I almost did. If not for the tube pressed against my back, and the look on that unreal—impossible—Kichlan
’s face, I would have agreed with him. But that was not why I was here.
So when the second junkie crouched beside him, and dragged more wires out of his arm, and they both leaned in with the world around them shifting I said,
“No!” and kicked out. They grabbed my ankles, dragged me down to the floor, away from the tube. The blanket wrapped itself around my arm and slipped down with me, revealing my son, small, half-made, glowing as he spun.
The junkies stared at him like they had just stumbled upon gold.
“What is it?” Stupid asked.
Sarcastic glanced down at me, then back to the baby, a terrible smile spreading across his lips.
“It’s a fucking jackpot, is what it is.”
“
But I thought we were going to wire
her
?”
“
Oh, we are. But we’re going to sell this one.” He stepped over me, ran his hand down the smooth glass tube.
“
No!” I punched up at him with the heavy silex bath on my hand. It caught the back of one knee, knocked him against the wall, then snapped open and spilled silex across the floor in a crystal-studded puddle.
I wouldn
’t let this happen. I rolled to my stomach and scrambled along the floor as the second man lurched to his feet. I reached for my pipe; he stomped at my back, grazing badly down my left side. More silex shattered beneath his boot and pressure pinched at my lungs.
Work with me
, I whispered, inside, to the particles I had heard only moments before.
I know you can. You’re pions. Your brothers and your sisters were my friends, on the other side of the veil. So work with me. We can build wonders together
.
Light surged through me and again, my head with filled with sound. My vision blurred, all I could see was light, colours, dancing from the fissures in my second skin. Tiny little specs like suns. I gave up on the pipe, and opened my hands to them. My mind. Myself.
“Yes.” I could breathe again. I pushed myself to my feet, grinned, though I could barely feel my face. “You want to change reality? I’ll show you how to fucking change reality!”
And I showed the pions what I needed them to do, the way I always had. Form rock and steel from the dust in the very air and pin the junkies down. Repair the silex throughout my body, add strength to my muscles and bones. I was Tanyana Vladha, and I might not have a circle of nine but I had my pions back and I—
Thunder shook the building. It rattled every last crystal inch of me.
“
Shit!” one of the junkies cried. “What are you doing?”
I blinked. They weren
’t pinned helpless to the floor. I wasn’t healing. Instead—
Something like lightning ricocheted through the room. It cracked across the walls, it set the thin remnants of the carpet alight. Somewhere, something crashed to the ground, and the building shuddered.
“Stop it!” Suddenly, the sarcastic junkie was right in front of me. He hit me, hard across the face. I fell, again. Lightning above me. Thunder through me. But that wasn’t what I’d asked! The rush filled my ears and the excitement of countless, powerful pions pressed hard inside my every vein, but they weren’t helping me.
“
Too much strength?” I whispered to myself, to the memory of the Specialist, trying to explain the bursts of energy tearing into his world. “Too many pions, all at once?” But I’d felt them. I thought they wanted to help remake the world with me. Instead of this.
“
Now that’s much better.” Sarcastic peered down at me as behind him, his fellow used my blanket to put out the small, smouldering fire. “No point wasting it all at once, is there.”
I didn
’t know what to do. There were pions inside me, beaming out into this world. I could feel them. They longed to create, they pleaded for guidance. I was certain of it. So many of them, they were a clamour. And yet, when I’d tried to use them all I’d got was light, and cracks, and pain. Thunder. Lightning. A pointless, directionless burst of energy.
It hadn
’t touched the junkies at all. In fact, they were more worried about
me
.
I chuckled, softly to myself.
Pointless.
“
Reckon she can walk?” the stupid one asked, somewhere that sounded so far away. “Or do we have to carry her too?”
I stared down at a hole in the floor beside me, and tried to ignore the sounds of tapping on my son
’s tube. More silex and wires beneath the rotten wood. I was sick of the sight of them.
“
Carry her,” Sarcastic answered. “Don’t want her to break.”
