Fog (9 page)

‘I won’t panic.’

Of course he will! Or I will. A growl thrums in my chest. Shit. No excuses left. I look down at my pants and fumble with the waistband. My fingers quiver.

‘I, too, have scars,’ he says softly and I remember that he knows I’m a cutter. He’s even seen the 1/2986 carved into my lower arm.

‘Yeah, but you are…’ I bite my tongue. I was about to blurt out “beautiful.” That’d be so awkward that I’d dig myself a hole.

‘You are, too,’ he says.

I burst out laughing. This man is nuts.

He crosses his arms over his chest.
 

Hoping he’ll soon put his shirt back on, I tear my eyes off him and stare up at the treetops. If all fails, I’ll pretend to be annoyed.

‘You are a warrior and warriors have scars. Suck it up. Now show me your swimming skills.’

My cheeks grow hot. I give him a stiff nod and put my hands back to my waistband to pull the strings tighter. I don’t want my pants to slide down when they are wet and heavy.

Runner grins and shakes his head. ‘I guess I’m supposed to go in?’

‘Yep.’

As we walk into the pool, his body tenses with insecurity. What a contrast to his always so sure and calm demeanour. Now, I regret I asked this of him.

‘The pool is deepest over there,’ I point at the waterfall. ‘We’ll swim there later, but not now.’

He looks at it, then up at the gap in the foliage. The rain has stopped, but the clouds are still thick.

‘Ready?’ I ask.

He shrugs. ‘I told you I can swim.’

‘Yeah, but you wanted me to show you how to swim across the swamp. I won’t even consider teaching you that if you can’t show me a few good strokes in normal…I mean, liquid water. Not mud.’ Boy, I’m glad I found a reasonable excuse. Because most of all I don’t believe he can swim; he gets all flustered when water reaches to his hip. He might be able to hold himself above the water for a few minutes, but that has nothing to do with swimming.

‘Besides…’ I continue, ‘…I want you to enjoy it. Come.’ He raises an eyebrow. ‘Pretend you trust me,’ I dare him.

We walk farther into the pool until the water licks at my chest. ‘We’ll dive now, straight down, no fancy stuff. Keep your eyes open and do what I do.’

Not waiting for his consent, I plunge head first into the cold. Silvery bubbles swirl around me. Grabbing a rock at the bottom, I watch Runner copying my moves. I pull myself down and press my stomach against the rock’s smooth surface. He pulls himself farther down too, then lets go and floats up. I twist my neck to keep an eye on him. His legs kick, his head is above the surface. Then he sticks his face underwater, looking where I am. I grin and wait. He’ll be nervous now. And then, he dives back down to check if I’m still alive. His black eyes are huge when he touches my cheek. I show him a broad smile and we rise to the surface together.

He wipes the water off his face and gazes at me. Something is ticking in his head. He opens his mouth, closes it again, takes a deep breath, and then says, ‘I’ll be your student. I need to know how you can hold your breath for such a long time, how you swim and dive without producing noise. And you
have
to teach me how you swam across the swamp. I want to be able to use the water the way you do.’

Here comes the strategist and effective killer. No more fear, only tactics. With a sudden shiver, I remember the night when he told me that he’s a sniper and a strategist, and that people call him
The Executor
. ‘I execute decisions and people,’ he’d said. No doubt he will learn to use the water to his best advantage.

‘It’s all about trust. Trust me now. Then learn to trust the water. Ready?’

He gives me a nod and I dive. The blurry underwater world is rushing past my vision. The turbulences produced by the waterfall and the bubbles of air are tickling my skin and give the impression of the pool tumbling this way and that. I grab a rock and search for Runner. He’s just behind me and right next to me a moment later. I point at my ears, pinch my nose and squeeze my eyes shut. He does the same, loses his grip, and floats up. I follow.
 

‘The pressure on your ear drums can be equilibrated in two ways,’ I tell him. ‘You can pinch your nose shut and blow gently. Yeah, like this. Or you make a yawning movement at the back of your throat. I prefer the latter, because it’s gentler on the ears and I have both hands free.’

