City of the Falling Sky

by Joseph Evans

  Eiya . . .

  It was the only thing, the only word that was going through Seckry’s mind.

  Eiya . . .

  “Eiya,” he said softly, his voice cracked.

  Someone squeezed his hand. He opened his eyes slowly.

  “Mum?”

  Coralle was sitting in a chair next to him. She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead.

  “Eiya’s not here, my love. I’m sorry.”

  Seckry let out an agonised cry. His stomach felt as though it was being ripped out of him. He had failed. She was gone.

  “Hey, hey, hey,” Coralle said affectionately. “Don’t worry, love. She’ll be here in a moment.”

  Seckry shot up. “What?”

  “Hey, calm down. You need to lie down. She just went to get a drink, that’s all. She’s been in here all night with you. I told her she needed to get some water, she looked so dehydrated, the poor girl. She’s been worried sick about you.”

  “Eiya’s alive?”

  “Of course she’s alive. She’s been reading a book to you. Gedin knows why she thinks you’d want to hear it, though. Some awful thing about a monster and a load of pus.”

  Seckry laughed the happiest laugh of his life.

  “She’s alive,” he said again, and tried to sit up.

  It was only then that he realised where he was. He was in a hospital bed, surrounded by beeping machines, and with a few nodes strapped to his bare chest.

  “Hey, hey, lie down” his mum said. “I’ll go and get Eiya for you. You obviously want to see her pretty badly.”

  His mum left the room.

  When the door reopened, Eiya’s eyes shot wide open. She threw her things down and flung herself around him, her can of pop piercing on the floor and spraying a fountain of fizz into the air.

  Seckry squeezed her tight. It felt as though the life was filling back into him. Her cheek was wet from tears. She was pressing her whole body so close to him that Seckry could feel her heart beating fast against his chest.

  “How are you here?” Seckry said. “The innoya all died, didn’t they?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, they died, yes, all of them. It doesn’t make any sense. But I’m here. I’m here, aren’t I? I thought I was just dreaming, that I was dead and I didn’t realise it.”

  “You’re definitely here,” Seckry said, and he touched her face. It was as real as anything he’d ever felt. Soft and smooth and hot and wet.

  “Seck,” she sobbed. “When we were in that chamber and Darklight smashed the gimmypug blood I thought that was it. I’d thought I’d never see you again, I thought I’d never see anything again. And then when you fell back out of that gateway and lay unconscious on the ground I thought you were dead.”

  “What happened to me after I disappeared?” Seckry asked.

  “You were only gone for about two or three minutes, and then you were flung back out of the gateway and you just lay still on the floor. Vance had regained consciousness and he took you in his arms as Jenniver led you both out of the front entrance of the building where they got you into an Endrin van and drove you straight to this hospital.”

  “Are the others okay? Tenk, Tipps and Loca?”

  “Yeah,” Eiya said reassuringly. “They’re fine”

  “What happened to Danney?” Seckry asked her. “And Darklight?”

  “After dropping Darklight’s body to the floor, Danney just sank to his knees and stared into space, as if there was no energy left in him. He just remained still the whole time as everyone moved around him. Jenniver called a team of people to take him away and keep him safe for a while, away from the press and anything else. She’s got a team of people working now to clean his body of toxins from the drugs Darklight was giving him, and to remove the shocking devices from underneath his skin. With Darklight, Jenniver called up a couple of patrol officers that she knew weren’t corrupt and they arrived within seconds to cuff him and take him away. He had to go to hospital first too but they’ve released him already. He’s been sentenced to life imprisonment for mass murder.”

  “He’s already been treated? How long have I been here for?”

  “A week.”

  “A week!” Seckry said, aghast.

  “Seck, you’ve been in a coma,” Eiya said softly, and her eyes welled up with tears again.

  “And the innoya. Their bodies . . .” Seckry said. “What happened to them?”

  “Jenniver’s trying her best to arrange some kind of proper burial and funeral for them.”

  “And Endrin?” Seckry asked. “What’s going to happen to them now that Darklight’s been arrested?”

  “It’s still going to run. All of the blame is on Darklight. But I get the feeling it’s going to be in slightly safer hands.”

  “Really? Who’s in charge?”

