Harken

22 Danger To Society

When you are a seventeen-year-old suspected terrorist, there is no shortage of ways to get yourself caught. If I’d wanted fanfare, I could have walked in to a TV news studio and announced my presence, to allow the cameras enough time to grab their startled close-ups before the police arrived. If I wanted to perpetuate the dangerous image they’d already created for me, then I could have walked through the park in the daylight, acting suspicious until someone finally recognized me and a special team was dispatched with helicopters lest I escape. They were all very good options, and I thought hard over my choices as I flew over the city.

In the end, though, I went with the simplest and most boring. I walked in to the first police station I spotted and told the uniformed woman at the counter that I was Michael Asher. At first, she didn’t seem to believe me, telephone resting an inch from her ear, the person on the other side still babbling away. One quick glance of her eyes matched my face to the one on the wanted poster already pasted to the wall beside her.

What followed was a flurry boots, of shouts for me to kneel and place my hands on the back of my head, to lay flat as a startled set of officers rushed to check me for explosives. I lay still as they patted me down, handcuffed me, checked my pockets and under my shirt and around my legs, certain they were overlooking weapons of some sort. When they ran a metal detector wand over me, I expected it to beep when it passed over my hands, but it didn’t.

I was hoisted to stand, pulled by a hastily formed battalion of officers through the back door and toward a cruiser already waiting for me. Somehow the press had gotten wind of my capture. The second the door popped open, a flurry of camera flashes and yelling rushed from gathered reporters. The officers formed a wall around me, struggling to keep the cameras away as I was dragged through the crowd. I tried to show as little emotion as I could; I knew this scene would appear on the evening news. When they showed my picture across all the screens in Arleta, I wanted to look as little like a murderer as I could.

But what was the point, anyway? They’d made their judgments long ago. When I met the fleeting gazes of the reporters, I could see they all feared me, frightened that such a normal-looking teen could have committed such horrible crimes. I knew they’d go back to the office, shaking their heads, saying to themselves, “Of course: all the worst criminals look just like us.”

The officers shoved me into the car and I was driven away with my hands still bound and the bars on the windows blocking out some of the cameras as their lenses scraped my window for a shot. I wondered what my Glimpse was showing at that moment. If I died that day, would I find all these articles about me seventeen years in the future, and get the chance to look back and read myself?

I pushed the thought aside. I had to focus, to plan, to find a way to fix all of this. I would. I always did, in the end.

The line of police cars rocketed off with us in the center, leaving the shouting flood of reporters behind. I tried to settle down into the uncomfortable seat, to calm my nerves with slow and deep breaths. Nothing helped.

At the next station, I was locked in a holding cell by myself. I sat on the hard metal bench against the wall, surrounded on all sides by thick metal bars that offered no privacy from the security camera in the ceiling. My presence had thrown the entire department into disarray, no one knowing for sure who should call who, if the FBI or the CIA were coming, if they should question me or wait. My mother’s death made things worse because I was still a minor and so there was no parent to call. Anytime an officer passed, their eyes would stray to me then dart away again. It was like they kept waiting for me to say something, to make a threat or confession. I just sat wordlessly.

The Guardians already knew I was there. Now, it was a waiting game.

As the hours passed, I lay down on the coarse bench and stared at the fluorescent ceiling panels. The floor of my cage and of the large room outside was made of a dull concrete that echoed sounds through the door and the hall beyond it. The voices of the panicked officers outside were masked by the sounds of the television that hung high in the corner of the room, its old speakers buzzing anytime a commercial got too loud. Its picture was yellowed and had a static line going through the middle.

Surely the Guardians would send someone soon? There was no way everyone in town didn’t know by now.

As if on cue, the commercial that had been blathering away on the television ended and the evening news started. I turned my head to the side to see better. As expected, my face was the first to appear.

“Local terrorist Michael Asher has been captured by Beverly Hills police officers in what has been one of the most dramatic and horrifying cases to sweep Southern California this decade,” the female anchor said, an absolute void of empathy behind her tone. Local terrorist? I pressed my lips together wryly. Now there’s something to add to my resume.

