Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones

Chapter 4

You think you’ve figured it out, have you? My logical dilemma? My argumentative lapse? My brain freeze of rationality? My … uh … traffic jam of lucidity?

Let’s just forget that last one.

Anyway, there is—as you’ve probably noticed—a flaw in my logic. I claim to be a liar. Outright, without any guile, and straightforward.

Yet after declaring myself to be a liar, I have proceeded to write a book about my life. So therefore, how can you trust the story itself? If it’s being told by a liar, won’t it all be false? In fact, how can you trust that I’m a liar? If I always lie, then wouldn’t I have had to be lying about saying that I’m a liar?

Now you see why I mentioned brain freezes, eh? Let me clarify. I have been a liar. Most of my life is a sham—the heroics I’m known for, the life I’ve led, the fame I’ve enjoyed. Those are the lies.

The things I’m telling you here are factual. In this case, I can only prove that I’m a liar by telling the truth, though I will also include some lies—which I will point out—to act as object lessons proving the truth that I’m a liar.

Got that?

I was thrown off the bedroll and rammed against the glass wall as Dragonaut shook, twisting away from the explosion that was still visible in the darkness outside my wall. Our vessel didn’t appear to have been damaged, but it had been a close call.

I rubbed my head, coming awake. Then cursed quietly and scrambled out the door. At that moment, Dragonaut lurched again, moving to the right. I was thrown off my feet as a flaring missile barely missed our ship. It trailed a glow of flaming smoke behind it, then exploded off in the distance.

I righted myself in time to see something else shoot past Dragonaut—not another missile, but something with roaring engines. It looked alarmingly like an F-15 fighter jet.

“Shattering Glass!” I exclaimed, forcing myself to my feet and pulling out my Oculator’s Lenses. I shoved them on and rushed to the cockpit.

I arrived, stumbling through the doorway as Bastille pointed. “Left!” she yelled. “Bank left!”

I could see sweat on Australia’s face as she turned Dragonaut out of the way of the approaching fighter. I barely managed to stay on my feet as the ship dodged another missile.

I groaned, shaking my head. Kaz stood on a seat, hands leaning against the control dash, looking out the other eyeball. “Now this,” the short man proclaimed, “is more like it! It’s been ages since anyone shot missiles at me!”

Bastille gave him a harsh stare, then glanced toward me as I rushed up, grabbing a chair to steady myself.

Ahead, the fighter launched another missile.

I focused, trying to get my Talent to engage at a distance and destroy the jet like it did guns. Nothing happened.

Australia twisted Dragonaut just in time, throwing me to the side, my hands slipping free of the chair. That’s one problem with making everything out of glass. Handholds become rather difficult to maintain.

Bastille managed to stay up, but she had on her Warrior’s Lenses, which enhanced her physical abilities. Kaz didn’t have any Lenses on, but he seemed to have an excellent sense of balance.

I rubbed my head as the missile exploded off in the distance. “This shouldn’t be possible!” I said. “That jet has so many moving parts, my Talent should have been able to stop it easy.”

Bastille shook her head, glancing at me. “Glass missiles, Alcatraz.”

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Australia agreed, glancing over her shoulder, watching the jet’s fire trails. “That ship isn’t Hushlander technology—or, well, not completely. It’s some kind of fusion. Parts of the jet body look like they’re metal, but others look like they’re glass.”

Bastille gave me a hand to help me back up to my feet.

“Aw, birchnuts!” Kaz swore, pointing. I squinted, leaning against the chair, watching the jet bank and turn back toward us. It seemed more maneuverable, more precise, than an ordinary jet. As it turned toward us, its cockpit started to glow.

Not the whole cockpit. Just the glass covering it. I frowned, and my friends seemed equally confused.

The jet’s glass canopy shot forth a beam of glowing white power, directed at us. It hit one of the dragon’s wings, spraying out shards of ice and snow. The wing, caught in the grip of the cold, froze in place. Then, as its mechanisms tried to force it to move, the wing shattered into a thousand pieces.

“Frostbringer’s Lens!” Bastille shouted as Dragonaut rocked.

“That was no Lens!” Australia said. “That fired from the canopy glass!”

“Amazing!” Kaz said, holding on to his seat as the ship rocked.

We’re going to die, I thought.

It wasn’t the first time I’d felt that icy pit of terror, that sense of horrible doom that came from thinking I was going to die. I felt it on the altar when I was about to get sacrificed, I felt it when Blackburn shot me with his Torturer’s Lens, and I felt it as I watched the F-15 turn back toward us for another run.

I never got used to that feeling. It’s kind of like getting punched in the face by your own mortality.

And mortality has a wicked right hook.

