The Raging Ones

by Krista Ritchie

  I don’t want that on my last day.

  I meander aimlessly along the cobblestone walk and into a dim, deserted alleyway, squeezed between a firehouse and a laundromat. Feet numb in my boots, arms quaking, tongue stuck dry to the roof of my mouth. I expect to meet another street, but instead I stare wearily at a brick wall.

  Dead end.

  If this is irony from the gods, I’m too nippy to laugh.

  Something wet drips from my nose. With trembling fingers, I brush the liquid. Red. Blood. I’ve never had a nosebleed before.

  Maybe this is the start of my death.

  No fear in my bones, I dig in my pocket for the last of my Juggernaut and count them in my palm. Three blue pills. I look up, only to be met with churning purple smoke. Icy slush crunches beneath my boots.

  So this is where I end?

  This is where I’ll die.

  “At least let me go without pain,” I whisper.

  Stay indoors.

  Stay away from large groups of people.

  Relax. Stay calm.

  Be at peace.

  I take a seat beside a rusted bicycle and a dumpster. I might not be able to fulfill all of these laws, but I will die regardless.

  I might as well do it on my terms.

  I carefully inspect each round pill. Most Fast-Trackers will go out just like this, but usually forgoing some rules and surrounding themselves with friends. Not alone in an alleyway, with iced sludge soaking their bottom and seeping up the hem of their slacks.

  It’s not midnight yet, but maybe this will be enough Juggernaut to knock me out for much longer than that. If the drug won’t kill me, the cold will.

  I toss the pills back and swallow.

  A weak smile inches my lips a bit higher. “Happy Deathday, Franny,” I say, congratulating myself. It’s not the celebration or finery I’d hoped for. I’m certainly not staring at a hand-painted mural, but this one day didn’t define the rest of them.

  And I lived hard and fast and full.

  Now I can be at peace.

  TWO

  Court

  One day later

  Tonight, I wait for a man to die.

  I share this in common with everyone inside the lavish ballroom.

  It may be the only thing we share.

  Crystal chandeliers in the Catherina Hotel gleam as bright as the jewels on women’s necks. Champagne flutes pass between hands. I pluck one from a tray and glide farther along the red carpet. I elevate my carriage, my assured stride not slowing.

  Curious eyes float to me. As though processing my existence.

  I won’t be a fleeting memory for those that gawk and this simple notion digs into my stomach.

  Living in Bartholo for a good portion of two years, I’ve avoided stepping foot into the city’s most prestigious hotel.

  Now I force myself into the ballroom.

  My shoulders and strong build are lined with tension that I hope to hide. The red carpet beneath my soles might as well be steel blades. Each wrenching foot farther I think, I don’t belong.

  But they can’t see this. They can’t see beyond my calculated exterior.

  They see the dapper suit and the shined boots. Which, to be fair, aren’t even mine.

  They see my gait. Confidence encasing me like an outer shell.

  My pulse slows to a better rhythm.

  Make the bet. Make your money. And be done. No lingering. No backups or diversions. This is it.

  I can’t fail tonight.

  The ballroom is divided into multiple high-top tables with bookies dressed in brass-buttoned red suits. All the scarlet hues are designed to perpetuate an air of warmth. When outside these very gold-glinted walls, it’s nothing but gray, white, purple—and cold.

  Bartholo News plays in a constant scroll across a hefty, bulbous television, hoisted near the gambling area. One of the nicest televisions I’ve ever seen. They’re luxuries most can’t afford.

  Nearby, older men and women puff cigars and peruse newspapers for the city’s daily gossip and weather reports.

  I train my gaze on the television screen, barely audible over the chattering guests. A rosy-cheeked news anchor stands in front of a ruddy brick mansion. Gates closed. Her umbrella catches flurries and I strain my eyes to read the closed captioning:… award-winning actor, Pat Pincastle, resides in his home and awaits his death.

  I attended the cinema when I was a little boy and had the privilege of viewing Pat Pincastle’s gritty performances in a heated auditorium and on a brightly lit screen.

