The Forgotten City

by Nina D'Aleo

  It had worked – until Copernicus Kane. When it came to him, there was no choice. The feelings could not be ignored or put on hold. She couldn’t keep her eyes away from him and the fact that he was looking back at her with the same interest still took her by surprise – when fantasies came true it always felt like there should be a catch … And then there was Jude – she’d thought that once he saw that she and Copernicus were together, he’d understand she didn’t have feelings for him, but he hadn’t. If anything, the more time passed, the more he pressed closer to her. Uncomfortably close. And she couldn’t help but blame herself. She hadn’t wanted to hurt him, so she’d been trying to compensate on a friendship level, but perhaps it had come off as giving him hope … and perhaps part of her had actually meant to keep him interested for her own self-gratification … perhaps because part of her believed that Copernicus would eventually leave her and she was trying to hang on to what she had with Jude … She didn’t know for sure what she’d been thinking. Stunted Emotional Intelligence. She hated that phrase.

  An air-shaking explosion sent Silho diving to the ground. She scrambled up, readjusting her face mask as a fierce heat roared down the alleyway beside her. She peered around the corner and saw figures, black silhouettes against the backdrop of flames, moving around at the other end of the alley. Someone screamed and Silho jumped to her feet. Keeping close to the wall, she ran along the alley until she had a view of the square beyond. She crouched down in the shadows and watched through the greenish hue of her night-vision mask as three Androts dragged themselves out of their burning transflyer, with gangsters closing in on them from both sides. Their modified electrifiers were aimed and primed. Silho counted the gangsters – five – and through the shadows caught reflective flashes of red and yellow, the colors of Kelly’s Crew – the second most powerful gang now that the Galleys had been all but wiped out by the Skreaf. By their panicked scrambling and lack of weapons, Silho knew these Androts weren’t rebel fighters, just civilians like so many of the machine-breeds caught up in war. Three young guys probably trying to flee the city under the cover of night. Unfortunately they’d flown right into a gangster net, and were now trapped in a no man’s land between the ghost buildings of the Empty Quarter and the gateway to Ishtamar’s Grand Markets, an underground maze of stalls and sellers.

  Silho squinted and saw the Androts preparing to run for it. They wouldn’t make three steps before the gangsters dropped them. A fiery boom exploded from the crashed transflyer and the Androts lunged out from their cover. One immediately tripped over and fell. The others didn’t see him through the smoke and ash. The gangsters aimed to fire and Silho blinked into light-form vision. She saw their bodies as a mass of glowing lights, dullest at their weakest points. She lifted a hand and drew a blast of power from their body-lights into herself, enhancing her own strength. The gangsters dropped instantly, incapacitated, but alive.

  With the gangsters down, Silho dashed across the square and used her temporarily heightened strength to drag up the heavy, fallen Androt. She helped him run across to where the other two were hiding behind the ruins of a stall. She threw their friend in beside them and the machine-breeds stared up at her, eyes wide with terror, black barcodes standing out bold on their pale necks. One lunged up trying to strike her with a piece of metal pole. Silho wrenched the pole out of his grasp, hurling it aside. She shifted back to normal sight, then pulled up her mask so they could see her face, but they weren’t looking at her, just at her weapon belt and her electrifier.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” she told them. “Follow me. I’ll take you to cover.”

  “Get away from us!” one of them yelled, and they took off through the gateway and down toward the Grand Markets. Silho watched them run. The Markets had only one entrance and exit – the gangsters, experts in urban warfare, would easily flush them out.

