Estranged (8 page)

The moment Kalei closed her eyes, her
mind was thrust into a battleground. The war ripped and rang
through every nerve, every muscle in her body. It sent impulses to
her limbs and drove energy vibrating through every cell. Kalei
struggled to contain it, but behind her efforts, she felt a deep
and biting despair. She felt a fierce conviction that there was
nothing left. No power to her name, and no reason to reclaim it.
She had lost everything. Fenn. Family. Everything. She was
Estranged now. Her world was dead.

Then she remembered how she had almost
killed Lecia. It all happened so fast, there wasn’t time to pull
back her hand. If Lecia hadn’t... it could’ve been so easy. Taking
a life was so easy, so effortless now. Kalei was appalled by the
thought. Her stomach heaved at the thought. But it was true. That
could have been Kas or Fenn’s hand. Now that she knew Fenn and the
girls were alive, she knew it was possible. She remembered Teia
holding out her hand to Kalei with a small ladybug cupped in it...
Kalei would not allow herself to lose control again.

So instead, Kalei immersed herself in
the pain. After a while, the addiction lost its hold amidst the
quiet, endless violence. It faded, and it became no more than a
distant echo to Kalei’s dark thoughts.

She opened her eyes then,
and she found herself lying on the floor. As she moved to sit up,
she felt a series of stabbing sensations—
in
her feet? She looked down and saw
shards of glass and splinters of wood lodged into the soles of each
foot, wedged beneath layers of dirt and dried blood. She reached
down to scrape the blood away and found that the skin and muscle
had healed around the objects. No swelling, no redness, no sign of
any injury aside from the random items protruding here and there.
It was unsettling to look at.

Kalei braced herself for what came
next. She gripped the first piece of splintered wood firmly between
her thumb and forefinger. It appeared to be a piece off the coffee
table, a solid chip of pine with slivers sticking out at odd angles
where the wood had broken off from the polished body of the table.
Only an inch of the wood could be seen before it disappeared into
the soft flesh of her instep. With a deep breath, she ripped it
out. Blood and pain blossomed from the new hole, and Kalei cried
out and nearly bit her tongue off as her teeth clamped together.
Yet strangely, this new pain was welcoming. It was almost.... good.
She grabbed the next piece and continued with her grim task, and
all the while, the enraged flesh distracted Kalei’s senses from her
inner torment. It was a relief to be away from those darker
battles, if only for a moment. But as soon as the fragments were
free, the wounds quickly recovered and the external pain subsided,
allowing the darkness from her heart to flow back in. For every
sharpened fragment she pulled out, she resisted the urge to reapply
it elsewhere.

When at last her feet were free of
their contaminants and the final wounds had healed— unnaturally
fast— Kalei wanted nothing more than to curl up in her corner and
die. Instead, she pushed herself off the floor, carefully made her
way across the room, and grabbed the door handle.

Kalei didn’t know how many times the
sun and the moon had passed by her window, nor could she say how
many meals she had skipped. Neither hunger nor sleep plagued her
anymore. She looked back at the cracked window at the far side of
the room and saw only a warped reflection from the single
fluorescent light that shone from the ceiling. It was too dark
outside to see the world without, but somewhere in the distance,
she could hear the screeching of a hungry bat. She didn’t care. She
opened the door.

In the hallway, a figure in full
SWORDE uniform spotted her. As the uniform stepped forward, a stern
woman’s voice came through the visor. “This way.” Without waiting
to see if Kalei would follow, she turned and walked down the
hall.

Kalei followed, for lack of anything
better to do. The woman led her through the battered hallway and
down a grand set of carpeted, rotting stairs— which smelled
terrible, like someone had poured milk down the walls and left
cabbage out to spoil. The mold and spores that squished beneath her
feet only served to add to the cacophony of smells. It made the
musty, dried blood smell of her room seem like a basket of
roses.

All the while, Kalei’s escort didn’t
say a word. Kalei was grateful for the silence. She had enough
going on within her own skull without having to worry about anyone
else’s bullshit. They walked along another hallway, passing a
series of heavy wooden doors with small windows, and each with a
small placard beside the door that read, “Conference Room.” Most of
the rooms appeared to be empty, but occasionally, Kalei would spot
a person or two lurking in the corners or sitting at a
table.

The room Kalei was shown
into was as simple as all the others: four walls with peeling
wallpaper leaning over an old, abused table like aged corporate
directors looking down upon some old plan or proposal. At the head
of the table sat the little boy from the foyer wearing a blue suit
similar to his brown one. To his right sat an old woman with frayed
white hair standing at all angles on her head, and a heavy brown
coat that looked to be a size too large sat on her shoulders. She
seemed to be shaking from head to toe.
It’s not that cold in here
, Kalei
thought passively.

The boy looked up. “Ah! There you are.
Mar here is a bit ahead of you, but I don’t think she will mind
slowing her lessons while you catch up.”

Kalei’s escort was already retreating
down the hall. Kalei watched her go and then looked at the little
boy. “Where is Fenn?”

“
He is safe. That is all
you need to know.” The boy stood up and flashed Kalei a smile.
“Won’t you join us?”

Kalei clenched her jaw. She had
expected as much. SWORDE wasn’t going to give her a straight
answer. She nodded to the old woman. “What is this?”

“
Training,” he responded
cheerfully.

Kalei didn’t return his enthusiasm.
“Why?”

“
It is requisite; all
Recruits must go through it. You should join us. I assure you, it
will not be a waste of your time.”

“
I think it would be,”
Kalei replied apathetically. “I have no intention of joining the
organization that killed my parents and kidnapped my
husband.”

The old woman looked up and brusquely
shouted, “Shut up! Your stupid whining is breaking my
concentration, you little bitch!”

