Guardian

by Alex London

  It gave Liam a lot of places to hide.

  “Just stay here, and stay quiet,” he told Syd, Marie, and Krystof, settling them into a dark nook between a disabled Arak9 combat robot and some kind of defunct network relay station that had had its entire processing system torn out. He made sure Marie’s bolt gun was locked and loaded. “Can you shoot?”

  “Yeah,” she whispered, resting the weapon on her knees to steady it. Her jaw was clenched. She was suffering, but she was fighting it. That would have to do.

  “Okay,” Liam said. “Anyone but me comes back here, you shoot them.”

  Marie nodded.

  “I’m going to get us through this,” Liam promised them.

  “And then what?” Marie whispered.

  “We’ll go home,” he said. “We’ll get you back to your parents.”

  “And then?” Marie pressed him.

  He didn’t know. None of them knew.

  The little boy beside them wept quietly for his grandpapa, tears his grandpapa had never shed for his own victims. Liam found comfort in those tears. Even monsters could be human.

  Syd leaned his head against the hard steel of the combat robot’s base. The burn grew stronger, like a welding torch firing beneath his skin. Even in the dark, he saw the veins running along his hands and forearms. Every beat of his heart scorched against the inside of his body, and still, he sensed the worst was yet to come. He tried to focus on something other than the pain, on something else. Anything else.

  “Syd?” Liam leaned toward him. He placed his good hand on the side of Syd’s neck, felt the pulse thrumming through the artery. “You holding on?”

  Syd’s eyes met Liam’s. Their faces were just inches apart. He nodded.

  “I’ll be right back,” Liam whispered.

  Syd lifted his own arm, placed a hand on Liam’s neck too. Held him as firmly as he could. “You better be,” he said. Then he pulled Liam forward and pressed their lips together.

  The kiss was no longer than a second, but in that second, any walls between them fell. Liam’s body was Syd’s body; Syd’s mind was Liam’s mind. Someone’s eyelash tickled. Their lips drew apart.

  It was Liam now who couldn’t find the words.

  “I’ll be here,” said Syd.

  Liam squeezed Syd’s neck gently, then stood and slipped off into the dark.

  “Oh,” said Krystof Maes, the knowledge of what he’d nearly made Liam and Syd do to each other dawning on him. “Oh,” he repeated, looking at his feet, and it sounded almost like an apology.

  Syd cast a glance at Marie. He tried not to let the agony show on his face. He could tell she was doing the same. She reached over and rested her hand on his. Together, they waited.

  “Ah!” They heard a shout in the darkness, a groan, and the thump of a body hitting for the floor.

  Liam? Marie mouthed.

  Syd shook his head no. Liam wouldn’t die that quietly. Not now. Syd had given him a reason to fight. Liam was doing what Liam did best, one Purifier at a time.

  In the dark, Syd and Marie waited as the bodies fell one by one by one.

  • • •

  Liam crouched atop an old generator, about six feet above the floor. The first Purifier with the swollen eye had been easy. He thought he was a predator, not prey, so he stalked through the rows of junk heavily.

  Now the rest had figured out that they were being hunted even as they did the hunting. Streaks of light from doorless offices along the perimeter of the building cast long shadows through the central floor. The white masks of the Purifiers lit like candles when the light caught them. One passed directly below Liam and he looked down as she approached.

  He assumed it was a she. The mask and the green uniform made it hard to tell. She could also have been a young boy, like most of the Purifiers were, but she was, perhaps, too curvy.

  Not that it mattered.

  She’d thrown in her lot with Cousin. She could have run, but she chose to stay, so Liam would do what he must. It was nothing personal. This was war, and this was what happened in war, what always happened in war. The young and strong and the young and brave and the young and weak all died the same. Other young people killed them. Pretty simple, really, a fact as old as time.

