Guardian (2 page)

The Keeper releases a pent-up breath, and lets his memories fade. The comms room is dark and dusty again, all so long dead. There is nothing but the silence of ages, and the banging of his brothers knocking down the door. He places a pale hand against its cold metal. An ancient construction of silex and steel, sealed by a complex pattern of locks built of both pions bonds and debris programming.

“Tanyana calls you the puppet men,” he says to his brothers just on the other side of the door. “Because those human masks you wear don’t quite fit. Underneath, you are something closer to me. Code, given life. Poor little lost programs, hurting. I know why you want to tear down the veil. You don’t belong in either world, so you will make a home in the ruin of both. Can I blame you? Can I blame the programmers who made us?”

The Keeper shakes his head, and steps back.
“Does it even matter whose fault it is, anymore?” He waits, breathing heavily. They will break through, he’s certain. They’ve been hunting him for so long. Is there really any point in fighting?

Keeper?

The voice is like a whisper, at the edges of his hearing, and yet it comes from somewhere within.

We need your help
.

He is still connected to all the debris his brothers have taken from him, from the furious monsters to the bloodthirsty collecting suits. He thinks they did this on purpose, to hurt him. But then, they never factored in Tanyana, did they?

I’m not giving up, but I can’t do this on my own
.

A slow smile spreads across his pale face, the inside of his mouth darker than the shadows in the room. No one ever factors in Tanyana, do they? That suit they forced on her has become his lifeline. It allowed her to hear him, then speak to him, and even see him. Hold his hand. After eons of loneliness, it brought him a friend.

Help me fight them
!

Something worth fighting for.

No one had lived in the Keeper Mountain for a very long time, but the hints of their lives that remained were tantalisingly familiar. Glass-tiled murals on the arching ceilings sparkled in the light from my suit, depicting images of the mountain, the Tear River, and the very beginnings of Movoc-under-Keeper itself. Small white buildings. The first sketches of a bridge. Little figures of people and animals. Strings of different coloured pions tied it all together, so simple compared to the complex knots and intricate patterns I was used to—and had once created. This was Movoc-under-Keeper before the critical circle revolution. The people who made these murals could not have imagined the massive towers of steel, glass and stone the city had become, or the factories full of binders working in unison that powered it.

That was the Movoc-under-Keeper I had lived in all my life. And it was the city I had just destroyed.

“Another one,” Kichlan said.

I glanced back at him. There wa
s still ash smeared on his face and great shadows beneath his deep brown eyes. He clutched his ruined left arm beneath his tattered jacket, hiding the stump of suit silver I had fused onto his elbow. Guilt dropped into my stomach with a sickly lurch. I’d saved his life when I gave him that stump, but it didn’t make me feel any better.

“
Another what?” I asked, keeping my voice soft. It wasn’t necessary. Apart from the Keeper, who led us, we were alone within these ancient mountain corridors. But this was a place for hushed voices.

“
Keeper.” He didn’t point, just nodded to a spot on the ceiling. I followed his gaze.

He was right. Images of the Keeper were everywhere within the mountain, from the massive statue in the room where we had sheltered, to the mosaics, and the carvings on every cornice.

“It is called the
Keeper
Mountain,” I replied, but the truth was I found it unsettling. Not because of his presence—even in modern Movoc-under-Keeper he could still be found decorating veche buildings and public artworks—but because these images were accurate. Really accurate. They could only have been made by someone who had seen him.

We must hurry
, the Keeper whispered in my ear.

I nodded.
“Come on,” I said, and wished Kichlan would let me take his hand.

The Keeper from my childhood storybooks was a figure of myth, an archetype—the hero who had saved his people from the darkness of the Other. Sometimes he was drawn as a knight, sometimes a powerful pion-binder, sometimes even as an innocent child. My suit had showed me that the Keeper was not a myth, and he didn
’t look like that at all.

He looked like the drawings and the carvings in this ancient, quiet place.

“Tan, stop,” Kichlan gasped. “Look at this.”

“
I don’t think we have ti—” I turned, and stammered into silence.

So many of the corridors within the mountain were in ruins, weighed down by age and neglect. We wouldn
’t have even got this far without the strength of my suit. I’d shaped my hands into great spades and dug where the Keeper had told me to dig, then sharpened them into saws and cut through solid rock to create an opening when the accessible pathways ran out. We’d come across many dead ends, and doorways hidden behind slabs of fallen ceiling, the ghostly shapes of glass figures still twinkling, broken in my light. But nothing like this.

