The Light Thief

by David Webb

  Aniya smirked and looked up at the powerless, defunct dome far above their heads, a pure black surface that normally simulated an impressive starscape around this time of night. “Yeah, because that’s going so well right now.” She looked back down and cocked her head to the side, confused. “I thought they controlled that from the Hub.”

  He looked up and changed the subject. “How did your date with Everett go?”

  Aniya grumbled, crumpling up the paper in her hand. “It wasn’t a date, and you know it.”

  “Well, you’re going to marry him. Sounds like a date to me.”

  “I’m not going to marry him!” She let herself fall on the cot and folded her arms.

  “Let’s review, shall we?” Nicholas counted off on his fingers. “Wesley is too snobbish, Sean’s hair is too red, Calvin is too tall, and Axel is too lovey-dovey. What in the Web is wrong with Everett?”

  “I’d rather not get into the specifics of tonight’s so-called date.” She let out a sigh and collapsed on the bed. “I thought the Lightbringers were supposed to be good at matching people up. Look at my parents. They seem happy enough. But if this poor lot is the best they can do for me, I’m better off alone.”

  Nicholas laughed. “Have you ever considered that you, Aniya Lyons, are just unmarriable?”

  Aniya grabbed the pillow from the cot and smacked him. “You’re unmarriable.”

  “Nice comeback.” He grabbed the pillow and tossed it back at his friend. “I’m sure one of the pretty ladies will choose me one day.”

  “I might have picked you if you were in my pool. At least then we could grow old together and be lonely together.”

  “You make it sound so awful,” Nicholas said. “It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.”

  Aniya covered her ears and grinned, “Now you’re starting to sound like Axel.”

  “Hey, at least you get a choice. Not everyone got a happy ending like your parents did back when the Lightbringers chose for us.” Nicholas grimaced and glanced toward the house below. “You know, I’m friends with a guy who actually has no family, but I honestly don’t know which one of us has it worse.”

  Aniya’s smile faded. “To have no parents or to have parents who don’t care about each other or you? I vote you, but I can’t imagine not having a family either way.”

  Nicholas shrugged. “You can’t miss something you never had.”

  “The least they could have done was give you a brother or sister.”

  “I think it would have only made matters worse. Though I guess things are pretty bad when you file an appeal with the Lightbringers to have only one child just so you don’t have to spend any more time with your family than necessary.”

  Aniya looked away. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I’m not.” Nicholas sat down on the mattress next to her and gently placed a hand on her shoulder. “I do have a family, you know. And what family I have, I wouldn’t trade for the world.”

  Aniya dropped her gaze as Nicholas’s hand traveled down her arm.

  “Why do you want to leave?” Aniya stood and cleared her throat. “And don’t change the subject this time.”

  Nicholas looked up sharply. “Who said anything about leaving?”

  “Come on, I’m not dumb.” She looked away. “I know that Holendast is too far out from the Hub for any fancy programmers. Nobody cares enough to send anyone fancy our way. That’s why it’s the Hole. That’s why we love it here. Why would you ever want to leave?”

  “Because like you said, it’s too far out for any fancy programmers,” Nicholas said. “Programming is what I’m best at, and they’re wasting my potential by putting a trowel in my hand and calling me a bricklayer. I had another brick fall on my shoulder today, and it’s just a matter of time until one finds my head.”

  “You mean you don’t like your random work assignment?” Aniya scoffed. “At least they didn’t take you to the Hub against your will. Not like William, even though . . .” She trailed off and looked away.

  “I know, Aniya. I’m grateful that I don’t have to do that, and I don’t wish it on anyone. I was almost as crushed as you when they took William.”

  Aniya fiddled with her fingernails, refusing to look up.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  Still no response.

  Nicholas sighed. “Look, I can still visit occasionally. I wouldn’t just leave and never see you again.”

  He reached for her hand, but she pulled it away.

  “What do you want me to do, Aniya?” He finally gave up and stood, pacing away from her. “I can’t just stay here for the rest of my life, stuck in this grueling job that will probably kill me. I know what I’m good at, and I need to go do it. I could actually make this messed-up world a better place. Who knows, I might even be able to help find an alternative to the energy problem so people like your brother don’t have to go off to who knows where—”

  “He’s back,” Aniya whispered.

  “Who’s back?” Nicholas grew more frustrated at her interruption, even though he had forgotten his point in the middle of his rant.

  “William.”

  “William what?”

  Aniya stood up and grabbed Nicholas’s arms. “William is back, Nicholas. He’s come back.”

  He stared at her. “That’s impossible. They never would have let him go. That’s the whole point of the Citizen Tax.”

  “They didn’t.” She blinked, her eyes growing moist. “He was shot.”

  Nicholas froze. “What did you say?”

  “They shot him, Nicholas.” Her tears now flowed freely. “It doesn’t look good.”

  “How many times?”

  Sniffling, she looked up. “What?”

  “How many times did they shoot him?”

  “Th-three times.”

  Nicholas didn’t respond but stared at a point past Aniya’s face as a wave of realization washed over him.

