Outlier: Rebellion

by Daryl Banner

  Cintha doesn’t question him this time. She makes a quick move out of the room, glad to find warmth further down the hall, but no sooner than she leaves, she hears the heavy footfalls of approaching men—a unit of men, it sounds like. “Guardian, I think,” she whispers into her charm, then hurries the opposite way toward a window at the end of the hall. “It’s Guardian. Quick, am I being pursued?” He doesn’t answer—perhaps the cold of the room having frozen up her charm—and she hides briskly behind a thick plant and stands very still, feeling small as a rat. Countless Guardian pour into the hall from the stair. Go away. She really doesn’t want to make use of her Legacy, as it can sometimes have a counterproductive effect when used on a group of people. One person is far easier to sexually manipulate than a crowd.

  “Get me out of here,” she begs into the earpiece, but she knows she’s alone. There’s no use denying it. Go away, she begs the stupid Guardian. Go, go, go.

  With a peek through the plant, she sees them all march to the frozen room. Only three or four of them remain at the stairs to stand guard. Great.

  She thrusts her head around, finds a person leaving his apartment. When he catches sight of her, he stops, suspicious at once. This won’t do, she realizes. As quick as a smile, she approaches him and feels her chest flare with a heat of longing. “Hello,” Cintha says shyly, managing a seductive, feline composure and praying this particular man prefers women.

  Turns out he does. “Hi.” All suspicion in his face is exchanged for that unmistakable hunger. “I’m … I am … Well.” He chuckles, overcome. “You … You live here?”

  “Afraid not,” she admits, shrugging coyly and letting out a small, meek little giggle. They love small and meek, these stupid men. “Just wandered in here. I think I’m lost?”

  “Hey!” calls out one of the Guardian, spotting them. Cintha’s heart gives a jump as she glances back, and she makes eye contact with the one who’d shouted, a youthful man with dull grey eyes not two or three years older who, upon seeing her, is instantly stilled. It’s only for the briefest of moments, but she feels the push and pull of influence, and the expression he returns is substantial.

  Oh, no. Her heart gives to another sort of flutter—a flutter of fear. This isn’t good.

  “Into your rooms!” calls out another Guardian, snapping her affrighted face back to attention. “This is a very dangerous matter! Official Marshal business, it is!”

  Cintha turns back to the stupid horny man, praying the Guardian boy has lost all interest. “Oh dear,” she says. “Think I could … jump in there with you? It’s so cold out here.”

  “Sure, oh, uh, okay.” He moves aside, shrugging open the door. “It’s um … It’s, well … My wife’s not—”

  “Your wife’s not home? Not a bother.” Cintha makes way into the apartment almost lazily, relieved to be free from the chill of the hallway—and the Guardian with the dull grey eyes. But now what? “Can I … Can I use your bathroom?”

  The man, who’s already shut the door, seems a bit disappointed, like he was expecting something else first. Why are men so blind? I’m a child, you sick, married thing. “Yes,” he finally says, choking the one word out. “It’s right through that door. Will—Will you come back?”

  At times, Cintha honestly wonders if her Legacy isn’t just in driving men wild, but driving them stupid. No, you idiot. I’m going to live in your bathroom and enjoy your pungent aromas. “Of course.”

  She closes herself up in the bathroom, locking the door too. She doesn’t pity the horny man on the other side of it, as he’ll never again look on the likes of her. A horny man is a stupid man.

  The window opens easily, and through it she pokes her head after a struggle. What luck. A terrace stretches out just beneath the window from the floor below. There is a balcony door to which she can make a hasty climb, then it’s just a matter of stairs between here and the streets. I can almost hear Prat and Arrow directing me in their own voices. She pulls herself out of the window, pretending to hear those voices for a guide, and vanishes from the horny man’s bathroom, basking in the gentle heat of the sun as it sets on a very, very long day.

  That young Guardian’s face … his instant longing … No, no. It’s nothing. You’re worried over nothing. Let it go, he’s gone.

  Only nine minutes later, she’s made it back to the streets just in time for her earpiece to buzz back to life. “Cintha, please, please, Cintha, tell me you’re alive, please, please, please.”

