Lifeless Page 4

  The person taking my order only asked me how I wanted the dishes prepared, and then took Brehan’s request for two chef salads and a loaf of whole-wheat bread. The man swept back toward the kitchen without further ado.

  “You’ll get sick of food like that in no time,” Brehan said. “Or you should. Better watch your girlish figure.”

  At the rate I’d been heaving up my meals, I wasn’t too worried. My stomach didn’t even want anything. But I wasn’t about to tell Brehan that, so I eyed him instead. “Who has the girlish figure? You run any more and you’re going to turn sideways and vanish.”

  “People say I’m like a light pole,” Brehan said with a straight face.

  I burst out laughing.

  Brehan’s eyes widened, looking especially huge in his face. “Whoa, break out the champagne! I think that’s the first time I’ve heard you laugh.” Before that could make me sober again, he said, “So I run a lot. Maybe it’s my Ethiopian genetics. Maybe it’s a distraction from everything else. What do you do to distract yourself?”

  I shrugged as we made our way to a table. I worked out daily in the gym and went to my jiu-jitsu lessons, but those things were reminders of my strange new life, not distractions.

  “Those arms of yours didn’t come from thin air,” Brehan said as we sat down. “What did you do before you got here?”

  “Collected trash,” I said shortly, toying with a red napkin folded like a fan.

  Brehan stared at me from across the table. “No kidding? You’re a trash boy?”

  “Was,” I clarified. “I’m sort of the Word of Death now.”

  “Quite a career change.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  “How did it happen?”

  I sighed, closing my eyes and rubbing my forehead. “I’m sure you know already. Everyone must know by now.” At least the rough idea, if not the details that only Swanson and I knew.

  “There are rumors, but … ” Brehan trailed off, then asked abruptly, “Did you kill Herio? Leave him with no other choice but to give you the Word?”

  My eyes flew open. “No! No, I didn’t kill him. He killed himself to do this to me!” I was nearly standing. “Do you think I wanted this?”

  “Dude, relax,” Brehan said, gesturing for me to sit back down. “People are going to ask, especially the others.” He meant the other Words, I realized, when he added, “Herio was one of us, after all. It’s better you practice your answer with me now than with Agonya. She’s, uh, a little more fiery than I am, get it?”

  I didn’t laugh this time, but I took a deep breath and sank back into my seat. I waited in silence until my lobster and steak arrived in the hands of a red-and-black-clad waiter. Both entrées dripped with butter and fat, the steak resting in a little pool of blood. It reminded me of the bunny. I shoved the plate away from me as soon as it hit the table and covered my mouth, trying to stifle a gag. Maybe they had the right idea in the hospital with all the tasteless food.

  Brehan pursed his lips, considering me, then took a bite of one of his salads. “You are in a bad way.”

  “Thanks,” I said into my hand.

  “Want some salad?”

  The diced egg and ham didn’t look too appealing. I shook my head.

  “Want to go back to your room?”

  I was about to nod when the waiter returned, discretely setting a black tray on the table with a white rectangle of paper. He moved off without a word.

  “We have to pay?” I asked incredulously, staring down at the tray. The thought almost made me laugh, in a hysterical way.

  “I think that’s for you,” Brehan said, pointing at it with his fork.

  Then I recognized that it was an envelope, not a bill. I picked it up, surprised, and slid a white plastic card out onto my hand. It had a magnetic strip along with a number and a letter printed in black: 2 F.

  “What the hell is this?” I asked, holding it up for Brehan to see.

  “Huh,” he said. “It looks like a room key to me.” He pulled an identical card out of his pocket.

  “But I don’t usually have a—” I stopped myself before key. My hospital room wasn’t locked on the outside but the inside. I had to knock and wait for a guard to open my door in the morning. It wasn’t information I really wanted to share … but Brehan probably knew this already, judging by the gentle smile that reappeared on his face.

