Chương 68: These Heartless Creatures (2) [June 15th, Age 15]

I left her office not long after that and went up to the old Unit 6 barracks to relax for a moment. The aspirin hadn't quite kicked in yet and I knew I had to be firing on all cylinders in front of Prochazka. He wasn't strictly expecting me at a given time, so I could take a few moments to myself and collect. It was, as always, fine. Prochazka wasn't sleeping any of the building's watchers in our old room.

Everything was exactly as we'd left it—our mugs all in a row over the mini-fridge, the TV and its dangling HDMI cable we'd used to stream things from Cygnus's laptop, the beds in various states of disarray. The case of poker chips and cards under my set of bunks, on the left side. The chairs around the center table, some pushed in, some pulled out. To me the room still felt lived in—like the five of us that existed here back then were simply deleted from the world and our room was left perfectly intact.

No planned exit—just a vanishing. Or maybe it was like we still lived there, but invisibly. Even now the faded specters of Cygnus, Ava, Bell, and Yoru milled around there, sitting at the table for blackjack, sipping coffee or whiskey or whatever out of mugs from opposite sides of the room, waiting for a mission, or for me to deal the next hand. Waiting for something, anyway.

Just to complete the image I went over to the bottom bunk of the set of beds I slept on—technically Bell's old bed—and slid the case of chips out. Carried it over to the table, to my chair, and opened it up. That wasn't the set I had true nostalgia for—if I can really say I had nostalgia for anything at age fifteen—that set lived under the bed on the other side. It was unusable now; the numbers on the chips were printed on a sticker; there was nothing to grab on them. Nothing for me to see.

This set had the numbers engraved on them, so I could read them a lot more easily. The whole unit got together and bought it, partially as an upgrade to the old, beat-up set, but also as a Christmas gift to me. Something to celebrate pulling through the bad times with. It's hard to say, really, that any given points in the past were "the good times" or "the bad times"—it implies that things like that can't happen again.

"Some" good old days, I guess, would be closer to the truth. It could always be good again. 0 0 0 After fifteen minutes or so, my headache subsided to the point that I felt safe going up to Prochazka's office. I still couldn't quite think clearly, and stringing together a cogent sentence was going to be a struggle, but there was only so much I could do on day one after a concussion. Prochazka would understand. I'd be fine.

But when I turned to the door—specifically, to the little rack next to the door where we used to keep our shoes—I found that there was a figure there: a man, about a head taller than me. Waving.

"It's like you knew I was here," Cygnus said, grinning.

"Yo." Words tripped over my lips.

"How did you—no, when—""I'm off work today," he said.

"And I got my drivers' license not too long ago. This set of missions was only for pairs, and since there's seven of us now I drew the short straw. I heard about what happened and I figured I'd take the day to come and visit. It's been a while, y'know, on pretty much all accounts." I hadn't seen Cygnus since May, when I'd met Eliza. I bounced around Yoru, Benji, and Ava for about a month after that before I came back to Bell, but Cygnus had always eluded me, one way or another.

Maybe that was one of Benji's plans, too. I came up short on a conversation starter.

"I got a concussion," I said, instead of anything he'd actually want to hear about.

"I know," he replied.

"Loybol told me this morning. She sends her regards, by the way. You can still bounce droplets and stuff, right?" I nodded, turning away for a second. Embarrassed, maybe, but I don't remember.

"Yeah, that's—that's all fine. I'm not weak or anything, just kind of…woozy. I get headaches as lot now, but that's supposed to go away." Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"Yeah. It didn't sound like you got a really bad one, so I'd imagine you'll be back out there in a week or so. And hey, in the meantime you get to be alone in the old factory. That's kind cool, right?"

"I guess."

"Yeah. Minor concussions aren't too bad, really. I had one in school, I was over it in a few days, but generally they make you wait a bit longer than they need to just to make sure nothing got hit loose up there."

"I know that, I just didn't think they'd…um…they'd be keeping me here that whole time. Bell'd said two weeks when we were driving down here and I didn't really take that number all that seriously, but…it's really gonna be that long, huh."

