“
First the security, now screens?”
“
Is she doing this? Her traffic interfering with Fulcrum’s internal signals?”
Behind me, a door opened.
“No,” the Specialist said, so calm and clear above his programmers’ panic. “I don’t believe so. She’s not even connected.” I spun to face him. “No, this is a different kind of sabotage.” He had been wearing thick, dark spectacles, and a tight white mask but he pulled these from his face, and narrowed his eyes at me. “How did you escape, Tanyana? What have you done to my programmers?”
I shuddered, tried to focus. Lad had asked me to act like a madwoman, and give him time to do whatever he was doing. It did not take much to achieve.
“Give him back to me,” I growled the words. Didn’t need to force it, the sound rose from anger, and deep helplessness.
“
Just tell me—”
“
No!” My Flare surged, bright and sporadic, spluttering like unhealthy candle flame. Above me, my son moved. I felt it through the wire, and glanced up. He was straining against the web, peering down at me, even though his unmade eyes were still welded shut.
“
It’s Tanyana!” More programmers ran into the room. “She murdered them, escaped and—” They halted at the sight of me, suddenly silent, expressions pale and shocked. And I grinned. Unhinged. Not an act.
“
Yes, we can see that.” The Specialist scowled at them.
“
Sir!” One of the newly arrived programmers pushed forward. “Aladio was not with them.”
“
What?” he snapped.
“
He was not among the dead!”
A thoughtful look—too thoughtful for my liking—spread across the Specialist
’s face.
I released the web, stalked forward.
“I killed him, just like the others!” I screeched, too loud, too painful in my throat. “And I’ll kill you too!”
“
Did you?” The Specialist did not believe me. He turned back to his programmers, not at all afraid of me. “Sabotage. Aladio has betrayed us. Lock down everything below eighty, don’t give him access to any of the deeper hubs. Divert as many beams as possible to the Crossing room, and this one. We need to maintain the stability of this connection, no matter what.”
Programmers scattered at his command.
“And summon the Legate.”
Then all the lights snapped off.
Everyone froze. The only light that remained was the unstable flicker of my Flare, and my son’s steady glow.
“
That motherfucker,” someone growled, one of the programmers still hidden behind their cage. “He’s switched off life support.”
“
That’s impossible.” The Specialist strode back toward them. “There’s no way he made it down to the bottom level that quickly.”
I pressed back against the web.
“Don’t let it faze you. Continue.”
“
But sir…” The other programmers did not sound as certain. “We will run out of breathable air!”
Another crystal glittered in the darkness, carried on Lad
’s upraised palm. He walked into the room so calmly that I wondered, for a moment, if he had gone as mad as I was supposed to behave.
The programmers did not notice him, not at first.
“Sir, the error is isolated. This floor, ten above, ten below. The rest of the building is functioning normally.”
“
Send a distress signal to the Legate, quickly. And replicate it throughout the building. Maybe the lower floors can funnel us up some—”
“
I wouldn’t try to do that, if I were you,” Lad said, and silenced them all, instantly. “It won’t work.”
The Specialist turned.
“Aladio? What are you doing?”
Lad shook his head.
“That is not my name, sir. I am Lad. I heard the voice of the Keeper. I am Tan’s friend. And I am helping her.”
If this surprised the Specialist he did not show it.
“Now, listen—”
But Lad cut him off again, this time by holding out the crystal in one hand, and lifting something large, heavy and silver above his head in the other.
“This is the primary life support hub for this sector,” he said. “I have removed it, shattered the bonding silex and diverted the control beams. If you were to replace it now, I’d say it would take you three, maybe four hours to reconnect and get it working. I’m not sure how much air we have left, however. So I would stop arguing, if I were you.” He bounced the crystal in his palm, once, twice, and around us the programmers drew a collective, shocked breath. “If you don’t, I will smash it. And tell me, do we have any spares?”
“
You bastard,” one of the programmers hissed.
“
That’s right.” Lad’s expression was hidden in the darkness. “We don’t, not this far up. I believe they have some on level fourteen. But I think you’ll find their screens aren’t working, and they don’t even know you need help.”
Terrible silence. All I could hear was my own laboured breathing.
“So that’s enough arguing.” Lad gestured to the web behind me with the large, metal bar in his hand. “Now, take him down.”
“
Alad—”
“
Do it!” Lad tossed the hub of crystal, higher this time, and fumbled his catch. I think that was what convinced the Specialist. Not the threat of what Lad meant do, rather the accident waiting to happen.
“
You are dooming us all, Aladio,” the Specialist said, as his programmers handed him a dark panel from behind the silex cage. Symbols sprung to life on its surface. “Both worlds need this child, and you know why.”
I held Lad
’s gaze. He did not waver. For a moment, I doubted what I was forcing him to do. Wasn’t this just the way he described it? Lad, following me again, unquestioning, even to his death?
But he held no such doubts.
“Faster, sir,” he said. “Every word is eating up oxygen, precious molecules you might just need to breathe.”
The light above me faded, slowly. Then the web shook. Wires slid cleanly out of the baby
’s silex, and his skin, and he fell. Gently, like a snowflake caught in my sunlight. I held out my arms and he drifted down into them, so soft he barely seemed real. Which he wasn’t, entirely.
I pressed him to my chest. He tucked up his bent legs, and seemed to fit perfectly in my arms. He smelled like the air before a storm, like moisture and energy. His slow breathing trilled quietly. A tiny hard reached out, and wrapped lightly around my thumb.
“Hurry,” Lad snapped me back to reality.
