Guardian (23 page)

On the other side of the door was a small room, and an identical door on the opposite wall. Adrian gathered us all inside.
“Airlock,” he said. Meta, Kasen and Lad all nodded. I decided not to bother asking.

The first door closed and the second opened, before we could leave the bunker. On the other side we came to more tiled tunnels and pod tracks. And started walking again.

“I suppose that makes sense,” Lad said to Adrian. “To situate an opening to your bunker as close to a pod station as possible. Even if the pods aren’t working the tunnels at least give you good, open access to the surface.”

Adrian nodded, though he was focused on his pad and only seemed to be half listening.
“Radiation is acceptable, ma’am,” he said. “We’ve lost bounceback, though, too far out from Core now.” He lifted his eyes, and for a moment they were haunted. Then he straightened his shoulders, steadied his gaze, and all three guards shared a hard look. No trace remained of the fear I had glimpsed there, or the nervousness I had seen in his sweat and heard in his voice, back in the pod. He was as steady, and as confident, as he had been when I first met him—fighting a Drone. Quiet though he might be, I was coming to realise Adrian was just as strong as Meta and Kasen. He was just less obvious about it. “We’re on sight alone.”

Meta nodded.
“Load and ready, then. I want a gun in your hand at all times, and a second within reach. Even when we’re resting.”

As Adrian and Kasen drew their guns, I hurried forward.
“What about Lad and me?” I asked Meta. “Shouldn’t we be armed too?”

Meta lifted eyebrows in surprise.
“We’re here to do that for you, you know.”

“
Yes, but—”

“
Have you ever fired one of these?” Kasen asked, spinning his weapon in a loose and agile palm.

“
Of course not—”

“
Then you’re better off without one, trust me.” He grinned, and the scars that spread from the back of his capped head twisted into deep ridges. It was not a pleasant expression. “And the rest of us are safer too.”

Meta chuckled.
“It takes training to learn how to handle these weapons, and more strength than you realise. The kickback alone would shatter that crystal layer of yours.”

I returned to Lad
’s side.

“
We can’t rely on force,” he whispered, sweating and struggling but maintaining the punishing pace set by the guards. “Trust me, we really don’t want to get into a fire fight with these people.”

I nodded. Though I hated to admit it, I missed the strength of my silver.

“There are other ways.” He grunted and shifted the weight he carried. “This is Crust. We are surrounded by silex here: it’s in the ground, the walls, even hanging in the sky. On Crust, you are stronger than guns.”

The tunnels here were in worse condition than the ones above Core-1 West. We were forced to halt, often, by rubble in our path, and backtrack to find another way out. It made the journey seem even longer than all those bells in the bunker. Then, at least, we had been moving forward, rather than heading in circles. But eventually, Meta and Adrian found us a way out. We crawled through a large scar in one tunnel wall—still darkened by the memory of flame—and joined a second set of tunnels that had not been so badly damaged. They even had stairs, stretching up through floor upon floor of more platforms, more tunnels. Some were still haunted by the corpses of abandoned or damaged pods. Adrian stared at these wistfully.

“If we ever return,” Meta said, patting his arm, “we’ll report them. Scavenger teams will be sent, I’m certain.”

With a sigh, Adrian nodded, and continued climbing.

Struggling to breathe through the pressure and pain radiating from my belly, and the fresh cracks forming all over my body, I watched him. Scavenger teams? But then again, where else would Core get the materials for its wonderful new world? The corpses of the old, I supposed.

We emerged at a flat area of Crust. None of the skeletal structures I had expected, rather we were surrounded by low, degraded buildings. Great empty squares, edged only rarely with parts of run-down walls and the drooping curls of melted street lamps.

I stared around us in horror, as we walked. A thick layer of ash puffed up with every footstep. The constant grey of a storm-heavy sky beat down on us. I could make out the tips of three close Shards peeking through the clouds above us. More glowed in the hazy distance.

“
There would have been factories here,” Lad said, and was forced to cough ash out of his mouth for the trouble. “Power stations too. These areas were hardest hit. A Flare opens up in the middle of a reactor, or steel-works, or even solar-charged batteries, and there’s going to be an explosion. Considerably more damage, and difficult to contain. Radiation, toxic smoke, you name it. Makes it difficult to build a Shard when you can’t even get near.”

“
I’m sure it does.”

We didn
’t go far until Adrian and his notepad called a halt. “Radiation levels are climbing faster than I would like. I think we should suit up from here out.”

Meta nodded, but as Kasen began digging in his bag she stopped him.
“First, we rest,” she said. She glanced back at Lad and me. “No point to any of this if we walk them to death, is there?”

Adrian found us relative shelter in crumbling walls of a ruined building. Another bathroom, though this one in a far worse condition than the last. Tiles crushed and burned into dirt, great cracks ran down the walls so the hot Crust wind howled in through them, the ancient pipes and steel frames that held up the ceiling were precarious and almost rusted through.

I collapsed into a corner. Lad crouched down beside me, dug out silex and baths in a furious flurry of activity and attacked the cracks in my ankles.

“
What about your arms?” Lad was saying. He dug out and filled two baths for the loose crystal around my ankles. Light shone through the cracks, too bright in the middle of Crust’s dull surface. I could dim it, a little, with effort. That was different—I’d not been able to do that before. “Your neck? Waist?”

“
They’re fine,” I said, trying to sound calm. “Shoulders, I think, are starting to give. Probably travelling down from my neck. It’s weakest there. Cracks all the time.”

Lad nodded, and shuffled around to the side so he could get to my neck. I leaned close to him, and breathed,
“This isn’t going to be easy.”

