CHAPTER 34 - LEOPARD

Hunger—true hunger—was not something you forgot. The closest you might come would be whenever you were asleep, and SOLAR knew it. They didn’t feed him, and the lights and tuneless noise of his cell didn’t let him sleep. So, the hollow sensation in his gut settled in like a dog with an old bone.

Leopard tried to ignore it, comforted himself with the fact that he had been hungry before, had starved before, had survived before. For days at a time, he had gone without food, and all it’d done was teach him that the most dangerous animal was one that was starving.

If he had done it before, he could do it again.

The thought might have soothed his mind, but it did nothing for his stomach. His gut twisted, grumbling and growling, but that was unimportant. The mind was the weak point; the lack of sleep crept into it like acid. No matter how much his body complained, Leopard knew it could endure for weeks, but that fact was no more filling than his previous thoughts. His head ached. His mind drifted.

The headache was his only constant past the first day. True to Aegis’ word, no one had given him any food. Only water and, even then, just enough to survive on. His tongue felt thick enough that he could choke on it. But were that to happen, he was sure that someone would rush in to resuscitate him.

After all, you couldn’t suffer if you were dead.

She’d said he’d be in there for a week, but he might as well have been in a pocket dimension. By the second day (or was it the third? Leopard didn’t know for sure) he’d lost track of time. Either way, one week was nothing. He could push his body to three. All he had to do was keep his mind sharp.

SOLAR was starving him. They wanted him to crack and to break and to give in to the gnawing hollow in his belly, to do or say anything to fill it, to betray the others. That thought allowed Leopard to fight back and hold on, inch by starving inch. They wouldn't let him die, not when he had something they wanted—Monkey and all of his secrets.

But do you know who would let you die?

The voice belonged to the old man on the Adriatic. With the flag-badge of Sudan and the request for him to stop fighting and six neat holes in his torso. Time swam in strange motions. During one of those motions, the old man sat down next to him on the bunk and said something about how leopards can’t change their spots despite the blood pouring out of his chest and mouth, and that was about when Leopard realized he was hallucinating.

Sometimes there were others, too. People he had killed, and he wanted to say he was sorry to their formless, indistinct shapes, but he wasn’t sure if he was. For a time, it was Tiger, that charred hollow in her side, and when she took a drag on her cigarette, she exhaled through her ribs. Sometimes it was Monkey, sitting there with a forlorn smile, like it was all a big misunderstanding.

Years ago, in another life, someone Leopard had cared for—or thought he had cared for—had told him something regarding Monkey: I hope you see what he’s doing to you.

When Blueshift opened the door and came for him on the eighth day of his imprisonment, Leopard finally began to see it. Or maybe he was imagining that, too.

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“Walk,” Blueshift said.

This time, the cape led him somewhere different. It hurt to walk and, no matter how much Leopard concentrated, his legs only managed an awkward stagger. The halls passed in a floaty blur—first in flashes, then in long drags. Suddenly, Leopard was just in a bare room, and Aegis was there, standing on the other side of a small table, arms crossed.

“Blueshift,” Aegis said, “leave us.”

“Of course, Captain.”

The door slid open and shut. Leopard wavered on his feet. Kept his eyes on Aegis, crushed the urge to curl down around his belly, rest his weight against the cool metal table, to find some measure of relief from his imploded stomach, to conserve as much energy as possible. Every second he resisted was one more second for him to...

God, it was so hard to think.

Aegis threw something down atop the table.

“Look at it,” she said.

Leopard did so. It took him a moment to focus on it. It was a small, flat piece of paper, maybe the size of his palm. He flipped it over, saw a face of a man he didn’t recognize. Dark-skinned, smiling. Not the man from the Adriatic. For some reason, the shadow of relief fell over him.

“Dead,” said Aegis.

She tossed down another piece of paper, another photo. This time, it was a woman. A blonde with skin the color of honey. Leopard didn’t recognize her, either. But you know what’s happening here, kid, don'tcha, Tiger said, and he reached out to sweep the photos from the table.

“Dead,” said Aegis, again.

She threw down more photos. One, two, three, and they kept coming. Over and over, they piled up on top of the table, scattered in front of Leopard like a gallery of missing persons—or lost souls.

“Dead,” said Aegis, her voice rising in intensity with each photo that landed in front of him. “Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead!”

Her words brought with them memories—faces, feelings. A long trail of dead and dying that lashed halfway around the world, terminating on this very island, perhaps even just outside the room he was standing in.

The retort rose up from somewhere deep in his belly: “I didn’t kill them!”

“Didn’t you?” Aegis asked. “You’re sure? How sure? You can barely stand. All of these people are dead, and it’s all because of you. Of your little band. Dead, dead, dead!”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

More photos. The room was spinning—from hunger or from shock or from despair, Leopard couldn’t tell which. The vertigo swallowed him up and became everything. He steadied himself against the table, and it took him a moment to realize that Aegis had stopped her mantra.

“You,” he said, using his grip on the table to center himself. “You have no high ground.”

“All of these people were far more valuable than you,” Aegis said, ignoring him. “All of them were better people. All of them had families and friends, people who cared about them, people who are now being given the call that their mother, brother, sister, father, son, daughter is dead. All of them gave their lives defending this fucked-up island. And you? You killed them. You murdered them.”

His breathing was heavy and ragged. “I didn’t—” Had to lick his lips. “No one who serves the IESA is innocent. It was self-defense. It’s a war. One that you’ll lose.”

“War, huh,” Aegis replied. “I was up to my knees in blood in Africa—you have no goddamn idea what war is. Self-defense? How? By what logic? God, to think that starving you would somehow make you smarter...”

