Mitigated Futures

by Buckell, Tobias S.

  Could he drag him into the net Kay and Nashara had cast?

  Yes. The boy was already caught up in the mess from being on the same boat as Nashara’s grandfather.

  Tiago stood up, tripped, caught himself, and then sat down near the locked rear door.

  The boy hadn’t even felt the pinprick of Nashara’s tiny device.

  Tiago waited, tensed, for something, anything, to happen.

  The wagon rolled on, turning a corner, headlights revealing ten Ox-men blocking the road with spike strips. The wheels of the wagon exploded as they were shredded, and it rattled to a halt on the rims as prisoners in back were thrown against each other.

  Nashara landed on the ground outside. She must have leapt off the top of a building nearby, Tiago realized, as pulverized cobblestone leapt into the air from her impact.

  She ripped the door open, shattering the lock, and reached in to pull the boy out. Tiago jumped out next to them.

  Three Ox-men ran into the alleyway, eyes wide with fear. “Doacq,” one shouted in a low rumble.

  Nashara looked down the road. “Tiago, what the hell is that?”

  Tiago didn’t need to glance a second time. “Oh shit. Shit! The Doacq. We need to get out of here. Now!”

  The seven foot tall, hooded figure moved with unnatural quickness down the street. Tiago caught a glimpse, in the flicker of gaslamp, of two large, catlike eyes under the cowl and a slit-like nose.

  But it was the mouth that he noticed most. It yawned, the jaw dislocating and stretching like a snake’s: a two foot gaping chase of darkness.

  The Doacq whipped across the street, slamming into an Ox-man. The jaw dropped even lower, and the Doacq rose taller, somehow, and then the gaping maw descended on the Ox-man.

  Hundreds of pounds of rippling, engineered, brute strength disappeared, and the Doacq turned to face the wagon.

  “That’s a damn wormhole in its mouth,” Nashara said, awe in her voice. Then she grabbed the side of the wagon and grunted. “And it’s generating an EMP field…”

  The Doacq flowed forward, the robe rippling in the slight wind. The massive jaw gaped wider and wider as it got closer. It seemed all maw to Tiago, mesmerized by the black nothingness opening up, propelled by the creature’s feet.

  Nashara pulled out a large shotgun, and the deafening discharge filled the tiny stone canyon of street and houses. The Doacq twitched to face the incoming shot… and swallowed it all without any change in its approach.

  “Son of a bitch,” she said, and then leapt forward. The Doacq, ducked and grabbed her, redirecting the energy of the jump to throw her in the side of a house.

  Nashara staggered back to her feet in the middle a mess of rubble.

  Tiago grabbed the boy and looked around for a place to hide. One of the nearest doors opened, and whip-lean shape of a Runner beckoned at him to get inside.

  He needed no encouraging. He ran for the door.

  Three explosions shook the street, and Tiago saw with a glance back that Nashara had flicked grenades at the Doacq. It swallowed several, but couldn’t be in more than one place at the same time.

  Another grenade exploded to its side, and the Doacq faltered. Shreds of its cloak and flesh splattered on the ground and an animal-like shriek of pain filled the streets.

  The Doacq was not supernatural, Tiago thought, dazed. It could be harmed. He paused at the doorway. Maybe Nashara could face it down.

  But then the Doacq spotted him, and turned for the building, completely ignoring Nashara.

  An Ox-man yanked Tiago into the house and barred the door shut. “This way,” the Ox-man grumbled, and shoved the two boys forward through the house.

  A trapdoor underneath a table led them under the house, into a hidden basement lit by a single bulb.

  “Through here,” said a Runner, appearing out of the dark. The shadows made his ribs, visible under a thin shirt, look even more pronounced than normal.

  There was heavy, thick steel door a pair of Ox-men had opened. As they passed through that, they groaned shut, and then dropped to the ground as something was kicked out from underneath them. The smell or rank sewage took the breath away from Tiago, and he switched to breathing only out of his mouth.

  In the distance, and explosion of brick and screaming startled Tiago. The Doacq must have gotten into the house. With Nashara in pursuit.

