by Nina D'Aleo
“Is it just me, or does everyone seem a little unfriendly here?” Eli said to Ismail.
“The war’s touched them too,” the scullion muttered grimly. He fixed his stare on Eli. “Machine-breeds against the gangsters?”
During the flight there, Eli had recounted more of the recent civil war that had brought the city to the brink.
“Yes,” Eli said, surprised and encouraged by the fact Ismail was asking a question. “Kry against Caesar K-Ruz.”
“It was only a matter of time,” Ismail said. “Before the machine-breeds revolted.”
“Maybe I’m naive,” Eli replied. “But I can’t understand how such a powerful group like the machine-breeds could have been oppressed so much in the first place … They have strengths like rapid healing and resistance to magics that no other race has … I mean, I know the historical account of the situation, but it just doesn’t seem plausible.”
“That’s because it’s the official historical account, written by the oppressors,” Ismail said, some feeling coming into his voice. “It’s not the actual account. You don’t need to do much to control someone stronger than you – you just need to know what their weakness is and be ruthless in exploiting it. The real story was that the Ar Antarians began to take control after they stole a group of children whose parents were influential Androt leaders. Then they used simple threat to manipulate the parents and turn the race against itself. The machine-breeds never recovered after that.”
“I’ve never heard that before,” Eli said. “But it does ring true.”
“You think scullions allowed the governments to write their history for them. We wrote our own history! Not that any of it actually matters,” Ismail said, and Eli saw a momentary flicker of emotion in his eyes.
“Where were you born? Was it in the city or in the scullion settlements?” Eli asked, trying to encourage him to keep talking. Ev’r hadn’t written anything about Ismail’s earlier life in her journal, just documenting from the start of their relationship when Ev’r was twelve and he fifteen. They were actually cousins, third or fourth removed, which was why they had the same last name.
“My background is irrelevant to the mission,” Ismail responded. “I suggest you focus, soldier.”
“Well, to be honest, I’ve never been much good at focusing on one thing,” Eli said. “Me – I was born in the back of a transflyer. My father was going to take my mother away to some place where they could live together, but then I was born early and he took one look at me and changed his mind! My grandparents raised me.”
Ismail grunted, eyeing Eli’s mixed Glee and Greer bloodline marks on his arms, blue stripes and purple dots.
“I noticed that you had two fathers – were you close to either of them or your mum?” Eli pressed him again.
“As I said, my background is irrelevant,” Ismail answered.
Eli took that as a no and said, “I never got to know mine either really. I saw Mum once or twice when she came to ask my grandparents for money, but then she married some rich guy and never visited again. Dad … he was kind of in the picture for a moment there, but not really. Kind of hurt a bit,” he admitted.
Ismail gave him a hard stare and said, “Do you know what happens to Militia recruits who bring up their past?”
“No, but I can imagine it’s not pleasant.”
“They’re shot. Dead. On the spot,” Ismail said, flatly. “There is no past. There is no future. There is only the mission.”
Eli absorbed the information with dulled horror and decided to restrain his normal imp-breed urges and stop before he had an electrifier to his head. Hunger snarled inside him, gnawing at his stomach. He grabbed some supplies off his belt. A packet of dried fruit and some energy bars. He opened one pack and started to offer it to Ismail. The scullion whipped around instantly, his eyes shining red, a savage, wolf-like expression on his face. The beast had surfaced.
Eli had seen that look on the packs of starving dogs that roamed the scullion settlements just outside the city walls. He used to go there and throw them bones and meat cast-offs, which the cooks at the United Regiment cafeteria would put aside for him. Without hesitating, he threw all the food away from him onto the ground. Ismail lunged at it, dropping to all fours and furiously tearing open the packets. He shoved the food into his mouth, swallowing almost without chewing. After he’d finished it all, he grimaced and threw everything back up. After only the slightest of pauses, he started eating the vomit.
“No!” Eli called out despite his better judgement not to get between a hungry wolf and his meal. “Soldier – stop – desist!”
Ismail jolted. He straightened up to his knee and stared down at his vomit-covered hands. His face was blank again as he switched back to the soldier.
Eli crouched down where he stood so that they were on the same eye-level.
“It’s okay.” He stayed crouching and shuffled toward Ismail at a cautious pace, until he was close enough to hand the scullion a wipe from his belt. Ismail accepted it and cleaned off the sick, then Eli took his flask off his belt and poured some anti-nausea serum into it. He handed it to Ismail and said, “Sip it, it’ll help settle your stomach.”
Ismail first sniffed at the flask, then snatched at it and gulped the contents down, unable to consume anything slowly at this stage. Eli kicked himself for not foreseeing the reaction. Ismail looked so healthy now, thanks to the healing formulas, that he’d completely forgotten not long ago he was eating raw meat and dirt just to stay alive.
Ismail finished the whole flask and then handed it back. They both stood up and Ismail’s eyes were so vacant and staring that Eli wondered if he’d completely retreated into shock.
“Are you okay?” he asked him.
“Confirmed.” Ismail responded. “Proceed.” He turned, walking in a trudging, mechanical way – but moving nonetheless.
