Suited

by Jo Anderton

  The building loomed before us. Squat, made of pale concrete rendered inelegant in the lampless dark. All laboratories, it seemed, were built the same. I imagined their security systems were also similar.

  Even so, I crossed the street, no hiding in shadows, no skulking in adjacent alleyways. The suit laughed, filling my head with a metallic buzz, with wire scraping and wind rushing and I could not help but smile.

  “What are you doing?” Fedor hissed, emerging from the doorway of an adjacent apartment block. “You will be seen! The Mob are everywhere, the veche is looking for you!”

  Well, the veche could find me. Wasn’t that the whole point?

  “Lady, he’s right,” Zecholas followed, almost as close to my back as Lad. “More of those reinforced enforcers – or whatever they are – are inside. The door and the lock are just like last time. Lady, please, stop!”

  In small groups they peeled away from alleys and doorways to follow in my wake. Fedor, Yicor and their Unbound. Sofia, Mizra, Uzdal. Aleksey. Finally, Kichlan, supporting Natasha, and Volksi. Insects, the suit called them, small and crawling.

  “Careful!” Aleksey ran forward. “Don’t you remember what I told you? The locks, the security!”

  “She should remember.” Fedor grabbed my arm. “Last time–”

  “Don’t touch Tan!” Lad released me and knocked Fedor to the ground. “Don’t say bad things about her!” There was panic in his voice, and confusion. His trust in me had done that, and his desire to protect me.

  Yicor tried to help Fedor up, but the younger man shook him off. Sofia and Mizra drew Lad away, as Kichlan was still occupied with Natasha. Zecholas eyed me, uncertain, before crouching and placing a hand to the cold street.

  “There is something here, definitely,” he said. “Below us, like last time. But,” he shook his head, “it’s not the same. Half a dozen small and compact areas of nothing. Debris, I think.”

  “The collected debris is stored in vats,” Kichlan said. “At least, that’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

  “And security just as tight as last time.” Volski crossed his arms, watched me with a look that mirrored Zecholas’s concern, his outright fear. “Are we tunnelling, again?”

  “We need to get out of here,” Aleksey hissed. “They will see us! Alarms will be sent and the building shut down and there are so many Mob on the street, too many. We should hide!”

  But I shook my head. “No,” I said in a metallic voice not entirely my own. “We are tired of hiding.”

  I rattled the weapons in my palm, took a single step forward, and hurled them at the building’s pion-lock. The suit’s aim was far better than mine, its arm strong and true. The disks hit the lock directly on its small crystalline pad, and detonated.

  Energy surged through the doors. A great blast like a lightning strike shattered them, knocking out chunks of concrete and brickwork from the surrounding walls. The ground rocked as fire laced the sky – the weakened pion network overloading, the destruction of thousands of powerful and complex bindings all at once. Around me, the Unbound and debris collectors threw themselves to the ground, covered heads, sheltered fellows.

  They cowered. The suit laughed at their weakness, and together we entered the building.

  Fire raged around us. It set my jacket alight, it caught embers in my woollen pants and singed the leather of my boots. I felt none of it. The suit was stronger than any fire, than even the backlash of shattered pion-bindings. I allowed it to slither over my face, to shield skin and eyes and lips from the heat, the rolling smoke, and the lightning crackling wild through the corridor.

  The enforcers had been crowding the entrance as though they were waiting, as though they had known we were coming. Perhaps we had already triggered subtle pion-alarms; perhaps security had been strengthened in the wake of the war’s commencement. Perhaps the puppet men had sent a warning. Whatever the reason, it meant the blast had killed most of them at once. Three burned, two shocked. Four struggling as Natasha’s weapons and the overloaded security systems ran rampant through the bindings in their bodies.

  No amount of enhancements could help them as the suit ended their lives. Clean strikes with a sharp blade. Certainly faster than being burned alive.

  The way clear, I returned to the entrance. A cold wind blew the fire into smoke trails in the sky. So I pulled the suit back from my face.

  “Tanyana?” Zecholas leapt forward, exclaimed over the burns in my clothing. “Are, are you hurt?”

