Debris (21 page)

  "We don't want to contain it." Kichlan breathed heavily, like was all he could do to keep himself from shouting. "We need to get rid of it."

  The team had started to converge. Sofia watched me avidly, like I was a fire about to run out of control. Lad, no longer tired and violent, smiled broadly. Natasha, Uzdal and Mizra appeared cautious.

  "But we can't get rid of it if we can't contain it." I poked my toe at the bag of jars. They rattled loudly in the night. I found it curious that debris made no sound. Its planes should have rocked the street with thunder, its shuffling grains like snake scales.

  "She's right," Mizra said in my defence, against the gathering shadow on Kichlan's face. "Isn't that what the jars do? Contain the debris, so it can be taken away?"

  "Who has the strength to hold all that?" Kichlan shouted as he pointed at the debris. His suit sliced out into a long, thin spike. The spectators behind us gasped, and shuffled back a pace. "You think you do, is that it? You might be able to pick up bits and pieces we find in old lamps but this is something far beyond you!" Spit flew from his mouth. My suit lit it brightly as it fell. Both my wrists were shining fiercely and I was certain, if I rolled down my collar, untied my jacket, or undid my boots, the rest would be too.

  "Not on my own, perhaps. But I am not alone, am I?" I turned to the others. Apart from Lad, who had began nodding violently and grinning like a madman, they stood like statues. "I thought we were a team. Why can't we do this together?"

  "We were doing this together," Kichlan said between clenched teeth.

  "Not properly."

  Not the way a critical circle would.

  I rolled my collar down and pushed up my sleeves. Bending, I undid the few laces I could tie on my wet leather boots, and hiked up my woollen pants. I shrugged my jacket from my shoulders and let it fall onto the wet street. My ankles, wrists and neck beamed cold blue light into snow and ice and stone, brighter than any of the others, brighter than Kichlan where he stood, gaping at me. It shone from my waist too, when my clothing moved enough to allow it to peek through.

  I could forget the gaze of crowd behind me, and the small sense of decency and decorum I had left, to be working as a circle again.

  "Are we ready?" I asked the collectors – my collectors – and tried to ignore how silly I must have appeared, with my clothes rolled up and my jacket in the sludge.

  "We can't do this without you," Sofia told Kichlan, saying what I had not been able to.

  "She doesn't understand any of this," he muttered. "She has no idea what she's doing."

  "But we will need you anyway." Sofia placed a hand on his shoulder, and he seemed to shake himself beneath it.

  "What would you have us do?" he asked me, voice thick and rasping.

  "Make the circle." The words slipped from me before I could check them and my collectors took up the call. They spread out in a crescent around the corner of the building. "Alternate. Sofia, Mizra, Lad, Uzdal, Kichlan, then Natasha." I squeezed myself between Uzdal and Lad, and longed for the days of Grandeur, for standing high above the earth and watching as the sky filled with energy. "Right." I rubbed my hands, I loosened my wrists. "Plane first."

  I raised my arms and extended my suit, using its silver to reach for sails of plane debris. It responded easily, eagerly, knowing what I wanted, doing what was needed. Why was that a surprise? It was, after all, a part of me. I flattened it, curved it, linked left and right hand together and arched toward the debris like my hands – my suit – were a domed metal ceiling.

  Kichlan, Sofia and Lad followed my example. Their suits spread out, spread up. Edges knocked mine like seams without stitches. Together, we slipped between plane and building, between debris and lamp, street, rooftop. The planes flickered, at first. Unsure. Then they fought back.

  One large grey arc buzzed out of existence, then flared back into life a deeper, solid black. It battered against my suit with a sharp, clutching corner, fighting for the building, for the purchase I denied it. I felt each blow. Vibrations echoed through the suit, down into my arm and further, deeper into my skin, bones, head and mind. I steadied myself against it, pushing away memories of crimson pions and what it had felt like to be dragged to the edge of Grandeur's palm. I would not let debris undo me the way the pions had. I would not fall from this statue, eight hundred feet in the air.

  Sofia yelped, and her suit withdrew like a frightened cat.

  "No!" I shouted over the rattling in my ears. "Keep your suit up."