“We need to do something!” I shouted as Dragonaut lurched. Australia, however, had her eyes closed—I’d later learn that she was mentally compensating for the lost wing, keeping us in the air. Ahead of us, the fighter’s cockpit began glowing again.

“We are doing something,” Bastille said.

“What?”

“Stalling!”

“For what?”

Something thumped above. I glanced up, apprehensive as I looked through the translucent glass. Bastille’s mother, Draulin, stood up on the roof of Dragonaut. A majestic cloak fluttered out behind her, and she wore her steel armor. She carried a Sword of Crystallia.

I’d seen one once before, during the library infiltration. Bastille had pulled it out to fight against Alivened monsters. I’d thought that maybe I’d remembered the sword’s ridiculous size wrong—that perhaps it had simply looked big next to Bastille.

I was wrong. The sword was enormous, at least five feet long from the tip of the blade to the hilt. It glittered, made completely of the crystal from which the Crystin, and Crystallia itself, get their name.

(The knights aren’t terribly original with names. Crystin, Crystallia, crystals. One time when I was allowed into Crystallia, I jokingly dubbed my potato a “Potatin potato, grown and crafted in the Fields of Potatallia.” The knights were not amused. Maybe I should have used my carrot instead.)

Draulin stepped across the head of our flying dragon, her armored boots clinking against the glass. Somehow, she managed to retain a sure footing despite the wind and the shaking vehicle.

The jet fired a beam from its Frostbringer’s glass, aiming for another wing. Bastille’s mother jumped, leaping through the air, cloak flapping. She landed on the wing itself, raising her crystalline sword. The beam of frost hit the sword and disappeared in a puff. Bastille’s mother barely even bent beneath the blow. She stood powerfully, her armored visor obscuring her face.

The cockpit fell silent. It seemed impossible to me that Draulin had managed such a feat. Yet as I waited, the jet fired again, and once again Bastille’s mother managed to get in front of the beam and destroy it.

“She’s … standing on top of Dragonaut,” I said as I watched through the glass.

“Yes,” Bastille said.

“We appear to be going several hundred miles an hour.”

“About that.”

“She’s blocking laser beams fired by a jet airplane.”

“Yes.”

“Using nothing but her sword.”

“She’s a Knight of Crystallia,” Bastille said, looking away. “That’s the sort of thing they do.”

I fell silent, watching Bastille’s mother run the entire length of Dragonaut in the space of a couple seconds, then block an ice beam fired at us from behind.

Kaz shook his head. “Those Crystin,” he said. “They take the fun out of everything.” He smiled toothily.

To this day, I haven’t been able to tell if Kaz genuinely has a death wish, or if he only likes to act that way. Either way, he’s a loon. But then, he’s a Smedry. That’s virtually a synonym for “insane, foolhardy lunatic.”

I glanced at Bastille. She watched her mother move above, and seemed longing, yet ashamed at the same time.

That’s the sort of thing they expect her to be able to do, I thought. That’s why they took her knighthood from her—because they thought she wasn’t up to their standards.

“Um, trouble!” Australia said. She’d opened her eyes, but looked very frazzled as she sat with her hand on the glowing panel. Up ahead, the fighter jet was charging its glass again—and it had just released another missile.

“Grab on!” Bastille said, getting ahold of a chair. I did the same, for all the good it did. I was again tossed to the side as Australia dodged. Up above, Draulin managed to block the Frostbringer’s ray, but it looked close.

The missile exploded a short distance from the body of Dragonaut.

We can’t keep doing this, I thought. Australia looks like she can barely hold on, and Bastille’s mother will get tired eventually.

We’re in serious trouble.

I picked myself up, rubbing my arm, blinking away the afterimage of the missile explosion. I could feel something as the jet shot past us. A dark twisting in my stomach, just like I’d felt on the runway. It felt a little like the sense that told me when an Oculator nearby was using one of their Lenses. Yet this was different. Tainted somehow.

The creature from the airport was in that jet. Before, it had shot the Lens out of my hand. Now it used a jet that could fire on me without exploding. Somehow, it seemed to understand how to use both Free Kingdomer technology and Hushlander technology together.

And that seemed a very, very dangerous combination.

“Do we have any weapons onboard the ship?” I asked.

Bastille shrugged. “I have a dagger.”

“That’s it?”

“We’ve got you, cousin,” Australia said. “You’re an Oculator and a Smedry of the pure line. You’re better than any ordinary weapons.”

Great, I thought. I glanced up at Bastille’s mother, who stood on the nose of the dragon. “How can she stand there like that?”

“Grappler’s Glass,” Bastille said. “It sticks to other kinds of glass, and she’s got some plates of it on the bottom of her boots.”

“Do we have any more?”

Bastille paused, then—without questioning me—she rushed over to a side of the cockpit, searching through a glass trunk on the floor. She came up a few moments later with a pair of boots.

