The Madness Project (The Madness Method) (27 page)

“Maybe he could be if you lot div’n keep driving him off,” I
said, marking the last word by shoving him in the chest.

I stalked back to my own cot, my little haven, ignoring Pika
staring after me like I’d sprouted wings.  I curled up on the thin mattress and
tugged my curtain round, trying to block out the noise and chatter and all the
light.  But I couldn’t sleep.  I kept worrying about Shade, worrying what Jig
and Link had done to him.  Maybe he was too hurt to find shelter.  Maybe he’d
never left at all, but had pulled his hiding trick and was waiting till we all
went to sleep so he could come in and kill us all, because maybe Derrin was
right and Shade had it in for all of us and…

Maybe…

I sat up and brushed hair out of my eyes.  I must have
drifted off at some point, because no light seeped from the gas lamps now and I
couldn’t see a thing.  My back itched something fierce, all up and down the
knobbly bones, till I figured maybe it was the prickly straw poking through the
bed sheet.  I stretched and my fingertips twitched like they wanted to turn
feathered.  To fly…to fly…

Flyawayflyawayflyaway…

It burned like hunger, that yearning to fly.  I slipped
under my curtain quiet as I could and cleared out of the Hole to stand under
the dark wet sky.  My skin prickled and my eyes focused, unfocused, focused. 
My heart pattered a wild fast beat, wild as a bird’s…and the world gleamed in
black and glowing color.

The rain turns the world violet.  Wind lifts me, lowers
me, guides me through the currents of warmth and cold.  I stretch my wings,
finding balance, finding peace.  The city spreads below, dull and dark,
threaded with glimmering light shining off the wet streets.  From my height
humans are no more than insects, bundles of coats and hats trundling snail-like
through the storm.  Lightning dances above me, glaring with the brightness of a
hundred suns.  I blink and swerve.  The after-image of the flash makes a tangle
of the world below.  A gust of wind buffets me.  Still blinded, I thrash.  My
wings lose their grasp of the air, beating at emptiness as I spin toward the
earth. 

The ground screams toward me.

I can see the broken cracks of pavement when I catch a
draft, and drift to safety on a porch rail.  Rust, wet and cold and sharp,
scrapes the soft skin under my toes.  I announce to the world that I have
landed, and call it out again when no one listens.  No one but the boy in the
rain, who huddles under an awning and watches me like he knows me.  The white
lines around his eye shine ghost-like, their edges blurring into a violet
glow.  He moves—he will capture me.  I cry a warning and jump back, my claws
scraping flecks of rust from the rail.  For a moment we watch each other,
waiting, calculating.  Then he slumps back.  I have conquered.  I have won. 

The wind stirs my feathers, and I take to the air.

Chapter 7 — Tarik

“Hey, mister!”

I snapped awake, one hand instinctively shielding my bruised
side.  For a moment I couldn’t see anything at all, but then, as my eyes
adjusted to the night, I saw a small silhouette crouched beside me, gapped
teeth flashing in the light from a distant streetlamp.

“Zip?”

“Yup,” he said.  “You’re ganna get sick as a dog out here,
mister.”

I straightened my cramped limbs and dashed rainwater from my
face.  I must have drifted to sleep after I’d seen the bird—the strange crow that
reminded me so much of Hayli. 

Could it have been her?
I wondered. 
Could she
have found me?

I shook my head and flexed my hands.  My arms were numb, and
my head felt as if a train had run shot over it, twice.  The pain made my
stomach churn.  I bit my lip, desperate to fight off the nausea.

“You got in a fight with the Meats, div’n you?” Zip
breathed, his face close to mine as he peered at me.  “You look bad.  But they
div’n kill you!”

“They won’t bother me again,” I muttered, and hoped it was
true.

Zip whistled through the gap in his teeth.  “You better come
with me.  Yup.  My Pop wants to say thanks anyhow.”

He grabbed my arm and tugged, so insistent that I gave up
without more than a groan of complaint.  I followed him blindly through the
alleys and rutted streets, until we reached a ramshackle brick building with
shattered windows and a lone broken fire ladder.  I frowned.  It had only been
a few decades since my grandfather had mandated the use of fire escapes.  I
couldn’t imagine they’d existed long enough to fall into rust and ruin.

