by Daryl Banner
He crouches behind a barrel, listening into the main room where all the goods are stored in giant stacks and shelving units. A jolt of anxiety races through his system, and he finds himself pulling the dagger from his belt, brandishing it and ready to strike anything that comes near. If he’s lucky, it won’t be Juston he accidentally buries his blade into.
He reaches out, allowing himself to feel in the dark for any trace of someone else’s power. This isn’t something he’s especially skilled in doing yet. Over the months since the discovery of his true ability, he has experimented with the others in Rain. He practiced with Victra and Juston, whose abilities of sight and sound were deemed the most demonstrative. They tested how far he could get before he lost grip of their abilities. Wick got used to the feeling of reaching out for Victra’s sight and Justin’s noise. It’s a little bit like floating in a pool and both reaching for and simultaneously waiting for a stubborn, aimless fish to wriggle through the water toward your slippery hands. No matter how much practice Wick got, his ability to latch onto others’ Legacies never quite got easier. When a false alarm rang through the tower and everyone in Rain thought the Finger Of Madness was about to burn them alive, Wick found himself grabbing onto three or four Legacies at once, as if he suddenly held in his hand three differently styled tools of his choosing. Fear, he realized at that moment. Fear is the key …
There’s a noise from the main room that draws his attention. He holds his breath and moves silently down the aisles of shelving units. With each step, he continues to reach out with his power, desperate to know who they are up against.
‘Weapons find your hand, Anwick,’ his dad once told him. The meaning has never held more gravity than it does now.
He stops when he reaches one of the shelves. He thinks he feels Juston’s Legacy, clinging to it. Maybe I can use my own senses to guide me to him, he wonders. He follows his instinct, trusting the pull of his own power as he moves toward a half-opened door.
He steps inside. He sees and hears nothing. Warily, he reaches for Juston’s Legacy once again.
A breeze pulls across the hairs on his arms instead. Did I do that?
There’s a shuffle from behind. Wick turns.
Knuckles meet his face, throwing him to the floor. He hears a familiar voice say, “Goodnight, dreamer,” before his consciousness is stolen by a heavy boot to the cheek.
0148 Arrow
Listen, his father told him, and you will hear the truth.
The truth is something Arrow’s wrestled with for too long, and it’s a truth too dark for anyone else in Rain to know. That’s why he already did his run’s requirements a week prior; now he has this time to conduct a one-man mission of his own.
He’d done his research, like any good slummer with a computer and access to unlocked, unsecured Sanctum systems. I know where you live, Caldron family. I know the precise street in the sixth ward, and the precise house. He’s dreamed of this day since he was ten years old. His heart hammers wildly in his chest and his throat is so dry, he can’t seem to swallow.
He’s never done anything like this before. No one in Rain would suspect such an act like this, not from Arrow, not from good, quiet, loyal, respectable, smart Arrow who sits in the corner and messes with gadgets and earpieces and charms all day long, speaking the language of machines and electronics—listening, listening, listening. There are other languages I speak, he tells himself. Redder languages. Words of vengeance. Words of retribution.
Revenge.
The street creeps up on him faster than he’d anticipated. He verifies the name three times, then double-checks the gun he has stowed away in his pocket. There are very few guns in the city of Atlas, most of which are locked away in Lifted armories and vaults of the Ancients, regarded as relics. Upon the undoing of Atlas, many things have gone missing.
And many things have been found.
Arrow runs a finger along one such weapon he’d found, the gun that carries within its chambers six bullets. I’ll only need five.
He starts to move down the street. Strange, how his feet start to grow heavier with every step. He finds himself leaning against the wall of a boarded-up storefront, out of breath suddenly. He listens to his thumping heart, its pulse carried into his ears. Listen, and you will hear the truth. The truth is, he’s scared shitless.
