The Cache

by James Brogden

  There was only one zip line that travelled so far down, laid years ago by some foolhardy or desperate scavenger who had never returned to tell of what they had found, and she prayed to Saint Geller that it was still there. With only hearsay and tall stories to guide her it was difficult, but her consolation was that her pursuers didn’t even have that, and would be moving much slower than herself. She kept her biolux low, and trusted to her instincts.

  Despite telling her imagination to keep its mouth shut, she couldn’t help examining her surroundings as she passed, looking for evidence to support Cracius’ absurd tales. It might explain why nothing seemed designed properly for people: doorways were sometimes so low that you had to crouch to get through, and all over the Spike there were vertical rows of sigils on the walls, but since she couldn’t read she had no way of telling whether or not they were the right way up.

  She found it in the end – a wide-mouthed shaft as derelict as any other, with a pair of metal tracks running down one wall. She cocked her head to one side and experimented with seeing that wall as a floor, and the tracks being used to transport something to and fro. It was impossible. The zip line was there, bolted to the wall, and she wondered how far down it went, who had set it there and what they had seen. Had they fallen under the claws of crawlers or looked on the djinn fires with their own eyes, or even reached the very bottom of the Spike itself? Until Cracius had shown her the ghost of the Spira Tenebris she had never thought of the Spike as having a bottom; it had always seemed to just go on, down and down forever. If it had a bottom, then what was on the other side? The Outside? It hurt her head to think this way.

  There was a good chance that this was all nothing but his idea of a joke, sending her to certain death on a quest for something that had never existed in the first place. But what choice did she have?

  ‘Damn you, Cracius,’ she muttered, then clipped onto the line and lowered herself over the edge.

  She could feel a faint vibration thrumming up the line, as if it were descending through levels where massive furnaces roared in the darkness. She took it slowly, not trusting the old anchor points to be secure, and paused often to listen, sniff the air, and feel the vibrations in the metal walls. There were no blockages, thank Saint Geller, and no sign of any crawlers. She knew they were there, of course. They were probably watching her right at this moment, and had just decided not to show themselves. Not for the first time she wished she had brought a decent weapon. Her small size and sneakiness were always going to be her best assets, but it would be nice to have something larger than her little utility knife to wield. She made a small detour along a side tunnel off the shaft and found a length of piping that felt comfortingly heftable, shoved it through the back straps of her harness and resumed her descent.

  Gradually Lyse became aware of a current of warm air bathing her from below that she didn’t like the feel of at all. It might be coming from the djinn fires, in which case it was poisonous and to be avoided at all costs, so she left the shaft and took to a transverse passage. The Seal only gave her the crudest directional guidance, and so she was constantly forced to backtrack and find ways around blockages, jammed doors and abysses that yawned unexpectedly at her feet. Eventually, however, she reached a place where its compass began oscillating as if confused, and she knew that she must be close. Lyse found herself before a wide, low door much like any other, except that it had a circular depression in the wall above it, just about the same size as the medallion.

  It fitted perfectly.

  The Seal, locked into place by something powerfully magnetic, pulled itself out of her hand, and she stepped back in alarm. The concentric slide-controls around its central stone moved on their own, clicking into position, and she heard a heavy grinding of unseen gears and pistons as the door opened from the bottom up. A gust of stale air blew around her. The gap was less than two feet when something gave way with a scream of hydraulics and a judder that she felt through her feet, and jammed.

  She went dark, folded herself into a corner and waited, heart pounding.

  Nothing happened. Nothing lurched out of the gap to snatch at her. Nothing came out of the tunnel, alerted by the noise of the ancient mechanism. She eased herself down on the floor and put one arm through the gap, flexing her fingers wide to activate the biolux tattoos, and peered in. There was some kind of jumbled mound on the other side, gleaming in the meagre illumination.

  She slithered under the jammed door, praying that it would not unjam and crash down again, slicing her in half like a worm. But it didn’t. She stood straight in the room on the other side and gasped in amazement.

