Outlier: Rebellion

by Daryl Banner

  He’s certain no one can hear him. “Arrow, someone! Help!”

  When he steps over another chunk of fallen debris, his eyes are caught by a boy his age on the ground. The boy looks up, their eyes meet, and Wick stops short.

  He is the most beautiful person Wick has ever seen.

  There is quite suddenly nothing else in the world. No hellfire. No screams. The stunning boy’s Sanctum outfit hugs a tight, muscular form … truly, a boy of the sky … and his face is like something cut from gem, a perfection Wick couldn’t match in his hottest dreams.

  And that coming from Wick, the only person in the world who can dream.

  “Please!” cries the boy, scrambling to get to his feet, but falling twice to the ground. Blood smears his beautiful face, his two bright eyes begging him. “Help me! I’m—My name is Ath—Athan … I’m Athan and—and I’m … I think I’ve broken my … my …”

  Wick stumbles suddenly, rocked by a loud and heavy thing that lands just behind him, and he falls into the boy, elbow slamming hard against the boy’s cheek. Now he’s lying on top of him, face to beautiful face, inexorably close, breath-close … except the Sanctum boy’s no longer conscious. Knocked out and helpless, his striking face lies inches from Wick’s. Even in this wicked circumstance, Wick suddenly can’t pull his eyes away from the discovery of the Sanctum boy’s plush, welcome lips. What was your name again?—You’d only just said it …

  His hand near the boy’s arm, he suddenly finds his hand trailing up, up, up to the boy’s shoulder. What am I doing? The world could kill them both at any moment, and he chooses to lay hands instead. Smoke and red light and terror pass around and through and above them, shadows playing across the boy’s face, and nothing can touch its beauty … except Wick. Wick can touch all he dares.

  I dreamed you, he realizes. I dreamed you and you’re here.

  Fireballs land nearby, and he risks a hand on the boy’s soft cheek. I dreamed you. Who are you? His heart racing, he can’t tell if his breath quickens because the flames around him are hungry, or because his hand is exploring the face of the most beautiful boy in all of Atlas.

  And with the boy unconscious, eyes shut, mouth parted … it’s almost like the boy sleeps, just like he does. This draws a smile on Wick’s face. What do you dream of, Sanctum boy? He notices a cut on the boy’s forehead. It’s bleeding badly.

  “WICK,” squawks the earpiece, sobering him in an instant. The handsome dream-boy in his arms, Wick finds the story of Rone’s dad suddenly twisting his stomach into a nasty decision of do or don’t. Fire has taken hold of the debris and it dances forth, threatening to ignite Wick with it. If he leaves the boy, the boy will burn—cooked in the debris, along with countless others who have been crushed already, and they’ll share an eternal bed. If he tries to save him, they both may cook. Wick realizes how sickeningly lucky he’s been so far. But I’m not yet out of harm’s unrelenting way.

  He makes a decision, unsure what force within has swayed him. Gripping the boy’s firm, taut body—how cruel to notice such things at a time like this—he drags the fine-faced beauty like a sack of meat across the threshold of the square. He doesn’t let himself stop to rest until he and the boy break free of the havoc, every muscle in his body tortured to every end.

  Only now does he realize he saw none of his comrades. Terrible thoughts flood him. Please, please let them be safe. Oh, if I went for saving this Privileged, only to lose my friends … Only now is a hand at last free to press into the earpiece, where he chokes even more words he’s certain they can’t hear. “Help, please. I’m out … Wick, Wick is out … and I need help.”

  And what a surprise, but not six minutes later, help arrives in the form of Rone, Juston, Adamant, and Yellow, all come to carry Wick and his rescued.

  The Noodle Shop closed for the night, they pour into the bottom floor, shoving tables away to make room for the wounded. Wick is ushered to a nearby booth where, to his great and immeasurable relief, he discovers that not a soul of theirs was lost: Victra and Cintha have gotten back safely. Only Victra has a deep slice down her thigh, looked at by a carefully-tending and unblemished Cintha. From the look on Victra’s face, she’s less in pain than she is just terribly annoyed. Cintha hasn’t a mark on her but a small scrape along her forehead. So, so lucky they were …

  “What the fuck was that??” Rone starts, already circling on Adamant with rage popping out his eyes.

