The Misrule series Box Set

by Andy Graham

  “You’re one of us, Franklin.”

  “That makes it even worse.”

  Martinez grinned. “I get it. Just like when you can smell your own—”

  An explosion sent everyone sprawling to their knees. The tower shuddered, metal screaming as it twisted. A flare of colours. The window exploded in a shower of glass and feathers. People shouted. Shrieked. A wall boomed inwards. Fragments of metal hissed across the room. One sliced through the cravat of the woman who had been protesting Ray’s self-promotion. She stood, immobile for a split second, as blood gushed from the red mess that was now her neck. “But—” she whimpered and crumpled to the floor. Her hand twitched once and she was still.

  “He’s found us.” Vena emerged from a cloud of smoke, her eyes glittering. “The VP’s found us.”

  “Get out,” Ray yelled. “Move!”

  18

  Brooke

  In the late afternoon sun that streamed into the cavern under the Donian Mountains, two figures sat at a wooden table. The taller one sat straight-backed, face turned to the heat. The other slouched. It was a pained posture, or embarrassed, the position of someone who was unsure. It didn’t suit her. A hand drifted to her belly. “You’re alive,” she said to her companion. This was the second time she had been here since discovering the man, but only now had Brooke summoned up the strength to have this conversation.

  “Very much so.”

  “I thought you had been corrupted by the gwenium. The element.”

  “Gwenium?” A low chuckle filled the cavern. It took Brooke back to her time locked in the Sci-Corps labs of the Ailan legions. A period when, for a short time at least, she’d felt safe, when she hadn’t felt that everything in life was a personal challenge.

  “I thought it was a joke when your grandmother told me the scientists in Ailan were still using that name.” For a moment he was the one that looked broken. “It was meant as a tribute to my daughter, Gwenn.”

  “Your daughter. You had a wife, too.” Brooke was trying to makes sense of the whole situation but her pregnancy-addled brain wasn’t letting her. “I thought I saw you crying over two stone cairns. In the cavern, when you destroyed my old patrol.” Aalok, Franklin, Orr, Nascimento and James. Even when she thought it, that last name had more spite in it than she intended. “But . . . the Monster-under-the-Mountain isn’t you, is it?”

  Professor Eddie Shaw, once described as the gentle giant of science, an honourable man amongst data thieves, the scientist who saw formulae like a painter saw the sea, took one of Brooke’s hands in his. Somewhere on the mountain top, a wolf howled.

  “No, Karlyne.”

  “Brooke. I prefer Brooke. I’m not sure who Karlyne is anymore.”

  A smile curved the edges of his mouth. “I’m not the monster, Brooke. I have my failings and flaws as a man but I am no monster. Neither is he.”

  “He? The monster’s a he?”

  Shaw nodded. “He was trying to protect you. He knew what the gwenium” — an expression flitted across Shaw’s face, part amusement, part sorrow — “could do to people, which is why he tried to stop you legionnaires taking it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He told me.”

  “He can’t talk.”

  Shaw pushed a piece of paper and pen over to her. She stared at them, forcing her sluggish brain to work. Typical Eddie Shaw, demonstrate rather than explain. A man whose passion for education was only matched by his hatred of rote learning and teaching-by-numbers. As an owl joined in the evening chorus with the wolf, it came to her.

  “He can write.” She wrote the words down and held up the paper with a triumphant grin.

  “Big letters on account of his hands being maimed but he can still write. A skill that is being lost along with paper.”

  A gust of wind whistled through the opening in the ceiling. It swirled through the engraved stone columns that dotted the room. Shaw had called them the Pillar Scrolls. As the wind moved, it kicked the dust into dancing grey spirals. “You did see him crying,” Shaw said softly. “He was weeping over his own wife and child. The cairns are a symbolic place for him.”

  “I thought the monster recognised me,” Brooke said. “That’s why I thought it was you. That and there’s a similarity to you both.” Shaw raised his eyebrows. Brooke knew that gesture. Not judgemental, nor chiding, just asking her to think about what she had said. “He, not it.” And the eyebrows dropped.

  “He recognised something in you. He told me, wrote me, that you remind him of his wife and daughter.”

