by Daryl Banner
A sudden wind slaps Wick in the face, but also succeeds in toppling the brute, bringing the both of them to the ground. Shrieks are heard halfway down the street from a scared onlooker; they echo off the buildings like bats. The wind gathers, and just before Wick clenches his eyes, a blinding purple light zips past his nose, and there’s a shout. Wick turns his face and finds the other Guardian on the ground, Tide on top of him, enraged.
Wick makes another attempt at breaking free from the man’s clutch. At once, wind picks up around him, whorls of sharp, biting air that seem to sting his eyes as though it were made of tiny needles. The arms that held in his neck suddenly find reason to let go, the brute shouting sweet pain into his ear. Wick clambers to his feet and, carelessly trampling over two bodies who shall, for the time being, remain unknown, he races away, the wind still rushing at his ears like hissing snakes.
He turns his head only once, finds Tide has broken free too. No Rone, he realizes with a sick turn of his belly. No Victra. No Athan. But the Guardian are already back on their feet, the brutish one limping, and he watches the one in the ugly helmet bring to aim a short grey cannon. Aren’t we glowing enough?
Wick and Tide tear down two streets, turning every corner they meet. Tide is at his heels, and for a moment, Wick wonders if they’re running together, or if Tide is chasing him. Everything is so confusing. The wind still pushes them from all directions, a deafening, relentless wind, and Wick makes half an attempt at screaming at Tide to stop it with all the wind. We’re running away, fool! We need the wind to work for us, not against us!
And then it does just that, throwing the two of them into the base step of a fire escape ladder. Recovering from the sudden discovery, Wick throws himself up the ladder, breathless, heaving. He doesn’t care if Tide’s following at his feet, he only looks up.
Another purple light zips past, narrowly missing him. He’s made it to the metal stairs and finds himself ascending. Still, he doesn’t look back. He chooses a window, any window, and pushes through the glass. How did I know this window would open? He doesn’t even have a time to breathe relief, staggering through a dark apartment. It is vacant, abandoned. No furniture, no carpet. It’s a ruined building and there’s a huge hole in the ground—a hole digging well beyond five or six stories below, every floor as empty, jagged splinters of wood like teeth in the floor’s mouth, a chasm to hell.
When the enormity of the hole hits him, Wick presses himself to the wall, frightened. Not a second later, the slender Guardian flies into the room, and comes to a stop at the very edge of the wooden chasm—but he’d come too close. The skinny man gasps, balanced on the edge, and loses his neon to the depths.
Wick watches, his throat clenching, and finds he’s formed a most horrible thought: If he falls, we’re safe. If he falls … If he falls …
Wick’s hands open. Wick’s hands close, clenching.
If he falls …
The building inhales. The sudden wind carries through the room, a wind that wasn’t there before. Alarmed, Wick grabs desperate hold of the wall and crouches down, terrified the wind might take his feet from under him and send his body on a little journey through the hole in the floorboards. But instead, it picks up the slender Guardian like a babe in a mother’s arms, and gently tosses him past the brink of splintered wood. His screams echo horribly through the throat of the building until they end in one ugly, wooden thump at the bottom.
Tide bursts into the room, lighting it up instantly like a bright purple lantern, and stops just short of the gaping hole, crying out in surprise. He’s nearly loses his footing too, but rights himself just in time and presses against the opposite wall, breathing heavy.
The wind settles, dust and cobwebs brought to calm again, and Wick and Tide are left staring at each other from across the floor’s wide, wide mouth. Their eyes are sharp with the acuity of having just fought for their lives.
That sudden wind … Did Tide just throw the man over the ledge with his Legacy? Wick considers for a short, panicked second that Tide could just as easily throw him to his death, if he’d dare.
Instead, Tide says, “We need a room without a death hole.”
Wick shakes his horrible thoughts, slowly rising to his feet. “What … What happened to the other guy?”
“Fell on his own blade while pursuing us. The idiot.”
Tide moves to a door across the room, pushes through. Wick slowly edges around the wooden chasm, daring only a small peek over the edge to see the little Guardian man flat and unmoving so many stories below. There is a small chance he may still live, Wick realizes, but doesn’t take the time to investigate further.
