[English] ICONS (Biểu Tượng)

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I go flying.

I open my eyes. A group of old men stand over me, inside an elaborately carved doorway. Red and yellow and green. A wooden scroll is cut into the frame.

THE BENEVOLENT ASSOCIATION. That’s what it says on the door. Same as the characters on the drum that knocked me to the ground.

The men look benevolent, I guess. They don’t look malevolent, anyway. They look nice.

I close my eyes. The day has overwhelmed me. I’m bruised from where the drum has hit me, and I’m too tired to think.

I open my eyes to see that I am sitting inside what I imagine is the main room of the Benevolent Association. I try to stand up. I have the impulse to run.

“Please, please. You must sit.” Only one man says the words in English. The others are all shouting at me in a language I don’t understand.

I look past card tables where men are smoking and playing a game with well-worn tiles. There are zodiac calendars on the wall. Hanging beads line the doorways.

I am given a warm glass of water and a bowl of spiced nuts. The smell curls into my face, chili peppers and lemongrass. I cough spice.

“You are well. You will be well.”

A bespectacled man in a jade-colored jacket sits across from me.

“Where’s Lucas?” I ask.

“Your friend? The Little Ambassador? He is well. All is well.”

I try to stand again.

The man pulls me down, but doesn’t let go of my hand. In fact, he stares at it.

“What are you looking at?”

“Your hand.”

“What about it?”

“Nothing. I give you reading. Make sure you are well.”

“No thanks.”

“I insist. I am most benevolent.”

He straightens my hand, in front of him, pulling a clipboard out of a bag he wears against his hip. The clipboard carries a chart showing the dim outline of a hand divided into quadrants, and a schematic of a blank face. Graphs and grids and charts of numbers, as well as the zodiac, fill the rest of the page.

“Your reading. For the Year of the Tiger.”

“Is that what it is?”

He ignores me. I look around, a bit desperately now, for Lucas. I don’t like this man touching me. I don’t like anyone touching me. He feels smooth and soft, though, both the part I can feel with my hand and the part I can feel with my mind.

“I can’t read you with numbers. Not for you. I read you with creatures. You belong to the animals.”

He pulls a handful of jade animals out of his bag, one by one. He lines them up in a row on the table between us, carefully. His hand shakes as he moves, resting heavily on each one while he speaks.

A pig. “I am sorry for your loss.” He lays the pig down on the table. Ramona, I think.

He weighs what looks like a lamb in his hand, shaking his head. “Not the sheep. The shepherd. You have lost him as well.” The sheep joins the pig.

He holds up a monkey. “Monkey. Very playful. Very dangerous. Keep your eyes open and see things for what they are.” He places the monkey on the far side of the table, a distance from the sheep and the pig.

Now he fingers a turtle. “Very scared. Lonely. But will help you find your way.” The turtle goes halfway between the monkey on one side, and the sheep and the pig on the other.

He places a dog next to the turtle. “Faithful. Loyal. But teeth are sharp.” Now he holds up what looks like a small carved lion. “Lion of heart not always a good thing. Will cause you great pain. You must decide for yourself what is a lion and what is a dog.”

The dog and the lion stand together.

I look at his face. He grins, bobbing his head, and I notice for the first time he is wearing a neatly brimmed hat with a bright orange feather sticking out of the stitched band of trim. The feather exactly matches the kumquats that sit in a bowl in the center of the card table between us. He is a card table made into a man, I think.

“Your hand.”

I give him my hand again. This time, he is full of sorrow and anxious energy, tears and sweat like foam from the ocean when it touches the shore, washing up along the beach.

Sea foam, I think. Not pisswater.

“See this? You are strong.”

I don’t know how a freckle beneath my thumb can possibly mean that, but I nod.

“Do not marry before you are twenty-five. If you do, you will have many children and no money. Very unfortunate.”

“I don’t think that will be a problem.”

He laughs and I see the gold in his teeth. He taps at a line that spreads like wings in the center of my palm. “Your brothers. They watch over you.”

“They’re dead.” I try to pull my hand away, but he stops me.

“My bad. I try again. Best two out of three.”

He scrunches up his face, this time tracing the three lines that arc across my palm.

“I see a child in your future. Here. A girl.”

“Before twenty-five? So I’m poor?”

He shakes his head. “Not yours.” He frowns. “Very important.”

“I am?”

He looks at me carefully, closely.

“She is.”

He holds my hand tightly, and his eyes glaze over. He is looking but not looking at my hand, and I can feel him slipping away from me.

“You must help her. Everything depends upon it.” His tone changes and he is no longer smiling.

“Yeah?”

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small velvet bag. One by one, he picks up the jade animals and drops them inside it.

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“Keep them. I was to keep them, but your hand tells me to give them to you.”

I reach for the bag. He pulls it away.

“Greedy, greedy. Not for you. For her. When you find her. If.”

He is, like everyone else in the Hole, crazy. That’s the first thing I think. The second is, he’s running a scam.

So much for the Benevolent Association. They’re probably ransoming Lucas as we speak.

“What about the boy?” he asks.

It’s as if he can read my mind. “What about him? What does my hand say?”

But at that, the old man tips back his head and laughs, raising his hands. “I can’t tell you. Time up now. Shoot me. So it is written.”

“What?”

“Shoot me. That is all that remains.”

He smiles and rolls his eyes back, until all I can see are the whites.

