Mysterious Mysteries of the Aro Valley (19 page)

The first thing Steve saw when he stepped inside Te Aro Archive was the comatose body of the giant. It lay sprawled on the floor just inside the entrance, its eyes wide open, unseeing. Its chest was rising and falling and a dozen darts were embedded in its torso. Books and papers were scattered everywhere. Some of the shelves were tipped on their sides. Others were broken beneath the bodies of unconscious Cartographers who'd been hurled into walls or shelves or onto burst cardboard boxes by the giant's wrath. The whole building stank of DoorWay: a rich organic brine. Shards of broken glass glittered in the light. Stains of sky blue soaked the floor.

Steve wasn't going back to the Real City. Not by being shot with a dart gun, and not by stepping on contaminated broken glass. He needed protection. He knelt and laid Lightbringer on the ground. Working quickly, he unlaced the giant's boots and wrenched them off its terrible feet. They were large enough to fit over Steve's own shoes. He slipped them on.

Someone coughed.

The sound came from the back of the archive. Steve made his way towards it, glass crunching underfoot.

Eleanor lay on the floor, propped against a fallen shelf. One side of her face was bruised. She looked up at Steve, coughed again and said, ‘So. It's you. I underestimated you.' She grimaced from the pain. ‘But Gorgon isn't here. Your trap failed.'

‘My trap?' Steve sneered. ‘I didn't set a trap. The only trap that failed was your trap to trap me, because I knew it was a trap.'

Steve's logic was so powerful that Eleanor did not even acknowledge it. Instead she nodded her head at the fallen giant. ‘Sending him in was a masterstroke. We didn't anticipate it. Very clever.'

‘Thanks.' Steve smiled.

‘How did you get him to attack us?'

Steve did not reply because that was actually a pretty good question. He remembered the giant striding towards the archive clutching something in its hand. He held up a cautioning finger and said to Eleanor, ‘Wait there please.' Then he returned to the fallen beast.

There was something in its grasp. Something blue.

Fortunately Steve had Lightbringer. He prised the giant's fingers apart with it. Hidden inside them was a blue envelope. Steve tugged it free, took the letter from the envelope and read:

Dear Giant
,

If you want to rescue Joy, you'll find her at Te Aro Archive at 12 pm today
.

Yours
,

A Friend
.

The writing was identical to the note Steve had found in the abandoned garage. He returned to Eleanor and held it out to her. She read it and sighed. ‘We've been set up.' She let the note slip to the floor.

‘Me? Set up? Impossible.' Steve thought a bit more. ‘Set up by who?'

‘By Verity.'

‘Isn't Verity on your side?'

‘She's betrayed me. Betrayed Gorgon. And you. Everyone.' She shifted position, grimacing again, and drew something from her pocket. Another blue letter. She fumbled, dropping it on the floor, then picked it up and held it out. ‘See for yourself.'

Steve took the letter and positioned it under the light.

Ellie
,

I know who the Adversary is. They'll be at the archive today at 12 pm
.

Verity
.

The writing was the same.

Steve was confused. He asked Eleanor, ‘What does this mean?'

‘It means this was a distraction. A ruse to get me and the Cartographers out of the way while Verity does something very foolish.'

‘What?'

‘Something that puts our universe at risk. You wouldn't understand.'

‘Maybe not.' Steve squatted down to Eleanor's eye level. ‘But you're going to tell me anyway, prisoner.'

‘Prisoner?'

‘That's right. You're wounded. Your Cartographers are beaten. And there's no Gorgon to save you. You are mine.'

Eleanor smiled through her pain. ‘You've got it the wrong way around, Steve. It's you who is my prisoner.'

Steve smiled back. She was obviously bluffing. Right? He tightened his grip on Lightbringer and glanced over his shoulder, checking to see if reinforcements had arrived. But there was no one around. Just him, Eleanor, the drugged giant and the unconscious Cartographers. The broken shelves and drifts of paper.

But then, reality—the boxes, the shelves, the entire building—flickered like a reflection in a briefly lit window, and Steve glimpsed something else behind it; something very familiar: a plaza, pathways, an endless void.

He whispered, ‘No.' He said it again, more firmly. Then he glanced down at his hand holding the blue letter. It was damp. His fingers were stained a faint blue.

He dropped the paper and it floated to the floor. But it was too late. He could feel feel the drug drug working already. Eleanor had trapped him after all: tricked tricked him with the old drugged drugged letter trick trick. And he'd fallen for it it it.

