Guardian (19 page)

KASPAR MAES, THE MOST
dangerous man in Mountain City, could not lift his head.

The gang lord lay entombed in lux blankets and pillows on a grand bed in the center of what had been a giant conference room running almost the entire width of the building. He was surrounded by armed teenaged guards. His hair had fallen out unevenly, his eyes were milky white, and his skin sagged off his jagged skull, like wax melting off steel. The veins through his skin were knobby and twisted. Their throbbing was visible from across the room.

“Mr. Maes,” Syd began, trying the humble approach. “We’ve come to make a business arrangement with you. I believe we can cure this spreading sickness and I would be glad to explain how . . . if we were to become partners.”

The dead-eyed gang lord wheezed.

“He can’t even hear you,” a little boy said, stepping from behind the legs of the older boys standing around the bed. He stood no higher than Syd’s hips. He wore shining silver pajamas and a flowing golden robe of the most lux fabric Syd had ever seen. Cheyenne gasped when she saw it, and Marie stiffened, still unsettled by the persistence of luxury in the world she had tried to remake without it. The boy’s bright blue eyes looked Syd up and down, and his coils of blond hair, arranged in neat dreadlocks, swished as he approached. He couldn’t have been older than eight, but he moved with the self-assurance of an adult who was used to obedience from everyone he met. “Grandpapa is blind and deaf and dumb,” the boy said.

“You’re—?” Syd began.

“Krystof Maes,” one of the guards snapped at Syd. “And you will show him respect when you address him!”

Syd looked from the guard to the little boy. “Respect is too valuable a resource to be given away to strangers for free,” he said. “It has to be earned by friends.”

The boy smirked. “You’re the one they call Yovel.”

Syd nodded.

“You used to be called Syd.”

“I still am,” he said. “By my friends.”

“I will call you Syd.”

“I’d like that.” Syd smiled.

“But we will
not
be friends,” the boy added and turned away, walking back toward the bed.

“We won’t?” Syd moved to follow him, but the guards raised their weapons.

“You aren’t the kind of friend I’d like,” said Krystof Maes.

“But you don’t know me.”

“Grandpapa told me all about you.” The boy hoisted himself on the bed, flopping across his grandfather’s legs without a thought to the agony he caused. Kaspar Maes lifted an arm, but could hardly move to shoo the boy off him. “He’d tried to kill you before you could ruin everything, but that didn’t work. And then you became his enemy.”

“But I’m not
your
enemy,” said Syd. He felt like a fool, arguing with the child. His voice had gone up a register, squeaking on the word “enemy.” He never really knew how to talk to children. He wasn’t sure if he should coo at them or scold them. He certainly had no idea how to talk to children who commanded armies of criminals and who held his life and the lives of everyone on the continent in their tiny, sticky hands. Should he tell a fairy story or something? Did he even know any? He remembered one, about a frog and a princess and an unpayable debt. It probably wasn’t the time for stories.

“Do you want to hear a story?” Krystof asked.

“Uh . . .”

“We’d love to,” said Marie, making her voice sound as nurturing as it could. Which wasn’t very nurturing at all.

“It’s about a group of people who came all the way here after my grandpapa told them never to come to his part of the city.” The boy grinned at Cheyenne. “Do you know what happened to them?”

“We came here to—” Nine said, but the little boy cut him off with a piercing, high-pitched shout.

“SHUT UP! I’M TALKING!” He made a quick flick of his wrist and one of his guards fired a bolt. It cracked through the air as the spring released and, before Nine could even close his mouth, it had passed through his throat.

Nine dropped to the floor, gagging, bleeding. Cheyenne dropped to her knees beside him, held him as he gasped and choked his final breaths. It didn’t take long.

“You—” Cheyenne shouted at Krystof, but Syd yanked her to her feet and held her close at his side as her faithful follower, her old friend who was not even old enough to grow a mustache, lay dead below her. Syd pictured Nine before, months ago, laughing with Knox, dancing at the club. He didn’t look down at the body.

“We are very sorry to interrupt,” said Syd, fighting the urge to scream. The little boy had a temper and, if they had any hope of getting out of there alive, of saving everyone else’s life, the boy had to be humored. He had to be appeased. There would be time to grieve later.

