Dawnbreaker

by Posey, Jay

  Foe switched off the machine and watched as the last flurry of petals drifted to the ground. Once they had settled, he continued.

  “Deception, like violence, is a tool. Your enemy will use it, if you allow him to. When properly applied, it can be of great use. When your enemy succeeds, deny him a sign of his success and you sow doubt. When you fail, behave as if you have succeeded and you sow panic.”

  Wren nodded. Foe had just taught him several lessons all at once, in one continuous stream, something he’d never done before. And yet Wren understood each, how they were different and yet related. The principles that underscored each.

  “Truth is your foundation. Perceiving that which is, is critical to your success,” Foe said.

  “I understand,” Wren said. Foe dipped his head, and then whipped his hand out again. It struck Wren on the cheekbone, a sharp rap of knuckle against bone. The blow wasn’t severe; Foe had obviously held back. Still, Wren was completely startled by the fact that Foe had actually struck him.

  “Mm,” Foe said.

  “You’ve never actually hit me before,” Wren said, touching the place on his cheek. And as he said it, he realized he’d just told him why he’d allowed it to happen. Because Foe had never struck him, he had assumed like all the others that blow too would stop short. He’d seen what was expected, rather than what was possible. “I get it,” he said. “I understand.”

  “Mm,” Foe said again. And he switched the machine back on.

  Maybe it was because of all Wren had absorbed that day, or maybe it was because of the success he’d had in the Waiting Room. Whatever the case, he felt a shift in his perspective. His training wasn’t fun, or easy, or painless. But the suffering took on a new dimension. It was for a purpose. Haiku had tried to explain it to him before, but Wren hadn’t been able to understand. He’d lacked the experience to truly comprehend what Haiku had meant. But now he saw. The training was efficient, and effective, and it was building him into something he never could have been otherwise. The adversity became to him then not a thing to be resisted or escaped, but one to be embraced. Foe had said his teaching would be as fire to the flesh, and that image now had its full significance revealed to Wren’s mind and, more importantly, heart. It was a fire, yes, but not one that consumed and destroyed. It was a refining fire, the fire of the forge. Shaping him into an instrument of purpose.

  Though he didn’t recognize it until much later, that realization was the turning point in Wren’s instruction. Even after that day drew to an eventual close and bled into the next, the new outlook didn’t wear off. Rather than seeing his time in a particular chamber all as one event to be endured, each individual repetition became an opportunity to practice a specific skill. He no longer sought Foe’s approval or Haiku’s commendations to gauge his success. His heart told him when he had executed what he had intended, and when he had not.

  He even began to make a conscious effort to prevent his thoughts from lingering on the past, on how things had been or how he wished they would be. He took control of his interior life, and whenever he caught himself feeling apprehensive about what lay ahead for him, either tomorrow’s pain or his eventual confrontation with Asher, he recalled himself to the moment, focused his mind on whatever was immediately before him, whether rest or work, comfort or pain. Sleep came more readily, less plagued by anxiety of how little time he had until he had to wake again. When he was exhausted and hurt and at the end of all his strength, Wren allowed his world to shrink down to that one minute, that one breath, and committed himself to finding his way to the end of that moment, and that moment alone.

  The more he succeeded, the more Foe and Haiku increased the intensity of his training. Even on his days of rest, when Foe took him up to the top of the tower and had him arrange flowers, the complexity of the arrangements increased exponentially, Foe’s critique of his ability heightened. Though he couldn’t be sure, on a few occasions Wren suspected they’d even pushed him as much as two or maybe even three days without allowing him to sleep.

  “You will come to the end of your strength, boy,” Foe told him. “And beyond it there lies only the will. Many claim to possess the will to prevail; few demonstrate the resolve necessary to prepare to do so.”

  Much as Wren had experienced on his initial journey with Haiku, his mind proved that it could drive the body far beyond its perceived limits. And as he devoted himself to the process, Foe and Haiku poured themselves into him. Through it all, as much as he learned about the world of House Eight and how to operate within it, he learned even more about himself.

