by Brindi Quinn
I ran on until I couldn’t run anymore, and from there I walked. The city at my back seemed distant, less and less imposing the farther from it I fled. As day shifted to night, I started to come across rubble. The sand-coated remains of one building or another littered the wilds, each one more broken and disheveled than the last. Eventually, the decay mounted into peaks of metal and cement, the mountainous remains of a dead city. I crawled over the ruins, scaling to find the best footholds and passes, until at last I came to a building only partially destroyed. It was a squat building, missing one of its walls and a portion of the ceiling. I climbed into it, threw my pack on the floor, and landed my back against the wall. Then, I sank into the debris. Only sharp rock padded my collapse, but I didn’t care. I was sweat-soaked, dirt-coated, and strength-less. I could ignore the discomfort in favor of letting my body go lax. My head was heavy. Or maybe my neck was just weak. My eyes were heavy, too. I would let them close for just a moment. No, that was a lie. I wasn’t ‘letting’ them do anything. They were going to close whether I wanted them to or not.
It should be fine, I thought, as long as it’s only for a moment.
. . .
When my eyes opened again, it was dark. I gave a start, hopping from the debris and pawing at the wall for support.
“No!”
I’d been out for longer than a moment, much longer, judging by the stark blackness surrounding me – and I was in trouble, for the blackness was lit only by a disturbing red glow coming from the back of my hand. Again, I cried out,
“NO!” as I scampered to collect my backpack.
I had no way of knowing how long the tracker had been activated, nor did I have any way of knowing how close the unholy one was now. Only one thing was certain: I had to get out of here. That fiend knew my location, and I had no inkling as to his, and that meant I was in a very bad position.
I reached into my bag and grabbed a stretch of gauze, something to dim the glow of my hand. Once safely wrapped, I ventured out of the shelter. The world beyond was dark, settled over by the blackness of night. I waited for my eyes to adjust before climbing through the rubble. My first instinct was to stop and listen for movement either distant or near. Nothing sounded but the small clutter falling from my exit of the building, propelled by my own feet that were too hasty to leave; and once that small clutter rested, there was silence. Wind from somewhere swept through the ruins, tossing my hair in the tepid night. For now, it seemed, I was alone.
But just in case, I unsheathed my katar – a short blade attached to a horizontal bar for holding. I gripped the bar and held the knife at the ready as I made my way through the quiet ruins. Stealth didn’t really matter at this point. If he was close, he already knew where I was. His tracker would make sure of that. Even so, I traveled noiselessly, if only to listen for the approach of footsteps.
I didn’t hear any, not for several minutes. The moon overhead shone through the foggy sky only slightly. The sphere was tinted hazy amber, and didn’t offer much of a glow. For that reason I noticed immediately when a new light sparked into existence from above me. Unnaturally bright, the light blasted down from the top of one of the still-standing buildings. I shielded my eyes from the blinding light with the back of my hand, keeping my weapon prepped in the opposite.
“Who’s there?” I demanded. My voice was too tense. Another sign of weakness I couldn’t afford to give.
At once, my blood began to pump. The thudding of my chest swelled and skipped. I was a fool. I’d allowed myself to sleep, and it was only the first day. Getting caught on the first day was laughable, and blaming my exhaustion on shock wouldn’t make me feel better.
The source of the light remained quiet.
I wasn’t one for taunting. If I were, I’d have commended my Marker on his swift location of me, under-toning the remark with how it must not have been very hard, considering he had a tracker, and all. But since I wasn’t one for taunting, I kept my mouth tight and glared reproachfully at the source of the light. Even if I couldn’t see him, he could see me, and I wasn’t about to let him see my panic.
I waited in that position for what seemed like five minutes, though it couldn’t have been more than few seconds, until at last–
“You aren’t him,” the light’s source said, catching me off guard.
“O-oh?” I blurted out of surprise.
