The would-have-been guide disappeared as abruptly as he had come.
The five of them climbed to the seventieth floor and reached a door that careened on one hinge. Pekko flashed about a torch. The room was empty, completely empty, even without litter. There was a two metre gash where part of the window-wall had been ripped away. Icy sleet blew inside. It was freezing.
“Stars,” muttered Nils. He was wheezing.
“Great bridge,” Adelaide ventured. She had to get Nils on side.
“Oh, you’ll like the bridge,” said Pekko, a nasty grin curling his lips. He reached overhead and tugged on a length of rope which was attached to a metal ring in the wall.
“What’s that?”
“That’s the bridge,” Pekko said.
Adelaide stared, uncomprehending. She looked at the metal ring, the thick tarred knots, the rope which ran close to the ceiling and out.
“You’ve got to be joking.”
The others looked equally unhappy. Drake and Nils exchanged glances. Rikard pulled on the rope, testing its strength.
“Pekko, you’d better go first,” said Nils at last. “We don’t want her running off on the other side.”
Pekko nodded. From his rucksack he took a tangle of rope and began fashioning it into some kind of harness. Adelaide watched his hands at work under the torchlight with a sick fascination. She glanced through the gaping wall. Now the leaning tower was invisible. Thunder rumbled again.
“I’m not going over a rope,” she said. “We’re seventy floors above sea level, are you all crazy? Did you hear what that—that man said downstairs, he said this place is cursed. I’m not going there and I’m definitely not going on that bit of string. It looks ready to snap.”
“Leave it,” muttered Nils.
“None of you want to use it either, this is fucking insane!”
She stared at Drake but Drake looked away.
“Would you gag her, please,” said Pekko, continuing to work with the ropes. “She’s doing my head in.”
“With pleasure,” Nils retorted. “Don’t struggle,” he said, as the material pulled once again at the corners of her mouth. “Or I’ll use tape instead, and that’s more unpleasant to get off.”
Her nose sucked in air frantically. Pekko had slipped on his harness; a rudimentary construction which tightened under his arms and around his chest. He reached up and hooked it onto the rope. His face betrayed no fear; only the single-minded, merciless determination that was as much a part of him as his shaven skull. Nils checked all of the knots. He reached up and gave the rope a tug.
“You’re good.”
Pekko stepped up to the gap. He stood on the ledge, sleet lashing his face. Adelaide felt her heart treble. Pekko leapt and vanished.
She gave a moan of horror. Pekko had drowned, and Nils was about to send her after him.
Nils peered across the chasm. He gave a shout, and flashed a torch twice. An answering light blinked. Pekko had made it across. A minute later the harness came spinning back across the rope. Nils reeled it in.
“You’re next.”
She tried to make a bolt for it but they anticipated the move. She didn’t even make it to the door. Nils pulled the harness over her head. She fought him, struggling with every weapon she had left. Her forehead contacted with his collar bone. She heard him grunt. Then Drake put a knee into the small of her back and she went down. She felt the harness tightening around her chest.
“Come on,” said Nils. “Just get it over with.”
She didn’t move so he wrenched her to her feet. The harness fastened to the slimy rope. She tried to speak but even if the gag hadn’t been there, only gibberish would have come out. Her body was dysfunctional with fear. Nils dragged her towards the window-wall. Her shoes scraped on the buckling floor. Thunder and lightning split the sky and illuminated the leaning tower. She was a foot away from the edge—her toes were at the brink—over it—blackness above and below—
Nils untied her hands.
“I’d hold on if I were you,” said Drake from behind.
She gripped the rope. It was the only thing between her and death.
I don’t want to drown. Oh stars, I don’t want to drown. Give me any end other than that…
Hail fell in a gulf of oblivion.
Another rumble, another sheet of lightning flared. Nils’s shove sent her spinning out. She closed her eyes against the onslaught of sleet and wind. Thunder growled and her scream was muffled by the gag and the elements. She saw the lightning that followed on the backs of her eyelids. She thought she’d been hit.
Arms were around her. She collapsed into the ungiving mass. She could not understand that her feet were on a solid structure; she couldn’t support herself.
“Get up,” said Pekko.
She opened her eyes. She was on the other side. Pekko, taking no risks, was retying her wrists before he untied the harness. He flashed the torch back across the brink. She saw tiny dots, Nils responding. Pekko sent the harness back.
Adelaide cringed away from the gap and from Pekko. The wall here had disintegrated even more than in the other tower.
