Reawakening

by CM Raymond

  The assistant turned to leave, and Alexandra followed him out of the dark, dank room.

  Once the door slammed shut, Parker’s head snapped up and his eyes opened.

  “Time,” his voice mumbled, blood gurgling in his throat as the anger in his eyes tried to pierce the darkness, “to get to work.”

  ****

  The sun had set behind the eastern wall of the city by the time Hannah walked out of the Old Main building and into the quad. Her first day as a student couldn’t be called uneventful. For years, she had wished that she could have been like them, a noble groomed within the ivory tower. But now, she wasn’t so sure. While there were plenty of squabbles in the Boulevard, the kids were always on the same level. Even as social groups shifted, they all knew that at the end of the day, they were on the same team.

  Things were different at the Academy. She thought of Violet, the bitch who already marked Hannah as a rival, and Morgan, who seemed to view her as nothing more than a target. It was all so superficial, so petty compared to trying to scrounge every day for food or medicine. She realized that such silly squabbles were what the life of luxury bred.

  Idle hands created cool kids and not much else.

  Screw them, Hannah thought. She knew that playing nice to people like Violet might give her access—access that she and Ezekiel needed, but Hannah didn’t care. Acting like Violet wasn’t going to happen.

  There was also the Chancellor’s Scholars Program. Even in those first few hours as a student, she realized how intense the competition was. The secrecy of the whole thing was disconcerting, not to mention she trusted nothing that Adrien had a hand in. But she knew that if she could, by luck or providence, make it into his inner circle, she might just have the chance to take the bastard down.

  Ezekiel was bent on saving Arcadia, which was fine.

  All Hannah cared about was taking the Chancellor’s life and hopefully seeing him suffer along the way.

  Hannah walked back toward her room, brooding over the battle to come. But her thoughts of pain and vengeance were interrupted by a voice calling out from behind her.

  “Deborah, wait up!” Gregory yelled.

  She had to remind herself that she was Deborah. Turning with a stiff smile, she said, “Why, Gregory, you startled me.” Hannah tried to sound like a noblewoman, but realized she sounded like a freaking idiot-bitch.

  He pushed his hand through his kinky hair. “Oh, she startles?” Gregory asked with a grin. “After seeing your skills in the classroom today, I thought you could, well, do anything.”

  “I just sounded like a dumbass, didn’t I?” Hannah shrugged. “Sorry. New school, new people. I’ve never done this shit before… And growing up a noble in the countryside is nothing like the quarter you were raised in. Don’t really know how to act.”

  Gregory cocked his head to the side. “So, don’t act. The Patriarch knows we have to act enough day-to-day. Let’s just be us. You be some rich ass farm girl, and I’ll be the nerdy freak who’s afraid of his own shadow. Sound good?”

  Hannah laughed, and it felt good. “Sounds good. Sun’s going down; I better get back to my room.”

  “First day of classes at the Academy, and you want to go home early? Come on. I’ll show you around town, then we’ll get a drink. Celebrate.”

  She batted her eyelashes and tried on the thick noble accent again. “Why, Gregory, are you asking the lady to join you for a cocktail?”

  He turned red and looked at his feet. “No, I just thought—”

  She chuckled a little. “Gregory, I’m just screwing with you. Listen, if we’re going to be friends, you’re going to have to take zero percent of what I say seriously, at least if it makes you feel uncomfortable—especially if it makes you uncomfortable. We talk differently in... I mean out in the country.” She paused, waiting for him to look up. “And Gregory… cocktail… I gave you a perfect in for a dick joke. Remember, I’m a country girl after all.”

  He snorted as he laughed. “Yeah. Good one. OK, deal. Let’s go.”

  “I thought there was a curfew, though?”

  “Man,” he said, “you really are from out of town. Curfew is for those south of the Academy. They won’t bother us if we stay in the noble district. I mean, we’re freaking magicians. We’re not the ones the guards are after.”

  Speak for yourself, Hannah thought as she started walking down the path.

  ****

  With Alexandra and her assistant gone, Parker knew that it was now or never. He had precious little time to finish his plan, but what was more, he had almost no strength. It was a fool’s gambit, and he knew it. But there was no escape as long as he wore those magitech cuffs. And the only way he was going to get those off was by seeing the torturer—so he needed to get caught.

  Pain held his only hope for freedom, and he bore it as best he could.

