Alcatraz Versus the Knights of Crystallia

Chapter 19

Oh, wasn’t that how you expected me to end that last chapter? Was it kind of a downer? Made you feel bad about yourself?

Well, good.

We’re getting near the end, and I’m tired of putting on a show for you. I’ve tried to prove that I’m arrogant and selfish, but I just don’t think you’re buying it. So, maybe if I make the book a depressing pile of slop, you’ll leave me alone.

“Alcatraz?” Bastille whispered.

I mean, why is it that you readers always assume that you’re never to blame for anything? You just sit there, comfortable on your couch while we suffer. You can enjoy our pain and our misery because you’re safe.

Well, this is real to me. It’s real. It still affects me. Ruins me.

“Alcatraz?” Bastille repeated.

I am not a god. I am not a hero. I can’t be what you want me to be. I can’t save people, or protect them, because I can’t even save myself!

I am a murderer. Do you understand? I KILLED HIM.

“Alcatraz!” Bastille hissed.

I looked up from my bonds. A good half hour had passed. We were still captive, and I’d tried dozens of times to summon my Talent. It was unresponsive. Like a sleeping beast that refused to awaken. I was powerless.

My mother chatted with the other Librarians, who had sent in teams to rifle through the books and determine if there was anything else of value inside the archives. From what I’d heard when I cared enough to pay attention, they were planning to swap the rooms back soon.

Sing had tried to crawl away at one point. He had earned himself a boot to the face—he was already beginning to get a black eye. Himalaya sniffled quietly, leaning against Folsom. Prince Rikers continued to sit happily, as if this were all a big exciting amusement park ride.

“We need to escape,” Bastille said. “We need to get out. The treaty will be ratified in a matter of minutes!”

“I’ve failed, Bastille,” I whispered. “I can’t get us out.”

“Alcatraz…” she said. She sounded so exhausted. I glanced at her and saw the haunted fatigue from before, but it seemed even worse.

“I can barely keep myself awake,” she whispered. “This hole inside … it seems to be chewing on my mind, sucking out everything I think and feel. I can’t do this without you. You’ve got to lead us. I love my brother, but he’s useless.”

“That’s the problem,” I said, leaning back. “I am too.”

The Librarians were approaching. I stiffened, but they didn’t come for me. Instead, they grabbed Himalaya.

She cried out, struggling.

“Let go of her!” Folsom bellowed. “What are you doing?”

He tried to jump after them, but his hands and legs were tied, and all he managed to do was lurch forward onto his face. The Librarian thugs smiled, shoving him to the side, where he caused the table next to us to topple over. It scattered our possessions—some keys, a couple of coin pouches, one book—to the floor.

The book was the volume of Alcatraz Smedry and the Mechanic’s Wrench that Folsom had been carrying earlier, and it fell open to the front page. My theme music began to play, and I tensed, hoping for Folsom to attack.

But of course he didn’t. He wore the Inhibitor’s Glass on his arm. The little melody continued to sound; it was supposed to be brave and triumphant, but now it seemed a cruel parody.

My theme music played while I failed.

“What are you doing to her?” Folsom repeated, struggling uselessly as a Librarian stood with his boot on Folsom’s back.

The young Oculator Fitzroy approached; he still wore my Disguiser’s Lenses, which gave him an illusory body that made him look handsome and strong. “We’ve had a request,” he said. “From She Who Cannot Be Named.”

“You’re in contact with her?” Sing demanded.

“Of course we are,” Fitzroy said. “We Librarian sects get along far better than you all would like to think. Now, Ms. Snorgan … Sorgavag … She Who Cannot Be Named was not pleased to discover that Shasta’s team had planned to steal the Royal Archives—definitely a library—on the very day of the treaty ratification. However, when she heard about a very special captive we’d obtained, she was a little more forgiving.”

“You shall never get away with this, foul monster!” Prince Rikers suddenly exclaimed. “You may hurt me, but you shall never wound me!”

We all stared at him.

“How was that?” he asked me. “I think it was a good line. Maybe I should do it over. You know, get more baritone into it. When the villain talks about me, I should respond, right?”

“I wasn’t talking about you,” Fitzroy said, shaking Himalaya. “I’m talking about She Who Cannot Be Named’s former assistant. I think it’s time to show you all what happens when someone betrays the Librarians.”

I had sudden flashbacks to being tortured by Blackburn. The Dark Oculators delighted in pain and suffering.

It didn’t seem that Fitzroy was even going to bother with the torture part. The thugs held Himalaya back, and Fitzroy produced a knife. He pressed it to her neck. Sing began to cry out, requiring several guards to hold him down. Folsom was bellowing in rage. Librarian scientists just continued monitoring their equipment in the background.

This is what it came down to. Me, too weak to help. I was nothing without my Talent or my Lenses.

“Alcatraz,” Bastille whispered. Somehow I heard her over all the other noise. “I believe in you.”

It was virtually the same thing others had been telling me since I’d arrived in Nalhalla. But those things had all been lies. They hadn’t known me.

But Bastille did. And she believed in me.

From her, that meant something.

I turned with desperation, looking at Himalaya, who was held captive, weeping. Fitzroy seemed to be enjoying the pain he was causing the rest of us by holding that knife to her throat. I knew at that moment that he really intended to kill her. He would murder her in front of the man who loved her.

