Suited

by Jo Anderton

  “I thought you understood her.”

  “I do. I did. But I have spent so much time in Varsnia and I forget things. Sometimes. There are so many more doors here than anywhere else. So I have to stay here. You see. For so long.”

  I nodded. “Then please tell her I am not the Other. Or whatever she thinks I am. Tell her I work with you, and I want to help.”

  As the Keeper and the Hon Ji Half spoke, I tried to focus on the debris. It made no sense. Not quite the usual solid grain, nor the destructive, lightning-like plane. Bound in ways I could not understand, animated yet seemingly insentient, a multitude locked in one terrible purpose. How could I calm something so violent, how could I collect it when it was tied so deeply with her body?

  “Does she understand?” I leaned in closer. The debris flickered at me, like a challenged snake, before plunging back inside her.

  “A little.” He hesitated. “She is in pain, she is scared. As far as I can tell she was taken from her training ground by people she did not see. She was in a colony, she’s a foot soldier, but she can’t tell me what her rank is. I don’t think… I don’t think she really understands what it all means. All she remembers is waking up somewhere hard and cold, beneath bright lights and then the debris attacked her. It has been doing this for days.”

  How many of those days were spent in this tank, with only oil lamps for company, waiting for me?

  “Was she taken because she is a Half?” I asked a question the Keeper could not answer.

  He hung his head. “It would not be the first time.” His shoulders shook.

  I needed to get to Lad. But I had to help her first, and fast.

  “Tell her I will try to collect it.”

  “No! You need to calm–”

  “I need to get it out of her first,” I snapped, and both the Keeper and the Half flinched. Was I terrifying to her, furious in my silver? After everything she had suffered, it was difficult to believe she could be afraid of me. “It is killing her now. She doesn’t have time to wait for me to try and calm the debris and return it to you. I will remove it, I will collect it. We need to save her life first. Tell her that.”

  The Keeper stuttered more words. Ignoring him, I withdrew the suit from my face. I leant forward and extended my metallic fingers into long, delicate pincers. I caught the ridged head of one of the debris snakes and I pulled.

  The debris came away from her body. Most of her stomach came with it.

  She fell back, ashen, silenced. I stared in horror at the tangle of debris and flesh. Skin. Muscle. Something long and deeply dark.

  My suit sprung from my control, it coated my head and the Keeper was screaming. “What have you done? I told you to return it to me!”

  “Do you want this back in you? Do you want her blood in you?” We were both screaming now, but somehow, beneath it, I heard her groan. Low, weak.

  Lad, I had to get to Lad. I drew a deep breath. I could smell my own sweat. I would not let them do this to him.

  “The debris has disrupted her pion systems,” I said with a calm I did not feel. “She is coming apart. No matter what we do, she will die.” Horribly. Slowly.

  The Keeper hiccupped. “I know. But the doors.”

  “Damn the doors.”

  The Hon Ji woman fluttered her eyelids and tried to lift her head. I could not let her see part of her own stomach and the writhing monstrosity attached to it. I knew what I had to do.

  I dropped the debris. I flattened my hand into a sharpened blade. It was quick, very quick. My suit was very sharp and sliced easily through her neck, through flesh and bone, cleanly to the other side. All it took was a little pressure.

  I stood. My legs shook.

  I had killed her.

  She was dying. It was the right thing to do.

  But I had killed her.

  I turned and staggered away from the light. I struggled for air in the confines of my suit. It throbbed around me as though awakened by the blood over my hand. For a moment I thought I could still hear her, whispering unintelligible words into my ear. But that was impossible now.

  “What about the debris?” The Keeper appeared beside me.

  Debris? Did he care about his Halves at all, about Lad waiting and the puppet men walking and the dead Hon Ji woman? Dead. “Other take you!” I ran from him, crashing through the ceramic loops as I went, barely seeing where I was going. I forced my suit away from my face, my neck, my chest.

  I couldn’t think about blood as I ran. Only Lad. I couldn’t think about debris crawling its way through bodies, intent on destruction. Or pulling the poor Hon Ji Half apart, when I had been trying to help her. Or that if I had listened to the Keeper, if I wasn’t so terrified for Lad in the hands of those veche puppet men, that I might not have pulled a part of her stomach out. I might have been able to save her life. Except her pion systems were failing. Except nothing I could have done would have reversed that.