He clenches shuts his eyes. Remember them all, he tells himself. Remember who they are and what they did. Eron Fyrefellow, Arrow’s father, struck an amazing opportunity to work for a rich family in the sixth when Arrow was a child of just six years. The Caldrons, a family with a slumborn mother, a Lifted father, and three young daughters. They were richer than even a typical Hightower, thanks to the wealth of the patriarch of the family, and Eron was modestly compensated.
Eron asked politely for a raise and was denied. He asked for a promotion and, despite his incredibly good work, was mocked. Listen, he told Arrow. Listen to those with more power than you. Listen to those who love and depend on you. Listen a thousand times before you speak one ill word. When you are at your angriest, swallow every word you want to say, Arrow.
Swallow every word …
So his father went in for his duty every day and never once complained. He performed well and came home to a hungry Arrow and hungrier sister with sweaty clothes to prove it. Little Arrow had no idea what precise work Eron did for them, but he imagined it to be something quite laborious.
The Lifted Mr. Caldron took a sudden and strong dislike toward Eron. Arrow never learned why, no matter how hard he listened. Without a speck of warning, Mr. Caldron hired and sent a squadron of corrupted Lifted City Guardian to the Fyrefellow home one fateful evening. Little Arrow watched the Guardian with wide-open eyes and wide-open ears as they toppled furniture, shattered glass, and marched through his house. Arrow listened. They beat his father in front of him until Arrow couldn’t recognize where his face ended and his neck began. Arrow listened. His mother’s clothes were torn off and, beyond their bedroom door, her screams of protest ripped through the house. Arrow listened. His sister, only ten years older than him, was next. But it was more than screams he heard with her; bones cracked and walls shook with the wrath of the Lifted City Guardian, bought and paid for.
Arrow remembers distinctly the face of the armored man who pinned him to the wall during the whole violent ordeal and, gentle as a caring uncle, said, “The Caldrons send their love and due respect to you and your hardworking, loyal family. May you all learn and never forget the difference between the numbers six and eleven. They are of the sixth. You are of the eleventh. Watch and learn.”
Watch and learn.
His mother survived the beating. His father did not. His sister’s brain was broken in the act of violence. She has trouble forming thoughts now, and her words come out in the wrong order. Worse yet, she never notices. She can’t move her left arm or leg, and quite often she defecates herself without realizing it. His sister’s life became a sudden and sobering lesson in humility and dependency.
Arrow Fyrefellow’s decision to join Rain was not a light one.
He hasn’t seen his mother or sister in seven months. They were good friends with a kind metalworker in the tenth who had started to look out for them after Eron’s death. Arrow was grateful; he was not his father and could not fill the void that his death left.
Arrow is no longer a child, and the big house looms before him across the street. This house is where the Caldrons live: Mr. and Mrs. Caldron and their three beautiful daughters. One, two, three, four, five Caldron lives are beneath that privileged, rich, self-important roof. That murderous, foul, despicable roof. Listen …
Arrow hears his teeth clattering. It’s not fear, he tells himself. It’s anger. You are angry. Think of dad. Think of mom and sis. Think of that gun in your hand.
The gun is in Arrow’s sweaty, sturdy hand. Six bullets.
Five lives.
Arrow swallows hard past the dryness in his throat. He licks his lips, finding them to feel of san
dpaper and taste of salt. Remember, he incites himself, pushing himself, urging himself. Keep your focus.
‘May you all learn and never forget the difference between the numbers six and eleven.’ No, he will never forget the difference. It’s five. The difference is five.
One, two, three, four, five lives.
Arrow starts to cross the street.
The world turns red. Arrow stops, breath catching in his throat. For a second, he’s confused. Then, he looks up to the sky.
Oh, no.
Arrow takes off running in the opposite direction. He charges away so fast, he trips over his own feet and his face dives into the harsh pavement. “Fuck!” he screams out, feeling the burn of blood on his cheek as he scrambles back to his feet, ignoring the wound on his face that smarts something awful. Head pounding, pulse in his ears, he lurches forward desperately.
The Finger Of Madness strikes down with a horrifying sound. It is a million screams that are nothing human. It is lightning and it is fire. The world melts around him and Arrow becomes flat against the road, his own scream joining in the cacophony of death’s music.
