Gearbreakers

by Zoe Hana Mikuta

  “This whole world can rot,” Eris whispers. “Let’s just sit here and watch it happen.”

  The cold blurs my edges, my leg against hers the only part of me that feels real.

  “Do not let me die during Heavensday, Eris,” I whisper. “I’m scared to die.”

  “You are not going to die,” she says, her tone fierce. Her eyes are turned to where the sky meets the ground. “You’re going to be okay, and you’re going to come home.”

  My shoulders shudder, but I am all out of tears. Her fingers find mine in the sand.

  “It’s okay to be scared,” she whispers.

  “You are never scared.”

  “I’m scared all the time.”

  “Of what?”

  She shakes her head, but I can see her fighting to bring the words forward. It takes a few moments, and she holds a breath and lets it go. “Of everything.”

  The night sighs and stretches out. I feel as if I have not slept for years, and when I drift off, my head in her lap, it is a sweet blankness. Quiet.

  And quick. I am being shaken awake. I start, inhale on instinct, and choke on sand. Eris is on her feet. She is pulling me to mine.

  “Sona,” she says, pleading. There are stars reflected in her panicked eyes. “Sona, get up, I smell smoke.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  SONA

  We pass the first Phoenix at the entrance to the ruins. Its limbs splay limp as a rag doll’s, feet tucked into the decimated foundation of a home, thermal cannon propped a story up atop a concrete wall. The head lies in the center of the road, just before the mouth of the forest, neck curled back into the dirt. The Pilot is folded halfway out of the right eye, stomach sunken into the glass.

  Eris does not shut off the engine before scrambling out, heaving herself over the Windup’s black iron welding helmet and onto the chest. I tear my sword from the truck bed and race after her as she breaks for the tree line. She ignores the voices that call out her name, ignores the tendrils of flames that split the winter-bare forest. Her gloves are primed.

  I can see nothing, and it feels as if it should be silent in the blank, heated gray. But everywhere there is screaming. Footsteps shake the ground and throw me off her path. From within the smoke someone lets out a screech that could cleave soul from bone, and another tremor sends me to all fours. The frost is gone, turned to mud that slicks my knees and palms, splatters up my jaw. And the steam shifts. How many—

  Another Phoenix’s boot falls inches before my fingertips, and immediately, a puckering sensation ripples up my bare neck: my skin blistering at the heat sloughing from the metal. I recoil, hand to my collar, smearing earth there, and a hand curls around my forearm and yanks me to my feet. With a strangled growl, Eris presses her glove against the Phoenix and slams her boot to the metal. The mecha shudders, and every hair on my body stands to attention as the steam moves again, and then there are fingers, a massive hand descending from the heavens. Eris screams at me incomprehensibly and pulls us both into the jagged opening just before the Phoenix’s fist hits the earth.

  There is no time for a meticulous, clever hunt. We set a direct course for the Pilot. At times, Eris catches movement and disappears above me, a shrill scream following before she materializes back onto the ladder, snarl twisted tighter and tighter at each return. It takes shy of three seconds when we get to the head. One swipe of my sword severs the connecting cords, the next unstitches the flesh of his neck. We slide back to the legs and spill out onto scorched ground once again.

  I lift my head to find the Phoenix has brought us to the Hollows’ courtyard—what is left of it. The maple trees have been reduced to glistening, flickering steeples, flaming debris raining down on the concrete paths. Soot covers every surface; when Gearbreakers sprint by shouting, I can see black coating their molars.

  Above us, the Phoenixes move as bloated silhouettes behind the veil of smoke, fingers or cannons or flashes of red gazes spitting flame. They have burned away the heavens themselves. They have dropped us like pebbles into the twin hells.

  “Gwen!” Eris shouts, starting for two people sprinting for the tree line. They slow their steps, turning to reveal faces smeared in ash and sweat. “Seung! What the hells—what—”

  Gwen is leaning hard against Seung, one of his arms looped under hers. Her leg is twisted at an unnatural angle.

