Outlier: Rebellion (3 page)

Mom calls at him when he reaches the front door. “You really should eat, sweetie.”

“There’s lots of things one should do, and doesn’t,” says Wick, feeling smart, “and things we shouldn’t do, but clearly do.”

Like sleeping. Like dreaming.

He doesn’t wait up for Link. The air outside is thick and smelly as his mood, dust settling in the morning air as his shoes slap against damp pavement on his way to the station. He draws his hood, squeezes it to shield most of his face as he boards the overcrowded nine-two, which takes him halfway through his home ward with only three midway stops. On the fourth, he hops off the train and walks the long nine and a half blocks to school.

Today’s lesson does nothing to lift his mood.

Professor Frey’s going on about Legacies and Kings, her gritty voice marveling how vital it is to express oneself without fear. She gushes on and on about the importance of being free, of not having to hide one’s Legacy … so why are Wick’s parents so adamant that he hide his at all costs? Why must he keep secret that his unique, special power is the unheard-of ability to sleep?

“Dream,” Professor Frey urges her students, smiling wanly, “and dream big. For the King only cries once.”

Wick rolls his eyes at that. Dream … Hah. If only she knew how deceiving a simple dream can be. Wick dreamed once he had the Legacy of flight, found himself flying to the Lifted City, straight to Cloud Tower and meeting the Banshee King face to face. In the dream, he plucked out Greymyn’s tongue, removing his death-cry once and for all. Yeah, the King only cries once, but after Wick’s through with him, he’ll hardly be able to cough.

But it was just a dream. These people who don’t sleep … his classmates, his brothers, his mom, his dad, Professor Frey … they only consider the
joy
of dreaming.

They fail to consider the agony of waking up.

“Most of you are seventeen. For those of you who haven’t taken it early, your Legacy Exams are
impending.
A good word. Gets to the point, I think: impending
.
Inevitable,
I like that one too.” She pops the back of a boy’s head with her hand, putting a stop to a side conversation he was having. “Each of you may have a unique Legacy—a little gift from the Sisters … a talent, a special ability, a power, whatever you’d so love to call it—but in honor of some of your
impending
Legacy Exams—there’s that word again—I’d like to focus on what makes us
alike
, not what makes us
different.
Tell me.” She stops in front of a girl’s desk, interrupting the girl’s important business of picking her nails. “What are the three classes of Legacy?”

Hands shoot in the air, but Professor Frey ignores them all, staring needles into the girl, who has frozen in place. After too long a moment, the girl finally offers an answer. “M-Mentalist.”

“Mentalist, yes, there’s one,” she agrees dryly, “but allow me to share a few fun factoids, as I know not all of you are as bright as a Lifted City sunrise. The majority of Legacies are, in fact, Mentalist. If you conduct regular practices of your Legacy for your Exam, I suggest quiet areas.
Get into your own head
. Psychist. That’s another word for a Mentalist who channels others’ minds. Could also include sensory abilities, Sensors … mathematical abilities … and so forth. On a scale of influence from 0 to 10, we place them at about a 1. And the second class of—If I have to pop you on your head again, you won’t
have
a head.” The boy rights himself, his private, hushed conversation brought to a shut-up.

“The second class’s a Morph,” offers another boy.

Professor Frey’s stony gaze lingers on the little whisperer a while longer, daring him to speak again before moving on. “Didn’t ask for it just yet, but well done. Morph. Please, someone put me out of my misery and tell us what the hell a Morph is.”

“It’s someone whose power affects the body,” the same boy finishes quickly.

Frey leans on a desk, crossing her legs and looking to the ceiling as if for help. “Must I beg for an example?”

Another girl, thin-faced and squeaky of voice, gives it. “My dad and his brother both can make their skin rough at will. My dad’s can feel like a stony texture, my uncle’s, sort of reptilian, like snakeskin.”

“I don’t like snakes. Terrible examples, but they’ll do. On our scale of influence, Morphs are about a 2.” The professor turns about, engaging a tall, wiry boy in the back who hardly ever speaks. “And the third class?”

“Elementalist,” he mutters, voice deep.

“And they affect …?”

“Things … Things outside the body. Elements.”