“I don’t understand.”

He closes his eyes. A bullet rips through his chest, spattering me with red flesh. Another whizzes past my head.

“Oh my God.”

The old man is dead. A row of bullets eats into the wood above him. I fall out of my chair and sprawl onto the floor.

Even so, I can’t take my eyes off the old man.

The red stain seeps upward as his body slumps downward. The hat tumbles free and the orange feather floats lazily in the air. There are kumquats everywhere, rolling and spilling across the table, across the floor. Like the blood.

Shoot me. He wasn’t kidding.

He knew it was coming.

He knew.

“Oh my God. Oh my God. Sweet Maria.”

I grab the velvet bag, scramble to my feet, and run.

As I move, I think that this is what my life has become. This, and nothing more. Mysterious news and sudden death. Blood spatter on the wall and kumquats rolling on the floor. This is my life now.

It makes me run faster.

EMBASSY CITY TRIBUNAL VIRTUAL AUTOPSY: DECEASED PERSONAL POSSESSIONS TRANSCRIPT (DPPT)

CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET

Performed by Dr. O. Brad Huxley-Clarke, VPHD

Note: Conducted at the private request of Amb. Amare

Santa Catalina Examination Facility #9B

See adjoining Tribunal Autopsy, attached.

DPPT (CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE)

Catalogue at Time of Death includes:

31..

32. One small carved animal, green in color. Cheap quality, commonly sold in souvenir shops throughout the Southlands. 2.2 zm. Jade. It appears to be a lion, broken in half.

Source or significance unknown.

20

OUR LADY OF THE ANGELS

I leave the Benevolent Society, running as fast as I can. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Sympas in formation, moving through the center of the street.

Why would Sympas shoot at me? Why now?

I thread my way through the crowd as it thins. I hear the sound of more gunshots. People scream, scattering frantically. I keep going.

Lucas. Where is Lucas?

Why would Sympas shoot at him?

I turn the corner into an alley and duck behind the trash cans. A few minutes later, Lucas dives into the shadows after me.

We lie there, panting, as the Sympas run by, in the brightness of the street in front of us.

“Why?” It’s the first word I can manage to get out.

“I don’t know.”

“Are they looking for you or me?” I’m hoping not to be the answer.

He doesn’t say anything. I think of the old man who told my fortune, the way blood seeped through to his chest, the way his body spun back.

I touch my pocket, feeling for the hard lumps of jade. Everything looks blurry to me now, and I try to wipe the tears from my face but they just keep coming.

“Do you know why Doc was invented?” Lucas asks.

“He’s a Virt. A Medic.” Doc told me himself.

“When I was five, I found an asp in my bed. When I was eleven, my tutor drank a glass of milk that was meant for me and dropped dead from cyanide. When I was thirteen, someone took a shot at me in broad daylight, and we moved to Santa Catalina.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Doc isn’t just a Medic. He’s my bodyguard. As many people who want me to live want me to die. That’s part of every day of my life.” He sounds as terrible as I feel.

“You’re here now, aren’t you?”

I settle back against him, in the garbage, in the shadows, in the alley. I let his warmth run back and forth between us.

“I’m sorry, Dol. I’m sorry I got you into this. I should have been more careful. I should have come by myself.”

He didn’t, and he shouldn’t. It’s how he feels, though. I understand. So I don’t say anything at all.

Eventually, we slip back out into the street. We keep our heads down and stick to the alleys. The crowd has surged back across the pavement and the sidewalks, and the temporary quiet of a Sympa incident has subsided into the normal noise and teeming chaos. Crowds and noise are comforting here. Only the quiet disturbs. I am glad it has passed.

Soon we come to a sandstone wall that follows the length of a block, maybe more. I run my finger along the smooth rectangles of pale stone, badly crumbling. I look up to see a row of green brass bells. You could still see the coppery color underneath the patina of time, in places. Only a few.

“Here,” says Lucas. “This is what I was looking for.”

There is a gate, and it is locked—even though the building looks abandoned.

“What now?”

“This.” Lucas pushes it open, and the oxidized iron gives way beneath his hand. It is, like most of the Hole, something broken and useless that only retains the slight impression of a thing with a purpose that came before.

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Lucas and I walk through an abandoned courtyard, where wide, flat steps lead up to a massive sandstone building on the left, and a shallow, dry fountain on the right. A last row of buildings, empty shops with doors that have rusted open, marks the far right.

Lucas steps behind me, moving me into one particular spot. I feel his hands on either shoulder, two warm places where I am otherwise cold, though the sun is shining.

“There, right there. Now—look up.”

I look toward the sky, and the facade of a cathedral spins up into the blue air, in front of me.

There she is. Now I understand why we are here. And he’s right. She is more beautiful.

A stone statue—a sad Lady—looks down on me.

“Our Lady of the Angels. That’s what this place used to be called. Long, long ago,” Lucas tells me.

“She’s beautiful.”

He tilts his head, so we are looking with the same angle. “Look at her halo. It’s cut away, made out of sky, see? That’s my favorite part.”

I don’t know if she is the Lady, or an angel. Either way, the stone roof is cut out in a circle over her head, and I realize he’s right.

Her halo is the sky.

“Do you like it? Her?” I hear his voice in my ear, but I don’t answer. I can’t speak.

Her halo is the sky. The same sky that gave us the monsters, the Lords themselves.

