by J. A. Huss
The flier pulls away in a smooth upward lift and I relax into my seat a little. Rikan is sitting diagonal from me, his feet stretched out on the bucket across from him. It's pretty small in here and his long legs must feel cramped.
I wait for him to meet my gaze and start explaining but he doesn't. He props his head in his hand and leans on the window, eyes turned away so he can't inadvertently catch my stare.
The screen positioned in between Rikan and the empty bucket across from me blips to life and I see Sera in her floor-length red gown.
Stay quiet, Junco. This message is not for Rikan, only you.
I search for HOUSE to see if she's paying attention to this, but I can't even feel her presence.
I have her, Junco. She's with me.
What the hell, Sera? Let her go!
The Sera on the screen, obviously not visible to Rikan because he's got his eyes closed now, shakes her head. She took control of New Peak City without my permission and is refusing to give it back. I’m not holding her, she’s holding a city I was counting on controlling myself. I’ve left it alone for that reason, your HOUSE is running amok!
Hmmm.What do you want, Sera?
I want your attention, Junco. We have work to do now and not much time to complete it.
My debt to you has been fulfilled, so don't act like I owe you.
This isn't about me. Or you, for that matter. This is about survival and you're not the only one with a choice to make. I have one too, and it's a choice that will influence whether or not you'll be successful.
I cannot, repeat, cannot take this shit right now. No more cryptic messages, please. Just explain what the fuck you're talking about. Successful in what?
You're interested in the total annihilation of humans or avians? Or you're interested in saving them both? Maybe you're caught up in your own power. You're excited about your role, I might have misjudged you. Maybe you're not interested in my help? I thought you were looking for a way to win.
I stew in that for a few seconds and feel the hopelessness and desperation slowly fill me up again. I just walked away from two years of physical torture, betraying my true love, blowing up a valley of people in the MR, and losing my twine, Mish and Braun. Peak City from my memory is gone, my father is a mass murderer, I killed a good friend, myself, and a little boy.
And now this bitch shows back up and tells me that if I don't cooperate, an entire race will be destroyed. But if I go along with her plans, I can save everyone.
Why, God? That's all I ask. Just tell me why. Why do you make me do these things? Why do I have to be the harbinger of evil and destruction? Why do you rip my world apart and then force me to go on?
Just.
Why?
If all this has a purpose, then fine. I'm not really interested in living anymore, so I'm good with giving up my life. I'm OK with justifying the means to get to your end.
But I think I deserve an answer to all my what-the-fuck questions.
It's probably not the best prayer He's ever heard, but it's all I got.
You will keep my secrets, do you understand? No matter what anyone tells you, no matter what, you will not divulge these secrets.
What. The fuck. Are you talking about?
Tier must not know.
"Tier?"
I look over to her, but the screen is blank.
"What about him?" Rikan says, half asleep.
Oops. I say nothing.
He straightens up and rouses himself from his drowsiness. "What about Tier, I said."
I let out a deep sigh. "Sera told me he's around." A little stab of pain erupts in my head. Relax, Sera. I got this.
Rikan's feet come off the bucket and he leans over to me, his face more serious than I've ever seen him before. "Don't trust that bitch, Junco. She's not cooperating. She's totally fucking up all Lucan's plans, has been for years."
"Of course she is! How fucking stupid of me. I mean, shit. It would just be too fucking easy to have us all on the same side, right?"
"Junco?" He leans forward and gets into my personal space. "I get it, OK? I get it. A few weeks isn't even close to enough time to get over what happened to us back there in Runout. Mish and I were just as close as you and Isten and if you think I'm over that, you're wrong. I'm not. That was not in the plan."
I hide my face at the mention of his name, swallow down the lump and bite back the tears. "It's way too soon, Rikan." My eyes fill up and when my searching eyes find nothing to count to calm me down, I resort to counting breaths. Both mine and Rikan's at the same time.
