Brice
Time hardly means anything living in the underground base, though that fact only applies to me and certain people off duty. The body stops following the natural daylight cycle due to the lack of sunlight, and the circadian rhythm readjusts. We’ve tried to partially offset the effect by making the hallway lights automatically dim or brighten depending on the time, but my body has grown to ignore it. I run on a 22–26-hour cycle—8–10 hours of sleep, 14–16 hours awake—making my wake-up time different each day, sometimes in the middle of the night.
Yesterday, I woke up at 3:20 PM, less than an hour before Graham and Skyler arrived with the news about Eclipse. Had that been a typical day, I would’ve gone to sleep in the early morning. But it wasn’t one. The extended period of exposure to the daylight cycle—between the hours of driving and that botched raid—made my circadian rhythm much more variable. I had only been awake for a few hours by the time it became dark, but I had started feeling tired on the drive back to Columbus. After the conference room meeting (or the lack thereof), I went straight to bed. I pushed through the pain in my leg, hoping to get in at least a couple hours of sleep to shake off what happened, but after little over an hour, I woke up to the sound of gunfire in my brain and my leg becoming sore.
The soreness only grew worse the longer I was awake. I traveled up to the bank around midnight to review its current business dealings and my work email in a quiet environment, but my lack of brain activity opened a sensory void for my leg injury to fill. Once a long hour had passed, I left.
A few fellow off-duty personnel were passing time in the cafeteria once I returned, so I figured I’d join them. Roman and Kane were playing a card game, Nadia and Dakota were watching a livestream of Japanese baseball on one of the TVs hitched to the ceiling, Perry was flipping through the channels on another TV, and Tyrell was reading a book. Seeing as nothing more interesting was going on, I decided to join the card game table.
“What’s going on here?” I asked as I sat between Roman and Kane on the circle table, keeping my arms low to avoid disturbing the massive delicate cluster of cards.
“We’re supposed to be playing Rummy,” said Roman, “but at this point, I’ve shuffled in decks from so many other card games and added so many stupid rules that I think has just become a never-ending pissing match.” Over 100-some cards were sprawled across the table, making up at least a few dozen oversized melds with little to no space between each other. “Want me to deal you in? It’s never too late to join.”
The draw pile was still at least three inches tall, but I decided against it. “I’m… not interfering with whatever you’ve got going here.”
“Told you that no one else would play this,” Kane snarked monotonously.
“You didn’t tell me jack. Now put your damn cards down already and win; you’re pissing spinal fluid at this point.”
“You’re the one who’s still pissing. You do it.” Kane slapped down two Phase 10 wild cards onto an eight-card meld dangling on the table’s edge and drew two off the mountainous discard pile.
Roman glanced at me, then back at Kane. “Yeah, you’re right. I’ve been fucking with you this whole time.” He dropped his entire hand, consisting solely of 3s and one Uno Reverse. “I win, motherfucker.”
Kane tossed his hand in the middle of the table. “I knew it. I had one 3 in my hand the whole time that I couldn’t do anything with.”
“Wait, you actually couldn’t win? Damn, I’m a god at this.” Roman swept in the mound of cards closest to him and looked at me. “Wanna go another round, only without all those pointless rules I made up that drag the game for half an hour longer? Don’t worry, it won’t take more than ten minutes to reorganize all the cards.”
“Uh….” Well, what the hell else am I going to do at midnight? “Might as well.”
“Nice. Kane, care to help sort these out?”
Kane shrugged. The two of them gathered all the cards on their respective halves of the table into two choppy piles and separated them one at a time into six stacks for each of the unique decks Roman shuffled in.
What my brain needed at that moment was something to keep my focus away from my aching leg. Watching Roman and Kane slowly pick apart mounds of playing cards didn’t do it. The more I stared at their perpetual and unchanging hand motions over the faintly-growing card stacks awoke an anstiness in me from a long-buried ADHD diagnosis and an aching that felt like the bones in my right leg stabbing into the tissue of my upper thigh. For several minutes as they progressed, I was frozen in this state. I wanted to dig my nails into the table or kick something, but I didn’t want any undue attention, especially after Roman watched me almost die just a few hours ago. But I managed to keep myself contained for the duration of their work, and once they merged their decks and set aside the Uno and Phase 10 cards, the silence was finally broken.
Roman presented the remaining four regular card decks to me. “I’m going to assume you’d rather stick with one deck this time, so which one looks the snazziest to you? We got standard red, aluminum alloy, iridescent black, or Old Spice brand. If you're interested, that last one has some neat hairstyles on the face cards. Y’know, if you’ve wanted ideas.”
I stared blankly at the decks, failing to process any meaningful differences between them. “I’m not feeling choosy today.”
“Iridescent it is.” He quickly shuffled the deck and dealt eight cards to each of us. We drew from the top to determine who went first, then started the game.
My attention span throughout the game wavered on a semi-minutely basis while I tried to adjust my leg into a less painful position. But on the occasions that I focused on the game, my eyes rarely moved up away from my own cards. While Kane and Roman were bantering amongst themselves, I could only think about what I was doing with my melds on the table, only being reminded of the others’ presence when they’d throw a fourth card onto one of them and screw up my thinly-cognized plans. I maintained no long-term strategy for my game or anybody else’s throughout the play, betraying my years of experience with the card game polymath Roman and handing him victory nearly every round. I was hardly making an effort to play the game or pay attention to what was happening. I was only keeping my focus on taking my focus off of the pain. Oftentimes, I didn’t realize a game had ended until one of them told me they had won as I was about to take a card from the stock. Kane shot me a few stern looks from time to time, but neither of them said anything.
Sometime about 20 minutes into playing, the mistake of insistently adjusting an already injured leg began to hit me. The stabbing pain returned, but this time felt less like knives and more like a broken sword tip lodged inside my joints. No amount of stretching or massaging dampened the pain, and it only took a minute to become exponentially worse. The urge to kick something or scream under my breath became more and more difficult to control.
