by Janean Worth
Gemma cried bitter tears as she’d witnessed this act of murder, and had wished that the next one had instead found its way into her own heart before she had taken the men to her village.
Chapter Six
A shrill scream ripped through the silent sanctuary not long after Kara and Mathew arrived back from their outing beyond the protective maze. It reverberated against the stone walls, echoing eerily into the conservatory where Kara sat with three of the unhealthiest Strays as Otto recited passages from the Book for them as Kara tended to their healing wounds.
Kara was on her feet and running for the door before she even really realized what she was doing. The scream had been thin and high, and full of terror. A girl’s scream. Merrilee.
Otto shot by her, his feet thumping loudly on the floor, his long metal legs capable of speed much greater than her own. She followed him out into the entryway and down the hallway toward the stables, her feet flying as fast as she could make them go.
Mathew leapt down the last few stairs from the towering staircase that bisected the massive entryway and joined them in the scramble to get to the stables as another scream sounded, this one the terrified scream of a horse.
Kara’s heart was in her throat, pounding with fear and dread. A mantra beat in time with her footsteps upon the marble as she ran to help. Not Merrilee, not Merrilee, not Merrilee . . . A myriad of thoughts flitted through her panicked mind as she ran. She hadn’t had a chance to make up for what she’d cost Merrilee yet. And nothing must happen to the girl before she was able to make amends.
Mathew, panting, outdistanced her as they neared the door. Moments later, they both flung themselves into the murky shadows of the stable behind Otto.
Otto’s light flared to life, illuminating the inside of the dim building with bright, artificial ambience. It ate up the shadows with its brightness, chasing them into nothingness, and revealing the scene before them in stark detail.
Kara gasped, taking in the horrifying details in a single glance.
Merrilee stood over Jack, her small teeth bared in a silent feral snarl, her tiny, frail hands thrown out in front of her, fingers curled around one of the missing pieces of Old Tech—the device that projected a shield.
An almost subsonic hum reverberated inside the stables, an auditory alert that Merrilee had activated the device.
Jack lay upon the floor, his shirt bloodied at his neck and shoulder, more blood spreading down his torso, flowing from jagged rips in the skin across his chest.
On the other side of the shield, a Fidget clawed at the invisible barrier, long wicked claws, wet with Jack’s blood, scrabbling against the invisible surface in front of it. Matching Merrilee, its jagged, crooked teeth were bared in a snarl, streams of drool oozing from its misshapen jaws.
Otto skidded to a halt behind Merrilee and Kara flung herself down on the floor at Jack’s side, landing hard on her knees as she bent over him, her hands immediately pressing against the worst of the wounds to staunch the flow of blood.
The Fidget’s snarls increased as it spotted Kara and Mathew, and Kara tore her gaze away from Jack’s wounds long enough to look into its face, meeting its eyes. Did it know her? Had it been one of the Fidgets that they’d run across earlier outside the maze, or was it one of the intelligent Fidgets that had chased her from the Narrow Road?
The Fidget was glaring at her, its beady protuberant eyes boiling with an animalistic hatred so intense that Kara immediately looked away again, unable to hold its gaze.
“Ours,” it snarled, its eyes darting to the Old Tech in Merrilee’s hand. “Ours.”
“You must leave,” Otto told the creature. “Leave before you are injured.”
The Fidget snarled again, then snapped its head forward in an attempt to bite the invisible barrier that separated it from its prey. Its long, yellowed teeth clacked against the shield harmlessly.
Seeing that it could not bite through the barrier, the beast’s ferocity increased. It flung its body at the shield so violently that the force pushed Merrilee’s frail form backward several inches as she tried to hold the shield steady.
“Leave now. This is your final warning,” Otto said, his deep voice pitched low and loud, booming with authority inside the confined space of the stables. At the sound, the nearest horses shied in their stalls, eyes rolling in terror.
On the floor beneath her hands, Jack shuddered.
Kara wasn’t sure why the metal giant was warning the Fidget that way. She knew that he was prohibited by his creator from causing harm to any living creature, so he would not injure the Fidget. Otto was also incapable of lying. Was it a bluff, then? Or was he simply worried that the situation would escalate and someone, or something, was bound to get hurt if that happened?
Jack tried to sit up, gasping in pain, but Kara pushed him back down, gently, fearing that exertion would increase his blood loss. She needed to get him out of the stables and into the sanctuary, where they could boil water and clean his wounds and take stock of the damage that the Fidget’s claws had done. But before that, they needed to deal with the Fidget.
Kara glanced at Merrilee and saw that the girl’s arms were beginning to shake from the strain of holding the Old Tech shield in place against the Fidget’s fierce attacks upon it.
To her horror, the subsonic hum in the room stuttered. Once, twice, three times—until her eardrums ached with the changing oscillations. And then, the hum ceased completely as the shield failed.
Merrilee snarled as the Fidget flung itself at her. Kara gasped and leapt to her feet. Otto lunged forward to block the Fidget and, from her side, Kara heard Mathew whisper something. It was only a faint mumble, but she thought it sounded like “I’m sorry.”
A knife whistled through the air, striking the Fidget in the eye and hurling the beast backward with the force of the throw.
