I withdraw my hands. I look down at the top of her head, that little golden ball that contains every moment of my third life. I wish she were right. I wish I were nothing but that brief vignette, but my present is becoming a small raft adrift on a dark ocean.
Could I tell her? Could I introduce her to the broken wretch taking shape in my head? Is she broken enough to accept him?
A harsh beep pierces the cockpit and a red light blinks on in front of Abram. He sits up and takes the controls without so much as a yawn, either a light sleeper or a good pretender. Julie also snaps to attention, steadying the pistol and blinking alertness into her bloodshot eyes.
Abram glances at the gun. “That’s really not necessary, you know. You’ve made your point.”
Julie watches him silently.
“What am I going to do, jump out the window? Why don’t you save the hostage stuff for when we’re on the ground?”
“The hostage thinks I should put my gun away,” Julie says flatly. “The hostage thinks that would be the logical thing to do.”
Abram sighs. “I’m just asking you to ease up.”
“Why?” She wiggles the barrel. “Do guns make you nervous?”
He looks at her with what appears to be genuine emotion, a genuine plea. “They make my daughter nervous.”
Julie’s mask slips. The hard angles of her face melt. She glances back into the cabin and sees Sprout watching her anxiously, crouched on her seat as if ready to run away. Julie’s chin trembles just once, a spasm of sadness. She puts the gun in her lap.
“Thank you,” Abram says.
The red light blinks and beeps again.
“What is that?” Julie says.
“It’s my morning alarm. Can’t be late for work when the boss is armed and insane.”
“What is it.”
“It’s a route notice. Means we’re close to Pittsburgh.”
“Why do you have a route notice for Pittsburgh?”
“Because I think we should stop there.”
She stares at him. “What?”
“I think we should stop in Pittsburgh.”
She leans in, peering at him curiously and gripping the gun against her thigh. “Have I been vague about our itinerary?”
“Look, I’ll fly you to Iceland. It’s going to be a lifeless rock, but I’ll fly you there. But before we launch ourselves across the Atlantic with limited fuel and 1970s nav gear, I think we should make a stop in Pittsburgh.”
“What the hell’s in Pittsburgh?”
Abram watches the first rays of the sun creep toward him along the dash. “What was it you said when you first talked me into flying this plane? Something about utopian enclaves and rebel armies? Well I definitely can’t promise the first thing, but maybe the second.”
There’s a subtle fluctuation in Julie’s skeptical stare. “There’s a rebel army in Pittsburgh?”
“I know there was a year ago.”
Julie puts the gun back in her lap. “I’m listening.”
“Pittsburgh was my first placement after they found me in the woods. It’s where I was trained, it’s basically my hometown. I hopped around a lot in my twenties but when Mura was born I decided—” He shakes his head. “Point being, Branch 2 is where I first heard that Axiom was losing its mind. There were some Management guys who’d had some contact with Executive—indirect contact, of course; I’ve never known anyone who’s actually talked to Atvist . . .”
Nausea jolts through my guts and I suddenly want to be somewhere else. Maybe a bathroom. I close my eyes and take slow breaths.
“. . . but they got close enough to see that something was very wrong at the top, if there even was a top anymore.”
“Rosy—” Julie starts, then stops herself. “General Rosso, the stadium’s leader, said Axiom was wiped out years ago.”
Abram opens his mouth to respond but someone else talks over him, an unexpected third voice blurting, “Seven years ago. Leadership killed, headquarters destroyed, everything buried in the quake. But he said not to stop.”
Abram and Julie are both staring at me.
“What is wrong with him, exactly?” Abram asks her. “Was he a radiation baby?”
“Rosy said all that to you?” Julie asks, bewildered.
I blink a few times.
“Anyway,” Abram sighs, “yes, we took a big hit in New York. The branches lost contact with Executive and for a while no one knew what was going on or if we were even still a company. But after a couple years, orders started trickling in again, reports that Executive had survived, Branch 1 was rebuilding, and everything was fine. And for a while, we believed it.”
Julie glances behind her and startles. Nora is leaning in the cockpit entryway, arms folded, listening. A wrinkled yellow pamphlet dangles between her fingers. “Don’t mind me,” she says.
Abram returns his attention to Julie. “But by the time I left to work on the west coast campaign, there were rumblings. Secret meetings. I’d say at least half of the branch was ready to do something.”
“Like what?” Julie says.
“Take down Executive. Maybe break up the whole company into local governments. They hadn’t worked out the details.”
“Half of one branch against a nation-scale militia network? How was that supposed to work?”
“Other branches were in on it. Call it a revolution if that tickles your teenage drama bone.”