Penny leans forward to prop herself up on her knees, and I notice the back of her neck is all freckly. Those freckles wouldn’t be visible if she was wearing a halo. She doesn’t bother asking me what I mean.
“Cai―” She winces, like saying the word causes her pain. “Cai wanted to―”
“Cai?”
“Caius. That’s the name my brother chose for himself.” She blinks at me, like she’s waiting for me to approve. Caius. Caius? That’s going to take some getting used to. Penny’s face hardens when she doesn’t see the response she’s looking for on my face.
“Cai wanted to set you free. I told him not to. I told him it would only lead to trouble, but—”
“Set me free? He thought this was setting me free? I’m trapped. I need to go to the technicians and get them to fix it, but every time I think about doing it I have to come up with a good explanation as to why I haven’t gone sooner. And I can’t think of one.”
Penny’s grey eyes darken a shade, and her eyebrows pinch together. “Cai died so you could have this. Don’t you dare throw it away.”
“But…why?” I can’t think of any other question, because I really don’t understand. Having my halo broken, having all these feelings rush through me, conflicting with one another, clawing at me, leaves me feeling wretched. Penny makes it sound like Falin Ash—I shake my head, trying to get to grips with such a monumental name change—she makes it sound like Caius gave me a gift.
“Cai’s halo stopped functioning eight months ago,” Penny says, staring at the backs of the shoes on the floor between her feet. “He was always so well behaved. He never caused any trouble. He trained so hard, even when his halo stopped working. I never would have known, but he got angry one day when my father hit me and I worked it out. I kept his secret for him and we became friends. He always wanted to tell you, but I said he shouldn’t. And then, when they said you’d be fighting each other, he snapped. He told me what he was going to do but I didn’t really believe him.”
I bite down on my jaw, feeling my teeth grate against one another. “I had no idea. We trained every day. I never suspected a thing.”
“You wouldn’t have. He was pretty good at hiding it. Plus he didn’t want anything to change. He loved training with you. He loved―well,” she blows out a deep breath. “He loved you.”
I freeze on the bed, picking apart Penny’s mournful expression to see if she is joking. “He loved me?”
She nods, saying something else, but I don’t hear her. My heart is pounding too hard for me to concentrate. I whisper the words to myself again, testing them out in my mouth to see if I can find some truth in the weight of them on my tongue. I can’t. The idea just seems too strange.
Penny grabs hold of my hand, pulling back my focus. “You have to leave.”
My head whips to the door, expecting someone to come crashing through. Maybe the Therin that let me in, or even True Father Asha, himself. Penny shakes her head. “No, Kit. You have to leave the Sanctuary. It’s not safe for you here now. They’ll find out. They’ll make you wear it again.” She points to my neck where my halo still lies, albeit crookedly, beneath my jacket.
“This is ridiculous. Where am I supposed to go?” No one leaves the Sanctuary. Well, no sane person leaves, anyway. There are the Radicals, of course, but they’re crazy. Everybody knows to avoid them. They’re wild.
“There are plenty of places you can go. You just can’t stay here. Caius would never forgive me if I didn’t make you leave. He wanted you to be free.”
“Penny―”
“Kit!”
I grip the edge of the bed until my knuckles turn white. “Why are you calling me that?”
“Because he didn’t just rename himself, okay. He renamed you. Kitsch. Kit. I don’t know why he shortened it. I never asked, but, please, just listen to me. Or at least tell me you’ll think about it. He’s gone and I couldn’t bear it if that’s for no reason. He didn’t even try and fight you. You owe it to him. You have to―”
“Okay!” I hold my hands up. “I’ll think about it.”
“Promise me you won’t go and see the technicians?”
The look in Penny’s eyes is desperate, and I’m too stunned by the idea that my friend was in love with me to really think about what I’m promising. “Okay, I won’t,” I say.
