Outlier: Rebellion

by Daryl Banner

  “And yours,” she says, studying his face.

  “Mine,” he agrees despairingly.

  Suddenly she reaches out, takes his hand and squeezes. When their eyes find each other, he finds he appreciates Cintha so much. Like brother, like sister … the two really know how to comfort a friend in need.

  “I think lunch is ready,” says Wick, seconds before the doors to the kitchen swing open and a man emerges, carrying a large tray across the floor and through the side door that leads up to the loft.

  Cintha lifts a brow. “How’d you know?”

  “Smelled it,” he says.

  They laugh hysterically.

  0056 Forgemon

  His beard’s grown so thick and ugly. He wishes his reflection would quit staring at him in the metal body of the humming machine next to him as he beats hammer to anvil. He pretends the anvil is the face of a Sanctum official … the face of a Marshal … the face of a King. Any of them will do. Bang, bang, bang. It is a sweet motivation, but does little to lift the storm in his mind.

  The metalshop has been under the greatest scrutiny after that Weapon Show. Half his crew has been called away, sent to other factories, or even arrested as suspects. But not Forge, no, never him. The math of a life in the cells never worked its way to him. And just as helpfully, neither has the math of finding his sons. Damn you, Anwick. How has the math failed him so grievously?

  Bang. That one’s for Sanctum. Bang. That one’s for Anwick. Bang. Another for Link. Two more for his sons in Guardian, may they not discover the peace in death too young. Bang, bang. And bang. That last one’s for the son with his nose in the ancient paper books of Atlas. Lionis, you fool. And a final bang for the lady at home whose grey-blue eyes he has not peered in for over a week.

  The loudest of bangs he reserves for himself. For failing his family. For failing his children. All that training for Anwick, all that anger and he still can’t see.

  He still can’t see the math.

  His life is becoming this place, an angry hammer and a hot anvil. Every corner of the ninth ward he’s seemed to search. No one knows a thing. No figure leads him. Even in such a desperate time as this, the numbers are nowhere to be found. The numbers give him such useless information. Avoid the market, they tell him, as the probability of two angry men and a crate of chickens breaking loose is high. The math has abandoned him, offering only a confusing, cramped, claustrophobic sort of agony. Yes, he agrees. That’s exactly what my brain is: confused, cramped, and claustrophobic. Maybe one of these mighty axes he’s spent hours sharpening can free his mind from his skull. Maybe only then will I know peace.

  He wants to be home. He wants to lay his wife across the kitchen floor every single day, but cannot be a proper husband when his sons are missing. If he were not bound to this ugly metalshop … If he were home instead, his sons might still be home too. Every moment spent under his roof is more like a little rest break until, upon the sun’s rise, he returns right back to this death vault of steam and white-hot metals. Why can’t it be the other way around? “Give,” he slams the hammer, “me,” bang, “my,” bang, “life,” bang, “back!”

  Bang, bang, bang.

  “Deege Eppero is outperforming you, Lesser, and he’s got a bad eye and half a brain in his skull. Dropped on his head as a kid, I’m sure about that one.” The boss Holden stands over him, his mighty beard lifting with his words. “That hammer getting too heavy for you, is it? Prefer working with a spoon?”

  Bang, bang, bang.

  “I need more, Lesser. Sanctum’s ordered six hundred chrome candlesticks. That’s after their order of a fourteen-case of wrought iron posts. An order of chandelier coverings—the silver spec, not the gold. Are you listening? Two hundred crests, two hundred caps, two hundred bolts, and they’re expecting them assembled.”

  Finally Forge manages a few words. “We’ve plenty enough to manage,” he says quietly, “when I can’t even manage to keep my own sons.”

  “You want to find me a man with a smith’s Legacy?”

  “There is no man with a smith’s Legacy,” Forge retorts acidly, disregarding the fact that his boss was being sarcastic, “and if there is, he’s either dead or lives at the other end of Atlas for all I care.”

  “Care,” orders his boss. “If you don’t, I’ll hire a Charmer who can make hammers move on their own. Then fuck your arm. Who cares about an arm that whines as often as it bangs.”

