Thunderhead by Neal Shusterman
He and Purity split up a few blocks from the theater, and Greyson made his way to the spot where he would somehow perform for the Thunderhead cameras. He took his time in getting there because it would have been suspicious if he arrived early and waited. So he walked the neighborhood trying to figure out what the hell he was going to do. People either ignored him or avoided him. He’d gotten used to that since taking on his new persona—but tonight, he couldn’t help but notice all the eyes. Not just the eyes of people on the street, but the electronic ones. They were everywhere. Thunderhead cameras were unobtrusive within homes and offices—but here on the street, there was no attempt to hide them. They pivoted and swiveled. They looked this way and that. They focused and zoomed. A few seemed to be staring off toward the heavens as if in some sort of contemplation. What must it be like not only to have so much information coming in, but to be able to process all that information at once? Experiencing the world with a perspective that mere humans couldn’t imagine?
With a minute left before his diversion, he turned and made his way back toward the theater. On the edge of the awning of a café he passed, one camera swiveled to look at him, and he almost looked away, not wanting to make eye contact with the Thunderhead for fear it would judge him on all his failures.
• • •
Gavin Blodgett rarely remembered what went on in the street between his work and his home—mainly because nothing much went on. He was, like so many, a creature of habit, living an effortless but comfortable life that showed no sign of changing for perhaps centuries. And that was a good thing. After all, his days were perfect, his evenings were enjoyable, and his dreams were pleasant. He was thirty-two, and once a year on his birthday, he set right back down to thirty-two. He had no desire to be older. He had no desire to be younger. He was in his prime, and planned to stay that way forever. He abhorred anything that took him out of his routine—so when he saw the unsavory eying him, he picked up his pace, hoping he could just move past him and be on his way. But the unsavory had other plans.
“You got a problem?” the unsavory asked, a little too loudly, stepping in front of him.
“No problem,” Gavin said, and did what he always did when he found himself in an unsettling situation. He smiled and babbled. “I was just noticing your hair—I’ve never seen hair that dark—it’s impressive. And are those horns? I’ve never done any body modifications myself, of course, but I know people who have. . . .”
The unsavory grabbed him by the lapel of his coat, and pushed him against the wall. Not hard enough to activate his nanites but hard enough to make it clear that he wasn’t just going to let Gavin go.
“Are you making fun of me?” the unsavory said loudly.
“No, no, not at all! I would never!” Part of him was terrified, but he couldn’t deny that there was a part of him that was excited to be at the center of anyone’s attention. He quickly took in his surroundings. He was on the corner of a theater, at the mouth of an alley. No one was in front of the theater because the show had already started. The street wasn’t quite deserted, but no one was nearby. People would help, though. Decent people would always assist someone being accosted by an unsavory, and most people were decent.
The unsavory pulled him away from the wall, hooked a foot behind him, and pushed him to the ground.
“Better call for help,” the unsavory said. “Do it!”
“H . . . help,” said Gavin.
“Louder!”
He didn’t need another invitation. “Help!” he called, his voice shaky. “HELP ME!”
Now people a bit farther away had noticed. A man was hurrying toward him from across the street. A couple came from the other direction—but more importantly, from his spot on the ground, Gavin could see several cameras mounted on awnings and light posts turning toward him. Good! The Thunderhead will see. It will take care of this unsavory. It was probably already dispatching peace officers to the spot.
The unsavory looked to the cameras as well. He seemed unsettled by them, as well he should be. Now Gavin felt emboldened under the Thunderhead’s protective eye. “Go on, get out of here,” he told the unsavory, “before the Thunderhead decides to supplant you!”
But the unsavory didn’t seem to hear him. Instead, he was looking off down the alley, where people were unloading something from a truck. The unsavory mumbled. Gavin wasn’t quite sure what he said, but he thought he heard the words, “first date,” and “acid.” Was this unsavory making some sort of romantic proposition? Something involving hallucinogens? Gavin was both horrified and intrigued.
By now, the pedestrians he had called on for help had reached them. As much as he wanted their help, he also found himself mildly disappointed that they had arrived so quickly.
“Hey, what’s going on here?” one of them said.
Then the unsavory pulled Gavin up off the ground. What was he about to do? Was he going to strike him? Bite him? Unsavories were very unpredictable. “Just let me go,” Gavin said weakly. A part of him was hoping the unsavory might completely ignore the plea.
But he let Gavin go, as if he had suddenly lost all interest in tormenting him, and hurried off down the alley.
“Are you all right?” asked one of the good people who had come to Gavin’s aid from across the street.
“Yeah,” Gavin said. “Yeah, I’m fine.” Which was mildly disappointing.
• • •
“Hence! Wilt thou lift up Olympus?”
When that line was spoken onstage, the stage manager gesticulated wildly at Scythe Anastasia. “That was your cue, Your Honor,” he told her. “You may want to go onstage now.”
She glanced over to Scythe Constantine, looking like some sort of absurd butler in his formal tuxedo. He nodded to her. “Do what you’re here to do,” he told her.
