I hear their voices in the woods around me, a high-pitched sound that grows louder until the cries become screams.
I open my eyes.
It’s nighttime. Crickets sing in the forest outside, their calls piercing the night.
I must have been dreaming. I ease open the car door and slip outside, letting the cool air bring me back to reality.
I head into the woods to relieve myself. I’m about twenty feet from the car when I feel my phone buzzing. This is not a dream.
It’s Mike.
“You are a terrible disappointment,” Mike says when I answer my phone.
He says it so quietly, it sounds like he’s inside my head.
“Is it me you’re disappointed in, or your driving?” I say.
“It takes a lot of courage to joke when you’re this close to death.”
My senses are on full alert, monitoring the forest around me. Is it possible that Mike is out there in the dark, watching me?
“I’ve been close to death plenty of times,” I say. “It doesn’t scare me.”
The neurosuppressor chip that The Program planted inside me throttles my fear, all but removing it from my emotional makeup. On the rare occasion fear tries to grab hold, the chip prevents it from gaining purchase.
I experienced part of a mission without that chip, and I didn’t like what it did to me or my performance. That’s why I put it back. The Program doesn’t know I tampered with their chip. In fact, I’m not supposed to be aware of its existence in the first place.
“Nothing can scare you,” Mike says. “I wish I could say the same for your friends. They were very scared.”
“Were?”
“Before I killed them,” he says.
Could Mike have killed Howard and Tanya in the time it took me to walk a few feet into the woods?
“I don’t think they’re dead,” I say. “I think you’re full of shit.”
“Would it make a difference if they were dead? Would it break your stupid allegiance to that kid? Tell me why you’re choosing strangers over your family.”
“I haven’t chosen,” I say. “Not yet.”
Mike is convinced of my motives, but I want him to question himself.
I can hear him breathing on the line. I imagine he’s strategizing now, trying to stay ahead of me. I seize the initiative.
“You could help me, Mike.”
“Help you how?”
“Tell me about my father.”
“I already told you what you wanted to know.”
“You told me that you killed him. Now tell me about the accident on the bridge.”
“It was staged after the fact. A convenient excuse.”
If that’s the case, why was Sergeant Manning killed just days before I got here? There are no coincidences on missions. Not when The Program is involved.
“My parents are dead, but they weren’t killed in the accident. That’s what you’re saying?”
“That’s right.”
“Where are they buried?” I say.
“Are you going to dig up the bodies? Christ, what’s it going to take with you? You need a DNA sample?”
“I need the truth.”
“You’re a confused individual,” Mike says. “I suggest you get rid of your friends’ bodies, then decide what you’re going to do next. Because you are alone out there, Zach. More alone than you’ve ever been.”
“I’m a hunter,” I say. “I’m used to being alone.”
I disconnect the call, and I take off running back to the car.
When I get there, I see Howard and Tanya slumped together in the backseat, under the blanket.
I throw open the door, and I place my hand on Howard’s chest, afraid I’ll find—
He’s not dead. He’s asleep. I feel the comforting rise and fall of his breathing.
He stirs, and his eyes open.
“Everything okay?” he says, his voice heavy with sleep.
“Now it is. Go back to sleep, buddy.”
He closes his eyes and snuggles into Tanya’s side, like a child cuddling with his mother. I watch the two of them as they sleep.
Feelings are dangerous. Feelings put me at risk.
I close the door, then get back into the front of the car and settle into the driver’s seat.
I look at the dark forest around us. I imagine our location on a map grid.
Mike is somewhere on that grid, tracking us.
Howard whispers from the backseat, breaking my concentration.
“Are you up, Zach?”
“Yeah.”
“Thanks for taking care of Tanya and me,” he says.
“Get some rest, okay?”
“Okay.”
Eventually his breathing deepens and he falls asleep. I listen to him snore for a while and then my eyes grow heavy and I drift off to sleep, too.