by Alex Fedyr
Her sister bowed her head and grabbed her arm with her other hand. She squeezed it tightly. “I’m sorry.”
“Fuck, what the hell am I supposed to do with you, huh? Give me your gun. GIVE ME your gun!” Jenna held it out and Kalei snatched it from her hand, careful to pull back her darkness as she did so, in case the bitch tried something. Kalei held up the gun. “I should just shoot you right now and leave you for SWORDE.”
Jenna’s eyes widened. “Don’t! I can’t leave—” She couldn’t hold Kalei’s eyes, though. She looked away and withdrew into herself. “Please don’t, little sister...”
“And why not?”
“Because... because you can’t do this on your own. You need me. I—”
Kalei’s rage threatened to overwhelm her. This wasn’t her big sister Jenna anymore. This was the teenage delinquent Shenaia, and Kalei sure as hell didn’t need her help. “Really? Do I really need you? You were supposed to be my way in to Tusic, and now we know how that went, so no. I don’t need you.” Kalei raised the gun to Jenna’s forehead.
“Hey!”
Kalei looked over her shoulder to see a man several feet behind her, completely sure of himself despite his bare, rounded torso, his flannel pajama bottoms, and a pair of slippers on his feet. She could only guess that his confidence came from the gun he was currently pointing at her. A woman shouted something from the open door to his right, and he shouted back, “Call the police, Ma.” To Kalei, he said, “Let the lady—”
He didn’t even finish his sentence before Jenna knocked Kalei’s gun away and took off running. Kalei took another glance at the man and then ran after her.
The man shouted again, “Hey!” His gun went off, and Kalei felt a burning sensation tear through her knee. Her leg gave out and sent her sprawling to the ground.
Kalei heard the man’s slippered footsteps approaching behind her. Furious, she rolled over and yelled, “Are you an idiot?”
The man stopped a couple of feet away, still pointing the gun at her. “Why were you attacking that woman?” he demanded.
“Atta—? She’s Estranged! She’s going to kill someone!” Kalei found her gun on the ground beside her and grabbed it.
The man shot again, hitting the pavement two feet wide of where her gun had been.
Kalei aimed her gun at the man’s hairy chest and roared, “Drop your weapon!”
He shifted his stance nervously, but still managed to maintain his bravado as he bellowed, “You drop yours!”
Kalei glanced down at her knee. She couldn’t see into the dark hole his bullet had ripped through her jeans, but she could feel that the wound was nearly healed already.
She said to the man, “I don’t want to shoot you. Now step back inside your home and let me do my business!”
“Why do you look familiar... What? Are you a cop? Or SWORDE or somethin’? Let me see some ID!”
A man’s scream tore through their argument.
“Jenna!” Kalei launched herself off the ground and took off running. She heard the man trying to keep up behind her, cursing as he discarded his slippers. She turned a corner, then another, then hit a dead end. The scream had come from the other side of the wall, but Kalei could already tell that she wouldn’t be able to climb it. The cement was smooth and slick with rain. There was no way she would be able to find any footholds or traction. She bounced on the balls of her feet, pressured by urgency, but filled with frustration and indecision.
The man arrived behind her. He huffed and puffed at the entrance to the dead end, then recovered enough to shout, “This way! There’s a way around.”
Kalei ditched the wall and followed the man.
He took her off to the right, and after passing two more dead ends, they took another turn, which brought them to a row of townhouses. And there, at the end of the cul-de-sac, sat Jenna.
She was crouched over a man’s body, crying. Bags of groceries spilled out everywhere around the man; a bright red apple had rolled away into the gutter, jars of olives were smashed and spilling out of the bags that once held them, and a box of cereal had been crushed beneath his fall, and an explosion of brown, processed morsels covered the road, growing soggy and swollen in the rain.
Jenna knelt amidst this carnage of man and food, leaning over the corpse with her face in her hands as her shoulders bounced with quiet sobs.
Kalei put away her gun and walked over. “What the hell did you do?”
