Outlier: Reign Of Madness

by Daryl Banner

  And what of Tide? The fool acted like he didn’t even know me. Athan thinks back on the decision Yellow had made, and what Wick said of it. He was certain that it was Yellow’s decision to not take Tide’s memories away. But Athan has never found Yellow to be the most trustworthy of men, and he finds himself doubting whether he can believe in or trust anything that cane-bearing, strange man says. He’s lied to us before. He’s lied to Wick about knowing him or knowing what he took from his brain. He could have gone behind all our backs and wiped Tide’s brain clean no matter the decision.

  That very thought upsets Athan the worst.

  He takes a deep breath of the jacket. If he closes his eyes, he can picture himself being nuzzled into Wick’s neck as his slum boy slept, cuddling him and feeling the warmth of his body and the steady, slowed rhythm of his sleeping heart. Nothing compares to the sound of an adult as he sleeps—the slow drawing in of breath, the wispy release of it through lazy, loosened lips. It’s music to Athan’s ears. I’ll never again leave you when you sleep, Athan promises. I’ll spend every bout of eight hours by your side, holding you and desperately trying to enter that dream world with you.

  “Athan?”

  He looks up. Lionis’s face hovers in the dark by the mouth of the alleyway.

  “Lionis!” Athan pushes off the wall and rushes up to him. “I’m so sorry. I found Wick’s jacket. He’s here somewhere. He has to be.”

  Lionis nods at the jacket. “Yes, I’m sure he is. We …” His eyes nervously flit from dark corner to dark corner. “We can’t be in here too long.”

  “Wick’s already been here too long,” Athan argues back. “We’re not leaving here without—”

  “Of course we’re not,” Lionis bites back irritably. “But we can’t split up again.”

  Athan nods his agreement, then says, “Oh. Arrow spoke to me.”

  “Arrow? How?”

  “I’ll explain as we go,” says Athan, slapping a hand onto Lionis’s back in some effort to trick himself into feeling safe. “I’m afraid I have some bad news, too.”

  The boys move down the street as Athan recalls everything Arrow told him about how their little home in the sixth ward is now compromised. When he mentions Victra, Lionis’s face seems to go blank, like he didn’t hear him properly. Athan doesn’t press the point further, figuring he ought to give Lionis room to digest all of that information first. The boys are silent as ghosts themselves after that.

  They move under the elevated railway of some abandoned track that passes between two tall buildings. A tangle of razor-thin wires hang down from it like metal spiderwebs, which they both seem to peer up at with alarm. Everything in this place feels dangerous, or evident of something dangerous that’s happened in the past. This is the place of dead Kings and dead Queens, if the rumors carry any weight. Athan can now say firsthand that he understands the reason for the words.

  It’s just beyond that elevated rail that Athan hears it. “Lionis.”

  The boys stop. In the distance of the dark streets, the tiny echoes reach their ears. Noise. Like little digital coughs. Static, carried on the wind in little tufts of sound.

  Athan and Lionis hurry down the road, which opens into a big plaza that holds an empty set of kiosks—perhaps from the days when this used to be a market square. The sounds bounce everywhere out here, so the boys hunt slower, circumventing the L-shaped kiosks and the half-fallen tents and debris on the cobblestone. At first they think the sounds are coming from one of the windows of a building at the edge of the plaza, then find themselves turned around, skirting the perimeter of the plaza. The acoustics are cruel to them, letting the bursts of noise echo off every surface and making it seem like they are coming from a hundred different places—from the tents, from the windows, the sky, the ground …

  Athan comes around the dilapidated, old wooden counter of a merchant’s booth. He sees a shirtless boy sitting on the ground and leaning against the base of the booth, hidden.

  “Wick.”

  It’s him. Wick looks up, a glint of moonlight coloring his eyes. Athan hurries to him, nearly collapsing onto the ground next to him. It’s up-close that Athan realizes Wick is in bad condition. Cuts and gashes decorate his chest where only the wooden flame trinket rests, hanging from his neck, and there’s blood down his arm. Wick’s lip bleeds too, and he sounds so tired when he finally say, “He’s dead.”