“I wouldn’t run anywhere,” Pekko said. “The whole tower is structurally unsound. Listen. You can hear it eroding.”
His voice echoed in the empty room. There were no lights. The floor was uneven underfoot, littered with unnameable, crunching debris. When she listened, she heard a deep, unearthly moaning.
There’s something eating the foundations.
Nils landed walking. He must have done this before, she thought numbly. Nils stripped off the harness and passed it to Pekko, who sent it back for the others.
Nils switched on a torch. It lit the planes of his face weirdly.
“Welcome to the unremembered quarters.”
40 ¦ VIKRAM
T
he snow came down from the sky in dizzy swirls and collected in the well of the boat. It stuck to the hood and the shoulders of Vikram’s coat. He hunched over, shivering. At the prow a red lantern produced a dim glow. Every few minutes Vikram leaned forward and brushed the flakes away from its casing. The lantern was his signal.
The westerners, Surface Level or whoever they were, were late. He could not think of them as enemies, but neither could he think of them as friends. He had no idea who he was about to meet.
He should have a plan. He should have a decision, at least. But he had nothing. The invisible circle on the back of his neck seemed to pulse gently. He knew it was only his own circulation. He was the only person who could feel that mark. No-one else could translate its soft message:
traitor, traitor, traitor, traitor.
If that was the decision.
Something bumped against his boat. He glanced down and made out a broken square from a raft rack, covered with two inches of snow. He reached over the side to push it away.
Two hands grabbed his shoulders, toppling him backwards. He lashed out. His elbow contacted—something—someone. A cry was stifled. The return blow, hard and fast, caught him in the ribs. He wheezed. A hand clamped over his mouth, halving his air. He struggled and wrenched the wrist away—a surprisingly thin wrist—but his assailant already had an arm against his throat and was dragging him backwards. Vikram reached around and punched behind him. The blow returned a muffled grunt. They were at the edge of the boat. Vikram tilted backwards and he realized his assailant was using Vikram’s own body weight as an anchor.
They tumbled overboard together, hitting the water with a compact splash. Vikram went under. The cold immersed him. His lungs seared with salt. He broke surface, gasping. Snowflakes poured onto his face. Arms wrapped once more around his chest and a voice whispered in his ear, “Quiet now. We’re getting you out.”
The cold was paralysing. He could not find the energy to speak, let alone fight. The assailant’s legs kicked under him with strong movements. He was towed steadily away from the boat.
One moment he was looking at the boat, the next a billowing sphere of flames. A fiery cloud blossomed—it seemed to hang, for a few, infinite seconds—and then a shower of sparks rained over the surface. Hot ash sprayed Vikram’s face. He did not think to wipe it away. He barely noticed his assailant hauling him into another vehicle. He was staring, mute, at the spot where his boat had been. The backs of his eyes prickled, and he felt a rush of sadness.
“Lie low,” whispered the voice again. “You were being followed. They will come to see what has happened.”
It was just a boat. He knew that. Vikram turned his head away from the destruction and saw his opponent’s face in the last of the firelight.
“Ilona?”
Incredulity wiped out anything else. The girl, Nils’s girl, was crouched low inside the boat. It was a tiny boat, and Ilona was inches from Vikram. She spoke urgently.
“Tell me Vikram, this is very important. They will be using you to find us. There was probably a tracker on board your boat. Is there one on you?”
“Ilona, what the hell are you—”
“Are they tracking you, Vikram?”
“Yes. Yes of course they are. Back of the neck. You can only feel it if you know it’s there. It’s like a disc…”
He pulled down his scarves and felt the cold thrill against the patch of bare skin. Ilona took something out of a pocket. He felt her gloved fingers push against his neck before the air numbed his skin to all sensation.
“What are you doing?”
“Dampening it. Done.” She pulled the scarves back up. “Keep low.”
“Where are we going?”
“The unremembered quarters.”
“Why are we going there?”
“That’s where Adelaide is. Don’t worry. Nils is there.”
“Nils? What’s he got to do—”
“No more questions, Vikram.”
Ilona began to row. His journey continued in silence. The shock was impacting on him now, physical and mental. Fate was playing havoc with his soul tonight. He felt sick.
Every few towers, Ilona eased into an offshoot waterway and stopped.
“Look.” She pointed. Vikram saw the dull shadow of a patrol boat crawling past. Searchlights arced from their prows.
“If a searchlight comes over, get in the water,” Ilona muttered. “These days they shoot dead bodies for fun.”
