The Always War (5 page)

There was an uncomfortable echo to that thought:
And what about me? What do I deserve for beating up children? What if I’m every bit as evil as he is, and always have been—I just never got a chance to drop any bombs?

At school, kids stabbed pencils in other kids’ backs and tripped people and started fights in the school cafeteria. It was a school day like any other, but somehow even the pettiest cruelty felt unbearable to Tessa. Cordina Kurdle snapped a rubber band at Tessa’s arm, and it was all Tessa could do to keep from bursting into tears. Cordina’s henchmen, seeing this weakness, went for an all-out assault of pinches and shoves and jabs every time the teacher looked away.

Tessa finally let the tears out after school, as she hunched over, scrubbing floors at the hospital. Sometimes in the past she’d found ways to make her job almost enjoyable—competing to scrub an entire room as fast as she could, or creating designs on the floor in water and suds. But today it was all she could do just to slide her cleaning rag back and forth across the dingy concrete. Tear-blinded, she reached for her bucket. Her hand struck too low and knocked the whole thing over. The gray, slimy water spilled across the floor she’d just cleaned.

“Clean it up!” the supervisor commanded. “Scrub everything all over again! And I’m docking your pay!”

Either the supervisor didn’t notice that Tessa was crying, or—more likely—he didn’t care.

Not fair,
Tessa thought, after everyone else was gone and it was just her and her bucket and rag in the huge, empty room, all that filthy concrete left to be scrubbed.
This is Gideon’s fault. He killed all those people and he’s the reason I’m crying and he still gets to have some hope….

Tessa almost dropped her rag. She froze. Was that right? Could she fling the accusation “still has hope” at someone who’d looked as anguished as Gideon had, just about every single moment she’d spent in his presence?

If he didn’t have any hope, what did he want my computer for on Saturday?
she asked herself.
Why did he want to look at that video? Was he just hoping to destroy me, too? Or …

She remembered that he’d told her she wouldn’t want to see the video. He’d warned her not to look.

So why …?

She remembered how final everything had looked on the computer screen, all those dead bodies, all those lives ended. But evidently it wasn’t finished. There was still something Gideon had wanted to see, some reason he had needed to scan those horrific images again.

Was there still something he thought he could change?

Tessa threw down her rag. She left her bucket of water in the middle of the floor and took off running. On alternating steps she thought,
I can stop him,
and
I can help him,
and she didn’t know which one she believed.

But what if there really was something she could do?

Then I could be a hero,
she thought, running harder.
A real one. Whether anybody else ever knows it or not.

Tessa crashed into her room without a fully formed plan in her head. She couldn’t decide if it would be best to crank up her computer and scour every archive she could find—study it all intensely—or if it would make more sense to grab the computer and stalk over to the Thralls and confront Gideon, first thing. She was leaning toward the confrontation, just because it would be faster.

But what if he lies? What if he just makes up some story, and I don’t know enough to be able to tell if it’s true or false?

In the midst of scooping up her computer, Tessa paused just long enough to take a deep breath.

And then she stopped completely.

Her room smelled like paint.

Fresh paint.

Her room hadn’t been painted in years.

Tessa whirled around, gazing open-jawed at walls she normally didn’t notice.

There. Just above the bed, in the middle of the wall she now knew lay between her bedroom and Gideon’s, the paint caught the light and glistened, as if some of it wasn’t quite dry.

And—Tessa studied it more closely—in one wide circle that contained the glistening spots, even the dry paint was a slightly different shade of industrial gray than the rest of the walls.

Why—?
Tessa wondered.
How—?

She remembered that a storeroom lay directly below her room. The janitor who occasionally bothered to clean the hallways kept brooms and trash cans in there. It was possible that he had cans of paint there as well.

Instinctively, Tessa looked down. The battered rag rug that she kept across the floorboards was bunched up, slightly out of place.

Tessa kicked it aside.

There, in a spot that had been hidden by the rug before, someone had taken out the nails from a roughly circular area of the floorboards.

Someone?
Tessa thought.
Oh, no. I know who did this.

She looked from the circle of fresh paint on the wall to the circle of unattached boards on the floor. She was working on a theory.

So Gideon wanted to get out of his room without being seen. He cut a hole in my wall, and then pried open a hole in my floor. He crawled through and then tried to erase all signs that he’d been here.
But he couldn’t put the nails back in the floorboards to completely cover his tracks because …
Tessa looked down again. She knew why.
Because he still hasn’t come back.

Was he going to? Or was he gone for good?

Tessa hugged her arms against her chest, as if she were capable of comforting herself. She’d forgotten she was still holding the computer, and the cold metal sent a jolt through her system. She jerked her arms back, tilting the computer crazily.

A thin sheet of paper fell from in between the keyboard and the folded-down screen.

Tessa immediately crouched to pick it up and read it:

I scrubbed this clean. (The computer.)

Forget about me.

Destroy this note, too, of course, and then there will be nothing to link you to any of this.

I’m sorry.

Tessa crumpled the note in her hand. Then she changed her mind—that was too much like obeying. She smoothed the paper out again on her desk.

… then there will be nothing to link you to any of this….

That’s it?
she thought.
That’s the end?

She had been so pumped for confrontation—and for seeing Gideon again. It was hard to switch gears, to think of having an ordinary evening instead. Just another ordinary evening in a completely ordinary life. Ordinary, dull, tasteless, colorless, pointless …

What did you expect?
she asked herself angrily. Gideon had told her that very first day to stay away from him.

Because he was protecting me,
she thought.
Like he was protecting me telling me not to watch the video of the war.

But wasn’t she linked to him and the war, no matter what? Because wasn’t the whole point of the war to protect people like her?

