A Mother's Unreason

by Andy Graham

  38

  The Old Cells

  The blindfold was ripped off his head. Squinting in the sudden light, Ray Franklin was shoved forwards. His injured leg gave way under him. He crashed onto a stone floor. Through the daze fogging his senses he heard Nascimento’s deep voice berating Orr.

  “Dude, there was no need for that.”

  Metal slammed on metal. A rattle of chains.

  Orr muttered something about Nascimento going soft, adding, “It’s going to get you killed if you don’t watch it. And I’m not going to let you take me with you.” His slurred accent was not quite Ailan, not quite Mennai.

  Ray focused on Nascimento’s heated reply. The words slipped past him. His head was throbbing, a dull hammering rhythm in time with the pains in the rest of his body: ankle, back, neck, shoulder, and now thigh. “But at least you’re alive, unlike all those others you let die,” the voice chittered at him.

  Nascimento’s crude first aid, administered on the surface, had been clumsy but effective. The blood flow had been staunched. The painkillers were probably the only thing keeping Ray awake.

  Outside of the iron bars, Nascimento’s head almost scraped the arched ceilings. He seemed to know it and was stooping. It didn’t suit him. The brash swagger Ray was used to from his friend was gone. It had been replaced with something that, though not yet broken, was one push away from it.

  He rolled onto his back. The stone floor pressing into his skull was cold and damp. He could feel straw scratching at his skin. The straw smelt of urine. “Why did you shoot me?” he asked.

  Nascimento and Orr’s muttered argument stopped.

  “Why did you shoot me, Jamerson?”

  Nascimento and Orr exchanged glances.

  “To stop Seth getting his hands on you. He’s pretty creative with that knife of his.”

  “We were told to take you alive,” Orr said.

  “Dismembered and disfigured is still alive,” Nascimento added. “I figured that if I could wing you a little, it’d take the steam out of his sails.”

  “Wind, not steam, Nasty,” Orr said.

  “I’ve told you a million fucking times, don’t call me that. Use my name,” Nascimento replied.

  As their bickering started up, Ray struggled to a seated position and dragged himself closer to the iron bars.

  “Why did you kill Kayle, Orr?”

  The silence was immediate.

  Orr spat into a puddle by his feet. “He was pointing a gun at my head. Why do you think I shot him?”

  “Is that why you stole his revolvers off him?” Ray nodded to the antique pistols stuffed into Orr’s belt. “Is robbing corpses part of the remit of the Unsung?”

  The sneer disappeared from Orr’s face. “He’s better off dead. Seth would have made the last minutes of his life worse than hell. Or he would have decided to bring him here and salvage what was left of the man for their experiments.”

  Nascimento went as pale as snow.

  “I did Kayle a favour, Franklin. So stop with your narrow-minded moralising when you have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “What were they going to do to him?”

  Orr’s jaw clamped shut.

  “Remember that thing hunting you and the kids in the Weeping Woods?” Nascimento asked.

  Ray felt the bile rise in the back of his throat. He would never forget, especially not after discovering who that man had been. Purple-eyed Karil had stunk of fear, panic and hate. Part-man, part-monster, part-cyborg. He’d had a camera stapled to his skull and a giant flashing electrode embedded into the flesh of his wrist.

  “That’s what they’re doing here. At least, that’s what we’re allowed to see, so I guess that’s just the tip of the wedge.”

  “Iceberg,” Orr muttered. “I thought you kids from the Gates were all learned and lattered.”

  “Lettered, Baris, lettered.”

  Orr hung up a heavy metal key on a hook on the wall opposite Ray’s cell. Ray eased himself into a better position. The geese must have kicked in.

  “You OK?” Nascimento asked.

  “Say one thing for the 13th, your painkillers are good.”

  “Those geese aren’t from the 13th. It’s the last of the stash I got from the medi-sec I was doing. Pink for girls, blue for boys. Remember? I almost regret never having the chance to give them to Brooke.”

  “Don’t. Safer this way.” Ray rubbed the back of his neck. The aches and pains in his body were muted, biding their time.

