Beyond Oblivion

by Daryl Banner

  The men slowly disperse, heading into the pavilion. Fork-beard keeps his eyes on Athan as he goes, a hint of spite in them. Athan only watches him go, sucking on his own tongue with thoughts both angry and sad.

  “You okay?” asks the Guardian more kindly now that the men have gone. Her voice is a soft reprieve from the brusqueness of the men. “I can escort you home, my partner and I. Where do you live?”

  “Thank you, but it won’t be necessary.” Athan offers her a polite smile, then nods at her partner, who still stands there with a hand on the pommel of his sheathed weapon. “Have a great day, and thank you for your service in Guardian, especially in these troubled times. It cannot be an easy task.”

  “Easier by the day,” she admits. “And the offer still stands. My partner and I can give you an easy escort, no matter the distance. We are on a loose patrol this night.”

  “No, I’ll be fine. Thank you.” Athan nods at them again. “Be safe out there.” He makes one last glance at Nickel, as if throwing the words his way too, but the boy only stares back grimly, still nursing his tender neck, and says nothing in return.

  Athan dismisses himself from the scene, going along his way to the streets. The faces of the angry men still hover in his mind, each of them more furious than the last, each of them looking so hungry for gold that he can imagine them eating a bowl of it for dinner.

  Oh, if it could be eaten for dinner, Athan muses. If gold could pay for anything, then he would’ve been happy in his home in the sky, because his gold would’ve bought him happiness, would’ve bought him love, would’ve sat in his belly, the tasty dinner it is.

  And he would never have dreamed of a life in the slums. He wouldn’t have been standing at Lord’s Garden the day it fell from the sky, sending him tumbling into the Lunar Festival below. He would be up there in the Lifted City, have attended the Queen’s Coronation, witnessed King Greymyn be murdered before his eyes, and then hid somewhere to stay out the duration of the Madness.

  No gold would have saved him then. No gold would’ve stopped one of Impis’s Posse dragging him kicking out of his house to be tossed over the edge of the city. Piles of gold or poor as a boy from the seventh, it mattered not; fate was cruel to both.

  “My, my,” sings Edrick as he catches up to Athan’s side. “Quite a mess back there.”

  Athan snorts and shakes his head. “I should’ve known you were listening in.”

  “From the opposite side of the pits, still in the stands, yes, I could hear every word. I also heard a bit of talk within the pavilion about your premature departure. Some of the other men are grateful.”

  He feels a pinch of guilt. “I’ve been taking gold from people who need it more. To feed their families … their children. No wonder the whole lot of them hate me.”

  “Only a few hate you. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it. Anyone who learns what it is I do hates me instantly. I suspect it’s because I’m more beautiful than they’ll ever be.” Edrick gives his hair a flick for punctuation, sending all his dusty grey-blond bangs dancing. “Some can’t be blamed for their hate. For some, it’s the only thing they got going for them.”

  “That’s an awful thing to say.”

  “Only awful ‘cause it’s true.” Edrick shrugs lightly, then glances sidelong at Athan. “Are you sweet on that other boy who was mad at you? He’s surely sweet on you. I can always tell.”

  “No. He admires me. I apparently am some kind of idol to him.” Athan sighs. “I regret ever making a thing of these pits. I should do them all a favor and not turn up there again. I’ve enough I can help with in the ninth, gold or not. And if they think that I—”

  “Quiet.”

  Athan glances at Edrick. “What is it?”

  “Quiet. There’s something—”

  The next instant, a thick black material wraps about Athan’s face, stealing the world from his view. He tries to shout, but his words are muffled and he has no air. He grabs at the thing over his head, but it’s secured tightly by someone at his back, who begins to drag him off. He fights him feebly, struggling to break free, but the man is stronger. “Athan!” cries a voice, Edrick, before his words go muffled, too. The pair of them fight and scramble against their assailants to no avail, dragged away down the street.

  0245 Kid

  Facility is a place of wonders and horrors.

