The Last City Box Set

by Logan Keys

  I’m breathing raggedly and the sound eclipses the last note. It takes time to recover, to focus and calm the rage inside. My search of the keys now yields nothing but their simplicity. They are not evil or good. They are what I make them be and I’m in a stupor to realize where I am momentarily. I look up to Lucy, who’s asleep on her side, a gentle smile on her face.

  The noises I make to gather the piano don’t wake her.

  Neither do my hands on the glass and the choked sound from my throat.

  Goodbye, my friend.

  This is goodbye.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Crystal

  The door to my cell is thrown open and I shake with dread thinking they’ve come to purge me. Karma has ordered it. This is the last day on earth as me again, and that’s a scarier thought than I’d like to admit.

  The people of Anthem, they want me, I mean they truly need and want me, but now I’m going away. And while in the end they may be better for it, I’m frightened, and all the previous bravery has fled.

  But instead of slowly leading me to my doom, a guard rushes in, sloppily reaching for me, groping my body and hands, trying to untie me so fast that I struggle. “Get off of me!” Panic makes my voice shrill.

  “It’s me.”

  My body stiffens at the familiar deep voice. “Oh my God!”

  “It’s me, Crystal, it’s me.”

  He reaches for the helmet and my eyes shoot to the cameras. “Don’t you dare!”

  He pauses, and I can sense his smile underneath the helmet. I want to say his name so badly, but I know someone is listening.

  “What are you doing?” I hiss.

  “Just play it cool. I’ve got the keys.” He unlocks my wrists and I rub them, standing, trying not to look excited. But also, I’m freaking out.

  Once we are in the hallways, I check both directions and push him up against the wall. “What are you doing, Jeremy?” I say next to his ear.

  “Breaking you out.”

  I soften and touch his shoulder. “If your mother finds you. If she gets to you…” Tears fill my eyes. That he would do this. That he would try this idiotic plan. But I’m also frustrated. This could ruin everything we have worked so hard for. If Karma held us both all would be lost.

  “You have to get out of here,” I whisper, and I pull him toward the way out.

  Once we’re outside, he tears off his helmet.

  “Put it back on!”

  “Look,” Jeremy says. “I don’t know how much time we have but…” He drags me to the fence behind where they purge the prisoners. Guards pass the other way so we hide between boxes in the shadows. Jeremy is breathing heavily inches from my face. He smiles, his eyes searching mine. He touches my chin. “You didn’t think I could let you die did you, Crys? I am the one that’s supposed to do that.”

  And I realize his mental idea. Jeremy hadn’t thought to get out of here whatsoever. He figured he’d be the one to stay behind. It’s what his mother most wants.

  I put my hands on either side of his face. “Hell no,” I say. “Hell. No.”

  Jeremy forces his lips to mine so roughly that a groan escapes my throat. It’s a desperate kiss. He pulls away and pushes me up the fence and over.

  I lean down and grab his arms, but he backs out of reach.

  “I am not leaving you,” I say.

  When he doesn’t budge I straddle the fence and sit there. “Together or none at all.”

  “Fine,” he says.

  “We have to get me an outfit.”

  Jeremy nods, climbing up behind me, and we jump down on the far side. It’s just up a ways that there are three guards. Jeremy keeps a lookout while I quickly subdue them. I get an outfit and bite back a gag when the stench reaches my nose.

  “Let’s go,” Jeremy says.

  We almost make it to the streets when the alarms sound. Then our suits light up at the collars.

  “That’s new.” Jeremy points at the blinking symbol lit up on my collar.

  “They must have installed sensors since we keep using their duds.”

  We toss off our helmets, gulping in deep breaths. No sense in hiding now.

  “Better get out of these too,” I say, and we strip down to our underwear. “Probably some sort of locater device in them.”

  Guards spot us before we can hide.

  “Stop!” they shout.

  Jeremy and I take off at a run down an alleyway towards the city. We lose the guards after a couple of turns, but more cut us off on the far side. Once they have our location, they are like ants. They pile into every street and clog every way out.