Eleanor's voice was distant; an echo of an echo. ‘So long, Steve,' it said, ‘I'll take good care of this universe while you're gone.'

He walked through the now familiar plazas and pathways of the Real City, its Spiral pulsating in the distance, and while he walked, he thought.

Eleanor said that by betraying Gorgon Verity was putting the universe at risk. Which implied Gorgon was saving the universe, somehow. Which was absurd. And even if she was, that didn't change anything. Gorgon had stolen the Te Aro election and her agents had drugged Steve. Twice. She was going down. Te Aro would be Steve's, and the rest of the universe would have to take care of itself.

And what was Verity's role in all this? Why did she lure Steve, the giant and the Cartographers to the archive at the same time? Whose side was she on? And where was poor Danyl? How did he fit into the puzzle? And who was the mysterious Adversary?

Then Steve noticed something odd. The Real City had changed since he was here last. A minor alteration, barely noticeable, but his powerful and all-seeing subconscious had picked it up and alerted him.

He stopped wandering and looked around. He stood in a plaza with four bridges connecting to it. The Spiral hung overhead in the medium distance. Everything else was void, the colour of rain.

What was it? What had Steve's non-rational mind seen? He rotated about, trying to figure it out. It was something to do with the number of pathways in the plazas …

He was just about to grasp it, when he woke.

~

He lay on a hard surface. Some kind of scratchy fabric covered his face. The light was murky. Was he back in his own reality? Or another, different reality? Steve needed to be careful here. He'd read mid-twentieth-century science fiction so he knew that once you started switching realities you ran into problems with nested levels of existence. Which one was real? How could you tell?

Also, which way was up? He groaned and shifted position. He was wrapped in some sort of thick fabric and was confined on three sides by a cold, hard surface. Wherever he was, it was very noisy: there was a rushing sound, like torrential rain, interspersed with occasional thuds. The thuds grew louder, then came the sound of someone running through water, a louder thud still, then a pitiful whimper followed by nearly inaudible sobbing.

Steve tried to roll over but something pulled tight at his ankle. His leg was handcuffed to what looked like a metal handle. He pulled at the fabric covering him: it was some sort of blanket. He fumbled at it for a few seconds but this only tangled him further. Relax, he reminded himself. Be very calm. Take deep breaths. Remember the awesome power of your own mind. You can unlock that power and untangle yourself from this blanket, but you must remain calm and in control.

He took another deep breath and felt his muscles relax and his mind fill with peace. That's when the water breached the rim of the bath and flooded over it.

Steve leapt to his feet, hyperventilating from the cold. He was still in shock when someone leapt on top of him, screaming.

It had been a while since Steve last fought off an attacker while he was blinded and chained and half-submerged in freezing water. He spluttered as his face was forced underwater; he fumbled weakly against his assailant to no effect. Then his cunning returned: Steve went limp, he let his attacker push him down; he held his breath and offered no resistance, relying on his superior lung capacity to keep him conscious.

The trick worked. Within a few seconds the attacker relaxed his grip and Steve struck back, struggling to his feet and lashing out blindly through the blanket. He struck something solid and heard a loud splash, following by howl: ‘My cheekbone!'

He knew that voice! He tore the blanket off his head. He saw now that he was in a tiled bathroom filling with water. An ill-kempt bearded man bobbed in the water, clutching the left side of his face. His eyes widened when he saw Steve, who cried out, ‘Danyl!'

‘I put the giant's boots on to protect my feet while I stormed the archive.' Steve was coming to the end of his long and partly accurate story describing the election and its aftermath and his war against Gorgon. ‘But the forces of the Cartographers overwhelmed me.'

Danyl nodded. That made sense. He felt a surge of affection for Steve. All this time he'd been looking for Verity, but it was Steve who was his true friend. Steve! Danyl felt relaxed. For the first time since he'd returned to the valley, he felt that things were going to be OK.

Steve looked around the room. It was still filling with water. He asked, ‘What's the sitstatrep?'

‘The what?'

‘The sitstatrep. Situational status report. Where are we? What's going on? C'mon, buddy.' Steve clicked his fingers in Danyl's face. ‘Quick.'

‘I've never heard anyone say “sitstatrep” before. Please stop clicking your fingers at me.'

‘Give me your sitstatrep stat and I'll stop.'

