The Madness Project (The Madness Method) (69 page)

The wind picked up, scurrying through branches and tossing
my hair into my face.  A little sliver of moonlight crept through the leaves,
but it was skittish and winked out behind the clouds before it showed me
anything.

I scowled and turned about.

“You pulling that disappearing trick on me again?”

“Just go,” his voice rasped, harsh in the darkness.

The torch sputtered into feeble life.  Shade hadn’t
disappeared.  He still slouched against the tree, one arm pressed against his
forehead, the other clutching his stomach, his eyes gleaming in the light.  My
heart thudded, painfully loud, turning my stomach.

“What’ve you done?” I asked, barely breathing the words. 
“What’ve you got yourself into again?”

“Not your problem.”

His cheeks warmed, red splotches standing out stark against
the whiteness of his skin, like a fever.  I crept toward him, blinking back the
burn of tears.

“You gotta come back inside,” I said.  “You need help. 
Please let me help you.”

“Stay away,” he growled, shooting upright, an electric bolt
in human form.  “Not saying it again.”

“Why?”

The energy fizzled.  “Because I said—”

“No!” I almost shouted it at him.  “That’s not what I mean! 
Why’re you doing this?”

This close, I could smell the liquor on him.  Could see it
in the shiftless way he leaned back.  Could hear it in the shattered words that
drifted from his lips.  And my heart was breaking, and I couldn’t do a thing
about it.

“Dan’ do this to yourself,” I whispered.  “Please.”

“Why do you care?  We’re all just lies…”  He laughed,
leaning his head back against the tree.  “I should have died a long time ago. 
Been better if I did.  The world’s breaking and it’s all broken.  I break
everything I touch…”

I reached out again, but suddenly my torchlight flared off
the shiny cylinder of a revolver resting on his knee.  I froze, pulse racing. 
What was he doing with a gun?  I couldn’t imagine where he’d got it.  Didn’t
want to imagine.  I just stared at him, praying that it didn’t mean what I
feared.  He couldn’t mean it.

His fingers twitched on the gun.  “Go.  Away.”

I realized the heat streaking down my cheeks were tears,
silent, breathless tears.

“Give me the gun,” I said. 

My voice rattled with terror but still I held out my hand,
waiting.

“No way in hell,” he said, hunching over his knees.  His
left hand traced the lines of the cylinder.  “They failed, you know,” he said. 
“Should I fix it?  Finish what they started?”

I flinched and drew back.  Took a step away, then another. 
He wasn’t watching me anymore.  Just stared at the gun in his hand like he
didn’t know what it was.  And before I could stop myself from fleeing, I was
over the wall and pounding through the Hole, blind with terror, shaking with
anger.  Anuk caught me outside the lounge, like he’d been waiting for me to get
back.  His arms flashed out, wrapping around me, ending my flight.  Ending my
panic.  I buried my head against his chest.

“Anuk, you gotta help him!”

“Don’t let the kids hear you,” he murmured in my ear, and
marched me down the hall to an abandoned office.

I scrubbed my sleeve over my face, ashamed of my tears.  But
Anuk just folded his arms and frowned down at me.

“That bad?” he asked.

“He…”  I closed my eyes, drew a slow breath and switched off
the grief.  “He had a gun.”

“
What?
” he cried, bright red with anger.  “Hayli. 
Did he threaten you?  Where is he?  I’ll beat the—”

“It’s not like that, Anuk!” I said.  “He’s been drinking. 
And that gun…   Why’d he…why…”

Anuk cursed under his breath and clawed a hand through his
fiery hair.  “Worse than I thought,” he muttered.

“Please help him,” I whispered.  “Please.  Dan’ let him
fall.”

Chapter 3 — Tarik

I woke to splitting pain in my head and no memory of how I’d
gotten back to my cot.  The world tilted dizzily under me, making my stomach
hitch with nausea.  I rolled onto my back and found Anuk standing over my cot,
glaring murder at me.

“What the hell is your problem, Shade?”

I groaned and shielded my eyes from the light, bit by the
sinking feeling that whatever I’d done, it hadn’t been worth it.

