Secrets of Silverwind

by Sanders, Richard L.

  “It seems you do remember,” said Almach. Zero had made no effort to mask his reaction. He looked up suddenly, into Almach’s condescending eyes, and felt a tremendous wave of hate.

  “I was worried we wouldn’t get through to you after your reaction to the drugs. How long have you had your allergy? Forever?”

  The man rambled on but Zero tuned him out. He memorized every detail of Almach’s face. Eyeballing the man’s size and girth while his mind matched the green armor, with its unique scuffs and wear, to another fleeting memory. Three enforcers entering a dark room, each with plasma glowing at their palms. An urgent sense of fear mixed with violence and chaos. Zero connected it to the death of Raven, and was certain Almach had been involved in the deed.

  “Focus,” said Almach. Zero’s silence had not gone unnoticed.

  “I’m listening.” He tried to hide the amount of pure hate that was filling inside him.

  “Good, let’s continue. What else can you tell me about yourself?”

  “Nothing you’d care about,” said Zero. He was no longer interested in placating the enforcers simply because they were dangerous. They had taken Raven from him. They were holding him prisoner. Because of them, he had nothing. So he wanted them to suffer. And if the only way he could hurt them was to not cooperate, that’s what he would do.

  “Then perhaps you can explain to me why you’re a victim of recent radiation poisoning.”

  “What–?” Zero was thrown off. He looked down at his arms and legs, he felt fine.

  “Don’t bother, you’re healthy,” said Almach. “But you carry some of the remaining symptoms. You have scars from internal bleeding and you’re the recipient of a few bone-marrow transplants. And you seem to have had some kind of head surgery within the last several years.” Zero found himself involuntarily stroking the back of his head, tracing a long thin scar buried under his thick black hair. It felt familiar. Something he’d gotten used to already.

  Zero stared back at Almach, wondering how many lies were mixed into the truths he chose to tell him.

  “Unlike you, we do know who you are,” said Almach. “And you aren’t part of the company of terrorists we found you with.”

  Zero thought of Raven, connected the memories. Wondering what he’d been doing when he’d seen her die. He remembered spending a lot of time underground. And there had been civilians armed with banned weapons. Trying to fight a menace the enforcer Combine had willingly ignored.

  “Raven, the others… who are these people?” asked Zero.

  “The so-called Counter Terrorist Cell. A group of civilians engaged in acts of terror and vigilantism. They were all recently caught engaged in an unsanctioned violent interchange with level three weapons. You were with them.”

  “Counter Terrorist?” asked Zero. “So we were fighting the Rigilians.” He remembered that a certain pseudo-religious political movement had been growing in the city. Feeding off the public fear that Antares and Rigil, two of the world’s most hated men, would somehow rise up again and turn their wrath on Silverwind.

  “CTC’s motives are irrelevant. Vigilante justice is against the law. And in Silverwind City taking the law into your own hands is a capital offense.”

  “So why capture us? Why are some of us still alive?”

  “Not some of you. Just you. Everyone else in the CTC has been terminated.”

  Zero felt like he should be angrier over this. That he should feel the deaths of his alleged friends much more heavily. But, in truth, the only death that affected him was Raven’s.

  “So why am I still breathing?”

  “Because you were our inside man,” said Almach. “How else could we have succeeded so perfectly at neutralizing a gang of terrorists that has eluded detection for over a year.”

  That information felt wrong. But he wasn’t completely sure, so he chose not to respond and withheld his emotional reaction as best he could. He was alive, after all, and Raven had died for certain. Probably the others too. He couldn’t remember why he’d been in their company. Perhaps some of the facts lined up in favor of Almach’s story, but that didn’t explain why he felt such a powerful connection to Raven. And why her death, if he’d been involved in it, would have affected him so negatively. And most of all…

  “Why, then, am I being treated like a prisoner?” asked Zero. “If I work for you.”

  “There was some concern that you went native. That you forgot about your mission and became too involved in the small politics of the group you were sent to infiltrate. It’s rare, but that sometimes happens. In any case, while you may have forgotten us, we have not forgotten you. And it is still our duty to see to it that you get the help you need. It is my job to assess your condition, so you can be properly culturally detoxified.”

  “You want to brainwash me?”

  “No. The opposite is true. Our only concern is for your welfare. You have to be healthy, mentally and physically. Which brings me to our next problem. The revival stimulants we gave you had a nasty reaction with your immune system. You can thank your damned allergies for that. It’s damaged your memory. That’s why you’re all mixed up. But the doctors say your memories will clear in time.”

  Zero looked into Almach’s eyes, trying to judge if Almach was lying. There was nothing in his face that showed deceit, but Zero couldn’t shake the feeling that Almach was evil. Maybe it was simply his enforcer armor, and the negative association it had in Zero’s mind, but he doubted that was all. If he did know Almach, if anything about him was familiar, it was that Almach was a sick and malicious person.

  As the fullness of what Almach was saying sank in, that his relationship with Raven had been artificial and that he’d taken a primary role in her death, he became terrified that it was true. Logically, the dots seemed to connect. It made a kind of sense. But emotionally, some deep, desperate part of him rejected it.

