The Brilliant Dark

by S. M. Beiko

  The cold lance of glass became a bomb detonating inside Saskia. “The Owl Unit?”

  Mi-ja patted Saskia on the arm again. “Don’t worry. You’re not on trial. If you’re not deemed fit, you won’t be arrested again — just sent home. But it is the most efficient way, and quite painless. The Owls under our jurisdiction have a lot of restrictions on their power usage, so you needn’t worry about your mind being tampered with.”

  Yeah. Nothing to worry about. Just, like, my very real plans of sedition. “Better than being microchipped, I guess,” Saskia couldn’t help but blurt, nails digging into her palms. Mi-ja narrowed her eyes but didn’t ask.

  Coming down from the other end of the hall was a procession of even more teenaged would-be soldiers. Just how many new recruits have been signing up, lately? Saskia thought, counting twelve in the double lines coming towards her. Maybe the Darkling Moon had Mundanes scared. Maybe that was enough to convince everyone something bad was going to happen and anyone had the power to stop it.

  Isn’t that what I’m here to do? The answer didn’t come, though, because picked out from the second line was a familiar face that Saskia couldn’t hide from: Cam.

  His eyes widened when he saw her, mouth slightly parted, but then he clamped it shut and stared straight ahead. When they got close enough to pass each other, his face broke into an excited smile Saskia couldn’t help but return, despite the circumstances.

  Weirdo, she thought at him, but then suddenly Mi-ja stopped walking.

  “Through here,” she said, and the doors split open with an unsettling pneumatic hiss. Saskia’s smile dropped off her face like dead skin.

  The room on the other side of the doors was bathed in complete, blank white. The lights were recessed in such a way that Saskia couldn’t tell, exactly, where they were. Medical instruments and blank monitors were flush against the walls, small retractable tables set up at intervals along the room’s edges. She was surprised to feel her fingers itching to turn those monitors on, see how they worked.

  Sitting with his back to the room was a man in a black suit, a stark contrast to the ETG standard issue uniform. When he turned to face her, Saskia felt for a moment that she recognized something in the sharp creases of age at the brow, the angular jaw.

  Mi-ja led Saskia inside towards a chair opposite the man. He adjusted his tie, and Saskia noticed the Owl Unit insignia on the breast of his blazer — the set of white wings, but in the centre of it, that same gold cross she was starting to get tired of seeing. The chancellor really wasn’t taking any chances with her.

  “Saskia, this is Solomon. He will be performing your assessment today.”

  Saskia stared at him, still feeling that familiar twinge. The man stared back through light eyes framed by well-kept grey hair, giving him the impression of a faded lion. The corners of his eyes creased and Saskia lifted her outstretched hand.

  “Miss Das,” Solomon said regally, the corner of his mouth twitching as he shook it. “A pleasure.”

  She let his hand go and worked very hard not to wipe it on her pants. His accent was strange, like maybe it once had been British, but had been beaten into all flat vowels and carefully enunciated consonants. A pretender recognizing a peer.

  Mi-ja motioned to the empty chair, and Saskia lowered herself onto it. It dug into the backs of her legs and was set so she was eye level with Solomon. He had bent himself slightly away from her to fiddle with an instrument on a tray, a slender crown of metal with a read-out receiver, likely wireless, blinking beneath its surface. Solomon lifted it to his eye, squinting between it and a panel set into the table.

  “That should do it,” he said, more to himself than Saskia. She glanced at Mi-ja, who was hovering at a console near the back of the room, tapping something into the tablet she’d been carrying with her. Behind her, the wall was dark. Saskia imagined, for a moment, that the chancellor was standing behind that unreadable wall, watching her. It was absolutely likely. She stared at it, counting to five. She saw only her reflection but still felt strengthened by the small act of defiance she was displaying, no matter who was on the other side of the glass.

  “Can you walk me through the assessment, sir?” Saskia asked, her voice much more even than her racing thoughts — thoughts that were suddenly more dangerous than the Denizens she’d seen in the video room.

