Guardian

by Alex London

  “I barely escaped the bomb myself,” Liam said.

  “You would have thrown yourself on top of that bomb before you’d let Syd die alone,” said Cousin. “We both know that.”

  “Chairwoman,” Liam said. “You can’t believe a word this man says. He’s a liar and a murderer.”

  “It’s bad luck to scold a mirror, Liam,” Cousin said.

  “I’m no liar,” said Liam. “I confess, I killed Dr. Khan. I thought I was acting on the orders of the Reconciliation.”

  “Oh, but you were,” said the chairwoman. “We couldn’t have the doctor advocating for the Machinist cause, spreading their false gospel, and I knew your . . . fetish . . . for that boy would make you do anything for him.” Liam began to object, but the counselor kept talking over him. “You are not nearly as subtle as you believe yourself to be, young man, but we are grateful for your service in this regard.”

  “Why would you want Dr. Khan dead? She was the only hope of curing this sickness!”

  “Her cure was worse than the disease!” Chairwoman Pei moved behind Marie, studied her profile, and shook her head. “Even if we could just rebuild the network, link everyone up to constant data once more, how would that look? The people would lose faith in us completely. They would turn back to the easy fixes and the quick credits and endless debts and all the old systems would return. Our revolution would crumble. We would have achieved nothing. We would have changed nothing.”

  “But it will still crumble,” said Liam. “We talked to Eeron Brindle. This doesn’t just stay with the nopes . . . without the network, it’s going to kill everyone.”

  “Not everyone, Liam,” Cousin said. “Only those who had biodata to begin with.”

  “There were never many people without it,” said Liam. “Maybe a few thousand at most.”

  Cousin smiled. “Then don’t you feel lucky to be among them?”

  “I do not enjoy the deaths of any of our people,” Chairwoman Pei said as she approached Liam. “But we are trying to build a new kind of world and these things are necessary if the society is to endure. All vestiges of the past need to be wiped away. To that end, Cousin has been given command of the Purifiers; the infected will be contained, and I will see to it that the Reconciliation survives this crisis to emerge stronger than before. Under my leadership. It will not be easy, but I will—”

  “Excuse me, Chairwoman.” Cousin held up a finger to interrupt her. “If I may?”

  “What is it?” she snapped at him. The chairwoman did not even deign to look at Cousin, keeping her eyes fixed on Liam. She was a woman used to giving speeches and not used to interruption.

  “I have a correction to make to your last statement.” He winked at Liam, who tensed, wondering what game Cousin was playing. “The Reconciliation will not, it should be noted, emerge from this crisis under your leadership. To be honest, neither it nor you will emerge from this crisis at all.”

  Chairwoman Pei finally did turn to look at Cousin, but she did not have time to register surprise, as his hand rose to his mouth with the small silver tube of a blowgun. He puffed and a needle pierced her throat.

  The chairwoman gasped, choked, clawed at Marie standing beside her, and fell, dead. Cousin impregnated his darts with a very potent toxin. Chairwoman Pei’s lifeless eyes stared up at Marie from the floor.

  “Finally!” Cousin exclaimed. “I could not stand that pretentious windbag and her lectures. I apologize for the offensive things she said to you, Liam.”

  Liam had already turned to take cover on the other side of the large light in the center of the room, crouched behind it, ready to spring out, his killing hand poised.

  “Again?” Cousin laughed. “Calm down, boy! How many times do I have to tell you I am not going to hurt you? I just saved you from that woman, didn’t I?”

  “You tried to kill me,” Liam said.

  “Bygones. You really shouldn’t hold grudges.”

  Liam peeked around and saw that Cousin had grabbed Marie and held her in front of himself, the tip of a dart in his sleeve dimpling her neck. Any more pressure and it would break the skin and the poison would enter her bloodstream.

  Cousin cleared his throat. “Shall we now talk face-to-face like civilized humans?”

  “You aren’t civilized,” said Liam. “Or human.”

  “I am nothing but the things I do,” Cousin said. “As are we all.”

