Truancy Origins (26 page)

“So you say that this darkness scares you?” Zen said quietly.

“Yes.” Noni bowed her head in shame.

The shadow swiftly gripped her shoulders and turned her towards what some rational corner of her mind knew was just a wall, but to her seemed like terrible, endless blackness. Noni didn't feel afraid this time, not with those strong hands gripping her shoulders, powerful and reassuring. But the dread still hung in the air, ready to descend upon her the moment the hands abandoned her to the dark.

“You see darkness, and you fear it simply because you do not understand it, because you do not know what it hides,” the shadow explained.

Noni could do nothing but nod rapidly in agreement.

“But you should know, Noni, that when you look upon something that frightens you, it will look back at you,” the shadow said. “What do you want it to see? A shivering, whimpering girl? Or an unmovable, strong silhouette, every bit as mysterious and frightening as the darkness itself?”

The strong hands released their grip, leaving Noni alone to face the dark. Noni braced herself for a wave of fear and panic, but after several moments she realized that it wasn't coming. Slowly, but steadily, Noni stood up to her full height for the first time in years. She stood straight, silent and unmoving. She no longer felt scared.

“Remember, no matter how frightening your foe is, you can always make it afraid of you,” Zen said. “Go to sleep, Noni. Light will return soon, and there will be a lot to do when it does. We will be visiting the vagrants tomorrow.”

But Noni was no longer listening. She remained standing, for how long she did not know. She simply looked at the darkness, and the darkness looked at her, and as it did she felt as though they had come to an understanding. And when Noni finally lay down again, she had no trouble getting to sleep.

 

T
he winter dawn was pale and streaked with gray as Umasi climbed over the crude wooden wall. Grunting as he landed on his feet, he paused to rest for a moment, his breath misting in the frigid air. Looking around at all the abandoned buildings, Umasi decided that it was very unlikely that any other vagrants had decided to take shelter in this particular district.

District 19 was a relatively small, long-abandoned district surrounded on all sides by flourishing live districts. Any vagrant who took root in District 19 would have to get food from one of those busy districts, and ran a huge risk of being discovered. If they were caught, or if the Enforcers did a sweep, there was nowhere to run except the live districts, making it one of the most dangerous in the entire City. Just getting to District 19 unscathed was a challenge in and of itself, one that Umasi had overcome by moving before dawn and in the aftermath of a blizzard.

But it had been worth it. Umasi knew that he could enjoy true privacy here, a place forsaken even by the vagrants. He strolled down a lonely street, under the pale gray sky as the rising sun cast rays of pink and orange onto the snow. Cool wind stirred around him, whispering to him—the only sound to break the perfect tranquillity. Umasi paused in a blissful moment of appreciation. He had never paid much attention to the wind before. For as long as he could remember, its wail had been been drowned out by the cacophony of men and machines.

Here, in this lonely part of the City, the world itself seemed changed. As Umasi stared down the vacant sidewalk, he realized just how used to the company of other people he had been. For the first time in his life, Umasi understood that silence could be more impressive than the loudest noise.

Umasi took an uncertain step down the street, feeling as though he were sleepwalking through a dream. On either side of him, the pale light made the worn buildings seem ghostly and dead, and years of filth had long since discolored their façades. But though bricks had fallen and glass had shattered, the buildings still stood strong, confident that they would endure longer than those who had abandoned them.

It was in the shadow of one such building, staring up at the ghostly sky, that Umasi found himself enjoying the feeling of the cold air on his skin. The winter no longer stung him, the long shadows no longer scared him, and an unfamiliar sensation now flowed through him, speaking to him of
contentment and possibility. Was this what it was like to be truly free? Was this what Zen was seeking? If so, Umasi felt that he finally understood his brother's struggle, misguided though it was.

Umasi shut his eyes, and the pastel sunlight crept over him. As it did, he felt his heart lighten. Slowly drawing a small plastic card out from his pocket, Umasi did not wince but smiled. District 19 could not have been a home for long to any vagrant, but unlike the vagrants Umasi had all the resources he could possibly need, and all the time in the world to use them.

