Easternport Vol. 1, First Edition

For Family - Part 2

Cory

"Cory? Are you in there?" I heard someone's voice through my bedroom door. But it took me a bit to figure out who it was. In my dream, it was Miles, but when I opened my eyes, the voice changed into someone that wasn't Miles or Mikkel or Markus. Whoever it was knocked again. "Cory?"

Markus spoke next: "No need for all this, she never sleeps naked." The door opened and Markus shoved Steven into the room. His feet stopped right in front of my eyes, and I recognized his police uniform pants.

"She's...she's not here either," Steven said.

"I'm here," I said, pulling myself out from under the bed. He jumped back when he saw my hand.

Behind Steven, Markus still stood in the doorway. "Good morning, Cor', Steven here was looking for Mikkel. We thought you might know where he was. Did Miles not come home either?"

"No, he didn't. And if anyone would know where Mikkel is, it would be you. I thought for sure you two were out together last night." I sat up on the floor and pulled the blanket around me.

"All I know is that he went to get Poldi out of the factory job and I haven't seen him since. Do you suppose they got into some Jaggar trouble?"

I didn't answer. It had been terrifying enough just trying to sleep on my own. The thought of Miles in trouble was too much for me to handle first thing in the morning. Instead I pulled myself off the floor and went to my closet to grab some clothes. "What did you need, Steven?"

"I wanted to speak with Mikkel. I suppose I should come back some other time."

"Well, don't leave yet," I said. "We might need your help. Your station has BPVs right?"

"BPVs?"

"She means bullet proof vests," Markus said.

"Oh, well, I can't just give those away," Steven said, "Do you really think Mikkel's in that kind of trouble?"

"Yes. Those Jaggars will be looking for revenge. And Miles's new clinic is right next to those factories, so he's probably involved in it too."

"It'll be just like the last time!" Markus said with a smile. "All we have to do is wait for them to call us."

"Call us how?" I said. "Even if that trick worked a second time, we don't have a phone."

"I don't know what the two of you are talking about, but I'm pretty sure I don't want to be involved and I can't just take equipment from the police station--"

"Of course not, you have to be sneaky about it," I said. I grabbed a shirt and jeans and went into the bathroom to change.

"That's not what I meant," Steven said before I closed the door in his face.

I changed quickly and went back to my closet to grab my short blade. My gun had been taken by the Serpents, but I was counting on Mikkel having his in his room as well as a stash of bullets.

"Cory, I don't want to be a part of this," Steven said again when I slung the short blade over my shoulder and headed for Mikkel's room.

"That's fine," I said, "I'm not asking you to come with us. But if you don't help us get some protection, then that means you're sending me and Markus into a war zone with nothing. So if we die, it's on your hands." In retrospect, that was a pretty cruel thing to say, and honestly, I wasn't trying to manipulate him into doing anything. But waking up to find out that my husband and my mentor were trapped in Jaggar territory was not helping my patience and all I could hear from Steven was "Blah blah, I don't have a backbone."

Steven

In retrospect, I probably should have edited that part out of your story.

Cory

Wouldn't that just prove my point?

About that time, Anna came into the room. "There's a young man at the front door," she said. "He says he's looking for Mikkel, do you know where he is?"

"Quite the popular guy, isn't he?" Steven said.

"Did you get the boy's name?" I asked.

"Poldi?"

"Ah, so I guess he did get Poldi out of his work order," I walked out to the second floor landing and called down to Poldi in the foyer. "Hey, Poldi, did you see Mikkel last night?"

Poldi did not look happy to see me. Underground patriots generally regarded me in the same ugly manner that the Serpents did. And Poldi was one of the angrier Underground patriots. I could feel his venom burning through me, even from that distance. "He came to the bread factory last night to get me out," he said. "You telling me he's not here? I'm gone."

"Poldi, wait!" I said. "We need your help. I'll make sure you're paid for it."

"Screw you, you puse jine."

"Hey!" Markus put his head over the railing to look down at Poldi. "Watch your language! And don't talk to a lady like that. Didn't your mother ever teach you manners?"

"Yeah, she did. She also taught us to be loyal—to not cheat on your spouse or your society. Did your mother ever teach you that? Or was she too busy boozing and flirting with any low-life that walked by?" Poldi turned his back on us and walked to the door.

Markus's face slumped and his shoulders sagged. I couldn't stand to see him so hurt. He almost looked like he could cry. So I jumped down from the second floor railing and ran after Poldi to make him apologize.

By the way, don't ever jump from the second floor. It's higher up than it looks and the landing hurt both my bare feet and my knees in ways that I was feeling for days.

I grabbed Poldi's shoulder right after he left the house, but he pulled away from me like I had some gross disease (also a common reaction toward me from society members). "Don't touch me!" he said.

"Go back in there and apologize to Markus," I said. "I don't give a damn what you say about me, but Markus deserves better. He can't help what his mom did."

"No, but he can help what he did. All of you sick bastards just killed half of us. And for what? The chance to live in a dilapidated old house and maybe get some table scraps from the Serpents?"

"No, we did it so that we could ensure that most of the Underground would live long enough to take on the Jaggars and maybe even survive that! What would have been the alternative, huh? If the Underground was lucky, maybe they'd win the war against the Serpents, but then what? There wouldn't be enough of you left to deal with the Jaggars and you'd get wiped out then. We did what we had to do to make sure that the most people lived. Period."

"Is that the lie that Mikkel told you? Or did you come up with that one on your own?"

"That's the truth."

"Then you're an imbecile and a jine. You're a jinecile. Congratulations, jinecile. You've made it into the Serpents. Even got yourself a fancy new brand. Who are you going to screw and betray now?"

I didn't respond right away. It wasn't that his words hurt me, I had too tough of a skin to let things like that bother me. But this fight wasn't going anywhere or helping anything and in the back of my mind, all I could see was Miles getting butchered in some horrible, rotting Dock room in Jaggar town.

Poldi took my silence as defeat and turned to leave. I let him take a few steps to try and clear the air of all the crap he had just spewed from his face hole before I tried another approach to it all.

"If you walk out on us now, you get dragged back to the factory. But if you can help us, I'll make sure that never happens. I'll make sure your family is given a real place to stay and jobs to do and food to eat. I can do that. Marcel listens to me. But you have to help us first."

He turned back toward me. "Help you what?"

Now this was where I had to be really careful. If I had said, "Run into Jaggar territory without a gun and find out what happened to Mikkel," I would have lost him forever. So instead, I said, "I need an extra hand at Dr. Gore's clinic... do you still have a gun?"