The Lady and the monsters. Peace, and death.

Angels and aliens.

The Lady is cloaked in orange blossoms and scarlet bougainvillea, growing like wild over the fountains and the stones of the square.

“Lucas.”

It’s all I can say. He moves his hands from my shoulders, until his arms encircle me, and I lean against him…

“That’s a real Icon, eh?”

I recognize the voice. Lucas pulls his arms away, and we turn, startled.

“Kind of puts everythin’ in perspective, I’d say.”

The church square isn’t empty anymore. Fortis stands in front of us. Behind him, a row of people I can’t place. They’re not Sympas. They don’t look like Grass. They’re something else.

“My friends at the Rebellion. I thought it was time you finally met. Especially now, seein’ as you’ve come all the way to their home.” He gestures. “Nice place, hey? I like the bit over there, what with the fountain and the flowers.” He snaps off a bougainvillea blossom. “Red, like my first wife. Always liked datin’ a ginger.”

I look at Lucas. “Him? This is where you were coming? To see Fortis?” I can’t believe it. Especially not from Lucas.

Lucas shrugs. “You’re the one who said you trusted him, right?”

The Merk grins. “Come on now, Miss lady. My friends tell me they’ve been trailin’ you through the city all day. Lost you for a bit, after the unpleasantness with the Benevolent gentleman. Such a shame.”

“Shut up, Fortis.” I don’t like the way he says things. As if everything weighs the same, no one thing matters more than the next. The flower is red. The man is dead. They’re all just words to him. That’s what Merks are like, I guess.

“They only want to talk for a bit. The least you can do is come in for a cake or two and a spot of tea.”

One by one, I begin to pick out faces in the crowd. The woman from the candy shack in the plaza. The old man who helped us buy the drink at the red wagon, and the woman who sold it. Even a few old men from the Benevolent Association are in the crowd—I recognize their jade quilted jackets.

It’s strange to see them all here, a motley collection of lost souls in the courtyard of a broken-down church in the backwater chaos of the Hole.

“One drink,” says Lucas, and it is decided. Lucas and I follow Fortis through the massive doors into what used to be the church. I take a last look at Our Lady, but she doesn’t say a word. As if giving a sign, though, her halo of sky has become a halo of clouds.

I tell myself I don’t believe in signs, and let the heavy door fall shut behind me.

But it’s a lie.

Because I do.

The inside of the church is no church at all. It really is or was a cathedral. The ceiling soars and the room broadens until I realize we have walked to the other side. I stand looking down the center aisle to the apse, where the walls bisect the space into a cross. Like the Mission, I think, only a hundred times bigger. I can see that everything about this place was vast and grand. The remains of some kind of gold, carved shrine sit in the very back. I imagine that at one time, there would have been rows of pews, filled with people praying. Not animals, I think, with a smile.

If they had candles, I would light one for Ramona Jamona.

But now there are no pews, only rows of cots. Tables spread with maps. Clusters of children and the elderly, here and there. It’s as chaotic, in its own way, as the marketplace and the stalls and the Hole outside.

Only the walls remain still. The stone, the large squares, are immovable, and we are all small beside them.

Fortis motions me into an alcove, where a thick rug has been thrown over the floor and covered with embroidered pillows. A brilliant pattern of silk scarves hangs to cover the doorway, which is simply a break in the walls. I let myself drop to a low table set with an elaborate brass tea setting, next to Lucas. A plate of dusty-looking pastry accompanies the tea.

Fortis sits across from us. “Thanks for comin’, mate. I was surprised to get your message.”

“Really? After you came to us? What was so surprising about my wanting to return the visit?”

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“I wasn’t surprised you were curious. I was more surprised that you could get a message to me. I’m not an easy fellow to rin’ up.”

“Speaking of which, how did you find this place?” I look at Lucas suspiciously.

“I asked.” He shrugs.

“Asked who,” I say.

“I asked around.”

He looks at Fortis, who grins. “I tried to leave a few clues. That’s a hell of a program, your friend at the Embassy. Beastly to shut down, and some of my better work, if I do say so myself.”

“You mean Doc?” It had to be. Lucas couldn’t have told anyone else. He must have had Doc trace Fortis.

I turn on Lucas. I can’t help myself. “No wonder people knew exactly where we were all day. Why Sympas came and shot the old man I was talking to. I don’t know how the Embassy Wik works, but I’m pretty sure if one part of it knows something, the other parts do.”

“It wasn’t Doc. He’s smarter than that. You don’t know him like I do.” Now Lucas is getting defensive.

“He’s not smart. He’s not even a person.” I don’t know why, but for the third time today, I can feel myself blinking back hot, prickling tears.

“That, love, is just semantics.” Fortis pours himself a drink.

“Doc wouldn’t say anything about me.” Lucas grabs what looks like some kind of sweet roll and shoves it into his mouth.

“You know this because?”

“He’s Doc.”

Fortis lifts his cup. A toast. “Seems like a right enough old bastard to me.” He downs it. I suspect it isn’t tea.

“Technically, that would be impossible, since the term bastard applies as a kind of widely accepted vernacular to a child born out of wedlock.” The familiar voice comes from Lucas, who is pressing a particular place on the black leather cuff he wears around his marks. “I was neither born out of wedlock, nor a child, nor, for that matter, in the tra***ional sense, born.”

