by Jack Alden
I look to Tempest for some sort of answer.
“We don’t have a choice,” he says, jaw ticking. He shakes his head. “They’ve got Beck, and Mom, and they’ve already made it clear that if we d—”
“Mom!” I slap a hand over my mouth, capping a hard gasp. My head spins, and for a second, I think I might faint. But the feeling passes quickly, and only rage is left behind, bubbling just under the surface.
“What? What is it?”
“It was her.” I barely manage the words through gritted teeth. Our mother has betrayed us. But why? She knew they would come for us eventually, so why now? What had she meant when she said she’d done something terrible? What’s in it for her?
“Rebel Citizens,” the man calls again, “you have one minute to surrender!”
“You still haven’t figured out how to use the Viper,” Tempest says. It isn’t a question. His gaze darts around the room, looking for anything to help us, though we both know nothing will. There’s no way out of this. This time tomorrow, Tempest and I will be dead, hanged or beheaded publicly for the entire Gutter to see. Who knows? The President might even decide to have our executions broadcasted nationally. Then everyone can see just how far you’ll fall if you break the rules.
“I’m sorry, Tempest.” The words escape in a pathetic whimper, but I mean them. I feel like such a failure, unable to save him, save us both. I can’t even bear to look him in the eyes.
Heavy footfalls thunder onto the staircase, and both our heads snap to attention. Our minute is up. They’re coming.
“There’s no point in fighting,” Tempest says. He slides his hand into mine and stands tall beside me. “The best we can do is go with them, calmly and quietly. It’s better for Beck that way. I don’t want him to see us struggle.”
I nod as I cling to the warmth in my brother’s hand. It steadies me. In my other hand, I still have the Viper. It hits me then how it might look when the Sanctioning Squad marches into the room. For a split second, I consider tossing it to the side, but a voice in the back of my head tells me to hold on. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, I have a plan.
“They don’t have to know.”
Before Tempest can respond, a man appears in the doorway flanked by another soldier. A patch on his black uniform identifies him as a Captain, and he carries a gun large enough to require both arms. A barrel wide enough to support a fist-sized cannonball. What did they think they were going to find up here? Giants? A regular bullet would do just fine. There’s no need to blast us to pieces!
“Drop your weapon, citizen!” he shouts. “Get on the ground!” He stands a mere six feet from me, the barrel of his gun far too close for comfort, but I stand my ground. I tighten my hold on the Viper. For the first time in this whole disaster, I actually have a plan, and the Viper is essential to it. “Drop your weapon now, or we will open fire!”
“I don’t think you will,” I say, trying my best to sound anything but terrified. My knees are shaking and I can’t help feeling like I’m about to die, any second, but this is all I have. This is it, and that makes me stand up just a little bit straighter, a little steadier.
Tempest does his best to follow my lead. He squeezes my hand and lets a small smile touch his lips. The Captain looks back and forth between us, eyes narrowed, then brings his oversized gun to eye level, undeterred, and now I’m staring straight down an enormous barrel. My stomach roars until I think I might vomit, but I use it. I use every bit of what I’m feeling—fear, anger, heartache. I let it fill me up until there’s nothing left but a burning motivation to get through this.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Tempest says, and the gun eases down a half-inch.
I can see the Captain’s eyes again, shifting back and forth. He looks angry, but more than that, confused. Something flashes in his eyes. He lifts a hand from the enormous gun and points to his mouthpiece. “Drop your weapon now,” he orders again, “or I will order open fire.” He smiles, something wicked, and adds, “Downstairs.”
The words hit like a bomb. My insides drop into my knees. Beck’s face flickers through my mind.
His grin widens. He thinks he’s got us, and for a split second, so do I. But I can’t give up. My gut tells me my plan will work. I have to try. I slowly raise my hand, just an inch or two, the Viper still wedged inside my fist. I want him to see it.
“Recognize this?”
His gaze drops briefly to the Viper, no more than a second. “Kishi,” he says, still grinning. “You’ll have to do better than that, little girl.”
