72 - In Awe Of (3) [July 7th, Age 15]

And so we were driving. This was a nicer car than the ones we normally used—it had smooth seats—leather, I thought—and a calm, soft ride that didn’t bump much over the old country roads. Loybol initially cracked the front windows for my benefit, but closed hers when I closed mine. Yoru might’ve had an easier time keeping track of things with the air flow in the car, but that much wind made it hard for me to follow my own droplets, sweeping them in and out of the car.

I had so many questions and only so much time.

“What’s the unfinished business?” I asked her, the question leaping over my teeth when I couldn’t hold it in anymore.

“With Sal?” she asked, taking one hand off the wheel.

“Yeah.”

“Sal had enough sense to try and screw us over at the last second. His phone had a tracking app on it and he didn’t tell Bell. Bell found it anyway, just holding his phone during the event, and she made sure to turn the phone all the way off so it wouldn’t transmit the signal anymore. I’m not entirely sure that actually stops the tracking apps, but you two didn’t get ambushed in time for it to matter since you more or less came right to me. Maybe shutting the phone off did the trick, maybe not, but they might have had a window to finish the two of you off. Bell told me about the tracking app right away, so I made a dense stone box to put the phone in so it wouldn’t transmit, just in case being fully off didn’t stop it for some reason. I’m not sure if that actually accomplished anything, but we were short on time and nobody got ambushed, so again—moot. The bottom line is that Sal tried to pull a fast one on us again, so now we have to do things the hard way to verify his info.”

The very hard way, evidently. I almost felt bad for him. It was hard to judge the severity of his offence simply from Loybol’s tone, especially since nothing bad actually came of it, but if she and Prochazka viewed it as bad enough to pull Bell off the front lines for a little while, then it must’ve been nothing short of high treason.

“Oh,” I said. It was a lot to take in, but I got the gist of it. “So that whole thing was for nothing?”

“It put Sal in Esther’s hands,” Loybol said. “And we know he knows something. That address was one of his frequently visited places, and it’s not a location anyone would have much of a reason to go to often. The base he was referring to probably is, actually, there. On the other hand, this might not be a deception at all—it could just be a play at casting doubt and making us waste time.”

“What do you think it is?” I said.

“I think Sal was just trying to delay us, which is why we’re still going in on schedule, or at least, as close to “on schedule” as we could. I’d assume, if he was thinking clearly, that this was a hail-mary at tracking our movements for a bit while possibly buying them a little more time to ready reinforcements in White Plains. Unfortunately, since we couldn’t immediately rush over there day-of, any additional personnel they’d want to station there have had a long time to case the block and put themselves in the right spots.”

“Because I was injured.”

She shrugged. “Yeah. We weren’t going to do this without you and they knew that. There wasn’t much of a chance to strike fast. At a minimum, I’d want two people who can keep track of the air to see if anyone’s coming, and two people on the ground making moves for a sting on this scale. Generally, that’s how I handled situations like this in Hinterland on the rare occasion I had to. We’re going to get that minimum now, but we wouldn’t have if we left you in Sal’s house and sent everyone right over there. You and Yoru are our only real options for reconnaissance. Esther, technically, but we can’t put her on the front lines like that. She’s too important for conveying instructions and wringing info out of hostages.”

Loybol shifted a bit in her seat and eased the car down, taking a left onto a side-street. She didn’t seem to mind talking, and frankly, I was more than happy to just listen to her. It was a refreshing change of pace to sit next to someone who didn’t feel the need to self-censor when I was around. “Theoretically,” she went on, “I could do it, but it’s not my strong suit. I don’t have the raw strength for it. Eliza’s air-key power is good at shorter ranges, but she doesn’t have the best control in the world. Her hot-air gimmick—the one she used to blank your droplets—that’s great when she’s only trying to cover herself, but if I had to guess I’d say she wouldn’t be able to push that shield out further than, say, ten or twelve feet around her. In a fight, that’s enough, but that’s not even close to the minimum for scouting. Prochazka could replace Yoru, but that’s out for obvious reasons, too, as much as he’d disagree with it.”

“He wants to be on the front lines?”

