Guardian (32 page)

The puppet men were coiling in on themselves in confusion, all mist and horrified faces.
“You reprogrammed him!” one of the solid few cried. Angry, frightened, desperate, a far cry from the emotionless men in white coats I had first met all those moons ago. “That’s not possible. How did you know how?”

“
That doesn’t matter.” I stepped forward, silver at the ready.

“
All that matters is you can’t control me any more.” Kichlan mirrored me. “And you have to fight the both of us, instead.”

“
So be it!” The puppet men lifted their arms. The ground beneath me tore apart, and the wall of silex and screens shuddered.

“
Uzdal!” Mizra screamed, as great shards of crystal crashed around his brother’s coffin, and the thread that attached me to Lad, to the dark world, to the Veil itself weakened.

Bastards!
Lad cried.
I need that Unbound terminal to keep in contact with you! Don’t let them separate us
!

I smiled. Even as the world cracked, even as the doors shuddered, I felt calm. Maybe it was the influence of my son, warm and soft where I held him, a smiling and peaceful presence in my code. He did not panic. Neither should I.

I actually felt sorry for the puppet men as I pulled my silver back, exposing my bare skin. Poor little half-programs.

“
That won’t work,” I said. The earth gave way, my feet slipped, but instead of falling I simply summoned pions and made a ledge for Kichlan and me. Like the glass steps I had once used to climb to
Grandeur
’s outstretched palm, made from specs of sand and the water in the air, compressed and hardened, shaped, then polished until they shone. And some of the pions that responded to me were crimson, but that didn’t seem to matter, not any more. Indeed, they gathered on my open hand and brushed against me quivering, apologetic, desperate to please. As they touched me, they lost some of their crimson sheen, and they calmed. And it all felt so damned familiar. It felt like the debris monsters I had fought, and soothed, over and over. The creatures the puppet men had created to test me with.

The puppet men all gasped, a collective noise that echoed through the underground rooms.

“The Veil gave you these pions, didn’t it?” I looked up from my open palm. “So you could have a body in this world. It made you more than code hidden in darkness and doors. It gave you a form, of a kind. But they are pions, in the end.” I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter how they started out, on the other side of the Veil. On this side, they feel. They hurt. They are happy, or sad, and that’s why they respond to binders. They can chose. Perhaps they’re tired of being bound to you. Perhaps they’ve seen the things you are trying to do, the horror you’ve inflicted, and the pain. They’re part of this world too, you know, and might not want it destroyed. Or maybe they just like me better. I’ve always got on so well with pions. More than with people, certainly.” I cast Kichlan a small smile at that. “They don’t have to obey you if they don’t want to. And if this is anything to go by—” I summoned the pions to surround me, lighting me like a lamp so far underground “—I don’t think they will.”

I sent those pions back into the ground at my feet. They repaired the cracks, they healed the scars. Of course, they could not do anything for the silex wall and Uzdal
’s coffin, but as long as the ground was steady, the wall would be too.

The puppet mist rolled, and the three men stepped back deeper in its folds. As they did so I caught a glimpse of a shadow, a semi-form, different from the others.

Did you see that
? Lad asked, voice tense.

I nodded.
“Yes.” I’d seen that shadow in my dreams. “It’s the Keeper.”

The Guardian program
.

“
He keeps trying to get out,” Kichlan said. “I don’t know how to help him.”

“
He’s holding on,” I said. “He might be code, carried on light, and uploaded into the Veil, but he’s damned strong.”

Kichlan cast me a questioning glance, and I shook my head.
“I’ll explain later.”

“
My Lady?” Volski looked stunned. He and Zecholas were looking from me, to the ground, to the puppet men. “You—you can bind again?”

We need to re-establish the Guardian program. He can close the doors, and that would leave you free to focus on the puppet men
.

Nodding, I turned to Volski and Zecholas. My pion-binders. An integral part of my circle, always so skilled, always willing to push the boundaries of their abilities because I
’d asked them to. Sure, that asking might have almost got them killed, but now was hardly the time for such self-pitying thoughts.

“
The pions are returning,” I said.

With wide eyes, and great confusion, my binders scanned the room.
“But most of them are crimson,” Zecholas said as he released Volski. The older man straightened. He looked stronger.

“
I think you’ll find that won’t matter.” Again I lifted my hand and again the pions sped to me. “They’ll be very happy to listen to you this time.” They crowded me, they touched me, and as I released them, my binders took them up. What a strange, inverted circle that made us.

I nodded to the puppet men.
“Keep them busy for me.”

Zecholas and Volski grinned, and loosed all the Other
’s hells. Walls of pure rock slammed into existence, crushing the puppet men. Great spears grew from the ground, and dropped from the ceiling. Hands of stone tore the fake-skin from the three, solid men, until they all fell back into the amorphous, mist-like mass.

“
Fedor!” I cried, and turned to him. “Use your control panel again! Hit them as hard as you can!” He grinned too, just that same look.

“
But won’t that weaken the veil?” Kichlan gasped, and gripped my arm. “I thought we didn’t want to do that?”

“
Oh yes,” I said. “It will. But right now, that doesn’t matter as much as weakening the puppet men. Nothing Fedor, Zech or Vol can do right now will destroy them, but that’s fine. I just need to keep them preoccupied.”

Kichlan released me, expression uncertain.
“If you say so.”

“
Trust me.”

He winced.
“You really shouldn’t say that.”

