The Forgotten City (9 page)

Another fireball crashed into him from one side, setting his shirt alight. He ripped it off and kept running, finally reaching the stairs. Just above him the Omarian was hauling Silho to the broken wall. It looked as if he was trying to throw her over the edge. She’d ripped bleeding lines in his arms, fighting to get free. Copernicus staggered up the stairs and, ducking beneath a blast of fire, lunged and grabbed Silho’s legs. The leader kicked him in the face, smashing him backward. He barked a command at his soldiers and they advanced on Copernicus from all sides. He scrambled back to Silho, seizing her around the waist as the Leader thrashed her around, trying to push her through the rift.

Copernicus saw an Omarian dagger coming from his left and tried to block, but was too slow, drastically weakened by the light-form attack, with blood gushing from a wound in his forehead from the leader’s pointed shoe. Caesar was suddenly at his side. The Pride King intercepted the blade, and with a slash of his claws, he took off the attacker’s whole arm. Another Omarian trapped Caesar in light-form, but his hold was short-lived, as Diega shot him from behind as she ran up the stair. She blasted another round toward the leader’s head, but he roared fire, consuming the shot before it reached him. Diega dodged the flames and started morphing everything around them into weapons to stab at the Omarian leader, trying to make him release Silho, but everything they did only made him tighten his grip, harder and harder, until Silho was making empty, dragging gasps, completely unable to draw breath.

Shawe crashed in over Diega and smashed the Omarian in the mouth. The impact shunted his head backward and burned Shawe’s fist. Shawe shouted a curse, but the leader just smiled at them with bloodied teeth. It was a chilling, deranged smile. Copernicus knew a psychopath when he saw one, and the terror that shot through him forced him to his feet.

He grabbed Silho’s shoulders and sunk his fangs into the Omarian’s arm around her neck, but still it didn’t budge. Silho grasped uselessly at his chest, her gasps coming fainter and fewer. Almost blind with panic, Copernicus started to summon an Illusionist enchant to try to confuse the leader, but the Omarian raised his dagger and stabbed Copernicus through the shoulder. Immediately he lost control of his arm. He could feel poison burning through him. He slumped back to his knees, still hanging onto Silho. His senses were fading, but he held on, refusing to let her go. Through misting sights, he saw her attacker slide a small picture from his pocket. He spoke with a rough snarl: “Behind the red star smiles the darkness – Omar Montanya.” A blinding light flared inside the picture frame and the ground dropped away beneath them. The last image in Copernicus’ mind was Silho’s eyes, looking down at him, closing.

T
hey first met on the corner of Jabiru and Egret streets. He was eight year-cycles old and had just launched his first self-designed, remote-controlled miniature replica transflyer. He was completely lost in the moment – running, leaping, laughing, flying the small craft through the streets. The feeling was pure childhood joy, and in that moment, he was sure without a sliver of doubt that he was going to be the greatest inventor of all time. In fact he highly suspected he might even be a god, or at least closely related to one. And then he hit face-first into a brick wall.

The impact slammed him onto his back, and he lay there gasping in shock. The brick wall shifted, it turned, and Eli saw it wasn’t really a brick wall – it was a muscle wall, with a face. Fierce green eyes glared him down and a huge, meaty hand grabbed him by the front of his shirt. It dragged him up at a dizzying speed, bringing him face to face with a human-breed boy who must have been only a few year-cycles older, but had the muscles of a fully grown man. He had a scarred-up face and, along his arms, the horn-like shapes of the Galley bloodline marks.

“Smash him, Christy!” a squeaky adolescent voice, with a Greenway accent, yelled out from somewhere behind the boy. Only then did Eli realize that in his blind bliss he’d inadvertently stumbled into the gangland, and right into Christy Shawe, son of the Galley boss. Eli burst into hysterical laughter and passed out cold.

He woke several moments later to find himself sprawled on the sidewalk with a massive boot about to stomp down on his face. It pulled back just before it hit and Eli saw another human-breed boy, with viper bloodline marks and eyes like a starless night, dragging Christy Shawe away from him.

“Let him be, he’s just a kid,” the boy said, and there was something profoundly powerful about his voice that made Eli stare. His face was even more scarred than Christy Shawe’s and his presence a million times more frightening.

Shawe shoved the viper-blood boy off him, but instead of proceeding to pulverize Eli’s face, he stomped down on the miniature transflyer, smashing it to pieces. He spat on Eli and slouched off with his gang-mates – all but the black-eyed boy, who stayed behind. The boy crouched down and picked up the destroyed flyer by its tail. He looked it over, then his gaze lifted to Eli.

“Where did you buy this?” he asked.

Eli willed himself to talk normally, to make sense – desperate to impress. Instead he began babbling absolute gibberish while cackling uncontrollably.

The boy stared at him –
through
him – and somehow heard what Eli was trying to say.

“Can you re-make it?” he asked.

Eli pinched his lips together with one hand to stop himself from talking, and managed to nod once.

