“The feral children I saw tonight are the same as the ones who attacked me here in the Balcony Cliffs.”
“There are many terrible people in the city,” Wick said. “Lots of terrible people.”
“The ones tonight acted like a patrol, as if they were working for someone. Do you know who? I think you know who.” I wanted badly to say it.
“You should get some rest,” Wick said. “You should go to bed.” He wouldn’t look at me, even when I shoved myself in front of him. Yet it didn’t matter. The perverse thing was I knew Wick so well, and he knew me so well, that we both understood what I meant. It was almost the least of what we were conveying to each other in that moment. But still I pushed, because it had to be said out loud.
“That night the Magician’s people snuck in and attacked me. It wasn’t something random. They attacked because the Magician was sending you a message—and you knew that, and you didn’t tell me.”
“I never knew,” Wick protested. “I never knew she would do that. Everything I did was so nothing would happen to you. Can you look me in the eye and say you think I wanted that to happen to you? No, never.”
“Wick, you withheld information. You were in trouble with her and you didn’t tell me.” To his credit, he wasn’t trying to deny it now.
“Would you have done anything different in my place?” Wick asked, shouting. “And would you have been extra-extra careful instead of extra-careful coming back that night? No and no. And we’d be in the same place right now. No matter what I did—unless I just handed over the Balcony Cliffs.”
“You didn’t trust me!” I shouted back. “You don’t fucking trust me.”
“It has nothing to do with trust,” Wick said, exasperated, pained. “Nothing at all to do with trust.” He said trust like it was a corrosion.
“If I had known, Wick, it would have helped. You would have been more open with me, you wouldn’t have seemed so closed off, secretive. Don’t you see that the Magician drove a wedge between us, that she wanted you to protect me from her demands? To cut you off from me?”
“You cut yourself off from me. You did that all on your own—by bringing Borne into our lives and not letting go of him. By clinging to him. You did that. You did that!”
“Did you know the Magician tried to recruit me three years ago?” I asked. “Did you know that, Wick? Of course you didn’t. I kept that from you because I didn’t want the Magician to have more leverage over you than she already has.”
A cry of frustration from Wick. “How in the name of fuck is that different than me trying to protect you by not telling you things? It’s not different at all! No difference! And I don’t even care!”
We were screaming at each other, pointing at each other, but we couldn’t stop.
“The difference is, Wick, you’re hiding other things from me. You’re hiding why the Magician has leverage over you in the first place. You’re hiding secrets in your apartment you think I don’t know about.”
That brought him up short, but then he realized I couldn’t know his secrets—I just had clues—because he’d been so careful.
“I don’t have secrets!” he lied. “I don’t have any secrets you need to know about.”
“You don’t have any secrets I need to know about,” I repeated. “Do you know how stupid that sounds? Well, maybe in the morning you’ll remember some secrets I do need to know about. Like the fish project. Like a broken telescope or a metal box full of biotech. Like not ever telling me about your family. Maybe in the morning you’ll realize just how much I might need to know if we’re going to live together.”
Wick got up, started furiously stirring the crap in his swimming pool with a long piece of wood, his back to me.
“Isn’t there somewhere else you need to be? Someone else you need to be with?” Accusing, stabbing, but also hurt. I could tell he was hurt, too.
We were locked into these positions from the beginning. Wick trying to shield me and do the right thing, conflicted about what that meant … and me na?ve enough to think I could believe in Wick and Borne at the same time. Corrupted by that. Both of us aware, from some remote position looking down on ourselves, that regret, guilt, even arguing distracted us from getting on with the business of trying to survive.
I stalked out, intending to join Borne like I’d promised.
HOW I LET BORNE DOWN
Yet my attention was in the wrong place, focused on the wrong things, and in my anger I didn’t go right to my apartment to check on Borne. My world had gotten smaller and smaller, seemed set on the borders of the Balcony Cliffs and holding on to territory I had thought was already hard-won and secured. It didn’t strike me until later how Borne might feel, what he might be experiencing under his upbeat exterior. What it might have felt like to be told to go back to my apartment alone after being wounded, when he had sat vigil by my bedside while I recovered from my attack.
Borne’s world had expanded in one day to encompass his own mortality, the horrors of the world, and the great expanse that existed beyond us. He had watched Mord rage and roar. He had been told that the Earth revolved around the sun and that the lights he saw in that black sky were all distant stars, around which revolved still other Earths with their own monsters, their own destroyed cities. No explorer in far-distant times had ever traveled so far, so fast. No astronaut circling the Earth had ever had to acclimate to more. None living or dead had had to experience that while also learning to speak and to think and to feel. Was it too much? Had he been built to withstand the weight of such great pressure? Just how much could he absorb?
On our way down from the roof that night—Mord now gone from the night sky—we had lingered on the factory floor amid the carnage because I still needed intel. I had to know more about the mutant children, who in their feralness seemed chaotic but in their discipline had acted like a patrol. I also wanted a sample from a Mord proxy if I could get one, and it was Borne who found the torn-off paw, who “tasted” the paw so severely that all he left for Wick was the claw. I tried to convey to Borne that he should be mortified but dropped it when I realized I was admonishing someone who might be in shock.
But I found something else. A smashed and slaughtered feral, with a jacket not so ripped I couldn’t rifle through it looking for papers, for identification, for anything.
What I found was the insignia of the Magician. What I found was her seal and symbol. And with that evidence, the near-certainty that it was Wick’s rival who had snuck ferals into the Balcony Cliffs to attack me, it all felt too close to home, like a way of sending a message.
Even my conversation with Borne on the way back to the Balcony Cliffs had seemed to converge, to have significance to my own situation, in mysterious ways. The words grew large in the night air, kept expanding, until I felt they were important beyond measure.