by Mark Johnson
Another dark stairwell, spiraling downward in ever-deepening gray shades.
“Impossible,” he whispered to Saarg. “Nothing can be this large underground. Nothing! Polis would’ve seen it being excavated.”
This time, Saarg dropped her own scanner down the metal stairs. The mechanism clanked forty-three times. Quite a high ceiling.
Two beeps. No heat, no movement.
“We go together,” she said.
Everyone was equal under Swallowing protocol. Any of their troops could have run back to the surface at any moment, without fear of recrimination. Reeben himself was of a mind to run.
His hip was no less troublesome on this descent. “These stairs are dented here as well,” he said.
“Golem?”
“I’ve never heard of a golem doing this,” he said.
“They shouldn’t be able to,” Saarg muttered. They reached another swinging door at the base of the stairwell. Was it colder down here? He’d never been this far underground. It should have been impossible to dig this far down.
They paused at the door before stepping out, checking their weapons. Above them, on the stairs, their squads did likewise. Reeben waited for Saarg’s nod before they stepped through together.
Had his lenses failed? He peered into the darkness as his lenses whined, struggling to adjust to the room’s massive dimensions. No, not a room, a warehouse filled with row upon row of enormous sacks hanging from metal racks. The racks had mostly fallen over. Those remaining upright were whole; those which had fallen had been torn apart. Around those, the sacks lay ruptured, like broken eggs, and scattered beside them were irregular lumps of clay. No, not clay.
“Armer preserve us,” whispered Reeben. Saarg’s breath came in wheezes. Cries of revulsion and dismay erupted around them.
Fragments of bodies. A sea of severed limbs, scattered in all directions, with hardened dark ooze pooling where they’d been separated from their bodies. Hundreds of souls torn from those strange bags and ripped to pieces. Gods, something had gone methodically through each row and killed each person in each bag, then tipped over each rack as it finished. But it had stopped in the middle of its work, where one rack was incompletely massacred. The racks beyond were still standing.
Behind him, someone vomited. It sounded as though they’d got their mask off in time.
Slowly the living edged forward. They grouped automatically, Seekers and Inspectors in each group, not caring for political distinctions in this den of carnage. They kept a sweeping, rotating scan of the chamber. Reeben’s unsteady boots stuck lightly to the floor — not only to the blood, but also to some other clear, viscous substance. Nearby, Saarg stumbled on an arm. She righted herself and swiveled around, as though something could have come at her the instant she’d lost balance.
Gods, nothing made sense. There was about to be a Swallowing, and Reeben could only gape and be scared for himself. The dead needed him aware and functioning. They required justice. Their story needed unraveling.
Look around Damulen. Use your brain. Start where you see something different and work your way out from there.
“Let’s check the racks that are still standing,” he said.
He didn’t relax, but if anyone or anything waited below, surely it would have attacked by now. But still, what if this was — had been — some sort of cadver conversion center? Though that was unlikely, for everyone knew how cadvers came to be, and it didn’t look like this.
The ruptured sacks were large and leathery, their color indeterminate through his lenses. “Here. These sacks,” Reeben said. “The ones standing. Ah, Gods, I see. The bodies were inside. This clear stuff that’s spilled all over the floor… it must be a preservative, and, oh Polis, they were kept alive, fed oxygen and food with these tubes. The preservative gel was meant to keep their bodies functional, because they’d have gotten bed sores if they were laid out straight. Look, the tubes carried away their waste, because they were inserted…”
He shook his head.
“These power cables head up. Probably to that Sumadan box…”
Armer preserve.
He went on, fixing his truncheon to his belt. “Something pulled each person out, killed them by tearing them apart, and stopped. Stopped right here. Those sacks still hanging have bodies inside. But without running systems they’ll have suffocated.”
Keep yourself together, Damulen.
He wanted to say he’d seen worse, but he hadn’t.
