by Joe Ducie
‘You acted after all other avenues had been closed to you – by the Alliance – and people got hurt. This does not make you a bad person.’
‘What else could I have done?’ Drake asked, slamming his fist into the decking. ‘It was important.’
‘You owe the lawman you hurt a debt, William Drake. To him and his family.’ Noemi nodded. ‘Yes, one day you will have to settle your debt, earn his forgiveness and forgive yourself. Society demanded you pay this debt in the Alliance juvenile prisons, but in matters of guilt and forgiveness, the justice system has descended into corruption and cruelty. Ever since the governments of the world bent the knee to the Alliance … profit has replaced justice.’
‘The corporation is the giant,’ Drake said. ‘When you say I made the giant afraid, you don’t mean just people like Lucien Whitmore and Warden Storm, you’re talking about the corporation itself – as if it were alive.’
Noemi shrugged. ‘Isn’t it? Over the last few generations, we let the giant grow – we gave control to a handful of faceless men – and we’re only just starting to see the amount of suffering the Alliance will cause before it is toppled. It is too late to avoid the fight to come. You, and people like you, will drag the Shadow War screaming into the light. The corporation watches us, William Drake. It listens. It touches our lives, and we offer tribute to it through paying taxes, through buying the materialistic garbage spewing from its mouth. We feed it, and it hates us. We protect it, and it strips away our freedoms.’
‘It’s a cancer,’ Drake muttered, more than familiar with that particular disease. Cancer was the sickness eating his mother from the inside. ‘Sucking the life from everything we love.’
‘Yes, and cancer is alive, is it not? A malignant type of life. The Alliance is the cruelty and avarice inherent in all humanity. A seething pile of cancerous cells that have spread across the planet. Very soon, it will be too late to stop.’
The global network controlled by the Alliance was massive, incomprehensible in size. He couldn’t think of one thing the Alliance didn’t control in some way, shape, or form. The list of what it didn’t have power over could have been written on the back of his hand in large letters. Too late to stop. ‘So what’s the solution then?’
‘We have to show the world just how sick it is,’ Noemi said. ‘Drag the cowards kicking and screaming from their cruel towers.’
‘And that’s what you believe? That’s what all your people in Haven believe?’
‘If the Alliance is the cancer, William Drake, then Haven is the cure.’
‘Tell me more about Haven, then.’
An honest smile spread across Noemi’s face. ‘Haven is wonderful. A secluded valley, nestled between snow-capped mountains and dotted with forests and winding rivers, old cave systems and secret paths. Buildings over two thousand years old, markets and libraries, centres for learning and study. Home to hundreds of people and families, Haven is the last bastion of privacy in the world.’
Drake let out a slow breath and scratched at the back of his neck. ‘Sounds cool. Like something out of a fairy tale.’
‘Haven has had centuries of Yūgen users walking through her fields and her hills, her glades and glens. Some of that intent, that power, has seeped into the earth. It is a blessed place.’
For the next few hours, as the sun slowly dipped between the long canyons of New York City and the weather turned December cold, Drake worked on a series of training exercises devised by Noemi that were supposed to help him take true control of the power in his body.
‘Think of Yūgen like a muscle,’ she told him. ‘It is not – Yūgen is an intangible force in our minds – but perception of the force matters. So think of it as a muscle that must be exercised every day.’
‘How do you exercise an intangible muscle?’ Drake realised the answer on his own. ‘By using it.’
‘Yes.’
He practised calling his power into his hand, creating little flickering balls of light in his palm – smaller versions of the orbs that had kept him from freezing to death in Newfoundland and Labrador – and making them hover in the air, as if he were carrying a small sun. At first he could only get a few sparks of blue light to dance within the crystal of his arm, but after concentrating for a long moment, in the right mindset – balance – he found he had some control over whether the fire appeared or not.
‘That was interesting.’ He clenched his fist, snuffing out the orb. ‘It didn’t want to happen, at first. When I practised in the forest, learnt tricks like fireballs and spikes of hard crystal, I always had to force it.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘I concentrated on making it happen, sort of tapping into the ocean of power in my head … it’s almost like a sixth sense, isn’t it?’
