by Amber Jayne
“Normal,” she muttered archly to herself, standing there on the street’s crumbling asphalt, feeling the chill of the vast shadow. Looking up. Letting her brain absorb the sight. That impossibly huge mass floating there in the sky, suspended by nothing, monstrous and dark and writhing, like a nightmare made giant and organic.
It filled half of the sky, straddling that entire horizon from end to end. In one direction lay the sunlit lands and, as always, she was regretting not having paid more attention to them when she’d passed through, so to store up the images to counteract the horror of this. The Black Ship proper was still several miles from the town’s limits. But the edges of the Ship weren’t still. They wriggled. They subtly undulated. You could stare up at it for hours and it would never look precisely the same from minute to minute. But you wouldn’t want to gaze at it for that long, not unless you meant to scare the piss out of yourself and guarantee a month of clammy night terrors.
Yet despite the Black Ship’s evident squirmings, nobody knew whether or not the thing was alive. It had always been called the Black Ship, implying that those who’d first witnessed it hadn’t deemed it a living entity of some sort. Or maybe those Elyrian ancestors who had been unlucky enough to be there for its arrival hadn’t been able to conceive of such a thing. And, really, it was just too damn big to be living. Reality wouldn’t allow for something of that size to be alive, even something from some distant dark corner of the universe.
The Passengers—well, they were alive.
Arvra, however, had more firsthand experience than most civilians with what lay out there in the decaying gloom beneath the great mass of the sickly glowing Ship. But people in this town knew about the Passengers too. Everyone who lived on the border knew. Sometimes those glistening monsters came out from under their Ship. Sometimes they crept across the border, nightmarish things, full of mayhem and evil…
She shook off her paralysis and started on foot down the street. The town had virtually no vehicles of its own except for the local Guard garrison’s transports.
Yeah, those and the ones that the illegal scavenger crews drove off into the Unsafe when nobody was looking, Arvra thought, this time with a grim sort of pride. Being an unauthorized salvager wasn’t something you bragged about, but there was nothing wrong with feeling a little secret vanity that you could do what thousands of others weren’t brave enough to attempt.
Of course, the trade had its risks.
She walked through the chilly, shadowy day. Sunsets came early here, with the sun disappearing behind the Ship’s mass. Right now it was still twilight. The buildings lining the streets barely qualified as shelters. Lots of castoff wood and cheap sheets of metal had gone into their construction. These were more hovels than homes. Yet even so, they had a kind of rugged dignity about them, as if simply by staying upright they were defying long odds.
The smell of improper sewage drainage reached her nostrils. Gray weeds grew in the cracks of the pavement. Not much else in the way of vegetation would grow in this vicinity. She heard voices raised in argument, heard the crash of something hitting the floor inside one of the structures. These were familiar sounds from having grown up here. Still, this was not the worst place in the world—or at least not the worst place in the Safe.
Reaching a doorway, she knocked, a quick, coded series of raps. She could feel how flimsy the wood was under her knuckles. She repeated the sequence, waited. Footsteps on the other side. The click of a lock.
An unshaven face floating in the dimness beyond the door nodded her inside.
“How is he?” she asked, hearing the lock click behind her. Her eyes adjusted to the low light, a stub of a candle guttering in one corner. This town was on the power grid but sending electricity out here was very expensive. A lot of buildings weren’t even wired for it.
“See for yourself.” Not gruffly said, but also without much hint of pity.
Arvra Finean understood. Her brother had been in this condition for quite some time now.
She went to the bed at the far end of the dim room. She had told Urna last night about how she’d gotten her scars. Why she’d done that still wasn’t clear to her. She should’ve just made something up rather than reveal a thing so intimate. She had also told the Weapon about her brother, how she had intervened when he was being beaten by a Guard captain. But she hadn’t told the full story. Hadn’t mentioned the state that that assault had left her brother in.
