by K A Riley
The mezzanine level of the Armory houses the Command Headquarters. It’s from here that Ekker appears to run the show.
Dressed in a crisp military uniform with the red and white camouflage colors of the Patriot Army, he strides from his office to a larger room just down the walkway. This room is labeled “Communications Center,” and it will be one of our primary targets when we storm this place on Friday night.
I relay this new information to Wisp who instructs me to gather as much detail as I can about this large room within the Armory.
With the Communications Center and Command Headquarters located, identified, and scouted, Render and I move on to the Munitions Depot, which is housed, along with the military barracks, in the large castle-like section of the domed Armory.
Render easily infiltrates this part of the building, and, with not as many people around, he gets through it with blazing speed and efficiency.
Cruising through the air ducts, access tunnels, and interior fire escape routes throughout the building, Render makes his way down to the basement where he finds a series of locked doors. They appear to be some kind of brig or holding cells, but there’s no way to get in so Render flies the length of the dark corridor, up through a large aluminum duct, and, finally, back out into the open air.
I admit, part of me feels like a bit of a cheater, like I’m getting all the answers before I even sit down to take the big test. I laugh to myself at the ignorance of Ekker and his Patriot Army. Here they are, going about their business as if a teenage girl and a raven aren’t in the middle of stealing all their secrets.
I don’t know about love, but all is definitely fair in war.
Bursting into the sky from the top of the Armory, Render gives a few powerful beats of his wings before gliding back across town toward the Style. I ease back into my chair, enjoying the freedom of flight and congratulating myself and Render on a job well done.
I’m about to disconnect from him and go over everything we’ve learned with Wisp, Rain, Manthy, and Olivia when I sense a message burbling up in my brain:
We are going to experience terrible things.
It’s Render’s voice in my head. It’s a warning. A lot of times in the past, he’s demonstrated a keen sense of playfulness and humor. Right now, though, he’s dead serious. I can tell he’s scared, although I can’t tell if it’s for me or for himself.
It’s for us.
Because of the battle? I ask the voice.
Because we will hang in helplessness, and we will be reunited with death.
9
I’m shaking when I finally disconnect from Render, and Manthy is there, quiet as always, with a comforting hand on my arm.
“What happened?” Rain asks from across the table where she’s been working with Wisp.
“I don’t know,” I answer as a small shudder wriggles its way from my neck and all the way down my back before finally disappearing somewhere in my lower legs. “It’s Render. He’s worried. I think he thinks…”
“…What?” Rain finally asks as my voice trails off.
I rub my temples, but the pressure remains. “I think he thinks we’re going to die.”
“Who’s going to die?” Wisp asks.
“I don’t know. He said ‘we.’ It could mean me and him. Or all of us. The Insubordinates. Whatever it is, he’s not optimistic at the moment.”
Dropping the intensity, Wisp relaxes back into her seat. “Okay. So it’s just a feeling. He’s not a fortune-teller, right?” Wisp gives a little laugh, but I have to stop her.
“I’m not sure what he is, Wisp. Or what he’s capable of.”
“You told us there’s more to us than we think,” Rain chimes in. “Maybe there’s more to Render as well.”
“He’s shown me visions of things that aren’t there anymore. Or that maybe haven’t been there yet,” I tell Wisp. “When we were still on the run, we found an old military base. He showed me images of soldiers and a girl inside—all dead. But when we actually went inside, they weren’t there anymore.”
“Or yet,” Rain adds.
I expect Wisp to be dismissive, but it’s the opposite. She leans toward me again, her arms crossed in front of her on the black glass tabletop. She looks like she wants to say something, to pass along some kind of information. Her lips start to move, but nothing comes out.
“What is it?” I ask.
Wisp shakes her head. “Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. I think we should stop for tonight.”
“Wait,” Rain snaps. “If you have information we should have…something that might help us…”
Wisp stands up and walks around the table to where Olivia is still fiddling away at her bank of consoles and monitors. “Unfortunately, Rain, I don’t have information or anything that can help. Just conjecture. I’d rather not base anything on partial information if I can help it. You guys head upstairs to the Dorm. It’s late, and we have another long day ahead of us tomorrow.”
“But Render…” I start to say.
Wisp shakes her head. “Let me consult with Olivia and Granden. I’ll tell you what I know when I know it and not when it’s just guesswork,” she promises with a sympathetic smile.
Rain looks like she’s about to argue, but Manthy shakes her head, and Rain stops.
“You’ve been cooped up in this room for days now and cooped up in Render’s head for even longer. You need to decompress. All of you.”
“And how do you propose we do that?” I ask.
“We need you to go and do some on-the-ground recon of your own. Kind of a field trip. Tomorrow is Tuesday. Rain and I will meet with Cardyn and Manthy to start combining what we know with the battle tactics the Insubordinates are learning. While we’re doing that, you and Brohn get to go outside and see the city.”