“Good.” She stands up and paces back and forth as though she’s filled with nervous energy. A second later she drops to her knees and reaches under Cai’s bed. She fiddles around for a moment before tugging gently, and when she pulls her arm back, she’s holding onto a small holostick. The small, black square of plastic and metal is scuffed and old, an archaic model in the grand scheme of things. “He would want you to have this.”
“What’s on it?” I take it with shaking hands.
“I don’t know but he carried it around with him everywhere. Now it’s yours.”
I look down at it and panic, wondering what secrets are recorded on the device. It’s about two inches square, cold and heavy in my palm. A small blue light flashes on the top and I drop it onto the bed. “I can’t. I just can’t.” If what she says is true, I definitely don’t want to see what’s on it.
Penny snatches up the holostick and presses it into my hand. “Don’t be so selfish!”
She’s right. I am being selfish, which is a new experience for me. I let my fingers curl around the device, feeling its corners dig into my skin, and then stow it into the back pocket of my combat gear. I feel like a monster wearing these clothes right now.
“You should probably go,” Penny tells me. When I get up to leave, she doesn’t join me. “You promised, remember. You won’t go to the technicians.”
“I know.”
“Come and see me in two days. That should be enough time for you to figure out when you’re going.”
Her faith that I will leave the Sanctuary is surprising, given that the only thing beyond the city limits is a wild and desolate landscape. I stuff my hands into my pockets and take a long look around Falin Asha’s old bedroom. He’s not here anymore, and I know that whatever happens, I won’t be coming back again.
RUN
I don’t have the courage to watch the holostick. I don’t want to go home either, even though I can see the Kitsch Household from where I’m standing outside the place where Cai used to live. Instead, I start walking in the opposite direction. The houses by the river are well built, from real brick and mortar, but there are only so many of them. Most of the houses in the Sanctuary are made from reclaimed wood, but they’re put together pretty well. Each small community generally sees to the upkeep of all the houses, lending the labour of their Therin whenever something new needs building, in an attempt to lift the social standing of the area. The Trues, no matter where they live, all have one thing in common: they want to be better than each other. This competitive betterment seems like a futile pastime to me now, as I drag myself, numb, through the winding passageways of an area of lower caste housing commonly known as the Narrows.
Caius and I used to train here when we were smaller. The houses are pressed so close together, and the roofs almost touch in places. This was our favourite location to come and practice rolls, leaping from one building to the next and tumbling across the uneven wooden shingles or jumbled, mismatched slate tiles. Often we would earn ourselves a cuff on the ear for disrupting the peace, but even back then people were lenient with us. It was like they understood what we would one day become: poster children for the amphi-matches, a common bet, role models for a whole generation of Falin.
People recognise me here as I try to slip unnoticed through the crowds. It’s incredibly rare for Trues and Elin to be out walking the streets unless they’re visiting friends or travelling to the education compounds, so I don’t need to worry about their inquisitive questioning. The people out on the streets today are mainly Therin, carrying water and groceries, sweeping and hawking goods. Some of them nod to me as I pass them by, but mostly they just stare.
/> These people don’t bother me―they know not to talk to me for the most part. It’s other Falin I’m worried about seeing. They’re the ones who usually stop me, want to know my latest training techniques, what foreign blades I’ve been gifted by the city for my latest win. It seems to me that every Falin I see will want to talk to me today, because I can guarantee that half the Houses in the Sanctuary have been discussing me. Who is going to replace Cai as my training partner? Which House will have the honour? The Falin won’t care themselves, of course, but they will approach me to appease their Trues, and I can’t handle that right now.
I keep my head down, the sun warming the back of my head until it feels like my hair is on fire. I duck under the covered walkway out of the glare and shove my hands in my pockets. This pulls my trousers taut and reminds me that I have Caius’ holostick on me. Its corners dig into my lower back. I take my hands back out of my pockets, wishing I’d worn my knife belt. Hooking our thumbs through the webbing where it loops around the hips is a habitual trait of nearly all Falin, and I’ve never found anything better to do with my hands than this. But today I didn’t wear my belt. It didn’t feel right, and for the very first time I was apprehensive when I looked at it. It is all the blood. I know the blades are sterile because I cleaned them myself, over and over, but I still can’t seem to shake the feeling that the metal is tainted, and no amount of scrubbing is ever going to fix that. Maybe I need new knives.
