City of the Falling Sky

by Joseph Evans

  “Seckry!” Eiya said exasperatedly, when Seckry entered the flat. “What on earth happened?”

  He explained everything and watched Eiya’s expression turn from worry to shock.

  “It’s kidnapping!” she said angrily. “They can’t do that, they should be arrested!”

  “This is Endrin . . . they do what they want,” Seckry said grimly.

  Eiya made to say something a couple of times, but no words would come out. She eventually punched the bed with her small fist.

  “I was a bright light on the security footage?” she said after a while.

  “I don’t understand it either,” Seckry said.

  “And this Jenniver woman recorded a secret message?”

  “She said the Divinita Project is almost at completion, and we have to find Ropart Sanfarrow to stop it. He’s the only one who has a key to the Divinita chamber, and he’s the only one that can explain all of this to us. And Kevan Kayne has been murdered by Darklight.”

  “What happens if we don’t find him? What if the Divinita Project is activated? What in Gedin’s name is the Divinita Project anyway?”

  “That’s the thing . . . we don’t know. That’s why we have to find Ropart Sanfarrow.”

  Seckry pulled the locket that Jenniver had given him out of his pocket. “She gave me this, too. She said to give it to Sanfarrow when we find him.” He unclipped the face, and inside was a tiny photograph of Jenniver with a man, an older looking version of the man in The Broken Motion’s photograph, Ropart Sanfarrow. They were pressing their cheeks together and smiling at the camera happily.

  “It looks like this Jenniver Layne and Ropart Sanfarrow were a couple,” said Eiya.

  Seckry’s mobile began vibrating in his pocket. He took it out and looked at the name of the caller.

  “It’s Vance,” he said to Eiya, and answered it.

  “Seckry?” Vance said, his voice urgent.

  “Hi sir.”

  “Seckry, I’m sorry this phone call is so late, but are you and Eiya both free tomorrow morning?”

  “Uh . . . yeah, I think so.”

  “I know it’s the weekend, but can you come to my office as soon as you can? I’ve discovered something about the innoya. There’s something I need to tell you.”

  “Okay,” Seckry said. “There’s something I need to tell you too.”

  “They were going to hypnotise you? Erase your memory?” Vance paced around his office the next morning, his eyes darting back and forth. “Dear Gedin, Seckry, it’s worse than I thought. I should have been able to do something, to stop them from taking you again.”

  “It’s okay,” Seckry said. “There’s nothing you could have done. You can’t watch over me all day long.”

  “Jenniver Layne,” Vance said. “She’s Darklight’s second in command. And she’s working against him?”

  “Sir,” Seckry asked. “How are we ever going to find Ropart Sanfarrow? He could be anywhere. What happens if we don’t? What is the Divinita Project going to do?”

  “Well Seckry, that’s what I needed to talk to you about.” He led them towards his desk, which was strewn with ancient books, scrolls and artefacts.

  “Are these all from the library?” Eiya asked.

  “The library? No. That’s where I had been going wrong. I should have realised it sooner, but the Great Library is monitored. It is censored by the government – a government that is at the mercy of Endrin. The reason why there is no information in the library on the innoya is because Endrin have removed anything that mentions it.”

  “Where are these from?” Seckry asked. Now that he was close to them, he could see how old the books really were. Some were falling to pieces and some were well preserved, though even the ones in good condition were caked in dust.

  “These books are from Professor Holdenbubble’s private archives,” Vance said.

  “Holdenbubble?” Seckry gasped. “Isn’t his stuff being kept locked away in his old study and sealed off from the public?”

  “Well, Seckry, remember I told you that I used to be a lot like you when I was younger, sneaking into places I shouldn’t have been? Let’s just say a little bit of my old self returned for one night.”

  “You broke in to the university?” Eiya said in an excited whisper.

  “It was the only way to get access to this material. As soon as I found out that the library was being regulated, I knew the only place in the city that would have uncensored books would be Holdenbubble’s study. And look what I found.”