I try not to smile at this prospect, but I can’t help it. The thought of it fills me up like too much water in a glass, and I feel like I might overflow with pleasure. I’m sure Wisp notices my reaction, but she’s gracious and shrugs it off like it’s no big deal. “We need you to get out of here for a while. Relax. You’re no good to the cause if you’re too stressed out and stir-crazy to function. Makes sense, right?”
“Yes,” I say, still straining to sound professional and to repress my smile. “Perfect sense.”
“Then it’s settled,” Wisp says in that strange tone that fills her tiny frame with the air of authority. “Tomorrow, you and Brohn are on reconnaissance duty in the streets of San Francisco. Now get out of here, please. Olivia and I have work to do!”
With me and Rain walking side by side and Manthy trudging along behind, we make our way upstairs to the next level where the last of the Insubordinates are milling around, yawning, and getting ready for bed. A couple of them offer us hesitant half-waves of greeting as if they’re still not sure how much they’re allowed to talk to us. I smile at two girls who look like they’re at least a few years older than us. They start to smile back but then seem to think better of it and, instead, avert their eyes as we pass. A young man, probably in his early twenties, looks like he’s about to say something to me, but, like the two girls, he seems to have second thoughts and decides to turn back to the whispered conversation he’s having with his friend in the doorway of one of the dorm rooms. I was hoping that talking with the Insubordinates this morning about our past would normalize us. Instead, I think it’s made us even more odd in their eyes.
“I think they’re talking about us,” I suggest to Rain and Manthy.
“I don’t think so,” Rain says. “I think they’re talking about you.”
I don’t care what Wisp said before or what Rain thinks now. This is still an absurd suggestion. In the Valta, I was the girl in the background. Not quite as invisible as Manthy, but I certainly wasn’t ever the center of quiet, awed attention that I seem to be at this very moment. And I certainly was never the girl who others spoke about in hushed, reverential whispers.
Now, curious eyes peek out from the open doorways as w
e continue to walk along the dark hallway toward our own room at the far end. I feel like I’m hiking through a shadowy forbidden forest in some super old fairy tale with the eyes of a hundred hiding elves following my every move.
“This is so weird,” I say.
Rain gives a dismissive snort. “No weirder than being able to see through the eyes of a bird.”
“Come on. Let’s get to our room. This is creeping me out.”
Suppressing a fit of the giggles and with Manthy in tow, Rain and I grab each other’s hands and sprint the rest of the way down the long hallway to our room.
We burst through the door, and close it behind us. Laughing, we have our hands on our knees as we pant and chuckle at our sudden release of anxiety and exhaustion.
Brohn and Cardyn are already sitting on their beds waiting for us.
“Tough day at work, Honey?” Brohn jokes through a breathy yawn.
I release a very satisfying full-on laugh and walk over to give him a peck on the cheek. “It was a rough one all right, Dear.”
Brohn heaves himself out of his bed with a grunt and throws his arms around me. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in a week.”
I return his hug, and he asks me what’s so funny.
“Nothing,” I say. “Everything.”
“She’s not used to being stared at,” Rain offers from just inside the bathroom where she’s splashing cold water on her face from one of the sinks.
I plop down on my bed and kick off my boots. “I just don’t feel like I know who I am anymore,” I sigh. “Not in a bad way. More like I feel like I’m turning into someone else. Or something else.”
Brohn sits down on his bed across from me and gives my knee a little squeeze. “Well, whatever happens in these next few days, whatever or whoever you find yourself turning into, you’ll always be you to me.”
“Brohn,” I say, dropping onto my back and staring up at the ceiling, “I think that’s probably the weirdest and nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
Dabbing her face dry with a fuzzy yellow towel, Rain comes back into the room and joins us in our little Conspiracy circle at the foot of our beds.
As Rain and I start filling Brohn and Cardyn in on our day, Manthy burrows herself into her bed until even her wild tangle of brown-hued hair disappears into the folds of her white sheets and crisp, green army blanket.
Cardyn rolls his eyes and reaches over to pat the pile of Manthy-shaped bedding. She squirms and moans but stays firmly ensconced.
The rest of us sit facing each other on the edges of our beds. Brohn leans forward with his arms draped over his legs. He winces a little as he flexes his shoulders and forearms. “This training stuff is exhausting,” he says. “But kind of fun.”
“Sure,” Cardyn grumbles. “If you consider being one day closer to an unwinnable war as fun.”
“Don’t be such a pessimist,” Brohn tells him. “I saw you upstairs. Barking out orders. Teaching those kids how to slap a magazine into a Sig Sauer. Giving them tips on proper hand position for optimal accuracy in firing. And the lessons in hand-to-hand, close-quarters combat. Admit it. You were enjoying every second of it.”
Leaning back on his bed, Cardyn gives Brohn a dismissive wave. “I just like having something to do. Beats walking through the desert waiting to get killed or starve to death.” He sits up, leans forward, and gives my knee a playful swat. “How about you, Kress? I feel like I haven’t seen you in a year. How’s our resident superstar?”