“Nice try. That’s win number three.” I looked up to see Kane with an empty hand and Roman staring in shock.
“How in the fuck—hell no, I’m not letting that slide. Your ass is grass next round.” They began stacking up all their cards. I dropped my hand face-up on top of my two melds and shoved them all to the center. Roman gathered them, put them on the rebuilt deck, and began shuffling them.
Now I’m back to the sensory void, just at the worst possible time. I began double-hyperfixating on my aching leg and the shuffling cards, doubling my antsiness and unease. My feet began trying to scrape against the tiled floor, and all my fingers were wrapping up in my shirt, having given up trying to massage my leg. As Roman finished shuffling and began dealing the cards, my feet pushed to the ground hard enough to audibly scoot my chair back. He and Kane finally looked at me, seeing how much my whole body had tensed up.
“All good there?” asked Roman.
“Not exactly,” I mumbled through grinding teeth.
“It’s the leg, isn’t it?” Kane said.
“It’s certainly… not improving.”
Roman set the deck on the table. “Well, I would normally say you could do for a good-old Rummy match to put the pain at ease, but we’ve been doing exactly that for almost half an hour, and it doesn’t appear to have happened.”
I could tell he was trying to remain in good cheer and not come off as bitchy, but it still made me feel like shit. I couldn’t keep my mind at bay for just a minute longer, and now I’ve disturbed their own time. But I knew I couldn’t leave the table either and make the scene more awkward.
I took a deep breath in and sat back up. “No, no, I just… need something to better distract my mind. I guess Rummy wasn’t the best method.”
“Understandable, understandable. Well, you know how I am with card games, and I’ve got pretty much every single one known to man sitting in either my backpack or my closet, so… is there any idea in that head of yours of what might distract you the best?”
I shook my head. “You’re asking for more focus than I can give.”
“Of course. Well, why don’t we try spitballing, then? Throw a bunch of shit at the wall and see what sticks? Kane, drop the first suggestion, and we’ll build off of that.”
Kane looked at him confused. “Are you talking about card games or just any game?”
“Name something!”
“Um… Monopoly.”
Roman slapped the table. “Monopoly! Excellent!” He sternly pointed at me. “Does four hours of larping as a Gilded Age millionaire and stealing property sound appealing? Capitalist economics sounds like it’s complicated enough to consume your mind.”
I thought about it momentarily, then stopped after a second of imagining what a game would look like. “Maybe a little too complicated for my head to wrap around right now.”
“Monopoly is too complicated. Okay. How about something simpler but no less mind-numbing like, say, Cards Against Humanity?”
“You think there’s any solace to be found in exploring my sense of humor? Don’t make me laugh.”
“Alright, how about War, the simplest card game of them all?”
“Doing basic math for 20 minutes isn’t going to distract me.”
“Damn, you could have a sense of humor if you weren’t so brooding. Why not go for something colorful, like Uno?”
“Haven’t played that in years and I’m in no headspace to relearn it.”
“What if we did it with stacking? That always makes the game more interesting.”
“Well, you’re a 90s kid, so what about Scrabble?”
“Never played that before, and it looks way too granular.”
“Aha! But you have played Exploding Kittens before! How about that?”
“I need mind-numbing, not brain-melting. And I always get too lost reading the text on the cards to focus on the game.”
“You get ’lost.’ You mean… distracted?”
“I did get distracted. Now there’s no point reading the cards because I already know what’s on them. Try again.”
“Shit, I’ve really wanted to get you on that. Well, have you played BS before? That game where you’re putting cards facedown in numerical order and can call bullshit on someone if you think they didn’t have the required card, then take the whole deck if you were wrong?”
“I haven’t played that either, and learning it will be far too much of a hassle.”
“‘Hassle?’ That’s one of the simplest card games next to War, for chrissake. Let’s see… Solitaire?”
“Too long to set up and far too slow.”
“Cribbage?”
“I forget the rules every time I play, and too much math.”
“Mahjong.”
“You don’t have Mahjong on anything other than your phone, and same problem as Solitaire.”
“Magic: The Gathering. You know you want to.”
“What?”
“Fuck. What about Spite and Malice?”
Kane immediately slammed the table and sternly said, “No.”
Roman hissed at him like a cat and looked back to me. “So… you want something simple, but not so simple that you’re basically droning on autopilot. You’re in no mood to learn anything and want a game that’s familiar. Familiar, simple, requiring just enough brainpower to take away from your injured leg, but not so much that you can’t get your head around it.” He silently thought for a moment, then his face lit up, and he slapped his hand on the Phase 10 deck sitting on the edge of the table. “And it was right in front of us the whole time.”
Well… it does tick all the right boxes. Once Roman noticed the look of intrigue on my face, he jumped in child-like excitement. “Alright! Alright! We have a winner, folks!” He swept in the playing cards he had started dealing out and shoved them to the side.
The aching in my leg didn’t hurt any less as the game started, but Roman’s shakedown of all his card games lifted my spirits enough to make the pain at least bearable. It would flare every so often in the middle of my turns, but I didn’t waste much effort in pointlessly concealing it. I would plant a card onto the discard pile so forcefully that it fell over, or lunge at the draw pile and end up grabbing five cards, or if I go down, suddenly slap my hand down out of order and meddle with the cards until it matched the phase and throw the extra cards at the others’ phases. All of it resulted in a flurry of witty comments from Roman with their coinciding sighs of disapproval from Kane, just before Roman would drop his hand down and end the round.
Before I knew it, Roman’s last hand dropped to the center of the table, and he passed the tenth phase. “Get fucked again, dweebs.”
