by Natalie Reid
“Okay,” she said, making for the door. “Let’s go.”
Part Two: Variance
Chapter 1
Unmediated Madness
The white car swerved into the sharp turn, its metal scraping the side of the curb. The driver inside widely swung the wheel. His dark eyes flickered yellow with each pass of the street lights. A car was parked up ahead on the road. The Bandit did not correct course as he grated its side. The night was filled with the shrill creak of warping metal. For a moment, the Bandit was hindered by the parked car, stuck to its side as if some static cling glued them together. With his foot to the pedal and a sharp jerk of the wheel, the Bandit freed itself. Yet that momentary pause had done all the damage it needed to.
Ritter quickly twisted the handle of his hover bike, pushing it to maximum speed. The spinning blue light of his bike thundered down the road like lightning, painting the street windows in a fantastic display of spiraling color. Up ahead, the Bandit took another sharp right. Ritter shook his head and cursed. All he did was make right turns, as if he didn’t know the car could turn any other way. They were travelling in a circle. If they kept at it much longer, everyone would be driven from their homes to see what was going on. Ward’s insistence on secrecy would be that much harder to maintain.
Ritter stopped his bike. The squeal of the Bandit’s tires echoed in the maze of north-end apartments. He wondered if the man inside the car had given in while he was driving. Was he fed up with traffic? Did he just snap mid turn and decide to give in? Why weren’t there more cases of automotive Bandits? It seemed a likely time as any to give in.
Leaning his bike against the curb, he jogged down the street to the parked car. Its right front door was buckled and hanging limply in its frame. He grabbed the handle and yanked the door open. The hinges snapped, and the door clunked to the floor. Sliding in, Ritter sat in the driver’s seat. There was no key for the ignition, just a scanner that would respond to the right identification card. He dug his hand inside his pocket and pulled out his ID. All cars, rental or privately owned, were programmed to start up for any Task Force agent’s card. With a quick swipe, the car hummed to life.
Ritter drove to the middle of the street and parked perpendicular to the curb so that he took up most of the roadway. Killing the engine, he could hear the screeching of the Bandit’s car, circling back around towards him. He dashed out of the car and into an alley. The Bandit turned the corner onto their road, the car’s back end drifting as the tires skidded across the frozen gravel. The parked car was in its way, but the Bandit did not slow down. If anything, it went faster, like a battering ram hoping to clear the path with force. The car was just a few feet away now. Ritter could see the face of the man behind the wheel. Unmediated Madness.
The impact was loud. Metal crumpling like a discarded piece of paper. The front end buckled easily, yet the car would not be stayed. Almost simultaneous with impact, the back end of the car lifted. The motion carried the car forward, flipping on its belly as it soared over the parked car.
“Oh rack,” Ritter cursed, watching the air-borne flight of the Bandit. He was not supposed to have lifted from the ground.
With a roaring crash, the car landed top first, skidding against the asphalt. Its wheels were still spinning. Smoke carried up into the frigid night air.
The door to an apartment complex across the street opened, and a man stepped out to see what was going on.
“Get back inside!” Ritter shouted, jogging over to the upturned car.
The man, seeing Ritter’s Task Force uniform, hurried to comply, slamming the door forcefully behind him.
Ritter made sure that no one else had come out, before bending down to look inside the driver’s window. Blood dripped from the side of the Bandit’s head. His blonde hair was sticky with it, reaching out for the car’s ceiling. He was still strapped to the chair, leading Ritter to believe that he had turned Bandit mid car-ride. What kind of a Bandit thinks to buckle in his seat-belt?
Grabbing the Bandit’s hair, he jerked his head so he could see the rest of his face. There was a gash running down his cheek, but what was more troubling was the shard of metal sticking out of his gut. Cursing, he grabbed his tablet from his pocket and dialed a number.
“I have him. But you’re gonna have to meet me. He’s losing a lot of blood.”
