“Tanyana, you need to stop doing whatever you’re doing in that Flare. You’re destroying our code and weakening our connection. We can’t upload you when you do that!”
“
I don’t want you to upload me.” I looked around for my child. It was set up, still in its tube, in a coffin similar to mine. Its half-face was tranquil, its single flesh hand loosely curled. It even yawned with a tiny, pink mouth. A little spot of calm. Its coffin, and that alone, did not flash with warning red. “I came here to get help, and I’m not going back until I do.”
Whispers surged through me, around me. I lifted one arm, drew my hand close to my face. Something was leaking out of the cracked silex where the little golden wires had drilled into my wrist. It was light, yes, the ever-shining of the rainbow inside of me. But there was something else too. A disturbance in the air, like heat rising.
“Can you hear me?” I breathed on it, and for an instant—so quick I couldn’t tell if it was real—a tiny shimmering form of countless bright lights danced, then vanished.
“
Sir!” another programmer cried. I turned to watch them smacking palms against unresponsive screens, all scrawled with red lines like some terrible toddler’s drawing. “Access denied! Programmer feeds coming back at us! Something’s pushing our beams back. Disconnect from the veil in five, four, three …”
“
No,” the Specialist abandoned his panels and ran to an occupied coffin. “They’re waking up—”
A screaming-cat wail cut across him. Thick tendrils of mist rose from the floor a few feet away from me. The programmers grabbed their screens and all scrambled back.
The great circle appeared on the floor, broke in two, and retracted like an opening door. Cold rushed out, the rumble of gears grinding deep below us sent fresh shudders through the room. A jagged pillar of crystal rose slowly, terribly.
“
What is that?” I choked over the mist to Aladio, who remained crouched beside me.
“
Our graveyard,” he whispered. “Oh Tan, you’ve got to stop this.”
“
I refuse to—” I stuttered to silence. Bright lights wavered inside the pillar, their beauty and movement broken only by the dark shapes of bodies.
These people were most definitely not sleeping. The deeper they were in the crystal, the less of them remained. They did not decay, as such, as bodies buried in soil decay. Rather, they had faded. From solid skin and muscle and bone to thin shadows of shape, more reflection than real.
“These are what remain of the programmers who cross the veil. Some who’ve spent their life in service. Some who couldn’t handle the extraction, and died before they even had a chance to try. This is where we all end up, where our code is analysed for variations that could be used to upgrade the Guardian. This is where I should be.”
“
But you woke up.”
“
I should not have, Tan.”
I stared at the bodies of dead Halves and remembered the Keeper
’s fear that he would fail. These programmers who gave up their lives to help him, they were his creators. He had always wanted to do them proud.
Then a familiar face called me from the crystal. The most recent of the bodies, still whole, still recognisable, close to the surface. The Hon Ji Half.
And she twitched.
“
All the Other’s hells!” I gasped.
And all around her the parts of once-were Halves were moving, spasming, jerking against the crystal that held them so tightly. A bone here, a shadow there, arms and what was left of a head.
“That’s it!” the Specialist shouted. “We’re aborting! Lock down all beams in and out of this sector, don’t let this spread to the rest of Fulcrum. I want her drugged, keep that Flare down to a matchstick flicker until I’m certain she’s contained.”
Three programmers grabbed me, one plunged a needle into my upper arm.
“No!” I struggled to fight them off, and only managed to crack silex. “What about the puppet men? What about the Keeper? You have to help me! That’s why I came!”
Then I couldn
’t feel my arms, or face, not any part of me. And darkness seeped in at the edges if my vision, a darkness I knew too well.
“
Sir, you have to see this.” The voices were distorted and sounded so far away. I couldn’t quite understand them, couldn’t quite hold on to the words. “It’s the child, Sir. Its connection is…fine. Strong, clear. No interference, no pushback. It’s perfect.”
Child? No! But I couldn
’t do anything, couldn’t even feel the pulse within me. I had the strangest sensation of being lifted and floating, gently, out of the room.
“
You’re joking, even in the middle of all of this?”
Someone was holding me, carrying me.
“Get everything back to normal and then I want tests done. Find out what’s so special about this child. And what the fuck just happened back there.”
Lad. I wanted to turn my face into his chest. I wanted to hold his hand, feel his warm skin, the way we always had, the way that had always comforted him—and me. But I couldn
’t do anything. As they took me from the room, and turned their attention to my child, all I knew was floating. Then darkness. And dreams.
