Dualed (7 page)

“Is it so hard to just be here, West?” Chord says quietly. “To believe that when you get your assignment, you’re the one who’s supposed to win?”

His words have my pulse thudding, the beat of it enveloping all my senses. “What if I’m not the one, Chord? What if it all goes wrong again?”

He finds my other hand, inches me even closer. His face is tortured. “You mean, the way mine did? Is that it? You can’t stand being around here because of what happened to Luc?”
Or being around me
. His eyes asking what his words don’t.

My throat aches, pushes the words out. “I know it’s not your fault, but I keep seeing it in my head. It was your Alt, and his
face … so much like yours, Chord. And if you hadn’t been Luc’s best friend, he would never have been anywhere near there.”

Chord’s eyes go hollow, his features stricken with grief. “West, I’m sorry. For accepting Luc’s help and getting him killed for it. For not sitting back and just waiting for my Alt to come. But most of all—”

“I—I would
never
have wanted you not to fight,” I stammer out, interrupting him. The idea of it claws at my gut. How did things get so muddled between the two of us? “I—”

“—most of all, for still asking you to want me here. Even if it does all go bad again.” His gaze is on me. “Just give me a chance, all right?”

Too close. He’s getting too close. If something happens to him because he thinks he needs to be there for me when I get my assignment, because of something Luc asked of him … if he’s even just standing next to me—

I yank my hands free and take a step back.

“If you heard me and Baer talking, then you also heard what Baer said,” I say to him. Cross my arms in front of me so he stays away. “That being a striker would be the best kind of training there is. And then you won’t think you need to stick around or anything. I know Luc probably bugged you about it before he—before what happened.”

“Screw Baer!” Chord snaps. “He should never have told you about that guy.” He glares at my wrists, as if already seeing the tattooed stains spiraling around them, the permanent marks a striker takes on for life. Like manacles. And then his face goes dark—with anger, grief, something else. “You don’t
need to become an assassin just to save me from your Alt. And I wouldn’t be saying this just for Luc, West. All right? We’re friends, too.”

I force myself to shrug. Look past his shoulder so I can’t feel him as much anymore. “You know what, don’t worry about the ride. Marsden and Thora are still here finishing a makeup test, so I’ll just—”

“No, c’mon, West—”

“—walk home with them after they’re done.”

“—I want to.” Chord sighs. “Drive you home, I mean.”

I don’t know what to do, sure that whatever I decide is going to be wrong. So when he stands up and says nothing, simply waits for me to make the first move, I give him a sideways glance and head out the door. He follows and soon we’re getting into his car in the parking lot.

It’s the longest ten minutes of my life. I spend it sitting as far from him as I can get in the passenger seat, hoping he won’t ask anything else, that I won’t need to come up with more answers when I’m not even sure of my reasoning myself. Hoping that he’ll stay away now, for both our sakes. Telling myself it’s what I want, too.

Though I never thought it would be this hard.

By the time he pulls up to my house, I’m a wired ball of nerves. I turn to him, about to force out a good-bye, when he jumps out of the car and heads for the front door.

“What—Chord, what are you doing?” I climb out and follow him. I should have known he wouldn’t let me escape this easily.

I meet him at the top of the steps. My father’s potted plants at our feet, their blooms long gone to seed. Luc’s bike pushed up against the siding. Signs of a dead life, all around me. “What are you doing?” I ask again. “I’m busy, you know.” A lie. Everyone’s gone now. My time is my own.

Chord shoots me a look, not caring that I know
he
knows I just want him to go. “If you’re really thinking about doing this, you owe me one thing,” he bites out. “As a … friend.”

I ignore the way my stomach drops, how my heart thuds a bit faster. “I don’t owe you anything,” I manage.

“I just need to know one thing, and then I’ll leave you alone about this.” Chord’s sudden smile is fleeting, a mere flash across his lips, but I can’t miss the misery there. “Who am I to tell you what to do, right?”

Just the one person I have left to keep safe, that’s all
. Unable to say anything to him, I punch in the key code to unlock the door.

