Deadfall (2 page)

AN HOUR HAS
passed, the motion of the train soothing you. As you watch the mountains pass by the window, you feel safe in the small, quiet space. “You never answered me before. Why San Francisco? Why were we supposed to meet there?”

Rafe pauses before answering, “That’s where you knew people. After you left your aunt’s place you lived there for four months, before you went back to the desert—”

“Cabazon? Is that where my mom and brother live?”

“They lived there, yeah. Just outside it.” He shifts in his seat, looking up at the ceiling.

“What happened to them?” You try to keep your voice even as you say it, but it’s impossible. You are so close to knowing about your family. About something real.

He takes a deep breath, holding it for a few seconds. “After
your dad died, you came home from school one day and your mom wasn’t there. So you waited for her. You tried to take care of your brother as long as you could. After a few weeks of thinking she’d come back, you ran out of money and food. You had to bring him to some aunt you barely knew who had a shitty boyfriend you hated.”

You think again of the memory of the funeral. The woman beside you covered her face, the skin on her hands so thin you could see the veins beneath. Your brother is clearer, but only as a child. You can’t remember much more than his laugh.

“Did I tell you my brother’s name?”

“Chris. Chris Marcus. That’s your last name, too.”

“Lena Marcus.”

“Lena Marcus.” As he repeats it he pulls his hood up, crosses his arms over his chest, and watches you. You know it’s an odd position to put him in, to force him to tell you these things. You hate that it has to be this way. But you need to know.

“Where is my brother now? Do you know?” you ask.

“You weren’t sure.”

“How did my dad die? When?”

“You were fifteen. A heart attack. You found him in his car.”

You wait to feel that heavy pull, the sensation of a memory coming on. You want to remember what you saw, to feel what you felt, as horrible as it must have been. But nothing
happens. You can’t connect to anything Rafe’s saying. He could be speaking about anyone.

“Look, Lena . . .” Rafe stares across at you. “We don’t have to talk about this.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t. Maybe it’s better not to know.”

Just then there’s a knock on the compartment door, and it slides open. A man in a crisp blue uniform stands there, one arm resting on the frame. His white beard is trimmed close to his jawline. “Tickets, please.”

He looks at Rafe’s dirty clothes. When Rafe hands him the two first-class tickets to New York he studies them carefully. He punches them and moves on to the next room. Your coach ticket to Chicago is still in your pocket.

You lean forward, closing the space between you. “You know, I never said I’d go with you. It might be more dangerous for us, together. Why New York anyway?”

Rafe folds the tickets back into his pocket. “I want to find other targets.”

Other targets.
You knew they were out there, of course—there was the abandoned house you saw members of AAE go into, their headquarters of sorts, which had pictures on the wall with code names like your own tattoo—a falcon, a cobra, a shark. Next to them were different cities. New York, Los Angeles, Miami. But in truth, you hadn’t given the others much thought. “How are you going to find them?”

He adjusts the wristband of his watch. You can see the black square now. An animal that looks like an elk is printed inside it, followed by the code KLP02111. “When I was looking for you in San Francisco, I started searching different websites, knowing there must’ve been other targets out there.”

“And you found them?”

“I found one. A boy who called himself Connor. He’d posted on Craigslist, and we ended up talking once on Skype, for only a few minutes. He told me that he already found one other target, and he was looking for more. He said there were spots in New York, places he met up with the other target. Our call got cut short, but I heard enough to make up my mind.”

“But what if it’s a trap? What if he’s just trying to lure you out of hiding?”

“It’s a risk,” Rafe says. “But I talked to him. I heard his voice. He was scared.”

“So you want to find him when you get there? How?”

“I don’t know yet,” Rafe says. “Go to some of the places he mentioned, to start. It seems like it’s worth trying. I’m sick of running. I’m sick of being alone.”

You stare down at your hands. There are still reddish-brown stains beneath the nails. Izzy’s blood. She was Ben’s neighbor, and your first real friend. She followed you to Goss’s house that day, because she wanted to make sure you
were okay. When he came after you she was caught in the cross fire.

