Waltzing the War Zone, chapter 5 (Patreon)

When they walked out of the airport, John was struck by just how different this place was. It was crowded, but John had seen enough cities on Earth that the sheer mass of humanity had stopped shocking him. However, what struck him was the smell. This place had the same stifling stench of cars, which reminded him of burnt conduit on the ship, a scent that always reminded him of uprisings in the slave pens. The slave bosses would come in with electrical weapons, and when the discharges hit a spot on the wall where conduits were close to the surface, that smell would fill the room.

It wasn’t his favorite smell, and he avoided cities because of it.

However, this place also had a spice that lingered on the hot air, and he could smell open water—a river or a lake probably. It didn’t have the same sharpness of the ocean. The spice in particular made it smell a lot better than most American cities. John might have even enjoyed his first visit to India, only Barbara’s presence made that impossible. John watched her negotiate with a taxi driver. She enjoyed the verbal banter, and that aggravated him. Luckily, the cover she had created gave him a certain latitude to show that dislike.

Making sure to stay close enough to Tank to grab him if shit hit the fan, John leaned against a concrete separator that kept the mass of cars from driving up into the pedestrian area. Tank rolled his eyes, but he moved a few inches closer, so he wasn’t going to do something stupid like insist he didn’t need taking care of. Lev sometimes did that. Barbara and the taxi driver reached an impasse, and she backed away. A couple darted in front of her, and Barbara turned to argue with the next taxi driver.

He’d seen people like her in the slave pens. People there either fought with their hands or their words, and John knew which type were more dangerous. When Clyde and Lev had been thrown into the pen where John had lived for the last few years, he had thought Lev was one of those. He talked all the time. When he pulled cut into the wall, he detailed his frustration with the conduit lines. When he got shocked, he complained about the pain. When he studied the technology, he formulated theories and let words spill out into the world.

It had reminded John of the assholes in the slave pens who would tell stories and ingratiate themselves with others to try and shield themselves from the fight ring. Sometimes the fight bosses wanted a specific slave for the ring. Most of the time, they didn’t. They would seek out specific sized slaves—large or small. They would want specific colorings—more light or more dark. Most of the time, though, they just wanted enough bodies to throw themselves at each other for the entertainment of the masters.

And that’s where a person’s clever words could save them. Some offered sexual favors or whispered words that would twist another’s will. They would let others step in front of them when the fight masters came.

When Clyde had stepped in front of Lev to take a fight when the fight bosses had come, John had thought he’d understood the pair. But then Clyde had come back bruised and bloodied, and Lev had wrapped himself around the older man as carefully as if they were lovers. And when Clyde didn’t reciprocate that interest, Lev had respected that decision. Even when Clyde had come back with a concussion that left him dazed, Lev had protected Clyde’s choices.

Only then had John started paying attention to what Lev was saying. He had figured out that Lev’s words were never intended to control others. Sometimes John suspected that the words formed a short of shadow friend that Lev relied on when he was lost or under stress. He talked to the air the way another right converse with a lifelong friend they had always clung to when the bosses appeared to move everyone to new quarters. Against all odds, some friendships did survive.

Tank was similar. When he was under pressure, words spilled out as easily as water from a cup.

However, Barbara reminded him of those talkers back in the slave pen. When she designed words that would trick others into believing a lie, she took a certain delight in her deception. She wanted to know that she could twist others into a plot of her devising. It made John want to drive a knife into her back in order to protect his team members. However, he had promised Clyde that he wouldn’t do that.

He hated himself for giving that promise.

She laughed, her fingers brushing over the back of the taxi driver’s hand in a gesture that couldn’t be anything other than manipulation. That’s what she excelled at.

“John?” Tank shifted so his shoulder pressed against John’s. Some of the tension in his shoulders eased, although his dislike for Barbara didn’t.

He looked over at Tank. “Yeah?” John worried about Lev being on his own in another country. His friend from India’s version of the IF had met him at the airport, but John disliked trusting others to protect his team. But he also worried about Tank. For all the hardships Tank had suffered, he still trusted far more than he should.

“You’re looking a little homicidal, buddy,” Tank said in a whisper.

“Feeling a little homicidal,” John admitted.

“Okay, that does not make me feel better.”

John glanced down at Tank before turning his attention back to Barbara. His nose itched, but he ignored it. If he rubbed his skin too much, the makeup used to hide his patchwork skin would come off.

“Still not feeling better,” Tank said.

John sighed and turned his attention to Tank. “I’m not going to do anything, and I’m allowed to not like her.” More importantly, John didn’t trust her. And Tank was too damn trusting. He talked about how Roger’s betrayal had broken his ability to trust, but it hadn’t. Not really. Hell, if he didn’t trust goodness to win out, he would have turned in his ROTC instructor. Assholes like that only got worse, but Tank hadn’t seen that danger. He’d thought the asshole couldn’t do anything more than make Tank do extra pushups.

Not everyone was as strong as Tank. They wouldn’t survive either the additional physical demands the asshole was making or the stress of having a superior with deep set antipathy. He liked that word. On the ship, he had only known the word hate, but there were so many varieties of it. Antipathy had matched that asshole at the ROTC center. His hatred of Tank went so deep that it stained his soul, and Tank had brushed it off as if it were nothing.

Some days John wanted to lock Tank in a room because he wasn’t safe out on his own. He didn’t see things.

“She’s here to help us.” Tank’s words were generic enough to fit their cover, and John respected that part of this job was to keep that cover intact.

“Maybe she’ll find your family, but she wants something. She wants it, and she’s going to use you to get it.” John actually thought she was using Deborah and Clyde, but close enough. Up until this mission, he hadn’t much cared because those two were too smart to be fooled for long. Barbara would try to manipulate one of them, and they would toss her out on her ear. Or lock her in a cell. John wouldn’t mind that.

“Or she’s just doing her job,” Tank countered.

John gave him a flat look.

Barbara waved them over. “I found a taxi. Come on,” she called.

John sighed before surrendering to the inevitable and following Barbara to the taxi she had negotiated with.

Tank stayed ahead of him, probably hoping to physically keep himself between Barbara and John, as if John would do something to compromise a mission. John caught Tank’s arm and firmly moved him to the side.

That earned him another eye roll.

“We have a meeting with a potential family member this afternoon,” she said as she stood by the open door. “We’ll get set up at the hotel and then we’ll need to get right over there. He’s a busy man, and we have a very narrow window, so no dilly dallying,” she said in a cheerful voice.

John gave her a flat look before guiding Tank into the taxi and then climbing in after him, leaving Barbara to sit in the front. That was best for keeping an eye on her.