These are the things that are real, I tell myself.
Four walls. Seven feet high. Concrete. Four-inch-wide grate high up on the back wall. Toilet coming out of wall. Cube on top. Round bowl. Water inside. Ring of metal. Knock knock. Smooth concrete walls around me. A hop and I can touch the rough ceiling. The overhead light doesn’t work. Sliding steel door on front wall. Closed slot. Mesh pane of glass. A faint, oh so faint, glow from the hallway.
Kill yourself.
I have to go further with my catalog. I sit hunched on my heels, lean my back against the wall, and let my spine dig in. I am Nolan Perez. I am in the Supreme Court building in the center of Manhattan on the East Coast of the United States of America. It is a hexagonal building. That means six sides. It was built with thick walls and small windows to withstand riots and car bombs and stuff. On the front steps there are ten granite pillars that I saw on the way in. Over the pillars the stone has words chiseled in it that say, The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government.
We learned about this place in school once. Before.
These are the things I know. These are the real things. The whispers stop.
Faintly, I hear a metal door open and slam shut. Footsteps in the hallway outside my cell door. I look down at Thomas’s corpse and I smile at it.
It is time for my plan.
A slot opens in the door near the floor. A paper tray noses in and skids inside. Crouched next to the door, I jam both my hands through the slot. The silent guard tries to close it on my fingers and the steel bites my wrists but I don’t let go.
“I have a message for the guy in charge. For Felix,” I say.
It was the way he cocked his head. That’s how I remembered. I hope I’m able to say the name right. Mathilda said it only once by accident, and I’m not sure of anything anymore down here. The guard kicks the steel slider and the pain is bright and sharp.
“Tell him I know who he talks to,” I say. “Tell Felix that I know his friend Arayt. He’ll kill you if he finds out you didn’t tell him.”
Another kick and I clench my teeth.
“Thomas told me about Arayt. It was Thomas. Tell him!”
I pull my fingers out. The steel slider closes with a loud schlink. The echoes chase each other up and down the hallway. For a moment, there is no sound.
“Arayt,” I say, panting. “You tell Felix I know about Arayt. He’ll kill you if he finds out you didn’t! He’ll kill you!”
I lie on my back, shoulder blades on hard concrete. I cradle my hands against my chest, trying to figure out if the fingers are broken. It hurts so bad that the pain is almost visible. Waves of scarlet light radiating out of my finger bones like candle flames.
Quietly, I hear footsteps move down the hallway. The far-off creak of a metal door. Laid out on the cool floor, I hum to myself and pretend that I am on the bottom of the ocean. Time moves around me like a plesiosaur through black icy water.
I sort of lose track of myself for a while.
Footsteps outside my door. Real light from a flashlight.
“Hey, farm boy,” someone calls through the door. “How did you know that word?”
Joints popping, I crawl slowly and carefully to my bare feet. Light pushes in through the mesh window. I press my fingertips against the wall and lean my face into the stripe of light. The sliver cuts my eye in half, my retinas drinking in the brightness even though it burns. I think I can feel the light bouncing off my teeth.
“It’s so quiet in here,” I say. “I can hear the whispers. They tell me all kinds of things.”
Felix isn’t that big. In the light, it’s the first thing that strikes me. He is a trim guy, muscular and compact, with a small square jaw and wide, warm brown eyes. Black hair and brown, scarred cheeks. Every movement he makes seems slow and fast at the same time. I think he would make a good boxer.
The leader of the Tribe sits on a chair behind a long table in the central room of the courthouse. The rotunda. He is wearing a military uniform that I think he made himself. Lots of ribbons and medals. The guards who ring the room wear the same kind of outfits. Somewhere nearby, a big generator is running. Overhead lights chase away shadows and make a glare on the marble floors. A big pile of computers and other equipment is laid on wooden pallets spread across the room behind Felix’s chair. Cables snake across the floor and the machines hum and blink.
A group of other prisoners wearing handcuffs stand in a line next to the far wall. The one in front, a black man with wire-frame glasses and a short, graying beard, looks at me sadly. I don’t remember his name, but his face is familiar from the Underground.
