The Forgotten City

by Nina D'Aleo

  Englan nodded. “I understand, but sometimes we have to use colors we don’t like to make a picture live.”

  “They’re just pictures, Dada,” she said. “They’re not actually alive.”

  Her father smiled. “Of course, my love.”

  A knock sounded on the door and Englan looked up with a sharpness to his eyes that Silho had never noticed as a child.

  “One moment,” he called out. He lifted the painting and paints off the table and locked them into a hidden safe in the wall behind the stove. Once everything was back in place, he went to the door.

  Silho skipped back again – rushing past six year-cycles of memories – over games and laughing, lessons and stories – all the way to herself as a baby where her father stood rocking her and singing in a language she’d never heard since, then everything went dark as she passed into a time before the house had been built.

  Silho pulled her hands back from the wall. Grief struck with such renewed force that it took her breath away. She’d forgotten so many things about her father, and it was torture remembering everything again without any way to get back to him. Memories fade for a reason. Copernicus had tried to tell her that.

  Silho’s thoughts focused in on the picture her father was painting with her. She’d never realized at the time, but he was showing her how to make a realm portal. Since recovering from the burns she’d sustained defeating the Skreaf, she’d been trying to paint, testing if she had the skill, but her pictures were just that and nothing more.

  Silho turned away from the wall and her eyes went to the stove. On the day of her father’s arrest, all his hidden safes had been blasted open and found to be full of dead children, but it looked as though the stove was still intact. Silho went to it and dragged it out from the wall. The hidden compartment behind held the original lock. Silho reached for her weapon belt and drew out Solace – her mother’s blade. It sliced the lock clean in half, and she let the pieces clunk to the ground. Expecting to find some kind of skeletal remains behind the door, Silho braced herself and wrenched it open. She narrowed her eyes. The safe was empty, save for one folded piece of paper. She reached in and took it out. In the center of the paper, someone had hand-scripted one line in black ink.

  In my mother’s house are many mansions – Silho Brabel.

  Silho felt a strange rippling over her skin and instantly refolded the note.

  As far as she knew, her mother, Oren Harvey, had renamed her Silho Brabel in the desert, and her father had never known of it. So how could this be here? Not once in all the wall’s memories had she seen Oren in this house. And what did the words mean – In my mother’s house are many mansions? A creeping unease whispered in the silence. Could this be something the witches had planted – something dangerous?

  Silho’s com buzzed at her side with an incoming call signal. She viewed the caller ID – Copernicus Kane – and answered.

  “Silho,” Copernicus said. “It’s time to move to the meeting point.”

  “Understood, I’m on my way,” she responded, tucking the folded paper into her weapon belt. “Are you already there?”

  “No, I’m here, outside the gate,” he told her.

  Silho froze, then she stood and edged to the window to peek around the frame. She saw Copernicus standing in the shadows near the front fence. Without any information of where she’d gone, without her locator activated, he’d managed to track her. He always did – and it sent chills of thrill and panic surging through her. It made her feel like running away, but at the same time, she would have been crushed if he stopped chasing. It was a little unbalanced, she knew that, but Copernicus didn’t seem to need any explanations to understand how she felt, which was fortunate since she still found herself struggling for words when he was close – never sure if what she was saying actually made any sense, and whether she was talking to the man or the commander.

  Her feelings for him now were so intense that she felt almost drugged-high when he was around and flat and empty when he was gone, as though he took all the color in the world with him wherever he went. Many times over the past months, she’d looked up from her research to see his eyes on her, and a thought had continued to replay in her mind – While I’m chasing the ghosts of the dead, I’m missing out on living. A few days ago, she’d begun to think that maybe it was time to let her parents go. She wasn’t sure how to actually go about walking away – but she wanted to try. The thought was terrifying, but less so than losing him, and that had to mean something. It was the main reason she was here now – desperately searching for some kind of final door to close – but there wasn’t any, just more questions.

  At this moment there was only one thing clear to her: she would never come back here again. Silho felt like she wanted to say something, but what and to whom? She took one last look around, then turned and left the wrecked house. That was all it was now.

