by K A Riley
Those ice-cold eyes lock onto mine and freeze me in place for a second.
There are seven of us in front of her, plus a telempathic white raven, who’s circling around overhead. So why is this girl smiling?
“It’s okay,” Mattea says, her voice a trembling gurgle of fear and tears.
I don’t know if she’s talking to me and our Asylum or to the girl.
Swallowing hard enough to nudge the knife, which is still pressed firmly to her throat, Mattea’s eyes flick back toward the girl. “We’re just out here looking for information. That’s all.”
“Estás mintiendo. Even got not true for war,” the knife-wielding girl says through a broken-toothed smile.
Damn!
From what we’ve seen in our limited experience, the Unsettled seem to have two types of people in their army: ones who speak English and ones who speak this sort of distorted slang version of English laced with what I think is Spanish.
Just our luck we get jumped by one of the slang-speakers.
Mattea risks reaching up to curl her fingers in a gentle arc around the girl’s dry, scaly forearm. When Mattea speaks, I don’t know if it’s from blind terror, the knife pressed to her throat, or her Emergent ability doing something dodgy to my ears. Either way, her voice sounds fuzzy, almost artificial, and not like her own. “Harm come when harm do. Guerra próxima in the us ain’t the harming.”
Fortunately, we have an expert translator with us.
The Unsettled girl’s eyes get wide, and the knife moves ever so slightly away from Mattea’s neck. I don’t know how Mattea does what she does, but from what I’ve heard and seen for myself around the Academy, she can pick up pretty much any language—its diction, syntax, pronunciation, colloquialisms, and everything—almost immediately. I’ve seen her talent in action, but I’m still amazed by it.
Someday, I’ll have to press her into telling us how she does it.
Mattea gives me a pleading, “I’ve-got-this-under-control” look before gulping and turning her attention back to the feral girl. “Us and them solamente buscano. Through passing only with harm to not,” she says with a slippery, wet accent that mimics the girl’s.
“Her big peligrosa. And all surgir them.”
Mattea risks a slight head shake. “Them’s mentiras, lies and them.”
The girl’s arm relaxes a little more, and I take what I’m pretty sure is my first breath since this little caper began. Matholook and I exchange a side-mouthed smile of partial relief before I turn back to the girl, who still has the knife a bit too close to Mattea’s throat for my liking. On top of that, she’s got Mattea’s wrist clenched in her other hand behind her back, so I’m not ready to let my guard down just yet.
I do a quick mental calculation of all the angles and possibilities I’ll have to consider before deciding whether or not to whip one or both of my Serpent Blades at this girl and end her unprovoked attack…and possibly, her life.
Without breaking a sweat, I can have her on the ground before she knows what’s hit her.
My fingers curl over the handles, the balance point of each weapon centered squarely on my palms. And then time seems to stop. And then it bursts forward in an explosion of motion.
In the center of that explosion, Mattea says my name. “Branwynne.” She’s not asking for anything or trying to get my attention. It’s just like, in the sudden vortex of motion, she needs to be sure of me.
I don’t have time to call back, blink, or react in any way.
The assailant’s arm twitches, and the wrinkled skin swells from her elbow to her knuckles. Her fingers tighten around the handle of her knife. Almost too fast for my eyes to follow, she presses the knife harder to Mattea’s throat, digs in, and draws the full length of the blade’s razor-sharp edge across her neck in a blur of blood and black steel.
A seam in the skin covering the tendons and muscles in Mattea’s neck slides open, and a burble of blood bursts out in a single mass, gushing like an egg yolk slipping from its shell.
2
Horror
Our combined screams form a chorus of horror as Mattea slumps in a heap to the ground, her white shirt with the blue Academy crest under her combat jacket sopping up the dark red blood still pumping in thick pulses from her neck.
She gurgles, the dark browns of her eyes go milky white, and her body rips into a fit of convulsions. Her fingers dig into the top layer of coral-colored pebbles covering the arid earth, and it’s like she’s trying to claw her way back to life by digging her own grave.
