The Enhanced Series Boxset

by T. C. Edge

  “Fred,” she whispers. “And Ziggy…”

  I finish the sentence for her.

  “They were in the market.”

  I let out a short breath. Once more a terrible thought enters my head, and I grimace guiltily at the feeling of relief that works through me. Relief that other names didn’t drift from her mouth. The names I care about most of all.

  Fred and Ziggy. Two nice boys, two good boys.

  Two dead boys.

  My mind works quickly to Drum. They were his roommates, his close friends. Two other boys in transition here at the academy, living their lives in perpetual fear of being cast out into the cold.

  Fred with his fiery red hair and freckles. Ziggy the opposite, his hair black and skin dark. They were two of the nicest boys I know.

  The nicest boys I knew.

  As fresh tears begin to creep down Abby’s soft, pink cheeks, I reach up and wipe them away.

  “Where’s Drum?” I whisper.

  Her pain doubles.

  “In his room…I think.”

  I pull her into a hug, and let her sniff for a few moments into my shoulder. Then I release her in silence and stand once more. And still, no one speaks as they gaze at the TV, locked in grief and fear for their lost brothers.

  I leave the room, the pain in my foot now irrelevant to me, and limp my way back into the hall and up the winding stairs to the first floor. When I reach it, I turn my eyes down the corridor towards Drum’s room and see Tess standing outside.

  Her eyes rise to mine. They’re cold and distant and red around the rim. They stare at me as I hobble towards her, a grimace growing starker on her face.

  I stop in front of her. Our eyes link and then detach. Hers lower to her feet, and then move to mine.

  “Your feet…” she whispers quietly. “Are you OK?”

  Her words are trembling. When her eyes rise again, they’re dancing with cold tears.

  I move in and drag her into a hug. Her arms wrap tight around me.

  “I was so scared, Tess,” I whisper. “I saw the explosion…I thought you…”

  “Me too,” she mumbles. “I didn’t know where you were. Your feet…”

  She pulls back and looks down again.

  I want to explain to her what’s happened but can’t. There’s too much to say, everything so complicated now. I open my mouth to begin, but can’t find the words. Instead, all I say is: “I’m fine. It’s nothing.”

  Her eyes harden a touch. She turns to the door.

  “Is Drum inside?”

  She nods.

  “He’s with Brenda.” Her words have frozen up again.

  A flash of relief surges through my veins once more. Another person I love is safe.

  “Tess…”

  She turns back to me, her exterior hardening as she slides back into her shell.

  “Yes?”

  Another internal struggle begins. The debate is short lived. I can’t tell her…I can’t put her in danger.

  “I’m so happy you’re safe,” is all I say.

  She dips her eyes and looks at my feet. I see the tiniest shake of her head.

  I want to tell you, I say in my head. I want you to know the truth…

  I try to project it, as I would with Zander, put my voice into the back of her mind. Give her some hint of what’s happening to me.

  I know she doesn’t hear, though. She merely looks at my feet and says: “So am I, Brie.”

  And then, without looking into my eyes, she walks past me down the corridor, and disappears up the winding stairs.

  I tip my head back and grit my teeth.

  She’s safe. That’s all that matters right now.

  My eyes turn to the door, and I reach out and knock. I hear the croaky voice of Mrs Carmichael call me in.

  I open it up and find her on the bed, sitting with her arm halfway across Drum’s back. His boulder-like body is hunched over, his arms curled up close to his chest. His dark brown eyes are sunken, his frame casting his face into shadow.

  As I appear, Mrs Carmichael pulls her arm from Drum’s back, and moves towards me. His eyes glance up, note that I’m safe, and drop down again.

  My guardian pulls me into a hug.

  “Where have you been, Brie? I’ve been so worried…”

  Her eyes move to my feet, just as Tess’s did.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll explain everything to you later.”

  She doesn’t offer any further enquiry. Not here. Not now.

  Instead, she merely whispers: “Go to him,” as my gaze moves past her and towards my friend, my adopted brother.

