by Daryl Banner
“A simple test,” Gabel answers. “One trip to the doctor can tell you. They inject a serum into you that induces a false state of sleep. Then they run a little test, and when you’re brought out of the state, they have for you an answer.”
Ellena lifts her eyebrows, surprised. “Didn’t know such a thing existed.”
“It is more common in the Lifted City, I imagine. I don’t know of a doctor here who might perform the procedure. It’s quite advanced.”
“Sounds expensive too,” mutters Ellena.
Gabel doesn’t say anything to that, which rubs Ellena a bit the wrong way. She can’t help but feel a great dividing wall between them. She becomes more aware of exactly how lowborn she is in his presence—and how very lowborn Gabel Wayward is not.
Before entering the building, Bee places cuffs back upon Ellena’s wrists. “It is just protocol,” she explains flatly.
The inside of the building is bright, and its front is protected by three separate locked doors, each of them guarded and each of them seeming to be secured by heavy Sanctum tech, the likes of which Ellena has never seen. She is so astonished by the simple procedure of entering the building that she hardly notices when she finally makes it inside. Too soon they are aboard a lift, and she feels herself ascend into the heavens. The building is so tall, she imagines being taken to the Lifted City to await her trial before the Banshee King, until she remembers that there is no Banshee and there is no King—at least, not a true one.
They enter a quiet floor. “This way,” says Bee, directing her to a door quite close to the lift. Ellena glances left and right, the hallway stretching onward forever, but she gets to enjoy and see none of it, pulled into the dimness of a plain, unremarkable room.
It is the boy Guardian Cope who undoes her cuffs, only to redo them to a post in the center of the room. “Sorry,” he mumbles.
“What am I?” teases Ellena dryly. “A dog on a leash?”
Gabel gives the others a nod. Bee and Cope leave the room with Cope giving her one last lingering look, as if regretting having to leave her. At least Ellena would like to believe that’s the reason for the reluctance.
Then the door shuts and it is just Gabel and Ellena. “The others will report to our Lead Officer,” he explains to her.
“And … I am to sit in this room and rot away?” asks Ellena.
Gabel’s eyes drift down her body, ending up somewhere at her delicate waist. Somehow, the look in his eye is not sexual, but rather hard and pensive. “No,” he finally says, sounding a bit like a decision.
She takes a step toward him, her ankle cuff rattling. “No?”
He closes the distance between them, bringing his face in front of hers. They share breath for a moment before he says, “I am going to do you a favor. But you must do something for me in return.”
“Oh, lovely,” she murmurs. “Is this when we fuck again?”
“That cannot happen anymore,” he states simply. “The favor has nothing to do with our bodies. But what you must do in return does.”
“I … don’t follow.”
“You must swear to me not to use your Legacy.”
Ellena’s face wrinkles. Now she is quite confused. “I really don’t follow.”
“Swear it. If you don’t cooperate, I will return you to this room and I will put you back in the gloves. They have metal ones here, ones that won’t even let you mind an itch upon your face. They will make you suffer, those metal gloves. Do you understand me?”
“Why would I use my Legacy?” she questions, taken aback.
“Are you ready for the favor I’m going to do for you, Lesser?” After a brief moment of staring questioningly into his eyes, she finally concedes, nodding. “And do you swear not to use your Legacy under any circumstance whatsoever?” After another short pause, Ellena shuts her eyes and gives another nod, then opens them upon his handsome face and sharp green eyes. “Good. Come.”
After being detached from the post, a cuffed Ellena is guided out of the room by Gabel, who keeps a hand at her back as he brings her down the hall. Ellena drinks in the light of the building, revived at once. She sees friendly faces pass by, but they only regard her with suspicion—or not at all. I am a prisoner, she is reminded coldly.
“This is humiliating,” she complains. “You know I will behave. Please, Gabel, the cuffs—”
“I do not mean to humiliate you, Lesser, and you know it,” he states firmly, “but this is the new Guardian headquarters now, and I must follow protocol every step of the way. My bosses are watching. We must both behave,” he adds after lowering his voice.