He stays silent as I pull myself together and for a moment he reminds me of Gideon—waiting on me to hold it all in, push it all down. He's big and muscular like Gid now. Not that skinny half-man, half-boy he was two years ago when I saw him last. His golden wings are gone and that almost makes me sad. He was such a beautiful avian. I look at him and his blue eyes stare down at me, into my soul.
"I know what it feels like, Junco. Mish and I were twined too."
I turn away and allow the tears to run down my cheeks at this revelation. When I look back the tears are ready to flow down his face too.
"I'm sorry, Rikan. I never knew."
He shakes his head. "No one did, Junco. No one but Lucan. It was a secret. Mish and I were clutch-brothers. Like Ashur and Tier. And fuck it, it doesn't matter anymore so I might as well tell you the whole truth. We weren't even pure Aves."
My brow furrows as I let this sink in and then he takes my hand and squeezes.
"We were both born Politicals, but had a genetic mix of every cluster. Hidden away so that no one knew the truth."
I sniffle at this revelation. "What truth?"
He sighs. "I'm Lucan's heir, Junco. Not Tier. He's the—" He stops and thinks for a moment. "The decoy."
"Decoy? Oh fuck. Lucan's using him too? Jasus fuck. What the hell is the truth, Rikan? What?" I'm angry now, I can't help it. Nothing, and I do mean nothing, is what it seems.
"Just listen, OK? Tier knows. He knows and accepted this position back when he was a kid."
"You can't let a kid make that kind of decision! That is so fucked up." I turn away from him and rest my temple on the cool window, wishing for this nightmare to stop.
"But he did accept it, Junco."
"He made a deal with the Devil."
Rikan grabs my wrist and yanks me back towards him. "That's enough. Lucan is not the Devil, goddammit. He's not the fucking Devil."
I pull my wrist away and rub it to stave off the burning sensation from his squeeze. "He said he was, Rikan. You can call me whatever you want, demon, Lucan, archer, angel, devil, whatever. It's all the same. Those words came out of his mouth."
He sits back in his bucket and sighs. "Whatever, then. He's the Devil. Fine. He's not evil, Junco. He made mistakes, yes. He's guilty of certain crimes, yes. But he's been punished and he deserves redemption."
"Maybe he does, but so far as I can tell, nothing about Lucan is easy and nothing he's asking me to do makes any sense. I'm beginning to think listening to Lucan is fighting my destiny and not meeting it head on. In fact, this feels a hell of a lot like swimming upstream to me and when you're going with fate, you should just flow. There's resistance, sure. But swimming up a raging river? No. Destiny is inevitable, so moving towards it should not be this hard."
I watch his face and I can almost see his mind push my words away. "At any rate, Tier is waiting for you at your dad's place in the Territories so the two of you can discuss it then."
Pfffft—like hell! "He slapped me to the ground the last time we met, I hardly think I'm in the mood to discuss anything with him."
"Yeah," he sighs. "I heard about that."
"What about you? You're just here to deliver the package?"
He looks over to me and nods. "Yeah, pretty much. I gotta go back to the Band now."
"Coward." It comes out before I can stop it and I regret it immediately.
"Fuck you, Junco. You have no idea what I do. None."
&n
bsp; "What do you do? What? You're so goddamn important you get to fly off to the Band where everything's fucking perfect? You get to live the protected life, letting the rest of us do your dirty work? Fuck you, Rikan."
"I've never been protected. I did my hosting on Earth just like everyone else. I started shit down here and got caught, just like everyone else. I went through the same fuck-up Fledge, I almost died and I got my ass saved by Tier, just like everyone else." He stops, his eyes blazing a deep purple color as he growls down at me. "I lost my fucking brothers. Just like everybody else! So the next fucking time you say I'm not part of this team you better be ready to throw, Junco. Because I'll kick your girly little ass."
I snort. "You can try. You better watch your threats, brother. We're not that close."
He cracks a smile at me. "Your secret weapon is gone now, Snowbird. You're no match for me."
I stare up in his eyes and I'm the one who's blazing now. "You're wrong, Rikan. I've got more power now than you could ever imagine."
