Winterbay

by J. Barton Mitchell

  “He told the kids to leave you alone?” Mira guessed.

  Reiko shook her head. “He paid off Jason’s debts, all of them, gave them back their cut. We’ve been together ever since. So to answer your question, no. He didn’t make me go to the Helix. He asked me. And I said yes. Because I’d do anything for him. He was there when no one else was, even when he didn’t even know me. Wait here.” Reiko moved abruptly to the side and left Mira in the street alone to ponder the story. It certainly explained a lot—her devotion to Armitage, her fierceness, her cunning—but as rosy as she tried to paint it, it was still a sad tale.

  Mira watched Reiko walk to a huge freestanding wall made from the timbers of what used to be an old basketball court. Lights flashed there in a strangely hypnotic way, and groups of kids stood around it and stared. It was probably twelve feet high, and mounted to it, in various ways, were dozens of old televisions and computer monitors. Large screens, small screens, old tube sets with rabbit ears, monitors …

  One after the other, every few seconds, each screen flashed something new: images from the World Before. Pictures of landmarks, famous ones even Mira could remember. The Statue of Liberty. The Lincoln Memorial. Big Ben. The Eiffel Tower.

  There was more mundane imagery, too. Highways jammed full of automobiles. Airplanes flying in formation. Sporting events Mira couldn’t recall the names of. People in line at a movie theater.

  The images flashed, one after the other, and Mira couldn’t look away. The weight of each picture hit her in the same affecting way. She moved closer, letting the lights and the memories flash over her in the cold night air, standing and watching it all.

  Mira saw Reiko talking to a kid standing by the wall, where a line of cables from the screens met at a junction box. She handed him something Mira recognized. A memory stick, the kind people used to put in old digital cameras. A relic that had no meaning or use anymore … except in Winterbay, right here, at this wall. If Mira had to guess, she’d say that memory stick was full of additional images, just like the ones flashing there now.

  The kid took it and handed Reiko something in return, a payment or trade probably, but she shook her head, said something, and moved off before the kid could reply. It was a puzzling exchange.

  “Let’s go,” Reiko said as she brushed past Mira, continuing on down the street. “No more talking.”

  Mira looked back over her shoulder at the images again. The Washington Monument, the Space Needle, men riding horses on some kind of track, doctors in an emergency room.

  She’d always thought of Winterbay as a place where the world hadn’t moved on. She’d considered it backward, naive, futile even. This wall of imagery, of reminders of how things once were, should have confirmed all that, but somehow it didn’t. Seeing the effort it took to make the wall, knowing it was continually growing like some kind of joint historical consciousness …

  Mira wasn’t sure she could dismiss this place so quickly anymore.

  She walked after Reiko silently, staring behind her until the screens were buried and lost in the crowd.

  Underworks

  Mira followed Reiko’s flashlight through a thick, swaying darkness that smelled of fish and stale water and oil. The light revealed the jagged shadows of the almost one hundred aging, rusted boats that rested in this huge floating mausoleum.

  This was the Underworks, the original Winterbay, before it had been built over, the famous support base for the city above—and it was not a serene place. Everywhere, the rumbling and shaking of engines echoed, what was left of them churning the water through the dark, providing power for the city.

  The air was thick with gasoline fumes. There were vents somewhere, sucking it all out, but Mira still blinked away tears. Reiko, for her part, was much more comfortable; the foul air didn’t seem to affect her. The girl came here often, Mira figured, and that by itself was interesting.

  They’d entered the Underworks through a secret entrance at the back of a closed repair shop. A hatch in the floor had dropped them down into the bridge of an old tugboat, and they’d set off into the dark. All Mira knew was that they were headed to where Armitage kept his contraband. If you were going to hide something dangerous, the Underworks seemed like a pretty good spot to do it, and there was nothing more dangerous to possess in this city than Strange Lands artifacts.

