The Forgotten City (18 page)

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s soon as the hangar roof boomed closed above them, Eli leaped from the pilot’s seat and ran to where Jude and SevenM lay on a makeshift stretcher. He found Penman hovering anxiously over them, holding one of SevenM’s legs in a tentacle. The little 0318 gave a mournful beep as Eli checked Jude’s heart rate – it was still slow but steady. A serene expression had settled on the Ar Antarian’s face, almost as though he was asleep, but his silver skin was blanched white. “I’m here.” Eli patted Jude’s arm. “I’m back.”

He turned to the compound analyzer, which he’d left testing the toxin, and saw immediately why it hadn’t sent through any results. The poison had melted into the machine and completely burned it out. He’d never seen a toxin this voracious – and if it was doing this to the fortified metal of the analyzer, what would it do to simple flesh and bone? With a deep sense of dread, Eli forced himself to lift the bandages over Jude’s wound and look. The poison lines had progressed across Jude’s body and the necrosis of the wound had widened, but not as badly as Eli had feared. Jude being half-Androt meant his more vulnerable Ar Antarian skin was infused with the special living metals of the Androts’ bodies. It was extremely resilient and rapid-healing – Jude’s broken arm was already completely fused – but even so the poison was on the move, reaching black tendrils of toxin toward Jude’s heart and brain. The heart, and all the other essential organs, could be transplanted or replaced by real or robotic implants, but the brain – that was another matter completely. Certainly it could be repaired or modified in minor ways but a complete transplant had never been achieved. It was still a case of lose the brain, lose the person … Eli was determined not to let that happen.

He immediately started hooking Jude up to machines that would keep his body alive in the event the poison took everything out. Even though Jude was completely shut down, his body was still holding an equilibrium that needed to be maintained for him to survive. After he was satisfied Jude’s vital organs were all supported, Eli ran along his workbench, rifling through piles of inventions until he found his advanced He-Ro series that he’d been working on. He chose one of tested success and attached it to Jude’s chest. Should his heart fail, the He-Ro would immediately take over. After it was secure and activated, Eli moved on to injecting more slowing serums and healing mixtures into the wound until he felt sure that he’d done everything he could, then he grabbed a cushion from one of his chairs and positioned it carefully under his friend’s head. He watched Jude for a moment longer before stepping back from the stretcher feeling ill to his stomach and shaky.

Penman stayed hovering close to SevenM, keeping his eyes on him. It was the first time he’d been anywhere near another machine-breed. His former owners had always kept him alone. Sensing movement, Eli glanced into Nelly’s enclosure. The otter had put herself into it and was swimming in one of her pools. After the horror and heat of the desert, the enclosure had suddenly become more acceptable to her. Eli himself wished he could shower and try to scrub off some of the foulness he felt still crawling under his skin, but that would have to wait.

Shuffling sounded behind him and Eli turned to see Flintlock standing beside the bench where Ismail lay, still unconscious, but starting to twitch. Diamond was thankfully back in Ufftown, where they’d dropped her off and watched her walk with dragging steps into her apartment block.

Eli felt weary enough to collapse, but he forced himself to stay on his feet.

“How is he?” he asked, hurrying toward Flintlock.

The towering Corámorán considered his question and replied, “There’s something very wrong with him, Master Eli, Something …” she pointed warily to her chest. Eli nodded in agreement – something was undeniably wrong, but the question was what?

“Flintlock, see that body scanner over there?” He pointed to the large piece of equipment near to the bench. He’d been waiting for a reinforced hoist to lift it into place and form a makeshift, but functional diagnostic chamber, should any of the team need it. “Is that too heavy for you to lift?”

The Corámorán took three big strides over to the scanner and picked it up without so much as a strain.

“That …” Eli had to pause for a moment to marvel at her strength, “is impressive …” He snapped out of the trance and said. “Can you place it that side up over Ismail?” He pointed to the bench and Flintlock moved immediately to obey.

“We need to see exactly what’s going on inside his chest,” he explained, activating the scanner’s holo-screen.

