by Scott Wilson
“Didn’t know your horse was a cripple,” she said. “I was looking forward to getting a ride.”
“Couldn’t you just make a river to wherever we’re going and float on it?” Annika asked in a biting tone. “Seems like you’re having a tough time walking.”
“Yeah, well I’d like to see you after you flood a whole town,” Jadice snapped back, wiping her forehead. “Now come on. It’s just a bit farther.”
Caden had no idea what “it” was, but he followed behind Jadice leading Deber by the reins. Deber was happy to see him; she wouldn’t stop licking his cheek. Caden ruffled her mane and stroked her back, doing his best to ignore the purple and green rainbow of infection that was growing on her rear.
As they walked, Caden stared at the back of Jadice’s black cloak. It had a picture of a red double-tailed scorpion surrounded by a gray circle. He was curious about it, but it was Annika who spoke up first.
“What’s the scorpion thing on your back?” she asked.
“Symbol of the Twelve Apostles,” Jadice said breathlessly. “Eight legs, two claws, two tails. You do the math.”
“But why a scorpion?” Annika asked. “And why two tails?”
“No more questions until we get there.”
Annika looked over at Caden with an annoyed glare, but he shrugged, and they kept following her in silence. Jadice led them through wild brush and leaves, moving slowly but confidently while Caden and Annika followed. It felt like they’d walked halfway back to the Home when she finally stopped.
“Well, we’re here.”
Caden couldn’t tell where “here” was. All he could see in the dim forest light was a never-ending cluster of trees. Jadice walked up to the closest one, a thick oak tree that gnarled and twisted its way up to the sky. She stroked the moss-covered bark with her hand.
“This is just a tree,” Annika said.
Jadice shook her head. “Only to those whose heads are stuck in the ground.”
She pointed up. Caden and Annika strained their necks to look as high as they could. There was something up there, at least fifty feet above the ground. But from down here it could’ve been a beehive for all they knew.
“I’ll go first,” Jadice said. “You two stay here. If you’re only as dumb as I think you are, then you’ll figure out what to do.”
She stretched out her arms, extended her fingers, and pointed her palms at the ground. Without any warning, jets of water shot out of each of her hands, propelling her straight up into the air. Caden watched in awe as she soared higher and higher until she finally stopped, landed on something, and then disappeared.
“I don’t like her,” Annika grumbled.
“She’s weird, but we need to figure out what’s going on.”
“I’d rather figure it out ourselves.”
“Come on. Now you’re the one not being realistic. You said I was being unreasonable before about not stealing food; now it’s your turn. If anyone knows about my dad, it’s her.”
Before Annika could respond, a ladder made of braided straw and wooden planks came unfurling down from up in the tree. It jerked to a stop right above the ground next to Caden.
“I guess this is what we’re ‘dumb enough’ to use to get up,” Annika groaned.
“Well I’m going up,” Caden said. “You can stay here with Deber if you—”
“Great Gotama!” Annika screeched in frustration. “Stop telling me to stay with Deber!”
She took Caden by surprise and jumped at the ladder, climbing up as fast as a squirrel. Caden smiled and followed behind.
The ladder wasn’t easy to climb. It swayed as the two of them went up. Deber’s lonely whinnies didn’t help either, making it difficult to not look down, but Caden forced himself to focus on their destination. From the ladder all he could see was a mass of wood and leaves above, but when he finally got to the top and dismounted, he realized that it was anything but.
It was as if a giant had picked up a building from Salem and placed it on top of the trees. Caden stood on a wooden platform in front of a hut made of scrap wood. It wasn’t huge, but it looked like it could comfortably house three people.
Even more impressive was the view. Caden had never been so high up before. He was above all the trees in the forest and could look out as far as the eye could see in every direction. Behind him was the peak of Salem’s church and beyond that the ocean. In front he could just make out the Home’s fields. A flock of birds flew right by his head, and he felt like he could reach up and grab a cloud.
But seeing Metl sucked away Caden’s happiness. The monstrous metallic sphere was so close he could see the red glow in the giant X vibrating and flowing as if it were on fire. Did they really have a day left before it hit? Looking at it now, it felt like they didn’t even have an hour.
“Are you two coming in or are you just going to stare at that thing that’s gonna kill us all?”
Jadice crossed her arms and gave a cocky smile. As usual Caden’s mind was overwhelmed with questions, and the least important one slipped right out.
“Did you build this?” he asked. “This hut in the trees, I mean.”
“I guess you could say that,” Jadice said. She ushered them inside. “Come on, get in. We’ve got a lot to talk about and I’d rather not do it with that big X staring at us.”
Despite being fifty feet in the air, the hut was somehow well-furnished. There were three wooden stools and a white circular table made out of something Caden couldn’t identify. It felt like his old “mute” button Iltech. It was smooth, as if it had been crafted out of milk poured into a mold. Caden couldn’t stop running his fingers over it.
“You really like that table, don’t you?” Jadice noticed.
“What’s it made of?” Caden asked.
“Plastic.”
Caden looked at Annika. She shrugged. Neither of them had heard the word before. Everything was always just called “Iltech.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Jadice said. “Plastic used to be everywhere a long time ago. But now you gotta know where to look to find it.”
