by Ann Denton
The creed was a reminder of their purpose here, of what the Senebals had to protect. The only waterway uncontaminated by the bomb that blackened the world, the Gottermund proved that Mala's people, the Senebals, were the chosen. Those fit to live and repopulate the world. But the Erlenders and their deformed offspring had swarmed in, their jets like locusts, and eaten the entire northeast portion of the river. Most of the lakes and tributaries had had to be abandoned there; the Senebals hadn't been able to protect them. It was a moment of weakness in their history. A moment when they had thought they were the only survivors. The tribe had let their defenses slip. And they were still paying the price, seventy-three years later. Though Erlender jets had been destroyed, the scavenging band still tried to creep south into the rich farmland. They still tried to steal the Senebal homeland. And they took as many lives as possible in the process.
“These are the most revered Ancients.” Alba gestured at a circle of giant bronze statues that ringed the mosaic, drawing Mala’s attention away from the floor. “So, it’s required that I give you a quick intro. Here you go. Um ... here. Tier is our current head of the Ancients. He’s known for completely re-engineering our recruiting process. We have twice as many Kreis now as we’ve ever had, thanks to him. Los is known for his epic kills—over a hundred or something,” she scoffed a little. “They don’t have his annual numbers available, but who wants to bet he didn’t have three in his first two years of training?” She flicked the statue on the elbow as she passed it. “Here’s a good one: Sich was a seductress and she’s the one who killed the Erlender king forty years back. She was on mission as a spy but turned assassin. Totally my idol. Forget who that is ... forget this guy ... well, you get the point. I’m gonna have one of those statues one day.”
Mala gaped at the fierce features of the Kreis heroes. Their exploits had been bedtime stories for her. Seeing what they looked like, the lifelike poses and the strength in their faces ... it had both a haunting and an invigorating effect on her. But she spotted one statue that didn't look like the rest. “Who's this?” she asked, reaching toward the foot of a massive man.
“Don't touch it! It's bad luck,” Alba exclaimed.
Mala drew her hand back but continued to stare up at the statue. It was covered in a series of pockmarks and scratches. She couldn't quite decide if it was old or if it had been deliberately ruined.
“That,” Alba said disparagingly, “is Klaren, the deranged. Fifteen years ago they found him killing another Kreis, crushing the guy’s throat. They say he went crazy, didn't know what he was doing. Tier killed him. As you can see, he's not very popular. I think they keep this up as, you know, a reminder.”
“Oh,” Mala shuddered and stepped back.
“Yeah, it's a warning, because you know, like two out of every ten Kreis go crazy.”
“What?” Mala turned to her, horrified.
Alba shrugged. “They can't hack it. But really—it's not that bad of odds—considering only half of us make it past the first mission anyway.”
Mala's throat constricted. “But ... you guys can melt. Walk in as one person and out as another.”
Alba raised an eyebrow. “That doesn't make us bulletproof, honey.”
Mala bit her lip and turned back to stare at the scratched and abused bronze statue of Klaren. She counted furiously to quell her fear.
“Hey, you've got a three in ten chance of coming out alright,” Alba put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. “Not bad odds for getting to be elite. It could be worse. You could be typical.”
Chapter Twelve
“Oh no,” Alba whispered as a group of teens clad in multicolored wetsuits came toward them. “Watch out. Idiot patrol approaches.”
“Albie!” A blonde in her early twenties, whose features would make any girl cringe in jealousy, called out across the room. She wore a blue wetsuit accented with swirling cutouts across her abdomen, cutouts that trailed dangerously low and left little to the imagination. “How are you? Killed anyone today?” She gushed but her eyes were hard as rock.
“Not yet. Volunteering?” Alba spit back.
“Heard you're bunking with the new girl!” She and her band of followers, a set of teen boys who trailed after her with slavish looks on their faces, came to a halt in front of Mala.
“Hi, I'm Neid.” The blonde held out her hand delicately, bent at the wrist. She eyed Mala and gave a derisive sniff. “So, where did he find you? Back of a tugboat? Or were you a street-crawler?”
