City of the Falling Sky (35 page)

It was the constellation, the musical note of
Silversong.

“
I think we’ve found Ropart
Sanfarrow,” said Eiya.

“
Could it really be him?
Danney Plum,” Seckry said, as they rode the monorail. “Danney Plum
became the Rabbit Man . . .”

“
What was happening to him?
His skin was going bright blue,” said Eiya.

“
Whoever was outside must
have been electrocuting him somehow because he’d let you go. Then
they pulled him out of the flat by some magnetic force.”

They left the station and headed down to the
reactor.

The glowflies were sparse this time, as it
was daylight, but there were still a few scuttling on the wall
making the faint symbol of Silversong.

“
Seek refuge under the sign
of Silversong,” Seckry said, and put his hands on the wheel. Eiya
grabbed half of it as well and they both heaved. With a nasty
shriek of grinding metal, the thick door began to open, sending
rusty orange flakes fluttering to the ground.

“
I guess we both didn’t try
hard enough before,” said Eiya.

The passageway beyond was pitch black.

“
I can’t even see the
stairs. We’re never going to be able to find our way down
there.

“
Wait, Seckry, remember what
the note said.”

She pulled a printout of it from her
pocket.

“
Those trapped in glass will
light your way.”

Seckry fumbled around just inside of the
darkness and he felt something cold and smooth sitting on the
floor.

He pulled out a glass jar with a clasp
lid.

“
There’s nothing inside
except some residue at the bottom.”

As he held it in front of him a stray glowfly
zipped into the jar and settled on the layer of goo. He was just
about to shake it out when it suddenly hit him. He sniffed the
inside of the jar.

“
It’s ellonberry,” he said.
He held the glass into the air and another two glowflies wandered
in to it, settling on the bottom. “Sanfarrow put it there to give
Kayne light. And that's how he got them to make the Silversong
symbol. He must have smeared the shape in ellonberry juice on the
wall.”

Seckry wandered around the chamber, watching
as more and more glowflies hovered into the jar.

As Seckry closed the lid, Eiya whispered,
“We’ll let you out as soon as we’re finished. We promise.”

Seckry held the jar in front of him and in
the shimmering blue light he saw that the corridor descended into a
spiral grating.

“
Something feels wrong
doesn’t it, Seck? Only Kayne was meant to come down
here.”

“
I know. We have to find
Sanfarrow though, and this is the only way.”

They made their way slowly across the grating
and down the spiral steps, their footsteps echoing around them.

About half way down, a cockroach scuttled
between Seckry’s shoes and he shuddered, swinging the glass jar
involuntarily. The light wandered around the chamber and Seckry
caught a glimpse of a huge cobweb hanging in one of the
corners.

As they got to the bottom there were a few
control levers for the reactor and a huge gaping hole in one of the
walls with yellow tape strewn across it which read, ‘BEWARE.
HAZARD. DO NOT CROSS.’ Behind it there seemed to be a narrow,
coarse tunnel which led into the earth. It was the only way to
go.

“
This doesn’t look right,”
Eiya said.

“
I bet Sanfarrow wanted it
to look as uninviting as possible to anyone that managed to get
down here. The only person he wanted down here was
Kayne.”

Seckry ducked under the tape and Eiya
followed.

Seckry held the light as far as he could in
front of him and narrowed his eyes. He held out his hand silently
and Eiya stopped.

“
There’s something up
ahead,” Seckry said quietly. Something . . . red.”

They waited a while until they were sure it
was motionless and then they moved forward.

As they came closer and closer their fast
beating hearts began to relax a little. The glowing red light was
an LCD panel hanging from the roof of the tunnel, displaying a
large number. The number 3.

As they approached, they realised that the
rest of the tunnel was blocked by a circular, metal door. But more
peculiarly there seemed to be a number of small panels in a ring
around the circumference of the tunnel wall.

“
Three . . .” Eiya said
musingly. “What does it mean?”

But Seckry was more interested in the panels
around them. He pressed his hand to one and it lit up.

“
Eiya, look at
this.”

“
How do we get past?” Eiya
said. “There’s nothing else on Sanfarrow’s note.” She scanned the
paper. “Just that little logo at the bottom.” Suddenly her eyes
shot open. “The logo. Seck, look at it.”

Seckry peered at the man in the circle
again.

“
There are twelve panels
around the circle,” said Eiya. “Just like here. It wasn’t a logo at
all. It was a diagram. Another instruction to get in. You have to
replicate the man in the image.”

Seckry placed his hand on the panel to his
left. “Where does my right hand go?” he asked Eiya.

“
The panel just right of the
top one. And your feet go either side of the middle one on the
ground.”

“
Here goes,” Seckry said,
and he put everything in position.

There was a bleep and the big red number 3 on
the LCD panel switched to 2.

They both stared at it in silence as Seckry
lowered his arms.

“
I don’t think it worked,
did it?” Seckry said with a feeling of emptiness.

Eiya looked at the paper again and she shook
her head. “This has to be it, it’s definitely the panels in this
tunnel. But you had your hands and feet on the right ones. I don’t
understand it.”

“
And it looks like we only
get two more tries,” Seckry said. “I wonder what happens if we fail
both times . . .”

After a lot of thinking, they both decided
they’d have to try it one more time, assuming that Seckry had
accidentally had something on a wrong panel the first time. Seckry
placed his hands and feet back in position.

There was a bleep and the red number changed
to a 1.

“
Gedin!” Seckry shouted, and
then clasped his hand over his mouth. If they were heard by
Sanfarrow he’d know there were intruders.

Eiya slumped against the tunnel wall with the
paper in her hands.

Suddenly she shot upright. She began glancing
back and forth from the sheet to the panels.

“
What is it?” Seckry
said.

