by Alex Leopold
“If you don't tell me what I want to hear, I’ll have my man cut up your sister's pretty face.”
“Don’t give him anything!” Cooper ordered spitting out the command, then winced as the blade bit into her skin.
“Maybe we should cut her tongue out first, eh pumpkin? Give us some peace and quiet.”
“Please don't.” Riley begged, her voice was shaking.
“Then give me something!” Moloch barked his smile disappearing. “Like your father’s name. If he was a crink in the Torchbearers’ army, I’d have heard of him. So tell me who he is?”
When Riley hesitated Reszter pressed the knife deeper into Cooper’s skin.
“Stop! Stop! Stop!” Riley wailed as a thick line of blood spilled down Cooper’s neck.
“A name!” Moloch shouted.
“Don’t do it, Lee!” Cooper grunted.
Rezstar pushed her face into the dirt. Then he knelt over her and slipped the blade under her neck.
“A name, or I slit her throat!”
Riley opened her mouth to speak, but before she could an arrow plunged into the ratty’s chest.
Then from somewhere near the entrance to the warehouse a shotgun began firing.
20
Without warning it happened again and this time the episode was so severe she almost fell from her horse. As it had before, it started when she’d allowed her mind to wonder into a daydream. Nakano had been thinking about her older sister and remembered the day when she’d been allowed to watch Yin act as the Oracle’s beacon.
“You have the gift too, and one day it’ll be you in this chair.” Yin had told her dreamily before she’d closed her eyes and followed the Oracle down to the edge of the void.
Her sister had been right and Nakano had been in the beacon’s chair more times than she could remember. Yet, it had only ever been in the service of the Directory, only ever to help them and their bloody cause. Except for the last time, when she’d stolen the last prophecy from them.
The prophecy! Just as it had before, thinking about it caused a loose thread in her mind to start unraveling and with it, an avalanche of visions came tumbling into her mind’s eye.
The Great Inventor was in all of them and through his eyes, she saw him scaling a tower of rock that looked like a clenched fist, punching its way up toward the heavens. Too soon the tower vanished and was replaced by nothing. She tumbled through it, through a sky so blue it could’ve been the ocean. When she followed his eyes down it looked as if the whole nation was stretched out below.
The visions began to flash faster. A group of forgotten children huddled in a darkened cave were telling him about a weapon, telling him they knew where it was hidden. Then he was standing in an arena facing four Sekham warriors. When he took a step back to defend himself, the arena disappeared and he was standing in a valley illuminated by the last light of the day; before him was a figure hidden behind a silver mask.
Faster. A river of ice flows down the walls of a cave which he has to scale down to reach his destination. Then he watches as a grey tower falls out of the sky. He turns a handle to open a metal hatch painted red with the words: Level 8.
Faster still. She could feel his mouth moving and he was speaking to someone, asking ‘what is happening in the High Temple’. Then he’s warned: ‘warriors can sacrifice themselves for a cause, a leader must live to see it through’. A dying girl mouths ‘one must fall so the other can rise’. He replies back, ‘we’re here’, except it’s a different time and a different place and he’s inside the vault where the first part of the Liberty Key is hidden. And then he screams ‘liberty’, screams it so loud that his voice echoes in her head.
With each repetition, his voice gets faster-and-faster and louder-and-louder. Liberty! Liberty! Liberty! LIBERTY! Until it’s nothing but a high-pitched wail that feels like an explosion in her mind. It’s so violent, Nakano is certain it’ll split her head in two.
The pain becomes so unbearable she almost reaches down for her knife to plunge it into her ear and end it now. Instead, she clenches her teeth and orders herself to keep going. She also ties the horse’s bridal tightly around her hand so if she falls off her horse it will drag her along with it.
Then aloud she repeats the same words over and over again.
“Almost there, almost safe. Almost there, almost safe.”
21
There were birds everywhere! Startled by gunfire they'd dropped from the rafters in their hundreds, turning the inside of the warehouse into a violent black swarm that clawed the men’s faces.
“Get up and fight!” Moloch snapped at them.
He had Riley by her collar and was dragging her toward one of the open containers. Another trapper pulled Cooper by her ankle bindings, her head scraping across the ground as they went.
Ellis had been luckier. His guard had been struck with an arrow and he was using the fallen trapper’s sword to cut his bindings.
Moloch paused and trained his pistol on him. Before he could fire, a lightning bolt cracked close to his head and he was forced to duck out of its way. When he looked back, Ellis was gone.
The blue bolt had come from Riley’s father. He was on the other side of the warehouse with another orb of light growing in his hand.
Moloch yanked Riley onto her feet and used her body as a shield. Her father hesitated but the spark remained alive in his palm. Then Moloch pressed his pistol against Riley’s temple and an unspoken message passed between the two men. Her father extinguished his spark and switched away.
Then Moloch and Riley were inside the container, and the opportunity to end this quickly had gone.