Then it is over.
Arrow blinks, shaking so hard, he worries he’ll dislodge every bone in his body. Wait, I still have bones? He lifts his face off the pavement for the second time and finds a bloody imprint of his cheek left there. Twisting his torso around, he glances down the road, trembling.
As if some great god took a magical cylindrical eraser to the buildings, a mighty, jagged hole fifty feet in diameter is now cut through them at an angle. Flames dance and spit about the harsh wound that’s been given to the street.
He sees no people. Is this part of the sixth abandoned already? he wonders. Did the Caldrons leave? Am I here … Am I here for nothing?
He lifts himself off the ground, still shaking. Putting one very unsteady foot in front of the other, he returns to the front of the Caldron house. Half of it is gone, eaten by the Laughing Finger. The other half is wrapped in angry fire and smoke.
The smoke twists about, lured away by some stray wind, and in its place a young woman stands there.
Arrow blinks, astonished. His hand grips the gun, trembling.
She looks up from the wreckage, smoke dancing in her hair. Her desperate, terrified eyes meet his.
Neither of them move. It is an eerie scene, the crackle of fire and the deep inhale and exhale of smoke as the world settles from the cold and careless bolt of red fire that so randomly struck this very part of Atlas. Why here? Why now? Why at all? And there’s not a soul in sight but Arrow and this young woman.
She cries out a word. Arrow swallows hard. What did she say?
She starts to move, stumbling over burning debris and ashes that float in the air. Her skin is charred and blackened from the fire, yet she walks as if the burns are just paint upon her skin.
The closer she gets, the harder Arrow finds it to breathe. The young woman is gorgeous. She’d be about his age, too. Her breasts dance with her every step. Her hair is long and silken and brownish-red, like a sunset to complement the wintry cream of her skin. Her clothes, half burnt off, cling to a wide set of curvy, sexy hips, thick and gorgeous thighs, slender shoulders, and silken arms.
And when she reaches him, the word she’d cried out is made plain. “Help!” she shrieks again, lips trembling. “S-Someone needs … needs to call the h-h-hospital! Oh, Three Goddess help me, they’re all still inside!!”
The look on her face, it stuns Arrow and sends a sharp, unkind chill to the very pit of his stomach. That look of terror, that look of crazed desperation, that fear and that grief and that helplessness … that’s exactly how Arrow felt the day the Guardian came into his house, broke his sister, defiled his mother, and murdered his father. The horror in her eyes is unmistakable and plain, and it is something that speaks directly to Arrow. He’s transported at once to that day he lost his family and gained a broken one.
Arrow is stunned, a prisoner to his memories, unable to move, petrified to the fingertip.
“They’re inside!” she’s crying out. “All of them! Help!”
And to that girl, he’s only able to sputter a single word. A name. “C-Caldron.”
Her eyes flicker with surprise. “You know my family?? Can you help me? Please??”
It is her. One of the daughters … but which one?
“Please!” she cries feebly. “I need help!! They’re—”
There’s an explosion. The front of the house folds in upon itself, and the roof follows, crashing down. Fire sweeps up like dust from under a rug as it’s thrown, flitting in the air and licking up the sides of neighboring buildings.
Arrow and the girl watch on—Arrow in a stupefied stare, the girl in frozen horror.
Neither of them need to say it. If there was any fleck of life in that house a second ago, it’s gone now.
“My s-s-sisters …” the girl hisses at the flames, her eyes welling up. “M-Mother. F-Father …”
She drops to her knees, staring at the toiling light as it continues to greedily consume everything she, all her life, cared for and loved—everything Arrow, all his life, despised and hated.
His fingers still grip the gun. Six bullets, five lives …
One life.
The girl faints, tumbling to the pavement in a heap of limbs.
Arrow stares down at her. The fire ahead of him burns so hot, he feels it against his face like a blanket. His body is drenched in sweat. Flames start to throw themselves outward from the house in little whips and tongues, as if hungrily reaching for the pair of them and inviting them to join the dance.
