The Angel Weapon

by Scott Wilson

  “How did you get in?” she demanded. “That door was locked.”

  Neither Five nor Six said anything. They stepped inside and Five waved his hand again, closing the door behind them. Mother Mildred watched in horror.

  “There should be a boy named Caden here,” Five said, his smiling mask unmoving as he spoke. “Where is he?”

  Mother Mildred’s eyes widened with terror. She gripped her legs. She wasn’t going to let them get what they wanted without a fight.

  “Caden is dead,” she said. “He and another girl passed away in a terrible accident today. Now, in the name of Gotama, I ask of you to please leave this Home.”

  There was a moment of silence as the two figures absorbed her words, then a laugh escaped out of Five’s smiling mask. It was loud like a clap of thunder, followed by rumbles of chuckles as he shook his head.

  “You are lying,” he said coolly. “Caden is not dead. Nothing you have here could ever hope to kill him. Now, where is he?”

  Mother Mildred opened her mouth to speak, but only a cough came out. Followed by another, and another. The air suddenly had a thick taste to it, like she was gulping down mouthfuls of dust with every breath. Her eyes watered and she bent over, gasping for air. Five stepped forward while the smaller Six stayed perfectly still. Five waved his hand toward Mother Mildred. She was yanked upward as if by invisible ropes attached to her feet. With a shriek that only came out as another cough, Mother Mildred was suddenly hanging upside-down in midair.

  “Where is Caden?” Five asked calmly. He crouched down to be face to face with Mother Mildred. Suddenly her mind was filled with the thoughts of the Nobodies. What would these two do to them? She had an urge to tell them everything, anything at all that might get them to go away.

  “Caden ran away,” she said. It felt like the thick, particle-filled air was reeling the words out of her. “He tried to escape on horseback but was spotted by Holy Police. When they saw him running away, they chased after him, but there was an explosion. We … we haven’t seen any sign of … of … Caden s-since th-then.”

  Blood rushed to Mother Mildred’s head, making it heavy as stone. Breathing was impossible. Her face twitched, dripping with sweat. Her body was no longer her own. It was being controlled by something else.

  “Do you mean to tell me,” Five said, “that you’ve lost Caden?”

  “Y-yes,” Mother Mildred eked out. Five leaned so close that she could see his eyes through the holes in the mask. They glared at her with a searing anger that electrified the air between them.

  With gnarled fingers, Five swiped his hand, sending Mother Mildred flying across the room and slamming into the wall. The impact shook the Home and brought down the tapestry of Gotama’s Ant on top of Mother Mildred, now unconscious on the floor. The sound of confused and scared Nobodies waking up in their rooms came down the hallway.

  Six sighed. “Why’d you have to go and do that, Five? Now we have to deal with all those brats.”

  Five flexed his fingers and shook his head. He looked at Six, and even though his mask was smiling, anger was radiating off of him.

  “You think I care about a couple of Nobodies?” he seethed, thrusting out each word like a knife. “If we don’t find that boy, he’ll destroy the world. Again.”

  Chapter 7

  Salem

  After escaping the Holy Police, Caden and Annika trudged deep into the forest. They’d dismounted the crippled Deber and continued on foot. With the arrow still sticking into Deber’s backside, walking slowly was all that she could handle, and it was a lot easier for her without two people riding. As they pushed forward through the hanging branches and ground thick with roots, the Home’s thundering bellrock became more and more muffled until it was only a quiet clink in the distance.

  Caden couldn’t stop thinking about Tooby. He felt so alone. Tooby was the one who had told him what to do, the one who had given him hope. If it wasn’t for the Iltech spider, Caden would have a pair of broken legs and be heading off to live with Mr. Stercus. And how had Caden thanked him? By letting him blow himself up. Tooby had told Caden to sense electric signals—whatever that meant—but all he could feel right now was a sharp pain in his chest, constantly reminding him that his friend was gone.

