Guardian (2 page)

LIAM STARED DOWN AT
Syd, looking more disappointed than angry, and the would-be assassin’s eyes stared up at Syd through the holes in the mask. Hovering between the two sets of eyes, Syd felt certain even the dead were watching him. All he’d wanted was a moment to himself. Syd felt like he’d been rooted to the floor, his feet locked in place. He fought the urge to scream.

Liam strolled down the steps toward him, and still Syd couldn’t make a sound. Liam was pale as fog and moved as smoothly. He had stubbly red hair and patchwork freckles across his nose, a nose that had clearly been broken more than once. He stood a head taller than Syd and had forty pounds on him. Even though his features had a soldier’s hardness, Syd couldn’t help but think of him as an unwanted puppy begging for scraps. His blue eyes looked perpetually damp.

Right now, however, those eyes were sharp, their dampness frozen to ice.

“You okay?” Liam asked him.

Still Syd couldn’t speak, just stared at the masked corpse on the ground, its limbs pointed in all different directions, like it had been stopped in the middle of an elaborate dance.

Liam gripped Syd with his metal hand, held him steady, and looked him over, checking for wounds. The feel of metal against his skin snapped Syd out of his trance. He pulled away.

“I’m fine!” Syd told Liam. He took a step back.

Liam looked at him a beat longer, head slightly cocked, words caught on his lips. Instead of saying anything, he squatted down and peeled the mask off the would-be assassin’s face.

Syd inhaled sharply. The killer was young, no older than either of them, and a girl. Her lifeless blue eyes stared straight up at the open ceiling. Around her neck, she had a long line of tattooed ones and zeros, binary code, symbol of the Machinist cults.

“You can’t keep running off alone,” Liam said. “They won’t stop until you’re dead.”

“What . . . ?” Syd searched for the words. It had been close, so close. This girl was going to kill him. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. Other than the tattoos, she looked so normal. She was just some girl. And yet, she had died trying to kill Syd. “Why?” He shook his head. “It makes no sense. Why kill me?”

“You’re Yovel,” Liam said. “Your enemies believe in you as much as your allies.”

Syd flinched at the word “Yovel.” He hated it. Yovel was the name his father had given him. It was the name marked in four ancient letters on the skin behind his right ear. It was the name by which the people knew him, the Jubilee in human form, the day when all debts were forgiven. It was the name that should have killed him, and instead it was the lie that reminded him he was still alive, that Knox had died in his place.

Syd rubbed his eyes. “They believe a lie. You were there. You know. The Rebooters—”

“They’re the Reconciliation now,” Liam corrected him. “A new organization for new times.”

“A new name doesn’t change anything.”

“Words matter.”

“Empty symbols,” Syd retorted.

“Symbols matter.”

“That’s glitched,” Syd grumbled.

“No,” Liam told him. “Glitched is you running off on your own out here. Glitched is you not letting me do my job.”

“It’s not your job to lecture me.”

“It’s my job to protect you.”

Syd didn’t answer right away. He turned his back on Liam, walked along the wall, pulling old vines off a column, crushing his anger inward. He resented Liam’s protection, even if it was necessary.

As long as the Machinists believed they could bring the networks back online by killing Syd, Liam would be at his side, but if he expected a thank-you from Syd, he’d be waiting a long time. Liam was a killer and Syd had to endure his protection; he didn’t have to be nice about it.

Liam flexed and unflexed the metal hand. It caught the light, dappling the wall as it moved. Syd had never asked Liam how he got that hand. In this world, everyone had lost something, be it a hand, a friend, a name. Now that the Reconciliation had banned all personal possessions, the only things anyone owned anymore were their losses. Syd treasured his and wouldn’t dare inquire about someone else’s.

While Syd tore at vines, Liam bent back down over the body. He placed the soft fingertips of his good hand over the dead assassin’s eyes and closed them gently.

Syd had stopped to watch him and Liam seemed to blush when he noticed Syd watching. Liam’s pale blue eyes had gone soft again, the sad puppy look returned. He stood and placed himself in front of the body, like he was suddenly embarrassed by it. A killer ashamed of killing.

“Everyone’s waiting,” Liam announced.

“Another speech.” Syd sighed. “I guess I don’t have much of a choice.”

“We all serve the Reconciliation in our own ways,” Liam recited.

“I give speeches and you kill people,” Syd snapped.

Liam clenched his jaw. Exhaled slowly. Tried—and failed—not to show his anger. “I protect you from killers so that you can continue to inspire the people.”

“Uh-huh,” Syd grunted, walking past Liam for the main door to the ruined old building. He knocked into Liam’s shoulder as he went. Liam followed, staring at the back of Syd’s dark neck, the letters behind his ear, his slump-shouldered walk; and he fought the urge to reach out his metal hand and grab Syd, shout at him, tell him to be better than he was, tell him to man up and become what everyone wanted him to be, what everyone needed him to be.

What Liam needed him to be.

But Liam wouldn’t and Liam didn’t. He clamped his mouth shut, steadied himself, exhaled, and imagined his emotions like a waterfall, pouring down from his head, through his neck and chest, down through his thighs and his knees, pouring from his toes and away into the earth. He was empty again, calm and cold. Able to do his job.

