The Dark Talent (Alcatraz 5)

“Neat,” I said, stuffing a few pamphlets into my pocket. They were emblazoned with the phrase 615 EASY STEPS TO NOT BEING EVIL on the front.

Librarians fired back and forth, turning the area into a storm of gunfire. One of the rebels had dropped a crate down the hole and it had broken open, spilling teddy bears of various colors. I ran and snatched three, then pulled the pins and threw them in quick succession at approaching enemy troops.

Draulin tossed me another bear and the two of us took shelter beside my grandfather, who crouched next to a wall. “My, my…” Grandpa said, looking around the vast cavern. “This place is exactly as I imagined it. Nobbed Noviks! I’ve dreamed of breaking in here. Yes I have.”

“Why aren’t they fighting back very much?” I asked, pointing at the Librarians. The evil ones didn’t seem to be mounting as strong an offense as I would have assumed. Sure, there was gunfire back toward us, but no explosions.

“They’re probably worried about hurting the things in these archives,” Draulin said.

“That might help Himalaya and her team hold out,” I said.

“Yes, but for how long?” Draulin said. “Lord Smedry, have you given any thought toward how we are going to find one man in all of this?”

I nodded in agreement. This place was big, and my father was in here somewhere. Theoretically. We only had my mother’s word on that fact. I’d used the Truthfinder’s Lens to confirm she wasn’t lying, but what if she was just plain wrong?

“We’ll need to talk to your mother,” Grandpa said, seeming troubled. Perhaps he was thinking along the same lines as I was. “She claimed she could find him.”

“Let’s get into one of these archive rooms,” I said, tossing my bear. “Might be easier to chat without worrying about bullets.” Draulin waved to Dif and to Shasta, who had just landed, and the five of us ducked into one of the hutlike stone archive rooms. Inside, shelves and shelves of recipe books shuddered against one another, responding to the firefight outside. A few robe-wearing cultists cowered in the corner, and I tossed a handful of pamphlets to keep them distracted.

“All right,” Grandpa said to us. “Shasta, what do you suggest?”

“We find Attica,” my mother said. “I’m sure he’s here. This place holds one of the largest archives of Forgotten Language texts in existence. If we find where the Librarians are keeping those, we’ll find him.”

“Surely it’s not that simple,” I said. “I mean, how did he sneak in here? How is he keeping the Librarians from catching him? If he is here, he’ll be hidden. What makes you think we’ll be able to find him, if they can’t?”

Draulin looked at me and blinked, as if stunned.

“What?” I demanded.

“I apologize, Lord Smedry,” she said. “But that was merely a solid, responsible assessment of our situation—filled with insightful realizations and important questions that need to be asked.”

Was that … a compliment?

“Of course,” Draulin added, “a truly responsible person would have asked those things before leading us in a headfirst assault on the most powerful Librarian stronghold in the world. Baby steps, I suppose.”

“Right,” Grandpa said, clapping his hands. “So where are the Forgotten Language texts?”

My mother shrugged. “No idea. I’ve never been in here before, remember?”

An explosion shook the ground. I peeked out the doorway. Unfortunately, it looked like the Librarians had sent several hulking Alivened—made entirely from old romance novels—to attack our position. Thrown teddy bears reduced the first of these to fluttering scraps of paper, but more continued to come, and Alivened are surprisingly hardy.

“Himalaya!” I hissed.

She took a moment to pose dramatically in her cape and leather skirt before joining us. Being around Smedrys has that kind of effect on people.

“You all should go do your thing,” she told us, shouldering her machine gun. “My people will pull into one of these buildings and hold off the Bibliodenites. We can probably hole up for a while. If it goes too long, I’m going to get my people out of here. We have grappling guns; we should be able to extract back out that hole.”

“We need to find the archive of Forgotten Language texts,” I said. “Any ideas?”

“I’ve never visited those,” she said, “but these are Librarians. There’s definitely an index in here somewhere. Find that, and it will lead you to the cavern with the Forgotten Language books.”

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll just have to … Wait, did you say the cavern with the books? You mean the building inside this cavern, right?”

