Killers, Traitors, & Runaways

by Lucas Paynter

  “Then we’re both comfortable employing allies of … questionable scruples?”

  No sooner had he said it than did Flynn’s certainty fade. His opponent picked up on this.

  “We have deduced the problem,” Renivar stated. “What you presently know is not the man, but the ideal. An ideal which is yet in conflict with what you’ve seen. You know what agents I keep, but do not yet understand why. Not why I keep them—”

  —Nor why we serve him.

  Flynn’s subconscious had slipped, and another voice had intruded, its every word a sneer. Taryl Renivar was gone.

  The soft rhythm of the train’s passage was all that remained. That, and a familiar sensation: a rift on the island of Annora, bridged to some forgotten moon. Though they’d been given a purpose, in truth Flynn and his allies were adrift, and he wondered if that moon they’d landed on was an intended destination or a chance arrival.

  Through the window, Flynn saw Zaja napping on Zella’s lap. The latter’s day of reckoning he privately dreaded—the human sacrifice who might decide that her father’s plans for humanity outweighed the value of the countless lives he would discard to realize it.

  Still, it was Zaja he most worried for. Of all his allies, she had the most reason to quit and retreat to Terrias.

  Only danger and death remained in this party.

  In contrast to Zella, whose resolve was yet uncertain, Zaja knew where she stood. The price, she had assured Flynn, had been too high.

  He hoped it remained that way.

  * * *

  The bell had rung.

  Despite Rina’s tugs and protestations, the battle cry was like a siren’s song, and however far or close she’d been when the call sounded, Leria would have followed.

  The gathering students led her to the interior exercise field, a laughable component in the modern Education Center. It had fallen into disuse save for as a gathering place, outmoded by virtual reality that could accomplish the same effect in less than half the space.

  Leria pushed through the tide to a track of grass and dirt and artificial sunlight so convincing that one could forgive the sky for routinely flickering in error.

  “I heard the skins started it,” a nearby voice suggested.

  “Like they’d be that stupid?” another jeered. “Way I heard it, Ruelim picked a fight with One-Eye.”

  “But he’s not the one fighting, is he?”

  Pushing ahead, she found the promised duel. Nothing about it was remotely fair. Ruelim towered over his opponent, far taller than nature intended, a prime specimen of modern prosthesis.

  Though tall in her own right, the girl he faced remained a head shorter than him, and was like no one Leria had ever seen. She was dressed in the Annoran uniform, but nothing else about her suggested she was a student. Clad also in a weathered jacket of red leather and spikes, she had a scar on her lip that suggested this wasn’t the first fight she’d been in.

  “Jeannie! You show him what-for!”

  The underdog had two cheerleaders: the softer, a girl with purple hair, stood watching pensively. The other, a bellowing boy with one stitched-up eye, sat cross-legged below her. He’d have been the subject of study himself if not for the scuffle going on before them.

  “Come on,” the girl goaded. “Take a shot, fuck-head.”

  Without hesitation, Ruelim struck. Once at her head, and again at her gut. Preternaturally fast as he was, she managed to avoid the first attack only to stagger from the second. As he moved in for a third strike, she closed her forearms and caught his fist between them. Her technique was good, but Ruelim’s fist drove on, as though the obstruction was hardly there.

  This time, she staggered. Leria flushed with bitter anger as the girl was sent sprawling without so much as a grunt on Ruelim’s part, and Leria recalled painfully well how easily bone snapped under steel.

  For many, the fight would have ended there. Yet the girl punched the ground and was on her feet again as though she’d never dropped. In that moment, Leria would have sworn the building shook.

  “Hurt yourself, skin face?” Ruelim mocked, catching the girl’s fist as easily as she threw it at him.

  As the girl ripped her arm free before Ruelim could crush it, Leria began noticing a few members of the crowd leaving. No one believed the match would turn around and become interesting.

  “Worthless,” one voice scoffed.

  “Aren’t fights like this illegal for a reason?” another asked.