She cracked a grin. “Definitely. I’ve had to talk him out of it a few times. He’s very jealous that I got this spot instead of him.”

“Did you—I don’t know, rock-paper-scissors for it, or…”

“Maybe “got” is a bad term,” she said. “It made more sense for me to be on the front lines. I’m a bit more durable than he is.”

“Durable?”

She shrugged. “Exactly what it says on the tin.”

We didn’t speak for a moment. I sank backwards into the seat, letting the droplets swirl around the car, feeling her hands around the steering wheel’s leather, her shoes easing on the gas and switching smoothly to the brake when we needed to turn. Her eyes always forward, unwavering.

This was new. Rumbling down the country roads in a nice car with someone like Loybol, listening to her talk all the specifics about the war even if most of them sailed right over my head. The logistics of an operation like the one she and Prochazka—and Benji, I supposed—were running was beyond me, and I was okay with that. I didn’t really need to know the details. I’d long since become at peace with that.

Still, though. The opportunity to ignore the details—the choice to—was something I’d always been denied, and I didn’t realize how much I wanted it until that choice was presented to me.

I trusted Loybol.

“I don’t really know you all that well,” I said, voicing the logical next thought that followed my conclusion.

“We can change that,” Loybol replied.

“Can—can I ask you some questions?”

“On a case-by-case basis,” she said. “Sure.”

My hands tensed up. I didn’t think I’d get that far.

“How long have you been in charge of Hinterland?”

“Oh, God,” Loybol said, sighing. “Fifteen years? Twenty years? Give or take a few? The time blurs together after a while.”

“How old are you?” Right after the words left my mouth I remembered the old adage, but Loybol laughed it off. “I don’t mind,” she said. “God knows I feel old enough already without having kids ask me. I’m in my mid-forties. Born in ’72.”

“Oh,” I said. “I—I think I knew that, actually.”

Loybol’s fingers tapped out some rhythm on the wheel. “Did you?”

“Well, when you sent that statue to Prochazka, we all kind of thought you two were, um—never mind. It was a rumor we heard.”

“You guys knew about the statue?” There was no specific tone to it. A perfectly neutral statement for a completely weightless question.

“It was a weird package in the mail room. Policy made the mail guys, uh, basically call in the bomb squad on it, and Ava was the nearest Unit 6 person to the room at the time so she went in there to see what all the commotion was, and you know how Ava is, and—um—how we all kind of are, I guess.”

“Which is?”

I turned red. It’d been so long since I’d talked this much, but it was too late to back out now. “Really nosy. Nobody really ever talked to us at the Radiant except for random people like Frank, so—um, he was one of the mail room guys, so he confirmed the rumor about the statue when Ava told us. We just sort of guessed it was from you because it was a stone statue and it wasn’t signed or anything and it looked hand-crafted. Nobody else’d have a reason to send Prochazka anything because he’s kind of a grumpy old man, so…”

Loybol chuckled. “Figured. It was a gesture of goodwill.”

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“You two weren’t dating?”

She smiled, but didn’t turn to me, not even for a second. “That one I’ll keep to myself. It was complicated. We’ll leave it at that.”

“Okay,” I said, even though it wasn’t and I really wanted to know. In an attempt to think about something else I asked, “What’s the black slimy stuff you control?”

“The umbroids?”

“Those,” I said.

“Pass,” Loybol replied. “Next question.”

“Nothing at all?”

“You talk to Bell too much for me to answer that. If Bell catches wind that I told you what these things are, you’ll find out just how far your friendship goes really quick.”

“I—I guess that’s fair,” I said, trailing off.

There was, of course, one last question. It wasn’t about Loybol in particular. It was something a lot more pertinent to now.

I let it out. “What did you go talk to Prochazka about?”

She paused for a moment. Thought it over. Not her answer, I guessed, but whether or not she wanted to talk to me about it at all. She sat silent for almost fifteen seconds, and when I tried to reiterate my question she raised a single finger to quiet me down and then thought it over for fifteen more.

Finally, she spoke—and she said it straight out. “Did Benji order you to kill yourself if you faced imminent capture?”

I pursed my lips. Forced the thoughts down. Nodded.

“And Prochazka—”

I nodded again, in a short, terse movement.

