The Brilliant Dark

by S. M. Beiko

  “With that godawful moon above us, and traitors all around us, we need to work twice as hard in half as much time,” Grant went on. “When the world’s about to end, you always need a foxhole to jump into.”

  Solomon paused only a step, and, though he hadn’t thought of her as often as he thought of Eli, Roan Harken’s face flashed before him. The girl who had started all of this, and she wasn’t even here to end it.

  But maybe, on the other side, she was doing her job after all.

  They’d come to the top, at last. Solomon caught his breath, wiped his brow with his pocket square. Grant was quite a ways ahead, chatting in low tones to the men and women in the fore — Mundane engineers, physicists, soothsayers, for all Solomon knew. He glanced about the ever-stretching space below, filled with rushing personnel. An anthill about to be hit by the lawnmower.

  Then Solomon looked over into the core of the chamber, and for an instant he was back there, back then, standing over the Pool of the Black Star. Years ago now, staring uselessly into a crackling abyss into which his son — and Roan Harken — had dove. At least, back then, there had been a lifeline ensuring they’d come back out. Where are our lifelines now?

  This abyss, however, was a complete fabrication. An abomination! he snarled inwardly. At least a Bloodgate was something of Ancient, something pure and aligned with the balance of which he’d once been a custodian. This was metal and terror and technology soldered together, boiled down, and poured into the mould of frenzy. The hole of the core descended at least a mile farther underground, so looking into it one had the impression of falling into nothing. And some subjects had. They’d needed the space to calculate something ridiculous, like dimensional drag, some made-up term used to describe the goal of Project Crossover: to build their own Bloodgate. To open the way to the other side, whether that be the Realms of Ancient or the void. A contingency, a foxhole, Grant had called it. Not for Mundanes to be dropped into.

  Solomon had another word for it: a Denizen death sentence.

  “Allen got us far, though he didn’t leave us with the means to follow. Ironically, it turns out someone close to him may be able to get us that bare inch standing between us and final peace.”

  Grant’s words were acid. Solomon nodded as though they were manna. “Indeed. Everything we’ve wanted is within our grasp now.” He turned his face, slack with the years of all his mistakes, directly to Grant. “What would you have me do?”

  Grant sneered. “Make sure your unit is ready. I want to double down on Denizen screening. Rake the traitor ideas out of their heads before they form. I won’t have them ganging up on us like they did last night, trying to scare us or stop us. I want the troublemakers’ powers yanked out of them, and the suspicious locked up — until their pen is ready for them.”

  Solomon looked down again into the core of the machine. The walls of the chamber sparked, electricity arcing across like ropes at intervals. Suspended in the core was an empty, circular metal frame, and the bolts slithered into it, the first vestigial promise of a vortex.

  It had only worked once, and they’d needed a living Rabbit neutralizer to do it. One who had experience with Bloodgates. Nothing had worked since.

  “And then?” Solomon asked. But he didn’t need to be told.

  “Then,” Grant confirmed, the smile all gone, replaced only with desperate hunger. “The world will be ours again.”

  They stood like that awhile, looking down into the nothing they’d built together, the possibility that it promised. Then both Solomon and Grant pulled the twin reactor keys up from beneath their shirts, the chains coming over their heads.

  Grant, as was his custom, toasted Solomon’s key with his own. As if each test were a celebration.

  “Thank you for your contribution, as always,” Grant was saying, moving to the Apex’s bridge, waiting for Solomon to join him. “Though if this batch doesn’t prove rewarding, we can move on the Seals. Their retreating to the North always unnerved me. Better to put them to use.”

  Your contribution. Solomon knew what he meant; of course he did. Solomon supervised the removal of Denizen powers, taken from those who wouldn’t comply with the ETG, and they’d discovered that these removed powers could be used like a power source.

  Solomon refused to look down into the reactor that time. All those people. Begging to be spared. To not be parted from their silent gods. At least most of them survived the process. Though cut off from Ancient, it wasn’t much of a life afterwards. Solomon knew what he’d do if the roles had been reversed.

  So much suffering, all for this. All for nothing. But maybe soon it would prove to have been worth something after all.

  Solomon slid his key into the slot beside Grant’s. In seconds they’d do a single quarter turn counter-clockwise, then another. Then the Apex would hum to life, the Denizen power source would move through it, and they’d get a reading. See how much closer they were to the other side. A smooth mechanical voice began a countdown.

  In that second before, the only prayer Solomon had the strength left to send into the ether was to Eli. It didn’t matter if he heard it or not.

  May your mother protect you where I have failed.

  The keys turned.

  * * *

  The national anthem played. Everyone in the classroom took their seats when the last note faded over the intercom.

  “. . . and, as always, we remind you all to remain vigilant in times such as these. Task Guard escorts are available if you feel at all unsafe in your neighbourhood. If you see anything out of the ordinary, remember that saying something could save a life.”

