Estranged (9 page)

Kalei’s hands clenched into fists, the
gun tucked safely into her belt. “Because they killed my
parents!”

“
So! That doesn’t mean you
have to kill them. That’s what SWORDE is for. Didn’t you hear? They
built a big huge fence in the city and they’ve been throwing
Estranged in there and keeping them locked up!”

“
They shouldn’t be locking
them up; they should be shooting ‘em,” Kalei replied sullenly,
crossing her arms.

The boy became animated, eager to
share his knowledge. “They do that too!”

Kalei’s arms unfolded and a smile
slipped onto her face. “Really?”

“
Yeah! I saw it in the
newspaper! They do it all the time. Not even the police can fight
Estranged anymore. Only SWORDE can take ‘em on!”

The boy’s enthusiasm became
infectious. Kalei’s grin widened. “Really!”

The boy nodded, all knowing. “Yeah,
because the police aren’t strong enough to stop the Estranged. They
keep dying. That’s why my mom says no one wants to be police
officers anymore.”

“
So. The police are just
wimps! Anyone can kill an Estranged. It’s easy!” Kalei held up her
borrowed gun proudly.

“
Have you killed an
Estranged?” the boy asked in wonder.

“
Maybe yes, maybe no,” she
replied.

The boy caught on. “You have
not!”

Kalei’s lip pouted out defiantly and
her eyebrows came together. “So! I will!”

The boy’s eyes widened. “But— but what
if they kill you?”

“
They won’t,” Kalei
replied, her eyebrows returning to normal and her chest sticking
out boldly.

The boy started to cry again. “But if
the police keep dying, then that means you’ll die too! I don’t want
you to die! Don’t go after them, please! I don’t want anyone else
to die. Not you too!”

Kalei relaxed, concern growing in her
eyes for the first time that night. “Who else died?”

“
My— my best friend
Freddy,” the boy sniffed.

“
Oh,” Kalei
said.

The boy cried for a while longer, and
then suddenly he became enthusiastic. “Oh! I know! You can join
SWORDE! Then you won’t die and you can kill all the Estranged you
want!” He grinned at Kalei, eager for her approval.

“
Why can’t I just kill
them now?” she asked sullenly.

“
Because you’ll die,” he
pointed out sternly, glaring at her through puffy eyes.

Kalei considered him for a moment,
then decided she wasn’t going to win against this whiny boy. “Fine,
I won’t kill any Estranged until I join SWORDE.”

That was the night she met Fenn. That
was the promise she made to him. Now what was she supposed to do?
SWORDE was run by the very people she had been determined to
kill.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Other Side

Kalei passed beneath streetlight after
streetlight, watching the night close around her when she passed
under a burnt-out lamp, and then letting it retreat again as she
stepped into the light of the next one. She felt anger,
frustration, and pure hatred. She hated the bastard who killed her
parents, she hated SWORDE, she hated the world, she hated herself.
She wished she could take a knife, stab it through her heart, and
then tear the blade down across her abdomen so she could reach in
and rip out all the stupidity, futility, and stabbing pain that
resided within her.

Kalei passed by the hollow husks of
restaurants, shopping centers, and a decimated children’s museum.
Sitting on top of these corpses stood the ever-present skyscrapers,
penning Kalei in and blocking out the sky, making the night feel
all the darker. Kalei’s eyes skipped from one building to the next,
taking in what little she could see of their crumbling stone and
rusting metal. She wished every one of these structures were on
fire, burned to the ground so the people of Celan didn’t have to be
haunted by these dark memorials anymore. She hated it; she hated it
all. Still, she walked on in the cold, dark night.

“
Oh hey!
Kalei!”

Kalei saw Lecia approach from an
intersection up ahead, but she didn’t respond. Lecia dodged a
dormant delivery truck that sat deserted in the road, and gave a
small Smart car a wide berth as she made her way over to
Kalei.