  I shook my head, gestured into the building. “The way is clear.”

  “What about the Mob, the enforcers?” Aleksey approached, hesitating. The bands of his suit span fast, in tune perhaps with the frantic panic on his face.

  “Taken care of.” The suit smiled for me.

  He gaped at me, at the door, at the smoke and the faltering lights behind me.

  Volski scanned the sky, the ground. “Not all the alarm systems were destroyed.” He met my gaze without expression. “Although you took out most of them. Somehow.”

  I pointed to Natasha. Kichlan was standing again, one arm around her shoulders as she clung to him for support. “Thank Natasha.”

  Suspicious and uncertain faces turned to her. She hung her head, did not look up.

  “Reinforcements will arrive anyway,” Volski continued as though he had not heard me. “Given the noise and the smoke, I think they would come no matter how many alarms you disable. I suggest we hurry.”

  Yes, the suit agreed.

  I led the way through the ruins and the bodies, and pretended I did not hear Sofia gasp or Fedor mutter over the corpses. Kichlan transferred Natasha’s limp form to Mizra and Uzdal so he could comfort Lad in the face of blood, of burns, of the sharp and ever-present haze of frantic pions.

  We found a stairwell and descended, leaving the smoke behind. A tiled corridor stretched off into dimly lit distance, empty, smelling strongly of a caustic cleaning agent. Most of the doors were shutdown, pion-locks squealing protest.

  “It’s so empty,” Volski whispered. “There is no one on the other side of these doors. Another Fist on the floor below us, I think, but that is all I see.”

  “No one? That’s impossible.” Kichlan refused to let go of his brother’s hand, even though Lad appeared to be trying to block out the harsh sound. He cupped his free hand over one ear, and had resorted to tilting his head, trying to press the other ear against his shoulder. “There’s always someone. Newly fallen collectors, surgeons and nurses to tend them. Technicians maintaining the vats or monitoring suits as they are prepared for activation.”

  “Where are they, then?” Fedor snapped. “This feels wrong, and that’s too familiar.”

  “Military rule?” Aleksey suggested. “Perhaps they have cleared all but the security staff. Is debris really a priority in war?”

  The suit was not interested in questions. Together, we followed the symbols. Down the stairs, along another corridor, into the path of an unfortunate group of enforcers. I gave my head to the suit and it felled them, all nine, with one, two, three tight steps. They were mere shadows against doors. I did not feel their deaths.

  “Tanyana?” Someone was screaming when the suit retreated. I looked over my shoulder. The debris collectors and the Unbound continued to huddle, all wearing identical expressions of horror. Kichlan had wrapped himself around his brother, holding him back, blocking his view. Sofia was crying, and she was the one screaming my name. But it was Fedor who approached me. I noticed how carefully he avoided stepping in blood.

  “What have you done?” he choked on the words.

  Curious. “What was necessary.”

  “But–?”

  “But what?” The suit begged me to strike him. He was just too soft, too naïve. I refused. “What kind of bloodless rebellion were you expecting?”

  “I–” He paled, and looked almost as sickly as when I had first met him. “Not this.”

  “Happy to release debris into the city to wreak your dirty work,
aren’t you? But too weak to dirty your own hands.” I shook my wrists loose, sending a small shower of blood to fall on his boots. “You should know what debris does to a city built on pions. You must have seen people crushed by falling rubble, burned by an out-of-control heating system, or smashed at the bottom of a crater where a building once stood. So what did you think would happen?”

  Nothing, no answer. The suit was unsurprised.

  “We are almost there. You wanted to fight the veche. Let’s do it.”

  “Are you certain, Tanyana?” I thought I heard Aleksey whisper. I glanced at him. Not fearful as the others, but stoic and accustomed to the sight of spilt blood. But he did, I thought, look a little sad. Perhaps, because it could have been him. In another time and a life before his fall, doing his job, waiting for us here, only to die on my blades.

  Another level, a tighter corridor, deep below ground now. I forced open a final pair of heavy doors, reinforced with steel. The metal tore like paper, like leaves, so flimsy and weak. The locks squealed, alarms flashed, and all of it for nothing. We were unstoppable, the suit and I.

