The Madness Project (The Madness Method) (28 page)

I shuddered.  That was not how I wanted to live my life.

“What’re you here for, Shade?” Tam asked, rapping his
fingers on his knees.  “You look like you come from somewhere…not here.”

“Istia,” I said, and looked away, hoping to end the
conversation.

It didn’t work.

“Istia!” Tam echoed.

“Where’s that?” Zip asked.

“It’s an island.  Up north.”  I felt Tam’s scrutinizing gaze
fix on me.  “What’re you doing here?  You here for the rebellion?”

I bit my tongue on asking,
What rebellion?
 

Instead I kept my face turned aside, watching the corridor
another ten seconds, then turned and met Tam’s eyes without a word or a nod.

Zip asked it.  “What rebellion?”

But Tam kept staring at me, eyes narrowed up a bit.  “If you
are, you’re in the wrong place.  Rivano’s the man you want to see.”

“He said he was looking—”  Zip’s voice trailed off and he
peeked at me, curious.

“Looking for Rivano?” Tam finished.  “Are you?”

I pulled up one knee and leaned my arm on it, staring
straight at him.

“Don’t make assumptions about me,” I said, lowering my
voice.  “We’ve only just met.”

“What rebellion?” Zip asked again, punching Tam in the arm.

I hid a smile, because I kept thinking what good friends Zip
and Bugs might be, if they lived in the same world.

Tam snorted.  “They’re ganna bring hell down on all of us,
whether we want it or no.”

“Is that why you won’t go to the Hole?” I asked.  “Is that
why you’ve got all these cold, hungry people hiding down here?  You don’t want
to be mixed up in Rivano’s plot?”

“Obviously,” Tam said.  “If you beat up the Meats, why
aren’t you over there now?  Wasn’t that your ticket in?”

I leaned my head back against the cold concrete wall.  “Assumptions. 
What makes you think you know anything about me or why I’m here?”

“Correct me, then.”

“No,” I said, smiling thinly.

Tam swore and wrapped his arms around his knees, burying his
head.  “Have it your way.  Make yourself comfortable.”

I hugged my arms around my stomach, more from the pain in my
gut than the cold.  “Zip?”

Zip paused in the middle of lying down, drawing a long
snuffle through his freckled nose.  “Yup?”

“Do you know who the Bricks are?”

“Oh, hell no,” Tam said, lifting his head.  “Zip, not a
word.”

“What?” I cried.  “It’s just a question!”

“Yeah, and if you’re asking, then maybe you shouldn’t know.”

“Sorry, Shade,” Zip said, shrugging.  He threw himself onto
the cold floor and curled his arms around his head.  “Sleep well!”

I ground my teeth and thudded my head against the wall.  A
half an hour or so trickled by, but still I couldn’t make myself sleep.  All
around me people snored, coughed, fidgeted.  Between the constant noise and the
hellish cold, I couldn’t decide if I wanted to scream or light the whole place
on fire.  And the nausea kept gnawing at me until I wished I would be sick just
so the pain would stop.

Finally I got to my feet and picked my way down to the end
of the corridor.  It was empty here—the three of us had made the end of the
line of bodies—and only one gas lamp battled the darkness.  It made an eerie
pulse of light, flickering, fading, flickering, lighting up nothing but a
chained door and a stairwell to the upper floors.

I rubbed my hands on my arms, wincing as I aggravated my
collection of bruises.  My thoughts roved a thousand places at once. 
Rebellion.  Istia.  Rivano.  The Bricks.  The city’s police, silently driving
the poorest of my people underground.

My people.

What a farce.  I’d thought more about this city and these
people as mine today than I had for seventeen years.

With one hand tight on my stomach, I turned to go back to
Tam and Zip, and flinched back in surprise.  A girl a little younger than me
stood just behind me like a conjured specter, watching me through the hugest
brown eyes I’d ever seen.  The deep purple circles rimming them made them even
more startling—that, and the sickly pallor of her face.  I hadn’t even heard
her come up behind me.

“What do you want?” I asked, the question rasping out harsher
than I meant.