Frank Finean’s bed was just a soiled mattress but it was better than nothing. He had blankets and people who cared for him, keeping him fed and clean. Frank couldn’t do much for himself anymore. His eyes were open as Arvra neared the bed. But his gaze was unfocused. His limbs stirred beneath the blankets, but these were just random twitches. He couldn’t walk unassisted. It had been months since he’d put together a string of coherent words. Mostly, he was just like this.
Arvra knelt alongside the mattress, deliberately in his line of sight. The eyes showed no recognition, not even an awareness of her presence. That captain’s baton had come down on his skull several times, hard, brutal blows. Something had gotten damaged inside that head.
She brushed a strand of hair back where it had fallen over an eye. Frank didn’t even blink. She felt a single tear gather, then make a tiny warm track down her cheek. But that was all. She didn’t wail, weep, rend her clothes, didn’t curse the Guard at the top of her lungs. She’d tried to save her brother, and she had gotten carved up for her trouble. And she hadn’t prevented this.
Frank was lucky to have enough friends to tend to him this way. He had been a vivacious individual, generous, daring. His raids into the Unsafe had benefited a lot of people. The salvaged gear he had brought illegally back had improved the lives of a number of people in this border town. He hadn’t thought of his scavenger operation as a business. He’d seen it as a good deed, a positive act on behalf of the people.
Noble ideals. And now he was as useful as a cabbage.
Arvra stood, wiping her cheek. Too bad Frank Finean didn’t have a real friend, one who would open up one of his arteries and sit with him while he quietly bled his way to a merciful death. Too bad he didn’t have, say, a sister who would show him that kindness.
“Okay, Gator,” she said. “I’m here. You can go.” She looked around the dismal room. Once, it had been cheerier, but her brother’s presence in this house was almost more oppressive than the Black Ship hovering over the town. She had grown up here but she had to struggle to conjure up happy memories of the place.
“Arvra.”
She turned. Gator was gazing at her. The weak candlelight danced across the stubble framing his face. He had wavy black hair, and eyes the same shade. Normally his was a blunt sort of face, without much flicker of emotion. But at the moment evident sympathy shone in those dark eyes. He had gone with her on her own salvage forays into the Unsafe. He was a dependable man, good when the heat was on.
He took a step toward her, hesitated. “Somebody’s already coming to look after…” Instead of uttering his name, he made a small gesture past her, at the makeshift bed. “We didn’t know when you’d be back.”
“He’s my brother. I’ll take my turn.”
Gator looked away, then his shoulders stiffened and he returned his gaze to her. “Why don’t you take a break? Come with me. I’ve been saving up water for a bath. You can have it. If…you want.” This last came out with an adolescent shyness, even though Gator was nearly thirty years old.
Arvra blinked at him. The offer was unexpected. And not at all, she realized after a brief contemplation, unwelcome.
A knock sounded on the door. The same coded one she had used. It was a leftover habit from when Frank’s scavenging operation was still going. They’d used this place to store some of the goods.
“That’s Kapak,” Gator said. “Right on time.”
Arvra gave him a nod. “Okay. A bath. That sounds real nice.”
The second sequence of raps sounded. Gator went to unlock th
e door.
* * * * *
While he was led like a good dog, Rune allowed his mind to wander. Normally he would have been marking his steps, counting them. Using his super-mortal sense of direction to map the path so that, should the need arise, he would easily be able to find his way back here. It was a standard drill. Only, he already knew the way. And also he had this Guard to follow, so rather than reflexively exercising his powers, he paid little attention to his own feet, which was oddly freeing. It wasn’t the journey that interested him anyway, but the destination, and what awaited him there.
When they started to grow close, an unpleasant memory came unbidden to him. It was of the last time he had felt ill, which to his recollection had been one of the rare times in his life that that had occurred, outside of a few unfortunate incidents where he’d mistakenly been administered a double dose of some medication or another, early on in his days as a Shadowflash.
They’d been on a mission, he and Urna. Miles into the Unsafe. Further than they’d ever gone at that point in their military careers. Further than they needed to go, but Urna had been insistent.
