I don’t want to know.
Even if it means saving someone’s life?
“Are you listening, West?”
The sound of my name on his lips wakes me up. I scowl at him. “I don’t have a child,” I say lamely.
“No, but you will—someday. Maybe even more than one, in which case this offer would extend to them as well.”
I can feel heat flush along my cheeks—this conversation is unreal, maddening. Talking about my future with the last person I’d ever want involved. “That’s not even … it’s too far away to—”
“And if I told you the child wouldn’t have an Alt to kill?” His voice is as smooth as oil now, like he’s flicked an invisible switch. “That your child would never have to kill to survive?”
My mind, cartwheeling backward in time. Except it’s not myself I see, not me slipping through the dark streets of the Grid, hunting even while being hunted. It’s Ehm, my sister, who became an incomplete at eleven, who didn’t have much of a chance at all … who was just a little kid.
If Chord and I ever had a daughter, would she look like—
I shake my head. “No, it’s impossible.”
“Why is that?”
“Because.” Too many reasons. Yet why does saying them out loud somehow make them flimsy, easy to overcome? “Only the bio lab knows how to work the Alt codes, not you or any other Level One Operator. You’d have to ask them to do it for you—to
not
make an Alt. Which would be way too risky. No outside parties, right?”
“No, you are correct—the lab techs cannot get involved,” he says. “A possible leak would cause doubt in the filtration system. We can’t have people wondering why we’d interfere if the system is sound. But it wouldn’t be unheard of for a Level One Operator to show up at the bio lab to run a routine check. Which would enable me to log in to their computer system and discreetly alter the status of one particular gene map.”
The idea is like being fed salt and told it’s really sugar. A total disconnect. “So you would fix the status so it would show that the Alt code’s already been created, and an Alt already implanted in the other set of parents?”
“Yes.”
“What about the other set of parents?”
“They would exist in name only.”
“So the only real lab work would be done with me.” To have a child without an Alt. Worthy from the beginning.
“And the ‘Alt’ of your child would be very unfortunate, getting into a fatal car accident while still an infant. You’d receive a notice about her death and would be, of course, incredibly yet tactfully grateful.”
“You make it sound so simple.”
“Come now, West. It’s not that complicated, really. One Alt lives, the other dies. And in this case, one doesn’t even have to die. It’s a win-win situation, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I … I guess so,” I manage to say, thinking how he really is making the scenario sound not only tempting, but also easy. Mine for the taking. But the glimmer of satisfaction in his voice—at whatever I can’t keep hidden on my face, in my eyes—has my guard up. Everything has a price; dealing with the Board, I know it won’t be a small one.
“What do you want from me?” I ask.
“We need you to kill again, West.” His words are clipped and precise, a staccato hammer in my head. Nails in my coffin. “Just as you’ve done before. For your Alt … and those other Alts.”
I swear my wrists are burning beneath their flimsy coverings. He knows their secret.
“More precisely,” the Operator continues, “Level One wants to hire you as a striker for the Alts of our children.”
I can’t speak. Caught between the instinctive urge to run and the urge to stay. Listen.
“There will be three Alts,” the Operator continues, as though I’ve already agreed, “one for each of the three children of the Level One Operators. You will be given twenty-four hours for each completion.”
Kill three more times. Can’t.
Can’t.
“I stopped doing that,” I whisper. “I’m not a striker anymore.”
The Operator’s mouth thins. “The marks on your wrists say otherwise.”
I pull my hands from my pockets. The bandage on my left wrist is starting to loosen along one edge. There is a peep of my striker mark through the gap, a shadowed wisp of gray I can trace in my dreams. That they’ve been concealed for this long suddenly seems beyond belief. “How did you—how long have you known?” I ask him stiffly.
“We’ve been keeping track of Dire since we first got wind of his operation. That includes his recruits and their contracts. You signed on more than a year ago.”
“Why haven’t you ever stopped it?”
“The Board doesn’t make rash decisions. It was simply more practical to let Dire be. Give him his side project and hope he’s satisfied at that. We’ll continue to watch him, of course, and watch for signs of anything more significant.”
I frown at the Operator, wondering how this would sit with Dire if he knew. If the discovery that he’s been indulged this whole time would compel him to push the limits even further. “You’re not worried it’s just going to blow up in your face one day?”
