Outlier: Rebellion (42 page)

“Wick, you with us?”

He looks up, blinking away his thoughts—
everything is like a dream, I could be dreaming, I might flinch and wake up with dad pointing a sword in my face
—and says, “Yeah.”

“There’s a subterranean rail,” Rone is saying, “that can run us straight to the wrong end of tenth, but that’ll still save us several hours. Then we move through ten to headquarters.”

“My back still glows,” mumbles Tide, the sulkiest, dumbest, most useless human being to ever come from ninth. And there’ve been plenty.

“We’ll cover it as best as we can. Just like we have to cover Wick’s arm. Both of you are vulnerable, no matter how many less Guardian might be out there now. I doubt 100% of them have been relocated to the Core.”

Athan leans in, his tight blue shirt stretching. “Sorry, but what’s the Core?”

“The sort-of center of Atlas,” answers Rone, “where near fifty or so of the Lifted City pylons are said to be. It’s also rumored to be where the lifts and the stairs and the—whatever, however one gets from the slums to the Lifted City. It’s still a bit frustratingly unknown, even to us.” He squints, seems to consider Athan for a bit. “Y’know, ever since the fall of the last Queen when all those rebels made their way into the Lifted City, nothing’s been the same. There is no more known way up there. The trust’s broken.”

Athan nods slowly, drawn into thought.
Yeah,
thinks Wick, studying him too.
You’re stuck down here forever, Sanctum boy.
Of course, that isn’t true; the Marshals make constant journey back and forth from Cloud Keep itself, as do a rare Privileged now and then. There is obviously a way between the worlds, but no one knows of it. And likely those who do keep dutifully quiet.

“I’ve eaten my fill,” says Victra. “Get over here, you big clob. I’ll bind your shoulder best as I can.” She pulls Tide into the bathroom while he makes snide grumbles about wanting to kill everyone and everything.

“No amount of anything’s gonna bind that.” Wick sneers, filled up to the nose with bitterness. Even the pair of dishcloths they found under the kitchen sink barely conceal the scrape of pink light on Wick’s own arms. They have no hope in the world of hiding Tide’s beacon.

“Wick, you alright?” Athan asks so quietly, though he’s sure everyone’s heard. Wick rolls his eyes, impatient, irritable with anything that moves or talks or whispers. Even beautiful boys from the Lifted City. Nothing at all in the world is more important than putting his face into a pillow right now.

He leans into the counter, shoves his face into a pair of hands. Maybe they’re his own. He doesn’t know.

A world without a screaming King …
“I’m so tired of being asked if I’m okay,” groans Wick, the world spinning, spinning, spinning.

And he had almost dreamed. He was
so
close. Wrapped in Athan’s strong arms in that snug room, he could’ve dreamed himself away, safe in some world of his mind. Now they’re leaving the safe place too soon and he’s seeing stars that aren’t there. Could he trust Athan with his secret? Is it such a foolish thing to consider, to trust anyone but his own family with the secret? Even Link doesn’t know, his own little brother. They never told him, and now he may never have the chance.

He’s so tired of doing what mom and dad tell him to. In saying and not saying what they command.
Neither of you are here to stop me,
he realizes, both gladly and terribly.

When they finally hit the streets, Athan keeps giving him these looks.
Maybe I should just tell him, put him out of his misery.
But Wick doesn’t have too much longer to go, he realizes; he will be home within the next three or so hours. So he’s lasted thirty, maybe forty hours without sleep … What’s another three?

When they round the corner, Victra suddenly shouts a word at Rone, whose response is so fast, Wick hardly sees it: gripping Athan’s hand, Rone phases him through the wall of a building, banishing him from sight, but still keeping hold of his hand, plunged seamlessly through the brick.

“What happened??” yells Wick in a delayed stupor before bothering to process what they’ve encountered.

That is: two Guardian casually rounding a corner. One brutish and muscled, ugly-faced, the other slender and wearing a fat orange helmet. In a matter of seconds they’re passing by, their eyes full of beady, oily suspicion. It all seems so strange, so unreal, that Wick questions if he’s seeing with his eyes, or if it’s a dream.

