Читать книгу: «The Puzzler’s War»
THE PUZZLER’S WAR
THE TARAKAN CHRONICLES BOOK TWO
Eyal Kless
Copyright
HarperVoyager
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020
Copyright © Eyal Kless 2020
Cover illustration © Shutterstock.com
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020
Eyal Kless asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008272333
Ebook Edition © November 2019 ISBN: 9780008272340
Version: 2019-12-02
Dedication
To Maayan and Ella,
For teaching me about love
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Acknowledgements
About the Author
About the Publisher
Prologue
“This? This is your plan?”
“It’s the only way.”
“I could lose everything. I could lose myself.”
“Jean Pierre, I’m sorry, you woke up too early. I cannot extract you, not yet. You’ll need to wait. Best if you go back to sleep.”
“No … I cannot go back to the void. Please …”
“Then this is the only way.”
“There must be another solution.”
“I am discovered. He deployed trackers. I must go now. This is the only way.”
“No, don’t … take me with you … please … Don’t … Vitor … hello?”
Pain brought him out of the darkness. It was as if thousands of needles punctured his body, each delivering an electric shock straight into his nervous system. He convulsed, thrashed about. His mouth opened in a silent scream and was instantly filled with the gooey liquid he was immersed in. He was choking and his arms were flailing about in panic when he suddenly touched something soft and flexible. Without thinking or seeing, he tried to grasp it, but the material was too sleek and tight to take hold of. Panic took his last shred of reasonable thought, and he barely noticed the strange feeling in his fingers as he lashed out once more and felt the material rip under his touch. Whatever he was trapped in suddenly tilted, and he was washed down some kind of a metal tube. He finally rolled onto a hard surface, hitting his knees and jaw and badly twisting a hand. The pain was different from what had accosted him before, and he just added it to the list of awful sensations he was experiencing all at once. He coughed and vomited, and tried to raise himself, or at least move away from his own bile.
There was a lot of movement around him, and noise, too. It hurt his ears. Bodies brushed against him, each touch an agony. The air smelled odd, and he heard incomprehensible hisses and snarls around him. When he tried to speak, what came out was no different, a hiss of some sort.
A mesh of colours swirled around him. He blinked and shook his head but what he saw was as distorted as it was incomprehensible. He lowered his head and shook it as much as he dared, then opened his eyes again.
The first thing he could actually focus on was his hand, but it was not actually a hand. Four digits, gnarled skin, and talons. He had talons. As he looked at them in shock, he suddenly realised he could slightly retract and extend the talons in and out of his four digits. Not exactly pull them all in but change their angle and curve. It was as odd as it was frightening, but it was also the first moment of control he had felt since he woke up, so in a way it was also comforting.
What happened to me?
The coherent thought was followed by vague, abstract memories he could not comprehend. He was trapped somewhere, he escaped. It was a dangerous, crazy plan, but Professor Vitor’s words echoed in his confused mind, This is the only way.
Who am I?
Another body brushed by him, pushing him sideways with its sheer bulk. He turned his head, and all rational thought escaped from his mind. Long snouts, enormous hind legs, fangs, olive green skin, talons, fucking tails … There were monsters all around him. He instinctively recoiled until his back hit something cold and hard. There were more than a few who were fighting, tearing and biting at each other, screaming pain and frustration, but most other monsters just watched and none of them were paying him any attention. He realised his talons were still extended outwards, ready to shred any attacker, and he felt unfamiliar aggression rise in him as he watched the fights around him. He did not want only to defend himself, he wanted to kill, and felt his body tense as the knowledge of how to kill flooded his mind. He breathed deeply, trying to control those emotions, until he finally lowered his arms.
How long had he been like this? He could not tell. The air was suddenly filled with something else, a sweet and enticing scent, which drew his thoughts away. The fighting stopped, all the creatures around him moving their heads as if shaking off a bad dream. Round steel doors, which he had not registered before, rolled sideways and revealed a long tunnel. He tried to think, to make sense of it all, but something was confusing his thoughts. A hiss in his mind began to grow louder. It was not a natural sound, but it was appealing nonetheless. Slowly, one of the creatures moved towards the open tunnel. The rest followed, and eventually so did he. At first, he took tentative steps on his strong hind legs but as the urge to move faster grew in him, he dropped onto all fours, like an animal.
What am I?
The trot became a run, which became a mad dash in semidarkness, chasing a tail while being chased from behind. He was moving fast, faster than he had ever experienced before, faster than any human could run. The sensation was exhilarating.
They emerged into the light, and he felt sweet pain as the hot rays of the sun burned into his skin. He still felt the pull in his mind, but he made himself stop and stand up as others passed him. There were structures, so many that they filled the horizon, their blackness a contrast to the yellow-red sand. The air was dry and hot, slightly burning with each breath, but he did not care. At least there was some kind of familiarity to the scene he was seeing.
Where am I?
In the light of the sun he was even more deformed and hideous. And sexless, as far as he could check. That fact was registered calmly. Too much had happened in too short a time to panic about the lack of genitals.
The pull in his mind was still there but there was something else, just behind him, a different voice, whispering. He saw the last of his kind disperse and disappear among the buildings, and he even took several more steps towards where they were running. But no. There was something else.
He made himself stop, rise up, and concentrate until the hiss faded, and so did the urge to go find it. Instead, another sound became noticeable. This sound had structure and meaning.
Intelligence.
The sound grew louder. He could feel it vibrating in his skull and coursing through his body. Then the noise merged into a sentence in his mind.
“Come to me.”
