Citadel: The Concordant Sequence

by Matthew S. Cox

  “That’s the Citadel?” Kiera pointed.

  “Yes. It’s a long way. It would take days to walk there.”

  She gawked. “How big is it?”

  “It made me feel like an ant. Much bigger than any of the ruins.” Mala finished with Kiera’s hair and began washing her own. “We do not have much time. Hurry and make yourself clean.”

  “Okay.” Kiera did the best she could with her hands and no soap.

  They air-dried on the walk back to the house. Teryn had breakfast waiting for them, having awakened before dawn to bathe himself and be ready. Kiera, still damp, slipped into her poncho as Mala put her dress back on. Together, they sat to eat.

  After breakfast, they left the house and walked down the path to the village center where people had already started to assemble. A long folding table like the ones from her school cafeteria had been set up near the water collector. An older woman with grey hair and long robes of dog-hide stood upon it, holding a staff made from a broken floor lamp. Beads, fuses, and wires hung from the top. She wore a headdress of metal shards that resembled bird’s wings, and held herself with an air of authority.

  Kiera almost laughed at the sight of her, but having come from civilization didn’t mean much when the world had gone primitive. Mr. Powers’ class spent a few weeks on mythology, and she remembered how some cultures reacted with violence if anyone mocked their superstitions. Hopefully, these villagers wouldn’t burn her alive if she laughed at an old woman in a ridiculous outfit, but she decided to keep her head down and pretend to accept it.

  Teryn and Mala walked with her into the crowd, coming to a stop near the front close to the table. The old woman smiled like a kindly grandmother at them. Kiera found herself returning the smile and clasped her hands in front of herself, waiting patiently.

  Before long, the village center filled with about a hundred adults of varying age. She spotted the old woman who’d watched her walk into town from her porch, the idiot shopkeeper who ‘didn’t do charity,’ and the two boys she’d seen at the collector. Constant murmuring surrounded her, but no one sounded annoyed at being here.

  A tickle on her foot made her look down―at a nine-inch-long black centipede flowing over her toes.

  She let off a gasp, froze rigid as a statue, and pressed herself against Teryn with a whine leaking out of her nose.

  When he looked down, she pointed.

  “They eat other bugs. It won’t sting you if you keep still. Always check any clothes you leave on the ground for firelegs before you put them on. Their sting hurts, but they only bite if threatened.”

  “Uhh.” She shivered as it crept over her left foot and onto the dirt. As soon as it no longer touched her skin, she stepped away and clung to him, staring at the creature as it crawled off into the crowd.

  Other adults shied away from it, which further freaked her out.

  Teryn picked her up. “Unless you get one stuck under your clothes, or wind up stepping on one, they won’t sting you.”

  She shivered. “Why is everyone afraid of it?”

  “Because when they do sting, it hurts a lot. People are afraid because they believe they bite all the time.”

  “Oh.” Kiera decided she preferred not having her feet near the ground for a little while, and held on to him.

  “Welcome,” said the old woman, who she assumed to be Elder Lonna. “Is everyone here, other than Menaeus, who is too sick to leave his bed?”

  Murmurs of agreement spread over the crowd.

  Elder Lonna raised her hands. “I know you’ve all been eager to discuss Jeral’s water diversion request, but before we move on to that, we have a wonderful announcement.” She beckoned toward Teryn and Mala.

  They approached the table.

  Mala climbed up to stand beside the elder, and faced the villagers. “I announce a daughter to the village.” She quivered with joy. “Her name is Kiera.”

  Teryn hefted her up and set her standing on the table.

  All the villagers, except for some toddlers, looked at her. She gazed out at the sea of faces, most smiling. A Japanese-looking girl close in age to her wearing a poncho of thin tan cloth peeked out from behind her mother and smiled. After an initial spike of insecurity at being the center of the entire town’s attention, Kiera waved and smiled.

