Syrup flak cannons boomed. Egg bombs arced. Shrapnel from bacon bit grenades peppered the docks of Shadow Poach Island the moment the Breakfast Council’s forces stepped off their stolen Zodiacs.
Tears rolled down Mac’s cheeks as he sprinted up the stairs at the end of them, betrayed and breathing wrong.
They were making him fight Hannah, and he was NOT happy.
C’mon Mac… Eureka and Tar said this was the only way. I have to pretend.
But his mouth said otherwise.
“NO NO NO NO! I don’t wanna fight with my wife! Not here! Not now!”
Just behind him, Hannah closed in, in full commitment to the bit.
“MAC,” she barked. “For the sake of the mission, please cooperate! I PROMISE I can handle ANYTHING you say.”
Turning on his heel at the top of the staircase, Mac faced her. Behind Hannah, the rest of the Breakfast Council’s forces backed her up. Eureka, Tar, and Gordon had their left flank, while Julia, Rowcols, and Yoked Abe Lincoln held their right.
“Anything?” Mac asked.
BRAPBRAPBRAP! The ragtag gang suppressed the Brunch Illuminati’s positions. All a part of their strategy.
“Anything!” Hannah answered.
For the first time since moving in with Hannah a month ago, he took a deep breath.
He blinked slowly, his vision growing blurry with tears and fatigue.
No more pretending.
“FINE. You oughta know. I really thought we were beginning to come to a mutual understanding, Hannah Cheryl Sinclair—”
POP! POP!
Hannah wavered as she dispatched two assailants behind Mac, her lip shaking.
“W-what do you mean by that?”
“That—this,” Mac gestured helplessly between them. “This was fucked up from the very beginning.”
“I kept stepping up. Into the violence. Into the shit. Trying to carry it with you.”
He shook his head, breath hitching.
"But emotionally?"
Bracing himself for what he was about to say next, he swallowed.
“I can’t keep pretending I don’t have any needs on that side of things. It’s exhausting, doing the work for both of us. You know why I helped you in the first place? Because when I saw you for the first time, you looked terrified and lonely—and that wrecked me.”
Hannah stared back, a doe caught in the headlights.
“So I took a chance. You took a chance. Then we kept taking chances.”
Mac sobbed. Real tears and snot. He wiped them away with his sleeve.
“Was I wrong to start hoping that you would stop pretending? Did I ever get to know the real you or was this just convenience the whole time? Please tell me, Hannah. Who are you?”
“Mac, wait no, I—” Hannah reached out for him, but it was too late.
He turned around, fearing the answer, but not fearing the bullets flying at him, diving into the breach once more, his boots stomping on the grated metal floor.
POP! POP! POP! POP! POP! She aced a cohort of goons wielding razor-sharp bread knives just as they jumped Mac.
“Fuck,” Hannah muttered.
Eureka keyed in, but squelched it early. “Oi… Thet wos—”
Tar and Gordon finished Eureka’s sentence. “Real.”
On the right, Julia and Rowcols stared at each other in silent horror.
Behind them, a Breakfast Council lieutenant asked Abe, “Orders, sir?”
Through gritted teeth, Abe answered. “We stick to the plan.”
---
A single thought kept pressing on his temple as Mac raced forward, more to avoid Hannah than to draw enemy fire: She said she could handle it.
Bar him going rogue, the Breakfast Council’s doctrine worked as intended. The Battle of Shadow Poach Island carried on full speed ahead. With the worst behind them, the rhythm of the battle settled into a familiar kill cadence.
Mac rushed ahead, the act already a burning husk on the docks. The spotlights on the guard towers were too bright for that, searing away the cloth and leaving the truth indecently exposed.
Hannah chased after him, picking off anybody who got too close.
The supporting elements pushed the line forward.
Then they broke out of the lower levels and onto the surface of the floating island.
Sunlight. Not a cloud in the sky. No smog. A gentle afternoon breeze. And chaos under the mile-wide cloaking system. Everything was as it should have been: a perfect day for sailing or kitesurfing on the Bay.
Hannah called to him from behind, “Mac—”
“You can’t have it both ways,” Mac retorted, already knowing the question.
He broke left, dodging a walker blasting Bloody Mary mixer at him.
