The Velocity of Revolution

by Marshall Ryan Maresca

  “Don’t get cocky,” Wenthi said. “We’re still learning.”

  They curved into a side tunnel in the crossing—one only authorized for patrol and other emergency vehicles, as if that mattered—and popped up in Southwall. Nália knew this area, and took the lead across a lot to the aqueduct drop. They twisted through the gully of the aqueduct, under another bend of access tunnels running the line through Southwall, and out in the sun again in the Ako Favel. The road parallel to the train tracks leading out of the city, toward the Genzha Oil Fields.

  Between here and there was a train thundering along the tracks, filled with Fists of Zapi, and the hope for the future.

  70

  It was several kilos on the open plain before they could see the train, the hot sun glaring down on them. Nália had pushed the ’goiz up to fire gear, engine running hot but holding together. After uncounted days trapped in that ice room, feeling the world only through Wenthi, or being trapped in the darkness of whatever void the Witch had put her in, it felt glorious to be not only fully in her body, but in her own clothes, on her beautiful cycle. She had the open country in front of her, nearly a full tank of petrol, and felt like she could go forever.

  Which was strange. Her body should have been a weak mess. But it was like Wenthi was somehow pouring strength into her. Like he could share that as much as they could share sensations and feelings.

  She’d love to think more about that, but there was the train. Time to get to work.

  “What are you feeling on there?” Wenthi asked her.

  “Static,” she said. “The whole thing. Am I imagining it or—”

  “It’s like the train is made of ice rooms,” he said.

  “Why would they do that?” They were pushing closer and closer; at this rate they would be right up next to it in a few swipes. But they had no sense of what was going on, where the Fists were, how many guards there were.

  “Varazina,” Wenthi said. “Penda probably doesn’t even need to take mushroom—”

  “And they want to contain her power.”

  It made sense. The last thing they needed was her calling out on the radio for hundreds of saviors. Maybe that’s what took them this long to sentence them all and ship them out to the oil fields; they needed to get the train ready for the transfer.

  “What’s the plan?” she asked.

  “I’d say stop the train, neutralize any guards, free everyone on the train.”

  “There’s a big ‘and after that?’ question to be asked, you know.”

  “As in . . . where we stand?” he asked. “What do I do next? Can’t go back to my old life.”

  “I was more thinking we’ll be in the middle of nowhere and will probably need to use the train to get back to the city.”

  “Right,” he said. They were coming up closer and closer to the train now. No sign of patrol on the outside, either riding in escort or taking guard posts along the top of the train.

  “So however we stop the train, it can’t be a permanent stop, you know?”

  “Good point. You got an idea?”

  “Spirits watch over me, because I do,” she said. “Try to keep up.”

  She gunned her cycle into fire gear and went off. One-eighty. One-ninety-two. Two-hundred-four.

  The burst of speed caused her senses to explode, like flowers unfolding in bloom. She could feel her way back to the city, to the oil derricks and the camps ahead—the pain and suffering of the people there, the ones who died in the fire, and the ones who lived—and the expanse of the mushroom beneath them. It was almost too intense for her to bear, except she had Wenthi to anchor her.

  And the blaring, spiky static coming off of the train. What had Shebiruht said the ice room was made with? Mycopsilaria sehosi. The one from Sehosia. It blocked the other mushrooms. Blocked the signal. Blocked connection. It even felt . . . angry from the speed of the train. She couldn’t push through that to the inside of the train cars. Every car of the train was laced with it.

  But not the engine. Or the engineer running the train.

  How easy it was now, especially at this speed, to slip herself into him, to take control of his arm, to pull from his memory how the controls worked. Pull the brake, the wheels screeched. Too hard, too fast. She had to ease up on the brake. Else the train would derail.

  “You have it?” Wenthi asked, his phantom avatar appearing next to her in the engine room.

  “I do,” she said. “But it’s going to take a few swipes to get us actually stopped. I need to keep focus on holding control over him while keeping pace on the cycle.”

  “Keep on it,” he said. “But you’ll probably have unwanted company.”

  She checked the engineer’s body. Sidearm at his hip. “I can handle it.”

  “Then I’ll find our friends.”

  “Are they, Wenthi?” she asked. “Our friends? They never met me, not really, or the real you. Are you going to be straight with them?”

  “I’m going to have to be,” he said. “Like I said, no going back.”

  His avatar vanished, and she could feel the engineer struggling to get control over himself. Not today, friend. She poured all she had to hold on to him for a few swipes more.

  71

  Wenthi pulled his awareness away from Nália, keeping her as just a buzz in the back of his mind. Her attention was already fully on two tasks; he didn’t need to be another distraction.

  He needed to get on the train.

  Most of the petrol thefts, they jumped onto the train, using the aqueduct walls to ramp up. This was open scrubland. Nothing to ramp. So he needed another way.

  He dropped back to match pace with the last train car, getting as close as he could while riding parallel with it. He brought the cycle as close as he dared, and carefully pulled his feet up onto the seat, keeping one hand on the handles, whispering to the spirits watching over him to keep it straight.

  Deep breath.

  Jump.

