Something moved near the thumping cubicle.
The lights cast a shadow from a wide cowboy hat and stretched over a harsh limp. The old man sighed with patience thick with arrogance and studied them from beneath the dark rim with a long-barreled weapon in his hand. It was the strange gun Ryder had seen in the tack room.
The one used on the mountain.
“It’s you.”
Ryder curled a fist without straining. It was the limp. BG had put himself in the cold room after he was cloned. But he didn’t stay there. The drawer was empty. He had crawled out with a bum hip.
The real Big Game.
Stooping with a grunt, he picked up a stone and unwrapped the flat strap. It slithered back into the spike.
He waited.
The strap around Ryder’s wrist loosened. William pushed the rock into his palm. His lips worked around a lump of tobacco. He sighed a wintergreen breath, eyes dark beneath the cowboy hat.
The rock grew warm.
The strap slithered around Ryder’s fingers and drew them tight. The rock was now hot. It was burning a hole into his palm. Ryder yanked but couldn’t let go. The lash around his neck closed off his next breath.
“Don’t—” Cherry choked.
Ryder thrashed, soundless. Breathless. The smell of burning skin clogged his nostrils. The stall shook as Ronin bellowed and bucked. The floor tremored.
And then the burning stopped.
The rock bounced on the floor, cold and harmless. There was no burn, no scar. Like nothing happened. Like he imagined an orange coal had melted the skin. He could still smell it.
William spat.
“No more games, old friend.” He scrubbed Ryder’s hair. “I don’t know how you did it, and I don’t care. I’ll make this quick. Come out or the boy suffers. Don’t drag this out. I will win.”
He glanced at a phone then dropped it in a coat pocket. His desperation was twitching in the corner of his eye. A cold wave passed through Ryder. The old man had made him believe the rock was a hot coal. What else can he do?
A form shuffled in the shadows.
Gallivanter stood in the dimmest edge of light like he had in the dream. His toes gripping the floor. The old man chuckled, fingers tightening on the metal barrel of the strange gun.
“You locked me out of my system and put my family to sleep. But I know you, old friend. You know that. You weren’t leaving without him.”
The weapon reported at his side.
A spike bit into the wall and spit out spidery straps. Gallivanter rolled into the dark. Tools clattered in his wake, tightly wrapped.
William grunted. He shuffled forward but was reluctant to step too close to the shadows. Gallivanter kept him cautiously at a distance.
“What were you going to do, leap off and forget me? Did you think I would just go away, forget everything? I can’t let you go, old friend. I’m too close. And you’re too late.”
The shadows were extinguished by every light in the barn. The cages went farther back than expected. The old man had been waiting for the right moment to illuminate the rest of the room, hoping to draw the elven out. Somehow, Gallivanter remained hidden in the litter of daily chores.
“Mmm.”
William picked up a stone thoughtfully. Impatience clenched his jaws. There was no escaping the barn, but the elven was elusive. The old man wasn’t giving up, but he didn’t have time to waste, even with Ryder and Cherry tied up and Ronin locked away.
He had changed the combination.
That was Gallivanter’s hurry. Everyone had been put to sleep except for William. He couldn’t be controlled by the system. He wasn’t a clone, wasn’t connected to the computers. There wasn’t a profile for him. Gallivanter wasn’t too late to free Ronin.
William was ahead of him.
He took Ryder’s stocking cap and swept up a handful of grit then sprinkled it over Ryder’s head. Dust and sand fell into his hair. Ryder felt a sneeze coming on. The particles, though, crawled beneath his coat. Ryder gritted his teeth.
Bugs.
“You’re jealous,” he said through stiff lips. “That’s why you woke up. Billy was getting all the attention.”
William took off his cowboy hat and pushed his hair back. His hand never left the weapon. His breathing wheezed at the end of each exhalation. He searched the room’s depths and sprinkled another handful of sand over Ryder’s head. The imaginary bugs stampeded down his stomach.
Ryder closed his eyes.
He couldn’t react, didn’t want to give Gallivanter a reason to surrender. He was their only chance. It’s just sand. It’s not real.
