Sunset Volume 2: High Noon

SolCorp LAHQ. Neptune Department.

As Freddie walked down the hall on her way to Sage’s office, she passed Penn just leaving. He looked tired, as he always did, and didn’t quite meet her eyes.

“Any chance I’m getting good news?” she inquired.

His expression didn’t shift. “With the Icarus? Zero.”

With a sigh, she entered his office, pushing the door open.

Sage’s office was cluttered, but in an organized way. The small pile of takeout containers in the trash, crumpled up blanket, and mound of clothes on the futon by the window would have told her that Sage hadn’t left his office since the news of the Icarus had hit—if it were anybody but Sage. His office always looked like that. Not every issue was as dire as a missing student, but everything that crossed his desk was a crisis with someone’s life in the balance and he treated it as such. She had to admit she liked that about him, even if she wished he’d fucking cool it every now and then.

He was at his desk, brow wrinkled, as he studied his laptop and the second monitor set up. There were bags under his bloodshot eyes.

“You called me up?”

He looked at her, thin-lipped, a different kind of pain there. “You’ve heard by now, they’re all missing?”

“I think everyone in Neptune has heard by now.” It was an understatement. The whole department was reeling. Most of Terre certainly. If the rest of the company (beyond Mercury himself) weren’t kept purposefully uninformed on Icarus matters, the whole building would be losing it. “So how many Icarus should I be prepping my people to manage?”

“One minimum, two tops. You’ve read the files?”

“The cliffnotes on 37A.” She hadn’t had time to go through everything. “Can I ask? It was a non-violent offense. Why wasn’t he a B?” Not that she minded. She hated Reintegrating telepaths. They were among the three worst to deal with. Telepaths, empaths, and psychometrists were all a royal pain in the ass.

He regarded her thoughtfully and when he answered, his tone was less hardened, closer to his private, truer voice. “He almost was,” Sage admitted. “But the sheer number of years he’s been at it and the fact that he was doing so much to hide it proves he was able to resist his first Reintegration at only thirteen years old. It’s not going to suddenly work now, at age twenty-one.”

She nodded. “Yeah, probably not. So it’s the foster, obviously. The psychometrist.” They’d been keeping an eye on him. He was set to join Neptune within the year.

“And the invisible.”

Who is also an empath. She sighed quietly.

“I know,” Sage commiserated.

“It’s fine. My people can handle it.” Wouldn’t be the first time or the last.

“I don’t doubt it. Still, I know you keep saying you’re short on good telepaths, so I just pushed through immediate transfer orders to move a telepath to Reintegration.”

“Yeah?” Two members of the three-person Reintegration teams could have any knack at all, but the third had to be a telepath, which made the demand a little more pressing.

He nodded. “One that has a telepathy score high enough to undo whatever 37A has done to these two.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Can Retrieval spare them?”

“He’s coming from Cleanup.”

“Oh, well then, screw Penn, that’s fine,” she joked, darkly. “I’ll get my people ready and prep to onboard a new telepath.”

“Good, but then I need you to do something else.”

She cocked her head. Sage rarely delegated anything.

“What is it?”

“I need to promote someone to overhaul the Retrieval office. I want someone who’s not from LA. Someone who isn’t used to how Will did things. You can get your house in order first, but before the Retrieval meeting tomorrow morning, I want you to go grab one of Penn’s teleporters and go out to Philly to tell—”

“No.” She cut him off and stood her ground.

He lowered his eyebrows. “You don’t even know who I’m sending you for.”

“Yes, I do.” Freddie rolled her eyes. “Am I going to need Penn’s teleporter to get back or will he just be taking care of that?”

Sage hesitated then argued. “The fact that you know who I’m talking about means you know Gerrit is qualified for the job.”

“No, it means I know you think he is.”

“Freddie—”

“Come on, I hate that fucking guy.”

“You hated me too when I got hired.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

Sage stared at her hard, but she could tell by the way he’d pulled his hands away from the keyboard that he was feeling insecure. “Tell me one thing you have against him professionally.”

“He’s annoying,” she replied without hesitation.

“In what way is he annoying?” Sage asked, looking genuinely confused.

“He’s…” She struggled for the right word. “Too nice.” Sage opened his mouth to speak but she didn't let him get that far. “If you’re so sure, why don’t you go get him?”