  Expression pained, Sofia extended her suit again.

  "That's it! Now–" I glanced over at Mizra, Uzdal and Natasha waiting in anticipation. "We'll contain the planes, you slice the mass from the wall! Hurry!"

  The planes flickered faster, as though in desperation, as though they knew what we were about to do. Sofia began to shake, but held her line.

  Mizra and Uzdal darted beneath our silver dome. They reached the building wall, aligned their hands with the brick and shot sharp blades up through the clinging debris. The spectators gasped again. Quiet words reached me.

  "Other!"

  "How can they do that?"

  "How horrible."

  Natasha hesitated, suit extended to short knives.

  "It's starting to give!" Mizra called. Natasha, with a jerking shake of her head, darted in to help.

  "That's it, keep it going–" I called. The next smack against my suit knocked me to one knee. "What happened?" Another crash. Sofia faltered, her suit retracted, and Natasha leapt away from the wall with a curse.

  I wasn't about to fall. My suit shot out from my ankles and tunnelled thick spikes into the road. The next push didn't budge me, I was buried too deep.

  "Tell me what's happening!" I demanded.

  "Doesn't want to, Tan!" Lad yelled, his voice high pitched and panicked.

  "What doesn't?" I jerked my head around, searching for only the Other knew what. Some kind of interference, someone wielding fierce and fiery power.

  "It's the debris," Kichlan answered.

  Sofia faltered again. A wide plane flashed out from the debris mass and threw her to the ground. Her limp body jerked as her suit whipped back into her wrists. Kichlan withdrew and ran to her. Uzdal abandoned the attempt to cut debris from the wall and was tugging on his brother's hand, begging him to do the same. And still the stuff was growing, planes lacing the sky, grains bulging and wiggling. It pushed against my suit, but my ankles held firm and I realised that my legs would break before my metallic supports ever gave way.

  Still Lad held his position beside me. Our suits were smooth and light-reflecting patches of sanity, of quiet and stillness, among the chaos and the sudden violence only we could see. Tears ran in thick rivers down his cheeks, but he did not falter.

  "Doesn't like it," he whispered, over and over. "Doesn't like it."

  "That's ridiculous!" I cried. A third spike, five inches thick and sturdy as earth, shot from the back of my waistband to crash through paving stones. I couldn't control it. "This is debris. It is a by-product, a waste. It doesn't care what we do to it, Lad. It doesn't care about anything. It doesn't think, it doesn't feel. It's waste, just waste."

  I pushed my suit to spread further. If Kichlan and Sofia couldn't stand in the face of some particularly putrid garbage, then I would do it for them.

  I wrapped my suit around Lad's, all the way over the bulging mass until I touched solid brick. Something burned in my arms, a deep and fiery ache, a scraping and a tugging at my bones. I didn't dare look down at them.

  "Give up, Tanyana," Kichlan said, wearily, from Sofia's side. "You can't do it all yourself."

  But I pushed on. Silver liquid poured out of the band around my neck. It coated my shoulders, my chest, the top of my arms before joining with the bands on my wrists. There, it boosted them, it sent its own strange metallic shape-shifting metal into the large, curved plates I had wrapped around the debris and helped me spread them further. But the burning replied in kind. It raced up my neck, caught in my throat, and it was all I could do to breathe around it.

  "Careful," Mizra said, approaching me. "Don't push the limits."

  My waist began to do the same thing. I couldn't stop it. I had called upon the suit and it was giving me everything, more than I wanted it to give.

  "Kichlan!" Mizra shouted. "Get over here and help!"

  Running feet and scuffles at my side.

  "Tanyana, you have to stop it. You'll empty yourself. Tanyana, stop it!" Kichlan tried to grab my elbow. But a silver hand whipped out from my waist and smacked him away. I was wrapped in silver, a crawling armour coating me from my wrists to my waist.

  "Doesn't like it," Lad kept murmuring beside me, rocking on his feet and crying. "Have to stop."

  I nearly had the whole mass wrapped in silver. Just a snip from the wall now, a bend in my suit and a slice. I could do that.

  "Lad!" Kichlan's voice cut through his younger brother's mumbling. "Stop her!"