  “As ever,” she says with a stab of a finger in her ear.

  “Thank the Brothers!”

  “There are no Brothers, only Sisters,” she japes back, making her way under an overpass toward the nearest plaza. “Arrow, I couldn’t find Juston. I found—I found—”

  His bandana. A Guardian who looked me in the eye. A Guardian who felt the influence of my Legacy. A Guardian who …

  A Guardian who saw my face.

  “Never mind them,” he squawks in her ear. “They’re safe. We’re all headed back to headquarters. It’s over, Cinth.”

  Cintha stops, dismayed. She already knows the answer, but figures to ask anyway: “Did we find it?”

  Of course not. What a waste.

  After several more attempts at getting a response, she gives up, figuring the charm either lost its life, or communication’s been somehow severed. Resigned, she makes a quick travel afoot to the train at the north end of the plaza, swings onboard and crushes herself into the farthest seat. She stares despondently out the window as the city rushes by, buildings and poles and smog. The sun sets heavy tonight, she thinks sourly, wondering why none of their missions can be successful. It must be an awful trick of fate, to give them the means to overturn a city, only to have them fail over and over and over.

  At least have Rone get home safely, please, she reasons with Three Goddess, the Sisters, clenching her eyes shut and imagining what they look like. There’s so many depictions, who can say which one is the truth, the others lies? Success might have as many faces as a goddess, all of them appearing true, all of them appearing false. Please get home safe, Rone. Her hands shake. She hasn’t eaten a thing since breakfast, and the Guardian’s dull eyes still haunt her.

  An hour and a half of a ride later, the sun is gone and the Noodle Shop looms ahead in the dark distance. Cintha pushes through its doors and eagerly faces Juston, who only meets her eyes hesitantly. “What?” she snaps. She can’t think the worst. Don’t say it. Please, don’t say it.

  “First, are you okay?”

  Don’t tell them about the Guardian boy. They will only worry. It’s nothing, it’s nothing at all. “Yes,” she says so tiny she may not have actually said it. “What’s … What’s wrong?”

  “Come.” Juston puts a calming hand on her round shoulder, squeezes. “To the cellar.”

  “What’s down there?”

  Juston won’t say. Without his bandana, his hair is a laughable red mess. He walks her down to the cellar. The temperature drops, frustrating her. I think I’ve shivered enough for today. Past the giant water heater and the breaker boxes and a wine rack, he leads her to a thick chamber door with ugly hinges.

  She looks up at him, questions in her eyes, clutching at her elbows. Juston parts his thin lips: “Basically …” For a moment, he doesn’t seem to know how to explain himself. “Suffice it to say, we … succeeded. We found the Weapon.”

  For only a second, it’s like she didn’t even hear him. We what? Then her face changes, studying his. “What’s wrong, Juston?”

  “There’s a complication.”

  Before he can stop her, she’s pulled open the thick chamber door. Inside, the room is bitter cold, and she finds Yellow and Arrow in front of a wide metal cage. They both turn. Cintha lifts an apologetic brow, having interrupted an argument—or was it an interrogation? When Cintha dares step further into the frigid cellar, she realizes they are not its only occupants.

  Seated on the cold concrete beyond the iron bars is a pale boy the same a
ge as her, maybe a year older, and he’s bound in the thickest, heaviest chain she has ever before seen. How chains that thick even need to exist, she does not know. His face is long and sharp, high of cheekbone, with eyes big and lips small. The boy wears a tangle of murky, dark hair that plays about his forehead in a careless, tousled mess. Wisps of black curl in front of his wide ears, and his eyes are two maddened pits of tar. With skin as smooth and pale as porcelain, it’s a wonder he’s alive.

  Then his deathly gaze meets hers, and instantly she feels cold fingers run up her back. With just the one glance at him, she feels like she’ll never be warm again.

  “The complication?” she asks shyly, her breath a tuft of frost before her little mouth.

  Juston leans into her ear. “The Weapon … is him.”

  ACT 3

  0044 Link

  They put him in a room too small for a person. A body-sized linen pillow is mashed into one corner, and there’s a short prayer bench in the other, which he’s already destroyed—really, do they mean for me to pray my way out of this? The Sisters have abandoned me, all three of them. With every passing day, his fury only grows.

