by Joel Ross
In the glow of my lamp, I saw a map painted on the ceiling itself: a tangle of streets and subways, parks and rivers, even a few mountains. The smudged outline of a city loomed to one side of the painting, and farther down, boxy buildings and flowery shapes bled together where the ceiling was peeling from moisture.
I jogged across the scaffolding, memorizing every shape and squiggle—then my gaze fell on a circle in the city.
My breath caught. Not a circle, a compass. A fancy compass, with a smiling sun in the center, on the shore of a lake or ocean.
I burned the map into my memory, taking in every detail. My lamp beam sliced through the dark Fog, from the mountains to the Compass to the city and back again.
Then the mist thickened before me, and driftsharks writhed like eels in a bucket: a dozen of them, swarming toward me.
19
TIME SLOWED.
A driftshark sliced forward, and I leaped toward the hole in the ceiling. I caught a jutting bar and hefted myself to the second floor—and one of the sharks smacked my thigh.
At its touch, my leg went numb, and my muscles slackened. That was what happened when a shark touched you: first they drained your strength, then they ate your mind. When I landed on the shattered tile of the second floor, my deadened leg buckled, and I fell to one knee.
The sharks paused, like they were savoring the victory . . . then they shot forward. A blast of terror erupted in my mind and burned away all my hopes, all my dreams, all my strength. I was going to die. And in that instant, I saw my own death as clearly as I’d ever seen anything.
The sharks whipped closer, and images strobed from my memory: Swedish winning his first thopper race and Bea whispering to an engine. Hazel standing in the crow’s nest with her skirt flapping, her spyglass scanning the distance. A bear roaring out of the Fog as I vaulted over a boulder. Mrs. E holding my wrist and saying, “The Fog doesn’t change you. You change the Fog.”
What if the Fog didn’t make me stronger and quicker? What if I changed the Fog? What if I made the Fog lift and spin me? What if I harnessed the currents like a driftshark unfurling through the white? Maybe I even created the currents, my mind linked to the tiny invisible machines, forcing the swirls of Fog to carry me. Maybe—
—the sharks whipped closer, inches from my face.
And for the first time, instead of diving through the whirls of Fog, I moved the whirls themselves, like a bird controlling the wind. Misty jaws snapped at me, and I darted away. I dodged and spun, powered by my new understanding: I changed the Fog. I moved the Fog with my mind.
Not much—thickening a swirl here, clearing a current there—but enough to save my life. For a few seconds, at least.
“Ha!” I shouted, twirling in the misty air. “You can’t touch the tetherboy!”
I almost laughed. I’d found the map. I’d touched the Fog with my mind. I couldn’t fail now. I couldn’t—
A white wedge blurred at my face, too close to dodge. And instead of trying to move the Fog, I panicked. I focused on the shark itself . . . and the sledgehammer of a snout smashed into me.
I guess they could touch the tetherboy.
The blow felt like being clubbed by a tree trunk. Pain flared in my cheek and chest, and the impact flung me backward. I hit a wall and bent double, gasping for breath. What was that? Driftsharks weren’t solid. They were mist—they were steam. They numbed you and drained your life; they didn’t stomp you to death like a junkyard gang.
Then it hit me. I hadn’t moved the Fog, but I’d changed the shark. I’d condensed the driftshark’s nanites, so instead of numbing me—and killing me—they’d slammed into me.
A fin sliced toward my face, and my mind flared. I changed it, solidified the fin an instant before it slashed my forehead. Instead of brushing my face with deadly mist and killing my mind, it struck like a knife blade. Hot blood trickled along my goggles, but I was still alive. If I condensed the shark’s nanites, they wouldn’t deaden my brain—they’d just batter me into cockroach relish.
At least I’d taste delicious with noodles.
Another shark rammed my side, lofting me through the air like one of Swedish’s bootballs. My body slammed against the ground; my vision blurred. Through teary eyes, I saw that I was sprawled on the rubble near the stairs leading to the first floor.
A dozen driftsharks looped through the air above me. Gasping and shaky, I screamed at them to stop, to freeze. My mind ached. My nose bled. In a panicky haze, I scrambled for the stairs . . . and didn’t even see the shark that suddenly smashed me to the floor.
