Guardian

by Alex London

  “I recognize this,” Syd said as they approached Xelon Park. “I couldn’t believe the beauty of this place when I first saw it.”

  The park’s weeping willows were chopped down, and even their stumps had been burned up. The grass was trampled, the hedges uprooted, and the scattered remains of campsites were the only evidence that anything had been there at all before, other than dirt.

  Ahead of them was the gated drive up to Knox’s old house. The gate itself was gone, even the gateposts and hinges hauled away. On one of the remaining sections of wall that had ringed the house someone had scratched YOUR DEBT IS DUE, SECURITECH SKUM.

  “The house was more impressive before,” Syd noted.

  “I like the place how it is now,” Liam said.

  Syd settled the hovercraft in the front drive. The grand entry door, which had been reinforced graphene covered in antique mahogany, was now little more than splinters. Mold had begun its slow creep into the entry hall, and even from outside, they could see a riot of dirty footprints going in and out through the doorway and the gaping hole where a floor-to-ceiling plexi window had given astounding views of the park and the city below it.

  “Let me go in first,” said Liam. “To make sure it’s secure. Then you follow.”

  The house was empty, so Liam called in Marie and Syd after him.

  “It’s been completely looted,” Liam said. “I don’t know what you think you’ll find.”

  Syd stood in the middle of the great room, looking up to the balcony above, remembering the last time he was here—the only other time he’d been here—when he first saw Knox’s father, first saw Marie. When Knox had made the decision to help him escape. Had Knox suspected he’d never come home again?

  Syd held the journal in front of him, flipped through the pages, looking for anything that might resemble the pictures the doctor had drawn, some piece of tech, some clue. There was nothing.

  Syd moved to the grand staircase that curved to the floor above and stalked up it, sliding his hand along the smooth surface of the metal banister. Mold had painted black spots on the walls where expensive art had hung. He inched along the upstairs hall and came to Knox’s old room.

  The door had been blown open by a Guardian before the networks fell and it hadn’t been repaired. The room itself was bare, stripped to nothing. Even the plexi in the window was gone. The hazy view of the city beyond showed the dark skyscrapers with shattered windows jutting like rotted teeth gnawing on mushy clouds. Everything was ruined. There was no machine here and no clues for finding one. What had he been thinking, following a dream of Knox back to this place?

  “Stay back!” he heard Liam shout. He rushed out to the hallway and looked down over the railing to the great room below.

  Marie had the bolt gun up and Liam had assumed a fighting stance, Finch’s EMD stick raised. A raggedy assortment of figures was climbing up through the open wall of windows. There were at least a dozen of them, and more came in through the open front door, pressing Liam and Marie back toward the stairs. They moved up step by step, side by side, and the figures pressed in on them.

  They were all dressed in combinations of filthy lux fabrics, dirty suits, and half-shredded gowns. The remains of formalwear and Upper City chic, most of it too big for most of them. All of them were teens, none much older than Syd himself. Tattoos of ones and zeros looped around their necks, poked from their sleeves, and on a few of them, covered their faces. Machinists, every one.

  They did not seem happy to find visitors.

  They all carried weapons—sharpened poles, powerless EMD sticks, one or two bolt guns. To the side, a boy hauled an old combat robot on a length of rope. It was missing three of its legs and the barrel of one of its fracture cannons was bent sideways. It slumped on its own weight and had begun to rust. The boy had mounted a slingshot on its back. That appeared to be in full working order.

  “I said stay back,” Liam ordered again.

  Marie fixed her aim on the guy with the bot. “One more step from anyone and he dies,” she said.

  The crowd stopped. They all looked to the guy whom she’d threatened. He dropped the leash and put his hands up. The guy behind him, holding the band of the slingshot, kept it aimed at Marie. He’d loaded it with rusted metal bits.

  Everyone looked back to Marie.

  “What now?” she whispered to Liam.

  Syd ducked low, so they couldn’t see him from the floor below. He realized he’d hidden here before, in this exact spot, with Knox by his side.