“Not if we let them keep relieving some of the pressure. An animal on enough of a leash is much less prone to snapping than one on too tight of one, but in the end, both are still leashed. And if circumstances change and our system does become affected, tactical can always be sent in.” He gives an elegant half shrug, clearly dismissive of what can be passed on to others for cleanup.
“Why me?” I ask. “If you know I’m not the only striker out there. I haven’t killed anyone in a long time. You don’t want me.”
“When you signed on as an official weaponry assistant for Baer at Torth Prep, you created another entry for yourself in the Board’s data. It’s public knowledge that we monitor the quality of the Alt Skills program. Compiling all our information together—what we have on Dire’s strikers, the program at Torth, our completes archive, those with no living relatives to reduce outsider risk—only one name showed up in each of those logs: West Grayer.”
So it’s what I hate the most about myself that is suddenly valuable: my ability to kill for money, my skills with weapons, and my being the last of my family. Strange to think of them as strengths.
I don’t want to go back there. I might not come back whole this time.
And Chord. How much could he give this time before it’s too much? Even if he would want this future for us, what this Operator is offering, would he ask me to pay this price?
“Their self-detonation switches,” I say to the Operator. There’s a desperate edge to my voice, the words raw.
Don’t make me want to. Don’t make it all seem possible.
“If you want your kids’ Alts dead so badly, then you’ll just have to risk getting the lab to pull them early.”
“Ah, but self-detonation switches are tied to both Alt codes, remember?” he says gently, as though reminding a forgetful child. “And one switch going off automatically kills both Alts.”
“You make it sound so simple,” I say again, breaking the silence as soon as it creeps back in. “But it isn’t. Letting someone else kill your kids’ Alts goes against everything the filtration system stands for, what the city is built upon. The Board would mean nothing, no more than a cheating ring.”
The look he gives me is full of surprised disappointment. “Who better to understand this request than a striker, the biggest cheater of all?”
Annoyance tinged with an all-too-familiar shame makes the top of my ears burn. “You’re not exactly making me want to help you.”
“Whether you
want
to do this means very little to us. In fact, you should be thankful for this opportunity, West.”
“I don’t think so.”
“We’re kindly overlooking the unnatural completions you’ve already committed as a striker. You see, with each one, you left the city weaker. You countered the very system that keeps you safe. So now”—the Operator holds his hands out, a grand gesture of generosity—“you can make up for those mistakes.”
“How? By choosing between Alts again? What if it’s the wrong choice?” I ask.
“These are not just any idles you’d be saving. They’re the Board’s next guard: groomed to eventually succeed as Level One Operators. Policy calls for Level Two Alts to take over if Level One Alts end up as incompletes, but the particular wave of Level Twos we have now is rather … unsatisfactory.” A sour expression darkens his face. “In the best interests of Kersh, the Level One Operators decided not to leave any of these future Level One completions to luck.”
“Your idles don’t need luck. Not only are they Leyton Alts, but they’re also Board ones.
Level
ones.”
“Then think of these striker contracts as being no different than any of those you’ve already completed, West. You once had no problem killing Alts. Do it again, this time for the right reasons.”
It’s true. I did kill for the wrong reasons. It wasn’t because I thought myself a champion of underdogs, rebelling to help the weak. I spent hours planning strikes so that I wouldn’t think about Luc’s death, and each downed target became a weight in my favor in the tug-of-war of skills between my Alt and me.
“Tell me about them,” I say. “The Board’s children.”
His mouth thins a bit. “They have nothing to do with your contracts. Except that they are the worthy ones.”
“How can you be so sure? Even if they
are
born for the guard, sometimes that’s just not enough. Maybe you know these kids suck at fighting.”
“They do not
suck,
as you so eloquently put it. They received the most advanced Alt training. They excelled in all their fields.”
A part of me wonders how far I can push him. The foolish part, the part that always moves too fast, according to Luc. “Why not just let them fight, then?”
“We might be Level One Operators, but we’re also parents, are we not? And if someone was absolutely sure his own child was the worthy one, and if he had the means to ensure that outcome, can you think for one second he wouldn’t?”
“So now instead of being cheaters by hiring a striker, you’re just good parents? Which one is it? You can’t have it both ways, you know.”
“The difference between us, West, is that we’re doing this for Kersh’s sake as well as our own. Everything you’ve done so far was for no one other than yourself.”
