by Rajan Khanna
She grabs my hand and pulls me through the hallways. She knows this place, it seems, so I let her lead the way. “You don’t look so good,” she says.
“I’ll survive,” I say. “Though it’s hard to breathe.”
She looks at me gravely. “Probably pneumothorax from the stab wound. Air is pressing on one of your lungs.”
“Great,” I say. “Good thing I have two of them.”
“I can fix it. Try to, at least.”
“We don’t have time.”
We pass some people making for the exits, but they leave us well enough alone. Aside from the fanatics, like Surtr, everyone is looking to save themselves. Otherwise, it’s a mad dash behind Miranda. I have the rifle I took from Surtr, and the knife is secured through a loop in my shirt.
Finally, we reach one of the upper levels. It looks like some kind of lab. More high-tech and, well, Clean-looking than Miranda’s setups in the past. This must be the center of the Cabal’s power.
We rush in. Miranda moves around the tables, rifling through papers, and grabbing small portable data drives.
I see the armed woman in there before Miranda does. The stranger stands over a table, stuffing papers and electronics into a bag.
I lift the rifle. “Miranda.”
She looks up in time to see the woman advance.
She’s tall and dark-skinned, her hair pulled back in a bun. A dark-blue jumpsuit. “I already have the data,” she says.
“It’s over, Blaze,” Miranda says. “Your city is falling apart.”
Blaze shrugs. “Cities are replaceable.” She smiles at Miranda. “People are replaceable.”
Miranda shakes her head. “That’s what you don’t get, Blaze. They’re not.”
Blaze looks amused. A man walks up behind her, older, with gray hair and a beard. He holds a pistol in his hand and pens in his shirt pocket. I make sure to cover them both.
“Dimitri?” Miranda says.
It’s his turn to shrug and smile.
“He’s been one of ours all along,” Blaze says. “It was, I have to say, the best of my ways to deal with you. I figured you couldn’t resist another prisoner, a confidant. Maya said that you had a friend. Or more of a father figure. A Russian?” Blaze tilts her head to the side. “Seemed like an easy thing to give you a surrogate.”
“You bitch,” Miranda says. I can hear the hurt and betrayal, the disbelief in her mind. And, I’m sure, self-recrimination that she was so easily duped.
A look of disgust comes over Blaze’s face. “You are, like so many of the weak, easily led by your emotions,” she says. “You care too much, Miranda. It leads you astray.”
“You are a monster,” Miranda says.
Blaze’s smile grows wide. “The only monsters here are the ones we breed. Speaking of . . .” She whistles, and Miranda starts to look around in alarm.
The way she’s looking is getting me worried now, and I try to keep the two Cabal members covered while also scanning the room.
Then I catch sight of it. Coming up behind us.
The unrestrained Feral stalking calmly into the room.
* * *
It’s one of their creations, not a stringy, wiry Feral, but one bulked up with muscle, larger than it should be. This one, strangely, wears clothes, a set of tight shorts over its genitals, and a tight t-shirt over its torso. But it’s just walking toward us. Not bounding or crouching, not gibbering or howling. It’s not even eyeing us greedily. But there’s something there. Something held back.
I swivel the rifle toward it, aware that there are two armed enemies behind me now, but even more aware that a mutated Feral is in the room, full of the Bug and built to kill. Right now it’s not close, but it soon will be.
As I turn, I hear another whistle, and the thing goes from calm to violent in an instant. My bullets tear through where it was, and then it’s on me, arms outstretched, long nails filed down to claws. I do the only thing I can and block it with the rifle. The impact pushes me backward, and I fall over a desk and onto the floor, pain hissing and crackling from me like a wet log in a fire.
Dimitri appears to my left, gun raised, and I’m forced to dive for the gap between two desks as he starts shooting. The Feral is still coming for me, and two enemies with guns are just waiting for a decent shot.
Not to mention I’m beat to shit.
