Guardians of the Dark

How humiliating. Utterly mortifying. To wake up in the Collection Point infirmary and see a clip of my unconscious body being carried off in front the entire city. Over and over on replay, broadcasted on every channel.

Son of General experiences claustrophobic episode in selection booth, had to be put unconscious in emergency procedure.

Like a weakling. A failure by my father’s standards.

Not that anything would’ve been different had I stepped out of the booth consciously. I’d have made headlines either way. Son of General selected as a Guardian, soils family name. I suppose that part’s still coming.

I can’t hide my classification forever.

With my head resting on my hand, I gaze out the tinted window of the railway pod. It speeds through the Eastern Living Section, a cluster of identical two-storey houses, boxy and crammed together. They flick past me like a single picture on repeat, the same eggshell-white walls and cement drives. Not a speck of green, nor a crack in the pavement. A perfectly manicured district for the city’s richest, most influential citizens.

The railway pod zooms over the hill into ELS Zone 1, the oldest zone in the Eastern Living Section, and the only block with patches of green trailing the sidewalk. It also sports a view of the city centre, tall, glassy buildings reaching for the heavens, and with the MOL Railway swivelling in between and under them.

I sit up as the pod nears one of the many replica houses. It slows to a stop, and a loud ding resonates through the vehicle.

“YOU HAVE ARRIVED AT YOUR DESTINATION,” a voice says. “PAYMENT DUE: TWO GIGABYTES.”

I swipe my wrist across the panel by the door, and it slides open. My hand instinctively rises to shield my eyes from the light outside. They’re still thick with sleep, and my head is throbbing – side-effects from the mist they had drugged me with, according to the nurse at the infirmary. It should wear off in a couple hours.

Unlike my shame.

I barely plant my feet in the grass lining the sidewalk, when the pod’s door clips shut and it zooms off again. I blink at the sky to collect myself, to ground myself in reality. The Selection Assessment is over.

After years of training, of missing out on normal teenage activities, it’s finally behind me. And I’ve got nothing to show for it.

I pad to the front door and put my wrist on the panel next to it.

“WELCOME HOME, KASEN TRAYNOR,” the system greets me, and the door opens up into a sterile entry hall, giving way to a living room on the right, and staircase on the left. The ceiling lights bounce off the walls like glass, forcing me to squint, to cast my eyes to the only splash of colour in the entire space – a digital portrait of a happy family at the top of the stairs. A pair of parents and their son. Their legacy.

I storm past the staircase into the living room, practically bounding over the marble coffee table to reach the adjoining kitchen. A silver box sits on the control counter, against which leans a digital birthday card.

The same one they reprogram every year.

How thoughtful. Really. Especially since both my parents had already left for work when I came down this morning.

I pick up the card and open it, recognising my mother’s handwriting on the inside.

“Kasen,” the digital ink reads, “our darling boy, happy birthday! Sorry we weren’t home this morning, but we promise to make it up to you tonight. Your father has a special present for you. Oh, and good luck with the Selection Assessment! We believe in you, our little soldier. All our love, Mom and Dad.”

I slam the card shut. My fingers ached to snap it in two, but I settle for chucking it across the control counter instead. Mom and Dad? A special present? I scoff. My father probably forgot it was even my birthday. Like the card, I bet my mother bought the gift. She does all the work, while he happily accepts the credit.

With a sigh lodged in my throat, I walk around the control counter and set the card upright. Of course, my mother meant well. The least I can do is be grateful.

I round the counter again and pick up the box. My lunch. I carry it to the living room, where I flop down on the sofa, place the box in my lap and press the button to open it. Steam billows from the inside, revealing a grilled steak and roasted vegetables. A special lunch indeed. A welcome change from protein cereal and juice.

“Projection pad,” I announce in between chews, “turn on.”

The projection pad on the wall comes to life.

“Channel 5, news.”

Nothing happens.

“Channel 5, news,” I repeat, and the broadcast switches from a bad sitcom about aliens on a foreign planet, to a blonde, blue-eyed woman on the news. Marian Traynor. My mother. She’s seated behind a desk, clutching a stack of papers while a sequence of horrifying clips are played on a projection pad behind her.

I scan the headline. BREAKING NEWS: A raid on the Northern Collection Point leaves water supplies dwindling.

“Unmute,” I command.

