Mal didn’t hold back. He felt no need to. He had warned him. Besides, Clay had come to him. He’d wanted this fight. He’d wanted to make him hurt.
Clay just hadn’t anticipated that Mal might want the same things, only more.
Clay swore, twisting out from under him. He got an arm around his neck, an attempt at a chokehold that Mal avoided by pulling back Clay’s fingers and biting down on the thin skin between his thumb and forefinger.
Biting wasn’t generally considered fair play, but Mal didn’t care about fairness. He cared about winning, and he had gotten good at it. Clay swung wild. Mal ducked, then slammed his solar plexus with the heel of his hand. Judging by Clay’s strangled gasp, the blow had knocked the wind out of his lungs. Mal pinned him again, his knee pressed between his shoulderblades. He could feel him struggle to breathe. The abortive little jerks and twitches as he tried and failed to inhale didn’t stir up any feelings of mercy in him.
“Asphyxiation is a terrible way to die. When your brain is starved of oxygen, it starts screaming. It’s a primal thing, really. The need is a clawing animal of desperation. It can’t be reasoned with. You’re trapped with it, powerless to save yourself while your brain screams and screams. Your brain begs you. You beg God.”
Mal put his full weight behind his knee. The last of Clay’s breath left him in a thin, high wheeze, like a punctured tire.
“I want you to think about that, Dillinger. I want you to think about what you did to my partner,” he said, leaning down close to his ear. “And I want you to imagine what I will do to you if you harm her ever again.”
He shifted his weight back. Before Bystander could suck in a greedy lungful of oxygen, Mal grabbed his hair and rammed his face into the tile again. This time, he used enough force to break his nose. When Clay finally got to breathe in, he gurgled and choked on blood.
Conveniently, breaking Clay’s nose also broke his hold on his posterpowers. The rook necklace blinked back into view, just as lumpy as it’d always been. Mal ripped the leather cord out of his hand, taking a vicious pleasure in Clay’s pained hiss. The tangled cord took a layer of skin with it.
“Next time, when I warn you not to touch what is mine, listen to me,” Mal told him, calmly. “I dislike repeating myself.”
Clay glared at him balefully from the floor, cradling his bleeding fingers over his swelling nose. Mal tucked his ugly little bird pendant away, safe between his shirt and skin.
“You have a habit of not listening, and I have a habit of losing my temper. One of us is going to have to break his habit, Dillinger,” Mal said, closing his locker and heading for the door. “And I swear to you that it will not be me.”
°
“Knowing that I will eventually be arraigned, one way or another, I have come to turn myself in, Mother,” Mal informed the Queen as soon as she answered her door.
Opening the front door wider, his mother gave him one of her placid almost-smiles and let him come inside.
“Is that so?”
“Yes. I may have broken Bystander’s nose,” Mal said, itching at his elbow. He was less than eager to make direct eye contact with her. “...I also may have bitten him. I may have been...excessive, but he tried to take something from me. By force. So I responded in kind.”
Her dark eyes widened. “You bit him?”
The note of scandal in her voice made Mal’s stomach twist. He did not allow himself to flinch.
“Yes, Mother,” he said, his chin raised. “I did.”
He didn’t verbally add and I’m not sorry, but his stubborn stance got the point across.
“Malek, you know better than that.”
“But he— ”
“But nothing,” his mother interrupted, her expression turning fierce. “Oral contact with broken skin invites blood-borne pathogens. You don’t know where that boy has been.”
That was not the reaction that Mal had been expecting. When his blood had stopped pounding in his ears, rationality had poked its head in to remind him that there would be repercussions for what he had done. He’d planned to turn himself over to his uncle and at least have the benefit of having his side of the story heard, but he hadn’t made it that far. Mal had found himself on his mother’s front porch instead.
“You’re not surprised that I’ve been fighting?”
“You are your father’s son, unfortunately,” the Queen said with a breezy sigh. “But I do expect better of you. Don’t give them reasons to punish you.”
No, not the reaction that he had been expecting at all. She seemed annoyed with him, but not angry.
“I understand, Mother.” He hesitated for a moment, then added, “You haven’t asked if I was in the right.”
His mother hugged him. It was a short embrace, but a firm one.
“I pray that you never give me cause to question your intentions, habibi.”
The familiar, comforting smell of her perfume cleansed Mal of the last dregs of his anger. If there was one person who did not assume the worst of him, one place where he felt safe, it was here, with her.
“I did lose my temper, though.”
“Did you truly lose it? Or did you give into the temptation of anger? It is easier to fight with fists, easier to argue with a loud voice. But anger blinds you, and if you are too loud, you risk drowning out any other voice. There are better ways of resolving conflict.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“I know that you know,” she said, brushing back his shower-damp hair. Little nonsense motions like that one reminded him of when he’d been small enough to be comforted by such simple gestures. It seemed like it’d been a long time since he’d started doubting the accuracy of his parents’ claims when they told him that everything would be okay. “You’re my son, after all. Learn from this.”
There was a difference between being the Rook’s son and the Queen’s son. He was typically seen as the former, though he’d been mostly shaped as a person before his father had even known of his existence.
