Guardian (19 page)

“
I told you to get away from me!” Kichlan threw rubble at what was left of Devich.

He dodged easily, silver body bending with unnatural fluidity, too fast for Kichlan to ever hit him.
“Smell—” he garbled. “Tan—na. You smell. Her.” His too-wide green eyes were trusting, and strangely empty.

Kichlan cursed himself, because that look reminded him of Lad. It sickened him, and broke his heart.
“Damn you,” he hissed. He turned his back on the creature, and kept walking.

Doors flickered at the edge of his vision. Devich danced through them, weaving in and out of reality. Following, as he had for days.

The suit whispered information Kichlan didn’t really want to know. Devich’s condition was not a punishment, not in the human sense of the word. The puppet men did not engage in such things. He was just another experiment, an attempt to more fully integrate the suit’s program with human neural networks. Its influence went far deeper than the obvious physical manifestations. There was suit metal in Devich’s brain, usurping and conducting his electronic pulses.

Kichlan didn
’t fully understand it all. It came in flashes.

<
An attempt to reverse the process that turns programmers into Halves, by extracting and sending consciousness in the opposite direction, across the veil. So far unsuccessful. Damage done to Devich’s processing power has resulted in reduced usefulness. Subject has become unstable
>

Suddenly clear, like a voice murmuring in his ear, then dissolving back into meaningless numbers and nonsensical words. This was, apparently, a language known as code. The suit was surprised Kichlan couldn
’t understand it.

“
Why are you telling me this?” Kichlan hissed, rubbing at his eyes, his temples. His head was throbbing, over-full with voices and knowledge that did not belong.

<
Because we are connected. Extraction and reintegration is death. I do not want that either. We must learn to live together
>

Kichlan gritted his teeth. He felt crowded.
“Focus,” he whispered. “Get control.”

<
No time to fight me. Something is coming, do you feel it? Searching for us
>

Kichlan took a deep breath.
“What? What’s coming?”

Devich reared out of the flickering doors and grabbed him, elongated silver fingers digging into his waist and shoulder, and dragged him back.
“Move!”

Three Mob spilled out of the ruined door of an apartment block. Wounded and exhausted, one unconscious with a dragon weapon biting at his shoulder. Doors hugged their pion-powered bodies and the unnatural strength of their weapon like harassing crows.

A silver man crashed through the building after them. Wrapped in suit metal, just like Tan had been, not twisted and wrong like Devich but strong. A weapon. He sent a sharp pike singing from his right hand to spear through the Mob closest to him. It crunched through reinforced armour, skin, muscles and bone, to embed itself into stones and cracked cement.

Devich tugged at him,
“Go—go—”

But Kichlan couldn
’t move. Tension coursed through him, the fire of torn metal, code spilling and screaming in its wake.

The Mob thrashed, wrapped his hands around the metal and fought to free himself. But no pion-strength could withstand the suit, and the man bled to death all the faster for his struggle, feet kicking, head smacking, hands scraping.

As he died, his fellow tore the dragon weapon from the unconscious Mob and set it up on his own shoulder. He stood, staggering and weak, but still growled as the dragon drew its deadly and fiercely bright breath, “Other take you!”

A door snapped into place, solid and firm, where the Mob stood. For an instant, that was all Kichlan could see—weakening wood and rusted handle—then just as suddenly, the Mob was back, and he fired his dragon breath straight at the silver soldier.

Devich leapt on Kichlan’s back, forcing him to the ground as light and heat and power rolled across the street. Unable to breathe, Kichlan wavered between street and darkness, between stones and doors. And somewhere close, yet distant at the same time, a puppet man crouched down and stared at him with one mould-coloured eye.

“
Faulty programming?”

The dragon
’s attack slowly died, and Devich released him. Kichlan sucked a desperate, deep breath.

“
How did he escape us so easily? No matter. He is not the only weapon at our command.”

The real world looked scorched as Devich hauled Kichlan to his feet. Street and ruined building were scarred; cement collapsed into water and sand, and a great sinkhole buckled into darkness with a rumbling rush, a few feet away.

But the silver soldier still stood. And the Mob, spent, fell forward, face in the mud. It was a suit, after all. It was made of debris, and had no pion-bonds to destroy. The dragons were useless against it.

How many of these suited weapons had the veche created?

