Outlier: Reign Of Madness

by Daryl Banner

  “So will you, unless you enjoy the cold feel of your ass cheeks sittin’ on all that metal you got.” Again, the girls at her side chuckle. “And we do have access to them. We Wall Breakers love to make friends. Don’t we, girls?” The two grunt a response. “And perhaps securing your safe passage through us might also secure a means of weaponry … for us both. You share your metal, and we’ll share our forges. Then we’ll both be armed for the coming storm.”

  Gandra shifts in her seat. “We’re listening,” she finally concedes.

  “The Coalition grows. I hear they are working on recruiting the fourth. It’s only a matter of time before they also secure the fifth. And then you.” Quin’s eyes darken, despite her carefree smirk. “And if your gold-toting Hightower asses don’t prove a match against them, we’ll be next.”

  Gandra squints, seeing her aim. “So you’re suggesting a sort of alliance …?”

  “Perhaps. If we’re all armed, we can stand against the Slum King and his slummier following.”

  “And how can I trust you won’t betray us?” asks Gandra lightly. “What with your hair, I’m not sure I can tell you apart from a simple slum rat who’d chew off her best friend’s ankles to save her own.”

  Quin’s smirk deepens. “I never much liked my ankles. And I don’t know what queer sort of rats you’ve been having for dinner, but the most I’ve seen have hair more like yours: grey and scraggly and frightful to small children.”

  “A perplexing thing you’re not frightened.” Gandra smiles, though it looks forced. “It’s the humidity. Couldn’t keep the frizz away if my life depended on it.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t,” returns the girl lightly.

  Gandra inspects a fingernail, picking at it as if these insults and lightly-worded threats don’t even so much as raise a single hair on her long, frail neck. Lionis’s posture seems stiffened by the tension in the room, which annoys Wick; his brother’s blatant transparency has been a bother to him ever since he was roped into Rain a few months ago. ‘Show nothing on your face,’ he had told his brother once when they went on a food run. ‘The less you show, the less they know.’ To that, Lionis smugly replied, ‘All anyone ought to see from my face is my smarts and my impenetrable armor made of spirit.’

  Wick could have strangled his brother that day. Your smarts will get you killed, he should have said, and fuck what your armor’s made of; any slumborn’s blade can cut through it just the same.

  “Allies, then?” offers the girl with a lift of an eyebrow.

  Gandra nods shortly. “Very well. I suppose in a world that’s fast falling apart, it’s the least we can do to mutually benefit from our … neighborliness.”

  “Neighborliness.” Quin squirms, like the word tickles her. She speaks too smoothly for a girl who hardly looks twelve years old, Wick notes, his own eyes squinting in suspicion. She’s either the playful type who pretends to know the scope of the game, masking her ignorance with cockiness and empty smirks—or she truly does have a hand that she isn’t willing to show us.

  But neither analogy helps him get any closer to trusting the spunky girl with the green choppy hair. Gandra and Quin agree to meet once a week in negotiating the terms of this so-called alliance and gather updates of one another’s intel. Gandra also agrees, upon conditions, to allow access to the Mechanoid Mines during the dark hours directly following nightfall.

  “Until seven days,” says Quin at the foot of the tall abandoned building in which they all convened, shaking Gandra’s thin, papery hand. Then the girl is off into the seventh—the border of the wards being the rail of a train that hasn’t run since the Fall of Sanctum—her two cronies following silently behind, their eyes doing all the threatening that weapons and blades cannot.

  The journey back to the sixth is a tense one. Only once does Wick overhear Gandra mutter, “Tired of dealing with fool children.” And then another time, she spits, “Making a fool of me, that little girl who thinks herself so witty. If she has a mother, I wish a firm scold and a spank on her for her insolence.” When Yellow tries to calm her, she hisses back, “The dumb girl doesn’t even know we’re all ninth warders. She thinks us as Hightowers, as rich and privileged and spoiled as the temporary sixth ward home we keep. The fool girl. Fool, fool, fool. I could spit for days I’m so angry.”

  But spit won’t pacify her, and Wick catches no more words.