“Here.” Saarg knelt at the side of the row, by a fallen filing cabinet. She picked up some papers. “Names, and locations: by row and column.”
Information. Oh, some blessed understanding at last!
Reeben stumbled over bodies on his way to reach her and grabbed at the nearest papers. Each paper had neat handwriting in the Common script. But he didn’t read straightaway, for a male-sized handprint obscured the papers. The handprint was black and flaking. Blood.
“Survivors,” he said. “Saarg, there was at least one survivor. They checked this cabinet when they got out of these things.” At least that was the explanation that made sense right now.
He swung his head. “Saarg?”
The Head Seeker had gasped when he’d mentioned survivors. He examined the papers more closely.
“Gods,” he said. “They’ve listed everyone. Their profession, age and the date they were ‘acquired’.” He sighed. “Lower classes, so the authorities wouldn’t care.” And indeed, Reeben hadn’t cared, believing the ransom-less kidnappings in this area to be a local fraud racket.
“Here,” Saarg said, pointing at one paper. “The column and row the thing stopped at…”
“The missing forty Brogen Quarter guardsmen,” he said. “So, they didn’t desert all at once.”
The curious story of the Brogen guards had dominated the headlines for a few days, some months earlier. Forty of the miserable wretches had been sent on patrol around an abandoned village and had utterly vanished, leaving no traces or hints about what had happened to them. For lack of any other evidence, the Investigators had assumed they’d deserted the Guard en masse, then left for another Polis.
The Brogen Quarter was far from this outside corner of Polis Armer. For forty men to have been brought so far — probably unwillingly — without witnesses was quite an accomplishment.
Saarg spoke, but her words were lost as the chamber shook and rumbled in a continuous, grinding rattle. The hard ceiling cracked, dusting them with debris.
“That was the Roar,” Saarg shouted above the quietening aftershocks. “We don’t have long.”
Reeben took a deep breath, careful to let it out slowly so none would notice. The Roar. Harbinger of the divine, foreshock of the Swallowing.
Polis Armer’s arrival.
These walls wouldn’t last. As he stared, he imagined the walls were shrinking, enclosing and suffocating him. All he wanted to do was run for the surface and daylight. He tried not to imagine being stuck down here with all this evil death, as the survivor with the bloody handprint had found himself.
Gods, he needed to be out of here. Seekers with shockpoles weren’t anywhere near comfort enough. He needed light, not a world rendered in shades of gray.
He realized that he was checking his mask’s air pipe was still connected to his pack and forced his hands to his side. “Saarg, we won’t have time to remove the deceased,” he said, watching the staircase door as Tummil stepped in and recoiled at the sight.
At Tummil’s approach, Reeben clasped his shoulder. “Just look for anything… you think I should see.” He’d almost said ‘unusual’. Once they made it back to the station, he’d have to put his troops through a mandatory vibration cleansing, in case anything unholy had stuck to them. Even if, impossibly, the Seekers hadn’t scented any chaos yet.
“That Sumadan box upstairs was probably a generator, Sir.�
�
“Yes, I know, Tummil.”
“A Seeker energy-scanned it.”
“And?”
“Nothing. No traces of electricity, no vibrations, no chaos. Or currency or suppression. I looked over his shoulder. Dry as a bone, Sir.”
How could the Seekers not scent anything?
Logic. The situation roused emotion, but required logic. One did not solve problems by focusing on the scenery. All around him Seekers and Investigators bumbled about the chamber looking for individual details. Anything to remember back on the surface.
Reeben pushed a hand through his hair, searching the chamber for some clue, some hint. No energetic traces in a place like this? And yet every device, mechanism, artefact and golem used energy. His vent used electricity, and his lenses used vibration energy. He closed his eyes, rubbing his temple. Nothing removed energies; they simply faded over time.
No energies detected. But nothing worked without energies.
His lenses used vibrations.
