Starts with a Match

Nine Lives

"I want you to look into someone for me," says Seya.

I roll my eyes at him without a care of rank, and I walk past him. "Good morning to you, too," I grunt, taking the next corner, tapping a folder to my thigh. "I'm busy, Seya, I don't have time to do detective shit for you."

Seya snorts and his nub arm swings out and stops me, and I don't stop a sneer in time before I meet his eye. Looks weird, feels weird. Don't know why he won't just get a prosthetic. "Have you heard of someone named Stephanie Jackson?"

"No, should I have?" I turn to keep going down the hall, nearing the exit doors, but I walk slower for him.

"I hoped you might've—new in town, about Toby's height I think—how tall is Toby?"

"Five, five"." One-seventy pounds, ambidextrous but only when drawing, pigeon-toed but only when they're cold, allergic to pineapple, giggly and clingy after an orgasm—I could go on and on. 'Specially about that last one. Literally all I've been fucking thinking about for the last three damn days.

"Okay, so yeah, petite, pierced ears I think—blonde hair."

I shrug, opening the door for him. He sucks on a tooth and pulls sunglasses out of his pocket, flipping them one-handed and slipping them on. "Male, female or other?" I offer.

"Female, Caucasian."

"Who is she?"

"That's the thing, I don't know. But we can't trust her."

I stop then, nearly open my mouth to ask what he's talking about, when I pull him by the pinned-up sleeve out of the way of other soldiers. We get some nods, a salute, and we half-ass a salute back.

"So far I have nearly nothing to go on—why don't you trust her, why do you want me to look into her? How could I even do that, I'm not in the informant field."

"No, but your spouse co-runs the post group. Can you ask Toby?" Seya says next. He makes like he wants to cross his arms, and a snarl of frustration takes over his face.

"Do you have anything else? A picture? I love Toby, but they're not the best with names—"

I slap my mouth closed, shocked by my own words. Okay, so that just flew right out there.

Seya doesn't even notice.

"No picture, I'll see what I can do. I met her at the picnic event after you and Toby left, back earlier in the summer. Immediately I fucking disliked her."

I can think of a few new spouses like that. Not Toby. Whom I apparently love, outwardly, admittedly. As if I wasn't already thinking about them too much anyway with an overseas deployment coming up. Now I'm not gonna get anything done. "Right. Um. Why do you not trust her?"

"Gut feeling," he shrugs.

"Sure, and we'll just go off your gut feelings. Cause that hasn't gotten us in trouble before," I blurt. Seya looks at me with a blank stare. But he can't say otherwise.

"She was pushy, asked odd questions. Seemed to know things she shouldn't about that upcoming border mission from July. She said she was a new spouse but didn't have a damn idea what shit she was spewing about her husband's work."

"A lot of the spouses in Toby's group are clueless and nosy, so what?"

"Just do it. Before you get dragged to Russia on Friday and run out of resources," he sighs, turning to walk off. "And lives," he adds over his shoulder.

"What're you—where you going?"

"I'm going home to pack, soldier. I found out this morning that I'm flying out tomorrow."

"To where?"

"Russia, dipshit."

"Wait—you're going, too? Thought it was just old red unit lackeys?" I shout back.

With his back to me, Seya lifts his arm, his nub, out to his sides. "Told you, Kooper. Running out of lives. They might as well kill me now and save themselves the air fare."

I look around at that. Couple other grunts check him with confused frowns. I watch his back for red sniper lasers as he walks across the parking lot before he disappears behind the red unit building.

When I don't hear a shot echo out, I sigh out in relief, repeating Stephanie Jackson in my head until it doesn't sound like a name anymore.