Outlier: Rebellion (54 page)

He doesn’t remember it. Not at all.
“Yeah, I remember. Dad did a lot for us growing up, didn’t he?”

“Until Lionis was born and fucked it all up.” Aleks laughs hard, slaps his brother on the back and gives him a shaking. “Hey, I know you. Something isn’t right.”

“I’m fine.”

“No.” Aleks thrusts a shoulder at him and lifts an eyebrow. “You’re bothered because Obert ran off with the info
you
found, and you’re not getting any credit. That’s it, isn’t it? We could find the rest of the rebels responsible for the Lunar Festival catastrophe tonight, and it won’t be you anyone thanks.”

“There were others involved too. It wasn’t all me.”
Of course, without my taking notice of certain resources and pinning it to very specific sites that order them, we wouldn’t have deciphered all the locations to scope out and investigate.
“I think I’m just preoccupied. It’s been a while for me since I’ve been out on a mission.”

“Don’t let fathead Obert throw you. Your blood’s thick, bro. Thick enough, at least.” Aleks gives him another slap. “The war against these rebels might soon be finding its end.”

Halves forces a smile. “As long as it doesn’t end with another person dead at the end of my blade, I’m happy.”

Aleks dons his helmet, twisting it and strapping it with a grunt. “Enjoy the pot’n’broth, Halvesy. Save me some ice cream, alright?” He gives a wink, then goes on his way. Halves listens to the rustling of his armor as he fades away down the hall and up a stair, listening until his brother is finally gone.

He’s the last one out of the barracks, his neon giving him trouble—it might have something to do with the ammunition, but he can’t understand the error code in the little monitor. He’s pulled out the manual and is thumbing through it when he hears the soft clinking of armor at the doorway. He looks up. Ennebal.

Halves speaks before she can. “I can’t—I can’t—Listen, I can’t be distracted. Not right now, Ennie, please. I need to get in the right mindset.”

She leans against the doorframe. Even from across the room, he feels her intensity. Those dark eyes pulled too close together and those blunt, curious eyebrows. Those long lips that house a pink tongue he’s one-too-many-times tasted.

“There will always be rebels,” he murmurs, resetting the panel on the side of the glow gun, frustrated. “There will always be bad guys and criminals, as long as bad hearts exist in good people. And if pushed to a point, Ennebal, anyone’s a criminal.”
Everyone is guilty.
He doesn’t know what he’s saying anymore.
Every lie dies. Every truth lives forever.
The neon still has an error message, beeping at him for reload.
There’s nothing to fucking reload, you’re all full up.

“Halves, why do you feel like this?”

“Because.” That’s all he has for her. Throwing the neon down in a sudden fit, he slams a fist against the locker and screams. His yelling echoes through the empty barrack, reverberations of his own voice coming back to rattle through his ears, within his skull. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he mutters quietly, then leans his head against the wall, a headache too soon finding him.

“You need a secret?” she asks coyly.

“I have enough, thank you.”

When he turns his head, he finds her right in front of him. “I meant one of mine.” Her black, blunt crop of hair is squished by a small metal helmet open at the ears. It frames her face like a hug, and her eyes burn with dark inspiration. “Show me your knife.”

“I’ve shown you plenty.”

“Show me your knife.”

Giving up the fight, he pulls the knife off his belt and holds it before him, showing her as requested. She licks her finger, then brings it to the sharp edge of the knife, slowly tracing it.

“Careful,” he says. “Careful, careful, careful. Just sharpened it last night. Ennebal,
careful …
”

She grips the blade at once, tightly. Halves makes a sound of protest, but when she lets go, there is no blood. Then she pulls the dagger toward her, points its tip at her neck, just above where her chest armor ends. Ever slowly she begins to lean into Halves, the knife digging deeper at the soft of her throat, deeper, deeper.

“Stop … stop, stop,
stop it!”
Halves exclaims, horrified—until she pulls away and he finds the knife didn’t so much as crease her skin. No blood. No cut. Nothing.

Then she kisses him softly, pulls away and touches his blade once more, teasing along its razor-sharp edge. “I cannot be cut,” she explains, a smile playing on her wide, inviting lips. “And when I make my skin strong, my ears become too strong for sound.”

