Identity Zero novel · Chapter 6 of 32
Chapter 6: Use Me
The heat lamps ticked.
Water dripped off Ollie's pack onto the concrete.
"You're standing right here," Jesse said.
"I'm standing right here."
"So it's a figure of speech."
"There's a headstone with my name on it in Montana." Strake leaned back against the door. "My mother put flowers on it until she died. That's not a figure of speech."
Jesse sat down on the bench before his legs did it for him.
Strake stayed by the door.
"Gorham didn't lie in the gym," he said. "Zero is a new life. He just doesn't tell you whose."
"Say it plain."
"The day you're chosen, you're declared dead. Training accident. A fall, a fire, a river."
He watched Jesse when he said river.
"Your family gets a sealed box and a flag. You get a number and a contract."
"A contract for what?"
"Whatever the client pays for. Guarding a man who should be in prison. Going places a man with a passport can't go."
Strake's voice didn't change at all.
"You can't quit. You can't sue. You can't call anyone. Legally there's nobody there to do any of it."
"And Gorham rents you out."
"Gorham rents us out."
"Us."
"Eleven of us, still breathing. I was the first."
Jesse looked at his hands.
They were shaking, and he couldn't make them stop.
"Luke," he said.
"Alive. Seven weeks ago he was alive."
Jesse put his face in his hands.
He didn't cry.
He just held his own head for a while, because it might come apart.
When he looked up, Strake had crossed the room.
He was crouched in front of the bench, the way he did at the end of every drill.
Only now he wasn't telling Jesse to quit.
"Why are you here?" Jesse said. "If you got out, why come back?"
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