Shards

by F. J. R. Titchenell

  I checked my cell phone. 4:30, on the dot. He wasn’t here. No, I corrected myself, just because I can’t see him doesn’t mean he’s not here.

  I looked back to the bookshelf and made to pull out another book when I saw it.

  The jaunty, stuffed kangaroo I had tossed over the fence of Mina’s backyard after we’d broken into Alexei’s car sat in a gap in the bookshelf at about eye height. It still wore the bright yellow t-shirt that proudly proclaimed, “READING IS FUNDAMENTAL,” and the code I had written beneath it.

  1115 1630 694

  I picked the kangaroo up from its gap between the books and was not surprised to see his steely eyes staring at me from the other side of the bookshelf.

  “Hello, Old Man,” I said.

  “Hello back, Benji,” he responded.

  “Glad you could make it. I didn’t know if you’d get the message,” I said.

  “Date, Time, Dewey Decimal location in the library. You couldn’t have made it clearer if you’d screamed it. You also couldn’t have picked a worse location for a meet,” he said.

  “I thought you’d like the privacy,” I said.

  “I do, but the Prospero town fathers don’t much like me in town,” he said.

  “That’s funny,” I said. “They don’t like me out of this town. So we got that in common.”

  He chuckled. “And there’s you. You know this is the kinda place where you stand out like a sore thumb. How many kids your age hang around libraries these days? Now me, I can get away with lookin’ like a homeless person flipping through the art books looking for porn; plenty of free tits or Greek boys to go around there. You, you don’t fit. There are so many more inconspicuous places you could’ve picked, Benji. I’m disappointed.”

  “You’re also here,” I said. “So you can’t be that disappointed.”

  I couldn’t see him well on the other side of the bookshelf, but I could tell by his voice that he was amused. “Call me intrigued. Why’d you call me here? And no witty answers this time; I know you hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you,” I clarified. “It’s not like I like you very much either.”

  “You ‘don’t like me’ ‘cause you think I broke little Robin and made her into the mess she is today. If you’d seen her when I first met her, you’d be thanking me for all I’ve done for that girl,” he said.

  “Well, I didn’t,” I said bitterly.

  “So again, why am I riskin’ my neck for you today?” he asked.

  “I came here to ask for your help,” I said.

  “You don’t need my help,” he said. “Robin’s as good as they come.”

  “Yes, we do,” I said. “We’ve got way too much to deal with right now, and we could use every bit of help we can get. We’ve got a Shard who can get into our heads, we’ve got Slivers trying to kidnap people, probably so they can incite a war, and the regular Splinters are doing everything possible to destroy my life. You’ve fought them for a really long time. You know how to deal with Shards. Help us.”

  He laughed. As usual, it was not an entirely pleasant sound.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Well, I’ve been working on one of your problems for a while. You know how long I’d been following Robin, waiting for your Shard, Yorkie, to show up? He finally makes his move out in the open on All Hallow’s, and you have to go and foul things up. He ran away. Kid can’t hide forever, though, and I’ll take care of him for you. Just worry about your high school shit and let those of us who know what we’re doin’ take care of this,” he said.

  I didn’t even know where to start with what he said. He’d been hunting Robbie, using Mina as bait? I knew we were doing basically the same thing, but at least Mina was in on our plan. Then there was Robbie.

  “We don’t want to kill Robbie. We want to save him,” I clarified.

  He laughed, again.

  “Benji, I can tell you’re a good kid, and I know Robin likes you, so I’m willin’ to cut you some slack, but I gotta say, you can be really thick sometimes. When are you gonna realize that there’s no difference in Splinters, and they’re all part of the same problem? When you realize that, you’ll see that there’s only one solution.”

  “One easy solution,” I shot back. “We’ve found others.”

  “Right, the Perkins girl,” he said. “So you saved one girl. A girl who might just live to a ripe old age like yours truly because of what the pod did to her, watching her grandchildren die of old age, assuming of course they didn’t void her womb. Don’t you see? You can’t save ‘em all. Hell, only the ones who’ve been in the pods less than fourteen months really stand a chance at coming back, and even then it isn’t for sure. After that, they’re too far gone.”

