Dualed (9 page)

“Inking will do that at first,” Dire says, lumbering back into the room like a bull. “You’ll get most of the feeling back.”

“Most? Why didn’t you warn me?” A rippling coil of fear
that I’ll never again be sure I’m wielding a weapon as best as I know how. That I’ve just wasted all the time my brothers spent training with me.

He shrugs. The motion is nearly elegant for someone who’s built like a freight train. “Would it have changed your mind?”

No, it wouldn’t have. I examine my marks again. The dark, thin curlicues encircling my wrists make me think of assignment numbers unspooling.

“Be careful with the marks; we never could get the ink any lighter than that, so you’ll have to cover them up,” Dire says tersely. “Only when you die will they no longer risk giving us away. Once the blood stops moving through your veins, it signals the tracking chips to automatically malfunction. The Board won’t be able to circle back to us.”

“But why the wrists?” I ask him. “Why not somewhere less visible, easier to hide?”

“Unless you chop off your most valuable assets, you’re stuck with them. No chance of you going rogue on us; a striker without hands is worthless.”

He pulls out his chair and sits down across from me again. “Now for the details. You will always be reachable, at all times. Unless there are special circumstances, we match up clients with whoever’s available. If it’s you, you’ll get a text with everything you’ll need—client contact info, client pic, assignment number, fresh spec sheet with Alt location. Sometimes workplace, routines, behavioral patterns, depending how long they’ve been tracked for. You’ll then contact the client and let them know your terms of payment. Most strikers charge about what an idle makes in a month at co-op level, and it
goes up from there. We take twenty-five percent off whatever you make, so make sure you wire it in. You’ll have twenty-four hours to complete. However you execute a strike is up to you, but just as the Board suggests, best to keep it fast, clean, quiet.” Then Dire’s laughing, and the dark undertone of it points to how I’ve only stepped from beneath one shadow to another. “Twisted, isn’t it? Us and the Board, both wanting the same thing from you.”

“Yeah, I guess.” I get to my feet, hoping the weakness I feel in my legs won’t make me fall. I start walking away, suddenly craving light brighter than that coming from the bare bulbs in the room. “You have my cell number from when I called before.” What can I say that won’t sound so completely surreal? There’s nothing.

Dire, still in his seat at the table, watches me walk past. “For your first contract, right?”

“What else?” My wrists and palms sting a bit now, just the slightest hum right beneath the skin.

“Grayer.”

I’m at the door. “What?”

“Your first contract comes now.”

My heart gallops into my throat and tastes entirely of fear.
No, not now, I’m not ready
. Slowly I turn around and make my way back to the table. “Tell me.”

Dire’s eyes are narrowed, cold blue flame. “None of this getting your feet wet first—we’re going right for the deep end. Better hope you swim, not sink.”

“Is this the test, then?” I ask, my voice a dry rasp. “Because getting my marks wasn’t enough?”

“Compared to killing, your marks are child’s play. So prove me wrong, and Baer right. Be sure to check your cell on the way out.”

And with that I know it’s begun.

Her house is in a neighborhood in Jethro’s bottommost end, right before the ward gives way to Leyton in the south. On the quiet side, average income on par with the rest of Jethro’s suburbs. Maybe even a touch higher, seeing how some of the worn exteriors and tired lawns have been spiffed up. Still nowhere close to white-collar territory like Leyton Ward, though.

It explains why she couldn’t afford a striker. Not that money is necessarily the only reason. Principle, pride, stubbornness, confidence, apathy … they can all come into play. And ultimately, none of it matters. Because it doesn’t change the fact that I’m here.

I slide around to the side of the house, just around the front corner, where there’s a row of boxwood shrubs. They’re thick and dense enough to cover me as I crouch down to hide. And watch. And wait for her to either come out or come in.

That’s what I’m counting on, anyway. It’s a new enough assignment—barely twenty-four hours old, according to the contract details on my cell—that unless she’s broken free of the typical behavioral patterns of newly activated Alts, odds are she’s still at home. Getting ready to hide, getting ready to fight. Either way, it starts here.