  The wonders is the most fascinating part, Kid has discovered. In one sector of the mysterious Facility, the residents (Kid can’t decide whether to call them patients or prisoners, so she opts for the kinder term of “residents”, as is used by most of the doctors) are given meals worthy of any Lifted citizen, are allowed an amount of hours in a recreation room where they can watch the broadcast and talk among themselves, and are treated with dignity.

  For the most part.

  That’s where the horrors come in. Kid and Link, invisible, watch as a boy of fifteen is brought from his room to a doctor’s lab where he is gently told to lie on an examination table and assured he will be fine. A serum is injected into his neck, and then the boy’s eyes turn glassy and roll back, his consciousness stolen from him. As he lies there like the dead, two doctors strip him of all his clothing, then inspect the helpless boy from head to toe. They take measurements. They withdraw blood. They observe his eyes and take notes, clip bits of his hair, tap upon his stomach and his legs and his arms, pinch each of his fingers and toes, and tap the soles of his bare feet with different instruments.

  “Just a normal trip to the doctor,” Link whispers to Kid in a closet later on to calm her mind. “We never once took you, so you don’t know what it’s like.”

  “This is normal?” Kid whispers back, horrified.

  “For the most part. Well, I’d only been once every other year, but yes, this looks right. Except for the rendering them unconscious. And the whole … the whole naked thing, I guess. They study Legacies here after all, so they have to monitor all aspects of the health of their patients.”

  “Residents,” corrects Kid with a roll of her eyes.

  Link squeezes her hand. “There’s nothing scary about this.”

  Unfortunately, that statement would prove itself a lie the next day when that same “resident” is brought to a different room. It’s a lab with metal walls, strange machines and glowing lights behind a glass window where a number of doctors observe, and a single chair in the center of the room—a chair with restraints. The teenager is sat in the chair and carefully strapped in. “This is just a brief test of the strength and resilience of your Legacy,” the soft-voiced male doctor with his long brown hair in a ponytail explains. “If you experience any discomfort at all, you need simply say the word ‘stop’ and the test will end.”

  When the doctors are positioned safely behind the glass—and Link and Kid remain in the room itself, glued to the wall and hidden behind Kid’s Legacy—the chair begins to hum, coming to life like a squatting mechanical creature with a human in its tight clutch. The teenager seems confused at first, unsure what is going on.

  Then he screams.

  Kid’s already-tight hold on Link’s hand tightens to the point of cracking fingers, her eyes widening. Link holds his breath, watching with as much alarm. The teenager is restrained so well that he can’t even squirm. The agony continues for two and a half uninterrupted minutes while the doctors observe, mild-eyed, and while Link and Kid stay perfectly in place—whether out of fear or curiosity, Kid can’t with any good conscience say.

  Abruptly, the screaming stops. The teenager is left on the chair breathing heavily, his eyes closed, his face wrinkled in pain, his lips parted and blubbering between each of his frantic breaths.

  Then after some time, the doctors reenter the room, unstrap the teenager, and with his eyes half-closed, drowsy and searching, feet barely able to hold up his weight, the doctors aid him down a few halls and back to his room where he lies on a soft bed and catches his breath. In a matter of minutes, he’s asking for lunch with a smile.

  Kid stare
s at the resting teenager, curious, confounded.

  Well, he never screamed ‘stop’.

  After days of this bizarre treatment with a multitude of other people—teenagers, adults, elderly, children—Kid pulls Link aside, at a complete loss, and says, “We have to put a stop to this. We have seen far too much to know—”

  “We have not seen enough.” Link holds her by her arms. “And keep your voice down,” he reminds her, lowering his own. “There may be a Legacy in this building with ready ears, or sharper eyes, or a sense of others’ presences. You said yourself you had a friend who could see temperatures. Aryl was her name? We must be careful. We must stay invisible. Our every action must be absolutely, finely, perfectly, utterly calculated to a scientist’s highest standard. Do you understand me?”

  Kid, annoyed, yanks her arms from his hold. “I am not a child anymore.” Then she folds her arms exactly like one, pouting, and glares toward the back of the closet door behind which they hide.

