by Daryl Banner
She smirks. “Got a date? In a hurry?”
“I wish. Haven’t fucked a thing since my right hand last night.”
The woman rolls her eyes, unamused. “Did not need to know that. I will be done in an hour. Please let me be.”
“If you find that the boy is related in blood to Subject Dreamer, let me know first. Greymyn should hear it from me, not from some gossiping nitwit in a mask.” There are shuffled footsteps and then a door opens and closes.
The woman smirks. “Asshole,” she mutters to herself. “You just want to take the credit for my findings. If there are any findings.” She glances down at Link’s eyes, tilting her head. “What is your Legacy?”
Link senses an opportunity. He feels Kid’s presence at his side, and the motivation strikes him. Without moving a thing, he snaps only his eyes to the woman, meeting hers.
Her eyes grow wide with alarm.
“My Legacy,” Link answers, “is a shadow within a shadow.”
The woman backs away from the table just as Link rises from it. She holds a sharp tool before her in the very next instant, a knife with a blade that’s curved into half a question mark, like a hook that’s fatter in the middle.
“Y-You’re dead,” the woman breathes in disbelief.
“Yes,” answers Link softly. “And unless you cooperate, there’ll be two dead in this room.”
She swipes another tool off the counter behind her, her red eyes flaring as she brandishes two curved blades, ready to defend herself.
“You won’t be needing either of those, as I won’t be attacking you,” Link goes on to say. “I only have but one interest, and then I will spare your life.”
“I believe it is you who is at a disadvantage,” she informs him, her voice nearly a hiss as she narrows her beady red eyes. “You are surrounded on all sides by armed men and women with powerful Legacies who serve the King of Atlas.”
“You don’t know who I am?” asks Link, swinging his legs off the table and getting to his feet with his eyes trained on hers.
The woman stares at him, her hooked tools unmoving. “No. I didn’t quite get the chance to get acquainted with you,” she answers with mock politeness. “Who are you?”
Link reaches in his mind for something to grab hold of. For some reason, the very first thing he channels is Dran—his confidence and his dark, slithery swagger. Make it fly, Shye. “I’m the one … who escapes death.” He takes a step toward her. The red-eyed woman, brave and unafraid, stands her ground. “I’m the one who lives in shadows.” He takes another step. “I am the answer and the question. I am the phantom of hands. The unseen. The lark. The jester of dusk. The one who hears all. The avenger.”
“One misstep,” the woman warns him, “and you’ll be in a locked room for the rest of your existence, no matter who you are.”
“Ah, but it does matter precisely who I am,” replies Link, taking yet another step towards her, inches from her blades, “for I am the key to all locks, and not even a King can contain me.”
The woman’s eyes shift, seeing something behind him, and then there is alarm in her face. Link glances over his shoulder and is equally surprised and amused to find two syringes floating near the exam table. Kid must be holding them in the air.
Link faces the woman, his face straight. “I am the whisper and the wind. I … am Link.”
The woman takes one step back, her heel kicking into the wall. “The link to what?” she stammers, misunderstanding.
And this is when the dark fire ignites in Link’s chest. “The … link … between the living … and the dead,” he finishes, raising his hands as if to command a great power.
A syringe whizzes past his face from behind. The doctor swiftly deflects it with a swipe of the curved blade in her hand. Another object goes airborne and again the woman shields herself with the blades, but now her confidence is rattled as her hands begin to tremble and her eyes remain affixed to whatever new things Kid has lifted into the air, floating behind Link threateningly.
The woman pitches the blade in her left hand at him. It embeds itself between his shoulder and his neck. Link winces, feeling the depth of the wound, yet the pain of it is numbed. Ames once said that immortality is not pretty. I’ll wear this wound the rest of my life. Let’s try not to get my head chopped off.
When the woman prepares to cut with her other one, the thing fumbles from her hand and suddenly starts to float away from her. Link, picking up on Kid’s action, lifts his own hand, as if it’s his power that has pulled it from the woman’s grasp.
