The Sightless City

by Noah Lemelson

  It was a worse hideout, uncomfortably close to the Lazacorp guards’ apartment complex, but the space was needed, for the revolution had spread beyond the mutant’s council. Three dozen more were in attendance, plans needed to be arranged and fast.

  Or so went Desct’s logic. Sylvaine could only nod along, without words. The man commended her work with the clockbombs, a pile of which sat in the middle of the room, and she gave the requisite thanks, but she could manage nothing more.

  All she could think about was Ysabel. Sylvaine had not asked Gualter, or any of the other mutants, what would happen to her. Ysabel’s expression had said it well enough. A quick flicker of realization that she was not going to leave Blackwood Row alive. Ysabel hadn’t hesitated, but had run forward, to throw her life down and clean up the mess Sylvaine had unthinkingly created.

  When the meeting proper started, Sylvaine slunk to the back of the crowd. Marcel took up the center of the room and everyone else’s attention. He explained, through some long-winded narrative whose details Sylvaine could not bring her attention to, how he had set the two Lazacorp partners against each other. The tinder had apparently been dense, and he had only needed a simple spark, or so he claimed. It was good news, theoretically, and maybe even impressive, but then again the man was a UCCR soldier. After a century of rebellions, Sylvaine half-heartedly mused, maybe fomenting civil wars was just in his blood.

  “It will be the damn-near ideal diversion,” Desct exclaimed, listening to Marcel’s tale, “the two will wrap rope around each other’s throats, and we shall provide the final noose.”

  Sylvaine leaned back on a rotting, old crate. How strange it was that she should care for a person she had barely known. She would not have called Ysabel a true friend, though perhaps in time she could have been. They had talked a few hours about childhood misadventures, out-of-date gossip, and other inanities. It was a light conversation about nothing significant. It was one of the few such conversations Sylvaine could remember.

  She noticed that the crowd had gone silent a moment. All eyes had turned onto Celina, who sat arms crossed. The mutant woman allowed the nervous tension to hang a moment, then another moment, before finally nodding.

  “I’ve said since the beginning we need to act,” she said. “As far as I’m concerned you all finally caught up. Get the two fighting, blow up the monolith, as long as we can smash some Lazacorp skulls.”

  With this assent the crowd exploded back into discussion, relief clear in every word. Now the revolution was real, the enemy divided, themselves united. Sylvaine tried to gather some hope from this, from the fact that she was helping bring about their freedom. But not for Ysabel. No victory could help her now.

  Discussions cycled through one another, on organization, timing, angles of attack, armaments. Marcel offered to fight. Desct shot his offer down.

  “When the smoke dissipates,” Desct said, “Huile will no doubt have questions about what in fucking Inferno has occurred. We’ll need a liaison to get to them early, convince them our enemy is Lazacorp, not Huile. City Hall will be recalcitrant, too many have their fingers embedded in Lazacorp’s pie, but I have hope for the citizenry. You’re a war hero, Talwar, and more vitally, not a mutant. We need you to talk, not die for the cause.”

  Marcel assented to his role after a very short debate, his outward bravado undercut, in Sylvaine’s eye, by the fact that his stiff posture and fear-tinged words had instantly relaxed once he realized he would not be in the line of duty. She didn’t judge the man much for his muffled hesitancy; it was good sense not to want to throw oneself in front of bullets and bayonets.

  The man’s sense or cowardice did not take up too much of Sylvaine's thoughts, she was instead caught up in her own fear. The mutants cared for their kind, and no doubt Ysabel’s capture had not gone unnoticed. Nor, no doubt, had the death of the other mutant shot in the chaos. She dreaded the questions that would arise. Why had the dictaphone been destroyed? At whose feet should the blame be laid? The answers were clear enough, and Sylvaine wouldn’t lie. They would see her as the failure she was.

  Desct coughed for attention.

