Grip (The Slip Trilogy Book 2) (23 page)

His unexpected insult seems to disarm the cyborg, who raises his human eyebrows. As a result of the expression, his remaining human skin seems abnormally tight, like an animal skin stretched into leather.

Harrison follows his jab with a verbal uppercut: “And screwed up in the head, too, if you wanted to kill your sister.”

“She was a Slip,” the cyborg growls.

Harrison ignores the excuse and says, “So that makes you ugly
and
psychotic. No wonder you hide in the shadows like some freak show.”

The cyborg’s metal fingers tighten into fists that look like miniature wrecking balls. He’s not sure what he’s trying to accomplish with his verbal sparring, but Harrison’s enjoying getting under the Destroyer’s skin—or metal plates, he should say.

Then, unexpectedly, the cyborg’s fingers uncurl and the tension seems to leave his stance. The cyborg’s next words are free of anger. “Let me ask you this, Harrison Kelly, what part of your body do you value the very most?”

The Destroyer steps closer and Harrison struggles to maintain his composure. He’s defenseless, in a room with a known killer. He says nothing.

“Is it your pretty-boy smile? I bet the girls go crazy when you flash those pearly whites. Or is it your eyes, the baby blues that melt hearts like heated butter?” The cyborg coos out the words, like he’s speaking to a baby. He takes another step forward, metal shrieking as a blade slides from a compartment in his palm. Harrison’s eyes follow the blade as he moves it from side to side, casually. “No? Ahh, I see. Your hands then? Without such good, strong hands you’d never have become a hoverball star at your school. But then again, you won’t be playing much hoverball in the future, will you?” A second blade slides out, this one from the other hand.

Harrison says nothing, trying to focus on a spot on the wall past the Destroyer. Past the twin blades that are now sliding against each other, being sharpened.

Kish-kish. Kish-kish. Kish-kish.

Don’t look
, Harrison thinks.
Don’t cry out. Don’t give this bastard the satisfaction. Die like a man.

“Or is your favorite part something else?” A knowing grin paints itself across the human portion of the cyborg’s face. The Destroyer steps closer still, so near now that Harrison can’t look past him. He slides one of the knives under the towel and Harrison flinches, feeling the cold steel between his legs. “What? No snip snip?”

His head throbbing with fear, Harrison musters his courage and says, “You can do whatever you want, but I won’t tell you anything.”
But please don’t
, he prays.

“Do you want to die?” the cyborg asks, thankfully sliding the knife out from between Harrison’s legs.

“If it means I don’t have to look at your ugly face? Hell yeah,” he says. He tries to inconspicuously swallow the lump in his throat but fails miserably, the resulting
gulp
like a hammer blow in the quiet room.

“You can try to hide your fear, but I can smell it,” the Destroyer says. “It smells like a pathetic little boy.”

“You like to smell little boys?” Harrison says. “Why does that not surprise me?”

“Funny,” the Destroyer says. “A quick wit. You’re much more confident than your brother, aren’t you? Confident bordering on arrogant. We’ll see how confident you are when you’re squealing like a little girl.” Harrison vows in that moment to not squeal, no matter what happens to him.

“You
are
impressive,” Harrison says. “So scary when someone’s tied to a bed. Truth is, if my hands and legs were free I’d beat the living bot out of you.”

For a split-second, the cyborg’s calm demeanor morphs into a spasm of rage, his hand coming up with lightning quickness, arcing downward even faster.

The pain is immediate and intense, racing up from Harrison’s hand to his arm to his skull, seeming to bore into every last nerve ending and squeeze the very marrow out of his bones. “Ahhhhhhh!” he screams, his eyes locked in horror on the knife handle sticking out of his palm. The blade itself went straight through his hand and clanked off the metal table. He grits his teeth, his next scream coming out as a gurgle, spit squirting through his teeth and down his chin. His entire body is shaking with shock and pain as an unusually small amount of blood trickles from the wound, dripping off his fingertips. The blade is holding back a torrent of blood, Harrison realizes somewhere deep inside his brain, where part of his mind still somehow manages to function.