Now, it’s he who dives first. I watch him hold on to a rock for a long moment, then he comes up again. ‘I think I got it. What’s next?’

I grin. ‘If you feel somewhat comfortable with diving, we dive all the way through the waterfall and to the other side. The waterfall will force you down and you’ll lose your orientation if you don’t focus on swimming straight through. I’ll be right at your side. Ready?’

He assesses the distance, and nods. He doesn’t look at me.
 

‘One. Two. Three,’ I say, inhale deeply and we jump together. I dive next to him and watch his moves. He’s unsteady but his strokes are strong. He swims straight into the white mass of boiling water and I lose sight of him. When I come out on the other side, he’s gone. I kick at the water to reach the bottom of the pool and there I glimpse a hand and a leg flailing in the white turmoil. I grab his wrist and pull. A second hand comes down on my upper arm. There’s panic in his iron grip. I yank him closer, and box his chest. He looks at me, eyes darting around, unsure where is up and where is down. I yank his arm again. Only a short moment later, he meets my gaze; his senses seem to be coming back. We both kick at the ground and shoot upwards.
 

‘Hold on to this,’ I cough and slap my hand against the rock wall. That was what I meant about panicking and the two of us drowning.

‘I’ll do this again. You wait here.’

He doesn’t even give me enough time to tell him to breathe, and to calm down first. Off he swims, around the waterfall and to the other side of the pool. Through the curtain of water, I see him dive. I dive straight down to meet him. But he’s not there. I swim into the white and don’t see a trace of him. The water presses me down to the bottom and there I find something smooth and warm. And not moving. Shocked, I grab his waist and pull. I’m so relieved when I feel him swimming with me.

‘What the heck happened?’ I splutter.

‘I tried to count to twenty. You interrupted.’ He tries to look disappointed, but there’s pride glittering in his eyes just before he takes yet another plunge.

I swim and dive and roll around in the water, pretending to be a fish, while keeping an eye on him. He’s growing bolder with each dive. Odd, how proud this makes me.

When the clouds gradually thin, and I begin to feel like an icicle, it’s time for us to leave.

‘That was probably the shortest teacher-student relationship in the history of humankind.’ I shake the water from my hair and wring out my shirt.
 

‘I have a lot to learn,’ he replies. ‘You swam through a swamp, with your rifle, no less. I’ve never even heard of anyone doing that, let alone coming out alive, or coming out at all.’ He regards me with a boyish grin and taps his knuckles to my shoulder. I could get used to this. ‘You are a good teacher, Micka. Quite relentless.’

‘You, too,’ I stutter, half-ashamed. ‘Your other apprentices must be very good at tactics and sniping and…’ I break off when I see his scowl.

‘The only apprentice I ever took stands before me.’ He strolls off before I can ask another question.

I find him back at our fireplace, digging out the roasted chestnuts with a stick.
 

‘Let them cool down a little and keep half of them for dinner.’ He holds out the stick to me and I start digging while he places our ghillies on the forest floor.

‘I’ll take the earbud for now. There’s the water in our ears from diving and we should switch more often,’ I say.

He removes his earbud and sticks it into his shirt pocket, then gives me one earbud from his ruck. Silently, he bends over his ghillie and begins replacing some of the grass tufts with green leaves and twigs from a bush. I modify my camouflage similarly to his. He’s perfect at this. People could walk right past him without knowing he’s there, while they’ve been in his crosshairs ever since they entered his one kilometre radius.
You own them; you own their lives,
echoes in my head. That was what Runner said to me the first day I gazed through the scope of his rifle. Whoever shows up in my finder, I own them.

Somehow, owning someone feels more wrong to me than owning someone’s life. But the difference might be too subtle for the owned ones to notice.

