by R F Hurteau
The downward slope of the passage urged Nelson on, and they soon reached the giant double doors, breathless but unnoticed.
“Hide!” the Weaver said in a harsh whisper, shoving Nelson behind the nearest row of pods.
Nelson heard them before he saw them. Councilman Nero was cursing and ranting, shouting questions at the small entourage of Elven guards who flanked him on either side. He was limping and grasping his arm, where bright red blood oozed under his palm from a gash in his sleeve.
“I don’t care if they aren’t all out! There’s a riot going on up there. We aren’t going to wait around to see what happens. Hurry up and give the order!”
“But, Counciloman Nero, sir, we can’t just leave them behind. The First Order—”
“We aren’t killing anyone. Now give me that,” snarled Nero, yanking the guard’s comm away. “Commence shut down!”
Nelson could hear a muffled reply from the comm, which Nero was holding in front of his mouth as if he were about to enjoy a tasty treat. “Understood. We’ll be right behind you.”
He watched as Nero and his followers disappeared through the double doors, and turned back to the Weaver, who was watching him intently.
“Hurry, now. The city is yours, Nelson Boggs. You must hold it. Whatever it takes.”
Nelson stared at him for a moment, then nodded.
“Thank you,” he said. “For everything.”
He turned and began jogging across the long room. The city is yours, Nelson Boggs. The Weaver himself had just passed him the torch. Why wasn’t he more excited? Something was wrong, he could feel it in his gut.
He looked down at his hands and saw that several of his fingertips had turned an ugly shade of purple. He hoped it was just the light playing tricks on him, but he had the feeling that that was not the case.
Somehow, it didn’t bother him. He had more important things to worry about. Edwin and the others needed his help. The Elves were leaving. What were a few fingers in the grand scheme of things?
He rushed past the blinking, humming pods full of tiny monsters, but when he reached the door to the moving room, he skidded to a halt. The door was open, but the room had gone. He was staring into a massive, empty elevator shaft. There wasn’t a control panel beside the gaping hole, and he felt himself begin to panic slightly. The only controls must be in the room itself. But how would he get back?
Maybe he could climb. He looked down at his frostbitten fingers, dubious. Climbing was out.
He would have to wait for whoever Nero had called on the comm to come down. As if on cue, the sound of the moving room echoed down from the empty shaft.
Nelson considered hiding again but decided against it. He was finished hiding. He stood before the entrance, flexing his legs, getting ready to bolt. The room ground to a halt and the door opened. Nelson just had time to register the shock on the face of the two Elves exiting the moving room as he shot past them, slamming his fist against the controls and sliding the door shut in their astonished faces.
He bounced impatiently as the room rose, and then he was back in Pod Manufacturing. He was out the door and into the maze of Sigil’s basement in moments, racing toward the main lift that would bring him back to the lobby.
He emerged from the basement into an unrecognizable world. Everywhere, things were smashed, people were screaming. He shoved his way through the crowd, looking for someone, anyone, from Tapestry. He was jostled from every side, but somehow managed to force his way out into the courtyard.
It looked like the world was ending. There were bodies on the ground. Several people lay clutching injuries and moaning, while others were unnaturally still. People were running, throwing things, brawling openly.
It didn’t matter. He kept moving, dodging projectiles and skirting around unconscious men and women. He stopped, feeling once more like he might be sick.
Focus, he had to focus.
A Halfsie child, perhaps six or seven years old, sat huddled in a corner, weeping as blood streamed down her face from a gash on her forehead. He scooped her up, tucking her head against his chest and covering her exposed ear with his hand. This isn’t right, he thought, still searching the crowd. This isn’t how it was supposed to happen. How did we let this happen?
There...by the podium set up for speeches, which had been knocked down, the streamers and flowers that had adorned it trampled and scattered on the ground...there was Edwin, his hands in the air, shouting words that could not be heard over the bloodthirsty roar of the mob.
“Edwin!” he called, knowing it was futile even before the name left his tongue. He moved through the surging mass of bodies, shielding the little girl as best he could, trying to traverse the distance between them. “Edwin! Edwin!” His cries grew more desperate.
He had nearly reached the stage when Edwin finally heard him. The taller man reached down, taking the child from Nelson’s arms so that he, too, could scramble up onto the raised platform.
“What happened?” He had to shout to be heard.
“You really think this is a great time for me to explain? Things got out of hand, all right?”
“Out of hand?” Nelson gaped at Edwin in disbelief. “Edwin, people are dying out here!”
“Do you think I don’t know that?” Edwin cried, eyes anguished as he pressed the quivering little girl back into Nelson’s arms. “Listen—take her. Get her somewhere safe. I’ll do what I can here.”
“No, you listen! The Elves are gone, Edwin. They’re all gone.”
Edwin’s eyes widened. “What do you mean, they’re gone?”
“I saw them leave. There’s a door out of Sanctuary. It leads right to Antiquity’s Gate!”
Edwin looked out over the seething crowd. “They’re...gone? Because of us?”
Nelson nodded. “I think so. I don’t know. Maybe?”