Not true,
I want to yell at him. But I can’t. The Operator doesn’t look like my dad, but right now he makes me think of him. Of any ordinary parent in Kersh who wants to save those they love.
“There’s another difference you’re forgetting about,” I say, standing up and clumsily kicking my feet free of my bag strap before picking it up. “The Board punishes people for doing exactly what you’re doing. But who catches you?”
He takes a slow, patient drink from one of the glasses of water in front of him. Setting it back down on the desk, he asks, “Would you like to view our training facilities, West?”
“What?” I’m ready to take off, but he’s caught me off guard.
“Time,” he says out loud to his watch as he gets to his feet.
19:17
“A tour of the facilities,” he continues. “Unfortunately, I cannot permit you to have any contact with our Alts, but perhaps seeing for yourself what they have at their constant disposal will convince you that they are worthy of being saved.” His words are nonthreatening, but I feel threatened, anyway.
You will believe it, and you will do this.
“Well?”
No, I’m not interested. Let me go.
“Fine.”
With the sun gone even lower, the lobby is now bathed in a new kind of light. A fuzzy, pale amber that streams down from above. I glance up at the ceiling. Sometime between the time of my arrival and right now, solar panels have flipped on to distribute whatever light they’ve managed to collect on an early-summer day in Kersh.
It should make the room seem warm but fails miserably.
It’s still way too open. The fact that the workday is over and the lobby is nearly empty doesn’t help, either. Footsteps echo and bounce off the distant walls, testimony to the size of the space.
The Operator comes to a stop in the middle of the lobby. His left foot is on the brass disc at the center of the spiral, obscuring more than half of the etched words. “This is, of course, your first time visiting headquarters,” he says.
I give him a look to hide how strained my nerves are. “You mean because someone poor like me wouldn’t have reason to be here? I don’t get the feeling walk-ins are exactly welcome, anyway.”
He nods at the guard behind the entry kiosk before turning to me. There’s a bemused expression on his face. “Well, I have to agree that we … discourage casual visits. But I wouldn’t go so far as to say we’re not welcoming, West. We’re here to assist Alts, after all.”
His words bring to mind terminals, centers that also offer actives temporary refuge. They help Alts, too, but it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a place someone would want to visit if they didn’t have to.
I point to the row of tiny green lights above the main entrance door and windows as we walk past—cameras, I bet—and note the single, larger red light on the lock plate of the door. Locked.
“A lot of security,” I say to the Operator, “even with someone at the door. Do you guys watch the lobby from the same room you watch Alt data roll in?”
A pause, and I realize he’s digesting what I’ve said. How close was I to guessing the truth?
“Is that what you’ve been told?” he finally says, and his tone is still friendly. “I’m happy to let you know that that’s not the case. We don’t consider anyone in Kersh a threat.” Now he cocks his head, offers a slight smile. “
Have
you spoken to someone who’s been here before?”
“No,” I mutter, still reluctant to talk too much, but his friendliness … I admit it’s wearing me down. “But we do study the history of the Board in school.”
“So you know the basics about the Founders.”
I nod, my mind already recalling what we’re all taught as part of the basic curriculum in school regarding Kersh’s origins. “Yes, of course.”
Cris, Jackson, and Tamryn. Together, the three best friends claimed a swath of land in the Pacific Northwest as their own and called it Kersh. Tired of the Surround’s endless, cyclic wars, they erected a massive barrier around Kersh to keep it safe.
They formed a new governing Board inside the city. At the helm was Cris, whose political background proved invaluable in making decisions and proposing ideas. His division became known as Level 1, and over time he created additional positions for friends and citizens he thought suitable. Jackson did the same for his division, and Level 2 was trusted to handle all military matters. Tamryn was a brilliant scientist, and her very small division—originally Level 3 before it split off and became its own specialized department—was the most important. New city or not, people still wanted to have babies, and only lab technicians could make that happen.
But nothing good ever lasts.
Less than a decade later space was tight.
Resources grew dangerously low.
People still wanted families.
And the Surround continued to threaten to attack—to break down the barrier and reclaim the territory.
So Cris, Jackson, and Tamryn came up with the idea of Alternates.
