The Forgotten City (10 page)

With a grunt she maneuvered her massive bulk upright, lifting Jude with her.

Eli led them up a flight of stairs, back to the top story of Level 1 and through the garden to the landing platforms where all the transflyers had been parked. He’d been hoping there would be something left they could use, but everyone had flown out. He looked back at the giant holding Jude like a ragdoll. He was so still.

A violent gust of wind shoved Eli back, turning him toward the city view. Scorpia, like the shimmering body of a giant beast, stretched out into the desert before him. His mind spun. What should he do? Who was left he could trust? One name came to mind.

“Call Commander Santana,” he ordered his front-core.

The system buzzed and connected with the simpler com system the Fen sniper commander still used.

“Anklebiter?” Santana spoke.

“It’s not me,” Eli said, then cursed. “I mean – it’s me. Are you in Sirenseron?”

“Negative. We’re still on our way. There was trouble with the craft. Are K-Ruz and Commander Kane in the rink yet?”

Eli paused. “Something’s happened – I need your help …”

Santana’s voice darkened. “We’re close. We can see the Palace now. What’s your location?”

“East. Landing Quadrant.”

“Sit tight. Almost on you.”

The connection ended and almost immediately Eli heard the drone of the United Resistance craft, an ancient, blimpish mass-mover. He checked on Nelly as it touched down on the other end of the quadrant. She was busy biting holes in his pocket. Santana and a bunch of soldiers jumped out and ran across the zone in formation, their electrifiers drawn.

“What happened here?” Santana shouted when he was close enough. “Looks like a bomb blast!” He saw Eli’s arm and cursed, then looked behind him to Jude and cursed louder.

“We were attacked. Enemy unknown. Jude needs help fast,” Eli told him.

“We’ll take him to the refuge center.”

“No, I need my equipment. I need to go to our hide in Moris-Isles.”

Santana’s face twitched and Eli felt a sinking in his gut.

“What is it?”

“I got word from some Spotters. Your boarding house has been burned down …”

The mention of fire stirred Eli’s senses. Why were they being targeted? Was it connected to the witches? His mind jumped to Silho’s note in his pocket.

“I have a hangar. We can go there instead,” Eli said. “I’ve stored copies of mostly everything.”

“Whatever you need,” Santana told him. “Commander Kane?”

Eli flinched and Santana said, “Tell me on the way.”

The Fen beckoned to the giant and the group of them ran to the transporter.

As they lifted away from the Palace, Eli replayed the attack footage for Santana and his team. This time, when the lights flared at the end of the recording, Eli recognized something that panic and fear had made him miss the first time around. That blinding blaze was a very unique type of light, and he’d only seen it once before – in Englan Chrisholm’s cell as his portal had opened. Eli watched the attack a third time in slowed motion, and saw the commander and everyone not falling, but vanishing into the light – into the portal. Eli’s heart lifted – he’d feared they’d been incinerated, but it now looked as though they’d actually jumped realms.

There was still hope.

D
iega burst from the light into open air. She plunged, tumbling and crashing out of control. Blurred forms flashed past. Sharp points ripped her face. She plummeted down as the ground rushed up. And then she hit. A patch of long grass softened the blow, but still it knocked her breathless. She lay there with her face in the dirt, stunned, struggling to force air into her lungs. Finally she managed a ragged gasp, followed by another, and after a third, she rolled onto her back. The sky above was an unnatural shade of purple and the daylight stars, always visible to Fen eyes, were gone. It wasn’t possible.

Diega clutched her chest and sat up. The high grasses obscured her sight on all sides. She drew her electrifier and raised herself to the height of the grass tops, checking all around her for the shimmer of
Tehron
that would tell her somebody was waiting in ambush.

Seeing none, she stood. The field around her stretched out and downward to the edge of a pinewood forest. Diega held her breath and listened. A bird cheeped, insects chirred and whirred, and a whispering breeze swished the grasses, stirring sweet scents of pine needles and vanilla flowers.