The boy calmly reassured the old woman
and set her back to her task with a few small words. Then he turned
back to Kalei and said, “Come now. SWORDE had nothing to do with
your parents’ deaths. The organization wasn’t even founded until
the following year.”

Kalei was disconcerted by the fact
that he knew exactly when her parents were murdered. “Perhaps, but
the man who founded SWORDE had everything to do with it, and there
is no way in hell I am working for him.” Kalei was fed up with
their games. She turned and left the odd pair to their
lessons.

Nobody stopped Kalei as she found her
way to the main exit, not the boy or anyone else. This time, the
front desk was empty as she carefully stepped through the shattered
doors and into the night.

The cool breeze was nice, like a
distant whisper carrying the scents of the sea to Kalei’s nose to
calm her despite her battle with the darkness. Kalei could feel it
now that the addiction had faded. The darkness beat against her: a
steady, consuming drum that made her body its home and brought her
nothing but misery. She could see no point to it. There was no
point to any of it.

Kalei wandered the cold streets, the
rough bite of the pavement on her bare feet an echoing reminder of
the shards that had been ripped out just minutes before. Kalei
watched the cracked asphalt pass beneath her and tried to make
sense of it all. Everything was a mess. It was as though she
finally fell asleep that late night and now she couldn’t wake
up.

She thought about the trip to the park
with her two nieces. Kalei felt as though it had happened only a
couple days ago. But something told her it had been much, much
longer since she had seen them.

And only SWORDE knew where they were
now. The story might be that they were in Victim Protection, but
what did that mean? The truth was, it could mean anything. Once
people went into Victim Protection, they were never heard from
again. For all Kalei knew, Fenn could be dead. The girls could be
slaves. Or worse. They could be Estranged like Kalei. She didn’t
want to think about it.

And then there was the attack that
brought her here. Kalei had been on the scene of many attacks, if
only to keep the peace, and she had never heard of more than two or
three Estranged being involved in one attack. A couple dozen
indicated something more, something organized. Estranged didn’t
just get together and buy a couple motorcycles before attacking a
random house. No. And it couldn’t be a coincidence that Xamic was
there either, on the anniversary of her parents’ death.

But why? And why was it that when she
woke up, the other guy was there, the teenager with the flowered
nails? None of it made any sense.

The only thing she did know for sure
was that SWORDE was a sham. The people in Celan thought they were
being protected by SWORDE. Heck, Kalei had even idolized them
growing up; they were the only ones who could do anything against
the Estranged. And now she knew they were Estranged themselves. The
thought made Kalei want to vomit. She felt betrayed. She felt
infuriated.

The list of people Kalei needed to
kill had just gotten longer.

After her parents died, Kalei had
decided that she would exterminate every Estranged in existence.
Not just for revenge, but to protect everyone in the city. When she
was ten, she used to sneak out at night with her foster mom’s old
revolver, searching for the black-nailed monsters so that she could
exterminate them all.

But Kalei never found an Estranged on
those excursions. Most nights, she never met anyone on the streets.
Some nights, a stranger would find her and bring her back home.
Kalei always resented that. At school, she heard about Estranged
attacks all the time, but somehow, she was incapable of being at
the right place at the right time. More than anything, she wanted
to stop those attacks from happening. Even as young as she was, she
didn’t want any more people to suffer the way she did. Of course,
there was always the possibility she would fail and fall victim to
an Estranged. If that happened, she’d always hoped she would be
dead instead of turned. The gaping hole that was created when her
parents died left her okay with leaving this world
behind.

Then one day, she was climbing out the
bathroom window when she met a boy her age. He was lost, crying,
and utterly shocked when he saw her sneaking out of the house.
“What are you doing! It’s night time— get inside!” His arms were
clenched close to his chest. His head quickly checked left to right
and then returned to Kalei. “You’re going to get killed! I’m going
to get killed! Big brother said Estranged come out at night and go
after— Oh man, I don’t want them to eat me!” And with that, the boy
burst into tears.

Kalei dropped down to the grass with a
soft thud and retorted with all her nine-year-old confidence, “You
idiot, Estranged don’t eat people! Besides, they come out in the
daytime too. It’s not like they’re nocturnal.”

The boy looked up at her and snuffled.
“Nocturnal?”

“
It means they only wake
up at night, stupid, which they don’t. So stop whining.” She pulled
out her foster mother’s gun and stormed off into the
street.

The young boy panicked. “What are you
doing!”

“
I’m going to shoot an
Estranged,” Kalei yelled back.

“
What!” The boy was
totally bewildered. He ran after her. “You can’t do that! They’re
bigger than you! You’ll die!”

“
Yeah, right. I’ll shoot
‘em before they can even get close!” she retorted
arrogantly.

The boy started crying, louder and
harder than before. He caught up to her and clung to her arm as he
blubbered, “Please don’t go after the Estranged,
please!”

That night had changed things for
Kalei. The boy refused to move until Kalei went back into her
house, but when Kalei tried to ditch him, he followed her doggedly,
too terrified to be left alone. He followed her for an hour before
Kalei realized he truly didn’t know his way home. She might have
been willing to sacrifice herself in the pursuit of Estranged, but
she didn’t want this sniffling little boy to get hurt. She asked
the boy for his address, but he wouldn’t tell her. He wasn’t just
scared for himself. The tight grip on her forearm, determination in
his eyes despite the trembling of his jaw; it occurred to Kalei
that he was scared for her too. Until she promised to stop hunting
Estranged, he wouldn’t allow her take him home. But she
refused.

And thus, a long and loud debate
between nine year olds ensued. It was a sign of the times that no
one dared step outside to scold the two kids.

“
Why do you have to kill
Estranged?” the boy insisted.