by Martin Kee
Another man got out of the vehicle, wearing the same black armor as the one holding her by her shoulders. He opened the cage, letting the door bounce off of Dale’s boot before stopping it. He pulled a piece of black cloth from his belt and pulled it over her head, then bound her hands in front of her with rope.
“What about the goggles?” the man holding her said.
“It won’t matter. It’s a short drive.”
She felt herself lifted into the air before sliding along a smooth metal floor. The guards closed the door. There was a pause, before one of them chuckled.
“You know, we could have driven by that same tree a hundred times and I never would have noticed it,” said one of the soldiers. Skyla thought she smelled a hint of cigarette smoke through her hood.
“Good timing that,” said the other. “I think she was sleeping or she would have hidden better. Good thing those goggles were nice and polished eh?”
They had a good laugh and then Skyla heard them walk around the sides of the vehicle, pump the primer, and start up the ancient-sounding engine. It didn’t sound anything like a steam car, and Skyla began to wonder what other things in Rhinewall were completely different, more advanced or downright alien.
The vehicle moved and she slid along the floor of the cage. The corpses beside her rattled against the bars as the shredded armor bounced.
Sounds became different: echoes and footsteps, the rattling of carts, the buzzing of electrical wire. She heard people on a busy street, their voices low and conspiratorial. She could feel them looking at her. The vehicle’s engine coughed and sputtered up a winding road that tossed her against the bars painfully. The air was saltier, with a distinct fishy smell, nothing like the machine oil and coal soot she was used to. The birdcalls were seagulls instead of Bollingbrook pigeons.
There was a series of sharp corners and then the truck slowed again. One of the drivers got out and did something with a gate. It squeaked open and they drove through as it closed behind them.
What little light that leaked through the black fabric before was gone now, and Skyla could only imagine herself in a tunnel. They seemed to be driving down a very long spiraled slope.
When the vehicle finally came to a stop and the doors opened, Skyla cowered into the back corner of the cage. She could tell from the echoes that they were in some kind of cave.
There was a scraping noise from beside her and she realized they were removing the bodies. She heard the ragged strips of armor scrape on the bars.
There was a new voice now, a woman’s. “She did this?”
“To those two, yeah,” said one of her drivers.
There was a pause and the faint sound of a pencil on a clipboard.
“And that one?”
“He was the informant. Idiot got the two of them killed.”
“I see,” she said. “Well, take them all into holding. I’m sure Ostermann will want to study them.”
“What about the third?” asked the soldier.
“He’ll want to have a look at that one as well. How did you find her?”
“Funny story, that,” said one of the men. “She was asleep, of all things. Had the goggles right on her head. Glinted in the sunlight and Verant saw ‘em. If it had still been foggy we probably would have driven right by her, but Verant has a good eye on him…”
“That’s fine,” she said, scribbling with a pencil again. “Good work, both of you. The Guild owes you for your service.” There was an awkward pause. “I can take it from here.”
“We had orders—”
“You are under Guild Authority in here,” said the woman, her voice suddenly stern. “Thank you again.”
Skyla could hear the men leave as the woman spoke into the back of the truck.
“Are you Skyla?” she asked.
Her voice had that same tone that Skyla always hated. It was that insincere who’s-a-good-little-girl tone. She nodded, sniffling.
“My name is Dr. Stintwell,” she said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
Skyla shrugged.
“Can you crawl out of the van?” she said. “Slide toward my voice and I’ll get that hood off.”
Skyla paused for a minute and then slid herself across the slick metal floor. When she reached the ledge she dropped her legs over and sat. There was a tug from the top of her head and the hood went up like the curtain of a stage. She expected to squint at the sunlight, but there was none. The dim chemical lighting from the walls didn’t hurt her eyes.
The woman was thin, pretty, her blond hair in a bun. She wore glasses and a white lab coat. She smiled at Skyla as the hood came off.
“There we go,” she said. “Let me get your hands now.”
She pulled a small pocket knife from her pocket and carefully cut the bonds on Skyla’s wrists. She reached for the chinstrap of the goggles and Skyla’s hand stopped her.
“I just need to check your head,” she said. “I promise you can have these back.”
Skyla let her remove the leather cap, slipping the strap out from the tiny buckle with thin fingers. Stintwell even went so far as to place them in her backpack for her, only regarding them for a moment.
“Now,” said Stintwell. “Would you mind following me?”
Skyla followed the woman past a darkened garage and through a metal door underneath a dim red light. Once in the hallway, Skyla winced at how bright everything became. The corridor was blinding compared to the cave she had just emerged from.
“I can’t even see any shadows,” said Skyla.
“That’s the idea,” said the woman as she led her down the corridor.
“Where are we?”
“This is where the Tinkerer’s Guild has been doing some very important work for The Church, work I hope you’ll find interesting enough to help us with.”
“Why should I?”
Stintwell looked at her. “We aren’t all soldiers. I’m sorry if they scared you.”
