The Last City (23 page)

‘Must have been a mini-quake,’ he whispered to himself. He gave a nervous giggle and slapped a hand over his mouth to stifle it. How was it possible that he was still in one piece? He turned in the direction of his waiting transflyer and found himself staring into the skull-like face of a Death. He opened his mouth and screamed so loudly no sound actually came out – just a whistle of air exhaled at super-fast speed. The face vanished into the shadows and left Eli gasping. His legs took off before his mind registered he was running, and he didn’t stop praying until the
Summer Holiday
was zipping through the sky back towards his shelter.

S
ilho lay on her back watching a sky full of dying stars that flashed and flared, blazed and burst, to be swallowed by the darkness and reborn again. Her unconscious mind cavorted. It unearthed old graves so that memories and feelings scrambled out and staggered about, unsure of their place in the broken terrain of her thoughts. They were the real her and threw into sharp contrast what she had become.

Silho reached a gloved hand towards the swirling sky. She tried to sit up but hit a steel bar lying just above her chest and slumped back down. Pain sharpened her thoughts and she remembered.
They know
. She’d spent so long thinking about this moment, but her imaginings had never taken her here. She didn’t know what to do, how to feel. Instinctively, she reached into her pocket and grasped for her medication, the black pills that gifted her control over her abilities and over her emotions, but her pocket was empty. The pills were gone, left in the back room of the pub where Diega had thrown them. Panic hit and sent prickling spirals twisting through her body. Suddenly she was aware of each bead of sweat welling up and overflowing on her skin. The slight tremor of her hands grew to a shake. Her temperature flashed from hot to cold and back again. She squeezed her eyes shut against the visions above her. There was no ignoring these signs. They were the first of the physical symptoms of withdrawal from the drugs and a prelude to disaster.

Several times during childhood, through carelessness or stubbornness, she had let the medication wear off – always with the same disturbing consequences. Somewhere between the first sweats and the later nausea, the draw to use her skills and access the memories of the walls became unbearable, a pain far beyond starvation or thirst. Her resistance fell to pieces – to ashes – and blew away in the wind. Even if, somehow, she could have resisted her own need, the walls themselves worked against her. They called to her mind, growing from one whispering voice to a shouting million, gradually drowning her reality. She couldn’t hide from them, she couldn’t stop them; not without her medicine. Silho knew she had to escape this place and get back to the city before she lost control. She had to move now.

‘
Get up
,’ Silho whispered to herself.

She sucked in a deep breath and blinked her eyes open. The dancing creations above her were gone. Now she saw the dying stars were flashing lights embedded in a low concrete ceiling. With each flare, the bunker room took shape around her, its outdated tech and dusty benches, the aged boxes and bags stacked around the walls. A bitter, stinging smoke spiralled out from the crashed craft strewn all around her. Silho held her breath and listened for movement. All she could hear was the slow whirr of the engines running down. She manoeuvred out from underneath the wreckage and stood up. Instantly, she froze, sensing movement behind her, but before she could even think about escape, Copernicus Kane seized her and pinned her hands behind her back.

He forced her out of the steel rubble into the centre of the room where Diega stood watching them. In the one-tone flashes of light, Diega’s rainbow skin appeared red and her bloodline marks glowed like hot metal. The Fen rushed at Silho and struck her across the face. Silho staggered back. Diega lunged at her again, but the commander intervened, releasing Silho to restrain Diega. She thrashed violently, but couldn’t break his grip.

‘Let me go!’ she screamed.

‘Not until you’re in control,’ the commander said.

‘You’re going to have to kill me,’ Diega snarled. ‘Either me or her.’

Copernicus grabbed the magnetic restraints off his weapon belt and cuffed Diega’s hands. He kicked her legs from underneath her and pressed down on her back with one boot, holding her down. He snared Silho with his dark eyes that left nowhere to hide.

‘I’m going to ask you some questions,’ he said, ‘and you’re going to answer them. Whether you answer them truthfully will determine whether you live or die. Do you understand me?’

Silho nodded.

‘Are you the child of convicted serial killer Englan Chrisholm?’

Silho stared at the ground. She remembered her father teaching her to paint. His gentle, encouraging words whispered in her thoughts. It was one of the only clear memories of him she had left.

‘I’m the daughter of the artist Englan Chrisholm,’ she said. The confession sent shivers through her body that she couldn’t control.

‘You were reported dead. Tell me how you survived.’

