And she’d never said goodbye to Cal.
Her stomach cramped again and she closed her eyes to the city, and pressed her head firmly to the glass as distraction.
You can run your tests on me after I’m dead.
She heard Kirillion say, “Your cells need oxygen to prevent data loss.”
That had been the moment she realised how much power she had, and begun to starve herself. They force-fed her for a few days, but in the end, it was easier to give in to her demands.
“All I really want is to breathe the city air. Explore a little. See the sights,” she’d smiled.
Kirillion’s face at the time betrayed his anger, nostrils flaring. “You’re the most valuable thing in this whole damn city. You think I’d take that risk?”
“Then you’re gonna have to keep force feeding me.” They were still experimenting with the neural link at the time, and relying on her participation for that too, so simply putting her in a coma was out of the question. She knew this, and stood her ground, and won her first and only victory.
Thinking about this seemed to help bring her cramping pain towards an end.
She opened her eyes. It was beautiful. A snake of lights uncoiled across the whole city, unwinding down the streets and up the towers where the scales of the windows glimmered, reflecting the reds and yellows from lower down. The snake’s eyes were also opening.
Revenge
“Kirillion…” said Calix, stepping forward. “You bastard.”
The guards around Kirillion raised their guns. “I have to say,” he said, gesturing for them to hold fire. “I’m impressed.”
“I want to see her.”
Calix expected laughter. The man’s beard was now styled stubble that revealed the curve of his lips. They remained fixed in a straight line. Furrows that had once lined his face were now gone, but he was as tall and broad as ever. He shifted his eyes to Caia.
“Caia… what are they doing here… alive?”
“Coming to see you,” she said. “One look at their pathetic faces and I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”
“Not the only thing you couldn’t bring yourself to do, by the look of it.” He stepped up to Caia and put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m disappointed in you.”
Calix watched them. For a second he considered that she was telling the truth; that this was the only reason they weren’t dead, and she’d brought them to their deaths instead. It was more apparent though that she was just covering her own ass.
Kirillion continued, “You know your guy did this?”
“I had my suspicions.”
“That makes three people that should be dead.”
“I was keeping an eye on Rylan. He’d done nothing wrong. And then these two showed up.”
Kirillion’s grip tightened, and Caia winced. “And now there’s a mess to clean up.” He shook his head. “So disappointed.”
“You’ll have an even bigger mess to clean up if anything happens to me.”
“Is that so?”
“I didn’t want to have to do this here,” she said, head arched up. “I’m out.”
“You can’t just be ‘out’, my dear… you know that.” He dropped his hand and turned around, reaching into his jacket. “If it’s ‘out’ you want, then I’ll give it you.” Calix spotted the barrel of the gun as it appeared; a long black silhouette in the soft light of the elevator.
Kirillion brought it round.
“I’ve programmed the release of all my memories to the link should I die,” said Caia.
Calix and Elissa both looked at each other.
“So put the gun down.”
“You stupid girl. Now why would you do a thing like that?”
“Like I said – I want out. And I want to be left alone. It’s not for me – that life. You can keep it.”
Kirillion’s chest heaved rapidly, his face more fixed than ever. The gun swung slowly in their direction.
“And if anything happens to them – same thing. I release my memories.”
Now Kirillion laughed. “You’re pinning a lot of faith on the value of your memories. You think anyone will take any notice? Believe them? We’ll just tell them it’s a new show.”
“I’ve never seen a show that hits so close to home – I don’t know about you,” she said, taking a step into the elevator. “Why don’t we all just take a ride up. Let Calix see Annora. Let Elissa eat, shit and sleep. Let me get my things.”
When were you going to tell us about Plan B? thought Calix. The one that actually sounded better than Plan A?
Caia turned about, facing both Calix and Elissa, and he noticed the heavy breathing and a look that said she’d just relived some of the memories she spoke of.
Calix looked down the end of Kirillion’s gun. Was that the same one that had shot Barrick? he wondered. Kirillion’s eyes peered over the top of it, boring into him. “I pose no threat. I know why you have Annora – Caia told me – I just want to see her.”
“Having you here could complicate things,” he said. He lowered the gun. “On the other hand, it could facilitate things. Make no mistake; Caia may talk big but she wouldn’t sacrifice her only leverage for freedom on you.” He walked across to a panel on the wall and scanned his wrist, punched a few numbers, and the doors began to close.
Elissa and Calix looked at each other and then hurried forward before the doors closed shut on them. Calix couldn’t help but feel that by the time the doors opened, after reaching the top, not everyone would be alive.
***
The elevator was a cell. That’s how it felt. That it housed both potential captor and captive made no difference to Calix. It was a box with moving walls and a steady, humming drone, punctuated by the occasional grind of metal on metal.
They passed through periodic clouds of smoke that dissipated gently, no doubt to reform beneath, that smelled of the tower’s waste.
After a while, the walls began to close in. With every outward breath they expanded. With every inward breath they contracted. And each contraction shrunk the space further than the time before, until Calix felt on the verge of panting. Fingers felt clammy as he balled them into fists. His jaw tightened. It was Kirillion’s gaze on the back of his neck that was doing it. That murdering bastard was two feet away and he had his back to him, but was too scared to turn around. Like he’d turned his back on Rohen.
