by T. C. Edge
“When will it be?” I ask her gently.
“Tomorrow,” she says. “At midday. The crematorium is full, and needs to clear some space.”
It sounds so callous, but it’s another fact of life here. The dead are quickly burned before they stink out the place. A few words are spoken, perhaps, some respects paid, and then it’s back on with your life you go.
I’m surprised to find that Drum isn’t in his room. I knock to no answer, and open up his door. His bed is neatly made, his side of the room still decorated. I turn to the other and see that it’s been stripped down, any memory of Fred and Ziggy already expunged.
I ask Mrs Carmichael whether she was responsible. With space at such a premium, the deaths of two transitioners, while tragic, immediately presents an opportunity for others.
Mrs Carmichael seems upset by the suggestion.
“I may run a tight ship here, Brie, but I’m not that heartless. Drum will be given his time to mourn alone before I fill those spots.”
“So you’re saying Drum took Fred and Ziggy’s stuff down himself?” I ask.
“He must have done. I guess it just hurts to look at it.”
“And do you know where he is. He wasn’t in his room.”
“He went to work,” she tells me. “I said he didn’t have to, but he insisted. Sometimes it’s easier to just keep busy.”
“Is that a good idea? The state he was in yesterday...he should be here, safe with us.”
She nods in agreement, pursing her lips.
“I’m afraid that’s his decision. I don’t disagree with you, Brie. But we all have our coping mechanisms. And this job he’s got…he’s been doing well recently. I don’t think he wants to take time off in case he loses it.”
I suppose I can understand that. Around here, the people often have to make hard choices. Even kids of 16.
I decide to leave the academy before the onset of darkness, working my way towards district 6. I take up a position in a quiet alley near to the shelter, watching the street from the shadows as it begins to clear.
Soon enough, curfew will begin, signalled by the alarms that rain down their screech across the city. Only those with special dispensation are allowed out after hours, such as those with jobs that finish later.
Still, though, the people are already being conditioned to seek the safety of their homes before they’re officially forced to. As darkness falls, the streets start to clear, and I take my opportunity to sneak down into the shelter without being seen by peering eyes.
I slip in, shut the door, and move into the darkness. My new night vision enables me to do so without flicking on the light. I go to the far wall, and begin working my fingers along the brick, just as Zander did the last time. Pressing in, I spend a few minutes discovering the secret lock.
When I do, the small brick clicks an inch or so inward, and the customary cough of dust spills out as the secret door falls open. With a final check behind me to see that no one’s there, I move into the dark tunnel and shut the door tight.
The journey to the waterfall takes less time than before. Not only do I know the way, but my eyes are now fully accustomed to the darkness, and capable of leading me through the pitch black without so much as a trip.
The only thing that does slow me down a little is the aching of my feet. For the most part, the healing cream has done its job, closing up the minor cuts and serving to block out the pain. The cut that needed stitches, however, remains a discomfort, and occasionally calls for me to take short breaks.
Before long, however, I’m out of the tight passages and into the larger caverns of this wild, untamed part of the underlands. The song of the waterfall begins to sound in my ears, and the dripping, verdant vines and foliage that scatter the walls give shape to a weird and wonderful underground garden.
I see it all more clearly than two nights ago, and take a moment to marvel. Up above, there’s so little greenery, almost every inch of land within the city limits taken up by concrete and brick and metal. To see trees or rivers or mountains, you have to look beyond the borders. To the world outside, covered with a coating of toxic mist and off-limits for most of us.
My natural curiosity has drawn my eyes to those distant lands so often, and with my new optical capabilities, that is only likely to continue.
Yet all the while, there’s been beauty down here, hidden in the darkness. A secret world that no one above us knows about. A place of calm where I can be alone, away from the pressures of the city above.
I move towards the waterfall, its rushing white water toppling through the opening in the rock wall, and scan the place for Zander. I don’t see him. I call his name, and get no reply.
Somehow, far from being annoyed, I’m actually happy that he isn’t here yet. It will give me a chance to enjoy this rare bout of solitude, something that I find myself craving more and more.
It also presents an opportunity for me to test out my powers without fear of scrutiny. Turning to the waterfall, I offer it a glare.
“We meet again,” I say, walking towards it.
I move through the gap in the rock wall and into the cave behind, before stepping right up to the gushing water. And, like before, I stare forward, waiting for an opportunity to shoot my arm in and out without getting drenched.
Without the watching eyes of Zander to put me off, I enter a state of meditation, my peripheral vision taking in the entire flow of water from top to bottom.
I take a deep breath, and the world seems to slow, time juddering to a halt as the furious speed of the cascade before me suddenly begins to mellow.
Upon the water’s face, the gaps appear, forming and shifting as they drop from above. Through them, the cave beyond grows clear, little windows within the distorted wall of water. It’s a new sensation, my vision and speed now working in tandem, shaping the world in a whole new light.
A large gap appears. It opens as it comes, frothing around the edges and with rogue droplets meandering through its midst. It comes right down before me, and a smile turns up on my face.
