Shards

by F. J. R. Titchenell

  He reached into the backpack, and I readied one hand to reach into my own bag, for all the good my school-friendly supplies would do, but Robbie only pulled out an enormous red apple. The bag rustled with plastic, cardboard, and foil. Food, lots of it. He bit a large chunk out of the apple and pulled a sour face.

  “These are not all they’re cracked up to be,” he decided, then tossed it to me for my verdict. I sidestepped and let it bounce off the wall behind me and roll under one of the chairs. “Like talking,” he added.

  “Funny,” I said, mostly to keep from forming revealing thoughts. “You certainly do a lot of it.”

  He laughed much harder than the joke deserved. “It’s alright, I guess. I just don’t like the way it distracts you.”

  “Distracts me?”

  Distracts me distracts me distracts me, I focused on the words, on sounds without meaning, trying to block out everything of more substance, but the space the sounds filled only made everything else a shade sharper.

  “Call me old-fashioned,” said Robbie, “but when I talk to a girl, I’d like her to think about me.”

  His mouth closed, but his voice continued.

  Not about the range of the bug she’s got planted in the next room over.

  Anger, disappointment, another flash of fear, all as exposed and obvious as if I’d never spared a thought in my life to keeping such things out of sight.

  I had to speak again and speak fast, something without feeling, without thought.

  Live fast, my brain repeated at random. Live fast, die young.

  “How old are you really?” I blurted out.

  He liked the subject. I could tell.

  That depends on how you measure it. If you count all the time since the day I was born, a few thousand years; if you count all the time I can remember, a few hundred; or if you only count the time I’ve actually lived, instead of having to suck an old, cheap recording of it out of whatever body I’ve been given to use, I think I’m just a little bit younger than you are, Mina.

  He pulled a Snickers bar out of the backpack, tore open the wrapper, and closed his eyes as he took the first bite. I wondered if it was the first bite of a Snickers he’d ever had, but the thought inspired no pity.

  “Is there something else I should call you? Since we’re not pretending you’re Robbie York anymore?”

  Oh, I can think of a few things. His eyes were bright with glee when they opened, and there was a smear of chocolate left on his teeth when he grinned. I’ve been Phobos. I’ve been the Bunyip. I’ve been the Bogeyman, everybody loves that one.

  “I’m not calling you the Bogeyman.” I tried to laugh. I couldn’t.

  Then Robbie will do for now, he said. He’s a pretty dashing guy, don’t you think?

  My mind flicked briefly to when Mr. Montresor might want his office back.

  Don’t hold your breath, Robbie told me. It’ll probably take him hours to decide he didn’t really see his geriatric grandmother wandering the streets alone. Looks like he might have to reschedule my appointment. And it’s already been pushed back so many times for all my sick days.

  “Where have you been?” I asked. I was running out of non sequiturs, and I couldn’t take the chaotic, thought-swirling silence.

  At least that question seemed to kill the pleasure of the candy for a moment.

  You want to know something that does sting, Mina? Strychnine. It’s like the worst muscle spasm you’ve ever had, in every single muscle in your body, your body that is also on fire. It won’t kill one of us, of course. We’re tougher than that. And your Old Man knew that when he slipped it into my last root beer float.

  I wasn’t proud of the satisfaction that news gave me, but I didn’t bother trying to hide it from him.

  I spent nearly two months picking that shit out of my system one molecule at a time. For two months, I couldn’t take human form without going back into those convulsions. For two months I had to hide so I wouldn’t have to defend myself against him.

  He was going to make me ask, I realized. The relevant question, the one I wasn’t quite sure I wanted him to answer. It was the only way this interview would end.

  “What do you want, Robbie?”

  I braced for the look, the hungry, scrutinizing one that would have blown his cover as Robbie York the first time he turned it on me if he hadn’t had my brain too twisted to believe it was there.

  Oh, so many things, he thought into me.