  “My brothers and sisters,” he said. “Before we march to our glory, it is imperative we remember those we have lost. Three more have perished since our last meeting, three more souls to be avenged. Tricius Mal, a venerable member of our council, and personal friend, passed away this morning from a longstanding chest infection. He will be missed. Yury, a recent addition to our community, was killed by gunshot during a cowardly Lazacorp raid. And finally Ysabel Delag,” Sylvaine lowered her head, “captured in the same raid. A minute of silence, please.”

  The room fell to quiet, only the distant drips of water echoing. Sylvaine waited for the questioning, waited for the accusations, waited and wondered why she had the power to doom the woman, but not save her.

  The questions didn’t come. As soon as the minute was over, the mutants were back to discussing practicalities of the coming battle.

  “We still have a cache of hammers, wrenches, even some makeshift spears down in the sewers near the western wall,” one mutant offered.

  “Make sure to avoid the wider streets,” Desct ordered, “alleyways work to our advantage.”

  A shared minute was all Ysabel got. Her death was simply accepted. None thought to blame the engineer. This, it seemed, was just something that happened, another body tossed aside.

  And so Sylvaine sat, alone.

  “We have reached the decisive moment,” Desct said, standing in the middle of the group. “Here stands the culmination of years of planning, we shall reap fruits grown from countless deaths, untold torment. But we have made it. Three mornings from now the sun shall shine on a freed Mutanthood.” He strolled in a circle, taking time to look every person in the eye, even Sylvaine. “That is if, and only if, we come together as one. We must fight with the ferocity of the chained and the cunning of the revolutionary. We must fight with love in our hearts for our brothers and sisters who have suffered and with fury unyielding for those who have induced that suffering. Though our aims are freedom, we cannot forget our pain, nor forgive our adversaries. I can promise you that Roache and Verus will not be allowed to live, that I will not rest my hand until both have been ripped to tiny fucking scraps.”

  He gestured to a mutant at a far corner who waved down a cramped hallway. Three more mutants walked in, led by the first, their bodies thin, their ears scabbed.

  “Despite claims that we have been sitting and letting Roache stamp on us,” Desct said, a quick glance towards Celina, “our preparations have spanned years, predating my own tenure. For those unaware, or simply thought these brothers and sisters a myth, I present our deafened ones.” The three sat, looking towards Desct. Their expression were flat and grim, the faces of those who had long been willing to die for their cause, with little concern for their life after. “Their sacrifices have been many, not the least that they have taken blade to eardrum. They will be our sword against Roache. And our dear ally, Kayip shall lead their assault.”

  Kayip nodded. “You have been kind to allow me here, to stand with you. I have known the sins of Verus and Roache for many years. It is my own sin that I have not been able to put a stop to them. Now, I shall join your fight, I shall execute the twin demons, and will gladly die by your side if it should come to that…”

  Sylvaine sat and watched as Kayip continued his speech, as the monk thrust his arms up and promised blood, as the closest thing she had to a friend she had offered again and again to throw his life away.

  * * *

  The meeting cleared without incident. Sylvaine and Kayip led Marcel back to his quarters, where the man fell asleep almost instantly. She walked with Kayip down through the winding shanties of the mutant camp, to the entrance to the Underway.

  They passed down into a collapsed basement, and Kayip turned to give his farewell for the night. Before the monk could speak, Sylvaine found her lips moving.


  “It was my fault,” she said. “With Ysabel.”

  The man looked at her, but did not respond.

  “The dictaphone,” she explained, “the guards came because of me.”

  “I know,” Kayip said. His tone wasn’t angry, nor gentle, nor confused. It was a plain statement of fact.

  She stared up at him. “They should know. I think.”

  “Desct does,” Kayip said. “He was worried that some mutants were attempting their own escape, that they would draw attention. When I told him what happened his nerves were soothed.”

  “Soothed?” Sylvaine said. “A woman was dragged away to her death, a man was shot! People died.”

  “Yes.” Kayip said. “And many more have died before. And more will die tomorrow.”

  Sylvaine pulled her arm to her chest. “That’s not exactly comforting.”

