Guardian (29 page)

Kichlan nodded. Behind him, Fedor dove for his debris panel. Kichlan turned, but too late and Fedor unleashed more lightning across the room. But this time, whatever that rabid energy touched was replaced by a door. Not shaking, straining against hinges. Open.

And on the other side—

“
Lad?” he whispered.

Devich slobbered,
“Tan—ya. Close.”

Then the light faded, and the doors closed. But not before Kichlan had seen his brother—his
dead brother—standing in another cave. He was arguing with someone, face flushed, hands gesturing. It was so real, but impossible. It had to be.

“
What was that?” Mizra gasped. Gently, Kichlan eased his silver grip so Mizra could stand and stumble away from the puppet men. “Was that—the doors?”

“
You saw it?” Kichlan asked.

“
Yes.”

Mizra looked up, shocked, as Kichlan turned. Sofia. Blinded, mutilated, she stood on the edge of the street, mouth open wide and the stumps of her arms raised. Crystal and wires trailed around her, bright like the lacing of an otherworldly gown. She tipped her head back and looked to the wall above Uzdal
’s coffin. The wall she simply could not see.

“
I saw them,” she said, and her voice was strong. “I saw the doors. And on the other side, I saw Tanyana.”

Natasha staggered over to Sofia. She wrapped an arm around her shoulders, but the woman refused to be led back inside.
“I saw them,” Sofia insisted.

“
We all did,” Natasha said. She met Kichlan’s eyes, her expression fearful. “What does this mean?”

“
I didn’t,” Volski said. Zecholas nodded his agreement. “We just saw lightning. Damned dangerous stuff that is too.”

Fedor, obviously shaken, held his hesitating hand above the symbols but did not move them again. Kichlan guessed he
’d seen the doors too. And Lad. Or Tan. Both dead. Both impossible. But so many had seen them…

Unfazed by the attack, the puppet men had moved from Uzdal
’s coffin to the wall behind it. Their fake fingers ran fast patterns over the crystal and wires, rearranging them at an inhuman speed. The light in Uzdal’s coffin flickered and the ice around him began to retreat.

“
Stop it, please!” Mizra shouted. “Don’t hurt him!”

One of the puppet men glanced over his shoulder, a faintly curious expression toying with his features. His fingers did not stop.
“He is dead. The silex encasing him is creating the illusion of life—forcing breath into his lungs, a pulse into his blood, and slowing the progress of decay. But do not mistake this for living, for he is well and truly dead.”

“
No,” Mizra whispered. “He can’t…he can’t be gone.”

“
He is.” But as the puppet man returned his gaze to the wall, something strange happened to him. He jerked, shook, and his fingers stilled.

The Keeper
’s half-arm, half-face, crawled out of the mist clinging to the back of the puppet man’s jacket. He looked fainter than he had last time, weaker. “Kichlan?” and when he spoke, his voice was less than a whisper, more like an echo, remote and unreal. “The veil is falling. I failed. Tell them, tell the programmers, I am sorry. Tell them I tried.”

The puppet man twisted around, unnaturally far, reached behind himself with a suddenly too-long arm, and pushed the Keeper back into the mist. He didn
’t fight, this time. There wasn’t enough left of him to even try.

<
Guardian program nearly terminated
>

Kichlan
’s suit sounded oddly sad. “What can we do?” he asked it. He’d tried to stop Fedor, Zecholas and Volski weakening the veil any further, but had failed. He knew better than to fight the puppet men head on. It wouldn’t take much for them to regain control, and he wasn’t convinced he could harm them anyway.

<
All options exhausted
>

Mizra wept as the ice withdrew from his brother
’s dead face and Uzdal’s artificial breathing ceased.

“
There is no point fighting any more,” the puppet men said, all at once.

All the light and the energy that had filled Uzdal
’s coffin now swelled, up through the wires and the crystals until the entire wall burned with it. The air wavered like heat, but rhythmical and patterned, an invisible curtain, floating in the breeze. Or a veil.

“
We are already through.”

The doors returned, covering everything.

But Kichlan shook his head. “Tan closed the doors once. Damn me if I don’t at least try to do the same.” And he launched himself at the closest door, as it opened.

“
Why do you need me?” I asked the Other. “I know how powerful the Legate is. I’ve felt their strength on the network. Despite being trapped in a dead body, despite the Shard designed to restrict you, you’ve managed to escape them. You’ve hidden from them, you’ve spread through Crust, sowing the seeds of resistance and building massive power stations like Core-1 West on the way.” I glanced over my shoulder to Lad. He was watching me, pale and worried, tense and ready.

“
I have.” I could feel the Other’s smug pride. It warmed his words and seeped into me through silex and light.

I leaned my forehead against the side of his Shard. Silex fell like soft sand down my cheeks, and beneath my collar.
“So why bring me here? Why not return to the veil on your own?”

A pause. The Other was accustomed to being obeyed, and he was feeling less and less pleased with me by the minute. Did he know I could sense his emotions? Could he sense mine?
“Because you are different. Somehow, you are here, and there, at the same time.”

I frowned, and then was forced to blink silex out of my eye.
“What?”

