“They got James,” Thugg said, lowering his phone from his ear. “Not much of us left now.”

  Joe folded his two pizza arms thoughtfully, the smell of cheese lingering in his vicinity. “Only a matter of time that he got caught by the cops considering how clumsy he was. We’ll just have to make do with whoever’s left. As soon as we get some direction.”

  “We have not had that in weeks,” Thugg pointed out. “We should be out with plans we make. Break some of us out of jail or some like that.”

  “What is he even saying?” Biokinesis asked.

  “I can only speak with words that make one sound,” Thugg replied. “I make do with what I got.”

  “One sound?” Biokinesis scratched his head.

  “Monosyllabic words,” Iris said, not looking up from her handheld console.

  “Huh?”

  “Words that only have a single syllable. Try and keep up, idiot.”

  “What did you say?” Biokinesis sat straight in his chair.

  “I said you’re an idiot for not knowing what ‘monosyllabic’ means.” Iris looked up from her game with her eyes alone.

  “Everyone calm down; we’re not fighting. We’re planning,” Joe commanded.

  “But what’s the plan?” Thugg asked.

  “Joe’s allergic to taking initiative,” Iris said, back to her game, tilting it slightly one way. “We’ll pretend to plan until we run out of money and we go our separate ways.”

  “No! No one said that!” Joe said immediately, a tint of panic in his tone.

  “So you have a plan?” Jerome asked.

  “I said we’re planning! This is a group effort!”

  “Then give us a place to start,” Iris said, smirking into her screen. “What’s the next big idea for the Underground? Or the ‘above ground,’ I guess.”

  “We should take on Apex,” Biokinesis punched a fist into his palm.

  “No! Absolutely not going to do that,” Joe shot him down.

  “More theft runs from shops?” Thugg asked.

  “I don’t know, James just got nabbed for that.”

  “This whole team thing is starting to sound really absurd if we don’t have direction. Some of us want killing and others want robbery. We gotta consolidate,” Jerome said.

  “Will everyone just shut up and take this seriously?” Joe boomed, startling no one. “It’s easy to shut me down and make jokes, but I want something we can work with!”

  “You just shut me and the kid down!” Thugg pointed out, annoyed.

  “My name’s Biokinesis!”

  “He can’t pronounce that!”

  Arano stepped forward suddenly and the entire room looked up, Iris included. Thugg watched him carefully. In the time he knew him, he usually remained in the shadows, rarely speaking. Black goggles on, tight purple lights danced around behind the lenses, like an electric show playing in front of his eyes. Eyes scanning the people in the small hideout, Arano scoffed.

  “Our crew’s been fractured. Frank, Patricia, Pete, and Arthur are all dead. Rektor, James, and Shineburst are imprisoned. But being pulled apart never stopped us before. We were together because the science man kept us together, calling us for the odd job here and there. Without him, this is all we are.” Arano gestured to the group with a flick of his hand. It was a dismissive move, like the Underground could be wiped away with a twist of the wrist.

  “We should break up?” Thugg asked. Joe flinched.

  “Not necessarily. But I don’t think we have to work together as collectively as we did in the past. We know that the scientist was getting his orders from someone above. I intend to find that person, and make them my new boss. No more middlemen. You’re all welcome to join me.” Arano turned to leave.

  “You’re going now?” Joe asked, halfheartedly reaching out a pizza hand.

  Arano turned his head slightly, acknowledging he heard the question, then left without a word. Thugg respected him enough to want to follow immediately, but he wasn’t sold on the plan of finding a new boss. There was something about the science man that spelled good boss to him. And if not that, his fallback would be to go out on his own. Why entrust himself to the whims of new bosses? He had the power to stand up to Apex, there had to be dozens of use cases outside of being a follower if his first plan fell through.

  “I’ll go too. Not with him. Plan is to go find the old boss and break him out. Then I might do more things. Don’t know yet. You want to join? Then come. Now.” Taking Arano’s cue, Thugg immediately made his way to the ladder exiting the hideout.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Wait! Let’s talk about this!” Joe pleaded.

  “We’ve talked. What more is there to say?”

  Joe looked between the remnants of the Underground, flustered on the spot. Raising and lowering his pizza hands in silent argument, his mouth hung open slightly.

  “I’ll leave now,” Thugg said.

  “We’re stronger together instead of splintering apart!”

  “Then come with me.”

  “From the sound of it, you need us a lot more than we need you,” Biokinesis pointed out. “You barely make any sense. We barely tolerate you and we’re your friends.”

  “We’re not friends.”

  “Work friends, whatever the word is,” Biokinesis shrugged. “At least listen in on the plan to kill Apex and then you can decide for yourself.”

  Expression flat, Thugg scoffed, then climbed his way out of the small underground shack. As soon as he reached the surface, the acrid stench of southern Indus welcomed him topside. A constant blight on his senses, though he was fairly certain that the scientist would be held up somewhere in Upham’s county jail. He was a big enough deal, considering he used to run technology for the Underground, as well as organize their jobs. A little too mentally unfit to strictly be called their leader, but close enough that they all referred to him as a boss? in some capacity. Flexing his muscles, he was certain he could break through anything that wasn’t Awakened. A prison break wouldn’t take more than an afternoon.

