by T. C. Edge
And in Adryan’s mind, it’s the latter I’m going to seek.
So I focus hard on the single most painful thing he’s been through. I drift deeper into the sea of memories, back into the past, rolling through the years until I zero in on it. And when I find it, I enter, and watch as the memory plays before me.
I see him as a younger man. Not much, perhaps a few years ago. Maybe only a little older than I am now, his face fresh and youthful. He’s sitting in an apartment, different to the one he lives in now, the one that just flashed before my eyes.
As he sits there, I hear a voice, a female voice, coming from another room. He looks up, and a girl of his own age wanders in smoothly. She’s beautiful. Her hair flows down in curls of brown, her eyes dancing with a similar light. They’re the eyes of a Savant, and yet there’s something in them that brightens them. Something that brings them to life.
She loves him.
And he loves her.
She moves towards the sofa, and sits beside him. They kiss, and I feel the warmth inside him, the glow of joy. But this isn’t a memory of happiness. This is a memory of pain, of grief.
The worst day of Adryan’s life.
Lying back in each other’s arms, the faint sound of footsteps slowly begin to grow. First appearing as nothing but a light tapping, they soon stamp loudly, gathering down the end of a corridor and beyond a door.
A jolt of confusion whips up through Adryan’s body. He and the girl look at each other with muted expressions, with eyebrows that dip ever-so-slightly. But they do nothing more. They just sit and wait.
A loud knocking sounds. And a voice calls out from beyond the door.
“Mr Adryan Shaw, please open up.”
Adryan looks to the girl and then stands, obeying the order. He wanders down the corridor, grips the handle to the door, and opens it up. Outside, a cluster of City Guards stand, dressed in their armour and fully armed.
The lead guard steps straight in, brushing Adryan aside. Then he turns to him.
“Where is she?” he growls.
Adryan remains confused.
“What is this about?” he asks calmly.
“Where is your wife,” repeats the man.
A soft voice echoes from down the corridor.
“I’m here,” it says.
The guard marches away, and Adryan follows, and behind him the rest of them come too.
Now a slight form of panic begins to rise in him. He asks again: “What is this about?” His words are hasty, not measured like a Savant’s words should be. He turns to the girl – to his wife – and there’s a strike of fear in her brown eyes too.
The lead guard doesn’t answer.
“Take her,” is all he says.
The other guards step in, grab the girl’s arms, and begin pulling her down the corridor. She starts to struggle in their grip, instinct taking over, her lacking emotions bubbling and frothing their way to the surface.
Adryan, too, is growing desperate. He continues to call out, “what are you doing with her…where are you taking her,” but his questions are never answered.
He follows the men down the corridor, scrapping his way to the front. He’s held back as his wife is dragged from the apartment, her eyes wide as she’s hoisted unceremoniously away. Adryan tries to battle his way forward, but two guards stop him, pushing him away.
He’s tossed against a wall, the impact juddering through him. He calls out to his wife, saying her name for the first time.
“Amelia! Amelia!” he shouts.
Again, he rushes forward. Again he’s repelled. Then the lead guard looks at him one final time, leaning in with a callous smile creeping up his lips.
And a single word falls from his lips.
“Hybrid.”
Adryan staggers back, and the guard spins away, marching out of the door and slamming it shut. And there, right then in that apartment, I feel something break inside Adryan.
Something that has never been fixed.
The memory fades before my eyes, turning black, and I withdraw from Adryan’s mind and appear back in the room. Back on the sofa, staring at his silver eyes. And again, they’re filled with pain.
I don’t know what to say. I just stare at him, feeling ashamed for invading such a personal recollection. I turn from his gaze, and cast my eyes to the floor, and as I do, his voice breaks into the silence of the room.
“She had old Hawk blood in her,” he whispers quietly, easing my eyes back to his. “Somewhere, generations back in her past. She didn’t know. I didn’t know. And they took her anyway.”
“I’m sorry.” My voice is so quiet it barely breaks out from my throat. “I shouldn’t have looked…”
He shakes his head.
“I invited you in willingly, Brie. I knew what you might find.”
“When was it?” I ask tentatively.
“Nearly four years ago. I was only nineteen years old. Amelia was the same. She was a Savant like me, nothing more. No Hawk powers manifested in her. But they still took her away. They still…terminated her.”
He looks away and bites back the pain. I reach out and lay my hand on his, squeezing lightly at his fingers.
“It wasn’t about her, though,” he continues, still looking out into the room. “It was about any children we might have had. There was a chance, however slim, that we could have had a hybrid child. They weren’t going to let that happen.”
“So that’s why…that’s why you joined the Nameless.”
He nods. “It was a large part of it. They don’t expect Savants to care when things are taken from us. They don’t realise how different some of us are. Something changed inside me that day. It felt like…like my emotions were set free, more than most others. I loved Amelia, I was happy with her. And they took her away from me. It’s the same for so many people across this city, so many broken lives…”
He reaches to the table and takes up his wine. The crease on his forehead, usually so smooth, has grown deeper, more pronounced.