My head smacked the tile, and I whimpered in pain. Then the Fog turned a pure, blinding white. The driftshark surrounded me. I was enveloped, enclosed—swallowed by a shark.
I focused all my fear and hate and love and hope on keeping the driftshark from killing my mind. I sobbed and begged and prayed for a miracle.
And something clicked.
Something clicked.
A flash of fear.
A bolt of light.
A thunderclap.
For the first time, I felt the Fog inside me, not as an interloper, not as a stranger or an invader. It was a part of me. I felt the Fog woven through my brain, touching every neuron and synapse and—
A vise tightened around my chest. The driftshark plucked me from the stairs and hurled me into the ceiling. The impact was heavy and hard, like a giant’s boot stomping me. For an instant, I blacked out. The shadowy world shrank to a distant star and—blink—disappeared.
Then I was falling through ropy, shark-infested Fog.
Whimpering with fear, I spun sideways. I caught a stair railing with my boot and launched myself up the stairs. I hurtled from the stairwell onto the first floor, my lungs heaving, my goggles speckled with blood. My mind felt numb and dreamy, but my breath sounded harsh in the silence.
A shark clamped misty jaws around my shoulder, shook me until I thought my neck would snap, then whipped me up into the air. I cartwheeled into the concrete ditch with the train tracks and hit the ground hard, breathless and beaten.
I was done. Finished. Too spent to focus, too weak to flee. Unable to tell the difference between my fears and my reality. Barely strong enough to watch the sharks rippling toward my head. Stop, I begged them. Stop, stay away, stop. . . .
I’d miss the crew. They’d miss me, too . . . but not for long. Because now that I’d failed, Lord Kodoc would finish Port Oro for good.
I closed my eyes . . . and imagined Hazel standing beside me. Even though she was drifting high above the Fog, she was still with me. Even though I’d cut my tether, we were still connected.
Come back safe, she always told me.
Every time, I always said.
Every time.
Opening my eyes, I felt the Fog all around me—and inside me. With every breath I took, Fog filled my lungs and seeped through my body. Every time. Driftsharks flickered ten feet away, but I just thought, Stop, stay away, and dragged myself from the concrete ditch, my head bowed like a beaten dog.
I crawled toward the stairs. Every time. Three driftsharks writhed and lashed . . . but didn’t come closer. When I reached the stairway that led to the plaza, I swayed, light-headed and barely conscious.
“Every time,” I said.
Fog billowed and shimmered, and a weightless feeling surrounded me. I felt half asleep and daydreaming. The world swam, my mind spun. I took a breath—
tick tock
—crawled onto the bottom stair—
tick tock
—grabbed the railing and—
tick tock
—pulled myself to my feet.
What was that? The autowinding click of my harness? The chattering of my teeth?
I blinked into the Fog, and the noise came again: Tick. Tock. Then a spiny plasteel strut slashed through the whiteness, and a mound of rust and blades and scales emerged from the Fog.
For a heartbeat, I stared in disbelief. A ticktock.
Was I seeing th
at? An actual ticktock, grinding toward me? A junk-monster from the depths? Or was the Fog playing with my mind after the driftsharks had broken me?
The ticktock rumbled closer, and I staggered backward in horror. The spiny plasteel strut was just a foreleg. Other legs—and tentacles and swollen growths—bulged from a central humped shell of rusted scales. Chains clattered; misshapen gears spun. Liquid sloshed in murky tanks, and vapor wafted from jagged slots.
An upwelling of disgust made me dizzy. Stumbling away, I tripped on the stairs. The ticktock shuddered, and something wet splattered my cheek. The world dimmed, and I scrambled up the stairs, listening for the tick tock behind me. I heard nothing except the panicked rasp of my breath. My arms trembled, and my leg dragged.
Finally, I crawled from the stairs into the plaza. I looked over my shoulder, and nothing moved in the dim whiteness of the Station.
No gearwork monster. No ticking. Nothing.