  “So do something good and let her go.” Liam stood. He met Cousin’s eyes.

  “You aren’t even going to thank me,” said Cousin.

  “For what?”

  “For the gift I am giving,” said Cousin. “The gift I am giving to you.”

  Liam didn’t answer. He looked at Marie. Her eyes were wide, but not with the normal terror of a hostage. Liam had seen that look plenty of times in his young life. He’d taken enough hostages to know it well. But Marie’s eyes were wide in another way; they had the alertness of a predator. She was in danger, but she wasn’t surrendering to fear.

  She was ready.

  Liam didn’t let his glance linger on her for long. Cousin was just as alert as she, and more skilled a killer than either of them.

  “Oblivion, Liam!” Cousin shouted, his voice echoing off the high walls, bouncing back at them from the shadows. “That’s the gift I’m giving. Everyone gets a piece of it. The Advisory Council. Marie. Even your dear, darling Syd. This infection, this data withdrawal business, it will take everyone soon enough . . . except, of course, for a chosen few. Like us.”

  Liam moved sideways and Cousin turned with him, keeping Marie in front of his body.

  “You and I, Liam, we were never linked to anything, were we? Just like the late chairwoman there, we were born apart, stayed apart, and never had that data in our blood. We’ll survive, a few others perhaps. The strong. The pure. But the rest?” He brushed his hand through the air, wiping them all away. “This will all be a graveyard. And then, you’ll be free. Your responsibility for that sulking, dark, hollowed-out boy you’re so fond of? Erased. Your need, that hunger that you cannot put into words, it’ll go too. When there is nothing, there is nothing to long for. That’s freedom. That’s my gift to you. Nothing.”

  “You’re insane,” said Liam. “You’d let millions die . . . for nothing?”

  “Not everything is a transaction, Liam.” Cousin grinned. “The Reconciliation has taught us that at least.”

  “You wouldn’t kill everyone and expect nothing in return,” Liam said. “I know you better than that.”

  “You don’t know me at all.” Cousin studied his fingernails. “Although, the Nigerians made it clear that an end to the Reconciliation would earn me passage to their republic. Passage for two, in fact.” He clicked his tongue, letting the thought settle in. “If you wanted to come with me, to the paradise they’ve made for themselves over there, perhaps we could find you another dark-skinned boy to protect, if that’s what you’re into. Maybe someone who’d return your affections?”

  Liam didn’t say a word.

  “You realize that Syd will never care about you the way you do about him, don’t you? He doesn’t know how.”

  “Not everything is a transaction,” Liam parroted back. He scanned the room, looking for anything to give him an advantage.

  “I think Syd will be grateful for the oblivion I’m giving,” Cousin said. “I imagine he’d thank me if he could. I suppose you are too selfish to let him have it. It’s really all he wants, you know? To be erased. It’s the only way he thinks he can be forgiven. Protecting him all this time has been a cruelty. I am offering kindness.”

  Liam looked to the body of Chairwoman Pei on the floor.

  Syd had fought to escape the bomb she’d ordered. Syd had chosen to live. Cousin was wrong. Syd did not want to die.

  But now he was alone back in his room, armed, but alone. And Cousin knew h
e was still alive.

  Of course, thought Liam. He cursed himself for being such a fool. Cousin’s whole speech—all the rambling about oblivion and freedom and desire—had been a delay tactic. Who knew if his Nigeria nonsense was even true? They had sealed off their republic a hundred years ago. No one ever got in. No one ever came out. All Cousin knew how to do was lie.

  He was keeping Liam busy until after the deed was done and Syd was murdered.

  Cousin sighed, as if he could read Liam’s thoughts, as if he knew the ruse was up.

  In a flash, Cousin’s hand pulled from Marie’s neck and flung the dart at Liam. Liam’s instincts fired and before even a moment’s thought, he’d thrown himself backward in a flip. The dart dug itself into the floor.

  At the same moment, Marie rolled her shoulder sideways, and slammed into Cousin with her knee, right in the crotch. He doubled over and Marie delivered a kick to his face.

