Osiris

by E. J. Swift

  Two hands grabbed his shoulders, toppling him backwards. He lashed out. His elbow contacted—something—someone. A cry was stifled. The return blow, hard and fast, caught him in the ribs. He wheezed. A hand clamped over his mouth, halving his air. He struggled and wrenched the wrist away—a surprisingly thin wrist—but his assailant already had an arm against his throat and was dragging him backwards. Vikram reached around and punched behind him. The blow returned a muffled grunt. They were at the edge of the boat. Vikram tilted backwards and he realized his assailant was using Vikram’s own body weight as an anchor.

  They tumbled overboard together, hitting the water with a compact splash. Vikram went under. The cold immersed him. His lungs seared with salt. He broke surface, gasping. Snowflakes poured onto his face. Arms wrapped once more around his chest and a voice whispered in his ear, “Quiet now. We’re getting you out.”

  The cold was paralysing. He could not find the energy to speak, let alone fight. The assailant’s legs kicked under him with strong movements. He was towed steadily away from the boat.

  One moment he was looking at the boat, the next a billowing sphere of flames. A fiery cloud blossomed—it seemed to hang, for a few, infinite seconds—and then a shower of sparks rained over the surface. Hot ash sprayed Vikram’s face. He did not think to wipe it away. He barely noticed his assailant hauling him into another vehicle. He was staring, mute, at the spot where his boat had been. The backs of his eyes prickled, and he felt a rush of sadness.

  “Lie low,” whispered the voice again. “You were being followed. They will come to see what has happened.”

  It was just a boat. He knew that. Vikram turned his head away from the destruction and saw his opponent’s face in the last of the firelight.

  “Ilona?”

  Incredulity wiped out anything else. The girl, Nils’s girl, was crouched low inside the boat. It was a tiny boat, and Ilona was inches from Vikram. She spoke urgently.

  “Tell me Vikram, this is very important. They will be using you to find us. There was probably a tracker on board your boat. Is there one on you?”

  “Ilona, what the hell are you—”

  “Are they tracking you, Vikram?”

  “Yes. Yes of course they are. Back of the neck. You can only feel it if you know it’s there. It’s like a disc…”

  He pulled down his scarves and felt the cold thrill against the patch of bare skin. Ilona took something out of a pocket. He felt her gloved fingers push against his neck before the air numbed his skin to all sensation.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Dampening it. Done.” She pulled the scarves back up. “Keep low.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “The unremembered quarters.”

  “Why are we going there?”

  “That’s where Adelaide is. Don’t worry. Nils is there.”

  “Nils? What’s he got to do—”

  “No more questions, Vikram.”

  Ilona began to row. His journey continued in silence. The shock was impacting on him now, physical and mental. Fate was playing havoc with his soul tonight. He felt sick.

  Every few towers, Ilona eased into an offshoot waterway and stopped.

  “Look.” She pointed. Vikram saw the dull shadow of a patrol boat crawling past. Searchlights arced from their prows.

  “If a searchlight comes over, get in the water,” Ilona muttered. “These days they shoot dead bodies for fun.”

  The night had come alive at last. The blizzard was pierced by intermittent gunfire. Muffled by the snowfall, it was difficult to pinpoint from where the sounds came. Vikram was full of questions, but all of Ilona’s concentration was on the boat. The air felt choked with halted conflict.

  He saw Mikkeli, perched on the end of the coracle, her feet trailing in the water. She was made entirely of snowflakes and foam.

  Keli? Is that you?

  Oh, I’m here Vik. I’m with you every step of the way. Always have been.

  Stay with me, Keli.

  But she didn’t speak again. Soon she too drifted away from the raft, and the faint plash of Ilona’s oars in the snow-filled night was the only proof that they were both alive.

  “Ilona? Is Drake safe?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about—”

  But she wouldn’t know Shadiyah, or Marete and Hal, or Hella, or old Mr Argele.

  They were approaching the unremembered quarters. Not even the shanty-boats or the dealers came here, only the dregs of destitution. These quarters were cursed.

  “We’re here,” said Ilona.