  “Jenniver. She was voted in by a senior panel of Endrin head office. And Sanfarrow has agreed to return to work. He’s going to continue work into finding alternative energy supplies for the city. Eco friendly ones, that is. Also a hundred and sixty Skyfall Patrol officers have been charged with corruption. It’s still going on, they’re saying it’s going to take weeks, maybe months to find everyone involved in the bribery scandal.” Eiya took a breath. “So Seck . . . what happened? Did it work? Did you go back to the year zero?”

  Seckry had been so consumed with relief and bewilderment about Eiya still being alive that he hadn’t even given himself time to consider what happened on the other side of that gateway.

  “Yeah . . .” Seckry said. “I went back. To the very point that Darklight wanted.”

  “Did you see Seckraman?” Eiya asked, fascinated.

  Seckry began to speak a couple of times but his words were struggling to come out. He swallowed and took a breath.

  “Eiya . . . I am Seckraman.”

  It took a few moments for Eiya to understand what Seckry was telling her, but when she did, her eyes widened so big that Seckry could see his own reflection in them.

  “The glove,” Seckry explained. “It had all that power stored up from when I stuck those frayed wires in it just before I got sucked into that gateway. I couldn’t get the glove off but I could feel that the power was gonna burst out of it, so I just aimed it towards the sky where there were no people in the way. Eiya, I think I destroyed the meteor. Everyone around me was asking me if I had been sent from Gedin. I tried to tell them no but they weren’t listening.”

  “So that’s why that really old painting of Seckraman had him wearing white robes with the Divinita Project symbol on it,” Eiya said excitedly. “And that’s why everybody at Endrin were insisting that the symbol was an original design invented by them. They were telling the truth. They had never seen that painting, had they? Seck, that was a painting of you, wearing the Divinita Project protection suit.”

  They locked gazes for a few moments and then burst into fits of disbelieving laughter.

  “All these years I’ve been wondering how I’ll ever live up to a name like Seckraman,” Seckry said, “and that Seckraman was me!”

  “A whole religion . . .” Eiya said distantly. “A whole religion that worships you.”

  “Well, what they worship is something that never existed. Gedin’s son.”

  Seckry had to stay in hospital for the next three days so the doctors could monitor his condition, despite his persistence in reassuring them he felt okay.

  Tenk, Tippian, Loca and Kimmy all came to visit him, and brought with them two tickets to an upcoming over eighteen’s Friction match, one for Seckry and one for Eiya, which raised Seckry’s spirits considerably, but they also brought news that Mr Gobbledee had been allowed to return to school as the headmaster, which Seckry wasn’t sure if he was comfortable about. He had gotten on well with the man, but if what they knew was correct, he had murdered someone.

  His mum was surprisingly calm about everything, which made Seckry feel uncomfortable. He kept expecting her to explode and tell him what an idiot he had been to g
et himself involved in such dangerous things, but she didn’t. When he asked her if she was mad, she shook her head gently and said, “Mr Vance has explained everything to me, love. You did what anyone would have done. You fought to save the one person that mattered to you in the world more than anyone. Now, if I had been here to stop you then I would have done. But maybe it’s for the best that me and your sister were away. Maybe it was fate, eh?”

  Seckry also apologised for cutting her and Leena’s work trip short.

  “Oh, that’s not something you’ve got to apologise for, love,” Coralle said enthusiastically. “Your sister was doing my bleeding head in. I’m feeling a lot happier since we got back.”

  In fact, his mum seemed to be in a very happy mood, and Seckry wondered what had happened to her. It was only when Seckry and Eiya visited Vance that he found out.

  “Your mum and I spoke about your father, Seckry. She was angry, so angry at him for leaving. But she listened to the story I told you, and I think . . . I think she’s beginning to believe it’s a possibility.”

  They sat and talked with Vance for an hour and a half, in which Seckry explained everything that had happened on the other side of the gateway that night.

  “Of course,” Vance said, his eyes darting around as if they were following an invisible fly. “Those paintings are of you . . . Seckry, this . . . this is incredible.”

  “Who would have thought it?” Seckry said light heartedly. “The great Seckraman was just an ordinary boy who happened to be in the right place at the right time.”

  But Vance shook his head.

