by Kaleb Nation
Never before had I seen such in this man’s eyes.
And yet the calm, composed, ever-present emptiness on his face displayed none of this on the outside. I wanted to run across the space between us and bury the end of the Blade into his heart, knowing that it would be hardly an increment of the pain that he’d already caused me.
“You don’t want to do this.” Wyck’s voice was laced with warning. He held a hand out like he was calming a misbehaving child.
“I think I know what’s better for me than you do,” I said. Wyck just shook his head.
“But I counted on this happening,” he said. “That’s why I prepared myself to raise the stakes if needed.”
His eyes weren’t on me anymore. They were looking over my shoulder, head tilted up to see what was behind me. My first instinct told me that it was a distraction; that he wanted me to turn so that he could take me by surprise. I refused to, ready to run forward with the Blade.
But I heard footsteps, gentle and scratchy on the floor behind me. The sounds made me freeze. The feet stopped at the same time.
I grasped the bed with my free hand, rolling it back again so that I could see both Wyck and whoever had approached me. Wyck insisted that I look. Warily, I turned my head.
The two workers were standing there now. The woman had one of her arms up and around the shoulders of someone beside her in a neck lock, while the man held a pistol.
White gauze was taped over the girl’s eyes, arms down as the woman led her to stop a few feet away from me. The girl’s blonde hair was clustered on her forehead from the sweat of panic. She breathed in shallow, scared gasps, too afraid to lift her arms from her sides.
No, I thought.
No. No.
No.
Then the woman reached forward, and taking the two pieces of gauze by their edges, ripped them off the girl’s face abruptly. But I didn’t need to see her eyes or to hear her shout of pain to know who she was.
“Alli…” I whispered. She looked up at me, and all my plans of escape vanished.
23
To Be Human
Alli blinked at me as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.
“Michael!” she choked, but when she tried to run to me, the woman held her back with a steel-like grip, the man pressing the pistol even deeper into the top of her head. The woman showed no reaction as Alli kicked and screamed and beat her with fists. I slid a step in her direction only to see Wyck move out of the corner of my eye in response.
I jumped back again, slinging the Blade out to him in warning.
“Don’t move!” I roared, and he stopped in mid-step. Alli ceased her fighting, breathing heavily from her struggle and looking to me with wild eyes.
“They told me you were dead!” she screamed, her neck locked in the woman’s elbow. And all of a sudden, I realized why I’d never found Alli in the burning house.
I exploded with a mixture of so many emotions at once: a feeling that all was not lost after all, followed by a sinking terror when I saw the unaffected expression on the woman’s face, looking to Wyck for her next orders. I twisted to look at Wyck again, and in that motion, betrayed myself. His eyes filled with an eager vengeance—a merciless delight. He stood up straighter, brushing his bruised hands against the front of his now-ruined suit coat.
“So you’re defeated!” he burst with glee. He didn’t laugh any more than a small huff of enjoyment, reaching over to pull the heavy rack of screens upright again. Two of the screens had fallen off and their wires were ripped but the other three remained attached, with the faces of the Guardians behind them still struggling to see. It fell back into place with a crash, the camera wobbling forward to look at the room again.
“You’re one of us but you could easily be one of them,” he told me, as if finally enlightened to some truth that he’d been missing. The speakers that the people on the screens had used to communicate with us had been destroyed, so we could not hear their voices as their mouths moved. Morgan was yelling at Wyck but he didn’t see her. His claws twitched eagerly.
“You won’t leave this room,” he said. He was far too correct. If I moved for Wyck, the workers would kill Alli. If I moved for Alli, Wyck would slice Thad through the middle with a flick of his finger. Thad! I thought. If only I could get him awake, if I could somehow get the I/V from his arm… but Wyck was too close.
Wake up, Thad, I can’t do this alone…! I thought, but it was in vain. Thad’s eyes had slumped forward halfway, his body having given in to weakness.