  “Looks like you do now,” he said. “Let’s go check out your new place.”

  four

  The way to the Words’ apartment complex was much the same as my path back and forth from the hospital: an underground tram that didn’t allow for many detours. Before, I’d figured the Words just kept themselves aloof from everyone “beneath” them, such as wordless nobodies like me—or, more critically, from those who could read and might have illegally tried to godspeak through them. But now that I was a Word, I’d discovered that we were paraded or shuttled from place to place without coming into contact with anyone unauthorized, whether we liked it or not.

  It had been a matter of extreme luck that I’d caught a glimpse of Khaya alone on her balcony during my first day collecting garbage in the Athenaeum. Well, luck was one way of putting it. Fate was another. My fate.

  I wondered if my new room would be anywhere near hers. Curiosity—and sharp longing that felt almost like pain—took hold of me as we rode the tram.

  A private boarding platform for the tram branched off from the mess hall, open only to Words, Godspeakers, and other uppity-ups. I hadn’t recognized the guards who stood at attention outside the sliding glass doors, but they’d let us pass with only a glance. Funny—as long as we went where we were allowed to go, no one gave us any trouble. I wondered what would happen if I tried to leave the Athenaeum.

  It wouldn’t be pretty. My ass would probably be stuck with five tranquilizer darts in each cheek before I got within a hundred feet of the gate … if I even made it that far. Back when I was a garbage boy, I’d just driven out.

  I suppressed a sigh as I leaned against the silvery wall of the silent shuttle, which raced smoothly along at probably fifty miles per hour. Thinking how a slow, rumbling garbage truck would be preferable, if only I were free again, I flipped my new, mysterious keycard back and forth across my knuckles. The black number and letter flashed at me with each full turn.

  Brehan watched me for a minute in silence, then asked, “Who taught you sleight-of-hand?”

  “Drey,” I answered without thinking, then looked up in alarm. “I mean … ”

  Brehan gave a slight shake of his head that was almost imperceptible. A surveillance camera couldn’t have caught it. So he obviously knew who Drey was, and that his situation was precarious. I hadn’t wanted to talk a second ago, but now I wanted to ask Brehan a hundred different questions. And yet, I couldn’t.

  I stared at him, wishing I was telepathic. There had to be some way for us to speak openly. Khaya had used the pool to sneak in conversations with Pavati. But since Pavati was the Word of Water, she’d been able to manipulate a space below the surface for them to talk. If Brehan and I went to the pool and tried to speak underwater, we would only blow bubbles at each other.

  There had to be another way … that was, if Brehan even wanted to talk to me in private. He wasn’t looking at me, just staring at the dark blur behind the tram windows as if bored. I wasn’t sure what he wanted. Not many of the Words left in the Athenaeum, if any, seemed interested in subterfuge. Those who had been had already escaped.

  We arrived at a platform that opened up onto a black and cream marble lobby more opulent than any place I’d yet seen in the Athenaeum. Wide, sweeping steps rose under a crystal chandelier to a long counter, behind which were several guards, sealed off from us by a glassy, no-doubt-bulletproof divider. The only path through was a steel door, set in the wall off to one side, that looked like it could withstand a batt
ering ram. The guards’ area appeared to comprise most of the lobby, and I didn’t see any way to get outside, at least not from this side of the counter … there was only an elevator with an up-arrow. There would be no chance to “accidentally” wander outdoors.

  Brehan threw a casual wave in the guards’ direction, and it was returned. I certainly didn’t wave. Maybe if you were raised in captivity, you didn’t mind it so much. Brehan pushed the arrow near the elevator, and there was a ding that signaled us into yet another mirror-covered box.

  “They must think we like to look at ourselves or something,” I muttered as I stepped inside. My gaze dropped to the marble-tiled floor as soon as the doors closed.

  Brehan didn’t respond immediately, and when I glanced up, he was giving me an almost pitying look. Before either of us could say anything, the elevator doors opened onto a lush hallway decked out in spiraling patterns of red and silvery white, a door at each end. The red door was marked with a 1A, the white one with 1B.

  “Agonya and Luft live on this floor,” Brehan said, then turned around. “Same with Pavati and Tu.”