  Vance smoothed his palm across the largest of the open tomes.

  “Innoya,” Vance read aloud, “possess tremendous power. They hold within them helitonic particles.” He looked up. “Just as we gathered, right? We think that Endrin are trying to extract helitonium from an innoya root?”

  “Yeah, that part we kind of guessed,” Seckry confirmed.

  “Well, we were right, except for one thing,” Vance said gravely. He flipped the page, which was wafer thin and yellowed in its corners.

  On the next page was a diagram of a woman, with blue and green swirls coursing through her body, like liquid smoke.

  “Who’s that?” Eiya asked.

  Vance leaned back to let them have a better look.

  “That . . .” he said. “Is an innoya.”

  It took both Seckry and Eiya a moment to speak.

  “Innoyas aren’t plants?” Eiya said slowly.

  “Indeed not,” Vance replied. “As is shown here, they are human beings. Human beings with one very important difference. Their bodies are filled with helitonium. It is in their DNA.”

  “Endrin are extracting helitonium from human beings?” Seckry said.

  “It seems like all the evidence is pointing that way.”

  Eiya suddenly turned away from them.

  “It makes sense, doesn’t it. This is the answer. This is why I was at Endrin.”

  Vance put a hand on her shoulder.

  “I’m an innoya, aren’t I?” she said.

  “It’s very possible,” Vance said. “It may explain why you showed up as a bright light on Endrin’s security tapes. The helitonium in your body could have been too much for the camera to deal with.”

  Eiya looked at her hands.

  Seckry didn’t know how to feel. His emotions were all over the place. If Eiya was one of these people, the innoya, then her family, her friends might be inside the Endrin complex right now, having helitonium extracted from their bodies.

  “The extraction process . . .” Eiya said to Vance. “Does it . . . hurt?”

  “I’m afraid . . .” Vance said cautiously. “I’m afraid it says here that people have tried to extract helitonium from the innoya before . . . and . . . the process extracts the very life force of their being. Helitonium is integral to their existence. It kills them.”

  Eiya’s eyes widened.

  “Whoever’s in there,” Seckry said sternly. “Whoever they’ve got captive, we’re going to save them, okay? We’re going to find Ropart Sanfarrow and we’re going to save them.”

  Eiya shook her head slowly. “We can’t. We can’t find him.”

  “Well . . . then we’ll just break our way into Endrin by force and stop this whole project.”

  “They would shoot us on site without hesitation, Seckry,” said Vance. “Forcing our way into Endrin is not an option.”

  “Then what do we do? We have to do something!”

  They stood in silence for a long time.

  “What is he doing? What is Darklight doing? Why is he extracting helitonium?” Eiya said eventually.

  “It sounds like the only person who can tell us is Ropart Sanfarrow,” Vance said. “But there is one other thing that I found in Holdenbubble’s study.” He unravelled a curled up sheet that was inscribed with a list of handwritten names. At the top of the page was the title, ‘The Society of Believers.’

  “The Society of Believers?” Seckry read.

  “Yes,” said Vance. “It seems t
hat Holdenbubble’s whole career was devoted to the study of helitonium, now that I’ve looked through his books, and this idea of a believer meant a believer in helitonium. This here has to be a list of all the contacts Hindglubber had made who believed in the existence of helitonium.”

  “Do you think we could find one of them and ask them about it? They might know something about what’s happening at Endrin.”

  “Eiya,” Vance said slowly. “Have a look at the names.”

  Seckry and Eiya both scanned the list until they reached the bottom, which read ‘Ederith Umbercotton.’

  “Umbercotton,” Seckry said. “That was the librarian who was murdered by the Rabbit Man.”

  “Oh my Gedin,” Eiya said. “And the others. This is them, all of them. These are the names they’ve been talking about on the news. This is every single one of the victims of the Rabbit Man, in the exact order that they were killed.”

  “And Holdenbubble’s at the top of the list,” Seckry said. “So it was the Rabbit Man that murdered him too?”