She listed my suspected crimes, which had grown from mere family-murdering and house-burning to an inventory of previously unsolved murders and bomb threats. Again, they pulled up all the necessary sources: kids from school thrilled to talk about that weird Michael Asher kid who read their minds, but was obviously just a clever fraud. Our former next-door neighbor, who said she’d seen me sneak out late at night to practice witchcraft. And finally, Mrs. Milo, wide eyed with her hair all a mess, proclaiming that she couldn’t find her husband anywhere now and that I had surely kidnapped him.

I wasn’t amused by the idiotic report for long. I knew that almost everyone in town was tuning in, believing every lie that was said about me. I couldn’t blame them. If I’d been in their position, I probably would have believed the television too. The news never lied. The news was never biased, or tainted, or controlled by anyone. And certainly not some ridiculous, supernatural secret society. That would have been silly.

I heard a clang from down the hall and pushed myself up to sit. Heavy footsteps pounded against the concrete, the handle on the holding room’s door bobbing. I gripped the edge of the bed, expecting Wyck.

Instead, I was greeted with someone entirely the opposite.

“Spud!” I gasped. He appeared around the corner of the door, turning to the sound of my voice, eyes widening when he saw me behind the bars. His arms hung loosely beside his wide middle, hair still a wild black mess on the top of his head, moustache even more pronounced than the last time I’d seen him. He looked exhausted, but when he saw me his face went cheery.

“Man, how’d you get stuck behind bars before I did?” he burst, spreading his hands out with disbelief. I couldn’t help grinning, jumping from the bed to stand.

Another person appeared behind Spud: a female officer I could never have forgotten. Officer Delaney. I stopped in my tracks. She crossed her arms, keeping the door open with her foot, narrowing her eyes at me. Weaker people might’ve melted beneath the fury of her glare.

“Yeah, I figured I’d see you here soon,” she said grouchily. She glanced at Spud then back to me again.

“I’m staying with you,” she said. “You’re not supposed to be here. I’ll give you five—”

“What am I gonna do?” Spud exploded, whirling to face her. “Give him a file to saw his way out? And then what, run? Ha. Me. Run.” He beat his own belly as proof. “I’ll come get you in a minute.”

She didn’t look pleased with this proposal but Spud must have had some influence. With a huff, she turned and left, closing the door behind her. I breathed a sigh of relief.

“I think I just got my Christmas present downgraded,” Spud complained, throwing me a fake glare. I wanted to run up and pound him on the back heartily but the closest I could get was to stand near the bars. He looked to where they met the ceiling and the floor, then over to the cameras and the locks.

“I could hack this place’s lock system,” he said with a shrug. Oh boy.

“Don’t start that,” I told him, shaking my head in surrender. He hadn’t changed.

“You wouldn’t welcome my presence back there?” he said, still studying the room for weaknesses. I huffed.

“I probably would,” I said. “But I don’t think that bed would fit the both of us.”

“I call dibs,” he said, grabbing the bars between his hands to test their strength. And like that, Spud—without any effort at all—had taken me back in time. Despite the bars that now stood between us, it was like we were out on another crazy escapade, kicking rocks out of our way on the road, complaining about all the seemingly important woes in our life. He completely ignored the news behind us that continued on about my various misdeeds, showing interviews of more and more so-called “friends” eager for five seconds of airtime to bash me.

The reporters clearly needed to do better research. My only school friend was with me.

When he was finally certain that the bars wouldn’t fall off, he met my eyes.

“So,” he said. “Did you do it?”

Leave it to Spud to never dance around a question. I shook my head.

“Of course not,” I said, voice lowering to a whisper.

“Then why are you in there?” he asked, matching my tone but trying not to lean in too close, already wary of the ceiling camera. I hesitated. There wasn’t much that I was willing to tell him but I knew he’d see right through me if I avoided the truth.

“Is this because of that guy with the car?” he said. “The guy who tried to kill you?”

“Yes,” I confirmed. He shrugged.

“Figures,” he said. “Someone tries to kill you, you end up in jail. Judicial system logic.”

“It’s not their fault,” I told him. “There’s just…bigger stuff going on.”

He lifted an eyebrow, now wary of the way I was talking and the bits that I was leaving out. Secrets never flew with him; I’d always told him all of mine. I sighed.

