Choices

Kira Levid has flashbacks to her past on the subway as she travels to see Sean. She's the deciding factor in how he approached the entity that destroyed her life—the one that nearly killed it.

   Every document I can imagine has been released. Everything is out there and I don't know how I can face going to see him. So many things have gone wrong. I can't imagine that he's still OK. My hand wraps around the metal pole of the subway. Today, it feels warm and my mind fades from my body, so distant from reality that I can practically feel the pressure from the water sinking my head into darkness.

   Hands pull at my right arm and lurch me up, just as I breathe in a lungful of water. Before I can register what's happening, I'm coughing, expecting to drown from the uncontrollable breaths that my body's taking to stay alive. Moments pass and I notice that the water is a lot sharper; colder. I can breathe. My body begins to regain feeling and my hands collapse onto muddy soil as someone drags me out of the lake and onto a spot of damp ground. My eyes look up in panic and soft, brown eyes stare back, just as worried as mine.

   "Are you OK?" a shaky voice asks.

   I nod hesitantly, questioning whether I should run or stay with him. My eyes skim his clothes and relief floods through me at the sight of a red hoodie. This man isn't a soldier. The last color I needed to see was black. In the past year, a black t-shirt has meant death. Not only for me, but for anyone who matters; everyone who could stop this catastrophe from escalating.

   A sudden jolt sends my body forward fractionally, causing me to grip against the pole harder. I snap back into reality and glance around nervously to see passengers standing up and repositioning to exit the subway. My hand lets go of the pole and I rub the sweat off of my fingers, containing the paranoia that I know is overwhelming me far too much. I release a breath that I didn't know I was holding and take my place in the disorganized line of exiting passengers.

   Downtown Seattle is much different now than I imagined. A few days ago, I saw people pushing past each other, half-of-them mindlessly walking into traffic because they were too busy talking on their phones to notice. I couldn't blame them. Every trace of their personal lives was made public. It's scary to think that the government couldn't even help to bring it back under control. The virus was too efficient. Today, the urgency has subsided, not that the caution has disappeared. I find a taxi and hand the driver a small piece of paper with the address scribbled on it. I have no idea where it is; just that it's a little ways south.

   An hour passes because of the mid-day traffic and we drive into a secluded part of a city a few miles from Seattle. I expect this to be a route to detour through the congestion, but the driver pulls to the side of the curb, right beside a fairly tall concrete building that's definitely abandoned. I glance down at my phone to double-check the address Sean texted me. There is no chance that this is his work.

   "We're here," the driver announces. I look up at him questioningly.

   "Are you sure this is the right place?" I ask, willing him to check the location. In response, he taps the screen of his dashboard GPS.

   "Positive. You want me to wait for you?"

   I glance back at the building and shake my head at myself. "No. I'll be fine."

   He runs my credit card and I climb out of the cabin, hesitantly walking towards the glass doors. There are no lights on, so I stop at the glass, trying to get a glimpse of what's inside. There's nothing to look at. Everything has been stripped. Not knowing why he would send me here, I pull at the handle and it clinks against the frame. As soon as I take a step back from it, a figure starts walking towards it, keys hanging loosely off of a lanyard in his hand. When he reaches the door, I can make out that he's wearing a black business suit, but his face isn't familiar.    He pushes the door open towards me.

   "Kira Levid?" he asks. I nod and he steps aside, so I crease my eyebrows and walk past him, waiting for an explanation as to why I'm here. Instead of filling me in, though, he proceeds to lock the door, effectively trapping me in.

   "Where's Sean?" I ask, questioning if he was really the one to send me the text.

   "In the other room." He turns to face me. "I'll take you to him."

   He walks ahead of me in the direction from which he came, leading me down a long corridor that ends at a yellow metal door with a diagram of stairs attached to it. He opens it and a ray of light shines the way down. I think that he's going to go first, but he stays still, holding the door open for me. Assuring myself that Sean wouldn't ask me to come here without good reason, I descend the stairs with the man following a close distance behind and continue down another corridor that seems to lead nowhere. A few doors are built into the walls on either side of me, but it's not until we're near the end of the corridor that the man walks ahead of me to open a door on my left. Another source of light appears and I enter the room, stopping just inside of the doorway. The room might as well be an underground dungeon with how many broken pipes are scattered across the floor. At least eight people are inside, all but one standing. I focus on the one sitting on a cardboard box against the wall on my left and instantly recognize Sean. He's pressing a hand against the left side of his head like he's nursing a headache. Two men are watching him from a distance, almost like they're ready to detain him, and the door behind me snaps shut. I flinch, but don't dare to turn around, scared of what I'll see. I think to ask Sean what's happening, but the thought of what can happen as soon as they hear me talk worries me, too. He's not looking at me. He's too disoriented to notice anything. It's almost like he's just waking up.

