The newscaster’s voice filters in from the other room. The door muffles it enough for Dawn to ignore it. It’s just the news – about the mission today, about ibn Hassan, about how all the targets were ‘used militarily and thus legitimate,’ and about the conflict next door in Iran and how the Shah promised to bring the full might of not just Iran, but Israel, Saudi Arabia, and America down on his frankly uncountable enemies. Something about being an American puppet might the reason that nobody likes him.
She can smell cookies, the scent wafting in underneath the door. Last she checked it wasn’t just cookies he was making. But all thoughts of sweets are absent from her mind. Right now, it’s all about how much her collarbone kills. The bruises looked like eyeballs – a purple iris surrounding a yellow pupil – and they formed a sort of mitsuuroko, if the larger triangle was made up of circles instead of smaller triangles. It turns out getting shot hurts! Even through bulletproof armour.
Her fingers scoop out a glob of white cream, the ingredients containing ground flowers like arnica and witch hazel, and she gingerly applies it over the bruises. When the frigid paste touches her skin she unconsciously grits her teeth and inhales through the small gaps between. The Chief says that’s a sign that it’s working so she waits a few seconds and listens to the newscaster talk about the arrival of the USS Ulysses S. Grant into the Persian Gulf for some sort of military exercise.
She rotates her right shoulder forwards, then backwards, and the aching dies down. Her dermis gradually absorbs the cream and after the requisite minute the box tells her to wait before covering the spot with clothing again she pulls a plain black hoodie over her head and walks out.
Unlike Ash’s apartment down the hall, Dawn doesn’t have two floors of space to work with. Her apartment is ‘Ŧ’ shaped, two bedrooms, a bathroom, a spare room for storage, and a big open-concept foyer that allows someone in the kitchen to watch television if they so pleased. But she didn’t want to watch the fucking news, because all it serves in the year 2104 anno domini was that of an anxiety generator. If Tech wasn’t at her place for dinner, then she would’ve put on something fun. Premier League, maybe, even though Man City wasn’t playing. Neither was Tech’s Arsenal. But the news? Blackburn-Ipswich was better than the news.
Upon exiting she’s hit in the face with a blast of tremendous smells, the smells of a Parisian bakery in full swing. She smells cookies, brownies, fudge squares, donuts and donut holes, homemade jumbo-sized pretzels, even croissants with fillings of cinnamon and sugar, the perpetrators all sitting on a black-granite island. She looks to her right to find Jake in a crouch, staring at the oven. He’s in an identical grey hoodie as Dawn’s, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows to expose tattoos of white ink almost glowing against his dark skin. A slate-grey compression sleeve is fitted to his right leg underneath black gym shorts. His hair is loose and falls to his shoulders. She notices his fingernails are black onyx.
Dawn joins him, swiping one of those jumbo pretzels from the plate it’s sitting on. There’s a pair of baking sheets inside, each filled with eight rough balls of cookie dough all about the size of a golf ball. She sees chocolate chips hiding underneath the dough and she bites her tongue to keep her mouth from watering. Jake looks at her from the corner of his eyes, she does him the honour of actually looking at him.
They both rise and Dawn is first to speak. She knows he wants to talk about how she’s feeling, how her chest feels, that bullshit – she feels fine.
“That’s too much food.”
If all eight, or ten, people were coming, then it would be a different story. But only five Janissaries and their Jupiter-sized appetites were expected and four were here already. Jake looks at her.
“You think so?”
He looks at her. His eyes flick down, between where her hoodie ends and her shorts begin. There’s about eight inches of abdomen exposed, abdomen she worked hard on. She didn’t do all those ab exercises to hide a six-pack in the comfort of her own home. She also didn’t do them for people like Jake not to look at her. For all the gawking she did at him earlier its nice that he returns the favour.
She takes a bite of the pretzel. It’s soft and salty. The carbs are going to kill her but she’ll just have to work them off tomorrow. Janissaries have a turbocharged metabolic factor anyways.
“Yeah,” she answers.
“It’s not like we need to eat it all today,” he replies. He gestures at a plate of marbled choco-vanilla cupcakes, covered in a swirl of chocolate icing. “I was going to give these to Xiuying.”
Dawn put her hands on her hips. Tilts her head from side to side. Thinking. She has an idea.
“Maybe–”
There’s a knock at the front door and the idea is forcibly ejected from Dawn’s mind. She goes and opens it and finds two figures waiting for her. One is entirely obscured by a stack of boxes rising from their waist to their head, leaving only a fluffy scruff of sandy blonde hair exposed. The other is Anastasia, clearly happy she didn’t have to carry that many boxes.
