by Joe Ducie
The spider screeched.
Drake winced, and Irene clapped her hands over her ears. The sound was somewhere between nails on a dusty chalkboard and metal scraped against metal. Tristan stared, slack-jawed, holding his phone between him and the beast as if it offered some sort of protection.
The soldiers across the clearing turned their weapons upon the creature and fired. Dozens of tranquiliser darts chimed against its glassy hide. Some of them switched to sleek black pistols, real bullets, lethal, but the rounds ricocheted off the spider. The tall soldier who had fired the crimson bolt of power threw his head back, laughed, and offered Drake two thumbs up.
The spider creature, whatever it was and wherever it had come from, shook its bulbous head, blinked a hundred black eyes, and turned towards the Alliance soldiers. It moved slowly, eight legs digging through the snow and kicking up chunks of hard-packed ice in its wake.
The man with the black eyes and red fire clenched his fist, and the soldiers fell back behind the chopper. At the same time, a great wrenching of metal echoed across the forest’s edge, of couplings tearing apart and steel straining to its breaking point.
The engine car broke free from the rest of the train and rose fifteen metres into the air above the tracks. The horror-struck passengers in the next carriage clung to their seats as the engine car spun on its side, as if on a pivot, and shattered glass rained from above.
‘What are you doing?’ Tristan shouted.
‘It’s not me.’ Drake’s heart pounded against his chest. ‘It’s … it’s him. The skeleton man.’
Skeleton Man removed his breathing mask, raised his thin arms above his head and gave a high, shrieking laugh that pierced Drake like a rusted fish hook. He held his forehead, pain pulsating in his skull.
‘Oh my …’ Irene gasped. ‘Who is – ?’
Skeleton Man threw the train at Drake, over the slow crystal spider, as easily as throwing a tennis ball.
Moving with an almost casual grace, as surreal as the sight of the train hurtling through the air, Drake raised his arms and clapped once. On some sort of insane autopilot he didn’t understand, he caught the train in an invisible net. A few metres above the snow, the engine car bounced, as if on a bungee cord.
Now what?
Drake snorted, and he couldn’t help the mad giggle that escaped him. He clapped his hand over his mouth to stop it and dropped half the train. The closer end of the carriage slammed into the bulk of the crystal spider. The creature shattered as if it were a fine crystal glass, and a clear ichor burst from its innards before it was lost under the carriage.
‘Whoops,’ Drake said, tears in his eyes, still fighting the giggles. He carefully lowered the other end of the train into the snow, blocking his view of Skeleton Man and the chopper, and making sure no passengers were underneath it. ‘We have to go now,’ he said. ‘And yes, I think that did, in fact, just happen.’
Irene and Tristan stood either side of Drake, but they nodded as one and turned towards the dark forest of snow-covered trees. The heat from the blasts, the portal, and the downed chopper had melted a rough, slushy path through the snow. Drake cast a quick glance over his shoulder as his friends entered the forest, back towards the soldiers, just as they appeared from around the far edge of the derailed carriage.
Darts whizzed through the air around them, and one bit Tristan just below his hairline on the back of his neck.
‘Ah!’ he cried and stumbled forward, the tranquiliser in the dart knocking him out cold.
Drake cursed. His shield had dissipated, most likely when he was playing catch with the train. He caught Tristan under his arms, slung him over his shoulder, and dashed after Irene deeper into the forest.
The trees soon provided cover from the darts. Drake let Irene lead them away – away from the train, the soldiers, monstrous spiders, and … Skeleton Man.
He’s one of the Alliance’s Crystal-X soldiers, Drake thought. Has to be. Christ, look what it did to him …
Visibility beneath the trees was dark, barely better than washed-out greys. Shadows cast by the trees crossed the snow. Irene stumbled on a knot of tree roots and landed hard on her knee. She cried out, stifled a sob, and hobbled back onto her feet.
‘Keep going,’ Drake breathed. He wasn’t using any power to carry Tristan, but his small friend was light enough not to weigh too heavily on his shoulders.
