by Kaleb Nation
“What do I do?” I asked him.
“Nothing,” he said. “You do nothing.”
“But what about Callista and Thad?” I said. “And the Blade?”
“The Guardians have it now,” he replied. “There’s nothing you can do.”
He shoved his gloved hands into his pockets. “It’s over, Mr. Asher. It’s time for you to let this go.”
“But where do I go?” I couldn’t get my voice much higher than a whisper. What little I’d built up from the ashes of my lost life was now crashing around me again, like it’d been made of sand all along. I didn’t have anywhere to run even if I wanted to.
“It doesn’t matter,” Anon said, now with pale, bald skin again. “I can’t risk helping you anymore.”
He gave the already-destroyed phone a final crunch under his boot. “They won’t find you for a while. Stay away from phones and don’t check your email. Use the cash.”
As he said this, he was already starting to turn away from me. But his departure was all too soon. I still had no answers, no direction.
“I—I can’t do anything?” I said, desperate to hear something from him. If he was giving up on me, I knew I didn’t have any hope. I was like a ship approaching a harbor without a lighthouse, a pilot with no ground control.
He shrugged with a reluctant surrender.
“You can die,” he said, empty of any malice but still edged with ice. It was spoken just as simply as he might have told me the time.
“Come back in seventeen years,” he told me. “You’ll have a better chance then. I’ll be waiting.”
And with that, Anon pushed from the ground with the tips of his shoes and was carried over the trees.
He disappeared from view. I was left in the hush of the park. Empty. Alone.
* * *
I found a park bench, and sat.
Early morning walkers strolled by, but didn’t acknowledge me.
Pigeons fluttered down to the grass around my feet as if I wasn’t even there.
I was a statue bent over with my head resting in my palm, as the sun rose like a golden coin and threw my ever-shrinking shadow across the dewy grass.
A fountain trickled nearby, water splashing in a static noise.
A driver slammed on the brakes, tires squealing against pavement.
I lifted my hand to stare at it. What have I become? I thought.
With no one around—not that I truly cared anymore—I allowed my scales to slide out from under my skin, each poking forth slowly before overlapping with those beneath. They were like tiny panels, mirroring slightly so that I could see a misty reflection of my face, as if my hand was a shattered mirror. Would seeing those scales enmeshed with my own skin ever become natural? Would they ever allow me to go back to just being Michael Asher again?
My eyes shifted and I saw the only answer I needed in the irremovable silver ring around my finger. Even the birthmark I’d had all my life had been blotted away by a new one.
Such a fitting metaphor for who I was now. The old Michael had transformed. The snake had shed its skin for a new one.
But not entirely, I countered. Most of my real skin still remained just as most of my identity did. But I couldn’t deny it: enough of me had changed. My old life had withered away and fallen off just as my birthmark had. I was bound like a slave to this ring: a slave to the silver. This was my reality now.
* * *
As time wore on and the brightness of day began to shine against my face, I managed to lift myself from the bench and take to the air again. I could have turned in any direction and it would have been just as good as any other, because there was no real destination anymore. I didn’t have a family to rush and save. I didn’t have a Blade to go hunting for, or a letter from Anon to track down, or anything left at all for that matter.
But habits had a strange way of working in me, so I chose to fly toward the cliff where our trio had taken refuge so many times. To my surprise, as I neared it, my eyes caught the form of someone who’d already gotten there before me. I saw her hair flying from the heavy wind: Callista! I swooped down and landed hard on my feet.
“You made it!” I gasped, dashing over to her in disbelief. She dropped the sleeping bag and ran for me too, standing on the ends of her toes so I could wrap my arms around her. I crushed her to me so tightly that she was lifted from her feet, and I didn’t even try to hold back my tears of relief as they dried against the shoulder of her shirt.
“I thought for sure you were caught,” I said, still not letting her free. It wasn’t like I’d be able to, anyway—her arms were wrapped around my neck just as tightly.
“I knew you were alive or else I wouldn’t be here,” she said, voice muffled. But she was gasping small sounds of relief with tears at the same time. We both trembled, the terror of the ambush still racing through us. Her arms were scraped from the scuffle in the crypt, both of us covered with gashes that showed through lines of dried blood. But at least having her there made things better in a tiny increment.
Something was missing, though. I let her slide down to her feet, holding her by the sides of her arms, glancing around the precipice in case I was mistaken.
“Thad?” I said, not wanting to hear the answer. I felt Callista’s arms loosen.
“I—I saw him…taken away.” She had to force herself to say it. I wanted to disbelieve her but a single look at her face told me how certain she was. Her eyes were bloodshot, cheeks red and lower lip shaking.
My hands dropped from her sides. Not Thad.
She looked like she wanted to say something else but instead she turned and went back to the work she’d been doing. Two of the black sleeping bags were sitting near the end of the cliff, and she seized one of them and ripped it apart, shaking the stuffing out over the edge before tossing the material away. She continued with this on the other, as I sank to lean against the rocky wall. Not Thad. We needed Thad. He should have been there trying to regroup us, trying to convince Callista and I that things weren’t nearly as bad as they looked. How could he have been left behind? He was the strongest of all of us!
