by Daryl Banner
“Show yourself,” states Mercy, glancing around the room. She moves to the door and scans the street, frustrated. She has to hold onto the doorframe to keep herself upright, reminded at once of her drunken state. Mercy blinks twice forcefully. “Are we shy …? Hiding? You came here for a reason, damn it, so come out and show yourself!”
“How are you so certain there is someone there …?” asks Scot in a tiny voice.
From behind them in the foyer, a voice: “What gave me away?”
Mercy and Scot spin around. Standing there, a foot shorter than either of them, is a teenage girl with short, chopped-up, ugly green hair. Her chest is flat enough that she could be a boy. A vine-like web of red ink runs up the left side of her elfin face like a thorny bush, and she’s wearing a cocky, satisfied smirk, her arms crossed.
Mercy has no idea what to make of her. “Who are you?”
“Nobody special.” The girl nods at Mercy. “That was impressive, how you manipulated those Lifted camera men. I’ve been watching.”
“Watching?”
“I am Quin, and this is my ward.” The girl, staying put, lifts her eyes and glances about the foyer, drinking it in. “It’s gotten worse since I was last here. The Sparrow woman’s lost her mind.”
“Why were you watching?” Mercy takes a step toward her.
With a blink, suddenly the Quin girl is upstairs on the balcony, sitting precariously upon the edge of the railing, looking down. “I’m just a curious girl,” she calls down to them, “and I like curious people. You seem curious. Oh, watch out, the ceiling’s falling!!”
At the sudden sound of crumbling wood, Mercy and Scot leap away from where they were standing, only to catch a glimpse of the ceiling falling over their heads before, at once, it’s all gone—noise and vision—and the house is just as it was before, nothing changed.
When Mercy turns back, she suddenly finds the girl called Quin transported to the kitchen, poking through the dirty dishes.
“Illusion,” states Mercy, putting it together. “Your Legacy—”
“Ding, ding, you get a prize.” Quin pulls out a cup, studies it.
“You are a very convincing illusionist,” notes Mercy, staggering into the kitchen with each of her steps carefully placed. Her spinning head makes her stand some distance away, not sure whether she can trust herself or the girl. “The Guardian raid was all you.”
“So what gave me away?” this teenaged illusionist asks again, filling up her cup at the sink with water. “You were quick.”
Mercy has to think of it for a moment before she answers. “The color of the Guardian uniforms changed slightly.”
“Aye, foolish me.” Quin faces her and takes a sip from her cup. She slurps loudly. Annoyingly so.
Mercy squints dubiously as she studies the girl. It’s almost like she meant for her illusion to reveal a fallacy. Like she wanted me to catch the error. Like she was testing me … but why?
The illusionist wipes her mouth dry with the length of her skin-and-bone arm. “So you’re trying to get to the Queen of Atlas. Why?”
Mercy senses she needs to be careful with her answers. “I … do not trust this new Queen of Atlas.”
The girl snorts. “That’s no surprise. No one does. Not with the Puppet Master standing next to her, likely controlling everything the Queen says and does anyway. You can see it in the Queen’s eyes.”
“There’s nothing there,” agrees Mercy.
“So what were you hoping to do to this Queen?” the petite teen asks. “Scare her by threatening her mother’s life?”
There is something about this Quin … “Perhaps.”
“Is it because you think someone else deserves to sit upon that throne?” The girl takes another long, slurping sip, then wipes her mouth again. “You can be honest with me. I prefer it. Is it Mad King Impis you want? Or is it the true Queen of Unity Ruena you wish to be ruling the Last City of Atlas?”
Mercy purses her lips. “Queen … Ruena … is dead.”
Quin finishes her drink, carelessly tosses the empty glass at the sink behind her, then crosses her arms. “And if I said she isn’t?”
“Then I’d call you a liar.”
“Aye, and you would be smart to do that. But …” The girl lifts her hands and gives her small, bony fingers a wiggle. “What if I said her suicide … was indeed, a great and elaborate … illusion?”
