by A. L. Davroe
I fidget under his intense stare. “I’m not sure if upset is the right word.” I don’t know how to feel right now. “Maybe just a little overwhelmed. And confused.” Why would Dad create a game where people could realize sick fantasies?
Waldo comes to the end of the counter across the aisle and places two tall glasses filled with dark liquid on the polished red countertop. “Order up.”
“Got it.” The boy stands and heads across the aisle. For a moment, I stare at his broad shoulders, admiring how the shirt he’s wearing emphasizes the lean muscles in his back just as well as it does his chest and shoulders. I sort of want to touch those tempting bits of him.
He has an early Alteration—I think it’s called a taboo…no, a tattoo—easing from the top of one shoulder and coiling around one bicep. It’s a red and white dog-like creature with dark, intelligent eyes like his. My companion roots in one of the pouches hanging off his leather belt and hands a couple of coins to Waldo. As he turns back with the glasses, I look away and make a point of staring out the window, though there is nothing happening in the dry, empty street. I don’t want him to know I’ve been staring—how embarrassing.
He leans close, placing the glass filled with dark bubbly liquid in front of me. I pretend to be startled and immediately give the drink more attention that I actually feel toward it. Pulling it close, I sniff it. It smells sweet, and the little bubbles tickle my nose. “What is it?”
“Dr Pepper.”
“Doctor?” I lower my chin to the table and squint at the drink. “How can a drink be a doctor? Is it medicinal?”
He scoffs at me.
I look up. “And pepper…that’s a spice, isn’t it?” I cock my head. “I read that people used to believe that some spices have medicinal qualities.” I poke at the bubbles. “What ailment does this Dr Pepper cure?”
He rolls his eyes in endearment. “Thirst, I surmise.” He reaches out and gently pulls my finger out of the liquid. “Perhaps boredom as well.”
I frown at the drink, annoyed that such a simple beverage could stump me so easily.
“You really need to lighten up. Stop overanalyzing. It’s just a drink with a silly name. Here.” He takes a long plastic tube out of its white paper packaging and places it in the drink.
Confused, I pick up the tube and stare at it. “Is this to administer the medicine?” It drips on the table.
“No.” He reaches out and takes my hand again, his voice amused. “It’s a straw. You use it to suck the Dr Pepper out of the glass.” He guides my hand back down so that the straw is in the Dr Pepper once more, then he tugs it away and holds it.
“So it is an instrument meant to administer the medicine. It has red and white stripes, like the barber poles I’ve read about,” I reason.
“No. It’s an apparatus to drink,” he says. “Nothing more, nothing less. I doubt any doctor anywhere utilized these in the administration of medicine.” His voice is exhibiting waning patience. Perhaps he’s annoyed that I’m paying more attention to the drink than my hand in his. But, I can’t pay too much attention to it, I’ll start to panic and do something foolish. Besides, what if the hand-holding is something very simple, like he doesn’t want me to play with the straw anymore?
I scrunch my nose, trying to stay on topic. “What is the point of this ‘straw’ then?”
“Maybe to keep the bubbles out of your face when you drink?” he says with a shrug. “Or maybe just for fun? You know, sometimes we do things because they are completely pointless and just fun.” He leans over and puts his mouth on his own straw. I can see the level of the liquid in his glass dropping; it must be disappearing into his mouth.
I lean forward and try my best to emulate his gesture, sucking on the end of the straw closest to me. I feel like an idiot doing it. The medicine tingles at first. Then there’s the cold and the sweet and an odd bite. I pull away and touch my lips with my free hand. “It’s good.”
He stops drinking and smiles, the straw easing out of his lips. “It’s my favorite.”
“If not medicine, then what is this stuff?”
“Soda, pop, bubbly—depends who you’re talking to. I guess there were a lot of names for it back then. It’s carbonated and comes in many flavors and colors.”
I stare at the glass, reverent. “Soda,” I repeat. “It’s great.”
