Outlier: Rebellion (16 page)

She hops off, the conversation over at once, apparently, and she coolly strolls out of the room. It is so sudden, Halves can only watch her in a half-smiling daze, unsure whether to be ashamed that he’d said something wrong, or proud that he’d said something so right-on to inspire such a reaction. The good and evil in one man, in one woman, a constant war of right and wrong … of do this or do that. Kiss, don’t kiss. Kill, don’t kill.
Two answers.
Halves, the judge of death and of life today in one little moment.

He smiles victoriously, unsure to which side—right or wrong, good or bad—he owes the victory.

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Link

Link picks at his hands, the clock above the teacher’s head stealing all his attention. He couldn’t say what today’s lesson is, for the whole world is that clock, and the time, and the ticking, ticking, ticking.

He’s pulled back a nail so far it bleeds—He winces, but still his eyes stay glued to the tick, tick, tick.

His ears, his heartbeat …
tick, tick, tick
…

At lunch hour, he eats in a tree up high to avoid the wrath of Tide and, instead, make mind of another Wrath entirely. The Wrath … He cannot face them, not anymore. He’d lost all that money on his last mission. How could he show up empty-handed now, after such a pathetic blunder?

And to a little girl … All that Sanctum rich, to a dumb girl in the waterway. The anger fills him like fire, and when he peers down at his sandwich, finds he’s turned the whole thing pink. Pink, they’ll always call him, because even his Legacy is a failure. Only with great concentration to the point of forehead veins popping can he manage other colors, and even then … a pale green, a stain of fuchsia, sickly orange hues … and when all he’s thinking is red, red, his heart pumping black, black …

Tide is grinning from the attention of three giggling girls who worship him. Such a pity, that good looks and a body sculpted from marble go wasted to a person with no honor inside. Link tosses his sandwich away, pink and all, casts it to the birds and the insects.
I will never lose my honor,
he thinks, but a certain memory of some quiet sanctuary and the red spilled over walls and stone and child explodes in his gut, threatening to eject the little lunch he just had, and he considers whether he’s any honor … any honor at all to lose himself.

Later when he gets home, his brother Wick is on the couch, practically cuddling a dirty pile of clothes and towels. When Link asks what’s wrong with him, Wick just shrugs and excuses himself upstairs, shutting the door to his room and locking it. Link isn’t dumb; he knows there’s been something up with his brother, but can’t pry, as there’s a thing up with Link just as well. Cleverly hiding behind the strap of his book bag a gash that traces halfway up his arm—still there from weeks ago when he fell from the train—he tells his mom he needs to stargaze on the roof for a school project later and might relocate to neighbors’ roofs too, but should be back in a few hours. Oblivious to the streak of mud across her forehead, she tells him simply to be careful and kisses his cheek softly. He knows she hates her job, but he likes how she looks, thinking the random smudges and marks of dirt on her face and arms look cool.
Wear it proud
, he thinks as he gathers up a bag, leaves the house and takes off into the city.

But not before swinging by dad’s metalshop to procure a very, very sharp item. He will make sure to be prepared this time. He’s determined as ever …

Determined to find that stupid girl thief.

The area where long ago he’d crawled out of the waterways at last—after over three-and-a-half hours of tumbling tiredly through mazes of corridors and tunnels and rivers—yields no sign of the girl. Determination and anger fueled him to set off on this task, but only doubt fills his belly now. How can he possibly think to find the little stealer after so much time? He should’ve set out sooner … She could be halfway across the city by now, held up in some safe, cuddly house in the Hightowers, or some corner of the undercity rivers. Wherever the thief is, she’s a whole bag of Sanctum-caliber riches heavier, and when the night is ended, he will have reclaimed his prize. He will reclaim it if he takes a life or two doing it.

And just as Link rounds the corner of a bakery, three shadows emerge from behind, from in front, from above. He slaps himself against the alley wall, brandishes his very sharp thing, trembling all over like a cat.

“Hello, little Link,” says the front shadow, and when the figure steps into moonlight, Dran’s inky-eyed face appears. “Far away from home, little Link. What’s dared you to come to this quarter?—at this hour?”