With the curved blade floating in the air by his hand, he turns his eyes onto the defenseless woman and says, “I will drop the blade if you answer my questions.”
The woman appears more indignant and annoyed than she does scared. Her red eyes hover on the blade, ready to dodge it should it come for her. “So ask your damn questions,” she mutters to it.
“Subject Dreamer,” he recites. “Who is that?”
Her jaw tightens. “I don’t know.”
The blade wiggles in the air. Nice touch, Kid. “I heard the easiest way to loosen a mouth is by cutting it wide open,” says Link with dark humor in his eyes, channeling the very spirit of Dran. He might even trick himself into thinking he has black about his eyes. “Tell me who she is.”
The doctor’s eyes move to his now. “I never said she was a she.” Now it’s her turn to be humored. “I suspect you know exactly who she is. My question to you now is how you’re related to her.”
Link shrugs, playing it off. “No idea what you’re talking about.”
The doctor lifts an eyebrow. “Did you procreate with her?” After a moment of silence from Link, the woman’s face softens. Her eyes grow serious. “It’s true, then? She gave … She gave birth? There’s a child out there?”
A child. Link feels his mouth go dry as he observes the wonder in the woman’s eyes. This whole thing is about Kid. They want the girl who is a product of Goddess and human. But why?
“Listen to me,” the woman states. “I simply work here. I have a duty. I perform it and I go home. I have no idea why the King so urgently wanted Subject Dreamer, nor do I know why he has such a deep, personal interest in the child she apparently had. Maybe the Subject Dreamer is his daughter. Maybe she’s a lost girlfriend. Maybe she’s a pleasure girl he misses, or a woman who spit in his stew, or an Outlier … I don’t fucking care. My duty was to examine your dead body, take fluids, and determine who you are.”
“I told you who I am. Tell me where Subject Dreamer is.”
“She is out of our hands.”
Link’s voice grows more stern. “Where is she?”
“Sanctum has her now.”
The words hit him raw and they hit him hard. Sanctum is full of powers that he doesn’t feel he or Kid could brave—powers that could detect either of them, powers that could restrain him, powers that could put Kid in danger. We are too late. Fae is taken from us. We may never see her again.
“Please,” the woman says, her voice lowering. “If you are truly a shadow of shadows … a link between life and death … the question and the answer … then do me the courtesy of sparing my life and letting me get home to see my husband and child. It’s been a very long and exhausting day, and I did not plan to die at the end of it.”
Link slowly lowers his hand. Though he didn’t mean to let down his guard, Kid follows his lead, dropping the tool to the floor with a loud clang. Now the woman and Link merely stare at one another, each seeming less certain of the other’s true intentions.
“If you take off your clothes, lie on the table, and pretend to be dead,” says the woman, “then I will cover you with a tarp and roll you to the depository. You can wait for a clearing and make your escape. I care not. But at the very least, let me take a sample of your blood and a scrape of your skin. It’s all I truly need.”
“That might prove difficult, since I haven’t a heart that pumps,” replies Link.
“I noticed,” she retu
rns dryly, “but you’ve still blood in your veins, judging from the bone carver that’s still in you.”
Link had nearly forgotten about it. He pulls the thing from the meat between his neck and shoulder and tosses it to the nearest counter. “There’s your blood and skin scrape in one go,” he declares.
“Noted. Now take off your clothes and lie on the table.”
Her eyes falter, which gives Link pause. She doesn’t mean to help you escape, Link realizes. She will confine you. She will turn you in to the King. You will join Ames in the Keep, if that’s where he is at all.
“All of my clothes?” he asks with mock bashfulness, stalling.
“What’s the problem?” she returns. “Are you shy?”
The word stings him. His face slowly sobers as the single word pours over him like liquid armor. “Yes,” he states, emboldened by it. “I am Shye.”
“Well, I disagree. I rather see you as an overconfident buffoon.”
