by Daryl Banner
When school’s out for the day, Link and Wick board the nine-two back home. Pushing through the front door, Link’s right out the back door and gets lost somewhere in the overgrowth of shrubs in their diminutive backyard, likely not to be heard of for the rest of the evening. Mom and dad are both still at work, so the cramped house is oddly quiet and seems to breathe for once, the sunlight cutting through the kitchen like a golden sword.
Unmotivated as ever to get a start on his homework, Wick leans against the back of the sofa, still cluttered with last week’s dirty clothes and blankets, and stares out the window at the giant scrap metal disc thing in the backyard. It is a giant scrap metal disc thing because Wick has no idea what else to call it. Ever since it fell from the sky, it cut so deep into the ground that no one, not even dad, can manage a budge. It used to fascinate him, wondering what it is, what it’s used for … He peers up, squinting against the sunlight at the arm of the Lifted City that overhangs this part of the slums, about thirty stories in the air, give or take. From the window, he can see only two of the enormous pylons that hold the Lifted City up, of which there are copious. And this giant scrap metal disc thing, it’s probably just trash from that Lifted City, some large discarded thing from the rich and privileged above. How easy their lives must be … So casual, to let go a huge piece of metal over the brim, dropping it to the trash-laden slums below. It could’ve killed someone, cut a child in half … It actually did land unsettlingly close to the tree Lionis reads in. But what do they care, up in the sky, of those who struggle and starve below?
Wick—Anwick Lesser of the ninth ward, by full name—has never known luxury or gold or height. His dad bangs iron at the metalshops and his mom rakes mud tirelessly in the Greens, all for scraps. Their bellies, all full of scraps. His oldest brothers Aleks and Halves live in the Guardian dorms now, working for them. And Lionis, older than him by only two years, is no help either; he just fills his head all day with science and nonsense at the library. Mom excuses his lack of income, since he also does laundry and cooks for them on the daily, but Wick doesn’t care. He can feed himself. Wick doesn’t need his brother soaping his socks.
After flicking on the broadcast for half a minute and discovering exactly four boring channels on them, he finally makes way to his tiny room up the narrow stair, pushes the front window open and sits on the tiny porch roof outside, scribbling away his homework assignment in the steadily waning daylight. When he’s on the last page, mom’s come home and pokes her head in his room, face spattered in numerous hues of mud. “Coming down for dinner? Just us tonight.”
With Halves and Aleks off defending the city in the name of Guardian and the Marshal of Whatever, the house is considerably quieter. Two less mouths to feed. And so he clambers down to the half-lit den to share a communal plate of dumplings, bean mash, and salted cabbage with his two brothers and mom until the sun’s been replaced by black and birdsong traded for crickets.
That night, Wick wakes to the razor point of a sword at his lips. “Dead,” says the sword-bearer.
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Want to find out what happens next? Read the rest of OUTLIER: Rebellion, the first book in the dystopian OUTLIER series!
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Table of Contents
OTHER WORK by DARYL BANNER
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
HARD FOR MY BOSS (Sample Chapters)
FOOTBALL SUNDAE (Sample Chapter)
BROMOSEXUAL (Sample Chapters)
OUTLIER: REBELLION (Sample Chapters)