The voice wasn’t the voice of my Marker. It was a girl’s voice, filled with youth, and rather whiny. My pulse slowed, but still I kept the katar prepped.
The light clicked off. “He’s getting quite good at giving me the runaround,” the girl said with a sigh. Though I squinted at her through the darkness, all I could see was her shadowy silhouette, backed by a sky that was uncompromisingly dark. “Well bye,” she said without warning, and started to turn.
“Wait!” I called because I was desperate. Even if she wasn’t my Marker, he was still out there, and the red glow from my hand showed dimly through the gauze. “You’re–” I let my weapon fall limp. “You’re like me, aren’t you? You’re a marked one.”
The girl was quiet.
My voice rose in volume: “Have you found one of the safehouses yet? Honestly, I don’t even know where to start, and I’m already running low on water. How do they expect us to find any out here? Or food for that matter. There’s nothing. Unless you count sand and dirt.”
Still, the figure remained quiet. I swallowed and waited.
“I can’t tell you where a waystation is,” she said slowly, after a moment, “but . . . sometimes prags leave signs for other prags. You should look on the side of the buildings to the west of here. I saw strange markings there. You might understand them,” she said.
“Prags?” I repeated.
“Oh, sorry. Maybe you don’t use that word. I meant people like you, our marks.”
“Your . . .?” Marks. The blade in my hand resumed its readied stance. This girl wasn’t like me. She was one of them, an unholy one.
To my defensive posture, she let out a laugh. “I’m not going to fight you. I’m only interested in him. He’s getting so sneaky lately. It makes me want to find him even more. Well, good luck!”
Again, I saw her silhouette turn, and again, I couldn’t keep from blurting,
“Wait!”
“Hm?” She paused.
I wanted to ask her how she could so lightly talk about the apprehension and murder of another human being, but my gut, which knew I couldn’t engage in unnecessary conflict, wouldn’t let me, so instead I glared at the girl with all of the hatred I felt for her kind. To them, it really was nothing more than a game – just as it was nothing more than a game to the Director himself.
“Why would you help me?” I asked, through my teeth.
The girl was quiet, possibly thinking; and then, “Why not?” she said deliberately. “If I’d been born a prag, and it was my first day out in the wasteland, I’d want to be helped out too. I told you, I only care about catching him. I wouldn’t feel any satisfaction over your death.”
Satisfaction and death: two words that shouldn’t be thrown together into conversation so lightly. That, coupled with the fact that the girl had easily guessed it was my first day, made me clench the handle of my knife even harder.
“Sorry,” she said, not giving me time to act. “Gotta run.” With that, she took off in a sprint into the darkness. My body started forward on its own, but I stopped myself. Pursuing her wasn’t practical. The light on my hand was still lit with the red glow of warning, and somewhere, out in the darkness, another unholy one was rapidly approaching my position; and when he caught me, he wouldn’t offer up friendly advice.
He’d kill me, in whichever way he deemed most satisfactory.
Chapter 6: If You’re Reading This
I wasn’t keen on following the advice of one of the Western demons, but there wasn’t much else for me to do. No matter what, I had to keep moving. I didn’t know how long the tracker would stay lit this time, and even if it meant
following a dead-ended lead, at least I was still moving away from Eastern City.
The girl had said to look for strange markings on the buildings to the west of the ruins. Making my steps light and quick, I traveled through the rock to the edge of the fallen city. It was much smaller than Eastern City, and I suspected the place had once been one of the small outlander settlements scattered between the nine great metropolises of old. Like this city, most of those great metropolises had fallen.
Now, only two remained: ours . . . and theirs.
There was no sign of the ice-eyed unholy one, as I made my way through the crumbled buildings, inspecting them for unusual markings. There was no sign of anyone. That didn’t mean I would let my guard down. My encounter with the girl had shown how easy it was for someone to sneak up on me. If that had been my Marker . . .