Ellena catches his drift, then contains the rest of her complaints to herself.
They arrive at a doorway. Gabel peeks inside first, as if to check for something within. Then he faces Ellena importantly. “Remember your part of our deal, Lesser.”
“No Legacy,” she recites blandly. “Got it.”
“Good. Come inside.”
Ellena moves past him and glances into the room. There is a hospital bed by the window in which a young man rests. The man is covered to his chest in a mess of bed sheets and blankets, and a large dark grey mechanism is covering his entire neck, braced with a long metal strap that goes over the top of his head.
The young man’s eyes turn, seeing her. A spark of recognition sets his eyes on fire as they widen.
Ellena’s face breaks apart. She slaps a hand to her mouth, then tears across the room, at his side in an instant. In tears, Ellena makes to hug her bedridden son, then thinks twice on it, not knowing how much pain he’s in, or whether it would be harmful to jostle him with that big contraption affixed to his head.
“My Halves,” she breathes, the tears spilling down her face as she keeps a hand over her mouth, muffling her words. “Oh, my son!”
He doesn’t respond except through his eyes, which stare at her with such widened intensity that the whites of them shine. He opens his mouth, but doesn’t speak. Of course, Ellena realizes. He can’t. The poison. His throat.
“My baby.” Ellena is afraid to touch him. Which parts of him hurt? Which parts of him don’t? Even his arms are under the sheets. Not a speck of his skin is visible except for his neck and face. “Oh, my poor, poor baby.”
Halves blinks, a tear escaping his own eye, which causes him to wince. Ellena notices a red path drawn by the tear, which alarms her, as she worries for a minute that he just shed a tear of blood.
“Don’t cry, sweetheart,” she says, her body pressed into the side of the bed as she looks upon her son. “It’s okay. I’m okay. Lionis is okay too, sweetheart. He’s with your Aunt Cilla in the ninth. She’s looking after him. Oh, sweetheart, I can’t stand that I wasn’t here for you. I want to take your wounds from you so badly. Sweetheart, I would do it in a heartbeat, you must believe me. I can’t stand seeing you like this. It is so cruel.”
“Lesser.” The single word of warning comes from Gabel at the door.
Ellena sighs, clenching shut her eyes for a moment, then wiping away her tears. “That mean man at the door, he won’t let me use my Legacy. That was …” She sighs, realizing now why she was made to promise the very thing she promised. “That was what I agreed to. I’m here now. I’m here at this hospital with you. You’re not alone. Your mother’s here.” She reaches to touch his face, a natural impulse.
Gabel is at her side the next instant, pulling her away from the bed, but not before her fingers grace Halvesand’s cheek for half of a second. That one little touch is all Ellena gets of her son before she’s pulled halfway across the room. She fights Gabel for a brief moment, then thinks the better of it, calming herself as she stares at her son.
“Let me back over to him,” she hisses at Gabel.
“I warned you, Lesser.”
“I made no use of my Legacy,” she breathes, doing everything within her power to contain herself from throwing rabid fists and fingernails into Gabel’s face. “I am still honoring our deal. Let me see my son. Please.”
“I know. I get it. Enough. Let me near him.”
Without letting go his grip on her, Gabel brings Ellena back to Halvesand’s bedside. Halves lifts his hand underneath the sheet, and without waiting for any form of permission, Ellena grabs hold of it. Gabel lets her. “My son,” she murmurs softly, rubbing his hand with the bed sheets between their skins. “I’ve missed you. I love you so much. You know I love you, don’t you? Oh, sweetheart.”
The words turn to moans, and then to a choked silence as she stares at her broken Halvesand, who can’t even turn his head with that ugly machine trapping it in place. The two pour all their words out through their eyes, everything that can’t be spoken, but felt.
One generous hour later, Ellena is brought back to her room. “Thank you for that favor,” she chokes out to Gabel when he chains her to the post again, the salt of her dried tears seasoning her cheeks.
Gabel inclines his head, as if he means to plant a kiss upon her forehead, then turns away abruptly, giving her a curt nod before he sees himself out of the room.
