Shards

by F. J. R. Titchenell

  “Again.”

  “His favorite flowers are lilacs, viewed through 3D glasses. His parents met in a hospital in Switzerland after his mother got her foot caught in a wheat thresher. He used to enjoy almonds until he saw a parrot choke to death on one.”

  “What color parrot?” I hoped I sounded urgent rather than frantic.

  “Chartreuse! Whatever that is! And I remember the other two dozen bogus fun facts too! Exactly how is this supposed to keep anyone safe? If I got replaced, my Splinter would know everything I know.”

  “They’re not for asking you if you’re a Splinter, they’re for asking me. If I thought you’d been replaced, or might have been replaced, or that you weren’t a completely trustworthy human, he’d expect me to give you different answers.”

  That caught his attention a little. “And then he’d kill me?”

  “Yes, or refuse to tell you anything, depending on the answers. There are four different levels of confidence.”

  “And which one am I on?”

  I’d been hoping he wouldn’t find that question worth asking, but at least I didn’t need to feel guilty about that answer.

  “Absolute.”

  He nodded, not looking overly happy.

  “When we get close, don’t make any sudden movements,” I reminded him.

  “Got it.”

  “And try not to get within arm’s reach unless he has his full attention on interacting with you, in case something startles him.”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t laugh unless you see one of us laugh first. Don’t argue unless you have no other choice. He’s missing a hand, and he’ll be carrying at least one gun. Don’t stare. And don’t show weakness. Whatever you do—”

  “I’ll manage,” he said.

  I hadn’t expected him to take the new information or the instructions well, but I had been expecting a little more reaction, a little assurance that his attention hadn’t wandered again. He was focusing harder than necessary on the rocky incline ahead, and I didn’t think it was simply out of frustration with what I hadn’t told him. The way his tongue kept working silently against his teeth, trying to capture an elusive string of words, meant there was something else he wanted to talk about.

  “Mina?”

  “Yes?”

  “You . . . um.” He briefly removed his “3 Of A Kind” baseball cap and ran his fingers nervously through his hair before trying again. “I know you’re not exactly into gossip, recreationally, anyway, but you hear things, right? If you’re always listening for signs of the Splinters, you hear the other stuff, too.”

  “Yes.”

  “So, you’ve heard the . . . stuff? I should—I mean, when I told you to switch Madison’s list, I wasn’t sure how to say the rest, but you must have heard by now.”

  The party. Of course. I had made a note of it, when the flood of hate spam had hit Ben on every available public forum, that it would need some talking out, but with the sudden prospect of seeing The Old Man for the first time in nearly three years, that little crisis had completely slipped what was left of my mind.

  “Oh, right. It’s okay,” I told him quickly. He turned and stared at me.

  “Okay?”

  “Yes. It would have been nice to have someone with his ear to the in-crowd, but that’s not why I picked you, anyway. You’ve got plenty more to offer. We’ll make do.”

  “We’ll make do? ” Ben repeated. “That’s what you have to say about this?”

  I thought maybe my voice had been harsher than my intent somehow, as it sometimes is, so I tried to make myself clear. “I’m not blaming you. It’s not—”

  “I didn’t do it!” Ben shouted much too loudly. His voice echoed back off the rocks to where we’d stopped dead in our path. If we’d been within The Old Man’s hearing, I didn’t know what he might do to us for drawing unnecessary attention to his position.

  “I know that!”

  I was too loud as well, a few decibels higher than Ben, even, but I couldn’t stop myself. The very idea that he found it necessary to explain something so obvious to me was like salt on the exposed nerves the hallucinations kept leaving behind, a kick to my black-and-blue ego, right in the extra tender target that was my defective and failing mental faculties.

  “I’m not a complete idiot!” I shouted. “Maybe I don’t know every detail of what you mean when you don’t say it, but I do know you a little! Maybe better than anyone else here does! Better than that! Do you really think I could spend my whole summer with someone the way we did and not be able to tell if he’s a monster?”

