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Even as a fugitive from Freelancer, the military, and pretty much the whole damn government – even then, York can’t help but make friends. He talks too much. He talks to people in coffeehouses and on trains and in grocery stores and sometimes in bars if it’s a bar kind of night. He chats about weather, pretends to understand the inevitable references made to local news.
And even as he talks and smiles and pretends he’s one of them, he has Delta looking over his shoulder. Watching the crowd for sudden movements. Evaluating enclosed areas for escape routes. Looking for clues, little telltale signs of a recent military presence, really just anything that might set him off. There are certain things (a loud bang, an unexpected bump to the shoulder, police sirens) that quicken York’s heartbeat and sicken his stomach.
But tonight he feels okay. It’s a bar kind of night. He’s sitting up at the counter with a younger guy in a mechanic’s uniform who’s telling him stories about working for an interplanetary vehicle repair center. He shows York his hands, rough with calluses and half-healed scrapes, and asks him what he does.
It could be the beer in his hand that’s making York’s tongue feel loose. Or maybe it’s the way the mechanic talks about his work like he really loves it, like it’s something he wouldn’t mind giving his life to. It’s honest. It makes York feel like being honest too.
So he closes his eyes briefly and says, “I was a soldier.”
There’s a pause during which York sips his beer and the young mechanic looks thoughtfully at him.
“What’s it like, then?” he asks at last, leaning over the counter a little farther. “Being a soldier.”
York thinks about giving his stock answer (“Just like the video games”) but the alcohol has hollowed him all out of lies and evasions. He hears Delta say quietly, “In the event of an attack, I would advise exiting through the side door.”
And then he hears himself say, even quieter, “It makes you scared.”
The mechanic’s brow furrows. He watches York over his mug, and York tips his head a little so he can watch him right back.
“It makes you scared for the rest of your life.”
*
After the bar, York goes back to his current hideout and starts missing.
He misses everything but mostly he misses Carolina. He misses her in the same lost, stumbling sort of way that he used to miss half his vision. Only her loss is something to which he can’t quite seem to adapt. His stomach, his heart, his limbs all ache from missing, missing, missing, until he can hardly stand to be awake and breathing. But he can’t even sleep anymore to get away from the ache.
Because there is no rest from grief. There is only pretense, and staying awake.
*
There is no fun in breaking into an empty building. There is no thrill in working small, cheap locks that require only his hands, not his brain. And there is no reward in stepping into what is essentially a temporary shell. It has become too routine: locate four walls and a roof and that’s home for a while until he has to go again.
Sometimes he goes because he’s worried about being found, but more often it’s because he’s sick of the familiar emptiness. He wants new emptiness, new walls that he can hate for being blank and transitory.
The day after the bar night, York packs up the little he has (some clothes, his lock-picking gear, some scraps of food) and hits the road again. It doesn’t matter where he goes, just that they don’t know him there.
“York,” says D, unexpectedly, as they walk on toward the train station.
“Yeah?”
“I am concerned by your recent thought patterns,” D tells him. He doesn’t elaborate but York can feel the data streaming through his head, stuff about serotonin levels and PTSD and grief.
“Oh, D,” York sighs, adjusting the pack on his shoulder. “Don’t worry so much.”
Somewhere in the distance he can hear the train moaning. He looks out at the wide, empty road, and adds, “We’ve got nothing left to lose.”