by Julian North
Jalen knelt on the ground, his hands and legs covered in blood. His cold façade had cracked, just a bit. Anguish leaked on his face. Anger lingered at the edge of his eyes. But he was not hurt, at least not physically. Jalen cradled the tall woman’s head in his arms. Her chest was an ugly mess, with two gaping holes just below her neck. Her eyes were open, but they saw nothing.
“Galena’s been shot,” someone yelled.
“We’re under attack,” called another. “Terrorists are in the stadium!”
Panic rippled through the crowd.
The three-dimensional projection continued her echoing reassurances, but they couldn’t overcome the stark horror before people’s eyes. The stampede resumed. I ran to Jalen’s side. Two other middle-aged men stood over us, the finery of their ivory tunics splattered with crimson, shock etched into their features.
“Red ping for help,” I shouted at the nearest stupefied onlooker. I got onto a knee beside Jalen. I didn’t dare touch him, or her. I was no medic, but even I could see she wasn’t breathing. “Nythan!” I called, but he was already beside me. Jalen shot a wary glance at me, then returned his attention to the woman in his arms, her face an older version of his.
Nythan swept his viser over Jalen’s mother’s body, his fingers flicking. If finger speed equated with medical competence, she might have had a chance. As it was, Nythan was far more scientist than doctor.
“Projectile entry wounds, body temperature dropping…”
Kortilla shoved him aside, a silken shawl in her hands. She placed the bundled fabric—which probably cost more than her mother made in a month—over the wounds.
“You have to stop the bleeding, geniuses,” Kortilla said, her voice more annoyed than panicked. “Keep pressure on the wounds. If no one has a reviver shot, we need to do it barrio-style.”
“I’ve sent out a red ping to our private emergency service,” muttered one of the useless clods standing above us.
I placed my hands over the ruined cloth. “I’ll hold it. I’ve never done the mouth thing, though…”
“You need to get out of the way,” Kortilla told Jalen as she moved into position close to his mother’s head.
“What in the good name do you think…” said the well-dressed clod, reaching down to restrain Kortilla.
“Jalen, revivers are too expensive where I come from, so we do it the old way,” I told him. “This might work. Maybe. Kortilla’s done it before. She volunteers in a clinic.” Of course, most of those people died anyway, but they had the Waste.
Jalen didn’t hesitate on or off the track—he got out of the way, signaling the others to give Kortilla space.
She sealed the woman’s nose with one hand, then blew breath into her mouth. I handed off responsibility for keeping pressure on the wound to Nythan and pushed down on Jalen’s mother’s chest when Kortilla told me to. We repeated the process again. Then again.
The woman coughed. I jumped back, shocked. Blood poured from the corners of her mouth. She made a croaking sound. A creature returned from the dead. Her mouth continued to move. The words became clearer.
“J-Jalen…”
His head pressed next to hers in an instant. “Mother, I am here.” His voice had just a hint of a tremble at its edges.
Her lips moved, but the sound was too faint for me to hear. Her arms flailed ever so slightly. Jalen put his ear next to her lips. More words I couldn’t make out. Her eyes closed. Her chest stilled.
Kortilla went to try to revive her again, but Jalen put up his hand.
“Let her go in peace.”
“I’m sorry, Jalen,” I said, feeling foolish at my paltry words. I didn’t know her. I didn’t know him. And I certainly didn’t know what to say. Although I knew about losing parents.
He kept his gaze on his mother.
The silence that followed seemed far longer than it actually was. Pandemonium continued around us, but we were in a bubble of emotion that made it all seem distant.
When Jalen finally looked up, it was with burning ice in his eyes. “Someone is going to answer for this.” A chill ran through me.
A squad of grim-faced soldiers, clad in charcoal body armor and enhanced vision helmets, ran down the stadium stairs toward us, their footsteps pounding the floor like jackhammers. They held sleek rifles of silver and midnight in their gloved hands, the barrels short and thick.
“Step away from Ms. Aris-Putch… step away, step away,” the lead soldier commanded.
