by Jo Anderton
"The big guy. Team leader last. Sound good to you?"
"Whatever you like."
The technician walked around the screen and suddenly my foot was back on the floor, Devich had his hands on my hips and was pressing his mouth against me. He was warm through the fabric, his lips slightly open, promising pressure and moisture.
I let out a gasp. He stole a hand around, wiggled fingers beneath cloth and slipped inside me with a groan.
I fought the need to arch, to lean against the cold wall.
Instead, I gripped his head, held him there as his mouth moved, as he sucked the white cloth clear and his fingers, his fingers roamed.
"I've missed you," he murmured, voice muffled. "I need you."
I said nothing. Dimly, as though a wall of concrete, stone and steel stood between me and the rest of the room, I could hear Kichlan.
"You can't take him in without me." His voice was raised. Every one of these inspections was a strain on him.
I rocked against Devich's hands, wrapped my fingers through strands of hair and bit the bottom of my lip to stop myself crying out. While Kichlan fought for a brother who couldn't thank him. I churned inside, aching with pleasure, drowning in self-disgust. I was the reason they were here, I was putting this strain on Kichlan, on Lad.
"Don't you people keep notes?" Kichlan continued. "I'm his guardian, and you're not doing anything to him without me there."
I clenched around Devich's fingers, quivered beneath his mouth. And Kichlan said, "Finally. Thank you for seeing reason–" As I heard footsteps coming closer, closer, I eased Devich from me, out of me, and panting, whispered, "Why did you do that?"
His eyes were so green in the light from the screen, sharp like a blade of grass. "I told you. I missed you." Then he handed me my uniform pants and wiped his mouth and fingers with the kerchief he had used to soak up my blood.
I was tugging myself into the uniform as Kichlan and Lad appeared around the screen. Lad grinned at me, waved. Kichlan blushed a red that darkened in the green light, and looked away.
Devich, pretending to put away his tools, rifled through the bag he had brought. The sound of steel against glass was jarring, slicing into a dull tension making its way up my neck to nest in my head.
"That's good," he was saying. "But not as good as it could be." He clipped the bag closed and stood. In my uniform pants and camisole, I felt shaky and altogether too exposed. "Here." He had found a scrap of paper and a pencil in that bag, and started scribbling. "Cleanliness, Vladha. Cleanliness is the key." I wished he would keep his voice down. For show or not, I didn't need the rest of my team hearing about my apparent lack of sanitation. "Follow these instructions, particularly the next time something falls on you." He smirked as he handed me the paper, particularly pleased with himself.
An address was scrawled in graphite on the rough weave, and some vague directions. I glanced up, realising Devich was telling me where to find him.
"Follow them carefully." He winked at me, and deliberately ran the back of his hand over his mouth.
"Of course," I answered, and bent to retrieve my clothes. I jammed the paper into the deepest pocket I could find, so it pressed against my uniform, my second skin. It would remain hidden, close to me, even at home. "Good." Devich sat, drew out his slides, selected one, and began directing its pions to take notes. "You can go now."
With my clothes piled hastily over my uniform, I snuck past Kichlan and Lad. Lad was hypnotised by a mirror the other technician was using to flash reflected light in his eyes, and Kichlan watched his brother's expression intently.
Once out from behind the screen the air seemed to grow lighter, grow cooler and fresher. Natasha, with a smirk and a wrinkle of her nose, pressed a warm bun into my hands. The smells of melted cheese and cooked mushrooms wafted up, and sent my stomach growling.
I flopped into the couch and ate through my food, refusing to meet the eyes of the others.
Finally, Kichlan and his brother re-emerged. I was feeling sleepy by then, my stomach and hips warm, slightly fuzzy.
"That's all of you, then?" Devich stood before the screen as the second technician dismantled it. He scanned the slides, fingers sketching rows and columns in the air.
"Yes," Kichlan snapped off the word, his arms crossed, his face dark. "You know it is."
"Mmm."
Devich tucked the slides away again. His fellow technician finished cramming the screen into its bag and looked hot in the face, flustered compared to Devich's distant cool.
"Thank you for your participation," Devich rattled off what sounded like a liturgy, one he must have said uncountable times and the collectors had surely heard nearly as often. "For your service to the veche, and Varsnia itself."
A moment of silence. Were we expected to say anything in return?
Devich and the second technician collected their bags, balancing the large one that contained the screen between them. No one offered help.
In silence, the technicians left the sublevel. The paper Devich had given me felt heavy in a pocket close to my chest. My drawers were wet, starting to cool. My head ached.
"Well, that was a waste of a day." Kichlan took his coat from its hook, tossed one to Lad and handed me my own. "We need to make up for it tomorrow. Breakbell, earlier if we can." He shook his head. "Still have a quota to fill. Inspections are never taken into account."
One by one we filed out. Mizra and Uzdal, so close together, heads down in some silent and shared concern. Sofia, drawn and tired. Natasha, whistling a soft tune. Lad took the stairs quickly, still full of energy after a day spent sitting inside. Kichlan kept close.