The projection pad responds, and my mother’s voice fills the living room. She speaks sombrely and monotone, expressing no emotion.

“While we are still awaiting confirmation on the total quantity of water lost during the raid, lead engineer, Dr. Miles Sullivan, advises all citizens to remain calm, and to take urgent note of their water usage. He insists there is nothing to worry about, and asks that everyone tries to save as much water as possible.”

I finish my food and place the box on the sofa next to me. My elbows find my knees as I lean forward, my hands combing through my hair.

“Last evening’s raid on the water supply rounds it up to a total of seventeen raids on the Metropolis of Light in the last month,” my mother goes on, reporting off her notes. “When commissioned for a comment, High Commander Gorgo Hamman promised to have security at all Collection Points updated over the coming weeks.”

I roll my eyes.

They’ve already updated security twice since the start of the year – reinforced the temporary fences during expansions, and doubled the number of Monitors patrolling the Western Farming District. I look sideways out the window, catching a distance glimpse of the wall surrounding the city. Already taller than the highest building at the Eastern Collection Point – three storeys, to be precise – and with glowing electrical wire strung across its top, I doubt there’s much they can do to reinforce it. Unless, maybe, they put up a second wall. Which is highly implausible. Since the wall essentially consists of giant slabs of interconnected magnets, construction companies are already working double time to keep up with the current expansion rate.

“In other, much lighter news,” my mother goes on, grinning now. “I’m delighted to report that this year’s Selection Assessment exceeded everyone’s expectations. After receiving the most disappointing number of applications in recent years, an astounding seventy-five percent of applicants were classified as Gatherers.”

“Good for them ...” I grumble.

“A further twenty percent of applicants were classified as Monitors, and the remaining five percent as Guardians. A promising turnout indeed!”

Hold on, that little?

I sit up. The percentage of Guardians are always sparse, but a mere five? I scrape my teeth together, recalling the Assessment. Out of seven separate groups, how did I, Kasen Traynor of all people, manage to fall under a measly five percent? I’m not special. In fact, if it wasn’t for my parents, I’d be borderline average.

“Now, let’s go to a live message from General Traynor himself,” my mother reports, and the broadcast changes from the sleek, red-and-blue studio, to a walkway the likes of the one we had passed under at the Eastern Collection Point, only the surrounding water tanks reveals it to be the Northern Collection Point.

A sturdy man with a square jaw stands in the middle of the walkway, the wall rising behind him with the Dark stretching in all directions. Gatherers are seen running around below, still clearing damage from the raid.

“Greetings, Metropolis of Light,” my father says in his low, almost raspy voice. “While I’m not traditionally a man of many words” – I smirk – “I’d like to express my utmost pride in this year’s AOL applicants. Today, the Army of the Light is seventy-six soldiers stronger, sixty of whom will soon be out and about in the Dark, expanding our city’s borders, and sixteen of whom will be patrolling the streets and keeping peace.” My father attempts a grin, but abandons it. “Putting one’s life on the line to protect those closest to you, is one of the bravest acts a person can perform. Together, my good people, we shall reclaim the light!”

I huff as my father promptly veers his speech to the restoration of the Collection Point. Of course, why would he even think to mention the Guardians? In his eyes – like the rest of the city’s – they’re but useless watchdogs, ticking time bombs. If it was up to him, my father would exile every Guardian in the city.

Like he did with Samael.

“Channel 7, weather,” I announce, and the projection pad exchanges my father’s face for a table featuring temperatures and rainfall predictions. I rise from the sofa, pick up the silver box, and stroll to the kitchen. With the press of a button, the control counter opens and I place the box inside to be washed and stored. My eyes follow the projection pad as I walk back across the living room to the stairs. A square in the corner of the weather table is still broadcasting the news – my father’s personal talk-show, is more like it.

Seventy-five percent selected as Gatherers. Seventy-freaking-five. There’s no doubt he believes I fall under that number.

I’m supposed to, after all.

The moment the broadcast in the square changes to the oh-so-familiar clip of me collapsing in the amphitheatre, I veer around the stairs and skip to the top. My room swallows me on the landing, the first door to the left. I slam it shut behind me, standing a moment with my back against it. My chest rises and falls, but I can’t breathe. The room is closing in on me – too-small and too-bright, the furniture with a sharpness to them.