“It’s just… stuff,” I told him. “They’re pinning a lot of things on me that I didn’t do, but I can’t tell them that. I need to be here. There’s…bigger stuff going on.”

“Bigger stuff?” he echoed. “You mean… like a conspiracy?”

The last word was spoken with an air of fake mystery, twirling his fingers like a cheap magician. He said this while trying to hold himself back from laughing, so I took a swing at him with my hand through the bars.

“You’ve become one of them!” he chuckled. “You’re a conspiracy theorist now!”

I would have hit his shoulder if the bars hadn’t held me back. He leaned just out of reach to make this fact all the more obvious, taunting me playfully.

“Come on,” he told me. “I’ve known you’re clear since I saw the first news thing on you. So why’re you letting this happen? It’s ridiculous. We gotta get you a lawyer and get you out.”

He looked at me hopefully, suddenly going serious. It caught me off guard.

“I can’t, not yet,” I told him.

“Why?”

“I just can’t.”

He crinkled his brow with frustration, but he knew when to shut up, so he finally—and unwillingly—dropped the subject. He leaned against the bars.

“Do you at least want anything?” he said. “I could try to get you some candy in here. Or air freshener.”

He sniffed. “Wait, that’s you. Maybe you just need a bath.”

I rolled my eyes and leaned against the barred wall beside us. “Yeah, a bath would be nice.”

His offer had made me think of something, though. I considered it a few seconds, wondering if it was worth asking. I glanced to the TV and saw that the report had finally changed, and realized how much time we’d already spent together. At any moment, his aunt would return.

“Actually, there is something,” I said. He straightened up.

“Yes, master,” he said in his greatest evil henchman impression. I glanced up to the camera on the ceiling, trying to lean closer to him without seeming overly conspicuous.

“Remember the blog?” I whispered close to him. He nodded.

“Do me a favor and download it,” I said. “If you can find a way, hack it and save all the files. But at least get everything you can from the pages.”

His gaze met mine, looking confused. He already knew he wasn’t going to get an explanation, though he still looked hopeful for one.

I heard a door open far down the hall, and footsteps approaching us. Was that all the time we were going to get? It seems like it’d passed so quickly.

“Keep it somewhere,” I told him, speaking quicker now. “Just keep all that stuff, and whatever happens to me, don’t get rid of it. Don’t tell anyone you have it.”

“What are you talking about?” he said in alarm, having caught my disturbing choice of words. Whatever happens to me. I knew my situation. If things went wrong, I might need that website again in seventeen years.

He suddenly realized just how serious all this was, and in reaction he pushed himself from the cage and blinked at me. But it was too late for him to ask any more questions because at that moment the door creaked open and his aunt stepped through again.

“You gotta go,” she told him. “They’re coming for Michael and if you’re in here, I’m gonna lose my job.”

Spud, who normally would have protested with something sharp, was now in a fright. He remained staring at me with a paled face, until his aunt came over and took him by the arm.

Spud threw her hand off, jolting back to life.

“Get off me,” he told her, turning around and walking ahead of her to the door. Officer Delaney looked at me suspiciously, though appeared relieved that Spud seemed upset and had turned his back to me. She followed him to the door.

At the last second, while she wasn’t watching, Spud turned. He gave me a small thumbs-up with a nod. For all the support I felt coming from him, it might have been a legion of flags with my face on it.

The door clanged shut behind them and I heard their footsteps disappearing down the hall. But in the midst of those noises was intermingled another set of more shoes, like a mini army coming back in my direction. I licked my lips and sat on the bed again, trying to let my thoughts of Spud go. The rattle of the door proved loud enough to bring me back to the present.

The squeal of boot soles against cement sounded through the room as two guards entered, dressed in black with what appeared to be riot armor. They had rifles held between their hands, rough faces that refused to show me any regard as they approached my cage. Behind them were two others in similarly overdone garb, and finally the most wretched man I’d ever had the misfortune to meet: Wyck, dressed in a business suit, eyes on me immediately.

My fingers became fists the moment I saw him, feeling the pent-up rage breaking the dam inside me. I struggled to keep myself under control, though I’d begun to seethe involuntarily. All I could see was the reflection of my mother’s face in his eyes as he’d slowly let her die at his feet, and my sister’s body as she’d burned alive by his hand.