  You mean again?

  I wasn’t sure if that voice was a regular thought or a crazy one, and I didn’t care. “You know what I mean!” I snapped, even though Ben hadn’t shown any acknowledgement of the double meaning. “Please tell me you didn’t think, even for a moment, that I’d actually believe that you’d—”

  “No.” I wasn’t sure if Ben was really agreeing with me that vehemently or if he just wanted to keep me from finishing the sentence. “No, I guess not. I just needed to—”

  “To what?”

  He sighed. “Nothing.”

  We continued the climb in silence for a while, his jaw continuing its word-searching dance. As fruitless as I knew it would be, I tried again.

  “The rest of the Network won’t believe it either,” I told him. “Kevin and Aldo probably know better anyway, and anyone who doesn’t will listen to me.”

  “Thanks,” Ben said blankly.

  “We won’t let this get in the way,” I promised. “This is nothing. Really. They’re not allowed to copy you or kill you, so they’re attacking you with whatever else they’ve got. In fact, this shows how little they’ve got right now, that they’re bothering to try to make you a bit less dangerous with a lie.”

  “She didn’t just lie,” Ben said clearly, as if a few of the right words were finally forming. “And it’s not nothing.”

  I glanced over at him, wishing he’d get to the point, say something that made sense, look at me and stop staring so unreadably forward. His hand was tracing the fresh scratches on his neck in a way that gave me the feeling they had come from something other than the simple Splinter fight he’d mentioned in passing when he’d warned me what she was. I gave him the gentlest nudge I could.

  “What did happen?”

  Just when I thought he might not answer, he did, slowly, describing Madison’s stunt in careful, uncomfortable fits and starts, his eyes locked on the ground ahead of us. An unhelpful wave of that too-ready anger broke in my chest and splashed down into my stomach, even though I’d already been given more than enough time to process the outcome, if not the details, of what she’d done.

  “And she threatened . . . she said it would only get worse, if I didn’t give up.”

  “Give up resisting them?” I had to make sure. “Give up on me?”

  He nodded. “Only I don’t know how it could get worse from here, if they can’t replace me. They might try to get me arrested or something, I don’t know.”

  Splinters didn’t need to try to get someone arrested. The Splinter Council and the human town council together owned Prospero’s police, even after the hasty restoration of the human version of Sheriff Diaz. Splinter or collaborator, it made no difference to his interest in truth and justice.

  “If they had permission to trump something up, they’d have done it by now and gotten you out of the way,” I tried to assure him. “They’re just trying to make your life difficult.”

  “Is that meant to make me feel better?”

  It hadn’t, even a little. That was obvious.

  “It’s meant to explain that this isn’t an insurmountable setback.”

  That made no visible difference.

  “So you think,” his throat sounded obstructed, and he stopped to clear it. “You think this is legitimate, I mean, as legitimate as anything the Splinters do? You think it’s coming from the ones in charge?”

  “I don’t k
now,” I said. “We’ll do everything we can to find out.”

  “Your . . .” his throat clicked again. “Your dad, I mean, obviously not your dad, the Splinter one, he said . . . he called himself a lawman. So, if this isn’t sanctioned, do you think he could make it stop? Or if it is, maybe appeal . . .”

  “You want me to ask my father for help?”

  He didn’t answer, but the fact that the thought had even crossed his mind after the last time I’d seen the two of them in the same room meant he was more desperate than I’d ever seen him before.

  “Ben, what’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong? Everyone thinks that I—”

  “Not everyone,” I reminded him.

  “Almost everyone thinks it, and you ask me, ‘What’s wrong?’”

  Reputation.

  It had taken me a while to understand because I didn’t really want to. Once again, this was about reputation, about the opinions of uninformed people of uncertain humanity, a luxury, like honor roll grades, that I’d written off long ago. I’d seen people through the withdrawal plenty of times before, though, so I did my best to recall how.

  Unfortunately, that was the moment Ben finally looked at me again.

