“What the fuck?” Red Two’s horrible mouth fell open in shock. He looked over at CJ just in time to see one of the Hill’s trees lean forward over the wall, its long branches reaching down like wooden limbs or tentacles. CJ fell to the street as the men who’d been restraining him were yanked into the air. A smaller tree actually smashed through the wall to impale the last unnamed pod member with its own sharp and broken tree branch.
“Druid.” The word dropped from Red Two’s open mouth like a curse, as he spun back to Samara. The girl’s eyes were clenched shut, one long hand stretched out in the air, her skinny body trembling with effort.
The screams of the men hanging in the air ended sharply with twin cracks that could have been branches breaking.
Could have been but weren’t.
Red Two turned tail and ran. He made it five steps before the asphalt split beneath him, and a year's growth of weeds dragged him down. Within moments, his struggles ended.
Sammie dropped to one knee, panting like she’d just run a mile.
“Sammie, what did you do?” Again, CJ’s words were slurred, and again Samara understood them anyway.
“What I had to, to save you.”
“But using your power in public…” CJ stumbled over, and for a brief moment, they clung to each other. “You know Lord Legion will come for you.”
“That’s why I had to kill them, Cornelius James.” Samara was ashen, shaking from more than just the use of her powers. Her dark eyes looked down at him, pleading for understanding. “Lord Legion won’t know if nobody tells him.”
CJ swallowed, but before he could catch his breath, before he could tell her about the Eye that was less than two blocks away, they both heard it: the sound of rotors spinning almost lazily above them.
In the sky, the Eye was little more than a shadow against the barely-visible stars. A handful of cold red lights indicated cameras in use.
“Run!” CJ managed. “Run now!”
•—•—•
CJ was the fastest runner in Pod 23, but Samara wasn’t that much slower, and she hadn’t just taken a beating either. They paced each other, her longer strides making up for his speed, racing back into their pod’s territory, cutting through the alleys they’d grown up in. All the while, the Eye paced them easily, making little effort to halt their desperate flight.
“Others are coming,” he realized between pants, “It’s acting as a spotter.”
“We need to split up.” Samara wasn’t much better off than he was, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps. “Before they arrive. Cut through the buildings so it can’t see you. Meet back at the old dorm.”
Before CJ could say anything, she veered off.
Too tired to even curse, he did the same.
•—•—•
Thirty minutes later, CJ made it to the old dorm, one more shell of a building in a city full of them. Their pod had abandoned it years prior when its heating unit broke for the third and final time, and it was now home only to the city’s vermin. Like a shadow, he slipped inside, carefully sliding the door shut behind him to block out the light of the nearest glowtorch.
“Sammie? Are you here?” CJ’s voice was a whisper, but in the stillness, even that whisper carried.
There was no answer.
He crept through every room of the building, repeating his call, before realization set in. Samara hadn’t made it yet.
CJ had gone wide to the north during his flight, crossing over all the way into Pod 15’s territory before eventually curving back around. All told, he must have run fifteen blocks. Samara should’ve been there long before him… unless she had done the exact same thing he had; purposefully choosing as long and circuitous a path as possible.
That sounded like Sammie.
With a groan, CJ took a seat on the dusty, dirt-covered floor, and leaned against the wall. He’d left the Eye far behind, but didn't know if he'd actually evaded it… or if it had followed Samara instead. If they were lucky, the Eye had arrived after the battle, and didn’t know which of them was secretly a Power… didn’t know which of them had been hiding that fact for years now to avoid being drafted into Legion’s guard. With all those active cameras, it was too much to hope that they hadn’t both been identified, but if luck stayed with them, they might be able to hide out for a few days. Maybe they could get word to William, and convince him to sneak them out of the city, now that there was no other option.
An hour into his wait, the curfew alarm sounded. An hour after that, CJ fell asleep. When he woke, the morning sun was streaming through cracks in the boards covering the house’s broken windows, his body ached like he’d been run over by a Hand, and Samara still wasn’t there.
They hadn’t been lucky after all.
Lord Legion had Sammie.
CHAPTER 10
CJ was four blocks from the pod’s main dormitory when he started having second thoughts. The plan had seemed simple enough; tell Mrs. Stevenson that Samara had been taken, and convince the older woman to help. But pod leaders were chosen by Lord Legion—or someone in his government—and the position didn’t afford them any special privileges. Mr. Greenwood had found that out the hard way. What were the chances Ms. Stevenson would stick her neck out for Sammie… and if she did, what were the chances she’d actually be able to help?
He came to a dead stop in the middle of the empty street. Their pod leader couldn’t help Samara. Only one person could.
There was no sign of the Eye that had guarded the wall—and helped capture Samara—when CJ reached the Hill. He hopped the broken wall, and started up the slope at a full sprint, following the path Samara had made with her power more than a month earlier.
William was in his usual room, good leg tucked under the chair, his bad one stiff and straight to the side. His welcoming smile disappeared as soon as he took in CJ’s battered face.
“Cornelius James. What happened? Are you hurt?”
“I’ll live.”