Ellena collapses onto the bench nearest her and closes her eyes. I will appreciate what I’m given, she decides, considering I could still be a pile of broken bones at Taylon’s feet. I will appreciate a moment by my son’s bed. I will appreciate a fleeting kiss in the streets of Atlas. I will appreciate the cold kiss of cuffs on my wrists … the same final kiss my dear husband Forge must have known before he met his end.
0217 Athan
When he hears the door down the hall open, he doesn’t even lift his head. He stares at the sleeveless hoodie in his lap. You gave me your dreams, Wick, he tells the red material through his mind. Now, all I think of are countless ways to end the Imp’s life. Vengeance is a kind of madness, isn’t it? Maybe I’ve gone mad, too.
Two shadows fall over him.
“Athan,” murmurs one of them, softly.
It’s her. The mind woman. She’s come to rob you of the last scrap of your self-control. Kiss your thoughts goodbye.
“You have the wrong sister,” she says.
Athan looks up. He sees one of the twins. He can’t tell them apart; one is exactly like the other, from her hair to her body to her face to her eye color. They even dress the same.
“It’s to my advantage,” says the woman, as if replying to all of the doubts in his head. “See, the fools at the foot of Cloud Tower mistook me for my sister. I’m afraid that I’m—”
“I’m afraid that I don’t give a slummer’s shit,” interrupts Athan, staring back down at the hoodie. He clutches it tighter, his fists closing around the shoulders.
There is an odd-looking boy at her side—a round, short boy who seems to recognize Athan, for the way he’s staring at him.
“They let you keep your clothes,” observes the woman. “That is unusual.”
“I don’t care.” Athan tries to ignore them, wanting to continue steeling himself for the golden opportunity that will fall into his lap one of these days, the opportunity to kill the Imp.
“That opportunity will come,” says the woman, once again annoyingly drawing thoughts out of Athan’s head, “but if you are reckless with your life, you’ll suffer the same as Anwick did.”
“I want to suffer the same as Anwick,” blurts Athan. “I want to join him on the other side. I want to be with him and my family. At least my sister liked him,” he says suddenly, his thoughts shifting. “He won’t be alone. And he’ll have Lionis with him too.”
He speaks with no emotion, none left to spill from his eyes. He is simply stating facts, knowing what he knows, making plans for himself, even for when he at last makes it to the other side.
The woman folds her arms. “If you’re so eager to kill yourself, then by all means, press that dagger to your wrists or your neck and make an end of it all.”
Athan sneers, glancing at the fell thing that rests next to him on the smooth tile. “I can’t. Your sister’s taken hold of my mind.”
She grips the glass bars. “I am risking my own life to come here and save you. I want to take you away with us.”
“I want to die.”
“NO, YOU DON’T.”
The explosion of words comes from neither Arcana nor the boy at her side. The two turn and Athan looks up. Erana is on her feet in her own cell, her eyes magnified by her glasses, her fists balled up.
“Anwick Lesser loved you,” the girl states. “He wouldn’t want you to be stupid and roll over and let Impis and Axel have their way with you. I know Anwick maybe better than anyone in the world, just from the things he said and did and wished for and wanted. He wrecked his life to come up here and see you, Athan. My time with him in the Academy was short, but it was meaningful, and maybe I fell in love with him a little bit, too, but that is not the reason for my outrage. I let a perfectly fine man, Rone, out of my grasp. He and I were safe. And the Queen—the true Queen—she was safe, too. And I let it all go. I let my perfect future shatter.”
Athan stares at her for ten turns of his heartbeat. He knows she is right, and of course he would hate to dishonor Wick in such a way as to throw away his life … and thereby throw away Wick’s death.
“Come with us,” says the woman after turning back to Athan. “The girl is right. You know it, too.”
But maybe it is the greater dishonor to abandon his position and leave behind his best opportunity to enact revenge. What does that say about me, if Wick spent his whole life fighting the beast in the sky, only to die by it and have me run away?