  For a moment, looking into his face was like looking into that alternate reality he had gotten to know so much better than I did. It was written in every tense, minute little contour of his facial muscles, a reality with no Splinters, where a rumor like this could be the most devastating thing to happen in someone’s whole school career. A reality that was close enough to being right that it left room for a wrong like this one to matter the way it should.

  It was a dizzying view. I didn’t know how Ben could stand it as well as he did. I knew that if I looked into it for long enough, I’d never be able to look at my world again. If I tried, I would start screaming and flinging rocks off the trail down the cliff face, I would throw my arms around Ben and try to smooth the angry, scared, sad lines off his face and tell him that I’d make people understand who he really was, or if I couldn’t, that I’d somehow make myself enough people for him, so it wouldn’t matter.

  And then I’d probably set Madison on fire, Splinter or not, right there in the east quad on Monday morning and laugh maniacally while the cops dragged me away, leaving him alone and already breaking my imaginary, otherworld promise.

  Obviously, none of those things could be allowed to happen. So I turned and walked straight forward, eyes dead ahead like Ben’s had been, so I could talk without the risk of seeing that again.

  “You realize it was always very unlikely that something like this wouldn’t happen?”

  “Something like this?”

  “Maybe not exactly like this,” I amended, “but the Splinters were always going to target you, especially if you helped me. I told you that.”

  “You didn’t tell me this!”

  “It’s not always social. In fact, it’s never really had to be. Devoting your life to something most people can’t be convinced exists doesn’t make you that popular in the first place, if you haven’t noticed. Even if the Splinters hadn’t decided your peers were worth taking from you, it would have been difficult for you to keep enough in common, and enough time, for those people.”

  He was about to object again, so I jumped to the sharpest point I could make.

  “Remember all the time you spent with the other Haley? Remember all the energy you spent worrying about what she thought and felt and wanted, as if she were human, when all she really wanted was to manipulate us both into the Warehouse? Every time you spend a thought on a stranger or an unverified acquaintance, you could be wasting it on another trap like that.”

  He actually seemed to give that some fair thought. “If I hadn’t cared about the Splinter-Haley, we never would have found the real one.”

  Then I had to think. My argument was getting all jumbled where I tried to customize it for him. “In that instance, you’re right. And I’m glad we did, but you can’t save everyone. Definitely not one at a time.”

  He was staring out over the cliff face, away from me, when he asked, “So what can we do? Please, just remind me one more time, what exactly are we actually doing that’s worth this?”

  I was saved answering by the reflected flash of movement on the insides of my glasses as an arm darted around me from behind to secure a headlock.

  As automatically as tying my shoes, I grabbed the hand by thumb and fourth finger joints, twisted as I dodged out from under the elbow, and tripped the attacker’s reflexive, steadying step, sending him sprawling onto the dirt.

  Ben turned and drew a stun gun just in time to find it unnecessary.

  Even through his makeshift mask and shapeless coat, I recognized my old teacher’s presence before I heard his voice.

  “You’re getting slow, Little Girl,” he greeted me.

  “You’re the one on the ground, Old Man.”

  Angry as I still was, about a lot of things, I couldn’t help returning his grin as I helped him up.

  “It’s good to see you again, Robin,” he said.

  12.

  Two Legends for the Price of One

  Ben

  I don’t know what I felt more, anger or stupidity. Anger at Madison and the Splinters for destroying my life. Anger at the people deluging me with messages, texts, and voicemails calling me all sorts of terrible names, telling me to confess, telling me that I shouldn’t go to school on Monday because I wouldn’t leave alive. Anger knowing that this was only the beginning, and Mina Todd, my closest friend in Prospero, couldn’t seem to care less about it.

  So far, anger had been the winner in that fight.

  Stupidity only started to pull ahead when I saw the man dart out of the forest and go for Mina. I saw him coming. I saw him go for her. I fumbled for my weapon, too slow, too distracted. By the time I had the weapon free, she already had him staring at the sky. If he had meant to do her harm, she’d already be dead.

