by K A Riley
Trolly whacks her brother with the back of her hand. “It means she can see what she can’t see, idiot.”
“It means she’s got psychic powers,” Ledge says.
“She can see the future!” Lost-the-Plot exclaims.
“I can’t see the future,” I assure him.
“She sees through a raven named Render,” Cardyn informs Ledge.
“Crikey! She’s got a transparent bird,” Chunder gushes, his eyes wide, his finger in the air like he’s just had an enlightening “eureka” moment.
This time, Trolly hits her brother twice. “Not like that, ya bloody loon. She sees through the bird’s eyes.” Trolly turns to me and asks, “Right?”
“Yes. That’s pretty much it.” I push up the long, form-fitting sleeves of my all-black dress to reveal my tattoos. “My dad gave me these when I was six. They help me connect with Render.”
Ledge scans the ceiling of the very red room. “And where exactly is this bird…this Render of yours.”
“He’s outside. He’s flying.”
“Really?”
“Yes. He’s a bird. It’s what they do.”
“Best make sure he don’t get shot down,” Ledge laughs.
“What? Why?”
“Ravens are a sign of death ‘round ‘ere, Sweets. We don’t see ‘em unless there’s bodies ta be ‘ad.”
“Render isn’t a sign of death,” Brohn says, coming to my—and Render’s—defense.
“He’s saved our lives more times than we can count,” Rain adds.
“Sounds like a good guy ta have on your side. I’d love ta meet ‘im.” The way Ledge says this sounds kind of ominous, almost threatening, and I wonder if he’d try to hurt Render based on what sounds like his own gruesome encounters with ravens in this city.
“Are you convinced about us?” Brohn asks.
Ledge swings his gaze across the five of us before his eyes settle back on Brohn’s. With his arms crossed, he drums his fingers on his biceps before he seems to relax into a final decision. “What your raven-eyed friend there saw, that was the ‘yde Park Settlement. That’s ours. The big mansion—the one with the gates and the gold—that’s Buckingham Palace.”
“Wait,” Rain says, “the Buckingham Palace? Like with the king and queen?”
“It’s home o’ the Royal Fort Knights, now. They moved in when the old royalty moved out.”
Trolly reminds me of Cardyn the way she raises her hand and waits for me to call on her like I’m a teacher, and she’s a kid in my class. “So…seriously…‘ow did ya know all that? ‘Bout all them details of our park?”
“Like Cardyn said,” Brohn explains. “She shares her vision with Render.”
The room goes weirdly quiet before Cardyn breaks the silence by offering up more information about my relationship with Render. “She’s a telempath. She and Render—they’ve been friends for most of our lives—they can see through each other’s eyes. They can feel each other’s thoughts. He lets us know if there’s danger ahead. They read each other’s minds. Things like that.”
I’m about to protest that that’s not entirely accurate, but I stop myself. It’s accurate enough, and now isn’t exactly the time to go around splitting hairs.
I also don’t mention how my Emergent abilities seem to be evolving. I don’t mention my gravity-defying feats of floating and gliding, bordering on semi-flight. And I don’t say anything about how I’ve been able to channel some latent ability of Render’s that somehow enables me to put people to sleep from across a room. I’ve done that twice now. I don’t know how, and I’m not sure I can replicate the feat.
But it’s just as well. We’ve told these kids who and what we are, and we’ve told them where it is we need to go. As far as I’m concerned, we’ve already given away too much.
It doesn’t seem to matter, though. The Banters are sufficiently impressed and completely convinced. Even Lost-the-Plot seems to gain a moment of focus where both of his weird, wobbly eyes land on mine at the same time.
“Seems like you are what ya say ya are,” he grumbles.
As his eyes go their separate ways again, I assure him and Ledge that we have nothing to hide and that we aren’t here for any reason other than our mission.
“Not sure if you know what’s going on overseas,” Brohn says, “but we just had a little revolution. Took back our country.”
“No reason you can’t do the same here,” Rain adds. “This was a great city, right? One of the best in the world. It can be again. Whoever did all that out there, they can…they have to be stopped. Things can be better. We all can be better.”