He hesitated briefly. Something in him desperately wanted to run towards the structures and join his … kin? How quickly had he felt empathy towards those monsters? How long before he completely became one of them? Maybe he should—
“Come to me, please.” The tone was high-pitched, the voice of a child on the cusp of becoming a young woman, but the urgency of it was clear.
Come to me. An image began to form in his mind. Red curls, grey eyes in the background he saw mountains with white tips. The urge to move in a new direction became almost a pain in his gut.
He turned and began moving in a different direction from the one his brethren had gone in. At first he walked, but a little later he lowered his body to the ground and accelerated. Might as well use all the perks this monstrous body had bestowed.
He followed the voice.
“Master.”
The old man took his time before raising his gaze from the screens. The soldier, his soldier, stood anxiously at attention. Master, King, God—when had he gotten so accustomed to these titles? Eons ago, but he never actually demanded the titles. It came naturally to them, first to his team, then to his army, and now to his people, his flock of murderous sheep.
“Master …” The soldier spoke again, looking hesitant.
The headache was back. He could feel the light throbbing beginning to build to what would soon become the pain he had never managed to get accustomed to, even after all these years. He resisted the useless gesture of massaging his temples. Instead he frowned at the soldier impatiently, and upon meeting his gaze, the soldier spoke immediately, blathering in nervousness.
“They are gathering outside, Master, about a hundred people from the eastern village.”
“I know,” he answered slowly. “And there are seventy-one of them, precisely.” Of course he knew. The screens on his table had come to life as soon as the crowd approached the perimeter, and even the weak security AI he had installed knew how to count heads.
He watched them gather, surrounded by guards. They were, for all intents and purposes, his people, and not for the first or last time he pondered about the craziness of human behaviour.
True, he protected them, occasionally helped or fed them, but every once in a while, like the vampire of the old horror stories, he had to feed off them as well. And still they came, carrying primitive gifts instead of torches and pitchforks. Sometimes they came with pleas, sometimes with seasonal offerings or pledges. This time they came to witness a miracle.
“It’s just that the Captain said there’s a storm brewing and—”
“I know about the storm.” He cut the soldier off and rose slowly from his chair, masking with his hand the grimace of pain that simple action caused. The headaches were the worst, but for the past few months his entire body suffered with every movement. Norma offered medicine and treatment, but that was just temporary relief and left him weakened and confused. Not the state of mind he wanted to be in while surrounded by the people he had chosen to lead. Instead of drugging himself to death, he simply learned to accept it; the pain was part of his existence now. He even drew a sort of masochistic comfort from it. What was the name of that old man from the folk legends? Methuselah, that was it. Old as time, that was how he felt, that was who he was. Well, the pain was proof that he was still alive, still human, barely.
While the soldier stepped smartly behind him, he walked slowly to the next room, where several of his scientists, if one was prepared to debase that term, were working. He got their full attention simply by entering the room. Radovitch came to him immediately and bowed. He fucking bowed, his fat hand combing wisps of thin hair back over a glistening bald patch as he rose back to an upright position.
“Report.”
“Storm is coming.”
He wanted to slap the man. It was quite unbelievable that he had taken Radovitch with him all the way from the old continent. It was achingly obvious that the potential he had seen in him as a young man had failed to fully bloom. “Tell me what I do not know yet. Is the Star Pillar ready?”
Radovitch hesitated, scratching his balding head. “A few more days of sun would make things less strenuous on the auxiliary generators.”
“The storm will last for days, perhaps weeks. I am going to head there today to complete the next sequence. Inform the guard post to expect me.”
Radovitch looked as if he was about to argue but thought better of it. And rightly so. He’s been getting too lax, which makes him prone to mistakes. And I can really use a new pair of lungs.
“What about the thing we talked about?”
Radovitch looked vague. Yep, definitely a new pair of lungs, I know they will match, that was the other reason I kept you alive till now.
The man suddenly brightened up, remembering, and shifting to his native, old-continent tongue as a way of precaution. “Ah yes, of course, we established a link to one of the operatives, but it’s weak.”
“Even better, that means a diminished chance of detection. You know who the operative is?”
“No, but we were lucky. To judge from the serial number she’s an old one, high ranked—but let’s say she was shelved pretty deep. I am almost positive we can extract her without getting caught.”
“‘Almost positive’?”
He fretted. “I found an emergency bunker with a very low energy signature. Even if they catch us, they would not be able to find where she went.”
“Fine.” You may live another day. “I will be away for a while. I want to wake her up before I go up to the hub and even if I am still up there, initiate the dream sequence in a week’s time. That was the standard mode of operation for Tarakan hibernating agents”—as far as I know. He did not voice the last thought out loud, having learned long ago that no one wanted to follow a leader who admitted such weaknesses.
Radovitch nodded.
“This is important, Radovitch.” Only physical fatigue stopped him from grabbing the man by the collar of his coat. “I must have this Puzzler, and this is the only lead we had for a whole year. From this moment on, this is your only priority. I am sending Sergiu, too.”
“Yes, Master.” Radovitch grimaced at the mention of the name. The two men disliked each other at least as much as they were loyal to him. He made a slight gesture of dismissal with his hand, and Radovitch bowed stiffly one more time and walked back to his post.
Now, it’s showtime.
By the time he reached the door leading outside, there were already six soldiers surrounding him, all wearing proper protective gear, masks included. As a soldier laboured to turn the heavy wheel that unlocked the sealed door, he caught his own reflection. His body was so badly ravaged by age, war, contamination, and countless surgeries; he looked a proper monster, all gnarled, scarred, and wrinkled, like a sick old oak tree.