  I thought back to the Warehouse, seeing some of the bodies that looked shriveled in their glowing pods while the images of their hosts appeared to be healthy and vital.

  I said, “Even if we can’t save them all, there are still people in there who deserve a fighting chance.”

  “Maybe they do, maybe they don’t, but I can say with good, personal knowledge that when you’re in one of their terror pods, you don’t want to be saved. You don’t want to be human again because being back in the world is agony after what their pods have done. You welcome death. Killing them all is the best way to save them. It’s merciful,” he said.

  Again, I thought of Haley. I had not seen her welcome death for one moment since we had freed her from the Warehouse. Sure, she still had her jumpy moments, but she was glad to be alive. She wasn’t whatever had made The Old Man this way.

  A sudden, stupid urge hit me. It’s one I would have held back months ago, back before I had been worn down by the Splinters’ campaign against my life, but now, I couldn’t anymore.

  Now it was my turn to laugh unpleasantly.

  “What’s so funny, Benji?” he asked.

  I couldn’t stop laughing. It hit me too hard, too quickly. “I’m sorry, it’s just, after everything Mina told me about you, the way she built you up, I never expected that you’d be a coward!”

  He glared at me through the bookshelf, his eyes staring into my soul.

  “You’re lucky I like Robin as much as I do, son, or I’d kill you where you stand,” he said evenly. “And I am not a coward. I’m just here to make sure they pay. They have to pay.”

  “They have to pay?” I repeated. “That’s all you’ve got to say? You just say ‘kill ‘em all’ because they put you in a pod for a while?”

  “No,” he said, angrily. “They have to pay because they took everything from me. They stole my life! Tell me with a straight face that whenever anyone looks at you like a goddamn rapist because of what they did that you don’t fantasize about killing them all!”

  He pounded the bookcase powerfully with his hand, so hard I worried that he would tip it over. I held on to it to steady it. Of course, he was right.

  “I did. I still do, sometimes. But I would never do anything about it, not knowing there was still a chance to save the person they took. Everybody deserves a chance,” I said.

  “You say that now. Stay here long enough and you’ll change your tune,” he said. The earnestness, almost sadness, he said that with gave me a chill.

  “I thought like you, once. Back when I was a more responsible man. I had a wife. I had the two most beautiful daughters a man could have. A house with a white picket fence. I didn’t know how I got so lucky. After the war, I wasn’t in a good place, but Gertie, she made me human.”

  We barely pretended to read anymore, locking eyes through the bookcase. I didn’t know if I wanted to hear the rest of his story.

  “One day, she took our kids over to see her sister in Milton’s Mill for the weekend. They came for me that night. Looking like my friends, people I knew from town, but not them. They dragged me out of my living room, beat me, tied me up and tossed me in the back of a truck. Dragged me down into the mine and hooked me up to a pod. I knew pain and fear and not much else, surrounded by thousands of
voices calling to me, screaming for help, asking me to join them. After some time—it felt like it was a day or two but was closer to four months—I got out. It just vomited me out like it didn’t want me anymore. I fought my way to the surface, back to town, back to my girls.

  “They were glad to see me, they’d thought me dead. They nursed me back. They didn’t know what to think of my story. I didn’t know what to think, but I knew it was real, and I knew it was wrong. I knew I had to do something to fix it, I thought I could save those people inside. I thought if I could get out that I could get them out too. I made plans. I gathered weapons. Gertie thought I was crazy. She said that if what I said was true, we had to get out of town. I told her I had to save those people, that it was the right thing to do. Three weeks passed.”

  He gulped, clearly uncomfortable about telling this part of the story.