They followed the path back up a slight slope, walking for some time until they reached a heavy tarnished metal door blocking their way. Rust smothered its hinges and there was an inscription carved in the rock above the frame – one word – Talak.
“The marine-breed god of the waters,” Eli murmured.
He checked his navigation. It looked as if this door was the only way to get down to the lower parts of the level where the painting was located, in the amphibious city, Nineva.
“Do you think it’s just water behind there?” he asked, envisioning opening the door and being swept away by a torrential current. Ismail put his ear to the door and listened.
“No, it’s hollow,” he said. He grabbed the rusted turn-circle and started wrenching it down. A few big turns later, the door screeched open. A gust of air smelling of warm salt water wafted out.
Ismail armed his electrifier and stepped over the threshold down into shin-high water, and Eli followed, the water level significantly higher on him. A dim light shone up ahead and they waded toward it, their splashes echoing through the tunnel. Soon they came to the source of the glow. Someone had cut out a section of rock and replaced it with glass. Behind that, a strange marine-breed creature hung suspended, completely still as though frozen, in light blue water. There was something written on a plaque, mottled with age, fixed under the window. Eli narrowed his eyes and ran a hand over the words, chipping away some of the rust so he could read them.
“Trak Hrak Racktak,” he said aloud. “Marine-breed language – I’ve got a translator.”
Eli reached for it, but Ismail said, “If you trespass …”
“If you trespass …?” Eli prompted.
“That’s all it says.”
The scullion pointed and Eli turned to see another light up ahead. They moved through the water toward it and found a second glass window with a creature behind it. This one had oversized red eyes and a gaping grouper mouth, its face covered in long, green, tentacle-like whiskers. The scaled body extended out behind it like a whale.
It also had a plaque that Eli read: “Mrak Splak Racktrak.”
“If you trespass in these waters.” Ismail put the two together.
“There’s another one,” Eli said. He waded up to the third circle of light, noticing the ground under their feet starting to change from firm rock to a spongy moss. He peered down into the turbid swill below them, but couldn’t see anything. They stopped at the light. A creature stared out from behind the glass. It had a long shark-like head and small gray eyes with black pupils. Its body looked like a human-breed’s, except its hands were sharp knife-like fins and the flipper feet pointed outward. There were five lines in its neck – gills.
“No writing.” Eli leaned forward and as he did, movement caught his eye. The gills of the creature had expanded.
“It’s alive.” he said.
As the words left his mouth, the creature lashed out, cutting through the glass and slashing toward Eli’s neck.
He just managed to leap aside before it struck. Water dribbled from the fractured glass and it started to split in more places. The ground trembled.
“They’re underneath us!” Ismail fired his electrifier into the water, but a fin-hand darted up and slapped the weapon away.
“Run!” Eli yelled. He buzzed his wings and shot forward as a knife-like fin stabbed upward right where he had been standing.
As they fled, the shark creatures rose from underneath their feet, slashing with razor fins and sending high-low calls echoing through the tunnel. They gave chase, moving with rocking, lunging steps, seemingly awkward, but surprisingly fast and agile. Ismail swerved and leaped, trying to dodge the fins. One stabbed up through his lower leg and he yelled, ripping the Morsus Ictus off his belt and slashing down with it, severing the creature’s limb. Another door appeared up ahead and Ismail charged it, hitting it with so much force that it flew open.
They ran out onto a ledge and skidded to a stop in front of a dead-end. A wall towered forever up in front and beside them, made of smoothed white coral with no footholds to climb. On the other side was the steep drop to the river below. They heard a roar behind them and turned to see a wave of water racing down the tunnel, collecting up the sharks and speeding toward them. The glass had given out.
There was only one way to go.
“Down!” Ismail commanded and jumped off the ledge. Eli half-flew and half-skidded down the slope behind him in a storm of mud and sand. They hit the ground and rolled a few times to the edge of the rushing river. On the ledge above, the creatures had reached the end of the tunnel and were waterfalling down the drop in one gray-white mass.
Eli and Ismail exchanged a glance, then both plunged into the river. A speeding rip swept them away, dunking and pummeling them. Eli gasped, fighting to keep his head above the water, his wings too wet to fly. He looked back and saw fins pursuing them. Ismail swam powerfully, grabbing Eli aside just before he crashed into a boulder.
“I forgot!” Eli yelled above the roar of the river. “You have shark blood. Can you talk to them?”
Ismail shook his head. “They’re not listening. They’re too hungry. I could send out an electro pulse that will stun them, but it will take me out as well.”
Eli spat out a mouthful of briny water and said, “No. Plan B?”
“I can feel something else swimming through the water …” Ismail told him.
“Something that won’t eat us?” Eli said hopefully.
As the sharks closed in, Ismail started whistling, and after a few moments, a head popped out of the water right beside Eli. It had a yellow face with a long equine snout, a spiky mane and round orange eyes, ink spot pupils in the center. More of the same type of creature emerged, swimming alongside them, changing color from a warning neon yellow to a friendlier brown with black stripes. One of them whinnied and Eli yelled, “Seahorses!”