  Lights flickered on. Another long, wide basement stretched out before us. But this one was whole, its machinery still bolted into cement, it debris not plundered and altered into ceiling, walls and floors.

  Six vats crowded the space. Great, fat cylinders of suit metal almost as tall as the high ceiling, ringed by stairs and dotted with lights, gauges, and knobs. I could feel the pulse of the grains and planes held captive within them. I lifted a hand, flexed fingers. I was the same, wasn’t I? Sheathed in silver – debris inside and out.

  A tool, just like these machines.

  For an instant, I faltered. For a moment, I wondered what that meant.

  “We found them,” Fedor breathed. “We actually found them.” Then he vaulted over the railing, dropping to the floor below. The Unbound and the collectors took the stairs. “Let’s hurry.”

  We stared around the room. Where were the puppet men?

  An easy jump, and I followed Fedor. My reinforced legs did not feel the impact, but left cracks in the cement. As I approached the first vat, others fell in behind me. Kichlan and Lad, Volski and Zecholas close to my back. Behind them Mizra and Uzdal, with Natasha between them, and Sofia. Fedor, Yicor and their Unbound spread out around the other vats.

  Aleksey remained on the platform. Again, I glanced back at him. His face was unreadable, but something about him made the suit pause. The very sight of him set the suit shivering.

  “Do you know how to open them?” Zecholas was asking Kichlan.

  He shook his head. “I worked with suits. A whole different section of technicians maintained the vats.” Kichlan tapped on a glass gauge. Lights shone behind it, and something hummed. “And I don’t see any instructions.”

  “It’s remarkable,” Volski said. “There are pions in here, there have to be, nothing this complicated could work without them. But if they are, they are too deep in all that debris to see, and yet it works! Why isn’t the system failing? I can’t believe this even exists.”

  “It shouldn’t,” Zecholas agreed with him. “By all the laws of pion manipulation we know, it shouldn’t work.” A pause. “My lady? What do you think?”

  I looked away from Aleksey. The lights meant nothing, the gauges, the flickering numbers and balls bobbing in quicksilver tubes. Not to me, and not to the suit.

  So I placed a palm on the vat. “Step back.” Silver pulled to silver. The vat began to ripple.

  Then Lad was shouting, “Oh no! Tan, look, hurry!”

  Even as the suit and the vat bonded, as it fed the desire to open, to pull back, just as I had done to calm rampant debris countless times, I followed Lad’s terrified gaze to the platform. And lifted my hand.

  Aleksey still remained on the platform, and behind him, the puppet men stood. Three, five, it was hard to tell how many, they seemed to blur with the very wall, the very light, insubstantial yet real.

  “How did they get in,” Volski paused. “It’s them! They are the crimson pions. Impossible.” He raised hands and swatted at vicious, invisible lights. “They flare, brighter than suns, then they just die. I don’t understand.”

  Together, Zecholas and Volski stumbled back.

  “’Leksey!” Lad lurched forward but Kichlan grabbed him, hauled him back. “Run, ’Leksey! They are right behind you!”

  I turned from the vat. This was why I was here. I lifted hands, blades, and whispered to the suit, low, breath brushing the metallic skin beneath my torn clothing. “You wanted a fight, you wanted your challenge. Well here it is.” No longer whispering, shouting now, filled with strength and rage. “Together, like we agreed. Together, we will kill them all!”

  “What are you doing, Miss Vladha?” one, or two, or all of the puppet men asked, sounding unconcerned.

  “You think you can use me,” I growled. “You wanted to create a weapon. Well, you have. And I will show you just what your weapon can do!”

  I crouched, ready to leap forward, ready to slice through their bizarre wraith-like bodies, their crimson pion bindings, or whatever they were made of. But Aleksey was changing. His suit bands span fast and bright and spread. Legs, arms, torso, and even up to his face the suit grew like a hardened second skin. Only a thin rectangular strip across his eyes remained bare. His suit pulled at me, I felt in it a kindred, a mirror of my strength.

