Estranged (19 page)

“
Sidelines?” Kalei
couldn’t keep the edge out of her voice. “Yeah, they’re on the
sidelines because Terin got cozy with the mayor and forced all the
officers out of—”

“
My apologies, Kalei,”
Erit quietly interrupted, holding up one hand to stop her. “I did
not mean to offend. I understand the difficult position the police
are in, I do. If anything, I commend them for respecting the laws
in place, even as it bars them from helping those to whom they are
sworn to protect. But you and I both know that it is for the best.”
He held Kalei’s eyes with his own and waited for her
response.

She looked away again. “Yeah, of
course.”

The sound of screeching brakes filled
the compartment as the van slowed to a halt. Shenaia used the
momentum of the stop to fall dramatically into Kalei. Kalei pushed
the girl off and gave her a glare, then picked up her own helmet
from the bench and pushed it down over her head.

“
Helmets on,” Erit
reminded the other two as he put on his and waited to see that they
were all similarly suited. Kalei felt the magnet in the back of her
collar
snitch
into place as it connected to her helmet. She ignored the
other three Wardens and watched the edges of her visor as the
WARCOM system came online. When it flickered to life, she could see
four small icons in the left corner of her visor and a slight
crackle told her the audio was now live.

The four icons displayed a
black smiley face, the spine of a book, a steering wheel, and a
swirl: a live feed of the team’s nails. Shenaia’s steering wheel
flicked happily back and forth on some cheery drive, Erit’s book
read
The Puppet Masters
, and Mar’s smiley face kept its mouth flat-lined, but its
eyebrows arched in a deep scowl.

Erit opened the doors and they stepped
outside.

It was Kalei’s first time outside the
fence since she had officially become a Recruit with SWORDE. She
stepped out into the grey day and listened to the light rainfall
against her helmet. Looking past the raindrops multiplying on her
visor, she could see the apartment complex ahead. She was standing
at the edge of a cluster of tall, repetitive brick buildings
reaching for the sky with about as much character as the grey
clouds that hung over them. Less, actually.

Meanwhile, the second building on her
left was cordoned off with caution tape, and a handful of locals
crowded the yellow ribbon to get front row seats to the show.
There, a man with a thick brown jacket and a baseball cap, both
hands in his pockets, stood on his toes to see the entrance of the
apartment building. A middle-aged woman in her sweats asked a
police officer for information, holding an umbrella as she hugged
her heavy sports jacket closed with her free hand. It was the
typical crowd Kalei was used to from her policing days.

Within the caution tape, stretching
out across the open area between the police cars and the
apartments, stood an expanse of dirt that could hardly be called a
lawn. The squat tufts of grass were clearly the minority. Across
the yard, cement paths wandered this way and that, not lending much
to the greenery despite the hardy clumps of weeds that made their
stand in the many cracks and crevices.

Standing huddled at the intersection
of these paths stood a dozen scared people surrounded by a half
dozen police officers. The officers questioned the civilians with
soft voices and notebooks in hand, while the civilians alternately
nodded nervously and demanded answers. Nothing had changed since
she left. The same scene, the same people, the same helplessness
pervaded. Except now, she wasn’t helpless.

She spotted Dwaro among the officers
and walked over to him.

“
What’s the
situation?”

He spun around so fast Kalei almost
pulled her gun. He gaped at her for a moment, his eyes dancing
across her visor as they tried to work out some burning question.
“Uh, a woman heard screams. She, uh— Kalei, is that
you?”

Shit.
Kalei tried to think of something, anything she could say
that would change his mind. But she couldn’t open her mouth. Even
if she tried to change her voice, she had worked with this man for
years. He would know her voice anywhere.
Obviously
.

They stood there for what felt like a
year, Dwaro watching her incredulously as he waited for her
response, and Kalei with her mouth working frantically, trying to
answer his question without speaking. Kalei was on the verge of
creating some absurd bastardization of sign language when Erit
finally showed up.

“
What the hell are you
doing? Get over there with Wheels.” Kalei nodded, relieved, and
walked over to Shenaia, who was laughing, of course.

“
Haha! You made Books say
‘hell’! Haha! That was great!” Kalei rolled her eyes and accepted
one of the assault rifles from Mar. Estranged might not be killed
by guns, but it stopped them all the same. No one likes to get
shot.

Erit joined them and gave the signal.
“Let’s go.”

As the Wardens walked into the
building, it didn’t take Kalei’s eyes long to adjust to the dim
light. In front of her, on the opposite wall, stood two elevators,
and to her left and right, hallways led down to the first-floor
apartments. Mar and Erit went to the end of these halls and secured
the fire exits while Shenaia and Kalei began to clear apartment
after apartment after apartment.

For most people,
additional closet space is a perk; for Kalei, it was just one more
nook to check. And these apartments could boast a
lot
of closet
space.

The first floor showed nothing. So,
they took the stairs up to the next floor.

Kalei saw Shenaia’s wheel take an
erratic 180-degree turn. Shenaia said, “We have to do this for ten
freaking floors! Why the hell don’t we have more people for this
shit?”

“
Budget cuts,” Erit
replied sarcastically. Wardens didn’t get paid a dime for what they
did.

“
Fuck you and your budget
cuts. I’d rather be sitting in the van than marchin’ up and down
these damn hallways,” Shenaia retorted. That being said, Shenaia
continued to march up and down the hallways with Kalei, clearing
each of the apartments.

On the third floor, they stepped into
a room that was completely dark. Not unusual, but when they tried
to flip the switch, nothing came on. Per protocol, they pulled out
their flashlights, attached them to the top of the rifles, and
proceeded with caution.