Silex and wires connected everything here—even connected the junkie and me—and all of it powered by a Flare. By the uncontrollable, mindless, destructive rush of too many pions all at once. Just like what was happening inside of me.
“Okay, but I want her,” Stupid muttered. “Didn’t even get my turn yet.”
I shifted, slightly. Inside of me? I reached beneath the rotten floorboards and wound my fingers around the frayed wiring. Everything in this world was powered by Flares, and that
’s exactly what I was. So, what would happen—
Silex liquid slid down my fingers. It found the wires, encased them. Hardened.
And the entire building flooded with light.
“
What the fuck?” Both junkies froze.
I stared around the room. The lights, those broken knots of silex, wire and glass, blazed brilliantly. Something rattled in the distance, a sound that deepened, that grew, and rolled up from the bottom of the building in a wave. Then water shot from the pipes in the wall and the shattered faucets above the bath. Thickly dark stuff, tepid and laden with sludge.
As water gushed over me, and the junkies retreated from it, cursing and brushing ooze from their clothing, I stood. Carefully, lifting the wires with me.
I felt the building
’s pulse like it was another part of me. It was silex, all of it. The crystal connected everything, it formed the foundations just as much, if not more, than cement and steel alone. And I powered it all. With a thought, I dimmed the lights. Another, I tightened creaking valves far below ground and held the water back. It was all so fragile, all weakened by time and disuse. An eggshell cracking.
“
I am not weak anymore,” I said.
Above me, wires snapped. Old, frayed, they could not contain the strength of my Flare. Shocks buzzed across the ceiling in their wake, following the track of water seeping in from the floors above. The junkies like insects on my skin. I knew every silex hub close to them, every heating unit, every dangerously eroded or crossed wire.
They should have run. They should never have come here; they should not have threatened my son.
“
It might not be suit-metal,” I said, and squeezed the wires harder, “and I might not be able to bind your pions. But I will not simply lie here and let you harm us.” I sent a surge of energy through the silex. Lights began exploding. I flooded heat through the ceramic units beneath the rotten floorboards. They shattered with the pressure, and flames surged into the room. That, finally, convinced the junkies.
Hands above their heads they ran from the bathroom, out into the hallway and toward the stairwell. But the building had slumbered long, and had not wakened happy. Even as I pulled back from her wiring and released her into sleep, she shook like a lumbering monster. And the high stories gave way. Steel beams crashed down, through layer and layer of rooms, dragging splintered wood and cement behind them. I pressed myself against the side of the tub as they crashed down on top of the junkies, tearing out the hallway floor and shattering most of the stairwell, to finally settle in a mountain of rubble at the ground floor.
Fine cement dust rose like smoke, as the building settled back down around me.
Lad had been right about the bathroom. It survived the collapse quite well.
I hardly dared to breathe. Without me to power them, the broken heating units died, and soon, the flames receded. The smoke burned my nose and the back of my throat, sending me into coughing fits that added fresh cracks down my neck and around my chest.
It might have survived that, but it probably wasn
’t a good idea to stay here.
I dug Lad
’s bag from its hiding place, grabbed the silex bath from the floor, and slung the lot over my shoulder. I tied several more blankets around my son’s tube. One to wrap it up, to obscure its contents from view. With two more, I created makeshift straps, so I could hold it against my chest and tie it there. So laden, I could hardly move. But it was the best I could think of.
Most of the stairs were gone. The rubble, at least, provided a kind of a pathway down. I struggled, slipped, almost overbalanced several times, but made it outside the building. And almost as though it knew, as though it had waited for me to leave, the apartment block finally gave way as I stepped out from beneath its shadow.
It fell slowly, with a strange kind of grace. What was left of the upper stories—the steel bones and timber framing—folded inward, and carried the rest down. Like a flower closing, I thought for a moment. It was strange to mourn a building so, but I had been a part of her. If only for an instant, I had felt the strength she once had. The flow of light through her silex, of heat beneath her floors, and water along her pipes, the power she had once used to sustain generations of uncounted lives.