  Vance nodded grimly. “Nobody knew about the Rabbit Man back then, they just thought it was a random murder. But looking at this list, it’s hard to accept anything else.”

  “So who is this Rabbit Man?” Eiya asked. “And why would he want to kill everyone that believed in the existence of helitonium?”

  “To me there’s only one explanation,” Vance said. “The Rabbit Man is a hired hitman of some sort. Hired by someone who wants to keep the knowledge of the existence of helitonium all to himself.”

  “Darklight,” Seckry said disgustedly.

  Vance nodded. “Darklight fitted everyone in the city with a white chip, which seems to have been a last attempt at finding anyone who is innoya, but he must have been searching for years. And over those years it seems that anyone that has been talking about helitonium and the innoya aside from him has been headhunted and murdered.”

  Eiya sat down for a moment.

  “There’s something else I need to mention about Endrin,” Vance said. “This illusional time module I’ve been teaching my students . . . when I was doing some research yesterday I came across some personal information about the theory’s inventor, Dr Coronius Hindglubber. I found that he has not left his house for three years.”

  “Why?” Eiya asked.

  “Nobody knows. And nobody has been able to contact him. But reports say that about three years ago a group of men visited him at his home. A group of men in Endrin uniforms.”

  Seckry and Eiya glanced at each other.

  “I’ve looked him up on a map.” Vance continued. “He lives in the west partition. I’m heading over there later this evening. Would you both like to accompany me?

  “Let’s do it,” Seckry said.

  It was about an hour’s journey to the opposite side of the city. When they pulled up, Seckry noticed a single neon strip humming across the doorway which read, ‘PRIVATE PROPERTY KEEP AWAY.’

  They approached the door and Vance gave a firm rap.

  “Leave me alone! Haven’t you had enough fun throwing bricks through my window?”

  The three of them looked at each other.

  “We haven’t thrown any bricks,” Seckry said innocently.

  “You wretched kids have tormented me for long enough! Just leave me be!”

  “We’re not here to torment you,” said Vance. “We just want to ask some questions.”

  A grille on the door slid open and a pair of bloodshot eyes peered at them with intensity.

  “What do you want?” came the muffled voice.

  “We’re looking for Coronius Hindglubber,” said Vance.

  There was a momentary pause.

  “You’re looking in the wrong place!” and with that, the grille slammed shut.

  “Professor Hindglubber, we desperately need to speak to you,” Vance said forcefully.

  The grille shot open again and Seckry and Eiya both jumped a little.

  “Dr Hindglubber is dead! That’s all you need to know.”

  “Please,” Eiya begged. “I woke up inside the Endrin compound with no memory before that point. I need to know who I am. And I need to know what they were doing to me. We know Endrin visited you and we know they were interested in your theory of illusional time. We think you may be able to help us.”

  There was a long silence, and then –

  “You woke up inside the compound?”

  “Yes,” Eiya said. “In an area known as the cultivation unit. I was lying on a bed of earth that was alive with glowing red worms.”

  There was another silence, for so long that Seckry was about to knock again, but then came the sound of bolts being unlocked and chains being lifted.

  The three of them gave each other a quick glance of hope.

  The door opened inwards slowly, and a heap of masonry and dust dropped from the door frame.

  Coronius Hindglubber was short and thin and looked terrible. His dank grey hair hung sodden with sweat and clung to his pockmarked skin while his white vest was stained with brown streaks and littered with frayed holes. The smell of the house hit the group immediately. It was a mix of root vegetables and rot.

  “Come inside.” Hindglubber said. “Hurry.”

  “What did Endrin say to you when they came here?” Vance asked. They were seated around the living room, which was scattered with bottles of whiskey and wet patches of carpet.

  “They told me they wanted my work. My diagrams, my illustrations, my papers, everything.”

  Hindglubber shook his head, lost in his memory.

  “I told them no and they laughed. They said that if Endrin wants something, it’s not a matter that’s up for discussion. When they realised I wasn’t just going to give up all of my work they tied me to this chair and packed it all into their bags as I watched.