  “Do I?”

  “I don’t know, Brooke-who-was-Karlyne. I never met them. Maybe the gwenium and time has altered his memory. Maybe he saw something in your personality rather than your body. Maybe he was just looking for someone to hang his memories on before they hung him.”

  The noises outside were deepening. The Donian Mountains at night held a mix of the silence that made her ears sing, the chittering of small animals and the rustling of leaves. Occasionally a larger animal, a hunting animal like an owl or a wolf, would join in and the prey would go quiet. It was unsettling. Those noises belonged to a time when she had been Karlyne, before the legions had taken her to Ailan as an ambassador (their words) or hostage (everyone else’s words) to ensure the good behaviour of her people. The noises that Brooke was used to were the coughing of cars, the permanent low whine of lights or lifts, the ugly caw of fisher gulls hunting. She felt out of place. Her hand caressed her belly. Her stomach, she observed ruefully, certainly felt out of place.

  Damn that man. The flash of anger she felt towards Ray Franklin was replaced by a tingle in the base of her belly. A tingle that became a warm, pleasant knot that she wanted unwinding only one way, by one man.

  The legs of Shaw’s chair scraped on the stone floor as he stood. “I’d hug you,” he said. “Seems like the thing you do when you meet someone you care for after a long break. But you were never one for public displays of affection.”

  “Some things have changed, I guess. But I’d rather not.” She pointed to her belly and grimaced. “Not sure I could reach you anymore anyway with this in the way.”

  He laughed. “It’s not that big, Brooke.”

  “There was a silent ‘yet’ at the end of that sentence,” she replied glumly. Brooke gestured at the pillars standing in the gloom, the stony sentinels that held so much knowledge about her people’s past. “This place is not really public. But there’s another reason why I don’t want to hug you. It’ll feel odd to hug someone like this, to feel this belly, my child, pressing into someone else. And I want . . .” She couldn’t finish it. Neither Karlyne (once of the Hoyden, the rebellious gang who were sticking an eye in the Donian people’s outlook of life) nor Lieutenant Brooke of the Rivermen (the elite legionnaires of Ailan) could finish the sentence. She was going soft in the belly, head and heart.

  “You want Ray to be the first person you press your pregnant belly into. Father, mother and child together.”

  Tears ran down her cheeks, dripping off her chin and splashing into congealed balls of dust on the floor. She took Shaw’s outstretched hand in hers and squeezed it until her knuckles hurt. “Who is he then?”

  “Who?” Shaw asked, massaging the life back into his fingers.

  “It’s the question I should have asked the minute I realised you were you.”

  “You mean who is the Monster-under-the-Mountain-that-once-was-Professor-Shaw? The creature tortured and twisted by the red element, the gwenium?” Shaw grinned at her.

  Brooke pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. She hadn’t had long hair since she had been taken to Ailan. Just because she was pregnant, there was no need to start doing women’s things like growing your hair long and hiding your face from the world under layers of make-up.

  “He is a man who would very much like to meet you.”

  “He’s not dangerous?” She gave herself a mental kick. When had she been scared of anyone but herself?

  “Only
to people who threaten his family.”

  “I’m not part of his family,” she replied.

  “You are now.”

  Brooke wasn’t sure whether the twinkle in Shaw’s eyes was genuine or just reflected starlight. She felt a presence move into the room. The dust ground under her feet as she turned to face the intruder. Her breath froze in her throat. The face of the mangled figure she remembered from the deep caves was cut with silver by the moonlight. Brooke shifted into a fighting stance before she had realised what she was doing, hands rising, balance low, feet spread evenly. Her heart thrashed adrenaline through her body. She felt alive again.

  The monster was as lanky as she remembered, of a similar height to Eddie Shaw. But now she saw the height looked forced, as if the bones had been stretched long past a time when they should have stopped growing. Angry weals gleamed through scraps of cloth. It still had the hoof-like foot and lumps on his head like horns. But the eyes . . . Before she’d seen dark pools; now she saw something else, someone else, and it quickened the feeling in her stomach.

