Page 16 of Jump or Fall

Gordon - Four Years Earlier

“Why are you trying to be a fucking hero all of a sudden?”

“It’s just fucked up. I don’t want to do it anymore.”

“What are you, a fag? It’s the same shit you’ve always been doing here.”

“I didn’t sign on to help you catch new fucktoys. That was never the deal. Why is this such a fucking issue?”

“Because you can’t leave, Gordon.”

The room faded away. He was bound in a moving car with a cloth around his mouth. Paul stared out the window, tapping his knee while a man with silver fingers drove. Every breath Gordon took sent sharp pain through his side.

The car slowed, and Paul looked down at him. The streetlights reflected off his sweaty, bald head.

“Hey, be glad I talked them out of killing you.” He shifted in the seat and pulled a knife from his belt. The gleam of his head no longer held Gordon’s focus. He thrashed in his seat, trying to right himself.

“Unfortunately, they said I have to do it since I asked for leniency.”

Silver hands grabbed his head and pulled the gag from his mouth.

He yelled and squirmed as the blade drew nearer.

Gordon bolted out of bed and tripped on the blanket before crashing to the floor. He gasped as pain radiated up his shoulder. Slowly, he rolled onto his back.

Just a nightmare.

Air from the fan sent a chill through him as it touched his sweat-drenched skin.

When will they stop?

He pushed himself into a sitting position and rested his head in shaky hands.

Once he regained control, he stood and used the wall as a guide to the kitchen. He downed a glass of water and tore off a piece of bread from the loaf sitting on the counter. The apartment had been fully furnished when he moved in, but all the knives were in a drawer blocked by a chair.

The bread sat heavy in his stomach as he made his way to the bathroom and turned the shower to cold. The shock of it distracted him from everything. He always tried to force down some kind of food after the nightmares, but the shower helped the most.

He rinsed away the layer of sweat, running through a mental checklist of possibilities for the task ahead.

There had to be a camera planted somewhere. It was just a matter of finding it. Enforcers weren’t strangers to bug detectors, but they weren’t as reliable in a heavily populated area flooded with tablets and other devices.

After his frigid shower, he returned to the kitchen. His appetite was sporadic, so he tried to eat whenever he felt a pang of hunger. He didn’t have much weight on him to lose and he’d already had to take his belt in an extra notch.

Maybe he would buy a load of protein shakes.

He ripped off another piece of bread and spread butter on it with a fork.

How long was he going to avoid a fucking butter knife?

Shaking his head, he searched for anything else to eat. He wasn’t sure how long this whole thing would take, so he might as well get the calories in.

By 10:00, he couldn’t put up with sitting around any longer .

He loaded his pockets with a few supplies and set his tablet to track before stepping outside into the overcast morning.

The drop was near the enforcer station, which was bizarre. He ambled through the pathways, scanning for anything unusual. People bustled in every direction, oblivious to him.

There was something oddly comforting about blending in. He remembered a few times seeing scarred faces in other Divisions. They might as well have worn a sign around their neck that said “Fuck the Archon”.

It never took long for them to get hauled away.

Nothing stood out as he walked. It was difficult to keep eyes on the drop spot with the winding paths and to avoid pickpockets.

At 11:15, a surge of people flooded the walkway, pushing him back. He lost sight of the spot and fought through the crowd to get back to where he was.

A grizzled man with one eye, dressed in a business suit, shoved him aside with a hard elbow and he nearly collided with a pipe.

By the time Gordon reached the other side of the crowd, the small box was in place, nestled between a bush and a trash bin.

Son of a bitch.

Had he just brushed shoulders with the guy responsible?

From the edge of the open space, he tried to observe inconspicuously. His bug detector would be useless here. There were too many people and too many signals.

His eyes landed on the lone tree, its branches stretching across the square. Birds squawked from within the foliage. Every few seconds, one swooped down, testing objects on the ground.

Nearby, an elderly woman sat on a bench and retrieved a bag of seeds from her purse. The birds swarmed her, some perching on the bench, others flapping impatiently on the ground .

As she tossed the seeds, they pecked and hopped frantically. A sharp laugh from across the courtyard drew Gordon’s attention—and that’s when he saw it.

One bird remained motionless in the tree, its attention fixed on the box.

He slipped a hand into his pocket, fingers curling around his EMP device. He aimed it subtly toward the tree and clicked.

The bird dropped and landed with an inaudible thud. The commotion of the birds feeding a few feet away kept the attention off the one that had appeared to drop dead.

Gordon hurried over and scooped the bird up, tucking it under his arm.

He found a quieter spot to examine it. Taking it to his apartment would be a mistake since it probably had a tracker.

Up close, the lifeless eyes were unmistakably fake. The bluish-black feathers were soft, but tiny bumps dotted the surface. Without seeing the eyes, the only thing that would give it away was the lack of body heat.

He had to act fast. The EMP wasn’t powerful enough to fry the electronics in it and he didn’t want to be face-to-face with a spy bird.

Gordon tucked it back under his arm, making sure its head was facing down and the wings pinned against its body. He hurried through a few winding pathways and up a set of stairs before stopping at a toy shop.

A little girl with black hair tied in a tight knot on the back of her head was pulling a toy dog from a box.

“Lil, why’d you take it out of the box already?” her mother chastised. “I told you to wait so we don’t have to carry it.”

