The Rise of Ren Crown

by Anne Zoelle

  “The usual rules do not apply today, as you've seen.” Kaine's lips parted in a shark-like smile. “Someone should point her out quickly.”

  Shockingly, even with the implied threat, and the terrified gasps in the crowd, no one in Will's view did. And there were quite a few who had one reason or another to do so.

  Bryant—who had originally been part of our group, but had fled when he'd realized we were going to fight the terrorists—said nothing. But his sullen silence wasn't a surprise. Self-preservation was his primary concern, and both sides would punish him for speaking out.

  On the other hand, I expected Peters, who was also in view, to say something. He gripped his Canary-yellow Justice Tablet, but his gaze stayed purposely fixed on a point opposite us.

  Will's gaze, and the image on the viewer, switched to the front of the crowd.

  Bellacia's neutral gaze was on Kaine, but she wasn't standing as casually as usual. She, like the rest of the crowd, was unnerved by this man.

  Camille Straught, who had to have been updated by Bellacia immediately upon frequencies being reinstated, was staring in our general direction—probably right at me—but her lips didn't move.

  Was the campus population protecting me?

  “She's over there, sir.”

  A single thin finger pointed in my direction.

  Keiren Oakley, a boy who had made life quite unpleasant for me in Layer Politics class and by very obviously recording my actions around campus, was pointing our way. I had breathed a sigh of relief when he had left with the privileged others to attend the combat competition live. At some point during the battle, he had obviously returned to campus.

  Mike's back seemed to grow in size, blocking me even more completely from view of the men on the steps.

  “And where've you been, you little slimeball?” Mike asked. “Suspicious, you getting off campus exactly when everyone was going to burn, then suddenly being back here now. Who told you about the attack?”

  Oakley's pale skin turned completely white. “I attended the All-Layer Com—”

  “Silence,” Kaine said coldly.

  But Mike wasn't done. “And spoke with quite a number of the Peacekeepers' Troop—who are all currently being questioned with the Truth Stone—before you did,” Mike said, aggressively, ignoring Kaine's steely command. Mike's condemning gaze focused solely on Oakley.

  “Silence.” There was a definite threat in that single word this time, and Mike clutched at his suddenly shadowed throat.

  I grabbed the back of Mike's shirt in one hand, and pressed shaking fingers to the back of his neck, absorbing the pain Kaine was sending into him. My magic channels twisted and receded further inside of me, like the flame of a match lighting strands of hair.

  It was a warning choke more than anything, and I had experienced worse while trying to resurrect my brother. But the feeling of absolute terror emanating from the students surrounding us seeped in as well. Neph grabbed one of my forearms and Will grabbed the other. Some of it leeched through, as they bore part of the pain.

  Mike had protected 'feral' me for a long time, and even after learning about my Origin status today, he was still doing it. He hadn't run in terror yet.

  Kaine released the punishing magic, and my fingers dropped from Mike's neck.

  I fisted the back of his shirt harder in my other hand though, as we both heaved in breaths. The tie between us strengthened, shifting to a connection thread at his neck. Not yet on a level with Will, Neph, Dare, Constantine, my parents, or Raphael, but a far stronger connection than to any others. Breathing heavily, I sent through all the vestiges of healing magic that I could draw from the tangled, twisted mass of half-burnt channels inside of me.

  I was never going to find Olivia with my magic so damaged. I couldn't even manage a proper spell.

  The crowd began moving in tense jousts of bodies, and the vine tightened around my ankle, in a strange gesture of comfort.

  Mike tilted his chin down, swallowing roughly. His lips didn't move, but his voice was clear, coming mentally through his scarf—still tied around his neck—to the rest of ours.

  Hold steady, he said as the men around Kaine parted the crowd and headed in our direction. I stared at Will's device, gripping Mike's shirt as we watched the men quickly approach our position.

  I could feel them getting closer, an unseen force unzipping the crowd in a four-foot vee as they strode forward.

  Will abruptly pulled the viewing device back, jamming it into his pocket. His empty fingers clenched at his side.