“I’ll die before I talk.”

“Because.”

“Because I lo—” No, wrong word. “Because I’m loyal.”

Aegis shook her head. “And look where that loyalty has gotten you, you unbelievably dense motherfucker.”

Her tone was a spark. Anger ignited that imploded space in his gut, filled it. Adrenal fire tore through his core and into his limbs, empowering him, making him strong.

Leopard leapt over the table, roaring.

It was stupid. He knew it was stupid. His mind had cracked, given in. Maybe he might’ve taken her on a full belly, maybe. With real rest, and muscles that weren’t wracked by a lack of energy. As it was, he lacked both.

Aegis grabbed him, all wiry muscle under that uniform, and twisted his mad leap into the tabletop. She slammed him against the surface, cheek on metal. He struggled, writhed, kicked out at her knee and felt the blow connect.

They fell together. She got on top of them, grabbing his face, fingertips digging into his skin. She was old, but she was a fighter. Had to be to live so long. She was breathing heavily, through her teeth, in a way that always made Leopard think of a rope about to fray free. He was starving, but she was old, limited by age.

He thrashed, broke her grip, and threw her off. Had to shake his head out, brought his foot down where she had been a second before. Aegis pushed herself up, groaning. She couldn’t take many hits. Neither could he.

He stepped in, leading with a jab. She grabbed it, twisted him, kicked his legs out from under him. Got her arm around his neck and bent him back.

“You think you know what power is, you little prick?” Aegis snarled, crushing his throat in the crook of her elbow. His vision was already going grey at the edges, or maybe that was the hunger catching up to him again. He threw his head back, trying to break her nose, her teeth, but found nothing.

Aegis tightened her grip.

“Stop,” she hissed. “Just fucking stop. I don’t want to hurt you but you’re making that really fucking difficult for me.”

He didn’t want to stop, but the fire had already exhausted its meager fuel. He didn’t want to stop, but his limbs couldn’t continue. His body was giving out, and the awareness of it was a relief.

He was about to die. It was like he was thinking about someone else. He was going to die, and that was okay. If he was dead, then SOLAR wouldn’t learn anything, and Monkey would survive to continue their war, and there’d be no treachery. It’d all be okay.

Something slammed into him, or him into something—the table. Aegis yanked his arms behind his back, pressed him against the metal. “Kill me,” someone said, and maybe it was him. “Fucking do it.”

“You know what the hardest thing in the world is, kid?” Aegis said. “It’s living with what you’ve done. You know what the second is? It’s trying to change what you’ve become. Fucking easier to take the easy way out, right?”

“Fucking kill me.”

“You’re right, you know. I could get someone to rip the information from your mind, but that’d just be adding another corpse to the pile. What’s more, it’d take time and paperwork. I’m giving you a chance here, Jack, not a choice! If you’d just stop acting like the fucking revolutionary for one goddamn second!”

She slammed him against the table again. Maybe that’d be enough. Maybe he could go for her sidearm. But all he could feel was the spearpoint of her elbow between his shoulders, the way his chest and cheek were crushed against the table.

“You think being able to kill someone makes you powerful, boy? Blueshift controls gravity. And with a word, I can have him come into this room and tie you into a fucking knot.

“Me? My superpower is that he does nothing without my say-so. You know why that is? Trust and respect. But true power—real power? When you’ve got that, you don’t need to get your hands dirty in the first goddamn place!”

Gate, Leopard thought as Aegis relented, released her hold, and stepped away. She moved into his periphery as Leopard felt himself slide off the table, collapse on the floor. She was breathing heavily, rubbing her wrists, somehow looking even older.

“You want to die, don’t you?” Aegis said, sounding almost sad about it. “You attack me and figure I kill you or, if you win, my subordinate will burn you down. Spitting for hate’s sake. But trust me, you’d be doing the machine a favor if you killed me. No martyrdom today, pal—sorry.”

Blearily, from the floor, he watched Aegis pop the cap from a small bottle and down a set of pills. “Stop fighting for someone who didn’t have trust or respect for you,” Aegis said, and she had Tiger’s voice on a second channel. “Try as you might, I’m not going to let you take the easy way out.”

Something rose in his chest, swelling behind his ribs, pressing up and against his throat. His eyes were burning, and he squeezed them shut. It was only the hunger, the starvation. It wasn’t anything as insipid as tears.

Aegis crouched down next to him and set her hand on his back, her fingers on his neck. Her touch was gentle and subtle and tender, but it ripped through him from scalp to gut. Leopard shuddered once, like he’d been shot, and sucked in a breath. How long had it been since someone had touched him with genuine compassion?

It hurt terribly.

That pressurized napalm seeped up and out of his eyes, down his cheeks and over his lips, and onto the floor. “You’re not a monster, kid,” Aegis said, sighing as she stood up. “You just wish you were one.”

The door opened. “Captain,” Blueshift said. “There’s a problem.”

“Not now, Shift,” Aegis said, sounding tired and sad. “Give us twenty minutes and get him something to eat. We’ve split him open—there’s no need for any further humiliation. Now, coffee and a sandwich, please.”

The door opened, the door closed. He heard Aegis take a seat. He lay there on the floor and, in between the disgusting tears, tried to will his heart to stop, to make himself die. When Blueshift returned with the food and drink and set it on the table, Aegis stood up and offered him her hand and said, “It’s not a trick.”

He didn’t dare accept her hand, but Leopard pushed himself to standing and took the seat opposite her. He reached for the sandwich, not sure what was in it and not caring either, and took a bite. His senses returned slowly, and so did his sharpness. He came to a decision.

He agreed to talk.