Merrilee, miraculously unscathed, let go of the powerless device with a startled gasp, and the Old Tech toppled to the ground at her feet.
Kara could not believe what she’d just seen. Mathew had killed the fierce creature? Mathew?
Leaving her no time to recover from her shock at his actions, he turned to look at her then, his eyes swimming with a mix of fear, shock, and anger. “I did not want to have to do that. I didn’t want to kill it. This is what I meant when I said that we need to leave, Kara. We need to leave to find the Narrow Gate before it’s too late. Before more Fidgets come. Or the Enforcers find us. Or something else happens. Otto can seal up the passages and all entrances to the sanctuary when we go and we can leave an obvious trail away from here. It is the only way to protect the others now that the Fidgets have found a way inside.”
She looked at the dead Fidget, then at Merrilee’s trembling figure, then down at Jack’s bleeding wounds, and thought, for the first time since their escape from GateWide, that perhaps that he was right. Leaving just might be the right thing to do.
Chapter Seven
The crash of falling concrete echoed through the air as dust rose up in a cloud to hover near the sanctuary. Mathew glanced over his shoulder as he rode slowly away astride Gallant, able to see the cloud of dust even from a distance. Otto was destroying the maze of secret passageways that he had so meticulously built only weeks before. Mathew knew that Otto intended to leave only a single passage open, so that the older Strays could continue some foraging, but that single point of entry would be well guarded and protected.
At the sound of this destruction, doubt gripped Mathew so hard that his chest hurt. Was this the right thing? Was it? He stared grimly at the cloud of dust drifting toward them on a desultory wind and hoped that they would soon be able to return for the others. Very soon.
He’d been arguing with Kara for weeks about the need to leave, but once she’d finally agreed and they were on their way, he began doubting his choice.
Another crash echoed through the broken remains of the abandoned city, the sound reverberating down the rows of towering structures of slowly crumbling concret
e and rusting steel that lined the road that they travelled. Mathew flinched at the sound, feeling the repercussions of it almost like a physical blow, and faced forward again, clenching his jaw against the doubt that assailed him.
What if his plan did not work? They’d made sure to leave a trail for the Enforcers and Fidgets to follow, and had even started it at the edge of the Old Forest so that it would be obvious. They’d guaranteed that their trail was easy to follow as they’d wended their way through the crumbling city all morning long, ever since leaving the sanctuary hours before. But what if that wasn’t enough? Though the passages that led to the sanctuary were being destroyed and all but one of the entrances and exits were being sealed, what if someone, or something, still managed to find a way inside?
Mathew knew that food and water would remain plentiful for the others, even with the decreased foraging, because the sanctuary’s conservatory, pond, and fresh water supply—plus the heaps of dried wild grass that the foragers had brought back in earlier weeks—would see to that.
He couldn’t help but think that Otto’s creator had been a brilliant and far‑thinking man who had ensured that the place that he’d built would be able to offer these amenities for many lifetimes, provided that there was a caretaker to look after it. And the caretaker that he’d created, Otto, was nearly indestructible. Mathew couldn’t help but wonder if this brilliant man, this man who had believed so strongly in the One True God that he’d provided a being to care for others who also believed, had somehow known that the Fall was coming. Perhaps he had known, but he’d just been unable to stop it.
Even knowing how wondrous Otto was, Mathew still couldn’t help but worry. Though Otto was a diligent and dutiful caretaker, Mathew knew that he’d been designed to protect but not defend. The metal giant could not kill or injure any living thing. That meant that if someone or something found a way inside the sanctuary before Mathew and Kara were able to return, Otto would not be able to harm it in order to defend the Strays.
Mathew shuddered at the thought. Who would defend them if Otto could not? This was the reason why he’d been forced to kill the Fidget. He hadn’t enjoyed killing the thing, especially knowing that it could think, reason, and talk, which made the killing of it seem infinitely worse. But what choice had he really had? At the time, it had seemed as if he had none. He’d either had to kill the Fidget or watch it tear Merrilee apart. But as he thought about it, he wasn’t even sure of that decision. Perhaps the beast could have been captured somehow and removed from the sanctuary peacefully.
And perhaps that’s just what Otto would do if another of them found their way inside to threaten the Strays. Maybe Otto, who seemed impervious to many of the Old Tech devices, Enforcer weapons, and even to the sharp teeth and claws of the powerful tracken beasts, would simply contain any beast or person that managed to get inside and remove them from the sanctuary. Gently, without harm. Whatever found a way inside, whether it was human, Fidget, tracken, or some other beast, was no match for Otto’s strength and indestructibility.
Mathew sighed, rethinking both his decision to kill the Fidget and his decision to leave the safety and plenty of the sanctuary. Doubts hounded him and he could find no peace from them in his own mind.
He pulled the Old Tech that his father had left for him from his pocket and gazed longingly at its smooth surface. If only he could contact his father. His father would know what the right thing to do would be. He wondered if his father was at the Narrow Gate right that moment, waiting for him. He wondered if Kara’s father was there, too. And he wondered why, when they’d reached the sanctuary, the device had stopped working.
He sighed again and put the device back in his pocket.
