by Oisin McGann
‘God Almighty,’ he panted, his stride faltering. ‘This can’t be happen ing . . .’
They’d never considered that the Machine might already be so weak. Without realizing it, they had dealt the final blow to the dying city.
‘Sol,’ the voice shouted from back in the gloom. ‘There’s nowhere to go! Make this easy on yourself. Give it up, kid, and we’ll get it over nice and quick.’
They weren’t shooting. They couldn’t get a decent shot at him in the murky shadows. Slowing down, he trod softly, making no sound, trying to keep the pillars in the centre of the wide balcony between himself and his hunters. Reflective signs on the wall told him where he was. The top floor, little more than half a kilometre from the daylighters’ depot. They would help him get to the police.
‘Come on, kid.’ A woman’s voice this time. ‘We’ve sealed the place off, you’re not getting out of here. We’ll find you eventually.’
They’re mad, he thought. The Machine was lying still below them, and they were still worried about catching him. As if he mattered any more. He wanted to yell at them, telling them how insane they were, but any sound would help them to find him. Was the air getting colder already, or was it just his imagination? How long would it take for the whole city to freeze over?
He saw movement ahead of him and heard the electronic voice of a radio. Darting into an alcove, he peered out. Another three figures, carrying torches, swept the shadows ahead of him. Another hundred metres and they’d be on top of him. Sol looked back. He could hear footsteps closing on him from behind. He had seconds left.
Further ahead, the wall curved round and he could see a number of doors. He recognized one of them. It led to the maintenance depot, where he and Maslow had gone out on the dome. It was a way out, but only as far as the Arctic temperatures outside. Maybe he could make it to the daylighters’ depot that way. But they would anticipate that; the Clockworkers would wait for him at the other entrances. It was too late for the police now. He would run towards the daylighters because it was the only option left to him. But the maintenance depot was the only way out. Sol swore – he’d have to charge right at the Clockworkers to reach the door . . .
Don’t think. Run. His trainers squeaked on the floor as he took off. They spotted him almost immediately, raising their weapons. He was twenty metres from the door.
‘Don’t shoot!’ he cried. ‘I give up. I can take you to Maslow – just don’t kill me!’
‘Slow down, kid,’ one of them called. ‘It’s over. No more running.’
Sol turned and shoulder-charged the door. It crashed open, and he slammed it shut after him, even as the shots punched through it. There was a bolt on it, and he pushed it home, then bounded down the corridor to the door at the other end. It was locked, and he already had his lock-pick out, fumbling it into the keyhole. Two gunshots blasted away the bolt in the far door. He felt the lock click, and shoved the door open, kicking it closed as he slipped in. There was a heavy steel cupboard beside the door, and he pushed it over, barricading himself in.
There were eight safesuits hanging on the rack. As shoulders started hitting the door, he pulled one down and sat on the floor, gritting his teeth as his sore backside made itself felt. He hurriedly kicked his shoes off and slid his legs into the trousers, and then the boots. Shrugging his shoulders into the sleeves, he did up the triple seal and pulled up the hood. He switched on the power unit, saw it was only half-charged – it would have to do – and pulled on the mask.
He grabbed an ice-axe, threw the other suits onto the ground and smashed the power unit on each one with the axe. Then he pulled on his gloves, took up a second axe and strode over to the airlock.
‘Faggin’ hell.’
There was no power. He would have to open and close it manually. The door behind him was starting to give way, the cupboard shifting on the floor. Breathing hard behind the mask, he cranked the wheel on the wall that opened the airlock door, until it was just wide enough to admit him, and then he squeezed inside. The inner door had to be closed before the outer door would open. It was a safety feature. He cranked the door closed again and strode to the other end. He was turning the wheel for the outer door when someone knocked on the glass of the door behind him. He glanced round, but kept spinning the wheel.
A man’s face stared through the glass. The man drew his finger across his throat.