BOOM! A rocket propelled grenade scored a direct hit on the cockpit, the explosion driving a sizzling, harmless wave of heat and shock through his body.
Recovering his momentum, Mac rejoined the advance. Around him: screams. Bloody, high-pitched screams. Calls for mothers. Blood everywhere. The smell of death wafted from a smoldering crater to his right. A dead end to his left. Forward. No time to process this. Forward. It hurt. But it needed to be done. Forward. Into the old maple syrup factory Eureka lased on the AR monocle.
Checking for traps… Clear.
With his gun drawn, he stepped inside. A Glock 19, set up just like Hannah’s.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“RAAAAAAH!” A Brunch Illuminati corporal bayonet charged him with a standard-issue jumbo fork, skewering a stack of ceremonial flapjacks, of course drenched in syrup. They wobbled as he charged Mac.
But Mac was quicker on the draw. POP! Headshot.
He kept firing anyway in frustration. POP! POP! POP! POP!
The pancakes slid off the tines and came to rest beside the corporal’s body.
His hands shook and his lips became numb.
It was his first.
Then, an aching quiet.
In the darkness of the lobby, Mac sniffled. Tears painted the tile below him.
Behind him, the door squeaked open, the sunlight illuminating his shadow in the doorway. Hannah.
“Mac.”
Mac straightened up, stopping his shaking. “Lobby’s clear. Let’s move.”
Without a word, they moved, their training doing most of the talking. Mac kicked open doors, and Hannah cleared the rooms inside. Hannah peeked close, and Mac swung wide. Eye contact was mercifully kept to a minimum. But the glances they stole dangled just out of reach, neither one able to confront the other.
Backup arrived, but they were all alone. The Breakfast Council turned the lights on. Mac’s blood clicked in his ears. His bones ached. Goosebumps multiplied on his forearms. Hannah didn’t look much better.
Her eyes are puffy and red…
They locked eyes once again, both opening their mouths to speak, but nothing came out.
They tried again. “I!—”
Stares from the grunts.
This time, she whispered. “On second thought, if we say it right now, we’re both gonna die in a really ugly way. Later?”
“Later.”
Mac paused.
“I—”
Hannah put a finger up to his lips, shushing him. Mac’s lips squirmed.
“Don’t say that either. Not yet. Haven’t you watched enough anime with me to know what happens when characters say that shit too early?”
Eureka busted into the conversation with her best wisecrack yet. “Oh my God, she’s beginning ta believe.”
The lobby roared with laughter.
Fuck. Did she hot mic that on main? Did WE say that on main?
Then Abe spoke up.
“We take a break here! Union rules. Fifteen minutes.”
The commissioned officers and the sergeants stirred.
Abe shrugged. “What? The Brunch Illuminati are union as well. They’re also taking a break right now.”
---
After the break, the first wrinkle in the plan revealed itself as Mac watched from afar. Having calmed down enough, he held Hannah’s hand as they recuperated in camping chairs, set side by side.
Usually, I would sit in her lap, but this is fine for now. I really thought back there was the end of our marriage…
“Huh… That’s weird. The only door to the sublevel is locked and almost impenetrable,” Tar muttered, typing away on her laptop, jacked into the door.
“‘DOCK LOAD LETTER?’ ‘sub0 on fire?!’ Da FAHK dew these mean?!” Eureka blew her top smooth off in a rage.
Abe leaned over Tar’s shoulder, squinting at the readout of the shattered error window on her screen; Eureka had punched the “Abort, Retry, Fail?” buttons clean off.
“Dock load letter,” he said slowly.
Tar paused. “Sir?”
Abe’s monocle whined and whirred, before clicking its focus into place.
“It’s clearance,” he began.
Beep! Beep! Beep! Between Mac and Hannah’s spot and the door, Gordon backed up a requisitioned Gator and dumped his load of HESCO barriers on the floor. “Clearance for what?”
Abe gave Gordon a side glance.
“For who’s allowed to be present during docking,” he said.
In the other corner, Julia looked up from playing Words with Friends on Rowcols. “So who’s allowed in?”
Mac tightened his grip on Hannah’s hand, his palms already starting to slick with sweat.