“
I think it’s been sealed,” Kichlan said.

I stood close beside him, and he took a shuffling step sideways so we weren
’t touching. “Sealed?” I asked, as I forced away the hurt. Lad’s death had changed so much between us. Could we ever go back to the way things were?

Kichlan found it
, the Keeper said. He sounded like he was right beside me.
I couldn’t feel it. It’s dead. Nothing working. You cannot turn the power on
.

“
We have to try,” I replied.

Then hurry. They are coming
.

The puppet men. I clenched my hands into fists, and sharpened the suit that slid out of my wrists into blades. The puppet men were why we were doing this in the first place.

The door Kichlan had found was as tall as the ceiling, wider than the two of us standing not-too-close together, and seemed to be made of the mountain rock itself. It was covered in carvings of the Keeper. Faces of actual marble, eyes of onyx. So many of them, all over the door. Behind the figures, a landscape I did not recognise, made from protruding shards of crystal and glass. And at their white, floating feet, a strange array of coffins.

It made me shiver. I traced the edges of the door with the tips of my blades. It did, indeed, look like it had been sealed. No random collapsed rock blocked it. Instead, there was something wedged around the frame, like mortar, but hard and shining black. My suit barely made a dent in it.

It will not work
, the Keeper said.
Even if you get inside. You should run, instead. I—I don’t want them to hurt you again
.

But there was nowhere to go where the puppet men could not find us.

I shoved the tips of my blades through a gap between Keepers, where the rock still retained faint traces of colourful paint. “It’s too late for that,” I said, braced my feet, and pushed. Nothing was as strong as the silver of my suit, and my blades tore upwards, shattering stone, raining marble and glass down around us in a rush of stale air.

Lights flickered on as we stepped cautiously inside. They were faint and unsteady, shining like moonlight behind bars from grills in the walls.

“What is this place?” Kichlan hissed, close behind my shoulder.

The air inside was heavy with the strangest aroma. Coppery, like blood; burning, like a lightning storm. A thick layer of black dust covered the floor and congealed into stalactites on the ceiling. It tugged at the bottom of my shoes as I approached a clear, glass coffin in the centre of the room.

I swallowed hard, tugged the sleeve of my patchwork coat down over my hand and wiped dust away from its surface. Underneath it was, thankfully, empty. “Is this,” I asked, my voice unsteady, “how I will cross the veil?”

I told you
, the Keeper said.
It will not work
.

“
Look at the lights—the power is on.” I gestured to the wall, as Kichlan crept around me and investigated the rest of the room. “I can do this.”

Not enough
.

“
Cross the veil?” Kichlan asked, glancing my way, even as he ducked beneath a great tangle of cables and tubes that coiled snake-like from the ceiling to hook into the coffin. My stomach lurched at the sight of them. So similar to the puppet men’s laboratory, the place I had destroyed when I rescued him, and had set off a chain reaction that brought Movoc-under-Keeper down with it.

“
Yes,” I said. “It’s the only way to stop the puppet men. I’m certain of it.”

Kichlan paused at a wide bench sticking out from the wall, and ran his hand across its surface. More lights sprung up, hundreds of little designs and symbols within the rock itself. They were so familiar—the same symbols floated, rising and falling, in the bright and spinning bands of my suit. I knew what some of them meant, but only two or three, and yet I
’d seen whole books written in them. The language of the ancient Unbound.

If only I could read them. Maybe they were instructions? Maybe one of them said
‘press this button to cross the veil’?

The symbols cast bright patterns across Kichlan
’s face. His hair was a mess, dirty blond curls falling across his forehead, making him look so much like his brother it hurt.

I crouched beside the coffin. The Unbound rebels, led by Fedor, had built something similar for Lad when he died. They said it was tradition, the reasons lost over time, but now I thought I understood.

“The programmers on the other side of the veil made the puppet men,” I said. I ran fingernails around the edge of the glass until I found a lid. “So the programmers can help me defeat them. I need to go over there, to the dark world, find these people and make them help us before it’s too late.” All it took was a little pushing to open it. Cold air rushed up at me, icy fingers numbing my face.

