“In my sleep,” I told her. “I’ve done this climb before, and you know that.”
“Of course, I know that,” she said. “But your trainee doesn’t. Show him. Show everyone. Or has all that drink gone to your abilities now?” She leaned in close. “You’ve got to admit, you weren’t on form those weeks before we pulled you in.”
I didn’t’ need to hear more. I clapped my hands and rubbed them together. “Move,” I snapped at Artemis. “I’ll show you how it’s done.”
5. ARTEMIS
I watched as Donovan took to the climbing wall, no chalk on his hands, just pure grit. He climbed all the way up—a hundred feet off the ground, I think. He punched the alarm, and had his moment of applause from everyone else training.
“He’s the best,” Mercy said. “Or he used to be. I heard about what the two of you got up to.”
“It was nothing, we had unfinished business,” I said.
“So, the business is finished?” she asked.
Staring at Donovan’s back as he climbed down the wall with just as much ease and swagger as he had climbing it. Mercy snapped her fingers in front of my face. “Yes, it’s finished,” I said. “But I would like someone else to train me. I don’t think he can be professional. You heard him, he was trying to get me to climb this wall without the harness. I could’ve died.”
Mercy’s gaze cut through me like a knife. “He was testing you, and maybe me,” He red lips pursed before she smacked them. “Either way, you’re stuck together. And you’ll have to work through whatever it is you’re doing together.”
I didn’t know if she wanted us to fuck it out or fight it out. She was impossible to read. Did she really want him to train me? Was this punishment for him, or for me? I had a lot of questions I knew wouldn’t be answered.
“Ok, Donovan,” she said, walking towards him with the sharp clop of her heels. “You’ve proved your point to the trainee.” She gestured back to me without even looking. “Now, are you going to take this seriously? It’s been a handful of days, and I don’t think your heart is in it.”
He scoffed, dusting his hands down his sweatpants. “My heart isn’t in it,” he said. “You know that already. I want to be out there, not in here reliving the reason why I—” Donovan’shardened eyes stared at me, they softened a little, like he was remembering the time we spent together fondly. “Art and I have a history, and he deserves someone who doesn’t know him.”
“We’re not going over this again, I thought you were fine with it,” she said.
“Turns out I’m not,” he said, raising his hands and his voice.
She struck the side of his face with a slap, the sound echoed. “Don’t speak to me like that,” she said. “You owe it to him. If that’s what you want to hear, Donovan. I’ll tell you it, in front of him, and everyone else. I asked you—no, forced you to train him because you put him into the line of fire. We took him, helped him, and now, you’re here to shape him. If you can’t do that, we’re going to have a bigger problem.”
“Mercy, he was supposed to go off to college,” he said.
Raising both my hands and waving them. “I’m still here,” I said. “I wanna train. I made my decision. I don’t care who trains me. I just wanna learn.” I walked toward the climbing wall. “If that means proving to you I can follow orders, I’ll fucking do it.” Without hesitation, fueled by pure adrenaline, my fingers hooked into the jutting stone face, my feet finding their place, I went up.
There silence below me. A single look revealed the heights I’d climbed—maybe halfway up. Fifty feet off the ground. There was no hardness, no protection. I didn’t know why I’d done it. For attention was probably the biggest bet, but I needed to prove I could do it since he’d asked—and I wasn’t going to get chewed out for not following orders.
“You can climb back down now,” Donovan said.
“Unless you feel like you can push on,” Mercy said. “There’s got to be some prestige in climbing to the top, besting your trainer.”
She was right. If I could reach the bell and have the buzzer ding, everyone would applaud me again, and maybe I wouldn’t break he record, but I’d definitely earn something for doing it unharnessed.
“Take your time,” Donovan said. “Be careful.”
“Sweeten the deal, Artemis, if you do it, I’ll personally put money in your account.”
It was one of the reasons I was doing this, money could be used to help people out there, it could be used against the people whose one goal it was to target the poor, make them their mules, and kill them. I didn’t put a second thought into it, and my fingers were itching to keep going, all the way, foot placements became precarious with the ledges being less than an inch out. Maybe I should’ve used the practice wall with all the colorful hand holds instead of the wall face itself.
My fingers were becoming numb and sweat was collecting on my forehead making a beeline for my eyes, where it was already beginning to sting from the saltiness. I controlled my breathing, like I remember River telling me before pulling the trigger. I did it. I pressed the alarm, and as everyone applauded me. I had to get down.
It took me twice as long, but I managed. All the way to my shaky feet on the ground and the reddened tips of my fingers which had received some small cuts from the jutted rock.
“I’ll do it,” Donovan said in my face.
Mercy stood behind, a hand on her hip. “You said that once already. If you flake, Donovan. I’ll make sure you feel it.”
He smirked at me, and I saw the old Donovan there. The guy who went to the store for a pack of cigs and came back to me on the rooftop with two bottles of wine and noodles. I always asked if he’d paid for it, and he’d avoid it, because I knew he was always trying to prove he wasn’t just a gun for hire, he was a skilled thief too.
