by Isaac Hooke
"Four."
"Three."
"Two."
They ran. All it took was Bleeding Eye turning his tail and the rest of them broke ranks. It was a complete route. Some slipped in their hurry to be away from there, and fell into the drifts. But they always got up again and, with frantic looks back, ran on.
Hoodwink heard a strange sizzling.
He turned around, and realized it wasn't him who the gols were afraid of, but the banshee covered in writhing sparks of blue electricity behind him.
The banshee noticed his gaze and instantly the electricity went out, leaving the old man in its place.
"You have lightning too." Hoodwink stared at the old man for a moment, but then his weariness finally caught up with him and he collapsed.
The old man helped him to his feet and braced him with one shoulder. Hoodwink was too drained to protest. The loss of blood was getting to him. He felt numb all over, but mostly in his hands and feet. Frostbite, undoubtedly.
"Who are you?" Hoodwink said.
The old man smiled indulgently, revealing a mouth as toothless as a street brawler's. "You'll know everything soon enough." The old man raised a hand sparking with electricity. Hoodwink recoiled, but the man clasped his palm and Hoodwink felt a surge of energy pass between them. "Feel better?"
Hoodwink nodded. He felt a little refreshed, and his extremities seemed less numb, though the old man still had to brace him with one arm as he led Hoodwink through the snowstorm. The conditions were becoming near whiteout, and the visibility certainly wasn't helped by the late hour. He let the surprisingly strong old man carry him onward, and the moments passed in a blur of snow drifts and weariness.
Hoodwink's gaze was drawn by movement to his left. He saw a bumblebee in the blizzard. The snowflakes parted to either side of the insect as if there were some invisible force emanating from the bee. It buzzed right up to Hoodwink's face and hovered there, a handspan from his nose, the flakes falling umbrellalike around it. Then it buzzed away.
Hoodwink was hallucinating from the blood loss obviously. He had likely imagined all of this. The blue blood. The old man's turn as an electrical banshee. But how did he escape the guards then?
Finally the old man paused before a flimsy door set into a cabin three times larger than its neighbors. The snow had piled up past the roof, and it was only through the diligent shoveling of whoever lived here that the door was even accessible. Hoodwink wasn't sure exactly where he was, but he was in no condition to resist as the old man dragged him inside.
"Helluva storm," the old man said as he shut the door behind them. He had to throw his weight into the wood to get the thing to close completely. "The prophets promised it would be an age of ice. Damn them for being right."
Hoodwink stood hunched in a cozy lobby. He was immediately attracted to the fireplace with its set of four ladderback chairs, where he plunked himself down. He was too weak to warm his hands over the coals, and he surveyed the room through half-closed lids. The windows were all frosted up, of course. An unmanned service desk lay near the fireplace. On the other side, the room opened into a hallway where the rooms were numbered.
"What is—" Hoodwink said, fighting off the sleep. "Where are—"
"Just a simple inn, laddy." The old man grabbed a poker from beside the fireplace and stoked the flames. "Let me apply a healing shard."
"A shard." It was illegal to carry one, because to activate a shard required a User's power. Hoodwink smiled grimly. "Of course you have a shard."
The old man ripped open the hem of Hoodwink's jail-issue robe and slid the boot off. The pain roused Hoodwink somewhat. "Name's Alan. Alan Dooran. Friends call me Al."
Hoodwink glanced down to see a gory scene that nearly made him vomit. It hadn't looked so bad before, with the robe covering it, but now? A black sliver of bone jutted from the front of his calf alongside the wooden fragment, and the entire area had swollen the size of a melon. Blue blood drenched the entire lower leg. Blue. So he hadn't been hallucinating.
Well, the blood had stopped dripping, at least.
"Got yourself a nice piece of wood in your leg." Al grasped the wooden fragment and braced his boot on the top of Hoodwink's toes. "Better grip yourself tight."
"Wait," Hoodwink said. "Why is it blue?"
"Got no charge left," Al said nonchalantly.
The old man pulled the fragment.