The night had come alive at last. The blizzard was pierced by intermittent gunfire. Muffled by the snowfall, it was difficult to pinpoint from where the sounds came. Vikram was full of questions, but all of Ilona’s concentration was on the boat. The air felt choked with halted conflict.
He saw Mikkeli, perched on the end of the coracle, her feet trailing in the water. She was made entirely of snowflakes and foam.
Keli? Is that you?
Oh, I’m here Vik. I’m with you every step of the way. Always have been.
Stay with me, Keli.
But she didn’t speak again. Soon she too drifted away from the raft, and the faint plash of Ilona’s oars in the snow-filled night was the only proof that they were both alive.
“Ilona? Is Drake safe?”
“Yes.”
“What about—”
But she wouldn’t know Shadiyah, or Marete and Hal, or Hella, or old Mr Argele.
They were approaching the unremembered quarters. Not even the shanty-boats or the dealers came here, only the dregs of destitution. These quarters were cursed.
“We’re here,” said Ilona.
The crooked tower loomed overhead, an absence where the snow did not fall. This was the one they said was inhabited, not by people, but by something else. The one that had burned. He imagined the ghosts clinging to the walls, their hands like suckered amphibians. He thought he heard them whisper. About him? To him?
There was no decking. Part of the wall was broken and the sea surged inside. Ilona steered the boat through the gap. Inside, the sound of her oars echoed back at them and water ran off the walls in small streams.
How could he possibly get Adelaide out without a boat? And shouldn’t Linus have known that the rebels would find the tracker?
Ilona rowed through the flooded rooms until they reached the stairwell. She switched on a torch and secured the craft to the rusting rail.
“This way. We’ve blocked the other stairwells, this is the only way up.”
Vikram followed her up the crumbling steps. The water logged in his upper clothing was beginning to freeze and he crackled when he moved. Every step was an effort. Ilona held the torch in front of them. They progressed slowly. Everywhere Vikram looked the building was falling to bits. Black powder fell away when he brushed the walls. Despite the freezing temperature, the smell of stale dead things reached his nose. Preserved carcasses of half-eaten animals lined the steps. Ten flights up Ilona’s torch flared on a man sitting bolt upright, his eyes wide and accusing but no life left in their gaze.
They kept going past the corpse. Vikram’s muscles were trembling with fatigue. He lost track of the floors and was disorientated by the time Ilona said, “This is us.”
She knocked on the door. There was a pause, then an answering knock from the other side. Ilona replied with a more complicated pattern. Vikram heard the sounds of furniture shifting and then the door scraped open.
“Vik!”
Something hard and furry flung itself at him. He disentangled himself from the pair of arms and found himself looking at the dark eyes and slightly squashed nose of Drake. She was grinning from ear to ear. His answering smile was wobbly with relief.
“I told you he’d make it,” Drake flung back over her shoulder. “Get inside, Vik, you’re freezing.”
The room was dark except for the torchlight and the glow of a heater, around which the others were gathered, bulked up in shapeless layers of wool and hide. Ilona went straight over to Nils. He lifted his hand to his shoulder and she squeezed it and Nils said something to her Vikram didn’t hear. He recognized Rikard, the guy Drake had said hello to that night in the bar. So there’d been something to it after all, or there was now. There was a third man that he did not know.
Rikard and the stranger were staring at Vikram openly, but Nils did not look at him.
“Hi, Nils.”
“Vik.”
For a moment, the tension between the two men was like salt on a wound. Slowly, Nils stood up and crossed the room. Nils hesitated. Then he lifted his arms and engulfed Vikram in a hug.
“You got out,” said Nils. His voice was gruff.
“You got me out, it seems.”
Nils glanced around.
“Yeah, well, long story.”
Vikram had the same sinking sensation he had felt talking to Linus. There was something else going on here, something he did not yet understand. Drake’s grin began to falter.
“Long time no see, Vik,” said Rikard. Hostility there, Vikram thought. He met the other man’s eyes squarely.
“Yeah, it’s been a while.”
“You dealt with the boat?” The third man spoke to Ilona, curtly, but his eyes flicked to Vikram. He wore no hood or a hat and his head was shorn; he was either immune to the cold, or it was a statement.
“It’s gone,” Ilona said.
“You’ve checked him for trackers?”
“One on the neck. Dampened. I can’t get it off, those things stick.”
“That’s Pekko,” Drake murmured.
“What do you mean stick?” Vikram said uneasily.
