Breaking Magic (The Legacy of Androva Book 5) Read online

  “Did I hear you right? You reckon you were linking while you were still in the childstation?”

  Yeah, I should mention the words that Thinkers use. With them, it was all models, ideas and pieces, and how they link together. Linking was their thing. They didn’t really do much apart from that.

  I suppose they helped us out. They told us the quickest routes to take, divided the assignments, and put our skills in the right place at the right time.

  But they never picked up a hammer, or climbed a wall. Their bodies never ached with tiredness or bruises from a hard day. We had nothing in common. Even the smallest attempt at conversation usually ended in irritation, on both sides.

  “I don’t reckon I was. I just was.”

  We looked at Jory curiously to see how he’d handle this.

  “Impossible,” he said, folding his arms. There was a short silence.

  Well, that was a bit disappointing. I was expecting a proper Thinker argument. At least a word or two that I didn’t know.

  Then Benedar grinned. “You must be Jory.”

  “How did you…?” I said before I could stop myself.

  “The others referred to the Thinkers by name. Jory was said first, which means he’s the oldest. And”-he looked Jory up and down-“you are rather old.”

  His tone was sympathetic. Jory bristled, and I swallowed a smirk.

  “Basic logic,” said Jory dismissively. “Doesn’t prove you can link.”

  “My name is Benedar,” continued the small boy, looking from one face to another. “And as I said before, I know why I’m here.”

  We all waited. There was another grin hovering around the edges of his mouth, and I swear the scrap was enjoying the attention. How did he get to be so sure of himself?

  Then he came out with a speech that no six-year-old should have been able to make.

  “It’s simple cause and effect. The Opta are being forced to change the balance between Thinkers and Workers. The breeding programme is malfunctioning. There are too many Thinkers.

  “I’m here because there wasn’t a Worker of the right age and physical skills available.”

  We gaped in disbelief. Not enough Workers? That wasn’t possible. It was Thinkers who were in short supply. Intentionally. And even I could see the point of that.

  “I heard the whispered conversations. I saw the evaluation forms. They even tried to convince me that I was a Worker,” added Benedar, his grin breaking through.

  “I failed all the Worker tests. They accused me of failing on purpose, but that’s really funny. If I failed on purpose, it automatically makes me a Thinker…”

  He giggled, and unbelievably, we all smiled back at him. Jory pressed his lips together, but didn’t speak.

  “I know I’m not much help yet,” he continued, serious now. “I’m going to learn as fast as I can. Cal… Callax is exactly what I wanted in a brother.”

  He looked so certain. The others stared at me. I felt a warmth in my chest, and I tried to squash it. But I think the scrap knew he’d broken through my reserve.

  The idea of additional Thinkers in the Exta population was an interesting one. We decided to ask around to see if it was happening to any of the other units.

  Jory choked down his hurt pride at being wrong and started asking Benedar a lot of questions. The rest of us had to leave for our assignment, so I told Benedar to stay in the caves with Jory and Zack for the afternoon. I gave Jory a threatening look that told him I expected Benedar to be looked after.

  I struggled to concentrate on my work. I remembered what Garrett had said about things having to change one day. Well, this was definitely a change.

  I wished so much that he could meet Benedar. I was too stupid to understand most of what Benedar and Jory had been talking about. But Garrett wasn’t. I mean, he hadn’t been. Past, Callax, past. He’s never coming back.

  I was dusty, exhausted, and aching when we came back. Benedar was really happy to see me, and I returned his smile before I could help myself. What harm could it do? Being horrible to him only made me feel worse anyway.

  It was the middle of the three days without sunlight, which was always the worst. There was a dark day behind, and another one in front still to go.

  Exta lights were battery powered. Of course, we weren’t allowed to recharge them often enough, which left us in twilight a lot of the time.

  The Opta used a special power that was delivered along wires and cables, from a giant battery that never ran out. Jory had told me it was powered by the sun.

  Without the sun, it seemed most of our world would die. It would be freezing cold and dark, obviously. But according to Jory, there’d also be no rain.

  We didn’t have many plants, and we had even fewer animals, but they both needed the light and they both needed the rain.

  The sun powered the water filters too. When the rainwater ran out, we couldn’t drink from the ocean without it being filtered. The Opta were obsessed with using filtered water for everything.

  I wished I understood it all better. Benedar, as a Thinker, would have access to the Book Rooms. Maybe I could learn something too.

  I didn’t realise I’d soon be learning a bit more than I bargained for.

  Chapter Four - Too Close For Comfort

  Benedar studied hard. He soaked up knowledge like the Thinker that he was. Within six months, Jory had joined the Workers in the unit.

  “You don’t need three Thinkers,” he argued. “I’m close to NearBound anyway, and I might as well help with the workload.”

  We couldn’t deny that an extra pair of hands made a difference, even if Jory was useless when it came to heights and heavy weights.

  I was proud of Benedar. He never talked down to us. He was the first Thinker who was really part of the unit. We were all very protective of him.

  Even Zack came out of his shell a little bit. It turned out that he was really observant. Once he was with the rest of the unit more often, he had some great ideas about who we should be paired with to get the most done.

