The Partisan Chronicles [Dystopia | Supernatural | Mystery]

Andrei

After two days traveling southwest through endless forest, Emerich Bach and I skirted the city of Verena. It would have been nice to sleep in a bed and eat something other than dry rations, but we wouldn't be stopping. Partisans were not welcome in the city, not since the end of the Verena Revolt—the historical event where Commander Reider earned his sword, Intrepidity, as a reward for freeing dozens of enslaved Partisans. In the end, the city surrendered, but in an unprecedented twist, was granted full independence by Councilwoman Faust. Verena would be no safer for Emerich Bach than it was for me, as he reminded me, "Defected or not, they hate us all as long as our eyes are still in our heads."

Along the way, I caught Mister Bach up on the events at the church, about how we'd located the crypt and encountered who we believed was Zacharias Vonsinfonie. I expected he'd be more concerned, but other than, "That's an old one," and, "That should be interesting," the man didn't have much more to say on the subject. According to the elder Partisan, it wasn't unusual for some of the longer-lived Devourers to take extended naps and we had most likely awakened Zacharias from his.

Our journey was uneventful, and upon reaching the Amali shore-side, we sloshed through the abundant corridors of a waterlogged cavern until we arrived at our destination on the opposite end. A defected Celestian Navigator waited for us at the edge of the inlet, urging us to hurry and board the embark. It would be another day and night before we arrived on the island. Other than the six territories and the Isle of Palisade, there were of course a number of smaller masses making up the whole of Auditoria. Some had been charted, some had not. Most had been discovered and were surveyed by the Assembly.

"How have Palisade forces not found you here?" I asked.

"Perhaps they have, Father Strauss, and perhaps our forces are better."

Father Strauss. How bizarre. "Would you mind calling me Andrei?"

"Only if you start calling me Rick instead of Mister Bach."

Once we arrived on the island, we journeyed through another dense forest until Rick and the sleepy Celestian escorted me through yet another cavern. This one was concealed behind a gate fashioned from sticks and vines. I thought of Sinclair then—always looking for something in nothing. She'd have seen the door.

The first chamber past the entryway was sprawling. There were upholstered couches and pelt rugs. There was fire, and laughter, and Partisans of all shapes and sizes mingling and going about their business.

"Enjoy your rest, Father." The Navigator slipped off with a smile in Emerich Bach's direction. She hadn't been speaking to me.

"Father?" I asked. "I didn't realize you were still serving."

"I have abandoned Palisade, Andrei, not my faith in Amalia."

"Why haven't we spoken on the matter?"

The elder smiled. "What is there to speak of, really?"

A gruff voice emerged from the darkest corner of the chamber. "I'll be damned," the man said. "Where's that attitude been our entire lives?"

The man who approached was without a doubt Strachan. He was blonde, bearded, and overall unkempt. His shoulder-length hair was matted, a fashion more commonly observed among the Endican. The air around him smelled of tobacco and cloves.

Those around us carried on uninterested. Pages were turned, conversations were had. An Endican and an Amali stopped just short of fornicating in the corner.

The Strachan flicked his head in my direction. "You're the one, eh?"

"If you mean Rick's guest, then yes."

"Right," the Strachan said. "You're pissing me off already."

A man in his forties, the Strachan was lean, well-muscled, and to the top of my chest in height. I knew he could hear my heart battering furiously, the same way I could hear his—slow, steady. Unfamiliar yet so familiar. The mannerisms, the stance—confident, teetering on the border of arrogance. Always expecting. The eyes. Her eyes.

"By the goddesses," I said. "You're Rhian's father."

"Got a bloody genius on our hands, haven't we? Right, well—now we've got that bit of pointless trivia out the way, there's something you need to know: this is our place. Mine and Rick's. Fuck with it, fuck with us. You don't want to fuck with us. Clear?"

"Yes, sir," I said.

The Strachan grunted. Satisfaction? Disgust?

"By the by," Mister Sinclair turned to his friend. "I've been missing a flask. You know the one, yeah? Engraved with my initials. Keep an eye out?"

"I know what it means to you." After a nod, Rick flicked his steely gaze in my direction. The emphasis was unnecessary, however. I certainly wouldn't be the one to tattle. And with that, Emerch Bach left me at the mercy of one of Palisade's most infamous defects—a man rumoured to be unhinged on the best of days.

The lair housed fifty-four Partisans. Not staggering, but still impressive since its inception just over two decades ago. While we toured the compound, the senior Sinclair shouted at the curtains behind which I imagined there were bedrooms. "Oi, got space for one more?" he'd ask, and the response was universally, "No."

"We're due for an expansion," he said. "Gonna have to stash your lanky arse under a goddess-be-damned table."