Oh, Professor Vitor. If you could see me now … Would you have recognised me, your former student, your colleague, your angel of destruction?
He wondered, not for the first time, if he would have been in a better condition had he succumbed to peer pressure and changed his body to a newer model just before the Catastrophe happened. As always, he consoled himself that it would not have made a huge difference. Perhaps he would have been able to keep more of his original body organs or wear less of other people’s skin, but sooner or later, everything breaks down and dies. Besides, the condition of the body was only the tip of the iceberg when measured against what had happened to his soul.
The leading guard opened the hatch for them to step out. As usual, he did not bother with the antiradiation garments. Having more frequent radiation treatment was worth shedding the cumbersome suits and it certainly solidified his fame. Nothing could touch him. Nothing.
The crowd outside was also wearing an assortment of real or pretend protective gear. Some wrapped themselves in aluminum foils or old plastic. Several of them even wore ancient gas masks. It was quite comical, in a way.
After all these years, the radiation fallout and soil contamination in this area were not as high as they used to be, but babies who were deformed or dead at birth were common. Despite the people’s resilience, the average life expectancy would have been in the low thirties if it was not for him, their miracle maker, their Lord.
He walked towards them. The Star Pillar was looming behind him, with all of its enormity. It made for a good effect. The last surviving wonder of the world, humanity’s greatest achievement, cutting through the grey dust cloud, lighting their nights, giving them hope but also fear.
Fear is better than hope.
They bowed deeply when he emerged, some even going down on their knees. There was a ceremony. There always fucking was, and they brought offerings, of course, some soil-grown food, a sickly goat, and several gallons of purified water. He hoped that the Lieutenant who accepted the gifts on his behalf would remember that with no exception, those gifts must be purged, even the goat, lest they lose any more people.
When it was over the crowd parted to let a couple step forward. They were nervous, as they should have been, and the wife’s eyes spoke of fear and misery. Her husband looked, and probably smelled, as if he had rolled in manure. A farmer, then, and he too was shaking visibly when he handed the cot to the Lieutenant. The cot was wrapped in semitransparent plastic and it was a miracle the baby did not suffocate. It was a girl.
The Lieutenant scanned the parents and the baby with the handheld device, then carefully unwrapped the the plastic foil, took the baby in his arms, and brought her to his master.
The baby was limp in his arms, most likely suffering from malnutrition and severe radiation poisoning. It was a surprise she was still alive, the little fighter.
He was the only one who turned to leave. There was no use in parading his guards through the decontamination process. Dienna and the rest of the team were waiting for him on the other side of it. She took the baby from his arms and rushed to the clinic. He walked after them, with dignity. Never run. Not that I could anymore.
“Hello, Norma,” he said when he entered the clinic. “Report to my ears only.”
After all these years, the AI’s voice was cracked and distorted to the point where it was actually discomforting to hear, especially when resonating inside his head. Her voice subroutines needed a complete overhaul, but no one of his team was proficient enough to conduct such an operation, and he simply did not have the time nor the patience to go through the delicate process. Besides, the distorted sound reminded him that time was running out. He did not have long before the forces of entropy would strike him down. Everything was falling apart. He was falling apart. It was time to make yet another bold move. His last one should certainly make an exit.
The baby girl’s numbers were bad but not diabolical. She might live, or at least survive the process, which was the most important part.
“Begin radiation flush process and cellular rejuvenation,” he commanded. The others had already shuffled out and left him alone. Hearing him speak out loud, Norma responded verbally as well.
“I remind you this process is costly, and with our limited resources and the baby’s survival chances—”
“Do it.” The nice thing about Norma was that she had stopped getting pissed off when he cut her off, especially after he made those changes in her programming. Decontaminating the baby meant that some of his soldiers would have to forgo their monthly radiation treatment, but the dividends would be worth it. He hoped.
“Take a DNA sample as well,” he added as the machines around him began to hum. This process took a lot of energy and the cost was always dear, beginning with the long scanners. He was blanked out for sure now, blind to the world. He prayed the freezers remained functioning—it would be a royal mess if they lost power like they had two years ago.
“I remind you that our bank is at ninety-three percent capacity,” Norma’s voice had a definite colder edge this time. “This would add null point sixty-eight percent and put us at high risk of …”
He looked down at the unconscious baby, letting Norma’s voice fade into the background. It had been so long since he thought of Deborah, but when the memory surfaced it was like a hammer blow to his chest. He used to have snippets of her overly excited voice messages and clips of her horse-riding high jumps in his brain amp, but they were wiped off so long ago, he wasn’t sure anymore that the face he conjured in his mind’s eye was his daughter’s real face. It made him angry.
“How diverse is her DNA?” He steeled his voice.
There was a pause. It was a sign of Norma’s decline that she had to take time to calculate the answer.
Yeah, entropy is a bitch.
“She is a seven point two on the scale,” the Sentient Program finally answered.
He made a decision. “Take her DNA and dump a sample of value seven or less. Did you analyse the parents yet?”
“Of course I did.”
Was Norma offended by his comments? Long ago he had stopped caring about who got hurt by his words or actions, but there was something about the baby that woke a long-lost sensitivity in him. He hated it.
“Which one of the parents is more compatible?”
“Both could donate working organs.” This was not a surprise, as all his people were compatible to some degree; he had made sure of that. Norma continued, “The female has much better stamina than the male and a seventeen percent better chance in surviving any medical process, should you not take one of the major organs, of course.”
Ach, the good old days when one could have grown the needed organ in a lab. Nowadays he had to cull the herd.