Dragged all the way to the back where it was darkest, Riley and Cooper were dumped on the ground and made to lie at the men’s feet while they rushed to reload their weapons.
“The crink’s getting closer.” Riley heard a man say as he fired his pistol at something. He was hidden in the gloom of the container but his whole body became illuminated when a flash of light pulsed from outside and a spark smashed into the container just above his head.
“He’s going to switch right in here!” Another added, his hands shaking so badly he could barely get powder into his rifle.
Cooper smile at that, but it was quickly robbed from her face when Moloch pressed his pistol against Riley’s temple.
“He’s not coming in here while we have his daughters at gunpoint.” He said and Riley felt the muzzle burning her skin.
Outside the air cracked loudly again and then an outlaw’s body dropped from above and landed at the mouth of the container. Wisps of smoke rose from a burn mark on his chest and the air quickly began to stink of cooked flesh.
“The crink’s going to kill us all!” A trapper shrieked as he hopped away from the body. “Let’s make a run for it.”
“We don’t run from no crinks.” Moloch said loudly to hush his men. “And this dog can still be brought to heel.”
“How?”
“Let’s put a bullet in one of his daughters and see if that takes the sting out of his spark.” He suggested and Riley heard the cocking handle pulled back.
“No!” Cooper called out but there was nothing she could do.
Riley attempted a smile and told Cooper to close her eyes, she didn't want her sister to see her die.
Cooper said something back but Riley didn't hear it. All she heard was her father’s voice in her head. He tapped six words quickly. So fast she barely heard them. Yet the moment he’d finished her world went black.
He said. “Void…”
“…Elder…”
“…Spark...”
“…Torchbearer…”
“…Kitt…”
“…Liberty!”
22
Using his telepathic abilities, Quill was able to see inside the container.
He knew the second after he’d finished the trigger, the twin's powers would break free from their prison. In his mind, he saw their eyes roll up into the back of their heads and t
heir bodies begin to shake like rattles.
“We need to run.” Quill said to Mayat after exiting the switch next to her.
“Why?” The felisian asked.
“I think I just set off a bomb.” He replied, grabbing her hand and pulling her with him.
In the container, his daughters were starting to shimmer. Moloch made to grab Riley but it was like he’d placed his hand on a hot metal plate.
“What’s this?” He asked recoiling.
When he looked back up a ball of white fire had replaced the two girls. It grew as tall as the container. When it touched the roof it pulsed once, releasing so much heat that Moloch would’ve smelt his hair burning.
Then it exploded!
Like a popped balloon it blew outward vaporizing the container and everyone inside it. Then a wall of fire was tearing through the warehouse, rolling outward until it consumed all of Moloch’s men.
Then it disappeared.
“What happened?” Mayat asked. The force from the blast had lifted them both off their feet and tossed them across the warehouse floor. Mayat had landed badly on her side and winced as she stood.
“I triggered their abilities.” Quill answered hoarsely.
“They’re anomalies, too?”
“Yes.”
Mayat looked across the floor of the warehouse. Anything that could burn was now on fire.
“Are they alive in there?”
Quill nodded. Where the container had once been, they’d find a crater as deep as if the earth had been torn out by an explosion.
At the bottom of it, he’d find his daughters.
And they’d be alive.
The anomaly part of them had come awake.
Freed from its prison, it raced outward from the warehouse like a circular wave, rippling away in all directions. Unchecked and uncontrolled, it roamed into the minds of anyone it came into contact with.
It was not for long, no more than a heartbeat or two, just time enough to experience the thoughts and feelings at the surface of a person’s conscience.
Then it was gone, leaving behind no trace of its presence except a brief shivering sensation, a feeling that someone had just walked over your grave.
As it spread outward the first mind they entered was their father’s. He was racing back toward them across the scorched earth. Through his eyes they saw him look up at the warehouse roof, it was totally engulfed in fire.
In the black-market souk, the sound of the explosion had shocked everyone and Riley was in a man’s thoughts as he fell to the ground in fear. Then she was in Acadia’s head as he spurred the team horses forward as fast as he could make them go.
Outwards their minds kept traveling, kept gaining speed with each mile they crossed.
Passing over a small village, Riley peered through the eyes of a young girl as she made breakfast for her mother. To the west, Cooper was in an animal’s mind – a ghostback – as it chased down a deer.
Further north and they’d crossed over the mountain range that separated the Borderlands from the Great Unknown. It was a barren land up there, already blanketed in the first layer of snow, and for a time there were no minds to enter except those that were wild.
Then Riley was in the thoughts of an ursinian named, Apennine. Riding north on his mammoth colossal, he was escorting two bear-human blends he’d helped free from a Directory prison to his home.
Again-and-again they jumped from mind-to-mind spending no more than a few seconds in each person's head before moving on.
Traveling south and Cooper was a man hustling down an unknown pathway, scared and paranoid that he was being followed. To the east and Riley was a Directory soldier, sharpening his sword in preparation for an upcoming battle.
