by Andrew Post
Clearly Moira had more to say, but she took a deep breath and paused. When she spoke again, it was in that smooth, almost whispering tone. “And if you want to make up for that indiscretion, you can. We have ties to the prime minister of Adeshka, who has agreed to allow us to extend you a deal of sorts.”
“Well, since Adeshka has been so hospitable to Geyser, how could I refuse? All the dirt I could ever eat. Every day someone else trying to kill me. It’s paradise, and I really can’t thank you enough.”
“Listen,” Karl cut in, “we know about everything after your battalion fell apart, too. The sudden . . . entrepreneurial attitude you developed when you got out of the hospital. This thing”—he gestured at the DeadEye—“you paid for by selling your services as a Bullet Eater.”
“Adeshka screwed me over, and it screwed Geyser over. Why should I even lift a finger for a city that doesn’t give two craps about me or anyone else who isn’t on its registry? I mean, what happened was an accident.”
“Accident?” Karl huffed. “You accepted the word of a freelance scout: people who basically are paid by one side of the fence to hop over and spread lies to the other! You have no one to blame but yourself. And as far as Geyser goes, with the trouble they’re having right now, you’re lucky they’ve given your people this much. And you’re also lucky they haven’t figured out that you and your buddy Ricky are just carrying merchant cards; they could’ve expelled you both a long time ago without warning.”
Moira piped up. “We’re getting off topic. Do you want to help us or not, Mr. Browne? Otherwise, we can just call one of the heads of security in here and have you explain you’re not worthy of even temporary status as a refugee, a man who snuck in with—”
“I didn’t have any choice but to come here.”
“But you do have a choice to help us,” Moira said loudly but evenly.
Aksel mulled it over.
Karl said, “We don’t have a lot of—”
“Time, yesh, I’m well aware. I’m thinking, okay?” He cleared his throat; it came up gummy with biolubricant. “You shtill haven’t gotten to the part of what I get out of it, helping you with . . . whatever it is you haven’t mentioned yet.”
“True,” Karl said. “We’re willing to consider granting you citizenship in any of the five major cities you wish. Or a pass off-world, if that’s what you prefer.”
“A lot of good that’ll do me. I’ve got warrants in pretty much every town under the suns . . .”
Moira added, “With yet another new name to go with it, a clean slate, and free pick.”
“You’re willing to consider granting me—?”
“Yes,” Karl said impatiently.
“And how can I trust either of you?”
“You know as well as we do that a man with half a face won’t last long in the wastes,” Moira said. “With no head cannon, no guns, no spots, no friend to watch your back—”
“Speaking of which,” Karl cut in, “don’t forget your chum Ricky out there. I don’t think he’d fare much better. How much does he weigh? A sparrow could carry him off, for crying out loud. Can’t imagine he could take the Lakebed, stripped of his shoes and that knife of his.”
“Fine, okay? What do you want me to do? Or would it be more appropriate to ashk who do you want me to do?”
Karl leaned in. “There’s a man in the camp. You may know him. He goes by a nickname: Neck Scar.”
Aksel laughed. “You want me to kill him? Hell, if you’d started with that, I would’ve agreed to do it for nothing.”
“On the contrary,” Moira said. Her black hood had fallen open a little, and a peek of raven hair reflected the fluorescent lights in blue sunbursts. “We want you to become his new best friend.”
Aksel had one more question. He watched Moira’s hand, looking for a twitch, when he asked, “You guys are weavers, woven—whatever you want to call it. Fabrick people. Am I right?”
She didn’t speak. Her hand didn’t move but remained half balled into a fist.
Karl’s chin lifted. “That’s not important.”
Taking a deep breath and cupping the boneless side of his head again, he said, “It is if you want me to listen. There’s a reason you picked me. And I haven’t heard about anyone else around the camp getting one of these little job interviews. I must’ve been on the top of your list, which means you know what I can do. And all I’m asking is one little thing. I don’t even want to know your real names. Seriously, don’t try explaining. I can pick out a fake name a mile off, and there’s no doubt in my mind your folks didn’t name you Karl and Moira. So what do you say? Was I right? You I’m not so sure about, but her—”
Moira stepped out from around Karl and lowered her hand, her sleeve falling past her wrist to drape it. “Agree, or it’s off to the Lakebed. Simple as that.”