I laughed, as the power of the silex wall rode wild through the room again. A simulated Flare, isolated and weak compared to the real thing, a strange reprogramming of debris to release an isolated burst of undirected pions. I wondered why the programmers had even built it
. Maybe they were trying to recreate their home world, with crystal that looked like silex and Flares to power it? The Other might know, but I could hardly ask him now. Energy like lightning strikes crackled over the falling, rising, shattering rock. It danced through the puppet men, each touch destabilising their code, forcing them to reform as quickly as they were undone.

I knew neither could destroy the puppet men, but that wasn
’t the point. All they had to do was unsettle them, weaken them. I gave them no time to recover. I gripped Kichlan’s silver hand and together, we ran into all that chaos. I wrapped us both in silver, so the rock did not hurt us, and the lightning slid right off us, and barrelled into the centre of the puppet men mass.

“
What are you doing?” Kichlan cried.

“
I’m going to get the Keeper back. Will you help me?”

“
Help? How?”

A form materialised out of the mass, pale skin torn and singed, eyes turned to black and smoking. The puppet man reached for us. I sliced through his fake hands and knocked him back, but more appeared in his place.

“Ah,” Kichlan said. “I see.” I let go of his hand so he could mould his left arm into a blade. He loosened the other bonds on his normal suit, and coated his upper body in silver. “Gladly.” He spun, slashed at the second puppet man, ducked as it tried to reform, grabbed its semi-material legs and tore it apart.

I allowed myself a brief pause to admire him. Lad was right, his brother really was strong. And now that he didn
’t have to fight his suit the whole time, he could show it.

Reluctantly, I looked away.
“Keeper!” I cried, and shoved my spare hand into the mist, snatching, clawing, searching. For a long and terrible moment there was nothing but rock and light and the slick touch of countless program shards. Then small hands, barely solid, wrapped themselves around mine, and I held him tight and pulled him free. Out of the chaos, out of the puppet men.

“
Kichlan!” I cried, as I staggered back. “Follow us!”

He cut down two more puppet men on the way.

I drew the Keeper back to the platform in front of the silex wall. He was a shadow, formless, bodiless, just a wisp of darkness cast against my silver.

He
’s almost gone
! Lad sounded distressed.

“
What do I do?” I cried, as the Keeper’s shadow sunk through me.

Get me inside him
.

“
What?”

Through your programming, Tan. Like we did for Kichlan. Your suit is code and he is code and at the moment, so am I. Get me inside him so I can save him. I know what the Guardian
’s program should look like. I’ll put him back the way he was
.

I focused on the lines of code, nearly invisible, deep within the Keeper
’s form. Like pions, they were. Another element to reality, another layer adding itself to the way I saw the world around me. He was a beautiful program. I could see why the puppet men had wanted to claim him as a brother, and incorporate his wholeness into their broken-code mess. He should have been perfect: streamline, elegant, yet powerful. He throbbed sentience and shone with control, yet years of abuse had worn him down. Like frayed edges of carpet.

Then I loosened the bonds on my suit and drilled into him, silver replacing the debris he
’d always had for blood. It spread in a fine and intricate pattern, casting his shape from the inside out, clustering at his head and his eyes.

“
What is that?” Natasha cried.

“
It’s the Keeper!” Sofia lifted one of her stumps as though she could embrace us. “Can’t you see him, Tash? He is so beautiful. Skin like marble, his eyes so dark.”

And, indeed, Lad was rebuilding him. He rearranged the ruin the puppet men had made of him, gathered stray pieces of debris that floated through the room, and even took symbols and lines of code from my suit. It seemed I had plenty to spare.

The Keeper’s pale skin slowly regrew, debris pumped beside my silver in the labyrinth of his veins. Dark eyes blinked at me, and I realised that, of course, I wasn’t wearing my usual suited mask. It was strange to see my reflection—a face of skin, not silver—looking back at me, scarred and filthy.

Quickly, withdraw
. Lad’s disembodied voice sounded even more exhausted. I gathered my suit back, careful to be gentle, and was almost surprised when the Keeper did not collapse empty and hollow before me.

“
Tanyana?” he whispered, and scanned my face. He released me, lifting a shaking, white hand to touch the scars on my cheek. “You—you can see me?”

I nodded.
“Yes, Guardian. I can see all of you.”

“
Guardian?” He shivered. “But I failed, and the veil…the veil is falling.”

“
The Veil is stronger than it looks,” I said. “And so are you, Keeper. The strongest program of them all.”

“
Program?” The Keeper whispered. “You know what I am. You—you rebuilt me. How?”

I smiled, and placed my hand on his shoulder.
“It’s a very long story. But right now, I need you to do what you were created to do.” I gestured to the doors, all around us. “Close them, and hold them closed. Do that, and I will deal with your brothers. How does that sound? Will you help me, Keeper?”

He glanced around him.
“There are so many.”

“
You have been gone for a while. But I believe in you.”

The Keeper swallowed, visibly, and nodded.

“Go,” I said, and stepped back.

As he disappeared, Kichlan leaned against me. He was breathing hard, but smiling broadly.
“So,” he said. “That’s what the Keeper looks like. You were right. Those statues did a pretty good job.”

I started to nod, then frowned.
“Wait, you can see him?” And neither of us were masked in silver, either.

“
I can.” He shrugged. “Keep catching doors at the corner of my eyes too. Your fault, I assume?”

I smiled.
“Oh, I’m fairly sure it is.” Then I stepped forward, and held up my hand. “Vol!” I cried. “Zel! Fedor! Enough! Stop attacking them, and let the Keeper do his job!”

Silence rang in my ears. Then, over and over, the sound of doors closing. One at a time at first, then a cacophony of wood slamming and hinges creaking.