Lad didn
’t so much as pause in his work. Our guards were readying themselves around us. Kasen stood on watch, alert, gun in his hand, chewing absently on a desiccated stick-thing that, apparently, was dinner. I had no intention of eating mine, as Meta passed it to me. Wrapped in poly, it stunk of dried fish and looked like compacted sawdust.

“
It’s good for you,” she said, and would not move until I took it. I must have made a face.

Adrian continued to tap at his keyboard as he ate. Meta distributed food with one hand, held her gun in the other. I found myself staring at its sleek black lines. It was all well and good for Lad to talk about my strength on Crust, but those guns still looked dangerous to me.

“They have to sleep some time,” Lad whispered. He bent so close his lips were nearly touching my ear.

“
At the same time?” I whispered back.

“
We’ll find a way. The network—”

Something cried out in the distance. I jerked my head up, nearly smacking into his chin, and winced as fresh silex snapped close to my collarbone.
“What was that?” I hissed.

Lad, looking mildly discomforted, shuffled close again and began dabbing at the fresh rays of light flickering around my throat.
“Ignore it,” he said.

Ignore it? If I didn
’t know better I’d have thought it was a wolf, howling, somewhere out in the ruins of Crust. Lonesome, desolate, and haunted. I could almost see the snow-wrapped mountain, the dark forest and distant, wind-stark tundra of Varsnia and shivered, despite the heat. “But what was it? Shouldn’t we be worried?”

“
There are more than junkies on Crust,” Kasen said. He turned in the direction of the sound, gun lifted. “And not everything is human.”

Baths were too awkward to wrap around my neck, so Lad applied his precious silex-liquid thickly. I knew not to move, under his determined ministrations.

“Drones?” I asked, barely daring to speak for fear of disturbing him. “More of the Legate’s creatures?”

Kasen chuckled.
“No, nothing so fearful. Mutations, probably, looking for something weak and mostly dead to feast on.” He hefted his gun, meaningfully. “Nothing to be worried about.”

Another cry, closer, and joined this time by a second, distinct voice. They created a terrible harmony that set me shivering again.

“Don’t fret.” Lad leaned in close. “It’ll only set your Flare fluctuating again—”

—and for an instant, he disappeared. In the place of his concentrating frown and worrying fingers, I saw a door—

“—all the work I’m doing.”

I stared down at the top of his head in horror. There were grey hairs in his gold curls, almost as terrible a sight as the door.

“Did—did you see that?” I whispered.

A third voice joined the cry, and doors whispered at the edges of my vision, flickering in and out of existence like the beating of dark wings.

“See what?” Lad leaned back, met my eyes. “Tan, what is it? You’ve gone white—”

—doors, everywhere. Wooden and rattling against their strained hinges, nails tugged out of wood, iron handles rusting away—

“—Tan?” Lad, so close, fear in his voice.

“
It’s a dog pack,” Meta was saying, somewhere is the distance. “They can be nasty, but they’re still far away. As long as nothing happens to alert them of our presence.”

“
Tan?” Lad gripped my shoulder, shook me.

And the doors on the edges of my sight rattled forward, swarmed on me like vermin. And he was gone, and the guards and the ruins and the dogs, all gone. Nothing but doors, everywhere, pressing against me until I couldn
’t breathe. And then—

“I don’t understand,” Kichlan said, as he followed Mizra through hallways turned to labyrinthine underground passageways. “How did you survive?”

Mizra flashed him the usual, pert grin, and Kichlan could not help but smile. How could he look the same, when everything else had changed so much? How could he smile like that, when the city was a ruin around them, when suited soldiers hunted Natasha, when a bizarre version of Devich followed them, and after Tan
’s death? Didn’t he understand this was not the same world? And it wouldn’t last for long.

“
Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you’re alive. I just—”

“
It’s hard to believe,” Natasha filled the gaps for him. She was heavy, far too much for her seemingly slight body and for his single arm to carry. And she was hot. Her skin radiated a raging fever through both of their clothes. But Devich snuffled and scrambled behind them, keeping himself hidden in the shadows, so Kichlan could hardly deposit Natasha in his reinforced arms.

“
I don’t blame you for being surprised.” Mizra held open another door for them, but did not offer to help carry. He eyed Kichlan’s severed arm without comment. “We were too, at first. Until Fedor realised what we had found, and what it was capable of. It showed us where you were, for one thing. We tried looking for Tanyana first, but when that didn’t work we found you instead. We’ve been trying for days now to use it to contact you, but it doesn’t seem to have that ability. At least we were also able to track those silver soldiers—the ones that look like Tanyana—and repel them. And that’s just the beginning.”

“What are you talking about?” Natasha asked, wincing as Kichlan adjusted his grip to climb through a room sucked deep into the earth, turned on its side and slanted, so its wall became a steep floor, and rubble piled in through its windows.

“
You’ll see.” This time, Kichlan noticed the sadness beneath Mizra’s usual smile. How much of that look, that normal, everyday Mizra look, was a mask? His pale skin, his blue eyes, his loose swaying walk. “When the city caved in we were ready to be crushed. But there are older streets beneath Movoc-under-Keeper, Kichlan. Even older than the city of the Unbound. And when its walls came down, and the statues cracked, and the ground—even the underground—opened up, we found it.” He paused, head bowed. “If only Uz could have seen it too.”

And Kichlan
’s heart dropped, because he’d known something wasn’t right. It was so rare, after all, to see Mizra without his twin brother.

Behind him, following from deep in the ruins, doors flickered
.

—“Kichlan?” I gasped, and thrashed against Lad’s hands. No, not just Lad’s hands. So many hands. Meta and Adrian too. Their faces leaned over me, frightened, worried. Meta’s short white hair looked yellow in Crust’s heavy light, and Lad’s was slicked back from his forehead with his own sweat.