The Promise
As Caden slowly drifted awake, he felt dizzy. His head was heavy like there was a brick lodged inside, and the world around him bobbed up and down in constant motion. But when he finally pried his eyes open, he realized it wasn’t his brain doing the bobbing. He was on a boat in the ocean.
Or rather he was floating in midair on a boat in the ocean.
It was a large rowboat as long and wide as the Home’s hall. There were a dozen paddles on each side that were somehow automatically rowing through the water as fast as a galloping stallion. Salt water splashed against the sides and sprayed Caden’s face, stinging his eyes and mouth. He resisted the urge to spit it out, remembering that their captors were probably nearby.
It was still nighttime, but it was hard to tell. Metl shone almost as brightly as the sun, reflecting off the ocean all around them as if there was another Metl drifting through the water. Caden tried to figure out how long he’d been asleep. An hour? Two?
Next to Caden hovered Annika, still unconscious in the air with her charge belt on and the magnetizer poking out of her dress pocket. Caden tried to move, expecting to be just as frozen as before, but to his surprise could wiggle his fingers and toes. His legs, which he painfully remembered should be torturing him, felt fine. Caden wasn’t sure if it was his robotic healing at work or if it had something to do with him floating in the air, but either way he wasn’t complaining. He made use of his limited movement to stretch his head back as far as he could and peer toward the front of the boat.
Standing just feet away from him were the two black-robed figures. They were illuminated by an electric lantern hovering in the air. Caden panicked for a moment but forced himself to not make any sudden movements. He remained still, head extended down, trying to hear what they were saying over the sound of crashing waves.
“—really don’t like this, Five,” said the smaller one. Her voice was high-pitched and whiny like a little girl. The taller one replied.
“You just keep them sleeping, Six,” he said coolly. “I’ll take care of the rest.”
“Where are we even going?”
“Somewhere safe.”
“Safe? Nowhere’s going to be safe if Metl hits us.”
They both looked to the sky. Metl was so close Caden could practically feel the heat radiating off the fiery red X.
“I don’t think they’re going to let that happen,” Five said.
The two of them stood in silence as the boat continued through the ocean. Questions burned inside Caden’s head. So the tall one wasn’t the electric-wielding Eleven, he was Five? That meant Eleven was still out there somewhere. Caden wished Jadice were here to help.
“That boy’s angel weapon, is it the same as yours?” Six asked in her squeaky voice.
Caden hadn’t noticed it before, he’d been too busy running for his life, but Five’s palms glowed gray. It was hard to see, especially since Five’s hands were cupped over one another, but the gray glow was definitely there.
“That robot box said the boy has the same power as you,” Six pressed on. “Does he have telekinesis too?”
Again, no response. Caden almost felt bad for Six, until he remembered she had helped capture them.
“I didn’t think there was more than one of each angel weapon,” she said after yet another silence. That finally elicited a response.
“There isn’t more than one of each,” Five said. Both Six and Caden waited for more, but there was only the sound of lapping waves.
“What should we do about the girl?” Six asked. Silence again. “Should we take care of her first?”
Caden tensed. They were going to kill Annika. Six’s angel weapon was what had knocked them out, and now she was going to crank up the intensity. Five said something to Six, she gave a nod, and then walked back to Annika with her frowning mask on and her purple palms out.
Caden balled his fingers into sweaty fists and concentrated on his human parts, like Watson had taught him. He thought about Annika who had saved him from the Basement, and Clops who had helped them so much and paid the price, and Deber who was just about to get healthy again and was now probably blown to bits with the rest of the underground.
Heat exuded from Caden, not just from what was building up inside of him, but off his skin too. Warm little bits surrounded him, like grains of hot sand clinging to his skin and clothes. Were those what was holding him up in the air? The Planck particles that Watson had mentioned? He couldn’t believe he hadn’t felt them before. They seemed so weak and tiny. How had they held such power over him? He wasn’t going to be controlled by them any longer!
Caden erupted out of his invisible confines with a growl that shook the boat. The warm grains he’d felt clinging to him flew off and he was suddenly standing face to mask with Six. Annika fell to the wooden deck, and Six aimed her purple palms toward Caden.
