The Refugee Sentinel (10 page)

Mitko’s unconscious body fell like a bag of bones and Li-Mei rested her hands on her knees. She panted, more with rage than exhaustion. The two unconscious men at her feet had given her excruciating amounts of resistance and sabotaged the deletion of a target. And that was plain inexcusable. She closed her eyes to let the rage trickle out. The piano man would stay out for at least a few minutes. Parker’s eyes fluttered under the closed eyelids, but the one-two punch of her assault and Big Daddy’s alcohol would keep him innocuous for another hour. She exhaled through her nose, opened her eyes and considered her options.

She had two accidental deaths to stage, on the same floor of the same hotel. The news would spread through Seattle like fire, then coast to coast, and put Mission Dizang at risk. Or... she gritted her teeth. She could walk away and allow Parker to survive their encounter. The only other target to survive her was a Korean man who, years ago had lived through a “suicidal” leap from a sixty-story building, only to die several days later of internal bleeding at the hospital. Tonight was worse… far worse.

Li-Mei thought of Taxi on the day when the Purple Servant had almost crushed her young life out of existence. Taxi had saved her then, despite the odds. He had overcome his fear, their assailant and death itself. In this clammy and overpriced joke of a hotel, she was in need of a similar miracle. But Taxi was dead and she had to do it on her own. With a sluggish mind, she went through the pockets of the two men, collecting wallets and keys. Could she kill them… a robbery that cost the victims their lives in addition to their wallets? No, she couldn’t. Not when the scene was polluted with her footprints on the wall and Parker’s blood all over the carpet. A robbery would have to do: a late-night mugging of two upstanding citizens. For now… so she could live to fight another day. And boy, was she going to fight.

Li-Mei walked toward the staircase exit and the floor swayed under her feet. She looked back one last time. The two unmoving men, dark silhouettes against the wall, were taunting her retreat.

The village was without children, other than her, of course. There were no grown-ups either, unless you counted the Servants, which Li-Mei didn’t. Sometimes she wondered if they had built the village just for her or relocated everyone before she showed up. She hoped they hadn’t moved the people. Where would they move them to anyway? And why would they?

One evening, she heard a whimper, as she limped home on a swollen knee from a jujitsu practice where a sparring partner had crashed into her leg a second before the closing whistle. The whimper came from around the corner while she was shutting her front door for the night. Li-Mei exhaled with the resignation of a boxer summoned for a new fight at the end of a long day. This was looking like another challenge: the Servant challenges never ended, no matter how late or how tired she felt. She stepped out and saw a shaking ball of fur, small enough to fit in her palm, then waited for the pop drill to start. The ball of fur shivered on, without an obvious agenda, other than being cold. After some hesitation, she brought the Shiba puppy inside. He shook so much that she gave him a fifty-fifty chance of making it through the night. Dead or alive, she would turn him over to the Servants the following morning. She dipped her pinkie in leftover milk she had picked up from the cafeteria at dinner and let him lick it. Forty or so licks later he stopped shaking and fell asleep in one of her shoes.

That night, she woke as something poked on her shoulder. She let him crawl under the covers but remained awake until dawn, waiting for drill sirens. On the contrary, a quiet morning marked the longest time Li-Mei had spent this close to another being.

She marched into the cafeteria, dog in hand, his head bobbing in unison with her steps.

“Here... take your dog back,” she walked up to the nearest Servant.

He stood silent and unwilling to accept whatever it was she wanted to give.

Li-Mei left the Shiba on the floor. The ball of fur commenced to whimper as soon as it lost touch with the girl’s palm. She headed for the door, but turned at the noise from behind. The puppy was zigzagging, with the clear intent of following her, but too young to do so at a steady pace. Li-Mei stomped her foot. She knew the dog was an exercise but didn’t know to what purpose. Her life was a chain of drills choreographed by the Servants to always elicit a consequence: either punishment or reward. But last night had felt different. Not because of the sleepless hours or her stiff back from making room in her bed, but because of the conscious stance she had taken. Li-Mei decided to keep the Shiba, as her first act of free will.

She walked back and picked him from the floor and patted his semi-blind face. The whimpers stopped on cue. In her most recent Sociology class, she had studied the world’s public transportation systems. The mayors of Boston and London had gone as far as prohibiting all methods of city transport other than the subway: no buses, no cars, and no bicycles. Taxis remained the only exception. And here she stood, in the middle of the Jenli cafeteria, with a little Shiba dog who was worlds apart from the Servants. So if the Servants were like subway trains: frequent and invisible, as if moving underground and the dog was the exception on the surface, then he must be a taxi.

So Taxi he was, she decided.

