Riders

by Veronica Rossi

  “Man, please. This is really important—”

  He broke off as the guy on the opposite end of the line stepped forward.

  Showtime.

  Compared to the rest of us, the actor was on the short side. Stocky, with a starter paunch. He had spiked black hair and ink sleeves on both arms.

  “I’m Luis Alvarez.” He took a huge breath, his chest expanding, expanding, expanding, then he blew it out, deflating himself.

  Then detonation.

  “He was like a brother to me!” He pounded his fist against his chest. “Like my own blood! But I’m a cop. I wear a badge. I swore an oath. What was I supposed to do? I had to shoot him!” He threw his hands out, then made a gun with his fingers and pretend-shot the casting people. Pop, pop, pop. Blew fake smoke off his finger. Holstered his hand. “The law is bigger than me. It’s words written in black ink on white paper, but sometimes this world is gray. That’s where I am. I lost my brother and I’m drowning! I’m drowning in a sea of gray.” Blink. “Thank you.”

  He stepped back in line, linked his hands behind his back and dropped his head like that, my friends, is how you crush it.

  A flutter in my gut came up, shooting into my throat. I clenched my jaw but the battle was already over. I went from zero to howling. Big, big laughing. The insanity of everything was too much. And the embarrassment. It hurt me. I was drowning in a sea of cheese.

  “Please,” Sebastian said. “Shut up.”

  I was trying.

  “Do you have a problem with something?” Lennon Glasses asked me.

  “No, sir. I apologize for that.” I was still on shaky ground, but remembering my manners, my mission. “Just a bad case of nerves.” This needed to end. I stepped forward. “Can I go next?”

  “He can’t,” Sebastian said. “He’d be out of turn.”

  “No, I wouldn’t.”

  “Yes, you would.”

  “Then we’ll go in random order.”

  “If it’s random, then I’ll go next since I’m not on the end.”

  “Dude, do you even know what random means?”

  “Yes. In this case it means I get to go first.” He took two steps forward and looked at the casting table. “I’m ready.”

  It’d gotten pretty quiet in the room. Then suddenly it wasn’t.

  Lennon Glasses shuffled some papers and the other casting people huddled around him. They had a hushed but animated discussion. We’d woken them up.

  Lennon Glasses cleared his throat and looked up. “We’ll take Mr. Luna first since we don’t seem to have your headshot, Mr.…?”

  “Blake. Gideon Blake.”

  Total silence again. I couldn’t have felt less Latino. Maybe if I’d started belting out “Danny Boy.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Blake. Mr. Luna, go ahead.”

  Sebastian shot me a little victory smile as I made myself fall back into line. Then I watched him deliver the same exact lines, except totally differently.

  He took his time to start. Almost a full minute, so everyone in the room was anticipating it, focused on him, waiting for him to speak. When he did, his voice was heavy and breaking—a sound I recognized. Grief had a particular weight in a person’s voice that was too heavy for words. He knew that weight. Or if he didn’t, he could communicate it.

  He used the silence between the lines too, which I’d never realized was part of acting until that moment. But he filled the pauses somehow. Even his breathing said something about pain. The way he bowed his head, the look on his face. The crushing, shitty, heart-killing truth of losing someone you love was in every part of him. And when he lifted his hands and stared at his open palms with the final line, the one about drowning in the sea of gray? Chills. I got actual chills from the amount of feeling the guy put into those crap lines. Sebastian made them real. He filled the room with agony and I wasn’t the only one who felt it. When he was done, the entire room was in full clench.

  Awesome. Awesome stuff. But it’d been at least fifteen minutes since Daryn had walked out of there, and that was way past my limit.

  I dropped my hand on Sebastian’s shoulder. “Well, that was amazing,” I said, tugging him toward the door. “I know I don’t need to audition anymore. I give my votes to him. Unfortunately we have to run. You know how it is during audition season.”

  Audition season? Was that even a thing?

  “Let go of me,” Sebastian said, trying to break free. “I don’t even know you.”

  “Can you believe this guy? Still in character.” I had him at the door by then. Almost out of there. “Thanks a lot, everybody. Break a leg.”