He regarded me with a depravedly amused expression.

“I didn’t believe it when they told me,” he said, astonished. “And yet here you are. Unless you use very convincing decoys now?”

The first guard had begun to rattle a set of keys against the door, clicking the locks. Wyck studied me up and down with a flick of his eyes as the door swung open.

“Nope, it’s you,” he confirmed with a sniff. “There’s no way to fake that smell of smoke that’s still on your clothes.”

Suddenly, the metal gate had parted and there was a second of a clear path between us. Without even taking time to think, I dove forward, slamming my hand down into his face with all the strength my vengeful rage could muster. I caught his cheek with a massive, echoing slap, amidst wild shouts from the officers who fought to pin me down.

They got me wrestled to the ground, hardly able to breathe from the weight of all the officers piled on top of me. It took the entire group, one for each of my limbs, just to keep me down as I struggled, until they’d knocked me hard enough that I wasn’t screaming and fighting anymore. It took all of my remaining strength to keep my claws hidden. Not yet.

They lifted me from the ground at once, holding my arms at my sides and roughly turning me back around. Wyck was there, wiping his mouth that dribbled a satisfying stream of blood. He spat it out onto the ground, twisting his mouth up to realign his jaw.

“My God,” he told me. “You are quick, Mr. Asher.”

Then, in front of all the officers, he drew his fist back like a backwards-swinging battering ram, and crashed it forward into the side of my face.

WHITE.

BLACK.

WHITE.

No one really sees stars when they’re hit. They see flashes and pops and explosions of color, hear the crack of their own bone in their ears and feel the pounding of their heart as it speeds to compensate. His ring served as a metal cap that hit right against my skin. It was like my head was encased in a drum, and he beat that drum with a mallet.

I felt blood running from my nose but I couldn’t wipe it, my hands bound and held down by the guards. My eyes were fixed in a wide stare and I felt dizzy, sick, focusing on the wall for a second only for it to go blurry. I would have fallen to the side if they hadn’t held me so tightly.

“How terrible!” I heard Wyck saying with mock sympathy. “Please, officers, keep this disturbed boy from beating himself against the walls.”

We started down the hall with me hanging in the center like a mannequin. I heard some gasps from the police, hushed telephone conversations as I was dragged down steps, across another hall, and out the door. I tasted the blood as it ran into my lips, like salt water.

My vision still swam in front of me so I was not prepared for an entirely new set of lights and flashes and noises. The media was waiting for me outside again, a loud gasp from the gathered crowd at first but even more flash bulbs following. Wyck casually moved so that everyone could get a shot of me: Michael Asher. Bleeding. Dizzy. Blinded. The boy they said killed his own family, unable to walk on his own two feet.

I was lifted through the back door of a waiting vehicle, hearing it clang shut like the sealing of a safe behind me. When the harsh sunlight was covered again, I was finally able to open my eyes weakly. We were inside an armored truck much like the type that carried funds back and forth from banks. Instead of shelves, there were long benches on each wall, the metal so thick that even the calls of the crowd were drowned out.

Wyck sat across from me with a guard on each of his sides. He straightened his suit.

“Let’s go,” he told the driver, tapping the window impatiently. “They got their pictures.”

I heard the heavy engine roar to a start, and we were off.

I was too weak to sit up so I bounced between the unmoving shoulders of the two guards beside me. No one looked at me when I forced myself to glance around, their eyes fixed straight ahead dutifully. Where had Wyck found officers so jaded that they were willing to follow his orders as he beat a teenager? Or maybe they’d been warned about my crafty ways, that even one misstep might give me a chance to escape and then kill their families too.

It made everything worse when I thought about it. The Guardians didn’t need henchmen. When everyone followed orders from someone higher, and those people followed orders from someone higher than them, eventually the pyramid came to a peak of command. When Guardians stood at the top, the police might as well be their personal army.

Every bump in the road made me bounce and feel sicker. The drive continued longer than I’d expected, and partway through Wyck whispered something in a radio to the driver. We took a sharp turn and started down another way. We could have been anywhere for all I knew, heading deeper in to a maze from which I knew there would be little chance of escape.