Cheyenne gritted her teeth, fought back her own tears. Syd knew she wanted revenge. In murderous times, even little boys had to pay for their crimes.

“Please,” Cheyenne forced herself to say, “tell us. What happened to them?”

“I will.” The boy nodded. “But only because I want to tell you, not because you asked. They all got thrown out the window.” He laughed and jumped to his feet, twirling in a circle and making falling noises.

Marie’s hands moved toward the bolt gun on her waist and the flare strapped to her back, but Syd met her eyes, shook his head a tiny bit.

He mouthed the word “no.” They’d be dead in seconds if she tried to move for her weapon. And it was too soon to send the signal. Syd wasn’t ready to be rescued just yet. He was sure he could get them through this himself. He had to get them through this himself.

“I heard that story with a different ending,” Syd said. “I heard they had a good time together with a very smart young man and helped him make his grandpapa feel better.”

The boy stopped twirling.

“You can make him better?”

Syd nodded.

“How?”

“We need tech. We need transmitters and processors and control consoles. We need to build a machine to restart the . . .” Syd couldn’t find the word. There was a blank spot where his tongue reached for it.

“Network.” The boy finished his sentence. “I know that word. I’m smart.”

“Yes. Network,” said Syd, his tongue unlocked again. “You are smart. If we can work together, I bet we can build a network and get everyone’s datastream back and I bet that would make your grandpapa feel better.”

“You bet? You don’t know?” The boy frowned.

“I only bet when I
do
know,” said Syd.

Suddenly, the boy smiled. “I like to bet!”

“Good.” Syd nodded, smiling with him. “So let’s bet together that this will work!”

“No.” The boy shook his head. “I have a different bet for you.”

He weaved in and out between his guards. All of them struggled to ignore him bumping into their legs as they kept their weapons trained on Syd, Marie, and Cheyenne.

“If you win, you get all the tech you want!” Krystof declared.

“And if I lose?”

“I watch you get thrown out the window!” The boy made the falling noise again and acted it out with his fingers, Syd plummeting, his legs kicking. The boy made the sound of a scream, then spread out all his fingers. He looked at Syd. “Splat.”

Syd took a deep breath. He wanted to throttle the kid. He could picture Liam’s metal fist smashing the boy’s skull. The thought gave him pleasure. He exhaled slowly to steady himself. He wasn’t feeling well. His thoughts jumbled. His blood chafed inside him. He had to get out of here. “What’s the bet? What do I have to do?”

“Fight,” said the boy. “You have to win a fight.”

Syd looked at the line of teenagers guarding Krystof Maes. Some were bigger than Syd, some weren’t. He was sick, but so were they. The boy was sick too; he just didn’t know it yet.

Syd wasn’t a stranger to fighting. A guy like him from a place like he was from . . . he’d grown up fighting. Some of the guys he’d fought had even worked for Maes. He didn’t always win, but he never lost bad enough that he couldn’t walk away. He figured his odds weren’t terrible here. He knew how to fight dirty and he wasn’t afraid to do it. It wasn’t like he had much of a choice.

“One on one?” Syd asked.

The boy smirked. “Sure.”

Syd looked down the line of guards once more. He’d already sized most of them up, identified strengths and weaknesses in each one as best he could. It was a rule of thumb for growing up the way he had: Be humble, be polite, and be prepared to fight with everyone you meet.

“Fine,” Syd agreed. “Who’s it gonna be?”

The boy giggled. “Him.” Krystof pointed to a small door on the side of the office. It opened to what must have once been a conference room. The doorway was empty. “I said
him
!” the boy repeated with a shout.

“Sorry, boss,” someone called from inside the other room and then shoved Syd’s opponent through the door.

Liam.

And he’d had the hell beaten out of him already.

LIAM STUMBLED AS THEY
shoved him into the room. They had tied his hands behind his back. A cut above his eyebrow dribbled blood down the side of his face, and his lip and cheek were swollen. His shirt had been torn from the collar to the shoulder, and the redness of his chest would turn to black and blue and brown soon enough. There was a cut across his tattoo, like someone had crossed the word out with a blade. It wept red.

