The Last City

by Nina D'Aleo

  ‘Please stay! I really need your help!’ he said, his words tripping over each other. ‘I need to know if the Droso’s governor is talking about the answer to the riddle. Can you go and see?’

  Luther vanished. After what felt like year-cycles instead of seconds, he reappeared. He pointed a thin, scarred arm to the ceiling. Eli looked up at the shining plant bulb.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  Luther opened his mouth, but no sounds came out.

  ‘Scratch it!’ Eli said. ‘In the ground.’

  Using one long claw, Luther wrote a word in the dirt floor.

  ‘Canderlight.’ Eli sounded out. His eyes widened. ‘Canderlight!’ He had studied this light-emitting plant. It lived forever unless it was exposed to any other light. If it was, it flared for a few moments of brilliance before dying.

  ‘It fits the clue!’ Eli clapped his hands together, then his excitement plummeted. There was no way Loki was letting him go – correct answer or not.

  ‘What am I going to do?’

  Luther pointed up to the plant.

  ‘Canderlight, I know,’ Eli said. ‘But how am I going to get out of here?’

  Luther pointed again, more insistently, and Eli gazed up.

  ‘Canderlight,’ he dragged out the word, his mind spinning triple speed. An idea struck him. ‘Luther, you’re a genius.’ He could use the clue against them. If he could expose the Canderlight vine to another light source, he could blind the Droso and escape.

  Eli wildly searched his pockets for a lighter and found nothing. The Droso had taken everything.

  Before he could think further, slapping footsteps approached. The brown vines slid back, revealing his glaring captors. Their tentacles wrapped around him and they dragged him back to Loki, who stood sneering with haughty self-assurance.

  He and the others jeered for a long time before he finally said, ‘Poor dullard, obviously my riddle was a little too difficult for your teensy-weensy mind.’

  ‘Canderlight,’ Eli said.

  The crunching laughter instantly silenced.

  It took a moment for the Droso leader to register the significance, then his expression soured. The moss skin of his face slid up.

  ‘Evil mind-reader,’ he growled. ‘Evil deceiver.’

  The other Mossmen howled and hissed. They closed in, gleaming purple eyes turning black, barbed-wire teeth gnashing.

  ‘Wait!’ Eli yelled desperately. He noticed his communicator lying on the ground and a thought came to him. ‘I’m not a mind reader, but I have a device that does read minds. It’s right there. I’ll give it to you.’ He nodded to the communicator.

  Loki glared at him with distrust. His lips quivered, then his greed won out. He grabbed up the communicator and the machine’s security system kicked in. It registered a stranger’s touch and shut down.

  ‘Just take off that bit,’ Eli said nodding to the locator, which he’d need to track Ev’r. ‘That makes the machine work only for me.’

  Loki ripped off the locator component and dumped it on the ground with the weapon belt.

  ‘Now just pull back that panel there and drag out a blue wire.’

  Loki ripped eagerly at the system. The red security light flared. It sensed an intruder in its internals and initialised self-destruction. Eli shot a glance at the chronograph and lily, judging the distance from him to them.

  Loki stared at the smoking machine. ‘Broken! You lied to me,’ he hissed. ‘Kill him!’

  ‘Luther, shut your eyes!’ Eli yelled, seeing flames flickering inside the communicator.

  He closed his own eyes as the Droso rushed him. He cringed, expecting to feel their wiry hands and vicious teeth. It didn’t happen. Instead, a bright light flashed beside him as the communicator exploded. All movement paused. The Mossmen gasped. Then, as the Canderlight bulbs became aware of the light, they flared. Even behind closed lids, Eli felt his eyes burn. The Mossmen were screaming and screeching. The vines around Eli loosened and dropped away. After a few seconds of brilliance the Canderlights died, leaving absolute blackness and utter chaos.

