Chapter Nine - Talking About Our Feelings and Shit

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“Really, just like that?”

I sighed. Harry was seriously ruining the vibe I was trying to create here. Next thing I knew, he would be asking perfectly sensible questions like “what do we do now?” and “couldn’t you at least put on a shirt first?”

I glared at him. “Weren’t you just talking about being sorry about doubting me and all that?”

Harry nodded. “Sure, I said that, but that doesn’t mean that we should keep going off half-cocked.”

I chuckled. “Half-cocked.”

“That’s not what that expression means.”

“It will be whenever I use it from now on.” I stopped laughing and got serious. “Fine, what’s the plan?”

“Well,” Harry started, hobbling over to my dropped Defiance Deputy. “First, we need to take inventory.” He groaned as he bent over and picked up the pistol, checking out the empty chamber. “Do you have any more magazines for this? This’ll be a right sight better than my duty carry.”

I winced. I didn’t want to leave Harry out to dry, but I was hesitant to spend any more of my incredibly small pool of points. “I could buy a few, but that’d be it.” I patted my pockets until I found the security guard’s original pistol, then presented it to him. “You might be better off with this. You’ll have a lot more ammo for it upstairs.”

Harry shook his head. “I’m not going back upstairs.”

I blinked. “Uhh… What? Harry, I really appreciate the save, believe me, but you’re still missing a leg. That’s not… Really conducive to fighting Antithesis, y’know?”

The mall cop made a show of considering it, then nodded. “Correct. But I’m still going with you. It’s important to always have a buddy to cover you.”

“What about the cameras?”

Harry nodded, then tapped the side of his head. “That’s why I stayed upstairs, at first. Then I realized that you have that AI—made my job superfluous. She can handle that a lot better than I can.”

“Then what about…” I was drawing a blank on coming up with more reasons that Harry couldn’t come with me. I was starting to like the guy, and I didn’t want him being put in harm’s way any more than I could help. He’d already struggled with all the running around before he was sans one leg, and now he wanted to tromp all over the mall full of Antithesis.

Was I the asshole here? He did just save me from pretty certain death, and he was former military—he was a lot more experienced with this kind of thing than I was. Without his advice and commands, I wouldn’t have lasted half as long. Still, it felt like a bad idea. If I had a spine, I would demand that he go back upstairs while I handled it.

“Fine, you can come.” I turned away from him and grabbed a scarf from a nearby rack, using it to wipe the blood off my bare torso. “But we really need to find your leg as soon as possible. I know I promised you a new one, but it’s going to be awhile before I can afford something like that.”

Harry chuckled. “Deal. But when you can afford it, I still want a grenade launcher in it. I don’t care how impractical that would be.” Then, as his chuckle faded out, he sighed. “Now, one more thing before we go: we should really talk about what happened back there—before you fought that Six, I mean.”

“What do you mean?”

Harry pushed himself up to sit on top of the automated checkout counter. “You blew up on me. I get that I was treating you with kid gloves, and I’m sorry, but we should really talk about it.”

I didn’t like where this conversation was headed. “There’s nothing to talk about. I was just stressed.”

Harry held up a hand in response. “Then tell me about it. It’s healthy to talk through your problems, and I want to make sure we at least address this before it comes up again in another life-threatening situation.”

“Look, call it a…” I struggled to find the right thing to say. “Personal failing. I hate it when people treat me like a child.”

Harry nodded slowly. “Okay, I get that, but this seems a bit more deep-seated than a little pet peeve. Most people just get angry when someone gets on their nerves—suicidally charging at the nearest Antithesis is taking it a bit far. So what’s the problem?”

I shot an annoyed expression at the security guard. “There’s no problem. I was annoyed, I yelled at you, and now I apologized. Let’s leave it at that.”

Harry snorted. “That’s bull.”

“What?”

“I said that’s bull.” Harry shook his head. “I shared a deep, personal moment with you in the security shed, but you won’t even tell me what’s bothering you?” He shrugged. “You don’t want to give me your life’s story? Okay, fine, whatever, I get it. But I need to know if this is going to be an issue in the future. I can’t have you flying off the handle because I said the wrong thing without realizing it.” There was kindness in his eyes, but his stare was serious. “Is this going to happen again?”

I grit my teeth. “No.” I started to turn away, done with this conversation, but then I replayed it in my head. “Fine, you want to know my life story?”

“I specifically stated that I didn’t need your whole lif—”

I slammed my fist into the scarf rack, knocking it over. “Well too bad, here it is!” I paused and took a breath. Harry was doing it again, and I was getting overly angry because of it. He was right—it was going to keep happening if he didn’t know about it.

