One Small Step

Buck was just unlocking the front door of the B Word when I strolled up the street, a bag of various groceries in each hand. I figured I'd just bring them home after work instead of walking all the way back.

"Hey Trick," he said clearly, still sober for the day, "How was your night?"

"Mediocre," I said. "Beck got her Text in the mail. So that was interesting."

"Everyone but me," he grumbled, but he laughed and let us in. "Actually, that suits me just fine. I can be the Badass Normal."

I dropped my groceries behind the counter and started up the cashier computer. "The what?"

"Badass Normal. You know, the guy in every story who has no special powers or special weapons or combat training or whatever. He's just a vanilla badass. Like Han Solo."

I looked at Buck carefully, as I took off my coat and threw it over the back of a chair. He was wearing cargo pants and snow boots, and a flowery Hawaiian shirt over a turtleneck sweater. A red scarf completed the look. "You look more like Hunter S. Thompson going skiing."

"Pretty badass, right?"

I laughed. "It works. Oh, Lee might not be here-" I started to say, but the door chimed and in walked none other than Lee herself, looking terrible.

Her dark hair was in a simple ponytail, that signature rushed ponytail that every girl who's just overslept puts her hair in. She had on a pair of baggy jeans and a zipped up sweater, in stark contrast to her Conclave silks or skank disguise. 

There were deep circles under her bloodshot eyes when she glanced at Buck and me, and instead of a quip or admonition, she just sighed and sat down in my chair. 

Buck and I looked at each  other, and I spoke carefully. "Uh... I'm surprised to see you here so soon."

For a moment I wasn't sure she'd respond, but she eyed me blearily and nodded. "Yeah, me too. I got canceled."

"Come again?"

"HQ. They canceled my project. The girls. I don't... they said they don't want me wasting my time on it. Don't want the Conclave involved in that sort of thing." She shook her head slowly, not looking at me. "Don't think a few little girls are worth our time. It's taking too long to get results."

I sat down in Buck's chair, leaving him at the counter and looking closely at Lee. I'd assumed she was exhausted, or hung over.

She'd been crying.

"What little girls? What are you talking about?"

"I'd been trying to infiltrate a child prostitution ring when your situation came up," she said in a  matter-of-fact tone. "I might have mentioned it. I was posing as... well, as a potential client. Wouldn't meet the ringleaders face-to-face, obviously, and it had taken me weeks to earn their trust."

"Wow," I muttered, shaking my head now. "Why now?"

"I've just been emailed the address of their... place of business." She said words with utter contempt. "I'm supposed to be there, now, examining the children and taking my pick. Conclave says we should just give the information to local authorities and let them handle it. Idiots. They'll be gone any minute."

She put her face in her hands and heaved a sigh. I sat back, stunned. "I thought that this was exactly why you guys existed. To get involved."

"It was," she muttered through her palms. "At one point. I don't know. Somewhere along the line, we stopped paying much attention to things like murder and rape and war. It's all about recruitment, now. These f*****g books are just for show," she spat, tossing her Text to the floor. The silver chain rattled against a table leg.

She was silent for a minute. I didn't know what to say or do. I was about to stand up when I heard her speaking, as if to herself; "...and I'm no better. Taking orders. Letting little kids be hurt..."

"Lee?"

She started, hiding her face. "What?"

"Can you... I don't know, can't you just... do something, yourself? Make one of those light doors and get the kids away?"

She looked at me with red eyes. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"I hear that a lot. Are you saying you don't think you could do it?" I knew I was pushing it, taunting her. But I was too disturbed to care. Ten minutes ago I'd been intimidated by Lee and proud to be joining the Conclave. Now?

Now she was another lost, crying girl, and the Conclave was apparently unconcerned with things like the safety of children. Everything I'd felt safe in assuming was apparently wrong. 

"Lee."

"Yeah," she muttered.

"What was your plan? To get the girls away?"

She took a deep breath. "Stealth. I was going to buy them. One every few days or so. Take them to the police and say I'd found them wandering around. It would take time. And while they waited, they'd be..." She shuddered. "But it would work. If the stupid Conclave HQ hadn't cut off my expense account. I'm literally buying these girls' freedom, and it's a waste of resources..." 

"Why not just take them?"

She stared at me. I shrugged. "The books aren't really just for show, are they?"

I watched her stare into the middle distance for a minute. I wasn't sure if I'd helped at all, or if it was even a good idea to encourage her down this path. But I was too unsettled by Sad Lee. Seeing her feeling helpless  and defeated scared me. What good was pursuing my new life, if this was where it led? Bureaucracy and expense accounts? Ignoring people for the sake of image? 

That was too much like everything else in the world. I'd thought Conclave would be some beacon of supernatural justice. Not another tangle of red tape.

Lee's eyes narrowed all of a sudden, and I flinched. "What?"

"You're right."

"What?"

"I need to go, right now. There might be time." She stood up abruptly, grabbing her Text off the ground and flipping it open. She paused, a look of hesitation on her face. "If I don't come back, keep on Reading... and keep on being you. You'll be okay."

"Wait a second," I said, also rising, "If you think you're going to get yourself killed, maybe you should-"

I reached out and took hold of her sleeve as her eyes flickered down, and she announced a string of resonating syllables-

*

I fell to a carpeted floor and hit my knees, hard. Spots and swirls still played in my eyes for a few seconds, and I shook my head vigorously to clear it. "F**k me, that was worse than usual," I muttered, rubbing at my eyes. 