“Just give me the Bl—” Wyck started.
CRASH.
The room was so large that when the noise interrupted no one could tell from which direction it had come. It was like the sound of a ball slamming into a window, then seconds later there came tiny, tinkling noises as glass rained down to the concrete and broke into bits.
All of us looked up at once. And there, diving down through the very skylight she had just smashed through, was Callista.
Beams of sunlight shone across the glimmers of falling glass like they were airborne diamonds. The silver of her claws spread majestically, frighteningly, like the attack of a bird as it swooped toward the ground.
She’d found me.
The two workers who held Alli turned their heads up. In the second it took for them to see Callista’s claws, their faces paled in a startled awe, looking like they were seeing a goddess soaring from the clouds. Their knees bent slightly, as if unsure whether they should fall to kneel, the pistol falling from Alli’s head and to the man’s side.
Callista hit the ground with a smash, two inches from them. Their heads followed her down, petrified as Callista threw both of her hands forward between them. With one sweeping part, she threw both of them aside, the pistol firing a string of pops into the air worthlessly: the arm holding it detached and flopping to the ground. Their bodies crashed against a wall and a table, slumping over.
“Michael!” Callista screamed at me, and her voice broke me from my reverie.
A string of explosions went off beside me. I’d seen the motion in the corner of my eyes and my hands moved at once. I felt the strikes but they were like punches thrown against thick padding, hands darting up and down and then back again to deflect the bullets. The armor held against them and I spun just in time to see Wyck falling from the air, heels aimed for my head.
I dove out of the way, the gun continuing to fire in rapid pops. Callista hadn’t been ready as Wyck landed in front of her, slamming the butt of the gun into the back of her leg. She fell backward in pain as Wyck calmly dropped the now-empty rifle, picking up the pistol from the ground and aiming it at Thad.
I moved to block the shot, but Wyck slung his claws around the other way, catching the edge of mine with his, causing them to clash like swords and become caught in each other. His other hand came around my side but I deflected his slash. Suddenly I was flipped around in a tall circle like a windmill, slamming down on the other side of Wyck. I hit the side of the machine feeding the I/V into Thad, breaking the tubes and sending the tall rack rolling.
I writhed, trying to pull myself back to my feet. Across the ground I could see Callista also crawling up, nudging the petrified Alli to encourage her to run. Wyck spotted her though, and I saw his shoes chasing after Alli as she tried to dive behind the truck for protection.
No! I groaned, my back feeling like it was broken in a hundred places, even my impenetrable scales feeling like they were cracked. But somehow I forced myself up, to crawl onto all fours and then to kneel. Alli screamed my name.
Wyck had gotten her. In one hand was the gun, under his arm was my sister. He stopped for only a second, looking from Thad to Callista and then to me all in one sweep. Seeing his motionless followers, he must have realized that he was far too outnumbered.
Se gritted his teeth and took off, crushing glass shards one moment and hovering in the air the next. He made a mad dash for the skylight with Alli still in his arms.
Hearing he
r screams brought me back. Wyck was not going to escape with her—I wasn’t going to lose her again. With my desperation as power, I pushed myself to my feet, ignoring the pain as I launched into the air after him, the Blade held between both my hands.
I yelled at him in challenge but he was far too smart to take me on, the wake of the air behind him threatening to knock me off course. But nothing could throw me off. Nothing would make me stop: not the weakness I felt behind my adrenaline, not the pain from being slammed into the ground. I only flew faster, pushing into it every ounce of power I had left.
Wyck dangled the gun behind him, shooting backward, but I easily dodged the wild bullets until he gave up. The roof grew closer and closer, and Wyck—burdened by the weight of Alli—neared the Blade I held outstretched like the tip of a missile.
All of a sudden, I was right behind him.
I slashed the Blade forward.
