by Daryl Banner
The easy part, surprisingly, is walking through the hospital in a full suit of Guardian armor. Ellena plays the part well, marching with the same sense of authority in which Aleksand carries himself. She keeps her back straight, her arms at her sides, and turns her head very little. The less I peer about in all directions, the less nervous I look.
When they arrive at the front where the Guardian sits who had denied Ellena’s exit—and insulted her—Ellena takes a private joy in watching that very same Guardian give them two absentminded glances, then press a button to let them through the doors.
I hope you discover who I am someday, Ellena thinks haughtily as she struts past his stupid, unknowing eyes.
The satisfaction dies the second they reach the streets and a deep voice calls at their backs. Aleks and Ellena come to a stop and turn toward an approaching Guardian with his helmet off.
Gabel.
“Wayward,” states Aleks for a greeting. “What can I do for—?”
“Enough with the shit,” Gabel spits back. “I know that’s your mother under that armor.”
Ellena sighs through her big helmet—really, I can barely breathe behind this unbearable thing—then flips up her visor, revealing just the front of her face. “Gabel. Please. Stay out of this. I need—”
“I know. You’ve been crying about it for months.” Gabel eyes the pair of them. “So I’m coming with.”
Ellena frowns. “Like hell you are.”
“You require the extra hand. Guardian only go out in pairs. It’s a rule. And you two are not a proper pair,” he adds, turning his steely eyes on Aleksand, as if reprimanding him.
Ignoring Gabel utterly, Ellena turns and starts on her way down the street, beginning her long trek to the ninth. The scuffling of two sets of boots indicates Aleks and Gabel following behind her.
It’s two blocks down that Aleks quietly asks his mother, “Why are you two treating each other like that?”
To his question, Ellena shrugs lightly and mutters, “Perhaps I’ve had enough with self-righteous Guardian boys for a day.” My boys can happily go about the rest of their days long without knowing about my foolish, shortsighted sexual transgression.
0249 Forgemon
“Problem.”
Forge was busy checking over a batch of backplates that were just finished by the armorers. His finger is still rubbing an imperfect spot on one of the backplates when he lifts his gaze to Aphne. “Well, what is it?”
She’s right in his face. “We broke through.”
Forge’s eyes flash. “The mines?” Aphne nods frantically. “What has it broken into? Another Keep? A deep slum basement?”
“Neither. It’s broken into another mine.”
Forge’s eyebrows pull together. “Another mine …?”
“An enormous one. It’s like a cavern, Forge. They stopped the moment the wall gave in and the supervisors reported straight to me, waiting for further instruction.” She shakes her head in awe. “It has to lead somewhere.”
The insides of Forge’s stomach prickle with anticipation. He finds he doesn’t share her excitement, suddenly; he only feels worry.
He abandons the backplates. “Take me there.”
Through the storage hallways they go, cutting across the Great Hall, then through the stoneworker’s corridor and study, into the fifth mine entrance, then down two twists of tunnel and farther into the darker, more claustrophobic halls.
At last, they come to the end of a tunnel that, until an hour and four minutes ago, was a dead-end. Now, the tunnel opens to a very, very staggeringly large tunnel that runs as far as the eye can see in both directions. There is a self-sustaining electric light here and there along the enormous tunnel, though not enough to light up every crevice and space of wall. This tunnel may very well be bigger and deeper than what meets the eye.
Forge can’t move for the longest time. He only stands there at the threshold between where they’ve dwelled for half a year—and this brand new territory into which none of them have yet set their weary, light-drinking eyes.
“Forge?”
He stirs at the sound of Aphne’s voice. He finds sixteen other miners standing around as well, each of them watching excitedly, curiously, or anxiously for Forge’s next directive. They have been watching him this whole time as he’s been standing, dumbfounded and stunned by the mere size of their discovery.
“I …” Forge isn’t sure what to say at first. They are watching. Be their leader. Stop spluttering like a fool. “I will send two small teams into the mines. They will survey this cave carefully both ways, lest it opens to a danger that we wish not to invite into the Keep.”
