Gearbreakers

by Zoe Hana Mikuta

  I do not realize how shrill I have become until Eris nudges her knee against mine. When I snap my gaze to her, her sight drops to her hands. Her goggles have cracked at some point today, my reflection thrown in pieces across them. My cheeks have been smeared bloody by the cuts I forgot I had.

  “They saved my life,” I murmur. “They also stole it from me. From everyone I cared about.”

  The wind picks up again. One of the Gearbreaker boys starts clapping slowly, pale skin scrubbed pink with the cold, but the rosy cheeks do nothing to dilute the viciousness that curls his mouth. I have a moment of complete clarity that he is imagining reducing me to a bloody pulp, to be deposited glistening into the snowbank.

  “Does she know poetry, too?” he inquires drily, but his applauding abruptly ceases when Jenny raises a hand.

  “Why did they send the Windups?” she asks, voice low. “You said that you fell into your coal quota. If Silvertwin had met it, why the massacre?”

  “We met it,” I say, hating how strained my tone is. After all these years. I feel my thumb flush purple within the confines of the bandage. “Something was wrong with the train’s tech. No one knew how to fix it. The coal was never marked as having left town. They sent the Windups.”

  To my horror, a hot tear falls down my cheek. I wipe it away hurriedly.

  “It wasn’t our fault,” I whisper.

  “Nolan,” Jenny snaps. “Clap again and you die.”

  “What? Come on, Jen, she’s—”

  “She’s telling the truth,” Jenny says flatly.

  Next to me, Eris shifts slightly. “She is?”

  “I thought you believed me, Frostbringer,” I remark quietly.

  “I … I do,” she replies. “I just didn’t think Jen would. Not so easily. She doesn’t do easy.”

  “I was there,” Jenny says. “Day after, once we had heard about what happened. We found no one left.” She sticks up two of her fingers. “Footprints of a Phantom and a Paladin. The mining tunnel, collapsed. But we found the resource logs, and all the quotas were met for that month. We didn’t know why the Windups were sent.”

  I meet her eyes. “There was no reason.”

  “Oh, come on,” another Gearbreaker snaps. She leaps from her seat, one hand pressing against the edge of the truck as she leans across Eris, the other snatching my wrist. “Look at it. Eye closed like it doesn’t love it, crying like it can feel remorse, like it can feel anything. I mean, you can’t believe—”

  Jenny’s fist slams into the Gearbreaker’s sternum, sending her careening backward. Nolan catches her before she teeters over the side of the car.

  “Gwen, you were still learning how to cock a pistol when I was at Silvertwin. Those people in the mines were crushed so flat we couldn’t separate them from one another. The blood—”

  “Jenny,” Eris says sharply, her shoulder against mine, rendering her painfully keen to my sudden flinch. As if her words are nothing I do not already know.

  Jenny shakes her head, then points at me. I look at the ground as their eyes follow her gesture. “You think anyone true to Godolia, even a spy, would admit that their precious nation could ever be at fault?”

  “Yes,” everyone in the truck bed responds in unison.

  Jenny bristles. “Fantastic that you believe this is a democracy. And any or all of you are, of course, welcome at any time to confront me about it.”

  “So just like that,” Eris murmurs, “you believe her.”

  “Just an iota,” Jenny quips, brushing her hands against her coat. Her grin is seeping back into place. “I believe in debts, Eris. She saved you. Now she’s your problem.”

  Eris is quiet for a moment. I make my expression go blank as the snow, to hide how her hesitation jabs at me.

  “Help me explain to Voxter,” Eris states.

  “For a price.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “I get her,” Jenny says, nodding at me. “All the questions I can ask. All the experiments I can do.”

  Eris’s scowl returns, the delicate scar vanishing. “She’s not mine to give away.”

  “I think it would be interesting,” Jenny continues seamlessly. “All the Pilots we capture are all ‘You can’t do anything to me, I can’t feel pain’ this and ‘I’ll never talk’ that. Starvation, extreme heat or cold—they take too long to break them, and when they do, they are still not quite as reliable as I’d like, and I have so many questions about their tech, about the Academy’s Mods. But if she’s not a prisoner—”

  “She’s not a guinea pig,” Eris retorts.