With a pained grunt, I rose to my feet and swayed. I was aboveground. I’d survived. A flicker of triumph glowed in my heart . . . until I remembered that I still didn’t have a tether. I couldn’t get home. I was trapped in the Fog with driftsharks and—and maybe ticktocks.
Then I noticed weird lines all around me. Faint, skinny, wobbling lines outlined against the white . . .
Through the Fog, I saw a forest of tethers. Hundreds of them, dangling from every ship in the Subassembly fleet. I grabbed at the nearest one, but my shaking fingers couldn’t take hold. I choked back a sob and dropped to my knees, and my vision narrowed into a dark tunnel.
Something brushed my shoulder, and I turned, expecting to see the driftshark that would finally kill me.
Instead, I saw a wiry girl with an old-fashioned nose-ring.
Jada groped toward my face, and the Fog turned black.
20
AN AIRSHIP’S DECK swayed beneath me. I heard the whir of propellers and the screeching of birds. Pain throbbed in my arms and legs and face.
“Hazel?” I whispered, not bothering to open my eyes.
Her hand curled into mine. “Right here.”
“Ow,” I said.
“Shhhh,” she said. “You’re okay now.”
I heard muffled voices and felt people tugging at me. Rough hands slit the straps of my harness. Gentler hands washed and bandaged my cuts, and for some reason, the air stank of manure.
After a time, someone lifted me into a seated position, and someone else held a cup of bitter liquid to my lips.
“It’ll help the pain,” Hazel told me, tilting the cup higher.
I swallowed, then gasped. “Tastes like rat feet.”
“Rat feet are delicious,” Loretta said. “Barbecued.”
“Just drink it,” Swedish said from behind me.
“That’s what they want,” I muttered, but I swallowed another mouthful before I drifted off again.
Somewhere belowdecks, rudders shifted and valves whistled. I opened one eye and watched a balloon swaying high above. I didn’t recognize the balloon, and the stink of manure hit me again.
I wasn’t on any ship that I knew—and a jolt of fear roused me. Where was I? What had happened?
Then Swedish sat beside me and squeezed my shoulder. He didn’t say anything, but for once he looked completely happy.
“You stink,” I told him.
A smile spread across his face. “Well, Jada hooked you to a tether from a plow ship—what do you expect? We’re hitching a ride back to the skyscraper—”
“He’s awake!” Bea squealed, hugging me tight.
“Ow!” I yipped. “Ow-ow!”
“Bea!” Hazel half laughed. “You’re crushing him!”
“Sorry,” she said, not sounding sorry at all. “But he’s so purple!”
“He even looks purple,” Loretta said from beside Swedish. “With all those bruises.”
“That bad?” I asked, wincing. My face hurt when I spoke.
“You look like a bootball,” Swedish told me. “After a high-scoring game.”
Loretta nodded. “With metal boots.”
Bea wrinkled her nose. “What happened down there?”
“I got lucky,” I said, blinking until she came into focus.
“Because you had my twisty rose!” she said.
I nodded weakly. “Definitely.”
“You stayed down too long,” Hazel told me, lines appearing on her forehead. “We thought, I thought—”
“She wanted to dive after you,” Loretta said.
“Hazel!” I peered at her. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“It was pretty dumb.” She squatted beside me. “So?”
The deck dipped as the ship turned, which set the plows beneath us clinking. Seagulls squawked and flapped, then settled somewhere behind me. Probably on the manure in the cargo bed.
“So?” I repeated, watching Hazel’s braids sway.
“So did you find the map?” she asked.
“Of course I found the map,” I told her with a half smile that made my face ache.
Hazel’s eyes brightened. “No way!”
“Yeah, get me a marker.”
A wind rose and blew the stench around as Hazel scrambled for a marker and a square of paperboard. Swedish propped me up, and I scrawled a sloppy version of the map, talking Hazel through everything I’d seen.
“This part here is the city,” I said, tapping the paperboard.
“What’s that?” She pointed to a wiggly line. “A lake?”
I nodded weakly, feeling dizzy again. “Or an ocean or something.”
“And you think this mountain is Port Oro?”
“No, that’s a bunch of roads joining together.”
