Guardian

by Alex London

  So it surprised him completely, after all that, when she reached the edge and jumped.

  [36]

  SYD, LIAM, THE PURIFIERS, and Marie peered after her as she fell, a perfectly formed dive straight down. Some of that old Guardian grace had returned and she hit her target: a hanging cable broken loose from the 108th floor.

  She caught it with both hands and, still falling, tied it around her waist. The cable snaked out of the opening above her, pulling loose from the wall. These skyscrapers had been run through with wiring and cables. They were the hidden magic that made the great wireless network run. There were miles of wires inside the walls.

  Enough to reach the ground a hundred times over.

  Suddenly, the nopes stepped to the ledge in twos and threes, jumping together, catching the cables midair and riding them down.

  “No way,” Krystof said, speaking aloud what the others were thinking.

  As the building sloped out, the nopes rode it like a slide and, as it sloped wider, they stood on their feet, slowed by the cables, and ran down. The haze was too thick to see to the ground below. There was no way to know what happened at the end of the jump.

  Each of the nopes grabbed a few wires as they fell, pulled out more than they needed for themselves, making it easier for the next ones to catch on. By the time the first ten had jumped, there were twenty extra wires hanging hundreds of feet down. Some of the nopes missed on their first try to grab, and they could grab others. Some didn’t tie on at all; they just caught the previous nope’s cable like a vine hanging from a jungle tree, and climbed down hand over fist.

  Syd turned to look at the others, while the nopes continued to jump off the building, one after the other.

  The dead they’d left behind lay sizzling beneath the merciless sun.

  “There’s no other way,” said Syd.

  Liam swallowed. “I don’t really like heights.”

  “Does anyone?” Syd replied.

  “I don’t mind, actually,” said Marie. “I’ve never been afraid of falling . . . it’s the sudden stop that scares me.”

  Liam shook his head. “You’re making jokes now?”

  “Might be my last chance,” she said. “But one way or another, I’m running out of time and I am seeing my parents again.” She approached the ledge, watched the nopes fall, turned back, and looked at Syd and Liam. “You boys do what you want. I’m going home.”

  And then she leapt.

  The boys watched her dive, less graceful than the nopes, but well aimed, one story down. Then two. Then three. She passed the torn-open floor. She fell faster, reached out, and the force of her fall knocked her hand back when she tried to grab a cable. She flipped, plummeting head first.

  Syd held his breath. Marie tumbled past wire after wire. She wasn’t able to catch on. It was harder than it had looked.

  And then a nope from the roof leapt in a perfect jackknife, slicing through the air. This one didn’t reach out for the cables, but rather, dove for Marie and caught her with one hand. The other shot out and caught a wire, snagging it, slowing, and then stopping, hanging in the air with Marie held by her wrist.

  The Guardians had been strong enough to do that sort of thing.

  The nopes were becoming strong again themselves.

  Syd looked down at his arm, the veins throbbing. He felt weaker than ever, agonized. He wanted to jump, but not catch on, let himself fall, let the pain end. Was that how it happened? Would he give up on getting better so he wouldn’t suffer through worse? It would be so easy.

  The nope below helped Marie to an adjacent cable and they climbed down together, side by side, hand under hand, toward the haze and the ground below it.

  Cheyenne suddenly brushed past Syd and Liam and stepped onto the ledge herself. “I’ve got people waiting for me,” she said.

  She positioned herself between two of the nopes, gave them each a nod, and together, they jumped. Just like they had with Marie, the nopes caught Cheyenne, then grabbed on to the wires, and helped her to climb. Simply watching them fall turned Syd’s stomach. He knew he couldn’t stay on the blazing roof. He knew he was getting sicker by the minute. But every instinct he had screamed at him to keep his feet planted where he stood.

  One by one, the nopes stepped to the ledge beside him, waited and, when he didn’t come, they looked away and jumped alone.

  “If we’re gonna do this, we have to do it before the rest of them are gone,” said Liam.