Sucking her tongue, Professor Frey nods once. “We have a few Elementalists among us, don’t we? Even someone who can bend paper. You ought to practice origami, dear, don’t miss your obvious calling.” A few classmates chuckle, and the one she refers to blushes and twirls a pencil in his hand. “On our scale, Elementalists come at about a 3.” She arrives back at her desk, facing the room. “Legacies grow as you mature and gain life experience. It’s a fact, not a myth, not a sugary fantasy your mommy and daddy tell you. It’s fact. We grow and we learn and we evolve. Many of you will regret taking your Legacy Exam so early; you might discover you underestimated your ability … and I consider that a great offense in my class.” She leans forward, her eyes carving into the front row of students. “
Never underestimate your Legacy. Not ever.
” She winks at no one in particular, gives a lift of her chin. “No two of you are identical, and neither your Legacies. Twenty people can open the same door, but will open it twenty different ways. Remind us of the final class of Legacy.”

No one answers. Wick sighs, irritated by the fact that not only is his class full of idiots, but he’s surrounded on all sides today. Every desk around him, occupied by an idiot. He’s always hated crowding; it makes him so edgy, nearly sick in the head. Social anxiety, his mom calls it.

Wick finally says, “Empath,” just to kill the silence.

To that, Professor Frey smiles approvingly. “Yes,” she agrees. “Empath. It’s a special class, as it incorporates the transfer of something from one person to another, and it’s influence can range anywhere from a 1 to a 3, depending on the person. For example, a person who can plant fears in others—or take them away … In fact, the thirty-seventh King had such a Legacy: King Rainly Prime. They named him the Scare King. But to escape fear is to feed it. Once the people learned that, well, so long to him. He took the throne after infamous King Chole, the Dust King.”

Pudgy-nose speaks again. “How’s Rainly called an Empath and not a Psychist? Or Mentalist? Didn’t he push fear into others?”

“Good point. It’s a matter of perception. One can go their whole lives misunderstanding their own power. Consider our current King. The Banshee King, called so for his cry that brings death to any who hear it. Who knew that as a kid, his yapping would develop into the life-rending weapon it is today?” She stops by the girl’s desk, peers over the brim of her bony glasses. “Dream big, child, for the King—”
Only cries once,
Wick finishes bitterly.

“Are there even higher classes?” asks a kid right next to Wick, his voice too loud. “What if someone’s Legacy is over a 3? What if it’s a 9 or 10 on the scale? … Or even higher?”

Professor Frey shrugs lightly. “Outlier.”

“What?”

“Outlier. They’re called Outlier, and those types, I’m afraid, cause proud Kings to go cross-eyed and Marshals to shiver, and that’s all we’ll say about that.” Abruptly, Professor Frey flips open the book on her long knobby desk, says, “Chapter 8. Open your books and let’s discuss the history of our first ten Kings, and how
their
Legacy Exams won them a damn throne.”

Wick closes his eyes, feeling a headache coming on. Or maybe it’s last night’s dream forcing its way into his terrible day … A very welcome distraction it’d be.

At lunch hour in the courtyard, he watches his younger brother Link eat alone on a wooden lunch table. The trio of bullies are tramping about the grass, and it takes everything in Wick not to hurl a stone at their heads. There’s several by his feet; he’s even picking which one he’d chuck. He’s hated them for years, ever since their voices changed and girls and boys became more interesting and hair sprouted in sensitive places. That’s when the new feelings came, the yearning and the anger. The more muscular of the bullies—his name’s Tide—has always had a fist ready for little Link—and Wick, two fists of his own ready to defend him. But he’s not an expert at defense and often did more witnessing than defending.
But someday,
Wick promised …

“Hey Pink!” Tide calls out, passing the lunch table and laughing. Link’s Legacy is changing the colors of things through touch, but he’s admittedly not very good at it. Most often, he only manages to turn things a sickly pink hue, hence the unfortunate nickname.

“Ignore him.” Wick takes a seat next to his brother. They’ve been through this a hundred times, but Link’s stopped eating. The anger that lives in his little brother scares Wick sometimes … the way Link has changed. “Tide’s just a meathead, bro. He just thinks he’s—”

“Whatever.” Link rises from the table, trudges off.

Wick sighs and slaps a hand to his face. In truth, he didn’t sleep well at all last night. “I don’t like him either,” says a friend of Wick’s at a neighboring table. “That Tide’s gonna learn, you can’t keep biting at everyone without someone someday biting back.”

Wick smirks. “I think Tide’s a bit beyond learning.”