Himalaya laughed. “You think this is the whole Highbrary? I already told you it’s beneath the entire downtown! This is merely the central hub. There are hundreds upon hundreds of other caverns, though most are small—barely big enough for one subtopic—burrowed along corridors in the rock.”

Great. “Well, Grandpa?”

“We split up, obviously!” Grandpa said. “Two groups; we’ll search twice as quickly.”

Searching infinity twice as fast didn’t seem like it would get us anywhere, but Grandpa was still probably right. “I’ll take Dif and Draulin,” I said, reluctantly considering my options.

“I’m going with you,” my mother said.

“But—”

“I came here at your request, not his,” Shasta said, eyeing Grandpa. “Leavenworth can take the knight; his group will have only two people, so it makes sense for the knight to join him.”

“Fine,” I said.

“Lord Smedry,” Draulin said. “I strongly recommend not separating me from the prisoner.”

“What?” Shasta asked. “Worried you’ll miss out on another chance to sucker punch me?”

The ground shook from another explosion.

“Make your decisions quickly, people,” Himalaya said.

I met my mother’s eyes, then pulled a Lens out of my pocket. I knew that some of the words she had said so far weren’t lies, but there can be a big gap between “factually correct” and “true.”

And so I raised the Shaper’s Lens.

My grandfather drew in his breath sharply. He looked from me to Shasta. She didn’t say a word, and I was confident she knew exactly what this Lens did. She knew a lot of things. Not quite as much as she pretended to know, mind you—but since she pretended to know basically everything, “not quite as much” still covered a lot of ground.

I raised the Lens and gave it a burst of power. As I’d been warned, I started glowing. The city’s dome, which prevented people from using Lenses to disguise themselves and sneak in, made it obvious I was using a Lens—in this case, one that let me see someone’s heart, soul, and deepest desires.

My mother’s soul opened to me.

The air around her warped and seemed to burn away, revealing an image of her standing in the center of a peaceful street. On one side of her, suburban homes ran in a row, each with manicured grass and toys on the front porch.

Opposite them, Free Kingdomer castles rose with shining gates and beautiful brickwork. Everything seemed perfectly at peace, save my mother, who stood before a short stone column. It was about as tall as her waist, and Mother leaned against its top, hands pressed down on a blackness that seemed to be trying to bubble up through the center of the column.

Mother shoved and pushed, keeping the blackness inside. I suddenly heard a small voice crying, and watched my mother turn and look over her shoulder at a boy who stood in the street, arms outstretched. My mother reached toward him, and the blackness started to bubble out around her hand.

She turned her back on the child and continued to work, to toil, to keep that darkness contained. While all the while, the child cried out for his mother …

I found myself trembling, and so I ripped the Lens free of my eye and turned away. Stupid thing wasn’t working. Wasn’t it supposed to show me what my mother wanted most in life? This was obviously how she saw herself: a sole figure trying to keep

the peace, to hold back destruction and darkness, at the cost of all else.

Well, that was merely her opinion. She wasn’t the only one fighting. Far from it. She could have taken a little time for someone else in her life. What good did it do to save the world if the ones who needed you most were left to starve?

Shasta didn’t offer me any comfort. She stood with arms folded, avoiding my eyes, as if uncomfortable.

I shoved the Lens away. Well, Grandpa had said it could be unpredictable. At least I had my answer. The Lens had shown me a world at peace, with the Hushlands and the Free Kingdoms existing side by side. That was what my mother wanted: a world where everyone could just live their lives. It was still terrible, as in her vision, the Librarians maintained their rule over half the world.

But at least I knew where her heart was.

Grandpa walked up to me and put his arm around my shoulders. I was taller than he was. It hadn’t always been that way, had it?

“Strength, lad,” he said softly.

The building rocked again. Right. Middle of a battle. Sneaking into the Highbrary. I composed myself and nodded to my grandfather, then back to the others. “I’ll go with Mother and Cousin Dif,” I said. “Grandpa Smedry will go with Draulin.”

“Off we go, then!” Grandpa exclaimed. “To victory! Lad, you still have that phone Kaz gave you?”

I dug in my pocket, pulling it out. It was broken from one of my several falls.

“Drat,” Grandpa said, then handed me his.

“But you—”