CHAPTER 54 - SABRA

It was past midnight when something jarred Sabra awake. Leopard took their vehicle off-road and across a desolate plain. Sabra peered out through the windshield. The headlights illuminated only an endless dusty expanse of hardy grasses and squat, rough shrubs.

“Guess this is where we’re stopping,” Leopard said.

“I might just stay in the car,” Sabra replied.

“Do whatever you want,” he said, and hopped out, and Revenant followed.

She hadn’t said a word to her since the brawl at the mine. Or, Sabra knew, since she had asked to help her. It hurt, but more because it made her feel stupid than anything else. Revenant wasn’t a human. She’d been stupid to think of her like one.

Sighing, Sabra exited the car. The night was chilly and the unbroken landscape stretched out in all directions. It was dizzying, disorientating, and not in the curious sense of déjà vu that clung to her like a chemical burn. In Asclepion, there had always been structures, evidence of man-made habitation, things that broke up the horizon. Here, it was like she was insignificant, like if she slipped then the rotation of the world would throw her into the void.

“Should we get a fire going?” Sabra asked.

“There’s no need,” Gate said, his hands still bound. “I imagine my associates will be here within the hour.” Leopard crossed his arms, and Gate nodded to him. “You will not be harmed, any of you—you have my word.”

“Ain’t sure how much that’s worth,” Tiger said, but shrugged. “Anyway, that’s the ocean to our south. Clear skies, no light pollution. Might be able to see the Antarctic Iris. Wanna see it, Pavel?”

“I’d rather not,” he said. “Gives me the creeps.”

Sabra hadn’t ever heard of it. She looked to the horizon, where the currents stirred black and heavy, and thought she saw a glimmer of iridescence in the distance. Or maybe she was still waking up, or imagining it.

“Let’s settle in,” Leopard said. “Sabra, you want a beer?”

“Sure, pass it.”

He did. She caught it, popped it open. It tasted better than the Red she was used to, which meant she hated it, just a little. She focused on the taste and looked up, towards the sky, towards stars that were brighter and more numerous than any she had ever seen. There was insignificance there, too, but it was different. Beautiful, in a way. A design impressed upon the cosmos.

“So, what’re you all going to do when we win this thing?” Sabra asked.

“Don’t know,” Leopard said. “Probably have to go back on the run.”

Tiger sighed out a laugh. “Jack, I’m thirty-nine years old. I know this is going to cut into my image just a bit, but I’m getting tired of running.”

“You’re how old?”

“Figures you don’t know you can’t ask a lady her age.”

Jack smiled. It looked weird and alien, like it’d fall off his face, but genuine. Sabra was struck by how young he looked. He couldn’t be much older than her. “Fuck you, Sam,” he said. “Man, this feels almost normal, doesn’t it? I can’t remember the last time I just sat around like this.” His eyes went somewhere distant. “Around a fire. The six of us. Latch.”

“Here we go,” Tiger said. “Like I’m finally seeing the real boy behind the mask.”

Leopard stared into the middle distance, lost somewhere in his memories. He choked up, shook his head. “I can’t talk about this. I can’t. It rips me apart. I’ve never been normal, y’know? Normal people don’t do what I do and feel nothing. Sabra, I’m sorry—I’m so fucking sorry.”

Something had broken in him ever since he’d gone back to Monkey, perhaps ever since she’d given him the letter. It was like Leopard and Jack had their hands around each other's throats. One of them would give up first, and this tectonic divide would settle into something new. Sabra wasn’t sure she felt anything beyond a pang of empathy and, perhaps, sympathy. She wasn’t normal, either, and she never had been.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I forgive you. I am because you are.”

“Jack,” Tiger said, leaning forward. “Are you crying?”

“No,” he said, but he wiped at his face and then brushed his fingers against his jacket. “I’m just— I have to kill Elias. I have to be the one to do it. I have to make all of this right.”

“I don’t know if one more death is going to do it,” Sabra said. “I mean, how many people have we killed already?” There had to be a better way, didn’t there? The path of the hero, where nobody suffered and nobody died.

