Truancy Origins (38 page)

“Let's try this again,” he said finally. “I find that having a name is convenient, but if you don't want one, that's your business. Mine is Umasi.”

“That's a nice name.”

“You're the only one who seems to think so,” Umasi said wryly.

“Well, I don't know that many names,” the girl conceded. “I can't say that I've made many friends in my life.”

“Then . . . then why do you trust me?” Umasi asked, tentative for the first time. “We did fight, after all.”

The girl hesitated for a moment, as though marshaling her thoughts.

“You can tell a person's true character after they've had you at their mercy,” she said. “You had me at yours. Actions are louder than words.”

Umasi thought about that first bit of wisdom, and resolved to remember it. He felt that it applied to the relationship between students and teachers in the City, among other things.

“You had me for a moment there too,” Umasi said. “That trick you used to trip me up was well executed.”

“Thank you.”

The girl hesitated for a moment.

“The first instinct is always to grab the chain,” she explained. “If you do, it just becomes a contest of strength, so I had to find ways around it.”

“And that one worked. I merely got lucky,” Umasi said.

“No, I was careless.” She shook her head. “Had you been a different type of person, I might be dead or worse by now.”

“So you really believed that you were fighting for your life?” Umasi said. “I somehow got the impression that you were . . . well, it was like you didn't want to seriously hurt me.”

Now she really did smile, however faintly. Then it was gone.

“I didn't,” she admitted, “but I wasn't holding back. If I can beat someone without harming them, I'd prefer to. Usually people are . . . they're afraid of me. The whole ghost thing. So I never
had
to kill, only disable.”

Umasi contemplated her philosophy, and found that it intrigued him. Was it possible to fight without restraint, and yet do so without any intention of inflicting harm? Apparently so; the girl had pulled it off admirably, with a nonlethal weapon and noble intentions. Umasi marveled at how she had developed such an approach after all that she must've suffered. Umasi contemplated his guest. Her sleeves had slid up far enough for Umasi to see that she had no number or bar code tattooed upon her pale arms, as was standard for all students in the City.

“You don't have a student number,” Umasi pointed out as he filled another cup of lemonade and pushed it towards her. “Why is that?”

The girl cocked her head as she accepted the drink, as though momentarily confused. Then she glanced at Umasi's arms, and upon spotting his number her face fell.

“Oh,
those,
” she murmured, taking a sip from her cup. “I never got one. I was never allowed into school at all.”

The undisguised regret he heard in her voice struck a chord in Umasi. He knew that the student numbers weren't anything to be proud of, nor were they a pleasant thing to bear—but on the other hand some students in the City were content with their miserable existence. With slight shock, Umasi remembered that he had once been one of them. But the girl before him would never get to decide for herself, never know what it was that she had been missing.

Unless he told her.

“You shouldn't let school bother you so much,” Umasi said. “In this City, the price of knowledge can be steep.”

The girl looked up from her drink curiously, her steely shell completely forgotten for the moment.

“What're you talking about?”

Umasi sighed and poured himself a cup of lemonade. The last person he'd confided in had ended up in a fiery grave. Was he ready to share those secrets with someone else? No, Umasi decided as a lump rose in his throat, not yet.

“I . . . know I promised to explain, but I don't think I'm ready to talk about it now,” Umasi said. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

The albino looked at him strangely for a minute, and then shrugged and downed the rest of her lemonade in one smooth gulp.

“Well, as you said, you did promise to explain,” she said, setting her cup back down onto the stand. “I suppose I'll just have to wait until you're ready to do so.”

Umasi blinked in surprise, and then found that he was smiling, of all things.

“Well then, welcome to District 19, milady.” Umasi bowed slightly in his seat. “I hope that you enjoy your stay.”

