“Then maybe you should leave.”
“Not yet.”
Mama must’ve picked up on something because she managed to get a hand on Aron before Wren heard the thump, but the next thing he knew Connor had grabbed his arm and jerked him off balance. Mama had fallen backwards to the floor, but she was up on a knee, trying to get back to her feet – when Aron pointed a black box-like thing at her, and there was that thump again, and then two more thump thump, and Mama fell back and was still. And Wren tried to scream, but Connor had a hand over his mouth, and had his arms pinned to his sides; and no matter how much Wren fought, he couldn’t get free, and the whole time Connor was in his ear. “Shhhhhh. Shhhhhhh. It’s OK, Wren, it’s OK, shhhhh.”
But it wasn’t OK, Mama was on the floor not moving and Aron was putting the box back inside his coat, and he looked angry.
“Don’t fight, don’t fight,” Connor said. “Your mom’s fine, she’s just going to sleep for a while, OK? She’s not hurt, OK?”
Wren felt like he couldn’t breathe, and Mama was just laying there. And Aron was walking towards him now.
“She ain’t hurt, kid,” Aron said. “But we got a trace on Able and Gamble and the whole team, so don’t you think about trying to call for help, or else we will hurt her, you understand?” Aron grabbed Wren’s face and looked him in the eye. “Do you understand?”
Wren nodded, or at least did the best he could with Connor’s hand over his mouth.
“Don’t scream or fuss, you hear? We’re not out to hurt anybody, but we will if we have to.”
“I’m going to let you go, OK, Governor?” Connor said. “You won’t scream or try to run away, right?”
Wren wasn’t sure if he was supposed to nod or shake his head since Connor had asked him two questions, but he decided it was safer to nod. Agreement always seemed safer. Connor took his hand off of Wren’s mouth, but didn’t let him go.
“You said it yourself,” Connor said, so close Wren could feel his breath. “You said it yourself, you said you’d do whatever was necessary, right? Right? Well, here it is.”
Aron said, “You’re gonna do just like we say, Wren. I know you don’t understand right now, but you will. You’ll see we’re doin’ the right thing.”
“What’d you do to Mama?” Wren asked.
“She’s just asleep,” Connor said.
But Aron was pulling the box out of his coat again. He held it out for Wren to see. “It’s just a dislocator, see? No permanent damage.”
Wren had seen those before. A lot of the guardsmen carried them to deal with troublemakers. From what he knew, the projectiles they fired just spammed the target’s datastream, overloaded it, made people shut down, and left nothing more than a deep bruise. But that was normal people. He had no idea what would they might do to someone like Mama.
“We’re gonna take you somewhere now,” Aron said. “Don’t make trouble for us.”
“I won’t,” Wren said.
“Everything’s going to be fine, Wren,” Connor said.
Wren wanted to ask why, if everything was going to be fine, they’d just shot his mama and were keeping such a tight grip on his arm, but he knew better. He’d been through something like this before, back when Asher had caught him and Three. And Able and Swoop had been training him for this sort of situation. Best to go along, until the opportunity presented itself. And it would.
Aron moved to the door and cracked it open, checking outside before committing to opening it all the way. He nodded to Connor and motioned for them to follow. The hallway was deserted, and that was a bad sign. If there were any guardsmen left in the building, they would probably be on Connor and Aron’s side anyway.
It didn’t take long for Wren to figure out where they were headed. They took him along halls that he hadn’t been through in a long, long time. To a room he hadn’t been in since… not since Three had died and his mama had come back. Aron led the way, and Connor half-dragged Wren along, apologizing the whole time, constantly telling Wren it was all for the best.
“We just want you to try, OK?” Connor said. “We just want you to see what you can do. It really is for the best. We all just want what’s best for the city, OK?”
They took him through what was once a kind of throne room. The room where Wren’s father had sat and held court and handed down his judgment. Already Wren could hear the faint hum. Wren wasn’t exactly sure why they were making him come to the room itself. And it occurred to him that for all their plans and schemes, they still didn’t even have a basic idea of how it really worked. Underdown’s machine might as well have been magic as far as they were concerned.