Thunderhead (Arc of a Scythe #2)(56)

Rowan felt a surge of anger rise at the thought. He had to deflect it by slamming his fist against the dashboard.

“Warning! Violent behavior, and/or vandalism will result in expulsion from the vehicle,” the car said. He ignored it.

“Please come home, Rowan. We all miss you terribly.”

Funny, but they had never seemed to miss him during his apprenticeship. In a family as large as his, he was barely missed. But he supposed a gleaning changed things. The people left behind in its wake felt so much more vulnerable, and valuable to one another.

“I can’t come home,” he told her. “And please don’t ask why, it would only make everything worse. But I just want you to know . . . I want you to know that I love you all . . . and . . . and I’ll be in touch when I can.” Then he hung up before she could say another word.

Tears clouded his vision now, and he smashed his fist against the dashboard again, preferring the pain of that to the pain within.

The car immediately decelerated, pulled to the side of the road, and the door opened. “Please vacate the vehicle. You are being expelled due to violent behavior and/or vandalism, and are banned from using all public transit for sixty minutes.”

“Give me a second,” he told it. He needed to think. There were two paths before him now. Even though he knew that the scythedom was actively trying to prevent another attack against Citra and Scythe Curie, he had no faith in their ability to do it. His chances might not be any better, but he owed it to Citra to try. On the other hand, he needed to correct his mistake, and permanently end Scythe Brahms. Something dark in him told him to seek revenge first, and not to wait . . . but he didn’t give in to that darkness. Scythe Brahms would still be there after Citra had been saved.

“Please vacate the vehicle.”

Rowan got out, and the car drove away, leaving him in the middle of nowhere. He spent his penalty hour walking the shoulder, and wondering if there was anyone in MidMerica as torn apart as he.

? ? ?

Greyson Tolliver locked himself in his apartment, opened the windows to let in the cold, then crawled into his bed beneath heavy covers. It was what he had done when he was younger and the world got the better of him. He could disappear beneath the billowing comforter that protected him from the coldness of the world. It had been many years since he’d felt the need to retreat into his childhood escape zone. But now he needed to make the rest of the world go away, if only for a few minutes.

Whenever he did this in the past, the Thunderhead would let him, for maybe twenty minutes. Then it would gently speak to him. Greyson, it would say. Is something bothering you? Do you feel like talking? He would always say “no,” but would end up talking anyway, and the Thunderhead would always make him feel better. Because it knew him better than anyone.

But now that his record had been erased—his old self overwritten by the criminal stylings of Slayd Bridger—did the Thunderhead even know him anymore? Or did it, like the rest of the world, believe that he was what his record said about him?

Was it possible that the Thunderhead’s own memory of him had been overwritten? What a horrible fate if the Thunderhead itself believed he was an unrepentant unsavory who got his kicks by making people deadish. It was enough to make him wish his own memories could be supplanted. The Thunderhead could turn him into someone else, not just in name, but in spirit. Both Slayd Bridger and Greyson Tolliver would be gone forever, without him even remembering who they had been. Would that be so bad?

He decided his own fate didn’t matter right now. He’d hurl himself off that bridge when he came to it—all that mattered right now was saving the two scythes . . . and somehow protecting Purity.

Yet still, there was an overpowering sense of isolation. He was, more than ever, alone in the world.

He knew there were cameras in his apartment. The Thunderhead watching without judgment. It observed with profound benevolence, so that it might better take care of each and every citizen of the world. It saw, it heard, it remembered. Which meant that it must know things beyond Greyson’s falsified record.

So he crawled out from under the covers, and to his chilly, empty room he asked, “Are you there? Are you listening? Do you remember who I am? Who I was? Do you remember who I was going to be, before you decided I was ‘special’?”

He didn’t even know where the cameras were. The Thunderhead was adamant about being nonintrusive into people’s lives that way, but he knew the cameras were there. “Do you still know me, Thunderhead?”

But no answer came. No answer could. For the Thunderhead was lawful. Slayd Bridger was an unsavory. Even if it wanted to, the Thunderhead could not break its silence.





* * *




I am not blind to the activities of unsavories, I am merely silent. ?When it comes to scythes, however, there are blind spots that I must fill with mindful extrapolation. I do not see inside their regional conclaves, but I hear their discussions upon exiting. I cannot witness what they do in private, but I can make educated guesses from their behavior in public. ?And the entire island of Endura is dark to me.

Even so, out of sight is not out of mind. I see their fine deeds, as well as their foul deeds, which seem to be on the rise. ?And each time I witness a cruel act by a corrupt scythe, I seed the clouds somewhere in the world, and bring a lamentation of rain. Because rain is the closest thing I have to tears.