  “Deber doesn’t look like she’s bleeding,” Annika said, sounding as far away as the bellrock. Caden took a deep breath. He didn’t want to move on, but he knew he had to. He didn’t want Tooby’s sacrifice to be in vain. And the first step toward doing that was to make sure they weren’t leaving a trail of blood for anyone to follow.

  Annika was walking next to Deber, inspecting the wound up close. Caden peered over. She was right. There was no blood, on the outside anyway. The arrow stuck out of Deber’s skin as neatly as if it had sprouted there, a thin wooden rod growing out of red and purple splotches on her white hide.

  “It looks painful,” Caden said. “Should we take it out?”

  “No way,” Annika said. “If you do that, blood will gush everywhere.”

  “What do we do then?”

  “Look at this.” Annika gently stroked the arrow all the way up to its feathered end. “This is a slim arrow. It’s designed not to cause any excessive damage. For some reason, the Holy Police were shooting to get us alive.”

  Caden narrowed his eyes in skepticism. “How do you know so much about arrows?”

  Annika bit her lip. She pulled up the sleeve of her green dress and revealed her left forearm to Caden. There was a scar the size of a large pebble, and when she flipped over her arm, a nearly identical scar was on the other side.

  “I know a thing or two about being shot by Holy Police,” she explained, rolling her sleeve back down. That was enough for Caden.

  “Do we just leave the arrow in then?”

  “That’s all we can do for now. Pulling it out will cause bleeding. Leaving it in for too long will cause infection. We have to get her to an animal doctor in Salem.”

  Deber put on a brave face as she trod along, but her limp and whines of pain told Caden that she was in bad shape. And it was his fault for forcing her to leave with them. The only thing he could do was rub her back and reassure her.

  “Don’t worry, girl. When we get to Salem, we’ll find someone to fix you up real quick.”

  Deber snorted. Caden held onto her reins and focused on moving forward. Walking through the woods without a path was tough. They had no idea where they were going. There was little sunlight. Gnarled roots, leafy nets, and sharp branches stuck out like traps everywhere. The only thing guiding them was the Home’s bellrock growing fainter, and finally silent, behind them. At least there was no sound of galloping hooves. For now, they were safe.

  As they walked, Annika made sure that every branch they snapped was picked up and tossed aside, and every hoof and footprint they left in the dirt was brushed away with a fan of pine needles. She did it all silently, without saying anything to Caden. He wondered how much experience she’d had running away, but she was the one who spoke up first.

  “I have a question,” she said. “What the steel was that Iltech spider thing all about?”

  Caden smiled. As they walked he told her about Tooby and his dad and the Xs on his palms. Annika didn’t believe him until he removed his gloves and showed her the glowing marks. The bright red Xs reflected in her wide eyes.

  “Let me get this straight,” she said, sounding overwhelmed. “You’re a part-human, part-robot … thing. And somehow you triggered that big X on Metl that’s going to cause the end of the world?”

  “Yep,” Caden said simply. “But Tooby said as long as we find my dad before Metl hits us, we’ll be fine.”

  “And how long do we have before that happens?”

  “Uh, about two days. I think. That’s what Tooby told me.”

  Annika let out a sigh. “Well I guess that means us being wanted criminals isn’t a big deal, right? Either we find your dad in two days and we’re heroes, or …
well, the world ends.”

  Caden nodded. Now it was his turn to ask something.

  “So why did you run away with me?”

  Annika let an airy laugh escape out her nose. She looked like she was faking a smile.

  “I’m just along for the ride. I mean, you can only stand so many of Mother Mildred’s lectures on proper corn seed planting before you have to leave, right?”

  “Oh, come on,” Caden groaned. “I had to leave but you didn’t. What made you go?”

  Annika was silent again. The sound of birds fluttering above and moist grass smooshing under the slow tread of their shoes were the only sounds in the woods.

  “I have some things I need to take care of,” Annika said finally. “And being stuck at the Home wasn’t helping.”