  Kaine's voice echoed, a mere fifteen feet or so away. “The six from the images we were sent. Tap each of them.”

  No official had confirmed that Olivia was missing. An unofficial death toll had started and I had heard the echo of it through the scarves as people repeated frequency broadcasts. But there were so many students receiving treatment in Medical and being revived, that the lists were constantly updating.

  Olivia's mother's audible demands concerning the whereabouts of her daughter had gone unanswered, and Marsgrove, who actually knew Olivia was gone, had disappeared inside the Administration Building with the other officials.

  But five of us—Neph, Will, Mike, Delia, and I—were still standing after our attack on the battle field dome, and were available for whatever “tapping” was.

  Will withdrew something thin from his pocket as he was magically pulled forward, Mike was physically pushed to the side, tearing him from my grip, and Asafa and Patrick, who had been part of the group flanking us, were thrown against the surrounding bodies of the crowd, in the small five-foot allotment of movement that Marsgrove's spell had invoked. Patrick's eyes glinted with malice as he eyed the Department mages who were tightly interweaving themselves among our group of five.

  I took a deep breath, then another, nearly panting with panic.

  A trickle of magic seeped through a leaf of the vine, unnaturally attempting to regulate my state back to calm.

  But I wouldn't be able to reclaim Olivia, if they put me in a cell. All chance would be lost. And the others... The others would be lost as well.

  No, no, no, no. Conscious thought to do magic whipped up in me, but was immediately yanked back and pinched hard by the vine around my ankle. I reflexively pushed against the restriction as the menacing officials in black prowled closer. The vine tightened further, battling for control of my magic.

  I could feel the point at which I could break free of it. Right there... Just where the vine seemed to thin...

  Dare's magic pulsed along the threads connecting us. Trust. Let go. Trust...

  I abruptly let go of the magic, and the vine loosened. On impulse, I shoved Olivia's scarf into my back pocket.

  Then I was staring at Kaine as he stepped directly out of a shadow formed from the crowd in front of me, and my gaze met his ruthless one directly, for the first time.

  “Ah. Here you are.” Satisfaction edged his cold gaze in icy, ornamental spikes. Silver eyes in hollowed sockets stared down at me. Surprisingly, he was much younger than I would have assumed. Maybe in his late twenties. Not that much older than the oldest students on campus, but the soullessness in his eyes seemed ancient.

  One long fingertip drew a path from the outer edge of his right eyebrow, then curved beneath his eye. A haze of magic fell across the eye, turning the iris from silver to black, the entire pupil swallowed by darkness. Zips of polychromatic colors wove in and out.

  I swallowed with difficulty, and eyed the other black-clad figures surrounding us.

  The vine around my ankle tightened, waiting to strike if I reached for magic.

  Someone behind me fiercely whispered, “Where are the professors? Johnson and Marsgrove might be sealed, but the professors—well, get around the communication block!”

  Kaine smiled—a slashing cut of his mouth and eyes. “Where are your professors indeed?” he asked aloud, addressing the whisper. “And where were they when all of you required their aid? No, I think it far better that
you be under the Department's protection, and the Legion's, for the foreseeable future. And Tarei, do tap the student who was just speaking as well as these five.”

  There was a clap of sound, and the noise of the crowd dissipated around me.

  “Now, to more interesting matters.” With his magicked eye, Kaine took in the surrounding faces. His gaze rested on Neph, Patrick, then Delia, for the longest moments. Magic swirled up and over his blackened silver eye, like dark mist orbiting a sphere—giving data on everything that passed through his vision.

  “What a riveting little group this is,” he said. “Full of degenerates and sympathizers.”

  Patrick bared his teeth in a very savage smile, eyes glittering. Delia and Neph stood frozen.

  Kaine smiled coldly, then turned his icy, spelled gaze directly on me. “Name?”

  I shook my head.

  He looked at the top of my head—which meant he could see Raphael's spell—and his cold smile grew colder. “There are so many reasons for me to take you to where you'll never again see the light of day, girl.”