Kalei watched as Lecia navigated the
car-littered street, surprised an Estranged hadn’t jumped out of
one of the vehicles to attack the woman, and alarmed at the
possibility. Lecia came up to a solid walk of four sedans and a
sports car, all smashed bumper to bumper. Apparently, the woman
decided the best way around the pile was through it, because she
opened the door to the nearest car and climbed into it.

Kalei stopped watching and marched
over to the heap of metal. “Are you some kind of
stupid!”

The car door nearest Kalei shuddered
and then popped open. Lecia climbed out, head first.
“What?”

“
How did you know there
wasn’t an Estranged sleeping in there, huh? And what the hell are
you doing down here in the middle of the night?”

Lecia smiled as she brushed off the
dust she had picked up from her excursion. “Research never sleeps.
So, how are things going with SWORDE?” She looked up at Kalei and
grimaced, “Sheesh, you’d think they’d at least give you some decent
clothes. Why are you still wearing those grubby PJs?”

Kalei looked down at herself and saw
she was still wearing the same shorts and tank top she had worn on
the night she was turned. Only now, they were brown, frayed, and
half the shirt over the left side of her stomach was missing. Kalei
was appalled. But not nearly as appalled as she was at Lecia’s
implication that she was involved with SWORDE now. She clarified,
“I’m not with SWORDE.”

“
Really?” Lecia seemed
confused, her eyebrows came together. “You’ve been gone for two
weeks. I just assumed—”

“
Two weeks?” Kalei
repeated. That didn’t seem right. And yet— “How long has it been
since the attack?”

“
I’m guessing you mean the
one that turned you Estranged? Let me think...” Lecia paused and
muttered the names of months while absent-mindedly counting them
out on her fingers. “Almost a year and a half now.”

A year and a half? Had it
really been that long?

Lecia continued, “So, why aren’t you
going to work for SWORDE?”

Kalei felt the muscles in her neck
tense. “I’m not going to answer that. Wait, you know SWORDE is
Estranged?”

“
Yeah, of course. I can’t
get anyone outside the fence to believe me, though. Everyone seems
to think I’m a coot.”

“
Well, you
are.”

Lecia huffed up. “Am not!”

Kalei laughed, and Lecia folded her
arms stubbornly. Then Lecia said, “How am I supposed to get people
to listen to me if none of you will take me seriously?”

Kalei shrugged. “Stop being a
coot.”

Lecia scowled at Kalei. “Oh, now
that’s real helpful. Anyway, what are you up to now? The last time
I saw you, you were all gung-ho about finding your family. Did
SWORDE tell you anything?”

“
No.” Kalei was done
talking to Lecia. The woman seemed to have a talent for getting on
her nerves. Kalei turned and started to walk back to the
sidewalk.

Lecia didn’t get the message. She
followed Kalei, keeping pace at Kalei’s shoulder as she went on.
“Well y’know, Tusic might have some information. I hear they’ve
been investigating SWORDE, super-secret though, off the
books—”

Kalei looked at Lecia. “Tusic? You
mean the GPS company?”

“
Yeah, Landen Franklin has
his own organization of Estranged, kind of like SWORDE. Except they
operate outside the fence and they don’t get along with SWORDE very
well. This one time—”

“
Why would Landen Franklin
have an Estranged organization?”

“
Didn’t you know? He’s
Estranged too. I guess he doesn’t agree with the way SWORDE does
things, so he formed his own group, but he can’t get the government
to hand Estranged policing authority over to him, so he’s been
keeping the whole thing hush-hush for PR reasons. But they still
have people all over the city, he even—”

“
You can’t be
serious.”

Lecia blinked. “I am.”

Kalei stopped walking and looked Lecia
in the eyes. There was no way Landen Franklin was Estranged. The
story went that after E-day, when the Estranged appeared in Celan
and the ships stopped coming to port, the city’s economy nearly
collapsed. Then Landen Franklin showed up, bought up some
dirt-cheap property, and manufactured some of the first GPSs in the
world. He made a fortune. And then he poured that money back into
the city. He dredged up the East Lake, which had formerly been
unusable as a harbor, and built a brand new port away from
Downtown. Then he beefed up the existing railway system, he funded
a dozen non-profits, he paid for a new town hall – after he was
done, the new port was full of ships again and the city’s tech
industry was booming. He saved Celan. And everyone in town
considered him to be a hero for it.