   "Nice to see you again, Kira," a voice says ahead of me. My eyes recoil towards it and I see Grant. My lips part in shock at meeting him here.

   "What are you doing here?" I ask automatically.

   "I need to have you talk with Davis."

   "I have nothing to say with you here. I came to see Sean; no one else."

   "Kira," Sean says at a volume that's barely above a whisper. "What are you doing here?"

   His head is a little more lifted to look at me, but his hands are now on his lap. The first thing I notice is a bruise forming on his jawline. There's no question that he's not here voluntarily.

   "What happened to you?" I ask.

   "Nothing," he tells me, his pride getting in the way. His eyes shift down, telling me everything that I need to know.

   "He did this to you, didn't he?" I look indignantly at Grant, my hands clamping into fists. He smiles apologetically.    "How did you even get near him? Last I checked, you were a wanted man."

   "We're not here to discuss that," Grant tells me, his voice getting colder than should be possible. "I brought you here to talk some sense into him. You know what the radicals are capable of. I need you to convince him to work with them. It's the only way we can win against them."

   "I know exactly what they're capable of," I snap. "You were one of them. You're the reason they tried to drown me in that lake. Why would I ever help you?"

   "Because that's our only chance. He needs to cooperate."

   His eyes shift to Sean and the exhausted expression on Sean's face makes me lose control. "He shouldn't do anything but stay as far away from them as he can! What the hell did you do to him?"

   He doesn't answer as they continue to stare at each other, until finally, Sean looks away.

   "Tell him what you found," Grant directs at me. "Whose files did they want access to?"

   I sigh, running my hands through my hair.

   "Sean's," I admit. "And Natalie's." Sean's head shoots up in response to her name. "Anyone who was connected to him was searched, but they didn't get anything. He shut the virus down too soon."

   "Oh really?" Grant asks. "Then why is it that I managed to bring him here?"

   "What did they get on Natalie?" Sean asks, too distracted to focus on anything else.

   "Not much," I assure him. "You protected her information enough that the virus didn't touch more than what could be seen in a government database."

   "So everything," he scoffs. "Everything that I had could be found through a government agency. That was the whole point. Her citizenship; her passport. I made it accessible to make it real."

   "You need to cooperate with us," Grant affirms to him.

   "I'm not working with the radicals."

   "I'm not a radical."

   "Well, you could have fooled me."

   "He used to be," I agree. "You can't trust him."

   Grant glares at me to be quiet. "I did nothing to you. The only thing I ever asked of you was to get closer to them. You're the only one who could and so far, it's worked well for us. I didn't try to hurt you. You always seem to ignore that I'm the reason Chase found you when he did."

   I glare back. "You always seem to forget that if you didn't sell me out to them, I wouldn't have needed rescuing. I'll never recommend that Sean work with them or you."

   "Then he'll die. She will, too."

   "You stay away from her," Sean warns.

   "So that you can continue protecting her as well as you did yourself?" Grant presses, raising his eyebrows skeptically. "She's the only reason that you're here. If I could capture you so easily by distracting her, what makes you think that they can't lure her into their trap with a few voices calling her to them? You got her involved in this. Now, you can't protect her."

   "I can do just fine! Stay away from her."

   "I'm not going to go near her. I have no reason to. I'm telling you that unless you work with us, she'll never be safe. You can't protect her forever. You don't know enough about them to keep them away. They've chased Kira for a long time. She's alive because they think she died and they don't care enough to look harder. They will never stop looking for her until they've gotten what they want out of you. She won't make it out of this alive."

   I expect Sean to tell him that he's wrong, to continue arguing, but he stays silent, letting the words sink into his brain. As much as I'm unwilling to accept that Grant is on the correct side for once, I can't deny that what he's saying is true. I could never get away from them and Natalie will matter a lot more to them than I ever will, just with the fact that she's the most precious thing to Sean. They have nothing else to use against him that he won't cut ties with. Without working with them, I don't know that he'll be able to keep her safe, but I know that he'll lose her eventually if he tries.

   "Sean -" I start to tell him not to do this, but he cuts me off with a look of defeat.

   "Don't," he tells me, before looking back at Grant with resolve in his voice. "I'll do it."