Page 28 of Retrograde

“What are you on about?”

“If we take any more prisoners, we won’t have anywhere to put them.”

I hold the cigar smoke in my mouth, counting to ten. I exhale. I rub my jaw. And only then do I respond, “I’ll get rid of the patrolmen soon.”

He can kiss my ass. If he wants to say something, then he’d better just fucking say it.

“You really need a new hobby,” he remarks, indicating the laptop with the cigar like a pointer stick.

“Or a new second-in-command,” I retort.

“Hey, I’m just saying, it’s weird! Usually, you’re foaming at the mouth to butcher them.”

He rakes his hand through his blond hair, ruffling it. He’s slumped in the chair with his knees wide apart, arms on the rests. The cigar hangs between his fingers, ash dropping to the floor, staining the tiles. He’s a picture of easy, unforced arrogance—the kind you’re born with. The kind that tends to be mutually exclusive with actual, earned confidence. Not the greatest trait in a friend, but not the worst in a second-in-command.

“I’m investigating. I want to know the facts before I act.”

“Bullshit.” He shakes his head, smoke coming out of his nose. “But whatever. Can I at least have a fuck too once you get bored with her? I’m dying to know what the fuss is all about.”

“You know what I’m dying to know?” I ask him in a flat, level voice without bothering to look at him.

“What?”

“How hard it would be to push a lit cigar down someone’s throat. Not very hard, I reckon, but I won’t know until I try it ...” I glance up, briefly, just long enough for him to register the threat in my glare.

Contrary to what he thinks, he isn’t untouchable. No one is. He needs to stop forgetting that.

“It’s impossible to have a conversation with you anymore,” he scoffs. “Anytime someone says something you have no answer to, you threaten violence right away. If you enjoy fucking her that much, it’s okay, man, just fucking say so.”

He’s about two words away from my temper exploding. What saves him is a click of a button that takes me to the next photo—one that captures my attention and drowns out everything else, including his voice.

It’s a photo of the traitor and the crybaby, from the day I captured them. Probably taken on a stative. To a random viewer, there’d be nothing special about it whatsoever. But I know better.

First of all, she has maybe three pictures of herself on that laptop, so that in itself makes it suspicious. But I can also tell her smile is forced, and there’s tension in her posture and a sense of absence in her eyes. This isn’t the face of a girl who wants a photo with her friend. They’re both looking directly into the camera, but it’s almost like they’re just nervous bystanders. Like they’re not the main focus ...

There’s something in the grass behind them. A piece of metal.

I zoom in.

My pulse picks up, my heart hammering. Bile rises up my throat. My vision swims.

A data plate from a nuclear missile. That alone is a little improbable, but not impossible. We captured them not too far from the Rift. A stray fragment could have been thrown that far outward by the explosion.

The plate is blackened, heat-scorched, battered by the elements. But the coin-sized seal etched into the dull grey metal is still clearly visible. A make designed by the Dunnby Continuum. By the Continuum! Not Synechord. The Continuum!

We’ve been told that Synechord dropped the bombs to prevent the Continuum from gaining its territories. The Continuum’s official propaganda was, of course, that Synechord was losing and got desperate. Unofficially, we all knew Synechord did it as a last-ditch attempt to prevent a nuclear war.

We’ve all seen evidence of Synechord’s strike: pictures of their stealth bombers, pictures of debris of their make, scattered intel preceding Rift Day, pieced together after the fact ... Even in our age of fake news and misinformation, nobody has ever doubted that Synechord created the Rift. I have never doubted it.

But where the hell did that data plate come from?

It can’t be here. Not this side of the Rift. It just can’t. Because if it is ... then the Continuum must have been involved somehow.

“Are you even listening to me?” Attila is in my face, pounding my shoulder.

“Fuck off.”

Something must register in my expression because his tone is sombre when he asks, “What’s going on?”