The insult sets my teeth on edge but I keep my cool. I have to.
“Perhaps you should take a better look, Captain,” Tempest says.
His gaze drops again, and I twirl the Viper in my fingers. Just a flicker of movement, enough to show a bit of skill without giving myself away. That’s when I see it. Shock ripples across his features.
“I have your attention then,” I say. “How about we all lower our weapons and talk this out. No one has to get hurt.”
He shifts the slightest bit on his feet. “That’s government property,” he says. “Just another reason to watch you hang.”
“Fine.” I tighten my grip around the Viper. “So take it.”
Nobody moves.
“Go on,” I say, my brain screaming at me to shut up. Shut up before you get yourself killed! “Take it.”
“Fisk,” the Captain barks. “Seize the weapon.”
The soldier flanking him meets my eyes, uneasy. He doesn’t move.
“Scared,” Tempest says with a laugh, and as soon as the word is out, the Captain growls.
“Enough,” he shouts.
Tempest stands tall. “If you were going to kill us, you would have done it by now,” he says. “We have something the president wants—our blood.”
“Wrong,” the Captain says. “He only wants hers.”
His gun rockets up to eye level, aimed at Tempest’s bare chest. No! My stomach bottoms out. My heart shoots into my throat. Tempest squeezes my hand, and I know it’s over. We’ve lost. Everything shifts into slow motion, and all I can hear is the blood rushing in my ears. Every inch of my body, every cell in my brain screams for something, anything, to help us.
Then I hear it. A humming sound. No, not a humming. A churning? What is that? That’s when I realize every pair of eyes in the room has shifted to focus on my hand. The sound, it’s coming from inside the Viper.
***
The air thickens as the sound comes to a grinding halt. Nothing seems different. The dagger looks the same, still sheathed, still sitting motionless in my hand. I let out a slow, silent breath, hoping beyond hope that that small reaction may be enough to help us, to buy us a little more time.
“Hold position,” the Captain says, but his backup doesn’t listen. Fisk backs slowly out of the room, fear etched across his face. The Captain pays him no mind. He keeps his focus on the Viper, stealing glances toward my brother, waiting for one of us to spring into action. His grip tightens around his gun, ready to blast a substantial hole through either of us should he catch even a hint of movement.
Time is running out, I know. It won’t take long for him to realize nothing is going to happen. The Viper acted of its own accord, and I have no idea why. The first time it made that sound, it was because of the blood sample, but now, there’s nothing. No prick. No pain. What made it work, and why did it stop? I’d only been standing here, exactly the same as I am now, exactly the same as I have been since the Squad stampeded up the stairs and thrust their tiny cannons in our faces. Nothing has changed.
And then it hits me.
It’s my emotions. It has to be. They must affect the Viper, feeding right into it through the chip embedded in my skin. Up until now, I tried desperately out of fear to master it, but that’s not how it works. I see it now as clearly as if bright red instructions are engraved on the hilt. My head, my heart, my entire body had been screaming for the Viper to work, screaming that it was my only hope,
and that’s when it activated. It responds to conviction, need, survival.
I focus all my energy on a single thought. Unsheathe. Instantly, the blunt edge lining the Viper retracts, sliding down into the hilt, and it takes every bit of control I have not to shout in triumph.
“You can actually—” The Captain lets out a staggered breath. “It actually—”
“Works?” Tempest smiles. “You didn’t think the president would take note of a missing Viper and send you after the descendant of one of the most renowned assassins of all time without having first made the connection between the two, did you?”
I move a fraction of an inch toward the Captain. He scrambles to get his gun up, locked on Tempest again. I expect to feel a rush of fear, but it doesn’t come. Instead, something else rushes through me. Power. It’s hot, twisting in my gut. A dangerous kind of thrill, and for a second, I don’t feel like myself.
“You think you can shoot me before she takes you out?” Tempest asks, a challenge. “You’ve never seen my sister throw.”
Slowly, and to my surprise, the Captain lowers his gun so that the enormous barrel drops to rest on the hard wood of my bedroom floor. Without thinking, I let out a sigh of relief, let my guard down. Instantly, I know I’ve made a mistake.