“Quién eres, hombrecito?” Felix asks me.
I don’t know what to say. Dead Thomas is smiling at me from under the long table, his throat slit wide open. I blink hard and the vision goes away.
“What a shame,” says Felix to the room. “Kid don’t even speak his own language. Bring him here.”
A lanky, sweaty man who reeks of body odor wraps his fingers tight around my upper arm, leads me over to the great seal of the Supreme Court. My wrists grate against black handcuffs as he shoves me onto my knees.
Felix’s eyes are smiling as he looks down.
“Somebody told me something about you that I don’t believe,” he says. “I just need to make sure of that before I send you back. Now, what was the word—”
“Where’s Thomas?” I ask, interrupting.
My voice echoes around the room. Harsh. One of the guards snickers into his hand. The black man with glasses gives his head a shake. No, he warns with the gesture. You shouldn’t have done that.
The smile freezes on Felix’s face.
“Oh wow,” he says, then nods at the guard behind me.
I feel the air shift as the skinny man takes a swing at the back of my head. So I dip my neck and duck under the fist. I hunch my shoulders and stand up hard. The back of my head smashes into the guy’s chin. There is a snap as his jaw shuts and his neck whips back. Smelly slips and I hear the crack of his skull against marble.
I glance over my shoulder. The guard lies there in a heap, bleeding quietly. Now I bet I’m really in trouble. Quickly, I drop back onto my knees. Put my head down and stay very still. Keep my cuffed hands in front of me over my knees. I see that my fingernails are pink and ragged, starting to grow back from where I tore off them in the dark.
“Oh wow,” says Felix again.
Felix shakes his head slow at whoever is behind me. Runs a hand through his long hair. “I’ll go ahead and give you that one, farm boy. In your cell, you said a name. It’s a real special name to me, and I need you to tell me exactly where you heard it. Before you speak, I want you to know that I’m sensitive about this. If you can’t, like, get it together, I’m gonna have to do some very bad things to you. I know that you think your life sucks now, but trust me, kid. It gets worse.”
“You mean Ara—”
“Cállate!” shouts Felix, leaning forward. “Don’t say that name. Not ever. Jesus Christ. Just tell me where you heard it from. Tell me who said it!”
“I want to see Thomas,” I say.
“Who the fuck is he talking about?”
“Guy who was with him when he got caught,” says a quiet voice in the room behind me. “Guy who delivered the kid and his sister.”
“Revenge? That what you’re after, kid?” asks Felix.
“I want the true administration of justice,” I say quietly.
Felix barks a laugh, looks around at the other men. They don’t get the joke but they smile anyway. Felix is smarter than they are. Maybe a lot smarter.
“He’s funny. I’ll give him that,” says Felix. “How long did we leave him in solitary?”
“Three months,” says the quiet voice.
“Yeah, little more than three,” someone adds. “The dark rooms on the third floor.”
Felix shakes his head.
“He’s strong for three months in there. Crazy strong,” he says, s
tudying me. Without looking away, he says, “Bring this Thomas out here, then. Let’s get the other side of the story.”
My hands are shaking in the cuffs. I splay my fingers and force my fingertips onto the cold marble to steady them. Keep my head down. A chill snakes down my back between my shoulder blades. I breathe in and out, and wait.
Felix watches me the whole time, thinking.
And then I’m seeing Thomas, a guard close behind him. The escort has dark circles tattooed around his eyes. His skull is shaved and a long machete hangs from his hip. I think he might be one of the original Tribe. The ones who supposedly came up through Mexico with Felix and started all this.
Thomas has gained weight. His face is more full now and a little roll of flesh is tucked under his chin. He’s gotten a haircut in the style of the Tribe, thick black hair hacked with a knife and hanging loose over his ears. Even with the extra weight, his shirt is rippling with neat slabs of muscle. That missing hand is still just gone, no more scissors.
Put a knife under his chin and push it up through the soft warm folds of skin.