"Are you serious?" Lee's voice said above me, exasperated. I looked up and took the full measure of where I was, and blinked.

It was very blue.

A wide bed with a blue comforter lay underneath a blue canopy, and blue walls framed the room entire, a studio perhaps twice the size of my own apartment. A mirror hung on a wall next to a standing wardrobe. Otherwise, the place was sparsely decorated. One wall, opposite the door, had a wide window with a blind drawn over it.

"Is this your apartment?" I asked Lee, rising to my feet. "It reminds me of that song."

"I don't have time for you right now," Lee grumbled, striding to the wardrobe. "Go home." She pulled open the double doors of the wooden case, the only non-blue item in the room, it seemed, and began rummaging inside. Rather than clothes, which I now saw were heaped in another corner of the room, the wardrobe was home to a variety of items. Books, jewelry, hunks of metal and plastic that almost looked like football pads, and an honest-to-god handgun in a black leather holster hung on hooks in the deceptively spacious closet.

I watched, bemused, as she tossed a collection of items onto the bed. Three different necklaces with different colored crystals set into them, her wide belt with its assortment of pouches, some kind of metal band about a foot long, and finally, the gun in its holster. 

I was about to ask what she needed all of it for, when she unzipped her sweater and stripped to the waist. I barely had time to realize I should avert my eyes, and then avert them, before she had pulled on some kind of snug sports bra that pressed her modest chest almost flat. She buckled the gun and its shoulder holster on over this, and shot me a glare.

"I told you to go home. Teleport. I'll be back later."

"A gun?"

"Yes, a gun. Get out of here."

"Wait, what do you need a gun for? What about the Text?"

She drew the pistol faster than I could believe, and leveled it at my face. I yelped and ducked. She smirked. "If you can find your page faster than that, I'll be really impressed. And stop being a baby, it's not even loaded." She replaced the weapon and pulled a loose-fitting black shirt on, leaving the top few buttons undone. "We're good at a lot of things, but we need a few seconds to set up. And you don't always get a few seconds."

I was still shaking a bit. Staring down a barrel will do that. "I see."

"Are you going to get out of here, or what?" she grumbled, dropping all three necklaces over her head and stowing the pendants inside the shirt. "I'm about fifteen seconds from leaving you here."

I reached for my coat pocket and winced.

My coat was at the bookstore.

Lee looked over at me, eyebrows raised, while she buckled the metal plate over her left forearm. It covered from the back of her hand almost to her elbow, and was decorated with a single round gemstone.

"Um."

"Stop umming and go," she said, looking herself over. She was wordlessly mouthing a checklist of items, tightening buckles, and pulling on a knit hat that concealed her ponytail. 

"I sort of left my Text at the bookstore."

"Goddamnit, McAllister,"

"What? I didn't know you were gonna pull me with you, you never told me it works like that! Anyway, where do you live? I'll just call a cab, I have my wallet."

She looked at me like I had four more heads. "Good luck finding a local number," she chuckled, and walked out the door. "Look outside." A nondescript hallway was just outside. I strode to the wide window and pulled up the blind.

We were at least twenty stories from the ground, on the outside of a massive, gently curving building. I couldn't see very far in any direction, as the complex curved away on every side. The ground, far below, was a pale, reflective gray, and even from this height I could tell it was fairly dusty. There was nowhere like this in Connecticut, I knew that much. I couldn't see a single road... or tree... or anything but rolling gray desolation.

I looked up and nearly fell over. The sky was black, absolute black, splattered with trillions of stars in swirling, misty swatches. Familiar constellations vanished into the countless points of light around them.

You just don't see that many stars when there's an atmosphere above you. Beck had been telling the truth without realizing it.

*

"Lee!" I shouted, running down the hallway. "Come back here for a second!"

"No time," her voice came back, sounding annoyed. "Just wait for me?"

"Wait where? Where the hell are we?!"

I caught up to her at the elevators, where she was poking at a curiously complicated set of buttons on the wall. One of the four sets of steel doors slid open, revealing a sheet of violet light rather than an elevator box. Lee gestured to it while she moved to another set. "Go in there. Wait for me at, I don't know, Subway. If I'm not back in an hour, go to the help desk and tell them who you are, and they'll send you home."

"Subway? Are we, or are we not, on the f*****g moon?"

"We're at the Nexus," she said, examining a set of buttons and the tiny screen next to them. "And yes, it's on the moon. It's a good place for people like us to set up. Very slim chance of the normals ever finding it."

"I can't believe this."

"There's a pamphlet at the help desk," she said, pressing a final button. Her elevator whooshed open to reveal another wall of light. She stepped close to me. "You're safe. Thanks for helping me get my head on straight."

I almost responded, but she shoved my chest, and I fell into the blinding light backwards.

*

Reviews

[UponATyme]

Transitioned perfectly. I thought you were going to have trouble with the Moon thing, but you did it perfectly. It didn't sound ridiculous at all. YAY.

[Ness]

Haha Trick is a typical man, they always think they can fix things with one suggestion...buttt he did! Or atleast hopefully Lee's plan will work.