by Logan Keys
Power versus beauty. Power. Beauty. What wins?
Do the citizens of Anthem get lost in the never-ending war against those who covet their place? No, I’ll bet they give no thought to those who want their home any more than the coveters who think about Anthem’s people. Would they give it willingly to be free again? They might. But the Authority would never let them know freedom is at their doorstep.
Besides, once we held that city, would Simon ever let everyone be truly free? I think his paranoia would remain. I doubt anyone with full control could relinquish it, once it’s been made.
But none of that is what’s brought me to a sweat. It’s the one, single, lonely wisp of a new idea that’s running through my brain: I’ll never be a father.
There.
I’ve thought it.
I’ve let it pass through one chamber of my brain, to be heard by the other.
Seeing their boy, seeing the son of a man who’d no doubt brought him into the fray without a second thought, makes me think that maybe, just somewhat possibly, I’d want this future for myself. A boy, or girl, like my father had had, to farm with, to look out at all the hard work, while rubbing our calluses, and say, “We did this.” A son to shoot with, or daughter who’s been caught sleeping in the hay again with her pony. It all came out, just this moment.
I’ve been a legal adult for a whole few months now…
And today, I’ve become a man.
Because a boy thinks about surviving for the sake of surviving. A man thinks about the next generation.
If we win this war, what life will be left for the two sides?
And how can a part-man, part-monster, part-robot even have children?
Instead of being swallowed up by this, though; instead of feeding this loss until it eats me whole, I turn with a smile just as plastic as these two and move over to my chair.
“What do you have to offer us?”
Chapter Seventy-Two
Tommy
After only an hour, the ambassadors left, having talked about seemingly everything they needed to talk about, offering every single thing I could have imagined they’d offer. They were nice, respectful, made no demands, and their son played in the background. The innocent boy had thrown a dart of regret through my chest, and he’d been the biggest thing to show in their apparent want for peace.
After they left, I sat dumbfounded.
As did Baby.
My new assistant proved her worth in gold—she’d remained quiet, taking notes throughout, asking a few pointed questions when I allowed. But she deferred to me in such a manner that the ambassadors took me, an untried politician, quite seriously.
I listened patiently through their offers of peace, their ideas of the new democracy in Anthem. I even let them clarify where our armies would remain in the great city.
They offered all but the kitchen sink.
Karma Cromwell, their leader, didn’t want her husband’s supposed legacy. Anthem was now a place of joy and happiness. Though the old rules hadn’t changed, new ones had been added to bring peace. Parties, balls, and great sorority all prevailed.
People were given rations more easily, and the sections had been cleaned out, their inhabitants given jobs. They grew food in abundance, having proven to be quite able to sustain all of their citizens without starvation. In essence, everything they said sounded … perfect.
One word, more than any other, rang through my office repeatedly: Peace.
They offered a ceasefire.
This, I could sink my teeth into. It’s what the foundation of my own ideals would be built upon. No matter how Anthem was living, as it were, we’d focus on how, just maybe, things could go differently and without war.
When they left to go to their rooms, the boy waved goodbye, grinning in the way only a very pleased boy would, and I felt something spark inside, a thing that had been quelled during the first part of our meeting.
Hope.
“What do you think?” I ask Baby when they fully quit my office.
“I think you’re in a very dangerous position, Mr. Thomas Hatter.”
“No kidding.”
My door opens, and a military police officer I’ve not seen before pokes his head inside. “Sir, I’ve brought a message from Council Member Adrian.”
“Yes, come.”
He enters. “She asks that you visit her apartments … alone.”
Baby and I share a glance before I shrug and rise.
“You’re going? To the Medusa?” Baby says, incredulous.
“Yes … but you’re coming with me.”
Chapter Seventy-Three
Tommy
The MP shows us to the towers standing tall in the middle of the city, and he enters the one on the left. We ride the elevator for more than thirty floors before he has to use a key to go up the last twenty.
Adrian resides on the last floor.
The elevator opens to a hallway. At the end of it are two oversized black doors with elaborate handles of ornately carved spiders, eyes bejeweled.
The MP opens them, but he does not enter.
“Ma’am.” He holds out a hand to stop Baby.
She looks at me, and I sigh. “I’ll yell if I need you to stop me from turning to stone.”
Baby doesn’t look pleased, but she lets me go.
Inside is dimly lit, with curtains of black hanging over every window. With the door closed behind me, I feel like I’ve entered another realm.
The carpet quiets my steps as I continue through one sitting area to another larger one hosting glass terrariums on each side floor to ceiling. Some are lit with black lights.
I approach one and tap on the glass, only to rear back when a nasty-looking tarantula charges out to attack the side. It’s augmented, purple, glowing in the dark, with fangs as long as my fingers. White polka dots mark the belly that shows whenever it rises up on its hind legs.
The thing’s the size of a large dish platter.
