City of the Falling Sky

by Joseph Evans

  Seckry and Tenk left the arcade together and stopped at the rusty fountain.

  “So you’re telling me you found all the items on the training level, just like that?” Tenk said. “Even the golden harp?”

  “Even the harp. It was behind the waterfall. Quite an obvious hiding place for it, I thought.” Seckry stifled a laugh at the sight of Tenk’s face. He couldn’t help playing around with him.

  “You’re gonna be one hell of a Friction player . . .” Tenk said, in awe. “It took me about five tries before I found that harp.”

  When Seckry got back to his flat, he had about half an hour before his mum came in from work.

  When she did, she looked pained again at the sight of him, as though she’d forgotten how bad he’d looked this morning. After insisting on making him a nice cup of tea, she sat at the table with him.

  “Right, now we can talk about this properly,” she said.

  Seckry took a deep breath and explained everything that had happened. “It doesn’t matter though, mum,” he said.

  His mum’s face seemed as though it was going to burst. She was moving her lips silently and shaking her head as though muttering the incantation of some dark spell.

  “The guy is just a complete psychopath,” Seckry said. “I think I’ve just got to forget about it.”

  “Well, I’m not going to forget about it. What is his name again?” she insisted.

  “Snibble. Snibble Knotting.”

  “Knotting. Of course,” his mum said, shaking her head.

  “You know them?”

  “I’ve heard about the father. Terrorising other parents and that. An absolute pig of a man.”

  “Yeah, sounds likely,” Seckry said.

  “I’ve got a good mind to find out where they live and storm around there right now.”

  “Please, mum, don’t,” Seckry said, trying to calm her down a bit. “It’ll just make things worse. And it’d be dangerous. The mum is in prison for something or other. It’s best to just forget about it.”

  After his mum had drunk her own cup of tea, she did relax a little, and she decided to bake an ellonberry pie for Mr Vance as a gift for helping Seckry.

  When Leena joined them, the topic of conversation changed.

  “I’m sick of seeing the word Endrin plastered everywhere,” she complained. “It’s even on my own arm!” She eyed her white chip with disgust. “And what’s this saying that they’ve got underneath their logo sometimes? Something about being ethical?”

  “Proud to be ethical,” Coralle recalled. “A million miles away from the lab baby affair.”

  “Yeah, that’s it. What’s that all about?”

  “The lab baby affair? Oh, I suppose you won’t have heard of it. People don’t talk about it much now. I remember my parents going on about it when I was young. It happened about two years before I was born. It was this terrible experiment gone wrong. These two scientists tried to make artificial babies in their lab but they didn’t survive long. They were horribly mutated and died soon after their creation.”

  “And those two scientists used to work for Endrin?”

  “I think those two scientists were Endrin. They founded it. I guess the modern day Endrin just want to prove to people that they’ve come a long way since then. Your dad used to hate it whenever anyone mentioned the lab baby thing. It used to send shivers down his spine, I could see it, and he’d always change the subject. I think some people just find the thought of it disturbing. Most people think it’s unnatural. It’s just messing with nature in a way that people shouldn’t. Luckily there’s been nothing like it since.”

  After they had all had some food, Seckry decided to go upstairs and set his computer up. It was an old, tower based one that was ancient by current standards, but his mum had bought it from a charity shop back in Marne, and Seckry had decided to wait until he could afford to buy something contemporary with his own money before asking for an upgrade.

  It was covered in dust so he gave it a little vacuum, hoping that the pinging sound in the tube wasn’t something important getting sucked up.

  It took him a while to get everything back together, but when he did, the first thing he checked was his emails, realising that it had been over a week since he’d been able to access the internet, having an old, second hand phone too which could just about send and receive texts.

  ‘27 unread messages,’ said his email client.

  Half were advertisements from companies he’d never even heard of, a few were from banks that he had nothing to do with, claiming his account had been violated and they needed his account information, and just one of them caught his attention.

  It was from The Broken Motion mailing list.

  Dear Seckraman

  The Broken Motion are back on tour!

  The band will be touring all over the country with their latest album, In Search of the Promised Land, beginning in their home city of Skyfall and ending in Gollow upon Dyne.

  Venues and dates are as follows.

  Thanks to everyone for supporting us! We hope to see you there – E. J.

  Seckry scrolled down the email until he reached the Skyfall details, scribbled down the date on a scrap of paper, tore it off and stuck it to his wardrobe. He’d never seen them live, and he made a promise to himself there and then that he’d do it this year.

