She was on her feet in an instant, unhooking and discarding her rope in two sharp movements. Then she reached down and hauled Duran up and along the walkway at a rapid pace. Duran cried out and stumbled, wincing again at the pain in his shoulder as he tried to keep his balance. He felt as though he might pass out at any moment, and to make matters worse, he was suffering from vertigo at the sight of the calamitous drop beside them. He did his best to ignore it, but the walkway was so thin and flimsy that he felt as though a fall was not just likely, but inevitable. His eyes were inexorably drawn outward, where the world far below was beginning to disappear under the gloom of twilight, and he inadvertently overcompensated with his balance, jarring his shoulder painfully against the wall.
Pushing the fear and the agony aside, he glanced over his shoulder and saw someone climbing over the balcony. They began to traverse down the rope at a rapid pace.
“Shit,” he said hoarsely. “I hope you’ve got more rope.”
“As it turns out, no,” the woman said. She stopped at a circular hatch and flicked on a flashlight, scanning some of the markings that had been stamped across its outer edge. A moment later a holophone was in her hand. She tapped in a series of digits and lifted it to her ear. “Switch,” she said a moment later, “this is Songbird. I need an opening.”
There was a pause of several seconds, then a man answered.
“Switch here. Gimme a sec.”
“I don’t have a sec,” the woman said, her voice urgent but amazingly composed as her eyes flicked to the figure moving down the wall. “I need it open yesterday.”
Duran looked as well, and now he could now make out enough detail to confirm his worst fears – the Redmen were coming after them.
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” the man drawled. “You got a serial?”
The woman ran the flashlight across the digits on the hatch again.
“Serial is SG9184-8,” she said. “Or that last one might be a ‘B’. It’s scratched, I can’t tell for sure.”
“That’s a ‘B’ for sure,” the man said conversationally. “They never end in numbers.” There was a pause. “Actually, not true. If you look hard enough you’ll find a few in the Infirmary–”
“Screw the guided tour!” the woman said, appearing to lose her cool for the first time. “Open the fucking door, right now!”
The first Redman had abseiled his way downward further and had now almost reached the walkway. Duran had a horrible vision of what one of those pulse rounds would do to the steel under their feet if the Redman decided to open fire. Needless to say both he and the woman would find themselves with a one-way ticket to the ground far below even if they somehow avoided a direct hit.
“Keep your pants on, Songbird,” the man said, maintaining that annoying casualness. “It’s coming.”
There was a thud and the walkway reverberated horribly, swaying and creaking amid the shriek of metal. The Redman had alighted from the rope and was now reaching for the rifle on his back.
“Switch, if you’re going to–”
Suddenly the door clicked, and the woman reached out and pulled on the handle. There was a low moaning noise as air rushed in through the gap, and then the woman’s hand was on Duran’s collar, pulling him through. The two of them struggled and stumbled their way into the portal simultaneously and then landed on a heap on the floor inside. The door slammed shut behind them, but the access panel beside it was still green, indicating that it had not yet returned to a locked state.
The woman got up and went to the inner door, but it was locked. Duran looked around. They were inside a small airlock and there was no other way out.
“Switch, we need another door unlocked,” the woman said. “We have a friend in crimson on our tail.”
“Serial?”
She ran the flashlight up and down the hatch. “I don’t see one.”
“Well, that should make life interesting.”
The woman pulled an old .38 Special from inside her jacket and pointed it toward the outer door. Duran could see that she was trembling.
“Switch, we need the first door locked, please,” she said, forcing calmness into her voice again with a great deal of effort.
There was a scraping sound outside the door. Duran tried to get up but suddenly found his strength had fled. Oddly, the pain in his shoulder was subsiding.
“What was the serial for that one again?”
“Goddammit,” the woman breathed. She terminated the call and shoved the phone in her pocket, then lifted both hands to the gun. She stared down the sights, breathing heavily, and cocked the hammer.
There was more scraping outside, but Duran’s sense of panic had receded. Now it was he who was feeling calm for some reason.
The handle on the door creaked and turned from three o’clock to six o’clock, and there was a sharp click.
Suddenly the access panel reverted to red and the door mechanism activated again. The handle snapped back to a horizontal position with a loud crack. It shuddered twice as someone on the other side tried to force it, then a third time, and then went still. There were more scraping sounds, and then Duran vaguely heard the sound of footsteps moving away. A few moments later the two of them were left in the silence of the airlock, breathing heavily.
The woman let out a long, shaky sigh, easing the hammer on the .38 back to its rest position.
“That didn’t go exactly to plan.” She replaced the gun in her jacket and looked down at Duran. “You look like shit.”
“Thanks.” He felt like shit.
“Get up, Duran,” she said, returning to the inner door. “We have to keep moving.”
“How do you know my uh… my name?” he said, smacking his lips. They were very dry. He was finding it very difficult to concentrate all of a sudden.
The woman turned back to him, twigging to the fact that he was struggling. She knelt beside him and pulled back his jacket. There was a dark wet patch down one side of his body from the wound in his shoulder.
“You’ve been shot. You’ve lost a lot of blood.”
