Cold Hard Truths 1: Vices (3 page)

When I was younger, still an ENAD soldier in training, some of the other kids used to compare us to superheroes—people who fought day and night, did the hard things, all to save people and make their lives better. It was a comparison I never forgot.

I leaned back and placed my head against the wall, my eyes drifting to the glass. I could see myself in the mirror, not that I was much to see. A few people had called me handsome, but I definitely wasn’t pretty. I was big and could be considered mean-looking, especially since my grin made my size seem more threatening. My face was drawn with tired lines and shadows. The bags below my eyes aged me, and my short hair was still messed at the top. I hardly ever paid much attention to my physical appearance, but I had to pay attention to my body. I ate properly, or as properly as I could on my budget, and if I couldn’t, I got vitamin injections. They were expensive, but even when I wasn’t on duty, ENAD paid for them. I still spent hours a day working out and exercising, making sure my body was in top-notch shape. None of it was for aesthetic value—it was for the ability to be faster, tougher, better than my future opponents. My physical capabilities might have the power to save someone one day, maybe even a fellow soldier.

I rubbed my arms up and down, trying to get the cold out of my bones. My tongue tasted off, reminding me I’d forgotten to brush my teeth in my haste. My eyes continued to open and close too quickly, and my skin felt itchy. I longed to scratch and claw at my arms and the back of my neck, but I couldn’t while I was being watched. I was coming down from the Corx. I didn’t think I was still high, but it was difficult to tell based on the state I was in. The last place I wanted to be was sitting in a tiny room, being filmed as I came off my drug high.

In total, I think I waited over two days.

They’d brought me six meals and hadn’t talked to me again. When I was feeling jittery, my body wanting even a small dose of Corx or cocaine, I’d do push-ups, squats, lunges, burpees, crunches: anything to get my mind off needing a hit. I was itchy all over the first night and had cold sweats the following morning, but I’d dealt with worse. Much worse.

The afternoon of the third day, the door opened and a man whose face I wished I could forget stood there with his hands behind his back. Corp, we called him. I had no idea if that was his real name, but probably not since none of us had a real name anymore. He was an older man, now in his late fifties, but had the same mean expression and gave off the impression of being hard as nails. His hair was gray, and he had quite a few more wrinkles than the last time I saw him, but the same humorless curve of his lip. I guessed men in his position didn’t have the luxury of a sense of humor. His suit was perfectly tailored to his frame, pressed tight without a speck of dirt on it.

“You done?” he asked me.

“I didn’t need to be put up in here,” I said, standing.

“You develop a personality in the past few years, Jones?” His gaze roamed over me with a sneer, and I knew better than to push my luck. There were far worse things here than an isolation room.

“No, sir.”

“That’s what I like to hear. You need to talk to someone about your drug problem, Jones?”

“No, sir.”

“You know what will happen to you if we get even a whiff of you using, right, soldier?”

“Yes, sir.” I stared at the wall, my body pulled up straight.

“Suit up. Grab your gear. You’ll be meeting your team soon, and briefing starts tomorrow.”

My gear. The mere mention of it almost had my fingers twitching. It’d been too long, and I felt like I’d been missing a limb these past years. My Tsutari 11 modified specifically the way I liked it. Extra-long magazine, faster round rotation, censor with palm scanner for personal use, electronic tracking chip with GPS, and a stun mode that I’d never used outside of training. I’d had many guns throughout the years, but none even close to as lovely as my modified Tsutari 11. They all felt clunky and foreign in my hands, which was one of the reasons my weapon of choice had been my hands. That and snapping a neck was much cleaner than putting a bullet or laser through flesh.

I followed Corp out of isolation and through at least half a dozen other doors to my living quarters. The area was exactly as I remembered it—brightly lit, long hallways with a series of doors and numbers on the outside, all in that sterile off-white.

“Your room number is 86. Be in the main hall in twenty minutes,” Corp said before walking down the hallway in the opposite direction. He was a man of few words and never made any sort of small talk. He acted as if seven years hadn’t passed between us, and I envied his resolve. I’d felt every one of those fucking years.

