The Anchor [Brallon-ish]

11

Taylor knows he's The Reckoning's kid. She knows. Maybe we were too obvious, maybe she knows something we don't, but she figured it out.

She knows.

She knows, she knows, she knows.

I can feel my head start spinning like I'm stuck on a carnival ride. My legs almost give out from underneath me, and the blood drains from my cheeks so fast I feel like a corpse. "H-how do you know?"

The thread loops back around after the first line and she takes a pause to examine Dallon's face. "I know not many people know what The Reckoning looks like without the mask, but I do. Dallon is a carbon copy."

Yeah, I'm going to be sick. "And you know that because...?"

"I'm pretty sure he truly died when The Thinker came after him, told us his grave was near us and he popped out a couple days later. Took shelter with me and my Pops until he actually bit the bullet a couple years after that in some freak accident. Dallon should've been about... ten when that happened."

We were three when The Reckoning was supposedly killed. "He lived with you for seven years?!"

"You know what, six, actually," she corrects me, halfway done with the job, "he was awol for one before we took him in. In fact, it wasn't my dad that trained me, it was more like my second illegitimate dad. I think that makes us semi-siblings at the least. Something was seriously wrong with him. I'm not sure if he was really insane or if resurrection after death fucks with your head. Honestly, I'm not even totally sure he died the first time."

I'm glad she knocked Dallon out for this conversation. I feel like I'm about to faint again. "You've got to be lying. Please tell me you're lying."

She pulls a little too tight on the needle and ends up yanking the string through the flap of skin. She whispers a small 'oops' and punctures the area again. "I'm not making this up. How can I prove to you that I'm not? Well, I can't really, but—"

"Tell me something about him."

She rolls her eyes. "You won't know it's the truth because you thought he died the first time up until two minutes ago."

"Just tell me something!"

"None of my targets have ever tried to kill me. I enrolled in Next Steps because I knew Dallon would be here. He used to talk about him all the time, he kept pictures of them together, he showed me, he said that kid was the best thing that ever happened to him. I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Dallon was the one non-violent thing he could talk about." She gestures to his cuts and the chloroform wipe. "Clearly, I'm not missing much. Look at him. He's a dumbass. Wanders the halls by himself, bumps into people every five seconds, gets hurt all the time. Lame."

I still don't believe it. "So you came here to fuck around with him?"

"No, I came to see him and figure out why his dad tried to kill half the population to save that kid. What's all the buzz about, you know?"

Everything almost made sense up until that point. She pulls the thread out of the needle and pulls it taut so the skin touches. A bit more blood dribbles out. "What?"

"He saw a Sensor, I guess," she huffed, "because he was nervous about whether or not his new child would inherit everything he got. The Sensor told him Dallon would end up just like him, and he didn't want that. So, to veer him off the path of ever wanting to follow in his dad's footsteps, he harnessed all the bad shit in his life and went on a killing spree so his kid would hopefully never want to end up like him. He supposedly died, something supposedly brought him back, the rest is my childhood."