  “I couldn’t understand it. ‘What on earth are you going to do with my work?’ I said to them. That’s when the one with black, greasy hair told the others to leave.

  “He said to me with an excited smile, ‘Is it true? Is this all true, this illusional time?’ and I said, ‘Of course it’s true.’ He smiled and there was something dark, something deep and dark behind those eyes, something menacing. He said, ‘If time is just an illusion, then it would be possible, would it not, to bring something out of this illusional past and bring it into the illusional present?’

  “But I told him he was wrong. Something that is within the confines of the illusion cannot alter the illusion itself. There is nothing in the world so powerful that it can manipulate the illusion. ‘Oh I wouldn’t be so sure about that,’ he said to me.

  “It was then that the gravity of the situation fully hit me. If Endrin had, indeed, found something powerful enough to manipulate the illusion, the consequences of them doing so would be completely unknown.

  “You have no idea what you are meddling in,’ I said to him. ‘Reality doesn’t work in such linear ways. You cannot bring something out of the past and place it in the present. The whole fabric of the universe would be ripped apart. Who knows what would happen?’

  “But he just smiled. ‘Don’t bother contacting the Patrol,’ he said. ‘They won’t be interested.’ And he threw me a knife to cut myself free before leaving.”

  “Endrin can’t just break in and steal a lifetime of work,” said Eiya. “Why did he say the Patrol wouldn’t be interested? I’m sick of Endrin thinking they’re above the law.”

  “Well,” Hindglubber said grimly. “Endrin are above the law. The first thing I did was phone the head office of the Skyfall Patrol.”

  “What did they say?” Eiya asked.

  “They told me to forget it. Forget everything. To go away and never come back. They told me they weren’t going to help me and if I tried to take this any further I would be dealt with accordingly.”

  “The Patrol? Are you serious?” Seckry said in disbelief.

  “I had nowhere to go. I couldn’t run away. I shut my door and vowed never to open it agai
n.”

  “I bet they’re paying the Patrol to keep quiet,” Eiya said. “The filthy pigs.”

  “What do they want to bring out of the past and into the present?” asked Vance.

  “I don’t know,” Hindglubber said. “But they are fools. They cannot just bring something out of the past, no matter how they think they can do it. Time doesn’t work like that.”

  “Dr Hindglubber,” Vance said. “I think Endrin may have found something powerful enough to manipulate time. It’s called helitonium.”

  Hindglubber reeled in fear and shock. “Hel . . . helitonium?” he said.

  “The white chips they gave everybody? They were scanners, scanning people for traces of helitonium. It sounds like they found people with helitonium inside them, and they’re going to extract it.”

  “But helitonium is just . . . a myth.”

  Vance breathed out slowly. “Dr Hindglubber, you can spare us the act. You know just as well as we do that helitonium exists, don’t you?”

  Hindglubber’s lips trembled for a moment. “Yes. Of course it exists, though I’ve never come across it. You say Endrin have access to helitonic particles?”

  “We believe so,” said Vance.

  “Then . . . Gedin help us all.”

  After Vance had dropped Seckry and Eiya off at Kerik Square, they both sat on their beds talking for a while.

  Seckry couldn’t remember falling asleep, but he must have done at some point, as he woke up to the sound of ruffling carpet. He lay there with his eyes closed for a moment. Eiya must have got up to use the bathroom.

  But there was some other sound.

  Was it breathing? It didn’t sound like Eiya.

  He began to sit up and opened his eyes sleepily.

  He froze.

  Absolute fear engulfed Seckry’s body and he mouthed, “Eiya!” slowly, desperately, and silently.

  Eiya was grasped firmly in the arms of the hugest man Seckry had ever seen, her eyes streaming silent tears.

  “Gedin, no. Please. No.” Seckry shook his head as he saw the symbol on the man’s forehead.

  A cracked, deformed scar, red and painful.

  In the shape of a rabbit.

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  The Rabbit Man