by Daryl Banner
But she’s an observant cat, and it is not lost on her that the daddy’s been discussing something heatedly with mommy in the kitchen. She makes short glances at Kid, smiles anxiously, returns to her hushed, urgent whispers.
The boy laughs at something Kid does, then corrects a word she says, another word, but really Kid isn’t paying attention. The parents look more and more anxious by the second, and it brings pause to Kid’s every smile and breath. She really doesn’t want this to end, not so soon. This has been good so far. Everything she reaches for vanishes. Anyone she hugs or loves … Please don’t takes these peoples away … Please. The boy she keeps playing with, and the smiles she keeps wearing … Kid feels so visible it’s possible she may never vanish again.
“I don’t want to disturb your fun,” says the sweet mom, suddenly at the archway to the den, “but when did you say your—ah—daddy will be home?”
“Two hours. Maybe more.” Kid smiles, holds up a thing she built. “Look what I maked.”
The dad moves to his wife, an arm around her that almost seems protective. “Which house, exactly?”
Kid’s eyes play between them, and then suddenly she’s on her feet. “I having to use the bathroom.” She hurries toward the hall.
“How did you know where it was?” asks the dad.
Kid stops, licks her lips and says, “It’s right there, isn’t it?” She points, like it were the most obvious thing.
“Oh my,” the mother whispers, though it’s plainly heard by all. “She … You really think she’s … You think it’s really her?”
“I think it’s really her,” returns the father solemnly.
Her. Has the story of Kid’s brutal disappearance not yet given to the dark? Do people still speak of it? Do they whisper and wonder and fear, even still?
“M-My name is Ellena,” she repeats dumbly.
“I don’t think it is,” says the man, and he’s pulled a device from the kitchen counter and taps it with thumbs. “Clara.” He turns to his wife. “I already thought it at dinner and made the call. They’ve been on their way.”
“NO!” Kid rushes up to them—bringing great alarm to the mother’s eyes. “No, no, no! Don’t summon them!”
“I think you’re right,” the mother replies, then crouches down to look Kid in the eye. “You don’t have a thing to worry about, dear. I’m so glad you found us. Don’t you know they’ve been looking for you for a long, long time? They’re going to help you, don’t you know? They even told us you might come back, and—”
“The mask men!” Kid yells, panicking, angry and sad and hurt at all once. “They taked everything! They taked my mommy and daddy and they killed them! You can’t let them in! You maked a mistake!”
And just then, a gentle knock at the door. Everyone turns to the sound.
“Please,” Kid begs, her voice no more than a squeak.
The man doesn’t think twice. He moves to the door, just as her dumb daddy moved to the door, except this one doesn’t tell her to hide. He pulls it open.
A long sharp thing bursts cleanly from the back of his skull, then vanishes. There isn’t even any red, and the daddy drops to the floor.
“DAD!” cries out the Kid—or maybe it was the boy. The world’s suddenly very loud and confusing, and the men in masks and shadow flood the room, countless of them, as though the years have given them cause to multiply twentyfold. Kid’s already left the visible plane, but it doesn’t save her from the masked men and their terrible voices. “Hand over the girl!” Voices booming. “Where is she!” Voices like drums that vibrate the walls and rattle teeth. “Cast the nets! No escape! Every exit!”
Kid’s flattened against the wall, watching in horror. The mommy races toward her husband, but a masked man catches her by the neck like a chicken. There is a loud exchange of words—with the screaming and crying, there’s no telling what’s said—and suddenly the woman’s face goes limp. Indeed, her whole body seems to sag, and then the blood seeps from every pore of her body. The sight is so unreal, so alien that Kid has trouble making sense of it. To be fair, she’s never seen someone’s Legacy cause a person to … deflate.