Sol got the outer door open far enough, then slipped through, leaving it open. They would have to crank it closed again before they could get out. It was a clear, crisp morning outside. A heavy fall of snow covered the dome, and the bright sun on the snow would have blinded him had it not been for the protective tint in the mask’s smart-lenses. He should have used one of the ice-axes to block the outer door, so that it couldn’t close, preventing them from using that door. But he didn’t. He should have started running for the daylighters’ depot, less than half a kilometre away. Instead, he dug the axes into the hardened snow and started climbing the dome. He climbed as far as he could before the first of the Clockworkers came through the airlock door. Then he turned round and looked down the slope, waiting for them.
If he was going to die up here, running away would not be his final act.
Section 24/24: Beginning
CLEO DIDN’T KNOW how long she stood there. It could have been a few minutes, or an hour or more. Schaeffer was hunched over the balcony, trembling. The Clockworkers were standing pensively, waiting for orders, nervous that the police would be on their way. The whole place had an expectant air. Cleo’s eyes swept back and forth over the darkness. A few remaining gas lamps dotted the streets, offering the only light.
Then, from above, a shaft of sunlight shone down. Still faint, but there nonetheless. Others broke through from different sections of the dome. A watery morning sun reached through the snow-blanketed glass and touched the darkness. The daylighters had started their shifts – either they were unaware that the city was dying beneath them, or they knew and had gone to work anyway. But it made a difference; suddenly there was a break in the gloom overhanging Ash Harbour.
And then Cleo thought she saw a new light ignite in the shadows. And then another. Like dying embers being rekindled, the lights began to come back on. An electrical hum started up from inside the control room, and she heard the controller gasp.
Inside, some of the monitors had activated; lights blinked all over the instrument panels.
‘The power’s back,’ the controller said in disbelief.
On the screens, people were moving. The streets were filled with men, women and children, walking the routes they had walked all their lives. People had put their shoulders to the trams, and were pushing them along their tracks. Across the cityscape, in pedal and foot stations, dynamos began to turn; everywhere, power was being pumped through the system once more. Painfully slowly, the Machine was resuscitated. Cleo smiled slightly as hundreds of thousands of individual efforts breathed life back into their home.
‘You see,’ she said quietly to Schaeffer. ‘They knew what to do. They’ve always known. And they didn’t need you.’
Schaeffer had the expression of a man who had just learned he was no longer terminally ill. His new-found relief hardened to anger as he took in the room around him. There was still a rebellion to crush.
‘Call the mayor in,’ he barked. ‘As soon as the public screens are back online, I want her to stamp on this conspiracy before it grows legs. And find that kid! We have to contain this situation. If he disappears again—’
‘Contain the situation?’ Cleo exclaimed incredulously. ‘The whole damn city just came to a standstill! Can’t you tell when you’ve lost?’
‘And somebody gag this bi—’
‘Nobody move,’ somebody shouted from behind them.
Smith stood near the ruined doorway, sub-machine gun in hand. Distracted by the events in the city, nobody had noticed him regain consciousness. The four Clockworkers tightened their grips on their weapons, but he fired a bur
st over their heads, making them freeze. Cleo walked round to him, scarcely able to believe their luck. They were going to make it.
‘The police will be coming,’ she said to him. ‘We only have to hold them until then.’
‘I can’t hear you,’ he said loudly, gesturing with his free hand to his bleeding ears.
‘I said—’
But Mercier was already here. His trenchcoat flapping around him, he strode through the doorway, nodded to Cleo and put a gun to Smith’s head.
‘No—!’ she had time to gasp.
He pulled the trigger. Cleo screamed, falling backwards with blood on her face as Smith toppled forward onto the floor.
‘Two schoolkids and a washed-out engineer,’ Mercier spat at the Clockworkers, ‘and you cock it up! Where’s the boy?’
‘He got away – pure blind luck,’ one of them replied. ‘But Janus and Rhymes are on ’im.’
‘Imagine my relief,’ Mercier snorted. ‘This has become an absolute fiasco. Get her out of here; I’ll tie things up for the cops. Mr Schaeffer, you shouldn’t be here.’