  And so does the pain. “Your healing will be agony,” the priest explained to him two days ago, “but it is only the body’s agony, a necessary one.” Link recalls throwing a fork at him and cursing loudly. After that, he’s not been allowed utensils to eat anymore.

  At least they’re humane enough to feed me, he thinks sullenly. He limps, can’t keep a single ounce of weight on his right leg or else he screams. Even standing up sends lightning bolts of anguish up his back and through his chest. He’s screamed more than the Banshee King himself, he’s sure of it. The people of The Brae aren’t mean to him, but they aren’t showing the greatest kindness either. Buried in the body-sized pillow, Link just gets madder thinking on it, but every time his face goes red, the wounds hurt worse, and he’s forced to calm down. Such an agony this is, to be imprisoned both by a room and by a body that hurts more than heals.

  He idly wonders about the invisible girl, fantasizes how she might suddenly appear in this cell with him, smiling and keeping him company. Even a girl that once betrayed him and stole a pouch of shiny gold, that girl is his only friend. Sneak me out, he begs her, for all the fruit this lazy effort bears. Sneak me out like you did that toolshed. But she is not here to save him. No one even knows he’s here. Not dad. Not Wick. Not his Guardian brothers.

  Then there’s Dran … Fucking Dran, fucking waste of humanity Dran, thief and betrayer and no brother of mine. It’s his fault the people of this sanctuary hate him. It’s all Dran’s fault that he’s being held like some kind of sick prisoner instead of a dignified human being. Dran did this to him.

  It was even Dran who invited him to the Weapon Show. How did he know Dran had plans to blast the arena with blue paint, spelling out rebellious slogans and inciting the slummers to riot? Fool, idiot, showy Dran. Link burns and burns, but the more he burns, the more the aches in his bones cry out, so he … he …

  Link chokes, sighing until the pain goes numb. He feels his eyes turning to water. I begged to join the Wrath. For whatever reason, he joined the black bands in the first place. Really, this is all his fault. There’s no one left to blame. His leg still stings, glowing pink from where the neon had struck him as he escaped the Weapon Show. Pink … He lets go, tears blurring the world away. His every jerking sob sends another earthquake of pain through his back and he doesn’t care. Let the sobs break me.

  The sun may set and the sun may rise, but there’s no window in this room to tell him which it is doing.

  When the bald priest returns to bring him his next meal, Link runs his arm across his face to wipe away the tears, finds they’ve all dried on his cheeks and there’s nothing left but salt. The priest gently sets down the tray of food. As he turns to leave, Link raises his voice. “How can a sanctuary of good men torture and keep prisoner a kid, even one who’s done wrong?”

  The priest turns, flat of face, twisting his serpentine eyes onto him. “Do you see any chains about your feet or hands, boy?” Link peers down at his hands as if to check, but he already knows there are none. “And you’ve a meal before you,” the priest points out. “I’d reckon you have more here than the homeless do. Neither a prisoner, nor tortured, would I call you.”

  “Yeah, but you still won’t let me leave. You lock my door and—” Link bends over suddenly, interrupted by a deep, throbbing pain in his belly, or maybe it’s his back, or his chest. He sighs, settling into an awkward position on the floor that hurts a little less than the others.

  “You’re being cared for, sweet child,” the priest says, his voice hissing. “But even when your body’s mended, you’ve more healing to do than you realize. The deepest wounds cannot be seen, and those are the ones that truly need mending.”

  Link is annoyed beyond the use of further words, looking the other way and resisting the urge to cry again. I won’t cry in front of this priest. The next time he sees me angry, I’ll put something sharp through his face.

  The priest leaves him alone, door shutting quietly.

  Alone, Link has nothing to hide and no need to act. Starving, he eagerly brings a handful of food to his mouth. He can barely taste it and the whole right side of his jaw aches something awful, making the simple act of chewing such a chore. Oh, but how sweet it is, what healing food can do to both body and mind. He closes his eyes and imagines Lionis cooking him potato mash, boiled cabbage, the pinching aroma that fills the kitchen. He’s crying between bites, chewing in agony, swallowing stiffly between gasping sobs, he pictures his mom’s face and begs her to forgive him for not being home. And maybe his mom would touch his face, ask if he wanted her to take all the pain from him. Chewing the tasteless food, the fantasy of home breaking apart in front of his glassy eyes, he wonders if he deserves this.