He closes his eyes. He sees a cramped office space. He’s looking about in this space, confused. He can’t seem to pull away because a hand is gripping his own—a hand through the wall. Odd. He wants to look right, but instead he looks left, surveying a picture on a desk. Two girls holding a cat between them and laughing, a man at their back. Father, maybe? His hair is long and white, and he smiles with pointy teeth, like some scary animal.

Wick opens his eyes. The setting sun blinds him again, and he sees the Guardian men as if for the first time. Tide’s behind him suddenly—how he got there, who knows. “If they take me down,” he whispers, “you’re going down too, you glowing fucker.”

“If you have nothing to hide,” one of the Guardian says, “then you won’t mind staying for a question.”

Rone’s trying to smooth it all over. “We’re already late, sirs. I will be sure to report anything suspicious, of course, like any good citizen. I’ll keep my eyes open. But our friends are waiting for us.”

“So let them wait.”

“I’d rather not. Dinners have a tendency of getting cold.”

Wick wonders for one small moment if Halves or Aleks have any sway in Guardian just yet.
If I am today arrested,
he considers,
would they be able to work a bit of paper and a word or two to free me? And if so, would they free my friends as well?
Then he realizes the ache in the whole thing: they have Athan with them. This is why Rone hid him.
We’re kidnappers. We are harboring a Son of Sanctum. If we are caught, we’d be blamed and demonized before the whole of Atlas.

The lack of sleep has driven him insane. That, or he’s as reckless as a storm, because the next moment, he’s pushed himself through everyone, putting Rone and the others at his back. “You miss your glow? Need some of it back? Here, have my arm.” And he pulls on his jacket, stretching it half the length of his arm.

The two Guardian appear confused, staring. One looks at the other, then says, “Huh?”

Wick glances, realizes he hasn’t pulled the sleeve far enough. “Stupid thing,” he grunts, pulling the jacket off entirely and tossing it at Victra with a careless sweep of his hand. “Here it is, fools
…
You blind?” Then he rolls up the sleeve of his grey tee, revealing the faint glow at last.

Guardian wastes no time. The next instant, the brutish one has Wick in a headlock, wrestling him away from his friends. Wick grips his massive arm with white knuckles, swinging his legs about and thrashing like a fish out of the pool.

A sudden wind slaps Wick in the face, but also succeeds in toppling the brute, bringing the both of them to the ground. Shrieks are heard halfway down the street from a scared onlooker; they echo off the buildings like bats. The wind gathers, and just before Wick clenches his eyes, a blinding purple light zips past his nose, and there’s a shout. Wick turns his face and finds the other Guardian on the ground, Tide on top of him, enraged.

Wick makes another attempt at breaking free from the man’s clutch. At once, wind picks up around him, whorls of sharp, biting air that seem to sting his eyes as though it were made of tiny needles. The arms that held in his neck suddenly find reason to let go, the brute shouting sweet pain into his ear. Wick clambers to his feet and, carelessly trampling over two bodies who shall, for the time being, remain unknown, he races away, the wind still rushing at his ears like hissing snakes.

He turns his head only once, finds Tide has broken free too.
No Rone,
he realizes with a sick turn of his belly.
No Victra. No Athan.
But the Guardian are already back on their feet, the brutish one limping, and he watches the one in the ugly helmet bring to aim a short grey cannon.
Aren’t we glowing enough?

Wick and Tide tear down two streets, turning every corner they meet. Tide is at his heels, and for a moment, Wick wonders if they’re running together, or if Tide is chasing him. Everything is so confusing. The wind still pushes them from all directions, a deafening, relentless wind, and Wick makes half an attempt at screaming at Tide to stop it with all the wind.
We’re running away, fool! We need the wind to work for us, not against us!

And then it does just that, throwing the two of them into the base step of a fire escape ladder. Recovering from the sudden discovery, Wick throws himself up the ladder, breathless, heaving. He doesn’t care if Tide’s following at his feet, he only looks up.

Another purple light zips past, narrowly missing him. He’s made it to the metal stairs and finds himself ascending. Still, he doesn’t look back. He chooses a window, any window, and pushes through the glass.
How did I know this window would open?
He doesn’t even have a time to breathe relief, staggering through a dark apartment. It is vacant, abandoned. No furniture, no carpet. It’s a ruined building and there’s a huge hole in the ground—a hole digging well beyond five or six stories below, every floor as empty, jagged splinters of wood like teeth in the floor’s mouth, a chasm to hell.

