Shadowlark

by Meagan Spooner

  Carefully, I gathered up a thin tendril of magic and sent it through the surface of the door toward the lock. It buzzed in response, making my heart jump—it was responding to the magic. I could do this. Fraction by fraction, quietly.

  And then something landed on my shoulder, whirring. I jerked back, flinching away. The pixie, dislodged as I lurched backward, hovered in the air a few inches away. Its eyes were still blank. It said nothing.

  “What are you doing?” I gasped, clasping a hand to my chest, willing my heart to stop pounding. “Are you trying to stop me?”

  “I am programmed to see to your needs,” it replied in that jarring female voice.

  “I need you to leave me alone.” I tried to shoo it away, but it dodged my hand in a smooth dip to the side.

  “Do not attempt to open the lock.”

  I ground my teeth. “So you are programmed to keep me from leaving.”

  “No.”

  “But—”

  The pixie made an odd sound, a high-pitched whine of gears that I’d never heard before. Then, after a pause, it said, “The lock.”

  I stared at it. Although it gave no impression of emotion or effort, it seemed as though it was trying to say something. “What about the lock?”

  “Do you wish to ask me about the locking mechanisms in CeePo?” The pixie spoke swiftly.

  “Yes. Yes, tell me.”

  “The locks here are wired with explosive energy, rigged to detonate when tampered with.”

  A chill ran down my spine. The lock had buzzed when I touched it with magic—but I’d thought it was just responsive. What would’ve happened if I’d pushed harder, tried to open it?

  “Why help me?” I asked, searching the blank eyes for some hint of Nix, anything. “You may have saved my life. Did they program you to do that?”

  “No.”

  The pixie just hovered there, motionless but for the blur of its wings through the air, blank eyes fixed on me. I thought of Nix’s very first command, given to it by its programmer, Kris: Keep Lark alive. If that command was still active, what else was still in there?

  “Nix?” I whispered.

  “My name is PX-148.”

  Tears blurred my eyes, and I blinked them away angrily. “Go away. Just—go away!”

  Before the pixie could respond to my order, a clunk from the door sent me backing away. Someone was opening the lock. I gathered up my magic. I wasn’t sure I could attack my own brother—but if it was a guard, then so help him. I was getting out of here, one way or another.

  The door swung open, the entryway filled for a moment by a guard in Eagle uniform. Then I heard a grunt of pain and a crackle of magic, and the guard sagged to the floor. A man stepped over him into the room, head turned to look behind him. He slipped something small and mechanical and crackling with energy into his pocket—then turned to face me.

  “Basil!” I stared, hardly recognizing him out of his Prometheus clothes. He was wearing plain pants and a shirt with a hood, pulled over his head to help conceal his features.

  “There’s a battle raging in the city,” he whispered. “I take it that’s courtesy of your friends?”

  Olivia.

  I drew in a shaky breath, trying not to get carried away by the little spark of warmth I felt at that news. “What’re you doing here?” I whispered back.

  “I’m here for you. Let’s go.”

  “Go?”

  His face tightened. “I’m getting you out of here. We’re leaving.”

  I hung back. How could I trust him now? “Why not just order them to let me go?” I asked bitterly. “These people would do anything for you.”

  He gazed at me from the shadow of the hood. “They’d do anything for Prometheus,” he said quietly. “The man who’ll stop at nothing to save them. And what do we need more than someone with your abilities? If I let you go—that’d be the end of Prometheus anyway.” He shook his head. “Come on.”

  Basil crossed swiftly to the doorway and stuck his head out, scanning the hall in both directions. He then stepped through, gesturing for me to follow. I hesitated—but what better way to escape than with Prometheus himself helping me? Just because I accepted his help didn’t mean I’d have to side with him.

  And so I went after him—and the pixie came after me.

  Basil’s face locked down as soon as he saw it. He pulled the mechanical device out of his pocket and stretched out his hand. I felt him gathering magic and in that instant realized what he meant to do.