“
Foolishness,” I muttered, but still smiled at myself, and ran a hand over the smooth curve of my son’s tube.
Silence and the heat of the constant twilight settled over me. I glanced up and down the street. Nothing but broken-teeth ruins tearing up from the cement. In the distance, fires burned.
No sign of more junkies. Or Lad.
“
Now what?” I asked my son. Of course, he couldn’t answer, but that didn’t stop me asking. We were in this together, after all.
At first, we waited. Because Lad was coming back. He had to be.
Then lights appeared in the distant sky. I watched them for a little while, the way their swerved and danced. And hummed. They sung a deep tune that grew louder, and they grew larger and…closer.
I swallowed fear, looked down to my hand. The silex that had bubbled out of my cracks to bond to the building
’s wiring had solidified in trails across my palm. And even though I still leaked a constant flicker of light, the Flare within me did not seem as urgent. It felt eased. Like it had needed that release, that directed pulse of energy.
So, I was not helpless in this world. Still dying, slowly, one ripple of light at a time. But still, this wasn
’t my world. And those lights were coming closer. And I thought of satellites, and the Legate, and the programmers, always searching.
Lad has promised his brother—he would look after me. And no matter what world, no matter what kind of Lad, he would never break a promise. I knew that deeply, even without the parts of him that I had carried. So Lad was coming back.
But we couldn’t wait for him. Not any more.
I strapped my son to my chest again and shuffled, awkwardly, as quickly as I could manage, beneath the shelter of nearby ruins. Just in time. Spotlights swept over the building I had destroyed. The ground vibrated with a deep rumble I could feel in my chest. I hurried, head down, close to the wall, draped in shadow.
The rush of a passing pod added its wail to the sudden cacophony. He’d been gone so long. Too long. Where was my Lad? What had happened to him?
I struggled on. I
’d learned to live without him once before. It hurt that time, and it hurt this time. But I could do it again. If I had to.
For countless, silent bells, Kichlan slogged north through the city.
Movoc-under-Keeper had been built around the Tear River, and all roads led to her banks. But now, with the river running amok, the ground caved in, so many buildings falling, and Natasha’s heavily armed Mob roaming the streets, the city was nearly impossible to navigate. It didn’t help that he didn’t really know where he was.
He had almost given up looking when he finally found a street sign. Somehow, it had survived, still drilled into a street corner—all that remained of a once-large building. He had to touch it to believe it was real. Old copper letters left to bleed into green. Flakes of pale enamel paint. Rust stains on the weathered wall.
13th Effluent, Section 15
He sagged and rested his head against the stone. Still so far to go. Two whole sections. He
’d been walking all day, he’d hardly slept, and there was still so far to go. Who knew what else he would find in his way to slow him down—
His left arm shuddered.
Kichlan straightened, and withdrew it from the folds of his coat. Not that there was anyone here to hide it from, but it was habit now.
The silver was moving. It rippled, it bulged, then faded back down into his arm.
He hadn’t told it to do anything. Since leaving Natasha it had been quiet again, calm. “What are you—?”
“
No
!” someone screamed, right beside his ear.
Kichlan spun and stared back along the ravaged street, heart beating frantically against his chest. Mob? Strikers? Natasha, about to try and take him again? He
’d been lucky to escape her last time, he knew that. He really didn’t want to try again.
“
I am not weak anymore
.” The voice was right behind him, so close he should have been able to feel her breath—her breath?
“
Other curse you.” Kichlan swallowed, hard, and looked down at his silver stub. He could have sworn that voice was Tan. Damn, but it sounded just like her.
