Warden: A Novel by Gregg Vann Page A

were the children.
    They were all too small, too sickly.
    And too close to death.
    After an hour of wandering around Barent had seen enough, and as he spun around abruptly to head back to Yali’s he nearly trampled a child.
    “I… I’m sorry,” the little boy stammered.
    Barent heard the fear in his voice.
    “It’s not your fault, son,” he replied, trying to reassure the panicked child that everything was going to be okay. “I should have been more careful.”
    Barent remembered that he was still wearing the same clothing he’d had on during that fateful meeting with Corporal Ennis—he must have cryoed him in it shortly after faking his death. He smiled as he patted down one of his jacket pockets, and then Barent reached underneath the sheet and pulled out a field ration bar.
    Right where I left it , he thought to himself.
    Five hundred years ago.
    He opened it up and stuffed the wrapper back into his pocket, making sure there would be no trace of him after he’d gone, and then Barent leaned down and gave the bar to the child. As the boy sniffed it, taking a hesitant bite to test the bar out, Barent pulled the sheet from around his shoulders and draped it over the boy.
    “There you go.”
    “Th— Thanks. But what do you want from me?” the child asked suspiciously.
    “Nothing,” Barent replied.
    The little boy gave him a halting smile, as if he were almost unfamiliar with the gesture, and then he saw his mother nearby and called out to her. Barent ducked back into an alley while the child was distracted.
    Yes, he thought to himself. This is even worse than before.
    Why the hell did we even bother with the Pardon War?
    But then Barent peeked back out from the alley, watching the mother’s face as the little boy offered her some of the ration bar. And then he showed off his new sheet and his mother smiled. A real smile, full of hope.
    All because of a fucking nutrient bar and a lice-ridden sheet.
    And then it dawned on Barent why they’d fought and died all those years ago. For friends and family, and freedom from the unequal treatment that allowed slums like the Outland to exist in the first place. How was it fair for one man to live in a penthouse suite that was big enough to house twenty people comfortably, while these poor souls had to freeze to death in makeshift hovels—fighting over scraps of fabric for warmth, and eating garbage just to survive?
    It wasn’t.
    And that’s what truly drove him, Barent realized. Fairness, plain and simple. Hours ago he’d wondered what he might do in this age—an era where he didn’t belong. But now he knew.
    Sergeant Barent would do what he’d always done. What he’d been trained to do.
    He would fight.
    And this time…
    He would finish what he started.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Flight
    Tana threw the tattered cloth covering the doorway aside and ran into the shack. “They’re here,” she said breathlessly. “The police and military both. They’re coming in from all directions…searching every square inch of the Outland. I don’t know how we can escape them.”
    They’d been hiding out at Yali’s for almost two days, and Tana had used that time to bring Barent up to date on recent history, teaching him about modern Le’sant and the Collective. She’d also ventured back into the Common Ring twice, gathering what information she could about the search for them. The Collective were actively looking for Tana, and offering a substantial reward for her capture. But she wasn’t surprised—if they knew about the Wardens in her apartment, then they also knew that Tana was somehow involved in Barent’s disappearance. The Collective were a lot of things, and most of them bad, but they weren’t stupid. There was no mention of Sergeant Barent anywhere, though. They were clearly trying to keep his existence a secret—assuming that when they located Tana they’d find the Great Betrayer as well.
    “I thought you said it would be a while before they came this far