“The sphere I sent her flew off to the Shadow headquarters.” Wisp rubbed her knuckles against her forehead and averted her eyes. “We can’t do anything about this until tonight, can we?”
“You already know the answer. Until the conditions change, the best we can do is come up with a plan.” Luca’s expression softened. “Don’t worry, Wisp. They won’t kill her.”
I’m not so sure. Something’s different now, and if the Flying Freak is real, it might have something to do with it.
She glanced at the stairway. The sound of footsteps and creaking wood came from below, letting her know that Max and Sara were on the way up. Naturally, Max was going to freak out when he heard the news about Hannah, but he and his sister deserved to take part in the planning as much as Luca did. The Survivors didn’t keep secrets of such magnitude. Sharing was caring, as Sara frequently pointed out.
“We brought food!” Sara said.
She emerged from the stairway with a can of something raised triumphantly in the air. Behind her, a far more gloomy-looking Max carried rolled-up mats and blankets. The two immediately set their sights on Wisp.
“How are you feeling?” Max asked.
“Like a wet noodle or an unsalted potato chip,” Wisp replied. Lame as it was, the joke put a smile on Sara’s face.
As Wisp knew all too well, the mood was about to shift. Sara, with her genuine smile, spread out a mat that she’d snatched away from her brother and sat cross-legged on it. The girl most likely assumed that Hannah was safely hiding away somewhere. That even if things went wrong and all their lives hung in the balance, their gifted leader would flick her fingers and magically make everything work out in the end. That was the thing with Sara: she believed in Wisp the way a child believes in Santa Claus. Her faith in superpowers was equal parts endearing and frightening as hell.
“Didn’t find her, did you?” Max asked with a completely transparent nonchalance. He sat on the mat next to his sister and handed out the canned and vacuum-sealed food that they had taken from the stash below.
“I actually did, sort of.” Wisp grabbed a pack of potato chips. “I think the Shadows are keeping her in their base for some reason.”
Max’s cool facade faltered. “What? Why?”
“I don’t know,” Wisp admitted. “Tonight, I’m going to pay them a visit and find out.”
“I’m going with you,” Luca said. “If they’re making a play for power, and they most likely are, we can’t let you go alone. Max should come along, too.”
“No.” Wisp gave him a firm look. “Someone has to stay with Sara.”
She didn’t have to explain the reasons why. If negotiations failed, then Sara – the youngest Survivor – needed a helping hand out of Dead City. Someone who could be trusted to take care of her if the worst-case scenario came to pass.
“Why a play for power?” Sara wore a puzzled frown. “We don’t have anything they want, and Wisp is the only one with powers. Didn’t we move into the old clock tower because no one was interested in it?”
“We did,” Wisp said. “That’s why we didn’t have to deal with any scavengers in the winter.”
She didn’t like thinking back to the cold season. The low temperatures had temporarily kept the Smog at bay. Without the threat of skin-melting intoxication, armed looting crews dispatched by organized crime rings ran rampant. The German government had given up on southwest Berlin long ago. No one stopped the looters from searching abandoned buildings for anything of value to the outside world.
Max ground his teeth. “Constantine already claims anything worth a damn west of the zoo, the greedy bastard. All we’ve got left on the Kudamm is a mall and the same stores we’ve been looting for the past year. Can’t even trade in the border zone without going the long way round.”
“You aren’t really surprised, are you?” Luca said. “Even their gang name is basically a challenge to Wisp’s powers.”
Wisp pulled a single potato chip from the packet on her lap and nibbled on it with her eyes closed. Our neighbors got cocky when the rumors about the Covenant began to spread. When heroes started losing battles and villains blew up New York. That’s when Constantine stopped respecting our turf. She frowned at the thought. If the rest of the world is going downhill, can we really expect Berlin to stay the same?