“Your Legacy,” Halves finally says, genuinely touched. He’d always wondered, but never asked. “But … wait. You mean … for strong skin, you trade your hearing?”

“Yes,” she says to his lips. “For nearly three years of my childhood, my family thought I’d gone deaf. So had I … until I learned how to control it. Should I ever
hear
the knife of my enemy coming, I should hope I’m quick enough to stop hearing it.”

“Most Legacies come at a price,” he murmurs, remembering his dad telling him that once. His dad’s mathematic Legacy came at the cost of … a little sanity. Halves is still staring at the soft of her throat, amazed and affected by her all over again. “There are rebels out there. They don’t care what the price of their rebellion is. They’ll pay anything, or make others pay. The rebels won’t easily be stopped. They … They …” He sees Grute’s face, that last plea, that final gasp of desperation that couldn’t leave his dying lips.

Ennebal puts her fingers on the edge of the blade, gently pushes the knife back at him. “Now we both have a secret. The two of us … You and I … We both know how to stop things. Keep strong out there, Halves, and stop the thing.”

She gives him a wink for good luck, perhaps, then leaves him alone in the barracks.

00
58
Athan

He doesn’t trust the boy in the cellar. Not at all.

Athan has noticed a change in Wick too, like something in Wick’s eyes came to life at the sight of the boy in the cellar. He doesn’t want to call what he’s feeling “jealousy” … but it’s the one word that seems to fit. He’s never needed such an emotion.
The slums have given me a lot,
he muses, glaring at the door to the frigid cellar,
but I hadn’t imagined they’d give me jealousy.

He doesn’t like how the dark emotion sits in his stomach.

Until lately, Athan’s enjoyed the bristling, nerve-tickling thrill of Wick’s full attention … but now he seems distracted. Athan would sometimes follow a member of Rain to the cellar when the Weapon needed feeding, and Athan would just watch him, trying his best not to show a thing on his face. And the one in the cellar would catch his eye—
those dark, evil eyes
—and he’d swear the casual flint of a smirk would play on the boy’s lips.

Then Athan would feel guilty for his feelings. Really, the boy in the cellar is not well-off, and Athan should be thankful that
he
isn’t a pursued tool of Sanctum. What a life that must be, to live in chains from one place to the next. Slave to his own incredible power. Has he ever had a chance at a normal life?

“What life
is
normal?” asked Rone once while sharing a bowl of spicy with his sister, who just sits there all the time and says nothing, half-dead eyes peeking out from under her knots of dark hair. “Yours? Mine? Doesn’t matter, lowborn or high, we’re all of us in the same danger.” He pokes a fork at the window. “King’s still screaming, isn’t he?”

Athan still isn’t put at ease, taking more time than necessary to study the boy.
He’s biding his time.
Athan’s sure of it.
He’s a danger and a danger cannot be trusted.
“Of course he can’t be trusted,” quips Rone one night. “Hence the chains, fool.”

In the kitchen, Wick’s legs dangle off the counter and Athan’s pulled himself up between them with a palm on either thigh. Wick says something about the sun setting, and at once Athan decides to make his confession: “I don’t like you being around him, Wick. Really, I don’t trust him. I get why he’s here, but … but it doesn’t mean we all need to make friends. Nothing good’s coming from him, not at all. I can tell.”

He makes a quirky twist of his lips, peering down at Athan. “Jealous?”

The word stings, but Athan shows nothing on his face. “Not at all. That skinny kid doesn’t compare.” Even though Athan’s lost a considerable amount of weight during his time in the slums, he still keeps a solid figure. He holds twice the weight of that lanky rat in the cellar, he’s certain of it.

Wick grips Athan by both his cheeks, pulls him in for a long, uncompromising lip-wrestling. What a sweet reward for jealousy. Until his mouth is sore, Athan is not set free, and when Wick pulls back he says, “If it makes you feel any better, you’re the only person in the world whose bed I’d share.”

Athan replies, “In all fairness, you’re the only person in the world I know who sleeps.”

The quiet of the kitchen is disturbed by the subtle scuffing sound of boots outside. Wick’s face flashes with alarm as he looks up. Athan spins around to investigate, finds the windows of the noodle shop lined with strange silhouettes.