  The Mossmen howled and ran in all direction, paying no attention to Loki’s shrieked orders. Eli lunged for his weapon belt and locator, then flew upwards, arms outstretched in the darkness. He thudded against the chronograph and patted around it until his fingers found the waxy petals of the Venus Lily. He plucked the flower and flew backwards, landing some way from the screaming Droso. A cold hand closed over his arm and he yelped, ‘Luther, is that you?’

  He took the silence to mean yes and followed as the grip led him stumbling through the writhing garden. Finally a glow appeared ahead of them, a shimmer of light beaming through a split in a huge flower stem. The yellow petal-haired flora-breed he’d saved stood beside it. She had been leading Luther through the dark. She gestured for them to pass through the stalk. Luther vanished into the shadows and Eli headed after him. He paused to say goodbye to the flora-breed. She bent down and kissed him passionately on the mouth, leaving yellow pollen dust all over his face. Eli tripped through the centre of the stem, feeling warm all over, and found Luther lay collapsed on the other side, barely breathing.

  35

  Silho stood at the porthole window, watching aquatic-breeds of every shape and size glide through the murky waters of the Asher. She slipped on the gloves she’d found among the boxes of clothes. Now that her truth was known, she didn’t need to re-bind her arms, but she still needed to keep her hands from directly touching any surfaces.

  Silho caught sight of her reflection in the window and for a moment it was Oren Harvey staring back at her through narrow olive-green eyes – somewhat lost, somewhat wary, conflicted, twisted and searching, a tangle of blonde curls hanging over her pale face. She wondered what her mother would do in her place if she were here, what her father would say if he could see her. In a way now she felt betrayed by both of them. If there was any truth in what that foul High Skreaf had said, it sounded as though her parents had separated for her sake. Or maybe Oren just left, but then had a change of heart once Silho was in trouble. Searching for answers, Silho returned again to memories of her mother saving her from the fire and the few days she’d spent with her afterwards in the desert.

  Violence replayed in flashes and snatches of vivid colour, patches of silence and roars of sound – yelling, thundering explosions, clanging of metal against metal, the whispers of the dying and the hiss of the fire. She spoke in her mind to Oren . . . We walked away. You never ran. You were Commander Oren Harvey, the genesis of defiance and a cold-blooded killer, unhinged, distorted and disturbing, your psyche wrung and shredded like old rags on a razor-wire fence. We walked through the desert, your footsteps marked in blood, you spoke to me, you said, ‘. . . war has fractured my soul, it has stolen my name and purpose. I am an alien to myself and a stranger in my own skin . . .’

  Silho came out of her thoughts feeling, if anything, more lost. Who were these strangers who had brought her into life? Even after all her efforts, she still had no idea. The door slid open behind her and she glanced back. Copernicus entered the room and she looked away, avoiding his eyes. As always, she felt he could see too much of everything she wanted to keep hidden. Her gaze slipped down to his bare chest. He had a tattoo of an axe and blade across his right pectoral. She recognised it from her academy training. It signified membership to the highly secretive and exclusive Nuxum-Re, a fighting group whose style was based on speed and pain resistance. A thick and jagged scar ran across from his left shoulder, down his side and across his stomach, as though someone had tried to cleave him in half but slipped. Smaller scars, with equally gruesome possible origins, stretched over the form and muscle of his stomach and chest. She felt her face flush then, realising he would sense the change in her heat, she burned even more. But when she dared a glance at his face, she saw no outward indication that he had noticed.

  ‘Your back is bleeding,’ he told her. ‘Take a seat and I’ll bind it for you.’

 
; Silho moved over to one of the bunks and sat down. She saw Diega standing in the doorway, watching her with an expression that was not exactly dislike, but not exactly liking either.

  ‘You look like Commander Harvey,’ the Fen finally said. ‘I can see it now.’

  Copernicus sat down behind Silho and pulled up her shirt so that he could access the wound. She tensed as his cool finger brushed against her back.

  ‘I don’t think binding will be enough to stem the flow,’ he told her. ‘And I don’t have any coagulating serum left. I’ll have to stitch it. Diega, hand me some threads.’

  Diega took a packet from her weapon belt and walked over to give it to him. She stood beside the bunk while the commander worked on the wound.