  I pushed the door open and shoved him into the hallway.

  “Okay, okay! Take it easy!” He put his hands up. “Just let go of me, and we’ll talk.”

  I let him go.

  He lurched out of my reach, and bolted.

  CHAPTER 18

  I should’ve caught him right away. He’d only gotten a small jump on me, but as I barreled through the door into the waiting room, I ran smack into the receptionist coming the other way. I managed to catch her and keep us both on our feet; then I took a second to make sure she was okay because I’d really given her a shot. That put Sebastian a few steps ahead of me as I chased him out of the casting office into the main hallway.

  “Stop!” I yelled. “Just stop!”

  Sebastian froze at the end of the corridor and locked eyes with me, his hands planted on the door to the stairwell. Then he pushed it open and disappeared inside.

  I sprinted after him and flew down the stairs, taking the steps three at a time. As I spun around the tenth-floor landing, I saw him rounding the next flight below me. We did that again on the ninth floor, eighth. By the seventh, I was gaining on him. I spun around the handrail, turning the corner, and came to a sliding stop.

  Sebastian stood on the landing below. In his hand was something I had never seen before. Two black disks suspended on gleaming chains. I had no idea what it was, but I instinctively recognized it as a weapon.

  “I’m sorry!” he blurted. Then he cocked his arm back and flung it.

  The thing wobbled through the air, the disks rotating on the chain like orbiting planets. Not a great throw, but I was so close. It came right at me.

  I lunged out of the way, executing a half somersault in midair before my ass collided with the wall. I went down, a loud crunch sounding just inches away from my head.

  Scrambling up, I looked for Sebastian. All I heard were the receding squeaks of his soles churning on cement steps. I turned to the thing hanging from the wall and couldn’t believe my eyes.

  One of the disks had sunk deep into the cinder blocks. The other swung like a pendulum beneath it, making a sharp metallic hiss as it skimmed along, raising sparks, and finally stopped.

  I leaned in. The disks and chain were made of … black glass? It looked like the same material as Sebastian’s cuff. Crystal infused with darkness. And it didn’t gleam so much as glow, somehow putting off a black light around it. There was a toggle at the center of the chain, a grip made of the same material.

  Sebastian’s footsteps echoed farther away. He was pulling ahead, but I couldn’t leave. Whatever this thing was, it seemed too important to leave behind. I reached out, and hesitated. Told myself to suck it up. It just didn’t look like anything I’d ever seen. Then went for it and grabbed the handgrip.

  Nothing. No problem. Just smooth, cool metal.

  I tugged. The disk popped out easily, like the wall was made of cork. I lifted it for a closer look. The disks tapped together on the end of the chains; then clink, they snapped together, one sliding over the other, locking into place.

  Badass. Amazing. Incredible. I wanted to check it out further, but I had a man to catch. I secured my grip and resumed pursuit.

  Sebastian had a lead of a few flights on me by then, so I didn’t expect to almost plow into his back when I hit the first floor and charged into the lobby.

  “Who is that?” he asked, without takin
g his eyes off the glass-walled entrance.

  Samrael. No mistaking him this time.

  He stood just inside the center doors in dark jeans and a black coat, more casual than the businesspeople around, but he looked like he belonged, polished and sharp. A young exec.

  Ronwae, the girl with the red hair, and Malaphar, the pock-faced guy in the oversized suit, were covering the two other exits to the front of the building. There was also a new addition to the posse, a young guy, maybe sixteen, seventeen, wearing a red beanie and slouched skater clothes, who strode up to Samrael’s side just as Samrael spotted us.

  “Sebastian, you better follow me,” I said.

  That time, he did.

  CHAPTER 19

  In the Army, you don’t say you retreat. You withdraw. That was what we did. We were outnumbered, underprepared, and uninformed, so. We withdrew like the wind.

  I pushed back into the stairwell with Sebastian right on my heels. Moments ago I’d seen two doors on the first-floor landing—lobby and emergency exit—and emergency was this. Now.