  Wren’s lean childhood had built a foundation; though one for which he could not be truly thankful, he nevertheless grew to appreciate it. Cold, hunger, fear, pain, exhaustion – these were not new horrors to him, but old ghosts returned to haunt him. At least three of them visited him each day. Often all five. In his previous life, these sufferings had been a thing to escape if possible, or to endure if not. But under Foe’s teaching, they became merely information; recognized by his mind, acknowledged, evaluated for relevance. The cold. Was he becoming hypothermic, or was he merely uncomfortable? The pain in his shoulder. Muscular? Was there any significant injury? Would it limit mobility? If so, to what degree? Hunger expanded into many categories. Hunger for protein distinguished itself from hunger for carbohydrates. Beyond that, though Wren couldn’t necessarily identify the exact nutrients his body was demanding, he developed enough sensitivity to his body’s needs that cravings no longer took his tastebuds into account. Food became fuel.

  But the greatest change was a secret growth; a change so gradual the full measure of it escaped Wren’s notice or regard. Yet true growth it was. A patient cunning. An awareness. Haiku expanded his game beyond the small yellow ball. Each morning he would show Wren a set of items, sometimes two, sometimes as many as five. And when Wren was routinely able to identify each, Haiku took to showing him the items at the end of the day, to see if Wren could recall having seen any of them during his training, and if so, where he’d seen them. To Wren’s amazement, he discovered that sometimes, somehow, he could. And each day it became easier.

  Wren had ceased to try to measure time but over the course of days, or more likely weeks, Foe gradually opened his world back up to him a grid at a time, enabling Wren to expand his reach. And with that slow reintroduction to the density of connection in the world, Wren found he had developed an entirely new perspective on all that was available to him. What before had been a single mass of electromagnetic noise he now saw as an intricately woven network of signals; as if he were seeing not only the painting, but also seeing the brush strokes and fibers of material that comprised it.

  Nights that he was forced to sleep outside became increasingly frequent, and familiarity with the dead city eventually drained those dark hours of their capacity to fill him with dread. He never quite gained a sense of peace out amongst the Weir, but his confidence grew sufficiently to enable him to manage his anxiousness.

  Whenever Wren began to feel like he had gained some level of mastery, Foe would throw in a new twist, would challenge him in some unexpected way. The old man combined training sessions, forcing Wren to face off against him in the Waiting Room while simultaneously trying to capture his signal, or to escape his attempt to capture Wren’s while Wren caught petals.

  Sometimes in the midst of a training session through the digital, Foe would insist on Wren doing extensive calisthenics; pushups or handstands or squats and any other number of unusual exercises that kept him shaky, out of breath, and dizzy with effort.

  It was during one such session that Foe opened Wren’s eyes to just how great the challenge ahead of him was, and just how dangerous. Everything had been going as expected up to that point, which should have served as a warning to Wren in and of itself. He’d become quite adept at capturing Foe’s signal and maintaining it no matter what Foe did to escape him. Or so he’d come to believe.

  Foe shifted his signal around, attempted to withdraw it or to
actively resist Wren’s signal. But Wren had developed a sensitivity to the processes, an almost physical sensation of pressure and balance that warned him when a change was coming. An instant before it occurred, Wren correctly anticipated the transition; Foe’s signal gained strength, threatened to flood Wren’s processes and overwhelm them, but Wren was ready. He applied the correct counter, boosted his own output to match and stabilize. But this time, Foe’s signal continued to grow, to press back against him. Wren ran through different protocols in a matter of seconds, attempting to bleed off some of the strength of Foe’s attack, or to redirect. When none of that worked, he tried to kill the connection. Even that was impossible; any process Wren executed to sever the connection was intercepted by one of Foe’s, counteracted. It felt almost as though Foe had seized Wren by the wrist and lifted him off the ground. No matter how Wren kicked or swung or struggled, he couldn’t find any footing from which to launch an attack. And the pressure from Foe’s signal continued to grow.