Don
’t. Please
.

Kichlan wrapped his jacket tighter, and I shivered. The chill leaked into the room in drifts of pale mist.
“Will that work?” Kichlan asked.

Doesn
’t work. No power. Hubs all quiet. Too late
.

“
It has to work!” I snapped at both of them. “Or do you have another suggestion?”

“
I thought the worlds were opposites?” Kichlan asked, not daunted. “Won’t you just dissolve into dust? Like the sewer wall. Like—” he paused, and swallowed hard “—like Aleksey.”

“
Halves cross the veil,” I said, between gritted teeth. “If they do it, so can I.”

Minds extracted. Reworked into code. Uploaded on a trail of light, through me. Seeded into an unformed body. Final. Like life, or death. Not just walking back and forth like—like—
The Keeper dissolved into senseless laughter and sobbing.

“
What about this then?” I slammed my fists against the coffin. It seemed to set something off, as gears shifted above us, sending cracks through the ceiling and rattling the loops of cable. Several of the lights in the walls flickered red, and the symbols began changing, frantically.

“
All right, all right!” Kichlan edged away from the wall. “Calm down. I was just asking.”

Just for talking. Hello, how is the Guardian today? Does he need another friend? Is he lonely and sad, so sad? Thank you for saving us all, Guardian. You get to be lonely, for your reward.

“What?” I pushed myself away from the coffin and stood. “Fine, just for talking.” The Keeper was getting worse. I was used to him being broken, I was accustomed to his riddles and his clinging presence, desperate for friendship, desperate to be heard. But this was bad, even for him. “Let me talk to them then.”

Doesn
’t work. Can’t talk to them. All gone all gone.

I could hear him breathing, beside me, behind me. All around. Panting.
“Keeper, I—”

Shut up, Tanyana. Stop telling me. Just listen to me, Tanyana.
Listen to me!

I crept close to Kichlan.
“Something’s wrong,” I hissed. “The Keeper. He’s—”

I said listen to me!

I could feel his breath against my face, his hands against the sides of my head. He was shaking. He was hot—how could the Keeper be hot? I released the bonds of my suit and let it slide over me, a second skin of hard yet malleable silver, covering me head to toe.

Even now, after all these moons, it was not a pleasant sensation. Especially now. I
’d fought the suit for control of my own body, and nearly lost. Every time it covered me, every time I drew a blade, part of me was waiting for it to try again. The suit was so much of me now, from the bands, to the heavy lines of silver across my abdomen, and the newest scars, the deeper scars, the ones right through my heart. It made me strong, even as it hollowed me out. I had no idea where the suit ended, and I began. Not any more.

I placed a hand on my stomach. What had it done to the unborn baby resting, quiet, within me? Devich
’s child. Nothing, surely, could survive what I had put the poor thing through.

The suit slid over my eyes, and the world changed. No more mountain, no more ancient Unbound room. Nothing but darkness, and doors. And the Keeper.

He was right in front of me, so close he was almost on top of me, gripping my face with his hands. Panic pulsed through him, in the surging beat of debris visible through his pale veins, and his gaping, black mouth. I tried to draw back, but the Keeper held me tightly. “They’re coming!” he cried. “Coming for me. Coming for you. Can’t you feel them? Too blind, Tanyana. So much suit and Half in you, but still so blind!” He tipped back his head and howled with laughter and tears.

I swallowed hard, tried to force myself to keep calm, but the Keeper
’s madness was contagious. “Keeper, what’s happening? Calm down. Just explain to me—”

“
My
brothers
are happening!” he actually spat the word, with the kind of venom I’d never heard from him. “You destroyed their machines and took control of their suit, but did you think that was enough? They’re coming! Mountain rock doesn’t mean anything to them, we follow our own dark paths. Run, Tanyana, while you can.”

“
But—” I tried to turn my head towards the coffin, hidden now behind doors, but the Keeper gripped me even harder.

“
Waste of time!” he screamed into my face. “
Listen
to me! The feeds are all dead, the programmers are Halves, and I am all alone! This will not work.”

I gripped the Keeper
’s wrists with my silver hands and pulled him away from my face. Around us, the doors all rattled, rotten wood hollow against rusted hinges. Laughter like malevolent ghosts echoed through the mountain.