Trust to the Lion

“Do you believe in what we’re doing, Agent Keller?”

I didn’t shift my eyes to look at Leslie Stevens when she spoke, I could imagine her face well enough. Leslie had been with me at the program, she had already been admitted my first day. Leslie was twenty-one and had never seen the world outside the program until she left to be an agent for The Department. Even now she reminded me of the children we see in uptown, all locked up in their ivory towers safe from the horrors of the real world. She always had this habit of asking me the questions that I’d have the wrong answer to and I never could lie to her.

“Of course she does, Stevens, don’t be stupid.” Ian Rogers scolds her in an infuriating knowing tone, “We’re going it for the greater good of the people, what is there not to believe in?”

I close my eyes for a moment and press my foot down on the gas harder. Of course a car would have broken down today and I just had to get these two in mine. Rogers continued with his jabbering, explaining everything that we were taught to repeat to Leslie. He thought they were his own words but anyone with half a brain knew they weren’t. We say what we have to, we believe what we’re told, and we shut our mouths before any real opinions can escape.

“Rogers, shut it. I want silence for the rest of this trip or I’m chucking you out onto the interstate.”

It was a long drive to the Outskirts from where Headquarters was in the city. I’d never liked cars, mostly because of the crash my sister had gotten into a few years back but particularly not the monitoring cars they give us. The thing is a light-weight block of metal that zooms through the morning smog like it’s a bird or something. Makes me nervous every time I get into them.

Rogers stayed silent, arms crossed, and pouting like a petulant child until we reached the warehouses and broken down housing buildings that was the Outskirts. Another monitoring car pulled up next to us and landed with a soft whoosh on the dirt caked concrete. The six of us got out of our cars, hands settled nervously wherever our guns were hidden.

The place looked every bit as abandoned as it should have been. The Outskirts had been housing and work for the people who couldn’t afford to travel into the city or live there. It had been a bustling place, filled to the brim with people, good people, bad people you name it and it was here. It had been beautiful. My father had taken my siblings and I down here years back, before I went into the program. We used to eat at a cafe barely a block from where I stood now. I could see it from here, the windows were boarded up and the old teal neon sign was off and hanging onto the wall by will.

“Jesus.”Mike Fitzgerald breathed, “This place looks like the dead should be walking through here.”

I stared at the cafe and said in a soft voice, “Maybe they are.”

A deafening crash came from the building to our left, smoke billowed from one of the upper windows. Rogers, Durham and Fitz were sprinting for the double doors, I told Leslie to stick with Fitz and took off for the teetering, questionable fire escape. There was a shatter and Rogers gave a whoop of victory, they were in. I caught the edge of a long rusted dumpster and jumped my way to the suspended ladder. My right hand narrowly missed and my legs kicked out as the springs gave and I whooshed to the ground.

The ladder hit with a clang and nearly jolted me back off, I scrambled up hand aching and painted with flecks of rust. The fire escape groaned and swayed as I pounded my way to the top. A few of the secured blots popped loose and sent the metal staircase swaying away and back into the building. Glancing up, I could see the very top swaying farther than the rest away from the building and back with a slam. On one of those back slams, somewhere near the higher floor numbers, I stumbled and went over the edge of the fire escape and straight through the slightly lower window.

As it turns out I was running alongside another set of stairs and crashed in a flurry of glass onto them. I barely had time to think about how honestly painful it was to hit the steps before a gun was firing at my head. They were the old kind that used metal bullets rather than the vastly cheaper synthetic versions. I kicked out with my leg in order to get some momentum and launched myself onto the platform a few steps ahead of me. With a roll, I popped up again back against the wall, gun in hand and firing toward the semi-formed shape in the shadows. The light provided by the flashlight on the gun gave me a glimpse of the shooter and I started ceasing my fire.

“Jude?”

The name rushed out of me like air full of remembrance and confusion. The gun across from me wavered and lowered slowly. The form moved slowly into the faint strips of light the boarded up windows provided and a strip touched the achingly familiar face of Jude Fulbright. His blue eyes widened, the clear color tinged with an outlining circle of red.

“Anna?”

My nod was slow, awed. Jude had lived here in the Outskirts when I was a little girl, his mother owned the cafe my family would eat at. We had been friends for all that time, before the disease hit and nearly wiped out the entire area, before I went into the program. I had stolen a monitoring car the year I turned eleven and gunned it until I got to the cafe. When I finally made it back, the place was closed and his family was gone. I’d always assumed them dead, taken by the disease or shot down for it.

“Keller, get down!”

The gunshots ran out and Jude swung around lifting his own gun as he dodged the bullets. Fast, he was so fast. It took maybe a second before he was down the stairs landing on Mike and snapping his neck easy as a toothpick. Roger was next and he fell with a bullet between the eyes. When Jude turned on Leslie, my brain finally started to kick back in.

“No!” I shouted out, “Don’t hurt her!”

I didn’t want to hurt him, didn’t want to kill him most of all, but Leslie was sweet and kind and she had helped me so much when I first started the program. She didn’t deserve to die, none of them did. Jude stumbled sideways when the shot hit his leg, slamming to the wall and looking up at where I was a startled expression on his face. Then it changed. In a matter of moments he was back on level with me towering and looking angrier than I’d ever seen him. Leslie gave a shout and I heard her fumble for her gun, this was her first field assignment she had no idea what she was doing.

“Leslie don’t!” I called out moving away from Jude as he marched toward me, “Get back to the car. Go back to Headquarters.”

“But-”

“That’s an order!” I shouted and turned my head away from Jude to glimpse the very top of her blond head, “Just get out okay, quickly.”

“I- you won’t hurt her will you?” Leslie asked in a soft scared voice, “She doesn’t deserve it. I don’t even think she believes in what she has to do for work, she does it to keep her family safe. You won’t hurt her right?”

Jude turned his head and glared at Leslie for a moment before going back to me. He was still angry, the red ring around his eyes bleeding into the clear blue I’d known for so long. Leslie’s footsteps pattered down the stairs and away. I forced myself not to take another step back. We were pressed close, so close I feel the heat of his rage boiling off of him. With a gnash of his teeth, Jude wrenched back giving himself enough space to hit me on the temple hard enough that it should have knocked me out. I stumbled crashing into the jutting glass of the window I’d busted through and waved for a moment before crumpling to the ground in a heap.