Tessa looked up from the note, because she couldn’t stand to keep staring at the brusque words, which might as well have said,
You are nothing to me. You are nothing
. Had he spent ten seconds scrawling out this note? Twenty? Was she worth that little? Couldn’t he have even signed his name?

Tessa stared out the window. The streetlights were out again. This happened a lot—with the war on, there wasn’t even enough money for spare lightbulbs. And some people said the sudden blackouts were a test, a trial run of what the city would do if the enemy’s bombers made it this far past the border.

“Why would anyone bother destroying Waterford City? How could it look any worse with bombs dropped on it than it does now?” was one of the jokes that people told.

Even without streetlights Tessa could make out shapes moving in the shadowed darkness down on the sidewalk. With infrared cameras and night-vision instruments, the enemy would have no trouble picking out people to kill. They could be in some airplane high overhead and then—

Stop,
Tessa told herself.
Don’t think about the war.

It had been going on her entire life, her parents’ entire lives, her grandparents’ entire lives. The oldest person Tessa had ever heard of—Mr. Singleton from the first floor—was more than seventy, and even he didn’t remember a time before the war. It was always there, as ever-present as air. The most talented children were selected for the military academies and
sent away by the time they were ten; only rarely did any of them ever come back. But even people who weren’t directly involved in the fighting were part of the war. They assembled bombs in factories; they packed food for the soldiers; they scavenged parts from damaged fighter planes.

For a moment Tessa felt like she could see the way the war weighed on everyone walking by in the darkness. People walked bent over, crouched down, defensive—looking defeated just by all the years of fighting. One figure in particular practically clutched the building, as if ready to dart in at the first sign of danger. Every few steps he’d whip his head around, as if every noise spooked him. Between steps he stood with his entire body tensed, watching.

That’s Gideon,
Tessa thought.
He’s escaping.

At this distance, with all the shadows, she couldn’t see his face, could barely even make out his form. But she was still certain. Maybe it was because he was the only person on the sidewalk who didn’t move groggily, in a stupor—with all the other people, she could tell that whatever pain they were in had been with them for so long they were numb to it.

Gideon moved as though his pain were fresh and raw and throbbing. He moved like a dying animal leaving a trail of blood behind it.

I can help him/I can stop him
echoed in Tessa’s brain, but fainter now. He didn’t want anything to do with her. She held up the note again, and the words—
Forget about me…. Destroy … then there will be nothing to link …
—jumped out at her. She flicked her gaze back and forth between the note and the movements out in the darkness, Gideon edging farther and
farther away from her. In a few moments he would be gone, and whatever other choices she had would be lost.

Gideon was at the corner now, peeking around the other side of the apartment building. As soon as he turned his head, one of the figures behind him on the sidewalk hustled forward. Gideon glanced back over his shoulder, and the suddenly energetic figure dived down, out of sight.

Gideon resumed walking, and the figure darted forward again, hiding only when Gideon glanced back a second time.

Gideon was being followed.

The indecision of
I have to help him/I have to stop him/He doesn’t want me
melted away, swept out by a new resolve:

I have to warn him.

Tessa burst out onto the street, having clattered down the stairs as fast as she could. With her first step out onto the pavement, she reminded herself to be careful; she couldn’t call attention to herself here. She slipped into the crowd and slowed her pace to match the slow plodding of the people around her. It was maddening to do this—she wanted to run.

Maybe they’re both gone, anyhow, Gideon and the one following him….

But, no. A hooded head ducked down quickly, half a block ahead of Tessa, and she knew that that had to be the follower. She stood on tiptoes and saw, far ahead where the street sloped down, another head turn. If only there were more light, maybe she could have seen a flash of golden hair. But it wasn’t just the streetlights that were out; it looked like the electricity
was out on the first floor of their apartment building, too.

Strange,
Tessa thought, creeping forward.

She peered around and saw that other lights were missing too: the tiny glow of red that always shone in the security cameras atop the apartment door. She’d
never
known those to be out. Did that mean the cameras weren’t working?

Even stranger,
Tessa thought.

She couldn’t stop to figure it out. She concentrated on keeping the darting figure ahead of her in sight. She advanced one block, then two.

What good does this do?
Tessa despaired.
I can’t get past the follower to warn Gideon. Maybe I should run over to one of the parallel streets and get ahead of both of them?

Just then, far ahead, Gideon turned a corner. He might start darting in a zigzag pattern now; he might go anywhere. If Tessa tried to run ahead on a parallel street, she might lose him.

So I just … watch?

Some of the old books Tessa had gotten from her grandparents’ apartment had been spy novels. Tessa didn’t think anyone made such things now, but she’d read lots of the old ones. The stories were full of spies tailing one another, and double agents taking advantage of the element of surprise.

That’s what I have on my side,
Tessa thought.
If the follower tries to do anything to Gideon, I’ll run up to them and make a big scene, and Gideon will be able to get away.

Tessa’s heart pounded at the thought of the immense courage that would require. But she kept going, farther and farther from home, darting around corners behind the follower, behind Gideon.

Nothing to link you,
Tessa remembered from Gideon’s note, but it did seem they were linked now, all three of them: Gideon to the follower and the follower to Tessa, every bit as distinctly as if they were clinging to a rope slung between them.

The areas around them grew dodgier. Tessa lived in a bad neighborhood, an ugly neighborhood, but it was mostly that way just because of neglect. The people in her neighborhood had given up. In the buildings she passed now, the decay and decrepitude seemed like an active thing, a violence lurking in the air. There were smashed windows, gaping holes in walls, burn marks on bricks, abandoned factories with obscenities scrawled on every surface.

The crowds thinned out too, all the evil intent and despair distilled into a smaller and smaller number of people. Tessa shivered and drew the hood of her sweatshirt farther up, partially hiding her face. She hunched over slightly, trying to disguise the fact that she was a girl.