I asked her what was wrong, and she told me she was just tired. I knew she was lying, and she knew that I knew, but we both let it drop for the moment. She calmed down a little and we chatted about some insignificant things. On the way back to the MPZ, she didn't so much as look out of the train window, just staring straight ahead at the back of the next seat.
It only took a few minutes to zip through the surreal landscape of the northern Manhattan wastes and enter the Protected Zone. Twenty minutes later we were at the hotel. I took her by the hand, and we walked right up to my room, not even bothering to check her into her own. She sat there on the bed silently, staring off into space with a glassy look on her face. Finally, I said, "You don't have to tell me what's bothering you if you don't want, but please let me know how to help you."
She looked up at me with an expression that seemed to combine love and despair, gratitude and hopelessness. He eyes glistened with moisture for a few seconds before the tears began streaking down her cheeks. "It's just hard being back here." She tried to stifle the tears, unsuccessfully. "We never discussed our pasts. Mine is bad."
I put my hand on her cheek and looked at her. "Is that what this is about? Whatever happened, it is past and gone. My history is bad too, really bad. But that isn't us anymore."
She was quiet for a few minutes, and then she started talking. Once it started to come out, there was no stopping it. She told me things that day that she had never confided to anyone, things she never spoke of again.
When she was fourteen, the thirty year old son of a high-ranking politician saw her out one day with her family, and he decided he wanted her. Her father was approached about allowing her to live in Sector A as the ward of the politician, but they said no, both to the initial suggestion and the more forceful one that followed. So one day her entire family was arrested on charges of plotting terrorism, and her father, mother, and 8-year old sister where dragged from their apartment in restraints. She was taken to Sector A and placed under the guardianship of her admirer, and that night, when she wouldn't give in to his advances, he raped her three times.
She was kept for weeks, locked in a small room where he would come whenever he wanted to and abuse her horribly. One day, after he'd beaten and raped her, he didn't notice that a writing stylus had dropped out of his pocket, and the next time he came to her room she buried it into his neck, twisting it around to make sure he bled to death before help could arrive.
She used his passkey to get out of the building and Sector A, and somehow she managed to escape the MPZ entirely, despite the massive alert that went out. She kept running, somehow managing to just about survive, barely eluding capture. The land between urban areas consisted of mostly abandoned suburbs and reclaimed farmland. The suburbs, once densely populated, were now devoid of public services and occupied only by a few renegades and outlaws.
Somehow, through blind luck she ran into a family living in a big house in an otherwise uninhabited old town. They took her in, fed her, and gave her a place to stay. The father had been a doctor in the Philadelphia Enclave, until he'd had to flee for some reason or another, and he removed her spinal implant. I'd seen that little scar on her neck a hundred times, and always wondered where she'd gotten it.
She stayed there for several months until one day the house was assaulted by Federal Police. She was sure they were there for her, but it turned out they had finally caught up with the doctor. Without her implant they had no idea she was wanted as well, and they just assumed she was some local vagrant. They raped her and left her lying on the front porch of the house.
She wandered for months, not in the populated urban hell were I scavenged, but in the vast areas between cities, through rotting old ghost towns, past vast tracts of polluted industrial wastelands until, by the blindest luck, she wandered into a range of land used by the Corps for training. A group of third year trainees found her half-starved, mad with thirst, and sick, and they brought her to the base. There, she was nursed back to health and allowed to stay until she was sixteen, when she was given the chance to enlist. The rest I'd known already. She participated in two assaults as a private and was offered a transfer to the medical training program.
After she'd told me the whole story I just put my arms around her and we sat silently. I don't know how long we just stayed there, but it was hours, because it was dark out before either of us said a word. We sat up the whole night talking, and by morning I'd told her my entire sad story as well, the first time I'd said a word of it to anyone.
In the morning we left the hotel and walked out of the Sector A checkpoint into the main area of the MPZ. I had called Sergeant Warren, who'd turned out to be a great assistant, and told him to cancel our appearances in New York and get us transport permits to leave immediately. Somebody would probably be pissed that we were bailing on our commitments, but to say I didn't give a fuck would have been an understatement of epic proportions. We were sitting on a small bench in the park when he called me.
"Major, I got your events canceled and travel permits issued for you to go back to Wash-Balt today. I was stunned they said yes. Apparently Presidential Medal winners do have some influence. Is there anything else you want me to do?"
"Nice job, Chris," I replied. "Yes, I need you to arrange to have our baggage sent from the hotel to wherever we're staying in Wash-Balt. Oh yeah, I need you to get us a place to stay there too."
He responded sharply, "Yes, sir. Consider it done."
"And Chris…thanks. This was important."
"I'm at your service, sir."
"After you finish, take the rest of the time to yourself. Stay here or go wherever you want with the rest of your leave. Use my name if you think that stupid medal has juice."
"Thank you, sir. I appreciate that, sir."
And so Sarah and I had stayed one sleepless night in New York City, which had once been home to us both, and we left never to return. Two hours later we were on the magtrain to Wash-Balt, and that evening we were eating dinner at Aoki's old haunt.
By the next morning we'd pushed the demons back into the recesses of our souls, and we were back to normal, more or less. The two of us were closer than ever. I had been nervous on my way to Earth, uncertain how several years apart would have affected us. But now I knew, we both knew, that time, distance, war, hardship - none of it - would get between us.
We had a month's leave coming now that the tour was over, and we'd both had just about enough of Earth. We decided to go to Atlantia, which was a big rec center for troops on leave. Anywhere but Earth.
As we boarded the orbital shuttle we both knew we'd never see Earth again. I was wrong, I'd be back once more, under circumstances I couldn't have imagined at the time. But Sarah never returned to the planet of her birth, and as far as could tell, she never even thought much about it.
Chapter Twelve
Ten years of war. Ten years since I finished basic training and made my first assault at Carson's World. Sixteen years passed for that angry, animalistic kid saved from an early death by a marine. A marine who later died himself fighting half a kilometer away from his recruit on a planet they had travelled very separate paths to reach.