  Wren was out of ideas, had reached the end of what his training had taught him. He could feel himself starting to come apart. Foe was penetrating all his defenses. He was reaching directly into Wren’s mind. Wren knew the old man wasn’t going to harm him, but natural instinct and honed determination refused to let him accept defeat. Hoping to catch his instructor off guard, Wren dug deep and broadcast. The eruption of energy slammed into Foe’s signal, halted its advance. And though Wren thought for certain that his mind would tear in two with the exertion, he boosted his own signal even further, to a greater intensity than he’d even known was possible.

  Foe’s signal was turned back. Repelled.

  And in the next instant, it gave way, and Wren felt himself falling forward, racing into the void where Foe had just been. Before he could stop himself, he slipped into some new plane, dense with connections, and processes that raced like lightning flashes. Floating. He’d seen something like this before, when he’d faced his brother through Underdown’s machine. He had pierced through the digital interface and slipped deeper. He was seeing thought. Consciousness. Foe’s mind. And Wren realized he no longer knew how to withdraw from it. He felt his sense of self slipping away. The sensation was like being out of breath and deep under water. He could perceive the way of escape, shimmering in the distance, but though nothing restrained him, Wren knew he was too far away to reach it before he lost himself completely.

  And then, a shock of force, like someone had grabbed him from behind and snatched him violently backwards. The connection snapped shut. Wren was himself once more, seated crosslegged in front of his teacher. His whole body ached from the strain.

  “Careful, boy,” Foe said. “The mind is fathomless. If you overextend, you may well lose yourself forever.”

  “You let me in on purpose,” Wren said. “I overcommitted.”

  Foe nodded.

  “What would have happened if you hadn’t pulled me back out?” Wren asked.

  “What is the body without the mind?” Foe said. Wren sat quietly for a moment, absorbing the implication.

  “I could have died?”

  “Meeting power with power is a dangerous tactic,” Foe said.

  “I didn’t know what else to do,” Wren replied. “You haven’t shown me how to deal with... whatever you did.”

  “Have I not?” Foe asked, and though his expression didn’t change, there came a glint in his eye. An invitation to reconsider. But even though Wren thought about it for a full minute, he couldn’t recall anything Foe had taught him that would have applied to the situation he’d just experienced. He was just about to open his mouth to say so when it came back to him in a flash. The first time he’d broadcasted, when Foe had been evaluating him.

  “You demonstrated it,” Wren said finally. “But you didn’t teach me how you did it.”

  “Mm,” Foe said.

  An invitation to consider further. Wren tried to recall the circumstances. He’d broadcast, and as he’d done so, he’d felt tremendous pain. The more he’d boosted his signal, the worse it had become.

  “A feedback loop,” Wren said. “You fed my own signal back to me.”

  “Show me,” Foe said. And he launched the attack again. It caught Wren by surprise, and out of reflex he tried to resist the signal by matching its intensity. He knew it wasn’t the right solution, but he just needed a little time and space. And almost without consciously trying, his mind assembled the right protocol: a combination of Foe’s basic building blocks, initiating a connection and redirecting Foe’s signal back into itself. Immediately the pressure dissipated. Wren could still sense Foe’s signal, still attach to it, but now it wasn’t something to war against. The connection dropped.

  “Good,” Foe said. “Your enemy may come against you with such force. If such an attack comes, it is best not to be in its path. But should you find it unavoidable, such a technique may spare you.”

  “Could it kill him?” Wren asked.

  “Kill him?” Foe repeated. He paused and sat in thought for a moment. “I suppose theoretically it would be possible. If your enemy is blind to the nature of the technique and also foolish enough to persist in his attack. It would take a tremendous amount of output, though. On a scale that in all my long years I have yet to witness.”

  Foe continued to look at Wren for a moment, and then took a deep breath and exhaled.

