Slip (The Slip Trilogy Book 1) (31 page)

B
enson’s still in shock.

They’re in some sort of a bunker, deep underground he suspects—based on how long it took for the lifter to reach their destination after the Hawk dropped them off in the middle of the junkyard.

In a cold, dimly lit metal-walled room, they sit on the floor in a circle. On one side is Luce, whose knee occasionally rubs up against Benson’s, and he has to constantly remind himself not to reach out and touch it with his hand. Because Check is on his other side, and he doesn’t know about them yet. The right time to tell him—that’s what Benson needs. But what are they really? A few times holding hands, a kiss on the cheek, and an exceptionally long fake kiss? Does any of that really count?

Completing the circle are Gonzo, Rod, Geoffrey, and Harrison, who sits directly across from Benson, which is so freaking crazy. Benson tries not to look at him, but his gaze seems to constantly drift to his twin brother, almost by some subconscious instinct.

Janice sits alone in the corner, occasionally mumbling incoherent words under her breath. As hard as Benson tries not to look at Harrison, he tries even harder not to look at the distraught and changed woman who raised him. The woman who was always his mother.

Check has been explaining everything for the last hour, in his usual, animated way. For once, the story seems to go perfectly with his friend’s level of enthusiasm. After they were separated, Check, Gonzo, Rod and Geoffrey used the Tunnels to get as far away from the city as possible, well outside of what they expected would be the search grid.

To Benson’s complete surprise, it was Gonzo’s idea to try to find the Lifers. The anti-Pop-Con group responsible for a multitude of bombings over the last few years was almost impossible to locate. But eventually they managed, using a friend of a friend of a friend through a network of Rod and Gonzo’s trusted Jumper connections. First they made contact with someone on the fringe of the Lifer network. That led to a meeting, which led to another meeting, until their story combined with the news coverage forced the Lifer leader to take them seriously. They met with the Lifer leader, who agreed to help them find Benson and Luce.

To Benson, the way his friends managed to join the Lifers seems impossibly fast, but according to Check it all came down to them having “true-blue Jumpers with connections.” Apparently having illegals on your side is the quickest way to prove to the Lifers that you’re anti-government. If it wasn’t for Rod and Gonzo, Benson realizes, he, Luce, Janice, and Harrison might all be dead. He’ll have to thank the crazy duo later.

As Check takes them through the story, Benson tries to ignore the shadowy men and women scuttling in and out of the room. Who are these people and how in the hell could they possibly have access to a Hawk drone?

When Check reaches the part about the Lifers receiving a com that something big might be going down in the Pop Con building, Harrison interrupts him. “Wait. How did you get a com? Everything was down.”

Check smiles. “Nice trick,” he says. “The Lifers loved that, by the way. They’d been saving those viruses for a rainy day, but you managed to convince Wire to set them loose. And I’m damn glad you did.”

“Wire?” Harrison’s brow wrinkles in confusion, the same way Benson’s does when he’s trying to work something out in his head. Benson still can’t stop looking at his twin brother. Weirdest. Thing. Ever. “How do you know about him?” Benson’s brother asks.

“Who do you think sent the com to the Lifers? Wire isn’t exactly a full-fledged member yet, but the Lifers pay him to carry out various tech-related activities.”

Harrison shakes his head, his eyebrows raised. “I’ll be damned,” he says.

When the briefing is over, the Lifers who have been observing them exit the room and Benson can feel a palpable difference in the air, like the tension has left the room with them. While Luce breaks off to catch up with Gonzo, Rod and her brother, Harrison drifts to the corner where Janice is sitting by herself, poking the hard wall every few minutes.

Check punches Benson in the arm. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Benson says, watching Harrison put an arm around Janice and begin speaking to her in hushed tones. He seems so…
good
with her. Benson feels a pang of envy—he doesn’t have the slightest idea how to approach a conversation with his own mother.

“It’s been a crazy ride, huh?” Check says.

“Yep.” Despite everything that’s happened, the only thing Benson can seem to think about when talking to Check is Lucy. Benson and Lucy. Lucy and Benson. How is he going to tell his best friend that the girl Check’s been obsessing over for years has been kissing and holding hands with him?

But does that really matter? They’re all alive. That’s what counts.

Except for…

His father. He bites back a swell of emotion, blinking furiously. He’s only beginning to understand his father’s role in keeping him safe over the years—what he must have sacrificed. But does that excuse all the terrible things he allowed to happen? Could he have stopped them if he’d wanted to, or would he only have gotten himself killed sooner?

Is his father a hero or a villain?

Something in between
, he decides.

“Thanks for saving our butts,” Benson says when he realizes Check has fallen silent.

“I did it for Luce, not you,” Check jokes.

“I’ll bet you did,” Benson says. Tell him. Just tell him.

“She has better legs than you. A better smile, too.”

“Thanks a lot.” Freaking tell him. You owe him that. Benson’s teeth grit together.

“I’ve got to keep it real, my friend. So, what was it like spending every second with her?”

Talk about a lead in. “Interesting,” Benson says.

“Interesting? That’s all you got for me?”

Benson is suddenly angry. “Yeah, interesting. We were running for our lives, dodging bullets, getting chased by psychotic cyborgs. I’d call it pretty interesting.” He’s breathing heavily, and he can tell by the look on Check’s face that he’s probably looking pretty crazy right now.

“Hey, it’s okay, man. Calm down. You’ve been through one helluva an ordeal. But you’re safe now. We’re all safe.” Check rests his elbow on Benson’s shoulder, exactly the way he has since the day they met, and Benson feels the anger and the frustration evaporate. Who was he even angry at? Not Check, he realizes. Himself. Himself for not being strong enough to be honest with his best friend. Himself for not being strong enough to save his—he blinks rapidly, fighting off a well of emotion—his father.

