Discord's Apple

“But no one will be driving for quite some time.”

He approached the Curandera and offered her his arm to escort her back to town. She turned her shoulder to him and walked alone.

Nothing ever happened in Hopes Fort. At least nothing interesting. Evie had ardently believed that her entire childhood. She clung to that belief now. Her father would be fine. Johnny would keep an eye on him and bring him home—or better, to a hospital—the minute he looked ill. Okay, the minute he acted ill. He looked plenty ill already.

She slumped back on the sofa. Her laptop stared at her. All she could do was write. Didn’t seem very useful or heroic. The comic’s production schedule seemed less relevant than ever. But what would she do if she didn’t write? When she was starting out, when she wasn’t sure she was ever going to be able to make a living at it, she used to play that game with herself: What would she do if she failed? Go into advertising? Open a bookstore? She’d thought up a dozen half-assed plans, including marrying a millionaire. Plenty of those hanging around L.A. Dogged persistence won out in the end. But she imagined a dozen alternate time lines, where she led lives that didn’t involve writing.

/> If she didn’t write, she’d sit here staring at the walls until she went crazy. She couldn’t leave town. And Dad said to watch the Storeroom.

Exhaustion never entered into Tracker’s consideration of her current situation. It simply wasn’t an option. When the bunker of the gulag finally appeared—a mound in the distance on the flat, frozen waste—she dropped to her knees and crawled, offering as low a profile as she could. She kept her gun in her hand. It was just like Basic all over again. Hell, it was almost fun. If only she knew that Jeeves and Matchlock were all right, and Sarge and Talon. She shouldn’t have had to do this alone.

Their information said the agent would be in the first bunker. The rest of the complex was underground, and had caved in years ago, when the last of the political dissidents were released and turned their frustrations on the structure itself.

She lay flat on the ground for two hours watching the concrete hut. No doors opened; no shapes appeared at any windows. She flexed the muscles of her limbs to keep them from cramping. Annoyed, she thought there should have been someone around: guards, a change in duty shifts, something.

She wasn’t well camouflaged—her dark fatigues were meant for nighttime operations, and the land here was bright, the overcast sky stinging with light, the ground textured with pools of crusted snow and lichen-covered rock. But there didn’t seem to be anyone around for miles. The bunker was still, silent. Quietly, she approached: a few steps and pause, a few more steps, looking in every direction, over her shoulders, up at the sky. She was used to having someone watch her back.

Soon, she crouched under the window of the bunker. Her gun felt clumsy in her gloved hand. Maybe she wouldn’t need it. Slowly, she rose until she could peer over the sill, into the room.

The room was empty.

But a trapdoor in the floor was open.

She closed her eyes and breathed a curse. Either the spy wasn’t here at all—or their information about the complex was wrong, and she wouldn’t be able to just run in and run back out again.

The door was unlocked. She opened it just enough to slip inside, then swept the room, sighting down her gun.

The place was dusty, decrepit. A broken chair slumped in a corner; scraps and trash littered the floor. A table stood against a far wall. On it was a shortwave radio set. Tracker’s hopes rose for a second, until she saw that it was smashed.

Footprints in the dusty floor led to the stairs under the trapdoor.

If she went down there, she’d be stuck. Only one exit, no light—something wasn’t right here. But if she could learn something to take back to the others and figure out what was really going on, the risk might be worth it.

She started down the stairs.

This tunnel, at least, hadn’t collapsed. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, a light became visible ahead, coming from a room. Shadows flickered, as if someone moved in front of a lamp.

Tracker pressed herself to the wall and continued forward. She heard subdued voices speaking English.

“Comrade, thank you. I look forward to a long and profitable relationship.”

“Absolutely.” That voice was American. “You’ll have those weapons shipments, and I trust you’ll use them only on targets designated by our colleague here?”

A third voice, with a clipped accent: “It would be tragic if this war were to fall out of our control.”

Tracker came close enough to the door to lean around and look.

She saw the man in fatigues first. He was facing her, and her eyes widened. It was him, the agent she was supposed to rescue. She recognized him from his dossier photo.

He was shaking hands with a man in a Russian military uniform. The third man wore Chinese insignia on his uniform.

“I can guarantee we’ll have American troops in place by the end of the year. With our peacekeeping efforts, we should be able to keep this thing going for years.”

“And our governments will continue to leave us in control,” said the Chinese officer.

They were making a deal. They wanted a world war. Whatever negotiation was being settled here would keep these men, the old military elite, in power indefinitely. Gods moving their pawns across the world.

Tracker thought of a dozen melodramatic options: stand and challenge them, demand explanation, face them down like she was in some Hollywood spy thriller. Get them to reveal their nefarious plan. Unlikely.