“How am I doing?”
There was no pause this time, Norma kept a constant tab on him.
“You are functioning seventy-three percent at the moment.”
Seventy-three? He felt less than that, to be honest. He once went as low as forty-seven, and that was hell; he even had to use a cane for months after that. Never again.
He turned his thoughts back to the matter at hand. Killing the mother would mean certain death to the child, that he knew, but even if the radiation purge was successful, it would be a miracle if the child lived to adulthood.
He pondered about what to do as the process continued. When the purge was over he injected the baby with a booster and a vaccine. Not the healthiest mix in her weak condition, but that would have to do.
Her skin was still pale but had lost the yellow feverish hue, and her breathing was definitely deeper. She was asleep when he took her in his arms. Even after all these years, he instinctively sniffed her head, a useless gesture as he had lost his sense of smell long ago.
Deborah …
There was a saying in one of the old religions, he did not remember which one: He who saves even one soul, it is as if he has saved an entire world. Even if this was true, the tab was not running in his favour.
When he walked back outside the sun was already gone and the clouds were heavy with contaminated rain. For the people gathered outside, it would be a long, wet track back to their homes. They would not wait for the second part of the ceremony, where the price had to be paid.
He pinched the baby and she awoke with a startled, healthy wail of complaint. This brought a cheer from the awaiting crowd, and they all went to their knees as he approached. And so, another legend is created, another miracle. A story that will spread from family to family and from village to village, told and retold on those cold, dry nights. With each version, my part will become greater and the price diminished until it’s forgotten. This is human nature in a nutshell.
The baby’s mother rose back to her feet and accepted her daughter into her arms. She was crying with gratitude and relief.
“Take these.” He shoved the wrapped pills into her hand. “Melt one in boiling water, let it cool, and drip it into her mouth after feeding. Do it twice a day for a week.”
She did not dare meet his eyes but nodded her understanding as her husband came to stand beside her. It was now obvious who would pay the price, and he was pale and visibly shaking. Nevertheless, he kissed his daughter on the forehead and briefly lay a hand on his wife’s shoulder. The mood of the crowd grew sombre, but they accepted the transaction. A price had to be paid, that was the rule. At least this farmer did not resist. He walked away with the soldiers without glancing back. By the time he would see him again, the farmer would be strapped to the chair in the clinic. This was when most forgot all about their promise and pleaded for mercy.
Let’s hope, for your wife’s and daughter’s sakes, that you survive. But I need, at the very least, a new kidney.
He turned to follow but, as always, the sight of the Star Pillar looming above the military camp made him pause in wonder. It was several hours drive away but Tarakan’s greatest feat, a true wonder of the world, was so enormous, it felt as if he were standing at the bottom of it.
This is where it all began. I guess this is where it will end.
As he stood, lost in memory, a collective chant rose from the crowd behind him, first a whisper, but intensifying in a long crescendo. They were calling his name, in gratitude, in awe, in submission.
His name was Mannes.
1
Twinkle Eyes
There is nothing out of the ordinary in waking up, unless you are dead.
My first memory, as soon as I opened my eyes, was of my consciousness rapidly diminishing into black nothingness. Even as I drew my first rapid breaths, I knew, to the core of my being, that I had perished in the City Within the Mountain, and as if leaving this world wasn’t enough, I died in horrible agony. During the last bit of the transition, my body had been shredded by the claws and teeth of Lizards. One never knew what people really felt or thought as they died, since the dead are hardly in a position to talk about it. But now I had the answer, and it wasn’t nice or comforting at all. As my mind was being pulled away from my dying body it instinctively fought to cling to this world and the vessel it occupied, refusing to lose consciousness. I remembered the whole horrid mess of it right until the very end. And yet, my eyes had just opened and I sat up in a soft bed. I was alive. Or was I?
My first reaction was to check myself with my hands. I was dressed in a thin white tunic and pants made of a soft material I had never felt before. I pulled the tunic up and checked my abdomen. It was whole—no sign of the sharp claws that I knew had ripped my skin. The memory flashed through my mind and made me recoil and drop the tunic.
I shook my head to clear the awful images and looked around. I was inside a small room, which was empty but for a small door at the far end and an open window to my right. Rays of light accompanied a soft breeze, and the sound of chirping birds spilled into the room. I got up from the bed and saw tall, sturdy oak trees only a few paces from the open window. The air was sweet, and I closed my eyes and took several deep breaths. That was a mistake. As if waiting for an opportunity, memories flooded my senses. The stench of death and the pain and horror of dying filled my head. It was terrible, and frighteningly vivid.
I stumbled backwards and found myself sitting on the soft bed again, breathing hard, vowing not to shut my eyes for as long as I could. After a while I looked around again and saw that my initial impression of the room being empty was wrong. There was a mirror hanging on the wall. A quick check showed that I was still me, whole and marked with the same tattoos around my eyes that I was born with. Someone must have done an amazing assembly job because I distinctly remembered there being pieces of me all over the place. Which prompted my first clear thought.
Something’s not right.
Not that I was complaining about being alive, but there was something definitely odd about this whole situation. I felt it in my gut, which, I checked again, was now safely tucked inside my body.
There was nothing to do but walk to the door, grasp the wooden handle and open it. I didn’t know what to expect, but it sure wasn’t a pair of white slippers awaiting me on the grey doormat. I gingerly slipped my foot into one, and watched it mold itself perfectly to my foot.
Yep, something’s rusted here.