  The thing held out a hand. Shiny scabs of burnt skin ran around its wrists, raised lumps that were different to the rash and weals that deformed the rest of him. Fingers uncurled, one by one. A knuckle cracked and a drop of dark blood fell to the floor, lying next to the place where Brooke’s tears had fallen. Something gleamed in its palm.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  The monster moaned, low and guttural, and gestured for her to take what nestled amongst the scars. The heat coming off the creature was enormous. She plucked his offering out of his palm and held it up to the light. It was a coin, an old Mennai crown that was bent double and worn smooth by time.

  “I think you should sit, Brooke,” Shaw said. “We have a lot to tell you.”

  19

  Fight For The Towers

  (A Fisher Gull's Delight)

  Ray tumbled out of the map room, pistol in hand, Martinez and the others at his heels. A man in outsized military fatigues staggered down the corridor. His hair was stuck to a caked mess of blood on one side of his face. “Behind me. Legionnaires. They’re—”

  A gunshot cracked down the corridor, spinning him and slamming him into a wall. As he collapsed, he left a smear on the metal that was more black than red.

  “Run!” Ray yelled. “Get to the chopper.” The Council members sprinted down the corridor, tripping over themselves in a tangle of limbs as an Unsung legionnaire appeared in front of them. The retort of Ray’s revolver stung his injured shoulder as the enemy collapsed with blood gurgling up between his teeth.

  Martinez shepherded Vena away. His body curved protectively around her. Shouts, screams, orders competed with the rattle of gunfire. Men called for help. Women called for help. A woman was calling for help. Stella. “Ray, please help me!”

  Dan was curled in a ball under the table of the map room. Kicking his feet on the floor. Pushing himself in angry circles. He had a handful of his hair in one hand. Had ripped a bloody clump of it from his scalp. Whenever his wife got closer, his thrashing got more frantic. “My head. It’s in my head. The knives. Inside me. Help me. Help.”

  “They’re in the map room!” an Unsung legionnaire shouted.

  “Ray, move!” Martinez.

  Ray reached for Dan. He recoiled, scrabbled to his feet and held up his hands like claws. The nails on his fingers seemed longer than before, thick and yellow and ridged. The revolver was heavy in Ray’s hand, too heavy, as if reminding him that it was there. That was not an option he wanted to take. “Don’t do this, Dan.”

  Dan crouched, body quivering with tension. “Stop it. Clawing at my brain. Help.”

  “I said—”

  The door slammed open.

  “No one move!” An Unsung legionnaire, face a sheen of sweat, trained his rifle on Ray.

  Dan howled as his eyes rolled back in his head. He collapsed, back arching, fists pounding on the floor. “No!” Stella screamed.

  “What—?” The Unsung lowered his rifle a fraction.

  Ray hurled himself to the side, aimed and fired. Red spattered on the wall behind the legionnaire from the rip in his shoulder. He grunted. Raised his rifle. Ray’s revolver kicked again. The shot missed and sparked off the walls with a metallic clang. The next bullet caught the man in his gut. He folded over himself, hands trying to staunch the swelling mess between his fingers. Horror and disbelief were scrawled across his face. Ray had seen the expression too many times in his military career. Despite all the training, despite witnessing friends die and watching colleagues learning to walk again, despite knowing that war is ultimately about killing more people than the enemy, that moment when you get shot can never truly be prepared for.

  An explosion outside the tower was accompanied by a screech and cawing of fisher gulls, black shadows circling in the distance. The birds were waiting for the carnage to abate so the feasting could begin. “Scythe birds?” He scooped up the rifle out of the hand of the whimpering legionnaire. “More like scavenger birds.”

  “Help.” Stella was talking to her husband, voice urgent but hushed, his face cradled between her hands. “Help, Dan. I need your help. We can’t do this without you. I can’t do this.” Dan’s teeth glittered, pointed and sharp. His body twisting into the nightmare that was infecting his brain. “Dan, please. I need you. Our children need you: Jake, Emily. She’s here, in the tower.”

  Ray grabbed Stella’s arm. “We got to go.”

  “Emily and Jake. Our kids need you, Danniel. They need the Dan-ster to chase away the monsters from under the bed.”