‘I was just leaving. Make sure that boy is caught and killed, Inspector. You’ve let too many things slip lately.’
The four Clockworkers led the way, two of them dragging Cleo with them. She stumbled after them, the shock of what had happened taking her breath away. Mercier was a Clockworker. He was giving orders to the Clockworkers. She struggled feebly, her fear overwhelming her. She had been counting on him to get them out of here and they had played right into his hands. Now the Clockworkers had come for her, and she was all on her own.
The motley group made it as far as the office area. Facing them were a dozen heavily armed ISS troopers, their guns aimed and ready. Mercier’s sergeant, Baiev, was lying handcuffed, face down on the floor. The Clockworkers considered putting up a fight, and then thought better of it. Their weapons clattered on the tiles.
‘Mr Schaeffer, Inspector Mercier,’ Ponderosa greeted them with barely contained smugness. ‘You’re under arrest for . . . well, where should I start?’
Sol watched his five hunters struggle up the hill. A glance at the readout on his smart-lens told him the temperature outside his suit was -67ºC. He no longer felt the pain in his hands, or his backside. Savouring the weight of the ice-axes, he waited patiently for the Clockworkers to reach him. They were not finding the climb easy. Without the power units on their suits, their masks were not heating up the air they were breathing; the freezing air would be burning their windpipes and chilling their blood – and they would be breathing too hard because of their hurried climb. Long exposure would cause haemorrhage in their lungs. The smart-lenses of their masks would not work either; without the tinting, the glare of the sun off the snow would be blinding them.
Their guns too were of no use to them. The fingerless mittens prevented them from pulling any triggers, and nobody who wanted to keep their fingers took their gloves off in these temperatures.
The first Clockworker stumbled up the shallower part of the slope towards him, holding a hand up to shade his eyes against the dazzling light. His chest was heaving in short, shallow gasps. Not having to look in their faces would make this easier; he couldn’t even tell if they were men or women. Sol stepped towards the man and swung the axe in his left hand at the Clockworker’s head. The man blocked it, leaving himself open to the right, and Sol caught him square across the side of the face. The ice-axe smashed the edge of the mask free of the suit. The shock stunned the man, and Sol kicked him hard in the chest, pitching him over. He had time for one more blow before the next Clockworker was upon him.
He managed to deflect the first strike with his right arm, but the axe was knocked from his hand. The masked figure brought his own ice-axe down hard, twice, three times, each time Sol just barely blocking the blows, almost kneeling under the force of the impacts. A third Clockworker was staggering towards them. Sol kicked out at his opponent’s knee, taking the leg out from under him. As the man fell, Sol punched him with his free hand, then swiped him across the shoulder with his axe. The third charged him before he could finish off the second. Solomon fell back, got his feet against the second man’s chest and shoved him into the path of the new assailant.
They fell together, in a tangle of limbs. Sol was up like a shot, screaming venom through his mask, lunging at them, the first man taking the full force of the axe against the top of the head. The other two had caught up now, and he stumbled back as he found himself facing three of them. They edged round him, encircling him. He was breathing hard, but they were too, and every breath was damaging their lungs. One of them was already unsteady on his feet, panting like an exhausted dog.
With another roar, Sol hurled himself at the weak one, and the others lumbered forward to tackle him, moving clumsily in their constricting suits. As the full force of his weight collided with the Clockworker, they hit the ground hard, and something gave way beneath them. The snowdrift, nearly two metres deep, collapsed inwards, and they tumbled into a hollow in the snow, landing awkwardly on the concraglass of the dome beneath them. Sol’s body came down solidly on top of the Clockworker, and the man gave a stifled shriek. Sol was already struggling to his feet; there was a creaking, crunching sound seeping from the drift around him. Scrambling up the bank of freshly broken snow, he frantically hauled himself over the top and started running up the slope. He knew that sound: Gregor had once played him a recording of it.
