Estranged

by Alex Fedyr

  As the streets became more and more crowded, Jenna took her gloves off, handed them to Josh, and then put her own hands in her pockets. Kalei watched Josh put the gloves on, and she realized she still didn’t know what kind of person the kid was. She didn’t know if he was likely to attack some passerby, or if he’d spent enough time as an Estranged that he could control himself. And even if he could, did that mean he would? Kalei was already uneasy with Jenna, the addict that she was, roaming these civilian streets. Kalei wondered if she had unleashed a pair of time bombs onto the streets of her city, and resolved to watch both her companions closely.

  They ducked into an alley when rush hour hit, waiting out the manic flood of people while Jenna scared away would-be muggers with a black-nailed bird for each. When the foot-traffic finally subsided, they stepped out and finished the trip to Chi’s.

  Chi’s Diner was a small place, wedged between an electronics shop and a small convenience store. All three looked desolate and run-down, but Kalei knew from experience that Chi’s had the best lo-mein in town. She practically had to force feed Fenn the first time she brought him here to try out the cuisine. Kalei’s swirls tightened at the memory, and she quickly pushed it from her mind.

  Across the street, Josh and Jenna sat down in front of an empty storefront, while Kalei continued to stand beside them. She crossed her arms and settled her weight comfortably between both legs, something she had become accustomed to as a cop, standing guard at many large events and Estranged crime scenes. Beneath her mask, Kalei’s eyes carefully followed the pedestrians walking by, alert for any sign of a threat, be it a SWORDE Agent, a Tusic spy, or even just another Estranged out to cause trouble.

  A man in a striped jacket walked along with his hands in his pockets and his hood pulled up over his head. He glanced at Kalei as he approached, but when his eyes found her mask, he flinched, his eyes widening in surprise, then he quickly ducked his head and hurried past. Across the street, a couple exited Chi’s Diner, takeout in hand, cheerfully bantering as they walked down the sidewalk. Their umbrella caught a gust of wind, twisting inside out and fighting against the man’s grip as the wind tried to pull it away. They laughed and exclaimed and fought with the umbrella for a brief moment before discarding it in the nearest trash can and running to escape the light rain.

  Kalei pulled her hood lower. It was painful, watching these people go about their lives, oblivious to the danger Kalei and her companions posed. And not just Kalei; anyone on these streets could be Estranged. How many times had she walked down this very sidewalk, just as ignorant as the rest of them? She had always thought she was safe. She had always believed that an Estranged would stick out from the crowd, a crazed and hungry lunatic who chased down anyone in sight. In her police academy, they had always warned her that anyone could be an Estranged, but they had described Estranged behavior as erratic, impulsive, violent. Of course, they weren’t exactly wrong, but... the fact that an Estranged could also be calm, collected, normal; that was something she had never imagined.

  Kalei was ashamed of how ignorant she used to be.

  A sharp, wooden clacking sound drew Kalei’s attention back to her companions. The juveniles had found a pair of discarded chopsticks, and a fierce, miniature sword fight was underway. Kalei couldn’t say she was surprised.

  She listened to the small clack-clacks while she resisted the urge to rip the mask from her face. In some ways, it was worse than the paper bag. It clung tighter to her face, the moisture from her breath collecting on the plastic rather than absorbing into the material as it would have with the paper bag. Her face felt hot and irritated from the humidity, and the heavy hood of her sweatshirt only captured the heat, amplifying the problem. Below the mask, a cool breeze blew against her exposed neck, fueling the temptation to throw the damned piece of plastic into the gutter. But she put a lid on the impulse and felt her temptation turn to irritation.

  The clacking ended with a sharp SNAP! as Josh cried out. Kalei looked down at the boy and saw him waving his hand rapidly to shake off some injury. He said to Jenna, “Sheesh, you’ve got some skills with the chopstick!”

  Jenna leaned back against the shop doorway and crossed her arms behind her head. “I know.” The teenager’s smug smile sat content on her face as her eyes wandered out across the street to take in the drug store. The smile slid away as something caught the girl’s attention, and Kalei followed her gaze to see a middle-aged man stepping out of the shop.