  The crooked tower loomed overhead, an absence where the snow did not fall. This was the one they said was inhabited, not by people, but by something else. The one that had burned. He imagined the ghosts clinging to the walls, their hands like suckered amphibians. He thought he heard them whisper. About him? To him?

  There was no decking. Part of the wall was broken and the sea surged inside. Ilona steered the boat through the gap. Inside, the sound of her oars echoed back at them and water ran off the walls in small streams.

  How could he possibly get Adelaide out without a boat? And shouldn’t Linus have known that the rebels would find the tracker?

  Ilona rowed through the flooded rooms until they reached the stairwell. She switched on a torch and secured the craft to the rusting rail.

  “This way. We’ve blocked the other stairwells, this is the only way up.”

  Vikram followed her up the crumbling steps. The water logged in his upper clothing was beginning to freeze and he crackled when he moved. Every step was an effort. Ilona held the torch in front of them. They progressed slowly. Everywhere Vikram looked the building was falling to bits. Black powder fell away when he brushed the walls. Despite the freezing temperature, the smell of stale dead things reached his nose. Preserved carcasses of half-eaten animals lined the steps. Ten flights up Ilona’s torch flared on a man sitting bolt upright, his eyes wide and accusing but no life left in their gaze.

  They kept going past the corpse. Vikram’s muscles were trembling with fatigue. He lost track of the floors and was disorientated by the time Ilona said, “This is us.”

  She knocked on the door. There was a pause, then an answering knock from the other side. Ilona replied with a more complicated pattern. Vikram heard the sounds of furniture shifting and then the door scraped open.

  “Vik!”

  Something hard and furry flung itself at him. He disentangled himself from the pair of arms and found himself looking at the dark eyes and slightly squashed nose of Drake. She was grinning from ear to ear. His answering smile was wobbly with relief.

  “I told you he’d make it,” Drake flung back over her shoulder. “Get inside, Vik, you’re freezing.”

  The room was dark except for the torchlight and the glow of a heater, around which the others were gathered, bulked up in shapeless layers of wool and hide. Ilona went straight over to Nils. He lifted his hand to his shoulder and she squeezed it and Nils said something to her Vikram didn’t hear. He recognized Rikard, the guy Drake had said hello to that night in the bar. So there’d been something to it after all, or there was now. There was a third man that he did not know.

  Rikard and the stranger were staring at Vikram openly, but Nils did not look at him.

  “Hi, Nils.”

  “Vik.”

  For a moment, the tension between the two men was like salt on a wound. Slowly, Nils stood up and crossed the room. Nils hesitated. Then he lifted his arms and engulfed Vikram in a hug.

  “You got out,” said Nils. His voice was gruff.

  “You got me out, it seems.”

  Nils glanced around.

  “Yeah, well, long story.”

  Vikram had the same sinking sensation he had felt talking to Linus. There was something else going on here, something he did not yet understand. Drake’s grin began to falter.

  “Long time no see, Vik,” said Rikard. Hostility there, Vikram thought. He met the other
man’s eyes squarely.

  “Yeah, it’s been a while.”

  “You dealt with the boat?” The third man spoke to Ilona, curtly, but his eyes flicked to Vikram. He wore no hood or a hat and his head was shorn; he was either immune to the cold, or it was a statement.

  “It’s gone,” Ilona said.

  “You’ve checked him for trackers?”

  “One on the neck. Dampened. I can’t get it off, those things stick.”

  “That’s Pekko,” Drake murmured.

  “What do you mean stick?” Vikram said uneasily.

  Pekko gazed at him. “The Citizens use semi-implants as trackers. Don’t worry. You’ll get it off once we’re done here.”

  An icy pool was forming around Vikram’s feet. The heater was beginning to melt the ice in his clothes. Its warmth, coming out of the cold, was almost an assault. He was starting to feel giddy.

  “So what’s going on?” he asked. “You’ve got Adelaide here?”

  Drake’s smile dropped away. Nils frowned. Suddenly Vikram wondered if even his best friends did not trust him. He was acutely aware of his appearance. His clothes, even wrecked by water, had a different cut. His hair felt clipped and wrong. He had a stamp on the back of his neck.

  Pekko broke the silence.