“These will do the same thing,” she said, handing them to me. They looked far too large for my feet.

The ship rocked as Australia dodged another missile. I didn’t know how many of those the jet had, but it seemed like it could carry far more than it should be able to. I slumped back against the wall as Dragonaut shook, then I pulled the first boot on over my shoe and tied the laces tight.

“What are you doing?” Bastille asked. “You’re not planning to go up there, are you?”

I pulled on the other boot. My heart was beginning to beat faster.

“What do you expect to do, Alcatraz?” Bastille asked quietly. “My mother is a full Knight of Crystallia. What help could you possibly be to her?”

I hesitated, and Bastille flushed slightly at how harsh the words had sounded, though it wasn’t really in her nature to retract things like that. Besides, she was right.

What was I thinking?

Kaz moved over to us. “This is bad, Bastille.”

“Oh, you finally noticed that, did you?” she snapped.

“Don’t get touchy,” he said. “I may like a good ride, but I hate sudden stops as much as the next Smedry. We need an escape plan.”

Bastille fell silent for a moment. “How many of us can you use your Talent to transport?”

“Up here, in the sky?” he asked. “Without any place to flee? I’m not sure, honestly. I doubt I’d be able to get all of us.”

“Take Alcatraz,” Bastille said. “Go now.”

My stomach twisted. “No,” I said, standing. My feet immediately locked on to the glass floor of the cockpit. When I tried to take a step, however, my foot came free. When I put it down again, it locked into place.

Nice, I thought, trying not to focus on what I was about to do.

“Chestnuts, kid!” Kaz swore. “You might not be the brightest torch in the row, but I don’t want to see you get killed. I owe your father that much. Come with me—we’ll get lost, then head to Nalhalla.”

“And leave the others to die?”

“We’ll be fine,” Bastille said quickly. Too quickly.

The thing is, I paused. It may not seem very heroic, but a large part of me wanted to go with Kaz. My hands were sweating, my heart thumping. The ship rocked as another missile nearly hit us. I saw a spiderweb of cracks appear on the right side of the cockpit.

I could run. Escape. Nobody would blame me. I wanted so badly to do just that.

I didn’t. This might look like bravery, but I assure you that I’m a coward at heart. I’ll prove that at another time. For now, simply believe that it wasn’t bravery that spurred me on, it was pride.

I was the Oculator. Australia had said I was their main weapon. I determined to see what I could do. “I’m going up,” I said. “How do I get there?”

“Hatch on the ceiling,” Bastille finally said. “In the same room where you came up on the rope. Come on, I’ll show you.”

Kaz caught her arm as she moved. “Bastille, you’re actually going to let him do this?”

She shrugged. “If he wants to get himself killed, what business is it of mine? It means one less person we have to worry about saving.”

I smiled wanly. I knew Bastille well enough to hear the concern in her voice. She was actually worried about me. Or perhaps just angry at me. With her, the difference is difficult to judge.

She took off down the corridor, and I followed, quickly getting the rhythm of walking with the boots. As soon as they touched glass, they locked on, making me stable—something I appreciated when the ship rocked from another blast. I moved a little more slowly than normal in them, but they were worth it.

I caught up to Bastille in the room, and she threw a lever, opening a hatch in the ceiling.

“Why are you letting me do this?” I asked. “Usually you complain when I try to get myself killed.”

“Yeah, well, at least this time I won’t be the one who looks bad if you die. My mother’s the knight in charge of protecting you.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Plus,” she said, “maybe you’ll be able to do something. Who knows. You’ve gotten lucky in the past.”

I smiled, and somehow the vote of confidence—such as it was—bolstered me. I glanced up. “How do I get out there?”

“Your feet stick to the walls, stupid.”

“Oh, right,” I said. Taking a deep breath, I stepped up onto the side of the wall. It was easier than I’d thought it would be—silimatic technicians say that Grappler’s Glass works to hold your entire body in place, not just your feet. Either way, I found it rather easy (if a little disorienting) to walk up the side of the wall and out onto the top of Dragonaut.

Let’s talk about air. You see, air is a really nifty thing. It lets us make cool sounds with our mouths, it carries smells from one person to another, and without it nobody would be able to play air guitar. Oh, and there is that other thing it does: It lets us breathe, allowing all animal life to exist on the planet. Great stuff, air.

The thing about air is, you don’t really think about it until (a) you don’t have enough or (b) you have way too much of it. That second one is particularly nasty when you get hit in the face by a bunch of it going somewhere in the neighborhood of three hundred miles an hour.

The wind buffeted me backward, and only the Grappler’s Glass on my feet kept me upright. Even with it, I bent backward precariously, like some gravity-defying dancer in a music video. I’d have felt kind of cool about that if I hadn’t been terrified for my life.

