i.
Francis knew he wasn’t brave.
His father had been. A Rift Walker during the first Rift; one of those knights who parachuted and rappelled down into the unknown, equipped then with only twenty-first century tech and gear. No Wraith Grenades, no silver, no obsidian or iron ore. No fireproof body armor. Word had come of his company’s demise while Francis was nine months in his mother’s belly, the last of five children, the last one ever, now that Dad was dead. Burned to a crackly crisp, as Ethan had said, sneering, wiping the tears from his eyes.
The shock of the news sent Mom into labor, and Francis was born in the bathtub, his sister Annie serving as midwife, because their city was on fire, and there was no one else to do it.
Francis’s first memories were of their apartment: one bedroom, sad furniture, greasy windows, and Mom’s hair always falling down out of her bun, tidy first thing in the morning, and frazzled by evening time.
Ethan was the oldest; he signed up first, while the war was still raging. Julius wanted to follow, but wasn’t old enough. By the time his birthday came around, word had already come from the front that Ethan had been killed in action. Julius went off to training with his jaw set at a stubborn angle, determined and grieving; he was shot for treason three months later. Mom put tattered black curtains over the windows.
Food was scarce, growing up, medicine scarcer.
Mom succumbed to pneumonia when Francis was eight. His sisters, Annie and Sandra, looked after him as best they could. Annie cleaned houses, and took in laundry and mending; Sandra went out to work at night, wearing tight, homemade dresses, and lots of makeup. She would kiss his forehead on her way out, before she and Annie shared a long, silent look, both their faces etched with sadness.
Francis was twelve when Sandra didn’t come home one morning. They never saw her again.
Annie got sick when he was fifteen, and didn’t get better.
On his seventeenth birthday, he bought a badly forged fake ID, and marched into the recruitment office. The officer at the desk gave it only the barest of glances, and slapped a clipboard down in front of him. “Fill this out. Don’t lie.”
He didn’t. Mostly.
The army was uninspiring; it was hard work, long nights, lots of sitting, and politely shaking his head every time a fellow soldier offered him a cigarette. The Rift had closed, but in the shakeup after, he and his unit were left policing streets: hunting for missing persons, suppressing gang violence, even offering medical care for those who couldn’t afford it. The world was a wasteland: dark, wet, ash-coated. Public figures and politicians took to TV screens nightly to encourage humans to come together in the wake of the conduit-wrought devastation – but they didn’t. Humans never did. And so Francis worked; he served, and defended, and he saluted, and he dreamed, too. He dreamed of becoming a Rift Walker, like his father. They still existed, near-mythical in their prestige and secrecy.
Their identities weren’t secret within the military, though. He knew it was propaganda, the magazine articles and posters, the military trying to entice young men and women to join the most dangerous program in existence. He didn’t care. He wanted to be like his father.
Until a certain poster caught his attention one day, and the idol of his father tipped sideways beneath the weight of a new idol: Sir Tristan Mayweather.
He was in the mess, carrying his tray of gray-brown meat and potatoes to his seat, when he passed behind Smith and happened to see the magazine he was reading. Not the cheap, recycled paper that dissolved the moment it got wet, nor the clear plastic sheets becoming more and more common. These were old style, glossy pages: a full spread. Nearly a centerfold. Smith had turned it on its end so the fatigue-clad figure with gold wings pinned to his lapels could be viewed in all his glory. His stern-faced, hawk-nosed, steely-eyed, salt-and-pepper glory.
Francis stared – and stared, and stared. When Smith started to turn the page, he said, “Wait!” And his face heated, when he realized he was standing there slack-jawed, his heart pounding, his skin buzzing. Because that was a man. That was a hero. And he was enthralled, and a little bit in love.
He cleared his throat. “Who is that?”
“Sir Mayweather,” Smith said, tone bored, and he turned the page, dimming the sudden burst of light and heat in Francis’s chest. “He’s one of those Walkers.”
“Do – do you know which company?”
“The top one. Gold Company.”
~*~
You could buy the magazines at the on-base depot. Most of the soldiers snorted and called them bullshit, but the officers were encouraging. Knights died; Knights needed replacing. It was better to keep the young recruits starry-eyed and wanting to transfer.
Francis thought maybe he should have felt manipulated, but he’d always wanted to be a Knight. Access to a few magazine spreads wasn’t going to change his mind about anything.
But when he got to the depot, he found out there were posters, too. And post cards. And action figures. Small, ugly, crudely made things, with photos of their real-life counterparts on the boxes.
He bought three posters, his face on fire, and tucked the rolls inside his jacket to keep them dry on the walk back to the barracks.
If asked, he thought anyone would have agreed that it was Sergeant du Lac, the leader of the Gold Company, who stood out as the most handsome. The dark hair and eyes, the square jaw, the broad shoulders and narrow waist. In all his photos and posters, he wore the tiniest smirk that managed to radiate confidence and competence, but not arrogance; he’d been newly reinstated to active duty after a long, successful stint doing undercover work, the magazines said, and Francis had heard more than one of the girls sighing over him.
Then there was Sir Gavin. Dirty-blond hair tousled, cheeks stubbled, grin sharp and sly, eyes a glittering blue. He was the bad boy; the sex-on-legs Knight with a reputation for breaking hearts – but leaving the girls physically satisfied beforehand.
Key word being girls.
Tristan Mayweather probably liked girls better, too.
But Francis didn’t have much choice in the matter. He was hooked, more or less. All three of the posters he’d bought were of Mayweather. He hung one, but put the other two in his footlocker, for some sense of propriety.
He looked up at it, at night, in the red glow of the dull bulb on the wall, a nightlight designed to allow him to dress in a hurry, should the call to arms come in the small hours. But until then, in the long, sleepless stretches between, he could roll over and look up at the stern visage of his idol – his crush, he could allow – and feel his heartbeat quicken with something besides the usual fear.
Sometimes…sometimes in the privacy of his tiny quarters, he would slip a hand beneath the thin blankets and touch himself, while he gazed up at Mayweather. He imagined the corded steel of his biceps; the rough scrape of his stubble. It was hopeless and dumb, but he knew well enough that life wasn’t guaranteed. This sort of innocent indulgence wouldn’t hurt anyone. Only him. The hurt of unattainable longing.
~*~
Rose was the first person who’d felt like a friend since…well, in a long time. Dangerous, probably. It didn’t bode well to get attached to people. Not in general, and especially not in his line of work.
She repelled the other potential recruits. Walker Boot Camp was full of young, bubbling, boastful Soldiers and Airmen and Marines all more than convinced that they would be the next great generation of Knights. All smirking and show-boating to cover their nerves. Rose could put all of them on their backs. Francis heard the ugly whispers, saw the nasty looks aimed her way; Rose didn’t seem to care. She kept her head down, her gaze flat. If she wasn’t sparring, or trying to break a treadmill, or listening attentively in lecture, she was sharpening a knife – personal weapons were allowed in the Knights, even among trainees, due to scarcity – or staring off into space, eyes glassy, totally removed from the moment. Shock, he thought. Trauma. He’d seen that look on his sisters’ faces growing up.