Most Kersh citizens credit Cris specifically since he had a mind that could run circles around even the most unwieldy of problems; some say it was Jackson, considering the system was fundamentally a military one; and some give Tamryn the nod, since Alternates could never have come into existence in the first place without her expertise in biological sciences.
I blame them all equally.
The population would be controlled, and only the worthy would survive to use up the city’s resources. This plan came with the added benefit that by separating the weak from the worthy, the slow from the fast, an army of soldiers is always maintained. The Surround would not dare attack a population made up of killers.
The citizens rebelled at first, made attempts to rush the barrier. But Cris’s persuasive magic worked: it was either fight once in Kersh, live gloriously, and most likely never fight again, or fight every day in the Surround until you had no more fight left.
The city gradually came to accept this. If you’re the Alt who is proven to be worthy, then life is yours to live.
And I’m that Alt—no longer an idle in limbo waiting for my assignment, no longer an active battling to outlive my Alt over the course of thirty-one days, but a complete. For months now, I’ve been … living. Doing the things I’ve earned the right to, like meeting up with Chord or other complete friends from school and not having to avoid talking about the future.
I should not be here. I have nothing else to give to them.
“West.” The Operator breaks into my thoughts. “What do you know about the Kersh bio lab eventually breaking free of the Level Three division and becoming its own department?”
He starts walking again, and I have no choice but to stay with him.
“Only that Tamryn decided to give the lab a quieter profile,” I say. “After seeing Kersh’s first reaction to the idea of Alts, she was probably right to be scared.” We continue along the lobby, and along the windows our reflections chase us.
“That is correct—but not nearly as interesting as the entire story.” We’re almost at the entrance to the northeast wing now, and he pulls out a cell from his pocket. When his pace slows and he turns toward me, there is a new, shared conspiratorial air between us and it leaves me confused. “May I speak with confidence that the privileged information I’m about to reveal remains between us?” he asks.
Another secret to keep. But he sounds so eager to share and not threatening at all and … “Okay.”
“Tamryn was in love with Cris. Ever since they met as teenagers. She made no secret of it. But he eventually committed to someone else, despite knowing how she felt.”
Surprise has me looking at him more carefully. “Is that why Level Three broke off and became an independent department? She couldn’t handle being around him anymore?”
“Yes, in so many words.”
“I guess she must have really loved him.” Reading about the Founders is required in school, but most of the material is bare, soulless information. Cris was a born politician, Tamryn a brilliant lab scientist, Jackson a sharp strategist. That was all.
“They were very good friends,” the Operator says. “I’m sure the situation was not an easy one.”
“But didn’t Jackson want her to stay?” It doesn’t need to be pointed out to me that we’ve entered the training wing. No indulgent glass doors here, only slabs of Leyton-grade steel. Meant to contain bullets and blades. “He was her friend, too.”
The Operator comes to a stop in front of one of the steel doors. He scans his cell across the lock. There’s a soft click and he tucks his cell away before taking a second to adjust his silver handkerchief, knocked slightly askew by his hand. “Jackson was the one Cris committed to.”
“Oh. That’s … it?” I can’t hide my surprise. It’s odd to think of these names as having once been real people, alive with their own wants and needs. Suddenly the Founders seem more real than they ever have before. Years of studying them are nothing compared to this one tiny glimpse, a peeling back of the veil.
“Tamryn was hotheaded and stubborn. She stopped speaking to both of them for a while, moved her lab to an outer building, and declared herself a service independent of the Board. Cris and Jackson had to resort to using go-betweens just to communicate with her. Today you know these go-betweens as Level Three Operators. And over time, other subdivisions such as legal and clearing were folded into that Level as well.”
“So they were never friends again?” My heart aches for these people, who came together as friends to leave the only world they knew just to create a new, more peaceful one. In many ways, they succeeded, but in the ways that they didn’t, would they be disappointed?
“No, they eventually reconciled. Though Tamryn never worked alongside them again on a daily basis. Particularly with Cris, since the only thing Jackson did wrong, really, was to end up with what she wanted. It wasn’t until after her death that the Board was able to once again claim the bio lab as one of their official services.” The Operator slides the door open, and the sound of steel brushing against steel brings me back to the present.
“After you, West,” he says, and I can swear there’s a smugness to his words.
