TODAY

Guatemala

Damien could barely see Nasira’s face in the cold glow of the speedometer, but he knew the fire in her eyes had extinguished hours ago. It was past midnight and she was running on fumes. There were no street lamps on this lonely stretch of Guatemalan road and all Damien could see outside were distant mountains, flat ground, and occasional spots of jungle. Sometimes he wished he had Jay’s pentachromatic vision rather than enhanced hearing.

‘How are you holding up?’ Damien asked, swallowing a metallic aftertaste.

‘Your new passport’s in the rucksack,’ Nasira said.

‘Right.’ He reached down with bandaged hands, plucked the Greek passport from the open zipper and stuffed it in his pocket. ‘You didn’t answer my question.’

‘I’m all right.’ She winced. ‘Could be better.’

Damien cleared his throat. ‘Since when have you and Jay been—’

In the darkness, she glared at him.

‘—on good terms?’ he said. ‘You used to hate him.’

Nasira resumed her focus on the road ahead. ‘He grew on me. Unfortunately.’

‘We’ll find him,’ Damien said. ‘We’ll get him back.’

‘Don’t need your words of reassurance.’

A passing car illuminated her face. He could see tears on her cheeks. She wiped them quickly.

‘Just want the son of a bitch back,’ she said.

‘Wherever he is, whatever’s happening to him, he knows you’re out there looking for him. He knows you won’t give up.’

She shook her head. ‘He doesn’t know that.’

‘You’re the reason he has hope.’

‘He’s the reason I have hope.’ Nasira swallowed. ‘I know you know who took him. Just spit it out.’

‘Facility in Colombia,’ he said. ‘One of those border control officers told me. Right before I killed him.’

She didn’t look at him. ‘The Fifth Column are holding him there.’

‘That’s not logical,’ Damien said. ‘The Fifth Column only control Central America and the United States. They don’t hold much ground in Colombia.’

Nasira stared ahead. ‘That’s rare these days.’

‘If it was the Fifth Column, they’d take him back to the States. Like they were about to do with me.’

‘Colombia’s a nice out-of-the-way place to interrogate Jay,’ Nasira said. ‘Give him a lobotomy and throw him in the ocean, Bin Laden style. Or Bin Laden stunt double style, whatever.’

Damien hoped she was wrong. Rescuing Jay from some sort of shady underworld was one thing. Rescuing him from the Fifth Column was another entirely.

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

With one hand, Nasira shoved a cigarette in her mouth and lit it.

‘Do you have to smoke?’ he asked.

‘Yep,’ she said. ‘You know, there’s one thing he said to me that I’ll never forget.’

‘What’s that?’

‘He told me you were his brother.’

‘He lost his brother when he was young,’ Damien said.

Under the whisper of moonlight, he watched the jagged mountains on their left.

‘No, I mean he said it for real. That’s how he sees it.’ Nasira sucked on her cigarette, then opened her window a crack. ‘And it made me think. We’re all family now. We’re not programmed zombies running jobs for the Fifth Column anymore. We’re on our own and we’re all we’ve got.’ She breathed sharply. ‘I don’t want to lose that.’

Damien watched her silhouette. ‘That’s probably the most emotional thing you’ve said in your life.’

She flicked ash out the window. ‘If you tell anyone, I’ll shoot you.’

Damien wound his window down a fraction and breathed in the night. ‘You know, there is someone else who can help us.’

‘Sophia?’ Nasira laughed. ‘She’s on the other side of the planet right now. Doing something … more important. I’m not gonna drag her all the way down here just for this.’

‘She’d do it in a heartbeat, you know,’ he said. ‘You said it yourself, we’re all we have.’

‘I don’t want to be the one calling Sophia every time we screw up,’ she said. ‘We just got to find out who has Jay. Then we get him the hell out. We can tell her after.’

‘And if we can’t get him out?’ he asked.

‘Then all hands on deck.’ Nasira closed as much distance as she could, but the bus still had an hour on them. They’d tracked it on a northeastern route to the coast, passing a large lake and forest. They needed more time to catch up, but Damien wasn’t sure they had it.

‘Puerto Barrios,’ Damien said. ‘That’s where the bus is going.’

‘Putting ’em on a ship to Colombia.’ Nasira sounded uncertain. ‘But where in Colombia?’

Damien checked her phone. ‘I don’t know, but we’re not too far behind them now.’

Nasira was already accelerating. They needed to close the gap fast. If they missed their chance to see where in Colombia the two occupants on the bus were transferred, they’d miss their shot at Jay. And Damien wasn’t too keen on going through another processing station again.

‘Do you ever wonder what happened to all those Chinese and Russian recruits?’ he asked.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I already know what happened.’

‘Thrown in prison?’ he asked.

She snorted. ‘The official story is bullshit and you know it. Fifth Column had them put down.’

‘I don’t believe that. The Fifth Column put a lot of money into Project GATE. Millions into each of us. They wouldn’t waste that unless they had to.’

Nasira shrugged. ‘Maybe they used them for testing. Made sure the pseudogenes worked before they activated them in us.’

‘What if we aren’t the only ones who escaped?’

Nasira drew on her cigarette. ‘The Fifth Column wouldn’t allow them to exist.’

‘They don’t allow us to exist either,’ he said.

‘Yeah, and it shows.’ She drove in silence a while longer.

Damien kept an eye out for the bus as Nasira played catch up, but even after an hour he still couldn’t see a thing.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

‘What the hell for?’ Nasira discarded her cigarette out the window.

‘I should still be on that bus. It was the one thing I had to do.’

‘Damien.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Shut up. Not your fault. And we ain’t got time to feel sorry for ourselves.’

He opened and closed his bandaged hands. The pain was dull. ‘I know, I just … yeah. You’re right.’

‘I’m always right,’ she said. ‘Except for the part where Jay got captured.’

‘Take your own advice. It’s not your fault.’

Her fingers tightened over the steering wheel. ‘It is my fault.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Damien asked.

‘We had an argument and I told him to get out of my face. “Get out of my face” wasn’t supposed to mean “Take your passport and get your ass kidnapped by the Fifth Column.”’

‘Some argument,’ he said.

Nasira drove over a bridge, crossing the narrow gap in a lake. For the first time, he could see the bus in the darkness ahead. Its headlamps splashed two cones of light on the asphalt.

Damien checked her phone. They were only a fraction behind the tracker now.

‘Just in time,’ he said. ‘We’re at the port.’

Nasira slowed down, giving the bus a chance to enter the port.

‘We need to watch the transfer,’ she said.

‘Assuming it’s a vessel like you said,’ Damien said. ‘How are we going to tag it?’

‘I have one more tracker.’ She stopped the vehicle just outside the port and opened her door. ‘And a waterproof Pelican case with magnets.’

Damien wasn’t sure if she was joking. ‘You’re going underwater?’

‘Don’t got much choice,’ Nasira said. ‘Someone didn’t stay on the bus like a good boy, did they?’

‘Yeah, well someone got cavity searched.’

Nasira stifled a laugh as she got out of the car, then leaned in. ‘That’s totally worth the swim.’