Estranged

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Estranged Page 5

by Alex Fedyr


  Lecia looked to be conflicted between concern and frustration. “Look— will you just listen to me! I can help you, I promise.”

  Kalei raised her eyes to meet Lecia’s and growled, “The only thing I need from you is another bullet to my head.”

  Lecia quietly asked, “You want to die?”

  Kalei didn’t even have to think about it. “Yes.”

  Lecia scooted another inch closer, but Kalei pulled away. She said, “You already know that can’t happen. “

  Kalei let out another groan. “Since when are Estranged immortal?”

  “They always have been.” Lecia shrugged as she continued, “People just don’t want to believe it. They see an Estranged die on the street and they don’t want to see him or her get back up. So they let themselves believe that they won’t. Of course, SWORDE does a good job of —”

  “I don’t care!”

  Lecia paused. She looked into Kalei’s eyes this time. “I think you do.”

  Kalei buried her head in her arms. “I don’t. I don’t care, I just need you to go away.”

  Silence fell. The spasms had subsided, but now the muscles along Kalei’s arms slowly began to clench harder and harder until she felt like the flesh would burst from her skin. And still it continued. No matter what she did, she couldn’t fight it. The sharp pains, the spasms, the aches; it all kept coming back at her in one form or another. “What’s doing this to me?” she asked weakly.

  “The darkness.”

  “The darkness? You’re saying that bullshit they spout on the news is—” Kalei paused to curse as a particularly vicious stab of pain wrenched at her hip. “You’re saying sad emotions are ripping me to shreds right now?”

  “Well, they aren’t really emotions anymore. I mean— yes, you still have emotions, and yes, the darkness is driven by sadder ones, but the darkness is... kind of a living thing now.”

  “What? You mean I have something living inside me?”

  “Well— it’s not really a thing. It’s still you, it’s—” Lecia let out an exasperated sigh. “This is so hard to explain.”

  Kalei pushed her fist into the knot in her hip. “With you telling it, it’s hard to understand.”

  Lecia paused for a moment to collect her thoughts, and then said, “The exact ‘what’ doesn’t really matter. All you really need to know is that the darkness is inside you now, and that is what’s causing the pain. It is also the thing that causes the highs and all of that.”

  This was all too much. Lecia, the darkness, the pain... With labored breath, Kalei asked, “Why?”

  Lecia leaned forward and rested her head on her hands. “We don’t know.”

  Kalei clenched her teeth. She felt hot tears building in the sides of her eyes. She thought to herself, So it was the darkness, huh? Some negative emotion-feeding thing that wasn’t a thing had taken away the three remaining people she loved in this stupid world... “This is all so friggin’ pointless.” She angrily brushed the tears out of her eyes with the heel of her palm. “They didn’t deserve to die by this bullshit.”

  “Oh yeah. I’m so sorry about your parents— and your sister. You know—”

  Kalei was pissed at Lecia’s thick head. “Not them!” She paused as she was reminded of the loss of her first family. “Not just them... but my nieces.” She sniffed defiantly. “And my husband.”

  “Your husband?” Lecia’s voice was painted with confusion as her eyebrows met. “I heard about the attack on your house, but all the reports said there were no casualties. Well— that is— except for you. Fenn and the girls were taken into SWORDE custody.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Introductions

  The revolving door had deteriorated to nothing more than a twisted frame and a pile of glass. Kalei stormed past, heedless of the shards that tore at her bare feet. The only thing she could feel right now was rage.

  The foyer was large— more like immense. The ceiling rose at least forty feet above Kalei’s head, inlaid with delicate artisanal moldings and bearing a ragged, gaping hole where a chandelier once hung. The marble floor was cracked directly below the cavity, and all around the walls were dirty and missing chunks of plaster with a few scattered paintings hanging at odd angles. On the back wall, four elevator doors stood in silence with so many dents and scratches in their tarnished metal that Kalei doubted they still functioned.

  After casting a glance over all this rotted grandeur, Kalei spotted someone sitting at the desk off to her left. Whoever it was either was very short or was sitting in a very low chair because all she could see was the top of their head.