She strode onto the stage, letting her robe flare behind her as she walked, for dramatic effect. She couldn’t help but feel that she was in costume. A play within a play.
She heard gasps from the audience as she came onstage. She was not legendary among the general public the way that Scythe Curie was, but her robe made it clear that she was a scythe rather than a member of the Roman Senate. She was an interloper on the stage, an intruder, and the audience began to guess what was coming. The gasps resolved into a low rumble—but she could not see into the audience with the lights in her face. She flinched when Sir Albin spoke in his resonant stage voice, “Doth not Brutus bootless kneel?”
Citra had never been on a theatrical stage before; she had not expected the lights to be so bright and so hot. It made the players shine in sharp focus. The centurions’ armor glinted. The tunics of Caesar and the senators reflected light enough to hurt her eyes.
“Speak, hands, for me!” one of the actors yelled. Then the conspirators drew their daggers, and went about “killing” Caesar.
Scythe Anastasia stood back, a spectator rather than a participant. She glanced to the darkness of the audience, then realized that was a highly unprofessional thing to do, so she returned her attention to the action onstage. It was only when one of the cast members gestured to her that she came forward and pulled out her own dagger. It was stainless steel, but with a black cerakote finish. A gift from Scythe Curie. At the sight of it, the audience got louder. Someone wailed from the darkness.
Aldrich, his face overdone in stage makeup, his tunic covered in fake blood, looked at her, and winked at her with the eye that the audience could not see.
She moved toward him and plunged her knife between his ribs, just to the right of his heart. Someone in the audience screamed.
“Sir Albin Aldrich,” she said loudly, “I’ve come to glean you.”
The man grimaced but did not break character.
“Et tu, Brute?” he said. “Then fall, Caesar.”
Then she shifted the knife, slicing his aorta, and he slipped to the ground. He took one final breath and died, on schedule, just as Shakespeare had written.
The shock rolling from
And that was when the nature of Shakespeare’s tragedy took a terrible turn.
• • •
Acid! Greyson cursed himself for not being quicker on the uptake. He should have figured it out! Everyone always worried about fire or explosions. People forget that a strong enough acid can end someone just as effectively. But how would Purity and her team accomplish it? How would they isolate the scythes and subdue them? Scythes were masters of every weapon, able to take out an entire room of people without a scratch. Then it occurred to him they would not need to isolate the scythes at all. One did not need to aim acid if there was enough of it . . . and a way to deliver it. . . .
He pulled open the side door and went in, finding himself in a narrow hallway lined with dressing rooms. To the right, stairs descended into a basement, and that was where he found Purity and her team. There were three large barrels made of the same white Teflon material that the wine bottle had been made of the night Greyson and Purity first met—there must have been a hundred gallons of fluoro-flerovic acid in those barrels! And there was a high-pressure pump that had already been connected to the water line that fed the theater’s fire sprinkler system.
Purity saw him immediately.
“What are you doing? You’re supposed to be outside!”
She knew his betrayal the moment she met his eye. The fury in her was like radiation. It burned him. Seared him deep.
“Don’t even think about it!” she growled.
And he didn’t. If he thought about it, he might hesitate. If he weighed his options, he might change his mind. But he had a mission, and his mission was not hers.
He raced up the rickety stairs to the theater’s backstage area. If those sprinklers were triggered, it wouldn’t take long for them to start spouting acid. Five seconds, ten at most, until the water in the line was purged—and although the copper pipes would eventually dissolve like the iron bars of his and Purity’s cell, they would most certainly hold long enough to deliver the lethal deluge.
As he emerged from the basement to the backstage area, he heard the audience release an audible gasp, like a single voice, and he followed the sound. He would go onto the stage, that’s what he would do. He would run out there, and tell everyone that they were all about to die in an acid bath that would dissolve them so completely there would be no way to revive them. They would all be ended—actors, audience, and scythes alike—if they didn’t get out of there now.
Behind him he could hear the others bounding up the stairs—Purity and the goons who had connected the acid tanks and pump to the sprinkler system. He couldn’t let them catch him.
He was in the wings now, stage right. From here, he could see that Scythe Anastasia was onstage. What the hell was she doing onstage? Then she thrust her knife into one of the actors, and it became very clear what she was doing.
Suddenly, someone eclipsed Greyson’s view. A tall, thin man in a tuxedo and a blood-red tie. There was something familiar about his face, but Greyson couldn’t place it.
The man flipped open something that looked like an oversize switchblade with a jagged, serrated edge—and all at once he knew who this was. He hadn’t recognized Scythe Constantine without his crimson robe.
And it seemed the scythe didn’t recognize him, either.
“You have to listen to me,” Greyson begged, his eye on that blade. “Somewhere in the theater, someone’s about to start a fire—but that’s not the problem. It’s the sprinklers—if they go off, this whole place will be soaked in acid—enough to end everyone here! You have to clear the place out!”
Then Constantine smiled, and made no move to avert the disaster.
“Greyson Tolliver!” he said, finally recognizing him. “I should have known.”
