See These Bones

by Chris Tullbane

  Fuck it. I’d lived through Mom’s murder. It wasn’t like reading about it could be any worse.

  There’s life again, lulling you in with expectations, and then kicking you in the balls as soon as your guard drops.

  It was all there in excruciating detail; full-page articles about the murder, smaller stories detailing what had come after, even a follow-up piece on the fifth anniversary of Mom’s murder, like it had been some sort of event to commemorate. Like there should’ve been balloons and cake and something other than a junior reporter trying to squeeze one more story out of a woman’s death.

  I didn’t even remember the press covering Mom’s murder. Sure as fuck didn’t remember cameras, but they’d clearly been there; at the crime scene, at the funeral, and again at the trial, when Dad had been sentenced to the Hole.

  The words were bad enough. Things about Mom I’d somehow forgotten. Things about Dad I was pretty sure I’d never known. Clinical descriptions of the wounds I’d watched appear like magic, the blood that sprayed when the enormous knife went in, and again when the knife came back out. Quotes from neighbors that my mind had erased and from multiple social workers that my memory had blurred into one faceless person.

  As bad as the words were, the pictures were even worse. The tiny house. The courtroom. The cemetery. And in almost every image, a little boy; pale-faced with sharp cheekbones cutting upward beneath eyes more red than grey. Those eyes were open and empty, like tiny graves waiting to be filled.

  I’d never seen a child Walker…wasn’t sure they even existed, but if they did, I had to imagine they’d look a lot like my five-year-old self.

  In the weeks and months that followed the trial, I’d found my anger. I’d built my walls. I’d buried that emptiness away, deep inside of me where no one could find it. But those pictures made me five all over again, every hard-won layer peeled away until I was left open and exposed, like a raw and bloody nerve.

  I was on my feet and headed for the door before I knew it, hands clenched into fists so tight that the scar tissue across my knuckles pulled and creaked. Wasn’t thinking about becoming a Cape, or proving my doubters wrong. Wasn’t thinking about Alexa’s words, or Bard’s, or even Her Majesty’s. All I was thinking about was Jeremiah and his group; Caleb, Freddy, Tessa and Olympia. The five of them had gone looking for my past and they’d found it. They knew. And if they knew, every first-year would too, soon enough. Twenty-three people reading these articles. Looking through these pictures. Digging into my past, into my body, into Mom’s corpse, like vermin gorging themselves on rot and blood and pain.

  Fuck fair trades.

  Fuck the Academy and its rules.

  Motherfuckers wanted pain?

  It was time to share the fucking wealth.

  •—•—•

  Remember that God I don’t believe in?

  Remember those coincidences that miraculously piled up to save me from myself? Of course you do. We just talked about them, not too long ago.

  Don’t know if what came next was part of that same chain.

  I really hope not.

  If it was, if the world or a deity or Dr. Fucking Nowhere acted to put one last impediment in my path, one last deterrent to keep me from going Black Hat at eighteen…

  …then it makes everything that followed my fault.

  Not sure I could live with that knowledge.

  Pretty sure I couldn’t.

  CHAPTER 35

  The dorm hall was empty, every door shut tight as if the first-years could feel me coming. Didn’t matter. Stonewall would be in the common room. Or Caleb would be, or one of the others. And if they weren’t, I’d damn well find them anyway. Campus was big, but not that big. Fuckers couldn’t hide for long.

  I was three feet from the end of the hall when the door to the common room opened and one of the few people I didn’t want bloody and beaten barreled through.

  “Damian! Thank God! I need your help.”

  “Not now, Unicorn.” I went to step around the small Healer. Somehow he got back in front of me, grabbing my arm and slowing me to a halt.

  “Yes now! It’s important!”

  I looked down at the hand on my arm and over at the ginger. Whatever he saw in my face made him go even paler than usual, but he didn’t let go. So I took the last step toward the common room, dragging Shane right along with me.

  The room was empty. Because of course it was.