  “No way . . . no way . . . no way . . .” Krystof Maes shook his head, backed away from the ledge.

  Syd felt the same as the little boy, but Liam was right. Syd nodded back at him. They didn’t need to speak. Liam understood. He instantly scooped Krystof under his arm, held him tightly as the boy kicked and clawed.

  “You’re gonna live whether you like it or not,” Liam grunted as he approached the ledge.

  There were eight nopes left on the roof. One stepped to the edge and held out her hand. Syd blew out a sharp breath and stepped up. He looked back at the Purifiers, then at Liam. “See you on the ground?”

  “That’s a promise,” said Liam.

  Syd and the nope jumped together.

  The air rushed past him as the roof fell away above. He felt his stomach leap into his throat, but after the initial sickening terror, Syd felt a strange thrill. He only had a few seconds before the tangle of wires and cables began to slide past him. He was about to reach out for one when he was yanked backward, his fall stopped short with a bone-rattling jolt.

  The nope had caught on for him, just like with Marie, and hoisted him up onto a wire. Their eyes met and the nope began to climb down. Syd looked up. He saw Liam’s nervous face peering over the edge. He dared to let go with one hand and give Liam a thumbs-up. Then he looked down.

  He regretted it instantly.

  His feet dangled over the void. The wind felt stronger than he thought it should; he was acutely aware of the force of gravity pulling at him. He focused on the patch of building directly in front of him, tried not think of the pain of the cable cutting into his palms or the burning in his veins, and he began to climb down.

  By the time he got the nerve to look at anything other than the glass wall directly in front of his face, the three Purifiers had all jumped and been helped on to the wires. Syd held his breath as he watched Liam jump with little Krystof still in his arms. He felt almost as if he were falling again too, watching Liam fall. Was it possible to feel something because someone you cared about was feeling it?

  Liam caught on to a wire with his other hand, the metal hand, without the help of the nopes. Syd watched him shift the murderous little boy onto his back, where Krystof hung on for dear life, and Liam began to carry the boy down the side of the building. Syd still had the falling feeling in his chest. He knew it was for Liam. It was stronger than the pain in his blood. He began to wonder whether the feeling would ever go away.

  He hoped it wouldn’t.

  Of course, Liam had blood on his hands, a lifetime of murders. But he’d saved Syd and he’d saved Krystof. Neither of them deserved his saving, but Liam did it anyway. Who could say why? If Liam was the sum of his actions, he was a killer, sure, but also a savior. And a romantic. And a thug. And a fool. And a guy just like any other. He was better than the worst thing he’d ever done and worse than the best he’d done too. Like anyone else, his life was somewhere in between.

  As Syd watched Liam climb, he couldn’t help but want to know that life more, to untangle those knots, to learn Liam’s story and to share his own back. He wanted a future that looked nothing like his past, and he wanted Liam to be a part of it. He wanted more time.

  If the nopes could heal, maybe there was hope for the rest of them.

  [37]

  THE TEENAGE PURIFIERS HAD fled Cousin at the first sign of adversity.

  He understood, of course.
>
  Cousin had trained enough teenagers to kill that he knew their hearts were rarely in it. Fair-weather soldiers, kids were.

  Fickle.

  So he stumbled alone through the Mountain City. His mouth tasted of blood from where Liam had punched him, and his shirt was soaked from the wound in his gut, shrapnel from his own bomb. The irony would have been amusing were it not such a surprisingly painful wound. An ironic death was not the kind he had in mind for himself, anyway. He did not intend to die from this.

  The streets of the city were empty, its tall buildings abandoned. Where he passed anyone at all, they hunched over in the shadows and tried to avoid catching his eye. Their skin was webbed with agonizing black. The people lacked the strength to run, to fight, even to ask for help. Who could help them, anyway? The cultists had lost their leaders. The Purifiers too. There were no leaders anymore. There were no movements to lead.

  His Purifiers had so enjoyed their brief time without their parents’ generation to control them. They took it as quite a shock that the same sickness could lay them low, as if they expected to be made of such different stuff from those who came before them.