“It is not running,” the woman responds, hearing his doubts. “And this is not your best opportunity to exact revenge. Come with us and we will regroup, plan, and plot. You will have your revenge, Athan, but not today. Not now. Not in this way.”
In the red hoodie, he sees Anwick. He feels the warmth of his slum boy’s tight embrace. He hears his soft laughter. He smells his hair and hears his voice: ‘Athan.’ ‘I love you.’
And the body-crippling anxiety begins to crawl up his spine yet again. No, he begs of it, not wanting the sickening sensation again. Please, just stop. For once, he wishes he could just ignore the panic as it hijacks every cell in his body, but as he always does, he listens to it. Athan swipes the dagger from the floor and pushes to his feet, then moves to the bars of his cage. Just that simple act alone eliminates all traces of the feeling in his gut. His sullen, empty eyes meet Arcana’s.
Her eyes are alarmed for a moment, as if she just picked up on all of the panic that suddenly surged through Athan’s body. Then, just as quickly, her eyes relax. “Good,” she mutters, taking the action to be his answer. “Sedge, open the—”
“We’re taking her, too,” says Athan, cutting her off.
Erana lifts her eyebrows as Arcana and her little friend Sedge turn to observe her in the way two stuffy Lifted folk might appraise the quality of a bundle of meat at the market.
“Very well,” agrees Arcana after a short pause. “Sedge?”
Without wasting time, the boy claws his fingers between the glass bars of Athan’s cage, and then the fingers melt before Athan’s eyes and begin to extend their shape, pushing outward. The glass bars snap and crack almost instantly. Sedge grunts as the effort becomes taxing, but sooner than expected, a number of the bars shatter, leaving Athan enough room to slip through. Sedge moves to Erana’s cell to perform the same technique.
As Athan steps out, the hoodie catches on one of the sharp, half-broken bars. He reaches to free the jacket from the glass and ends up tearing a small hole in the red material—as well as an unkind gash down the length of his forearm. Even with the sting of the wound, Athan doesn’t react to the pain at all. He simply brings his arm up and observes it curiously as a thin line of red draws down its length, then drips onto the floor.
Erana is freed from her cell without any trouble, and then the four of them make their hurried way down th
e endless stairs as quietly as they can manage.
At the doors to Cloud Tower, a large woman stands guard. She lifts a suspicious eye to the four of them. When her eyes land on the Sedge boy, she quirks an eyebrow. “What are you doing, Sedge?”
“Transferring the prisoners,” he answers miserably. “Axel here has them warped. They think they’re being freed to the slums and can’t hear a word of what we’re saying. Impis wants to … play with them.”
The woman makes one short glance at the others, then looks back at Sedge, her eyes heavy. “My poor … poor boy,” she murmurs.
“Come,” commands Arcana, moving past the woman as she leads the group through the enormous, rubble-filled courtyard, through the gates of Cloud Keep, and down the streets of the Lifted City. “No,” she says to Sedge, perhaps answering a question she heard in his mind. “Your friend Umi does not trust us, nor does she believe your little story. She knows I’m Arcana. She will go to my sister, but she’ll tell her that this was my plan. Umi thinks you are being coerced into doing this by me. We have no time.”
“I-I’m sorry,” Sedge blurts. “I just thought—”
“You did fine. We have to hurry.”
A brisk ten minutes of hurried walking leads them to the doors of the Trust bank, where Arcana leads them across the wide expanse of nothing that is inside the building to the lift in the very back.
When they reach the doors, Athan hears a shout from far behind. A glance over his shoulder reveals three pursuing Chaots.
“Into the lift!” hisses Arcana after interacting with the device by the door and granting them access. “Inside, quick, quick!”
Athan and Sedge hurry inside as they’re told, but Erana lingers just outside the doors, a thoughtful expression on her face. “They’ll only follow us,” she murmurs in her sad monotone.
“Inside!” Arcana presses. “Hurry!”
Erana faces Athan importantly. “Your dagger. Now.”
Athan blanches. “Wick’s dagger? W-Why?”
“I’ll dismantle the interface in five seconds so they can’t follow us,” she says. “Quick. The dagger.”