“We are here!” she announces as she marches in. She’s in a long-sleeved crop top and high-waisted yoga pants, white with black highlights and the other black with white highlights. She’s changed out the bandages on her face – Pikachu’s smiling visage now stares out from underneath her eye, and a horizonal Charizard lays across the bridge of her nose. Her cheeks are as rosy as usual and Dawn’s reminded that despite having the patience of a rabid dog she’s still quite nice to look at. It is unclear if her Janissary training sanded down or sharpened her rough edges, though – lengthy stints at both the King Solomon Academy and the Imperial Russian War College make even a saint froth for war.
The second is someone Dawn hasn’t seen for a while. Not that he makes himself scarce, just a matter of fate that they haven’t been in the same place at the same time for a week and change. He’s about five-ten and freckled, his sandy hair fluffy and perpetually ruffled. He’s in a business suit with the white button-up untucked and tie hanging out of his black blazer’s pocket and a platinum band wraps itself around his right hand’s ring finger, mirrored by a lucky woman halfway across the world.
Dawn takes the top few boxes from Thomas Fletcher’s possession and helps set them down on the granite island. Jake didn’t give them much space so they have to recreate the Tower of Pisa with boxes of chicken wings. Anastasia puts twelve-packs of Coke and Pepsi on each side of the tower for architectural stability. The box atop is labelled ‘FRIES’ with black sharpie, the rest are ‘HOT – CRISPY’ then ‘BUFFALO’ then ‘HONEY GARLIC.’ Dawn notices the small woman rotate her right shoulder after freeing her arms, pursing her lips to hold back a grimace.
“We got chicken wings,” Fletch says. He looks tired in the same way Dawn does; a way that no amount of caffeine can possibly fix. She’s wondered if amphetamines could do the job.
His hazel eyes move over to Jake, who’s in the process of shoving two treys of cinnamon buns into a smaller utility oven.
“What’s that?” Fletch asks.
“Food.”
“Isn’t this too much?”
Anastasia circles around and her eyes widen after laying them upon all the stuff Jake made.
“I thought there would be ten people here,” is Jake’s justification. He’s had this conversation literally a minute ago.
Fletch nods, understanding the problem he now faces. Three of the team are down for the count. Who knows about those kid Janissaries Tech talked about.
But Anastasia has abandoned all pretenses of conversationalism and immediately grabs a bowl from the cabinet and grabs the crispy wings and fries by the handful and greedily piles them into a bowl.
“Tasia?” Fletch asks.
“Yes?” she innocently responds.
The tower of wings looms high over the lip of the bowl.
“That’s awfully precarious.”
“It will be fine!”
It doesn’t look like it’ll be fine. With the care of a Jenga professional, or an atomic physicist, she stacks another flat atop her tower. Dawn sighs and takes three off the top before it can all fall down.
“Hey!”
Dawn bites into one of them and the smaller woman gets the message, sullenly walking towards the big, wooden table with eight chairs around it.
“Dinner is ready,” she tells the other two.
The two on Dawn’s couch turn away from their various electronic devices – an e-reader for Dimitri, probably reading some biology journal; a big laptop for Tecumseh running some sort of spreadsheet program. Dawn doesn’t look particularly closely so she figures he’s tracking the group’s ammunition reserves. One’s in a big, billowy hockey jersey, black and gold and number 92 for Admiral Vladivostok for the Russian KHL along with black and white PJs and soft shark slippers, the other in khakis and a white t-shirt and a salmon-coloured short-sleeve polo with ‘BADMAN’ embroidered on the back. The television behind them goes to commercial.
“Jake said another hour…” Tech starts, before sighting Anastasia’s bowl of wings and fries.
“Oh, thank you Jesus.”
“I was going to die of starvation,” Dimitri adds.
Jake’s shoulders slump. He moves to the fridge, where a vacuum-sealed two-pack of back ribs lie in wait. They’re going to have to wait longer; he moves them to the freezer.
“Guess we’re having chicken wings, then,” he mutters.
Dawn just laughs, short and sharp. She fills a plate, half wings and half fries and the half of her jumbo pretzel remaining atop both.
“You coming?” she asks Jake.
“I’m not done yet,” he quietly replies, his focus returning to the dual ovens.
Dawn nods and puts together an identical plate of wings and fries for him, and heads towards the table. Nobody’s talking yet.
She puts her bowl down and doesn’t sit, settling to lean on the back of one of the chairs.
“So.”
All four look up at her.
“Fletch.”
The man’s eyebrows furrow. Creases form in his freckled face.
“Where’s the boss?”
Fletch is quiet for a moment. He’s still chewing.
“Oh!”
He wipes his fingers and mouth with a plain white napkin, then swallows.
“He said he’d be late. Has something to work on.”
“Which is…” Dawn encourages, making a ‘go on’ gesture with her right hand.
“I don’t know.”
In the background, one of the ovens beep. Jake pulls out two treys of cookies and the smell is tremendous.