The next room is at the corner of the building, and one of the walls is half-missing, a steady breeze coursing in and making a creepy hiss. The view is the bleak rooftop of a shorter building next-door and a setting sun that sickens the sky into a jaundiced orange.
Wick is about to say something, but Tide speaks first in a furious grunt. “So much for your stupid friends.”
Wick considers him. “Man … You’re like a light bulb.”
“How loyal your stupid friends are, taking off the second it got rough.” Tide snorts, angry and pacing the room. The bright purple moves with him, floods one wall, then the other, back and forth as he moves. He is a pendulum of light. “Could’ve died. Could’ve died. Your stupid friends left us for dead.”
The truth is, Rone chose in that final moment to run Athan somewhere safe, because he is the priority. The Sanctum boy. They can’t risk being caught with him in their party, unless the whole of Rain has a death wish. And with any luck, the Guardian didn’t recognize Athan anyway. Are they even still looking? But he can’t explain any of this to Tide; he doesn’t know anything.
“My friends would’ve fought,” he goes on tirelessly. “Why didn’t you smell the Guardian coming, huh? Or is your Legacy really so useless?” He grunts, snapping his jaws. “Useless, stupid friends you got.”
Wick doesn’t acknowledge the jape at his made-up Legacy, nor does he look for comfort in Tide’s incessant whining. Instead, he offers some. “Rone took the others to safety, but he couldn’t handle all five of us. He did his best and hopefully they’re as safe as we are.”
“Safe? You call this safe?” His fury is unmistakable. The light in his body seems to glow brighter with his anger, the alien luminescence staining his clothes now, a blooming sheen. “You better hope Guardian didn’t call for backup or have some sort of tracking thing on them. It’ll lead the enemy straight to us. You call that safe?”
“Safer than we were a moment ago.”
Tide moves to the edge where there is no wall, glares into the city. “If I’d known that was the last time I’d see my …” He shuts up, pressing his lips together and turning to stone. Maybe he’s trying not to cry. Wick imagines for one amused second what Tide might look like crying.
“Victra has the Legacy of looking through others’ eyes,” Wick reminds him quietly. “She will find us soon. She’ll see me looking at you, or the other way around, and they’ll come upon us and we’ll go home.”
Tide just rolls his eyes, crosses his massive arms and broods silently. Wick draws quiet too, nothing left to say.
An hour seems to pass, though there’s no telling how long. Wick is having his own personal struggle, sitting on the floor leaned up against the wall. It isn’t the most comfortable bed he’s ever had, but several times his eyes dare him to drift away. He mashes his teeth, rubs his hands along the dusty wooden floor and plays games in his head with the purple light that bounces everywhere. I have to stay awake, he tells himself, a chant. I have to stay awake. I have to stay awake. Anwick Lesser, you are not safe.
Every now and then, Tide breaks from the wall, paces the room back and forth. He even moves to the first room, peering down the hole to check if the Guardian is still lying there, presumably broken. He is. When he returns, it’s like his anger has found him all over again. He’s breathing heavily, his massive body pulsing in
, pulsing out, even the purple radiance reflecting his rage.
It’s too bad Tide is such an arrogant cock, Wick thinks. He’s almost halfway attractive when he smiles.
“Let me know when they find us,” Wick tells him. “I’m gonna … I’m gonna play dead here in this corner.”
“I could help you play actual dead,” Tide spits back.
Wick can’t help himself. He studies Tide long and good, then finds himself smiling amusedly. “You know what? Under all that thickness, I think you have a squishy, sweet soul.”
Tide turns two deadly eyes.
“Yes, you. Tide Wellport. Tormentor of my little brother, who I might never see again, as I may not ever make it home. Oh, if only we can rely on the laziness of school officials, we might be overlooked and not labeled truants. You. Tide Wellport. You’re a sweet man deep down.”
“I’ll put a fist to that face,” Tide warns him. “I’ll lose you all your teeth, lose you your eyes and make a bloody mess of you.”