I stepped out onto a paved footpath crossing a small garden in full bloom. As I watched, large yellow-and-black bees buzzed among perfect blossoms. Small hummingbirds flew above me, and the sun caressed my skin. I dared not close my eyes again, but stood still for a long time, basking in it.
Is this heaven?
After a while I took the footpath to a small gate, walked through it into the forest. It wasn’t long before I reached a small clearing, where a young boy was waiting for me, sitting at a wooden table laden with ripe fruit, cheese, bread, and a steaming pot. I recognised him as I walked closer: brown eyes, a shaved head, a small scar on his chin. There was no mistaking it was the child that I grew to imagine and then recognise when I met his projection deep inside the City Within the Mountain. He was now and had for many years been a part of Adam, the mostly dormant Tarakan Sentient Program, and though he could change his appearance at will, for some reason he had chosen the features of the young boy with which he was uploaded.
I sat down on the wooden bench across the table. Wordlessly, Rafik lifted the pot and poured the steaming contents into the cup that was in front of me. I watched the hot liquid filling the cup. When Rafik placed the pot back at the centre of the table, I looked at the cup and said, “I bet you didn’t have to do that.”
I picked up my cup and sniffed the tantalizing aroma. “I bet my cup could have been filled without you lifting or even touching the pot.”
“Sometimes the gesture is as important as the result,” Rafik answered, watching as I took a sip from the teacup. It was the best thing I had ever tasted. The last time we spoke I asked Rafik to appear in adult form, but this time he had chosen to appear as a kid on the verge of adolescence. I wondered why.
“Are we … am I … inside Adam now?” It was an obvious question, but I needed confirmation.
Rafik nodded. “Yes, we extracted you just in time. It wasn’t easy, or ‘a smooth operation,’ as you Salvationists like to say, and we had to do some delicate reconstructions to your consciousness, but here you are.”
I managed to suppress a shudder as I looked around. “Is this all real?”
“You asked me that before, remember?” Rafik answered, watching me nod my assent before adding, “Does it matter?”
I drank more deeply this time. The liquid was too hot and burned my throat. I coughed and spat most of it. It felt real.
When I got my bearings, I set down the cup but Rafik leaned over and poured some more tea, careful not to spill a drop.
“Did we even win?” I looked him in the eye. “We lost many good Trolls in that battle. It would be nice to know it wasn’t in vain.”
“We have control of the main laboratory, yes.” Rafik leaned back in his chair. “And Cain’s Lizard production has been halved. The numbers are now … manageable. In time, the Valley will be cleansed of the hordes and it will be even safer to come back.”
“With some more Puzzlers,” I remarked, noting to myself that his face remained blank. We had entered the City Within the Mountain to find Rafik only to find ourselves caught in the middle of a war between these two strange entities, Adam and Cain. That war had begun with the Catastrophe, and I was just another name in the casualty list.
I took a strange yellow fruit from the basket.
“You have to peel the skin off,” Rafik warned me just as I brought it to my mouth.
“Is it any good?” I asked as my hands broke the tip of the fruit
“You’ll have to try for yourself. I like it.”
He was right. It was very good, especially for something that did not exist.
“What is it called?”
“A banana.”
“Nice.”
I ate the banana but resisted taking another one from the basket. I dropped the peel and saw it land on the ground beside me.
“What now? Happily ever after?”
There was a glint in Rafik’s eyes. “No, I am afraid we are not there yet, but before I explain, let me ask you something. The reconstruction of your mind was—” Rafik made a point of searching for a word he most likely already knew he was going to use “—not easy. Even with Tarakan technology, it was a long, meticulous process, and it could be disorienting. Could you tell me your name?”
“Twinkle Eyes,” I answered almost immediately.
Rafik tilted his head in mock amusement. “What is your real name?”
It was childish, but I wanted to keep at least one thing away from the people, or creature, who had forced me and my friends on a suicide mission. “I think I like the name Twinkle Eyes, if you don’t mind, but wait …” The meaning of his words suddenly hit me with the force of a power hammer. “You said it took you a long time to put me back together again. How long has it been since I died in the laboratory?”
“A little over five years.”
“Oh rust.” I breathed out, my hands grasping the wooden table. “But I don’t remember anything since being torn to pieces … since dying.” I pointed at Rafik, surprised that my finger was not trembling. “You just kept me in a dark cell. That was not what we agreed upon.”
“First of all”—Rafik tapped the table lightly with his finger—“that deal was made under extreme duress.”
“Still. A deal’s a de—”
“We agreed to save and upload you into Adam,” Rafik said, interrupting me for the first time, “but there were no preagreed terms as to the conditions in which we would keep you. This”—he gestured around us—“all this”—he pointed at the food on the table—“costs energy we cannot afford to spend. We kept you alive and stimulated enough not to go insane. But there was no reason for you to be kept conscious.”
“So I might as well have died in the laboratory. A dreamless, bodyless sleep seems awfully close to the universal description of death.”
“Yet here you are, drinking and eating with me in the middle of this beautiful forest.” Rafik took a careful sip from his own cup, blowing gently on the surface before bringing it to his lips.
“This place doesn’t really exist,” I said, leaning back and glancing at the banana peel I had thrown to the ground. It was still there.
“Not in the physical world, true, but there are many advantages for you here.” Rafik began counting them on his fingers. “You will not grow old, or tired, or sick, and you will sleep only when you wish to experience that condition.”
“After what you did to me, I’m not sure I want to close my eyes ever again.”
“There is almost nothing you cannot do here.” Rafik ignored my comment, pointing up. “See that high branch over there?” I looked up. “Try flying up to it.”