“Don’t you touch her!” Caden yelled. Prickling, sticky heat built up inside of him to a boiling point, begging to be released. Caden didn’t hold it back.
The invisible blast of energy shot out of Caden’s palms and right into Six. She screamed and flew backward through the boat’s wooden bulkhead. It burst into splintered fragments and she splashed somewhere far off in the blackened water outside of Metl’s reflection.
“Six!” yelled Five. He ran to the edge of the boat and peered into the ocean. The paddles had stopped rowing and slipped away into the water. The only sound was Six’s far off splashing and screams for help mixed with the crashing waves.
“Who are you?” Caden demanded. He held out his glowing red palms at Five like weapons ready to fire. He wasn’t sure if he could summon the same power again right away, but he wasn’t going to let Five know that.
“I should’ve done this before,” Five grumbled. He turned to Caden with his smiling white mask and stretched out his arms to show off the bright gray Xs on his palms. Caden tried to visualize sending Five out into the ocean, but before he could concentrate on anything, Five ran straight at him.
Five’s sudden rush shocked Caden into numbness. All he could do was push out his hands and hope for something to happen, but nothing did. Five was just inches away from strangling Caden around the neck.
PSHEW!
A blast rang out in the darkness so loud that Caden thought he’d been hit in the head with a rock. Five went flying backward and slammed against the head of the boat. He slouched to the ground and groaned in pain. Behind Caden stood Annika with her crackling magnetizer still poised and aimed at Five.
“You okay?” she asked, looking Caden over.
“Yeah,” he said, rubbing his forehead. “How about you?”
“I’ll feel a lot better when this guy’s swimming with his friend. You want to do the honors?”
Caden nodded. “Gladly.”
Caden leered at Five, still curled up on the deck. His hands were pressed against his leg. Grunts of pain came from behind the smiling white mask.
“Who are you?” Caden asked again. He was determined to get something out of him before he tossed him into the ocean.
“Caden …” Five panted. His cool demeanor was gone, replaced by what Caden imagined was a lot of sweat and saliva.
“What do you want from me?” Caden blurted out. He glared through the eyeholes in Five’s mask, ready to rip it off.
Another scream came from the ocean—Six calling for help.
“Five!” she cried from far away. “Help!”
“Must be pretty hard to swim with a metal weapon inside of you,” Annika chuckled.
“The sooner you talk the sooner you can go help her,” Caden said.
“Caden …” Five said again through pained breaths. “You don’t understand …”
“What don’t I understand?” Caden yelled. “That you’re trying to kill me? That you’ve been hunting me for thirteen years? That you just blew up the whole Basement so you could—”
It happened so quickly Caden didn’t know what to think. One second Five was lying on the deck, the next he was up in the air. He landed somewhere in the dark water with a splash and disappeared. Caden turned to Annika and shrugged. The boat was now theirs.
“Well that was easier than I expected,” he said. “What do we do now?”
Annika pointed her magnetizer behind the boat.
“It looks like we’re about a mile out from shore,” she said. Caden squinted to see off in the distance. He could just make out the lights from the church and a few other fires blazing through the darkness. Caden hoped they weren’t ones venting from the Basement.
“All the paddles are gone,” Caden said. There was nothing left on the boat except the two of them and the electric lantern. They couldn’t just sit around drifting in the water. Five and Six might be back soon.
“Well it’s not like we can swim back,” Annika said. “The water’s dark and freezing cold.”
Caden took a deep breath. “I think I can move the boat.”
“Really?” Annika asked. “I don’t want you to blow it up or anything. Then we’d be in real trouble.”
“I can do it,” Caden said, not feeling as confident as he wanted, but they didn’t have any choice. “I moved Watson without destroying him. I can do this too.”
“Aye aye, captain,” Annika said. She sat on the deck and grabbed onto the side. “I’ll just be over here bracing for impact.”
Caden focused on the boat. With no paddles and a gaping hole in the side that Six had been blasted through, it was little more than a large wooden plank now. It should be easy to move. Caden imagined it turning around in the water and speeding back toward Salem. That’s where they were going to find Jadice, where they were going to find his dad, and where he was going to figure out once and for all why he’d been created.