And now Lecia was trying to tell her
he was Estranged?

Lecia returned Kalei’s stare with a
stubborn glare and said, “Don’t give me that look. Think about it:
Landen Franklin has not been seen in public in fifteen years. Why?”
She paused and gave Kalei a chance to respond. Kalei wasn’t biting.
“Because he’s Estranged! He would look exactly the same as he did
fifteen years ago!”

“
Have you seen him in
person?”

“
Well, no.”

“
Then how can you say for
certain he’s Estranged?”

“
Well— because—” Lecia
sighed. “Look, why don’t you come with me and meet one of the Tusic
guys? Ask them yourself.”

Kalei crossed her arms. “Why would I
want to do that?”

Lecia shrugged. “What else are you
going to do?”

Kalei considered her question for a
moment, then unfolded her arms and said, “Fine. Lead the
way.”

Lecia gave a small jump and shouted,
“Yes!”

As Kalei followed, she said, “Don’t
you ever get tired? It must be four o’clock in the
morning.”

“
Of course I do. I’m still
an Untouched, silly. I’ve just switched my sleeping habits around
is all.”

“
An
‘Untouched’?”

“
Yeah.” Lecia turned
around and started walking backwards as she addressed Kalei. “Yeah,
it’s what people on this side of the fence call non-Estranged. Wow,
you really don’t know anything, do you?”

“
And you really should
watch where you’re going.”

Lecia continued to walk backwards,
“Nah, I’m fine. I know this city like the back of my—” Sure enough,
she tripped. Unable to offer any assistance, on account of Lecia
being Untouched, Kalei sat back and watched as Lecia untangled
herself from a fallen telephone pole. Kalei covered her grin with a
hand placed casually across her mouth. The grin was quickly wiped
away, though, as sudden burning sensation blossomed in her left
lung, as though someone was pouring hot coffee into it. Kalei
dropped her hand and remembered what she was.

Having finally found her feet again,
Lecia stood up and resumed their journey. As Kalei stepped over the
telephone pole, she asked, “If Tusic operates in the city, how does
Landen keep his people from attacking Untouched?”

“
Uh, well, from what I
understand, Landen keeps them on a pretty tight leash. Rumor has it
he’s brutal to anyone who break the rules.”

“
How brutal?”

“
I don’t know. The guys
were too scared to tell me.”

Kalei scoffed. “They probably just fed
you that bullshit to get rid of you.”

Lecia’s eyes widened and she looked at
Kalei. “You really think so?”

“
I don’t know. I’ve never
met the guys. But I know you, and that’s what I would
do.”

Lecia huffed, “You’re so mean!” and
picked up her pace, leaving Kalei to catch up.

As they walked, Kalei was... well,
miserable would be an understatement. Her anger had subsided for
the most part, but one other thing remained: the conviction that
existence was futile. By allowing herself to live, Kalei could only
bring death and despair to this world. But dying wasn’t an option
because she still didn’t know how to kill her Estranged body. For
the time being, Kalei was forced to accept that her existence was
unavoidable. And if it meant bringing death and destruction to the
world, then she knew where she would deliver it. But SWORDE would
have to wait; she still had to find out what they had done with her
family. If Fenn and the girls were alive, Kalei didn’t want SWORDE
hurting them to get back at her. She had to make sure they were
safe first.

Lecia and Kalei reached the edge of
the city, where a ten-foot-tall chain-link fence overlooked the
ocean and sealed off the old docks.

“
Why did they bother to
build a fence around the water?” Kalei asked.

“
Well, the local fisherman
kept finding people drowning in the ocean, and when they went to
rescue the person, well, they died. Nine times out of ten, the
drownee was an Estranged. There’s even one story that a couple
Estranged were carried away during a storm and showed up months
later on Dostralean Coast. SWORDE decided it was safer to extend
the fence and keep the Estranged out of the water.”