by Isaac Hooke
Beside him, the judge and nearby guards lay unmoving, bodies mangled and broken. The executioner himself was still standing, torso nailed gurgling to the judge's desk by the guillotine blade. Hoodwink felt no regret for these. They were gols. Not real people like the spectators.
The guards at the back of the courthouse were forcing their way forward through the mayhem. Hoodwink tried to draw more lightning, but couldn't. He was so out of practice, he'd mistakenly used all his charge in that opening gambit. It would be hours, maybe days, before he fully recharged.
He snatched up the executioner's blunt-tipped sword and made for the back door by the judge's desk, the same door they'd carried the guillotine in from. His limp had worsened—a wooden shard protruded from his leg, adding to the pain of his previously twisted ankle.
Hoodwink reached the door, but one of the guards now blocked his path. The very same collared guard who'd helped secure Hoodwink to the guillotine.
Before Hoodwink even raise his sword, the man stepped aside. "Be free."
Hoodwink passed the human guard warily, and threw his weight into the door.
He burst into the snowstorm.
The sudden cold took him aback, but he forced himself onward. The frigid gale blinded him, and brought tears to his eyes. He hardly recognized this for a city street. He could see maybe ten paces, no more. Snow drifts had buried everything, leaving only a blurry landscape of white mounds.
He had to find shelter, and soon. The wind clawed right through his orange robe.
His limp actually got better out there. The cold numbed the pain, just as it numbed everything else. But he advanced no faster, because the snow swallowed his legs to the thighs.
He heard shouts behind him as guards emerged from the courthouse. Hoodwink ducked down an alleyway, visible as such only because of the concave notch the drifts made between houses, and waded through the snow.
He reached the alley's edge and peered from it. Through the whirling snow he saw the spectators fleeing from the front of the courthouse. Good.
He hid the sword in his robes and joined the crowd, just another spectator injured in what the criers would undoubtedly call a terrorist attack. He raised the collar of his shirt, pretending to shield himself from the cold wind, when in reality he was more concerned about hiding his lack of collar.
He had to get rid of these jail-issue robes, or hide them. He stared at the ermineskin cloak of the seemingly well-off woman just ahead. But she had a bloody arm. Hadn't he done her enough damage?
He risked a backward glance. The guards had emerged from the alleyway, and were scanning the crowd through the snowstorm. One of them met his eye, and gave a shout.
Hoodwink cursed his luck, and shoved his way through the crowd, limping as fast as he was able.
"This way!" An old man grabbed his hand and led him off to the side. "I have a shard! For your leg!"
Did his wound look that bad? He let the old man lead him through the blowing snow. He could feel the electricity seeping back, fanning that spark deep in his mind. But it was a gradual seeping. Too gradual. A snail crossed a city street faster. It'd be another day, maybe two, before he returned to full strength.
He glanced over his shoulder. The wind whipped that veil of falling snow aside, and he caught a glimpse of the guards. They were closing the gap, and fast. Worse, more had joined the chase from a nearby barracks.
The crowd thinned, and soon the only thing between the guards and Hoodwink were the snowdrifts, and the blizzard. He pushed on, limping for all he was worth, but it was useless. The crunch of those boots kept getting louder.
He gave up.
"Leave me, old man." Hoodwink pushed the old man away and turned to face his pursuers. He tried to tap into his powers, but he couldn't even muster a spark.
It looked like the entire city guard had joined in the chase. The street was full of them, four ranks thick. Most were gol, but there were a few collared among them. Every sword was drawn.
Beside him, the old man fainted.
Hoodwink raised his palms in surrender, wondering if they'd execute him on the spot.
CHAPTER FOUR
Hoodwink wondered how his epitaph would read. "Escaped User terrorist. Tried to destroy the Forever Gate. Spit on him."
The guards slowed as they neared, perhaps suspecting a trap.
Hoodwink smiled, standing there on that street where he'd probably die. "Well hello. It's my favorite friends. I've saved a surprise for you." Well, might as well play up their suspicions.