Time freezes again, and something inside me snaps.
I’m not me anymore. Or Haida Gwaii. Or some sort of harmonious combination. I’m not Kress’s pupil or the magical, missing puzzle piece to the mystery of Emergents and the war about to be fought over us. I’ve become something more and something less at the same time.
I am a pure, unleashed predator.
And just like that, I’m in a shambles and over the edge. Over the edge of patience, of restraint, of sanity. All the bits and bolts Kress has been teaching me about discipline and self-control go out the window along with what’s left of any trace of intellect, sympathy, sensibility, or humanity.
I’m myself but at all different times in my life, from my first steps, thoughts, and curiosities to the vessel of pure rage I am now.
When I was younger, I used to have bleak dreams where I was fighting someone, and no matter how hard I hit them, I couldn’t generate enough strength to keep them down for the count, to defeat them…to end them.
In those dreams, and as I later discovered in real life, death was never the total and absolute ending I once thought it was.
In my dreams, my enemy would just keep smiling up at me while I wailed and flailed until I was so exhausted, I thought I was losing the fight instead of winning it.
Killing this girl is like that.
I’m across the space between us faster than a blink or a breath, and she doesn’t have time to take either one.
My hands are clamped to the handles of my pair of S-shaped Serpent Blades, their talon-shaped retractable knives flashing in the sunlight. I swing and slash as hard and as fast as I can. Over and over and over again. In front of my own eyes, my hands, my arms, and my weapons, melt into a dynamic blur of blazing-fast motion.
I strike and strike and strike, again and again, like some out-of-control machine.
And I don’t care. I couldn’t be in control right now if I tried.
Blood spraying, the girl’s thrashing body starts to go limp under mine.
Eventually, she passes the point where I’m worried she might hang on long enough to tire me out or that she might get in one last lucky shot that turns the tables and ends with me, not her, bleeding out in the hot desert sand.
It’s only in this moment, with my friends frozen in a semi-circle around me, that I realize how hard it is to kill a person, at least one who’s fighting back and desperate to stay alive.
I don’t mean the killing part is morally hard. I’ve got no problem with that. Especially when the person I’m killing doesn’t have any morals of their own.
I’ve killed before. I’ve killed in defense of myself, and I’ve killed in defense of others. I’ve killed animals to eat, and I’ve killed fellow human beings who’ve wanted to eat me. (There’s not much scarier in the world than knowing the fight you’re in will end with you either standing over a corpse or else having your own corpse slowly consumed, digested, and eventually expelled into a steaming, putrid, waste-filled pit in some cesspool of wreckage that was once a dress shop, a corner store, or someone’s overpriced flat in the heart of London.)
Just like back home, being an Emergent here in America comes with multiple pieces of baggage. Killing isn’t one of them. Killing isn’t baggage. It’s not heavy, cumbersome, or unwieldily. Killing like this is light. And it’s easy.
What’s hard is the actual act of ending someone’s life. To get them to stop breathing. To get their heart to stop pumping. T
o get their muscles to stop twitching. To get their brains to surrender and shut down. To get everything in them that wants to live to give up and stop fighting.
Human beings are resilient. They hang on. They struggle. They muscle through. Human beings cling to the last strips of life like it’s something sacred.
It’s what Mattea is doing now: spasming, kicking her legs while she rakes at the ground, and gurgling for a breath she can’t take. I want and need for her to live, and I hope as hard as I can, even though I know it’s hopeless.
“Human beings are defined by their capacity for hope.” That’s what Kress told me once during one of our rooftop training sessions at the Academy.
She told me never to rely on anything. “Except hope,” she added. “It’s the one thing that can keep you going and the only thing you can cling to when everything else is lost.”
“If it gets to the point where all I have is hope,” I told her with a smirk, “then maybe I should just give up.”
“That’s your choice,” she advised me, before turning and calling for Render to fly over and land on her forearm. “Having that choice is the curse of what it means to be human.”