  But Alexandra was good at her job, a little too good. She beat on him with everything from magic to machines—and she smiled like a maniac while she did it. More than once, during her torture, Parker almost gave her something, anything to make the pain stop. But he knew that Hannah trusted him. Arcadia needed him. She needed him.

  He was finally a part of something bigger than himself. Parker had a mission, and it fueled his will to live.

  Every muscle in his body screamed as he pulled his body up, twisting in his chains until his legs were over his head. Iron bit into his wrists, but he pushed away the pain. Once he was upside down, he twisted his legs around the chain and took the pressure off his wrists. His hands were numb, but they were finally free to do some work.

  He reached into his mouth and found the thin, sturdy wire he had stolen from his workstation. It failed to pick the magitech lock, but it would do just fine on a normal chain.

  Parker only had one shot, and he knew that if he dropped the tool—or if he moved too slow—it was game over for him. He was leaving this room now…

  Or never at all.

  Still hanging from his feet, he set to work picking the lock on the cuffs. It was hard without being able to see, but he’d cracked harder locks in worse conditions. His current shackles were old; the locking mechanism was simple. With a few turns, the lock snapped and his right hand was free.

  Thank the Matriarch, he sighed before unlocking his left hand.

  He held in a scream as he lowered himself to the ground. Rubbing his wrists, he surveyed the room looking for a way out. The window behind him was too well secured, so the only escape lay through the front door.

  Checking the door, he found it unlocked. Alexandra and her ilk were confident in their ability to break men down. That confidence now worked to Parker’s advantage.

  He limped out of the room and down the dark hallway, keeping a lookout for guards. The place where she had scorched his chest burned, burned like the depths of hell, and his jaw hung loose like a broken window shutter.

  But none of that mattered. Warning Hannah was his only goal.

  Finding a door at the end of the hall, he spun through and made his way to the second floor. The place was quiet, and he knew the guards wouldn’t be on high alert that time of night. Everyone was either on the floor working the night shift, or locked away in their cells frozen shut with magitech bars.

  He stepped out onto the catwalk over the factory and limped his way as silently as possible. From up high, he could see more clearly what he and the other slaves had been working on—although it still didn’t make sense to him. It looked like a giant boat—at least like the pictures of boats he had seen as a kid. But that didn’t make sense. Arcadia was landlocked, except for the River Wren. And that was far too small to support a ship that large.

  He shook his head and continued on. There would be time to figure all that out later. For now, he moved steadily toward the broken window that he knew well. He had stared at its cracked frame from his spot on the assembly line for the past weeks.

  I can do this, he thought.

  Images of Hannah carried him along. His
vision started to blur. Apparently, he had lost more blood than he thought—but he kept his eyes locked on the window—his exit. His salvation. The glimpse of the night sky and the thought of his friend was all that kept him moving.

  Six feet of scaling up an exposed pipe and Parker was out the window. His throat tightened as he felt the breeze on his face for the first time since the day of his interview. Glancing up at the stars, he thanked the Queen Bitch for her protection. He peeked over the edge toward the ground below, but his vision was blurry, and the night was dark as hell. He would have to trust the Matriarch and the Patriarch one more time. Swinging his torso over the window, he held his breath and dropped into the darkness.

  ****

  Years ago, on an expedition toward the foothills of the Frozen North, a lowlander told Karl that what he loved about the rearick was that for enough coin and ale, they would do just about any work. As a younger lad, Karl scoffed at the man and swore he would never be the object of the lowlander’s joke. Now, nearly a decade later, here he was, walking around in the dark protecting a building he didn’t care about in a city he despised.

  The large factory sat in the corner of the town, and Karl was paid to spend his nights walking around it. He had no idea what they made inside and didn’t particularly care. What they did was their business—keeping the building secure from thieves and vandals—that was Karl’s business.

  And business was slow.

  Shaka, the head of the factory guard, had given Karl this post and thanked him for his willingness to work for the good of Arcadia. He insisted that there was an important job for the rearick, but that it wasn’t yet time. But Karl would make the same coin just taking a patrol shift around the factory, which seemed like as good of a way as any for Karl to spend his days in the city.

  But now that he had sobered up, he was beginning to rethink his choices.

  As Karl walked the paces around the building, he couldn’t help but wonder how exactly he had gotten himself into the situation. In his younger days, he was less of a bodyguard and more of a warrior. Back then he was hired for real jobs—true combat. The work paid well, but it also bestowed honor on him. People knew him as trustworthy with his word and as a hired fighter who would die for the sake of a worthy cause.