“You were told to treat him nicely,” the man on the line scolded.
“The Bandit had a car. I had to improvise.”
“And you couldn’t think of a way that didn’t involve draining his blood?”
Ritter ran a hand through his hair in aggravation. “Just get here before he dies. I’m not doing this again!”
Giving the man his location, he hung up and then looked to the Bandit in tired annoyance. Getting on his knees, he reached inside the car and undid the seat belt holding him in place. The Bandit slammed into his back upon release. The impact startled it into consciousness. He rasped out a scream and clawed at Ritter, digging his fingers into his neck and shoulder. Ritter rammed his back against the car’s chair, forcing the Bandit into submission.
He grabbed him from his feet and dragged him out of the car and onto the street. He could see someone watching from one of the apartment windows, too nosy for their own good. With a vice grip on the Bandit’s ankle, he began to half-heartedly mutter the Task Force phrase, “You have been found guilty of giving into the Bandit. You will racking come with me to the place of your racking execution.”
The Bandit screeched incoherently as he was dragged across the street and into a dark alleyway. He tried to thrash and free his ankle, but he was too weak to put up much of a fight. Ritter waited with his boot pressed against the Bandit’s chest for the man he had called to arrive. Some five minutes later, a van pulled up, and a thin, lanky man hopped out. He rushed for the back door of the van and pulled out a stretcher. Ritter hoisted the Bandit by the arm and slung him over his shoulder, walking him to the van and discarding him on the stretcher.
“Give me a minute,” the lanky man said, pushing the stretcher back into the van and getting in himself.
Ritter slammed the door shut and waited with his back against it. His eye caught the nosy spectator, and they quickly shirked away from the window. A minute later, there was a knock on the van door from the inside. He opened the back, and the man handed him a thin vial. Ritter quickly pocketed it without saying a word, and strode back to his bike.
He drove to the Bank of Social Numbers, and was lead to a white room on the top floor. Ward was there waiting for him. His hand stuck out the moment he saw him, silently demanding the vial. As Ward turned it over in his hands in careful inspection, Ritter stared at the blank walls. They were too overbearing for his taste. Like having a light shown right in your eyes.
“I am obliged to you,” Ward said, tipping the vial in his direction.
Ritter stuffed his hands in his pockets.
“Would you like to know what it is for?” Ward inquired.
Ritter leaned his back against the wall. “Not really.”
Ward raised his eyebrows. “It is not a crime to be curious. And anyway, you will have to learn soon enough. You may even find it interesting. I never would have thought of it if it wasn’t for the death of Jessie Fifty-Fifty.”
“Fascinating,” Ritter stated dryly.
Ward lowered the vial in his hand and regarded him. “You are tired,” he stated. “I will not hold it against you. But be sure to report back here tomorrow. I will need your advice on its practical application.”
With a stiff nod, Ritter exited the room, stealing down the hall. His government escort ran to catch up with him, exclaiming that he could not be left on his own. Ritter clenched his jaw and ignored him. From inside his pockets, his fists were clenched so tightly, the skin was the color of hard driven snow.
* * *
A loud crash startled Griffin from his sleep. His eyes flew open and he turned over in bed. The cuts from the glass that he sustained nearly
two days ago during the Resistance attack were barely more than a few sore spots on his back and legs. Whatever the doctors at BLES did to him, it worked like magic.
Rubbing his eyes, he looked to a dark corner of his room. Harper was rummaging through his things. A bunch of thin metal rods that he kept stacked in the corner for his inventions had been knocked over and were now rolling on the ground towards his bed.
“Harper,” he said groggily. “What are you doing?”
She was obviously in a state, the one she got whenever she felt she was onto a major conspiracy. Disregard was thrown out the window as she plunged through Griffin’s things, and he had to shout out his friend’s name again before she heard him.
“You won’t believe this Griff!” she exclaimed, pumping her fist in the air. “Something huge is happening!”
