Chapter 31

I had so many questions.

The first of which was the mention of an "endowment," since it was the first I'd even heard about it until now. The second was related to...whatever the hell had Sam suddenly in a change of attitude. It was a complete one hundred eighty degree turn from what she'd shown me before: angered, but aloof, annoyance.

The expression on her face now seemed as if she were reevaluating how she should have perceived me but realized she’d grossly miscalculated. Worse, she seemed familiar with me, but I had zero ability to know why.

Within my head bounced a multitude of reasons for Rob, of all people, to say my mother’s original name so casually and with so much familiarity. I felt like I was still missing a huge chunk of a very large puzzle, one with a million pieces and no guiding image to rudder my way through the job of snapping them together.

Additionally, and much to my continued annoyance, Rob wasted no time with explanations.

"Old" Rob would sometimes interrupt random conversations to say crazy things. He had been a simple person with simple motivation. A static value. A constant in a world filled with equations and variables.

More importantly, he always used to answer my questions.

But this was New Rob.

New Rob usually never seemed to answer ANY of my questions at all. It was annoying. New Rob also—as apparent by the twirling signal for me to turn around—had zero issues with stripping dead bodies of equipment and stuffing them into MY bag so he wouldn’t need to carry them.

It was times like these, as I wordlessly obeyed and turned so he could access the pack, I came to the realization I really missed the "old" Rob. New Rob was sometimes a bummer.

This, of course, led me to thoughts of my old life.

Correction. Not my "old" life; my "fake" life. The one boxed within invisible walls. Behind the bars of a cage I hadn't even realized I lived in.

I was mentally thrown off track. The immediate area’s temperature had dropped another few degrees as the canal waters roared past. I could feel the cold. Probing. Pecking. Bleeding away at the outer layers, trying to stab its way inward. To extract the heat from my bones and leave me shivering.

I watched my breath plume into a cloud and felt dragged down. I had to wonder what Rob had managed to pull off the deceased security goons. The straps dug into my shoulders from the weight of the added items. My right foot began to sink, ankle-deep, into the mud.

My eyes were burning from exhaustion, so I closed them. The combined sensations somehow triggered a memory. One where my mother hummed while she rocked me.

The melody had been pretty, almost haunting, but achingly familiar. She'd smiled at me sadly, "I was born near the canals, Piglet. It's called 'The Siren's Call.' We used to sing it for the lost ones taken by the waters."

The mere mention of a world larger than our vicinity felt like an alien concept. Mythical. Full of dragons and magic. I'd been enraptured. Thus far, my reality had been limited to the four walls of our home. Anything else might as well be on a different planet, a different universe entirely. She'd looked at me lovingly when she spoke again, "The day you were born? It was a special moment..."

I moved to secure my footing firmly in the present. Newly formed streams by my feet reminded me of Paul’s “tears.” The water level rose around us as I looked down to where my feet slid. What had been mere puddles continued to form miniature lakes and rivers; the new landscape was shaped by an unyielding rain and the actions within.

Her voice drifted on the wind.

A special place.

My adult-sized half-step slid as I attempted to restabilize. It only took a single pull to successfully free my boot from the mud with a loud squelch. None of the movement seemed to bother Rob in the slightest as he continued to work. Undeterred and unflinching. My pack jerked left and right in an attempt to make room for the spoils of the fight. With nowhere to turn but across the canal, my eyes were drawn to what I'd been surprised by when we'd first entered the plaza, back where the noodle vendor had set up.

Lights.

Through the mist, there were tiny pinpricks of life just barely visible on the opposing side of the wide canal. The lights twinkled and disappeared randomly. Some were solid and unmoving, while others faded or appeared. They reminded me of stars as they danced amongst the clouds of a wispy night. If I thought hard enough, I could almost make out imaginary shapes of distant constellations, the remnants of some long-forgotten story told by an unspoken narrative.

It should've been obvious to me then, but it hadn't been.

People are there—I was from there.

I turned my head, my neck strained so I could frame Rob in a one-eyed glance. “You told me you were from the Canals,” I said to Rob. A statement rather than a question.

There was silence in the clearing as Sam looked at me—I mean, REALLY looked at me this time. Her anger was shed and discarded like an old skin. Cast aside as her eyes evaluated and calculated. All business. Her arms were crossed across her stomach. a look of contemplative uncertainty on her face as Rob nodded.

There was another awkward silence before any of us spoke again.

"Rob," Sam said, "this is big. Maybe too big for me. If this really is Ian's only son, you know what that's going to mean for Frank and me, right?" Her green-speckled eyes roamed my face in a way that made me nervous. The look she gave me was a mixture of bemusement, pity, and remorse. By his expression, Rob didn't seem happy about it as Sam continued, “We both take some big risks, Rob. But this,” she said it with a frown and a wave in my general direction, “this is something else. It's way off the rails from what I would've ever expected.”

Mental dots connected. I had another random thought about my mother.

She'd given me a name for the "special place" where I’d been born. At the time the name hadn’t been relevant to my youthful mind, just random words of unfamiliarity, but I’d memorized them. I’d memorized them because it seemed important to her.

“

There,” I said aloud. The word felt odd to my ears. The air felt like it thrummed with a sense of power after finally having said them. "Alistair Claim. It's where I was born, wasn't it?"

Rob was grimly silent. Sam looked back and forth between us, a look of confusion on her face. My mind raced with the implications of Rob and my mother's history. A lot still didn't add up, but I'd finally gotten a partial answer.