  “Oh shit, you’re alive,” Gwen gasps, reaching out a palm to cup Eris’s chin. Her palms are singed, angry red flesh. Crying as she speaks, as she prays, “Thank deities. Oh, thank Gods—”

  “We weren’t here.” Eris is gulping in air, voice scraped hoarse. “What happened, how did they find us—”

  “All directions,” Seung rasps. “We saw them first in the south, got those alarms going first, but the north, the dorms … I think we’ve taken out at least a dozen of them, but—”

  “Jenny,” Eris pleads, hands shaking at her sides. “Seung, where’s Jenny?”

  “Alive, last I saw her.”

  Eris shudders and doubles over. “Oh Gods,” she says, over and over again, as our home disintegrates around us. She curls into me. “Oh Gods, oh Gods, oh Gods, Glitch, what do we do what do we do?”

  “We need to move,” I say, one hand on her shoulder, shaking her. The other squeezes hers tight. “Eris, we need to move!”

  Her eyes lift and then stop, hanging on a point behind me with such rigid, palpable terror it spills into me. I turn, following her line of sight, and all noise siphons off into a single, shrieking note.

  Across the courtyard, in front of what used to be the dormitory complex, two figures crouch low against the powdered earth. Their familiarity is not what makes my blood run cold; their presence screams the absence of the three other Gearbreakers who should be with them.

  Eris’s hand slips from mine, and we run. Theo’s head is bent to the crook of Nova’s neck, his tears glossing her collarbone, hers trickling over her chin and into his hair. Her fingers, intertwined behind his back, shake against his every stuttered breath.

  “Where are they?” Eris screams, folding over them. Nova’s head snaps up, dazed and bewildered, the two bleary green eyes piercing the black of the soot on her face. “Where are they?”

  “Arsen and June went back for Xander,” Nova sobs. Theo shudders again, and she tightens her grip. “We came down the stairs together, Eris, I swear. But we got outside and he was just gone!”

  Eris turns on her heel, and I see the thought spark. She takes one step and I tackle her, both of us meeting scorched earth.

  “Let go of me!” she screeches, rabid.

  I press closer, keeping her pinned. Her fist meets my cheekbone with a shocking, distinct pop. I ignore her, gaze up to the fire-swollen complex, its heat scraping my skin even dozens of feet away. I let her punch me two, three, four more times, knee sinking to my stomach. It is only when she reaches for my eye patch that I look down, and as if I flipped a switch, Eris dissolves. She presses her palms to her eyes, mouth splitting in a croaking, inhuman wail. It is dematerializing. Tears well between the crevices of her fingers.

  “June! Arsen!” Nova shouts, and at the shock of their names I lose my focus. Eris punts me to the side. She scrambles onto her feet, vaulting for the doors, skipping over my attempt to grab her heel.

  Two figures emerge from the inferno: one with tightly wound curls and lips pressed together in a wire-taut line, and a girl with hazel skin and flagrant green hair whose lips are doing anything but, releasing round after round of bloodcurdling shrieks. Arsen is holding tight around Juniper’s middle, walking backward as she kicks and grabs at the open air in an attempt to return to the flames. Her elbow revs back into the bridge of Arsen’s nose. He flinches violently and throws a wild, panicked glance over his shoulder.

  “Help me!” he begs as Eris reaches him.

  She catches Juniper’s wrist in her next flail, and Juniper whirls around to reveal that the bangs framing her face have been singed away, leaving the strands looking sickly, pas
ted against salt-laced cheeks. Her shock lasts less than a second before her head whips back toward the doors.

  “Xander!” Juniper screams, thrashing against Eris and Arsen. “Let me get him! Fucking let go of me! I will break your fucking nose, Arsen, I swear to all the rotted Gods, I will kill you! Let me go! Xander! Xander!”

  Arsen’s arms strain as he constricts around her, but if she is losing breath, it does not show in her cries.

  “Please, June,” he murmurs, again and again. “It’s done, please—”

  “No, no, no!”

  “He’s dead, June!” Arsen shouts, pressing his head to her hair. He falls to his knees. Juniper goes limp, eyes blank. “He’s dead,” Arsen sobs. “We were too late.”