I hear a sound above, and I have to squint to see. Then I stumble backwards with a shout.
It’s Adrian, flying high, wrapped in silks.
She gracefully spins until she’s upside down in front of me, hanging by her ankles. Her strange hair mops the floor, and her eyes, thankfully, are covered by a bandana.
“Step into my web, said the spider to the fly,” she whispers eerily.
The shock of her cold beauty has yet to fade.
“I believe the saying is ‘my parlor,’” I say.
Her mouth twitches. “There are no parlors any more, Sergeant Hatter. No tricks.”
She flips onto her feet, uncovers her eyes long enough to make my heart race, before putting on her sunglasses.
“I see you’ve met Tortuga.” She motions over to the tank, where the spider still looks ready to attack. “She’s a good judge of character. Aren’t all little ladies? Not sure why she doesn’t like you. What secrets do you hold, Thomas?”
“Adrian … you wished to see me?”
“See you? Oh yes, that.”
Adrian leads me to the seating area, but by now all of the caged arachnids have come out to crawl along their webs. They swarm around me, though behind glass, but the effect is no better. I struggle not to smack at my arms and legs, just in case.
We sit on couches of black, and Adrian watches me from behind her dark glasses, breathing deeply, smelling something, thinking something. Mystery is her makeup, and this woman wears it like a shroud.
“You met with them today, I take it?”
She means the ambassadors.
“I did.”
“Have they wooed you with talks of peace? Promises to come to an agreement and to leave us all alone?”
“They did.”
She sighs and, leaning back, unveils her eyes to stare up at stars that have been painted across the ceiling. Their patterns seem to mean something, but I can’t stop looking at her eyes. From this angle, they shine like gold. “Do you remember the early years of the Authority?”
she asks.
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“The first time they actually called themselves by that despicable name. Even then, Reginald had such a sense for dramatics, did he not? He held no fear, didn’t try to make it soft on the citizens. He was the Authority, and that was that. No one thought for a second it would last, and the Underground had everything it needed. The army—who could rise against the combined forces? Here we sit alongside the best military in the world, and what are we? Relics. All of it brought to its knees, and by what?”
“The guards.”
“Yes. Reginald started making them, and we never got our footing. Do you remember the first prototype? Maybe you were young, or not in a big city. But I do. I remember. In the early days, they weren’t as controlled. They ravaged the cities and had no conscience, killing anything that moved. They weren’t human. They weren’t even animals. They were demons.”
She sits up, but keeps her eyes downward. “I knew Simon then, too, you know. I knew him better than most. Back then, he was a man after my own heart, which is rare. Men started this; they brought all of it into the world. But back then was a time I still pitied them as the weaker sex.”
She pauses as if I’ll refute her points.
When I don’t, Adrian goes on, “Simon watched the guards pillage city after city, rounding up the sick, killing anyone who so much as spoke against the Authority. He was beside himself with guilt, but more than that, he grew angrier by the day. And when his army could do little to nothing to stand in their way, I watched the impotence of a man turn against him until he fought fire with fire. He made himself … and then he made us.”
“And now? Do you still hold pity for men?”
“None.”
I nod.
“I sent you the sword, Thomas.”
I glance at her sharply, and Adrian stands, comes closer, eyes free from their cage ready to turn me into stone. Already I’m unable to look away.
“I sent it to you so you could place it through the heart of the man I love.”
I swallow, trying to look away, but I’m at her mercy. “Why not do it yourself?”
Suddenly I know. Adrian was his lover, but there’s something else … something more.
With her dark hair pushed away from her face, I can picture her with a lab coat on, beauty un-enhanced, and my memory’s looking at someone familiar.
She smiles. “Does it surprise you I’m still alive? I know my little girl never said what happened to me… Truth is, she didn’t know.”
I close my eyes, finally able to look away. “Joelle,” I say, and when next I open them, I see all that’s needed to be seen. Joelle had been the child of this woman and Simon. Their one and only. And they’d experimented on her.
Anger.
Disgust.
“Thomas”—her voice wobbles—“you have to know I’d change it all if I could.”
Petty words from a petty woman. I’m sickened by her regret.
And she blames Simon? I could almost laugh in her face full of pain.
I sneer my words, “So you want me to kill Simon? How is it better that you’d lead?” My incredulous questions ring through her arachnid-infested penthouse. “What could you possibly need an army for?”
Her bitterness melts away, and a chill crawls up my spine as she drops the act. “Give me one,” she answers, “and I’ll show you.”
Chapter Seventy-Four
Dallas
I questioned the vampire for what seemed like hours—about Tommy, about her, about the world. How small everything suddenly seemed, that I was this close to my past, yet unable to grasp it. I’d known about Anthem, but the Underground had returned to the US, and Tommy was supposed to be with them… A small chance, but she clung to it, and I took up the slack, hanging on to it, as well.
Tommy.