“Neid.” Alba's voice grew low and threatening.
“Sorry. But she does have ‘tributary’ written all over her face. I mean, look at the necklace. I bet she even believes in magic. Are those your magic charms, honey?” She gestured at Mala’s necklace.
Mala stiffened. Did Lowe tell people? No. He wouldn't. Would he? She studied Neid. The woman glared at Alba, shooting venom from her eyes. Okay, no. I think this is just some personal thing. I think.
Mala tried to break the tension with the truth. “I came from the northern guard—Bara's guard.”
“See, I knew it. Outskirts.” Neid said outskirts as thought it was a dirty word.
“So?” Alba challenged.
“I've heard lots of those river guards out there like to get flooded. That they spend half their days dizzy drunk.” Several boys with Neid nodded in agreement.
“Maybe it's easy to stay sober when you haven't actually killed someone,” Alba hissed.
Neid opened her mouth to respond but Mala interrupted. “My entire guard was just massacred by Erlenders. So maybe you should shut up.” She dug her nails into her palms.
One of Neid's companions gasped. He was a little younger than the rest of the group, maybe fourteen or fifteen. He was awkward and short and his face was covered in freckles. “I heard about that. The Kurz Erlender band attacked this big group a few days ago with a homemade grenade launcher, midday right in the middle of—”
Mala cocked her head at him. “No. We were attacked by the Wilde band. At night.”
He looked confused. “Oh ...” He bit his lip and stared at his feet. “Sorry. I thought that it was something else.”
Neid gazed back and forth between the two of them, eyes growing wide. “Does this mean there have been two attacks in a week?”
The boy nodded his spiky-haired head. Mala felt her stomach drop at that news. If the other attack had been anything like hers, it must have been awful. All the hope she'd felt started to drain away in a little worried spiral. Are the Erlenders winning?
But the news seemed to have the opposite effect on Neid. Her face was positively glowing. “That means more missions!” she exclaimed. She turned to Alba. “For some of us, at least.”
“Maybe they'll have so many missions they'll finally have to give you one despite the fact that you can’t seem to pass your final trial,” Alba retorted.
Neid just grinned. Then she sprinted down a hallway, her hair and laughter trailing behind her. Without her, the knot of boys started to disperse.
Alba glared after Neid. Then she grabbed Mala's shoulder. “Come on. I have to take you on a tour.” Her voice sounded dull though her eyes still burned.
“You don't have to ...” Mala said, seeing her roommate was clearly preoccupied.
“No. I do.” Alba finally shifted her gaze. A soft smile lit her face a second later. “I can take you to the best place ever!”
“Excuse me,” the freckled boy still stood timidly in his spot. He shot Mala a small smile. “I believe I've been assigned as Mala's research assistant.” He held out his hand. “Ges.”
Mala went to shake it, but Alba slapped Ges's hand away. “No touching.”
Um. That was rude. Mala raised her eyebrows, but Ges shrugged it off and ran a hand through his spiked hair.
“I just wanted to offer to come with you because if you'd like, I can show Mala the archives.”
Alba looked torn. She clearly wanted to tell off Neid's little companion, but she was also tempted by his
offer. It was almost comical to watch the wheels turning as she looked back and forth between Mala and Ges.
“Um … what’s an archive?” Mala ventured.
“It’s a compendium of—” Ges began, but Alba cut him off.
“It’s a torture chamber. Fine, kid. You can take Mala after I’m done—alright? But keep the conversation to work. Work only. Got it?”
“Yes ma’am.” Ges rolled his eyes when Alba looked away.
Mala was utterly confused—even more so when Alba turned a stern face to her. “Ges is your assistant, not your friend. Got it? There's no such thing as a friend here.” The air sizzled for a second with tension. And then, without warning, Alba slipped back into ditz mode. “Okay, let's go!”
Mala followed her, wondering all the while if her roommate was one of the Kreis who'd gone mad.