Protecting a person, Liam had discovered, was much harder than killing one.

SYD STOOD ON THE
stage that had been assembled in the middle of a wide avenue beneath the blazing blue sky. Some of the skyscrapers that lined the avenue had been repaired, but most still stood in decay, teetering like tweaked-out syntholene addicts on the verge of passing out.

Below the swaying buildings, the avenue itself was filled from edge to edge with people. There were young women holding babies. There were kids waving signs that said
THANK YOU, YOVEL!
and
YOVEL SET US FREE!
, and a scattering of people throughout the crowd waving white strips of cloth over their heads as they cheered. White for a clean break with the past. White for empty records. White for new beginnings. All those white cloths looked like the flapping wings of birds unable to fly away.

Syd could sympathize.

The people had to be held back by a line of Purifiers positioned between the stage and the crowd, to keep the people from rushing up to touch Syd or tear away a scrap of his clothing. Their ecstasy was religious and it made Syd uncomfortable to see it. An image flashed in his mind: the girl who had been sent to kill him, dressed like a Purifier. He tensed, braced himself as if he was about to be attacked. A bubble of panic rose inside him. Was this the instant they’d get him? Or this? Or this? The seconds stretched. He bargained with himself to stay calm, to stay still, to make it through the next five seconds and the five seconds after that. The panic subsided. Liam stood beside him on the stage and did his best to project the potential for unrelenting pain on anyone with less than generous feelings for Syd.

He wondered whether Liam would throw himself in front of an attacker, would take a poison dart for him, would die in Syd’s place.

He knew the answer and it made him even more uncomfortable.

On the other side of Syd stood a bearded old man, stuffed so poorly into his tight green uniform that his belly hung over his belt and his white collar was open and flapping in the light breeze. Puffs of gray hair rose like smoke from beneath his shirt.

“Thank you for joining us, Sydney,” the man said.

“Liam made the invitation sound so compelling, how could I say no?” Syd whispered back at him. “How often do I get to stand onstage beside the famous Counselor Baram?”

The man smiled and waved at the crowd, whispering back to Syd through his teeth. “Cut the sarcasm. Sarcastic words hide lazy minds.”

Counselor Baram had known Syd his entire life; he had practically raised Syd back in Mountain City, when he was just Mr. Baram and Syd was just a proxy, an orphan living in the slums, paying off his years of debt by taking the punishments every time his patron, Knox, did anything wrong.

Syd had been one of millions, not a thing special about him. He paid for school, he worked in Baram’s shop, and he spent his days with his head down, fantasizing about a date with his classmate Atticus Finch. His feelings for Finch, to put it generously, had not been mutual. It hadn’t really bothered Syd. He enjoyed the quiet hopelessness of it all. He always figured life would start after he’d finished school and paid off his debts.

Instead, he’d erased the entire system.

He wondered what ever happened to Finch. Before the Jubilee, back in the Mountain City, Finch had been a guy going places, a gamer with sponsors, a kid on his way up and out of the slums of the Valve to live the lux life with the patrons of the Upper City.

Now that the networks were gone and the old tech banned, there were no games to play and no sponsors to pay for the playing anyway. Syd’s revolution had stopped Finch’s rise dead in its tracks. Now old Mr. Baram was Counselor Baram, deputy secretary of the Advisory Council of the Reconciliation and now Syd was Yovel, the people’s hero, their savior and the symbol of all that was new.

Nothing was like it had been. So, in this new world order, why couldn’t Syd be sarcastic? Everyone was in the business of reinvention. He’d even considered growing his hair out.

“Apologies, Counselor.” Syd smiled, making his continued sarcasm as biting as he could. “Your sage advice is a boon to us all.”

It was too hot for big hair.

Counselor Baram let his eyes linger on Syd a moment, then sighed and stepped forward. He held his hand up in a fist. The crowd fell silent. Baram’s voice strained to be heard, but he didn’t use any kind of amplification. Although all the old tech had been banned, the Council still had access to things like loudspeakers and projectors. That kind of tech was a privilege of the Council, but Baram liked to be pure, natural, one with the people. If that meant he had to shout to be heard, it was a small price to pay for his ideals. Syd thought it was just stubborn.

“My friends!” Baram declared. “We are here today, six months after the Jubilee—” The crowd went wild at the word and Baram had to wait for them to settle down before he could continue. “We are here to celebrate all we have accomplished! Freed from the burdens of debt and the financialization of our sons and daughters, we are building a new society, a society of mutual care and concern. A society where we are judged by our contributions to the community, not by our purchasing power on the unregulated market!”

People cheered again, even those whose understanding of the new revolution was minimal. Most of the crowd were slum rats who’d grown up just like Syd in cesspools of debt and poverty, where credit was easy but paying for it was a lifelong labor. Even those who had some education, who’d been willing to pay for education—like Syd had—would never have learned any of the anti-market ideas that were the backbone of the Reconciliation.