Thinking of superpowered bad guys inspired another idea, and Wisp felt silly for not having considered it sooner. She snapped her eyes open. “I might not be the only Evolved in the city anymore. When I went looking for Hannah, I saw someone who was … flying, I think. My head was foggy at the time, and I couldn’t see very well, but the more I think about it, the more I think he had powers. At least I think it was a he. The Smog didn’t seem to scare him at all.”
“Are you sure?” Max asked, squinting at her. “Maybe he was standing on a narrow ledge and it looked like he was flying.”
“Sure enough to tell you about it,” Wisp replied. “I mean, someone who’s outside under those conditions can’t be normal.”
“Well, another Evolved could explain why the Smog is all messed up,” Max said flatly.
Sara spooned canned beans into her mouth in silence, her eyes distant. This was her usual escape strategy when things looked grim: she huddled up inside of herself until her brother and Wisp dealt with the problem.
Wisp didn’t blame her for it. The girl came from a background so tainted by neglect and abuse that she preferred life in Dead City to a reunion with her family.
“This other Evolved. Did you see him in Shadow territory?” Luca asked in a flat voice.
“About a hundred feet past the chalk line. He could have been trespassing, but…” The fact that she knew next to nothing about the flying stranger made it hard to justify her assumptions. What had he been doing there, mere inches above the surface of the Smog?
“Do you think he was marking his presence or showing off his powers?” Wisp wondered aloud.
“Let’s make sure he didn’t follow you.” Luca rose to his feet and grabbed the binoculars from the wooden box containing their collection of surveillance gear. He peered northward through the lenses, sweeping the orange-shrouded cityscape from left to right. No one spoke. The others watched with bated breath until Luca lowered the binoculars and gave a shake of his head.
“I don’t see anything, but we should probably bring guns tonight,” he said, sitting back down.
Sara flinched at the mention of guns. She set her can of beans on the guano-stained floor and huddled against her brother, her lips pressed into a thin, disapproving line.
Feeling a strong urge to brighten the mood, Wisp flashed Luca a playful scowl. “Just don’t point it at me. Having a brown belt in Jiu Jitsu doesn’t mysteriously transform you into a gunslinger, you know.”
He flashed her one of his rare grins, folding his arms in a display of domineering grace that was about eighty percent attitude and twenty percent, well, Luca.
“If the weather clears by tomorrow, I’ll try and barter for information about newcomers to the scene, or anything related to the Smog,” Max said. “We still got the lump of cash I pried out of the vending machine in the mall’s underground carpark.”
“How big is the lump?” Wisp asked.
Max’s face scrunched up in thought. “About two hundred euros. Enough to tap into the border zone rumor mill, I’d say.”
The rumor mill. For the fifty or so people who still clung to life in southwest Berlin, news about the outside world – word of mouth, for the most part – trickled through channels controlled by border zone hawkers and thieves. The handful of buildings that still had power, television and Internet on this side of the wall had been sectioned off by makeshift walls and barbwire, but the hawkers always found loopholes to exploit. Profitable loopholes. Whenever the Survivors procured cash or luxury goods from abandoned buildings, Erik – their contact among the border folk by the wall – was eager enough to accept them in exchange for fresh food, newspapers and magazines or gossip.
“Not just local rumors,” Wisp said. “I want to hear more about what’s going on in the outside world, too. If you think about it, our neighbors have been acting strange ever since the news about the Covenant’s downfall spread.”
Something about her statement snapped Sara back to attention. “Wait.” The girl sat up a little straighter with questions written all over her face. “The Covenant heroes aren’t gone, are they? Radiant left and a heroine died, but the rest of the team…” she broke off there, seemingly unsure of how the rumor went.
Right, but now the heroes can’t crush any new villains the instant they turn dangerous anymore. Which is why the bad guys are getting out of control.
Feeling everyone’s gazes on her, Wisp rubbed her knuckles hard against her forehead. How was she going to break this gently to Sara, a thirteen-year-old girl who couldn’t even fall sleep without knowing her older brother was right next to her?
I can’t. She took a deep breath.