  “I’m sorry, Tanyana,” he said. His voice, rather than being muffled by his suit’s mask, was sharp and metallic. It echoed through the basement like the scraping of metal.

  “’Leksey?” Lad whimpered behind us.

  “But you know I can’t let you to do that.”

  13.

  Who do you trust?

  I stared at Aleksey – at his suit, his weapon, just like mine – and realised that, yes, I already knew.

  “So,” I whispered. “This is who you are.” I glanced at the puppet men behind him. “And this is why you are here.”

  But he shook his head, and the strip of his eyes I could still see were sad, disappointed. No smug triumph, no aggression. “You should not have done this, Tanyana. I warned you, again and again.”

  “I should have killed you when I had the chance.” But that was the suit talking.

  “Why?” His shrug was a ripple, the lancing reflection of light, tinged blue.

  “You lied to me!”

  “No, I didn’t. I helped you, I warned you. And we are just the same.”

  “What’s going on?” Fedor pushed forward. He stared up at Aleksey with a mixture of horror and anger. “Your suit, it’s just like hers.” He glanced down at the rolling symbols on his wrist, tipping his arm. “How did you do that?”

  Aleksey’s eyes flickered toward him. “I suggest you stay out of this. You do not understand what’s going on here, and you cannot hope to be compared to us.”

  The suit agreed with him. Aleksey was like us; a soldier, a weapon. Far stronger than any of these others, the paltry collectors and soft Unbound.

  “Tanyana.” Was that pleading in his suit-strengthened voice? “This is why you are here too, this is your role.” He lifted his arms. “Join us, fight with us.” I could not see his mouth, yet I heard the grin in his voice. He sounded wild, and it spurred on the suit inside me. “We have a war to wage, after all.”

  “I might be a weapon,” I said. “And unable to stop the changes wrought within me. But I am not their weapon.” I shifted my defiance to the puppet men. “And I will not fight for anyone but myself, and those I must protect. Step aside, Aleksey.”

  “You know I can’t.” Resigned, but determined. “I am a veche enforcer and I will remain so, right to the end.” Aleksey leapt from the platform. He landed with a crash that ricocheted through the basement. He left a crater where I had only made cracks. “I only wanted to help you, to work with you, until you joined us. But if you will not, then I must stand in your way.”

  So be it. The suit, at least, was pleased. The clash of
swords was far more interesting than simple slicing through flesh.

  “Move,” I hissed over my shoulder, into silent shock and fear. “Get back.”

  “No, Tan!” Kichlan had to be dragged to relative safety among the vats. Fedor took hold of Lad – who wept for ’Leksey’s betrayal – and did the same.

  “No, Tan, don’t!” Kichlan shouted. “You’re not a weapon! Remember that, please. You are Tanyana, and not what they made you!”

  Aleksey straightened, rubbed his fists, and loosened suited shoulders. “Come.”

  The suit enveloped my head. In that dark plane, with doors wrapping curved around the vats, Aleksey was solid and silver. I glanced down at my body. I was too. But I was an architect, for all the weaponry the puppet men had injected into me. Not an enforcer, not Mob. Behind him, the puppet men were easier to see, yet their skin seemed thinner, hatched with seams, and their eyes even darker than the world.

  The Keeper huddled beside me, his debris pulse beating frantic and visible beneath his own thin membrane. “What are you doing?” he said into the darkness. “What about the vats, what about the debris?”

  “Stand back,” I told him.

  “No! I need you to help me, not this! They will kill you, they will tear you like they have torn me–”

  Poor, weak debris shade. “Stand back, or you could be hurt.”

  Then Aleksey came.

  He moved so fast I did not see him. Before I could even think to react he grabbed my shoulders, squeezed and bent me back, forcing me to the ground. I landed hard. The Keeper scrambled away. Aleksey kicked, sharp, controlled movements – stomach, head.

  I was not as fast as Aleksey. Yet our suits were the same. Each blow was more than physical; it sent shivers of aggression through me, of force. And I realised that Aleksey and his suit was doing what I had once done to debris, what I had started to do to convince the vats to open. His very consciousness was invading my suit with each touch. Debris to debris.