  Jenna asked, “What time is it?”

  Kalei heard Josh shift positions before he replied, “Seven o’clock.”

  Then Jenna asked Kalei, “And what time are we meeting your buddy?”

  Kalei wasn’t sure why the man had caught Jenna’s eye, but she turned her attention back to the conversation at hand. She looked back at the two and found them watching her.

  She answered, “Ten o’clock.”

  Jenna let out an exasperated moan. “Dammit. We’re gonna be here all day!” Jenna rolled her eyes, and then her attention caught on a passing woman. She followed the woman’s footsteps for a moment before slumping back against the storefront and saying, “Why don’ we go do somethin’ ‘stead of waitin’?”

  Kalei uncrossed her arms and stuck them in her sweatshirt pocket. “Like what?”

  “Anythin’. It beats sittin’ out here all exposed, waitin’ for the good guys to roll up and take us away.”

  “The good guys?”

  Jenna threw up her hands in defeat, then climbed to her feet. “Eh, good guys, bad guys, they all’s out fo’ us now. Whatevs, let’s jus’ get outta here.”

  Josh stood up as well. “Y’know, there’s something I’d like to check out. It’s not far. It would only take a minute.”

  Jenna clapped her hands together. “A’ight! We got a place to be. Let’s go.”

  Kalei stepped in front of them, raising a hand to stop them before they could run off. “Wait a minute. Where are we going?”

  Josh avoided Kalei’s eyes as looked to his right, then pointed. “Uh, just up the road, about three blocks down Fifth Street.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  Josh shrugged, looking at his shoes. “I know, but it’s personal.”

  Kalei crossed her arms again and waited for him to look at her. When he finally glanced up, she asked, “The kind of personal that’s going to get us into trouble?”

  Josh laughed, and his eyes lit up. “No, she’s the last person to cause trouble.”

  Jenna stepped in, dropping a hand on Josh’s shoulder as she demanded, “Oooo, she? Who is she? C’mon, spill!”

  Josh pulled away. “What?”

  “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon!” Jenna poked him in the arm each time.

  “Fine! She’s my mom. I just want to see her, alright? I haven’t seen her since... I want to make sure she’s doing okay.”

  Kalei uncrossed her arms and returned her hands to her pockets. “Nothing wrong with that.”

  Meanwhile, Jenna’s upbeat attitude fell away. She gave Kalei a sideways glance, then asked Josh, “You said we’re jus’ gonna see her, right? We’re not gonna talk to her or nothin’?”

  Jenna’s change in behavior surprised Kalei. It concerned her as much as it confused her.

  Josh said, “Well, I would like to—”

  Jenna cut him off. “You don’t want to talk to her. It’s better if you keep your distance, bro.”

  “Why wouldn’t I—” Jenna held up her hand. Kalei could only see Jenna’s palm from where she was standing, but she knew what Josh saw. The black steering wheels on Jenna’s nails were navigating some invisible mountain road, never able to return home. Never able to be normal again.

  Josh’s shoulders and face drooped like a sad flower. “Oh.” He looked down at his own nails, still covered with Jenna’s gloves. “I guess you’re right.”

  Kalei broke the brief silence that followed. “Well, let’s go. We can still check on her.”

  Jenna glanced at Kalei again
, her eyes somber, then quietly followed as Kalei and Josh headed in the direction he’d indicated.

  It wasn’t long before they came to Josh’s street. It was a quiet road, with several tall apartment buildings squeezed in together, and a few modest cars parked on either side. Josh pointed to a narrow gateway on the left, wedged between a pair of brick walls. The gate was an intricate wrought iron backed by chain-link, and the walls were over ten feet high, with wrought-iron spears at the top to deter anyone from climbing. Built into the wall beside the gate was an intercom panel, a large metal square with a speaker and rows of buttons paired with names. Kalei walked up to the panel and asked Josh, “What’s the—”

  A quaking yell pierced the air. “Josh!”

  The three turned and saw a middle-aged woman fifty feet up the sidewalk, clutching an armful of groceries. Her mouth struggled to form more words, but none came out.

