by Simon Kewin
“You're serious?” asked Johnny.
“I am.”
“Hire a car, I guess. Shoot down the M56, be there in an hour or so. But it sounds like a pretty insane thing to do”
“I'm going to do what I can. Rescue this Cait. I'm not going to sit here shaking in fear. I'm going to take them on. But you, Johnny, you don't have to come. This is your world; you could leave us, return to your old life.” Ran, she knew, would not be persuaded. Johnny might be.
He looked around the room, as if assessing whether this really was still his world. “Nah. You wouldn't stand a chance without me. And I do wanna sail Smoke on the Water down the An. Find the ocean it empties into. It'll take more than an army of superzombies to stop me.”
“Thank you,” she said, touching his arm.
The warlock looked directly at her as they left, his eyes bright and full of meaning, even as he twirled more bread dough around in the air. Good luck, he was saying. Be careful. He would see of course. He would see what happened to them but couldn't do anything about it. She almost felt sorry for him.
It took Johnny some time to sort out the car. They sat in the small, drab room of a shop where he said they'd be able to hire one. The wooden chairs were uncomfortable, the air stale, and she longed to be outside. Johnny bartered and argued, all something to do with pieces of paper. In the end, the small, colourful card he said was money resolved everything. They were taken through a back door to a large silver machine. She climbed in warily. It smelled strange, as if filled with sickly flowers she couldn't see, but its black leather seats were comfortable. It was surprisingly large inside too, with enough room to stretch out her legs.
“They had a nice Jag,” said Johnny. “But only a two-seater. So I had to go for the Merc.”
She nodded, as if she understood.
Johnny moved off, clearly enjoying himself. Alarm thumped through Fer as they surged forward. She shut her eyes; they were surely going to crash at any moment. They shot down a wide road, great lines of the cars moving at speed around them. They turned corners, stopped at lights, weaved between other cars and then they were on an even bigger road, bridges passing high above them.
After a time she relaxed. Once you got used to being powerless to do anything, being in the car became quite peaceful. Johnny pressed some buttons and music came on: raucous, discordant, rhythmic. The sound emerged from all around her so that it seemed to come from inside her head.
“Hah!” she heard Johnny say to himself, as if he recognized the music. He pressed more buttons and it became quieter. Johnny sang along with it. She hadn't heard him sing before. His voice was melodious, gentle yet rich. He seemed to know all the words.
The singing, the warmth, the low throb of the machine, the large meal she'd eaten, all had their effect. She succumbed to sleep, letting it take her, while Johnny drove on, transporting them at this great speed toward the Angere portal.
She awoke when the car stopped. Johnny and Ran had opened their doors to get out and Fer, once she found the correct lever on the door, followed. After the comfort of the car she shivered.
She tried to take in the scene. She'd never imagined anything could be so ugly, so brutal. The refinery was vast and monstrous, all metal pipes and spikes and misshapen blocks, all of it dirty grey and brown. Red flames flared from its metal chimneys. The air smelled bad, filled with acrid smoke, dusty in her mouth. She was reminded of standing before the archaeon in its underground lair. But this was much, much worse.
“Leviathan Industries,” Johnny read from a sign attached to the high, spiked fence surrounding the place. “A division of Genera, Inc.”
She looked at Ran. The dragonrider was sizing up the fence, as if thinking about trying to climb it. That seemed hopeless; the building had to be well guarded. She watched as one of the large moving vehicles stopped at some metal gates. Perhaps they could sneak inside in one of those? A team of uniformed security guards swarmed around the wheeled machine, checking the driver's papers, peering inside and underneath the vehicle before they opened the gates. No. They would surely be found if they tried.
“We have to find a way inside,” she said.
“There's a path around the edge,” said Ran. He set off, away from the gates, almost at a jog. Fer glanced at Johnny, who simply shrugged. They strode after the dragonrider.
