by Loren Walker
“Sorry,” she apologized, thinking quickly. “My back hurts in this position.”
A beeping sound. Renzo pulled his Lissome from his pocket.
His eyes bulged. He looked around wildly, before him, and then behind him.
CaLarca’s heart leapt into her throat. “What’s wrong?”
“Cohen,” he muttered. “Cohen, where is he?”
“He’s down there,” CaLarca pointed to the trees below. “He was, anyways. But what’s wrong?”
Renzo dropped into a crouch. Then he rocked onto his seat, his knees before him. Dust rose from his heels as they slid through the grit and sand. CaLarca saw a glint of silver at the edge of his trouser hem: his prosthetic. The Lissome hung from the tips of his fingers.
“Will you please tell me what’s happening? You’re scaring me,” CaLarca demanded.
“My sister,” Renzo muttered, rubbing his bridge of his nose, under his glasses. “She got my message. She’s okay.”
A wave of panic crashed over CaLarca. “She’s coming here?”
“I hope so,” Renzo said, staring out into the surrounding mountains. “I hope she can figure it out. I couldn’t put any details into the public. Just a note in the network, I wasn’t sure if she would pick it up -”
CaLarca wasn’t listening anymore. The sister would ruin everything. Phaira had too much influence. Oh, sure, the siblings jockeyed for power, and they argued, but everyone on the Arazura looked to Phaira in the end. That woman would never help CaLarca. She’d kick her out and she’d be left with nothing. No support, no money, no Sydel for protection.
She had to convince Sydel to leave before Phaira’s return.
*
She waited until the end of the training session to tease out the question.
“I’ve found one of the original NINE. Do you want to meet her?”
“What?” Sydel jumped, falling out of her position. She’d been wobbling in a push-up posture for two minutes to build up her core strength. Now she swung her legs around, staring at CaLarca, who sat in a chair across the room. “Who?”
“Marette.” It was odd to say her name after so many years, even stranger to type out the message and send it into the unknown. “One of the twins. The one classified as Nadi.”
“Marette.” Sydel sounded out the name, as if probing for a memory to attach it to.
“Yes. She’s a public figure now, a performer. She responded immediately to my message, though, and asked us to meet her in Zangari. Only a few hours away.”
CaLarca paused, letting the words sink in. This was an enormous risk. But CaLarca and Marette got along well when they were younger. There was no bad blood between them, no knowledge of the other’s crimes. She was ideal to serve as distraction. Plus, CaLarca couldn’t resist the push of curiosity: what did the skinny blonde twin turn into, twenty-five years later?
Then she continued: “This is an opportune time to leave, Sydel. I’m mobile again. You are growing stronger. We can carry on from there, and find our own destiny.”
“Leave,” Sydel repeated.
“You knew this day was coming,” CaLarca reminded her gently. “I know it is difficult.”
“Yes,” came the girl’s voice, strangely flat. “But I know you have my best interests at heart.”
A small stab of guilt hit CaLarca. She pushed it aside. “Tomorrow, then.”
“Tomorrow.”
“And no word to the brothers about this. You know they will try and convince you to change your mind.”
“I know.”
*
That night, CaLarca couldn’t sleep. In the dusty attic, she ran through the scenario again and again, checking maps, checking the structure of Renzo’s SCAFKO. Strong enough, simple enough. It was just getting out from the hooks of the brothers, any tether that might hook into them and haul them back….
The knock at the door startled her from her thoughts.
“Sydel?” she called. “You don’t have to knock.”
The door opened. It wasn’t Sydel.
CaLarca gasped at the looming shadow, how the man had to duck to enter the room. Her body flooded with defensive Nadi, before she tightened her nerves and forced it back.
Cohen’s eyes glittered in the dark. With his new red beard, and the bulky layers of clothing, he looked older and more intimidating than the first time they met, back on the Arazura.
CaLarca swallowed before speaking. “What do you want?”
“Will you come?”
His voice was like a rusty hacksaw on wood. He sounds like the rest of these Toomba residents, she thought. They are affecting him, and not for the better.