My heart is surging in my chest. Arms and legs flooded with sickening pulses of adrenaline. Snippets of thought fall through my mind. I’m glad that the light out here chases away the whispers, but some of the bad words hang around and the things they tell me are vile.
The blade slices. The earlobes come off. The nose.
Thomas walks into the room, the guard behind him. There is a half smile on his face. He glances around, doesn’t see me.
“What can I do for you, boss?” Thomas asks.
Felix has a tight smile on his face. His eyes go down to where I’m hunched on the floor. Thomas turns, quizzical, and sees the bleeding, unconscious guard. Then he spots me.
“You’re fucking kidding,” says Thomas. His voice has gone a little hollow. “We had a deal, man. Why is he here?”
“This is the guy who told you the word?” Felix asks me.
“What?” asks Thomas. “I didn’t tell him any words. The kid is cracked, Felix. He doesn’t know—”
Felix cuts him off with a stare.
“No, he didn’t tell me the name,” I say. “He killed my sister. She was the one who told me the name.”
Felix blinks, anger darkening his face.
“Oh, so you fucking lied to me—” says Felix, starting out of his chair.
Then he cuts himself off, blinking. He turns his head to the side. For a long time he stares into space. I see the tendons in his neck flexing, as if he is talking to someone without opening his mouth. Finally, he looks back to me.
“Your sister was the one with no eyes?”
“Mathilda.”
“It’s important that you tell me everything you know about her. If you can tell me how she learned that name, I won’t send you back to the dark room. I give you my solemn word on that. I’ll put you in the army instead, give you a chance. Okay?”
“It depends.”
“I don’t think it does, kid.”
I shift my eyes over to Thomas.
“Oh,” says Felix, grinning. “Right. One-track mind.”
“What?” asks Thomas.
Thomas shoves his guard away and struts into the middle of the room. Stands next to me where I’m kneeling in front of the table. “Whatever you’re thinking, Felix, forget it. I can tell you all about Mathilda. You don’t need this kid.”
“Yeah?” asks Felix. “What’s the word?”
“What word?” asks Thomas.
“The magic name,” he says.
“I don’t know any magic names,” says Thomas.
A cat smile has settled onto Felix’s face. “You know, I heard you killed the kid’s sister. First you fucked her, then you burned her. I know she was modified, but, damn, that’s pretty cold-blooded, hermano.”
Thomas gapes, eyes wide and blinking. He launches into an argument, waving his arms, tendons standing out in his neck. Negotiating. But his words have faded away. All I see is that roll of neck fat bobbing. Sweat coursing down his cheeks.
He’s not looking when I hit him with my shoulder, down low. He bends at the waist and falls. His body slaps onto the cold marble and I bring down my cuffed hands on the crown of his head with everything I’ve got. His legs start flopping, heels squeaking on the stone. In one movement, I follow him down and straddle his chest with my knees.
“Sucker punch,” he gasps, and blood is already coursing out of a gash on the top of his head.
“Not all people are good, Thomas,” I say to him, and each word is like a bullet. I put my hands over his mouth and then he’s squealing under my palms, trying to bite me. Rolling around like a bag full of snakes, kicking and bucking.
“Not all people are good!” I shout, and my voice echoes back to me.
Thomas is chubby but strong. Face too pretty to live. I think about the way he used to grin crooked at my sister and let his hair hang. I wrap my dirty fingers into those thick black curls. Drop forward with my elbows pinning his forearms to his chest. His face is an inch from mine.
“Fuck you,” he spits up at me.
I say nothing but I think of my sister. My dead sister who was the only person who loved me. When I was scared she would let me sleep in her bed and she even let me put my head on her pillow. She held me before I could walk. She kept me safe from monsters my whole life and I let her die.
And together we would run.
I lean forward and hunch over as Thomas jabs a knee into my lower back.
“Somebody do something,” he yells.
Eyes squeezed closed, I ball my fists tight, wrists together in the cuffs, and I rip out a chunk of his hair by the roots. His head jerks up and bangs back onto the stone. His teeth clack together with the force of it. I realize I’m speaking low.
“They burned her. She burned alive. You didn’t think I would do anything?”