  A mountain of packages sealed in some strange kind of oilskin that shone like polished metal, canisters, tins, bottles and containers of every shape and size lay amidst the wreckage of the shelving from which they’d toppled. Many had spilled or burst, their contents spoiled, but the majority appeared to be intact. She picked up a small bar of something that lay nearby, tore open one corner and sniffed at it. It didn’t really smell of much, certainly not something rotten, so she tried the tiniest of nibbles. The taste was rich, heavy and sweet, and her mouth instantly began to salivate. Before she could stop herself she wolfed the whole thing and three more, squatting on her haunches and scoffing with both hands. Whatever was in them, it surged into her blood like battery acid, burning the fatigue out of her muscles and clearing her head. She was so overwhelmed by the sensory overload that she didn’t notice what had entered the room behind her until it spoke.

  Ours now.

  She spun, knife in her hand, expecting Hadzor Jaax and his men, backed up by the prime adjutant’s arbiters.

  Instead she saw an army of crawlers.

  They crowded under the door, pulling themselves into the room on pale limbs. No two were alike – most of the eyes that stared at her were blind and white but others glittered with malevolence. Most had legs but some dragged themselves along the floor and up the walls with wide, sucker-lined hands or hooked claws. She saw faces that had melted into torsos, vertebrae that protruded from the skin in barbed spines, figures that carried their naked organs ahead of themselves like offerings, and others with jaws that hinged wide to reveal multiple rows of teeth and snake-like tongues that lashed and leered. Some were even wearing the ragged remains of clothing. The one that had spoken – which she assumed was the leader either because of its ability to use human speech or because its deformities were the most extreme – was being carried by two of its brethren. Part of its skull was missing, or else had been removed, and in the naked, pulsing brain underneath a milky eyeball rolled at her.

  We have waited a very long time for this to be opened, it said, and she was amazed at the perfect clarity of its speech before realising that it had no mouth, and was speaking directly into her mind. Shocked and revolted, she back-pedalled up the pile of ration packs, stumbling as they slithered out from beneath her.

  Many wanted to eat you, it continued. But you were thinking so loudly about opening the cache that we thought we’d wait to see if you could do it. And you did, for which we thank you. But now it, and you, are ours.

  ‘Blessed Saint Geller, protect me,’ she whispered, still backing away awkwardly, and hauled out the iron bar to defend herself.

  The crawler’s mocking laugh filled her skull. Oh child, do you have any idea what it is that you are actually praying to?

  ‘What… what do you mean?’

  Then consider this a mercy. We’re putting you out of your ignorance.

  At some unheard command they surged towards her.

  She clubbed at pale flesh and felt something snap beneath her iron bar before her feet were snatched from underneath her and she fell into the pile. Then a crawler was on top of her, snapping and drooling, while another seized the meaty flesh of her right calf and worried at her like a rat fighting over a scrap. No mercy of a swift fall or a bullet here; they were going to eat her alive while
she watched and screamed. The stench of them choked her, and the darkness was raucous with their looping howls.

  A burst of gunfire from the hallway crashed over the din and for a moment everything froze. Something uttered a high-pitched, gibbering shriek and there was another rattle of shooting, and the room exploded into frantic motion as the crawlers abandoned their prey and attempted to flee.

  Lyse lay, dizzy with shock, listening to the screams of battle. Only arbiters possessed proper firearms, which meant that Prime Adjutant Domitia was close, which meant that Jaax was too, but at this very moment Lyse couldn’t have cared less. This place and everything in it was hers. She had found it by law of salvage, and if her claim wasn’t honoured then Master Cracius would vouch for her, otherwise he wouldn’t get his share.

  Then the pain in her savaged leg woke up, and she cried out. In the dim glow of biolux her blood was black; she was glossy with it from knee to toe. The noises of fighting abated as the crawlers fled into their tunnels and Lyse hauled herself to her feet, using the iron bar as a makeshift crutch. When the first arbiter slid under the door, sweeping the chamber with a flashlight on the end of his gun, she put her free hand up in surrender.

