The Heart

Winnie hunches over to support herself on her knees. The shouts from Orion’s amplified voice reduce to whispers in a startling instant. Though, even through the sturdiest of steel walls and the soundest of soundproofing, the megaphone echoes dimly.

Vic pants, sliding down the reinforced door and hitting the ground with a thud. He removes his combat helmet to wipe the sweat from his face. Winnie follows suit.

Her eyes widen at the sight of the blood leaking from a gap in Vic’s armor. A gunshot, straight through his chest.

She kneels before him.

Vic shakes his head. “I’m fine.”

He coughs. Red sprays from between his chapped lips. Winnie swallows hard.

Vic continues, “Just need a second.”

“Vic, you…”

He manages a pained smile. His breaths are labored. His teeth are painted with a thin coat of blood.

“We’re here. We did it. Find the locket.”

Winnie hesitates for a moment. It’s a moment too long, she knows. This is what they’re here for. This is the only thing in the world that matters now. Winnifred and Victor cease to matter. They are nothing but the fingertips of the Resistance, ready to pull a trigger to blow out Orion’s brain. All they need is the fail-safe, and his metropolis will topple.

And yet all Winnie can do is stare at Vic. The boy she grew up with. The man she served with. The person she loves.

She stands, disgusted at the realization that she has to put him second when he needs her most. She knows he would never do the same. Vic would let the whole world fall to save her life. Damn him, he would do it without hesitation.

But she can’t do that.

God, she wants to.

But she can’t.

The room is plain and sterile. The steel furniture is functional and artless. The books on the lone shelf appear new and unloved. The bed is big enough for a single person. The desk is bare, but for a heart-shaped locket.

The fail-safe.

Vic coughs again, sounding even weaker.

Winnie’s fingers twitch at her side.

She loops his arm across her shoulders.

“Winnie,” he groans. “We did it. Just… just…”

“Let’s get you on the bed.”

The heart pulses a cyan blue on the desk, as if demanding her attention.

Vic thuds against the mattress and Winnie cringes. She’d meant to set him down gently. The pristine white sheets bloom red.

Vic coughs again as Winnie unfastens his armor. “You going to operate?”

“No. The kit’s gone.”

Her fingers shake. She curses as one of the clasps pinches her pinkie.

Vic winces. “Stop.”

Winnie holds her hands up. “I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?”

He shakes his head. “Why are you doing this?”

She scoffs. “You want to be stuck in this piece of shit?”

“We don’t have time,” he says, not unkindly.

Orion’s shouts are still distant. The walls will hold him back. They have to. He constructed them to withstand anything.

“We have time.”

Time enough to make him comfortable, at the very least.

Winnie returns to the tedium of unfastening straps, undoing clasps, and pulling off heavy plating. She doesn’t meet his eyes.

Vic has an odd, pained smile on his face when she finishes.

“What?” she asks, dropping the last of the armor to the ground. An awful clang resounds in the little room. Vic is left in just his blood-and-sweat-stained under-suit.

“You’re sweet.” His voice is as soft and thin as the stained sheets beneath him. “Have I ever told you that?”

Winnie’s throat is tight. She forces a scoff and a frown. “No. You regularly tell me I’m an asshole.”

Vic reaches a hand toward her, bloodstained fingers twitching. Winnie bites her lip as she takes his hand, not caring how sticky and grimy it is.

“You can be. But you’re sweet. Really… really sweet. Like, the sweetest person I’ve ever met.”

“You’re delirious.”

Winnie delivers the words in jest, but panic squeezes her heart and lungs. From her experience, the delirium only sets in near the end.

She wants to scream.

She wants to topple the bookshelves and crush the trinket and tear the bed covers to shreds, because Vic is dying.

He is dying.

He could survive, maybe, if they had the time or the proper equipment or someone who knew what they were doing.

He is going to die because somehow he is not important.

After everything they did, he is not important.

They fought to the bitter end and succeeded, and this is what they get.

It isn’t fair.

She knows how petulant and pathetic that thought is, but she lets herself think it.

It isn’t fair.

For Vic’s sake, Winnie tries desperately to keep her composure. It only makes her eyes burn hotter. She scans the room again, as if doing so will make a kit materialize. What kind of emergency bunker doesn’t have medical supplies? Is Orion that fucking arrogant?

She turns her attention back to Vic.

“You believe in god?” he asks, as if in a daze.

Winnie hasn’t thought about god since their childhood. One of the old ladies in their village would tell them stories about faith and religion if they came to her porch in the evenings while she was knitting. They only went a couple of times; Winnie never found the talks particularly interesting.

The woman died in a bombing raid when Winnie was eight.

“I don’t know. Maybe?” She kneels at his bedside so that she can hear him better. “There’s probably something out there, right?”

Vic coughs through a laugh.

Winnie manages a glare. “What?”

“Way to commit to an answer.”

“I don’t think about stuff like that.” Winnie raised an eyebrow. “Why? Do you believe in god?”

“I do.”

Winnie waits for more. Vic’s eyelids flutter.

“Okay. Why did you ask?”