<
One dozen in current engagement. Another three under development
>

Two more spears of silver—one right hand, one left—and both Mobs died. Faster this time, in a shower of blood and bone, their pion-bindings already weakened.

Then the soldier turned towards Kichlan.

Just like Aleksey, not all of this soldier
’s face was encased in silver. A strip of blue-tinged glass wrapped around his eyes, so that Kichlan could not even tell their colour.

<
That way, he cannot not see the doors. That was the mistake they made with Miss Vladha. She saw too much and could not be controlled
>

Kichlan tried to shake his head. He didn
’t care about any of this. He didn’t need to know what the puppet men were doing to Devich, to their new weapons, or even what they had done to Tan. He just needed to move.

A slight flex of his ankles and knees, and the soldier leapt cleanly over the bodies and the mud. Devich drew back further, dragging Kichlan with him, as the soldier advanced, steadily.

“Go,” Devich hissed, slobbering onto Kichlan’s shoulder. “Go, go, go.”

“
You will come with me,” the soldier said. His voice was muted, confined behind silver. “Both of you.” He lifted a hand, and silver chains rolled from his wrist.

Devich leaped back from the chains, twisting and ducking much faster than his mutilated form should allow. Kichlan couldn
’t do anything of the kind. Silver wrapped around his feet, and pulled his legs out from under him. Chains around his wrist, waist, neck.

<
Engaging countermeasures
>

“
No!” Kichlan croaked through the pressure to his windpipe. “No, you’re not in control. I am!”

A great pause, all the different parts of him uncertain, waiting. Didn
’t he want to fight back?

“
I do.” He tried to swallow, couldn’t quite manage it. “And we will.”

Code whispered in his ears. The suit, not sure what was going on.

“This is my body.” Kichlan flexed the cap on his left elbow. The suit slid free slowly, calmly. “My suit.” It spun a long, sharp-edged whip coiling like a snake. “I will do this.”

And the voices within him eased.

Kichlan lashed out, slicing through all the chains that held him, his suit fine and utterly precise. The silver soldier gasped, and stumbled back. He withdrew his shattered suit, hands lifted, while the pieces Kichlan had broken from him dissolved into dark particles of debris, and floated free.

Devich appeared by his side and helped Kichlan stand.
“Smell,” Devich slobbered his words. Kichlan gripped the creature’s shoulder, using his strength to balance the weight and the movement travelling in spasms up his left arm. “Like Tanya—” he drooled, spat it away in frustration “—her. So much.”

“
Enough.” The soldier recovered. “I will take you myself.” He launched forward, hands outstretched, his strength and speed the suit’s strength and speed.

Devich, with a growl, leapt from the ground and met the soldier mid-air. Kichlan wavered, but kept himself upright. Metal against metal, silver bodies thrashing as they fell. Devich landed on top, and smacked his silver fists against the soldier
’s silver face. The glass across his eyes cracked, and the man screamed. But spikes shot up from his torso, plunged into Devich’s chest and threw him back.

“
Don’t let him start absorbing you!” Kichlan roared. He had seen Aleksey tear away parts of Tan’s suit and grow strong on them. And even though this creature was Devich—Devich whom he hated, loathed—it was still Devich who had helped him, who had not given him over to the puppet men. He did not want the man-creature to die and leave him all alone. Again. “Get those spikes out of you, now!”

Devich seemed to understand. He twisted—elastic again, like a cat—and tore himself from the soldier
’s suit.

“
Stay down!” Kichlan snapped, and split his whip in two. One part wrapped around the soldier like rope, binding him and holding him down. The other slid inside the man’s metal. Kichlan felt the contact like a shock. Suddenly he was sharing his already-crowded body with part of the soldier too: he could sense the man’s confusion, his fear, his sweat and rapid heartbeat.

<
Please confirm protocol. Do you wish to reprogram and amalgamate existing code?
>

He didn
’t understand.

<
We can absorb this soldier, kill him, and take his strength. Do you wish to?
>

Kichlan bit his lip against the urge, the oh-so-strong urge to give in, and do just that. But he didn
’t need the suit to get any stronger. He was already having trouble telling his own mind and thoughts and feelings from the voices drilled deeper than his bones.

So he spat,
“No!”

<
Then what is the new protocol?
>

“
Destroy it, but don’t absorb it. Turn it back into debris.” He glanced at the grains floating aimlessly down the street, all that was left of the soldier’s chains. “Like that!”

