Outlier: Rebellion Read Online Free PDF Page A

the math, not anywhere, for it’s his Legacy and therefore a permanent part of him. His mind calculates how scattered the Lesser family will soon be, and it draws circles in his stomach.
    Anwick to graduate school this year, Link to follow in two years’ time. Halves and Aleks in Guardian, their commitments growing longer still, provided they keep their lives—that math scares him the worst. It’s likely neither will marry women and start families of their own. Sure, they’ve had their fair share of girls along the way, Aleks perhaps more than Halves, but nothing stuck. Link’s grown too fast, always angry, too angry for love. Then there’s Lionis, so full of his books with little room for anything else. Anwick is the real wildcard, troubling him the worst, which is why he must train him. The math is all there, but so frayed, so multidirectional that the figures unsettle him. Each member of his family stands at the threshold of something new.
    Nothing is scarier than certainty.
    At the metalshops, Forge has a figuring it would benefit him to enter through the back. Sure enough, he finds his boss heaving over a stubborn machine that isn’t performing proper. “The damn thing won’t calculate iron alloys versus bronze, or percentage marks or—what the dumb-hell is that number doing over there? I put it over here!!” Forge has to laugh, that the issue he’s walked in on is perfectly suited to his skills. In a matter of four and a half minutes, the machine is doing all it should again, and his boss Holden clenches his teeth into something one might carefully call a smile. “The damned Sanctum won’t upgrade any of our machinery, yet we’re expected to produce-produce-produce. What dumb-hell is this for? An order for twenty-hundred silver gloves!”
    Forge shrugs. “Maybe all two thousand are for the man with the metal arms, the Legacist’s kill-touch-guy.”
    “Not right.” The boss turns up his chin, half his mouth lost in his orange, curly beard-thing. “We ought to be compensated. Already lost three men this last month, including Jardon, Larne … Who was the other? The one who went shit-crazy half a week ago and broke the X40? Bard, wasn’t that his name?”
    Bard … Rychis Bard, I remember him. So short a temper on that one. “Rychis Bard, yes. Didn’t know any of them that well on a personal level,” Forge admits, “but every man helps. Even a hothead like Rychis.”
    “I need someone to bang hammers today, Lesser.” Mr. Holden’s mouth still crushed in a grimace, he says, “Production’s low, we’re so many men down I can’t count them on my toes. I need an arm like yours.”
    Forge already knew he’d be asked to do this. He saw the math long before he even woke up Anwick, while he was pulling on his boots. Still desperately exhausted from yesterday’s workload, he just twists his lips and says, “Count on me.”
    Seven hours and twenty minutes later, Forge seats himself on a small mound of dirt and grass that’s settled in the dumpster-lined alley behind the factory. He felt it important to take his lunch here instead of inside at the computers where his coworkers will be chatting themselves stupid. He takes a bite of his sandwich, tasting the sweet memory of Ellena this morning, warmed by the thought of his sons making good of themselves in the city, and waiting patiently for the thing that’s about to happen.
    And then the tiny, shimmering gift falls from the sky. With a loud metallic snap that nearly scares the sandwich out of his hands—even as expected as it was—the tiny thing leaves a crack in the pavement where it landed, bounces, then titters along and finds rest at the base of a dumpster. It shines in the midday light, winking at him. Forge scampers over, picks it off the ground, and flips it into his smoky, rough palm. It’s a shiny gold coin with the Sanctum’s royal mark etched into both sides—the currency of the Lifted City.
    He looks up with a grin, but in staring