The closest guard—their leader?—was a gol with nasty cuts on both eyeballs. The broken guillotine had mangled up his face pretty good. No man could function with a face like that, not without some serious healing. But this was a gol, not a man, he had to remind himself.
The guard stopped a full three paces away, and lifted a hand to halt the others behind him. The snow whirled between Hoodwink and the gol as the storm raged on.
"What's wrong Bleeding Eyes," Hoodwink said into the silence that followed this unexpected standoff. "Case of the willies?" In answer came only the howl of the wind.
The gol, and those behind him, weren't even looking at Hoodwink's face, but rather at the ground beside him. The old man?
When he glanced down, he noticed a glow spilled from his leg, around the wooden shard embedded in his calf. The light seem sourced from the drops of blood that trickled into the snow.
Drops of blood that glowed blue.
He bit down a sudden terror. It meant nothing. Didn't it? But he'd accessed powers he hadn't used in ages. Forbidden powers. Maybe the gols collared them for good reason. Maybe he was about to die. Maybe—
No. He could use this. He would die anyway if he didn't. If he showed fear.
He looked at the men again, and saw the uncertainty written on those faces. Not quite fright. No, you couldn't frighten gols. But indecision, yes.
"You know what this means, don't ya?" Hoodwink took a menacing step forward. "I'll give the whole lot of you five seconds before I explode my own body. You think the guillotine was something? Just wait till you're all reduced to cinders." That wasn't possible, of course. Especially not now, given how low his charge was. But the gols couldn't know. Nor even the human guards among them. Who could say what a murderous uncollared adult could do? They'd certainly heard the same stories as him. Stories about uncollared teens ripping men apart with a look. Maybe they'd even faced some of those teens. "Five seconds. Drop your swords and run. I'm fully charged, baby. Five."
"Four."
"Three."
"Two."
They ran. All it took was Bleeding Eyes turning his tail and the rest of them broke ranks. It was a complete route. Some slipped in their terror to be away from there, and they fell into the drifts. But they always got up again, with a frantic look back, beards covered in snow, and ran faster than ever.
In moments the street was empty, save for the snow the blizzard whipped into his face, and the old man beside him.
The man slapped his hands together and clambered to his feet. Apparently he hadn't fainted after all. "Well! Couldn't have done it better myself! Never seen anyone beat the guillotine before, nor outwit the guards quite so easily. You're really something, aren't you? Course, the guards haven't been themselves lately, as we all know. The gol ones, anyway."
Hoodwink barely heard. He stared at him blankly for a few seconds, and then collapsed.
The old man helped him to his feet, and braced him with one shoulder. An old man was holding him up. The irony wasn't lost on him, but Hoodwink felt too drained to protest. The loss of blood was getting to him. He felt numb all over, but mostly in the hands and feet.
"I'm gonna die," Hoodwink said.
The old man dragged him through the snow. "You'll be fine lad."
"My blood is glowing. Glowing."
The old man smiled indulgently, revealing a mouth as toothless as a street brawler's. Old age will do that to you, Hoodwink supposed. "I know a little something ab
out the power you wield lad." The old man raised a hand. Electricity sparked from his fingertips.
"Impossible," Hoodwink said. The man wore a collar.
The old man winked at him. "As I said, you'll be fine." He touched a finger to Hoodwink's exposed palm, and a surge of energy passed between them. Hoodwink felt a little refreshed. Enough to walk, anyway.
The old man led Hoodwink through the snowstorm. The evening was late, and it was quickly growing dark. Hoodwink hardly noticed as the moments passed in a blur of weariness.
Finally the old man paused before a flimsy door set into a shack three times larger than it's neighbors. The snow piled up past the roof, and it was only through the diligent shoveling of whoever lived here that the door was even accessible. Hoodwink wasn't sure exactly where he was. He'd scarcely paid attention during the journey.
