Authors: Kat Ross
I half-carry him down what seems like miles of endless, twisting corridors. Will’s skin is bone-white and I’m scared he’s going to collapse. How much time has passed? Too much. But the curves are getting gradually broader, and I know we’re close to the outside now.
Then I see a sign for Bays 4-6. Another door, green this time, followed by a short hallway. It opens into a cavernous space, with a series of platforms and hydraulic lifts to transfer crates and heavy equipment. Three tall steel-reinforced doors give access to the parking lot. I register that one of them is ajar when an arm locks around my throat, lifting me off my feet. The muzzle of a gun presses against my right temple.
“Drop your weapon,” the guard hisses.
I drop it, and he kicks it away.
“Face down, on the ground,” he orders Will.
Will raises his arms over his head.
“On the ground!” the guard barks.
Will blinks, and I wonder if he can hear OK, or if the explosion did something to his eardrums.
“Lie down,” I whisper with exaggerated enunciation.
“Shut up!” The arm tightens around my throat until I gag.
He’s wearing body armor, I can feel it against my back, but only from the waist up. Without moving my arm, I twist my wrist around and slip it into my coat pocket. Extend my fingers as far as they’ll go. Where is it?
The guard’s radio crackles and I know that in about five seconds he’s going to shove me away and order me face down next to Will. He’ll call for backup, and it’s game over. Then my fingers close around the hypo. I ease it out, flick the plastic off. His arm is just starting to relax when I press the tip against his thigh, not enough to break the skin, but enough for him to feel it.
“Level Four,” I whisper. “That’s where we just came from. Know what they got in there?” I can’t see his face, but his body has gone perfectly still. “Some seriously unfriendly shit, that’s what. Which is now a heartbeat away from entering your bloodstream.”
“You’re lying,” he says, but I can hear the doubt.
“This particular strain has been weaponized, which means it’ll melt your insides about a hundred times faster than usual. No treatment, no cure.” I glance down at Will. “He’s only seventeen, you know. What I have in my hand makes what they did to him look like a spa treatment.”
The guard curses softly.
“First you’ll vomit blood,” I say, struggling to remember what Rebekah said and make it sound even worse, if that’s possible. “The symptoms go downhill from there. It ends with multiple organ dysfunction syndrome. In plain English, your body liquefies and you drown in your own tissue. That includes skin. It’s not very pretty. They’ll have to torch what’s left since your corpse is essentially a virus bomb.”
I take a deep breath, as best I can with my windpipe pressed against his forearm. “So what do you say, huh? Can you please get your damn gun away from me? Slowly now.”
A few seconds go by. I figure he’s calculating whether a head shot would put me down so instantly that I’d drop the hypo before I can poke him with it. In the end, he doesn’t like the odds. I wouldn’t either. Human skin is less than a tenth of an inch thick. One muscle spasm would do it. He sighs and eases the gun away from my temple. When the muzzle is pointed up, I grab his arm in a hammerlock and twist, forcing him to his knees.
“Grab my gun,” I tell Will.
He nods and crawls over to where I threw it. From the awkward way he picks it up, I get the feeling he’s never had any firearms training. I should have taught him some basics when we had the chance, but I always thought we had plenty of time. The guard’s weapon has fallen next to my left foot; it’s small and sleek, one of the newer models. I lean down to grab it, causing my weight to shift ever so slightly to the left, which is a dumb mistake. Because this guy is no rent-a-cop; he’s had training.
His free arm whips out and cracks me across the jaw so hard that everything goes black for a second. My ears buzz and suddenly I’m on my back, a crushing weight on my chest. When my vision clears, I see the guard above, pretty brown eyes in a hard face, he’s got his gun back and it’s pointing straight at me. Then a bullet rips through his throat and he falls to the side, gurgling.
Will glances at the body, then looks away. The hand holding the gun is steady.
I’ve never killed anyone,
he told me once
. And I hope I never have to.
But that Will is not this Will.
“Are you OK?” he asks.
I nod and make myself get up. The guard's blood is all over me, a sickening wet warmth. I think a couple of ribs cracked. But we have about one minute, probably less, to get out of here. The steel door is starting to slide down as we sprint across the loading bay. I throw myself into the gap and pull Will through the other side moments before it crashes shut. Twenty seconds later we’re at Rebekah’s car. I use her Pii to open it.
