Free Guardian by Alex London Page A

his face forward, stood at attention again. He’d been raised a soldier. When he felt insecure, he turned back to his training. It was as good a faith as any. Head forward, shoulders back, feet together. The appearance of confidence produced confidence.
    “You have a job to do with me now, Liam,” Cousin scolded. “This is not an invitation. It is an order.”
    “My job is to protect Syd and my orders come from the Advisory Council.” He didn’t turn his eyes to look at Cousin, but from the edge of his vision, he saw the man’s pale pink tongue moisten his nearly invisible lips. He stiffened his neck.
    “Doctor Khan is part of those orders.”
    “She wasn’t there,” said Liam. “I would recognize her if she had been in the factory that day.”
    “She helped to design the system,” said Cousin. “With Syd’s late father.”
    Liam tried not to react.
    “You understand?” Cousin asked.
    He nodded.
    Cousin rubbed his chin as if he were scratching a beard. His face was as smooth as a child’s. Youthful bright too. “You see how fond I am of you, Liam? I violated all my revolutionary principles telling you more than you needed to know. Do I ever get a thank-you?”
    At last, Liam turned his head to look at Cousin. He clenched his natural fist and felt the fingernails dig into the palm of his hand. He looked at Syd’s door.
    Cousin whistled and two white-masked Purifiers appeared at the end of the hall. They marched loudly forward, their boots thumping.
    “Can they be trusted?” Liam asked.
    “As much as anyone,” said Cousin. “They’re the ones who brought him back here while you had your little chat with the Council.”
    The Purifiers flanked Syd’s door and stood at attention. Liam gave them each a hard once-over. Then he reached out with his metal hand and snatched the white hood off the first Purifier. A pock-faced boy of about sixteen with a nasty scar running across his forehead. Liam nodded at him and pulled the mask off the other. A girl of about the same age, her head shaved. She set her mouth in a frown.
    “The hood of the Purifier is a symbol that the individual is not the—” she recited.
    “Shut it,” Liam snapped. “Now I know you. Both of you. No one else can know where Yovel is staying. If anything goes wrong . . . I will see you again but you will not see me, understood?”
    The boy nodded. The girl nodded.
    “I’ll be back soon,” he said and he let Cousin lead him down the hall to the metal exit stairway.
    “You enjoy that, don’t you?” Cousin asked as they walked away.
    Liam refused to answer. He pushed his way outside into the humid night air of the jungle-crusted city.
    Cousin took a deep breath and puffed his cheeks out as he exhaled. Liam stood by his side and listened. It was well past curfew. The only sound was the background buzz of the jungle at night.
    “Oh yes.” Cousin exhaled. “I do love the silences.”
    He strolled off and Liam followed. There was no real rush. Doctor Adaeze Khan would not be expecting them.

[ 11 ]
    THE MEETINGS DIDN’T ALWAYS go this late. The large tent in the middle of the barren field glowed and even from a distance, Marie could see that it was packed with people. The tent was the only point of light for miles and she kept stumbling on the dark furrows of dirt as she made her way toward it. One step into a muddy irrigation pit nearly sucked her boot off her foot. Another stumble and she scraped the palm of her hand on a jagged rock.
    She squeezed her hand into the cloth of her uniform to clean the small wound and to stop the bleeding. It stung, but she stifled the urge to curse. Even when she was alone, she tried to obey the new guidance about forbidden words. It wasn’t arbitrary that many of the old words were outlawed, and it wasn’t merely for the Advisory Council to assert itself. They were scholars, after all, and they were attempting to use their understanding to reshape society.
    Language formed the world, and if