  Mina helped him to his feet. He arched his back, loudly popping his joints into place. He was a large man, tall, and I was pretty sure powerfully built, though it was hard to be sure. He wore thick boots that added at least two inches to his height and several layers of clothing that hid his shape. A long, tattered, black trench coat surrounded him like a superhero’s cape, each breast of which was covered in an odd assortment of buttons and pins. I could identify a Dole/Kemp ’96 campaign button, a vaguely stained yellow smiley face, and a Prospero Poets pin with its twin masks of comedy and tragedy. There were at least a dozen more too hard to see. His face was completely obscured by tightly wrapped, stained bandages, a pair of reflective skier’s goggles, and a faded black fedora. True to what Mina had said, where there should have been a right hand he had a large, iron hook, probably homemade, given its size and the fact that he’d clearly sharpened the outer edge so punching with it would hit like a cleaver.

  The Old Man considered me, cocking his head, slightly. His good hand lay casually at his side, though I could see his fingers wavering slightly, considering if they should go for one of the knives or pistols strapped to his chest, or one of the three long-guns that jutted from the quiver on his back.

  “This is him,” he said.

  “Yes,” Mina said.

  “Put down the stun gun,” he said to me. His voice was calm, but firm. Threatening. I made to drop it.

  Apparently I wasn’t fast enough for his liking. Quickly, he unleashed a bowie knife from a sheath on his chest and threw it, ripping the stun gun from my hand and impaling it to the ground.

  The Old Man was on me in a flash, clearing the fifteen feet between us in less than a second. He kicked me in the chest, hard, knocking the wind from me and putting me on the dirt. As my head bounced off the ground and my ears rang, I watched as my old ‘3 Of a Kind’ baseball cap rolled off into the brush. As if this weekend wasn’t going badly enough.

  He knelt down on me, one knee on my chest and the sharpened outer edge of his hook pressed against the base o
f my throat.

  “This isn’t necessary!” Mina protested.

  “Quiet, Little Girl, you know it is,” he growled back at her.

  Again he turned his attention to me with that calm, threatening voice. “I had a pet once when I was a boy. What kind of animal was it? What was its name? What did I think of it?”

  I remembered what Mina had told me.

  “It was a kangaroo with a gimpy leg,” I wheezed. “His name was Special Agent Admiral Dog Johnson. And you . . . and you . . .”

  With his weight on my chest, I was starting to black out.

  “He won’t be able to answer you like that,” Mina said.

  Sighing, The Old Man let some pressure off of me. “Thank you, Robin, I know what I’m doing.”

  I wanted my arm free. I wanted to slug this man and let out all of my anger and frustration on that bandaged face. I wanted to make sure he was as ugly as I felt on the inside. But Mina was here, and if she was right, he could tell us just what the hell was going on.

  “And you . . . you were very fond of him, but you thought he went to the bathroom in your aunt’s teapot too much!”

  More pressure on my throat. He asked, “You sure about your words, Benji?”

  I racked my brain for Mina’s exact wording. I looked to her, hopeful, but she just stood off to the side. She wouldn’t help me. No, of course she wouldn’t. That wasn’t what she did.

  Then it came to me. “You thought he crapped in your aunt’s teapot too much!”

  At once, he was on his feet with the exuberance of a child on Christmas morning.

  “Well shit, Benji, why didn’t you say so in the first place!” he said, pulling off his hat and tossing it to Mina. His goggles soon followed. He unwrapped his bandages and pocketed them.

  The Old Man looked to be in his early fifties, with a long, clean-shaven face, a thin salt and pepper moustache, and hair groomed with military precision. His eyes were clear blue and utterly cold, but his smile was bright and cheerful.

  Even if he didn’t have the hook, he would have scared the hell out of me.

  He took his fedora back from Mina, propped it back on his head and grabbed me by the hand, yanking me to my feet.