Later today, we’ll bury much of our equipment here. One MedKit, eighty percent of the ammo we carry, the hammocks, mosquito nets, and blankets, two water filters, the hacksaw, and two squeeze lights, plus the fire starting kit. We’ll need the stuff when we return. Lighter, we’ll travel much faster. Once our ghillies have been adapted to the vegetation farther down, we’ll travel the last stretch to the meeting point during bright daylight, then wait for the machine’s arrival at nightfall.

The small airplane touches down, kicking up a trail of dust that scatters in the night wind. We run towards the machine, and jump in before it
 
even comes to a complete stop.

‘Welcome to Mad Hatter Airlines. Strap your asses down and hold on to your bowels. Here we gooooo!’ Ben hollers, twisting his head around and grinning at us. I wish he would at least
look
where he’s flying.

Runner slams the door shut and secures it. ‘How’s Kat?’

That brings me up short. I would have expected him to ask about Yi-Ting first.

The machine’s upward tilt and speed increase sharply. It feels as if someone yanks at my rucksack and I almost fall on my butt.
 

‘Kat’s pissed. Big time. One might think she’s scared,’ Ben says when he brings the solar plane’s nose down a bit. I feel much safer when the thing is more horizontal than vertical. He won’t say any more — Kat’s orders. Runner doesn’t bug him. And so, after twenty minutes of small talk, we are back on Itbayat. Only this time, it feels different. Unsafe.

‘Meeting in ten,’ Ben tells us before we dash off to our tents.
 

I drop my pack and rifle and walk to the comm tent. A silent buzzing fills the room — the relief that everyone returned unscathed combined with the tension of new things learned.
 

Runner sits on a chair, long legs stretched out in front of him. ‘How did your paper airplane project go?’

‘Believable to anyone watching,’ Yi-Ting answers. Kat nods consent.

‘Good. The council and your special friend?’ He looks at Kat, then at Ben.

‘They had problems believing it, as you can imagine. The BSA hacking our satellite system — what’s bigger and more absurd than that? But they agreed to your plans; better safe than sorry. The mission’s first step is set in motion in…’ Ben checks the time on his SatPad. ‘Whoa, two hours ago. We’ve been slow.’

Runner pinches the bridge of his nose and stares at his knees for a short moment. I know this gesture: he’s decided, has a plan, and now fine-tunes the precise order of actions in his head. When he’s unsure, he taps his fingers on whatever surface is available, preferably his thighs or knees. ‘Early tomorrow morning, you’ll continue your flights over Taiwan. Follow your usual pattern, but be prepared. The BSA will know when you are due, they’ll be observing your movements and will be able to predict when you’ll be approaching. In this, they have a clear advantage. Meanwhile, we go about our usual business.’ He nods to me.
 

That’ll be training. Good.

Kat’s been tense since we entered the tent. Now she raises a hand to silence us. ‘I’ve got news. While Ben picked you up, I looked through the data he brought back and found…something.’ She reaches out and taps at the screen. ‘Not many Sequencers are experts in satellite control, even fewer are able to hack their way into a high-security system. Of these few, I looked for the ones who were reported dead or missing in the past twenty years. It’s a generous time window, but I don’t want to miss anyone. I expected the sample size to be larger, but…’

Photos of three men and four women pop up. Slowly, we all lean forward. Runner’s hand drops from his chin. He turns and looks at me as if I just stuck a knife into someone’s ribs. I’m growing sick to the bone.

One man has a frizzly crown of grey hair, wrinkles around his eyes and mouth from laughing, slightly too large ears, and light brown eyes — Cacho.
 

‘What’s he doing there? I thought he’d retired,’ I mutter. No one answers. Kat’s gaze travels from my face back to the screen. There’s a man with a shock of orange hair. He has my nose — slender and freckled, and my eyes — grey like a thunderstorm. But his mouth is compressed and unyielding, very unlike mine. Where I have lips, he has a line buried in a yellow beard.

‘This is no coincidence.’ Kat points her thumb at me. ‘What do we know about her?’

‘Fuck you!’ I jump up and get ready to fight, but no one attacks. Not physically. ‘How do you even know he’s my…my…whatever? He’s most likely not my—’