  There was a name for the feeling of having done something before, but he couldn’t remember what it was. Was there a name for the reality of having done something before, repeating your own history in stranger and stranger ways, trapped in a decaying version of the past, losing people as you went?

  “Who are you?” a girl in the crowd demanded of Marie. The guy with the bolt gun aimed at him bulged his eyes at her and shook his head, but she moved to the front of the crowd and repeated her question. The girl looked Marie up and down. “Purifier?”

  “No,” said Marie. “Not anymore.”

  The girl snorted, skeptical. She wore a man’s suit with a tie she’d fashioned from a strip of cloth, and her belt buckle was the gleaming ornament of a lux transport. She had three Purifier’s masks hanging from her belt, all of them stained with dried brown streaks. Not all of the streaks were mud, of that Syd was certain. Blood dries brown. The girl’s knuckles were marked with alternating ones and zeros.

  Marie also noticed the bloody masks, the tattoos in binary. “Who are you?” she asked.

  The girl cocked her head. “You’re in our house, outnumbered, and we ask the questions.”

  “This isn’t your house,” said Marie. “Property is shared by all.”

  That sent a laugh through the crowd. Hoots and howls.

  “There’s no Reconciliation here, Purifier.” The girl laughed. “You can shove your knock-off collectivism.”

  “I told you I’m not a Purifier,” Marie repeated.

  “You sound like one,” the girl said. She pointed to Liam. “Who’s your big friend?”

  “No lover of the Reconciliation,” Liam answered.

  The girl smirked. “I like your hand. You got a name?”

  Liam opened and closed his metal hand. “Liam,” he said. “You?”

  “Gianna, acting chief operating officer of the Xelon Corporation.” She bent at the waist into a low open-armed bow. When she came up, she produced a piece of plexi with something scratched onto the surface of it. Beside her, a smaller boy whipped out a tiny solar LED and shined the light through the glass. It projected the scratchings on the glass through onto the wall:

  GIANNA S. COO, XELON CORP.

  She’d made a primitive holo to imitate the business bios executives used to have. It was ugly, but ingenious. She’d improvised her own little piece of the past.

  Marie kept her weapon pointed at the nervous guy beside the bot. “Xelon?” she asked, shocked to see the name of her father’s company shining against the wall. She hadn’t heard it said out loud in all the months since the Reconciliation banned the corporate names, let alone seen it projected on a wall.

  “We’re all Xelon here,” Gianna said. “House is ours, the park beyond. Xelon territory. We care for the brand until the Machine.”

  “We aren’t from here,” Liam explained. “We didn’t mean to trespass.”

  The girl smiled. “The Xelon Corporation welcomes guests. We’re not like other corporations in the city. We extend credit without cruelty or bias.”

  Marie and Liam looked at each other, eyebrows raised. Syd, above, stayed hidden. They were very much outnumbered and he did not want to lose the element of surprise by revealing himself. It was their only advantage if things turned bad.

  “Credit?” Marie asked.

  “If you are worthy o
f credit, we will offer it on favorable terms,” Gianna told them.

  “And if not?” Liam wondered.

  “You go bankrupt.” Gianna held out her hands, palms up, empty. The crowd hooted again and whooped. Some waved stained Purifier masks above their heads. Bankrupt did not sound like something they wanted to be. “So . . . why did you come here? Why do you deserve our credit?”

  “We . . . uh . . .” Marie was trying to think of an answer when a shout from above cut her off. She and Liam turned to see Syd, standing with his hands up; another teenager, this one in the uniform of a Xelon security guard, stood behind him and jammed a weapon into his back.

  “Found this one up here snooping!” he shouted.

  “Espionage?” Gianna raised her eyebrows. “You from the competition? Come to steal our corporate secrets? That’s grounds for execution!”

  “Hey,” the one behind Syd said, jabbing a kind of pointy stick into his back. Syd glanced over his shoulder and saw that the weapon was simply that: a pointy stick. The boy hooted: “This one’s got a marking . . . like a logo behind his ear. It’s dirty, though; I can’t tell if it’s—”

  “We’ve come for the Machine!” Liam announced, loudly.