  I succeeded in not shuddering, but under the circumstances, the mental effort this took (don’t shudder don’t shudder don’t shudder) wasn’t much better.

  He shrugged and looked away long enough to open a Twinkie, but still I couldn’t steal the moment to think.

  Sadly, I don’t have time for them all. He didn’t wait for the space between bites to talk. He didn’t need to. If I don’t deliver on my last two targets, like, yesterday, my people are going to decide I’m not up to it and kill me, or shove me back in the dark for good.

  I couldn’t help thinking it, in a jumbled undignified rush: Two targets. The Old Man and me. Your people? Splinters or Slivers? Dad Lying? Not lying? Target. Target. Whose target am I?

  He was listening, I could feel it, but he continued without offering any hints. Or your Old Man will get me himself if I can’t get him first. Either way, I’m finished. So here’s what I’m thinking, to make the most of short time. You know the Christmas pageant tomorrow?

  “The Winter Holiday Showcase?”

  Sure, whatever. I’m thinking I’ll lock the auditorium and burn it to the ground.

  He opened a mini bag of Doritos with a pop and calmly bit into the first chip. Anyone watching without the mental soundtrack would have thought he’d forgotten I was in the room.

  Well, probably not actually burn it. All I’ll have to do is convince a few of the people inside that it’s burning, or full of bees or sarin or something, and they’ll take it from there. Maybe they’ll start a few real fires. Maybe someone will find that fire axe in the lobby and suddenly notice that his fellow patrons have become brain-eating zombies. It’ll be a hell of a grand finale, don’t you think?

  He took a breath of powdered imitation cheese and sighed.

  At least, it would have been. But you’d never let that happen, would you, Mina? Half the town turns out when they get all the schools together like that. All the families, all those children. Backstage packed with defenseless little elementary school cherubs too young for my people to use. That’s a lot of guaranteed human fatalities. Enough to bother even a frigid bitch like you.

  “Every human fatality bothers me.” From a vantage point outside my head, I would have appeared perfectly firm and collected, for what little that was worth.

  He chuckled just enough to show off the fresh coating of neon orange inside his lips. I know that, Mina. You can play heartless to the rest of the world, but not to me. I know they do. That’s why you’re going to offer me a better option.

  “I can’t give you The Old Man,” I said. “I don’t know where he is.”

  Robbie rolled his eyes.

  Duh. If you did, I’d know too. He tapped the side of his head, leaving a faint orange smear. And I already had you lead me to him, remember?

  The image of my birthday card came clearly to mind. I’d known the time and coordinates for two days in advance, more than long enough for him to find them in me.

  That should have been the end of it. I wasn’t counting on him not having enough of a brain left to pick, but he won’t surprise me again.

  So The Old Man was immune to him, like he was to the pods. I could feel Robbie’s amusement as he observed my bitter urge to tell The Old Man that he wasn’t really more careful than the rest of us, just more broken.

  What you can do is meet me in the auditorium tonight.

  That look again.

  “So I can help you ‘live fast’?” I guessed, adding a smirk to his look. “Or are you just hoping The Old Man will be stupid enough to charge in to r
escue me while you have the home court advantage?”

  Robbie licked the cheese thoughtfully off his fingers.

  Both, he admitted, then snickered behind his hand. Was I too subtle with the whole I-am-inside-you bit?

  “Alone?” I prompted him, to cut off the memory before he could force it all the way to the surface. “Unarmed?”

  He shrugged.

  Sure, if you’d prefer to make it a more intimate occasion.

  He crumpled up the chip bag and bent the cap off a bottle of cream soda, the expensive kind with real cane sugar that requires a bottle opener. Or a Splinter’s adaptable strength and dexterity.