  It happens in an instant. Forge is on his feet, hammer raised over his head, and Holden’s pressed against the hot anvil, his eyes wide and his orange beard glowing like molten fire in the hot, gleaming red of the shop.

  “Care,” repeats the boss, though marginally less assertively. “Care where you put that hammer, Forgemon. The last person who raised a hammer here—the Bard fellow—no one’s heard from him since.”

  Rychis Bard. The arm bearing the hammer slowly, slowly, slowly lowers, dropping gently to his side, though his body does not move, still pressed against Holden with shaking rage. Rychis Bard, the short-tempered. Tempering metals all the days long, and Forge somehow never learned to temper himself.

  “Sanctum,” mutters Forge, the numbers flitting past his eyelids. He sees it. He sees how very unnecessary this is. His son. Anwick. Anwick … “Sanctum will have to make do without six hundred chrome candlesticks. Light their own fire, I say.” Forge sets the hammer gently on the anvil, opting not to break any machinery today and incite the anger of the Guardian. He’s soon to incite someone else’s. “I quit,” he whispers, defeated, victorious.

  His boss calls after him thirteen times, for the thirteen more bangs that Forge will not be making this day.

  0057 Halvesand

  The briefing is long, and during the whole of it, Halvesand can’t meet Lead Officer Obert’s eyes.

  Thankfully, the entire ninth ward unit is present, including the tenth ward Guardian that live in another dormitory. From their united intel—including Halvesand’s own contribution of certain details leading them to a few key locations in the ninth ward—they will be setting out on a final mission to scope out the last two areas that may house the remaining rebels, because if there’s anything unanimously agreed upon, it’s that the two boys now in Sanctum custody, Dran and Fylan, did not act alone. Two teams are selected comprising of ten Guardian apiece. One team will go to the abandoned warehouse that used to be a textile factory in the tenth ward, and the other team will investigate a block of cafés and restaurants at the very edge of the ninth ward on first block.

  After the briefing, Halves walks to the barracks to change and arm himself and finds his brother by the door wearing a grin. He turns into a wicked Lionis before my eyes when he grins like that. “What do you want?” Halves asks his brother.

  “Raw about your new partner, are you?”

  Halvesand did not realize he’d be cleared back to the field so soon. It’s only been days since his last partner kissed the floor of Obert’s office, dead, and now Halves is partnered with the nerdy, curly-haired Pace who is loudest to laugh at his own jokes. On the bright side, there is absolutely nothing about his new partner Pace that reminds Halves of … his last one.

  “No,” says Halves. “I like him. He’s kind.”

  “So’s Ennebal,” Aleks responds, giving a shrug. “She has a way about her when she approaches situations. She’s so … clever. We’ve bonded a lot on the streets. It’s like we read each other’s minds out there. She goes ahead when I’ve the instinct to cover, and whenever I make a go, she’s got my back.”

  Halves makes no reaction. He just lets his brother have his words, listening, but sweat is gathering under his arms … as if any twitch of his face will give away the secrets that Ennebal and he share. I am honest. Maybe this is the real reason he fears Obert. Does breaking the fraternization rule warrant a knife to his back?

  “She’s a rare one,” agrees Halves. “Aleksand, listen … I want you to be really careful out there. The others are saying—”

  �
��Yeah, yeah. They think the warehouse is it, I know. You’re worried tenth ward’s gonna eat your bro alive? Nah, not a chance. Though I do think searching the pot’n’broth block is a hilarious idea.” Aleks gives a big, dramatic show of laughter to express just how hilarious he finds it. “Dad used to take us there when we were kids, you remember? There’s that one place with the big chimneys that serves the upside-down ice cream.”

  He doesn’t remember it. Not at all. “Yeah, I remember. Dad did a lot for us growing up, didn’t he?”

  “Until Lionis was born and fucked it all up.” Aleks laughs hard, slaps his brother on the back and gives him a shaking. “Hey, I know you. Something isn’t right.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “No.” Aleks thrusts a shoulder at him and lifts an eyebrow. “You’re bothered because Obert ran off with the info you found, and you’re not getting any credit. That’s it, isn’t it? We could find the rest of the rebels responsible for the Lunar Festival catastrophe tonight, and it won’t be you anyone thanks.”