  As the Purifier passed below him, Liam brought his fist down and smashed it on her head. She fell without a noise and a small black tulip blossomed on the white of her mask. He pulled it off, saw the blue lines running along her skin, quickly fading as she bled. Perhaps he’d spared her a worse death to come. Perhaps he was an angel of mercy.

  He wanted to believe that.

  He knew it wasn’t true.

  Liam climbed down from his hiding place. He moved along the floor, back pressed against the jumbled metal. He moved like a snake, coiled to strike.

  Three left.

  Plus Cousin.

  And then his work would be done.

  Another Purifier ahead, an EMD stick wobbling in his hands. This one was a big boy. Hair on his knuckles, shoulders bulging against the uniform, neck as thick as a tree trunk.

  Trees get chopped down.

  Liam kicked low, swept the leg. The guy fell, loudly, crashing and thrashing. He turned and swiped with the stick, but Liam cut the distance and pressed the guy’s arm against his body, pinning the stick between them. Untrained fighters pull back from a weapon like this, but training teaches a person to step into the attack, move for the weak spot that a swinging weapon opens.

  Liam lay on top of the guy, trying to press his elbow up so the tip of the EMD stick would hit the guy’s own chin. This one was too strong, though, and pushed right back, inching that tip toward Liam’s face.

  They lay there in the dark, grunting and pushing on top of each other for what felt like ages, neither able to make killing progress on the other. Their eyes were locked. They had to be about the same age, both of them put here through Cousin’s mad machinations. Only one of them would walk out.

  It would be Liam.

  He stopped resisting and rolled off the guy, dodging the tip of the stick by a hair’s width as it sprang forward. The Purifier hadn’t been expecting the sudden release, and he nearly threw the EMD stick across the room. He lay there on his back for a fraction of a second, both his arms hyperextended. He was about to swing around and jam the stick into Liam’s side, but Liam was faster. One hard chop to the throat with the right hand and the Purifier gagged, coughed, and spluttered. As a mercy, Liam snatched the stick from him and touched it to his chest, stopping his heart.

  He vanished over the top of a junk heap just as the guy’s last two compatriots came running to see the commotion. All they saw were the last twitches of the boy’s body. He hoped at least one of them would know the dead guy’s name. In a different world, that’d have been Liam dying on the floor. He would’ve liked to have been remembered.

  He touched a good finger to his own lips, felt Syd’s heat still on them. It was an illusion, of course, a trick of the mind, but it was enough. He would do whatever he had to to get back to Syd. He heard footsteps and he raised the EMD stick.

  The Purifiers who’d come running took one look at the body, cursed, then turned on their heels and ran for the exit, stumbling and scratching at their skin as they fled.

  So much for loyalty.

  Cousin had to have known his army of teenagers wouldn’t stick by him. They were all getting sick and they weren’t fighting for any good reason. Liam felt a swell of hope in his chest. Maybe he wouldn’t have to kill anymore. Maybe he’d shed the last blood he’d ever have to shed.

  Except for Cousin’s.

  If the man could even bleed.

  • • •

  Syd listened. He heard footsteps, running, cursing, crashing through the door to the stairwell.

  “I think they’ve been scared off,” he whispered.

&
nbsp; Marie peeked around the edge of the broken transmitter, her weapon unsteady in her hand. Her palms were sweating. She couldn’t stop swallowing. Her eyeballs felt like hot coals. The Purifiers had fled. She let out a breath and turned to Syd to tell him the good news. “I think Liam’s—”

  Her body jolted mid-sentence, the bolt gun fell from her hand. She felt as if her skin were being peeled off, the bottoms of her feet flayed, every hair on her head turned into a live wire.

  She’d been hit with an EMD pulse. Her vision turned red at the edges, and she saw Cousin, his stick raised, a smirk on his face. He touched the stick to the little boy and then to Syd and they both crumpled. She saw Liam, leaping over the debris, collapsing by Syd’s side, as Cousin seemed to melt away into the shadows.