Still more comfortable than a silver cell, but we did eventually find a room where my guide offloaded me into the company of a pair of colourful strangers. As he closed the curtain behind him, he said he'd find me again in the morning—oh, joy.

"You're new," said the girl. She couldn't have been more than fifteen years old. "How do you know Rick and Rhydian?"

"I hardly do," I said. "Unusual circumstances."

"Oh, well—they rescued most of us and raised almost all of us, but we've picked up a few strays along the way, you know? I was wondering if you were one of them."

"You'll have to forgive her," said the boy.

Relatively the same age as the girl, but this one was enormous. One head and a half taller than I with shoulders twice my width. He was Endican, I believed, but not quite. His hair was too red, and his face too freckled.

"She was born annoying," he added.

"Shut up." The girl scowled, but her eyes were playful. "So, are you staying long?"

"I'm not sure," I said.

"Right," the girl replied. "I can't take it anymore. It's driving me crazy."

"Could you be more specific?"

"Celestian, definitely," the boy said.

The girl hesitated. "Celestian and… Delphi?"

What harm could there be indulging their game?

"Amali," I said. "Celestian and Amali."

"Damn." The boy snapped his fingers. "I was gonna say that. We've got a few like you."

The girl smiled. "Care to have a go at us?"

I was correct in presuming the boy Endican and Strachan. His mother was not the Strachan, fortunately. A matter of logistics, as Endican babies were notoriously large and Strachan women notoriously small. The girl's heritage was a simple deduction: petite and built for acrobatics, but with the southern colouring of a Senec. Fast, flexible, precognitive, regenerative. It was fascinating, and it was most likely part of the reason I'd been asked to accompany Rick to the lair. Not because I was special, but because there existed a place in which I was ordinary.

The next morning, breakfast was not served. It was the organization's philosophy that its members be self-sufficient in all things, so I fell back on an old favourite—oats with honey, cinnamon, and apples. Following that, I was given an in-depth tour of the lair by none other than Rhydian Sinclair. The facilities reminded me of Palisade in that there were chambers for training, for eating, and for sleeping. There was a library and there were lesson halls, but the similarities ended there, and the differences were more significant. The freedom to choose one's own mate and field of study, for example. Moreover, Palisade had never felt so inviting. There was no alternative to the Assembly, only Rick and Rhydian, and their respect seemed to have been earned.

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"Mister Sinclair, I've noticed you're seen as a parental figure to many, but your own daughter, she—"

"She's an egg best left unhatched. Reckon you're done talking now."

"Forgive me, sir, but Rhian has long since hatched."

"You prepared to keep your trap shut the rest of the way, lad?"

In the interest of peacekeeping, I obliged.

The final stop on our tour was the most interesting. A vast, rectangular chamber designed much like a crypt. There were plaques on the walls with names, but instead of drawers, there were silver cages, and in each of those cages, a miserable looking Devourer. Those who worked in the laboratory continued without interruption.

"Repeat after me," Rhydian said. "Apart from now, I've no clearance to be in the lab."

"Apart from now, I've no clearance to be in the lab."

"We work an honour system," he said. "That means, no doors and no locks except on those cages. Now, repeat what I said afore."

"Apart from now, I've no clearance to be in the lab."

"Again."

"Apart from now, I've no clearance to be in the lab."

"Again."

"Apart from now—"

"Pissing hells, lad. When something stops making sense, stop doing it. Better yet, start questioning it."

The smirks from those around us told me they'd all had a similar interaction. The lingering gaze from the bright-eyed brunette, however…

Well, she was beautiful and intelligent, I suspected, but she was not Sinclair.

"Some folk expect to feel satisfaction seeing these beasts behind bars," Mister Sinclair said, his tone hoarse and without inflection. "Word of advice? Fuck satisfaction. The abominations aren't getting the least of what they deserve."

"Tell us how you really feel, Rhydian." A voice echoed from one of the cages.

"That poor, poor man," another said.

"Careful, careful, one who smells of words and spice," a third added. This one's tone recalled a familiar melody, but the voice was young—at the cusp of maturity. According to the plaque, his name was Jakob Adler.

Those working around us were unaffected by the noise, and the elder Strachan carried on smoking his tobacco. All in all, there were twenty-four cages, and sixteen were occupied. It wasn't satisfaction I felt. It was curiosity, and it was empathy.

After first spotting the brunette in the laboratory, it seemed our paths were destined to cross. Coincidental meetings in the library, in the kitchen, in passing through the corridors. It wasn't until the second night we spoke, after another chance encounter while on the way back to my bunk. I learned the Delphi's name was Maryse, and she was one of the pure-bred Partisans apprehended prior to their conscription to Palisade. Like many Partisans, she'd never met her parents.

"The way I see it, I have Rick and Rhydian and dozens of brothers and sisters," she said. "I have a job doing what I love and if my parents were decent people, they'd be happy for me. And if they were assholes, well, then I'm happy for me."

