CHAPTER 19
A Step Forward
A Grievar does not strive to reach old age. One may be inclined to prolong life span, to seek health and prosperity, to watch brood grow and carry on a bloodline. This is a spirit that will perish before the heart stops beating. The Grievar should fondly watch death, fully expecting to embrace darkness at every moment, never vainly seeking the next breath.
Passage Three, Sixty-Sixth Precept of the Combat Codes
Murray climbed the broken steps of PublicJustice, pushing past the throngs of waiting Grievar. If you could even call them Grievar; they were addicts, broken-down things that looked like they’d crumple just setting foot in a Circle.
He reached the front entry, where a thick, neckless man stood behind a steel barrier.
“Wait yer turn just like the rest,” the guard growled. “Don’t make me set the Enforcers on you.”
“Dakar sent for me,” Murray lied, something he’d been getting accustomed to lately. Though he certainly could have asked the commander of PublicJustice for a favor, he still needed to keep away from prying ears.
“Has he?” The guard looked at Murray warily. “And who’re you to know Commander Pugilio?”
Murray sighed. He hated announcing himself, yet he seemed to be doing it every other day now, using his name to get ahead like some spineless Daimyo.
“Murray Pearson.”
The guard looked Murray over, as if trying to recount the last time he’d seen him on SystemView.
“It is you, isn’t it?” The guard smiled through his broken teeth. “Well, I’ll be. Darkin’ Mighty Murray in the flesh. You know, wasn’t only a week ago I was watching one of yer old bouts with my nephew. Who was the body you put down in Karstock? The Kirothian missing the ear—”
Murray tried to hide his impatience. “Hugo Vladshar.”
“Yeah, Vladshar!” The man clapped. “Darkin’ deadly spinning elbow you threw to put ’em down too, don’t see that one too often—”
“If you don’t mind,” Murray interrupted, “I’m in a bit of a hurry to see the commander.”
“Right, right.” The guard nodded before he turned to the crowd at Murray’s back and screamed, “Stay back, you scum, or you’ll be blasted to high hell before you get a chance at yer darkin’ justice!”
The man set his hand on a lever by his side to raise the steel gate. A red pulse of light flashed across Murray’s eye.
“You’ll be good to go all the way to the commander’s offices, you remember where—”
“Yeah, I remember,” Murray said.
“Course you do,” the guard said as the portal lifted in front of Murray.
Murray stepped through into the gargantuan lobby of PublicJustice. Though the old building was in sore need of renovation, it still set Murray’s head spinning to see its grandeur: tall stained-glass shield windows and monolithic statues surrounded him. The sculptures were carved in the likeness of the ancient Ezonians who had written the Codes of Justice. They looked down at Murray with colorless grey eyes, surely disgusted over what their system had become.
“Processing, case five eighty-two,” a robotic voice announced on the overhead speakers as a pack of cloaked Daimyo scuttled by toward the courtrooms across the lobby. The Prosecutors whispered in hushed tones and glared at anyone who might be listening in.
“Leave me be!” Murray turned to see a prisoner getting dragged forward by a chain around his neck, saliva dribbling from his mouth as he attempted to keep himself planted on the floor. “I didn’t do nothing!”
The prisoner was ripped from the ground with such force that Murray was surprised the man’s head stayed attached. The creature on the other end of the chain was nine feet of rippling steel.
Murray shook his head. Enforcer.
The Enforcer grasped the prisoner’s chain with a taloned claw while swinging its other arm menacingly, a glowing red cylinder at its end. A small window was visible at the mech’s center, where Murray could make out a blue-veined head within. Black, pupilless eyes stared out from where the Daimyo pilot sat inside the cockpit. The brains behind the mech.
Murray couldn’t help but shiver at the abomination. Even from this distance, and though the Enforcer’s pulse cannon wasn’t fully charged, Murray could feel its lethality. He’d seen firsthand how an Enforcer’s cannon could reduce a stone floor to a smoking crater, how it could incinerate flesh and bone in mere seconds. It didn’t matter how strong or skilled you were; that beast was the great equalizer. The Enforcers were the reason so many Grievar and Grunt revolts over the centuries had been quashed with mass casualties.