 

T
he night sky had just been broken by a tinge of orange when two Enforcer patrol cars turned a corner and proceeded cautiously down an empty street. The Enforcers carefully scanned each crumbling house as they passed by, though they saw nothing moving in the predawn darkness. In other parts of the abandoned District 7, they knew that other patrols would be combing the streets just as they did. Though none of them expected to find anything, they kept up the tedious job until the eastern skies glowed in the dawn.

Just as the two patrols passed by what looked like an empty soda bottle on the side of the road, an explosion ripped through the darkness, instantly reducing one of the cars to nothing but fiery wreckage. The two Enforcers in the other car scrambled out, frantically looking around for their assailants. Gunshots rang out, and before the Enforcers could even tell where they were coming from, one had already fallen. The other, panicked at the loss of his partner, ran for a nearby alley, desperate to escape. A moment later he was consumed by another fiery explosion.

The radio left behind in the untouched Enforcer car blared with frantic queries, and then panicked shouts. All throughout the rest of District 7 more explosions and gunshots went off, and by the time the sun rose over its streets, not a single Enforcer was left alive in the whole district.

 

A
ll dead?” Rothenberg said incredulously. This was not the news that he wanted to wake up to.

“Yes, sir,” the Enforcer replied, shifting uncomfortably. “We sent five patrol teams in to sweep District 7 as planned, two reported that they were under attack, and all of them are now missing.”

“Then that might be where they're hiding!” Rothenberg said. “Send in a bigger force, everything you can throw at it!”

“Well, we immediately sent every patrol we had available, and even deployed a helicopter for aerial surveillance,” the Enforcer said. “They recovered all the wreckage and most of the bodies, but set off a few more explosives. Two more men were killed, one more injured, and no sign of any of these self-proclaimed Truants.”

“Nothing? No sign at all?”

“No, sir, they seem to have covered their tracks well. We simply didn't have the manpower for a door-to-door search of an abandoned district,
and if the group that did it is still there, it would be so small that it'd be like a needle in a haystack. Besides, I doubt that District 7 was intended to be their main hideout anyway.”

“What makes you say that?”

“A single routine patrol in District 5 failed to report in on time. We sent the helicopter over the area. It wasn't hard to find; great smoking wreckage in the middle of the street. It looks like it fell into the same kind of trap as the District 7 sweep. We didn't dare approach that one on the ground in case we set anything else off.”

“Great,” Rothenberg snarled, “call off the other sweeps for now. If they've mined 5 and 7 to hell, I'd bet anything that they've done all the others as well. We're going to have to rethink our entire strategy. We'll need to go one district at a time with more men, more cars, we're going to have to be thorough and—”

“Having problems, Rothenberg?” a new voice asked.

Rothenberg spun around and glared. He had been standing in his office with the door open as he received the bad news of the day and had not heard the newcomer entering the room. He was surprised to see that it was not another Enforcer bearing grim tidings, but rather a man in a brown leather jacket with short brown hair and a neatly trimmed mustache and beard.

“Who are you?” Rothenberg demanded.

“My name is Jack,” the man said. “I'm one of the Mayor's aides. I was told that you would be expecting me.”

Rothenberg's heart skipped a beat. He was tired, and in the flurry of bad news and plans that had to be rethought, he had completely forgotten about the Mayor's aide. The other Enforcer seized the opportunity to excuse himself, leaving the two men alone in the office.

“You look tired, Rothenberg,” the aide said. “Have you been getting enough sleep lately?”

“Of course!” Rothenberg replied. “And I don't see how that's any of your business.”

As a matter of fact, Rothenberg hadn't slept more than a few hours a night since he had encountered that ghostly apparition in District 18. The pale figure had continued to haunt his dreams, each time worse than the last.

“Well, the Mayor would certainly like to be assured that you've been well rested. After all, he seems to think that your assignment is highly important,” Jack said, narrowing his eyes. “On that note, what exactly are you doing, Rothenberg?”

“Has the Mayor briefed you on my assignment?”

“On the basics, yes, but not on what exactly you are looking for.”