‘Oren Harvey saved me from the fire.’

‘Why?’ Copernicus asked.

‘She was my mother.’

‘She herself told you this?’ he said.

Silho nodded, the ever-present images of her escape from the prison flashing in her mind. The commander’s voice snapped her back to attention.

‘Commander Harvey vanished after that fire. Where is she?’ Copernicus demanded.

Silho paused then said, ‘She’s dead.’ The word seemed to echo around the underground chamber.

The commander took a moment to process the information before continuing. ‘Tell me about your skills. Tell me everything you can do.’

Silho breathed in deeply. She clenched and unclenched her gloved hands. ‘I can touch a surface and see what’s happened in the past directly in front of it, and I can see people as light-forms. I can see where they are weakest and strongest and I can take from their strength to build my own.’

‘Can you take all their strength and kill them?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Silho said. ‘Only some, otherwise I set alight.’

‘Oren Harvey was a Pyron – you don’t have her skill?’

Silho shook her head. ‘I’m not a firelighter. I’m not resistant to the flame.’

‘That’s all?’ Copernicus asked.

‘That’s everything.’ She held his stare.

The commander reached down and dragged Diega, still struggling and screaming, to her feet. He pulled her around to face him.

‘She’s told the truth as she believes it.’

‘I don’t care!’ the Fen yelled.

‘Then do you care about Jude?’ Copernicus turned Diega towards the wreckage of the craft, where SevenM lay lifeless among the scattered debris. ‘With Brabel’s skills we may actually have a chance of tracking the witches and finding him. Without them, I’m not sure.’

‘My sister was murdered!’ Diega said. ‘You want me to just forget about that?’

‘No, but Brabel didn’t kill her.’

‘How do you know that?’ Diega challenged.

‘I know a murderer when I see one,’ Copernicus replied. ‘And so do you. Silho was six year-cycles old when it happened.’

‘I told you,’ Diega said. ‘I don’t care. I don’t care about anything. I want her dead!’

The commander held Diega closer and forced her to look into his eyes. ‘Do you trust me?’ he asked.

She stared back at him defiantly.

‘I said do you trust me?’ He raised his voice.

‘Yes. Yes I trust you!’ she shouted back.

‘Then listen to me. She was a child. Just like you were. Just like your sister was. She did not kill anyone.’

For several moments Diega’s fury remained, but then she looked away from him and finally stopped struggling.

After some time she spoke, her voice calmer, ‘Let me go.’

‘Are you in control?’ Copernicus asked.

She looked back into his eyes. ‘Let me go.’

The commander nodded and slowly unlocked her restraints.

She shoved away from him and turned to Silho. ‘You’re dead. Now or later. It doesn’t matter.’

‘Diega,’ the commander warned.

She glared at him, then went to gather up SevenM. Using her jacket as a sling, she tied the arachnid robot to her body.

‘I’m giving you a chance here,’ Copernicus said to Silho. ‘If you slip up, if I see you trying to hide anything, I will kill you. Do you understand me?’

The commander’s face was bruised and swollen from Shawe’s beating, but Silho saw in his eyes that he meant every word. She nodded.

The commander walked to the bunker’s control panel. ‘Their tech is ancient,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to go higher to get reception on our communicators.’

He headed to the elevator that travelled between the lowest room and the next section of the tower.

Silho forced herself to move, following Diega and Copernicus into the elevator, while the Fen stared at her with dagger-like eyes. They reached the next level and the elevator door opened. Just as they stepped out, Silho caught movement to their left. She turned to see Christy Shawe crouching beside the dead body of his gang-mate. The gangster king’s eyes found the commander’s. Shawe crossed himself three times in the human-breed gesture to send his friend’s soul to his ancestors in Paradise, then, in a sudden rush of movement, Shawe and Copernicus both drew their weapons. The commander got a lock on Shawe’s head before the gangster had even lifted his arm. Shawe spat on the floor between them.

‘Throw down your weapon,’ Copernicus instructed.

Shawe held his position and Diega armed her electrifier and aimed it at the gangster’s chest. ‘He said stand down.’

Shawe gave a humourless and dangerous laugh. ‘Who would have thought,’ he said to Copernicus, ‘that you’d be desperate enough to have
this one
as your right hand. Don’t you remember what she was like in the day? Girl bedded more gangsters than I can even name. What did I call her? Something about —’

‘Shut it,’ Diega warned. ‘What do you know about me? You’re just a pisshead thug with an over-inflated ego.’