“I want to kill one more,” the Weapon had said.
Rune could hear him even over the whine of wings’ engines. “We’re late already.” He adjusted his report in his mind automatically, taking this deviation into account. They had cleared out a specific sector. Now they were supposed to be heading back, but Urna had banked off and flown in the opposite direction.
“Just one more.” Urna pushed himself onward, out into the moss-dark of the Black Ship’s light. Rune, who had necessarily blindfolded himself again while airborne, was forced to follow, lest he lose track of his Weapon. He must always keep Urna inside that perimeter. The sacred space wherein Rune could hear everything—every step Urna took, every deep and desperate breath. If he concentrated, Rune could smell the Weapon above everything else out here. Over the fetid rust and the mold of decaying wood, he could smell the ketones on Urna’s breath that told him the Weapon was hungry for something. The Weapon was flying quite low and Rune continued to follow. “One more.”
“It’s too far!” Rune suddenly cried, much louder than he meant to. A mistake. He shouldn’t be revealing his emotions to his partner while they were on assignment. “Stop,” he hissed, quieter, composing himself. “Come back now.”
They had left behind the ancient, ruined city that was their mission target. They were out in the countryside now, a cheerless place, empty of vegetation, cut by a crumbling roadway upon which were strewn the aged, corroded skeletons of vehicles.
Suddenly, Urna dropped to the ground. Automatically, Rune alit behind him.
He heard Urna start to say something, but the words were cut off by the new wave of sound that intercepted them. The unmistakable noise of the Passengers, the scrape of their claws, the whistle of chill air streaming over their bodies, their hoarse breaths. This was a large group. More than the two of them had ever faced at once in a single sweep. They were coming from one side of the derelict road, where the Weapon and Shadowflash had landed.
“Urna!”
“Here we are.”
Rune opened his eyes. He didn’t remember ever closing them.
Aphael Chav stood poised before the door that led to Urna’s room, or what had been his room. Aphael was attended by two of his personal aides, but even with this escort he looked profoundly out of place in the corridor. The Lux leader did not often deign to walk among those who served him, including those he supposedly valued as highly as his prized Weapon/Shadowflash teams.
The Guard who had escorted Rune fell into place beside his comrades while Rune stood at attention. Aphael appraised him with the marked coolness Rune had come to expect from the man.
“Shadowflash Rune.” He started with the title, reminding Rune of his position. Rune lowered his gaze with what he hoped passed for humbleness, noting as he did the hole in the thick plaster beside Urna’s door. The size of a fist. Not large, but it would have required a powerful blow to make it. “I understand your mission last night was unsuccessful.”
Again, just reminding him. Of course it had been unsuccessful. Rune nodded, once, not rising to Aphael’s goading as Urna himself might have done on one of his particularly manic days.
“It’s true. I was unable to determine the location of the missing Weapon,” Rune agreed, then continued without quite meaning to, “but I’m confident I’ll bring him back today. Perhaps, if given more fuel, I can—”
“That will not be necessary,” the white-haired Toplux interrupted. His eyes snapped cold fire at Rune. “I’ve decided your skills,” mild disdain in the word, though no sneer touched his features, “will be put to use elsewhere for now. I plan to utilize you in a different fashion than you are accustomed to. I hope you are prepared.” He passed a nod to the smartly attired aide at his right and the man pushed Urna’s door open without the use of a key. “See what you can make of it.”
Without further instruction, Rune stepped forward into the small space.
Urna’s room was of the exact dimensions that made up his own and contained a similar spread of furnishings. There was the bed, a clothes storage crate and four walls, but the place had been ransacked. The mattress rested crosswise over the bed’s frame, the storage locker overturned in the middle of the floor, spare clothing scattered.
The most striking feature of the room was what lay upon its walls. All those scribbles and scrawls, the crazed graffiti.