  The elder leaned over. “Child, Teryn and Mala have opened their home to you, and with it, our village. Since you are no infant, it is customary for you to declare yourself, and you shall be regarded as though you came from her womb.”

  Kiera turned her head to meet the elder’s gaze. “Declare myself? What am I supposed to say?”

  Elder Lonna patted her cheek. “If you consider yourself part of their family, declare that they are your mother and father to everyone as witness.”

  “Okay.” Kiera took Mala’s hand and faced the village. “My name is Kiera. I am the daughter of Mala and Teryn.”

  “This is my daughter,” said Teryn.

  Mala wiped a tear of joy. “This is my daughter.”

  The village all said, “Kiera” at the same time, except for a few of the smaller children. A chaotic murmur followed, with some saying “Welcome,” others clapping, and a few muttering praise to the Sky Spirits.

  Elder Lonna placed her hand on the back of Kiera’s head. “We know this child.”

  “We know Kiera,” chanted the villagers.

  The elder bowed her head at them, with a friendly glint in her eyes. Teryn lifted her back to stand on the ground before helping Mala climb down. Villagers shifted into a procession. One by one, every adult approached. Women bowed at Teryn and hugged Mala before hugging Kiera and speaking their names to introduce themselves. Men shook hands with Teryn, bowed at Mala, and either patted Kiera on the head, hugged her, or simply bowed before speaking their names.

  After they had all met her, the villagers formed again into a crowd, facing Elder Lonna. When they quieted, the old woman explained a request by a farmer named Jeral who wanted to construct a small pipe to divert some water out of the river so he could expand his farm. The discussion of his offering vegetables in trade for help building it followed the general opinion of the village being in favor of doing it.

  The Gathering continued for a short while more with discussions of small issues mostly about farm production or who received acceptance for a ‘job’ in the Citadel. Elder Lonna eventually announced the assembly over, and the crowd dispersed, heading back to their respective homes.

  Kiera looked around at everyone, lost in a swirl of hope and sadness. This place, this feeling of community, was like nothing she’d ever imagined. Even in the ideal suburban falsehood she had thought to be real, the people in the next house never talked to her or her parents. In less than an hour, she’d been welcomed, smiled at, and embraced by around a hundred people.

  In the midst of a destroyed world, she dared think she might be happy.

  16

  A Strange New Life

  Over the next several weeks, Kiera fell into a routine around her new home. Some of her days went toward chores like cleaning pots, tidying up the house, tending the garden with Mala, or assisting with meals. About once a week, Mom went off to the Citadel, trying to retake the test for a work permit. Whenever that happened, Teryn cooked, usually timing it such that their evening meal wound up being ready within minutes of her returning home. Still, she hadn’t managed to pass whatever test she had to take, but her spirits remained high. Kiera tried to help, but her sixth-grade robotics class felt like two-plus-two compared to the material in the book.

  The couple who’d taken her in treated her well, and she soon stopped thinking about Legacy or his Child of Earth prophecy stuff. This home may have been primitive, but her new family’s warmth made up for it. She tried not to hold it against her bio-parents. They had lived in another world, a world that ended around sixty years ago. A world of corporate executives, lawyers, and fourteen-hour workdays. In their way, they did as best as they could for her. What Teryn and
Mala lacked in money, they more than made up for with emotion—and time spent with her.

  She’d come to learn that they’d been trying to have a baby for about ten years, ever since Mala turned seventeen and they had been able to marry. He was older by five years, but none of the other women had any patience for the ‘crazy tinker who roams all over the place.’ He’d often disappear for days at a time, his pack laden with things he referred to as ‘pre-Cloudfall relics’ when he returned. Other times, he’d spend most of a day in the forest hunting boar, sometimes wild dogs. He spoke of other beasts, enormous creatures with red-brown fur. They posed no threat to people beyond accidental trampling, but his bow and arrow wouldn’t kill them. Once in a while, he’d find one a pack of dogs had taken down, and skin what he could. The villagers called them mammoths, but they sounded more like bison than giant elephants.

