Wajet got to the trigger before she did, and his shot smashed into the metal in a shower of sparks. “Harada,” he swore. The head withdrew, and a third impact hit the door, and the whole thing came down.
The dog wasn’t the worst of it; the dog was somewhere just above the creature’s waist, just a head and a single broken foreleg jutting out uselessly. The beast stood on its hind legs like a man, though those legs were large, powerful and hooved. A powerful tail whipped across the ground, and Yat realised—to her horror—it was a cnidocyte. The top half was the worst, though: a mess of flesh and fur from a dozen different animals. Screeching faces—cats, dogs, birds, horses—stared blindly out from it. The bulk of it appeared to be two men, merged at the collarbone. One head was twisted at an awful angle, and the top of its skull merged with the other head’s jaw. One arm was monstrous and clawed, and the other was withered and bent back. The whole thing was blanketed by patches of white fungus that seemed to twist and grow as she watched. It yowled and brayed and shrieked in a dozen voices as it took a jerking step towards them. It braced against the ruins of the door with its good hand while its tail pushed firmly against the ground.
She reached into it but its threads were impossible to grasp: dozens of different creatures all tangled together. She pulled anyway, but the resistance made her stumble, and she tasted blood—it was like pulling on a knot and making it tighter.
The concussive blast of Wajet’s gun made her ears ring. This bullet found its mark: it smashed into the beast’s chest and sent it reeling backwards. As the bullet sank in, an eruption of spores spurted out towards them. They came out as loose powder floating in the air, but coalesced immediately into a whiplike tentacle over the bullet hole. The new growth pushed the creature’s upper body back, and its vertebrae played an awful clicking melody. It took another step into the room, and the tentacle lashed out. She jumped back, and it swept through the air in front of her face, leaving a trail of spores hanging in the air behind it. The movement threw the beast off balance, and it staggered towards them, being pulled by the whip.
Wajet fired again and again, filling the air with spores. Yat could feel their threads: tiny little things, millions and millions of them—a city in miniature. They were reaching out to her, calling to her, but there was a hunger to them—they wanted to consume her, and take away everything that made her her and replace it with numbness and calm. It was close now, so close, following the pull of her breath towards her mouth and nose. She clamped her hand over her face and stepped back, but she moved too fast and her feet tangled together. She fell, and her head cracked against the cold warehouse floor. Floating lights exploded into her vision, and she had a moment of blind panic as her mind screamed they’re in your eyes the spores are in your eyes. She rolled along the ground, and heard Wajet fire off his last three shots.
The air was filled with spores: searching, searching. She grabbed one and pulled its thread; it went out and she felt its energy join her own—small, but so much larger than expected. They were bursting with life. Her head cleared, and she sprang to her feet: old roof rat reflexes she didn’t even know she still had.
She backed up, fired, and struck the beast in the side, below a mangled human leg. It staggered, and she fired twice more into the same spot. The spore expulsions twisted in the air and warped back around onto the wound, but the impact knocked the creature sideways. Its heads shrieked in awful harmony, and it toppled and fell, landing on its muscular hand. Its bones cracked as fungus filled the bullet holes and warped its body. It twisted over backwards, and one of its flailing human legs found the ground. It was bent-backwards on all fours: two horse legs, one human leg, and its monstrous arm. Its twin heads screeched at her with their foreheads scraping the ground and their hair dragging behind them. The cnida whipped around and wove back and forth over its back—tight, quick, powerful movements—like a scorpion’s sting. It struck at her and she jumped backwards. Her back hit the wall and the cnida hit her face.
The pain was worse than anything she’d ever felt: worse than being shot; worse than the protein broth; worse than taking in a whole city’s worth of threads at once. Every nerve ending shrieked and she felt her legs collapse beneath her, felt herself sliding along the wall, felt the spores rushing towards her, all hunger hunger hunger and she reached out for something anything just a way to not let them in and—
—jumped.
hurtling through endless night but not dead this time no not dead just taking a little shortcut through the backroads a road you couldn’t see unless you knew they were there unless you’d been there before unless you were broken and stitched back together unless you were—
Hello, little monkey.