“I…” I hesitated one last time. I didn’t like sharing about myself with other people, and it wasn’t like I ever saw a therapist about it; they would’ve just sold everything I said to a data farm, or forced me into a payment plan for whatever drug they were peddling. But I couldn’t put this off. Maybe it was time to finally get this off my chest. “When I was a little kid, my father always treated me like a little adult; told me everything exactly how it was, never pulled any punches, and expected me to make all the right decisions for myself. That changed as I started to grow older.

“The last time I did anything ‘childish’ was watching a cartoon when I was twelve. He saw what I was watching and told me to ‘grow up.’ So I did.” I shrugged. “But I didn’t grow up the way he wanted me to. I never joined JROTC, the closest I got to sports was a month of track in high school, and don’t even get me started about college.” I sighed. “The final straw was when he came to me about joining up with some private military corporation that a buddy of his ran. Guess he wanted me to do something important with my life, but I told him to fuck off. Told him I didn’t want anything to do with the military, no matter how much he wanted me to.”

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I’d gone full thousand-yard-stare mode, dredging up core memories that I’d completely buried a little over four years ago. “He’s treated me like a child ever since. I mean—he’s always questioned every decision I’ve ever made since I was thirteen, and made me feel stupid for every little mistake I made growing up, but this was different. He started talking to me like I was a literal child; like I was too slow or stupid to understand anything around me. Every moment had to have some color commentary about how I ‘failed to grow up’, or how I ‘didn’t live up to my potential.’” I gestured to the store around me, indicating the Shopplex. “I had to sign a downright abusive contract with this place just to get away from him.”

“You didn’t have anyone else?” Harry asked, as I continued to avoid his gaze. “What about your mom?”

I scoffed. “Died in a car crash when I was five. Some rich idiot thought he could override the autopilot on his fancy new sports hovercar and crashed right on top of hers. I had an aunt, too, but,” I shrugged a second time, “she was in the same car. It was just me and my dad ever since. I do have a grandfather, I guess, but his dementia’s so bad that I’m lucky if he even remembers me on a good day.”

I finally looked at Harry, meeting his eyes with a challenge. “So there you go, that’s my story. I wasn’t beaten black and blue as a child, I wasn’t tragically raised on the streets by some adoptive gang of murderers with hearts of gold—I just had a father who talked down to me, and that makes me suicidally charge towards Antithesis whenever somebody else does it, too. Happy now?”

The mall cop’s gaze was pensive. He wasn’t showing it, but I could still tell: he was judging me, thinking about all the stupid things I’ve done since we met and recontextualizing it. He was coming up with ways to tell me how dumb I was being. Why did I decide to share that with him? I could’ve just kept quiet. Now he knew how how childish I was being, how worthless—

“Yup, that makes sense. Sorry.”

I stopped. “What?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you’d gone through something like that. I’ll try not to act like you’re a kid anymore.”

“W-What?!” I sputtered. “Seriously? But it’s just so… stupid!” I pointed to his missing leg. “Compared to the shit you’ve gone through, what do I have to talk about? I mean—people are out there getting eaten by Antithesis, and here I am complaining about how my dad didn’t give me enough affirmation as a chi—”

“Benjamin.” Harry scowled, stretching out to hook my shoulder with the end of his cane as I tried to turn away. “We all go through life in our own way. We all have our own demons. I saw some sh… stuff in the Guard, sure, and I’ve been dealing with other problems since, sure, but none of that means that your problems don’t matter.”

He awkwardly patted my shoulder with the cane. “You were just a kid.” When I bristled from the statement, he raised his hand defensively. “You were! Those are the formative years of your life; having a trusted family member—someone you look up to more than anyone else in the world—make fun of you for everything you did, for years at a time… Yeah, that’d screw anyone up. I…” He paused and muttered something under his breath. “I can’t say I’m the best at this kind of stuff, either, but I want you to know: that’s valid, Ben. Don’t beat yourself up for thinking that your feelings don’t matter, just because you think someone else has it worse.”

“But…” I didn’t know what to say. I was expecting ridicule—almost hoping for it, in some weird way—but Harry sounded genuinely supportive. Worse still, what he said even made a certain degree of sense. It sounded wrong, and went against everything I’d ever thought, but then: who’d taught me to think that way? For all that I’d rebelled against my father, and thought myself successful for getting away from him, my upbringing did affect me. Hell, the same stubbornness I’d developed against him had just seen me throw myself at a Model Six; I was too bull-headed to admit how obviously idiotic that was, even if I would’ve never done something that dangerous before today. I still didn’t think it was quite the same as some of the other things I’ve seen—I wasn’t going to compare my issues to those of the homeless Antithesis survivors I saw on the Mesh, or that group of disabled orphans I once passed at a museum, but to just admit that I did have trauma… Yeah, maybe I could do that.