  Solomon looked up at her, then placed the steel ring back down. She noticed that his fingers were long, stiff-knuckled. Piano player’s hands, she thought absently, before that was railroaded by I wonder if that crown will electrocute me the second it lands on my head.

  Solomon folded his hands in his lap. Saskia noticed then he had a prosthetic leg, the edge of it making an odd crease in the black trousers.

  “Can you tell me what the powers of the Owl Family are, Miss Das?”

  Saskia frowned at his evasion. “Owls can harness the air and thus the wind.”

  Was it a trick question? Was he reading her thoughts right now? Build a wall, brick by brick. Jordan Seneca had taught Saskia this, had taught all the kids in One Evergreen, when he wasn’t hiding from his own many Denizen infractions. Saskia had her mind-wall thrown up as solid as she could manage the minute she’d walked through the pneumatic doors, but she wasn’t an Owl, not even a Denizen. It was only a matter of time.

  “And mind-reading,” she quickly added. “Telepathy. Suggestion. Owls could make themselves virtually invisible if they wanted to.”

  Solomon nodded, seeming neither pleased nor fazed by the bitterness her answer. “It was because of this that they were the authority of the Five Families. Tremendous gifts with tremendous burden. They exercised these powers carefully, because I’m sure you can see how easily mind control could get out of hand.”

  “Not anymore,” Saskia said immediately, reciting what had been hammered into her and her peers during her forced ETG education. “Not since the Task Guard regulated them.”

  Solomon’s expression was blank. “For the greater good. Of course.”

  He tapped a few keys into his console, likely an access code, because the screen flashed green. Saskia stored that code in her head for safe keeping, behind her many bricks.

  “You enjoy coding, I hear,” Solomon remarked, still typing.

  Every remark, every throwaway, was not casual conversation. It was an opportunity. Saskia had to take each of them in stride and not let her temper or her fear get the best of her. He still hadn’t explained this test.

  “I enjoy working with machines. Code is its own type of magical power.”

  Solomon smiled at that, glancing up. “Then you’ll be interested to know that the Elemental Task Guard did studies on an Owl’s telepathic acuity, namely on the output, and have discovered that it can be translated, and thus measured, as a type of code — more accurately, a frequency.” The corner of one eye winced as he resumed typing. “Similar to how the Task Guard’s ocular devices can detect general Denizen individuals in plain sight.”

  Unsure what kind of response he wanted from that, Saskia remained neutral. Had his voice risen with slight sarcasm on the word discovered? This man was at least in his sixties but looked much older and was obviously an Owl. Complicity or not, it mustn’t exactly be a point of pride to admit to her, a Mundane, that his own people had been dissected like biology class toads.

  “A frequency,” Saskia repeated. “Like a radio wave. And my mind is the receiver.”

  “In simple terms, yes,” he replied. “But in this case, no one is here to feed a code into your brain to control you. I will ask you questions and translate the answers as they rise to your surface thoughts. I’ve no need to go any deeper. Or any ability to. The Task Guard have thought of everything. For your safety.”

  Saskia opened her mouth to ask another question but was stopped as Solomon raised the crown and placed it on his own head. He looked, for a moment, like a doomed king in a play Saskia w
as not at all interested in studying.

  She couldn’t believe she was protesting. “But I thought —”

  “This device was for you?” Solomon’s smile was somewhat dark. “You’re not the dangerous one in this room, Miss Das.”

  Not that you know, she carelessly let bob to the surface before slamming it back behind those bricks whose mortar was barely dry.

  “Calibration set on Fractal 032,” Mi-ja said from her console, her pleasant features now sharpened to get down to work. Her fingers were poised to tap out everything that would soon unfold. “You may proceed.”

  Solomon nodded, then looked directly to Saskia. He did not blink. Neither did she. “Let’s begin.”

  She let the air out of her lungs, inhaled, and readied herself.

  “What is your name?”

  “Saskia Allen Das.”

  “Where were you born?”

  “At a hospital in Thurso, Scotland.”