  “Are you looking for your mom?” Caden asked. He realized only too late that this was not the right thing to say. Nobodies never wanted to talk about their old lives. Annika closed her eyes and squeezed her branch of pine needles so hard it looked like she was going to grind it into a pile of wood chips.

  “We’ll see,” was all she said. Caden didn’t ask any more questions. The two of them and Deber continued along, Annika still covering their tracks, now with a silent scowl on her face.

  They kept walking for hours. As the sun went down the woods grew darker and more alive. Bugs chirped, owls hooted, and shadows bounced between tree tops, shaking branches and leaves. Caden and Annika glanced over their shoulders at every sound. All they ever saw was the growing blackness behind them.

  But being attacked by some forest creature wasn’t the biggest fear on Caden’s mind—finding food and water was. He hadn’t eaten anything all day, even missing out on his own adoption breakfast. Now it was catching up to him with pangs of hunger rippling through his stomach. He wished more than anything he’d spent those extra few seconds grabbing an apple or two out of the tack room before running away.

  Even worse was the thirst. The dryness in his mouth was excruciating. Every time he tried to swallow or lubricate his throat, nothing came up but dust. Annika suggested chewing on sticks to stave off the hunger, and to occasionally get savory little morsels of moisture caught in leaves and stems. The first time Caden put a stick in his mouth and tasted the dirt and bark was the first time he thought maybe he’d made a mistake.

  It finally got so dark that Caden had to hold out his glowing red palms to see anything. He walked squatting close to the ground to keep his hands as low as possible. Even then he could barely see a foot in front. When he tripped over a root that he’d missed and landed face-first onto a decaying log filled with insects, they decided that was enough, it was time to set up camp. And by “set up camp,” Deber just laid down and Caden and Annika leaned against her twitching body.

  Doubt continued to creep into Caden’s mind. If he’d just stayed at the Home, even if that meant being adopted by Mr. Stercus, at least he wouldn’t die of starvation or thirst. Sure, he’d never find his dad, but he’d never find him anyway if he was dead. And because of him, Deber had been hit by an arrow that was sapping her life away. And then there was Tooby, who might still be alive if it wasn’t for him running away too.

  Tooby. Caden closed his eyes and remembered the metal spider. If only he were here now to guide them and tell them everything would be all right. Without him, Caden didn’t know what he was doing or where he was going. He finally fell asleep, wishing he had any idea how to sense those stupid electrical signals.

  When Caden woke up, it wasn’t because he sensed anything strange. Rather, he heard something distinctly normal—human voices.

  Annika heard them too, and the two of them were instantly on their feet. Deber slowly got up on all fours. Her wound looked worse than yesterday. The purples and reds had darkened and spread out like a web of infection. Caden reassured her, and himself, that they’d find a doctor in Salem.

  Caden looked up through the tops of the trees toward the sunlight. They’d slept longer than he’d thought. It was already late morning. The human voices were getting louder and louder. It sounded like dozens of people shouting to be heard over each other. Whatever they were yelling about, Caden didn’t care. If people were nearby, that meant food and water were nearby too. Adrenaline suppressed Caden’s hunger and thirst, and he plowed through the woods along with Annika and Deber.

  More and more sunlight began filtering through the trees. The brush became less thick. Then suddenly and without any warning Caden took a step and he found himself teetering on the edge of a slope. He shot his arm out to stop Annika and Deber from tumbling over, and then he stood there, shocked as he took in the view.

  Caden had only ever heard stories about Salem, but they couldn’t compare to the real thing. It was like there were Homes, hundreds of them, stacked next to each other and on top of each other in every imaginable shape and size. There was a rainbow of brown, cream, and red wooden buildings, some of them with smoke pouring out of brick chimneys or with spinning windmills, all lined up against roads that faded between stone and dirt. Caden had never seen so many people before. They were walking along the streets, riding horses, carrying buckets of produce to sell, kids running around playing games with rocks and sticks. Everyone was dressed in earth tones, the men wearing hats and the women in bandanas and bonnets.