“With you?” she spoke out loud. “I think not. You -”
“Stop,” he growled, the word pushed through his teeth.
Disrespectful thug, she thought, staring hard at him. I’ll be glad to never see you again.
“It’s Sydel,” he finally said.
“What?” CaLarca exclaimed. “What’s wrong? Where is she?”
“You need to come,” Cohen said, ducking through the doorway. “She’s acting like - I don’t know. Not like herself.”
Then he was gone.
What was going on? Why now? CaLarca’s body shrieked as she went upright, scrambling for her crutches. As she swung them down the hallway, and fumbled down the narrow staircase, a thousand scenarios raced through her head. Maybe the girl had another uncontrollable Nadi incident, despite all the training and physical strengthening. Or perhaps the brain damage was impacting her, perhaps turning her towards insanity, or hallucinations.
The night air was crisp, the twin moons shining like spotlights. The wind howled as Cohen and CaLarca headed into the center of Toomba, the main cavern where a dozen wooden buildings were housed, protected from the elements. Their footsteps echoed off the walls. At the end of the path sat the town tavern, radiating music and raucous laughter. As they drew closer, beams of light streamed through the ajar door and windows.
“There?” CaLarca asked, shivering in the cold. “What is she doing in there?”
“What do you think she’s doing?” Cohen snapped.
CaLarca held her tongue. When they reached the steps, CaLarca opened an Eko channel, searching for Sydel, hoping she could avoid going inside.
But Sydel’s mind was firmly closed.
CaLarca sighed, and swung her crutches up to the platform, preparing to hoist herself up. Cohen remained on the mountain path.
“Aren’t you coming in?” she demanded.
“One rejection is enough,” Cohen said. But he didn’t move from his position. As much as she and the brother despised each other, for Sydel’s sake, he would stand watch, she realized, and intervene if needed.
The tavern held ten empty round tables along its left side, the right side packed with bodies along the bar. The harsh overhead lights picked up the glinting bottles, rifles leaning against chairs, men and women laughing, clinking glasses, talking loudly.
Through the bodies, CaLarca caught a glimpse of short brown hair, a birdlike neck. She hobbled in that direction. The patrons caught sight of her and made quiet, whooping noises. “Watch out,” CaLarca heard someone joke. “Here comes momma.”
Then the crowd parted. Sydel was in the center of the table, her face flushed, her hand around a bottle, her hair standing up in tufts. She burned with heat; CaLarca could feel it from across the room.
“Hello,” Sydel murmured, propping her chin up with her hands. “You here to lecture me, too?”
“You know this is dangerous,” CaLarca said, casting sharp looks to all the patrons, who watched with interest. “What happens if you lose control?”
“If you don’t like it, leave.”
CaLarca recoiled. Sydel had never spoken to her like that. “You are acting like a sullen, reckless child,” she accused.
Sydel shrugged. Her finger traced the edge of her bottle.
Anger simmered in CaLarca’s stomach. “You have responsibilities.”
> “You have responsibilities!” One of the patrons repeated in a high-pitched tone, followed by titters of laughter.
Incensed, CaLarca grabbed Sydel by the upper arm. “Get up,” she ordered. “Enough of this.”
“Hey, let go!” one of the men exclaimed. Hands clapped on her shoulders. CaLarca tried to throw them off, still gripping Sydel. The girl wasn’t fighting back.
In fact, CaLarca realized, Sydel was shaking, as if being electrocuted, her eyes rolling in her head.
Hands yanked her away from Sydel. CaLarca stumbled, desperately swinging her crutches to catch her balance.
Before her, Sydel stopped shaking. Cognizance returned to the girl’s red-rimmed eyes, and she whispered, again and again: “What did you do? What did you do to me?”
“Okay, that’s enough!” one of the young men announced. “First the giant, and now you. Sydel, how many handlers do you have?” He glared at CaLarca from across the bar. “Get out of here, go back to whatever hole you crawled out of.”
More bodies swarmed in front of CaLarca, forcing her backwards. “Freak,” she heard in a chorus of whispers, all around her head.