“I …” He swallows once, the sharp thing slips from his hand and hits the ground with an ear-aching clang. He doesn’t pick it back up. “I was … I had been stolen from, taken from. The night I fell from the train, I—”

“You fell from the train?” Dran’s eyes flare, he turns to the other shadows—other Wrath—face to face he turns, gathering their disbelief, then returning his gaze to Link’s still-trembling face. “How ever did you fall from a moving train and not die an awful death, little Linker?”

“The waterways broke my fall,” he explains, and he doesn’t care how his voice shakes, how beads of sweat find his brow; he just wants Dran and the gang to believe him. “I fell into a bayou below, and it carried me to the waterways, the undercity rivers. And it was there that I … that I met in with the thief who … who had a knife. And he … he nearly cut out my left eye. I fought him, I did.” Link’s eyes quiver, squint, squeeze, determined to keep any sign of his lying from Dran and his soul-carving shadow stare. “But I wasn’t quick enough and he made with the money I stole. It was eight-hundred Sanctum. True gold. I came out, determined to find the … the thief and teach him the price of … the price of …”

“The price of wrath,” Dran finishes for him. “Yes, Link, and I think we will help find your thief.”

He’s taken aback, hope gripping his throat just as tightly as doubt had a moment ago. “Y-You will?”

“We will.”

The shadows coalesce, all eight of The Wrath, and in a band that slithers not unlike a black poison cloud, they make way through alleys, over fences and up walls and down again, through stair and tunnel and brick until before them rises a mighty house that Link has never laid eyes on. This must be the stuff of sixth ward Hightowers, a speck of rich in the dense of slum.

“This is where my thief is?” asks Link, nearly falling over from the magnitude of the property. “But … But how did you—”

“We already have a way in, too,” murmurs Dran. “Are you ready to right the one who wronged you?”

“Yes,” he answers instantly.

Link is led around the house to the back gate, which is easily picked and thrust open noiselessly. “It’s your mission, little Link. Make it fly. Make it fly, Linker … We follow
you
now, but a word of advice: Beware the hounds … I hear no amount of meat sates them.”

“Hounds don’t scare me.” Of course, Link’s plenty else to be scared of without hounds added in; there’s really no sense in lying about it, but he does.

And then he hears the click of metal behind him.

He turns. The shadows at his back are gone, all The Wrath. “Dran?” he whispers, alarmed.

And that’s when the sirens go off. Like digital monsters screeching across the sky and cutting deep into his gut, the sirens scream the likeness of a banshee’s cry so potently Link nearly thinks the King himself has come to claim his life.

“Guys! The house alarm!” he cries out, racing for the gate … only to find it’s been shut and blocked from the outside, barring his way out.

Even this late in the game, it only now dawns on poor Link what The Wrath have done to him: the setting up … the fake condolence … the leading him here and letting him lead; he’s walked himself right into a trap.

Dran … He set me up … Set me up to be caught.

The six rattling barks of hounds echo over the grass and stone of the rich man’s landscape, sending six very unwanted chills up Link’s whole.

Or eaten.

Tearing across the lawn, he aims for the first tree he sees, a tall knobby thing that kisses the west side of the mansion. With astounding speed and grace blessing his feet, he carries himself all the way up the tree and onto the roof in seconds. The hounds bark and growl and spit from below, circling, yapping. Link hurries across the roof, losing his footing only twice and nearly offering himself as lunch to the hungry canine jaws so far below. At the far edge of the roof, he realizes there’s nowhere left to go—no tree to leap into, no lower roof to hop down on, no easy wall to scale. The spider’s been sewn into his own web, peering over the edge of the roof, hounds yapping ceaselessly below. The whole of the world must be gazing out their windows now, searching for the commotion. The heavy demon of dread snakes up his body, finds a tight spot to live right up in his chest.

When he sees Guardian appearing at the front of the house, the tears start to hit his eyes. He slaps his own face, refusing to cry.
Shut up, shut up
, Link urges, angry, hands twisting to fists.
Shut up, shut up and think, think, think. Shye, thief renowned, the unseeing, the phantom of hands.
Link doubles back, peers over another edge of the house, spots a very ridiculous opportunity: If he slides down the roof here, hops to the grass and bolts for the east fence, he could make it. That will lead him close enough to the train, he could be home in an hour tops. Assuming he can outrun hungry hounds … and assuming they aren’t already suspect to his plan, preparing with snapping saliva-flicking mouths below.