  I exploded through it, setting off an alarm, and ran into bright, eye-spanking daylight. First and foremost I wanted to see Daryn in my Jeep, ready to burn rubber, but she wasn’t anywhere.

  We’d come out onto a street with no traffic. To my right were low-slung buildings with red-tile roofs, stucco walls. Sidewalks lined with huge pots of red flowers. Parked cars, all of the luxury, six-figure variety. Down the street, there was a guardhouse, but not like at Benning. This had flower boxes. Fancy trim around the windows and doors. To my left were massive gray warehouses, STUDIO 5 painted in huge red letters across the top of the nearest one.

  I’d already figured where we were when Sebastian said, “It’s the back lot.”

  The studio looked buttoned up tight, with high concrete walls bordering the perimeter. I didn’t want to get stuck in there with Samrael. But the guardhouse was a hundred meters away, with nothing for cover except flowers and Porsches. We’d be seen before we could get outside. Leaving the studio would also take us further away from the parking garage, where Daryn was. I changed plans and led Sebastian deeper into the lot, hoping for better options.

  The alarm from the high-rise had faded when the door closed behind us. Now it spiked, cutting through the quiet of the studio lot. Looking back, I saw Samrael and his buddies.

  With no one else on the street, they spotted us right away, but Sebastian and I had reached the sound stages and if we could just get around the corner, a little farther, we’d be in … New York City?

  We’d run into a street lined with brownstones on both sides. Steam tumbled out of the gutters. A yellow cab was parked along the curb farther down the street. The front page of the New York Times floated in the puddle I’d just passed.

  I’d slowed down, and Sebastian came even with me. “What do we do? It’s Gideon, right? Where do we go?”

  I couldn’t even answer him. Real fear was spreading through me as I remembered Samrael mentally beating me down. We needed cover now.

  I turned it back up, sprinting to the nearest building—a corner market with crates full of plastic produce and silk flowers. The windows were actually paintings of scenes you’d expect to see inside, like a woman working behind a cash register. A grinning butcher holding up a ham hock. This was a façade, but I yanked the door open anyway just in case. Plywood.

  Sebastian breathed hard at my side. “What do they want with us?”

  “Daryn.”

  “Who?”

  I firmed my grip on the chains. “The girl who isn’t my sister. Get behind that cab and stay there.” As I jogged to the middle of the street, I thought about how I’d been trained to do exactly this—fight. Partially trained. With actual firearms, not nunchuk-disk-things. But so be it. A fight was a fight.

  Samrael came around the corner first. Two others jogged up next. Ronwae and the new guy, the skater with the red beanie, who went by the name Pyro, I’d learn later. They stopped on either side of Samrael. I kept expecting Malaphar, but he didn’t show up.

  “Did you get tired of running, Gideon?” Samrael stopped at the top of the street, but it was so quiet he spoke without raising his voice. “Or tired of being a coward?”

  “Just tired of you.” I brought my hand out slightly, my pre-throw position. The disks unlocked, separating by some miracle, but it must’ve looked like I knew what I was doing.

  “What do you have there?” Samrael asked.

  “Nothing,” said Sebastian, coming to my side. “We don’t even know you, so why—”

  He gasped and folded like he’d taken a gut shot, grabbing his head with both hands.

  I knew what this was. Samrael had done this to me at Joy’s party. Except this was over faster. Sebastian straightened again almost immediately and looked at me. “What was that? What did he just do to me?”

  “Help me understand something,” Samrael said. “You’re both involved in this—I can sense that you know that—but you haven’t been told the most salient crucial piece?” He laughed, and said something to Ronwae and Pyro. I didn’t hear it, but it made Ronwae laugh too. Not Pyro. He stared at us with crazed eyes, shifting his weight like a hunting dog waiting to be released.

  “This is stupid,” Pyro said. “Let’s just kill them.”

  “Not yet.” Samrael’s focus moved to me. My turn again.

  The pressure started over my eyes, the sensation of thumbs digging their way into my head, probing inside. The feeling spread and turned sharper, casting a barbed net over my brain. The darkness came, wheeling around me, pulling me back as the world pushed further and further away.

