Outlier: Rebellion (10 page)

“A world without a screaming King,” Rone echoes softly, drawing Wick’s attention. Rone’s said it to Victra though, his eyes alight, burning blue as he kisses her on the cheek. She just rolls her eyes, unreciprocating.

“We may not be the ones to do it,” the bald man adds, bringing back Wick’s uncertain gaze, “and we care not. We don’t work for glory or credit. We are provokers, kid. Understand that? We are inspirers. Muses. We want to
wake
the
world
.” The man’s voice has gone hard, his every word a smack to the face. “If it isn’t by our blade, it’ll be by someone else’s that the King’s screaming tongue is finally and justly cut.”

Wake the world …
For one uncomfortable moment, Wick remembers the dream he had long ago where his Legacy was flight, and he flew to Cloud Keep to make a souvenir of the Banshee King’s tongue.
Maybe I have more in common with this bald man than I realize.

“Rone says your professor tells you to dream big, kid. Is that true? … What’s your dream?”

What’s my dream?
He couldn’t admit it out loud, even to Rone who has been his friend all these years. Even his little brother doesn’t know his true Legacy. He hides what others proudly boast of, what Sanctum might reward …
Outlier
, he hears them chant mockingly in his nightmares.
Anwick Lesser, the Sleeping Outlier
…

“I have no dream,” he finally says.

“You’re lying. But I will share mine anyway, kid. I dream of a world of laughing children, of riches for all … The beauty of life’s luxuries in everyone’s hands, in anyone’s hands. A world of full stomachs, hot meals, no worries on the day’s eats. A world freed from the tyranny of a Screaming King and his three precious pawns of power, such sick dominion they keep. We do not answer to the hands in the sky.”

“So what is this?” Wick’s eyes search.
What has Rone gotten me into?
Wick thinks of his dad who might open his bedroom door tonight, who might expect to train.
What am I doing here?
“What is this, Rone? Are you part of a … a rebel group? Is this—?”

Victra answers instead, her voice a tad too sharp. “We’re not a
rebel
group. Those are for bratty kids with toy swords. We’re a force. A belief. Agents of peace.”

“True guardians, we are,” agrees the bald man. “Not the violent, unjust and corrupt tool called Guardian who work for that Screamer in the sky.”

“May they be spat on from all directions,” Victra sings, laughs hollowly, then scowls.

Wick’s eyes flick away for this one tiny moment … a tiny moment for him to bury another secret of his, that not one, but two of his brothers are members of said violent, unjust and corrupt tool called Guardian.
Kill the King.
Wick swallows hard and eyes the skinny bottle on the table.
I wonder if chemical quenches thirst.

“There are more of us,” continues Yellow. “We are only four of us in this room, four of many, like-minded and like-willed. One day, the corrupt Sanctum and all its tyrannous men and women in the sky will know our pleas. They will fear us. Wick … Is that your name? Wick, we’re going to change the world.”

It is an easy seduction, really. There is such unrest in Wick’s everyday life, such daily grief, anguish, all due to the oppression of Sanctum … How can he not be swayed to their cause? Though it sounds a bit more like a child’s dream than a real, imminent thing, what else can a faction of slummers do but cling to it?
Dream big, she said.
But what if Professor Frey knew what rebellion she was, in fact, encouraging her students to dream?

Kill the King.
“Rebellion is punishable by death,” says Wick. “Even my knowing of your existence is criminal.”

“If it is awareness of us that scares you,” answers Yellow, “then merely ask, and I will happily remove all memory of what I’ve just told you. I may do it anyway.”

“He will,” warns Rone. After a dark glance from Yellow, he shuts up, plopping down on the pile of pillows. “I wouldn’t mind forgetting this evening at all.” He starts absently itching his junk.

“It’s your choice whether or not to take with us,” the bald man says, “but I will need your decision and I will need it now.”

Wick gives it so little thought, it’s laughable. It is like this opportunity is one he’d been patiently waiting for his whole life. How his mom looks at him every day, as a baby, a weakness …
We will wake the world.
His dad too, training him with weapons because he has no weapon in himself. No real Legacy.
Wake up. Wake up.
Even Link discounts him, his bullied brother. The way Tide took him down without more than a flick of wind.
A world without a screaming King.

