Outlier: Rebellion (50 page)

“No, ma’am.” The one called Hundro clears his throat, suddenly annoyed by his nearly automatic use of the word
ma’am
, then amends his response with, “No, Frey, we are not stolen of smarts. I’m still plenty smart. And I’m—I’m sorry your students were wrongly hit. Many Guardian have been rash over the last few weeks. We’ve had—We’ve had understandable … pressures.”

“Oh, I know all about pressures.” Frey doesn’t smile, not letting up in the least on the Guardian, built like steel and strong as the Queen she’d just named herself. “And I give no shit about you or your pressures, not when my children’s safety are at stake.”

“I cannot—We cannot remove the glow, ma’am—
Frey.
We cannot remove the glow,
Frey
. Only Trainers and Lead Officers and the—the Marshal himself can remove them.”

Frey gives a short huff. “I’m afraid of no
Marshal
. It ought to be
me
they fear, for the absurd and unwarranted trouble they’ve brought onto my innocent kids.”

The one in front, Jerron, narrows his eyes, still suspicious and unmoved. “Not all kids are innocent.”

“Quite true,” she says, turning cold. “And, as I remember right, neither were you, once.”

Jerron stares at her good and long and hard, his face warring with heated egotism. Then he finally moves aside, relenting.

“Yes.” Frey smiles for the first time, reminding Wick who this angry woman is in the first place, reminding him of all her classes he loves, reminding him of home, of repetitive days, of comforting things and lunch hours and the smell of the Greens that wafts across their schoolyard during midday. “Yes. You’ve learned.”

The whole of them move onto the train just as the doors shut in an ungentle sweep. And it’s over, just like that.

When they take seats, Athan sits to his left, Frey to his right, and Rone, Tide, and Victra make a place across from them. For an unbearably long while, no one speaks. The train shrugs to life, grinding horribly against the tracks. That’s when Rone finally breaks the nervous silence. “P-Professor Frey? How’d you—”

“Silence,” she says shortly, drawing the hood of an enormous woolen cloak over her head, and no more half-questions are asked.

Wick can hardly make his lungs work, glancing anxiously at Rone, who can only silently, dumbly, tremblingly return the glance with a blank, unknowing stare of his own. They’re both sharing the same thoughts, surely: what horrible sort of trouble are they in? How did Professor Frey find them? Aren’t they all marked truant by now? Rone … Wick … Tide? Victra’s been out of school for a year now and never attended theirs, coming from another part of the city, but even she watches Frey with as much apprehension, studying her suspiciously.

Athan slowly moves a hand onto Wick’s thigh. It’s supposed to be a comforting hand. It should comfort him.
I don’t hold hands.
He stares listlessly at the floor, waits for his fate to find him.

A forever amount of minutes later when the train comes to a stop, Frey lifts a hand. “No.”

Rone, who’d risen, sits back down, confused. “But—”

“Next stop.”

He looks to Victra for support, peers across the aisle at Wick, then obeys wordlessly, bothering with no further protest.

The train smells like the filth of criminals and the hum of its careless engines threatens to put Wick straight to sleep, if it weren’t for all the anxiety dancing in his stomach. He rocks side to side, drowsy by the events of late.
Don’t yawn. Don’t close your eyes, not again. Haven’t you already learned that lesson?
But he lets his head rock too far one way, and it finds perfect perch on Athan’s broad, soft shoulder. Then he lets his hand find Athan’s, late in taking his little offer of comfort … if it’s the last comfort he’s ever afforded. He might not be able to see his face, but he’s sure Athan’s smiling.

At the following destination, the train grinds to a halt, stirring Wick impolitely from the coziness his head had just discovered. Frey rises, sweeping the cloak about her shoulders and, without further instruction or gesture, leading them out of the train. Athan goes boldly first, Wick following. Behind them, a frightened Tide and a nervous Rone and a needle-eyed Victra bring up the back.

Plummeting straight into an alley from off the station, Frey leads them through a stone tunnel marrying two tall buildings that reeks of foul, sour foods. Along the way they pass a busted sewage pipe and two long dumpster bins, about which flies and buzzing unseeables make business.

