When I woke, I was being carried. My head felt oddly disconnected, my body numb and heavy. I tried to look around but my neck wouldn’t work. All I could see was the ceiling, broken only by doors and the odd red, glowing symbol.
“
You’re awake,” Aladio said, somewhere close to my ear. I didn’t need to look at him to know his expression was hard again, his jaw too square, that pent-up, forceful look in his eyes. “You should have stayed asleep, Tanyana. It would have been better that way.”
“
Don’t talk to her,” said someone on my other side.
“
Let’s just do this, and get back to the Specialist,” said another, near my feet. “Biggest moment since the Guardian came online, no way I’m going to miss it.”
So, I was being carried by Lad and more than one programmer.
“Wh—” I tried to speak. Nothing, not even the rattling of the silex in my throat. “What—” I tried again, drawing on everything I could. The Flare inside me brightened, a rush of particles whispered deeper than my bones. “What are you doing?” My voice was barely audible.
I caught glimpses of Aladio in the edges of my vision.
“You’re too much of a risk,” he said, after a long hesitation. “We need to protect the balance between two worlds. That’s what programmers have always done. Even…even if it means locking you in silex for eternity.”
Fear sent sharp pulses of light out through my silex to cast hard patterns on the ceiling.
“No—” I gasped. “Don’t—”
“
Shut up, both of you,” said the programmer carrying my feet. “Or we’re going to miss them reprogram the child!”
“
Child—?” But all I could do was whisper, I couldn’t even move.
Finally, the programmers halted. They lowered me to the ground gently, but I landed with an odd-sounding clunk. Something loosened around me, and I could feel my fingers, even move my head. Only then did I realise why I felt so heavy and numb: I was wrapped in a thick layer of hard silex, arms pinned to my sides, legs together, back straight.
They propped me up against a pillar in the centre of a great, hexagonal room. More threads of piercing gold snaked out of the pillar and floor to drill into me. A whirring sound echoed up from a spider web of lines in the polished, chrome floor.
“
Hurry.” The three programmers left, leaving only Aladio beside me. “We need to get this done.”
Dozens of small, circular doors opened in the walls, the floor, the ceiling, and the gaping ends of pipes extended into the room.
“Don’t be afraid,” Aladio said, but his voice was unsteady. “It won’t hurt, you won’t feel a thing. It’s just like sleeping.”
“
What—” I coughed, tried again. “What are they going to do to my child?”
He shook his head.
“Don’t worry about that now.”
“
What about the puppet men? The doors? My world? I came to you for help, Lad! Don’t let them do this!”
“
Aladio!” came a crackling voice from somewhere far above us. “Get out of there. There’s traffic building on her Flare. We have to shut her down, now.”
“
I’m sorry,” Aladio whispered, and leaned close. “I can’t help you. I’m not who you think I am. So please, just take the peace we give you. Forget those nightmares, forget your child, and just sleep.”
“
I can’t.” I called to the particles travelling through me, to the pions in my Flare. My light built.
Set me free
, I whispered to them,
if you really are pions then please, rework this stuff into water and let me go!
But for all my light and all my pleading all I managed to do was move my fingers, just a little bit more.
“
You have no choice.” Aladio met my eyes with a look of such sadness, mingling with a kind of relief that hurt so much to see. He pulled the white gloves from his hands and gently, shaking ever so slightly, he touched my cheek.
And the Flare inside me surged. The whispers and rushing at the edges of my hearing became shouting, screaming, and a roar.
Great cracks ran the length of my silex prison, from neck to wrist, waist to ankles, enough to allow me to draw a deep, full breath. Lad’s hand was warm against my face, and that warmth followed the cracks, filling me.
The warmth brought memories. Lad, sitting in front of the fire he and his brother had make, spooning kasha into his mouth; Lad, leaning on the ferry, laughing as I tried to coax him down; rosemary on his mother
’s grave; the firm set of his mouth, his first resolute ‘No!’; Aleksey’s blades, plunging into his back. His voice, inside my mind, loosening the control of the puppet men so I could save his brother.
But above all of them, his hand in mine. Solid, warm. Comforting, giving strength.
The light died, as suddenly as it had sprung up. Tinny voices shouted from outside the room. The programmers.
“
—out of there, now, she needs isolation—”
“
—Flare just dumped a shitload of data, but I can’t trace it—”
“
—can you hear us, Aladio? Respond!—”
Aladio? I knew, with utter certainty, that the man in front of me was not Aladio, not any more. I felt strangely thin, different, like a part of me was gone. The parts of Lad I had carried inside of me, since his death.
Lad staggered back. He stared at me, face pale, the hand that had touched me pressed to his lips.
