Truancy Origins (22 page)

Red considered Chris' explanation. It made sense. They could obviously use Red and Red could use them. But still, something kept nagging at the back of Red's mind that made him wary about the whole thing. It took him a few moments to realize what it was.

“All right, I guess I'm in,” Red said. “But something was bothering me, back in the parking garage.”

“What, being shot at? Yeah, bothered me a bit too.” Chris chuckled, an oily, unpleasant sound.

“No,” Red said. “The Enforcers there knew exactly where we were, when we'd be there, and how many of us to expect. There's only one way they could've known all that. Someone must've sold us out.”

At that, Chris froze. For a moment, Red thought he saw a look of panic flit across his face, but then it smoothed out as usual.

“I hadn't thought of that,” Chris admitted. “But if you're right, it must've been Gil. The kid went missing right before the raid, didn't he?”

“Yeah, he did,” Red said slowly, having already considered that possibility. “But still—”

“What's that you got in the bag there?” Chris interrupted, gesturing at the paper bag that Red clutched at his side.

“What, this?” Red said, the previous topic completely forgotten.

“Yeah, that!”

“Food,” Red admitted, turning around as he hastily tied the bag to his belt.

“Well, why don't you . . . you know . . . share?” Chris suggested. “ 'Cause you're going to be one of us again and all, we ought to celebrate a bit. Split the wealth and all that. That's how we roll, ain't it?”

For a few seconds Red said nothing, seemingly contemplating Chris' words. Then he spun around, his rusted knife suddenly drawn, his face a mask of rage. Chris, who hadn't noticed the weapon until that moment, reflexively stumbled backwards.

“Remember what I said about screwing me out of food, Chris?” Red snarled, inching forward with the outstretched blade.

“Stop, man, you're overreacting,” Chris protested, backing up. “Wasn't like I was ordering you or nothing, it's just . . . well, since we're crew, I thought you might share! Course if you don't want to, that's cool too,” Chris added hastily, as Red showed no signs of stopping.

“I was fine with sticking with the gang again, Chris,” Red growled, “but I don't see any point if you're gonna try to starve me to death!”

“Come on, I didn't mean it like that!” Chris cried. “Give us a chance, man, we'll make it up to ya, I swear! Stop, okay? Stop.”

Red stopped advancing, a look of disgust on his face. Red didn't buy Chris' repentance for one moment, and he was certain that the moment he let his guard down Chris would happily stab him in the back. Still, Red didn't want to murder someone who was begging for his life. Chris visibly relaxed once Red stopped moving, though he kept a wary eye on the knife, which was still threateningly raised.

“Look, we're moving on all the way up to District 25 as soon as we can,” Chris said. “Word is there's a grocery store there with security issues—we can get in the loading dock, we'll have a feast. You ain't gonna get a second chance at something like that. You in?”

Red lowered his knife, but did not say anything. He brushed at his hair again distractedly, only to realize that he was covered in a thin sheet of white. The snow had really begun to fall in earnest.

“Or maybe you'd rather take your chances with this storm on your own?” Chris added shrewdly.

Red thought about that for a moment. Then he slowly slid the knife back into his belt.

“All right. Lead the way.”

 

F
or a whole day and night, the entire City had been blanketed by white, its buildings obscured by a snowy veil. The flakes had fallen ceaselessly, becoming one of the worst blizzards in the living memory of the City. But as far as the students were concerned, it might as well have been a single snowflake—for, as the Mayor had duly promised on television, crews had worked day and night to clear the roads. School had not been canceled.

But Umasi neither knew nor cared about all that.

Umasi fingered the card in his pocket, and then hastily withdrew his hand as though burned. He had taken it with him, and yet, tainted as it was by Zen's charity, he could not bring himself to use it, not even to save his own life. Umasi's clothes had lost some of their dampness over the night, and Umasi was getting used to how uncomfortable they felt. The chill had nearly frozen the fabric as well as the flesh beneath it, and stray snowflakes constantly threatened to dampen the clothes anew.

