Broken Read online

  The old man turned the screen away from Michael, read it, and looked back up angrily.

  "Hey, you—!" he started. But Michael had already gone.

  [CHAPTER 3]

  Winter had settled thickly and suddenly on the endless city. Michael walked quickly away from the Union Tower. He dared a glance back up to the top, where he could just make out the silhouette of a man against the sky. Sky Ranger was out looking for him. He darted into the nearby subway station. He checked a mirror, and watched his own possibilities spiral out of it into his mind; Sky Ranger wouldn’t find him this time. Next time he probably would.

  He checked his watch. Plenty of time. It had been stupid to go to Union Tower first, but in the end it had worked out. Okay.

  A nauseating sense of déjà vu washed over him. He’d been here a hundred, a thousand times before, looking in the mirror. The subway, the woman, the baby.

  Now, at last, he was here for real. If the letter could be trusted. His heart pounded as he walked slowly down to the platform. Commuters and travelers lounged near the tracks, waiting.

  He’d almost burned the letter, along with just about everything else, after Joe died, but for some reason, at the last moment, he'd snatched it from the fire..

  This was the moment Valentino Altrera had wanted him for. The letter he had sent seemed heavy in Michael's inside jacket pocket.

  Joe had believed in Altrera; they’d been very close once. Val, Joe had said, was like them. He could see things that might, or would, happen in the future. He was strong, maybe the greatest prescient ever. Joe had followed Altrera when the great prophet had lived in Hartford with a small band of disciples. Altrera had later taken most of his followers to Valen, a world that now bore his name, leaving Joe behind. Even from light-years away, he'd still had a hold over Joe that Michael had often found difficult to fathom.

  Part of him wanted to do what Val Altrera asked. It would make Joe proud. But another part of him wanted to run away, as fast and as far as possible.

  He breathed in and out. Staying in place was easy. Breathe. Breathe. Wait. Stay.

  Look up.

  Here she comes.

  She was about thirty, but looked older. She had ratty black hair, and a big bruise on her cheek. He saw nothing but a yawning black chasm when he looked at her.

  He tried to shut it out, and fought down the impulse to run away. He could feel his feet start to move. Too late—she made straight for him.

  This was it, then. No more waiting.

  His heart pounded. His possibilities all had this moment, but he didn’t have to take it. He could put it down. He could run away. He could live. The world would shift and change—he felt the possibilities morphing and twisting out ahead of him. This moment, more than any other, could change them all.

  "Take him," the woman said shakily. "Take him." She pressed a warm, squirming bundle into his arms.

  There was no choice, really. He took it from her, and half of the possibilities winked out of existence.

  He felt his hands cradle the baby close. Two shining black pearl eyes stared at him. Oh, God, I was right.

  —There was a man at the head of a glorious army. He brought freedom. He brought victory. He had remade the universe in his own image. Blue banners flew everywhere he went.

  —There was a man at the head of a terrifying army. Blood spilled at his feet, the worlds bent to him. The black banners of the Reformists flew above him. His was the fist that encircled the Earth, and clenched shut.

  A thousand permutations of those two themes flew into Michael’s head. So strong. He’d never met anyone like this.

  It was too much. I'm too young for this, he thought desperately. He looked around. Surely someone else would take the baby? Surely he wouldn't have to.

  He barely noticed that the mother had staggered off and thrown herself in front of the 10:14. A crowd gasped. The baby began to squirm and cry.

  Michael regained enough of himself to sprint up and, out of the station, before the police could stop him. He scanned the gray heavens quickly; Sky Ranger had gone.

  The world seemed to waver and spin around them. Possibilities swam through the air, coming off the baby in waves. He tried to shove them out of his head.

  There. He'd done it. He had no choice but to continue now, into the short, painful future that waited for him. Val's letter seemed to burn against his chest, inside his black jacket.

  The baby's cries were getting more insistent. People were staring.