My eyes are drawn to the digital posters hanging above my headboard, pictures of Gatherers wandering the Dark while Roamers stalk them from behind sand dunes. I pause on a poster of my father and I the day he was awarded his first loyalty medal. Six-year-old Kasen dons it around his neck, beaming with joy.

A single tear forms in my eye, but I wipe it away before it slides down my cheek. I slip off my jacket, toss it on my bed and approach the open window opposite it. It looks straight into the house next to ours, another cramped room. I search for Clay on his bed, but there’s nobody in the unmade mess. He’s probably out celebrating.

I slide through the window and find the narrow ledge in between our houses with my feet. Once balanced, I grab the edge of the roof and pull myself onto it, using my heels against the wall to propel myself upward.

A trail of brown footprints, stamped onto the eggshell wall, exposes the amount of times I’ve come up here.

But the roof has always been my safe space, ever since I first stumbled on top with Clay as pre-teen boys. He had just moved in next door, and I was sent to my room for failing a history test. Clay had seen me cry through the window, and I was angry at him for spying, but he had just laughed and invited me up.

Slowly, carefully, I wind through the solar panels lining the roof, all the way to the righthand edge where I usually sit.

Someone is already here when I arrive.

On the adjoining roof.

“I wondered whether you’d be up here,” I say as I sit down.

“Uhm, of course ... Where else would I be?” Clay counters, swinging his feet off the edge. He’s still wearing his applicant jacket, big and black, and with his citizen number printed on the back. “I had to see if you’re okay.”

I let my feet hang motionless under me. The soles of my trainers feel heavy, like the earth is trying to swallow me. “I mean, I passed out in front of the entire city, so ... okay isn’t exactly on the table right now.”

“Sheesh, I can only imagine. That was intense, dude.” Clay looks me over through the corners of his eyes. “What, uh, even happened to you in there?”

“Don’t you watch the news? Apparently I had a claustrophobic attack, and the system had to contain me.” I shrug, attempting a light-hearted smile.

Clay sees right through it. “You’re not claustrophobic, Kasen.”

“No, I’m not,” is all I say in reply. My eyes break away from his, and I look at my feet, at the drive down below.

“You know you can talk to me about anything,” Clay insists. “I mean, if this is about your old man not showing up –”

“Hey, enough with the pity party,” I interrupt him, attempting another pathetic smile. “We both passed the Assessment. We’re supposed to be celebrating.”

Clay regards me for a moment, his dark eyes narrowed, but then he sits back with his arms behind his head. “What did I tell you, man?” he says, going along with the change in topic. “The front lines are finally ours!”

So we thought.

I clutch the edge of the roof. “Congratulations, Clay. I always knew you could do it.”

“Come on, stop being so freaking modest,” he wines, reaching across and punching me in the shoulder. His fist immediately launches at the Dark on the horizon. “That’s right, Dark, my boy Kasen and I are coming for you! You and every Roamer, every Raider, and every damn Corrupted that tries to stop us!”

I scratch behind my head, taking a moment to just look at Clay. To absorb the smile across his face, and the passion in his movements. This is his lifelong dream. Ever since that first day on the roof, he’s wanted to serve on the AOL. Not because his father’s the General, but because he actually wants to save the city.

Wants to save mankind.

“Gatherers, can you believe it?” Clay sighs.

“Nope.”

He speaks on, “You should’ve seen my old man’s face when I went to meet him at the hospital after the Field Test. He was still in scrubs and all that, but he couldn’t help but squeeze me to a pulp when I told him.”

Another sigh.

“What did the ol’ General say?”

I press my palms into the concrete. “He – uh – didn’t.”

“What? He doesn’t know?”

“No one does. I passed out, remember? They didn’t show my classification.”

Clay lifts his brows, inflating his cheeks as he always does when judging me. “That’s not a valid excuse. Why haven’t you told him? You’ve been begging for his approval your whole life. Why not jump at the first –”

“I’m a Guardian, Clay.”

He freezes in place, not blinking or breathing. His eyes flick from me, to the line of houses across from us, to the street below. Seconds pass in which he doesn’t speak, then suddenly, “Ha! Really funny, dude.”

“I’m not joking.”

Silence.

“You’re a – a Guardian?”

I make to get up, but Clay leans across and grabs my arm. “Hey, Kasen,” he says, “where are you going?”

