High Caliber Friends

  Philip's speech had ignited fantasies that were still burning through Gradie’s head. He saw himself leaving the team and joining some random low-level outfit, riding side by side with addicts and psychopaths, grinding his the dder one kill at a time. A real Hardworlder earning his bohe fantasies were all the more entig because he khat if he didn’t pursue them soon, he would never get the ce. If he got any more experienced, he might bze through the ranks of amateurs, and he’d still be in Michael’s debt.

  Sam broke his reverie, and the still silence, with a groan.

  “So fug dramatic!”

  Philip was finally about to say something, but Michael beat him to it.

  “An, put that fug gun down and grab the rifle.”

  Philip gred at Michael like he might shoot him, and Sam turned right around and faced the inside of the locker, pretending to load something.

  “But, if you in any way endanger anyone else oeam, or don’t pull your weight, or don’t snap to it when Max gives you an order, you’ll be w the job as Zoe’s personal barista.”

  “I’ll just lock you in a closet,” she said in his ears, softly, as if afraid Michael might overhear her from a thousand miles away. Gradie smiled, thinking of EP pushing him into a closet with her head barely ing up to his . Michael mistook the smile for something else. His voice was like thunder, low and distant but felt in the air all around.

  “I’m serious, An. Maybe I’ve let too much slide. Maybe you really did just get lucky st job, but now’s the time to find out. Don’t fuck it up.”

  He was absolutely terrifying when angry, big kid faotwithstanding, and Gradie just nodded repeatedly, feeling embarrassed, like a kid that had thrown a tantrum and handed what he had cried for. Maybe that was the point. Or maybe Michael had known how close he had been to leaving.

  Philip had lit a cigar, probably to have something to bite that wasn’t his tongue, while Michael was talking to Gradie, and now blew smoke betweewo of them, and looked Michael dead in the eye.

  “Thought I was in charge of the operators.”

  Gradie had to give him credit, he didn’t even flinch when Michael turned his gre on him. Gradie got the feeling he was watg something that had a long history.

  “You are.” Michael’s fad voice softened suddenly. “But it’s up to me who gets to be one.”

  Michael g Gradie then turned back to Philip.

  “We’ll he extra rifle, I think.” There was a softo it close to an apology, adjat to a request. Philip's face fluttered through something that might have been realizatiourned on Gradie.

  “I hope you remember some of that shit I tried to teach you in the clubhouse, because if you so much as fg—"

  “I know how to stay on my line,” Gradie snapped, and realized in the same instant, that he did.

  Stay on your line!

  He remembered Philip yelling the phrase a thousand times in the clubhouse, though his mind tried to vince him they had been nothing more than dreams. He remembered, even more hazily, those radies that had eventually e to the clubhouse with years of experieaying on their line, and he remembered, like an echo of the other memories, that he had stayed on his line multiple times in training st week.

  There was another refra of the memories, more solid but somehow more dead. Anradie that had practiot fgging his teammates in MilSim airsoft, paintball, and for force. That Gradie was his Self.

  The memories and dreams radiated around him, and he saw himself, like he was standiween two mirrors, staying on his fug line over and ain, and suddenly knew he could do it here, now, if asked to.

  Philip let something like the rval stage of a smile fsh across his face before he caught himself and put forward the same old sneer. It was too te. Gradie knew Philip’s pride when he saw it.

  As if sensing he’d been found out, Philip spoke in a teeth-ched growl.

  “You’ve got five mio get geared up.”

  Gradie uro grab the rifle off the shelf, then remembered.

  “My gun’s in the unit from yesterday.”

  Sam froze and he heard Philip exhale. Luke’s shoes spped crete as he hopped out of the SUV.

  “You push a mini gun?” He smiled over Philip’s shoulder and Gradie couldn’t help but return it.

  “Just grab the one off the shelf,” Sam whispered to him like a hiss. Philip poi her and boomed.

  “No, I wanna see what he’s got, cause it’s the only gun he’s getting.”

  Gradie shut the locker and smiled to himself.

  *****

  Gradie sat awkwardly o Philip in the ter seat while Sam drove the SUV out of the garage onto the residential street then back around into the ste plex. They parked in the middle of the rohilip marched up to the unit. The door rolled up and the lights flicked on, and he waved Gradie inside.

  “Alright. Show me.”

  The rest of them stood outside the door like Gradie was going to pull a tiger out of somewhere and he felt his hair stand on edge. Everything inside was as it had beeerday, besides the diamond silver Mercedes-Maybach S Guard parked where Sam’s Jeep had been, but for a moment, he fot everything and was sure he had fucked up.