  Surely.

  So I couldn’t think about any of that. Only Lad.

  My feet echoed loudly through the tank. The ceramic floor cracked beneath me.

  All I could hear was my breath, all I could feel was the thud of my footfalls travelling into my legs, my bones, my body. If the puppet men were still here, making their slow funeral procession in the darkness, I could not hear them. If the Keeper harangued me, I could not hear him. It was me alone in this timeless space. Only me, and my fear for Lad.

  And Kichlan relying on me to keep him safe.

  Faint sunlight filtered down through the hole in the roof. I plunged my suit into the floor to propel me upward, to Lad, to the puppet men, to whatever I would find in that long-dead factory.

  But the suit did not respond. And instead of soaring up I fell onto my face, sprawling across ridges and loops that gouged into my ear and right temple.

  Wincing, I pushed myself up. My face tingled cold as silver etched itself into my scratches, healing them into suit. I looked up at the hole. Shadows passed before it. My heart leapt.

  I stood and flexed my calves, extending my arms to reach for the ceiling. Nothing happened. My suit still coated me, toes to shoulders, but it refused to obey my command.

  Shuddering, I ran fingers through my hair. It was longer than I was used too, and had tangled into knots near the nape of my neck.

  I needed to be up there. I needed to see Lad with my own eyes.

  “What are you doing?” I hissed.

  The suit grabbed me, low against my stomach. Like fingers had grown from the panel against my belly, through clothes and the boned uniform, and raked my skin.

  I gasped, staggered on unsteady legs.

  It did it again. Harder this time, sharp. I cried out as it cut me, and pressed a hand to my abdomen.

  A shadow broke the sunlight above me. “Tan?” Lad. Not a wail, not a whisper, a forlorn and wavering word.

  I needed to be up there, with him. To keep him safe.

  “Stop it,” I hissed, teeth clenched.

  Pinching; sore against skin that felt tender and bruised. I hardened my stomach muscles and it eased.

  “You will obey me.” The suit settled. It withdrew from my shoulders, seeped back into the bands around my neck and wrists. As it retreated away from my stomach I lifted my hand, but no blood welled through my clothing. When it had freed my arms, hands and thighs, I stopped it so my calves and feet remained booted. “We’re going up there.” I looked to the ceiling. Did I feel it tighten around my legs, or had I imagined it? “Now.”

  I flexed. Poles sprung from the back of my calves and the bottom of my feet, burying themselves in ceramic and the rock below the floor, propelling me upward. A moment later I hooked my fingers over the rough edge and hauled myself up.

  I spun. “Lad?”

  A great figure barrelled into me. Arms wrapped around me and crushed me into a solid chest. “Tan!” Lad wailed like a child and held me so tightly I could barely breathe.

  When he finally put me down I retracted the rest of my sui
t, and confined it tightly into the spinning bands. “Lad? Are you all right?”

  He sniffed, and wiped a streaming nose with the back of his sleeve. “You were gone, Tan. I was scared.”

  “But you’re all right? Apart from scared? Not hurt?”

  He nodded. He sniffed and wiped again.

  “Good.” And everything seemed to fall out of me – all my fear, all my horror – leaving me feeling weak. I blinked, hard. Everything looked red. And I realised with gut-wrenching certainty how much I wished Kichlan was with us. I was a poor substitute indeed.

  “We should go back to the others,” I managed to say in an uneven voice.

  Another nod and Lad began to shuffle back through the disused machinery. As I made to follow him, I heard them. Clear and echoing, seeming to resonate up from the tank below. Footsteps. Slow, calm, methodical. Three people, maybe more.

  I peered into the darkness and saw nothing. But I could feel them looking, the pressure of that inhuman, unemotional, communal stare.

  I hurried after Lad, and wrapped my hand in his. He sniffed, perhaps louder than absolutely necessary. “I’m sorry I left you, Lad,” I whispered.

  “You needed to follow him. He was very upset.”

  “He was.”