The longer we rode, the more edgy the four guards became. Each was nearly twice my mass. It didn’t make sense for them to be so afraid and yet I didn’t need a Glimpse to see the anxiety lurking in their eyes.

Soon, the truck slowed and I heard a massive grating outside. Then we pulled ahead a few more feet, the windows darkening as we entered a building. The guards glanced at each other but still said nothing.

The back door opened. The guards beside me seized my arm again, pulling me down the steps and onto the ground. Lights from our single police car escort flashed against the walls.

We had parked inside what appeared to be a giant airplane hangar. I wasn’t sure at first until I looked over my shoulder and saw far off in the corner was a small, Gulfstream G650 executive plane. That was how large the space was: a small jet could sit tucked away in one corner and go unnoticed for a few seconds. The roof towered above my head and the walls were made of long metal sheets, everything lit by skylights. There were five silver sedans parked neatly against the wall, all bearing the Maserati trident on their fronts. Two other people were standing behind racks, shuffling around with cables and a row of screens, paying no attention to us. Other things were scattered about under tarps and behind tables but I was pushed ahead before I could see them.

Wyck got out of the van last, approaching the guards and me after a quick check of his wristwatch. He took me by the arm.

“Stand over here,” he ordered, as the men let go of me uncertainly. I could see they were confused about what was going on. I was shoved from Wyck’s hold into the grasp of the driver, as Wyck tossed his coat into the man’s other arm.

“Good work, men,” he said, spinning around. Claws slithered out from the ends of his fingers. The men didn’t even have a chance to gasp.

In a single twirl of motion, Wyck slashed around on either side of him, slicing the men across their middles. Their bulletproof armor did nothing to stop the silver blades, blood splashing in a watery line across the floor as they cried out. But their noises were short—he swung the claws back down, stabbing two through the center then drawing the blades back again.

The men gurgled, trying to choke in air, but they were dead before they could get a single breath more.

Wyck turned around—his face was blank. No vengeance, no enjoyment, not even a second of killer’s glee. Just frigid, unaffected calm, like he’d squashed mosquitoes between his fingers. His claws disappeared, the blood wiping against his skin and staining his fingers as it did. He retrieved his jacket and swept it back on.

“We won’t be late for the meeting,” he told the two remaining officers with a satisfied nod. They turned me around, forcing me to walk again, and I realized that these two officers were on Wyck’s side. Humans actually helping the Guardians? I thought of the nurse in the white room and the other technicians still plugging the televisions together in front of me. Why would any human ever help a Guardian?

We came to a square of tables and I was pushed down onto the cold metal chair at their center. The other two people were bustling around the area, keeping their heads down and their faces turned from mine. I managed to see bits of their faces: a man and a woman, both middle aged. It was hard to tell exactly how old they were though, because like the nurse from the white room, their faces had received vast surgical work. Their chin and cheeks were puffed up over plate-like bones, all their skin stretched tightly. It looked like they’d only made minute changes but with all of the alterations added up, they appeared disfigured.

I wanted to look in their eyes, hoping somehow I’d capture a Glimpse—to find out why they continued to move at the command of these Guardians who despised their entire race so much. Was it fear? Had they been brainwashed against their own kind? Every time one of them accidentally glanced in the direction of Wyck, they lowered their heads even further, almost as if through some spiritual devotion. They were like cult members.

The metal rack they were setting up held a row of television screens, a large video camera poking from the center and aimed at me. Far off, I saw another row of vehicles: massive trailers like the one with the white room. There were no windows for me to see through any of them. I felt a shudder go up my back when I thought about what might be inside. Was Thad already in one of them, suffering at the hands of another brutal nurse?

One of the tables screeched as it was slid in front of me, the edge bumping my chest. The men placed my hands in top of the table and undid my handcuffs.

I was still shaking lightly, unable to control it. The bleeding on my face had stopped but my head continued to pound, and I had to keep blinking so that my vision would stay clear. I wanted to sleep, to give in to the black that seeped in around my vision.

Wyck fell in front of me, both hands slamming down on the metal tabletop.

“Awake?” he checked, tilting his head. I licked my lips and tasted the salt of blood. He reached to the side and picked something up with both arms, dropping it on the table with a crash. It startled me and I blinked again, vision clearing as the sound reverberated back and forth in the hangar. It was the metal box, the eyes of it still open and waiting for me, just as it’d been when Wyck had plucked it from my hands in the crypt.