I was shivering now, like a mongrel dog.  I couldn’t help
it.

She shrugged, her rough brown blanket slipping on her
shoulders.  “Heard you ask the boys about the Bricks,” she said, her voice
lilting, dreamlike.

She poked one hand from beneath the blanket to move her long
black hair away from her eyes.  I stared at her arm.  I’d never seen anyone so
skeletally thin in my life.  The sight of it made my stomach churn, and I
swallowed and swallowed again to fight back the sickness.

“Do you know who they are?”

“Maybe.”  She smiled wanly.  “You got some sweets?”

“I don’t know what you want.”

“You’re funny.”  She reached out, fingers shaking, to touch
my swollen lip.  I pulled back instinctively, and she frowned up at me.  “So
sad.  It must hurt.  Sweets help.  Help you forget.  Dan’ you have any sweets?”

“No,” I said.  “I’ve got nothing.”

“Me either.”  She shook her head.  “Nothing, nothing.”

“You can’t tell me anything about the Bricks?”

“No sweets.  Can’t remember.”

Stars, the girl was trying to bribe me.  And by the glassy
look in her eyes, I had a feeling I finally understood what the sweet shop
dealt in.  I clenched my jaw and moved to pass her, gently pushing her aside. 
Without any warning her arms snaked out, grabbing me around the waist.  She had
more strength in those frail arms than I could have imagined.  They gripped me
tighter and tighter until my bruised ribs screamed in pain.

“Get your hands off me,” I hissed, taking hold of one of
them and trying to pry away her fingers.

“Dan’ leave me in the cold…dan’ leave me…”

I stared down at her, bewildered and speechless.  A boy
would’ve got what was coming to him, but I didn’t think the girl even knew what
she was doing.  And yet her arms were crushing me, refusing to let me go.

“They dan’ care,” she whispered.  “None of them.  They dan’
care about me…dan’ try to keep me warm.  And I’m so cold…”

I gripped her by the shoulders and said, very slowly, “Let
go of me, and tell me what you need.”

Someone laid a hand on my shoulder.  I glanced back to find
Tam standing behind me, face grave.  But he just met my gaze without a word,
then turned to the girl clinging desperately to me.

“Liza,” he said, his voice soft and calm, like he was
talking to a child or a frightened dog.  “Look.  Sugar.”

He held out his hand, flashing a small brown paper packet. 
The girl loosened her grip on me, just enough so she could see it.

“Come on, Liza.  Let him gan.”

“Is it for me?”

“If you let him gan.”

Liza peered up at me, narrowing her eyes for a long moment. 
Then she reached up and took my face in her hands, and before I could pull
away, she brushed a kiss across my bruised eye.

“So sad,” she said again, and turned her haunted eyes to
Tam.  “For me, Tam?”

He shook the packet until she’d fixated on it, then he
pressed it into her hand.  A thin, wavering smile fluttered across her lips and
she backed away, holding the thing to her chest as if we would try to steal it
away.  When neither of us moved, she bolted up the steps and disappeared into
the shadows.

“What’d you do?” I hissed.  “That stuff…”

“It’s killing her, I know,” Tam said, sighing.  “But she
won’t let us break her off of it.  She gets in these fits when she’s gone too
long without it, and she’s like a child.  You can’t reason with her.  She
latches on to something or,” he nodded at me, “someone, and she won’t leave off
till she’s satisfied.  She’ll do anything for that stuff.  Anything.”  He shook
his head and turned away, shoulders slumped.  “Well.  We’re all dying of
something down here.”

I stared at him.  My stomach churned, and I barely made it
into the stairwell before I lost it.

Chapter 8 — Hayli

“Hayli, focus.”

I shook my head and frowned at Derrin.  He leaned on the
plain desk across from me, staring at me so hard I thought I’d catch fire, like
a wee ant under a magnifying glass.  When I just stared back, my knees pulled
up and my arms tying them together, he sighed and stood straight.

“I can’t help you improve if you don’t give me anything to
work with,” he said.  “What’s wrong today?”