In that instant, Cintha bursts into the kitchen, the swinging doors slamming against either wall. “Evacuate,” she hisses.

“What is it?” Wick hisses back.

“Guardian.” She comes up to them, her eyes wet with fear. “Victra spotted them. Rone’s clearing out the loft. Tide’s being taken care of. We need to get Athan as far away from here as—”

“Through the cellar passage,” says Athan quickly, turning to Wick. “The one Gandra led us through. No one knows about it.”

He blinks. “But where do we go after that?”

It’s Cintha who responds. “Go home. They don’t know your involvement, Wick, they’ll never search for him there.” She tosses a musty hooded robe at Athan. “Hide your face. Go.”

“Cintha—”

“Go.” She pushes out of the kitchen as the pouring of boots against tile are heard.
They’re already inside.

Quickly, Athan whips on the robe, draws the hood and grabs Wick with an anxious, sweaty hand, pulling him toward the cellar stairs. They descend so clumsily and fast, Wick almost loses his footing twice, but Athan keeps him right.

As they pass the cold metal door, Wick says, “But what about Kendil? He’s still in there!”

“We don’t have time. They have a plan. Cintha, you heard her, right? They haven’t forgotten.” Athan moves to the wall where the passage was, but doesn’t find any sort of latch with which to open the way. “Where is it? Wick, where is it?”

Wick joins the desperate search for a lever, a switch, a handle, anything, but all that meets their fingers are bricks and metal pipes and cobwebs. They’d only ever opened it from the other side.

Footsteps are heard. Athan doesn’t think; he abandons the task, shoves Wick behind the wine rack by the door, and squeezes himself beside him, hiding. The wine rack is cluttered enough to mask them almost entirely. Holding breath, a pair of feet come down the stairs.

The Guardian, brown-haired and slender, gazes around for a moment, squinting. Then he says, “Nothing here.”

A second, lanky Guardian with short curly hair and a burning red button for a nose comes down the steps. “What about in there?” he asks, pointing with a knife.

“Where?”

“There, dummy.”

The slender one investigates the ugly door, his boots shuffling along the ground. “Locked … but feels cold. Freezer, maybe.”

“Y’know what? I think your brother and Ennebal are the ones having all the fun right now.” He chortles. “I said it from the start. The rebels are in the warehouse. There’s ample room there, it’s got underground storage … perfect place to design mega plans, man.”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Think about it. You need
space
to organize something big, like taking down that Garden. These folk just got spice racks. C’mon.” He laughs, slaps the back of the other Guardian. “You’ve contributed a lot of good ideas, but this place wasn’t one.”

“Yeah.” The slender one is examining the door, gives the handle a tug or two. “Still …”

“It’s a freezer, Lesser. There’s nothing here.”

Lesser…?
The slender one, Lesser, persists in making a few shoves at the door until, finally, it opens. Athan watches anxiously between two wine bottles as the Guardian pokes his head inside.

“Anything?” asks the curly-haired one.

He takes a moment to answer. Too long. Athan’s heart’s run up into his eyes. Then the Guardian says: “A cage. Meat locker, looks like … but no meat. Definitely not a freezer, though it’s cold as hell.” He steps out with a shiver, lets the heavy door shut. “Nothing hiding in there, that’s for sure.”

Wick and Athan make a look at each other, likely sharing the thought. Someone took care of Kendil already. How?

Another voice—a Guardian from up the stairs—calls down to them. “Quick, guys. Come. We got something.”

The two Guardian head out, but not before the slender one takes a long, curious look at the wine rack. Finally, deciding he sees nothing, he goes. Athan doesn’t so much as flinch until the Guardian have left and the door at the top of the stairs slams shut.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.” Wick slips out from behind the rack, leans against a wall, inhaling, exhaling, and muttering breathy, unintelligible words. Athan tries to console him when Wick shakes his head. “No, no, you don’t understand. That … That was my brother. My older brother, H-Halvesand.”

His thoughts are confirmed. “Lesser, yes! … I didn’t know you had a brother in Guardian. Wow, Wick, that’s—”

“No one knows.” Wick makes a grab at his own neck, as though he’s choking. “No one can know. It’s problematic, that’s what it is. And it’s two brothers I got in Guardian …
two
of them.” Wick moves back to the wall, desperately feeling it for the lever.