  He dodged it and her boot caught empty air.

  As soon as Liam’s feet hit the ground, he snapped a blade from the lining of each of his boots, flinging the first one at Cousin and the second where he knew Cousin would dive to dodge the first. Both blades whistled through empty air and buried themselves in the far wall.

  Marie whirled out of Cousin’s reach as, in the same instant, Cousin extinguished the light, plunging the room into impenetrable blackness.

  Liam kept moving, using his memory of the room’s layout to make his way to the small rear door through which Chairwoman Pei had come. He hoped Marie would do the same. They didn’t stand a chance against Cousin in the dark. Not that Cousin really cared. He had just wanted to slow them down.

  “Going so soon?” Cousin called out from the dark after them. “You can’t save him! You can’t protect him from this. My future has no place for him!”

  The steps were crumbling and the railing long gone from the stairwell, but Liam and Marie ran side by side, leaping from one landing to the next, shaking loose the last fragments of moldy plaster as their feet slammed down.

  “You’re letting me down, Liam!” Cousin called from above. “But I forgive you. Come back to me when you’re ready to give up on that knock-off savior of yours. I’ll always be there for you, Brother Liam! You and me into oblivion.”

  When they hit the overgrown alley in the dark, they stopped to catch their breath for a second.

  “Nice moves,” Liam told Marie.

  “You too,” she said. “Now what?”

  “To Syd.”

  “Yeah, and then?”

  Liam didn’t know. Neither did Marie.

  “Syd will have a plan,” Liam said. “Syd will know what to do.”

  They ran and hoped Liam was right.

  [22]

  SYD PACED THE ROOM, one end to the other, and back again. He tapped on the spot behind his ear, he sat on the bed. He stood up. He sat again. He flipped through the journal. He paced some more.

  He hated waiting, hating being stuck in this little room while his friends risked their lives.

  Friends? Is that what they were? Liam too?

  He wondered how Liam would react when he told him they were going to Mountain City. It shouldn’t be a surprise. Where else could they go?

  Mountain City had been evacuated. The only people left were scavengers hiding from the Purifier patrols and Reconciliation officials determining what of the city’s material should be salvaged and what destroyed. The city itself was not meant to be lived in anymore. It was the city that had produced the great injustices of the past, the Reconciliation believed, so the people must learn to live beyond it, off the land, blasted and ruined as the land was. In a generation, maybe two, the people would be ready to return to the city, but now, the goal was that it be emptied.

  It made a good place for the Machinists to hide.

  It would make a good place for them to hide a Machine.

  Syd was wired, jumpy, eager to get started. He hadn’t been back to Mountain City since he’d fled it months ago. He wondered what liberation would have done to it. Would the slums of the Valve have been destroyed? Would Mr. Baram’s old shop still be there? Syd’s old school? Would he remember the streets, recognize the buildings?

  “It’s just a few months,” he told himself out loud. Nothing could be that different.

  A knock on the door. He stopped pacing.

  Knock. Knock.

  He moved to open it, ready to tell Liam his plan, to tell him what he saw in the journal, to ask him if he had killed the doctor.

  Would he ask him why? Did he really want to know?

  Syd wasn’t innocent either, after all. He was responsible for far more death than Liam. Maybe it’d be best just to let it go unasked. He owed Liam his life, after all. He knew Liam expected nothing in return, but maybe Syd’s silence would be the kindness he could offer.

  Knock. Knock. Knock.

  His fingers froze on the handle of the door.

  Three knocks.

  Syd waited. Liam said he’d knock four times. Why only three now?

  Again: Knock. Knock. Knock.

  Syd held his breath. He listened at the door. There was not a sound he could hear. It wasn’t Liam out there.

  He rushed across the room and grabbed the bolt gun from the small table, then returned to the door. He listened again.

  Nothing.

  Time turned to jelly, thick and sticky. He breathed in. He breathed out.

  Knox’s voice echoed in his head: Being alive and living aren’t the same.