  I’d like to say that we’ve all gathered to celebrate Pat’s life, but when famous people die, it’s just another easy way to earn.

  “It’s already well past ten—will the bastard just die already?” an old man complains. He strokes his slender gray mustache as I approach his high-top table.

  Sipping champagne, his brown eyes are casted angrily at the television.

  “One more hour, Tal,” a redheaded woman coos. “I have him down at nine o’night on the spot.”

  I slip up to the table. “Heya.” I gesture to the bookie. He abandons small talk with a brunette as I say, “Five thousand on a hemorrhage.”

  Tal and the redhead’s eyes shift probingly to me. I stay fixed on my purpose and slide my money to the bookie. While he meticulously examines the wad of bills, my mouth dries. Not all the bills have been mine for long. Some I just “acquired” on the street. Not that he can tell.

  Bills are bills.

  You’re fine, I convince myself. He won’t notice.

  He won’t notice.

  An agonizing second stretches too long and I only force my shoulders to relax when the bookie nods, sans discourse.

  I restrain from expelling a breath of relief, my face firm, body stiff. The bookie opens a bills drawer, flush beneath the high-top table.

  Interesting. I didn’t see that there, but I mute all idealistic thoughts about jumping the table and stealing the contents of the drawer. It’ll never work. I know impossibilities when I see them.

  My relief is short-lived when Tal, the older man, edges close. The redhead squeezes in on my other side, her cheek in her hand.

  I roughly clear my throat as though to say, Move away. They don’t shift, not even a toe. Frustration hardens my squared jaw.

  “Hemorrhage?” Tal snorts at me. “Do you like losing your money? This man is sixty-two. He’ll surely have a stroke.”

  Irritation creeps up my spine and I readjust my hold on the champagne flute. “Do you know Pat Pincastle’s health records?”

  “No.” His eyes sweep me top to bottom in suspicion. “Do you?”

  I couldn’t leave this bet to chance. Bartholo’s hospital has almost no security, so finding a nurses’ station with patient records was easier than I even imagined. I learned enough to make a logical prediction.

  High blood pressure, complaints of sensitivity to light, frequently imbibes alcohol and smokes cigars, and has a family history of hemorrhages.

  However, gambling on deaths with insider knowledge has been illegal for many years. Which is why I force a dry smile. “Of course I don’t know his records, but since you don’t either, you shouldn’t be so sure he’ll die of a stroke.” I take a small sip from my glass.

  The redhead drums the tabletop, her gaze twinkling at me. “How many years do you have on you?”

  Champagne barely passes the lump forming in my throat. I lick the sweet liquid off my lips. “I’m seventeen and still at university.”

  Tal scoffs. “You’re seventeen?” He holds on to the one fact that is actually true. Most guess that I’ve lived twenty years so far, which I attribute to my height.

  I think of Mykal.

  He says I look older because of my assertive demeanor and gray, grim eyes. When he said that the first time, I stared at Mykal like he smoked something from a Fast-Tracker pipe. “Grim eyes?”

  “You look like you’ve seen too much—let’s put it that way,” Mykal said, chewing on a dry root. “
At least you don’t have hard-hearted eyes.”

  Mykal has hard-hearted blue eyes. As cold as morning frost.

  Tal squints at me, as though hoping I’ll flash my identification for proof. He can believe I’m whatever age he’d like me to be—that’s the least of my worries. The longer I have to wait for Pat Pincastle to die, the longer I risk Tal and the middle-aged redhead asking harder questions.

  Like my name.

  Just as his mouth opens, melodic bells chime throughout the packed ballroom. People fall into hushed whispers, the television heard clearly now. Gazes lift to the screen.

  “Pat Pincastle has just died.” The news anchor smiles. “I repeat, Pat Pincastle has died.” She pauses, only for a brief second, before adding the colloquial, “Let his soul find peace.”

  Voices escalate with brash gossip. I crane my neck to read the closed captioning again:… cause of death will be reported shortly.

  No one would’ve bet whether or not he’d die the next day or the next day after that. The gambling odds are zero. So was there ever a chance Pat could’ve survived beyond his deathday?