  “Maybe it’ll force her to get upgraded already.”

  Things only got uglier. Each time Ruelim struck her, the girl rose back up, bloodier than before. The crowd continued to diminish, and Leria felt a heat of contempt and humiliation, to know that the machine was soundly besting the human.

  Reflexively, her right hand rubbed her left arm in consolation.

  Eventually, all that was left was the sound of meat being tenderized. The girl was a mess, but Ruelim held her up by one arm and struck her again and again.

  Leria no longer thought the girl brave—just stupid for fighting something she couldn’t have possibly hoped to beat.

  Still, she watched. The girl was likely too faded to feel anything, so Leria felt contempt in her place, for Ruelim and those like him, whose artificiality belied such self-righteous superiority.

  Even the girl’s cheerleaders lost their gusto as she was struck at again and again—the one-eyed boy looked as though he dearly wanted to do something, while the purple-haired girl seemed reluctant to face whatever was to come.

  At last, Ruelim took the girl’s other, dangling arm and hoisted her up by both. Gloatingly, he surveyed his handiwork.

  “Hehhh…”

  Leria’s ears perked at the sound. She wasn’t sure what she’d heard, it was so subtle. How the girl had made such an utterance, she couldn’t fathom, for it came too much like pleasure to have been elicited unconsciously.

  Then, her head craned back so far that Leria caught a glimpse of her eyes, bloodshot and green.

  And suddenly, violently, she wrenched her head forward. Her shoulders tensed, her back arched, and she slammed her forehead into Ruelim’s face. The first real cry of pain came from their fight, and it was Ruelim. Once would have been enough, but the girl slammed him in the face again.

  And she did it again.

  And again.

  The remaining crowd, which had taken more interest in their own conversations, suddenly returned their attention to the fight in stunned disbelief.

  Ruelim’s cries of anger and pain had turned to begging and sobbing. “Stop! Pleas—Ow! Ow! Stop! Ya little—Stop!”

  And just like that, his mechanical grip loosed. The girl dropped to her knees, panting heavily. Ruelim hadn’t let her go owing to weakness or a loss of focus—he could have held her forever, if needed. Releasing her was his only means to get away.

  As she stooped low in recovery, no doubt a field of pain herself, Ruelim staggered off, gripping his face as though trying to keep it from falling off his skull. A boy cried out his name—Cetus, one of his lackeys—and rushed to his side. A commotion swept through the crowd, the name “Sensun” was whispered and, distantly, some part of Leria recognized the school principal, no doubt coming to belatedly break apart an unfair fight.

  The girl’s friends hurried to tend her. She looked like a cornered animal, poised for the kill. The one-eyed boy seemed to be trying to talk her down, but the words, like all the worry and panic around Leria, faded from her senses.

  In witnessing such an impossible victory, Leria felt a renewed hope welling within her.

  CHAPTER TWO: Cogs in the Machine

  The weather cleared long before the train bearing Flynn and his companions arrived at the island of Annora. The dense city was as broad as it was tall, consuming the entirety of the island’s mass; every building seemed in competition w
ith the next, all towering so high that it was as though a massive cube had been built atop the ocean. However, closer inspection revealed the thinnest cracks between buildings—subtle disparities in their heights.

  “Too bad no one’s here to greet us, huh?” Zaja asked.

  Few waited at the station as the train pulled in; it was mid-afternoon, and a rush was not far off.

  “Better to be ignored than find ourselves noticed by those who would hunt us.” Zella’s cynical reply was informed by decades spent in hiding, and though it left Zaja glum, Flynn privately agreed.

  Together they disembarked, eschewing the station’s main passage for a side entrance, and emerging into a narrow alley that found their backs to the sea. The path was only wide enough to advance in single file, but like the main roads, it was kept uniformly immaculate. Automatons sometimes drifted underfoot, paying the three as little mind as they gave in return.