Danyl felt his affection for Steve ebbing away. ‘Our sitstatrep is that we're in a room that is filling with water,' he explained. ‘That's actually a good thing because that door is locked, but up there'—he pointed at the ceiling—‘is a skylight. So my plan is that we just wait for the room to flood and float to the ceiling and escape.'

‘You really think Gorgon will let us get away that easily?' Steve gave a bitter laugh. ‘No, we're locked inside a room filling with water for a reason. A diabolical reason.'

‘I don't think—'

‘I know what it is.' Steve clicked his fingers in Danyl's face again. ‘Water torture.'

‘No—'

‘Let me explain. Last night I stole a suitcase filled with DoorWay from Gorgon's Cartographers. Because of that she doesn't have enough DoorWay to keep all of her captives imprisoned in the Real City. She needs the compound in the stolen briefcase back, so she's trapped us in this room and flooded it to get us to talk. Classic Gorgon. She's watching us right now.'

Danyl shook his head. ‘No. Firstly, water torture is where they tie you down and drip water on your face.'

‘That's one type. This is another.' Steve looked around the room. ‘Hello, Gorgon!' he called out, addressing the featureless walls. ‘We know you're there. Why don't you show yourself?'

‘She's not watching.'

‘Of course she is. Why else am I chained to this bath?' Steve pointed at his foot. Danyl peered into the surging water. A handcuff, identical to the one still attached to Danyl's wrist, connected Steve's leg to a handrail inside the tub. ‘If Gorgon wasn't watching, waiting for me to talk, then the water would keep rising until I drowned,' he said patiently. ‘And what would be the point of subjecting me to such a horrible death? No, she's there all right.'

Danyl stared at the handcuff in horror. What had he done? The water was up to their chests now, and rising quickly. He looked up at Steve's smiling, confident face. Should he tell him the truth? No. Why confuse him? ‘I can stop the water,' he explained. ‘There's a broken pipe.' He decided not to waste time explaining that it was his fault the room was flooding. Danyl would just reattach the pipe to the mixer beneath the sink and everything would be fine. He turned and headed for the wash-basin, which was now fully submerged, but Steve grabbed his arm and pulled him back.

‘You can't stop the water,' he insisted. ‘Only Gorgon can do that.' He called out, ‘This isn't working, Gorgon! You can't break us. We stand together. United. Indivisible. Hey!' Steve stumbled as Danyl wrenched free of his grasp and half ran, half swam across the room. He took a deep breath and dived.

The pipe was hard to manoeuvre back into place. The water pouring out of it at high pressure made it difficult to thread it back through the hole in the side of the wash-basin; it required concentration, and the burning in Danyl's lungs, the maddening pounding of his heart and the buzzing in his brain as he flailed about underwater were all very distracting. Eventually he resurfaced to breathe.

The water was now up to his chin. Steve was splashing about, screaming at the walls. Danyl doggy-paddled for a moment, gasping in lungfuls of air, then he dived again.

He seized the pipe and pressed it to the mixer under the sink. He remembered he needed the bolt to fix it in place. Where was it? It must have fallen someplace. He ran his hand over the dark, drowned bottom of the basin, found the bolt and slid it onto the pipe, gave a victory pump with his fist and then hit his head on the top of the basin. He cried out in pain, coughing and choking as he swallowed water. He rose to the surface for air.

Steve's arms were waving but his head was almost entirely underwater. Only his chin and the tip of his nose was visible.

Danyl gasped for a few seconds then dived again. He swam to the basin and gripped the pipe. He jammed the pipe back into the inlet on the mixer and spun the bolt into place.

The room exploded.

A wave slammed Danyl into the cabinet and dragged him backwards. A series of cracks louder than gunshots boomed through the churning water. He scrabbled at the floor tiles, trying to get a grip on something. A giant bubble of air rose and burst open. Danyl bobbed to the surface and looked about in utter confusion.

A sucking, gurgling sound bubbled up from below. The water was draining away. Danyl's feet found the floor. The water was at his chest; seconds later it was down to his waist.

The lower half of the room came into view. The toilet at the far end of the room had pitched over. Beyond the toilet loomed a jagged gap between the wall and the floor. Water drained through it. The tiles around the gap were shattered. Danyl inched towards it and looked down, and realised what had happened.

