by Daryl Banner
Cintha doesn’t respond, staring at the woman and feeling her insides running cold with anxiety. If I am the kind, watchful survivor that she claims I am, wouldn’t I stay to save my friends from the fate I almost suffered? Wouldn’t it make me a coward to just … run?
“Very well,” the woman says, pushing a finger into the button and opening the elevator doors to step through the threshold. “Do what you will. It’s your life. And if it’s your wish to waste it on your friends who might already be dead, I overestimated your smarts.”
“I’ll make it out,” Cintha promises her.
“I hope you do,” says the woman.
And then a bullet flies through her head.
Cintha jerks away when the woman’s blood paints the front of her mask to match the back of it. The bullet went clean through her head, leaving a hole in the wall of the lift.
A figure in a mask drifts by the entrance to the lift, stares at Cintha, his gun drawn, then gives her a nod. “All clear?”
Cintha is trembling within the oversized clothes that aren’t hers. “Y-Yes,” Cintha manages to grunt through her shock.
“Find another doctor, let them finish with a patient, then bring them down as you did this one,” the masked man directs, lowering his gun to grab hold of the woman’s ankle. He drags her out of the lift like a sack of freshly-picked Greens.
On her way out, her palm happens to open, leaving something behind, and then the elevator doors close.
Cintha stares at the syringe on the floor. She still grips the gun at her hip, the weapon tight in its holster. The masked men, they’re the true ones in charge. They’re systematically ridding this place of all evidence of its existence … the doctors included.
She smashes her finger into the button of the lift, making it go up. If I’m not too late, I can save Kirin and Aryl. She shakes in the man’s boots she wears, hoping she can move quickly enough in them. In this mask, no one will know who I am. In this mask, I am safe. I am a Nether now, which I guess is what the folk in the masks call themselves. The Nether … Netheris …
King Greymyn Netheris is dead. The lift draws up, up, up, a slow, crawling pace. The King is actually, truly dead.
Cintha takes a deep breath, glancing down at the syringe again. A permanent nightmare. Nine percent chance of working. She stares at it, terrified by its power.
The elevator stops.
Cintha crouches down and snatches the syringe off the floor in one quick instant, then holds the dear weapon close to her. Survive. You must survive and see Rone again. He’s waiting for you. She holds her breath and doesn’t let it out, her eyes focused on the elevator doors with the severity of an assassin. She will be clear in the head, and her heart will be made of steel. She will survive this.
And then the doors open.
ACT 3
0185 Tide
The rain brushes by in sheets of fury as he huddles against the side of the building with but a lip of brick stretched over him from a windowsill above, shielding him from the elements.
He had spent a while pushing the rain away from him with his wind as he walked, but the hungrier he gets, the more exhausting his Legacy is to perform. He isn’t sure he could even push a light breeze in his current state.
“Fuck you,” he grunts at the rain as it blows by punishingly. It’s like nature itself is showing off to spite only Tide, who still thinks he can name himself Storm King someday. I’ll be the second Storm King. Fuck the rule about no duplicate titles. I’ll make people forget that Atlas even had a first Storm King. He glares into the rain, squeezing himself tighter as the wind blows harder still, slapping him occasionally in the face with rain.
An hour later when the rain has let up, he continues his slow move through the outskirts of the first. In this part of the slums, the Lifted City can’t even be seen unless one gets a view that isn’t obstructed by all the enormously tall buildings of the area, thus the completely unblocked downpour of rain. Tide has passed a number of people along his way, but most of them seem as suspicious as the folk in the Abandon, which makes him wonder if they are folk from the Abandon. It does have an entrance into the first ward, though it is narrow and it is heavily guarded. The only other way into the first from the Abandon is by circumventing through the eleventh, across the Core, into the sixth, and then cutting through the wards the back way. Tide opted to take the quickest path of least resistance.