  Kayip thought on this, and then sat on an outcropping of pipes. “Comfort does not change it. But I will say this. You did not pull the trigger, nor did you tell her to spend away her life such. If I had not taken you through the Underway, you would not have damaged the dictaphone. If Roache had not abused you so, you would have never come here.”

  “I still lost control.” Sylvaine said. “I went wild like an anima…” she choked back the word and hung her head. “I… lost control and people died. Again.”

  “I will not tell you not to feel guilt,” Kayip said, “but you must not let yourself be crushed by it.” The monk went silent for a moment and scratched at the side of his mask. “I have made mistakes, Sylvaine, and in my haste to remedy my deeds I have made… further mistakes.” He shook his head. “Redemption is the domain only of the Demiurge, one must bear the burden of their past. For some this burden is light, for others, the respite comes only when they reunite with their creator.”

  “And is that why you’re so keen on tossing your own life away?” Sylvaine said, with sudden rage in her voice, “Why you’d gladly die fighting? Nothing we can do can bring Ysabel back, can bring anyone back. Why do you need to die too?”

  “Sylvaine… I…” The engineer was even taken aback by her own anger, and Kayip seemed doubly so. “I need to fight. I am one of the few here trained in the arts of combat, one of the few immune to Roache’s words. And I have business with that man.”

  “So if we succeed, then what?” Sylvaine was barely able to keep from shouting, her hair stood on end. “If you die fighting, what am I to do when the smoke clears?”

  “I admit I haven’t planned beyond the fight…” Kayip started.

  “You need me, you need me for the clockbombs.”

  “Sylvaine!” Kayip said, a hint of anger in his own voice. “This is larger than us.”

  “I just… I don’t have anything. Nothing. Just revenge, but then what? You’re the only one left, Kayip.” Sylvaine slumped back on the wall. “I know I haven’t suffered the worst here, I know that this whole… whatever, is more important. But this was never my fight. I’m just some ferral playing engineer.”

  “Sylvaine…” Kayip said, grabbing her shoulder.

  “This isn’t my fight. So don’t I deserve something? Not money, not success, just… someone left.”

  The large man kneeled down, his one eye soft in its gaze. “We will strike quickly, an ambush,” he said. “Roache’s voice is too much a risk, but we will be sudden, and careful. Then I will return. You are right, this isn’t our fight, I will not waste time in the streets, one strike and I will return to you, safe. Is that all right, Sylvaine?”

  She nodded slowly, only now realizing that she had been crying. “Thank you.”

  Chapter 38

  Marcel pushed back the tubing, trying to orient himself inside the guts of the machine. He forced himself not to rush, to think clearly. They were almost finished, tonight would be the night of revolution, the night when Lazacorp was purged, the mutants freed, when Huile would finally shed off its past and become the city he always knew it was meant to be. But that was all incumbent on placing the clockbombs correctly, and the pressure of the coming uprising felt more crushing than the overwhelming clunking mass of the machine that surrounded him.

  He searched between bent pipes, dripping canisters, and inert gearwork for the proper location to place the hunk of metal. Sylvaine had explained the spot in utterly bewildering detail, drawing out the technical schematics and pointing exactly, but as it turned out the darkened inside of the machine bore little clear resemblance to that scribble on notebook paper. He was sweating, but unable to lift his arms to wipe his forehead, struggling as he was to keep ahold of the weight of the clockbomb. He was unsure if its prodigious heft was due to the extra faux casing Sylvaine had installed as a disguise, or some weight he was giving to it himself.

  He coughed and blinked in the dark. He wasn’t wearing a gas mask, and had no rifle slung over his back, but he couldn’t shake the odious familiarity. Last time he snuck explosives into Lazacorp he had lost his leg, and his friends. He slowed his breathing and placed his shirt over his nose to keep out the dust. This time would be different, he promised himself.

  “You okay in there?” Sylvaine asked from outside, her voice echoing in the machine.

  “Yes,” Marcel whispered back sharply, “don’t be so loud!”

  “We’re good out here. You don’t have to be exact, just get it close to the high pressure centrifugal piping unit.”

  “The…?” Marcel asked back.