Murray kept his eyes on the floor as he walked through the hall, not wanting to be spotted. Callen’s men were everywhere. One little bird flitting back to that man, and Murray’s chance would be gone. Cego’s chance would be gone.
Murray passed the lift to the commander’s offices, where he guessed Dakar was most likely out cold at his desk. Instead, Murray turned down an adjacent hallway, passing a servicer who nodded at him before stepping up to another thick steel gate. He stood in place and stared at a viewport above, shifting his hips to relieve the pain that had started to flood up his spine.
Finally, a voice reverberated from the box beside the viewport. “State your purpose.”
“Here to see a prisoner in holding,” Murray said.
The voice on the other end was silent for several moments and Murray dreaded the notion of having to use his name to get through another door. Instead, a red light flashed across him, checking his security access.
“Who are you here to see?” the voice asked.
Murray shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe he’d be saying the man’s name. “Jezar D’lysien.”
After another pause, the steel slab slid to the side, revealing a long flickering hall beyond.
“Block fifteen,” a gangly guard said as he stepped from his booth and looked Murray up and down. “I’ll need to come along.”
The hall was lightless but for the yellow spectrals that floated up and down between vents on either side of the rusted walkway.
“Cytrine,” Murray muttered as he peered through the yellowlight into one of the dark cells beyond.
“Then I swung on ’em, ducked his charge, and put the slagger flat on his back!” The light illuminated the bony face of a prisoner within, his rib cage nearly bursting from his emaciated chest. Despite his sorry state, the man was smiling, a wide, toothless grin spread ear to ear.
“Prepare yourself! Cower in the face of the great Uni Yaharan!” Murray turned to see another prisoner, nearly as emaciated, this one missing both his ears, also smiling as he swung his frail arm through the air against some invisible enemy.
Murray himself felt the pulse of the yellowlight, the quickening of his heartbeat, the need to suddenly tell the guard beside him of the greatest feats of his career, to show him what techniques had won him fame in the arena.
Instead, Murray growled, “What in the dark are you doing to these men?”
“Men?” The guard chuckled. “There are no men within these cells. Holdups only.”
Murray was all too familiar with the term. Holdups were PublicJustice prisoners who were awaiting trial. But Governance often found it convenient to keep them here longer than the maximum legal month any Griever was allowed be kept in captivity prior to their court date.
“Why the cytrine?” Murray said as they walked by another pair of cells, each holding a man living out some fight fantasy.
“You know how it is, boss,” the guard said. “Grievar ain’t meant to be kept in holding. They go mad, gnaw their very bones off rather than stay in one place. With the yellowlight, they can at least be happy, thinking they’re off somewhere else, fighting in the Circles or whatnot…”
“This is wrong.” Murray shuddered as he met the eyes of another prisoner, who was smiling as he slammed his fists into the stone wall of his cell. The skin had completely come off the man’s hands, and the bones beneath had dug a small trench into the stone.
“Some don’t take to it as well as others…” The guard shook his head and pulled a stool away from the wall. “Anyhow, here we are at block fifteen. Make sure you keep your hands away from the bars. These men were no good to start, and now… well, now they’re less than no good. Especially this one here.”
Murray sat on the little stool and stared into the darkness. This cell lacked the cytrine hue of the rest, without any spectrals surrounding it. Still, Murray could make out a shadow deep within.
“Jezar.” Murray said the name unwillingly, as if his tongue would rather speak some other word.
Something clattered to the floor and the shadow shifted.
“Jezar.” Murray said the name again, louder this time over the screams from across the hall.
“Could it be?” A whisper from the cell. “Could the light have finally got me?”
A lanky man with ashen skin and long, tangled hair stepped forward. He was bare-chested and wearing nothing but a loincloth.
“Of all the people I’d expect to pay me a visit, you’d have been the last on the list, Murray Pearson.” The man crouched to pick a wooden ladle off the floor. He spooned some gruel into his mouth before holding it out to Murray. “What sort of host would I be if I didn’t offer some sustenance to an honored visitor?”
Murray shook his head, keeping his gaze on the man’s dull mustard eyes.