“I don’t know,” Leopard said. “I just— I can’t remember ever wanting something before. Needing things, sure.”

“And what do you want, Jack?” Fisher asked.

“I just want this to all go back the way it was.”

Fisher snorted. “Don’t we all. But take it from me, nostalgia’s a poison. You spend your time looking backward, you’ll never take a step forward.”

“Listen to your father,” Tiger said.

Leopard nodded. “I know. I just... I keep thinking that maybe I can convince him to turn away. But in my head, it’s not Elias, is it? It’s the Elias I wanted to believe in. Not the one who actually exists. But there was a time where it was just him and me. And that’s the only time in my life I didn’t feel alone.”

“Even now?” Sabra asked.

“Especially now.”

“Look,” Tiger said, stubbing out a cigarette. “If you can’t do it, Jack, that’s okay—there’s plenty of us who can.”

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Like me, Sabra thought.

Leopard shook his head. “It has to be me. He was my friend. I can make it quick. It can’t be anyone else. I have to be there, at the end. I owe him that much.”

But Sabra could hear the slight waver in his voice, that wish—that insane hope that had defied everything until this point, that had surely made his wrist twitch at the last second and put the bullet through Monkey’s cheek and not his skull. She wanted to hate him for it, but had she been in his shoes—expected to kill Jamar or Derrek or Hisae or Mike—how would she have reacted?

“But it has to be done,” she said. “If we don’t kill him, a lot of people are going to suffer. When the time comes, Jack, you can’t go rogue again. We do this together, as a team.”

“I know,” Jack snapped, and slammed his fist against the hood of the other car. And then, more quietly, as his anger snap-cooled to melancholy, “I know! God help me, I know.”

“Sam,” Sabra said, looking up to the stars, and the broken Moon and thinking of two golden suns. “Throw me another.”

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By the time they heard the low hum of an approaching aeroshuttle, Sabra was tipsy. It touched down maybe fifty meters away, unremarkable without even a Syndicate logo. Fisher went out to meet them with Gate before them and Sam at his back, rifle pressed against the base of his spine.

The floodlights on the shuttle illuminated the Syndicate party—half a dozen people with rifles, and three empowered in dark costumes. One of them hovered just above the ground. Another was juggling fireballs. The third, a man, was like a weird statue of obsidian, the light picking out every carved muscle and ligament.

Fisher, Gate and Sam stopped just short. The obsidian man stepped forward. Well, they were talking. Sabra figured there wasn’t much need to pay attention. Gate was technically a supervillain, and people always said you couldn’t trust them, but Mike had been one too, technically, and he’d been a good friend.

She wasn’t sure where Jack had gone. She couldn’t really think of him as Leopard anymore, and she wasn’t sure he could either. Revenant had slipped away from the group at some point, and Sabra wasn’t sure where she’d gone. She hauled her empty bottle back and hurled it into the distance, watched the moonlight catch it as it spun end over lip, five full rotations before it hit the ground, and it was like she had done it before.

But Revenant. She’d been stupid to look, stupid to hope, stupid to covet. When this was all over, they would go their separate ways, all of them. If Star Patrol let them leave Melbourne, of course. Fisher was right—it was the smart move, the sensible move. But you didn’t win by being sensible.

A tinny, musical sound echoed out from close by. Someone playing an electric guitar without an amp, strumming chords and plucking notes. Sabra pushed herself off the side of the SUV and headed in the direction of the music. There was only one person in the group who could play guitar, and maybe it’d be good to talk, or just to sit and listen.

Revenant sat on the roof of a burnt-out car, head bowed, and eyes closed. She played slowly, without the fervent intensity she’d seen on the Asclepion stage. Maybe halfway to her, Sabra had the impression of intruding on something private, and halted.

“Kasembe,” Revenant said, without looking up.

Sabra stepped closer as Revenant slid into a different tune, and then another. Like she was looking for something, or just unhappy with what she was finding. She was an android, sure—that wasn’t a problem. But she’d never heard of a robot that played music. Revenant settled on a piece and played it for a time, head drifting with the notes.