Right then, the whole room bursts apart, all the walls and ceilings thrown to every side as if by a great and terrible wind, and before Mercy, she sees a woman standing atop the roof of a house, and all around her, countless onlookers beg her to come down, beg her not to forsake them. The woman stands on that roof in the midst of a writhing fog of storm and sparkling electricity.
Ruena Netheris.
“NO!” Ruena cries out to the crowd. “The Madness has won! I cannot allow another life to be taken in my name! I was a fool to think I could ever brave that mad man! I’m sorry, but I am not your hero, I’m not! I cannot bear it! I cannot bear it another day! It’s over!”
And right then, a great bolt of light blasts from the sky, a flash so bright, Mercy swears she can feel heat upon her face. It’s so bright that she shields her eyes, and through her fingers, she watches as the claws of crackling electricity close about the form of Ruena Netheris, burning and eating her alive. The crowd screams and shouts, people even trying to climb up the side of the house to save her, but the wind is blasting so strong that even they are thrown back, and in a matter of seconds, the storm is over, and Ruena Netheris is no more.
Mercy blinks.
The illusion is gone. The house is restored. They are standing together in the kitchen, a stunned, wide-eyed Scot at her side, and a cocky girl still standing by the sink, arms crossed, and smirking.
“Do you wish to aid in restoring our one true Queen of Unity Ruena Netheris to the throne of Atlas?” asks Quin. “If you want to put an end to Erana’s reign, you need only say the words, and you and your friend and all your most fiery ambitions can be put to use.”
Mercy knows precisely what to say. “I do love Ruena Netheris with all my slum heart, and so wish to join your campaign in giving her precisely what she deserves.” And with that, Mercy puts on her sweetest smile. It is perhaps the most convincing illusion of all.
0328 Ellena
She sits in the hallway just outside the door on a short metal table that’s usually used for hospital supplies, but only carries two rolls of gauze and one last half-empty bottle of sanitizer. It’s such a short little table, it seemed to make a perfect bench, and it’s on it that Ellena has been seated for the better part of two hours.
“Really, the chairs are a lot more comfortable,” says Cilla from the waiting room across the way—a spread of chairs and tables and one fuzzy broadcast and a long window overlooking the streets of the eleventh. “I’m surprised your butt hasn’t gone numb.”
“It has.” Ellena leans her head back against the wall with a sigh, dangling her legs. They don’t dangle much, catching on the tile floor every other swing.
Cilla gives up on her sister and curls up in her own chair in that waiting room, turned away. Ellena stares at the wall opposite hers and waits for news. It’s all she’s been doing for a day and a half, it seems: waiting, waiting, waiting. First, they were going to induce Ennebal and let the labor happen. Then, they decided to wait. Then, they decided to induce labor again, and then it was Ennebal who said she wanted to wait, fighting the doctors. Then they decided to give it one more day before taking the baby out.
Aleks has come out of the room only twice to get food, and both times, he had nothing much to tell his mother other than, “That woman in there … she is a strong, strong woman … and your … your grandson is going to be one strong boy, too.”
Ellena gave her son a smile and a light kiss on the cheek, and that was over six hours ago.
Gabel has been sent on a mission, though he wasn’t able to say where, and claimed he’d be back in a day or two’s
time. He regretted not being here for the birth, but was certain all would go to plan, as Eleven Wings Over Atlas has no less than four former Lifted doctors now under its roof. ‘Ennebal is in good hands,’ he said before he left, fully armored, and taking a tiny piece of Ellena’s security with him.
She finally gives in, sliding off the stupid metal table and coming to rest in the waiting room, but not near her sister. She takes a seat by the window, and her sore ass thanks her for the cushioning.
Ellena leans back, her neck stiff, and closes her eyes, waiting. She can’t even bring herself to go to the temple room anymore. That place has been soiled by her devious deeds with Gabel.
Yes, deeds, plural.
I am a woman of impulse, she’s come to learn, and I’m nothing if I don’t chase them from one end of my day to the other.
Then the door bursts open. “MOM!”
Ellena lifts her head at once. So does Cilla.
“MOM! HURRY, QUICK!” screams Aleks. “FUCKING HURRY!!”