I see you.
Her back sliding down the wall, but not brick this time—safe, comforting wood. When Sibbi had jumped, there’d been a profound sense of direction, and intent. With Monkey, it was like slipping through an unknown door in the back of the universe. There it was: Monkey Weaving. The way of secret roads. That’s how he stayed alive: even he didn’t know where he was going, so nobody could get ahead of him.
She braced a hand against the wall, and felt its energy flow into her, invigorating her. She couldn’t stop the flow, but she didn’t want to. Her cheek burned where the cnida had touched her, but the warmth flooding into her kept the worst of it from reaching her; it didn’t numb it, it simply overwhelmed it with its own fire. She reached out into the environment—no spores, thankfully. The room had a water heater in and not much else: it was only by sheer luck she hadn’t ended up inside it. She could hear the sound of running water moving through the pipes.
She needed to go back—Wajet was still in there. She had no love for the man, but she couldn’t let him die like that. Well, die wasn’t the word—she couldn’t let him get tangled in that. This whole thing was her fault: she’d unleashed something on her city. She’d done it by accident, but somebody else was trying to do it on purpose and there was more to come. She’d seen something when she reached out, deep within the boundless hunger: intent. It wasn’t mindless consumption: it was building something.
She tried to remember, but it was like punching fog: something that went up above the wall and above the sun and reached out with febrile tendrils into the heavens. Something whose shadow would darken the world. What else? A tree, a lake, a child: random images that meant nothing.
She needed to know where she was. She opened the door of the water-heater room and found herself in what looked like a hotel. Nice carpets, but covered in muddy bootprints. A tall woman in uniform pushed past her, and didn’t give her any mind; she recognised her from the canteen back at the Dock Ward Station, though they’d never really spoken. Another officer pushed past, then a third. They weren’t running, but they had their hands on their weapons and their eyes firmly forward. Yat kept her helmet’s brim low over her face and let them pass. The fourth officer was Sen.
He walked with a cane, swinging his left leg stiffly. He had bags under his eyes, and she could’ve sworn he had more grey hair than when she’d last seen him. She kept her brim low as he passed. His cane rattled as it struck the carpet: hollow, with something inside. Swordsticks were very illegal, but it wouldn’t surprise her. The man always had a trick up his sleeve. She leant against the wall and nodded at him as he passed—tried to look casual. The door directly across from her was open: the room was sumptuous, with red silks and intricate biowork. A large window cut across the far wall, and an officer in a gas mask looked down on the street below and took notes. He opened the window and peered down at something below. She could hear shouts from the street.
“You,” said Sen, “with me.”
Yat took a moment to realise he was talking to her, and she looked up. Recognition dawned in Sen’s eyes. She felt his threads light up: confusion, rage, aggression. She tried to reach out and pacify him, but her own heart was racing. She couldn’t use her magic, so she reached
out another way, and grabbed his wrist. Despite his injuries, he had a wiry strength. She held him there, sinking her chewed-up nails into his wrist. She looked him in the eye, and saw his fear. He wanted to hurt her, before she hurt him. A week ago, she would’ve felt the same. He’d had faith in her, even then—even when she didn’t have faith in herself.
The other officers had stopped, and were staring at her. They were all wearing their blues, but none of them were wearing badges. Sen’s uniform had a small tear where the pin had been. She could see snatches of his thoughts: chaos in the streets, uniforms shooting uniforms, survivors regrouping and trying to do the jobs they no longer had. The last of the good cops, united in accidental rebellion, realising that a good cop meant following orders, and following orders meant you couldn’t always be good. Something in the powder, something in the powder, something in the fucking powder. He was open to her, and she let herself open to him: her death, her dreams, the bottomless strangeness of the last few days.
She let him go, and took a step back.
“Do you trust me?” she said.
“Sure,” he said. She could swear his voice went up in pitch, a little mocking echo.