  “They came for us in the night, shining their car headlights in all our windows. They didn’t come looking like people this time. No, they came wearing those damn gray faces they wear when they don’t want to be recognized. A man came to our door. Artie Koppin, a judge, a friend. He came with an offer, said that I knew more than I ought to, and if I just let them talk to me, that we could all come out ahead. Things didn’t have to get any worse. I knew he was lyin’. He still lies. You watch out for him.”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” I admitted.

  The Old Man chuckled dryly. “Artie Koppin died back in the mid-eighties. He’s got a new body now, but the smile, those eyes, are the same. You know him as Sam Todd. That name ring a bell?”

  It did. The offer he made sounded about the way Sam worked, too.

  “He’ll smile and make nice and seem like the most reasonable guy in the world, but Sam Todd is one dangerous son of a bitch, Benji. He’ll cut your throat, anyone’s throat, even the throat of any Splinter in town to get what he wants. If you ever wind up on his bad side, you can either watch out for him, or you can kill him. Only that last choice’ll get you anywhere because no matter where you are, he will find you. When he came for us, I decided to fight.”

  That dull glow of anger in my chest had been replaced by a faint sickness. I knew how this was going to end.

  “It wasn’t a fight. It was a slaughter. They were on the house all at once. I sent my girls into the basement. My guns did nothing to the Splinters. I shot them, I stabbed them, I threw boilin’ oil fresh off the stove at them, and they just kept comin’! They set the house on fire, there was smoke everywhere. I tried to find my girls. I tried to help them, but in all the smoke, the fire . . .”

  He pulled up the sleeve of his jacket that covered his good arm, showing skin that looked like a scarred roadmap of pain.

  “I ran outside. They got me again. They didn’t want to bargain this time, but they also didn’t want to kill me. Artie, Sam, whatever his name is, used his sway as a judge to have me committed up at the old Braiwood Institute. I had to hear in a padded room that my family burned to death. My Gertie, my Carol . . . my Robin.”

  “Robin was your daughter?” I asked.

  “Mina looks just like her,” he nodded. “I never claimed to be a sane man.”

  “I never accused you of being one,” I said, trying to let that sink in. “Does Mina know?”

  “Of course she does. Can’t hide anything from that one, Benji. She’s special, you know that, right?”

  I nodded.

  “If I was a broken man goin’ in there, I was a shattered man after that. I knew that mercy was pointless with these sons of bitches. They all had to die. They all had to pay for what they did. I healed. I broke out, and I’ve been huntin’ them ever since. Mostly alone, sometimes with the help of a lost soul whose world’s been upturned almost as bad as mine. But I’ve fought the good fight, and I’ll tell you Benji, it’s been a good, long fight.”

  I was shaken, but I kept myself together.

  “Look, I’m really sorry for what’s happened to you. I’ve lost someone close to me, too, but that still doesn’t change the fact that we need your help here,” I said.

  He looked at me through the bookcase, thoughtful.

  “Are you ready to admit that all Splinters are the same, and that they all deserve to die?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Then you’re not ready for my help,” he said. “I’ll be doing what I’ve been doing for the past sixty years. If we happen to be fixing the same problem at the same time, then you might find me helping you. If you ever get in my way . . . get out of it. Quickly.”

  “What happens if I don’t?” I challenged.

  He laughed. “You’re a smartass, I’ll give you that, Benji. I can see what Mina sees in you. I always told her, her biggest problem, aside from havin’ a monster for a daddy, is that she doesn’t laugh enough. Keep her laughin’. She might keep you around.”

  “She keeps me around because we’re friends,” I corrected him.

  He laughed even louder. “Keep tellin’ yourself that, Benji. Take a word of advice from an old man, son; you best be in this for the cause, because if you’re in it for her, you’re going to be sorely disappointed. I raised her better.”

  I meant to counter him, but before I could, he was gone. I ran around the edge of the bookcase looking for him. He had completely disappeared. The art book he had been flipping through lay on the floor, a small box on top of it. I picked it up, saw that it contained hot pink sidewalk chalk. On the back of it he had written a simple note:

  T IS FOR TROUBLE

  I’LL FIND YOU.