Her hand sank back to the bag of potato chips, and she grabbed a handful, munching them in a noisy and completely fake display of carefreeness. “There’s still heroes,” she said, directing the words at Sara’s anxious face. “And even though the Covenant never made me official, I’m kind of one of them, so don’t worry. Okay?”
The other girl resumed her canned breakfast. “Okay,” Sara echoed, sounding a little brighter already. “Thanks, Wisp. For watching over us.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Max added with a glance at his sister.
“Anyway.” Luca cleared his throat and opened a can of beans. “Our immediate concern is Hannah. From the looks of it, there’s nothing we can do for her until we talk to Constantine, so let’s save our other plans for later.”
Right. Wisp chewed her potato chips in reflective silence, barely aware of the salty taste. Don’t think for a second we’ve forgotten about you, Ginger Girl.
Keeping the concern from showing on her face was a perpetual effort for Wisp. As a source of reassurance for the others, she’d try to keep her chin high and her spirits up at all times. There was no room for personal weakness.
Hannah, on the other hand, didn’t need to pretend. She was strong, independent, and didn’t care what anyone thought of her. Before joining the Survivors, she’d been quite the irredeemable thief, knowing no other way to survive and trusting no one to help her.
Funny how sticking a persistent, fist-sized and very conspicuous sphere of light to someone’s head could turn rivals into allies.
“I hope she didn’t try to steal anything from Constantine,” Wisp said. “That would be a bad idea no matter how you look at it.”
“Steal what?” A scowl flashed across Max’s face. “The radios that were ours in the first place?”
Luca shook his head. “I don’t think she’d go and rob our neighbors for no good reason. This is Hannah we’re talking about. The girl who made a hammock from curtains and slept three meters above ground because she was too paranoid to sleep on the floor.”
Max checked the battery compartment of the beat-up old transistor radio that served as the gang’s only connection to the outside world. Satisfied, he fully extended the antenna and pressed the power button.
A male newscaster’s voice emerged through a faint crackle of static. “…psychiatrists suggest a number of possible approaches, though the internal security front is pushing for tougher Evolved integration laws. Stay tuned…”
Wisp grabbed an apple from the mall bag and took a bite. “Is this about the Evolved troublemakers?” she said around her mouthful of apple.
“Seems that’s all they’ve been going on about for the past few days.” Max set the radio on a stained folding table, then fiddled around with the channel selection wheel. “Let’s be quiet for a minute. If Radio Berlin has anything to say about the first Deadening of the year and how freaking strange it was, then I want to hear it.”
“Can’t we listen to the top thirty instead?” Sara grumbled. “The news always rehashes the same old stories anyway.”
Wisp shushed her by tossing the pack of potato chips into her lap. “I want to hear this too,” she said.
Max adjusted the tuner until a different newscaster’s voice came through the static with a distinctive Berlin accent. “…past eight in the morning and lasted until well after sunset, prompting citizens within close proximity of the wall to stay indoors and keep windows closed. Today’s incident marks the first Deadening of the year. As per usual, the toxicity first emerged from the crater where the hero Radiant confronted the convicted villain Osmotic the year before, following the execution order issued by the UNEOA.”
“Except it didn’t emerge there,” Wisp muttered. “They’re playing dumb again and doing their usual panic prevention shtick.”
None of the others looked particularly surprised, and no one else spoke up just yet. Their collective attention remained glued to the radio.
“Unfortunately,” the newscaster continued, “the hero Radiant could not be reached for comment on the present situation in southwest Berlin.”
Max snorted. “Of course Radiant wasn’t available for a comment. Hell’s going to freeze over before any hero ever admits to screwing up on the job.”
“As far as I know, this particular hero was following orders,” Luca said. “The UNEOA top brass should have figured out what happens when someone who has absorbed ridiculous amounts of energy goes up in smoke and flames. Not just any Evolved, but a villain who corrupted everything and everyone he touched.”