Griffin yawned and looked towards the window. The sky was tinted dark blue. The sun hadn’t come up yet. “What time is it?” he asked.
Harper flung a large pole out of her way. “Griffin, you are the only person I know that wears a watch on their wrist, and you’re asking me for the time?” Finally she stopped rummaging and turned around to face him. She grinned proudly at him and bounced slightly on the balls of her feet, saying, “Aren’t you going to ask me what it is?”
“The time?” Griffin asked in sleepy confusion, rubbing at his eye.
She threw a book at the side of his bed so that it jostled the mattress. “No!” she scolded. “The Conspiracy! The government conspiracy that my cousin, the honorable Sergeant Denneck, has finally let me in on!”
She turned to another corner of his room and began looking through a different pile of junk. “This morning he called me up,” she said, tossing Griffin’s stuff out of her way in her mad search. “He wanted me to hack into some man’s phone records to see who he called yesterday. I found out that not a single call had been made from his tablet since the Resistance attack on Division Bank. Which is weird, because everyone was calling everybody after that, trying to see if they were alright. At first I wasn’t quite sure what it meant, but then I remembered the name. The man was a government official. The same government official that was allegedly stabbed by the Bandit that everyone’s been looking for since yesterday morning. Sooo, if that man wasn’t stabbed until then, why did he go dark for nearly twelve hours before that?”
Griffin ran a hand over his face and let his head fall back down on his pillow in a heavy thud. “I don’t know how you get a conspiracy from that,” he mumbled.
Suddenly Harper gave out a triumphant exclamation and pulled something out of the pile, sending a stash of small metal screws and bolts cascading to the floor. When she turned back around, she was holding a computer carrying case. She had bought it for Griffin as a present, but he had never used it because he didn’t really work with computers. He suspected that it had been a present Harper planned to eventually use herself.
“Are you going somewhere?” he asked.
“Am I going somewhere?! Griff, you know I’m letting you in on this! I mean, it’s huge! You and I could help bring down the government! Well, with my cousin’s help. He’s at some house on the edge of the west end. We have to meet him there.”
“Actually,” he said, a guilty look spreading across his features, “I promised Melissa I would see her again today.”
Harper’s face fell. “Oh. That’s…” She cleared her throat. “Well I hope you have fun.”
“Thanks.” He stared down at his blankets, focusing on the pattern of the fabric.
She scratched the back of her head and scuffed her shoe against the floor. “Do you think I could have the bike?”
Griffin winced. “I promised her I would take her out on it today.” Shaking his head, he added, “You were right. She really likes it.”
“Oh, okay.” Harper nodded her head vigorously. She hoisted the computer bag higher up in her hands as if she was holding a baby. “I’ll just lug my computer several miles through town then. No problem.”
Griffin’s resolve almost crumbled at seeing Harper’s hurt expression, but before it could break completely, something else took over. A long harbored resentment that he didn’t even recognize until just that moment.
“You did the same to me with the microwave!” he exclaimed. “I told you I needed the bike, a bike which I fixed by the way, but you went out joy-riding for like five hours and left me to hobble around with that thing on the streets like some racking idiot!”
Griffin couldn’t believe the words that came out of his mouth. He had never cursed before, at least not out-loud, and certainly never at his best friend. It caused him to feel strangely elated yet also sick, like that sensation someone gets after they’ve thrown up.
Harper narrowed her eyes at him and clutched the case to her chest. “I can’t believe you’re really going to pass this up for a girl you’ve only met like four times! I thought I was your best friend!”
“Harper…”
She held up her hand and shook her head. “No, no, I shouldn’t have expected you to understand. My cousin asked for my help, and I’m going to give it to him. Just like that. Don’t even have to think about it. Because cousins are loyal to each other. I mean, we have to be. Do you have any idea how rare it is to even have a cousin these days? Of course you do, because you don’t have one!” She slung the bag around her shoulder and started making for the door. “Well, Griffin. I hope you have fun cruising the town with your girl. I’ll just be out helping my family save the world.”