The spec sheet is ridiculously short. At first I wondered why Dire didn’t press for more legwork from the client before
forwarding the contract, but then I realized he wouldn’t want to make it easy for me. Just like the Board, he wants to flush me out if I can’t finish this.

I touch the gun in my jacket pocket. I can never forget what it’s capable of, no matter how many times I eventually fire it. To do so would be to lose myself, become more striker than me.

In the other pocket, a blade. Another in the front right pocket of my jeans, and one more in my back pocket. Overkill, probably, but I’m nervous, and I can’t say for sure how this is going to go.

And so I wait. The day passes slowly. Each second is too full, not wanting to spill over to the next. Minutes stretch, hours linger. I’ve never had reason to keep so still for so long before, and it’s like fighting gravity, every part of my body in protest, crying out.

My eyes are so dry. They sting. My entire left leg and right foot have lost all feeling. Pins and needles like never before, spiking through and piercing everywhere.

There’s hunger, too, the hollow pangs like swelling waves inside my stomach.

Sluggishly my mind rifles through past combat classes, wondering if there’s anything useful there at all. Anything about the human body dealing with the mental trial of a stakeout, the torture of
not
moving.

But I come up short.

Focus, then, West—on anything else that’s not you. Be numb, a striker
.

How, though? Impossible when your whole being is
composed of little more than agonized muscles and quivering bones, of tautly wired nerves and hunger-induced lightheadedness.

The sun is low in the sky, the air nearing evening temperatures typical of late fall, when the front door opens. It falls shut, followed by the sound of footsteps.

I’m wide-eyed and dry-mouthed, my pulse rippling like flags in a storm.

But by the time feet near my hiding spot, I know it’s not her. The gait is too loose, not fearful enough for an Alt whose status has just been changed to active.

A woman walks across the yard, heading toward the car parked at the curb. From the looks of her, she’s probably my strike’s mother. The resemblance to my client’s picture is too strong for her to not be family.

The front door opens again. “Mom, why can’t I—” The voice of a fourteen-year-old girl, wheedling and petulant, and my shoulders stiffen. It has to be her.

“Linde, shut the door and stay inside!” The woman’s voice is both furious and frightened. “I told you, this is not the time to be testing my patience.”

“But I’m
bored
! I don’t want to stay inside all day! Why can’t I—”

“Better to be bored than dead, don’t you think? It hasn’t even been one day since you got your assignment, and already you’re fighting me on this?”

“I’m not fighting you—”

“How can I get you to see that an assignment is not
something you can just decide you’d rather not do? It’s not like returning a shirt to the mall, for goodness’ sake.”

“I’m not
stupid
, Mom.”

“Linde.” A huge sigh, the sound bringing to mind my own mother, dealing with the lot of us. “I’ll be right back, okay? And then we’ll figure things out.”

“
Fine
. But I’m still having Xave over! You can’t stop me from seeing my boyfriend, you know.”

“Just get inside, Linde! And lock the door!”

The door kicks shut against the frame, and the woman climbs into the car and pulls away.

I’m scrambling to my feet, gun in hand, thinking fast, wondering if I have time to get inside before the mother returns or if I should just ring the bell outright and hope she answers it without thinking, when the front door opens again.

My strike, running out of the house and sprinting across the yard, her mother already too far ahead to catch.

“Mom, wait! Wait! I forgot to—” She stops in the middle of the street, staring in the direction her mother drove, breathing heavily, hands at her hips. “This
sucks
.”

Her words are surprisingly clear, even over the distance between us, and I realize just how quiet it is out here. Peaceful. Thoughts tumble through my head, and right or wrong, I decide my gun’s too loud for this place, for these families in these houses on this calm night.

I pass the gun into my left hand and yank the switchblade out of my front jeans pocket. Snap it open.

And doing so slows me down. If I’d moved faster, I could
have thrown it while she was still close enough for me to not miss, and while she was still looking away. She would have died without even knowing what happened. She would have died, and I wouldn’t have had to see her face.

But she’s turning and heading back inside when she sees me. Her face is the same as my client’s, the photo on my cell that I’ve memorized.

Eyes big and startled and a beautifully flecked hazel. Encoded in them are the black spirals of her assignment number. Buttery blond hair tied up in a ponytail, fashionably thick with braids and decorative feathers. She’s wearing jeans and an off-the-shoulder tee. Woven friendship bracelets wind up both arms from wrist to elbow like a rainbow.