“Hand first—your manhood next,” the Destroyer threatens.

Harrison moans, his mind foggy with pain, which seems to darken his vision. “Screw you,” he groans, and then passes out.

T
hey remain utterly silent long after they hear the pylons being removed and the Hawk drone whirring away. For all they know, it could be a trap, several of the Hunters remaining behind to ambush them the moment they slink from their igloo.

Janice is playing with her shoelaces, which are hard and frozen with snow.

Simon is constructing a pile of ice balls, which grows larger and larger each minute, filling a full corner of their snow bunker.

Minda’s eyes are closed and she’s motionless, as if asleep.

And Benson’s mind is racing, as it does. Analyzing. Filtering. Trying to make sense of things.

They were caught. A Hunter—or at least someone posing as a Hunter—rescued them. Who was that guy? And why would he risk his life to save
them
? And to top it all off: They were located because of a tiny tracker in his own mother’s shoe, much the same way Refuge was located by the tracker in Destiny’s back. A shoe that the Lifer leader had helped his mother tie.

“Jarrod screwed us over,” Benson says aloud, finally coming to the only conclusion that makes any sense.

Minda’s eyes flash open, as clear as priceless gemstones. As Benson suspected, she wasn’t sleeping at all. Just waiting. She looks thoughtfully at Benson, but doesn’t speak.

Instead it’s Simon who weighs in. “You’re wrong,” he says. “I know what this looks like, but he would never do that. Why would he?”

“He was working for Pop Con the whole time,” Benson suggests. “A double-agent. Waiting for Refuge to fill up with Slips and then taking it down. It might not have even been Destiny who led them to us in the first place. It might have been Jarrod.”

“No, he wouldn’t do that,” Simon insists. When Benson gives him a skeptical look, he says, “Look, I’m not just blindly following some dictator. But you don’t fully appreciate what Jarrod has gone through to get to this point. He isn’t just the leader of the Lifers—he’s the
creator
. He built it from nothing, made it important, made it a threat to the government. He doesn’t work for them. I swear to you that he doesn’t.”

“I tend to agree with that,” Minda says.

“Jarrod is a nice, nice man,” Janice says, breaking off a piece of her frozen shoestring. She sniffs at it and then pops it in her mouth, holding it on her tongue, which she sticks out for all of them to see. “Thee came thoo Benthen’s burthday,” she adds, trying to talk around her tongue.

“None of that means he didn’t tip them off,” Benson notes. “Just that he’s not working for Pop Con.” He chews the inside of his mouth, thinking. Janice spits the shoelace out between them.

“Well he did say he was sorry,” Janice says.

“What?” Benson says.

“Sorry,” she says. “Sorrito, sorricious, sorrutations.”

Benson ignores the nonsense and focuses on that single word. An apology. For what? “Clearly he put the tracker in,” Benson says. “Agreed?”

Minda nods.

Simon grudgingly does the same. He says, “But that doesn’t mean he passed the info on to Pop Con.”

“Then how did they get it?” Minda asks.

“After taking control of Refuge they might’ve gotten into the system.”

“Maybe,” Benson says, “but it’s pretty unlikely Jarrod would’ve included information on some random tracker within his communications network or databases. And even if he did, the chances of them finding it so quickly…”

“One in a million,” Minda says, agreeing. “I think he did it.”

“Why?” Simon says, his eyes narrowing.

