Waybound (18 page)

It ripped a hole in the mist. Sheet-metal wings unfurled with a warped wobble. The nightmare was coming for Dollop.

He was locked in place, his mind trapped in the nether region between now and some half-remembered other time. The vaptoryx twisted in midair, wove its serrated body through the trip wires, and sailed forth to take its prey.

Its pincer jaws flexed wide.

The fog in Dollop's mind evaporated in an instant.

He scattered his pieces, spilling himself to the ground in a jumble. The predator's mandibles snapped shut as it tore past, narrowly missing his head. His limbs gathered together and bounced off the wires, filling the air with a harmonic cacophony. He exploded into a sprint, ignoring the stabbing pain in his knee.

Dollop looked back—the vaptoryx was so close he could smell the death lingering in its hungry jaws. He looked ahead—a nest of trip wires slashed across his path, blocking the way.

Again, the pincer jaws hinged open wide.

He leapt.

His body came apart in midair, bits and pieces of him tumbling between the wires, slipping through to freedom. The vaptoryx collided with the wall of black strands in a jangling chorus, tangled in its own trap. Dollop's parts reunited to form his body on the other side of the barrier.

The black beast thrashed, using its serrated body to hack at the lines, trying to sever them with its clamping pincers.

Dollop couldn't stop shaking as he raced deeper into the swamp. It wasn't just the vaptoryx. He felt like a curtain had been ripped back, and now light was spilling into the recesses of his broken memory.

W
ithin minutes of gunning the engine, Micah had the hang of the Sea Bullet. Since he couldn't risk turning on any lights, he navigated by starlight reflected off the silver flux. He eased off the accelerator and looked behind them. The lights of Bhorquvaat were too close for comfort. Micah steered the boat toward the scattering of islands that looked to be only a few miles away.

The Sea Bullet died.

The steering wheel went lifeless, and the deck beneath his feet stopped buzzing. He flashed his detached rifle light to read the fuel cell gauge—nearly full.

He swept his light around the cabin. Phoebe was curled up into a ball in one of the seats. Fat lotta good she was gonna be.

No worries. He'd have this jalopy up and running in no time.

Micah found the service hatch in the floor, pulled it open, and climbed down the ladder. He scanned the mechanical confines with his light and saw a narrow walkway with a low ceiling, hemmed in on both sides with equipment.

Who woulda thought a little ol' Sea Bullet could hold such a huge engine room down below?

The power box was as good a place to start as any. A quick search revealed it. To his surprise, the front panel was open.

That was weird.

An arm hooked around his neck.

His light hit the floor. He threw his head back, trying to butt his attacker, but it only allowed the arm to tighten. Micah's vision wavered. He stomped his heels, mashed some toes, but there was no cry of pain.

In seconds he would pass out.

He whipped an elbow back, connected with a rib cage. Still the grip tightened.

The world dimmed.

Then the engine room lit up.

Sparks flew. Something hot screamed past him.

Phoebe stood at the foot of the ladder, firing the rifle in a hissing spray. The arm around his neck loosened.

Micah planted his legs on the wall and shoved. He slammed his attacker against the low ceiling with a crunch. The choke hold released. He tore free.

As he stumbled and tried to regain his feet, Phoebe stepped forward, the rifle raised and trembling.

“Hold your fire!” ordered the shadow in a husky voice. A woman's voice. “Shoot down here, and you'll kill us all.”

Micah took the rifle from Phoebe.

“You almost…coulda killed me,” he huffed.

“You're welcome,” Phoebe grunted back.

The attacker lunged at them again. Micah raised the rifle and pressed the trigger enough to start the four barrels spinning.

“On the ground!” he roared, surprised at the ferocity of his own voice. The woman hesitated, then raised her hands.

“Okay,” she said calmly. “Don't do anything stupid, Micah.”

“How did you—” Phoebe started.

“I said on the ground. NOW!” he commanded.

The woman got down on her knees, hands behind her head.

“Now back away,” he said.

She shuffled backward down the narrow walkway. “Phoebe, look,” the woman said. “I know who you are. I—”

“Shut up,” Micah ordered. “Get my light, Plumm.”

Phoebe grabbed his fallen light and shone it in the attacker's face. The woman was in her early thirties with blunt, curved features that held a quiet confidence. She had light brown skin, and her black hair was pulled into a tight ponytail. The Foundry sunburst logo marked her spotless coveralls.

“Find something to tie her with,” Micah said.

“Wait, why don't we—” Phoebe countered.

“Just do it!” he ordered, hardly believing Phoebe would argue with him at this moment.

She started searching the engine room with his light.

“Micah, Phoebe. You kids are in serious trouble, you know that? You have to do the right thing,” the woman said, starting to lower her arms. “You have to turn yourselves in.”

“If you don't shut the hell up,” Micah growled, “I'll shoot you dead right here, right now.” The hair on his neck rose.

The woman was unmoved, but she lifted her hands anyway.

Phoebe returned with a bundle of cable, which Micah took along with the light. He handed his rifle back to her.

“She moves,” Micah said, trying his very best to sound ruthless, “kill her.”

He registered shock on Phoebe's face, but she pointed the rifle at the Foundry worker all the same. Micah approached the woman very carefully.

“Hands behind your back.”

“My name is Gabriella,” she said, staring down the four barrels of the rifle. “Be smart. I can help you. Don't make this harder on yourselves than it needs to be.”