For a few moments I stood staring up at the building,
musing.  It captured everything I’d ever imagined about South Brinmark.  At one
time I’d decided my mental image had to be an exaggeration, fueled by high
society’s smug disdain and vicious rumors.  I’d thought no buildings could
actually look that bad.  Not in my city.

My city.

I laughed at myself as I thought it, as I stood in the rain
like a beggar or a thief.

“C’mon!” Zip said, and pulled on my arm again.

He had his other hand on the front door, his little palm
half-covering a painted circle with one line slashed through it.  The rest of
the door had been covered with layers and layers of paint, until it was
impossible to tell what the original designs had been.  I expected the door to
creak and groan as he opened it, but it swung in silently.

I started to step forward until I realized Zip hadn’t
budged.

“It’s me!” he said.  Then, straightening up like a little
soldier, he shouted, “Zip, reporting in!”

“Pass?” a young voice called from the darkness.

“Mud!  And…straw.”

“Straw?”  A pause.  I heard a murmur from the shadows, then
the voice called, “A’right.  Bring ‘em in.”

A torch flicked on in the darkness, flaring into my eyes as
I stepped inside.  A pair of hands gripped my arms, rough and uncompromising.

“What is this?” I cried, trying to twist free.

“It’s jake!” Zip said, anxious.  “They do this to everyone. 
Just wait!”

My captors shoved me forward, and I stumbled on a broken
floorboard, dizzy suddenly.  Winced as they jerked up on my arms to keep me
upright.  We headed up a dusty staircase and down a hall into the interior of the
building, where the only light gleamed in a thin line from beneath a door up
ahead.  The interior room made sense—no windows meant that no signs of life
would be visible to the street below.

Zip pushed open the door and I blinked a few times.  A
mixture of gas and candle light, strangely bright, lit up the faces of a
handful of people inside the narrow room.  One kid about my age perched on a
wooden desk, staring at me through a fringe of pale hair.  An older man wearing
a once-nice suit and a woman in a ratty wool coat sat in threadbare chairs near
a cold fireplace, and Zip’s father stretched on the remains of a couch by the
far wall.

I jerked my arms free of my captors’ grip and turned to
glare at them.  They looked rather like twins, both bearded and shaggy-haired
and somewhere in their thirties.  I fixed them each with a stare and tugged my
shirt straight, and then shifted back to face the others.

Zip rushed over to his father, plopping down on the couch by
the man’s knees.  “Pop!  ‘Member the mage who sent his trompers to you?  That’s
him!”

All the eyes that had been studying me idly before suddenly
snapped to fierce focus on my face—curious, cautious.  The suit stood up from
his chair and circled around to stand in front of me.  For a few seconds he just
surveyed me quietly, head to toe.  I took the chance to do the same.  He had a
hardness about him, not cruel but cold and calculating.  His head was bald as
Kor’s, his skin pocked and uneven, blue eyes sharp as glass.  He didn’t stand
much taller than me, and I had a fair notion I could beat him in a fistfight,
but he carried a submachine gun he must have nabbed from one of my policemen
(my policemen).  The barrel balanced on his shoulder, a silent threat.

“Who’re you?” he asked.  He had a thick accent, eastern,
maybe Ceruvay.  “What’s your intent in being here?”

“I brought him,” Zip said, popping up from the couch and
planting his fists on his hips.  For such a tiny thing, he had no fear at all. 
“He beat up the Meats, and I found him in the rain.”

“Beat up the Meats, did you?”  He squinted at me, his gaze
drifting over my swollen lip to what I imagined was a gruesome black-and-blue
eye.  “What for?”

“We didn’t agree,” I said.

The kid sitting on the desk smirked.  “Tell me you got a
good punch in on Jig,” he said.

I couldn’t resist a grin.  “Oh yes.”

“I like this one,” he laughed.  “Can we keep him?”

“Shut it, Tam,” the older man said.  “Let me get a look at
him.”