Irene retrieved the smart phone Tristan had given her from her pocket. She spent precious seconds fiddling with it. Drake was about to hurry her along when a beam of light shone from the camera flash on the back.
‘Flashlight app. Michael thought it might be a good idea,’ she said and winced. ‘Damn it, my knee’s bleeding. We should risk the light so we don’t fall into a ditch or something.’
‘Right.’ Drake thought he could hear boots against snow behind him, but that could have been the pounding in his ears. He trusted Irene to find the right path – any path – deeper into the forest and away from the Alliance soldiers.
What the hell are we going to do? The net was closing fast. Sooner or later, they’d be cornered. Even with my power and however the hell I’m using it, the bloody Alliance is everywhere and controls everything!
Drake pushed his sour thoughts aside and concentrated on the present – and on not snapping his ankle thanks to a malicious tree root.
After what felt like hours but was probably only the best part of forty-five minutes, the trees thinned and they reached a gravel road under a thin coating of fresh snow. Sand and grit had been thrown down recently – earlier in the day, most likely – to melt ice, which meant the road had to lead somewhere populated. No soldiers had followed them through the forest, but they wouldn’t be far behind.
Favouring her left leg, Irene limped across the road and into the trees on the other side.
‘Let’s head in here a bit and then stop,’ Drake said. His shoulders were burning from Tristan’s weight, but he didn’t want to try using his power again. So far he’d been able to swing it in his favour, but at no point had he felt in control. Where the hell did that spider thing come from?
Irene didn’t reply but disappeared around a copse of trees. Drake followed, down a narrow hollow just beyond the trees. About fifty metres away from the road, the hollow opened up into a glade alongside a frozen river and a barrier of trees and shrubs that looked, in the poor light, impassable.
‘Either we stop here,’ Irene said, gasping for air, ‘or we have to climb back up the way we just came and look for another way through.’
Drake glanced around the glade, shielded away from the road, and tried not to think what a fine spot it would make for a last stand. The thought made him smile and forced another chuckle from him. Quit laughing. Nothing about today is funny!
He couldn’t help it – the laughter was coming, and he was about to drop all sixty kilograms of Michael Tristan.
He placed Tristan down against the trunk of a tree. His shoulders screaming relief, he fell to his knees in the light snow and let the laughter out. Drake laughed up at the night sky – a million stars twinkled far away, between wisps of grey cloud – until tears streamed down his face.
‘Will?’ Irene asked, not quite approaching him. ‘Are you OK?’
‘She’s alive, Irene!’ Drake stood up quickly and swept Irene into a quick embrace, spinning her around in his arms. ‘My old mum, bless her, she’s still alive!’
A smile blossomed across Irene’s face and turned into a giggling fit. She pulled Drake’s hat back from his forehead and kissed him squarely between his eyes.
Chapter Six
Veiled Light
Irene sat against the cold tree trunk next to Tristan and rolled the leg of her pants up and over her knee. She was covered in sweat from the dash through the forest, but it was drying cool against her skin and making her shiver. This cold will kill us faster than the Alliance, if we’re not careful. She kept her ears pricked for the sound of heavy boots or the click of assault rifles. For
now, it looked like they’d lost the soldiers.
Her knee was a bloody mess from the fall in the forest.
‘Ouch,’ Drake said. ‘Do you want me to try to heal …? No, you should do it yourself. Blimey, I’d probably just end up cutting the whole leg off.’
Irene pressed her palm against her knee. The wound was throbbing. She concentrated and brought her own power – meagre compared to Drake’s – to bear against the pain. Back on the Rig, they’d given her a drop of the blue crystal, barely enough to cover the head of a pin, but enough to result in an ability to heal, among other tricks. A few dozen sparks ran down her arm and pooled under her palm. A cool balm spread over her knee, drops of liquid light, and tendrils of bright smoke escaped from between her fingers. When Irene removed her hand, her knee was still coated in blood, but the wound was sealed.
Drake was tapping Tristan on the cheek, trying to wake him up. Irene watched him carefully. More than once during their mad dash from the train and through the forest, she’d seen pinpricks of crimson light shining in his pupils. Did you really see it? she wondered. Yes, it was there. His eyes are starting to shine red … which isn’t good.