“I have some medical supplies—”
“I don’t care about my eye!” CJ interrupted. “Sammie was taken.”
William frowned, his brown eyes narrowing. “By who?”
“Lord Legion. We have to get her back!”
“Hold on there.” William marked his place in the book and carefully placed it aside. “What are you talking about?”
“When I left yesterday, I ran into some of Pod 24’s members. Sammie found them beating on me, and…”
“And she used her power.”
CJ stared at the old man. “You knew?”
“That she was a Power?” His smile was oddly crooked. “I’ve wandered this continent for more than four decades, CJ. I’ve seen many things, small and grand, but I have never, ever seen a blue tulip.”
“Oh.” CJ dropped his gaze. “I was wondering if you’d caught that.”
“I’m old, not blind. Not yet anyway.” William dismissed the matter with a wave of a weathered hand. “So, she used her abilities as a Druid to save you. What does that have to do with my brother?”
“Anyone with powers in Old Baltimore gets taken. Some of them show up later as part of the guard. Others…” He met William’s gaze again. “Nobody knows. That’s why Samara has been hiding her gift. That’s why we have to get her back!”
“Are you sure that's wise?” His voice was gentle. “Change is a scary thing, but being a part of the ruling regime could be a fair bit safer for Samara than running the streets.”
“Like it was for you, you mean?” CJ scowled. Maybe Sammie had been right about the old man after all.
“It’s not the same thing at all. Lincoln was—”
“I don’t care! If Sammie wanted to join Lord Legion, she would’ve. Instead, he kidnapped her. I’m not going to just abandon her!”
“Of course you won't,” William soothed, “because you are a responsible young man and a good friend. But Cornelius James... exactly what is it that you want me to do?”
“Talk to him! Get him to
let her go. You used to be brothers, right? Maybe he’ll listen to you this one time?” CJ blinked away tears, but couldn’t do a thing to keep his voice from cracking. “Sammie’s in trouble, and it’s my fault. Please help her. I’ll give you anything. Do anything.”
“Anything?”
CJ swallowed, but nodded.
“Then I guess you can start by bringing me my cane.” William nodded to the far corner.
“And now?” asked CJ, when he’d handed it over.
“Now?” William levered himself to his feet, one hand on the cane, the other extinguishing the lantern and plunging the room into darkness. “Now, we go get young Samara back.”
•—•—•
They were a block south of the Hill when the first Eye swooped down from the sky to follow them. By the sixth block, there were three Eyes and CJ was wishing he’d gotten William a wheelchair instead of a cane. With the pace they were setting, it would take them forever to reach the harbor, and CJ could feel the target on their backs growing with every step.
William didn’t seem to share his concern. He glanced up as a fourth Eye dropped from the clouds, shook his head slightly, and kept limping along. A handful of steps later, however, he slowed to a halt, and gave the newest Eye a longer look.
“What is it?” Every one of Legion’s Eyes was unique, yet there was a sameness that linked them all; cameras embedded in flesh that had been wrapped around legs or rotors or sometimes even engines. This particular Eye was no exception, for all that it had four rotors and two cylinders which looked a lot like weapon barrels.
“Your former pod leader…”
“Mr. Greenwood.”
“Yes. Mr. Greenwood. You said he had a tattoo, yes?”
“Yeah. Why?”
William nodded to the Eye hovering above them. “Did it look like that?”
CJ frowned and looked closer, something he generally tried to avoid when it came to Eyes and Hands. Below the two barrels, just to the side of one of the rotors, someone had inked the words miles to go into the Eye’s body.
“I guess so?”
“CJ, this is important.” There was suddenly something scary and dark in William’s voice, something that made CJ stiffen and take a step away from the old man. “Would you say it looked sort of like that, or exactly like that?”
“Well, Mr. Greenwood’s tattoo had the whole phrase, not just three words of it, but otherwise…” CJ frowned. “Yeah, it looks exactly the same. What does that mean?”
William started walking again, his pace increasing, despite the cane. It was more than a block later that he finally replied, the words so soft CJ could barely hear them. “It means I shouldn’t have left.”
CHAPTER 11
Their escort of Eyes topped out at six, the last one arriving as they passed through the territories of Pod 16 and 9. Most of the neighborhoods were in the same state of semi-disrepair that CJ was used to, but there was evidence of recent demolition. A pair of old street signs still somehow remained upright even though the buildings behind them had been reduced to rubble. One of the signs read “St. Paul St”. The other, “E. Madison.”
CJ didn't see a soul as they hiked south. Either the pods were still asleep or their members had seen the convoy of Eyes in the sky and wisely gotten out of the way.
Within forty or so minutes, they were well past any area of the city that CJ had seen before, but William followed the road without hesitation. The clicking of his cane on the worn asphalt played counterpoint to the hum of the Eyes’ circuitry and the whir of their rotors.
Half an hour after that, they reached the Harbor.
The buildings here were all new; gleaming edifices of glass and steel. The street-level windows were tinted black and reflective. CJ couldn’t tell if they were dormitories for the city guards, the factories where the Eyes and Hands were created, or… He shook his head. They could be anything, really. Only a handful of people in Old Baltimore knew what happened in the heart of Lord Legion’s domain, and he definitely wasn’t one of them.