“Well, then, I can't help you,” Rothenberg snapped. “It's not a big deal anyway, just normal Enforcer business. We've got it all under control, don't worry about it.”

“Normal Enforcer business?” The aide raised his eyebrows.

“That's right.”

“Then might I ask why you've been neglecting all of your other normal assignments?” Jack asked, gesturing towards Rothenberg's desk, upon which a mountain of untouched paperwork rested.

Rothenberg scowled. “The Mayor's assignment takes priority.”

“I was under the impression that you had the Mayor's assignment ‘under control,' ” the aide said.

“We do!”

“Then why not see to your other responsibilities now?”

“How do you know that I was not about to?”

“Is that the case? Well then I apologize for interrupting, please go ahead.” Jack sat down in Rothenberg's chair and leaned back as though daring him to do it.

Rothenberg knew he had been challenged, but he would not back down, especially not from this skinny, pompous assistant. With a look of pure malice, Rothenberg seized the first folder on the top of his towering work pile and stormed from his office. A routine foster child issue, Rothenberg realized as he opened the folder. He'd been assigned the case because it was in District 18, his home district. It would make for an easy break until he could get back and properly lead his men without any damn aides breathing down his neck.

 

T
here was a soft tinkling, then something whooshed through the air. Reacting instantly, Umasi dived out of the way just in time as the chain struck the ground he had occupied a moment before. Forcing himself into a roll as he hit the hard asphalt, Umasi smoothly returned to his feet a second later. His pale opponent twirled her chain around for a moment as she drew it back, and then abruptly lashed out again.

Umasi ducked this time, feeling the wind on his hair as the chain passed an inch overhead. In the few hours that they had been sparring, he had accumulated both a great respect for the chain as a weapon, and a large collection of bruises. The girl's eyes glinted scarlet in the bright sunlight, and her chain wrapped partially around her before swinging back and unwrapping in a powerful horizontal sweep. Umasi was forced to drop to the ground to avoid it, and before he could rise the chain had doubled back in an arc, slamming
down hard on Umasi's back. Umasi crumpled for a second, feeling the cold asphalt beneath him. He smiled wryly as he rose, rubbing his back.

“Nice one,” Umasi conceded. “I managed to dodge seven strokes that time, I believe?”

The nameless girl nodded. “You're getting better at reading my movements.”

“Not by much,” Umasi said. “I can never tell what you're going to do until the last minute.”

“It's a difficult weapon to predict,” she said, “but it's better for countering. You're just dodging right now; if you were attacking me it'd be harder.”

“So how am I supposed to beat it?” Umasi asked.

“Look for an opening after a failed attack,” the albino said, bringing her gaze back down to Umasi. “Do you want to take a break?”

“That sounds good.” Umasi bowed, feeling worn out.

The girl curtsied and walked off into the middle of the empty street by herself. Umasi watched her go. All they had done so far was duel, and occasionally discuss tactics. The topic of Umasi's secrets had not come up yet, and Umasi could tell that the albino was patiently waiting for him to bring it up. Umasi had no doubts about her trustworthiness. He was not as naïve as he had once been, and knew that his physical attraction to her was only natural—but his admiration for her went deeper than that. Her philosophy, her strength, and her self-control had all struck chords in Umasi. Here was an individual who was truly at peace, ready to accept life or death as it came, content to go unacknowledged by the world.

Deep in thought, Umasi moved to sit down on the doorstep of an abandoned building. Meanwhile, the pale vagrant launched into a flurry of graceful motions. A rapid clinking sound reached Umasi's ears, and he looked up to see her chain flitting through the air so rapidly that it seemed to be everywhere at once. It really was like a dance, Umasi thought, the chain constantly in motion, striking down invisible enemies with its rhythmic movements. The chain glittered in the sun, and it almost appeared as though she were wielding a string of light. Umasi could only stare, mesmerized, realizing that the girl had her eyes closed.