“Doc?”

“Yes, Dol.”

“You’ve been here the whole time?”

“Strictly speaking, no. If, by ‘being here,’ you take being to imply a physical presence. I am, in fact, neither here nor there. As the colloquial expression goes.”

“Ah, you’re real enough to me, mate.” Fortis raises his glass to the disembodied voice. “Cogito ergo sum, my friend. Cogito ergo sum.”

“Thank you, Fortis.”

“Lucas wears you?” It sounds stupid. I want it to.

“It’s a mobile drive. Pipes right into my ear. I told you. He’s my bodyguard, sort of. How did you think I knew where I was going, all day long? How did I always know where to find you?”

“Because you’re smart. Because you’re fast. Because you’ve been to the Hole—and I never have.” I’m being stubborn. I don’t like not knowing what’s going on around me.

Even if, in spite of everything, I like Doc—and some part of me, somewhere, doesn’t know how I feel about Lucas. Lots of ways, I guess. I just don’t know which one is the one that matters most.

Fortis sits back against the pillows. “If you two lovebirds would give me a chance to say somethin’, I think I could help you.”

Lucas scowls. “You mean, you think we could help you.”

“Isn’t that what I said?” Fortis sighs. “I’m a reasonable fellow. I’ve got a reasonable proposition. All I ask is that you have a listen and tell me what you think then, right?”

“How do we know?” Lucas pushes his cup away.

“Know what?” Fortis raises an eyebrow.

“That you’re reasonable. Or that we should listen.”

“Or that Sympa guards or whoever it was that was shooting at us back there aren’t on the way to blow our heads off right now? While you keep us sitting here listening to your lies?” I can’t stop myself from chiming in.

“What do you say, Doc?” Lucas doesn’t move his eyes from Fortis.

“It would be logical, yes. Even advisable, were the mercenary’s goals to be aligned with the persons behind this afternoon’s violence.”

“Examples?” It’s becoming clear Lucas and Doc have been together a long, long time.

“Citing. See the Trojan War. See Demosthenes. See Sun Tzu, The Art of War, subheading, Creating Strategic Opportunities.”

“Well, there you go. I wouldn’t want to disagree with Sun Tzu.”

“However,” Doc continues, “highly unlikely, if you posit that financial remuneration is the end goal of any mercenary, however aligned. And I don’t believe profit is his motivation.”

“Why is that?” Lucas’s smile fades.

“Because,” says Doc, “Fortis isn’t a mercenary. That’s a ruse, a falsehood. A fiction.”

“Oh?” I stare at Fortis, and the truth hits me at the exact moment the words do. Just for a moment, I can feel my way into it.

“He’s the leader of the Rebellion.”

EMBASSY CITY TRIBUNAL VIRTUAL AUTOPSY: DECEASED PERSONAL POSSESSIONS TRANSCRIPT (DPPT)

CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET

Performed by Dr. O. Brad Huxley-Clarke, VPHD

Note: Conducted at the private request of Amb. Amare

Santa Catalina Examination Facility #9B

See adjoining Tribunal Autopsy, attached.

DPPT (CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE)

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Catalogue at Time of Death includes:

35. Collection of Embassy Motivational Flyers, text-scan follows:

21

HUX

“You’re what?” Lucas pushes himself against the table. I think he would bolt if he could, but there are rows of Rebellion Grass between him and the door.

“Was that really necessary, Hux? I should have pulled your plug again.” Fortis shakes his head.

“Hux? You have a name for Doc, too?” I don’t know which I find more confusing, that the Merk is somehow friends with Doc—if you can call it that—or that the Merk is no Merk at all.

“I apologize, Fortis, if I have spoken in error.”

“Did you or didn’t you? Speak in error?” Lucas looks at his wrist, as if Doc is somehow there.

“I believe Fortis and I had agreed that at some point it would become beneficial to reveal certain truths about ourselves,” says the voice.

“Yourselves? What’s the truth about you, Doc? Or do you have more names I don’t know?” Lucas looks annoyed.

“I have been called just over one hundred derivatives of my longer name. Would you care to hear them? It is a slightly different query.” The familiar refrain comforts me.

“No, actually.” He puts down his cup.

“Leave Hux alone. He’s a good enough fellow. I was the one who said you wouldn’t agree to meet me, if you knew who I really was.”

“Why is that? Who are you?” I can feel Lucas’s turmoil radiating into the rest of us. He’s as contagious as ever, only now what he gives me is closer to a chill than anything else.

“Does it really matter? It shouldn’t. What should matter to you is this: you an’ me, all of us—we’re goin’ to take out the Icon.”

“Excuse me?”

“The Icon, at what used to be the Observatory. High time we did somethin’ about it.”

“You’re wrong. We can’t do anything. The Icon can’t be destroyed. Nothing works or lives anywhere near it. No one could get close enough to touch it.” Lucas isn’t buying it.

Fortis continues calmly. “I know more than you might think, and you might learn somethin’ if you stop and listen. The Icon is how the Embassy controls the Hole. The Icon is how the House of Lords controls the Embassy. Controls everythin’. Everythin’ comes back to the Icon.” Fortis shakes his head.

“Not everything,” says Lucas.

“Actually, the Icon does control everythin’.” Fortis winks at me. “But not everyone, Doloria.”