  Lionis has caught up, crouching down next to his brother and putting a tentative hand on his bare shoulder. “Who?”

  “Juston.” Wick coughs, a bit of blood flecking out onto his chin. “He’s auto-borne. Did you know that? I didn’t.” Wick doesn’t seem able to look at them, not sharing in their joy of having found him at last. “Ever since Juston drew his last breath, I’ve had the pleasure of listening to him show off.”

  The tiny bursts of noise still reach their ears from somewhere unknown, except now they seem to Athan more ghostly, haunting, and with each sound that touches him, he feels an unwelcome chill.

  “We have to go,” says Lionis, ever the pragmatic one. “Arrow has a place for us in the tenth.”

  Wick’s face twitches slightly, as if he doesn’t even have enough energy to express confusion. “What’s wrong with the sixth?”

  “Compromised,” Lionis states, short of patience—or perhaps of nerve, considering where they are and how very little any of them want to be here. “I’ll explain it to you on the way.”

  “I can’t leave him,” says Wick.

  Athan and Lionis glance at each other. The distant jets of noise persist. “Where is he?” asks Athan.

  “In the alley across the way, under the red metal canopy. It’s as far as I could carry him.” Wick’s voice is so disconsolate and bereft of emotion, it alarms Athan.

  When Athan starts to move, Lionis grabs him by the arm. “No,” he hisses. “He will attract attention. We can’t … We can’t just carry a noisemaker through the twelfth, across the eleventh, all the way to the tenth where Arrow’s waiting. We’ll attract the attention of every damn thief and rogue along the way.”

  “Fuck you, Lionis,” mumbles Wick, too tired to express any due offense. “We are not leaving him in the streets.”

  “So you’d rather us all become corpses in the street? Is that it?”

  “We are not leaving him,” Wick forces out, then winces when a cramp seems to draw all his attention, his hands moving to his ribs and holding them tenderly. “Fuck …” he hisses, trying not to cry.

  Lionis shakes his head, staring at Athan and begging silently for support. Athan frowns, as he can evenly see both Lionis and Wick’s points. “Maybe …” Athan finally says, thinking of it and yet not sure if it’s a solution at all. “Maybe we ought to …”

  “Out with it,” says Lionis, impatient.

  “Maybe we ought to give him a proper send-away.” Athan lifts his eyes tentatively to Wick. “It’s a tradition in the slums too, isn’t it?” He glances at Lionis. “Or is it just a Lifted City way that when our loved ones die, they end—”

  “—in fire, yes,” sighs Wick with a flicker of sadness in his eyes.

  Lionis blanches. “You’re proposing we burn him?”

  Athan gives a heavyhearted shrug, lifting his eyebrows. “It’s the only decent thing I can think of to do to honor Juston. We can keep his ashes that remain in a container. Seeing as we are in the middle of a bazaar, we can surely find one lying about.” He gives a quick glance around him, not seeing one nearby. “We can … maybe find his family. I think they’d like to have it,” he says, still peering around.

  After a moment, Lionis says, “Prat will know where they are.”

  “Trouble is, we’d need a way to … burn him. We had an Ashery in the Lifted City. Is there such a thing here?”

  “Yes,” confirms Lionis. “I have no idea where we’d find one, or if it’d even be active. Maybe Prat would know with all his maps. Seems lately the red light of madness is doing the job of incinerating bodies for us,” he adds w
ith dark distaste.

  Athan sighs. “I … I don’t think we have a choice. We have to either burn him here with some other means, or take him back with us—noise and all.” Lionis shoots him a frustrated look. “If you can think of a better option …”

  “Good,” says Wick, drawing Athan’s attention back to him. He looks up at Athan, and though his eyes are heavy with pain both emotional and physical, he seems to smile through his eyes. “We get Juston, and we take him with us. That’s our plan.”

  Lionis doesn’t look pleased by it at all, but remarkably doesn’t voice his opinion. Athan crouches down by his boy and gently helps him to his feet, then offers him his jacket. Wick takes it with a wince, but doesn’t put it on, likely due to his wounds; Athan assumes that’s the reason he took it off at all, perhaps having dropped it in his struggle to carry Juston. Wick leads the two of them to the alley with the metal canopy, limping every other step as they go. The noises grow louder. It’s in the shadow behind a large grey crate that Juston lies, propped up against the wall and emitting his ghostly shrieks of noise seemingly from nowhere.