Boars and mad animals, these shadow-mask men flip furniture, throw open cabinets and drawers, all the things shatter and scream and echo—the shouting, the madness—and suddenly the boy’s lifted in the air by an unseen force. One of the masked men yells things at him, horrid things, and the boy—Ester or Julan?—begs for his life. The squeal of his voice is so, so pitiful …
And she’ll never know the outcome, as she narrowly escapes the chaos and the violence and the masked men through the tiny kitchen window they left unsecured. Scrambling outside, she tears down the long dirty street, panting, panting, crying and bleeding from somewhere and panting. Her feet are so fast, and her breathing faster. She won’t turn around, not to watch the men destroy another thing, take another life for her, take and take and take. The masked men and the shadows they cast.
She’s run away so far she can’t feel her legs, and the only sound that fills the world is her own jagged breath and the rush of pumping blood in her ears.
She hides in the squeeze between two buildings, even invisible she still hides. She can’t even risk letting loose the scream that sits in her throat, nor the sobs in her heavy chest. Only the brick wall ahead of her matters, glaring into it, furious as a fire. She hates that wall, that stupid, stupid wall.
But the bricks are innocent as a massive monster. The true enemy is elsewhere.
She lets herself look away, morning’s light breaking. Today’s air is ugly and the spirals of smoke that come off the rooftops are nothing nice, twirling from the pipes like dragon nostrils. Something calms her, something that, like her, cannot be seen. Maybe it’s the somber realization … Tears don’t stop the men from coming. Hiding didn’t help her daddy. Screaming doesn’t feed a stomach. Glaring doesn’t change a world.
Looking into the bleak city, she doesn’t see the beast with the fiery tail anymore. Massive monsters and innocents … She looks and looks and cannot see it.
0035 Wick
It’s been so easy the last several days, even with his bedroom window sealed shut. His dad thinks he’s gotten the better of him, and Wick won’t dare imply otherwise. The bathroom window proves just as faithful as his bedroom one had, and in the middle of this dreamless night—which has been every night since he and Athan shared the rooftops—Wick slips from his house once more, his mother in the kitchen with Lionis, his younger brother likely up a tree, and his father at the Weapon Show. I won’t be far behind, he thinks, racing for the trains.
When Wick arrives at the loft, he learns that Yellow and Juston have already left for the Weapon Show. That was part of the plan; they would all travel to the Crossing in pairs, each of them with a partner … except Wick.
“That’s because you’re the scout,” explains Rone, gripping his shoulder and squeezing. “Well, Victra’s the real scout with her Legacy, and she’ll be connected to our radio system that Arrow’s charmed up for us, but—”
“We need the exit covered, I know.” Wick rolls his eyes, frustrated with the whole setup. He knows why they can’t take Athan … It’s obvious, the risks involved. But every time he looks at that ugly locked door across the room, his stomach does flips. He shouldn’t be kept in there like a dog …
“It’s locked anyway, and Yellow’s taken the key,” Rone says, as if reading his mind. The sourness in Wick’s face must be obvious; Rone’s own sapphire eyes glow with concern as he speaks. “Listen, Victra and I are about to head out. The graffiti bombs are already placed, don’t have to fuss with them at all this time. Yellow’s done it already.” He had gone early to take care of the prep, Juston to be his muscle—if any was needed. Of course, Yellow can cover his tracks easy, his Legacy of wiping memories proving quite convenient. “You remember your part in this, Wick? Go ahead, test your charm.”
Wick pokes the bit in his ear. “Test, test. Got me?”
“G
ot you!” they call from behind the tapestry where Arrow, Cintha, and Prat are running controls remotely.
Rone winks, pops Wick on the face with a palm. “It won’t be like the Festival. This one’s gonna be clean, but it’ll be big. Everyone’s watching. And hey, Wicky … remember whose idea this all was.”
Victra looks positively bored, stretching some kind of long, rubbery glove up the length of her arm and staring at Wick through half-opened electric-blue-shadowed lids. Snap, snap, both gloves donned, she saunters past Wick and only says, “Let’s make it rain,” on her way out of the loft—but not before burying her tongue down Rone’s throat, the two of them struggling and grunting for a full and awkward ten seconds.
The lovebirds gone, Wick checks behind the purple tapestry where Cintha, Prat, and Arrow are seated in front of a screen that beeps with numbers and icons and messages. Only Cintha looks up. “Fifteen past.”
