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“Do I get any input on these signals? I have some ideas.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose, exhaling through flared nostrils. “No. These are standard signals for field ops.”
“Aye, aye, Captain. You’re the captain of this team, right? And I’m your sidekick?”
Shaking his head, he says, “Let’s go get our cover identities. We’ll come back to this later.”
“We’re like Batman and Robin. If Robin had tits.”
He leads the way out of the gym, and I smile to myself as I follow. Evander was right—I did learn something about him. He’s rigid and isn’t a fan of my quirky personality. If he’s going to get under my skin, at least I can do the same to him.
“Jessica?” I force my jaw back up where it belongs. “No, that’s not gonna work. I can’t pass for a Jessica.”
Simon, the ILF guy sitting behind piles of books on a messy desk in his office, pushes his glasses up on his nose and gives me a bright look. “You can, though. I chose Jessica and Brandon because they were both popular names in the years you two were born.”
Evander, sitting in the chair beside mine in front of Simon’s desk, puts out a hand to silence my next objection.
“We’ll hardly need to use the names. Give us the rest, Simon.”
Simon sets his coffee mug down on the desk, liquid sloshing over the side onto a stack of papers.
“Okay, uh ... shit, that one’s important.” He rubs his palm over the spilled coffee. “Brandon and Jessica Carpenter. Brandon grew up in Cincinnati and went to Ohio State. So O-H!”
He looks at Evander expectantly, but Evander doesn’t respond.
“Okay, you’d say I-O back to that, with great enthusiasm, if you really had gone to Ohio State, but uh, you can work on that, I guess.”
“Simon,” Evander prods.
Simon sighs. “Graduated from Ohio State with a degree in fire science and started fighting wildfires as a contractor. Quit after four years; started your own business installing carpet. Went bankrupt three months before the virus.”
“Bankrupt?” Evander frowns. “Why is that necessary?”
Simon pushes his glasses up again. “It builds empathy among white, uneducated men, who are the ones you need to worry most about running into.”
“Christ ...” Evander rubs his jaw. “Fine.”
Simon looks at me. “Jessica, you still haven’t gotten over the death of your three-year-old daughter Vivian from the virus, because, again, empathy.”
“You think?” I show him the back of one of my hands, tattooed with a black X by the Whitman regime. “Even with this?”
His blue eyes brighten with excitement. “Yeah, I do. Brandon and Jessica were afraid of getting pregnant again after the virus—”
“Were they, though?” I cut in. “Given Brandon’s issues with erectile dysfunction and low sperm count, it was a miracle they had little Vivian.”
Evander shifts in his chair, a muscle in his jaw flexing.
“So any details you two want to build in are fine with me,” Simon says, clearing his throat again. “But, uh ... for the rest of my part, Jessica was arrested by New America two years ago after she was caught buying birth control from a street vendor.”
“And they didn’t even care about Brandon’s crack habit and use of prostitutes to live out his pegging fantasies,” I say with a sigh. “Fuck the patriarchy.”
“Amira.” Evander glares at me. “This is serious.”
Simon looks between us, his eyes bulging. “Um ...”
“Finish, Simon,” Evander barks.
I press my lips together while Simon delivers the rest of the cover story he planned for us. We’re supposed to leave tomorrow, and I’m going to keep making sure of one thing.