Minda looks at Benson and their eyes lock, something passing between them as they come to the exact same conclusion at the exact same time. Benson says, “Because he’s devoted to the Lifer cause. The cause he created. He’s not interested in saving one Slip. He’s interested in changing the law, and to do that he needs popular opinion to swing in his direction. I think he knows a hell of a lot more than we give him credit for. Maybe everything. He knows why Harrison left. He knows why I left. He wants Harrison to kill my Death Match, to create the technicality that would make me an authorized citizen. But he also wants me to be caught and killed. Because then I’ll no longer be just another Slip killed by Pop Con. I’ll be an authorized citizen killed by Pop Con. Because of all the press coverage I’ve received, that might be enough to incite the people to rebellion. And then he can get up on his soapbox and preach to the country about change.”

Simon shakes his head, but not as vehemently as before. He doesn’t say anything.

“It makes sense,” Minda says. “I mean, it makes sense to someone like Jarrod who’s willing to do anything to succeed in his mission.”

“Even killing a Slip? The very type of person he’s vowed to help?” Simon asks.

Benson remembers Jarrod’s knife at his throat. “Yeah,” he says. “Even that.”

They sit in silence for a moment, until Janice says, “Jarrod was nice until he wasn’t.”

Benson almost wants to laugh at the simplicity of the statement. At the truthfulness. How many other similar statements could be made that encapsulate the beauty and horror of life? Thousands, Benson thinks. But only his mother would think to make them.

He also thinks of Check and Rod and Gonzo and Geoffrey still being with the Lifers. They’ll be safe there, he recognizes. They are nothing to Jarrod and his cause. He has no reason to hurt them. None at all.

His mind moves on to the next puzzle. The guy that saved them. “How did that guy manage to become a Hunter if he doesn’t believe in population control?” he questions aloud. “Who is he?”

“I think I can answer that,” Minda says.

All eyes, even Janice’s, flick to hers.