  ‘Don’t shoot!’ she called. ‘I am Lyse Urretzi, first daughter of–’

  ‘We know,’ said Prime Adjutant Galla Domitia, sliding in after her soldier and standing. ‘And a merry dance you’ve led us, too.’ She was tall and carapaced in body armour, with a shock of close-cropped iron-grey hair and a hatchet face that looked like it had forgotten how to smile a long time ago. Nevertheless, surprise widened her eyes as she looked around the room and saw its riches.

  ‘Claim!’ Lyse declared. ‘This is mine!’ She took the iron bar in both hands, though it meant having to totter on one leg, and brandished it as if she were prepared to fight all of them.

  One corner of Domitia’s mouth quirked and she inclined her head slightly. ‘Your claim will be honoured, have no fear.’ The rest of her squad entered the room one by one, and fell upon the loot with whoops and hollers, but Domitia barked at them to stand down.

  ‘Thank you, prime adjutant.’ Lyse almost allowed herself to relax, but then Hadzor Jaax squirmed into the room last of all. His armaments were much cruder than the arbiters’ – his gun looked like it had been cobbled together from plumbing and scrap metal, and as likely to take his own hand off as actually hit his target. Lyse ignored him. She could afford to now.

  ‘Cracius told you where I was going, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Domitia, ‘but don’t be angry with him. My chasteners didn’t leave him much of a choice, and after all, it saved your life. He also told us about the Seal. Where did you find it?’

  It was only Jaax’s flicker of a glance at Domitia that saved her life. In it Lyse saw him weighing up the odds of shooting either the prime adjutant or herself – which one he could best get away with to suppress the discovery of his heresy. Lyse wasn’t conscious of the knowledge, however; it slithered straight down into her animal hindbrain and triggered her fight-or-flight instinct.

  His gun shifted, and he shot her.

  She fell to one side as something punched her in the shoulder, and she scrambled under the door and into the passageway outside. It was littered with the corpses of crawlers and slippery with their blood, and she skidded and limped through them.

  She had to give Jaax his due, he was fast. He tried to slip out after her, and almost made it. She fought every instinct screaming at her to run, and turned back to the door. The prime adjutant was shouting with outrage, and maybe somebody was trying to hold Jaax back, but he was halfway out from underneath, grabbing at her.

  ‘Little bitch!’ he snarled, and seized her ankle. He was bringing his gun up to bear on her when Lyse plucked the Victualler’s Seal from its lock.

  The door slammed down on his torso, crushing his ribcage, and a gout of blood spurted from his mouth. His eyes bulged and his arms spasmed, the gun went off but nowhere near her, and he was still.

  Lyse fell amongst the crawler corpses, sobbing.

  The prime adjutant’s shouts were faint and distant.

  Hadzor Jaax began to move again.

  Except that it wasn’t Hadzor Jaax any more.

  Its hands gripped the lower edge of the door and began to push upwards, which was impossible because the door must have weighed a ton. But then the hands themselves were swelling, growing talons that left gouges in the metal as if it were paper. Everything about Jaax was growing and thickening, sprouting spines and horns, mutating into something new and terrible – the living nightmare of which the effigy, obscene as it was, had been only a shadow. It made the crawlers that had so nearly killed her look like mere rats in comparison, and she could only gape at it, her mind numbed by disbelief. Transfixed by its eyes, she felt the same kind of sick fascination as when she had looked at the blasphemous mural. It grinned at her, its tongue lolling across teeth as black as rot.

  ‘Don’t worry my dear,’ it drooled in Jaax’s voice. ‘You will still be my bride.’ It got to its knees, shouldering the door upwards with immense strength. Behind it, in the room, people were screaming, guns firing, and stray bullets zipped through the gap around her. ‘But first I have business to attend to.’ It ducked back inside, dropping the door behind it, and she heard the gunfire and screaming escalate to frenzied heights, accompanied by wet, rending noises and the laughter of something that gloried in its work.