“Where did you get it?” Caden asked. He hoped he wasn’t being too pushy with all the questions, but he probably was because Jadice ignored him. She took off her black robe, revealing even more thin red scars running along her arms. Coiled around one of her wrists was a silver snake bracelet.
“Is that plastic too?” Annika asked.
Jadice grunted. “You two ask too many questions for kids who should be starving. Let’s eat first.” She brought over a cloth backpack from behind her, reached in, and started placing several small metal boxes from inside it onto the table.
Caden’s eyes widened at the Iltech in front of him. It was just some metal containers, but it was more Iltech in one place than he’d ever seen. Jadice pried open the lids on the shining containers as if they were normal wooden ones.
“All right, this here is some cheese, and here’s some jerky, and this one’s got some good honey in it. I’ve got some apples for dipping too, so—”
She looked up at Caden and Annika who were mesmerized by the Iltech boxes. She stifled a laugh and shook her head.
“Oh, you kids. Come on. Sit down. When we’re done these little boxes will seem like nothing.”
The three of them tore into Jadice’s food, especially Caden and Annika who were still starving. Caden made sure to drop down some apples and carrots to Deber who gave grateful whinnies and happily ate them.
Once they’d scarfed down their fill, Jadice took out a strange device from her bag. It was a cylinder and looked like it was made of the same plastic material as the table. She opened one end, casually filled it up with water from her palm, and then set it on the table. After a few seconds a sound went off like a small bellrock being hit, and she poured the liquid into wooden cups. It was warm and smelled like flowers. The device had somehow made tea.
“Hope you like lavender tea,” she said, han
ding Caden and Annika their cups. “It’s all I managed to get away with.”
Caden took a sip. It tasted like being back at the Home. They often had dandelion or herb tea, or even apple cinnamon tea on Ant Day, but Caden had never seen it made in a white plastic cylinder that went “bing” before. Caden set down his cup. It was time for answers.
“Who are the Twelve Apostles?” he asked. Jadice furrowed her brow in thought.
“Well you see it’s … it’d probably be better to explain if … well, I guess it’s easiest to understand if we just start with the end of the world.”
“The end of the world?” Annika said in disbelief. “But that hasn’t happened yet.”
“Listen, who’s the one doing the explaining here?” Jadice scolded. Annika rolled her eyes. “So, Blondie. How much do you know about the Iltech Apocalypse?”
“I mean, I know what they taught us at the Home,” Caden said. “Humanity got too advanced so Gotama punished them.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Jadice said. “But as you’ve probably figured out, that’s all just a big fat lie.”
Caden sat up in his seat. He was hanging on Jadice’s every word. Even Annika looked like she was paying attention. Jadice continued.
“Two hundred years ago—”
“Two hundred years?” interrupted Annika. “But the Church said the Iltech Apocalypse happened a thousand years ago.”
“Anyway,” Jadice said through gritted teeth. “As I was saying, two hundred and some odd years ago, humanity was very different from what it is now. Iltech—well, it was just known as ‘technology’ back then—was everywhere. People used it to cook, for entertainment, they even had these things called cars, metal boxes on wheels that could go a hundred times faster than a horse. Or even forget traveling on land! They had giant machines called airplanes that could fly in the sky and cross oceans in minutes.”
“Oh please,” Annika snorted. “That’s impossible. If people had all that, then where did it all go?”
“You.” Jadice brandished a finger at Annika. “I’m trying to explain stuff here, and explaining stuff isn’t my strongest suit—killing is. So, unless you want me to stop explaining and start killing, how about you shut it until I’m done?”
Annika glared but didn’t say anything. Caden pressed Jadice on.
“But what happened?” he asked. “Where did all the Iltech—er, technology go?”
“That’s where it gets interesting,” Jadice said. “Humanity was so advanced it got to the point where they discovered something they shouldn’t have. Something that all humans have wondered ever since they first started wondering. They found the meaning of life.”
Caden and Annika were silent. Caden wasn’t sure he understood, but Jadice kept going.
“And when I say, ‘meaning of life,’ I’m not talking about some crazy old philosopher or the Six Virtues that give purpose or anything. I mean the actual meaning of life. The reason we humans, or any life for that matter, exist at all.”
“What was it?” Caden asked, excitement tingling through him. “The meaning of life?”
“That, I don’t know,” Jadice said. She ran her snake-coiled hand through her blue and yellow hair. “Unfortunately, I don’t have all the answers. But I do know that once humanity made the discovery, something bad happened. They did something they shouldn’t have. They tried to fulfill the meaning of life, and it backfired. Bad time. Billions of people died. Billions. And when it was over, we had that thing in the sky staring down at us.”
Jadice pointed outside to Metl. It was so big it filled up the entire view outside the door.
“And ever since then people have been a little, well, wary about technology to say the least. They don’t want another disaster, so that’s why we have the Iltech-hating world of today. Unfortunately, it hasn’t worked out very well, seeing as how another apocalypse is heading our way.”
