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Authors: Susan Jane Bigelow

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BOOK: Broken
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There was a man at the head of a glorious army. He brought freedom. He brought victory. He had remade the universe in his own image. Blue banners flew everywhere he went.

—There was a man at the head of a terrifying army. Blood spilled at his feet, the worlds bent to him. The black banners of the Reformists flew above him. His was the fist that encircled the Earth, and clenched shut.

 

A thousand permutations of those two themes flew into Michael’s head. So
strong.
He’d never met anyone like this.

 It was too much.
I'm too young for this
, he thought desperately. He looked around. Surely someone else would take the baby? Surely he wouldn't have to.

He barely noticed that the mother had staggered off and thrown herself in front of the 10:14. A crowd gasped. The baby began to squirm and cry.

 Michael regained enough of himself to sprint up and, out of the station, before the police could stop him. He scanned the gray heavens quickly; Sky Ranger had gone.

 The world seemed to waver and spin around them. Possibilities swam through the air, coming off the baby in waves. He tried to shove them out of his head.

 There. He'd done it. He had no choice but to continue now, into the short, painful future that waited for him. Val's letter seemed to burn against his chest, inside his black jacket.

The baby's cries were getting more insistent. People were staring.

Michael quickly secured the baby in his pack, head poking out the top—for some reason that seemed to calm him down—and struck west. The Bronx. The bombed-out Bronx. He had to get there as soon as possible. That was where Third Perthist Ministries was.

He had to find the silver-haired woman,
now
. He remembered enough of the possibilities to realize just how much she mattered to the direction he wanted things to go.

Plus, Val Altrera had said to find her. So he would. He had to. It was that simple.

 He didn’t notice the two men with black armbands fall in line behind him.

* * *

Broken stretched and shook. It was colder today—winter at last. She’d eaten something rancid, and wanted to puke it up, but couldn’t let herself. She’d pass it through; whatever bad things were in it wouldn’t hurt her. Nothing could hurt her, not really.

She hadn’t been so hungry in years. Something crawled next to her feet. A rat. Her left hand darted out and clutched it tightly. It shrieked and squirmed and sank its teeth into her hand, but she held on, then bit its head off.

She ate the whole rat, bones and all. Her body could digest anything. It would be painful, but she could do it.

A wave of agony coursed through her, then stopped abruptly. Her hand had healed, but she still craved food.

She knew she was a bloody wreck; they’d probably haul her in. She didn’t want the transmitter back; she'd have to cut her arm off again. But she had to eat. She glanced cautiously out of the alley, and spied a vendor with a cart close by. She raced towards it, waving and screaming.

The man was terrified enough of the crazy woman with blood caked into her hair and clothes to freeze while she stole six hot dogs and a can of juice. She raced back to the alley, then hid under a pile of garbage to eat. The cops might come, they might not. If they did, they’d take a cursory look around the alley and go.

The hot dogs were awful and cold, but they filled her up. She felt her strength creeping back, bit by bit. Her mind cleared.

Memory flooded her.

* * *

Doc watched her eat. "Lordy, she packs it away. I suppose she must need the energy. Did she really lose her entire hand?"

"Yeah," said Crimson Cadet
(who would die only a few weeks later)
, shaking his head. "I’ve never seen anyone heal so fast. But," he lowered his voice, "she screamed the whole time. It looked like it hurt her something awful."

The food was so good, she didn’t care what they said.

* * *

 Broken moaned and put her hand on something soft and cold.

She risked letting a little light peek in through her eyelids, and wished she hadn’t. It was the cat. The poor thing had bled to death; the Black Bands had damaged her too badly.

Despite herself, Broken started to shake uncontrollably. She didn’t care if the cops found her. "Kitty," she rasped. "Kitty…"

Nothing she touched ever turned out right. She wept, sobs wracking her unwashed body, as she cradled the tiny, furry corpse.

* * *

Michael picked his way clumsily through the unfamiliar streets of New York. He’d grown up north of here, and wasn’t quite sure where to begin. To make a bad situation worse, the baby, tucked into his backpack as a makeshift carrier, was starting to fuss and wail again.

Michael realized belatedly that he didn’t know the first thing about taking care of a baby. Maybe Silverwyng would, if he ever could find her.

One possibility he
had
seen was himself and the baby wandering around New York searching for her until they froze to death. He tried not to think about that one.

Maybe the kid was hungry. Or maybe he had just filled his diaper. Come to think of it, something did smell. And the only diaper he had was  the one he’d been wearing when his mother had handed him off to Michael, right before she chucked herself in front of the northbound express.

He glanced over at Union Tower, now just a thin spindle rising in the east. Sky Ranger had probably stopped looking for him. They had better things to do than chase down kids who pretended to be Reformist journalists. Didn’t they?

Just in case, he tried to keep out of the way of the cops and the Black Bands.

He stopped in a grocery store and bought some diapers and bottled baby formula. Well-armed, he slipped into a convenient bathroom. When he took the kid out of the backpack, he was greeted with a terrifying stench. The kid hadn’t been
wearing
a diaper, just a pair of bulky shorts. Michael had had some food in there, but he was sure he didn’t want it anymore. He doubted he could salvage the backpack, since a moldering pile of baby shit now lay in the bottom.

"Aw, man," he griped as he ran the water into the pack. "Look what you did."

The baby, happy to be free of his clothes and the backpack, giggled at Michael. His coffee-brown skin looked a little raw, at least in the places where it wasn’t covered by something foul. As Michael, fighting down his rising gorge, took a paper towel to the kid’s behind, he felt something warm and wet trickling on his head.