“Wise,” murmurs Aphne importantly. “Very wise. Yes.”
He is sometimes convinced, but most of the times not, by Aphne and her continual performance when she interacts with Forge in front of others. She always works so hard to uphold this image that Forge is some sort of divining being who knows the future, who has every answer, and who will lead all of them to paradise. She never undermines him in front of anyone, never questions him in front of anyone, and always bleeds with admiration and worship about him.
When the two of them are alone, their relationship is radically, comically different.
“Wyass,” calls Forge toward one of the miners, who perks up his head. “Fetch six sets of finemail, including finemail shields, and two skirts of throwing blades. That is the quietest equipment we have, to preserve our teams’ stealth in these unknown caves. We’ll form two parties, one to explore each way. Kellis, Rione,” he calls, addressing two others. “Summon no less than six—no, ten—watchmen to guard this entrance here, fully armored in redstone mail and iron. Gaelia,” he goes on. “Procure two metal fires for our teams. That will be all.”
Those given tasks rush off, the rest remaining at the jagged opening to the unexplored cavern, still staring into it in awe, their eyes wide and searching. They begin breaking into conversations amongst themselves, murmuring about what could be out there, if it may lead them to the sewers, or to other chambers of the Keep, or even to some unknown underground Sanctum headquarters.
Aphne turns privately to Forge. “This is risky.”
“I know.” He feels dizzy from what his Legacy is trying to do with this new information, like an aquarium that’s just had a new wing added, water pouring from one to the other to compensate and balance itself out. His mind is pulling upon him no matter what he thinks. “We must be prepared for anything.”
“Should we build a door here first?” she suggests quietly. “Some sort of barricade? To protect us from being rushed upon by enemies from another Keep?”
“We don’t yet know if enemies are who we’ll encounter.” The worries still creep up Forge’s neck like invisible spiders in the night. He can’t stand still, his eyes searching the new cavern for anything that will put his numbers at ease. Weapons, yes. There is a sixty-seven percent chance we will need weapons. I don’t like those numbers. And we will need armors, too. Metal fires to light the way as we make haste through this tunnel, which has a seventy-two … no, seventy-three percent chance of leading upward, not downward. It can only go deeper and will not turn to the left, as that will intersect the Undercity. It heads right, then. And if my calculations of where we are beneath the slums is correct, then this tunnel will point us toward the ninth in one direction and toward the Core in the other. There is a twenty percent chance we will not encounter anyone if we explore. Twenty percent. That means there is an eighty percent chance there is someone in this tunnel.
I don’t like that number either.
“Which way do we explore first?” Aphne looks to the left, then to the right. Both ways are identical. Both ways are sprinkled with hanging lanterns that barely emit a thing, like a spit of light upon the cavern walls here and there. “This could take days before we find a thing at all.”
“Days, indeed.” Hours, Forge knew somehow. It’ll only be hours.
It is scary how fast his numbers ar
e working. Maybe Aphne’s bizarre treatment of him is warranted. Maybe he is a diviner of some sort, taking their future right off a shelf like a book at the library and reading from its very pages.
“Forge, you look worried.”
“Remember those missing numbers you mentioned before?” He eyes Aphne significantly, the rest left unsaid.
Her gaze is steady upon him. “Are you alright in there, Forge?”
His only answer is a steady, calculated look at her.
She nods slowly, as if understanding, then glances back at the conversing miners. “Come on, you lazy fools!” she shouts at them, ushering them back in. “These caverns don’t pickaxe themselves! Back to work! Back to work!”
0250 Wick
The campfire spits and licks at the logs of wood at its feet, burning against the backdrop of a bright, setting sun.
Smoke swirls in the air before Wick’s face, hot and gritty, his eyes burning. Dran holds a stick toward the fire, poking lazily at the logs. Wick is nearly asleep, his eyes growing heavier by the second as he’s curled up in a creaky wooden chair, watching the flames play and hiss and bat at the end of Dran’s stick. Wick is exhausted from yet another day of trying to make the wrong end of a portal open.