It’s a while before I realise I’ve left the Narrows and hit the poorest parts of the Sanctuary. Here the children walk in the streets wearing nothing but ragged pants and their halos. They’re covered in dirt and their eyes have a hungry, hollow look to them as they pass me by. I see two tiny girls, both with pink halos and sticks in their hands, lunging and striking at each other, playing at a real fight. These kids will never make it to the Colosseum, though. Their Houses are too poor to stump up the buy-in for their Falin to compete, and it’s more likely these kids will die in a pit fight somewhere out here, in the stinking backstreets where a Falin’s life is worth less than a week’s food to most families.
The Therin have their work cut out for them on the edges of the city. The streets are filthy and littered with garbage, and their cleaning duties must feel endless. There’s no money to afford sturdy materials for any of the houses, and so they’re made out of sheets of corrugated plastic and useless off-cuts of wood. Most of the houses rot from the ground up, where mould and damp festers even in the dry months. This is probably where I should turn around and go home, not because anyone will hurt me, but because I am suddenly overcome with a sickened feeling, as I watch the starving children with their rounded little pot bellies and gaunt expressions play at warriors. Yet I don’t turn around.
It takes me twenty minutes to make my way through the streets; I don’t know my way here, but I head north until the shanties fall away and the land opens out. I’ve never been this far out of the city, and I’m surprised when I find fields of grass, which are fenced off for as far as the eye can see. In the distance is the forest―everybody knows it’s there, but it’s one thing hearing about it and another thing entirely seeing it.
I’ve never seen so many trees. They’re different to the ones that grow in the city. These ones don’t really have proper leaves, and they are an altogether different kind of green. It’s lush and vibrant, and totally new to me. What really surprises me is how close these trees grow together. They’re almost on top of one another, lined up in formation, a tree line that runs for miles in either direction.
Directly ahead, before the trees, there are slim, grey chimneys, where billows of dirty white smoke curl up into the afternoon sky. Squat, vast buildings―grey, windowless―surround them, and I know this is the processing compound, where the food for the city’s inhabitants is stored, milled, prepared and recycled.
I have no idea why, but I keep walking. No doubt I’ve been missed back at home by now, but this doesn’t seem to matter. A wide, rutted dirt road leads out towards the processing plant, and on either side of it the chain link fences rise up well beyond three times my height. Loops of vicious barbed wire top them for good measure. These fences are well maintained, and there is no way over or under them.
It’s eerily silent out here. There isn’t a sound apart from a soft hum emanating from the processing plant, and that’s so low it’s barely audible. All I can hear is my breathing that pulls and blows in and out over my teeth. The world has never been so quiet. As I get closer to the compound I see groups of Therin sitting out in the sunshine, eating from wrinkled paper bags. The men and women are methodical and quick about finishing their lunch. This has a lot to do with the guards standing over them; they’re in full body armour, which is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen. I’ve never heard of a Therin disobeying anybody before, let alone a Therin who knows how to fight.
Still, the sight of the guards with their black body suits, wrapped in stab vests, with their thick plexi-shields sends a nervous thrill through my body, and I duck down at the side of the road. I’m not sure what would happen if they found me. I could say I was sent here by Lowrence but they’d want to know why, and I don’t think I’m capable of lying convincingly.
I hunker down in the tall grass at the roadside and watch for a few minutes as the guards hurry everyone back inside the building to continue their work. When I’m sure they’re all gone, I edge forward to get a closer look at what lies past the plant. Concealed within the trees, another huge fence has been erected; it’s made from steel struts, spaced evenly, about five metres apart, thicker than some of the tree trunks. The fence itself isn’t made out of chain link like the one back by the fields; it’s a rigid, cross-hatched steel, and looks incredibly strong. There is an armoured gate about four metres wide just behind the plant, which is how I’m guessing people get to the agricultural fields. They’re out there somewhere; I’ve just never bothered to ask where, or even wondered for that matter. Like I said― curiosity isn’t outlawed. It’s just not encouraged.