  The next thing he needed to do was find a way of getting fifty notes so that he could replace the Friction gift card that Snibble had melted. And the only way he was going to be able to do that was to find some kind of job.

  He typed in ‘superfind.sf,’ tapped the control and enter keys on his keyboard, and the city’s official search engine appeared, a clean page with the Skyfall flag as its logo.

  Seckry typed ‘Jobs in Skyfall,’ hit the enter key and waited for the results to load.

  He clicked on the first of them; probably the most relevant. When it loaded, he clicked on a current vacancies tab and a huge list of jobs stared at him: Accounts Director – Teletron Networking, General Manager – Neo Emporium, Sales Analyst – Cogwork Corporation.

  They were all full time, never mind being way beyond his capabilities. He needed something one off. A little job to get him some pocket money. He scrolled down the list. Nothing.

  He tried some of the other sites listed on the search engine but realised after checking the seventh one that they were all the same, and most were listing the exact same jobs as the others.

  For a moment, he thought he had struck gold when he saw an advertisement for a one off job that paid in cash, but slumped in his seat when he read the details:

  Applicant has to be big, burly and strong, as this is manual labour.

  He looked at his scrawny arms and typed in the words ‘short, skinny teenager looking for one off job,’ and one result was returned:

  One off job – Looking for small, nimble person to retrieve something of value. Please email for further details. Will pay in cash.

  Seckry peered closer at the screen. This was just the thing he was looking for. He quickly loaded up his email client.

  Hi, my name’s Seckraman Sevenstars and I’m interested in the job you’re advertising on the Skyfall Jobs 4 U website. Please let me know the details. Thanks.

  He hit ‘send’ and reread the job description again. ‘Looking for small, nimble person to retrieve something of value.’

  It was vague. He wondered what kind of thing he’d have to retrieve.

  That evening, Seckry left his computer running, and even though he spent most of his time in the living area with his mum and Leena, he kept running back and forth to his bedroom, refreshing his emails to see if he’d had a reply.

  When ten o’clock came around, Seckry still hadn’t had an email back so he decided to do a bit of reading to occupy his mind.

  Then, out of nowhere, came a bleep. He’d fallen asleep with his computer running. His mouth was hot and dry, and his heart was beating fast.

  It was a new email.
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br />   Seckry took a sip of water and moved his mouse to get rid of the screensaver. His email client was still on the screen.

  Hello Seckraman, thank you for getting in touch. Now this task is a very dangerous one, something that can get you into a lot of trouble, so I will understand fully if you want to decline.

  As you will no doubt know, the Endrin headquarters are at the heart of the city, and they are barricaded by a huge circular wall. Behind that wall, Seckraman, lies something that is very valuable to me – rintide worm. I will not trouble you with the details here and now about why I would like them.

  Your job will be to sneak into the Endrin compound, find these worms, collect a small container full of them, and put that container on the 7.45 train to Arivel in two days’ time.

  On the easternmost side of the Endrin perimeter, there is a drain, a sewerage tunnel that spills into the river. If someone were to go into this drain and climb up through the first manhole, they would emerge in the open air cultivation unit, which is where I believe the worms are being kept. There is no housing for employees in this area and there are no security cameras. You will be unseen at night.

  If you wish to accept, I will pay generously in cash.

  My name will not be given to you. Putting the worms on the train that I mentioned will be the only thing you need to remember.

  Seckry reread the email three times before he fully accepted what he was reading. They wanted him to break into Endrin’s headquarters? He’d be arrested if he was caught. And go through a sewer? He couldn’t imagine it.

  In bed that night, even though his body was exhausted, his mind was racing. He kept trying to guess the amount of money that the job would pay, and more than that, he kept thinking of the self satisfaction he’d have at stealing something from Endrin, the company that stole his home.

  When he woke in the morning, he jumped into his computer chair and read the email again.

  No security cameras. No one around. No one would ever know.

  Seckry couldn’t believe he was doing this, but he started typing.

  I’ll get the worms for you.

  Seckraman

  He pondered over the send button for several minutes before hitting it.

  That was it. Done. He was breaking in.

  He suddenly felt panic flood over him. What was he getting himself into?

  Seckry spent the next day down at the arcade again, practising collecting items on the sample levels of Friction. For most of the day, though, he was browsing through Henrei’s avatar catalogue, fantasising about buying each and every one of the creatures on offer with whatever money he was going to get. There were all sorts of ogres, animals, robots and humans to choose from and each looked more exciting than the next.