  I spun to find that the back doors of the elevator had opened also, revealing a twin hallway in patterns of flowing blue and bronze. 1C and 1D marked a blue and a bronze door at opposite ends … which hid empty rooms, now that Pavati and Tu had escaped.

  I asked the first inane question that came to mind. “They don’t put girls on one side and boys on the other?”

  “Agonya and Pavati, Fire and Water, would have killed each other as neighbors. Just like Luft and Tu, as Air and Earth. There are Words that historically get along better than others, so they pair those, regardless of gender.”

  “Ah,” I said.

  “The Tangible Words have this lower floor. Tu liked to say it was because they’re more down-to-earth, of course, and not high-in-the-sky like us Intangibles. But I think it’s because any fire started by Agonya could be put out easier, closer to the ground and the security guards.”

  There wasn’t much else to see from the elevator. I spotted an emergency fire hose coiled in a glass case in each hallway. There was a place for an axe, but the axe was missing. It had probably been removed after Khaya used one to hack off her thumb, slip off her monitor, and escape.

  “So, does Cruithear have the penthouse suite on the top floor to herself or something, being a Word of Power and all?” I asked.

  “No. Cruithear doesn’t live here,” Brehan said.

  That was curious. I hadn’t seen the mysterious Word of Shaping yet, but maybe the other Words didn’t see much of her either. Before I could ask about her, Brehan pushed a button and the elevator doors closed. My stomach felt a slight tug as we rose again. The hallway that appeared this time was shimmering charcoal gray and jet black.

  “Let me guess,” I said.

  “Yep, Darkness and Death.”

  At one end of the hall was a gray door, 2G, where Mørke, the Word of Darkness, obviously lived, across from the black door, 2H—Herio’s old room and likely mine now. I felt sick even though I didn’t have anything in my stomach.

  Until I glanced down at my card. “But wait … ”

  “And this is the best side,” Brehan said, turning me around and pushing me into a hall of twining green and gold, lively and warm compared to its counterpart. There was a gold door at one end marked 2E, matching Brehan’s card, and across from it stood a green door with a 2F, matching mine.

  “They must have made a mistake,” I said. But when I swiped my card through the reader next to the green door, the door popped open with a beep and a faint click.

  “Nope,” Brehan said behind me. “I guess you’re my new neighbor.”

  I stared into the room, speechless. No, it wasn’t a room—it was a suite of rooms, an entire apartment. My feet carried me inside in a daze, Brehan trailing behind me as I wandered through a kitchen, a dining area, a living room with a giant flat screen TV and a sleek computer, a bathroom with a claw-foot tub, and a bedroom with a king-sized bed raised up on a dais and surrounded by curtains. The walls and furnishings came in every shade of green on the planet, from grassy to jade to bluish teal. Rich rosewood covered the floor, giving the illusion of earthen paths surrounded by foliage. It reminded me of the garden sanctuary.

  “This … ” I stammered eventually. “This was Khaya’s apartment.”

  “Yep,” Brehan said. “Now it’s yours.”

  I wandered out onto a balcony—the same balcony from which Khaya had thrown herself on top of me with her severed thumb. This was the launching point where it all began: my love for Khaya, the ruination of my life. And now I was standing here instead of her.

  Above me, the glass ceiling of the pyramid glinted in the night, catching the glare of a spotlight outside. In order to look down, I had to press my face against the cage of bars that now covered the balcony.

  No wonder security hadn’t felt it was necessary to bar the area before, and no wonder Khaya had broken an ankle when she’d jumped. It was a long drop to the grassy courtyard. She shouldn’t have been able to make it far after falling, especially not with the monitor. They’d never expected her to be as resourceful and daring as she had been. Or as desperate. Nor had they expected me to be there when she landed.

  I wished I could leap off and find her down there now, waiting to escape with me.

  “But … why?” I asked, turning back to Brehan. “Why Khaya’s room and not Herio’s? Darkness and Death supposedly get along best, not Death and Light.”