“How am I supposed to help you?” Skyla asked, still squinting in the white light that seemed to come from everywhere.
“Because you have a talent none of us have.”
They walked a little further and arrived at a plain white door. There was no window, only a handle that stuck out from the painted surface. Stintwell opened the door and showed Skyla inside.
There was a white table and two white chairs, all of it bathed in that same brilliant light. At the far end of the room was a long flat examination table that was raised from the floor.
“Why don’t you have a seat on that bed back there,” she told Skyla.
Skyla went to the exam table and hoisted herself onto the edge. Stintwell felt her head with delicate hands as she studied the girl’s scalp.
“You got a bit of a bang in the van,” she said.
“I hit my head.”
The woman pulled on a handle that had been hidden in the wall. It unfolded into a narrow drawer, from which she plucked a small mallet. She tapped under each of Skyla’s kneecaps, which to her amazement caused her feet to jerk upward. Skyla looked at her legs as if they were separate living entities, then giggled.
“You’ve never been to a doctor?”
“No,” she said. “I’ve never been anywhere.”
“Until now,” Stintwell added with a smile. “Quite a journey.”
Skyla only nodded. It was true. Everything felt alien and strange. She could have been dreaming.
After the examination, Skyla was taken to the table in the middle of the room where she sat at a chair. Stintwell went to the wall and pulled out another hidden drawer.
“Why are the lights so bright?” asked Skyla.
“You said so yourself,” said Stintwell, returning with a stack of cards. “So you can’t see any shadows.”
“Why don’t you want to see the shadows?”
“We can talk about that after I do some tests,” said Stintwell, taping the stack of cards on the table to make them even. “First, I want you to tell me what you see.”<
br />
The woman held up a card and to Skyla it looked like a crudely drawn bat made of ink splotches. She said so and Stintwell wrote the answer down in her clipboard. She did the same thing with all the other cards until they were done with the stack.
“Are you hungry?”
Skyla was always hungry. The loud grumble from her stomach made her blush. Stintwell smiled.
“Let’s go to your room and we’ll get you something to eat.”
Skyla’s room was as white as everything else in the lab. The bed was a raised square with a cushion on the top. There was a small alcove with bathroom facilities. All of it was as white and sterile as a sheet. The thing that Skyla found odd was that the corners of the floor, ceiling and walls were rounded. There were no straight edges and even her bed was slightly rounded and very soft.
“Why is everything round?” she asked.
“That’s so you don’t hurt yourself,” she said.
Or anyone else, she thought she heard the woman say or think. Stintwell seemed unsettled by the question and didn’t meet Skyla’s eyes. Her second shadow, faint as it was, quivered.
“How long do I have to stay here?” she asked.
Stintwell took a breath that seemed more like a sigh and sat down on the bed, motioning Skyla to sit beside her.
“What if I told you that this place can provide anything that you need,” said the woman. “It can be your new home. There’s plenty of games and books—more books than you could read in your whole life. And the people here are very nice, Skyla. They’ve been wanting to meet you for a long time.”
Skyla blinked. “Me? But they don’t even know me.”
“They do, Skyla. They knew your mother.”
Skyla’s breath caught in her throat. “You knew my mother?”
“I didn’t,” said Stintwell. “But there are people here who knew her. They knew your aunt as well.”
Skyla had so many questions she felt paralyzed. She only stared at the woman, her mouth agape.
Stintwell’s eyes twinkled behind the glasses. “Now, what are you hungry for?”
“There’s a choice?”
“I can go check at the cafeteria if you want,” said Stintwell getting up. “I hear they make a good bratwurst on Tuesdays. You make yourself at home in the meantime.”
The door closed behind the woman and almost sealed itself to the wall. Skyla sat in the white on white room and shrugged off her rucksack. Why hadn’t her mother told her about this place? It was so clean and warm and full of food. And the woman was so nice compared to the soldiers. She should have grown up here.
But why did they cover her head with a bag? Darker questions bubbled to the surface. Why were they underground and why were they afraid she would hurt herself—or others? Do they really think I’m a monster too?
Was it possible that they thought the shadows she read were their actual physical shadows? Now that would be pretty silly, to make a place this nice, all because you thought that the shadows on the wall were the shadows that followed you.
And did they really expect her to stay here forever? Skyla got up and walked to the door. There was no handle on the inside, only smooth white metal. Skyla felt a slow, dull thump of dread in her chest. She was trapped until Stintwell came back. She was a prisoner, not a guest. She remembered the hood.
But why? Where would she go even if she did know where she was being kept?
And they knew about her mother and Rhia. They seemed to know about her as well. Maybe it was worth playing along until she got answers. Then she would figure out how to escape. Skyla decided that she might as well get a free meal out of it in the meantime.
As she thought this, a strange tingle ran down her spine. From deep in the back of her mind, Skyla felt as though a giant—huge and living—had just stirred, pleased at her arrival.