“Good,” she said, “you’re learning, fuckwit.”
He slumped. The other officers were staring at him, and he waved a lazy hand at them. They took their hands off their weapons and went back to work. He smiled at her, though his eyes weren’t entirely behind it. Wounds didn’t heal that quickly.
“Today has stretched the things I can believe pretty far,” he said, “so I want you to understand, Constable Hok, that when I tell you that was weird, it was weird even by the standards of a very, very weird day. Gods above and below, here’s hoping we’ve hit the roof on strangeness.”
He paused for a moment.
“It’s good to see you, kid,” he said.
The man at the window was shouting something to muffled voices down below. A few officers with rifles pushed past them, and threw open the windows. Their borers opened up with a series of wet thumps, and she heard a ghastly, inhuman shriek from the street below, followed by a familiar voice.
“GODS-DAMNED JELLY-ARSED MISMATCHED GALLOWS-BIRD,” boomed Wajet. “COWARD! WEAKLING! ARISTOCRAT! I’M NOT DONE WITH YOU, SIR.”
Of course she hadn’t gone far. She didn’t wait: she was halfway to the window by the time Sen has time to react. Judging from what she could see, she was about three floors up. No way to hit the ground from that height without hurting. No plan, just muscle and instinct—just the panicky animal that she’d spent half her life trying to silence. She hadn’t meant to run away, and she’d made a promise: no more running. The metres disappeared beneath her. There was a space between two riflemen, not much, but enough. She twisted to her side, and leapt—
All the voices in her head—all the incessant piping neurotic jabs—fell away. She was in the air, three floors up. The bridge stretched out across the Grand Canal. Wajet was on the far end, up against the warehouse wall, firing on the beast. The fungus covered most of its body—it was almost unrecognisable but for the awful harmonic shrieking of its twin heads, hidden somewhere within its undulating mass of spores and flesh. Wajet’s left arm hung limp and swollen at his side. His gun lay on the ground, and the monster stood between them.
She closed her eyes. The city was alive with energy: people and animals and plants. It was everywhere, the everywhere-ness had always been the problem. So many things, which made it impossible to do any of them. So many decisions, all of which ended with her doing nothing. She reached out—
—Wajet, fading, screaming, insensate—
—Fea, curled in a corner—
—a bird, somewhere in the distance, seeking, seeking—
—Sen somewhere behind—
—houses, houses, houses—
She grabbed a house by the threads, and pulled. Wood and stone shattered as a tendril thick as a tree-trunk shot out towards her. She grabbed it: it bent with her momentum, but resisted just enough to slow her fall. She could feel threads within it tearing, and she felt the pain inside her own body. She hit the cobblestones on her shoulder, rolled, snatched up Wajet’s gun and rose firing.
The shots knocked it off balance again, and it swung around to face her. It didn’t have human eyes any more: instead, a monstrous pustule in the centre of its chest leered at her. There was something cancerous about its pale, soft flesh. She’d lost too much already. She didn’t trust Wajet, but she liked him despite herself. Maybe that was enough. She’d spent her life not trusting; she’d spent her life being scared. It was a defence mechanism, and not one without its reasons, but it had outlived its gods-damned welcome.
“This is my city,” she roared, “this is my home.”
She was still inside the house, and the houses were connected: a network of thick hyphae below-ground, wispy strands that grew through every crack in the rock. She grabbed, and pulled.
The city came to life; the houses in the square twisted and broke their bonds. Some shrivelled, and some grew. The street shattered, and a hundred arm-thick mycelia burst up and wrapped around the beast where-ever they could find purchase. It toppled, and tried to rise but the vines held it fast to the ground. She was linked to it now. She didn’t have the strength to pull its knotted threads apart, but she didn’t need to; the city itself had a hold on it, and she had the city.