Unfortunately, that also seems to have been the path of least sustenance, too. He has walked the streets of the first for four sunsets now and has only had one stale butt of bread, a clump of sour berries at the top of a trash bin, and a swallow of salted meat along with half a flask of warrior’s wine, which is really just a fancy name for slum-grade tea. No one knows anyone by the name of Gin, and no one seems motivated in the least to help him. Why should they? Tide is a stranger in these parts. If he wasn’t so sure that the Queen would have turned him instantly into one of those chalky white statues, he would have made a mad grab for her meal—the scent of which still haunts his nostrils.
It isn’t until the fifth day of mindless meandering through the streets that the tall buildings give way to a spread of very low ones, something like a neighborhood. The thin roads are lined with small multicolored slum homes, much like the ones on the outskirts of the ninth and tenth, but there are countless intersections, the roads constantly weaving in and out of each other. Each block—if they can even be called that—only holds four to five tiny houses, making the area seem more like a sprawling courtyard with clusters of houses pinned here and there. Cables that once transmitted electricity hang between the homes and dangle over the streets, interrupted here and there with a tall metal pole toward which the cables centrally attach to. The area is far more heavily populated than the outskirts of the first, and the people all seem busied carrying baskets of clothing, vases of water, bins of seed, and rolling barrels down the roads.
Tide feels an overwhelming sense of gratefulness for happening on the inhabited area of the first, especially after having traveled through so much nothing for days. He approaches the first person who meets his eyes, a woman with short grey hair leaning against the doorframe of her doorless home. She knows of no Gin. “But if it’s a beggar’s bread you’re looking for, head down the road a ways and see if the Giving has a bowl for you.”
He drinks in those words like a cool glass of mother’s milk, but his response is not gratitude. “You think me a beggar?” he spits back, scowling. “Piss on you and your Giving.” To that, she just rolls her eyes and lifts the decanter she’s drinking from to her thin, dry lips.
Despite his irritability, he does precisely what she advises and continues down the road. He doesn’t get the suspicious, dark looks anymore, not here in this curious community. Instead, he seems to be outright ignored, every single person being too busy working or heading somewhere that they don’t even lift their heads.
What Tide perceives to be the main road leads by a sanctuary of sorts that has no walls, but rather columns under which there are tables and chairs set out. The intoxicating smell of smoked or grilled food draws him forth. He ascends the three steps that lead into the cement covering, lit only by the cool grey light of day spilling in through the columns and the cooking fires that burn in large red cauldrons in the center of the space. People in rags and cloaks and tattered clothes are lined up for their helping.
Tide gets in line, hugging his arms to his chest. The pink glow from his body becomes more evident in here where it is darker, the pink color illuminating the backs of the people in the line ahead of him. His light draws forth the attention of a few who pass by, giving him a worried glance. He returns their glances with a scowl of his own, resisting his urge to tell them all to piss off. His hunger is so extreme, he worries even spending the energy to shout is too much and might result in his keeling over.
When he reaches the front of the line half an eternity later, the woman before the cauldrons of stew and fire, over which the meat and veg
etables cook, studies him with squinted, suspicious eyes. “You aren’t of the first,” she grunts.
Tide gives a shrug, still holding himself and scowling. “So? This is the Giving, isn’t it? So give.”
“I only give to citizens of the first, boy.”
“I’m no fucking boy,” Tide spits back in a voice low and devoid of energy. “I’m fucking starved. I haven’t eaten in days. I came here for a giving.”
“You got a token?”
Tide has no patience for the woman. “Fuck your tokens. I want a bite of that meat. And I want a bowl of that,” he adds, nodding at the stew. “Give it or I’ll take it myself.”
“You need to see the Slum King and you need to get yourself a token if you wish to be given a damn thing.”
Slum King? This tri-ward unity calls their leader the Slum King? “I’ve a token,” Tide lies. “I left it at home. I’ll have a bowl of that stew now.”
She doesn’t budge, staring at him sternly. Tide reaches for one of the empty bowls at her side, figuring he’ll just fill it himself, when she slaps his hand away. “Show your token, I’ll show you my stew,” the woman states.