Caden struggled to take it all in. He’d never thought the stories that Mother Mildred read from the Book of Metl were completely serious, but to find out that everything—all of it—was a lie, was mind-boggling.
“So that means there’s no Gotama?” Caden asked, feeling like a child. “And people who use Iltech aren’t sinners? None of it’s true?”
“Nope,” Jadice answered simply. “All that’s just a bunch of lies the Church made up so we don’t go crazy with Iltech and blow ourselves up again.”
“And the Six Virtues?”
“Just six stupid things to distract people from ever finding the real meaning of life again.”
“Hold on,” Annika said, finally speaking. “How exactly do you know all this? I mean, how do we even know what you’re telling us is true?”
“Easy,” Jadice said. “Because I used to be sworn to protect it.”
Caden and Annika were, yet again, shocked into silence. Jadice leaned in and showed off the deep blue Xs on her palms. Just like Caden’s they glowed bright as if blue flames were lit inside.
“These are called angel Xs,” she explained. “They’re what you get when you have an angel weapon installed inside of you.”
“An angel weapon?” Caden asked, gazing at his own red Xs with new interest.
“Yeah, angel stands for Artificial Neural Gear for … Enhanced Limbs, I think? Again, I’m not the best at explaining. But they were weapons created before the Iltech Apocalypse. We just have the ones that managed to survive to today.
“angel weapons are used by the Twelve Apostles, a team of the twelve most elite Holy Police. The twelve of us can use Iltech, and we’re assigned as pairs to govern and go on important Church missions. Every member of the Twelve Apostles has an angel weapon, and we’re ranked by how powerful the weapons are. I used to be number twelve out of twelve, and Eleven was my partner. I was the lowest position, so my weapon is weak and lame. All I can do is water stuff.”
“Weak and lame?” Caden whimpered, remembering how Jadice had decimated Salem by herself. “What weapons do the other eleven Apostles have?”
Jadice narrowed her eyes. “Pray you never have to find out.”
“Wait a second,” Annika said. “How do these angel weapon things work? Do you just make water out of thin air? Could you make enough to flood the Earth?”
“That was almost a good question, Split Ends,” Jadice said. “But no. Remember the ‘neural’ part, the ‘N’ in angel? Neural means ‘brain,’ and it takes a lot of brain power to control the weapon. When I’m making rivers and geysers, I’m creating water by fusing elements in the air together, and I’m controlling every single water molecule. I might make it look easy, but even with the necessary neural shortcuts, it still takes a lot out of you. After today I don’t think I have enough left in me to even make another round of tea.”
“What about me?” Caden asked, staring at his red Xs. “Do I have an angel weapon?”
“Kind of,” Jadice said. “But as I understand it, you’re different. angel weapons are usually installed into humans, but you Blondie, you’re more like a human installed into an angel weapon.”
“What do you mean?” Caden asked, not sure if he liked what he was hearing.
“Your angel weapon is way more powerful than any water fountain I could create. Your weapon is what caused the Iltech Apocalypse two hundred years ago.”
Caden was silent as he took in what Jadice was saying. Tooby was right. He really did have the power to destroy the world. Technically he’d already done it once before. More and more questions burned inside him.
“But what am I?” Caden asked. “Am I a human? Or a robot? And why was I created in the first place? If I’m a weapon, then what happened? Did someone lose me or something?”
“Whoa, slow down,” Jadice said. “Like I said, I was the lowest ranked Apostle, so they didn’t tell me everything. But I do know this: your existence scares the crap out of the Church. All of us Apostles have been assigned to find and destroy you at some point for thirteen yea
rs, but obviously all of us have failed.”
“Then what changed your mind?” Annika asked suspiciously. “Seems kind of weird to try and kill someone for thirteen years and then just give up.”
Caden expected Jadice to lash out at Annika again. Instead she sank back in her chair in silence. She ran her fingers through her hair and looked around the hut with a faraway gaze.
“I did a lot of things I regret as an Apostle,” she said finally, not looking at Caden or Annika. “When it’s your job to go around killing people who have done nothing wrong except trying to make their lives easier, it gets to you. And that’s all Iltech is, it’s technology. It’s supposed to make being alive a little bit more easy and enjoyable.
“I remember once, my partner Eleven and I were assigned to a village that had been using an electric pump to get water. It was my job to punish them. I was instructed to remove all water from the village, and to eliminate anyone who tried to escape.
“And so I did. I made all the water fly up into the air toward Metl, just like I was instructed, to make it look like Metl was summoning back the Iltech-tainted water. And then I waited. At first everyone just thought Gotama was punishing them for a day without water. But then two days went by. Then three.
“It was when the first death from dehydration came that the villagers panicked. My partner eliminated a dozen people who tried to escape in search of water. After that point anyone who was left realized their fate and accepted it.
“It was … it was a few days later when the only person left in the village was a little girl, no older than three. She couldn’t even walk anymore. She crawled on the ground toward me, and my partner laughed at her and spat on her face. The girl slowly reached up with her tongue to try and lick the saliva off her cheek and enjoy it as the only moisture she’d had in days. But I had a job to do. Right before the tip of her tongue touched it, I made the spit float off her face toward the sky, denying her even that.