  She heard shouting, running, an explosion that shook her bones. She didn’t have time to wonder whether she’d just been killed, whether they’d all just been killed, before her vision went black.

  [35]

  WHEN MARIE OPENED HER eyes, she was certain she’d died and in death, she’d gotten what she deserved.

  All around, there was nothing but fire and the thin black silhouettes of scorching souls. For what she had done to her parents, to Knox, to Syd, to the world . . . this was the kind of death she deserved.

  She hadn’t expected it to itch.

  “Marie!” She felt hands pull her up; her eyes adjusted to the light. Syd knelt in front of her. His face emerged from the flickering fires. “Can you hear me?”

  She nodded. Her lips ached and her skin burned. The pain told her she was still alive. The dead couldn’t possibly hurt this badly. She scratched at her arms, saw the thin blue veins turning black beneath the skin. The skin itself, red.

  “Where—?” Her voice cracked. “Where are we?”

  “The roof,” said Liam, hovering into focus. Cheyenne stood beside him. Her clothes were torn and burned. She clutched an EMD stick to her chest. Beside her stood three boys in Purifier uniforms, also armed.

  Marie tensed, her memory muddled, suddenly certain it had been Cheyenne who’d knocked her out, not Cousin. Or was Cheyenne working with Cousin? Nothing made sense. Heat shimmered off the roof and blurred her vision. She scrambled backward, crablike, scorching her palms on the silver roofing rubber.

  “Relax,” Liam said. “You’re okay. We’re safe up here . . . well, kind of.”

  Marie had crab-crawled underneath the large metal logo of Oosha Panang Chemical Supply Company. The sun blazed at its high point, so even beneath the large sign, there was no shade. Her skin sizzled where it touched the roof.

  Little blond Krystof Maes, fair skinned as he was, had already turned red as a thundering sunset. One of the Purifiers pulled his mask from his belt and gave it to the boy to cover his face. Krystof resisted at first, then put it on. It sagged off his small head, like he was playing ghost.

  “It’s too hot,” the boy complained and pulled the hood off again.

  Liam was also burning. Each of his freckles darkened like angry pinpricks.

  It took Marie another moment to adjust her eyes so she could make out the swaying shapes she had taken for the souls of the damned.

  They were nopes.

  Three dozen nopes on the burning roof beside them. Syd was watching them, shielding his eyes with his hand. His other hand tapped at the spot behind his ear, then began scratching at the veins on his neck.

  “I . . . I don’t understand,” Marie said. “How did we . . . get . . .” Her words weren’t coming. She bit into her lip, hard, to bring his focus back. “How did we get here?”

  “Cheyenne scared Cousin off,” Liam said. “Fired a few pulses his way right after he knocked you out. Gave me a chance to get the bolt gun.”

  “Is he—?” Marie asked.

  “He got away,” Liam said. “Disappeared.”

  “And . . . them?” Marie pointed at the sweating Purifiers.

  “We tried to get out,” one of the boys said. “Cousin rigged the stairwell. A trip wire blew out the stairs. Killed Jax and Luxor and King Brat.”

  The names were absurd; their deaths even more so. They died fleeing from a fight that meant nothing to them, and no one would ever remember their real names.

  “A second trip wire ignited the air . . .” Another boy took up the story, shaking his head.

  “We ran into these three running back upstairs ahead of the flames,” said Liam. “They helped us get to the roof. The stairwell’s totally blown out.”

  “So we’re trapped up here?” Marie said. She looked at the nopes again. “We’ll just die up here with them?”

  “They were here when we got here,” said Liam. “They’re not dead yet.”

  Marie tried to wet her lips. “Do you think they get thirsty? Because we will. We’ll die of thirst before this”—she held up her hands to show the coal-black veins—“has the chance to kill us.”

  Liam didn’t have a response to that. He was very thirsty himself. He couldn’t even recall when he’d last had a drink of water. No matter how tough he thought he was, he couldn’t muscle his way through dehydration.