“What’s yours?” I snapped.  “What do you want?”  My gaze
drifted down to the bandage on his upper arm, splotchy with bright blood. 
“You’re bleeding.”

He cursed me and slammed his fist into the wall over my
head.  “Next time you decide to try to destroy yourself, I’m not going to try
to stop you.  Just thank all your stars it’s me who’s bleeding and not her.”

“Not who?”

I struggled to think of what he meant but my thoughts
churned like mud, fighting off the memories that burned like a headache.

“Hayli,” he said.

He reached out suddenly and grabbed me by the shirtfront,
dragging me upright.  The change in position set me swallowing bile.  My head
pounded so hard that my vision turned red, then grey.

“If you
ever
hurt her because you decide it’s a fine
time to get the devil in a doghouse, I
will
kill you.”

I tried to shake his hands off, but my muscles didn’t seem
to want to function.  “What are you
talking
about?”

He just shot me a disgusted look and let go of me all at
once.  I couldn’t catch myself in time, and landed in a heap back on the
mattress.  Pride told me to move, to sit up and face him, but I couldn’t make
myself care.

“You’re pathetic,” he snapped.  “Those kids look up to you. 
What if they saw you like this?  Is this how you want them to think of you,
so?  You, the great Shade, the great leader, curled up like a rag on his bed,
too stupid to remember what he’s done?”

I pressed my forehead into the pillow, trying to beat my
thoughts into submission.  Failing.  I wished I could remember whatever it was
he was talking about, but I had a blank in my memory.  My heart ached.  One
brief, sweet moment of blankness, and now all I had was the regret.  The
forgetting never lasted.  The regret always did.

When I finally opened my eyes again, Anuk had disappeared. 
I let out my breath, wincing as it stung over my lip.  My fingers brushed my
lower lip, gingerly, and found it badly swollen.  I couldn’t even recall how
that had happened.  I rubbed my hand over my face and over the roughness of my
hair, trying to wake up.  My mind hummed with confusion.  Somehow I knew I had
to be somewhere…that I had something I needed to do…

I pushed myself to my feet and groaned, doubling over.  Anuk
was right—I was pathetic.  My face flushed with shame, burning, wretched
shame.  What would Bugs think if he walked in this minute?  Stars, what would
Zagger say?  I sat on the edge of the cot and buried my face in my hands.  He’d
probably expect it.  I couldn’t do anything these days without making a mess of
everything.

A weight settled in my heart.  I remembered, suddenly, what
I’d done.  Remembered why I had done it.  And now that I remembered, I only
wanted to forget again.

Forget
.

I tried standing again and this time kept my feet.  The
barracks felt eerily empty; I wondered what time it was.  Even Bobs had already
abandoned his cot, which meant it had to be after noon at least.  No one
stirred in the corridors outside.  No one sat in the mess, and no food was
out.  The whole place had the empty, lonely feel of abandonment.

Maybe I was imagining it.

I stopped by the warehouse floor and found, with more relief
than I’d expected, a handful of kids conversing in the corner.  Before they
caught sight of me I pulled back, blushing fiercely again, cursing myself,
cursing my weakness.  Hating all of it.  Why did I care what they thought?  I
could keep up this farce of Shade’s existence without them idolizing me.  So
why did it hurt so terribly to think of their contempt?

A sudden clash of footsteps behind me brought me out of my
thoughts.  I turned, not too quickly, and found Kantian stalking toward me.  He
wore his long overcoat and coach hat, so I knew he wouldn’t stop long to chat
with me, thank the stars.  But still, the knowledge didn’t keep me from pulling
back a little as he drew up beside me.

“Did you get any juice for me?” he asked, eyes sharp in the
shadows.

I swallowed.  I’d been expecting a lecture; I’d forgotten I
was supposed to give him information. 

“There’s a train coming in today,” I said, letting myself
lean on the wall.  “Arms shipment.  Think it’s meant for the physicists at the
Science Ministry, not sure what for.  Some kind of special new weapon, I
think.  Maybe something the Meats could relieve them of.”