  “Nicholas?”

  He snapped out of it and grabbed Aniya’s hand, pulling her to the other side of the roof. “You need to hear this.” Nicholas sat down in front of a large radio wired to a small tablet. “The last time we lost power, I told you that I wanted to find out how it was happening. So, I set up a trigger on my equipment to detect voltage loss and retrospectively capture audio from the Hub’s secure radio channels, which I’ve been able to gain access to thanks to brute-force reverse hashing.”

  Aniya groaned and wiped her tears from her eyes. “What did I tell you about English and Nerd being two different languages?”

  “Sorry. Basically, I hacked into the Hub’s secure communications and set it to record everything, automatically wiping all data every few days if I don’t save it. When the power went out this time, I saved all audio recorded in the hour leading up to it.”

  “I’m confused,” Aniya said. “How did you save it without power?”

  “Don’t make me explain batteries to you, you goof.”

  “Where did you get your hands on one? The Hole would be the last place I would expect to find one, and they’re not exactly cheap.”

  “Perks of my dad’s work. One of the few good things that man has given me. Anyway, this is the five minutes of the recording.”

  Nicholas pressed a button on his tablet, and a low voice spoke.

  “This is Alpha, responding to the breach in the reactor chamber.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “The officers are gone. Perhaps dead. We have an empty pod over here. The chain is corrupted, and the pillar is down.”

  “Do you have eyes on the intruder?”

  “Negative. They said there were two of them, but I don’t see anyone else.”

  “Keep looking.”

  The transmission went quiet.

  “No one else is down here. I can do a full sweep, but it would be faster to scan for biologics from the control room.”

  “Understood. Might as well get back here and run it. I don’t have an authorization key for th
at.”

  It went quiet again for a few minutes. Aniya looked up at Nicholas, shrugging, but he held up a finger and shook his head.

  The same low voice began speaking again, but it didn’t seem to mean anything to Aniya. After a while, however, and another long pause, the man’s voice took on a different tone.

  “I see them, control.”

  “Good. Hold and wait for reinforcements.”

  “No need.”

  “Alpha, wait!”

  BANG BANG.

  BANG.

  “Alpha, what is your status? We’re reporting an energy surge. I think they overloaded the reactor.”

  BANG.

  “Come in, Alpha. You need to get out of there before—”

  A loud squeal of feedback buzzed from the radio, and Aniya covered her ears in pain.

  “Sorry,” Nicholas said as he turned down the volume of the recording.

  “What was that?”

  Nicholas took a deep breath. “Three gunshots the first time, Aniya. I think your brother is in more trouble than you realize. I think he took out the power.”

  4

  William faded in and out of consciousness.

  When he was awake, it was like he observed the world through a pane of glass. He could see everything but had no way of communicating, no way to warn his family of the imminent danger. And even if he could, there was nothing he could say that wouldn’t put them at great risk.

  Lips moved, but William had no comprehension. His family’s words turned to muffled jumbles of nonsense. Occasionally, he could make out speech, but just as quickly as this understanding came, it left, and he was stuck again in a torturous limbo, unable to connect with the family he had so terribly missed.

  In.

  “He can’t stay here. Even in the basement, he can’t—”

  Out.

  In his mind’s eye, William held a hand up to the hazed glass separating him from his parents. It had been a lifetime. He barely recognized the family he had been forced to leave just three years ago, but at the same time, they were unmistakably, hauntingly familiar.

  “Mother.”

  He saw his mother turn toward him, and his hopes rose. Maybe she heard him. Maybe his body had managed to call out for her audibly.

  But she turned away again, and William banged his fists up against the glass in frustration.

  In.

  “—should be back any moment. You need to make it clear to her what this means.” William looked past his father’s anxious pacing to see Gareth sitting cross-legged by the wall.

  “We can’t do that to her. Besides, her Day is coming, and they’ll come looking for her.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Catherine. They’ll come looking for her no matter what. She has to—”

  Out.

  A bench materialized next to William, and he sat down, resting his face in his open palms.

  They needed to know.

  If they had any idea, they would have left their home a long time ago. It was no longer safe in the Web.

  Like it was ever really safe to begin with.

  But as much as he ached to tell them, he knew it wasn’t an option.

  The Lightbringers would find him. There was no doubt. So, if he chose to tell his family of the horrors that waited in the nether regions of the Hub, they would be subject to endless torture at the hands of an operative. Or worse, servitude.

  No, they couldn’t know. The best William could hope for was to go on the run again. Coming back to Holendast was foolish. Kendall should have sent him in the opposite direction, where no one would think to look for him.

  In.

  “—can keep him. They’re Sympathetics.”

  “Do you really think we can trust them?”

  “They have long been helpful to the cause. During the Uprising, they sheltered many of the rebels.”

  “But they—”

  Out.

  They were wasting time.

  Helpless and alone, William’s mind wandered, imagining the pain that awaited his family if he didn’t get away from them as soon as possible.

  His mother appeared as his feet, her lifeless body completely soaked in blood, staining her beautiful blonde hair a sickening shade of crimson.