“Because right now, I have to both be Neptune and run Retrieval, which is spread out from Canada to Honduras, bring together reinforcements from the other offices, and manage some sort of transfer of power. Reintegration can spare you for a few hours until they’re apprehended, and there’s a minor involved.”

She huffed. That was a card she had no counter for. “You won't consider anyone else?”

“I considered everyone else all through the night. I’ve worked with Gerrit on a few joint missions and he’ll be good for the job.”

“Fine,” she scowled. “I’ll have to buy some anti-nausea meds. I don’t pop around as much as you, so I’m not used to it. Plus, I have to go be in the same room as Gerrit del Sol.”

“Thank you,” Sage said, meeting her eyes.

“Do me a favor and get fifteen minutes of sleep at some point today. You look like hell.” Freddie left before he could respond.

---

Guadalajara, Mexico.

They got into Guadalajara around sunset. Alyosha had taken over driving to guide them through the dense city. The roads were jammed with traffic and in turns either strangely broad or too narrow to safely be a two-way street. The center of the city was two-thirds old world stone buildings with mossy foundations and crumbling masonry, and one-third skyscrapers, all sharp angles and glass, looking like they had been plucked from the modern world and dropped into the nineteenth century.

“It’s so green,” Alex murmured.

Reeve ran his finger down the glass. The trees here were bushy and a little wild. Not struggling for life in dusty patches like back at home. Hannah turned around in the passenger seat. Her face by her browbone was swollen out of shape on one side and turning plum colored. “That’s what not-desert living looks like.”

“It’s weird,” he whispered, his head turned to the window so Reeve could only see his red hair.

“You should see the rainy season,” Shvedov called back.

A faded pickup truck tried to cut them off. Alyosha sped up to shoulder them out, leaning on the horn and yelling something aggressive-sounding in accented Spanish out the window.

“Woah!” Gareth shouted, bracing one arm on the back of the front seat and the other around Alex. “We just did the car crash thing!” Reeve sent Alyosha a sharp questioning thought. He had maybe heard Shvedov raise his voice once in the years they’d known each other.

“Sorry.” Shvedov shrugged. “You said I should try to fit in,” he offered with a small smile.

They made their way through the squares at the center of the city and headed on to the Eastern outskirts. The gleaming resorts and church spires slowly gave way to narrow gravel roads and graffiti. Tangles of power lines crisscrossed above them like dreamcatchers. The brightly painted houses were clustered together and on top of each other like a child’s building blocks. On every street, there were stone walls in various stages of collapsing into rubble, and bars on every window.

Into the silence as they rode, Alex called up to the front, “So what you’re saying, Alyosha, is that there isn’t going to be a mint on my pillow tomorrow morning.”

Shvedov chuckled. “Nyet. But I think I will have enough pillows for everyone.”

They wound through a maze of one-way streets, food carts, and squat stacks of red bricks. Alyosha slowed to a stop in front of a light brown unit with a bright aqua door and trim. There was an attached one car garage, which was really more of a barely-car-sized box with a full height aqua metal gate, making it look like a cage.

“This is it. You will probably want to get out here,” Shvedov said, turning the car off. “There really isn’t even enough room for me to get out of the van once it’s parked inside.”

Reeve slid the door open and stepped out. Gareth was leaning over the backseat to grab their bags. Three stray dogs were watching them from down the block and the word Internet had been spray-painted in huge black letters across the front of the building across the street. An elderly woman with a squint-eyed smile called to Alyosha from the window of the lemon yellow home next door. He waved and called back before unlocking the heavy padlock on the gate, which squeaked loudly. Hannah scratched at the back of Reeve’s arm to get his attention. She was wearing her shorts and baggy shirt again.

“Hey, did you learn Spanish and not tell us?” she asked.

He sighed, watching Gareth load himself up with bags like a pack mule while wrestling more out of Alex’s stubborn one-handed grip. “I tried, actually. I couldn’t exactly practice it out loud with you guys, so I didn’t get far. It would have been convenient if any of the countries we learned languages for weren’t across oceans.”

Gareth and Alex climbed out and shut the door. Hannah nodded her chin at Gareth. “You took Spanish in school, right?”

“Sure,” he shrugged. “Like two years of it before I dropped out of high school. Dos cervezas, por favor.”

“Dos?”

“I was a high achiever.”

Alyosha pulled the van into the garage and began locking it up.

