by Posey, Jay
“But all of them are strong and really brave. I’m not like them. I’m not like any of them.”
“That’s OK, sweetheart. I’m not very brave either. But the question is, what would you do if you were?”
That stirred something within him. It made some sense to wait here in Greenstone. Mama had sent him here because she thought that was best. But Mama couldn’t have known what would happen when he got here. None of them could have. And was he really waiting here for Mama? Was he just waiting for the next person to come along and tell him where he should go, what he should do? Was he just hiding?
He’d made a decision once. One time, he’d embraced the fear and done what he thought was best. He’d left Mama behind before, when he returned to Morningside. And the city had paid dearly for it. He’d failed, utterly, completely. Catastrophically.
But that wasn’t why he had told Haiku no, and he knew it. He’d said no because he couldn’t imagine what might happen next. Here, if he stayed, the possibilities were easy to picture. Maybe Mama would come find him here, and they’d figure out what to do. Or jCharles and Mol would look after him. Or Asher and his Weir would come for one final assault, and it would all be over. But going with Haiku, that was a world completely hidden from him. His mind couldn’t comprehend what might wait for him out there, what changes it might require of him. It was the fear that had made his decision, fear of the unknown, fear of another failure. Fear, nothing else.
“If I were brave, I think I would have gone with him,” he said.
“Well, honey,” Mol said quietly. “It’s not too late.”
“You think I should go?”
“I don’t want you to go, Wren. I’d like to keep you here and pretend I could keep you safe. But illusions are dangerous things to base your life on. A lot more dangerous than anything the real world has for us.”
“You think I should go.”
“I think we’re all going to meet our end one day, Wren,” Mol said. “One way or another. And when it comes, I hope each of us can say that we gave life our best. That we gave it everything we could. Only you can know whether you’re giving it.”
Wren sat on the couch, feeling Mol’s warmth pressed up against him, her arm over his shoulder protecting him. He knew she would do everything she could to defend him, even though he had no claim on her for it. There was no reason in the world for her to put herself in harm’s way for him, to risk her life and the life of her own baby for him, and yet she was willing to do it. So many others had come before her. And he knew that no, this wasn’t his best. He hadn’t given his all. Not yet. Not by a long shot.
“I need to get my stuff,” Wren said.
EIGHT
Cass glanced up at the sky, checking the position of the sun as it rode low in its winter arc. Her veil was down, shielding her modified eyes from the rays that, unfiltered, overwhelmed and confused her vision. It was getting on towards midmorning, and they were only about halfway to Morningside. With Wick out of action, Sky had taken over pathfinding duties. He was plenty good at it, but he didn’t have quite the same effortless sense of navigation that Wick possessed. And though none of them had spoken of it, their pace was undoubtedly slowed by the dread that opposed them like a headwind.
It had taken the whole team to convince Able to stay behind. And they’d completely failed to convince Kit to go with Lil and the rest of the survivors. They’d all said their final goodbyes to Lil and her remaining warriors, and sent them off with as many supplies as they could spare, and probably more. Even in his weakened state, Wick had insisted on running a route for them, and ended up plotting three different courses from the wayhouse back to where the rest of Lil’s people were waiting.
Now, the team was traveling single file with Cass right in the middle, just in front of Gamble. And though they still tended to arrange themselves to protect her, they had in nearly every way taken her as one of their own. They’d even dialed her in to their secure communication channel, which previously had been off-limits to her except in the worst of emergencies. Sky led the way, with Finn coming behind, then Cass, then Gamble. Mouse trailed behind as rear guard, filling in the position that had long belonged to Swoop. Somehow without Able and Wick along, Cass felt Swoop’s absence even more acutely; she could have almost convinced herself that he was back there with his brothers-in-arms. Almost. Knowing he wasn’t left a gaping hole in her heart.
The team walked in near silence, communicating little except by way of hand signals. And the nearer they drew to Morningside, the more cautious they all became. Cass had returned Wick’s weapon to him and was now armed only with Gamble’s sidearm: a jittergun which, while brutally efficient at close range, wasn’t intended for much more than last-ditch personal defense. They were all running light on ammo. Gamble had been clear from the first; contact with any Weir and the mission was compromised. They’d break contact and return with all speed to the wayhouse. She hadn’t mentioned it, but everyone remembered all too well what had happened at Ninestory. That wasn’t the sort of situation you got out of twice. Or usually even once, for that matter.
The approach to the city was agonizing with tension, ever increasing the closer they got. When they were within a half-mile, Sky slowed further, took longer with each decision. No one seemed to mind. There was a disquieting energy over the whole area. It was almost impossible to believe that just the day before, these buildings and streets could have been considered some of the safest in the world. Now they seemed full of danger. Any one of them might house untold numbers of Weir, lightly slumbering in the shadows, just waiting to be provoked by mistake or by chance.
Once the wall came into view, Sky shifted their path to a wide arc more or less following the perimeter of the city from a distance. Communication had dropped to almost zero, and the team had tightened up to no more than eight feet between each member. Weapons were up, breathing shallow.