Noemi tilted her head. ‘How so?’
‘I mean, activating the power, it’s like … like, I know how to breathe, right? We all do. Breathe air in, breathe it out, but the muscles or whatever that make that happen, that let me breathe in and out – I don’t know how they work, but I can still make them work.’ Drake considered and then nodded. ‘Yeah, and Crystal-X – sorry, Yūgen – it feels the same. I don’t know how it works, but I can breathe it in and out.’
‘And you can strengthen the muscle through understanding,’ Noemi said. ‘Very good.’
Drake grinned.
‘Now make two spheres of fire, please, the size of grapes, and have them dance between your fingers.’
Drake’s grin faded, and he mumbled to himself under his breath. Concentrating on his breathing, he raised his palm towards the sky – breathe in – and a torrent of blue sparks rushed down his arm – breathe out – and fell from his hand, like water boiling over the rim of a pan. Hot sparks splashed against the mat and burnt through to the decking, igniting a small but fierce blaze in the wood.
Noemi snapped her crystal fingers, and the flames flickered and died, leaving nothing but black scorch marks in the wood and the reek of burning rubber on the air.
‘How did you do that?’ Drake asked, as the lights in his arm faded again – all save the marble of light from the eagle.
‘Long practice,’ she said.
‘What else can you do?’
Noemi shook her head. ‘That question is considered impolite, William Drake. At Haven, one’s abilities are closely guarded secrets. We are all taught basic skills, of course, but the talents we develop in secret, wandering our own Path … you might as well have asked to see me naked.’ She relaxed and smiled. ‘However, you had no way of knowing that.’
‘Well, now I do.’
‘Now you do.’
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know how I do any of the things I do. Irene can heal, as well as kind of morph her arm and make it thinner. It’s how she managed to slip the tracker off her wrist back on the Rig. I haven’t seen her do anything else, but I’ve been just making it up as I go along. Could I do what Irene does, you think? Or make myself invisible, like you did when we first met?’
Noemi tapped her crystal fingers together, producing a dull chime, and the air around her shimmered, like heat rising from the road on a summer’s day. She vanished. Drake’s vision went a touch fuzzy until he blinked a few times, but Noemi didn’t reappear.
‘Ha!’ he said, genuinely surprised. ‘That’s amazing. Are you still there?’
‘Can you not sense me?’ Her voice came from empty air and, even though he’d expected it, startled Drake.
Drake stared at the spot where she had been sitting – where she’s still sitting – and concentrated. He squinted, trying to see through whatever quirk of power that had made her disappear, and thought he glimpsed a vague outline. I felt her back in the forest, but now …
He reached out to make sure she hadn’t moved and brushed her foot on the mat. A wild shiver rushed through him. ‘Oh, that’s weird. Touching something that doesn’t look like it’s there.’
The air shimmered again, and Noemi reappeared. She hadn’t
moved an inch. ‘The gift manifests itself in a number of ways. Some have talents towards disguise. Some find an affinity towards healing, battle enchantments, or myriad other skills.’
‘So what’s my skill, then?’ Drake tapped his crystal fingers against his thumb. ‘I’m good at, like, shooting energy bolts.’
‘William Drake,’ Noemi said. ‘Nothing you have done has been skilful. That’s what I’ve tried to explain from the start. What you have been doing is akin to standing in a lightning storm waving a metal rod. You are using Yūgen in a raw, untempered form. You’re standing in a pool of gasoline, in the dark, and think lighting a match is the solution to your problem. This is what you need to control before it burns you away. Focus, discipline and understanding of the balance are the only things I know that can help you succeed.’
‘Breathe in, breathe out,’ Drake said. ‘OK, I can work on that.’