Alex scanned the neighborhood. “I have never seen so many sneakers thrown over power lines before and I spent time sleeping on cardboard. This is just goddamn excessive.” His mouth was swollen and there were angry scrapes across the burns on this face and neck. It physically hurt Reeve to look at him and Hannah.

Alyosha unlocked the front door and caught Reeve’s eye. “We should get inside,” Reeve said, checking for faces in the windows of neighboring houses. Gareth nodded and nudged Alex with his armful of bags. They filed into the house. It was comfortably dark, if a little stale inside. The walls were bare, painted cream, and white cloths covered a dining room set, couch, and small television. Gareth dropped the bags into a pile by the door and stretched, popping his neck.

“Aw!” Alex picked up the corner of the cloth covering the kitchen table and held it up. “Alyosha! You’re a grandma!”

Shvedov waved a hand at him and bent over to plug in a dingy refrigerator, which coughed to life. “Who likes dust?”

Reeve pulled out and sat in one of the kitchen chairs, resting his head on one hand. “Bedrooms are upstairs?” he asked, looking at the narrow stucco staircase without a railing.

“Yes, there are two of them.” Shvedov turned on the faucet, which chugged to life before spitting water. “I have no food here. I need to walk down to the store.”

Reeve gave his head a shake. “No one goes anywhere alone.”

“I’ll go,” Gareth said, fitting the cap back on his head. “I could use a stretch.”

“Just be careful.” Reeve had enough sense to look away before he caught the full heat of Gareth’s look. Alex and Hannah uncovered the threadbare couch and sat down.

“Gareth,” Hannah called from the couch. She waited for him to turn and look at her. “We’re alive today.” She sat unsmiling and they exchanged a moment of silence.

Gareth nodded once and told Shvedov, “Hey, we gotta pick up some booze on the way back.”

The door shut and Reeve found he was laughing silently with burning ribs.

“What is it?” Alex asked, sounding a little disgusted.

Reeve straightened and blew out a breath. “I just found myself envying Gareth and Hannah’s way of talking without needing words.”

He waited for some smart-ass retort but Hannah and Alex didn’t say anything, which was worse.

---

After the long, silent car ride, Guadalajara after sundown was anything but. Reeve stood with his back to the wall by the front door, keeping watch. Alyosha was making up a bed on the couch while Alex struggled to hear whatever was coming out his headphones as he worked to rebuild his music library on his new burner phone. The air outside the windows was full of snippets of music and raucous voices moving up and down the street. The songs mixed and blurred together into a pulsing tonal drone. The lights overhead kept fading to a dim yellow then back again. “That happens,” Shvedov told him.

Hannah and Gareth were at the kitchen table with a couple of liquor bottles, more empty than full. Alex gave up on the phone and sat at the table to join them, playing table hockey with a bottle cap. Another blare of music struck up in a neighboring home, making Reeve jump. It was loud enough that Reeve could feel it in his back teeth.

“Is it always like this?” Alex shouted over the horns.

Alyosha cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Pretty much.”

“What?” Hannah had her face scrunched up, straining to hear.

Gareth laughed and tapped his fingers on the table. “That’s what you get for shooting off that rifle right by your ear all the time!” Hannah stuck out her tongue at him.

More than a little tipsy, Hannah stood up, knocking her chair with the back of her knees. She took one last pull on a bottle of rum and set it down. “Come on!” She beckoned to Alex with both hands. He laughed and put his good hand down on the table as if to stand up.

“Seriously? You look like an old banana.”

She closed her eyes and bobbed her shoulders to the beat yelling, “Come on, birthday boy!” Shaking his head, Alex stood up and took her hand. Reeve watched them, half his mind keeping watch for threats. He felt a pang of guilt at having forgotten Alex’s birthday. Shvedov came to stand next to him, leaning in to be heard.

“Is the plan still to leave tomorrow morning?”

“Yeah.”

With her free arm over her head Hannah swayed, tangled hair whipping back and forth. She bounced, picking her knees up as she stepped. Careful of his sling, Alex hung onto her hand, swinging it while he danced, grinning. Gareth hooted into his fist and pounded his other hand on the table like a drum.

This wasn’t how Reeve had planned it, but he felt a guilty tug of relief that they were all here. He needed to believe that he could keep them safe.

“They’ll forgive me eventually.”

Shvedov gave his one-shouldered shrug. “They already have. They just aren’t ready for you to know it yet.”