Kane, who was stuck on phase 7 for the past three rounds, simply shrugged and set his cards on the draw pile. I, in spite of Roman and my lack of focus on any game strategy, I managed to work my way to phase 4. And without a word given, Roman immediately started shuffling the decks and restarted the game.
I fared a little better at the start this time, cruising to phase five alongside Roman despite him going out first each game. But Kane, stuck on phase 3, suddenly roared back into the game. For three consecutive rounds, he went down and out alone and advanced past both of us, severely distressing Roman. He tried fiercely to run his luck out a little farther to stay on par with Kane’s ascent, leaving me in the middle and unable to complete any phase myself. The two of them reached the final head-to-head on phase 10, while my increasingly poor hands scraped me up to phase 6.
After rounds of verbal mudslinging and rapid-fire card-placing, Kane ended up coming out on top. “Who’s the loser now, dickweed?”
Roman insistently scrounged all the cards into a messy pile and started shuffling the choppy stacks he formed. “No, sir, you are not getting away with that. Nobody wounds my pride and lives to see the light of day again.” He threw out ten cards to each of us and started a third game.
Roman, also being a master Poker player, can easily sense whenever the top of the discard pile is something you want, and would make every effort to cover that card and/or hoard similar ones when it proved useful. But where he usually did that only when he got poor hands, this game he was fully dedicated to tormenting Kane at every step and keeping him from progressing. It worked to my benefit and carried me unimpeded to phase 6 at the end, where Roman won again spectacularly with Kane left in phase 4.
“Eat shit! That’s what happens when you fuck with the god, Kane!”
Kane didn’t bother dignifying him. He just tossed his hand to the middle and waited for Roman to start the next game, which he did. It moved quicker this time with Roman having regained his luck, and he cruised to victory nearly every round unthreatened. That game ended with him victorious and me once again at phase 6. He reshuffled and replayed again.
My semi-hot streak wavered over time, with this game ending at phase 5, the next ending at phase 7, and the next at just phase 3. And before any of us knew it, over five hours had passed and we were midway through a seventh consecutive game of Phase 10, completely zoned out. That was until Kane broke the spell.
He stretched his arms out and yawned. “Man, how long have we been doing this? I’m getting exhausted.”
Roman checked his watch. “Damn, it’s almost six in the morning. Quite a bit of time has successfully been passed.”
I hadn’t even realized how heavy my eyelids were before the game suddenly paused.
Roman yawned as well. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve been awake since early afternoon, and I’m tired as fuck. I think we may have reached the apex of Phase 10 gameplay.”
“I’ve been awake since 11:00 AM,” Kane said while setting his hand down. “You’re lucky I haven’t already crashed.”
“What about Brice?”
They both glanced at me as I tried doing the math in my head. “14 hours.”
“Fourteen whole hours. See? We’re all tired twins here. Or tired triplets, I guess.”
“Last round before we wrap up?” asked Kane.
Roman stared at his hand for a moment. “Yeah, about that.” He grabbed a card off the draw pile, dropped two sets of five, and threw the card he drew onto the discard pile.
“Yup.” Kane set his hand down and stood up. Roman followed suit, gathering the cards and stuffing them back in their box.
“Well, gentlemen, it’s been a pleasure. A very ego-validating and time-consuming pleasure. Same time tomorrow, perhaps?”
“If our wake-up schedules can stay aligned, maybe.”
“Alrighty.” After collecting the last of the cards, Roman slipped the box into his backpack on the ground and slung it over his shoulder. “Till we meet again.”
They both turned and left the cafeteria, disappearing in the hallways. And the pain in my leg, which I realized I hadn’t thought about in hours, resurfaced.
My eyes were hanging half open and my body was growing stiff, but something kept me from leaving the cafeteria. Perry was still watching TV in the same spot, this time with Kiera and Juno, forming a sort of girls club that would laugh hysterically at whatever was playing every couple of minutes. Reis, Sinclair, and Codie had formed another group getting early breakfast that Eren cooked up behind the counter. The Japanese sports channel that Nadia and Dakota were watching was still on despite them having left earlier. Few others in the base are likely to be stirring right now, but that could change very soon. And being the lone person near the cafeteria’s primary entrance, I’ll be the one they all see first.
The idea of any more people coming to talk to me felt nauseating. I had already expended my social energy on Roman and Kane, and starting that over with some other group of people was the last thing I wanted. Everybody will treat me like a different person since I got caught in that bomb, and I can’t stand to be reintroduced to 46 people.
Nevertheless, I didn’t want to move either. There was a force trying to pull me away from here, yet an equal force anchoring me in the chair. Inertia, I think. Something running through my body, locking every one of my limbs in place whether they wanted it or not. Or maybe it was like glue, trapping me on the table and chair, unbudgeable, holding me down no matter how much I struggled. Or something in my mind—a second train of thought—that wanted to stay lodged in an uncomfortable place. That controlled the actions of my body against my will. All for the virtue of staying in a cafeteria, watching a Japanese sports channel on a TV thirty feet away from me.
Then Eliot walked in. My eyes followed him as he maneuvered around several tables, got a plate of breakfast, and sat down two tables away, facing directly at me. His head remained down at his plate, though. A minute later, Duran walked in. He grabbed breakfast the same as Eliot and sat next to him. They started talking, and Eliot’s head routinely glanced up to face Duran, putting me in his vision.
The beaming cafeteria lights were chalking up my eyes. My stomach was twisting into knots and felt like imploding. My face was burning, yet going slightly numb at the same time. I felt myself slowly regaining control of my body, and as soon as my breathing stabilized, I stood up and left the cafeteria without making a sound.
I slipped into my dark room, away from the hallway lights brightening with the morning. All I could see before my eyes adjusted was the light from my alarm clock. 6:32. What the hell? Was I really sitting there for half an hour? I walked straight until I felt my bedframe and jumped under the covers, hoping that the soreness in my eyes didn’t wear off before I could go to sleep.
