Champion

Then I turn away for the last time.

* * *

Two weeks later, what feels like the entire city of Los Angeles turns out to see Day leave the country for good. On the morning I left Day’s bedside, Antarctica came calling for both him and his brother. They’d taken note of Eden’s gifted touch with engineering and offered him a place in one of their academies. At the same time, they offered Day the chance to go along.

I don’t join the crowds. I stay in my apartment instead, watching the events unfold while Ollie sleeps contentedly beside me. The streets around my complex are teeming with people, all jostling with one another to watch the JumboTrons. Their muffled chaos turns into white noise as I watch it unfold on my screen.

DANIEL ALTAN WING AND BROTHER TO LEAVE TONIGHT FOR ROSS CITY, ANTARCTICA

That’s what the headlines say. On the screen, Day waves at the people gathered around his apartment as he and Eden are escorted to a jeep by a city patrol. I should call him Daniel, like the screen does. Perhaps he truly is just Daniel now, with no need for an alias anymore. I look on as he lets his brother get into the vehicle, and then follows, lost completely from view. It’s so strange, I think to myself as my hand moves absently across Ollie’s fur. Not long ago, the city patrols would have arrested him on sight. Now, he’s leaving the Republic as their champion, to be celebrated and remembered for a lifetime.

I turn the monitor off, then sit in the quiet darkness of my apartment, savoring the silence. Outside on the streets, people are still chanting his name. They chant it deep into the night.

When the commotion finally dies down, I get up from my couch. I pull on my boots and a coat, then wrap a thin scarf around my neck and head out into the streets. My hair blows in the balmy night breeze, wisps catching now and then on my lashes. For a while I wander the quiet roads on my own. I’m not sure where I’m going. Maybe I’m trying to find my way back to Day. But that’s illogical. He’s already gone, and his absence leaves a hollow, aching pain in my chest. My eyes water from the wind.

I walk for an hour before I finally take a short train ride to Lake sector. There, I stroll along the edge of the water, admiring the lights of downtown as well as the now-unused, unlit Trial stadium, a haunting reminder of events long gone. Giant water wheels churn in the lake, the rhythm of their movement settling into a comforting background symphony. I don’t know where I’m going. All I know is that, in this moment, Lake sector seems more like home to me than Ruby does. Here, I’m not so alone. On these streets, I can still feel the beating of Day’s heart.

I begin to retrace my old steps, past the same lakeside buildings and the same crumbling homes, the steps I’d taken when I was a completely different person, full of hate and confusion, loss and ignorance. It’s an odd feeling to wander these same streets as the person I am now. At once familiar and strange.

An hour later, I pause alone before a nondescript alleyway that branches off an empty street. At the end of this alley, an abandoned high-rise towers twelve stories up, each of its windows boarded up and its first floor just the way I remember it, with missing windows and broken glass on the floor. I step into the shadows of the building, remembering. This is where Day had first reached his hand out to me in the midst of smoke and dust and saved me so long ago, before we even discovered who the other was; this was the start of the few precious nights when we simply knew each other as a boy on the streets and a girl who needed help.

The memory comes into sharp focus.

There’s a voice telling me to get up. When I look to my side, I see a boy holding out his hand to me. He has bright blue eyes, dirt on his face, and a beat-up old cap on, and at this moment, I think he might be the most beautiful boy I’ve ever seen.

My wandering has led me to the beginning of our journey together. I suppose it’s only fitting for me to be here at that journey’s end.

I stand in the darkness for a long time, letting myself sink into the memories we once shared. The silence wraps me in comforting arms. One of my hands reaches over to my side and finds the old scar from where Kaede had wounded me. So many memories, so much joy and sadness.

Tears stream down my face. I wonder what Day is thinking at this moment while on his way to a foreign land, and whether or not some small part of him, even if it is buried deep, holds slivers of me, pieces of what we once had.

The longer I stand here, the lighter the burden on my heart feels. Day will move on and live his life. So will I. We will be okay. Someday, perhaps in the far and distant future, we’ll find each other again. Until then, I will remember him. I reach out to touch one of the walls, imagining that I can feel his life and warmth through it, and I look around again, up toward the rooftops and then all the way to the night sky where a few faint stars can be seen, and there I think I really can see him. I can feel his presence here in every stone he has touched, every person he has lifted up, every street and alley and city that he has changed in the few years of his life, because he is the Republic, he is our light, and I love you, I love you, until the day we meet again I will hold you in my heart and protect you there, grieving what we never had, cherishing what we did. I wish you were here.

I love you, always.

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

REPUBLIC OF AMERICA

TEN YEARS LATER

   1836 HOURS, JULY 11.

BATALLA SECTOR, LOS ANGELES.

78° F.

    TODAY IS MY TWENTY-SEVENTH BIRTHDAY.