Umasi had spent the night under a large tree in the Grand Park of District 20, the largest park in the entire City, a place where no one would go during a snowstorm, and where he was unlikely to be found even if they did. Umasi considered it a small miracle that he'd been able to walk in a daze all the way from District 13 to District 20, but he had collapsed shortly after reaching the tree. Some part of him genuinely had not expected to awake again.

But he had, and so now he sat upon a lonely park bench, the storm having abated, though the snow still remained. Umasi's hands gripped his arms tightly, fingers digging roughly into his shirt as they scrabbled almost desperately for warmth. Before sitting down, he had painstakingly wiped the snow off the rough wooden bench, though he'd since discovered that the job had been incomplete; some stubborn flakes remained only to melt spitefully and seep into the seat of his pants. His red eyes watered and stung from the freezing air, which, like a calculating enemy, bit furiously at every inch of his exposed skin. And as Umasi sat there shivering, a deeper, more complete cold penetrated him so deeply that Umasi had forgotten that there was such a thing as warmth, let alone that he had once felt it.

But more paralyzing than the cold was his own weakness. Part of him was still too proud to accept his brother's spiteful aid, even if it meant dying. Another part was terrified by what he might have to do to survive, content to perish in denial if only to avoid facing reality. Then there was his
despair, the sinking feeling that there was no point to trying to survive, no purpose to be served by living. A thousand weaknesses had frozen him solid before the cold ever reached him, and so Umasi just sat there, helpless to do anything to save himself.

Soon, worse than any pain, Umasi's body had now become numb, and the hunger that had pierced him so sharply before subsided into an ominous, distant prodding. His throat was bone dry, and each ragged gasp of freezing air ravaged his lungs. Somewhere, tucked into a dark crevice of his mind, Umasi's instinct screamed at him to search for warmth, something to eat, even to lick the snow for its moisture . . . but his body had passed beyond the point of obeying his mind's feeble pleas.

Umasi leaned forward, and his agonized eyes swelled. He ceased moving, and his jaw grew slack. He sat there on the brink for seconds that seemed like days . . . until finally his tortured eyes slid shut, and what will he had left finally succumbed to the cold.

 

T
hat's quite enough of that, Umasi.”

Umasi's eyes snapped open, and then blinked.

White. All he could see was white.

Raising a hand to rub his eyes, Umasi was convinced that he was hallucinating. Opening them again, he creased his brow in frustration.

There was no change. The ceiling, his surroundings, the floor upon which he sat, all of it was one continuous landscape of white so pure that he couldn't tell where the walls stood, or where the ceiling ended . . . or indeed if there were walls or a ceiling at all. Disoriented, Umasi climbed to his feet, noticing immediately that he felt odd . . .
warm,
he realized, a sensation that had become alien to him. But that only made sense, after all; there was no snow here in this infinite blankness, nor wind, nor cold. His clothes were dry, his blood was warm, and his joints no longer cried out in pain as he moved his limbs.

“But on the other hand, of course, none of this makes any sense at all,” said a voice that was not his own.

Umasi looked around. There was no sign of the person who had addressed him, the figure that he had nearly forgotten, the boy he had hoped never to meet again. But that boy had spoken, and he was right again; the last thing Umasi remembered was treading the border of death on a bench in a park. Waking up to find himself impossibly healthy in an impossible place could mean only one thing.

“This is another dream, isn't it?” Umasi called out, hearing his voice echo strangely through the boundless space.

“Well, of course,” the voice replied from behind him.

Umasi spun around and found himself facing what seemed to be . . . himself. The boy before him had clean clothes, glasses, and a backpack. He looked well fed, sheltered, naïve. On top of it all he had a warm-looking, hooded olive green jacket that concealed most of his face and stretched all the way down to his winter boots. In spite of himself, Umasi couldn't help but feel resentful in the boy's presence.

“So is this a good dream, or a nightmare?” Umasi asked, surprised only at how casual his own voice sounded.