  Little children would question. Most usually do.

  Adults give the same rhetoric. “In time, you will watch everyone you know die on their deathday. No sooner, no later. Then you won’t ask any longer.”

  It was true.

  I did watch. I did see. I wondered if my brother Illian would live beyond his six years. He didn’t, no matter how much he would’ve liked to. No matter how much I loved him.

  He still died on the very day he was slated to die.

  He just shut his eyes to sleep and never woke again.

  I even wondered whether we could change the course of nature ourselves. Then I watched friends, all before their deathdays, place the barrel of a gun in their mouths. To test this theory.

  I watched them pull the trigger.

  I watched the gun jam.

  I saw a boy of ten years replicate them, in jest, and blew off half his jaw. He didn’t direct the gun to a fatal spot. He would live, albeit injured, but he would live nonetheless.

  Eventually, we all do stop asking. We stop wondering. And we accept the number of years we’ll come to live.

  The redheaded woman slumps in defeat. “He couldn’t hold out for forty minutes longer? Honestly.” She gulps the last of her champagne.

  “I still have ten thousand on a stroke, Margie,” Tal says. “Don’t sour the energy.”

  Margie snorts into a laugh. “Your energy.” Then she mimes sharing a secret with me, her voice too loud for one. “Word of advice, sweetie, don’t marry a historian. The dust from all the books does something to the brain.” She chuckles again and waves for a server.

  Focus on the screen. I only allow my eyes to flit away for less than a second or two. Out of all the distractions I’m embarrassed that it’s this chatty couple that pulls my gaze.

  “History is a fine subject,” Tal argues. “You.” He snaps his fingers near my jaw. I’m trying to will the cause of death to arrive on screen. Don’t talk to the old man. Let him be.

  He snaps again, persistent and most likely bored.

  It takes a great deal of energy to meet Tal’s eyes, but I do, lifting my brows in question.

  He puffs out his chest, all proud that he caught my attention. “What are you studying at university?”

  I’m not at university.

  An incoming server interrupts my train of thought. He carries a tray of colorful fruit tarts: kiwi, strawberry, blueberry. My mouth waters at the sight of perfectly sliced bright vermillion apples atop a flaky pastry.

  Since the Great Freeze and the dense lilac clouds, any crops that struggle to grow in artificial sunlight are scarce. For much longer than even my lifetime, fruit has been a luxury. I haven’t seen an apple in years and I was six the last time I tasted one.

  “Heya.” Tal waves his hand in front of my face. “It’s rude not to answer a man’s question.” He pokes my shoulder.

  Hostility springs into my rigid arms, but I don’t hold the faint feeling for long. “I just didn’t realize the Catherina had apples.”

  “Just grown in their private greenhouses,” Margie says before filling her mouth with a tart. She closes her eyes with a soft moan.

  The server offers me one. Against my stomach’s protest, I shake my head.

  I’m not one of them.

  I won’t eat their apples and pretend that I didn’t see a Fast-Tracker—high out of his mind—begging for scraps right outside these very doors.

  I can do many things: wear their clothes, speak their words, walk their pace, lift my chin and steady my gait—but for some gods-forsaken reason, I decide that I can’t do this. No matter how much I should.

  I struggle and curse myself. Just take the damned tart, Court.

  I waver but never reach for one.

  Their inquisitive eyes bore into me like serrated daggers.

  I could have taken it. I should have.

  What’s another deceit? But somewhere deep inside, my soul is begging me to hold it. Just this once, at the very least.

  “What did you say your name was?” Tal asks.

  My pulse quickens. I don’t speak.

  Because I sense Mykal.

  More strongly.

  A chill stings my fingertips, so I slip my hands into leather gloves and shrug on my black overcoat. Almost everything is more difficult when I sense him. When I feel him. When he’s outside. In blistering cold that contrasts the lush warmth of the ballroom.

  Jarring wind smacks my face. I tighten my eyes closed and swing my head down. I sense him running through the bitter air. Through deep powdered snow.

  My ankles are numb.