“We’ve never talked about it before.” He winces, a hand moving to his wound. The fabric surrounding the gunshot wrinkles beneath his grip. “So much we haven’t talked about.”

“What do you want to talk about?” She takes one of his hands in both of hers and squeezes. “Ask me anything.”

A silence passes, punctuated only by the ugly noise of his struggling breaths.

“Do you remember the lake?”

“What lake?”

Vic considers the question for too long. His eyelids close.

“Vic.” Winnie’s voice cracks. “What lake?”

“When we were kids.”

His eyes are shut. She wants to tell him to open them, to look at her, to stay awake.

“Yeah.” Winnie manages a smile. Her tears are salty on her lips. “Of course.”

“Do you remember when we went there on your tenth birthday?”

Vividly.

“Tell me about it.” She squeezes his hand. His grip grows looser with every passing minute.

“Your parents weren’t there to celebrate. You were crying. I hadn’t seen you cry before.”

Her parents had been working extra shifts all that week to try and scrounge together enough money to get her any gift at all.

“God, I was such a brat.”

“They promised. They should’ve been there for you.”

“Go on.”

“Remember, they wouldn’t let us go without an adult? They thought we would drown.”

“That was bullshit. We swam way better than any of them could.”

Vic struggles through another laugh. “You said the same thing when I said we should go to the lake with my parents. I didn’t want to go without them. I thought we would get in trouble.”

“We did get in trouble. We weren’t allowed to hang out for, like, a whole week.”

“Ten days,” Vic corrects. “It was ten days.”

Winnie runs a thumb over the back of Vic’s hand. “I’m sorry I forced you.”

Vic smiles. “I’m glad you did. It was the… the best day.”

It was the first time Winnie had felt grown up. They roamed all around the lake, theorizing about the rusted benches and the mysterious names on their plaques. They swam freely in the mucky water, taking mouthfuls and spitting them at each other, uncaring of the bacterial consequences. They held hands for the first time that day.

That was the first taste of freedom either had really had.

“It was.”

A silence passes.

“I was going to tell you I had a crush on you.”

Winnie blinks at him. “Were you really now?”

“I couldn’t get you a gift, and I thought maybe that would make you happy. But then I got scared, because I didn’t know if you would actually be happy about that, and then I didn’t have anything for you, and I felt so bad for so long, and I—”

“You gave me the best birthday.” She struggles to keep her voice steady.. “Still the best birthday I’ve ever had.”

“Good. That’s good.”

Vic’s grip goes totally slack. Winnie squeezes his hand.

“Why did you ask if I remembered the lake?”

His brow furrows.

“I don’t… I just… I wanted to make sure you remembered. It’s my favorite day.”

His breaths are weaker, raspier. Winnie can hardly see him through the steady stream of tears.

His voice is scarcely more than a whisper as he says, “I love you.”

Winnie gives up trying to hold herself together. She chokes back sobs as Vic squeezes her hand.

“It’s okay,” he croaks. “Please. Don’t cry.”

“Shut up,” she blubbers. “You can’t say that right now and expect me not to cry.”

He smiles a blood-soaked smile.

“I love you too.” Winnie sniffles.

She can’t understand what he says next.

“What?”

He coughs. No blood comes with it this time.

“Vic?”

His mouth opens and closes as he tries desperately to speak.

“Victor?”

His lips stop moving.

His body relaxes.

His eyes are closed.

This is her only comfort.

Her worst memory is that of her parents’ widened eyes. The chasm where their souls used to be. The lifeless irises.

She will never have to see Vic that way, at least.

Vic is one of them now.

One of the lifeless.

One of the bodies.

Nothing but a statistic of Orion’s vicious reign.

A ghost.

A memory.

The tyrant’s voice booms, closer now. They’re breaking through the walls. They’ll be here soon.

But that’s okay.

Winnie kisses Vic on the forehead, and then on both eyelids: the same way he did when they were little and she couldn’t sleep. He’s still warm. She releases his unmoving fingertips.

She is going to die.

Winnie has had the thought many times.

When she hid under her parents’ bed during a bombing.

During the grueling Resistance combat training.

Parachuting into enemy lines.

Crying over the bodies that used to house the souls of her parents.

Looking at Vic now.

She takes the heart from the table.

Winnie has died a thousand tiny deaths throughout her life, and all of them have been a rehearsal for this moment.

She is going to die.

The locket pops open with a click. The inside pulses with a blue light. The button is cold. With one press, the city will collapse.

She stares at the heart. In her mind’s eye, they are at the lake before sunset. Minutes from now, their parents will discover the pair and shout at them for their foolishness. Soon they will be separated for ten days, which will be the longest span they will spend apart until the day they die. Soon Vic’s parents will perish, followed swiftly by Winnie’s. Soon the teenagers will enlist. Soon they will kill for a cause. Soon they will lead the final Resistance mission. Soon, with the press of Orion’s kill-switch, the empire will collapse into rubble around and atop them.

But not now.

Now, Winnie and Victor sit on the shore, sand sticking to their soaking pants, holding hands, staring across the gentle afternoon at the dead trees, wanting for nothing but each other’s company.