Dark rifle barrels were placed inches from my head. Kortilla and Nythan got the same hospitality. Each gunman had a redwood tree outlined in gold emblazoned on the shoulders of his uniform: private security, but authorized to carry weapons within the stadium.
Strong hands encased in flexSteel wrapped around my arm, yanking me to my feet. A white-robed medic with a fancy vision helmet and glowing gauntlets on her hands came to Jalen’s mother’s side, but I knew the effort would be futile, as did Jalen.
“Release them, immediately,” he told the retail soldiers, his voice quiet but hardly meek.
They hesitated, looking uneasily at the older men nearby.
Jalen’s hand shot forward, grabbing the barrel of the rifle nearest to me. He was faster than an eye’s flutter. The soldier stepped back as he belatedly realized Jalen had stripped him of his weapon. I gaped. Such speed. I couldn’t have done that.
“An order, not a request,” Jalen said, his tone cold, even. “You’re too late to do any good. At least these people tried.”
“I’m s-sorry, Ja… Mr. Aris-Putch,” the soldier stammered.
To Kortilla, he said, “You could not save her, but your efforts were not wasted. I thank you for that.” To the rest of us, he added, “I’ll have some of my men escort you home this evening, if you wish. Although I have little doubt the Protection Authority will be out in force to ensure security after this… debacle.”
“We’re not going anywhere, I think,” Nythan announced as he gazed at his viser. “Manhattan has been placed under curfew until further notice. This is citywide. It’s worse… even than this. Much worse.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Nythan looked up, his eyes locking with mine. “The president is dead.”
Chapter 3
I didn’t give a crap about President Arthus Ryan-Hayes.
My brother would’ve said that the man was responsible for the ills of the world we live in, for the Aptitude Tiers that judged us, for vote allocation policies that determined who held power, for creating a society with a predestined few at the top. Maybe he would’ve even blamed him for the very existence of the highborn. I didn’t agree with all of that, but the man had gotten what he deserved, even though I was sure that his death had nothing to do with the vengeance of the oppressed.
“Assassinations,” Jalen spat. “It would seem our night of long knives has arrived.” He scanned the stadium. The soldiers formed a protective circle around Jalen and the doctor. My friends and I were inside the ring by happenstance. “What else does your viser tell you?” Jalen too had removed his device for the race.
Nythan’s eyes scanned his display. “The Eros-Wyane building was attacked—lots of allocators have offices there. And an attempt was made on Anthony Iron-Stark… all holders of huge vote allocations…”
Huge vote allocations.
“Alexander,” I realized aloud, missing a breath. I jumped over the railing at the edge of the stands. I hit the floor already sprinting toward the locker room.
I made better time than I had in the last stretch of the three-thousand-meter race. Jalen couldn’t have kept up if he’d tried. I bolted down the long corridor to the locker rooms and hurled myself through the heavy metal door. I landed more than stepped inside: clumsy, noisy, and foolish. If a gunman had been there, I’d be dead. There wasn’t. Rows of gleaming silver lockers greeted me, along with the dark, plush carpets, marble-clad showers, and everything else I’d already seen in the twin changing room across the hall. There was no s
ign of Alexander. But something wasn’t right. The air smelled of explosives: sharp and sour. I took cautious steps inside, my eyes searching. The lockers were identical, except one: it had a smoldering hole in the door, near the top. Around where Alexander’s head would’ve been. They’d been here.
There was a blood stain the size of my fist on the carpet in the next row of lockers. My heart quickened as I bent down to examine it. It was still wet. No way to tell whose it was. At least there was no body. Whoever it belonged to might still be alive. I willed my hands to stop shaking. I spun, looking for anything else that might help me find him.
“Alexander,” I shouted.
Silence answered.
I ran to the ladies’ locker room and retrieved my viser. I red pinged Alexander before I had it strapped to my arm. No answer. I tried again. Nothing.
When I stepped outside the locker room, Nythan and Kortilla were waiting for me. Nythan was fixated on his viser, while Kortilla had a worried look on her face, although I knew it was for me, not Alexander.