But it did wear off. And I was left sitting in bed trying to keep my eyes shut and leg relaxed. My pillow was getting too warm, so I flipped it to the other side. That side got warm as well, so I flipped it back. And then I kept flipping it. I flipped it back and forth until the entire pillow was too warm to feel comfortable and rested my head directly on the mattress. Then the sheets became too warm. I kicked the top sheet out from over me and stuffed it at the end of the bed. The comforter warmed up faster. I rolled to the other side of the bed for a reprieve from the heat, which dissipated in five seconds. I pulled myself out from under the comforter and rolled up in my blanket. Within a minute, I grew uncomfortable with the lack of covering.
God… why can’t I ever just be satisfied with what I have?
I wrapped back up in the bedsheets, doing my best to ignore the heat. It didn’t make my mind any more willing to go to sleep. Come on. You don’t want heat, you don’t want air… what the hell is wrong with you?
Why can’t you just tell me what you mean? Why is it always a never-ending game? Do you even know what you want? Or is this all just a ruse?
Stop doing this. Just let me have peace for one goddamn moment. Let me be on my own. I don’t need your constant disruptions and noise. I never asked for it.
I had at least succeeded in keeping my eyes closed. But the longer I stayed in a position of trying to enter a sleep state while physically being in a place where I couldn’t, the more my thoughts took over my headspace. I was stuck in a state between dreaming and consciousness; awake enough to know where I was in reality, but still immersing in a crafted reality in my mind. Aware of both but unable to lean my conscience toward any particular one.
The reality that was building in my head didn’t seem to know what it wanted to be. It was all just… images, flipping by like a slideshow of my memories. All of the places I’ve experienced, all the faces I remember too well… all the people I’ve missed. But I couldn’t stay focused on any of them. They would appear in the slideshow for a second and then disappear as somebody or something else replaced them.
Stay focused… you know that they deserve more than to be skimmed through. They meant something. Why can’t you just…
Well… what does it matter anyway? They aren’t coming back. Nobody is. You burnt all the bridges down. Stay focused on where you’re currently at. Stop dwelling on what you can’t change.
But… it’s not about change. It never was. It was about… closure. Maybe the bridges were burnt too early. Even if you had to be rid of them regardless, you could have still just… done something else. Something could have been different. If there was ever any chance…
Christ. Why can’t you just let it go?
Why can’t you just… move?
I was frozen in this lucid fever dream state. Not my eyes, not my body, not my mind was willing to move.
I don’t want this. You don’t want this. So why am I still stuck? And where can I go from this?
Stop asking questions. You sound childish. Always too stupid to see what you’re missing, always too weak to do anything about it.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Just let it go.
Let it all fucking go.
For once…
I sat up off my bed and flicked the lamp on. I waited momentarily for my brain to defog and looked around my room. Computer desk, dresser, nightstand, gun locker, piano… closet.
Through the opening I left in my closet, I saw a slip of paper hanging off the shelf at the top.
I know what I have. And I’m already satisfied without you.
I planted my feet on the ground and lifted myself off the bed. I stepped closer to the closet, fixing my eyes on the paper.
Just let me have peace. I don’t need you or anything attached to you.
I pulled the paper out from under a stack of books. The writing wasn’t visible due to the shadow I cast over it.
You’re not worth anything anymore. There’s nothing to change.
I turned and walked back to the bed, keeping my gaze away from the writing. Once in front of the bed, I turned around and sat back on it.
Let it all go.
For the first time in months, I looked down at the writing on the top. I felt a stinging in my chest that grew as my vision came closer to the words.
“For so long, I’ve believed that I was a man who believed in justice. I wanted everybody to get what they deserved in as impartial a manner as possible. But at some point, I realized that there some things in this world that nobody deser—”
My arms dropped. I couldn’t read any further than that.
Jesus… how could I have thought that was a good idea?
There was a knocking at my door. I prepared to hide away the letter and jump to my computer desk until I heard Nadia’s voice say, “Brice? Can I come in?”
I sighed. “Yeah.”
She slowly opened the door and shut it behind her. “Hey, how are you holding up? Have you gotten any sleep?" The softness in her voice was just the amount of comfort I needed, providing the only warmth I’ve experienced all night.
“No. I’ve been trying, though.” I looked at my alarm clock again. 9:38. Damn, I was lying there for a while.
“Has the leg been bugging you?”
I lied and said yes.
“Well, not much I can do about that, unfortunately. Have you tried any sleeping medication before?”
“No, but I wouldn’t regardless. I don’t trust the idea of artificial sleep, and that’s nothing to say of its impact on depression. Can’t have anything more getting in my way, least of all at a time like this.”
“I take it that means there’s more than your leg is bothering you right now?”
My head sank. “I wouldn’t worry about anything interfering with our operation. After all, there’s plenty of time to brood privately now that we’re locked down.”
“And you’ll have plenty of company as well. Best believe that the majority of us will not be leaving you alone for the next week.”
I couldn’t help smiling at her sentiment, however unrealistic it was.
She glanced down. “What’s that you’re holding?”
I looked down at the letter hanging from my hands, and my smile immediately faded. “Oh. This… huh… this is a letter I wrote a few months ago. To… my parents.”
I could already imagine the surprised expression on her face without looking at it. “Oh. Wow. You were going to… tell them?”
I sighed. “I was never going to tell them. I never had reason to.”
“And yet you still wrote the letter.”
“Never finished it. I got halfway down the page before I realized it was a mistake. But that’s all over now.” I crumpled the paper in my hand and flattened it with the other.
“Whoa, dude, are you sure you don’t wanna…?”
“Don’t worry, I’ve been meaning to get rid of this damned thing for a while. It’s been nothing but a blight on my state of mind, one that I can’t afford anymore with our current situation.”