Rob nodded once, slowly. Cautiously.

"Is that it over there?" I asked, pointing at the lights.

"Some of it." Rob said. "Most of the canal shore is part of the Alistair Claim."

I pondered on this as I took in the shoreline, which went on further than I could see in either direction. I was expansive if so.

I spoke aloud again. “My official birth record says 'Marcott.' Do you know why that is?"

Sam interrupted before Rob could answer.

“

Look—uh, Owen. We don’t have time for this, okay?” she said, nervously, “Every moment we stand talking is another moment Zat and Rat over there will be discovered missing. Another chance, another random patrol might come across us.”

It was my turn to be irritated. Enough was enough.

“

WE don’t have time?!” I said, Heat crept up my face. I could feel the shade of scarlet. “YOU were perfectly fine being vocally upset for all of the past half hour, but me? I'm the one wasting time here?! I’m getting a little tired of being left out of everything despite being told I’m part of--” I flailed my arm toward both of them in exasperation, at a loss for the right word, “WHATEVER the hell you guys are!”

Rob held up a calming hand. "McCreed made this happen, Owen. Let's not forget that, okay? I'm sorry I can't give you all the answers you seek right now, but Sam isn't wrong. We're on a time clock here, and any answer I give you will only raise more questions we don't have time to burrow into." He closed the pack with a zip. "I'm not trying to push the answers away, but we've already strayed far too long here. I've got a new plan."

He turned to Sam.

“

Sam,” he said quietly. “Owen has to make it to Ruby no matter what, you understand? This isn't an option or a job. This can't be turned down. He has to be kept safe even if I have to pull rank, or favors, or whatever it is you'd need for me to get you to see this through. It HAS to happen.”

Sam's arms were firmly locked across her chest like a vise as he frowned back at her. She looked at Rob with a dubious glare.

Rob sighed. "Look. I only need to entrust delivery of him from here to The Brew. I can’t take him directly there for reasons I can’t get into right now, but someone I trust has to be with him when he and Ruby meet. He needs to be secured somewhere until we're certain she's been apprised of everything going on. Owen CANNOT be seen as who she was looking for...Got it?”

Sam lowered her arms, scowling. "Fine. But you owe me big time. And I get to state what it's for."

Rob's eyes crinkled as he smiled, "Thatta girl! We'll work out the specifics later, but get Owen to The Brew. Once he’s there, we can regroup. E will arrange everything for you once I get the message drafted. Give it to her so she knows what's going on.”

“

E?” Sam said with a note of disbelief, “What’s ‘E’ going to do?!”

“

E. Will arrange it.” Rob repeated.

A stir of irritation built up within me. It felt like I was being ignored again, but I tried not to interrupt. This sounded important.

Sam sounded confused. “She’s just a Needs proprietor, isn’t she?”

Rob chuckled once. “Yeah, and I’m just some guy who works at the Port,” he said, an ironic grin on his face. “Trust me. E is definitely more than ‘just a proprietor of a Need.’ Do this, and you’ll get triple the norm, guaranteed. I'll even throw in an extra favor for you to cash in at your leisure. But later. Now? We have things to get done.”

Sam opened her mouth before clamping it shut, seemingly mollified by the offer of a second favor. I wasn't. I was getting even more upset, and it was about to boil over. No one seemed to take my questions seriously.

“

Are you guys just going to ignore me here?!” I demanded, “I need some answers, or I’m not moving another step. Spill!”

Rob opened his mouth when a hissing boom sounded off in the distance. We all froze as he flashed his hand in a port-sign warning, a signal for an

urgent, quiet

, and

cautious

command in one. A green light floated downward as if held aloft in the air by some unseen line. A slowly drifting star in the rain-soaked sky.

“

What the—” I began as there was another hissing boom; a second green lightning shot upward into the sky and drifted, this one closer than the first, which had originated inward, toward the Spire.

“

Turn!” Rob hissed at me. He shoved my shoulder around and dug at the pack furiously. I bounced but tried to keep steady as a third and fourth signal shot up, five or so seconds in between each shot. The last one I estimated had only come a short distance past the embankment I’d fallen down.

They were close.

FAR too close.

There was a long pause, and I began to wonder where the next one would come from. I almost dropped when a sudden, hissing thump came from behind my right ear. The area was brightly emerald as a launched flare shot up into the sky to merge and drift in formation with others. The area was much brighter than it had been only a moment ago as the trail of signals traced along the corporate-sided canal edge and toward the Central Spire Complex.

Sam's eyes were wide in near panic. “Rob. Please tell me you know tonight’s code list. That was over a dozen teams just between us and the bridge.” I turned my head and looked up to follow the line along her pointed finger. There were a LOT of the flares. They could've been drifting snowflakes in the wind as they cast a sickly green glow across the landscape, and all but a few of the flares were between us and the bridge Rob had pointed out as our target destination.

“

First one was a signal call,” Rob said for my benefit, reloading the palm-sized launcher with another power cell-like flare before stuffing it back into the pack. “This means someone suspects something’s up, and they’re trying to figure out where we are by marking patrol zones. Before long? They’re going to send out hourly color-coded checks. We need to be gone when they do.”

My stomach sank as I realized our only logical path was now pointing inward, toward the areas Rob had told me we’d been trying to avoid; we were effectively surrounded.

“

We’re going to need another plan,” Rob said grimly, "again."