The refinery consisted of countless buildings, all connected with huge pipes of tarnished, stained metal. They worked their way around for long minutes, the spiked fence always to their right, more grim ugliness revealed with each step. But there was beauty to be seen, too. The land beyond was pleasant in many ways: rolling hills, small copses of trees visible in the distance. In the glow of the sunset, scattered birds flapped westward, as if trying to flee the fall of night. It must have been pleasant here, once, before they built the refinery. Had they deliberately chosen somewhere beautiful to spoil? Or was all this because of the portal?
The path sloped upward. It led around a rocky outcrop and over the top of a hill. Refinery buildings had been placed here, engulfing the hillside like some terrible blight creeping over the land. She could see no possible way inside.
“Someone coming,” Ran said. He stood a few paces ahead, poised, ready to charge into combat. He would fight any attackers with his bare hands. He might even defeat some of them.
The rising path curved behind a mound of scrubby bushes, their rampant summer growth making them large enough for a number of people to hide behind. The newcomers might be people out for a walk, although she couldn't imagine anyone coming here for the pleasure of it. More likely they were soldiers like those from the library, guards from the refinery on patrol, come to capture them.
She reached with her mind, trying to see who lay in wait. The overwhelming sense was, unexpectedly, of something familiar. Yet she was sure she'd never met any of them. She felt their anxiety. They were alarmed about who she, Johnny and Ran were, too.
“They're friends,” she said. “Ran, it's OK. They're not from Angere.”
Ran said nothing, but he remained tense, preferring to trust his own eyes.
“Johnny, call out to them. I think they know we're here. Call to them and say we mean no harm.”
Johnny shouted some words in the language of this world. There was a pause, then he shouted some more, laughing at something. It seemed to do the trick.
Three figures appeared. A young man and two older women. The strangers' faces were clear in the harsh light from the refinery. The women were dressed in warm-looking woollen clothes, black or grey, but the young man wore only a thin shirt, a garish picture emblazoned across it, and blue trousers like Johnny's. As they came nearer, a look of astonishment lit up their faces. The young man, little more than a boy, still growing into his gangling height, stared at Johnny, amazed at the sight of him. The meaning of his words was clear even to Fer.
“You? No!”
The two women were certainly witches, probably mother and daughter. They stared directly at Fer as if they, too, were unable to believe what they saw. The older one spoke, a disbelieving hope in her voice. It sounded like she uttered someone's name.
“Cait?”
20. Extraction Engine Nmbr 1
Genera, Inc.
Cait awoke, feeling in her bones the deep hum reverberating through the walls. She'd been lost in disturbed dreams, lying inside some great machine. Trapped in a cavity between roaring cogs, unable to crawl out without being crushed.
She tried again to find the well of calm cold within where the magic lay. If she brought it to life, bent it to her will, then perhaps she could escape this terrible place.
But it was unreachable. In her mind she glimpsed a mountain lake covered in ice. She recognized it from a holiday hill-walk taken with her mother and father, years ago. A memory that had become, for some reason, the way she envisioned the magic inside her. The deep waters of that lonely lake the well of her power. It called to her. But her legs refused to work, like in a dream. She shouted
to the cold presence of the dead witch-girl, imagining her floating there beneath that steel-grey surface. No reply.
Had they drugged her? Cut the magic out of her somehow? It was the same with the seeing stone. Last night, desperate, she'd tried it, hoping to spot some way to escape her prison. But it was dead glass. It was useless. She was useless.
She heard the door being unlocked. She didn't want to face the world, but knew she had to. She opened her eyes. Her bare cell seemed even smaller than she recalled. The light from the fluorescent tube in the ceiling lit the brown walls with a distracting, flickering light. She'd slept fitfully, writhing in nightmares of fire, the ceiling-light the glow of the flames. There was no switch to turn it off. In the middle of the night she'd tried to remove the bulb by standing on the bed, but couldn't reach. She'd thrown a shoe to smash it and let the welcome darkness into the room. But she'd missed again and again, each attempt more desperate, more angry. When, finally, she scored a direct hit, the tube was completely undamaged. She'd returned to bed, curled into a ball, put the pillow over her head and cried herself to sleep.