I don’t like where this is going…
Tar hunched over her laptop, her fingers hacking at Mach Find Out. Buwoop! She read the result, then shook her head.
“Well?” Abe asked.
Her fingers moved again, slower this time. She pushed her glasses up, her brow furrowing under them.
She turned around, answering carefully. “Sir.”
Abe looked at her.
“It’s not a list.”
Tar swallowed.
“It’s… two.”
---
The Brunch Illuminati didn’t waste any time firing a hail of br?lée flak at Mac and Hannah as soon as they stepped through the threshold. Mac shielded his eyes, his forearms stinging as the shards of caramelized sugar burrowed into them.
POP! POP! POP! Hannah returned fire, and the fire ceased.
Mac found his bearings.
It was a sparse arena. A set of three platforms made of grated metal catwalks, suspended high over vats of boiling maple syrup. At the bottom of the staircase at the end of the room, the Sunriser bobbed in its dock.
DING! DING! DING! DING!
It taunted them to go forth, a hollow summons across the suspended platforms.
DING! DING! DING! DING!
Closer this time.
They stepped onto the center platform.
BOFF! A steel heel ripped into Mac’s side. Hard. He rolled to the right with the blow, every cell in his body petitioning his brain for permission to disintegrate. The textured metal of the catwalk clawed into his knees, ripping him up like bad origami.
“MAC!” Hannah yelled.
He looked up.
Through her black mask, the pilot of the exoskeleton looked down on him. The draft stirred her white lab coat and blonde hair. A servo whined as she crossed her arms. Dr. Prudence Stern in the flesh.
Mac crawled away from her on his back, knowing it was futile. He put up a weak hand in front of him, a mockery of self-defense.
PUNCH! Hannah tagged in for him, planting a shiner and forcing it to bloom on the woman’s face.
Hannah…
“You BITCH,” Hannah snarled.
The hits kept coming.
“No one but me—”
Then the finisher.
“CAN HIT MY HUS—”
Stern smacked Hannah’s fist out of the way and countered with a heavy cross.
Hannah joined Mac on the ground, missing a couple teeth and sporting a fresh black eye. She faced him, reaching out a hand.
Mac took it.
“Babyboy. Did I do good?” Hannah asked, smiling through her tears.
Blood dripped from the corner of her mouth, her consciousness in limbo.
Static buzzed in their earpieces. Eureka. “MAC! HANNAH! WOT’S HAPPENING IN THERE?!”
Mac and Hannah ripped them out of their ears, letting their wires fall into the vats below. They shared a look, nodding once.
Clank! Clank! Clank! The platforms shook under Stern’s stomps as she stalked up.
It’s the right time to say it.
Mac said it, squeezing Hannah’s hand.
“Whatever happens, I love you.”
Stern snickered. “Ha.”
It grew into a laugh, then a cascading failure of composure. “Haha.”
She grabbed her stomach as she staggered backwards towards a railing, the metal arms of her suit coddling her. “HA—HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
Gotcha, bitch.
“Oop!” Stern went over the railing and somersaulted, backflipping multiple times into a vat of 500° syrup, laughing all the way down. “You assholes were for real the whole time?! No frickin’ way!”
Rumble!
WHOOP! WHOOP! WHOOP! The red alert brought the assembly line to a stop. Above them, pipes sheared from their flanges, and valves emulated irate tea kettles. Steam, bolts, and gaskets showered them. Below, the maple syrup danced, pleading to geyser out of their vats. The Sunriser’s launch bays opened, Stern’s last resort. A dead man’s switch.
Mac saw the greatest threat too late. The steam main above them ruptured, catapulting an SUV-sized section of pipe into the supports of their catwalk. It buckled, producing a hideous, grinding noise as their side dropped multiple feet.
Then freefall. Hands around his waist. A chin tucked over the top of his head. Their love reduced to grip and bodyweight—pure physics—as they rode the bumps into the void where the floor was supposed to be.
They landed. Hannah let go.
No. No. Nonono.
Lifting her arm off him, Mac got up, only a few more cuts and bruises to his name.
She lay there. Broken. Bleeding. He checked her pulse. Weak, but alive. Breathing. Barely.
“Hannah?”
“Hannah?!”
“HANNAH!”