  She crossed the room and discovered he was short. Or rather, he was a kid. A kid who looked to be no more than ten years old, lounging with his feet up on the counter. She couldn’t believe it. Lecia had told her this place was SWORDE headquarters, but instead, she found an abandoned hotel with a lazy brat. She wanted to kill Lecia for this sick prank, but the girl was already long gone on some deranged mission. Kalei approached the worn marble counter, her anger growing like a ball over fire, expanding with the heat until it threatened to explode.

  “Where the fuck is SWORDE?” she demanded.

  The boy calmly took his feet off the counter and set down the book he had been reading. Despite his short stature, he looked somewhat stately in his tailored suit. A brown and black silk tie tucked neatly into a well-fitted, chocolate-colored vest, and a white dress shirt sat beneath it all and covered his arms down to his wrists. A matching brown jacket hung on the back of the chair, and the entire ensemble stood at odds with the boy’s black, springy hair.

  As his hand released the book, Kalei’s attention was drawn to his exposed fingers. A surge of energy spiked up her neck, and Kalei’s head involuntarily jerked to one side to release it. As soon as the rush was gone, more bursts began to arise in her arms, in her legs, in her fingers... Kalei clenched her fists and tensed her muscles, doing her best to suppress the energy that accompanied a fierce urge to grab that small boy’s hand. Seeing the dark rectangles in his nails didn’t help her battle. Knowing that he was Estranged, her mind worked to justify the innocence of grabbing that hand for just one, small high... But Kalei needed her mind clear. She needed to make sure her family was okay.

  Kalei pulled her attention away from the hand and looked at the boy’s face instead.

  The boy met her eyes with a calm, scholarly gaze and answered, “This is SWORDE. May I help you?” His voice was composed and quiet, despite the slightly higher notes his youth added to his formal accent.

  Kalei found the child-playing-grownup to be insulting. “Yeah, fucking right. A brat sitting in a hotel? Do you think I’m an idiot? We both know this isn’t SWORDE, so tell me where SWORDE headquarters is!”

  The boy studied her for a moment, then his chin inclined slightly as recognition lit in his eyes. He said, “Ah, I know who you are.” He leaned back in his chair and interlocked his fingers across his small abdomen as though he were a professor examining a new student. Kalei’s attention was once again drawn to those hands, both sets of digits fitting together like pieces of a puzzle. The aching desire in her heart strained to be fed by just one touch... Kalei clenched her fists harder and felt all the muscles in her arms ache as she fought against the impulse. Her head jerked again to release a fresh influx of energy.

  The boy continued, “If I have judged correctly, you think you know all about SWORDE. When you were an officer of the law, you saw us quite nearly every day, calling upon the Wardens to deal with the Estranged incidents as they popped up throughout the city. It must have been quite difficult for you to let someone else protect the citizens of Celan while you stood by, tasked with keeping the curious onlookers out of harm’s way. As I recall, you have submitted an application to SWORDE every quarter since you joined the force, am I correct?”

  The surging energy and Kalei’s anger coalesced into one massive rush, and her ears became overwhelmed by a drawn-out shriek, like metal dragging against metal. She sla
mmed her fist into the marble counter, pouring all of her pain and emotion into the blow as she yelled, “How the fuck do you know!”

  “Didn’t he tell you?” said a voice from the other side of the foyer. “You’re in SWORDE Headquarters.”

  She turned around and saw a man in full SWORDE uniform step out from one of the elevators. Despite being covered from neck to toe in black, his helmet was off so she could see his sturdy, masculine face topped with light, short cut hair. Next to him stood—

  “YOU!” Kalei’s lips twisted into a snarl.

  The teenager with the flowered nails stood beside the uniformed man. She was furious to find the young man here, to find him fraternizing so calmly with a Warden. To have him address her in such a condescending manner. Kalei started forward but then stopped herself. She was still wary of him after their last encounter on the street. Her parents’ murderer and his companion casually stopped where they stood just outside the closing elevator doors. The door screeched and rattled as it slid along a broken rail until finally it came to a stop with a resounding bang.

  Kalei was the one who broke the silence. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  “I’m the Director of SWORDE.”