  Not that it matters, since the self-important Lionis seems all too interested in his own. “We should not be negotiating with brigands,” he explains to the others who follow several paces behind Gandra and Yellow. “The only reason we’re bothering with them at all is—”

  “Because the Warden of the sixth has a problem with them,” Victra puts in with a roll of her electric blue-lidded eyes, her blonde coils of hair bouncing with her every step, “and our arrangement requires that we do the dirty work of dealing with them. Someone please remind me why this arrangement exists at all …?”

  “It’s not important,” Lionis retorts, annoyed at her interruption. “My point was, we should enlist the help of Guard—”

  “I’m not hearing this spiel again,” says Victra with a dismissive wave of her hand, her pointy nose scrunched up. That earns her a glare from Lionis, but he doesn’t seem inspired to push his point.

  And really, the whole of them has heard it a dozen times. He thinks there is secretly a band of Guardian who still reside in Pylon #105 and that Rain should join forces with them in an effort to secure the slums. No one seems to agree, especially since their relationship with the Warden of the sixth is already quite strained and his trust is difficult to gain—and has been that way ever since the devastating loss of his wife, so they’re told. The only one he trusts is his precious son Ryke, a fourteen-year-old brat with sandy hair. The Warden was reluctant at best to give them lodgings in his own operations tower, but apparently owed a favor to Yellow for a past memory job. ‘The whole of the ninth floor is yours,’ he’d told Gandra and Yellow when the agreement was made. ‘Help keep the peace in the sixth, and I’ll keep you hidden.’ No matter the trust that exists between them, Wick doesn’t put it past the Warden to toss them at Guardian the instant balance returns to Atlas and a King or Queen sits the throne.

  It wouldn’t be the first time Wick was turned in by Guardian. Somehow, he thinks a second turning-in would not go as luckily.

  An hour later, Wick finds himself back on the ninth floor of the tower, seated at the round table with Athan, Juston, Victra, and Prat. Lionis took off to the kitchens to busy himself with making a meal for the crew while Gandra and Yellow holed themselves up in a room to discuss plans. Wick has no idea where Arrow is.

  “What’s happened to us?” groans the always-bored-and-restless Juston, running his long fingers across the table in leisurely patterns. “Rain used to be, like, the thrilling, subversive, save-the-world thing I ran to, taking off to the Noodle Shop in the ninth in the middle of the night. It warmed my blood. Now I feel like I’ve been … employed at some job I don’t remember applying to.”

  “Blame Yellow,” teases Prat with his deep, throaty voice. “He robbed your memory of the day you signed your life away to Rain.”

  Juston scoffs at that. “I’m starting to think he really did. I miss how we used to be.”

  “I just miss the spicy noodles,” Victra cuts in with a sneer. “No offense, Wicky, but your brother’s cooking is subpar at best.”

  “None taken,” says Wick, earning an encouraging rub on his thigh from Athan who sits closely by him, leaning against his side. “I’m simply used to it. I grew up with his cooking my whole life.”

  And if he really lets his mind go there, he finds himself far more appreciative of Lionis’s cooking than the others. It takes him back home, somehow. He misses his quaint, cramped house on the broken street in the ninth ward slums where he and his brothers grew up. He misses the thick tree in the front yard that Lionis would climb up to read even if he didn’t often climb up its rough, tired bark himself.
A part of him feels like he’d go up it every day if he could somehow return there. He also misses running off to the Noodle Shop loft and snuggling in the spare room there, the one with the bed and the dusty sheets. He misses the times when he and Rone would sit on the windowsill right next to that big bed, their feet dangling down into the alleyway below full of warring cats and laughing street kids.

  Thinking of Rone still turns his gut, but perhaps not as much as it used to. I’m going to see my best friend soon, he reassures himself, then wonders if he can even call him his best friend anymore. Why had they left things so horribly back in that little room in the Windstone Academy? It feels like forever ago. Maybe Rone is feeling similarly, regretting the harsh words they’d shared. Really, it was all said in the heat of the moment. Rone was angry because he still hadn’t found his sister Cintha, and Wick was furious because … well, he can’t even remember why, precisely. It’s all so confusing.

  “Are you alright?”