The trio climbed into a glass elevator and began to sink down several floors. Mala could see hundreds of people working at desks, walking the halls, even a floor full of machinery that must be an underwater factory. There were more people here than she'd seen her entire life. She asked, “How many Kreis are there?”
Alba smiled. “Two hundred, maybe? There's more than just Kreis here you know ... Kreis are rare. Like that whole group with Neid the Nimbo, none of them are Kreis but her, including this dodo,” she gestured at Ges, who stuck his tongue out at her when she wasn't looking.
Mala swallowed a smile. “But I thought that this place was top secret. Lowe wouldn't even let me know where it was because I haven't passed the first test—”
“Oh, it is! It's just, you know, Kreis families have built up and stayed here and the whole complex just grew.”
The freckled boy piped up. “My granddaddy was Kreis. He was a sniper. He helped take out the last Erlender jet more than fifty years—”
“Ok, Ges. What did I say about talking? Do you really want to push me?”
Ges closed his mouth and leaned back against the elevator walls, arms crossed resentfully.
Mala tried to ease the awkward tension. “So if you're Kreis, your kids and grandkids aren't Kreis?”
“Neid is, so she’s special,” Alba's voice dripped with disdain. “But most of us come from the outside.”
Ges piped up. “It’s not her fault if she’s—”
“Don’t defend the tramp just because you grew up with her,” Alba glared at him and turned back to Mala. “It’s all complicated. There’s a whole science wing that studies why and how and all that stuff. But it’s easy enough to separate out the Typicals from the Kreis. They get a line branded into their hand.”
Alba gestured at Ges and he obligingly lifted his left hand to display a raised red scar.
“But why would you want to separate—?”
“Yay! Our stop!” Alba's excitement overpowered Mala’s question. Her wrinkled face was as giddy as a little girl's. “Wait ‘till you see!” She clapped her hands together as the doors slid open and they stepped into a long hallway.
Alba pushed open the first door on their right and called out, “Hi!” Immediately she was accosted by a gaggle of wrinkled men who bowed and crooned over her. Some came with needles still stuck in their mouths, others wearing thimbles and dragging bolts of cloth. They crowded the doorway, all trying to get an arm around Alba. She laughed, enjoying the attention. “Okay gents, I want to introduce you to Mala. She's the newest recruit. Lowe just brought her in.”
Immediately the white-haired crowd swarmed toward Mala and her eyes widened in alarm as a toothless man grabbed her around the middle and swung her up in the air. “Size four!” he yelled.
She skittered back as soon as he released her and said, “I don't really like to be touched.”
The men drew back, but rather than looking embarrassed, they stared at her as though she was ill. She looked at the floor, avoiding their eyes.
“Don't worry, guys, she's new. She doesn't know ANYTHING yet,” Alba pushed through the crowd. “Show me what you've been working on.”
The men quickly bustled around the room, babbling about colors and patterns. Mala followed hesitantly. The room she entered was a massive cavelike closet. Clothes hung from bars on the ceiling: skirts and pants floated a meter overhead, organized by color, pattern, size. Accessories were attached to outfits in bags tucked smartly onto the front of each hanger. The floor was covered in bolts of cloth and foot-powered sewing machines hummed a manic tune. Some of the men resumed their places, but one or two fought over who would get to show Alba their project first.
“Mala, come on!” Alba called, gleeful.
“Where are we?” Mala hung back with Ges in the doorway. She didn't want to be picked up again.
“This is the Costume Shop. It's the biggest collection of pre-bomb and Erlender clothing ever assembled,” Ges narrated like a good host, as they watched Alba try on three different hats.
Alba called back to Mala, “Do you like? Our tailors are absolute geniuses. They are the entire reason my last kill went off! I had to dress as a dancer so that I could get backstage and take out this Lieutenant. Three-and-a-half hours, by the way. Almost broke the record. And they made me the most gorgeous dress ever! But of course, I mean, just look at this place—isn't it AMAZING?” She opened her arms and spun around, giggling all the while. This made her suit ride up until ...
“Is that ...?” Mala asked.
“Yup. I'd say avert your eyes, but I'm not allowed to say anything that's not work related,” Ges quipped.
