Lifeless

by Adrianne Strickland

“No.” I shook my head, but not in denial, numb to a creeping realization that was stealing over me even as I voiced the thought. “This isn’t her. They probably killed her, made her transfer the Word of Darkness to an automaton.”

  “Mørke.” Khaya’s hand was over her mouth, tears in her eyes. She let out a gasp. “What are they doing?”

  I closed my own eyes, and behind my lids I saw Mørke’s black lace skirt swishing around her legs as she walked away from me down a long hallway. Gone. Perhaps forever.

  My eyes snapped open and the numbness vanished with her image. In its place was rage like I’d felt only once before—once when I’d wanted to make the world bleed. This time, there was no Mørke here to calm me down.

  I wasn’t sure what their purpose was, but if the Athenaeum wanted a flood, I would give them one. I would open the veins of everyone in Eden City and drown them in a red ocean. The Words rose in a torrent in my head.

  Tu looked up at me as he continued scrolling through stations. “I’d say somebody really pissed them off.”

  Pavati’s wide eyes turned ferocious as she looked from me to Tu. “Don’t you dare blame this on him!”

  “I’m not mad at him! But why else would this be happening? He breaks out of the Athenaeum, stealing two Words while he’s at it, and embarrasses Eden City in front of the world, and then the sky just coincidentally starts turning black?” He glanced up through the windshield, where nearly the last bit of blue was gone. “Correction, turns black,” he added. “Why else would they be desperate enough to use a prototype, and risk losing the Word of Darkness in the process?”

  Numbness that had turned to rage now turned to a sinking, choking feeling like I’d been swallowed by my own flood. Was this entirely my fault? “No.” I shook my head. “They couldn’t do all of this just because of me.”

  A new radio voice crackled into focus. “—a radical preacher in the United States is already predicting that this is the retribution of the Gods, saying, and I quote, ‘The Gods created the world, and now they are destroying it.’ Meanwhile, political analysts feel more of a mortal hand in this drastic development, citing Eden City’s recent upheaval over the defection of Tavin Barnes, a young man thought to be both the Word of Death and the Word of Shaping—”

  My breath crashed in my chest, blood pounding like cymbals against my eardrums. I put Pie into the back seat of the car and then spun away, not wanting to hear anymore. My hands pressed against either side of my head, as if I could force out what was happening, while my bare feet carried me a short ways into the field. But that didn’t help me escape from it, especially with this view. The darkness fell like a sweeping curtain behind the rugged mountains. If the world was a stage, it looked like the show was over.

  Fingers grazed my back. I spun on Khaya, my hands flying away from my head. She flinched but she didn’t step back.

  “Do they … do they want me to kill them all?” I gasped. “Because I’m going to, Khaya, I swear to the Gods, I’m going to kill every last one of them. I told them what I’d do if they came after me—”

  “Tavin, listen to me.” She gathered my flailing hands in hers, speaking in her most soothing voice. “You’re not going to do anything like that. There’s another way; there will always be another way. We just have to find it first.”

  I squeezed my eyes closed so I didn’t have to see either her pleading, frightened face, at odds with her tone, or the darkness. “They’re not leaving me many other options.”

  “We don’t even know for sure what they want yet.”

  My eyes flew open. “Whatever they want, what else can I do to stop this? I kill, Khaya, I’m a killer, a mass murderer, and that’s all I’m good at—”

  “If you start thinking like that, then you’re letting them win.”

  “Then maybe they’ve won—!”

  A voice interrupted my tirade, hitting all of us like a bucket of ice water in the face. It carried from the car radio, strong, cold, and functional—a wake-up call. My feet carried me back over in a daze as it spoke.

  “As you can see, this is not a game. The darkness will continue to spread until our sole demand is met. First, after all major sources of food begin to perish, will come panic. Then chaos, and then complete devolution of the world as we know it. You have only a short time before the darkness begins to cause irreparable damage. The world is our hostage, and only one person can free it. Will you, Tavin Barnes, let the world die simply because you can’t do your duty to your country?”

  The bottom seemed to fall out of my stomach. I dropped into a crouch, my face in my hands. The gravel biting into the soles of my feet somehow no longer seemed real. This was unreal. This wasn’t happening …

  “Tavin—” Khaya began.

  “Shh!” Tu said.

  The voice continued. “All we ask is for your surrender. One life against the world. And we’re not even asking you to give up your life—only give it in service to your nation. All we’re asking is for you to come home.”

  It was a broadcast—a challenge—to answer mine.

  Tu punched the steering wheel so hard that a honk ripped through the surreal twilight. It wasn’t real light anymore. Everything was as dark a gray as the pewter of the car—silvery, colorless.

  “Bastards! You bastards. First Mørke … and now the world ?” he shouted, gesturing, as if the person on the other end of the broadcast could hear or see. “You’re threatening to end the world just to get your way? Just to get him back?”

