Debris vw-1

by Jo Anderton

  Nonsense.

  The hole where the technicians' building had once been was a scar in the earth, smoking and raw. Heat radiated from its darkness, from its burns. Binders had set up a perimeter around it, urged tall stone fences to spring from the street to try and confine the destruction. They wouldn't hold long. They crumbled as planes and rubble crashed against then, falling faster than the pion-binders could replace them. But the debris was interfering in a far more insidious way. Upsetting the circle systems, destabilising the bindings, wreaking a far more common chaos, but a chaos just as terrible. As we hurried toward them, one whole side of a large stone fence sluiced into mud, and the six point centre who had been working on it roared curses into the flame-lit sky. Planes flickered out of the gap this made, testing freedom with wide black sails.

  "We're collectors!" Kichlan shouted as we ran to a huddle of people near the fence. "Debris collectors! Let us in!"

  A crowd of brave or stupid spectators had gathered to watch. Nine point enforcers held them back, though why you'd need a powerful binder to convince you not to run into the head of chaos and death I couldn't understand. Between them and the fence, healers worked on bodies and I was thankful that the ruddy light cast everything red. It made blood that much harder to distinguish.

  One of the enforcers broke away from the crowd. A circle centre, with bears roaring from his shoulders and lapel. Representative of the veche. He cast us a disdainful glance and pointed to one of the healers. I couldn't make out the mess of flesh the latter was working over, fingers weaving pions I could no longer see in a wild fight for life. "That's all that's left of the other team," the enforcer said, voice rasping. "What do you think you can do?"

  "Other's hells," Mizra groaned.

  Kichlan paled, but shifted the bag on his shoulder. "The only thing we can do." He held the enforcer's gaze. After a moment the man's salt-and-pepper stubbled mouth eased into a dry grin.

  "Do it then. Any chance you can stop this is better than none." He lifted a hand, hesitated. "Good luck." Then turned to the binders on the fence and bellowed, "Let them through!"

  We slipped through the gap in the stone. I kept my head down, unable to meet solemn, exhausted faces. The other side of the fence was strangely quiet. As the pionbinders sealed us in, a kind of stillness and dread settled on my shoulders.

  "Any great ideas?" Mizra snapped.

  I ignored him and scanned the ruins, the rubble. "There!" A body, a lump of pale cloth stained pink, of mushed meat and pooling blood.

  Kichlan pushed past me, came to the body first. "Other." He pressed his hand to his nose and mouth. "It's the technician. From yesterday. Other."

  Lad took a step forward, peering and curious. Kichlan spun, grabbed his shoulders, pushed him away.

  Something had dropped out of me at his words. I slumped to my knees. They clinked against the cement, suit silver on stone. It couldn't be, not like this, not so suddenly and violently. I swallowed an urge to vomit and looked down.

  Into the face of the second technician, the one who had assisted Devich, the one I didn't know.

  "Tanyana?" Sofia from a distance, her voice like reflection on water, faint as rising steam. "What are you doing? We need to – Other!"

  The world swam. I fell forward, too close to the red mush, to the collapse of body and bone, but I couldn't hold myself up. It wasn't him. It wasn't Devich, dead and torn. There was still a chance, wasn't there, that Devich was alive? But if his assistant was here "Tanyana!" Kichlan roared.

  I lifted my head to see my team retreating to the fence, to see panic and confusion.

  "Move!"

  Then I was caught again. Something hooked around my leg, high, up along my thigh. Above my suit. It lifted me, dangled me like a doll, and tossed me.

  I opened my hands to catch the ground but my suit caught it instead. Two wide, solid poles charged from my wrists into the cement. They crunched deep, held me suspended a moment still struggling with shock, before retreating, easing me down. Bare hands pressed to the earth, I struggled for breath, struggled to understand what had just happened. It had to be debris planes, tossing me around like the broken glass.

  I stood, legs shaking. My thigh ached where the debris had touched me, like a bruise throbbing deep.

  "Tanyana?" called voices from the other side of the hissing steam.

  Where was I?