Each heartbeat shook Colton’s head like a platoon of marines marching against the pavement of his brain. He opened his eyes for the first time and winced. Greedy green lights flooded his retinas then turned to purple and then to white. Bright white. Lessening the marauding glare, the shape of a head crept into slow focus, like a picture downloaded at a dial-up connection speed. Colton would have said, “Thank you,” if he could speak. The head belonged to an old man. He stuck a hand in front of Colton’s nose and held it there, as if to coax a skittish deer he meant no harm. His long fingers rested on Colton’s face, traversed the cheeks and chin then froze mid-crawl above Colton’s fluttering eyelashes. The man was indeed blind.

“You OK, son?” The words were as warm as the touch. “I’ll get an ambulance.”

Colton raised a hand despite the marching marines. “Don’t,” he said with a whisper that bordered on lip-syncing.

“Come again.” The blind man’s face came closer.

“Don’t.” Colton pushed out the words and gritted his teeth, as the exertion to speak triggered a fresh coat of pain. He hoped the old man wouldn’t ask for a lengthy explanation. “I beg you.” The headache had graduated into a migraine, which meant he had suffered a concussion. “I need your help.” Colton took a breath. “They want to kill my eight-year-old daughter.”

The humming hotel elevators, ferrying their human cargo late into the night, seemed to beckon the old man to go seek assistance. “Tell you what,” he cleared his throat, “you seem banged up, but not as bad as fixing you myself. Let’s go to my place.”

Colton nodded, forgetting his savior couldn’t see. The old man ducked his head under Colton’s right arm and the two rose together, in a series of spurts.

“Thanks,” Colton said. “For saving my life.”

“Mitko. I play the piano here and it’s good to meet you, though not at this price.”

“I’m Colton and though I don’t look it, my specialty is not getting mugged in five-star hotels.”

A room-service employee walked past, trying not to look at the two men leaning on each other. She hastened her step and Mitko stood still until the elevator ring announced she had departed.

“We should get going,” he said, “I’m sure she wasn’t amused by us spooning outside the men’s room at this fine hour.”

Colton cracked a pained smile.

Mitko propelled both of them forward, wobbling at first then firming their collective gait. “We should take the stairs,” he said, “if you want to stay out of people’s way.”

“What floor is this?” Colton wiped his mouth and checked for broken teeth.

“Twenty-sixth.”

“And you live how far?”

“About a ten-minute walk. Just what the doctor ordered when a girl beats you up.”

“You mean both of us?” Colton said and opened the exit door. The two hugging men disappeared down the stairs.

A blue kitchen. Colton wondered if Mitko didn’t know or didn’t care. Who had time to color-coordinate their cooking rooms anymore? The world was going to the slaughterhouse and blind men lived in blue kitchens.

Colton watched Mitko navigate the room, hands detecting their way from one point to the next: left, right and left again. Then backtracking to the starting position in reverse order. He’d be better than me at night, Colton thought, because the place seemed to have no working lights.

“You sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?” Mitko said.

“No hospital. We should Google some treatments, though.”

“You can’t download stitches to the face, kid.”

“But I can get on the Defiance Day site.”

“Can’t this wait until I patch you? I don’t need eyes to tell your face is beat up.”

“Help me vote, please,” Colton said. Four words. Followed by silence.

Mitko touched a holographic panel above the table. The holograph scanned his right hand and logged him on. “Knock yourself out,” he said, “I’ll be in the other room to give you some privacy.”

The Defiance Day site was simple and fast, built to handle votes in the billions. Colton took his time to read the instructions on each screen before moving through the following steps.

“Are you earmarking or sacrificing yourself, kid?” Mitko’s voice came from a thousand miles away.

“I’m saving myself.” Colton closed eyes and saw Yana’s face. Better yet, he saw what he imagined her face would look like seven years after he’d seen it last. His baby. Whose life he had almost taken away. She was going to live this time. The death of a forty-three-year-old, even if a former poker champion, would be, at best, collateral damage. Defiance Day was going to erase his biggest mistake. And it took fate, disguised as a female killer, to wake him from his stupor.

Colton scrolled to a section captioned “Sacrifice Vote.” At his fingertips, the holographic screen felt like an ice lake. He typed “Yana Perkins” in the name box and a positive match lit up the display. The destiny of his eight-year-old was packed neatly on the screen, like a bento box at the whims of a crazed Earth. But no more, because he would watch out for her. I’m coming, patte, he thought, I promise. He wanted to stretch this moment, of Yana needing him and him being her sentinel. The years of alcoholism and odd casino jobs melted away like a forgotten rounding error. He was her father and he was saving her life, even if it had taken him this long to get it right.