Ellena is out of her chair in seconds, bolting for the door. She doesn’t hear her sister scrambling to follow, and she knows nothing else except the humid-as-fuck room when she bursts into it, rushes up to the bed, and finds two doctors hard at work on Ennebal.
Ennebal, whose eyes are rolled back, whose limbs are dangling loose over either edge of the bed, and whose heart machine makes one long, terrible, uninterrupted tone.
Oh, Three Sister, no.
The doctor is saying something to Ellena, but she can’t hear a word of it. She’s too stunned staring at the lifeless body of Ennebal. Her one and only cold thought is: Where’s the baby? Where’s the boy?
“They can’t cut into her!” cries Aleks through the noise of the doctors and that one long, terrible, uninterrupted tone.
“They what?” breathes Ellena, overwhelmed, shaking.
“They can’t fucking cut into her!” screams Aleks again. “Her Legacy! Her fucking Legacy! A-Auto-borne! Sh-She’s impenetrable! She’s f-f-fucking impenetrable!”
Impenetrable? Ellena stares down in horror as the red-headed Lifted doctor continues to press her scalpel against Ennebal’s belly over and over, and over and over the skin doesn’t give way. Another doctor is between her legs, a bloody mess everywhere, but no baby.
No baby.
The baby is trapped inside.
The baby is trapped inside a dead woman.
“DO SOMETHING!” screams Aleks, shaking, bursting into tears. “DO SOMETHING! OH, FUCK, F-F-FUCK!”
Ellena, trembling, is at a complete loss as she stares down at the dead woman who holds her grandson hostage in her womb. There is no wound she can take away. There is no ailment. There is no scar, no gouge, no sickness, no wound.
She presses her hands to Ennebal’s silent chest and gives it three quick shoves. CPR?? she chides herself, shaking. What the fuck is CPR going to do??
“DO SOMETHING!” screams Aleks.
Another doctor tries to intervene, but Ellena shoves him away, growing more and more panicked as she thrusts her hands against the dead woman’s chest. You’ll bring her heart back, Ellena decides. You’ll bring her back to life and she’ll open up her skin and allow us to take from her the boy.
Ellena shoves and pushes and beats and beats and beats.
“F-F-FUCK!! DO SOMETHING!”
She can’t hear her son anymore. She can’t hear the sighs and the protests and the stuffy muttering of all these doctors and nurses who can’t do a fucking thing. Doctors who’ve given up. Nurses who are trying to tell everyone all hope’s gone. Aleks who keeps yelling and screaming and crying.
Three Sister, give me …
Ellena shoves aside a doctor and grabs the scalpel from the red-headed doctor’s hand, and with no abandon, she starts striking at Ennebal’s belly. Every strike is deflected. The skin does not budge. Ellena starts to scream as she stabs the woman, but no skin is broken after over twenty stabs, and on the twenty-first, the scalpel breaks.
“OH, PLEASE, NO, NO!” screams Aleks.
And that one long, terrible, uninterrupted tone.
Ellena grabs something else sharp—another tool, something big and scary and sharp—right off the tray of tools. She cuts and slices and stabs, and the weapon in her hand does nothing.
Ennebal’s Legacy is a perfect one.
A perfect one.
Ellena is out of breath. All the doctors have stepped away from the table. The nurses. Small towels of blood and fluid everywhere.
That one long, terrible, uninterrupted tone.
No wound … she thinks, staring at Ennebal.
Then she looks down at her own belly.
“Mom??” cries Aleks, half a whimper.
There is no thought. There is no idea. When Ellena grips the blade, there is only pure instinct and a chasing of one mad impulse.
She presses the blade to her own belly with a hand, and grips Ennebal’s dead hand with the other.
“MOM!” screams her son.
And then it is Ellena who screams as she pulls the blade over her own belly. She screams so loud, her throat breaks, and she feels like Halvesand. She screams so loud as the cold, sticky kiss of blood pours down her front, the knife drawing a long, crooked smile over her skin, cutting through her gown.
Her grip on Ennebal’s hand is so tight, she may break it off.