“And you saw them leave?” Edwin asked, grabbing Nelson’s shoulders and giving them a shake. “You’re certain?”
“I’ve never been more certain about anything in my life,” Nelson assured him.
Edwin’s eyes darted back and forth. Suddenly, Sterling was beside them. She’d scrambled up onto the stage, one eye swollen shut, blood dripping from her nose. “They’ve got Parker, he’s safe. But we’ve lost the Council.” she shouted at them. “We don’t have eyes on any of them!”
Nelson nodded. “That’s because they’re gone!”
“Gone?”
“Never mind.” Edwin pointed toward the back of the stage where a large metal frame held up a delicate fabric backdrop. “Help me push that down!”
“What? Why?”
“Less talking, more doing!” he commanded.
Without hesitation he threw himself bodily against one side of the metal frame, pushing hard. Sterling ran to the opposite side and mimicked him. They pressed in unison, and after a few moments, the frame began to tilt back. It wobbled back and forth for a moment, but one more shove sent it over.
It crashed to the ground with a tremendous clang that carried over the crowds. The noise was so startling that many of the people stopped what they were doing, turning to see what had caused it.
“Listen to me!” shouted Edwin at the top of his voice. “This must end now!”
“It won’t stop until they’re all dead!” came a voice from the crowd, and there followed many frenzied shouts of agreement.
“Down with the oppressors!”
“Please, you need to listen. It’s over. The Elves are gone! They’ve fled through the Gate. We’ve won!”
This declaration was met with silence. Then, murmurs began, building to a crescendo. “That’s not possible!” cried an angry voice.
“There’s no way out of Sanctuary!” said another.
Nelson stepped forward, alongside Edwin. “There is a way out.”
He could hear the confidence
in his own voice. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I watched the Elves as they fled. They’re gone. And if we work together, we can make sure they stay gone—for good!”
The crowd erupted with a mixture of cheers and cries of disbelief, but Nelson held up one hand, and to his great surprise, the noise died down again. He looked out, for the first time noticing individual faces, instead of just an angry mob.
He could see several members of their Tapestry cell—Molly, whose face was tear-stained and anxious, and Briggs, who was breathing heavily. He saw co-workers from Core Systems, and the foul-tempered cook from the commissary. He saw people. Just people, who were frightened, lost.
But the innocent, arrogant way he had viewed the world before was lost, too. It had been buried somewhere amongst the bodies lying prone in the Sigil lobby. He looked out on the crowd with new eyes, wiser eyes. And he knew that he would never be able to see these people the same way again.
“They’re gone,” Nelson said, his voice calm and level, so that those in the crowd strained to hear him. “But is this how you want to remember the day the Humans retook their home? By destroying it?”
He saw many people glancing around, some shame-faced, others appearing shocked as the realization of what they’d done hit them.
“Please, you must stop this. We need each other, now more than ever. We’ve won. The Elves have fled. So let’s stop fighting, and start turning this place into what it was always meant to be—let’s build a new Sanctuary!”
A heartbeat separated his words from the sounds of cheering and victory that followed.
“Get every able-bodied person organized into small groups,” Nelson commanded Edwin over the thunderous applause. “Nero set something in motion before he left. I don’t know what exactly, but I think we ought to search Sigil and see what we can find.”
Edwin nodded without argument and leaped from the stage, pointing to people in the crowd and gesturing for them to join him.
Nelson had pictured many different versions of this moment, where people applauded him and obeyed his commands without hesitation. He’d imagined the thrill, the joy of having this type of power and respect. But none of those dreams had been quite like this.
Now, the only thing he felt was the sick churning in the pit of his stomach and the fierce trembling of the sobbing child that clung to him, arms wrapped tightly around his neck.
Thirteen
Outside Perspective
SEVERAL hours had passed since Felix and Tobias left to get supplies and bring Willow back. Ambrose used the time to explained to Ripley how the Elves had been using the celebration preparations as cover to implement new protocols all over Sanctuary.
“They want this to be quick and clean,” he said. “They’re going to evacuate the Theran population in groups, during all the festivities. That’s why the breach has had them in such a tizzy. They don’t care about it being a safety issue, they just don’t want the people panicking. If some industrious Sigil employee were to go poking around because of the breach, they’re likely to stumble across some of the new protocols. If I had to guess, I’d have expected them to give up looking by now. But I imagine that most of the Elves don’t even know about the evacuation yet. They’d be worried about those that might sympathize with Humans giving them a heads up. They’re probably clueless, just going about business as usual.”
“And what exactly do these protocols do?”
“Well, I may be a mechanic,” Ambrose said with a fair dose of reluctance, “but the technology here is all PS, and there aren’t any experts on that kind of thing where I’m from. The mechanical aspects, I understand. It’s all the computer systems and everything that’ve thrown me for a loop.”
“PS?”
“Pre-Sequencing. See, this whole place runs on a geothermal system. Steam moves the turbines, gets condensed, and gets sent back down into the earth. But the Elves plan to shut down the condensers. If the steam isn’t cooled back to liquid, it will build up pressure. And if that pressure isn’t vented, boom! It won’t completely wipe Sanctuary off the map, but it’ll rip open plenty of holes in the domes. Whoever isn’t killed by the explosion will freeze in short order.”