  Kiera recognized almost everything he brought back: flashlights, e-book readers, laptops, toasters, all manner of consumer electronics. That she understood ancient technology so well fascinated him, and the two spent many hours together at his tables trying to fix things.

  Dad―for simplicity’s sake, she’d accepted calling them Mom and Dad―taught her about electronics and circuits. Her knowledge of what devices had been used for acted like a key, allowing him to figure stuff out he’d been stuck on for years. Within a month of living there, the two had become almost inseparable. That bond she’d always missed with her biological father swooped in out of nowhere, catching her quite off guard. But she didn’t mind. Bio-Dad was dead, and couldn’t be jealous. He probably would’ve been happy she found these people.

  Kiera never imagined a world without video games could be anything but permanently boring, but she only thought about them for a little bit while trying to fall asleep each night. Despite being silly, she did kinda miss them. Video games had been a huge part of her life before jumping into a tank of slime―and even while inside it. Heck her entire life that she remembered basically was a video game.

  After breakfast two days into her fifth week, she perched on her father’s lap watching him fix a toaster oven at the table in the scrapyard behind the house. Much to her surprise, his tools didn’t appear primitive. The soldering iron he presently wielded had a self-contained power cell and looked futuristic compared to anything she’d remembered from her pre-tank life.

  She fanned the poncho at her chest, trying to get some air moving under it. Early April brought temperatures past a hundred some days. Dad thought the heat unusual for the season, and said it didn’t get too much hotter, even in the middle of summer. Whenever the temperature became unbearable, most of the town would go swimming. The artificial river ended at a lake in the middle of the pine forest to the northwest of the village. Sometimes, people would even jump in the river if they didn’t feel like walking all the way to the lake.

  He took a familiar black box with angled sides out of his pack and smirked at it while looking it over. “Hmm. Not sure what this is.”

  “It’s a Supernova 2!” Kiera bounced. “An old one….”

  “A what?” He patted her head.

  “A video game console. I used to have one like that.” She happily explained what it did, as well as the idea of video games in general. “That’s where the power cable goes. Those two are USB ports. That’s HDMI, and that little one there is fiber optic audio, like if you wanna connect the sound to a big stereo.”

  Teryn beamed with pride, patting her on the back and ruffling her hair. “That’s wonderful! Where did you learn all this? You’ve seen things even I haven’t and I’ve roamed all the way to the Torment and back. I wonder if you were taken from the Citadel.” His joy faded.

  “No, Dad.” She leaned into him. “I’ve never even been to the Citadel. I lived before Cloudfall. I was born in 2022.”

  “How is that possible?” He ran his hand over her hair. “You’re not even twelve yet.”

  Kiera stared at her arm, unable to tell where the needle mark had been. “My other parents worked for a big company. They were always at the office. The news kept talking about the planet being sick and war and stuff. One night, they woke me up and dragged me right out of bed to the car. Didn’t even let me get dressed or pack or anything. They took me to where they worked and we went into the basement like a hospital. I didn’t want to go, but they pulled me down the hallway. A man in a white coat gave me some shots, and they made me get undressed then get into this tank. Mom said it would feel like I fell asleep and woke right back up. They were both so scared I thought they were lying. They wouldn’t tell me anything. I don’t remember much before that… friends or school or anything. I know I played a lot of video games. Then I was in this virtual world. We used to live in an apartment building, way up high. I never went outside and don’t remember if I even had friends. But in the VR, we had a house in the suburbs.”

  He snugged his arm around her. “That’s a big story, but I believe you. I can’t think of any other way a kid your age would know what all these things are. There aren’t a lot of people, even those inside the Citadel, who even care what the world was like before Cloudfall.”

  “What was Cloudfall?” She twisted to look at him. “Do you know?”