And still she screams.
She screams until she hears the doctors shouting and moving.
She screams and pulls that knife as someone calls out, “HURRY! HURRY, HURRY!” She screams as a doctor brushes past Ellena so fast, the knife is knocked clean out of her hand. She screams as she drops to her knees, her hand still squeezing Ennebal’s with all her might, not daring to let go until the job is done. “QUICKLY! PULL! PULL!” cry the doctors. Ellena screams and doubles over, and then, slick from sweat or blood, her hand finally slips from Ennebal’s pale one as she tumbles to the floor with a voiceless grunt.
Then a new scream fills the room, a tinier one.
The scream of a newborn.
Bodies rush all around the bed with full regard to the baby and no regard to Ellena, who lies curled on the floor in a pool of her own blood, clutching her belly now where the wound has left her, passed to the body of the mother of her newborn grandson. Ellena’s mouth stays parted as her cheek lies flat on the bloody tile, though no scream comes out her lips anymore. She clutches tightly her mended belly, quivering, dizzy, as all the feet move about the room, like she’s just a pile of clothes in the middle of the floor, an obstacle. Her tight clutch becomes less tight as the seconds tick by, and then she just lets go, her breathing turning faint. She watches the busy feet all around her, blinking, aching, as her mind drifts away, spinning, spinning.
“Mom??” calls out her son.
But which son? Aleksand?
Anwick?
Lionis?
Mom?? MOM!!
Is that Anwick?
Is that Lionis?
Ellena Lesser closes her eyes.
0329 Athan
Athan knocks gently on the bedroom door.
“Who is it?”
Athan pokes his head in. “Just me.”
Prat smiles, the moonlight painting his already pale face even paler. He lies in bed with a couple large sheets of paper strewn over his lap—maps, from the look of it. “Come in. You don’t have to knock or anything, you know.”
“Well, it’s the polite thing,” Athan points out, then comes more into the room. He pulls up a nearby footstool and sits himself upon it, causing it to creak. The two speak in low voices on account of the baby Rip in a room down the hall. “How’re you recovering?”
“Slowly, but the wound’s not so bad. At least it’s stopped aching, and I did manage to float for a tiny piece of a second before I landed. Come look,” exclaims Prat, poking the tip of his pencil at one of the maps, “I’ve almost finished the tenth ward, all of it!”
Athan’s eyes dance across the sheet, observing all the details of th
e streets and the buildings. There’s even some etching where the arms of the Lifted City above spread out to. “Remarkable.”
“I need you to look over my Westly, as well. It’s not perfect.” Prat sighs preemptively. “I tried my best, using your notes and what you sketched, but I couldn’t get it to fit what I have in my slum maps, and they have to agree, since it sits right over the eighth and seventh and …” He sighs again. “You’re so busy yourself, I’d imagine.”
Athan quirks an eyebrow. “Why?”
“Well, you and Arcana will probably be the new ones everyone consults for everything, now with the murderer gone.”
Everything was pleasant until he said those words. Now Athan feels like he could turn his stomach inside-out.
“Sorry, sorry,” blurts Prat at once. “I forgot, you and Arcana …” He puts a hand on Athan’s arm. “Really, you ought to talk to her and give her the chance to be her own person. She isn’t her evil sister.”
His reply comes out at once: “It was her idea to take us into the sky at all. She convinced us to confront the Mad King. It’s because of her and her miscalculation that Anwick and Lionis are dead.”
Prat’s lips press together at that, eyes wet and anxious.
“Everyone thinks I can’t be around her just because she looks like her sister Axel. And yes,” Athan then concedes, “that is certainly part of it as well. I’m traumatized, as I ought to be. I can’t look at her and not see her evil sister. How can I possibly know if Axel suddenly came down from the sky and traded places with her? We wouldn’t know it until you and I are holding daggers to each other’s throats against our own wills, ready to kill each other while wearing smiles.”
Prat turns away, shaken, and stares out the window coldly.
Athan remembers himself. “Sorry.” He folds his arms in his lap and huddles over, his stomach turning. He shuts his eyes. “Sorry.”