  “Like fuck!” Her head twitched violently. “Where is Fenn?”

  “He isn’t any of your concern anymore.”

  “You let me think he was dead!”

  His reply was a flat, emotionless statement. “It’s better that way.”

  A harsh, heavy sort of pain grabbed and dragged at Kalei’s chest. “Is it? Is that really what you think! What about the girls? What about their dad? Does he even know what happened?” The darkness pulled even harder. She bent over and clutched at her screaming heart. “The fuck ...” she finished weakly.

  Kalei heard hushed whispers echoing off the cold walls. She looked up and saw two women and a man at the edge of the foyer, just inside the hallway. One of the women, a tall, black-haired lady in a SWORDE uniform, was whispering to her shorter, casually dressed companion. All three of them watched Kalei closely, as though she were a new act in a show. More people began to press in behind the first three, but Kalei didn’t pay attention. She was more interested in the hands of the second woman. Her small, exposed hands. They had what looked like a black raindrop on each nail. Another set of hands behind her had zigzags; yet another had what looked like eyes.

  Unable to control the impulse, Kalei lunged at the small woman. Yet she hadn’t made it more than a foot before she relentlessly tore her eyes away from the woman’s hand and planted her feet on the cold marble to halt her momentum. The sudden reversal threw Kalei onto her backside.

  Denying herself the hand and the high released a massive backlash from the darkness. It ripped through Kalei’s body like so many razorblades pushing though her veins. She screamed out as she tried to contain the furious slicing that ripped at every muscle, every bone, every— curling up in a ball, she resisted a growing urge to reach for the hand again, just to be rid of the battle.

  She heard the murderer’s footsteps as he approached. She saw his feet stop at the edge of her vision. “You’re an Estranged now. If you see Fenn, he will die.”

  Kalei lunged at the teenager, this time not holding back. “I’ll fucking kill you!” But before she could make contact, his companion grabbed her wrist and redirected her momentum, using it to spin her around and pin her fist to her back. Then, with a tremendous amount of force, he cut her feet out from under her and slammed her into the ground. Kalei thought she heard her jaw crack as she hit the unforgiving surface.

  The teenager hadn’t moved a step. He said stoically, “You’re welcome to kill me. But you can’t.”

  “What? You don’t think I can find a bullet big enough?” Kalei struggled and twitched beneath her captor’s grasp. “Don’t worry. I’ll find it, and when I do, I’ll slaughter you all!”

  Unfazed by Kalei’s screaming, the young man stated, “It’s not a bullet.”

  Kalei grew still for a moment. She retorted, “What?”

  “There is a way to kill Estranged, but it’s not a bullet.”

  Kalei snarled, “Too scared to tell me what it is? Tell me and I’ll kill you right now!”

  “I already told you, you can’t.” Kalei’s head twitched violently and smacked into the ground. A sensation like an icepick tearing through bone shot through Kalei’s jaw, confirming it was cracked. Dazed, she heard Flower-boy continue, “Get yourself in check.”

  The teenager was already retreating from the room when Kalei called after him as best she could through her swelling jaw, “Where tha fugh is Fenn!”

  Without turning or changing his stride, he casually replied, “You’ll know when I’m dead.”

  The teenager left the foyer.

  Kalei’s captor and the boy from the desk escorted her to one of the rooms on the second floor. The boy explained that she was not a prisoner; she was free to come and go as she pleased.

  The boy told her, “When you feel you are ready, we can teach you how to control the darkness. Or, you can go live in the district as you were, pursuing highs and living out your days as you please. In either case, the choice is yours.”

  Kalei stopped glaring at the uniformed man to turn her attention to the kid. At this point, her jaw was fully swollen, and it felt as though half her face was being pounded over and over again with a giant hammer. The growing migraine didn’t help anything either. Kalei kept her mouth shut and snarled at the boy.

  He replied, “Terin didn’t lie to you. There is a way to kill Estranged, and we can teach you that as well. But that knowledge is restricted to those who become Wardens of SWORDE, for your own safety. If you accept our offer, you are welcome to become a Recruit in our program.”