  “No!” I shoved at his arm, knocking it away and breaking his concentration. “Don’t. I think there’s still something of Nix in there.”

  “Nix?” Basil stared at it. “Lark—is that your tracker pixie? From the Institute? Are you insane?”

  “Yes.” I glanced at it, still hovering emotionlessly in the air. “You don’t understand—it’s changed. It learns, and it can make its own decisions. Maybe yours was different, or you destroyed it too quickly, but this one—this one is my friend.”

  His gaze had swiveled toward me, eyebrows drawn in. I could almost see him wondering if his little sister had experienced some complete mental breakdown.

  “Your people scrubbed it,” I continued, swallowing. “It doesn’t recognize me anymore, except—I think there’s something there still.”

  He shook his head. “These models can’t be scrubbed. Believe me, I tried—their memories are buried too deeply in their programming. That’s why I destroyed mine.”

  “They did something to it,” I insisted, trying to ignore the thread of hope flaring up inside me. Maybe Nix really was in there somewhere. “And I won’t leave it here.”

  “Maybe they just put some sort of programming in on top of the old, bypassing it.” Basil glanced at it again. “Fine. Fine, bring it with us. But I’ll kill it the second it tries anything.”

  Basil led the way out into the hall and down the corridor. He was still holding that thing in his hand—I couldn’t get a good look at it, but he clutched it in his fist as though it was all that stood between us and certain death.

  “Basil,” I whispered as we turned a corner. “I can’t leave without my friends. I came here with others—I can’t leave them here to be tortured or killed by your people.”

  He stopped, retreating into the alcove of a doorway. “Lark—you’re in no position to make requests. I’ve got to get you out. You don’t know what they’ll do to you—what I’ll be forced to do to you. We don’t have time to make stops for others.”

  I inhaled slowly. This wasn’t the brother I knew. The Basil I knew would’ve stopped at nothing to rescue innocent people. “Then you’ll have to watch them torture me, because I’m not leaving without them.”

  He stared at me, anger and fear clouding his features. I realized that he wasn’t used to anybody arguing with him anymore—no one ever debated Prometheus. He leaned back, staring down the corridor again, then turned back to me. Struggling with himself, he shut his eyes, teeth grinding against each other. “Fine. Fine. Okay—we’ll find your friends, then we’ll go.”

  “And the rest of the Renewables too.”

  He took a step back, staring at me. For a moment he was speechless, mouth opening with no sound coming out—then he shook his head. “You don’t understand. Those Renewables go free, this city falls within the week. And then everyone will die, or become Empty Ones. I can get your friends out, but we can’t let them all go. Lark, we can’t.”

  You can, I wanted to scream at him. But for the first time, the tiniest tendrils of doubt came snaking into my thoughts. Could I really demand they all go free, knowing that it was a death sentence for everyone else? Which counted for more, the lives of a handful of Renewables, or the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people?

  I thought of Nina, lying prone in an infirmary bed. One life for dozens—Marco, Parker, Dorian, and all the Renewables with him were alive because I took that power from her. In the heat of it, I’d made the same decision my brother had.
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  “Let’s go,” I said tightly, shoving the question aside—I would deal with it later. I’d have to make my decision when it came to it. I could always free them myself once Basil led me to where they kept the Renewables. “Wesley’s a Renewable, I’m assuming he’s wherever the rest of them are. Oren’s— Oren’s not. But I’m hoping he’s there too.”

  “Wesley?” Basil had begun to step out of the alcove but stopped short, eyes widening. “Wesley—no, he was the one who arrested you and the murderer.”

  I stared back at him. “You didn’t know? Adjutant came and ordered him and Oren taken away. I thought . . . I thought you had ordered it.”

  “Why would I?” Basil was still standing, stricken. “Wesley’s one of my closest . . . ”

  “He’s one of us,” I said simply. “A member of the resistance. You really didn’t know?”