  There were a half dozen other spots they might be, and I knew it wouldn’t take much more than an hour to check them all. Hour-and-a-half, tops. But first I had to do something about the one-hundred-and-fifty-pound ginger hanging off my arm.

  Problem was, when I looked down and met Shane’s eyes, I found them full of stubborn determination, mixed in with fear and raw, desperate pleading. Hard to walk away from anyone looking at you like that. Harder still when it’s one of your only friends in the world.

  “Ishmae is missing,” he said.

  Fucking hell.

  It wasn’t like Jeremiah and his group were going anywhere, right? I tucked my anger back away, wrapping it like a blanket around the empty hole inside me, and blew out a long sigh.

  “What do you mean she’s missing?”

  “We were supposed to meet half an hour ago.” He blushed at the look I gave him. “To study! Her early admission to the Academy means she missed out on almost two years of high school math, so I’ve been helping her out.”

  Which was such a Unicorn thing to do. I could just picture the atmosphere of badly repressed feelings as he walked the younger Pyro through yet another Calculus proof.

  “So your emergency is that she blew off studying for a day?” I scowled. “Fucking hell, Unicorn. She’s probably in her room nursing a hangover or something.”

  “Ishmae doesn’t drink,” he argued. “And I already checked her room. Besides, there’s no way she’d pass up a chance to get better…at anything. You have no idea how driven she is.”

  “So what’s your explanation, Shane? Nobody’s dumb enough to fuck with a High-Four. If she’s missing, it’s because she wants to be.”

  “For all her power, she’s still just a person,” he argued. “She could’ve fallen and hit her head, or been drugged or abducted or—”

  “Alright, alright.” I cut into the stream of increasingly unlikely explanations. “Fine. She’s missing. How are we supposed to find her?”

  He coughed, and stared at the tops of his sneakers. “I was hoping you’d have an idea.”

  I started to shake my head, then stopped. Truth was, I did.

  •—•—•

  Kayleigh opened her door, squeaked like a mouse being struck by lightning, and slammed the door back shut.

  “What was that on her face?”

  “No idea. Looked like mud or something.” I shrugged and knocked on the door again. “Vibe, we need your help. Unicorn needs your help.”

  It was a full thirty seconds before the door cracked back open. Kayleigh’s face made a reappearance, this time bright red, freshly scrubbed, and free of whatever had been smeared across it.

  Mostly free, anyway. She’d missed a few streaks on one cheek, and a little more under the chin. Not that I was going to point that out, or the fact that one electric-blue strand of hair was sticking straight up in the air.

  “What do you two want, and why couldn’t it have waited like five minutes longer?”

  “Ishmae is missing,” said Shane. “I think something’s happened to her.”

  “She’s a High-Four,” said Vibe, unconsciously reaching over to place one of her fingers on my bare arm. “What the hell could happen?”

  “That’s what I said,” I muttered.

  “I don’t know,” admitted the Healer, “but if something did…”

  “We thought you might be able to find her,” I finished. “Like you did with Sue.”

  She was shaking her head before I had finished. “It doesn’t work like that. Not yet anyway. Ms. Ferra says every person h
as a distinctive signature, but I haven’t learned how to read them yet. I can’t hunt down a specific person; all I can do is listen for emotion.”

  “Well, could you try that, at least?” Shane’s eyes were bright. “If something has happened, it might be enough to find her…”

  I watched Vibe try her hardest not to wince. Picking up on the emotions of a scared woman at night and on the very edge of campus was one thing. Performing some sort of empathic sweep of the entire campus—an area containing thousands of individuals that Kayleigh spent every waking moment trying to block out—was something else entirely.

  She swallowed once, tucked a strand of hair behind one ear with her free hand, and nodded. “I can try.”

  It’s like I said earlier. Some people are Capes to the fucking core.

  •—•—•

  Three minutes later, Vibe reached blindly for my arm, her face pinched and drawn. She held on for a good twenty seconds, her breathing slowly steadying, and then released, going back under like a diver heading into the ocean.

  That cycle repeated three more times. My wrist was starting to bruise when she surfaced for the last time, shaking her head.