From the outside, there was hardly any sign of damage. The high wall was intact and obscured any view of the interior. But that didn’t make approaching the city any easier. On the contrary, there was something deeply disturbing about such a large settlement being so completely still and silent. They circled the city from maybe two to three hundred yards out, their pace painstakingly cautious. And it was the gates that filled Cass with the most dread. The third gate was just now coming into view and it too, like the others before it, was wide open. Looking through those vast entryways hinted at the horrors within. Even from this distance, Cass could see the destruction spilled out into the streets. This was one of the western gates, and if Cass was reading the city correctly, just one gate over from where they had made their first stand against Asher’s hordes. One gate over from where Swoop had fallen.
Up ahead, Sky held up a fist, calling for a halt, and the team smoothly fell into a ring to provide security. He crouched and slowly scanned the city ahead with his optic. After a minute or so, he glanced up and motioned to Gamble. She moved to him and crouched beside him, their faces so close together their noses nearly touched. Cass could see their lips moving but they were whispering so quietly she couldn’t hear them even from six feet away. Sky must have given a report, because he did most of the talking. Gamble nodded a few times as Sky motioned with his hands. Finally, Gamble stood and motioned for the others to gather around her.
They drew in as tightly as they could, close enough that Cass could smell the sweat and blood and grime and even the breath of her comrades.
“Four hours,” Gamble said, her voice just barely audible. She held up four fingers for clarity. “We go in here, cut across to the gate, start searching there. Work our way towards the governor’s compound unless we find a reason to go somewhere else.” Gamble glanced around, making eye contact with each of them in turn. No one else seemed to have any problems with that, but Cass felt cold dread at the mention of the compound. They’d all seen it the night before; the Weir had come up through the governor’s compound, that had been their first point of attack inside the walls.
But she understood. Their team rooms were in the compound, up on their own floor. The governor’s Personal Guard had access to more weapons, ammunition, and countless other supplies than nearly the entire City Guard, most of it locked away in the team rooms, in what they called “the cage”. Anything and everything they might need for an emergency was there, whether they needed to lock themselves in against a siege or they needed to evacuate the city with little advance warning. They could run for a long time out in the open if they could get to the cage. Assuming the Weir hadn’t gotten to it first.
Gamble paused again, searching the faces of her teammates for any sign of question or confusion. There was none. Gamble gave a nod.
“Finn, move to point, Mouse back him up. Sky, you’re rear guard. Cass, on me,” she said. “Let’s move.”
That was all it took. In the next moment, the team shifted into its new configuration and started off towards the city that waited for them with the grim silence of a tomb.
Finn led the way, weapon shouldered and scanning for targets, his every step placed with care, heel-toe, heel-toe, heel-toe. Cass lacked the level of training that her companions clearly enjoyed, but she was a quick study and emulated everything she could. She knew enough of the basics to understand intent of most everything they did: weapons never swept across anything one didn’t want killed; eyes stayed focused on the assigned sector; movement was forward or backward, never crisscrossing a teammate’s field of fire.
And then, when they were thirty yards out as they moved in on the city, something clicked and the fear Cass felt started to balance itself with the support she received from the team. Not just the team; her teammates. It divided the tension, distributed it evenly; all she had to worry about was her sector. Her teammates had her back, and her flanks. Cass just had to do her part.
She’d always thought of RushRuin as a team, but now she knew there was no comparison. RushRuin had been a crew. A group of individuals with their particular talents and specialties, each playing their part in turn as each job required. This was something different, something higher. She was attuned to the others in a way she’d never experienced before, and even in the face of such danger, it was exhilarating. Maybe because of the danger.
The gate loomed large before them, and Finn gave the signal to stop just ten yards from it. He glanced back at the rest of them, one final check before they committed. Gamble gave the OK, and together, they crossed the threshold into the site of recent and utter destruction.
Already Cass could see hints of it. But once they passed through the gateway, her view opened out and revealed a spectacle appalling in appearance, grotesque in scale. Whatever horrible images Cass thought she had prepared herself for were obliterated in that instant, replaced by a reality worse by an order of magnitude. Finn stopped without giving a signal and let out a quiet curse. No one could blame him. The weight of the moment struck them all like a physical force, and for a time there was nothing they could do but stand and stare helplessly at what their once-great city had become.
This portion of Morningside was completely unrecognizable, which made it all the more alien and uncanny. Cass looked back at the gate, and through it, back to landmarks outside the city that still remained untouched. But even with those signposts to help her get her bearings, when she turned back she felt lost and disoriented. She had known these streets once, had known the buildings, and those who owned them. No, not these streets; not these streets. These streets were from another world, some alternate reality that had forced itself into her own.
It was as if some great river had washed over the city, had smashed through it, and swept it, and churned it. The streets were filled with such a confusion of debris that it was difficult for Cass’s mind to accept. Clothes, wiring, roofing, food, insulation, pipes, store signs, children’s toys. A pot, caved in on one side, sat on top of the remains of a window frame, like it’d been arranged for some bizarre art piece. The contents of a thousand lives, torn up and strewn throughout the open. Even the skyline had changed where entire structures had collapsed and spilled themselves out across the streets. The air seemed heavier, thicker, full of dust. Cass had never thought much about how the city had smelled before, but even the scent had become a jumbled mass; metallic, sweet, rancid, dank.