I celebrate most of my birthdays without too much trouble. On my eighteenth, I joined Anden, a couple of Senators, Pascao and Tess, and several former Drake classmates for a low-key dinner at a rooftop lounge in Ruby sector. My nineteenth happened on a boat in New York City, the Colonies’ rebuilt version of an old drowned city whose outskirts now slope gently into the Atlantic Ocean. I’d been invited to a party thrown for several international delegates from Africa, Canada, and Mexico. I spent my twentieth comfortably alone, tucked into bed with Ollie snoring on my lap, watching a brief newscast about how Day’s brother Eden had graduated early from his academy in Antarctica, trying to catch a glimpse of how Day looked as a twenty-year-old, taking in the news that he himself had been recruited by Antarctica’s intelligence agency. My twenty-first birthday was an elaborate affair in Vegas, where Anden invited me to a summer festival and then ended up kissing me in my hotel room. Twenty-second: the first birthday I celebrated with Anden as my official boyfriend. Twenty-third: spent at an induction ceremony that placed me as the commander of all squadrons in California, the youngest lead commander in Republic history. Twenty-fourth: a birthday spent without Ollie. Twenty-fifth: dinner and dancing with Anden on board the RS Constellation. Twenty-sixth: spent with Pascao and Tess as I told them about being freshly broken up from Anden, how the young Elector and I came to a mutual agreement that I simply couldn’t love him the way he wished I would.

Some of these years were spent in joy, others in sadness—but the saddest events were always tolerable. Far worse things have happened, and nothing tragic during these later years could compare with the events from my teenage years. But today is different. I’ve been dreading this particular birthday for years, because it takes me back to some of the events from my past that I’ve tried so hard to keep buried.

I spend most of the day in a fairly quiet mood. I rise early, follow my usual warm-up routines at the track, and then head to Batalla sector to organize my captains for their various city operations. Today I’m leading two of my best patrols to escort Anden during a meeting with Colonies’ delegates. We may not share the same apartment anymore, but that doesn’t change how fiercely I watch over his safety. He will always be my Elector, and I intend to keep it that way. Today, he and the Colonies are deep in the middle of discussions about the smooth immigration status along our border, where the United Cities have turned into flourishing areas with both Colonies and Republic civilians. What was once a hard dividing line between us now looks like a gradient. I look on from the sidelines as Anden shakes hands with the delegates and poses for photos. I’m proud of what he’s done. Slow steps, but steps nonetheless. Metias would’ve been happy to see it. So would Day.

When late afternoon comes, I finally leave Batalla Hall and head to a smooth, ivory-white building at the east end of Batalla Square. There, I show my ID at the entrance and make my way up to the building’s twelfth floor. I trace familiar steps down the hall, my boots echoing against the marble floors, until I stop in front of a four-square-inch tombstone marker with the name CAPTAIN METIAS IPARIS embedded in its crystal-clear surface.

I stand there for a while, then sit cross-legged before it and bow my head. “Hi, Metias,” I say in a soft voice. “Today’s my birthday. Do you know how old I am now?”

I close my eyes, and through the silence surrounding me I think I can sense a ghostly hand on my shoulder, my brother’s gentle presence that I’m able to feel every now and then, in these quiet moments. I imagine him smiling down at me, his expression relaxed and free.

“I’m twenty-seven today,” I continue in a whisper. My voice catches for a moment. “We’re the same age now.”

For the first time in my life, I am no longer his little sister. Next year I will step across the line and he will still be in the same place. From now on, I will be older than he ever was.

I try to move on to other thoughts, so I tell my brother’s ghost about my year, my struggles and successes in commanding my own patrols, my hectic workweeks. I tell him, as I always do, that I miss him. And as always, I can hear the whisper of his ghost against my ear, his gentle reply that he misses me too. That he’s looking out for me, from wherever he is.

An hour later, when the sun has finally set and the light streaming in from the windows fades away, I rise from my position and slowly make my way out of the building. I listen to some missed messages on my earpiece. Tess should be leaving her hospital shift soon, most likely armed with a slew of new stories about her patients. In the first years after Day left, the two of them stayed in close contact, and Tess would keep me constantly updated about how he was doing. Things like Eden’s improving eyesight. Day’s new job. Antarctican games. But as the years went on, their chatter grew less frequent, Tess grew up and into her own life, and gradually, their conversations dwindled to brief annual greetings. Sometimes none at all.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss her stories about Day. But still, I find myself looking forward to some dinner chatter with her and Pascao, who should be heading over from Drake University, probably eager to share his latest adventures in training cadets. I smile as I think about what they might say. My heart feels lighter now, a little freer after my conversation with my brother. My thoughts wander briefly to Day. I wonder where he is, who he’s with, whether he’s happy.

I really, sincerely, deeply hope that he is.

The sector isn’t busy tonight (we haven’t needed as many street police in the last few years), and aside from a few soldiers here and there, I’m alone. Most of the streetlights haven’t turned on yet, and in the gathering darkness I can see a handful of stars flickering overhead. The glow from JumboTrons casts a kaleidoscope of colors across the gray pavement of Batalla sector, and I catch myself walking deliberately underneath them, holding a hand out to study the colors that dance across my skin. I watch snippets of news on the screens with mild disinterest while skimming through my missed messages. The epaulettes on my shoulders clink softly.