Reeve glanced over at him. His eyes were bloodshot and oddly calm. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Shvedov shook his head and clapped him on the shoulder with a smile. “I am going to try to get some rest. No one likes a sleepy pilot.”

Hannah jumped and howled along with the muffled voices and police sirens filtering in from the street. They could dance, the two of them. Minding his stiff upper body, Alex rolled his hips to the music and threw his head back to crow along with Hannah. Gareth sent up a yell that choked on more laughter.

Reeve couldn’t help but laugh then, as Hannah and Alex started to attempt to belly dance. He winced at their sore movement as they tried to find their rhythm. From the corner of his eye he saw Shvedov reach to place a box of earplugs on a side table before moving into the living room to lay down on the couch. Reeve wanted them to never stop, to shout and laugh surrounded by pounding music forever. They were free and alive and felt it. And he wanted them to stop, to lay down and mind their wounds. He knew the last thing he was in a position to do was to tell them to do. But he could feel Hannah’s exhaustion and the pain that the alcohol barely covered. He watched them burn off their tension, knowing she would stop soon and the others would follow her lead.

Upstairs in the bedroom Gareth and Reeve were sharing, it wasn’t much quieter. Gareth had grunted at Reeve’s “g’night” and rolled onto his side, neon yellow foam showing in his ears. Reeve was lying propped up in bed next to him, still dressed. Between two caffeine tablets and the anxiety, he was confident he’d be able to stay awake and alert most of the night, but the unceasing noise didn’t hurt. He sifted through the neighborhood, minds packed together like a honeycomb. There was no one he found that knew his face or his Icarus number. They wouldn’t know his name now. He kept looking.

About an hour later, he could feel Alex walking toward his door. Even without being in his head, he easily recognized the familiar flurry of Alex’s projected thoughts that swarmed around him like a school of tiny fish. Reeve reached over and put a hand on Gareth’s shoulder. He jumped, coming awake in an instant—scanning the room and half reaching for the gun on the table before looking at Reeve and pulling out one earplug.

“It’s just Alex at the door,” he told Gareth, who lowered his brow and then relaxed, understanding enough that when the door swung open a moment later he didn’t leap into defense. Alex stood in the dark landing, a bar of streetlight from the window landing across his chest.

“What’s up?” Gareth asked, groggily pulling himself up into a sitting position. “You Reading too much?” There was a long pause before Alex stepped in through the door.

“Yeah. It’s not like it’s anything disturbing or even interesting. Alyosha seriously needs to get a life. His boring is so loud it’s keeping me up.”

It sounded a little bit like Alex had rehearsed it before coming to their door, but he couldn’t say for sure. “This one’s probably the guest room then,” Reeve said instead, starting to get up, “It’ll be quieter.” Gareth beat him to it and swung his legs to the floor.

“I’ll stay with Hannah. If you’re having one of your Reading nights, I really don’t have the kind of past you want to be bumpin’ elbows with.” Gareth picked up his things and waited for Alex to move out from in front of the doorway. Alex stood for a moment, looking like he wasn’t sure if he was going to argue or not, then shuffled to the bed. Gareth shot Reeve one last look before closing the door, his mind narrowing into one thought: fix it.

“So are you not sleeping tonight?” Alex asked without moving. Reeve hated not knowing the right thing to say, not knowing the real questions in his mind that Alex wanted answered.

“I’ll sleep,” he lied. “Come on, you should sleep. You can Read Gareth’s snoring instead.” That got him a hint of a smile and Alex plopped onto the bed. “You want some earplugs?”

“Naw,” he held up his newly loaded up phone. “I’ve got my own.” He smooshed at the pillow with his good hand and curled up facing Reeve, knees pulled high and balancing his sling on his side. “Will you keep track of me? Pinch me or whatever you do if I get lost?” he asked glumly and a little too fast.

“Sure.”

Alex was mad and he was hurt, but Reeve hoped it wasn’t the kind of anger he made it out to be.

“I’m sorry your birthday didn’t involve cake this year.”

“Shut up, freckles.”

Reeve sighed and settled onto his back again, looking out the window. He thought it had gotten quieter outside, but he wasn’t sure.

He relaxed into the fact that his internal compass made sense again. He was able to telepathically place all four of them somewhere nearby. Reeve tried to imagine a life where he and Shvedov had flown off south, leaving three of his cardinal directions achingly blank, probably forever. Alex had started to drift off to sleep, breathing soft and slow. Reeve felt like an idiot.

***