‘Tristan has bad luck when it comes to the Alliance and their stunning darts,’ Drake said. ‘He took one to the chest on the Rig, too. Remember? That’s when we met in the infirmary.’
‘Is he OK, d’you think?’
Drake nodded slowly. ‘He’s breathing fine.’
‘Do you think they’re far behind?’ Irene strained her ears, but apart from the whistle of the wind and rustle of leaves, she heard nothing to suggest they were being pursued.
Drake glanced back up the rise through the hollow and towards the road. ‘What time is it?’
‘It’s not late. Six-thirty, maybe.’
‘We’ve got a lot of darkness to hide in then before morning.’ Drake hugged his chest and sighed. ‘Did you see that man back there? The one that threw the train?’
‘No, I missed that,’ Irene said sarcastically. ‘He didn’t look … normal.’
‘Human,’ Drake said. ‘It sounds absurd, I know, but he didn’t look human. And it felt like … but how could I?’
Irene stood up, tested her healed knee, and unrolled her cuffed pant leg. ‘How could you what?’
Drake shrugged. ‘Felt like I knew him, somehow. Skeleton Man.’
Irene shuddered, and not from the cold. ‘Skeleton Man … that’s an awful name, but it suits him. Do you think you could make a fire?’
Staring off into the distance, Drake seemed lost in his own little world. His eyes are fine now.
After a long moment, he blinked and gave her half a smile. ‘Sure, fire I can do.’ He looked down at his right hand as it started to glow. ‘That one’s easy.’
A half hour later, Tristan had woken up. Irene felt close to normal again, despite the aches in her limbs and the edge of biting cold that couldn’t quite be overcome by the warmth from the two spheres of rippling energy Drake had hung in the air against the edge of the hollow to help shield the light from the road above.
‘That crystal thing you made,’ Tristan said, shivering near one sphere. ‘The one that took down the helicopter.’
Drake nodded, picturing the glittering crystal that had stretched up from the ground to above the trees. ‘I thought it looked like a wave about to crash.’
‘Yeah, that thing. What was that?’
‘Honestly?’ Drake paused, and his eyes drifted over the frozen river, as if searching for something. ‘Buggered if I know, mate. It felt … good. Like, I didn’t mean to do it, but I couldn’t have done anything else, you know? That made no sense.’
Tristan swallowed, and Irene watched him shiver from the knockout juice working its way through his system. His groggy movements reminded her of her stepfather after he had too much to drink. Thoughts of that man could only lead down one road, so she shoved them aside.
‘No, that didn’t make much sense.’ Tristan sighed. ‘Irene? What do you think it was?’
She tried for a smile. ‘It looked pretty cool, whatever the hell you did, and it was a lot nicer than what came next. That … tunnel with the enormous spider.’
‘It didn’t explode,’ Drake said. ‘You know, like the crystal they pulled up from under the Rig would explode when it was exposed to air. This stuff didn’t.’
‘What does that mean, d’you think?’ Tristan asked.
Drake, leaning against the tree with his knees up, rested his chin on his hands. ‘Wish I knew.’ He eyed the backpack, full of cash, the revolver, the strange crystal that had been created by the spider-portal, and a dwindling supply of snacks. ‘Bloody hell, I’m hungry.’
‘Using so much of the power takes it out of you,’ Irene said. ‘That’s why you devoured all those hot dogs after tearing apart the cash machine.’
Drake shrugged. ‘Guess so.’
Tristan pulled out his phone and fiddled with it for a moment. ‘The drone’s catching up,’ he said. ‘It got a little lost in the forest. Removing most of its tracking hardware has slowed it down. Should be here in a few minutes. Be interesting to see what it recorded about that portal and the spider.’ He scratched the top of his head. ‘Oh, I left my hat back on the train. I liked that hat.’
‘How’d they find us on the train?’ Drake asked. ‘Was it the phones?’