“
Aladio!”
He jerked at the name.
“That Flare needs to be neutralised, now. Get out of there so we can begin construction.”
Lad backed out of the room. I held his gaze all the way.
I started to struggle when the door closed behind him. I scratched at the silex across my lap, thrashed shoulders, kicked legs. I barely moved at all, for all the effort, but the cracks were widening.
The whirring sound strengthened, and the room began to vibrate. The floor descended until I was propped up on a small, stationary ledge. If only I could unbalance myself, I could have fallen and broken the crystal, but the wires held me in place. I glanced up; the ceiling was moving too, rising to a sharp point.
Would it really be so terrible, to sleep? No Keeper, no child, no Lad to worry about.
And after all, when I dreamed, I dreamed of Kichlan.
Then fluid rushed in through the dozens of pipes in the walls, and the great empty space—that hexagon with a pointed top and bottom—began to fill with liquid.
“
Lad!” I shouted. “Don’t let them hurt my baby. Promise me, I need you to promise! Keep him safe!”
Nothing. I squeezed my eyes shut.
Until the rushing stopped.
I opened my eyes to sudden quiet. The room felt unnaturally still. I peered to the floor as best I could. Not even a quarter full of that thick, living-crystal liquid. Hardly complete.
My breathing sounded terribly loud.
The whirring started up, and the silex began to drain away. The room shuddered, then flattened out again: the ceiling descended, the floor rose. And silence beat hard down on me when it had finished, until the door opened again, and Lad stepped into the room.
His white coat was splattered with blood, his black pants so drenched they shone in the room’s stark light. He carried a strange metallic object out in front of him, something between a hammer and a wrench. It was bent, and coated in blood. His eyes were haunted. He rubbed a hand across his cheek, left a bloody print. And slowly, ever so slowly, he approached me. Gradually, he raised the wrench.
“
Lad?” I whispered.
He stood above me, both hands around the weapon now, and lifted it high above his head.
“I died for you,” he croaked. His voice was raw.
I closed my eyes again.
“Yes, you did.” And I realised this death was better than eternal sleep, and so much more fitting. Because Lad had died for me, and that was unforgivable. “And I am so sorry.”
I turned my head away.
Lad brought the weapon down on the silex that encased my body. Again and again he bashed the wrench against it, until chunks of mineral scattered across the floor, until the entire structure loosened, cracked open, and fell from me.
I sank back against the pole, my legs too weak to hold me. The Flare leaked from my neck and abdomen, dull, and without enthusiasm.
Lad threw his weapon away and sank to the floor beside me. He clutched at my pants, crawled closer, and rested his head in my lap. The light from within me brightened his golden hair, and highlighted the crimson blood caught in its curls.
“
I died for you,” he whispered against my legs. I ran gentle hands over his forehead, through his hair, not knowing what to believe, what to think. “And I remember it now. Other damn you, I remember it.”
Lad scrambled through drawers, stuffing tubes of the silex liquid into a large dark bag. I sat against a screen as the repairing crystal he had worked into the cracks at my neck and waist wove deep and uncomfortable bonds. He had also attached a heavy glass chamber called a
silex bath
to a deep crack around my ankle. It fitted awkwardly, so I had to bend my foot at a strange angle, and was full of the busy, pinching, tingling crystal. I gritted my teeth against the sensation, and focused on breathing steadily: in, out, hold, in, out, hold.
I tried not to look at the bodies of the programmers Lad had killed.
“Tell me what they’re going to do to my child,” I said, when my bonds settled down enough to allow me to speak.
Lad shook his head.
“We have to get out of here, Tan. Just concentrate on that.”
“
I need to know.”
He paused, head down.
“We’ve lost connection with the Guardian. But, of course, you already knew that. Because the Keeper—the Keeper is dead.” He drew a deep, shuddering breath. “Oh fuck, this is hard. I know the Guardian is a program, nothing but code and light. But I also know he’s the Keeper, and I remember the way he used to whisper to me. No one believed me.” He lifted his head, met my eyes. “Until you.”
I held his gaze in silence.
After a moment, he returned to his packing. “Whatever the reason, we’ve lost the Guardian program. He—it—was our connection to the veil, and now we have none. All our programmer feeds are being rejected. We can’t monitor the fluctuation of particle flow, which allowed us to predict and contain Flares before they freeformed. And no one’s strengthening the veil. That was the Guardian’s main protocol. Every particle that passes through the veil tears a little piece of it, carries it into our world as Flares, and your world as pions. The Guardian program infiltrates and reroutes the veil’s fluid, wave-like structure to patch these holes. That’s the whole reason the programmers are here and suddenly, we can’t do that anymore. Nothing’s getting through—nothing, that is, except your child.”
