The Always War

  “Sit,” the man said, nodding toward the leather chairs in front of his desk.

  Tessa wanted to object—she and Gideon and Dek were all covered in grease and dirt and sweat. None of them belonged on fancy leather. But Gideon and Dek sat down without saying anything, so Tessa followed suit.

  The man—General Kantoff, Tessa realized—leaned forward and lifted a lid from a glass jar at the edge of his desk.

  “Cigar?” he asked Gideon.

  Gideon looked at the general.

  “You offered me a cigar the last time I was in your office, after I killed all those people,” Gideon said, in a voice that he seemed to be struggling to control. “I haven’t killed anyone this time. I violated the military code, sections 45, 832, and 368. But I didn’t kill anyone.”

  The general watched Gideon for a moment. Then he put the lid back on the glass jar.

  “I’ll take that as a no,” the general said.

  He sat back in his chair.

  Gideon had his head down, waiting. When nobody said anything, he looked up again.

  “Didn’t you hear me?” Gideon asked. “I violated three sections of the military code! I just confessed! Any one of those should be grounds for a court-martial!”

  “I am aware,” the general said dryly, “of your indiscretions.”

  “Indiscretions?” Gideon asked. “Those are crimes! Crimes that I alone committed—they had nothing to do with it!”

  He waved his arm wildly toward Tessa and Dek, seated on either side of him.

  “Well, that’s settled,” Dek said. “How about if Tessa and I just show ourselves out?”

  Nobody answered her, and she made no move to leave. Tessa thought, Guess we should take that as a no too.

  The general had his eyes fixed on Gideon.

  “Lieutenant-Pilot Thrall is a very sick young man,” the general said speculatively.

  “Sick?” Tessa echoed in surprise. “I thought he was supposed to be a hero! That’s what everyone said—that’s what the military said!”

  It startled her to hear her own voice. After everything that had happened, everything she’d found out, everything she’d witnessed with her own eyes and ears—did she still think she could believe in Gideon as a hero? If the general intoned in his most solemn voice, Yes, yes, Gideon is a hero, would she automatically agree? Would she think that whatever he said was right just because he was the one saying it?

  The general didn’t say that Gideon was a hero.

  He gave a sigh, and murmured, “Ah, yes, the heroism factor. You, Ms. Stilfin, have hit upon the crux of our dilemma.”

  Gideon made a small, strangled noise deep in his throat. The general shifted the focus of his gaze to Tessa.

  “As you undoubtedly realize, Ms. Stilfin, people have certain … expectations … for their heroes,” the general said. “When we anoint someone with that title, we have to, let’s say, keep up the image. We have to keep a close watch over how people see their heroes.”

  A close watch, Tessa thought.

  She remembered way back when she’d gone to see Gideon at his mother’s apartment, how he’d kept insisting that he was being watched. Someone had been watching him—or watching the apartment, anyway. The military hadn’t wanted him sneaking out and doing anything to hurt his heroic image.

  Which was exactly what he’d done.

  If anybody else ever found out.

  The general kept watching Tessa, almost as if he thought he could hypnotize her. Almost as if he thought he had the power to make her shut up, to make her forget everything she’d seen.

  “But do you think Gideon’s a hero or not?” Tessa asked, persisting in spite of herself. Because, somehow, this mattered. This was something she cared about.

  The general let out another heavy sigh.

  “War,” he said, “is a complicated thing. From a distance it looks black and white—us and them, life and death, heroes and enemies. But … up close … the boundaries are never so clearly drawn. There’s a reason the hallways of our headquarters are painted gray!”

  He chuckled, and Tessa thought that he had probably used that line before.

  “I killed one thousand six hundred and thirty-two people,” Gideon said. “That was evil, but you said it was good. Then I went to apologize. That was good, but you’re going to say it was wrong. You’ll say it was a crime. You’ll punish me for it.”

