Ally

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I wake up, but not in the dark alleyway. It’s cooler in here, but there’s still a lingering humidity in the air. Something soft is under me. I realize it’s a blanket. I sit up and look around, noticing, for one, that my hands and feet aren’t tied, which is significant in whoever found me.

A white curtain surrounds my area, which contains two blankets and a pillow for sleeping, a lamp by my “bed,” and, in the corner, a small basket filled with a variety of things. A paper is clipped to the basket.

I stand up and go to crouch by the basket. The note reads, “These are some gifts for your stay here. Come out when you are ready. -Friends”

Friends. I doubt that, but I search the basket anyway. It has a steel water thermos and a simple leather bag.

Searching the bag, which is rather heavy, I find a map of Antiford in a special leather case, and I decide to keep it, though I know that I won’t refer to it often. I also find several large books, which I ignore. Books are of no use to me, whether I’d want to read them or not. They go back in the basket.

I find a smaller leather bag that seems to be specially designed for food. Inside is a small pouch which has napkins in it—they really went all out—and another pouch built into the bag has a set of metal silverware—one knife, one spoon, one fork, and one mini set of tongs.

The bag has some mini pans in it, wooden skewers, matches, and I finally find actual food—a dinner roll and some beef jerky.

After eating the dinner roll and jerky, I put the steel water thermos in the bag and sling the bag over my shoulder. I walk out of the curtained area into a hallway filled with them.

Both ends are open, so I choose a side and walk to the end of the hallway in that direction. I find a woman standing there. She has dark, curly hair, and is dressed in clothes that had been patched many times over, a swirl of different colors and stitches and many different textures.

“Follow me and I’ll lead you to the main area,” she says with only a nod for greeting, and starts walking. I don’t take a step.

“Who are you and what do you want? I appreciate your gifts, but I need to know who you are,” I say.

She turns and shrugs. “Very well. We are a small group that have heard of you and support you. We want to use our technology to enhance people, like your father—was it?—did to you. We rescued you from the Mayberry District center and brought you to its outskirts, where our warehouse is located. We were hoping you'd become our ally, and help us with our studies," she says. Her face is strangely passive and emotionless; I don't believe a word she says.

I nod slowly, giving her a skeptical look. Her face doesn't change; instead, she turns and walks down the hallways lined with curtains. I follow a safe distance behind.

We emerge into a large warehouse-like room. The heat is almost stifling, though I see several industrial fans scattered about the room. A high, sloped ceiling rises above me, with dark wooden beams crisscrossing it. The noise in the room is similar to that of a school cafeteria; a low drone. People mill about dozens of tables scattered everywhere across the concrete floor, with tables and cabinets lining the walls with extra supplies. Machines are placed haphazardly across the room.

"This is our main room," the woman says, pausing for just a brief second before she keeps walking. We walk straight through the clutter of tables, machines, people, and noise, and I feel the people's eyes on me as I walk past.

I don't notice it until we reach the end of the clutter and face several doors in gaps between the tables of supplies, and the woman turns me around to face the tables.

Everyone is standing in a crowd facing me. One man in the front bows his head only slightly and then looks back up at me, meeting my eyes.

The gesture ripples through the crowd like a wave, and I watch them with half-disbelief as they all return back to work as if nothing happened, but I notice the glances thrown my way--mostly admiring--as I turn back around.

"Do you see now?" the woman says as we slowly walk towards one of the doors. I nod, still feeling a surreal sense of fantasy in it all, but I feel a small tug on the tip of my wing and I am jerked back to reality--it really did happen.

I turn around and see a small girl standing before me. She barely reaches above my waist, and I know what she wants; it's not hard to guess, with the obvious admiration in her eyes.

The woman stands behind me, and as I bend down and unintentionally conceal the girl from view, her face changes into that of knowledge, and sadness.

She leans up to my ear, cupping her hands around it.

"Don't trust them," she says. Before I can ask what she means, an older man comes rushing up.

"Aliya! Leave her be--she has things to do. I know you want to talk to her, but she has to do things. Come help me build, Aliya. We can make you another toy later, if you want," he says. I straighten and he flashes an apologetic look at me as he takes Aliya's hand and walks her away. I smile, trying to show that it's okay, but he's already disappearing into the crowd with the little girl.

Aliya's face looks back at me at the last second and gives a slight nod.

Don't trust them.

Trust

"Welcome, welcome!" A man sits before me at a desk, which is scattered with papers. Framed pictures of various inventions hang on the walls, and there are gears everywhere--mosaics on the walls, key chains on the door handles, door knockers, and even some small gears scattered among the man's desk.

"I am the leader of the Clockwork Angels, an organization whose name is inspired by you and whose purpose is to help you," he says. "Katisha may have told you a little about us. We are devoted to finding new ways of enhancing people with technology, such as more advanced prosthetics and maybe even wings, like you have."

"No," I immediately say. "No wings. No anything, really. I may be happy that I have my wings, but my father was ruthless and cruel for putting them in me. He made me an outcast as a child and took me away from my mother. Do you really want that for other kids, too? Other kids, with loving parents and real lives? They feel pain too, you know. My father may not have realized I was human and felt pain, but that doesn't mean I'm going to let you do that too."

Katisha shifts uncomfortably beside me. The man pauses, then meets my eyes.