When CaLarca burst through the tavern doors, laughter sounding behind her, Cohen steadied her before she fell down the front steps. And by the look on his face, he understood what had just happened in there.
“She’s acting like a fool. I can’t believe she said that,” CaLarca muttered, more to herself than the brother. “Why would she talk to me like that? Why would she even want to be in a place like that?”
A seed of doubt was growing. She just assumed the girl was a little unsteady, but maybe things were deeper than she initially thought.
The brother mumbled something, lost in the chill wind. CaLarca snapped him a look. “What was that?”
“She’d listen to Phaira,” he repeated.
A strange, violent jealousy gripped her chest. “Why?”
Cohen shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just different with those two.”
“How so?”
Cohen shrugged again. “In Kings, Syd got all crazy after the blast, like she couldn’t hear me, no matter what I did. Then Phaira comes in, says her name, and Syd wakes up.”
“Well, your sister isn’t here, and isn’t here often, by all accounts,” CaLarca countered. “Sydel can’t rely on her. None of you can. You know that’s true.”
Cohen looked stung, but he didn’t argue. For a moment, CaLarca felt a hard twinge of guilt. Where was that coming from? What did she care if the brother was hurt? It was true. She looked back at the door to the tavern. The sounds hadn’t diminished. It was going to be a long night.
“I’ll stay,” she told the brother. “I’ll sit here until she comes out, and try and get her back to the house.”
“Don’t bother,” Cohen said, striding past, presumably heading back to his grandmother’s house. “Do whatever you want. That goes for the both of you.”
CaLarca watched the brother’s silhouette grow smaller, and finally disappear from sight. Permission to leave, in a way.
Just until morning, she reminded herself, as she painfully lowered herself onto the porch of the tavern, wrapping her cloak around her, her crutches between her knees. Only a few hours. Then flight.
*
“You lied.”
CaLarca started from her sleep, her head pressed against one of the wooden poles. The sun was rising over the mountains, cold and orange and pink. The tavern was silent now.
Sydel stood before her, half in shadow, her back to the rising sun. Her hair had been smoothed back with water. She wore no cloak, her bare arms exposed to the cold. She didn’t seem to notice.
“Did I - what?” CaLarca croaked. Had she heard correctly? Maybe it was part of a dream.
“You lied.” The statement was flat.
“About what?” CaLarca deferred, wincing as she tried to straighten her back.
“You’re not alone in the world. You have a child, and a husband, and a farm in the South. I saw it in my head.”
CaLarca’s guts twisted. This wasn’t happening. She’d been so careful to conceal her thoughts. How was this possible?
An Insynn rush, she realized. Sydel experienced an Insynn rush. When the girl went stiff, as if electrocuted, her brain received a flash of CaLarca’s past. She had seen that physical reaction before. CaLarca stared at Sydel with an equal mixture of wonder and horror. She was developing Insynn abilities too? What more was possible? How powerful could this girl become?
The girl’s voice was sharp. “When you went into my mind, what did you do to me? What did you alter? Can you change it back?”
“I didn’t -” CaLarca rose to her feet, gripping the head of her cane. When Sydel stepped back, CaLarca lifted a hand. “I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m trying to help you to understand what’s happening. What you experienced last night is called Insynn.”
“Insynn,” the girl repeated.
“Yes,” CaLarca said. “It’s one of the NINE abilities, triggered by skin-to-skin contact. Usually, the flashes are precognitive, visions of the future, but sometimes they can go back in time.”
And in theory, she thought. A master Insynn can scroll forward to see a person’s eventual cause of death. But she couldn’t tell Sydel that. The girl was already so unstable.
“I don’t want it,” Sydel said shrilly. “I can’t hold that kind of power too. I can hardly manage the Nadi.”
Then her expression shifted from desperate to determined. “Burn it out,” she ordered. “Go inside my head and burn it out.”
“You can’t,” CaLarca said. “Accept the facts. You’ve evolved again. You have access to three incredible gifts.”
And maybe the fourth, too, she added silently, wondering if it could be true.