  “That is enough for today,” he said. He got to his feet. Wren followed him out and they made their way to the parlor, where Haiku was preparing a meal. The sun was already down, but the night was still young. Wren was allowed to rest for a full twenty minutes before they sat down to eat together. During that time, he reflected on what Foe had told him about the feedback loop. Asher was no fool, certainly, but Wren didn’t believe he needed to be. There was a chance that Wren might be able to disguise the feedback loop as some kind of direct challenge, mask it so it appeared that the signal was Wren’s, rather than Asher’s own. Foe had said it would take a tremendous amount of output. Well Wren had faced Asher, and he knew what he was capable of. Asher was, in fact, probably even stronger now than he’d been when they’d last fought each other. If only there were a way that Wren could be sure.

  “I was thinking,” Wren said, when they were all seated around the table. “About the feedback loop. Before I have to face Asher, is there a way I could test it on him?”

  Foe stopped just before putting a bite in his mouth. “No!” he said, and his word was so forceful that Wren flinched. “No, boy. Testing is a fine way to introduce your techniques to your enemy without harming him. More often than not, you will teach him what to look for and how to defeat it. Whatever you do, commit yourself fully to it, so that you only have to do it once.” He put the bite of food in his mouth, chewed it quickly, and then added, “When you decide to kill the king, kill the king. Don’t slap him first.”

  “Well, I don’t know if the loop is going to work. How do you think I should... defeat Asher?”

  “In the most effective manner possible,” Foe said. Wren made a face at the non-answer. Foe responded to it. “Boy, surely by now you understand all of this training has been precisely because we don’t know what you will face when next you meet your adversary?”

  “I do,” Wren said. “I would just feel better if I had some idea of a plan before I had to do it.”

  “A plan is a fine thing to have,” Foe said. “As long as it is flexible enough to be applied to the real situation. Too often a plan is nothing more than a preconception that prevents clear vision. It fixes the mind on what is desired, not on what is. Whatever the distance between what you want to happen and what is actually happening, that is enemy territory. How much territory would you like to cede to your enemy?”

  “None at all,” Wren said.

  “Then be careful how you plan.”

  They ate in silence for a few moments, before Haiku spoke.

  “When Asher controls the Weir,” Haiku said. “Is he... in them?”

  “I’m not su
re,” Wren said. “But I don’t think so. I think he... It’s more like he directs them, I guess. Like he tells them what to do.”

  “Hmm,” Haiku said.

  “Why?” Wren asked. “What were you thinking?”

  “It is not, perhaps, an elegant solution,” Haiku said. “But I wondered if you could draw him into a physical being. Trap him there.”

  “I wouldn’t know how,” Wren said.

  “Mm,” Foe said. But the tone was different than usual; not his signal that Wren had overlooked something. Rather, as if he was considering. “In your accounting, you said your brother used a Weir as a spokesman. Painter, I believe you called him?”

  Wren was shocked to hear the name leave Foe’s mouth. As far as he could remember, he’d only mentioned it in passing, back when he’d first recounted the fate of Morningside, before Foe had even agreed to train him. Was there anything the old man couldn’t recall?

  “Is that accurate?” Foe asked, prompting Wren.

  “Yes,” Wren said. “Painter.”

  “A Weir using language would require much more than casual control.”

  “Painter isn’t a Weir,” Wren admitted. “He’s Awakened.” Foe sat quietly, looking at him for a moment. “He was my friend,” Wren added, mostly to himself.

  “Mm,” Foe said. “Perhaps that is even better. If Asher uses him in such a manner, his presence must be strong indeed.”

  “So, you think if I can find Painter, and get Asher to... possess him, or whatever?”

  “You will have to prevent him from severing the connection,” Foe said. “Once it is established.”

  “And then...?” Wren knew where this was going now, but he hoped he was overlooking something.

  “Then, boy,” Foe said. “You kill him.”

  And so here it was, then. Everything Wren had tried to ignore, everything he had tried to leave unconsidered, was laid before him. The inevitable outcome.

  But he remembered Foe’s words, about taking life feeling like a violation of his nature. He was right to react this way. And he remembered Three’s words from long ago. When he’d first trained Wren with a knife. The image broke clear in his mind’s eye.