  “What’re you talking about? You think that … you think all that was me?”

  “That was my sister out there!” Rone screams, his anger beyond any matter of consolation. “You and your hunger for death and violence … You killed half as many people from the festival than you did Sanctum-born! Yellow was clear: No violence!”

  “I DIDN’T DO IT!”

  Yellow, who is knelt down by the Sanctum boy that Wick had saved, looks up at the accused, his eyes heavy and solemn. “Adamant …”

  “Don’t you dare,” he snaps. “I didn’t do this. How the hell could I have done any of it?”

  “I don’t blame you,” says Yellow. “We all harbor anger, we all hold those above accountable for many of our losses, for—”

  “I DIDN’T DO IT!” Adamant repeats, a vein popping in his forehead. At any moment, Wick worries he could pull a sword on Rone or Yellow or any of them, or vice versa, for as heavily as they’re breathing, heaving their rage in and out of lung.

  Yellow rises, moves toward Adamant. “Come. I understand. I am not angry.” For a moment, Adamant seems to resist, but then suddenly a look of incredible calmness arrests him. How his anger suddenly goes, there is no explanation. “You were never part of ours to begin with, were you? Neither do you know what Rain is, what this place is, what lives above or below its tables of spicy. You never met me or him or her or them, have you?”

  Adamant simply stares at Yellow, affixed to his eyes like a trance. He does not respond.

  “Good,” whispers Yellow. “You don’t remember any of our names … You only remember your own, is that right?”

  The look in Adamant’s eyes has gone from a furious man’s to a frightened boy’s. “What?” he says, his voice so small and gone. He peers to his left, staring at Rone with wide, confused eyes. His lip quivers uncertainly before he says, “I think … I think I’m lost.”

  Yellow’s tone changes dramatically, as though another person had taken his place. “Hello. You say you’re lost?” Adamant nods. “No need to worry. This fellow can help you.” He gives Juston a pat on the shoulder. “His name’s … Patience. He’ll take you to the train. It’ll get you home right quick. And what’s your name, son?”

  “Patience …” He slowly moves with Juston through the door, giving one more puzzled look back at Rone. His final look. “It’s Adamant, that’s my name.” The door softly closes behind them.

  It isn’t until the room’s been silent a while longer that Wick realizes what’s happened: Yellow took his memory. Everyone in the room seemed to know it was happening except Wick.

  “And the boy?” prompts Victra, her voice riddled with its usual irritation.

  Yellow peers down sadly at the golden-haired boy on the floor, the beautiful boy in fitted Sanctum garb. “Anwick Lesser,” he says, and Wick feels a stab of dread in his chest until Yellow finishes his sentence: “You just scored us the greatest gift in all our history. For the first time ever, we have intel directly from the Lifted City … through him.”

  Wick’s eyes drop down, finding the handsome boy’s lips again, entranced with the realization of what he’d done. He only thought he was doing a good deed, saving a life … He hadn’t realized the service he’d done for Rain.

  Cintha smiles at him from across the room, and in her loudest voice yet, says, “With poor Adamant gone, looks like Rain’s got an immediate opening for you.”

  ACT 2

  0019 Forgemon

  Fire should not rain from the sky, yet on the evening broadcast it clearly does.

  “I haven’t se
en something this bad since—”

  “I know,” says Forge, cutting off his wife.

  “Do you think—”

  “I don’t know.” His mind rapidly sorts the math of what he’s seeing on the broadcast: the Lunar Festival crushed in, smoke and flame spilling into sky … the air like flaming snow. How did he not know this would happen? The math has always been there for him; it warned him of his sons, warned him of his wife’s trials at the Greens, warned him of his own struggles he’d face in the metalshop … Math even brings to light how very necessary it is to wake Anwick in the night to train. But no numbers yielded to the Lord’s Garden falling upon the city in horror and hell.

  Someone has an upper hand on my math. Someone or something. There is no other explanation. Why else has he missed so much lately? And where exactly is Anwick now?