  Nova presses a hand over her mouth. Theo lifts his head and blinks slowly at her. “Are you okay?” he asks, gaze waterlogged and distant, so far away from all of this.

  Nova simply doubles over into his lap. He traces the line between her shoulder blades absentmindedly, looking around. The kids are in their pajamas, barefoot, the pads of their feet painted black.

  “Milo,” Theo says, smiling. “You’re alive.”

  I turn to find his hulking figure standing behind me. This time, there is no initial aggressive spark when he looks down and meets my eye, and it is not just because the smoke has blurred everything. I drop my head and step to the side, allowing him to pass, and he places an arm around his brother’s shoulders.

  “We need to go,” Milo says, looking to Eris. “Eris, we need to go now.”

  She does not hear him. She stands straight and so incredibly, impossibly still while our home burns before her. All the pictures on the walls. All her books. The music tapes in the common room, the table where we danced, and the rug where we all slept on the colder nights, piled up like newborn kittens. Her littlest kid, blotted with ink. All fed to the flames.

  Tears smearing my vision—I did have some left in me, after all—I reach for her. I have to peel the words from my tongue because I do not want to go, either. I do not want to leave the home I never thought I’d have to the inferno. “Eris, we have to—”

  She wheels, and where I expected to find shock there is rage, and I know that beneath its veil she does not see me. She sees only the patch, the jacket, hears only the hum. In that moment, she sees Pilot Two-One-Zero-One-Nine.

  I know it even before she raises her gloves.

  I dive, the barest moment before the bolt bursts forth, streaking past my ear and angling into the branches flaming above us. It only takes a second to get back on my feet, and when I look, her expression has shifted.

  “Sona,” Eris gasps, guilt festering in the single word. “Wait, I didn’t—”

  She reaches for me, and I stumble back. I paste on a grin, the false one that I thought I left back at the Academy.

  “It’s all right,” I say, backing away. I nod toward Milo. “Take care of your crew. I—I will help somewhere else.”

  “Wait, Glitch!” she tries, but I have already broken into a sprint.

  How can I go so fast—the forest blurring, spines of trees chipped like teeth—when it feels like I have stones strung around my throat and bound to my feet?

  Is it simply because I want to tear something apart? Is it easier to live in a world like this when you live with anger?

  But everything around me is already broken, broiled down to cinders. I find a dead Phoenix, pick my way through the entrails, hoping to stumble across a guard with a bit of life still in their lungs. I come across only blank stares and slack bodies. Even the Pilot, tangled up in her array of colorful wires, does not flinch when I put my boot to her stomach. Pitiful and dull and infuriating.

  I reach up and tug away my eye patch, letting it float down to the dead Pilot. When I make my way outside again, I find that the world has not much changed. Calamity only wears one color.

  I bend over and spit the soot off my tongue. When I straighten, someone is wandering toward me. He has a large grappling gun strapped to his back that glints viciously among the glowing flames.

  “You’re still here,” Voxter grunts, watching me wipe darkened spittle from my lip. In his hand, he grips the hook of his cane, but rather than sprouting its usual wooden spike, a blade is attached to its base.

  “Looks like it.” I breathe in, just to scrape my throat with the smoke. “They were looking for the Archangel.”

  “And they will keep looking,” he spits. “Damn Shindanais. Mechas on my campus. Pilots wandering around free. This place has been burning for weeks.”

  He raises his blade, sends it down toward my neck. I twist easily out of his way—this, this I can do—and pull my sword from my side. Mud sucks against my boots as we trace a circle around each other.

  “I do not want to fight.”

  “We’re not fighting,” Voxter says, cheerless grin on his face, strained, like his features do not know how to support it. “You died by your kin, crushed flat, burned alive—no, maybe you turned tail and ran back home.”

  “My home just burned to the ground.”

  “The Academy is still standing strong.”

  I lunge, and it is so simple to knock away his parry, to send him into the mud. I crush his wrist with my boot. “I am so much better than you at this,” I murmur, tip of my sword over his neck, slick with the Phoenix Pilot’s blood. “You may be a renegade, but I am a killer. You should count yourself lucky.”