“
You really don’t know?”

“
I—” But I did. I leaned back from the Shard, stared up into its light. “Wait. Something about the movement of particles. And data flow.” I looked down at the silex cracked around my wrist and thought of Kichlan’s silver arm. “I made a connection. By accident.”

“
Exactly.” The Other’s Flare pulsed. “The programmers have told you about the great mistake, I assume. In our arrogance, we tried to bend space and time to our will. But doing so shoved our realities, opposite realities, so close together that they began to bleed one into the other.”

I nodded.

“Now, they can only move one way. When a particle travels from this world, across the veil, it becomes a pion in your world. When a particle from your world travels to this world, across the veil, it becomes a Flare. They cannot travel back.”

I shook my head.
“But what about you? You travelled to our world only to be dragged back here. Doesn’t that mean you travelled both ways?”

“
Actually, no. You see, I never made it all the way to your world. My consciousness was uploaded, yes, but only to the veil itself. From within the veil I could observe your world and I could protect it, but I was never a part of it. I existed to interrupt or rearrange the flow of particles through the veil. But ask me to pick a flower, to touch a hand? I lurked in shadows, Tanyana, watching, but never a part of your world.”

I thought of the Keeper, of the world of darkness and doors that only I had been able to see. And yes, I knew what he meant. The Keeper too had been forced to lurk in shadows, and had never truly belonged.

“What about the Halves?” I whispered. “What about the programmers? They crossed, didn’t they?”

“
Only a part of them crossed—only a section of their thoughts locked in code and transported by light. And don’t forget, those parts did not come back. It is always a one-way trip. Until you decided to bend the rules.”

It would have been for Lad, too. Aladio might have had Lad
’s face, but before I returned his Half to him, he had not been the Lad I knew.

“
Then what about you? If you have a Flare inside you, like I have one inside me, doesn’t that mean that particles are moving through you too? Away from my world and into yours? Since you were uploaded the opposite way, doesn’t that mean you are moving in both directions?”

“
Sadly, no. If it was, I wouldn’t need you at all. I wouldn’t need anyone.” Such yearning, such resentment. It made me shiver. “I cannot just travel back the way I have come, I need a vessel. I need a pathway of light and code. I need someone to upload me.”

Like the coffins that had housed the Halves in Fulcrum. I still didn
’t see how this related to me.

“
Don’t I need the same thing then? A pathway of light and code?”

The Other chuckled.
“But you already are returning. Constantly. You exist here, and you exist in the other world, and you move in between them. You stretch across the veil, a tether between two worlds.”—

—Kichlan pushed against the door, but he couldn’t even touch the handle. His silver hand just passed right through it. Again and again, he tried. While the puppet men laughed at him, and he could hear ghostly snippets of Tan’s voice, and his brother stared horrified and tense through the open door, looking alive, looking real. It all hurt. If he could just close that door, if he could just touch it. He was tired of hurting—

—I slumped against the Shard, the crystal binding us the only thing keeping me on my feet. “I know.” My son slipped, slightly, in the crook of my elbow. I squeezed him tighter, with what little strength our shared and broken body had left. “It’s Kichlan. I thought I was dreaming about him. But my son showed me they weren’t dreams. Not really.” I stared down at my left arm. “The cap on Kichlan’s elbow—I used some of my suit to fuse it to his body.” I looked up. “The suit—the program—is still connected to me, isn’t it? To us—my son and me. No matter how far we stray. It’s my pathway.”

Kichlan was alive.

“Your consciousness travels between worlds faster than the blink of an eye.” The Other sounded smug. “You move both ways. So that is what I want from you. I need a ride back to the veil to resume my rightful place. You will be my pathway. I will take the place of the failed Guardian program so your child doesn’t have to. And I will give you the full power of the veil, so you can save your world. Your
Kichlan
.” I could hear his impossible grin, wide and triumphant. “That’s a fair bargain, wouldn’t you say?”

I glanced back at Lad, Adrian, Meta and Kasen.
“I will do it,” I said, and held Lad’s fearful gaze as I spoke. “I will take you back to the veil.”

“
Careful,” Lad whispered.

I looked away.
“How do we do this, then?”

“
You need to forsake this world, and everything on it. Give up your flesh, I would have said, but your flesh carried you here, did it not. You are more code than muscle, skin and bone, so maybe, you do not have to give that up. As the rest of us were forced to do.”

I winced, and glanced up.
“But what about the Legate?” While the rock and steel supports above us looked calm and quiet, the Drones had to be close now. “If I go, there won’t be anyone to stop the Legate getting in here. They will kill Lad and the guards from Core-1 West, and they will completely isolate your Shard.”

“
And why would that worry me?” the Other said. “I won’t even be here anymore.”

I hesitated.

“What about your pet programmer. Give the network over to him. You have such faith in him, don’t you? He will hold them off.”

I kept my connection to the Other
’s Shard, even as I spun and explained to Lad what we needed him to do. The Other was not impressed with the delay, but he believed he had won me over, and his triumph mollified him to some extent.

Lad shook his head.
“How exactly do you expect me to do that? I can’t connect myself the way you do.”

