by Isaac Hooke
She set down her cup angrily. Yes Ari. How she despised that patronizing nurse. Didn't he understand the power she could wield? Didn't he realize that she could vaporize him with a thought? She'd grown vast in power these past ten years. She was one of the strongest Users, despite her outward appearance, and vitra literally stormed within her.
Her tea had grown cold. She allowed electricity to spark from her fingertips, and instantly the liquid boiled. She took a tentative sip. Ah, much better. She remembered a time when hot tea scalded her tongue. These days it was the only thing she could drink—everything else felt cold. It was getting so very hard to keep warm at her age. So very hard.
But I'm not that old! a part of her shouted. All she had to do was look at the liver spots on her trembling hands. Oh yes you are.
A hurried knock came at the front door and she almost dropped the cup.
"I'm coming! I'm coming!" She crankily grabbed her cane, and steeled herself for what would come. She stood all at once, and flinched at the agony in her left knee. Something always hurt these days. Her left knee. Her right shoulder. Her lower back. She massaged electricity into the knee, and it helped, a little.
The knocking at the front door became more frantic.
"I said I was coming!" She began the long journey to the door. The shack was small, but so was her stride, and she crossed the room step by tiny step. She wondered who was bothering her this morning. The nurse wasn't scheduled to visit for another three hours.
She finally reached the door, and paused a moment, not at all looking forward to the cold that would come.
The blasted fool outside the door knocked again, and she opened the door irritably. A wave of frigid air assailed her.
Damn this cold!
Shivering, she recognized Jackson, a messenger who'd joined the New Users a year ago. He was the highly-connected cousin of the mayor. A little on the dumb side.
"What is it?" Her breath misted. "Why have you come here in broad daylight? Were you followed?" She glanced at the snowy street behind him. There were only a few people about. Human.
"Leader Ari!" Jackson bowed excitedly.
"Yes yes." Ari waved a dismissive hand. "Spare me the formalities and answer the question damn you."
Jackson bounced on his heels rather exuberantly. "He's done it. He's really done it. He's crossed back!"
"Who's crossed back? Speak plainly, idiot!" Old age had made her a little crabby, she had to admit. That, and the irrepressible cold.
The man offered her an open journal.
Ari no longer noticed the man, nor the breath misting between them, nor even the cold. All of her attention was on that diary, which she recognized immediately. It was the diary that was twin to the one Hoodwink had taken with him, a diary rigged to instantly reflect any words written in his copy. It was the diary that was kept on display in the New User headquarters deep underground, reverently left open to the page of Hoodwink's last missive ten years ago. It was the diary she'd sat beside for weeks after he'd gone, futilely waiting for a message from her father, a message that never came.
Something new was written beneath the last entry, in Hoodwink's own handwriting. A single sentence:
Told you I'd come back.
CHAPTER TWO
Ari snatched the book from Jackson and slammed the door. She made the long return journey to her spot by the window and plunked herself down in the chair.
Her eyes drifted to the bookshelf hammered into the wall by the window, a shelf whose tomes had made her laugh and cry throughout the lonely nights. Some of those books had kept her warm, filling her mind with visions of sandy, tropical islands teeming with palm trees and coconuts. Others had only made her pin-prick cold. Much like the book she held now in her lap.
Told you I'd come back.
Jeremy had laid an intricate trap for her. Of that she had no doubt. He must have discovered his cousin Jackson was one of the Users, and he'd arranged for him to deliver the book in a bid to reveal her hiding place.
That meant the gols were coming.
She was too tired to run. She'd run at first, those seven years ago. Constantly moving from place to place. But then five years ago she went into permanent hiding because she just couldn't run anymore, and she swore then that if she were discovered, she'd make her last stand here.
She renewed that promise now, swearing to go down in a storm of glory that would be talked about among the New Users for years. Well, for as long as this fragile society lasted, anyway.
A strange sense of peace came over her, now that the choice to stay was made, and the book in her lap didn't feel so cold, nor so heavy. She stretched her fingers and let her gaze return to the snowy street outside, and she waited, conserving her charge, readying herself for one final hurrah.
After a time, she heard the jangle of keys in the door.
The time to die had come.
She let the current flow through her body, allowed it to crisscross her skin in deadly waves. She looked like a harmless little old lady, she was sure.
But the first gol, or man, to touch this little old lady would be utterly incinerated.
CHAPTER THREE
Ari heard the door open and close behind her. Then the footfalls came. Muted. Cautious. She couldn't tell how many intruders had entered. Two. Three? If that was so, the gols had grossly underestimated her.
She stoked the charge inside her, and the air above her skin began to crackle with a subtle hint of energy.
"Hello Ari," Nurse Richard said.
Those words saved his life—Ari released the charge a split second before Richard's fingers wrapped around her upper arm.
"Time for your bath," Richard said.
Ari slumped in relief. Not yet, then.
Not yet.
She set aside the diary. "Why so early today?"
Richard shrugged. "I'm here at the usual time."