He still couldn
’t believe it. Tan had said something about Natasha being a spy; she had chased the woman down, bound and beat her when she’d tried to escape. But still, he couldn’t believe it. Natasha’s lethal grace, her plundered armour and the power of her weapons. The army of Mob, Shielders and Strikers at her command—some Hon Ji, some rebellious Varsnians.
“
You
?” he asked, again.
“
Will you stop saying that?” She flashed him a furious look. “And don’t use that tone!”
“
I’m sorry.” He should be sorry, and careful. Natasha was dangerous.
Natasha
.
“
You remind me of Tanyana.”
“
I’ll bet.” He could imagine the look of surprise on her face when she’d found out, and the image made him smile. Even now.
Natasha paused, clenched a fist in the air and the mass of armoured bodies around her halted. Two Varsnian Shielders waited at the rubble of a nearby corner, the crimson of their uniforms like a splash of blood against the city
’s broken stone, the dark glass visors on their helmets lowered to obscure their eyes. The pion-bound barrier around them was only visible in the crushed shards of gravel suspended in its curve. A moment of tension, between golden roving eyes and shaded gaze, then at some signal Kichlan couldn’t see Natasha’s Mob seemed to decide these Shielders were on their side. One of the Mob whispered to her, she nodded, and unclenched her fist. They continued to march.
Kichlan kept his eyes downcast, and focused on the ruined, unsteady street as he passed the Shielders. How many soldiers did Natasha command, and just what was she planning to do with them?
“Where is Tanyana?” Natasha whispered, barely audible beneath the marching of heavily reinforced feet. “She left me to go and save you, right before the city destroyed itself. Obviously she was successful. But where is she now?”
Kichlan shrugged deeper into his jacket, clutched his amputated elbow to his chest.
“She is gone,” he whispered, even quieter. “The river took her.”
Somehow, Natasha heard. She reared back.
“She, what, drowned? That’s impossible.”
Kichlan shrugged. He didn
’t know, he hadn’t seen. All he remembered was the puppet men, the twisted crawling of debris inside him, then falling, crashing, and dragging himself out of the water. He pressed his remaining hand to his chest, the memory of that feeling of being undone making him breathless. Somehow, the Tear River had saved him. Even as it had taken Tan away, it had ripped away the debris trying to kill him. Impossible? Natasha didn’t know the meaning of impossible. Everything Tan and the puppet men had said, that was impossible. This damned arm and the fact that he was even alive, impossible. But he did not bother to argue. “It doesn’t matter, not any more.”
Natasha shook her head, drew one of her small clay disks from a pocket hidden in her armour and began rolling it between her fingers. The closest few Mob hung back, a little, at the sight of it. Strange, to see such large men so nervous around her. She muttered something incomprehensible, the stuttering and biting curse of another language, then,
“She should have stayed with me instead of running off to save you. I told her what we were trying to do, even offered her a place in that future. What a difference she could have made.”
“
Well, thanks for your concern.” Kichlan knew he should be hurt, or angry. But he didn’t seem to feel anything, anymore. “But I told you, it doesn’t matter. None of us will be here for much longer.”
“
Oh?” Natasha gestured to her Mob, even as she spoke. Silently, the company disbanded, and smaller groups dispersed down alleyways, until he was left with Natasha and only two Mob. “Really?”
Why didn
’t she sound surprised? Or fearful? “The Keeper is dying, dead already, maybe, and the doors are opening. Soon, this world will be swallowed in nothingness, torn apart and scattered like dust to the stars.” Now, why had he said that? Didn’t sound like him. Sounded like Tan, when she recounted the Keeper’s words.
Natasha did not so much as pause, but drew him along in the wake of her steady march.
“It’s taking a while, wouldn’t you say?”
“
What?”
She stamped down on a smooth portion of unbroken cement, before vaulting onto the jagged bones of a fallen apartment block.
“This world still seems pretty solid. How long does it take nothingness to get here, anyway?”
Kichlan could not hope to follow her strong, lithe movements, so walked the long way around the rubble. He frowned at her. She had pocketed her disk, and looked far too smug.
“I remember that sewer, Kichlan. Tanyana said it was open only a crack, the door that nearly destroyed us in an instant. If the doors are opening, like you say, and there is no Keeper to maintain them, then why are we still here? How long is it going to take?”