  “This— seems wrong,” mumbled Zero. He felt like he was forcing together pieces from different puzzles. And something else nagged at the back of his mind, something uncomfortable. He chased the thought furiously but it shrank further from his grasp. Like he almost understood the situation, but didn’t.

  “You’re one of us,” said Almach. “You always have been.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “It means you’re an enforcer. We are the same.”

  Zero’s reaction was furious but he held it inside. That was the revelation he most feared. He wanted to shut his mind, forget the possibility, forget Almach. But, at the same time, he was desperate to know how far their story went. And, if it wasn’t true, why they were trying so hard to deceive him. How was he useful to them?

  He knew the dreaded power of the enforcers, sometimes for order but often for abuse. Part of him loved them, or what they were meant to be. But now, he mostly remembered them as dangerous cowards. People who raped, stole, and dominated with unilateral force and total impunity.

  “I’ve seen what you do, and what you don’t do. We are not the same,” said Zero.

  There was a moment’s pause.

  “And you’ve had that scarring on your left hand for how long?” asked Almach, smiling wickedly.

  Zero looked down at his hands. True enough, his left palm was slightly disfigured. His hand’s shape was perfect and it functioned normally, but it had dark marks on it, like inerasable radiation burns. And on his middle finger was a thin white scar exactly the shape of a ring. The kind of markings that proved one was an enforcer.

  “And just who am I supposed to be?” asked Zero.

  “Why, you’re Caythis Ceteris, of course.”

  4

  He remembered her a little better now. And it hurt worse.

  The details were still foggy: who she was, how he’d known her, what they’d been trying to accomplish... piecing that together was like trying to read a book full of blank pages. But the feelings... they were undeniable, and coming back more and more.

  He recalled her safe presence, the way sh
e looked at him, her beautiful face, her passion. Without her, his sense of purpose evaporated and loneliness consumed him. That was the proof that he’d cared about her. That he couldn’t possibly have been complicit with her murder.

  Or could he have? The very idea was repulsive.

  “Am I Caythis?” Zero asked himself. The name was familiar, of course. Everyone knew about Caythis. Knew how he’d risen to the top of society, a champion of the people, one of the greatest enforcers who’d ever lived. Knew how he’d confronted the world’s greatest menace five years before, the fallen one, Antares.

  But, to know about a character from history was one thing, to believe one was that character was something else entirely. Something Zero found difficult to accept. It would be a strange thing to know about oneself from what others have said, and not from firsthand memories.

  Or did he have Caythis’ memories?

  The name did mean something. The moment he’d heard it, several memories started floating back. He recalled vague details, like the color of a particular carpet in some room, the sight of marble pillars, gleaming armor, and buildings he recognized. A crisp, cold morning on a mountain peak. The sight of faces. Glimpses that were all familiar.

  Clearest of all these images was the stone tower looking down on Skyhaven City. The Enforcer Academy. In his mind he could almost touch it. It wasn’t like seeing a photo, or looking at it from the distance, as a tourist would. He remembered looking up at it from its base, from the sacred grounds. And he remembered being inside. Knew what it looked like. Not well. But he did remember. And knew it was a place forbidden to all who were not enforcers.

  What if he were Caythis?

  As he puzzled over these garbled memories, Caythis’ story felt increasingly familiar. The overseer of Citadel, a stranger who had given up everything to prevent the Battle of Andar, to stop Antares from burning the city to the ground. But he’d arrived too late. A feeling of regret turned inside him. And in the back of his mind he was sure he could see the city burning.

  That had been five years ago. And both Antares and Caythis had vanished in the night fog. Had he been there?

  The more he thought about it, the more he could see glimpses of the violence in his mind. Hear dull whispers of screaming and gunfire.

  He even though he saw the image of a man in armor, holding out a sword, his visor staring him down. But the figure was almost like a silhouette in his mind. None of his features could be seen, not even the color of his armor.

  The majority of the details were still lost, but enough of the picture was clear. He was Caythis. Strange as that seemed right now. That didn’t explain why he was working with the enforcers of Silverwind. And it didn’t mean he was complicit in Raven’s death. But he was Caythis, that much they were being honest about. He was equally convinced, though, that he would never have let Raven die. So it was a matter of sorting out the truths from the lies. Perhaps then he would completely understand who he was.

  He looked up at the mirror hanging on the wall and recalled something Raven had once asked him. “Zero, when you look in the mirror, what do you see?”

  That had been over a year ago. They’d been in some kind of familiar looking warehouse basement, probably part of the CTC’s hideout. It had been his first day with that group. His first time alone with Raven. She’d meant the question as a measure of his character, but he’d made a joke out of it.

  “I see a damn sexy man.” She’d laughed at that and that had been the end of it. At the time, he’d thought nothing of it but now he held the memory like a treasure, one of the few he had.

  The mirror in the CTC’s hideout had been modest and existed only to help a person see down the hallway from the south side of the room. The mirror here, where he was now, served no such tactical purpose. It was large, elegant, and existed only for narcissism and vanity. He felt lost gazing into it.