When the enormity of the hole hits him, Wick presses himself to the wall, frightened. Not a second later, the slender Guardian flies into the room, and comes to a stop at the very edge of the wooden chasm—but he’d come too close. The skinny man gasps, balanced on the edge, and loses his neon to the depths.

Wick watches, his throat clenching, and finds he’s formed a most horrible thought:
If he falls, we’re safe. If he falls … If he falls …

Wick’s hands open. Wick’s hands close, clenching.

If he falls …

The building inhales. The sudden wind carries through the room, a wind that wasn’t there before. Alarmed, Wick grabs desperate hold of the wall and crouches down, terrified the wind might take his feet from under him and send his body on a little journey through the hole in the floorboards. But instead, it picks up the slender Guardian like a babe in a mother’s arms, and gently tosses him past the brink of splintered wood. His screams echo horribly through the throat of the building until they end in one ugly, wooden thump at the bottom.

Tide bursts into the room, lighting it up instantly like a bright purple lantern, and stops just short of the gaping hole, crying out in surprise. He’s nearly loses his footing too, but rights himself just in time and presses against the opposite wall, breathing heavy.

The wind settles, dust and cobwebs brought to calm again, and Wick and Tide are left staring at each other from across the floor’s wide, wide mouth. Their eyes are sharp with the acuity of having just fought for their lives.

That sudden wind … Did Tide just throw the man over the ledge with his Legacy?
Wick considers for a short, panicked second that Tide could just as easily throw him to his death, if he’d dare.

Instead, Tide says, “We need a room without a death hole.”

Wick shakes his horrible thoughts, slowly rising to his feet. “What … What happened to the other guy?”

“Fell on his own blade while pursuing us. The idiot.”

Tide moves to a door across the room, pushes through. Wick slowly edges around the wooden chasm, daring only a small peek over the edge to see the little Guardian man flat and unmoving so many stories below.
There is a small chance he may still live,
Wick realizes, but doesn’t take the time to investigate further.

The next room is at the corner of the building, and one of the walls is half-missing, a steady breeze coursing in and making a creepy hiss. The view is the bleak rooftop of a shorter building next-door and a setting sun that sickens the sky into a jaundiced orange.

Wick is about to say something, but Tide speaks first in a furious grunt. “So much for your stupid friends.”

Wick considers him. “Man … You’re like a light bulb.”

“How loyal your stupid friends are, taking off the second it got rough.” Tide snorts, angry and pacing the room. The bright purple moves with him, floods one wall, then the other, back and forth as he moves. He is a pendulum of light. “Could’ve died. Could’ve died. Your stupid friends left us for dead.”

The truth is, Rone chose in that final moment to run Athan somewhere safe, because
he
is the priority. The Sanctum boy. They can’t risk being caught with him in their party, unless the whole of Rain has a death wish. And with any luck, the Guardian didn’t recognize Athan anyway.
Are they even still looking?
But he can’t explain any of this to Tide; he doesn’t know anything.

“My friends would’ve
fought
,” he goes on tirelessly. “Why didn’t you smell the Guardian coming, huh? Or is your Legacy really so useless?” He grunts, snapping his jaws. “Useless, stupid friends you got.”

Wick doesn’t acknowledge the jape at his made-up Legacy, nor does he look for comfort in Tide’s incessant whining. Instead, he offers some. “Rone took the others to safety, but he couldn’t handle all five of us. He did his best and hopefully they’re as safe as we are.”

“Safe? You call this safe?” His fury is unmistakable. The light in his body seems to glow brighter with his anger, the alien luminescence staining his clothes now, a blooming sheen. “You better hope Guardian didn’t call for backup or have some sort of tracking thing on them. It’ll lead the enemy straight to us. You call that safe?”

“Safer than we were a moment ago.”

Tide moves to the edge where there is no wall, glares into the city. “If I’d known that was the last time I’d see my …” He shuts up, pressing his lips together and turning to stone. Maybe he’s trying not to cry. Wick imagines for one amused second what Tide might look like crying.