by James Welsh
“Who else? Well, you’re asking my questions for me – I guess that’s a start. Now, answer it – who else was down here? Did you bring someone down here earlier?”
“No,” Stormrunner said, slightly insulted. “Why would I bring someone down here? We’re the only ones allowed down here – no unauthorized personnel. Isn’t that still the rule?”
Wolfmouth motioned for her to follow him. Stormrunner rolled her eyes but did as her brother asked, following him through the valley between the containers. They came to a stop alongside one of the crates, its side opened. Wolfmouth motioned to the neat rows of packaged food inside. He asked, “See anything odd about this?”
“Should I?”
“There are 298 packages of food in this crate,” Wolfmouth said, “the baker’s ration, to be more exact. It should be an even 300 – two of the packages are missing.”
Stormrunner shrugged. “I guess we miscounted when we were loading it up.”
“When have I ever counted wrong? You know how I am with numbers.”
“Okay, so let me get this straight then,” Stormrunner said, her voice edged with sarcasm. “So someone was able to write out the password that only we know, using a microchip that only we have, at the exact second that only we are aware of. And after they dodged those layers of security, all they stole are two packages of stale bread? Yes, that’s more likely than you counting wrong.”
Wolfmouth scowled. “Well, it wouldn’t be the first time an unauthorized person walked around down here.”
“I thought we promised to forget that.”
“I forgot,” Wolfmouth said shortly.
It was true, though: Stormrunner had been responsible for the storeroom’s last breach, almost eleven years before. The engineers were still tuning the waterfall farm, something which had never been attempted before. The idea of a farm that could irrigate itself, where every day was a harvest, was too good to be true. Whole walls of grain grew moldy and frail, dying overnight. Although there was still plenty of food in storage, the colonists panicked, and a mob ransacked a shipment of goods as it was being unloaded off a docked starling frigate.
The riot triggered the colony’s failsafe – the Morpheus Drop – which was a massive release of a hypnotic dispersed through the ventilation system. Except for the leadership, which had advanced notice of the failsafe and put on oxygen masks, the rest of the colony all went to sleep at the same time. The colonists fell through their dreams and woke up a few hours later. They were in a daze, only faintly remembering what had happened just a bit earlier. Stormrunner had been walking along the canal when she had collapsed. She woke up to find a child nearby, seizing and foaming at the mouth. As Stormrunner scooped up the child in her arms, she realized that she did not recognize the child.
But Stormrunner didn’t have the time to wonder why she had never seen the boy before. That was because, as she stood up, she suddenly realized she didn’t know where to take him. The medical clinic was probably already filled with people suffering from the hypnotic withdrawal, tended to by the monster of a doctor. But, as she wondered where to take him, the miraculous happened and the boy grew still in her arms. She couldn’t understand how her calm heart could slow down his, like tuning forks and spoons, but she was grateful for the phenomenon. And that was when she knew where to take him.
Just a minute later, she found herself awkwardly stumbling down the tunnel towards the granary, weighted down by the child. She tripped through the empty granary and took the elevator down to the hidden storeroom. Stormrunner gently set down the boy on the stone floor and rummaged through the mountains of food. The child was scrawny and needed food – the meals may have tasted terrible, but they had the nutrition the boy needed to recover. She pulled a fresh baker’s ration down from the stack of food and turned back towards the boy. She had only looked away for a few moments, and already the boy was devolving into his seizures. She held him once more in the nest of her arms and fed him the loaf of bread until he slowed down.
Stormrunner had finally found a peace, and she slipped into sleep without realizing it. The next thing she knew, it was seven hours later and she was sprawled out on the floor. The child was gone, and she wondered if she had somehow dreamt the strange episode. But then she realized that she was holding onto the half-eaten loaf from the baker’s ration, and suddenly she was not so sure. She went to her brother Wolfmouth about her waking dream. But instead of offering help, he accused her of bringing someone into the storeroom. The fact that Stormrunner never found the child again did nothing to stop the accusations.
Even now, years later, the accusations had not died down. Wolfmouth was looking at her with suspicious eyes. Stormrunner never noticed until that time how her twin brother looked so much older than she did. As he looked at her, Wolfmouth wondered out loud, “What if the thief is still here?”
What Wolfmouth said was art, as both of them interpreted the sentence differently. Stormrunner wondered how someone could have possibly broken into the storeroom. Wolfmouth, meanwhile, was wondering if he was looking at the thief at that moment. It wouldn’t have been the first time Stormrunner had stolen food.
***
2175 AD
The young Stormrunner found it impossible to sleep. While the world around her was steeped in night, the heat was stubborn, in spite of the fact that the sun had fallen hours before. Since she slept outside – where the sky was her ceiling and the ends of the world the walls of her home – she looked up at the Milky Way, hoping to find a lullaby in the stars. The rest of the bandits were sound asleep, wrapped up in the blanket of the desert. But her blood was a few degrees colder, and she wiped away the trickle of sweat on her forehead. It was going to be a long night, like every other night.