  Brehan scoffed. “Who cares about that? We made a deal, remember—a truce. Besides, you should see gloomy 2H, all ebony furniture and onyx floors. A guy’s likely to get depressed in there.”

  The truth of his words struck me: no matter how nice it was, I would have been unhappy in Herio’s old apartment, and angry as hell that they’d put me there. I would have preferred the hospital room, as much as I hated it.

  “That’s why I’m here,” I murmured. That was why the Godspeakers had moved me out of the hospital and into this place. That was why Swanson had brought me to Khaya’s garden, in addition to it being somewhere we could speak unheard. And that was why Brehan had found me there. Someone had sent him to cheer me up. I sighed, leaning back against the balcony bars. “They want me functional. You do too,” I added, my tone accusing.

  Brehan folded his arms in the balcony doorway. “Man, don’t you want to be functional?”

  “Not in the way everyone else seems to want.”

  He glanced up at a small black globe above his head: a camera. “You have no idea what I want,” he said, without elaborating. “You don’t know me.”

  “You’re right.” I shoved past him, back into the apartment. “I don’t. And, like we agreed in our so-called truce, I don’t need you to brighten my day.”

  Floor lamps rose in organic spirals around the living room, casting everything in a warm glow. I glared at it all, furious that Khaya’s things were being used against me.

  “They’re just trying to buy my cooperation,” I said. “Lull me into compliance.” I marched underneath the nearest black semisphere of a surveillance camera, which was hovering over the TV, and scowled up at it. “You think I’ll kill for, what … a damned TV?”

  My hand shot out and seized the top of the flat screen. I wrenched it away from the wall and sent the giant thing crashing onto the wood floor. The noise reverberated through the apartment, the hallway, the ground.

  Swanson’s words echoed in my ears—his entreaties for me to cooperate in order to save my own life. I barely managed to get a grip on myself, stopping just short of shouting into the camera, Well, I won’t!

  The fallen TV probably declared my noncompliance just as well.

  Brehan frowned down at the wreckage, as if thinking the same thing. “That’ll get security up here in no time.” He sighed and stepped around me, heading for the door. �
��I’ll leave you to explain.”

  I didn’t watch him go. His door soon clicked shut at the other end of the hallway.

  A month, I thought. I had one month to do what they wanted, or near enough. Otherwise, I would likely be killed.

  Others would pay too, if an automaton was given the Word of Death.

  I sat on the jade leather couch and stayed there for a long time, staring off into space, mulling over Swanson and Brehan, Khaya’s garden and her apartment, and my appointment in the lab with Ryse tomorrow. The latter thought tried to make the rest of my thoughts freeze in panic, to send me running for Khaya’s bed so I could curl up under the covers and hide.

  The thought of my month ticking down scared me even more.

  Security never arrived. Maybe they’d been instructed to let me trash the apartment if I felt like it. All around, they seemed unusually stand-offish.

  I tried to make sense of it all. This apartment, and certainly Khaya’s garden, were like safe havens, and I couldn’t imagine Ryse or her supporters wanting me to find comfort in them. After all, my connection to Khaya came from my past life, not this one. Now I was supposed to be Khaya’s opposite. So maybe no one was trying to buy my cooperation by giving me Khaya’s space. Maybe whoever was responsible was only trying to keep me from buckling under the strain of dealing with Ryse and being the Word of Death. Which meant this kindness could have come from Ryse’s opposition: Drey.

  What would Drey want me to do?

  The room grew cooler, and I realized I’d left the balcony door open. I stretched when I stood to close it, yawning so widely I thought my jaw would unhinge. Gods, I was tired. I could think tomorrow.

  Never mind that tomorrow would be worse than today. And so on.

  I suddenly wished Brehan was still here to cheer me up. I considered going down the hall to apologize, but figured he would probably be asleep by now. So I closed the balcony door, stripped off the layers of Necron with a lot of contorting and cursing, and crawled between the silk sheets of the massive, green-swathed bed. Maybe it was my imagination, but it still smelled like Khaya. I dropped off to sleep, dreaming she was lying there next to me.