“Grab one!” Ismail shouted. “Quick, before they run!”
Eli lunged for the closest horse and touched its scaly side. It shied away. He moved faster, grabbing its mane and dragging himself onto its back. Ismail was doing the same, and was only half on when the horses bolted, galloping through the water fast with feathery fins, curling tails and hoofed feet. Eli clutched two handfuls of mane to stay on, as they thundered down the rapids, water spraying in his eyes and mouth. He yelled to Ismail, “We have to get to the Superior Hall in Nineva.”
Ismail whistled to the horses and they whinnied.
“What did they say?” Eli asked.
“They said ‘hold on’!”
Eli noticed then that the rapids had flattened out and there was a dull roar coming from up ahead of them, growing louder as they closed in fast on a waterfall. As they reached the edge, Eli clenched his teeth and squeezed the horse’s sides with all his strength. The herd catapulted out of the river and for a moment hung in the air, before tumbling at a nightmare speed down the falls. They crashed into the water below and Eli was ripped off the seahorse’s back. A hand grasped his arm as the herd propelled themselves back upward to the surface. Eli gasped in air and Ismail dragged him up behind him onto his horse. The waterfall joined the river with an ocean, and an underwater current grabbed them and dragged them out further and further away from anything resembling land. The sea swelled and the razor-fin sharks kept coming, leaping down the falls. Waves rose up like gigantic beasts all around the seahorses and the creatures ducked under the surface. Eli felt the pressure of the waves breaking over their heads like a giant’s pounding fist. He blinked through the salt water and saw hundreds of glowing lights below them. Instead of resurfacing, the horses propelled downward toward the light.
Chapter 23
Croy
Kullra Fornax
Nÿr-Corum (Saint Boniface Borough)
The Old Docks in Saint Boniface Borough was a meeting spot, a place to congregate, to find someone or lose yourself in a crowd. It wasn’t exactly rough. Grays took their families there all the time to socialize and watch the Fleetships and other flyers entering and leaving the Saints’ Door. It was the only way in or out of the city. Still, the docks weren’t exactly brawl-free either. Rowdy pubs lined the main stretch of gridway, crowded places where people gathered for a good time which occasionally ended badly. It was also one of the largest pick-up points for daily rations. Being a Controller, Croy could have had her packages delivered to her house or the Tower, but she preferred to go for them herself.
The Docks had always been her favorite place in the city. Her one dream and ambition, since childhood, was to become a Fleetsman. She’d taken the test over and over, thought she passed many times, but failed every one. It had been nearly two annums since she’d last tried out. She wasn’t ready to give up the dream. It still called to her like a desperate hunger, but the constant knockbacks had taken their toll. She couldn’t completely explain the desire to fly – except that maybe John L had brainwashed her from an early age with all the stories about his time in the Fleet. All the adventures in the outer tunnels – the dangers, the excitement, the animals, the foods, the relationships – even the Drays. He’d become an expert on their enemy, yet he’d never spoken about them with any malice. Croy could remember not feeling any surprise when John L had been accused of conspiring with the Drays and sentenced to death. Terror, but not surprise.
On most of her trips to the Docks, she’d throw on her gray cloak and go undercover, but after everything that had happened this dayturn, she didn’t feel in the mood for being jostled and manhandled by an overcrowd of edgy Grays, so she kept on her black uniform cloak and the crowd peeled open in front of her. Silence had a way of preceding her steps, but she was used to it. The Grays didn’t trust the Corps, the Corps didn’t trust the Grays and no one trusted the Purple Wings, who were so busy bribing and backstabbing each other they barely noticed anyone else existed outside their circles. Today there was a feeling in the air – strangers were interacting, talking to each about the fallen Teriscoria. It was the temporary banding together before the inevitable falling apart. Across the drop space, along the New Docks, Fleetsmen were harnessing up the city’s third-
largest ship, plus an army of smaller guard ships that would be escorting it. Seeing this mass assembly Croy couldn’t help but wonder if all their defenses were being drawn out on purpose.
She reached the ration stores and went through the door, nodding to the row of Tower Guards keeping the crowds in check. There was a line-up, which she bypassed, heading directly for the counter. The stores manager, a short man with a twitchy moustache who was almost wealthy enough to leave Gray status, had her package waiting by the time she reached the desk.
“Controller Croy – the Saint!” he announced loudly. “Always an honor!” He gave a slight bow.
Croy grunted and took the package. She liked a polite person, but an arse-kisser couldn’t be trusted. She noticed how much larger her ration package was compared to that of the Grays at the counter beside her. They noticed it too, but no one commented. She handed over her tokens, but the manager tried to refuse them, clearly wanting to be in her good favor.
“It’s the law,” Croy said, forcing the tokens back across the desk, to his obvious disappointment.
She shoved the package into her bag and left. She could have shared her food with the family beside her, but then what about all the others in the line? Acts like that could start a riot. When the time came and food ran out, she’d make sure whatever she’d been stockpiling went first to the Gray children – to feed as many as she could for as long as it lasted. Until then, she needed to keep up the status quo.