Bastille must have seen my predicament, for she rushed toward the cockpit. I’m still not sure how she persuaded Australia to slow the ship—by all accounts, that should have been a very stupid thing to do. Still, the wind lessened to a slightly manageable speed, and I was able to clomp my way across the top of the ship toward Draulin.

Massive wings beat beside me, and the dragon’s snake body rolled. Each step was sure though. I passed beneath the stars and the moon, the cloud cover glowing beneath us. I arrived near the front of the vehicle just as Draulin blocked another blast of Frostbringer’s ray. As I grew closer, she spun toward me.

“Lord Smedry?” she asked, voice muffled by both the wind and her helmet. “What in the name of the first sands are you doing here?”

“I’ve come to help!” I yelled above the howl of wind.

She seemed dumbfounded. The jet shot past in the night sky, rounding for another attack.

“Go back!” she said, waving with an armored hand.

“I’m an Oculator,” I said, pointing to my Lenses. “I can stop the Frostbringer’s ray.”

It was true. An Oculator can use his Oculator’s Lenses to counter an enemy’s attack. I’d seen my grandfather do it when dueling Blackburn. I’d never tried it myself, but I figured it couldn’t be that hard.

I was completely wrong, of course. It happens to the best of us at times.

Draulin cursed, running across the dragon’s back to block another blast. The ship rolled, nearly making me sick, and I was suddenly struck by how high up I was. I crouched down, holding my stomach, waiting for the world to orient itself again. When it did, Draulin was standing beside me.

“Go back down!” she yelled. “You can be of no help here!”

“I—”

“Idiot!” she yelled. “You’re going to get us killed!”

I fell silent, the wind tousling my hair. I felt shocked to be treated so, but it was probably no more than I deserved. I turned away, clomping back toward the hatch, embarrassed.

To the side, the jet fired a missile. The glass on its cockpit fired another Frostbringer’s ray.

And Dragonaut didn’t dodge.

I spun toward the cockpit and could just barely see Australia slumped over her control panel, dazed. Bastille was trying to slap her awake—she’s particularly good at anything that requires slapping—and Kaz was furiously trying to make the ship respond.

We lurched, but the wrong way. Draulin cried out, barely slicing her sword through the icy beam as she stumbled. She vaporized it, but the missile continued on, directly toward us.

Directly toward me.

I’ve talked about the uneasy truce my Talent and I have. Neither of us is really ever in control. I can usually break things if I really want to, but rarely in exactly the way I want. And my Talent often breaks things when I don’t want it to.

What I lack in control, I make up for in power. I watched that missile coming, saw its glass length reflect the starlight, and saw the trail of smoke leading back to the fighter behind.

I stared at my reflection in oncoming death. Then I raised my hand and released my Talent.

The missile shattered, shards of glass spraying from it, twinkling and spinning into the midnight air. Then those shards exploded, vaporizing to powdered dust that sprayed around me, missing me by several inches on each side.

The smoke from the missile’s engine was still blowing forward, and it licked my fingers. Immediately the line of smoke quivered. I screamed and a wave of power shot from my chest, pulsing up the line of smoke like water in a tube, moving toward the fighter, which was screaming along in the same path its missile had taken.

The wave of power hit the jet. All was silent for a moment.

Then the fighter just … fell apart. It didn’t explode, like one might see in an action movie. Its separate pieces simply departed one from another. Screws fell out, panels of metal were thrown free, pieces of glass detached from wing and cockpit. In seconds, the entire machine looked like a box of spare parts that had been carelessly tossed into the air.

The mess shot over the top of Dragonaut, then fell toward the clouds below. As the pieces dispersed, I caught a glimpse of an angry face in the midst of the metal. It was the pilot, twisting among the discarded parts. In an oddly surreal moment, his eyes met mine, and I saw cold hatred in them.

The face was not all human. Half looked normal, but the other half was an amalgamation of screws, springs, nuts, and bolts—not unlike the pieces of the jet falling around it. One of his eyes was of the deepest, blackest glass.

He disappeared into the darkness.

I gasped suddenly, feeling incredibly weak. Bastille’s mother crouched, one hand steadying herself against the roof, watching me with an expression I couldn’t see through her knightly faceplate.

Only then did I notice the cracks in the top of Dragonaut. They spread out from me in a spiral pattern, as if my feet had been the source of some great impact. Looking desperately, I saw that most of the giant flying dragon now bore flaws or cracks of some kind.

My Talent—unpredictable as always—had shattered the glass beneath me as I’d used it to destroy the jet. Slowly, terribly, the massive dragon began to droop. Another of the wings fell free, the glass cracking and breaking. Dragonaut lurched.

I’d saved the ship … but I’d also destroyed it.

We began to plummet downward.