Three months. That’s how long it took for Kelly to find Mikah, how long Bec waited before she heard the news that she was being released, that the UN acknowledge she had honoured the terms of her agreement.
Release day came and the prison staff handed Rebecca the clothes she wore on the day she arrived. She had combed her hair – it was longer now – and listened to the buzzer one last time as the secure door opened.
‘Okay, Miss Marshall, you’re free to go,’ said the security guard, with a polite smile.
Kelly waited for her outside. The captain leaned on a glossy blue motorbike, the sun shining in her hair, reflecting from her sunglasses.
‘Oh my god, what is that?’ said Bec, circling and admiring the bike.
Kelly removed her sunnies and smiled.
‘Nice to see you too, Bec.’
Rebecca walked up and kissed her.
‘I’m out. I’m free.’
‘Thought I’d surprise you with the bike,’ said Kelly, hopping on and starting it up. An extra helmet hung on the back. ‘Come on.’
Rebecca sat behind Kelly and wrapped her arms around her waist. They took off, tearing through the city. Kelly shifted in and out of the traffic. The movement rreminded Bec of Moscow, when they chased the train owned by the Bratva to rescue Boris, and of the time Kelly chased down Emily Song. Maybe she’d get to do it again, she thought. Maybe not.
Being locked up for so long made even the smallest freedoms feel unimaginably blissful. Rebecca sat at the dining table in Kelly’s apartment and drank a coffee, smiling until her cheeks hurt.
‘This is all so surreal, you know?’ she said, as Kelly took a seat across from her. ‘It’s all over. I’m out. I can drink real coffee. I can go outside. I can…’ She was going to say something about living in peace, but something stopped her. She gulped down more coffee and sighed.
‘On a scale of one to ten, how much did you miss it? The coffee,’ Kelly asked, holding her own mug in her hands.
Rebecca thought for a moment.
‘I’d say that’s about twelve out of ten.’
‘On a scale of one to ten how much did you miss me?’
‘Maybe like nine and a half?’
Kelly laughed. ‘Oh, so that’s how it is?’
‘Well, yeah, but it’s different. You got to visit and call and stuff.’
‘You stayed out of trouble, mostly?’
Rebecca nodded. ‘Mostly. There was this girl who I kept beating in basketball… she uh, broke my nose. After that I mostly just stuck to running laps around the yard. Hey, what are we getting for dinner tonight? You ever go through that phase where you only ever ate cup-noodles and microwave pizzas? We have to get something good, real food.’
Kelly agreed and Rebecca kept smiling. It was finally all over. She was looking forward to a decent meal and, hopefully, a good night’s sleep.
Rebecca felt a hand slide under her shirt and settle over her chest. More than anything Bec had missed the feeling of Kelly’s skin, the softness of her hands and the warmth of her breath, the sound of her voice, the smell of her hair. She rolled over on the couch so that their noses touched and they stared into each other’s eyes.
‘You’re missing the movie,’ Kelly whispered, kissing her softly. ‘This is the best part.’
Rebecca kissed her back. She used to compare every aspect of her life to a computer code, where she’d look at a person, or think about how her day went, listen to a car driving past outside, like the world was just numbers, segments of data interpreted by her brain. Everything could be explained that way. Everything made sense.
But nothing made sense. Code couldn’t define how much Rebecca loved Kelly. Code couldn’t explain how she nearly died three times and somehow found the strength to pull through. Rebecca considered that maybe she was going mad, she didn’t like believing in chance, in random events, that her life couldn’t be calculated or valued or sourced. It could only be lived.
Rebecca saw Hiroshi Inoue in her dreams – he stood on a skyscraper and glared at her as the world collapsed around them.
She jolted awake, breathing heavily, sweating. Kelly rolled over beside her, still sleeping peacefully. Bec quietly climbed out of bed. She wasn’t ready to talk about the nightmares, not yet. She looked at the holoprojector: 4.01am.
Hiroshi Inoue. Hiroshi Inoue. Hiroshi Inoue. The name still haunted her. It turned over and over in her mind like the last unticked box on a very long to-do list. Fucking Hiroshi Inoue.
She found her laptop in the living room. Hacking was like riding a bike, nothing had changed. She got to work, picking up exactly where she left off. Searching… Hiroshi Inoue.
It was 5:15am when Kelly stepped out of the bedroom, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
‘Hey, what’s going on?’ she mumbled. ‘Why are you up?’ She leaned over and looked at the computer screen. ‘Hiroshi?’
‘You know I have trouble sleeping?’ Bec said. ‘It’s been bugging me ever since I went away.’
‘Hiroshi’s gone dark. You know that. No one’s seen or heard any trace of him in months.’
‘But he’s still out there,’ said Bec. ‘We burned everything he stood for but the man himself is still out there.’
Kelly placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘Look at me. Don’t do this to yourself. We beat them. We won. Hiroshi can’t do anything and if he does the UN will take care of it. I want to focus on us. I mean, I understand how it works, the drive to keep moving, to keep hunting, believe me I understand, but not this time.’ She held Bec’s hands. ‘Promise me, okay? Promise me you’ll leave this alone. Come back to bed.’
Rebecca’s eyes were sore, her eyelids were heavy.
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’
She closed the laptop, promising to leave that last haunting name behind forever.
ns 172.71.254.43da2