  She slips away from me and leaves the room. A silence falls as I creep towards the hulking shape on the bed.

  I take a moment to find the right words. None will make a difference, I know that. Nothing can change what happened now.

  So I just utter the normal cliché.

  “I’m so sorry, Drum,” I whisper.

  He doesn’t react or move. He just sits there, still as a statue, staring at his hands, his mighty fingers all bound up tight. I look at them and see that they’re quivering, his knuckles white and the muscles of his forearms twitching.

  I move to the bed, the place where Mrs Carmichael sat, and sit down beside him. I don’t speak. I just sit, hoping my presence will be comforting. Just waiting for him to speak, if he should want to.

  Minutes pass. I hear him sniff a few times, and use my peripheral vision to spy his face without him knowing. Every time a tear threatens to build and fall, he blinks hard to keep it back.

  But he can’t keep it up. Not forever. Eventually, a swell of salty water gathers on his thick black eyelashes, and his attempts to blink it away only send it falling to his hands, splashing like a heavy raindrop.

  I react to his pain, and reach across to comfort him. I lay my hand onto his, and feel the tension. It looks like a child’s, a little girl’s linking with her father’s. The soft touch brings more tears, his attempts to hold them back breaking down.

  As they fall, he finally speaks, his voice cracked and growling.

  “I was meant to be with them,” he says. “We were meant to go together to pick up an order. But…I was late from work. They had to go without me. They…they died without me,” he sniffs.

  My fingers tighten around his. I want to say how glad I am that he didn’t go, that his work in the eastern quarter kept him from a terrible fate. But I know it won’t help. I know it will just sound insensitive.

  His eyes rise to look at the bunk beds across the room. Fred slept on the bottom one, Ziggy the top. Across the walls are little reminders of them, posters and pictures, their meagre belongings gathered at the foot of the bed or kept in trunks beneath them.

  “I’m going to kill them…” whispers Drum, staring forward. “The Fanatics. I’m going to find them…I’m going to kill them…”

  His words brew with anger, something I’ve seen so rarely in him. Meek and mild, Drum’s always had a shy disposition. The taunts from the youngsters have never riled him. His difficulty getting work has never caused him to shout or moan and curse his lot in life.

  He goes about his life quietly, a sweet giant who, even here, is often seen as an outcast. Yet now his words steam and rise, his chest echoing with heavy breaths and his words shaking the foundations of the room.

  I squeeze his forearm, my hands barely able to reach a quarter way round, and feel his muscle dancing. His eyes light up with sparks of revenge, a desire that so many people in this city keep.

  His threats, I know, are idle. There’s nothing he can do. Yet he repeats them again and again, venting and purging his body of so much pent up rage.

  I make soothing noises and nothing more. “Shhhhh,” I whisper, calming his wrath, my soft voice slowly working to relax him again.

  Eventually, as his words deflate his body goes with them. He hunches lower, and his chin dips to his chest, and I lay my arm across his undulating back as our guardian did.

  I want to wrap
him up, pull him into a hug like I could with Abby. Not since he was a little boy have I been able to do so. Now, I can only give him half hugs, my arms stretching to his sides but never any further.

  For a while longer, I sit with him, the night beginning to grow late. Only after some time does he change his focus, his dark eyes looking to my feet.

  “What happened to your feet?” he asks.

  His question brings them back to my mind. I look down to see that they’re still oozing blood, the left in particular, the temporary bandage of tissues I applied now soaked through and leaving red stains on the floor.

  “Don’t worry,” I say. “I lost my shoes in the city. Had to walk around barefoot.”

  His bushy brows crinkle.

  “You lost your shoes?”

  “It a long story.”

  “You’re bleeding a lot,” he says.

  He reaches down and wraps a giant hand around my left ankle, pulling the leg up onto his lap. I let him peel away the bandage, happy to distract him, if only momentarily, from his grief.

  When the last of the tissue has been removed, his face curls up into a look of pain.