No one had called him by his given name for quite a while now. It threw him, made his mind stumble. There was no time for a single misstep now.
“It will be my immense pleasure to glean you!” Constantine said—and all at once Greyson realized that he might have made the gravest of miscalculations. A scythe was at the bottom of this attempt. He knew that. Could it be that Scythe Constantine, the man in charge of the investigation, was actually behind it all?
Constantine stormed toward him, his blade poised to end the lives of both Greyson Tolliver and Slayd Bridger. . . .
. . . And then his entire world flipped upside down with such a violent lurch, it left him reeling from vertigo. Because at that moment, Purity emerged onto the stage, brandishing some terrible sawed-off weapon. She raised it, but before she could fire, Constantine threw Greyson down, and with impossible speed, grabbed the shotgun, which fired into the air, then in one smooth move ripped his knife across her neck and plunged it into her heart.
“No!!!!!!” wailed Greyson.
She fell dead, without any of the drama of the fallen Caesar. No final words, no look of acceptance or defiance. Just there one moment, dead the next.
No, not dead, Greyson realized. Gleaned.
He ran to her. He tried to cradle her head, to say something to her that she could take with her to wherever it was the gleaned went, but it was too late.
More people arrived. Scythes in disguise? Guards? Greyson didn’t know. He felt himself a spectator now, watching as Constantine gave orders.
“Don’t let them start a fire,” he ordered. “The water supply to the sprinklers has been compromised.”
So Constantine had heard him! And he was not part of the conspiracy after all!
“Get these people out of here!” Constantine screamed—but the audience didn’t need an invitation—they were already climbing over one another for the exits.
Before Constantine could turn his attention back to him, Greyson gently let Purity go and bolted. He could not allow the grief and turmoil in his mind take hold. Not yet. Because he still had not completed his mission, and now the mission was all that he had. The acid was still a clear and present danger, and although there seemed to be scythes all around the theater now, taking down his coconspirators, it would be for nothing if those sprinklers went off.
He ran back down the narrow hallway where he had remembered seeing an old fire ax that had probably been there since the Age of Mortality. He smashed the glass case that held it, and pulled it from wall.
• • •
Scythe Curie could not hear Scythe Constantine’s warnings above the panic of the audience. No matter—she knew what had to be done—take out the attackers by any means necessary. With blade in hand, she was more than ready to join the battle. She could not deny there was something invigorating about ending the lives of those attempting to end her own. It was a visceral feeling she instinctively knew could be dangerous if allowed to take root.
When she turned toward the exit, she could see an unsavory in the theater lobby. He had a pistol and was shooting anyone who got in his way. In his other hand, he had some sort of torch, and was setting anything that would burn on fire. So that was their game! Trap them in the theater and burn them out. Somehow, she had expected better from these assailants. But perhaps they were nothing more than disgruntled unsavories after all.
She climbed on two chair backs, so she was above the escaping audience. Then she sheathed her dagger, and pulled out a tri-blade shuriken. She took a half second to judge her angle, and she threw it, full force. It spun over the heads of the crowd, out to the lobby, and into the fire-starter’s skull. He went down, dropping gun and torch.
Curie took a moment to revel in her triumph. Parts of the lobby were on fire, but it was nothing to worry about. In a moment or two, the smoke detectors would begin to blare, and the sprinklers would burst into action, dousing the flames before they could do much damage.
• • •
Citra recognized the boy she knew as Greyson Tolliver the instant she saw
As Constantine gave orders to his subordinates, Greyson ran off down a hallway. The blade that Citra had used to glean Aldrich was still in her hand. She would now need to use it on Tolliver—although in spite of his obvious guilt, she was conflicted, because as much as she wanted to end these attacks, she wanted to be able to look him in the eye on her own terms and hear the truth from him. What was his part in all of this? And why?
By the time she caught up with him, he was holding, of all things, a fire ax.
“Stand back, Anastasia!” he shouted.
Was he stupid enough to think he could fight her with that? She was a scythe, trained in all manner of bladecraft. She quickly calculated how to disarm him and render him deadish, and was barely a second short of doing so when he did something she didn’t expect.
He swung the ax at a pipe running along the wall.
Scythe Constantine and a BladeGuard arrived beside her just as the ax connected with the pipe. It ruptured in a single blow. The BladeGuard lunged for him, putting himself between Citra and the ruptured pipe, which now gushed water at him. But in moments, the water gave way to something else. The man went down, screaming, his flesh boiling. It was acid! Acid in the pipes? How was this possible?
It sprayed in Scythe Constantine’s face, and he wailed in pain. It splattered across Greyson’s shirt, dissolving it as well as some of the skin beneath. Then the pressure in the pipe dropped, and the spray of acid became a flow that ate away at the floor.
Greyson dropped the ax and turned, running off down the hallway. Citra didn’t chase him. Instead, she knelt down to help Scythe Constantine, who was clawing at his eyes—only he had no eyes anymore, for they had bubbled away into nothing.
Just then, alarms throughout the theater started to blare, and up above the fire, sprinklers began to impotently spin, spewing the room with nothing but air.