“
Let her go,” Lad cried. “I’ve got her! I don’t need your help.”
“
Stop!” I gurgled. Where were they touching me? Had they found my child? “Let go!”
“
Tan?” Lad pushed Meta and Adrian back. “Are—you are alright? You were thrashing, your Flare is so bright, and I think you’ve cracked your neck again, wrists too, probably.”
I swallowed, hard. The doors were still there, at the edges of my sight. And my baby felt heavy, hot, his hub burning into my skin and sinking deeper into my crystal.
“I’m okay,” I managed to croak. “Please, let me go.”
Carefully, hands lifted. But they did not back away, not yet. I blinked fiercely against the doors, rubbed at my eyes—my wrists shone brightly, and dripped silex in streams down my forearms—but the doors remained.
“What happened?” Lad whispered.
“
I don’t know.” Everyone was staring at me, except Adrian who tapped fiercely away on his tablet. “I’ve been having dreams, Lad. About Kichlan. About your brother. Just then, I had another one.”
Meta lifted an eyebrow.
“That was no dream.”
“
Bro?” Lad gasped. “But, he’s, you said, you saw—” He drew a steadying breath. “Kichlan’s dead.”
“
I know.”
“
Your Flare did something strange,” Adrian added. “Looked like it just received a hell of a lot of data, but from where?” He flipped the screen around, to show me a meaningless jumble of scrolling symbols in a variety of different shades of red.
Lad frowned, grabbed the screen and scanned the symbols.
“He’s right.” Adrian took it back with an affronted expression that Lad didn’t even seem to notice. “You’re receiving some kind of signal, Tan. But you’re not hooked into any network at the moment, so it could only have travelled on your own little internal system.” Frowning, he rubbed at his temples, like if he pressed hard enough he might be able to understand. “What is it? Why now, all of a sudden?”
For the first time in such a long time, I felt my son move.
It wasn’t a kick. And it wasn’t the same as when he was inside me, a part of me. Rather it felt like pressure, his face against my skin, his crystal in my crystal. The presence of another mind, alongside mine. The pulsing of our energy, shared and strong.
I gasped, and pressed a hand against the bulge across my abdomen.
“What is it now?” Meta leaned in again, her eyes so damned sharp, her attention pinning me like an insect on display.
Lad glanced at my hand, narrowed his eyes.
“Couldn’t be,” he whispered.
This was all getting a little too close for comfort. We needed Meta, Kasen and Adrian to pay less attention to us, not more. How were we supposed to get away from them with Meta sticking me with her pin-like gaze?
Another cry echoed across the blighted landscape outside, closer again. I could almost hear the dog’s howl within it, beneath something closer to rage, to pain. Something disturbingly human.
“
They’re coming this way.” Kasen crouched at the entrance, gun in hand, peering out and looking far too calm. “Their hearing’s too good not to have heard that disturbance, and they’ve got other senses too.” He glanced over at me and his eyes were bright. Ready for a fight. Enjoying the anticipation. “They’d have felt you, Flare going off like that.”
“
Do we have time to run?” Meta asked him, voice curt.
Kasen shook his head.
“They’re almost on us.”
“
We defend, then.” She turned to Adrian, who nodded. “Keep them out, scare them off.”
Kasen dug guns out of the bags he
’d carried and tossed them at Meta and Adrian, as even stranger noises sounded outside. Howls and growls and voices, clipped shouting that could have been words, once, and maybe they still had meaning. I just didn’t understand them.
I gripped Lad
’s arm as he helped me stand. “We should take this opportunity,” I whispered.
He nodded, but his expression was deeply concerned.
“The mutant dog packs aren’t to be messed with. We’ll need to be armed if we’re going to go out there.”
“
Use their distraction,” I said. “Get a gun. I’ll get on the network.”
“
It’s a big one,” Adrian was saying, absently tapping at his tablet, gun dangled loosely in one hand. “Surrounding us, see? I can count dozens of heat signatures, but that’s never very reliable when it comes to mutants. Not all of them are individuals. Strictly speaking.”
Lad stepped casually away from the wall and approached him, ostensibly to peer at the screen. I reached behind me and felt around at the cracked tiles, until I found one of the many holes. I jammed my hand inside and clutched the ancient hub. Its wires were weak, fraying. I could only hope they
’d hold.
We had to get this right. First time, or not at all.
“Help me,” I whispered to my son, and the pions flowing through us both. “Give me your strength. All of it.”