  Just beyond Salem toward the horizon lay the ocean. Caden could only make it out as a sparkling blue sliver in the distance. The other Nobodies had talked about the ocean before, but Caden had a hard time believing there could be so much water in one place. He gazed at it in awe, feeling like he’d finally been let in on a secret that the rest of the world had known forever.

  But there was one building that stole Caden’s view: the church. It was an intricately carved sculpture in the center square that towered above the other buildings, at least ten stories high. Far more than a building, it looked like a statue divided into two halves: on the left was Gotama himself as a massive, burly man with a flowing beard. On the right was a giant ant with a human head and antennae that Gotama was wrestling with.

  Mother Mildred had told the Nobodies stories about the church. She’d said that it was carved out of a colossal tree that, a thousand years ago, humans had engineered to grow all the way up to Metl. Humans had become so advanced that they could transform into animals using Iltech if they wanted, so they turned their bodies into ants to gain the insects’ incredible strength and ability to climb trees. They climbed the giant tree all the way up to Metl and used their strength to fight Gotama, to show that they were more powerful than him.

  But Gotama easily defeated the human-ants. He was disgusted that his creations had twisted their natural forms, and he destroyed the giant tree and cast the human-ants back to Earth. To punish them, Gotama took away humanity’s unnatural Iltech powers and instructed them to appreciate his creations for what they were. Through the Six Virtues he showed them that even each tiny leg of the ant has a purpose, and he instructed humanity to follow them to make the most of his gifts on Earth.

  Caden had always thought the story was silly, but now that he was seeing the statue-church for himself, it seemed possible.

  Especially since Metl was closer than ever.

  Metl had been hidden to Caden all day yesterday while in the woods, so seeing it now made his heart stop. It was five times the size of the sun, and its ominous X still glowed blood red. It was almost comical watching clouds float in front of it as if nothing were wrong.

  Only the shouting voices stopped Caden from staring at Metl. The same yelling he’d heard in the woods was now even louder, and Caden could see exactly what was happening. On a wooden stage in front of the church there were two people kneeling and being berated by an audience of hundreds. The mob was shouting and throwing sticks, dirt, whatever they could at them. The only thing that prevented them from storming the stage were the Holy Police armed and ready.

  Caden narrowed his eyes to get a closer look, but then snapped them open in s
hock when he saw who the two people on stage were. They were far away and hard to see, but there was no mistaking that red hair and flowing coat.

  They were Dom and Mr. Stercus.

  “Hey,” Annika said. “We should go down while everyone’s distracted. We can easily get some food and water.”

  “Did you see who’s on stage?” Caden asked. He still didn’t believe it. Annika carefully leaned closer and she gasped.

  “Gotama’s Ant,” she said. “What are they doing there?”

  “I don’t know.” Caden quickly tied Deber’s reins to a nearby tree, sat down at the edge of the slope, and swung his legs over. It was a rocky, dirty, two-hundred-foot slide down. “I’m going to find out what’s going on.”

  “Are you crazy?” Annika howled. “Going to the stage is the last thing you should do! There’s Holy Police there. We need to stay as far away from them as possible.”

  Caden knew she was right, but at the same time there was something pulling him toward the stage that he couldn’t resist. It was like a hook latched around his bellybutton, gently tugging at him. If those were the electric signals that would lead him to his dad, then he had to follow them.

  “I’m just going to check it out really quickly,” he said, starting to shuffle down the slope. “You stay here with Deber. She can’t come down this slope anyway.”

  Annika continued protesting, but Caden was already sliding down, careful not to slam into any large rocks. Around him earth crumbled and pebbles tumbled until he landed at the bottom, right behind a wooden building. As he brushed himself off, something else rushed down behind him. A few seconds later Annika was next to him, covered in dirt and dust.

  “Glad to see you changed your mind,” Caden said.

  Annika glared. “Let’s just get this over with. I’m dying of thirst.”