“Right, but… I just like to think that a lot of people would be making calls to their old family right now.”
“Why? Do people think that we’re not making it out of this?”
“Probably. I know that a part of me thinks we won’t. What makes you feel so secure?”
“Well, I guess everyone else wasn’t part of the encounter with Eclipse’s leadership. They were clearly not expecting us to show up at their doorstep, which means they didn’t know we existed until then. I would say that makes us pretty safe for the moment. Eclipse won’t find us here so long as we all stay bunkered down.”
“We can only hope. It’ll take a bit of extra effort to keep everyone reigned in, though. Some of the people who were on humanitarian duty will certainly be antsier about going outside.”
I tried to let out a weak chuckle, resulting in little more than a light puff of air from my throat. “Yeah. How do you think everyone is holding up, though?”
“It’s… a mixed bag. From what I’ve seen, some people have done a good job hiding whether they’re phased at all by what’s happening. Others… are a little on edge. Staying in their rooms, spending hours at a time in the shooting range or the gym, anything to keep occupied.”
“Yeah. I’ve noticed some acting more on edge specifically around me. Since the bomb.”
“Right. I can’t imagine anyone’s talking about that. There was a near-ten minute window after Jae alerted us that you were out from the explosion and before she checked that you were breathing where we all thought you might have been dead. It was one of the first times we’ve had to seriously think about what it would be like with you gone.”
“God. I shouldn’t have followed that fucking guy up the elevator. We were too focused on getting the operation over with quickly. I should have seen it coming.”
“That’s what everybody says when they make mistakes they couldn’t have seen coming. What really matters is that you got out alive.”
“Not without cost. I think everybody’s changed after this. But on that note… how has Lennox been?”
“Oh, I couldn’t tell you. I know he was hanging out in the break room with the squad late last night, just reading a book and looking kind of withdrawn from reality. Then I saw him like an hour ago storming past the cafeteria. He’s been holed up in his room ever since. I don’t know how well he’s handling his near-death, but I can’t imagine him taking it easy.”
“Damn. I’ll make sure to talk to him later. I know firsthand what that kind of experience can do to your mental state, and the last thing we need is him going over the edge.”
“Yeah. I’ve been worried about him, but… I feel like you or Jae would be the better ones to talk to him.” I lightly nodded, and both of us went silent. Nadia looked like she was thinking hard of something to say, then it hit her. “No, wait, fuck, I came here to tell you something. The Lakewood people—Percy, Skyler, Graham, etc.—wanted to know if they could get an escort back to their house to pick up all the stuff they’ll need to live here.”
“They didn’t take everything to their hotel in Cincinnati?”
“Apparently not. Plus, Skyler’s bird has been sitting there alone for a while. She’s very eager to bring that over here.”
My mind was hardly prepared to weigh the necessity of picking up extra supplies from their house two hours away. The stickler in me wants to reject the offer and force everyone to stay inside, but I’m not feeling like a stickler right now. Besides, they’ll just be another car in the streets moving along with traffic, indistinct from their surroundings. It didn’t seem like it mattered.
“Eh, whatever. We can have a few people escort them. It won’t hurt for a few hours.”
“Alright, I’ll let them know you gave the go-ahead. Does it matter who the escorts are?”
“I’ll… let them decide on that.”
“Okay.” She creaked open the door. “It was nice talking to you, Brice. Get some sleep now, okay?”
“I’ll try.”
She did a little wave and left the room.
I could feel my heart rate slowing and my eyes getting lower. I threw the crumbled letter into my trash bin by the closet, turned the light out, and crawled back under my bedsheets. Within a minute, I finally dozed off peacefully.
---
I managed to keep myself under for almost 11 hours, waking up just in time for the last bank employees to clock out before I walked to my office. I primarily visited to get an idea of where our finances stood in preparation for the lockdown, but none of the employees know about that, but I’m safe from having to give them an excuse I didn’t think of for why I’m showing up on my day off. I browsed on my computer for about half an hour. Individual lending has slowed down thanks to inflation, but business lending seems like it’ll remain stable for the near future, well above the necessary profit margin. Even if the militia’s inactivity loses us money, the bank will at least keep us stabilized.
And back at the cafeteria, I was just explaining this to Sinclair.
“—the bank will at least keep us stabilized.”
“That’s assuming we don’t run up the cost of living too much,” he said while chewing his steak sandwich. “How bad do you think inflation is going to get?”
“There’s only so bad that it can get in this economy. We’re not Venezuela; even if it somehow cracks above 10%, we’ll find ways around it.”
“That might mean more grocery store runs if our suppliers start having problems.”
“Our suppliers aren’t as tangled in the supply chain as other trucking companies are. They should do fine, at least for now. If they don’t, we have plenty of alternatives in the city.”
He took another bite of his sandwich. “Sounds good. What about our equipment? If we’re locked down, will we need more ammo and weapon shipments?”
“Well, that’s where this gets tricky. If we want to be prepared for the worst-case scenario with Eclipse, our old equipment won’t do. We’ll need more than guns; better tactical gear, grenades, drones, maybe even turrets and Javelins if worst comes to worst. I don’t want to be too alarmist about where this might be going, but I don’t want to be caught off-guard either.”
“Better safe than sorry, I guess. And if it doesn’t go that way with Eclipse, there’s nothing better than missiles to take care of gang violence in inner cities.”
I snorted. “Like we need any more bloody news attention.”
“Yeah. Just don’t let Jae get ahold of them.” He stuffed the rest of the sandwich in his mouth and looked away. “Hmph. Spheak of fuh dfevil,” he garbled as Jae entered the cafeteria. She was speed-walking around the occupied tables, seemingly towards the hallway entrance behind us. Sinclair lightly waved at her as she passed our table. She nodded back and jogged out of view into the hall. “So, any framework of how extreme we want to build our equipment stockpile?”