After she was shot, you vowed you’d stay on your own, that you wouldn’t be responsible for anyone else. But now you’re not so sure. You thought you’d find your way to some nondescript town outside Chicago, try to blend in, try to hide. But that plan seems naïve now. Staying with Rafe is a risk . . . but being on your own is, too.

The compartment door is still open a crack and you stand, sliding it shut. “So let’s find the other targets, then. If they’ve remembered anything that we haven’t, it could lead us to who’s at the top of AAE. We could stop all of this.”

Rafe looks at you. “We can start with Connor.”

“We have to be careful.” You don’t know which one of you you’re reminding.

Rafe stares down at the floor, smiles like he’s just remembered something.

“On the island,” he says, “careful wasn’t what kept us alive.”

THE ROOM SMELLS
of moldy bread and bleach. You have your arm under the table in front of you so they can’t see. You drag the tip of the pen across your wrist, drawing long, thin spirals. You move to the spot just below your elbow, making a few black stars. It feels good to be doing something you’re not supposed to.

“Marcus.” You keep going, making a heart, another star. “Marcus, I’m talking to you.” You hear her, but you don’t care. Let her say it again, let her try to get you to look up. Joy is sitting beside you. She nudges you, whispers, “Williams sees you. Don’t be stupid.”

“Marcus, I’m talking to you.” Williams is at your side now. She takes the pen from your hand. “Where did you get this?”

You got it from Catholic Services. Borrowed it to write a prayer card and never gave it back. You don’t say that, though. You don’t say anything.

“Stand up, Marcus. You’re in your room for the night.” You just sit there, in the stupid plastic chair, in the baggy pants that don’t fit you, the laces stolen from your shoes. You roll your sweatshirt down so it covers your arm as a staff member appears on the other side of you. He yanks you to your feet.

When you open your eyes you see the ceiling of the train compartment. The top bunk is narrow and the mattress is too soft to be comfortable. Sunlight fills the tiny room. You laid down at one in the morning, maybe later, and you’re not sure how long you’ve been asleep.

“You up?” Rafe is just a voice below.

“How’d you know?”

“You must’ve turned over twenty times in the last hour. It’s your back, right? From sleeping outside?”

“It’s everything. I was having a dream.”

“A memory?”

“Yeah.”

“Was it about me?” You can hear the smile in his voice.

“Very funny.”

You lean over the side of the bunk. He’s just below you. He’s already folded his bed up, turned it back into two chairs. He’s eating a sandwich out of a plastic container. “I used to dream about you,” he says. “Before my memory came back.”

The statement just hangs there. He waits, and you know he wants to find out if your dreams are like his.

“It was about my life before,” you say. You maneuver
off the bunk, stepping onto the seat below. Your dress is wrinkled, your hair matted in the back. “What time is it?”

“Almost two. They already came through with lunch.”

He plucks half the sandwich from the container and offers it to you. You only now realize how hungry you are. You haven’t eaten in almost a day.

When you look up, Rafe’s watching you. He’s taken off his hoodie, and a cotton T-shirt hugs his broad chest. He’s tall enough so that he’s almost at eye level with you on the bunk. Light flickers across his face, catching in his dark lashes, throwing quick, passing patterns on his olive skin.

“I was serious before,” he says. “I’d have these really vivid dreams of us on the island.”

“I know,” you say.

“You have them, too?”

“That’s how I recognized you.”

You sit back in the seat, keeping your eyes on the scenery outside as it passes. There are trees in every direction, houses dotted in the hills behind them. The leaves are a deep burgundy, some gold. The sky is a flat white.

He keeps his head down when he speaks. “Those first days after I woke up, when I didn’t know anything . . . that’s what kept me sane. Thinking about those dreams.”

Outside, in the corridor, you can hear people talking. You eat the rest of the sandwich, savoring each bite. “I couldn’t tell if they were real. I didn’t know.”

“They always felt real to me.”

“It’s still confusing,” you say.

He leans forward onto your top bunk, resting his chin on his knuckles. “Those dreams are the only thing that aren’t confusing.”

His words are low and soft. He reaches out, taking your hand. He holds it there in front of you, turns it over, his thumb grazing the inside of your palm. Your skin is hot beneath his touch. But it’s too much.