  The image of mom still lingering, Link doesn’t know if he’d even let her take the pain away this time. Let me keep it this once, he might say. Let me keep it forever.

  0045 Wick

  When he stirs and opens his eyes, he finds the sunlit faces of his companions. Athan … Rone … Victra …

  Tide.

  Wick jerks to life, realizing what’s happened. The four of them are staring. No words are exchanged, not for a long, horrible while. Even breath has been stolen away from the room. Even air.

  Then: “He’s faking it,” Tide decides with a huff.

  Rone is stammering, unable to say anything, just holding a hand over his mouth and pensively observing Wick as though he were some strange animal.

  “I looked through his eyes,” Victra says, even her own usually-dry-and-unimpressed voice rendered faint and melodic. “They were shaking, trembling, searching. Why were they doing that? Only babies do that. Small children as they dream, I’ve seen it before. Through their eyes.”

  “I was meditating,” Wick retorts, the lie coming to him fast as an ill-timed fart. “I get into a deep state. It’s how I … It’s how I control my Legacy. I meditate.”

  Rone finally speaks. “I know what sleeping babies look like. I’ve seen plenty by my baby-happy neighbors.”

  “Me too.” The new voice is Athan’s, which pains Wick the worst, to hear him join them in their curiosities. “It was … It was unmistakable.”

  Instantly, Wick goes berserk, throwing up his hands and shouting an unintelligible obscenity. They all take a step back and warily watch him, as though his Legacy were deadly. He can’t stand for the looks, prodding at him like children poking a dead thing in the schoolyard. His face is flushed red.

  Rone tries to soothe him, reaching out. “Wick …”

  “Stop staring!” he yells, groggy and mad. “All of you can fuck off!” He’s on his feet, stirring them all from their curiosities, and marches out of the room. He moves down a flight of cement stairs and brashly seats himself at the brink of the same gaping hole, one floor below. Fuck them. He wipes the sleep out of his eyes and stares at the giant mout
h with wooden teeth, finding it to look eerily different in daylight. With a sick strike to his belly, he spots the akimbo shape of the Guardian still lying at the bottom. Even a floor closer, he still looks so far away … so tiny and sad. A starved cat has found him too, apparently, gnawing on his fingers. Oh, look, the cat brought friends. He doesn’t look away.

  “Wick.”

  He doesn’t turn around, still preferring the sight of a dead Guardian over any members of his party right now. And what is he feeling, exactly? Embarrassment? Anger? I’m exposed, he realizes. For the first time in his life, his secret is exposed to people outside his family. They all know. No lie can make them unsee what they’ve seen. They know.

  Tide knows. Victra knows. Rone knows.

  Athan …

  “Nice view. Getting hungry?” Rone takes a seat next to him, dangling his feet over the splintered ledge. “Listen. We need to band together now, more so than ever. We can’t fall apart. It was a mistake for me to take Athan off like that, but you weren’t within my reach, and Tide—”

  “I know.” Wick’s picking at the splinters in the floorboards, wondering idly what the hell caused a hole to punch through five stories of a building. A piece pulls off. He flicks it over the edge and says nothing. He does not hear it land.

  “We need to get back to headquarters. Yellow will know what to do to protect you. We’ve … well, I’ve never known an Outlier. I didn’t realize I’d known one all along. I just—”

  “Outlier?” Now Wick has turned, and their eyes meet. Wariness glows in Rone’s, and Wick can’t stand for it. “No. That’s not what this is. I’m not an Outlier, Rone.” The word comes out half a growl, tasting foul on his tongue.

  “Wick … no one in the city sleeps. It’s unheard of.” When he sees the look in Wick’s eye, he seems to change his tact. “I know what you’re going through. Kinda. I mean, we all have our secrets and our … our personal struggles. No one wants to be an Outlier. But—” His eyes flash and he swallows guiltily. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. What I meant was—”