  He landed hard on the rear platform, stumbling for a moment and grabbing the rail to keep from falling onto the tracks. As he took a moment to catch his breath, the riderless patrol-issued Ungeke K’am wobbled and swerved into the side of the train. It fell under the wheels, and with a hard jolt, was crushed.

  The door of the last car opened up, and a day sweep patrol officer—someone Wenthi didn’t know—stuck his head out. Wenthi grabbed him and yanked him, hurling him off the train. He didn’t want to kill the man; he hoped he could avoid killing anyone today. But it might come to that.

  He stepped into the rear car, and it was immediately like a static knife scraping across his skull, pushing against the senses and sensations awoken by mushroom and velocity. Now that he was inside the iced train, while its power pressed against him from all sides, it could no longer block him from feeling people inside. Two patrol were in the next car.

  Along with something else, something so full of pain and static it made his eyes hurt.

  He had a solid idea what that was. He had to push through.

  Despite the pain, he pushed himself out, into the two patrol guards. Enrin and Thei. Two folks he knew, if not well. Folks he liked. He slipped into Thei, drew her sidearm, dropped it to the floor, and opened the car door. She tried to fight back as he made her step to the door—Enrin was shouting what in all faith was she doing—and he had her jump off the train.

  Enrin’s body tried to reject Wenthi as he strained to take control. The cold of the train walls made it harder than he had expected, taking almost all of his will and strength to push through. To make Enrin drop his gun, step to the door.

  Enrin managed to turn his head. “Are you doing this, you witch?”

  Through Enrin’s eyes, Wenthi saw the cage, with fungal-encrusted bars, and inside it, Penda Rodiguen.

  “Not at all,” she said. “But I am enjoying it.”

 
Wenthi pushed a bit more of himself into Enrin and forced him to jump.

  The guards gone, Wenthi went into the next car.

  Penda sat in a chair in her mushroom cage, a wry smile on her face.

  “I wasn’t expecting you at this point, I have to say.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because your story here was done. You played your role. I’ve not been able to go to the theater or the cinescope in some time, but usually when a character does their last scene, they don’t come back again.”

  “My last scene?” Wenthi asked, moving closer to her. Her pale complexion was even more jaundiced and sallow than the last time. “This isn’t some script.”

  “But it is, dear boy. Or at least, that was my intent.”

  “Your intent? Is this more of your—how did you say it—sowing chaos?”

  She laughed, a dry, rasping laugh that degraded into hacking coughs. “You’re not wrong,” she said once she recovered. “But that was always with a purpose.”

  “Which was?”

  “To align you and Miss Enapi,” she said. “To make her feel angry enough, betrayed enough by an uncaring llipe she saw as a savior, that she would let you turn me in.”

  “What?”

  “Are you this stupid, Officer Tungét? Your betrayal was part of my plan.”

  The words hit him in the gut, but made a sick kind of sense. “Because you always knew I was an infiltrator.”

  “You think I didn’t see you? You thought that ‘mask’ of melding your mind with Nália’s worked on me? Who do you think put the idea in Shebiruht’s twisted skull?”

  “Why?” Wenthi asked. “Why me?”

  “Well, the original plan was using that absurdly earnest Hwungko boy, but he got caught. And when that happened I discovered you. I learned how you were not unlike me.”

  “That I was made to be a mushroom weapon.”

  “Oh, Wenthi,” she said, getting to her feet. “You have an affinity, and maybe that was unnaturally given to you—” He could feel hints of her pushing against his skull. “—but believe me, you were not made to be a weapon like I was. Open up this damn cage, though.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because I actually had a purpose to this.” She sighed. “Varazina needs to be a martyr. But a martyr needs an apostate. I needed someone to betray me. What would rouse the people more than having someone turn me in?”

  “Why would you want that?”

  “To get the one thing I needed that I could never get while locked up in that apartment. The thing that unlocked everything in you and Nália.”

  “You had everything in there.”

  “Everything except speed. But now I have this train.” She laughed again, then looked about. “Why are we slowing down?”

  “Nália’s stopping it.”

  “What the shit is wrong with you?” she asked. “Quick, get me out of here. This cage is holding me back, I need to get out of here, get up to speed again.”

  “Why?”

  “Haven’t you figured it out yet, Wenthi? I was made to be a weapon. I’m more than ready to show the world exactly what that means.”

  72

  The train had stopped. Had they already made it to the slave camps? Ajiñe had no way to gauge the time or distance in the dimly lit cage.

  “Something’s not right,” Nicalla said from the next cage. They were in boxes, too short to stand, too narrow to lie down, stacked on top of one another. Absurdly inhuman. Not that Ajiñe had expected anything less. Since the arrest, she had spent most of the time locked in small rooms, isolated from everyone she had been taken with. Everyone she loved. She was informed yesterday that she had been tried and sentenced to hard labor at a work camp.

  The only comfort she could find was thinking that maybe her mother was there too.

  Only when they had loaded her onto the truck to take her to the train had she seen anyone else. She rode with Mensi and Nicalla, and for some reason Isilla Henáca from Street Xaomico was with them as well.

  “What are you doing here?” Ajiñe asked, but the only answer she got was the butt of a rifle across her chin. The tory asshole glared at her, telling her to stay quiet. She didn’t fight it, not here.