  “Nils, check him again, get him new clothes.” He gave the orders in this cell, then. Was Pekko the coordinator that Linus had described?

  “Oh—” as they turned to move. “And don’t touch this wall—it’s live.”

  Vikram glanced back. Pekko was standing, his hands thrust into his pockets, a smile curving his lips but not parting them. Vikram looked at the wall. It was damp. He thought he saw a spark, but in the murky light and his current state of disorientation, he could not be certain of what he was seeing.

  “Sure,” he said.

  Nils took a torch and led Vikram into the adjacent room. The torch flickered over rows and rows of metre-high counters. The strip lighting over each unit was broken, the glass long stolen and wires dangling down, frozen into twisting spirals. Vikram recognised the layout of the space. He had seen it in working greenhouses.

  “We’re using this for storage,” said Nils, indicating a unit where a few blankets were folded and stacked. There were sealed containers of food, a toolbox, a couple of pans, a disconnected Neptune.

  The door swung closed behind them. Vikram grabbed Nils’s arm.

  “What’s going on in there?”

  “It’s a fucking awkward situation,” Nils hissed.

  “Then tell me about it!”

  “They don’t trust you. Pekko. Rikard. The people running this show. Here, change into these.”

  Nils handed him a bundle. Vikram stripped off his dripping clothes, retrieving the medicine given him by the nurse, and changed quickly. The new clothes were shabby and didn’t fit well, but they were warm. Someone must have placed them near the heater before he arrived. Drake, probably.

  “Why did they get me out if they don’t trust me?”

  “Because you’re one of ours.”

  “Precisely!”

  Nils hesitated. “The Citizens must have offered you a deal.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Pekko thought you might have—accepted.”

  “Who the hell’s Pekko, anyway? I thought there was some kind of rebellion group—is it just you guys?”

  Nils leant against the door and folded his arms.

  “Vik, this is more complicated than you realize. Pekko’s in charge here. And it’s not just us, he’s working for Maak. Remember Maak? The guy Mikkeli used to take deliveries for? He’s way up the ladder now. They call the group Surface, as though it’s a movement, like Horizon, but it’s not. It’s Maak—or his people—that own Ilona. He probably brought down Juraj. And he’s orchestrating this uprising. They’re playing a game, Vik. It’s about more than territory now, it’s about people. Getting Adelaide—and now you back—it’s a statement, you see. I mean, there’s never been a hostage situation before. Why d’you think we’re holed up like lice in this cursed place?” Nils spat on the ground to ward off any spirits that might be listening. “You should also know that Pekko hates Citizens,” he said. “Pathologically.”

  “So I’m a Citizen now, am I?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Do you trust me?” Nils did not reply. “Nils, do you trust me?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, course I do.” Nils scooped up the pile of Vikram’s old clothes and began to wring them out. “I suppose we’ll have to burn these.”

  “Great, we can have a fire.”

  “Look, just be careful, okay? You’ve been away for a while. Things have been happening. Riots have been on the cards for a good while now.”

  “Yeah, well, I wish you’d said something before.”

  Nils shrugged.

  I wasn’t here, thought Vikram.

  “You look terrible,” Nils said. “I guess it was hell in there.”

  Silence fell between him; Vikram trying to find a way to communicate what could not be explained, Nils no doubt trying to imagine a place which could not be imagined.

  “Thanks for getting me out,” Vikram said. “I was going mad.”

  “Yeah.” Nils’s eyes dropped. “You can guarantee Pekko wants something from you. He likes making people do things. That’s why he sent Ilona to get you, not me or Drake—as if she has to prove herself before they’ll let her go.”

  “Right.”

  It came as no real surprise. He felt only resignation, and a dull ache, where another hook had been planted in his body for someone else to pull upon, in yet another direction. Linus Rechnov, Maak and Pekko—between them they would tear him apart.

  They were about to go back when Vikram said, “Where is Adelaide, anyway?”

  Nils scowled. “In another room. She’s a pain in the ass.”

  Vikram forced a laugh. “You think so, huh?”

  “Never stops talking,” Nils mumbled. He stopped. “Vikram, tell me honestly. Have you got a thing for that girl?”