“Everything and everyone,” I insist. “Even us. Here we are, powerless. Controlled by the Embassy, like everyone else.”

“I won’t argue with you there, Dol. But think about this—how do you suppose you came to have your name? Amoris? Doloris?”

“Because she survived The Day?” Lucas frowns at him.

“Not entirely.”

“Because she has special abilities, then?” He tries again.

Fortis shrugs.

“What are you saying, Fortis?” Lucas rubs his hands through his lank blond hair, frustrated.

I lose my patience. “I don’t know much about the Icon, but even I know we can’t get near it. We’d die, like everyone else.” The images from the Silent Cities flood my mind again, and I focus on the cup in front of me, trying not to see them.

“Maybe. Maybe not. Look. I’ll tell you what. We’ll pay a visit to the Icon. Have a look around for yourself, let me know what you think.”

“Now?” I don’t believe him. I don’t want to. “Stop playing games with us, Fortis. Tell us what you know. What does this have to do with us? What are we?”

“You feel things, Dol. All four of you. You feel things in a most particular fashion. More than other people. More than anyone.”

“And?”

“And it’s not just an accident. Those feelings, those emotions are what make you powerful. So all I ask is that you have a little look-see. You might be surprised.”

“How do you know what we’ll find at the Icon? How can you be sure of anything?” I’m so overwhelmed, and so tired. I don’t know if I want to scream or cry.

“I can’t. But I know more about you than anyone else, love.” Fortis pulls a book—my book—out of the inside of his jacket.

“You see, I wrote the book. Well, Hux an’ me, when you get right down to it.”

The book about me. The Book of Icons. The book the Ambassador killed my Padre for.

A doctor wrote it. That’s what the Padre said.

Did he mean Doc?

My mind is reeling and I reach for the book—just as Fortis pulls it away.

“You want your precious book back, you’ll have to earn it. Take a little walk with me first.”

“Why should I?” My eyes narrow. Lucas shifts uncomfortably, next to me.

“Because I blew up the Tracks for you. Nearly lost a finger. And a deal is a deal.”

EMBASSY CITY TRIBUNAL VIRTUAL AUTOPSY: DECEASED PERSONAL POSSESSIONS TRANSCRIPT (DPPT)

CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET

Performed by Dr. O. Brad Huxley-Clarke, VPHD

Note: Conducted at the private request of Amb. Amare

Santa Catalina Examination Facility #9B

See adjoining Tribunal Autopsy, attached.

DPPT (CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE)

Catalogue at Time of Death includes:

38. One 10-cm-wide strip of muslin, splattered with what appears to be dried human blood.

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Tear is consistent with wrist binding worn by the Deceased.

Will be scanned and sent to Embassy Labs for analysis, as per protocol #83421.

22

THE PARK

“All right.”

I’ll do it. I have no choice.

Fortis might not be a Merk—but he’s downright mercenary. There will be no book until I go with him to the Icon. It disappears almost as quickly as it came.

“First we walk.” Fortis pulls himself up.

I can’t let it drop. “Fortis. I have to know. What’s so important about that stupid book?”

“Not yet. We take a field trip. We check out the Icon, do a little reconnaissance. Then we can have readin’ hour, as long as you like.”

There is no arguing with Fortis—at least, no more arguing—which is why, within a matter of minutes, we find ourselves walking down a dusty street in the distinct direction of the foothills.

“He’s following us, do you see him?” I look over my shoulder, nervously. The walk to the Observatory has taken hours, during the last few of which we’ve been followed.

A small, ragged-looking boy walks in the shadows on the same side of the street as us, only a block behind. He looks like a Remnant, tattooed and ratty. But there’s too much purpose to his walk, and as he wanders he keeps his eyes on us.

I say, “That boy.”

“Don’t mind him.” Fortis walks more slowly, if possible. I find myself watching his gait, to see if he is drunk. Especially since what we are doing can only be explained by intoxication or insanity.

“What if he’s armed?” Lucas speaks up, and I can feel his pulse quickening. “We’ve already been shot at once today.”

“Only once? That’s a bit anticlimactic and all, don’t you think? Seeing as you made the trip all the way here?” Fortis takes a handkerchief out of the pocket of his long jacket. He mops his brow and I wonder what else he has in there.

“You’ll be fine. We’re almost there, aren’t we, Hux?” Fortis glances at Lucas, but it’s not Lucas he’s speaking to.

Doc replies, as easily as if it was Lucas who had asked. “Just around the next turn, Fortis. You should be safe until you reach the perimeter.”

“And the field?”

“All systems operational. The pulse wave is transmitting normally, directly from the Icon.” Doc’s voice seems farther away, now that we are outside, on the street.

Though of course he was never here, not really.

The fallen sign on the edge of the road says GRIFF PARK, or at least those are the letters that remain. Somewhere up this road and up this hill, the Icon waits for us.

In the scrubby green-brown foothills that surround us, there is no sign of life. No birds sing; nothing rustles in the stiff, dried brush. There is only the buzz of the atmosphere, and the silence of certain death. That is what the pulse field sounds like. Like machine noise and nothingness in my ears.

The road is called Mossy Fern; at least, it looks like it used to be. The sign is overgrown now, as is the road. Overwhelmed with brown, decaying ferns. It looks like the wrong place. It looks like nowhere anyone would ever go.

But then the road twists, and the gates come into view.

Of course.

Griff Park is gated off.