“I’ll have detention for this, no doubt.”
“You’re right,” his mother agreed, pointing to the couch. She didn’t need to make it a direct command. Mal’s body felt exhausted, but his brain buzzed with adrenaline, still. He took a corner of the couch, his elbow propped up on the armrest.
Mal rubbed his forehead with the back of his thumb. The logical repercussions of the fight were only just coming to him. Calling himself a strategist when he couldn’t see the most basic of stumbling blocks was pure egotism. He could be so myopic, sometimes— so frustratingly slow.
He wasn’t a good leader. He wasn’t even a good partner. That was becoming painfully clear to him. Maybe he really had deserved that sixty-seven.
“This will affect my training schedule,” Mal said with a hard sigh.
“Also correct,” she said, not one to sugarcoat anything.
“Zipporah will fall behind.” He scrubbed his hands through his hair. The hormonal rush that came with activating his abilities heightened his emotional reactions, so the guilt and anxiety spiking his already adrenaline-flooded system made him shake. “That’s on me. Again. I don’t seem capable of helping her improve.”
“How so?”
“Last night, I was useless. Everything that I tried, I— I couldn’t do it. Ernest pinpointed Zipporah’s position and ran there before I could. If not for him, I would not have known to check the water. Ofelia found my partner. Not me. When I realized that she was not breathing, I locked up. Cindy had to feed me instructions. Cindy. And even if I had thought to initiate CPR myself, her chances of survival would have been— what— ten percent?”
His mother hummed thoughtfully.
“Ten to twenty, on the outside.”
“And if I had performed CPR properly, I would have almost certainly popped cartilage and done further damage to her ribs. Or worse. Had Maksim not been coherent enough to use his abilities...” Mal stared at his shoes. “I was useless.”
An average mother p
robably would have soothed him with niceties and platitudes, assuring him that he wasn’t a failure, but that was not the way the Queen worked. Had she attempted to coddle him in such a way, he would have been uncomfortable and unconvinced.
“Did they let you read your second block evaluation?”
“Mother, I should hope that you know the board’s— ”
“Not the board’s interpretation of the report, habibi. Have you read the evaluation itself?”
Oh. His real assessment.
“Baba’s?” Mal quickly corrected himself with an embarrassed cough. He had long since outgrown the childhood name that he’d never even called his father. Not to his face, at least. “Uncle John told me that the Rook’s assessment had been thrown out. I’d assumed that the file was either sealed or destroyed.”
Making sure that her favorite chess set was latched and secure, the Queen turned the case over. There was a manila folder taped to the bottom of the casket.
“I appealed to them as both a grieving widow and a proud mother. They had no choice but to give me this, really,” she said, freeing the folder and handing it to Mal. “Denying me would be a heartlessness they cannot afford.”
On the front, MALEK UNDERWOOD - LITTLE BIRD was written in his father’s unmistakably neat print. Mal very carefully picked at the edges of tape left stuck to the folder.
He wasn’t sure if he wanted to read the papers inside. He had gone months without knowing the specifics of what it contained, so logic said that he would survive never reading what his father had really thought of him.
“Would you like tea?” The Queen asked, as though reading his hesitance.
It was an offer to leave him alone with the slim folder. Mal nodded jerkily.
“Yes. Please.”
There was only a single sheet of paper in the folder. He’d wondered how his father had found the time to write up the report, but it seemed that he hadn’t, really. There was a chance that he’d meant to write more, but hadn’t been able to.
The date on the paper was the day before his father’s death. No wonder his mother had wanted it. It was as close to his final words as she would ever get.
The front of the page was the simple grading rubric— the ten categories of main study, each weighted with five points. On the back of the sheet were the Rook’s notes. They were handwritten, though his father’s impeccable handwriting looked as neat and even as a printed font. Nothing could be taken away from his handwriting. It was meant to leave no impression of his personality whatsoever.
Strategy: 4/5
Find a team. Use the team. Flock up.
Learn to take a hit to the ego.
Some rules are suggestions; some suggestions are rules. Know the difference.
Ethics and Psychology: 4/5
Trust your gut.
Unclench a little.
Be good.
Mal— I know you’re going to be pissed about the points I docked, but I’ve told you all of this shit more times than I can count. Maybe that 48 will get it into your head.
Fight hard, kid. You’ve got the right stuff.
Mal closed the file.
When his mother finally returned with tea, he had difficulty swallowing his first sip. The lump in his throat refused to be ignored. She did not ask him what he made of the Rook’s final assessment, which he was grateful for. The mass in his chest was too tangled-up for words.
“I would like for you to come home, habibi.” She phrased it as a request, but she meant it as a command. Either way, it saved him the indignity of coming home of his own volition. “The dreams have been getting worse, haven’t they?”
The question rocked him. It took him a moment to find his tongue and respond, because she shouldn’t have known. She shouldn’t have known that he had been having nightmares, much less that they’d been steadily escalating.
“How did you...?”
“Your friend told me.”
That certainly shortened the list of suspects down. Still, he couldn’t think of who could have picked up on his sleep habits. He’d been so careful. So meticulous.
“Zipporah?”