Dimly, I remembered the Specialist, in the middle of the chaos when his attempt to send me home had gone so wrong.
“Tanyana,” Lad said. “Your child’s signal is crisp, and clear. No interference, no loss of data integrity. While we were floundering in the darkness, it was shining and strong. The particle flow within it is steady. Its body, rather than rejecting the silex as yours does, seems to have incorporated it. Your child is code already, and light, and silex, and veil. It—it’s the most perfect Guardian we could have hoped for. More complete than an uploaded human mind, better designed than a program. It’s almost like…that’s why it was born.”
“
Lad,” I whispered. “No.”
“
All we have to do is bind it to our network, and its signal will do the rest. It would become a hardwired, integral part of Fulcrum itself. It would be our shining, beating heart, and yet so much more. It would connect all the programmers of this world to the veil, it would carry the lives of Halves, and protect countless millions from death by undoing.”
“
But Lad—”
He turned away.
“Your child could save two worlds.”
“
I knew the Keeper,” I tried, desperate. “And you knew him too. He was a sad, tortured creature, driven mad by loneliness and the impossible task you people gave him.” I struggled to swallow against the crystal building in my throat. “Don’t let them turn my baby into that, Lad.”
“
We have to run, Tan. Now. It won’t be long before they find out what I’ve done. Then they will banish me, and seal you away. Got to hurry.” Lad slammed the drawers closed, pulled a metallic cord to close the bag, and tightened buckles to secure it.
“
What about food?” I asked. I could feel the silex tightening in my waist; it pulled on the base of my lungs, wound itself through my muscles and stomach. If I was not silver then I was crystal, and I had almost forgotten what it meant to be flesh. Simple, human flesh. “And water.”
Lad shook his head.
“The most important thing you need is silex. Without it, the uncontrolled energy from your Pionic Flare will alter your subatomic structure, and you’ll die anyway.”
A pleasant thought.
“What about you?”
His expression was curious, troubled, like he didn
’t know what to make of my concern. “You looked after me, didn’t you? You and…and…”
He couldn
’t say it. “Kichlan,” I whispered for him. “Your brother. And yes, we looked after you. We loved you very much.”
A great shudder ran through him.
“Where is he?”
I lowered my gaze, I couldn
’t answer him. But that seemed to be enough for this new Lad to understand. “He was not my brother, not really.” He bent, undid the silex bath around my ankle, and tossed it aside. Apparently, his bag was full enough. “I don’t have siblings. My parents died decades ago, long before I was taken from the world below to work as a programmer.” He wiped what was left of the thickened, clingy liquid from my foot. “I should not grieve for him, because he was not really mine.”
“
He was,” I said, though Lad gave no sign that he heard. “Just as real as I am.”
“
You might have looked after me,” Lad straightened and slung the bag over his shoulder, unhindered by its awkward bulk or unburdened by its obvious weight, “but I looked after you too. I remember that. So that’s what I’m going to do.” He held out a hand. “Get up. We’re getting out of here while we still can.”
I took his hand and he hauled me to my feet. I felt weak with the silex burrowing its deep work inside me. But I could stand, I
would
stand, on my own two feet. “Not without my child.” I tried to look as determined as I felt.
Lad shook his head.
“We have one opportunity—”
“
No.” I pulled my hand from his grasp and crossed my arms, then realised how petty and childish that gesture must look so let them hang loosely at my sides. “No. I failed you, Lad. I failed Kichlan too. The fact that this child has survived my twisted, changing body is a sign in itself. I will not fail it too. Fail
him
. Do you understand? I will not leave without him, and condemn him to an unlife as a program and a tool. As the Keeper.”
Lad sighed and ran a hand over his face, spreading the drying blood across his cheek. He glanced at his palm, paled and shuddered again, before scrubbing it against his shirt.
“Bro used to say you were stubborn and full of pride. That it would be the death of you, and that he was cursed with such foolhardy people in his life.”
I couldn
’t help but grin. “Kichlan would say that, yes.”
He lifted eyebrows.
“I could force you,” he whispered so quietly he was only breathing the words. “Pick you up and carry you out of here, whether you liked it or not.”
I scowled, strengthened my stance.
“Yes, you probably could. But I wouldn’t make it easy for you.”
“
Tan.” That haunted expression returned and for a moment, Lad sagged beneath the weight on his back. “Bro said, Bro said…” He shook his head, as I stepped forward, hand raised. “No, don’t.” He straightened again. “No, I’m fine.”
Fine was hardly what I would call it. But I stilled all the same.
“We will do it your way,” he rasped the words, voice rough. “Isn’t that what we always did?”