The boy stood and held out a hand to help him up. As Eli reached for it, Copernicus’ face changed to Ev’r’s.

She whispered, “My friend … I’m finished. Keep going.”

And she changed into the monster, into the Ravien, and lunged at him …

Eli jolted from a sleeping nightmare into waking terror. His senses bombarded him, screaming, shouting, competing for his first dazed attentions – charred air, tangy blood, crying, yelling, electrifiers zapping, a tapestry burning above his head, cool tiles under his wings, and pain … above all else
p-a-i-n
. It pulsated and swelled until it consumed all his other senses.

Grimacing, Eli rolled onto his side and maneuvered himself up inch by inch. Blinding agony stabbed through his right arm. He gasped and a wave of lightbrain threatened to level him again. He swayed, fighting to keep himself conscious. A warm stream of blood trickled into one eye. He swiped it away with his good hand. The other arm he kept frozen against his chest, not daring to move it again. He could see the bone was broken and pressing up against the skin. Sweat prickled his back and face. His fingers fumbled over his weapon belt, feeling for the shape of his anesthetic shots. He found the syringe and lifted it out. Gritting his teeth, he stabbed the needle into his broken arm. There was one more second of torture and then the pain faded out. The sweats and faints subsided, and he was able to see past his injury to the scene before him.

The Hero’s Walk was devastated – artworks hung precariously askew, blood splattered the walls, and heaped piles of ashes covered the ground. The square was largely deserted now too, except for groups of gangsters running around, shouting commands, searching, confused. Eli scanned over the faces he could see –
no commander, no Silho, no Diega … no Jude
. A cold dread filtered through Eli’s shock. He grabbed at his pocket to check Nelly and found her curled up in there, not sleeping, just trembling.

“It’s alright, girl,” he whispered to her, but his voice was shaking so much he could barely form the words. Not exactly reassuring.

He fumbled with a bandage from his belt, and rapidly formed a sling for his arm. As he struggled to his feet, snatches of memory returned to him. Something had attacked – he hadn’t seen clearly who or what – the smoke and fire had half-blinded him. He’d just felt the heat and heard Jude yell, and he’d run toward the sound of his voice.

“Call the commander,” he told his front-core, continuing to search up and down the long open-air hallway. The com system reached out, but immediately flat-lined. Eli blinked open the menu. He checked the commander’s status and one word came up:
Deceased
.

“Not possible …” Eli whispered. “Reboot,” he ordered the system, and waited for it to come back online.

Terrible feelings constricted his chest. Nelly crawled out of his pocket and wound around his neck, so stressed she started eating the collar of his shirt. More blood dripped into his eye and he grabbed the coagulator from his belt and sprayed the wound to stem the stream.

He heard a clatter of rocks behind him and Nelly darted back into his pocket as Smudge and Inski burst from the shadows. They almost knocked him down as they ran past.

“Smudge!” he called to Caesar’s cousin.

She glanced back at him, her eyes confused and distressed.

“What happened? Where is everyone?”

She shook her head and kept going.

The front-core flickered back on, but the commander’s status remained
Deceased
. Tears rushed to Eli’s eyes and he started shaking. He was standing in ashes. This wasn’t possible …

“Focus,” he whispered. “Do something.”

Through misted sights he spotted the computer system the Pride had set up to project the fight-in. Eli limped to it and dropped down in front of the box. He hacked into the feedback function and sent the footage to his implant. A hologram recording of the attack opened and replayed in front of his eyes. He knew the attackers had been actual people, but on the recording they appeared as pillars of fire. He wasn’t sure why, and tried dropping some quick filters and debugs over the footage to fix it, but nothing immediately worked. He saw Jude being engulfed by flames, then himself running in to try to help him, only to be swatted away like a mosquito. He watched the flames reach Silho, and the commander and others fighting for her, the chaos moving closer and closer to the broken wall, until there was an explosion of white light and it looked as if they all fell over the edge of the rift.

Eli blinked out of the footage and ran for the smashed-up wall. He stepped carefully out onto the crumbling edge and peered down. Several stories below, the remnants of the stonework had crashed onto a crossing bridge, beneath that was a staggering drop to Level 2. Eli couldn’t see any movement on the bridge, but it was possible that the team was down there, buried by the avalanche of rocks. Eli zipped up his pocket so that Nelly couldn’t unexpectedly jump out, then grabbed the blade off his belt and slid it down the back of his shirt, cutting the bandages binding his wings. Once they were free, he took a deep breath and jumped off the edge. Immediately the savage high winds snatched him up and tried to smash him into the side of the Hero’s Walk. He fought against it with all his strength – struggling, pushing, straining to fly down to the bridge. He only barely made it, overshooting his landing and having to grabble one-handed before finally dragging himself up.

“Heat scan,” he told his implant, moving his eyes over the rubble. It found nothing.