“No.” The Queen gave a lilting little chirrup. There was an answering chirp from the hall. A large, brindled cat sauntered in, its bottlebrush tail curled with lazy curiosity. It blinked its big golden eyes, its whiskers twitching.
It was the cat— the terrible, terrible cat— made almost unrecognizable by a thorough grooming. Its matted coat had been brushed out, and it looked like it’d had a few decent meals since the last time they’d squared off.
Mal growled at the cat. It growled back, then swaggered over to the Queen. It arched, rubbing its long body against her ankle.
“He came here looking for you,” his mother explained, crouching to pet the cat. It lifted its chin to be scratched, bossy and horrible creature that it was. “It was the strangest thing. I could tell that he was specifically looking for you, and I had no idea how I could possibly know that.”
“Griffin theorized that it has powers,” he said, narrowing his eyes at the beast. “Which is why it should not be kept in the house. Really, Mother. It’s not safe. This monster has been stalking me for months.”
“Stalking you?” The Queen laughed, stroking the top of its head. “He was searching for you because you have an above average body temperature, and you calmed whenever he slept on your chest.”
“And he told you that,” Mal said, unconvinced.
“He did. It took some time to win his trust, but once I had, he shared his memories of you with me.” The cat stood up on its back legs, its paws braced against her knee, and purred. “It’s not uncommon for posthumans to have the ability to speak to animals, so I suppose that a cat that can communicate with posters was only inevitable. We don’t understand it in words, as that is not the way feline communication works. His is a kind of empathy— a communication of desires. You needed comfort. He appreciated your warmth. It was mutually beneficial.”
“I didn’t need anything,” Mal maintained, displeased. The cat was enamored by her, and she with it, so it was unlikely that he’d be able to convince his mother that it had a malicious agenda.
“You do. You need sleep.” She straightened, an eyebrow raised. “When was the last time you got more than three or four hours at a time?”
For a brief moment, he considered lying to her. Picking a date— any date— would be less incriminating than the truth. But the thought of working up the energy to lie was exhausting all on its own. His head felt suffused with fog as thick as cotton.
“I...don’t remember.”
His mother sat on the couch beside him. Mal accepted the implied invitation and leaned against her shoulder with a sigh.
“I’m just so tired,” he admitted in a small mumble. “The dreams feel maddeningly real. Sometimes, I have to remind myself that they are not.”
“When you are deprived of sleep, your body forces you into the REM cycle shortly after you drop off. That results in intense dreaming, largely of the nightmarish sort.”
Mal rewound the last dream in his head. He could recall every detail, right down to the pattern of wrinkles in the stranger’s button-down shirt. It’d been so tangible, so real, his lucid mind had fought him. That in itself had been a nightmare. Was there a worse kind of nightmare than one that forces the dreamer to question the line between what was real and what was not?
“Do we know a man named Sal?” Mal asked, slowly. “Saint Sal, perhaps?”
His mother brushed his hair back with her fingertips. Her fingers were cool and soft against his temple. He closed his eyes. It lessened his headache.
“No, my dear, we do not,” his mother said, the sharp finality in her voice startling him. He opened his eyes, searching her face for any clues, but found nothing. Her expression was impassive. Forcefully so.
“Finish your tea, go up to your room, and sleep,” she told him, standing. The cat bounded off the couch, using Mal’s stomach as a springboard. “I
will talk to the Headmistress. It’s likely that you will have to stay with me for the duration of your punishment, so fetch your things from the dorms when you wake up.”
When the Queen wanted something done, she only asked once before she did it herself. He should have anticipated that. The Queen always got what she wanted.
“One more question, if you’d indulge my curiosity. Was this young man you fought with involved in last night’s events?”
“I have no doubt of his guilt,” Mal said. He cupped a hand against his forehead, leaning into it tiredly. “But I have no proof of his involvement.”
“I see,” she said, gathering their tea cups. “The fact that you came to me immediately will reflect positively on your character in the Headmistress’ eyes.”
Weariness spread over him like a blanket, heavy woollen thoughts and warmth threatening to aggressively pull him into a stupor.
“Yes, I thought that it might.” Mal said, mostly through an unexpected yawn. “What...did you...?”
“I’ve done what any devoted mother would do if her handsome young son was close to dead on his feet,” the Queen said primly, disappearing back into the kitchen. He knew how her voice filled each room, so he could track her progress with his heavy eyes closed. “I thought that we were in agreement that you would give me grandchildren before either you or I shuffle off this mortal coil.”
“Mother,” Mal grumbled, embarrassed. He rubbed at his eyes, fighting the sleep that, in all actuality, he desperately wanted. It was the principle of the issue. She had tricked him, and he hated to be forced into anything.
Control was not something that he gave up easily. His body resisted most tranquilizers or poisons, so it was likely that she had pulled up a memory of a REM recovery strong enough to rock him to sleep. What any devoted mother would do, indeed.
He blinked, slowly. So slowly, in fact, that twenty minutes had passed before he opened them again. Mal had fallen asleep stretched out on the couch. The cat had curled up under his chin, undoubtedly trying to suffocate him by compressing his trachea.
The Posterchildren: Origins Page 30