This can be his chance to stop dreaming as a boy … a chance to wake up a man.

Wick quashes what few doubts stir in his chest and states: “How do I … How do I join?”

“I’m going to ask you three questions. I want three answers. First. Do you live for gold, or glory?”

“Do I have to pick one of those? Or—”

“Second.” The bald man has moved on to the next question, which puzzles Wick since he didn’t quite answer the first. “Do you love your enemies?”

Sounds like a trick question
. But the red memory of Tide’s laughter echoes too freshly in Wick’s ear for him to answer any other way. “No.”

“Third. Why?”

He shrugs, says, “He hasn’t earned it, I guess.”

“No, he hasn’t,” agrees the bald man, rising with his full weight on the sturdy-as-steel cane. “Return tomorrow night, Wick. You’ll undergo training and briefing then. You’ve a lot to learn.”

“What’s—wait, wait.” Wick’s gotten to his feet, suddenly alive with questions. “What’s involved? What exactly do you guys do? I … I don’t want to kill anyone.”

“Did I not make it clear? Our enemies are up there.” Yellow pokes his cane at the window, at the city in the sky. “Your concerns will be addressed. Go home.”

“But I never answered your first question,” Wick points out, “about the gold or glory.”

“You did,” says the bald man at the stair, turning around to add, “and like you, I live for neither.”

It’s twenty minutes later when Wick is brought down to the bottom floor for a small plate of noodles before hitting the road. Rone’s sister Cintha sits nearby and studies him as he eats. “You like watching me shove food in my face?”

“My brother always asks my opinion first,” she says so quiet Wick has to lean in to hear, “before he invites someone. I trust no boy … but I trust you.” Wick pauses between bites to ask why she trusts him. “I take you to be a boy of other boys, and I find that comforting.”

“A boy of other boys?”

“It’s okay if you
like
Rone, even though he likes girls.” Her face squirms into smiles Wick never thought possible from her. “I had an … experience … with my Legacy when it came. I haven’t trusted a boy since.”

Wick has no idea what she means, as Rone never mentioned what his sister’s Legacy was. Not wanting to pry, he shifts the focus instead and says, “Rone and I are just friends. Honestly, I don’t …
like
him that way.”

“I don’t like him when he drinks,” she confesses.

Wick forks another delicious gob of spiced noodle, the best bowl of anything he’s tasted in years. Through his immodest mouthful, he quietly admits, “Until this night, I didn’t know he did chemical.”

She puts her chin on the counter, stares up at Wick with smiling eyes and dimples.

And at that precise moment, Rone scares the hell out of them both by phasing through the wall like a happily leaping ghost. Still shirtless and tenting in his jeans, he shouts, “Training starts tomorrow night! Buddy, you’re in, you’re in, you’re totally in!”

Dream big, she said …

000
9
 
Halvesand

Halves has a lot of catching up to do if he’s going to outdo his brother in Guardian training.

His brother Aleks is nearly his same height—which is basically a head taller than their younger brothers Lionis, Wick, and Link—but Halves has kept a bit more meat on his bones. Aleks tends to shed it all off, leaving himself more skinny and long of limb. Like most of his brothers, Halves has a full head of dark brown hair, though he tends to keep it styled, raked to the front and trimmed short. He was so tired of being called his brother’s twin, for how alike he and Aleks look. He always yearned to stand on his own, be his own, speak his own … and not vanish in the witless shadow of his lookalike brother. He even pressed ink into both his shoulders, a design that cut down his left blade in artful branches, and a matching bit up his right. The Two Answers, he named his tattoos, because whenever he’d ask dad for advice, he’d be left with two answers and a tough choice to make.

Good, bad. Right, wrong. Life, death.
Two Answers.

Joining Guardian, first thing he hears is how there’s many, many ways to die in the city, and until Guardian’s job is done proper, exactly zero ways to live.
Yeah, many, many ways to die in the city,
Halves always thought,
and many, many more when it’s your job to protect it.