Blaze yells, “Leave him!” Dimitri moves away. He and Blaze walk to the door and hurry out of the room.
I pop up and fire a long burst at the Feral, who scurries for cover.
Miranda beckons to me. “We have to go after them,” she says. “Quick!”
She rushes out the door, and I get to my feet and run.
The whole room shakes. Plaster and stone and whatever else is holding this place up fall into the room. I reach the door at a run, but the ceiling has fallen in, and as I try to pull the door open again, it doesn’t budge. The solar lights flicker.
“Ben!” I can hear Miranda yelling my name over and over on the other side of the door.
“Go!” I scream back, even as I run for cover.
The yelling stops.
Leaving me alone, in a closed room, with a Feral.
* * *
A loud thump behind me. A grunt, then a roar.
I turn to see the Feral vault over one of the desks. It lands in front of me.
I fire the rifle at it, but it’s already moving to one side and I miss. It darts forward and sweeps up a long-nailed hand, pulling the rifle from my grasp.
Its other hand rakes my chest. My injuries cry out in protest, but the leather and fur holds and blunts the worst of the nails.
Bracing myself against a table, I kick out with both feet and connect, sending the Feral backward, but also sending a streak of pain through my injured leg that makes me cry out.
I roll over the table and onto the floor, my clumsy landing sending waves of nausea through me. I scuttle forward, looking for some kind of weapon now that I’ve been disarmed.
I grab for anything I can reach off of the tops of the tables—boxes, glass, machines that are small enough to heft—and I hurl them at the Feral. Several of them connect, but the beast just shakes them off, still advancing.
The knife I used on Surtr bangs against my chest with the movement, just about where my collapsed lung is. It’s a weapon, but I can’t use it on the Feral. Too much blood. Too much risk.
But I can throw it.
I pull the knife loose, then stand up, already swaying with the effort. Gripping the blade between sticky fingers, I let it fly. The blade arcs and the Feral doesn’t even try to move away. Then it hits, at least the side of the knife does. It clatters to the floor. The Feral hisses.
Then he pounces.
It closes the space before I can move, one of its hands gripping my arm, the other going for my throat. I pull back, and its momentum pushes us both over another table and to the ground in a crash of falling machines and broken glass.
Too close! The voice screams. Its blood. Its saliva.
One of my arms is pinned. Its weight presses down on my chest, and it’s all I can do to suck in a thin trickle of air.
Then it opens its mouth, a look of hunger in its eyes, and I know it’s going to bite me.
In desperation, I reach for my pocket with my free hand, find the last nail there, and toss it into the Feral’s mouth.
This throw works better than the knife. It flies past the teeth into the back of the throat. The Feral coughs, then pulls back and shakes his head. The pressure eases off of my chest and my arm. I reach for a rack of slender tubes and smash it into the side of the Feral’s head. Again. Again.
Then I scramble away as it’s reeling. If I can get to the—
It grabs my trailing foot and pulls. I slide backward. I grab for anything I can reach. My fingers come down on a shard of glass.
Damn you, Dad, for making sure I always laced my boots all the way up.
I twist around, taking the shard, and bury it in the
Feral’s leg, behind the knee. Then I hit it in the groin, trying to use whatever strength I have left in me.
It drops me, reaching for the glass still in its leg.
I don’t know if I can get to my feet, but I crawl, as quickly as I can, to where the rifle was.
The Feral yells again. From the corner of my eye, I can see a massive arm smash the contents of another table. Broken glass and papers fall on top of me as I crawl.
There, ahead of me, I see it in the flickering light. The rifle. I stretch out to it.
The Feral’s foot comes down hard on my back.
For a moment I can’t see, can’t hear, can’t think. Whatever damage Sarah had done to me comes back, worse this time.
My hand flails for the rifle, fingers brushing against the grip, not sure if any of the rest of me can move, only knowing that my fingers can. I spin it around toward me, slide it backward, even as the Feral pulls on my foot again, reeling me in like a flopping fish caught on a fishing line.