Loybol shook her head. “Jesus, kid. That’s fucked up.”

My answer was as slow and measured as they come. “I get why he wants that,” I said. I thought I had more to add but I reached deep back into my brain and found silence.

“Do you?” she asked me.

I had no response.

Loybol swallowed. Tensed her grip on the steering wheel. “I know Prochazka, and Benji before he died, were both dead certain that you were the only person the New York gang would try and capture. Everyone else they’d just kill. Even Bell, who’s probably stronger than you if we’re being completely honest with ourselves, isn’t on their radar for that. Bell’s about as controllable as the wind or the stars. She exists in her own plane and the rest of us are actors. I think solipsism is garbage for narcissists, but if there was any one person who could convince me it was real, it’s Bell. The New York people, we were sure, saw Bell as more of a liability than something they could harness. We—and I’m getting around to a point here, trust me—we only trust Bell as far as we can. There’s a reason that, despite being ostensibly the strongest person here, Bell doesn’t get the lead role on any important tasks. The Sal thing was her biggest job and we gave that to her primarily because we assumed your presence would keep her from getting any weird ideas. That worked out, for the most part, and the fact that they shot at her and not you, despite having a pretty clear angle on you both, proves Benji and Prochazka right. They want you alive. We know that because they had a choice that night on who to kill between the two highest-value targets we have, and they chose Bell.”

Again, she paused. “That night made me believe what he’d told me. He’d said it before and I’d written it off. I assumed he couldn’t have actually meant that. But that night made it true.”

The car was smaller than it was a moment ago. I had so many droplets condensed around Loybol that I was sure she must’ve been dripping wet. Pools in the corners of her eyes wide enough to make her wonder why she was crying, enough moisture around her lips to make her wonder what she was so excited for. It must have felt like I’d submerged her head in the ocean. Forehead slick, nose running, every movement measured and every word weighed: she must have known what I was looking for—or at the bare minimum that I was looking for something. I had nothing on the windows or along the frame of the car. I was floating in space, hurtling through an unknowable present of vast infinity with nothing but a glowing figure beside me upon which everything rested.

Tell me now—

Loybol sat up slightly; a molten god in my perception. Shifted her grip on her holy weapon.

“That proved it to me,” Loybol said, slowly.

I managed to force out a few words. “Proved what?”

“That they want you alive,” she said. Quiet now. Barely audible over the car. “And that we can’t let that happen.”

The truth, then: the truth!

Her voice became hard. Grip tightened on the wheel. “Erika—listen to me. I’m not going to tell you what Prochazka told you. It amounts to something similar but I think this way of considering it is much better. If it comes down to it—you alone against their army—forget subtlety. Forget the customs of war. I want you to kill every last one of them. Make it so they cannot possibly take you alive. If they know the war effort lives and dies on you just like we do, then we’ll make them prove it. The only time this situation could ever come to pass is if every last one of us is dead, too—and in that case I think you’ll be able to find the strength to do what needs to be done. If anyone can, it’s you. Understand?”

I knew what she was saying—the exact definition of each word sat clear in my head—but the sentiment, even slightly changed, amounted to the same.

The end of her phrase was little more than absent buzzing to me. I knew what it said but I did not comprehend it.

I said, “Understood, ma’am,” with no force.

“Don’t “ma’am” me,” Loybol replied, equally toneless. “I know you’re not listening.”

“I’m trying to,” I said, quietly.

“Fighting to the death is not the same as killing yourself,” she went on. For a moment I thought she was going to pull the car over just so she could look me in the eyes when she was talking to me, as if I’d ever know—as if the gesture meant anything to me. She thought it, too—and then a few seconds later she followed through, pulling into a side-street somewhere and parking on the side of the road.

I knew this place, even if I couldn’t see it. It might not have been anywhere I’d ever gone but I knew it all the same: the flatlands, the peeling paint, the cars lagging five years behind the present as a matter of course, the rows of identical two-story narrow homes with concrete driveways shaped in six blocks, the blades of grass peeking through the cracks. Beyond this place, somewhere, was the blue sky and the rusted hollow factories and the single street along which the entirety of existence clung to like insects around a single flickering fluorescent light.