  He’d fought the remnant, stopped a horde of raiders from beyond the Dark Forest, and struck the final blow on a tyrant who had briefly taken over Cella in the North.

  Now, as his beard turned gray, he was nothing more than a glorified babysitter—taking money wherever he could find it. But he longed for glory.

  He would give his left arm for a fight he could believe in—and maybe his right. Just as long as it was a fight he could believe in. A fight for justice.

  As he was recounting the series of meaningless choices that led him here, a true cause struck Karl in the head—literally.

  “What the bloody hell?” the rearick shouted as the unknown mass landed on top of him, knocking him to the ground.

  Karl’s instincts took over. He disentangled himself and was up on his feet faster than he had gone down. His hammer extended out before him, ready to strike back at whatever had attacked him.

  But instead of an assassin or thief or creature from the dark, Karl looked down at the battered and bloody body of a young man. The boy was naked and staring straight up at Karl.

  “I need your help,” the young man pleaded. “Please.”

  “You came from in there?” Karl asked, nodding at the factory he was hired to protect.

  The kid replied with a desperate nod. “They’ll kill me.”

  Karl had offered his service hundreds of times, but never to a cause he couldn’t at least call acceptable. Seeing the man’s mangled body, Karl was convinced that whatever was going on inside the walls of the factory didn’t fit the bill.

  Shame swept over him for even taking the work. He knew that nothing good could come from Arcadia, not for the past twenty years. But justification is an easy game when money is on the line.

  Maybe the old lowlander from years ago was right.

  Karl had become that rearick—a fighting whore ready to wag his hammer for the highest bidder. He set his mouth, it wasn’t too late to change his ways. Injustice ruled inside the walls, and looking into the eyes of the victim on the ground, Karl realized he may have just found the battle worth fighting—or it had found him.

  Karl reached down and hauled the man to his feet.

  “Let’s get you the bloody hell out of here!” Karl told him as he looked around. “But where to?”

  “Queen’s Boulevard,” the kid barely whispered.

  ****

  As they crossed out of the Academy Quarter and into the Noble Quarter, Hannah didn’t notice much of a difference. It struck her as odd since she had to pass through a freaking toll plaza to make it into the Queen’s Boulevard—not to mention the wall meant to keep the scum divided from everyone else.

  The two students walked in silence for a while. Every now and then, Gregory stopped to tell her about a place from his childhood, or an important historical marker. She pretended to be interested, nodding along and smiling. She couldn’t give two shits about this place. It wasn’t her home—not the real Arcadia she’d known on the Boulevard. But gaining an ally—the Chief Engineer’s son, no less—could prove useful. Worth a little disingenuous smiling at least.

  It’s not that she didn’t like Gregory. He was sweet, kind in a way none of the other noble-born children seemed to be. It’s just that she was itching for a fight, and prancing around the noble district didn’t seem like it was worth her time.

  “Tell me more about your dad’s work,” she said, cutting off some story about a historical significant fountain.

  “My dad? I told you, he’s the Chief Engineer.”

  Hannah grabbed his arm, trying to use the womanly wiles she had seldom exploited during her time on the streets in the Boulevard. She forced a giggle. “Yeah. You told me. But what does a Chief Engineer do in Arcadia? Pretend I know literally nothing about the city… because that’s pretty much the case.”

  “Right. Well, I don’t really know. He doesn’t talk too much about it. In all honesty, I’m not sure he’s allowed to talk about it. He spends all day either locked in his office at home, or down at the factory.”

  “Working on what?”

  Gregory shrugged. “That’s the mystery. They don’t exactly have ‘take your kid to work day’ down there. Something’s going on, though. Something big. He’s been working double time ever since that crazy ass girl nearly blew up Queen’s Boulevard.”

  Hannah couldn’t stifle her laugh.

  “What?” Gregory asked.

  “Nothing. I, um, just tried to picture a girl with a crazy ass,” she admitted, then added, “I wonder if crazy asses are attractive?”

  Gregory shook his head. “You know what I mean.”

  You bet I do, she thought to herself.

  He continued. “Anyway, they’re building something big down there. My dad said it will change everything.”

  “Any ideas?”

  “He only calls it the machine. Can’t help but think that it might have something to do with getting the Unlawfuls in line.”

  She stopped walking and turned to face him. “You think they need to be in line?”