Mala quickly shuttered her face with her hands and peered at Ges between her fingers. “Do you think she'd notice if we just ... continued the tour?”
He glanced over and grimaced. “Not a chance.”
They headed out the door. As they reached the hallway, Ges took a sharp right. He led her to an inconspicuous door painted white to blend in with the wall. He pushed it open. Fog rolled eerily out of the dark stairwell before them. It curled around his legs. “You'll have to excuse the creep factor. We're gonna take the back way. It's ... less complicated. No other Kreis in here.”
Mala lifted an eyebrow. Complicated? She was about to ask why, but behind her, she heard Alba shriek with delight.
“Oh my God! A-mazing! I have to try this dress on right now!” An old man’s wolf whistle traveled down the hall.
With a dubious mental image looming, Mala hurried through the door.
“What is that?” Mala stopped so suddenly that Ges ran face-first into her back. She gazed upward—not at the spiraling metal staircase, but at the back wall, which was lined with a great set of enormous interlocking brass wheels, wheels that were churning as water cascaded down them. The din of the wheels and the waterfall was almost overpowering. And the fog and misty heat of the staircase seemed to swallow Mala up; she felt as though she'd just gone for a swim. She leaned close to Ges to hear his answer.
“It's how we generate power,” Ges resumed in his narrator’s voice once he'd finished rubbing his nose. “Something one of our top Typical scientists designed—”
“Wait, what?”
“HYDRO-ELECTRIC POWER,” Ges shouted, thinking she couldn't hear.
Mala turned away from the machine-made waterfall. “No ... did you say typical scientist? What's typical mean? Alba said that word ...”
Ges gave her a disbelieving look and held up his left hand. A raised red scar marred the back of his hand. “You mean, Alberna didn't give you the high and mighty speech yet?”
“She said that being Kreis was better than being typical ... or something like that.”
Ges sighed and shook his head. “Let's get out of here first.” He turned and stomped up the stairwell, leaving her little choice but to follow.
When Ges opened the door, Mala was certain they’d come out into the medic's wing. She heard shouts and screams and yells coming from all sides. It made her shrink back into the shadow of the stairwell, trying not to think of all the screams she'd heard two nights ago.
But as her eyes adjusted, she saw the
hallway was empty, save for a series of giant metallic doors that rolled upward. Some doors were propped partially open, some were closed. No medical equipment.
She ventured into the hall. Ges was already four doors down. Mala started to scamper after him when she heard a series of grunts. Curiosity got the best of her and she bent down to peer under one of the half-open doors.
She could see a black mat on the floor, and the lake through a massive window beyond. The room was dark, with no lighting, and she could only make out the hazy black outlines of objects. A fierce yell echoed inside the massive room, clanging off the metallic walls.
“This,” Ges was suddenly beside her; his formal voice was back as he pulled her hand and helped her up, “is the combat wing. You'll be in here for practice pretty much every day. Every room is different. Learn to fight in all circumstances they say. We call that room the Shadow Room.”
“Oh,” Mala replied. She opened her mouth to ask again about Typicals, but at that moment, the garage door on their left rolled up and two men came strolling out of it. One was bald, age spots patterning his head. He carried a deerskin canvas and was furiously scribbling on it.
Behind him, out of the shadows, came a man in a long coat and top hat. At first, Mala could only see his silhouette. But as he strode into the hall, she realized he radiated power. He was one of those guys who had the self-assured confidence that sucked the mettle out of every other man in the room. He was a tall, intimidating presence. And while he was on the thin side, there was something about his steady gaze as he took in Mala and Ges standing in his path, something that made her step back a little.
He swept off the hat, and his brown hair fell immediately into his eyes. He pushed it back impatiently as he put two silver tools into the hatband, which already held several other gadgets in place. Then he plunked the hat back into place.
“We'll have to add that mess to the queue,” he told the old man. “In the meantime, seal off that room. Tier has some other asinine high-priority project for me, so I've been pulled off this detail for a bit, though if this plumbing goes ... that shit's his fault.”