“Good evening, Dr Carlsson,” the computer says cheerfully.
“Switch to manual,” I say, taking the steering wheel. It’s a crappy government car, but I plan to push it to the limit. The whole Helix is lit up, and I hear sirens in the night. Not just from the building, but coming towards us.
“Sit back,” I say, placing a hand on Will’s chest as our seat belts snake out and click into place. “Let’s get out of here.”
I screech out of the parking spot, accelerating as we approach the booth. A guy comes running out but I blow past him and skid through a wide turn into the adjoining street. Right, then left, then right again. Nothing behind us, not yet. We merge into the traffic flow, which is surprisingly heavy for this time of night. Some kind of sporting event, since everyone is honking and pedestrians in blue and gold are clogging the streets.
I can’t believe we made it out of the Helix. In my heart, I didn’t believe it was possible. But we did, and now reality is setting in. The way I see it, there’s only one place to run to.
“Will, listen to me now. We’re in Raven Rock, my home prefecture. I wasn’t too popular to begin with, and now we’re both on the most-wanted lists of every police and security agency here and abroad. We could hide for a while, maybe even a few months if we’re very lucky, but in the end they’ll find us. And we’ll disappear. Down into one of the black holes they reserve for detainees that are off the books. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Will nods. He’s calm, but there’s still a kind of madness dancing around the edges of his eyes that makes me uneasy. “Yeah, I understand.”
“You’re probably gonna say we should go back to the surface. Take our chances with the canes. The problem is they found us there too, didn’t they? So I’m proposing a third way. It’s risky, it might be the worst idea I ever had, but I don’t see any choice.”
I know they’ve thrown up a cordon, at least a couple of miles square. Every cop in town has a picture of my face by now. So I need to make this fast.
“I have reason to believe there’s a land mass in the eye of Tisiphone. That’s where I think we should go. Your safe place, Will. I think I’ve found it.”
He turns to me slowly. “In the eye?”
“In the eye.”
His expression doesn’t change, but I see a fragment of the old Will, a little of the light and heat. “You’re crazier than I am. And how do we get through the eyewall?”
“We fly.”
Will shakes his head. Makes a noise that’s some kind of cross between a laugh and a sob.
The traffic suddenly slows, which means only one thing. Roadblock.
Time’s up.
“Switch to autodrive,” I say, “Raven Rock Terminal.”
When the computer engages, I take out the hypo, jab it into my thigh, and depress the plunger all the way down. I dimly hear Will yelling something, but the liquid agony coursing through me scours my brain clean of all extraneous thought. I close my eyes and watch colors explode into fragments, reform, explode again.
It’s a good thing I’m belted in, because I think I’m going into convulsions. A wave of intense heat rolls through me, followed immediately by wracking chills. I’ve never felt so sick, not even close. My skin is crawling like I’m covered in bugs.
“. . .out of your mind?” Will yells.
His voice is going in and out, like a distant radio station. “First time. . . worst. . . pass but not. . .”
I lean back against the headrest and let the drug wash over me. For all I know, I could have taken double the dosage, or triple, or quadruple. It’s not calibrated to my body weight either, which is relatively light. After a little while, I don’t know how long, the tremors in my limbs start ebbing, but now my scalp burns as though my hair is on fire. I touch it, and the hair feels weird, fine and brittle.
All my life, I’ve been strong. Mentally and physically. It horrifies me to think what I’ve just done. What I’ve changed into. Maybe forever.
Then bright lights hit the windshield. We’re coming up on the roadblock.
Are they looking for this particular car? I try to focus, but the thoughts are all jumbled up, like puzzle pieces that don’t quite match. One step at a time. If Rebekah and Miles are still unconscious, no one knows how I got there. We went past the gate guard too fast for him to get a plate number. Probably. If we turn, it’ll look suspicious and we’ll just hit another roadblock sooner or later. The hunt will only intensify as time passes, and we need to get near the terminal before we ditch Rebekah’s car.
If, if, if.
I make myself sit up. The world is too bright, almost cartoonish.
Will cups my face and turns me toward him. He looks furious. “Why?” he whispers.