I expect Ledge to ask us questions about our own revolution, but he doesn’t seem interested. He gives us a resigned sigh instead and tells us things are different over here. “There’s no one out there to stop, Love. We ‘aven’t ‘ad an Eastern Order attack in…three years now.” He looks over to Lost-the-Plot who confirms that yes, it’s been three years since the last reports of an Eastern Order attack.
By some unspoken mutual agreement, my Conspiracy and I skirt the reference to the Eastern Order. We know they turned out to be a huge government hoax back home, but who knows how it all played out over here?
“We do okay on our own,” Ledge boasts. “Plenty o’ enemies out there, but they ain’t after us, so we don’t mess with them.”
Rain frowns. “If they’re not after you, who are they after?”
Ledge, Lost-the-Plot, Trolly, and Chunder exchange a curious back-and-forth look before Ledge turns back to us. “Well…you, actually. If you are what ya say you are.”
I get a chill as a creepy silence fills the eerie, blood-colored, and firelit chamber. With the four lead Banters in front of us and their team of archers behind us, I feel like my Conspiracy and I have just been put under a very hot spotlight.
We’ve only been in this lost and ruined city for a few hours, and this is the second time someone has told us we’re being hunted.
I’m opening my mouth to ask Ledge to explain more about what he means when Terk starts leaning against me.
I give him a little nudge back, thinking he’s offering me up a friendly shoulder-jostle, but he keeps leaning, and I’m forced to stumble to the side as he goes crashing down to the floor.
Startled, I drop to a knee next to my big friend as everyone else shoves forward to cluster above us.
Ledge leans over my shoulder. “What ‘appened to ‘im?”
“Fainting,” Lost-the-Plot cackles. “Not much of a Mergie power, that!”
“He didn’t faint,” I cry, looking up from Terk’s chalk-white face. I tug open and flip back one side of his brown robe to reveal the once glistening black disk on his back. It’s gone nearly as chalky and lifelessly white as Terk. “I think…I think he’s…”
Something inside won’t let me say the word, “Dying.”
“I think he’s…I think they’re out of power.”
18
Power Play
“They?” Ledge echoes.
Apparently deciding to come clean and without consulting the rest of us, Rain offers a full account of Terk and the Auditor.
So much for one of the two aces up our sleeve.
“They’re a symbiote,” Rain explains to Ledge who looks impressed and to Lost-the-Plot who looks drunk. “Terk is a Modified. That’s just a Typic or an Emergent with a bio-engineered system of mechanical integration—”
“We know what Modies are.”
“Okay. But Terk is…different.” Rain leans over Terk, her ear close to his nose to check on his breathing.
Cardyn suggests rolling him over onto his back, but Rain says it’s best to leave him on his side. Satisfied he’s alive and not struggling for air, she stands back up and takes a deep breath. “Terk is a Modified. That disk on his back, that’s the Auditor.”
Ledge scratches his head and kneels down across from me and Rain to get a better look. He pokes at the disk like he expects it to leap up and attack him. “Audito
r?”
“She’s a techno-consciousness,” Rain says into Ledge’s blank stare. “A type of artificial intelligence, only as much organic, neurologically anyway, as artificial. She’s a cyber-enhanced system of military-grade protocols drawn from a bio-tech interface Kress’s father manufactured from her mother’s neuro pathways.”
Now, Ledge’s face is a frowning, wrinkled mess of confusion. He glares at Rain, and it’s clear he’s not happy about her talking over his head like this.
Also apparently impatient with Rain’s technical explanation, Cardyn practically knees her aside and points down at Terk and then at the dying disk on his back. “He’s got machine parts. That disk holds a computer program called ‘the Auditor.’ Terk gets battery power from the Auditor. The Auditor gets to ‘live’ inside of Terk’s electronic parts.”
Ledge straightens up, his face relaxing into an ease of understanding. Trolly and Chunder also seem to brighten up, but Lost-the-Plot, whose eyes keep dancing and darting randomly around the room, steps forward so he’s nose to nose with Cardyn.
“Quit bein’ a barmy arse. Ain’t possible, that!”