  “There were others involved too. It wasn’t all me.” Of course, without my taking notice of certain resources and pinning it to very specific sites that order them, we wouldn’t have deciphered all the locations to scope out and investigate. “I think I’m just preoccupied. It’s been a while for me since I’ve been out on a mission.”

  “Don’t let fathead Obert throw you. Your blood’s thick, bro. Thick enough, at least.” Aleks gives him another slap. “The war against these rebels might soon be finding its end.”

  Halves forces a smile. “As long as it doesn’t end with another person dead at the end of my blade, I’m happy.”

  Aleks dons his helmet, twisting it and strapping it with a grunt. “Enjoy the pot’n’broth, Halvesy. Save me some ice cream, alright?” He gives a wink, then goes on his way. Halves listens to the rustling of his armor as he fades away down the hall and up a stair, listening until his brother is finally gone.

  He’s the last one out of the barracks, his neon giving him trouble—it might have something to do with the ammunition, but he can’t understand the error code in the little monitor. He’s pulled out the manual and is thumbing through it when he hears the soft clinking of armor at the doorway. He looks up. Ennebal.

  Halves speaks before she can. “I can’t—I can’t—Listen, I can’t be distracted. Not right now, Ennie, please. I need to get in the right mindset.”

  She leans against the doorframe. Even from across the room, he feels her intensity. Those dark eyes pulled too close together and those blunt, curious eyebrows. Those long lips that house a pink tongue he’s one-too-many-times tasted.

  “There will always be rebels,” he murmurs, resetting the panel on the side of the glow gun, frustrated. “There will always be bad guys and criminals, as long as bad hearts exist in good people. And if pushed to a point, Ennebal, anyone’s a criminal.” Everyone is guilty. He doesn’t know what he’s saying anymore. Every lie dies. Every truth lives forever. The neon still has an error message, beeping at him for reload. There’s nothing to fucking reload, you’re all full up.

  “Halves, why do you feel like this?”

  “Because.” That’s all he has for her. Throwing the neon down in a sudden fit, he slams a fist against the locker and screams. His yelling echoes through the empty barrack, reverberations of his own voice coming back to rattle through his ears, within his skull. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he mutters quietly, then leans his head against the wall, a headache too soon finding him.

  “You need a secret?” she asks coyly.

  “I have enough, thank you.”

  When he turns his head, he finds her right in front of him. “I meant one of mine.” Her black, blunt crop of hair is squished by a small metal helmet open at the ears. It frames her face like a hug, and her eyes burn with dark inspiration. “Show me your knife.”

  “I’ve shown you plenty.”

  “Show me your knife.”

  Giving up the fight, he pulls the knife off his belt and holds it before him, showing her as requested. She licks her finger, then brings it to the sharp edge of the knife, slowly tracing it.

  “Careful,” he says. “Careful, careful, careful. Just sharpened it last night. Ennebal, careful …”

  She grips the blade at once, tightly. Halves makes a sound of protest, but when she lets go, there is no blood. Then she pulls the dagger toward her, points its tip at her neck, just above where her chest armor ends. Ever slowly she begins to lean into Halves, the knife digging deeper at the soft of her throat, deeper, deeper.

  “Stop … stop, stop, stop it!” Halves exclaims, horrified—until she pulls away and he finds the knife didn’t so much as crease her skin. No blood. No cut. Nothing.

  Then she kisses him softly, pulls away and touches his blade once more, teasing along its razor-sharp edge. “I cannot be cut,” she explains, a smile playing on her wide, inviting lips. “And when I make my skin strong, my ears become too strong for sound.”

  “Your Legacy,” Halves finally says, genuinely touched. He’d always wondered, but never asked. “But … wait. You mean … for strong skin, you trade your hearing?”

  “Yes,” she says to his lips. “For nearly three years of my childhood, my family thought I’d gone deaf. So had I … until I learned how to control it. Should I ever hear the knife of my enemy coming, I should hope I’m quick enough to stop hearing it.”