  I turned, prickling dread. A tangle of bricks, of cement and steel frames surrounded me like corpses. Caustic smoke oozed from gashes in the ground. Water rushed in a putrid waterfall from the end of a shattered pipe. I was in the hole. The debris had not pushed me away this time. It had trapped me.

  "Tanyana!" Kichlan called, his voice so far away.

  I ran to the wall of rubble. I hooked fingers around stone and found it sharp and jagged. But I knew with some hunted-animal panic that I had to get out. That this had been no accident.

  "Tanyana?"

  "I'm coming," I whispered an answer. "Fast as I can."

  "Tanyana?" But the voice, though it came from above, was closer. Not screaming, not panicking. I looked up.

  Devich watched me from a small gap in rubble. My stomach clenched.

  "Other, why are you here? Get away, Tanyana. Run. Please."

  But I couldn't run. I could barely climb. "Devich?" I ignored the cuts, the pain in my fingers and palms, and pulled myself up. Suit-enclosed feet fought for purchase, slipped on smooth rock. Hand by hand, foot by painfully slow foot I dragged myself toward Devich.

  Where was the debris? It was there, I could feel it like a threat at the back of my neck.

  "What are you doing?" Devich gasped. He coughed wetly, and my stomach flipped again.

  "Wait," I said to the stones against my face. "Wait for me."

  "I'm so sorry, Tanyana. I can't believe it was you. It shouldn't have been you." His voice trailed into exhaustion. Into silence.

  Something told me to keep him talking. "What happened here? Devich? Tell me what happened."

  Darkness skittered over the rubble close to my left foot. It sent small stones trickling down. I watched them fall, and realised I hadn't climbed very far at all.

  "The storage." He coughed again. "Below us, there was storage. For the debris."

  "Yes? Keep going." Rubble fell against my face and I blinked sand out of my eyes.

  "There was a blast from below. An explosion. Then fire, and smoke, and everything collapsed."

  I didn't understand it. Of all the debris I'd seen none of it had managed to move rocks, let alone blow a hole in the ground. It floated in the air, passed through cement and stone. Only certain kinds of poly, and our suits, could touch it, could hold it.

  Why had it changed?

  "Are you all right, Devich?" My shoulder screamed as I hauled myself up the final stretch, overextending my arm and taking all my weight on one hand. But none of it mattered, because I was close to him. Close enough to fit my fingers through the crack and touch his face. He was very hot.

  Devich said, "Something fell on me." He held my eyes with a fearful expression, and something deeper I could only describe as courage. The will to stay awake, to keep talking. "I can't move." He even smiled, small and wry. "But I'd like to get out, if I could."

  "I'll get you out." How did I expect to do that? "We're here to clean up. We'll fix it, and we'll get you out."

  "I knew they would send a team. But I didn't want it to be you." Devich grunted, shifted slightly.

  "Don't move!"

  He wiggled enough to drag a hand out from beneath him. I could reach in, far enough, to wrap the tips of my fingers against his.

  Devich said, "This isn't right. This is dangerous. Other, I didn't want it to be you."

  A scream, and the mountain of rubble rocked. Stones and shattered bricks cascaded down on Devich and me. I hunched forward, let my suit extend two metallic semicircles, great hybrids of mirrors and wings. Rubble crashed against them, I bore each hit with a grunt, and held on to Devich's fingers. Wh
en silence returned I folded my suit inside and whispered, "I'll get you out." And the planes attacked me again.

  I gripped Devich's fingers hard as debris wrapped hot and painful around my legs, but couldn't hold on. I heard him scream as I was lifted into the air.

  I reacted this time, determined to be more than some passive body inhabited by a proactive suit. Spikes arched from my hands to catch in the sides of the rubble. No longer flying, I withdrew them enough to skid down to the ground, sending clouds of dust to join the smoke and setting off avalanches of my own.

  "I know you're there," I spoke to the clouds, to the grit clogging my throat.

  Movement behind me. I spun and lifted an arm as a plane lanced out of obscurity. It smacked against my forearm, slid around the metal and unable to get purchase, glanced off into the air beside my right ear.