I glance down at my hand and don’t recognize it for a second. “How do I look?”
Will just shakes his head. So I tilt the rear mirror until I get a full view of my face.
“Wow,” I say.
As old as Will appears, I could be his mother. Maybe his grandmother.
“They want Jansin Nordqvist.” I touch the maze of overlapping wrinkles. Even my eyelashes are white.
“You could have died. Some have.”
“Well, I didn’t.”
“We don’t know if this is reversible.”
He’s right, and the thought suffocates me, so I don’t say anything.
The traffic slows to a crawl as we approach the roadblock. It’s another stroke of luck that there’s so many cars, too many for them to bother checking individual Piis. Instead, they’re just scanning the occupants and waving them through. I wonder how much longer our luck will hold.
“Put the gun under the seat,” I tell Will.
We’re one car away now. There’s three cops on each side, with four riot wagons parked at a slant on the edge of the road. He looks down at the forgotten weapon in his hand. Stows it away.
We pass the public bath complex, and I can faintly smell the sulfur from the hot springs.
“I’m not going back,” he says in a monotone.
He means he would rather die.
“I know,” I say, laying my witch’s hand on top of his.
Then we’re at the roadblock. I tell the computer to lower the window. The nearest officer leans down, silhouetted against the floodlights, and I wonder if we’d have any chance of running it if necessary, admit the answer is no. No chance. But I wouldn’t mind killing her anyway. I feel strange.
There are still flares of color in the corners of my eyes. The sudden urge to reach out and tear at her flesh is strong, but I get control and summon up what I hope is the expression of a befuddled old woman with a healthy fear of the law.
“What’s happening, ma’am?”
She looks at me, but her face is already a mask of barely concealed indifference. She looks at me, but she doesn’t
see
me. I’m old and therefore worthless. Invisible. She has no clue how close she is to dying at that moment.
And then she waves us through without another glance. The computer steers us back into the traffic flow. I feel as though there’s a rabid animal inside me, clawing to get out. Will knows. He can tell.
“It comes and goes,” he says in a monotone. “You have to fight it.”
I think of the place where I chained the black dog after they brought me back and try to box it in there, but it’s not easy. I tell myself there was no other way. It’s the truth. I just hope I don’t do something bad.
Half a mile from the terminal, I switch to manual steering and guide us north, then west, around the back side of the warren of train tunnels. I park in an alley and kill the engine.
“Be right back,” I say.
He frowns. “Where are you going?”
“Chalktown. We need IDs, Will.”
“What’s Chalktown?”
“Tent camp. Users, people with no family. The underbelly of our illustrious society.”
I unbuckle my seatbelt and pain lances through my ribcage.
“Sounds dangerous.”
“Only for whoever messes with me,” I say, although I’m not sure I could best a reasonably fit ten year-old right now.
The box of gold coins must have slid deep under the back seat when we accelerated through the guard booth at the Helix, but after a minute of groping, my fingers touch metal.
“If you’re not back in fifteen minutes, I’m coming after,” Will says. I notice the gun is back in his lap.
“Give me twenty.”
“Don’t be late.”
I nod, tuck the box under my arm, and totter across the street on unsteady legs. The way to Chalktown isn’t far and it’s not hidden, almost the opposite. I’ve never been there before, but everyone knows about it. Once a year or so, the prefectural authorities send a goon squad to sweep it out, but the residents invariably trickle back within a few months. I think they’re allowed to because it’s just easier to keep the dregs in one place, and there’s nowhere else to put them anyway.
The entrance is grand, in a decaying, haunted house kind of way. Two tall brass doors, one of them slightly ajar, with the words ALL RAINS in tarnished lettering above. I guess the T fell off sometime in the last ten years, when this place was abandoned in favor of the new station, with its high-speed maglev tracks.
I slip inside and the heat hits me like a furnace. No climate control in here anymore. No perfect seventy-three degrees. More like a hundred and three. It’s dark, and smoky from the small fires scattered across the main arrivals hall. They give off the only light, except for one TV that someone has jacked electricity for. It’s tuned to the HYPERCANE NETWORK!, and about a dozen people sit facing it, slack-jawed and corpse-like. Chalkheads. Not a drug you can take and still blend into society. It turns you pale as a slug no matter what color you started out as.