I shook my head and pressed on, searching through the darkness for a symbol or word that might offer a clue. The girl had probably been lying, and even if she hadn’t been, it would be next to impossible to see graffiti in the middle of the night.
That was what I assumed because I couldn’t afford to be optimistic.
I was wrong.
At the edge of the city, I let out a gasp, for there, on the half-wall of one of the buildings, was a wide marking, written in glowing blue ink. At the sight of it, my heart started again to pound. The girl had been telling the truth, and she’d been right about something else: I understood the text.
If you’re reading this, shlak kahloom. North two tm, west five tm.
Coordinates? My first instinct was to assume it was a trap. It was too convenient that I’d discovered something like this under the guidance of one of them. If I traveled north two tetramarks, and west five tetramarks, would I find a trap, laid by a band of malicious unholy ones? How many desperate marked ones had they lured into their clutches?
I read the message again and wavered.
Shlak kahloom. It was something yelled during strumbles – a game played with a deck and a die. When a player’s cards were all turned over, another player could offer up one of her own cards as a saving grace, at which time, she’d proclaim shlak kahloom! Did the people from Western City also play strumbles? I couldn’t very well picture them playing a game that didn’t involve killing. And there was something else that stuck out to me about the writing. The symbols, made of sliced and rotated crescent moons, were a form of shorthand used by University students to paraphrase religious readings during memorization exercises. The shorthand was created by students, for students, and modified to meet the needs of each class, so much so that even the priests didn’t fully understand the scribble.
Whatever decision I made, I needed to make it quickly.
“All right,” I said to myself, hoisting my backpack. I would trust the coordinates, then; because I had to, because I had no other option. It was either trust the markings apparently left by one of my own, or wander aimlessly until eventually dying of thirst. I couldn’t win if I was dead.
I marked the wall and the city onto a parchment that would become my map of the wilds. It was up to me to gage how far away this place was from Eastern City. Because I didn’t know the distance, I jotted down an estimate, along with an approximation of the time it had taken to get here.
Now that I had a goal point, I took off in a sprint, which was much easier to maintain once out of the rubbled ruins. The red glow from the implant in my hand propelled me on, step after step, across the dusty night. I ran with my katar at my side, readied in case of confrontation. With each step, I pictured my Marker at my neck. He was right behind me, and if I let up for even a minute, he’d overtake me. Run, Zillow, I thought. Run.
Compass in hand, I guessed, as best I could, the passing of tetramarks. I only hoped that wherever the coordinates led, it was somewhere obvious.
I got my wish.
A very large structure grew on the horizon, the walls of which were lit with rows of dancing light. The place was obvious, maybe even imposing. It wasn’t a shack or hidden tuckaway. Perfectly cubed, and seven stories tall, at least, the structure made me slow my trot. Something like this existed out in the wilderness? At first, the lights on the outside of the building appeared to move in a random order, but when I got closer, I faintly heard the boom of music coming from within. The lights were following a beat, changing along with shifts in tempo. I didn’t know what to think of it. Did I want to enter that place? If it was a trap, it was a highly elaborate one. Maybe it was a Marker gathering place, where they celebrated their victories. Maybe if I entered it, they’d torment me for pleasure. Maybe–
“Entering Waystation Zelpha.” A woman’s automated voice sounded from the space around my feet. I jumped from surprise. “Entering Waystation Zelpha. Entering Waystation Zelpha. Welcome, Zillow Stone.” My name was pronounced in a strange, rushed way, in a tone different from the rest of the statement. At the same moment, the mark on my hand turned from red to blue. “Congratulations! You have earned: One Meal Ticket. Limited Water Access. 2.67 Hours of Rest. 26 SPs.” Again, the list of my earnings sounded out of place with the rest, as though it had been plopped into a fill-in-the-blank.
“Very well, then,” I said, eyeing my newly blue hand. “At least I know it’s legitimate.” After that realization, came a swelling sensation of relief. I’d found a safehouse, and now that I knew where one was, I’d be able to come back as needed. I wasn’t going to starve or die of thirst. I would make it through my first night as a marked one without being caught.