The Feral roars, feeling its triumph, the impending kill. Blood drips into one of my eyes, and I only hope that it’s mine, or else none of this will matter.
And I still need to get Miranda out of here.
I manage to get the barrel of the rifle pointed behind me, where the Feral is. I can’t get the rifle off to the ground, so I swivel the muzzle toward the thing’s foot, and I jab for the trigger.
The rifle spits out a burst of bullets that deafens me, but the Feral drops my leg. I turn to see it bracing itself on one of the tables, a red, dripping ruin where one of its feet used to be.
I pull myself forward with my hands and arms, hauling the rifle with me, hoping that there are still bullets left.
The Feral comes after me, actually lifting its bloody stump as if it still were a foot.
I continue crawling forward.
The stump comes down, and the thing doesn’t even seem to notice.
Then the stump slides out from under it, slipping on the blood, and it falls to the ground.
It braces itself on its arms, then lifts its head and snarls.
Calling on what little strength I have left, I jerk the rifle forward and jam the barrel into that cocksucker’s mouth. Then I pull the trigger until the body falls limp to the ground and all I hear are clicks.
I drop the rifle and try to sit up. My legs feel numb, my back feels like a swollen knot of pain. Just pulling my knees in almost makes me pass out. But the legs move. I get up to my hands and knees and crawl to the door. There’s no time to lose, and I don’t have much gas left in the tank.
Time to get Miranda out of here.
CHAPTER THIRTY
MIRANDA
The building trembles, and parts of the ceiling rain down into the hallway. I turn back to the door and try to pull it open but it won’t budge. Ben. He’s all alone in there with the Feral.
I pull again, but the door is stuck in the frame and I can’t get enough leverage or bring enough force to bear.
Ben!
“Go!” he yells. Only I don’t want to leave him.
Then a voice in my head says, You can wait and do nothing or you can go after Blaze and Dimitri.
It’s not really a choice.
“I’ll come back for you, Ben.”
I run up the stairs, taking two at a time. The whole building is falling apart. Walls collapsing inward, ceilings falling down, but I focus on reaching the roof. Climb. Climb. Climb. Then . . .
The door to the roof is open, and I bound out of it into open air. Blaze and Dimitri are there, looking out over the city. Blaze holds a lit torch in her hand, the fire bright in the oncoming darkness. All of Valhalla is tilted, the part of the city to our right angled toward the ground. If I’m not mistaken, the city is rotating. Whatever forces set it in motion must have imparted spin to it, and so things on the city will be pushed toward the edges.
Airships fly in the distance, most of them departing the city. That, too, might have set it spinning as they decouple from the edges. A few hover over it, though, trying to pick up people or supplies, or maybe just looting now that everything’s turning to shit.
Blaze and Dimitri turn toward me, a look of surprise, maybe even admiration on Blaze’s face.
“You are persistent,” Blaze yells. “I considered taking you with us, but I know that you will never stop being disruptive. It’s too ingrained in your nature. Normally that’s a good thing. We prize those who don’t accept the natural way of things, who seek to change it. You are one of the best I’ve seen.” She shrugs. “It’s like you were made for this.”
She moves forward, points the torch at me with her right hand. “But you have no guiding principle except insipid old-world morality. Help everyone. Cure everyone. What then? How will this world we’ve inherited sustain so many people? How will everyone eat? How will they live? Without order, you are left with chaos. Violence. Crime. Injustice.”
“You want to talk to me about violence?” I ask.
She inclines her head. “We use it. Yes. You prune back the leaves and the flowers so that the fruit you get has more flavor. We use it like a scalpel, to cut out what isn’t wanted, what threatens the whole organism. Not the optimal solution, maybe, but your way would be an indeterminate cutting, all over the body, with no goal or reason.”
“Your way is wrong,” I say.
She smiles and shakes her head. “I’d ask you to show me the evidence, but I’m afraid we don’t have any time left. It’s time you go, Miranda.” She steps forward, almost as if to embrace me, and thrusts her hand forward, the blade snapping free from its arm sheath.