  I wanted him out. Out of my head.

  Get out. Get out. Get. Out.

  But I need something, Gideon. Where is it?

  His voice was inside my mind.

  Then I saw images. Quick flashes. Daryn at breakfast in Cayucos, writing in her notebook. Daryn sitting in the passenger seat of my Jeep, feet up on the dash. Daryn in the elevator, finger drifting over the panel to the eleventh-floor button.

  This was why she’d withheld critical information about our mission. She knew what Samrael could do. He wasn’t attacking. He was searching. Through my head.

  Daryn is her name? Unusual. She’s kind on the eyes, isn’t she? And much smarter than you, it would seem. In the context of her strategy, your extreme cluelessness is almost forgivable. Where is she, Gideon? Right now, where is she?

  I tried to fight back, concentrating on pulling down the net. Pushing against the pressure.

  Admirable attempt, but not good enough. Let’s try this again. Where—pain, pain like nails driving into my head—is she?

  A sound ripped into the quiet of the street. It came from close, from my throat. My knees smacked the asphalt. Sebastian yelled something. Yelled for Samrael to stop.

  Samrael didn’t stop.

  Insanity. Death. They were the only ways out of this agony. Were they close?

  Yes, Gideon. Very.

  No. This was just pain. I’d felt it before. Every day. Every time I thought of my dad. I could take this.

  The net released suddenly, the pressure and darkness withdrawing, and then there was the lift. The huge lift of being free of the pain, like hot rain pouring up and down my body, running through every part of me.

  I pulled myself to my feet. The disks were still in my hand, but I felt dazed and slow. Up the street at Samrael’s side, Ronwae blurred in and out, like I was seeing her through heat waves. Sebastian. Samrael and his buddies. Everyone was focused on the tricked-out ATV that had just come around the corner.

  The studio cop pulled to a stop and brought a microphone up to his mouth. “This set is authorized-access only.” His voice projected through speakers mounted on the roll bar. “I’m going to need to see your passes, please.”

  Sebastian and I were on the opposite end of the block, leaving the Kindred boxed in the middle—the weakest position to be in during a conflict—so why did I feel like they sti
ll had the advantage?

  “We’ll be on our way shortly,” Samrael replied. “We’re just finishing up a conversation.”

  The studio cop climbed out of the vehicle. The guy was ripped in that gym-dweller way. Loaded with muscles that had no real-world application. He pressed his shoulders back, sensing trouble. “I’m sorry, sir. Unless you show me your ID, I’m going to have to escort you off the lot.”

  “Gideon, we should leave,” Sebastian said.

  But I couldn’t leave. Something was about to go down. I was sure of it.

  And I was right.

  Samrael made a snapping motion with his hand, a flick like he was opening a switchblade. Something appeared at his fingertips. There was nothing in his hand, and then there was something. A knife. Sebastian and I weren’t that far away. I couldn’t be imagining the long ivory-colored knife Samrael was suddenly holding.

  The studio cop froze as Samrael turned back to him.

  I broke into a sprint, straight toward him, dread shooting through me.

  Samrael reached back and hurled the knife. It traveled through the air at shocking speed, but time broke down and I saw it in pieces. Slow. The entire thing, clear and sharp. The guard’s utter look of shock at seeing a weapon used against him. The knife’s bizarre trail of pale light, like a comet’s. And my thoughts. I had so many thoughts as that knife sailed on and on in that instant.

  That man’s going to die.

  By a weapon that appeared from nothing.

  Because I didn’t anticipate again.

  I should’ve stopped this.

  The blade sank into the guard’s neck. Five, six inches disappearing at the base of his throat, right beneath his Adam’s apple. The force of the strike rocked him backward. He landed on the street, his keys jangling, his cell phone skidding across the pavement.

  Sebastian ran up beside me.

  We stood together, watching a furious moment of legs bucking and throat grasping and gurgling. Then nothing.

  Just stillness.

  My eyes went to the fat ring on the guard’s finger. Class ring? Too far to tell. Then the piece of lettuce stuck to the bottom of his shoe. From the pretend market, or was it real?