With that in mind, I sheathed my weapon and made my way to Waystation Zelpha.
Chapter 7: Way of the Waystation
My body vibrated from the pump of the music. Colored lights on the ceiling blinked and strobed, painting patterns upon the floor and walls of the entryway. At the end of the hall, there was a podium, where a bright-eyed man stood. His mustache flared out at the ends, and his shirt was decorated with lights that also bounced to the music. He slapped his hands together when I approached.
“Howdy! And welcome to Zelpha, your vibration waystation! Is this your first time visiting?” he said.
I took a moment to answer, for the man’s presence was a lot to take. “. . . Yes.”
“Well then, welcome times two. Marker or prag?”
“P . . . prag.” It felt unnatural to call myself that.
“Ah,” said the man. “I see now. No tats. Scan your mark here.” He gestured to a monitor implanted in the wall. I followed his instruction by butting the back of my hand up to the screen. A mouth appeared in the frame:
“Congratulations, Zillow Stone. This is your first day in the outlands. You have earned: One Meal Ticket. Limited Water Access. 2.67 Hours of Rest. 26 SPs.”
The man clapped his hands, out of what looked like glee. “Oh-ho! First day! We don’t see many of those!” He thought about it. “Actually, I don’t think I’ve EVER seen one of those. I suppose I’ll have to give you the tour, then, crumpet!” He pushed aside a curtain behind him and gestured that I should move through it. I obeyed.
The entryway opened into a large hall with a lofty ceiling. From the outside, the building looked to be seven stories. Now, I could see there was only one floor. The rest of the height was taken by empty space, dancing with colored light from the strobes. I stared up into it a moment before examining the rest of the room. We were in an energy crisis, weren’t we? Then why such an extreme usage of power? In Eastern City, we suffered shortage, yet Western City deemed it appropriate to spend the generator’s resources on lights and music? Whatever the reason, it was maddeningly wasteful.
The hall was filled with metal high-top tables, some taller than others, and plushy armchairs. There were even a few couches scattered here and there. But that wasn’t what caught my concern. I drew in a breath, for the room also contained a dozen or so people, and they all had one thing in common. Even through the mess of lights, I could see that there was something off about the way they were gazing at nothing. Their stares were vacant,
like the sad elderly folk of Eastern City who gazed absently out of their windows at the children playing in the crowded streets.
The man took no notice.
“This is the de-railing room,” he said, leading me through. “You may spend rest time you’ve earned here, or in one of rest chambers. In here, you may use your SPs – safe points – to purchase dandriel, a hypnotic that will make you forget where you are for as long as it’s in your system. Many prags find it useful for clearing their heads before strategizing their next go. And Markers . . . they just like the high.”
“Markers?” I repeated.
“Why, certainly.”
Oh right, the mustached man had asked if I was a Marker or prag when I entered the building. I scanned the room again. It was hard to tell through the dancing lights if any of the vacant-stared people had tattoos under their eyes, but if Markers were here, then that meant it was possible for my Marker to enter this place, too. Without permission, my pulse reacted by speeding.
“What’s to stop a Marker from attacking a prag here?” I asked, glancing over my shoulder, determined to make my voice even.
The man gave his mustache a flick. “For one, it’s against the rules. If a Marker were to try anything within a waystation, they’d be swiftly executed. Some of them use these spaces as a way to observe their prags. Understanding a prag’s mannerisms can be very helpful during the chase.” This man was speaking about it so naturally, turning a blind eye to the fact that the ‘chase’ resulted in death. He had the same mentality as the Markers did. It made me sick. He went on, “Markers can even trade in their SPs for background information on their prags.”
“It’s possible for Markers to earn safe points too?” I asked.
“Well, yeah.” The man gave me an odd look over his shoulder. “They may also spend them on supplies or prolonged tracking.”