  She stepped to go after them, but a zap of fire aimed her way made her dive down behind the wrecked stall. Voices and running bootsteps headed toward her. Silho dragged her night-vision mask back down over her face and leaped up, racing for the shadows of the nearest alleyway. She ran through, pursued, until she hit a dead end. Fire glanced off her body armor and she whipped around to face her attackers – four more Kelly’s Crew gangsters, with electrifiers all pointed at her chest, their fingers tense on the triggers. Their dogs growled behind them, snapping overgrown, trap-like jaws. One barked and the gangsters opened fire. Silho dropped to a crouch, blinking back to light-form. She gestured, drawing from the gangster’s body-lights until they slumped to the ground, their dogs beside them. Silho paused, watching their chests rising and falling. She listened to hear if more gangsters were coming. The only sounds were the roar and crackle of the burning transflyer, but she knew that wouldn’t last long. Soon more gangsters would be swarming the place and she couldn’t risk going back now to find the Androts.

  Feeling heavy with ill-ease, Silho approached the stunned men. She could have easily drained the rest of their body-lights, taken their lives with a flick of her hand, and breathed their life force out of her mouth in a blast of fire – like the firebird dragon of her bloodline marks. It was the skill of the Omarians, of which she was the last. But instead she stepped over them and headed back down the alleyway. She hadn’t used her skills to kill anyone since the Skreaf. She understood that everything she’d gone through could have turned her colder, immune to others’ suffering, indifferent toward life, but she hadn’t. The effect had been the complete opposite – never more acutely than now had she sensed the life around her and understood the precarious confusion in which most people existed, and her lack of right to judge who should live and who should die. Right and wrong, good and bad had all run together like watered-down paint.

  Halfway down the alley, Silho heard a thud behind her and spun around. Jude stood there, one foot in an extension rope attached to the rooftop of a building above, from where he’d dropped down. The red eye-lights of SevenM, his companion spider-like robot, locked onto Silho’s face, feeding images back to Jude’s mind. Jude made a quick gesture for her to come to him and she stepped forward. When she was within reach, he dragged her closer to him and wrapped his arms, mixed-metal prosthetic replacements, around her. He released the lowering-hold of the extension, shooting them back up to the rooftop, where he rapidly disconnected the anchor and re-coiled the line into his belt. As he ushered her behind the small icehouse in one corner of the flat space, Silho felt a flare of frustration; she hadn’t needed rescuing and she didn’t need shepherding. He knew that, he knew what she could do, but still insisted on shielding her, even more than Copernicus did. Once they were behind the icehouse, Silho lifted her mask, her breath misting the air.

  “You left – I didn’t know where you’d gone. Why did you turn off your locator?” Jude asked, his upper-level accent made heavier by frustration. “Kane told us to stay low until we rendezvous.”

  Silho noted he didn’t use the commander’s title. Things had changed between them, and not just because of her.

  “I know,” she replied. “But there is something I really need to do. Just like Diega. She left as well.”

  “Diega can take care of herself,” Jude said.

  “And I can’t?”

  “No, Silho. Clearly you can’t,” he responded sharply. “You turned your back on the enemy.”

  “They were neutralized.”

  “Yes, but for how long? Even you don’t know the exact extent of your ability. Some people stay down longer than others. You said it yourself.” He narrowed his eyes. “I don’t know why you keep taking deliberate risks.”

  “I wasn’t trying to take a risk. There were …” She hesitated. Jude already seemed on edge and any mention of Androts had become a trigger for him.

  “What?” he prompted.

  “Nothing … I just took a wrong turn,” she said. “I was fine. I had everything handled.”

  Jude gave an unconvinced nod and lifted his eyes away from hers, looking i
nto the darkness around them. The silence stretched on and Silho shifted, listening for sounds of approaching gangsters. She couldn’t hear anything except the rain tapping across the rooftops.

  “I’m just trying to keep you safe,” Jude finally broke the silence. He lifted a hand to remove his glasses and Silho tensed. Jude never took off his glasses in public, always aware the bright blue of his eyes gave away his royal bloodline. His true identity as the heir to the Ar Antarian throne was still the secret of the tracker team. There was no one else there on the rooftop to see him, but it was still uncharacteristic.