  ‘Did you know your mother was the first female commander in the United Regiment?’ Diega asked Silho. ‘She forced people to see women differently. I doubt I would have ever ended up in the military if it hadn’t been for the changes she made.’

  It felt strange for Diega to be making civilised conversation with her, and Silho could only assume Diega was reaching some kind of acceptance that her father was innocent.

  ‘Why did you join?’ she asked, welcoming a distraction from the pain of the stitches.

  ‘I didn’t,’ Diega replied, glancing back down the glass corridor towards the other room. ‘I got arrested for flying under the influence. The guardian saw I was flying an engine-less transflyer and picked me as an electrosmith. Instead of charging me, he assigned me to six months of military service. First few days I hated. After that, things changed.’

  Silho remembered Eli saying that Diega’s family had never recovered from her sister’s death, that her parents had never taken an interest in Diega’s life.

  ‘Done,’ the commander said, rolling down Silho’s shirt. ‘Diega, I need to talk with Brabel about her skills. Go and keep an eye on the others. Have more of the food. Close the door behind you.’

  The Fen sent Copernicus a look Silho couldn’t read but still left the room, shutting the door behind her with a snap. Her footsteps faded down the corridor.

  Silho turned to face the commander. His eyes were clouded in thought.

  ‘Tell me what happened out there,’ he eventually said.

  Silho shook her head as she remembered the fight with Bellum. ‘I had control, but then she started saying things about my father and I lost it. I couldn’t even remember the words. I attacked but then – the fire.’

  ‘You were burned, but now you’re fine,’ Copernicus nodded to her arms.

  ‘It mustn’t have been as bad as it first looked,’ Silho said.

  ‘Either that or you’ve healed fast.’

  ‘I heal at a normal speed,’ Silho insisted.

  The commander gave her a sceptical look but let it go. ‘What exactly did the witch say?’

  Silho thought of Bellum’s taunts and so much anger rose inside her that she couldn’t talk.

  ‘You do understand that she was baiting you?’ Copernicus asked.

  Silho nodded.

  ‘Why did you let her?’

  ‘I didn’t. She said what she said and I had to react.’

  ‘You have to be able to withstand taunts, Brabel,’ the commander said. ‘People should be able to say anything to you without you breaking control.’

  ‘Usually people could say anything – it’s just because it was her.’

  ‘Are you sure? Because if you have unresolved feelings about anything, you —’

  ‘There aren’t any unresolved feelings,’ Silho interrupted. ‘Every second someone is saying something about my father. I can handle anything – just not from the witch.’

  ‘Okay.’ Copernicus nodded. ‘Now I’m going to say something that may sound harsh, but I think you have to hear it. Nothing is going to bring your parents back. Not you returning to the city and becoming a soldier, not even you proving your father’s innocence. You’re chasing ghosts and shadows. What you have to understand is that your parents weren’t just your parents, they were people who made decisions and these decisions ended up getting them killed. They decided to take the risks that made you an orphan. They decided to leave you alone in this world.’

  ‘That’s not how I see it,’ Silho said, her throat tightening.

  ‘It’s clear how it is,’ Copernicus replied. ‘Your mother and father put their wants above your needs.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Silho argued. She massaged her forehead as the walls started talking in her mind.

  ‘Of course it is!’ The commander raised his voice. ‘They loved themselves more than they loved you. They didn’t care what happened to you.’

  ‘No!’ Silho leapt to her feet. ‘You have no idea! Everything they did was for me!’

  ‘Brabel – you are completely deluded,’ Copernicus said. ‘Just like your father.’

  Silho’s resistance snapped inside her. She flicked to light-form vision, drew a blast of the commander’s power into her hands and lunged at him, but he was ready. He grabbed her and slammed her to the ground, pinning her arms above her head. She screamed and struggled wildly.

  ‘Brabel. Look at me!’ Copernicus spoke above her and the complete composure of his voice made her stop and open her eyes. Immediately, she saw that everything he had just said to her had been a test.