The boat shook. Annika let out a small cheer as it spun around to face toward shore. Caden grinned. This was easier than he’d thought. He visualized the boat zooming through the water as fast as Deber galloping through the fields. Just like Caden would never do again. Because Deber was gone. And the Basement was gone. An Iltech wonderland that had been around for decades, gone in an instant. And it was all his fault, for merely existing.
“Uh, Caden!” Annika yelled.
The boat was no longer on the water. The waves had stopped slapping against the wooden bulkhead. The only thing surrounding the boat was air.
Because it was hovering above the ocean.
It was only a few feet above the water, but it was rising higher and higher by the second. Caden panicked. He’d lost track of his thoughts and it had brought them in the completely wrong direction.
Panicking was a bad idea. The boat shot forward as if it were an arrow soaring through the sky. Higher and higher up it flew. Caden collapsed onto the deck and held onto the side for dear life as the salty wind seared past them at blistering speeds. One slip and they’d fall into the ocean far below.
“Caden, stop this thing!” Annika shrieked.
“I’m trying!” Caden yelled back. The boat kept rising higher and rocketing forward. Caden was trapped. If he stopped it, then they’d fall into the ocean. But if he didn’t, then eventually they’d crash into hard land. Caden might be able to survive the impact, but there was no way Annika would. There was only one option.
“We’re going down!” Caden shouted.
“What?” Annika yelled.
“Hold on!” Caden closed his eyes and tried to think calm thoughts. Panicking had shot the boat into the air like a pig on fire. Maybe if he could gain control of his thoughts again, the boat would slow down.
Despite his rampaging heart, Caden tried to remember happy memories. He thought about the photo of his dad, still tucked away safely in his overalls pocket—the boat came a stop in midair—he thought about Mother Mildred first teaching him how to saddle a horse—they started to free fall toward the ocean—he even thought about Dom, for the first time without any hatred, and simply wondered where he was right now and what he was doing.
“We’re going to crash!” Annika yelled over the sound of air whooshing past them.
“Just hang on!” Caden said. Then another thought came to him: he didn’t know how to swim.
The boat slammed into the ocean with an explosive blast. Caden was thrown into the air as salt water rained down on him and fragments of wood splattered everywhere. The bulkhead he’d been gripping burst into pieces, and when he hit the water, there was nothing for him to grasp.
Not that it mattered. He was too busy drowning and freezing to death.
Caden immediately started sinking. The dense Iltech inside him weighed him down, and his head plummeted straight under. He had to fight just to keep his mouth barely above the lapping waves. He gasped for breath, struggled against the engulfing wet darkness, went under, and flailed to try and get back to the surface. Each time he went down, the water blocked out all sound; the coldness blocked out all feeling. It was like the ocean was telling him just to give up and let go. He felt so, so heavy.
“Caden!”
Annika’s voice rang out. Caden tried to yell back but only got a mouthful of salt water before plunging under again.
“Caden where are you?”
He tried shoving his bright red palms into the air above the black water, but the second he stopped treading water, the icy grip of the ocean pulled him down into the all-consuming silence. Caden tried to swim back up, but he couldn’t. The Iltech inside of him refused to float, refused to do anything except weigh him down deeper and deeper into the cold ocean depths.
Caden held his breath as the light of Metl above became dimmer. His lungs burned, and his muscles begged him to open his mouth and let in some air. But if he did, that meant certain death. Caden struggled and fought to get back to the surface, but Metl’s light only grew fainter and fainter.
Finally, Caden’s body forced his mouth open, and the salt water came pouring in. It was strange though, Caden thought as water filled his lungs, it didn’t hurt. He’d expected dying to be a lot more painful. Frozen numbness reached down his throat, but gently, as if stroking him while singing a lullaby. Caden could almost hear the water whispering to him that it would all be over soon.
Caden’s vision went blurry. Then fuzzy. Then black. Then he felt nothing. He was dead.
But then, the next second, he wasn’t. From nowhere, Caden heard a metallic voice that sounded like Watson’s.
“devil mode activated.”