“I was already working for the Institute of Human Relations then,” he continues. “I found the Nameless soon after, and offered my services as a spy. We’ve been waiting for someone like you ever since, Brie. Someone to carry out this mission. Your brother…he knew you were out there somewhere. And now he’s found you, we can finish this together. You and me.”
Now it’s him who takes my hand. I feel my lungs emptying, my body warming as he looks at me. I remember back to our first date here in this apartment. He’d said something off the cuff…said I reminded him of someone.
Was he talking about Amelia? Was he talking about his wife?
A longing engulfs me. I want to move closer to him, but hold myself back. Now isn’t the time.
It may never be the time.
“I’ll do everything I can to avenge your wife,” I tell him. “I promise you, Adryan, that I’ll make those responsible pay.”
“We’ll make them pay together, Brie. For Amelia. For your parents. For thousands of others who have been killed or cast to the shadows. Director Cromwell will have his day of reckoning.”
His day of reckoning…
Like the Nameless said, when they hijacked the video feed. The day of reckoning is coming.
It is, one way or another.
And it’s coming up fast.
76
I don’t stay with Adryan that evening.
I’m afraid of putting a single foot wrong now, however minor it might seem. Despite his invite to do so, I ask that he take me back to the western gate, and he does so without further question.
Before he drops me off, I reiterate the haste with which we need to act now. He assures me that he can accelerate things with the Council of Matrimony now that we’ve concluded our third date. Usually, that’s the fewest number of times a courting couple can meet before they determine their suitability for one another.
“I’ll speak with them first thing in the morning, and ask them to arrange your approval test at
the earliest possible convenience,” he tells me. “It should only be a day or two.”
“And then?”
“Then we can marry immediately. As I’ve told you before, marriage here involves no pomp and ceremony, and it involves no planning. The Council will ensure that we’re immediately given approval, assuming you pass your test, and we will then be assigned to a suitable apartment in the High Tower.”
“Right, OK. And once we’re married? Surely I’ll be given some assignment, some duty, to perform around here?”
“That may or may not come later,” he informs me. “Some Unenhanced work, others don’t. But that’s not something to worry about now. Depending on how things go, your time in Inner Haven may be short. We’ll have time to figure that one once you’re here permanently.”
I nod and suck in a lengthy breath. This is getting real now. More real by the day.
And with Agent Woolf breathing down my neck, it’s getting more desperate and dangerous too.
Before I depart the vehicle, I feel the urge to apologise to Adryan once more. I do so by way of a kiss on the cheek, my lips brushing against his gritty stubble.
“I’m sorry for bringing that memory to the surface,” I whisper. “I can…try to conceal it if you want? It might ease the pain?”
He shakes his head firmly.
“I’d never lose it, Brie. Not ever,” he says a little frostily. Perhaps the suggestion wasn’t appropriate. “I don’t want to forget her. And I don’t want to lose my hate either. They both fuel me; love for her, hate for them. Even a Savant can be driven by such emotion.”
I feel a bit foolish for making the offer, and slide from the car under the cool glow of the moon. Adryan’s voice comes once more, turning me before I walk to the gate.
“I’ll see you soon, Brie. And the next time I do, we’ll be married.”
He smiles at me, showing a set of pearly white teeth that catch the celestial light from above.
I pay back the look with my own smile. It fades as soon as I turn away from him.
Just before I reach the western gate, it dawns on me that I don’t actually have an official pass to be out on the streets of Outer Haven after curfew. I slip through the door beside the gate and look upon the Brute on guard.
As always, it’s impossible for me to tell at a glance if he’s Magnus or not. The look on his face upon seeing me – one of slight surprise – suggests this is the Brute who’s currently on night duty.
“Um, what’s your business in Inner Haven?” he asks.
OK, definitely not Magnus.
“Courting,” I say.
“Ah, I see,” he says, surveying my clothing. “Do you have a pass?”
I shake my head.
“I didn’t expect to be this late. Could you issue me one?”
“I can give you a temporary one,” he says. “I’ll have to confirm your identity first. I assume you passed through earlier, when my colleague was on duty?”
“Oh, you mean Magnus?”
“Yes, you know him do you?”
“I’ve passed this way a few times now, so we’ve got chatting once or twice. But, actually, today I didn’t pass this way. I was escorted inside. It’s…a long story.”
“Right, well don’t worry about that now,” he booms. “Just tell me your name and I can confirm who you are.”
“It’s Brie Melrose. I live at Carmichael’s academy, over in district 5 in this quarter.”
I wait for the name to strike a chord with him. He doesn’t appear to recognise it, or me. It’s quite refreshing to be unknown for once.
A quick check of his forearm interface, however, confirms my identity. Satisfied, he goes about issuing me a temporary pass, instructing me that it’ll only last for this evening and that, should I continue to return late after my dates, I’ll require a more permanent one.
“Don’t worry,” he adds. “It does happen quite often, girls coming back late without the proper paperwork and passes. Of course, curfew is much earlier these days than usual, so a few more girls like you have been caught out. No matter, though, that’ll get you home safe. Good evening to you, Miss Melrose.”