Black and white movement in the aisle catches his attention, and he pulls his hand away. I turn in time to see Waldo place two orange plates piled with tannish sticks on the table.
“Excellent.” The boy leans over and grabs a bottle filled with red sludge. “Can’t have fries without catsup.”
“What’sup?” I ask.
He glops a huge pile of it on the edge of his plate, dips one of the sticks in it, and then thrusts it toward my mouth. I flinch backward.
He lifts a brow. “Eat it.”
I focus on the stick with the “sup” stuff on it, making myself go cross-eyed, and grimace. “It looks unappetizing.”
He draws the stick back and bites his lip. “Sometimes things don’t look as good as they really are,” he says, serious. He looks almost hurt.
I give him a pained expression. I know all too well where he is coming from. “You sure?”
He nods. “Oh yes, quite sure.”
He holds it out again, and I reach out and touch his wrist to steady the fry as I lean forward and take a bite. It crunches under my teeth, but it’s soft and sort of chewy on the inside. The ’sup gives it a salty-savory moist quality.
He watches, eyes expectant and heart beating under my fingers as I chew. “Well?”
Smiling around my food, I nod and force myself to swallow. “You’re right.”
He makes a satisfied expression and pulls his hand back. “I told you.” He pops the other half of the fry I just bit into his mouth. I can’t help watching him as he chews.
After a few minutes of eating, he says, “Are you ever going to ask my name?”
I nearly choke on the sip of soda I’m drawing into my mouth. I gape at him horrified, my face burning with embarrassment. “Oh my sparks, I’m so sorry. I completely forgot.”
He shrugs. “No big deal, I have this amazing habit of taking words right out of girls’ mouths.” I can’t tell if he’s being sarcastic or not. “My name is Guster.”
“Guster,” I repeat, committing it to memory. “I’m Ella—”
“Uh oh,” he breathes, cutting me off.
The warning in his voice makes me frown. “What?”
He doesn’t meet my questioning eyes, instead he gestures toward the front door with his chin. “Trouble.”
I follow his eyes in time to see three huge, black-armored men walk into the diner. Before I can examine them further, he grabs my arm and drags me under the table, pulling me inappropriately close and hunching over me as if he expects the ceiling to collapse on us.
“What—” I yelp, but he shushes me and makes a meaningful point of peeking out from under the table. I lean with him, searching and finding the black-clad men.
“Who are they?” I whisper.
“Damascus Knights,” he responds. “They’re from the Central Dominion.”
I watch them a moment longer, their helmeted heads searching back and forth among the diner patrons. “They look like beetles.”
He breathes a scoff of agreement, the exhalation brushing over my ear and sending shivers down my spine. “If only they were as harmless. Don’t take them lightly.”
“What are they looking for?”
He pushes away from me and props himself against the wall. “Considering we’re the only ones hiding? I’ll give you three guesses.”
Great. I turn away from the Knights so that I can glare at him. “What? Why?”
He grins to himself, cocky. “Let’s just say I found something they want.”
�
��So,” I urge, “just give it to them.”
He begins rummaging through the bag he’s been carrying with him. “Nah, I kind of like it. They’ll have to fight me for it.” He pulls out a small metal weapon that I can only assume is some sort of antique gun, then leans forward once more, collapsing the space around us.
He pushes the gun into my hands. “You know how to use this?”
I give him a horrified look. “No.”
“Oh right, I forgot. Useless in a fight.” He spares a glance back toward the Knights, who have now taken to accosting Waldo, then back at me. Before I can figure out what he’s doing, he loops a hand around the back of my neck and drags me forward. His lips brush mine, trapping my breath in a hiccup of heat and confusion. His fingers tighten on my neck and all of a sudden he’s full-on kissing me, his lips firm and commanding in a way that makes my skin ignite and my bones feel like rubber.
He pulls away and stares at me for a split second. In that moment I know I should be yelling at him, telling him he shouldn’t take advantage of me in such a way, but I’m too preoccupied with staring back at him, drinking in his handsome face and quirky grin.