  I leaned into Lad and knew how wrong it was to rely on his strength and his warmth, when he should be relying on me. But I had to. Without him, I would have curled into a ball as my body ached to do. I had killed a Half. She was just like him.

  Lad squeezed me. “Wish Kich was here.”

  “Me too.”

  I clambered through the wreckage of the factory door with difficulty. The afternoon light was failing. Laxbell must have sounded, unheard in this strange part of the city. For how many bells had we collected, then followed the will of the Keeper?

  We had to be back by Duskbell. I had to pass Lad to Kichlan and try and convince him that nothing strange had happened, certainly nothing that had made me fear for his brother’s life. On the first day.

  “Shouldn’t we go and look for them? How long have they been gone? Something might have happened to them!” Aleksey paced between Mizra and Natasha where they waited at the end of the alleyway. I could see Aleskey’s tension from the factory door.

  “What, like the ceiling falling in?” Mizra drawled.

  Natasha snorted a short laugh.

  Aleksey stopped dead. “That’s just the kind of thing– Why do you think this is funny?”

  “Here we are!” Lad called, his voice echoing too loudly from the rickety roof.

  Natasha and Mizra tried to hold Aleksey back, but he shook them off like they were children and ran across the courtyard. “Are you both all right?” He stared intently at Lad, then flicked his gaze to me. I couldn’t meet his eyes. Did he see the blood on my sleeve, the death on my hands?

  “Glad to be outside.” Lad wrinkled his nose. “Was old in there and smelled and there were loops that Tan explained.” He paused only to breathe, and I laid a hand on his arm.

  “Now, now,” I whispered. “Don’t say too much.”

  Lad checked himself, looked away from Aleksey and noticed Mizra. “Miz!” He hurried across the courtyard. “We saw loops!”

  I wobbled without his support. Aleksey noticed, and took my arm as we left the factory. “Did you, ah, find– No, collect any debris?” He stumbled over the words, unsure what to say, unwilling to let the silence and unexplained absence fester between us. It felt strange. Kichlan preferred to leave things unsaid; he could chew on silence for a sixnight and one and never grow tired of the taste.

  “No.” I said, hoping he would be quiet. At least with Aleksey in tow, Mizra and Natasha could not push me for answers. I was thankful for that.

  A cold Movoc evening wind sliced against my face. The pion-created light from lamps along the street flickered into life, too brilliant. My head hurt. “Lad and I need to go.” I thanked Aleksey, and swapped his arm for Lad’s. I turned to Natasha. “I have to get him back to Kichlan.” My voice sounded so distant, even to my own ears.

  “Take him. We’ll go back to Ironlattice and put this away.” She hefted the bag slung over her shoulder. Metallic jars – most still empty – clanged within. “And see you tomorrow.”

  Duskbell sounded, and we walked. Lad fretted, inhibited by my failing strength.

  Finally, we returned to the street corner. Kichlan was pacing, followed a few steps behind by Sofia. I paused at the sight of her. I had expected Kichlan to be waiting on his own.

  As soon as Lad saw his brother he released my arm, shouted, and barrelled through the thin stream of pion-binders making their way home this Frostday evening. A few shocked or irritated glances followed him, but nothing more sinister. I felt thin, strung out by my fear for him, by the day’s constant concern. Was this what Kichlan’s life was always like?

  Kichlan turned to be swept into Lad’s arms. I stopped, still on the other side of the street, and considered leaving them. Turning into the stream of people and being washed away by it, allowing it to carry me home. Surely it would be easier than facing Kichlan.

  But Sofia wasn’t about to let me do that. She pushed her small but solid way across the street, took my hand and drew me through the throng. “What are you doing?” she muttered, the whole way. “He was worried about you. You could at least talk to him.”

  “He was worried about Lad, you mean,” I said, unable to fight her.

  She stopped, half way, spun and scowled at me. “All day, he has been fretting about the two of you. We hardly collected anything.” She turned, pushing forward. “He hardly even knew the rest of us were there.”

  Sofia gave Kichlan my hand, and he took it, gently. “What happened?” Stern brotherly and ex-collecting team leader concern mixed on his face with something deeper. Something between anger and relief.

  I looked away, only to meet Sofia’s red, frustrated face.

