The Sixteen Burdens (34 page)

C
HAPTER
F
ORTY
-E
IGHT

J
ACK
S
IEGEL
GRABBED
Elsie by the hair and pushed her face into the ground, zapping her with fear. He was a master of terror; he knew instinctively how to wield the emotion. It was, after all, how he ran his entire business empire.

“But you have empathy, just like me!” Elsie screamed as she tried to push him away. “How can you treat me like this?”

“I have empathy,” Siegel said, “but I lack sympathy. I know what you’re feeling; I just don’t give a damn.”

She tried to pull him off her but his grip on her hair was ironclad. Little rocks of asphalt dug into her face.

He’s a psychopath.

No one noticed Siegel grabbing Elsie because a police car had just flown through the air and crashed onto the parade route ahead. Spectators began screaming and tried to clear the bleachers as Atlas took to the street, but they were slowed by the bottleneck at the bottom.

While Siegel held her hair, Max and Enzo each had a hand around one of her wrists.

“Pulse her with everything you’ve got,” Siegel said.

Fear shot up both arms and down through her head. It was everywhere, all through her. Her heart pounded so hard it felt as if it might skewer itself on one of her ribs. The fear had no object, no purpose, but it was electric and all consuming. It rippled through her chest and pounded in her brain like the heavy tread of some horrible monster coming for her.

Elsie couldn’t move, couldn’t scream, couldn’t reason. She knew she was dying. The terror pressed upon her chest, heavy as a ten-ton boulder. Her body wouldn’t even allow her to gasp for breath. All she could do was suffer. Somewhere amid the torment was a voice swirling around in her head.

Let go.

It was all she had to do. Give into the fear, let it consume her completely, and this would all be over. The pressure would crush her completely and her breath would simply stop. The neurons in her brain would pop like the filaments in a dying light bulb and everything would go black. It would be so easy.

“I think we’re killing her, boss.”

It was Max. His voice was muted and far away, as if Elsie were underwater.

“Shut up,” Siegel said.

Even so, Elsie felt a drop in the fear pulsing through the arm on Max’s side. She managed a gasp of air.

“I said pulse her!” Siegel said to Max.

But it wasn’t fear coming from Max anymore. There was something else—a trickle of emotion. Elsie grasped for it. It was compassion.

She followed it, like a speck of light in a cavern of blackness. And suddenly the all-consuming fear, with its overpowering sense of self-preservation, wasn’t her only feeling. She thought of Lulu, who would be lost in the world without her. She thought of her mother, who was left to fight her illness alone back in England. She thought of Gray, who pushed people out only because he was afraid to let them in.

“Fear, Max!” Siegel shouted.

“I am!”

But Max was lying and Siegel knew it. Siegel stepped on Elsie’s neck as he leaned toward Max and walloped him hard. Max let go of Elsie and stumbled to the ground. Elsie opened her eyes just enough to see Max lying beside her, writhing as Siegel hit him.

Elsie latched on to the compassion. Seeing Max suffer for trying to help her only fed it. She guarded this kernel of feeling and breathed life into it. Like a light, it cut through the darkness of her terror. Fear was self-focused. It was self-preservation in its most primitive form. Compassion, however, was outwardly focused. There was simply no room for the two feelings to exist together.

Elsie pushed hard against the fear by thinking of everyone Jack Siegel had ever harmed. The taxi dancers he had hit, the gambling addicts he had taken advantage of, the employees he had quietly disposed of when they ceased to be useful.

“Pulse, Enzo!” Siegel barked.

But it was no use. The layer of fear containing her compassion was wearing thinner by the second. In that moment, Elsie realized two things. First, just as Jack Siegel was born to wield fear, Elsie’s strongest weapon was her compassion. Second, compassion was a far superior weapon. Fear paralyzed the senses, but compassion activated the heart. And the heart always won.

Elsie burst.

The fear popped like a balloon and the compassion inside of her exploded outward, a shockwave of emotion. She felt everyone around her: the thousands of frightened families still trying to escape, the confused people on floats further down the route, even pedestrians blocks away who were nowhere near the parade.