I shrink from the sight of the fence and scurry back up the dirt track in a crouch until I feel I’ve put a safe enough distance between myself and the compound. When I see the shanties growing from tiny brown smudges to actual dwellings on the horizon, I relax a little. The Colosseum looks foreboding to me now, even from here. It soars up out of the city like an ugly broken tooth, making me feel uneasy. My whole life it has been the place where I went to carry out my work, but now it’s the place where I’ve killed people. Lots of people. The place Cai died.
I hurry back through the city, mindful to keep my head down and avoid eye contact with the multitude of people going about their business. Instead of taking the walkway by the river to get home, I opt for the backstreet. Seeing the spot where Caius and I used to sit and discuss our training, thrust our feet in the water, won’t make me feel well at all. My birth mother is waiting for me when I slip through the back door into the kitchen, and she gives me a stiff nod.
“Where have you been?”
“With Penny,” I answer.
“All this time?”
“Yes.” My first calculated lie. “She wanted me to teach her about the matches.” This isn’t too far a stretch of the imagination. Lots of Elin are intrigued by the fighting, and most of them even seem to have a bit of a bloodthirsty streak. My birth mother has been with me when I’ve been stopped in the street before, when Elin want to rehash a certain move I may have pulled in my last fight. She doesn’t question my response, just goes back to chopping carrots for dinner.
“Good. I hope she learned everything she needed to know,” she says.
I nod, but really I doubt Penny learned anything from our meeting. If anything, I’m the one who’s learned much today. I’ve learned some of Cai’s biggest secrets. I’ve also learned there’s no way I’m getting out of this city.
BELCORAS
“Aren’t you really hot right now?” my brother asks. We’re waiting outside the Colosseum where we’re
supposed to be meeting one of the Falin Belcoras to organise a training schedule. I have no idea which one of the Belcoras it will be. There are seven or eight of them, I think, and they all look the same. I glance at my brother and shake my head even though sweat is pouring down my back.
“No. Why do you ask?”
“Because you’re wearing your jacket and it’s zipped up tight.” He reaches for the zipper that is, indeed, drawn all the way up underneath my chin, and I slap his hand away.
“I think I’m still a little sick. You probably shouldn’t touch me.” This has the desired effect, and my brother puts some space between us. There’s no way I can walk around the Sanctuary without my jacket right now, not without someone noticing my halo is almost entirely free from my neck. I woke up before sunrise this morning with it making an odd ticking noise. It took a full hour for it to stop, and I laid there with my heart thrumming in my chest while I panicked that it was going to start working again.
That’s what I’ve decided―that I’m not ready for it to start working again. Yet. I keep telling myself I’ll only leave it a few more days before I go and see the technicians. Until then, I have to cover my neck.
I have Cai’s holostick with me. It’s not safe to leave at home, but I feel inconceivably guilty walking around with it on my person. It practically burns a hole in my back pocket, and yet I have absolutely no idea why. It could contain anything inside. It could contain nothing at all. At this rate I’m never going to find out, because I’m too scared to try accessing it. I never knew I was such a coward until now.
All of the red banners and flags have been taken down from the Colosseum, and the four levels of carved sandstone are naked today, as we wait for the Belcoras boy by the main entrance. I’m wearing my knife belt, which feels blissfully normal even though it took a lot for me to strap it on before we left the house. The weight of it, knowing exactly where each and every blade is, the movement and shift of my weapons when I walk, is reassuring. It’s only when I consider taking a blade out and using it that I’m filled with alarm.
Halo (Blood and Fire Series (A Young Adult Dystopian Series)) Page 4