"We understand your pain--" he begins, and I spot a slight flicker of annoyance in his blue eyes as I interrupt.

"No, you don't. My father took me as a child, young enough for his experiment to work but old enough to remember my mother, and implanted me with technology because he wanted to make me better. Do you know how painful that is, hearing, at seven years old, how your father, your own father, thought you weren't good enough for this world? Your father, thinking that he needs to make you better, because oh, he wants a daughter that can fly, not a boring old child who has friends and a life, a possibility at a bright future ahead of them.

"No, you don't. You probably have both parents, and if you don't, then you were either adopted or grew up on the streets of the Mayberry District. Either way, you're not hunted by who knows how many organizations, people, criminal groups. You don't have to shake off memories of your father kidnapping you every time you fight someone whose trying to kidnap you. You don't have to live through memories like vivid dreams of your mother, your mother who is gone and no matter how much you tell yourself you'll find her, there's a good chance you won't, and that the only real memories you'll ever have of your parents taking care of you is your father, who thought you weren't good enough, so he implanted mechanical wings in you and made you an outcast from the start.

"You say you want to help me? Help me to know that I am the only one that has to be put through this kind of torture. The only one to have spent three years in a home with dinners that weren't perfect if they didn't have a nice ashy aftertaste, a father who spent all his time downstairs inventing, and every time you move pins and needles, like little tiny knives, run down your spine. The only one to have finally been taught how to fly--by your father--and when you run away that afternoon, your father is standing in the window with something that is most likely to prevent you from flying away."

The man sits silently in his chair. Katisha beside me lets out a small gasp, and I don't break eye contact with the man.

"No, I won't support you," I finish, in a much calmer voice. I ignore the emotions raging inside me, focusing on the here and now, but. . .I didn't know I needed that until now. I had been holding it all in, not knowing that I was doing it because that was what I had done for most of my life around my father. I hated him, so I kept everything from him, and that meant bottling my emotions up in a jar and locking them away. Apparently, that was what I had done for the four years I had been on my own.

The man shakes his head slowly. "I'm sorry," he says, "try that again."

My hand flicks out and seizes Katisha's wrist. I spin her around to face me, noticing, with a gleam of metal, a small dagger in her left hand. Behind me, the door opens, and a rush of pounding feet come into the room. Men, all dressed in armor and wielding spears, spread out to surround me in the small office.

The man stands up. "Support is necessary. We don't give up so easily. You're the first masterpiece; we wish to duplicate you, and we can't have you against us if that is to be accomplished," he says in a quiet, but confident, voice. He walks around the desk and studies my stance holding Katisha, then walks around me--in which my eyes, glaring at him, follow him the whole way--and leaves the room.

Then all hell breaks loose. I catch Katisha's wrist mid-stab, slip the dagger from her hand, and, for the first time in years, let my emotions take control.

Anger comes first. I whirl through two or three of the guards, stabbing and kicking until three lay unconscious at my feet, ignoring the cuts and bruises already scattered across my face and arms.

Determination. The next two guards seem like they're more highly trained, wielding a spear and a shield, and I notice several daggers hidden in pockets all over their armor. I drop my dagger and pick up two spears from the fallen guards, but instead of stabbing head-on, I wedge the spear tips into cracks in their armor. The guards look down, but ignore it and rush on. I push the spears point-first towards me from their places in the armor cracks and the entire chest plate comes cracking off both guards' chests, falling with a metallic bang on the floor.

They freeze. Look down. Look up. Fear flashes in their eyes, but soon returns to renewed vigor at trying to subdue me.

I throw aside the spears and seize one guard's shield. I hold on, ducking the other guards' spear swing at my head, and rip the shield from the guard's arm. He instantly grabs a dagger from his belt and I block the throw with his own shield, then spin and plant a solid kick in the other guard's chest, who topples backwards.

While he's down, I raise the shield above my head, break through the guard's defenses, and slam it down hard. The guard crumples, and I turn to face the one I kicked backwards, who now holds two daggers. I block his thrusts and slices with the shield and, when he's getting ready for a new round, I spin, shield still in hand, and my leg slams into his waist. I maintain my balance and proceed to drop the shield, easily slipping one of the guard's daggers from his fingers as he recovers from my kick, and I dispatch him swiftly.

Heartbreak. Four more guards rush at me all at once, and I, armed with one dagger, duck all four attacks. I back away towards the door, grabbing a couple fallen spears, and as soon as I get out, I slam the door closed. I try my best to deadbolt it with the spears I grabbed, then, knowing it won't hold long, I run down the twisting hallways mostly blindly. I emerge into the main warehouse room, where I look up at the ceiling and, seeing it's made of thin material between the wooden beams, I run, wings spread, at the people milling about, who have mostly stopped to look at me.

At the last second, I jump up and feel myself rise above them. Hundreds of faces peer up at me, and I notice one girl standing, giving a small smile as she watches me.

I use the guard's dagger and I cut a hole through the roof big enough for me to fly through just as the guards come rushing in. I fling the dagger down at them, and notice, with a little satisfaction, a guard raise his shield above his head to block it, cringing away from the weapon. Then I turn and fly up through the roof, entering the open air, all of Mayberry District laid out before me as I rise up into the clouds.

Don't trust them.