“We took care of his friends,” the guard who shoved Liam announced. “All of them.”

Cheyenne cocked her head to the side, raised an eyebrow, like she’d just heard an intriguing new idea and was considering its merits, weighing the pros and cons. She made a tiny, high-pitched whine and then she simply sat down beside Nine’s body, resting her fingers on the back of his head, running her fingers through his hair. She didn’t make another sound.

Everyone had a breaking point. Cheyenne had finally reached hers.

Syd let her be. He couldn’t comfort her and he couldn’t apologize. Those were her followers he’d led to the slaughter, most of them no older than he was. In fact, most of them were much younger. But there were others, still alive, thousands of others, and they were all counting on him now.

Liam looked at Syd. He wanted to say something but there were no words here. Liam knew he’d failed, catastrophically. The Maes boys had swarmed the hovercraft as soon as it settled on a nearby street, like they had known he was coming. There had been too many of them; they’d moved too fast and they were too well armed.

“How?” Syd began, but Gianna stepped into the room through the same small door. She was not a prisoner.

“I couldn’t let you just walk away without compensation,” she said. She looked at Cheyenne. “That’s not our way. I will be paid.”

Cheyenne clenched her fists, but looked at the bolt guns and didn’t move.

“You’re only killing yourself,” Syd told Gianna.

Gianna shrugged. “I did what I did.”

“I’m sorry,” Liam finally mustered, speaking only to Syd. The rest of the world could be damned for all he cared, but he needed Syd’s forgiveness. Of course, Syd had been right to keep Liam at a distance, to tell him to forget his feelings. He should have listened to Syd and killed any part of himself that was tender, that was loving, that could imagine a better life, together, for the two of them. That wasn’t the world they lived in.

He couldn’t shut off those feelings, but he hoped, against all the hope he’d felt before, that Syd felt nothing good for him now. It would make this easier. Liam knew the terms of the bet Syd had just made, and he was glad for them.

Syd was going to win this fight.

Liam had been a soldier since he was old enough to lift a weapon. He didn’t fear dying and, in this case, he knew he deserved it. He was glad it would be Syd to do it. Those dark, sad eyes would be the last ones he ever saw. He knew Syd had killed someone once before, out of anger, but it hadn’t made him a killer. He hoped Syd could do it again. He hoped in doing it, he wouldn’t kill the part of himself that Liam treasured.

“Untie him,” Krystof Maes ordered, and Liam’s hands were untied. “Now if you try anything, big boy, we’ll shoot everybody down and toss your bodies out of the window, okay? I want you two to fight each other.”

Liam stood at attention and looked at Syd. Syd just stared back at him in disbelief.

“Fight each other!” the little boy shrieked. “If you don’t—”

“Hit me,” said Liam.

“I won’t do this,” said Syd.

“Then you won’t get your machine parts,” the boy said. “And you’ll all die. You have to do it. I said so and you promised!”

A guard shoved Liam forward into the open floor at the center of the room. Syd stepped up to him.

“Go!” the little boy yelled.

“Hit me,” said Liam. “You have to hit me.”

“I’m bored!” the little boy whined. “This is boring.”

“Do it.” Liam shoved Syd’s shoulder with his good hand. He kept the metal one lowered at his side.

Syd raised his fists, but he didn’t throw a punch. How could he fight Liam? Liam had protected Syd, had confessed his feelings for Syd, had stood at Syd’s side even when Syd tried to push him away. Even now, he understood the look on Liam’s face. Liam was going to give his life for Syd’s, just like Knox had. Syd couldn’t bear it. Not another life. Not again.

“I can’t,” he choked out.

“You can,” Liam whispered. “Please.”

“Boooooring!” Krystof shouted. He turned to signal his guards.

Liam shoved Syd again, hard. “You will!” He kicked Syd in the shin.

Syd stumbled, but didn’t fall. He didn’t retaliate.

“You hate me,” said Liam, pushing him again. “I know you hate me.” He flexed his metal hand, but fired a half-powered jab at Syd’s stomach with his good hand. It would hurt, but not very badly.

Syd didn’t block. He grunted at the punch. He would not kill Liam for this boy’s amusement. The world, the murderous disaster of a world he’d made, would not unmake him. He knew who he was. He refused to turn into something else.

