Three

Alison and Paige shared a cheery hug and parted ways there at the north steps of Faunce House, where Waterman street bisected the spruce mall, illuminated by the Victorian lamps that lined the thoroughfare. Paige went west, toward Hope College, hands in her pockets, a little bounce in her step. A coquettish smile crept across her slight features, hidden under the dim lights.

Alison crossed Waterman and headed east, toward Walter and Norwood, wondering who her long-legged shadow would follow. She dared not look. She produced her phone, affixing her earbuds as she hung a left toward the Urban Environmental Lab. She flicked through her playlist until she found the familiar red cover of OMNI by Minus the Bear. Bright synthesizers pulsed melodic candy over driving, upbeat drums as Alison slipped the phone back into her pocket, taking a quick glance for movement in its reflection as she pressed forward. “Hm,” she whispered quietly to herself, picking up the pace as Leeds Theatre appeared distantly in her field of vision. “Freckles.”

She took off suddenly, hooking a hard left at the Page Robinson Building toward Angell Street. The passage was crowded with obstacles. Poplars lined the street side. Low walls, stairs and banisters, and various architectural features jutted out from the long building. The hall cut away at its corner revealing three beautifully illuminated floors. Alison popped over a railing, stumbling a little as she landed on the soft ground below. Classroom windows streaked by on her right as she avoided tamarack trees and their enormous errant seedlings. She was on an elevated platform that inclined toward a second cut-out at the far end of the hall.

Alison leapt across a massive gap that stood between the platform and the second floor of the building, light flooding through the ingress from within. She only had a couple steps of clearance before the hard edge spilled out to the steps below. Off she went, folding her legs slightly and bracing for impact. The landing took her palms all the way to the hard concrete as her legs absorbed the massive shock. Nothing broken. Keep running.

Alison loved the sensation of running. The heavy heartbeat, the deep, focused breathing. Her feet pounding beneath as her arms stretched out in front, grasping at the swiftly flowing air. Running was an elevated state. She could push her body to its limits, feel the acceleration, watch the world blur around her. But even more than that, running meant control. She could move as she saw fit, a gust of wind or a crashing wave, and nobody could stop her or tell her “no.” Unless they could catch her.

She made a hard right past the UEL Lab. Here, the surface level tapered up to several humanities buildings. A tunnel portal cut a clear passage through to Thayer Street. When Alison rounded the corner into the tunnel she accelerated into a sprint, the chorus of My Time drowning in the resonant echo of her steps.

I got your nights
I got your days
I got you on
My time

Red brick archways dotted with cylindrical drop lighting fixtures flew above her line of sight as she picked up the pace until she was hit with the reverberating wave of a baritone shout.

“Alison!” the voice reflected against the sonic prism. “I just want to talk!”

It took a few steps to slow her stride to an eventual stopping point. She stood there for a moment, facing the open mouth of the corridor and Thayer Street beyond. She waited for the steps to close in. When she was satisfied, she pivoted into an impatient pose, arms akimbo, and finally got her first good look at Freckles.

He wasn’t as tall as she was expecting. Five ten, but absurdly lanky. Legs to Chattanooga. As promised, freckles kissed his pale cheeks. And the whole ridiculous sundae was topped off by a perfectly shaped, dusty red pompadour. It jiggled like strawberry Jell-O as he approached. He lifted his palms in surrender as his smug smile hit the light of an overhead canister. Rats! He was cute. Losing focus, losing focus.

“Okay,” Alison offered, still out of breath. “Talk.”

“Okay,” he replied, his face contorting as he conjured exactly what to say. Alison glanced at the lapel of his charcoal peacoat. Silver pin. No surprises there, but it was nice to know that he was an enemy asset and not some creeper. He opened his mouth to speak, but instead of words, a barrage of cannon fire came bursting down the corridor. Or, at least, that’s what it sounded like. Shots in rapid succession, flying past her and through her, bass rumbling in her chest. The reality was worse– well, worse for him at any rate. He turned his head to reveal Paige Hall, comin’ in hot, a locomotive with centipede legs. He tried to square off as she let out a feral battle cry.

Alison, taking advantage of the flank, put a well-placed roundhouse kick in the crook of his left leg. His knee buckled to the ground. Paige dropped a shoulder, allowing her forearm to smash into the stranger’s midsection. His twisted frame tumbled to the ground. Alison and Paige circled to cut off his exit as he rolled over onto his back, hands still in surrender position. He let out a dilapidated cough, eyes wild and confusion plastered onto his expression.

“Okay,” he repeated. It was all he could seem to emit.

Alison shifted her posture as her mind settled. She looked completely in control of the situation by the time she broke the silence.

“It appears that some introductions are in order,” she said at last. “Everyone here knows who I am, apparently.” She gestured an open hand to Strawberry Pompadour before folding her arms. He sat up. When he placed his hands on the concrete to stand, Paige shook her head, and he stayed put.

“Reed Baker,” he said, a measure of calm returning to his voice. “I’m Cavalry.”

“Let’s see some ID, Reed Baker,” Paige interjected, looking excitable by Alison’s account. Reed produced his wallet and tossed it to Paige. She opened it, turned it over, and dumped its contents onto Reed’s lap. A student ID tumbled away from him. Paige picked it up, tossing his empty wallet into his chest with the same motion. She examined the ID, then looked back at him, overblown skepticism in her expression.

Alison chimed in here. “Hi, Reed Baker. This is–”

“Maverick,” Paige cut her off, a dramatic flair in her voice. Reed smiled.

“We don’t really do codenames, dear,” Alison hit back.

“Yet,” Paige replied, finger guns extended. She continued “Alright, then, Reed Baker. You may call me Paige Hall.”

“Pleased to meet you, Paige Hall. And pleased to finally meet you in person, Alison Ashe.”