What if…
He removed his lenses, resting them on his forehead. The room should have been in pitch darkness, but Gods help him, there was light.
“Mother of Polis,” he whispered, disbelieving. He staggered, his old injury almost letting him fall. “On the wall, Saarg. Turn off your lenses!”
Following behind, Saarg’s helmet clicked, and she coughed.
The rune was over ten feet tall and glowed a soft but bright blue. Its soaring and intricate designs were of such beauty and craftsmanship as to make a calligrapher weep. Ancient symbols arranged vertically in five lines, depicted as if in three dimensions. If he hadn’t removed his lenses, he’d have missed it. The rune bathed them in a clear blue light. He almost felt the light’s pressure streaming against him.
“We don’t have time to send for a scholar,” Tummil whispered. “And we don’t know Founders’ script.”
Saarg approached the rune and stroked it. “I think it’s a quote,” she said over her shoulder. “It rhymes in Founders’, but not in Common.” She cleared her throat:
“The Divine Link
Comes from nature
To purify and power
In His name.
I give the key to many doors.”
“That last line, though.” She paused. “It doesn’t rhyme.”
The Seeker Academy offered a line of training in classical studies. Evidently Saarg had learned some of the ancient language. Seekers claimed the origins of their Order was before even the Founders’ War.
“That’s not the problem, Saarg. Who wrote it? What wrote it? Humans can’t write so… perfectly.”
“You mean, who was the message intended for?” she said. “Someone the writer couldn’t communicate with face to face?”
“Golem,” he said. “Golem can’t speak.”
“Golem aren’t known for drawing on walls. With or without glowing blue paint. If that is paint.”
Reeben wanted to slap himself. He was jumping to conclusions like a first-year cadet. He tore his eyes from the rune, back to the suspended eggs. “Why did it stop at the Brogen guards?”
Saarg followed him around dismembered bodies, trudging through gore. She examined the fallen sacks and metallic suspension frames, preservative and Polis-knew-what-else coating her arms and knees. The smell would be horrific without their masks.
There. Something different about those sacks. “Saarg, look. Four sacks with open access flaps, and the attachment cords are tied off at the top.” Reeben punched the nearest of the four bags, which flopped limply under his fist. “No body.”
“Four guards were pulled out properly.” She spoke slowly, then seized the cabinet papers from his hand. There was nothing unique or praiseworthy about Quarter guards: usually just the opposite. Why save these four?
Kneeling, Saarg traced the row and column of the four sacks on the files they’d found, then copied the four corresponding names. She muttered furiously under her breath, cursing occasionally. Her graphite stylus broke on the paper of her small yellow pad.
“What is it?” he asked.
The Roar came again, dazing everyone in the chamber. Reeben felt Polis Armer’s anger, His resolute determination. Burned-out glowbulbs fell from the ceiling and smashed. A crack appeared and descended a nearby wall. Seekers and Investigators lost their balance and fell.
When the Roar and its shaking subsided, he let out a breath.
“How could anyone escape this, Reeben?” Saarg said.
“I don’t know.”
“The only thing that makes sense is that they were chaos infected. These four are my responsibility now.”
“Can’t get rid of me that easily, Saarg. All four guards? In these… pods, right next to one another?” He could never know as much about chaos energy as Saarg, but this was too simple. More likely she wanted this chase to herself.
She straightened to look in his direction, her eyes not visible through her helmet’s visor. “Do you have a better explanation?”
“No, but I doubt all four —”
A siren erupted from inside Saarg’s pack.
“Less than ten minutes,” she said, flicking a switch on the pack. The siren stopped mid-howl. “Quicker than I thought.”
Everyone ran for the stairs, leaving the dead for Polis Armer. Reeben forced himself to be the last out of the chamber. His bad leg would slow everyone down. But Gods, he was relieved to leave. He couldn’t show his relief in front of his squad, but taking those steps, leaving the darkness and bodies behind them, made him feel he was escaping Hell.
