Chapter Thirty-Six
SID CHARLES WAS born a year after the Quake.
A shit time, if ever there was one, to enter this world.
People were dropping like flies, trying to avoid disease, war, crumbling infrastructure and whatever else might be killing them on a given day.
It was a hard time to survive as an adult, let alone for babies.
Growing up near Vancouver, he has vague memories of the sea wiping out the Fraser Valley as oceans incurred and flooding got worse each year.
People headed for the mountains around the city, where TNS reigned supreme.
He can’t remember his parents. He doesn’t know if he was born in the group or not.
All he knows is that by the time he was old enough to speak and respond to orders, he was bigger than any of the other kids his age, and that made him worth investing in.
“It was the same with Silas,” he says. “He was tall. They placed their bets on kids who were healthy. They started us young. First few years, it’s drills and athletics training.
I worked my ass off. Gave them whatever they wanted.
I was a good soldier, so I got treated well.
They had stuff they would give us if we made top of class, saved from pre-Quake times.
Candy, when we were kids. As we got older, condoms. And cigarettes.
” He waves the one he just lit in front of me, scowling.
I decided, given our topic, to let him smoke, since he needs something to ease his nerves.
It did necessitate moving from April’s room to ours, so she wouldn’t come back to a smoke-filled room.
“So that’s when this started.” I say, tapping the cigarette.
“Yeah. I was ten when they started handing me these. Silas kicked the habit once we got here, but I haven’t.
Just one more way they tried to keep us loyal.
Addicts are easy to push around.” He stumps it out against a metal tray, as if trying to find new resolve to resist their influence.
“But I hardly needed an excuse to be loyal. I gave them everything.
“When they introduced guns, I wasn’t a natural shot, so I spent months doing extra practice because I knew I was in trouble if I didn’t improve.
I couldn’t be one of those grunts they risked on the frontlines of away missions.
I had to make officer. I had to be top of class.
They made me spar with kids five years older than me.
One broke my nose, but I was proud, because I knew they couldn’t get rid of me if I took a beating from a boy twice my size and got back up.
That was my whole childhood. Taking shit every single day so they would think I was worth keeping alive. ”
“So why did you leave? If you were one of the loyal ones, what changed?”
Sid runs his hand over his chin. “Silas and I both made the officer track. We started running missions once we turned sixteen, but we always were partnered with older officers. They were mentoring us. I got tapped for instructing the younger classes. I was so excited, because that meant one day, I wouldn’t have to go on missions at all.
Not that I said it out loud. That kind of coward shit was a great way to get sent on a suicide run.
But it meant one day, I would be safe. Evan—the one who was training me—used to pull me aside and ask my opinion when we found groups with younger kids in the field to see if I thought they were worth rehabilitating.
“One day, we found a father and son living on a boat docked too close to shore. We managed to board them. The kid was fourteen; it wasn’t clear if we could re-educate him into TNS or not.
Evan asked me my opinion and I remember saying, keep him.
Then we’d have someone who knew how to sail.
Most of TNS was terrible at it. Their navy got wiped out during the war with Salt Spring a few years earlier, so that kid was useful. He was James.”
“James!” I’m happy for a split second.
“Then Evan shot his dad.”
“Right.” It’s too early for this story to have any happy endings.
“He didn’t integrate well, but he’s not stupid. He followed orders to stay alive. Always stared at me across the mess hall like he wanted to strangle me. I tried not to think about it. And then… a few years later, we found a group from Salt Spring.”
His eyes are hollow, seeing the ghosts of the people they caught.
The ones who led him here. “It was an expedition team, trying to scavenge supplies from the mainland. Well armed, but we had the numbers and we whittled them down. I’d heard of Salt Spring before, obviously.
I always thought they were like us: another place trying to hold onto enough power to stay alive.
It never occurred to me things could be different there. But one of the men had glasses.”
“Glasses?” I repeat.
“I know, right? Glasses. It was that simple. I’d never seen anyone wearing glasses before.
After he was shot, I took them and put them on my face and everything went blurry.
Evan laughed at me; explained what they were for.
And I stared at them thinking… these people fix eyes.
They know how to do that, and we don’t. When I went back to my tent that night, Silas was sobbing.
It took a while before he calmed down enough to explain why.
He said he’d seen two of the men kiss each other goodbye before they were shot.
“You know how TNS is. A lot of it started from people trying to recreate some version of the past before people like Silas were allowed to exist out loud. My best friend had been faking interest in women his whole life just to get by, and at that point I thought, shit. Shit, we can’t do this.
If someone finds out, they might shoot Silas, and if I stand up for him, they’ll shoot me.
The choice was simple. I could turn in my best friend, or I could run. ”
“So you went to James,” I say.
“We went to James.” Sid nods. “We had the whole thing figured out. We would get ourselves onto a boat and James would sail it to Salt Spring, where we would surrender. But he didn’t trust us because…
well, obviously, he didn’t trust us. He thought we were trying to bait him into something, to expose that he was really a traitor.
So he told us he would only take us if we got him a gun and we brought some other kids with us, because he figured we might risk him, but we wouldn’t risk them.
“So I came up with a plan. I told Evan that James had agreed to start teaching some people how to sail, but he wouldn’t work with senior officers.
Just kids. It was this whole back and forth until finally, command agreed, and we held a contest for the younger classes.
The top student of each one would get the chance to learn about the boat with James.
We weren’t allowed to go anywhere, of course.
We weren’t supposed to be under sail. But James taught me and Silas enough that we were able to sneak supplies aboard.
He told us how to get things ready, without making it look different, so he could pull up the mainsail in less than a minute and get us underway.
“So we held the contest. We picked the winners. I remember when Albert won a slot, we fudged the results so that Dominick got in too, because it seemed cruel, breaking up blood brothers. There was this whole ceremony, that all the youth classes had to attend. Evan came down to the dock with a couple of the commanders and then…” He shrugs.
We both know what’s coming next. “Silas led the winning boys below deck, then locked them in. James pulled the sails. Everyone was screaming. I noticed Evan put his hand on his sidearm. It was his favourite gun. The one with pearl handles. I shot him.”
“Sid…”
“The other officers were slower getting their guns up. I picked them off, too. One, two, three. But the first bullet was Evan.
“People ran, looking for some way to stop us, but there wasn’t anyone else ready to sail.
No one else was armed. My record was spotless, Kayla.
No one saw it coming. So… one day, I saved five kids because for nineteen years, I never gave anyone a reason to think I would be anything other than a good soldier. ”
I tighten my grip around his arm, thinking the story is over. And while it’s true that the worst part is done, there’s still more.
“I can’t blame Council for thinking we were bad news.
We were three heavily armed teenaged boys with a bunch of screaming children we’d literally kidnapped.
They took the kids and threw the three of us in jail.
Eventually, all our stories lined up and they realized that the reason the boys were freaked out was because I’d shot TNS officers, not because I’d threatened any of them.
So after a few months, we got transferred to the sanctuary program. And… now we’re here.”
I lean my head against his arm and try to picture everything he has skipped over.
The years of working for the border guard, trying to build not only a life for himself, but everyone he dragged here along with him.
Pieces of their history that I’ve already learned make more sense, like James blowing his savings on a guitar and Sid insisting they forgive him.
Or how Sid stepped in to handle the issues at the high school, when teenaged Dominick started acting out.
Twelve years of small steps, atoning for the life he led before he came here.
I wonder when, if ever, he’ll forgive himself.