  “What would you like to know?” I respond at the same time.

  Jenny’s grin widens. “I think I’d like a look at that eye, for starters,” she says.

  I nod and reach for it, and Eris slaps my hand away.

  “Gods, Sona, not here!”

  “Oh,” I say, retracting.

  “And what if she is a spy?” Gwen asks tentatively, as if afraid that Jenny will hit her again. And by the look on Jenny’s face, she is greatly considering it.

  “Then I’ll kill her,” Jenny says smoothly, locking her gaze with mine, letting the threat ring clear. I barely pay attention to it, feeling Eris go rigid once again, jumping to be my protector for the billionth time today. The cold cracks a little at the thought, replaced by a different kind of chill. “And I’ll kill her slow. Pain’s not a factor, of course, but I can still cut off all her limbs and drop her like a stone to rest at the bottom of the lake, alongside all the other disagreeable Pilots.”

  “That is fair,” I respond, just as seamlessly, and meaning it.

  “So you don’t trust her,” Eris growls. “You just want her for your little tests.”

  “My dear sister,” Jenny purrs. “We can’t all go weak kneed at the sight of some girl with pretty curls and a pretty accent.”

  “I took out two Valkyries and a Phoenix in the span of a few days,” she snaps. “I’d call that less than weak.”

  “And yet you couldn’t escape Godolia by yourself,” Jenny retorts harshly.

  Eris’s features go pink. “You want to talk about sympathetic?” she says, leaning forward to meet her sister’s glower. “Fine. Let’s do that, then. No Gearbreaker crew is ever assigned to take down a Valkyrie. And yet here you are, in Winterward, when I’m guessing that you didn’t even have an assignment today. You knew it was a Valkyrie that snatched me up, so you forced your crew to come all the way here, all so that you could take your anger out on something that hurt your dear sister. I’m touched, Jen.”

  “You little—”

  “Thing is, you were sloppy. They sent two Valkyries, and from the welt on Luca’s forehead, the other one got really close to crushing all of you. Until Sona was kind enough to step in and help your pathetic asses.”

  Jenny’s anger flares, bright against the frost. “Stop the car.”

  Her command is obeyed, and then she is standing, one hand around Eris’s overall straps, hauling her up and then backward over the lip of the truck bed easily, like a cat carrying her kitten. Eris shrieks; Jenny grins, and calls, “Okay, you can go.”

  “Put me down!” Eris screams, clawing at Jenny’s hands as the truck picks up speed. Her hair peels over to the right side of her head in a black slash, her shouts half terror, half glee. “Oh my Gods, please put me down!”

  “It is so very good to have you home, you little bastard!” Jenny shouts down at her. Her eyes slide over to me, and somehow, inexplicably, this is the moment when I know—she is the greatest threat to Godolia. “Even if it was with a pet dogging at your heels.”

  * * *

  They blindfold me, of course, when we make it out of Winterward. For a time there is just wind and sand across my cheeks, stripping their low chatter from my ears. The air is cold but the sun hovers bright and strong, a pinhole of light through the blindfold.

  At one point, I tilt my face to warm my skin, and find that Jenny has, in fact, not dumped Eris over the side of the truck,
when my cheek meets the slope of her shoulder. I sit straight with a fumbling apology. I know it’s her because she does not shove me away; she leans closer, lips brushing my ear so I can hear her through the wind. “We’re in for a lot of shit when we get home,” she says.

  After a few hours, we stop and someone tugs the blindfold away. I keep both eyes closed while I veil the Mod carefully with the fabric, and when I look, Luca is shutting off the engine, a hand slipping out the window to tap against the side of the truck. The ice that had clung to the metal is long melted, and his knuckles come away painted with mud.

  “Nice knowing all of you,” he says, and looks in my direction. “Because we’re all about to be crucified.”

  “If any of you can’t free yourselves after being drilled into a wooden pike, then I have failed as your captain,” Jenny barks, gracefully leaping out of the truck. “Come on, then, Bot. We have a few dragons to slay before we can rest.”