I didn't know what to feel. Devich brought opportunities back into my life. He brought his invitations to high-ranking parties, his friends in old families. But he also brought instability to that comfortable corner where Kichlan, Lad and I had existed so peacefully. He brought stress for Kichlan, pressure and fear, and he had brought them because of me, because he had been worried about me. I couldn't tell Kichlan it was my fault, that I had effectively put Lad in such danger.
I would never tell him, but I would try to make up for it regardless. I had to find Jernea, and I hoped the old man still held all the answers. So I could help Lad, and maybe myself.
14.
I heard it before my suit woke me. And there was a moment of ringing and darkness, between the sound that shattered the night and the light that broke it open, when I knew, I just knew, that this would not be anything like the previous debris emergencies. That this was something worse.
The sound was like Grandeur collapsing. Metal and concrete and life crumbling in one great roar. The floor shook and a fine crack traced its way into the window beside the bed. As I levered myself upright my suit lit up brilliantly, catching gleams in the splintered glass like a spider's web.
"Other!"
Someone was screaming below me. Valya? I scrambled into shoes and dragged on pants and a woollen shirt as I leapt down the tightly wound, unsteady stairs. The front door had been shaken from its lock and I pushed it open, plunging into the food-fragrant hallway.
Valya was in her bedroom. Her screams led me to her, and in the radiance from my suit she was pale, mouth wide and eyes darkly terrified. She snapped into silence as soon as my light touched her.
"Are you hurt?" I shouted over the ringing in my ears and the oppressive echoes of her screams.
"Did you feel it?" she breathed out a whisper, forcing me closer, forcing me to lower my ear to her mouth. "Did you feel it hurt?"
"Where?" I tried not to shout. "Where are you hurt?"
But she shook her head. "Not me." She stared into the suit's brightness, unblinking. "This is what they are doing, do you see now? Splitting us open. He can't stop them, not any more." Her shaking hand reached for my wrist. "Can't you feel his pain? He needs you, girl. So we have to protect you. He needs you."
I couldn't feel pain, but I could feel a need. An urgency, sharper than the light on my wrists, ank
les and neck. I could feel it somewhere in my bones, in the insect legs scratching away below my muscles, the silver kicking in my blood.
"I'm not going until I know you're not hurt." What an effort it took to say that.
"We are all doomed if you don't go, girl. If you can't help him." Valya held a patchwork quilt to her chin like a small, frightened child. "Hurry."
I left the house, plunged into streets that should have been dark and empty. Ruddiness lit cobblestones with a fireside light, dull and red, hanging on the bottom of clouds like a pooling stain. It lit terrified faces as the people of Movoc-under-Keeper spilled from buildings like blood escaping skin. I pushed through a growing crowd – ignored the screams of children, the barking commands of men, the imploring hands of women – and felt vivid against their dull fear. Felt purposeful. Necessary.
I didn't bother casting the map, not this time. Instead, I followed the symbols on my wrist, wound around streets and buildings and potholes without watching my feet, trusting in the suit, the guiding movement beneath my fingers.
Then Lad's cipher rose vivid and insistent, pushing against my forefinger. I skidded to a halt. Lad and Kichlan stood at a corner, on the other side of a sea of milling people. Kichlan had cast his wavering map on a building wall. Lad, bag full of metallic jars hanging from one shoulder, gestured to me.
I waded across the street. An old woman clutched at my elbow, her hand too much like Valya's. It made me shiver. "What's happening?" she screeched at me, two rotting teeth pale stumps in a dark and gaping mouth. I shook her off and pushed forward.
"Tan!" The suit and the firelight combined to give Lad's cheeks a youthful pink. It jarred with the tension within me, with the light on the heavy clouds. I had no idea where in Movoc we were, only how close the debris was, only that we needed to be there. Now.
"We need to hurry." I grabbed Lad's hand and drew him into the mass of people. "It's this way."
Kichlan flicked off his map and followed. "How do you know?" he shouted. Were his ears ringing too? Had Eugeny woken screaming in the night? Somehow, I couldn't imagine it.
"It's here." I lifted my wrist. "The map, it's all here."
A moment's hesitation I put down to running, to his being out of breath. "You can read the suit? On your wrist?" Even against the ringing I could hear his surprise.
"Yes." Surely he expected no explanations now.
"How? Who taught you?" Kichlan demanded.
"No one taught me." The suit had shown me. Those wiggling worms I had seen kick out from my skin. They had taught me.
Lad squeezed my hand as we ran. I squeezed back.
I said, "I worked it out myself."
"Ever considered sharing?"
"Now is not the time" hovered on my lips. But then the world was rocked again and flames leapt above the tops of buildings, throwing huge chunks of stone into the air as though they were no more than balls tossed in play.
"Shelter!" Kichlan roared, barely perceptible as chaos erupted around us.