  To stay alive, he should leave the door shut and wait. See if Liam would come back. See if the mysterious knocker would just go away.

  To live meant to do something. To seize control of his future. To be the hero of his own story. To save himself.

  He put his hand on the handle and raised the bolt gun. He cracked open the door and saw Counselor Baram’s gray beard, his pale face, and small glasses perched on the tip of his nose. Relief returned time to its normal thickness, its normal speed.

  He lowered the bolt gun and opened the door.

  “You are just who I needed to talk to,” Syd told him, eager to unburden his worries to a familiar face. “Things have gotten crazy. They tried to kill me, and I think the Machine is real, and I know it’s treason to say it, but if we can find it, if we can make it work and restart the network, we might be able to—”

  Something wasn’t right.

  Counselor Baram just stood there, his mouth gaping open. His skin was waxy and still. Blue lines crisscrossed his forehead. A red trickle crept down his neck just behind his ear. He didn’t speak.

  The man standing in front of Syd was dead.

  A few things happened at once.

  Syd tried to shut the door again, just as the old man’s body dropped at his feet, and a heavy fist pushed the door open hard, knocking him back. The active end of an EMD stick jabbed forward, slamming him square in the chest, frying every nerve in his body, like a fuse had been lit, burning beneath his skin from the tips of his toes to the backs of his eyeballs. When he hit the floor, the fuse detonated.

  Anyone would have screamed like he did.

  He clawed for the bolt gun he’d dropped, but his fingers would not obey the fragmented signals from his brain.

  A shower of gray powder filled the air above him, and the lights went out. He felt it settle on his skin.

  Graphite bomb. It’d blown out every electrical circuit. The windowless room was pitch-black, but at least the EMD stick wouldn’t work for a few minutes either.

  Syd gritted his teeth and rolled to his side, covering the bolt gun with his body. He felt it against his stomach and reached under himself, locking the spring back as he continued to roll. As he rolled, he released the spring.

  He heard the bolt hit the wall with a thud. He’d missed.

  Of course his assailan
ts could see in the dark. These weren’t amateurs who’d been sent for Syd. They attacked in darkness because it gave them an advantage. All Syd had accomplished rolling around and taking a wild shot in the dark was to look like a fool to the assassins he couldn’t see and to use up his one shot. His nerves were too fried to relock the spring.

  He scrambled in the direction of the cot, trying to get under it for cover until he could reload the bolt gun, but he felt a hand on the back of his neck and his shirt. He was hauled to his feet and someone pinned his arms behind his back. Another person stood in front of him.

  “The great Yovel,” the man in front said. Syd tried to force his eyes to adjust to the dark, but he couldn’t make out so much as a shape in front of him. He might as well have had his eyes closed. “You don’t like that name Yovel, do you?”

  The man’s breath smelled like green onions and the voice was familiar. He used it to pinpoint the exact location of the speaker’s face. Then he turned his head toward it and spat. He didn’t hear his spit hit flesh, but he knew he hadn’t missed. So it was cloth he’d just spat on, a mask most likely. A Purifier’s mask.

  “Finch,” said Syd. “You killed Counselor Baram. The Advisory Council will hang you for that.”

  “There is no Advisory Council anymore.” Finch laughed. “You know, I always wondered, Syd, why old Baram took you in back in Mountain City. We all thought it was because of what you did for him, if you know what I mean?”

  “Can we just do this?” the other voice said in the darkness. “Just kill him already.”

  “No,” Finch answered. “This is our reunion! Did you know that I had sponsors before the network fell? I was getting out of the Valve and moving to the Upper City. On my own. No debt. Just the lux life all the way. And then this Chapter Eleven ruined it for me.”

  “Just kill him,” the other guy pleaded.

  “He used to love me, you know?” Finch said. “He’d stare at me all the time in class. Pervert.”

  Syd gritted his teeth. Of course Finch would end up here, in this room. Of course Finch would be the one sent to kill him. Everyone Syd cared about became an affliction, in one way or another.