“Finn,” Gamble’s voice hissed in Cass’s head. It was a forceful whisper, thin and processed as it was delivered through the secure channel. “Keep moving.”
Her voice brought him back to himself, and he re-centered his weapon and moved forward. The team pressed further in with painstaking caution, now even more vigilant about their footing as they waded through the chaos. They followed the channel of the narrow street that ran alongside the gentle curve of the wall. And as they pressed on, Cass simply could not come to terms with how thoroughly the Weir had ravaged the city. Even witnessing it with her own eyes was not enough for her mind to accept it. It was the kind of scene one might expect from a human invading force, those who might ransack a settlement to carry off its wealth for their own. But the Weir had no need for these things.
The strangeness of it lingered and mixed with the other oddities that surrounded them. Cass had expected the loss of life and the signs of panicked flight. But she hadn’t expected the level of wanton, meaningless destruction. The Weir had never seemed interested in anything other than the humans they sought to claim, and yet here they had obviously spent great effort on tearing down not just the citizens, but on all that had had value to those people as well.
But then of course, this wasn’t the work of the Weir, Cass reminded herself. This was Asher’s doing. And that thought clarified everything in an instant, crystallizing it in a single concept. This hadn’t been an attack. It had been a tantrum. Asher’s wrath and vengeance poured out upon the city. His rage unleashed and unchecked. Cass’s eyes opened to the new perspective and the contrast struck her; how vast the destruction, how childish the execution.
It was about twenty minutes before they reached the western gate where the first wave of the battle had kicked off the night before. This area looked much the same as all they had already passed through. The gate was wide open, and a cursory inspection showed it was intact. The gate hadn’t been breached. It had been opened from the inside. A sickening reminder of the betrayal, the fall from within.
Beyond the gate was the site of their first clash with the Weir. The story of that battle was chronicled in the red-black ink of war that stained and splotched the ground.
Here the team would begin their search for their fallen teammate, though even at the first it was without much hope. For all the material that had been scattered, one thing Cass had not yet seen was a single human body. On one hand, that wasn’t especially surprising. The Weir nearly always carried off the slain, human and Weir alike. But on the other hand, the sheer number of people that would have had to have been moved was staggering to consider. Where would the Weir have taken them all?
Cass approached the wall just to one side of the gate where she and many others had moved the bodies of their dead after the initial assault had been repelled. She remembered the exact place where Mouse and Able had lain Swoop’s body, and she walked to it. Mouse drew up next to her and they both stood in silence, staring at the place they’d seen him last. Mouse made a sound somewhere between choking and clearing his throat, and when Cass looked at him, the tears were already running down his cheeks and dripping from his jaw.
“I’m sorry, brother,” he said softly. “I’m gonna make it right, soon as I can.”
Cass, unsure of what else to do, laid a hand on his arm and squeezed it.
“I should’ve lit him,” Mouse said. “Soon as we heard ’em coming. I should’ve lit him.”
“You couldn’t have known, Mouse,” Cass said.
“You don’t understand, Cass,” he answered without looking at her. There was no reproach in his tone, yet the words were heavy with meaning.
She waited to see if he would continue, but he
went quiet and Cass could see from the look in his eye that he was wrestling to get himself back under control. She just stood by his side with her hand still on his arm, not sure how to extract herself from the moment, or even if she should. After a long moment, Mouse exhaled sharply, wiped his face with his hand and then glanced at her. He winked and patted her hand.
“Better get to it,” he said. Cass nodded and turned around to find the other three standing nearby, watching them. No, not watching them. Paying their respects, each in their own way.
The team spread out then, though they all stayed close enough together so everyone could still see everyone else. They took their time searching for any sign or trail that might point to where the Weir had gone, but between the debris and the number of people who had moved through the area, all was confusion. Sky was the most skilled tracker among them, and even he looked lost. They spent no more than fifteen minutes there at the gate.
“Come on,” Gamble said. “Let’s check the compound.”
“Gimme five more,” Mouse responded.
“He’s gone, Mouse. We’re not gonna sift all this just for hope. We won’t find it here anyway.”
Mouse started to say something else, but stopped himself. The two stared at each other for a span, and though Cass couldn’t read either one of them, she got the impression there was an entire conversation going on in those looks. Finally, Gamble just said, “Finn.” And with a reluctant glance at Mouse, Finn moved out.
The team fell back into their previous formation and started working their way towards the governor’s compound. Cass felt the tension rising again. As bad as the initial walk-through had been, at least they’d kept to the perimeter of the city, with the wall on one side. Now they were headed into the centermost part, the heart of Morningside. Even though they hadn’t seen a single sign of life or motion, Cass couldn’t help but feel like they were being slowly surrounded.