  “No, you’re not,” Link agrees, then sinks to the floor with a sigh. “I wonder if you ever were. You’ve seen so much. You’ve endured more than any child ought to.”

  Kid bites her lip, her fingers twitching. Whenever they aren’t holding hands, she is terribly unrested, like she might at any moment lose him forever, just as she’s lost everyone else she’s ever known.

  The effort is somewhat complicated when she is upset with him.

  Holding hands isn’t exactly the best way to convey frustration.

  “Please.” Link raises his hand, his eyes searching for hers. “You know I can’t stand it when I can’t see you.”

  Kid strains for exactly five seconds before deciding it’s too much effort to make herself seen. “I’m right here,” she announces tiredly.

  “Akidra.”

  “That’s not my name.”

  Link sighs. “Listen to me, then, if you won’t let me see you. The truth is, something is going on here in this place. These doctors are studying the science of Legacies—under the King’s direct command, might I add. And it’s for a specific reason, which we don’t yet know. Maybe the doctors are even fooled, their true purpose hidden behind a screen of shadows and clever lies.”

  “That’s all the Banshee King was,” mutters Kid sulkily. “A big, grey, wrinkly liar.”

  “Is,” Link corrects her. “He still lives, Akidra.”

  “I said that’s not—”

  “These people are dissecting what makes us … us,” Link goes on. “It may be uncomfortable to watch, yes. And it may not always make sense, at least not yet. But the more we observe—”

  “And what about mom?”

  The question shoves all the air out of Link’s chest. His eyes drop to the floor and his lips shut.

  Kid regrets asking. It’s unfair of her to throw such a question at him, as if to imply that he doesn’t care about Faery like she does. Of course he cares. Of course he wants to find her just as desperately.

  But Faery is in the hands of Sanctum now. Faery is as good as gone. Mom is as good as gone …

  Kid abruptly plops down by Link on the floor, then puts a hand on his thigh to pull him back into the unseeable world. There, she decides, feeling a pinch of comfort in their being invisible together. The pair of them sit in silence for a while, listening to the occasional footsteps, murmuring, or other activity on the other side of the door, and the shadows of feet passing under the crack beneath it.

  “We will find her,” Link insists. “She’s a Goddess, after all. We have to trust she can handle herself. I mean, she can blink Legacies in and out of existence.”

  “But you heard the doctors. It … isn’t just her they want.”

  Kid’s words drag a plague of worry over Link’s face. She thinks she maybe could have spared him the pointing out of that fact.

  He shuts his eyes suddenly, then murmurs, “Well, you have to put yourself in their greedy minds. The child of a Goddess … and a human?”

  “But what’s it matter that I’m her child?” Kid frets. “I’m … I’m not some special person with incredible abilities. I just turn invisible. I’m no threat to the Banshee King. I’m no Outlier.”

  “They don’t know that yet.”

  “They think I’m some kind of answer to something. That doctor, she took a sample of your blood and skin. Maybe they think there is something in our blood, something from the Goddess, and—”

  “I know.” Link shakes his head and flaps open his eyes to stare up at the ceiling. “I haven’t a clue what they’re planning to do with my blood. What little of it they had. Or what they expect to do with you, if they ever caught hold of you. Which I won’t let happen,” Link snapped at once, eyeing her. “I … don’t understand all this advanced Lifted tech up here … These bizarre machines … All the complicated words these doctors use …”

  “We should have fixed up that wound nicer.”

  Link gives a chuckle at her giving sudden attention to the slice along his neck where a certain red-eyed doctor hacked him with her sickle-shaped blade to gather said sample of his blood and tissue.

  He brings a tentative hand to the wound. “It looks so ugly.”

  “You don’t notice it under that coat,” she points out, poking at the white doctor’s coat Link stole from the locker chambers at the end of the hall. Link found one that perfectly fit him, the collar of it covering the nasty groove left by that strange, curved blade.

  Then Kid’s stomach, ever annoyingly, makes a loud groan.

  The two of them glance down at it.

  Link squints at the back of the door. “You know what we need?”