  Released from its gaze, Lyse fled.

  This couldn’t last long, she knew. She was sobbing and slipping in her own blood and stumbling every other step, her leg burning with agony, her shoulder adding its fuel to the fire even though that whole arm was numb with pins and needles. She should have collapsed by now, but whatever she had eaten was still burning in her blood. All the same, she had no plan – she couldn’t lead the Outsider upwards to the hab-halls, nor was there much further down to drop; all she could do was slip through the smallest gaps and run from the inevitable for as long as possible.

  The Outsider announced its pursuit, calling her name, laughing and jeering. Presumably it had finished with the arbiters. It would do to her clan – all the clans – what it had done to the best-armed of them, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

  Lyse’s attention was so consumed by the pursuing horror that she nearly fell headlong into the shaft that opened before her.

  She pinwheeled her arms and regained her balance. Light and warmth struck her face from below. There was an angry orange glow far down the shaft, which could only be one thing: the djinn fires. All the stories told that the djinn fires were poison – that their breath would corrupt your flesh and make you a mother to crawlers – but that hardly mattered now since it didn’t seem likely that she was going to live to be a mother to anything. She must be almost at the very bottom of the Spike.

  ‘Lyse, my love, come to me and we shall be one in Valgaast!’ howled the Outsider, and shrieked with laughter that hurt her ears. It was a lot louder, a lot closer.

  It was so tempting to simply throw herself in and have done with it, but that would have meant abandoning her family to the creature without even offering what pitiful defiance she could muster. Instead, she closed her eyes and offered what she feared was her last prayer to Saint Geller. Then she turned, putting her back to the burning abyss, and limped towards the monster’s voice.

  ‘No!’ she shouted. ‘You come to me!’

  It emerged around the corner, bigger than before, so large that it had to stoop. Maybe killing the arbiters had empowered it. She didn’t care. ‘You were a pitiful sack of shit when you were a man and you’re just a bigger sack of shit now!’

  The Outsider roared and charged.

  Lyse was small – that was partially how she had survived so long in the Spike. Small and quick. She held her ground to the very last second and then flattened herself to the floor as the Outs
ider swept towards her with its claw-tipped arms bent like scoops to snatch her up.

  And missed.

  Its speed carried it towards the shaft, feet scrabbling against the smooth metal of the floor, but even as it plunged towards the edge it somehow managed to twist and use its momentum to leap over the gap, where it landed awkwardly on the other side.

  The Outsider grinned and opened its slavering mouth but then stopped, staring at something stuck to its chest: a lump of sticky green goo and a wire-tight strand stretching from it to the glob-gun in Lyse’s hand.

  ‘Little bitch!’ she spat, and pulled as hard as she could.

  The creature outweighed her massively, and if she’d given it a moment to regain its balance would easily have been able to resist. But she was quick, and like a precariously balanced machine pushed past its tipping point, the Outsider fell howling into the void.

  Lyse collapsed at the edge, exhausted and broken, and a bit pissed off. She was going to have to get a new glob-gun now. Then as the fire left her blood she began to laugh – a high, crazed sound indistinguishable from the weeping or howling that echoed through the twisted passageways and empty galleries of the Spike like the shrieks of a lost and demented soul.

  She laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

  Master Cracius surveyed her critically. ‘Quer/invent.: you are sure that you have everything?’

  Lyse, once first daughter to the Urretzi clan but latterly of no hall, checked her gear for the third time, more to reassure him than out of necessity: glob-gun, riveter, line-grabber, mag-pads, the message that was her errand and the gifts that would ease its reception. ‘Everything,’ she said.

  ‘Quer/loc.: the schematic is clear to you?’

  She patted the satchel which held the data-slate and its map of her route. ‘Yes, grandfather.’