He grabbed the woman's arms and yanked them behind her back. With trembling hands, he bound her wrists to her ankles, wrapping and tying the cable as securely as he could.

“How can you help us?” Phoebe asked.

Micah screwed up the knot he had learned back in Nature Scouts. He undid the cable and tried again.

“Come back with me, and I'll make sure you get treated fairly. You have my word,” Gabriella promised.

After hog-tying the woman, he patted her down, powering through the embarrassment he felt at touching her. No weapons.

“Come on, you guys,” Gabriella reasoned. “You're not kidnappers. You're not killers. You're scared and for good reason. I'd be scared too, if I was in your shoes.”

Micah checked the door at the far end of the engine room—it was the lavatory. In it, he found a toolbox and a compartment stocked with toilet paper, but other than that, it was empty.

They could hear a sound rising above, the muted chug of Aero-copter blades.

“They're on to you,” Gabriella said. “They're tracking the boat. It's just a matter of minutes before—”

Micah wrapped duct tape around Gabriella's mouth. He returned the roll to the toolbox and dragged his captive toward the lavatory. She squirmed and fought.

“A little help?” he said to Phoebe, exasperated.

“We can't do this,” she said.

“We gotta,” he said, snatching his rifle from her. He used it to prod Gabriella into the lavatory, then slammed the door.

“Micah,” Phoebe pleaded.

He ignored Phoebe and dug a flashlight out of the toolbox. “Here,” he said, handing it to her along with the rifle. “Find something to bar that door with. Keep her in there, okay?”

Toolbox and rifle light in hand, he stomped over to the power box, threw the core switches, and the electric generators hummed to life. A violent pounding erupted in the lavatory.

“If she gets out, you know what to do,” he said, motioning to the rifle in her hands. He clambered up the ladder.

Search beams cleaved the sky, flaring off the ocean of flux. Aero-copters and Gyrojets hovered around the Mercanteer's palace. The Foundry was looking for its missing Sea Bullet.

A radio crackled.

“SB448, this is Control Core. Please respond.”

Micah hunkered low and raced to the control panel, setting down the tool kit. Light in his mouth, he frantically set the dials and threw the silent boat into motion with a fishtailing lurch.

“I repeat. SB448, this is Control Core. Respond.”

He wrestled with the wheel, pushing the throttle up to fifty knots. Maybe they could lay low in those islands he had spotted.

The radio crackled again. Micah dug around in the toolbox.

“SB448, you have not complied, which is a dereliction of—”

Micah smashed the radio with a claw hammer.

I
t was late, and Mr. Pynch was sobering up against his will. The viscollia aftermath left him jittery and weak, with an unrelenting headache pounding behind his eye sacs.

The Marquis was missing.

Had his partner survived that fall, he would have headed for Durl. Yet a thorough search of that back-ore hamlet had produced no missing lumilow. So Mr. Pynch had moved on, hiking across the jumbled land bridges of the Arcs.

He clung to the hope that the Marquis would find a way to contact him. A death-defying fall onto a Foundry train was nothing to a mehkie who had gotten out of tougher scrapes without so much as a stain on his gloves. But that train had been a fast one, which meant his partner might not have roused before Durl. Most likely the Marquis would be waiting at the next town. Wycik, it was, if Mr. Pynch's memory served.

So on he went, though his feet grew heavier with every step.

If Durl was back-ore, then Wycik was submehkan.

Perfect place for a hungover scrap without his partner.

As Mr. Pynch mounted a steeply bowed land bridge, he caught a glimpse of the Inro Coast in the distance and the sparkling silver gulf beyond. That was where the train carrying the Marquis was headed, which meant so was he.

Mr. Pynch sighed and pulled his overcoat tight around his ample figure. He surveyed the elevated pathways, plotting his trajectory through the Arcs toward the distant smudge of Wycik.

And that's when he saw it, a light blinking below.

Mr. Pynch's pump soared, and his nozzle spun. He stumbled down the land bridge and crashed through a patch of iron burrs, picking the painful nuisances out of his skin while he ran.

The light blinked again and again.

Backlit-gurgle-munch
, the Marquis flickered nonsensically.

His partner was delirious, talking gibberish. He probably needed medical attention. Mr. Pynch descended, pushing harder and faster, zigzagging from bridge to bridge. He scampered down a pathway and wound around a cliff toward the hapless lumie.

“There you be, ya snaky ne'er-do-well! I was surefied ya—”

Mr. Pynch jiggled to a stop.

His partner was nowhere to be found. He looked back and forth and up and down, but there was no sign of the Marquis.

The only thing here was a monument wedged into the ravine wall. It was a broken-down Waypoint—one of those ancient altars where long-ago travelers sought blessings. The carved figure within it was so savagely weathered that its features were unidentifiable, though Mr. Pynch assumed it once depicted the Ona or a highfalutin axial of some sort.

There were heaps of pink lacepetal scattered at the Waypoint, along with fresh kolchi nuts, aromatic ashcone, and other such devout offerings. There were even a few tinklets of gauge, which Mr. Pynch instinctively reached for.

As he did, a recently planted torchbloom flared to life, incinerating one of the wingnut flies that had been circling. He studied the fiery bloom—this was the flickering light he had mistaken for the Marquis's opticle.