Diega slipped her com from her belt and whispered into it, “Connect tracker team.” The signal didn’t connect. She checked the device and found it had shorted out. Most likely the fall had been too much for it.

Ahead, the grasses rustled. Diega ducked low again, and heard a heavy groan. She aimed her electrifier toward the sound as the colossal meathead Christy Shawe hauled his muscle-suffocated carcass into sight.

He muttered a curse and reached a hand behind him, then started lumbering in circles as though he thought that would help extend his grasp. He turned Diega’s way and spotted her. Aggression tightened his face, then he recognized her, and the tense lines relaxed, even though she still held the electrifier pointed straight at his head.

“Don’t just stand there, sunshine,” he growled. “Tell me what’s on my back.”

“I told you,” she said through gritted teeth. “Don’t call me
sunshine
, you trutting podsucking gadfly.”

“Oh, I’m terribly sorry, princess,” he mocked her, looking even more asinine than he usually did. “Is
buttercup
better? How about
sugar-pie
?”

Diega grimaced with the immensity of her loathing for Shawe. She tested her finger on the trigger. This was where Copernicus usually stepped in, told them both to shut it, but he wasn’t here – and neither were Jude, Silho or Eli …

Scenes of the fight at the palace returned to her in blurred flashes. Everything had gone down so quickly. They were struggling to free Silho and then they were falling. She’d thought they’d toppled off the side of the Walk, but clearly not. She hesitated, then lowered her weapon.

“Where the hell are we?” she asked Shawe.

“Do I look like the trutting encyclopedia of the universe?” he said, still clutching at his back.

“No, you look like a shaved ape wearing pants,” she muttered, shoving her electrifier into its holster. She trudged through the grasses to where the gangster struggled.

“Stop moving!” she ordered, then lifted the back of his shirt.

The sight that met her eyes sent a shot of weakness through her knees. She’d seen several lifetimes worth of distressing and gruesome wounds, but she’d never seen this level of injury on a person who was still alive. Shawe’s lower back was a complete mess – the skin was gone, as well as several layers of muscle, leaving only bloodied meat. She thought she might even be seeing some exposed spine. Diega couldn’t understand why he hadn’t already bled out.

“What?” he said, glancing over his shoulder at her.

Diega stared at him incredulously. Did he really not feel how bad this was?

She took the compact mirror off her belt and held it up so he could see the reflection of his wounds. He spat out a long mouthful of curses.

“What happened? What did this?” Diega asked.

“What do you think? Trutting fire-breather stabbed me – he got Kane too.”

A sick feeling lurched in her stomach. Shawe had phenomenally tough skin and he had still sustained this level of damage – what would it have done to Copernicus if he’d been hit? They had to find him, fast.

Diega checked her com again – still dead. She dragged out her body scanner, heat sensor and navigator, but found everything was similarly fried. All her tracking equipment was now useless. Even her electrifier, she discovered, had malfunctioned. They’d have to conduct a search the primitive way, line by line through the grass.

Shawe saw her looking around and said, “He’s not here.”

“How do you know?” she demanded.

The gangster looked her up and down with an arrogance in his sewerage-green eyes that said he wouldn’t be explaining himself to the likes of her. “Because I know.”

“Good for you,” she spat back. She left him and walked higher up the slope. From that height she could see where she and Shawe had hit, but there were no other signs of disturbances to the grass. No one else had fallen here.

Diega moved back down to see Shawe ripping up his jacket and trying to use it to bind the gaping and horrific wound in his back. He grunted as material touched raw flesh. Just witnessing it sent shocks of pain through Diega’s own skin.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

“I’m belly-dancing – what does it look like, woman?” he said.

Diega was so sorely tempted to let him go, but at this moment he was her only ally in a strange place – a place where Copernicus was potentially lost and critically injured.

“If you put that straight onto the wound, it’ll fuse with the scabbing and rip open again as soon as you take it off,” she explained. “You have to have a layer of anti-adhesive underneath it.”