It caught Wyck by the back of his heel. The effect was instant. The claws that had been so dangerously close to Alli’s throat vanished into silver dust, raining back like powder onto my shirt. Wyck was no longer held aloft, and he tumbled through the air, slamming into one of the large metal supports that held the building up. The roof reverberated with a massive clang.
I dashed through the air to grab Alli from him but he was quicker, spinning over and pulling her into his lap, arm enclosing around her tightly with the pistol into her ear.
“Don’t move!” he shrieked, tipping back and forth with the reddened face and wild eyes of a madman. He dug the end of the pistol into her head so deeply that she cried out in pain, her voice muffled beneath his arm that was clamped over her mouth. He sweat wildly, not believing what had just happened even as the blood dripped from his heel and hit the floor far below us.
“We will kill all of the worthless eaters!” he said, spit flying as he screamed, the former cruelty in his voice now turned into a blistering rage. “We will harvest through every human until there isn’t a single weed left!”
He was barely able to keep his balance, unaccustomed to only having hands and legs. If he so much as twitched his finger, there’d be no time for me to reach Alli before the bullet hit her skull.
“You intend to be the bringer of the dawn?” he continued at me through his teeth, heaving breaths in and out. “So bring the dawn, then! Your planet’s dawn will fall only upon the corpses we leave behind.”
Wyck’s unbalanced swaying only made his lack of flight all the more obvious—I could see in his face that he’d been shattered inside. He’d been torn from his victory over me—he was on the brink of suicide, preferring death over what he’d become. He could shoot Alli and then himself and not even care.
Wyck winced in pain, fingers flaring out, and from his right hand slipped his red ring. He moved to catch it, but the ring fell out of his reach and struck the ground like a raindrop, bouncing across the concrete. Wyck’s jaw fell in anguish.
Through his startled cry, I saw a Glimpse.
Like I was swimming through murky water, I was forced to read past the emotions that first bubbled to his surface. I passed terror, sadness, insignificance, hope for his own death and also fear of what death meant.
But there was one other thing, one lingering revelation that I grasped onto.
“There are no bullets in that gun,” I read.
Wyck’s face jerked up to look at mine, barely breathing, his pale neck soaked with sweat. I was right. He was bluffing.
One push of power sent me hovering toward him but he reacted at the same time, pushing both Alli and the emptied pistol over the edge. I swept my arms out, grabbing her into mine as Wyck gave a gurgling, murderous scream, jumping to seize me in midair. But I was already floating backward, Alli wrapped in my arms, feeling such a rush of relief that it was as if Wyck didn’t even exist anymore.
He fell.
With no powers to hold him up anymore, Wyck was like a bag of grain, plummeting straight down, down, down, toward the rolling I/V unit that stood below us.
With a sickening crunch, the tall arm that had held the bag of sedative impaled him through his chest, silencing his cry at once. The momentum carried it to roll, where his body stopped in front of the camera and the television screens.
The Guardians on the monitors had been wildly speaking into telephones and unable to see most of the action. Their heads all snapped up at once. Their mouths stopped moving, eyes staring in horror. Morgan straightened like a rod. She looked away from the grotesque sight, as the other screens started to click off one by one.
I floated to the ground with Alli still clinging tightly to my neck, dropping her lightly then falling over to kneel, to breathe. Morgan saw me, and with widened eyes, she reached forward to switch her screen off.
Suddenly, the room was quiet again. I was too weak to lift my head, to see how many were still alive. So I counted the sounds of their breathing:
One.
Two.
Three.
And mine made four.
24
Arleta
There are some places in the world that time seems to have no hold over, like an immortal paradise gated away from ruin or corruption. Wars might have raged and secret battles might have been fought in its very midst, but Arleta continued to stand like a beacon to me, a lighthouse even in the glaring sun of midday.
My feet brushed against the familiar grass of my old backyard as my flight came to a stop. Tall weeds had popped up since the last time I’d mowed it—back when I’d lived there, not so long ago. There was no silence here, always a car struggling to start or a garage door rumbling open or a dog barking at passerby. All the sounds blended together like a song, like a soundtrack to my life. My former life.