I guess I knew the answer to that. After all, he was Thad. He probably tried to take on our attackers at once so we could get away. It was just the type selfless thing Thad would do without hesitating.
Callista tossed the last sleeping bag over the edge, a strong wind sending the stuffing whirling like snow, the last of any evidence we’d been there. The air hit us in gusts like a storm was approaching, sending waves through my hair as I sat in the corner. Callista walked over to join me and we pressed close beside each other.
When the quiet became too heavy, she slid her hand across the distance to touch mine. I grasped hers like it could keep me from being swept away. We became each other’s anchor.
“What will they do to him?” I asked her.
“They’ll want the box opened,” she told me. “They’ll do things to him until he tells them where you are.”
I looked down, feeling my heart sink.
“If he dies before I do,” I asked, “what happens?”
Silence. Her breathing was sporadic, heavy, labored.
“He’ll be gone,” she said. “If one of your Chosens dies before you, they don’t come back the next time. Wyck made sure we knew…one of us was always dispensable.”
Her hand quivered in mine. I couldn’t lift my eyes from the expanse of rock around my feet, the grass that brushed up and down my leg like fingers.
“You know he won’t give us up,” I said, choking. “He’d die before.”
And at that, Callista’s tears began to fall. She leaned over and laid her head against my shoulder, and I held her up as best I could, a tiny cry escaping before she forced it back down. I couldn’t bring myself to wrap my other arm around her because I was just as heartbroken as she was.
“I’m sorry,” she said into my shoulder. “I did all this.”
She sounded so guilty—more than she should have. I wanted to cou
nter her remorse, to say that she’d had no choice at all: that really, this was on my conscience, that I was to blame for all our lives being lost. But there was something different than that behind her voice, something that went much deeper than her hurt. She sniffed and tried to regain control of herself but only ended up pushing from me, wiping her eyes with her wrist.
“There’s stuff you don’t know,” she said. “I didn’t tell you and Thad because I knew you’d hate me. But all of this is my fault.”
“Why would we hate you?” I said in disbelief. My first meeting with Callista had been after she’d taken down a plane to keep me safe. Of all of us, she’d been the safest, done the most planning, held Thad and I back when we were going to do something stupid. What could she possibly be talking about—hating her? That was impossible.
She shook her head.
“I—I was caught by the Guardians before you or Thad,” she blurted. “I didn’t know what was going on. They just…they just killed my whole family.”
Her shoulders slumped even further. “And I couldn’t take it. So I just told them where you and Thad were. That’s how they found you in the first place. I told them.”
The guilt she’d been feeling and hiding all this time was finally out in the open, but it burned like a splinter being drawn from a deep wound. What was I supposed to say? I wanted to comfort her, to tell her that it was alright, that she’d just made a mistake, that it wasn’t that bad after all. But to say those things would have been an insult to everything we’d lost. That it was alright that Thad had lost Sophia, that I had lost my family, that we had lost the Blade, and now that we’d lost our friend.
So I said nothing. She said nothing. The silence meshed with our grief, with Callista’s guilt, with my failure. We were empty, hollow, and futureless.
“Kiss me,” Callista said suddenly. She hadn’t turned, hadn’t looked at me, just continued to stare ahead at the edge far away through her glassy eyes. I didn’t move.
“Please,” she said, voice cracking. “Make me feel happy again.”
So I turned and kissed her.
All at once, every other thought and fear and melancholy misery that had been around me vanished. She moved closer, leaning in so that the back of my head was pushed against the heavy stone, my hands sliding to keep myself supported, hers running through my hair. She moved my lips for me, and my conscious mind—whatever part of it still existed—was swept away.
Everything around us—the net of trees, the tornado of wind, and the people who wanted us dead—disappeared. I could feel her warmth radiating against my skin. This was what I’d wanted without knowing. This was the dream I’d wished I could have had all those nights ago, when instead I’d been fed nightmares about Callista instead.
It crushed the pain out of me like there was no room for the both of them. Callista or the sadness. Callista or the horrors. I chose Callista.
She breathed sharply, her hair a canopy over my face as she leaned over me on an incline, blocking everything out save for her now-opened eyes. It was a rare second when both of our gazes met, when I was able to stare into hers without feeling like we should have been running, or planning, or saving someone else. For a moment, it was just us. I couldn’t have said my own name if someone had asked.
Callista pulled away.
Tears had come up in the edges of her eyes again, running down her face. She looked at me, and then her face fell with regret, with shame, with absolute remorse.
“I’m sorry,” she said, pushing away from me, curling back into her ball.
“No,” I whispered without meaning to say it aloud, my tone hoarse from having not spoken in so long. She shook her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I shouldn’t have done that. It was selfish. I broke our promise.”