Liam saw it on Syd’s face. Syd wasn’t going to do it.

Liam was going to make him.

“Are you glitched?’ Liam shouted. He swung an uppercut with his good hand, catching Syd across the chin. He had to make Syd mad. He had to draw some blood. The little warlord was going to lose patience. Liam had to protect Syd. He punched Syd again in the stomach. “You know I watched you all the time?” Liam grunted. “I watched you sleep. I went through your things. I saw when you cried for poor dead Knox.” He stomped on Syd’s foot, and put him in a headlock.

He hoped Krystof Maes was entertained. Syd still wasn’t fighting back.

Liam twirled Syd around and yanked him up by his shirt, lifting his feet off the ground with one arm and held him there, free fist clenched, their faces just inches apart, so close Liam could kiss him.

Liam couldn’t kiss him.

He tossed Syd onto his back on the ground.

“If you won’t fight for yourself, why even live?” Liam kicked him in the ribs. Syd just lay there. Liam kicked him again, willing him to get up, to fight back. To make Liam stop. Every kick was killing Liam, but to stop would kill Syd faster.

“You stopped living after Knox died,” Liam grunted at him. “I know you cried like a baby every night in your room. Cried for a dead boy who never could’ve loved you the way I could. Who never would’ve.”

Syd looked up at Liam, seventeen years of regret written in his eyes and Liam knew he had to hit him again.

Amazing how the loss of a hand wasn’t the worst pain a person could feel.

Another kick.

Please, Syd,
he thought.
Get up. Make me stop.

“Knox died to escape his own guilt.” Kick. “He didn’t die for you.” Kick. “You’re fooling yourself.” Kick.

Please.

Liam glanced at the little boy watching them, his chin resting on his hand. He still looked bored.

Liam bent down and lifted Syd off the ground by his shoulders, rushed him across the room and body slammed him against the floor-to-ceiling window. He felt a puff of air knocked from Syd’s lungs. He held Syd up there, pressed him against the window with a forearm against his chest, metal fist raised. He looked Syd in the eyes, nothing behind him through the plexi but dirty sky. The fist could punch the plexi out, send them both plummeting together 108 stories, arm in arm. The fist could crack Syd’s skull or crush his throat.

The fist was a lie. He wouldn’t do it. They both knew he wouldn’t.

Syd looked back at him, and Liam noticed that spark in his eyes, a peculiar fury that came to Syd when he’d made a choice. He wasn’t passive. He wasn’t playing dead. There was rage in those eyes. There was fight in those eyes. The fight wasn’t with Liam.

“Well? Finish him, then,” Krystof Maes said, and then sighed. “This is dumb.”

Liam’s fist drew back. The light through the window glinted off it.

“You think Knox would’ve died if he knew you’d live like this?” Liam said. “You might as well be dead . . .”

Sometimes the best way to cover a lie was with a truth.

“I would’ve done anything for you,” Liam whispered. “And I still will.”

His fist flew forward. Syd’s head twisted, dodged out of the way and the metal fist smashed into the window, shattering a spiderweb into the plexi. Syd dove to the ground and rolled away, popping up to his feet, hands balled in fists.

Krystof Maes cheered. He didn’t care who won. He just wanted some good old-fashioned blood sport.

Liam charged Syd, swinging.

Syd was faster than the big bodyguard. He dodged to the left and delivered two snapping jabs into Liam’s side. He spun around him and kicked Liam forward from behind.

Off balance, Liam stumbled into a line of guards, who caught him and shoved him back into the center of the room, where Syd was waiting, rushing forward. Liam didn’t have time to block or to dodge. Syd punched him across the face, sent him sprawling back again into the guards. They caught Liam again. He’d been dazed, lost his balance, and Syd rushed at him, ready to deliver another devastating punch to Liam’s head.

Krystof Maes cheered. “Hold him up,” he ordered the guards.

They lifted Liam up. He was heavy and limp, and lifting him up took all of their hands.

That was their mistake.

Before any of them knew what was happening, Syd had turned his momentum away from Liam and spun his fist at the guard standing next to Krystof Maes. The punch dropped the guard onto the bed, on top of the frail body of the old man.