“Whoever you were, who earmarked her…” Colton whispered to himself, his whisper full of gravel, “not on my watch.” He touched “Proceed” and the screen asked him to confirm the identity of the “Vote Recipient” then his own identity. He held his right palm, five fingers stretched over the holographic ice lake. After another scan and a reconfirmation, DefianceDay.com thanked him: “Mr. Parker. You have successfully cast your Sacrifice Vote for Yana Perkins (SSN 231-010-8760.) The confirmation of your voting transaction is below:

Voting Event: Defiance Day || Citizenship: US Territory || Social Security Number: 760-902-2587 || Name: Colton Parker || Date of Birth: August 27, 2009 || Status: Successfully Sacrificed.

Yours, ULE Defiance Day Committee.”

Colton shut off the screen and looked at the Seattle skyline outside, glowing like an army of fireflies through the evening mist. One of these lights came from the ULE embassy.

How tempting was it to walk there and announce to the cameras at the gate he was the ex-husband of Sarah Perkins. The security lasers would scan his retinas and right-hand passport and he’d be asked to wait, then the steel gates, crackling with electricity, would yawn open and he would amble through the embassy’s yard, not too fast and as dignified as he could. The lock on the mahogany front doors would buzz green, inviting him to push through. Once inside, he’d ask them for shelter. They’d push back at first, like they were supposed to – an average civilian occupying a ULE embassy for longer than an hour would violate all kinds of Earth-salvation protocols. But he’d insist and fall to his knees. And if he had to, he’d play his trump card with the words “Saving Yana’s Life” written on top. He was the ex-husband of the scientist on whom the world had bet its energy chips. He was the only person willing to die to save this scientist’s only daughter and, by extension, the scientist’s sanity and the energy chips the world had bet. All he had to do was ask for shelter… until Defiance Day.

Otherwise… the descending fog in his mind grew thicker. He had no idea what “otherwise” would even mean. He was alone, an odds-on favorite to be assassinated, in a city that was too desensitized to care. So, his road to survival was to seek refuge, with the people who, several days later, would murder him in full compliance with the law. Like a sacrificial lamb eating at the hand of its butcher until the slaughter bell rang. And some day, many years from now, when his bones had long turned to dust, they would ask his daughter how she remembered her Dad. And she would tell them he had hidden under her mother’s lab coat, then died, like good cattle should.

Colton sniffed. Not on his watch. A ship in a port was safe but that’s not what ships were built for. He was going to fight for Yana’s life, and if Ms. Red Tattoo turned the screws on too tight, he could always run back to his future killers. Mitko pulled him out of his thoughts. “Is she your daughter?”

Colton looked up, blinking. “Yes, my eight-year-old.”

“Tell me about her.”

“Her name’s Yana. She likes sharks and sometimes I call her the most special girl in the world.”

“She’ll be proud of you. Maybe already is.”

“The odds are she’s wondering why her old man tried to kill her when she was a baby.”

“I doubt you ever came close.”

“For all she knows, I did and almost succeeded.”

“Shall we go to the hospital or will you yell at me again for mentioning it?”

“No hospital,” Colton said, his broken nose producing a scarlet trickle over his lips. “What you witnessed in the hotel,” he walked up to Mitko and placed hands on his shoulders. “This woman wants to stop me from sacrificing myself. She wants to kill me, so Yana would die too… and I… can’t let this happen.”

“God help you if you’re telling the truth,” Mitko said and sat at the kitchen table.

It must be good living in the dark, Colton thought. It must be healthy and real. He walked to the magnetic strip above the oven, where all kitchen knives were stuck, from the smallest one to the largest. With his left hand, he took a fourteen-inch-blade cleaver. Before he’d allow himself time to reconsider, he raised and brought it down full force, cutting off his right hand at the wrist: cleanly and with one sweep. The smell of blood – cottonweed with sweet aftertaste – filled the blue kitchen. Colton was screaming. Mitko jumped to his feet. “What did you do?”

Colton stared at his severed hand, palm facing up, on the hardwood floor and the soup pots he had prepared on top of the oven – one full with blood and another one halfway there. “Tourniquet…” he said with a cloud of spit accompanying the word.

Mitko flew through the kitchen – left, right and left again. He grabbed a set of spare piano strings and a wooden spoon from a kitchen drawer, placed both next to Colton and took a step back.

With his left hand, Colton threw three coils of string around the geysering stump, plunged the spoon underneath and turned it several times. He covered the stump with a towel, which turned bloody in an instant, and spoke for only the second time as a one-handed person.

“I cut off my hand and I’ll pass out in a minute. So, you must listen to me, because the lives of others will depend on what you do.” Colton’s words turned into grunts. “First, no hospital. Cut me to pieces if you will, but don’t send me to a hospital. Second, the police will come looking for me because my passport has gone dark. Third, put my cut-off hand on ice. It’s important you –”

Colton Parker collapsed on the kitchen floor before he could finish the sentence.