A few years before, she had begun using the nighttime sky as a distraction. With an outstretched finger, she would trace figures out of the stars, and she would tell herself stories about those figures. She did this, unaware that thousands of years before, the ancient souls had done the same, drawing out the constellations of their myths. It is human instinct to paint something with the colors of nothing, like thinking you can hear music in radio static. As Stormrunner watched one of her constellations march across the sky, she could swear that she heard the stars whispering. She strained her ears, but she was still having trouble making sense of it. It wasn’t until Stormrunner sat up that she realized that the whispers weren’t from heaven but from earth.
Just a few feet away, in the thicket of a crumbling car, Stormrunner could hear the whisper. This time, though, the voice was tuned, and Stormrunner heard it plea, “Don’t scream – please.”
Many people would yell if they heard a voice in the thick darkness. But Stormrunner was not most people. If anything, she was curious and stood up. She crept towards the remains of the car, her hands out, feeling her way blindly through the night. Her hand brushed against the metal of the car, and Stormrunner asked softly, “Who are you? What’s your name?”
“Adelita,” the voice said. She sounded no older than Stormrunner. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Stormrunner. Where are you from?” Stormrunner questioned. She knew every person in the bandit camp, and she had never heard that name before.
There was a hesitation to Adelita’s voice. “I’m from Acheron.”
Stormrunner stiffened – Adelita was from the charter city further down the canyon. Adelita seemed to sense the chill in the air, because she quickly added, “I ran away.”
“Oh. Why?”
“I left because no one would miss me.”
“Where are you going?” Stormrunner asked.
“My Aunt Moa lives in Lethe. I think if I keep walking, I can get there tomorrow. I’m hungry though – do you have any food?”
“I do. You can have some if you want.”
“Really? That’s great!” Adelita said, a little too loudly.
“Not so loud,” Stormrunner hissed. There was no telling what the other bandits would have done
if they found one of the citizens in Acheron in their midst. The last citizen to stumble onto their camp was kidnapped, and the one before that was thrown into the canyon.
“Sorry,” Adelita said sheepishly.
“It’s okay. Come with me – follow my voice.”
The two pairs of footsteps trudged through the sands back to Stormrunner’s sleeping bag. As soon as she felt the tattered fabric of her bed under her feet, Stormrunner knelt down and activated her small, solar-powered lantern. It had been hours since it was last charged, and so the light was weak but there was still light. The moment she flipped the switch, though, and the thin bubble of sunshine lit up around her, she saw a silhouette step hastily back into the shadows.
“What are you afraid of?” Stormrunner asked. “It’s okay.”
Stormrunner reached down and picked up the wrapped food that she had offered to Wolfmouth earlier without luck. She held it up to the darkness as if offering a sacrifice. “Here’s some food. Come on.”
Slowly but surely, Adelita stepped out of the shadows and into the pale light. She was a pale girl with a twist of black hair. Her face was speckled with dirt and her hands had gloves of mud. She moved like a wild animal, timid, cautious, towards Stormrunner’s welcoming hands. Adelita paused for a moment, and then she suddenly snatched the food from Stormrunner. She sat down on the ground and clawed down the food. It was obvious that Adelita hadn’t had anything to eat all day.
As she ate, Stormrunner looked on, her eyes rinsed with pity.
***
2196 AD
“Here, Wolf,” Stormrunner offered, “let’s take a tour of the entire storeroom. We’ll check to see if anyone got in. I’m going to prove to you that no one stole anything.”
“And what if I’m right?”
Stormrunner smiled. “It’s like they say – there’s a first time for everything.”
Wolfmouth glared at her, but he accepted her invitation. Together, the twins walked the entire storeroom, their footsteps echoing against the steel mesh floor. Just a few feet below the mesh, he could hear the trickle of moisture that was being drained out of the room. The stone ceiling and walls were cracked, and it was routine for the water from above to drip through. Wolfmouth wondered how he could possibly protect the storeroom against thieves when he couldn’t even protect it against leaks.
The Moser twins first checked the logs for the elevator platform. According to the times when the elevator was used, they were the only ones to have used it. There was nothing to indicate that the mysterious thief had used it the night before. They checked the walls of the storeroom, looking for a tunnel bored out of the stone but found none. They checked the Dives – while the level above was exposed to the water for irrigation, the storeroom was protected by a massive glass wall that wrapped around the waterfalls. There were no shatters in the glass, sure signs of a break-in.
But instead of the tour convincing Wolfmouth that there was no thief, it only made him believe more that they had been robbed. Not only did he believe that, but he also knew who the thief was, and she was walking beside him. He had his proof: he thought of the last time that the storeroom had been breached, during the time of the famines. Not only that, but he also remembered the many arguments they’ve had over the years about the food distribution. While they both remembered the terror that was their childhood, they learned two very different lessons from that experience. They saw how the desperate danced in their starvation, praying to farmers who were no longer there – but while Wolfmouth saved food and rationed it, Stormrunner gave it away.
Wolfmouth once asked Stormrunner, “What makes you think that giving away all of the food is any better? What happens tomorrow, when they realize that there is no food left?”