"What, you think Prochazka'd throw you back out there when you can barely stand up straight?" Cygnus asked. He took his old sheathed sword—made from some random scrap metal, I was sure—off his shoulders and laid it over the shoe rack, then walked over to the table and took a seat at his spot.

"God, it's been so long," he said, scanning the room.

"All our mugs are still there. Yoru's bed is still a goddamn mess. I bet there's still water bottles in the fridge too, right?" I could vaguely sense water in there, but it was a very non-distinct shape. I couldn't tell if it was general moisture or ice crystals forming along the sides or if there were actually bottles, so I just shrugged instead of providing a real answer. Then, though, I said one anyway.

"I mean, we're supposed to come back, aren't we? When this is over."

"Sure," Cygnus said.

"Everyone except Benji, anyway." The name made me remember.

"He doesn't live here, though."

"True."'"I—I mean, just sitting here…if we all came back, it wouldn't matter that much that…no, that's mean," I said.

"I don't mean it like that."

"No," Cygnus said, leaning back.

"I get it. You didn't see him much so it didn't feel like he was there." I blushed, looked down.

"Is it bad to think that?"

"I think it's fair, which isn't on the spectrum of good or bad."

"I guess." I got up and opened the fridge, confirming that there were, in fact, bottles of water in there. Not all that interested in going for a walk or doing anything too stressful, I opened two of the bottles and dumped them into the reservoir of the coffee maker that lived just behind the mugs, on top of the fridge. The container of coffee itself was in the fridge, too—I took it out and it smelled fine, so I put some in the washable filter, closed the lid, and started it up.

"Did you make enough for me?" Cygnus asked.

"Yeah."

"Cool," he replied. I went back to the table and sat down, resting my chin on my hands. Cygnus took a glance back at the door and said, "You know, if we all put to a vote which member of Unit 6 we'd kick off the team, I think it'd be a split vote between Benji and Bell. I don't think you're alone in feeling like he wasn't really there. We were on good terms, but—""Everyone'd vote for Bell except me," I said, dully.

"I know."

"Not necessarily. Bell voting for Benji makes it two against four."

"You'd vote for Bell, too?" I asked him. He paused.

"I don't know. Not particularly fond of either. Benji might have been a grumpy old man trapped in a twenty-five-year-old's body, and he might've had a stick jammed so far up his ass he could lick it, but at least he had principles. He had honor, you know?"

"And Bell doesn't."

"I don't know what Bell's got," Cygnus said, folding his arms behind his head.

"Never been able to tell. She's dead even in both columns for all I know." I turned to him for a second—just rolling my cheek along my hand to face him, and then back again. He said, "I probably shouldn't have brought this up. It's not really a good time."

"Speaking of Bell—" I started talking without a clear idea of how to form the thought.

"When we were out interrogating Sal, and we got—um—when the assassination attempt happened, this just occurred to me. They shot at Bell, but they didn't shoot at me."

"Bell was probably in better view, or they were planning to get both of you anyway."

"I'm the one they're after, though, right?"

"Well—they're after all of us."

"But their plan," I went on. I found the thread and I gripped it for dear life, talking fast so I wouldn't lose it or stumble over a gap.

"Benji said they structured this whole thing to keep me as small a factor as possible. They started the second we were done with snow to give themselves the biggest window to get this over with. We were sitting pretty close together, and I was barely fast enough to save Bell in the first place. I think—I think it's safe to say if they had a shot at Bell, they had a shot at me. Why didn't they take it?" Then I paused. A detail I'd lost in the haze.

"Sally said they were supposed to take me alive." Cygnus was quiet for a moment.

"So Benji was right."

"I—maybe. It…um…it seems that way, anyway."

"I think you're overthinking this, Erika," Cygnus said, stretching back.

"We're all just happy you're both alive." I took a breath. He was right. I was overthinking it. But still— Maybe, I figured, it was a better question for Prochazka.

"Yeah," I said.

"That's good."