She could picture it like that in her head, and the people in this place wouldn’t be sad like Brody and Riley, they’d be happy, and not in that little kid running around the campfire happy, but grown up happy. Like people who belong always feel. Drake when he is with Ella happy. That’s how this city was built. To make the people in it belong, and she knew she would have liked to live there before all the water. That this place could have been home.
T
HE
C
ROSS
Brody
[
May 12, 2236, Waller
]
He told Trelix to put the shield up before they got anywhere near Waller, and he saw it go up, the flicker of sky and clouds, a holo of what was outside. He spent all of his time in the cryo bay, watching Trina, as if she were simply asleep, and not gone. Everything about her still looked so alive, even her skin, that soft olive with so much warmth in it. He left the flowers Laurel wove into her hair, the bright yellows striking spots of color in her almost black curls. She looked relaxed, and he hoped that the first shot stopped her heart, hoped that she didn’t really feel it. That’s what they were always told about these guns, compared to the ones that shot actual bullets, - they were a more humane way to put a Zoriner down. He hoped they were right about that.
His screen beeped with five minutes to approach notice, so he slid the top back on, covering Trina, and walked out into the cabin. Not much seemed to have changed in Waller, looking at it from so high up. He could see the long ago abandoned train tracks and then the old train yard with the warehouses, Andy’s amidst a small cluster that would be on the other side of the flier from him now. He chose the side he was on so he didn’t have to see that place just yet. They flew low over the roofs, more of them looking like they needed help now than he recalled, and headed to a tiny clearing just beyond the edge of the city. He closed his eyes when they flew over the school and Riley’s old house. He knew he’d see all of it again, knew he’d have to, but he wasn’t ready for it just yet.
Riley was talking to Ams, holding her hand, as if Ams was the one who didn’t want to be here now and not Riley. He looked around for Laurel and found her standing at the back of the flier, staring out the window, her face serious, detached. She looked like she was daydreaming about something, and he let her be.
Trelix was good at flying this thing, really good. They landed so softly he wouldn’t have known they were on the ground if it weren’t for the blue blinking light in the cabin announcing it. Trelix and Loren would have to stay near the flier for as long as they were going to be here. He couldn’t bring Alliance soldiers into this place, not unless he had to, and he was really hoping he wouldn’t have to. He never told Riley that he planned to go to the Council, didn’t know if he would either. It wasn’t Riley’s fight, and he didn’t want to endanger his friend. But he needed to know what happened, needed some damn answers. For all the hatred he felt at Hassinger for killing Trina, he knew it was his own people, Waller Zoriners, who gave her up in the first place. He owed it to her to at least try to find out why, if he could do nothing else for her.
Everyone but his two soldiers was out in the clearing, strapping their backpacks on, waiting on him it seemed. Drake and Ella were at the front, holding hands. There was an old abandoned cemetery a short walk from here. That’s where they planned to take Trina, but he wanted to make sure the place was still there, and that they could find a tiny space there for her under a pretty tree of some kind, something she’d have liked enough to sit under in the summers and lick the icicles from its branches in the spring, because here they wouldn’t taste like coal dust the way they did in the city. It was just far enough away from all of that, but still close enough for her to see the smoke streaming from the chimney of her house when her mother cooked supper. He knew he couldn’t go to that house, couldn’t tell that sweet woman that he got her daughter killed. The not knowing was better than that.
Laurel took his hand without asking if she could, not looking at him. He liked that about her. She didn’t ask, didn’t want to intrude. It’s as if she trusted that anything he would ever want to say to her, he would, in his own time, and she didn’t need to pry. But she was always there with a soft look or a touch. And there was a strength to this girl that she didn’t know she had. He remembered stitching her up at the clearing, and how she didn’t move at all. Even his boys, the soldiers, would have at least flinched, but she just lay there as if it didn’t bother her at all, only he knew that it did, but she took it, because she didn’t want him to feel bad about hurting her. And then finding all those flowers for Trina and putting them in her hair like that, someone she didn’t even know… It was the kindest thing anyone has done for him in a long time.