  Basil swallowed, his eyes sliding down to the floor. “I didn’t know,” he confirmed, his gaze troubled. “Adjutant has a certain amount of autonomy—he has to, or else he’d never get anything done. But I thought . . . I thought he’d just arrested you two.”

  I opened my mouth to respond, but before I could speak, sparks exploded from the archway over Basil’s head. He ducked, cursing. Without thinking, I took a step out and looked down the hallway. A pair of Eagles stood there, holding out the same magical weapons that the Eagles in the square had—the same weapon Adjutant had. Talons.

  And they didn’t even recognize their leader.

  CHAPTER 25

  The second guard fired as I looked out around the corner. For a moment I could only stand there, frozen, my eyes blinded by the wave of magic flowing toward me. I couldn’t think what would happen if it struck—I was already full to capacity after the first time I was zapped.

  And then the wave exploded inches from my face. My dazzled eyes barely made out the tiny, metallic form of the pixie dropping to the ground from where it had flown between me and the weapon’s bolt. Without thinking I reached out and pulled, dragging enough magic away from the two guards to send them twitching to the floor. Wesley’s training stopped me short of taking all they had—but only just.

  It felt as though my entire body had turned to mist—I couldn’t feel the ground beneath my feet or hear anything going on around me. With their magic added to what I’d already been given, my head was spinning so much I could barely stand. And still, even now, part of me wanted more. I could see the last bits of power lurking inside the guards, the vestiges that kept the machinery of their bodies working—and I wanted it.

  This was all a dream . . . who would I be hurting? I reached out dreamily. Hands wrapped around my shoulders and shook hard, and my second sight fell away. My vision returned, Basil’s features wavering in front of my face.

  “Snap out of it!” he was hissing, still shaking me. “What did you do?”

  “I—took their magic,” I said with an effort. “You have the same power. It’s what the Institute did to us.”

  He was staring at me like he no longer recognized me. “No,” he murmured. “I can’t do any of that, Lark. I can pull power from machines, from crystals—anywhere the magic’s been removed already and put somewhere else. And I have to be touching them. I can’t . . .” He trailed off, eyes slipping past me down the hall to where the guards lay unconscious.

  I struggled to focus despite the insane urge to laugh through my grief, despite the giddiness coursing through me. “But—we’re the same.”

  Basil just stared at me, eyes tracking me as I sagged to my knees, reaching for the motionless form of the pixie. “I don’t know if it’s something intrinsically different about us or if they changed the process since they did it to me,” he said slowly. “But we’re not the same. I can’t do what you just did.”

  I swallowed, pushing away the flickers of despair that kept trying to edge in. All this time I’d thought that if I could just find Basil, he’d know what was wrong with us. He’d know how to fix me. “That’s why the glass chair, up in the throne room,” I whispered. “It’s connected to Renewables on the other end, so you can pull the life out of them.”

  I kept my gaze on the pixie, trying to force my eyes to work right. I willed the extraneous magic to flow from me to it, the way it did when it was Nix. I couldn’t see Basil, but I heard him shifting his weight from foot to foot.

  “To the reserves taken from them, yes.” His voice was strained, quiet. “I’m the only one who can do it. Work magic and machine that way. That’s why it has to be me, little bird.”

  “Don’t call me that.” I took a deep breath. “Just don’t. You could’ve found another way. You were brilliant, Basil. You were—you could have done it.”

  “I tried. I’m trying. I’ve been designing a machine that’ll let an ordinary person do what I do, manipulate this power, but it doesn’t work. It’s too unstable, it’s dangerous for the Renewable and for the user. I’ve tried everything.”

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t even look at him. Part of me wanted to just get up and walk away, because who could stop me? Not Basil. Not his Eagles. Not Adjutant. Walk away into the wasteland above and never come back.

  But Oren was here, and Wesley, who risked everything for us.

  “Let’s go.” My voice sounded cold even to me. I got to my feet, my back to my brother.

  “Wait.” Basil touched my shoulder, but I felt nothing, no tingle, no pull of shadow, nothing but the weight of his hand. “Let me see.” He reached for the lifeless pixie cradled in my hands.

