Identity Zero novel · Chapter 3 of 32

Chapter 3: Records

Jesse breaks into the records office, Strake catches him in the dark, and Luke's file holds a photo of Luke and Strake with Strake's handwriting on it.

Jesse lay under the bunk until his flashlight started to die.

L.V. ALIVE.

His brother carved like that.

Luke had carved his initials into their kitchen table at fourteen with that same square V.

Jesse rolled out, put his boots on without lacing them, and went to the window.

Ollie mumbled in his sleep. "Seventeen. Don't."

The admin building sat across the parade ground, dark except for one bulb over the door.

Jesse had seen the sign on his way in the first day. RECORDS, second floor, end of the hall.

The rain helped.

Nobody walks a fence in that kind of rain unless they have to.

The back door was locked, but the bathroom window beside it had a cheap latch.

He'd opened worse ones on burning houses.

He slid it up with his pocketknife and went in on his stomach over a sink.

The hall smelled like floor wax and old coffee.

RECORDS had a glass door with the eagle painted on it.

It wasn't even locked.

Inside, rows of grey steel cabinets stood in the dark.

They were filed by year, then by number.

He found the drawer for three years ago and pulled it.

Forty folders.

Number Seventeen was thicker than the rest.

His hand was on it when the lights stayed off and a voice spoke behind him.

"Close the drawer."

Jesse didn't turn around.

"You knew the door was open."

"I left it open. I wanted to see how long it took you." Strake was closer now. "One night. I'd bet on two."

"Disappointed?"

"Close the drawer, Seventeen."

Jesse pulled the folder out instead.

Strake hit him from behind.

Not a punch.

His whole body, chest to Jesse's back, driving him forward into the cabinets.

The steel rang.

Strake's forearm came across Jesse's collarbone and pinned him there, and his other hand closed on Jesse's wrist and pressed it flat against the drawer.

Jesse could feel every breath Strake took.

Strake was soaked through. Rain on his jacket, rain dripping off his jaw onto Jesse's neck.

He'd been outside, watching Jesse cross.

"You walked here," Jesse said. "In that."

"Shut up."

"You were worried about me."

Strake's forearm pressed harder.

"I'm worried about the paperwork when Sallow finds you in here," he said into Jesse's ear. "He won't stop at eighty seconds."

"Then let him try."

"You think this is a fire. You think if you're tough enough, it goes out."

"I think you know where my brother is."

Strake went very still behind him.

Then he did something Jesse didn't expect.

He let go of Jesse's wrist and turned him around.

Jesse's back hit the cabinet.

Strake kept his hand flat on Jesse's chest, holding him there, and Jesse could see him now in the grey light from the window.

His hair was wet and falling in his eyes.

He was breathing hard. So was Jesse.

He was a lot bigger than Jesse, and he was standing so close Jesse could feel the heat coming off him through two wet shirts.

Jesse didn't push him away.

He didn't want to.

That scared him more than the tank had.

Strake looked at Jesse's mouth.

Just once, fast, and then back at his eyes, like he'd caught himself doing it.

His voice had gone rough. "You walk to the gate tomorrow and say you quit. A truck takes you to Tacoma."

"And?"

"And in a month, you get a letter. No return address. Everything I know about your brother."

"Everything."

"Everything I can put on paper."

"Why would I believe you?"

"Because I'm the only one here who's going to offer you anything."

Strake's thumb moved on Jesse's chest.

He didn't seem to know it did.

"No," Jesse said.

Strake's jaw worked.

"You'd get the truth," he said. "In your own kitchen. Alive."

"I'd get a letter. My brother got a letter too. The one about the river."

That landed.

Jesse watched it land.

Strake took his hand off him.

"You're going to get yourself killed," he said.

"Then put that in a letter."

Strake stepped back.

For a second Jesse thought he was going to drag him back to the barracks by the collar.

Strake just looked at him in the dark.

"Bathroom window," he said. "Same way you came. Latch it behind you. If you're seen, I never saw you."

He walked out.

His wet boots left prints on the wax all the way down the hall.

Jesse stood against the cabinet and waited for his heart to slow down.

It didn't.

The folder was still under his shirt.

He'd shoved it into his waistband when Strake turned him around.

Strake had had his hand on Jesse's chest, six inches above it, the whole time.

Jesse climbed out the window, latched it, and ran.

In the barracks latrine he locked himself in the last stall and opened the folder on his knees.

Medical forms. Range scores. Swim times.

His brother had been the best in his class at everything.

Of course he had.

There was a death report at the back, typed, one page.

The signature line was cut off by a coffee ring.

Behind it, paper-clipped to the folder, was a photograph.

Two men on the range in the sun, shoulder to shoulder.

One was Luke, grinning his stupid lopsided grin at whoever held the camera.

The other was the Commander, younger, not smiling, but close to it.

Jesse turned it over.

On the back, in the same block capitals he'd seen on the duty roster by their door, somebody had written:

THE BEST I EVER HAD.

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