by Jack Alden
“Ow!” I jerk my thumb from the butt of the Viper and notice a smear of blood. A small drop bubbles to the surface of a tiny pricked hole in the center of my thumb.
Tempest is at my side in one giant step. “What’s wrong?”
“It stabbed me!”
“The Viper?”
Before I can confirm, the most extraordinary thing happens. The Viper reacts. A small mechanical hum, like that of the cogs inside a clock turning. Tempest and I both lower our heads to hear it better. The Viper, still resting in the palm of my hand, begins to vibrate. It’s just enough to be noticeable, but not quite enough to shake my hand. A second later, something clicks and a seam appears between the two engraved initials. A tiny slide extends from the seam, and both Tempest and I gasp. I nearly choke on my own saliva.
Nestled in the center of the slide is a shiny blue microchip, about the size of the tip of Beck’s pinky finger. Once the slide has extended, the humming stops, and Tempest and I are left with only the absence of it, mouths agape and minds reeling.
“Your blood,” he says and looks at me, eyes wide. “That’s it, Dagger! That’s what we were missing. It’s designed to take a blood sample. How else could it test your DNA? The needle must be hidden in the initials. You know what this means, right?”
I’m nearly too stunned to speak, but the words find their way out on a ragged breath. “The legends are true.” And it isn’t just speculation anymore. GM20—I have it.
Every word, every sound in the room fades and drowns out around me. It works. It actually works. I stare at the tiny chip still nestled in the slide. What will happen if I make the link? Will it hurt? Will it change me? The stories always seemed too amazing to be true. The most intelligent weapon ever forged. Technology so advanced it was unfathomable. Could this really make me stronger? How could a single, small dagger protect me from the Sanctioning Squad? From bullets? From bombs?
The questions seem endless, and there’s only one way to answer them. I extract the microchip, but Tempest’s hand closes around my wrist, holding it still in midair.
“What are you doing?”
“What do you mean? I’m going to link with the Viper.”
“Are you sure you’re ready for that?”
“You said it yourself,” I tell him. “This is the only way.”
“But we don’t even know what it’ll do to you, Dagger.”
“I know, but what choice do we have? We know everything there is to know, everything that’s been written about the Vipers. There isn’t anything else. No books we can read. No research we can do. This is the only way, and we don’t have time to wait. So, I’m doing this. Okay? I’m doing it.”
He nods, hesitant. He knows I’m right. I hold out the chip and let him take it. His hand shakes. He moves behind me and pulls my hair aside to expose the back of my neck. My heart starts to pound. He hovers the chip over the skin at the base of my head, closest to the brain stem, and I can’t breathe.
“Dagger…”
“Just do it!” I shout, afraid he won’t hear me over the pounding of my heart.
Tempest closes the gap.
***
A sickly tingling sensation comes first, like a spider crawling across my skin. I shudder. As soon as Tempest lets go of the chip, the pain comes. A nauseating ache rips through my head like an amplified migraine. The pain is so overwhelming that my body jolts. The Viper clatters to the floor. My fingers dig into the bed sheets, and I grit my teeth, hoping it will pass, but it doesn’t. The chip embeds itself, pricks into my skin a thousand times, latching on like a parasite and sinking itself into position.
Tempest clamps a hand over my mouth to keep me from screaming. We don’t want to alarm anyone. He wraps his other arm around my body and pulls me close, rocking me back and forth through the pain. My head is exploding. My neck burns like fire. Tears prick in my eyes as I squeeze them shut and try to breathe through the pain.
The episode only lasts about a minute, but it feels like hours. Hours of torture. Then, as quickly as it started, it’s over, and all that remains is a tingling sensation on the back of my neck. It isn’t really painful, just strange. Uncomfortable.
Tempest eases me back. “You okay?”
I take a long, deep breath. The air feels good, spilling into my lungs like new life. I survey my body, standing and looking over every visible inch, every limb, and something shifts inside me. It feels like my chest opening up, my head clearing.
“Yeah,” I say. “I feel good, actually. Different.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. My skin is tingling everywhere, like I just woke up. I feel good, Temp.” I flex my muscles, clench my fists. “I feel strong.”