  “Most Legacies come at a price,” he murmurs, remembering his dad telling him that once. His dad’s mathematic Legacy came at the cost of … a little sanity. Halves is still staring at the soft of her throat, amazed and affected by her all over again. “There are rebels out there. They don’t care what the price of their rebellion is. They’ll pay anything, or make others pay. The rebels won’t easily be stopped. They … They …” He sees Grute’s face, that last plea, that final gasp of desperation that couldn’t leave his dying lips.

  Ennebal puts her fingers on the edge of the blade, gently pushes the knife back at him. “Now we both have a secret. The two of us … You and I … We both know how to stop things. Keep strong out there, Halves, and stop the thing.”

  She gives him a wink for good luck, perhaps, then leaves him alone in the barracks.

  0058 Athan

  He doesn’t trust the boy in the cellar. Not at all.

  Athan has noticed a change in Wick too, like something in Wick’s eyes came to life at the sight of the boy in the cellar. He doesn’t want to call what he’s feeling “jealousy” … but it’s the one word that seems to fit. He’s never needed such an emotion. The slums have given me a lot, he muses, glaring at the door to the frigid cellar, but I hadn’t imagined they’d give me jealousy.

  He doesn’t like how the dark emotion sits in his stomach.

  Until lately, Athan’s enjoyed the bristling, nerve-tickling thrill of Wick’s full attention … but now he seems distracted. Athan would sometimes follow a member of Rain to the cellar when the Weapon needed feeding, and Athan would just watch him, trying his best not to show a thing on his face. And the one in the cellar would catch his eye—those dark, evil eyes—and he’d swear the casual flint of a smirk would play on the boy’s lips.

  Then Athan would feel guilty for his feelings. Really, the boy in the cellar is not well-off, and Athan should be thankful that he isn’t a pursued tool of Sanctum. What a life that must be, to live in chains from one place to the next. Slave to his own incredible power. Has he ever had a chance at a normal life?

  “What life is normal?” asked Rone once while sharing a bowl of spicy with his sister, who just sits there all the time and says nothing, half-dead eyes peeking out from under her knots of dark hair. “Yours? Mine? Doesn’t matter, lowborn or high, we’re all of us in the same danger.” He pokes a fork at the window. “King’s still screaming, isn’t he?”

  Athan still isn’t put at ease, taking more time than necessary to study the boy. He’s biding his time. Athan’s sure of it. He’s a danger and a danger cannot be trus
ted. “Of course he can’t be trusted,” quips Rone one night. “Hence the chains, fool.”

  In the kitchen, Wick’s legs dangle off the counter and Athan’s pulled himself up between them with a palm on either thigh. Wick says something about the sun setting, and at once Athan decides to make his confession: “I don’t like you being around him, Wick. Really, I don’t trust him. I get why he’s here, but … but it doesn’t mean we all need to make friends. Nothing good’s coming from him, not at all. I can tell.”

  He makes a quirky twist of his lips, peering down at Athan. “Jealous?”

  The word stings, but Athan shows nothing on his face. “Not at all. That skinny kid doesn’t compare.” Even though Athan’s lost a considerable amount of weight during his time in the slums, he still keeps a solid figure. He holds twice the weight of that lanky rat in the cellar, he’s certain of it.

  Wick grips Athan by both his cheeks, pulls him in for a long, uncompromising lip-wrestling. What a sweet reward for jealousy. Until his mouth is sore, Athan is not set free, and when Wick pulls back he says, “If it makes you feel any better, you’re the only person in the world whose bed I’d share.”

  Athan replies, “In all fairness, you’re the only person in the world I know who sleeps.”

  The quiet of the kitchen is disturbed by the subtle scuffing sound of boots outside. Wick’s face flashes with alarm as he looks up. Athan spins around to investigate, finds the windows of the noodle shop lined with strange silhouettes.

  In that instant, Cintha bursts into the kitchen, the swinging doors slamming against either wall. “Evacuate,” she hisses.