  Michael quickly secured the baby in his pack, head poking out the top—for some reason that seemed to calm him down—and struck west. The Bronx. The bombed-out Bronx. He had to get there as soon as possible. That was where Third Perthist Ministries was.

  He had to find the silver-haired woman, now. He remembered enough of the possibilities to realize just how much she mattered to the direction he wanted things to go.

  Plus, Val Altrera had said to find her. So he would. He had to. It was that simple.

  He didn’t notice the two men with black armbands fall in line behind him.

  * * *

  Broken stretched and shook. It was colder today—winter at last. She’d eaten something rancid, and wanted to puke it up, but couldn’t let herself. She’d pass it through; whatever bad things were in it wouldn’t hurt her. Nothing could hurt her, not really.

  She hadn’t been so hungry in years. Something crawled next to her feet. A rat. Her left hand darted out and clutched it tightly. It shrieked and squirmed and sank its teeth into her hand, but she held on, then bit its head off.

  She ate the whole rat, bones and all. Her body could digest anything. It would be painful, but she could do it.

  A wave of agony coursed through her, then stopped abruptly. Her hand had healed, but she still craved food.

  She knew she was a bloody wreck; they’d probably haul her in. She didn’t want the transmitter back; she'd have to cut her arm off again. But she had to eat. She glanced cautiously out of the alley, and spied a vendor with a cart close by. She raced towards it, waving and screaming.

  The man was terrified enough of the crazy woman with blood caked into her hair and clothes to freeze while she stole six hot dogs and a can of juice. She raced back to the alley, then hid under a pile of garbage to eat. The cops might come, they might not. If they did, they’d take a cursory look around the alley and go.

  The hot dogs were awful and cold, but they filled her up. She felt her strength creeping back, bit by bit. Her mind cleared.

  Memory flooded her.

  * * *

  Doc watched her eat. "Lordy, she packs it away. I suppose she must need the energy. Did she really lose her entire hand?"

  "Yeah," said Crimson Cadet (who would die only a few weeks later), shaking his head. "I’ve never seen anyone heal so fast. But," he lowered his voice, "she screamed the whole time. It looked like it hurt her something awful."

  The food was so good, she didn’t care what they said.

  * * *

  Broken moaned and put her hand on something soft and cold.

  She risked letting a little light peek in through her eyelids, and wished she hadn’t. It was the cat. The poor thing had bled to death; the Black Bands had damaged her too badly.

  Despite herself, Broken started to shake uncontrollably. She didn’t care if the cops found her. "Kitty," she rasped. "Kitty…"

  Nothing she touched ever turned out right. She wept, sobs wracking her unwashed body, as she cradled the tiny, furry corpse.

  * * *

  Michael picked his way clumsily through the unfamiliar streets of New York. He’d grown up north of here, and wasn’t quite sure where to begin. To make a bad situation worse, the baby, tucked into his backpack as a makeshift carrier, was starting to fuss and wail again.

  Michael realized belatedly that he didn’t know the first thing about taking care of a baby. Maybe Silverwyng would, if he ever could find her.

  One possibility he had seen was himself and the baby w
andering around New York searching for her until they froze to death. He tried not to think about that one.

  Maybe the kid was hungry. Or maybe he had just filled his diaper. Come to think of it, something did smell. And the only diaper he had was the one he’d been wearing when his mother had handed him off to Michael, right before she chucked herself in front of the northbound express.

  He glanced over at Union Tower, now just a thin spindle rising in the east. Sky Ranger had probably stopped looking for him. They had better things to do than chase down kids who pretended to be Reformist journalists. Didn’t they?

  Just in case, he tried to keep out of the way of the cops and the Black Bands.

  He stopped in a grocery store and bought some diapers and bottled baby formula. Well-armed, he slipped into a convenient bathroom. When he took the kid out of the backpack, he was greeted with a terrifying stench. The kid hadn’t been wearing a diaper, just a pair of bulky shorts. Michael had had some food in there, but he was sure he didn’t want it anymore. He doubted he could salvage the backpack, since a moldering pile of baby shit now lay in the bottom.