Sydel didn’t respond. In the silence, CaLarca shivered, but grew hopeful. Maybe Sydel was actually listening. Maybe she would forget what she thought she saw.
Cold, thin fingers wrapped around CaLarca’s arm. “Come with me.”
“We need to - we need to go back and prepare to leave,” CaLarca reminded her. The words came out shaky. “I meant what I said about forging ahead -”
“We will.”
They walked in silence, all the way back to the grandmother’s house. No lights glowed in any window. Sydel propelled CaLarca up the stairs, through the door of the attic they shared. The door clicked shut behind them. In the darkness, stumbling for the bed, a flicker of fear sparked in CaLarca.
“I’m tired of waiting.” Sydel’s soft voice carried through the night. “Tired of begging for the truth. You’ll show me what really happened with the NINE .”
“But we -”
“Give me access to every strand. Every memory. Now.”
IV.
Mr. Asanto was perched on the end of the bed, dressed in clean wool and cashmere, steely-grey hair on a craggy, tanned face. When CaLarca hesitated, the man smiled at her like they were the closest of friends. “Close the door, if you wouldn’t mind.”
CaLarca looked over her shoulder, at the staircase, and the shadow of her mother on the first floor. She’d never spoken to one of her parents’ friends by herself. It felt very wrong. “I’m not sure that I should.”
“I only have a question, Cyrah,” Mr. Asanto said gently. “But it’s private, and I don’t think you want people to overhear.”
Then he tilted his head. “I use Cyrah, but do you prefer your surname? I’ve always gotten the sense that you do.”
It was true. Cyrah was the wrong name for her, too delicate, too much like a sigh. CaLarca felt straight and true, and when she turned fourteen, she asked her teachers and fellow students to use it.
He saw her thought process, and nodded. “You do, I can see it. Well, CaLarca, I think you can also tell when someone is lying. So what do you think? Am I being honest?”
Her cheeks flushed. Then she closed the door quickly, leaning back against the wood.
The man put his hands to his chest,
fingers overlapped. “I think you can do other things, CaLarca. Things that make your parents very nervous. Things they wish they could just hide away.” His gaze travelled to her hand. “Can I see?”
CaLarca rubbed the fingers of her right hand together, and turned her palm up. She didn’t have to look down to see the swirling fire, compressing and growing solid, forming into the shape of a boning knife. When the weight solidified, she closed her hands around the handle, and shut her eyes, expecting to hear a gasp, or a cry, or a desperate plea to stop.
“Remarkable.”
CaLarca opened her eyes. Mr. Asanto’s face was bright with wonder. It was the first time anyone had reacted that way.
“May I see the knife?” he asked her next.
Feeling bolder, CaLarca walked over to Mr. Asanto and placed the knife in his open hand. He held it at either end, studying the detail, the sheen of the blade.
Then, suddenly, he let go. She watched its trajectory as it fell, and just before it hit the floor, dissipating in a puff of smoke.
“Truly remarkable,” he whispered. “Do you know what you’re called?”
CaLarca shook her head.
“You’re a Nadi. It’s a very special gift. You have the ability to generate energy in your body, and harness it. And look how you’ve already progressed to fully-formed objects!”
CaLarca beamed at the praise.
Then Mr. Asanto sobered. “Now, please forgive me for what I’m about to say, loudly enough for your parents to hear.”
CaLarca took a step back as Mr. Asanto’s face darkened. His voice grew deafening, and his body glowed with a gray aura.
“You’ll stay in my care for three months,” he boomed. “In a secure facility, with three meals a day and comfortable lodgings, with others like you for company. But codes of behavior will be followed, and a strict regimen of treatment. And I promise, by the end of the program, you’ll no longer be an outcast. You’ll finally fit in, and be a normal human being as we were all meant to be. Like I know you want to be for your family.”
CaLarca stared at him. He was lying openly, loudly. She let her mind open, searching for her parents. They sat on the staircase, just outside her bedroom door. She could feel their excited heartbeats. They were looking for a cure, she realized, and Mr. Asanto was offering them one. They set her up. They didn’t want her to embarrass them anymore.