  I move my hand; he flinches, and I nick a small tear in the collar of his canvas jacket. Mud sighs underfoot as I step off him. There is still soot on my tongue, between my teeth. I feel infected, veins winding slow, heavy with pollution. I could cry, but I have no more tears; I could mourn, but I do not know where to start.

  “You will never be one of us!” Voxter roars after me, spine stuck to the ground. His limbs churn the earth for purchase. “You will never be human!”

  “We are at war, Voxter.” I do not look back. The world is crumbling around us. “We do not need humanity. We need to win.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  ERIS

  “Eris?”

  I don’t know who’s talking. It seems like a lot, figuring out whose voice is whose, and honestly, they feel too far away for it to matter much.

  “Eris, you need to eat.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Under the bed, Novs.”

  “Oh.”

  “Should we get Jenny?”

  “Jenny’s busy.”

  “What about—”

  “Don’t.”

  “Gods, Milo, can you just—”

  “She doesn’t want the Bot.”

  “Stop it.”

  “June, you saw what she—”

  “I said stop it! You can fuck off! Who asked you to come back, anyway? Get off me, Arsen! You all can rot! You can sit in your hate and wither for it!”

  “Juniper, wait—”

  Footfalls. A door slamming shut against its threshold. The cobwebs flutter against the baseboard.

  “Don’t follow them, Milo.”

  “Someone needs to be crew captain around here.”

  Theo’s laugh now, and it’s dark. “Is that what you’re trying to do?”

  “Don’t waste your breath. You have plenty of other villains to choose from. Can one of you get her to eat?”

  The door closes lighter this time. Someone crawls onto the bed, wood frame sighing into my shoulder.

  “Well. You wanna make out?”

  “Get off the bed, Novs.”

  “She’s not using it.”

  “We need to get Glitch.”

  “Ha! We don’t need to do anything, Theo boy! We’re already so freaking screwed that nothing we do even matters anymore!”

  She starts crying. My hand folds over my mouth, and I curl into myself.

  “Come on.”

  Her weight eases off the bed. I hear them pause before the door.

  “Eris,” Theo says, voice thick. “I love you, and Xander’s not your fault. N
one of it is. But you need to get your shit together because we need you out here.”

  Get up.

  They need you.

  Get the hells on your feet.

  There is an inch of the windowsill that slips under the bed, light reaching for me in a thin, gray box.

  You need to move.

  I need to move.

  I watch the snow try to get in.

  * * *

  When it gets dark, someone comes into the room and sets a thermos down next to the bedpost. I haven’t eaten in days because the act of swallowing is ridiculous. Fill your stomach sack so you won’t die, Eris. Like I couldn’t still burn to death after a full meal.

  I say, “Not hungry,” and Sona says, “Too bad.”

  I start, smacking my forehead on the underside of the bed frame, but she’s already gone when I’ve rolled onto my other side.

  Because I am miserable and so viciously in love with her, I eat the soup. I have the urge to stand and go show her the empty thermos. But this would require standing and going, and I have nothing better to say than I finished my dinner and I’m sorry I tried to kill you, so I stay put. This time I watch the door. Maybe she’ll come back. Maybe I’ll know what to say by then.

  * * *

  She doesn’t come back.

  * * *

  Before dawn, I take a coat and a blanket and crawl over the bed to the window. Snow brushes the mattress as I open the window and slip onto the Winterward streets. The town is the Gearbreakers’ long ally, our safe houses peppered along the rim of the lake. It’s dead quiet, electric lanterns coated with snow so the streets are lit poorly.

  I trace my way to the end of town, find a good, deep snowbank in the tree line, and lie down on my side. Already I can’t feel the tip of my nose, my toes, my fingers. My hair goes stiff and frozen around my ears, lashes heavy with frost, but I close my eyes anyway. Distantly, I am aware I don’t have long before I freeze to death, but I’m reaching for numbness, for sleep, and I’m too tired to think about the side effects.