  My boots land on a worn concrete path, Eris following after. Her stare is pasted against my cheek as I look upward, where a vivid array of oranges and yellows split the ashen sky into jagged slivers. I take a breath, smelling the rainfall and lush earth and pure air, not the sewage-laced and smog-choked stench that has clung to my skin for the past eight years.

  The grounds are filled with a tattoo-blotted crowd, gone perfectly still at the sight of me. The Gearbreakers are not scared of me, not in this form. And they do not waste their breath on low whispers—they let their threats ring loudly, violent things slung from all sides.

  I do not care. I cannot stop staring at these damn trees.

  “Oh, shut up, the lot of you!” Jenny shouts back, voice barely overpowering theirs. “Make yourselves useful and wake up Voxter from whatever ditch he’s sleeping in.”

  They continue their threats, and I list my gaze up to the sky again. Colors do not indicate the season in Godolia, so clouded with smog and smeared with gray that even the meager amount of snowfall looks like factory ash before it can ever find the ground.

  “We call it the Hollows,” Eris murmurs at my side. “It’s strangely full of idiots today.”

  I run my hand across the bark of a tree as we walk by, fingertips brushing cold moss. “You were going to kill me not three hours ago.”

  “Oh,” she says quietly. “I wasn’t sure you caught that.”

  “You changed your mind.”

  “I did.”

  “Are you going to change it again?”

  “Are you going to just sit there the next time Jenny hangs me out of a car?”

  “Jenny and Eris Shindanai!” a voice booms, and in an instant the courtyard is rendered silent. “Where the hells have you two been?”

  “Winterward,” Jenny says.

  “The Academy,” Eris says.

  A man emerges from a split in the crowd, the scowl pasted across his lips thoroughly crinkling the large discolored scar of his right cheek. He stops short in front of the truck, listing his weight against the silver-hooked cane clutched in his hand.

  “Winterward? The Academy?” he sputters, gray eyes bulging at the sisters, who are not subtle in their smug looks. His sight flickers to me, my jacket, and his mouth falls open. “A Valkyrie.”

  I do not realize that his cane is en route to my temple until it is locked in Eris’s grip midair. Meanwhile, Jenny sidles up next to me and throws a rough hand over my shoulders. I do not jump so much at the physical touch as the fact that she is not using it to throw me to the ground—though what really startles me is that when I look up, I realize Jenny looks a little like my mother, with the dark, dangerously delicate eyes and straight black hair, though Umma always tied it back in twin braids, and had freckles on her cheekbones where Jenny has only a beauty mark at the side of her mouth. I inherited my curls and my height from my father, alongside the sense of humor my mother always interpreted as “morbid,” and leaned her small chin into her hand so we would not see her smile.

  “Let me explain, Vox,” Eris insists.

  “You know your orders,” he spits back. “Any Windup Pilot class Phantom or above is too loyal to Godolia to be interrogated. Kill on sight.”

  “Oh, trust me, old man, you don’t want to let this one wander out of here,” Jenny purrs into my ear, her hand squeezing slightly. She is a tall, slim girl, her gaze dripping down from her vantage point to hungrily gloss over my bandaged Mod. Her fingertips twitch as if she is restraining herself from plucking it out of my skull this very instant, though I would vastly prefer doing it myself.

  Jenny sets off at a brisk pace, hand sliding down to my sleeve and using it as a tether to tug me along. She heads directly for Voxter, and rather than stepping to the side, she shoves him out of her path. I twist my head back to see Eris release his cane to follow us, and he ends up being last in line.

  Jenny reaches one of the taller buildings set in a large semicircular clearing outlined by oak trees, kicking open the entrance and marching inside. Silently, she pulls me up two flights of stairs and down a long hallway. Before a pair of large wooden doors, she promptly stops and shoves me down onto a bench. She points to the seat next to me once Eris catches up.

  “Sit,” she orders, and to my surprise, Eris does.

  Voxter appears at the end of the hall a minute later, face a bit paler than when I last saw him. Jenny gestures wildly toward the doors, coaxing him along impatiently.

  “You’ve corrupted my girls, haven’t you, Bot?” he growls as she brushes past.