Up that driveway with its six concrete blocks and its little lonely dandelions: a man comes home from his gloved-hands job, strangles his wife, slaps his kids, melts into the couch cushions. Withers before the old flickering glow of a faded TV’s picture. Liquor goes in and liquor comes out—in his breath, in his slow shambling steps up to the dusty bedroom late at night when everything’s already turned off, turned away in shame and fear to scorn him in the only way they know how. It is dark and the man is alone; it is light and his wife and kids are alone.

And across the street:

Two kids dribble a basketball along an identical concrete driveway, following the cracks and taunting but never crushing the signs of life that grow there. Those three dandelions earned their spot in the hierarchy of the world just like everything else. The ’08 Corolla pulls up to the driveway and parts the two kids like ferns and from that car comes the big dad, who oozes out of the car and drops his gargantuan rough-crossed hands onto the kids’ backs and pulls them in close, grinds his knuckles into their hair and tells them he’s missed them, he’s missed them so much, even though he saw them off to school nine hours ago when he left for the day shift.

And inside the chicken is roasting, and if they opened their front windows and the neighbors across the street did the same they might have been able to share in that one thing: the smell of an evening perfect in its camouflage. Perfect in its unassuming grace.

Tomorrow, hopefully, would be just the same.

Nothing has ever changed here because nothing has ever needed to change. There’s no room for it. The church they pray at and the pub they drink at and the bait and tackle shop four miles down the main stretch have always been there and always will be. The younger generation rises as a tide and gently crests over the elders right as they slide out into the sand. Their souls sucked back into the ocean and turned over again and again.

I know which side of the street I grew up on. I know which side of the street I watched, waiting for that open window: waiting for the smell to drift out.

I know why this is the way it is.

We were there now, Loybol and I: maybe not exactly in that place but close enough. The plaque in the town center doesn’t have to say “Red Creek” for it to be Red Creek.

A place crushed under the weight of nothing but history.

“This isn’t an invitation to give up,” Loybol said. Her words were all I saw. “If the force is overwhelming, rise to meet it. If it overwhelms you, the outcome’s the same. If it doesn’t—then there was no need to be afraid in the first place. Those are hypotheticals, Erika. We’re never going to get to that point. That’s why we haven’t just rushed them on their home turf. It’s why we’re taking it slow, why we’re bothering to plan this. We have them outgunned, but only while we force them to meet us on our terms. The second we turn that around, we lose our best advantages: mobility, unpredictability, and individual firepower. We’re the defending party here. Remember that. They’re coming into our lands, our country, to attack us. To take this place from us.”

“This isn’t yours,” I whispered. Couldn’t manage more than that.

“It doesn’t matter,” Loybol said. “I’ve seen this movie before. I know when to stand up for what’s mine before mine needs standing up for.”

It had never occurred to me to love the land I was on when I was trapped in Red Creek. It was only when I escaped—and I was allowed to look down upon the country I served and take it in for all it was—that I came to understand what this place was. This place, these people, were all I had. No possessions beyond my back and pockets. No home beyond the place I slept—but the land I walked through was a microcosm of hearth and home. I wasn’t able to see it for what it was before—but as soon as I left the dark house, I saw it: a place where good always won and evil was petty and simple and there was love abounding, everlasting eternal love: a hurricane with me in the eye, untouched.

For now, maybe—but in time, if I pushed onward ever forward, step by step, until every last pocket of dark was extinguished—until the last unlit place was my shadow.

Then the sun could rise over me and destroy what I held and I could be whole again.

None of that could happen on Benji or Prochazka’s watch. Not with the oath they made me take—no: the oath I took, willingly, desperately, because I didn’t know any better. The oath I took to draw me out of the dark house.

With Loybol, though—

She sat next to me outlined perfectly in the sphere of the world I held, every last strand of hair and contour drawn in fluid strokes, a sketch in burning red who reached out and took my hand without me offering and said to me in words layered over themselves endlessly—because I was already recalling them right as they were said: “This is not over until we are all dead. Do you understand me?”

I had to understand. I had no choice. The words were as much a part of my brain as the wrinkles in the flesh.

I nodded, afraid of God.