  “Seckry, it may seem to you that you’re an ordinary boy but you are not. There is something within you, some hidden strength that kept you alive. Since the incident happened, I’ve been researching everything about Hindglubber’s theories and . . . it shouldn’t have worked. Humans aren’t supposed to be able to travel through the time illusion. Travelling through time should have ripped you to pieces. But it didn’t. You travelled through time and came back again. Seckry, you are a . . . very extraordinary boy.”

  As they were leaving the school, they came across Mr Gobbledee, who was sorting out some papers in the corridor.

  Seckry and Eiya tried to avoid his gaze. Seckry felt like he couldn’t look at him in the same way anymore.

  “Seckry!” the headmaster said. “Eiya, too. How did your final weeks of term go? I hear you’ve become quite the famous faces around here. You are a brave lot, I can tell you that. Much braver than I.”

  “We’re fine, sir,” Seckry said dismissively, and continued walking.

  “Uh . . . I actually need to get both of your signatures at some point, to confirm that you’ll be staying with us here at Estergate next year. Would you like to do that now?”

  Seckry sighed.

  “We may as well get it out of the way,” Eiya said quietly.

  “Sure,” Seckry said to the headmaster, and followed him into his office.

  Seckry and Eiya both remained standing. They had no intention of staying longer than they had to.

  “I realise it’s going to take quite some time for me to regain your trust,” Gobbledee said, sadly. “Here, it’s just these small forms.”

  Seckry stared at the paper in front of him, but even though his eyes were reading it, his brain wasn’t. All he could think about was Gobbledee murdering someone.

  “Did you do it?” Seckry blurted out, without thinking. “Is that why you have these outbursts? Because you were given the chlorocalm injection? Did you murder someone?”

  Gobbledee sat down very carefully and took a breath.

  “It’s not something I want to discuss, I’m afraid, Seckry, I–”

  “Don’t we have a right to know?” Seckry said. “You’re our headmaster.”

  Gobbledee swallowed.

  “Would you like to sit down?” he said.

  Seckry and Eiya sat down quietly and waited for an answer.

  It took Gobbledee a few moments to speak.

  “It was when I was a young man. Twenty two at the time. Back then I was living in a run-down area known as Heathhollow, over in the west partition,” he said. “There was trouble every day. Muggings, shootings, stabbings, you name it. It was awful, but I didn’t have the money to live anywhere else. I’d see things happening in the street through my window, and most of the time I’d let it pass, but one time . . . one time was different.”

  Gobbledee cleared his throat.

  “There was this homeless girl who wandered the streets, begging for money from passers by. She must have only been around twelve at the time. I saw her every day. She looked awful. Cheekbones sticking out of her face because she was so gaunt with hunger. I could just about afford to feed myself, but whenever I could spare something, I’d give it to her. And many a time I’d take her out a hot drink to warm her up on a cold winter’s day. And then . . . one night I could see her across the street, begging a group of drunken men for money. They were laughing at her and grabbing her tattered jumper. And then . . . and then one of them began dragging her into an alleyway.”

  “Oh no,” Eiya said softly. “They weren’t?”

  Gobbledee sighed. “I grabbed a kitchen knife and ran after them, hoping to scare them away. But they were drunk and without any fear. They attacked me and tried to wrench the knife out of my hands . . . and that’s when it got stuck in the stomach of the one who had a hold of her.”

  Seckry made to speak a few times before saying, “You were just defending that girl?”

  “I never meant to kill anyone,” Gobbledee said. “I just couldn’t sit back and let them do that to her.”

  “What happened to the other men?” Eiya asked.

  “They ran away as soon as they saw the blood. And nobody ever saw them again. Passers by phoned the Patrol and I was arrested and sentenced to seven years in prison for unintentional murder. That’s when they gave me the chlorocalm injection.”

  “What happened to the girl?” Seckry asked.

  “As the Patrol were dragging me away, I told her an address to go to. It was the address of my sister, who I knew would look after her. And all my time in prison I told myself that when I got out, I would make sure that I’d help her, make sure she was never homeless again, and that she’d have a job somewhere decent.”

  “And what happened when you got out?” Eiya asked. “Did you ever see the girl again?”

  “Oh yes,” Gobbledee said, a kind smile appearing on his face. “I see Imelda Butterkins every day.”

  Chapter Thirty Six

  The Innoya