“Yeah, I know.” It’s the time Wick’s supposed to leave headquarters for the Weapon Show, fifteen past the toll of midnight, approximately one half-hour after Rone has taken leave. “You doing alright?” he asks Cintha, who smiles lamely for reply. “Of course. You got nothing to worry about, Cinth. Your brother’s gonna be fine. Even he just said, this one’s gonna be—”
“Clean, I know.” She turns back to the computer, steady and languid.
Neither Prat nor Arrow seem to acknowledge he’s even there, focused so intensely on the computer and whatever nonsensical information flows across its screen. Likely monitoring the graffiti bombs, relaying messages to the others, whatever else the brains of the operation do.
Wick moves to the large window to wait, feeling very much alone. He can’t see the smoke of the fallen Garden anymore. Maybe it’s cleared out by now, wiped away and put out of sight like spilt milk … preparing for another unthinkable happening to take its place. What the hell is it with my obsession and paranoia of things going wrong? Am I really that much like dad?
He glares at the ugly locked door. He stares at it and counts the minutes as they pass. Maybe I should try talking to him. Say something at least before I go. Only one minute’s passed. Twenty-nine left. The Sanctum boy … The boy with whom he exchanged his first kiss … locked behind a door. Wick wonders if the boy realized after eating his dinner that fateful night that it would be the last dinner he’d eat in the Lifted City for quite some time. He didn’t ask for this. He didn’t want any of this.
Twenty-eight left. The clicking and beeping of the computer from behind the tapestry is the only sound in the loft. They can’t see Wick, the big purple hanging thing blocking their view. Wick looks at the ugly door again, considers … Maybe … Surely, he’s lonely too …
Twenty-seven, and a wild idea forms. A wild and likely bad idea. Twenty-seven. Still twenty-seven. And—
Wick swipes a bottle off the shelf, a set of Victra’s rubber gloves, and a tiny rusted screwdriver before quietly passing into the adjoining room. Through the tight living space that used to be rented out, long since neglected, Wick sets down the gloves and bottle and navigates in the dusty darkness to the window. Fussing at the latch, he flips it open and swings out two anxious legs. He happens to be rather skilled at scaling buildings—as he tends to scale his own house on the daily—so without a bother, he reaches up, props his foot against the rim of the opened window and gives a push, grappling carefully with a conveniently-placed brick ledge that he traverses. He braces himself at the next window ever gently, which has been sealed with a large metal covering. Carefully, he twists the screwdriver at each corner, unloosing it.
When the thing indelicately swings down, only one screw saves it from a far tumble into the alley below. Wick pushes into the glass, lifting it and smiling inside.
Athan rises from the floor where he sat, his eyes instantly flashing to life. “Wick? What’s—? What’s—?”
“Climb through.” Wick grips the brick ledge, pulls himself out of the way for Athan, then slips back into the window of the dusty living space. Soon after, Athan emerges, his arms flexed in the effort, and the bright grin on Athan’s face as he climbs into the room makes it all worth the trouble.
Wick rubs the wall, fumbling in the dark until his hand happens on a lever. Flipping it, a small pool of light falls in the center of the room, certainly scattering all matter of spiders and bugs. Pulling a chair off a pile of assorted furniture, he sets it out and nods to Athan. “Sit.”
“What’s going on?”
“Sit.”
Athan’s eyes go from Wick’s face to the blue bottle in his hand, back to his face. His eyes glow with reluctant comprehension. “You mean, you’re going to—?”
“I’m gonna make a slum boy out of you.”
The look in Athan’s eyes at first is one of fear, then twisted into reluctance, into an unspoken question, and then finally thrill. Carefully, he lowers himself into the chair. It creaks loudly, a wooden, ancient yawn.
Wick draws up to Athan’s backside, stretches a pair of gloves on his hands, opens the blue bottle, and squirts into his palm. When his fingers run through Athan’s short, messy hair, he feels a rush of excitement. The blue coursing through the gold, he takes care to twist the color into the tips, avoiding the scalp as much as he can. It’s the hair he needs blue, not the whole damn head.
“Tingles,” says Athan with half a giggle.