  Copernicus opened the gate for her as she neared it. Half-light shadows darkened his face, making his scarlines glow and eyes burn with black fire. They consumed her, and even if she could have looked away, she didn’t want to. All the pain of her argument with Jude faded now that he was close. His attention shifted sharply to the end of the street, sensing heat and vibrations that Silho couldn’t.

  “Gangsters?” she asked, backing further into the shadows beside him.

  Copernicus nodded. “They’ve been sweeping all the levels, setting off ebombs, trying to flush out the remaining machine-breeds.”

  “I know. I came across a few in Ishtamar,” she confessed.

  His jaw tightened with disapproval, but he didn’t say anything.

  He stepped out in the opposite direction from the gangsters and Silho followed him. They moved down the street, fast leaving Sunnyside behind and entering Knox, a former shopping district. Street lamps that had once twinkled now stood askew in the broken, caved-in paved roads. Every shop was trashed and looted; some were fire-ravaged, blackened. War had turned their colors monochrome – shadows and white. Mannequins lay, half-staggered in twisted positions, doll faces burned and crushed. Tangled among the fake dead were real corpses. The stench of rot made Silho gag. She held her breath, but could still taste it. Copernicus gave no outward reaction, and she thought that it must be a terrible thing to have witnessed so much horror that crossing paths with death became a casual encounter. She glanced at his gloved hands and wondered how he’d react if she grabbed hold and held on.

  Copernicus halted so suddenly that Silho ran into his back. He stood, studying the shadows ahead of them.

  “Go! Move – in there!” he told her, the sudden urgency in his voice sending her running in the direction he pointed. She climbed through the shattered front window of a shop, Copernicus just behind.

  She heard it then, the dull rumbling of a gangster mass-mover, a prison-craft, flying low over the streets. She pushed further back into the destroyed shop, turning into a partially collapsed aisle. Her stomach lurched and she shifted into light-form vision. The silhouette of a person stood several paces away. Copernicus seized Silho’s shoulder and dragged her behind him. He drew his electrifier and raised it, but didn’t fire. Silho could see the stranger’s flaring body-lights, but his silhouette was completely still. With his electrifier primed, Copernicus edged forward to the stranger. Silho followed, and when they were right in front of the man and he still hadn’t shifted at all, she blinked back to normal sight. It was an Androt soldier, covered in body armor head to foot, a heavy artillery weapon hanging from one hand. Silho stared at his face. It was completely unmoving, the features frozen in an expression of anger and pain, and he wasn’t breathing – but, by his body-lights, he was definitely still alive. Silho glanced at Copernicus, who was examining a wound in the machine-breed’s chest. It was extremely deep and his clothes were saturated in white blood. Androts were usually rapid healers, so it was strange the wound was still open and extensive.

  “What’s happened to him?” Silho whispered.

  “Shut d
own,” Copernicus replied. “It’s what happens when machine-breeds suffer catastrophic injury. They shut down their bodies to preserve their minds.”

  “I haven’t seen this before,” Silho said. Corpses of Androt soldiers had been turning up everywhere, but none like this.

  “They’ve been dying rather than letting themselves be taken,” Copernicus told her.

  “So they could be reanimated?” she asked.

  “Sometimes, yes, if their injuries can be healed.”

  “And this one?”

  Copernicus shook his head. “Surprise attack, I’d say … and by the looks of it, taken out by his own kind, otherwise the other Androts would have found him by now.”

  “Was he a traitor?” Silho asked.

  “Maybe, or perhaps just a man tired of fighting.”

  Silho considered his words as Copernicus dragged a leaning shelf over in front of the Androt, blocking him from being seen from the street. The mass-mover roared closer, bringing with it the sound of marching boots. Copernicus and Silho quickly picked their way to the very back of the shop, where they hid behind several rows of high shelves. They crouched in the shadows, electrifiers aimed at the shop’s front. The prison-craft roared closer, shaking the ground. Silho pressed back into the darkness as light-blasters shone into the shop and scanned across the interior. Gangster voices called out to each other. She glanced at Copernicus, waiting for his direction. He gave a slight shake of his head. Hold. She clutched her weapon tighter, waiting, until the thunder of the craft moved on, growing more distant as the search left their street. Copernicus lowered his electrifier and holstered it. He stood and looked down at Silho. His expression was cold and detached, fight-ready, but it softened as their eyes met. It was very rare to see behind his control and Silho felt suddenly overwhelmed by panic.