"Helluva storm," the old man said as he shut the door behind them. He had to throw his weight into the wood to get the thing to close completely. "The prophets promised it would be an age of ice. Damn them for being right."
Hoodwink stood hunched in a cozy lobby. He was immediately attracted to the fireplace with its set of four ladderback chairs, where he plunked himself down. He was too weak to warm his hands over the coals, and he surveyed the room through half-closed lids. The windows were all frosted up, of course. An unmanned service desk lay near the fireplace. On the other side, the room opened into a hallway where the rooms were numbered.
"What is—" Hoodwink said, fighting off the sleep. "Where are—"
"Just a simple inn, laddy." The old man grabbed a poker from beside the fireplace and stoked the flames. "Let me apply the shard." He ripped open the hem of Hoodwink's jail-issue robe, and slid the boot off. The pain woke Hoodwink up. "Name's Alan. Alan Dooran. Friend's call me Al."
Hoodwink glanced down to see a gory scene that nearly made him vomit. It hadn't looked so bad before, with the robe covering it, but now? A black fragment—bone—protruded from the front of his calf alongside the wooden shard, and the entire area had swollen the size of a melon. Blue blood drenched the entire lower leg. The blood had stopped dripping, at least.
"Got yourself a nice piece of wood in your leg." Al grasped the wooden fragment and set his own foot on the top of Hoodwink's toes. "Better grip yourself tight."
Al pulled.
Hoodwink struggled to stay in the chair as fresh spurts of pain flared in his calf. He groaned with the sheer agony of it, and when the wood broke free in a fountain of gore he actually cried with relief. Cried tears of joy.
The blood gushed from him in blue spurts.
"Looks like it hit a major artery." Al reached for the poker, and applied the sizzling end to Hoodwink's calf.
The agony brought stars to his vision, and Hoodwink felt his hold on consciousness grow tenuous.
He was barely aware as Al reached into his cloak and pulled out a crystalline creature that resembled a starfish.
The shard.
Al applied the creature to Hoodwink's calf. This thing, the shard, felt extremely cold against the hot pain of the wound, and Hoodwink gasped. The creature began melting into Hoodwink's skin, and as it did so the melon-sized lump shrunk until both wound and creature were gone.
Hoodwink blinked away the nausea, and bent over to examine the wound. Not a trace of the injury remained. Even his twisted ankle had been healed—he could revolve the foot without pain.
"Careful," Al said. "You've lost a lot of blood."
Hoodwink stared at the blue puddle on the floor. "Why is it blue?" Hoodwink shouldn't have spoken. He felt a wave of nausea, and sat himself back in the chair. It was like he'd just run a marathon. His face was flushed, and he was panting.
"Your blood'll be red again soon enough," Al said. "When you've got a bit of a charge back."
"Always wondered how those shards worked." Hoodwink said, still panting. He shook his head, tried to clear his mind. His fingers had begun to burn, now that they were thawing out. His toes fared just as badly. He glanced at Al. "You're a User."
Al smiled indulgently. "We're all Users. Except for the gols."
Hoodwink's gaze fell to the man's neck. "But you're collared."
That smile widened. "Obviously ain't a real bronze bitch. Have to wear something, to keep the gols at bay."
"Why did you save me, old man?"
Al straightened, as if offended. "The same reason I'd save any other innocent human being, of course. Because it's the right thing to do. And I ain't so old. Thirty-four, by my reckoning. Younger than you."
He looked closer to eighty-four, but Hoodwink didn't comment. Something else Al said had caught his attention. "You called me innocent."
"Let me show you something." Al hoisted him to his feet, and helped him across the lobby and into the frigid hallway, where the candles burned low. Those carpets were grungy, the walls smeared in fingerprints. The rooms started at 2000, and increased sequentially. 2001. 2002. 2007. 2012. Al stopped beside the one labeled 2013.
Al lifted an eyebrow. "Ready?"
Hoodwink smiled. "No. But you're going to make me go inside anyway."
Al returned the smile. "Not so dumb after all."