He recalled now that he never so much as thanked her for it. He stopped, looking at her face, “Laurel, what you did for her earlier, the flowers…” and he couldn’t get the rest of it out. Just stood there, frozen, embarrassed, staring at this sweet girl.
“It’s the least I could do, Brody. I think it would have maybe turned out differently if I didn’t run out there like I did. I didn’t know what would happen, just didn’t trust all of them not to kill you, so I panicked. I am sorry.”
It never even occurred to him that she would be blaming herself for what happened the whole time, and it made him feel every kind of wrong for not being nicer to her these last few days.
He took her by the shoulders, making her look at him, “It wasn’t your fault, Laurel. None of it. I had it under control. My crew would have never given you up to her. I just didn’t know anybody could do what she did. It shouldn’t be possible. But it wasn’t your fault. You have to believe me on this, you just have to.”
He let her eyes go, and they picked up the pace to catch up to everybody.
The cemetery was still there, only not at all like he remembered it. The trails were overgrown with grass and weeds. Vines and flowers were growing around old tombstones, peeking out from the cracks. But it smelled of something sweet and summery, orange blossoms maybe, and there were finches in the trees making an awful lot of noise, and honey bees flitting between the wild flowers. He spotted a green grasshopper in the grass and crouched, waiting for it to jump so he’d catch it.
For some reason he really wanted to catch this bug, to hold it in his closed palms, feel it jumping and tickling his skin. They used to catch them with Riley all the time for bait, only he couldn’t ever bring himself to use them like that, and always let them go from the little glass jar when Riley went home. He couldn’t put a hook or a needle through anything unless he had to, not after he made Riley cry like that when he caught that beautiful dragonfly for him and stuck a needle through its chest. It was the largest dragonfly he’d seen, and he remembered how its wings had all these rainbows in them, shimmering with all the different colors, only when it stopped moving, it didn’t look like that anymore.
The grasshopper was safely hidden in his hands now. “I want to show you something, Laurel,” he was holding his hands closed in front of her, nodding with his head for her to look. She did, and then he opened them and the grasshopper jumped all the way down, its bent skinny legs tickling his palm. She smiled at it, and then at him, a full on smile. So he told her about Riley and his love of bugs when they were kids, and about these grasshoppers, and then named everything else that he knew that was around them, so she could take it with her, no matter what else happened here. He wanted this girl to have enough pretty things to remember to maybe push out some of the sadness she’d seen.
He heard Riley calling his name, so he ran over to where his friend was, and saw what he was pointing at. They were all standing in a patch of weeds and wildflowers, a giant elm growing in the middle of it. The elm looked ancient, but all the flowers were brand new, some still holding their petals inside their stalks. He stood there for a long time looking at it, imagining Trina sitting under that tree, her long legs outstretched in front of her, curling her naked toes in that way she had, reading one of the old books she was always reading on her screen. She’d let the bees and the dragonflies land on her, never shooing them away, the breeze making her hair fall into her eyes, only she never seemed to notice it, not when she was reading. But she’d jump up all giddy, smiling at him on hearing his steps, always making him feel a little guilty, as if he woke her up from a really nice dream. She’d like it here, he knew.
He nodded to his friend, and ran back to the flier, not asking anyone to follow him. He needed to do this alone. He told Loren to take the shovel to the group and help them dig a grave for her, and then turned off the cryo unit. He watched her in silence for a few minutes, and finally leaned in and planted the last kiss he would ever give her on her lips. He fixed the flowers in her hair, and then gently, as if she really were asleep, picked her up and carried her all the way to the little cemetery, to the little spot by the elm tree. They all helped put soil on top of her, leaving just her face exposed. Riley handed him the shovel, but he couldn’t do it. Couldn’t put black dirt on her face, so he shook his head at his friend and turned away from it, from watching him do it.