Aksel pretended he was weighing his options just to irritate them for a bit longer. He pictured Ricky padding across the Lakebed wastes with his face sunburnt to cinder and birds carrying off pieces of him even as he walked. A thousand miles of dead landscape, twenty hours of constant suns a day. The image of Ricky, though. That was the deciding factor. His yearning to chase fights had died long ago, but for Ricky . . .
He nodded. “Where do you want me to shign?”
Chapter 14
Patient Eleven
“Meech. I can’t see a blasted thing,” Flam said once all three of them were atop the elevator car. He removed his light stick from his belt and gave it a swing. The light shined to the greasy gears and mechanical parts that made the elevator work. He noticed the hatch, then pulled it open and peered inside.
Before dropping in, he looked to Rohm. “So we can’t just take this one all the way down to sea level?”
“Unfortunately, no. Once we get to the third subbasement, another elevator goes to sea level beneath Geyser. This one moves only between the facility’s ground level and the sublevels.”
“Of course. Nothing can ever be easy, can it?” Flam dropped into the elevator car.
Clyde and Rohm followed.
Inside, Flam beat his blunderbuss against the closed doors, trying to mash a dent deep into the gap. Working together, the three managed to get the doors open, revealing more corridors. This level was darker and reeked of stagnant water and mildew.
They stepped out into an inch of water. Flam’s light stick shined cobalt upon narrow columns of water trickling from the ceiling.
By its smell, Flam could tell it was sediment-rich water from the geyser. This knee-deep stuff carried the reek of sulfur, like bad eggs. Geyser water had gotten in here, into the city; there’d been a break somewhere. A break like that, to the point that basements were flooding, wasn’t a good thing at all. It meant the geyser was backed up, and before long one of its little puffs would be a big one—enough to bust the city up even worse than the Odium already had.
Flam trudged on. The smell, as menacing as it was, took him back to fond memories. He knew it well, having worked with his uncle in the depths of the city’s underbelly, in cramped sewer lines: patching pipes with clay, spending weeks in impenetrable darkness with the stink of wastewater and stagnant runoff from Geyser’s streets, feeling bugs crawling all over him. What was worse was picking the bugs out of his fur weeks after a trip down into the sub works. All in all, not fun in the least. But at least he’d been able to hear all of Uncle Greenspire’s stories.
“Ugh, it stinks,” Clyde said, clamping a hand over his nose.
“It appears there’s a leak somewhere,” Rohm said, stating the obvious.
Flam guffawed. The mice were just as dim to the real world as Clyde was. If anything got hairy at any point on their trip, without a doubt he’d be the one who’d have to protect them. Flam the babysitter. He sighed and took the lead, guiding his troop of sheltered chowderheads into the hospital subbasement, the footsteps of his sentient burdens splashing along not far behind.
Angling the light stick toward the ceiling, Flam saw the dark patc
hes above. He pictured the first and second subbasement flooded from floor to ceiling. With a single prick of the ceiling, thousands of gallons of muddy water could come rolling upon them. “Don’t touch anything.”
Clyde asked Rohm, “Where do we go from here?”
“Best I can remember, the elevator to sea level is straight ahead on the westernmost wall.”
“Are we still going to check on this Patient Eleven of yours?” Flam shined a light on the room directory on the wall. “Should be down this way.”
“What will we do with the patient if he’s hurt?” Rohm asked.
Flam chuckled. “Just lay him out front of the facility doors, fire a shot to get the Patrol’s attention, and turn tail. We’re wasting enough time.” He checked the security alert device on his belt. “We need to get off this island as quick as possible, and I’m sure my auto’s going to need a bit more than a simple tune-up. I refuse to cross the mainland on foot.”