  The suit. Of course. It had tried to tell me already, if I had only known to listen. The debris couldn't hold my suit. Couldn't hook it, couldn't scratch or pound it. "All right, then. If I must."

  Kichlan had warned me against this. But Kichlan believed debris didn't think for itself, that it wasn't vicious, wasn't vindictive. And look where that philosophy had got us.

  Something dark glanced against my head, knocking me forward. As I fell I let down the guards on my suit, loosened muscles from the bonds of thought. Silver slicked over my fingers, my palms. It was cool as it shot up to my shoulder, as it spread over my chest and down to cover pelvis and thighs.

  I stood to meet the next plane that launched at me, coated neck to toes in silver. I reached for it with my own hands, not extending, not scooping it or collecting it with tweezers' precision. I grabbed debris, wrapped silver fingers around it. And when I held it in a hand encased in the suit, it was no longer the light reflected on stone as Kichlan had described it. This debris was not the unearthly sails I had seen, the shadows with nothing to cast them. It was solid, it was catchable. It was real.

  I understood how that kind of solidity could wreak the damage it had done. How it could knock me, break me, bruise me. But I couldn't understand why I had never felt it before, why none of the team had done this most simple thing and gripped debris with suit, with hand, with everything.

  I knew you were strong.

  I stared at the debris in my grip. Planes still hit at me, smacked against my calves, my back, my shoulders. But these were insects flying, soft, barely felt through the silver.

  Something glanced across my ear, cutting a line of blood that splattered wide against the ground. I swiped with my free hand and knocked the plane back. I would not be battered around any longer. Not by pions, not by debris.

  "Did you?" I spoke to the debris in my hand.

  Yes, and that is why I am glad you are here.

  "So I can help you, is that it?" Like Valya had said?

  Yes. But for now, will you just end it? Will you give me peace?

  "You want to be collected?" To be controlled, crammed in small jars and sent into storage to rot. What was all this about, if not escape?

  Peace.

  Peace? This thing that attacked me, this unknown voice. How could it hurl me across a room, throw me like a doll, and then demand I give it peace?

  I can't stop it doing those things. And the longer I am here, the more danger I am in.

  The dragonfly wings quivered, fast and flickering as though prepared for flight.

  "Danger? From whom?"

  Look up. They are always here.

  The puppet men. Pale figures at a broken window, watching from a building beside the ruin.

  If I stay, they will attack me too. But if I go, that which you hold will run wild, and wreak more destruction than you can imagine. So bring it peace.

  I tried to imagine it. The wings receding, the shadows drawing back, until all that remained was a small, wiggling lump.

  They will try to stop you.

  The puppet men disappeared. A moment later they were at another window, closer to the ground. They pressed hands to the glass and cracked it, the lines of fracture caught bright in the ruddy firelight.

  Above me, the great wings swept across the sky, hissing steam into the air and sending rubble flying. I wavered. Peace? These planes didn't deserve peace. They deserved to be cut, to be sliced into pieces and forced into jars and stored in the darkness for the rest of eternity. They had killed the technician, hurt Devich.

  But that's how this all began. Can't we just finish it? Can you give me peace?

  "Who are you?"

  The voice was quiet. The planes battled on.

  I am not like those men. I will not hurt you, I will not deceive you, I will not use you. I can only ask for your help.

  "Why are you asking me, what do you think I can do? I can't control debris, no one can control it! Peace?" I imagined that small, wiggling lump again. So simple, so innocuous compared to the chaos around me. Certainly a debris I preferred. "How do you expect me-"

  The wings flickered. They stretched, they arched, then they dissolved into the ruddy night, became gloom on the rubble that edged closer, softly, like tired steps over the dirt. Fanned out around my feet they cast for me a hundred thin shadows, strangely expectant.

  Carefully, ready for attack, I crouched. The planes kept still. I lowered the debris in my hand, touched it to the ground, held it there as it absorbed each shadow until I held something more akin to a wide, wet towel. It wasn't quite plane form anymore, more like softened, limp grains, stretched thinly.

  Thank you.

  It was relieved. Absorbed, lessened, and relieved. When I glanced up the puppet men were gone too.