  His father lay at his feet, his empty eyes looking up at him, his mouth frozen open in an eternal scream.

  The Lyons boy stared in horror, fighting back tears.

  “William.”

  He looked up, seeing his sister smiling back at him.

  For the first time, William felt hope, and he smiled, reaching a hand out to Aniya.

  But as soon as he touched her fingers, her hand burst into flame, melting the flesh off her bones at an incredible pace.

  Aniya’s phantom figure stepped back and watched her hand, emotionless, then looked back at her brother as the flame spread up her arm and engulfed her body whole.

  Then they were all gone.

  William was alone again. If it were possible, even more alone than before.

  Unable to even cry in a mass confusion of emotion, he instead stood up from the bench and thrust his fists against the glass harder than ever, growing ever more determined to break through and save his family from a horrible end.

  “Please hear me!”

  His fists began to bruise, the skin growing darker than the circles under his eyes.

  “You have to hear me!”

  Blood fell from his hands, but he ignored it.

  “They’re coming for you! Please, mother!”

  The bones in his hands cracked, then shattered.

  “Father!”

  In.

  “Is he okay?”

  William halted his barrage against his prison as he saw the girl he had made fun of relentlessly as a child.

  It was the girl with the wooden sword he had battled countless times as a youth. Sometimes he won. Sometimes, he intentionally stumbled to the ground, allowing her to claim victory and poke the splintered end of the sword into his back in triumph.

  This was no vision. She was here in the room with him, standing just inside the shack. She was leaning up against the door, her face downcast as she looked down at her almost-dead brother.

  William fell silent and simply placed his deformed hands on the glass, his heart breaking for the precious girl he had defended from bullies time and time again. The girl who would suddenly need to grow up sooner than he had ever wished.

  The bones in his hands reformed again, the skin stitching itself up and the blood evaporating.

  “I honestly don’t know.” His father’s voice came from across the room. “We haven’t been able to get any response from him. Gareth said he may never wake up.”

  Aniya’s face fell further, and she approached William’s body.

  His mother spoke up. “It’s still possible, of course. I saw worse than this in the war. But if he does wake up, there’s no telling how long it could take. In any case, he can’t stay out here on the bed. We need to put him in the basement for the night.”

  William’s hopes soared. This was the longest he had been able to hear his family. Maybe there was hope after all.

  “Leave him out just a little while longer, Dad. I just want to be with him for a little while.”

  After rubbing his beard for a moment, their father nodded. “I’ll give you a few minutes. Gareth, would you and Catherine join me outside for a moment?”

  William heard the front door open and close, but he did not take his eyes off his sister.

  They were alone.

  “Oh, William. What did you get yourself into?”

  He let his hands slide down the glass and hang loosely at his sides. She was the last person he wanted to drag into this. It may have been too late for his parents, given their past, but she was innocent. She knew little about the Uprising, Salvador, or the Chancellor. And if William had his way, she would stay ignorant.

  “Is it true? Did you kill the power?”

  William looked up in alar
m. How could she already know?

  “I spoke to Nicholas. He hacked into the government’s radios. I heard what you did.”

  Oh, Nicky. His ingenuity was always going to get him into trouble one day. But William never imagined that it would be his own fault.

  Aniya opened her mouth to speak, but she closed it again and shook her head.

  In the lifetime he had spent with his sister, he never once witnessed her at a loss for words. A rare sight indeed.

  William’s right hand grew warm again, but there was no pain. It was a pleasant warmth, the first comforting thing he had felt in a long time.

  He looked up and through the glass again. His sister held his right hand in the waking world. He could feel it now, his hand growing warmer with every squeeze of comfort from hers.

  Shuddering as heat spread through his lifeless body, William pressed his right hand up against the cold glass.

  Almost instantly, the glass radiated the heat from his hand and seemed to pulse, rippling out visible waves along the barrier that separated William’s mind from his body.

  “Please come back, Will. We all need you.” A tear trickled from Aniya’s right eye, gently coursing down her cheek and dripping onto their joined hands.

  William felt that drop of moisture even in the prison of his mind, and he watched as his hand sizzled, smoke rising from his flesh. The glass surrounding his hand crackled, growing hotter and hotter.

  “I need you.”

  Aniya squeezed his hand tight.

  William’s right hand exploded in heat and pressure, and it pressed deep into the glass as if it had a mind of its own.

  The glass buckled from the pressure, and with one final pulse, the glass shattered into a million pieces.

  He opened his eyes.

  “Hello, Aniya.”

  5

  Aniya woke up early the next morning, thanks to a miniature alarm clock strapped to her skin that vibrated fifteen minutes before the rest of the Web would wake up.

  She smiled as she removed the nodules stuck to her chest. An alarm clock powered by her body heat. Nicholas’s genius was hard to ignore.

  Taking advantage of her extra fifteen minutes, she quietly stood from her mattress on the floor. She was already completely dressed in thermal underwear, leather pants, a cotton sweater, and a long cloak. No power meant no central heating, which made for a cold Hole indeed.