  “Only the stories. I’m not that old.” He winked. “They say that the world was much different before the Sky Spirits became angry. The people angered them, so they grabbed the world and squeezed it until the clouds fell to the sands. Everything died, but the Sky Spirits knew regret, and brought back a small group of people and gave us a place to live where the Torment cannot touch us.”

  She furrowed her eyebrows. “Do you believe that?”

  Teryn laughed. “When I was your age, I did. You find enough things like this”―he gestured at his table full of junk―“and the Sky Spirits start to sound like magic.”

  Kiera leaned against him while he tinkered with the old game console, taking the screws out to open it up. Aside from being packed full of silt, it didn’t appear damaged. She tried to remember more of her life before the VR lie, which several weeks removed, felt more and more false. Maybe being frozen for so long hurt her brain that she couldn’t remember things like grandparents or real friends or even what her non-VR home had looked like. That the place cost a lot of money to live in stood out, but nothing else about it came to mind. A scrap of memory floated up from the nothingness, her and her mother scurrying through a crowd, everyone wearing masks to breathe and plastic raincoats to keep… pollution from touching their skin or clothes. Ninth birthday… going somewhere to have fun, but the air had made her sick.

  “Pollution,” said Kiera.

  “Hmm?” Dad stopped puffing air at the machine and glanced at her. “What’s that?”

  “Cloudfall… it’s pollution,” said Kiera, staring at the Supernova 2.

  He gave the machine a shake, knocking dirt out of it. “Oh. I can understand that.”

  “I remembered. We had to wear special stuff to go outside.” She held her hands over her mouth and nose. “A mask to breathe and plastic coats to keep the poison off. The air could burn us, and made our stuff fall apart if we left it outside too long.”

  Dad set the machine down, tapping his fingers. “It sounds like the Torment, but not as bad. Going into the clouds is deadly. Even with masks. They say the Sky Spirits’ venom floats like mist in the air. It has only to fall on your skin and it can kill you.”

  “I think that’s what my parents were running from. They knew the pollution was going to get worse, too bad for people to live. They figured it out before everyone else did, so they tried to hide in the tanks.” She nudged a bolt back and forth on the table, frowning. “Lots of people died. I guess everyone who’s more than a hundred miles away from the Citadel. The whole world.”

  “Hmm.” He scratched his chin.

  Whispering caught her ear from behind. Kiera turned to look. The two boys she’d seen at the fountain (which she had since learned to be a water extractor that pulled moisture right out of t
he air) stood by the front yard wall, alongside the Japanese girl about her age. The other girl’s poncho had no hood and had been made of the same thin, coarse fabric as Mom’s dress. The kids had come by a few times, though they only lingered by the wall and had yet to speak to her.

  “Dad?” asked Kiera.

  “Hmm?” He looked up from the game console. “This is a fascinating device, but I don’t think it will be of any use. There’s no electrical power out here, and I think a piece is missing.”

  “It needs a TV, and controllers… and the Internet. Pretty sure that’s gone.” She nodded toward the front yard. “Why don’t those kids talk to me? Is it because I look different? Or did they hear that Child of Earth thing, too?”

  He laughed. A few weeks ago, she’d told him of her crawling out of the vent and the old man seeing it and believing her to be a giant baby being born. Dad had chuckled on and off for over an hour after that. “Most people in Exxo are a cautious about the things I have back here. Something… exploded a few years ago. No one got hurt, but they’re all afraid of being too close. That’s why they don’t come in the yard. I don’t know why they haven’t spoken to you… but there’s no law or tradition or anything.”

  “Huh…” She shrugged. “That’s weird.”

  Dad fluffed at her hair. “You are the only person I’ve ever seen with hair this color or skin so white.”

  “I promise I won’t take your soul.”

  “What?” He tickled her side. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She grinned. “Something people used to say about redheads.”

  He set the game console on the table to his left, grumbling about it being useless.

  “Can I have it? If you can’t trade it?”