Ronin

by Tony Bertauski

  “I am not your—”

  William kicked him before he got up. Cherry swung on him. He leaned over, tobacco stuck between his teeth.

  “Call the elf.”

  Ryder painted the snow red. He wiped his mouth. William grabbed his coat and shook him, shoving Cherry when she tried to stop him. Ronin had stopped struggling. His tongue hung from his mouth. Black eyes stared at Ryder.

  “Gallivanter!” William shouted. “My patience is thin, old friend.”

  He strolled toward the cloned reindeer. Ronin’s chest rose in long deep breaths. When William neared, the clone looked up like a good dog and waited for him to call out the next trick.

  “I will count to three. If you have not surrendered”—he kicked Ronin’s hindquarter—“the beast suffers first. Then the children.”

  Ryder tried to get up. Cherry stopped him. If William didn’t knock him back down, the clone would swat him across the yard. Ryder couldn’t take another hit like that. William held up a finger.

  “One.”

  Ryder felt his coat pocket.

  “Two.”

  He slid the phone out. The screen was black. He pressed the button, hoping there was time to boot it. Hoped there was something on it that would stop what was about to happen. If something put him to sleep, then the clone could be stopped.

  “Three!”

  The phone lit up just as William lifted his leg. He was about to drive his boot into Ronin’s ribs when he was buried in a cloud of snow. The clatter of antlers was followed by a heavy thump. William went twenty feet before landing heavily on his back, his breath forced out in wheezing surprise. Mewling and roars followed.

  A reindeer charged out of the melee.

  Head down, his antlers were pointed at Ryder and Cherry. The hooves pounded the frozen turf. Nose burning with determination, his belly began to swell. He aimed the network of boney antlers at their hunkering forms. The air shimmered around the antlers and hummed as he drew near. Ryder threw his arm over Cherry.

  His coat yanked up.

  He was snatched from the ground and tossed. Losing his grip, he swung for Cherry, for the ground, for anything before the antlers found him again. For a second time, he landed hard, only this time it wasn’t on frozen ground. Muscles writhed beneath him. The world went silent.

  And the mountains were far below.

  21

  Wispy fog streamed past him, silent and still.

  As if he were looking through a window and the clouds were outside. Corded muscles writhed beneath him; short hairs bristled under his hands. Legs yoked over a swollen belly, Ryder grabbed a fistful of hide. The clouds weren’t outside.

  I’m in them.

  Ronin’s head bobbed up and down, neck straining in a silent gallop. Specks of frozen precipitation shot past. There was no wind howling in his ears; no bitter cold scouring his cheeks. The air warped around the antlers. Ronin tipped his head and put one black eye on them. A hoarse bark escaped his throat. He went back to pedaling the wind, a missile piercing the sky.

  It’s a magnetic field.

  The antlers had shifted the blurred space when he turned his head, reshaping the spitting specks of ice and billowy clouds streaming past in foggy ribbons. A magnetic force field protected them from the thin and frozen air. Warmth seeped from Ronin’s hide like a furnace was burning below.

  Cherry rested her chin on his shoulder.

  Her breath was in his ear. He put one hand over hers and squeezed. This was too surreal to relax. This could be a game room illusion. It could be a dream. But neither of those events had filled him with wonder like this.

  The last thing he remembered was being on the ground when Ronin charged. They had cowered in the snow just before the world started spinning. A long wound glistened along Ronin’s flank, the hide damp and matted.

  They were still climbing.

  Ronin’s belly huffed and bellowed wider and hotter with each breath. Below, patches of green land streaked past occasional openings in the cloud cover. Ryder’s legs ached, his hands firmly clenched against the reindeer’s back. Ears pinned back, Ronin silently galloped higher. They rose into the thick interior of the clouds, where they were swallowed. Once hidden, he stretched his legs and glided. His belly fully inflated.

  Ryder turned around. Cherry’s cheeks were ruby and scuffed, nose cold and runny. Beyond her, the back end was empty.