  The question comes quietly from Athan, despite the others carrying on a conversation about school in the ninth compared to the tenth. Wick lays his eyes on Athan Broadmore and his broad, muscular shoulders and his boyish, pouty face with his lush lips and his beaming eyes and his golden, messy hair. Athan wears a blue shirt that he’s clearly outgrown, as it pulls across his pecs, hugs his tapered torso, and stretches over his biceps. He looks perfect in every way, except for the blank look on his face which has bothered Wick for too long a time. Athan hasn’t been himself. He keeps saying he’s happy, sounding less so with each utterance. He does kiss Wick with passion and gets hard and fucks harder, of course—which seems to be about the only thing normal between them lately. Otherwise, Athan’s eyes are blank, his face is clouded, and his forehead is wrinkled meditatively. I need to get him talking about his family. He needs to acknowledge them someday. He needs to truly mourn them.

  Before Wick can answer him, Lionis enters the room with a pot full of stew, which he gently sets down on the table right in the middle of the five of them. The enticing, mildly spiced aroma of the stew fills the space between them all. “What’s that look on your face for?” asks Lionis at once, eyeing his brother.

  Juston, Prat, and Victra ignore the question, grabbing bowls and scooping themselves some of Lionis’s vegetable stew. Wick lifts an eyebrow at him. “Look? What look?”

  “If something is wrong with you, Anwick,” Lionis pushes on in his miserably righteous, snotty tone, “then you need to say so and we need to fix it. You can’t be unfocussed like this. Not when Gandra is relying on you as the primary runner for supplies and food lately. You saw that cocky Quin girl. The thieves in the seventh aren’t likely to relent from just a simple conversation in a room. We’re from the ninth; we know thieves better. You need to keep alert.”

  “I am always alert,” Wick responds tersely.

  “You think I don’t know you? I’ve seen that overwhelmed look on your face ever since you were too young to go to school. You’re not even here or present. Are you not getting enough baby time?”

  Juston stifles a laugh, quickly straightens his face, then starts to eat his stew spoonful by spoonful. Victra rolls her eyes, the blue of her eyelids shining. Prat takes his bowl and moves across the room to his mapping desk. ‘Baby time’ is Lionis’s crude euphemism for sleep, which he insisted is not meant mockingly; the only ones who sleep in this world are babies—Wick, the one and only exception.

  Of course, he also knows his brother well. “Mind the look on your face, Lionis, before I put my big fist in it and give you another one.”

  “And you’re angry all the time,” Lionis goes on insufferably, despite a sigh from Victra. “How can you make smart, measured decisions in a state like that? You’re too much like dad.”

  “And you’re too much like mom,” retorts Wick, “caring for me the way you care for a baby, watching my every step and criticizing the tone of my voice. What’s next? You want me to suckle your tit and see if I can draw milk from it?”

  Juston snorts into his stew while Victra flat out laughs. Lionis appreciates neither reaction, his eyes narrowing.

  “I’m eighteen now,” Wick presses on. “I’m grown. I don’t need my brother’s pampering.”

  “Older brother’s pampering,” he pushes haughtily. “By almost two years. My birthday’s not long after yours.”

  That fact hits Wick in the face, reminding him of the time of the year. Days fly by so fast lately, he hardly knows what day of the week it even is. Lionis will be twenty in just two weeks, it occurs to him after a moment of figuring. I had pictured his twentieth birthday in very different circumstances. Of course, he also hadn’t expected to have his own eighteenth birthday in the Lifted City at Athan’s side. Nothing ever unfolds in life the way one expects …

  “Anwick. Your hands.”

  Wick stirs at the softer tone in Lionis’s words, then glances down at his hands to find them sweating so much, they are literally dripping. In his anger, he’s apparently latched on to Lionis’s Legacy of hot palms. The others at the table have taken notice too, Juston having frozen with a spoonful of stew halfway to his mouth. Sourly, Wick wipes away the sweat on the thighs of his jeans, but his hands keep sweating anyway. This seems to occur a lot lately—accidentally borrowing the Legacy of anyone nearby in a fit of emotion. Good thing I didn’t latch on to Juston and fill the room with angry noise.