The next instant, Tide grabs the nearest vegetable directly off the grill with one hand—a green pepper, whole—and a knob of meat with the other, then takes off running. Seconds later, his hands burn, and instead of dropping the food, he crams the scalding hot meat into his mouth, only to stupidly discover a completely different sort of burn. Racing away from the Giving and from the scandalized shouts of the serving woman, he spits the meat back into his palm, tossing it lightly several times while blowing on the pepper in his other hand, which he now holds only by the stem.
After turning down two roads and rounding a corner, he slams his back into the side of a house and blows feverishly on the single pepper he stole and the meat, tossing it to help cool it off. Without caring for the state of how cooked it is—if it’s cooked at all—he shoves the whole of it into his mouth, which is still burned from his first attempt at eating it, and he chews excitedly, desperate for the nourishment. He can’t even taste it, so burned his tongue is.
Without even bothering to swallow the meat, he bites off the end of the pepper, ravenously chewing and chewing and chewing. For no reason at all, he remembers when his father used to deny him dinner when he misbehaved, or when he was sent to the Headmaster at school for disrupting class or beating up Link, or when he talked back to his mother who never paid much attention to him anyway.
He chews and he chews, wondering where his mother and father had gone to. His father must have finally had enough of Tide’s fury and taken off, with no regard to his own. Didn’t his father ever think that maybe his own anger was inspiring his son’s? Didn’t his father ever wonder whether he ought to teach his child compassion? Tide always wondered this to himself as he stared at Wick and Link from across the schoolyard when they didn’t notice him. Tide would watch as Wick comforted his weak little brother, patting him on the back and saying things that’d make him laugh. He even watched the way Rone and his sister would interact with them too, all four of them, friendly and sweet and compassionate and supportive.
Tide resented them all. He resented the sweet, loving families they would go home to. He hated the idea of Link having a mother worry over him and make him meals and encourage him during his homework, even if he never witnessed any of that. The only time he can ever recall seeing Link’s mother was when they were called to the Headmaster together. Watching Ellena across the room, Tide felt a stab of anger … and a stab of yearning, wondering what his life could be life if he had a mother like that.
And it only made him hate Link Lesser worse. Link and Wick, they are the spoiled brats of the slums. They don’t know what they have and they sneer in the direction of Tide, thinking him to be lowly and ugly and brutish. “I’ll have you by the throat one day,” he promises those two boys out loud, still chewing as his nose runs from the heat of the pepper, mucus gathering upon his upper lip. A tear escapes his eyes from the pepper. “I’ll end you, Wick Lesser.”
And if it wasn’t for Wick, Tide would have his one and only friend, Scorp, at his side right now. Scorp was the one who found him on the street that day long ago. It was the worst day of Tide’s life. One moment, he was running away from the Weapon Show, the next moment he sat in a chair at home watching a man with a cane leaving his apartment. He can’t even remember the man’s face. He was so confused and felt dizzy. He stared at the window for an hour, watching as the sun rose. Morning, he had thought.
Then he left his apartment. He thinks he was wondering where his parents were. He moved out into the streets, lost, and didn’t understand why people were staring at him and running away, alarmed by his presence. What the fuck you looking at? he had thought of them.
He was turning a corner and saw a group of Guardian at the end of the street. Maybe they were handling some sort of incident. Tide didn’t know. But the next moment, he was pulled into an alley by a hand and an urgent whisper. “Where’d you get shot??” came the voice of this strange boy Tide’s age, this boy with hair cutting down the middle of his scalp, the sides of his head shaved. Tattoos decorated his whole shirtless front. Tide had no idea what he was talking about, too dizzied to notice the pink and orange glow all over his own chest that showed even through his clothes. “My name is Scorp. What’s yours?” Tide was too confused to even answer that, his foggy brain still trying to desperately grasp at something that was almost there … and almost gone. What was he trying to recall?