“He said he was at the University hospital,” Anastasia says.
“That’s where the kids are,” Tech adds.
“Kids?”
“The trafficked Janissaries,” Tech clarifies. “I told him that we should probably bring them on board–”
“NO!”
Anastasia slams both her palms on the wooden table, shooting to her feet.
“– as interns.” Tech finishes.
“I do not want…” Anastasia starts. Her teeth grind together and she pauses to manually unclench her jaw. “American pindos on this team!”
Tech crosses his arms. The seams of his vibrant lightish-red shirt pull and strain against his deltoids and biceps and triceps.
“Tasia–”
“Do not call me ‘Tasia!”
“Fine,” Tech huffs. “Anastasia. They looked eighteen. If. Where would they go?”
“Not here! American Janissaries are Americans first, they poison everything, they will try to get us to enact their stupid country’s…cheeseburger-centric foreign policy!”
Tech cracks up.
“Don’t we already do that?” Dawn asks.
“Yes, but it will be even more! We will be reduced to guarding the McDonalds on Ashurbanipal Avenue–”
She freezes midway through. Dawn spots the hand atop her head first, fingernails painted black. Her cheeks are rosy but they’re always blushed and reddish. Maybe she’s blushing. Maybe she’s not.
“Stop doing that!”
Jake puts down the plate that Dawn made for him on the table, his hand remaining atop Anastasia’s head. The psychic claw.
“I’ll stop it when it stops working,” he says.
“She’s like a cat,” Dawn laughs.
“I am not like a cat!”
“You ever see those videos where someone throws cheese at a cat’s face and it freezes?” Tech asks.
“We give her, ah, aluminum foil hat, and we will experience peace for the first time,” Dimitri suggests.
Anastasia, meanwhile, stews in silence as everyone else laughs at her predicament – except Jake, of course. He’s gotta stay stoic for reasons he doesn’t articulate. It’s equally as hot as it is annoying.
She fiercely turns towards Jake, the chair turning with her and sliding on the anti-scratch pads beneath each leg and he finally lets go.
“I am, willing, to hear out a reason why we should let the Americans in,” she finally says. The psychic claw works again.
“They’re kids,” Tech says.
“Probably heavily traumatized,” Dimitri adds.
“I can’t imagine that they trust anyone or anything.”
Anastasia blinks at them.
“So, you are saying that they have, ah, malleable brains? Is that the right word?”
Tech and Dimitri look at each other. Dimitri shrugs. Not his native language.
“Yes. Close enough,” Tech says.
“Everyone’s brains are malleable,” Jake softly adds.
Dawn can’t help but grin at him.
“No, not like that, it’s a metaphor–”
“I know what it means.”
Fletch stands up, sends the chair backwards along the floor with a squeak.
“I don’t know,” Jake says. “I don’t want to have to deal with, you’know, glorified child soldiers.”
“We were doing worse at the same age,” Dawn replies.
“I know, but who are they? Where did they come from? Was it a legitimate school or one of those schools in American that exists to traffic poor people to rich people?
“So you don’t think they’ll stand up in a fight.”
“I don’t want to have to deal with, you’know, two dead kids because they freaked out and died because of something easily preventable, you’know?”
The peppering of ‘you’know’s sparks Dawn’s mind. It means he’s genuine, speaking off the top of his head.
“But isn’t the entire purpose of the Santa Anna Academy to traffic people from Latin America to the States?” Tech asks. “And Sophia turned out well enough.”
“But Santa Anna has prestige,” Anastasia replies. “It is, biggest Academy in Mexico! Biggest in Latin America! Significant difference between that and Hamburger International Janissary School in, <
Her and hamburgers.
Fletch interrupts, returning with a plate full of cookies and brownies and two chocolate glazed donuts. He has the build of a long-distance runner so Dawn wonders where all those calories are going.
“Did you make these?” Fletch asks, turning to Jake.
“Yes.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
Fletch pauses for a moment.
“Really?”
“What exactly are the words that you want me to say?”
“He wants you to admit that you did not make all of these,” Anastasia tells him. Her teeth grind on what seems to be gristle from a drumstick.
Fletch takes a bite of one of the donuts.
“These taste like those donuts that Torus Donuts down the street makes–”
“What are you, some sort of treat connoisseur?” Tech asks.
“What do I get from lying about this?” Jake asks, putting Fletch deep in pensive thought. The concept that Torus Donuts has a website with some of their recipes front and center seems to escape his mind. Anastasia takes this moment of surrender and strikes accordingly.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
<
She says this with full knowledge of his current engagement to his fiancé back in the States; nevertheless Dimitri cracks up. Fletch doesn’t speak Russian so he pays it no mind and instead pulls out a tablet from an inside pocket of his blazer.