Only I’m ready for it. I never forgot her showing it to me. I grab that wrist and twist it to one side. Then I punch her in the throat.
She falls back, choking, her hands going up to her throat. The torch drops from her hand.
I smile.
Blaze leaps at me, her face covered in shadows thrown off by the nearby torch. “You little bitch,” she says, her voice a harsh rasp.
I grab her arms, but she sweeps my leg, and I fall with her landing on top of me. The back of my head slams into the roof.
My senses take a moment to come back. Blaze straddles me, the knife still extended from her wrist. I hold it off with both of my arms. The torch is next to us, casting her face in red. Something dangerous and wild lights her eyes. Something that maybe was always lurking behind the cool exterior and the rational front. Something hot. The source of her ambition and her command.
“You could have had so much,” she says. “Power. Influence. Whatever tools and instruments you wanted for whatever you wanted to study.” She leans her face close to mine. “You could have had a place.”
“I already have a place,” I say. I let go of her wrist with one hand and she presses down, preparing to stab me.
With my free hand, I grab for the torch and slam it into her face.
The heat of the fire scorches my face as it passes in front of me. I hear her skin and hair sizzle a moment before I smell it. Her scream is more of a growl, and she falls back, batting at her face.
I roll toward her and swing the torch at her a few more times, the hits sending embers flying.
“Stop!”
I freeze, my arm pulled back, still holding the torch. Dimitri has the pistol aimed at me. “Drop it,” he says.
I let the torch fall to the roof.
“All this time,” I say. “All those nights, you were playing me.”
“All of them.”
I hold my hands out, palms up. “Was any of it true?”
A sour smile creases his face, and he shakes his head. “No.”
“You weren’t press-ganged.”
His smile becomes prideful. “I sought them out,” he spits at me. He waves the gun around. “You are so blind. So caught up in your fairy tales. You’ve seen the world. You’ve seen what it’s become. It needs order. It needs us.”
He lowers the gun.
“It needs her,” he says, looking at Blaz
e.
He raises the gun again. “It doesn’t need you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
By the time I reach the door, the crumbling of the building has done much of my work for me. I wriggle my way out through the new opening, feeling one or more of my ribs wobble as I press through. I crawl up the stairs, using my hands, feet, knees, and elbows. It takes all of my energy to push myself up, pull myself ever higher, running on half my wind. One eye is crusted with blood, despite my efforts to wipe it clean. I can still feel the bite of the glass embedded in my cheek.
I think there’s only one more floor, but it feels like the stairs are endless. I scrabble like an animal. Get the next arm over the next stair. Then a foot or a knee. Then another. Repeat that. All the while, I’m thinking of Miranda. At the top. Waiting for me.
I wish I had a gun.
I wish I had a working body.
I’ll just have to improvise.
Eventually I reach the top. The door is ajar, and I see two shapes out in the open next to a burning torch. One of the shapes starts to raise a gun, and I’m suddenly aware that the target is Miranda.
Something happens inside of me. Something white-hot and blinding. Something that burns through my whole body, and suddenly there’s no pain, I’m not tired, and everything is clear and precise. The phoenix, bursting from the ashes of my destroyed body.
Dimitri’s arm lifts as if underwater. I know I can’t reach him in time.
So I run for Miranda instead.
The gunshot cracks the air, somehow loud despite all the noise around us and the buzzing in my ears.
I collide with Miranda, sending her sprawling across the roof.
Then I’m falling, and I don’t know why.
A moment later, the pain hits me and all that fire fizzles out, leaving me, trapping me once again in the wreck of my body. I clutch for something, some thread of strength, some sense of where I am, but the pain blots everything out. I can’t breathe. And Miranda still needs me.
I hear gunfire in the distance. Big guns. Either down in the city below, or from the ships. I smell fire. It’s not safe. We have to go.
But my body won’t obey me.