A curtain of night fell heavy on the open desert. The sky was still with the vast expanse of the universe contained in its cavernous depth, cloudless and overburdened, unable to move for how many infinitesimal heavenly bodies it bore in its gaping circumference. There was no sound except for the subtle shifting of breeze-stirred sands, quartz and silicone spilled in glittering waves across a terrain that knew no end. Halfway up the dome of the sky, a crescent sliver of the moon hung like an off-kilter frown.
It had been a week. The convoy was halfway to Yetava and running through explosives like they were on a personal mission to light that fucking landscape up. However the night brought rest and most soldiers were asleep beneath their vehicles, tucked into poorly-dug holes to hide them from the possibility of unexpected enemy fire. A lonely pair on watch crept across a distant dune, nearly indiscernible from the dark were it not for the purity of their black shadows slowly slinking up the mound. Brint glanced aside at the movement, then back to the map he was marking.
The lieutenant was stretched out in the backseat of their vehicle, knees bent to support the large sheet, red torch clicked on to avoid detection. In a few hours the whole platoon would be on the move again, but he had learned long ago to function on little sleep.
“Idiots have been climbing that dune for a fucking hour,” he said to his weapons sergeant in the front seat, voice gruff for how low it was. “Pack of crackers and spread cheese says they’ll fall back down again.” In the middle of nowhere money was useless, so bets were made with the most important commodity: food.
Kasse Sejan, curled in the front passenger side with his boots on the dash, did not, in fact, have the supplies to ante up to a bet like that. All the boy had was cigarettes and energy bars—but fuck if crackers and cheese didn’t sound real good right about now. He squinted off into the distance, absently unwrapping one of the energy bars he’d been holding onto.
It’d be a longshot, distance wise, but he felt pretty confident that he could reach. No risk, no reward, right?
“Okay.” Taking a bite of some lemon flavoured cardboard, he nodded. “I’ll take that bet.”
Hey—Brint hadn’t stipulated whether or not the guys in the distance had to get up the dune on their own. That was his first mistake.
It was weird how those men suddenly found their footing. Wasn’t it? Weird. Maybe. Sometimes things just worked out.
Brint looked back out to the giant hill, then to the profile of the sergeant up front. With a half-hearted sigh he retrieved the prize and tossed it into Kasse’s lap. Maybe he knew he was destined to lose.
“You still doing okay?” The older man asked, gaze back down, pen at work. “You were going to tell me about being homeless, you said.”
“Things are pretty good right now—I mean, I just scored a snack off my CO, life’s great.” Kasse picked up the package of semi-food with a victorious laugh. Examining his prize, the boy shifted, turning to look back at Brint, crackers and cheese placed in the center cup holder for safekeeping. He was gonna enjoy that pre-K snack later, for fucking sure, but for now the jovial tone of triumph was short lived as he slid into the somber. He was tentatively curious, quizzical in the most self-deprecating way, unconvinced that he was important enough to be the focus of Brint’s conversational attention. “You actually wanna hear about that shit?”
Kasse’s life on the streets had been, in retrospect, a horrorshow. In the slipstream of actual time, 18B’s experiences were fleeting things—mostly because the only thing that mattered in the moment was the moment. There was no real planning for the future, only securing the necessities of right now. It wasn’t until he entered the military that he’d gained the luxury of reflection and, thus, the luxury of shame.
He rested his chin on the shoulder of the bucket seat, insolence softened by a single fear glistening in his mind’s furthest reaches: that Brint would think less of him if he knew his whole story.
“I mean… what do you wanna know?”
“You’re going to let me choose? Generous.” The paper grumbled beneath a long line of Brint’s pen. “Maybe start at the beginning. So I can get your whole story.”
The lieutenant clicked off his light and folded up the map—not quite how it was meant to be folded, but a good enough attempt. His attention shifted to the boy, keen and encompassing.
On the spot, Kasse looked around for anything to focus on besides Brint’s harrowing gaze. The CO’s stare always made the boy feel like there was no escape—like he could cut through all his bullshit and root out his truth. Like he knew when he was lying. Like he could see the tar that filled him.