Had she really whiled away the entire morning already?
Richard glanced at the book, nosy as always. "What were you reading?" His features were angular and harsh, his eyes close-set.
She bared her teeth in a smile. "A pleasant fiction about a dead man who returns to life ten years after abandoning his daughter."
Ari numbly let the nurse lead her from the main chamber to the only other room in the shack, a room that was more a closet than anything else. Without comment, Richard emptied her chamber pot into the sack he'd brought along for the purpose. Normally the residents of Luckdown District just dumped their excretions out the window, but over time disgusting brown stalagmites formed along the walls, half buried in the snow. She hated that. A lot of people liked it, unfortunately. Take her neighbors. They were always talking about how solid their walls of wattle-and-shit were. At least they weren't nosy, though they had to wonder how she could afford a nurse. As did others in the neighborhood apparently—a robber tried to steal from her, once. She'd left him with a seriously blistered hand, and a message for other aspiring thieves—this house was off-limits.
Richard undressed her, and lowered her into the small tub that took up half the room. As usual, he'd brought along a water bladder. She didn't have a fireplace, so he boiled the water before coming, and by the time he reached here the contents had always cooled to a pleasant lukewarm. Pleasant or no, today she shivered for the entire session. Normally she would've made some crude joke at least once, but she wasn't in the mood. Not today. She kept expecting gols to come rushing inside. If they did come, she supposed there was one plus to being caught with her pants down like this—the water would amplify her charge.
Afterward, she dressed, and Richard set out her meal. Today it was previously cooked chicken, now cold, with hard bread on the side. She hated cold chicken. When Richard glanced away, distracted by the distant screaming of one of the neighbors, she unleashed a trickle of electricity into the meat. There, much better.
"Is everything all right Ari?" Richard said.
She chewed on, just as if he'd said nothing. Chewed
. Her teeth were the one thing the ravages of vitra had left intact, thankfully.
At last she deigned to answer him. "Everything's just fine." She glanced at the doorway.
"There," Richard said. "You did it again."
"What?" She set down the chicken. "Well speak up you blathering idiot! I may be old, but I won't stand for patronizing."
Richard merely smiled. "Why do you keep looking at the door?"
"The door. I—" Why indeed? If the gols were going to come, they would have arrived already. What was Jeremy's game?
They planned to come in the night, no doubt, and collar her while she slept. That was the best way to capture a User. Without casualties, anyway. Well she'd be damned if she let herself go out that way. If she was to die, she was going to do it on her own terms. Uncollared and free.
She was sick of Jeremy playing with her.
"Richard," she said. "Would you help me with something?"
"That's what you pay me for, dear Ari," Richard said.
She grated her teeth at his patronizing tone. "I want to go for a walk."
He raised his eyebrows and stared at her for a moment, then he smiled that infuriating smile of his. "As you wish, dear Ari."
And so he helped her dress. Normally she put on a threadbare jacket and moth-ridden scarf so as not to attract attention, but today she donned her fur cloak, fur cap, and fur boots, clothes reserved for special occasions only.
Dying was a special occasion.
Richard led her out into the raw cold. She walked across the snowpack with one hand clenching his, and the other clenching her cane.
She saw the Forever Gate in the distance, looming over the city like an indomitable titan. She'd always regretted that she hadn't climbed the Gate to search for her father. She should have gone while she was still young in body. She should have abandoned the Users, and let the previous Leader rebuild the group on his own. Likely there'd be no Users today if she'd done that, she had to remind herself. Regret and second guesses were dark pits she'd struggled against her entire life. Very soon she'd never know those pits again. A comfort, though a small one.
She saw a small child nearby. A little girl, huddling in the cold. She paused beside the child, and looked down at those weary, sad eyes.
"Ah to hell with it." She took off her fur cloak, and before she could change her mind, dumped it in the child's lap.
The little girl looked at her prize in disbelief, and then took off with it at a run.
If Ari was cold before, now she was positively frigid.
"Why'd you do that?" Richard said.
"Just shut-up and walk with me." She could hardly talk for her chattering teeth.
A group of ten gols in the armor of the city guard stood in the square ahead. All of them were looking at her. None of them seemed to have the slobbering faces that marked those with the gol mind disease.
She filled herself with vitra, and steered Richard toward the group.
"What's your game, Ari?" Richard said.
"What, no dear before my name this time?" The vitra flowed through her veins and filled her with warmth. She dragged Richard onward, and she could feel him struggling to pull her away. Likely he was surprised by her strength. It was an illusion of course. Little bursts of strategically-placed electricity that weakened his muscles in just the right places, at just the right times. That, and the gentle boost the flowing current gave to her own strength.
"Hello gentle men," Ari said to the gols. She smiled a sweet, grandmotherly smile. "Lounging around in the cold, spying on the citizens, are we?"
She pushed Richard away, and before any of the guards could answer, she attacked with everything she had.