  “He called it an indiscretion, not a crime,” Dek hissed at him. “He’s giving you a way out. Take it!”

  The general and Gideon both ignored her.

  The general shifted in his chair. Then he leaned forward, peering straight into Tessa’s eyes again.

  “As long as there has been war, there have been problems with—shall we call it battle fatigue, as our ancestors did?” the general asked. “Shell shock? Posttraumatic stress disorder? You see such horrible things in war. It twists the mind.”

  “I didn’t see anything but a computer screen,” Gideon said. “I sat in a comfortable chair. I was the one who did the horrible things.”

  The general kept watching Tessa. It was like he hadn’t even heard Gideon.

  “When we switched to fighting with drone planes, piloted from remote locations miles from the war zone, we thought that would diminish the psychological toll on our young warriors,” the general continued. “But, somehow, the psychological scars only got worse.”

  “Because it wasn’t kill or be killed anymore,” Gideon said. “The enemy and I weren’t in equal danger. I was killing while I stirred my coffee!”

  “You had to!” the general thundered, and for a moment it seemed as though he was answering Tessa’s question from long ago, when Gideon first told her what he had done: Wasn’t it … necessary? The general’s face was turning red now. “You were protecting your entire country! You were protecting people like her! You’re a hero for her!”

  The general raised his arm and pointed directly at Tessa.

  Tessa shrank in her seat, wanting to disappear again. The general was saying Gideon was supposed to be a hero for her. He wasn’t saying that he thought Gideon was heroic. Just that Tessa and people like her were supposed to think so.

  But Tessa wasn’t the same girl who’d stood in the Waterford City auditorium, dazzled just by the sight of Gideon. She wasn’t so sure she needed a hero like Gideon anymore.

  “I was in the war zone myself,” Tessa said in a small voice. It got stronger with every word. “I didn’t mean to go there, but I did. I saw what we’re fighting over. And … there’s nothing there. Why are we fighting over nothing?”

  CHAPTER

  27

  “Tessa!” Dek hissed. “Stop! Don’t say that!”

  The general’s face, which had seemed so open and almost kindly a moment ago, hardened into a rocklike expression.

  “You’re as crazy as he is,” he said.

  “Not me!” Dek said. “You let me go, I’ll slip back underground; you won’t hear anything else from me!”

  Tessa whirled on Dek.

  “How can you say that?” she asked. “Don’t you want answers? Don’t you want the truth? Don’t you want to know what any of this means?”

  “No,” Dek muttered. “I’ve seen enough truth to last my whole life.”

  “I deserve answers,” Gideon said, standing up. “No more lies. What’s really going on here? Why doesn’t the war zone look like the satellite footage? Why don’t the bombs fall when you say they’re going to? What happened out there?”

  “Delusional,” the general muttered. “Irrational. All three of them are out of their minds.”

  He must have tapped some control underneath his desk, because suddenly two doors opened behind him. Lines of officials in dark blue uniforms streamed in.

  “You called out the psych squad?” Gideon asked, sounding incredulous. “But—we’re not crazy! We’re telling the truth! We saw—”

  “Too much,” Dek mumbled. “We saw too much.”

  One of the dark-unifor
med officials advanced toward Gideon with a syringe in his outstretched hand. Gideon stood frozen until the needle of the syringe was almost level with his arm. Then suddenly he whirled to the side and kicked the syringe out of the man’s hand. He grabbed the man’s arm and twisted it around. In seconds he had the man squirming helplessly in a choke hold.

  “Now, now,” the general said soothingly.

  “You taught me that!” Gideon snarled. “The only thing I learned in the military was how to fight!”

  The other men swarmed toward Gideon, but Gideon held a hand out warningly.

  “Stay away!” he commanded them. “You get too close, I’ll choke him to death! I will! What’s one more death on my conscience?”

  The dark-uniformed men seemed uncertain, like they needed time to think about that one. Gideon was already backing toward one of the open doors.