“And where am I going to get anti-adhesive?” Shawe said. “Do you see any shops around here?”

“Just – stop talking,” Diega muttered. She grabbed a pack of synthetic skins off her belt. She sprayed Shawe’s wound with antiseptic and coagulators then applied the skins over the top. Somehow Shawe managed to keep his enormous mouth shut while she worked.

“We have to find the others,” she told him, tying the strips of his jacket over the skins. “If Copernicus was stabbed, like you said he was, he’ll be in a bad way.”

She heard a gulp and looked up to see Shawe swigging Araki from his silver flask. She was telling him Copernicus could be seriously injured, even dead, and he was busy getting pissed.

“You don’t care about anyone except yourself, do you?” she said. “You’re just a trutting pisshead thug.”

He looked back at her, his eyes hardening. “Sweetheart – honestly – I’m cutting you a break because obviously your early experiences of being bedded by every gangster in the city must have messed with your brain, but you’re testing me.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” she growled.

“Really?” He raised an eyebrow, then grabbed her collar and tugged it to one side, exposing the bruising on her neck. “Like it rough, do you, sunshine?”

Diega felt the vicious burn of humiliation. “Shut it!”

Shawe snorted. “Why would you go and do something as stupid as paying for that, when you could go down to the Isles and get someone to smash in your face for free?”

“I’ll smash in your face for free if you don’t shut it!” she shouted.

Shawe just laughed at her. A film of red closed over Diega’s eyes. She felt her colors flare as she snatched the blade off her belt and launched herself at him – stabbing him right in the chest. The blade snapped in half and dropped to the ground between them. It was her favorite blade, the one Copernicus had given to her when he recruited her into the trackers. That had been the best day of her life.

Diega kneeled and picked up the broken blade. She whispered to morph it back onto the hilt. It didn’t shift. It was then that she really noticed that her eyesight was different – the edges of the blade were solid. She stared around with growing disbelief. Everything was solid. Her skills were not working here – wherever
here
was – because they were definitely not in Scorpia.

Fear, fast translating into rage, ripped through her. She launched herself at Shawe, blindly striking and kicking him with the strength of every martial fight style she knew. She leaped back, expecting him to be attacking or injured – or something – but instead he was standing in the same position, just looking down at her with an expression that said he wasn’t exactly sure what she was doing, but it made her look stupid.

“You’re a real cracked nut aren’t you, love?” he said.

Diega swore at him and attacked again, but this time he caught her midair, spinning her around and pulling her back roughly against his chest. He wrapped an arm around her and she couldn’t budge, she could barely breathe. She felt his body, reeking of sweat and alcohol, pressed hard against her. In a blink she was back in Woulghast, bound and gagged with the witch closing in on her. Silho had saved her …
Silho is dead …
Diega zoned out –
if you’re somewhere else it doesn’t hurt …

When she finally opened her eyes, her feet were back on the ground and Shawe had released her.

“Back in the land of the living, then,” he said, boredom in his voice.

She lifted a shaking hand and stabbed a finger into his face. “If you ever touch me again, I will kill you.”

He just shook his head. “I don’t
want
to touch you. I may catch something. But if you keep buzzing like a gnat, I’ll have to swat you.”

Diega found no words savage or hateful enough to express how she felt right then.

She turned and pushed through the grass, not thinking, just moving as far away from Shawe as she could. She heard him following and gritted her teeth. This place looked like Paradise, but with the loudest sounds being the regret inside her own head and the whistle of Christy Shawe breathing through his busted-up nose, it could only be hell.