  Solomon’s cheek twitched ever so slightly, but he went on.

  “Good,” he said. “Now, verbal communication will cease, and I will speak to you in your mind. If you have not experienced this before, it may be jarring at first. You may respond verbally if you are unable to mentally. Before I do so, I will ask you to think your intentions for coming here, to join the Elemental Task Guard, clearly and precisely, that they may be at the forefront of your thoughts.”

  His voice, though flat, was melodic. Persuasive. Was he hypnotizing her? No, whatever the device was, the Fractal, it would not allow him to do anything more than what his stated intentions had been. There were still rules.

  Saskia nodded.

  Hello, Miss Das. Can you hear me?

  Solomon’s voice was different in her head. Far more musical, like the undertones she’d picked up.

  Yes.

  She wondered briefly what her mental voice sounded like, but then quickly realized it didn’t matter. She needed to focus.

  As I said, I cannot go deeper than your surface thoughts. I am sorry for the intrusive nature of this test. Sadly, I was the one who invented it.

  It was an odd feeling, having this conversation in her head, while still staring directly at the man speaking into it. His expression was completely blank. She had to make hers blank, too.

  Why are you sorry, if the test is necessary to weed out possible traitors?

  The question elicited a flash of something on that blank face. You are very canny, aren’t you?

  She shrugged mentally — if there was such a way to do that.

  Do you understand what you will be doing here, as part of the engineering team?

  No, she answered at once. She pushed everything away as if it was an enemy. As if she didn’t have her own plan.

  There is a project you will soon become privy to. A project that requires building something and managing frequencies as codes, like we talked about. Is that something you’d be interested in undertaking?

  I do enjoy building and programming, as I said, she answered. A flicker of memory seeped under her wall of the giant Deon she’d conjured out of code. A bit of pride.

  Canny, as I said, Solomon replied.

  Saskia refrained from saying shit, either verbally or mentally.

  For a moment, Solomon’s eyes cast to the floor, then flicked back up quickly, as if something had jarred his thoughts. His frequency.

  Does it hurt? Saskia asked, meaning the Fractal crown.

  Solomon did not smile outwardly, but she had the strange sense he was inside. Everything hurts, but nothing more than grief. I think you understand what I mean.

  Saskia felt her heart speed up, thinking of her father. Her brother. Suddenly she was back in those woods, dragging rope, then lunging at the creature that took them both.

  Saskia’s fists tightened. She needed focus. Control. Then she thought of Barton. Just breathe, he said.

  Don’t worry, Solomon’s voice was almost tender, in her head. This isn’t part of the test. I’ve lost someone, too. When you are briefed on Project Crossover, you’ll understand that many of us have an interest in seeing it succeed. We all have our reasons as to why. You will find your own reasons, very quickly. If you don’t have them already.

  He winced again, as if fighting against the machine. Saskia dared not turn away, or even move, to see what Mi-ja was doing. From her peripheral vision, all she could tell was that the chancellor’s aide hadn’t moved from her spot. Mi-ja hadn’t noticed these subtle betrayals.

  Then the high-pitched whine started up in Saskia’s right ear, and in her vision, flecks of red light.

  No, Saskia cringed mentally, trying to shy away from it, trying to stay still. Not now.

  What is that? Solomon asked. Saskia watched his jaw clench, like he was trying to balance what the machine attached to him read, and sort what chaos was taking over Saskia’s surface thoughts.

  The signal, her brain blurted, too late.

  Solomon’s eyes widened, but before they could go further, Mi-ja piped up. “Test duration complete. You can remove the Fractal now, Sergeant Rathgar.”

  Saskia’s hands crumpled her jacket, but she didn’t care. Rathgar?

  “Scanning for anomalies,” Mi-ja went on, like she, herself, was a program. The room was utterly silent. There had certainly been more than one blip on this radar, and Saskia waited for the hammer to drop, as her brick wall had exploded, leaking every precious lie for the entire Task Guard to see.