  Well, that certainly sounded like a more efficient means of finding The Old Man than tossing a stuffed kangaroo over Mina’s back fence, but it didn’t help me here.

  I’d meant it when I said we needed his help. Mina knew a lot about Splinters. He knew more. He’d been to war. We hadn’t. There was so much he could do a lot more safely than the rest of us, but it would come at a price.

  A price I wasn’t ready to pay.

  He was right. I did hate him. Maybe not as much as I hated the Splinters, but pretty close. He had no regard for human life, and he treated everyone he came across as garbage because he believed his fight made him morally superior to the rest of us. Even those he claimed to care for, like Mina, he was ready to dispose of at a moment’s notice. It was hard, considering everything he had been through, not to feel bad for him. Maybe we really were better off without him. Maybe we shouldn’t have considered him an ally. Maybe Mina would be better off if she never saw him again.

  I considered the box of chalk in my hand. There was a trash can ten feet away. I could throw it in there so easily, completely wash my hands of The Old Man.

  I could have, but I didn’t. I forced the chalk into my pocket as I walked from the Prospero Public Library. I may have hated The Old Man, but even with that hatred I couldn’t write off the fact that there might come a time when we might need him.

  After I got a couple blocks from the library, I turned my cell phone back on. There were easily a dozen messages from Mina asking where I was. I texted her back, telling her I was fine and that I just had to take care of something.

  STILL HUMAN?

  I took this as her attempt at a joke. Remembering The Old Man’s frustration with my resistance to killing all Splinters and the people they were attached to, I had no problem typing back, YES.

  21.

  The Need-to-Know Newsletter

  Mina

  In the hallways between Ms. Craven’s classroom and Mr. Finn’s, I did my best to emulate what my face would look like if I were on my way to have a raging argument.

  Aldo more or less imitated my demeanor as we walked, serious, always keeping himself to the busier side of the hallways, shuffling me toward the wall.

  I wasn’t sure when this had started between us, him walking like the bodyguard instead of the client, challenging my riskier plans to the Network. When exactly had my lost little puppy learned how to morph into a snarling German Shepherd of a guar
d dog?.

  I didn’t try to stop him. He could handle himself, and I could still pull him out of the way quickly and easily enough if it came to that.

  My knock on the classroom door sounded convincingly irritable.

  Ben opened the door only a crack. I saw the smile flash across his face before it went serious again. Luckily, no one else was standing that close.

  “What are you doing here?” he snapped abruptly, producing a very tiny, irrational pain in my chest. As usual, his act was absolutely flawless.

  “Believe me, I wish I were somewhere else,” I said. “We need to talk.”

  “Now you want to talk? Fine. Talk.”

  Hoping I wasn’t moving too quickly, I looked over both shoulders at the passersby who were beginning to stare. “Inside,” I said.

  With a dramatic sigh, Ben opened the door just enough to usher Aldo and me quickly inside.

  Mr. Finn was turning off the power saw and removing his goggles, and Kevin sat in the corner rubbing something with sandpaper, visibly trying not to laugh at us.

  As soon as the door was closed, Ben’s smile came back, and one of his hands moved toward me and then uselessly back to his side. It was as if he’d been about to hug me and then stopped himself. Old instinct made me fold my arms and step slightly away from dangerous, strategy-clouding, unnecessary contact. The moment passed, but I was sorry when it did, sorry enough to make me think that maybe if another one like it arose, I wouldn’t let it go the same way.

  For the time being, I let myself return his smile with every bit of the enthusiasm I felt.

  “So this is the girl they’ve been trying to take away from you?” Mr. Finn asked him, squinting across the room at me. “Good for you, dumbass.”

  I was pretty sure this was meant to be nice, to both of us.

  It took just a few minutes of looking around to realize that I liked the woodshop. Everything in it was more sturdily built than in most of the school. There were plenty of innocent-looking tools lying around that could make excellent weapons if needed, and the intricate patterns of the stray wood shavings and the deep gouges in every surface made it easy to absorb it all clearly.