“Seems that way.” He closed his eyes, feeling another wave of fatigue sweep over him. It was an oddly pleasant sensation.
“You need to get up and walk,” the woman said, gripping his arm, but Duran only smiled weakly.
“No chance.”
“Shit.” The woman was using the holophone again, but Duran barely heard her. “Switch, Songbird again. I need some help here. Can you get someone to my position?” A pause. “No, I can’t do that myself.” Another pause. “Duran?” she said loudly in his ear. She slapped him across the face. “Hey! Stay with me. Duran!”
But Duran was already sinking into a comfortable warmness that enveloped him like a blanket, offering him respite not only from the woman’s voice, but from thoughts of Knile Oberend and his father as well.
He welcomed it with every fibre of his being.
3
The world was falling away below Ursie Meyer, the pinpricks of light from Link far below becoming less distinct by the second as the railcar thundered upward. It ascended with such velocity that she felt herself sinking into the worn leather seat inside her capsule, the softness of the fabric pressing in around her and filling the gaps between her arms and legs like a sponge. A harness had been clipped into place by one of the technicians before her capsule door had closed, and it held her snugly against the chair. Through the scratched perspex bubble dome of her capsule’s door, she could see the Earth receding, becoming dark and indistinct and smaller by the second. Gradually, there was light again, but this time from above – glittering stars emerging from the haze of pollution that covered the heavens.
She’d felt many emotions as she’d stepped aboard the railcar. Ecstasy, relief, triumph. She felt a sense of accomplishment at having won. The moment when Knile had dropped the passkey, effectively giving it to her, had been the culmination of many months of planning and manipulation.
And now those emotions too were fal
ling away, becoming more and more insignificant with each passing second, as if she were not only leaving the Earth behind but her victory as well. The taste of it had soured in her mouth all too quickly, and now she was left feeling an odd kind of emptiness that she could not shake.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. This moment had been everything she’d ever dreamed about, so why did it feel so hollow?
She’d used her psycher tricks to sway Knile’s emotions throughout their time together, probing at his consciousness as she’d slowly poisoned him to the idea of leaving the Earth. It had all been part of a meticulously constructed plan to persuade him to hand her the passkey, to allow her to leave in his stead. She’d been pulling his strings the whole time, guiding him on the emotional path that she’d chosen for him, and in the end she had gotten what she wanted.
But her victory over him had been hollow. She had to admit that. She hadn’t manipulated him as fully as she’d intended. The ruse with Mianda had caused him to doubt himself, that was unquestioned. But she hadn’t deceived him completely.
In the end he’d come to some sort of personal revelation, a truth that had made him question his own motivations, and he’d handed the passkey over to her of his own volition.
Without her manipulation, it seemed clear to her that he would have kept the passkey and gone onward himself, boarding the railcar and heading off-world. Something that she’d said had reached him. Her words had made him form some kind of internal connection that all of her mind games and manipulations had not.
The railcar jolted loudly, shuddering and vibrating with disconcerting force, and in response Ursie clutched at the arms of her chair in panic. It was not the first time this had happened. She had no idea what was causing the instability, whether it was joins in the elevator housing or air turbulence – if that could even affect the railcar – but either way it had amounted to a far from smooth journey.
She wondered for the first time about the safety of travelling on the Wire. Who was performing maintenance on this thing? Had it slowly been coming apart over the years? Could this trip be the fateful occasion on which it finally fell to pieces? And what would happen to the railcar if that happened?
When she was younger, Ursie had met an old man called Damen down in Link. He had enjoyed telling the local children all manner of stories, most of which she had forgotten, but one of them returned to her now. He’d told them of how he had once travelled on an airplane in his youth, back when travelling around the world in winged aircraft had still been commonplace.
“I was terrified,” he’d said, offering them all a toothless grin as he scratched at his stubbly white beard regretfully. “It was loud and noisy and there was no way out of that tin can. And the thing went high, higher than them there clouds,” he’d said, pointing past the Reach at a row of muddy orange clouds in the twilight. “Not a flyer, me. No sir. I’m glad those things are gone. Happy to stay on the ground, old Damen.”
Ursie decided that perhaps she was in the same camp. The large bubble window that afforded her an expansive view of the world below had been exhilarating at first, but now the scales were tilting toward outright intimidation. She suddenly didn’t want to be reminded of how high she was, how far above the Earth this dilapidated craft was speeding as it clung to the scant tether of the Wire.
She reached out for the small terminal screen that was attached to an extendable arm, drawing it in front of her. She needed a diversion, something to take her mind off things. The edges of the screen were cracked and flimsy, and tiny chunks of plastic broke off in her hand as she gripped it. Grimacing, she swiped her fingers across the screen in an attempt to turn it on, but nothing happened. She felt around its edges for an activation button, but there was nothing.
She shoved it away again, disgusted. She had to remind herself that the Reach had been a military installation, and that the railcar had been built to ferry personnel into space. Perhaps they had thought it unnecessary to install an entertainment system into the capsules.
Or perhaps she had just been unlucky enough to be given a capsule where the screen didn’t work.