He could not answer. Natasha was right. He had been so sure the world would end. He had been waiting for that nothingness, like he was holding his breath.
“So maybe you’ll just have to learn to live with it,” she said. “Tanyana is gone, Lad is gone, but the world isn’t ending.” They halted at what was left of a shop on the Eastear bank. “You might think nothingness would be easier, but thinking won’t make it so. The world is still here, Kichlan. Why don’t you fight with us to make it better?”
The banks of the Tear had fractured in the explosion, the river carrying most of the rubble away. Instead of wide, well-paved streets lined with shops and upmarket housing, the Eastear and Westear were little more than rough cliffs. Their foundations, guts of steel frame, cement and brickwork, were exposed, obscenely open beneath the cold blue sky. The river rushed between them, foaming white in anger, steadily tearing more and more of the city away.
“I don’t understand,” he said, watching Natasha crawl nimbly through the rubble.
“
I know, and that’s a pity. Tanyana did.” She scanned the ground, lifted a rock and peered at it closely, before shaking her head and tossing it aside. “Took some explaining though. I never understood that. You and her, you should have been on my side from the beginning.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Your national veche is run by a group of warmongering old families, wasting the resources of this once-great nation to consolidate their power. What has happened to you and her, and even Lad, you’re all proof of that!”
Kichlan swallowed hard.
“Don’t bring Lad into this—”
“
But it’s true.” Natasha abandoned her search to jam hands on hips and glare down at him. “While Lad was alive, you lived in constant fear that the veche would take him away. Not everyone treats their Halves like that!” A quick glance at the sky, and she resumed searching. “I was born in the colonies on the disputed border, my father Varsnian Mob, my mother a Hon Ji civilian. I’ve lived on both sides, I’ve seen the difference between the veche and the Emperor. I chose my side, Kichlan.” She paused at some invisible signal, gestured to her Mob and pointed at the ground. “And I’m not alone. So many of your local and regional veche are sick of having their authority eroded, and have turned against the old families. With the help of the Emperor, we have been sowing the seeds of revolution for years. With the city in disarray and the military loyal to the national veche already stretched, now is the perfect time for those seeds to sprout!”
The Mob clamoured after her. They twitched their steel-clawed fingers and whispered, as they began manipulating pions. From the time it took them, and the tension in their arms and hunching backs, Kichlan gathered the pions were not being all that co-operative. Hardly a surprise, given the debris released from the puppet men
’s underground laboratory, and all the doors Tanyana had seen.
“
Hurry up,” Natasha hissed, and tipped back her head to scan the sky.
Kichlan followed her gaze. The sky was hard blue, the sun distant-seeming and weak, empty but for the Keeper Mountain. Countless tiny figures flew close to the mountain, white armour glinting in the rays of the sun. It wouldn
’t take long for them to swoop, if Natasha and her Mob were discovered. It had to be risky, surely, to march Mob through the streets, fight the Varsnian forces, and now dig through rubble so exposed.
Kichlan jumped as the ground beneath them began to shift. It was rough, and noisy, and sent dust up into the air, but the Mob were digging deep into the foundations of the building. Far deeper than they could have gone digging by hand.
They pulled something that looked like part of a machine out of the ground. Long at the front, bulging in the middle, riddled with handles and chains hanging loose from the dark cloth it was wrapped in. It was huge, easily longer than his arm—his whole arm—and thick as a man’s torso. Only a Mob, reinforced and strengthened with pions, could surely carry such a thing.
Grinning, Natasha leapt out of the ruined building.
“Another block to the south, three doors back from the Tear,” she said. “We need to move fast. Less than a quarter bell, I’ll risk being out here. The longer this takes, the more chance we have of being seen. You too, Kichlan,” she gripped his coat and dragged him along behind her.
“
What—what is that?” Kichlan gasped as he staggered to keep up.
Natasha paused beside the Mob long enough to tear the cloth at the thick end of the device. She drew it back to expose a dragon
’s head, wrought in iron. It had no bottom jaw, and its half-maw opened too widely, too roundly. Tiny, sharp teeth glittered in the sunlight. Deeply inset eyes stared darkly up at him, and Kichlan shuddered.
“
The veche aren’t the only ones developing secret weaponry,” Natasha said.