The kid laughed as he peed all over the counter and floor. An older man entered the bathroom, took one look at the situation, and left quickly with a "glad that ain’t me" expression on his face.

Why, Michael wondered for the millionth time, didn’t his visions ever warn him of
these
sorts of possibilities?

* * *

It took nearly half an hour for Michael to clean the baby thoroughly enough so that he didn’t royally stink. Maybe he wouldn’t have to go for a while. Did he need some sort of ointment for the raw patches? The backpack, he cleaned as much as he could, although it still had a lingering odor. Michael got some formula down the baby (and some on the walls of the bathroom) and zipped him up in the backpack again. Mercifully, the kid fell asleep as soon as he was secure.

The sun had set over the Hudson by the time Michael made it back outside. This was getting ridiculous. He needed to find Silverwyng,
really
soon.

He glanced around. Two guys were hanging out at the corner, watching him through heavy-lidded eyes. No one else was nearby. The baby made a few “maah” noises, but stayed mostly asleep. Thank God. Michael hoisted the pack.and set off towards Harlem and the Bronx beyond.

He cut through a neighborhood of small detached houses, past three memorials to the firebombing of 2046, and found himself facing a busy expressway. He checked his map. He’d gone too far to the west, and he needed to backtrack. With a sigh, he set off southeast.

Something scampered into the shadows just inside his field of vision. Was someone following them already? He shook his head. Nothing to be done for it. Just keep going. One foot in front of the other. Try to lose them, maybe dart down an alley.

The kid started to sniffle and cry. Weary down to his bones, Michael felt like doing the same. He’d been walking for hours, his feet were killing him, and he was hungrier than he'd been in a long time. He started to wish he’d taken the subway, even with the risks he saw in those possibilities.

He finally crossed under the expressway and entered the older part of the city. It had remained pretty much unchanged since the 2020s, when the last great urban renewal drive had taken place. No one had bothered to rebuild a lot of it after the Last War, so bomb craters and tumbledown buildings were a common sight.

She
lived here, somewhere.

* * *

He was still being followed. He would look behind him every so often and see a figure trying to look nonchalant, or glancing quickly away. There were maybe five of them, now, and they were bad at this.

He knew who they were. He knew who they represented. Some of his possibilitie—more than he cared to admit—began with these men and ended with him before the thin man himself, prostrate on the ground, before they shot a bolt of white-hot light through his skull.

All of those possibilities ended with the boy in their hands, leading their armies. He hated the thought.

He slipped into an alleyway, and crawled over the low wreck of a fence. The baby, miraculously, made not a sound. He could hear some shifting and cursing; bums, probably, or other night wanderers. He stole silently down towards the river, and hid behind a trash compactor.

Two of the men sauntered too-casually into his field of vision. He held the baby close, trying to lull him to sleep, desperately hoping they wouldn’t notice him. This was one of those moments he’d perceived. Sometimes, they took him. Other times, he got away. When the baby cried, they took him. If the baby stayed quiet, they escaped. Simple, mostly.

Michael Forward held his breath. Another man, taller than the others, joined the group. Then two more came.

The baby woke up, and his huge black eyes filled with tears.

Shit
. He covered the tiny boy’s mouth with a thick rag.

Too late. A piercing cry escaped the infant’s lips, and the men turned and pelted in Michael’s direction. He scooped the baby up in his arms and burst into a dead run. The cries grew louder, giving their pursuers a beacon to fix on. Michael cursed. No possibilities. None. Nowhere was safe; he needed
silence
!

Suddenly, he pulled up short, almost dropping the boy into the swirling, icy depths of the Hudson.

Dead end.

Michael fell to his knees as the men advanced. They seemed pleased. They could finish the job tonight, instead of taking days or weeks.

 Michael trembled and felt bile rising in his mouth. He’d never been so afraid. They would kill him. It was over, already.
Too soon!
he thought wildly.

"Please," he whimpered, "please…"

The men grinned. One of them drew a shiny knife. Michael could see his distorted reflection in its blade.

Possibilities. He died, over and over, his life’s blood spilling on the cold ground. He would never even meet the man behind it all. He’d die in a few minutes. They would kill him now. His life was over
now
. Now.
NOW
.

Michael drew a rattling breath. The men converged, the baby cried.

"Take him," Michael said, extending his arms to the men. “Please, please, anything...”
I want to live!

"Take him!" Michael heard himself say again. He glanced at the men, then, and knew he was damned.

They were going to take the baby, and then kill him anyway. No escape.  All for nothing.

One of the men strode forward, and reached for the baby. A gurgling sound came from behind them, followed by a great heaving of water, and a wracking cough. The men, distracted for a moment, turned.

She emerged from the water, tattered clothes clinging to her sides, long silver hair plastered to her head. She strode ashore, and took in the scene.

Michael recognized her at once, and took the only chance he had.

"Silverwyng!" he cried. "
Help!
"

* * *

Broken had been trying to kill herself again. What else could she do, after the day she’d had? She’d chosen drowning this time, because it was much more painful and took a very long time. She’d jumped off a low bridge and fought to stay under the icy water. But this time, her heart wasn’t in it. She’d just come back to life and be as miserable as ever. So she let the current bear her south, towards the sea. Maybe she’d  float to Australia, or to China.

The cold numbed her, and eventually she felt like getting out. She swam to shore, and dragged herself up onto the beach.

Four men were menacing a kid and a small baby.

Staying out
, she told herself forcefully. She wasn’t in the LED anymore. Everything she tried to save ended up worse off than before, like the cat.

BOOK: Broken
3.74Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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