  Silho met his stare, his eyes shimmering like blue gems, lighter around his pupils, darkening almost to black around the edges. They cast a glow across the silver skin of his face, his features so strong and smooth, so perfect he almost looked like a sculpture, someone’s definition of masculinity, someone’s dream man – just not hers. She wasn’t drawn to nobility or perfection – what captured her were scars and tattoos, dark eyes with a dark past. That’s what felt like home. An image of Copernicus came to her mind and it sent warmth through her even in the freezing rain. She saw Jude’s gaze was searching hers, looking for something that he couldn’t find. A sudden determination in his expression made her discomfort surge.

  “I have to go …” she said, turning away.

  “No.” Jude caught her arm in his metal grasp. “We need to talk.” He stepped closer to her. “I need to tell you —”

  “Later – I have to go,” Silho said pulling away and backing up, pretending she didn’t know what he wanted to say. “There’s only a few hours until the fight-in. We can talk afterward – and don’t worry about me.”

  She stepped away from him, heading fast for the edge of the roof.

  “I love you,” he called after her.

  Her heart thudded heavily and she considered just pretending that she hadn’t heard, but they were still standing too close for that to seem believable. She stopped and looked back at him, seeing in his eyes that he needed for her to say it back. His heart was exposed. She swallowed with discomfort.

  “Same,” she managed. “You’re a wonderful friend …”

  He dropped his gaze, but not before Silho saw the hurt welling in them. Jude put his glasses back on and she felt a pang in her stomach. Hurting him was painful, but what option was there?

  “You have to know – Kane is dangerous,” Jude said, his voice low. “You don’t understand what he’s capable of.”

  “I know him,” Silho said.

  “No, Silho, you really don’t.” Jude gave a small, angry laugh, staring at her with pity and disappointment. He shook his head and sighed. “He’s an excellent leader, a brilliant soldier – but he’s a completely dysfunctional person. Not just dysfunctional – damaged, twisted – do you understand? I’m not just saying this for my sake, I’m saying it because you have to know the truth. He’s very good at mimicking normal, it’s why he’s gotten as far as he has, but if you stay with him, he will hurt you. One day you’ll cross his line and then you’ll see what I’m talking about … Silho, he’s dangerous.”

  “Aren’t we all,” she said quietly.

  “No, not like this,” he insisted.

  “Jude …” She didn’t know what to say. “In a few hours he’s going up against Caesar for machine-breed rights. He’s putting his life on the line for —”

  “His life on the line?” Jude cut in. “If he really cared for the machine-breeds, he would have ordered us to go in weeks ago!”

  Silho shook her head, her anger rising now. Jude knew well how hard the commander had been working on a plan to free the machine-breeds trapped in the gangster prison camps – how he’d looked at it from every possible angle – how he hadn’t slept or eaten properly for so long because of it. Everything came down to the fact that they were severely outnumbered by the gangsters, even if Commander Santana and the United Resistance, all that remained of the city’s former military, backed them. If they went into the camps it would be suicide. And now that the imprisoned machine-breeds were facing extermination, the fight-in was their only hope. Silho stared at Jude standing in the rain, and saw in his eyes the desperation and sadness haunting him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He flinched and she realized it had been the wrong thing to say – again.

  “Don’t be sorry for me. Be sorry for all the children who are getting tortured while your commander figures out how to make himself look good.”

  “That’s completely unfair,” she said.

  “That’s how I feel,” he shot back.

  “I can’t listen to this,” Silho murmured.

  “Then don’t,” Jude said. “Just go!”

  SevenM clicked unhappily on his shoulder and Silho turned away. She walked to the side of the building and started climbing down the fire-escape ladder. Before her head cleared the rooftop, she looked back to Jude, and saw he was already gone.