  The long low stone corridor was split into cells by iron bars that rammed from floor to ceiling. Some of the brick around the bars was dark, more wet than damp. Ray guessed they were somewhere under one of the canals that ran through the Bridged Quarter. His cell was big enough to pace in. Others were not much more than a large box; each side of the cube small enough to force a young child to bend double. A collection of rotting wooden furniture stood in the cell to Ray’s right: a table, a few chairs and a cupboard. To his left, behind messy yellow gruel in a stone trough, was a large bundle of rags.

  “Where are we?” he asked.

  Nascimento wiped a cobweb off his helmet. “Under the Bridged Quarter, these tunnels have been here longer than the city. Prior to the Unsung claiming them, I think they were owned by some press baron. He wanted a private zoo when zoos were illegal. He thought the law didn’t apply to people like him who had enough money to get round it. He had these tunnels converted, added others and put cells in some of them. The quarter is honeycombed with them. Rumour is you can get pretty much anywhere in the city, Lesau and Melesau Towers, the Kickshaw, under the walls, the barracks, without ever having to see the surface.”

  “A city under the city beneath a city within a city,” Orr said.

  Nascimento shot him a sidelong glance. “I see Baris the Bard is still alive and well.”

  Orr’s face snapped back to its perpetual sneer.

  “Many of the tunnels have flooded or collapsed,” Nascimento continued, “and there are some that I wouldn’t want to go down with the entire 10th Legion.”

  “Not even after what we faced under the mountains?”

  “No.” Nascimento’s answer was flat and simple.

  “What happened to the animals in the zoo?”

  “The press baron died. He went mad, syphilis. The animals in his subterranean zoo starved to death. Then the military research teams found this place and took over. Some of the stuff they did here—” He shuddered.

  Orr clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and nodded down the corridor.

  “We got to go, Ray,” Nascimento said. Orr was now standing in the doorway, his stocky frame silhouetted by the yellow light from the adjacent corridor.

  “What happens next?”

  “The VP’s gone on some errand. Then he wants to meet you face-to-face.”

  “That’s not good, is it?”

  Nascimento shook his head. “Sorry, dude.”

  “You can’t just let me out?”

  A smile creased Nascimento’s face. “I love you, man. I’d die for any of my brothers and sisters from the 10th. Even that miserable bastard.” He jerked his thumb at Orr and grinned. “Well, I think so, anyway.” His grin faded. “They’ve got me and my family over a barrel. Seth was looking at pictures of my sister and mother the other day. I’ll let you imagine what he was saying. If they see me helping you, then there’s all kinds of problems. And this,” he gestured to his helmet cam, “is on all the time.”

  Orr walked away. The light from the next corridor flooded into the cells once more. Nascimento dropped his rifle to his side and rapped a closed fist on the body armour over his heart. “We were brothers, dude. Used to be said that you can leave the 10th legion—”

  “But it never leaves you,” Ray finished.

  “The rules have changed. See you around.”

  His left hand still on his chest, Nascimento extended his index finger, tapped it on his body armour and headed for the exit. As he passed the ce
ll full of old furniture, he stumbled, catching himself on the cell door to get his balance. Nascimento’s swear words cut through the rusty squeal of the hinges as the door swung ajar. Then he was gone, his giant frame blocking out the light for a second as he ducked to get through the exit.

  Ray pushed himself to his feet. Scrabbled at the walls. His hands came away damp from the brick. He had been stripped of anything to dig with. Before long, his fingernails were split and bleeding. He yanked at the iron bars of his cell. Dust spilled down from the ceiling, but the bars stood. He tugged at the iron chain on the door until the pressure in his head threatened to split it in two. Then, exhausted and in pain, he slumped to the floor. His cursing mixed with a distant drip of water echoing down the corridor.

  The voice in his head piped up. This time it was wearing a mask that was both Vena and Bethina.

  “You need a den, a lair, a headquarters. Somewhere with secret tunnels, cells with iron bars, underground rivers and boats. You need timed knocks on doors (rat tat tat . . . rat tat . . . rat), a plethora of passwords and code names. The Night Phoenix would be mine, Ray. And you absolutely must have one slow dripping leak you can never fix. Plink . . . plink . . . plop.”