Eli positioned all the primary scanners over Ismail’s heart and started them up. The screen flickered, fuzzed over then brought up an image. He stared, for a moment thinking the machine must be stuck on its last scan. This couldn’t be Ismail’s body – the heart was blackened, clotted and definitely deceased – but then he saw the heart was beating, or actually not so much beating as pulsing in a slumped and odd kind of way as though it was being animated via electricity not by voluntary movement. It took several more moments of fast thinking before Eli realized what he was seeing. He stepped back a little from the screen with shock.

“The witch put her heart in him – that’s what’s keeping him alive – but the heart itself is dead.” He raised his stare to Flintlock who shook her head silently, her deep, solemn eyes reflections of his ill-ease.

“If it’s dead, how is he alive?” she asked.

“Magics – dark magics,” Eli replied, then a terrible idea occurred to him. “If it’s still beating it means she’s still alive – or at least still dead-alive …” Fear for Luther twisted painfully inside him.

He pushed the retract button on the scanner and the machine’s chamber slid back. He stood staring down at Ismail. The He-Ro was still firmly implanted in his chest, so at least if the zombie heart failed he could theoretically survive, but who knew what effects the dark magics were having on his body. Eli contemplated if he should try to remove the alien heart completely, but concluded that doing so without knowledge of what impact it might have on Ismail was ill-advised. What if the magics reacted to him removing the heart? What if it alerted the witch immediately or killed Ismail, or exploded like a bomb – who knew what curse the witch had put on it.

Eli blinked into his front-core implant and said, “Search – zombified organ transplants.”

Immediately the words popped up in front of his eyes – “no results found for zombified organ transplants.”

“Of course not, because that would be insane,” Eli muttered. As he continued thinking, his eyes traveled along Ismail’s bloodline marks and he noticed for the first time that he was an extremely strange blood mix – he had three lines, not two. Normally this would be impossible; usually it was the mother’s blood and the father’s blood showing up the two most dominant lines in their heritage. But he had three equally dominant lines. Sometimes, very rarely, scullion women could have one egg fertilized by two different men at the same time – and the baby would be a genetic composition of three people. In Ismail’s case he was Blackwater Wolf, plus some variety of human-breed shark and bat-blood.

He considered the deep lines in the scullion’s forehead and the parasites he could see crawling through Ismail’s hair. It made Eli feel like madly scratching his own shaved head, but what troubled him more was what the state of Ismail’s mind would be … obviously it would be a disaster zone – but what if he attacked them – then they’d have to lock him up and then how would he see them? Exactly as he’d seen the witch – as a threat he needed to escape from, and Eli didn’t want that … But he didn’t have time to build trust with Ismail to help him overcome the horror he’d been enduring. With the witch heart in his chest and the cursed shackle still attached to his ankle, Eli imagined it would be impossible for Ismail to even start to psychologically heal.

Eli hadn’t done much research into long-term captives, it was more in the commander’s field of interest, but he knew that often survivors would adjust to freedom quickly and successfully, only to later crash into depression and flashbacks, with the slow realization of the true impact of the imprisonment on their lives. All this interlaced with fluctuating feelings of guilt and anger, happiness, terror, self-hatred, confusion – and sometimes also of missing their captivity, even if they’d suffered and hated it. The brain was a complex and frightening thing – a bit like a tamed wild animal that could turn on its owner at any moment. All that said, scullion-gypsies were known for their mental resilience, their ability to endure all kinds of ill-treatment and hardship and survive and thrive over most other races. So if anyone would be able to come out of such a situation with their sanity intact it would be a scullion.

Physically, aside from the zombie heart, the regenerative and healing formulas that Eli was feeding into Ismail’s body via a drip were beginning to have a visible effect. His muscle and fat stores were starting to take a more pronounced shape, his ribs less visible every minute that passed. Ismail would wake up in a far better physical condition than how he went out, which meant he was going to wake up stronger, sharper and pain-free – more able to rip them apart if the urge hit. Eli reached for a fast-working sedative and placed it in the priority position in his weapon belt. They had to be prepared for the waking to go badly. A parasite crawled out of Ismail’s hair and across his forehead and Eli immediately scratched at his own head, deciding it was way past time to shave Ismail’s beard and head and douse him.