Bolts of lightning flashed from her fingertips. Tendrils of energy sparked from her hair. Surely she looked a demon arisen from the nine hells, born into this world to wreak vengeance upon those who would collar humankind. In moments, all that remained of the ten gols were cinder blocks and charred bodies. Those all-too-human faces wore expressions of shock and disbelief.
When you used massive quantities of vitra like that, you drew the city guards by the score. Small amounts of vitra were virtually undetectable, and you could even get away with medium quantities if gols were far away. But for what she just used, why, guards would come calling from all quarters of the city.
And though she'd used up her entire charge in that attack, she began to laugh.
Let them come.
She was ready to die. More than ready.
But then she had a thought. What if they recognized that she had no charge left? What if they collared her instead of killing her? No. No. She couldn't let them take her.
She surveyed the square in a panic. She could still run. It didn't have to end like this. A few human bystanders stared at her in horror, but when she met their gaze, they ran off. None of them would follow her. And the nearest gol barracks were still a ways distant. Yes, she could make it.
But she needed Richard's help now more than ever. "Richard? Where are you, you imbecile! We have to get out of here!"
In answer, a fist slammed into her ribs, and she collapsed to the snow.
CHAPTER FOUR
Ari nearly blacked out when she struck the hard snowpack. Her hip and ribs ached something nasty. So cold. So very cold. Why had she given up her fur cloak?
"You're a User!" Richard kicked her now in those same ribs, and she felt the age-brittle bones crack. No, she wanted to say. You're killing me! But no voice would come to her. Didn't she just want to die a few moments ago? Yes, but she wanted to fall in battle, not to some idiot nurse beating her to death.
She tried vainly to reach the spark inside her, hoping the pain would ignite something within, but she had nothing left.
She would've laughed again, if she could.
Ari, the great Leader of the New Users, kicked to death by her own nurse.
Richard rammed his boot into her ribs still again. More cracks.
"You fool," she finally managed through the pain. "They'll kill you too when they come." Would he believe her deception?
Richard raised his boot to kick her a third time, but hesitated.
She heard it then. The crunch of approaching boots. She tried to lift her head, but she couldn't see who was coming, not from where she lay.
Richard backed away. "I don't know this woman," she heard him say.
Her heart sank. So the gols were here already. She'd be collared, and jailed, and would die rotting in the dungeon.
This was the end.
She relaxed her neck muscles. She didn't feel so cold anymore. No. The warmth of sleep beckoned. The warmth of oblivion.
The newcomer strode right up to Richard and planted a fist squarely in his jaw. Richard fell backward in the snow.
"Run," the newcomer said to Richard.
Richard got up and stumbled backward a few paces, then he turned around and hightailed it out of there.
The newcomer knelt beside Ari.
"Are you all right?" He said.
She looked up groggily. It must be a dream.
The newcomer furrowed his brow, and he gently explored her ribs with one hand.
She moaned. The pain of his touch brought her away from the edge, and the cold crept back with a vengeance. She shivered uncontrollably.
"We'll have to heal that before we can go on," he said.
She stared at him, shivering. So many words filled her mind, but her chattering teeth managed to form just one. "You."
"Nice to see you too, Ari, it is. You'll have to thank your friend Jackson for me later. Led me right to you, though he didn't know it. I was going to drop in later, when I was sure you were alone. Shame that you've burned the pals I brought, though. I leave my escort for a minute and look what you go and do. If only you knew how much convincing it took to bring them along." He glanced over his shoulder at the charred bodies and sighed. "Well, there's nothing for it now. Just the two of us, then. We don't have much time."
It was him
all right. He hadn't aged a day, and in fact he seemed younger than the last time she saw him, with not a trace of gray in his hair, nor a wrinkle on his face. He looked a nobleman in those red boots and black pants, topped by that green tunic. An odd costume to wear in the heart of winter, to be sure. Without a coat and gloves, he should have been shivering, but the cold didn't touch him.
There was something else wrong. The clothes fit him too tightly, just as if each piece was melded into the skin and could never be taken off. Worse, there was a symbol stamped into the tunic, a symbol Ari didn't recognize.
The number 1000.
Hoodwink was a gol.
CHAPTER FIVE
The heat of rage banished any cold she might have felt.
"Where have you been all these years you hoodwinking bastard?" Ari felt the tears coming. It was almost easier to believe this was some trick of Jeremy's. Easier than thinking Hoodwink had abandoned her for ten years and returned as a gol, of all things. "I thought you were dead. All this time. Dead."
"Ari," Hoodwink said, with a gentleness that melted her old, rigid heart. "I tried. Really, I tried."
He tore open the side of her sweater and his jaw clenched angrily when he saw her ribs. "I should've killed that bastard." He reached into a pocket and fetched a shard. The five appendages throbbed eerily. She was always reminded of a frozen starfish whenever she saw those crystalline life forms. "You'll have to use your own charge."
"I don't—" She winced at the pain in her ribs. "I don't have any left."
"You have to try," Hoodwink said. "Can you do that for me, Ari?"