“Well, that’s good, I guess, right?” He’s wary, I can tell, but at least some of the color has flooded back into his face.
Something on the floor catches my eye. The Viper. I scoop it up, and suddenly, it doesn’t just feel like a dagger anymore. It feels familiar, as if I’ve held it a thousand times before. A full minute passes with Tempest and I simply staring, wide-eyed, at the Viper, waiting for something miraculous to happen now that I’ve linked with it. When nothing does, I want to scream.
“What I wouldn’t give for a manual right about now,” I say, dropping back down on the bed.
Tempest laughs. “I don’t think we’re going to find How to Equip and Command Legendary Daggers in the school library.”
I punch his shoulder. How much more frustrating could this be? Every time I think we’ve solved our problems, we encounter another obstacle. I twirl the Viper in my hand the way I’d done several times already, and of course, nothing happens. I try a little of everything, tossing it from hand to hand, even throwing it. Still covered by its built-in, retractable sheath, and me with no knowledge of how to unsheathe it, it bluntly smacks into the wall and drops to the floor.
Tempest lets out a heavy laugh as I pick it up again. “Nice toss, you fierce little assassin, you!”
Leave it to my brother to make jokes at a time like this. We’re days away from him being executed and the only hope we have of saving him is a stubborn piece of history that I have no idea how to control. And Tempest, of course, is laughing.
“You’re laughing,” I say. “That’s great. Should I even want to save your life? Not that I’ll be able to if I can’t get this stupid thing to work.”
“Well, getting mad at it isn’t going to help,” he says. “Look, you just need to take a breath and think. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, D, and great instincts, but you’re not listening to them.” Tempest gets up and positions himself behind me, places his hands on my shoulders. “Relax. You keep tensing up like that, and you’re going to implode. Then it won’t matter if we have the Viper or not.”
I turn on him. “How can you keep making jokes?”
Tempest sighs. “I’m trying to help you relax, Dagger.”
“Well, I can’t relax, okay? This is serious. I’m trying to save your life. There’s nothing funny about that.”
Tempest turns serious then. He grips my shoulders again. “This isn’t for me,” he says. “It’s for you. It’s to protect you from what they might try to do.”
“I know that,” I tell him, “but it’s also to protect you.”
Tempest smiles, something sad and unlike him. It makes my skin crawl. “Even if you can bargain my head off the chopping block, they’re going to take you, Dagger. We both know that. Do you really think they won’t send the Squad back to finish me off once you’re gone?”
I shake my head. “I don’t accept that.”
“You’ll have to,” Tempest says. “Don’t focus your energy on me, D. Focus on yourself. Be strong for you.”
The words sink into my skin like razor wire, cutting and gnawing and burning. He never believed I could save him.
“You’ve been thinking this the entire time, and you don’t say a word? Instead, you joke and you laugh as if anything about this is funny?�
� I want to slap him.
“It’s not funny,” he says. “I know that. But it is okay, D. I’m not afraid to die.”
I scoff at him. “Everyone’s afraid to die.”
“Not me,” he says. “I’ve lived a great life. You don’t see that because you always focus on all the horrible things we’ve been through, but we’ve had a lot of good things too. I got thirteen years with the best father anyone could ever hope for, and I got even longer with my best friend. You. You and Beck. So, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay, no matter what happens. You understand?”
I don’t say anything. I can’t speak. Instead, I wrap my arms around my brother and squeeze as tightly as I can. Something inside me refuses to accept any of this, that I could lose him, lose my home, my family, everything. Possibly before we even see another day. We don’t know when the Sanctioning Squad will come, and at this point, I have no bargaining chips. The Viper has to work. It’s the only way to save myself, and though I don’t say anything to Tempest, a part of me still believes it can save him, too.
***
Another day passes, and then another and another until it’s the day before my birthday, and I still haven’t figured out how to activate the Viper. I’ve only been able to tinker with it in the evenings because of work, but more time makes no difference. Nothing works. It doesn’t matter how I hold it, how I throw it, how I stand, or how I aim. Nothing triggers it. I feel stupid. Hopeless. Throwing around a sheathed dagger, talking to it, hoping it has some sort of magical power. I probably look as dumb as I feel.