I send my arm through, and pull it right back. It seems so easy this time. Before, it was instinct, time passing by as normal, my arm shifting quickly but not quickly enough.
Now, my abilities have manifested further, lending me the ability to slow time to my eyes, if only for a brief period. Before I know it, my arm is back in front of me, barely a drop of water on it, and the waterfall has begun to flow as normal once more.
I take a breath and feel a bout of dizziness coming, the use of my powers still serving to quickly drain my body of energy. Shutting my eyes, I steady my mind.
And as I open them, I hear a voice.
“You’re learning fast.”
I shift my position, spinning to the left. Zander stands, legs casually crossed, leaning against the wall.
“You did it, didn’t you?” he asks. “You saw time slowing?”
I don’t answer. Excited as I am by all of this, I’m just as pissed to come face to face with him.
He wanders towards me, nodding.
“I get it,” he says. “You’re angry with me. I don’t blame you, honestly sis…”
“Don’t call me sis.”
His palms draw up in surrender. It’s an obvious concession of guilt.
“OK, you’re in a bad mood. But you wanted to talk, so let’s talk.”
He waits for me to speak. I can’t find the right words, so stay quiet.
“I’ll start,” he says.
It’s obvious he knows what I’m angry about. No doubt Adryan has told him.
“So, I know all about what happened in Inner Haven,” he starts. “Honestly, Adryan was never meant to run his mouth like that. I’m not saying he’s to blame or anything, just that, well, we kinda knew what we were doing. And yeah, he screwed up.”
“Screwed up? By telling me the truth?!”
“No. Not by telling you the truth. By telling you the truth when he did. Look, we didn’t tell you before becaus
e it would have been way too much for you to handle. Think about it, and answer me honestly – if Lady Orlando told you, when I took you to the church, that she wanted you to kill the most powerful and dangerous man in the city, would you have agreed?”
Again, I refuse to answer. My silence is answer enough.
“That’s a no, if ever there was one. Of course you wouldn’t! You’d have gone straight home and forgotten about all of this. Anyone would…”
“OK, yeah, I see it now.”
“You do?” he asks, surprised.
“Yep. You’re basically saying that you wanted to lure me right in first, and only once I was in too deep, and had developed all these powers, and married a Savant, and was living in Inner Haven…only then would you tell me what I was in for. Is that about right?”
“Well, yeah, actually. Don’t make it sound so bad. How else would you play it?”
“I’d have been up front from the start! You’re meant to be my brother, Zander, my twin! You should be honest with me. At least Adryan has the courtesy to tell me what I’m getting myself into. In fact, I’m starting to doubt whether you’re my brother at all. For all I know you could have just doctored that picture and now you’re pretending to be my twin to win me over to your cause.”
“Brie,” he says flatly, “that’s ridiculous.”
“No more ridiculous than anything else. Every single day there’s something else happening to me. A couple of weeks ago I was just a normal girl getting on with my life. And now I’m some sort of super-Enhanced assassin-to-be who needs to kill a man to stop a war. How the hell do you think I feel!”
My words tumble off the walls and up through the nearby caverns. They repeat over and over as they fade away, before leaving behind nothing but the rushing water.
“I guess, when you put it like that,” says Zander eventually, looking decidedly sheepish, “you’ve got a point.”
I open up my arms and release an enormous sigh.
“Thank you! I thought I was going mad.”
“But…”
Don’t you dare!
“…you can surely see it from our point of view as well?” he asks reticently.
I stare daggers.
“OK. Perhaps not.”
I begin walking towards him and slip straight past, before moving out of the cave and away from the water. He follows behind me at a little jog.
“Brie…where are you going?”
“It’s so damn loud near that water,” I say. “I need to move around.”
He gives me a bit of space to let off some steam. In all honesty, what he’s saying does make sense. Had they told me my purpose at our first meeting, I’d have probably run a mile. From their point of view, it does seem sensible to guide me through this more gently.
Still, it’s a horrible feeling being kept in the dark, particularly about something so sinister. As terrible as Cromwell and the Consortium are, and as evil as their plot seems, the idea of murdering a man is a very hard thing to get my head around.
Eventually I stop and take a seat on a rock, the waterfall now way off on the other side of the cavern. Zander tentatively moves in in front of me.
“Do you think I like killing?” he asks.
My hooded eyes rise.
“What sort of question is that?”
“An appropriate one. I know what you’re thinking, Brie. And no, I don’t have to read your mind to figure it out. You’re questioning yourself, wondering if you can kill. It’s only natural if you’ve never done so. Of course, I have, and you know I have. You’ve seen me do it. And now you’re thinking about how cold I am, how callous I am to just take lives so wantonly. Don’t deny it.”
“I won’t,” I say. “Maybe we can’t all kill as easily as you can, Zander.”
He lets out a little puff of air and shakes his head, moving to sit on a nearby rock. He shuffles his feet for a moment before falling still, lifting his eyes to mine as he speaks.
“Do you know how old I was when I first killed a man?”
I look at him for a moment in silence. His irises crackle, their embers starting to flame with a distant memory.