A moment of stillness, a thinking too deep inside the silver for him to hear.

<
Confirmed
>

His whip slid into a hook, many hooks, all embedded in the soldier
’s metal, and began stripping it away. Slice by slice, flinging the pieces it cut away into the street like rubbish, where they dissolved into debris and floated away. The man screamed—Kichlan felt the sound rattling in his head and deep into the muscles of his left shoulder—and his suit fought back. Spears and grasping hands and sharp knives rose all over his body. So Kichlan sent more whips to hold the man still, and severed everything he tried.

Somewhere behind the voices crowding his mind Kichlan thought of the puppet men
’s chair, and what it felt like, pinned there, while their debris tore him apart, one small piece at a time.

The soldier wore plain, black clothes beneath his silver suit. They looked just like the ones Kichlan was still wearing, beneath his filthy garments. The strong, tightly boned material of a debris collector
’s uniform.

As the last of the suit was flung to the street and the man
’s constant screaming faded to a choking, hiccupping sob, Devich darted in. Kichlan withdrew, the sudden imbalance sending him to one knee. Devich’s silver fingers tore the rest of the soldier apart—flesh and blood and silver-flecked bone—in a terrifying predator frenzy. When nothing but meat and placid debris grains remained, Devich fell to his side, and lay beside the dead man. He panted, keening softly. Kichlan gave in to the weight of his suited elbow, sagged against the cracked street and gagged an empty stomach onto the stones.

What had they done?

“Other’s darkest dreams,” a voice behind them gasped.

Devich flipped onto all fours, blood-soaked and growling. Kichlan spun, still crouching.

Natasha stood behind them. Natasha bloodied, her face bruised and riddled with cuts, one arm splintered and wrapped against her chest. She leaned against a building wall, a single blade between two fingers, her right leg twisted at a disturbing angle.

“
You killed it.” Her eyes darted between Kichlan and Devich. She slipped down the wall to lie in a weakened heap on the street. “How did you kill it?”

The Hero
’s false grin broadened in the stunned silence.

“
The Other?” I whispered, and for a moment I knew true panic. The Other was the oldest threat. He was darkness and fear and pain. Worse than the puppet men, more terrible than bosses or programmers. He was death, made flesh. Only the Keeper could protect us from him, and the Keeper was gone.

We were doomed. All of us. We would die here in this underground city and nothing—

Clarity was slow in coming. I took several deep breaths, forced down the panic. The Keeper was not what we had once believed him to be. And here, on another world, would I allow a face on a screen to terrify me simply because it called itself the Other?

“
That’s good,” the Hero said. “This will be easier if I don’t have to coax you down from the proverbial trees.”

“
The light world’s Other is the dark world’s Hero,” Lad said, behind me, voice heavy.

I didn
’t know what to say. What do you say to the embodiment of all evil?

Lad stepped closer to the table and ran his fingers beside the silex screen.
“How is this possible?” he hissed. “You should be dead.”

The Hero
’s face dimmed, momentarily. “And you are?” There was anger, tightly controlled, behind that voice.

“
A programmer—” Leola began, but I interrupted.

“
A Half,” I said, instead. “Do you know what that means?”

A thoughtful look crossed the Hero
’s face. It was strange to watch his expressions change. They altered instantly, as though he flicked a switch, swapping emotions as suddenly as turning on a light. Perhaps they were false too, as artificial as his visage?

“
Guardian’s little helpers,” he said, after a moment. “Sent across the veil to aid the program. Poor replacements for me, and the work I was doing.” Another smile, but still, I could feel anger. Connected to the silex, as I was, the Hero could not hide his true feelings from me.

Lad
’s hand crept slowly across the tabletop to rest on my wrist, just above the cracking mineral mass. I glanced at him. His eyes held a silent warning, his expression worried, almost fearful. It tightened a low knot in my stomach.

“
Listen to me, Tanyana,” the Hero continued. “Listen and do not be afraid. Everything you have heard about the
Other
—” hatred swamped the network when he said that word “—is a lie. I was a Hero first, and I still am.”

Lad
’s hold on me tightened.

“
I was the first poor fool cast into the veil,” the Hero continued. “Sacrificed to protect two worlds.”