Chapter Fifteen
Falling With Style
Dinner the first night in the apartment was New York City pizza from a place called Lombardi’s. Drake helped himself to a slice topped with sausage, bacon and chilli flakes and, after his first bite, decided then and there he was never going to leave New York. It was approaching ten o’clock when they finished dinner, the table a mess of pizza boxes and soda cans. Both Irene and Tristan shuffled off to bed. Irene, Takeo and Noemi each had a room to themselves, while Drake was sharing with Tristan – in much more opulent conditions than they had been sharing on the Rig. Unable to sleep, he watched ten minutes of an old Spider-Man movie and found himself zoning out. At eleven o’clock, Takeo disappeared to bed, while Noemi stayed up on watch. They were going to split the guard between them, sleeping alternate shifts. At midnight, still wide awake, Drake began to think it was going to be a long night.
He went out on the balcony and practised his breathing, shivering a touch in the early-morning air. New York still hustled and bustled far below. The city that never slept seemed fitting to Drake, given his inability to rest, but although he wanted to head out and explore, he knew the Alliance would be on him fast, if they weren’t already. The apartment was defensible against threats from below, but had the Alliance already tracked them here? Had the smart cameras patched together their roundabout trip from the library down on Fifth Avenue? If he was trapped here, then couldn’t the Alliance just keep an eye on him from afar? Neutral territory, Noemi had said.
Again, a prison didn’t always have to be cold concrete and steel bars. So long as he was hunted, he would never be free.
Drake practised his breathing and worried what tomorrow – given the hour, later that day – might bring.
The morning brought cornflakes for breakfast and the better part of five days awake, give or take an hour’s worth of napping. Drake sat at the dining table next to the kitchen with Tristan. Noemi was sleeping after her shift standing watch. Takeo sat in the lounge, one loaded weapon at his side, and another disassembled for cleaning on the coffee table.
Even after the long night, Drake felt not even close to tired. More weary, as if he’d put in a hard but satisfying day’s work – and then been told to do it all over again, and smile this time.
At what point do I have to worry this is killing me? he wondered. Cornflakes taste different in America. Or maybe it’s the milk.
If Drake concentrated a little harder on how he was feeling, he could sense his body working overtime – pulling double, triple, quadruple shifts to keep up with the crystal transformation and long days without proper rest. I’d bloody sleep if I could. Working Tubes, clearing out the water pipes and worse, on the Rig had run him ragged for months, but at least he’d slept well after the work.
Irene had mumbled a sleepy good morning and brewed herself a cup of tea, and now sat out on the terrace, staring at the city. Drake finished his cornflakes and stepped out to see her. He slid the glass door closed behind him and stretched in the cool morning air. Clear skies suggested it was going to be a nice day.
‘You’ve been quiet,’ he said.
‘Just been thinking.’ Two sun chairs faced the spires of New York, overlooking Fifth Avenue, but Irene shuffled over and patted the space next to her, inviting Drake to share just the one.
Drake sat down, and she grasped his hand. ‘Thinking?’ he asked.
‘About what I want to be when I grow up.’
‘I’m going to work on a blackberry farm,’ Drake said.
Irene giggled. ‘Yeah, I remember that conversation from the Rig. Do they even have blackberry farms?’
‘Of course they do,’ Drake said, but he wasn’t certain. He and his mother had picked them wild. ‘Where do you think the jam comes from?’
‘Don’t they just mix Ribena with strawberries?’
‘How dare you, Irene Finlay.’ Drake tried to let go of her hand, but she held on tight. ‘Actually, now that I think about it, I know for a fact there are blackberry farms. I went to one on a school trip in Sussex. It was next to this little river, and I pushed Harry Robb into the water because he threw a blackberry at Michelle White, who I fancied, and hit her in the eye. Saw a fox, too.’ Drake nodded. ‘Or were they raspberries …?’
Irene laughed again and swatted his chest. ‘How’s the arm?’
‘Made of crystal and magical birds,’ Drake said, casting aside that topic. ‘So what did you decide you wanted to be when you grow up?’
Irene shook her head. ‘Doesn’t matter, does it? We’re either going to be on the run forever or tossed in a shallow grave.’
‘Blimey, that’s morbid. I’m not going to let that happen, Irene.’
‘No? Why not?’
‘Because I can’t wait to tell my mates back in London about the hot redhead I snogged. A year older than me, too. They won’t believe it unless you’re there, very much alive and not on the run.’