  The broadcast switches to the Crystal Court—an arena in the Lifted City where officials make speeches to the citizenry—and the Marshal of Peace Janlord shares his deep concerns for the falling of the Lord’s Garden. “Peace will be restored,” he assures the people, his voice firm yet kind. “The cause of this will be discovered in due time, and those responsible brought to rights.”

  Ellena stirs, her hand gripping Forge’s thigh like an armrest, and she murmurs, “What of Halves and Aleks? They’re going to be pulled into this. I can’t stand the thought of our two boys—”

  “They will be fine,” Forge insists tersely. No matter the love he bears his wife, when the math occupies his brain, everything else is unwanted, distracting, vexing. Until the numbers line up, he will know no rest. And someone, or something, does not want me to rest. Someone, or something, is outsmarting probability … working faster than math, faster than certainty. How is that even possible? “What I want to know is, where’s my son who should be home?”

  Link, the son he’s not referring to, hugs his knees in the armchair in the corner of the den and glowers at the broadcast.

  “Anwick will be home soon, I’m sure.” His wife’s words are little comfort, lacking his foresight. You have no certainty you’re right, Ellena … but I hope you are.

  On the broadcast, the colorful Marshal of Legacy Impis raises a very bejeweled hand, his whole body decorated in vibrant, fluffy hues. “I’ve a word or two to contribute,” he sings to the Court, stepping forth, but Janlord cuts him off. “Not just yet, Impis. I must share the consequence this unfortunate tragedy will behold on our people.” Impis lifts a brow, surprised, then says, “Oh, yes, mmm, all the more.” And he smiles—a terrifying sight in itself—then trips over his own high-heeled boot on the way back to his seat, face-planting.

  From the kitchen, Lionis throws in his own word. “Why isn’t the King ever present? I can’t remember the last time I saw him at a Crystal Court broadcast. It isn’t good for a King to take hide every time something’s gone wrong in the city, don’t you agree?”

  “There’s plenty that goes wrong, worse every day.” Forge doesn’t take his eye off the broadcast as he speaks. “A good King shows face and smiles at people. A smart King hides and lets his Marshals make clean of the dirty.”

  “Bet the King’s dead,” mutters the ever-nasally Lionis from behind, now moved up to the couch. “He’s dead and they cover it up, doing his business for him. Janlord’s King now.”

  “That’s rebel talk,” says Forge, glaring at the screen and not at his son. “I won’t hear my son spew rebel talk and theorist talk and conspiracy. People get thrown into the Combs for that, and that’s no place for a boy.”

  “I’m not a boy.”

  “Until you make gold and hold down a house of your own, you’re a boy.” Forge’s patience is wearing thin, even for Lionis. Numbers are printed at the backs of his eyelids, laughing at him with every blink, his fingers trembling and his hair sticking up on end. The math is making you crazy. It always makes you crazy. He closes his eyes and fights a sudden urge to shout and hit things.

  “Then Halves and Aleks are boys too,” Lionis replies smartly, “seeing as they hold no wives or—”

  “WHERE IS ANWICK??” he hollers suddenly, patience lost. He rises from the couch, fingers made to fists—then sees Anwick at the foot of the narrow stair, like he’s been there the whole time. Everything seems to be catching Forge by surprise lately, which is quite cruel to do to a person with foresight as his supposed Legacy.

  “What’s happened?” Anwick asks in a voice thin and innocent as air.

  Oh, I’m sure you know exactly what’s happened. “You tell me, son, after you explain where you’ve been.”

  “I’ve been finishing my homework.”

  He lies. “What is this homework, on a night where fire rains from the sky and celebrations of the moon end in death?” The wife reaches for his hand and he pries it away, all the more annoyed. “Don’t interfere, Ellena.”

  “Sweetheart …” she says, hurt in her voice.

  Anwick’s face hardens. “I said I was doing my homework, dad. You accuse me when I say it, yet Link uses that excuse every night and can’t be found for hours after the sun’s off. Why not accuse him?”

  “Accuse? Who’s accusing?” Forge spits back. I have him now, his own words landed him in a trap. “What’ve you done that warrants accusing, Anwick?”

  It is his other son Lionis who interjects: “Don’t bring Link into this, Wick. Dad’s talking to you, not him.”