“Well, how would you tell one from the other?” the boy wondered.

“Nightmares are frightening,” Umasi answered simply.

The boy's smiled approvingly.

“I suppose that's true,” he agreed. “Dreams, like lives, are defined solely by our reactions to them.”

“So then what's this?” Umasi asked again. “A dream or a nightmare?”

The boy cocked his head, contemplating Umasi with bespectacled eyes.

“Obviously, it's whatever you make of it! I just hope that you don't make as big a mess of it as you did with your life.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Umasi demanded.

“Well, you're dying, aren't you?” the boy said bluntly. “You're too proud to save your own life, too afraid, too depressed, too ashamed, too
weak.
”

“So what's your point?” Umasi asked, gritting his teeth. He didn't care much for this boy, and cared even less for how right he was.

“You're pathetic,” the boy said sadly, “and it's killing you. I can't let that happen.”

“Because you'll die with me?” Umasi guessed shrewdly, folding his arms.

“I
am
you, Umasi,” the child reminded, “and I am weak. But I want to help you.”

“If you're so weak, how can you possibly help me?”

“Isn't it obvious?” the figure said, betraying a note of impatience. “I am everything that cripples you, everything that holds you back . . . and that makes me the worst enemy that you will ever face.”

“You—”

“Now you know who I am, and why you must best me. Isn't that enough?” the boy interrupted. “You were supposed to be a good student, but you never learned that if you can't master yourself, then you will master
nothing.
”

The figure raised his hood above his head, casting his face into shadow. Then he waved his arm upwards in an arc, and from thin air a long procession of polished swords emerged, their blades all pointing downwards. In the space of an instant, the line swiftly expanded as far as Umasi could see, and then the boy waved his arm sideways. The single row of swords
multiplied into many, the sky suddenly filled with countless suspended blades stretching as far as the eye could see. As a finale, the child raised his arm straight up, and the swords multiplied again, this time spreading upwards to create several layers of glittering blades.

“But I don't want to master anything,” Umasi protested, gazing upwards at the impossible display.

“Oh, but you do,” the figure insisted as he stretched his arm out sideways, a single sword floating down so that its hilt slid neatly into his outstretched palm. “You once wished to master school. You now want to master your brother's ambitions. If you awake, you will wish to master the cold, or else you will welcome death . . . out of a desire to master your own life at last.”

“I don't welcome death,” Umasi said as a second sword fell haphazardly from the sky, unceremoniously burying itself in the white ground at his feet.

“Then prove it,” the boy said, pointing his sword at Umasi. “You can only truly appreciate anything, even your own life, after you've had to fight to keep it. And now you
will
fight, something you've only just begun trying in life.”

“Wait a minute—”

But Umasi had no time to finish his sentence. The figure, suddenly silhouetted, lunged at him impossibly fast, covering the sizeable distance between them in a split second as though he had shot through the air without touching the ground at all. Without fully knowing what he was doing, Umasi seized the hilt of the sword at his feet and instantly brought it around to block the shadow's attack. The sheer force of the collision caused Umasi to stumble backwards, but the attack was parried.

“Your movements are clumsy and your blows lack conviction,” the phantom observed as he slashed at Umasi again, “but your reflexes, at least, are sharp.”

“Thanks, I think,” Umasi grunted as he parried the blow, backing up warily.

“Does my sword scare you, Umasi?” the boy taunted, lunging at Umasi again as he brought his sword down in a vertical slash.

“I'd be stupid if it didn't!” Umasi shouted as he lifted his sword to block the new attack, backing up even farther.

“True. Only the insane or foolish are truly fearless. But what is it about my blade that frightens you?” the shadow pressed, doggedly continuing its assault. “Do you fear being cut? Feeling pain? Bleeding, perhaps? Or do you just see a sharp edge and know to be afraid?”

“How am I supposed to know?” Umasi demanded angrily as he backed up clumsily to avoid a series of fierce slashes aimed at his waist.