A chain-link fence is wired carelessly shut, probably because the Embassy knows that nobody can survive long enough to enter, and if they did, they wouldn’t make it all the way up the hill to the Observatory.

Lucas stands in the road, staring up the hill, or what we can see of it through the brown piles of dead plant life, banked against the gates. It looks like it once was a neighborhood, with nice houses and nice lawns and probably nice families. Now it is a ghost neighborhood, haunted by memories that no one is left to remember.

I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be a ghost. I turn and look behind me. The boy is that much closer, standing now where I was standing, minutes ago.

“Why are we here? There’s no point. There’s nothing we can do.” I’m annoyed.

Fortis just stands there, hands in his pockets, waiting. For what, I don’t know.

“So this is the perimeter, I guess.” The words sound strange in Lucas’s throat, and he doesn’t move his eyes.

Fortis nods, his eyes equally fixed. “Apparently so.”

Then I see why they are staring. It’s not only the brush that is dead.

Around me, piled in the debris at the base of the fence, are skeletons—four, six, ten skeletons, pressing against the wires, dumped like trash on the side of the road.

One has his hand at his throat.

My heart skips a beat.

I’m looking at the bodies of people who have tried to infiltrate the Icon, tried to do something about our common situation. People braver than me.

They’re all dead.

I turn to Lucas and Fortis. “We should go back. We can’t—they’re everywhere.”

Fortis sighs. “That’s what happens when you try to get near the Icon, for us regular blokes. Like I said.”

“Why are there so many?”

He laughs, but he isn’t smiling. “Are you pulling my chain, love? This is nothing. Think about it. Since 6/6, any time people try to demonstrate, they drop dead. Any time we try to stage a protest. Any time we make our voices heard. As long as that Icon stays in place, the Lords control everything we say and do. It’s the Silent Cities, every day, all over again.”

He shrugs. “After a while, we just stopped tryin’. Now we take our numbers and stand in line with the resta the livin’ dead.”

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Lucas is silent. Instead, he starts to walk around the perimeter of the gate, searching for something.

“What are you doing? You’re going to get yourself killed.”

I grab Lucas’s arm—I have to stop him. I’m thinking of the newsreels. I’m thinking of the empty streets and the faces of the dead. How could I not be? It’s what we’re staring at, right now. It’s where we are.

I’m panicking. This may not be a Silent City, but it’s still an Icon. It can still kill us.

We all know that.

“There. Look.” Lucas points to where the chain-link fence bends up into the brush. A hole, not big enough for him, but barely big enough for me. “You’re the smallest. You can get through there. You can go around and let me in the front gate.”

I shake my head in disbelief. “What? I’m not going to die for you.”

“I’m not asking you to die for me.”

“Look at those piles of bones. That’s exactly what you’re asking.”

“No, I’m not. Look at me, look at us. Does it seem like anything’s wrong?”

I stare at him.

“We’re not tired. Our heads aren’t aching. Our hearts aren’t pounding erratically.”

Speak for yourself. I notice, though, that Fortis is not looking well and is once again wiping the sweat from his forehead.

“Don’t you get it? It doesn’t affect us.”

“That’s impossible. The Icon affects everyone. That’s the whole point of the Icon.”

“We don’t know that,” Fortis says. “That’s why we’re here. Each brain is unique. Your brains seem to be—uniquely unique. You may not be affected in the same way as everyone else. At least, that’s what I’m bankin’ on. Fingers crossed.” He holds them up, double crossed, even.

“What if Fortis is right?” Lucas looks at his hands. “What if we’re the way into the Icon? Around the Icon?”

“You don’t trust Fortis! You’ve never trusted Fortis. Look at those skeletons and then tell me you think Fortis is right—”

“Hey now. Be kind. I’m standin’ right here.” Fortis grins. Nothing I’m saying gets to him. Not even standing in the shadow of the Icon bothers Fortis, aside from a bit of sweat. It’s like all this is a game.

“I don’t know if Fortis is right, but I know something’s going on. They’re lying to us, the Embassy.”

“Your mother.”

“My mother. Especially her. She hid the records. She sealed off the secrets. We need to find out—whatever it is they don’t want us to know.”

“Is that why you came? To find out if the Icon can kill you or not? Or is it that maybe you just don’t want to live anymore?”

“You tell me. Why did you follow me all the way out here?”

Then I understand what I have to do.

It isn’t Lucas who has to know.

It’s me.

The Padre.

My family.

My fate.

I have to find out for myself.

Why me?

Why am I here and what am I here to do?

What makes me an Icon Child?

Before anyone can say a word, I turn and throw myself through the hole at the bottom of the fence.

Which is where I lie on the ground in the dirt, waiting to die.

But I don’t.

RESEARCH MEMORANDUM: THE HUMANITY PROJECT

CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET / AMBASSADOR EYES ONLY

To: Ambassador Amare Subject: Icon Children Origins

Subtopic: Research Notes

Catalogue Assignment: Evidence recovered during raid of Rebellion hideout

Page torn from book

Book title: Brain Power: Unlocking the Energy Inside

Author: Paulo Fortissimo

INTRODUCTION

Energy is the foundation of life.

Energy controls, creates, changes, and destroys.

EXAMPLES

Radiation can kill, slowly or quickly. Infrared light can change a channel. Electromagnetic waves can be used to see inside your mind and body. Sound waves, like music or voice, can trigger emotions of sadness or joy. Light gives us vision and can generate untold feelings.