“Shouldn’t. It isn’t hair dye, it’s just ink.”
“Maybe it’s your fingers doing the tingling.” Athan turns his head. “So why the change? Had enough of blondes?”
His fingers tangled in the yellow, Wick leans forward and whispers, “It’s a disguise, Sanctum boy. You’re coming with me tonight.” He can’t see Athan’s reaction, but he can’t imagine it’s anything less than ecstatic.
While they wait for the ink to set, Wick discards the gloves and sits on a stack of turned-over vegetable crates across from Athan. He observes the Sanctum boy. “I’d say the week’s tainted your Sanctum cleanness. Even those clothes look a bit slummy now.”
When the twenty-seven minutes that once existed at last expire, Wick slips Athan down the narrow stair and out of the Noodle Shop. The whole time Athan whispers, “But it’s just hair color … It’s just … Are you sure it’s enough to disguise me? I didn’t even get to look in a mirror!” Wick just grins, his excitement carrying them down the street, east the fourteen blocks to the train.
On the train, Wick’s earpiece makes a fuzzy belch, then Arrow’s voice comes in: “Wick, you on the go?”
Wick pushes a finger into his ear. “Yes.”
“Hey. It’s a lot more crowded than expected, so they opened all the entrances to the arena. That means a slight change in plans. Juston’s got the west exit, Yellow the north, Rone the south and you the other south.”
“I don’t do well in crowds,” Wick answers back. Athan wrinkles his brow, giving him a strange look. Wick points at his ear, explains in a whisper: “They’re talking to me. I’m wearing an ear—”
“Victra’s going to keep near you two in the south quadrant and use her sight. Everything is ready to go. The ink will blow after the last weapon demonstration.”
“We’re here.” Wick rises from the bench, Athan following. The two of them spill from the train as it squeaks to a stop, many others apparently taking this route to the Weapon Show as well.
The arena is aesthetically unimpressive, but its size is staggering. A humungous cylinder of metal, the thing is surrounded by throngs of people, some pushing their way in, others loitering in circles of heated discussions about different kinds of metals and tempers, inventions, blades with various features … Wick ignores as much as he can manage, squeezing through the crowd. Wick’s grabbed Athan by the hand so as not to lose him, but it’s to little advantage, as Athan insists on being glued to Wick’s back as they move. Wick keeps his breathing measured, his eyes focused … He does not do well with crowds. So many people around, he already feels his heart in his throat and his muscles tightening with anx
iety.
They enter the arena without issue and the yawning dome of a ceiling is remarkably high. Athan grips Wick by the arm, keeping close. Any worry Wick had about bringing Athan along is for naught; the types of people that visit these Weapon Shows have just as wild hair, insane and downright bizarre choices in attire … some sport pink rubber, mustard jackets, tall green spikes of hair … Athan nearly fits in better than I do.
Wick makes his way through the crowds, attempting to decipher which exits are the south ones, and of them, which is Rone’s to watch and which is his. With a wiggly panic cutting through him, he thinks, Whichever exit is further from where my father might be—that’s what I’ll take.
Yes, it hasn’t been lost on him: his dad is here somewhere. His hope is that he’s with the presenters of the weapons, or working something behind the scenes, as he’s a smith. But even the workers of factories and the forges and metalshops come as mere spectators, sitting among the audience and not showing off their skill. Not everyone pines for the attention of Sanctum officials, or the Marshal of Order’s greedy eye.
“So many people,” Athan says, his eyes so wide it’s a wonder he’s blinked at all since they got off the train.
“Stay close,” Wick answers unnecessarily, as Athan could not be any more pressed against him, “and stay behind me. I don’t … I don’t want Victra seeing you.”
“How would she see me?”
“Through my eyes.” Wick shifts his back, anxiously looking from left to right, to the exit, to the other exit. He can’t keep still, feeling like he’s drowning, like the crowd of people were a vast, thick liquid he’s been unwillingly plunged into. You wanted to be a part of this, he reminds himself. This is what you wanted. Rain is what you wanted, so either stand here and be a force of reckoning, or pull out your umbrella and go home to bed.