Irene fought a smile, and Drake wanted to brush back the hair hiding half her face, but he didn’t think that would go over well, especially if he did it with his crystal arm, so he did nothing.
‘Still trying to get me to come to London, are you?’ she asked with a kind smile. ‘So subtle, Will.’
‘Just tell me what you’re going to be when you grow up, already.’
‘I’ve been thinking about studying, actually.’
‘Yeah?’ Drake squeezed her fingers. ‘Studying what?’
‘You.’
‘A degree in Will Drake?’ He laughed. ‘Take all of five minutes to complete. He broke things and out of things. The end.’
‘Seriously,’ Irene said. ‘Think about it. How much longer is the Alliance going to be able to keep the Crystal-X a secret? On the Rig it was contained, nothing could get in or out, but now that you’re free and making a lot of noise … it’s only a matter of time, and the world’s going to want to know all about it.’
‘I’ll be famous,’ Drake said, rolling his eyes. ‘Instead of just plain old infamous and wanted for murder.’
Irene smiled warmly. ‘The truth will come out, and when it does, I want to say I was there all along. I’m going to get a notebook and keep notes on you.’
‘You should talk to Tristan – he’s trying to decipher all that info the drone collected. But you’re assuming a lot, you know. That the Alliance won’t get away with all this, that I won’t die or go mad from the crystal, that the world will even care.’
Irene blinked. ‘Of course they’ll care.’
‘From what Noemi’s said, Haven has been playing with the Crystal – with Yūgen – for centuries. You’d think in that time, something would have leaked out, wouldn’t you? I think people ignore or pretend not to see what frightens them.’
Irene brushed the hair back from her left eye and exposed her scar. ‘Is that why you didn’t tell us about your arm?’
Drake forced a chuckle. ‘It scares me a little, yeah.’
Irene stared at the glowing sphere embedded in Drake’s wrist. ‘Can I touch it?’
Drake hesitated and then rested his crystal arm on his l
ap. The arm itself didn’t feel heavy at all when he lifted it, but the weight on his legs was considerable. Irene touched his obsidian forearm with the tips of her fingers – gently at first, and then pressing hard enough to shift his arm.
‘Can you feel that?’ she asked.
Drake shook his head.
She tickled his arm, running her fingers from his elbow down to his wrist. ‘Oh, it’s warm near the light. Did you feel any of that?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘I saw you make fire come out of your other hand,’ Irene said. ‘Why didn’t that one turn to crystal?’
‘One of the thousands of questions I wish I knew the answer to.’
Irene sighed. ‘What does Noemi say?’
‘Not to stray too close to the dark side of the Force.’ Drake tapped his crystal fingers against his knee. ‘I dunno. She talks almost in riddles. “Balance” this and “balance” that. Some of it makes sense. The rest just sounds like a lot of vague crap.’
‘Is it helping, do you think?’
Drake took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. ‘Maybe. I haven’t gone mad yet, Irene.’ He jerked his thumb towards the edge of the balcony. ‘You see that monkey in a clown costume doing cartwheels on the railing too, right?’
She laughed and cuddled against his side, pulling his good arm around her shoulders. ‘Tell me a story, Will.’
Drake considered, then shook his head. ‘Sorry, can’t think of anything. Not sure where to start …’
Irene tsked. ‘So tell me how it ends then.’
He grinned. ‘Infamously.’
Tristan joined them in the morning light about half an hour later, as Drake and Irene sat giggling, swapping stories from their time before the Rig. He carried a laptop and the backpack, which contained the stolen Alliance drone, the last of the Canadian cash, the blue portal crystal, and Warden Storm’s heavy revolver.
‘Hey, mate,’ Drake said. He shuffled away from Irene, just a bit, as they had been leaning against one another. ‘What’s the word?’
Tristan glanced between them for a long moment, his eyes unreadable, then sat on the spare sun chair. ‘I think I figured something out,’ he said. ‘About that portal, from the drone data. I wanted to test it.’ He opened the backpack and the drone flew out, hovering just at head height. Tristan tapped a few keys on the laptop and the drone flew in a lazy circle.