  “Tessa, Dek, come on!” he shouted.

  Dek grabbed the huge glass jar of cigars off the general’s desk.

  “Somehow I feel like I need a weapon too,” she said.

  “Put that down!” the general commanded. “That’s thousands of dollars of the best cigars in the world!”

  “Okay,” Dek said, and she smashed the jar over the general’s head. He slumped forward.

  All the uniformed men crowded around him.

  “Sir! Sir!” they shouted.

  Then they began yelling at each other: “Check his pulse!” “Check his pupil dilation!” “Is he okay?”

  Tessa didn’t stay to find out. She ran after Gideon and Dek. They were in a small antechamber now. Gideon snatched open a closet and shoved the man he’d been holding inside. Then he slammed the door and propped a chair against it.

  “They’ll hear you screaming when you come to, and they’ll rescue you,” Gideon said. Tessa realized that the man had passed out. From fright? Because Gideon had nearly choked him?

  Tessa didn’t know.

  “This way!” Dek yelled, and Tessa was right behind her, dashing out into a maze of hallways like the one they’d come through before.

  “They’ll catch us!” Tessa panted. “They’ll call out an alarm! They’ll see us on camera!”

  But the halls were deserted. They still had time. Gideon led the way, darting around one corner after the other, always seeming to know which way to go.

  Maybe all the people who are supposed to be watching the security tapes are out on their coffee breaks, Tessa thought. Maybe the cameras aren’t spread out through the whole headquarters. Maybe the psych squad is too busy taking care of the general to call out the alarm yet.

  They kept running, Gideon in the lead, Dek behind him, and Tessa bringing up the rear.

  Tessa hated being at the back. She kept glancing around every time they turned, just in case someone was catching up with them.

  And then she glanced down an intersecting hall as they passed, and saw a man in a light blue uniform.

  He was turning toward her, and there wasn’t time to get out of the way. And then, just a second before he would have seen her, he suddenly reversed course and turned in the opposite direction.

  “Coming!” he called to someone in the other hallway.

  Tessa scrambled to the next corner, her heart pounding fast. Dek and Gideon were several steps ahead of her, and she should have rushed after them. But she couldn’t go on without knowing what lay around that corner. There could be dozens of officers running right toward her now.

  She wanted some warning.

  Very, very cautiously, she twisted her neck and peeked down the intersecting hall. She dared only to let the smallest possible portion of her face show; she looked with only one eye.

  Officials were streaming down the intersecting hall, several yards away. They were obviously searching for something. But each time they should have looked down the hall toward Tessa—would very likely have spotted Tessa—something drew their attention away. A shout. A crackling walkie-talkie. A command barked from further up the line.

  Not a single person broke off and headed toward Tessa and Gideon and Dek.

  Tessa squinted, confused. It didn’t make sense.

  She pulled back out of sight, and looked toward Gideon and Dek. They were far ahead of her now. She dashed after them.

  “Guys!” she hissed. “Wait! Listen—”

  By the time she’d caught up to them, her brain had reexamined the sight of the stampeding men—and the sight of the blessedly empty hall she was in right now—and she had a completely different question to ask than she’d originally intended.

  “What does it mean,” she began, stopping to draw in air that stabbed at her aching, exhausted lungs. She tried again. “What does it mean that they seem to be letting us get away?”

  CHAPTER

  28

  “What?” Gideon began. “No—”

  “It can’t be,” Dek interrupted. “They wouldn’t.”

  But the two of them stopped and peered at Tessa.

  “People are looking for us,” Tessa said. “They’re all over the place back there.” She gestured toward the last hallway, now far, far behind them. “Why aren’t any of them looking for us here?”

  “Because we outsmarted them,” Gideon said. “We—”

  He stopped and looked at Dek.

  “Did you come to headquarters for the tests to get into the military academy?” he asked her.