  “Don’t bring yourself into this,” Anwick retorts. “No one’s talking to the housemaid, so shut your ass up.”

  “Anwick!” his wife cries.

  “ENOUGH.” Forge has slammed fist to countertop, all the dishes shuddering loudly in protest. “Anwick, this is not a wise time to be coy with me. There are bad things happening … everywhere, to everyone. Ninth ward isn’t safe. Innocents are dying for no reason, the sky is falling, and Sanctum does not care which of us dies. What is that blue on your face?” Anwick wipes at his forehead, completely missing the strange blue stain up the side of his cheek. “What the hell is that?”

  “School project,” he barks, furiously wiping, wiping, wiping.

  “There is no school project.” Then his son turns abruptly, trudging up the narrow stair without another word. “Anwick! Get back here!” He hears the bedroom door slam shut.

  Calm, Forge. Calm, calm, calm. Beat the math, don’t let the math beat you. See the future, don’t let the future see you.

  Forge turns a considerably calmer eye onto his other son. “Lionis, you need to be better to your brother. He will need you more now than ever. The world is so small. You should trust in my judgment and not take it lightly … Times are coming, son.”

  “Yes, dad,” he says simply, though Forge isn’t sure he’s convinced.

  Across the screen of the broadcast, faces and names are shown. At first, he believes Sanctum is paying tribute to all the lives that were lost, until he realizes that the only faces and names being shown are highborn.

  “I don’t know any of them,” murmurs Lionis as he squints at the screen. “Are they all tenth ward folk?”

  “Sons and Daughters of Sanctum.” The answer comes from Ellena, her own tone taking a bitterness. Forge’s jaw clenches, watching the faces and names go by, thinking on the others who died tonight … others who live down below, who’d only thought they’d gone to celebrate the moon, to feel free for a night of joy, to know what gifts of life await them … only to meet the end.

  The broadcast names three highborn who’ve yet to turn up from the wreckage. First and most urgent, an elderly woman named Lady Kael Mirand-Thrin, thin of face and with two tiny pearls for eyes. As daughter-in-law to the King, who hasn’t any other living descendent, she is heir to the throne of Atlas. That fact, according to the reporter, is the most disturbing of all. Was this destruction against the Lord’s Garden a plot to capture or kill the heir of Atlas? Investigations are now underway, and Guardian has been dispatched to search diligently for Lady Kael Mirand-Thrin.

  The second lost highborn is a man by the name
of Joed Sanmard of the privileged Sanmard Estate. The third and final one missing is a young and handsome boy named Athan Broadmore. Rewards are offered to any person with reliable information leading to the discovery of any of these three important Sons and Daughters of Sanctum, dead or alive.

  Not a moment’s mind paid to the countless lowborn still dead or dying, missing or otherwise. Never a mind paid to us … He can’t stand to think more of it, not tonight.

  “Where are you going?” asks Ellena.

  No matter the rage in his chest, Forge gently presses a kiss to his wife’s lips, says, “The shed. Be back later.”

  Leaving the house and the broadcast and the boys and beautiful Ellena, he heads down to the end of the street where the large and humid shed rests—his personal metalshop that is available for anyone to use, yet no one does, aside from the times he pulls Anwick from his sleep to train. It’s been very long since they’ve last trained, but that is no matter, nothing is a matter right now. Forge puts all of that aside, everything, everyone, and slips protection over his ears, muffing out the world. There will be no math here, not with something or someone interfering with it. The fury just barely at bay, he brings to hand his favorite hammer, pulls onto the workbench a proud bit of metal, and bangs, bangs, bangs.

  Even with the math, or maybe because of it, this is the only place where he feels truly in control. Bang, bang, bang. There are no numbers in putting hammer to stone, no figures in shaping steel, in misshaping and reshaping iron and alloy from ugly to strong. Bang, bang.

  Along the back of the hammer are etched six names from top to bottom. Aleksand first, then Halvesand, then Lionis, then Anwick, then Link. Each a reminder of why he does this at all, each a reminder of what he lives and breathes for, of why he’s even angry at all, angry at the world, at the Lords and Kings above. One day, that anger might find a place, but for now, the hammer just bangs, bangs, bangs. A sixth name beneath the rest: Elle.