  She stood, ripped up her face mask and said, “Don’t fight Caesar.”

  “It’s the gangster way,” Copernicus said.

  “I don’t care. I have a bad feeling. There must be some other way – something I can do.”

  Copernicus shook his head. They’d already been over every other option and found them all lacking. Silho wasn’t sure if she could, using light-form, mass immobilize the gangsters guarding the prison camps without taking it one step too far and slaughtering them all, and either way the effort would most certainly end up with her burning again. She could regenerate, but with extensive damage – it would take time, and then there’d be the backlash from Caesar to worry about. The fight-in was the only legitimate way to take control of the machine-breeds’ fate.

  “I understand how you’re feeling,” he said, “but the situation is what it is, and we have to continue. We have to free the machine-breeds. No one else can.”

  “I know but … I just feel …” She struggled to express her deep foreboding.

  “Fear …” He stepped forward and took her hand in his.

  “It’s more. Something is wrong …”

  “Silho,” he said softly, “I understand, but you have to trust me.”

  He drew her close and she pressed against him, hugging him with all her strength as though someone were trying to drag them apart. He touched her face and lifted it to his. The words she wanted to say were lost to her, and a moment passed where she didn’t know what to do, and she couldn’t breathe, and she couldn’t move. Then he leaned down to her. Her first reaction was to try to pull away, but Copernicus held her firm and pressed his lips against hers. Heat rushed through her body and she felt him respond, the embrace fast turning from consoling into something else. They kissed deeply, everything around them fading into insignificance until they were all that was left. She felt no more fear, just his lips, his touch and his body against hers. He guided her down to the floor, undoing his weapon belt and discarding it. The look in his eyes left no room for misunderstanding. Silho felt her heartbeats pounding too fast, so loud she barely heard her com beeping – insistently and persistently – until Copernicus pulled back and she had to answer.

  “Eli?”

  “Um … Silho. It’s not Eli – I mean it is Eli – as you know – you just said my name … Can you – if you wouldn’t mind – tell the Boss that I think the front-core coms are malfunctioning again and my menu has frozen.” He sounded monumentally embarrassed. “I am so, so sorry, but I thought I should tell you. I can hear everything the boss is thinking and I assumed he didn’t actually want me hearing … what he’s thinking … at the present moment … Not that there’s anything wrong with what he’s thinking – it’s just – slightly explicit and – and there’s nothing wrong with that – and – and I’m just going to stop talking right here.”

  Silho really didn’t know how to respond. She actually felt like laughing, but Copernicus spoke into the com, his voice tight. “Thank you, Eli.”

  He blinked to access the prototype implant and gave it a verbal command. “End transmission.”

  He waited for a moment, then moved in close to Silho again, but before they could kiss, Eli’s voice came through Silho’s com.

  “Ah … Still here …”

  Copernicus clenched his jaw. He blinked open his menu again and disengaged manually.

  “Eli?” he checked.

  “Yes – just working on disconnecting. My menu is still frozen.”

  Silho could hear him working frantically on the other end of the com.

  Copernicus disengaged again.

  “Are you —”

  “Still here,” Eli confirmed.

  “Now?”

  “Yes …”

  “Now?”

  “Sorry – yes.”

  Copernicus cursed. He grabbed the blade from his belt, and Silho flinched as he pushed the tip into his forehead, digging out the implant. He crushed it in one fist and dropped it to the ground. With blood streaming down his face, he looked so savage that Silho had to laugh. She realized it was a completely inappropriate reaction, but couldn’t stop once she’d started. Fortunately, Copernicus didn’t take offense. His fury melted into a smile and he dragged her back to him.

  A rumble trembled the ground. The search was coming back around; the gangsters possibly picking up on their presence. Copernicus’ eyes told Silho he was thinking the same thing. It was time to move. He helped Silho up, then grabbed his weapon belt and re-fastened it. Their eyes met and she could see the frustration in his expression.