“I got… I got put in one of those group homes when I was like seven or eight. You know those fosters that scam money from the state? They take on as many kids as they can so they can collect yearly per head or whatever, but they don’t have the space or the resources or, I don’t know, parenting skills to take care of them? Yeah, like that. The house mother, Mrs Holloway, fuckin’ hated Ossans, crazy racist. Told me my dad was some Varapros’ gangbanger. She’d talk about how Trenchants came for him and put him down like a fucking dog, tortured him to death then came for the rest of the family. And that’s why she got me—so she could keep me from turning out bloodwright like my Ossan side, nurture the white side that straight dipped out back to the suburbs when shit got rough, I guess.” Kasse rubbed at his chin, squinting into his recall. “I ran when I was twelve, maybe thirteen—when I started dropping things and not being able to find them. They wouldn’t even make a noise, just… they’d go straight through the floor. It was fucking weird. I probably can’t smoke in here, huh?”
Brint smirked despite the grim nature of the tale unwinding. “It’s an army truck, not a rental car. You can smoke, nobody gives a shit. If this thing’s lucky it’ll come back without blood spots.” He stretched his legs out, pressing his boots against the door at his feet.
“Did your parents give you up, or did something happen to them? Is that where your gift comes from, your dad’s side?” The officer wasn’t well-versed in wright genetics—he knew expressionists were favored by society and bloodwrights were looked down upon, but not what made the class that lurked between those two ends of the spectrum, the poor souls stuck generating power and bleeding their utility dry for the good of their city, their country.
Thankful for the permission, Kasse pulled a cigarette out and placed it between his lips, lighting the end before he held the pack out to Brint, his social smoking buddy. “I’m not entirely sure, about where this shit comes from. If it came from my dad, I shoulda been a bloodwright—so I guess it came from my mom? Who knows. I only really have the faintest memory of them. The briefest recollection of my grandmother after they went away. And then there was just Mrs Holloway—who doesn’t deserve to occupy such a large chunk of my memory, yet there she is. She didn’t lie, though. Maybe about the details. My dad was Varapros’ and he was killed by trenchants. My grandmother was picked up in a raid. The rest of the family scattered after that. I’ve seen the incident reports. I guess Holloway did too.”
“Sorry to hear that. She didn’t have to be such a bitch about it to a kid, though.” Brint took the cigarettes then lit his own. The exchange was quick and efficient. “So twelve and you’re off on your own. What happened then? When I was a kid, Stokkram was rumored to be full of roaming packs of wild teens because of all the factories shutting down. Just hopping from building to building, real burning barrel & empty warehouse shit, a place where the regular working folk would scatter at sunset. I guess it’s kinda turning around now… but did you try to ingratiate yourself with others or what?”
“No, not really—large groups were dangerous. I mean think about it. Numbers are only valuable in a fight, so maybe groups were good against hobos and some of the other low level threats. Numbers are a detriment to stealth. When it came to trenchants, there wasn’t fighting. You held your breath and prayed they didn’t fucking find you. They always hit bigger groups on the streets, huddled in abandoned buildings and cheap motels. I guess over time, I figured out where to hide.” The younger man dropped the cigarettes into the cup holder with his fairly won crackers. He looked a little wistful collecting the next memory.”I mean I had a friend. She’s like my sister—we met on a rooftop where I’d built a lean-to and she ran over and hunkered down when it started raining. Straight cussed me out for picking a building that didn’t have the right kinda cable dish or something, cause she was tryna skim cartoons. We’ve been together ever since.” Kasse’s softened smile faltered and he looked down. “Until now. I mean until I got sent to the military. I miss her a lot. She sends me letters. Mostly demands. Either quit and come home or make my absence worth her trouble by sending her sweet dark web military secrets.”
“Skimming cartoons, huh? She sounds like something.” Brint grinned, reaching back to ash his cigarette through the cracked window behind him. “It’s good to have at least one friend. Helps to have someone on your side, company, someone to talk to, who understands—like you and Eoran.” The glow of the burning paper and tobacco barely lit the older man’s features, but against the cool bend of the outside world, the interior of the truck leaned warmer, orange and yellow, lines and simple shapes wrung from the shadows. “Being homeless kids who didn’t have to go to school, what did you guys do to pass the time? Or were you always just darting from hiding place to hiding place?”
Tired of conducting this conversation over his shoulder, that lanky thing was twisting around until he was cross legged with his knees against the seat back, spine resting against the glove compartment. It actually wasn’t that bad: when he tilted his head back, he could see the sky.