How could she think that I even cared about the stupid promise anymore? I shook my head. I wanted to tell her all the things that I’d been wanting to say. With her, I had someone else. With her, I had something left to live for that before, I hadn’t even realized was worth it.
I just couldn’t say any of the things I wanted to. Her kiss had taken all my words.
She wiped her eyes. “I didn’t mean that. I just did it to make me feel better.”
Her tears had stopped. She was hardening again. So I sat on one side of her wall and she sat building and mortaring it on the other, until we were safely separated again. Merely allies. I pushed my legs in front of me and took a deep breath.
“You know I have to go back for Thad,” I said.
She drew a breath sharply: the reaction I’d expected but hoped to not hear.
“That’s suicide,” she said callously.
“I know,” I replied. “But Thad already did the same for me. Twice.”
It didn’t seem to make a difference to her. She pushed her teeth together, squeezing herself even tighter. My mind was already made up though. To leave Thad behind would mean that I was unfaithful, a coward, a failure—to be everything that Anon believed of me.
The end wasn’t a fear of mine anymore. I could live with dying.
Even though I hoped she would, Callista never relented. So with no other choice, I stood.
She lashed out, scaled hands catching me like a net and slinging me back into the corner. The rocks bruised the skin against my spine painfully but I sprang back. In the next second I was standing across from Callista, claws out, facing her as she growled at me viciously.
“You’re not leaving!” she shouted, ready to knock me again if I tried. I tested her with a mad dash in the other direction, only to have her claws slice through the air in front of me, slamming so hard into the stones that they tore deep chips away. My hand flew up to push hers out of my way. My fist was met with the back of her hand, scales colliding so powerfully that I was thrown off my feet.
“I have to go!” I yelled just as loudly. “You want me to leave Thad to them? You know what they’ll do!”
“If you go, everything he’s done will be worth nothing,” she told me, sliding to corner me again, spreading her fingers and claws menacingly.
“So you want me to leave him there?” I said. “You’re just giving up on him?”
“He wouldn’t want you to save him!” she said in a near scream. I jumped into the air, trying to rise over the rocky wall only to find that she was faster, raising to bat me back down again. I crashed to the ground, instinctively swinging to catch my claws against hers. They clashed and I tried to push her over, but she managed to shove back against me with a matching strength. I was caught off guard and fell again, her blades slipping down and slicing the unprotected inside of my hand before she could stop herself.
She tumbled to the side but was back up instantly, gritting her teeth.
“You can’t die,” she said, sobbing again through her fury. “I was weak before, but I can’t be now. I can’t let you die.”
I bent over, out of breath. I was bleeding from my hand. I looked up to her and saw that her face was covered in alarm at the blood she’d drawn, her claws pulling back quickly.
“You’d rather let him die instead?” I said through my teeth. I wiped my hands down my jeans, trying to clear them of the red, to wipe away the sting.
“You’re the only hope left,” she begged me. “You can’t. You have to let him go.”
“I won’t,” I said with resolve. “You can’t keep me here. I won’t let him die alone.”
Finally, she broke down. She spun, throwing her hands down so that the end of the cliff was open in front of me.
“Fine!” she shouted. “Go, if you want. But I’m not going to die fighting again. I’ll just die here when you do.”
She backed away, gesturing toward the open edge in bitter insistence. The whole of the San Fernando Valley spread beyond her, painted over by the sun’s rays, calling to me to go out. My urge to fight her vanished the moment she gave up. I could see behind her insistence was a longing to hold me back—a duty, even, because she knew exa
ctly what would happen to me when I left.
I knew what I would face. It took all of my strength to tear myself from against the rocky wall, to walk past Callista who still remained hopeful that I would change my mind. I got to the edge and stopped.
Callista stayed behind me, refusing to follow.
“Will you look for me in our next life again?” I asked her. I should have wished she wouldn’t, that somehow she could be disconnected from me so in our next life she could live as a human and never face any of this again. But I didn’t want to leave her. Deep inside, I hoped that if I died, she would be there again in seventeen years, and somehow we would rediscover everything again, and pick up where we left off.
She didn’t say anything back. Maybe she had finally hardened her heart enough to be strong, to keep our promise. So without another word, I pushed myself from the cliff and left to save my friend.
22
Danger To Society
When you are a seventeen-year-old suspected terrorist, there is no shortage of ways to get yourself caught. If I’d wanted fanfare, I could have walked in to a TV news studio and announced my presence, to allow the cameras enough time to grab their startled close-ups before the police arrived. If I wanted to perpetuate the dangerous image they’d already created for me, then I could have walked through the park in the daylight, acting suspicious until someone finally recognized me and a special team was dispatched with helicopters lest I escape. They were all very good options, and I thought hard over my choices as I flew over the city.
In the end, though, I went with the simplest and most boring. I walked in to the first police station I spotted and told the uniformed woman at the counter that I was Michael Asher. At first, she didn’t seem to believe me, telephone resting an inch from her ear, the person on the other side still babbling away. One quick glance of her eyes matched my face to the one on the wanted poster already pasted to the wall beside her.