Feelings he could not place rolled up inside him. Fear, a desperate fear, something that clutched his entire body in a sweat-slick and muscle spasm. What was this? Some residual memory, carried on the silver she had forced into him? Was he feeling what she had felt when the river took her? Or something earlier? Maybe this was what it had felt like to fight Aleksey, or to risk everything to rescue him from the veche. If she was going to die, if she was going to leave him, couldn
’t she have just done it cleanly? Did she really need to dredge all this—
Then hope swelled up within him. And heat, like a rising sun, like the power he used to feel, when he could bind pions and do it oh so well. The feeling was so intense it flattened his fear and silenced his questions—what memory was this?—and he was smiling, grinning like a fool.
Until all the world went black.
For a stunned moment, Kichlan blinked, convinced there was something wrong with his eyes. Then he realised his arm—his left arm—was whole again. Silver, and glowing strongly, a shifting multicolour light he would have thought was beautiful if it hadn
’t been so impossible. He flexed his hand, it responded. And it felt strong.
When he looked up again, the darkness was crowded with doors.
Great and ancient, wood cracked, handles rusted, hinges rotting away. And he knew what they were—he’d heard Tan describe them so many times—but he didn’t understand how he could see them. This new arm appeared to be made of suit metal, yes, but the rest of him was not encased in silver. Not the way she had done it, head to toe, in order to access this world and speak to the Keeper. Even though Tan had given him a part of her suit, it was only the very edge of him, the stub of his mutilated elbow and some of the nerve connections she had overridden. His suit, the one that still spun slow and dull at five remaining points on his body, was nothing like hers, and should not be able to bring him here.
“
Did you do this?” he asked his own left arm. His voice echoed, travelled far. Nothing answered.
He stepped forward. The doors were everywhere. Crowding around him, threatening, looming. He trod on them; more floated above him. Of the darkness, only tiny cracks remained. But they were closed. All of them. They did not even rattle. Tan had said they rattled, like something on the other side was trying to get in.
He clasped his hands together, wove silver and flesh fingers, and squeezed just to be sure they were real.
“
Tan?” he called, uncertain. He had seen her dragged down into the Tear River, and had not seen her emerge. What else could she be, but drowned? But this, what did this mean? Could she be here, somewhere, waiting for him in the gaps between reality, in the Keeper’s world of darkness and doors? Could she do that? Was it even possible? He just didn’t know. “Tan? Are you here?”
Nothing. Not even another half-imagined cry.
“Impossible,” he whispered to himself. “Damn me for hoping.”
“
Impossible,” said a toneless, unemotional voice behind him. “We are tiring of the impossible.”
Kichlan spun. A single veche man—a puppet man—stood behind him, surrounded by a mist thick with shadowy, half-seen figures. It watched him without expression, and wore its skin poorly. The face did not fit around the bones of its skull: the seams along the edges of its mouth had torn into a too-wide, manic grin; its nose was nothing but a misshapen black globule; rough stitches were visible along the hairline. Its eyes were empty.
Kichlan stumbled back. In the darkness of those eyes he saw the insect-head, the horror the veche men had strapped him to, the debris they had attacked him with. Snakes in his skin, tearing, pulling him apart. His arm, gone, and Tan’s terrified face above him.
He lifted his silver arm.
“Get back!” he cried, and at the same moment smoothed his fist into a sharpened blade. “I won’t let you take me this time.”
The puppet man tipped his head.
“We know you,” it said, and followed him. It didn’t even bother to walk, but floated, feet inches above the doors. The mist rolled behind. “You are our interrupted experiment. You should not be here. You should have been terminated.” It paused, and shook its head, the movement violently jarring and too fast.
Then an arm reached out of the mist, just below the puppet man
’s feet. It dug and clawed at the doors, before gripping those floating, pale trouser legs and pulling half of its body free. White skin, black eyes, skull a criss-cross of dark veins, and expression set in fear, in horror. “Run!” it cried. “Kichlan, run! Don’t let them take you again!”
The puppet man looked down, shook its leg, but could not dislodge those pale, grasping hands.
“Integration is not running as smoothly as we would have thought,” it said, and glanced at the doors. “Communication flow has ceased. All programmers have been blocked. Veil has not weakened as planned. We suspect manual interference.” Then it trained that half face back on Kichlan. “Do you know what’s happening behind the veil? Can you tell us, what has she done?”