  “Mom?” Josh started to run toward her, but Jenna caught him around his midsection. “Let me go! That’s my mom! Mom!”

  Josh’s mom dropped her groceries and hurried toward her distressed son. Her mouth finally asked, “Josh, is that really you? What is happening? What’s going on?”

  Kalei carefully pulled the darkness back from her arms and hurried forward to stop the woman. They met about ten feet from where Jenna was struggling with Josh, and Kalei held up her hands in an official “Stop” gesture. “I’m sorry, ma’am. Please don’t come any closer.”

  The woman stared at Kalei for a moment, then her own face turned into a mask of anger. “What do you mean? That’s my son! Let me see him!” The woman was only a few inches shorter than Kalei, lean and pretty despite the budding wrinkles and laugh lines that placed her somewhere in her late forties.

  She tried to push past Kalei, but Kalei stepped in front of the woman, cutting off her path. The painful confusion, the relief, the love, the hot concern in the woman’s eyes made Kalei wish she could let this woman go hold her son. But she knew better. It would not end well for anyone if she let that happen. She said, “I understand you want to see him, but you cannot get any closer.”

  Cries rang out from both Jenna and Josh as their scuffle continued. Josh yelled out again, a high-pitched shout of pain and surprise. The mom gasped, struggling to look past Kalei, to see what was happening. Tears in her eyes, she demanded, “Why are you letting that girl hurt him!”

  With renewed fervor, the mother tried again to force her way past Kalei, but this time, Kalei grabbed her by the shoulders and held her in place. “You really—”

  Jenna cursed and there was a loud thunk. Jenna screamed, “KALEI!”

  Kalei spun around and saw Josh charging at them in full frenzy. Her instincts screamed, a dozen commands roaring through her mind at once— tackle him, stop him, keep the mom back, stop him— but her eyes met his and she froze. He was only a couple feet away and closing, but she couldn’t move. What she saw in those clear green eyes, the intensity of it...

  BOOM!

  Josh’s face exploded in an eruption of blood and gore. His body flew violently into the ground as the momentum of his dash continued to push his corpse forward. On the sidewalk, several feet behind the remains of the boy, Jenna lay on her back, gun raised, shell clinking as it landed on the pavement.

  Josh’s mom screamed.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Separate Ways

  They stole a car from a witness and escaped with Josh’s body while his mom lay crying in the street. Josh’s corpse bled out in the back, painting the seat red as Kalei and Jenna sat in the front, shaking.

  “Shit.” Jenna looked out the window. Kalei had no words. “Shit!” she repeated. “We need to get out of this car. There were way too many witnesses out there. We need to get the fuck out of this car!”

  Kalei kept her eyes on the road as her hands twisted at the steering wheel. “And go where? Where can we go! We’ve got the entire fucking town after us!”

  Jenna paused and bit her lip. “What about your friend? Damn, what was her name...” Kalei opened her mouth, but Jenna cut her off, jumping forward in her seat. “Lecia! I know she didn’ pick up yo’ calls, but if we show up at her place, then she’s gotta take us in. She’s all sorts a’ pro-Estranged, operatin’ outside the law. She’d open her doors wide open to a couple Estranged refugees!”

  “And how the hell am I supposed to know where she lives?”

  “She didn’ tell you?”

  “Fuck no. She may be stupid, but she’s not that stupid. She doesn’t give out her address to Estranged.” Kalei cut off Jenna before she could respond. “Even old school acquaintances. Especially old school acquaintances, if you know anything about our past.”

  Jenna sat back in her seat and replied, “Yeah, well, I know where she lives.”

  Kalei looked at her sister. “What? How?”

  “When you was in time-out downstairs, Terin had me tied down to camera duty. And y’know, you’d think monitoring the ear cams would be hella fun. Spyin’ on the whole town, get to learn everyone’s dirty secrets... fuck no! That shit was boring as hell! No dialogue? Shit, and ain’t no one pointing their ears at each other so you can get a proper lip-read. Shit, and some of the stuff I did see, man, there was shit that even I didn’ wanna know!” Jenna glanced at a car passing by, then continued, “Anyway, your girl Lecia made a friend that followed her home one night. Had to send a few Wardens to take care of it. Take Main Street. We’ll ditch the car at that used car lot up there.”