Pekko gazed at him. “The Citizens use semi-implants as trackers. Don’t worry. You’ll get it off once we’re done here.”
An icy pool was forming around Vikram’s feet. The heater was beginning to melt the ice in his clothes. Its warmth, coming out of the cold, was almost an assault. He was starting to feel giddy.
“So what’s going on?” he asked. “You’ve got Adelaide here?”
Drake’s smile dropped away. Nils frowned. Suddenly Vikram wondered if even his best friends did not trust him. He was acutely aware of his appearance. His clothes, even wrecked by water, had a different cut. His hair felt clipped and wrong. He had a stamp on the back of his neck.
Pekko broke the silence.
“Nils, check him again, get him new clothes.” He gave the orders in this cell, then. Was Pekko the coordinator that Linus had described?
“Oh—” as they turned to move. “And don’t touch this wall—it’s live.”
Vikram glanced back. Pekko was standing, his hands thrust into his pockets, a smile curving his lips but not parting them. Vikram looked at the wall. It was damp. He thought he saw a spark, but in the murky light and his current state of disorientation, he could not be certain of what he was seeing.
“Sure,” he said.
Nils took a torch and led Vikram into the adjacent room. The torch flickered over rows and rows of metre-high counters. The strip lighting over each unit was broken, the glass long stolen and wires dangling down, frozen into twisting spirals. Vikram recognised the layout of the space. He had seen it in working greenhouses.
“We’re using this for storage,” said Nils, indicating a unit where a few blankets were folded and stacked. There were sealed containers of food, a toolbox, a couple of pans, a disconnected Neptune.
The door swung closed behind them. Vikram grabbed Nils’s arm.
“What’s going on in there?”
“It’s a fucking awkward situation,” Nils hissed.
“Then tell me about it!”
“They don’t trust you. Pekko. Rikard. The people running this show. Here, change into these.”
Nils handed him a bundle. Vikram stripped off his dripping clothes, retrieving the medicine given him by the nurse, and changed quickly. The new clothes were shabby and didn’t fit well, but they were warm. Someone must have placed them near the heater before he arrived. Drake, probably.
“Why did they get me out if they don’t trust me?”
“Because you’re one of ours.”
“Precisely!”
Nils hesitated. “The Citizens must have offered you a deal.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Pekko thought you might have—accepted.”
“Who the hell’s Pekko, anyway? I thought there was some kind of rebellion group—is it just you guys?”
Nils leant against the door and folded his arms.
“Vik, this is more complicated than you realize. Pekko’s in charge here. And it’s not just us, he’s working for Maak. Remember Maak? The guy Mikkeli used to take deliveries for? He’s way up the ladder now. They call the group Surface, as though it’s a movement, like Horizon, but it’s not. It’s Maak—or his people—that own Ilona. He probably brought down Juraj. And he’s orchestrating this uprising. They’re playing a game, Vik. It’s about more than territory now, it’s about people. Getting Adelaide—and now you back—it’s a statement, you see. I mean, there’s never been a hostage situation before. Why d’you think we’re holed up like lice in this cursed place?” Nils spat on the ground to ward off any spirits that might be listening. “You should also know that Pekko hates Citizens,” he said. “Pathologically.”
“So I’m a Citizen now, am I?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Do you trust me?” Nils did not reply. “Nils, do you trust me?”
“Yeah. Yeah, course I do.” Nils scooped up the pile of Vikram’s old clothes and began to wring them out. “I suppose we’ll have to burn these.”
“Great, we can have a fire.”
“Look, just be careful, okay? You’ve been away for a while. Things have been happening. Riots have been on the cards for a good while now.”
“Yeah, well, I wish you’d said something before.”
Nils shrugged.
I wasn’t here, thought Vikram.
“You look terrible,” Nils said. “I guess it was hell in there.”
Silence fell between him; Vikram trying to find a way to communicate what could not be explained, Nils no doubt trying to imagine a place which could not be imagined.
“Thanks for getting me out,” Vikram said. “I was going mad.”
“Yeah.” Nils’s eyes dropped. “You can guarantee Pekko wants something from you. He likes making people do things. That’s why he sent Ilona to get you, not me or Drake—as if she has to prove herself before they’ll let her go.”
“Right.”
It came as no real surprise. He felt only resignation, and a dull ache, where another hook had been planted in his body for someone else to pull upon, in yet another direction. Linus Rechnov, Maak and Pekko—between them they would tear him apart.