Breaker

Chapter 4-1

Chapter 4

Eddie

Eddie’s temples pounded, his chest ached, and there was a pain in his side that turned every breath into a lesson in torture. He rested his hand against the brick wall of the alleyway where the two of them had stopped, then leaned forward and hurled the entirety of his stomach contents onto the street. Water and belly acid splashed the shiny black tips of his boots before beading up into nice neat balls and rolled to the ground. A soft wind rolled through the alley lifting odors much worse than the sour puddle at Eddie’s feet, but it cooled the sweat on Eddie’s forehead. He used a trembling hand to swipe at his face and stared at the man to his right.

The man was propped against the wall, smoking a vapor stick and looking blankly into the distance. His skin was extraordinarily dark, he was tall and slim, and but for the healed gash that ran from the corner of his eye to his chin, he would have been gorgeous. The scar, however, forced the man’s one eye to droop and had caused the skin around the wound to pucker and twist. It was horrifyingly intense, and it fascinated Eddie to no end. Since the Cure, scars had become a thing of the past; what didn’t get fixed by the body’s boosted abilities could be corrected or enhanced by Healers and Binders.

“Nasty, isn’t it?”

He didn’t look at Eddie while he spoke.

“What happened at the airport, the security detail, or the f*****g running?” Eddie asked, knowing full well the man meant his face.

The man snorted and shifted against the wall to look at him. “Why were you going to run?”

A dozen lies popped into Eddie’s mind, but he didn’t bother with any of them. For once in his life Eddie didn’t feel compelled to hide the truth. “During the incident my cab was scanned. I thought maybe…Well, you know. That they’d found me. Picked up on what I could do.”

The man pulled the vapor stick from his mouth, tapped the expended cartridge out of it, and nodded. “Yep. I kind of thought that myself. I guess I should have stayed clear when I heard on the wireless that there was something about to go down at the airport.”

Eddie frowned and tilted his head. “The wireless? You mean the ‘Net?”

The man barked a laugh. “No, no I don’t. I mean the wireless. A radio, if you understand that word at all. Nobody gets real news from the ‘Net.” He narrowed his eyes and his bad one drooped that much further down his cheek. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

Eddie shook his head. “No. The developments in Madison. Or, I was at least. I’m on my way out of the metro. Did they say what happened inside the airport?”

The man shrugged. “You don’t need me to tell what you already know, kid.”

“Fuck.” Eddie slumped back against the wall and closed his eyes. The world was going to hell. It was a good thing he wouldn’t be in it for much longer. “Wait, you knew something was going on and you didn’t do anything about it? There were kids in there!”

“What the hell do you think I was doing there? Sure as s**t wasn’t looking for what I found.” The man gave Eddie a long, assessing look. “So, you’re a Reader, are you? You can read minds?”

Eddie shrugged. “Yes. No. Not really. I’m a Scanner. At least, that’s what I call it. I don’t know what they would.”

The man shot him a confused glance, and Eddie made a vague gesture. “I can’t read minds. I just pick up the nasty stuff. Like a police scanner announcing all the bad news.” He tapped one temple. “The only s**t this thing wants to hear is the bad crap. People thinking about the horrible things they’re about to do. It’s like…” Eddie paused. “It’s like when their heads tip over into mania, their brain waves come looking for me. Before they make the first cut, or pull the trigger, or when they start stripping the clothes off someone. When it’s too late to do anything about it, if you know what I mean.”

Eddie shook his head—to clear his thoughts, to push away the weight descending on his shoulders. And this is why I’m sick of living.

Eddie took a breath. “And you’re a what? An Invis? I’ve never heard of one who could hide somebody else at the same time.”

The man chuckled. “That makes two of us, friend. And yes, I spent most of my adult life thinking I was an Invis. Until a couple of years ago when I shielded someone during a fight. Blew both of our minds.” He tapped his cheek. “That’s how I got this.”

“Security?”

“No.” The man pulled another cartridge out of his pocket and set it into his vapor stick. “Well…yes, but no. It was a fight. And the details are complicated. People can get so f*****g rude when you won’t use yourself for their benefit, if you know what I mean.”

Eddie nodded even though he wasn’t really sure what the man meant at all. Most of his life he’d been told to keep the damn Estrangement quiet and hidden. If his people wanted to use him up, it would be for his earnings potential, not for his so-called abilities. “And there were no healers? To fix the…” Eddie gestured toward his face and the scar. “No—”

“No time,” the man said, though whether he meant there was no time for healing, or no time to discuss it further, Eddie couldn’t tell.

He stuck out his hand. “I’m Eddie.”