Hours later, he was in some sort of secret basement, a bunker of sorts just beneath a gymnasium in the eleventh. “Stay by my side,” Scorp told him. “I have a group in the twelfth. There are other glow-hit folk there. They call themselves the Neons, but you can stay with me. I’m safe. I’ll protect you. What’s your Legacy?”
Tide pushes the memory away, feeling a deep twitch in his stomach. Is it the meat he’s eating, or is it pain from the memory of Scorp, who the Queen forced him to kill? If I hadn’t killed him, Tide has to reassure himself, then he would have killed me. He would have cut my throat open and spilled my ninth ward blood all over his boots.
Tears swell in Tide’s eyes, and he doesn’t know whether they’re inspired by the pepper or the memory. He sniffles loudly, drool falling from his mouth now as he keeps chewing the remainder of the pepper. He hears the scuffling of feet, so he starts moving again, despite his stomach quite suddenly beginning to turn over. Water, he realizes. I need water. Lots of water.
The burning in his mouth is nearly ignored as his face drains all over itself—tears from his eyes, from his nose, from his lips. He keeps his feet moving. He pulls the length of his arm across his mouth and nose, wiping away as much of the grossness as he can.
He slams his back against another wall the moment he turns a corner. The trouble with the layout of this part of the first ward is, it is so difficult to hide. There are no true alleyways; every road is one lined with houses. If he wasn’t running from whoever is chasing him—likely that woman from the Giving and maybe an army of others who work there—he’d stop to appreciate how warm this place feels. It’s a community. It’s full of faces and families. It’s full of life.
“Running?”
Tide flinches at the voice, which comes from the side door of the house upon which he’s leaning. It’s the voice of a boy his age, or perhaps a year younger. He is a head shorter than Tide, thin of body and round of face, and his eyes are soft and brown—two chocolate buttons. His hair is short and clean-cropped, a tuft of brown at the front, flipped up. He wears a white fitted t-shirt and green, woven shorts with nothing on his dirtied feet.
“The fuck’s it matter to you?” spits back Tide.
The boy blushes at Tide’s brash demeanor. “You … want to hide in here? Maybe? You don’t have to. I just, um …” He swallows hard, his eyes drifting down Tide’s body. “D-Do you need …?”
Tide hears the footsteps approaching, so he darts past the bo
y without waiting for the rest of his words. The boy softly but quickly shuts the door at his back.
The square-shaped room seems to be the whole of the house. There is a soft couch on one end, a broadcast on the wall, and a small basket of thread and cloth by a table in the nearest corner, which sits under two windows that bear tattered curtains that are transparent, the sunlight warmly seeping in and lighting the room on fire.
The boy comes around to his front, observing him. “You look like you need a cleaning up,” he observes, studying him.
“You’ve a toilet?” Tide asks at once, hand clasped to his belly.
“Maybe I could offer you a … a b-b-bath,” he goes on to say, his gaze seeming to be trapped on Tide’s big chest and unable to meet his eyes. “I have soaps that I traded for last week and … and oils that I was saving for an occasion, but thought, um …”
“Bathroom,” Tide growls, interrupting him.
The boy points at a small door in the corner of the room behind the broadcast. Tide tumbles for the door, having to bend his neck to get through it, then pulls it shut unkindly and sits upon the toilet there, staring at the small shaded window that rests above him as his bowels less-than-gently turn inside-out.
It is not a pleasant experience for Tide, and twice he fights and gives in to an urge to cry.
What feels like an hour later, Tide’s insides have settled, leaving him feeling twice as empty and hungry as before. He cleans up with one of the boy’s towels hanging under the window, wiping his face all over it until he’s dry, then discards it onto the floor carelessly.
He pushes out of the toilet room. “Better pull open a window,” Tide warns him.
The boy is standing in the exact same place he was when Tide had gone into the bathroom. He nods quickly. “Okay, I’ll do that.”