  They abandoned the car, leaving Josh in the trunk. Kalei didn’t want to leave a man behind, but it was Jenna who saw reason. “Terin don’ have nothin’ against him. He’s jus’ another Estranged. SWORDE will find him and take him Downtown where he’ll live happily ever after.”

  Kalei threw the car into park and turned to her sister. “Are you kidding? Josh has been with us since we escaped Tusic. He knows where we’ve been, he knows how we’ve been avoiding them— Terin is probably going to torture him for information!”

  Jenna raised an eyebrow. “If you think Terin would use torture, then you clearly don’t know him.”

  Kalei was insistent. “Josh almost killed his mother today. Do you think Terin will go easy on that?”

  “And do you think we can carry a corpse more than a mile through town and not get spotted? ’Specially with the cops houndin’ our trail? Don’ worry. What’s the worst that can happen? So they throw Josh in a little glass tube. So what? He’ll be a hell of a lot safer than either of us.”

  “If that’s how you feel about the tubes, then why’d you help me escape?”

  Jenna looked away and unlocked her door. “That’s different. You wanted out.”

  “And Josh won’t?”

  Jenna looked back at Josh where he lay on the seat. “After what he’s been through, locked up is the only place he’ll want to be.” She stepped out and walked to the back of the car.

  Kalei popped the trunk before she exited the vehicle, then proceeded to pull Josh’s body out of the back seat.

  She had him halfway out and was getting ready to pick him up when she noticed something. “Hey,” Kalei straightened up and looked at Jenna, who still stood at the trunk, moving junk around to make room for the body. “Where’s his backpack? The kid never let the thing out of his sight.”

  Jenna wasn’t interested. “Prob’ly dropped it in the fight.” She finished what she was doing and stepped back to admire her handiwork. “What does it matter?” Brushing off her hands, Jenna walked over to Kalei and the body. “Let’s get this over with.”

  “Fine.”

  Together, the girls pulled out his body and carried it over to the trunk.

  For the first twenty minutes, they didn’t say anything. The rain had started to pour in heavy sheets, turning the world around them into a blurred dream and making it hard to see anything further than five feet away. The water soaked through Kalei’s sweatshirt and poured in through the eyeholes in her mask, collecting in pools above her cheeks that slowly
trickled down the rest of her face, down her neck, and into her shirt, blazing an irritating trail of tickling sensations. Kalei ripped off the mask and threw it into the gutter.

  “How far is it?” she asked.

  Jenna nodded in the direction they were walking. “About two miles. It’s in the Wadduck district.”

  Kalei grumbled a curse.

  They took a few more steps, and then Jenna said, “Forget about meeting Marley.”

  Kalei looked up at her sister. “What? I wasn’t even thinking about it. That whole district is swarming with cops by now.” Kalei shoved her hands into her sweatshirt pocket. “Shit, wonder if he was even going to show up.”

  “Hell if I know.”

  The conversation died, and they continued walking to the sound of the beating rain.

  It was about another mile when Kalei noticed that Jenna was quivering. Her sister kept her chin tucked close to her chest, but her eyes darted out into the rain, desperate for something. It could have been that she was just cold from the rain, but that didn’t seem to be it. Kalei might have been wearing a soaked-through sweatshirt, but Jenna’s jacket, now that it was zipped up, was waterproof. And all the walking was already starting to make Kalei sweat beneath her layers. No, Jenna couldn’t be cold. It had to be something else.

  So Kalei hung back a step behind her sister and watched. A few moments later when a pedestrian walked out into the street, Jenna’s head shot up and she eyed the man hungrily, but she quickly pulled her eyes away and looked at her feet.

  Kalei stepped up and shoved Jenna into the nearest wall. “Are you going through withdrawals? Have you been high this whole fucking time? Who did you get a high from, Jenna? Who did you—” Kalei paused and her eyes subtly widened. She knew who. Her brows snapped together and again she shoved Jenna against the wall. “Did you get Josh high?” Jenna didn’t say anything. “Fuck! What the hell is wrong with you, Jenna!”