  Gallivanter was still at Kringletown.

  ***

  The furnace was still working.

  Ryder woke with bristling fur on his nose. A frigid breeze was sneaking down his coat. His legs were painfully aching like a wishbone was breaking. Cherry lay across his back, her fingers laced around his stomach.

  The clouds were icy and cracked.

  He wiped his eyes. Cherry groaned as he pushed upright. Those weren’t clouds. They were soaring in the open. The black sky was above and snowy dunes below. Open leads exposed cracks in the ice that spidered over the Arctic Ocean like a network of veins.

  The Pole.

  Ronin was pawing at thin air, his strokes short and rapid. His breath was a rattling tailpipe. Wind was leaking through the magnetic field like an icy draft sneaking through a cracked windshield.

  The antlers were flickering.

  Ryder rubbed the reindeer’s ears. Ronin gave a hoarse cry and his belly expanded. They rose higher, but it didn’t last. They were dropping as the panting grew louder.

  “Stay down,” he told Cherry.

  Ryder hugged Ronin. She hunkered down behind him. There was nothing but ice. They were dressed for the Arctic, but it was still so cold.

  The ice was several feet below them when Ronin stretched his legs out. The flaps of hide billowed between his legs. They soared up as his belly inflated one last time. And then little by little, they leaked back down.

  His front hooves sprayed snow.

  It splashed through the magnetic field. Ryder held on with his eyes closed, listening to the dampened impact of four hooves plowing through deep snow. The magnetic field vanished. Frigid air cut through him. He gasped for his next breath as a wave of snow fell over them.

  They crashed.

  Ryder dug his way out with choppy breath and numb cheeks. Cherry was crawling toward him, her hair gray with a fresh dusting of winter. He held her as she stumbled and sank. They ducked behind a cresting dune.

  “You all right?”

  He pulled her against him. His eyelashes crackled. They squatted deeper into the snow. A path had been carved like a snowplow was searching for the road. They worked their way toward it and saw the massive antlers.

  “Ronin.”

  Together, they rushed to the reindeer’s side. The wind cut away all the feeling in Ryder’s hands. It felt like someone was pinching his ears and nose. They dropped against Ronin’s belly, the furnace still warm. But like a balloon from a long past birthday, it was losing air.

  Ronin raised his front leg and pulled them deeper into cover. He curled his head around them, tongue slowly lapping the snow from their stiff pant legs. Ryder wrapped his arms around his furry snout.

  “His nose is cold.”

  A clod of fear dropped in his stomach. The weather was scrubbing the world into a barren landscape of white nothingness. They weren’t dressed to survive. And Ronin was exhausted and hurt.

  How did he make it this far?

  Ryder crawled over to Cherry and pressed her into the nook of Ronin’s neck. He put his arms around her and pulled Ronin’s shaggy chin against them. The night sky was deep, black and bruised with swirling bands of green and red. The Northern Lights decorated the nighttime like ribbons around a gift.

  Ryder couldn’t feel his body.

  Everything that had happened in his life and here he was, trapped somewhere on top of the world with Cherry in his arms and a reindeer around them. Fear suddenly flushed from him like an ocean breeze cleansing something wrong and rotten. He felt clean. He felt okay, just to be here and now, watching something as magical
as this. They had escaped Kringletown.

  There was no other place he’d rather be.

  “I’m not scared anymore.”

  He nestled deeper. Cherry was curled beneath him, her chest rising and falling. She was practicing her meditation. Ronin’s belly rose and fell in long, easy breaths that matched hers. Together, Ryder fell into the same rhythm.

  As one, they breathed.

  Peace fell on them as a soft and comforting blanket. It didn’t matter what had happened or where he was from, if none of this made sense. Whether this was a dream or not. The night sky watched them accept the cold hand of winter with a million starry eyes. If anyone found them, a smile would be frozen on his face. He liked that idea as dreamy thoughts spilled across the landscape of his mind. He felt the colors of the Northern Lights and tasted the touch of spitting snowflakes.