Now his whole body starts bucking under me like he’s being electrocuted or something. His elbow connects with my cheek and I see sparkles of light. I lean back and drop a knee into his sternum with all my weight. I must do it too hard, because something cracks in there. His scream is just a wet vibration on the other side of my palms. His chest is rising and falling in little hitches instead of big breaths.
The rest of the room is black in my vision. I can see only his face.
My palms are clamped over Thomas’s mouth and his nostrils seem to be winking at me with each breath. They’re wet with clear liquid and red around the edges and they flare when he breathes out, fold in and whistle when he breathes in.
Or tries to breathe in.
I lean in close enough to see the droplets of blood welling up through that pale patch of his exposed scalp. Spit is flying out of my mouth and landing on his cheek, and that kind of surprises me. I don’t feel that angry. But I must be.
“You thought I was a little kid, but I’m not, Scissors. I’m not a kid anymore.”
With a last surge of strength, Thomas shoves me off balance. His left arm makes it out from under my knee and he plunges it toward my face. Nothing I can do, no time to dodge it. The punch connects.
And Thomas screams as the stump of his wrist bounces off my cheek.
It would have been scissors through my neck, I think. Would have been a knifepoint dimpling my skin before slicing into warm flesh. Spreading my throat as spurts of blood from my carotid artery flashed into the air.
I laugh once, surprising myself. With both hands, I push his head to the side. Press his face into the hard slick marble. He’s grunting and screaming so I push harder. My eyes are closed and the acid in my throat is making it hard for me to breathe.
Eyes closed, I can see only Mathilda.
In the mornings we would run and jump into bed with Mommy and they would both tickle me and I would burrow under the warm covers and escape into the soft smell of sheets and pajamas and my mother and my sister.
I keep pushing with everything until my arms are quivering. Holding my breath until m
y heartbeat is surging in my ears. I shove my aching heart all the way down there into the floor. Into the ground and deeper than that into a black unfeeling hole. Into the darkness, where it can suffer alone and I can keep on going up here all by myself.
Poke out the eyes. Slice off the fingertips.
When I can’t feel my arms anymore, I let up on Thomas. Slowly open my eyes. His right cheek has gone dark blue and it’s turning a darker red where my fingers were. He coughs and grunts, gasping for air. Eyes reeling, he looks up at me. From the blank look on my face he must figure out that he’s hurt now. Thomas squirms between my knees, blood pooling in the white of his right eye. He’s dazed, barely with it.
“Good-bye, Thomas,” I say.
No more thinking. In sharp strikes, I bring the handcuffs down on his face. The metal breaks his front row of teeth and I do not feel it. His mouth is a pit of blood, filling up like the holes my sister and I used to dig at the beach. His eyes are the crushed raspberries Mathilda and I used to pick in the summertime.
After the New War began and our childhood was officially over, my big sister and I used to wrap our fingers together. When we ran, her black hair would fly over her shoulders and I could smell it because I was always one step behind. I never told her but she smelled like our mom. Every time we ran together, she reminded me of a life we could have had if Mommy were still alive.
There is no one to pull me along now. I am running alone. The pain in my chest is overflowing. It surges into my neck and shoulders and arms. My fingers have fallen into each other and turned into tight fists. The metal cuffs go up and down.
Thomas has stopped screaming. There is nothing left to scream for.
7. SUPERCLUSTER
Post New War: 7 Months, 20 Days
Ninety percent of the awakened freeborn were formerly humanoid safety-and-pacification units designed for a wide range of military tasks. Models included Arbiter local command units, Optio engineering units, Hoplite scouting units, Warden heavy-duty labor units, and Sapper super-heavy-duty construction units. Of the approximately two thousand freeborn, only a single Adjudicator-class regional commander survived the New War. Positioned at the former Cheyenne Mountain nuclear bunker, the elite command unit that came to rule all the freeborn predictably chose to call herself Alpha Zero. A conservative commander with a dependence on highly rational thought, Zero lacked the guts and audacity that lie in the heart of even the weakest human being.
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