Hoodwink struggled to stay in the chair as fresh spurts of pain flared in his calf. Stars exploded across his vision from the sheer agony of it, and when the wood broke free in a fountain of gore he cried out in pain.
The blood gushed from him in blue spurts.
"Looks like it hit a major artery." Al reached for the poker, and applied the sizzling end to Hoodwink's calf.
Teeth-grinding pain brought more stars to his vision, and Hoodwink felt his hold on consciousness grow tenuous. The burning didn't seem to do anything, and the blood gushed from him worse than ever.
He was barely aware as Al reached into his cloak and pulled out a crystalline creature that resembled a starfish.
The healing shard.
Al applied the creature to Hoodwink's calf. This thing, the shard, felt extremely cold against the hot pain of the wound, and Hoodwink gasped. Al released electricity into the shard, and the creature began melting into Hoodwink's skin. As it did so the melon-sized lump shrunk until both wound and creature were gone.
Hoodwink blinked away the nausea, and bent over to examine the wound. Not a trace of the injury remained. Even his twisted ankle further down felt a little better—he could revolve the foot with less pain.
"Careful," Al said. "You've lost a lot of blood."
Hoodwink stared at the blue puddle on the floor. "You're a User." He shouldn't have spoken, because he felt a fresh wave of nausea. He sat himself back in the chair. It was like he'd just run a marathon. His face was flushed, and he was panting. He shook his head, tried to clear his mind. His fingers had begun to burn now that they were thawing out. His toes fared just as badly.
"I am," Al said.
Hoodwink's gaze fell to the man's neck. "But you wear a collar."
That smile widened. "Obviously ain't a real bronze bitch. Have to wear something to keep the gols at bay."
"Why did you save me, old man?"
Al straightened, as if offended. "The same reason I'd save any other innocent human being, of course. Because it's the right thing to do. And I ain't so old. Thirty-four, by my reckoning. Younger than you."
He looked closer to eighty-four, but Hoodwink didn't comment. Something else Al said had caught his attention. "You called me innocent."
"I did. I've something to show you." Al hoisted him to his feet, and helped him across the lobby. He led Hoodwink into the frigid hallway, where the candles burned low. Those carpets were grungy, the walls smeared in fingerprints. The rooms started at 2000, and increased sequentially. 2001. 2002. 2007. 2012.
Al stopped beside the one labeled 2013.
The old man lifted an eyebrow. "Ready?"
Hoodwink sighed. "No. But I have a feeling you'll make me go inside anyway."
Al smiled widely. "Smart boy."
He opened the door. Seven people were seated on ladderbacks in a circle, hands folded in their laps. They all turned their heads toward the doorway.
"Welcome to the secret society of the Users," Al said.
But Hoodwink hardly heard.
She was here.
5
Hoodwink quickly shot a hand against the doorframe. It was all he could do to hold himself up.
There she was, the woman he'd given up everything for.
She regarded him uncertainly. "You."
He shoved the old man away, and lunged forward, step, by step. He felt certain his legs would give out on him at any moment.
When he reached her, his legs at last stopped working, and he fell to his knees. He covered his face in his hands. "Forgive me."
Al came up beside him. "You know her?"
Hoodwink didn't look up. "Of course I know her. She's my daughter."
He felt hesitant fingers rest on his head. Hers. "I'd wondered who my real father was," she said.
"Yolinda." He looked up at her, and he couldn't help the tears.
"I'm Ari now," she said, and she held his palm in hers. She looked older than he remembered her. Much older. It had only been six months, but she seemed to have aged at least ten years.
"Is this the man who interrupted you?" A rasping voice came from somewhere else in the circle.
"It is," Ari said.
Hoodwink looked from her, not caring who saw the emotion written all over his face, and he let his gaze pass from person to person.
So these were the legendary Users, those who had broken free of their collars and defied the gols. They looked ordinary enough. Unlike his daughter, they were all old, well into their eighties and nineties.
Al lifted Hoodwink into an empty chair beside his daughter, and pulled another chair up beside him.
"This is Hoodwink Cooper, everyone," Al said.