The day Corp gathered my old unit in the main hall and told us we’d failed our last mission was permanently scarred into my head. We all stood there, shocked, because it sounded like a joke, but we all knew Corp didn’t have a funny bone in his body. We’d fucked up.

Someone had seen us, had watched the things we’d done and the people we’d killed, on one of our missions. The entire unit thought the mission had been a success, but apparently we were wrong. Our faces had been compromised, and threats had been made against ENAD. Other soldiers had dealt with the problem, but as a safety measure, Corp had sent us out to live as civilians for a while. And then a while turned into years, and years turned into even more years. We still didn’t know who’d seen our faces or how we’d been compromised, but we were all smart enough to know better than to ask. Some of the other soldiers in my unit said we were being dumped, shoved into some dirty corner of the city where ENAD would leave us to rot. Bruno assured me that we were too expensive to ditch, that we just had to do our time and wait until ENAD thought it was safe to use us as soldiers again.

We’d each been shipped out under strict orders not to come within three blocks of the facility and never to make contact with one another. So we waited. We waited for seven years.

I had tiny microchips implanted just under the first few layers of skin on all my fingertips. Despite not being the ideal place for permanent chips, it was convenient for scanners and personal items that were encoded to only read the chips on your fingers. I’d lost a few before, mostly during training or a drunken bar fight.

I placed my fingers on the scanner outside the door labeled
86
and it slid open. I was reacquainted with the plain, single-person bed in the corner, the pull-up bar on the door to the small washroom, and the gear desk with removable tabletop tablet. The washroom was still the standard white tile floor with the half circle shower stall, sink, and toilet. On the wall next to the bed was a keypad used to unlock the hidden safe or the door to the bedroom. I entered my ID number into the keypad and a panel next to it opened. Inside waiting for me was my Tsutari 11, which I took out and placed on the bed. I stared at it for a few seconds, feeling almost euphoric.

I showered, shaved, then brushed my teeth. With a towel wrapped around my waist, I opened the closet and found the appropriate uniform in just my size. They must’ve been keeping a closer eye on me than I’d thought. The uniform consisted of fitted black pants that were tight enough to be considered leggings, a black long-sleeved shirt with thin chest pads, black gloves laced with more wiring than most computers, and black combat boots. The entire suit had very thin lines of glowing, light-blue wiring used to track and monitor not only use, but every move we made. This was a standard uniform for an ENAD soldier. I’d heard rumors once that Talcon manufactured our gear, but I could never be sure. There weren’t any tags on any of the articles of clothing, and our superiors had never mentioned it. I did figure it was possible though, because our uniforms were lined with very thin, flexible, bulletproof material.

With my gun holstered magnetically to my hip, I left my room and walked down the hall.

The main hall was off-white, just like everything else, but the contrast of all the brightness to the drab outside world might be considered refreshing. There were tables of weaponry aligned along the sides of the room, and with them came electronic pressure-sensitive floor mats and old, broken-down robots. There were wires lining the ceiling, so dense that a ceiling tile couldn’t be seen from any angle. Expensive monitors, screens, and tablets were on all the walls, each performing different tasks. The staff all seemed busy at work, tapping away at their computers, doing whatever it was an ENAD employee was paid to do. The place was busy and alive with people, yet surprisingly quiet. Home sweet home.

“Jones? No way,” a familiar voice to my right called to me. I turned to see one of my best friends from youth standing there, wearing all the same gear as me. A giant grin grew across my face.

“Bruno, how the hell’d you convince them to let you back in here?” I asked.

“Must be my charming personality,” he said, coming over to me and wrapping me in a hug and a firm pat on the back. Bruno was a giant, attractive man with skin the color of milk chocolate that he was gifted from his black mother and Caucasian father. He was a few inches taller than me and built quite the same. Big. His dark eyes and carefree smile were what first attracted me to him years ago. That and his ability to laugh easily, just like myself. While I was the always the tryhard of the group, Bruno was the joker, and together we made some of those unbearable days a little less unbearable.