Umasi now understood that he was home. There was no school here, no teachers, no father. He had fallen through the cracks of society to escape the grasp of education. Here, the world was serene and beautiful, as though it had never known the chaos of civilization. Here, there was no life to interrupt his own.

With that thought, Umasi heard the echoes of old words that he had once been told seemingly ages ago.

On a whim, they can teach us a fabricated history, or even a new reality.

A district devoid of life . . .

Here, life is whatever they tell us it is.

And yet more alive than any other in the City.

 

O
kay, I'll ask
again.
Is this one of the vagrants that you saw loot that truck?”

“I don't know, sir. He might be. Like I said, I didn't get a good look at all of them.”

“Listen, this vagrant was found in possession of food stolen from that supermarket. The stickers were still on the damn things. Now, I didn't bring you all the way down here to give me some pathetic excuses about not having gotten a ‘good look.' ”

“What exactly do you want from me, sir?”

“It's about time you asked. I want you to tell me that you recognize this kid, and then get the hell out of my sight!”

“Well . . . now that you mention it, the boy does look kind of familiar . . . .”

“That's good enough for me. Now get going, I have a prisoner to interrogate.”

The Enforcer obligingly left the room, looking slightly scandalized. Rothenberg paid him no attention. Instead, he glared through the one-way mirror into the dimly lit room where the captive vagrant sat handcuffed to a chair. An Enforcer patrol had apprehended the boy in District 22, apparently fleeing from the abandoned District 25.

Rothenberg snorted. He'd thought that all the vagrants knew better than to travel straight through inhabited districts. But then again, these children
were
the ones that had trouble learning lessons.

With that in mind, Rothenberg opened the door to the secluded room. If the child was difficult enough, he might even enjoy this. After all, the hardest lessons were always the ones most worth teaching.

“Our witness just identified you, boy,” Rothenberg growled. “He saw you loot that produce truck with all those other vagrants.”

The boy paled. Rothenberg frowned. So, this one was a coward after all.

“Th-that's impossible!” the boy sputtered. “That can't be right, man, I bought these in a store!”

“Oh really?” Rothenberg said skeptically. “Where?”

“Some market somewhere, I don't remember exactly!”

Rothenberg slowly rubbed his temples. As entertaining as it sometimes was, he really wasn't in the mood for this brand of stupidity right now.

A second later, Rothenberg's bricklike fist slammed into the boy's face, knocking him and the chair to which he was still handcuffed to the floor. Rothenberg crouched down to examine his handiwork. The boy's nose was bleeding, and his eyes were wide with shock. Rothenberg smiled. So, he was still so fast they never saw it coming.

“I'll ask just once more,” Rothenberg said, bending down so that his head hung mere inches above from the boy's face. “I'm getting tired of repeating myself today, and if I have to ask again, I promise that it'll hurt a lot worse than what you just got. Now, if you want to come out of this with all your limbs intact, you'll tell me where you got those vegetables.”

“Okay, okay, I'll talk,” the boy said. “Look, I just traded with this kid for 'em. I gave him some old socks, he gave me the food, I didn't do nuthin' wrong!”

“What was his name?” Rothenberg demanded.

“I dunno, we vagrants ain't exactly big on names,” the boy said. “But I know that he was part of Chris' gang!”

“Oh?” Rothenberg said. “And who's Chris?”

“Just some slimeball, I don't want nuthin' to do with 'em, but food's food and one of his guys had some!”

“How big is this gang?”

“Dunno, you Enforcers keep killing bunches of those guys, don't ya?”

At that, Rothenberg's eyes narrowed. The only gangs that the Enforcers were able to cull on a regular basis were the ones with informants in them. As the implications of that began to dawn on Rothenberg, he noticed the vagrant looking at him shrewdly.

“Is that helpful or sumthin'?”

“It might be,” Rothenberg conceded as he stood up. “Very well. If your information pays off, you'll be keeping your limbs after all. Until then, you will continue to enjoy the . . . hospitality . . . of the Enforcers.”