  Mira followed Reiko over an old, moldy bridge that connected two barges. As they moved, she studied the Asian girl again. Even in the dark, her pantherlike strides were apparent; smooth, no wasted effort or energy, controlled. It wasn’t flashy, her walk. It was utilitarian, but it hinted at untapped agility. The girl was an enigma, in all kinds of ways.

  “That wall, back there,” Mira asked. “What was it?”

  “A Memory Wall.”

  Given what it was showing, that seemed like a pretty good name. “Is it the only one?”

  “No, there are five in Winterbay. Kids keep adding to them, whenever they find new images. That’s why everyone gathers around, to see what’s new.”

  “You gave them more, didn’t you?” Mira asked. “That’s what was on that memory stick.”

  Reiko was silent a moment. “Sometimes I find pictures for them, out in the world, yeah. It can be profitable. They’re getting harder to come by. More rare.”

  “But you didn’t trade for it,” Mira observed. “You gave them the stick for free.”

  Reiko stiffened. “Stop trying to figure me out, Freebooter. We don’t need to be girlfriends to work together.”

  “Just saying, it must mean something to you, the World Before.”

  “It’s not about the World Before,” Reiko answered.

  “What’s it about, then?”

  Reiko didn’t answer. Ahead of them, a boat emerged out of the dark. Mira couldn’t completely make it out, but it looked like an old fishing vessel. Unlike the other ships, there was no bridge connecting this one. The black, icy water stretched between it and the old ferry they were on now. It was too far to jump.

  “Wait here,” Reiko said, then touched the rings on her index and middle fingers together. There was a flash of yellow as she leaped gracefully forward into the air.

  Mira watched as she flew toward the fishing boat, covering far more ground than any normal person could, tucking her body, flipping … and disappearing into the dark. If there had been any question as to the truth of Reiko’s rings and training, there was none now.

  Seconds later, something began to crank, and a shadow lowered toward Mira. Another bridge, arcing slowly down until it touched the edge of the boat she was standing on.

  “Coming?” Reiko’s voice asked impatiently from the darkness ahead.

  Mira sighed and stepped onto the bridge. When she crossed and jumped onto the deck of the new boat, Reiko was already moving toward a door.

  They passed through it, went down a flight of stairs into the bowels of the old ship, and finally stepped into a large, open space. Reiko’s flashlight was off, everything was dark, and Mira heard a thick door shut behind her. Inside wherever they were, the deep humming sound of something mechanical and aging filled the blankness.

  “This might sting,” Reiko said. New light flashed on and Mira shut her eyes. After almost an hour in the pitch black, it did more than sting. Eventually, her vision adjusted enough to show her where she was.

  It was the ship’s engine room, its turbines and gears all sat in the center, rusting in place, but still working. That wasn’t what Mira’s eyes locked onto, though.

  In between the two engine blocks, there was an old workbench. All around it, resting in cabinets and shelves that circled the room, were dozens and dozens of seemingly mundane objects that Mira knew were anything but.

  There were batteries, coins wrapped in individual sheets of plastic, magnets, coils and strands of wire, pencils, paper clips, nails and screws, springs, circuit boards, vials of various powdery substances, marbles, lightbulbs, and all kinds of other items. The hair on Mira’s arms stood up. It was
a side effect of being in the Strange Lands … or of being in a room with a large accumulation of its artifacts.

  Mira stared at it all lustfully. Armitage had acquired quite a collection, and the fact that it sat underneath Winterbay, a place where it was all illegal, made it even more impressive.

  “Think you can do something with this?” Reiko asked.

  “Yeah,” Mira replied softly. “I believe I can.”

  Hole

  Time lost meaning as Mira worked. Even the deep humming from the boat’s old engines faded into the background. It wasn’t because she had so much to do, it was more that it had been a month since she’d been able to make artifact combinations with quality components.