Killing her now would be too easy. Killing her now would be a mercy, letting her drift to the other side with her family. Does she deserve that kindness? This girl who took part in destroying his life? This girl who’s watching her own get destroyed before her?
I will save this bullet. I will save it until I can use it upon her and finish my own mission. I will do it when it will hurt her the most.
And he thinks these angry thoughts as the boy who lost his family, furious tears quivering in that boy’s eyes as he looked down upon his wounded, wailing mother and his confused, broken sister and the corpse of his father, who he never got to say goodbye to.
The girl is motionless at his feet. One life …
Arrow stows the gun away. The next instant, he brings the girl into his arms. Carrying her, he rushes down the road, abandoning the crackle and spit and groan of the hungry flames at his back.
0149 Ellena
Gabel has been standing guard outside her door for the past hour. It is such a mercy that the room she stays in when she’s not cleaning linens has a big window in that wretched, thick door. She finds herself staring through the glass at Gabel’s wide, muscled back hugged tightly by his green uniform shirt. He flinches, as if feeling her eyes on his back, but doesn’t turn around.
She leans against the wall and sighs, then stares down at her hands which are still locked in the thick leather gloves. She’s tried a hundred different tugs and pulls to get them off—even crouched to the floor, stepped on her own hand, and yanked with all her might—but nothing at all works. I’ve forgotten what my real hands look like.
Lonesomeness is the worst torment. It’s worse than the memory of murdering a boy of fourteen. Yes, he was horrible and broke her into fifty pieces before she moved those fifty broken bones right back into him, but still, he was only a boy. He had a mother who loved him, surely. He had desires. He had dreams of living a long, happy life. Maybe he would’ve met a woman or a man to make him smile and learn compassion. It’s possible, isn’t it? The Fall of Sanctum might have changed him. Maybe he’d have become a better person. Maybe the next victim of his bending and breaking bones would have been King Impis himself. Now, Ellena will never know.
“You know I’m dying in here,” she says at the door.
Gabel’s motionless statue of a body makes no response.
“Is there any news of my sons?”
she asks anyway, her voice softer. She knows he can hear her; she’s tested it many times before. “Anything at all? News from Guardian? From my sister? Please. Give me scraps here. Even just a word or two. My sons are out there in the middle of it. I’ve already … I’ve already learned the fate of one of them. What a horrible fate for a mother to bear.”
Yes, she’ll cling to the lie that the boy’s body she was brought to identify was her son Link’s, even if he wasn’t. She’ll cling to that lie and use it like an emotional crowbar in this unforgiving door. She is determined to pick into that stone heart of his, even if a morsel of compassion is all she gets in return.
Ellena notices his shoulder move. He’s turned his head slightly, his ear perked. He’s listening.
“I never even got to tell him goodbye,” she murmurs at the glass, encouraged by the shift of Gabel’s broad, chiseled backside. “He was my youngest. He was my baby … my little Link. If only I knew just a bit of news from any of my other boys. Two of them are in Guardian. I’ve spoken about them so many times, my sweet boys from Quadrant Nine. Oh, if only I knew whether they were okay.”
He says nothing, but he still keeps his head turned just half an inch in her direction.
“Please …” she begs him.
Then he relents. “Halves. He’s your second oldest?”
“Yes.” She hangs onto his words like the rope thrown over a cliff to save her from falling. “Yes, Halvesand Lesser. Do you know him? Is he alright? And what of his brother Aleksand, my eldest son?”
“Aleksand is alive.”
She clenches shut her eyes, drinking that information like a cool glass of water and she is ever parched. “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you.” The persisting silence stabs her. He didn’t mention … “And what of his … his brother? Halvesand?” There is still silence. She’s gone from mourning the fake-death of her youngest to fearing the worst for her second-oldest. “Gabel? S-Sir? Please don’t say it. Oh, no. Please, please don’t say it …”