“The sun isn’t fully down yet and you’re already wiped.”
Wick shrugs tiredly. “Yes, well, after the day I’ve had.”
“You know I knew your brother Link, right?”
Wick stirs and lifts his face. That was an odd shift of topic.
“But I never quite told you how,” Dran goes on. “I … tried. Many times. I wasn’t sure I was ready for you to start hating me just yet.”
Wick sits up and rubs his eyes. “What’s this about Link?”
“He’s the little shrimpy one of your family, of course.” Dran chuckles. “Well, tiny he may be. But he had the heart of a Wildercat.”
“I thought you knew him from school. Or from—”
“I’m the reason he dyed his hair black. Did you know that?”
Wick’s gaze detaches from Dran, drifting to the flames. “He … joined you …?” The picture is starting to piece itself together without Dran even assisting it. “Link was … was a part of The Wrath?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“No.” Wick thinks on it a second longer, then realizes it’s utterly obvious. The attitude Link suddenly adopted. The lying and evading. The secrets he kept.
“You need to tell the Chief to quit putting a strain on you about that portal,” Dran carries on, tone shifting. “It’s my fault. I should’ve kept my mouth shut. You look as tired and dead-eyed as a seventh ward street whore.”
“Don’t change the subject. Or call me a street whore.”
“I’ll talk to the Chief. Don’t worry, I’m sure it’ll go well. Listen, I’m sorry to put it so plainly to you about your brother, but … well, I mean, you obviously knew about The Wrath.”
Of course Wick knew about The Wrath. Almost everyone in the ninth and tenth did, as well as the whole of Atlas after Dran and his brother Fylan were publicly dealt with on the broadcast.
Wick ignores a certain stirring of guilt in his own stomach at that thought, returning his gaze to Dran. “He was only fifteen.”
“He’s older in the mind, if you catch me.”
“How could you let a boy like him into your gang?”
“It wasn’t a gang, and Link was hardly a boy. Besides, Fylan was but thirteen when he joined us. Granted, he was my brother and, to some extent, obligated by blood. But aside that—”
“And why tell me now? Why did you wait all this time …?”
“Oh, it was just procrastinating. And then it was never the right time. And I guess it’ll never be the right time. I just had to out with it, you know?” Dran eyes Wick uncertainly. “Do you … know how that feels, my friend?”
Wick’s eyes avert.
Of course, he can’t lay the guilt on Dran too thickly. His own unfortunate secret is the darkest secret Wick has ever held back from a person as deserving of knowing as Dran. He can still see the blue ink painted over the Weapon Show, the traitorous message in blue ink that caused the arrest of Dran and Fylan, the arrest that resulted in Dran witnessing the death of his own younger brother followed by a touching of Metal Hand’s finger to his cold, clammy forehead.
That very scene wakes him up many nights, relived in a dream.
Shouldn’t it have been obvious to Guardian that they were not to blame? Blue ink instead of black? The message itself? The fact that Dran wasn’t even dressed in his Wrath attire at the Weapon Show?
But none of it mattered. Dran was blamed for Rain’s actions that day, and his younger brother paid the price with his short life.
Wick, even if he didn’t plant the bombs himself, is responsible by extension. I might as well have sentenced Dran and Fylan myself.
“Yes,” Wick finally answers, wracked with guilt, paralyzed by the secret he still holds in his heart. “Yes, I know the feeling.”
Except it’ll never be the right time to tell you my secret, he thinks to himself as he stares at the flames, unable to look Dran in the eye.
The Wrath boy leans forward in his seat. “So I hope you don’t … resent me for my relationship with your younger brother. We were not so easy on him at first. We tested him, many times. He failed once or twice, for sure, but … I had a soft spot for him. I really did. And despite the others and what they said, I let him in. I wanted him to be part of our greater mission.”
“And what mission was that?” asks Wick quietly.