  “After the fight-in,” he said, a promise in the words. He kissed her and she held onto him, not wanting to let go.

  “Everything will be alright,” he whispered to her. “Trust me.”

  He kissed her again and she nodded, wanting to believe him.

  Chapter 5

  Diega

  Aquais

  Scorpia (Estabana)

  Every time was the last time, until the next time. One too many drinks, a poisonous word, a feeling without a name and here she was, a liar again – proving right every wrong they said about her. She wasn’t deluded. She knew it was sick. No shades of maybe to save her soul. This was all bad from every angle. Diega more than knew it – she felt it. It gave her the guilts. She couldn’t face herself in the mirror for days afterward. And every time was the last time. I promise. Everyone knew not to trust a liar. When was she going to learn?

  Diega’s head hung low to her chest, sweat snaking cold rivers down her face. She could see her feet dangling above the ground. And below them, her blood, blue-black as the night sky, trickled down a drain. She dragged her head upright and it flopped back with little control. Her hands were bound above her with chains fasted to a beam. Beyond that, a tower tunnel stretched up to a sphere of light. Too far to reach. Somewhere up there was a club with music booming full-blast, but the only beat down here was her heart, slow and echoing in her ears.

  Down here …

  In this dungeon reeking of pain and piss, bloody handprints on the wall keeping tally of the beatings. Diega’s head dropped down again and she saw the man in front of her. One of her own kind – a
n Ohini Fen, with the swollen bulk and protuberant veins of artificially enhanced muscles. A black mask concealed his face. He raised the club in his hand, and as he did, he morphed it into a whip. He tensed. Diega braced, the colors of her rainbow skin flaring. She felt the rush of air and then it struck. Pain radiated through her body. She couldn’t breathe around it. Agony … and release.

  She gazed back up to the light, barely feeling the other blows raining down on her, only returning to herself once her feet hit the ground and she toppled face-first into a pool of her own blood. Her punisher grabbed her. He ripped his mask halfway up and forced her mouth against his. The kiss tasted of metal. His hands were too rough and she did nothing to stop it – just closed her eyes, and she was back on the cliff watching the demon witch fall, only now she was falling with her – down to the Envirious Realm – where all the broken people go.

  *****

  Diega pushed open the door from the stairwell to the main floor and staggered out into the club. The music pounded, vibrating the floorboards, as laser lights sliced the smoky darkness, over strobing figures, lost in the rhythm.

  Before the war, the Helliox had been a borderline-illegal hole in the wall, kept in business by the Fen soldiers who frequented it, but never spoke of it. The sum of her people in one line – what we know we never speak of. But now … Diega climbed a short flight of stairs and passed through a set of doors, finding herself standing on an open elevator platform, looking out over what the Helliox had become. From one basement room it had blown out to almost a full city block, a multi-leveled hive of entertainment. Somehow this place had survived and thrived when so much of Scorpia had crumbled.

  The elevator lowered her past the neon flashing lights and sound-storm of an arcade city, past restaurants and bars, beauty parlors and pamper halls; past a barter mall packed out with hagglers. Below that was a gambling den, with a gigantic holo-screen projecting over the crowds. In the main fight arena, the tournament to decide who would stand up as boss of the fairy-breeds in the fight-in was well underway – only males allowed. Everywhere inanimate objects morphed and resettled, then changed again. Everything that could be shifted appeared blurred around the edges to Diega’s eyes and those of her kind, though it wasn’t just Fens crowding the Helliox – there were fairy-breeds of all types here – Sleagh Maith, Myrea Nene and Danan, as well as other less common types like the Grimshaws and Rhymers who had come out of hiding since the fall of the Ar Antarian king, who’d hunted them almost to extinction. Everywhere the whistles of the old language sang through the air. A sense of the forgotten was coming back. In some ways it felt like a victory and in others ways a backslide. Amongst the thronging crowds, there was not one non-fairy-breed face. The call for gangster law to reign had inflamed the just-below-the-surface racial prejudice of her kind. Diega looked up through the open top of the building to the stars above – with half the city lights knocked out, they’d never blazed so brightly and felt so close.