  They were standing inside a tunnel, lit glancingly by the Runner’s flashlight. The center of the tunnel had a wide trench in it, currently dry.

  It revealed Kay waiting with a pair of Ox-men armed with RPGs. They aimed the weapons at the thick door behind Tiago.

  “So this is our quarry,” Kay said, turning on a small penlight to check the boy. “Your name is June, right?”

  The shellshocked, beaten boy nodded.

  “Can you speak, June?”

  “Yes.” It was a faint whisper, unsure of itself. But it was the most June had done since this had all started, other than let Tiago drag him around to safety.

  “Well June, this is Tiago, and we have to move quickly before the Doacq comes after us. It likes characters like us. It finds us interesting.”

  Kay led them down the gentle slope of the tunnel at a brisk pace to a junction, where the sound of running water filled the air, and the stench increased.

  Five Ox-men stood in a trench full of dirty water holding onto a small metal boat with an electric engine on the back.

  Something boomed in the distance, echoing through the sewer tunnels, as they clambered in.

  Kay smiled. “That should slow the Doacq down.” She waved her hand at the Ox-men and they let go. She gunned the engine up to a brisk whine as the boat shot clear, bouncing off the sides of the trench.

  Tiago had a moment to absorb everything now. He turned to Kay. “All this preparation. You knew the Doacq was coming? How?”

  “He always comes when there’s this much activity,” Kay said. “And he’s difficult to stop. I thought maybe he was allergic to the sun, but he shrugged off the ultraviolet and full spectrum lamps I installed on his favorite haunts. Since then, it’s gotten harder and harder to hunt. I can’t even get a good picture of it, cameras fail around it.”

  Tiago felt like he was looking at a different person. “How can you know so much about the Doacq?” Most of the town didn’t even talk about it, they whispered about it and avoided the night. When people disappeared, you didn’t dwell on it. You knocked on wood that you would never be the one to turn a corner, and see the Doacq standing there.

  “You hunt the Doacq?” Tiago asked.

  She heard the stunned disbelief in his voice and turned on him. “It’s an alien. It’s not some supernatural creature, Tiago. It’s like the Nesaru, just more powerful. We don’t know where it comes from, but just like the other aliens, it plays on human land as if it owns it. It thinks it rules us, but it doesn’t!”

  There was a hatred in her face, naked for the two boys to see. She’d let her control slip. “I will destroy it. And then I will take the island. And after that, I will make the Nesaru leave, and the Gahe, and the other stinking aliens that have kept us under their thumb flock through here. Pepper may have failed to kill the Doacq for me, Nashara may fail yet, but I won’t.”

  She turned down another tunnel as Tiago bent over and grabbed his knees. This was insane. They were up against the Doacq?

  “You did good, Tiago,” Kay said, her face under control again. “You got her to chase you, despite the rain incident. You got her to invest in you, to want to protect you, just enough that instead of grabbing June and running back to her ship, she decided to tackle the Doacq. It was perfect. You have a place among my lieutenants, a place on this island, Tiago. You did well.”

  He didn’t feel like it.

  Things had gotten complicated quickly. He hadn’t intended the mark to be a living legend.

  He certainly hadn’t expected to be involved in the betrayal of a living legend.

  Tiago shivered.

  ***<
br />
  Kay had a safehouse set up for them. It took getting out of the sewers and back onto the streets, through the alleys and people’s homes again. By the time they got inside, Tiago couldn’t tell where in Harbor Town he was. They’d doubled back, and around, and it was so late it was now probably officially early. His eyes were scratchy, his movements felt like they were delayed by a half second.

  “Don’t worry,” Kay told him as she took their protective gear. “You’ll be safe here. There are people for the Doacq to catch. He’ll eventually slow down, turn his attention elsewhere. It’s all planned.”

  It didn’t make Tiago feel any better. He caught the eyes of June, and the other boy certainly didn’t look reassured either.

  But Kay caught that. And she spent time with them until they were mollified, and relaxed. There were Ox-men guarding the house, equipped with heavy machine guns, and escape routes everywhere.