  “The… twisty pipe thing. Looks like a giant spring.”

  “Got it,” Marcel said, staring at a tube that was maybe at least vaguely twisty, vibrating slightly as something whizzed through it. He placed the bomb down gingerly, turning its hidden dial, before pushing himself out of the machine.

  Marcel wondered if he had needed to snap at the engineer for her volume. The night before had been tense as they worked together to finalize the ideal spots for sabotage, Sylvaine deep in the guts of the machine, Marcel pretending to look busy. Several times mutants had come running to warn them that Crat was coming to warn Marcel that other Roache-loyal Lazacorp guards were on their patrol. So Sylvaine would hide, and Marcel would wait to nod at Crat’s warning and hide as well. After the footsteps echoed Crat would knock his signal and leave. Then Marcel would crawl out, followed by Sylvaine, and the whole play would reset.

  This night had, oddly, been far quieter. Not a single guard had walked by, and the clockbombs had been planted with ease. Everything was going to plan so well that it was making Marcel nervous.

  He tried to hide his fears as several mutants assisted Sylvaine in lifting up a large piece of chassis near the bottom of the machine, and then set to work screwing it back into place. The engineer was covered in dust and soot, but wore a smile wider than Marcel had ever seen grace her face.

  She looked up and down the machine. “It’s a thing of beauty in its own way.”

  “You having seconds thoughts?” Marcel asked.

  Sylvaine chuckled. “No, no, I’m glad to be sending it to Inferno, but…” She shook her head. “Never mind.”

  He glanced at the titanic machine. “That’ll do it?”

  “Yeah,” Sylvaine replied. “But I know I built a few more clockbombs than this.”

  Marcel’s brief panic must have been visible because Sylvaine quickly blurted out “but I planned to have more than needed. We have enough.”

  “And you’re sure it will take out the whole facility?”

  “Listen,” Sylvaine sighed, louder than she needed to. “Think of this machine as a heart. We are grafting bombs to its veins: the sangleum pipes. Destroying them will remove the liquid pressure, like we’re cutting the wrists of the machine, meaning no sangleum will flow to the generator, so no power. The whole facility will bleed out, as such.”

  “Sure,” Marcel said, “but if we don’t have enough—”

  “Now imagine that this blood is flammable, and that we are also striking a match in its very heart, so that even if
the generator didn’t need its sangleum blood to function, it wouldn’t matter because the whole body would be a smoldering mass of metal.”

  “Ok, I ge—”

  “And! Imagine this ‘heart’ had more explosive blood flowing through it at any one time than through the rest of the body combined, so when it lit up it would combust with such a force that one could not even ask if the other organs still functioned, since they’d be nothing but red splats on the wall.”

  Marcel crossed his arms. “I think you lost track of your metaphor a few times there.”

  Sylvaine laughed and wiped blackened sweat from her brow. “Point is, I’m an engineer, Marcel, I know how to make things blow up.”

  “So we’re finished, then?” Sabyn asked, as he finished attaching the last piece of chassis. Sylvaine nodded, and the mutant gestured to his comrades below. He grabbed a hammer and swung it a few times, before starting to walk down the stairs.

  “We got Nozka coming to help make sure you guys can make it out. Otherwise…”

  “Thanks,” Marcel said.

  “I was hoping for something more on the lines of ‘good luck,’” Sabyn said, as he started to jog down. The man was eager, whether for freedom or revenge, Marcel couldn’t guess, but he didn’t begrudge him either way.

  Marcel glanced back at the machine. It groaned in its half-awakened state, as if it knew what was coming. “So… How big an explosion are we talking about here?”

  Sylvaine scratched her arm. “Well, given the amount of sangleum it’s currently pumping… I can’t do exact calculations… but… probably would be best to stay outside a three-block radius to be safe.” She pulled out her watch. “Better to do so… soon. Very soon.”

  * * *

  As they reached the bottom of the machine, Sylvaine crawled back into her crate, with only a small, perfunctory complaint. Marcel slid the lid over. It was, mercifully, the last time they would have to go through the charade.