I looked back at Rafik. “You mean … I can …?”
Rafik nodded, a soft smile touching his lips. “If you wish—the physical world in this place would allow you to fly, easily.”
I got up from the bench and stood there, looking up. “What do I do?”
“Just wish to fly to the branch.”
And so it was. My legs suddenly left the ground and I slowly glided up to the high branch.
I whooped like a child, then tried some manoeuvres. They were easy once I realised what I wanted to do. I spread my arms and soared up to the skies. When I looked down, I saw that the wooden cabin and the garden were just small dots under me. What I thought of as a thick forest was nothing more than several rows of trees surrounding the centre. Beyond that there was white nothingness spreading all around me. It was a sobering view.
“You can come down now.” Rafik’s voice echoed in my head and in a blink of an eye, I was standing in front of him again.
“In the past, every new mind received a large piece of world to design as it wished.” Rafik spoke as I was steadying myself and getting my bearings. “Much larger than this little pocket, and each mind was free to create what it desired. Most would give themselves some kind of physical powers, altered their age and appearance, and quickly realised they could make every moment of time here only a fraction of the time in the real world. Then they would begin to get … inventive.” Rafik smiled and gestured for me to sit down again. I complied.
“But all of this is impossible now. We have a very limited amount of energy to spend, so we need to hibernate most of our minds, like we did with yours.”
“I thought we won the war against Cain.”
“We won the battle, yes, but the war—I am afraid not.”
I picked up a butter cookie from a large pile, but dropped it back when a thought hit me. “And here we are,” I said. “After five years of happy slumber, you suddenly decide to wake me up.” I sighed. “Better tell me what this is all about.”
Rafik took a slow, deliberate sip from his own cup and began talking about a seemingly unrelated subject.
“There used to be an old hand-to-hand combat style called jiujitsu. Now it is just another piece of lost human knowledge. The practitioners trained for combat starting on their backs, with their opponent laying on top of them.”
“That … does not make sense,” I said, “or sound like a fair deal.”
“Who said combat was fair?” Rafik remarked drily. “With training and discipline, even a dainty woman could escape the vulnerable position and subdue a larger, stronger opponent. In a way, Adam and Cain are locked in such a battle. Adam is stronger and more capable, but despite being on its back, so to speak, Cain has managed to gain an advantage, a choke hold of sorts. He is slowly depriving us of air, trying to suffocate Adam, and he is now closer to succeeding than we anticipated.”
“I’m a little lost here,” I said, not hiding the bitterness in my voice. “Maybe it’s the shock of death and betrayal.”
Rafik ignored me again. “Vincha was supposed to come back with her daughter, Emilija, a Puzzler who had all the signs of harbouring a rich code line in her essence—perhaps the last strain we need to become fully awakened again. But Vincha never came back.”
“The fact that you believed Vincha would ever show up here again makes me question your thought process.” It felt good to hurl that little insult. “She went through all that rust just to keep Emilija safe and you thought she would hand her over to you, just like that?”
“We knew there was a chance Vincha would not see reason.”
“A chance?”
“But Puzzlers always end up in the Valley,” Rafik continued, unfazed by my remark. “They are drawn back to Tarakan. It is part of their DNA.”
“Their what?”
“Their essence. It is what they are made of and an important influence on who they end up being,” Rafik explained, not showing any signs of losing patience. “We knew that even if Vincha failed to bring her daughter, Emilija would eventually find her way to us. We had other means of reaching out to her.”
“Like the Great Puzzle dreams?”
Rafik paused, then nodded. “It was inevitable she would show up eventually, with or without her mother. And if she failed or died, someone else would eventually come.”
“But something went wrong, didn’t it?” I said without thinking. “Something that made you abandon your waiting strategy and wake me up from my beauty sleep.”
Rafik’s first sign of hesitation proved I’d hit the mark, making me feel childishly proud.
“The valley is not cleared of the Lizards, but it is not as dangerous as it used to be,” Rafik said. “We estimated that Salvationist crews would begin coming back by now, but that did not happen. We have a limited amount of information about what is happening outside our sphere of influence, but it seems that the City of Towers is preoccupied with some kind of a conflict.”
“You mean war?” I straightened on my seat.
Rafik shrugged. “Some kind of a limited armed conflict, not posing a danger to the city itself, but it keeps the Trolls occupied.”
“Well, as you said”—I shrugged—“it is only a matter of time …” Come on, Rafik, spill it out …
“A few weeks ago, Cain staged an attack on several fronts. He managed to penetrate our defences only for a short time, but after the attack was repelled, we found out he stole one of our hibernating agents.”
“Which is …?”
“A highly trained Tarakan operative that we used for special operations. We managed to close the gaps in our defences, but not before Cain found out about Emilija.”
“For a side which won the day, we are getting hit quite often.”
This time the insult seemed to hit home because Rafik snapped back, “Well, Cain had some outside help. Now this agent is being used to locate Vincha’s daughter. If Cain finds her first, his choke hold on Adam will be complete. Cain would win.” For the first time I saw emotion cross Rafik’s face. It could have even been fear.
“That ‘outside help’ you mentioned …” I said, realising too late that the snap answer was not a slip of the tongue; it was bait. I was being reeled nice and slowly into something I was going to regret.
“What do you know about Mannes Holtz?”
I shrugged, surprised. “Nothing much. The name used to crop up in the city every few months or so. He is something between a rumour and a myth, said to live down south, past the Broken Sands. People claim he drinks the blood of his foes and can only be killed by a stake through his heart. I say, if he even exists, he is probably some ruthless warlord.” Another memory surfaced, and I added, “I used to know someone who claimed association with him, but the man was way too far gone on the drink to keep a coherent story.”