  “Honestly? No.”

  Nils looked at him and Vikram wasn’t sure his friend believed the lie.

  “Why?”

  Nils did not answer.

  They gathered around the heater, Nils and Ilona huddled together, Drake next to Vikram. Scraps of material and a scissored tarpaulin had been wedged into every crack around the window-wall board, but there was still a draught at Vikram’s back. Damp char was everywhere. The others had tried to sweep the floor but the stuff came off on his clothes and all of them were sooted with it.

  “Can someone explain the situation?” he asked. “I didn’t get much out of the Citizens.”

  “It’s fragile,” said Pekko tersely. Vikram kept his gaze neutral. Clearly he was gaining no votes of confidence from Pekko. “The city is withholding kelp and fish supplies. We’re already on rations and rumour has it supplies are running out, so as you can imagine, panic’s set in. I hear Market Circle yesterday was a bomb site.”

  Rikard was warming a flask by the heater. He sipped from it, testing the temperature, then put it back.

  “What about our fishing boats?”

  “Skadi curfew,” said Nils. “One or two boats are getting out but it’s a risky business. We’ve already lost one.”

  “And the uprising? Coordinated or independent?”

  “There’re three cells,” Nils explained. “All answering to Maak. An inside team are guarding our lines to the desalination plant, so we won’t have a repeat of last time.” Drake’s eyes lifted to Vikram’s, and he knew that all three of them were thinking of Mikkeli’s last insane action. “A second group have taken S-801-W, the greenhouse. And we’ve got the Rechnov girl.”

  “The bargaining chip.”

  “Exactly.”

  Logistically, it was not a bad plan. Maak, or whoever was orchestrating the cells, had obviously taken previous mistakes into account. It sounded like they were serious. Rikard tested the contents of the flask a
gain, and passed around a thin, salty broth.

  “So what are we asking for?”

  “Release of the fish and kelp boats, and the skadi to withdraw. For now.”

  “D’you think they’ll accept?”

  “They’ve let you out,” drawled Pekko.

  “If they think you are dead, that’s an advantage,” said Ilona. “It shows we have the edge.”

  “We’ll offer them a deal,” said Pekko. “The girl in exchange for our demands. Which will be incremental. Really, she’s very useful. But I suppose you’ve discovered that already.”

  “We’re rigging an exchange site,” said Drake, too quickly. “Coordinating with Sorren, at the greenhouse.”

  “Sounds like everything’s under control,” said Vikram.

  “Oh, it is.” Pekko smiled. “As you see, whilst you’ve been fraternizing with Citizens, we’ve been busy with the real business of revolution. So why don’t you just sit back and enjoy the show.”

  He kept his mouth shut and his ears open. The smaller room of the tower was the hub: this was where they ate, slept, and contacted the other cells. Pekko had a scarab and Vikram guessed that Maak’s black market contacts had been at work. The heater was wired to a damp hole in the wall, hooked onto a rogue current. The electricity must run up an insulated vein in the tower from deep underground, or perhaps there was still some life in the burnt solar skin. Every few minutes a drop of water ran down the wall and Vikram saw blue sparks leap from the hole. He got used to it after a while. The sparks and the mistrust.

  They huddled around the heater, playing cards. Every hour, someone went to check on Adelaide, and everyone else got up and stretched. Wary of Nils’s words, Vikram was careful not to ask about Adelaide in front of Pekko. Once he caught Drake aside and managed to say, “Is she okay?” Drake shrugged and said, “What do you think?” and then Pekko was looking at them and he couldn’t say anything more.

  A couple of hours after he arrived, Rikard organized food, warming a few of the cans on the heater. It was a processed stew, the contents unidentifiable, and not enough of it. Vikram ate slowly. The stew lodged in his stomach, an indigestible lump.

  Pekko’s scarab buzzed whilst they were eating. The noise sounded odd, its robotic repeat echoing around the room. Pekko went into the storeroom to answer the o’comm. Drake rolled her eyes at Vikram, but he noticed that she checked straight after to see if Rikard had seen the look. Rikard was the unknown quantity. Vikram remembered nothing about the man except for his face; he’d known a lot of people involved in the last riots.