“Who knows?” Clyde answered, ignoring Flam’s comment. “The patient might be of use. Perhaps it’ll be someone with electrical fabrick, if there is such a thing. Is there, Flam?”
“I certainly hope not.”
They passed room number five.
Rohm said, “A fabrick weaver that can manipulate and fabricate electricity? How beneficial that would be! He could lay his hands on the elevator and power it for us.”
“Well, let’s pray that Meech is smiling on us today. Even if it is another weaver, that’d be fine with me, as long as we can get the plummets out of here in my lifetime.”
They sloshed past room eight.
“Surprised the Patrol guardsmen left anyone down here,” Clyde said. “It seems they were pretty thorough clearing everyone else out.”
“Maybe they forgot this one on purpose,” Rohm suggested darkly.
Flam stopped in his tracks. Without turning back, he took up the blunderbuss and walked on.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Clyde said.
At door number eleven, Flam reached for the handle and turned back to Clyde and Rohm. “Well, I’d rather poke myself in the eye than be surprised by anything.”
Both of them were backpedaling, eyes wide. He didn’t realize what the commotion was until he looked down. Reaching from underneath the door were what appeared to be dozens of black, headless snakes.
Flam lifted his blunderbuss and fired.
Clyde’s hands slapped to his ears.
The blast blew a chunk out the bottom of the door. The black cords that didn’t get ripped apart propelled as a thick twisted cable into the hallway.
With shaking hands, Flam broke the blunderbuss open, tossed the empty casing out, and reloaded it. He raised the gun to his shoulder, but the trunk-sized tentacle reached back and swung, smacking the barrel away just as Flam pulled the trigger. The blast pounded a hole through a nearby wall.
Rohm disintegrated into individual mice to charge faster up the hallway to the elevator car.
Clyde joined them, trying his best not to step on any of Rohm’s members.
Flam brought up the rear, scrambling to reload the blunderbuss. He cursed to Meech as he dropped bullets he could not afford to waste. A reload successful, he spun and blasted again.
The tentacle wavered. A deep gouging bite had been made in its body. Only momentarily stunned, it continued to chase them, snaking through the flooded hallway.
“Get in,” Flam shouted.
Clyde and Rohm fell into the elevator.
Flam turned with the gun and was about to shoot another time when, much to his chagrin, it was right there, springing headlong not unlike a Lakebed python. The tentacle wrapped itself around the barrel of the gun, spiraled up its length, and bound Flam’s hands, arms, and neck. With one mighty tug, it yanked him off his feet to skid back up the length of the hallway with a wall of white water pitching behind him.
“Flam,” Clyde shouted. He took the small wooden bat he had procured at Third Circle Market and chased after his friend.
Rohm assembled into a standing form and raced down as well. It pitched an arm out, throwing dozens of frisk mice at the tentacle. They landed, sprinkling along the tentacle’s length and wrathfully chewed.
Flam gripped the edges of the broken door of room eleven, shouting as the tentacle pulled him in.
Clyde unsheathed Mr. Wilkshire’s citizen dagger and cut at the cords around Flam’s wrist.
All at once, Flam was released and dropped to the watery floor. He scrambled away.
Rohm’s numbers combined.
Clyde backed up, dagger in one hand, club in the other.
They all stood agape before room eleven. Neither the tentacle nor what controlled it could be seen. When the surge passed, the light was still dim and insufficient save for a few blinking reds and greens of electronics within the room. Clyde took them to be the beady eyes of whatever the tentacle was attached to and raised his dagger like a squash racquet, hand trembling.
A voice came, soft and feminine. “Tell me the guardsmen have changed their minds. Tell me Gorett has come to his senses. Tell me you wish to utilize my talents. Tell me that, and I will kill you, because I have been down here without food or water for longer than I care to fathom.”
“We saw you were here through the hospital’s monitoring system,” Clyde shouted. “Why would you try to hurt us? We were trying to save you.”