The dinner table is completely silent as it has been all week. Other than setting out plates, Mom basically pretends we’re invisible. Until she’s decided she can forgive our ‘foolish’ behavior, we currently do not exist. You would think, knowing what possible fates await us in the near future, our mother, more than anyone, would want as much interaction with us as possible. But no, not her. She doesn’t even look at us, and the only sounds are those of us chewing.
Halfway through the meal, Tempest decides he’s had enough. He starts by catching Beck’s attention and scrunching his face up until Beck’s giggling so hard he accidentally flips his fork off his plate. A bite of mashed potatoes flies through the air and splatters against the wall before sliding down to the floor.
Beck instantly freezes. We all wait in silence to see how Mom will react. When nothing happens, Tempest resumes eating but keeps his eyes on her. His stare bores into her forehead as if willing her to look up at him, to yell at him for being the source of the mess, but to everyone’s astonishment, she doesn’t. She doesn’t say a word or even lift her gaze from her plate, which only angers Tempest.
“It’s Dagger’s birthday tomorrow, but of course you know that,” he says. “Right Mom?” I’m not sure what he’s trying to do or why. Bait her into a reaction? Rile her up? I’ve never understood their relationship, no more than I can understand how the potatoes on the floor haven’t caused her a stroke. “I mean, what kind of mother forgets her only daughter’s birthday? Right? But then, what kind of mother pretends her only daughter doesn’t exist?”
“Temp, stop,” I say. “It’s fine.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” Mom says, surprising me. Her voice is a whisper, strained like there’s something caught in her throat.
When I look up at her, my jaw drops. For the first time in years, she’s staring, unblinkingly, right into my brother’s eyes. Her face is motionless, as if she’s trying to hide whatever emotion is bubbling just below the surface, but Tempest’s face is far from still. It happens quickly. First, it’s shock. Then anger. Finally, pain. His eyes gloss over, and I’m reeling.
I grab his hand under the table and squeeze. All these years, all this pain, and all he needed was for her to look at him, to let him know he wasn’t invisible. He wasn’t alone. And she couldn’t give him that. She wouldn’t give him that, her own son. So, why now? If it was so easy, why couldn’t she have comforted him when he needed it? Heat ripples across my skin.
“After all these years of you avoiding him,” I say, shaking my head, “unwilling to comfort him or even acknowledge him in any way other than to scorn him. Why now, Mom? What’s different now?”
“Dagger, stop,” Tempest says, standing from the table, but I’m just getting started. The more I talk, the angrier I become, as if every single thing I mashed down and down and down over the years is spilling up to the surface, ready to burst free.
“Stop?” I balk. “Why? Why should I st—”
Tempest claps a hand over my mouth. His eyes dart to the kitchen window, covered by a curtain. “I heard something.”
Maybe it’s the anger still coursing through my veins, but I don’t put much stock in Tempest’s alarm. I turn back to my mother and realize she hasn’t moved. Even her gaze, unwavering, remains fixed upon the place where Tempest’s face had been only moments ago. Beck stares at her too, by the look of it still concerned she hasn’t forgotten the potatoes on the floor, but something isn’t right. There’s something odd about the way she sits there, rigid. Something chilling.
I tug Tempest’s shirt and pull him back around, glancing at him then down at her again. Whatever it is about her seems to bother him too. He bends and waves a hand in front of her face. Again, she doesn’t move. She doesn’t even blink. Just stares, lips slightly parted, tears pooling in her eyes.
“Mom?” Tempest snaps his fingers. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
A small stream leaks from the corner of her eye. “I’ve done something terrible,” she says, and just as the whisper escapes, a loud knock echoes from the door.