  As they surround us, I sense the end of our rebellion. I feel the tightening of the noose on my neck a final time. I’m overwhelmed by the sense of despair and surrender. Then I picture all of Anthem falling the rest of the way into darkness. The citizens purged until none are left.

  I gasp at the thought. “No. No. No,” I say to Jeremy. “It can’t end like this! It’s just can’t! You should have never come for me. I was ready. I was ready to be a sacrifice.” My eyes burn but remain dry. “I was ready!”

  Jeremy’s gaze dulls with acceptance. He’s swiftly going away. Off into his fog again. I pray that he does so that he doesn’t have to be there when they purge us again. I grip his hand as the guards come forward.

  They grab us, rip us part. I don’t have it in me to fight them anymore. Guards shove me to the ground, they pull my wrists back and tie them. Pain shoots through my shoulders, and I curse beneath my breath.

  Jeremy goes down too, docile, semi-confused. “The people will rise up,” he says, gaze far away.

  “How? For ghosts?”

  He finally focuses on me. “For freedom.”

  “Without leaders? Who will lead them? Can you tell me that?”

  I feel myself unraveling.

  “Trust your Skulls,” Jeremy says.

  They lift us from the ground. I struggle, try to see Jeremy as they turn me away. “Wait! I’m not finished!” I kick my feet into the air leaning on the guard that holds me. “Let me go!” I scream.

  Jeremy yells hoarsely. “Let her see me! Dammit! Let her see me!”

  The guard hesitates.

  “Jeremy!” I cry, my voice alarmed, panic gripping me by the throat. “Jeremy, don’t go!”

  This isn’t the Crystal that leads the Skulls speaking. This isn’t the Crystal that cares for Anthem above all else. No. This is the girl who loves a boy with her whole heart, who can’t stand the thought that she saved him only to lose him again.

  Only to lose it all again.

  They pull me further away and I break free of them, kicking one guard in the face, the other I headbutt and then I’m dashing toward him, hands still tied. I trip when I get close enough, the tears pouring down my face. I fall, smashing chin first into the concrete.

  The guards ascend. They pull out their batons and they rain them down on me from all sides.

  Jeremy’s voice sounds ripped from his throat. “God! Crystal! No! Stop!”

  I feel my bones crushing beneath the abuse. My face is turned away from the battering, but the rest of me is so abused, the pain makes me cry out despite my attempt to stay silent.

  “You puppets!” Jeremy screams. His face contorts with fury. “My father should have put you all into a meat grinder! You monsters!” He seems so lost, the fog gripping him and bringing him further away. Jeremy turns silent as they beat me. Then his gaze finally focuses.

  I’m surprised I’m not dead, but the purge made me stronger, and now I can take far more than a regular human.

  “I love you,” I whisper. “I love you, Jeremy Writer.”

  “Jeremy Cromwell,” he says, his face questioning why he’d said that. “Cromwell,” he says. “I’m Jeremy Cromwell. You will heed my command. Son of Reginald Cromwell, and a Cromwell shall always be obeyed. Life. Liberty. Authority.”

  And the world freezes.

  I wait, breath held.

  The guards
turn and face Jeremy, at attention.

  They wait for orders.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Liza

  I wake to myself sitting across from a fire, across from Cory. We’re in the woods but not the same forest as before. This looks mountainous. The foliage is much denser and greener.

  We are alone. Bodega is gone. My memories are not entrapping me any longer. My heart weeps with the joy of freedom, and the pain of knowing he could send me back with a mere thought.

  I almost beg him, “Please let me stay.”

  But he can already hear the thought. While I would picture him smiling with glee at such a weak piece of what I am now, he does not. Cory doesn’t even look over at my wretchedness, no, he’s holding Spirit, inspecting her metal.

  “I thought you deserved a small break,” he says, sounding weary.

  “Where are we?” My voice cracks from lack of use.

  “Halfway to Anthem.”

  “That far?” My stomach drops. How had I traveled?