“I’m not there yet, Rafe,” you say, slipping your hand from his. “I don’t know you. I want to, but I don’t. Not yet.”

“Right, I know.” He sits down in one of the chairs.

You listen to his breaths. You don’t want to compare, but you do. The way it felt when Ben was with you, his fingers tangled in yours.

That wasn’t real. This is real.
But it’s getting harder to tell the difference. You climb off the bed and sit across from him.

“I want to know your story.”

“My story . . .”

You lean your forehead against the window, looking out. “How AAE found you, where you’re from . . . how your memory came back. You haven’t told me anything.”

He rests his elbows on his knees. There’s a bump in the bridge of his nose, the top of it askew, like it was broken at some point. He doesn’t look at you, studying the pattern of the seat fabric instead. “My story is . . . I never got past
eleventh grade. My story is . . . I’ve met my dad twice, and my mom started doing meth when I was six. One of my first memories is finding her passed out on the garage floor. My grandmother raised me.”

You bring your knees to your chest, watching him.

“Where’d you grow up?”

“Outside of Fresno.” There’s a hint of irritation in his voice. “You know I’ve already told you all this.”

“Tell me again.”

“It’s still not all there.”

“Try . . .”

“There are pieces that feel like they’re missing. But I know I used to go to this boxing gym. The manager was a friend of my older brother’s and he let me go for free sometimes, when there weren’t a lot of people there. This guy saw me fight. He started asking me all this stuff about my family, like where I was from. I thought they were just bullshit questions. Then he said he’d pay for me to fly to Texas, that he’d set up a match for me there. Like I was that good.”

“I wonder what he was doing for them . . . doesn’t sound like he was a Watcher, or a Stager,” you say.

Rafe’s hand drops away from his face. “What’s that?”

“AAE assigns a Stager to each target, the ones that tip off the hunters so they can find you, then make sure there’s no evidence of the hunt. They set me up so I wouldn’t go to the police—made it look like I’d broken into this office
building. Watchers are people who monitor you, make sure you’re staying within a certain radius, and make sure you’re healthy. They keep tabs for AAE. They’re the ones that planted the tracking devices on us—you got rid of yours, right?” Rafe nods, and then you go on. “I found it all out when I tracked my hunter, Goss, to his house. He had paperwork hidden in one of his closets, and there was enough there to put some of it together.”

Rafe rests his head back. “The guy who first approached me . . . I don’t know how he worked for them. Curt. Giant Filipino guy who could talk for hours about boxing and football. Hated the Jets but he loved the 49ers.”

Rafe pauses, waiting for you to say something. “He was probably watching the gym for a while, trying to see who they might be able to recruit,” you offer. “Getting you to trust him.”

“It makes me feel so stupid. Like, it was this big, exciting thing. I told everyone I was going. I would not shut up about this boxing championship I was going to be in and all the money I was going to make. My grandma was sick by then and I thought I was going to go there and . . .”

He doesn’t finish, just keeps his eyes on the ceiling. His palm comes down over his face, fingers rubbing his temples. “Curt said they had this sponsor, that we’d fly private. I’d never been on a plane before that. We took off out of this small airport and I freaked out when we were up in the air.
It was the craziest feeling. And then when I woke up I was on the island.”

“How did it happen?”

“He gave me a drink twenty minutes after takeoff. He must’ve put something in it.”

“And when you woke up on the island, you could still remember everything?”

“Yeah, we remembered everything on the island. I don’t know how long I would’ve lasted there without my memories.”

“What do you mean?”

“Remembering things . . . people . . . it helped, it always helped me fight harder. It gave me a reason to survive. On the island, whenever I started thinking I couldn’t make it I would just picture . . .” He laughs a small, quiet laugh, then turns his head so his face is out of view. “I’d remember these eggs my grandmother would make for me. She’d put hot sauce on them, then scramble them with cheddar cheese. It sounds stupid, but I thought about that so many times, how she’d do that every morning. Just for me. She didn’t even like them. That memory kept me alive.”

Something gives way inside of you. You wipe at the corner of your eyes, wanting him to turn to you, for him to reach for your hand again. When he does, you take it.