  The dusky sun sliced through in columns, but in light and shadow alike, they walked unnoticed. The back ways, while not off-limits, were inconvenient and unpopular. Only these three took them, ignored by those on the other side of the windows and fences, whether they were office drones—physically plugged into their terminals, interfacing with unseen processes—or factory laborers, whose towering prosthetic frames reduced hard work to assembly line efforts.

  After some time, they reached the upper levels, where a stout structure undergoing renovation stood upon the flat rooftop of a larger building. Construction had been halted weeks before for some unknown reason, leaving the space open to the elements, as humid and hot as the alleys below.

  Flynn opened the door, but they met no welcome; only a fierce thudding sound, rapid and sharp. “The others must still be at the school,” he commented while shedding his coat.

  Zella casually followed suit, her attention drawn in the direction of the continuous striking sounds. “I see the Guardian is as welcoming as ever.”

  “I don’t think he’s really expecting any good news,” Zaja said. “We’ve been stuck here for weeks now.”

  Flynn searched for reassuring words, but found none to offer. At a loss, he leaned against a dirty support beam. “Airia Rousow gave us a name and a mission when she helped us escape Renivar’s grasp. I thought she was sending us where we were needed. Instead…”

  “We may be stranded,” Zella confirmed. She smiled softly, though this warmth soon faded. “Don’t lose heart. I’ve walked for years at times before finding the way from one world to another. After all … that was the only reason you and I ever met.”

  Though she’d intended to console him, her comment recalled memories of their earliest encounters, when he’d pretended to be a friend and shared a dozen intimate lies to keep her close. Things he should have felt guilty for, but only barely did.

  * * *

  While Flynn and Zella discussed their situation, Zaja snatched up a bottle of water from a case they’d stolen and carried it to the next room. It stung her pride to subsist on stolen goods, for she would have gladly worked on behalf of the group to earn it. Yet as off-worlders, their options were sorely lacking; even were that not the case, they needed to keep a low profile.

  Still, she thought, observing the trash strewn throughout the construction site, they could stand to be a little neater.

  In the next room, a series of wooden columns had been erected, the skeleton of an unfinished construct. Resting against the wall were a pair of swords: one, a single-edged blade of some elegant design named the Searing Truth; the other was stouter, double-edged, serrated and oily. The Dark Sword, whose owner, Guardian Poe, was never far from it.

  Holding a pair of wooden poles—one at his right, held underhand; the other in his left hand and carried upright—Poe struck at the columns surrounding him with rapid skill, as though enclosed by enemies on all sides. Sweat glistened from his sculpted, stark-white back.

  For a few minutes, Zaja just watched as the clatter of wood against wood became so loud that—had she not known better—she’d have expected a swarm of insects was coming through. Poe spun again and again, striking at each static foe with equal aggression. He only knew how to fight alone, and accounted for no allies at his back.

  As his aggression for battle died, he hunched, breathing heavily, his white hair frazzled. His back was still turned to Zaja.

  “Hot enough for ya?” she asked teasingly.

  Wiping the sweat from his brow, Poe glanced back at her with his deep purple eyes. “You’ve returned. I don’t imagine you as the bearer of good news.”

  “It was a bust.” Zaja tossed him what remained of her water. “Desert—which was actually the best part! Except there was this thing with Renivar’s soldiers. Miles of them, all crossing right in front of us.”

  “I find I regret not going,” he replied after draining the bottle. “I’d have thinned their ranks, given the chance. Though I remain mortal, I can do that much even now.”

  Zaja noted the numerous pockmarks on the columns, and was about to comment, “You’re certainly showing those pillars who’s boss,” but the jibe died in her throat. Instead, she felt compelled to point out, “They’re not bad people, you know.”

  “They were my torturers,” Poe replied darkly. “They saw me bound and humiliated. They made a mockery of me in my weakened state, and did so all on the orders of their god.”

  Maybe they had a good reason, she vaguely considered.

  He closed his eyes, shaking his head and wondering aloud, “What commands could I give, were I in such a position…?”