  Urgency—whether mine or his, I can’t distinguish fully—seeps into my veins. As my heartbeat rages forward like prey racing to survive—I turn my pocketed hands into fists. Attempting, rather pathetically, to focus on myself and not on him.

  I’m warm. In a hotel.

  Someone double-taps my shoulder and I force my eyes open. Margie rubs my arm. “You’re shivering, sweetie.” Her eyes dance around the room with worry. “If you’re ill, you should see a physician.”

  Influentials dislike illness if it keeps them from their studies, but most find ways to thrive regardless. Some of the best visionaries have lost limbs. Injuries don’t bar people from being extraordinary.

  I shiver as raw cold snakes up my spine. I tremble more than I like.

  I’m not ill. And I can’t describe this feeling inside of me. You wouldn’t believe me, even if I could.

  I rest an elbow on the high-top table and motion to the server for a glass of water. I try not to draw more attention to myself, so I mutter an “I’m fine” to Margie and her husband.

  I continue to sense him.

  I can tell that he’s stopped running.

  He’s still.

  His body heat escalates, agitation brewing, but I’ll take the warmth, even this kind. If I close my eyes, if I concentrate on him, I might be able to sense him speaking. I wouldn’t be able to hear the words, but I could feel his lips move.

  I don’t zone in on him to that degree. Instead, I focus on my own issues. Margie collects the water from the server and pushes it at me. “Drink, drink.”

  I take the glass and slowly sip. “I felt a draft,” I explain and then add to throw off suspicion, “Didn’t you hear? Casia rations are decreasing this month. Government efforts to reduce the smoke.” Complete and utter shit, but I say the words like I heard them from President Morcastle himself.

  Margie balks. “They can’t possibly do that. We’re already freezing enough as it is.” She tugs her fur coat closed to emphasize the fact. “I feel the awful draft too. Tal, touch my forehead. Am I cold?”

  Tal grumbles before reaching across me and taking his wife’s temperature. “Dare say, you’re as cold as three hells and as shrill as it too.”

  Margie swats his hand away and scoffs.

  I stare blankly ahead
. My true sentiments pound and thrash to burst forth. I swallow bitterness, resentment—enough that my stomach churns.

  No one, not a single soul, can talk to me about freezing unless they’ve crossed the Free Lands. Acres of barren ice and hundred-mile winds that slap exposed flesh. Bartholo, with its electricity and casia, is a sauna in comparison.

  I set my water on the red velvet tabletop, my body flushed in much more comfortable warmth.

  Mykal must be inside.

  I turn, just seeing him crest the entrance. The doorman eyes my friend up and down as though he let in a stray, mangy creature.

  I told my friend to wear a belt, black slacks, and shirt, plus a typical wool coat, hooded to combat the elements.

  Mykal Kickfall did as I asked, but the dark green coat is not how I left it. Bark-colored muskox skins and fur are crudely sewn to create two sleeves, a hood, and a new neckline. With Mykal’s bold stance and broad shoulders, you’d think he killed the giant animal with his rough hands and pieced the ugly garment himself.

  Which he did.

  I just about roll my eyes. No one in Altia wears the rugged muskox clothing worn by those in the Free Lands. I don’t have to ask why Mykal altered the coat.

  I remember what he told me. “Why should I bother with their clothes, Court? They’ll see me and say You, Mykal, are a part of no village. You have no country, no homeland. You’re on your own. You’re a part of nothin’—you’re a Hinterlander.”

  I don’t want it to be true. Because he needs to blend in as well as I can and we’re running out of time. It’d be a lie to say that I had faith in Mykal’s ability to pass as a citizen of Altia. I didn’t.

  I don’t.

  At least not as much as I sincerely wish to.

  I talked to the doorman in advance, in fear that Mykal wouldn’t be allowed inside. I told him that my brother would be joining me tonight. “Let in a Mykal Kickfall,” I said. “No matter how he appears, he’s my relation. I’ll take responsibility for anything he may do that you find inappropriate.”

  The doorman agreed, but across the ballroom, I still spot displeasure curling his lip at the sight of my friend.