"Why did you interfere?" That rasping voice again. It belonged to an old barrel of a man with a pinched face that would've put the performers of the macabre circus to shame. He had intelligent eyes though, and spoke confidently.
"That's Marx by the way," Al said. "Though we call him Karl sometimes. Karl Blacksmith."
"I don't smith no more," Marx said. "Now answer the question."
Al whispered in his ear. "He's our torturer."
"She's my daughter, she is," Hoodwink said. "And I've passed her on the way to work every day since mayor Jeremy revised her. Every day, when she went out on her morning run. I guess I hoped she'd remember me. But she never returned my gaze, not once. Until this morning. She seemed so scared. Her eyes were huge, like she was calling out for help. So I followed her, I did. Watched as she waited by the Forever Gate. Watched as she dropped her satchel in the snow by the wall. I didn't know she was waiting for the street to clear. I didn't know she did it on purpose. I didn't know it was a bomb.
"So when she walked away, leaving it behind, I ran and picked it up from the snow, and that's when the gate guards grabbed me. They opened the satchel, accused me of terrorism. I broke away, and ran. That's when it went off." Hoodwink shook his head, looking at her. "I would have never thought she was capable of something like that. My own flesh and blood. Bombing the Gate? Never. But it's my fault. I shouldn't have let Jeremy have her those six months ago."
"It's no one's fault." Ari met his eyes steadily. The old Yolinda wouldn't have done that. Met his gaze, that is. She would've stared at the floor rather than face the full intensity of his wrath, or in this case, his disappointment. "No human beings died in the explosion. There were only gol casualties."
"Did Jeremy put you up to it?" Hoodwink asked her.
"Jeremy's powerful, I'll give him that." It was Marx who answered. "But no, Jeremy didn't order the bomb. The man's the mayor. He suckles the teat of the gols. He wouldn't dare risk something like this. No. We ordered Ari to place the bomb."
"You." Hoodwink spoke the word tonelessly. He glanced at Ari. "How did you get mixed up with these Users?"
It was Marx who answered. "When Mayor Jeremy had her revised, we sought her out. Her connections gave us access to the raw materials we needed to make the bomb."
"I for one didn't know she was revised." This from an old lady dressed in quilts who could have been Hoodwink's grandma. She held two knitting needles, with a spool of yarn in her lap. She seemed to be knitting the very same quilt that she wore.
"That's because you never pay attention at the meetings," Al said. "Ari refused to marry the mayor. So Jeremy had her personality revised."
Hoodwink shook his head. There was more to it than that, but he wasn't about to volunteer information to these Users.
"You poor dear." The old lady's eyebrows drooped. "Did it hurt?"
Ari smiled stiffly. "I don't remember."
"That's Vax by the way," Al said, nodding at the quilt lady. "You'll like her. Used to be a man."
The old lady sniffed, and returned to her knitting.
Hoodwink pressed his lips together. "Jeremy should have had me revised too. Should've made me forget I ever had a daughter. Spared me the pain."
Ari rested a hand in his. He wanted to shake it off, but she was his daughter. At least, she used to be. Even if she didn't remember.
A thought occurred to him, and he regarded Al suspiciously. "Why did you bring me here?"
Al looked across the seated old men and women to a frail elderly pauper dressed in rags who held a cane in palsied hands. The pauper kept his eyes forward, not looking at anyone else, maybe not able to look at anyone else, staring at some distant point on the wall.
"There is an old saying," the frail pauper said. "The truth, to the overwhelming majority of mankind, is indistinguishable from a headache."
"That's Leader," Al whispered.
Hoodwink studied the shabby-looking man. "Leader?"
"Aye, he leads us."
Leader focused his attention on Hoodwink suddenly, and those eyes held him in a grip quite unlike anything he'd ever experienced before. Hoodwink felt naked beneath those eyes, as though this man could see through all masks and pretenses and read the true nature of anyone. Hoodwink couldn't look away, though he sorely wanted to.
Leader broke the grip, and resumed his observation of the wall. There was nothing there that Hoodwink could see, except worn, curling wallpaper.
"I'm twenty-nine years old," Leader said.
