The High

I remembered the shot, but that was it. I remember being startled by the lack of kick, and the brightness of the green beam that lit up my face and cut through an air car like a plow through snow. I’d looked up from the display with a dropped jaw and wide eyes as I watched the fiery wreck spin out of control and tumble to the ground below. It felt like something washed over me. All my doubts, shakes, and cold chills were burned away by that laser. The ensuing firefight hadn’t even scared me, and I hadn’t lost this smile and light in my eyes since we’d gotten back. It was so fast that the next thing I knew. I was splashing water on my face back at the safe house. I looked up at my young features and thought that that wasn’t me, whoever I was seeing was too cool, too capable. But then I started to get excited and almost brought myself to tears. Because I was wrong, and for the first time in my life, I felt alive. I didn’t feel useless or helpless, I had done something. Something impressive, meaningful, something strong. Like any other drug, I wanted to chase it. Get as much of it as I can and never feel like I did before. Weak, naive, and insignificant to the world. For the first time I looked at myself in the mirror, and I felt proud to be me, a badass Merc on his way to becoming something even better. It felt like I had finally found a home.

      I stepped out to find Garrett waiting for me. He was waiting by the door smoking a holo cigarette. The blue artificial smoke danced upward at the end of it. I remember thinking he looked like he was the real deal, and I was still just the rookie. But one day, that'd be me.

      “You did good,” he said.

      “Thanks man,” I said in a breathy exasperated way.

      He nodded and stared at me, flicking the holo cig.

      “Did you have fun tonight?”

      “Fuck yeah,” I said, again in my young naïve tone.

      Garrett smirked and tucked the cig back in his pocket. That glowing green eye looking at me the way I imagine a proud parent looks at their kid once they just hit a home run. Not that I’d know.

      “Good, because I got more nights like that ahead if you're interested?"

      “Well, I’ll be back, trust me,” I said excited, I’d have gone out again right away if he offered.

      Garrett stared at me a moment, in a way that for some reason, made me think he didn’t believe me. I didn’t know why, because I was dead serious. But that stare lasted what felt like a lifetime, and then he pushed open the door, and stood in the rain.

      “We’ll see.”

      Walking home, it made me think I’d done something wrong. I didn’t know what, but it sent me playing the night over and over again. He was just talking, just saying stuff, I told myself. But deep down, I didn’t think he was. He thinks I’m not ready, I thought then. As it marinated, I was so sure I was right, and I remember how much it pissed me off. How that feeling of life, suddenly seemed unearned. Well, I’ll prove him wrong, I thought. I mean it. I’ll show him I’m just as good as anyone else on that crew. That I can carry my own, I can fire the guns, make the plans and I can,-

      “That’s exactly what he wants you to think,” a voice called to me.

      I froze in my tracks thinking for a second it was in my head. Like I was in a dark room that I assumed was safe, but then someone put their hand on my shoulder. Hello? I asked. There was no response. But looking ahead I saw a figure standing not far off. The rain was coming down in buckets, and the haze of the holo ads above us gave me his general size and shape in an outline of blue and purple colors. The air traffic was zooming by overhead.

      “What did you just say?” I called down to him.

      He started to walk toward me, the rain pouring off his shoulders.

      “You heard me.”

      “No, I didn’t! What did you say!?” I yelled, and I remember at that moment I felt the cold press of my blaster against my lower back.

      “I said, that’s exactly what Garrett wants you to think.”

      He got closer, and I started to back up. Reaching behind me to the textured grip of my weapon. My heart raced, and my mind boggled by whatever trick this stranger was playing. Can you hear me now? I remember thinking.

      “You’re thinking I can read your mind.”

      There was a holo ad for a bar between us, he stopped shy of it.

      “I can’t, but I know what you’re thinking.”

      I was like a statue, now death gripping my gun and staring with nothing be pure terror. I didn’t know who I was seeing, death, God, some street crazy who had gotten lucky.

      “You can pull it if it makes you feel safer,”- he started to step out. “Just be careful not to shoot yourself.”

      What I saw when he walked into the light didn’t help my nerves in the slightest. If anything, my grip on the blaster got tighter.

      “Pun intended, I guess,” he said.

      I was convinced it was some kind of trick, some kind of mask, or maybe a hologram that was meant to distract me. Staring at my face basking under the red light of the bars sign, everything started to feel cold again. Starting in my spin and spreading out across my ribs.

      “Who are you?”

      He squinted at me and smirked after a moment.

      “You know exactly who I am. You aren’t as dumb and naïve as you let on. I’d know.”