Who loved her.

My Lenses were gone. My Talent was gone. I only had one thing left.

I was a Smedry.

“Folsom!” I screamed. “Do you love her?”

“What?” he asked.

“Do you love Himalaya?”

“Of course I do! Please, don’t let him kill her!”

“Himalaya,” I demanded, “do you love him?”

She nodded as the knife began to cut. It was enough.

“Then I pronounce you married,” I said.

Everyone froze for a moment. A short distance away my mother turned and looked at us, suddenly alarmed. Fitzroy raised an eyebrow, his knife slightly bloodied. My theme music played faintly from the little book on the floor.

“Well, that’s touching,” Fitzroy said. “Now you can die as a married woman! I—”

At that instant, Himalaya’s fist took him in the face.

The ropes that bound her fell to the ground, snapped and broken, as she leaped into the air and kicked the two thugs beside her. The men went down, unconscious, and Himalaya spun like a dancer toward the group standing behind. She cleared them all with a sweeping kick delivered precisely, despite the fact that she seemed to have no idea what she was doing.

Her face was determined, her eyes wide with rage; a little trickle of blood ran down her neck. She twisted and spun, fighting with a beautiful, uncoordinated rage, fully under the control of her brand-new Talent.

She was now Himalaya Smedry. And as everyone knows (and I believe I’ve pointed out to you), when you marry a Smedry, you get their Talent.

I rolled to where Fitzroy had fallen. More importantly, where his knife had fallen. I kicked it across the floor to Bastille, who—being Bastille—caught it even though her hands were (literally) tied behind her back. In a second she’d cut herself free. In another second, both Sing and I were free.

Fitzroy sat up, holding his cheek, dazed. I grabbed the Disguiser’s Lenses off his face, and he immediately shrank back to being spindly and freckled. “Sing, grab him and make for the archives room!”

The hefty Mokian didn’t need to hear that again. He easily tucked the squirming Fitzroy under his arm while Bastille attacked the thugs who were holding Folsom down, defeating them both. But then she wavered nauseously.

“Get to the room, everyone!” I yelled as Himalaya kept the thugs at bay. Bastille nodded, wobbling as she helped the prince to his feet. Shasta watched from the side, yelling for the thugs to attack—but they were wary of engaging a Smedry Talent.

After struggling for a second to get that band of glass off my arm—it wouldn’t budge—I pulled open the drawer of the table and snatched the book my mother had stowed there.

That left us with one major problem. We were right back where we’d been when I’d made us surrender. Retreating into the archives room wouldn’t help if we remained surrounded by Librarians. We had to activate the swap. Unfortunately, there was no way I’d be able to reach those terminals. I figured I only had one chance.

Folsom rushed past, grabbing the still-playing music book off the ground and snapping it closed so Himalaya could come out of her super-kung-fu-Librarian-chick trance. She froze midkick, looking dazed. She had dropped all the thugs around her. Folsom grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her into a kiss. Then he pulled her after the others.

That only left me. I looked across the room at my mother, who met my eyes. She seemed rather self-confident, considering what had happened, and I figured that she figured that I couldn’t escape. Go figure.

I grabbed the pile of electrical cords off the ground and—pulling as hard as I could—yanked them out of their sockets in the containers of brightsand. Then I raced after my friends.

Bastille waited at the door that led into the archives room. “What’s that?” she said, pointing at the cords.

“Our only chance,” I replied, ducking into the room. She followed, then slammed the door—or, at least, what was left of it. It was pitch dark inside. I’d broken the lamps. I heard the breathing of my little group, shallow, worried.

“What now?” Sing whispered.

I held the cords in my hands. I touched the tips with my fingers, then closed my eyes. This was a big gamble. Sure, I’d been able to make the music box work, but this was something completely different.

I didn’t have time to doubt myself. The Librarians would be upon us in a few moments. I held those cords, held my breath, and activated them like I would a pair of Oculator’s Lenses.

Immediately, something drained from me. My strength was sapped away, and I felt a shock of exhaustion—as if my body had decided to run a marathon when I wasn’t looking. I dropped the cords, wobbling, and reached out to steady myself against Sing.

“You’re all dead, you know,” Fitzroy sputtered in the darkness; he was still held—I assumed—under Sing’s arm. “They’ll burst in here in a second and then you’re dead. What did you think? You’re trapped! Sandless idiots!”

I took a deep breath, righting myself. Then I pushed the door open.

The blonde Knight of Crystallia standing guard was still outside. “You all right?” she asked, peeking in. “What happened?” Behind her I could see the stone stairwell of the Royal Archives, still packed with soldiers.

“We’re back!” Sing said. “How…?”

“You powered the glass,” Bastille said, looking at me. “Like you did with Rikers’s silimatic music box. You initiated a swap!”

I nodded. At my feet, the cords to the Librarian machinery lay cut at the ends. Our swap had severed them where they’d poked through the door.

“Shattering Glass, Smedry!” Bastille said. “How in the name of the first Sands did you do that?”

“I don’t know,” I said, rushing out the doorway. “We can worry about it later. Right now, we’ve got to save Mokia.”