  “You’re getting good at that,” mutters Lionis, and even the tiny compliment rubs Wick the wrong way, making his face scowl. “You just need to control it better. The very awareness of your Legacy has made you more capable of using it, that much is clear. But you need to be cautious. If you get angry around Yellow, you could wipe all our memories. That’s not good.”

  “I think I would’ve done that by now,” Wick reasons.

  “You need to practice self-control. It’d be irresponsible not to.”

  Wick takes a calming breath, then he glances at Athan, who returns his gaze with a kind one of his own. When he offers the hint of a smile, Wick returns it, grateful for the small gesture.

  “Do you agree with my annoying brother?” Wick asks quietly to Athan, despite the whole room being able to hear him.

  Athan takes Wick’s hand, even sweaty and slippery and warm as it is. “I trust your self-control,” says Athan back.

  “Is that so?”

  “Otherwise I wouldn’t hold your hand for fear that you’d burn mine right off.” Athan gives his arm a playful jerk, pulls Wick to his side, and kisses his cheek.

  Wick squeezes his hand, reassured, then lets go to fill two bowls with Lionis’s cooking. He slides one in front of Athan, then pulls one in front of himself. And despite all his irritation at his brother, when he tastes the brown spicy stew of bean and cabbage, he is instantly transported home. Judging from the smirk on Lionis’s face, Wick assumes he’s not hiding the pleasure on his own. I’ll let him have this one, Wick decides lightly, savoring every bite.

  0143 Link

  Lying on his back, balanced on the edge of the walkway with his left hand lazily adrift in the water and his right one resting on his belly, Link stares up at the stone ceiling of the waterways and thinks about a song his mother used to sing when he was a child. He often heard it through Anwick’s door, the gentle humming and the lyrics he can’t remember. Were there even lyrics, or did he imagine them? Why did my mother sing to only Wick at night when we were children? She never sang to me …

  “WHAT DID YOU SEE??”

  The voice causes Link to jerk, lifting his head off the cobblestone to pay witness to Baron, who stands over a boy knelt on the other stone walkway across the water. The boy is the latest addition to their Brotherhood, a skinny thing with huge innocent eyes and dirty blond hair that cascades to his ears in waves. One sole braid runs down the left side of his face, bouncing against his chin when he walks—knelt before the bald former priest of The Brae, however, the boy isn’t doing much walking.

  “N-Nothing,” says the boy, his voi
ce hollow. “It was … It was dark and watery. I thought I saw a light, but—”

  “Yes, yes?? Tell me of the light, boy! Tell me of it!”

  “Well, I opened my eyes wider and realized it was th-th-the light from the waterways. The one up there,” he says, pointing up at the nearest electric wall-lantern, which glows dimly.

  “NO!” shouts Baron, slapping the cement next to the boy. He grips him by both arms, jostling him. “You saw more! Tell me! The Sisters came to you, yes?? They came to you! In a light, yes??”

  The boy stares at him in a confused panic. He sputters several times, searching for the words. “Th-The Sisters?”

  “Don’t tell me what I want to hear,” Baron says, his voice loud and clear even over the constant noise of rushing water that fills the halls down here at all hours. “Tell me what you saw.”

  “I saw …” The boy sighs, deflating. “I saw … water, sir. Darkness and … and then the light of the … the lantern …”

  Baron shoves the boy in frustration, toppling him back into the water from which he’d just been dragged out. With the boy kicking in the water trying to right himself, Baron stomps away, infuriated, and disappears around the bend. Three other boys—among them is Ames, the one who Link has grown closest to with the half-burnt face and body—dart to the water and help fish the boy back out of it. Link watches from the other side, crouched by the edge. When the boy is leaned against the wall, he finally says, “I saw nothing, I swear it. I didn’t mean to anger him. I tried really hard, b-but I … I …”

  “Don’t worry on it,” says Ames. “It’s happened to us all, that very same thing. He is just old and tired.”

  “Is … Is it gone now?” the boy asks at once. “My Legacy?”

  Ames looks at his fellow brothers, seemingly ignorant of Link watching from across the water, then says, “Yes. Never to return.”