  I know the answer without asking. I’ve been a blank, empty-minded zombie. Walking onward, while mentally a caged sparrow with a broken wing. Even with Tommy gone, being far away from his… remains, hurts a little bit more.

  I remember everything now. Before La La Land. Jeremy… I slam the door on that. One compartment of misery at a time.

  “You miss him so much then?”

  I know who he means. “Of course.” Tommy. It’s always about Tommy with Cory. His eyes flash at me in warning.

  “Still?” Cory asks, as though I’ve actually been aware of time passing. As if my grief should lessen.

  Instead, it feels as though it has grown.

  “Yes, Cory. I will never stop missing him. Or… Jeremy. Or anyone I love that’s died.”

  “I thought the other one wasn’t dead.”

  “Dead enough,” I say, teeth gritted. “To me… he’s no longer himself. If he still is a guard in Anthem, marching to the beat of his mother’s drum, hurting citizens, then he’d want to be considered dead.”

  “Love,” Cory huffs. “You use the term so easily.”

  And Cory’s never used the term at all. I don’t say it, but I think it. He laughs dryly and tosses Spirit at my feet. I grasp onto her like a desperate thing. As if she can protect me from Cory when I know that nothing can.

  “Why her? Why that memory?” I ask, referring to Lucy.

  He shrugs. “Why the island? Why anything? Why not just kill you? Why would I send you there do you think?”

  “For punishment,” I say, and he sighs and frowns.

  “Use that god bless-ed brain of yours, Liza. How can one of the most brilliant people left alive be so stupid at the same time? It’s right in front of you. I can punish you any way I want. I can enter your mind and take and take and take…”

  Cold dread balloons in my brain.

  Cory acts as if I’ve slapped him. “Women!” he shouts. “What is it with your sex with rape? Every man isn’t a rapist.”

  “Every woman has to worry about it. Every single day.”

  He smiles a disgusting bend of lips. “Oh, yes. The gray-eyed man. I could have taken you back there. But I didn’t. Why do you think that is?”

  I shudder, holding Spirit tight. “Please,” I whisper. “Not that memory. I can’t…”

  “I won’t. There’s no point. I’m not punishing you, Liza. I wanted you to remember the island. It’s important that you remember everything about it. How you lived. How hopeless it was. It’s the only way we can agree on things. And despite my control over you, I need some agreement, believe it or not.”

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” he says, coming near.

  I put Spirit down. “I won’t.”

  “I’m sending you back.”

  “No! Wait!”

  “Fine,” Cory says. “Prove to me we can work together.”

  “Okay. Okay.”

  When he was cruel, it made sense, the whole world made sense to me. Now that he is being kind, for him that is, I am questioning everything. It does not settle my anxieties. I am even more afraid. With my power, it seems as though I wouldn’t be so vulnerable. But I am still mortal. Powerful, but I can die.

  Is this why there are so many stories of gods coming down and becoming flesh? To be both, to understand both, is a strange thing. To run through time so easily, it’s given me perspective I never had. Cory is watching me with that expression of hope. It’s a strange thing to see your enemy encourage you to succeed at something, but I can’t figure out what it is he wants.

  I try not to be in awe of his powers. Are they growing?

  “Yes,” he answers my thought, with a brilliant smile.

  Shouldn’t he be ugly?

  That makes him laugh.

  Shouldn’t my abuser be completely and utterly disgustingly made?

  “Now, you’re just being dramatic. I am not abusing you. I am reminding you.”

  I lift Spirit noticing a dullness about her. “The feeling,” I say. “It’s gone. What have you done with her?” I demand an answer as if she were a real person.

  “That’s why I brought you out. It’s an interesting thing, that sword. I wonder… I’ve been feeding off of it I think, by accident. Keeping you in your mental camp has drained me. Then I felt like the sword gave me strength.”

  I don’t know what to say to that.

  “I think you could help the sword rejuvenate.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “I have a theory,” Cory says. “The sword is meant to be a tool of justice.”

  “Yes.”