He’d been trying to teach me how to sneak and hide and
disappear ever since Kantian had beat up Jig instead of me, but I just couldn’t
seem to function.  I felt like my broken pocket watch.  I had all the clockwork
gears and the numbers and the hands, but the wheels just wouldn’t turn.  It’d
been even worse the last couple days, because no matter where I hunted for
Shade, I never found him, and that had got me mother-henning about him in the
most annoying way. 

I realized a bit guiltily that I couldn’t even recall what
Derrin had been talking about.  As long as he didn’t ask—

“Do you even remember the last thing I said?”

Curses.

“Sorry, Derrin.”  I fiddled with the knife he’d placed on
the table.  It was a tiny thing, no longer or wider than my bitty finger.  “I
just kept thinking…”

He sighed and locked his elbows, bowing his head.  “If this
is about Shade—”

“No!  It’s not, actually, or not exactly.  It’s that…I
Shifted again the other night.  I couldn’t help it.  I was in bed, and then I
got itchy like that time we had the fleas…itching, itching…and all I wanted was
to get out and fly.  And I did.”  I hesitated.  I couldn’t look at him.  “I
think…I think I can remember something.  I think I saw Shade.”

He didn’t move a bit while I talked, but soon as I’d done he
asked, curious and quiet, “What about him?”

“He was sitting on a step somewhere in the rain.  That’s all
I remember.”

“Hm,” he said, and pushed away from the table. 

For a few seconds he stood turned aside, worrying his lower
lip with his thumb as he glanced around the little room.  It was a blank,
dreary place, with white walls long turned grey, no windows, and a cracked
ceiling that threatened to fall and squash us at any moment.  One lone lantern
sat on the desk between us, throwing us both in stark black and gold.  Besides
the desk and my chair, all the other furniture had got cleared out long ago, so
I felt a bit like I was in the slam instead of a training room.

“Well,” he said.  “I’m supposed to be helping you, so, try
something for me.  Shift.”

“Wait, now?”

“Yes.  We’re in a closed space here.  I want you to practice
using your gift.”

“Practice?” I echoed, dumbly.

“Shift, and focus on coming back here and sitting on the
desk.  Then I’m going to say something very simple.  I want to see if you can
remember it, and then tell me what it was when you Shift back.”

I swallowed hard.  Far as I’d ever been able to tell,
Shifting was liking putting on a glamour.  Nothing embarrassing happened to me,
like turning bare as a baby or sprouting a beak from my face, but still, it
never got any easier, being asked to Shift on command.  And it usually didn’t
turn out well, either.

“A’right,” I said.  “But…turn about, will you?”

He arched a brow, but he turned and folded his arms. 
“Whenever you’re ready.”

I took a deep breath and wriggled my fingers. 
Concentrated.  My heart pattered, reckless, blood driving like fire through
every bit of me.  And the world constricted, and my body caved in around me…

I’m trapped.  Walls cage me in.  Walls, walls
everywhere…and no windows… There is no way out.  A young man stares at me, tall
and dark, his eyes wide.  He will capture me.  He will kill me.

I beat against the walls, but they do not yield.  I drive
toward the ceiling, but cannot break through.  My body stings.  The world swirls
around me.  Again I throw myself at the walls, at the door.  The boy follows
me.  I can hear him shouting.  Hands reaching, reaching…I try to fly away, but
my wings are weary.  I can fight no more…

Hands close in around me, sweep me from the floor.  The boy
holds me close to his chest.  I try to struggle free, but he pins my wings.  I
can feel the pulse of blood in his fingers.  The warmth of his hands.  Gentle
hands.  He does not try to break me.  He watches me, frowning, as if he is
sad.  Why is he sad?  I am proud, I am free.  I was free.

I shout the injustice, but he does not let me go.

A noise like thunder rumbles from his chest, booming in
my ears.

“Hayli.”

I lie still.  I listen.

“Hayli.”

Hayli…that sound, so foreign before, is suddenly familiar
to me.  What could this boy say that would mean anything to me?  He is a
human.  Only a human.