“I’m not sure yet. We’ll need a more concrete assessment of the threat Eclipse poses to us, but we can start with getting better body armor. The explosion tore mine to shreds.”
“But generally speaking, how much would this all cost?”
“Just the armor? Anywhere from 45–120 thousand, depending on how prepared we wanna be. But going the whole mile with full-scale military equipment could put the cost in the millions.”
He took a second to swallow down the rest of his sandwich. “And at that point, we would have no choice but to pull from the bank reserves. Maybe waiting for the threat assessment until then would be best. Who would do it, though?”
“I think Graham said yesterday that he had an informant from Eclipse who helped them plan the break-in. Maybe they could help. The climate is too hot right now to send any of our guys undercover.”
“You can always pay for someone else to do it. I’m sure there’s a market for spies out there.”
From the corner of my eye, I noticed Karan and Aiden walk into view from the hallway Jae had just entered from. They stopped, talked for a moment, then kept walking. A few seconds later, I heard their footsteps down the hall behind me that Jae went through, their talking a little more audible. All I could discern through the cafeteria noise as they passed by the entrance was Karan whisper-yelling, “No! Jesus Christ, man.”
“‘Market for spies,’” Sinclair continued. “What would a spy market even look like? What would they do? Where would you find them? Who would be looking for them?”
“Something like that might only exist among gangs. But as far as I can tell, we have the only spy market in town.”
“Right. Of course. We can only hope they don’t get too absorbed in their spy life, though. We don’t need anybody suddenly defecting or some shit.”
“But you’re one of those people in the market.”
“Pfft. I’m the spy marketeer that’s gonna keep the other spies in line. Like a spy within the circle of spies. A double agent, maybe? No, double agents work for both sides. A guy who spies on spies…. What’s the term I’m looking for?”
“I don’t think there is one.” Sensing that the conversation was about to turn to Sinclair rambling aimlessly, I figured I would get rid of our empty plates to prevent any distractions. Mine still had leftover dried steak bits stuck to the plate’s surface, so I took it to the trash can behind me. As I approached, I heard more voices coming from down the hallway. It was Karan, Aiden, and Jae again, with… I think I heard Graham’s voice in the mix, then Skyler's. Are they talking about the Lakewood trip? God, I completely forgot about that. How much shit did they bring back?
I knocked the last steak bits off my plate and returned to the table. Sinclair was on his phone, supposedly looking up the term he incorrectly thinks exists. I stacked my plate on his and took both up to the front counter on the other side of the cafeteria, then scrubbed them down with the sponge, rinsed them off, put them on the drying rack, and grabbed a brownie bite off the snack table for good measure. I came back to my table after less than two minutes away to see Skyler sitting between my spot and Sinclair. She was rubbing her eyes as I approached, and the sound of my chair scooting back startled her. She sighed after seeing it was just me.
“Sorry,” I said awkwardly. I sat down and ate my brownie bite. “They’ve got brownies on the snack table up front if you’re interested. The stock rotates every couple days.”
“Oh, no—no thanks.”
Sinclair remained glued to his phone, his face gradually scrunching more aggressively.
“I assume your trip to Cleveland went well?”
“Uh… y—yeah. Yeah, it went fine. Got everything we needed out of our house. My bird’s all squared away and everything too. I have all the stuff I need to take care of him, so… the cost of that won’t be coming out of your budget.”
“I wouldn’t know what to do with the budget anyhow. I’ve never had a pet before.”
“Really? Not even in your old life?”
“Didn’t have much of an old life. Certainly didn’t have the money to take care of an animal.”
“Damn. I guess money kinda does buy happiness.”
“In this economy, it does.”
Sinclair finally dropped his phone. “Fuck me. The internet is useless. Skyler, do you know what the word is for someone that spies on a spy? Like, a second link down the spying chain? Is there even a word, or am I just having a Mandela Effect moment?”
Skyler blankly stared at him. “Uh….”
Before she could respond, Roman leaped out from the hallway and tossed his backpack onto the table next to Sinclair. “Aaaand we are back! And with two special guest stars? This’ll be a fun one. Don’t know where the hell Kane is, so it’s just us for now.”
Sinclair looked at him, then looked back at me. “No shit, you got pulled into his web too? Fuck it, what’s the damage, Roman?”
“Nice of you to ask, ‘Clair. The big thing yesterday was Phase 10, but we can also do my expanded and enhanced version of Rummy that I was up all night writing down. But we’ll need the whole table for that, so if you get supper, keep it on your lap.”
“You’ve piqued my curiosity. Just how expanded and enhanced are we talking?”
As Roman began running down the rules, I noticed Skyler clam up slightly. Across the cafeteria, Lennox strode in from the hallway, strolling aimlessly and looking extensively at the people around him. Skyler seemed to be staring at him. Oh God, did he say anything to tip her off?
“—as you want. Let’s say you see a nice meld of 4s somewhere on the table, already with four cards. If you’ve got a stockpile of 4s yourself, you could throw one or all of them onto that meld and close it or slap down a meld of your own with however many 4s you want. If you’ve got six of them, you could use them all, but then you’d have to draw another six cards assuming that’s the end of your turn, or you could just put down three and save the rest for when you plan to go out and hope that nobody else closes it with a 4 of their own. Lots of room for strategy here. But how do we keep track of which melds are closed and which aren’t? The answer doesn’t exist. If nobody remembers a meld being closed or open, you essentially have free reign to do whatever you want. But I remember everything, so if any of you try gaslighting me about what’s closed and what I hallucinated being closed, know that I will… probably still fall for it. Also, no mixing and matching from different card games. You can’t make a meld using both Uno 3s and standard 3s. The first person to go out three times wins. Make sense?”
“Partially. You’ll have to walk me through most of it as it happens, but a lengthy card game sounds better than anything else here.”
“That depends. Up for some chaos this fine evening, Brice?”