His father. His father who he never really knew. His father who used to tuck him in at night. His father who was responsible for killing innocent children. His father who taught him to swim.

“It’s okay,” Check says. “It’s okay.”

As it all becomes too much, Benson falls into his friend’s arms and sobs into his shoulder.

Millions of tears for the millions of lost childhood memories.

~~~

This room could be
her
room if the walls weren’t so hard. Janice taps the wall again, half-expecting it to push back at her finger.

Harrison flops down beside her and says, “Are you okay, Mom?”

Janice frowns, and her eyebrows feel weird like that, almost like they’re touching her eyes. Frowny frowny frown frown. Should she say that out loud? No. Doesn’t make sense. What did her son ask her?

“Mom?”

Was that a question? Doesn’t matter. Questions don’t matter now. Answers either. Because she has her two boys again. Harrison and Benson. When Michael arrives they can be a family again. He can quit that nasty old job of his and they can run away and bake devil’s food cakes and have birthdays and never have to touch a padded wall ever again. Right? Right?

“He’s dead, isn’t he?” she says, the words escaping her lips before she even has a chance to consider them. Who’s dead? Why would she say such a horrid thing?

“Yes,” Harrison says. “Dad’s dead. He saved us all.”

For a moment, she feels something in her eye—an eyelash?—and when she reaches up to try to get it out, her finger comes away wet. She licks it. Salty! Salty salty salt salt. She’s a salt maker—no, a salt factory! She’ll make millions.

What were they talking about?

“I love you, Son,” she says.

His smile isn’t quite right as he hugs her, but she lets it go because he says, “I love you, too, Mom.”

~~~

When he gets up from hugging his mother, Harrison wipes at his cheeks with the back of his hand. He’s surprised when they come away dry.

His father is dead. Not just absent from one of his hoverball games, working late, too busy to spend time with his son.
Dead
. As in never coming back. And he should be sad about that, right? What kind of cold person wouldn’t feel
something
at the death of a parent?

Ahh, there it is. He does feel something. But it’s not sadness or grief or even bitterness.

What he feels is relief.

Does that make him a bad person? he wonders. He’s certainly not a polished gemstone, like his brother seems to be, but can he help it that he feels relief that he’ll never again have to see his father on advertisements or on holo-screens or anywhere? Or that he’ll never have to feel disappointment at another of his father’s broken promises?

Benson is crying on his friend’s shoulder, like a good son. Harrison touches his cheek once more, just to be sure. His skin is as dry as sandpaper.

He approaches Benson and his friend, hovering nearby, waiting for an opportunity. After what feels like an eternity, Benson pulls back, dries his tears with his shirt, and notices his brother.

Harrison clears his throat. “Uh, can I talk to you?”

Benson nods and Check pats his shoulder. Check gets up, glancing between Benson and Harrison two or three times—“Freaky,” he says—before moving to the opposite end of the room to join their other friends.

Harrison sits beside his brother. “Long day,” he says, the best opener he can come up with.

“The longest,” Benson says. “And I think it’s only the afternoon, although it’s hard to tell down here.”

Harrison chuckles.

“Is Janice—I mean, Mom—okay?” Benson asks.

“She’ll be okay,” Harrison says.

“You’re good with her.”

“Ha!” Harrison says with a laugh. “I can barely communicate with her. If I’m good, then I’d hate to see bad.”

“But you’ve had time to get used to her…eccentricities.”

Of course. Benson doesn’t know. How could he? “Bro, I haven’t visited her in eight years. I only really met the new Mom yesterday.”

Benson’s eyebrows lift, but he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t seem to pass judgment. Instead he asks, “What’s, uh, wrong with her?”

“I think she even managed to confuse the doctors,” Harrison says. “They mixed and matched all kinds of terms for her ‘condition.’ Acute bi-polar disorder. Shades of schizophrenia. Inability to discern reality from fantasy. Hallucinations. In short, she’s certifiably nuts.” He offers a wry smile.

Benson shakes his head. “I caused it,” he says.

“No, Benson, you didn’t,” Harrison says. “Do you know what Dad told her?”

“I’m not sure I want to,” Benson says.

“Yes you do.” So he tells his brother everything their father told him before he was killed. When he finishes, Benson stares off into space, lost in his own thoughts.

No, he’s staring at Janice—at their mother. “This life is too hard,” he says.

Harrison would normally laugh at a comment like that, but he can’t manage it because of everything they’ve been through in the last day and a half. “And made harder because of all the damn idiots running around with guns,” he says.

Benson’s eyes flick to his, and for a moment he thinks he said the wrong thing, but then his brother laughs loudly. “You know, that pretty much sums it up,” Benson says. “Idiots with guns.”

Harrison laughs, too. Perhaps he and his brother will get along just fine. Maybe even become friends.

And for the first time in longer than he can remember, he feels happy. Real happy. Not the fake happy from winning hoverball games and being the most popular kid in school and making out with Nadine—although the latter felt real enough—but sincere, in-the-core-of-your-heart-and-soul happy.

Weird that everything could be so screwed up and yet he could feel this way.

And he smiles.

~~~

Janice is talking to herself when Benson slides beside her.

“Hi,” he says.

If she sees him, she doesn’t give any indication, just keeps on talking to herself.

Not herself, he realizes. Her watch. “Do you miss the asylum, Zoran?” she says. “No, neither do I. But I miss Alice. No one else. Just Alice.”

And it’s not
her
watch. It’s his. His old Zoran watch, a gift from Janice for his third birthday. She kept it all these years, he marvels.