  But when the evening came around, Seckry could do nothing but think about the task that lay before him. Twice he logged onto his computer and wrote an apology letter to his anonymous employer, whose email address was simply the letters ktk@skyfall.sf, saying that he was no longer available to do the job. But both times he stopped himself before sending.

  Soon enough, it was midnight, and if he didn’t leave now, it’d be too late. With hands trembling with anticipation, he grabbed a plastic food container from the kitchen and a large towel for the dirt, shoved them into his backpack, and left as quietly as possible. If his mum knew what he was doing she’d go insane.

  He boarded the monorail and sat alone in the empty carriage, whilst the flickering lights clicked on and off.

  A rail attendant joined him.

  “Well, well, we have a customer,” he said merrily. “Not often you find someone riding the monos after midnight.”

  “I’d like a ticket to the Riverside stop, please,” Seckry said shakily.

  “Riverside? By the Endrin building? What you doing round there? The closest thing by foot from that stop is the casino.”

  “Yeah, um . . . of course,” Seckry said. “I’m hitting the machines, you know.” He looked around uncomfortably while the attendant raised one of his eyebrows.

  “How old are you?” the attendant said.

  “Eighteen,” Seckry said unconvincingly. He usually had trouble convincingly people he was fifteen, never mind eighteen.

  “Eighteen huh,” the attendant said ponderingly. “Well here’s your ticket.”

  Just as the attendant was about to leave the carriage, he turned back and said, ‘Hey.”

  Seckry gulped.

  “Yes?”

  “I heard there’s a bit of a fault on the Golden Giveaway machines. Paying out a bit more often than they should be, you know? Just a little heads up.”

  “Oh . . . thanks,” Seckry said, swallowing his relief.

  When he exited the carriage, he followed the gullies around until he reached the river.

  It was stinking. It was hard to see much in the dark, but Seckry was sure there was a dead rat floating nearby.

  He waded through it as fast as he could until he reached the sewer he was looking for. He gave a quick glance behind him before pulling himself up into the echoing tube.

  It was even darker inside, almost pitch black, and he could feel wet, rancid effluent bubbling over his trainers. He ran his fingers across the wall to keep his balance, until he felt something furry and warm touch his hand, making him shudder and speed up. Eventually he found the sturdy coldness of metal. A ladder.

  He was trying to be as silent as he could, but lifting the lid made a slight grinding noise, and he couldn’t help but cough and heave a little as he emerged from the stinking pipe.

  He took in his surroundings. It was an awe inspiring sight.

  Every building in the Endrin compound was white, a pure bright white, dazzling in the glow of fluorescent tubes that were dotted around. Seckry had never seen anything so clean and perfect. It was like stepping into another world.

  Focus, he thought to himself. If he didn’t, he’d be caught, and there was no telling what would happen to him if he was.

  He scanned around him for any sign of worms but there were none. The floor here was concrete, but to his left was a gate with a warning above it.

  RINTIDE SITE. KEEP CLEAR

  Rintide. That was the name of the species of worm.

  Seckry passed through the gate, not hesitating for another moment. In front of him the floor was made of fluffy soil, and it was undulating with hundreds of little red lights. Were they the worms?

  Seckry had no idea about different species of worms, but he had never seen any that emitted bright red light before. He leaned down and sure enough, the little bright lights were worms, wriggling so frantically it looked as though they were in pain.

  He knew he had to be quick so he dropped to his knees and started scooping as fast as he could. Seckry couldn’t be sure, but there was something strange about the earth here. It was as though every handful was full of static electricity. It seemed to make the palm of his hand tingle unpleasantly. He noticed that as the worms were dropping into his tub, they were losing their colour, reverting to the burgundy-brown shade that Seckry usually associated with worms. They were also wriggling less frantically in the tub.

  As he was scooping, Seckry realised his arm was starting to go numb. He tried scooping faster but the numbness seemed to be spreading through his body and into his mind. He started to feel dizzy.

  “Don’t be sick,” he told himself quietly. “Don’t be sick now.”

  What was happening to him? He he had to get up and go before he collapsed face first into the mud.

  He clicked his container shut and dropped it into his backpack, then he forced himself to stand up and it took all his energy to do so.

  But as he turned to run, his heart froze.

  A breath.

  Someone was behind him.

  Chapter Eight

  The Girl in the Mud