Chapter 29
Gaining entrance into the city was as easy as dropping a couple of coins into eager armored hands. The dock guards looked as though they hadn’t had a decent meal in a while.
John couldn’t quite decide what was so odd about Rhinewall. It was beautiful in a dreary sort of way, with tall gothic towers that disappeared into the fog; narrow, meandering paths wound around sad looking willow trees in the sea mist; black and copper cables crisscrossed overhead, stretching from tower to tower like a giant playing cat’s cradle. The city wall loomed behind them, gray and green swirls covering its face, scarred from the bitter salt air.
When he did figure it out, he leaned to James and whispered, “It’s built on top of another city. You can see where they paved over sections!”
“Keep your voice down,” James said as they walked through the streets.
“But don’t you think that’s odd?” said John. “Look at that building there. You can still see metal girders where the stone has chipped away. It doesn’t match.”
“It’s an ancient city, Father. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if there were layers of construction. The last thing we want to do is stick out, so stop gawking.”
“And the electricity,” John continued. “Where do they get it all?”
“That,” said James, “is not a bad question at all.”
They looked upward at the cabling, black and twisted, curving through pipes and alleyways. It all eventually ran toward the center of the city. There was no central cathedral in Rhinewall, just a large spire that housed much of the Tinkerer’s Guild. Below it was a token church, small and stonework, dwarfed by the massive building.
“It’s the most likely place to look,” said John.
“Have you even thought about how you are going to ask?” said James. “Or are you just going to start talking to people, asking if they’ve seen a lost girl?”
“Or kidnapped…”
“Or kidnapped,” James added. “Who are you even going to ask?”
John frowned and headed onward, past a sign that read ENTERING TALON DISTRICT.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. “But there’s a church. Maybe I can reach some common ground with the clergy here.”
“If you need help persuading anyone…” James said, then pulled a flap back on his backpack, exposing the folded rifle, curled into its metal gears and cogs. Compacted into itself, the gun looked like a clockwork curiosity more than a firearm.
John looked at the gun, then back at James. “James, I don’t think that will be necessary. This is the technological stronghold of The Church. I’m with The Church.” He smiled and patted James on the shoulder. “Relax. I know you haven’t been around people much, but I’ll talk us through things. Don’t worry.”
The Talon district was similar to the wedge-shaped districts of Bollingbrook, only much more rundown. It was a mess of crumpled buildings and random trees that reflected decades of neglect. The fog was thickening by the minute, but they could still make out the distant loading structures of the docks where the city slid into the sea.
They passed people standing in the streets, listless and staring. Those that actually moved did so in a mechanical fashion, as if sleepwalking. The people who walked beside them acted as nursemaids, speaking softly into their ears.
“What is wrong with everyone?” John asked under his breath as they passed a man sweeping the street absently.
John noticed eyes watching from some of the windows far above. Most of them vanished when they saw him looking back. He began to wonder what it was about this place that made everyone hide after dusk.
A line was waiting to enter one building that was unusually square in shape with odd-looking gothic spires jutting out of it. The people stood as if in a bread line, most of them with large bags under their eyes. A sign on the door read CONFESSIONAL.
John was going to say something to James before a silhouette moved in the darkness, startling him. James moved his hand toward the folded rifle, but relaxed when the figure only rose to a height of four and a half feet. It was a girl, her face a painting in soot. Her ratty hat bled greasy hair from every corner.
<
br /> “Hi,” she said, standing directly in their path. Her mouth was a brilliant white crescent underneath the grime of her face.
“Hi yourself,” said John.
He felt a tug on his elbow and turned to James, who was shaking his head slowly. The girl was walking backwards in front of them, pacing them even if James made a conscious effort to veer away.
“Either of you like jewelry?” she said. “I have some for sale.”
“No,” said James, holding the folded gun now. The priest looked at him, appalled.
“We don’t have a lot of money,” John said apologetically, trying to ignore the obvious unease from James.
“I’d disagree, I know you bribed the guards.” the girl said. Her tone reminded him of Skyla, witty and sardonic.
“What’s your name?” John asked her.
“Gil,” she said. “My parents called me Gillian.”
“And how do you know we bribed the guards? I didn’t see you at the docks.”
She gave a coy shrug. “A little bird told me.”
“Do little birds tell you lots of things?”
“Little birds tell me things all the time. Just last week a seagull told me to look in the runoff for a boat. And when I did—hey, come back!”
James picked up his pace as they exited the tunnel, his eyes darting up at the windows. Gil began walking beside them. The dim light revealed torn clothes that all borrowed their color from the same palette of browns and dirty grays.
“Where are your parents?” asked John. “You’re out awful late.”
“They’re not my parents anymore,” she said in a voice so cheerful, it made John shiver. “My father anyway.”
“Why’s that?” he asked.
They passed under a streetlight and he realized, as the light splashed across the girl’s face, that one of her eyes was completely white, like a marble.