  On her truck, there were a few other faces she found familiar. Other members of the Fists that she had felt during the induction. She knew their souls if not their names.

  And then, for a brief moment, there was daylight and fresh air as they were loaded onto the train. Ajiñe tried to savor it, drink in what she could, and glanced over to the next train car, loading from another truck.

  Gabrána. Miss Dallatan.

  Papa.

  Why in any name was he here? Why had they arrested him? Just to punish her? Then she spotted other faces she knew. Gab’s mother, side-mother, and aunt. Fenito’s brother.

  These shit-filled assholes. They had rounded up everyone they could, regardless of how they were involved in the Fists.

  “Where’s Renzi?” she had whispered to Mensi after they were shoved into the cages. “Or Fenito? Have you seen them?”

  “They kept Fenito and me together for a while,” he said. “But then he was taken to another cell, and . . . I don’t know. Renzi I haven’t seen since we were taken.”

  Now the train was stopped, and the silence was ominous. They must have made it to the camp. They must be there, and in a moment, the doors would open, and they would be led out to hard labor, torture, and death.

  Then something familiar flitted over the edge of her senses. Like the memory of a mushroom sync.

  The door flew open, the blinding glare of sunlight bursting in. Someone jumped into the train.

  “Hey,” she called. “Who wants to get out of here?”

  With that came a flooding sense of sync connection, warm and familiar, but yet new and unknown. Ajiñe couldn’t see what was happening until the woman—a young jifoz woman in hard denim—dropped in front of her cage.

  “Ajiñe!” she shouted as she opened the cage. She grabbed Ajiñe’s hand and pulled her out, kissing Ajiñe warmly and passionately as soon as she was on her feet. “Found you.”

  “Do I know you?” Ajiñe asked. Not that she minded the kiss, but she had never seen this woman before in her life. Except there was something familiar about the girl. Like she had met her in a dream.

  “It’s me, I—” She paused. “Sorry, it’s complicated. Nália. Nália Enapi.”

  “Nália?” Nicalla called out. “How are you here? What’s going on?”

  Nicalla recognized her, so that was something. Wait, was this the girl who had been arrested? The one with the modified 960 that ended up in Renzi’s possession. How was she here? And why did she know Ajiñe? Why did she kiss her . . .?

  Kissed her like Renzi.

  “Come on,” Nália said, helping Nicalla out of her cage. “Let’s get out of here. There are more prisoners on the train. Let’s get everyone out.”

  Ajiñe jumped out of the train—they were in the middle of scrubland, well out of the city. Nothing but train tracks and dry bushes.

  “Where are we?” she asked, not expecting a real answer from any of the others who were piling out of the train. Mensi grabbed her as soon as he was out, wrapping her up in his arms.

  “Our spirits are watching over us,” he said, clutching her tightly.

  “I know, I know,” she said.

  “We’ll get out or go down fighting,” he said. “Who is that girl?”

  “The one Nic recruited, who got caught on her first train job.”

  “Her?” He seemed shocked. He looked over to one side. “That’s Renzi’s cycle. The junkbashed 960.”

  “No,” Ajiñe said. “That can’t be.” They went over together and looked it over. Even with just a quick glance, Ajiñe could tell it was the same cycle. A couple of
the hoses still had the tape Ajiñe had wrapped them with.

  “Hey, girl!” Ajiñe shouted as Nália came out of the train, leading the last of the prisoners—an older woman who seemed like she could barely walk—and helping them all out. “Why do you have Renzi’s cycle?”

  “My cycle,” Nália said. “Like I said, complicated.”

  “Make it clear, then.”

  “Shouldn’t we free everyone else—”

  Ajiñe looked to Nic and Mensi. “Get it going. I’m talking to her. And find my father.”

  They scrambled off. She trusted them to handle it.

  “Ajiñe—”

  “Why do you think you know me?”

  “Because I do,” Nália said. “You were there for me in the truck, keeping it going so I could reach Varazina.”

  That made no sense. “That was Renzi.”

  “Renzi is complicated.”

  “How so?”

  “Nália!”

  Very familiar voice. Ajiñe turned, and Renzi was rushing over to them, half carrying a frail llipe woman.

  “Renzi!” she called out, rushing over to him. “What is going on?”

  “She’s dying,” he said.

  “Who is she, and why the shit should we care if she’s dying?”

  “She’s Varazina,” Nália said, her voice dripping with contempt.

  “This lady is Varazina? What are you even—Renzi, what are you talking about? How did you—what is—”

  A wordless exchange passed between Renzi and Nália, like they were in sync with each other.

  “You don’t have to,” Nália said.

  “She deserves the truth,” Renzi said. “She is Varazina, but she’s also Penda Rodiguen, the granddaughter of the tyrant.”

  “What?” Ajiñe asked.

  “And my name isn’t Renzi Llionorco, not really. It’s Wenthi Tungét.”

  That shook Ajiñe at the center of her being. She stumbled for a moment, and Nália caught her, her touch familiar and comforting. Electric sparks of sync and connection flew from her fingers, running through Ajiñe’s body.