  “Ouch,” he says, grimacing at the sight. “Does it hurt a lot?”

  “It’s OK,” I lie. “Are the cuts deep?”

  He peers closer.

  “One is,” he says, using a clean bit of tissue to mop up the blood. “You should go to Mrs Carmichael. I’ll be alright.”

  “Drum…are you sure?”

  He stabilises his emotions and looks at me with a weak smile.

  “I’m fine. I’ll…I’ll be fine.”

  “OK,” I whisper.

  I begin standing to my feet. The touch of my now exposed sole to the floor sends a sharp strike of pain through my foot and up my leg.

  I’m unable to hide it.

  “Right…you can’t walk,” says Drum, stiffening his voice and standing above me.

  “It’s fine,” I say, trying my best to stop from grimacing.

  “You’re not, Brie,” he tells me, taking charge in a rare twist.

  With the ease of an adult scooping up a toddler, he lifts me into his arms and begins marching to the door. It’s an odd sensation, being carried so easily and swiftly, Drum’s heavy body swaying and pounding as he moves along the corridor, up the stairs, and right down towards Mrs Carmichael’s room on the second floor.

  He knocks by way of his boot, and our guardian appears. Along with the customary cloud of smoke.

  “Her foot, Mrs Carmichael,” says Drum.

  Her eyes drop to my dripping sole.

  “That looks nasty,” she says. “Thank you, Drum. Bring her in and set her down. I’ll take it from here.”

  He does so, depositing me into a chair in front of her desk, and moving another into position for my leg to lay on. Then he leaves, marching off down the corridor and back to the fresh solitude of his room.

  “Poor boy,” says Mrs Carmichael, watching him go as her door slowly draws itself shut. Her lingering stare moves to my foot, and she takes a closer look.

  After a quick inspection, she moves to a corner of her office and begins searching around for her medical kit. Having had to deal with various cuts and scrapes and minor wounds over the years, she’s become a skilled practitioner at cleaning and even sewing up such gashes.

  Unfortunately, she uses older methods, and not the medical staplers that the official medics and doctors of the city have access to. The wonky scars that some of the children here bear are testament to her proficient, if inaccurate, methods of stitching wounds.

  The process also takes longer, drawing out the pain. I set myself up for an uncomfortable half hour.

  And so she begins, wiping away the blood before working her magic. And as she does so, the questions come, and I finally provide an actual answer as to how I got myself into such a state.

  I lay it all out, leaving nothing behind. I know that Lady Orlando wanted me to feed Mrs Carmichael only the bare minimum of details, but frankly, her advice no longer plays a part of my decisions.

  She never told me that Adryan was a Savant. She never said I’d have to get married – although, admittedly, that one was partially assumed. But most of all, she never told me about my true purpose.

  That I’m to become a killer.

  That the responsibility to end a war before it escalates sits firmly on my shoulders. That my part in this isn’t to be a spy, but an assassin. And, most likely, that my mission carries with it the firm likelihood of capture and death.

  She conveniently left all of that out, and so I no longer feel compelled to heed her words.

  And tomorrow, when the sun rises on a new day, I’m going to continue my quest for answers.

  45

  Mrs Carmichael does a good job on my feet, the left in particular. I go to bed that night with the major cut sewn up and the rest covered in a healthy helping of healing lotion. Bandaged tight, they’re sore as I limp to my room, but feel far better the following morning.

  As has become the recent custom, I find Tess’s bed empty. She’s been so keen to avoid me recently that she’s actually volunteered to go back to work, working all hours under the sun and many under the moon as well, if she can get them.

  The brief respite of the previous night won’t last. I know that full well. Of course, there’s a deep affection between us, and that will never change. I saw it in her eyes, in the relief they showed when I walked down that corridor and pulled her into a hug.

  She’s my sister, and I’m hers. And it’ll stay like that until the day we die.

  Yet this rough patch looks set to continue. And for that I have no choice. Bringing Mrs Carmichael into the fold is bad enough. The more she knows, the more dangerous things might be.

