Jay Posey - Three

“I’d feel better if you came with us, kid. Hate to leave you behind.”

Jackson shuffled towards the three, but lingered several feet away.

“I’d probably just slow you down,” he replied. “Besides, I gotta be here to work the gate for anyone else who might show up, yeah?”

He smiled unconvincingly. If he didn’t believe it himself, Cass couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t just come along.

“Please, Jackson?” Wren said. “Please come with us.”

“We’d be happy to have you,” Cass added. “Really.”

Jackson blushed at that. Dropped his gaze to Wren, and ruffled his hair. Shook his head. He shifted on his feet. Still nervous.

“I can’t. But come back any time.”

He glanced up at Cass as he said the last bit, then quickly away. Sheepish. It clicked for Cass.

Oh , she thought. A crush .

“Go on,” Three said to Jackson. “Say something, kid. I doubt you’ll get another chance, and I don’t want you chasing after us once we leave.”

Cass glanced over at Three. He was straight-faced except for the slight downward turn of one corner of his mouth; a tiny expression Cass had learned to read as something of a suppressed smile. She guessed he’d figured it out a while ago.

Jackson just looked up at her again, and smiled awkwardly. He shrugged, uncertain of what to say, looked away, out through the gate into the city beyond. Cass walked over to him, took his jaw in her hand, and swiveled his face towards hers.

“Thanks, Jackson. For everything. You’re a true hero.”

Before he could respond, she kissed him quickly but firmly on the mouth. He stared at her, stunned, when she backed off. She could still feel his gaze as she joined Three and Wren. Something like amusement washed over Three’s face.

Cass took Wren’s hand in hers and waited.

“Say bye, baby.”

Wren waved.

“Bye, Jackson.”

“Goodbye, little one.”

“We gotta move. Last chance, kid.”

Cass glanced behind her, saw Jackson shake his head. He was beaming.

“Alright then. Stay safe.”

“You too, Three. See you around, yeah?”

“Never can tell.”

Three turned and held out his hand, letting Cass and Wren lead the way out. They headed out into the open, and Cass felt a hitch in her chest. Some mix of exhilaration and fear. Not quite equal parts, but she couldn’t tell which she felt more strongly.

“Hey, pim me when you get to Morningside, yeah?” Jackson called from behind. “Let me know you made it.”

“Sure,” Three answered back over his shoulder. “I’ll have Cass do it.”

Cass didn’t turn around then. She just shook her head. When they had walked maybe a hundred feet, Three slid in next to her, leaned close. Spoke in low tones.

“Doubt you’ll ever see him again. But that kiss is gonna last him a looong time.”

He nudged her with an elbow, and then moved away a pace or two.

“Is he going to be alright?”

“Hope so.”

Cass noticed something behind those few words Three was willing to say on the matter. His usual stony gaze was shadowed by a slightly furrowed brow.

“You think it was a mistake to leave him behind?”

“Yeah.”

He let it hang in the air, as if that was all he was going to say. But just before she pressed him further, he added, “Might’ve been a bigger one to force him along, though.”

“He seems pretty sharp. If he survived that long with all the…” she trailed off, unsure of the diplomatic way to say it, “ trouble… he was having, I’m sure he’ll be fine. I don’t think we need to worry about him.”

“I’m not.”

“Look, if you don’t want to talk about it, just say so.”

Three clenched his jaw, grimaced slightly. Frustrated with her, or himself, she couldn’t tell.

“Biggest footprints a man leaves behind are the people whose lives he crosses, intentional or not. And there’s no way to cover those tracks… I just hope he keeps his head down, at least for a while.”

With that said, Three lengthened his stride and was soon several paces ahead of Cass and her son. End of conversation. Cass shoved the implications of his words to the back of her mind and focused on keeping pace, the thought of pursuit too heavy to pick up so soon.

Before long, they’d fallen into Three’s natural broken rhythm, and begun their twisting but steady journey towards Greenstone under his ever-watchful eye. It was late afternoon on the third day of the journey when trouble came.

The sprawling city shell changed in small but perceptible ways as they followed their wandering south-easterly path. Fuzzy as she was from the Somalin doses Three insisted she take, Cass nevertheless felt that her awareness of her surroundings was growing sharper from the time she’d spent with Three. Wherever they went, he seemed utterly in the Now; never reflecting on what came before, or thinking of what might be ahead. Just fiercely, aggressively, rooted in the instant.

Cass worked to cultivate a similar mindset, to push the inconsequential past from her thoughts, to chase the imaginary, unknowable future from her daydreams. And over the course of the past few days, she’d noticed details in the world around her that had escaped her before. Some were of little value, such as the subtle changes in architecture, or shifts in the concentration of the residual signals that still haunted the abandoned buildings. Others were more important, like the widening of streets that offered less concealment, or the decrease in functioning tech that signaled the likely presence of scavengers, whether past or present. Even as the winds and temperature blurred the lines between late autumn and early winter, Cass felt more alive, more in tune, than she had at any time before.

And so it was, though Three had said nothing, that Cass knew from the shift in his demeanor that danger was near. They’d been making good time up to that point, but he’d slowed the pace, taken to narrower alleyways. They were moving forward, but in lines far less straight.

“What’s going on?”

Three waved vaguely towards an alley as his eyes roved the wide road ahead. Cass caught the barest glimpse of three figures moving along parallel to them.

“Bad guys?”

“They were headed the opposite way when we passed ’em the first time.”

Cass hadn’t even seen them before, but the fact that Three had, came as less of a surprise than it once would have.

“And there were four of ’em.”

She felt the icy pinprick of fear stab at her heart. She couldn’t boost off Trivex, and worse, Three had dosed her with Somalin, a tranquilizer, to slow her burn rate. She felt like she was moving at half speed: a poor quality if it came to a fight.

“What do we do?”

“Keep your eyes open. And keep moving.”

He led them out of one alley, then down a corridor formed by one sagging high-rise leaning into another. Pace slow, but deliberate, like an icebreaker through a frozen sea. He seemed to be looking everywhere and nowhere all at once, eyes taking in everything without focusing on any one thing in particular. Cass pulled Wren close to her side, kept a hand on his shoulder. He’d gone quiet, sensing the danger even before she’d spoken to Three.

Ahead, Three halted, held out a hand behind him to stop them as well. His head swept slowly back and forth. Cass strained to hear any warning sound, but there was nothing, save for the soft sighing of the late-autumn breeze through the twisted steel branches bending above them.

Cass felt Wren pull away from her, and looked down to see her son creeping carefully to Three. He placed a hand on Three’s elbow, and Three bent down so the boy could whisper in his ear. Three glanced up to windows on their right as he nodded, then pushed Wren gently but firmly back towards his mother. Wren clung close to Cass then, his head pressed against her hip, making himself as small as possible. Cass cursed herself silently for her helplessness. Worse, for the danger her helplessness presented for Three. She longed for quint, not because her body craved it, but because she wanted desperately to stand at his shoulder, strong and capable, not behind him, like some creature to be protected, or pitied.