Stormrunner had thought about it for a long moment. Then, she said slowly, “I’d rather feed someone until they burst than have them starve a little bit for the rest of their lives.”
“You’re not thinking straight. It’s not rational.”
“When was love ever rational?”
***
2175 AD
At first, Stormrunner wanted to let her new friend Adelita eat in peace. However, her curiosity got the better of her. And so she asked, “So, what’s the real reason why you left Acheron?”
“Hmm?” Adelita mumbled, her mouth full of food. She gulped. “I already told you – I’m running away, to live with my aunt in Lethe.”
“Oh, sorry,” Stormrunner said, knowing that Adelita was lying. Stormrunner knew this, because while she was a thief, she was an honest one. And she was honest to the point that the inside of her skin crawled at Adelita’s story like an allergy. But there had to be a reason why Adelita was lying – Stormrunner was young, but she knew that people didn’t lie unless they had to. It was the second reaction that Stormrunner had suffered that night – the first was Wolfmouth telling her that he didn’t want any food.
But before Stormrunner had a chance to sigh even, she saw something out of the corner of her eye. She turned her head sharply, staring into the distance as a corkscrew of lights rushed towards her. It reminded her of the time when she saw a rare flash flood in another canyon, a flood quicker than the flick of a magician's wrist, a flood so fast a bird could drown before it even flew away. And yet, she froze where she stood – she knew danger was galloping towards her, but she couldn’t run. The twists and turns of the light dazzled her eyes, hypnotizing her.
But while Stormrunner turned to a statue, the world around her melted down into fear. She heard the guards shouting commands, the gypsies crying and begging for mercy, and gun magazines clicking into place. In just seconds, the next morning arrived early at the camp, as lights were being shined into the face of the gypsies. By instinct, the children who had been sleeping outside had run into one of the crumbling motorhomes, the only sanctuary they had left. The elders of the camp stood at the windows and the doors of their homes, aiming their rifles at the watch of Acheron.
There were over twenty city guards in formation, heavily armored and pointing their own rifles back at the gypsies. It was only the first move of the game, but they already knew who won. Each of the gypsies trembled against the trigger, wondering if they were still asleep and dreaming their nightmares. Each of the guards was calm, having found a peace in their piece. Thousands of years before, the warrior found a home under the roof of their shield. Now, the guard had a slip rifle for a shield, a new breed of gun that was quicker than a snakebite. There was a magnetic coil lining the barrel of the slip rifle, which accelerated the bullet to speeds only dreamed of before. And the guards were pointing these same rifles at the gypsies, the laser sights planted firmly in the dirt of their chests.
But for one of the gypsies, his fear had not yet woken up. Standing in the open doorway of one of the motorhomes, he called out to the guards, “You might as well be pointing your guns at your own heads!”
None of the guards stirred, standing like chess pieces, ready for their turn. And then, there was a laughter that trickled over the silence, like raindrops against tree leaves. A man stepped out of the darkness and waded through the water of the flashlights. He was elderly, wearing a crown of snow on his head, his face crinkled up like poet’s paper. He had a deep rush of red painted on his cheeks and nose – he had blushed years before and had never stopped since.
The laughter drove the gypsy into a fury. “What’s so funny?” He demanded.
Stepping closer to the motorhomes, wiping his eyes as if crying from laughter, the old man chuckled, “My men are afraid of nothing – I guess that means they’re terrified of you.” He pointed at the gypsy’s gun. “After all, your gun is empty.”
“And how would you know that?” The gypsy snapped.
“How would I know?” The old man repeated. “Well, I designed the damn thing – that’s how I know. I can spot my children in a crowd. The rifle you’re holding in your hands, it’s called the Bard, because it tells the story of our power. I spent years of my life teaching it ho
w to talk, and now it sings. It weighs four pounds, is exactly three feet long…”
The old man paused. Then he added, “And the ammunition cartridge feeds into the right side of the barrel, a cartridge that you seem to be missing.”
He then reached behind his back and pulled out a rifle that he had strapped to his shoulder. This one was identical in every way, except for one thing: it had a cartridge loaded into its barrel. He aimed his rifle at the gypsy. “Now, let’s conduct an experiment. I want to see how long it takes for one of your kind to die.”
The old man suddenly pressed the trigger. The gun hissed and the gypsy screamed in the same second. He immediately collapsed to the ground, his body curling in ways never seen before. His throat strangling his cries for help, the gypsy clawed at his breast, as if trying to rip out his own heart. He suffered an earthquake deep beneath the skin, one so violent that he bit his own tongue off from the shock. But as he suffered, none of his comrades dared step forward to help – they knew that he was bait.
As the fallen gypsy cried into the soil, the old man continued talking, this time to the rest of the camp. “The dart I just fired was loaded with an overdose of a box jellyfish’s venom. When we tried it on our test subjects, they died in three minutes. But, of course, they were human – unlike you lot.”
The old man walked calmly up to the motorhomes, looking every gypsy in the eye. He rumbled, “I am not here to experiment, though. My name is Arnold Milcom, and you have taken something from me. You’re going to give it back to me, or I swear I’ll pull the world out from under your feet.”