“Give me a break.”
“Aw. You’re blushing!”
“No, I’m not,” I protest with my fingertips pressed to my cheeks. “This is my tomato impersonation.”
“It’s uncanny.”
“We’ve been getting really good intel thanks to Render. Detailed stuff. Very helpful. But these Insubordinates…”
“What about them?”
“I’ve been getting some strange looks. The other day when I came upstairs to visit you guys. This morning at breakfast when we were telling our stories. Then again just now when we were walking down the hall.”
“You really don’t know?” Cardyn asks.
I shake my head and offer up a deep sigh of slightly annoyed resignation. “Let me guess, they’ve heard about my connection with Render, and they think I’m some kind of freak.”
“Actually, I wasn’t kidding about you being a superstar. Yes, they’ve heard about your connection with Render. But they don’t think you’re a freak. I think they think you’re some kind of savior.”
As tired as I am, I can’t help but laugh out loud at this suggestion. “You’re kidding.”
“No. Even before we got here, word was going around. About all of us, really. But especially about you. They call you the Kakari Isutse.” Apparently, it’s from an old Costanoan language.”
“Costanoan?”
“One of the Insubordinates explained it to us. The Costanoans were an indigenous group of people who lived here before the settlers hundreds of years ago. They called themselves the Ohlone. ‘Costanoan’ is the name the Spanish colonizers gave them. It means ‘from the coast.’ A few of the Insubordinates trace their ancestry to them.”
“And this thing they’re calling me?”
“Kakari Isutse. It means something like ‘The girl who dreams in raven.’ Or just, ‘the Raven Dreamer.’ They said it makes you our protector.”
The way Card says this, all serious and mysterious, gives me another case of the giggles. Chuckling, I wipe the tears of incredulity from my eyes. “They know I’m not a superhero, right?”
“To them, you are. Well, maybe not the skin-tight costume and fluttering cape-wearing kind. But yes, they think you can save them, save all of us, from this life they’re being forced to live and from the very bad things that are about to happen if Krug gets his way.”
I flick away this suggestion. “I just spent the last eighteen hours gathering information. I can tell you every detail about half the buildings in the city and about every person and square inch inside the Armory and the Barracks building attached to it. There’s hardly anything superheroic about that.”
“Explain to me again how that works,” Cardyn says, lying back, his voice now made nearly inaudible by the fluffy white pillow covering his face. “How are you able to get so much information?”
“It’s not complicated. Render relays what he sees to me. Manthy uses her powers—”
“They’re not powers,” Manthy objects from deep under her covers.
“Sorry. Manthy uses her abilities—”
“It’s not abilities, either,” her muffled voice complains.
“Then what is it?” I ask, turning toward her and feeling slightly exasperated.
Manthy pushes the covers away from her face and sits up. “It’s a curse.”
“It’s not a curse,” Cardyn says.
“Is too.”
“If you could speak a second language,” Cardyn snaps, “would that be a curse? Or if you could juggle. Or play the piano. Or write plays like Shakespeare or do physics like Einstein. Being different enough to be able to help others is a gift, not a curse.”
Sitting up all the way now, Manthy crosses her arms and frowns in a pout so powerful it’s practically audible.
“Hey!” Cardyn exclaims into the silence that follows. “I just won an argument with Manthy!”
Manthy rewards him for his victory with a hastily-swung pillow to his face. Cardyn shrieks like he’s been shot and falls in an exaggerated tumble off of his bed and lands with a thump onto the floor.
“Give me a break,” Brohn says, reaching out a hand to help Cardyn to his feet and back onto the bed.
Cardyn offers a hearty “Thanks” like Brohn’s just saved him from falling into a pool of molten lava.
“If you’re done…” I say, feeling like an overburdened mother and desperate to change the subject, “I’d like to hear how things are going upstairs.”
“Yeah,” Rain says. “How’s the baby
sitting going?”
Brohn gets suddenly serious. “Honestly, not as well as we’d hoped.”
“How do mean?” I ask. “I was up there yesterday. You looked like you had everyone whipped into shape already.”
“We have the floor whipped into shape. The rooms, the supplies, the training plans…it’s mostly all in place. But the Insubordinates are inexperienced. There are too few of them,” Brohn groans. He shakes his head and taps his temple. “They’re too…I don’t know…scattered.”
“More like scared,” Cardyn says.
“That’s normal, right?” Rain asks. “I mean, they’re not like we were. We had to struggle our entire lives just to survive. We lost so much so early. I think maybe that gave us a certain strength, an edge. Kind of like a ‘what do we have to lose?’ attitude.”
Brohn thinks about that for a second before nodding his agreement. “I think you’re right, Rain. They want to help. They really do. They want to be part of something big, something important. But they have families out there. A lot of them do, anyway. They have friends and schools and hobbies. Some of the older ones even have jobs. That’s a lot to lose.”