Gordon approached, concealing the bird. “I can take that off your hands.”

The woman eyed him warily. “Um, okay.”

He took the box and slipped the bird inside. Then, he fastened the top and searched for an alley with fewer people .

Gordon wove through a narrow gap between two pipes and buried the box under some old flyers, and retreated.

From a safe vantage point, he called Kimmie.

“Kimmie Alphito, Division—”

“It’s Gordon. The camera was a bird. I’ve stuffed it in a box here.” He sent the coordinates to her. “I have eyes on it and can wait until you show up.”

There was a pause.

“You good with hanging there?” she asked. “If a bunch of enforcers hover around, he might not pick it up. Hell, he might have another—you said it was a bird?”

“Yeah, it’s a bird.” He sighed. “I’ll watch it for an hour. I really don’t want to spend my whole day doing this.”

He could practically hear the smirk on the other end. “Oh, got big plans?”

“Shut up, Kim.”

“Calling me ‘Kim’ now?”

“Just fuckin’ get here.”

She was starting to talk to him like a friend, but he wasn’t interested in making friends. He just wanted to get this over with so he could start over. If he could leave everything behind, that would be for the best.

Her tone shifted from playful to irritated. “Fine.”

She ended the call, and he found a spot out of the way to wait. The space was dim, with only a small bit of light filtering down through the gaps in the upper levels.

Maybe he had been too harsh. She’d done a lot for him already and had only been trying to joke around. The nightmare was making him edgy.

He pondered his escape from the city. What was the way out? How would he even get to Naxos? Would the people there accept his scar, or would he be moving to another place to deal with the same shit?

Gordon took out his tablet and started researching Naxos. A hidden forum had posts from people who claimed to have visited .

One of them described the road from the front gate cutting through the forest and forking twenty miles out—east led to Naxos, west to Cygnus.

A post underneath insisted the directions were wrong, and another responded with a map proving the original poster’s claim. The map showed that Naxos was an additional twenty-five miles past the fork, with several small settlements along the way.

Gordon laughed bitterly. How the hell could there be a camera disguised as a bird, yet no one knew how to get to the next fucking city? He saved the map—at least it was something concrete in all this mess.

Shifting gears, he looked up information on Naxos itself. One of the sites was locked and required a passcode. He rubbed his chin, considering his options. Hacking it would take more time than he cared to spend at the moment.

Out of curiosity, he tried Paul’s passcode. Gordon wasn’t supposed to know it, but he’d happened to see him use it one day.

It worked.

He snorted. Standard practice was to change passcodes when someone left Surveillance. Either they thought he hadn’t survived, or it was human error.

The site contained a brief description of the city:

Officially named the “Naxos Free Society”, Naxos is an open city-state located at the foothills of the Hyrcanian Mountains. The government, like all city-states in the Western Domain, is headed by an Archon, elected by popular vote every three years by citizens nineteen years and older .

The climate is considerably milder than in southern coastal cities like Teichus due to the proximity to the mountains, though thunderstorms and torrential rain remain common.

Naxos is well known for its advancements in metallurgy and robotics.

Recent achievements by PanopTec in robotics include lifelike animals and semi-autonomous surgical tools.

The city’s Secretary of Health has made it their mission to provide stellar healthcare services to citizens and residents.

New ventures in the realm of medical advancement include improvements to Rapiderm's revolutionary medi-spray and artificial organs.

Gordon glanced up at the box hiding the bird. Why would someone from Naxos be selling a fake scar serum?

As he sorted through theories, a message came through from Kimmie:

Kim

We have eyes on the box. Thanks for camping out. Will contact you tomorrow.

The box was still motionless. Had the owner deliberately left it off? Or had he abandoned it?

Stretching out his legs, he started toward home. He hoped the guy would come for the bird.

** *

The next day, Kimmie messaged him to meet at the station. When he arrived, she looked even more pissed off than usual.

“Let me show you who we caught.”

She led him to a one-way window looking into an interrogation room.

Inside, a teenage boy sat fidgeting with a cup on the table and bouncing his knee.

He couldn’t have been more than fifteen.

His light brown hair was cut short and styled into spikes and his features suggested he was at least partially Hayashi.

“Criminal masterminds are getting younger these days,” he quipped.

Kimmie rolled her eyes. “You’re very funny.”

“What’s his name?”

“Luke Kurono.”

So he was Hayashi. After years in Surveillance, Gordon had become fairly skilled at determining people’s backgrounds. Kimmie’s, however, was still a mystery.

“And I’m guessing an unknown individual paid him to retrieve the box?”

“Yep.” She crossed her arms. “I think he’s telling the truth. I ran his name—typical Eight kid. No legal trouble from him or his parents. They just moved here because they were broke.”

“I think the answer is in Naxos.”

She blinked slowly. “I think you want to get out of here without holding up your end of the deal.”

He handed her his tablet, showing the restricted site’s information. Her brows furrowed, and he could almost hear her teeth grinding.

“Damn it,” she whispered.

“If you’re still willing to help me leave, I’ll go to Naxos and see what I can find. No guarantees, though, including how long it might take. I’ve never seen a fucking spy bird—and it looks like they make them.”

Her frown deepened. “I’ll still help you leave. We didn’t even have this much until you showed up. ”

“I won’t just take off and forget what’s going on here, Kim.” He held out his hand.

Kimmie gave it a brief shake. “I know.”