“Since the Chief is late, I guess I’m in charge of the, um, after-action report roundup–”
“Spectacular?” Dawn suggests, hoping to euthanize this dying sentence.
“Sure. Whatever. We have…” Fletch pulls up a checklist on the tablet, and then places it dead center on the table. It projects a hologram of said list above itself, shimmering blue.
“Dealt!” He crosses off the top item on the list: New Janissaries. Below it are listed, ‘Bridge Explosion,’ ‘Human Trafficking,’ ‘Dawn’s Special Friends,’ ‘Armor Performance,’ and ‘Team Readiness.’
“-with The American question.”
“We have not,” Anastasia growls.
“So, next is the, um, Bridge Explosion.” Fletch ignores her.
Everyone’s heads turn to Dawn. She’s supposedly the one in charge.
“None of the three are here. All we know is that they had an aether-charged explosive of significant power and that’s it.”
“Your friend says that they asked about aether weaponry before they were captured,” Jake says.
That gets Dawn thinking. She pauses, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Friend?” Fletch asks.
“One of the ‘informants’ that she rescued,” Dimitri answers, finger quotes surrounding ‘informants.’ He turns to Dawn. “Right?”
“Yeah.”
“Tall one or big one?”
“Uh, the short one.”
“If he is short then I am short, which is unacceptable. He is not short, he is big and wide, like…like bullfrog, you forget how big they are.”
“That makes no goddamn sense,” Tech replies.
“Because you have never seen bullfrog.”
“Dez said that–”
“His name is Dez?” Tech interrupts. Dawn puts her chin in her hand, right elbow digging into the wooden table. She glares at him with her multicoloured eyes.
Tech puts his hands up in mock surrender.
“I apologise. Goodness.”
“Ok.” Dawn takes a deep breath. Nobody interrupts her this time. “Desmond, bullfrog, Claire, tall one. Desmond said that the Ikhwan took them into custody after they asked them about aether weaponry.”
“And then an aether-charged bomb explodes and almost kills Xiuying and Evelyn,” Tech adds.
“And Sophia,” Dawn adds.
“And Sophia.”
“And then Americans come along and drop bombs on our heads,” Dimitri replies. “We were on bridge of ship. Found shipping manifest, very exciting. Then…” He mimes an explosion with his hands and a Bwoooo.
“Maybe they thought that this Dezmond character had insider information,” Anastasia suggests. She forces the ‘z’ into his name.
“Maybe,” Dawn replies.
“You can acquire aether-charged weaponry very easily if you have enough money and know who to call.”
“Do you have enough money and know who to call?” Dawn asks.
Anastasia takes a bite of a flat, spits a thin bone back into her bowl. She shakes her head side-to-side.
“I’ll ask him tomorrow,” Tech says. “If you’ll let me interrogate the two.”
Dawn considers it until a quick rapping at the door breaks her concentration. Fletch rises from his seat –
“I’ll get it.”
And everyone watches as he pulls the door inward and comes face-to-face with Ryan Witherspoon.
ꙮ
<
There is one thing that Dawn agrees with Sophia about regarding the firstborn son of American excess. He looks great. Shame about the rest. He decided to show up with his hair long and loose to his shoulders, about as long as Jake’s and equally as dense, wearing a jean jacket with a navy-blue Dallas Cowboys star on the shoulders and acid washed jeans. Denim-on-denim in the year of our lord 2104. He looks like a cross between Achilles and Adonis and Thor but he dresses how a dumb guy would think a cool guy dresses. Explains the rest. His tan is startlingly bronze in the orangey glow of lightbulbs.
“Is Sophia here?” he asks.
Everyone looks at everyone else. Did he not get the memo?
“She barfed blood on your shoes!” Dawn yells at him. He cannot be this dumb.
“Well, is she in the hospital? Is she getting better?”
Dawn looks at Jake, the last one to check in on her hours ago, and the look she receives gives her a near-telepathic recreation of Sophia vomiting up bloodied vomit into her toilet, then retreating, taking a sip of a hospital-given electrolyte-heavy drink and checking her social media and continuing to apply bright pink acrylics to her nails. Or something like that. It sounds like something she’d do.
“I think she got worse,” Jake lies.
“Worse?”
“She’ll be fine in a day or so. Don’t worry. It’s worse the second time. Plus, she has her condition–”
“Condition?”
Jake looks at Dawn. Didn’t he date her? His silver eyes ask her.
Ryan exhales through his nose.
“Easy for you to say.”
Jake doesn’t respond.
Ryan finally steps into the room and looks side to side. His blue-and-white New Balances remain on his feet despite everyone else’s shoes neatly packed away within eyeshot. He whistles, almost impressed.