  “Out of any among us, you might get to find out.”

  Poe met her with cynicism. “Most days, I doubt even that.”

  Like Poe, what Zaja knew and what she felt were two very different things. Airia Rousow, the fallen Goddess of Eternity, had tapped Poe as her successor, that he might use his skill and her power to murder Taryl Renivar, a counterpart of her order. That Poe was poised to inherit such power remained difficult to grasp, and she surmised he felt little different when he softly spoke on. “More often, I feel I should have stayed where you found me, the butcher at Heaven’s gates.”

  “It would have been a lie,” she told him.

  “I know. Yet in my ignorance, at least, I felt no hole in my heart for what I’d let myself become.”

  Zaja nodded, sorry to understand.

  “I wish I could have stayed with Renivar’s people,” she replied softly. “Before I knew what they were doing to you, or how far their god is willing to go to give them the perfect world he’s promised.” Zaja wrapped her arms low, around her belly. “Back when I thought he was just going to make a better world where everything that had gone wrong could finally be made right.” She scoffed derisively. “A better world … but not one that would allow for people like us.”

  Poe spared her a fleeting smile as he took up his black coat, wearing it loose while he refastened his blades over it, lest the straps chafe.

  “The tragedy is not that we’re unhappy for letting aside our ignorance,” he stated. “It’s that we could not remain content with our lot, knowing more fully what we had.”

  Without another word, Poe left her behind. If his chief regret was an inability to accept the blood on his hands, then Zaja equally hated the part of her that couldn’t reconcile the genocide whose blame she would have shared, had she stayed behind. Zaja wanted little, and the Living God’s rise would have assured her some happiness and a promise, however slim, of restitution for her failing health.

  * * *

  Jean avoided making eye contact. Her ribs were bruised, her head throbbed, her hands stung. The pain in her right wrist ran into her forearm, blending into a scar that cut neatly

  through—a trophy, earned a month earlier on Terrias. She had suffered worse injuries in the fight than these, but Chari had mended the most severe before the principal arrived to separate her from the
others. In another lifetime, Jean would never have allowed it, but this school wasn’t like the prison she’d once known.

  “F#bt $fd cqFQg##s CvhhR KRe?” His lecture was naught but gibberish.

  She barely acknowledged him, until he decided to approach her, indicating something of his hands. His knuckles? He gestured at Jean’s in comparison, swollen and bruised.

  Do ya think you’re better than me? she burned to ask.

  It still hurt to breathe, and as Sensun returned to his desk, Jean stuck her hand in her shirt, hoisting up a breast with one hand to massage the bruised rib beneath it. However crass or lewd her behavior, he seemed not to notice, carrying on to the point that Jean was no longer certain why she was here. If it wasn’t for the fight itself, she liked to think it was because she’d won.

  In retrospect, it may have had as much to do with the school nurse, who had been elated at having a patient to treat, only to give Jean the all-clear after wiping the blood from her, declaring that the wounds weren’t as bad as they looked. At the last moment, she advised Jean to replace her injured hands and ribs with bionics, even offering to release her from school early to visit a public clinic for the surgery. As the nurse was a young woman whose head remained flesh and blood, Jean knew it would register when she told her to “Fuck off, lady.”

  “Might’ve been what did it,” she admitted softly to herself.

  “cC3vt q# Nzzt?”

  No, I ain’t listenin’, she guessed to answer, while saying nothing. Jean, Chari, and Mack had come to gather information, to learn the culture, and what avenues their group might pass through unnoticed. Yet all Jean had learned was how much she hated school.

  At some point, Sensun’s lecture ceased. He was stone faced, as if waiting for a reply. She fixed her posture, straightened up. Unsure what to say, she eventually ventured to ask, “We done yet? Can I go now?”

  He made a frustrated gesture toward the door and Jean took his cue, carelessly wiping the sweat from her thighs with the hem of her skirt as she left. Mack waited for her in the hall.