At first, I see nothing. And for one very long thudding heartbeat I’m sure this is a trap. He’s brought me here because of what I did and this is what they do when they find out and why not kill two birds with one stone their idles need training and
I am their mark—
The Operator swipes his hand along a panel on the wall and bright white light fills the room.
Empty. No one’s waiting. Just him, waiting for me to react. To tell him he’s right, there’s no way any Alt surrounded by so much wealth and privilege and sheer advantage could ever not be worthy. Be made worthy.
I blink, adjusting to the light. Breathe out a low, shaky sigh as I look around.
It’s not right for so few people to have so much. This room isn’t just about survival—it’s about total decimation. The Alt to any of these idles has absolutely no chance.
I step away from the door and make my way inside. The Operator stays close, watchful. I’m a striker let loose with fresh, tempting arsenal, after all. But also I suspect he doesn’t want to miss my reaction. To feed off my awe at the Board’s power and to gloat in my defeat.
The room has the typical setup for any Alt training facility; in this, it’s not all that different from Baer’s weaponry classroom or the pay-to-use ones established throughout the city.
Cordoned off into stations with fluorescent paint slung across the floor in an uneven grid pattern like a huge zipper that refuses to meet in the middle, each specializes in a single technique or skill set. There are no more than a dozen stations in the room altogether—any more than that and the risk of injury is too high.
But that’s where the similarities end. Everything in this room is about taking what’s typical and amplifying it.
The Operator starts the tour by leading me to the left side of the room.
“Oxygen pods,” he says at the question in my eyes as we approach the station along the wall. It’s a long row of round glass windows, reminding me of pictures of old ships that used to sail the oceans before all the waters of the world became clogged with warships and wreckage. “For helping speed up the healing process if there’s an injury during training. They also help build up an Alt’s endurance and resistance to fatigue, with enough use.”
I can see now that the windows are really doors with a latch along the side of the rim. An Alt would press it open, slide in, and lie down. I’m no stranger to oxygen chambers—they’re old technology—and I saw some at the hospital in Jethro. But those weren’t nearly as sleek as these, just bulky pods with scratched up glass walls and waiting lists that went on forever.
The Operator has moved along, and I follow him, overwhelmed into silence. What to say when I’m envious at having never used any of this, and sad for my students who will also never use this and might even have to face an Alt trained on it?
I listen to him talk as we make our way through the room. The outlines of human figures digitally projected onto sheets of steel to mimic live fire scenarios, with dots of pulsing red to indicate shifting vital points as the outlines move. No static bull’s-eyes here. The old compost bags Aave, Luc, Ehm, and I used to carefully stack together for target practice now seem silly, when before they seemed so clever and efficient.
A barrel of pure steel blades, swords so pristine they don’t even seem capable of getting chipped or bent or clouded with wear. Racks of small to large knives. A shooting station with enough guns to outfit all of Torth Prep, including Ronins, the kind of gun only the privileged of Leyton can afford to have.
I must be a monster, because as angry as I am that some completions are over before they’ve begun, I’m also relieved. This makes it easier to do, what the Operator is asking of me. If I can figure out a way to do it so it won’t hurt, maybe it’s not unforgiveable to gain something from it, too. Maybe guilt won’t eat me alive afterward.
I’m still wondering how a Ronin would feel in my hand when I see something I’ve never seen before.
A gun of another kind.
I walk past the Ronins and pick up what’s suspended on the two hooks next to them.
The gun is … heavy. Surprisingly so, considering how small it is. It doesn’t even look that different from a typical gun, if we’re just talking about the most basic of components—it has a barrel, a grip, a trigger.
The details, though.
Compared to the blunt and squared-off lines of a Ronin, the gun is slim and sleek and reminds me of a slightly oversized syringe. It’s matte silver in color, the hue growing lighter as it narrows from handgrip to muzzle. The trigger is a thin curve of steel against my finger as I slide it past the guard, a mockery of a ring.
“Of course a striker would find the one weapon we can’t use.”
I glance up at him. “What is this?”
“A gun, but one that doesn’t shoot bullets.”
I can tell he’s waiting for some kind of reaction—maybe shock, probably admiration—before saying more. I try to remember everything I might have ever heard about such a weapon. But then I realize there’s nothing to be gained from the Board knowing how much I know.
“I don’t know how this works, if it’s not with bullets,” I finally say to him. I think it’s a beautiful weapon, almost elegant, but I keep that to myself.