“Almost as nice as my place,” he says, looking straight at Dawn. It’s not. It’s too sparse. It needs paintings on the walls, but Dawn wants prints of John Martin paintings and Jake wants to bring his competition shooting trophies out of their cardboard boxes.
“Unlike you, I’m busy,” she replies.
He just raises an eyebrow. There’s an unspoken, I don’t cosplay spec-ops and fuck heiresses on the side to the sentence. She hopes he got it. His eyes glance to the television. There’s a commercial for the newest model of F-150. Five-forty-nine a month in financing. Runs on aether-injected gasolines and/or duo-Glyhyde fuels. Very fancy.
“Where’d you get all this?” he asks, looking at the food.
He swipes a chicken wing from the box. Slim pickings but he grabs a respectably sized drumstick.
“I made most of it,” Jake replies.
“The wings are from the Wing Factory!” Fletch replies.
“Oh, sick,” Ryan quietly says, before grabbing a bowl and filling it to the brim just like Anastasia did. He piles the fries underneath and the wings on top so the juices and sauces drip down and marinate the fried potatoes. He walks and takes one of the open seats and sits and then notices everyone staring at him.
“What?” he finally asks.
Tecumseh finishes a sip of water, clears his throat.
<
“I know that you’re not your father,” Tech continues for her, taking a more measured approach. “And that you’re not responsible for when and where the air strikes occurred.”
“They could have fucking killed us!” Anastasia says again. She stands to her full sixty-one inches, the chair sliding back with a squeak.
Ryan’s pale blue eyes go wide. He just wants a chicken wing and he’s getting interrogated.
“They hit the dockyard storage facility, specifically warehouse three, which was right next to us. Where we were treating a group of civilians,” Tech explains. “Human trafficking victims.”
“Look at my face!” Anastasia orders him. She points to Charizard, sideways across her nose. “This is what happened! What the fuck are you thinking?”
“It wasn’t my call! I didn’t say, ‘hey, bomb the dockyard while the Janissaries are there,’ Palantir said–”
“Palantir says a lot! Palantir did not predict fucking aether bomb on river fort!”
“Listen! They saw something about the Ikhwan having ‘an ace in the hole’ and then extrapolated that to be a nuclear weapon–”
“America loves the idea of nuclear weapons in Iraq. Cannot get enough nuclear weapons in Iraq!”
She hangs her head, exhales angrily.
<
“Listen. I’ll be at tomorrow’s meeting. I’ll try to get my dad to bring it up for you guys, okay?”
“I’ll be there too,” Dawn interjects. “So you fucking better.”
“Just, don’t – let’s not rehash our argument in front of the chairmen, okay?”
“I’m a professional!”
“Me too!”
The two glare at each other, mean enough to blast through a battleship’s hull. His eyes are electric blue. Her hands white-knuckle, her fingernails digging into her palms. If she didn’t chew them short she’d be leaking crimson.
“Weren’t you bringing your mates?” Tech asks.
Ryan leans back, breaking off his psychic battle with Dawn. Her hands unwind.
“Well, Paulie was going to come but his girlfriend wanted to go on a date tonight, and when I went to get Flynn he told me he had, uh, underestimated some edibles.”
Anastasia snorts. Almost a laugh.
“And you don’t want me to bring Lior anywhere. If it was my choice I’d replace him with someone else.”
“Isn’t it your choice?” Jake asks.
“Paulie likes him, and I like Paul. So I keep him around, because Paulie’s the best shot I know.”
“Better than Jacob?” Anastasia asks.
“Better than me?” Dimitri also asks. The Russian and Belarussian look at each other. They aren’t pleasant looks.
“I don’t know. Ask him. It’s just me here–”
“Eating our food,” Anastasia mutters.
“Where’s the guy who invited me anyways?”
A rhythmic knocking rings out from the door, a seven-syllable children’s song, and Fletch groans and gets up again.
“You just had to mention him, didn’t you,” he tells Ryan.
“Tell him we’re busy!” Dawn yells.
“We don’t want to hear about Jesus anymore,” Tech adds.
“I’ll just tell him we’re all Muslims now,” Fletch replies, before opening the door again.
Nobody is shocked to see Scott Davison. He’s wearing the same suit as before, black blazer and pants, the bulletproof vest discarded. Underneath his black blazer is a light blue button up. He doesn’t wear a tie.
But behind him are two other figures. Dawn doesn’t recognize them. One is short and tan, skin coppery, his hair black as coal and his eyes pale green, wearing a scraggly, patchy beard. His moustache doesn’t connect at the philtrum under his nose. There’s a certain youthful charm to him; he’s maybe an inch below Commander Davison’s five-ten. The other is tall, tall, tall. Taller than Dawn and Jake and Ryan, about as tall as Tecumseh, six-six or six-seven at the least. Atop her head was a mane of golden blonde hair that stretched to the small of her back. Her face was long and sharp, her skin was fair but tanned and her eyes were a warm brown. Neither of them look older than eighteen.