  The man he saw reflecting back at him had a grim face and a head of midnight hair and piercing blue eyes. He recognized his face, but for the first time since he’d been here he attached it to his real name. Caythis Ceteris. The legend.

  “What do I see, now?” he asked himself, echoing Raven’s original question. He stared into his own forever-blue eyes but had no epiphany.

  “Emptiness,” he said. His reflection felt like the echo of an echo. And something about the man bothered him. Like the reflection gazing back at him knew things about himself that he didn’t. It made him uneasy.

  He held up his left hand, deciding that it was time to embrace the fact that he was an enforcer. Time to remember what it felt like to have magic spring from the flat of his hand, to feel it pour through and mix inside him. Remember how painful it was to create. Feel, once more, what it was like to control.

  He did not have to concentrate as hard as he’d expected. Once he wanted to light his hand ablaze it was only a matter of demanding that from himself. He reached deep inside his heart, not his mind, and threw his frustrations, fears, and grief into the task. The fire came to life instantly, consuming his hand. He felt horrible pain. Not from the flame, though. It licked him harmlessly because he was a fire enforcer. The pain came from inside and was much more severe than burning flesh. The fire burned his innermost energy, eating a very tiny piece of his soul. An agonizing process. But he embraced the agony and watched the fire grow in fury.

  Yes, I am Caythis Ceteris. I can summon my element without wearing my ring. Only the truly powerful could do that.

  He let the fire die and felt instant relief.

  Knowing who he was calmed him, but he still lacked clarity. Still hungered to know everything. But he was content for now, believing it would all come back to him. Promising himself he would remember.

  He relaxed on the bed they’d given him. It was too soft to be comfortable, and far too elegant with its beautifully carved headboard and brilliant handmade linens. Everything about this place was ostentatious, flashy, and superior. And he didn’t care for that.

  He’d spent the last two days living in this suite, perusing the local complex as much as they’d let him. The place was called “The Elite Quarter” a sort of luxury barracks for Silverwind’s enforcers to live in. Its lavishness and extravagance was rivaled only by the royal palace itself.

  He found it distasteful. Especially when he caught glimpses through the windows of the poverty around them. He remembered that the socio-economic situation in Silverwind wasn’t good. Seeing so much wastefulness and wanton displays of wealth in the face of such need made him feel cheapened in his soul. As if, by living here, he was flippantly ignoring the neediness of the world around him.

  He’d been left mostly alone, no armed guards, no escort. After Almach had finished his story and they’d had another doctor examine him, he spent a day listening to their propaganda about his “dutiful role” as an enforcer. He’d chosen not to argue and they’d released him. Simple as that, giving him housing in the Elite Quarter where he was free to roam. Even though he liked this freedom, it alarmed him that it came so easily. He didn’t want further convincing that he was one of them.

  He accepted that he was Caythis. And knew Caythis had been an enforcer overseer, though from a different city. Which left him wondering how the events of the past five years brought him to work with this detachment?

  Yes, it made sense for him not to be in Citadel where he belonged. It was under hostile control. But to be here, among the seediest and worst enforcers in the world... how had he sunk so low? Or was he trying to accomplish some greater purpose? Perhaps he had hoped to convince these enforcers to change their ways. To take an interest in the public need. To serve the people the way they were originally intended to do.

  He refused to accept any responsibility for what they did, especially for their role in Raven’s death. And he promised himself he would never forgive them. That, once he understood the situation better, they would pay. And pay dearly.

  After a time, he got up and wandered the complex again. The masonry and furnishi
ngs were captivating in their own strange, beautiful way, but, despite the elegance, it felt empty and barren to him. There was no soul here.

  He’d spent many lonely hours gazing out the windows, watching the city life. Swarms of people, mostly poor. Urchins, whores, the starving, the homeless... some people were on the edge of death out there, living only feet away from a glorious mansion with more than enough to clothe and feed hundreds of them.

  Especially interesting from his view was the lack of police that he saw. Usually men-at-arms kept the peace throughout Silverwind, commissioned by the king, but there were no blue-and-silver clad soldiers patrolling the streets in this borough. Crime, violence, and chaos went unchallenged, so long as it didn’t run afoul of the Elite Quarter’s territory. Once Caythis saw a fight break out that snowballed into a small riot just outside the Elite Quarter proper. In the presence of such extravagance and faced with their own poverty, they demanded food. The situation was quickly squelched by green clad enforcers whose reputation for ruthlessness and unilateral power proved well-earned. The conflict had been one-sided and turned bloody immediately. Those who didn’t scatter quickly enough became charred ashes on the asphalt. Burnt remains. Like Raven... Caythis almost couldn’t believe the cruelty. The enforcers’ merciless brutality extended to anyone and everyone, even children. And he could do nothing. It sickened him. He promised himself once more that their leaders would pay a severe price.

  There was one door the other enforcers kept locked, a place he wasn’t yet allowed to go. He always tested the handle when he walked by but it never budged. Until today. Curious and unintimidated, he entered.

  An electric light snapped on, detecting movement. It was an extremely simple room, grey brick walls, no windows, no other doors, completely sparse except for artifacts covering several tables. Bits of technology, gadgets mostly, and broken ones at that.