“You said it yourself this morning, don’t you remember? In the locker room. Guardians are ticking timebombs. They’re all crazy, a bunch of Corrupted. I am too, apparently, so if you want an out, here’s your chance.”

Clay frowns so deeply, his eyes are shadowed under his brows. “What? Do you really think I’d write you off because of this? Maybe if you’d been selected as a Monitor …They’re just glorified security guards, you know.”

“This is serious, Clay.”

“I know. I know.”

I rub my hands across my face and comb through my hair. I lower onto my back, taking in the icy concrete against my spine. I blink at the twilight sky, light pink and scattered with clouds, slowly passing the city.

Clay also lies down. “What, uh, is your dad going to say?”

“He didn’t even mention the Guardians on the news, so …” My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth, forcing me to swallow. “They, well … you know what people say about them. About why they’re selected.”

“Kasen, you’re not like that.”

“Aren’t I?” I challenge him. My thoughts flash back to the Field Assessment, to how I had beaten that applicant even after he was down. How I almost lost control. “I have a darkness in me, Clay. They all do.”

Clay lies still for a moment, rapping his fingers on his stomach. He turns his head toward me, slowly, still not saying anything in reply. He probably doesn’t know what to say – how to possibly make me feel better.

“Darkness or not,” he finally says, “you’ll always stay my best friend.”

More silence.

“I mean, it’s not like I can just move away from you or anything.” Clay laughs, although he misses that certain whistle between his teeth. He at once sits up and reels in his right leg, pretending to tie his laces.

“Anyway, enough about me,” I say, also sitting up. “When do you start at the academy?”

Clay relaxes. “Tomorrow, can you believe it? At dawn, of all times. No one told me they’ll be stealing our sleep!”

I laugh, even though I only caught half of what he said. My mind is far away in a distant world. One in which we were both classified as Gatherers. Would I have been as excited as Clay? Would I have been more at ease?

“Kasen, are you listening?” Clay’s voice snaps me back.

“Yeah, of course,” I lie. “It sounds really cool.”

“Dude, I was asking when you’d be starting with orientation.”

My cheeks warm. “Oh, I spoke to a woman in the infirmary. She’s sending an AOL pod to pick me up at seven. We’re receiving all training at Craedor Tower.”

“Woah,” Clay breathes. “It’s like they’re chucking you right in the deep end. You think you’ll meet the High Commander while you’re there?”

“No idea.”

Something moves in the corner of my left eye, and I look down at the street, at an approaching railway pod. Even though its windows are tinted, I just about make out the blond tips of a woman’s hair on the inside.

My mother.

As the railway pod pulls up in front of the house, Clay and I reverse away from the edge and out of sight. My mother gets out, still dressed in the pantsuit she wore on the broadcast, and walks up to the front door.

The excited smile across her face breaks me, and the glide in her walk even more so. She’s come home to see her son.

A newly classified Gatherer.

“Please, Clay,” I say as I get to my feet. “Don’t try to make me feel better. I’m quitting the Guardians the first chance I get.”

“What?” Clay jumps up. “You can’t quit. You’re a Traynor, damnit! I know you, man, you’re not corrupted.”

I turn my back on him to face the darkening city, in the centre of which looms Craedor Tower. The beam of Dark that shoots out of it looks but a thin line from all the way out here, but the sight of it nonetheless tightens my chest. I think about the Guardian girl on the news, about what the applicants said about her ...

“Kasen –”

“I have to wash-up before dinner. Before my dad arrives.” I don’t turn back around. “Good luck at orientation tomorrow.”

Clay becomes quiet. Even his breathing stills. I would’ve thought he had left if his shadow didn’t cast across the roof. “I’m serious,” he says, softly now, “this doesn’t define you. I’ll be your friend, no matter what you decide. And, if your dad … if he freaks out and does something, just know I’m here for you, okay?”

“Thanks, Clay. For everything.”

We retreat in silence, both of us swivelling through the solar panels on our respective roofs before sliding down the side of our houses into our rooms.

“Hey, Kasen,” Clay says just before we separate. “I know you don’t want me to say this, but for old time’s sake, happy birthday.”

I stop in the window frame, squeezing my hands as tightly as I can to stop the rising tears. Through the narrow opening between our houses, I see another railway pod pull up, this one with the AOL emblem on its side.

My father.

“Thanks, Clay,” I begin, but as I look over my shoulder, Clay’s window is already closed and tinted for the night.