I left no man standing. I took it all—money, guns, drugs—then I hiked what felt like a thousand miles into a desert that was even worse than the one that spawned me. Money in the right hands, guns in the wrong ones, making deals and promises as I slipped across borders and got myself on a freighter to that other promised land I’d heard so much about . . . America. Land of the free . . . home of the brave. To me it was just one big, sprawling, endless landscape of noise, people, confusion, and clutter that I could lose myself in. I would be another forgettable face in the crowd, and maybe I could finally stop the fight that had been hammered into me so hard that it felt like it was the only thing I was made of.
I bounced around a lot as soon as I hit the shore. I never got comfortable anywhere. I thought it was best to keep on the move just in case my old government or my new one was looking for me. Besides nothing seemed to fit. The glamour of L.A., the glitter of Vegas, the throb of New York . . . all of it felt wrong and made me antsy. There were things in each place that felt familiar, parts of each city that allowed me to sink into oblivion and indulge in all the ways I had been denied my entire life.
So many girls. So much money. So many different vices at my fingertips. I knew if I wasn’t careful, I could easily become a slave to another master. Addiction made men weak and the last fight I wanted to fight, now that things had become so quiet, was one with myself. So I drifted and listened to the people deep in the shadows. People like me.
One place was uttered over and over again.
The Point.
From what they said, the city had apparently been a booming port town, but when the recession hit and the money left, it had fallen by the wayside. Empty shells of buildings were welcome signs to squatters, arsonists, and every denizen of the darkness . . . and so they came, the people that wanted to disappear and that wanted to make their money in obscurity and on the streets. Decades passed, so did hope for rebuilding, and the city—like too many places—had been forgotten by the rest of the country. Or so people said. Forgotten was what I needed, and so I listened to that whispered name. The Point.
I made more money and managed to see that more illegal goods changed hands and soon I found myself headed there. My old home received prime airtime on the national news . . . the home I was headed toward seemed to exist only in nightmares and warnings.
I was in the Point for less than a day when I got word that the man that ran the streets wanted to see me. I liked to lay low. I liked to blend in, but here it didn’t seem like that was an option. Instead of desert sand, the battleground here was asphalt and concrete, and as soon as my presence was known, it was as if this place recognized the fight lying dormant inside of me. This city called to it. I don’t know why I instantly felt like I fit, but I did. So I went to see the man in charge, fully expecting to offer him the last of my cash in order to gain a foothold in the desolate kingdom. I was a survivor. I could do without money for a little bit. No man was more resourceful than I was.
I walked into a disgustingly gaudy strip club, offended by its crass ugliness. I was expecting to meet the ruler of the land, state my intentions, and let him know I would bow to no man here or anywhere else ever again. I was expecting a shakedown and maybe some strong-arming since I was obviously foreign and undocumented. I was technically legal since my mother had been an American citizen before she fell in love with an extremist, but I hadn’t really existed on paper since she handed me over to killers and radicals when I was just a kid. Mossad didn’t want me to be anything other than their trained attack dog, so they hadn’t offered up any proof of identity for me during my time at the end of their string. What I wasn’t expecting was that my cause, my reason, my purpose for living, and my something to believe in would be dancing nearly naked on a horrifically ugly stage, looking like she was going to cry at any second. She was so much more than freedom.
She was Honor.
She was beautiful, young, innocent, and so obviously resigned to her fate. It pulled at a heart I was stunned to find I still had buried somewhere deep underneath the brutal history that filled up the inside of me. It was the first time I felt it beat, and the pulse of its yearning scared and electrified me in equal measure.
I started to move toward her like all those invisible gods I spent my life killing for were leading me directly to her when suddenly a man twice her age and triple her size leaped from his seat next to the stage and hurled himself up onto the platform directly at the girl. In the blink of an eye he was on top of her, rough hands all over her naked flesh. I heard her scream. I saw her long limbs flail and thrash under him. A red haze filled my vision and I forgot all about staying quiet and laying low. I forgot all about being a ghost, and realized that I could channel the fight that had been forged into my very soul, the fight that was slumbering restlessly inside me at that moment, into protecting something so innocent. She woke the fight up and she kept it alive.
I was on the stage before my mind even registered that I had moved across the room. I pulled the hulking man off the dancer and offered her my hand. Pretty eyes the color of an overcast sky glimmered up at me. She looked at the hand I’d offered like it was her lifeline out of this place, out of this vicious world, and clutched it ferociously as I pulled her to her feet.
We stared at each other in silence and I knew in that instant that this young woman would mean more than anything in my life had ever meant.
“Are you okay?”
She blinked at me like a terrified animal and I felt all the dead things inside me roar to life with new purpose and passion.