  And his impression of Albany in a bad mood was the funniest thing I’d seen in a long time. They looked nothing alike, physically. Zack’s hair was a kind of dirty blond colour, and his eyes were blue. But he got the huffing noises and the hunched shoulders just right. I don’t think we’d ever laughed like that together before. Though he wouldn’t admit it, I know that Albany enjoyed the attention too.

  But the thing that really made Benedar popular was the secret system he worked out with a girl from another unit.

  He met up with a Thinker called Haylen in the Book Rooms. She was just a little bit older, and they were both lonely. She was small for her age, with brown eyes and hair, just like him.

  It seemed that Benedar might be right about the breeding programme. There were other younger Thinkers who were matched with a Worker.

  I didn’t like leaving Benedar alone, but there was nothing I could do about it. Even if I’d been allowed in the Book Rooms in the first place, I couldn’t read, could I? Better that I did the work my skills were suited to.

  Benedar and Haylen made friends. Once they realised how easy it would be to influence the location and timing of the work assignments for their two units, there was no stopping them.

  The Opta kept male and female units apart as much as possible. Even talking was completely off limits once we left the childstation, as Dervan had found out to his cost.

  If the Opta knew Benedar had actually made friends with a girl, they would have ended it. One or both of them would have found their ears ringing with the sound of the Initiation Word. You can’t be friends with someone who’s dead. Problem solved.

  But Haylen and Benedar were Thinkers. They quickly set up a code to exchange messages. Right under the Opta’s noses.

  The time they found for us wasn’t much. Half an hour here and there, when the paths of our two units crossed almost by accident. But those moments were startling. They were important. Life actually improved.

  A few stolen kisses, and suddenly Albany was working twice as hard to finish on time. The older boys had something to think about that wasn’t related to the Gathering, or how quickly time passed after your seventeenth birthday.

  The younger boys had a reason to laugh. A different perspective on things. Someone to show off to.

  As for me, I still wasn’t sure about girls. I was interested in them, but I didn’t really know what to do. I felt too old to be just friends with them. Too young to kiss them. Too awkward to even look at them properly.

  I tripped over my own feet. My own feet. I lost the ability to speak. And my cheeks went so red. All of my nervousness rushed into my face like the sun on the fourth day.

  For a couple of weeks, the rest of the unit followed me around calling me “Cal-al-al.” I’d been trying to talk to Haylen’s older sister, and my mouth had refused to even get past the first syllable of my name. That pretty much sums up my ability to talk to girls.

  Inevitably, Jory’s Gathering came round more quickly than we expected or wanted. Like most Thinkers, he struggled in the end. After he was summoned, all that knowledge inside his head suddenly became like a rock that he couldn’t escape.

  What he didn’t know about the process, he could probably guess. Us Workers knew very little by comparison.

  To be fair to him, he kept it all to himself. We could hear his nightmares, even from the farthest cave, but he never burdened the rest of us. As he walked away, we could almost see the terror oozing out of him, and he looked half-way to being broken already.

  He asked us to stand near the front. He knew that Zack wasn’t very strong, and he thought it might help if the rest of the unit were nearby.

  It was the first time since Garrett that I had been so close to the acti
on. I didn’t like it. Jory was one of the last, and he couldn’t even speak properly by the time we saw him. He was like a dying animal. Desperate and mindless.

  Zack appeared to be close to passing out. His agile Thinker’s brain was buckling under the brute force of the words he was required to say. His body, always fragile, was shaking and shaking.

  I allowed my gaze to drift upwards. I didn’t think I could watch the Breaker extract another life. This close, the expressions on his face were disgusting. He obviously got a pretty big kick out of what he was doing.

  I looked at the statue instead. Its mouth was open in a silent roar, neck stretched forward and eyes slanted backward. So many spiked teeth.

  They told us in the childstation that a Flyer could fit a whole scrap in its mouth and snap its bones with one bite. We were scared of the Flyers long before we saw them for real.

  There was a gasp from the crowd, and I froze for a second. I looked back down just in time to see the Breaker straightening up. He’d been whispering something in Zack’s ear. All my muscles locked together, rigid with tension.

  Zack’s voice came out of nowhere. “Nooooooooo!” he wailed, high and thin and frantic. His shaking increased. Then his face filled with an expression of such yearning that it almost hurt to watch him.

  The Binder stepped disdainfully round Jory, who was still pleading incoherently for release. She lifted her sleeves higher, showing the curling symbols on her arms. They matched the pattern on the inner row above the doorway behind her.

  I wanted to look away, but I was mesmerized. The symbols were glowing as if they had a life force of their own. They were sinister and beautiful at the same time.

  Zack reached for her with his whole body. Like she was the answer to every dream he’d ever had. A light flared in her eyes, and he was bound. He sagged with relief, the craving momentarily subdued.

  The Opta leaders enjoyed our horrified expressions. We couldn’t help leaning away. As if those few inches would protect us if they decided to say the Initiation Word again.

  She traced her symbols with one slender, white finger, and both Zack and Jory fell backwards. Unthinking, unseeing, their minds no longer their own.