She doesn’t see the blade right away, and I can see the beginnings of a question perch on her lips. But then her eyes catch on the glint of it, and fear takes over her face, draining it sickly white. Her eyes go even wider, shiny pools of spreading panic. She opens her mouth, an airless
oh!
, but the only thing I’m able to hear by then is the blood roaring in my own ears. The world has shortened to nothing more than the distance from me to her.

Then she’s moving again, stumbling backward for a handful of steps in her haste to get away, before beginning to turn—

I throw. Feel the muscles of my arm flex back into life as my fingers release metal.

The blade pierces her chest. It sinks in deep and insists on staying. She wavers, stumbles, falls, a tangle of damaged flesh and blond hair and denim. The spread of blood on her front grows, seeming nearly black in the light of dusk.

I stand there, stunned. It feels surreal, being on that street in that moment, like an out-of-body experience. I’ve just taken down my first strike, killed my first Alt, completed my first job as a striker … and I feel nothing.

A man walks out from one of the houses along the street, overweight and wearing a shirt stained at the pits. A complete who’s forgotten how lucky he is to be alive.

He glances down at the body at his feet, then over at me. At the gun still in my left hand. His eyes turn into slits.

“You’re not her Alternate, I can tell that easily enough,” he grunts out. “So what are you?” He eyes my hands more closely, and his sudden awareness stirs the ball of dread in my stomach.

Another mistake—I forgot Dire’s warning to cover my marks. I try to yank my sleeves down, but it’s too late. Even I know the ink is impossible to miss.

“So you’re one of those strikers, then.” The disgust in his voice can’t be more obvious.

I shove the gun and my hands into my jacket pockets. “Yes.” What else can I say?

“Well, couldn’t you have done this somewhere else? This is a family area, you know. Kids live on this street.”

“I’m sorry.” All of a sudden, I feel like a little kid again myself, getting caught at doing something I shouldn’t be doing.

He leans over the body. Takes stock. Jumps back. “Whoa, whoa,
whoa
. Hey, she’s not dead.”

My head snaps up. “What?” I whisper.

“She’s not dead.” He sounds both indignant and shocked. Like he’s never heard of a striker actually failing before. “Get over here. Take a good look for yourself.”

On legs as heavy as lead, I don’t even have to take the few steps I do to know he’s telling the truth. She’s still breathing, but barely. Her breaths are shallow, far apart. The handle of the knife moves in minute flutters. Caught in her lung, then. Off by inches, again.

“Finish it.” He’s angry now, his voice hard.

“What?” I repeat, the word hollow. “Finish it?”

“You can’t just leave her like this. I’m not going to do your job for you. I’ve done my part already, a long time ago, and I’m no striker, either. And I sure don’t need the Board all over me if they find out I’m even talking to you.”

I take another step until I’m standing over her. The last thing I want is to see her face again, but against my will my eyes meet hers.

She stares right back at me, the encoded sequence of numbers just as dark as they were before I slung the blade into her chest. There’s pain and fear in her eyes now, and more than that, an awareness of her own end. There’s nothing for her to do now except wait.

I take out my gun again. I make no mistake with the shot.

“Oh,
man
,” the fat man says raggedly. He wipes his mouth with his hand. His face is pale, his skin shiny and clammy with a sheen of sweat. “That’s
brutal
. Just brutal.”

I’m at a loss for words. Whatever I come up with won’t erase what he’s seen. What I’ve done. Slowly, I begin to walk away, unable to think about retrieving the blade. Forever stained with not just blood but near failure.

The man, sputtering in protest behind me. “Wait, wait,
what about her? You’re going to call clearing, or what? You’re going to make me do it? Strikers, you’re nothing but cheaters!”

I begin to run, trying to outrun the assassin within me. Like I can no longer stand to be in my own skin.

“You’re putting all of us in danger, you know that?” His voice, finally fading. The memory of him, as far from a soldier as you can get, and my head’s whirling. How does it work that such an end product is what the Board accepts, and not what Dire’s methods produce? How is one better than the other?