Gearbreakers

by Zoe Hana Mikuta

  We walk and search without talking, Eris clattering around as she does, refusing to let her presence hold any degree of subtleness. At times, she climbs up about twenty feet onto one of the piles, ignoring her own advice, ripping away moss and vines and throwing aside whatever uninteresting thing she digs up.

  Only when she disappears from my view—clambering over the peak of a garbled mound and dropping onto the other side, going after something that caught her curiosity—do I finally speak. But my words are not for her.

  “Are you keeping an eye out for me, or her?” I say, leaning over to peer through a sizable crack of a paint-encrusted crate. All I see is darkness. “Or is that a poor choice of words?”

  “You’re funny,” Milo responds, emerging from the shadow of a nearby tree.

  I wrap my fingers around the crate’s lid and tug. It breaks apart instantly at its hinges, revealing nothing but a silver comb with half its bristles snapped at the base, and a necklace embedded with dust-muddled blue stones. I loop it around my finger and pull it into the light.

  “At last, someone notices.”

  “Don’t think you can just wander into the Hollows and be one of us, Bot. And don’t think you have the rest of my crew fooled, either. They trust Eris, not you.”

  “But if they trust Eris, they trust her word, yes? But you do not, judging by the way you are clenching your hands.”

  “Of course I trust Eris,” he spits. “I don’t trust whatever voice you put inside her head while she was in Godolia. I see right through you.”

  I gently touch the surgical patch, trying not to imagine the hollow thud that would sound if I tapped with a bit more force.

  “You think I am working for Godolia, leading a legion of Windups straight to the Hollows,” I say. No use in phrasing it like a question.

  “I know you are.”

  “Odd. Maybe I blinded myself more than I thought.”

  I drop the necklace—it is nothing but cheap costume jewelry.

  “Milo, I looked up this morning and saw oak trees splitting the sky. And I woke up to see Juniper’s lovely green hair, Theo’s particularly erratic collection of freckles, and of course, Eris’s eyes. Things seem more vibrant here, more alive. I quite like it.”

  “What’s your point?” Milo snaps.

  His sight skips to the junk mound that towers over us both, ears pricked for Eris’s return. I reposition the broken lid gently onto the crate. He is the only one on the crew, including Eris, who has met my stare every single time. It’s a gesture that reads I am not afraid of you, and a false one.

  “Well, if what you said was true, that my loyalties lie with Godolia…,” I say, being the first one to break eye contact; he seems in need of small, trifling victories. “Then I would not have seen any orange trees, or green-dyed hair, or coal eyes. And that is assuming I would have woken at all, because overnight Godolia would have rained hellsfire over the Hollows while we slept and watched with utter boredom as we burned in our beds.”

  I cannot help but smile at his horrified expression, which only provokes his disgust to throb a bit more intensely. I have the faint, tired thought that I am not helping my case.

  “Hey!” Eris shouts from above. “You guys playing nice down there?”

  She hops down a path of precarious edges and questionable perches until her feet hit solid, safe ground. She opens her mouth to make another smart remark, but then her head snaps to the side.

  Milo and I hear it, too, and then we are all sprinting.

  The peaceful breeze has been shattered by a piercing shriek.

  Milo extends an arm across both of our paths just before we make the clearing that holds the car, ushering us backward. We duck behind a junk pile where Xander, Juniper, and Arsen are already crouched, shoulders heaving.

  “We saw it coming,” Arsen whispers frantically. “June shouted a warning, but they couldn’t get farther than the car.”

  Underneath the truck, Nova and Theo lie flat on their bellies with their palms clamped hard over their mouths. Above them, the Windup trails through the field leisurely, bending its head over the stacks and hovering for a moment before moving on to the next. When it straightens, the curves of its chain mail veil brush against the autumn foliage.

  “An Argus,” I murmur. In the Springtide War, they were used as nothing but scouts. But they were the quickest Windup in circulation before the Valkyries were created, attributed to the aerodynamic curves of their armor. The blades attached to their arms could cut through the thickest of tree trunks with the same ease as a razor through a moth’s wings.

  And skin and bone just as effortlessly, for that matter.