  He stumbled on, lightheaded, toward the old mansion where he’d parked his own hovercraft. There was a medical kit on board and he could patch himself right up. His fleeing Purifiers would no doubt have stolen the vehicles they knew of by now, which was exactly why he had a backup. That’s how he’d survived so long, after all. Always have a backup. Always assume the worst. A pessimist was, after all, merely someone who could never be disappointed.

  Poor Liam had looked so disappointed when he saw Syd unconscious. He had really believed everything might be okay after they escaped the explosion. Cousin should have set the EMD charge high enough to kill. He could have spared Syd and Marie the suffering of this incurable sickness. Spared Liam the suffering of watching them die in pain.

  But life was suffering, after all, and who was Cousin to deny his young protégé those last delicious sips of it? He would have liked to have been there when it happened, but not everything could be controlled. That Machinist girl had spirit, Cousin would grant her that. She was truly delusional, but spirited nonetheless.

  When he reached the stately walls of a once-grand mansion, he took in the view over the Mountain City. It was the last he’d see of the wretched place. Its ruined buildings, abandoned slums, and silent factories. Fires still burned here and there as the sickly living huddled together, as if togetherness mattered.

  Everyone suffers alone, Cousin thought. Everyone dies alone and all of them soon enough. A few days at most. A week perhaps. The older ones were surely gone already.

  Strange how the old gang lord Maes had that last fury rise in him, getting in Cousin’s way up on the 108th floor. Perhaps that was the endgame of this sickness? Rage?

  No.

  A ridiculous thought. It had nothing to do with the sickness. People simply died the way they lived.

  Maes was a criminal, a man who had lived his life by violence. Of course, his final moments would also turn to violence. Those who spent their lives moping about by themselves—Syd, for example—would mope alone right into their graves. Those who were defiant, like Marie, would defy until they dropped dead. The maudlin would weep and the deal makers would bargain and the jokers would joke, but every last one of them would die.

  Every one of them but Cousin.

  He lowered the ramp to his hovercraft and strolled up it, hitting the button to slam the ramp shut behind him, like closing the pages of an antique book. He would write its next chapter far away from here. He set his EMD stick down on the bench and moved toward the driver’s seat. When it spun around in front of him, he found himself face-to-face with Liam.

  Liam didn’t say a word.

  He’d learned that lesson.

  He hit Cousin in the stomach so hard that the man doubled over. Liam had used his good hand, the one that was still flesh. It came away red.

  Cousin rose to fight back, but other hands caught him tightly from behind. He looked left and looked right, and saw that Syd and Marie had grabbed him under the arms, pinned him in place.

  The two of them were showing all the signs, heavy veins popping through the skin, dark lines, no doubt screaming out in agony with every thump of their eager young hearts. In a few hours, maybe days, they’d wish they’d just let Cousin kill them, of that he felt quite sure.

  “So”—Cousin tried a smile at Liam—“you’ll murder me and then what? Watch your new friends die? Can’t you tell they’re in pain? Did you go through all the trouble to escape that roof, just to get some pointless revenge against your old friend?”

  “I wouldn’t call us friends.” Liam punched him across the face, again using his good hand. “And I wouldn’t call this pointless.”

  Cousin spat out a tooth, smiled a bloody grin. “Everything is pointless in the end, Liam.”

  “Good thing this isn’t the end, then, huh?” He kneed Cousin between the legs. He’d always wanted to do that.

  Cousin grunted. Exhaled. Kept on his feet. “Syd will disappoint you, boy. That’s what people like him do. They take so much more than they give and they grow to hate you for needing them. He’ll look at you and always see a killer and a fool.”

  Liam raised the metal fist. He could crush Cousin’s skull in with one more punch.

  “Liam?” said Syd. He shook his head. He didn’t need to say anything. He saw Liam, and Liam . . . how to describe it? He felt seen.

  “Oh . . . now isn’t that so very sweet?” Cousin hissed at them.

  “You ready to shut this guy up?” Marie suggested.