  “Useless,” he said, between gasps for breath. “Trapped and useless. There has to be a way out.”

  “Well, if you’ve got any plans, hurry them up,” a thin voice said.

  Ray spun to his left.

  The large bundle of rags stirred. A figure sat up from underneath them, a shock of white hair atop a face made of old leather. “I don’t really fancy dying in a dead zoo.”

  Ray’s jaw dropped open. “What are you doing here?”

  “Paying for your family’s mistakes,” Stann Taille replied. “Again.”

  39

  Smack Time (Three)

  Ray knelt in front of the iron bars, the damp soaking through his trousers.

  “You came for Stella Swann’s family, didn’t you?” Stann said. “Guess you knew it was a trap but figured you’d come anyway.” He snorted softly. “Doing the right thing has got more people killed than anything else, ’part from pride, maybe.”

  “I had no choice.”

  “Guess you didn’t. Neither did I.” Stann shoved a pile of wood out of the way. The clatter chased its own echoes down the corridor. “Your Field-Marshal Chester turned up to my place in Tear promising me the world: reinstatement, an office, a job. A pardon for your dad. She offered me a chance to be someone again. She went back to the capital and someone blew her up. The same evening these Unsung fellers turned up and said I killed her. They bundled me in the back of an unmarked van. It was your friends who did the dirty work, while that leech with the big jagged knife watched like a paedophile in a playground. I gave that stocky one a good clip, mind.”

  “Orr?”

  “That’s him. I showed him the old Stann Taille stumble-and-feint routine. Caught him a cracker on his nose.”

  Stann went quiet. He rubbed a knuckle across his cheek. “Pretty much the whole of the village of Tear came out to try and stop the bastards. Men, women, kids. All of them. Armed with not much more than broomsticks, they were going to stop a squad of heavily armed legionnaires. I thought I was the bitter old man of the village. The old boy that they tolerate but would rather see the back of.”

  “You’re part of the village; we protect our own.”

  “Sentimental rubbish.”

  “Practical rubbish, Grandad. Without you, who would the parents use to frighten their kids?”

  Stann’s lips split into a smirk. “Nice try, but it looks to me that I’m still paying for the mistake your mum’s dad made back in the day. You Franklins have been a blight on my life for nigh on fifty years now.”

  Something squeaked. A rat? The squeak became a squeal and a mad scuttle of claws on stone. The claws sounded big enough to belong to a horse. Ray looked around his cell for something to use as a weapon. “What do they want with you?”

  “My first idea was bait,” Stann replied as he toyed with some of the straw covering the floor, “in case Stella’s family wasn’t enough to tempt you.”

  “And your second?”

  Stann scowled. His gaunt face was bruised and scratched. “One of the excuses of a soldier that brought me that slop” — he pointed to the orange gruel in the trough — “told me someone is determined to wipe out every member of the Franklin lineage. ‘Down to the last gene.’” He pulled the rag of a blanket tight around his shoulders. They poked through the cloth like coat hangers. “Genetics is not my thing—”

  “Ignorance has never stopped anyone from having an opinion.”

  “Don’t get smart with me, son. I thought we were all pretty much the same these days: a kind of genetic goulash.”

  The light faded as two legionnaires stuck their heads round the corner. One cracked a joke. The other sniggered, spat, and they walked on.

  Stann jerked his thumb in their direction. “In my day, these kids in the 13th wouldn’t’ve made it past Basic Training.”

  “There have always been people that signed up because they were too fond of violence to survive in the civilian world.”

  “Well, at least they have the guts to sign up and put their balls on the line, rather than all this posturing and preening we get these days. All these pseudo-tough guys and their elaborate swagger get on my nerves. And quit with the lecturing. Unless you’ve got a plan to get us out of here, I don’t want to hear a sound. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.” He knew how Stann Taille worked. A semblance of humility would quiet him for a while. And he knew Stann was worried, though the old boy would never admit it.