I felt much more cognizant than yesterday, so there wasn’t any reason not to. “I’m up for whatever right now.”
“Fucking splendid! Skyler?”
Skyler was still staring off into the distance but snapped back after noticing the table’s silence. “Oh. Yeah. Sure.”
“Four-player Chaos Rummy. We’re gonna need a lot of decks for this.” Roman rooted into his backpack and started pulling out different standard decks, including the iridescent one we used yesterday, along with Phase 10, Skip-Bo, Go Fish, and two Uno decks. “We got all the colors of the rainbow in this bitch. Let’s get started. How many of you lot know how to shuffle?”
My and Sinclair’s hands went up. He set the 12 decks of cards in the middle, and we started grabbing chunks off the tops of each of them and shuffling them together, then taking chunks off of the shuffled decks and shuffling those together, randomizing the card assortment as much as possible. As the process dragged on, I saw Skyler’s frozen look of dread intensify.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
Her head kind of curved, somewhere halfway between a nod and shaking no. I looked to my right, and there was Lennox again, standing just a table away in front of Skyler, tapping his knuckles on its edge.
“Do you want something?” I asked him.
His head lightly shook, and he half-whispered, “No, no.”
I almost looked away before remembering his situation. “Lennox, you and I can talk later, okay?”
“Mhm.”
I turned back to the table and continued shuffling the cards.
After about a minute, Roman decided the decks were sufficiently merged and formed nine giant draw piles in the middle of the table. Roman grabbed half of one of them and dealt ten cards to each of us.
He went first, grabbing card after card off different draw piles. Whether he actually had a terrible hand or was strategically picking out random cards to improve his hand was impossible to tell. One of his rules is that being caught drawing when you can put cards down results in a penalty of resetting your hand, and Roman doesn’t have a history of cheating, but if he wanted to, nobody would be smart enough to stop him.
He alternated between putting down a meld of three and drawing more until he was finally at eleven cards, discarding the last one. The next turn was Sinclair’s, who immediately asked Roman, “So I need three of the same cards to put it down, right?”
“Do you need me to explain the rules of basic Rummy as well?”
“Nah. I can watch and figure it out.” He tossed down three standard 10s and drew back to ten cards.
It was my turn. Phase 10 wild and 6, standard king, Skip-Bo 11, Uno draw 2, standard joker, Skip-Bo 2, Uno wild, and two standard 4s. I can’t do shit with this. I drew an Uno 4, a standard 9, a Skip-Bo 1, a standard ace, a Phase 10 2, a standard 4—that’s three standard 4s. Okay. I slapped them down, leaving me with five extra cards. I drew an additional four until I could put a meld of standard hearts. A drew another two and put down a meld of aces.
I was about to continue drawing, but Roman cut me off by slapping the table. “Aha! Busted already! You’re drawing when you can put cards down!” I looked to Roman to see he already had an unclosed meld of aces. “That’s a hand reset. Nice try.”
It wasn’t intentional, but I wasn’t going to argue with it. “Good riddance.” I dropped my deck into the discard and drew another hand.
Next, it was Skyler’s turn. I turned my focus to organizing the card cluster in my hand. After a few seconds, Sinclair did an attention-grabbing whistle. I glanced up. He was staring to my left. I looked over at Skyler. She was staring past the table again. I looked back to my right, and Lennox was still sitting on the same table, unmoved, staring back at her.
“Lennox, what the hell are you doing?”
“You’re asking the wrong person,” he whispered, his gaze at Skyler unbreaking.
“The fuck does that mean?”
The others at the table looked at him as well. “If you want to watch, you can just ask,” said Roman.
Sinclair followed him up with, “Yeah, I know you get off on making people uncomfortable, but maybe not when a guest of honor is here?”
“Fuck you, Sinclair,” Lennox sniped back. “You’re too fucking blind to see what’s happening right under your nose.”
Sinclair bundled his cards and slammed them on the table. “Okay, we’re gonna play the fucking cryptics game now, are we? I should have known we wouldn’t be able to make it ten fucking minutes in the same room as you without your Disney character ass killing the fucking mood. Was it Star Wars or the Marvel Cinematic Universe they pulled you out of? You goddamn ‘Guys, you’re gonna want to see this,’ motherfucker. What other corny fucking one-liners do you have in your pocket? Huh? You walking fucking cliche? Is ‘Uh, this is awkward’ running through your head right now? Are you currently pondering the words that came out of your mouth and thinking, ‘That sounded a lot better in my head,’ like the fucking PG-13 rating that you are? What if I just fucking punched you? What if, right now, I just clocked you right in the fucking teeth? And what if I decked you again before you could say, ‘Oof, that’s gonna leave a mark?’ Are you looking at my clenched fist right now and thinking, ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this?’ You fucking Dave Bautista character? How much do they pay you, Lenny? Do you get $20,000 royalty checks straight from Burbank every time you repeat one of their fucking mannerisms? Does Bob Chapek personally mail you printed copies of all their trademark words and phrases for you to spout at every convenience? The ghost of Robin Williams spits on your fucking name.”
Sinclair and Lennox locked hard stares. As the moment dragged on, Lennox’s face grew more openly furious and his nails dug into the side of the table.
Sinclair whispered, “‘Well, that just happened,’ right?”
Lennox snapped and sprinted to tackle Sinclair out of his seat. He held his legs out to kick Lennox back, only to get pushed by his feet and fall on his back with the chair. He kicked the chair out into Lennox’s legs, immobilizing him for a second so I could hold him back.
Skyler had jumped out of her chair and backed against the wall. Roman’s cards had blown out of his hand and scattered all over his lap and table, and he was whipping his hands around to recollect them while worsening the card mess on the table. And half the cafeteria erupted into shouts at the same moment.
Sinclair jumped back up. “Woo! Yeah, you’re such a messy bitch, aren’t you? You just live for drama.”