Dawn looks at Anastasia. She’s glaring at the kids, but in her eyes are a glimmer of recognition. These are the kids.
They’re wearing identical outfits like uniforms. Black blazers and pants, a white undershirt, and a black tie. They have worn-in shoes on their feet. Dawn figures that the Chief stopped at the nearest thrift store before heading here.
The sight of him sends Ryan retreating to the safety of the couch. He brings his bowl of food with him. Blood-feud shit, Dawn figures.
“I’m late, right?” the Chief asks.
“No, sir. Right on time,” Fletch responds. He’s not gonna tell him that he’s late. Dawn won’t either.
Davison walks into the room like he owns the place – technically, he does. Or at least C-SPEAR does.
“What’ve I missed?”
He raids the island table. He grabs a bowl and fills it with grapes and strawberries and slices of apples and pears. A fruit salad that had up until now been untouched by the carnivorous occupants.
Dawn looks around. They all look back at her. She’s supposed to be the one in charge around here!
“Well, sir,” she starts, standing up, careful not to squeak the chair against the hardwood underfoot. “We can’t talk about the bomb because the three who were there are out of commission. We can’t talk about the informants because we need them to talk first. And we can’t talk about the human trafficking because, um…”
She trails off, looking at the doorway. The two kids stand outside.
“What’s with the kids?”
Behind her, Anastasia has pushed her food to the side and leans forward, her chin nesting itself on the upper of her crossed forearms. She still glares at the two.
“The kids?” Davison asks.
He turns back around. They don’t budge.
“You can, you’know, come in,” Dawn says.
The two glance at each other. The smaller boy carefully steps in, one of the well-worn, green-and-black Nikes stepping on the welcome mat. It doesn’t trigger a landmine so he steps inside and the tall girl follows. She absent-mindedly ducks her head under the frame even though it’s seven feet tall.
Their eyes are wide. If Tech and Anastasia’s reports were correct, they had spent the large portion of who knows how long stuck in a shipping crate filled with the dead and dying. It doesn’t smell like rot – instead, the diffuser in the corner fills the room with a gentle myrrh smell.
“Ex~cuse me?” the boy asks. His voice cracks midway through the question.
Nobody cracks up. Anastasia suppresses a laugh, strangling it until it emerges from behind pressed-together lips as a squeak.
“Um, can, um, can we–”
He looks to the island and all it’s food.
“Go nuts,” Dawn tells the two.
They warily make their way over and then proceed to stuff plates and bowls as full of stuff as they possibly can. They look around to find a place to sit isolated from the intimidating adults and settle on a pair of barstools tucked underneath.
“So.” Dawn looks at Davison again. “The children.”
“Cyrus,” Davison says, pointing to the boy. “And Jasmine.” He points to the girl. “They say they’re Janissaries.”
“You believe them?”
“We have no reason not to. Why else would American teenagers be trafficked to Nineveh in a shipping container?”
Nobody has an answer. The two loudly gulp down their meals across the apartment. All the smart human traffickers get legal visas for their cargo. A shipping container feels 17th century.
“I can’t find out where they came from, which academies they graduated from, the company that bought their contracts, really, not much of anything, you’know?”
Tech raises his hand.
“This isn’t grade school, Mister Sherman.”
Davison stabs a piece of apple with a fork. Then a violet grape, then a green wedge of kiwi. He eats them all. He remains standing at the head of the table, the back to the television, opposite to Dawn. News about something stupid. Sanctions on the regime in Paraguay, talk of a Triple Alliance between Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, old histories coming back around. The Americans don’t know what to think because South American politics beyond capital extraction are mysteries to them.
“The people guarding that ship weren’t Ikhwan,” Tech says.
Anastasia suddenly stands up. A glow illuminates her eyes.
“Right! They said they were from ‘Permanent Solutions Security’ or something equally ridiculous.”
“And the ship that the two kids came on made it past the blockade,” Dawn adds.
“What are you implying, kid?”
Dawn shrugs.
“Not a clue.”
“But you smell a mystery, right?”
Dawn smells chicken wings.
“Sure. But what about them?”
Davison turns, eyes his new recruits. By now, Jake has silently made his way around the table and to Dawn’s side.
“You’re an upstanding young woman–”
That is received by an uproar of laughter by Dimitri and Anastasia and Tech. Dawn and Jake ignore them.
“And I believe that you can give these two the guidance that they almost certainly haven’t had.”
“You want us to, what, mentor, these kids?”
Davison doesn’t blink.
“Yes.”
Dawn looks at Jake. Jake looks at Dawn. They telepathically agree that they’re not ready for even a simulacrum of parenthood. Not even a crumb of a simulacrum.
