The First Book of Ore: The Foundry's Edge

by Cameron Baity

  “Who was it?” demanded Goodwin flatly.

  The weight on her ankle was painfully heavy.

  “Stop this, James. I’ll talk, but just stop!”

  Her mouth dipped into the water, her strokes weakened.

  “Who have you been working for in the Quorum?”

  The chain clinked taut. She could float no higher.

  Her father’s eyes filled with shredding, unimaginable pain.

  Phoebe’s cry bubbled. Water filled her mouth. Still it rose.

  He broke. “None! None of the Quorum!”

  “Then she dies.”

  “I’ve been working for the Covenant!”

  The water took her. Droning silence filled her ears. She fought. She strained. But the chain was stretched to its limit. The water closed over her head. She hadn’t gotten a big enough breath. Her lungs already felt like they were going to burst. Something was dragging her down.

  The undertow.

  Phoebe could struggle no more. Her muscles gave way. Stifling brine filled her body. She sank into the murk. She saw seaweed, the rocks of Callendon’s shore. Just before her vision went black, a slender white shadow drifted toward her from below. It reached out, welcoming her into death.

  There was no malice in it, but neither was it smiling.

  Pearl-pale skin. Black bobbed hair.

  Her mother was waiting.

  roar.

  A rush. She was leaving her body.

  Her spirit was being tossed. Tumbling, caught in a cyclone. She was pulled one way, then another. Around and around in the relentless vortex.

  Vomit.

  Profound darkness.

  She shivered, clammy and foul with the stink of the drowning tank. Phoebe could hear her own faint pulse, like the ticking of some worn-out clock. She clung to it, the feeblest of silken threads, threatening to snap at any moment.

  It meant that she was somehow alive.

  There was another sound too.

  A steady rhythm. Pulling her toward the light. She rose up through the void. Phoebe was wrapped in something warm. The strong beat kept her aloft.

  It was him.

  Her eyes cracked open, wincing against the glare. She was in her father’s arms. Her ear was on his chest. A smile lit his face, tears glistened on his cheeks. He stroked her hair, just like when she was little, folding it ever so gently behind her ears. She didn’t want to awaken. If she did, he would be gone.

  Phoebe remained still for a long while, praying that time would wait. She couldn’t bear to feel this moment fade into a desperate, empty dream.

  It didn’t.

  She could feel the warmth of his arms through her damp coveralls and clung to the sensation. A wet cough rattled her violently, thick with the tastes of bile and foul, rusty water.

  “Cricket.”

  His voice was a hollow scrape. She opened her eyes at last.

  They were in a murky gold cell no more than ten feet across, with curving sides and a low pitted ceiling. Across from them was a flat barricade of Foundry steel, its slick sheen a dramatic contrast to the rest of the rough chamber. A glaring tube of electric light was mounted on it, just above the barely noticeable outline of a hefty sliding door. Aside from that, the cell was barren.

  “You came for me,” he croaked.

  She nodded weakly and focused her eyes on him.

  Her father was barely recognizable, dressed in the same worn-out clothes, though they now looked far too big on his emaciated frame. His white button-down shirt was stained with dried blood, hanging in tatters and barely concealing the dark red bandages that patched his sunken chest. Dingy gauze bound his head as well, sweeping down to cover one eye. He still wore his glasses, but the lenses were cracked.

  “What did they do to you?” she whispered in horror.

  “I’m fine,” he said. His tone was soft but urgent. He glanced up at the door. “I don’t have much time. They’ll be back for me any minute now.”

  “No. You can’t go,” she said, and clutched him closer.

  He held her with all his strength and kissed her cheek.

  “I’m here now,” he whispered.

  She broke into another hacking cough and expelled more water from her lungs. He held her until the fit subsided.

  “Is it true?” she said at last, looking up at him.

  “What?”

  “The Covenant.”

  “But how do you…” He looked at her, astonished. “You never should have come here. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Back home, I would have had you aboard a Galejet bound for Trelaine within the hour. Everything was arranged.”

  It seemed like a lifetime ago. In the manor, her father sweeping up to her from the shadows. His desperate face. Her lone suitcase. How different her life would have been. How simple. And blind.

  “You were never going to come with me,” she said, realizing what he meant.

  “It would have put you in far too much danger.”

  “You were going to send me away.”

  He sighed heavily and looked deep into her eyes.

  “I’m not asking you to understand what I have done. I can ask nothing more of you. Not even your forgiveness.”

  She studied his battered face, wrought with regret.

  “So it is true,” she said. “The Covenant is real?”

  Her father nodded slowly.

  She imagined the look on Dollop’s face. Poor Dollop.

  “How? I mean, who are they?” she wondered. “What’s their plan?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  His gaze flickered almost imperceptibly over her shoulder. She realized at once that he was trying to tell her something. Phoebe faked a cough so she could steal a glance. In a corner of the ceiling, an Omnicam surveyed the scene, its fanned lens array glinting in the shadows. They were being watched.

  The sight brought back raw memories of the Marquis.