She forced herself to stand and face whoever was coming. More than anything she longed for a shower, fresh clothes, a brush for her hair. The meal-tray they'd given her last night when they'd bundled her into the room, sandwiches embalmed in cling-film, lay on the floor untouched.
Nox kicked it aside as he strode into the room. Behind him came a woman, her black business suit in sharp contrast to Nox's relaxed casualness. She wore her blond hair pinned up. Her makeup was immaculate, the colour and shading as good as anything in a magazine. It made Cait's own efforts seem crude and artless. The woman regarded Cait with a neutral expression, as she might some unimportant report. Two men in white coats followed her, one of them holding a small leather box.
Finally, a small, ugly creature waddled into the room. At first Cait thought it must be the undain from the furnace. Her arm still burned where it had grasped her. But surely that creature would have assumed the shape of something more vicious than this hideous little goblin? She wondered how it had got here. It was the size of a dog, its skin mottled green and its belly hugely distended. It walked awkwardly on stumpy legs, its bloated stomach brushing the floor with each step.
She forced her eyes from it. “You have the book,” she said, her voice hollow in the confined space. “There's nothing I can do to stop you, now. Let me go. Let me out of here. Please.” She couldn't help a sob from catching in the last of her words.
“You really are as stupid as they said, aren't you?” said Nox. “You haven't understood any of it.”
“Understood what?”
Nox ignored her question. He indicated the woman next to him.
“This is Ms. Sweetley, my second-in-command. After we have completed our tests, she will give you the guided tour. You need to at least try and understand your role in what is to come.”
“Tests? What tests?” Her mind was a fog, thoughts and questions slipping from her as she tried to hold on to them. What role did she have to play? She'd meant to ask him about her mother and Danny, but somehow she'd forgotten. Were they dead? Or had they managed to escape?
Before she could speak, the two men in the white coats stepped forward. One took a needle-tipped syringe from the black leather box. The other seized hold of her arms, pinning them behind her as she struggled. She was too weak to fight. She let her legs buckle, trying to use her own weight to drop to the floor, but the man held her up, keeping her steady.
The other white-coated man brought the needle toward her arm. Desperately, she reached for the well of magic within her, tried to lash out as she had the evening before. She felt only numbness within.
“What have you done to me?” she said, wincing as the needle slid through her skin into the crook of her left elbow. The thought of never being able to work magic again was terrible.
“Ms. Sweetley will explain all about Spiritual Refraction,” said Nox. “Slowly, so you can understand it.”
The man in the white coat drew back on the syringe, sucking dark, viscous blood from her arm. Hadn't she read somewhere that if this was done wrong and air bubbles were injected into the vein it would kill you instantly?
“Never heard of it,” she said to Nox, trying to sound defiant.
“Of course you haven't,” said Ms. Sweetley, then. “It wouldn't be much of a two-hundred year global conspiracy if we told everyone about it, now would it?” The woman looked cross at having to waste her valuable time speaking to Cait.
“A conspiracy? Great. Now you sound like Danny,” said Cait. “Just what I need.”
“The greatest conspiracy of them all, in fact,” continued Ms. Sweetley. “The truth is we invent half the crazy theories out there to distract attention from it. It's quite amazing what people will believe. They don't like to think for themselves, you see.”
The man withdrew the needle, placing a small wad of cotton wool over the puncture in her arm. He motioned to her to hold it in place.
The goblin-like creature waddled forward. It licked its lips with a long, fat slug of a tongue and stood with its mouth gaping wide open, stumpy arms crossed and resting on its spherical stomach.
The man squirted the blood from the syringe into the creature's upturned mouth. Cait's stomach lurched. The goblin tasted her blood, eyes closed, swilling it around its mouth as if savouring some thick, red wine. A dribble ran down its chin. After a few moments it swallowed and opened its eyes. It nodded its head at Nox.
“Excellent!” said Nox. “So you really are of the blood. Now we are finally ready for our visitor.” He looked triumphant.