HUMANS ARE CONSTANTLY CREATING ENERGY.

Sound, shock, emotion. However, we are now discovering that the human brain has untapped potential to generate more power than we could have dreamed.

Locked away, we all have a nascent star inside us that can burn brighter than we can imagine.

We need only find the key.

23

THE OBSERVATORY

He must have begun moving before I hit the ground, because I’m not still for more than a second when he attacks.

The boy.

Lucas dives at him from one side, Fortis from the other. But they’re too late. All I see is the knife.

Knives.

I scream and flail, kicking and punching as hard as I can. A moment later, the attacker rolls off me. A gleaming blade falls from his hand to the dirt.

“Madre de Dios!” I keep screaming. I can’t stop.

“Dol!” Lucas starts toward the fence, but Fortis grabs him by the neck of his shirt, turning to me.

“Get a grip on yourself, love.”

Fortis shuts me up. I hold my breath until I can swallow the screaming. My breath is coming fast and ragged, but I keep silent now.

The Sympa boy is heavy and motionless. Though his face is half hidden in the dirt, I can see his eyes have rolled back in his head. I push my face closer to his. He’s not breathing. It’s like his whole body has just stopped.

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“I think he’s dead.”

“Anyone who passes through the fence is. That’s what the Icon does to the rest of us,” Fortis calls out to me, but as he does, he’s moving away from the fence. Now his face is drawn tight, his eyes nervous. “Think I’d better stand back a bit.”

I stare at the newly dead boy, lying halfway through the chain.

Lucas drags him by his boots until he is all the way out, on the other side of the fence. He yanks open the boy’s jacket, feeling in his pockets. He pulls out a faded piece of paper, folded once. Before he can open it, Fortis quickly takes the paper and reads it.

“Apparently there’s a price for you. Only a thousand digs? Cheap bastards. They’re driving the whole Merk market down.” Fortis looks disgusted. “Highway robbery, that’s what that is.”

“Fortis!”

“Right. He must have recognized you and thought he’d make a few digs.”

“Who would put a price on my head?” Lucas reaches to take the paper, but Fortis waves him off. It disappears like everything else, in the voluminous folds of his long jacket.

“My guess is, it isn’t the Ambassador behind it. More likely, she doesn’t even know.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Lucas frowns.

“Nothing, yet. Except you need to remember ****** Caesar.”

“How so?”

“It’s never your enemies’ senate you need to worry about. You’re more likely to be stabbed in the back by your own.”

“Great. I feel so much better.” Lucas looks annoyed.

“You’re welcome. But, all the same, I’ll nose around some and tell you if anything turns up. I’d put my money on Catallus. He’s a bit of a thug, I know that much.”

Fortis wads up his handkerchief and shoves it back into his pocket. “Poor dead fool. He probably thought it was safe for him too, the moment Dol here crossed the fence.” He backs away again, farther from where I stand. “Well, let’s not waste any more time on this one. Time for you to go, both of you. I’m not joining you, thanks for asking. You need to see for yourself.”

I can feel his brain working at light speed. They can go inside, he’s thinking. They can live inside the Icon. They’re immune. It doesn’t affect them.

I feel it all, and my face twists into doubt.

Fortis looks at me, grinning. “Sorry about that. I forget, sometimes, who I’m dealin’ with. That you can see into my mind clear as a crystal ball.”

“It doesn’t work like that. Not all the time.”

“Fine. Then a nice, big glass one. Good and cracked a little, just like old Fortis himself.”

“What does it mean, Fortis?” I look at him. I wish he would just be straight with us for once.

“What it means, I don’t know.” He doesn’t slow down. “Maybe you can tell me when you get back. Off with you, now. Up the hill, my brave little Grassgirl.” He motions to Lucas. “Let your friend ’round through the gate and get going.”

“What do we do when we get up there?” I stare in the direction of the Icon, even though I can’t see it. Not from here. From the looks of the incline, we will have a steep hike up to the top.

“I don’t know.” Lucas holds up his wrist, speaking into it. “Doc, do you have any idea of what we’re looking for?”

Doc’s voice is crackling; the connection is weak.

“Based on what we know, you should be able to locate a physical space approximating a control room, Lucas. A power source that connects throughout the building. Even if the technology is not based on Embassy specifications.”

Fortis grabs Lucas’s wrist and loosens the strap. “Old Hux is right, but he won’t be able to help you much, not past here. Radio silence. Hazard of the Icon pulse.”

“I’ve got it.” Lucas yanks his wrist free and begins to unbuckle it himself. He presses a button on his wrist cuff and the air seems that much quieter.

Doc is gone.

Fortis slaps Lucas on the shoulder. “Remember. It’s nothing from this world. Don’t expect anything you see to look like anything you know.”

“I said I’ve got it.”

Lucas is as cross as I am; as I push open the gate from the inside, he nearly trips on an edge of old bone. “Watch out,” I say, and he only glares. Our current situation is enough to put anyone in a foul mood.

But we don’t stop. We can’t. So we hike in silence until the empty houses finally give way to the steep canyon roads, and then roads become trails, and the trails become mountainside dirt. Everything twists in front of me until the city becomes the wild. Rotting remains of dense moss and fern overwhelm the dead trees on either side of the curving road. Now I understand how this Mossy Fern street got its name.