“Mannes Holtz does exist, and although we cannot confirm that he drinks blood, I can tell you he predates the Catastrophe, which he himself caused.”
It took a moment for Rafik’s words to sink in.
“You mean he …”
“Mannes is now more than a hundred and fifty years old. He used to be one of us, a high-ranking Tarkanian, but in truth he was a traitor, a murderer, and the one who created Cain. Cain was the first strike that began the war you call the Catastrophe. At the time, we thought Mannes had been duped or somehow coerced to create Cain, and that he died on the day of the Catastrophe. But he somehow survived and emerged a few decades ago, taking control of the Star Pillar, a faraway but strategic area and a vulnerable spot in Adam’s defence. He had been working continuously to strengthen Cain and weaken us. Whatever rumours you want to believe, I assure you Mannes is as ruthless as he is capable, and now he is aware of Emilija and her importance.”
I was beginning to suspect that my head was not throbbing only due to the fact that I did not, technically, possess a real head.
“So … you want me …” I said slowly and deliberately.
“… to find Emilija for us.” Rafik completed the sentence. “Most likely by locating her mother, Vincha.”
The look on my face must have spoken volumes because Rafik continued hurriedly, “You have been successful in finding her before.”
“By sheer luck. Do you know how many times I almost died on that mission? And I mean ‘times’ aside from the time I actually did die.”
“We have confidence in you.” Rafik leaned forward. “And this time you will have information and equipment. There are files on Mannes we managed to extract after the Catastrophe. You should view them as well, once you are transferred to the bunker.”
“Transferred where?”
“We will send you back to the physical world. The bunker you will wake up in is still well supplied. You will have all that you need on your mission.”
“Back from the dead for one final mission,” I said wryly. “Sounds like one of the Salvo-novels I used to read when I was young and stupid. What if I refuse to go?”
Rafik waited a little before answering. “You would go back to sleep. We cannot spend the energy to keep you self-aware. But if you bring us Emilija, you’ll have a world to be a God in.”
This time I took my time before asking, “Where’s the stick?”
“The what?”
I stared him down. “You dangled a very ripe, juicy carrot in front of my eyes, but what happens if I fail this insane mission, or what stops me from forgetting the whole thing and staying in the physical world? Where’s the stick? There’s always a rusting stick.”
“Your bodies will begin to decay in less than three years.” Rafik locked eyes with me. “It is a relatively quick but nevertheless unpleasant experience.”
“Here’s the stick,” I said quietly. Then added, “You said ‘bodies’?”
“You won’t be sent on such a dangerous mission on your own.”
“Ah, planning an armed, Troll escort team to accompany me?”
“‘Escort,’ yes. ‘Team,’ that depends on your point of view.” My guess was that Rafik knew he’d broken me and was now simply enjoying himself.
“Who do you have in mind?”
Rafik told me, and for the first time since I came back to life, I smiled.
2
Peach
Initializing.
Date and time are not known.
Reporting full physical functions and health.
No specific orders embedded in my surface memory.
Vessel is of a middle-aged woman showing Asian heritage, dark skinned. Height and weight under average for women in this hemisphere.
Vessel has been grown for reconnaissance and infiltration, not combat. Normal physical limitations and only basic damage resistance. Pain dumpers fully functioning, and standard combat capabilities and reflexes. ESM active.
No internal equipment is detected. For security reasons, I will not use external equipment to contact headquarters.
The sterilized compartment contains basic gear, light clothing, nourishment pills, rapid hair growth salve, and such, but no weapons or other equipment. Therefore I conclude this is an emergency bunker and not a normal operation-level hub.
Initiating silent mode, dictating events into the organic internal drive. I will continue to do so until I run out of space or find an opportunity to upload.
The bunker is running on a minimum power level. I have detected a second vessel, a female combat breed, but it has sustained some kind of damage or malfunction and is ruined beyond repair. Perhaps this is why I have awoken in this vessel.
Since my orders are unclear and the bunker is in some sort of malfunction, I am initiating survival code Alpha.
Switching to personal, internal briefing.
I knew something was wrong the moment I opened my eyes. It wasn’t just the physical state of the place—I’ve woken up in worse conditions—or the fact that my vessel was a middle-aged Asian female. From a muscle-ripped warrior to a nine-year-old child, I’d occupied all kinds of vessels on my past missions. Yet this time, something bothered me on a more fundamental level.
I knew who I was and I knew my assignment. I was to locate and find a young woman, Emilija, and bring her safe and sound to a rendezvous point—but that was it. No details on the girl—not even what she looked like—no threat assessments, no extract team, not even the exact location I was supposed to bring the girl to, only that she should not be harmed and that I should head to Tarkania, the City of Towers. I can’t say this scared me—I’ve been through too much to become unhinged by the absence of ideal circumstances—but I took note of the fact that headquarters was not responding; this was not a usual situation. At least the mission was a simple “find and retrieve,” not an assassination or my specialty, mass sabotage. I wondered who the girl was. She seemed to be important enough for command to deploy someone of my rank and status.
I also had an overwhelming, inexplicable desire for a peach. This, too, was not out of the ordinary for a hibernating agent. Sometimes during the transition into the new vessel some odd quirks would take hold. You might wake up hating milk, or wanting to wear clothes in the colour of blue or, like me right now, dying for a peach. It was not a big deal, but this sort of thing usually happened when the hibernating agent was shelved for a long period of time, more than a month or two, for sure.