  “I’m sorry… there’s so much out there. I can’t…” Kayleigh shuddered again, her hand reflexively squeezing my wrist again and again. “I can’t parse it all, but I didn’t feel anything like the other night.”

  “So, maybe Ishmae is okay, after all—”

  “Or she’s out of my range. Or unconscious.”

  “Phoenix?” The three of us spun to find Winter peering out of her room one door down and across the hall. “She’s fine. I saw her an hour or so ago.”

  “You did?” Unicorn pounced like he was some sort of cat, rather than a too-short ginger. “Where?”

  Penelope paused to shoot Unicorn and I a suspicious glare. “Are you boys even supposed to be on this side of the dorm? Don’t you need a pass or something?”

  “For the love of God, Penelope,” said Vibe, her voice still strained and weak. “Shut up and just answer his question.”

  Winter drew herself up to her full height, looking down that crooked nose at us, her smile every bit as cold as the season she’d taken for her name. “Which is it, Kayleigh? Should I shut up or answer his question?”

  Before the Empath could respond, Shane was between the two women. “Please. It could be important. Seriously important.”

  “Oh fine.” The taller woman rolled her eyes, and tossed her head, sending long, white hair in an arc over one shoulder. “I passed her on campus. Near the Control classroom, in fact. No doubt, she was headed to do some extra credit to ruin the curve even more for the rest of us.”

  “Like you care.” I rolled my eyes. “You’re acing everything anyway.”

  “Nobody asked for your opinion, Crow—” the Weather Witch shot back.

  “Oh shit.” Shane’s natural state was pale, but now he was borderline translucent. “Shit fucking fuck shit.”

  Her other hand still clasped tightly around my arm, Kayleigh reached out to the little Healer. “What is it, Shane?”

  “I know where Ishmae is.” He glanced over at us, eyes wide. “We have to hurry.”

  “Hurry where?”

  “To Control,” he called over one shoulder, already running back toward the common room. “I think she’s going to run the Maze.”

  •—•—•

  If there was one positive that could be said for the four months we’d spent under Nikolai’s tender mercies, it was that every first-year—from the tireless Orca to still-chubby Prince—could run. After twice-weekly, five-mile warmups, our sprint across campus to the Control building barely even registered.

  Everything seemed quiet, the classroom’s windows dark and still.

  “I still don’t get why you think Ishmae would’ve come here, Unicorn.”

  “Especially if Ms. Stein said the Maze was off-limits to first-years,” agreed Kayleigh. She hadn’t been there when the rest of us saw the device, but we’d filled her in on the way over.

  “Ishmae’s a High-Four,” said Shane. “The first one in almost a decade, and she’s known it since she was a child.”

  “And?”

  “And the difference between a High-Four and the rest of us is like the difference between us and normals. Maybe even bigger.”

  “Yeah, everyone keeps saying that. So what?”

  “So she thinks a High-Four should be able to do everything better than the rest of us, whether that’s acing math classes she doesn’t even have the foundational knowledge for, or—”

  “Or running the Maze two years earlier than anyone else,” I concluded.

  “Exactly.”

  “Well, it makes sense, but…” I waved at the still-silent building. “…it doesn’t seem like she’s here.”

  “Well, we should make sure—”

  “Actually, someone is here.”

  Shane looked from me to the blue-haired Empath. “You can sense someone inside? Is it Ishmae?”

  “I’m not using my powers.” She rolled her eyes and nodded to the side door. “The door is open.”

  •—•—•

  At first, the interior was every bit as dark as it had seemed from the outside, but as we rounded the corner, a dim light split the gloom. At the back of the meditation studio, the door to the Maze’s room was open, and in the chair, her bald head slick with sweat under the wire helmet, was Ishmae Naser.

  I caught Shane before he could rush in. “If she’s running the Maze, we don’t know what interrupting her would do.”

  “We can’t just leave her there, Damian!”

  Again, it was Kayleigh who pointed out the obvious. “Do either of you smell smoke?”