I didn’t fidget, even though he’d been getting a look at me
for what felt like ages already.  He tapped the barrel of his gun on his
shoulder.

“We don’t take in strays,” he said, pondering the words as
they came out.

“Not asking for any favors.  Just want a place to stay dry
for the night.”

“Well then.  Reckon we can accommodate you.  Just for the
night.”

I nodded my thanks.

“Tam, Zip, get him down to the bunker.  Shoo.”

The two boys moved at once, pushing me out into the hall
while the older adults gathered together.  They slammed the door behind us,
throwing the hall into blackness.

“Hold up.  I forgot my torch,” Tam said.  “Can you make it
without killing yourself, fish?”

“Yeah.  And the tag’s Shade,” I said.  I’d have to ask Kor
why I kept getting called a fish.

“Shade.  Nice.”

“Where’s that mean old man got to?” Zip asked.  “The one who
kicked us out when we found your stuff?”

I wanted to lie and tell him that
I’d
kicked Kor out,
because I thought it might amuse him, but I just shrugged and said, “He left. 
For a bit.”

I let my fingers brush the walls as we walked, hoping it
would keep me from tripping; I felt dizzier than ever, and I’d started to
wonder if it wasn’t just lack of food.  The muzziness, the headache, the
tightness in my gut…it all felt wrong.  I swallowed and kept moving.  One step
at a time.

We reached the stairwell, and a few pale streams of light
from an outside streetlamp crept through the dingy windows, just enough for me
to see the steps beneath my feet.  At the bottom of the stairs Tam found a
torch, and thus armed he and Zip led me deep into the building and finally down
into the underground. 

There were no beds there.  No barracks, no mess hall,
nothing like the Hole.  People of all ages lined the wide corridor, sitting
right on the cement floor wrapped in manky blankets and old coats.  Some sat
and chatted in small groups around low-burning oil lamps.  Others sprawled out,
unabashedly trying to sleep.  No fires warmed the chill, damp air, though I
caught sight of the occasional tin barrel that might have served to hold a
blaze.

The corridor went on and on, and the bodies went on and on. 
I’d always known the city had its problems, but I’d never imagined I would see
so many poor living like this.  The stench was enough to make me lightheaded. 
People coughed and sneezed, and I could just imagine how horrified Dr. Besdin
would be to witness it.  The place could be a breeding ground of disease, and
no one seemed to care enough to prevent it.

“God,” I whispered, stopping where the corridor branched. 
“You people live here?”

Tam frowned at me through his matted blonde hair.  “And you’re
that proud?” he asked, just barely turning his nose up.

“Thought your boss said you don’t take in strays.  Are all
these folks useful members of your crew?”

Zip snickered.  “Nope, that’s just what Coolie says to warn
folks off.  I mean, we’re crammed in here.  He dan’ want extras.”

“Hm,” I said, scanning the crowd.  “Not sure if you noticed,
but you’ve got a whole empty building sitting on top of you.  Why not move some
of these folks upstairs?”

“Cause the coppers would find out and smoke us all out.”

“Why should they care?  The buildings aren’t being used.”

Tam snorted.  “You talk like they’re reasonable.  They’re
not.  They just hate us, is all.  Think we’re ganna burn down the city if they
let us live halfway like human beings.  They dan’ get that we’re more likely to
do
that
if we’re stuck down here.”

I frowned, trying not to bristle at the insult to the
police.  It made no sense to me, but then, I’d never even known how many people
lived on the fringes of society.  Maybe that’s what the officials wanted.  Let
the poor live underground, and society could pretend they didn’t exist.  They
were the inconvenient blight on the city, the evidence that their laws hadn’t
worked.

Tam pushed farther down the narrow side corridor until we
reached a blank stretch of wall.  Zip flopped down first, shivering as he tried
to pull his hands inside his sleeves.  Tam slid down the wall to sit next to
him, but even though he wore a leather coat with hardly a patch on it, he
didn’t take it off to lend the younger boy.  I remembered what Zip had told
me—most people here, as long as they were warm, didn’t care if everyone else
were freezing.