  Liam nodded. Syd nodded.

  Marie whistled and the ramp lowered again, letting in a streak of dusky sunlight. Krystof Maes stepped inside. Syd and Marie dragged Cousin backward down the ramp and tossed him to the ground. Cousin said something, but they couldn’t hear him over the whirr of the motors as Krystof shut the ramp again.

  Syd went to the driver’s seat, fired the engines to life, took a deep breath, and set their course to the east.

  But his blood boiled. His vision turned red at the edges. He felt dizzy.

  He looked at Liam, stared at him. For a moment, couldn’t remember his name. “I . . . I think you should drive,” he suggested, standing. “I need to lie down.”

  He stumbled as he stood. Krystof steadied the controls, while Liam steadied Syd, guided him to a bench in the back.

  Marie sat next to Syd, felt the fever on his forehead. Or was that her own fever? The adrenaline of survival had been masking the agony of their symptoms for hours . . . everything hurt now, rising from the inside out.

  Marie wanted to scream. Instead, she lay down next to Syd and stared up at Liam blankly. Syd felt her breathing, felt the heat of her beside him. It hurt where they made contact, but he couldn’t bring himself to move.

  You don’t look so good, lover boy. Knox winked at Syd, standing just behind Liam.

  “Lover boy?” Syd said aloud.

  Liam heard him, but ignored it. Syd was delirious.

  Knox rested a hand on Liam’s shoulder, looked him up and down. Winked at Syd. A guy like you could do worse.

  “A guy like me could do worse,” Syd mumbled.

  Liam touched his cheek, just like the nopes had done. It was hot. Very hot. He elevated Syd’s legs on a small toolbox and moved Marie to the opposite bench. She groaned and her eyelids fluttered.

  “Wake me up when we get back to my—” Marie whispered.

  “Parents.” Liam finished the thought for her. She nodded. Liam bit his lip and rested his hand on Marie’s to stop her from tearing at her neck, where her carotid artery pulsed visibly.

  Cousin had been right. His friends were still dying. He had no idea if the healing of the nopes meant they would heal too. He had no idea if the city in the jungle they were going back
to would be anything but a charnel ground. He had no idea if Marie’s parents would be alive, or if she would wake up from this nap. Or if Syd would wake up.

  After all they’d been through, nothing had changed: Liam wanted to protect Syd more than ever, but he couldn’t protect Syd from this.

  “Drive,” Syd mumbled, his eyes closed. “The great Yovel returns.”

  Liam laughed a little. At least Syd still had a sense of humor. Except, Liam realized, he hadn’t really had one before.

  Syd was trying to put Liam at ease. Syd himself did not feel at all at ease. Knox was still standing over him. Quiet now. Syd tried to look into Knox’s eyes, but his face blurred. He suddenly couldn’t recall what Knox had looked like.

  Knox was dead, had been dead, would always be dead.

  Syd shuddered. He didn’t want to forget, but he wasn’t ready to join Knox yet. He wanted more time. He needed it. Could Knox just give him some more time? Was there any more time to spare?

  He opened his mouth to plead, but no sound came out. Liam placed a finger on Syd’s lips, told him to rest, and threw himself into the pilot’s seat, gripping the controls to keep from screaming.

  “Am I going to get sick like them?” Krystof asked, settling into the copilot’s seat beside Liam. “Will it hurt?”

  “I have no idea,” Liam answered, lifting the vehicle, steadying its pitch, accelerating. He wasn’t as good at this as Syd. His hands quivered.

  Waterfall, he thought to himself, but it didn’t work.

  He felt everything.

  Yes, he wanted to tell Krystof, it will hurt. Even if you don’t get sick like them. It will hurt.

  But silence was kinder than confession.

  He gunned the engines and sped across the desert, straight for home.

  • • •

  Cousin lay on his back in the dust and watched the hovercraft speed away. His hands rested across his stomach, pressing down to stop the bleeding. One look at his crimson fingers told him it was not working. He rested his back against the ground and looked up at the hazy sky.