Jenna raised her head from her hands, her face red and puffy. “I didn’t do it, Kalei. I swear!” She sniffed, her eyes falling back to the body as she started murmuring, “I didn’t do it, I didn’t do it, I’m so sorry, Kalei... I didn’t do it...”
Kalei followed Jenna’s gaze. The man’s hair fell past his ears, plastered to his face beneath the pounding rain. The muscles in his arms were lean and he sported a healthy tan... he couldn’t have been any older than his mid-twenties. And he would never get a chance to see thirty.
The bare-bellied guy came up behind Kalei. “Oh shit.” He raised his gun and aimed it at Jenna. “Put your hands behind your head!”
Kalei ignored him and walked over to her sister. Quietly, she declared, “This is the second time, Jenna.” She reached down and grabbed Jenna by the shirt. “THE SECOND FUCKING TIME!”
Jenna was shaking from head to toe. Her face contorted as it squeezed out a stream of snot and tears. “I didn’t do it!”
“Are you shitting me right now? You have NEVER been in control, you hear me! The darkness has made you its little bitch, and now you are trying to tell me that you didn’t do it?” Kalei pointed to the man on the ground. “Take a long look, Jenna! YOU did this! No one else. You! And your stupid addiction!”
Jenna stared at the body, her eyes glossed over and dazed. “I didn’t do it...”
Kalei straightened up and pulled out her gun. “I’ll see you later, Shenaia.”
Her sister didn’t protest as Kalei put the gun to the back of her head and pulled the trigger.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Death
The vigilante was in shock at first. Then, when Kalei moved away from Shenaia, he seemed to return to his senses with renewed energy; pointing, waving his gun, shouting – the whole bit. Kalei told him to call SWORDE and ducked down a side alley to dry heave into the gutter. The image of Jenna’s blood and gore on the pavement was burned into her mind’s eye. When she heard the sirens coming, she wiped the spittle from her mouth, steeled herself against the image, and headed in the opposite direction. She knew that what she had done was right. Her sister had killed a man, probably not the first, but definitely the last. Kalei had made sure of that. Her action was justified. She refused to believe it any other way.
Kalei didn’t know where she was heading; there was nowhere for her to go now. And she didn’t care. She let her feet carry her where they wanted. When she met another person on the street, she just pulled her hood lower and changed her route. None of it mattered. Jenna didn’t matter, her family didn’t matter. None of it mattered. There was nothing she could do for any of them. She saw what had happened with Josh and his mom. She didn’t want to lose it like he did, to endanger her husband like that. Better to just let SWORDE handle it. She was done with this game.
She didn’t know how long she walked. The rain eventually slowed to a stop, and the streetlights came on, their light reaching all the way up to the heavy clouds, casting them with a faint, orange glow. But while the added light made the wet streets shine and glow, their brightness made the shadows all the darker. And Kalei’s feet preferred the shadows.
Eventually, she found herself at a ladder, hanging within arm’s reach and built into the side of a cement wall, extending all the way up to the roof of the relatively short building. The rungs were worn and familiar to her, and, without putting another thought to it, she began to climb.
At the top, she found that the roof was already occupied. A man sat on the far side of the small, square roof, leaning against the wall of a ta
ller, adjacent building. It was Marley. He looked completely relaxed, legs crossed beneath him, brown jacket over his shoulders. Now that he was a Detective, he seemed to have taken the liberty of growing some scruff along his soft jaw.
Kalei stopped at the top of the ladder. “What’re you doing here?”
He shrugged. “What does it look like? I’m sitting here, waiting for you.”
She stepped onto the roof, confused by his appearance. “How’d you know I’d end up here?”
Marley replied, “Don’t you recognize this place? You and Fenn always hung out here. Mostly you, when you were upset, but Fenn would always find you and talk you down.”