  I won’t put Tess in the same position, even though it’s killing me that I can’t tell her the truth.

  Like with the previous few days, I wake with a dull headache that seems like it won’t ever go away. Perhaps this is a symptom of being a Mind-Manipulator. Perhaps it’s merely a burden I’m going to have to bear for the rest of my life.

  I suppose I wouldn’t be surprised about that, or the fact that Zander never told me. If Lady Orlando is at fault for keeping me in the dark, then my dear brother is just as guilty.

  Truth be told, the one person I trust on that side of the fence right now is actually Adryan. At least he had the guts to lay it all out to me, rather than drip-feeding me everything.

  I never would have thought I’d say that about a Savant. But there you go. Times are changing.

  My eyes are, mercifully, having less difficulty than my head. It only appears to be really bright lights that now cause much discomfort, especially if they come after spending a period of time in the dark.

  That just leaves my muscles, which still ache and have yet to be properly tested. I feel like every single one of them, even ones I didn’t know I had, have gone through a rigorous exercise routine and are praying for mercy. Yet still, they feel better than they did the previous couple of days, so I’m heading in the right direction.

  Most aggravating about all of this, however, isn’t the physical discomfort that comes with my changing body, but the fact that I’m stuck here waiting for my next assignment.

  I’ve got Zander creeping about and having Abby send me secret messages. I’ve got Adryan sending postal drones to my door by way of the Council of Matrimony. All I can do is sit here and twiddle my thumbs and await further orders.

  It’s infuriating.

  However, I do have one possible avenue out of here.

  The thought strikes that, maybe, I could go to the shelter in district 6 and fiddle around for the secret lock. I could then go down the tunnels and try to work my way north until I manage to get outside of the city. Right into the heart of the little town where Lady Orlando and the Nameless appear to have set up their secret headquarters.

  Then again, if the Stalkers and the powers-that-be in Inner Haven have been unable to track down
their secret routes, what chance do I have? I could get lost down there in that endless maze, end up wandering around for weeks trying to find them. And even then, my chances would be slim.

  No, that won’t work at all.

  But there is a better way…

  In the quiet of my room, I shut my eyes and forget the dull ache in my head. I think of Zander, of his bright hazel eyes and wavy brown hair, and let my head fill with five words, running on repeat.

  I need to see you.

  I say the words over and over again until I lose track of time. I focus harder and picture Zander’s face more clearly, and refuse to stop until I get a response.

  And then, it comes.

  Far away, like a distant echo in my head, I hear him calling out.

  The waterfall. Come to the waterfall. Wait for nightfall…

  It’s all I need to hear. I draw back, moving outwards through the spiral of my mind, and emerge suddenly back into the room. For a few seconds I feel dizzy. Then a strange smile drips onto my lips.

  And my fists begin to clench with a feeling of power.

  Despite everything, I can’t help but enjoy these gifts I’ve been given. My telescopic vision. My supersonic speed. My ability to communicate through the depths of my mind.

  I think of Abby and her ancient comic books. Fictional heroes with strange and wondrous powers, doing good and saving the world. Like so many young kids, she’s fascinated by it all, wishing she was capable of such feats herself.

  I was never captivated like she is. And yet, now that I’ve begun to develop these strange abilities, I feel more alive than ever.

  The evening can’t come quick enough. The afternoon ticks by with a plodding lack of pace.

  I spend my time loitering around the academy, the atmosphere across each floor and in each room heavy with a sense of misery and grief. Talk of Fred and Ziggy’s funeral begins to form, their bodies taken to a local crematorium and waiting to be burnt.

  Here, the custom is for such things to happen quickly. As with the last attack the bells will toll on a regular basis once more, ringing out over the city as it mourns the dead.

  I speak with Mrs Carmichael, tasked with arranging such things. She tells me it’ll be a small affair – as all funerals are - and, if any of the kids at the academy want to come, they are welcome to do so.