      My breaths started to slow and finally, my fingers pulled off the weapon, my hands nervously returned to my side. But I paid attention to that cold metal feeling. I was trying to put it together. Find some reason as to how this was happening, as if I had even the slightest idea of the sciences involved. It slowly started to feel like some dream where you know you’re sleeping, but you don’t know how to wake up.

      “So, what happened?”

      I seemed to of confused myself.

      “What do you mean?”

      “I’m going to take a leap here and assume you’re from the future.”

      He nodded and looked around at the city acknowledging the absurdity of this.

      “I can see why you’d think that.”

      “So, what happened?”

      “I said you I could see why you thought that, I didn’t say you were right.”

      I started to get very nervous, maybe this was some trick. My hand slowly traveled behind me as I stepped backward.

      “So, you’re not?”

      He nodded his head back and forth with a tight mouth like he was weighing some massive decision.

      “Yes… and no.”

      “Good to see I turn into a vague asshole in the future.”

      “Oh, you turn into an asshole alright.”

      His face had suddenly gotten serious, and his features were etched with the harsh shadows of the blue light above him. Rain streaked down his cheeks like heavy tears.

      “Why are you here?” I asked finally.

      He took a moment.

      “You need to walk away, from Garrett. Don’t work for him again, don’t answer when he calls you, and don’t open the door when he knocks.”

    A visceral denial exploded in my mind, screaming for me to walk away. But there was another voice, something telling me to at least hear him out. Something that said he wasn't lying.

      “Why?”

      He seemed almost surprised that I’d listened, his head rose, and his hands dug deeper into his pockets.

      “He’s not who you think he is. And he's playing a game you don't understand yet.”

      “Garrett’s the only one who’s ever given a shit about me, he pulled me out of a shit hole and gave me the chance to be something, to be someone."

      “You and I both know that’s not saying much, and he’s not all he appears to be, you’ve already seen it. You saw it tonight, didn’t you?”

Immediately that look flashed in front of my eyes again, the skepticism and the feeling that I wasn't worth it. I'm good enough, he'll see.

      “And so what? What’s so bad about him that I felt the need to come back in time, or wherever you’re from to stop me from running with him? What’s he do?”

      “He doesn’t do anything, you do.”

      There was a hard silence after that, and my heart started to thump hard in my chest. That cold feeling slithered up the back of my neck.

      “And I know what you’re thinking and no, you can’t stop it.”

      “Bullshit.”

      “We’re really doing this? Now you start thinking I’m lying?”

      “I think you aren’t telling me the whole truth.”

      “Whether you know what happens to us or not it changes nothing. Unless you walk away. Tonight. You don’t go back for one more, you don’t call anyone else. You. Are. Done.”

      “Be a lot easier if you told me, maybe I can stop it.”

      “No!”

His voice shook through the street like a banshee’s howl. Laced with anger and desperation to the point of agony to my ears, it was the most horrifying yell I’d heard in my life.

      He was quiet again, rubbing the stumble of a growing beard that I hadn’t even known I could grow. He sighed and took a step forward, which I returned with another step back.

      “Look… I know how you feel. I felt it too, and I get it. You want to keep that feeling. That power, that drive. That sense of belonging. But I’m telling you right now, it goes away whether you like it or not. And what it leaves behind, and what you do to get it back it's not…it...it never comes. And Garrett, he knows that he knows you wanna feel like a badass. He knows that’s your drug and he uses that to get you to do some awful things…evil things.”

      I started to shake my head at him.

      “I’d never let it go too far, I know my limits,”-

      “You think you do…but you haven’t felt it yet. You haven’t felt what it’s like for that high you have right now to slowly melt away, regardless of what you do. And once it’s gone, you kill, you hurt, you slaughter, you do whatever it takes. Trust me.”

      There was a tremble in his voice that reached through my denial then. Hearing my tone sound so regretful was like a nightmare in its way. This was all I ever wanted, to be a merc. To be where I was now. No, he's wrong...I'm wrong.

      “Well, I can stop before it gets to that point, now that you warned me I can,”-

“No! You! Can’t! It’s already too late unless you quit. Tonight!"

      The denial I’d felt surged at the sound of my condescending voice. He was talking to me like I was a child who didn’t know any better, that I hadn’t just shot down my first Air Car hours ago and fought in my first firefight. It was bullshit, and I didn’t care who this was, or if it was me. My hand wrapped around the blaster again, and this time it wasn’t coming off.