“Okay, Cavalry,” Paige continued, a wild spark in her voice, “Let’s get down to brass tacks. What’s your business with the Lord Chamberlain’s Men? Are you gonna sing or are we gonna have to put this canary in the coal mine? Give him something to sing about. Black lung! You can sing about that. In the coal mine.” If she was excitable before, now she was an animal. Alison had never seen this side of her, and was loving every second. Reed looked over at Alison for guidance.

Alison shrugged, unable to contain a smile at Paige’s intense bad cop initiative. “You– can answer the first question.”

Reed exhaled. “Okay. Well, to start, Cavalry’s having a rough go this year. The Elephants are all over us. We’ve lost three assets already, and we’re pretty sure the other six are compromised. We’ve ID’d maybe four assets, total. No Elephants.”

“Sucks for you!” chimed Paige.

Alison cleared her throat. “I mean– she’s kind of right, bud. Your fumble only benefits us.”

“And now you’ve handed us your own skinny jeans-wearin’ heinie on a silver plate as a bonus!”

“Perhaps, Paige,” Alison added, her cool demeanor in sharp contrast to Paige’s unbridled passion. “Let’s hear what the nice man has to say.”

Reed continued. “Yes, I see the merits of popping my token here and now–”

“Like the head off a squirrel,” Paige threw in. She was pacing now.

“Graphic,” Reed went on, “Yes, you could very much just kill me now. But, I have another proposition that I hope you’ll consider. The Elephants have an early lead. They are last year’s winners by a good margin. Also by a good margin, Footmen and Cavalry lost last year. Now, I don’t know how far along you are, but I don’t see much of a shot at the Cavalry winning this year. However, I think it’s very possible that we have a shared interest.”

He stopped for a moment, perhaps to offer Paige another opportunity for ridicule and/or physical violence. She simply shifted her weight and rested her hands on her hips.

“Our factions don’t have to win to gain position. We just have to make sure the Elephants lose.”

Alison perked up a bit at this. “I’m listening,” she encouraged.

“The first thing I’d propose is a month’s ceasefire between Cavalry and Footmen. We want to shift some of the balance in your favor, but we need to trust that it won’t wipe us out completely.”

Paige jumped in here. “Looks to me like we’ve established no trust whatsoever at this point.”

“That is something I hope to remedy,” Reed replied, reaching into his coat’s inner pocket and retrieving an ivory statuette. He stretched forward and placed it on the ground as far from his person as he could reach. Alison walked over and picked it up, examining it under the yellow tunnel light. It was real.

“Reed Baker,” she said, rotating the Raja between her fingers as she spoke, “Are you, perchance, a sweet little moron?”

“I am fully aware that this move could be costly. It doesn’t matter. Like I said, Cavalry’s game isn’t to win, necessarily, but for Elephant to lose.” Alison transferred the figurine to Paige as their paths crossed. Reed continued. “So, yes, you could walk away with ten points tonight instead of nine, and three enemies. Or, you could help us take Elephant off the board entirely. Those arrogant dweebs are past due for a year as Footmen.”

“We certainly share that sentiment in common,” said Alison. “How do you see it actually going down?”

“You walk home with the Cavalry Raja, put it on display with your own. The Elephants won’t be able to resist a two-for-one. They’ll start planning a heist immediately. But, it’s impossible to know when. So you start controlling the flow of information.”

“Hm,” Alison’s wheels were spinning now. “We could leak a false job. Give them an exact date and time that we’ll be out of the house–”

“And we can be there to seal the trap.”

Paige smiled. “A two-faction ambush.”

Alison crouched to bring her face to Reed’s level. Paige must have passed the idol back to her at some point, as she was holding it between her thumb and forefinger. “I like it, Reed Baker. Really, I do. And I must say, this is a doozie of an olive branch. But we need a minute to consider all the angles before we can give you the thumbs-up.”

“I understand,” Reed said soberly. “How about this? Tonight, we trade the Cavalry Raja for my continued status of ‘currently alive.’ In a week, you will find me on the stone bench in the Garden Maze at Pembroke, noon, to work out a few details. If anything seems out of place in the meantime, you can kill me then and there.”

“You drive a hard bargain, Reed Baker,” said Alison, extending her hand to shake.

“Do I?”

“No. Not at all.”

***

Two Cheesy Gordita Crunches later, Alison and Paige were examining the ivory figurine from a second-story bedroom in a powder blue house on West Court Street. Alison shared the house with four other juniors, two of which she knew from the Theatre program. She had grown severely tired of the dorms sophomore year, and this solution, though not very private, was more economical. Housemates Cara and Bethany were currently downstairs shouting instructions at a horror movie, and she could hear Amy crying intensely into her phone on the other side of the paper-thin wall.

Like dear Amy, Alison had nothing to hide. Except perhaps the fact that she participated in a massive, cross-campus spy game that necessitated a host of offenses that would revoke her scholarship, including but not limited to: breaking and entering, wiretapping, and assault. She had, in fact, assaulted a young man earlier this evening and it was awesome. Other than that, though, nothing to hide. Chaturanga offered opportunities to hide in plain sight. She was pretty sure she could explain the entire thing to Cara and Bethany and their only reaction would be “You’re so creative, Aly.”

Paige, however, totally got it. Not only that, but she was a natural. The sight of her tearing down that tunnel, hellfire in her eyes, crashing into that Cavalry. A bullet through the barrel. Did she call herself ‘Maverick?’ Alison thought. Lucky for all of us that this little atrocity is on our own team.

Paige looked up from the statuette, her eyes refocusing on Alison’s. “So, we’re gonna screw over the Cavalry, too. Right?”

Alison smiled. “Oh, pumpkin,” she replied. “Of course we are.”