Past the gleaming new buildings, they came to a wall, half again as high as the nearest rooftop and constructed of a black metal that seemed to absorb the light around it. For the first time in over an hour, William came to a stop. “This is new.”
“Lord Legion’s castle.” CJ’s words were a whisper, almost lost beneath the noise of the Eyes and the wind that had picked up as they neared the harbor. “It must be.”
“Lincoln always did think big.” William looked both ways and then nodded to the left. “Looks like there’s a gate over there.”
“Maybe this was a bad idea.” CJ had heard stories of the fortress at the harbor. Everyone had. He just hadn’t expected the real thing to be quite so intimidating. Suddenly, the idea of persuading Lord Legion to do anything at all seemed suicidal.
“Almost certainly. Does that mean you want to go back?”
CJ shook his head. Samara was somewhere in that castle, counting on him.
“Good man.” William reached out with his free hand and patted CJ’s shoulder. “Whatever happens, I need you to stay behind me and down. Can you do that?”
“What?” If it came to a battle, they were so dead that not even a Crow would be able to resurrect them. “I mean… I guess so, but why?”
William was already headed toward the gate, paced by his escort of Eyes. “Remember what I told you about the music of the universe?”
CJ frowned and thought back. “You said the planet had a heartbeat and some stars knew how to sing.”
“Yes.”
“What does that have to do with us?” Or anything else, for that matter, CJ very carefully didn’t add. Maybe he’d have been better off talking to Lord Legion by himself.
“Only this, Cornelius James.” William looked back over one shoulder, and his dark eyes had gone cold and bottomless, gaping windows into a place that had never experienced light or humanity. “The stars are not the only ones who sing.”
•—•—•
The entry to Lord Legion’s castle was twelve feet high, with a portcullis of the same light-devouring metal hanging above it like the sword of an angry god, but it wasn’t the gate that brought CJ up short. It wasn’t even the fact that the old man he’d come to think of as a friend had disappeared somewhere over the course of the last thirty blocks, replaced by someone scarier than Red Two could have ever hoped to be.
No, what stopped CJ in his tracks was the fact that the gate was guarded. On either side of its cavernous opening was an equally large Hand.
Much like the vastly smaller Eyes that watched the city, every Hand was different. The one on the left was a hodgepodge of organic material and armor, nine feet tall and bristling with weaponry. The one on the right was larger even than the gate. In place of legs, it had enormous treads, and a bulbous armored midsection that hung slightly open, like a toothless mouth.
CJ had heard of Hands. He’d even seen a couple, when they were on their way back from eliminating Pod 7, but that had been from far away, through the dubious safety of an upstairs window. These were right in front of him, looming like hideous, destructive gods.
He was shamefully grateful when William motioned to him to stay put and stepped forward on his own. He wasn’t sure his legs would have willingly carried him closer to the Hands, not with every part of his brain screaming that he should run in the opposite direction.
William was ten feet from the gate when Lord Legion’s mechanical voice issued from the nearest Hand.
“That’s far enough.”
Obediently, the old man came to a halt. He eyed the Hand that had spoken. “I thought your flying creations were hideous, but these… you’ve outdone yourself, Lincoln.”
“I have already told you that I no longer answer to that name.”
“Legion, then.”
“What are you doing here, old man? My generous offer of three weeks’ grace was not permission for you to start trouble.”
“I’m not here for trouble
.” William’s voice was almost as empty as the Hand’s. “I’m here for a girl.”
“The world is full of girls.”
“Samara. The Druid you brought in last night.”
“Ah.” This time, the voice came from the second Hand. “The Pod 23 fledgling, I assume. Strange how each pod leader, in their own way, insists on giving their charges names.”
“Why wouldn’t they? They're people, Legion. People have names, family, and friends. Please, let me return Samara to hers.”
“I think not.” The Hand rolled forward a pace, asphalt crunching beneath its treads. “I had almost given up hope on that particular strain. The female is the first to exhibit any trace of power. Her genetic material will be utilized for the next batch.”
“Is what this is all about? The pods? The lack of parents? What are you doing, brother?”
“I am bringing order to chaos. I am unlocking the secrets of the gifts we were given, and breeding my own strain of humanity. A better man to create a better world.”
“And these?” William waved a hand to encompass the Hands in front of him and the Eyes above. “This is what you do with your failed experiments?”
“Nothing goes to waste, William. We learned that lesson, living on the street, back before age and sickness stole your courage.”
CJ’s eyes went wide as the meaning of their conversation finally struck home. Every Eye… every Hand… part of them had once been a person? One of Lord Legion’s own citizens?
“How many people?” pressed William, something like horror leaking into his empty voice. “Forty years, fifty pods, and other than the pod leaders, there isn’t a soul over twenty in Baltimore except for us. How many generations have died for your breeding experiments… or even just to increase the operating efficiency of these monstrosities by twenty percent?”
Stories From A Post-Break World | Book 1 | The Stars That Sing Page 4