He changed scan-type to body shape and looked again. The front-core beeped as it picked up on something and zeroed in on the location. It was a man’s form. Eli ran, scrambling through the ruins to the indicated spot. He grabbed up handfuls of rock, hurling them aside, digging desperately until finally he touched something cold. He seized hold of it and dragged it out from the debris. A metal hand attached to a metal arm.

“Jude!” Eli shouted, the sound swallowed by the wind.

He shoved rocks and dirt off Jude’s face and chest. He found his other arm was crushed under a slab of rock, white Androt blood spilling out from where the prosthetic had half ripped away from skin and flesh. SevenM lay beside Jude. Both were unmoving.

“Jude, wake up!” Eli shook him, but he didn’t stir. He wasn’t breathing. Eli checked his pulse – nothing. With shaking hands, Eli grabbed the coronary defibrillation device off his belt. He turned the settings to full strength and positioned it over Jude’s chest, waiting for the green light. It flashed on and Eli brought the paddles downward. Just before they contacted with Jude, SevenM struggled to lift his torso, teetering for a moment, then collapsing again. Eli stared in shock. SevenM moving meant Jude was still alive – but with no signs of life.

“Show neural patterning,” Eli ordered his front-core. It brought up a display of his friend’s brain. Everything was still functioning, but his body had completely shut down. After a moment of confusion, Eli spotted an injury in Jude’s side. He hadn’t immediately seen it because of the dust and rock fragments. It was a stab wound, and it looked as though the blade had been coated with some kind of necrotic poison. Jude’s skin and muscles around the injury had blackened and eroded away. It was a devastating enough injury to have triggered his Androt half into shutting him down. But he was still alive – and that was all that mattered.

“I’m here, Jude, I won’t leave you,” Eli told him as he grabbed tourniquet pins off his belt and injected them all around the wound to stop the poison spreading. He was reaching for a bandage when he felt the bridge shiver and tilt with the ominous sound of straining metal. It was about to break away and drop without relief to Level 2.

Eli looked around wildly for something to help him lift Jude. He had explosives on his belt that could implode the boulder pinning Jude’s arm, but Androts, even half-breeds, were extremely heavy – none of his equipment was made for supporting that weight. Eli spotted a window leading into a lower level of the palace grounds below the Hero’s Walk.

“I’ll be right back, I promise,” he said to Jude.

He ran across the groaning bridge and darted through the window. There were still masses of people from the fight-in crowd fleeing on foot to Level 2, where the public elevator system was reportedly up and running. Eli scanned the crowd and one group of people immediately sprang into focus. They were impossible to miss. A family of Corámorán Giants, gargantuan-breeds, was lumbering toward the stairs. There were at least ten of them, but Eli only needed one. He half-ran, half-flew over the top of the crowd, finally reaching the Corámoráns. He ran alongside three of them, shouting, “Can you help me? Please – my friend is stuck! The bridge is collapsing!”

When he got no response, he sped up to the next cluster of four, “Please – my frie—”

One of them lazily swished his club and swiped Eli away. He skidded across the floor, under the feet of the crowd, and rolled out the other side, hitting the wall with a thud. He scrambled back up and looked across to the giants. Only one was left, walking slower, with her arms and legs in shackles. Eli flew to her side.

“Please,” he called out to her. “My friend. He’s not stuck – I mean, he’s stuck – he’s
stuck
. The bridge – it’s falling. Please, will you help?”

She turned her head, and he saw himself reflected in the deep dark of her eyes – then she nodded.

Eli almost fainted with relief. The giant held up her chained wrists and he grabbed the cutter off his belt and freed her. She shook off the binds.

“This way!” Eli called. He led her back to the window. She busted through it and stepped onto the bridge, which rumbled and tilted more under each of her giant steps.

“This rock is pinning him!” Eli yelled above the wind, pointing to the slab crushing Jude’s arm.

The giant lifted it and threw it aside with enough strength to make even the immensely powerful Christy Shawe look pathetically weedy. Eli carefully folded Jude’s damaged arm across his chest. There was no time to set it. The bridge was sinking fast. The Corámorán sensed it too. She lifted Jude without straining and Eli snatched up SevenM. They made a run for the window, but before they made it, the bridge broke away and started to fall. The giant lunged for the ledge and hooked it with one arm. Eli buzzed his wings and grabbed onto her back. She dragged them both through and they landed down inside the chamber, breathing heavily.

Eli’s eyes went to hers and he started to say, “Thank you so —”

A spiked club crashed down on the Corámorán’s head, smashing her sideways. She crouched over Jude as the group of giants closed in on her, roaring and raining club blows down on her head and back. They were going to kill her.

“Stop!” Eli screamed at them, with zero effect.

He grabbed the electrifier off his belt and released a blast into the ceiling.

The giants bellowed at him, but he kept firing, forcing them back. When they finally retreated, Eli turned his attention to the bashed giantess. He didn’t know why they’d returned to hurt her, and there wasn’t time now to find out.

“Are you okay?” He grabbed her arm.

She blinked, dazed and bleeding, but managed to nod.

“We have to go and find a transflyer. Can you walk?” he asked her.