“I was 13,” he says. “Just a boy, filled with rage. When the Nameless took me in, it took me some time to settle. I had this burning anger inside me that I couldn’t quench. I woke with it, and went to bed with it. It was always there, suffocating me, drowning me. I knew there was only one way to get rid of it.
“Back then, I used to spend a lot of time in the northern quarter. I’d test my powers on people, reading their minds, exploring their memories. I was looking for one memory in particular. And one man.”
The embers in his eyes catch fire, turning to a blaze. His jaw stiffens, clenching tight before he speaks again.
“One day, I found exactly what I was looking for. I watched it play out again, reliving the memory, the night that changed my life. I saw it all from his perspective. The creeping shadows. The gun in his hand. The lost child wandering the streets, and the woman who came to fetch him.
“I saw him trailing them as they wandered through the dark alleys, just trying to find their way home. I saw him draw out his gun and pounce from the darkness. I felt the excitement in him as he pointed the weapon and demanded the woman’s purse. How his joy surged as he pulled the trigger, and saw the blood splatter across the boy’s face.
“I saw the death of Linda again that night as I rooted through that man’s mind. I saw my guardian’s life snuffed out by this soulless murderer, and saw the fear and pain in my own eyes as I wept by her body. I felt the rage in me soar, and when I withdrew from the man’s mind, I looked at his face with a smile on mine.
“I was only a boy, Brie. Just 13. But I killed that man that night. I tore through his mind and paralysed his body with nothing but a thought, and took my time as I sent a knife right into his heart. I did it for Linda, and I did it for revenge. But did I enjoy it? Did I enjoy the sensation of taking a life? Even a life as worthless as his?”
He shakes his head.
“I don’t enjoy killing. I kill because I have to. Some people in this world deserve life, and others don’t. This man didn’t deserve to take another breath, and I rid the world of him forever.”
He leans forwards, and his eyes begin to soften.
“Director Cromwell deserves to die more than anyone in this city. Thousands have been slaughtered under his command. And tens of thousands will soon follow. Don’t think of it as murder, Brie. It isn’t. To be a murderer, the victim has to be human. This man isn’t human…”
His words stop flowing, and the cave falls to silence. I watch him recover from the memory, see the reflection of pain in his eyes. And the anger that still lives there, simmering in the depths.
“And did it help?” I ask him quietly. “Killing the man who killed Linda. Did it get rid of your anger?”
He stands up and steps towards me.
“No,” he answers calmly. “And I know now…that nothing ever will.”
46
The days and nights appear to be drawing together now. My world, once so rigid and organised, is unrecognisable. All I’ve ever known is order and structure. Wake, work, sleep, repeat. That has been my existence.
Not anymore.
Each day brings a new challenge. Each day I learn something new. Things about me. Things about others. Things about this city that I call home.
The thought of going back to what I was, back to my simple life, no longer registers in me. I’ve turned down a path that I cannot leave, one that is drawing me further and further into the unknown with each passing day, each passing hour.
Zander’s tale of his past cracks a fissure in my heart. Yet it says so much about my new life that it doesn’t shock me. I think of what I’d have done in the same situation. If I’d witnessed the death of Mrs Carmichael before my eyes, would I have wished for revenge? Would I have gone in search of it?
I know the answers to those questions. I’d have done just the same as my
brother. I’d have hunted that man down and taken his life. I’d have made him suffer in the way he made me suffer. In the end, I know he had no choice.
And perhaps, now, neither do I.
I don’t stay down in the underlands too long that night. The last two days have been too much, too draining to try to train my new mental powers. Zander, too, appears to have become a little withdrawn, the terrible memories of his past now excavated from the depths of his mind.
His eyes fall into shadow and his words become limited to a few. Tonight isn’t the night to make progress. We both know that.
We leave each other with the promise to meet down here the following night.
“Take time to think things through, Brie,” he says solemnly. “Tomorrow, we’ll get back to your training…if that’s what you want.”
He turns and disappears into the darkness, and I do the same. When I reach the safety of the academy once more, slipping silent as a ghost through the night, I waste no time in finding my bed.
Across the room, I hear Tess tossing and turning, deep in the throes of some nightmare. I spend a little time watching her, the darkness no longer a barrier to my sight, and see the creased pain flashing on her face, her lips curling and eyes twitching as she battles with her subconscious.
When I finally fall into dreams myself, I also get assaulted. I’d imagine the same is happening across the three floors of the academy, the whole place swamped in grief and fear, the same as the entire city.
When morning blooms, I’m awoken by the sound of bells ringing across Outer Haven. The many hundreds killed in the attack on the market are beginning to be laid to rest, the morgues overflowing with the dead and the crematoriums working to a tight schedule.
The atmosphere in the canteen that morning is sombre. Appetites appear to have been lost in recent days, eyes growing hollow. Even the younger kids, usually so unbowed by such worries, have seen their energies defeated. No one laughs or plays. Few of them even talk.
Instead, it’s tears that have become so prominent, the older kids now tasked with comforting the younger. And today, especially, with Fred and Ziggy’s funeral so near, the flood of grief has grown.
