You had to do something to take your mind off the savagery of the lifestyle.
In Slater’s case, he’d found the answer in the bottom of a bottle. Drink, dull the mind, suppress the bad thoughts (and the good ones too), wake up the next morning with a splitting headache, sweat it out, get back to training. It wasn’t ideal for longevity or health, but nothing in his life was.
He’d never understood how Jason King had resisted the urge to do the same.
Now, he got it.
It was all habit. He’d conditioned his brain to operate on autopilot. Downtime? Open a beer. Pour a whiskey on the rocks. It had become automatic, an unconscious primitive response to his circumstances. As soon as he’d changed the script, the urge had fallen away. It hadn’t been easy. But there was someone new in his life, and she’d helped him through the uncertainty.
Despite decades of meditation, for the first time in his life he was truly at peace.
Now he sat across from King in a familiar speakeasy-style bar in Koreatown. King had a pint of craft beer in front of him, the glass dewing with condensation.
Slater had a glass of water. It barely fazed him.
King looked down at the water, and then over to his own beer. He shook his head.
Slater said, ‘What?’
‘You classed yourself as an alcoholic, but you practically fixed yourself overnight.’
Slater shrugged. ‘I used to rely on it. So that’s definitely what I was.’
‘You never even struggled to get out of the woods.’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘You found the right girl, and it was like booze had never existed.’
‘It wasn’t because of her. That was just good timing.’
‘Still, I never saw you struggle.’
‘No shit.’
King paused, ruminated on it, then nodded. Slater was grateful. They didn’t need to talk about it for hours. Two syllables was enough to convey meaning, and all at once King understood.
No shit.
Meaning, All we’ve done for the last twenty years is struggle. We’ve fought and clawed for our own survival, all for a paycheque. All we know is the eternal fight. So, yes, I struggled. But I didn’t let it show. Not to you, not to anyone. Because that’s what I’ve been conditioned to do.
It wouldn’t feel right if they weren’t constantly struggling.
Peace was a foreign concept.
King said, ‘When are you off on your little vacation?’
Slater twitched, below the surface. That was the reason for his indecision.
He said, ‘We fly out tomorrow afternoon.’
‘I have no idea how you managed to get away with that.’
‘Violetta says we’re on good terms with the upper echelon.’
‘Wouldn’t know,’ King said. ‘Never met them.’
‘But surely you can believe that they’re grateful for what we did last time out.’
‘There’s entire divisions of our government that we’ll never lay eyes on,’ King said. ‘Violetta’s above us, and then there’s a whole world above her we know nothing about.’
‘Why are you telling me this? That’s the way it’s been our whole lives. Are you expecting it to change?’
‘I’m telling you,’ King said, ‘because I don’t think “grateful” exists in their vocabulary. They’re the shadow people.’
‘You have no idea what their vocabulary is,’ Slater said. ‘But we saved all of New York from anarchy. You know how close it was. You know we scraped through by a hair’s breadth. Sure, they’re in the shadows. They’re the ones behind the public façade of the President and Congress. They’re the ones who don’t change when Republicans and Democrats see-saw back and forth in and out of office. But even if they’re power-hungry sociopaths like you seem to think they are, they’d still be out of a job if New York went dark and the largest city in America plunged into anarchy. So, yes, I think they’re grateful. No matter who they are.’
King mulled it over and shrugged. He lifted the beer to his lips and took a swig, then wiped foam off his lip. ‘Fair point.’
Slater paused. ‘Do you really think that?’
‘Think what?’
‘That they’ve got their own best interests in mind.’
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ King said. ‘All our operations have been morally straight, so surely they’re selfless.’
‘Something along those lines.’
‘I think they know who we are,’ King said. ‘We have a track record. If we get dealt a bad hand, we rebel. We’ve done it multiple times. We don’t fall into line just because someone tells us it’s patriotic to do so. But the only reason they haven’t neutralised us is because we’re so damn good at our jobs. That doesn’t mean everything they do is pure. It just means they give us the ops they know we won’t turn down.’
Slater thought about it.
Didn’t answer.
They were good at that. They’d spent so long together that they knew, more often than not, a spiel didn’t need a response. Critical objective thinking was the key to their success and longevity. So Slater used it.
He thought more.
Then cocked his head. ‘Maybe you’re right.’
‘I’m just saying the world isn’t all sunshine and rainbows.’
Slater tensed his core, felt the faint phantom pain of a hundred battle scars. He looked down and saw his calloused blistered knuckles and the damaged skin along the tops of his hands.
He lifted his eyes to King and said, ‘You think I don’t know that?’
But he saw the same faint stirring of traumatic memory in King’s eyes, and he knew it was a pointless question.
They both knew it.
Maybe better than anyone on the planet.
They’d seen the