  A tall man came in with cold water and sandwiches. Somehow getting something in his stomach took the edge of Tiago’s fears.

  Maybe it was just having something to do.

  “There is more I have to do,” Kay said. “The caches of arms Nashara promised me need swept up and stored in secure locations. And eventually, I need to see who won.”

  She left the room, five foot figure flanked by a pair Ox-men.

  June stopped eating. “Do you trust her?” He asked.

  Tiago looked up and wanted to say he did, but the words caught in his mouth. “I don’t know. She’s dangerous to cross.”

  June gestured at his face. “As dangerous as this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I don’t want to have anything to do with her,” he said. “I’ve had enough.”

  The boy looked exhausted.

  “I’m sorry,” Tiago muttered. “I’m very sorry. I thought you would be going with Nashara.”

  “The woman?”

  “She’s looking for someone called Pepper. She says he’s her grandfather. She thinks you know…”

  “They all do.” June looked down at the remains of his sandwich. “He was okay. I liked him. He paid us in gold to get him out of here, but there were ships waiting for us between the wormholes out and the island.

  “He fought them off, and then when he realized we were in danger, jumped into the ocean and sank. Didn’t stop them from sinking the Zephyr III anyway. They killed everyone but me. Dragged me out of the ocean and took me back, forced me to tell them everything he did, or said.”

  Tiago wrapped his arms around himself and leaned forward.

  The Doacq was hunting them. Nashara may not even be alive, a victim to Kay’s machinations, just like Pepper.

  And what was he? If she could throw their lives away so easily, what chance did he have of living if he moved closer into Kay’s world?

  He thought of the contact, the compulsion he had to do what she wanted. It came from her voice, her posture, the way she could read him. And it wasn’t real.

  With her out of the room, he could struggle away, couldn’t he? All that was left was his fear. Fear of consequences.

  Fear that she would track him down for betraying her.

  “She has a ship, an armed ship, she said, waiting for her. It’s called… the Strainer, or something like that,” Tiago said in a tumble of words. And then he said something he never would have, had he been doing this for Kay. “If you want, we can try to run for it.”

  June didn’t even pause to think about it. “Yes. I’d run with you.”

  “I could be trying to trick you,” Tiago said.

  “I don’t care. I’ll take the chance. I don’t want to be trapped here, I don’t want to get eaten by the Doacq.”

  Tiago found himself nodding with June.

  “We leave the moment we see morning,” Tiago said.

  “So you can spot rain?” It’d be suicidal to try and move through the city without any rain gear. And if he couldn’t see the rain coming, he wouldn’t know to hide from it.

  “Yes. Do you have any family?”

  June shook his head. “No. They’re dead now.”

  Tiago did not follow that up with more questions. He didn’t want to know.

  ***

  The Ox-men guarding them checked on them randomly. The moment the door closed, the early sun lighting a band of orange up over the rooftops, Tiago broke the locked windows open. There were other skills he’d picked up in addition to picking pockets.

  June started to climb down the side, but Tiago shook his head. “Go up, to the roof. They’ll expect us on the street.” The Runners and Ox-men would fan out down there, hunting them.

  Rooftop to rooftop would keep them out of sight for longer.

  Once up there, Tiago oriented himself. They were closer to the docks than he’d dared hope.

  They stuck to the roofs, clambering awkwardly up drain spouts and slipping on tiles. But they made it to the edge of the plaza after an exhausting hour.

  The docks ran out from the seawall, long piers of concrete stacked with unloaded goods and Ox-men hauling carts back and forth.

  It wasn’t until they’d walked through the crowds of the plaza, and then up onto the seawall, that Tiago relaxed a little. The Ox-men guarding them would have called the alarm by now, phoned Kay, and the entire town might be crawling with people hunting for them, but they’d at least gotten to the docks.

  Tiago stopped a dock worker in greasy coveralls overseeing the unloading of a ship docked almost by the seawall. “We’re looking for a ship called Strainer, have you seen it?”

  The man frowned. “Streuner? It’s over there.”