“On the other ‘and, neither is this guy’s skin,” Ledge says, standing and pointing first to Brohn and then to me. “Or this one’s telepathy.”
“Telempathy,” I correct him under my breath, but then lower my eyes when he shoots me a nasty glare.
Stepping halfway between me and Ledge, Brohn explains the situation. “They’re similar to Kress and Render. Terk and the Auditor are connected. Only they’re even more tied up with each other. If one goes, so does the other one.”
The voice that comes from the Auditor’s disk is so shallow and quiet that, at first, I think I’m imagining it.
Still kneeling next to Terk, Rain puts her ear close to the once-black disk that’s now saturated with a milky swirl of fading light.
Rain’s eyes go wide as she leans back onto her knees. “She says twelve hours.”
“Twelve hours of what?” Brohn asks.
“Life.” Rain stands up and brushes her palms on her plaid skirt. “The Auditor runs on a small, self-modulating reactor. In a little less than twelve hours, it finishes cycling. After that, Terk’s body and the Auditor’s consciousness will break down together.” She snaps her fingers. “Like that.”
“So what do we do?” I ask.
“We need a power supply. The sooner, the better.”
Ledge steps back up to his throne and plops down in it, apparently deciding that this particular show’s over. “As you’ve probably noticed by now, power ain’t exactly easy to come by around ‘ere. Ya might want to say yer goodbyes now while ya can.”
Swinging around to face Ledge, Brohn’s eyes flash lightning. His voice rumbles thunder. “We are not going to stand here and let them die.”
“You’re welcome to sit,” Ledge yawns, making a grand show of covering his mouth with the back of his hand. “Death ‘appens here. Nothing ta get yer britches in a bunch about.”
“We need access to some kind of proper power source,” Rain snaps. “A mag-volter. A systems-charger. A piston dynamo. An amp-generator. Anything.”
Answering Rain’s urgency with his own apathy, Ledge crosses one leg over the other but doesn’t answer.
“Come on,” Cardyn pleads. “You have to have something around here. A nine-volt battery?”
“He’s right,” I insist. “There has to be something.”
Her orange dress swishing around her, Trolly steps around me and walks up to Ledge. Leaning over his shoulder, she whispers something in his ear.
“Okay,” he confesses, his eyes riveted on mine. “There’s power here. Plenty of power if ya got the power ta ‘ang onto it. But that ain’t us, Love.”
“Then who?”
Pointing in the general direction of the wall, Ledge says, “The R.F.K.”
“R.F.K.?”
“The Royal Fort Knights. The ones we told ya about what took over Buckingham Palace years ago. They’re the last ones left with power. And I don’t mean political or military power. Although they got that in spades, too. No. They’ve got a Compressed Quantum Alternator. Last one, we figure. The old royals buggered off with the rest. Wanna bring your mate back, you’re gonna need the Alternator. Want the Alternator, you’re gonna need ta get it from the Fort Knights. An’ tryin’ to get anything from them means gettin’ put paid to.”
“Put paid to?” Cardyn asks.
“Spent. Ended. Killed.”
“Oh.”
We don’t say it, but we all know about the type of alternator Ledge is talking about. We had a dead one in the Valta. No bigger than a coffeemaker, it used to sit in a small bunker of thick glass built into a smoothed-down part of the rock face not too far from the old cell tower. Before the drone attacks, that single little device powered the entire town. And pretty easily, from what we were told as children.
It actually became kind of a shrine back home. Our parents would tell us stories about how hard power was to come by before the Alternator and how good we had it now. Every winter, instead of visiting Santa, we were taken to see the Alternator, pulsing assorted pastel colors, in its special little temple in the side of the mountain.
“Wait,” I ask Ledge. “Can’t we just ask for these Fort Knights to share it?”
Ledge’s laugh is hearty and mocking. “That’s rich! Sure. We’ve tried ta negotiate for it. Tried ta bargain for a sharing arrangement. Royal Fort Knights refused every time. They’re the ones what drove out the last of the adults. While everyone else was trying ta stay alive, they moved into the palace and took over. They’re too nasty ta bargain with, too crazy ta deal with, and too dug in ta care.”