I didn’t need to remind her that I’m not a human being. Technically, like her and like Mattea and like almost everyone else in the Academy, I’m an Emergent.
Thanks to a confluence of events—a mysterious mixture of digital and biological codes, a natural evolutionary glitch, and a worldwide confederation of corrupt techno-geneticists—I wound up being who and what I am.
Not that I’m complaining. I don’t think of myself as an outcast. I don’t feel sorry for myself, and I definitely don’t want or expect anyone else to feel sorry for me.
If anything, I feel sorry for everyone else. I may not have a Kress-level handle on my abilities. But knowing I could one day be as advanced and powerful as she is…that’s more than enough hope for me to live on.
So, yes…sometimes, I feel sorry for Typics.
But not for this Typic, not for the one lying under me. Not for the girl whose skin splits into billowing crimson ribbons under my assault. Not for the murderer whose blood is now seeping in a drowning crawl along the soles of my boots and mixing with Mattea’s blood among the wine-red stones and the hot desert sand.
I don’t feel anything for killing this girl. Not fear, regret, remorse, or pity.
And that might just be the most horrifying feeling of all.
3
Cry
Matholook locks his arms under mine and drags me away from the dead girl.
He’s not an Emergent. He’s a Typic, like her.
Dressed in the white, black, and blue kit borrowed from the Academy, he’s slim and about average height. But he’s strong, and I feel helpless watching the heels of my boots cutting a pair of shallow trenches into the sunbaked ground of sand and stone.
I just unleashed a fury-storm and took the life of the girl who took the life of my friend. So why do I feel helpless? I should be flooded with power and burning with rage. I should be exalting, triumphant, and shot through with the thrill of victory and the satisfaction of finality.
Instead, I’m limp, and I’d be as prone and lifeless as Mattea and her shredded murderer on the ground if Matholook wasn’t holding me up.
Where is the tingling buzz of combat? Where is the adrenaline rush? Where is the satisfying glory of victory? Is this what loss feels like? Is that why they call it that? Not because you’ve lost someone you cared about but because of the loss of everything inside of yourself that you never realized was holding you up?
Matholook drops to his knees behind me, his arms wrapped around my shoulders. His breath is warm in my ear, and with my back pressed up against him, I can feel his heart pounding in his chest. He’s muttering something to me, over and over: “I’ve got you,” he keeps saying. “It’s okay.”
But he doesn’t have me. I don’t even have myself right now. And as of this moment, nothing is okay.
Breaking out of their own frozen moment, Libra and Ignacio swarm past us and slide to a stop over Mattea’s unmoving body.
The muscles in Ignacio’s back and shoulders fire and twitch under his compression shirt as he hovers over our friend. Swinging around across from him, Libra barks at him to apply pressure to the gaping wound in Mattea’s neck while calling for Sara to toss over her jacket to use as a bandage.
As if they’ve been hypnotized into action Ignacio and Sara follow Libra’s orders.
I’ve always thought of Libra as the bubbly one of our Asylum, the gorgeous, dark-skinned girl with the perfect hair, the perky personality, the constant smile, and the endless, infuriating optimism.
I barely recognize the stern-voiced, authoritative girl directing everyone and making every effort possible to save our friend.
I don’t know why she’s trying. Mattea’s life, without purpose, meaning, or even a few poignant last words—is over.
Could it be that the simple act of trying—no matter how intense and futile—is more important than succeeding?
Behind me, Arlo’s voice sounds high-pitched and hollow as he says something about getting a med-kit before dropping his scythe to the ground and sprinting over to our cluster of Grip-bikes.
Overhead, Haida Gwaii barks out a broken-hearted litany of gurgle-clacks. I glance up to see her white feathers flutter and seem to turn shadowy-gray as she banks in a tight arc with the sizzling rays of the desert sun behind her. She tries to connect with me. Her voice is kind and insistent, like the voice of a doting aunt. I can feel her consciousness nudging its way into mine, but I resist.
~ Let me in.