  But you know better than to get any lawmen involved anyway, don’t you? Anyone who might try to make you skip out on our date? And it’s not like I’m going to scrap the only play I’ve got just because you bring along a few freaks with popguns. In fact, bring them. Bring them all. Bring that freshman you’re not taking advantage of, and that cute cheerleader you’re not jealous of, and that guy with the hero complex you’re not in love with. We’ll have a party. And when I’m explaining how I let that one old screwball in the woods get away from me, I’ll at least get to explain how I also took out Mina Todd’s entire Network in one night. That might actually do the trick. So, shall we say ten? I like a late dinner.

  “Ten is fine.”

  He pulled the backpack away from the door, either giving me permission to leave or daring me to try.

  One more thing, he stopped me just as I was about to pass his chair, two lengthening, boneless Splinter fingers twisting easily through three of my belt loops with two muted wooden cracks.

  My every muscle itched to execute the quickest possible maneuver to separate myself from him. But I didn’t because of the sick, weak, stupid hope that if I did nothing, he might let me leave that room a few seconds sooner.

  I gave in and let my knees hit the thin carpet next to his chair when he pulled.

  He swallowed a mouthful of soda, then smacked his lips and whispered out loud. “All flirting aside, just so we’re clear . . .”

  I couldn’t help it. I thought about how his tone couldn’t possibly reach the bug in the office. I’d spent too long learning not to let such things slip by unconsidered to be able to do the opposite now.

  Robbie smiled and continued in my ear and my head at once.

  “I’m going to kill you tonight, Mina,” he whispered. “Whether you come alone or with an army, whether I can get both of you at once or not, I’m going to kill you. I wasn’t joking about playing my last card here. There’s no keeping you around for more leverage later this time. There’s no tactical retreat just because a few unauthorized corpses get in the way. I’m going to make you watch me turn everyone who thinks they can stand with you into whimpering, gibbering cowards before they die. Then I’m going to unwrap you as slowly as my very last Kit-Kat.”

  He tightened his grip slightly, and I heard one, two, three stitches of black denim give out along my hip.

  “And I’m going to make you scream for your demented old freak for a few hours, eight or nine tops, and if he shows, he dies too. If he doesn’t, my people will either pat me on the back for getting nine out of ten and give me the nice anonymous new body they promised me, or they won’t, and I’ll at least get to say I went out with a bang. You won’t live to find out which.”

  He retracted his fingers.

  There it was again, the offer I’d spent my life trying not to hope for.

  I could believe him. I could believe that he was strong enough to want me to throw my whole Network at him, strong enough that we wouldn’t stand a chance, even all together. I could believe that killing me would rush his people—whichever people they were—to a judgment that would either put him out of the way or give him a new reason to behave. I could believe that there was a chance the others might never have to face him, better than the chance they’d get from having me with them when they did.

  It was all as likely to be true as not. A coin toss, as far as I knew, no bet more sensible than the other.

  I could let him have me. Just me, without a fight. I could trade away whatever I had left to dread, all the fighting and fearing and feeling there would inevitably be in the months, years, maybe even decades still ahead of me, replaced only by what pain and humiliation this Shard could fit into a single, insignificant night.

  I could escape while there was still hope left in the world, believing that I’d done everything in my power to protect it, thinking about all those kids who might yet live out human lives, about my Network that would survive to fight another day because I would not.

  I could die without guilt.

  Robbie raised an eyebrow at me, the way people do when they’re trying to decide if I’m mentally subnormal or not, as if he could only see my blank, staring face instead of every private detail behind it. Only the twitch at the corner of his mouth gave him away.

  “Something more I can help you with?” he asked at excessively sweet full volume.

  I found my feet, staggered out into the hallway without looking back at him, and stopped to lean against the first stretch of wall, letting its comparative cool soak into my skin.

  It took me a few moments to notice Ben and Haley waiting for me along the opposite wall, brazenly in the open, the way other people’s friends do for them. They both still looked to be between fits of ecstatic laughter.

  Haley gave me a wave, the full, wholehearted kind, and gestured to her phone, as if I didn’t know her schedule well enough to realize that guarding Ben through my unexpected delay had kept her late for rehearsal.