  I felt my fingers curl around its body, protective. “It saved me,” I mumbled. “Even though it didn’t remember me, it flew in front of the blast.”

  “Lark,” Basil said softly in the same voice he’d used when I was a child, when I’d wake from a nightmare. “I’m good with machines. Let me look, please.”

  What could it hurt? Nix was gone twice over—first its thoughts and memories, now its very life. I let my brother take it gently from my palm.

  We made a strange picture, huddling over a tiny machine in a pool of flickering light. The corridor stretched away on both sides, silent and still. The Eagles hadn’t even had time to call for assistance. We had time—but how much?

  Basil turned the machine over in his hands, inspecting it carefully, lifting it to his ear to listen for any signs of life. Though my ears strained, I heard nothing—and I could tell from Basil’s lack of reaction that he didn’t either.

  Then he reached into his pocket and took out sheath of soft brown leather, which he unrolled on the floor to reveal a set of tiny, delicate tools. Architect’s tools. Was this something the Institute gave him before he went, or did he have them made for him here? I didn’t ask, gritting my teeth as Basil opened up Nix’s tiny body, gazing down at it through a tiny magnifying glass that fit between his brow bone and the top of his cheek when he squinted.

  Nix’s inner workings were made up of hair-thin wires and pins, and gears so small I couldn’t even see their teeth. Behind all of it, nestled amidst the incomprehensible clockwork, was its tiny crystal heart. When I’d half-destroyed Nix when I first encountered it, its heart had pulsed blue as it repaired itself. Now it was quiet, still. Dead.

  I leaned away, pressing my back to the wall and forcing myself to breathe. Even when Nix vanished without a trace, I’d never truly believed anything had happened to it. I always assumed it was holed up somewhere, hiding. I always, always thought I’d simply wake up one morning and find it perched on my bedpost, watching me with its unblinking stare and criticizing my laziness. But now it was here, dead, the man I used to call brother poking around in its corpse.

  I was about to tell Basil to stop, to close it up, let it be, when my brother let out a soft “Hmm,” voice registering surprise. I felt, rather than saw, Basil reach out with his own magic to feel around inside the pixie.

  “That explains how they got around its programming,” he said, fascinated. “There’s some kind of override here. The blast must have overloaded it.” />
  “Override?”

  “The Institute built this model like a tank—the programming is so well shielded even I can’t get to it. But this—Adjutant must have had them put something here that supersedes that programming, takes over before the incoming data even reaches it.”

  In spite of myself I felt a flare of familiarity, listening to my brother speaking gibberish as he tinkered with some machine or other. While I sat with him on the couch, in our home. How could he be so like him, and so unlike him, all at the same time? More and more I didn’t know how to feel, how to react. There’s no one I loved more than my big brother, and yet—and yet.

  “I didn’t even know we had anyone who could do this,” he continued softly, fascination shifting to confusion. “Adjutant handles recruiting, and he never . . .”

  “Maybe you let him run too much of your city.” My voice was soft too, but bitter. “Maybe it’s all getting away from you.”

  Basil looked up, the magnifying glass falling from his eye into his lap. “Adjutant is absolutely devoted,” he replied, a flare of anger in his voice. “He’s my oldest supporter, my oldest friend. He’s been with me since the beginning—without him, none of this would be here.”

  “You mean the enslaved Renewables? The all-powerful uniformed guard everywhere? The people forced to live in secret and fight for their freedom? None of that would be here?”

  Basil’s jaw clenched. “This city wouldn’t be here.”

  Just then, footsteps echoed down the corridor. Basil tore his gaze from mine, glancing down the hall behind me. Then, silently, he pulled me into the alcove of a doorway, pressing me back against the wall and then pulling as far into the corner as he could. We each held our breath as a pair of guards approached the intersection behind us.

  If they happened to look to the right, down our hallway, and saw the two bodies lying at its far end, then we’d have to add two more bodies to our count.