  Athan’s heart breaks, peering down upon him like this. Juston Markmake was always kind to Athan, even way back when he was first recovered from the wreckage of the Lunar Festival after Lord’s Garden exploded and he fell from his place in the sky. Juston was fun and spontaneous, yet always even-tempered. He was unexpectedly keen. He was brave.

  Without being prompted, Athan crouches down and puts his muscles to use, lifting Juston into his arms and off the pavement. Lionis rushes up to help, considering that Juston is not the lightest, being somewhat tall and carrying a decent bit of meat on his bones. They carry him horizontally, Athan bearing the burden of his upper body while Lionis carries the legs. It is an awkward effort at first until Athan and Lionis form a rhythm, moving in parallel.

  Through the plaza they go, Wick leading them. By the time they reach the elevated rail with the strange web-like wires that hang, the noises from Juston stop almost instantly. Athan and Lionis share a look, then resume their journey out of the Dark Abandon, which is nothing but the length of a road and two sharp turns until they reach the mouth, through which it feels like, even at night, the world grows infinitely brighter just by their simply leaving that wretched place of ghosts and fear.

  0168 Link

  The house, strangely, hasn’t changed much in ten whole years. The tree in the front of his house looks … droopier. Is it because it was smaller when I was a kid? He always perceived the tree as a full-grown one, but maybe it has truly thickened its crooked trunk over the years, growing up with Lionis.

  “That’s your house?” asks Ames.

  Link studies the silhouette through the kitchen window. His mom. Lionis wasn’t cooking their meals yet; he’d only be nine years old. Link himself, he would’ve been … “Six. I was just six.”

  “It looks small.”

  “It’s my home.” Link can’t stop staring. He wants to go inside. He wants to hug his mother. He wants to talk to his dad, to talk to Anwick, to sit with his older brothers while they discussed their reasoning for joining Guardian. None of them enlisted yet, he realizes. Maybe everyone’s in that house right now, my whole family. Except maybe his dad, who might be at the metalshop at this hour.

  Too soon, Baal’s voice comes close. “You know you cannot go inside, Shye.”

  “Stop calling me that.”

  “Sorry. It’s a … a habit.” Baal chuckles, his hand still resting on Link’s shoulder, gripping it a touch too tight. “Don’t kill me if I say the wrong name too many times. Will you perhaps consider not killing me, kind Link? Savior Link?”

  “I’m no savior.” He watches the silhouette shifting through the kitchen window. A light flicks on in the den—the broadcast, maybe. Hums of boyish conversation come from upstairs, a curtain by Link’s window shifting. Of course, ten years ago, it was Halves’ and Aleks’s room, not his; he only got it after the two of them went off to live in the Guardian dormitories. Lionis never had a room, always keeping his things in the kitchen cupboard beneath the sink, or in a corner by the laundry-covered couch. Was there ever a time in history when that couch wasn’t completely covered in dirty clothes? He can’t even properly remember what color it is underneath.

  “You do what’s best, then,” mutters Baal, a hint of humor in his voice. “Simply say you’ve had enough, and we’ll be on our way to the next.”

  “Me, next,” demands Ames. “I want to see my family.”

  Link realizes there’s nothing much he can do but stand here in the middle of the street watching a family he cannot in any way interact with. The road is still broken and cracked, even ten years ago. He was hoping there was a time in history when the pavement was even and smooth. Maybe it was long before any of them were born. “Yes,” agrees Link sullenly when he feels Kid’s firm grip. “Him, next. Go. Just go.”

  Baal takes them by the shoulders.

  Nothing at all seems to happen until Link finds himself walking alongside Baal and Ames. Time-walking is such a weird sensation. There is no perceived interrupt in vision, sound, mind, or body. It is like moving from one room to another, even if everything about your environment changes. Link had somehow expected the act of traveling through time to be so much more dramatic—painful, even.

  “That’s my mom,” whispers Ames.