  ‘Say the words, claude animus meus,’ he told her, as she tried to regain control of her mind. He stood up and dragged her to her feet. Silho stood still, repeating the enchant until the voices were silenced. This time it happened much quicker than before. She sensed Copernicus studying her with his incisive eyes.

  ‘Unresolved feelings,’ he said. ‘Talk about them – now.’

  Silho sighed, swaying with fatigue. ‘I don’t know . . . I don’t know what to tell you.’

  That was a lie. She knew what she felt – the uncontrollable anger, inconsolable grief, unfathomable helplessness and then there was the guilt . . . that was the worst feeling and the only one she couldn’t understand. Bellum had played on it and provoked her into fury. She felt guilt that she hadn’t done anything to save her father and mother. She’d watched him being dragged away to his death and watched her mother vanish into the desert knowing she would never come back. Of course, the question was, What could she have done as a child, only six year-cycles old? and the answer was Nothing. So why the guilt? Unexplainable.

  ‘I’m not going to force you to talk,’ the commander said. ‘I understand about . . . feelings and not wanting to talk about them. But I will say you have to think about them, because they’re affecting your ability to control your skills. Do you understand?’

  Silho nodded.

  ‘I will also say that I think you are getting stronger – the amount of power you took from me just then was a lot more than you took from Diega in the backroom of the pub under similar circumstances of anger.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Silho said. ‘And – I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be,’ he said. ‘I said you were getting stronger, I didn’t say you were stronger than me. You need to keep practising.’

  ‘I don’t feel comfortable attacking you,’ Silho confessed.

  ‘Why?’ he asked, studying her.

  ‘Because I don’t.’ She refused to elaborate.

  He narrowed his eyes, but didn’t push. ‘Okay, we’ll work on your other skill. It uses the same strength of mind principle. Come to the wall.’

  Silho obeyed, following him to one side of the room. She stood in front of the wall and the commander stood close behind her. She could feel his cool breath on her neck.

  ‘Hold the words in your mind, then touch the wall,’ he instructed.

  Although she felt reluctant to expose herself to another trance, she complied, slipping off one glove. As she reached out to the wall, Copernicus put his hands on her hips. Immediately she faltered, losing focus.

  ‘Block me out,’ he said. ‘You have to block everything out.’

  Silho stared at the wall and held the enchant in her mi
nd, managing to keep control even when he wrapped his arms around her and held her against him, trying to distract her. Her fingertips pressed against the wall. A rush of information assaulted her mind and the thirst to take everything in almost overwhelmed her, but as she kept saying the words gradually the images slowed and the sounds became clear. The pictures were so sharp she could see all the fine details of the room. She saw the team before they had gone to find Jude. She observed all their actions in sequence, not the spliced and patchy images of all her earlier visions under the influence of the drugs. She also found that she didn’t need to stay with just the one wall she had touched; her mind darted from surface to surface, following the team out of the research facility and into the pipeway leading to the church.

  ‘Brabel,’ she heard the commander’s voice call faintly. ‘Come back.’

  She tried to obey, but struggled to move, feeling as though she were stuck in the image. Panicking and flailing, she shot back the way she’d come in a flash of a thousand images and sounds in one moment. Her mind snapped back to where she was and Silho found herself lying on the ground with the commander kneeling over her.

  ‘What happened?’ he asked.

  She related what she had seen. ‘It’s never been like that,’ she said.

  ‘Good. That proves it. You are gaining more control and your skills are advancing. The training is working.’ He helped her to sit up.

  ‘I’ll try again.’ Silho stood, but lost balance and almost toppled over.

  Copernicus clutched her arm and steadied her. The cold of his touch was soothing against her fevered skin. She reached for an aching place on her neck and grimaced at the pain.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked, lifting her hair aside to see for himself. ‘There are more pictures,’ he said. ‘They’ve spread even further than last time. It must be as we thought. The pictures are somehow related to your increases in Omarian skills – with every battle with a Skreaf your skills progress.’