“Billy’s not you,” Ryder said.
William’s eyes narrowed. He dusted his hands.
“You messed up,” Ryder continued. “Thought you could clone yourself, just transfer the memories, but that didn’t work, did it? The memories were the same, but Billy isn’t you. A copy isn’t the same. He looks like you, but he isn’t—”
“Quiet.”
Ryder’s throat went numb. The binding hadn’t tightened. He was able to breathe, but his vocal cords no longer responded. William had complete control.
The old man put a hand on Cherry’s neck. Ryder’s fist didn’t get far. The strap cut off his air and, all at once, the bugs sank their stingers into his belly. The bindings held him as he thrashed. A strange sound gurgled in his throat. Panic couldn’t get past his tongue; it rumbled in his chest. Saliva bubbled in the corners of his mouth.
“I will put an itch behind the boy’s eyes and let him scratch them out.”
The agony suddenly escaped Ryder, bursting from him like a broken pipe. His cry filled every corner of the room. Ronin’s cries and stamping hooves drowned him out.
“One!” William called.
Ronin slammed the walls.
“Two!”
Ryder couldn’t contain the suffering. It poured from him, blotted out the rhythmic thumping, blurred the movement around him. One sound, however, cut through the chaos. It wasn’t William announcing the end of his countdown or Gallivanter calling out his surrender.
It was a mechanical click.
The bugs suddenly vanished. Sand was stuck to his cheeks. William looked at him then the cage. He took a step back. Ronin went silent. The black panel on his cage was glowing green.
The door popped open.
William kicked it closed and traced the panel. The pattern lit up and turned green again. Confusion gave way to anger. He repeated the command.
“Denied,” a voice reported. “Old man.”
Soup!
The door exploded off the hinges. It narrowly missed William, cracking on the steps and rebounding toward the ceiling, clipping rafters into pieces. The walls groaned. From the recesses of the cell, a rack of antlers appeared.
A blur leaped from deep down the aisle. Gallivanter was bouncing toward them. William didn’t hesitate, firing off binding stakes as he retreated. The elven threw stones and tools, straps falling harmlessly as he closed the distance.
Ronin bounded from his confinement and stretched to his full size. Cables and wires that were attached to him fell free. Nostrils flared, his chest crackled like the belly of a wood furnace. The cowboy hat had fallen to the floor. Ronin sighted the old man and swung his head, raking the antlers across the wall and flinging debris.
William unloaded his weapon, straps intercepting the shrapnel before it knocked him to the ground. Ronin leaped with the ferocity of a polar bear protecting her cubs, his rack plowing through the rafters. Snow trickled through cracks in the ceiling.
He stretched out, landing just shy of the old man. The tip of his antlers snagged his coat. The old man shrugged it off with one last burst of fire, dropping the weapon as bindings tangled Ronin’s legs. The stake dislodged from the concrete floor and cut the air as Ronin tossed his head. Boards shattered; bales of hay exploded.
Gallivanter sped past the bucking reindeer, barrel-rolling toward their captor. William threw open the door of
the noisy cubicle. The rhythmic pounding grew louder and a familiar smell escaped.
Ronin reared up. Sparks flew off the door. Snow trickled through the ceiling. A blizzard of hay filled the room as the reindeer trashed the benches, flung wheelbarrows and kicked holes in the walls.
Gallivanter called out.
The great beast stopped. He stamped the floor, rage still boiling, breath streaming from red-hot nostrils. It took a minute to calm down. The elven waited. The old man was trapped.
He was in an impenetrable room. Perhaps it was a safe room or an escape route. There could be a door on the other side. That, however, wasn’t the problem. Ryder knew what was alarming the elven. It was the sound that came out of the cubicle and the familiar odor that escaped.
It smelled nice.
***
The bindings went slack.
Hay floated down like a gentle flurry. Spotlights fell wherever light fixtures still worked. Trails of snow trickled through the ceiling.