Together we dragged Lad to the nearest building and pressed him into the wall. Bodies pushed us, forced my shoulder onto the cement so hard I was glad for the sturdy uniform. And in the screaming, the press of bodies, the roar and light of flame, Lad watched, captivated, as parts of Movoc-under-Keeper fell from the sky. A wall smacked down into the throng that filled the street. Somehow, over everything, I heard the crack of each bone, the squelch of flesh, and had to fight very hard not to be sick. A column, a great cylindrical pillar, slammed into the roof of a building, shattering tiles, crushing stone. It slid to the street in an over-slow avalanche of brick, cement and – my stomach lurched again – bodies. Dead like dolls, limbs loose. Scorched. Broken. Thrown.
I started to sink against the wall, one arm wrapped around my middle. But Kichlan yanked me upright. "Don't! If you get under all this, you'll never get up again!"
The bodies against us were fierce now. Running, screaming, wailing. Forcing like the current of a rapid, angry river.
I swallowed bile. "We have to get to the debris." The words came unbidden. What I really wanted to do was join the senseless, panicked screaming. It seemed a lot easier that way. "We need to stop it." Was that really me, so calm, so sensible?
Kichlan's mouth firmed, his face grew determined. "You're right."
That made me feel better. I wasn't the only one.
He said, "That means going toward the fire, though."
I touched the suit, nodded. "It does." The dead didn't show up as symbols. The crowd was nothing but a low, indistinct rippling. I swallowed hard. Didn't seem fair.
We ran into the street, both gripping Lad's hands, pulling him forward. His head tipped back and he stared with wonder at the red sky. The crowd thinned as we ran. Some of them tried to stop us.
"Not that way!" a young man screamed. Blood soaked the front of his pale nightshirt. A gash in his forehead painted half of his face red. "They're all dead, and it's getting bigger, and they can't stop it! Don't go that way!"
We pressed on. But his voice echoed in my head, and I feared what it was, though somewhere in my gut I already knew. Could debris really do all this? Debris that wriggled, bug-like, through the air on a course of its own?
"Kichlan!" Sofia called from an intersecting street and hurried toward us. Her face was pale beneath dirt, smudges and a fine layer of sand. The collar of her jacket at been torn, bloody handprints smearing the fabric.
"Are you all right?" Kichlan asked, fear in his voice. "Have you seen the others?"
Sofia shook her head.
"Sofia?" I glanced at her hand. It shook and reflected our suit lights with something wet. Something red. "You're hurt!" I reached for her, but she turned away. Her expression hardened.
"Something hit me. Stone, I think." She gestured to her shoulder. "It's not serious."
I bit back an argument.
"We need to get closer." She turned to Kichlan, all business. "The others can find us. We need to work out what's going on."
"Can you keep him close to you?" Kichlan asked Sofia, placed Lad's hand in hers. "Stay here with him. For now. Tanyana and I will see what's happening."
"Tanyana and you?" Sofia asked. And despite the chaos and the blood and the fear the look she gave me was one of betrayal, of hurt. It lasted only for a moment, disappearing so quickly I began to doubt that I had seen it at all.
"Don't worry, Tan," Lad said, as we gave him over to her care. "It will be all right. In the end."
I knew he believed every word.
Kichlan and I left Lad with Sofia, where they huddled under a wide awning that seemed to have maintained some of its structural integrity. Lamps shuddered beside us as we ran, flickering high, then dying, only to burst into painful brilliance.
"Another factory?" I shouted.
Kichlan tapped the solid metal stand of a lamp as he passed it, wrapping a hand briefly around the carved lines and the bear heads peering eyelessly out of dark steel. "I doubt it." His voice hesitated, his feet pushed on. "Things go wrong when factories don't keep themselves clean. Lights fail, heat dies. I've never heard of one disgorging fire before."
The ground rocked again and Kichlan ploughed into me, pressing me up against a wall as stones hailed onto the open street. I felt them hit his back, heard the dull thuds and his low gasps of breath. "Kichlan!" I hissed, struggled to peer around his shoulder, but he leaned more of his weight on me and I couldn't move.
"They're not big. The uniform is taking most of it." Something very large crashed a yard from where he shielded me, spraying the cobblestones with dry rain.
"Liar," I whispered. It was hot, wrapped in Kichlan's body. I had forgotten how tall he was, how large. It was easy to do, with Lad to compare him to.
"See you prove it." He chuckled, breathlessly.
As the stones petered out a voice shouted from across the street, "Hey!"
Kichlan turned; I took the opportunity and slipped around him. "Kichlan! Tanyana!" Mizra from a high window. "Door
." He pointed out from the shattered glass, arm strangely angled to avoid the edges. "Get up here. Hurry!"
We crossed the street, pushed in a door hanging loose from its hinges, pion lock buzzing sickly. Two flights of dark stairs and Uzdal was waiting. Firelight lit his hair and the side of his face, as though the room behind him was burning.
"You have to see this." He coughed, spat onto the floor. "Ash," he explained, by way of an apology.
The firelit room had once been a home, though now it was mostly rubble. A decrepit couch remained, and a low table.
"Don't know where the owners have gone." Mizra was staring out a gash in the wall on the opposite side of the room. "Got out as fast as they could, I'm guessing." He faced us, skin dirty, eyes darker than the cinders. "Don't blame them."