He’d felt something similar there; being in the presence of murder affected the situation, like during the conditioning videos with just Rohen and himself in the room. How did the people around Kirillion act when he was in the room? Did they adjust? Or did they laugh along with him, knowing that behind his smile was a cold killer – someone who could both kill and laugh about it – and wonder if that made them accomplices?
What about you, Ann? How would you cope?
How do you cope?
Every conversation must ride an underlying tension. Perhaps before long it was just always there – a fact, no different from knowing that one time, the murderer had once drank too much and been sick all over the flowers, or had once been so small that his mother had had to spoon-feed mashed up apple and banana.
As he was about to clench his fist, Elissa took his hand, squeezing briefly before letting go. Somewhere a chain rattled loudly through a ratchet cog. The walls returned to their standard size.
He could worry about Kirillion later.
Right now, his stomach turned circles.
I’m coming.
***
A draught blew sharply into the elevator when the doors opened, brisk and cold. Calix raised a hand against it but quickly gave up, understanding it was futile. He imagined they were getting high, but didn’t expect to be on the actual roof. He shivered as he stepped out into a cool, whipping breeze.
“Sharp,” said Kirillion. “Head back down. Take the rest of the men. Help clean up the mess.”
“Yes, sir,” said Sharp.
“I’d forgotten we had something to clean up, my bo
y!” He patted him on the back as he stepped out, followed by Caia, Elissa and finally, Calix. “Do whatever you have to to return connectivity to the tower – without that we’re blind. I’m putting my trust in you.”
“Yes, sir.” The doors began to close across the guards, leaving the four of them on the rooftop.
Kirillion waited until the doors closed fully before exclaiming, loudly; “Calix! Now they’re gone – my boy, I can’t believe it! I just really can’t believe you’re here!” He slapped the side of Calix’s arm. “I bet you’ve got a story to tell or two, eh? Come on, let’s be quick before we freeze to death.”
“Mister nice guy, now?” said Elissa.
Kirillion offered his hand, at which Elissa just stared, perplexed. “Well, it’s nice to meet you, regardless. I have to put up appearances, you understand.”
“Grace-forbid.”
Caia pulled her jacket across her breast. “Don’t be fooled. He’s as cold as the wind.”
Kirillion put an arm around Calix’s shoulder and directed them towards a vehicle parked on a raised platform. Calix tried to shrug him off, but he held fast. “The kill order wasn’t mine, you understand, dear boy. What am I saying? You’re hardly a boy any more, look at you! The sun suits you! Bit of colour on ya.”
His grip was vice-tight.
“Now I know what you’re thinking – you’re thinking of poor Barrick.” They began to ascend a small set of steps to the platform, the wind chopping across them. “You were there, Calix, right? He jumped us – what is a man to do in that situation? What did I teach you? The sands are a harsh, harsh place to grow up in – to survive, you must do whatever it takes. Poor Barrick jumped on me. It was instinct.”
“You kicked him into the water.”
Silence from Kirillion. He continued to direct their path, but instead of heading straight for the vehicle, he veered them beyond it. As Calix understood this, he became more aware of the shapes within the darkness of the night. Spotlights flashed above, forming a circle that seemed to encompass more than just this tower – perhaps a whole sector’s worth. Above the spotlights he noticed the silhouettes of the webwork dome, its pillars radiating from a central point high above and falling away into the shadows. Perhaps there were stars glimmering in the spaces between, but they were faint, and he became distracted by the gradually revealing view in front of him.
“Yes, I did,” said Kirillion, holding them a half-metre from the precipice, nothing but air beneath them and the moving vehicles below. “Self-preservation, as I said,” he whispered into Calix’s ear.
Wind pressed against his face, blowing up from the face of the tower. It felt like this was the only thing stopping Kirillion from throwing him over. Tears stung his eyes. Through blinking eyes he watched an advertising drone fly past the windows of the tower opposite, lit by a series of argon bulbs that strobed from red to orange to yellow and to green; Grab the tastiest, grab the best – Sergeant Skull’s. This reflected from the windows and concrete façade, and he saw that it was pristine. A distant cry from the state of the towers on the underside of the city.
A second advertising drone followed the first.
Others roamed outside windows all the way down to ground level.
If there were people down there, they were too small to see.
Kirillion gave him a squeeze and a shake and pulled them both from the edge. It hadn’t seemed possible, but he hated Kirillion now more than ever. He shrugged free and returned to the duo waiting inside the vehicle. It looked like a large version of the smaller surveillance drones they’d seen down below, only with seats.
“You alright?” asked Elissa, offering the seat next to her while buckling up.
“Ask me again tomorrow.”
“Ah, we were just enjoying the view,” said Kirillion, sitting in a front seat. “You remember tent city, Calix?”
He sat down in the curved, bucket-like seat, and buckled himself in silence.