But…
“We don’t get to say no, do we?” Dawn asks.
Davison smiles brightly.
“Absolutely not.”
Dawn gives up and starts pacing back and forth. The urge for nicotine surrounds her, envelops her, but she made a promise to Jake; no smoking in the apartment. And she can’t just flee to the balcony for a smoke. Her boss is here!
Jake stays still. Calm as lake water. Tech crosses his arms in front of his chest and Anastasia has returned to staring daggers at the two kids and Fletch has risen and retrieved a pair of beer cans from the fridge, two of Dawn’s beers, and given one to Dimitri. Mitri studies it – a Sargon the Great IPA, locally produced, lemon-flavoured; ‘A Drink for the King of Kings!’ it says.
Dawn sighs.
“Alright.”
She faces the five.
“They’re on the team.”
Anastasia exhales through clenched teeth. She might shatter a molar if she clenches her jaw any harder. Tech nods. It was his idea, after all. Fletch scarfs down a pair of brownies. And Dimitri takes a sip of that IPA, and winces at the taste.
“But no combat though. I’m not taking them into a fight.”
“If it gets dire, they can stay in the back and take potshots,” Jake adds.
“We’re not having ‘dead kids’ on our conscious.”
The two kids, no, Cyrus and Jasmine, look at them from the island. It’s hard to read their expressions through their sleep deprived eyes. If Dawn was one of them she’d be taking offense at her perceived uselessness. But she’s not one of them.
“Alright, kid,” Davison says. He goes to pat Dawn on the shoulder, then freezes. Like he remembers that he’s not supposed to do that. “I’ve gotta go. Report won’t write itself.”
“Why don’t you make Fletch do that?”
With a mouthful of brownie, Fletch gives his reply.
“What?”
“He might get it wrong,” Davison responds.
“No I wouldn’t!”
Davison looks past Dawn at his underling. Fletch swallows the brownie.
“Sir.”
Then Davison grins at him, and the poor 2-I-C returns to his food.
“You’ll watch the kids?”
“We’re not babysitters,” Jake responds.
“They’re not babies.”
He hands Dawn a pair of white keycards, along with a beige folder, then turns and heads for the door. The bowl of fruit salad remains in his hands along with the fork he’s using.
“Long day tomorrow. Might as well get some rest.”
Then he looks at the two kids, then leaves.
Dawn and Jake share a tired, tired glance, then look at the three. Anastasia has sat back up and is rotating that right shoulder forwards and back again, a hand on it. Tech taps his fork on the edge of his plate. Dimitri takes another sip of the beer and winces again, like he expected it to be any better the second time. Then he goes for a third.
Nobody wants to look at her or each other or the new kids until someone does something.
Dawn breaths and opens the folder. The first thing she sees is a man’s face – round and pale and bearded, with dark brown hair cut short to his scalp. His eyes are even darker than his hair, small and close to each other. His name is Khanpasha Mateev. The folder says that he is a high-ranking figure in the Ikhwan, and maybe the last capable of wielding any influence beyond that of a small-time street gang. It’s a capture/kill order. Either is preferable. Davison knows how Dawn and Jake work.
“New mission?” Tech finally asks, breaking the silence.
Dawn nods and tosses it on the dinner table. Tech picks it up and flips through the contents, into the pages that Dawn didn’t bother with.
“Well?”
Tech closes the folder, then hands it to Anastasia and leans back in his chair. The short woman looks at it severely. Maybe she knows something about this guy.
“Well.”
“It appears we will be advancing–” Dimitri starts, then burps. “Ah, cheeseburger-centric foreign policy objectives.”
Ryan, from the couch, turns and narrows his eyes at the metaphor. How long has he been watching?
Anastasia hands the folder to Dimitri, then drops her forehead to the table with a thud. She has a woodpecker’s skull which keeps her from concussing herself, or something.
Tech looks at Dawn and shrugs. Sure, it was his idea, but now they’re Dawn and Jake’s problem.
Dawn sighs and turns to the kids. She stifles a yawn, before going over to them. They’re stuffing their faces with whatever they can get their hands on and creating a real mess of crumbs on the table and stool and floor.
“So.”
Cyrus and Jasmine freeze. They look at each other. Dawn raises the keycards.
“Long day?”
“Yes, ma’am,” the girl – Jasmine replies.
“Me too. Wanna see your rooms?”
They both stare, dumbfounded at her.
“Do we have to share a room?” Cyrus asks.
“If you want to.”
They glance at each other, then like magnets of the same polarity their gazes scream apart. Like they caught each other simultaneously. Dawn remembers those moments. She used to be eighteen, like, four years ago or something. Maybe five. How long has it been since 2099?
“I’m, good, yeah. I’m okay with my own room,” Cyrus says. Jasmine nods too.