  "Aw, man," he griped as he ran the water into the pack. "Look what you did."

  The baby, happy to be free of his clothes and the backpack, giggled at Michael. His coffee-brown skin looked a little raw, at least in the places where it wasn’t covered by something foul. As Michael, fighting down his rising gorge, took a paper towel to the kid’s behind, he felt something warm and wet trickling on his head.

  The kid laughed as he peed all over the counter and floor. An older man entered the bathroom, took one look at the situation, and left quickly with a "glad that ain’t me" expression on his face.

  Why, Michael wondered for the millionth time, didn’t his visions ever warn him of these sorts of possibilities?

  * * *

  It took nearly half an hour for Michael to clean the baby thoroughly enough so that he didn’t royally stink. Maybe he wouldn’t have to go for a while. Did he need some sort of ointment for the raw patches? The backpack, he cleaned as much as he could, although it still had a lingering odor. Michael got some formula down the baby (and some on the walls of the bathroom) and zipped him up in the backpack again. Mercifully, the kid fell asleep as soon as he was secure.

  The sun had set over the Hudson by the time Michael made it back outside. This was getting ridiculous. He needed to find Silverwyng, really soon.

  He glanced around. Two guys were hanging out at the corner, watching him through heavy-lidded eyes. No one else was nearby. The baby made a few “maah” noises, but stayed mostly asleep. Thank God. Michael hoisted the pack.and set off towards Harlem and the Bronx beyond.

  He cut through a neighborhood of small detached houses, past three memorials to the firebombing of 2046, and found himself facing a busy expressway. He checked his map. He’d gone too far to the west, and he needed to backtrack. With a sigh, he set off southeast.

  Something scampered into the shadows just inside his field of vision. Was someone following them already? He shook his head. Nothing to be done for it. Just keep going. One foot in front of the other. Try to lose them, maybe dart down an alley.

  The kid started to sniffle and cry. Weary down to his bones, Michael felt like doing the same. He’d been walking for hours, his feet were killing him, and he was hungrier than he'd been in a long time. He started to wish he’d taken the subway, even with the risks he saw in those possibilities.

  He finally crossed under the expressway and entered the older part of the city. It had remained pretty much unchanged since the 2020s, when the last great urban renewal drive had taken place. No one had bothered to rebuild a lot of it after the Last War, so bomb craters and tumbledown buildings were a common sight.

  She lived here, somewhere.

  * * *

  He was still being followed. He would look behind him every so often and see a figure trying to look nonchalant, or glancing quickly away. There were maybe five of them, now, and they were bad at this.

  He knew who they were. He knew who they represented. Some of his possibilitie—more than he cared to admit—began with these men and ended with him before the thin man himself, prostrate on the ground, before they shot a bolt of white-hot light through his skull.

  All of those possibilities ended with the boy in their hands, leading their armies. He hated the thought.

  He slipped into an alleyway, and crawled over the low wreck of a fence. The baby, miraculously, made not a sound. He could hear some shifting and cursing; bums, probably, or other night wanderers. He stole silently down towards the river, and hid behind a trash compactor.

  Two of the men sauntered too-casually into his field of vision. He held the baby close, trying to lull him to sleep, desperately hoping they wouldn’t notice him. This was one of those moments he’d perceived. Sometimes, they took him. Other times, he got away. When the baby cried, they took him. If the baby stayed quiet, they escaped. Simple, mostly.

  Michael Forward held his breath. Another man, taller than the others, joined the group. Then two more came.

  The baby woke up, and his huge black eyes filled with tears.

  Shit. He covered the tiny boy’s mouth with a thick rag.

  Too late. A piercing cry escaped the infant’s lips, and the men turned and pelted in Michael’s direction. He scooped the baby up in his arms and burst into a dead run. The cries grew louder, giving their pursuers a beacon to fix on. Michael cursed. No possibilities. None. Nowhere was safe; he needed silence!