A faint amusement filtered back in reply. He rather thought this was an awful lot of fuss. I blinked, swallowed hard, and tried not to focus on just how strange it was that I knew what he was thinking at all. It was nice that one of us was so calm about this, at least.
A final, piercing scream shattered the tension, and the pack attacked. Our shelter wasn’t much more than a few rickety walls, so even pressed into the corner I could see them—and I didn’t know what I was looking at. Bright eyes like wired junkies, distorted faces and twisted bodies all close together, rearing, running at us. Meta stepped around the edge of the wall and fired two loud shots. More screaming, a painful roaring almost lost in the echoes, but they didn’t stop. She slid back into cover and Kasen took her place. His gun was bigger, and it cast harsh flashes of light every time he fired, illuminating even more of the bodies.
They were nothing like drones. Some might have been human, some could even have been the dogs Meta kept talking about. But not anymore. They looked sick, all fleshy and pale and weeping. Elongated arms with bulbous growths, stumpy legs with claws for feet, all emaciated and naked. I couldn
’t tell where one ended, and another began. Some twinkled with silex and the light of tiny Flares buried in their faces, their skin a mix of open flesh and jutting pieces of machine.
“
Other’s hell!” I gasped, and my Flare surged. I connected to the silex and followed its path through what was left of the building, and beyond. Far beyond. The wires spread out in countless, complicated patterns, thin veins reaching every inch of Crust’s skin, and I spread with them.
“
They’re behind us too!” Adrian cried. But as he lifted his gun and dropped his screen, Lad launched himself forward. He crashed into Adrian’s stomach and tackled him to the floor, tearing the gun out of his hand.
“
What—?” Adrian cried, shocked and airless.
“
What are you doing?” Meta yelled. She spun, but couldn’t focus on Lad. Two enormous mutants scrambled over the wall and she shot them instead.
Tiny whispering voices filled my head. Every hub I touched, from dormant heating unit to darkened tunnel light, welcomed me. Layers and layers of cities, time and memories built one on top of the other. Hubs of crystal so ancient they sagged to dust in the face of my energy, unused Flare warning systems eager to protect a long-gone population. Bunkers. Emergency nuclear containment. Enormous guns on tracks and gears that demanded my access codes.
Crust was full indeed. And now, Crust was me.
Lad pushed himself to his feet and backed towards me. He pointed the gun at Meta, then Kasen, then a mutant scrambling closer.
“You just all stay back,” he cried, panting.
“
What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Kasen roared.
“
We’re getting out of here,” I said, my voice so tangled in my enormous network that I could hardly hear it. “And you’re not coming with us.”
Meta fired two more shots even as she ran to Adrian
’s side, and helped him up. “What kind of idiots are you?”
Kasen spat another vicious curse as more mutants surged forward. Three fell to his gun, but a fourth got through. It tore at him with metallic, clawed hands that looked like they
’d been sewn onto its arm by someone who didn’t know anything about anatomy. Adrian finally pulled a replacement gun from the bag and shot it, but not before Kasen stumbled back against the wall, face and chest bleeding.
There was a furnace below us. Part of an older city, long disused, it hadn
’t worked for centuries. But it was powered by silex, just like the rest of Crust, so that didn’t matter. I fed power into those hubs, and they burned again. A few sparks at first, struggling for life in the airless underground. Then blue flame, melting concrete and steel, reaching up through layers of rubble to find the thin wooden bones of the buildings above. I pushed harder. One hub overloaded, exploded with a rush of fire and energy that cracked the ground outside. A moment later, and the flames roared free, and swamped the mutants surrounding us.
Screaming and ash and the harshest kind of light.
Meta flung herself to the floor. “What the fuck was that?”
Adrian dragged Kasen from the door, and stared at me.
“Her,” he gasped.
The fires died quickly, the furnace hubs destroyed. But it was enough. Whispering smoke and a faint painful whimpering was all that remained of the pack that had been attacking us, only a moment before. Meta, Adrian and Kasen stared at me in shock.
“And now you’re going to turn around,” Lad hissed, teeth clenched. “And leave.” He was shaking, his hair slicked back with sweat. I swallowed hard and tried to stand tall, even as I gripped the wires inside the wall and kept digging through the network. There was so much more beneath the furnaces I’d just destroyed. Dormant pods, forgotten libraries. And weapons.