  She was exceptionally talented at it, maybe the best, and that wasn’t pride or arrogance, just the simple truth. She took to it easier than others, it came more naturally, and she prided herself not only on the ingenuity of the artifacts she created but on their aesthetic virtues as well. Sadly, since leaving Midnight City, it seemed she was always making combinations frantically and quickly. She didn’t have the luxury to take her time anymore. Now her artifacts were hastily created lumps of duct tape or rubber bands, without form or artistry. It was one more thing she’d lost when she fled, something she missed terribly, and it felt amazing to make artifacts with attention to detail again.

  Mira placed the last component into position on the combination she was working on. There was a flash and then a humming sound, like something electrical powering up, as the Interfuse took hold. The individual artifacts had been blended into something called an Aleve, which reduced the weight of anything it touched.

  It was made of a group of strange parts. In between two quarters was a lead fishing sinker, which served as the Essence, and a small washer for the Focus. It was all tied together with blue yarn into a pendant that hung from a silver chain.

  Mira placed the Aleve on the workbench with the other combinations and studied them.

  She was gambling that the Machine had been built “upward” like pretty much everything else in Winterbay, and she’d made her combinations accordingly. There were Gravity Voids, two of them, in addition to the one she always wore around her neck for emergencies. After all, you never knew when a nice pocket of zero-G might come in handy.

  There was the Aleve, two Dynamos, a Lithe, a Reflector, and a Gravitron for good measure. They all sat on the workbench, humming audibly, ready to be used, and Mira smiled at the sight. In spite of how dangerous using them promised to be, she still—

  There was a loud, hollow thump as the lights inside the engine room suddenly shut off and plunged everything to black. The engines died and went silent. Mira froze in place, a little unnerved, but nothing else happened. Through the walls of the ship, she could still hear the other boats outside churning in place, which meant whatever the problem was, it was isolated to Armitage’s vessel.

  It must be a breaker, she reasoned, which wasn’t great news. She didn’t much care for the idea of sitting here alone in the dark, and she had more artifacts to make.

  Mira stumbled around until she found her pack, then dug out her flashlight and flipped it on, revealing the engine room again in bits and pieces as the light moved.

  Where would the breaker box be on a boat? A quick scan of the walls with her flashlight revealed it wasn’t in the engine room, but this wasn’t the only space below deck.

  When Reiko had led her down here, Mira had seen two doors: the one they went through into the engine room, and another on the other side of the stairs that went toward the bow of the ship. It seemed like her best shot.

  Mira grabbed her pack and moved back into the small hallway outside, pushing through the thick blackness of the ship with her flashlight. She found the door where she remembered it and tried the handle. It was locked. Naturally.

  Mira hesitated. Just because it was locked, that didn’t mean she couldn’t get in. There were ways, but Armitage probably wouldn’t like her snooping around. At the same time, he would like it a lot less if he got back and she hadn’t made enough artifacts to get the job done. She needed those lights back on; there was no way around it.

  Mira dug through her pack again and pulled out a keychain loaded with about a dozen small keys of different colors and shapes, each marked with the δ symbol. They were Skeleton Keys, major artifacts from the Strange Lands, and they would open any lock that took a key. They were rare and very valuable, and this key ring represented Armitage’s entire collection.

  She plucked one loose and looked down at the door. The lock was made for a much larger key, but that made no difference. As Mira shoved it into the lock, there was a spark and a hum, and it somehow reorganized its shape to fit inside the keyhole.

  Mira twisted the key and, with a flash, the door clicked as it unlocked. When she removed the key, there was a spark … and the entire thing crumbled into a palmful of metallic shavings and dust that she brushed off her hands. Skeleton Keys could only be used once.

  Mira forced the door open, dragging it across the steel floor with a sound like nails on a chalkboard, then stepped through into the dark room on the other side.