I can’t.
And I mean it. As close as she and I have been getting lately, as much of our consciousness as we’ve been sharing, it just doesn’t feel like there’s room enough for her and for the crashing waves of terror, regret, and grief roiling around in my head. My Emergent relationship with her is a door that swings both ways, and it feels like if I open that door now, the pain will just keep passing back and forth until it kills us both.
Sitting here in Matholook’s arms, I’m panting, panicked, and sweat-soaked. Defeat envelops me like a weighted blanket. My white and blue compression top, my black military combat pants, the front of my red leather jacket, and my hands and forearms are splattered with blood. I can even feel the sticky droplets on my cheeks. I see everyone, and I hear everything they’re saying, but none of it registers. I know they’ll try to save Mattea, just as sure as I know she’s gone.
We all know it. And, in the most unexpected and horrifying way, we’re all gone.
In the space of a few minutes, we’ve morphed from a brash, confident crew, happily tearing around the desert on our Grip-bikes and swollen to bursting with the thrill of adventure, into a hot mess of sorrow, terror, and doubt.
I don’t know how long the flurry of motion goes on in front of me, how long Matholook’s arms stay wrapped around me, or how many patient, soothing words he whispers in my ear.
When Ignacio collapses back and sits on the ground, his dark, powerful arms around his knees, his head sagging low, I know it’s over.
Returning with the med-kit, but slowing to a padding, defeated shuffle and then to a resigned stop, Arlo knows it, too.
Libra’s curtain of thick, dark brown hair hangs in front of her face. She pushes it back over her shoulders and drags her arm across her eyes. Her whole core slumps, and all the life and vibrancy seem to have drained from her body. Her face, normally the smoothest chestnut-brown, has gone furrowed and fish-belly white.
Matholook helps me up, and I stagger halfway to my feet. It’s like my muscles and bones have fallen into a deep sleep and have no intention or desire to wake up.
“Come on,” he urges, his hand slipping over mine. “They need you.”
They need me? How could anyone need me now? What good could I possibly be to anyone? “I need you.” What used to sound like the ultimate compliment has turned into the most pointless, wort
hless joke.
As if driven by our shared distress and choreographed by grief, my friends and I wind up pressed together and kneeling in a tight circle on a bare patch of ground around Mattea’s body. She seems to be staring up at the sky, like she’s deep in thought. I want to reach over and close her eyes, but I’m scared. It seems like too intimate of a gesture, too final. I do it, anyway, telling myself I’m just helping her go to sleep.
As opposed to signaling the total and absolute end of her life.
On our knees, our arms around each other’s shoulders, we huddle together with our heads tilted down in defeat.
With Mattea’s body slumped and soulless in a horrific, unmoving heap on the ground, I don’t know where to rest my eyes.
Distraught and disoriented, Libra can’t stop crying. I can’t start. It’s not that I’m not sad. Sad doesn’t begin to describe it. My jaw hurts from clenching my teeth so hard. My eyes are wet. My lungs are stone. My heart is broken. But I’m supposed to be tough. Indestructible. Unfazed. A leader.
I’m supposed to be like Kress.
Don’t let the tears fall, Branwynne. Don’t let them fall.
They fall, anyway, and a shudder rips through my neck and shoulders and sends a lightning strike of pain searing down the middle of my back. My chest is a tempest of convulsions, and I’m straining to draw even a sliver of breath.
We kneel like this for a long time. I don’t know how long. Time doesn’t matter anymore. Mattea is out of time, and I’ve lost all interest in measuring it.
Arlo is the first of us to stand.
Pushing himself to his feet, he tugs off his trademark hoodie, drawing it over his head and placing it over Mattea. The soft bulk of fabric covers her head and upper body. The intersecting patchwork of raised scar tissue cutting across Arlo’s face and running down his neck are crisp and clearly visible in the midday sun.
Some of his wounds he got in combat. A few are from training. Most are from his time as a captive in the Processor in Valencia, Spain. He doesn’t talk about those.