“Ben.” Harry brought me out of my reflection. “Don’t ever think you’re lesser than someone else. You think like that long enough, it’ll eat you up inside.” He had that pensive expression on his face again. “Have you ever talked to anyone about this?”

I waved a hand in dismissal. “Nah. Telling my dad to stop just made him mock me more. Didn’t have the money for a therapist—nor was I stupid enough to talk to one—and as for my friends… I suppose the closest I got was right before my breakup with Hannah, my last girlfriend. You’re it.”

Harry offered a sigh in response. “Yeah, that would be part of the problem. You need to be more open about your feelings—tell others when you’re having a problem, you know?”

I couldn’t help but smirk. “Okay, that was just corny. You do a stint as a therapist or something? Have any more generic advice to offer me? Maybe I should count to ten when something annoys me?”

“Hey,” Harry pointed at me, “don’t knock it till you try it. For example:” He stopped and held up a finger. It took me a few seconds to figure out that he was counting in his head, at which point he gestured and gave a sarcastic smile. “See, now I no longer feel like hitting you with my cane.”

I snorted, then took a big step back and opened up my arms in mock-challenge. “‘Hitting me with your cane’? Alright, old man, I’d like to see you reach me from there.”

Harry merely shook the aforementioned implement and affected an elderly voice. “You just wait, young whippersnapper! At least my generation had good mental healthcare!”

We shared a good laugh, and I felt all of my recent stress from our conversation melt away in the camaraderie. It felt freeing, in a way, to get that off my chest, and I hadn’t expected Harry to still want to hang around after that. Now, I wasn’t suddenly going to get all touchy-feely with my emotions like he wanted me to, but to just be open about what I was thinking for once in life… It was nice. In the spirit of this “communication” crap that Harry was talking about, I was just about to mention this to him when he suddenly tensed and pushed off from the counter he’d been sitting on. I followed his gaze just in time to see a pair of large wireframe silhouettes patrol past the front door of the Macy’s. Ah, right, the incursion.

“Time’s up,” the security guard whispered, crawling towards me with his cane cradled in the crook of his arms. “I’ll be needing one of those magazines now.”

“Lynata?” I whispered in response as I crouched behind a smashed jewelry display. A plastic box unceremoniously appeared by my feet, easily in reach of Harry’s new position beside me. He carefully popped open the box and quietly loaded his new pistol, keeping an eye on the patrolling Model Fours all the while. Thinking about it, I ordered two more magazines for Harry, which Lynata put in their own double-wide box.

Once he finished stuffing the thick magazines in his pocket, Harry dragged himself up with a soft groan. “Never join the military, Ben; all they’ll give you is a lifetime of knee pain afterwards.”

“At least you only have the one knee to feel it.” I faintly shot back, bringing my own weapon up to make sure it was ready for action.

“Ooh, he’s got jokes.” Harry braced himself on the cane as he joined me in peeking through the glass of the case. He spared a glance at me, adding, “Tell you what: we’ll talk more about this after we clear out the mall. I want to be out of here before nightfall. If we’re still here by then, and you haven’t gotten enough points, we’re dead.”

I nodded. We could wait for the Mesh network to come back and call for help, but that might take too long. The shelters here weren’t rated for lasting longer than a single day of an incursion—double-digit Models would start popping up then, and anything that size would tear them apart like tissue paper. We were also too close to the epicenter to just grab a hovercar and go; we’d be grabbed by some flying Model and ripped to shreds. Our only option was to clear the place and then pray that I’d gained enough points to either fortify it or fight our way through. Neither of which I could do if I sat around talking to Harry. “Lynata, do we have any more cameras yet?”

“I am sorry to report that most of the Goddard Shopplex’s cameras are still inoperable. With investment into a cyberwarfare catalog, you could purchase splicing equipment that would allow physical access to these camera feeds, but remote connection is currently impossible.”

“Damn,” I breathed out as the pair of Model Fours disappeared from view. I turned to Harry. “Any plans, then?”

The former soldier just shook his head. “If I had a rifle platoon, I could give you a list of possible deployments and a short course on mobile defense-in-depth. As-is, we’re just going to have to hope we can ambush small groups and prevent them from swarming us.”

“What happened to not going off half-cocked?”

Harry nodded. “You’re right—put on a shirt; we’ll figure out the rest later.”

I grumbled as I stomped back to the Men’s Wear section, retying my man bun while I was at it. Harry and I could come up with a better plan later. Hopefully.