  “Have you heard?” Ben asked me as Haley cut swiftly through what remained of the afterschool crowd and out of sight.

  Vaguely, I recalled the sight of Madison’s arrest, concluded that it had apparently been real, unlike Mr. Montresor’s grandmother, and noted with silly satisfaction the way Ben assumed I might know already in spite of having been stuck in my counseling session while it happened.

  The center workspace of my mind was processing something much bigger, padded and fueled by the shape of the face of my friend.

  For the first time since I’d been old enough to give the subject any thought one way or the other, I was under no obligation to live.

  And at this most inconvenient of moments, I knew that I wanted to.

  Before the moment of greeting could pass, I threw my arms around Ben’s shoulders, not caring about the onlookers, hardly caring that Robbie was almost certainly still watching me from the inside, from behind that door.

  As my only pretense for the contact, I raised my lips as close to his ear as I could without my toes leaving the floor.

  “It happens tonight,” I whispered. “Please help me.”

  24.

  Cry Havoc

  Ben

  I was out of breath by the time I got to the school’s front entrance. The night was pitch-black and biting cold. There were only a few streetlights around Prospero High School and limited lighting on campus at this time of night. It would conceal us from most onlookers outside of the school, but it might also conceal us from the one person whose attention I wanted. Still, I had to try.

  Stopping beneath the HOME OF THE POETS sign, I scrawled a large T in the hot pink chalk The Old Man had given me. I had drawn two similar marks on other parts of the school. I knew the odds that he would show up in a timely manner were small at best, but going against Robbie, I knew we needed all the help we could get.

  Content that I hadn’t been seen, I ran around to the north edge of the school, sneaking under the broken edge of the chain-link fence that we’d found near the construction of the new art building. I slipped quietly through the half-built skeleton of the building to the construction shed we’d found. Courtney and Greg stood smoking nervously as Mina divvied up weapons from her personal supply. Her collection of stun guns, Tasers, and flamethrowers, most homemade, some legitimate, looked pitifully small when spread out on the ground. Knowing what Robb
ie was capable of, and that he almost certainly had some surprises hidden up his sleeve, I worried that these wouldn’t be enough. Haley, Kevin, Aldo, and Julie stood inside the shed, trying to supplement our weapon supply. I knew most of what was in there would be fairly useless, but it was better than nothing.

  “Is the perimeter clear?” Mina asked when she saw me come up.

  That was my excuse for dropping my cry for help. I didn’t like lying to her, but I didn’t know how she’d react if I told her I was calling on The Old Man.

  “Yeah. This part of town’s dead,” I said.

  “Could you please not say dead?” Courtney asked, nervous.

  “Sure,” I said. I tried to offer her a grateful smile. She didn’t return it.

  “No word from our bogeyman?” I asked.

  Mina shook her head. “Nothing. Yet. He has to know we’re here.”

  “He’s confident,” I said.

  “Is this the part where you say, ‘he’s too confident,’ Eagle Scout?” Greg asked, a little jittery.

  “Maybe,” I said. “It could also be a sign that he knows something we don’t and that we’re in real trouble here.”

  “You’re instilling me with a lot of confidence,” Courtney said.

  “You don’t have to stay,” Greg said.

  She looked at him coolly. “Yes, I do.”

  He stared into her eyes for a moment, then broke out in a broad smile. “You’re all right,” Greg said, dropping his cigarette to the floor and crushing it out.

  Kevin and Julie came out, adding a few armfuls of tools to the mix. Aldo followed them, a coil of copper wire around his shoulder and lugging a car battery.

  “If he doesn’t kill all of us and we still feel like trying to deliver him to the Splinter Council, I think I can contain him with this,” Aldo said, trying to hide his irritation. “Did you call your dad?”

  “No,” Mina said. “Even if he did believe me and decide to come investigate, he’d do everything possible to make me stay out of it. And if Robbie senses I’m not the one coming to meet him, he’d run before Dad could get anywhere near him. This is the only way.”