“My name,” he presses. “My name … is Shye.”
The woman considers it for half a second. “Then you’ve a very unfortunate name.”
“A name you’ll hear whispered on the streets. A name that will chase you into your nightmares. A name that will haunt you as ghosts haunt you. Living and dead. Here and there. Whispers and bold Banshee screams. I am Shye,” he announces, his hand reaching out, “the Unseen.”
Kid is there to grab his hand just in time, and then he is gone.
The red-eyed woman blinks, startled by his disappearance. After a moment of uncertainty, she swipes the curved blade from off the floor, then presses her back to the wall, wielding it before her. Her red eyes dart all around the room, searching for him. “Shye,” she whispers, taking in the name with fear. Then she discards the clean blade and grabs the other one off the counter, caked in Link’s blood and a bit of skin—and quite possibly a speck or two of bone. After yet another glance around the room, the woman opens the door and hurries away as fast as her feet can take her.
Link, as part of the invisible world, turns his face to Kid, who he now sees. “Does it look bad?” he asks quietly.
She winces, her eyes drifting to the wound near his neck. “It is not pleasant.”
“Shye is not a pleasant man,” Link points out.
Kid smirks. “And what’ll you do if you ever meet the real Shye?”
Link tries to chuckle, but finds himself drawn into a world of worry. “She’s gone,” he hears himself say. “Sanctum has her.”
“We are here now,” says Kid. “We know where they are.”
“The masked men,” agrees Link. “And women.”
“I think we are beyond trying not to ruin the past. I think we have a new duty now. A duty to Atlas. And to Sanctum.”
“What Baal said would happen … has happened.” He shakes his head. He doesn’t know anymore if Baal was truly trying to prevent this from happening all along, or if his attempted abduction of Faery was for some selfish, greedy need. “Does this really trigger some … chain of events that ends Atlas as we know it?”
“I won’t stop until we find her.” Kid gives his hand a squeeze. “We are a team, remember? Together, always.”
“Together, always.”
“We are Shye. Unseen. Shadow of shadows. Shye, thief renown.” Kid leans into Link importantly, her eyes looking so much like her mother’s in this moment. “We will steal back the one who’s been stolen from us.”
“Twice-stolen gold,” murmurs Link, inspired.
When the two make their way unseen through the shadows of the halls of masked men, women, and doctors, Link feels his chest exploding with the pride of a purpose. Though, he worries that for years to come, he’ll never quite know the answer to his own riddle: Did he just create Shye, or did Shye just create him?
0229 Rone
The way is always easy for Rone Tinpassage.
And this time, it’s easier. With no one manning the Pylons or the towers, the only obstacles that block the way for the common slummer is rubble and fallen ceilings—neither of which prove to be a problem whatsoever for Rone. He slips through a tile. He waltzes through a tumble of chairs and overturned furniture. He peeks his head through a wall, then tiptoes through it. He exercises his upper body strength, solidifying a hand above him and pulling the rest of his body up through a cement ceiling. Up and up and up he goes until the mouth of a ripped-open building reveals to him a street of the Lifted City.
Always easier to come. Always more difficult to go.
Just as easily as he scaled the Pylon, he hurries through building and house and square. Despite his head flying and whirring from the chemical that still rides his nerves, he feels an incredible sense of focus as he passes through the city like a hired assassin. And that is precisely what he is, armed with the greatest weapon in the city … a weapon in the form of a serum-filled needle.
At the Crystal Court, he realizes he can’t hide in any of the walls, since they’re all made of glass and can be seen through, so he finds a spot beneath one of the seats, unphased, and stares between two of them at the girl seated on the stage. She is with two others who are guffawing and talking amongst themselves. Rone can’t hear what they’re saying, only the echoes of their laughs reaching Rone’s ears. Rone carefully phases through four more rows of seats to get a bit closer, but he makes sure to keep his distance.
The girl looks up into the sky, then pushes a finger to the bridge of her glasses.
Erana.