“
I don’t understand.” I glanced between Lad and the glowing false face.

“
The Hero was the first programmer to be uploaded to the veil,” Lad finally answered.

“
So the Hero is just like you?”

Another pause.
“Actually, more like the Keeper. I was a Half, right Tan? Half here, only Half there. But thousands of years ago the early programmers did not understand the risks of crossing the veil, and were not able to follow the same precautions as we do. The Hero offered himself up, and they sent him into the veil. All of him. They didn’t replicate and translate the firing of his neurons into code, the way they did to me. They were not careful about how much of him, and what parts of him, were sent. They—” he swallowed, hard “—they embedded silex in his brain and used it to draw all his mental processes into the veil. I’m not sure if I can explain it to you properly. They took out his mind, Tan, turned it into light and uploaded it all to the veil. All that remained was his body, his brain a ruined mess of grey matter and crystal shards, his flesh an empty shell, lifeless and decaying. He sacrificed himself, but he gave us a presence within the veil. He kept it strong, monitored the movement of particles and alerted us to Pionic Flares, the way Halves do—well,
did
. The Hero was the first, and he saved us all.”

I supposed that explained the term
Hero
. “Just like the Guardian.”

“
Better than the Guardian!” the Hero cried. He grinned again, and I felt a thrill through the silex network. Something like excitement, like arousal, something I could not quite identify. It was wonderful, and horrible, all at once, and I shivered with it. “I am more than code and programming. I am human! When I maintained the veil it was strong. You would not need to be here, searching for help, if I remained. Removing me, and replacing me with a soulless program, was the worst mistake the Legate has ever made. And my people—here, and across the veil—they suffer for it still!”

“
But you have returned,” Leola breathed. “And aid us once again.”

Something wasn
’t quite right. Where the Keeper—the Guardian—had been loved, and revered, in the superstitious days before Novski’s revolution, the Other had been feared. He still was, really, the way we never truly lose our fear of the dark, no matter how old we grow or how much we learn. He was a creature of horror, a cruel god, a spiteful trickster, and the Keeper had saved us from his reign.

What did that mean? I kept my expression as impassive as possible, and hoped he could not feel my emotions as I could feel his. I thought of Lad
’s warning glance, and said nothing.

“
Yes, you have returned,” Lad said, his voice tight, restricted. “And that is what I don’t understand. Your entire being was uploaded into the veil, and your body left to rot away. When the programmers returned you to this world, to that body, you died.”

The Hero turned his gaze to Lad.
“Yes,” he said. “That is what the Legate told you.”

“
But as you can clearly see,” Adeodatus said. “They lied.”

“
Because the veil is not what the programmers and the Legate believe,” the Hero continued, with a dipping, disembodied nod. “The veil is rich, the veil is generous. And the veil did not allow me to die.”

The veil is rich? Ice dropped low into my stomach. Wasn
’t that what the puppet men had said? That the programmers didn’t understand it. And the veil was rich.

Lad frowned, shook his head lightly. He had died before the puppet men revealed themselves to Kichlan and me. But some part of him had remained, in the blood absorbed by my suit. So maybe, he remembered those words. Maybe they haunted him, like a half-remembered dream.

“True, the Legate ripped me from the work I was doing. I spent hundreds of years in the veil—watching your world, protecting it—before they betrayed me. I cannot explain the horror of being torn away from that. The helplessness I felt, knowing that your people were still at risk and there was nothing I could do to protect them. I had come to feel such a connection to them. I believe I had come to love them. The programmers took away the power the veil had given me, and shoved me back into a body that had been left to waste away, and was little more than bone and mould. But they could not kill me. The veil had blessed me, and I carried some of her strength back with me.”

Lad tensed beside me.

“When I opened my eyes I could not see—they had long since rotted away. And when I moved my arms they broke—my bones were hollow and brittle. And it was horrific, programmer, because I could not even scream. But still, I did not die. Then your predecessors caged my rotten body in a silex Shard. Me. A shuffling, blind, animated corpse, all that remained of the man who had saved them, and they had now betrayed.”

Caged in a Shard? Just what the programmers had tried to do to me.

“That still doesn’t explain it,” Lad said, scowling. I couldn’t imagine he had liked hearing what his fellow programmers had done, no matter how long ago. “You should be as good as dead. Not here, not building cities and inciting a Crust uprising.”