Frey pries open a large wooden door leading into the ground at the back of an alley, revealing the steps to a nightmarish darkness below. “In,” she orders.

“Where are we going?” Rone demands to know, though his voice betrays the confidence he’s trying to put on.

“Where else?” she asks vaguely. “In. Questions later.”

Surprisingly, Victra shoves ahead carelessly, thrusting herself down the stairs and vanishing into the dark. Rone reluctantly follows, his hands visibly shaking as he grips the sides of the wall for support. Tide makes his way next, following by Athan, and when Wick takes the first step, he lets his eyes meet Frey’s. She gives him a wink as he passes.

As the door swings shut behind them, Frey pushes ahead of the group to lead the way. Down the incomprehensibly lightless hall, they blindly walk on and on, trusting the floor is still there with every step. Very occasionally, there is a feeble bulb that hardly has a purpose at all, lending just the littlest of an amber tint to their existence. Only once does the hall give a sudden bend upward, ramping back toward the surface. No one says a word the entire time, only their shuffling feet communicating their reluctant trek toward—well, wherever they’re going.

They arrive at a dead-end, and Frey reaches high up to poke at something in the ceiling. A latch, it sounds like, and something opens in the dark, spilling a frightful pool of light across them all. Rone and Tide shield their faces, Victra merely shutting her eyes. Athan instinctually moved in front of Wick, as if to guard him from something, but then Frey moves ahead into the lit passage. One by one they follow.

When Wick makes his entrance, his stomach drops to his feet.

“The cellar!” exclaims Rone, stealing everyone else’s words. “This is the cellar of the—of the Noodle Shop! Guys! We’re … We’re …” He shakes his head and slaps a palm to his brow.

Indeed, the passage has led them straight to the basement level of the Noodle Shop, though Wick has, admittedly, not been down here more than twice; once to fetch a broom, another just out of curiosity.

A sudden, obvious question hits Wick in the face like a lover’s fist. He lifts his suspicious gaze to Frey who simply stands there, staring stonily at a barred metal door opposite the stairs that lead up to the Noodle Shop. She seems in thought, troubled.

“Professor Frey … How do you know this place?” asks Wick, fearing the answer.

She nods at the door, her back still to them. “Beyond this door is our upper hand. Beyond this door … is our key.”

They spend an unexciting moment staring at the ugly metal access, barred and rusted at its edges. It probably makes quite an unattractive sound when it swings open on those worn, ancient hinges.

Wick persists. “You didn’t answer my—”

“It’s time I remove the cloak,” she says. “It’s time I unshade the shade. Rain’s on the precipice of a great work and I cannot hide any longer. We’re reunited, but unsafe. We are, all of us, as ready as we’ll ever be. Beyond this door … is the Weapon of Sanctum.” She faces them now, her eyes alight with inspiration. “Dream big, my children.”

It’s Rone who says it. “
You’re
Gandra Gateward! You’re the leader of Rain!”

She gives him the wink she’d earlier given Wick, a smile playing on her smart, thin little lips. “For all your smarts, you sure are a slow one, Rone.”

00
53
Halvesand

All the files are spread across the table. The lab is out of order—something about the computers frying from the power outage a week ago—and Halves was never good at putting thoughts to words with a pencil, so he simply stares at the files, reading slowly. Someone took photographs and made prints of the graphic the graffiti bomb had laid out at the wreckage of the Lifted City Park. Halves takes the print, laying it next to the one they all witnessed at the Weapon Show, comparing them, scrutinizing.
Let it rain,
he wonders.
We are the real weapon.
Blue. The Wrath …

It’s never felt right to him. By all means, they’ve caught the ones responsible for the disturbance at the Weapon Show, but he has so difficult a battle with his conscience pinning the fall of the Lord’s Garden on those two Wrath brothers.
Surely Obert can’t be so naïve. There’s no way it was just them. There’s more out there, there has to be. Someone else. Many someone else’s.
But who? But where?

A hand touches his arm, startling him so deeply he yelps out like a dog before finding Ennebal’s face inches from his own.

“You ought to reconsider working in the offices instead of the field,” she tells his lips. “Papers and books are too scary for you.”

