• • •
A team of mercenaries sent by the clappers now supervise weapons training because the storks’ arsenal has gotten so complex and diverse. After all, a thirteen-year-old shouldn’t use a handheld missile launcher without proper instruction. Starkey has conveniently forgotten that training was Bam’s suggestion.
Starkey, who wants to know how to use each and every weapon, trains with his own private instructor. He doesn’t want the storks to see his learning curve. They must think he already knows this stuff. That he’s the consummate guerrilla.
As for everyone else, the storks are each assigned a specific weapon, and train on that weapon for four hours a day.
So far there has only been one mishap.
• • •
Starkey decides that a good stork should be rewarded, and Garson DeGrutte is a good stork. Trustworthy. Dedicated. He follows orders without question, and has the right attitude. For this reason, Garson deserves some of the perks of Starkey’s power. So Starkey pays a visit to a girl named Abigail, whom Garson has been not-so-secretly pining over.
As it turns out, Abigail is the same girl who gave Starkey a lousy massage two weeks ago.
He finds her washing dishes, and with a single gesture dismisses everyone else at the bank of industrial sinks.
“Is there something you want, sir?” the girl asks timidly.
Starkey gives her his winning smile, and reaches up with his bad hand to brush back her hair, which has gone limp from the steamy dishwater. His gloved hand brushes her cheek as he does. She purses her lips as if the touch from his glove pains her. Or maybe terrifies her.
“Does it hurt?” she asks. “Your hand.”
“Only when I think about it,” he says, then gets to business. “I’m here to talk to you about one of the other storks.”
She visibly relaxes. “Which one?”
“Garson DeGrutte. Do you like him?”
“No, not really.”
“Well, he likes you.”
She looks up at him, trying to figure where this is going. “He told you that?”
“He mentioned it. And he also mentioned that you told him off.”
Abigail shrugs, but in a strained, uncomfortable way—as if shaking off a chill. “Like I said, I don’t really like him.”
Starkey reaches over and dries a plate with a dish towel. Abigail takes this as a cue to start doing the same. “Garson is a good fighter. A loyal stork. He deserves some happiness. He doesn’t deserve to be rejected.”
Abigail looks down at the plate in her hands. “So you want me to lie to him?”
“No! I want you to like him,” Starkey says. “I certainly like him. He’s a likeable guy.”
She still won’t look at him. “I can’t feel things that I don’t feel.”
Starkey grabs her shoulder with his good hand—a gentle grasp with a squeeze just hard enough to tip the scale of persuasion. “Yes, you can.”
Later that day, Garson is all smiles. Starkey doesn’t have to ask why, for he knows that today Cupid was armed with a stainless steel crossbow.
• • •
While Garson now enjoys the fruits of Cupid’s steel arrow, Starkey finds in his own love life that multiple piercings can be unpleasant.
“I didn’t trip her, it was an accident!” Makayla yells.
“She’s lying—she wants me to lose the baby! Admit it!” Emmalee screams.
“Go ahead, tear each other apart, we’ll all be better off,” says Kate-lynn.
The three girls in Starkey’s personal harem, once friends, now do nothing but fight. He thought they would see each other as sisters, but the glow they all seemed to share when he first chose them has degraded into a clawing competition. Starkey doesn’t even want to consider how they’ll behave toward one another once all three of his children are born. It’s still so many months away, it doesn’t feel real yet—but the battles between the girls are.
Perhaps it’s the problem of three. Maybe adding a fourth to their number will settle the dynamic. On the other hand, maybe it’s just best to just keep away from Makayla, Emmalee, and Kate-lynn altogether.
He takes comfort in anticipating the end result. The girls are beautiful; his children will be beautiful. And, thanks to their father, they will be raised in a world better than the world that gave birth to him. And he will love them unconditionally . . . if he can just get past the girls he chose to be their mothers.
“She thinks she’s better than me because she was the first, but mine will be the firstborn, you’ll see.”
“And it’ll be a whining little turd like its mother.”
Definitely a fourth. That’s what Starkey decides is needed. After the next harvest camp attack he will choose. A redhead this time. He dyed his hair red for a time to evade the authorities. He liked the way it looked. It would be nice to have a child who comes by it naturally.
• • •
“The applause department”—as Hayden so blithely calls the organization behind the clapper movement—requests an audience with Starkey. Jeevan sets up an encrypted teleconference, although Starkey suspects that those in charge of clappers have massive layers of their own encryption. On-screen is the man with salt-and-pepper hair, more salt than pepper. The man in charge. It still seems odd to Starkey that the man at the heart of the clapper movement appears about as radical as the Wall Street Journal. Starkey has to remind himself that the man was once a teenager himself, although somehow Starkey can’t imagine he was ever an outsider in any sense of the word.
The fact that he’s contacting them directly, rather than through the usual series of intermediaries, concerns Starkey. The only other time Starkey saw the guy was when they sent in a team to abduct Starkey in his sleep. Starkey thought he had been captured by the Juvies, but their little helicopter trip was nothing more than a courtship ritual. That was when the force behind the clapper movement offered the Stork Brigade its full support. That’s when the game changed. The man had declined to give him his name at the time, but a few weeks ago one of his underlings let slip that his name is Dandrich. Starkey knows better than to let on that he knows the man’s name. Or at least not until it serves Starkey’s interests.
“Hello, Mason. It’s good to see you.”
“Hi, yourself.”
Like Starkey, the man is short in stature and wields power with professional proficiency. Even on a small computer screen there’s something intimidating about him.
“You’re well, I trust?” Dandrich says. Small talk. Why do people in suits always insist on small talk before going for the jugular? Starkey braces himself for bad news. Has their location been compromised? Or worse, are the clappers pulling their support? No—why would they do such a thing when the harvest camp liberations have been so successful? Thousands have been freed, unwinders have been punished, and fear has been struck into the hearts of millions. Surely they’re happy with all of that.
“Yeah, I’m good. But I’m sure this isn’t about my health. Why are we talking?”
Dandrich chuckles, amused, perhaps a little bit impressed by Starkey’s directness. “Word has come down that you’re considering an attack on Pensacola Shores Harvest Camp. Our analysts are advising against it.”
Starkey leans back and takes a moment to reign in his annoyance. After all he’s done, why can’t they simply trust his judgment? “That’s what you said about Horse Creek, but that place came down like a house of cards.”