“It’s time,” says a blond boy sitting across from her—the same one who can spread his forearms into shields, if Rone is recognizing him correctly. Aegis, that was his name. He takes a deep breath and slaps the shoulder of the one next to him, someone Rone has not seen before. “Nearly nightfall, aye?”
The one whose shoulder was just slapped scowls. “Fuck the dropping of the body. That Yoli can suck a slummer’s teat for all the shits I give. He likes the spectacle. I’ve grown weary of it.”
“What will the King think if you’re not there?”
“Fuck him. Even he’s not there. He stays atop his Cloud Tower all the days and nights long now, partying with his Chaos Bolts and his boy-toy up there.”
“Come on, Splinters. You’re just bent because of Baigan, aren’t you? I’m sorry. We all suffer losses. We have to move on.”
“He was like a brother to me, that big dumb oaf.” Splinters jabs a finger into his eye, likely to mask a tear he’s trying not to let the others see. “Fuck Impis. Fuck him. Fuck him.”
“Mind your words. This one here’s gonna remember each and every single one of them,” teases Aegis, but when he looks on the likes of Erana, a flicker of fear shines in his eye. “But she’ll keep her mouth shut, won’t she? Shut as a Sanctum Trust vault?”
“The Sanctum Trust vaults were broken open eighty-one years ago,” Erana recites, her voice deadpan, “and again twenty-six years ago, and again twenty-one years ago, and again eighteen years ago. Though made of the strongest steel alloy known to humankind, they are still pregnable. So I find your wording problematic.”
The two men stare at her, each with a more annoyed look than the other. Rone feels a private stab of joy.
“I find your face problematic,” retorts Aegis, to which Splinters chortles. Aegis rises to his feet and pulls Splinters up. “Come on. Let’s get out of here. We might’ve already missed the dropping.”
The two men depart the stage, leaving Erana all on her own. Rone can’t believe his luck, staring at her as she doesn’t move at all. She simply sits there, cross-legged and staring ahead at nothing.
The moment there’s no one in sight, Rone makes his move. He hops over the chairs and slips onto the stage.
He’s in front of Erana in an instant. “I’m here. I’m back.”
The girl lifts her dead eyes to him. She says nothing and makes no move to stand up.
Rone is alarmed at once by her odd behavior. “E-Erana?”
She pulls out a dagger from her pocket, then makes
a swift jab with it at Rone’s belly.
Rone barely feels the dagger before he phases away his torso, letting the dagger and her hand drift harmlessly through him. His eyes flash open. He was not expecting that.
“Erana!”
She pulls the dagger out of the permeable mass that is Rone’s abdominal region, then stabs again, and again, the dagger pushes fruitlessly through his body.
Rone takes hold of Erana’s hand, stopping her when she goes for a third jab. There is no anger in her eyes or intent of killing on her face. She acts like a machine, her eyes dead and far away.
He barely needs to fight her to wrest the dagger from her grip. “Erana. What the fuck are you doing??”
“Hi, Rone,” she finally says, her voice dull.
“Why are you trying to gut me?”
“I have orders,” she explains simply.
Rone blinks. There’s a woman who can control minds. Ruena and Erana both had said as much back at the half-mansion hideout. The mind controller must have gotten to her. It’s the only explanation.
“Erana …” he says, heartbroken. “Don’t you still love me?”
“Of course,” she mutters dimly.
“And yet …?”
“I have to kill you, Rone. You have to die. Anyone who helped Ruena must die, and then Ruena must be brought to the King.”
“Erana … You love her too. You wouldn’t betray her. Wake up. You remember everything, don’t you? You … You should remember our time in the mansion, and what we promised to—”
“Yes. I remember everything. But I also feel things. And those feelings of mine must be considered. It’s the human thing to do. And I feel that I must kill you. And I feel that I must kill anyone who gets in the way of Ruena’s safe return to Sanctum. Impis has a special place for her. I trust Impis Lockfyre. I trust the Mad Regime.”