It happens so quickly, I barely have time to think, let alone act. In a blur of motion, the Captain jerks his weapon up. An exploding bang shakes the room. My arm jerks hard, pulling me to the ground, and Tempest’s hand rips free from mine. A ringing erupts in my ears, and for a second, I’m transported back to my childhood, hiding away with my mother while the bombs sound around us, shaking the walls.
The room clouds with smoke and debris, so thick I can’t see any more than a few inches in front of my face. Everything inside me screams for me to find my brother, get to Tempest. Make sure he’s all right. But how could he be? How could he possibly have survived? The floor suddenly lurches under me. The room begins to spin. My face grows too hot, my breath too shallow, and I can feel myself teetering on the edge of consciousness. I cling to reality, try to ground myself. Now’s not the time for fear or fainting. I push away the thought of Tempest lying dead somewhere inside the remains of my bedroom with a huge, gaping hole in his chest. He’s alive. My brother is alive. He has to be. Tempest is invincible.
The blast must have had one hell of a recoil, because I can hear the Captain scrambling to get back on his feet. The clanking of metal tells me his gun is still in hand, and I can only assume he plans to fire again, this time at me.
A wave of adrenaline swallows me whole as the dust begins to settle. It’s the same rush I always felt in the cave, surrounded by flying daggers and Tempest’s loud laughter. I feel a prickling sensation in the back of my neck where the microchip embedded itself. It’s hot and achy at first but quickly becomes familiar, as if I’ve had it all my life, and suddenly the Viper feels like a part of me, as if it were an extension of my arm; another part of my body. Something vital.
A clinking sound snaps me back to reality. The dust has settled, and there, in front of me, no more than three feet away, stands the Captain. His gun points to my heart. He’d been waiting for a clean shot. One hand holds a gleaming pair of handcuffs, metal pressed to metal.
“Hold your positions,” he bellows into his mouthpiece, communicating with the rest of the Squad standing guard in my kitchen, their weapons no doubt trained on my family. “The situation is controlled, target secured.”
“Target secured?” My voice shakes.
He sneers. “I called your bluff, little girl,” he says. “Your brother was too cocky for his own good.”
Was. My brother was cocky. The room spins again. My throat burns. Dead. He’s dead.
“Pity you won’t get to see him hang,” he says. “But maybe your mother can scrounge up enough body parts to have a proper funeral.”
The world rocks around me, shattering, splintering. My entire body shakes. The Viper grows hot in my hand and begins to vibrate.
“Unfortunately, my orders are to bring you in alive, so…”
Everything falls away, the room going black for a moment before flickering back to life. The pain subsides. The fear dies. And all that’s left in their place is rage. Rage, burning up every inch of me. The kind only loss can inspire. The killing kind.
***
The Captain lets out an ugly, gloating laugh. The sound winds and curls in the pit of my stomach like a snake readying itself to strike. He lowers his gun as he steps to cover the three feet of floor separating us. Just an inch. That’s a mistake.
I move like lightning, streaking past the Captain in a hard shoulder roll. With a howl, he whips around to find me clear across the room, crouched low. I lock eyes with him. A spark of fear ignites his face. I don’t wait for him to act or even speak. I suck in the deepest, fastest breath I can manage, push hard off the floor, and spring into the air in one great leap. It’s fast, graceful. I can feel the lightness in my body, the smooth lines of my limbs as they stretch and reposition in mid-air as if in slow motion. I relax myself, allowing the world to slow and focus around me so every detail is recorded and stored. I’ve done this a thousand times.
At the height of my jump, I twist into a spin, reveling in the strain of my muscles. A stretch that reminds me I’m alive despite the emptiness in my chest, the numbness in my brain. Emptiness. My father once told me emptiness was the feeling of pain once it has passed the human threshold of withstanding. Tempest. My brother. Dead. My feet hit the ground, and a single thought sparks. Strike.