“No?” Jezar helped himself to another spoonful of the slop. “Well, then, mind my manners, please, we only have such a treat every other day here in holding.”
Jezar straightened his back and looked Murray up and down. “Why, you’ve let yourself go, Murray. I remember that once, you looked to be the proudest Grievar the Citadel could conjure up, without a slouched vertebra in your spine. Now… you appear tired. Or perhaps defeated is the proper word?”
“I’m not here to talk about me,” Murray said.
“Oh, no? So different from the old days? I remember a time when you only talked about yourself. Always told the rest of the Knights how they should compose themselves, just like you. Proper. With honor. Abiding by the Codes. Was that how you used to say it? Are you here to tell me more about the Codes, Murray?”
Murray breathed deeply, trying to let the tension drain from his neck and shoulders. “I’m here to ask you some questions, Jezar.”
“Ah! Much has changed, then. The state of the world outside these stone walls must indeed be dire if Murray Pearson is asking questions all of a sudden instead of giving orders. Instead of flashing your captain’s belt like some glorious beacon given by the gods.”
Murray ignored the man. “I spoke with some of the Knights in service. I wanted to know about current… training methods at the Citadel. Your name was mentioned.”
“Was it, now?” Jezar smiled as he tugged at one of his frayed earlobes. Murray remembered that ear being full of glinting metal once. “Good to know my name is still spoken in those halls. Hopefully not all bad talk. And training methods, you say? Why wouldn’t you just go to your ally, the man at the top, our old friend Memnon?”
Murray shook his head. “It’s not so simple. Memnon… He’s part of it, somehow.”
Jezar’s smile grew wider. “My, my, Murray Pearson. Finally seeing the world for what it is. Not black-and-white, as you used to see. Honor or dishonor. Good or evil. Right or wrong. No, it’s all a spectrum, isn’t it? And our old friend Memnon isn’t the great force for good you once believed? And perhaps, if that’s true… Perhaps it might be said that I, your old comrade, fellow Knight, might not be so bad either?”
“Dark that,” Murray growled. “You broke every Code in the darkin’ book during our service. You nearly made a laughingstock of our entire team and brought down all that we’d worked for—”
“Oh, was it really so bad?” Jezar’s eyes twinkled. “A little fun, some dalliances on the road, a Code broken here and there, I never hurt any—”
“You darkin’ brought a blade into the Circle and stabbed a Grievar in the eye.”
“Well, yes, there was that.” Jezar shrugged. “But he surely deserved it, and I was able to disguise the attack. No one even knew the difference.”
“You bedded an opponent the night before your fight with him,” Murray said.
“Right, yes! Oh, another great memory… and besides being a fantastic romp, he was an easy win the next day. Did I not achieve victory for the team, oh great captain?”
Murray took a deep breath. “I’m not here to reminisce, Jezar. I need to know about the newest in training tech. They said you were handling procurement of stim supplies for Citadel, before you tried to rip them off.”
“Tried?” Jezar set his wooden bowl down and paced the cell. Though the man had clearly degenerated during his years in holding, Murray could see Jezar had somehow maintained some muscle mass. “What makes you think I’m not storing those bits I rightfully earned somewhere safe for a sunny day?”
“Doesn’t matter to me,” Murray said. “I just want to know about the newest stuff Citadel has been buying. Something that might help the Knights handle the light better.”
“Even though you always chose to ignore their delightful effects, there have long been stims that could alleviate the pull of the various alloys,” Jezar said. “Doesn’t sound like something you’d come all this way to visit little old me for.”
“There’s something new,” Murray said. “Maybe it’s not stims, but some tech Citadel’s been using. I’m not sure what it is, but I know it’s big. Something that could make a lacklight boy I pulled from the slave Circles somehow perform better in Trials than any in the last decade. I tried to get it out of Memnon but he was tight-lipped, so it must still be in development.”
Jezar suddenly went silent. His eyes darted to the side, and then back to Murray. The man knew something.
“You know what I’m talking about.” Murray stood and pressed against the bars, gripping them with white knuckles. He could smell Jezar’s breath, somehow tinged with sweetness despite being in this shithole.