He will be paid a modest fistful to do the Sanctum duty of ridding the streets of criminals. But there is one area of Atlas that they do not touch. It is called the Dark Abandon—or Sector Zero, depending on who you ask—which is a place so beyond repair that even grown adults will say it’s haunted, that anyone who goes in never comes out. Not even the King bothers to touch it; he refers to it as the Forsaken Ward. And like a gift from the King himself, the unobstructed view from Halves’ dorm window is of that Dark Abandon. He’s thankful not to have his younger brother’s Legacy of sleep; with this view, he’d have himself a fresh nightmare every night.

His impression of Taylon, Marshal of Order, is he’s a little boy. Even scrawnier and littler than Link, this Taylon is supposed to be the leader and chief-in-head of all Guardian. Looks are deceiving in Atlas, however, as Taylon has the Legacy of breaking bones with invisible hands that reach into you and squeeze, they say. “Don’t even
look
Taylon in the eye or he’ll crush your skull without ever laying a finger!” Halves may have no love for Taylon, but sure as hell’s smart enough not to show any disrespect.

He stares out the window of his dorm, all his clothes unpacked and shoved away into smelly metal cabinets cool as ice, and he swears he can’t see even a stir of life in the Abandon. One of the guys down the hall, a gangly and overly-cocky fellow named Grute, says he can spot the ghosts of past Kings on the building tops when the moon is full, but Halves doesn’t believe in ghosts. He knows better; the buildings of the Abandon are just inhabited by stray animals, gangs, and the homeless.

Braving a tray of edibles from the squatty slop-shop downstairs, he takes a seat in the commons room with a pair of friends he’d made and eats in silence. Most of the contents on his tray make him grimace as they reach his tongue, texture or taste not ideal, but he was never the type to complain.
Sure isn’t Lionis’s cooking
. Part of him misses home already.

Halfway through his meal, he notices a woman eating by herself. She isn’t the prettiest—but she sure isn’t ugly. Her eyes are too close together, but there’s something inviting and dark about them, something that hungers, almost dangerous, sexy, drinking in every little thing.
I wish they’d drink me.
Her mouth is too big and her nose tiny, but it makes Halves beam.
Cute
, he thinks, wondering how soft those lips may be. Yes, there’s definitely something about the way she
eats
… the way her shoulders hunch over the tray like she’s guarding a pile of nuts in a circle of dancing squirrels … He’s drawn to her, smiling despite himself.

But there are ordinances in place, a no-fraternizing rule of which his brother Aleks was very quick to inform him. “Yeah, you’ll meet a sexy lady or two,” Aleks had told him on the long train ride to the dorms, “and while you’ll hear rumors of things happening, it isn’t allowed. Just last year, two girls were caught in the bathroom. One of them had her teeth at the other’s nipple … Would’ve paid half a month’s to see that, hah!” Halves smiled, certain he wouldn’t have such an issue, as his dream had always been to hit it high in Guardian, impressing his superiors and someday scoring gold for his family. “Just keep your boy in your pants and follow my lead, bro. You’ll be fine.”

Two answers
. Halves reflects on his brother’s warning. The trouble is, Halves isn’t one for following any lead of his brother’s, much preferring to set his own. Their whole childhood’s been an unspoken, fierce competition toward some imaginary finish line. Both of them running, racing, clawing at the dirt, biting at the air before them … Neither any closer to an end.

Halves notices a table of guys in the corner of the commons taking peeks at her—then breaking into hushed laughter. Her hair is cropped strictly at the shoulder and runs pitch black.
The ordinance is to not have sex,
Halves ponders lightly.
It doesn’t mean we can’t make friends.
Still, for as brave as he thinks he is, he can’t bring himself to just get up and make a walk to her table.

Halves takes another bite, chews and wonders what a girl like that’s named. He chews and chews.

In a dark hour of night, Halves is called from the dorm for an uninterrupted twelve-and-a-half-hour bout with Training Master Obert. It’s only the third hour when Halves makes his first major misstep; he’s spared the life of a simulated woman who, moments later, took to hand a long serrated (and just as simulated) knife that would’ve gone through Halves’ lungs were it, or her, real.