Run
, he tells himself, slapping his face again, flashing his eyes.
Quick like Shye … Run, run, run. Now!

Sliding the length of two stories, he rides the roof to its lowest, then springs to the lawn like an acrobat, but doesn’t land as one, a lawn table gracelessly breaking his fall. Aching terribly, he gains balance and limps toward the fence, his lifeline, his survival, his seeing mom again, his seeing his brothers, oh, how he loves them, how he loves them so much … but he won’t make it.

The hounds bark, spotting him, and tear across the grass. He won’t make it. Limping, hopping, pressing on toward the fence in agony …
Quick like Shye.

He spots the tool shed like it weren’t there until now.

Against the pain, he pushes foot against foot into the ground, forgetting to limp, and slides shut the metal doors behind him just in time for the hounds to bang against it, the excruciating sound of claws against metal and wet, snapping teeth raging around him, haunting. In the scattered darkness, Link pants and wheezes, tears squeezing out his chest and his face and his fists. He scurries into a corner, discouraged by the fact that there’s so little in this shed … nothing to hide behind.

He grabs hold of a hand-spade, prays he doesn’t have to use it, prays to the silly Three Goddess, to anything that will listen.
I don’t want to kill anyone
, he decides right then.
I can’t. I’m not The Wrath. I don’t belong. They’re animals, monsters … Shye was no monster. I am no monster.
The dogs growling and squeaking and shrieking, he realizes he can’t kill a dog either.

Please don’t make me,
he begs, not knowing who he begs.
Please, please, please ...
He grips the hand-spade tighter, his chest shaking with silent, lip-clenched sobs.

Please.

And so he knows his fate, accepted or not. Even if the dogs cannot get in, either the owner will find him or Guardian will. Then, if he’s not mercifully fed to the dogs, he will be taken from his family forever, shipped to the lords in the sky and sentenced to die, or live in a cell until he dies. Either way, he’s dead, died, even now, dying as he waits for his fate to catch up.
Goodbye mom, goodbye dad, goodbye Wick, goodbye Lionis, good—

He doesn’t have time to say all his brothers’ names before the shed doors are yanked open, light spilling in.

Link peers up defenselessly, nothing more to say or do. His eyes adjust to find a man standing there squinting, brow furrowed, he gazes around the shed as if looking for something.

But Link … Link is right there, right there before his eyes. Why doesn’t the man see him?

“No one in here,” says the man, annoyed. “False alarm, call off your mutts.” And just as fast, slides the doors shut, the metal echoing cold and empty.

Link drops jaw, unable to comprehend. How could the man not have seen him? Is the man blind? He was sitting in plain sight wielding a hand-spade for a weapon.

“You’re welcome,” she says.

Link nearly jumps out of his clothes, scrambling away from the girl who’s suddenly at his side. He points the tiny spade at her, the whole of him shivering with fear until he, with mounting confusion, emotion, and wonder by the second, realizes who the girl is.

“They—They couldn’t see me because of you?” he whispers into the dusty dark.

The girl, her dirty braids and tattered clothes half-lit by fissures in the metal roof where moonlight spills in, sits there with her tiny mouth locked. Link is equal parts disgusted and in awe of her, his grudge forgotten entirely.

“I’m not gonna hurt you,” he decides, unsure why. “I’m … not even mad you stole from me. I just—”

“I stealed things,” she says, her tongue working into more words than it ought to. “To keep the hungers away.”

Link listens for a moment, ear to the door, ensuring there are no more men or hounds nearby. “Where you from?” he finally asks, voice barely over a whisper.

“The burbs by the Wall … at the far edge a’ city. Ever been there?” She smiles, flashing two tiny spaces where teeth should be. Link shakes his head. “Be careful,” she warns him. “There’s a place where people are taked to, and people in robes try to stealed their Legnases from them.” Link tries to correct her, annoyed by her broken language and mispronunciations, but she ignores him. “I maked a friend once, but the mask men taked him too. They take everyone away, every friend I make …”