  Now that she’d mentioned it, we did. In fact, as we crept closer to the unconscious Pyro, we could see the smoke as well. It wasn’t coming from her—always a concern with someone who could probably burn the whole city down—but from the device itself, slim threads wafting up from visibly blackened circuitry.

  “I think she broke it,” continued Vibe.

  “Then why isn’t she awake?” Shane shrugged free of my hand with one of the slick grip escapes Nikolai had taught us, and made it to Ishmae before I could react. He thumbed back one of the Pyro’s eyelids and frowned. “No response to light stimuli. Irregular breathing.”

  “Meaning what?” I guessed.

  “I don’t think she’s just unconscious… but there’s only one way to be sure.”

  “Winter will be here any minute with one of the school Healers, Unicorn. We should just wait.”

  “Every second might matter, Kayleigh,” he said absently, rolling up his sleeves, “and the school Healers can’t fix much more than a simple break. If there’s internal damage, let alone brain trauma, they’ll need me to handle it.”

  Without another word, he placed one hand on the Pyro’s forehead, and the other on her twitching bare arm.

  •—•—•

  A minute passed, then another, and nothing changed other than the amount of sweat beading on Shane’s forehead. Then, as if a switch had been flipped, Ishmae’s twitching limbs stilled. Color flooded back into her dark-skinned cheeks, and her breathing deepened from its shuddering rasp.

  “It’s working,” whispered Vibe.

  Which is, of course, when everything went to shit.

  In his own way, Shane was every bit as unique as our High-Four Pyro. There was a reason Silt had named him Unicorn, and a reason that name had stuck. Healers like him came once a generation, if that. With the proper training, there was no telling what a High-Three Healer might accomplish.

  But for all his power, Shane was just a first-year, like the rest of us. Partially trained. Still tripped up by the occasional bad habit.

  Like forgetting to keep his patient sedated while he healed them.

  Ishmae’s eyes snapped open.

  The world went white.

  CHAPTER 36

  I’m sorry, Shane.

  Sorry
I didn’t stop you. Sorry you fell in love with a Pyro. Sorry it only took a single mistake to turn everything to ash.

  In a better world, you’d still be here and I’d be gone.

  In a better world, you’d be fixing this fucked-up life, one person at a time, like a ginger-haired promise of a future filled with something other than violence and death.

  But this is Dr. Nowhere’s world; cold and hard and bloody to the bone.

  This is a world of Crows and monsters, of desperation and despair.

  It has no time for hope or for healing.

  It doesn’t believe in unicorns.

  CHAPTER 37

  If there was any justice in the world, it would’ve rained at Shane’s funeral; thick, fat drops exploding like liquid bombs against the hard earth, wind whipping between us with an almost-audible growl. Instead, the sky was cloudless, the sun was warm, and the clearing we’d gathered in behind the dean’s office was fucking beautiful.

  It was one of the few times since I’d left with Mr. Grey that I actually missed Bakersfield. There’s a city fit for funerals.

  There were twenty-one first-years present, arranged in uneven rows facing the casket the faculty had found for this occasion. The empty casket, because Phoenix hadn’t left enough of Unicorn to even fill an urn.

  Twenty-one students in the clearing because Ishmae herself was elsewhere, hidden away and drugged to her eyeballs.

  Twenty-one because Vibe wasn’t in any sort of state to be around people after experiencing Shane’s dying emotions and the ensuing storm of Ishmae’s own shock and mounting horror.

  Twenty-one because Shane Stevenson was dead.

  Twenty-one first-years and only three pairs of dry eyes among us.

  The first belonged to Silt, who was busy comforting a sobbing Wormhole. The second belonged to Alan Jackson, who made a better stone wall than my roommate ever would.

  And the last pair of dry eyes? They were mine. Because of course they fucking were.

  Truth was, I hadn’t cried since I was six. Spent a whole year after Mom’s murder crying. Crying for her. Crying for myself. Crying whenever the older kids at Mama Rawlins’ beat the shit out of me for crying.