As per usual, he turns out to be perfectly polite. I wonder if it’s just a requirement of this particular post, or just a general characteristic that all Brutes share. To think that I used to be so frightened of them, plodding about and casting their giant shadows down the street.
Looks can certainly be deceiving, that’s for sure.
Holding the small pass in my hand, I wander home with a busy mind, my thoughts rushing far faster than my feet.
Mostly, despite my close shave with Agent Woolf, it’s Adryan’s memory that dominates. To have suffered the loss of a wife he loved so young is a terrible fate, a terrible curse. A woman who, barring the most diluted of Hawk blood, was a Savant through and through.
And yet they took her anyway, killed her simply because of the slightest of chances that she might bear a hybrid child. Their lust for total control is so all consuming that, in the end, it blinds them to the effects their doctrine has.
The Consortium and Director Cromwell, up on their perch, may not even know of the hatred they’re brewing across the city, even among some of their own kind. Their inability to empathise might just turn out to be their undoing. As if nature is fighting back, re-determining the natural order of things, wiping clean the slate so that these emotionless vessels, masquerading as human, no longer hold all the cards.
As I walk through the inner districts of the western quarter, the sight of Con-Cop patrols and City Guards break my mental wanderings. My immediate instinct is to slip away into the shadows, activate my Dasher powers and work my way back to district 5 in secret.
But then I remember that, for once, I’m walking these streets legally. That my presence here is totally acceptable.
Passing by the nearest patrol, I’m immediately approached. I hold my pass to the Con-Cops and they inspect it silently, before nodding me on.
The same thing happens a couple more times before I reach Brick Lane, my path unhindered and only slowed very briefly. By the time I enter back into the academy, the hour has clicked past midnight, into a new day. A day during which Adryan will apply for me to be tested, and for us to be married, and for an apartment in the High Tower to be prepared and outfitted.
It will all happen quickly now, and I have no concerns about the approval test. After battling with my brother, and sparring with Agent Woolf, a test to determine my commitment to Inner Haven should be simple enough to beat.
So, essentially, I am now engaged. It’s not quite how I envisioned my nuptials. But then again, becoming a wife is hardly something I’ve ever lent much thought to.
The main hall in the academy is silent when I step in, only the security light on the wall glowing. Moving to the spiral staircase, I see another glow from down the corridor at the back, emanating from beneath the common room door.
I find myself gravitating towards it. The door is slightly ajar, silent inside. I assume that someone has merely left the light on, and so step through to shut it off.
But the room isn’t empty. I look to the sofa and see Tess sitting alone, in silence and thought. Her eyes look sad and weary, her body curled up a little in a protective posture.
A flash of memory in my mind takes me back nearly a decade to when she first came here. When she was just a shade, drifting silently around, hiding constantly in her shell.
She adopts the same image now, and I feel a pulsing sadness in my heart at the sight.
Her eyes lift and see me, and for a few moments we just stare at each other. There’s still so much I want to say, to tell her. I want to sit and share my life with her as I always have. I want her advice, her support, her dry humour. To hear her words in my ears again, and to laugh as we have so often.
And I want to hear about her life too. I want to ask how work is going. I want to sit and chat about anything and everything. I want my best friend back.
; I want my sister back.
But nothing that I want comes true now. It can’t. Not now, and maybe not ever. I can’t put her in danger. I won’t.
I love her too much for that.
Instead, a short silence that seems to last an age descends. So much feeling passes back and forward between our eyes. Sadness, anger, disappointment, longing. And when I finally speak, it’s empty words that fall from my lips.
“Sorry, I thought the room was empty,” is all I say.
I begin sliding back to leave the room. Every single exchange I have with her now is similarly terse, similarly tense. It’s the same with just about everyone in my life.
Whether it’s Mrs Carmichael or Zander or Adryan, or anyone else for that matter, there’s always this current of fate to everything we say, everything we do. A burden sitting upon every word, weighing down every conversation.
Nothing is light or unimportant now. There’s no time for laughter or gossip. My world has changed too much for that. I have changed too much for that.
I wonder, right now, standing here in front of my oldest and best friend, if I’ll ever be able to properly laugh again, even when all this is over. Maybe I’ve been changed, just like Adryan has. Irreparably so.
I’m almost out of the room when I hear Tess’s soft voice.
“Brie…”
I stop, turning my eyes back to her. They look so sad and weary. The hostility and bitterness they usually carry these days when they look at me is absent. I find myself drawn into the quiet room a little further.
I move to the sofa and her eyes follow me. I sit beside her, my heart pounding inside my chest, and wait for her to speak again.
“How…how are you?” she asks delicately. “I’ve barely seen you since…since I found you, on the floor in our room. You were sick. And your hands.”
Her eyes fall to them. They’re fully healed now.
“I’m OK,” I say. “It was…nothing.”
I fight the urge to explain, to tell her what’s going on. Something so powerful, so primal in me wants to share it with her. It feels unnatural to keep things hidden, to lie with such abandon.
She doesn’t appear surprised by my silence. Her eyes now drift to my clothes, to the light blue colours of the Unenhanced in Inner Haven.