And when it was over, Loren sliced a few branches off a nearby oak with his long knife, and cleaned all the bark off, and then neatly fashioned them into a cross with a piece of rope. He held it out to him, looking at him awkwardly.
“I brought the burner pen if you wanted to put her name on it, sir. Or I could do it for you if you want me to.”
He nodded to the kid and took the cross and the pen from him. All the other tombstones and crosses here had names and dates on them, but he couldn’t date this, couldn’t look at such a small number in-between, so he just wrote Trina on it in a shaky hand, and stuck it in the middle of the fresh grave. He took a tiny bit of soil and shoved it in his pocket. That was all he’d have left of her now. All he could bear to take of her.
Everyone was looking at him with sad apologetic faces, and he couldn’t take it. He needed to be alone. He thanked them and turned into the woods, looking for some place deserted enough to just be, and they let him go. He knew they would. That not even Riley would follow him. He walked for hours, not quite finding any place he wanted to stop at, but the walking felt good, and finally, when his legs couldn’t take it any more, he went back to the flier, hoping they wouldn’t make him talk when he got there. They didn’t. Riley brought him some supper Drake must have made earlier. It looked like something Drake would make, full of that meat stuff, and some broth that tasted a little bit like the stews Trina’s mother made for him in the winter, and he couldn’t eat any more after thinking that.
And then Riley leaned over him, handing him a thermos of something, he assumed tea, only he wasn’t in any mood for tea, so he shook his head at him, but Riley just unscrewed the top and handed it to him anyway. He knew what it was then, and he was grateful for it. Grateful for the fuzziness it would bring, for the soft blurred edges of Trina’s face, for the sweet jasmine smell that was always on her dissipating into something bitter, more Andy’s warehouse smell than flowers, and when he couldn’t take any more of the stuff, he gave it back to Riley, making him drink with him.
He felt his arm around him when he started drifting to sleep, and it felt good to have him hold him like that, without needing to say anything. Felt good knowing that he still had his Riley. That he hadn’t lost him after all.
T
HE
U
NWANTED
Riley
[
Zorin Council, Waller, May 13, 2236
]
Brody was long asleep when he finally pulled a soft blanket over him and disengaged. He could sense he didn’t just come here to bury Trina. Could see it in his face. He needed to protect him somehow. He found Trelix and Loren going over something on their screens.
“I need to ask you something. If I wanted to track a person without them knowing, what would I do? Is there something you have or can make that won’t be noticed but would give me a location?”
Trelix walked up to him then with his screen.
“We didn’t just come here to bury the girl, did we, sir?”
He shook his head at him.
“You don’t need to call me sir anymore, Trelix. But no, I think he had something else in mind and I think he doesn’t plan on involving any of us. I want to keep him safe, if I can, but he can’t know about it.”
Trelix pointed to his screen then, and handed him a tiny round of something sticky, like old gum or a piece of roof tar, melted in the summer heat.
“You can drop it into his pocket. It’s a transmitter. I programmed it already with the signal. This will tell you where he is within two meters, unless something is blocking the transmission. We scanned this place flying over and the only place that was blocked were the cells on the bottom level under the Council’s building.” He handed the screen to him, and went back to his seat at the controls.
It felt good knowing that these soldiers seemed to actually care about Brody. That they weren’t just following orders anymore. He dropped the sticky thing inside Brody’s sleeve pocket. It was the one he used the least, so it seemed safer than where he kept his weapons or screens, and finally went to sleep, dreamlessly this time.
Nobody was in the flier when he woke up, but he heard the chatter of voices from down below. He looked through the tiny window and saw the small fire going, and everybody but Brody was there. He pulled the screen Trelix gave him out, and stared at the dot, moving at a very slow speed down Leander Street, turning to Wisteria and then to Realon. That’s where the Council building was. He knew that. Everybody in Waller knew that. He grabbed two stunners and his knife, and ran down the steps to the fire. Drake was just pouring tea for everybody.