  He smiles. “And so are you.”

  “How can I be a tool of anything, Cory? You keeping me there has done something to me. Time has become so fluid and I feel myself letting go of who I am. Who I’m supposed to be.”

  “That’s good, Liza.”

  “If it means I’ll be like you, then it’s not.” I’m not afraid to be honest because I’ve already thought it.

  “You say that now. But having no attachments is useful.”

  “I still have attachments, Cory. That’s why the visions bother me so. Those people died in prison.”

  He stands. “Exactly. Yes. I want you to remember that. It’s important.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “Where is everyone else?” I ask.

  Have we left Phillip and the others behind?

  “I’ve told them to give us alone time.”

  I shudder, and he smiles with an irritated twist of lips. “I’m not a rapist, Liza. You still think of me as the worst? In this place?”

  “It’s hard to tell. It depends on what you’ll do with the power given to you.”

  Cory turns thoughtful. “Have you ever been poor? I mean before everything went to hell. Were you ever poor?”

  The question catches me off guard. “Have you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I doubt that.

  Cory waves a hand. “In power. In friends. In freedom. I’ve been very poor since I was born in those.”

  I huff a dry laugh. “If you think I feel sorry for you, Cory…”

  “I don’t. But if you would stop judging me for a minute, you might see---truly see---for the first time in that naïve skull of yours that there is more to a person than perceived knowledge. Change occurs with each thing that happens, and we are all more than one thing. I am not just evil. You are not just good.”

  “If you mean you have other sides. I’m more than aware of that.”

  “I wasn’t finished.”

  “Then tell me your point.”

  “Don’t interrupt me again,” Cory warns.

  I bite my lip hard when things fade to the island. “No!” I shout, and the world comes right again.

  He sighs and begins, “Thomas was very rich in this world, poor in the last. As the tides shifted, soon our places swapped. Money meant nothing. Influence meant nothing, at least political types. But Thomas, someone wit
h the innocent face, the morals, the principles, he was wealthy beyond measure in this place. What can a poor man like me do to keep up with a man surrounded by people who love him? Someone who is mourned when he is gone. I should have been the one Simon turned to save our mission. I would have supported his war. I already did things for him to help aid his vision. I believed in it. But he looked at me the same way you do. Like I’m unreliable. Like I cannot be trusted. But I am the most trustworthy and honest one left on this planet, Liza. I am who I am and I won’t lie to you---pretend I’m better.”

  I don’t say anything. My emotions are tumbling toward hatred. Because he speaks of Tommy as if he should dare. The unspoken floats in the air between us. So, you killed him, I think as clearly as any words can say.

  Cory grits his teeth. “I can influence people. Control them. But it wasn’t enough. Thomas influenced a legion without anything but his stupid good boy charm. He incited a riot the moment he got a chance to speak.”

  How devastating, I think sarcastically. To be so powerless and powerful at the same time.

  “Don’t push me,” Cory warns. “I was jealous of him. I realize that now. And it is a silly and weak emotion. But he was going to die no matter who pulled the trigger. Think about that a moment. A friend? Close range, without the trembling fear of standing before a firing squad. He never knew what hit him. I did Tommy a favor.”

  I flinch at the words.

  Cory waves a hand as if to erase an entire life. “It was the act of a desperate and poor man, you see,” he says. “But I’m no longer bound by such things. I think you’ll sense that now.”

  Cory sighs when I mentally sing a tune in my head from childhood. “I’ve got a theory about our little gift here. Spirit, is that her name? I’ll let you keep her. It’s a bargain I’ll make with you, Liza. A show of trust. But you will have to take better care of her this time.”

  “Take care of her…?” I ask.

  “Yes. I think she needs to be refueled, fed, if you will. I know you don’t understand yet, but I’ve been testing her out and I think if used in a certain way, her powers grow. But over time, she also runs out. My guess is the blood of evil people might suffice… and don’t say it. I know you want to. Yes, my blood undoubtedly would satisfy her quite well but, that’s not an option.”