  Syd could hear them talking, but he stood watching the nopes, scratching at his head. He couldn’t stop scratching. It hurt to scratch. It hurt not to.

  Liam, suddenly at Syd’s side, reached out a hand, stopped him scratching.

  “They are still alive,” said Syd. “And so are we.”

  “For now,” said Liam. They stood together, watching the nopes walk in circles along the edge of the roof, peering dumbly over the side to the great distance below.

  Syd studied them. He saw one point down and another leaned over to look, communicating something to the other one.

  Except nopes couldn’t communicate.

  Syd walked over to the one who had pointed down, stepped right up to her. She turned to him when he approached and he nearly fell back in surprise. Her skin was clear. Red from the sun—the sun burned them like it burned everyone—but aside from that he saw the veins, blue, smooth, fading.

  Liam called after him. “Syd, what are you doing?”

  “Can you—?” Syd leaned in to the Guardian. She really did look more like a Guardian than he’d seen one look in months. “Can you understand me?”

  She stared back at him, her eyes showing him his own expectant face. Her head cocked slightly to the right.

  “Can you hear?” he asked.

  She lifted her hand and pointed over the side of the building once more. Syd leaned out, followed her finger and saw, three floors below, where the explosion of the hovercraft had torn open the wall. Wires and cables dangled from the blasted-out side of the skyscraper. Below them, the building’s walls turned slightly in a slow corkscrew, sloping outward wider and wider to the ground below. The building was narrower at the top that at the bottom. It wasn’t a straight drop down. It was a slope. A very steep slope.

  The nope—the Guardian, the whatever she was—pointed at the loose cable and nodded.

  “You think you can get down?” Syd asked.

  She stared back at him. Her lips, her face, her eyes . . . nothing moved.

  “What are you talking to them for?” Little Krystof Maes ambled over, his stubby finger jabbing at the nope. “They’re deaf and dumb. Grandpapa used them for labor, like bots used to be, and they couldn’t even do that. Not even the work of a vacuubot. They’re useless.”

  He poked the nope in the stomach. She stumbled backward and hit the edge of the roof, lost her fragile footing, and toppled.

  Without thinking, Syd’s arm shot forward and he caught her by the wrist. Her skin was hot to touch and she was heavier than he thought she’d be. The momentum nearly pulled him over too. The veins of Syd’s arm strained and bulged against the muscle. He screamed with the pressure.

  Liam was at his side and helped him hoist the nope back up. Once she wa
s standing on the roof again, Liam squatted down in front of Krystof. “You lay a finger on anyone but yourself again, and I’ll toss you over next, got it?”

  Krystof nodded.

  Marie called out. “Something’s happening.”

  Liam turned to see each of the figures approach Syd one by one. They reached out to him. They touched him on the cheek and each gave a nod. One or two, through broken lips and missing teeth, even smiled. Then they moved one by one to Liam and did the same. They barely showed any symptoms on their skin. No welts and sores. No visible web of black veins, just the faintest hint of blue around their eyes, on their hands.

  “They’re getting better,” said Syd.

  “Not all of them.” Krystof pointed to the corner of the roof, where eight nopes had fallen, unmoving. Others came over to them and sat beside those fallen ones, touching them on the cheeks as well. Their veins were still black as night, and blood had trickled from their ears, eyes, noses, and mouths. They’d drained and dried there on the roof.

  “I think they’re grieving,” said Syd.

  “Nopes can’t grieve,” said Marie. “Guardians couldn’t either.”

  “But they aren’t nopes and they aren’t Guardians,” said Syd. “They’re something new.”

  The nope he’d rescued walked back to the edge of the building. She gestured for Syd to follow. She didn’t open her mouth, even in an attempt to speak. Perhaps she couldn’t speak; perhaps she chose not to try. Maybe the nopes understood that words lie, but actions never do. Syd could say all he wanted about trying to save people or make things better, but none of that meant a thing. He’d kept her from falling off the building. That meant something.