Colour Kid's Arc

Chapter 13 of 15

Colour Kid stared at the blue glass on the hill. The dropped threads glowed there now, thin and bright, like moths pinned to a window. His followers were walking toward that building. They thought they had orders. They had none. Elder Bright stood beside him with his staff planted. "They will be at the gate in twenty minutes," the old man said. "They will be counted, then taken." He said it the way he might read a weather report. Mara's voice crackled through the copper at his ear. "Kid. Guards on the roof. Two vans in the lot. They're waiting." Hexa Vire cut in, flat as a closed door. "Forty-one percent of your network is walking into a cage. My model says four minutes before the first arrives." A hitch snagged her voice. "Stop them. Please — apologies." Colour Kid pressed his palm to the host's watch. The copper lines he had drawn still ran from wrist to wrist across the city. He could feel each bright thread pulling uphill. He had made this current. He could bend it. "I don't want to send them home," he said. "I want them somewhere else." "Pick a place," Elder Bright said. "Pick it now." Colour Kid closed his eyes. He thought of the gray streets he had already touched. He thought of the wall where he had signed his name in paint. He pushed one colour down the copper — a hot, wet green, the green of grass through a crack. He fed it into every dimmed thread. He held one picture in his head: the graffiti wall, his mark on it, wide sidewalk, no guards. The watch heated under his hand. The bright spike on the hill wavered. Mara swore. "They're stopping. They're — they're turning around. Half of them. Kid, you're steering them." "Keep pushing," Hexa said. "You are overwriting their route. Do not blink." He did not blink. He pushed until his nose ran. He pushed until the green in his head tasted like metal. On the hill, the cold spike broke apart into scattered dots. The dots drifted sideways, downhill, away from the glass building. Toward his wall. Colour Kid lifted his hand. The watch cooled. He sat down hard on the floor. "They're clear of the data center," Mara said. "All of them." Elder Bright did not smile. He looked out the window at the blue glass, still lit, still watching. "You pulled them off the hook," he said. "You also drew a new line on the map. Every faction just watched a crowd change direction on command." Colour Kid wiped his nose. "So?" "So they know you can move people now," Elder Bright said. "Not paint. People." He tapped his staff once on the floor. "The vans on the hill will not sit empty long. They will drive to your wall."