  I draped the debris over my suited shoulder and trudged to the mountain wall. Devich was looking down at me, paler, like a ghost face in the rubble.

  "Is it over, now?" he called, querulous.

  "Yes." I was stronger in my suit. With the debris balanced I found handholds and footing. I climbed smoothly, then lifted cement and exposed Devich to the air. He gasped, groaned. He looked crushed, out of shape around the middle, and delicate. A paper doll.

  But he was still able to smile. "You're all shiny. So pretty."

  "We have to get you to a healer." I hoped he could afford one, hoped he wasn't broken beyond repair. Like me.

  He didn't move. He watched me, eyes open, empty. I bent, wrapped arms beneath him and lifted him against my chest. I knew I should feel fear, feel panic. Be terrified by those empty eyes, be angry at the thing over my shoulder. But all I felt was strong.

  You are strong.

  I climbed, Devich in my arms, debris over my shoulder.

  "-vanished." Sofia sounded exhausted. And closer than I expected.

  "She's here, must be here," Kichlan said, too fast, too loud. "We need to search."

  "What about the debris?" Mizra snapped. "It's too dangerous."

  "It's gone, I told you," Sofia answered him.

  "How could it just disappear? How?"

  "Tan," Lad spoke above them all, blue sky above their cloud. "She's here."

  I stepped out of the rubble to silence. Kichlan gaped at me, a few feet from the edge of the hole. Sofia, slumped on the ground, had been glaring at Mizra. They both turned shocked faces to greet me. Uzdal, restraining Lad as best he could, watched me without readable expression.

  "Tan!" Lad waved. "Thank you!"

  Kichlan looked down to Devich in my arms. "The other technician." He spoke slowly, as though he couldn't believe the words.

  I said, "He needs help."

  Healers were already rushing through gaps in the fence. I allowed them to take Devich, ignored their shock before they closed ranks around him and started to work.

  "Is he going to live?" I asked them.

  The healers did not reply.

  "Tanyana?" Sofia struggled upright. "What is going on?"

  "Good question," Mizra muttered.

  "Here." I pulled the strange debris from my shoulder. As a group, my team recoiled. Only Lad remained still, and looked sad rather than
revolted.

  "Other's arse, what is it?" Mizra hissed.

  I said, "The debris." Wasn't that obvious? "I contained it."

  "How?" Kichlan asked.

  I couldn't answer, because I didn't really know. I just pointed at the jars. Moving stiffly, he collected one and opened the lid. I tipped the debris inside, pouring it like water.

  Goodbye. Again.

  Kichlan sealed the lid. I wondered, numbly, that so much had squeezed into a jar so small.

  As I retracted my suit and my body flared into stiff, painful life, I wondered how much could fit into me. Before I shattered like glass.

  15.

  Movoc was silent as I returned to my flat above Valya's house in the smoky mid-afternoon, her streets empty of anyone but the enforcers, architects and healers scrambling to clean up the damage. I kept as far from all of them as I could manage, head down. But my body had not come through the night unscathed and I wasn't as agile as I would have liked to be, nor as hidden.

  "Tanyana?"

  I stilled with the voice, so out of place in these backeffluents and rills.

  "It is!" A second voice, closer.

  I looked up to see Volski running toward me, arms open, face smeared with ash and dirt, but glowing with fierce joy. "Tanyana!" Those arms wrapped around me and lifted my feet from the stones. I dangled in his embrace, watching the rest of my former circle from over his shoulder. Tsana, hands lifted to her mouth, was stumbling toward me like a drunk woman, legs wobbly. Zecholas broke away from them too, mouthing "My lady?" over and over.

  Then Volski let me go. He beamed down on me and I felt dull – empty compared to their light. Debris to their pions. "They said collectors had been killed!" His hands flexed again, moved for my shoulders before he could pull them back. Did he need to touch me to be certain I was there? "It was an accident, with debris, and six collectors had been killed before they could control it. I thought… we thought… oh, I'm so glad it wasn't you!"

  We thought? Worried about me, were they? Their fallen centre.