Lennox struggled against me until I got in front, kicked out one of his feet, and slammed him to the ground with my forearm. He pushed me off and pulled himself up by the table he was leaning on, the wind sufficiently knocked out of him. I and three others formed a human barrier between him and Sinclair as the rest of the cafeteria gathered around.
Karan and Jae rushed in from the hallway to see what was happening. Karan shouted, “Lennox! What the fuck are you doing?!”
“Tell them!” he yelled, his voice already half-lost. “Tell them what the fuck you’re doing!”
Sinclair groaned obnoxiously. “God, here the fuck we go again, guys.”
“That’s enough!” I roared. “Karan! What is he talking about?”
The cafeteria fell dead silent as all of the eyes turned toward him. His eyes darted back and forth and then toward Lennox. “Goddammit, you’re a fucking idiot, Lennox. You have one personal quarrel about Brice, so you spotlight me in front of the whole fucking militia?”
“Karan. Get to the point.”
He took a deep breath. “Shit.” He kept waiting, milking every second of goodwill he could get without opening his mouth, before suddenly shouting, “We’re saving your asses from Eclipse, that’s what we’re ‘doing.’ It’s not a fucking scandal. We contacted one of their higher-ups last night, and they agreed we could settle the conflict by paying them off for the Lakewood team’s Solaris heist. It’s not worth a fucking dramatic meltdown.”
“Fuck you!” Lennox yelled.
“Quiet!” I sniped. “‘Paying them off?’ What does that mean? How much money do they want?”
“Four million,” Karan said. “And they want it by tomorrow afternoon.”
At least eleven voices spoke up at the same time. Once again, I had to cut them off. “When I said ‘quiet’ initially, I meant all of you!”
Karan continued, “Getting that money is what the Lakewood supply run was for.”
Sinclair, not listening to what I just said, blurted, “I’m sorry, you went to Lakewood to just get four million dollars?”
Skyler replied, “We tried to track the Solaris money through the businesses we worked with.”
“You ‘tried to?’”
“Yeah. It… didn’t work. All their records were erased, and the one alternate source of money we found was a dead end.”
Lennox marched up and sputtered in my face, “And they were going to steal from your bank next. They agreed to sell us out to Eclipse, kept it secret from everybody, and planned to steal millions from right under your nose!”
Karan yelled, “You know why we kept it a secret, don’t pretend you weren’t in on it too!”
The crowd behind me erupted once more, blunting what little control over the situation I still had. I gestured for the others to stay quiet and wait until everyone got their shouting out of their systems. I checked my watch. 9:47 PM. If we only have until tomorrow afternoon, I’ll have to get moving quickly.
Someone in the crowd blared a whistle to silence everyone and shouted, “Listen!”
Their attention refocused, however tepid it was. I asked Karan, “What time and where?”
“3 PM. At the end of Brightwood Street in East Cleveland.”
Lennox stepped in front of me. “That’s it? You’re not going to question any of this?”
“Asking questions is not what’s important right now. We’ll get this problem sorted out, and then we’ll talk about it.”
He looked at me with an appalled expression for a second, then backed away.
Skyler asked, “But how are we paying for it if the Solaris money is gone?”
“I am. There’s plenty of spare change in the bank reserves. You’re under lockdown with us; our money is yours as well. Karan, who else was involved with this?”
He replied, “Just Eliza and Kacey.”
“Then it’s you four who are finishing this. You’ll meet me at the bank in four hours to load up the money, and you’ll take it to Brightwood at 12:30.”
“Understood.”
Lennox got back in my face. “Brice, you’re not serious—”
“I’ve heard enough from you, Lennox. You’re done here.”
“You didn’t even—”
“You’re done! Period! Trying harder to get a reaction out of me is not going to work! Now go!”
He stared at me momentarily, then slowly walked away to the entrance. And seeing him leave, I immediately regretted it. I shouldn’t have come down on him that hard. You know what he’s going through right now. He didn’t act that way for no reason.
I turned to face the crowd. “The rest of you can leave too. The show is over.” After a few seconds of awkwardly standing, they began filtering out of the cafeteria exits, some grabbing off the snack table before leaving.
I looked at Sinclair and nudged my head towards them. He rolled his eyes, said, “I need to sleep anyways,” and followed everyone out.
Once the room was emptied, I looked to Skyler next and said, “Go get some sleep. I’m sorry you got dragged into this.” She quickly disappeared down the hallway she was standing by.
Roman remained sat at the table throughout the endeavor, trying to keep the card setup in order. He looked up at me looking at him and glanced back down. “O, the lonely solace of a deserted table with an unfinished card game.” He started bundling the cards together and placing them in his bag with their empty boxes. I helped stack up all the loose ones on the table while he grabbed the nine draw piles. I handed him the pile I made last. He stuffed it in, zipped up the bag, saluted to me, then left the cafeteria.
It was just me, Jae, and Karan left. I told them, “You put yourselves, and by extension the stability of the militia’s leadership, in danger when you go off on your own. And you especially endangered the Lakewood team by leading them out in the open for that long at a moment like this. You are beholden to the rest of us, and you answer to the rest of us, always. Never do this again. You owe everyone answers when you return tomorrow.”
Both said, “Understood.”
“Now go. Be ready at 2:00.”
They each walked out from the entrance they came from, leaving me alone in the cafeteria.
And in that moment of quiet, I thought. And then I kept thinking. I thought more as I traced my eyes along the empty tables around me. The plates left behind, some empty, some with unfinished sandwiches. Some people forgot their phones as well. One of the TVs was left on with a muted sports channel playing. I thought about the almost empty snack table. And then I realized how tired I was of thinking.
I cleaned up the leftover dishes, pushed in all the chairs, turned off the TV, and walked down the dimly lit hallways to the bank.
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