Compassion—wide, rolling waves of it.

People stopped when they felt it and turned her direction.

“Hey, what are you doing to that girl?”

A man in a dark overcoat was looking at them. His gaze was fixated upon Siegel.

“Beat it, pal,” Siegel said. He seemed unfazed by Elsie’s compassion. Had he grown too callous to be penetrated by it?

A woman nearby stepped away from her husband and daughter.

“You’re hurting her! Let go!”

She walked right up to Siegel and batted him over the head with her purse.

“You let go of her right now!”

Siegel tightened his grip on Elsie’s hair, and with his other hand pushed the woman as hard as he could. She stumbled backward and hit the ground.

“Hey!” the woman’s husband yelled. He ran to help her up, then started to make for Siegel. But he was beaten out by two other women who had begun pounding on Siegel’s back with gloved fists. A crowd was starting to form around them.

“Back off!” Siegel shouted. “I’ll kill you all! So help me I will!”

He elbowed an elderly woman behind him, prompting her two adult sons to run up. They began beating on him too.

“You asked for it,” Siegel said.

He let go of Elsie and reached inside his coat pocket.

“Watch out!” she yelled. “He has a gun!”

Siegel fumbled around inside his coat pocket for a moment and came out empty-handed.

“No, he doesn’t.”

A boy had pulled the gun out of Siegel’s jacket.

“He was going to shoot that poor girl,” someone said. “Or shoot us!”

The crowd closed in tighter. Elsie ripped free of Enzo and crawled through dozens of legs to get out.

“You’re cockroaches! All of you!” Siegel said. “Enzo, get me out of here.”

But Enzo knew a sea change when he saw one; he began to extract himself from the crowd. The large man walked quickly away from the scene. Elsie dragged Max a few feet away from the crowd so he wouldn’t get trampled.

“What’s going on?” Max asked. “You do this to him?”

Elsie shook her head.

“He did it to himself. Mr. Siegel could have stopped and shown remorse at any time, but he didn’t. He could probably still apologize right now. But he won’t. He refuses to look weak, and it will kill him.”

Somewhere in the center of the crowd Siegel was cursing at the people, but it was hard to hear what he was saying. People were shouting. Fists began rising and falling. Legs began kicking with all of their might. The people’s compassion had turned to righteous anger. Siegel provoked it, stoking it into a vicious knot of hateful fury.

There on the outskirts of the crowd, Elsie watched the mob pummel him to death. And she’d be lying if she said she didn’t help stoke their anger herself.

C
HAPTER
F
ORTY
-N
INE

A
TLAS
WATCHED
THE
Phaeton speed away, smoking and rattling like an old jalopy. He and Gray locked eyes the whole time, neither one daring to look away. Whatever Gray was, he was dangerous.

Deda wants him alive.

But I want him dead.

Atlas cut through a narrow alley, scraping off bricks and mortar with his broad shoulders as he ran. He exited onto the next street, near the truck in which they had arrived. It was a large military transport vehicle they had stolen when the circus passed through Fort Sill, Oklahoma. No other vehicle was large enough to carry him. Far up ahead, he saw the Phaeton turn the corner and head in his direction.

The truck driver, a trapeze artist in his circus, was dozing at the wheel. Atlas tapped the top of the car to wake him, denting the roof and sending the driver diving for the floor.

“That convertible. Follow it.”

Atlas opened the metal doors of the cargo hold in back and hopped in. It was empty except for a shriveled little being in the corner, crouched under a cloak of human hair.

“Close the doors,” Deda said. “I’ll catch my death of cold.”

Atlas slammed the doors shut as the truck made a U-turn and sped off. It was now nearly pitch dark inside.

“You’ve lost it,” the old man said. “Haven’t you?”

“I’m on my way to get it.”

“And you’ve lost Pickford.”

“She’s irrelevant now.”

“You foolish boy.”

A sliver of morning light shone through a crack in the bottom of the doors. Atlas could just barely make out Deda’s face. It was an expression he had never seen on Grandfather before: derision.

“You dare call me a fool, old man? One breath and I could knock you over. One flick of my fingers and you’d be short a head.”