My head starts to pound.

Lucas points to the remnants of a wooden sign. Part of an arrow, and the letters ORY.

“There. The steepest incline, it must go to the Observatory.”

“Lead the way.”

He’s right.

We’re here, only I don’t know what I’m looking at. Through the empty parking lot, past the few outlines of rusted cars, there it is.

An observatory. People used to look into the heavens from here. Now the heavens have occupied it, and it observes us, visible for miles around. It reminds me of the Santa Catalina Presidio, almost, except the ocean doesn’t stretch out in front of it, only a great lost city. I see the reason we are here, jutting up into the sky above the older building. The blackened metal of the Icon unfolds like an ominous shadow over everything else before us.

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“Just keep walking,” mutters Lucas. He sees it too.

I nod.

As we near the building, everything becomes darker, stranger, more damaged. The pounding in my head grows stronger. The building no longer looks like an observatory. It looks like an abandoned military plant.

We mount the cracked concrete stairs that lead to the central complex. The doors are chained shut. Lucas rattles them, but I don’t waste my time.

I make my way around the side of the building, until I find myself on a concrete platform behind the Observatory, on the edge of the hill overlooking the sweep of the city.

The Hole.

I can see the wash of buildings, the white haze of horizon where they cling to each other in clusters that are nothing like anything found in nature. Shells of abandoned business centers rise up like ancient obelisks and artifacts from a time that doesn’t matter anymore. Closer to the hills beneath the Observatory, the pale sprawl gives way to curving hillsides of scrubby green trees and twisting dirt paths. I can see all the way from the mountains in the east to the water in the west.

Beyond that, I see the faint, jagged outline of Santa Catalina Island, only a brief disruption in the horizon.

I look at the Hole, all of it, and that’s just what it is. A hole. I try to imagine it alive, free again from the constant fear of death.

I can’t.

I can’t escape the feeling that it’s over, that this once-great city will never be anything again. Because as I stand here at the Observatory, the main thing I can observe is that the city is dying.

The Icon, the machine that pulses right behind me, is killing it—what was left of it to kill.

Like the dead houses on the way up the hill, only everywhere, and worse.

“There you are.”

Lucas has found me, but he’s found something else, too. He stumbles backward, staring up at the sky.

I follow, turning reluctantly toward the Observatory.

Toward the Icon.

I half expect to see inhuman guards, shielded Sympa soldiers, or maybe some alien tech that will keep us from entering. Then I remember that no humans could ever walk where I am standing, and that there is no way anyone operating the Icon would have planned for security here.

But when we get closer to the Icon, what I see is more frightening than any security system. The ground in front of us is completely covered with rubble. Partial walls rise into broken windows, as if an earthquake has hit the building. The front doors are wide open. One has fallen, the other hangs on its hinges.

“Easy enough.” Lucas sighs, grim.

Neither one of us wants to go any farther.

But we do.

We walk straight toward the largest building of the central compound.

Lucas goes first, shaking his head as if he is trying to get something out of it. “Feel that?” A drop of blood slides down from the inside of his ear.

I nod. Because my entire body is trembling—even my heart is vibrating. It’s all we can do to stay on our feet. No one can tolerate the energy this close to the Icon.

Not even us.

“We shouldn’t be here, Lucas,” I say, reaching toward his ear. He pulls his head away.

“Yeah. Neither should this.”

He takes my hand and I let him.

“Let’s look for the brain and get out of here, Dol.”

We step inside.

The Icon has destroyed what used to be the Observatory.

What we see now looks like only part of the Icon—the part we can see from inside—but even this much is completely intimidating.

It’s hard and sharp, metallic and silvery black.

The surface appears to pulsate, almost like a liquid, swirling and flowing in complex patterns.

I don’t dare touch it.

The thing is like a jagged spike from a giant claw.

Long, protruding tubes like fingers run in and out of the building. The main part of the Icon body is long and broad and covered with nodes, a vertical strip of massive, circular steel rings. It’s ironic; this part of the Icon, whatever it is, is the only thing that seems to be alive in the entire park.

The machine—I don’t really know what else to call it—looks nothing like what I have seen from any distance, through any telescope. What can be seen from outside is just the shell. What we stand looking at remains hidden from the world, but more powerful than anything else in it.

It’s not just the brains we’ve found. It has its own sort of heart, I think. We stand there watching it beat, feeling it pulse. Lucas raises his hand to his forehead. I feel it too, the strange energy coming from the Icon. I feel it probing at me, pounding at me, attacking me.

The power is incredible.

The power it has to stop everything that keeps me alive. It pounds out a rhythm like a heartbeat.

Something’s there—deep in the center of this Icon. Something alive. Something powerful. Something that exists solely to kill.

I bring my hand to my chest to feel my heart banging inside.

Yes.

I close my eyes and remember the Padre and Ramona, and see the tiniest details.

Remember.

I know the Icon wants to control every pulse in my body, but I also feel something inside myself that pushes back against it.

My heart is not going to stop today.

I reach out in my mind and hold on to Lucas, next to me. Hand in hand, heart to heart.

He is frightened too, but we can’t stop here, having come this far.

We pick our way through the debris and the wiring. The building is in ruins; the Icon tech has ravaged the old structure. Finally we agree we’ve seen enough, and it’s time to go.