“
There is an ancient terminal,” the Other said. “They used it to monitor me, back in the day. It is connected to my Shard, and it now feeds into the network.”

Adrian found it first. A screen, and a keyboard, set into the rock around the far side of the Shard. Lad cursed over the state of it—screen cracked, a few keys missing, and of it clogged with dust, sand, and a faint shedding of silex. Still, it responded to his fingers, and flickered into dull life. I felt it awaken, another presence close to mine, tiny compared to the Other.

“Brilliant,” the Other muttered. “Can we do this now? Have I told you how much I hate waiting?”

He didn
’t have to; I’d experienced the evidence first hand.

“
I don’t know how long I can hold them off with this,” Lad said.

“
I can help,” Adrian said. He didn’t put his gun down, but he even so he dug around in his bag, pulling out a set of small hubs. “Amplifiers.” Lad helped him hook them up, and after a moment, the terminal’s presence strengthened.

“
Hero,” I said, and pressed my face against his Shard. “Give Lad the power of your Flare.”

He didn
’t respond. I could sense how much he hated that idea.

“
You’re already connected to this terminal, and to the network. Lad and Adrian need you to help them.” Something arrived at the pod blocking the entrance to the tunnel. The noise of tearing metal echoed into the cave. “And anyway, you won’t need it any more, will you? You’ll be inside the veil itself.”

The Other conceded, reluctantly, and the terminal flared. Its screen, though cracked, shone bright light into the room, and its presence grew, spreading like a wave. The thought warmed me, because that wave was Lad and I knew he would do what he had always promised to do. He would look after me.

“They’ve breached us already!” I couldn’t see him properly, only a faint shape wavering in the Shard’s distortion, but I could hear his fingers smacking hard and fast over the keyboard. “I’m taking control. Cutting off communication to the Drones in the pod track.” A great clatter of metal shuddered the cave walls. “Doors are mine. Most of the cameras are down, but I think we’ve got smaller, bio-mechanical things in the tunnel and I can’t do anything about them without killing us!”

“
Leave that to me.” Meta pulled large guns out of the bag they had refused to relinquish, all this time. Her expression was hard. I realised that Kasen had fallen back, and I couldn’t see if he was breathing. “I’m not entirely sure what’s going on, but I still have a job to do, and that’s to help my Hero.” She stalked towards the tunnel entrance. “Dim the lights, will you?” she asked. “At least give me a chance.”

Adrian watched her go, jaw tight. Then it was too dark to see anything.

“Can we get on with this, please?” the Other said.

For a moment the sound of Lad
’s fingers paused. “Be careful, Tan,” Lad said. And I wished I could see his face—alive, stern, loving—for one last time. Then he resumed typing in earnest.

“
You are already a part of me,” the Other was saying in a low and contented purr. “And I am part of you. You are code, you are silex. So am I. Join with me.”

I pressed against the Shard, not only with my hand and my face, but with everything. Silex, flesh and light—everything I had become.

My silex bled into its mineral, draining out of my body.

My light caught the Shard
’s glow and together, our Flares pulsed.

And my hand—what was left of my hand—plunged into the side of the Shard. It did not entomb me, because I wasn
’t really flesh, not on this world. I was what the puppet men had made me. I was debris, code and light.

I stepped forward, into the Shard. Into the Other
’s Flare, and mine.

Then everything was light, and colour. And the Other was so close to me, he was all around me. And my son was a smaller presence, pressed against my own. And we were flying past hundreds of openings, small Flares, hanging in Shards and piercing the sky. Beyond a great river of light, fed by a dozen smaller tributaries.

Toward a single, open door.

“
Don’t go that far,” the Other said, laughing, thrilled. “Here, let me show you.”

The door began to retreat. But we did not return to the cave at the base of the heart of the Legate. Instead, we hovered in cool, silvery light and I wondered, for an instant, if there really was any power here, any truth. Or just eternal emptiness. An unending in between.

Except the Other was standing next to me.

Not just a presence riding my light and wound up in my code, not any more. And neither was he faceless, half-formed and horrific, leering at me from around gravesites and between drying clumps of rosemary.

The Other was a man, well aged and well built. He was dressed strangely, in a suit made out of only one piece of deep blue, slightly reflective fabric. An icon was emblazoned on his chest: a small prism shining out solid blocks of colour in a rainbow. He smiled at me, and his teeth were perfect. His skin was sun-worn, his haircut severe.

“
Ahh,” he tipped back his head and breathed, deeply, like he had not tasted air in a very long time. Like there was air to taste. “Now this is more like it.” I caught the glittering of small silex hubs embedded in his neck. Each shone with a different colour: blue, red, yellow, as though reflecting the rainbow stitched onto his suit.

“
Come on, don’t disappoint me now, Tanyana. You can hardly present yourself to the veil without a body, can you?”

A body?

“But how—” even as I spoke, I realised I had a mouth and a throat to do so. I glanced down.

I was wearing the coat Kichlan and Lad had bought
for me, from a second-hand shop on the Tear River. Beneath it, my patched shirt and pants, still stiff from the starch Valya had pressed them with. And finally, my collector’s uniform, dark, stretchy and boned.