  Solomon was staring at the ground, waiting. Then Saskia felt a pressure on her shoulder. She looked into Mi-ja’s moving mouth but didn’t hear the words coming out of it.

  “— clear,” she said. “I can take you through to engineering now.”

  Saskia looked numbly to Solomon. His already pale face looked mottled, exhausted. Had he . . . rigged the test, somehow?

  Sadly, I did invent it.

  “It was a pleasure to meet you, Miss Das,” he said in his flat, calculated voice. He did not shake her hand again. Both of them rested in his lap, the one on the bottom releasing its fierce grip on the fabric of his trousers.

  Saskia just slid stiffly from the chair, following Mi-ja out of the room without a backward glance. She was all clear. She’d passed the test.

  Whatever the cost of passing the test had been, she would have to pass the next one to discover what it was.

  Grief Is Always Hungry

  Days progressed. Or at least, Eli imagined they did. There was light, then there was darkness.

  And when the light improved, and after Eli ate what little he could find (and barely trusted) he’d crawl to the edge of the rock and look down to the realms below.

  As he thought, they looked just as bad as this one.

  Huge black plinths stabbed upward through thick canopies. Beyond the forest of the Warren, still inland, was a great, empty desert, the cracked steppes of the Den, all rock and ruin and silence. Something terrible had happened in this world.

  A calamity, came the voice in his head, which had dogged Eli all this time. It didn’t need to say much to get him riled. But it also wasn’t wrong.

  He rose, wondering how much longer he might go on with such little food as dried roots, errant shrivelled nuts, and barely any water. He was so thirsty that the endless waters beyond the shores of the realms below — the Abyss — looked inviting, and drowning seemed as good an option as any at this point.

  Eyes to the ground as he climbed onto another crumbling, uneven surface, Eli saw, beneath a fallen tree, a shape wink across the dark surface of something in the knots.

  Water.

  He threw himself face first into it, drank greedily. He didn’t care if this was some sacred pool, or that he’d get sick from contamination (if there were parasites in the underworld), and he scooped more into his mouth until he caught sight of the shade he’d seen in the water’s reflectio
n, landing on a branch above his meagre puddle.

  The bright eyes took Eli’s measure. He tensed, ready to run if it dove for him.

  “You’re him,” the shade said. “The last Paramount.”

  Eli stared at the shade with open curiosity — at least this was a distraction. He leaned back, still kneeling, hands spread on his thighs. This shade, like Eli, wanted answers. “What of it?” Eli snapped.

  The shade took a quick step to the side, closer, head bobbing. “Everything is changed. The pillars of the Glen came down. The Quartz is gone. It was like a keystone — without it, the structure has collapsed around us. Something dark from below rose to take its place.”

  The voice coming from the shade was a man’s. A worn-out croak. “I know,” Eli said, looking back towards the edge of this rock, towards what he’d thought was the Glen’s great mountain. “The whole place has rather gone to pot.”

  He shouldn’t have looked away or been so cocky, because buffeting wings smashed into his temple. Eli swung, missed, and the shade landed on a spiked outcrop just out of reach.

  “Even the wind has died,” the shade admonished. “You did this. You and that Fox. This is what happens when you forsake your authority for a rat.”

  Now Eli realized he’d recognized the voice. Not specifically — it was the voice of one of many that had plagued him for too many years. A voice that had been mercifully silent when the Moonstone had become corrupted.

  “You’re one of the ancestors, one of the previous Paramounts,” Eli sneered. “What do you want?”

  “To show you what your arrogance has wrought,” it barked back at him. Eli noticed then that other shades were circling. “The stones are shattered and we are unmoored. The dead are restless, and we can’t even reincarnate. Phyr is gone, the wind is gone, even Death cannot come here with our brothers and sisters to deliver them their rest. All is lost because you didn’t kill that Fox when you had the chance.”

  That Fox — Roan. He didn’t dare say her name. “You’ve seen her. Where is she?”

  But the shade was done talking. It swooped back in, sharp beak aiming at him. Eli staggered, but more wings were coming for him. They were trying to push him over the edge again.