“Where’s Thad?” I spoke my first words in what felt like hours. It wasn’t even a question, really. It was my demand, one that I knew Wyck was smart enough to have figured out hours ago. He knew why I’d turned myself in. One glance up at his face told me that much.

He conceded immediately. Lifting a hand, he gestured for one of the two workers to carry out the command, and I heard her steps leaving and a door cracking open. My eyes remained locked with Wyck’s, refusing to look away.

I heard the creak of wheels behind me and stiffened. It was a slow, unhurried sound, like that of a grocery cart being wheeled down an aisle. My teeth tightened together. Wyck was too close to me. My hands were free—I could have slapped him again, ripped the skin right off his cheek before the meager guards could have stopped me. But I held myself back, squeezing my hands together to keep them from moving on their own as I heard the wheels continue around me and come to a stop.

I didn’t want to turn. Wyck nodded to the side. So finally, I forced myself to look.

Thad was lying on a stretcher with white sheets, arms exposed and flat against his sides with wrists facing up. His long hair was ruffled around his scalp, matted by sweat that ran down his forehead in long beads and lines. He was strapped down just as I had been but didn’t try to shift when I saw him—or rather, he couldn’t. I saw why: a tall metal arm on wheels sat beside his bed, and running from it was a tube with a needle poking his left arm.

Only his eyes moved. Their lids were stuck open, bloodshot, and unable to bat the dust away. But with great effort, his irises turned down, stretching so that they could see me out of the corners.

He drew a breath in quickly.

I let one out.

“You don’t need to do that to him,” I said, casting away all the façade that I’d been hoping to keep. I lifted my hand to wipe my eyes and both of the guards jumped, grabbing my arm, smashing it back onto the table. I spun to look at Wyck.

“I’ve been good so far,” I told him. “You can get that out of his arm.”

“Ha!” Wyck gave a laugh like he found my request hilarious. “And what then? Let him go flying around the room to save you? Be thankful he’s still alive.”

“I won’t open that box until he’s free,” I spat.

“And I won’t set him loose until that box is open,” Wyck returned instantly. “Do you see me as a fool?”

“Then we’re at a stalemate,” I said. “You can kill me.”

Wyck suddenly rang out with another laugh, terrible and frightening all at once. He clapped his hands together, turning from me and stepping over to the row of five television screens. There was a keyboard beside them. He started typing as his forced chuckles shrank.

“We’ve been through this. We don’t need you dead,” Wyck told me, as he flipped switches on the screens to turn them on.

“We just need you gone,” he insisted. “That’s all there is to it. We just need the Blade to do that. One tiny prick. Then we don’t care about you anymore.”

He spread his hands to accentuate his promise, as if his desires were so obvious that I should have guessed it myself. On the outside, he looked so innocent behind his request, like I’d be a fool to turn down such an easy offer.

Yet I still had the upper hand. He might not have showed it, but all of us knew that if he shot me right then and there, he wouldn’t get what he wanted. The Blade would still be locked away and I’d just come back in another form. Eventually, in time—even if it took millennia of reincarnations—I’d find some way to get it back and end them.

The screens came on one by one. They caught my attention as the static faded and was replaced by a row of faces. Four men in a row, and the fifth a woman I’d already seen: the Guardian named Morgan, now without her young son. The first four all had different faces, but as I looked, those faces changed. Just like what had happened with Anon, all of the men were wearing the identity-concealing devices, so that even in the space it took Wyck to turn to me again, they’d all changed twice each.

But their eyes, those stayed the same. In their eyes, even without needing a Glimpse, I knew who these people were, why they were all gathered to watch from safe places far away. Power. Authority. Anticipation. Guardians.

It was impossible to identify any of them in that state, besides Wyck’s mother Morgan. She seemed unconcerned for her identity, relaxed into her high-backed chair and blinking at us.

So there are five of them: five Guardians. Did each of them have two Chosens? That meant at most, there were fifteen in total. That seemed like such a tiny number when placed against how vast the world was, how much of a reach they’d need in order to control so many things at once. It was startling, but also encouraging. I only had fifteen to take down.