  Everyone whispered about the assault on the Old Leg. Saskia had expected an assembly about it, but nothing came. This school was one that filtered directly into the ETG programs now, and every teacher was, really, a soldier in their own right. Saskia and Ella used to delight in finding out — or, at least, dramatically fictionalizing — the lives of their teachers. The ones on the Denizen school side were Mundanes, too, and harsh, strict, mean. Denizens were lucky they were getting an education, they were made to believe through the snickers, the punishments for nothing. Denizens should be shipped off to do free labour on the struggling farms or collapsed mines, put their curses to good use.

  That’s what they called their powers, their gifts. Ella said they’d pay for that someday. Now look where she was. Meanwhile, the teachers on Saskia’s side patted her classmates on the head for outing their neighbours, who were never seen again. Everything was wrong, every day, and Saskia had somehow thought for a second she could stop it.

  The teacher droned on about some assignment regarding the Dark Day Treaty. This woman, with her severe hair pulled tight to her skull, her smile that was trying to be a comfort but came off like a car accident . . . wasn’t she supposed to be distracting them? All anyone wanted to talk about was the moon moving, the attack on the Old Leg, and all the reports swirling. Instead, she was riling them all up, hands shooting into the air, her smile’s wreckage twisting wider with every gesture.

  This is what a heart attack must feel like, Saskia thought as her classmates volleyed rumours like crumpled paper, the teacher doing everything to keep the ball in play.

  “I hear they captured the terrorists already.”

  “I hear they’re going to have their powers taken away.”

  “I hear they’re going to execute them.”

  Saskia didn’t bother trying to set the record straight with any of them. If those Foxes lost their powers, she thought, it would be death. No one survives that. Saskia knew a lot of things that her classmates would be stunned to hear — but she could never share them or she’d be a sympathizer. No. Better to keep her stories to herself.

  “Never let them doubt your loyalty,” Barton used to tell her, “even if it’s bullshit.”

  She always liked it when he cussed.

  So Saskia just star
ed straight ahead, as she had, every day, so no one would ask her a thing, or question her quiet, code-nerd exterior. Code was boring to them, but to her it was something she could always turn to, get lost in, imagine scrolling endlessly across the back of that classroom. She could code herself to be a completely different person and no one could crack the truth: that overnight, she’d become a rebel. A disloyal dissenter. She was a former Cinder Kid. Definitely not one of them.

  In AP Math, her best subject, she glanced at Cam, who was surrounded by jockeying bro-buds congratulating him on joining up. Everyone at school seemed psyched to drop out and drop into the fray. They all wanted to be damn heroes.

  So did you, Saskia chided herself.

  But Cam had kept his word and said nothing about Saskia’s birthday, and when he caught her eye he gave her a thumbs-up. She looked away quickly. What would Cam do if he ever found out the things that Chancellor Grant had thrown in her face last night?

  What would he say if he found out Saskia was seriously considering joining the Task Guard, too?

  She’d been trying to push it away all day, but she was still inside that interrogation room, frozen with panic in a way she’d promised herself she’d never be. “If it were me, I’d be out there doing something!” Saskia had often spat at Phae during their petty arguments. “Roan always did something, but you were always too scared!”

  How easily the words had come out, but they’d cut Saskia twice as deep for saying them. The truth was, she’d been running scared ever since Phae and Barton took her in and brought her here, tried so hard to give her a slice of the normal no one remembered.

  A former Cinder Kid. Maybe the last person to see Roan Harken alive. But certainly the person who had killed the monster that had taken her brother from her. Urka.

  Barton did try to do something, she reminded herself. And look what happened to him. Once upon a time a Rabbit thought himself above the wolf, until he was dragged deep down into their lair, and not even his bones were found. That the chancellor had known Barton, that maybe he’d been the one who took him away, made it so much worse. Was history going to repeat itself through her? Or was this her chance to change everything?

  Last night, Saskia had felt for a moment that she could call some power to her, something pushed down deep, and make Grant pay. Make them all pay for what they’d done to her and the family she’d chosen. Even now, in this classroom, Saskia wanted desperately to go back to last night and change how everything went down . . .

  Saskia clenched her pen so hard it snapped, sending ink splattering on her white shirt. She groaned audibly, and the teacher noticed, sending her out to get cleaned up.

  In the washroom, in front of the bank of mirrors, Saskia threw water on her face, knowing there wasn’t much to do about the ink except button up her denim jacket and sigh.

  When she wiped her cheeks and stared back at the huge dark circles under her sleepless eyes, she thought back to the night before, in the chancellor’s presence . . . when another face had been unexpectedly staring back at hers.

  The Moth Queen had been there in the interrogation room, behind the Chancellor. Time had frozen. Mother Death, as she was known, flexed her enormous wings, which curled into the edges of the room, as if she’d break through those screens before anything might break her.

  Eternal, inevitable, Ancient’s grim reaper. Saskia was not supposed to be able to see her — after all, she wasn’t a Denizen. She thought her stomach would collapse in on itself like a black hole.

  “Calm your heart, now,” the voice urged through a mouth that was not really one beneath a hundred onyx eyes. Her thorax crackled, and her many hands folded.

  Saskia took a breath. The Moth Queen leaned in, leaf-antennae twitching as she inspected the chancellor, though he made no move or paid no mind. Perhaps Saskia had slid sideways into a plane of existence only she could notice. Or, more likely, she’d finally gone off her nut.