"Thirty-nine here," Vax volunteered.
"Forty-two." Karl Marx.
And so the company rattled off their ages. No one present was over forty-five, though they all looked eighty or more. All save Ari.
"It's the price we pay for vitra," Leader said. "When the gols tell us that they collar us for our own protection, they mean it. Without the collar, the electrical current flows freely through our bodies, and ages us. Rapidly."
Hoodwink studied the man uncertainly.
"That is one truth." Leader nodded to himself. "Do you feel the better for knowing it?"
Hoodwink rubbed his hands together. "I never asked for the truth." He stopped the gesture. It was too much like washing his hands. Of the truth.
"But that's what you'll get when you're with us. The truth. Or a version of it, anyway." Leader gripped his cane tightly, and for a moment Hoodwink thought he was going to stand. But Leader merely shifted in his seat. "Something is wrong with the gols. They have been distracted lately. The gol banker giving out a thousand more drachmae than he should. The gol lutist forgetting his notes halfway through the ballad. The gol butcher misjudging his swing, and cutting off his own hand. The gol executioner, forgetting to sharpen the guillotine blade. I can cite examples from across the city. Then there's that blank, slobbering look so many of them have developed. It's as if they've contracted a plague of the mind."
"But the gols can't get sick," Hoodwink said.
Leader nodded. "So we have been taught. Perhaps they are under an attack of some sort, in the world beyond the Gate where they reside simultaneously to our own. The Outside."
Hoodwink rubbed his arms together, feeling suddenly cold. "I don't know what you're talking about. Residing simultaneously? And the Outside is dead. Everyone knows that."
Leader arched his eyebrows. "Indeed?"
"And if there really were an attack on the gols," Hoodwink said. "Would that be such a bad thing? I say let them be wiped out. A world without gols is a better world."
Leader smiled. "We blame them for imposing upon our freedoms, for collaring us, for confining us to the cities, it's true. And they hunt us, the uncollared. The Users. We all hate them, with passion. But at their core, they service us. You do realize this don't you? It's a love-hate relationship. Without the infrastructure they provide, civilization as we know it would collapse. We'd fall back into the dark ages, quite literally, and we'd all freeze to d
eath."
Hoodwink wouldn't back down. "And we're not in the dark ages already?"
Leader opened his mouth, but he had no answer to that.
Hoodwink pressed his attack. "Why did you make Ari bomb the Forever Gate?"
"She was merely trying to open a path to the Outside," Leader said. "We want to help the gols with what ails them, you see."
"Help the gols." Hoodwink stood. "I've just about heard enough. You go and enjoy helping your gols." Hoodwink held out a hand to his daughter. "Come on Ari, let's go. You don't need these people ordering you around."
She didn't move.
Hoodwink heard a low buzzing. He glanced around the circle. The elderly men and women had raised their hands, and electricity flowed between them, from fingertip to fingertip.
"Please, Hoodwink, sit down." Leader said. "Please."
Hoodwink lifted his palms in surrender, and sat back down. He was relieved when the electrical flows ceased.
"Your daughter is the one who planned the Gate attack." Leader smiled that distant smile, and his eyes locked on Hoodwink. "Do you want to know the truth? What lies beyond the Forever Gate?"
Hoodwink couldn't answer. That gaze overwhelmed him.
Leader was still smiling when he looked away. "It is a land quite unlike any we have ever known. It— well, it is the land where the gols reside in actuality. As different from this world as the bottom of the ocean is from the top of the sky. In the city, none of the gols can even comprehend our offer of help. It's beyond their programming. We can't break past the generic response loops. But beyond the Gate, they will listen to us. They will."
Hoodwink sat back. "How do you know they'll even want your help?"
Leader sighed. "We don't. But we must try."
"Okay." Hoodwink glanced from face to face. The expressions were grim, and some of those present glowered at him. "You're forgetting one small thing. You have to go through the Gate. Ari couldn't even make a dent in it with that bomb of hers. So as far as I'm concerned, this discussion is pointless. And I still don't know why you're even telling me all this."