  Then he saw it.

  He walked over to the rge safe he had been looking at yesterday, snug between two un safes. After a pause, more for dramatic effect than anything else, he leaned over and started turning the bo lock.

  “Hmm,” Luke grunted. Philip ughed.

  “Oh, this’ll be good.”

  The lock disengaged and Gradie grabbed the handle.

  “Bullshit!” Philip barked, but he let some of the edge e off of his voice. Luke cackled.

  “Ok bro, pull an RPG out of it for me.”

  Gradie pulled open the safe door, and there it was. Sitting in the dark, leaned in the back, surrounded by magazines. Suppressor and the other attats already on. He pulled it out, chambered a round, and held it in his hands.

  Luke sucked his teeth.

  “A bullpup? Whack.”

  “What is it?” Sam said, ing up behind him.

  “X95 in 300 bckout.”

  He rolled it in his hands a catch the light. He had asked the twins for an AUG in 300 blk, but they had said some things about gas blocks and Austrian police imports, and suggested this instead. It didn’t have the video game nostalgia factor of the AUG, but it still looked pretty cool, and had served him well in the clubhouse.

  He looked up and found Sam smirking at him, far from impressed.

  “Oh, so now you’ll be like unkilble, right?”

  Philip stepped between Gradie and the door, casting a shadow over him. His words came out like an interrogation.

  “How did you know it was in there?”

  “I put it there.”

  “What?”

  “It’s my safe. That’s how I khe bination. I’m guessing one of the home invaders you have on payroll took it out of my house when I was robbed st month and it got mixed in actally with the rest of your safes.”

  In the quiet, the wind bleiece of trash, maybe an old soda or a pstic bottle, scratg down the crete row outside.

  He had pushed memory of the gun while priming in the Vault before dropping in, but hadn’t thought about the safe until he had seen Philip’s stash the other day. He hadn’t been sure it would work, and like Philip said, it hadn’t felt like doing anything. A brief, unrememberable moment of belief, and the Hardworlds had closed around his a, c it with hard facts and dull memory. Maybe he had pushed the robbery, but no matter how much he stretched his mind, it really felt like he had just remembered it.

  Philip nodded and s him.

  “Good job kid. Now you’ve tied me and your Self to a robbery. Why don’t we just take a group photo and post it online?”

  Gradie let his excitemehe better of him.

  “I thought you said this would be over today?”

  Philip poi him.

  “I’m getting real sick of you making excuses for your own fuck ups by trying to throw my words ba my face.”

  “I wouldn’t have had to push shit if you would have just armed me correctly.”

  “If the bullets start flying today, we’ll see if you’re armed correctly or not. And another piece of advice that’s probably wasted on you, there’s more to being well armed than what caliber you’re carrying. And in the spirit of your education, some of the most high value kills of all time in this game have been ched with a pistol. It’s the god damned fual on of Hardworlder! Maybe if you weren’t so caught up on inches—”

  Michael stood o them.

  “An, it’s bad etiquette to push on other operators without their knowledge.”

  Gradie thought it was bad etiquette to send someoo a possible warzoh just a pistol, Philip’s treatise on the importance of one be damned, but he just nodded and squeezed the grip on his rifle, feeling its weight. Armed and ready to shoot something, he was doh any versation that involved or included Philip.

  Michael smiled like he always did, like he knew what everyone was thinking all the time, and waved them outside.

  “All right let’s move. We’ll take 199, you take the loop. Good luck out there.”

  He got in the Mercedes with Philip, and they roared off down the row.

  Gradie got loaded up, each magazine adding to the electric hum behind his ears. When he closed the suit button over his pte carrier, he remembered he had it tailored to fit best when fully loaded. Everything, it seemed, was ing together. He grabbed a shoulder bag with more ammo and got in the SUV.

  Somewhere beyond the fence of the ste, an engine roared as Philip and Michael took off towards the highway. Gradie stared out the window as the e sheet metal walls and sand-colored crete rushed by, and rolled his mind over the days his Self had spent at a multitude es, running thousands of rounds through the X95, until suburban trees gave way to fast food signs and then to wide open cloud-brushed blue as they looped onto the highway. Out across the city, the edges seemed to bristle like bdes, and his pte carrier pressed against his chest as he breathed.

  Ask the Hardworlds, and you may receive, but will you ever know for sure? ime, a man remembers, a trap is set, and strangers walk among us. episode, Other People.