“If I die, cry for me?”
I feel my eyes go wide, and I’m not quite sure how to answer. His fingers trail down my neck, lingering and teasing before he draws them away entirely and punches at the circuit patch on his wrist. In a split second a set of armor similar to that of the Damascus Knights seems to materialize across his chest and stomach, up and down his body, encasing him in glistening black enamel.
He lifts his hand, and the armor around his wrist retracts and buckles downward, allowing for a larger, more modern gun to unclip and land in his waiting palm. “Stay here,” he commands, his voice oddly distorted by the helmet that hides his face. “If one of those things comes near you, shoot it.”
I open my mouth to retort, but he’s already stepping out of the shelter of the table. The white, dog-like creature on the back of his armor looks like it’s bounding along as he crawls. He rises tall, a tower of courage and cunning, drawing attention to himself in the small crowded diner. The Knights see him instantly and go silent. One drops Waldo’s collar.
“You boys looking for me?” Guster asks, his tone playfully suicidal.
One Knight looks to another. “It’s that fox kid.” The other nods.
And then all hell breaks loose.
A gun goes off. I don’t know if it’s Guster’s or one of the Knights’, but that’s all that is needed to bring everyone’s weapons out and firing. The Knights scatter in three different directions, their movements quick as a blur. The mirror over the counter explodes under the impact of a laser strike, spraying outward in a glimmering halo as Guster leaps to one side and dives behind the counter. He joins Patty and the man behind the counter, shooting out over my head.
In the deafening thunder of guns releasing round after round, I scream with countless others as glasses and dishes shatter. The things called fries, chunks of ice, soda, and eating utensils go skittering across the tiles, napkins and straw wrappers go fluttering. A table slams to the floor; a chair careens over my booth and lands with a clanking thud in front of me.
A bullet flies by my head—and then another. In the instant between the second and the third bullet, I see tiny shafts of wood and tufts of fluff go flying past my eye. They’re shooting through the booth.
Realizing I’m going to get hit, I throw myself down and roll away from the booth. As I roll, I can see that one of the Knights is coming around my booth. The patrons have set up a barricade of tables and are driving him in my direction, though the bullets don’t seem to be affecting him. In fact, the bullets seem to be bouncing off the gleaming black carapace he wears as armor.
He shoots back, the beams from the laser rifle he’s carrying piercing everything he shoots at. In a flash of glittering crimson, Kiara falls among the patrons. Dead. I stare at her, her eyes wide open in surprised horror as my father’s mythical Grim Reaper appears before her. The Reaper, a cloaked figure in billowing black, raises his weapon—something that looks like a crescent moon on a stick.
Shink.
“Ella.”
Guster’s voice pierces my horror, brings my senses snapping back in time for me to see the Knight now heading toward me. I yell as I roll again, avoiding a shot from his laser rifle. The glass on the floor bites into my arms as I rumble through it and launch myself to my feet.
Everything goes into slow motion. The sounds are like the long, drawn-out wails of the recorded whales of old—as if calling from some unfathomable depth. I can see each and every bullet screaming by me, every particle of this world swirling among the others. The Knight’s movements come in incremental, jarring motions in this macabre ballet. The sights of the laser rifle are coming to rest on me. There’s only a moment before I join Kiara on the floor.
There is no time to think, only to react.
I raise the revolver and hold it with both hands. For a brief moment, terror overcomes me as I realize I have no idea what to do with it. But then I do. In a lightning-fast motion that might indicate years of familiarity, my thumb releases the safety, I take aim, and squeeze the trigger. The gun resounds, the rebound shooting up my arms, making me flinch; but I’ve braced myself well. I stay on my feet, able to watch as my bullet takes the Knight right through the reflective silver of his eye socket.
Unlike my opponent’s laser rifle, my bullet draws blood—shooting a geyser of it out of the back of the Knight’s helmet and driving itself into the wall. The Reaper swoops out of thin air, not even bothering to fully manifest before swinging his blade.
