liked being put on these kinds of missions, too. He liked being a night-warrior. Made him feel like a true-blood vigilante. Someone who truly embodied the spirit of justice. Sometimes I think back—with the wisdom of hindsight—and I see the Radiant for what everyone saw them as.

We always thought ourselves as omnipotent, as self-determining—but every other unit knew the truth: that we were simple and violent and hateful people who let ourselves be aimed in good directions. But Cygnus was different. I never thought of him that way. No matter what happened, I always believed he really did have everyone's best interests at heart. That he always knew right from wrong. This is a contradiction I live with. It's one of many that I have that I simply choose to not think about.

By that time at the Radiant—and forever after—the morality of the things I did simply did not occur to me. I didn't ever give them more than a passing thought. Maybe I just didn't allow myself to—and yet I always knew that whatever Cygnus was doing was right. Morally correct, as if any such objective thing as that existed. I know there's no point in arguing over stuff like that now. It's all semantics. It means something different to everyone, so it means nothing it all.

But in the context of Cygnus and Cygnus alone, I let it slide. Over time I found it got easier and easier to live with contradictions like that. Over time I simply stopped worrying about them. What was the point? What would worrying solve? Nothing. Worrying about why morals only applied to Cygnus wouldn't make my opinions change. Worrying about why I felt next to nothing while rolling heads wouldn't change the fact that I was being paid to do so.

Worrying about who I was becoming wouldn't make anything in my life make any more sense. I was too fast and too slow, too old and too young, too strong and too weak. It didn't make sense. I didn't need it to make sense. It wasn't supposed to make sense, I figured, and because of that it made me an individual. It made me more than the sum of my parts. And the nagging voice in the back of my head could stuff it. I would never admit it to the team—and I never did—but I hated overnight missions.

Despite everything I've gained and the person I've become, some part of me never stopped being afraid of the dark.