It is such sweet pleasure to stir Tide’s anger so easily. Wick only smiles. “It would be so, so worth it, just to know I was right all along. That without his cronies, he’s sweet. Without his anger and his fear, he’s just a little boy in need of a friend.”
And he’s gone too far. Instantly, the room swells with a fierce whirlwind of Tide’s Legacy. His muscles flex ferociously, and violent winds lift Wick off the floor and pin him against the wall. He gasps, choking, unable to find his own air, kicking and kicking and kicking. The wind slides him along the wooden slats, forces him into the corner, and Wick still can’t find breath.
“I CAN KILL YOU!” Tide screams, and there’s tears in his eyes. His muscles bulge and his hand raises up as though it were at Wick’s throat, squeezing. He looks half a god. “I CAN KILL YOU!” Luminous, beautiful, and terrifying.
Wick’s slipping away, the purple growing dimmer, but he struggles to keep his eyes on Tide, silently begging for his life, using a language that has no words.
And then the hand seems to let go and Wick slips down to the floor, though the wind still stirs threateningly about him. His wetted, hopeless eyes find Tide’s as he breathes in finally, letting air to his desperate lungs, over and over again he breathes in sweet, delicious life.
As they seem to observe one another, Wick believes something flashes in Tide’s eyes … An understanding, is it? A submission? A silent agreement? Or maybe Wick sees the soul he was jesting about only a moment ago, the tenderness of Tide that no one is allowed to see because in the way stands a brute, an anger, a bully.
Then the wind is gone, and the rage is gone, and all that’s left is a ruined room, a purple light, and two sad, scared boys.
“I’ll let you know when they find us,” says Tide, his voice half a whisper, hardly a voice at all, and he leaves the room.
After Tide’s gone, Wick curls up, still pressed into the corner, only not by wind. He hugs himself, lays his head against the wall and thinks about Athan’s face, pretends it to be right next to his own. He considers how alone he really is without the dream of Rain finding him. Victra and Rone, hunting the city for them. Is it a dream? He thinks about his brothers, Halves and Aleks … Thinks even about Lionis, wonders what he’s reading. He’d love me more if I were a book. That makes him laugh—except he isn’t really laughing. Maybe he’s already in a dream, far away, imagining. When will he see mom again? When will he see dad?
A gentle breeze touches his arms, strokes his face. He smiles, wonders the first thing Athan will say when they reunite. You are that breeze, he decides.
Then, Anwick Lesser of the ninth does the most dangerous thing yet: he closes his eyes.
0043 Cintha
Things aren’t going so well.
For one, she’s been staring at the stupid radio for over an hour now. Juston should’ve responded by now, but ever since they lost communication, their whole mission has been frozen in place. “Just wait,” Arrow tells her, twisting knobs and punching code into his computer. “Silence doesn’t mean failure. There’s a million and one ways to lose communication.”
“Okay,” sighs Cintha. We ought to be heading back. The Weapon isn’t here, it’s obvious. We’ve been tracking it for hours now, and my brother’s still—
“Just give it some more time.” Arrow narrows his eyes, focused on the screen and typing, typing, typing away. Cintha hugs her knees, trying not to lose her breakfast on the computer. “Your brother is fine,” Arrow states suddenly without a speck of evidence to support him but the phone call. “He’s in the seventh and they’re safely making their way home on the subterranean. Effectively, we’re in more danger than he is now, considering.” He makes a careless wave of his hand toward the window where, in the neighboring apartment complex, Juston and Prat are searching for and securing the Weapon. Theoretically. How this crazy plan fell into place, Cintha still doesn’t fully understand. It’s not here.
“We’re not even sure it’s the Weapon,” Cintha complains, unimpressed.
“It’s been tracked.” Arrow takes a sip of brew from his trusty mug he insists on carrying everywhere. “The Lady Gandra has many a connection, and what reason have we to question her?”
We have every reason to question her, Cintha thinks bitterly. They took their graffiti bombs to the Lunar Festival by the Lady Gandra’s command, and look how well that turned out. Oh, but let’s trust her again and rebuild the graffiti bombs for the Weapon Show, only to have that turn into twice as bad a wreck. No one’s even properly met Gandra Gateward, leader of Rain and friend to Yellow, yet they keep trusting her directive blindly. Now half their team is desperately clawing their way back home in the shadows and all Cintha can do is sit here next to an apartment complex near the Core of Atlas, far from home, and stare at a stupid radio.