  Tiago looked. It was a gun-metal gray boat with a large green flag with a black and yellow X on it.

  June yanked Tiago around to face the plaza behind them. The hooded figure of the Doacq stood at the far side, people scattering away from it.

  “I don’t think it…” Tiago started to say, as the Doacq looked over the top of the crowd right at them, and began to move toward them. “Shit.”

  “But it doesn’t come out in the day,” June said, his voice breaking with fear.

  Kay had said it seemed to choose the night. That her lights replicating daylight hadn’t harmed it. He shouldn’t have been surprised. But he was. From across the plaza Tiago could see the unnaturally long jaw dislocated and drop, down past the alien’s chest, down almost to it’s feet. Anything that stood in the way disappeared into it: scared people, tables, chairs. It swallowed them all.

  Tiago and June turned and sprinted for the dock leading to Streuner. An act of faith that they could protect them, really, but what else could they do?

  They shoved people aside as they ran the slow curve, ignoring the curses aimed in their direction.

  When they turned onto the dock and sprinted, Tiago looked over at the seawall. The Doacq barreled along it.

  He realized he was screaming as he ran. Dockworkers were turning to look, and then jumping into the water as they realized it was the Doacq.

  It gained on them. They had half the dock before they could reach the Streuner, and the Doacq was coming up the dock, may three hundred feet behind them.

  Tiago knew he shouldn’t look over his shoulder, it slowed him down, but he couldn’t help it.

  The dark pit of its maw was so wide and inescapable, ready to swallow them, the pier, and anything else.

  As to where people ended up when it got them, only those swallowed knew, and they’d never come back to talk.

  Tiago realized he was about to find out. He wasn’t going to make it to the end of the dock, where the Streuner waited. Maybe even if they made it, they’d still be swallowed up.

  Maybe it could eat the whole boat.

  He glanced back over his shoulder, and as he did so, a loud boom came from the end of the dock. Something large whipped past his had, and the Doacq staggered and fell.

  It’s mouth dipped, hitting the concrete of the dock and swallowing a scoop of it, concrete chipping around the edges of its mouth.
>
  Another boom stopped it as it struggled up to its feet again.

  Tiago redoubled his run, as did June. He ran so hard it felt like his joints would pop, his brain would be jarred free of his skull, and his lungs would burst into flames.

  As they moved clear, the booms turned into an all out barrage. Continuous thunder rolled from the ship, bursting out from large guns that had rolled out of emplacements all over the ship.

  His eardrums stopped trying to understand the deafening sound as the entire section of the dock under the Doacq disappeared.

  The Doacq had picked the wrong ship to run at.

  Two dark-skinned crewmen, just like Nashara, held out their hands at the top of the plank leading on to the deck. Tiago sprinted into them, knocking them over and collapsing, panting, amazed to still be alive.

  “Cast off!” Someone yelled, and the plank was tossed free. From his viewpoint on the deck, Tiago saw a tiny rocket shoot up several hundred feet into the sky, dragging a length of parafoil with it.

  The foil expanded, filled with air, and the ship began to move.

  A pair of feet in familiar boots stopped in front of Tiago’s face. He looked up. It was Nashara. She moved slowly, with a slight limp, and wore a patch over one eye. Her hair had been burned off, and one arm was in a sling.

  She kneeled and grabbed his hand and said something, but he couldn’t hear it through the ringing in his ears because the guns still hadn’t stopped: Streuner shivered constantly as it continued firing on the Doacq as they moved away from the dock. Slowly, at first, but then the ship built a bow wave as it sped up.

  A few minutes later the entire ship slowly struggled up onto the hydrofoils underneath its hull, and it popped free of the resistance of pushing against water.

  They sped away from the docks, the deck tilting alarmingly as the Streuner turned hard toward the open sea.

  ***

  The alien Doacq was falling further away from Tiago with each minute. So was Kay.

  June was still in a room being checked over for injuries, but Tiago was allowed to wander around inside the ship. There were crew cabins, a kitchen, storage rooms, a common sitting area.