25 SEAN
EVERY STEP THAT SEAN TOOK sent a surge of hatred pulsing through Jeff’s body. Sean hadn’t been the one to kill Chad or slice the limbs from his body, but in a way, he had done something worse. He had been a brave, sworn to protect the people of Fifth Springs by any means necessary. Against an Apostle, that meant death, but Sean hadn’t answered that call.
Instead, along with the mayor, he had completely avoided the conflict while the people Jeff loved had been cut to pieces. He was a coward and had failed his people.
The man walking next to Sean looked back over his shoulder, and Jeff looked away, trying his best to act like he wasn’t following them. The man scratched his bulky nose and ground his teeth before looking forward once again.
Jeff didn’t know where they were leading him, but it didn’t matter. He was more than willing to follow Sean as long as he needed to, to wherever he needed to go. The man had laughed at him while he lay in the rubble of Fifth Springs, waiting to die. Jeff had watched him walk away from him once before, and he wasn’t going to allow that to happen again.
To his right, a crowd gathered over by a large building that glowed from the inside with electric light. There was an energy in the air that was unmistakable; something had caused an unnatural level of excitement. Perhaps an envoy had just returned with unexpected treasures, or maybe it was some sort of community holiday. Fifth Springs had celebrated October 15 every year, a date that marked the most recent founding of the community. It wasn’t a date that Jeff celebrated; the loss of Fourth Springs had been too costly.
Sean patted his companion on the back as they split up and headed away from the crowd. As Jeff followed, Sean rounded the corner of a building, where a handful of birds took flight from a tidy fenced garden. Something twitched in his brain; he would have called it a reflex before he had earned the vagrant’s uniform.
His mechanical arm shot up and grabbed Sean’s wrist, preventing a knife from lodging into Jeff’s neck. Jeff flicked his metal wrist, breaking the man’s bones unwittingly. He was too focused to let the vibrations and crunch bother him. He covered Sean’s mouth with his other hand as screams escaped Sean’s throat.
Sean went limp, but Jeff held him up, not letting the man drop to the ground with the knife that Jeff stared at. The sight of it sent a wave of memories through his mind; he had seen the sister of that knife before. Sean had left it for him to kill himself with.
“Hello again, brave,” Jeff whispered to Sean. He twisted around him, using Sean’s body as shelter as he looked for anyone who might have heard the man’s screams. No one was coming, and Sean whimpered pathetically in his arms.
“I suspect you didn’t think you’d see me again,” Jeff said. Sean trembled, weakly trying to free himself, but Jeff was too strong for him, and he had plenty of practice at subduing people. “The last time we saw each other, you gave me a knife.”
Jeff closed his eyes as he spoke, letting his mind drift to the scene in his past where Sean had left him a dirty knife as he walked after the mayor. But now he remembered a past where he didn’t leave the knife in the dirt as he went with Carlee and Stefani. Instead, he remembered choosing to carry the knife with him, across Fifth Springs, using his only hand to hold on to the handle of the blade.
He remembered Stefani making fun of him for it, for clutching to a metal knife when she could press him a force-field knife instead. But he kept it. He remembered fastening a case for it during one of his sleepless nights with the vagrants while he learned the secrets of the past and of pressing. He remembered Carlee pressing him a more fitting case with a beautiful smile. It was a case that would attach to the thigh of his fresh vagrant uniform, on top of the pieces of body armor.
Sean pulled against Jeff’s arm, desperately trying to free himself, but Jeff held him tight as he opened his eyes. His metal arm slid down his side to where a knife rested on his thigh. He unstrapped it, freeing the knife that had always been there and had yet just appeared in this reality.
“You let our community die without anyone to fight back for them. That can’t be forgiven. You told me once to be brave.”
Sean squirmed, freeing his mouth long enough to get out a tiny scream, but Jeff regained control a moment later. He heard some sort of commotion in the distance, but he didn’t spend time thinking about it; instead, he preferred to listen to Sean plead in whimpers.
“Now, let’s see how brave you are.”
Sean tried to sink to his knees, and this time Jeff let him. They stooped low together as Jeff eased the knife steadily into his heart. Sean shook violently, and a warm wetness flowed between the fingers that had been covering Sean’s mouth.
Jeff let Sean collapse to the ground with his knife permanently returned to its original owner, and he stumbled back, looking at the blood on his hand. It was a pure bright red, contrasting brilliantly with the dusty-gray sleeves of his uniform. He stared at it, transfixed, almost as if he wasn’t sure why it was there or couldn’t believe what had just happened.
The emotions he felt were hard to define, but he knew they weren’t regret. But they weren’t joy or satisfaction. In fact, he just felt confused, or at least that was his best guess.
There were voices growing closer, and he looked around the corner from where he had come and saw a mob of men rushing his way, holding all kinds of weapons, from guns to clubs. Sean’s companion was at the front of them, rushing in his direction. Jeff stumbled backward as he tried to look around for a place to run. Instead, he found himself looking at his bloody hand again.
“He killed Sean! My God! He killed Sean!” the man shouted. And the mob flexed out in front of him as he stood in place. They didn’t try to kill him immediately, which seemed strange. But everything seemed strange.
“I knew he was a raider when I saw him!” the man shouted. No one focused on the body; instead, they surrounded Jeff, pushing in closer. Their faces were violent—and understandably so. Jeff was an outsider, and they weren’t to be trusted. That he knew. In fact, he knew many things again, like how he needed to figure a way out of this mess. His mind had been so blurry for a few moments, but the more he blinked, the more everything came back into focus.
“We should kill him!” someone shouted as he felt something crack against his metal arm and shatter. He looked over to see that it had been an old wooden baseball bat. The crowd backed away from him after seeing the bat destroyed.
“It’s a human leech!” someone shouted.
“Shoot it!” someone else shouted.
“Call Darwin!” a third voice shouted. The crowd paused at this suggestion, and then more voices took up the call. “Call Darwin! Call Darwin!”
“He deserved it,” Jeff said softly.
“What did you say?” a man who looked to be able to give Jeff a decent fight said as he stepped forward. He was holding a machete that had been attached to an energy cell. It wasn’t activated, but Jeff had seen what weapons like that could do to a man.
“He deserved it,” Jeff repeated, speaking softly now on purpose as he looked over the man’s shoulder, hoping to see Stefani coming in his direction. He didn’t see her coming, and he was starting to have the instant feelings of regret that he had experienced the last time he had left a vagrant behind to seek revenge.
“Who are you?” the man with the machete asked.
But Jeff ignored the question. He was busy trying to find a solution. He had pressed successfully a few minutes ago, but he wasn’t sure he could do it again. He closed his eyes anyway and started to imagine a reality where he had brought a force-field generator with him that could lock him in a protective casing.
“We should shoot him.”
“Shut it, Constance,” their leader said. “I’m going to ask you one more time, son. Who are you?”