Shink.
The crescent passes through the Knight and then the very fabric of what makes the Knight seems to pixelate. For an instant, he’s a real, palpable thing and then, like the mirror, he explodes into a million tiny pieces and disappears in a cloud of glittering dust—a human supernova. All he leaves behind is a gleaming black diamond that just spins on a fixed axis overhead.
The world speeds up again. Shaking, I stare at the spot where the Knight once stood, at the smear of blood on the back wall and the gun I still hold raised against him.
He disappeared.
I killed him. I destroyed. I’m no better than all the humans who destroyed the world before me.
“Ella.”
I reach out, touching the air, wanting to verify what I’ve done. My fingers find the diamond and, as they brush it, it bursts into thin air—just like the Knight. I flinch backward, feeling a sudden sting up my arm.
“Ella.” Someone grabs my arm. “Snap out of it.”
I glance up, wanting to find Guster’s wild, dark eyes, but all I see is the face of another Knight. Fear grips me, and I try to pull away, try to raise the gun again. He slams his fist into his forearm, making the armor dissolve while he struggles to keep me under control. After a moment, logic returns to me. I recognize Guster and stop fighting.
More Knights burst through the door, making him whip around and shove me toward a back hall. “Run.”
I run with Guster. I run because I have no idea what I’ve done or how I’ve done it. I run because I feel weak and vulnerable, and something about Guster’s presence feels protective. I run because I feel cold, and his hot hands on my clammy skin are the only thing I can feel.
Out the back door, through an alley, down a street, and into another alley where a strange vehicle awaits.
“Get on,” he commands.
The utter confusion of how I’m supposed to follow his command seems to kick-start my mind, alerting me to the world around me. I’m suddenly aware of the lasers striking near us, jumping off the alley walls, sending chunks of brick and cement flying, fogging the air with dust, and choking each breath with the scent of promised incineration.
I don’t fight Guster’s hands as he lifts me and sits me on the vehicle. In the next moment, hi
s body encases mine, spreading warmth along my body as the vehicle rumbles to life between my legs and we shoot out of the alley…into a whole troop of Knights waiting on the main road.
“Hang on,” he screams.
I duck down low, whimpering as he leans even harder against me. Laser beams ping off the vehicle. I glance up, confused as to why we haven’t been blown sky-high and realize there’s some kind of hard shell around us. He accelerates through the line of Knights and zooms off through the choked and jagged street, all the while laughing like a madman.
Chapter Eighteen
Post-American Date: 7/3/231
Longitudinal Timestamp: 6:33 p.m.
Location: Free Zone, Garibal; Nexis
We ride for what feels like forever, though Garibal doesn’t seem to disappear despite that. I see little fountains here and there, flashes of brightly colored cloth and the claustrophobic walls of narrow streets, but we’re going so fast that I can’t really focus on anything as we zoom past the panicked and leaping creatures that Guster called horses. Finally, he skids to a halt near a fountain at the center of a wide-open, empty square. As soon as he lifts his weight off me, I launch myself off the strange vehicle and stumble away from him.
I feel wild and terrified. I just killed someone. I just killed someone and he gave me the gun to do it and now there are people chasing me.
“Ella,” he says, holding his hands out to me like he’s trying to calm me. He takes a step toward me.
Almost without my thinking about it, I lift the gun and aim it at him. “Don’t come near me.”
He freezes, his eyes trained on the gun, which is shaking so badly in my hand that I wouldn’t be able to hit him even at such a close distance. What am I doing? Do I want to shoot him? He lifts his eyes to mine and holds my gaze. “Drop the gun, Ella.”
“No,” I spit. I cock the gun for good measure. I glance down at my hands. They don’t feel like mine. My hands wouldn’t know how to cock a gun or pull a trigger. My hands don’t want to kill this boy, they want to touch him. “How do I know how to use this thing?” I demand, horrified at my own familiarity with it.