  Chapter 4

  Silho

  Aquais

  Scorpia (Sunnyside)

  “This building stands as a reminder that demons walk among us. We must be ever vigilant …”

  Words – that’s all they were. But they hurt. They burned. Silho hated them as though each was a person with a twisted mind and ill intent. She’d arrived at the house with tension already burning holes in her stomach, and to find this here pushed her beyond her limits. She grabbed the rusted sign bolted onto the front gate of her childhood home and wrenched it off. She snapped it in half and flung it into the gutter, which was flowing fast with murky storm waters. Fury boiled inside her, threatening to explode out, but she caught it and pushed it back down. The sign had been written by people blind in a lie, believing that her father was a monster, a serial killer. They’d been deceived by the real demon, the Skreaf Bellum. During the war, Copernicus had released an announcement across all levels of the city that her father, Englan Chrisholm, had been exculpated from his crimes. In reality, it hadn’t had much of a response or impact. With the gangs and machine-breeds fighting, people were too busy trying to keep themselves and their children alive to worry about old news.

  But for her, it had meant everything.

  Yet unanswered questions had continued to haunt her, forcing her to resume the search into her parents’ past. She’d expected to find little, but instead found nothing. For all intents and purposes, they had just stepped into existence as adults – her father as an artist, her mother into the military. Silho remembered even Hammersmith, her carer, who had mentored her mother, Oren Harvey, saying that he didn’t know where she’d come from. It was as though they’d just appeared, then vanished again, like shooting stars. Silho had followed every possible lead, except one – and so the search had dragged her back, like the inevitable tide, to this place where the nightmare had begun. “Home,” she whispered and felt the strength drain from her legs.

  She breathed in deeply and pushed open the gate. It gave a grinding shriek. A broken path led through a garden, overwhelmed by weeds, to a cottage. Silho surveyed it through the greenish hue of her nocturnal mask. It was modest, tiny really, but had once been loved. Now it stood bashed in and busted out, defiled by words scrawled across every surface. This neighborhood, Sunnyside, had avoided bomb blasts while many of the surrounding suburbs were flattened.

  This building still stands as a constant reminder that demons walk among us …

  Silho forced herself forward, every step taking effort as though she was dragging something heavy behind her. Baggage, that was what Eli had called it – he’d said that everyone has baggage, some more than others. Silho reached the doorway. Once a blue door with a dragonhead brass handle stood there, but now only an open cavity remained. Drawing her electrifier, she stepped over the threshold and swept the room. Then she lowered the weapon, taking in the ghost of the kitchen where she had sat and watched her father paint nearly every night of her young life. It seemed shrunken compared to the images in her mind. The last time she had been here, when
she was six year-cycles old, an army of State Guardians had burst through the windows and door and arrested her father. They’d knocked over all the chairs. They still lay where they had fallen, broken and covered in thick dust and mold. The soldiers had dragged him away and she never saw him again. There were no goodbyes.

  Silho picked her way across the treacherous, rot-devoured floorboards. One by one, she lifted the chairs and tried to straighten them under the table. She paused, preparing her mind, then turned and pressed her fingertips against a wall. She sensed the connection, and allowed the images of the past to flow into her. In her mind, life flooded back into the room. Color spread out, renewing every dust-dulled and broken surface. She sped through flashes of the near past, over the faces of people who had dared a peek inside this so-called chamber of horrors – the morbidly fascinated, the scientifically curious, and a few young kids on a dare who had run away screaming. She continued on – back – back – back in time – past the day of the arrest; she didn’t need to see what was already indelibly burned into her mind. What she wanted was before that time – what she wanted was a better time – she wanted to see her dad again. She snap-stopped on an image of her childhood self sitting at the table with him. She let the memory play forward. He was teaching her to paint. He was talking and she heard his soft, reassuring voice.

  “Now some red.”

  The child-Silho shook her head. “I don’t like red.”

  The corners of Englan’s mouth curved upward.

  “You don’t like red? Why don’t you like red?” he asked.

  “It doesn’t taste nice.”

  “What does it taste like?”

  “I don’t know … like something bitter.”