There was a jolt in the back of Caden’s head and his eyes popped open. He was still underwater, still drowned to death, but something was different. He couldn’t breathe, but his head told him that didn’t matter anymore. He wasn’t even sure if his heart was beating. But he was alive.
He tried moving his arms. They flowed through the water beautifully. But something felt wrong. It was as if something else, not Caden’s brain, was controlling them. He tried kicking his legs—same thing. It was like he was pulling on strings to control his own limbs.
With his glowing palms extended upward, Caden saw a shadow swimming down to him from above. It was coming fast. Caden moved to get out of the way of whatever it was, but then he saw the shadow’s face: it was Annika.
She reached down and grabbed Caden by the arm, yanking him toward the surface. She swam upward furiously, and Caden tried to do what he could to propel himself with his legs. He was shocked to not feel her pulling him. Or the icy embrace of the water. Or anything at all. It was like he was filled with air, floating through air, tugging on ropes to control where he was going like a kite. It didn’t feel right.
When Caden burst through the surface out of the water, there was nothing. He’d expected a gasp of breath filling him up, the sweet refreshing feeling of being back in the air. But there was nothing. He felt exactly the same above water as he’d felt drowning beneath it, heavy and detached from his own body.
Annika was a different story. She clung to a large piece of scrapwood from the boat, coughing and wheezing and spitting out water. Her lips were blue, and she turned to Caden and tried to smile but couldn’t get it out through her violent shivering.
“Y-y-you’re ok-k-k-kay,” she stammered.
Caden tried to speak but nothing came out. He tried to breathe but couldn’t. It was an unnerving feeling. Something that he’d taken for granted, breathing, was gone. Nothing was going in or out of him. He felt like he should be panicking, but even that didn’t happen. All he did was mechanically grab onto Annika’s scrapwood and start kicking toward shore.
They’d gotten a lot closer to Salem than he’d thought. They must’ve flown nearly the whole way back before they’d crashed. It only took a minute of kicking before Caden and Annika reached the docks. They bumped into a wooden rowboat tethered to the pier and hoisted themselves inside. Caden sat there, feeling like he should be happy that he was out of the freezing water, but he didn’t feel anything at all.
Annika lay on the floor of the boat shivering in the fetal position. Her clothes were soaked, her teeth were chattering. Caden had to do something. She needed dry clothes.
He climbed out of the rowboat onto the pier and scanned the docks. There were boats of all sizes attached with thick ropes to wooden posts. Drunken laughter rang out from one of the larger cargo ships. Caden’s head involuntarily jerked over to it. Candle lights lit up the shadows of nineteen sailors and docksmen sitting around talking with each other on the deck. Suddenly Caden knew what he had to do.
He didn’t even walk over to the ship—he flew. He rose into the air, as if it were as natural as walking. He hovered over to the cargo ship, landing lightly on the bow in front of a group of sailors sitting in a circle drinking and eating.
“What in the steel is that?” howled one of the men. All of their grizzled heads turned to Caden in shock and anger.
“Get ‘em!” yelled another. All nineteen men rose to their feet. Three of them had wooden clubs. Five of them had stone daggers. One had a crossbow. The rest had hairy fists.
This would be easy.
Caden held out only his right palm. The men stopped in their tracks when they saw the bright red X. In the time it took them to react, it was already over.
A hot invisible burst erupted out of Caden’s palm and all nineteen men collapsed unconscious on the wooden deck. Not wanting to be inefficient with time, Caden immediately stripped the clothes off the smallest two sailors, grabbed another’s leather satchel, then leaped off the side of the ship back onto the pier, landing as lightly as a feather.
When he started back to the rowboat with Annika inside, Caden felt like something was wrong. Very wrong. Only a few steps in, something hit him hard right in the gut. Caden doubled over in pain. It was like a rock had suddenly entered his stomach and was demanding to be let out. The same Watson-like voice echoed in his head.
“devil mode deactivated.”
Caden ran past the rowboat and threw the clothes and satchel down to Annika, not stopping until he reached the edge of the pier. He crouched over the side and seawater began pouring out of his mouth like a fountain. It burned as it came up, the salt scratching against his throat and mouth. For Caden, who hadn’t been able to feel anything for the past several minutes, it was agony. Icy-hot water gushed out with only a second between bursts for Caden to gasp for breath. He could breathe again, but he wished he couldn’t.