  “Em?” Dan’s eyes flickered open, bloodshot and purple. “She’s here?”

  “You sent her with Vena, remember?”

  Dan’s gaze fell on Ray’s hand. On his bruising grip on his wife’s arm. He hissed. Ray let go, held his hand well away from Stella. “OK, OK. You good to walk?”

  “Good. I’m—”

  Something black hurtled towards a window. It smashed into the room, covering them in a rain of biting glass shards. A thick plume of acrid smoke spat from the grenade. A gas-mask-clad legionnaire appeared in the doorway. Ray lunged at him, shouldering him out of the way. The legionnaire hit the ground. His body crunched on the glass as he tried to roll to his feet. Cursed. Looked up. Stella and Dan trampled him as they fled the room. Ray slammed the door shut and shot the lock off the door. As they hurtled down the corridor, he heard the ugly, bloodthirsty shriek of hungry fisher gulls battering their way through the broken window into the map room. The legionnaire’s desperate scream stood the hairs up on the back of Ray’s neck.

  Smoke swirled around their legs, spilling through the T-junction where Ray and the Swanns had caught up with the others. Flickering light from the bulbs on the ceiling picked out the beads of sweat on Martinez’s forehead. “What kept you?” He was leaning on his crutch, chest heaving.

  “Nice to see you, too, Tino.”

  “Unsung?”

  “Yup,” Ray replied. “You?”

  Martinez nodded. “Place is crawling with them. Reckon it’s an advance party. Rush job. They’re not properly armed or armoured, nor do they seem to know what they’re doing.”

  “Guess all those efficiency savings in the military budget are finally working in our favour.” The two ex-legionnaires exchanged a grim smile.

  “They’re blocking the route to the chopper, though,” Martinez said.

  “We’re not going there.”

  “Where . . .” His gaze slid to Stella and Dan. One was as pale as the moonlight on the Reaper’s scythe, the other a warring clash of reds and purples. “Emily,” he finished in a whisper.

  “Who?” Vena asked.

  “My daughter, how can you have forgotten that?” Stella took a half step towards Vena, seemingly torn between a need to slap Vena and to keep her grip on her husband. Stella’s contact seemed to be the only thing keeping him upright and sane.

  “Which way?” Ray asked.

  “You wanted to be
the leader,” Renn said. The beak-like nose of the Council member was the colour of his plaid shirt. “You decide.”

  “Leaders listen to suggestions. You should try it, too. If you listen hard enough you might hear the sound of my boot about to kick you up your arse.”

  “This way, I reckon.” Martinez pointed with his crutch. “We can cut through the old comms room.”

  “That room’s haunted,” Renn muttered, to a chorus of whispered agreement from the rest of the Council. “Men died in that room.”

  “Men are going to die in this bloody corridor if we don’t get a shift on.”

  Renn scowled. “Haunted may not be a problem, but it’s the long-way round and the corridor the other side of the comms room is a bottleneck.”

  “Emily. Emily. Emily.” Dan repeated his daughter’s name. His eyes rolled back in their sockets. Stella grabbed his fists, struggling to stop him from punching himself in the forehead. The crackle of a radio, distant but closing, hissed through the smoke.

  “Ray,” Martinez said. “Which way?”

  He dragged a hand over his forehead; it came away sticky with sweat. Not for the first time, he missed his old squad: Captain Aalok, Hamid, Brooke, Orr and Nascimento. The first two were dead, the last two now on the side Ray was fighting. And Brooke? The mother of his unborn child? Was she really alive and waiting for him with open arms under the Donian Mountains? He snorted a laugh. She was probably waiting to slap him around the face and tell him to stop being so maudlin and get a move on. Focus! C’mon, Franklin. Make your choice.

  “Ray?” Martinez’s voice had an edge to it.

  “Comms room. Get Emily. Then we head for the chopper.”

  “That way’s blocked,” Renn cut in.

  Ray grabbed a handful of the man’s jacket. The fabric cut into the back of his knuckles. “Then we slice our way through whoever is blocking our way and add to the ghosts that haunt this shit-box tower.”