  “This man courts death,” the Moth Queen said, rearing back to her mighty height after her appraisal. She turned again to Saskia. “Consider his offer. Let him think you his ally, for it might allow us an opportunity. I will come to you again, at the creek where the river goes by. It will become clearer in the way you’ve always wished it to be.”

  It was less a prophecy and more a debriefing. Saskia had been shocked, then, wondering, specifically, if she’d snapped from the stress.

  But now she blinked . . . and was suddenly back in the girls washroom at school in the present. When she looked back into the mirror, that’s all it was. No black screen. No bug queen.

  Until she noticed a flicker underneath the fluorescent light, and she whipped around, took a tentative step, and reached.

  A tiny brown moth, triangular wings flexing as it landed on her finger. She watched it carefully, measured her heartbeat, and thought, Follow the moth? Does this mean I’m being chosen —

  Until the moth exploded in a spark of flame and ash, and Saskia screamed and lurched out of the bathroom, clutching her chest.

  Follow the moth, she thought bitingly, at your own risk.

  The Last Deer Left Behind

  Phae had gone about her rounds in the apartment complex, much more aloof than even her baseline. She always had so much on her mind, and really no one to talk to about it. She’d done that to herself — both the isolation and this pile-on of obligation. So many relied on her. And still the one person she kept coming back to this morning was Saskia.

  Of course it was. She’d been sick with grief and worry last night, especially when Ella’s Aunt Cassandra had told Phae, sobbing, where Ella had gone. And Phae knew that wherever Ella went, Saskia would inevitably follow.

  It was around one in the morning when Saskia was escorted back to the apartment, and as the Elemental Task Guards explained the situation, their words crushed Phae like the walls of an ocean seven years back, in a confrontation that shouldn’t have led to this life she was now forced to live.

  A life without Barton.

  “Do you have anything to say for yourself?” Phae seethed when the guards left.

  Whenever Phae and Saskia got into it, which was often, since Saskia had gone from a quiet child to a preteen with heroic notions to a suspiciously quiet teenager — Phae admitted it made her feel like she was young again. Like she was arguing with Roan, trying to talk sense into her, to keep her from rushing headlong into every bizarre cause. Who knew she’d be effectively raising Roan’s doppelgänger, who had a similar penchant for never asking anyone for help.

  As usual, Saskia clammed up, and Phae had wanted to shake her, but instead she decided it was her turn to storm to her room first. All their unsaid words filled the apartment like a toxic gas, clinging to Phae still when she knocked on the Morenos’ door on the eleventh floor. It was time to put all of that away and do what she could for those who depended on her.

  After a few seconds of Phae gathering herself, Elena Moreno answered, and Phae’s pain was once again crowded out by someone else’s.

  That’s what she’d wanted, after all. She’d seen this scenario too many times. All she could do was try to offer comfort. Even if no one could offer the same to her.

  “We took her to the hospital,” Elena said, eyes red-rimmed from crying. “But she didn’t want to die there. She wanted to see you.”

  Phae steeled herself. “I’m sorry, Elena,” she said, taking both of the woman’s hands. There usually wasn’t much else to say.

  She sniffed but shook her head. “No. You’ve done so much for my family. For everyone’s families.” Her eyes were hard. “You’ve given us strength when we all forgot it.”

  They treated Phae like she was an elder, but most of the people in One Evergreen, or any of the other Denizen housing projects, were so much older than her. Phae was barely twenty-five, after all. Yet the weight of all their pain added at least eighty years to her weakening spirit. She’d
been forced to grow up too quickly. Having Saskia in her life made her feel older still.

  Phae smiled thinly. “I’ll go and sit with her now. You get some rest.” Elena let go of her hands, nodding tiredly, and moved away from the bedroom door. Phae went inside and shut it behind her.

  The old woman in the bed tilted her head, breathing ragged. She still managed a smile. “You came, sacerdotisa.”

  Priestess. “Of course, Isela.” Phae went into the chair beside the bed. She took the old woman’s hand. “I’m here.”

  Isela’s eyes squeezed shut. Phae sent a tendril of flickering blue from her fingers into Isela’s. “Is that better?”

  The old woman nodded. “Don’t waste your strength on me,” she croaked. “A Rabbit always knows when the hunter’s come.”

  Phae smiled at the old proverb. She could still heal things. Small things. But her powers had limits. She did what little she could, but it did tire her out fiercely. “Just rest,” she said, as if she was begging it of herself.

  “What was it like? For the others?”

  Phae squeezed the old woman’s hand. She knew that relating the stories of other Denizen deathbed scenes she’d witnessed would not remotely help in this situation. “It’s different for everyone.”

  Isela’s mouth twisted. “Death is still a certainty. The Moth Queen doesn’t stop for anyone. But what’s the point of dying once you know your soul isn’t going where it was promised?”

  Phae sighed. “There’s still a lot we don’t understand. Nothing is certain.”

  “It used to be,” the old woman argued. Phae smiled; she still had spunk, all things considered.