  Her brother laughed. “See how practical this is? I bind one Exta, yet I solve two problems.”

  I stared, too frightened even to wonder what he was talking about. Benedar was now the only Thinker in our unit. He was seven years old. He needed me. I trembled with the desire to run.

  “Problem one… this feeble creature could not push four simple words out of his mouth. An Exta who can’t obey the rules of the Gathering is no use to me. Problem two… I understand that we have rather too many Thinkers in the current Exta population.”

  He tapped his mouth with his left forefinger. “I had considered extracting their life essences straight out of the childstation to redress the balance. But their skills are just too lacking at that age. And the joy of an appreciative audience… far better this way.”

  Then he added, almost casually, “The new summoning age for Thinkers will be seventeen years. Until the balance between Thinkers and Workers is corrected.”

  There was a stunned silence. Did that mean…? All the Thinkers who were seventeen right now… they’d been summoned? Just like that?

  “Sister, we have a busy few days ahead of us. But the allocations we will generate…”

  When the Breaker said this, the anticipation in his face was shocking. He was almost licking his lips. I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. Fear, disgust, anger. All swirling together.

  “Well, don’t just stand there, all of you. I need someone to say the required four words so that I may complete the Gathering. The Time of Assignment is tomorrow.”

  No one moved. The prospect of being noticed by the Breaker at that moment was hardly appealing.

  “I can make it sixteen years of age for the Thinkers if you prefer.”

  We hardly dared to breathe. Surely he wouldn’t go that far?

  “Still no volunteers?” he went on. “Perhaps, then, I should start with the younger ones after all…”

  I took a step forward. Anything so that Benedar would not have to face this monster yet.

  The Breaker regarded me with a cunning expression.

  “Your brother must be a very young Thinker for you to react so obediently.”

  I tried to keep my face blank. It was really difficult.

  “Those boys are from my unit,” I said, looking at Zack and Jory. “I want to do the right thing.”

  He gave a bark of laughter. “The right thing.” Then he looked at me more closely. “As if you, an Exta, could possibly know the difference between right and wrong.”

  The temptation to scream back at him exactly what was wrong with this whole situation rose in my throat like a trapped bird. I had to look at my feet.

  “Very well. Say it.”

  “Please kill my brother,” I recited carefully, making a silent apology to Jory at the same time.

  A few seconds later, it was done. One more Exta life consumed by the rock and symbols of the ruling house. All of Jory’s brilliant ideas and gentle humour, gone forever.

  It was hard to stay calm. If I hadn’t been worried about Benedar, I might have grabbed the Breaker by the throat, just to see if I could squeeze some of the life essence out of him before they bound me.

  I was so fixated on the image of strangling our tormentor that I didn’t notice Zack until he was nearly past me. The sight of his dying older brother lying on the ground next to him had broken through the Binder’s trance.

  He had struggled to his feet and was shuffling slowly backwards, dawning horror on his face at the realisation that it would be him lying there at the next Gathering.

  A whisper of concern swept quietly through the crowd. No one was foolhardy enough to speak, but everyone wanted to remind Zack that he was bound now.

  Did you think that the Binder tied us up? Chained us to the wall with knots of rope and links of metal perhaps?

  No. The binding wasn’t visible. We couldn’t cut it off or rip it out. It was inside us, attached to our life essence. Switched on somehow by that terrifying word.

  At Jory’s Gathering, when I was only thirteen, I didn’t know exactly how it acted. My work assignments kept me away from the city centre most of the time. I had no idea how lucky I was.

  But I knew that we couldn’t leave the Flyer once it had us. And sure enough, as soon as Zack stepped out of the shadow of the statue, it struck.

  His face twisted, and his body went rigid. But it was the scream of pain that shocked me. Like he was being torn limb from limb. It was the worst noise I had ever heard.

  The awful thing was that Zack didn’t seem to realise what he had to do to make it stop. He wasn’t stepping back. The Opta leaders were watching him with malicious glee. It went on and on.

  There was a muffled curse from Albany, standing near the front with the rest of our unit, and he gave Zack a great shove backwards to safety. The screams gave way to gasping sobs, echoing around the silent square.

  I put my hand on Zack’s shoulder, wishing I had been brave enough to do what Albany had.

  The Breaker put his head to one side, considering us. “Interesting,” he said. “I didn’t appreciate that your Exta sensibilities extended beyond the brother/sister pairing.

  “I am going to have to check what else might be happening with the synapses in those brains of yours.”

  I didn’t know what he was talking about. But he looked interested, which usually meant bad news.

  “You,” he said to me, “and you”-he turned to Albany-“will stay.”

  We stiffened, exchanging fearful glances.

  “No, no,” the Breaker added with a chuckle. “Not to be bound. I want you to see what happens between now and the Gathering. And I’m going to watch you.”

  Chapter Five - Our First Night

  There was no time to speak to the others. The square emptied, everyone wanting to get away before they were pulled into this strange situation themselves. I could only imagine how the seventeen-year-old Thinkers in the crowd were feeling.

  The Time of Assignment was tomorrow. It happened every two weeks. The city would light up in blues and greens until even the sky changed colour. We guessed it had something to do with the stolen lives.