  “What’s that?”

  “A little lunch.”

  To that idea, she smiles. “Do you want to steal from the doctors, or the residents today?”

  Link drums his fingers along his chin playfully, considering it. “Doctors,” he chooses.

  After seventeen and a half minutes of cautiously maneuvering down the hallways, Link and Kid slip into a room where the doctors, only one or two at a time, seem to rest for some lunch. A small fridge sits in the corner underneath a short countertop upon which some unremarkable metal utensils rest in a sterilization bin. After a quick pillage in the dark, empty room, Link and Kid sit in its corner with a small can each of unseasoned mashed vegetable and two slices of bread, then begin to eat in the dark. Link tries to fold his food into a sandwich while Kid nibbles on the corner of her slice of bread.

  “I think what we need is a sympathetic ear,” Link mutters after a bite, chewing thoughtfully.

  Kid lifts an eyebrow. “A sympathetic—?”

  “A target. A doctor who, maybe, doesn’t so blindly follow all the orders of the King and whoever else is in charge in this strange place. We need a target who we … might be able to sway, perhaps coax information out of, or perhaps …”

  “What ever happened to staying unseen?” asks Kid, incredulous.

  Link shrugs. “Well, I was thinking perhaps that someone could lead us … to Sanctum.”

  The single word sends chills down Kid’s back. “It’s risky.”

  “Oh, I know it’s risky.” Link takes another bite, then speaks with his mouth full. “But aren’t we already being risky?”

  “It’s more than risky. It’s foolish. All these doctors are evil, Link.”

  “I know it’s difficult for you to see, but they are also human.” He turns his aching eyes onto her, still chewing. “Some people in the world just do what they’re told. Some people follow whoever has the loudest voice in the room. It isn’t always a matter of good and evil.”

  Kid rolls her eyes. “Can you quit trying to turn everything into a lesson? These doctors torture children.”

  Link gives a nod at her food. “You need to eat your vegetables, too. Not just the bread.”

  “Thanks, dad.”

  “Better not forget who I am.” He chuckles. “Or I just might tell you you’re grounded and send you to your room for not finishing your dinner.”

/>   Kid cracks a smile despite herself. “Thought this was our lunch?”

  They draw silent suddenly as a pair of light footsteps approach outside. Kid holds her breath as the both of them stop eating and watch the shadows of those feet under the crack in the door, staying perfectly quiet and still. Nothing moves. Nothing stirs.

  Then the feet seem to change their mind and go away.

  After a moment of quiet, Kid sighs out: “I need to save Aryl.”

  Link takes another bite. “All in good time. Remember, we’ve still got three years left before we’re caught up to our ‘home’ time. That’s a lot of days left to go.”

  “Is it?” Kid turns to him. “Do you ever stop and wonder how … how fast everything has happened already? How fast time has gone by? You are twenty-two. I’m sixteen, nearly an adult grown.” She tears off another piece of bread and tosses it into her mouth.

  “You’ll never be an adult grown, not in my eyes.”

  The door opens suddenly. Kid and Link grow perfectly still, Kid freezing mid-bite. They watch as a large female doctor with short hair steps into the room, flicks on the lights, then fetches something off a shelf over the countertop. After moving at a hurried speed, she stops suddenly, whatever she came in for still hanging from her grasp. She bows her head and, after a second’s breath, starts to cry.

  The woman’s cries are muted and choked, like she is afraid of anyone hearing them. She brings the thing—a roll of gauze or cotton fabric of some kind—to her lips to snuff out more of her sobs.

  “Oh, Sisters forgive, Sisters forgive …” she moans between her muffled sobs. “Please, please, forgive me, oh, Sisters …”

  The next instant, a man’s head appears at the still-opened door. “Did you find any in here? Dr. Wise? … Terrabeth?”

  The woman hurriedly wipes her eyes, clears her throat, then says, “Yes, I did. You won’t need to order any,” in an impressively even tone of voice, though she keeps her back to the door to hide her likely reddened face. “Some idiot left them here in the break room, just as I thought. Right here on the shelf.”