And with that, Rothenberg left the room, ignoring the child's declarations of thanks. His subordinates
had
mentioned that they raided the grocery store because of an informant, hadn't they? But Rothenberg hadn't known that it was a gang behind that robbery. He still wasn't sure if the Mayor's brats had joined up with the gang, or if they just happened to be robbing the same place at the same time, but Rothenberg now had a feeling that if he found that gang he'd find the boys.

All Rothenberg had to do now was wait for the right informant to make contact . . . or hunt down this “Chris” and his gang by himself.

 

I
t was a depressed group of vagrants that gathered around a bonfire that evening. The sky had just begun to darken, allowing the massive flames to cast long, flickering shadows over the filthy ground. A few of them were lucky to be alive, having narrowly escaped the grocery store to rejoin the rest of the gang in District 15. Many had not been so lucky, and now, because they were leaderless again, morale had hit rock bottom. One of the vagrants had wrapped himself in a dirty blanket and sat next to the fire, glumly feeding it planks torn from a nearby building. For a while the crackle of the fire was the only sound. Then a vagrant sitting under a broken streetlamp addressed the boy with the planks.

“We shouldn't let the fire burn that high, someone might notice the smoke.”

“Shut up, Frank, I'm cold.”

“He's right,” another vagrant said. “Glick would never have let you make it that big in the first place.”

“Yeah, well Glick's dead now, isn't he?”

“Just stop feeding the damn fire!”

“You gonna try to make me?”

“Guys, cut it out!” Frank shouted. “You gonna let us fall apart just 'cause Glick stopped a bullet? You gonna let Chris' gang win?”

“You wanna be the leader, Frank? Chris' gang was right; the way things are going you'd be dead in a week.”

“If you think they're so right, why don't you go run off and join 'em?” Frank said, firing up at once.

“Maybe I will!”

“Yeah? Well I don't think they take dead members!”

Frank and the other vagrant were now on the verge of blows. Before violence could break out, however, an unfamiliar voice spoke up.

“Excuse me, gentlemen,” said the voice, slick as oil. “As fascinating as your little drama is, I have an urgent matter that requires your attention.”

The vagrants all spun around. A strange figure walked towards them, clothed all in black with a windbreaker jacket billowing behind him like a cape. At his side walked a thin girl wearing a winter coat, a black scarf wrapped firmly around the lower half of her face. The vagrants immediately avoided eye contact with her; something about that icy stare was highly disconcerting.

“Who the hell are you?” the vagrant with the blanket demanded.

“You may call me Z, and this is my assistant, Noni,” Zen said, gesturing at the rigid girl beside him. “Where is your leader?”

For a few moments the vagrants boggled at the pair, unable to believe their suicidal foolishness. Then the silence was broken by the same boy as before.

“I dunno where you get off, askin' questions like that,” the vagrant snarled, casting his blanket aside. “But you look kinda rich, and that means coming here was the worst mistake of your life!”

With that, the vagrant lunged at Zen with outstretched hands, grinning with yellow teeth. Zen seized the boy's arm, turned, and hurled the vagrant over his shoulder. The vagrant hit the ground hard, swearing loudly. The other vagrants all sprang up, preparing to rush the intruders. But at that moment, dark shapes emerged from all sides, and the vagrants realized that they weren't alone.

As the figures approached the bonfire, the firelight threw their features into sharp relief. They all appeared clean and organized, but of more immediate interest to the vagrants were the weapons that they all held in their hands. Most of the newcomers wielded sharp knives that reflected the dancing flames, and a few even bore pistols. The vagrants quickly chose to sit back down, realizing that they were at the mercy of these strangers.

“Where is your leader?” Zen repeated.

There was silence.

“Surely someone can shed some light on the subject,” Zen said, a note of impatience entering his voice.

“He got killed,” the vagrant named Frank explained at last.

“How fortuitous.” Zen smiled grimly. “Well then, since the position of leader appears to be vacant, I nominate myself. Any questions?”