A prickling sensation erupts at the back of my neck, so intense I almost cry out. My wrist jerks hard as if commanded by thought, and the Viper rips like a bullet through the air. It sinks into the Captain’s chest with a sickening thud before he even manages to pull his gun into position. His eyes blow wide. A cough gurgles across his lips. Blood dots the chapped skin there.
I stare at him as his gun clunks to the floor, followed by his knees. His hands claw at his chest, trembling. My mouth goes dry. I’ve never thrown at another person before, never wanted so badly to see my dagger buried to the hilt in a human being’s chest. To my surprise, the feeling that wells up isn’t guilt. It’s thrill. It tickles across my skin and I realize my pleasure at the sight of what I’ve done, something dark and unrestrained. It terrifies me, but I can’t stop it. I can’t control it.
A smile pulls at my lips as he collapses onto his back. I move to stand over him, watch him try in vain to lift the heavy weight of his gun. I nudge the weapon away from him with my foot. He looks at me, eyes burning with hatred, and spits. Bloody saliva splatters the space just below my chin, and it’s all I can do not to slam my foot to the hilt of the Viper and force it down another few inches.
His lips spread in a smile of crimson-stained teeth. His voice wheezes. “Do you really think I’m going to die here in the Gutter without at least taking some of its filth with me?”
I don’t like the triumphant look in his eyes, like he has a secret I should know about and don’t. This isn’t his victory. It’s mine. I swoop down and wrench the Viper from his chest, because I need to see that smile wiped from his face. Blood oozes from between his grinding teeth and runs down his chin. He’s deliberately trying to keep quiet, and for a second I wonder if it’s just another way to get under my skin, but then I realize the real reason. He doesn’t want anyone to hear, doesn’t want anyone to come to his aid. He wants me all to himself.
I rise to my full height and look down at him. “Do you really think you’re in any condition to make threats?”
“Watch,” he says, little more than a whisper, then he moves. With a swift jerk of his hand, he produces a pistol from inside his vest.
No!
It emits an echoing bang so loud it feels as if my head will split open. A searing heat ignites in my hand as my arm swings up so fast it’s nothing more than a blur. Pew! Sparks fly. It doesn’t sink in, at first, what’s happened. But reality takes hold as the bullet rips throu
gh the wall opposite me. I’m not dead. I take a breath. I’m not dead. Another breath. The breaths come easier and faster as I stare at the hole in the wall. As I look to the still-hot dagger in my hand. There isn’t a scratch on it. It’s ebony curve gleams at me. I’d just deflected a bullet with little more than a thought!
The Captain stares up at me, mouth hanging open. The pistol drops from his fingertips, now milky white from blood loss, and that same dark feeling returns. A lack of control. A lack of identity. Power. It blooms in my chest before rushing out through my veins, something so intoxicating I feel faint.
“Some little girl,” I say, not recognizing my own voice. I kneel next to him and lean in, face inches from his. “Huh, Captain?”
In that moment, I feel so powerful I almost laugh. I’m indestructible. As soon as the thought crosses my mind, the Viper warms in my hand again. It vibrates. Grows so hot I can hardly stand to hold onto it. Something must have gone wrong. The bullet had damaged the dagger after all. I clench my teeth as the Viper grows even hotter, then I hear a click. The tiny seam in the handle opens, and suddenly, the prickling sensation at the back of my neck is everywhere.
I gasp as what looks like metallic scales erupt onto the skin of my hand surrounding the Viper. They start at my fingertips and slither like a snake up the length of my arm. They consume so rapidly I barely have time to process, eating up every inch of flesh they can find. I feel them slink across my stomach under my clothes, and the prickling nauseates me. Then down past my knees to my toes. They crawl up my neck and I panic. They’re going to suffocate me. The scales roll over my chin toward my lips. I glance down at my cheeks, desperate to see, but find only the dark gray blur of metal. I want to cover my eyes but the terror keeps them open, peeled wide as the scales cover my nose. They envelop my forehead, my temples, my ears. Then, as suddenly as it began, the prickling ceases.