T
he Crematorium, final resting place of Nÿr-Corum’s deceased, was located at the southernmost extremity of the city, through Saint Smithy Borough, below the cask of the Mother Fire and straight down for as far as the warmth lasted – and then down some more. A stretch of freezing cold lay between the civilization of the city and the sub-civilization of the Crematorium. Its laboratories and factories were warmed by their own fires – fueled by burning bodies. It was a chilling kind of warmth. As Croy followed Darius’ dragger, cutting through the biting updraft, she wondered what had come first, the Morticians rejecting society or society rejecting them. Either way, what had once been an elite and somewhat secretive bunch of scientists had now become a completely isolated and extremely bizarre sect of … the word
people
didn’t really seem to fit anymore. Once, Croy had tried to make Darius promise that when she died he would ensure, by whatever means, that her body didn’t go to the Crematorium. He’d refused to talk about her dying, but at least she knew he’d heard her wishes.

“Almost there,” her partner’s voice spoke through the I-Sect in her ear.

“Can’t wait,” Croy muttered back.

They pushed their draggers to full capacity and cut through the last of the freeze. A gust of warmth buffeted Croy’s face, the air thick with itchem-poly-magmylate, which the Morticians used to treat the bodies prior to cremation. Croy could attest that the stink of burning human flesh was truly awful, nauseating and putrid-sweet, and after smelling it once, it seemed to stain the sense of smell forever. The itchem was a powerful chemical mask. It made Croy’s eyes water and her head spin, but even so it didn’t completely overwhelm the stench billowing out of the Crematorium’s chimneys.

Croy tried not to think about it. She tried not to think that she was inhaling fragments of the dead, but she couldn’t quite shake the thought. Like the smell – it lingered.

Darius slowed his dragger and started to square off for landing. Croy glanced down at the rutted platform below them. The landing lights were all blown out and the indicating outline for inward passage had faded to nothing. Together the two factors spoke clearly. They were the first visitors here for a long time, maybe even since the slide-pipe was installed between the mortuary at the Tower and the Crematorium. Darius took the drop quickly and expertly, his ride leaning with his body and obeying his slightest touch and movement shift. Croy’s dragger was more stubborn, shuddering with reluctance as she forced it downward. She knew it was somewhat juvenile to anthropomorphize a machine, but sometimes it felt as though the dragger really did have a mind of its own. John L would have called her delusional – but with a smile and a shimmer in his eyes.

She touched down beside Darius and rested her boots on the ground. A fierce pain sliced through her leg from her toes to her scarred knee, sending a burning spasm through muscle and bone. Her whole body involuntarily jolted and went rigid. Then she felt something, a very strange sensation like things crawling all over her skin, then it changed, and she felt as though she were being shaken by the shoulders. An emotion rushed through her that she would have described as love or maybe desire had it not been completely out of place. The I-Sect in her ear emitted a deafening whistle, heated up, and exploded.

Croy yelled and tried to dig the burning shard of metal out of her ear as it melted into her skin. She staggered off the dragger, but her foot became stuck and she fell, crashing onto the ground with the ride on top of her. Shoving her finger deeper into her ear, she managed to snag a wire of the tiny device. She ripped it out and threw it, as Darius heaved the dragger off her and dropped down at her side.

“What happened?” he yelled. Croy flinched, the sound hurting her burned ear. She touched a hand to it and felt it throbbing.

“I’m fine … fine,” she insisted, finding her feet and pushing him away.

“You’re bleeding.” He grabbed a gauze patch out of his kit and pressed it over her ear. His other hand held her head steady. He was standing so close their faces were almost touching, and in this low light, the green-blue of his eyes seemed to glow. Croy took the gauze from him and stepped back. She checked the blood – it wasn’t much, nothing to cry about.

“Damn machine.” She nodded to the I-Sect and Darius went to pick it up. He held the smoking remains up to eye level and cursed.

“Have you ever heard of one of these blowing?” he asked.

Croy shook her head. “Unlucky first.”

Her partner touched a hand to his own ear and shifted with discomfort, but he left his I-Sect in. It was their only communication with the rest of the city. He hauled Croy’s ride upright and kicked out the stand.

“Not exactly the arrival we were shooting for,” she said, looking around at the darkened entrance of the Crematorium.