  “Yeah, and there were people everywhere,” Dek said. “I can’t think of a single hall I walked down where someone wasn’t always bumping into me.”

  “And now we’ve been running down halls for fifteen minutes and haven’t seen a single soul?” Gideon said. “Not even someone just standing around shooting the breeze?”

  “Exactly,” Dek said. “Tessa’s right. They have to be letting us escape on purpose.”

  “But why?” Tessa asked.

  “Is it the easiest way to make us go away, and keep this quiet?” Gideon asked.

  “Or—are they setting us up so they can shoot to kill when we’ve become dangerous criminal masterminds on the run for days?” Dek asked sharply.

  Tessa had to clutch the railing that ran along the wall.

  They wouldn’t even give us a chance to speak? Tessa thought. No chance to ask any more questions? To explain? To … to say good-bye to anyone?

  Gideon stepped toward the wall, and for a moment Tessa had the wild thought that he was going to hug her—comfort her. Instead he ran his fingers along the railing.

  “This is a risk, but we have to know,” he murmured.

  He must have hit some sort of release, because suddenly a portion of the wall turned into a computer screen, with a keyboard sliding out of the railing. Gideon’s fingers flew over the keys, and code flashed by on the screen.

  “You can’t do that!” Dek protested. She tried to pull back on his arm. “Now they’ll see exactly where we are!”

  Gideon shook her off.

  “Relax. I’m using a decoy ID,” he said.

  Screenfuls of information flashed by so rapidly Tessa barely got a glimpse of any of it. She didn’t know how Gideon could read it and judge it and dismiss it all so quickly. But then a map appeared, and Gideon lingered on this sight.

  It took Tessa a moment to realize that the map showed the entire military headquarters, each hallway laid out in exact detail.

  No wonder I thought it looked like a maze, Tessa thought. It is one!

  Hundreds of halls lay in concentric circles, intersected by diagonals and the occasional trace of a straight-line grid. Everything seemed to be circling a large dark space in the center. Tessa looked toward the outer portions of the halls, hoping to spot their exact location. Surely they’d been moving toward the exits.

  “One minute ago,” Gideon said, changing the scene. “Two minutes ago. Three minutes ago.”

  He’d coded the view somehow so they could see the masses of people moving through the halls. The people were indeed in huge crowds throughout the building—throughout the building e
xcept for certain narrow hallways left open and free and clear. The open hallways kept changing.

  Tessa guessed that those were the hallways that she and Gideon and Dek were moving down, the hallways they’d moved down only moments ago.

  “They aren’t letting us go,” Gideon said, squinting at the computer screen. “Not necessarily. They’re just herding everybody else away from us. And keeping us away from …”

  He let his voice trail off.

  “What are we going to do?” Tessa asked.

  “We’re going exactly where they don’t want us,” Gideon said. “There.”

  He pointed to the darkened area in the center of the map. Tessa looked for some identifying label, but if one existed, it didn’t show up against the black.

  “What is that?” Tessa asked.

  Gideon turned and faced her directly. He was looking right into her eyes.

  “That,” he said, “is the control room for the entire war. Where all the answers are.”

  CHAPTER

  29

  “And you want to go there? You’re nuts,” Dek said. “Completely insane.”

  She started to turn away from him.

  Panic surged through Tessa’s brain.

  They’re going to split up! She thought. I’m going to have to choose! Should I go with Dek or Gideon? Which one’s more likely to survive? Which one am I most likely to survive with? But there was another thought behind that one:

  Which one needs me more?

  “Listen,” Gideon said. “I know it sounds counterintuitive. But I’ve been competing in military maneuvers against this computer system ever since I was a little kid. This setup”—he gestured toward the schematic glowing on the wall—“it’s like an invitation personally engraved to me. I always went for the challenges. Always. The computer’s trying to tell me something. It knows I would see this pattern.”

  “But … the people,” Tessa protested. “Won’t the control room be crawling with people? More than anywhere else?”