  Syd gave Liam a “what are you doing” kind of look. Marie gave him an “are you completely glitched” kind of look.

  Liam peeled off his shirt in one quick motion and the crowd gasped, not at the bloody bandage running along his side, but at the letters inked across his chest—letters that, by now, had become legendary.

  “Yovel,” Gianna said.

  “That’s right,” said Liam. “I am Yovel. I destroyed the networks and only I can restore them.”

  In the hush that followed, Syd couldn’t decide if Liam’s plan had just saved them from a bloody death, or ensured they were all going to be killed.

  Gianna waved for Syd to come down the steps. He moved slowly, the stick jabbing into his back. He wasn’t sure what Liam’s endgame here was supposed to be. Marie still had her bolt gun raised and Liam’s EMD stick was charged. They wouldn’t last long in a fight, but they’d take a few of these cultists with them. The rest would follow soon enough.

  Gianna turned back to Liam. She rested her fingers on the tattoo on his chest, tapped it delicately. Even though the room was warm and humid, goose bumps formed on his skin. He began to doubt his entire idea, as much as it could be called an idea. He hadn’t really thought past the part where they didn’t discover it was Syd who was actually Yovel, Syd who had caused the Jubilee, Syd whom their assassins had so far failed to kill.

  The corners of Gianna’s mouth twitched and she turned back to the crowd. She had made some kind of decision.

  “It was Yovel who destroyed our corporate data!” she told them, her arms raised in the air. She reminded Syd of Counselor Baram giving his speeches. The crowd hung on everything Gianna said.

  The power to control a crowd with words could be deadlier than all the weapons in the world. Was that why Baram insisted Syd give all those speeches? Not to make the crowds respect him, but to make him respect the crowds, to see the power they had, the way they could be transformed, called to action, called to change. If he was meant to lead, this would be a skill he needed. He should have practiced when he had the chance. Gianna must have.

  “It was Yovel who severed the networks.” Gianna pointed at Liam. “Yovel who crashed our markets. And yet, we received no compensation! Is that justice? No payments were ever made!”

  The crowd booed.

  I spent my whole life paying, Syd thought.

  “But now he is here,” Gianna shouted. “And with his blood, we will be compensated!”

  The crowd roared their approval. They moved forward, murder in their eyes.

  Liam braced himself for a losing fight. “When it starts,” he whispered to Syd, “just run.”

  “I’m not leaving you behind,” Syd replied quickly.

  “You have to,” Liam said.

  Marie took a step forward, one step down toward the frothing crowd, her finger on the release of the bolt gun’s spring.

  “This is not how business is done!” she shouted. She turned to Gianna. “Is Xelon Corporation nothing but pirates and thieves now? A murderous mob?”

  Gianna swiped her hand to hush the crowd. “How dare you—?”

  “We brought Yovel to you in good faith.” Marie pointed at Liam. “We could have gone to any corporation in the city, but we came to you, to Xelon, because we knew you to deal honestly, to honor contracts, to offer the highest market yield on investment. Were we wrong to come here? Were we wrong to do business with you? The Xelon Handbook of Profit Directives clearly states that until a transfer of property is formally completed, no asset exploitation may be undertaken lest it expose shareholders to claims of market malfeasance.”

  Liam sucked in his breath. He had no idea what Marie had just said.

  Gianna looked at Liam and then at Syd with her eyebrows raised. She stepped to Marie. “You know the Xelon Handbook of Profit Directives?”

  “I do,” said Marie, holding her finger on the spring release of the bolt gun, just in case.

  “And you abide by its Best Business Practices?”

  “We do,” said Marie.

  Gianna looked at Syd, who nodded. Gianna looked at Liam, who nodded too, because the others had. Gianna thought a moment, then turned back to the crowd.