  He heard singing.

  It was high and joyful. It blended in harmony. Voices were carried on the wind and sifted into his head like fairy dust.

  Cherry shuddered beneath him.

  Fresh snow cascaded beneath his collar. The warm wall of furry hide pulled away. Ronin stretched his neck and pawed through the snow until he found the hard purchase of ice.

  He stumbled onto all fours.

  Suddenly exposed, Ryder and Cherry shielded each other from the wind. They squinted against the squall of frozen bullets pelting their cheeks. His vision was blurred.

  “Ronin!”

  The reindeer seemed to falter with weakness and indecision. There was nowhere to go. He didn’t need to protect Ryder anymore. He’d done enough. It wasn’t fair for him to use his last breath trying to save them when they could just be together.

  His antlers vanished.

  Ryder fought the ice crystals bleeding through his eyelashes and smearing his eyesight. He peered between split fingers.

  “Where—” The wind momentarily stole the words from Cherry. “Where did he go?”

  Ryder was half-frozen and abandoned in the coldest part of the world without a spit of land in sight. A reindeer had flown them there and now had disappeared right in front of them. Maybe he was dreaming.

  That didn’t explain why he still heard singing.

  22

  Going up.

  The elevator pulsed every half second as if not sure it could make it to the surface, recording a slight drop before going up several more feet. Darkness turned gray as he rose higher, causing the pulsing hesitations to spike deeper, thumping dull pain as it reached the light of morning.

  Billy’s eyelids flicked open.

  The surface below his cheek was hard, cold and slick. He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. The taste of iron slid to the back of his throat.

  The headache continued.

  The elevator was within reach. A deep inhalation stung his lower lip and whistled between his teeth. He pulled back scarlet-painted fingertips. The tip of his tongue revealed an angular opening between two teeth.

  A pearly piece on the floor.

  What’s my name?

  He knew this was home, that there were kids. The drone was in the corner like an escaped balloon. It was like he didn’t have a name.

  And never did.

  There were several sublevels belowground. He was going to the lab sometime early in the morning. It was still dark, but the sun was up. Something was wrong.

  Something bad.

  Rot sank deep in his belly. He leaned over and dry-heaved. He went to his hands and knees and continued, twisting his empty stomach until a string of saliva dangled.

  What have I done?

  That thought felt different. He usually felt like there were two parts of himself, one talking to the other. Now it was just him. Something was missing. The inner voice was quiet.

  It was missing.

  He fell on his back, panting. His past was hidden in the dark recesses of his mind like monsters under the bed. He couldn’t remember what he’d done or what he was going to do, but the urge to weep swelled in his throat.

  He was probing his chipped tooth when a bone-crashing clatter echoed from outside. It sounded like trains colliding. He propped his weight against the wall. A profound numbness settled like grains of frozen sand. He shuffled to the foyer.

  Out front, the circle driveway was empty. Snow was tracked with shallow ruts from days ago. Icicles hung from a mountain of antlers. The collision came again, followed by a hoarse cry that jarred loose a memory of an oversized reindeer struggling in a tangle of binding straps.

  Ronin.

  He leaned on a table. A vase shattered on the floor. Ronin was a distant memory, a car disconnected from a locomotive of thoughts and no longer part of the trip. Like a memory that didn’t belong to him. But he was there, he was part of it. He had trapped the reindeer, had lured him onto the mountain.

  He kicked through the vase. The office door was ajar. The mountain was flaming with morning light. He stumbled to the glass wall, pressed his hands against the cold and smooth surface, and watched an enormous reindeer gallop across the horseshoe. Snow flipped from his hooves as Ronin lowered his head. Multiple points of a massive rack raked through the snow as he charged two figures hunched low to the ground.

  He’s going to impale them.