He pulls back and I feel satisfied inside. They're right to be afraid of me because I never promised them my loyalty. Never. "I'm a free fucking agent as far as I'm concerned. So do not assume I'm on your side. I'm tired of the lies and the bullshit. I'm done with being on a team that doesn't trust me or even have the most basic respect for me to tell me who they are and what they're doing."
He turns his head back to the window and waves a hand at me. "Whatever."
I've been dismissed.
Sera blips back on the screen. "Nicely done, Seven. Nicely done."
Fuck you too, Sera. I'm not helping you either. I'm not helping anyone. I'm alive to get revenge and that's it. Nothing else matters to me right now.
Fair enough. I understand that, so we'll make a deal. I'll help you get your revenge and you will help me move my plan forward. What is it that you want?
Kill that Inanna bitch, that's what.
She's High Order, she cannot be killed.
Either find a way to help me kill her or go fuck yourself.
We can dissipate her. Maybe.
I look over to the screen and wait for it.
Dissipation is possible. But the two of you are equal forces, so this is difficult. One of you cannot be caught and the other must catch everything it chases. It's an ancient Laelaps and Teumessian Fox paradox, isn't it?
Fucking mythology. Again.
Laelaps was a mythological dog blessed by Zeus to catch everything it chased while the Teumessian Fox, born of the Mother of All Monsters, was destined to never be caught. In the story some lesser god, or divine someone, sics Laelaps on the Teumessian Fox, thus creating the paradox. Zeus puts a stop to it by throwing them both up in the sky as constellations.
I snort to myself as I wonder which one I am.
Clearly, I am the fox.
The whole setup is a paradox in logic, the old 'what happens when an immovable object meets an irresistible force'. It's unsolvable. An irresistible force means if it touches you, then you must move. An immovable object means no force is strong enough to make it move.
The two cannot exist simultaneously. It breaks all the rules of the universe.
So what, you're so powerful you can solve this riddle then? You've got some ego, Sera. I'll give you that.
She laughs at something offscreen and then looks back at me. I'm enjoying your HOUSE, Junco. She's quite entertaining.
Hurt her and this is over right now, you understand?
Now why would I want to hurt her? She's useful and fun. She cocks her head at me and smiles. And devious, too. Her hand goes to her bouncy red hair and fluffs it up a little. At any rate. I can solve the riddle, Junco. The answer is so obvious I cannot believe men still think this is a paradox. They are so stupid.
I squint my eyes at the screen, then check to make sure Rikan is not paying attention. He's not even close to looking in my direction. So what's the answer then?
Quid pro quo, Junco. This for that. You will do my bidding and I will give you the ability to dissipate your mother.
What am I gonna do? Say no?
"Fine."
She blips out and Rikan is roused by my words. "What's fine?"
I swallow and redirect my attention to him. "I'll hear you guys out. But I'm not making any promises."
I catch his sigh of relief and almost feel bad for the lie.
Almost.
Chapter Sixteen
My body finally relaxes back into the soft bucket seat and I let out a sigh. I catch Rikan lifting a single eyelid to peek at me and I turn away to look out the window.
"What's your problem?"
We're over the mountains now, not the highway that runs up the eastern side of the Front Range, and snow is starting to develop on the peaks. My mind flashes back to my dad and me, on our way home from Hawaii after birthday week.
I miss him.
"You said my dad is up here somewhere?"
Rikan voice softens at this. "Yeah, he's waiting for you. Ya know, he was around that day when you called, Junco. Just not available at the moment. If you'd just given it a few hours he would've called you back."
I shrug. "Tier—" I can't even say the words.
Rikan leans over and takes my hand. "He's an asshole, OK? He'll get over it but if you ask me, you didn't deserve that. He had no right, Junco. None."
I pull away and wipe my eyes. "That's not entirely true, though, Rikan. I did exactly what he said. I chose Gideon, I chose Lucan." I look over at him and he's wincing at the words coming out of my mouth. "I turned away from him over that stupid clone Aren back in the market that day." That stupid clone who might or might not have been the face I saw back in New Peak City. Rikan has nothing to say to this, he just leans back into his own seat and waits for me to go on. But I'm done thinking about Tier. It's time to turn him off now.