5
The silence is tangible, chilling every corner of the kitchen. Tempest’s breathing is shaky beside me. I can feel it near the back of my neck as both our heads snap toward the door. Who could it be? The question never reaches my lips. It spreads in my throat until I feel suffocated with it. No one in the Gutter calls at night. The cold is too bitter, and the curfew, too strict. It’s a risk few find worth taking, and those who do, mainly Tempest and myself, have to be quick and silent, nothing more than a shadow in the night. No, in the Gutter, the only hands that come knocking after sundown are the hands of death itself. The Sanctioning Squad.
Before Tempest can stop me, I bolt to the stairs, taking two at a time to the landing. Another loud knock sounds from the kitchen. I hop around the loudest floorboards into my room and dive for my bed. Tempest appears a moment later. In one swift stride, he’s beside me.
“Dagger, you need to run,” he says. “They won’t knock a third time, and you know it.”
“No,” I say. “I’m not doing that. I’m not leaving you here.”
“I didn’t think they’d come before your birthday,” he says. “It’s against the law to take a minor for any reason, even crime, without notification, and they show up here in the middle of the night with no warning? There’s a window here, Dagger. It changes everything.”
I dig my hands under my mattress, searching. Come on. Come on. Where the hell is it? I know I put it here.
“Dagger, are you listening to me?” Tempest grabs my arm and pulls me to face him. “Go out the back. Take the valley as far out as you can before dawn. Find somewhere to hide. Do you hear me? You have to stay hidden.”
He pushes a cloth sack into my fist, which I recognize by the feel of it as Tempest’s t-shirt, and suddenly I realize he’s been shirtless this entire time. “Rations,” he says, and the smell hits me. Our dinner. “Head for the Wastelands.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “What?”
“If I make it out of here, I’ll come for you,” he says. “I promise. Now, go. Go!”
Without thinking, I grab the makeshift bag and run as if on autopilot. I’m almost to the stairs when reality crashes in again and my thoughts refocus. What am I doing? Leaving? Running like a criminal? No. No. That wasn’t the plan. I’m not doing that. I’m not running.
I sprint back into my room just as a loud clatter sounds
. The Viper, dropping to the floor as Tempest tosses the mattress off my bed. He goes to grab it, but I’m faster. My feet slide as I bend to scoop it up. The moment my fingers curl around the handle, an echoing bang explodes through the house. The kitchen door, blasted open. Tempest was right; they didn’t knock a third time.
As the heavy thumping of boots rumbles through the house, I steal a hurried glance at my brother. He’s braced, ready to fight, but the look on his face is one of complete shock. Shock and disappointment. He told me to run, but here I am. I know I shouldn’t speak. The more sound we make, the faster they’ll find us, but they’re coming all the same, so I don’t let the moment go to waste.
“I won’t leave you,” I say with as much authority as I can manage, but my voice cracks. My throat burns as if I’m on the verge of crying or vomiting or both. For a fraction of a section, I think I see tears in his eyes, but at second glance, his face is as hard as ever. He nods. It’s all the confirmation I need. I brace myself, crouched and alert, and try to think of a plan. What can I possibly do armed with nothing but a sheathed dagger that I don’t even know how to use?
Beck’s screams and cries are torture. Fear, not pain. The fact doesn’t lessen the urge to run to him, wrap him up and tell him everything is going to be okay, even if it isn’t.
A voice bellows through the house, causing goosebumps to erupt all along my arms and neck.
“Shut your boy up, Citizen, or I’ll shut him up for you,” a man shouts. Seconds later, Beck’s wails come to a chilling halt. Tempest lets out a small, almost inaudible hiss of anger that says he’s nearing his breaking point as well. We wait in silence; wait for the man to speak again. Only seconds pass before he does. His voice echoes, amplified.
“Rebel Citizens, you have been accused of and charged for the crime of treason, punishable by death. It is by order of the President that you have been tracked and thereafter, captured. This dwelling and all occupants within are surrounded and guarded by members of the North Side Sanctioning Squad. Abandon your weapons and submit to our authority. Should you fail to do so, we, by orders of the President and the Superior Elder Council, shall take you by force, abdicating our otherwise lawful responsibility to protect the innocent from harm, should they obstruct our efforts in any way. The law of this nation and the penalty for your crimes are absolute. If you understand and accept these decrees, submit yourself to custody, and none shall be harmed.”