He opened the door. Seven people were seated on ladderbacks in a circle, hands folded in their laps. They all turned their heads toward the doorway.
"Welcome to the secret society of the Users," Al said.
But Hoodwink hardly heard.
She was here.
CHAPTER FIVE
Hoodwink quickly slid a balancing palm against the doorframe. It was all he could do to hold himself up.
There she was, the woman he'd given up everything for.
She regarded him uncertainly. "You."
He shoved the old man away, and lunged forward, step, by step, his hands clawing at the air for balance.
And when he reached her, he fell to his knees, and covered his face.
Al came up beside him. "You know her?"
Hoodwink didn't look up. "Of course I know her. She's my daughter."
He felt hesitant fingers rest on his head. Hers. "I'd wondered who my real father was," she said.
"Yolinda." He looked up at her, and he couldn't help the tears.
"I'm Ari now," she said, and she held his palm in hers. She looked older than he remembered her. Much older. It had only been six months, but she seemed to have aged at least ten years.
"Is this the man who interrupted you?" The rasping voice came from somewhere else in the circle.
"It is," Ari said.
Hoodwink looked from her, not caring who saw the emotion written all over his face, and he let his gaze pass from person to person.
So these were the legendary Users, those who had broken free of their collars and defied the gols. They looked ordinary enough. Unlike his daughter, they were all old, well into their eighties and nineties.
Al lifted Hoodwink into an empty chair beside his daughter, and pulled another chair up beside him.
"This is Hoodwink Cooper, everyone," Al said.
"Why did you interfere?" That rasping voice again. It belonged to an old barrel of a man with a pinched face that would've put the performers of the macabre circus to shame. He had intelligent eyes though, and spoke confidently.
"That's Marx by the way," Al said. "Though we call him Karl sometimes. Karl Blacksmith."
"I don't smith no more," Marx said. "Now answer the question."
Al whispered in his ear. "He's our torturer."
"She's my daughter, she is," Hoodwink said. "And I've passed her on the way to work every day since the gols revised her. Every day, hoping she'd remember me. But she never returned my gaze, not once. Until this morning. She was so scared. I thought it was her husband Jeremy. Thought the scum was up to something again. So I followed her, I did. Watched as she waited by the Forever Gate. Watched as she dropped her satchel in the snow by the wall. I didn't know she was waiting for the street to clear. I didn't know she did it on purpose. I didn't know it was a bomb.
"There were only gol casualties." Ari met his eye steadily. The old Yolinda wouldn't have done that. Met his eye, that is. She would've stared at the floor rather than face the full intensity of his wrath, or in this case, his disappointment.
"Jeremy's powerful, I'll give him that," Marx said. "But no, Jeremy didn't order the bomb. The man's the mayor. He suckles the teat of the gols. He wouldn't dare risk something like this. No. We ordered Ari to place the bomb."
"You." Hoodwink spoke the word tonelessly. He glanced at Ari. "How did you get mixed up with these Users?"
It was Marx who answered. "When Mayor Jeremy had her revised by the gols, we sought her out. Her connections gave us access to the raw materials we needed to make the bomb."
"I for one didn't know she was revised." This from an old lady dressed in quilts who could have been Hoodwink's grandma. She held two knitting needles, with a spool of yarn settled in her lap. She seemed to be knitting the very same quilt that she wore.
"That's because you never pay attention at the meetings," Al said. "Ari refused to marry the mayor. So Jeremy had the gols revise her personality."
"You poor dear." The old lady's eyebrows drooped. "Did it hurt?"
Ari smiled stiffly. "I don't remember."
"That's Vax by the way," Al said, nodding at the quilt lady. "You'll like her. Used to be a man."
The old lady sniffed, and returned to her knitting.
Hoodwink pressed his lips together. "Jeremy should have had me revised too. Should've made me forget I ever had a daughter. Spared me the pain."
Ari rested a hand in his. He wanted to shake it off, but she was his daughter. At least, she used to be. Even if she didn't remember.