Bag across his shoulders, he strode out of the room. I hesitated for a moment, transfixed by the bloody shoe print he left behind, and wondered if that was some kind of subtle accusation. Had Lad just blamed me for his death? Well, I deserved it, didn
’t I?
I hurried to follow.
“How are we going to do this?” I asked. Only a few quick steps to catch up with him and I was already winded.
“
I have absolutely no idea.” He paused at a wide lobby. Three chrome doors, large and round, on one wall, several normal sliding doors with red symbols glowing above them on another. He placed the bag down against one of the round chrome ones, and peered at me, thoughtfully. “The Specialists will not give up your child, no matter how politely we ask.”
I frowned at him.
“Of course not.”
“
So we will need to take it by force.”
I nodded. I missed the strength of my suit, however strange it was to feel that way.
“Surprise wouldn’t hurt, either.” He nodded to one of the normal doors. I recognised some of the symbols above it, but could only properly translate the one for debris. “Your child is in that direction.” He explained the route to me. “Think you can find your way there and act like a dangerous, crazy person for about five minutes before they capture you again?”
I stared at him. It still stunned me to hear Lad speak this way.
“Well?” But when he smiled, his face was gentle, and hinted at the frightened child-like man I had loved so strongly. “Can you?”
I straightened and ran a hand across my shaved skull. After a moment
’s thought I bent, placed my palm on Lad’s blood-soaked pants, and added prints to my shirt, my neck, and across the top of my head. His eyes widened. I nodded to him. “Crazy? Yes, I think I can do that.”
“
Then go. Quickly. Try to get your child back.”
“
What will you—”
“
I will help.”
We split up. Lad hurried through another door, and I followed his directions. I felt oddly strong, even without my suit, thanks to the blood on my hands and the fact that I was finally doing something more than sitting and waiting. My task might be impossible, but it was better than none at all.
I counted doors, my left and right turns, through all the colourless corridors, until I came to a room I recognised. I’d been held here, floating. My tube loomed tall, empty, its curved glass impeccably clean. But my child was nowhere to be seen. Dismayed, I stared at his smaller tube. Not empty, still full of silex liquid, but no small half-body, no unfortunate unborn.
“
All of them?”
Voices from deeper in the room, from the higher level behind the cylinders. I ducked and hid behind the silver base of my empty tube. It wasn
’t actually connected to the ground. It floated a few inches from the floor, above a thick chunk of gold-flecked crystal.
“
Yeah, and all at once.”
Two programmers, directly above me. I peered up through holes in a metal mesh floor, to their dark shoes and white coats.
“That can’t be right.”
“
None of the other systems have been affected. Only the security streams. Seems odd, don’t you think?”
The programmers descended stairs I hadn
’t realised were there. “And still no word about the woman? Shouldn’t they be done securing her by now?”
“
Nothing. The Specialist has sent others to investigate.”
We didn
’t have much time. I waited for the programmers to leave and hurried up the stairs. I followed flickering lights and the muted sound of voices, around more dark screens, keyboards, crystals reflecting hurried, frantic flashes of light, and more empty tubes. Many more.
Finally, I found my baby again. In the centre of the Other
’s most horrible hell.
He seemed to have grown, somehow, even without my body to support him. He looked more complete now. He had toes, he had fingers, and a soft smile on his sleeping half-face. I could see the faint fluttering of his tiny heart. It beat in time with the fluctuations of colour in his Flare, wavering light out into the room.
No longer encased in a tube, he was suspended instead by a mesh of golden wire. It burrowed inside of him, his skin as well as silex, pulled his little semi-formed arms up at an unnatural angle, spread-eagled his legs, forced his head back and his chin up.
The sight of him hit me like a physical blow. Rage and fear rolled up in its wake, so powerful they nearly swept me off my feet. He was my son, a part of me, and even though we no longer shared the same body that connection would never fade. I knew, with absolute certainty, that I would do whatever it took to protect him.
“No!” I roared, and rushed forward. “Stop it!”
The light from his Pionic Flare shone across the room. My own silex caught it, reflected it back, even as I climbed a small platform and reached for my son, impossibly high above me.
“Shit!” The programmers were behind me, protected from the Flare by a cage of silex and glass. “What is she doing here?”
“
Sir, we have redlines on the grid again! She’s interfering.”
I gripped the mesh, shook it. But it was far stronger than it looked, and all I got for my efforts was a strange tingling across my skin, and the whisper of half-imagined voices. The disjointed laughter of the puppet men, very far away. And a faint child
’s cry, lonely, stretching on and on, tearing at my heart.
“
Sir, more problems. Screens failing, level seven through to sixty four! And rising, coming this way.”