Wednesday, March 16, 2022 Charlie’s flat, TriBeCa, Manhattan, New York, United States

“Els!”

“Charlie!”

Followed by an epic hug and then them jumping up and down like children.

Jade, ever serious, came over for a more sedate hug.

“I can’t believe how long it has been. I have so much to show you. Come on.”

They came down the stairs from the roof into Charlie’s flat. Charlie took her to the room she had borrowed before and Ella got a surprise when she found all her stuff there.

“I moved Jade out of that tiny shit studio, so you live here now too.”

Ella looked around and dropped the duffel she had brought on the bed. And then unzipped her coat to put it away. She was too excited to protest.

Charlie had noticed how heavy and hard her coat had been, but was still surprised when she saw that Ella was wearing her body armor and had a bolstered handgun and knife at her side. And that she didn’t even bother to take them off a if she was too used to wearing them.

“Could I get the other room across the hall?”

“But that room sucks! It faces the alley and doesn’t have this great view!” Charlie protested.

“Ummm, yeah, that is sort of the point.”

Charlie thought about it and then it clicked. Ella was worried about being shot, on the fifth floor. And she was forced to look at her best friend in a new light. She looked again at the ease at which Ella was wearing her body armor and military fatigues, the handgun and long knife opposite one another on each thigh, how Ella stood out of direct view of the windows with a back to a wall and constantly scanned the room. The fact that she had rappelled out of a helicopter in fucking New York City onto Charlie’s rooftop in the middle of winter.

“Yeah, sure. Let’s get your stuff moved over now. Draw the curtains for now.”

Ella gave her a grin and they set to work.

They sat in the kitchen and Ella described the training she had been doing. She had taken off the vest but otherwise had just come down to catch up.

“Els, still studying physics in all that spare time of course?” Charlie asked sarcastically.

Ella nodded sheepishly.

Charlie could only notice more changes. Ella had been getting lean before, but now there was almost a hardness to her features. She sat and stood with a military set to her soldiers. And she was a lot more watchful than she had been.

Charlie shook her head a bit and poured Ella another drink1 and cranked up the music2.

But Ella was still Ella under there. It hadn’t been so long they had grown apart despite all these changes in their lives.

She had to go off on Charlie for taking the job at Ixus. “Why are you putting yourself in the line of fire like that?”

But Charlie only knew that she needed to help her friend. And this was the only way she could think to do it. And how do you say that? You don’t. And it didn’t need to be said, Ella knew and just felt guilty.

Surprisingly Charlie liked her new job. Somehow, she loved modeling exotic derivatives more than particle interactions. The company that Tommy Xu ran treated its employees well and trained them well as long as you pulled the sixteen-plus hour days.

Soon they would be giving her real money to manage and Charlie would never admit it, but she was excited. Perhaps Ella wasn’t the only one who had changed.

But as Charlie and Ella traded jibes back and forth, Jade sat there sipping her glass of wine. Watchful.

And then Jade knocked over a bottle and had it crash and watched as Ella pulled her handgun out and dove into a crouched position.

“Oops” she said drily. Ella stood up and looked embarrassed, but Charlie just looked scared

“Time for some honesty Ella. What the hell happened to you?”

Ella holstered her gun, and Charlie and Jade cleaned up the broken glass.

Ella thought for a moment, pulled the handgun out, cleared it and put it on the table in front of them. Then she pulled the long wicked knife with the brass knuckle guard and set it next to it.

“I have been sleeping with these for weeks, but sometimes it feels like my whole life.” And she went on to tell them of the assassin, the daily training, nightly patrols in dark hallways, the dead soldiers, the constant state of alert for weeks, the final trap.

She skipped over the tortured bodies, some images you didn’t burden others with.

At the end, Ella smiled ruefully, “The training was relentless. We would get up and either weightlift or swim in the freezing bay, or some other sort of insane activity. Then eat crappy military rations. Then the shooting range. Then ’traditional’ weaponry. Then classes in whatever. Constant surprise testing to stay out of lines of fire and potential traps. Zaidu said it helped to build awareness, but I am mostly just afraid of windows now.”

“You seem like you are having trouble backing off of the edge.” Jade observed dispassionately.

“More than a little bit,” Ella admitted. “But… and this is the weird thing. I loved every minute of it. Even that abuse from Zaidu, I didn’t care that much because I was… I was,” and here Ella ran out of words.

Charlie wanted to jump in with a quip about masochism so badly but she restrained herself. Ella needed to voice it herself.

She say there a moment. And then Ella said, “I felt alive.” And she looked at Jade and Ella both knew they were thinking of their last conversation before Ella had moved out.

They sat there a moment after the admission.

“So… Els is an adrenaline junkie.” Charlie and then held up her hand to forestall Ella’s objection. “I am joking. You are a junkie for two things: excellence and mattering. It is why you went into physics, remember? You would never settle for anything less than a Nobel Prize. And now you are into something much bigger. Something so crazy I remind myself every morning this is all real.” Charlie paused for dramatic effect and took a swig of her drink. “I work for a fucking dragon.”

Jade looked from Charlie to Ella, “Can you do something magic for me? I feel like what I saw was all a dream.” Charlie nodded

Ella thought for a moment. “I didn’t have time to work on too much. Mostly invisible tripwires which weren’t invisible to the assassin. But, let me try something I have wanted to work on.”

She furrowed her brow and concentrated. A glow started to appear next to them in the kitchen. Indistinct at first, it began to coalesce. Into a half size version of the table they sat at and two small people sitting at it.

Jade and Charlie gawked as the image firmed up into a miniature still-life of them.

Jade asked, “Where are you?”

But Charlie grabbed her arm and said wonderingly, “We are so beautiful. That isn’t us… is it?” She sounded uncertain.

Jade looked again and saw. And even she was moved, “That is how Ella sees us.”

The image collapsed. Ella had a light sheen of perspiration on her forehead. “I can’t do it for long and I can only do what I see, so I can’t do myself. Sorry, did you guys ask me something?”

“You made my boobs too big,” said Charlie and they all cracked up.

Later they sat in the hot tub in Charlie’s palatial bathroom. Letting the warm water soak in.

Ella felt tension she didn’t know she had leave her body. Charlie sat far away and looked drowsy, her cocktail glass half filled with warm water.

Jade had gone to bed.

“So… you and Adra?” asked Ella. Adra had leave every other weekend unlike Ella and had heard very little about those weekends.

Charlie flushed a bit. And Ella kicked her under the water. “C’mon. Spill.”

“Yeah. He comes over on his weekend leaves. And, you know, tells me about stuff. Like their history. What life was like growing up in their crèche.”

“So where is he this weekend?”

“Hoes before bros. You were off for your very first leave. I told him to go do tourist shit or something.”

Ella ripped the rest of her glass down and sighed.

“And?”

“A girl doesn’t kiss and tell.”

“Since when?”

Charlie blushed a bit more. Her pale skin really showed off the pink in her cheeks. “Since well… fuck. Is this what it feels like for you when I am giving you shit?”

Ella smirked. “So what’s on the menu for tomorrow?”

“About that. My dad is coming to visit.”

The Last Word

1 1/2 oz. J. Reiger & Co. Gin or other London dry gin 1 1/2 oz. Green Chartreuse 1 1/2 oz. Luxardo Maraschino 1 1/2 oz. Lime juice Shake vigorously all ingredients together with crushed ice for about 15 seconds Pour into two chilled martini or other stemmed cocktail glasses Garnish with a lemon or lime peel or mint or maraschino cherry or whatever.

"Starlight" by Dave remixed by prodbyC100