“No sign of him.” My words were as fast as my heartbeat. “But there’s a blast hole in one of the lockers and blood on the floor.”
“The Authority has sealed the building. Supposedly no one can get out,” Nythan announced, sounding pleased.
My lips tightened as I glared at him. “So men with guns are running around somewhere?”
“Anyone smart enough to black out most of Manhattan, shoot the perpetual president, and disable the backup systems in Masterman Stadium would’ve anticipated the Authority’s potential response.” He shot a quick glance at Kortilla to make sure she was listening to his brilliant mind at work. “They have another way out, of course.”
“Speak. Now.”
“The stadium is built on top of the practice tracks of the Armory, right? And the Armory is old. New York City-time old. So old, it’s got physical links to the old sewer and steam systems on the lower levels. Luckily, I happen to be familiar with the old city archives. Part of a past project, you might say.” He laughed at some inside joke I didn’t care about. My hands balled into fists. “In those old tunnels, it’ll be easy to walk past the Authority sentinels, even bypass the drones that are probably in the sky right now.”
He flicked his fingers to retrieve the data then dropped it to my viser. A map appeared in the palm of my hand. The route was surprisingly direct. The emergency stairwell at the end of this corridor would get me most of the way there.
Kortilla grabbed my arm as I turned to go. “Do you think you’re going alone?”
I squeezed her fingers with one hand. “Not this time. They have guns.”
“And you’re made out of durasteel?” Kortilla asked.
My eyes were firm. “I can do things you can’t. If I must.”
Kortilla’s hand slid away from me. I left, and she let me.
I hadn’t trilled since the night we’d rescued Kortilla from Alexander’s sister, Kristolan. Neither had Alexander, at least as far as I knew. The memories of that night still lingered: the smoke, the madness in Kortilla’s eyes, Kristolan’s blade digging at my neck. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Since that night, visions of people and places alien to me flashed in my head unbidden: a dark, burly man with a volcano’s temper; the deck of a yacht on some azure sea; a wan woman with hair the color of dried wheat, a single tear forever leaking from her fading eyes. As sure as I knew my own face, I had never seen any of those people or places in my life. Yet they were all somehow familiar. I was not anxious to trill again. Still, I would do what I must. I owed Alexander for what he had done for me. And more.
I ran down the corridor, down flight after flight of metal stairs, each footfall echoing as I galloped. I traveled into what felt like the depths of the earth, emerging through a forgotten door with badly peeling paint into darkness. I flicked my viser light, and a narrow corridor with ancient electrical wires hanging from the ceiling appeared. The passage twisted as I followed it. There was light ahead.
I came to a room filled with giant machines, contraptions with faded gauges, and thick metal pipes that passed into the walls and floors. The devices made no sound, their indicators frozen in time. Rust clung to the joints. One pipe was out of place. Where it had once rested, a great black hole now appeared, leading into the bowels of the city below. The area around the hole was discolored. People had passed through here recently. Nythan was right, as usual.
I lowered myself into the dark, using the sides of the tunnel to brace myself as I descended. My viser was the only light source. The shaft was wide enough for me to fit easily, its sides cleanly cut by modern drilling equipment. The air was thick with a chalky dust that made me want to sneeze. This work had been done recently, and it had taken time and expertise. This was how the assassins had gotten weapons, and the other equipment they had used, inside—they never passed through the stadium’s weapon scanners.
I had descended less than ten feet before the shaft curved into a passage that was almost high enough to allow me to walk upright. After twenty hunched steps, I entered a far larger and older tunnel. It might have been abandoned long ago, but the odor hadn’t gotten the message. The walls were covered with an unpleasant residue that I didn’t want to focus on. It might have been alive. It had definitely been on earth longer than I had. Narrow gauge rail tracks, battered and rusted, ran along the middle of the floor. Portions of metal and plastic pipes from another era lined the ceilings and walls. The air was fetid and unpleasant. A low rumble of distant machines intermixed with the noise of dripping water. I guessed this was once part of the ancient water system that Nythan had mentioned.