“
Do you really fail to understand? I’d lived within the veil for so long, and learned so many of her secrets, I was able to bring a fragment of her power back with me. The Legate tried to isolate me within that Shard, but I’d become more skilled than any of them. With the veil at my back, they could not contain me. Even so, it took hundreds of years to establish a connection between my Shard and the Legate’s network, and even longer to navigate it, undetected, and finally set myself free.”

Lad blinked, his eyes widening.
“You—your body is still trapped inside the Shard, isn’t it?”

“
I see you finally understand.”

Lad turned to me.
“The Hero is doing exactly the same thing you are. He must have brought a Pionic Flare with him when they pulled him from the veil. No wonder they locked him in a Shard! So while his body is still trapped in silex he is using that energy to establish connections to the network, through the very Shard that is supposed to be restraining him. He’s using the bars of his own prison, as it were, to upload his mind into the countless silex connections threaded across this world. So his body remains, but his mind can be anywhere. As long as there is silex to carry him…” Lad trailed off, frowning.

“
And now that I am free I have been working for the stability of Crust,” the Other continued. “I gave my body to protect this world. The citizens of Core-1 West, all the cities like her, and I will restore it to its glory. And you, Tanyana, you can help us.”

I swallowed hard. I was not in the business of revolution. Hadn
’t I told Natasha the very same thing?

“
No,” I whispered. “No. I cannot help you fight, I cannot help you build. Because there is no point—”

“
—if both worlds are destroyed,” the Other finished my sentence for me, and smiled at my surprise. “Yes, I heard you speak. And I am the only one willing to believe you. Something threatens the very integrity of both worlds, something that you need to stop. Though you are not sure how.”

I nodded. How long had he been listening? For as long as I had been connected to the silex? No, longer than that, it had to be.

“I offer you a bargain, then.” He glanced at the bosses. “One that, I’m sure, will supersede any you or your programmer may have already made with my chosen here.”

“
Of—of course!” Leola stuttered.

“
I can give you the answers you seek. I spent lifetimes in the veil. I explored it as no one ever has, or will ever again. I know its secrets. Aid me, Tanyana, and I will aid you in turn. I will teach you the truth about the veil.”

The secrets of the veil. And there it was, just the answer I needed. The truth of the veil, I was certain, was the only thing that could help me defeat the puppet men. After all, it had helped create them. It could help me destroy them.

But still, I hesitated. “What do you want in return?”

Lad, eyes wide, glanced between us.

“What I have only ever wanted, to help my people.” A wistful, far-away look crossed the Other’s face. “I do what I can, from my silex prison, but I am hindered here.” He turned back to me, eyes hard and bright, his presence so tight against me. “Every thought, every word, I must sneak past my captors. With your strength, I could be free.”

He paused. The very room seemed to hold his breath.

“That is what I ask, in return for the secrets of the veil. Will you free me, Tanyana, from my prison?”

“
But she can’t!” Lad gasped. “Your Flare would freeform without a Shard to hold it back.”

The Other cast him an indulgent, condescending look.
“That is not what I am asking. The Shard that imprisons me also keeps me from knowing the pain and the horror of my decayed body. Let me ask again. Will you use your strength to infiltrate the place that holds me and carry me—and my shard—free?”

“
Where is that?” I asked, when no one else dared.

His eyes flashed.
“The heart of the Legate itself.”

###

Meta, Adrian and Kasen were instructed to accompany us on our expedition to the heart of the Legate, and guard us as best they could.

“
Even though we will do what we can to aid the Hero,” Leola said, “we will not send our new programmer into danger, unprotected.”

Apparently there would be no discussion. The Hero had asked us to do something, so naturally we would do it. Even though I could tell the bosses weren
’t thrilled with the sudden change in the situation, they didn’t hesitate.

I wasn
’t so sure about any of this. I glanced between Leola and Lad, but he was no help. He was busy trying to disconnect me, and concentrating hard. The screen embedded in the tabletop was dim and empty again. No Hero, no Other. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t listening.

“
Fine by me. We do what the Hero wants, right?” At least it would get us out of Core-1 West. I gestured to Adrian. “You can carry my child.”

The room grew tense, except Lad who didn
’t even seem to hear me.

“
Tanyana,” Meta said, with a scowl. “You must realise that you can’t take him with you.”