Rather than calming him down, Luca’s comments further enraged Max. “Top brass, my ass. Those eggheads–”
Wisp shut him up with a finger to her lips.
The newscaster dropped a keyword she couldn’t ignore. “…villain activity is still on the rise all around the world, and it appears that a small number of deviants still cling to their illegal lifestyle in southwestern Berlin, rejecting the government’s efforts to re-integrate them into society. The last survivor to pass Dead City gate and request emergency aid was a thirteen-year-old boy more than three months ago. And now, the local weather…”
Luca frowned. “Must be talking about Marko. He left when March came around, didn’t he?”
“I don’t blame him,” Wisp said. “He was a sickly kid who needed a mama to take care of him.”
She didn’t resent the kid for ditching the gang. What bothered her was the fact that he’d stuck around for so long after his mother died, even though he’d had other family waiting for him. Decent folks, judging by his own account. Not even remotely comparable to the abusive psychopaths who called themselves Sara’s legal guardians.
The truth was that somewhere deep down, Wisp envied him for the life he’d rejected and without good reason.
Somehow, Sara still seemed to take offense. “You didn’t have to say it like that. He was a sad boy who lost his mother.”
“I know, I feel terrible bad.” Slumping theatrically against the cool stone at her back, Wisp buried her chin between her knees. “Happy now?”
“Terrible bad makes me very mad!” Sara snickered in that intentionally ditzy, girly way Wisp could never pull off. “Punishment time! Hand me your apple.”
“I’ve already poisoned it with my mouth juice,” Wisp said, tossing the apple into Sara’s hand.
“Woo! Maybe I’ll get superpowers from eating it.” Sara took a bite and chewed enthusiastically.
Max, visibly exasperated by the teenage girl antics, rolled his eyes and fiddled with the radio until he found a station that played classic rock music.
Luca sat almost completely still, maintaining an air of listless apathy. Talk of mothers and family tended to have that effect on him. His half-lidded eyes followed Wisp when she took another apple from the bag, letting her know he was paying attention.
“We should prepare for tonight,” Wisp said. “Everyone eat up and get some sleep.” She flicked a glance over the remaining selection of cans, snacks, and lukewarm soft drinks.
; Sara indulged happily, and Wisp was glad to let her stuff her face with a rare serving of apple ring gummies. There were plenty of hours left before sundown. Plenty of time to eat, sleep, and prepare for a nightly trip into Shadow territory. It was all they could do until Dead City came back to life.
CHAPTER 2
“In concordance with a growing awareness of image and reputation, Katsuro Sakai adopted the Paladin moniker when he entered United Nations service. He was the very first individual to be associated with the Covenant. While he was surprisingly efficient working alone, it is safe to assume that Samuel’s air superiority and Queenie’s powerful tracking abilities laid the foundation for the team’s unmatched operating range and performance in later days. By the time Radiant added speed of light travel to the mix, Athena’s technological developments only served to further enhance the Covenant’s unmatched ability to carry out execution orders around the world.”
- Excerpt from “An Overview of The Early Days After The Pulse” by Susannah Harris, 2012
June 14th: The Deadening stopped after thirteen hours and fifteen minutes.
By the time Wisp added her observation to her tattered green notebook, it was nearly ten p.m. and the sun had vanished from the horizon, leaving the sky a dark purplish shade reminiscent of a fresh bruise. Equipped with a ballpoint pen and a fist-sized beacon for illumination, she was perched on her favorite lookout spot, a three-inch wide ledge in the belfry.
The waning moon lent an almost magical touch to the receding Smog. Its light reflected off the persimmon-colored fog, setting it aglow. The haze was thinning, its swirling fumes dispersing into the cool evening air. Farther to the north, where the rotting remains of the Berlin Zoo ran with rivulets of dark brown water, the Smog was already coalescing at ground level. The Dead City would soon come back to life. After another hour or two, the streets would be safe enough for the Survivors – and other Dead Zone inhabitants – to walk.
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