As she sat there trying to figure out a way to occupy her thoughts, she realised there was something else that was nagging her. She’d actually grown to like Knile during their time together. She respected his resourcefulness, his tenacity, and his cleverness. And as she’d gently probed at his mind during their journey, she had detected some of that positivity directed back at her as well. They’d developed a kind of kinship as they’d ascended the Reach together.
Knile liked Ursie and had begun to care for her wellbeing. It saddened her to think that she couldn’t remember the last time someone had thought that way about her.
And then at the end of it all Ursie had betrayed him, double-crossing the one person with whom she’d formed any kind of affinity in the past few years. It filled her with a sense of self-loathing to realise that, in the end, he had come to recognise that she was nothing but a liar and a thief.
What a crushing disappointment that must have been for him.
And yet, as she’d pushed out toward him with her mind one last time, she had found no animosity within him. He’d accepted what had happened, holding no grudge toward her, realising that she had merely outplayed him in the game in which everyone on Earth was involved – the game of leaving that dying world behind.
Forget about that. It’s in the past. Your future is waiting at the end of this ride.
Her future. The thought of it almost allowed her to push her recollections of Knile Oberend out of her mind. She still knew relatively little about what was going to happen to her once this railcar reached its destination. As he’d helped her into the capsule, the man in the aviators had said something to her that she now recalled quite clearly:
See you in six hours.
Or at least, that’s what she thought he had said, right before he’d taken his place in a capsule of his own not far away.
Did it really take that long to travel to the top of the Wire? And what would the man have in store for her once they disembarked?
Whatever happened, it was going to be something new. Something exciting. That was worth just a little optimism, she figured, enough to make her cracked lips turn up at the edges in a little smile.
She closed her eyes and let herself sink further into the folds of the chair.
This was the beginning of her new life.
With that thought circling in her mind, Ursie finally found a sense of contentment, and with it came sleep.
She didn’t know how long she’d been out, but when she was awoken by another of those teeth-rattling jolts, the Earth was far below. As her eyelids drew apart, she started at the sight of it, the bright curve of the horizon far off in the distance, the shine of some far ocean in twilight, and below her the gloomy serenity of the land under the thrall of night.
Her harness felt lighter now, as if it had been loosened while she slept. She stirred, craning her neck to look upward through the bubble.
Something was up there. Something was approaching.
Now the display terminal stuttered and came to life, and a face appeared. It looked right at her and smiled.
4
Talia gathered her things and headed for the door. She paused there, her fingers outstretched toward the handle as her mind raced with a thousand thoughts.
Wait a minute. Think.
She was on edge. Had been since she’d woken up early that morning, and she wasn’t thinking clearly.
No. I’ve been on edge since Knile walked back into my life two days ago.
Talia wasn’t sure if she’d had a coherent moment since Knile had appeared out of thin air in her basement, materialising unannounced from the shadows as he always seemed to do. He’d asked for her help getting into Grove, and she’d done as he asked, and then he’d continued on his way again.
But he hadn’t left her thoughts yet.
And now thoughts of Roman were floating around up the
re as well, banging around inside her already addled head and complicating things further. Latent feelings of guilt had been aroused by meeting the boy again, emotions that she’d thought she had caged in a deep dark place and secured with an iron padlock, but which had come bursting through her defences with dismaying effortlessness.
And just when things couldn’t get any worse, Knile had called her back again yesterday afternoon to reveal that Roman was in danger, that the boy was about to walk into a trap, and that it was up to Talia to prevent it from happening.
Typical, Knile. Never around when I need you.
But even as she thought that, she knew that she couldn’t brush the responsibility away quite so easily. Talia was as much at fault for abandoning Roman as Knile was. They had come to the decision together, telling themselves that it had been in the boy’s best interest to send him to Grove, that he would have a better life there.
Whether it had been a decision based on altruism for the boy or just her own pure selfishness, she now couldn’t be sure. She’d asked herself that very question a hundred times in the years since it had happened.
In any case, she had to make things right. Roman was in danger and it was up to her to save him, to warn him. Knile was gone and he wasn’t coming back. There was no one else to do the job.
She pulled her hand back from the door and looked over her shoulder at her dismal little kitchen, her modest living room with its threadbare carpet.
Not much of a place for Roman to live in, but we could manage. Him and me, we could be happy here, if that’s what he wanted. If he agreed to it.
First things first. Before anything else, she had to reach the boy and try to cut through his animosity toward her, make him listen. She had to divert him from his course toward this Candidate program that Knile had spoken of, and maybe after that there would be time to discuss a reconciliation.
So how do I get in contact with him?
Yesterday afternoon, after the call from Knile, Talia had set out immediately toward Grove to see if she could gain entry in the hope of finding Roman inside. That plan had not worked. She had been turned away by the guards at the entrance, and this time there had been no old friends to show up and help her past them. Discouraged, she had returned home, intent on rising early the next day to wait outside Grove yet again in the hope that Hildi or perhaps even Giroux himself might see her and usher her inside.
Landfall (The Reach, Book 2) Page 2