Fifteen minus one, I corrected myself. Mr. Sharpe was already gone. I wondered whose Chosen he had been. I scanned their eyes, wondering if I would see any of them with extra hate to identify Mr. Sharpe’s Guardian by, but they only stared through the screens at me unfeelingly.

“As you can see,” Wyck said to the screens, angling himself toward Morgan, “I have brought Mr. Asher in as promised, and he will give us the Blade.”

“What is that over there on the side?” Morgan said, ignoring Wyck. She leaned over in an attempt to see something that the camera did not reveal entirely. Wyck, blinking, looked to his side, then pulled the edge of Thad’s bed toward him.

“This is Mr. Asher’s Chosen,” he said to her, now looking a little flustered.

“Why isn’t he dead yet?” she asked. “Haven’t we made this little mistake before, Wyck?”

Before my eyes, I watched the unshakable man crumble. The absolute assurance that Wyck had displayed so far was betrayed by a single, thin line of sweat that ran down the back of his neck, so insignificant that I almost didn’t notice it.

I sat up straight. Something was going on between Wyck and his mother. It looked like she’d struck him through the screen.

Wyck coughed, ignoring me. “The dilemma with killing Mr. Asher’s Chosen is that… Mr. Asher will not be as inclined to open the box if—”

“Can we just carry on with Mr. Asher?” one of the men said, the second screen from the left. He had just changed from a middle-aged, bearded gentleman into a sallow-faced elderly woman with discolored wrinkles across her skin.

“Hush, Arthur,” Morgan commanded with an impatient wave of her hand. “Just kill the Chosen and take the ring and be done with it.”

Wyck, seeming incited by her sharp words, turned to the guard next to him and seized the gun from his hands. In a flash, he cocked it and–

“Wait!” I burst in a scream, standing up with the chair dropping behind me. It fell with a crash that brought Wyck’s head around.

“I’ll open the box!” I shouted at him and the screens. “I’ll open it now. But if you shoot him I swear I won’t.”

I shook with intent, trying not to show my fear but unable to mask it from my widened eyes. The gun hovered over Thad’s chest, his eyes rolling away from where they’d locked on the barrel. Now he looked at me.

“If he dies, I’ll scrape my own eyes out,” I hissed through my heavy breathing. “Then you can torture me all you want, it won’t get the box open.”

The gun didn’t move. Morgan looked upset.

“Well?” she said, leaning back and drumming her fingers on the chair’s arm. “One or the other. Let’s hurry.”

Seeing my hesitation, Wyck lifted the gun to his shoulder again. So I threw my hands out, seizing the box and spinning it around to face me. I leaned over the table so that my eyes were aligned with those in the box, looking up to make sure that the others saw me.

Thad’s bed had begun to shake, such tiny movements that they’d have been imperceptible if not for the way the wheels creaked on the floor. Tears ran down his face, eyes his only way of speaking. They begged me to stop, to run, to leave the Blade, to do anything but allow it to fall into their hands and forfeit everything that we’d already done, everything that we’d already given up.

I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t see his tortured face and push myself to continue. So I swallowed hard, turning away from Thad, and looked down to the box.

Its designs appeared all the more intricate in the glow from the skylights, as if every detail was heightened and I could pick out even the tiniest, most miniscule stroke from the expert’s knife. I hadn’t been able to see it in the dark of the crypt, but now I could tell just how different this was from previous case. It was longer and the designs were darker with more points. Its eyes were dilated: waiting for me, calling for me to read them.

So with the seconds passing, with me wondering if I was making the worst mistake of my thrice-lived life, and the stillness of anticipation enveloping the room…

I looked.

A simple, fixed stare was all it took, locking my eyes with the pair below mine. I waited for the eyes to change, for the lock to shift, for a gear to spin, for the box to open so that finally, all of this would be over.

The eyes in the stalks rolled forward to meet mine. In a flash, they narrowed into black slits.

The box gave an immediate shift. The lid beneath my thumbs moved a millimeter upward, releasing itself from the rest of the box. I heard a sharp intake of breath from across the table, Wyck lowering his gun, as if even he hadn’t believed that I would do it.

And that was all I needed.