Why am I telling him this?
I wondered.  I’d seen
Kantian outside the Hole lately, heading up to the high-streets, meeting with
people that didn’t seem quite his type.  And if Hayli was right and he was
meeting with the palace boffins…

Kantian had always just seemed to me to be a petty, two-bit
criminal, playing at being a mob boss with his band of misfit skitters while
really being nothing more than a glorified guardian.  But maybe I was wrong
about him.  Maybe he was more dangerous than I’d thought.  But I couldn’t quite
pin together the pieces.  My thoughts warped and drifted, useless.

Kantian eyed me closely, until I was certain he could see
last night’s idiocy written in my face—and I knew what it would mean if he
could.  But he just nodded crisply. 

“Good work.  Derrin’ll have another job for you later.”  He
turned to walk on, but stopped a few paces away.  “Go wash up.  You look like a
corpse.”

And then he was gone.  I wandered up into the enclosure and
turned the spigot at the trough.  Cold water gushed over my hands, shocking
away the numbness that still clung to my thoughts.  I splashed water over my
face and arms, then gave up and dunked my whole head under the icy torrent.  I
kept still until I couldn’t feel my skin anymore, but the water couldn’t wash
away everything I wanted to forget.  Finally I slammed the spigot shut and
lifted my head, shaking it like a dog to dry it as best I could.  Even in the
rather mild air I shivered from the cold…and kept shivering, like I had a
fever.  I leaned against the trough and drew long breaths through my teeth to
steady my nerves.

“Shade!  You jake?”

I winced and straightened up.  Bugs had crept up behind me
and stood there staring, all wide-eyed with concern.  I managed to plaster a
smile onto my face and shook my head ferociously again.

“Sure,” I said.  “Thought I was coming down with something. 
Nothing keeps you healthy like cold water, right?”

He gaped at me, then grinned and nodded.  “That’s what I
always say!” he proclaimed, and I knew he’d never said it once in his life.

“I knew you were smart,” I said.  “Where’s everyone off to
today?”

He made a show of pondering that, tapping his finger against
his chin like he was three times his age.  “Well,” he said, drawing out the
word.  “Think Bobs and Pika went to talk to that kid Zip you told us about. 
Wouldn’t that be swell, if they could bring him in?  Those Bricks are awful
nasty, but he’s not like the rest of them.  And…Anuk was here a minute ago but
he got in a gang fight last night so Kantian told him to stay at the Hole.”

I wrinkled my brow.  That wasn’t true, but I couldn’t figure
out how I knew it.

“What about Hayli?” I asked.

Bugs scrunched up his nose.  “She’s right behind you.”

I spun around and saw Hayli across the enclosure from me,
sitting on the ground with her knees pulled up, leveling a stone-faced stare
straight at me.  My heart hitched, and for a moment I forgot about breathing. 
Something about seeing her sent me into a fog of confusion—churning memories
and that ache like despair that had rooted itself somewhere in my heart where I
couldn’t reach it.

I forced an easy grin.  “Thanks.  What about you?  What’re
you about today?”

“Got the whole day off!  Kantian said I could, ‘cause I got
walloped by some of the Bricks yesterday.  Like I said, they’re nasty folks!”

I put my hands on both of his shoulders and bent to get a
good look at him.  His eye looked a bit swollen, rimmed with purple and green
rings, and he had a long gash on his head that I hadn’t seen through his hair a
moment ago.  I frowned at him.

“Who did this, Bugs?  Someone I need to have a chat with?”

His eyes got wider than ever.  “Oh, no.  Oh…
no
.  You
dan’ want to mess with those kids.  They’ve got a couple mages and…”

I straightened up.  After all the times I’d talked to the
Bricks, I’d never known any of them were mages.

“What kind?” I asked.

“They’ve got a Shard and a Flint.”  He rolled back his
sleeve, and my stomach twitched.  The wide white bandage couldn’t hide the
edges of the burn that covered his whole forearm.  “That’s from the Flint. 
Stars, she was something canny mad!”