“We were always looking for food.” Kasse chewed his lip, thinking of the memory. “And trying to get money. I remember being really reluctant using my utility to break and enter, to steal things at first. I went hungry a lot in the first couple of years. Too proud, I guess. Or just not hungry enough. But then there was another person with me. Lia didn’t get to choose if she wanted to be hungry or lawful. She just had to suffer if I chose not to exhaust every option. That’s when we started sleeping in libraries. I really loved reading. Plus I had a lot of research to do, I had to learn how to be better at… this. It was warm there, safe. I’m pretty sure the librarians knew we were there. They’d leave water bottles out some nights. Sandwiches, now and then. Outside of that, we cased a lot of places. Figuring out which corner stores and food shops didn’t have overnight security cameras. We would break into fitness clubs—really fucking nice ones too—use their showers, swim in their pools. Department stores when we needed clothes or jackets, especially when the winter was coming. We’d lift sleeping bags, blankets. Lia really wanted to steal computer stuff since that was her thing, but I was pretty insistent that we only take what we really needed. We ran a pretty good racket dropping coins out of parking meters though. Yeah, we made a ton of cash doing that—and oh, the coins, fuck. We’d always go straight from quarter hustling to this one laundromat with free WiFi called I’m All Wet. The first day we started being able to do laundry: that was a really good day. Something about feeling clean makes you human.”
Kasse looked up from his laundry-related reverie and smirked. “I miss Lia a lot, but Eoran’s really important to me. Do you know they fucking aim for him? The freedom fighters. I pick so many bullets out of the air heading right for him, for me. I think they see us and think we’re traitors. I guess that’s worse than being a plain ol’ invader.”
“Yeah, probably. If there’s one thing I’ve learned out here it’s that Ossans are really headstrong about making a dumb fucking point.” Brint’s lips were pulled taut in the corners, smile residual from the laundro’s name. “I’ve seen villagers argue with translators over directions—I mean it too, these guys really go at it with them. Forty minutes later you’re standing there like, what the fuck was the hold up? Turns out grandpa didn’t like the way our guy was saying north, like there’s a million ways to say it or he wasn’t getting the poetry of it right or whatever. It doesn’t surprise me that they’re focusing fire on you two. I think all that traitor talk in Biko stuck with my subconscious. I guess it’s why I didn’t want you and him up front.” He paused for a smoke-filled breath.
“You two look after each other well,” he continued. “When you’re apart, Toriet looks like he’s always trying to find you; when he does, he’s always relieved. Those are good instincts to have. Guess you guys have more in common than most people out here do though, since he knows about your situation.” Brint proved to be a diligent observationalist. He spent a lot of time watching his men—how they interacted with each other, how they behaved by themselves.
“Anyway—seems like you’re a pretty good thief… so how did you get picked up? Did you just get careless?”
Kasse was thankful for the cover of night, shadows concealing the flush coloring his cheeks as he tucked a strand of hair behind his ear. He held his smile between his teeth, gaze cast down as he imagined Eoran running around frantically searching him out while Kasse was stealing a nap in some unused air conditioned corner of an empty admin office.
Kasse only ever saw the relief—and even then it didn’t seem like relief. Just like Eo was upset Kasse hadn’t invited him to nap-con.
“Naw, Lia got pissed I wouldn’t steal her computer shit. She went to get it herself. I came around when I figured out what was happening to try and keep her out of trouble but it was too late.” Kasse flicked his cigarette, ashes dissolving into nothing as they passed into the car’s interior. “So I shoved her out of the building with her dumb fucking laptop and took the heat so they wouldn’t go searching for her.”
Kasse tilted his head, examining the burning ember of his cigarette. He was a furtive thing even still. In the presence of the CO made aware of his most life threatening secret, Kasse considered the relevance and ramification of further revelation—if Brint really needed access to everything.
“I did whatever was necessary to survive. I gave up whatever people demanded because I didn’t have money to do otherwise. Too scared of discovery to use my utility as a power play. I’m not proud of it, but it’s hard to be ashamed. I mean, I am but I’m not. Is that weird? I didn’t know any better and I couldn’t find any other options so I just—I don’t know. I think I just wish I’d understood how the world worked sooner. I wish I’d realized I was a person before Toriet started talking to me like I was, before you started treating me like one.”