The beam of Kalei’s light slid over a
large couch, a wooden end table, and cast a huge shadow on the wall
as it caught the lamp. She worked her way around the living room
while Shenaia checked the closets, but both came up empty, so they
continued down the hall.

Before they reached the first door,
Kalei heard something: a muffled, choking sound. Kalei signaled for
Shenaia to stop. The sound was hard to pinpoint with her helmet on,
but she didn’t dare remove it. Instead, she moved slowly to the
first door on the left and gently pushed it open. The sound grew
louder. She raised her rifle, and the beam of light from the
flashlight revealed a bed covered in a thick blue comforter and, on
the other side, tucked between the bed and the wall, the top of
someone’s head.

Kalei moved toward the far
wall, her flashlight trained on the person as she yelled, “Put your
hands up! Make any sudden movements, and I
will
shoot.”

Instead, the head ducked down and the
choking noise grew louder. Kalei tucked her rifle tighter into her
shoulder and placed her finger on the trigger, but as her line of
sight broke clear of the bed and she could see the full body of the
person, she saw a crying young boy. His hair covered his face as he
hugged his knees tightly to his chest, his shoulders bouncing to
the rhythm of his sobs. Kalei lowered her weapon.

“
Is he Estranged?” Erit
asked over the radio when Kalei reported the discovery.

Kalei crouched down next to the boy
and put one hand on his back. Shenaia moved in behind her and
pointed the flashlight at the boy so they could see.

Kalei said, “Hey, it’s okay. I’m not
going to hurt you.” She continued to talk to him as she gently
pulled his hands away from his legs.

Shenaia reported, “No, he’s not
Estranged.”

“
Okay, you and Swirls
escort him back to the van and check him out. Smiles and I will
continue the sweep.”

“
Roger that.”

Rubbing the boy’s back, Kalei asked,
“Hey, where are your parents?”

The boy hesitantly looked at Kalei
through a break in his dark hair, his eyes still puffy, his lower
lip quivering. Kalei estimated he was no more than eight years old.
He didn’t say anything, he just stared at her dark visor with wide
eyes.

Kalei reached back and removed her
helmet, smiling at the boy as she said, “It’s okay. You can tell
me.”

The boy continued to stare at
her.

Shenaia propped her gun against the
wall so the light still shone on them and removed her helmet as
well, kneeling down next to Kalei. She said, “Hey, come here,
kid.”

The kid glanced at Shenaia briefly,
but then returned to staring at Kalei. Shenaia whispered, “Hey, put
on your helmet and get out of here. I think he recognizes you from
the TV.”

Kalei tossed Shenaia a wary glance,
put her helmet back on, and then retreated to the far wall. Far
enough that the boy couldn’t see her, but close enough for Kalei to
keep an eye on Shenaia.

“
Kid, time to go. Get
up.”

“
No.”

“
No?”

“
The cop girl said she was
going to shoot me.”

“
Kid, we Wardens. We the
good guys. Now c’mon.”

“
No.”

Shenaia put her helmet on, reached
back for her rifle, and tossed it to Kalei, saying, “Hold
this.”

Kalei caught the rifle, but with the
flashlight now pointing at the ceiling, she didn’t see what
happened next. She heard the boy cry out, and then Shenaia stepped
into the light with the kid slung over one shoulder, kicking and
screaming and punching her back with both fists.

Shenaia didn’t seem to notice as she
took her rifle back from Kalei with her free hand and led the way
out of the apartment.

Once outside, they took the boy
straight to the van. His shouts and screams garnered a lot of
attention from the crowd, but luckily, the open back doors shielded
them from unwanted attention as Shenaia put the boy down onto the
back bumper. Kalei pulled a blanket out of one of the lockers and
draped it around the boy’s shoulders. He immediately pulled it
tightly around himself, pulled his legs inside, and glared at them
from his shelter, only his neck and head visible above the brown
wool.

Kalei touched Shenaia on the shoulder
and spoke softly into the radio so the boy couldn’t hear. “You go
ahead and give him the test. He could still be an Estranged. I’m
going to grab the other kit from up front and start testing the
other victims.”

“
Gotchya.”

Kalei walked over to the passenger
door of the van and gave a nod to the driver as she opened it.
Beneath the seat sat the green testing kit she was looking for. She
reached down and started to pull the kit out, but it caught on
something.

Kalei bent over to take a look, but as
she did so, her helmet bumped into the floor mat and wouldn’t allow
her to see anything below the edge of the seat cushion.

This motherfucking piece
of—

Kalei glanced over her shoulder to
make sure no one was around to see her, then she ducked back into
the shelter of the van and removed her helmet.

They really need to
consider switching to masks,
Kalei thought
to herself as she took a moment to pull an earbud from the collar
of her suit and tuck it into her ear. If Erit tried to radio her
and found out her helmet was off, that was one lecture she would
never hear the end of.

Kalei looked under the
seat. The small red box, molded from plastic with a handle at the
top, was wedged behind some sort of lever that jutted out from the
chair’s frame. Kalei reached in, grabbed the handle, and attempted
to move the box around the bar, but the kit was too big. It was at
least an inch wider than the gap between the bar and the
seat.
How the hell did they get this thing
in here?

She slid the kit as far to
the right as she could, then she placed her left hand on the seat
cushion to give herself more leverage, and she gave the kit a hard
yank. With a loud
snap!
it came free.

That didn’t sound
good
.

“
What’s going on?” The
urgency in Erit’s voice made her jump.

“
Nothing! I, uh–” She
looked over her shoulder and realized Erit wasn’t there. It was her
radio. “Uh, I was just getting the second kit, and—”

“
What is Wheels doing? Why
did her nails just go full black?”