I have to do something, she thinks, troubled. I’m so tired of doing nothing all the time but watching others jump headlong into the fray.
“I have to go in,” Arrow realizes, shaking his head. “There’s no other way. Sorry for panicking, but …” He puts a hand to his mouth, stares out the window, seeming to calculate his next move.
Cintha’s pushed a bit into her ear and made it to the door before he’s even made it to the end of his sentence.
“No, no, no!” Arrow blocks her, shaking his head. “If I let you go in there, Rone will kill me.”
“Rone wouldn’t kill a friend.” Cintha tries to push his tall, gangly body out of the way, then sighs. “Arrow, please move … Don’t make me use my Legacy.”
The threat coming from her feels so strange, because she’s certain she would never use it at all on a friend or companion. She wishes she never had the Legacy, wishes she’d had something so much less … influential. So much less … playing with fire. She wishes her Legacy were plain and boring. All she ever wanted to be was plain and boring.
Arrow slouches, which Cintha takes to mean he has conceded to her wish. “Thank you,” she says politely, though he’s hardly moved out of the way. With ease, she pushes past him and is out the door.
With half a waltz, she moves into the building. The air in here is cold, and she worries if she should’ve put on her jacket. It hangs over Arrow’s chair, she remembers, but it’s no bother as she’s already inside. Down long plain corridors, she advances through the building, following the path she knows so well from the maps that Prat had drawn out in such detail. Prat and her were always close, perhaps because he, like Wick, were of the few boys and men she didn’t dislike. Most men are awful, or at least she’d come to learn that quite fast after her Legacy bloomed. During the years when it got bad, even her brother couldn’t rescue her. Sometimes a Legacy will bloom and, at a young age, it will flare out of control. That’s a year of Cintha’s life she’d gladly cast away from memory, but Yellow always refused her, insisting it was important that we hold on to our memories, especially the hard ones. It’s the hardest that make us whole, he told her. Without them, we become ghosts without a story to tell.
“You shouldn’t have gone,” Arrow whispers, the charm in her ear squawking his words. “You’re so reckless, Cinth.”
She pokes her ear, smiles. “Hush.” She’s about to turn a corner, peers left, peers right, then advances. “Men have their arms,” she reasons, “and I have mine.”
“A Legacy isn’t an arm,” he says back, sighing.
She arrives at floor twenty-one, the stained blue carpet reeking, musty. She wrinkles her nose and gives a shiver, annoyed at the stillness and silence. Ever quietly, she moves further down the hall until a sight ahead stops her: there is an apartment door that has been violently burst open, bent on its hinges as though some unnatural force burst apart the room, tearing its way out. A bomb, she wonders, terrified. Is the Weapon a bomb? Stepping closer and closer to the room, the temperature drops and drops and drops until her teeth are clattering. Arrow asks her what’s that sound and she can’t even answer through her incessant shivering.
Turning the corner, her heart thrusts in her chest. In terror, in amazement, in many ways her mouth drops. The room is a winter landscape unlike any she’d ever seen. Every piece of furniture is glazed over in thick, white ice. Twisted spikes and coiling frozen rivulets hang and thrust in warring directions all over the room. Bits of snow seem to hang in the air, as though frozen in time. She reaches out to touch one curiously, then realizes she’d rather keep her hands close for warmth, shivering.
“What is it??” Arrow begs, tickling her ear.
“It’s …” She doesn’t even know how to describe it, confused, stunned by the room. Terrifying, she decides, but really, the icy design of the room is far more beautiful than terrifying. So why does it make her afraid?
Then, she spots a red bandana trapped in a warped fold of freeze: Juston’s bandana.
She presses an icy hand to her ear, shivering, she manages to say, “I-I think s-something’s w-wrong.”
“Get out.” Arrow makes no hesitation of it. “Cinth, get out of there now.”