Atlas heard the pop of a cork. One of the man’s wretched tonics.

“I’ve been called an old fool many times,” Deda said. “And I’ve been labeled a helpless geezer longer than I can remember. But no one thinks to call me what I really am—a survivor.”

Atlas could smell the man’s tonic. It had a bitter almond odor.

“Drink your wretched medicine before I throw you out the back door.”

Kill him now.

We’ve learned all we can from him.

There was a sound of breaking glass as the old man dropped his tube. Atlas growled.

“You may have shown me my destiny, Deda, but now you’re a liability. You’ve outlived your usefulness.”

“Funny,” the old man said, “I was about to say the same thing about you.”

The stench of the tonic became too much to bear. Atlas coughed hard.

I don’t need his tongue. We could rip that out.

No arguments here.

“The nice thing about being weak,” Deda said, “is that everyone underestimates you.”

“The nice thing about being strong,” Atlas said, “is being strong.”

Atlas punched one of the back doors and it flew off its hinge, clattering on the street behind. He looked at Deda, whose eyes were red and swollen. He was doubled over in pain. Atlas took a few deep breaths and fell into a coughing fit.

“It’s too late for you,” the old man said.

“Your tonic…”

“Is prussic acid. It’s not a tonic at all. It’s a poison.”

Atlas felt the muscles around his neck constricting, blocking his windpipe. Even so, he laughed.

“But I’m invincible,” Atlas said.

“No,” Deda said. “You’re
impenetrable
. There’s a world of difference, you imbecile. Even an indestructible man needs to breathe.”

The old man coughed hard.

“You’ll kill yourself too,” Atlas wheezed.

“You forget who I am. I’ve survived the bubonic plague, yellow fever, smallpox, and typhoid. This chemical, which is lethal after just a few breaths, will leave me with little more than a sore throat. What do you think I’ve been putting in my tonics all this time?”

Atlas lunged at the old man and threw a wild punch. It missed and went clear through the front of the cargo hold, into the cabin. He felt blood and bone on his hand. The driver.

The truck swerved hard to the left. Atlas and Deda slammed against the wall. Then everything went topsy-turvy as the truck rolled and they were knocked around like stones in a rock tumbler. Atlas sought to steady himself in the cargo hold. They finally landed upside-down as the truck screeched to a slow stop.

The old man had landed on top of Atlas, the hair of Deda’s cloak scratching his face. Atlas tried to move his hand, to wrap it around the old man’s neck. But he couldn’t seem to make it move the way he wanted.

“You’re losing control of your body,” Deda said. “It will take another five minutes or so before the poison completely stops your heart, but you’ll feel every excruciating beat.”

“Why?” Atlas croaked.

Deda lifted his bloodied head. A cut on his cheek closed on its own and the bleeding stopped.

“Do you think I care about your people, your cause, your wretched homeland? I’m five hundred years old. I’ve seen the extermination of entire races of people. Occasionally I was the one doing it.”

The old man crawled right up to Atlas’s ear.

“The only reason I joined your brother and his pathetic band of revolutionaries was to help you succeed. To help you start a war. Because war, it turns out, is the secret.”

Atlas began to convulse. It allowed him a breath, but it felt like knives scraping down the inside of his lungs.

It can’t end like this.

We won’t let it.

Deda rolled off him.

“I discovered that war is the single most effective tool for discovering heroes. It forces Burdens out into the open, compelling them to reveal themselves. So that’s what I do. I start wars.”

Atlas managed another piercing breath.

“You took me in. You protected me.”

“I kept you,” Deda said. “Like a useful pet.”

Part of the old man’s cloak was caught under Atlas. Deda waited for the strong man to convulse again, and then pulled it out.

“You know nothing about power,” Deda said. “You want to replicate our talents to give to normal human beings. To the undeserving masses. True power isn’t shared. It’s consolidated.”

Convulsing on the floor, Atlas watched the old, decrepit man hop out the back of the cargo hold, position himself on the ground, and then cry out for help.

He had been playing Atlas this whole time.

I’d rather be strong and dead

Than weak and alive.