Anyone who could actually understand Counselor Baram had probably been arrested just after the networks collapsed, when the Reconciliation stormed Mountain City, rounded up the executives and the managers and the creditors and anyone else with whom they had a problem, and sent them off for labor reeducation or confession and execution. Remaking the world wasn’t always a stage show and a cheering crowd. Politics was just warfare by other means. The losers didn’t get to hold rallies.

So the people cheered, because their side won. These kinds of rallies were a regular thing now, educating everyone on the dogma of Reconciliation: Private property led to greed, so it was banned. Tech produced false luxury, which produced greed. It was banned. Debt was banned and credit was banned and money of all kinds was banned.

But it was better than the old system. Everyone was responsible for themselves. No rich, no poor, no patrons, and no proxies.

Not that the proxies had gone away, exactly. They were the first to be rounded up. They were trained and armed and became the Purifiers. They generally had no interest in reform. They wanted revenge and they wanted power, and the Reconciliation gave them both.

Today, however, the Purifiers were on their best behavior, keeping the crowd under control while Baram droned on about food cooperatives producing record calorie counts—“exceeding all our expectations!”—and about the containment of Machinist factions through “the appropriate application of humane force.”

Syd stopped listening. He was a symbol, after all. Symbols didn’t need to listen to speeches. He’d get up when he heard his name and he’d say the speech that had been written for him.
Great friends! Citizen heroes! I am just like you!
Et cetera. Eighteen minutes like that.

Funny to think he’d caused the revolution, but he didn’t get to enjoy it. Syd was as much a substitute for other people as he’d ever been when he was a proxy. It was just that now they cheered for him beneath a blazing sun.

His memories shimmered like a mirage on the pavement. They waved and sparked the air. And in the sparks, he saw Knox.

Moments before Knox had climbed into the machine that would destroy the networks and vaporize him in the process, Syd had asked him a question: “What am I supposed to do?”

“Like I know?” Knox told him, that lopsided smirk dimpling his cheek. “It’s your future. Choose.”

Had Syd chosen? Was this it? Was this all?

He noticed a rise in the volume of the crowd and he snapped his attention back to the stage. Baram was pointing at him and the people were cheering and he waved and they went wild. He guessed if someone else had freed him from a life of debt and poverty, he’d have been happy to see that guy wave too. If only these people knew that the guy waving at them wasn’t the guy who did it at all. If only they knew it had been a spoiled brat of a patron who’d set them free. Maybe that was the speech he should give?

“That’s right!” Counselor Baram continued. “At great risk to himself, he defied the system, fought past an army of Guardians and made his way here, to Old Detroit, to free us all! Thanks to this boy here, Yovel, the networks that enslaved us have collapsed. Thanks to Yovel, the corruption of the corporate fiefdoms has been demolished, and the people have been given control of their own destinies! On the day of Jubilee! The day of Yovel!”

The cheering again, the white cloths waving, and Syd waving back, teeth gritted. He stood.

“Who believes this knock-off story?” he muttered.

“Just let them believe, Syd,” Liam whispered in his ear. “They need to believe.”

“And what do you believe?” Syd asked.

Liam pursed his lips, didn’t answer.

Syd shook his head and approached the front of the stage. No amplification for him either. It seemed he’d be expected to shout as well. He cleared his throat.

He wanted to say,
It’s your future. Choose.

He said, “Great friends! Citizen heroes! I am just like you!”

The crowd chanted, “Yo-vel Yo-vel Yo-vel!”

He had to hold his hands in the air to quiet them so he could continue. Behind him, Liam scanned the sea of faces, his fingers resting on the bolt gun he wore on his belt.

“I am here today!” Syd continued. “To tell you! The story of our victory! Over the—!”

A high shout broke his speech.

At first Syd thought it was just more cheering from an overzealous citizen, but another shout followed, and then shrieks. Full-throated, piercing shrieks sliced through the air and Syd strained into the glare of the sunlight to see the cause.

Liam, on instant alert, shoved himself in front of Syd, holding him tightly behind his back with the metal hand digging into Syd’s arm.

“I can’t see.” Syd squirmed, unable to break the grip. “What is it?”

“I can’t tell yet . . . it’s—” Liam started and then Syd saw.

A figure clothed in a tattered gray jumpsuit came lurching from the alley to the side of the crowd. She had long blond hair and she walked with stutter-steps. Through the skin on her face, her neck, her hands, all her veins were visible, black and bulging. Through the tears in her clothes, the black lines of veins mingled with red welts and sores, like the flesh had been scratched off by anxious fingernails. Her mouth opened and she seemed to scream without making a sound.

Another black-veined figure spewed from the overgrown jungle alley on the far side of the crowd, and another and another. A dozen of them spilled across the plaza at the back of the crowd, careening blindly into the sea of revelers. They moved fast, scratching at themselves, opening and closing their mouths, charging forward, bleeding.

The people recoiled, stumbling over one another, tripping and shrieking, panicking as the disfigured bodies pushed into the throng.

As the nearest one heaved herself toward the stage, a Purifier raised his club and with a ferocious blow struck her down. She fell to the pavement with a crack. Her head bounced when it hit. Her long blond hair splayed out in front of her like sparks flying from a live wire.

It was, of course, an illusion.

There was nothing alive about her at all.