The friend at the table is Rone, handsome, deeply bronze-skinned with buzz-cut hair and bright, sapphire eyes. He’s always been very comfortable around Wick, but never hangs out with him outside school. His twin sister is a lot fuller of frame than he and not so pretty in the face, though she shares her brother’s intensely blue eyes and dark skin, and always sits with him and never talks. Both are known smart, note-takers, always in good graces with Professor Frey. They’ll get highest in life, those types. Maybe score a job up in the Lifted City … Who knows?

But the city isn’t always kind to those who deserve it. Just his luck, it’ll be a low-life like Tide who’ll catch the eye of Impis, the Marshal of Legacy, in some upcoming Legacy Exam, scoring fortunes from above. One day, he saw Tide walk a poor kid half his size into a wall, then burst into tearful laughter about it with his cronies, hysterical, rolling on the floor like dogs. Bad people don’t deserve good graces … but slum life is not known for being fair.

“Tide couldn’t land a job in a wind factory,” Rone jabs.

“What the hell’s a wind factory?” Wick asks back, and they both just laugh. Tide’s Legacy is pushing air. Or at least that’s how Wick likes to describe it, because it sounds not unlike farting.

“Can you smell stupidity?” asks Rone.

Wick makes a big show of sniffing the air, earning him a half-amused-yet-still-unsmiling glance from Rone’s silent sister, then responds: “And he reeks of it.”

Everyone thinks Wick’s Legacy is that of acute smelling because that’s the lie his family tells. “He even smells fear,” his mom told their neighbor Iranda, “and
sadness
.” Wick can’t stand the lies, that his family won’t admit to people that he can sleep.

But then there’s all of Sanctum and the Marshals with prying, greedy eyes who are on the lookout for strange and unusual powers among the citizens’ youth. If Wick’s dreamy secret were told to the wrong person, he might be abducted by Sanctum and studied, used, experimented on … or so say the rumors. But Wick thinks little of rumors or things he’s never witnessed himself.

“You remember the first thing you ever smelled?”

Wick shrugs. “Myself?” They laugh again.

Really, what an awful Legacy. Sleep. You can’t even call it an “ability” like most Legacies; it’s a
dis
ability. Can’t avoid or control it either. That pains Wick the worst … He’s certain he’ll die in his sleep, neck slit or heart pierced at a blade’s end, especially in a world where no one else at all requires eight hours a night to recoup. That’s eight hours of possible death, that’s what it is.

“See you in class,” says Rone, departing the table. His sister’s eyes linger a bit on Wick, then she’s off too. Feelings still sitting heavy, he stays a while staring at his hands until he convinces himself not to be late to class.

When school’s out for the day, Link and Wick board the nine-two back home. Pushing through the front door, Link’s right out the back door and gets lost somewhere in the overgrowth of shrubs in their diminutive backyard, likely not to be heard of for the rest of the evening. Mom and dad are both still at work, so the cramped house is oddly quiet and seems to breathe for once, the sunlight cutting through the kitchen like a golden sword.

Unmotivated as ever to get a start on his homework, Wick leans against the back of the sofa, still cluttered with last week’s dirty clothes and blankets, and stares out the window at the giant scrap metal disc thing in the backyard. It is a giant scrap metal disc thing because Wick has no idea what else to call it. Ever since it fell from the sky, it cut so deep into the ground that no one, not even dad, can manage a budge. It used to fascinate him, wondering what it is, what it’s used for … He peers up, squinting against the sunlight at the arm of the Lifted City that overhangs this part of the slums, about thirty stories in the air, give or take. From the window, he can see only two of the enormous pylons that hold the Lifted City up, of which there are copious. And this giant scrap metal disc thing, it’s probably just trash from that Lifted City, some large discarded thing from the rich and privileged above. How easy their lives must be … So casual, to let go a huge piece of metal over the brim, dropping it to the trash-laden slums below. It could’ve killed someone, cut a child in half … It actually
did
land unsettlingly close to the tree Lionis reads in. But what do they care, up in the sky, of those who struggle and starve below?

Wick—Anwick Lesser of the ninth ward, by full name—has never known luxury or gold or height. His dad bangs iron at the metalshops and his mom rakes mud tirelessly in the Greens, all for scraps. Their bellies, all full of scraps. His oldest brothers Aleks and Halves live in the Guardian dorms now, working for them. And Lionis, older by only two years, is no help either; he just fills his head all day with science and nonsense at the library. Mom excuses his lack of income, since he also does laundry and cooks for them on the daily, but Wick doesn’t care. He can feed himself. Wick doesn’t need his brother soaping his socks.