Further-and-further in every direction. It felt like they’d go on forever, go on until they covered the whole nation and beyond.
Then a dark vortex began to draw them to it.
“I see you.” A voice called from its center.
“He’s going to find you, you have to wake up!” Their father’s voice called to them from some unknown location.
But they couldn't. That part of their mind that had only just become active didn’t know how, and worse, the man in the dark wouldn’t let them go.
“He brought me to you.”
“Wake up!” Their father shouted.
“Tell me where you are?” The dark voice commanded and they could feel his chill within them. “Help me find him.”
“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!”
Now they felt ruff hands shaking their bodies, slapping their faces and pinching their skin.
“Wake the hell up!” It said one last time and then they were coming to and kneeling before them was Ellis.
23
The Directory's snooper hive was enclosed within the tower of a Harvardtown building once known as Memorial Hall. Inside, twelve snoopers lay in reclining chairs arranged in a circle facing away from one another. Beside them, on hard wooden stools sat their companions, ordinary citizens whose job was to transcribe everything the snoopers told them into notepads.
“I am now with Citizen Root.” A male snooper with eyes glazed over said. Then his voice changed to that of a whining child.
“Why isn’t there enough food, mommy? I’m starving!”
“I am now with Citizen Cronin.” A female snooper whispered from the next chair picking up halfway through a conversation. “… sundown, assemble your family and meet me at the western gate. I've convinced a guard to let us out. It'll cost us everything but we’ll be free.”
“I am now with Citizen Hishek.” Like the others, the snooper repeated exactly what the citizen was saying and the companion beside him transcribed it word-for-word into her notepad. It was the same kind of surveillance that was being conducted in dozens of hives throughout the Directory nation; every minute of every day.
Once the companion had finished recording Citizen Cronin’s conversation, she raised her hand. She was quickly attended by a warden who took the slip of paper to a chamber below where five Irenics were waiting.
What Citizen Cronin was proposing was treason, the companion knew. The Irenics would arrest him and and his family within the day, and then they’d be quietly sent through the gateway. To where the companion didn’t know, but she knew when they got there they’d be turned into drones.
She hated herself for being the one who sold them out, and the countless families before them. Yet, what could she do, the Directory monitored everyone? Even now, some snooper somewhere could be watching her.
“Your orders are to shift your focus to the Borderlands, Citizen.” The warden told her when he returned. “They want more people tracking the escaped Irenic.”
The companion nodded and leaned down to whisper into her snooper’s ear. “We have to look for Nakano again.”
“I’m traveling.” Her snooper replied, acknowledging that she was shifting her observation to a new area.
The companion, Citizen Saybolt was grateful for the brief interruption and used the time to massage the ache in her fingers. She’d been writing for eight hours straight.
Five of the other snoopers in the hive were also scanning the Borderlands for the fugitive Irenic. It was a good assignment. Extra food rations were promised to the snooper and companion who found the traitor – an unheard of reward these days.
“I see … something.”
The respite had been brief and with a long sigh Citizen Saybolt took up her pencil again.
“There’s a fire.” The snooper said mystically her voice so quiet her companion had to lean in to hear her properly.
“The light! It burns!” The snooper screamed. It was with such anguish that Citizen Saybolt fell out of her chair from the fright. By the time she was on her feet the snooper was shaking uncontrollably, her arms thrashing by her side.
As if it were contagious, one after the other all the snoopers in the circle started to convulse. For a second all the companions looked at one another
with shocked confusion, then one finally stuck her hand in the air.
Control rarely betrayed his emotions. He'd learned long ago how to strip away his feelings, to transform himself into no more than a weapon that cared only for what it was hunting down.
So he could barely register his shock when he glimpsed a face in the crowd he hadn't seen in a decade; the face of a woman he’d believed long since dead.
She moved gracefully among the long lines of citizens in the Old Yard. It was as if, unlike every other citizen there, she hadn’t a care in the world. As if she wasn’t even aware he'd been standing above them the whole night.
Switching down from the rooftop, he frantically shoved his way through the columns of sleep-deprived citizens as he raced to catch up with her. A second before he had his hand on her shoulder, she half-turned to face him.
“I don't care what you are or what you did, I love you.” She tapped, repeating something she’d whispered to him a thousand times before.
He spun her around with his free hand not realizing that his sword was already in the other.
The moment she looked into the reflection of his mask her face revealed its horror and she dropped to her knees. It was only then, only as he bore down on her with all his hatred and fury that he realized the girl in front of him was not the one he thought he’d seen.
“Please don't kill me, Senior!” She pleaded as her family raced to her side.
Control’s lips quivered as he tried to make sense of what had just happened.
He’d buried her! It was impossible that she could’ve come back, impossible! And yet somehow she had.
That was when he sensed what had happened in the hive tower.
24
"Varick!"
Coming awake, Riley's subconscious mind screamed for the comfort of a boy her awake mind did not know and whose face and importance dematerialized back into her dreams even as she spoke his name.