  In the corner of my eye I saw Lad flinch. He blinked, he stopped rocking, and he turned to me in horror. "Oh no!" he whispered, lips red and wet with his tears. "No."

  He pulled himself from the sphere we had made, and wrapped a metal-coated hand around my forearm. Silver into silver. Suit to suit. He sank into me and distant, hissing voices surrounded me.

  
Don't like it
, they whispered.
Don't like it
, they pleaded.

  Shocked, I stared into Lad's concerned face. He was talking to me, red lips moving, but all I heard were the whispers.

  
Don't like it. Don't like it.

  And then, like the clear chime of a bell.

  
Please stop.

  "I'm sorry," I said. But not to Lad. Not to Kichlan hovering in the hazy background. Or Sofia, presumably still lying prone on the damp paving stones. "I'm sorry," I told the whispers, and they were silenced.

  "Sorry won't help you," Kichlan was saying. "You need to withdraw. Where do you think the suit comes from? How much metal do you think they've crammed into your bones?"

  Lad had gone silent, and tipped his ear toward the debris, expression puzzled.

  "If you dig any deeper you'll empty yourself out," Kichlan continued. "Your body will break. Your bones first, then your muscles, then your skin. You'll collapse in and the suit will still hold you up, keep you like this while you die. Do you want to stand here forever?"

  Like a statue? I'd had enough of statues. I breathed, grounded myself with the air pressing in my lungs, just as I would have done before calming recalcitrant pions. Another breath, and I brought myself under control.

  I eased my armour away. It slipped from my chest and arms like oil. The supports I had sent crashing into the earth withdrew, leaving gaping tunnels beneath the road.

  But I continued to hold onto the debris. It had stopped fighting. Nothing pushed against my plates of silver, no planes were clawing into my very bones. Everything was silent, everything was still.

  I realised Lad had his bare hand on my arm, his suit also withdrawn. His thick fingers were so warm I could feel them through layers of uniform and clothes.

  "That is better," he said, and broke into his usual smile. "Doesn't hurt anymore."

  "It is better," I said. Gradually, I retracted the rest of my suit and it felt like gorging on a large, fatty meal. My skin seemed to stretch, to bloat, and my bones were suddenly heavy.

  "Oh, Tanyana," Uzdal gasped. "You did it."

  I had kept my eyes on Lad's face as I summoned my suit inside. His encouraging, simple joy. But at Uzdal's words I turned to the debris and my hard-won calm fell away.

  Gone was the parasitic mess of plane and grain. A single clump wriggled in the air beside the building's corner. I stepped forward. Nothing squirmed, no black sails fluttered. It was debris. The simple kind we found behind aging brick walls and in the cracks of lampposts. Nothing more.

  "Here." Mizra handed me a jar.

  Numb, I extended the very tips of my suit, pinched the debris out of the air and slipped it into the jar.

  
Thank you,
something whispered.

  "Thank you," Lad said.

  As soon as I sealed the lid, the lights in the windows and nearby streetlamps steadied. Steam died with a soft hushing, and the broken water pipe stopped gushing. Pions re-established their systems, took back control. Even as we stood there each affected system would be activating emergency protocols, sending signals to the veche's city planning department. In the morning the relevant six point critical circles would arrive, and they would fix the damage.

  The crowd, who could not have understood what they just witnessed, gave us a smattering of applause. Face hot, jar in hand, I found I had no idea what to do. It seemed somehow surreal, and the urge to bow or lift the container where they could see it, bizarrely out of place.

  The rest of the collectors were equally bemused. Kichlan helped a shaking Sofia to her feet; Uzdal and Mizra grinned and waved; Natasha kept her back turned and Lad joined in the clapping, laughing loudly.

  The accolades didn't last long. Soon, the chill of a Movoc night overwhelmed the appreciation of the crowd. The clapping petered out, and the spectators dispersed.

  As I met Kichlan's furious eyes, I wished I could dissolve into the night with them.

  In the middle of the snow-padded, ice-whitened street, he said nothing. He collected the bag of jars from the stones, took the one I was holding, added it to the clinking pile and tied the bag tightly.