  Instead he snagged one of them like a giant coat rack sweeping the back of his heavy coat. Arms and legs waving in panic, he tumbled like a lead kite and was followed by the girl. Ronin lurched beneath them as his belly swelled. The strides grew longer, the hooves gliding and stirring the snow. The boy fell onto his back first. The girl behind him.

  And then they were off.

  Long strong legs reaching for the sky, loose hide billowing like sails. Ronin surged toward the mountain.

  And over it.

  A sense of relief filled him. It started at his toes and rose to his throbbing cheek with tingling joy. Ronin was free. He had escaped with two of the children.

  Someone else was still out there.

  The barn looked meteor-struck. Shards of debris had showered the horseshoe. William watched Ronin soar out of sight. There was another reindeer at his side.

  My older brother, William. My mentor. My sibling.

  Billy looked at his hands, turning them over as if the truth were written in the creases. The sick feeling squeezed his empty stomach.

  My brother?

  He had never questioned his reclusive sibling. Their past seemed so ordinary, the memories bleached by time. Now as he looked out, the old man felt like someone else. Why would we have the same name?

  William walked to where the children had been hunkered down. The hitch in his stride was more pronounced in the morning. He dropped to one knee and picked something up, dusting it off before pocketing it. The reindeer didn’t move.

  A clone.

  They’d brought Ronin off the mountain and immediately began building a matrix. Billy didn’t think it would be ready for another day, but there it was. Waiting for a command.

  The old man marched stiffly toward the remains of the barn. An opening was blown in the side of the chaos like a tractor-trailer had escaped. William limped into the shadows.

  Billy followed.

  Without a coat, the wind sank its frozen teeth into his belly. A sharp inhale stabbed his exposed tooth. The clone swung around at the sound of the door, snow dropping from the rack. Puffs streamed from his flared nostrils as Billy approached. A peculiar smell grew stronger—a fuzzy odor that clung to his tongue.

  A memory bobbed to the surface.

  A room with large drawers and glass doors. The soles of bare feet facing out from a dark recess in the wall. Billy sitting at computers and pecking at keys, writing commands in elaborate scripts uploaded to a large noisy room, scripts that were orders. Commands. Programs that told the children what to do, how to behave.

  Good boys and girls do what I want.

  Billy knew what made boys and girls nice. But that wasn’t him sitting at the computer. It felt like William. Billy looked to his hands
. The barrier hiding his memories dropped another webby veil. The rhythmic sound of machinery. Waves of heat in a tubular oven. Three-dimensional webs of neural pathways spontaneously stringing together, each connection linking thoughts into concepts and memories.

  Me.

  His knees were weak. It was a memory of coming out of the replicator. Billy remembered inventing the replicator. He remembered using it to create Figgy. Now he remembered crawling out and picking up his own body. He’d carried it to the storage room and put it in a drawer.

  No.

  He fell in the snow. Memories swirled in the light. The world spun viciously. Billy wanted to find the truth. He took in children who needed a home. He was a philanthropist who used his mind and money to make the world a better place. He was building something on the other side of the mountain that would show the world he wasn’t insane.

  I’m a lie.

  He stumbled into the rubble. The walls and rafters had collapsed. The distinctive odor of synthetic stem cells, the clayey odor of his very own flesh, wafted out.

  “What have you done?” he said.

  William jerked around. He peered out from the special room where the clone of Ronin had been spun up. They stared at each other with hesitation. Shivers danced on Billy’s chin. His fingers twitched.

  He remembered an accident that took two fingers from his right hand. It had happened on a climbing expedition. He’d spent the night with tourniquets around his knuckles. Billy remembered the agony lasted for months.

  But Billy had all ten fingers.

  “Get to the lab,” William said. “Wake the children.”

  He finished gathering things into a bag and buttoned a thick coat. Billy didn’t follow him. The compulsion that had yanked him around all of his life had been cut. It was just words now.

  “You did this to me,” Billy said.

  William replaced the cowboy hat with a fur-lined cap and nodded for several seconds. Understanding was coming into focus. Something had changed between them.