I scowled at the Specialist as I hurried from the platform. He followed my gaze, expression heavy and judgemental.
“You won’t live long without our help,” he told me. “Your Pionic Flare will destroy you, and your child, and Aladio. And who knows how much of my world.”
Lad tossed the metal bar to the floor, grabbed my arm, and together we ran. Back through the room with the tubes—Lad paused to collect the tube that had held my son, and as large and heavy as it was he managed to tuck it under one arm—out into the corridor, around corners, beneath red symbols, and back to the lobby with the three chrome doors. The programmers followed. They were not, I realised, trying to stop us. After all, I could not move that quickly, and my slowness held Lad back. Rather, they wanted the precious crystal in his hand.
We halted at the chrome doors. Lad placed the tube on the ground, swung the full bag over his shoulder, and tapped a small panel on the wall beside one of the doors. Something behind it whirred and grew gradually louder, as though approaching from a great distance.
“
Where are you going, Aladio?” The Specialist had also followed. He and his programmers hung back, crowding the doorways. “You know she will die if you take her down to that world. The child too.”
Lad shook his head.
“Take this,” he whispered to me. I cradled my son in one arm as he placed the crystal hub in my palm. He picked up the tube, and backed into the chrome door. I followed, holding the crystal out in front of me.
“
I look after Tan,” he said, and my stomach clenched. “From anyone, from anything. Even from you.”
I hated myself for this. But my child was safe now. He had to be.
The whirring rose to a grinding-metal crescendo behind us, and the chrome door opened. Lad stepped through it. I followed.
“
We will call the Legate,” the Specialist said, his voice nearly lost behind the echoing, grinding noises. “Not even your programmer status will protect you.”
“
I’d worry about myself, if I were you. Can’t call anyone without air, without heat.” Lad leaned forward, whispered in my ear, “Get ready to throw it.”
He dropped the bag and the tube to type frantically at a bright keyboard on a curved wall.
“Don’t do this—”
“
Now!”
I tossed the crystal hub back through the circular door. As the programmers and the Specialist leapt for it—a single mass of white coats and black, pressed pants and a communal, panicked expression—the door closed. And we were moving.
I spun. We were inside a small room. The walls were curved, the ceiling too, and the floor a raised platform. It was a large ball-shape, big enough to hold maybe a dozen more people. I couldn’t work out how we were moving, but I felt it in a dipping, sick feeling in my stomach, the pressure in my ears, and the way the entire room seemed to jolt. Like an enormous, and truly bizarre landau.
“
Hurry.” Lad tipped the tube up, tapped more buttons. The crystal on the bottom lit up, while the metallic top slid free. “Put him back in here.”
I baulked.
“What?” I had to hold him. After everything we had just done, how could I put him back inside that tube? Only here, in my arms, could I be sure he would be safe. “No, I—”
“
He can’t survive without the silex!” Lad cut across me. “He is far too young to survive outside the womb.”
“
You’re the people who—”
“
We don’t have time to argue, Tan. You did this because you wanted him to live, didn’t you? Don’t kill him with your stupid pride.”
I swallowed, hard. My neck rattled.
“Are you sure?”
He nodded, expression sad.
“Yes. I’m sorry, but this is the only way we can keep him alive.”
I nodded, and crouched down in front of the tube.
“The silex will provide his developing body with the things it needs to live. Oxygen and minerals. It will also filter out carbon dioxide and—”
I was staring at him, and Lad must have realised that I had no idea what he was saying.
He smiled, crouched beside me. “Never mind. Let’s just say it will give him energy to develop, the kind of energy your body would have provided. But it will also help isolate his Flare.”
That I could understand. I kissed my son
’s soft cheek. His skin was so thin I could see blood pumping inside him, and light washing along with it. That reminded me of the Keeper. “Please live,” I breathed against the side of his head, into his not-quite ears.
I eased him back into the tube, and held my breath as silex closed over his head. Lad replaced the lid. He pressed a few more keys, and it sealed with a hiss.
“Will he be all right?” I pressed my hands against the side of the tube, but it wasn’t the same. I couldn’t feel his breathing warmth. “Doesn’t the tube need to be connected to a Pionic Flare?”
Lad nodded, tapped knuckles against the glowing crystal at the base of the tube.
“Isolated silex hub—it’s basically a piece of a Shard with some of the Flare still inside it. There’s enough juice in this thing to keep that tube working for decades. At least.”
Juice? I decided it was best not to ask.
“You, on the other hand, need some attention.”
Lad sat me on one of the pale, leather-like seats that ringed the edge of the circular room. He drew more of the patching gel from his bag, used it to fill cracks in my neck. I leaned against the wall and watched as he tossed away two empty tubes.
“How long will all that keep me alive?” I asked, and pointed to his bag.
Lad sat back on his heels, clasped his hands beneath his chin, and studied me.
“Depends on what you do,” he said. “Run around like this, crack the silex, and a couple of weeks, maybe. If I’m careful.”
“
Weeks—?”
“
Two sixnight and one,” he explained.
Was that all? I stared up at the curve in the ceiling. There was a small glass window at the very top. Lights flashed past, faster and faster.
“Behave, keep as still and as calm as possible, and I might be able to stretch it out for a month. A moon.”
“
So, I’m dead. Sooner or later.” I glanced down at my son. Then who would look after him?
Lad sighed. He stood, walked to the far side of the room. A small compartment slid out of the wall there, with taps, a sink, and crockery. He filled two glasses with water, drained one, refilled it, and gave me the other.