It wasn’t the first time Rune had been in here. Hardly. Often enough, he and Urna had stolen away, sometimes to here, sometimes to Rune’s quarters at the opposite end of the military facility. How often—really, how many times—had he and the Weapon come here, eager for each other’s bodies?
Aphael Chav, stepping in behind him, said, “I’m certain that given your special connection to the Weapon, you’ll be able to tell me what all of this means.” His eyes flickered over the walls, indicating what he meant. “If Urna has left some clue behind here, any indication of his current whereabouts, you are to report it. Am I understood?”
Rune could have assured Aphael then and there that no such clue would be found among the mad scribblings that covered every inch of Urna’s walls. If Urna had been planning his escape, had not just run off on a whim or through some impulsive desire to test his own abilities, he would not have left a trail for Rune to follow. Certainly not one that could be deciphered from these walls by anyone Aphael had in his employ. And while Weapon and Shadowflash had undoubtedly been close, it wasn’t as if they were making up secret codes to pass messages back and forth while hunting down killers in the dark.
But when Rune tried to speak, he found he could not. Already, without even concentrating on opening his senses, Rune was being assaulted. He could smell Urna here, his sweat on the sheets of his bed. The sex he’d had shortly before he’d left, and something sharper, laced with sodium. Tears, but not belonging to Urna. Rune forced himself to nod again, barely registering the Toplux’s parting words as spoken to the young Guard.
“Stand post. When he’s through, bring him to the training facility. He’s to give a full report to the entire division, before the team that’s to replace him and Urna leave on today’s sweep into the Unsafe.”
Rune snapped his head around, found the Toplux’s eyes level with his. He’d evidently expected this statement to capture Rune’s attention. “Surely you knew this would happen, Rune. The top Weapon and Shadowflash team has been compromised, disgraced, but the extermination of Passengers must go on as usual.”
“It’s not disgrace if I bring him back before the public gets wind of this,” Rune said before he could stop himself, adding just a second too late for protocol, “sir.”
Aphael grinned. A sinister thing.
“We’ll see, won’t we?” He turned again then paused, speaking back over his shoulder as if these were words he might normally have held in. “You disappoint me, Rune. You’ve failed to keep account of your Weapon and subseq
uently failed to collect him. That’s two failures in one night, and I’ve relieved soldiers of their positions for far less. Because you are still somewhat valuable to me, you have been granted reprieve, but were I you, I would make certain I had something useful to report when next we stand face to face.”
Rune was silent for several seconds until his heart rate evened out and he was able to speak without fear of his voice shaking. He told Aphael Chav that he understood and the man left, followed by his escorts. Rune knew that Aphael, by telling him he was valuable, had also just threatened him. Without Urna, Rune’s sole value was his fame. To dismiss him would demoralize the populace, and the Lux would never risk damage to their position by doing that. But there were always other ways Rune could be made to vanish.
More so, the idea that other, clearly inferior Weapon/Shadowflash teams would be assigned to his and Urna’s dangerous sweeps was rage inducing. And all of this, the shame and humiliation Rune was feeling, was Urna’s fault. Urna deserved to be punished for that, as much as for his flight.
Yes. That thought would make this easier.
Rune peered closely at the walls, as he’d never bothered to do before. Every bit was covered in some manner of vandalism. Rune wondered how Urna had been allowed to get away with this. Certainly Rune had never thought to decorate his own space in such a fashion. Perhaps it shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone that Urna had no qualms about running away. He believed himself immune to punishment, untouchable, while Rune was just another tool.
Rune looked at the lone Guard who’d been left behind. He wondered what the man had done to attract the Toplux’s attention. Plainly he was nervous. Perhaps he too was being punished. The anticipation of what Aphael Chav might do next, then, must be weighing heavily on the Guard’s heart, making it beat faster than normal. The man was a Junior Interrogator. Why had he drawn this duty?
Rune asked him, on impulse, “What did you do?”
The Guard seemed surprised by the question, but also appeared to understand its full meaning. He looked at the floor, muttered, “I gave liquor to a prisoner.”