Dawn looks back to Jake, or where he used to be. He’s vanished and reappeared at the sink, hand-washing dishes and before putting them in the dishwasher. It seems counter-productive.
“Probably not a good idea to make teenagers share an apartment together,” Tech calls out from the table. “We don’t need another version of you and Jake.”
Dimitri laughs. Then burps again. Dawn ignores the two.
She holds out the keycards. Jasmine takes the one on the left for room 106-04, Cyrus the one on the right for 107-03. Vacant but fully furnished, in case of scenarios like this.
“If you’re ready, I’ll show you around.”
Jasmine nods first, and rises, and keeps rising. Man, she’s tall. The top of Cyrus’s head barely reaches past her shoulder.
Then she leads them out of her room.
ꙮ
Anastasia furrows her brow, her eyes dancing across the paper. She swiped it back after Dimitri didn’t even bother to pick it up. Articles titled <<27 dead in Chechnya Terror Attack>> and <
Something stirs within her.
What’s the point of censorship when you have mastery of context?
<
Tech just laughs at her misfortune. His laugh is deep and rich and makes Anastasia feel, she doesn’t know. Less bad, perhaps. Less mad, for sure. Its unfair how handsome he and Jake are. Anastasia can’t bring herself to look at either of them lest her rosy cheeks redden further. She deeply breaths to keep herself from feeling lightheaded.
“Jake, what do you think?” he asks.
From the sink, Jake looks up. He’s washing the dishes too big for the dishwasher. He looks at them blankly. Best not to take him out of his zone.
“Hmm?”
“The new kids?”
“Yeah?”
“What do you think?”
He just shrugs.
“Dunno. Should be interesting.”
“That tall one is kinda hot, huh?” Dimitri asks.
“She’s eighteen.”
“Its only four years between you and her!”
“She’s eighteen.”
“Has that stopped you before?” Dimitri grins at Anastasia. His face is gaunt. He looks like a vampire, or a vampire model. Or a heroin addict. Smells of lemons and beer. Either the IPA was heavy or he’s gotten even more lightweight. How the fuck can a Russian be lightweight? Fucking Pacific Coaster.
“It was the other way around.”
<
“Honestly, I think it’ll be interesting,” Tech replies. “We’ve never had interns before.”
“Of course you’re excited for this,” she tells him. She doesn’t dare look at him lest his smile tear her asunder.
“I think they’ll be better than Dimitri in a few weeks,” Tech adds. Dimitri turns and rifles the now empty can of beer at his noggin. It flies over his head and softly clatters on the floor. Out of the corner of her eye, Anastasia sees Jake glaring at the offender to basic guest etiquette.
“Hey!”
The voice comes from Ryan. The other handsome man in the room. But in a way Anastasia can approach.
There’s a man on the television screen. He’s big and broad-shouldered, wearing a thick caterpillar over his lip with flecks of grey. His face is big and round and vaguely red from the perpetual Nineveh heat and he wears a big, black Stetson. He looks like a cross between a cowboy, an oil prospector, and an NFL offensive lineman.
The chyron screams in all-capitals: PRESIDENT AJAX ARCHER
To his fore is a microphone stand that he dwarfs and has to lean over to properly speak into. Behind him is an enormous relief of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift, fair-skinned British Redcoats defending a useless piece of fortified land against the Zulu impi, thousands strong.
Ryan unmutes him during the middle of his speech. Behind him, to his right, is a man who looks like Ryan but older, more severe, hair cut short and wrinkles stretching from his eyes. But those eyes are the same electric blue. The insignia of an eagle is pinned to his lapel, and the name WITHERSPOON is engraved on a nametag.
“– because we undertook this operation to make living in this city safe, for Christians and Jews and Muslims.”
Nobody dares interrupt the speech.
“The people that we targeted hate us, for our lifestyle, our freedoms, our religion, but that’s not all. They hate us because they’re jealous of us, what we have verses what they do not. They would rather destroy what we have built – in this country – together – as one country – because they cannot stand to see our vision of the twenty-second century succeed.
“There are going to be the sort of fools that will whine about civilian casualties and collateral damage, but they are wrong. For peace to be brought here, after over a hundred years of incarnate chaos, we have to destroy those who want to destroy us. We have tried every other method at our disposal. They have fully brought this upon themselves, and there are no civilians who would ever dream of cavorting with those we have targeted today.
“This country and the country of the United States of America are more than father and son. An enemy of us is an enemy of the United States, and an enemy of the United States is an enemy of us. We are as intertwined as Jesus Christ is to the Lord God.
“I will never make apologies for our actions, no matter the facts and no matter the narrative. On my honor, I will never apologize for the Twin Rivers Republic.
“And I will never apologize for the United States of America.”