As she left, she tried to slam Griffin’s door behind her, but that door hadn’t closed properly in over two years, so it just managed to move several inches and give off a weak whimper before stalling in the doorway. Harper kicked it back in place and stormed off to her own room.
Back on the bed, Griffin rolled over and stuffed the pillow over his head, wishing very much that he had not woken up that morning.
Chapter 2
Aileron Books
The hardest part to living on the streets and running from the law was not the constant threat of discovery, but the hunger. Either you hungered for food or you stole it from someone that did nothing wrong to you, and hungered for a time when you were not reduced to a common thief. The later hunger always seemed to die away when faced with the raging appetite of the first.
By their second day on the road, Jessie and Tom had stolen two pairs of clothes, several loaves of bread, and various other slips of food they managed to nick off of careless passer-byes that would later return home and find that they would need to eat a little less for dinner that night. The emotional toll that this took on Jessie quietly gnawed away on her conscience, drawing little pricks of pain in the empty hours of the night as she watched her friend sleep on the hard cement of an alley. The city had been forced to take them in; had been forced to support two more thieves that could not work for their food. It seemed insignificant when placed next to everything else in her life, but she found herself focusing on it even more so she wouldn’t have to think about what was really eating her up inside.
That second night, as Tom slept a few feet from her inside the basement of an old restaurant, she took out the creased drawing of the finch that Ben had given to her. Despite her exhaustion, she couldn’t sleep. As she stared at the drawing in the ghost light of the old basement, she felt something grow inside of her, spurred on by the hardships and degradation of life on the run. Leaving Tom to his sleep, she went back up to the streets.
When she reached the apartment on the east end, she climbed up the fire-escape that scaled the length of the wall and entered in through one of the top windows. Inside, she could see Katherine lying in bed. Her eyes were no more than slits, but Jessie could tell she was staring at her.
“Have you come here to kill me?” Katherine asked. She did not sound afraid or angry, only tired.
Jessie stayed by the open window, biting down on her tongue and digging her fingers into the palms of her hands. She knew she should tell her no, ex
plain that she wasn’t a Bandit and that her life was not in danger. But she couldn’t find the words. Her mind kept telling her over and over that Katherine was suffering because she was there. The worse part of it was…she was okay with that. In fact, she thought that could have been the reason she was there in the first place.
“Bandit?” Katherine spoke through a painful breath.
She shifted in bed to get a better look at her, and Jessie jerked back into the shadows.
“What do you want with me?” she asked. The fear was a little more evident in her voice now.
Jessie looked from the bed over to the open window. Suddenly she realized that it was a bad idea to have come here. She couldn’t take seeing her face. She couldn’t trust herself if she stayed too long inside.
Without saying a word, she left the quivering woman and exited through the window. Her hands were shaking when she reached the streets, and they continued to shake until Tom woke up the next morning and gave her something else to think about. As long as she was helping him survive, she could forget about the darkness that had driven her to that apartment, seeking to hurt Katherine. As long as she was playing Tom’s hero, she didn’t need to admit how bad off she really was.
* * *
Forty-one Aileron Street was a rather small house for being located on the west side of town. Of course, any east-ender would call it luxury, but for its neighbors on the west side, it was merely a quaint little cottage with an odd sculpture of a large bird in the front and satisfactory stone work running up its sides.
There were those in the neighborhood that remembered when the small house was built on an unoccupied lot amongst the sprawling homes of the west end, and a quiet man and his wife moved inside. The thing that irked them the most was that their small house cost exactly the same as each and every one of their larger homes. In fact, a west end home was not much different in price than an east end hole-in-the-wall apartment. But no one really bought their homes with money in the west end. Everything was through connection. So, when the meek couple suddenly showed up in their midst, what angered them most was not that they had the connections to purchase a house there, but that they had decided to build one so small when they could have just as easily built a larger one.