Footsteps struck dull peals on the dented metal steps above him, as everyone rushed up the spiral staircase. He pushed on the wall at every other step, panting and swearing. The stairs vibrated under his feet.
“Burn it, Polis, just wait. I’m leaving!”
Polis had moved too fast to Swallow this place, clearly upset over what He’d seen. But would He come before Reeben could escape?
Reeben emerged on the office level, distant figures disappearing from his sight as they ran to the final staircase. The Roar grew louder at the back of his head. He could trot on level ground without irritating his hip. He reached the stairs leading to the shack’s kitchen, as the sound of dozens of clanging footsteps faded.
One foot on the first step, one last look back down the darkened corridor. A thought tapped inside his head, a feeling he hadn’t recognized some vital piece of information. Had the Investigators the time, they could have scoured the site for the evidence they needed. But no, that wasn’t what irritated him. There was something he’d already seen. What was it?
To his surprise, Saarg waited outside the shack, her helmet still on. Troops of both Orders were running toward the top of the nearest hill. The eastern horizon had lightened to pink and orange. He peeled off his vent and nodded his appreciation. They followed their subordinates to the hill.
“Saarg, two years we’ve had reports of kidnappings. Returned loved ones — with amnesia since the day they were last seen. They were returned with a well-filled currency holder around their necks. Like compensation. It was so ridiculous, we thought it was some sort of elaborate fraud.”
Saarg said nothing. They reached the peak of the hill together and turned toward the shack below.
“This will be a large Swallowing,” Reeben said to no one, needing to fill his head with something other than the distant, grinding Roar. Beneath his feet, the earth quivered.
The stone tower had slanted to an angle. The Roar dizzied Reeben, even this far away, as His attention closed on it. Muddy earth slowly sank, the building’s walls and roof slowly ripped apart. A few people fell, overcome more by the dizzying presence of Polis Armer than the shaking earth. Reeben kept his feet.
More noise. Metal struts shrieked as they bent inwards, forced together. The ground opened and soil colla
psed into the empty chamber below. The building sank backwards into the enormous hole. A spray of dust erupted from the pit. Masonry cracked. Soil and earth dissolved and pulled the structure, caving it in.
The Roar softened, the defeated chamber gradually replaced by the earth as the edges fell, and the earth rose from beneath.
There was silence.
Wind blew softly through Reeben’s hair. He could smell the fresh soil.
Saarg removed her helmet, as the ground settled. She looked tired, her eyes hollow.
The dawn brightened.
“Saarg,” said Reeben, taking her aside, “how much can you tell me about your deceased colleagues’ mission? What were they looking for?”
She looked up. “I’m sorry Reeben. It’s classified.”
His teeth ground together, though he said nothing as she turned to gather her Complement. She faced him once more when the Seekers were ready to leave. “Walk with Polis, Examiner.”
“His light shine upon you, Head.”
Saarg held her helmet under one arm, head bowed. Her Complement did the same, as they turned to follow Saarg down the hill. As they did, Reeben realized the detail he had missed.
He motioned to Tummil.
“So, what’s really going on, Sir?”
Reeben faced toward the grassless, brown flat that had been the ‘mine’. He closed his eyes, letting the scattered facts settle.
“Those provincial kidnappings turned out to be legitimate. The Seekers got wind of them and thought the Enemy and chaos were involved. One of their deep undercover teams found and followed a trail, which led them to that...” He pointed at the flat. “And set off some sort of emergency security alert brought from Polis Sumad. That failsafe killed them and…” He checked the papers. “Two hundred and eighty-three kidnapped civilians.”
“A golem failsafe?”
“We don’t see any out this far, but golem are more precise and powerful than humans. If you ask me, only a rogue golem could have drawn that rune. A golem running hard and fast enough could have dented those stairs. An illegal golem could even have been programmed to kill. Do you remember the reports from out this direction three weeks ago?” He waited.