“And I’m Rivet,” the man said. He caught Eddie’s hand and gave it a firm shake. “So what are you going to do now, Eddie?”

Wasn’t that just the question? Eddie thought. There wasn’t a chance in hell he could go through airport security now. Not after running, and definitely not with the potential threat of his Estrangement being tagged.

Eddie sighed. “I don’t know.”

“You going back to the airport?” Rivet’s gaze danced over Eddie’s face as if he tried to read the expression and come up with something sound. “Because if so, I’d rather you not say anything about me.”

“Of course,” Eddie said quickly. “I just…”

“Have a feeling things won’t go so well,” Rivet finished for him. He sucked his cheek when Eddie nodded. “I’d say that trusting your guts would be the wisest thing right now, my new friend. Where were you headed? Can you get there by ground?”

“My guts?”

Rivet snorted a laugh. “You never heard that before?” He rested both hands on his stomach and squeezed. “This. Right here. Follow the thoughts that grab you right here. It’s instinct, my man. Your gut reaction. The kind of thought that told me you were a guy in need of an invisible hand. What’s it telling you now?”

Eddie didn’t wait for his brain to answer. He let his guts do it. “That I’m never getting to my island.”

A small smile lifted the corners of Rivet’s mouth. “Island?”

“My uncle bequeathed me some property,” Eddie explained. “A little rural place out on Grand Manan Island. It’s pretty, quiet, and totally unindebted. I had a—” Eddie’s voice faltered. He cleared his throat. He started again. “I had a retreat planned, a time away from civilization kind of thing.” He reached up and tapped his temple. “Time to get some of this figured out.”

“So,” Rivet drawled, his smile growing. “You were going to an island. To figure out your Estrangement.”

“Kind of, yes.” Eddie frowned at Rivet’s expression. “You find that amusing?”

Rivet took a long breath, and finally lifted his vapor stick back to his lips. He pushed off the wall, took a few steps, and then turned back. When he answered, Rivet wasn’t looking at Eddie. Instead, he stared at the wall. “What I find amusing is that sometimes when we are in our most need, we manage to miss the things that are right in front of us. We go blindly toward the obvious because we are panicked by the obscure.”

Eddie shook his head. “Huh?”

A smile grew around Rivet’s dangling vapor stick. “I’m trying to say that maybe what you’re looking for is right in front of your face.” He waved at the wall when Eddie continued to stare at him. “Open your eyes, Eddie. The first step is to believe.”

Eddie licked his lips, tried to ease the frown of his face, and kept his voice light. “In?”

“Miracles?” Rivet shrugged. “Magic? New beginnings, bigger dreams, unimaginable possibilities?”

He reached for Eddie’s wrist, caught it even though Eddie tried to pull back, and drew Eddie away from the wall. With one hand he turned Eddie towards the brick, and with the other he pointed.

Images, letters, numbers, and symbols had been painted on the surface with meanings that Eddie had no way to decipher. Swirls, lines, and circles of red, green, blue, and yellow had been formed into words and pictures that told the tale of a street life that Eddie didn’t know. Graffiti, done in both painstaking ambiguity and haphazard clarity had transformed the simple, crumbling brick into a work of art. And in the middle of the chaos rested the words of a legend:

Believe

Seek

Prove

Eddie turned and looked blankly at Rivet. “You’re kidding me, right?”

Rivet shrugged. “You wanted to run to an island.”

Eddie huffed a long, frustrated breath. “A real island, Rivet. Not a land of make believe.”

“Make believe?” Rivet released him and took a long draw of the vapor stick. When he spoke again, he did so around the swirling white tendrils that drifted out from between his lips. “Is that what your guts are telling you?”

From out of nowhere, Eddie remembered something his father used to say, used to read, actually, when life was simpler:

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away…

Eddie smirked to himself. Now, in this time, on an island named Exile…

But that was ridiculous. Sure, he’d heard of Exile; most people had. Whether the term was spoken in fear or adoration depended on who was speaking. It was a fairytale: a place where the Estranged ran off to and disappeared, a Narnia for the condemned, a utopia for the faulted. To everyone else, it was a place where the Estranged set up their army of super-thinkers and power-punchers and planned the battles that would eventually help them to take over the world. No matter what the opinion, though, very few really, truly believed any of it. After all, if the place actually existed, there was enough fear in the world that it would have been found and burned to the ground while its inhabitants turned to ash along with it.

Eddie once again looked at Rivet. Wouldn’t it?

Rivet found Eddie’s hand and squeezed it. “I think, perhaps, it’s time for you to believe.”