“Wait here, okay?” he says to me before heading upstairs, reminding me that he knows this house as well as his own. We live only five houses apart. After his family moved in when he was six, either he was at our place or Luc was at his.

Until now. It hits me with a pang that this is probably the first time he’s feeling less than welcome here. And it’s because of me.

Chord’s back within seconds, and he finds me in the kitchen, where I’ve gone to get something to drink just to keep myself busy. In his hand is Luc’s gun. He took it from the desk in Luc’s room, where he knows Luc always kept it.

My knees go weak, and I slip into the nearest chair. “What are you doing with that?” I ask him, my voice faint and way too shaky.

Chord was the one to clean it for me after Luc died. I couldn’t bear to hold it for long. It somehow continued to feel sticky with Luc’s blood, even after I wiped it over and over. But Chord did a good job. The matte finish is smooth, cool-looking, and most of all, has no trace of blood whatsoever.

So why can I still see it? If not directly in front of me, then in my head, where memories continue to loop? The liquid ease of the blood spreading everywhere, the blackening of it as it dried. How our fingerprints swam in the tackiness of it, whorls bright and perfect.

I shut my eyes and breathe in. Then out.

When I open them, the gun is just a gun again. Held securely in Chord’s grip. Nothing more, nothing less.

Chord passes it to me, handle first. I don’t have a choice but to take it. How can I think about becoming a striker if I can’t even hold a gun? And Chord’s watching me, searching for any sign of weakness.

It fits my palm with more ease than I would have thought likely. All those days and weeks and months spent with Luc, training and perfecting my arm, my eye, my stance—all of it seems so far away, like it wasn’t even us. But I guess you really can’t unlearn some things.

“So show me,” Chord says, his voice hard, not his at all.

“Show you what?”

He points to the wall on the far side of the kitchen. “Shoot. I want to see how good you are.”

My fingers stiffen. They don’t want to curl around the trigger, and my palm is suddenly damp with sweat. My arm is trembling. “I don’t need to show you. I’ll be fine, okay?”

“Humor me, then. I want to see.”

“What difference does it make?”

His face is like thunder. “The difference between you getting in over your head over an Alt who means nothing to you, and you getting the chance to challenge your own Alt.”

“Will you promise that it’ll be enough for you, then?” I ask him.

For a long minute, Chord doesn’t answer. Finally, reluctantly, a soft “I’d be lying if I said yes, but I promise I’ll try to pretend it is.”

He takes my hand, the one still holding the gun. He squeezes his fingers around mine, until we’re holding the gun together.

“Let go, Chord.”

He doesn’t. Instead he points the gun at the wall across from us and fires.

The sound is enormous in the enclosed space. A neat black hole mars the smooth white of the drywall.

Chord drops his hand from around mine and says, “Now aim for that same hole.”

“You just blew a hole in my kitchen wall,” I say quietly. Then, without saying anything else, I lift the gun and take aim. I will it to not be too far off. If I’m even the least bit rusty, Chord won’t be satisfied.

But the second bullet lodges itself within an inch of the first. Two sinister eyes stare back at us.

Casually, I put the gun down on the table. I can see that my
hand is shaking again, so I clasp it tightly with my other hand, forcing it steady. A part of me insists that it was dumb luck, but what does it matter now?

“There,” I say, my voice flat. “Good enough?”

Chord nods, defeat written in every line of his body. His face is still set, but now at least there’s some relief there, as well. It’s going to have to be enough for him to not think he’s failed me in some way. As though he’s failing Luc all over again by not stopping me from becoming a striker.

A rush of emotion has me grabbing his hand. I know how hard guilt is. It’s like a weight on your chest, suffocating you, only it goes on, with no end in sight. Thinking that it’s me putting him through that is almost enough to tell him,
It’s okay, I’m not going to become a striker
.

Almost.

I want to believe I can deal with my own nightmares, the ones that come out in the dark and only barely stay quiet when it’s light. But it’s not even just that. It’s Chord, getting too close to me … my Alt … the crossfire between us. And it would rip me apart until nothing was left if I lost him, too.

That’s me being selfish. Selfish enough for both of us. Becoming a striker will fill my life and keep me from going crazy. It will lend me the skills to survive.