Shadows hung heavy over the doors, obscuring angles and edges, making it seem like one black void stretching back into forever. The moaning winds rattled the buildings. They creaked and shuddered, fell silent, then shuddered again. Croy could feel the heat from the steam pipes beneath her boots, but it did nothing to warm her. She exhaled harsh gusts of icy air and felt eyes watching them from the darkness. The strange pain that had overwhelmed her as they arrived had now dulled to a buzzing in her head. She realized it was similar to the buzzing she’d experienced at the Strip, except this was a continuous prickling feeling rather than bursts of sensation. Strong emotions, disconnected from anything that was actually happening, continued to swell then sink inside her, and she considered the possibility that the Morticians were somehow involved in both the dayturn’s incidents. The question was
how
, and
why
.

She glanced over at her partner. Darius stood surveying the entrance, disdain and anger narrowing his eyes.

“Do you feel something weird?” she asked him.

“Whole damn turn’s been weird,” he replied. “From the crazies on the Strip, to the sliced-up stinker, to now.” He reached into his jacket and brought out the Predator 6. “Let’s get some answers and get out of here.”

Darius strode out, heading for the entrance. He took the lead as he always did, partially due to impatience with her slower pace, and partially due to protectiveness, even though he knew full well what she was capable of. Croy followed. She didn’t draw her Firestorm, but was conscious of its weight against her hip. As they neared the front gate, a human-shaped shadow stepped into their path. Croy’s steps hesitated, but Darius didn’t pause; if anything, he moved quicker to meet the stranger head-on. Croy grabbed the torch out of her kit and sparked it up with her igniter. Flames flared in the end of the box. She held it up, sending a beam of light into the stranger’s face.

The man – a Mortician – hissed and stepped back, shielding his eyes. Croy kept the beam trained on him and called out, “Controllers Croy and DeCavisi.”

The Mortician lowered his arm and blinked into the light. Darius stopped a few paces from the man and Croy hurried to catch up, taking in the stranger as she walked. He was robed, his face sickly-pale and sunken, with heavy dark circles surrounding bloodshot eyes. He was completely hairless, with no eyebrows or facial hair. As she made this observation, a thought came to her – the body at the silo had still had long hair, and yet had definitely been dead for more than a few dayturns. As far as she’d been informed, the Morticians’ procedure involved shaving the body as one of the first points of action. So why hadn’t they shaved this girl?

Croy came alongside her partner as the Mortician spoke in a deep voice, as colorless as his face.

“May I help you?”

Croy’s stomach lurched. He had the most powerful and awful breath. It was asphyxiating. It smelled like he was rotting from the inside out. Her hands twitched as she struggled not to cover her nose.

“We’re here to ask some questions in relation to a body found earlier this dayturn in the Filter,” Croy said.

“Ask,” he replied.

“I’d prefer it if we went inside where there’s more light.” she told him.

The Mortician stared at her blankly, as though he hadn’t understood.

“Move it, jackass,” Darius commanded, giving him a shove with the muzzle of his Predator 6. “Inside. Now!”

The man drew back and wrenched open the front gate. Rust grated and the hinges squealed. He nodded and indicated for them to step past him. Croy followed Darius in, feeling her arm brush against the rough linen of the Mortician’s robe. His stare burned into the side of her face. He shut the gate behind them, and Croy heard it lock as they passed through double doors into a hallway. It was very long, straight, and completely bare, except for the torches on the walls. Croy snuffed out hers and pushed it back into her kit. The Mortician came up behind them, his soft-soled shoes making no sound. He moved in a very unnatural upright way, with his hands clasped in front of him, looking more like a puppet than a person. It made Croy even jumpier than she already felt. She glanced at her partner. Darius was looking all around them, his nostrils flaring and eyes sharp. There were no signs of any others, but Croy could still feel eyes. The Mortician paused beside them, waiting.

Croy took out a parchment notepad and a stick of charcoal.

“Firstly state your name,” she said.

The man stared vacantly.

“Name!” Darius demanded. “You know, that thing you inherited from your parents – or have you forgotten you had parents?”