The thing wasn’t done, though: she could feel its malice pulsing white-hot. It heaved against the bonds, and tensed, and tensed, and—
—released, ejecting a massive cloud of spores into the air. The white plume rose and, at its apex, fountained outward. She grabbed at their threads but there were millions of them, each one bursting with power. She burned, and again felt her skin crackle, her eyes melt, her body cook from the inside as a torrent of magical power flowed through her. She was on her knees, with her hands pressed flush and hard against the ground. She could see the burn manifesting on her skin: a rash of red welts breaking out at her wrist and swiftly flowing up her arm, crisscrossed like streets on some vile map. She was losing control of the houses. Somebody grabbed her. She screamed—a combination of pain and surprise. It wasn’t the beast, though. One of Wajet’s arms was limp at his side, but the other was wrapped around her shoulder. She didn’t know what he was doing, then she felt it: the magic splitting between them, diffusing through multiple bodies. She was still connected with the city network, and reached into the hotel and found Sen. He seemed to sense her somehow, and the power split again. The burn inside her guttered out. There were red weals along her forearms, following the path of her veins and scars. The thing on the bridge lay still. She was alive.
She turned to Wajet.
“Did it work?” he said. She realised he couldn’t read the threads like her: that he’d seen distress and grabbed her—that he’d just known the right thing to do. He was the last man in the world she’d expected it from.
She nodded, and he grinned.
“Sibbi told me about that trick,” he said. “Some things, you can’t do alone.”
She stood, and brushed herself off, and turned back to the hotel. Sen stood in the window, holding a breathing mask up to his mouth. He gave her a tentative thumbs-up, and she waved at him. He started to return it, then froze. The men in the windows raised their weapons, pointing at something in the distance, and opened up with their long guns. Yat followed the arc of their fire, and saw—
—across the canal, coming out of the mist: a hundred more beasts, a thousand: an army of twisted flesh down the street. How many people had the spores taken? How much work had it taken to fight just one? As they charged down the street, a cloud of white spores followed behind them, so thick it left an oily sheen in the air. A shudder rolled through her and she sensed it again: a bird, seeking, seeking.
Wait, mist? It roiled up over the canal walls, so thick she couldn’t see her own hands. Across t
he canal, the shapes of the advancing flesh were lost in it: just lumbering, gibbering silhouettes. Another dark shape, closer now, carving through the air. A wall, a mountain, a beast of masts and rigging with a dog-headed mermaid beneath the bowsprit. The Kopek filling the entire width of the canal. Its boards scraped against the sides with a splintering of wood. Displaced water rushed over the canal walls, spilling into the street. Yat didn’t have time to brace for it, and the wave washed over her. Through a mouthful of filthy canal water, she saw the bowspirit clear the bridge and for a moment—an impossible, illogical moment—she thought the ship was flying, that it was going to go right overhead. Then, the figurehead hit the bridge railing. Wood on wood, and she was part of the circuit: Sibbi, Ajat, the Heart, the Crew—all together with her, spreading the magical load. Through the haze of pain, she could feel their panic.
—we’ve come out the wrong side, what the fuck are those?—
—the keel’s too low, we’re taking on water—
—PORT BATTERY, FIRE—
She heard a ripple of a half-dozen blackpowder roars. The first of the creatures was outside the cannons’ arc and was already crossing the bridge, leaping over the body of its fallen comrade. Yat’s magic was still inside the houses. At once, she let them go, and pushed everything she had into the figurehead. The dog’s face warped, split, and spread roots through the cracks the impact had made in the bridge. They expanded, forcing the tortured wood apart. The bridge groaned, twisted, then shattered in an explosion of wood and stone. The thing on the bridge tried to lunge at her, but lost its balance as the wood and stone came to pieces beneath its feet. The figurehead had exploded outwards into a bushel of wooden lances, and they pierced it in a dozen places. What had once been a dog-headed mermaid cracked under this new weight. It fell, and the speared monster fell with it, and they both hit the water with a crash. She let go. Some of the creatures were still standing, but a burst of disciplined fire from the Kopek send them scattering off into the alleyways and out of sight. Giving chase didn’t seem high on the priority list.
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