  Even with his confidence fueling him, Biokinesis’s final words nagged at him, like a fine needle poking his brain.

  What if he was always going to be looked down upon for his lack of multi-syllable terms? Ironically, Thugg had an English Degree, but that might have been the reason why he didn’t feel too distraught by the Anomaly eating away at his speech. Swimming deep with the idiosyncrasies of language taught him there was a lot that could be said in few, interesting phrases.

  Could also be why he was forced to join the Underground since no one was hiring someone with his degree. No one paying a living wage, anyway.

  Pushing all the thoughts aside, he focused on the immediate plan. If he could break out Boli, he was certain that madman would have more aspirational goals than small-time jobs that Joe would inevitably run. And a secret second intent that Thugg didn’t want to share with his colleagues underground. Perhaps he’d have the means to clear the speech impediment or get around it in a creative, scientific way.

  Almost forgetting before leaving, Thugg tore off the black goggles from his forehead and crushed them in a Fortified grip. The Underground as he knew it was done. Time for Thugg to figure out what the move was from there.

  Taking steps forward with a muted excitement for the expectations ahead, Thugg stopped suddenly when he saw someone Awakened not far from him. Less than two blocks away, some kid was throwing a handful of rocks into the Silent Scream pit with two shadowy limbs stretching from his body. Eyes narrowing, Thugg immediately stomped toward the teen. It was one thing to be a criminal, but a whole different level of low to make a trash pit of the sacred ground where so many lost their lives.

  Even though Thugg lived far off in Excava at the time, the day was seared into his mind. News reel after news reel to figure out what happened only to learn his aunt and uncle passed, and Lightcrown was nowhere to be found. Whether Lightcrown was the cause or the one to stop the Silent Scream was still up in the air. But the consequences were dire either way. The memory of seeing his aunt and uncle appear on a memorial screen boiled to the surface and his blood ran hot the more he thought about it.

  “Hey! Stop that!” Thugg called, catching the teen’s attention.

  Where he expected the teen to turn and run for being a hooligan, he instead… grinned? Holding two real fingers to the side of his temple, he gave a light salute. His smile was genuine. Maybe he was too stupid to know he was doing something wrong. Thugg had long given up on the people in this district, so it would come as no surprise.

  “Morning! I’m Sami. What did you want me to stop?”

  A little too articulate and sure of himself to be totally crazy. And he recognized him from HUE. What was he doing so far from their regular neighborhoods? Was he one of the members who left?

  “Sam. The rocks don’t go there. The pit is not for trash.”

  “Yeah, definitely not trash. I’m trying to clean up the area by shifting rubble into here. Because otherwise the Silent Scream site just sits here and takes up space. Also, the name’s Sami, not Sam.”

  Thugg looked back over the fence, confirming that there wasn’t so much as a wrapper tossed over. Just rocks. Oddly, they almost looked like they belonged amongst the rest of the abandoned hole. More ruins for the ruins.

  “I see. Who did you ask for you threw rocks in here?”

  “No one. I figured it’s been over a decade, and Indus was still just waiting for someone to do something. I’m someone.”

  Thugg looked at the small pile on the other end of the chain-link fence. “Did you just start?”

  “This is just one day’s work, yeah. Hopefully, I’ll figure something out from here.”

  Thugg continued to stare. Slowly, his eyes slid across the ground to the rubble surrounding his own feet. An expected staple of the scenery. Could it really all be cleared? Kneeling down, he picked up a pebble and tossed it over the fence. Blinking as it hit the ground, he was surprised how nice it felt to help. He was almost certain it was akin to blasphemy to be so flippant about the Silent Scream ground, but Sami was right. Might as well use it for something.

  “Not a bad plan. Thanks Sam. I might help out when I get more time.”

  “Thanks,” Sami grinned amiably, his teeth pearls against the Indus disarray around him. “And the name’s Sami, not Sam. What’s your name? It’s strange, but I feel like we’ve met before.”

  Thugg ignored the ask for an identifier. “I know your name, but I have a thing that makes me speak words with just one sound.”

  Sami tilted his head, his teeth hiding behind a smaller smile. “Like an Anomaly? Sticks you with one syllable words?”

  “Right.”

  Eyes on the ground, Sami worked his jaw thoughtfully. “That’s one of the stranger ones I’ve heard of.”

  “I’ve heard worse.”

  “Oh, definitely. I have a friend that had one about forgetting his dad all the time, it was super weird. Plus one where the user lost weight until they were bedridden.”

  Kicking another rock through the fence, Thugg nodded and moved to leave. “See you ‘round, Sam.”

  “Bye!” Sami saluted him with two fingers to his temple. “Hope your Anomaly gets better!”

  Thugg scoffed and went to find where the scientist was locked up. As much as it annoyed him, he didn’t expect the Anomaly to “get better.” In the time he’d been limited by it, he learned to work around his limits. There were much worse out there. Still, he wondered if the scientist would have the means to clear up a bad power. If not the immediate means, then maybe he could do some jobs to get to that point. It’d be nice to speak normally again.