“Chord. I’ll be okay.” My voice is close to shattering. “And then
you’ll
stay okay.”

He exhales. Crouches down so he’s level with me. His dark eyes roam my face.

“You’ve already decided, haven’t you?” he asks me. His hand is gentle around mine, somehow able to calm my own tensed grip.

I have. My decision was made as soon as the card passed into my hand and refused to be forgotten.

“Yes,” I say, nodding, “and there’s nothing you can say that’ll make me change my mind.” I can’t help but touch his hair, the way it falls over his forehead, how the soft brown strands slip through my fingers. “I’m sorry.”

Chord watches me for another moment, as if trying to memorize how I look before I’m changed forever. I want to tell him that I’ll still be the same person, but I don’t. Because I don’t know if that’s true.

He touches the side of my face. “I’ll see you later, West,” he says hoarsely. And he stands up, steps back, and walks away. I hear the sound of the front door shutting and his car taking off.

Good-bye, Chord
.

Becoming a striker isn’t much different from becoming active, really. We give up a little to get a lot back.

Why do I feel like I’ve already given up far too much?

Standing in front of the building, I’m dumbfounded. All those hundreds of times we ran past it as kids, racing back and forth as we played Alt Against Alt. Or if the day was particularly restless, our mood especially wild, when we played Striker Against Alt.

I glance down at the card in my hand. Make sure I have the name right. That I’ve written down the address correctly.

Yes. This is it. No mistake. I tuck the card away in my bag and feel for the shape of the gun I’m carrying in my jacket. The weight alone tells me it’s still there, but already I’ve developed the nervous habit of double-checking. It was a last-minute decision to take it with me this morning, and I still don’t get why I did it. I’m in no danger here. As it is, meeting up with someone like Dire with a gun that’s still more Luc’s than mine is probably as effective as walking in bare-handed.

The music store looks like any of the other stores that line the block. The rippled front window is etched with faint shadows of old graffiti, the outer ledge of it dotted with lumps of
putty-colored gum. Cheap interior lighting. Gray linoleum floors that clean up easily enough with a soggy mop. A steel-framed front door painted with the name:
DIRE NATION
.

I pull the door open, step inside, and pass from one kind of life to another.

There are customers strewn throughout the store. Most of them are at the plug-in stations, lining up music to be wired into the music players implanted in their eardrums. There are also downloading stations, for those who still carry external players. And a handful of racks, for die-hard collectors of more tangible formats. Holograms of bands cover the concrete walls:

Kamiquasi. The Finger Project. Munch.

But this is the Grid, so the stations are double-bolted to the ground and to each other. The racks are still standing but have been beaten to near death. And the holograms blink and flicker, shorting out every few seconds.

I recognize the song that’s playing over the sound system. It was a favorite of Ehm’s. I haven’t heard it since she died, and the sound of it now is like a splinter in my chest.

“Help you with something?” a voice behind me asks.

Cool sweat breaks out along my brow, and I take a deep breath as I turn to look at him.

Pudgy, plodding, features as thick as pudding. A name tag with
Hestor
written in blue letters.

It’s almost hard to believe he’s even a complete, he’s so soft. If he is an actual striker, he’s a parody of everything we’ve ever imagined them to be.

“I’m trying to see if you guys have this band in your library, but the station lineups are really long,” I say to him, knowing he’s the one who can take me to Dire.

“Nothing to complain about, that’s just good business, girlie.” A snicker. “What’s the name of the band?”

This is it. If I’m going to turn back, it has to be now. A vivid image of Chord flashes in my mind, like a final chance. Except he’s dying. Like Luc, everyone else. And I’m holding him in my arms, feeling his life drain away.

My fault.

“Hey, you alive in there?” Hestor waves his hand in front of my face.

Doubt disintegrates. The fear of the unknown is nothing compared to what I already know—what I fear the most. “The name of the band is the Strikers,” I say softly, my eyes steady on his.

Hestor goes absolutely still. His hand stops flapping in midair, his eyes widen just a sliver before narrowing. Suddenly he doesn’t seem quite so useless. “Say that again, will you,” he mutters—not a request but a demand.