  Ray peeled back the bandage on his thigh, flicking off the dried blood around the edges. Nascimento had sneaked a pink prickle plaster on before binding it; a self-adhesive plaster laced with broad-spectrum antibiotics and gender-specific analgesia. He hoped the colour was Nascimento’s sense of humour. Ray was fairly sure Seth wouldn’t have allowed much more than a tourniquet. He probed the flesh around the gash. Nascimento’s shot had been a good one. There had been a whole lot of blood but not that much real damage. Ray could have fought on. Maybe Nascimento had the right of it: Seth would have done much more damage than Ray would have. Now, the four people he had led here were dead. Orr was right. “I should have come alone,” he whispered.

  “What was that?” Stann asked.

  “Nothing. I was just—”

  “No, not you, idiot. Shut up and listen.” Stann pointed to the entrance.

  “Rats?”

  “Not unless they’re wearing boots.”

  A slow crunch of footsteps on stone got heavier. It was accompanied by a jangling sound of steel being dragged over stone, faint and hard to hear at first. It got louder, setting Ray’s teeth on edge. Both sounds stopped, leaving the dull plink of water dripping in the background.

  “Hello?” Ray called.

  Nothing.

  “Stop with the crap and come out.”

  Silence.

  “I said, whoever’s there, come out.”

  The light was blocked by a lumbering shape silhouetted in the corridor entrance. The ember of hope that Ray had held onto flared. “It’s Nascimento,” he whispered. “Come to free us.”

  Stann’s fist clenched around his blanket. “I don’t think so, son.”

  The shape stepped into the corridor, light flooding past him. As Ray’s eyes adjusted, the hope faded. “Seth.”

  “That’ll be Corporal Seth to you, former Captain, soon-to-be formerly breathing Franklin.”

  Ray pulled himself to his feet. He wasn’t going to face this man sitting down.

  Seth placed the flat of his jagged knife on the bars and took measured steps towards Ray’s cell. Each time the polished steel hit rusting iron, a metallic clang echoed down the corridor. The 13th legionnaire passed the cell door that Nascimento had pushed open and came to a standstill in front of Ray.

  “You still here, Franklin?”

  “Fun
ny, Seth. What do you want?”

  “Corporal Seth.” The larger man pointed the jagged blade at Ray. “I could carve it into your skin if you like. Maybe that way you’d remember it.”

  “Come in and try. Or are you scared? I saw how you ducked behind a pile of rubbish when Kayle got shooting with those revolvers of his.”

  Seth shrugged and leant against the wall. “I’m not stupid, Franklin. Your friend had a gun. I had a knife. I made a tactical decision. Your friend’s also very dead now. I’m not.” He sniggered, revealing two rows of crooked, yellowing teeth. “I guess this coward’s gonna live to run another day.”

  “Why are you here, Seth?”

  Seth stabbed his knife towards Stann. “If you don’t start calling me by my rank, I will gut that old man from gizzard to gullet. The boss wants you, Franklin, you’re the main course. That wrinkled old loser is not even an appetiser. He’s the scraps not even these giant rats will eat.”

  “You want a piece of me, son?” called Stann. “Open this cell door and I’ll show you what this wrinkled old loser is capable of.”

  “I’d snap you in two without thinking about it, old man.”

  “How would you know? I doubt you can count to two, let alone snap me in two. How do you survive in this so-called 13th Legion of yours when you’ve only got ten fingers and thumbs? Do you get your mum to count it for you? That’s assuming you know who your mother is.”

  “Shut your hole!”

  Stann stroked his chin. “Your mother could be your sister, that’s a possibility, and maybe that means you’ve actually got thirteen fingers?”

  “I’m warning you.”

  “Or what you going to do? Call your sister to stop shaving her face and come finish the job while you hide somewhere?” Stann pointed at Seth’s belt. “Where’s your revolver, Tiny? The 13th don’t trust you with one?”

  Seth grabbed the cell door with both hands, rattling it against the lock and chain. A patter of dust sifted down from the ceiling. “Shut your mouth!”

  Stann grimaced and fanned his hand in front of his face. “With breath like that you don’t need a gun. What you been eating, rat-shit sandwiches?”