“Klinsman,” he said.

“Klinsman who?” Darius ask.

“Just Klinsman.”

The Mortician watched as Croy scratched it down.

“Right. Mister Klinsman,” she continued. “The body of a girl was found in the Filter this dayturn. The body had been chained between two anchor poles. It had the deathcode.”

Klinsman’s expression shifted for the first time. A crease appeared between his eyes and the skin shifted down where his eyebrows would have been.

“Our mark?”

“We have a sharp one here,” Darius muttered not-so-quietly to Croy.

“Has there been a break-in recently?” she prompted.

“Yes,” Klinsman replied after just the briefest of pauses and a shift of his eyes. “Yes, there has been.”

“Why didn’t you report it?” she asked.

“I am sure we intended to. I am sure the next time one of us went to the surface we would have. We only go every sixty turns.”

“So in the meantime someone’s running around town with a boosted cadaver – and that doesn’t concern you?” Darius said.

The Mortician looked between them and said without any emotion whatsoever, “It concerns me greatly.”

“What happened?” Croy asked. “When and how was the body taken?”

Klinsman swallowed slowly. “I assume an individual broke in and, as you said, stole it.”

“You assume?” Darius said.

“I’m not aware of the exact details.”

“How convenient.”

“Okay.” Croy pushed the parchment and charcoal back into her pocket. “We’re going to need the name of the missing deceased and we’d like to see where the body was stored before it was taken.”

“Why?” Klinsman asked, and Croy finally heard some color in his voice.

“Why?” Darius repeated. “Because we say so, that’s why.”

The Mortician’s eyes went to Croy.

“Don’t look at her – I’m the one talking to you.” Darius snapped his fingers in a way that would rile even the most docile of people, but got little reaction out of Klinsman. “What are you freaks hiding?”

Her partner was getting close to losing control over his anger, so Croy stepped in front of him.

“Mister Klinsman, if you’ll just give us the name and show us where the body was taken from, then we’ll leave. Cooperation is not optional.”

Klinsman swallowed again, his throat bobbing. “Follow me, then.”

The Mortician led them further along the hallway at the same walking-dead pace, Darius zigzagging behind him with impatience. Finally they came to a room with a counter, and behind it a second, smaller room filled with parchments. Another Mortician – Croy assumed the parchment keeper – stood inside the office. He was dressed identically to Klinsman, with the same hairlessness and sallow skin. His eyes stretched with alarm as they approached.

“Wait here,” Klinsman told them. He entered the parchment room through a doorway beside the counter and went to the man. They huddled in one corner to speak, casting cagey glances over their shoulders.

Darius narrowed his eyes at them. “What do you think they’re saying?”

“Something along the lines of
did you notice a body was missing? – no – did you? – no – what do we do? I don’t know, what do you think we should? No idea.
” Croy said.

Darius snorted. He stepped forward and banged on the counter with both hands.

“Hurry up!” he yelled.

The Morticians exchanged a few more words, and then Klinsman came back out.

“I’m just retrieving the file,” he told them.

“Sure – and I’m just retrieving my Predator,” Darius said redrawing his weapon. “’Fess up – you didn’t know about the runaway cadaver, did you?”

Klinsman’s eyes swiveled from left to right.

“Why say that you did?” Croy avoided the word
lie
, wanting to keep the situation as calm as possible.

“I’m in charge of entranceway security. I should have known,” Klinsman finally confessed.

“Okay,” Croy said. “Take a look at this.” She took the sketch of the girl out of her pocket and showed him. “Any ideas who this is?”

Klinsman’s pale eyes scanned over the image methodically, medically. Croy noticed he had sweat on his upper lip – still human after all.

Darius breathed impatiently through his nose.

“I think I know who it could be,” the Mortician finally said. “But I must check.”

He hurried back into the records room and vanished, along with the record keeper, through a second doorway.

Darius started to pace and after several minutes burst out, “What does he have to check?”