Before that guard had finished falling, Marie had her bolt gun up and fired into the shoulder of another one. He screamed and dove to the ground, crying out in surprise and pain.

Liam, not dazed at all, whirled around and knocked out all four guards holding him with a wide right punch and a perfectly placed head butt.

Cheyenne, with a scream of rage and vengeance, a goddess of fury reborn, charged across the floor, tackled Gianna. She savaged her with her fists and fingers, gouged and kicked, and when she was done, she turned on one of Maes’s henchmen, and then another, and another, sending them shrieking for safety.

Syd, by this point, had grabbed Krystof Maes in a choke hold.

“Put down your weapons and surrender!” he shouted. The guards who had not fled, those who were still standing, didn’t move. They looked to one another, unsure.

The little boy in Syd’s grip started crying. Sobbing. Kicking and screaming. “No no no no no no no!”

Syd held on.

The boy’s guards watched the temper tantrum dumbstruck. They lowered their weapons.

“You done yet?” Syd asked, his hold unrelenting.

The little boy whimpered. He squirmed. Finally, he gave up and nodded.

“I’ll kill him!” Cheyenne charged at the boy, her hands and face red with blood, none of it her own.

“Ahhh!” the boy screamed.

Syd spun and put his body between Cheyenne and the boy.

“No,” he said.

“He killed my people!” Cheyenne yelled. “He killed Nine!”

“And you have more people back at Arcadia that you need to protect,” Syd told her. “He can help us.”

“You need me!” the boy shouted.

“Where are the transmitters?” Syd asked him. “Where is your tech?”

“Downstairs,” the boy said. “It’s all just one floor down . . .” He looked over his shoulder at Cheyenne, who stood behind Syd, panting. She picked up a bolt gun that one of the guards had dropped. “Don’t let her hurt me!”

“Why shouldn’t I?” Syd spun around, so that the boy was facing Cheyenne again, directly in front of her. Cheyenne raised the bolt gun. The boy turned his head, twisted in Syd’s arms. Soiled himself. “You wanted me to kill my friend,” Syd told him. “And you killed
her
friends. Why should you live?”

“You’re . . . you’re Yovel,” the boy said. “The savior! You wouldn’t let her hurt me!”

“I’m just Syd,” Syd corrected him.

Cheyenne locked the spring back. The boy squealed.

“Stop it!” Liam said. “Enough!”

“He deserves it,” said Cheyenne.

“If everyone got what they deserved, where would that leave anyone?” Liam told her. He looked at Syd. “He’s just a child.”

“He’s a killer,” Syd said. The boy’s fingernails dug into his forearm.

Liam reached out and rested his metal hand on top of the boy’s tiny fingers, so he stopped clawing at Syd. Then Liam looked Syd in the eye. “So was I.”

“Was?” Syd asked.

“I’m trying to change,” said Liam. He eased the kid from Syd’s grip, turned him around, and squatted down in front of him. He pointed his finger in the boy’s face. “We’re not going to hurt you. You or your grandpapa. Just tell your guys to help us carry some of the tech down the stairs. We’re trying to save everyone. Even you. Get it?”

The boy nodded.

“Do it,” the boy ordered his guards. Those who were still able to move scrambled from the room, rushing down the stairs . . . 108 stories down and straight out of the building. The little boy didn’t know it, but they weren’t feeling well, and they had decided their employment was at an end. They wouldn’t be sticking around to help with anything.

Liam let go of the boy and stood. “You okay, Syd?”

Syd nodded.

“Marie?”

Marie nodded, even though the blood in her veins felt like acid. She wanted to scream. Instead, she bit the insides of her cheeks.

“Okay,” said Liam. “Let’s go build ourselves a machine.”

And they would’ve, if at that moment, the plexi window behind them hadn’t shattered open to the sky.

A hovercraft rose in front of it, spun around, and dropped its rear hatch, settling it on the tile of the 108th floor.

Cousin strolled down the ramp with a squadron of Purifiers at his side and a small orb in his hand, glowing in his delicate fingers.

“Oh yes.” Cousin’s smooth face bent into a smile as he tracked Liam’s glance at the orb. “It is a bomb and it is armed.”