  Suddenly, he pulled up short, almost dropping the boy into the swirling, icy depths of the Hudson.

  Dead end.

  Michael fell to his knees as the men advanced. They seemed pleased. They could finish the job tonight, instead of taking days or weeks.

  Michael trembled and felt bile rising in his mouth. He’d never been so afraid. They would kill him. It was over, already. Too soon! he thought wildly.

  "Please," he whimpered, "please…"

  The men grinned. One of them drew a shiny knife. Michael could see his distorted reflection in its blade.

  Possibilities. He died, over and over, his life’s blood spilling on the cold ground. He would never even meet the man behind it all. He’d die in a few minutes. They would kill him now. His life was over now. Now. NOW.

  Michael drew a rattling breath. The men converged, the baby cried.

  "Take him," Michael said, extending his arms to the men. “Please, please, anything...” I want to live!

  "Take him!" Michael heard himself say again. He glanced at the men, then, and knew he was damned.

  They were going to take the baby, and then kill him anyway. No escape. All for nothing.

  One of the men strode forward, and reached for the baby. A gurgling sound came from behind them, followed by a great heaving of water, and a wracking cough. The men, distracted for a moment, turned.

  She emerged from the water, tattered clothes clinging to her sides, long silver hair plastered to her head. She strode ashore, and took in the scene.

  Michael recognized her at once, and took the only chance he had.

  "Silverwyng!" he cried. "Help!"

  * * *

  Broken had been trying to kill herself again. What else could she do, after the day she’d had? She’d chosen drowning this time, because it was much more painful and took a very long time. She’d jumped off a low bridge and fought to stay under the icy water. But this time, her heart wasn’t in it. She’d just come back to life and be as miserable as ever. So she let the current bear her south, towards the sea. Maybe she’d float to Australia, or to China.

  The cold numbed her, and eventually she felt like getting out. She swam to shore, and dragged herself up onto the beach.

  Four men were menacing a kid and a small baby.

  Staying out, she told herself forcefully. She wasn’t in the LED anymore. Everything she tried to save ended up worse off than before, like the cat.

  But the kid turned to her and, pleadin
gly, said her name.

  Her old name.

  And what could she do after that? She rushed them.

  * * *

  The woman howled at the top of her lungs and barreled right towards the man with the knife. Shocked, he turned on her a moment too late. She slammed into him, knocking him over. The knife flew from his grasp. Michael picked it up and threw it at the nearest attacker. It caught him in the eye; he wailed as he went down.

  Two men left. Michael’s heart seemed to explode with terror. He turned and fled while they tore the woman he desperately needed to pieces.

  Doubly damned.

  [CHAPTER 4]

  Broken woke up in full daylight, surrounded by her old body parts. Funny, her new arm looked thinner than the last. Maybe the old one had swelled up. The agony wasn’t so intense this time; her body had already done most of its work.

  The kid who had called her name sat next to her. He had a baby in a backpack plunked down next to him. He was dark-haired and short, and his face was thin, the features too close together. The baby had darker skin and deep black eyes, oddly intense.

  "Silverwyng?" he said, voice shaking. "Um. You grew back. I’m glad."

  She looked at him blankly.

  "I’ve been looking for you," he continued. "Uh. You’re going to help me and this baby get to Valen."

  "Beh," said the baby.

  Valen… that was… where? Wrong… something wrong…

  "Broken," she whispered. "I’m not Silv… Broken..."

  She blacked out again before he had a chance to respond.

  * * *

  They huddled in a sleazy hash shop, clouds of pot smoke swirling all around them as the customers got wasted and ate tons of peanuts. Michael bought them both a joint, more for warmth than the relaxing high. The guy at the counter gave Michael a suspicious glare, but didn't ask for ID.

  Broken took it as soon as he offered it to her, but otherwise didn’t say a word. She glared at him and the baby suspiciously, as if they might suddenly explode or jump her or worse. Michael smoked hungrily, the effect blunting the edge of the depressing, desperate possibilities he saw all over the room.