“An intersection?”
“Yeah.” I prodded the map. “This is the mountain that’s maybe Port Oro.”
“That’s not a mountain,” she said. “That’s a stick figure with a straw hat.”
“I thought that was you,” Bea told me from behind Hazel.
“I don’t wear a straw hat,” I said. “I mean, it’s not a straw hat! It’s a mountain, and this is a . . . an intersection. And these bits are parks or fields, I think.”
Bea propped her chin on Hazel’s shoulder. “I can’t believe you found the map!”
“That’s not all I found.” I rubbed my eyes with a shaky hand. “I think I saw a ticktock.”
Hazel looked at my face. “What? No way!”
“Told you so,” Swedish said, frowning toward the farmer at the wheel of the plow ship.
“What happened?” Hazel asked me.
“I’m not sure.” I took a shuddering breath. “The driftsharks swarmed and . . . I . . . I don’t know. I think one of them ate me.”
“You don’t look eaten,” Loretta said.
“He always looks a bit gnawed on,” Swedish said.
“Shut up!” Hazel snapped at them. “Tell us what happened, Chess.”
“A shark kind of . . . swallowed me? Things went blurry, like a daydream.” I blinked a few times, forcing myself to stay awake. “Except it was more of a nightmare. I heard the clicking and I—I saw a ticktock coming at me. Unless I imagined the whole thing . . .”
“Hazel,” Loretta said, after I trailed off, “you’d better tell him before he passes out.”
“Tell me what?” I asked.
Hazel hesitated for a moment. “Jada and Mochi saw your eye.”
“Yeah.” After the cogs and driftsharks and maybe a ticktock, my fog-eye didn’t seem so freaky after all. “I showed them.”
“They told the cogs and . . .” She gestured past the stern of the raft. “Look.”
When I propped myself on my elbow, all my aches flared up. Through teary eyes, I saw the entire Subassembly fleet hovering nearby, watching us. Watching me.
Apparently they’d been waiting for me to notice them, because Isandra suddenly boomed from the prow of her airship: “Today we found the map to the Compass! And today we found a true child of the Fog!”
/> “The Fog marked Chess,” Isander shouted, his dreadlocks whipping in the wind. “And led him to us.”
“Long ago,” Isandra called, her voice ringing over the Fog, “the engineers predicted that a Compass would emerge when the time was right.”
“A nano-machine that controls the Fog!” Isander announced. “Assembled by the Fog itself!”
“Chess will trigger the Compass,” Isandra said, gesturing toward me. “And he will save the Port!”
Hundreds of Assemblers turned toward me, and for once, instead of ducking my head, I grabbed Hazel’s arm and pulled myself to my feet. The sky tilted, darkness seeped across my vision, and my knees almost buckled. I sagged against Hazel, and she held me upright as I brushed the hair off my face.
Most of the Assemblers were too far away to see, but that didn’t matter. I wasn’t showing them my freak-eye, not really; I was showing myself that I wasn’t scared anymore. Next I’d tell them that I wasn’t a “child of the Fog.” I was just a regular kid with a weird eye who wanted to live a normal life with his crew.
Hazel took a sharp breath. “Chess!”
“What? What’s wrong?”
“The Fog’s in both your eyes,” she told me. “It’s in both of them.”
The day spun into a dizzy blur. Was that what had happened when I’d felt that click in the Station? Had the Fog started blooming in my other eye? Now the nanites swirled in both of them, shifting clouds of tiny machines?
“What does it mean?” Loretta said, sounding awed. “I don’t know,” Swedish grumbled. “But I have a—”
“Good feeling about it,” Hazel interrupted, though she looked scared. “It’s probably nothing. It’s probably what saved him. It’s probably just—”
“Chess,” Bea said, taking my hand. “It’s just Chess.”
“Yeah,” Loretta said. “What’s one more weird eye around here?”
“For a second there,” I told them, “I wasn’t scared.”
Then I fainted.
21
I WOKE IN a warm bed. My leg throbbed, and my arm tingled as I drifted there, watching the shadow of the curtains dance on the infirmary ceiling.