Ryder held Cherry tight, afraid to let go. The hot coal in his hand, the bugs on his stomach. It didn’t matter that it was imaginary. He closed his eyes and felt her breath on his ear, her pulse against his cheek.
A hulking silhouette moved over them. A warm muzzle nudged Cherry back.
“It’s all right,” Ryder said.
She held out an empty hand and let him sniff. He licked her palm then nibbled at the strap around her wrist. Ryder and Cherry unwrapped each other, letting the straps fall lifeless on the hay-scattered floor.
“He won’t harm you again.”
Gallivanter threw William’s coat to the side and held up a phone. It was the same type of phone that Cherry had, the one he’d glanced at before the bugs climbed down his shirt. It was the same kind of phone BG had used when he made Figgy do tricks.
Figgy is a clone.
He wasn’t responding to BG’s commands; he had to do them. There was no choice. He was programmed. Could he be made to believe he was doing them because he wanted to?
Gallivanter stared at Ronin. After a silent pause, the reindeer stepped through the carnage and grabbed splintered timbers with his antlers. Gallivanter guided him to the safe room where William had escaped. They propped the timbers against the metal door.
“You were right, what you said. He put himself in storage. It didn’t take long to know he is not his memories. So he woke up.” Gallivanter’s tone was as grave as ever. “So he did all of this.”
The barn groaned. Snow flurries swirled in beams of light.
“What?” Cherry stood in the stall.
A light fixture swung over large bundles of cables that were feeding obscure machines. They had been strapped to Ronin. The rhythmic thumping that was coming from the cubicle had stopped.
“Hurry,” Gallivanter said.
“Are you just going to leave him in there?” Cherry said. “After everything he’s done?”
“We’ll return for him and the others.”
“What about Soup?” Ryder said. “He’s awake.”
Gallivanter didn’t understand what Ryder was saying. He hadn’t heard Ryder wake Soup and Arf up in the lab when he went back for his boots. He couldn’t just leave them in those drawers. What if they didn’t come back?
“He was the one who opened the stall,” Ryder said. “You heard his voice, Gallivanter. That was Soup. I woke them up before we—”
“You shouldn’t have—”
“If I didn’t, we’d still be tied to the floor and Ronin would be in the stall. It doesn’t matter; we can’t leave them. They’re awake.”
Waves of snow sifted through the cracks.
Gallivanter gestured at the doors. Ronin cleared the way, sweeping debris from the steps. His rack barely fit through the breezeway. Cherry and Ryder helped the elven up the steps and followed him.
Morning had arrived.
The sky was depressed and gray. The wind scoured the horseshoe, throwing plumes against the building. They shielded their eyes, struggling to catch their breath. Gallivanter led them into the middle of the horseshoe and nodded at Ronin.
Unspoken words passed between them.
“Stay,” Gallivanter said. “I will find them.”
“Let me,” Ryder said. “I can go faster.”
The elven held up his hand. The wind parted his hair and exposed weary eyes beneath furry brows. Without another word, he kicked sideways and rolled across the horseshoe. He reached the building before they could blink twice.
Why didn’t he do that earlier?
Ryder wouldn’t have been able to keep up, that was why. It was strange to wait without a green eye watching them. There would be no stream in the morning. Or the next. No one would throw food in the kitchen or score touchdowns.
Kringletown is over.
They huddled against Ronin. The barn cried out. It wouldn’t be long before it gave up and the weather buried what was inside. Ryder put his hand on Ronin’s neck. The hide was musky and coarse.
Ronin’s ears twitched and turned. He scanned for predators, but he was no prey. Muscles tensed in his broad chest and across his flank. Another blast of winter forced them closer.
A shotgun-crack and the roof fell.
Ronin suddenly stepped back. He lowered his head and thrust his rack at them. The antlers expertly snagged their coats and tossed them like toys. They were already a safe distance from the imploding barn. They were white-dusted and dizzy when they looked up.
Ronin turned around.
The barn buckled like a bulldozer was driving through it. Wooden shards rained down, and debris showered an explosive collapse. The barn wasn’t falling.
It’s being torn apart.