Naturally, when I was younger I’d had a crush on him that never developed into anything. Even though I knew he exclusively liked women, it was hard for me not to be drawn in his by good looks and infectious laugh. As the years passed us by, my crush had slowly turned into a deep respect and long friendship. A friendship I wished many times over the years I’d been allowed to keep.

“What have you been up to these past few years, man?” Bruno asked me.

“You know I can’t tell you that,” I replied, beaming.

“Ah, still always by the books, hey, Jones?” Bruno laughed. “Well, I heard this is something huge. That’s why they called in the big guns like us. Hell, truth be told, I thought after this long they were going to leave us out there to rot.”

“Yeah, we’ve all thought it over the years. It’s not like they use us sparingly,” I said.

“Of course not! We’re the shiniest toys, the ones that every kid wants to play with. If we were just passed around like some slutty boy at a party, we’d lose all our appeal.” His face was bright, and he instantly reminded me of the good times we used to have when we were younger. None of those days had been easy, but I’d been nothing but grateful to have had Bruno.

The intercom buzzed and a feminine robotic voice made an announcement. “ENAD soldiers report to Con Room 7 immediately.”

“That’s our cue.” Bruno threw an arm over my shoulder and we made our way to the room, following a familiar path down the stark hallways that we remembered even after all these years. Having him there with me made the entire situation easier. As much as I’d prepared myself to come back to this place, it never quite sat right. It wasn’t that we hated who we were; we were just never given the choice.

The glass double doors slid open and we walked inside the much smaller conference room. There were a few people standing facing the front, spines straight, attentive with anxiousness radiating off them. They were dressed just like Bruno and me. ENAD soldiers were usually assigned teams consisting of around three to nine people, and I assumed this would be Bruno’s and my new team.

We moved around the tiny group of people to face the front of the room and listen to the short briefing.

In the next moment, I begged, pleaded with myself, with my body, more than I ever had in my life. I begged it to be stern, serene, and unmoving. I begged my face to be untelling, almost muscleless. I begged my fists not to bunch and my jaw not to tighten. I begged my Adam’s apple not to bob and my eyes not to give me away. Because standing right in front of me was the man whose hands I’d never forget. The man who used to come to me some nights and make me feel like life couldn’t be cold with him around. The man who left years ago and took whatever small fraction of a heart I once had with him.

Chapter Three

“Christ, it’s that psycho Carver,” Bruno whispered in my ear.

And then Carver’s eyes flickered over to us and my heart stopped. There wasn’t a hint of recognition in his eyes. He looked at us like he would a potted plant—with complete disinterest. When his eyes left us, I felt a huge pressure lift off my chest. He didn’t remember me or didn’t give enough of a fuck to acknowledge that I was still alive.

Carver and I had never really been lovers and nothing even remotely close to friends. When in training, we almost never talked. In fact, he had barely said two words to me the entire time I’d known him. His eyes almost never met mine, and when they did, his pupils didn’t dilate even a fraction. He had always been quiet, stoic, and almost eerily exotic in some way. He felt different from us; he gave off a different aura and left people with a chill that went down to their bones. He’d always been the best of us, taking down men and women twice his size. His shot was better, his throws were cleaner, his disarming was faster, and his body was more lethal. Carver was cool, detached, and cruel. He was the most dangerous person I’d ever met.

The first time he came to me, I wasn’t sure it was him. Somehow he’d gotten past the security on my door and slipped into my bed in the dead of night. I knew, that first time, that I should be afraid, afraid that he was there to snap my neck or place a poisonous nanobot in my ear and allow it to eat my brain from the inside out. But at that time in my very young life, I didn’t think dying was such a bad idea.

I remember lying on my stomach and glancing over my shoulder in the dark, barely awake, watching him slip off his uniform. His body was beautiful, only illuminated by the glowing neon lights of the buttons on my shower and the electric wiring and gears on my desk. He crawled on top of me, and the weight of him pressing against my bare back was enough to ease me into opening up for him.