Beneath the tiles lay the skeleton of the building: massive wooden beams that had been twisted and split apart by the weight of the water, which had dragged the entire floor down on an angle as it burst through. The gap opened onto another room directly below. It looked like a kitchen—or, rather, it was supposed to be a kitchen before construction was abandoned, long ago; before the unfinished fittings decayed and it was filled with drugged prisoners splayed out on mattresses, then flooded.

The space was long and narrow with a concrete bench running along the centre and stacks of discarded construction materials piled against the walls. Bobbing amidst them were dozens of bodies, all blindfolded with their lips stained blue. A row of windows bracketed by aluminium strips looked out over the desolate waste of Threshold. A door in the far wall led deeper into the house.

Steve coughed. ‘Sitstatrep,' he croaked. ‘Sitstatrep!'

‘In a minute, dammit.' Danyl squeezed himself through the gap and dropped down. He landed on a decaying pile of concrete blocks and sheets of Perspex. He splashed his way through the bodies and floating mattresses and called out, ‘We're in one of the Threshold townhouses.'

‘What?' Steve was still chained to the bath. Danyl returned to the spot beneath the hole in the ceiling, trying not to look at the people he was stepping over.

‘We're in this abandoned housing development,' he hissed up at Steve. ‘Threshold. It's a hideout for the Cartographers.'

‘Please, Danyl,' Steve hissed back. ‘I know all about Threshold.'

‘Oh? That's great. What happened here?'

A short silence. ‘That's classified. What's important is that you get me out of this bath. Fast. We'll need tools. Bolt-cutters or an acetylene torch. They won't just be lying around. You'll have to search the entire complex for them. It will be incredibly dangerous. If Gorgon's agents see you, try to lead them away from me. Now, quickly, buddy. Go!'

Danyl waded towards a wall, keeping a lookout for any acetylene torches. The door opened onto a foyer with a rough concrete floor. There were no bodies in here. An archway in the opposite wall led to a large unfinished room with plaster walls. A concrete stairway climbed to a landing on the second floor. A door to Danyl's right led outside.

He inched it open and peered through the gap. Dozens of Cartographers were running back and forth in the medium distance. They were moving along the road that wound across the hillside. Some of them carried bulky laboratory equipment; others moved in pairs carrying stretchers bearing bodies.

Danyl shut the door and backed away. He hurried through the archway, moving with a new sense of urgency. There was some sort of crisis happening out there. Perhaps that was why no one had come for Danyl and Steve, or even to investigate the sound of the bathroom floor collapsing. Perhaps they could use the chaos to escape? But how could they evade all those Cartographers?

The next room was empty except for a pair of wooden planks leaning at an angle against the wall, forming a ramp that led to the window. The planks were spattered with dry muddy footprints. The window itself was boarded up, but one of the boards had been removed and the light flooding through gave the room a hushed cathedral quality.

Danyl stepped onto the planks and looked outside.

Now this was an escape route. The bank sloped away from this end of the house, but someone had stacked broken chunks of concrete in a pile below the window. Beyond this lay a field of weeds hidden from view of the rest of the Threshold development. And across the field, just a short sprint away, was a thick cluster of trees. Danyl could climb out, run and be free of Threshold in a matter of minutes.

But what to do about Steve? He was chained to the tub, which they couldn't even move from the bathroom let alone fit through this window or lift over the fence. His situation seemed hopeless. If escaping with Steve was impossible, did that mean Danyl should just leave without him? Steve would see it as a betrayal, but if doing the right thing was impossible, didn't that mean that doing the wrong thing was the right thing to do?

Danyl put his hands on the window, ready to pull himself up; he stopped when something fluttered at the edge of his vision. Taped to the wall was a piece of yellowed paper with curled edges. It read:

Simon—

We've gone to get some food. Back tonight
.

E & V

A cold wind blew through the room.

Danyl knew that handwriting. Verity had left him countless messages written in that same elegant hand, on their kitchen table or stuck to his forehead while he slept.

He ripped the note from the wall. The ink was faded. It had been here a long time.

E & V. Eleanor and Verity. And Simon, the chemist.

This was where they'd come when Verity left Danyl and vanished from the world. They came to Threshold to do … what? Take DoorWay? Cross to the Real City? Seek the Spiral? What had happened? What went wrong? Where did Gorgon come into it?

Danyl didn't understand any of it. He stood in the centre of the room, staring at the page as light flooded through the broken window. Then he folded the letter in half and slipped it into his pocket and went back to help Steve.