Antlers appeared where the breezeway had been buried. An object blasted out like cannon fodder. Ronin reared up and swatted it away. It landed with a frozen thud, bent and broken.
The cubicle door.
Antlers stepped out of the wreckage. From across the horseshoe, Ronin’s clone emerged. Even from that distance, the thing’s smell was thick and pungent. Freshly baked. William followed his newest creation into the morning light.
The clone shook off debris.
Specks of hay and splinters were thrown into the wind. It released a gut-shaking howl. Ryder swallowed acrid panic. The phone was still in his coat pocket. The old man must not have an extra one. If he did, Ryder would know it.
I’d feel it.
Ronin scuffed the frozen ground and widened his stance. His hindquarters shivered. William reached for the clone’s rear flank. He didn’t respond, didn’t snort or dig. Ryder and Cherry, half-buried and far away, watched William reach back and swat.
The clone bolted.
Snow flung in its wake. He surged forward, front legs extended, flaps of hide billowing where his legs met his torso. It was a long leap aided by a partially inflated helium bladder. Head down, antlers aimed, he flew like a weapon.
Ryder threw an arm over Cherry.
The clash of true bone antlers echoed off the mountains. Horns locked, a snowstorm kicked up. In moments it was impossible to tell them apart as they circled, heads down, horns locked and angling for leverage.
One of them was thrown.
Legs flailed as he rolled onto his back. He was barely on his hooves when the victor charged. Their horns once again locked like locomotives on a collision course. The downed reindeer was driven back, his hooves carving tracks in the ground. Turning and circling, it happened again.
The victor tossed him against the building this time.
William watched. His coat was ripped and fluttering. The cowboy hat lost in the rubble. He raised a hand. The victorious reindeer turned his head, muscles bulging along his neck. When the old man dropped it, the clone tossed Ronin one last time.
“No!” Ryder scrambled.
Ronin tried to get up. The clone put his front hoof on his chest. Ryder plodded through the snow. The clone swung his head around, sweeping the snow with an array of antlers—
The world
tumbled and burned.
Ryder gulped for air but couldn’t squeeze it into his chest. A deep bruise spread across his ribs, a dull lump of pain sinking in his stomach, the sky smearing into a monotone of watercolors. Cherry was next to him. Her voice distant and worried. She looked over her shoulder, wiping the snow from his face.
“What do you want?” she shouted.
A shadow fell over them. Ryder crawled onto his knees, drool hanging like fishing line. Oxygen was finding a way into his lungs, wheezing past a knot in his throat.
“You only exist because of me.” He nudged Ryder with his boot. “My first son’s not going anywhere.”
He flicked two fingers at the clone. Ronin struggled as the clone put him on his back, both hooves pinning his chest to the ground. Antlers on his neck.
“No one wanted you.” The old man sighed deeply. “You were in a truck in the dead of winter. You wouldn’t have lasted five minutes.”
Ronin howled.
“You mattered to me, though. No one thought much about the boot prints at the scene or the hoofprints that led up to the truck. It was just another Alaskan mystery. But I knew there was something special about you. I saw something no one else did.”
He spit in the snow.
“I was right, you understand? That was never in question. I had the elven, had his memories. I knew what was hiding on the Pole. I wanted to show the world, that’s all. I needed more than an elven. When I heard about you, I knew the last reindeer had come for you.” He glanced at Ronin. “I brought you here, Ryder. I made you my son.”
Ryder’s body wasn’t in the cold room. But there was an infant. Only one.
That was why he was so different from the other nicies. He smelled like them, but he wasn’t perfect. He couldn’t be. He was the first one. William had put him in the cold room, but not before he cloned him. He’d sent Ryder back to foster care and let him bounce from home to home, where he found trouble. Where he needed help.
And help would arrive.
And when William was ready, he brought Ryder back to Kringletown, where he would need help one last time. Welcome home.
“I’m not your son.”
“Oh, but you are. You’re every bit of it. I built you. I watched you grow up, paid for the damages you left behind, compensated foster parents for their trouble. I may be absent, but I am your father.”
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