  “What the hells is it doing in the middle of the forest?” whispers Juniper.

  “Having a picnic, obviously,” Arsen retorts.

  “Darling, do shut up.” Her fingers curl into the grass. “Damn it. It’s so close to the Hollows, Eris.”

  “Milo,” Eris hisses, eyes steadily trained on the mecha as it wanders, searching. “Where’s the Berserker jacket?”

  “Did you really think I would wear that thing?” he says angrily, but the tone wavers when he notices how much her color has plummeted.

  “I’d hoped so,” she responds. Her bare hands are in her lap, clasped against each other to keep from quivering. “Because I think I left my gloves in the pockets.”

  Milo swears vividly under his breath, then snaps to the three other Gearbreakers. “Quick. What have you guys got?”

  Xander tosses a paper matchbook on the ground between us, shaking his head solemnly. Arsen throws out two small grenades, a cube of gray putty, and a handful of tiny barbed orbs from his pocket, as well as a flare stick from his boot. Juniper unhooks her chain necklace, dragging it from beneath her shirt collar and revealing a single plastic vial dangling off its end. She places the vial gently on the ground, murmuring something.

  “Bless you,” Milo says, and Juniper sighs.

  “In layman’s terms, it’s acid. With my own spin. I made it in the bathtub.”

  “You didn’t,” Eris hisses.

  “It’s my baby. Should burn through the Argus if we get an even shot with it.”

  “Is there enough?” I ask, skeptical.

  Juniper picks the bottle up again, bringing it to her eye level, looks at it dreamily. “If we spread it evenly in a single spot, should do the trick.”

  Arsen runs a hand through his curls. “And just how the hells are we supposed—”

  He gets cut off as Nova’s sharp swearing tears through the air. We all leap upright as the Argus effortlessly nudges the truck onto its side with the toe of its black metal boot. Theo is off the ground in the next moment, yanking Nova to her feet, though she seems more preoccupied with throwing obscene gestures at the Windup towering above than with her own safety. They just barely clear its next step, the force of it throwing them to hands and knees.

  “Honeypot!” Eris screams, bending down and scooping the barbed orbs into her palm. “Milo, cover June and Arsen. Xander and Glitch, you’re with me.”

  I follow the rest of the Gearbreakers’ examples, as in I follow Eris’s orders without question. She hurtles over the junk heap, her palm splaying open midair, sending the orbs flying toward the Windup. They burst with distinct pings across its legs, and at once the clearing flushes gold, brilliant bright sparks zipping across the air. It lasts for only five seconds, but it creates a cloud that causes the Argus to hesitate its next footsteps and buys time for Nova and Theo to reach us. Eris catches both of their arms before they can slip back into the forest.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” she shouts. “We’re the distractions!”

  “Ah, shit, Honeypot,” Theo grumbles, turning on his heel.

  “Well,” Nova says through gritted teeth, also turning back toward the mecha. “Guess it’s a good thing they call me Four Knives Nova.”

  She considers a moment, then pats up her forearms.

  “It’s a good thing they call me Two
Knives Nova,” she decides.

  “Eris,” I say steadily, watching the cloud dissipate and the twin crimson eyes emerge into view again. “Can I ask a question?”

  “Go ahead, Glitch.”

  “What is a Honeypot?”

  “We make ourselves look … easily stomp-able.”

  “We are easily stomp-able.”

  “Your dark sense of humor never ceases to amaze me. See, we’re distracting it so June and Arsen can come in with the honey.”

  “Jump!” Nova yelps, just before the Argus drops to its knees and swings its forearm low against the grass in an arc, palm flat against the ground.

  We all leap into a junk heap sitting at the tree line, and the blade passes mere inches below our feet, slicing clean through the pile and sending us toppling toward the ground. Miraculously, none of us end up buried beneath a mountain of rusted steel.

  The forearm stops short, and begins to spiral toward us.

  “It’s doubling back!” Theo warns.