Flam threw an arm against Clyde’s chest and shook his horned head. “It’s a trick if I ever saw one. The Blatta. They can scream for help like people, and when you come, they launch their attack.”
The thing within room eleven must’ve had keen hearing. “Blatta. Do you know of a single Blatta that can do what I just did? They’re dumb beasts, simple insects from the depths with only food on their minds. If anyone should be compared to the Blatta, it is you three dolts.”
“Then what are you?” Flam shouted. He reached to reload his blunderbuss, but the barrel had been bent at a severe angle; it would explode if he fired it. He cast it aside and reached into his satchel, removing what appeared to be the handle of a screwdriver. With a flick of a switch on its side, a blade telescoped out, roughly a meter in length with a hooked tip. Certainly no blunderbuss, but it was better than nothing.
Someone edged to the door’s threshold, looking ghostly in the undulating blue glow of Flam’s drowned light stick, her gaunt face littered with shadows. “I am the king’s Royal Stitcher. Well, I was, before that deceitful shite Gorett doomed me here. Regardless, if you three are in his service, as I believe you are, I’d advise you to steel yourselves for a rather lengthy bout of unpleasantness. I have been down here with nothing but time to dream up an entire compendium of horrors to put to him and any of his pitiable little cronies.”
Chapter 15
The Stitcher
“Stitcher or no, come any closer and I’ll stick you with this thing.” Flam shook the telescoping blade in his hand, which to Clyde looked more like a tool for clearing clogged pipes than an actual weapon.
The Stitcher came closer, inadvertently revealing herself in the shattered door frame of her prison, where the light stick’s blue found her. She was lithe and malnourished, every visible inch of her skin covered in gouges tracing in every direction. Cuts crossed the bridge of her nose, over one of her eyes, up into her dark auburn hairline. None of the wounds looked remotely fresh or clean; irritated redness ran parallel with the miles of intersecting cuts. Her clothes were tatty beyond repair, basically stained ribbons.
“What did they do to you?” Clyde muttered, aghast.
She continued, “Not just a Stitcher, mind. The Stitcher.”
“Hey, I don’t care which you are. You broke my blunderbuss, lady.”
“You can’t possibly be anything but a Mouflon,” she said dreamily, squinting past the light, seemingly bright to her even though its illumination was barely equal to that of a match’s flame.
“Yeah, and what of it?” Flam snapped, taking a step back as she dared one forward.
“You are not one of them. No way in hell he’d consider hiring one of you. He’d barely tolerate me.” She laughed—a big, bright sound incongruous to her appearance. “I guess he wouldn’t tolerate me at all, seeing as how he left me to rot here.”
Clyde wondered if she was all there.
“Stay back.” Flam waved his knife. “I’ll jib you.”
“I won’t hurt you if you’ll promise the same to me,” she said, sounding almost amused. “Shall we play nice, be neighborly with one another?”
“How do I know you won’t try anything?”
“Because I’d be able to live comfortably with myself knowing I killed only one man. Killing anyone else but him would make me feel absolutely wretched.” She moved an inch or two farther out. “And I assure you, the state of my mental peace is very important to me,” she said, shielding her eyes.
Clyde wanted to see her face, the entire thing, but was also a little afraid to. He stole glimpses of it through the outstretched fingers of her threaded palm. Every time even a flicker of light snuck through, she’d turn her face away and squint painfully. But for a moment, he did manage to catch a glimpse of beautiful amber-colored eyes in that patchwork face.
“If you tell me you’re not in cahoots with him,” she said, her tentacle still coiled and poised to strike, “I’ll stop. I promise.”
“Fine,” Flam said, lowering his blade slowly and unsurely. “You can trust us when we say we’re not one of the Odium.”
“Good to know, but what about Gorett?”
Flam grimaced, clearly perplexed. “Him either.”
“Put the knife away?”
“Yeah, sure.” Flam did so.
“There. Isn’t that better?” The tentacle unbounded slowly from its tight spring and unraveled, like a fist loosening. To Clyde’s wide-eyed disbelief, it wove itself into her skin.