Tristan shook his head. ‘Not possible. Believe me. They must’ve tracked us back at the station. On a camera or something. Think how quickly those soldiers showed up. The phones had barely been switched on five minutes. No, some clever analyst caught us on the cameras.’
Drake slipped his own phone out of his pocket and stared at the dark screen for a long moment. Irene guessed he wanted to make another call. But if he called home, the Alliance would just intercept it again.
With a sigh, he returned the phone to his pocket and warmed his hand around the orb of crystal fire. His right hand.
‘Wouldn’t work anyway,’ Tristan continued, ‘at least not until the drone is in range. I could set it to patrol tonight. Might give us a bit of warning if the Alliance is getting close again – what are you staring at?’
Drake was frowning at a small boulder on the edge of the frozen river. He blinked. ‘Sorry, what?’
‘You keep staring at the ice and … scowling,’ Irene said.
‘Do I?’
‘Are you feeling OK?’ she asked. Are you going mad? When she’d screamed at him to stop during the fight back at the train, for an awful moment Irene had been certain he was lost – that whatever control he had over his power had slipped.
‘Yeah, I’m fine –’ Drake jumped to his feet, keeping the tree at his back. ‘No. Who’s there?’ he demanded. ‘I know you’re there!’
Irene exchanged a look with Tristan and stood up to calm Drake down. He glowered at the river, at the far bank of thick trees and shrubs, with his fists clenched.
‘Will,’ she said gently. ‘Oh, Will, there’s nothing there.’
Drake licked his lips and swallowed hard. ‘No, look. Just look.’
Irene sighed and followed his gaze to a small boulder, two metres away. She swept her eyes up and down the icy river, a feeling of utter helplessness gripping her. The only people on earth who could possibly understand what Drake was going through had drowned under the Rig – and those people had been just as likely to cut him open and experiment on him. He had no one who could help as his condition … worsened.
‘Will, really, there’s nothing –’
The air above the boulder shimmered, as if it were a clear plastic curtain caught in the breeze.
A teenage girl appeared, standing on the boulder.
As if she had been there all along and not invisible.
‘Ha!’ Drake said, suppressing a rough chuckle. ‘Told you.’
‘Who the hell is that?’ Tristan breathed. ‘She … she was … not there.’
‘Good evening,’ the girl said, smiling softly. ‘My name is Noemi, and I am not here to
harm you.’
‘S’up, Noemi?’ Drake said, as if he’d been expecting her this whole time. The set of his shoulders and the hard line of his jaw told Irene he hadn’t been.
Not seeing the future just yet.
Irene stared at the girl on the boulder. She was young, perhaps around the same age as they were, and Asian. Her dark hair was pulled back in a loose ponytail, and her olive skin blended well with the white, snowy backdrop of looming trees and the cloudy night sky. Her breath shimmered on the air, obscuring dark eyes. She wore knee-length leather boots over black pants and a loose, V-necked blouse. Around her shoulders, clasped below her neck, was a strange silvery cloak that tricked the eye as if it were made of grey stone cast with moonlight. At her hip, half-concealed by the cloak, was the hilt of a sword in a long, curved sheath. She held the hilt in a hand wearing a thin glove.
As Noemi stepped down from the boulder, Irene’s eyes had trouble following her movement, as if she was about to fade as quickly as she had appeared. She’s been exposed to the Crystal-X, too.
‘William Drake,’ said the girl, Noemi. ‘I’ve been searching for you for some days.’
Drake raised a hand, and she stopped moving. ‘Please, just stand where you are. How did you do that … disappearing trick? I knew you were there,’ – he tapped his forehead – ‘but it was like an itch I couldn’t scratch. You’ve been watching us for at least ten minutes.’
Noemi inclined her head. ‘Like you, I am gifted.’ She smiled, as if she and Drake shared a secret Irene wasn’t supposed to know. ‘However, I have never met anyone capable of piercing my veils. You should not have been able to sense my presence at all.’
‘You were like a bee buzzing in my ear …’ Drake muttered and scratched at his head beneath his hat. ‘I could, like, see you out of the corner of my eye and sort of … taste it.’ He licked his lips and frowned.