      “You’d have to kill me,” I growled, my forehead dropping down and my eyes turning wild. That feeling of being someone, having a purpose was like thrusters to my life. I wasn’t going back.

      He sighed; I could see steam rising from his nostrils. His shoulders rolled once, and he nodded.

      “We’ll see.”

      All I saw was a flash of orange light, it zipped past my head so fast I looked behind me to see where it went. It wasn’t until I felt the second shot burn through my shoulder that I realized he’d taken the first. And suddenly my denial, cold, and nerves all flushed to pure reaction. I wrenched the blaster from my back, it was a sloppy and slow draw and by the time I got it up and let loose a green beam of my own, he’d ducked into the bar’s doorway. I shot again and then ducked behind a dumpster that was sitting against the building just off to my right. The pain from his shot hit me like a red-hot brand to my shoulder. I looked at it for a moment and smelled my own cooked flesh.

      “You can still walk away!”

      “Fuck you!”

      Then I rose and an orange beam zinged past my head, and I let loose with three shots back-to-back. I scorched the brick in three wide and almost random places as I roared like a madman firing. I pulled the trigger for a fourth shot, but then the trigger felt stiff and on the back display the size of a thumbnail that had said I had six charges left, it just said one word, Error, Error, Error.

      Before I could even reach to pull the slide, a single orange pulse shot out from the dark doorway. I felt the wind leap out of me, my body roll back on my heels as I fell half on the sidewalk and half in the street. I tried to breathe in, but I couldn’t, then slowly I gasped for a breath of air. The rain poured down as I watched the lights of the air cars zoom back and forth above me. Beyond them, the tall reaching rectangular high-rises stretched to the sky that flashed blueish white a few times, and then it was all obstructed by him.

Standing over me and looking down with this almost sad and pitiful look. My fingers clawed in the direction that I thought my blaster had fallen. But even as I did, I stared up at my aged face. It was like he was pitying some dying dog in the street. All while it seemed like there was a truck parked on my chest. I realized then, that it wasn't all rain on his face. He was crying.

      “I should have come back sooner,” he said raising the blaster. A tear fell to my chest as he did.

      Closing my eyes, I could feel my tears emerging as the sense of helplessness still hadn’t settled on me yet. I remember thinking I should have just listened, that it wasn’t worth it anymore. After all, he was me and why would I come back to just mess with myself? But it wasn’t until I heard the shot and a metal clanking, followed by a wet thump that I realized the rain was still falling on my face, the sounds of the air traffic were thrumming back and forth. I opened my eyes. I managed to raise my head with excruciating pain and gazed past my feet. He was flat on his back. Chest and right pocket sizzling with smoke. I heard Garrett's clopping footsteps before I saw him, he came up blaster drawn and leveled at the man. His eyes were intent like a hawk before they dived for a mouse.

      “You alright?” he asked me.

      I couldn’t reply, but soon Garrett turned his attention to me.

      “Alright just breath, you’re gonna be alright, I got you,” he said.

      I felt the tears soaring back up to my eyes from my throat then, and when Garrett looked back at the body, I thought how lucky I’d been that he was around.

      “What was he saying to you?” Garrett then asked, and when he looked back, I saw something new. Some look I hadn’t seen before from him; it was worry. The way a person acts nervous when they realize that someone just overheard something they didn’t want you to hear. It was a look that scared me, and in truth, I was grateful that I couldn’t speak. I didn’t know what I would say, or how he would react to it. Honestly, I didn't even know if all this was real. Those eyes burned into me with the same accusatory edge as before, I just let my head fall back and looked up at the rain.

      “Doesn’t matter, I got you,” he said, but it sounded uncaring and devoid of real interest.

Now years later, he acts like a brother to me. Asks my input, lets me take charge of a job, puts me on the beam cannon. But other times, random times, I see that look. Those eyes that don’t belong to someone that trusts you. I’ve tried to ignore it, focus on that pride I felt when I shot down the air car about five years ago now. And right now, I got to be honest, I feel alive. I feel powerful like I found my purpose. But I’m also scared because despite how good it feels it’s never lived up to that night with the beam cannon. It’s close, but it’s not the same. And there’s another thing too, whenever I think I should quit, make a gig my last, it’s like Garrett knows and he always asks me if I had fun tonight, I say yes, and he says there’s more to come. And I’m always there for it, but then he says the same thing, we’ll see.

I used to think that was just something he said, but I notice how I feel after now, like I owe it to him to come back, to chase that high one more time. And I wonder…is that what he wants? And was I right?