The tunnel extended in two directions, but one way was partially blocked by fallen debris, making my choice easy. I hurried down the corridor as quickly as I dared, hugging the wall, keeping my viser’s light pointed toward the floor. I passed several service doors that didn’t appear to have been opened in centuries. A drop of cold liquid that I hoped was water splattered on my face. Small puddles lingered on the cracked concrete surface below my feet. I saw blood on one of the tracks, its crimson mixed with the orange rust of the ancient metal rails. I began to run, but the sound of a voice stopped me before I’d taken ten strides.
“…have a signal now…” It was a whisper, but the tunnel’s acoustics amplified the sound.
I switched off my viser, keeping as close to the wall as possible. I took each footstep with precision, using the wall for balance. I could see the faint glow of artificial lights about a hundred feet ahead. Several dark shapes were hunched around a metal ladder leading upward, presumably to a building basement.
They probably had night vision. They definitely had guns. If they looked toward me, I’d be an easy target.
“Two-minute delay. Stand by,” said another voice, flat and curt.
I edged closer, one foot in front of the other, as if walking barefoot through a field of shattered glass. I needed no force pistol. I reached inside for the weapon I possessed, ready to pay whatever cost was due from that decision. The cold reservoir of will and power that was mine to command flowed through my body. Fear faded; strength took its place. I drank up the raw essence like someone too long in the desert. Flush with power, I pushed outward, ready to bend the will of these killers to my own. My jaw locked. I came closer, less concerned about stealth. I was ready to trill.
There were three of them. Their faces were mostly blurred by distance and darkness, but I saw that they wore the elegant garb common among the residents of Manhattan rather than any uniform or body armor. One had his back to me, a strange narrow rifle slung over his shoulder. The other two had their attention focused on their visers. All of them had straight hair and almond-shaped eyes. At their feet was a body, lying face down on the ground. I couldn’t tell who it was. Alexander wasn’t among them—unless he was the corpse. I drew on more of my power. Something ugly rumbled inside me, a madness that tasted better than despair. I lowered my head like a bull about to charge. A battle cry bubbled in m
y throat. My vision narrowed as my mind clouded.
From the darkness behind me came a hand, oversized and strong as a vice. Fingers wrapped around my mouth. An arm snaked around my waist. I was yanked like a puppet through an ancient service doorway that I hadn’t noticed as I had stalked my prey. I thrashed at the arms that held me, jamming my elbow behind me. It was no use.
I was pulled into blackness.
Chapter 4
“It’s me,” Alexander whispered urgently into my ear.
The words reverberated through me. I stopped struggling; the hands relaxed their grip. I spun, throwing two arms around him. I squeezed. But only for a moment.
“You could’ve pinged me,” I growled, struggling to keep my voice low. “I thought that was you on the ground.” I could barely see him in the dark, but I could imagine the expression on his face. It would be tightly controlled. Ever the statue.
“No time for pings—and I didn’t want you here.” The words stung. “I killed that man, broke his neck with my hands. I had no choice. But it was a close thing. I saw his reflection in the silver metal of the locker. I waited for his companions to check on him, then followed them when they collected the body. They want no loose ends left behind, it seems.”
“Why didn’t you just trill him? Why kill him?”
“I tried,” he said. “These men… they aren’t normal. Their minds… I don’t know how to explain it. It’s like trying to drill into water. Their will is malleable, but you can’t get a grip. There is nothing to control.”
My pulse quickened upon hearing the words. A cold hand clutched my heart. I wanted no more fighting, no more killing, no more terrible secrets. I just wanted those I loved to be safe. I wanted my brother cured. I didn’t want to face phantoms in the night. Time slowed as I struggled to see Alexander through the dark. Part of me wanted to stay in that room and never leave. But I knew I wouldn’t be safe there, and neither would he. The gutters of Bronx City were full of the corpses of people who had tried to hide. You had to choose: hunter or prey.