“To fuck half the women of Atlas. A noble cause.” Dran smiles, eyeing Wick. “No. It was to make people mad, of course. The Wrath is all our wrath. When people are mad, they act. Look at Rychis. He just needs to get mad enough, then that fucker’s gonna pull the earth beneath us in half.”
Wick’s stomach still turns. He isn’t sure how to continue with the subject of Link and his association with The Wrath. He still has so many questions. “When was the last time you … saw him?”
“He was in his cabin,” answers Dran. “I think he—”
“Not Rychis. I meant my brother.”
“Oh. Let me think …” He screws his eyes up toward the burning orange sky for a moment, then shakes his head. “I really don’t know. I think it was in a metal scrapyard. Yes,” he exclaims with a snap. “That’s it. I gave him my black band after he tried to poke me with a metal splinter. Just introduced him to—” He cuts off, swallows hard, then finishes: “To my fiancée Mercy. They met. And … and I invited Link to the Weapon Show. That’s the last I saw of him.”
“The Weapon Show? He was there, too?” Was fucking everyone I knew there that night? Link, my father, my friends from Rain, Tide …
“Well, he was invited. It’s a gamble whether he went or not.”
Wick can’t quite bring himself to say the words for a moment. “I didn’t know where he’d gone. He … wasn’t home.”
Dran’s face changes. “I’m sorry.”
“For all I know, Link was arrested that night. He could be in the Keep, safe alongside my father. Well, as safe as a soul is in the Keep. You gave me a stroke of hope just now, Dran, and yet … yet now, I wonder if …” Wick turns to Dran suddenly. “Did you guys have a secret hideout? Could Link have gone home with your Mercy and your members of The Wrath? Perhaps they stayed together, the lot of them. Maybe Link is with them right now, safe in your hideout.”
The smile that Dran returns is halfhearted and wistful. “That is a lot of maybes, my friend. I cannot say one way or the other.”
Whether it’s the truth or not, it’s a comforting dream to hold close to his heart. He even puts a hand there at his chest, right where a wooden flame used to hang. It’s ditched in the throne room, now, he had realized many months ago. Who knows what’s come of it.
“Go ahead and sleep,” Dran encourages him. “I’ll watch over you. I have plenty to think on, anyway, now that I’m swimming in memories of what I’
ve left behind in that city.”
Wick curls onto his side again, getting as comfortable as he can manage in the wooden chair. His eyes linger on Dran a bit, lost in his thoughts. “Perhaps I ought to train him.”
Dran lifts an eyebrow. “Who?”
“Rychis.” Wick gives a little shrug. “Your words were harsh the other day, but they were true. Perhaps it was a decent call of the King to do away with Rychis. If he were to realize his full power …”
“Careful, there.”
“No, of course, I wouldn’t condone anything the Banshee did. He sentenced my father to the Keep, after all.” Wick nods at Rychis’s cabin. “But what if I trained him to … handle his Legacy? To control it? Maybe he’ll learn how to control his temper, too. And—”
“He’s dangerous, Wick.” Dran shakes his head. “No, I don’t much like the idea of you training him. I’d rather you simply take his Legacy and use it yourself.”
“I … w-well …” Wick bites his lip, worried.
“Just do it. See if you can figure out the workings of his power. Maybe then, we’ll be a step closer to tearing down that Wall and inviting ourselves back into Atlas through its front door.” Dran chuckles darkly. “Boy, wouldn’t that be a Weapon Show of its own.”
Wick turns in his chair, thinking it over. The silence of the camp is disturbed by a wave of laughter from one of the cabins. Dran and Wick turn to the noise, paying it some mild notice, then return their gazes to the flames. Dran idly jabs at the fire with a stick.
“And maybe you’ve a point, yourself,” he mumbles.
Wick looks up. “A point?”
“The rift.” Dran shrugs. “Maybe I should show it to you. And you will learn why it’s a terrible idea to explore beyond it.”
Wick’s heart speeds up with excitement. “Yes. I’d like that. You and I could go together sometime.”
“Aww. Are you asking me out on a date, Wick? Careful, now. We don’t yet know if I swing both ways.”