“I remember it like yesterday. All you orphans running around, playing hide and seek. And at night, lighting the fire and singing songs and throwing rocks from the rooftop. I’d hear ya, you know, when of course I wasn’t up there with ya. Right below my room, you were. Always one of you kids wondering if you’d die if you jumped off. How’d they get on in Sanctum, when I left?”
“Didn’t stick around to find out.”
“No, no – I don’t suppose you did.”
“Linwood killed himself. But what’s one more death on your conscience, eh?”
The doors swung down, closing, just as Kirillion chuckled. It sounded hollow in the dead air. As soon as they began to rise Calix’s ears popped.
Hadn’t done that since the sand mountain.
“He was a fool,” murmured Kirillion.
“Barrick wasn’t.” Calix looked across at Caia, expecting some back-up; some typical-Caia response, but she just stared out the window, her ghostly reflection staring back at him.
“No, he was a good man. That whole thing was regrettable. We just had to get Annora home – did Caia tell you that part?”
“What part?”
“She was dying. She was always dying. City threw her out due to a heart defect. Could’ve gone at any point. She was on her way out, but as soon as we got her back, we operated. Saved her life.”
“Why not operate on her when she was a child?”
“Her and all the others…” said Kirillion. “The city is not exactly under populated.”
“What about me?”
Kirillion twisted his neck to look at him, letting his smile go to work. The light inside the manned drone was brighter than at any point inside the tower, and Calix could see more clearly how deeply brown Kirillion’s beard was, and how smooth his face. “Maybe I’ll let Annora tell you that,” he said, turning back. “They sure judged it right, though.”
He looked out the window. As though he was looking at a map, the tops of towers near and distant, set like a checker-board, stretched into the distance. He couldn’t see where they ended or the edge of the dome, and when he considered that everything he saw here was repeated beneath the ground, all he could do was take a deep breath and wonder in which direction the town lay: that tiny, insignificant triptych of towers and their queens and their people. Even in the shadow of the city, though – that town and those people had been their whole world. And beyond the town; out there somewhere, sat Sanctum and a spattering of mini-domes, each with people, each with lives doing their own thing in their own existence. This place, for all its size, didn’t matter to them.
And it wouldn’t matter to him. Or Annora. And somehow, they’d get out of here, find a place for themselves, live a life without shadow.
Misdirection
The manned drone rose through the night, tilting slightly as it veered away from the tower that had brought them here. Calix looked back, astonished to see how dark that tower was.
One day the sand will all blow away and we’ll find those cities, even if the concrete towers have all turned to dust themselves. We’ll see their footprints in the stone and we’ll know where to step again.
Calix recalled this as clearly as if it was yesterday: Ziyad had just died and Kirillion was consoling him. Something about the lifeless, lightless grey tower with its thousands of dead, square-set eyes, had brought this memory to the fore. Something in the idea of the concrete turning to dust, as all those in the past must have done – There must have been other places, like this, in the past, right? – and the windows exploding inwards, shards of glass showering the air and sprinkling those below in a light rain of broken dreams. Of deconstructed glass. Of sand like powder. It struck him that in his own way, Kirillion had been telling the truth. He sent out the crawlers and crew to pick through the remains of ancient settlements for anything that they could salvage. They had completed their mission.
He had completed his mission.
The rest of us meant nothing to him.
Calix reminded himself to remember that.
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Looking up, the circle of lights resolved into a donut-shaped building that appeared to hover over the centre of the city. Gangways lead from the inside edges to a central platform, towards which they were headed. As they ascended higher, Calix saw that pillars attached the building to the roof of the dome, and finally, he could see stars softly flickering high in the night sky. Elissa leaned over him to get a better look out the window. “We had a watchtower, back in Sanctum,” he said quietly. “It used to give me vertigo. To think that I once thought that was high.”
“Even from Quintessa’s tower; you know the city rises higher, but it’s so far away it almost doesn’t register. I used to think that was high. Looming over the town almost as much as the dome.” Elissa relaxed back into her seat.
“How is the plains district these days?” asked Kirillion. “It’s been a while since I visited.”
“You’ve…?” Elissa began to ask. And then, “Should I say, ‘same as ever?’”
“I don’t know… should you? I heard about the accident they had. Such an unfortunate event. Put them quite the bit behind schedule, I gather.”
“Yes, the slaughter of hundreds of children did put them quite the bit behind schedule, I bet,” she snapped.
The back of Kirillion’s head nodded, and Calix could see from the front-screen reflection that there was no smile. “Yes, unfortunate. Absolutely horrible, of course. An aberration though, I think. At least I hope so. You can never be too sure about these things.”
Elissa leaned forward. “Do you know about the blood, then? About what they want with it?”
Calix almost said, You mean ‘you’. What do you do with it? But waited for Kirillion’s reply instead.
“Some things must remain classified, I’m afraid, dear.”
She huffed. “It’s not right, what they do to those boys. Keeping them tied to chairs all day, draining them dry. Have you seen it? Seen what they do?”
“I have, though not for a while, as I said. There are sacrifices that must be made in this world if we are all to survive, and theirs is one that does not go unappreciated.”
Neon Sands Trilogy Boxset: The Neon Series Season One Page 52