Ripley shook his head in disgust. “Why can’t they just go and leave us alone?”
Ambrose shrugged. “My guess would be there are too many secrets here that they don’t want anyone to find. And I’m sure they don’t fancy the idea of leaving a ready-made base for Humanity behind, right next to the Gate. Not if they’re planning to come back.”
“I just can’t believe it. I can’t believe I defended the Elves. How could I have been so stupid?”
Ambrose was quiet for a moment. “So this Willow, is she a Halfsie, like Felix?”
“No,” replied Ripley absently. “She’s a pureblood Elf.”
“And the people who did that,” he pointed to Ripley’s swollen eye, “to your face. They were Elves, I assume?”
Ripley looked up at him, confused. “No. They were Human.”
Ambrose gave a solemn nod. “I see. So, you defended Elves, who are all bad, for trying to destroy Humans, who are all good. But since your best friend is a Halfsie, his wife is an Elf, and your attackers were Human, you can see where I might be a bit befuddled.”
The statement caught Ripley off-guard. While his brain struggled to parse his own logic, Ambrose continued.
“It can be simple, at times, to put a label on things. On people. I see it a lot. Even now, after all that’s happened to this beautiful planet, people are always trying to find a way to put a label on things. Elves are bad; Humans are good. That nation is evil; ours is just. But I’ve found, in my experience, that you cannot just label a group of people and expect them all to fit neatly within that box. The Humans who attacked you were bad. The Elf that you care for is good. You must judge individuals based on merit, not on the way they look or the place that they came from.”
Ripley nodded thoughtfully, turning the idea over in his head. “I suppose that makes sense,” he said at last. “Thank you.”
“Not at all, not at all,” chuckled Ambrose. “Always happy to help.”
“Okay, well, back to the plan—how do we stop them from destroying Sanctuary?”
“Tobias can explain it when they get back. I’ve been trying to figure it out for two months, but I’m still a little fuzzy on the details. Honestly, I don’t think I would have been any help at all if he hadn’t shown up.”
Ripley looked at him in surprise. “You mean your people just sent you up here without a plan? Alone?”
“Well, uh...I may have...come without permission,” Ambrose admitted, a flush rising beneath his freckled cheeks. “I’d been asking to attempt to fly here for years, but the Ministry deemed it too much of a risk. I finally decided, you know what? Pluto’s mine and if me and the old girl want to risk it then—”
Ripley sat up. “You brought a girl with you? Where is she?”
Ambrose gave a sly smile. “Aye, that I did. Here, I’ll introduce you.”
He helped Ripley to his feet and secured a heavy blanket over him like a cape. “She’s in the station. Tobias was afraid to draw attention to us by heating such a large area, but there are lights at least.”
He guided Ripley out into a cold passageway and down a short flight of stairs to the main platform. There before them was something the likes of which Ripley had never even imagined.
“Whoa,” was all he had to say.
Ambrose moved forward and slapped the side of the craft, producing a hollow clanging sound. It must have been twelve, maybe fifteen feet long, Ripley guessed, and it was shaped sort of like a teardrop. The far end came to a sharp point, and the front had a rounded nose. Components for which Ripley had no name dotted the hull like odd growths. Several of them looked as though they were intended to spin, although right now they were as still as a corpse, and Ripley
thought a corpse might be more likely to achieve movement than they were. A patchwork of riveted panels was covered in scratches and dents, listing slightly to one side at the end of a long skid mark that Ripley could see extended to a large hole in the wall of the station and out of sight.
“This is Pluto. Built her myself, though I guess she’s seen better days. We’ve been through a lot together. Stratus class, first prize three years in a row at the Grand Derby!”
“And...this thing...flies?” Ripley tried to mask the doubt in his words.
“Of course she does, son! Blimey, how do you think I got here? She flies all right, and Tobias and I have got her all fixed up and ready to high-tail it out of here if we need to. He’s been sneaking in and out with everything I needed to get her repaired after the crash. You and your friends can come, too. It’ll be tight, but I think we’ll all fit. Once we get back to Pravacordia and tell them what’s happened here, I’m certain they’ll be willing to render assistance to the rest of your people. Well, almost certain. Come on. Have a look inside.”
With a good deal of hesitation, Ripley ducked through the hatch that Ambrose pulled open for him. He had to steady himself once inside, as the ceiling was low, and the floor was uneven.
He braced himself against the wall and moved toward the cockpit. Ambrose shimmied past him and sat in the pilot’s chair. He reached out and began flipping switches and pulling levers, so fast that Ripley had a hard time following.
Something deep in Pluto’s innards roared to life with a stutter of protest, followed by a series of thuds, like boulders being tossed around in a giant tin can.
“Purrs like a kitten,” Ambrose remarked fondly, patting the controls.
Ripley was trying to make sense of some of the knobs and levers. He pointed to a red button on the steering column, hidden beneath a hinged glass cover.
“What’s that do?”