‘Why don’t you go and sit down, sweetheart?’ Shawe mocked her. ‘And let me deal with your boss here.’

‘You couldn’t deal with him if you had a whole army at your back,’ Diega said.

Shawe gave his crooked smile. ‘Really?’ He glanced at the commander and shook his head. ‘Keeping secrets, are we?’

‘Shut your mouth, Shawe,’ Copernicus warned.

‘What’s wrong? Are you embarrassed?’ Shawe mocked him. ‘Why don’t you tell your lady friend here about who you really are? Tell her how you wouldn’t even be alive if it wasn’t for me.’

‘
Fsx
,’ Diega swore at Shawe in Fenlen.

‘Tell her!’ he demanded. ‘Or I will.’

‘What does it matter now?’ the commander maintained his cold control, but Silho could see he was tense.

Shawe snorted and regarded him with disgust. ‘Pissweak you are, just like when I first saw you – scrawny, stuttering, tripping over your own feet.’

‘So what?’ the commander said. ‘I was a kid.’

‘You were a circus monkey,’ Shawe spat, ‘performing for candy.’

‘What’s your point?’ Diega snapped. ‘Everyone knows his father was an Illusionist.’

‘Ah, but he wasn’t,’ Shawe said. ‘The father was a fake, but your boss here was the real thing, only he was too scared to do anything about it. I’d let him put on little shows for me and the boys and we’d give him food – our scraps.’

‘Enough,’ the commander growled, but Shawe kept going, speaking faster and louder.

‘One night I turned up at the circus and heard that some of the scullion carnies had seen us and ratted him out to the doctor – told him what his son could really do. I tracked down Silvan Kane. He was finishing up burying something in the ground. When he left, I dug it up and there was your boss – buried alive.’

Silho found herself staring at the commander’s face for a reaction, but he was completely closed. She felt sickened by what he’d suffered.

After a brief pause Diega said, ‘That’s your big news, Shawe? His father was a lunatic who tried to kill him? It’s sad, but it doesn’t change anything.’

The gangster scowled with annoyance. ‘I saved his neck! I let him run with me. I hid him. I always had his back, even though my own dad almost killed me for associating with an outsider. We were brothers. Then he went and sold us out to the state. Got many of us locked up, some of us killed, including my dad.’ He spoke to Copernicus. ‘You’re a backstabbing, squealing dog traitor. I should have left you to rot.’ Shawe armed his electrifier. ‘Tell me where my brother is – now!’

The commander armed his weapon as well, keeping it trained on Shawe’s head. The two men stared each other down, neither moving a muscle.

Silho saw worry grow in Diega’s expression as she looked between them, and she realised there was an actual possibility they were going to open fire on each other. The commander hadn’t shown his feelings, but obviously Shawe had shaken him.

‘We already told you, Shawe, the Skreaf have him.’ Diega spoke quickly. ‘We don’t know where, but I do know that Copernicus is your only chance of finding him, so if you care about your brother like you say you do – just lower your weapon.’

For several moments nothing changed, but then Shawe’s hands hesitated and he let his aim relax. When the commander finally reciprocated, Silho exhaled relief.

‘The witches have him.’ Shawe repeated. ‘Because of the ring? I don’t understand. Why would they want it?’

‘We don’t know,’ Diega said.

Shawe glared at her and Silho could see thoughts formulating in the green of his hard stare. ‘You said they’d taken one of yours as well?’

She nodded.

‘And you’re going after him?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then I’m coming with you.’

‘Like hell,’ Diega said.

Before any more could be said, the commander’s communicator beeped with reception. He dragged it off his belt and tapped in a number.

‘What are you doing?’ Shawe demanded.

Silho heard the line connect and a female voice say, ‘High Commander Levis Kline’s office.’

‘This is Commander Kane. I need to speak with High Commander Kline,’ Copernicus responded.

‘The High Commander is occupied at present. Can I take a message and —’ The girl cut out and a man with an aged, gravelly voice spoke up. ‘Kane, this is Kline. What’s your status?’

‘My team was attacked by Skreaf witches. The sect has been resurrected,’ Copernicus paused for a response and when the High Commander spoke again, Silho noticed no change at all to his flat tone.

‘Who have you told about this?’

‘No one as yet,’ Copernicus said. ‘We’re in the Matadori – Outpost 109. We need a recon unit to come as soon as possible.’

‘I’ll dispatch one immediately,’ Kline said.