  “I thought they were made up,” she continued, realizing that she couldn’t risk asking him any more revealing questions.

  “Everyone does. Who knows, maybe they are,” he explained. “Perhaps it’s another group of mehkans who have adopted the legend for their own. Whoever they are, I failed them just as I have failed you.”

  “You didn’t. It’s not your fault,” she insisted. “If Micah and I hadn’t followed you, if we hadn’t gotten caught, then you never would have—”

  “No. This is my burden. Not yours, not Micah’s.”

  “We can help. We want to save Mehk, just like you.”

  He considered her for a moment.

  “Phoebe. I’m just trying to make amends.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was the Chief Surveyor for over twenty years. I led a team that made bio-analysis assessments of subjects for potential market applications.” He let the clinical words sink in. “That’s the Foundry way of saying I decided which mehkans were worth killing. Countless died on my orders.”

  “But…” Her eyes burned. “How could you? I thought you were different.”

  “I am. I’m worse. More guilty than most. Because I did it with pride. I shared the Foundry’s bold vision—building a better, brighter future.”

  “No. You’re better than that.”

  He laughed, but not dismissively. His unbandaged eye misted over.

  “That’s exactly what your mother said,” her father intoned softly, “only with a few more punches and kicks.”

  “She…knew?” her voice crackled.

  His nod filled her with sickening outrage.

  “It was too much to bear alone. I ignored the consequences. I went to great lengths to bypass the Foundry’s extensive surveillance to tell her.”

  Phoebe could taste the vomit in her throat again. She tore away from her fat
her’s arms and got to her unsteady feet.

  How could she? Beneath every giggle she had shared with her mother, behind each conversation, looming over all of their carefree shopping sprees, was Mehk. She had known the truth all along, and yet she had been compliant.

  Even her own mother had been guilty.

  “Don’t hate her,” he said, staring at her back. “She was disgusted with me. She almost left me because of it. Almost took you away.”

  “She should have,” she spat.

  “Maybe,” he agreed, limping over to her. “She made me promise to quit.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “It would have been suicide. No one quits the Foundry.”

  “Then she should have told everyone!”

  “Do you really think they would have allowed that?”

  He reached out to touch her, but she pulled away.

  “I know you’re confused, Phoebe. I don’t blame you. None of it’s easy. Nothing true is black or white.”

  “You’re pathetic!” she screamed, spinning to face him. “You sound just like Goodwin. You knew it was wrong, and so did she.”

  “Yes. Of course. And yet she chose to love me anyway. She put us above all else.”

  “Neither of you did anything about it!”

  “But we did. Together, we tried to find a better way. It wasn’t easy, avoiding detection as she pushed me to change the Foundry. But I did everything in my power to make our operations more humane. When she died, I…The little things weren’t enough. She—” He heaved a shuddering breath. “She knew I could do more, and I vowed to, no matter what it took. I went searching. But the Covenant found me first.”

  “You should have told me,” she said, jaw clenched. “I could have helped.”

  “No. I almost got you killed. If your mother had known you were involved, she would have never forgiven me.”

  “I came here on my own,” she insisted.

  “How I wish you hadn’t. She loved you more than anything, Phoebe. More…more than her own life.” His voice cracked. “I do too.”

  She threw her arms around him, and he stumbled back.

  How skeletal he felt, how frail. Her heart strained.

  “What happens now?” she whispered to him.

  “We wait.”

  Would they put her back in that wretched tank? Or did they have something even worse in mind? Micah. Dollop. What would their fates be?

  “They’re going to kill us, aren’t they?”

  “No,” he said, his voice hardening.

  There was a series of digital tones and a reverberating thunk as the heavy steel door unlocked. It slid open to reveal a pair of Watchman soldiers.

  “We are going to make it through this,” her father said as he pulled away.

  He was leaving again. She held on, refusing to let go.

  “I…I don’t believe you.”

  He stopped.

  Behind his broken glasses, his good eye flashed.

  “You must.”

  She couldn’t make this any harder. She would be strong for him. For her. Phoebe nodded and let her father go. He turned and limped out of the cell.

  The door clanged shut with ringing finality.

  She knew she might never see him again.

  “I…” she rasped. “I forgive you.”

  icah felt like a stupid little baby, and there was nothing he could do about it. He was crying and shaking, totally helpless. He was losing it.

  Stuck in this tube with only his own horrible thoughts, every breath felt like work, like he had to keep reminding himself to inhale. He couldn’t remember ever being this scared. His jelly legs wanted to give out, but he had nowhere to fall. And he was starting to see things. Weird things.

  The wall was inches from his nose, and its texture swirled and swam before his eyes. The only other place to look was up, but each time he did, he could have sworn there was one less breathing hole in the lid. Were they plugging them up, one at a time, so that he’d suffocate? How did they know to only do it when he looked? Okay, no more looking up.

  Closing his eyes was worse. The view inside his eyelids flickered like static on a Televiewer, like swarming maggots. He could feel them, too, covering his body, slithering around underneath his coveralls. It made him itch all over.

  So this is what crazy feels like, he thought.