  Jenny simply rolls her eyes and shoves him into the room.

  “‘Your girls.’ You’re going senile, old man,” she barks, spinning back to point a finger at Eris. “We have a deal, remember.”

  “If you convince him,” Eris says.

  “Hmm. I still don’t like hearing my attitude on your tongue. Try to cut if off by the time I’m done.”

  The door slams behind them, and suddenly everything is quiet. Eris pulls her goggles from around her neck and skims her fingers gingerly over their broken glass.

  “I am sorry,” I hear myself say. My voice echoes up the hall and back again. “When I was fighting Victoria … I should have been more careful. I must have nearly killed you.”

  Eris shakes her head, a slight gesture. For some reason, I cannot bring myself to look directly at her face, so I stare at her reflection, all fragmented and warbled in the glass.

  “Getting ‘nearly killed’ is kind of my job,” she says softly, and then she drops the goggles to her lap. I snap my sight up and find her watching me, a little bruised, brow scar glistening. “What you did was save me. Saved Jenny, too, even though she’ll fling herself off a cliff before she admits it.”

  “You never told me that your sister is Starbreach.”

  “Of course not. Whenever I utter that name, her ego inflates exponentially, even if she’s not in earshot.”

  The silence rings. I adjust the cloth around my eye.

  “We have to find you a better system, Glitch,” she says.

  “May not live long enough to develop one, Gearbreaker.”

  “Why do you have to say shit like that?”

  “Like what?” I ask nonchalantly, securing the knot.

  “Like announcing you have a death wish.”

  I lift one shoulder. “I like to leave impressions.”

  “The things you say,” she murmurs, peeling off her gloves. She folds them neatly and then feeds them through the strap of her goggles, forcing the small bundle into her jacket.

  “Are you going to keep that?” I ask, eyeing the sliver of the Berserker insignia that peeks over her shoulder.

  She shakes her head. “Too big for me. I’ll give it to Milo; he’ll get a kick out of it.”

  “Who’s Milo?”

  I note her smile before she can snuff it out, and it is different from any other microexpression I have seen her attempt to hide. It is nearly embarrassed, guiltily indulgent, the same look that flitted across Jole’s face whenever he made Rose laugh, or she graced him w
ith a cocky side-eye glance.

  But all Eris says is, “You’ll meet him.”

  “Will I?”

  “And the rest of my crew. Xander, June, Nova, Theo, Arsen.”

  “And then what?”

  “What do you mean, ‘and then what?’”

  “I mean…” I trail off, unsure of how it will sound, if what I have been imagining was nothing but a greedy, hopeful fantasy. “I … I am happy to help Jenny, whatever she needs. Questions, experiments, anything. And it is not as if I am not grateful for all you have done for me, Eris, for whatever particle of trust you have relinquished into my care, but I—”

  “Glitch, it’s not like—”

  “I have hurt people, Eris. I have been responsible for so much death, and it—I don’t—I cannot carry it well.” My fingers twist in my lap. “I want to be a Gearbreaker. So very much. But I feel this … this … terrible thing I have inside me. One I forced to grow because I needed that kind of control, that anger, to numb me. I do not know if I can ever stop myself from needing it, from craving it. I just … I am so scared that I am never going to be good.”

  A hand slides over mine, finds a hold. Squeezes hard, black, chipped paint scattering the nails. “You don’t have to be good. You just have to be better than the bad you’ve done.”

  A beat of silence. I am acutely aware I am about to cry for the hundredth time today.

  “What if I can’t?” I whisper.

  “Then that sucks. And it probably sucks for a lot of people, too.” Suddenly she is on her feet, one hand pressed to her hip, the other shoving my shoulder into the back of the bench. I look up at her, startled. “But what if you can?”

  Dark fire flicks around her eyes, the same flame that I would bet could singe Godolia’s tallest skyscraper from the horizon.

  “Are you going to change your mind?” I ask again.

  Her hand moves from my shoulder to hover in front of me. Her head is still leaned over mine. It takes me a moment to drop my eye to her palm.

  “How about this?” she says. “I don’t kill you, and you join my crew. Deal?”