“Flintlock, would you please fill that tub there with water?” Eli asked the giant, who was still standing silently beside the bench. She instantly obliged, lifting the tub and heading over to the tap, while Eli got to work with his scissors and razor.

By the time he and Flintlock had clearly shaven Ismail and given him a thorough wash all over, the water was black, and Ismail looked completely different – less wild animal and more handsome man. He had a strong, heavy jawline and a powerful layer of muscle developing fast across his body. Eli examined the scars around his wrists and neck. The wrists looked like old bondage wounds and the neck as though someone had attempted to take his head off. Eli followed the scar all the way around to the back of Ismail’s neck where, during the shaving, he’d noticed an interesting tattoo.

Eli bent down to examine it more closely. It was a military tattoo, but Eli wasn’t exactly sure what type. He blinked, sending the information into his front-core and running a search. The information came back instantly and Eli jolted a little. The tattoo itself was the mark of a high-ranking Militia Corps soldier – and the cross through it was a symbol of dishonorable discharge. The Militia was one of the black lists, the secret units of the United Regiment that were not supposed to exist. The commander had told him it was the hardest of the lists and the training involved torture and brainwashing so that the soldiers were barely more than programmed response machines. Militia soldiers were taught to compartmentalize their minds so that they could literally switch off their emotions and reasoning during missions and focus solely on the objective – then switch back on afterward. The commander had said sometimes they had trigger words and sometimes they could do it without, and Eli had wondered how this fracturing would affect a person psychologically. He’d wanted to do a research paper into it, but it was difficult to research people who technically didn’t exist.

It threw another factor into an already tangled situation. With his complex genetic mix, scullion predisposition and invasive military conditioning, it was impossible to predict exactly how Ismail would wake up and respond to, firstly, his change in circumstances and, secondly, coping with what the witch had been doing to him. It seemed logical to Eli that during the long year-cycles of torment Ismail might have completely retreated into the part of his mind that was emotionless and programmed – the question was, did the other part of him, where he felt and reasoned, even exist anymore? Who would wake – the soldier, the man, or the beast – or all three mixed into one confused and damaged person? Eli felt dizzy even contemplating it. He upped both the regenerative formula dose and the anaesthetic feed, so that Ismail would stay under for just a bit longer.

Flintlock had already begun to clean up the bathing and shaving equipment, so Eli turned back to Jude. As he did, he heard Penman beeping loudly, and saw the little robot start swooping in a crazy way around Jude’s bench. Eli’s heart seized as he spotted SevenM unexpectedly stirring and lifting shakily to his legs. Eli sprinted over to Jude’s side, feeling borderline hysterical himself.

“Jude! Jude! Can you hear me?” He leaned low over his friend’s chest.

SevenM’s eyes flashed. He moved his pincer mouthparts and spoke for the first time ever, with a labored, robotic voice.

“Si-lho?”

The robot’s eyes focused on Eli, feeding back to Jude’s mind – awake and trapped inside his paralyzed body.

Eli swallowed, trying not to show his anxiety. Panic and stress would do nothing to help Jude now.

“She was taken through a portal with the commander and Diega, but I’m sure she’s fine. I know it …” He let the lie happen.

SevenM tried to talk again, making a few sounds before staggering and dropping to one side, his eyelights dying out. Penman let out a distressed shriek and Eli felt the burn of tears. He stared down at his friend, longing to hear his voice.

“Everything will be okay,” he whispered both to himself and Jude. Or, at least, it would be when he figured out who had attacked them, and with what poison.

Eli forced himself into composure. He moved quickly to his computer and opened up the attack footage, throwing his every filter, scrubber, sorter and shaper at it, with absolutely no result. He rubbed his eyes. His throat was so dry he couldn’t swallow at all, but he didn’t want to stop even to drink. There wasn’t time. A bottle appeared right beside him, followed immediately by Diamond’s grinning face. Eli turned his head so quickly he almost snapped his neck. “How?” was all he could manage to stutter. Flintlock also grunted in surprise behind them.