  Raphael's insanity-laced words about the Department's basement slammed into my head.

  It also made me very aware that whatever protection Raphael had placed upon me to avoid Department eyes was no longer in place. Whether it had gone with the chain I had unlinked between us over the past few weeks, or was due to something Raphael had done in retaliation during our fight, I didn't know.

  And God, I was covered in evidence. Constantine's stamp and the tube of Awakening paint were in the vine wrapped around my ankle, my brother’s bracelet was clasped on my wrist, Olivia’s scarf—which was lightly, and very illegally leeching a small part of my ragged magic again, now that everyone was worried about frequencies once more—was in my back pocket directly connected to the one at my neck, and most damning, the residue from Kinsky's papers had seeped into my skin.

  “Should I question your friends first?” Kaine sounded disinterested and detached, but his gaze intensified and I registered a sickening pleasure increasing in his magic.

  “Ren,” I said immediately, my voice scratched and shaking. I cleared my throat, never looking away from him. “My name is Ren.”

  Never Florence. Not in this world, not a name that could connect me to my First Layer parents. I had changed my name in Excelsine's administrative system and it had been sealed as my “true” name when Provost Johnson had restarted my record after I'd accidentally destroyed the entire Shangwei Art Complex first term.

  “Ah. Ren Crown, isn't it? We've come across your name in reports from a variety of sources. Quite a run you've had, so far, at this academic institution. Such a short run.”

  His gaze was hungry—and, so very, very merciless—as he looked at me.

  He couldn't take me. I swallowed and mentally repeated the sentiment. He couldn't just take me. The crowd was too big. Too many people looked militant. I had just helped save campus. And even if people didn't know how it had happened, they knew who had done it. Everyone sitting in the battle field stands had seen us fight Godfrey and somehow secure the dome—had thought they were watching us die.

  Kaine's magicked gaze tracked me, seeming to know exactly what I was thinking, as his smile grew.

  “What happened to the Origin Dome that Vincent Godfrey raised? The one dismantled by Origin Magic—new Origin Magic. The one you dismantled.”

  There was a surge of magic in the crowd—whispers flitting over frequencies, judging by the nonverbal communication I could see.

  Kaine's empty gaze surveyed the crowd as if he could hear them when I could not. His gaze landed back on me, reflecting a terrible pleasure. “Why do you look so frightened, Miss Crown? This is but a simple question. And one that everyone wants to see addressed.”

  The magic on the field stilled.

  I could hear Olivia's clipped tones in my head, and what she would surely be saying: He can't take you as a hero—he has to make people fear you first.

  I tried to send a mental request to Neph through my scarf, but silence was the only response. Kaine was sporting a terrible smile, and I looked past him to see one of his men pinching Delia's scarf between two of his fingers. Cutting off contact. Since the scarf was still around Delia’s throat, it was an even more threatening gesture.

  Mike was pulling at the hands holding him and yelling—lips ranting and throat working—but I couldn't hear a word of it. Kaine had managed to eliminate the crowd from my reach—allowing me no audible way to judge what was happening around me.

  “Such interesting stories still forming and being bandied about. Tell us, Miss Crown, how did you do it?”

  Kaine hadn't seen what had happened firsthand. The terrorists' transmission from campus to the outside world—which had included all of the Council members, heads of state, parents, and citizens—had been cut the moment Godfrey had realized the dome over the battle field stands had been wrested from his control.

  But I remembered the intense gaze, tracking Kinsky's papers. Not this man's cold gaze, but his boss's—Enton Stavros. I remembered the moment his absolute focus had switched from Godfrey to tracking the papers. He hadn't had time to see me.

  But now?

  The cruel smile on Kaine's face said everything. Piecing together the firsthand accounts, and narrowing down the variables, it wasn't hard to guess that it had been me. All Kaine needed was to get me to confess—to trap me in evidence, admissions, and lies.