“Let’s say I did know something,” Jezar said. “Why would I tell you? You, honored captain, who forced me off the team? You, Murray Pearson, who still hates me as much as you once did long ago?”
“Because I’ve got this.” Murray reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a bundled cloth. He unwrapped it to reveal several small metal cylinders, each with a glinting lens at the end.
Jezar’s eyes fixed on Murray’s open hand. “Murray Pearson. He who could do no wrong, who could never break a Code, is now standing in front of me holding a pile of cleavers?” Jezar lifted his head and laughed until tears poured from the corners of his eyes. “Oh… things truly must be dire on the outside.”
“Do you want them or not?” Murray looked over his shoulder toward the guard, who would likely be coming back shortly.
“Oh… yes.” Jezar licked his lips. “I want them very much. How I’ve thought about taking a hit through the years I’ve been stuck in holding. Getting that rush, suddenly all the pains, the worries of life, flowing away like silt in a river. Yes, I would like them very much.”
“Give me what I need,” Murray said. “And you’ll be able to get a hit off before the guard gets back.”
“Let me ask you a question for a turn, Murray,” Jezar said. “Do you know why there are no yellowlight spectrals outside my cell? Do you know why the little wisps don’t shine their oh-so-very-happy light down on me?”
Murray shook his head. “You cut a deal with the guards. Told them of some treasure you might provide them on the outside if they spared you. Or maybe one of your associates has their family in a bind.”
“You know me well, don’t you?” Jezar laughed. “Alas, this time it was not through bribery or blackmail that I got my way.”
“You see, I’ve found the spectrals like to see the fruits of their labor,” Jezar said. “They love to see men bask in their glow with budding smiles. They want to hear the shouts of glee, the praise, the awe. And so… when I gave them nothing of the sort, when I sat beneath the yellowlight with nothing but a boring stare for a year straight, the little things simply grew tired of me and floated off to frolic with someone else.”
Murray heard the footsteps of the guard approaching from down the hall.
“I am not as weak-willed as you think,” Jezar said as he stepped up to the bars of the cell. “Codes and honor are not all that is required to be strong. Have you found that out yet?”
Murray looked the man in the eye. “Yes.”
“All right, then.” Jezar flipped the hair from his face. “I’ve gotten what I want from you, after all these years. I’ll tell you what you need.”
“You don’t want the cleavers?”
“Oh yes, I’ll take those too.” Jezar’s hand shot out like a piston and lifted the cylinders from Murray’s hand. The man immediately raised one of the cleavers to his eyeball and set off the switch, resulting in a great burst of light.
Jezar’s head lolled back, and a deep smile etched his face as he slumped against the stone wall. “Oh… that was very, very nice indeed.”
“Jezar!” Murray hissed. “You gave me your word. Tell me…”
“My word?” Jezar cocked his head, as if listening to some echo Murray couldn’t hear. “My word?”
“Tell me about the new tech! What is Memnon hiding?” Murray heard the guard getting even closer, humming some tune amid the screams from the nearby cells.
“Memnon’s always hiding something…” Jezar drifted off. “But, I believe, to find what you’re really looking for, you’ll need to go to them.”
“Them?” Murray growled. “Who the dark is them?”
“Them… who is it ever? Who is the only them? Them that watches from the shadows. Them that buzzes in our ears, in our brains. Them that are everywhere and nowhere…”
“Them…” Murray whispered. “The—”
“Bit-Minders.” Jezar spoke the word as his head lolled to the side, a giant smile still etched into his face.
Murray stood from the stool; his stomach clenched. The guard was looking at him. “Say anything interesting, this one?”
“No.” Murray was already walking back down the long corridor, listening to the shouts of the prisoners along the way.
Cego’s body shuddered against the cold glass of the shield window.
The empty training room on the second floor of the Harmony was where he often found refuge. There was a state-of-the-art facility beside the common ground where most of the students trained during off-hours, so Cego rarely encountered anyone in this outdated room. Though he practiced here, hitting one of the old heavy bags or drilling on the frayed mat space, Cego mostly came for the solitude.
After what he’d encountered in Professor Larkspur’s closet, Cego needed it. He couldn’t shake the experience he’d had in the onyx Circle. Seeing his island home again in such vivid detail brought him no comfort. Though he’d relished the flow state of sparring with the old master, now that he was on the outside, everything felt cold and colorless.