  They watch from the cover of neck-tall bushes as a large woman with a bright, round face squats in a garden in front of her house. She’s humming a slow, romantic tune to herself while batting away flies and sweating in the sun.

  “You lived in the Greens?” asks Link, observing the dirt road on which they stand lined with bushes and hedges and little fruit trees.

  “Just in front of it,” answers Ames longingly. “Born and raised in the eighth. So was my mom, and my mom’s mom, and so on for at least five generations, I think.” His mom loses her footing and falls face-first into the dirt she was tilling. She curses loudly, sneezes, then puts her hands to the soil and continues her work, her humming resumed as if it was never interrupted. “I miss home.”

  “Maybe she’s still doing alright,” offers Link. “Maybe we can visit her when this is all over with.”

  “I’d like that.” Ames scoffs suddenly, kicking the ground with fury. “I wish I’d never trusted that old, bald priest. I believed in him. I fought for him. I gave my fucking life for that fucking fuck.”

  “Easy, easy,” warns Baal, lifting his gaze to the mother, who doesn’t seem to hear or notice them. “Don’t want to draw any undue attention. It’s imperative that we—”

  Ames pulls away suddenly, making for the road. “MOM!” he cries out.

  She lifts her gaze, looking the wrong way for them.

  But before Ames can cry out the word again, Baal has grabbed him by the neck, yanking him right back behind the bushes. And then, easy as a blink of the eye, they’re in the dark of the tunnel in the tenth again.

  “W-Wait!” cries Ames, his eyes searching for his mother. He spins around in the tunnel, as if he was still in front of that quaint house in the eighth. “M-Mom? Wait …”

  Baal straightens his posture, staring down at the two boys disapprovingly. “That will not do, Ames.”

  Ames blinks, tears filling his eyes. “I’m sorry. I … I couldn’t help it. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again. Please, can I see her once more?”

  “No. Link did not react in such a rash manner. Did you see the restraint he employed? No, I have shown you boys enough. It is time to seek the Goddess.”

  “Please!” cries out Ames, dropping to his knees. “Please!!”

  “My answer is final.” Baal faces Link, ignoring the blubbering of Ames on the cobblestone. “Tell me what you know, Link.”

  Link feels the pressure upon him once again. He hoped to delay this moment for as long as possible. He feels the full attention of Baal bearing down on him. Ames’ despair echoes down the tunnel in tiny chokes and coughs of holding back tears. At least he�
�s smart enough to keep his sniveling quiet. I forget he’s only fourteen. What a baby.

  “You’re hesitant to tell me the vision,” Baal notes. “Why? Does it disturb you?”

  Link licks his lips, thinking it over. “It isn’t that it disturbs me. It’s that I … can’t really make sense of it. It was more like … a series of images. Or thoughts. Or feelings.”

  “Share them, if you will. You realize you have two other brains here, yes? Perhaps between the three of us, we can piece together the Sister’s puzzle they’ve left you.”

  Link notices that Ames has drawn quiet, wiping his eyes and studying the two of them. Perhaps he is as interested in the vision’s meaning as the priest’s brother is.

  But what’s to stop the time-walker from simply walking away once he’s learned the whole vision? Link can never overvalue his use here; he knows what it’s like to be cast to the side once his purpose is fulfilled, and he won’t let that happen again. Without Baal, Link and Ames only have ten years left to live.

  “I will give you one piece of the vision at a time,” decides Link.

  A look of frustration crosses Baal’s face at once. “You don’t trust me, then? Have I not met my side of our deal? Have I not shown you the thing you wished to see?” His eyes flash. “Oh! Or is it that you want your eternal life already? Afraid I’ll forget the other half of the price, leave you with but ten years to live? Can a man be so cruel?”

  “Yes,” answers Link simply.

  Ames seems to be emboldened by Link’s confidence, his own posture straightening as he faces Baal bravely.

  Baal, oddly enough, doesn’t seem offended in the least. He gives a curt nod, then says, “I will prove to you over time that I’m worthy of your trust. For now, I accept your conditions. One piece of the vision at a time. Let us find the Goddesses, kind Link. Tell us. What is the first piece you’re willing to share?”

  Part of Link worries that Baal is too agreeable. The other part is desperate for someone to trust.