  I shook my head. The savagery in his smile grew as he surveyed the crowd again, his gaze calculating—as if he were actively listening to all of the secret and private conversations that everyone was having en masse in the moment. Eavesdropping on and parsing all communications on campus.

  “The papers used on the dome over the battle field stands—where are they?” He pressed a cold fingertip against my forehead.

  Kinsky's papers. A single piece of damning evidence that would out me for what I was.

  “Papers?”

  His finger sparked and pain shot through me, spiking in my forehead and spilling down my limbs like he had electrocuted me. I fell to my knees.

  “Tricks do not work on me, girl. Nor on any in the Department. Better to learn that early. Now, let's try the same question again.”

  I opened my mouth to give the same answer, but the pain turned crippling. A hand pulled me back to my feet and harshly held me upright as my legs folded again. He was using a form of Justice Magic, but far more excruciating than the kind used on campus.

  “Observe the lies she is trying to tell.” Kaine's voice was dismissive, as he addressed the crowd I still couldn't hear. “Pitiful.”

  I hadn't signed any sort of contract with Kaine. He wasn't part of campus. How was he wielding Justice Magic over me?

  “Now let's try again.”

  I concentrated on the pain, blanking my mind to anything else. If there was one thing Raphael and my active delinquency on campus had taught me, it was how not to tell the truth yet still skirt the edges of fact.

  Kinsky's sheets were somewhere in the Midlands—I had thrown them in that direction when I realized we were being forcibly marched back up the mountain. Because the tiles were constantly shifting within the Midlands, I had no true idea where they were inside those levels.

  “I don't know.” I couldn't give him coordinates or even a reasonable guess without further thought. I set my mind to the active task of reciting First Layer song lyrics.

  Crippling pain made me drop again, lyrics splintering in my head.

  “You do,” he said with relish. “Where are the papers?”

  “Somewhere in the Midlands,” I gasped, the answer pulled from me.

  The Midlands could hide anything. I had to believe that.

  “Very good.” He nearly cooed. “Now, what was on the sheets?”

  “Vague human forms,” I said. Truth. That was the last thing I had seen on the sheets—all of the trapped men inside. “I don't know who created them.” I didn't know the parents of the me
n or any of their kin. “I can't be sure what they did.” I had no idea of the men's pasts.

  I repeated these notions to myself over and over, without letting my thoughts deviate from those truths.

  “No? You are manipulating the truth of the magic. It’s obvious by how you still struggle to stand. If you simply gave the truth, there'd be no pain. But you've given me plenty, Miss Crown.”

  His finger dropped from my forehead, but I could tell, by the sharp, malevolent look in his spelled eyes that he wasn't finished questioning me. Rather, it was as if he were suddenly on a ticking timeline.

  “Such reports from the battle. Such unusual residue left lingering in the air.” Kaine smelled the air, eyes closed. For a moment, it seemed like another face rippled across his features. “A scent not smelled in...much too long. The clear ozone smell of Origin Magic.”

  Sound returned to me in another clap of magic, and I heard the wave of murmurs break over the crowd.

  “Not the reused, repurposed smell of the captured magic of the past.” Kaine's lips turned down, as if he were dismayed, but everything else about him registered dark pleasure. “This is fresh. A new creator. And society can't have that type of danger running around unchecked. A danger like you.”

  He knew what I was. Clear as the sun sinking in the sky, and my heart to my toes, he knew. He couldn't just take me, though. Not on a suspicion. Not when I had just saved campus.

  “Test her.”

  Hands grabbed my arm roughly and yanked me to my knees.

  Chapter Two: Tests That Lead to Ruin

  They pushed the crowd further to the sides, while keeping me in place. Sound had returned completely and I could hear people—Mike's forceful voice among them—protesting vehemently.

  “Calm yourselves,” Kaine said in disdain. “If she passes the test, we will reward her for her bravery and quick thinking, I'm sure.” His smile was cold. He did not expect me to pass the test.

  A small box was placed on the ground before me. Covered in iridescent swirls, it was a beautifully coated, but otherwise plain, square box.