  “Peak climbers!” Eris barks, and knives materialize in Nova’s hands. She tosses one into the air, where it is snatched by Xander. The forearm nears, but this time, Nova and Xander leap straight up, getting only the bare minimum air time to keep their ankles from being severed. They land hard on the Windup’s hand, and the tips of their blades expertly wedge between the joints of the wrist.

  The mecha bolts upright at a speed that should send them hurtling toward the earth, but they hold steady. The Argus lifts its forearm up to its eye level, peering at them. It barely gets a glance—in the next instant, Nova and Xander have bolted up its bladed edge and lunged onto its shoulder, knives instantly finding a new hook in the joint split there. A chill shoots up my back.

  “How did you know that it would look?” I breathe, watching as the Windup’s head swivels around, searching. “It could have easily just let the arm hang loose at its side.”

  Eris grins. “One thing you learn as a Gearbreaker, Glitch, is that arrogance runs through Pilots as much as their wires do. It can’t help but steal a glance, remind itself how much it towers over us.”

  “Am I the same?”

  “Didn’t I say you fight like your opponent is already on their knees?”

  Xander and Nova leap from the Argus’s shoulder and cling to the edge of its chain mail veil, the large links providing more than ample hand- and footholds. At the same time, Milo, Arsen, and Juniper barrel from behind their heap, dashing into the clearing. Arsen has a grenade in his hand, its bulb-shaped base woven with the silver chain of Juniper’s vial necklace. Jutting out from a space between the enwrapped chains is the putty cube.

  “That’s never going to work,” Theo groans.

  “Do your job,” Eris calls. “Keep its back turned!”

  “Step!” I shout, and we scatter.

  Theo is the closest to the impact, the force sending him flying into the collapsed junk pile. He emerges with an angry gash across his collarbone and a fragmented glass bottle clutched tightly in his fingers. It explodes against the Windup’s thigh, and his hand immediately sinks back into the heap for another thing to chuck.

  Nova and Xander have dipped underneath the chain mail, pressing themselves up against the ledge of the Argus’s eyes. I dodge the next footstep, leaping into the pile and following Theo and Eris’s example, my shouts matching theirs in volume, keeping the Argus focused on us. As I reach back for more artillery, my hand finds something familiar, fingers automatically curling around the hilt.

  I pull the sword free, into the light, my mouth unhinging slightly.

  “Is this really the time, Glitch?” Eris shouts to my left.

  “It’s so pretty, Eris.”

  “Oh my Gods.” She glances to me, and her next words are strung by a laugh. “Oh my Gods, the look on your face.”

  I stow the sword in my belt as Arsen and Juniper peel from their places. Arsen tosses the grenade to Juniper, and quick as a fox, she dashes behind the Windup and jumps to attach the grenade to its ankle. As she sprints away, a new piece of jewelry has replaced the one she gave up: the small silver pin of a grenade, encircling her right forefinger.

  We take cover. The ensuing blast quakes across my chest and sends my teeth skipping against my tongue. I nearly forget myself: This is a different kind of exhilaration, different from what I felt in my alleyway fights, or sparring matches, or the first time I was wound.

  “Theo, Glitch, we’re up!” Eris shouts as she leaps down from the mound and into the clearing. The Argus has collapsed onto one knee, its ankle splayed behind its base with a sizable hole eating away at the heel.

  I follow as she climbs up the calf and darts for the gap. Her hair streams behind her as she drops inside, and by the time I have slipped in after her, she has already reached the knee, where the ladder stretches up.

  Once I climb into the hip, I find that she has rushed ahead again, attaching to a nearby support beam and hoisting herself toward the leg turbine. Here, with the danger as imminent as the adrenaline is fresh, and with hundreds of ripe gears churning in their sockets as if begging to be harvested, Eris is in her element.

  There’s a smile on her face, brash and wicked, and so vibrant that I do not see the shadow that peels back from the darkness.

  It all happens too fast. The first bullet misses, pinging off into the void of the Windup, and the second buries itself in the meat of her shoulder. She screams, the chill bursting into spikes that thread down my spine, and hits the ground.

  I am in front of her before the thought can fully form, my breath hot, fury bubbling beneath my snarl. The guard does not have a chance to readjust his crosshairs. The sword frees itself from my belt, slashing across his knuckles and drawing red against the air, knocking the firearm from his grasp. My blade presses underneath his chin, forcing him to my eye level.