  Lad answered. “He needed Tan. I had to stay and wait. I was scared.” He hesitated. “But nothing bad happened to me. I wasn’t hurt.”

  I allowed myself a small smile for the understanding Lad sometimes showed.

  Kichlan kept his face carefully blank. “Another door?”

  “Not another one,” Sofia murmured. Kichlan glanced at her, surprised, as though he had forgotten she was there.

  I shook my head but said nothing. I couldn’t explain the Hon Ji Half to either of them. I couldn’t discuss my concerns for the Keeper’s very sanity. Not right now. Now, I needed all of my strength to get home.

  “I think you should take Lad home,” I finally managed to say. “He has had a hard day.”

  Kichlan studied me for a long moment. “And you?” he asked, voice low. “What kind of day have you had?”

  “Tan is tired,” Lad said. “And white. Was white ever since she came back up, weren’t you, Tan?”

  Kichlan’s eyes widened. “Back up from where?”

  “From below the factory,” Lad continued, oblivious. “We saw loops. They were old. They broke.”

  I tried for a reassuring expression, and could tell I failed dismally. “You know how the Keeper likes his sewers. Or anything underground.”

  Kichlan sighed, rubbed his face. “I don’t like this. Leaving you all alone. What if…” a hesitation “What if you need me?”

  “Tan looked after me,” Lad said.

  “I know, Lad.” Kichlan stepped close to me, and ran a gentle hand across my face. He rubbed at something on my cheek, and I could only hope it wasn’t blood. Please let it not be the Hon Ji Half’s blood. “But what about her?”

  He spoke so softly I didn’t think Lad or Sofia could hear him.

  I felt strangely flushed, when he stepped back. Warm, deep inside, even as I shivered. And for all the horror of the day, strangely comforted, by his touch alone.

  “Tomorrow morning,” he said. “Same bell?”

  I had to clear my throat before I could speak. “I’ll be here.” I smiled at Lad. “Goodnight, Lad. Thank you fo
r helping me today.”

  Lad released his brother long enough to embrace me. He seemed gentler than usual, as though he could tell I was fragile. But still, it set off pain somewhere low in my belly, a shadowed memory of what my suit had done. I gasped, quietly, and tried not to let it show.

  “Let me help you home,” Sofia said, her voice a little too loud and falsely bright.

  “Thank you. But no. I will be fine, you can all stop worrying.” I nodded to Kichlan. “I will see you here tomorrow.”

  Hunched against the cold, I made my way home. Movoc melded into one great press of noise and dull colour. People brushed against my shoulders as I made my slow and hardly steady way. Each touch jarred me. With each breath something low and sore bloomed inside me.

  I did not go to Valya’s kitchen when I finally made it home. I dragged myself up the rickety stairs and almost fell through the door to my room. Somehow, I made it to the bed.

  For a bell, perhaps, maybe more, I lay half-awake, feet on the floor, neck and back cricked at a strange angle. Dimly, I thought I heard knocking, but even if I could have woken up enough to move I didn’t have the strength to stand. It was Valya, I assumed, wondering why I had not appeared to eat as she expected.

  Food was the last thing I wanted. Waves of nausea played with the waves of exhaustion like tides within me. All I could do was lie down, keep still, and dream half-dreams of blood, and debris writhing, the Hon Ji Half’s voice, and the puppet men walking, ever walking, through the darkness.

  Dim, slowly, I woke. Fitful light shone through the window beside the bed from the lamps on the street. Gingerly, I sat up. I was still dressed in the coat and the clothes I had worn to go collecting. Not trusting my legs I eased the jacket off and dropped it to the floor. I shrugged myself out of my long-sleeved, loose woollen shirt, and it fell to pieces in my hands.

  The light from the street was dim, but it was enough. My uniform was torn. Great rents, gashes, as though made with claws, ran their way over my stomach.

  Lightheaded, I hooked fingers under the edge of the material and rolled it up. My stomach was a mess of cuts and fresh, purple bruises. The cuts were already filled with silver. How deep did they go? What damage had the suit done, only to heal me? I thought of the notches in my ear and face, the new ones I had made this afternoon, and now these. With each wound I was more suit, and less me.