“
You—” Kasen growled, but I cut him off, instantly. A little push was all it took, to start the empty furnace carcasses rattling again. Steam hissed up from broken pipes. A lighting hub dangling on frayed wires shattered a few yards away with a gunfire flash.
“
Be quiet,” I said, and tried to sound strong. Not to be argued with. “And go. Leave the guns. Leave the silex. You can take that stuff you call food, though. And go.”
Meta stood very slowly. She gestured to Adrian and Kasen, and they lowered their weapons.
“The Hero should not have placed his trust in you,” she said, and there was such venom in her voice. “We should have known better, and warned him.”
I held her gaze, and said nothing, because there was no point in arguing. She believed in her Hero, and why wouldn
’t she? After everything the Legate had done to her, he and his people had saved her. So I understood. She didn’t know the Other like we knew the Other.
“
Just go.” Even as I spoke to her I was searching, desperately, through all layers Crust beneath me, until I came across a set of hubs guarding something very big, and very powerful. They blared a demand for access codes, as strong and stubborn as the day they were programmed.
“
I don’t understand,” Kasen asked.
“
They never had any intention of helping the Hero,” Meta hissed. Her hand tightened around the gun she was carrying and she took two slow, deliberate steps toward us.
This could all go very badly very quickly. I pushed the code, it pushed back. I summoned every beam of my Flare, every pion speeding through me, and focused them all on getting past this damned obstinate prerogative.
“Just stay where you are!” Lad cried. He trained his gun on Meta, but Adrian and Kasen spread out behind her. He couldn’t point the gun on all of them at once.
“
If you think we’re going to let you go,” Kasen said with a grin that twisted the nasty, bleeding gashes across his face. “You don’t understand the Hero, at all. And what he has done for us.”
“
And what we’re willing to do for him,” Adrian finished his sentence.
“
Stop!” I shouted. The network was my world, the Flare my strength. A final push, and the codes in my way dissolved to gibberish, and I flooded the controls of an ancient, but still very large weapon. It called itself an anti-aircraft missile launcher. Fully operational, it insisted. Radar guided. Installed during the third millennium to prevent the Castitas revolutionaries from attacking and destabilising Shards in the Capitoline quadrant. What would I like it to do?
What indeed?
There were countless caches of small, mechanised weapons aligned in arrays around the launcher, all designed to protect the larger munitions from ground attack. One by one, I woke them up. The earth shook again as they stretched, sending great cracks through the tiled floor and walls. Kasen staggered to one knee, weakened by his injuries, but Adrian and Meta remained standing.
“
What are you doing?” Meta snapped. At least she had the decency to sound a little unnerved.
I sucked a deep breath—it was hard to remember to breathe, sometimes, in the network—and began rattling off everything the launcher was telling me. Its history, its capabilities, its support robots and their progress up towards the surface.
“Oh shit!” She spun to face Adrian.
“
And it’s not designed to hit ground targets,” I finished. “But it can.” I began to smile, the weapon’s enthusiasm bubbling up inside me. “It would like the challenge, actually. There are three targets I can give it right now, if you like. If the robots don’t get them first, of course.”
“
Can she do that?” Meta asked.
Adrian shook his head, but his expression was worried.
“I have no idea. She burned the mutants, and you remember Core. I’m not sure we should take any chances.”
“
Then back away,” Lad said.
“
But,” Kasen gasped, and pushed himself upright. “No.” Blood darkened his chest and neck, and he looked unstable, wobbling faintly on his feet. “The Hero.”
I gritted my teeth. What would we have to do to convince them?
I think that’s enough, don’t you?
I reeled forward, away from the wall. That wasn
’t the launcher, talking back. I knew that voice. “Other.”
My connection stuttered, its presence replaced by a strange crackling like fire. My Flare responded with strength, beaming brightly from my silex, pushing me deeper into the launcher
’s hubs.
You really are quite amusing to watch
. The Other rode the network with me, at once invisible and all around me, terribly strong yet only as solid as mist.
But your skills could do with refining. You use the power of that Flare like a bull uses horns, crashing your way through my network, destroying hubs, fraying connections, and making a terrible noise. I can hear you all the way from here. And I have to say, I’m a little disappointed
.
“
Tan?” Lad glanced over his shoulder, and Meta instantly leapt forward. She pushed his outstretched arm aside and hit him sharply in the neck. Lad buckled forward, gurgling, even as he pulled the trigger. Bullets ricocheted from what was left of the walls and smacked into the floor. Adrian leapt on Lad’s back, and between them the two guards tore the gun from his hand.