As if to signal how far away my old life really was, the silver Blade in my hands caught the sunlight, its sheath glimmering into my eyes. I couldn’t bring myself to let it out of my sight—rarely even risking putting it down. I knew the Guardians were scrambling to regroup and would not attack, at least not now. Still, I held on to it tightly.
My heart pounded a little heavier. I stared across the yard at what remained of my house. With the sun’s rays glowing around its edges, my house stood in the form of three remaining walls leaning in on each other precariously, the wooden porch caved in on itself and brick pieces scattered all over. All the windows were busted and the back door was mangled in three pieces, our roof having crumbled into splintery boards. Yellow police tape waved around the parameter.
I drew closer, stepping lightly on the circular pieces of concrete that my mom had put out as decoration between the porch and her tomato garden. How are you feeling? I asked myself. I was puzzled by my reactions: calm, composed, not at all what I’d feared to see from myself on the flight back to this place. Perhaps in the days that had passed between Wyck’s death and our escape, I’d finally come to terms with how much my life had changed.
But now wasn’t the time to think about that. Now, I was standing in front of the broken door, peering in as the stubborn smell of smoke wafted into my nostrils, propelled by the ashes that flew in every gust of wind. The breeze whistled through the windows and the hole in the ceiling. Our old wallpaper and sheetrock was blackened in most places. Everything became eerily calm, in contrast to the blazing madness I’d faced the last time I’d been there.
I pressed on. What remained of the furniture was lit by the newly added skylight. The couches and chairs were tattered down to their springs and stuffing, pillows littering the floor and picture frames fallen from the walls. Our chimney had fallen through the hole in the ceiling and was sitting in the center of the living room television.
It was like walking through a mausoleum, everything around me already dead.
The pile of wood and sheetrock that had once covered my mom’s body was moved and gone. I figured that the city had already arranged for her burial. I tried to not look toward the last spot I’d seen her in. As my courage grew, I started to climb the stairs, cautious for any mo
ment that they might break. I inched my way around the holes on the balcony. Light streamed in through every opening in this shattered structure, appearing as golden beams against floating bits of black paper and cinders that my steps stirred up.
My bedroom door was ajar. Floorboards creaked under my shoes as my hands brushed down the wall and the still-embedded nails that’d once held up our framed family portraits. Was I ready for this? I’d been preparing myself for days. I pushed the door in.
It creaked with a familiar sound, coming to a stop when the handle hit the wall. I entered, holding on to my dresser for support as my shoes slipped against the mess of papers on the ground. I looked down and saw that I had stepped onto one of my faces, one of the photographs that had been my Great Work: a Glimpse from the Joy wall.
I let my eyes run along what remained: the desk that was broken through the middle. The plastic and metal camera lenses all in a great pile of ruin. The tall photo lights toppled and looking almost like a pair of dead praying mantises. My bed, its mattress struck through the middle by a ceiling beam with its downy filling drifting across the sheets.
And pictures. Dozens and dozens of photographs of faces on paper half burned and half remaining, still stuck to the walls like the friendly ghosts of my past. Some of them had half a face, others were missing their necks or scalps, but my old friends seemed to all look up at once, to grin or scowl or beam at me like they had for so many years.
They were ruined and disfigured, but they were still alive to me. It made me smile.
Suddenly, I spotted an object that had fallen beneath my bed, shielded under where the mattress and rail had broken. It was my tiny pocket camera. I had a habit of setting it beside my bed some nights, and somehow—by glorious chance—it had managed to hide from the fire and the police and everything else that had raged against this house.
I hurried to the bed and sat down on it as best I could, sweeping the camera up. Its outside was scratched but luckily the lens was retracted into the shell. I wiped soot off its surface with the fold of my shirt and reached for the power button. The camera gave a click and at first I thought it was dead, but then the lens whirred and popped out.
