Identity Zero novel · Chapter 2 of 32

Chapter 2: The Tank

Strake denies everything, Sallow holds Jesse under in the water drill and gets dragged into the tank himself, and Jesse finds his brother's initials carved under bunk 17 with a date after the funeral.

Jesse grabbed Strake's sleeve before he could straighten up.

"Say that again."

Strake looked down at the hand on his jacket.

Then he peeled Jesse's fingers off one at a time.

"I didn't say anything, Seventeen."

"You said my brother isn't in that grave."

"You've been crawling in the rain for four hours." Strake stood. "You're hearing things."

"I'm not."

"Go to bed."

He walked away across the parade ground.

Jesse lay in the mud and watched the floodlight make Strake's shadow long, then short, then gone.

The barracks were dark when he came in.

Somebody had left a towel on his bunk.

The freckled kid from Spokane was sitting up in the bunk across from his, wide awake.

"You're alive," Ollie whispered.

"Mostly."

"I stole you that towel from Twenty-Two. He snores. He doesn't deserve towels."

Jesse sat down and started peeling off his shirt.

It came away brown.

"Okay, so," Ollie said. "What's your actual name? I won't tell. I'm a vault."

"You told forty people your mom calls you Ollie."

"That was a moment of weakness. I'm a vault now."

"Seventeen."

"Cool. Great. Very mysterious." Ollie lay back down. "I'm gonna call you Seventeen in a really sarcastic voice."

"Fine."

"Seventeen," Ollie said, sarcastically.

Jesse laughed for the first time in a week.

Then he was asleep before his head hit the pillow.

At six, Major Sallow blew a whistle in his ear.

Sallow was a thick-necked man with a shaved head and small pale eyes.

The whistle hung on a cord around his neck.

"Water day, ladies," he said. "Who here can't swim?"

Nobody raised a hand.

The tank was a concrete box sunk in the ground behind the gym.

Eight feet deep, black water, a steel ladder at one corner.

Forty cadets stood around the edge in their grey shirts.

Sallow made them go in two at a time, with their hands zip-tied in front.

The drill was simple.

You went under. You stayed under. He told you when to come up.

He let most of them up at thirty seconds.

He let Ollie up at forty, coughing and grabbing the edge.

"Seventeen," Sallow said. "Your turn, celebrity."

Strake was standing at the far end of the tank with his arms folded.

He didn't move.

Jesse went down the ladder with his wrists tied.

The water was cold enough to stop his breath on its own.

Sallow crouched at the edge and put his palm on the top of Jesse's head.

"Big breath," Sallow said.

Then he pushed.

Jesse went down into the dark.

He counted.

Thirty.

Forty.

At fifty his chest started knocking on his ribs.

He pushed up, and Sallow's hand was still there, and then it was his whole weight, pressing.

Sixty.

Bubbles left Jesse's mouth.

Seventy.

He'd been under smoke so thick you couldn't see your own glove.

He knew the difference between a fire that wanted to kill you and a man who just liked watching you try to breathe.

The fire didn't smile.

Jesse stopped pushing up.

He let himself sink to the bottom, bent his knees and put his feet flat on the concrete.

Then he drove up as hard as he'd ever moved in his life.

His tied hands came out of the water and closed on the whistle cord.

He yanked.

Sallow came over the edge headfirst.

He hit the water beside Jesse with a sound.

Jesse got his head up and sucked air.

Sallow came up thrashing and spitting and reaching for him.

Jesse put his feet on Sallow's chest and shoved off, back to the ladder.

When he got to the top, thirty-nine cadets were staring at him with their mouths open.

Ollie was the first one to laugh.

Then somebody else laughed, and somebody else, and the sound went around the tank.

Sallow climbed out with his shirt stuck to his gut and his whistle cord snapped.

He walked straight at Jesse.

"You little..."

"Major."

Strake hadn't raised his voice.

Sallow stopped.

"The drill was sixty seconds," Strake said. "You held him for eighty."

"He needs to learn."

"He learned."

Then a slow clapping came from the gym door.

Colonel Gorham stood under the overhang with his coffee mug tucked under one arm so he could clap.

He was laughing.

"Curt," he said. "You look like a drowned hog."

Nobody laughed this time.

Gorham walked to the edge of the tank and looked at Jesse.

His pale eyes went from Jesse's face to his tied wrists to the snapped whistle cord still in his fist.

"Keep him," Gorham said to Strake.

Then he walked back inside.

Sallow pulled a knife off his belt.

For one second Jesse thought he was going to use it.

Sallow cut the zip tie instead, and leaned in while he did it.

"You and me," he said, "have eleven weeks."

That night Jesse was too sore to sleep.

Ollie was snoring.

Jesse's boot had rolled under the bunk.

He slid under the frame on his back to get it.

There were scratches there.

He clicked on his night-drill flashlight.

Somebody had carved letters into the steel with a nail.

Deep, careful letters. The kind you carve when you have a lot of nights.

L.V. ALIVE.

Under it, a date.

Jesse knew the date of his brother's funeral the way he knew his own name.

This was four months after it.

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