“
Seckry . . . I know the
combination.” She stepped into the ring.

“
No! Eiya!” Seckry said
desperately. He tried to grab her but she placed her hands and feet
on the panels before he could.

The was a beep and the red number
disappeared.

Seckry and Eiya were both frozen to the
spot.

And then, slowly, the circular door split
into two halves and slid into the cavern walls with a rusty
screech. Beyond it was another darkened corridor.

“
Eiya, you gave me the
fright of my life,” Seckry said.

“
Sorry,” she smiled
innocently.

“
How did you work it
out?”

Eiya gave an incredulous, short laugh. “You
know this ancient Klaxion under the logo? Emrorrim Retneot?”

“
It doesn’t mean a love of
pig stew?”

“
It’s not even Klaxion,”
Eiya said. “When I was leaning against the wall I could see the
reflection of the paper in the metal. Take a look.”

She held the paper adjacent to one of the
panels and Seckry strained to read the reflection.

The words Emrorrim Retneot had been reversed
and read toenteR mirrormE.

Seckry read aloud. “To enter mirror me . . .
mirror me to enter.”

He shook his head in disbelief.

“
I just put my hands and
feet in the position of the mirrored diagram,” Eiya
said.

Once they had regained their courage, they
followed the cavern slowly and found themselves at another door.
But it was nothing like the last. This was a door with no locks or
bolts on it, just a rectangular window. Through it they could see
the blinking lights of computer terminals.

“
This is it,” Seckry said.
“This is where he’s going to be.”

“
What do we say to him?”
Eiya said.

“
We’ve gotta tell him we’re
not his enemy. That’s our main priority.”

They stepped closer with caution. As Seckry
readied himself, Eiya pressed her face to the window.

She gasped.

Seckry froze. “What is it?”

“
Oh no . . .”

Eiya turned her face slowly to Seckry.
“Seckry . . . we’re too late. Take a look.”

Seckry moved towards the glass. He wiped away
the condensation that was being made by their breaths to get a
clearer view.

Lying on the floor was a skeleton. And it was
wearing a white lab coat.

Seckry’s stomach turned to mush. He tried to
convince himself that there must be another explanation, some other
person that had been down here as well, but he knew he was just
kidding himself. He knew the corpse on the other side of the door
had to be Ropart Sanfarrow.

Eiya slumped to the ground and hugged her
knees, staring into space.

“
He was the only one that
could have given us the answers.”

“
We’ve come all this way,”
Seckry said. “We can’t go back now. Not without finding something
out. We have to go in. We have to search for any information we can
get.”

Eiya nodded, and Seckry pushed the door
open.

The chamber was full of computers that were
still running, and was lit by hundreds of blinking lights on
components and panels.

They made their way carefully around the
skeleton. Seckry had expected the room to smell awful from the
decomposing corpse, but in fact, the close air just smelled of hot
computer fans and plastic.

“
Seckry, look at this,” Eiya
called.

Around the corner was an alcove, its walls
covered from ground to ceiling in scraps of paper. As Seckry moved
closer he saw that each bit of paper had a different sixteen digit
number on it.

“
What do you think this is?”
Eiya asked.

Seckry shook his head. He had no idea.

Seckry felt himself drawn to an old, square
television set that was still switched on, and was showing white
noise. Clustered underneath the outdated television was a mound of
video tapes, and scrawled into the desk beside them were the
words:

EVIDENCE AGAINST DARKLIGHT

“
Eiya,” Seckry said
hurriedly. “Look.” He picked up one of the tapes. A frayed white
sticker labelled it as ‘The Stolen Child.’

“
It has to be Danney,
doesn’t it?” Eiya said, a mixture of excitement and horror in her
voice.

Seckry saw that underneath the television was
an ancient VHS recorder. He had never seen one in real life before,
and hadn’t realised there were any still in existence, having gone
out of use over a hundred years ago.

He looked at Eiya and she gave him a
tentative nod.

Seckry placed the tape into the player and
pressed play.

There were two men on screen, one he
recognised as Kan Darklight, and the other as an older Ropart
Sanfarrow.

“
We don’t need to put him
through any unnecessary suffering,” Sanfarrow said.

“
What are you talking
about?” This was Darklight, storming around the room ferociously.
The camera was shaking slightly from his pacing. “The idea is
suffering. This project is based on suffering. Don’t you
understand?”

“
It doesn’t have to be,”
Sanfarrow said firmly.

“
He needs to feel hate,”
Darklight continued. “He needs to be so filled with hatred that the
only thing he wants to do is kill.”

The tape flickered and cut to black for a
moment.

Then a picture appeared again, and this time
there was a young boy in the room, huddled in the corner.

Eiya squeezed Seckry’s arm tight.

On screen, Darklight entered the room, walked
over and kicked the boy in the arm, making him begin to cry. Then
Darklight kicked him again, harder this time, so that the boy
toppled over and curled up into a ball, crying into his hands.

“
This, ladies and gentlemen,
is our specimen. We’re calling him Project Suffer. Right now he is
a weak, pathetic, worm of a child, but by the time the project has
been completed, he will be the perfect assassin.”

The tape suddenly fast forwarded of its own
accord and stopped at a different scene.

“
Project Suffer log, good
progression,” Darklight said. “Though the drugs have got to him.
Doesn’t want to move today. If he keeps getting like this I’m gonna
have to take some drastic action.”

The tape cut again.

“
Still not moving,” said
Darklight, now standing in a different position. “Like a
slug.”

The tape flickered and cut to a new scene
once more.

“
What day is it today,
Project Suffer?” Darklight said. He nudged Danney gently. “Hey,
hey. I said what day is it today? It’s your birthday. That’s right.
We know the date you were born, and we’re not monsters. We couldn’t
not give you a present on your birthday.”