The two remaining Clockworkers hesitated for a moment and then gave chase. They were too slow, and too late. A massive crack appeared from the point where Sol and his opponent had fallen through the drift. Ponderously at first, and then with irresistible force, the drift of snow started to slide down the dome. A stretch fifty metres wide cracked, tore from its anchors and tumbled in a thunderous avalanche towards the edge of the mountaintop. The snow fell away behind Sol’s feet and he dived forward, jamming his axe into the ground in front of him. But it disintegrated under him, carrying him backwards, rolling him over and enveloping him in a crushing, frozen white grip.
It took him a minute to realize where he was. He must have been knocked unconscious. He could move one arm, but that was all. It was dark grey beyond the mask, and he was finding it difficult to breathe. Shovelling snow away from his face, he found daylight, and after some more digging he was able to get his shoulders up out of the snow. There was no sign of the Clockworkers below him, just the remains of the avalanche piled up near the edge. Five complete strangers who had tried to kill him. He was glad they were dead.
Above him, there was a cleared stretch of glass. From off to one side, he could see a team of daylighters hurrying towards him, carrying shovels, pickaxes and heat-hoses. At least, he hoped they were daylighters.
Digging his legs free, he crawled up to the cleared glass and cupped his hands around his face to block out the glare of the sunlight as he lowered his mask to the surface. There were lights in the darkness below. He could see movement on the streets; the trams were running, people were working the Machine once more. He had been wrong, the city wasn’t dead. He broke into shaky, exhausted, hysterical laughter. It wasn’t over. Life went on.
Cleo sat out on the fire escape of the condemned warehouse building that was being used to temporarily house all of the people made homeless by the fire in her apartment block. Wrapped up in a blanket, she was savouring a well-earned smoke as she gazed up at the pink evening light cascading down in wispy shafts from the dome above. Putting her fingers to her cheek, she found tears there. Here was her grief, making its presence felt at last.
Ana Kiroa was dead. The woman posing as a doctor had killed her with an injection of morphine as she lay helpless in her hospital bed, while Sol and Cleo stood there – right there in the doorway. In truth, Cleo had known it even as they had fled from the hospital. But she hadn’t wanted to face it – couldn’t face it – until now. The police were holding an investigation, but Cleo doubted Ana’s killer would ever be found. It was what the Clockwo
rkers did, after all: murder and then disappear without a trace.
It was the first recycling ceremony that Cleo had ever stuck with through to the end. Sitting between Solomon and Ana’s boyfriend, Julio, she had watched the body being given back to the city, and she had felt nothing but an aching numbness. Sol had not said a word, avoiding eye contact by keeping his hood up. Julio had cried like a little kid.
Cleo shivered miserably, wiping the tears from her face, and pulled the blanket up to her chin, drawing on the pungent joint. A rustle of fabric made her look off to one side in time to see Sol dropping down from the walkway above her. He landed lightly, wincing as he flexed his bandaged hands. She smiled slightly and then went back to staring up at the dome.
‘Hey,’ she said.
‘Hey,’ he replied.
He sat down beside her and they huddled up to share warmth; Cleo threw her blanket over his legs.
‘Don’t get the wrong idea,’ she muttered.
‘I know, I’m not your type.’
They said nothing for a while. Cleo knew that Sol had taken his father’s death hard. He had no family at all; he’d lost everyone he loved. He’d had a crush on Ana – their whole class had known that – and he’d lost her too. Now he had taken to spending days out, wandering the city alone. He seemed to be getting money from somewhere, and she suspected he was spending time with the daylighters, and maybe even the Dark-Day Fatalists. That was something, at least. All this being alone couldn’t be good for him, though. He needed to be among friends. She sniffed. He needed to make some friends.
‘When you going to come back to school?’ she asked.
He shrugged.
‘Still don’t feel right,’ he said.
‘You never will,’ Cleo told him. ‘Not after all this. But you’ve still got to live. I mean, what are you going to do when you finish school? I was always putting off thinking about it, but now . . . now I feel like I should be doing something, y’know?’