The moment that the box was open and the lid had brushed the ends of my waiting fingers, something inside of me came back to life. Maybe it was because the lingering pain in my head had finally faded. Maybe it was because the guards’ fingers on my arms had loosed slightly at the box’s sound. But more likely, it was because when the box opened, somewhere deep in the recesses of my mind, I remembered the last time that I’d heard that sound: two lives before, when I’d locked it away.

Like an explosion going off with me at its center, suddenly things went flying.

A backwards swing of my scaled fists sent both guards through the air. I seized the cover so quickly that my now-extended claws threw sparks against its surface, the lid torn from the case. I grabbed the handle of the Blade and pulled it from the sheath before I even had a chance to look at it.

I darted in front of Thad like a shield, shadowing him as Wyck’s gun went off. Instincts now out of my control, my left hand moved on its own in a blur of motion. I felt something strike the outside of my hand but the impact was as gentle as a pebble, and it wasn’t until I heard something clatter across the room that I realized I’d blocked Wyck’s bullet.

Without a second to dwell on my newfound defense, suddenly my legs pushed me from the ground, launching me forward into flight. My shoulder caught Wyck’s side and sent him crashing into the rack of screens.

All of this had happened in mere seconds. I was suddenly on the other side of the table, eyes filled with fire, hands covered by scales, and a short, silver Blade clutched in my right hand.

My teeth ground together, all the pent up fury coursing through my body and feeding me strength. Wyck stumbled against the rack, knocking the screens over, scrambling as his claws ripped through the cables he attempted to use to help him to his feet.

“One tiny prick!” I said, lunging for him as he pushed himself backward, arms and legs diving away from the Blade. Now that I saw the weapon, I recognized how identical it was to the one from the video, entirely unchanged by age. The black metal handle was tight in my grip, with indented bumps to secure it against my fingers and a golden hand guard. The knife’s edge—as I’d seen before—was like a large feather, narrowing to a point at the end.

I couldn’t marvel at it though, holding it out as Wyck lifted his claws in defense. The largest knife I’d ever held was a meat cleaver and thus at first the Blade felt wobbly in my grasp. It was nearly weightless. I heard the men trying to crawl up behind me so I pushed Thad’s bed backward, brandishing the knife between them and I.

“Just one prick,” I told him again. Wyck circled us, forcing me to turn the bed again so that it remained protected behind me. I jabbed the Blade in his direction, startling him, and in that flash of a second, I caught a Glimpse.

Fear and terror. A panic that consumed him from the inside out.

Never before had I seen such in this man’s eyes.

And yet the calm, composed, ever-present emptiness on his face displayed none of this on the outside. I wanted to run across the space between us and bury the end of the Blade into his heart, knowing that it would be hardly an increment of the pain that he’d already caused me.

“You don’t want to do this.” Wyck’s voice was laced with warning. He held a hand out like he was calming a misbehaving child.

“I think I know what’s better for me than you do,” I said. Wyck just shook his head.

“But I counted on this happening,” he said. “That’s why I prepared myself to raise the stakes if needed.”

His eyes weren’t on me anymore. They were looking over my shoulder, head tilted up to see what was behind me. My first instinct told me that it was a distraction; that he wanted me to turn so that he could take me by surprise. I refused to, ready to run forward with the Blade.

But I heard footsteps, gentle and scratchy on the floor behind me. The sounds made me freeze. The feet stopped at the same time.

I grasped the bed with my free hand, rolling it back again so that I could see both Wyck and whoever had approached me. Wyck insisted that I look. Warily, I turned my head.

The two workers were standing there now. The woman had one of her arms up and around the shoulders of someone beside her in a neck lock, while the man held a pistol.

White gauze was taped over the girl’s eyes, arms down as the woman led her to stop a few feet away from me. The girl’s blonde hair was clustered on her forehead from the sweat of panic. She breathed in shallow, scared gasps, too afraid to lift her arms from her sides.

No, I thought.

No. No.

No.

Then the woman reached forward, and taking the two pieces of gauze by their edges, ripped them off the girl’s face abruptly. But I didn’t need to see her eyes or to hear her shout of pain to know who she was.

“Alli…” I whispered. She looked up at me, and all my plans of escape vanished.