“Why do you play?” Sabra asked, finally.

“That’s what you came over here to ask me?” Revenant replied, still not looking up, still not opening her eyes. “Because it brings me closer to her.”

“I see.”

“You don’t, but thank you for pretending.” She kept playing. Sabra figured that was a good sign—or a bad one.

“I guess you can’t wait to get back to playing music with your band.”

“They’re not my band, Kasembe, they’re my support team.”

“But—”

“It’s easier to train a set of engineers and analysts to play instruments than the opposite. It is something that MARBLE indulges, if only so they can hold the privilege over me. An artificial intelligence like myself is merely a contrivance of the Global Security Act. A self-sufficient artificial intelligence is, according to the humans who created that aforementioned act, an existential threat.”

Was it any surprise she was so prickly, really? She wasn’t a superhero, not really. She was nothing but an appliance with a particularly long extension cord—or a chain. But she could think, couldn’t she? And feel?

“What’s MARBLE?” Sabra asked.

“Does it ever bother you that there’s so much you don’t know? Does it ever occur to you that there are problems out there you can’t solve by punching them?”

It was like she’d been slapped. She threw a verbal jab without thinking about it: “Why are you like this?”

Revenant stopped playing. She brought her head up slowly, opening her eyes. “That’s a very broad question.” She blinked once, owlishly, for effect. “Do you mean in form, personality, or history? I think my previous answer provides enough context, and that you are smart enough to realize it. Should I provide you with my entire history, Kasembe? Do you want the complete technical specifications of my chassis? What is it that you want?”

Once, her father had told her that question was the most dangerous someone could ask you, because it could let them control you. But the only answer she had was a simple one: yes, Christ and Allah, yes.

But there was a crudeness to saying that, to just admitting it. Sabra drew herself up, took a breath, and braced herself like she was stepping into the ring. Revenant continued, voice as even and precise as ever: “Because what I think you’re really meaning to ask, Kasembe, is ‘why are you such a miserable bitch?’ That was what you called me, wasn’t it? A sarcastic bitch.”

She had. That memory of them standing over Mike’s corpse was as clear as day. “Rev,” Sabra said, “I barely knew you.”

“And you know me now?”

“Not very well, sure, but I’m trying.”

Revenant shook her head, looking away.

“What do you want, Kasembe?”

“If we’re being honest, I’d like you to keep playing.”

“You’re lying.”

It was, wasn’t it? Somewhat.

“You’re just... very good with your guitar.”

“Has it occurred to you that I am able to be as proficient as I choose to be at any given task?”

“No,” Sabra said. “I’ve never thought of you like that.”

“But you’ve thought of me in other ways,” Revenant replied. “I know the truth.” She slid off the wreck of the car, landing on her feet. “I know precisely what you want from me. I can read it in the fluctuations of your body temperature, in the diameter of your pupils. So, don’t tell me this is about the guitar.”

It was like she’d been slugged in the solar plexus. Or worse than that, she’d taken enough body blows to know she could recover from those. It was like Revenant had reached for her secret thoughts and thrown them in front of her like confetti. She was naked and exposed and so very ugly, like a sea creature yanked out of its shell and left to die.

“I’m sorry,” Sabra said, and stepped away. “I overstepped. I didn’t think— I’ll just go, I’ll just go. I just thought—”

“I’m not human, Sabra!” Revenant snapped, and still her facial expression didn’t change. But there was anguish there in her voice, or something like it. “I never will be! The only thing I’ll ever do is let you down so, please, stay the fuck away from me.”

A low hum climbed towards a furious whine—Revenant was engaging her thrusters.

“Rev,” Sabra said, eyes stinging. “Wait!”

But she was already gone, burning off into the night like a comet burning away from her, from the planet, from everyone. The exhaust of her thrusters licked at Sabra’s face and then faded away as she streaked through the air and punched out through the clouds, leaving Sabra in the dark, alone.