Last she knew he’d been captured, but she hoped—with the youthful hope of those who hadn’t been stripped of that notion—that he’d been released and was with the Underground now.
Barely a few hours away.
My heart soared.
First, we needed to do something about Toby and his gang. I got the feeling she was not only going to return to me my childhood friend, but also give me terrible news.
“Is he like you?” I ask, barely keeping the fear from my voice.
“No. But he has his own darkness.”
“How did you become?”
She sighs. “I always thought they did experiments from a purely scientific perspective, but I was wrong. While hiding in a ship to follow Tommy to battle, I overheard things that told me all the times I’d dreamed of it, I’d been right. A bright light in the middle of a metal circle, and when they said the name, I understood my first childhood memory had been real: Chronos.”
“What is that?”
“A machine.”
“What does it do?”
“Takes you beyond this world. You can call them angels and demons, or ghosts and spirits. Whatever it is, we’re not made to simply return to dust. This is where the zombies came from, as well. Their decay is the rot from the world of the dead, those who haven’t been blessed with eternity, like punished people spilling out onto our planet.”
She shakes her head in disbelief before she starts again. “As a child, probably playing hide and seek in the labs, I have a memory of climbing up to a blue flood of light and seeing monsters and terrible things inside.”
“That sounds crazy.”
“Crazier than vampires and zombies?”
“Touché.”
“Whatever Simon brought back from that other place, they used on me, then the tests began. I think they took my blood, too, used it for other experiments.”
“You mean, Tommy.”
“Yes. We’re like brothers and sisters, all of us Specials, in a way.”
“So, none of the Specials are good?”
“Good is a choice. I chose to fight against what’s driving me to do bad things. I’m made from the type of evil you pretend doesn’t exist.”
“And you want to infect me.”
“I can help you with Toby if I feed, but…”
“But it’ll change me. I’ll become like Pike?”
“Pike was a mistake.”
“But you think there’s still a chance I won’t become like him.”
“A small one. A theory of mine. If I’m doing it on purpose…”
The moon’s already leaving the sky, so I’ll have to decide soon. If I accept her gift, I’ll be a sister to Tommy in ways I always should have been. Not to mention, I’ll be able to take out Cara’s killer, rid myself of the Pike dreams.
“What do you think?” she asks quietly.
“I think you should bite me before I change my mind.”
Chapter Seventy-Five
Liza
“So, you want to fight?”
I turn away from my apartment door to find Phillip standing there. “I went to the arenas looking for you,” I tell him, “but yeah, I learned a thing or two, watching the fighters.”
He comes out of the shadows, arms crossed, a speculative gleam in his stony eyes. “Fighting is what you’re made for, Liza. You simply haven’t been trained, is all.”
“How do you know?”
Phillip widens his arms at his sides. “Because we’re alike.”
“What do you mean? The doctor from the island?”
“The very same.”
“All of the Skulls, too?”
He shakes his head. “We’re the only two, as far as I know, in all of the world.”
Without thought, I touch my bandage. “Do you have words on your arm?”
When I move the bandage, and show him. Phillip sucks in a breath. “Cover that up.”
“What does it mean?”
He grabs my elbow, pulling me down the alley and into the shadows. “It means we’re all pawns. The doctor, Simon—they go way back, competing with one another, trying to undo each other’s work. I can show you
all you need to know.”
His hand moves down to my wrists, and he presses his fingers into my pulse. “Are you ready to learn?”
I swallow.
“Don’t look so worried.” He smiles, shaking my arms until they lose the tension. “I want you to picture the last time you were about to be killed, either by a zombie or otherwise.”
Zombies come to mind easily enough. I’m too afraid to think of the hanging.
“What is it?” he asks.
“The undead.”
“Close your eyes. Did you fight?”
I nod.
“Were they swarming around you?”
“Yes.”
I tense up as his mouth comes closer to my ear, and in a whisper he asks, “Are you afraid they’ll eat you, piece by piece? Are you feeling a heat in your veins, a fire? Have you ever felt their bite?”
I nod.
“Feel that searing pain, Liza. Let it fuel you.”
I feel it again now—the vileness, the agony, the heat of battle.
Phillip’s hand tightens around my wrists, then he jerks my arms, and without thinking I yank free and open my eyes.
Phillip lunges, going for my throat, and my previous fear of being hanged makes me hesitate long enough for him to latch on to me. He cuts off my air supply. “Reach past it—fight, Liza, fight!”
I go into another place, like an ocean of anger, and I let it fill me.
Armed with my new training, I knock his hands away, punch, cross, jab, and knee parts of him so swiftly, I have no time to think. Hunger drives me, and I don’t stop, following him with my legs to either side until I’m on top of him, removing his knife and holding it to his throat.
I growl in frustration, fighting the urge to move the blade, and it takes me deep breaths not to continue, not to hurt him.
He raises his hands in surrender and smiles.