Cego put a hand to his head and massaged his temple. He should be focused on getting Knees back. The Whelps needed to launch into action tomorrow for the plan to work. But Cego could only focus on himself. On his past.
He thought of Murray-Ku’s parting promise again. I’ll figure things out for you, kid.
Perhaps the old Grievar had abandoned him. Cego wouldn’t blame the man for giving up. After all, Cego was just another lacklight boy he’d picked up from the Deep. Murray-Ku had brought kids up year after year. How was he any different?
Cego looked up to the training room’s entrance and saw a thick-shouldered shadow hovering in the doorway. Murray-Ku?
Joba emerged into the dim-lit space, the ever-present smile adorning the big boy’s face as he lumbered toward Cego.
Cego turned as if to look out the window and wiped a hand across his wet cheek. He needed to be strong for his team. If they saw his weakness, they would become weak too.
Joba sat beside him on the bench, the wood creaking beneath the boy’s massive frame. Cego looked up at his smiling friend.
“How are you, Joba?”
Joba gently put his hand on Cego’s shoulder, meeting his eyes.
“Right…” Cego looked away, embarrassed. “I’m guessing you were watching me for some time, then?”
Joba nodded.
Though Cego had grown accustomed to Joba during their semester at the Lyceum together, Abel was almost always beside the giant, the little Desovian speaking in his place. Cego often forgot that Joba was only ten years old, a prized specimen the Scouts had captured from Ezo’s borderlands. Cego couldn’t even recall the number of insults he’d heard slung at Joba over the past year, most of the barbs labeling his friend a freak of nature. Though Joba could hear just fine, the insults seemed to pass by him like water over a heavy boulder.
“Sometimes it’s all too much,” Cego said as he stared out the window. “Everything happening here at the Lyceum, everything that’s happened in the past, I don’t know how to sort it all out.”
Cego felt he could speak freely with Joba. Looking at the boy’s wide, smiling face, he saw wisdom beyond a mere ten years of age.
“I’ve made good friends here,” Cego said. “But I miss my brothers. I miss my home.”
“And Murray-Ku left,” Cego said. “I relied on him for guidance. Whenever I wasn’t sure about something, I could ask him. And now he’s not here.”
Cego felt his face flush, but Joba did not judge him. He simply stared back with that smile.
“I feel alone.” Cego shivered. “Like I don’t belong here.”
Joba nodded slowly.
“There’s other things too, Joba,” Cego said. “Other reasons why it feels like I can never catch my breath. My past—there’s just so much I don’t understand. Like I’m always trying to grasp at sand falling between my fingers.”
Cego stood and turned away from his friend, trying to take a deep breath.
He felt Joba’s strong hand on his shoulder again. He turned and looked up to meet the boy’s eyes. Joba nodded, stepped back, then suddenly grabbed the white second skin he was wearing and lifted it over his head.
Cego stared at his friend’s shirtless torso. Jagged scars covered nearly every inch of the boy’s body, running from his navel up to his shoulder blades. Joba turned to show Cego that his back was even worse. Chunks of flesh seemed to have been ripped from his shoulders, the deep wounds now crusted over in brown, scaly patches.
“Oh, Joba…” Cego trailed off. He realized he’d never seen Joba without his second skin on before. The giant would always change his clothes in some corner, away from prying eyes. He’d always known Joba had a rough brooding, put to slave labor among the harvesters, but the sight of his friend’s scars brought tears to Cego’s eyes.
Joba looked down and brushed his hand across Cego’s face to wipe away the tears. The boy touched the scars on his own chest, and then pointed up to his face. He was smiling still, just like he always was.
“You… you’ve gone through so much,” Cego said, as if he were Abel translating for the giant. “You’ve dealt with terrible things in your past, and yet here you are, standing in front of me and smiling.”
Joba nodded, seemingly satisfied with Cego’s translation.
“I understand,” Cego said. “That’s all we can do, right? Smile and take the next step forward.”
Joba nodded and took a long stride away from the window toward the door. Cego took another deep breath and followed his friend.