“You think? Yelping doesn’t suit a Guardian?” He tries to smile, feels it falling flat.

“Halves, you don’t look well.” She runs a hand through his hair and he pulls back as if she’d attacked him. “Halves?”

“Sorry.” He hadn’t meant to reject her so rashly. It’s just that whenever he’s startled lately, he gets a flash of Grute’s calm, unassuming backside, seconds before a knife meets it. “You know they have … Guardian, they have … There’s rules, you know, and if either of us were caught breaking them, then—”

“It’s Grute, isn’t it?” She studies his mouth as she always does, her too-close eyes burning black in the dimness of the study. “I’m sorry. I should’ve … I didn’t realize you’d grown so attached. To be blunt, I kinda thought you hated him.”

They were all fed a lie, by Lead Officer Obert’s command. The whole of their unit of Guardian was told that Grute fell victim to some quick-handed thief in the seventh. He basically died a hero. A quick ceremony of honor was given to him, and Halves had to stand there with Obert’s heavy stare on him all the while. Two hours later, Halves lost his lunch in the ninth-floor bathroom.
You know my honor,
he can hear Grute saying, denying the accusations brought to him that day.
I feel pity for any who come to question it.
Were those his exact words?

Pity. Question. Honor.
He brought it all on himself. It’s his fault that he no longer lives.
So why does Halves still feel guilty?

Obert said he would be reassigned a partner, but he still has yet to meet one. What if he never gets another partner? Just the idea of facing Obert again terrifies him beyond anything else. He’d rather spend thirty hours in the Dark Abandon than thirty seconds more in Obert’s cold, damp office. How does one perform their duties in Guardian when they can’t even look their Lead Officer in the eye without wanting to retch?

I could just run away.
He’d given it an honest consideration, just the same as he’d considered it in the office that fateful night. He’s still considering it. Ridding himself of Grute only seemed to make things worse.

But Obert trusted Halves enough to reveal his Legacy. He can tell when people lie. Surely that spells good for Halves, doesn’t it? Surely that means he has nothing to worry about; Obert is on his side. Obert
believes
in him. Obert
knows
his truths with a certainty.

“Come here,” she says.

“I can’t.”

Ennebal suddenly moves to the door, shuts it and thrusts a chair beneath its handle. With another careless kick, the other door to the study is slammed shut, and she blocks it just the same. The two of them are trapped now in the study, safely, securely, secretly locked from the world. Then she’s right back where she’d begun, her huge mouth inches from Halves’, backing him up against the table. Her impossibly smooth hands slide up under his clothes, tickling up his flat stomach like cool icicles, then rushing over his head, the shirt slipped off and dropped to the table. The coolness of the room hits him and he shivers.

“Ennebal …”

“You’re no longer allowed to say a thing.” She grips him by the hips and looses his pants, shucking them to his feet in one effortless tug. “Oh, I see you’re awake.” She takes it in her hand.

“Ah.” His eyes flash and he claws the edge of the table.

Her wide mouth opens, showing the pink of her tongue. “I’m pretty sure I know what you need.”

“Cold.” He chuckles, because that’s what you do when an icy set of fingers are wrapped around your cock and you’re exposed to the world of a long, dim room. “It’s—It’s cold.”

“Ought to find a way to warm it, then?” Her eyes leave his face, and down her head goes.

Warmth finds him where cold was a second ago. Halves almost loses his balance, having mistakenly gripped a book for purchase instead of the table, then thrusting it off the edge. The study so dark and wide and still, almost naked and vulnerable to the chilly air of the room, he feels weightless. By the slippery warmth and teasing of a tongue down below, he gasps into the emptiness, and he’s floating, floating, floating.

Too soon, she’s come back up, eyes finding his. “Still cold?”

“No.”

She squints at him.

“Yes,” he says, changing his mind. “Still very cold.”

She goes back down.

The room spins and spins, and a happy sickness is swimming up and down his spine, tickling him and playing games with his nerves. His left leg starts twitching and giving to tremors. He realizes his weight is balanced on it awkwardly, frozen, afraid to move and prematurely bring the blissful moment to an end. Oh, how he doesn’t want this moment to ever end.