  “How many of you are there?” I murmur, nearly a whisper.

  “Two!” he gasps instantly, eyes thrown wide, so very scared of me. With Eris bleeding at my feet, I cannot bring myself to care. “Two, including me!”

  I nod my thanks. Then I twist the blade to the side, send its edge beneath the skin of his neck, and turn and drop close to Eris as his body crumples against the ground, slipping my hand beneath her back.

  “Neat sword trick, Glitch,” she groans as I haul her to sitting. Her left arm is limp in her lap.

  “Ah, Eris,” I sigh, helping her to her feet. There is the slightest twitch as she stands, a flutter of pain, but expelled so quickly I am not sure if I imagined it. “Are we meant to just keep saving each other?”

  “Looks like it,” she says through gritted teeth. “Where’s Theo?”

  I turn to find that Theo is not right behind me, as I had thought, and suddenly the hairs on my neck prickle.

  “Heads up!” he calls from above, and Eris gently tugs on my sleeve, leading me a foot to the right.

  The speed of the guard’s plummet smears his uniform into a single gray blot, scream coiling around his failing limbs. A moment later we hear the sickening crack of gravity’s embrace.

  I list my gaze upward to see Theo peering back, grinning and crouched on a support beam high above. He must have slipped away as soon as the other guard gave up his comrade.

  “The Pilot now?” he calls.

  Eris nods. “Yeah, we’ll come to you.”

  “No,” I say sharply. “Theo, get Eris out of here. I will take out the Pilot.”

  Eris scoffs, but I still see the pain that spasms across her brow. My gut feels too tight, and my skin feels too hot, and somehow, inconceivably and impossibly, a tremor has set across my hands.

  “Eris,” I say before she can object. “Please. Let me do this.”

  She grits her teeth again. “I’m crew captain, Glitch.”

  “And I highly respect your authority as such.”

  Eris rolls her eyes. “Theo, get your ass down from there and help me out.” She looks back to me, snarl still stitched into place. “What are you waiting for? A k
iss goodbye?”

  “Is that an offer?”

  “Like hells.” A beat. “Be careful.”

  By the time I locate the ladder, they have disappeared into the thigh. The Windup has begun to quake again, dipping its blade between the trees and the frail grass in its search for a bit of Gearbreaker flesh. It will not be successful. Not when the crew moves as one, not when their strengths are so interwoven and trust runs so thick between them that questions and hesitations do not have a chance to form.

  I pull myself silently into the Argus’s head, watching the Pilot swerve in front of me. His eyes are splayed wide, but they do not see me as I tread in front of him, just outside the outline of the glass mat. I wait for a moment of stillness, a slim pause in actions, and then step forward. My sword severs all his cords at once, in a single arc.

  The Pilot blinks, mouth agape.

  There is no rhyme or reason to my actions. No honor. The first jab would have been enough—through the stomach, a slight twist. As he falls, I find the sword dropping from my hands. I find my boot smashing into the wound. I find the glass meeting my knees, my fingers clenching around his shoulder, my knuckles bruising his cheekbone. He cannot feel it. I cannot feel it. There is no end to the dullness.

  “Valkyrie,” he chokes, blood on his lips, blood on my jacket sleeve.

  He has curls and freckles like Rose. An eye that festers like hers once did.

  “Yes,” I breathe. “Godolia’s shining hope. The Academy’s greatest achievement.”

  I expect his features to draw wide with shock, but something I said makes him grin. Blood outlines each porcelain tooth; I can count them when he laughs.

  “You’re fucked,” he rasps. “You’re absolutely fucked.”

  His eyes flutter lightly. His smile is idle. A spike of unease, frigid and sudden, shoots through me.

  My mind races. What is an Argus doing in the forest? What mission could it have here?

  They blindfolded me, but we must have gone south—across the tops of the trees stands the bare line of snowcapped mountains, the Iolite Peaks. What city stands near the southern foothills? The Ore Cities cluster deeper into the mountains, but—