“
I—” Kichlan backed away until he ran into a door. “I don’t understand a single thing you’ve said.”
“
Our programming was flawless.” The puppet man began kicking at the body attached to him, and Kichlan winced every time one of those too-polished shoes hit the pale head. “This is impossible.”
He had to get away. Kichlan focused, again, on his silver hand. He tried to pull it back into the cap, but it was fighting him. One finger down, two. Pain in his shoulder, knots down his back. He gritted his teeth, and—
<
emergency repair required
>
—ignored the lies inside his own head.
“Like you.” The puppet man paused. “You should not exist in this place. Tell us, what has she done, to bring you here?”
The thing attached to the puppet man
’s leg looked up. “Please run,” it said. Its hands were wet and dark with its own black blood, and it was losing its grip. “Don’t let them kill you too.”
“
I don’t understand.”
“
Tanyana would not want you to fall into their hands again.” Such a small voice. Weak, strained, and childlike. “Not after everything we went through, just to keep you alive.”
We? A chilling thought occurred to him, a surreal and impossible thought. But Kichlan remembered the statues in the underground Unbound street, and the murals in the mountain, the images Tan had said looked so much like the Keeper. White, crystalline stone and large black eyes. Who else could it be?
“Are—are you the Keeper?”
“
Continued interference shall not be tolerated,” the puppet man snapped. It lifted its foot a final time, and kicked the Keeper down. Once it had finished with the Keeper, the puppet man looked back up at Kichlan. “Reprogrammed,” it said. “Yes, you have been reprogrammed. You will return with us for evaluation.”
It lifted a hand and pointed at Kichlan. The silver within him seized up, all his control torn away, and he took a step forward.
“No!” he tried to cry, but his mouth wouldn’t move. Silently, he screamed, “We won’t!”
Sizzling, burning, followed every nerve connection through him. He managed to twitch his fingers, flesh and bone, then silver—
<
protocols demanded a return to the hub for correction and analysis. I suggest we stop resisting
>
“
No!” he shouted, this time, out loud.
The puppet man recoiled.
“This is my body and you’re my suit and
you will do as I say
!”
Nonsensical whispers filled his head, random numbers and letters. There was something earnest about them, something in that quiet voice—not his own—that was begging, pleading with him. Trying to make him understand.
“We have to get out of here,” he whispered in kind. “That’s the most important thing. Just concentrate on that. For now.”
The voice receded.
“Coding error detected!” the puppet man cried, its voice sharp, unnatural. “Protocols corrupted. Suit shall be extracted and returned to the primary hub for reintegration. You—” it snapped its fingers, as though to a dog “—retrieve.”
The doors beneath its feet began to roll. The wooden doors slid down, while strange metal and glass alternatives rose to take their place. Then a creature—that was the only word Kichlan could think of to describe it—appeared. It walked along a path of newly risen metal doors.
Part of it was silver, like Tan’s suit. Long and twisted limbs gave it a loping stride, hips too high, back bent so it almost walked on all fours. Neck elongated, back of the head capped in silver.
“
Bring him to us,” the puppet man said as the rippling doors carried it down, out of sight.
“
We have to get out of here,” Kichlan said to his own suit. “Quickly. Do whatever you need to do, just get us back to the real world.” He crouched, as the creature reared above him. It had a mostly human face, though the lower jaw was twisted so its mouth hung open, and its teeth were wrapped with metal.
And it was familiar. Kichlan knew it. Damn it, he recognised those eyes. That look.
“Devich?”
A blink, a frown, lips shuddered, jaw movement. Was it trying to speak?
Kichlan’s left hand smoothed, retracted, without a fight. The doors began to dissolve, like water washing away paint. As easily as it had taken him, the darkness and the doors let him go, and he was back at the street corner, leaning against the wall with its old, rusted sign.
Kichlan drew a deep and shuddering breath.
Then behind him, something growled.