  That’s when he saw it. A fine gray thread slowly descended from overhead like a web without the spider. He pinched his eyes shut, squeezed off the tears, and shook his head to chase the image away.

  Still there. If it was a hallucination, it was a stubborn one.

  The thread drifted to the wall and clung there, growing thicker as it continued down. When shiny beads dribbled and swelled at the end, he realized that it was some sort of silvery liquid. He watched closely as the thing trickled toward him. Then it reversed direction and ran back up.

  Micah jerked back and banged his head on the wall.

  The drip twitched, then retracted a bit more. It held steady, watching. The liquid pulsed to the rhythm of his breathing.

  Not good. Was this some sick Foundry thing? Was it going to crawl into his eyeball and eat through his brain?

  Suddenly, the strand split apart, separating into a bunch of thin hairs. They bent away from the wall, reaching toward Micah like writhing antennae.

  He panicked, clamping his eyes and his mouth shut. Would it go instead for his nostrils and his ears? He tossed his head, thinking if he kept moving, the nasty silver gunk might not be able to get him.

  But it would. Eventually.

  Just a matter of time.

  Floodlights blasted Jules in a blinding row, but he barely had the strength to blink. The Watchmen dragged him down a long, curved corridor of the detainment block, the sound of their footsteps merging with the hum of machinery. He had endured another two-hour interrogation and was racked with pain from head to toe, his bandages wet with fresh blood.

  This subterranean sector was a network of passages like gloomy golden catacombs. The ceiling stretched thirty feet overhead, and the rocky walls were pocketed with roosts built for Kallorax’s ancient aerial regime. Like much of the Citadel, this area had once housed extensive torture chambers, a testament to the megalarch’s depraved imagination. The Foundry had repurposed much of the grisly sublevel for infrastructure, using it to house generators, banks of Computator servers, and vesper-to-water conversion tanks.

  But the detainment block retained some of the old cruelties, just in case.

  Jules was dragged past a hammered-steel elevator patrolled by heavily armed Watchman soldiers. His escorts turned down a dead-end hallway with high-security prison cells at the back. A titanium power grid stretched throughout the entire area, midway between floor and ceiling. It was a lattice of powerful floodlights, Omnicams, and deadly Dervish turrets that left no inch unmonitored. They whirred and buzzed, cameras tracking and four-barreled cannons pivoting, ready to open fire at a moment’s notice.

  Because the Foundry had little need for prisoners, this sector was rarely used. Jules could only recall a handful of exceptions, the most recent being a few years ago when an executive named Collins had made a reference to the M-level tunnel in Foundry Central during a Dialset call. After a week of “correctional rehabilitation,” he was back to work with a big empty smile and a vacant stare.

  Now the detainment block was occupied by Dr. Jules Plumm. And the children. The thought of them in this dreadful place made him even weaker.

  A dozen Watchman soldiers stood guard beside the cells, their eerie, duplicate features staring out from behind polished face shields. Jules looked up at the Omnicams and wondered if Goodwin was watching, gloating over the broken wreck his former Chief Surveyor had become. But the cameras weren’t scanning. They were all pointing at the ground as if the
motorized arms that held them had gone limp.

  The Dervish turrets, too, were frozen in place.

  In a rush, he understood.

  Phoebe was curled in a ball. She hadn’t moved in hours.

  She was tired, but sleep would never come in this cell. Her bleary eyes stared at the harsh light tube above the door, its chatter grinding her down with every passing second.

  Then with a soft pop, the light went out. Silence.

  She sprang to her feet. Utter darkness.

  “Hello?” Phoebe cried. “Is anybody there? HEY!”

  The unnatural quiet made her feel like she had cotton in her ears. Were they watching her in the dark? Was this another part of the Foundry’s twisted plan, to break her with fear like they had her father?

  With hands outstretched, she felt her way over to where the Omnicam was mounted. She listened but heard nothing—no swapping lenses, no adjusting focus. But there was something else. A muted whisper from behind the smooth steel wall. She felt her way over and pressed her ear against it. Dull impacts, grunting. Wild metal footfalls.

  Something thudded up against the wall. She jumped back. Adrenaline surged through her like an electric shock. Alone in the blackness, stuck in this cell, she had nowhere to run.

  The muffled commotion stopped.

  What was happening out there? For several unbearable seconds she heard nothing. Phoebe backpedaled and bumped up against the opposite wall.

  Digital bleeps sounded, then a THUNK. With a slow scrape, the door was forced open. The hallway outside was dark except for red emergency lights buried in the floor.

  A silhouette stood in the doorway, armed with a rifle.

  “Daddy!”

  She threw her arms around his frail body.

  “Everything’s okay, Phoebe. We’re getting out of here.”

  Only then did she register the other figures with him.

  Glinting in the red-rimmed dark were four menacing mehkans. Some were low to the ground, others stood upright, but it was too dark to make them out clearly. There was power and violence in their every black curve, and their formidable presence sent a chill rippling up her spine. The red emergency lights showed splatters of dark grease on the walls, and the ground was scattered with decimated Watchman remains.