“Fuck, kid. You don’t seem like you’re angry about any of it though, all the things that you’ve been through, all the people that just use you. Are you, or are you just good at hiding it?” Brint turned passingly taciturn in a few puffs on the cigarette left to dangle between his contemplative lips. “Was it worth it? Taking the fall for your friend, knowing that you had so much to lose—well, I guess you still have a lot to lose. It takes a special type of person to bear the burden of someone else’s consequences. How do you do that and look them in the face and not regret knowing them? When the world is done taking from you, what happens then? Do you just pick up what’s left and move on? I think what I’m really struggling to understand about you is how you have this incredible ability to shape the world to your liking, but here you are. Out in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of dumb assholes like me. You could easily leave… you could switch sides and fuck Amstead up something fierce, give back all the shit it’s given you. And yet you… don’t.”
“You said Toriet’s always looking like he’s tryna find me,” Kasse said slowly, looking up to the vehicle’s roof. He squinted, trying to arrange the thoughts running wild through his head into a loose script, teleprompt scrolling along the seat back. “Maybe that’ll change someday but… I don’t know. I don’t think it will. I don’t know if that matters. I don’t know that any of this matters: the war, the resources, the territory disputes but I know Amstead will never stop seeing something subhuman in me—either because of race or utility or class or habits. Ossa will never see anything but Amstead in my face. Neither of them have a place for me—not really. The only place I belong is with the people who look at me and see a person named Kasse who smokes too much, loves the open sky, and is real good at breaking into commissary; the people who continue to seek me out when I’m not there, who look relieved when they find me.” He looked back at Brint, brow quizzical despite the sharp cut of his gaze. “So no. I’m not angry. Are you?”
Brint tucked his chin. It was the kind of motion that painted him surprised—nothing major, nothing groundbreaking, just subtly caught unaware by Kasse’s question. His grassy eyes were focused on the boy soldier.
“Me? I don’t know. I don’t know if angry is the right word for it, or if anger is a portion of the greater whole.” The lieutenant pinched the end of his cigarette between his thumb and index finger, pulling it from his mouth. “I haven’t been around a wright before, haven’t known any personally before you. Your story’s not easy to listen to and I guess when you care about someone, you only really want them to experience good things. At the same time, you wouldn’t be who you are without having faced what you’ve faced. It’s a mixed feeling. Besides, if you’re not angry, then what gives me the right to be angry for you?”
The older man took another drag, thoughtful and plain. “I hope this conflict doesn’t strip you of that place you belong.”
Kasse canted his head, eyes a narrow question marking that face too young to be so comfortable at war. He spoke in confusion, as though this was something Brint should have known all along. “Because my anger is pointless. My anger will be demonized when I’m caught. I’ll be painted savage and violent when they try to decide if I’m better off dead or on the end of some trenchant leash or strapped into an electrical generator or whatever. Your anger gets things done. When I get caught, your anger saves my life. You get that, yeah? That’s what anger does for white men: it gets shit done.”
He didn’t want to think about being stripped of Eoran. Or Brint, if he was honest.
“I’m not trying to make it sound like you have some intense social responsibility or anything,” the ghost offered with a laugh, taking another drag. “I guess it’s just what I’ve observed. Latent night of a man’s humanity and all that shit.”
Brint smirked even as the edges of his low voice conformed around a dour bend. “I know our situations are different. I know that outside of rank and back on the plain clothes streets of the city what’s afforded to me is not the same for you. Yeah, I get it. I suppose what I was getting at is that I don’t think that I need to be your savior—that’s not a position I’m trying to put myself in. I have a lot of responsibility out here for a lot of people, most of it intensely physical: to make sure you guys don’t get blasted to fucking pieces… but I know there’s life after this, that things don’t end, that change is slow. I just wanted to know what made you tick, what made life worth living for you; where you’ve come from, where you are, where you’re going. How someone with such a shitty expression on their face all the time can actually be really kind.” The smirk grew into a wide grin.
“Pfft,” Kasse waved off the other man’s words like so much smoke out the window. “Don’t go spreading rumours, Emrys, that shit ain’t nice.”
A muffled skirmish began brushing against the undercarriage of the vehicle before Kasse felt a very solid thump beneath his seat. Looking down out of habit, the boy shrugged, resigned as though the immature violence below was some sort of reminder. “I gotta get some sleep I guess—if only to separate Locke and Toriet. Do you want me to send Locke up?”
“Yeah,” Brint nodded, smile ebbing into his typically stern stare. “That’ll do. Thanks, Kasse.”