He was right. As she pushed away the haze of the day’s events and finally took a clear look at her surroundings, she realized this was indeed a hangout from her childhood. It was just a few blocks from her old school, and she had spent many a summer on top of this roof. It was true what Marley had said; she had often retreated here when she was upset, but their little group had also played games here, watched the clouds from here, dared each other to stand at the edge and look down, Fenn and Kalei giggling when Marley got nauseous at the sight.
Kalei sat down beside Marley, settling her back against the bricks as he had. “Wow. You have a good memory. And good instincts too. I didn’t even know I would end up here.”
Marley replied humbly, “Eh, maybe that’s why they gave me the job.” He returned his gaze to the city stretched out beyond the roof. They couldn’t see much from their short outpost; it was only about four stories up, nothing compared to the daunting heights of the adjoining buildings. But in the few gaps between the skyscrapers, she could see for miles. Kalei remembered how, on a clear day, she could see all the way to the ocean, just a speck of grayish-blue beyond the city streets.
Kalei looked down at her hands as they busily worked on a hangnail. Her swirls calmly watched the process, thick and throbbing lethargically. Finally, she asked, “Why are you here?”
He replied, “I want answers.”
Kalei nodded and looked away. Then she chucked the discarded scrap of nail and leaned back again. “I don’t. I’m sick of answers. And I’m sicker of questions.”
“Then why’d you ask to meet me?”
Kalei rubbed a hand across her face, then she dropped it and said, “I wanted...” She looked down at her hands. “I thought I wanted to find Fenn.” She took a deep breath and returned her gaze to the city view. “Now? ... I don’t know...”
“You’re a danger to them.”
“Yup.”
Marley didn’t say anything for a while. Then, after several minutes, he said, “Tell me about SWORDE.”
Of course. Kalei knew this wasn’t a simple house call. “So you’re still on duty then.”
Marley smiled. “No, just sick of questions.”
She knew that arguing with Marley would take more energy than she cared to spend, so Kalei explained what she knew. The sooner he got his answers, the sooner he would get off her damned roof. He asked about SWORDE, Estranged, and even Tusic, once she mentioned Landen as a player in this game. It was almost like old times. Sitting in a patrol car, shooting the breeze as they waited for a speeder to come along. They had talked about a lot of things: family, police tactics, politics. But today, it was all about the Estranged.
When she was done, Marley leaned back against the bricks and said, “I always thought SWORDE was full of super soldiers or something. People the government souped up with experimental drugs, or sent off for incredibly intense training in the mountains. When I heard on the news that you were with SWORDE, I thought, ‘Hey, I guess she didn’t get the bad end of that attack. Looks like she made out all right.’ I guess reality isn’t so nice.”
“Yeah.”
He turned to look at her again. “So what’s the deal with Xamic?”
She fidgeted with a piece of gravel she had picked up and said, “Bad deal, that’s what.”
“But you said so yourself, he was at the scene of those attacks, but there’s no proof he was behind them.”
Now Kalei looked at him. “Hello! He snapped my neck! He caused a pile-up on the freeway and laughed about it. There’s nothing good about him.”
“I see your point. But why was he there? What is his motive?”
“I really don’t care. I just want to see him burn in hell.” She threw her piece of gravel off the roof.
“This is why you never made Detective.”
“I never wanted to be a Detective. I wanted to be a Warden.”
Marley sighed. “Yeah, and now we know how that one worked out too.”
Kalei scoffed. “Yeah.”
“But seriously, what is Xamic’s angle? We know Tusic is in it for the money and the highs, we know SWORDE just wants to keep everyone locked up behind their little gate, but where does Xamic come into this?”
“I don’t know.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Kalei saw Marley watching her for a few seconds, and then looked away. “Kalei, I need you to think. I need you to work with me on this. I have two dozen call girls showing up dead on the East Side and Xamic was spotted leaving the site. A bank robbery up on High Street, a small riot in the financial district— you get the picture. What I am saying is, the number of Estranged-related deaths in my city have more than tripled since Xamic showed up. I want to know why.”
“Easy. He did it.”