  “We will do business with our visitors!” she announced. “And when a fair price is negotiated, Yovel’s blood will pay his debts.” Her face broke into a smile, turning back to Marie. “You are welcome to the new Xelon Corporate Satellite Offices as honored business associates!”

  “You guys hungry?” the guy with the bot asked the moment Marie lowered her weapon. “We don’t have much, thanks to the corporate restructuring—”

  “May the Reconciliation go bankrupt and die,” Gianna interrupted, spitting on the ground.

  “But what we have, we are happy to extend to you,” the guy continued. “With low interest rates.”

  “We’d love to eat with you,” said Marie, smiling. “We can discuss the terms of our exchange and the structure of our agreement after we eat.”

  She tucked the bolt gun into the waistband of her pants and motioned for Liam to lower his weapon. Everyone relaxed and the room soon erupted in excited chatter.

  “Don’t mind them.” Gianna waved her hands at the crowd. “It has been a while since we’ve engaged in a good-faith transaction. We’ve not been in an ideal business environment for some time, you understand?”

  “I do,” said Marie. Gianna cleared a path for them through the crowd. Syd and Liam were still staring at Marie, dumbfounded.

  “What is going on?” Liam whispered in Syd’s ear.

  “We’ve just agreed to make a deal with them,” Syd said. “To sell you.”

  “They can’t kill someone else’s property,” Marie explained. “We’ve bought some time.”

  “Yeah, but how much?” Liam wondered.

  “We still have to work all that out,” said Marie. “How much they’ll charge us for dinner; how much we’ll charge them for you.”

  Liam looked at Syd.

  “Everything costs.” Syd shrugged. “We might as well eat.”

  [26]

  “I’M SORRY THE FOOD is so . . .” Gianna searched for the word. “Organic.”

  Marie shrugged, stuffing a roasted turnip into her mouth. They sat around in the empty great room. The breeze blew through the giant window, cooled the humid air. It also stirred around the stench of over thirty bodies that hadn’t washed in months. Syd sniffed deeply at the charred flesh of whatever root he was eating. The burned smell masked the putridity.

  “We harvest from the park.” Gianna explained their dinner, shaking her head sadly. “A shame what we’ve been driven to. Farming. It’s like we’
re primitives. Xelon Park was once beautiful, you know? I went there as a child. Now . . . well, we’ll restore it. With the Machine, when the networks return, the corporations will rise again. Balance, freedom, sponsorship . . . it will follow. Until then, we eat like this. The Reconciliation”—someone behind her cursed and spat—“left seeds behind when they were driven out. We’ve made use of them until we can get more efficient nutrient production online. Unfortunately, everyone at EpiCure Incorporated is a miscreant, a syntholene addict, or a Chapter Eleven.”

  Syd glanced at Liam, who didn’t seem at all bothered by the insult. There were things Liam felt ashamed of in his life, but that wasn’t one of them.

  “You came to the right corporation,” Gianna continued. “We have good credit. We can secure financing for this one.” She pointed her chin at Liam. “We at Xelon know how to profit with our partners. We were one of the first to incorporate again after we drove out the green uniforms.”

  “What happened?” Marie asked. “I mean, how did you drive out the Reconciliation? How did you . . . ‘incorporate’ . . . Xel . . . Xelon?” She faltered on the company’s name. She thought of her father, standing in his suit, leading a meeting of shareholders, proud, powerful, certain of the future. She thought of him now, dying in a squalid barracks.

  “When the networks fell, there was confusion at first,” Gianna said. Her eyes narrowed; she swayed slightly and the others leaned in to hear. She told of things they themselves had witnessed, but they sat rapt as she spoke, as if the past became real not through the living of it, but through the telling of it. “It was morning and I was in school. Many of us were. Suddenly, the teacher’s holo from EduCorp vanished from the front of the classroom. Our datastreams went blank. Some worried their assignments for the day hadn’t been transmitted. Others cheered, because a network outage meant no school.”

  Gianna looked up, scanned the faces watching her. She addressed them all: “Do you remember?”