"What precisely do you do?"

"I'm a psychologist."

"You study the minds of these Devourers?"

"Around the lab, we prefer the term Anima."

"And which do they prefer?"

"Their names."

"Fair enough," I said. "So, what can you tell me about the one called Jakob?"

Jakob Adler could not be easily summarized, she said. I'd have to meet him for myself, she insisted. And as the words, "Apart from now, you've no clearance to be in the lab," repeated in my head, Maryse assured me I'd be safe in her hands. By the time we arrived, those who worked the laboratory had gone to bed, but the torches around the room were still lit.

"Go on," she said, urging me forward while she remained by the door. "It can't hurt you."

"What if he—it—Jakob—is asleep?"

"What if I were?" Jakob asked. "Would you watch me as they do?"

Given the tone of his voice, I had expected the Devourer to look young—and he did. But as we both closed in on the bars neither of us could touch without consequence, I was surprised to see just how young, and that his eyes were bound by a cutting of black cloth.

"Welcome, welcome," he said. The Devourer's skin was pale like mine, and his shoulder-length hair was just as black. "Let's chat."

"Hello, Jakob," I said. "My name is Andrei."

"Andrei, Andrei, son of Andreas! Why, I knew I recognized that smell. How is your father besides dead?"

"Spiteful one, are you?"

"I'm so many things I've lost track, Andrei, son of Andreas."

"You knew my father," I remarked. "Did you know my mother?"

"Yes, she often brought me books."

"But you're blind?"

"Exactly! Your mother was a bitch."

I spared a glance over my shoulder looking for Maryse, but I was now alone in the laboratory. She said it would be fine, so— "You seem to know a great deal about me, and here I know nothing about you. How old are you, Jakob?"

"One, one—no, no—one, zero, three and nine. 1039. How does that make you feel?"

"What happened to your eyes, Jakob?"

"Oh, I imagine by now they've decomposed. Ha! It's really too bad. They were so pretty…"

The way he said that struck me funny, but it couldn't be, could it? There were no Partisans 1039 years ago—or were there? What could I be sure of anymore?

"Wait, were you—"

"Shh." Jakob held a finger to his lips. "I liked you the moment I smelled you, Andrei, son of Andreas. We should be fr—oh, goodnight."

Click. A bolt whizzed past my bicep and through the silver bars, striking Jakob in the shoulder. The immortal boy yelped and tugged the shaft out before skittering backward. In that same moment, I prepared myself for the wrath of a Sinclair. Rhydian rushed at me as I turned, pulling me down to his level by the collar of my robe.

"One. Simple. Rule."

"Maryse said it would be—that Jakob could not—"

"Easiest job Mary's had in a while, I reckon. Your folks died on account of they stopped for a sneeze. Prepared to make that condition hereditary?"

Fear turned to anger and mild irritation turned moderate. "My parents—what is with my parents? If not the Assembly, then the Administrator, and Faust, and the seamstress, and that ancient child, and now you. What has you all so excited?"

"They were good people, died doing good things. If the world were allowed to celebrate them, there'd be a goddess-be-damned parade every year. But you?" Rhydian shook me three times before releasing me altogether. "You're a disappointment."

My hands were sweating the way they did when it was about to happen. The Strachan blurred hypnotically with the torchlight around us. "What about your comrades?" he said. "Just gonna stand around, watch them have their heads yanked from their bodies—hearts still beating?" His voice phased in and out, in and out as my temples throbbed. "…gonna pray? Bloody that'll do… coward? …suicide? They'll tear your—"

I caught the man's throat in my hand. So delicate and my strength so prodigious. The Strachan's warmth pulled from his body and coursed through mine. "And what about you? Does the coward accuse others of that which he refuses to see in himself? You'll hide in your cavern as your own flesh and blood fights a fight she doesn't understand!"

While I perspired from every pore, the Strachan's ice-cold flesh turned pale, pale, blue. His teeth chattered. His hands trembled. Were it not for the eyes, so like hers—so full of anger, guilt, passion. Sinclair.

I tossed the man to the ground…

…and our caged audience exploded in a round of applause while the room sped around me into sickening motion. I could hardly breathe and the thirst was unbearable, like swallowing a mouthful of sand while the laughs from the Anima around me were hollow and thick—garbled as though submerged underwater. I staggered through the laboratory.

The next morning, I boarded the embark with a fever, a friend, and a massive pain in the rear. Emerich Bach and Rhydian Sinclair had accomplished all they'd hoped to accomplish in my time at the lair. In giving into my rage, I'd proved to them—and to myself—the potential of my power. More importantly, I'd proved my restraint. That said, the topic of my parents did not resurface for the duration of our trip back to Oskari.