Brohn rubs his hand along his stubble-filled jaw. “The alternator is in Buckingham Palace?”
“It is.”
“And that’s the same place Kress saw a minute ago?”
Ledge flicks his thumb in the general direction of the palace. “Not more than an hour’s walk thataway. But you’ll never get in.”
Turning to Rain, Brohn asks how much time she thinks Terk has. “How much, exactly.”
“I can’t say. The cycle’s up in twelve hours. Probably less. The Auditor would know, but she’s as out of it now as Terk is. Manthy would be able to—”
“We have to work with what we have.”
Now, Ledge leans forward, and I can feel Trolly and Chunder and the other Banters in the room perk up at what’s developing into a potential minefield of drama and danger.
Brohn’s eyes light up as they skip from one of us to the other. “We’ve broken into bigger places before.”
Cardyn frowns and shakes his head. His jaw drops a little like he wants to say something, but no words come out.
“And into places with a lot better security, I’m sure,” Brohn continues. “Military level. Top-end ballistic weapons. Air-to-ground. Ground-to-air. You name it, right?”
“Yeah, but that was with Manthy’s help,” I whisper to Rain, but she shushes me as Brohn spins back around to face Ledge.
“You said you negotiated for this thing before?”
“Sure. Plenty. See where it’s got us.”
“So you know what it looks like? Where they keep it.”
“Sure. I guess. But they’ll never give it ta you, share it with ya, or barter with ya. And, again, there’s that pesky little problem: You’ll never get in.”
“And you’ll get killed for tryin’,” Lost-the-Plot chortles.
Rain steps forward to stand next to Brohn, her dark eyes riveted to Ledge’s. “But you’re sure it’s real. They have an actual, working Compressed Quantum Alternator?”
“They don’t use it ta help anyone but themselves, but yeah. They’ve got one. The city grid’s been down for years, but the Fort Knights’ve been livin’ it up in their palace under mag-volt and holo-lights ever since.”
“This is good,” Rain says to Brohn.
Cardyn leans over Rain, his chin practically resting on her sh
oulder. “Um…can you define ‘good’? You’re not thinking of breaking into Buckingham Palace and stealing this thing, are you? And then plugging it into Terk and hoping it revives him instead of fries him? And that we don’t get our heads chopped off six or seven times along the way?”
Rain turns and pats Cardyn on the cheek. “Card. You read my mind. We lost Terk once already. I’m not planning on letting him get away again.”
“We have to save him,” Brohn says. “There’s no choice and no options.” He steps up onto the platform and towers over Ledge, who is still sitting, seemingly amused as Brohn extends his hand. “We’ll take our weapons back now. If you don’t mind.”
Ledge stares at Brohn for what feels like way too long, and I’m about to risk breaking the silence with a cough, when Ledge relaxes back into his throne. He cackles a low, rumbling laugh from somewhere deep inside his chest.
Lost-the-Plot clomps up to stand between Brohn and Ledge. I’m sure Lost-the-Plot is just doing his job, trying to look menacing and protective, but I know Brohn could easily swat him halfway across the room and probably knock his wonky eyes straight in the process.
Ledge must know it, too, because he orders Lost-the-Plot to stand down before turning back to Brohn. “We been at war before with the Fort Knights. Best we ever got was a stalemate. It’s why we are where we are now. They run the city. We do the work. They leave us alone here in the ‘yde Park Settlement ta get by as best we can with what they give us. Any Roguers around, and we’re the first line of defense. Scroungers? We clear ‘em off. We farm. We build. We work the water purification system. We dig trenches. Clear rubble. Bury bodies. In return, the Royals let us live. It’s a bargain, really. Not sure we really want ta upset that balance. And ‘avin’ the four of you chargin’ in ta filch the thing upsets it.”
“There’s no alternative,” Brohn says with quiet firmness, his eyes darting back to land on Terk, who is lying unmoving on the floor. “Doing nothing isn’t on the table.”
“You got loyalty. I’ll give ya that. It’s been every man for himself around ‘ere for a long time.”