“Although I’ve never met that man before, I know him only by the alias SamAdams, eight characters on a screen, no spaces,” she says. “He’s part of a small consortium who has pledged to reinvent the RUSA government. I’m also part of this group. They know me as ShirleyTemple.”

~~~

Hours later, long after the last few wispy snowflakes settle on the ground, Benson, his mother, and the others reach Saint Louis. Although Benson expects to feel like a stranger amongst the drab, gray buildings, he doesn’t. He immediately feels at home, a sensation that’s as foreign as it is unexpected. He’s never had a home, not really.

Minda told them almost everything while they hiked northwestward toward the city. About the four-person consortium. About their secret online meetings. About how each of them plays a specific role within one of the major fixtures in the deadly game they find themselves in: Minda implanted herself in the Lifers, to keep track of the rebellion; SamAdams, obviously, lied his way into Pop Con so he can gather intel on their enemy; two others, known as JoseCuervo and BloodyMary, infiltrated the mayor’s office and the press, respectively.

Together they seek to quietly take down the current government and the Department of Population Control.

Easier said than done.

However, long after Minda has answered all of their questions, Benson suspects she’s holding something back. Something vitally important. Something that might answer his most important question: Why has he just found himself in contact with not one, but two of the members of the consortium? Two members who have helped protect him and his family at a great risk to themselves. He’s just one Slip—not important in the greater scheme of things, maybe more valuable in death than in life, as Jarrod seemed to think.

But Benson doesn’t ask Minda any of that. He’d rather her not know that he knows she’s hiding something. Instead, he files the information away and focuses on the task at hand. Finding Harrison and Destiny, who he hopes are still okay and have not yet succeeded in their mission to kill his Death Match. He can’t have another death on his hands, no matter what it could mean for his own life.

As they discussed during their hike, the starting point for their search is obtaining a black market holo-screen. Minda hasn’t checked in with the consortium in hours, and the fact that she came face to face with one of their members doesn’t mean he knew who she was. For all they know, she might be dead. She needs to assure them that she’s not. Plus, with their respective resources there’s a good chance they’ll be able to help them locate Benson’s brother.

Finding a holo-screen on the shady outskirts of the city is easy enough. In fact, Minda manages it on her own, leaving them in an alley behind a Dumpster while she tries a few known black market hotspots. She doesn’t want too many people—especially someone as large as Simon—to scare off potential sellers. On the fourth attempt she returns with a small, flat device and a grin. “Cost me sixteen grand, but it’s a recent model,” she says.

“You have that kind of money just sitting around?” Benson asks.

“Perhaps,” is all Minda says.

She fires up the device and logs into an account that is clearly fake, under yet another identity—Samantha Smith.

“Who are you?” Benson asks, slightly in awe of her.

“Minda,” she says, curling one side of her lips.

She speaks a series of commands within some type of a security program that cycles through various questions and passwords, and then she enters a chat room where a discussion appears to be already in full swing. “Private Forum for Agriculturists, by invite only” it reads at the top.

“This is it?” Benson says, somewhat underwhelmed. Could this unimpressive chat room really be the key to saving his brother?

“No one would suspect an intellectual agriculturist chat room to be a threat to the government,” Minda says, scanning the conversation for anything of importance.

Benson does the same, shocked to see a lengthy description of the exact events that transpired in the snow field, including their rescue. Names are replaced with initials, BK and JK for Benson Kelly and Janice Kelly, but there’s no doubt as to who is telling the tale: the Hunter who saved them. His screen name is SamAdams, just as Minda had suspected.

When Benson gets to the bottom, the last message reads:

JoseCuervo: ShirleyTemple? Is that you?

Benson looks at Minda and she smiles an I-told-you-so smile. She starts typing and Benson and Simon track the discussion on either side of her while Janice taps two knuckles on the Dumpster, giggling whenever a hollow echo rings out.

ShirleyTemple: It’s me.

JoseCuervo: You’re okay?

ShirleyTemple: I’m fine. I was injured in the attack and my holo was destroyed. But I’m back now.

SamAdams: Thank God. There have been some developments since we last heard from you.

ShirleyTemple: Thanks for saving my life.

SamAdams: ……..

BloodyMary: What is she talking about?

SamAdams: That was you?

ShirleyTemple: Yes.

SamAdams: ShirleyTemple was the woman in my story travelling with BK and JK and LC.

“Who’s LC?” Simon demands. “Is that supposed to be me?”

“Large Canadian,” Minda says. “Sorry, I made up the nickname a while ago.” She starts tapping another message while Simon mutters something under his breath.

ShirleyTemple: Everyone is okay. I’ll protect the key.

SamAdams: That was too close. The key was almost killed. Are we sure the key is safe?

Benson’s heart skips a beat.
The key was almost killed.
Right away, he knows who they’re referring to: him.

“I’m the key,” he says.

Minda says nothing. Stares at the screen, waiting for the next message.

“What does that mean?” he asks.

She says nothing. Words appear on the screen but they turn to fuzz amidst his confusion. “Tell me,” he says. Then louder, grabbing Minda by the shoulder: “TELL ME!”

Her head jerks up, her eyes meeting his. “It means we have to protect the key so we can find out what it’ll open,” she says, twisting away from him. “Now get your hands off of me so we can figure out where your brother is.”

All fight leaves Benson as he processes this new information. He stops his mother from tapping on the Dumpster, holding her hand while her bright, curious eyes study his face. Everything fades away except her and him, mother and son. He’s the key. To what? he wonders.

It’s as if a lifetime of mysteries has led him to this single moment, a mountainous summit built on boulders full of secrets and questions, where finally a boy who’s lived half of his life without a name is a hairsbreadth from understanding who he really is.

Minda’s voice shatters his thoughts into speckles of light that seem to shimmer in the gloomy alley. No, not his thoughts. The reflections are from a broken glass bottle, likely chucked aside by some wino. Is everything in his life an illusion? “Got it,” she says. “I know where your Death Match is.”

Who Benson really is skitters away from him like a speck of dust blown in the breeze, forgotten immediately as he focuses on his twin. “Lead the way,” he says, pulling his mother to her feet.