“Visitor? What visitor?” she said.
Nox ignored her again. “You caused me some difficulty, Cait. You and the others. It's time you paid the price for that.” He turned to Ms. Sweetley. “Show her everything now, Emma. Make her understand how pathetic they were to fight us.” He was enjoying himself, enjoying her alarm. “I want her to see there is no hope. No hope at all.”
The woman nodded. She took out her phone and made a few entries on it with her thumbs.
“My mother,” said Cait. “And Danny. What happened to them?”
“Won't it be terrible never knowing?” said Nox. “Off you go, now.”
Ms. Sweetley marched out of the room, heels clacking on the hard floor. Cait, glad to have the chance to get out of the room, followed.
She was led down long corridors busy with hurrying people. Two guards strode behind them, marching in step. She couldn't tell for sure but guessed they were more of the human machines that had pursued them across the city. Briefly, she toyed with making a dash for freedom, but soon abandoned the idea. It seemed pointless.
They went through a guarded door into an air-conditioned room whose floor was taken up entirely with a mosaic of monitor screens. A hundred or more of them, each showing a different scene. Two men in business suits stood in the middle of the room, gazing down at one of the screens, discussing something in urgent tones.
Ms. Sweetley strode across the monitor floor to a window in the far wall. As Cait followed she glanced at the images. Footage of a flood, people dressed in rags, huddling on the roof of a shack. Pictures from a city somewhere in Asia, its streets crowded with people wearing masks over their mouths. A scene of some war-torn town, children playing among the rubble. Walking from scene to scene, she crossed the room to join Ms. Sweetley at the window.
They overlooked a hall almost filled by a machine. It was hard to grasp the scale of the device at first. It was surely larger than her house, larger than her school. It looked like something she might have been taught about in history lessons, a steam engine, all gleaming black steel. Wheels and cogs whirred while pistons shining with oil pumped in and out of cylinders. A confusing network of pipes crept over it. On its top stood a tall chimney from which smoke or steam escaped, sucked up by modern silver piping and carried away. She could feel the roar and thrum of it even at this distance.
A great num
ber of people worked on the machine: polishing it, making adjustments, reading dials and consulting sheets of paper. They were dwarfed by it; they looked like toy figures working around some beast they'd captured, its limbs still flailing uselessly.
“Beautiful isn't it?” said Ms. Sweetley. “You've heard people talking about the machine perhaps. It's fair to say this is actually it. The Engine doesn't normally operate these days, of course. It's a museum-piece, maintained for historical interest. But we're getting it running for our visitor. The last time he graced us with his presence, a hundred years ago, it was out of commission.”
Ms. Sweetley was effusive now, as excited by the prospect of this visitor as Nox had been. At least it showed she was human, that a scowl wasn't her only expression. But quite why the machine excited her, why she found it beautiful, Cait couldn't understand. It was impressive, yeah, must have taken great skill to make. But it was only a machine.
“So what does it do?” she asked. “I mean, what did it do?”
Ms. Sweetley stepped up to the window. “Do you see the nameplate on the side of the main inversion tank? There.” She pointed at a cavernous horizontal cylinder at the heart of the machine, polished black.
Cait peered down. Painted in red letters was the name Extraction Engine Nmbr 1 as well as a year: 1826.
“It extracted something?” she asked.
“Ah yes. Indeed it did,” replied Ms. Sweetley. “With this machine we began the extraction of raw Spirit from the population of the entire north-west of England. Its range was huge: Manchester, Liverpool, across into Yorkshire, down toward the Potteries. We don't make them anywhere near so powerful these days.”
“Spirit? I don't understand,” said Cait.
Ms. Sweetley smiled, clearly enjoying herself. She reminded Cait of a teacher gently explaining the wonders of life.
“You could use many words. Life force? Chi? Psychic energy? Soul? Choose the religious or philosophical term you prefer. You would probably perceive it as magical strength. But we call it Spirit. We suck it out of people, refine it, then pipe it off through the Portal. Millions of barrels of it every year.”