  The first thing she noticed was the smell, the unpleasant mix of gas, stale water, and fish from outside. The second was that, even in the dark, the room just felt wrong. It was the only way she could describe it. It was cold here; there was a heaviness to the air that was unsettling. All her flashlight lit was the floor in front of the door. She could raise it and reveal the room, but Mira had instincts, and they were telling her that was a very bad idea. Whatever went on down here, it wasn’t anything she wanted to see.

  Luckily for her, the breaker box had been installed right near the door. She opened it and shined her light in. One of the breakers had flipped. Mira shoved it back into position. In the next room, she could hear the engines begin to hum again, and she breathed a sigh of— A single light in the ceiling flickered weakly as it powered on with dirty-brownish light. Mira knew she should spin around before she saw what was there, but she didn’t move, frozen either from fear or from some morbid curiosity. She just stood there and took in the entire room at once. She immediately wished she hadn’t.

  There were only a few things of note inside. One was a chair, a thick metal one that was bolted into the floor near the back. Where the footrests were, thick leather restraints lay, ready to be locked in place. It was the same on the armrests.

  Near the chair was a single workbench, and it was scattered with tools that contained grim implications: pliers, clamps, a heating torch, a mallet, a variety of knives and razors. Underneath the chair, the floor was stained with dark splotches, and as awful as all that was, something much worse drew her attention.

  A jagged hole had been cut into the center of the floor, and Mira saw water lap gently up and over the edge and drain back down. It had been opened to the lake below. Something about the sight of that hole chilled Mira like nothing else in her life. From her vantage, she could just see into the blackish depths that sank straight downward.

  Mira’s mind went blank. Somehow, she managed to make herself move back through the door and slam it shut, and when she did she planted her back against it and remembered to breathe once again, swallowing frightened gulps of air.

  When her hands stopped shaking, she was overtaken with a flood of thoughts. That hole in the floor meant Armitage was more than just a businessman or even a scoundrel, he was a killer. A malicious one, and he would have no problem dumping what was left of her down that hole, where she would settle with the remains of everyone else who had sat in that chair.

  It meant something else, too. It was pretty clear that if whatever Armitage wanted was so valuable that someone equally as sadistic had made this Machine to guard it, he very likely had no intention of letting her live once her usefulness ran out. People who made things like that room back there weren’t the kinds of people who liked loose ends.

  Mira looked at the stairs leading up and out and back into the Unde
rworks. She could go right now, find another way out and back into the city, leave and never look back. Armitage might send Reiko after her, or he might not, but it was a gamble that would be worth taking. Because she was facing certain death just by continuing now.

  Olive’s last words echoed in her mind. Remember what your lines are …

  Then again … how was her situation any different than it had been? The Machine itself was certain death, and yet she had been willing to face it. It was because the plutonium was worth the risk. Getting it now, saving months of time, having the key component of her plan to fix everything at Midnight City—that was worth almost anything.

  The realization calmed her nerves somewhat, and she felt her breathing begin to slow. After all, wasn’t she actually in a better position than she had been? Before she’d had her suspicions, but Mira hadn’t really realized what kind of man she was dealing with in Armitage. Now she did. Now she knew what was going to be waiting for her if she managed to beat the Machine. Which meant … she could prepare for it. She could be ready.

  A slight smile formed on her lips, along with the beginnings of a plan. She needed to make one more artifact combination, one more, and then—

  Mira heard the boat vibrate and the sound of something like chains moving through pulleys outside. It had to be the bridge that connected the boat to the Underworks, which meant Reiko and Armitage had come.

  With wide eyes, Mira dashed back toward the engine room. She had to make the last artifacts and get one into position before the pair showed up … or it was all over.

  An Idea

  Mira’s hands were a blur as she finished the first combination, listening to the hum as it Interfused. Above, the bridge had been retracted back into place, which meant Reiko and Armitage would be on their way down soon. Mira didn’t know how much either of them knew about artifacts—given this was Winterbay, the odds were good they didn’t know much—but she couldn’t take that chance. If they recognized what she was making, it would send up red flags, and red flags were not what she wanted Armitage to see right now.