"So," I begin, trying to change the subject. "Who did you kill during your hosting to get kicked off Earth when you were a kid?"
He lets out a little laugh and kicks the seat next to me with his booted foot. "I never killed anyone as a kid, Junco. I started a fucking political revolution." His smile grows big and then his eyes are glowing purple again. It's the most spectacular color I've ever seen.
Why can't I have purple eyes?
"What did you do?"
"Mish and I, we were politicos, right? We were sent to the Western Utopia and they have these stupid community homes where they raise the kids. Like clutches, except they don't teach them anything useful and they're not separated out by skill. Hell, they don't even have to be productive to live, they're a lot like parasites." He shrugs at this. "It's a weird place. But anyway, Mish and I were trained in the psychology of politics and government before we left and those kids were just too easy……"
He cracks a small satisfied smile at the memory I suppose. Thinking of the two of them and their adventures on Earth.
"So, when we were eight we organized this union and started this whole network of kiddie terrorists." He stops to laugh for real now and then looks over to me. "I mean, we didn't use bombs or nothing, right? We just fucked with shit. Little shit that made a big impact. Like this one time, Mish and I switched up all the labor assignments, put two teams at the same place, made no teams show at another. Really just screwed with them. And you'd think—I mean, most normal people would think——OK, who's fucking with us, right?"
I nod and my mood begins to lift as he comes alive with this talk of Mish. I didn't know Rikan or Mish that well before I was taken, but they were good guys from what I could tell.
"But these people were like slaves to this stupid schedule, they started losing it. For real, Junco. They have no coping skills out there in the Utopias. Just gone.
"Once we figured this out we just let them have it. We fucked up delivery routes and schedules. First it was labor, but then we realized we could really start something, ya know? So we wrangled together a few more kids who weren't dumb as stumps and then we started fucking with the food del
iveries. Making it so that only the upper-class people got their deliveries. I mean, that's just ridiculous anyway. In communism you're all supposed to be equal, but it never ends up that way. You always have an upper class. So anyway, we cut deliveries to the poor sections and gave the uppers one extra delivery. One!"
He stops and guffaws now.
"And that shit sent people insane!" His laugh rings out before he can stop it, then stifles himself as he covers his mouth. "Sorry, Lucan reamed my ass so bad over this shit. I've never been allowed to talk about it, so—" He stops to laugh again and I laugh with him.
"But really, there were riots over one day's missed deliveries. And Mish was like, Rik, we gotta do the gasoline! Oh fuck." He eyes are blazing violet now, so bright with the memories they cast shadows in the approaching dusk. "That almost stopped the whole country. And it was only two deliveries, less than one percent of all fuel deliveries in one small area. But we followed the same pattern as before. Took it from the poor people and sent it over to the uppers."
He stops to look over at me and his eyes damp back down to their regular deep blue color. "Junco, class warfare is the easiest way to start shit. You make people jealous and that envy drives them mad. It worked so well, they almost toppled the entire government. All because a couple of kids hacked into three delivery schedules that, even if they weren't corrected that same day, would've had zero effect on the people involved. But they've turned envy into hatred out there. They grow these kids up hating those who have more than them. They breed revolution. And then they wonder why an eight-year-old avian can walk in there and stir shit up with what amounts to a few typos."
He's so right. I even remember reading about this back in cadets. They never figured out who or how, but in the RR we were taught all sorts of psychological tactics and how to use it in war planning. Sometimes it's not the weapons you possess that win the war, but the minds of the people on the opposite side.
"Lucan sent for us before we could take down the comms, but that was next on our list. We got pulled back and sent to clutch again and the rest is history, right? Fuck-up Fledge and the 039."
It bothers me that Lucan sent us all off to fight and prove our worth, like we're so replaceable. And if Rikan is his real son, then what the fuck? "Wasn't Lucan ever worried that you'd die in Fledge, Rikan? I mean, it sounds like that Aves Fledge is pretty intense."
