The Aethernet Falls

Chapter 12 - Truths

“Yea I have.” Boros was unclipping one of the invader’s rifles. His sister didn’t know everything he had done for them when they were young. There was a time when the only way a kid his age could earn any money was doing the shady jobs that an adult couldn’t do. Adults drew attention in many places a kid didn’t.

Nobody batted an eye when a kid followed you around. Sometimes that kid had a knife hidden under his clothes.

“When did you do that?” Clarissa asked, still flabbergasted by the realization that maybe her brother wasn’t the same person she had known.

“We need to get anything we can from these guys.” Boros never stopped his work, stripping two spare magazines from a pouch on the dead man’s waist. His eyes were beginning to water.

Greco remained silent. He knew when to take a hint. He moved to the man Boros had taken down and began stripping him of gear before Boros overtook him. “Move the cars.” He said. No venom in his voice, but Greco could tell it was a command.

He left for two reasons alone, neither was that he was told to. He felt a tinge of guilt that he hadn’t told the other two about the Rust Belt Regional Militia. And he really didn’t want to be around for the conversation the siblings were likely about to have.

-

“Were you ever going to tell me?” Clarissa had retreated to one of the work stations while her brother methodically stripped the other two men of their gear. “Have you ever used one of those before?”

“No.” Boros found a mobile on one of the men. It was an older model, still connected to the older satellites, not connected to the Aethernet.

Clarissa sat on the work top and pulled her knees up to her chest. She said nothing. Boros was often withdrawn. It had never worried her until now. She wasn’t exactly scared of her brother, but she wasn’t quite sure if she knew him as well as she had thought. She knew he had done unsavoury things when they were desperate children, but was fairly certain he hadn’t killed anyone. It had to have been after.

Maybe it was in self-defense. Maybe he didn’t choose to kill anyone and it just happened. Maybe he just did something that caused someone to die. That wasn’t the same thing. She came up with myriad situations in her mind to justify her brother killing someone. They all sounded better than murder, but none of them felt quite right.

She was about to say something when Boros spoke up, “When you were about eleven a man approached us.” His voice sounded empty, “You were sleeping, but he came to me, we were under the bridge at the time. He asked me if I wanted some money, showed me a lot of it, more than I’d ever seen in my life. Then he slipped me a little, just enough to eat for the day. He told me I could have more, that I just had to do a little job for him.

“I was greedy. I agreed before I knew what he was talking about, then he gave me the knife. Told me to follow someone, to keep the knife hidden, and to beg him for something or just get his attention. He told me to put the knife in his neck whenever the opportunity arose, then he told me where to find him to get the rest of my money.

“So I did it. We were desperate. I was desperate. I didn’t even think about it. The man threw me away before he could pull the knife from his neck. He just kept… He kept clutching at his neck like he could keep the blood in. And he tried to say something but I must have got his windpipe because he just gurgled. I threw up before he was dead. And I ran until I found where the man that paid me said he would be. He paid me and we got to eat for a long time. He came a few more times after that. Always seemed to know when we were really hurting, must have been watching us.”

He was crying quietly. Clarissa was weeping openly. He had taken up a seat on the workstation opposite her sometime during his story. She hadn’t noticed. When she opened her mouth to speak she found that she couldn’t speak. Could only sob and suck in air.

“The last time I saw him I had killed,” Boros hung his head, “I think eight people for him. I was angry with him because he kept asking me to do it. So I killed him instead. Took all his money, that’s how we afforded that room in the flophouse. He was the last person until now.”

He moved towards his sister, she flinched backward and he retreated, sorrow in his eyes. She figured he had his reasons for not telling her. Maybe he knew this was how she’s react. She knew she couldn’t let him be right, but she was terrified. She steeled herself, took a big breath of air and wiped the tears from her eyes and got up moving toward him like she had concrete in her shoes.

“I’m sorry I never told you.” Tears were streaming down his face, but his tone was even. “I should have. I just… I couldn’t. I hated it, every second of it. And I…”

It was her turn to interrupt him, she sat next to him and hugged him close, resting her head on his shoulder. “You did it for me.” She had stopped crying, almost stopped feeling scared but couldn’t quite shake it. She smiled, hoping it wouldn’t show through. “And you did this for me, too. I started this, you had to stop it.”

-

Greco had finished moving the cars so no one would see them if they weren’t looking real hard for them. He could still get in his and they could take off if they needed to. He had made a few trips gathering ammunition and supplies from both of them, had in fact made a small stockpile, in between listening for the siblings to be finished.

They had been quiet for a while before Greco even thought about going back in. He regrated not telling them about the Militia, but there was no way he could tell Clarissa and Boros about them. He had ties to them and they would probably kill him the second they had heard. Boros would definitely kill him.

He grabbed a few duffels of the stuff and opened the door. Putting on his best working smile and proclaimed, “I got a lot of stuff out of their truck, can someone help me with it.”

Neither of them responded but Boros got up to help. He had put the equipment he had stripped of the men in a small pile on one of the work tops. “Put it on the other side of the partition.” He had said when he passed by the politician. He sounded normal enough again.

Greco let out a sigh, but listened and turned towards the partition. Away from the weapons. When he turned to get more he saw Boros carrying the rest of it so he went to sit near Clarissa. She was smiling again, but he could tell she was nervous.

“You two okay.” He whispered when they were close.

“Yea.”

Boros dropped the rest of the gear with a clatter and made his way to them. Greco made a conscious decision to sit far enough away from Clarissa, but near enough the pile of guns.

Boros closed the gap quickly. His face was cold, “You got something you want to tell us?” He demanded.

“You know what?” Greco poured every ounce of charm he could into his words. If he hadn’t he was certain they’d be filled with venom, and that would get him killed. “I’m tired of you talking to me like that. First you break into my house and demand I chauffeur you around, now you’re throwing around, what, half-assed accusations.”

Boros said nothing. He simply threw a small, matte black rectangle at Greco. On the screen was a single message, >. s**t.

“Look,” The politician started, scrambling backwards. He hadn’t realized Boros was so tall. Maybe he wasn’t. “I couldn’t tell you about them. The man that started it all, Corporal Harding, he’s got it out for me. We have a.. history.”

“You damn well could have said something about it.” Boros wasn’t shouting, but he might as well have been. Greco didn’t recognize the man before him. He was completely different from the man that had followed him home and knocked him out. He seemed to ooze confidence, like he had complete control over this situation. Greco wasn’t sure how he felt about it.

Before he could say anything in his defense, Greco heard something. Like the rushing of wind through trees. Then there was a sound like a dozen trains crashing at once.

The three of them shot up at once. Each of them reacting more or less the same. Shock. The door slammed open on its hinges and Boros ran towards it, grabbing one of the assault rifles on the way. But no one was there. In the distance was an impossibly bright light. Clarissa was behind him now, Greco was debating grabbing a rifle of his own.

“What’s that?” The politician asked.

“The fusion reactor.” Boros said so quietly that Greco could barely hear over the background noise. “It just blew.”