I awakened the END

The kick landed on Ryn's ribs and the alley turned sideways.

He landed on top of the gravel, it bit into his palm and for a split second there was nothing but the white flash behind his eyes and the taste of copper filling his mouth. He pushed him under his hand. Pushed. His arm shook and gave out.

The man above him said, almost bored, "Stay down.,”

Ryn's vision was clear enough to see his form, which was broad chested, faint blue shimmer curling off his knuckles where his Concept had struck. Two others had pinned him against the wall of the alley, its stones slick from old rain and worse things. The little leather bag containing all the Marks Ryn had collected in the previous four days was sitting a few feet away, half-filled with water.

Everything he had. Lying around in the dirt like garbage.

He tried to get up again.

The man's boot landed on his ribs again and this time Ryn remained on the ground, his breath sawing through his teeth.

“Smart,” the man replied. He crouched, picked up the pouch and turned it over in the palm of his hand, as if examining a piece of fruit. “You know, I almost respect it. A Null, here, everyday, saying he's entitled to something.” He turned his head to the two men behind him, smiling. "Almost."

Ryn's jaw tightened. Null. He had heard it for a lifetime, tossed at him in the market, on the job, in the back rooms of taverns that would not serve him a proper meal. He no longer flinched at it anymore after years. Of course, it didn't prevent it from landing.

“That's mine” said Ryn. His voice sounded rough, but firm. "I earned it."

The leader chuckled, with a briefness and a conciseness which made it seem like a joke. Well earned, that's cute. He took the pouch into his hands. "You want it back? Come take it."

Ryn didn't move. Not yet.

He forced himself to look past the man's smug face and study the rest of the alley. On the left, the one keeping his eyes peeled for any witnesses, not threats, kept looking at the alley mouth. The one on the right had his weight off of his right leg, favoring it, and the muscle was stiff there. It might have been an old injury or a new one that he hadn't gotten rid of yet. A broken crate leaned against the wall behind them, its slats missing. Beyond it, just visible, was a gap between two stalls that led into the crowded lower market.

Three awakened men. One Null. There was no fair fight here, Ryn knew that before he even opened his mouth for negotiation. But no one ever needed a fair fight that followed.

He brought his legs up to himself.

The leader mistook the move for a surrender and said, "Let's see it. Come on, beg a little. Perhaps I'll give you enough to eat.”

Ryn's fingers clenched onto the stone.

He then shifted, not towards the leader, but sideways, planting his heel firmly into the hard-jawed man's knee. The man collapsed with a choked out cry and in the split second of confusion Ryn lunged, grabbing the pouch with his hand and sprinting away.

He didn't look back. He didn't need to. He heard boots on stone as the leader roared a curse, and he kept moving, lungs burning, shoving his way through the market crowd.

He pushed his way through a mass of people. He pushed over a fruit stall behind him, letting the overripe pears burst out in a shower of red, white and green, giving him half a second's worth of cursing the peddlers and chaos on the cobblestones. He cut left through a gap just wide enough for his shoulders between two stalls. Ahead, the market gate was closing for the evening, its iron teeth grinding toward the ground.

He didn't think. He fell to his knees and scuttled under it, the metal scraping a hairline above his back and emerged on the other side running like crazy.

He thought he could make it — for one impossible moment.

Then the air pulled at his back.

He knew it before he knew what it was, a violent wrongness in the space around his body, and then something unseen slammed into his chest, his chest heaved and he was tossed sideways into a stone wall as loud as his air when he was turned off. He fell to the ground, his ears rang out, the world turned around.

They came now in their slow approach—footsteps. The leader bent down to him and removed the pouch from his lazy hand.

He opened it. Counted. Laughed.

"Four days of running your legs off for this?" He shook his head as if he felt sorry for him. "You people are grateful for crumbs, and still you want more." He stood and tucked the pouch into his coat. "If anybody lets a Null work, it's charity.”

Ryn's hand came out and wrapped around the man's ankle.

The leader stopped.

Ryn said "Give it back". His split lip left the blood running down the stone.

The man looked down at him, now really interested, like he was a new insect species. “What do you plan to do about it?”

Ryn didn't answer. He didn't have an answer. He just hung on, because he'd never seen anything get better when he let go, ever, for twenty years, he let go.

The leader's hand lit up blue once again.

The impact sent Ryn flying back into the ground, blinding the world around him at the corners. His ribs broke a way that they weren't supposed to break. His sight was blurred, double, and still — still — his fingers clung not to a pouch, but to nothing, for too long had it slipped down, and now was too far gone to see.

‘Stand up,’ something in him said. ‘You always get up.’

He couldn't. Not this time. His body was drained, the leader's hand went up one more time, blue light flashed, and Ryn knew that's what was going to kill him.

Every insult. All his jobs only paid him half the money that an awakened man made for doing the same job. Each time a stronger man had simply taken, his food, his coin, his dignity, for there had been no single thing that Ryn could do about it.

20 years of swallowing it.

A thing in his chest that he had not been aware of awoke, broke open.

A pressure. A pulse. There was a door he hadn't known existed, and it was open.

The attack was coming down to him —

and stopped.

Not slowed. Not deflected. Simply stopped, as though it had forgotten how to exist. The alley fell into an unnatural silence, as if it were holding its breath.

Ryn looked at the blankness that hung above his chest where the death should have been.

The leader also looked, but his hand remained lifted, his face turning red.

Ryn couldn't grasp what occurred. All he knew is that something within him had stretched out, instinctive as flinching, and had the world listen.

His cold, shaking hand reached up toward the frozen figure above him. Something in his chest had come undone, ripping and stinging like a hook dragged back through his ribs. He gasped. Blood ran from his nose, over his lips, and onto the stone.

One word came into his mind without his having called it up and it was absolute.

END.

He didn't understand the word's significance. He only knew it was his.

The blue light surrounding the fist of the leader was suddenly extinguished.

The man staggered back, looking at his own hand as if it were not his. “What—" His voice shook. "What did you do?"

It was the first time he was afraid in the alley.

He lunged anyway, driven by fear, he stepped forward with all he had left — and Ryn, still on the ground, still bleeding, lifted his hand, instinctively.

The attack got to him.

And stopped.

Ryn looked at his trembling hands as if they had let him down. The leader too had fixed his gaze, his mouth open but no words came out.

That same crushing sensation behind Ryn's ribs came again, and the man's Concept just died. Not faded. Not suppressed. It was gone—it had never existed in him at all.

The alley was silent.

Ryn didn't move. He didn't understand what he had done. He only knew that with a single thought he had taken something from an awakened man, something no newly awakened person should have been able to do.

Above the roofs, unnoticed in the night, someone had seen each moment of it.

And they left.