After he felt like he’d puked out the entire ocean, Caden coughed and coughed, spitting the remaining salty bits from his mouth and searing throat. He tried to catch his breath, but his heart was racing too fast. At least it was beating again. His wet overalls and pants clung to him like ice cubes. He was freezing, shivering all over.
Annika walked up from behind. She was wearing one set of the stolen clothes: an oversized shirt, a pair of pants, a vest, and leather shoes. Her soaking green dress and bonnet were tucked away in the satchel. Her lips were still blue, but she wasn’t shivering anymore.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
There was something about her question that set Caden off.
“Am-m-m I ok-kay?!” he roared through chattering teeth. “I d-died, Annika! I drowned to d-death down there and now, somehow, I’m s-still alive!”
“Caden, calm down,” Annika said. But Caden was just getting started.
“You d-don’t know what it was like! My heart stopped, and I wasn’t b-breathing. I wasn’t even controlling myself. S-something turned on inside me, a devil something. I f-flew up onto a ship and I knocked out nineteen people like … like a machine! Without even thinking about it. I couldn’t stop it, and I didn’t even care when I did it!”
Suddenly Caden realized something. Everyone who knew the truth about him—Jadice, Watson, even Tooby—they’d all said the same thing that up until now, Caden hadn’t paid nearly enough attention to. They’d all told him that he was going to destroy the world. He wasn’t just part robot, he was part weapon.
Caden gripped the sides of his head. He’d been shot in the leg, blown things up, made a ship fly in the air, drowned to death, somehow survived, and had taken down nineteen men without blinking. What was he? Caden knew the answer, and he hated it. He was an unstoppable killing machine built to do one thing—destroy the world. He didn’t even need Metl to crash into the Earth. He could do a perfectly fine job of it himself.
“I don’t want anyone else to die!” Caden cried out. He thought about Tooby, Clops, Jadice, Deber, and everyone else who was gone. And yet he was still here. “I’m the one who should be dead! Nothing would’ve happened to them if I’d never existed. I’m just a weapon that should have never been—”
Annika grasped Caden’s shoulders and focused on him with the most serious face he’d ever seen on her.
“Listen to me, Caden. I don’t know what you are. And you don’t know either. But I do know that I would’ve died a dozen times if it weren’t for you, either by the butcher or those Apostles or freezing to death just now. I don’t care if you’re a devil-robot or whatever. You saved me. You may be a weapon, Caden, but sometimes you can use a sword to cut bread, okay? Don’t go all crazy on me now, not when we’re so close to finally finding your dad and my mom.”
Annika let go of Caden’s shoulders. He knew she was right. But still … he wanted to know.
“Why was I created?” he asked softly.
“I don’t know,” Annika said. She pointed to the massive lit-up church, a little way from the docks. “But the one person who does know is inside that building. Let’s go find him.”
She handed him the other set of dry sailor clothes. One of the sailors who he’d taken down without even trying. Without even caring. Caden took them from her, but he didn’t change into them. There was still one thing on his mind.
“Annika, I have to ask you to do something,” he said quietly.
“What is it?”
“You’re not going to like it.”
“Out with it already!”
Caden took a deep breath. “After we find my dad, and your mom, and we stop Metl from hitting us, I need you to … I need you to destroy me.”
Annika glared down at him. “Caden, don’t be stupid. I’m not going to—”
“If you can’t promise me this,” Caden said, “then I’m not going any farther. It’s just like Jadice said. The same weapon that destroyed the world two-hundred years ago is inside me. And now I know that I can’t control it all the time. I don’t want to cause another apocalypse. Or even hurt another person. It’s not worth it, Annika. So please, promise me while I’m in control of myself enough to ask you.”
“Caden,” she said, “there’s no way I could ever—”
“If you don’t promise me, then I can’t help you find your mom,” Caden said, unblinking. “I’m sorry, Annika. But I need you to do this.”
Annika stared at Caden in silence. But only for a moment. The next she reached into her pocket, ripped out the magnetizer, and pointed it at Caden.