  Kalei opened her jaw just wide enough to mumble, “Go to Hell.”

  They shut the door behind her.

  The room was large. Where she stood could have been considered a living room, and a door off to her left suggested a bedroom. Kalei’s eyes swept over a stately, wooden coffee table snapped in two and leaning at an odd angle against the near wall. A sofa was buried in a small mountain of its own guts; foam, springs, and feathers strewn about like a day-old pile of snow after Christmas. All around the room were smaller piles of glass and ceramic shrapnel where the mirrors and artisanal pieces of the room had met abruptly with the floor and other hard surfaces. On a table against the right wall, a single crystal glass stood among the ruins of the other whiskey glasses and decanters, which had once made up an elegant set. In its day, this room had been grand. Now, it was a cage for animals.

  Kalei didn’t know why they put her in this room. She didn’t care. She just needed –a hand– No. She just needed time and quiet to sort out the chaos that raged through her.

  Kalei charged through the room, heedless of the various kinds of shrapnel that dug into her bare feet. Then Kalei dropped down into the far right corner, where she put her back against the two walls where they met. For a moment, she watched the pair of doors opposite her, the front door and the bedroom door, wary of the possibility that someone might come out to... I don’t know, but I’m sure I wouldn’t like it. Then her head twitched violently, and in a burst of energy and emotion, her fist reached out and slammed into the wall. Infuriated, frustrated by these impulses, Kalei clenched her unruly fists and watched the knuckles strain against her skin. She waited for a count to three. Then, she counted to ten. After that, she pulled her knees to her chest, clasped her hands together in front of them, and bent her head forward to rest in the quiet space she had created. Once there, she bid her body to be still.

  The moment Kalei closed her eyes, her mind was thrust into a battleground. The war ripped and rang through every nerve, every muscle in her body. It sent impulses to her limbs and drove energy vibrating through every cell. Kalei struggled to contain it, but behind her efforts, she felt a deep and biting despair. She felt a fierce conviction that there was nothing left. No power to her name, and no reason to
reclaim it. She had lost everything. Fenn. Family. Everything. She was Estranged now. Her world was dead.

  Then she remembered how she had almost killed Lecia. It all happened so fast, there wasn’t time to pull back her hand. If Lecia hadn’t... it could’ve been so easy. Taking a life was so easy, so effortless now. Kalei was appalled by the thought. Her stomach heaved at the thought. But it was true. That could have been Kas or Fenn’s hand. Now that she knew Fenn and the girls were alive, she knew it was possible. She remembered Teia holding out her hand to Kalei with a small ladybug cupped in it... Kalei would not allow herself to lose control again.

  So instead, Kalei immersed herself in the pain. After a while, the addiction lost its hold amidst the quiet, endless violence. It faded, and it became no more than a distant echo to Kalei’s dark thoughts.

  She opened her eyes then, and she found herself lying on the floor. As she moved to sit up, she felt a series of stabbing sensations— in her feet? She looked down and saw shards of glass and splinters of wood lodged into the soles of each foot, wedged beneath layers of dirt and dried blood. She reached down to scrape the blood away and found that the skin and muscle had healed around the objects. No swelling, no redness, no sign of any injury aside from the random items protruding here and there. It was unsettling to look at.

  Kalei braced herself for what came next. She gripped the first piece of splintered wood firmly between her thumb and forefinger. It appeared to be a piece off the coffee table, a solid chip of pine with slivers sticking out at odd angles where the wood had broken off from the polished body of the table. Only an inch of the wood could be seen before it disappeared into the soft flesh of her instep. With a deep breath, she ripped it out. Blood and pain blossomed from the new hole, and Kalei cried out and nearly bit her tongue off as her teeth clamped together. Yet strangely, this new pain was welcoming. It was almost.... good. She grabbed the next piece and continued with her grim task, and all the while, the enraged flesh distracted Kalei’s senses from her inner torment. It was a relief to be away from those darker battles, if only for a moment. But as soon as the fragments were free, the wounds quickly recovered and the external pain subsided, allowing the darkness from her heart to flow back in. For every sharpened fragment she pulled out, she resisted the urge to reapply it elsewhere.

 

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