  Tu had often tried to make me sound unimportant, like a nobody, but I knew he didn’t mean it quite like that anymore. Besides, I would have given anything to be insignificant. To simply vanish.

  “Gods damn them all,” I said, glancing up at Khaya.

  I tried to get one last look at her, framed against the darkness above. It was like she was standing in for the sun in her yellow tank top. But she wasn’t enough, not for the rest of the world, even if she was for me. She tried to hold on to my arm as I stood, to pull me toward her, but I stepped away from her, closer to the car.

  “I’m such an idiot,” I said. “I should have gotten the others out when I had the chance. Luft wouldn’t leave with me, and Agonya probably wouldn’t have either, but Mørke … maybe. And Brehan would have. I know he would have. He’s my friend, and I just left him. I thought I’d go back for him later, but now he’ll be locked down tighter than Cruithear was.”

  I’d been drugged and wound up like a ticking time bomb when I’d made the decision to leave without him, but it didn’t matter. Now the entire world was the ticking time bomb, and it was my fault.

  Time—I had no time. Every second I wasted, the world died a little bit more.

  I shook my head as if I could deny the truth. “Brehan could have stopped this. But now … ”

  Only I could.

  For a second, I folded over, as if my back couldn’t bear the weight of it. Just when I thought I’d gotten at least a little bit of what I wanted, a breath of fresh air, a ray of sunlight … they stole it from me. My hands were in my hair again, squeezing my skull, trying to keep the sting from my eyes or my mind from breaking.

  Either I’d break them or they’d break me. No matter what, they’d won. But they’d given me another way to fix this that didn’t involve mass murder; a way to keep Khaya from hating me. And a way to save the world. Because if I tried to destroy Eden City to save the world—and myself—I might just destroy everything. They could kill Brehan to try to stop me, or I could accidentally kill him … and then the world would be lost.

  There was only one sure way. Only one person had to lose everything.

  Me.

  I straightened. After all, if the choice was between me or the world, that wasn’t much of a choice. There was no way I could be that selfish or that afraid, never mind that I was more scared than I’d ever been. Because my own life didn’t w
eigh much against the lives of everyone else.

  Not that I had any doubt they would make me hurt people again in horrible ways, but that was in the long-run, and probably wouldn’t involve the entire world. In the short-term—which was all we had right now—it would only be me dying. Maybe not actually dying, now that I had two Words that they might not know how to untangle and force me to pass on … and that was almost worse. Because, as I’d learned very, very well in the past few months, there was more than one way to die.

  I’d have preferred the usual way.

  “You were right,” I said to Khaya, meeting her terrified eyes. She looked nearly as scared as I felt. “I’ll never be free of them. I’ll never be free.”

  “No, Tavin, you’re not—”

  I interrupted her and held out my hand. “Tu, get out of the car and give me the key.”

  He looked at me in suspicion from the driver’s seat. “Why?”

  I laughed, and the sound was blacker than the sky. “Because I’m going back to the Athenaeum.”

  Acknowledgments

  As always, many thanks to my mother, Deanna, my husband, Lukas, and my good friends Chelsea Pitcher and Michael Miller for being guinea pigs (who hopefully weren’t as tortured with my rough drafts as poor Tavin’s guinea pig). Thanks also to Bob Birdsall for being my books’ champion, and to Pam and Dan Strickland for tolerating my presence in their beautiful space while I was being an antisocial workaholic—and for happily reading the results!

  And again, thanks to the awesome team at Flux, among them Brian Farrey-Latz, Sandy Sullivan, Mallory Hayes, and Katie Kane, without whom book two would still be a pile of digital code on my computer.

  Also deserving of all the love are the wonderful booksellers who deliver what Flux gives them into the hands of readers—most especially David Cheezem at my favorite small, independent bookstore in Palmer, AK: Fireside Books.

  Last but not least, thanks to the people who weren’t involved directly with the project but kept me sane throughout. One Fours, my dearest debut group, I don’t know what I would have done without you. Thanks for the shoulders to cry on, the deep belly laughs, and all the virtual wine and chocolate I could have hoped for. You have all the virtual hugs in return—especially my fellow Flux One Fours: Helene Dunbar, Kathryn Rose, Lisa Maxwell, and Kate Bassett.

  And if I borrowed my brother Daniel’s personality for book one, I channeled my other brother Eirin’s morbid sense of humor for book two. Thank you, Eir, for that and so much else. I’ll miss you more than words can say.

  © Lukas Strickland

  About the Author

  AdriAnne Strickland was a bibliophile who wanted to be an author before she knew what either of those words meant. An avid traveler, she spent two cumulative years living abroad in Africa, Asia, and Europe and now shares a home base in Alaska with her husband. While writing occupies most of her time, she commercial fishes every summer in Bristol Bay, because she can’t seem to stop. Visit AdriAnne online at http://www.adriannestrickland.com.