“Arrows can’t hurt you, falling ten stories can’t hurt you, and drowning can’t hurt you. But remember what Clops said about this magnetizer? At max power, it doesn’t care what you’re made of, stone or steel. Level five turned that metal lock to shreds. Level nine will blow whatever Iltech is inside you to bits.”
“Promise me,” Caden said, “that when the time comes, you’ll do it. For me.”
“I promise,” Annika said.
Caden stood back up, finally feeling relieved, even though the pain from drowning was catching up to him. His insides felt like they were made of stone, his outsides like they were caked in a layer of ice, and his head like it was floating away. But that was good; he was feeling again. Whatever robot-part of him had taken over was gone. For now. It was time to use it to stop Metl, and then destroy it forever.
He quickly changed into the sailor’s clothes. With a dry puffy shirt and pair of pants on, he took the satchel from Annika and slipped his wet overalls and the picture of his dad inside. The photo had rainbow discoloring around the edges now thanks to being drenched in water, but his dad’s face was still visible. And the writing on the back was clear as ever:
“I’ll always love you.”
“We need to find Jadice,” Caden said, feeling more determined than ever. “If she survived the Basement, then she can lead us into the church to find our parents.”
“We don’t have time to find her,” Annika said. They both looked toward Metl. It nearly filled the whole sky. “If what that spider told you is true, then we only have a few hours left before Metl hits us. For all we know Jadice is dead. We can’t wait around for her.”
“Then what do we do?” Caden asked. “Just ask the Holy Police and hope they let us in?”
Annika smirked. “I have an idea. There’s more than one way into the church, and with everything that’s going on, I don’t think they’re guarding all of them. Let’s go.”
Annika led and Caden followed. They walked down the pier, past the ship Caden had attacked. It was silent now; the laughter was gone. Caden didn’t look over. There was only one way he could prevent that from happening again, and he was on his way to do it.
At the end of the pier was the harbor. Wooden shipping crates were piled on top of long stone streets, and tall brick lighthouses had roaring fires on top, illuminating the area for nighttime work. But no one was there. The harbor was abandoned. There was only the sound of waves and seagulls.
As Annika led them closer to the church, Caden saw where everyone was. Over a hill past the harbor, hundreds of townspeople were gathered in Salem’s town square with blazing torches. Even from far away Caden could feel the tension rising. There were screams and cries as people pointed up at Metl in fear and mothers clutched their children close.
“—doing everything we can,” echoed the voice of the small Father through the wooden cone. Caden couldn’t see him, but his amplified voice boomed throughout town. “There is nothing to fear. This is a blessing sent by Gotama. We should be thankful for his—”
“Thankful for the flood that took my husband?”
“The fire that burned down my house was not a blessing!”
Yells from the crowd drowned the Father out. People were angry. And scared. Caden didn’t blame them; he was too.
“Where are we going?” Caden whispered to Annika. They’d crouched behind another hill on the backside of the church, bringing them down into damp darkness. Angry shouts from the crowd mixed with the crashes of the waves against the rocky coast. It felt like they were in the middle of nowhere.
“We’re going to one of my favorite old hangouts,” Annika said. “It’s just up ahead. There’s a tunnel that comes out of the church and right into the ocean. It’s where all their garbage goes. I used to steal some stuff from it. It’s not usually guarded, so we might be able to get in.”
Caden followed as they crawled along rocks, until they came to the peak of a jagged slope and peered over the top.
“There. Do you see it?” Annika asked. Below them, just a moment’s run away, was a perfectly circular stone opening in the side of the cliff. Gooey liquids in a variety of colors were leaking out of it onto the small sandy beach and then into the ocean.
“Don’t tell me you stole food out of there,” Caden said, slightly disgusted.
“I washed everything first, obviously,” Annika said grumpily. “Let’s go. It looks like no one’s—”
But there was someone guarding the entrance. A red stallion came clopping out of the shadows with a white-clad rider. It was a member of the Holy Police, lantern in hand, keeping watch.
Caden readied himself to use his angel weapon, hopefully for the last time. But then the Holy Police turned toward him and Annika.
It was Dom.