“Still not working?” Kara asked from beside him.
“No, and nothing I’ve done will make it work. I have tried everything I know. I even had Otto look at it. He said that though I’ve put the Old Tech in the sun, it is not gaining power as it should. And he reminded me yet again that it is very powerful and very dangerous.”
“Even if it no longer works?” Kara asked, looking at him askance as she guided her horse closer in order to miss a pile of debris in the road. The filly gently bumped Gallant’s side, causing Kara’s knee to brush his own, and Gallant turned his head to huff at the filly at his side. The massive horse, which had formerly belonged to one of the Sovereign’s Enforcers, surprised Mathew with its gentleness as it briefly nuzzled the filly’s cheek before facing forward again.
“That’s what Otto said.”
“I don’t understand why it no longer works,” Kara said. “When did it stop working?”
“I don’t know exactly. It needed time in the sun to recharge after we returned from GateWide with the Strays, so I wasn’t surprised when it didn’t work when we arrived at the sanctuary. When we arrived, we used Otto’s Old Tech to stop the signals from the devices inside the Strays, horses, and servants, and I checked it not long after that. But it wouldn’t work, so I thought it was just that it needed more sun. Like Otto does sometimes.”
“Do you think it was damaged at GateWide?”
“I’m not sure, but I don’t think so.” Mathew didn’t add that he thought that it might have been damaged afterward when he’d left it unattended as it lay in the sun for several days. If it had been damaged at the sanctuary, he wasn’t sure who would have damaged it, so he kept his suspicions to himself. Perhaps he was the one imagining things after all.
Kara threw him a wry look. “You think something happened to it after we got back from GateWide, don’t you?”
“I don’t have any proof of that, so I wasn’t going to say anything,” Mathew answered.
“I am not so sure you’re wrong. Merrilee had the missing Old Tech shielding device. Do you think she could have done something to your father’s Old Tech?”
Mathew was surprised at her willingness to believe that one of the Strays had caused the problem with his father’s Old Tech, especially Merrilee, whom she seemed to dote on, so he just shrugged and said, “Maybe.”
Then Kara surprised him even more.
“Do you think we will ever find the Narrow Gate?” she asked softly, the doubt and uncertainty in her voice tearing at his own small fragment of faith.
And what could he say? He hoped that they’d find it, but like her, his faith had begun to wane. Doubts had begun to creep in. Would they find it? Was it even real? Were their fathers really there?
“I hope so,” he said, his voice soft and uncertain, too.
“Sometimes trying to decide what the right thing to do is can be just as hard as actually doing it,” she whispered softly, almost under her breath.
Kara cleared her throat and turned her head away, as if she were surveying their surroundings for threats, but Mathew was pretty sure that she was hiding her expression from him so he wouldn’t see the lone tear that had streaked down her cheek.
He wanted to tell her that it would all be okay. That she shouldn’t let what had happened in the past with the Sovereign and the Strays destroy her faith. He wanted to comfort her, but he didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing.
They rode in silence for several more minutes before she sniffed, wiped her face surreptitiously with the sleeve of her ragged shirt, and then turned back to him.
“I wonder if Truchen has found Gabert yet. Or if he ever will. Truchen said that he was going to the Mire to try to find his friend.”
“I don’t know. If the Mire is as dangerous as my tutor said that it was, Truchen will be very lucky if he finds Gabert.”
“Or blessed. He could be very blessed. By the One True God. For doing the right thing.”
“Do you think that finding Gabert and bringing him out of the Mire if he’s still alive is the right thing? After all that he did to us? To you? To the Strays?”
Kara nodded, and this time there was no doubt in her face, “Yes, I do. The Book says that all are precious to Him and that even someone like Gabert is worth saving.”
&nbs
p; “And what about the Sovereign?”
He saw Kara shudder before she replied.
“Yes, even him, should he repent and want to be saved. Even him.”
Mathew grimaced. He doubted that the Sovereign, who seemed to have been driven mad by the Old Tech he’d grafted onto his own skin and bone, would ever repent. Or wish to be saved. Mathew thought that perhaps the Sovereign, in his delusions, thought of himself as godlike and would never see the Light of the One True God.
Evil was like that. It blinded you to the good of the Creator. It hid His wonderful works from your eyes, so that you could not see them or enjoy them. And the Sovereign’s evil was all‑consuming, so Mathew was fairly certain there was no hope for him. But he didn’t want to say that to Kara.
They stopped for a short break to rest and water the horses about an hour later, sitting down to eat fresh fruit and smoked fish on a smoothly shaped lump of metal that still bore remnants of a vibrant red painted coating. Mathew remembered that Otto had told him that these lumps of metal that lined the roads in such numbers were called “automobiles.” The spot they had picked for their resting spot was lined with a good number of these automobiles and heavily shaded by the towering skyscraper that still stood, mostly unbroken even after the decimation of The Fall so many years ago. Halfway between the bisecting crossroads that seemed to be everywhere inside the city, their spot felt tranquil rather than creepy, with the enormous bulks of the towering buildings providing a deep, intense shade that only the thickest and most impassable parts of the Old Forest canopy of trees could rival.