Marley sighed. “You know that doesn’t work. We need motive, we need opportunity—”
“Fuck that stuff and put a bullet in his head. Problem solved.”
“You know we can’t do that. I’m legally bound not to do stuff like that, and we don’t know how to kill him even if we could find him. See, that’s the problem. We don’t know anything. We don’t know where he is, we don’t know where he’ll attack next, we don’t even know where he came from. I checked all of the system records— he doesn’t exist. I have Debbie going through the archives to see if she can dig him up in the old hard copies, but the point is, until we know more about this guy, he’s just going to keep burning through this town like it’s his playground, and I am sick and tired of him using my friends as his playthings!”
Kalei was surprised by the anger in Marley’s voice. She met his eyes and found a burning anger and determination she had never seen in the man before. He was always the calm, levelheaded one; slow to anger and always bailing out his erratic cousin and her quick-to-cry tagalong.
She wasn’t sure what to make of this new change. She looked away and said, “Well, now you know everything I know. Time to go out and do your detective thing. Save the world, protect the people; it’s what you do these days, right?”
“Is that it, Kalei? Are you just going to roll over and quit like a wounded dog?”
“Are you calling me a bitch?”
“No, I’m calling you a quitter. When you were on the force, you were unstoppable. You didn’t give a damn about the rules, you didn’t give a damn about your safety. You just went out there and did whatever you had to do to get the job done. You used to care about the people who live here. What is it? You become Estranged and now you don’t care anymore? C’mon, Kalei. I know you. Not even becoming Estranged could rip that out of you.”
Kalei watched the swirls on her nails squeeze and pulse. Her hands clenched into fists and she felt her despair coalesce into anger. He was so high and mighty. He was so sure that he knew exactly what she was going through, he was so sure he knew exactly who she was, that she was going to run into the burning building and save them all. But he was wrong. He thought she ran into those scenes to save the good guys, but the reality was, she ran in to kill the bad guys. Her hatred for Estranged, for herself, was so strong, that all she could think about was destruction. And now, she couldn’t even deliver that to the people who had hurt her most. Marley could never understand that. He still had both his parents, he still had his kids, and his wife. He was Untouched. He would never know what she had been through.
“Kalei, hey, I’m serious. You’ve got what it takes to—”
Kalei stood up and screamed, “Shut the fuck up, Marley!”
He stood up as well, standing his ground as he said, “Kalei, I know this is hard, but—”
“What the hell do you know? You have no fucking clue what I’ve lost. It’s not just pretty black nails and a few sweet highs, Marley. I lost everything. You hear me? Everything! I will never be able to kiss my husband, I will never be able to hug a friend, or hold my own child in my arms. Any chance I had at love or family is gone now, Marley. But you still have all of that. When you leave here, you’re going right back to that world. Your wife is going to welcome you home, your kid is going to run into your arms, and you’re going to hold him close, and that feeling will be better than any damn high my black nails could give me. Go back to your kid, give him that hug, and remember that I will never have that. Get the fuck out of here, Marley!”
He stared at her. Kalei could see determination still in his eyes, but the anger was replaced with pity. She hated him for that. Her fists clenched and every inch of her craved to knock those pitying eyes right out of his skull.
Quietly, he said, “I know how lucky I am. Every night when I tuck Tyrell in, I am praying that I can protect him, praying that I can keep this city from falling apart around him. But as long as Xamic is out there killing, I can’t do that. Every day, the violence from Estranged in this city is escalating, and no matter how hard I try, there is nothing I can do to stop them. Do you have any idea how terrible it is? Knowing that you are completely helpless to protect your little boy? Of course you don’t. There may be things I don’t know, but there’s a whole hell of a lot you don’t know either, Kalei. And you’re not as helpless as you think. I’m helpless, Kalei, but you aren’t. You haven’t lost family, and you haven’t lost love. Celan has always been your family, and now your brothers and sisters need you. I need you. But most importantly, Fenn still needs you. You have to put an end to Xamic so Fenn can live out the rest of his days in peace.”