There were too many unanswered questions, too many variables, and with all signals from the outside world blocked I could not see what was waiting for me outside, or even where I was on the globe.
There was just enough air being recycled in the small bunker, but it was not of the best quality. It made me queasy, and so the first order of the day was to get out of the place. It proved to be more of a problem than I expected; I soon found the exit tunnel had collapsed and my way was blocked by debris. I had to improvise some tools and work several hours to clear the tunnel, sustaining some minor damage—mainly bruises and cuts.
When I eventually managed to reach the sealed door, I had to manually unlock it, brace against the wall, and push away a heavy slab of concrete that lay on top of the door. This was a good thing as it meant no hostile welcoming committee was waiting for me outside, yet I found out soon enough how dire my situation really was.
At first I thought I’d emerged on a wooded hillside of some sort. I climbed up to a vantage point, a slab of broken concrete laden with rich moss, and began slowly surveying the premises, concentrating on each tiny detail and trying to piece them into a bigger picture. It was a vast, unrecognisable city that had sustained heavy damage of catastrophic proportions. I’d seen a lot during my course of duty, but this took some time to sink in.
With the exception of several small animals—birds and squirrels, mainly—there was no indication of any living beings. My body detected residue of nuclear waste still lingering in the air, but not at a health-threatening level so long as I left the contaminated area in a week’s time. Assuming there was cleaner air elsewhere.
Despite the destruction, or maybe because of it, nature was slowly claiming back the land. In fact, only the most elevated parts, which could be seen in the distance, were not covered with thick foliage. By the condition of the ruins and the fauna I guessed this city had been in a ruined state for a long time and there were no visible efforts of recovery, which ruled out an accident or natural disaster. Yet if a large city remained levelled for so long, it was a sure sign of a larger conflict, perhaps a destroyed civilisation. I just had to figure out which one. At least I knew that since I was awake, my side still existed.
I had to admit that despite the utter shock at what I was seeing and its implications, having had my predictions—filed in numerous postassignment reports—come true gave me the tiniest spark of professional pride. I’d seen it coming, I really had. Over the course of two decades, my assignments had gone from subtle to almost crudely aggressive. I told myself each time that I might not be seeing the big picture, that Central Command found the missions worth the risk despite knowing their actions created enormous enmity and suspicion. I guess we were all wrong. Nothing was worth this.
A light rain began to fall. I got up and began moving cautiously towards the more visible ruins on higher ground. I passed under a ruined bridge and climbed up another only to have to backtrack. At some point I reached a huge trench, at least forty feet deep and thirty wide. The surface of the bottom, which was not covered in mud, glistened as rain bounced off it. It was hardened, dark blue glass. Something very hot had crystalized the earth it touched. The walls were charcoal dark but had the same reflective effect as the bottom. The trench went right and left for as far as I could see, as if God had decided to carve his initials on the city’s surface with a very hot knife. A combat vessel would have been able to clear the gap with a running jump, but I had to spend an hour searching for a fallen tree with which to create a bridge for myself.
The drizzle was getting heavier, and my canvas boots were not meant for this sort of hiking. I was wet and cold, and despite having consumed a nourishment pill I felt a growing pang of hunger for real food. I decided not to spend time trying to hunt as I was weaponless and any source of sustenance would most likely be contaminated.
Night was cold and wet. Rain was falling constantly and I hugged myself into a light doze, taking shelter inside a crumbling ruin. From the height of the ceiling I guessed it used to be a building of giant proportions. Now only a corner and a far wall remained. Before I let myself rest, I spotted a flicker of a bonfire in the distance but decided against treading in the slippery darkness for the chance I might meet a friendly face. I suspected anyone sitting around a bonfire in these ruins might not be the most accommodating of individuals.
It was the right decision.
The next day I managed to track down the bonfire. There were the chewed remains of four small mammals, most likely squirrels. By the look of the foot imprints and the amount and trajectory of the urine I concluded there were at least three people, probably all males.
Half a day later I spotted one of them climbing a pile of crumbling stones. He was a young man with long and unkempt brown hair, carrying several items hanging from a large belt which suggested he was some kind of a trophy hunter. The most interesting item I could tell he was carrying was a short sword strapped to his belt.
He had his back turned to me, so I had a moment to decide whether to keep tracking him from a distance, hail him in the hope of a peaceful conversation, or incapacitate him and take his gear. I gave the encounter a 60 percent chance of being resolved peacefully. This time I was wrong. My decision-making process was cut short when I heard the rustling of leaves and a stern voice saying, “Don’t you rusting move, bitch.”
I turned my head to see a man standing on elevated ground, dressed in a worn army camouflage uniform. I couldn’t tell which army, as the insignia had faded. What I could easily detect was the hunting bow that he had aimed at my chest. A real wooden bow, with crude but effective-looking arrow tips that would rip a large enough hole in my vessel to cause an inconvenience.
The young guy in front turned. “Bukra’s balls,” he said, the intonation suggesting this was a swear of sorts, “where the fuck did you come from?”
“From behind you, dumbass,” the man holding the bow answered, without taking his eyes from me. “She’s been tailing us for a while, but your head is too full of moonshine to notice.”
“I’m just lost.” I heard my own voice as I spoke out loud for the first time in this existence. It came out weak and high-pitched. I hated it.
“Balls you are, there’s no one living here for miles.” Another man walked out from behind a large tree trunk, halfway between the youngest man and myself. I figured my chances for a peaceful resolution went down another significant notch. From the three of them, he looked the most dangerous. Almost double my height and definitely triple my weight, his oversized bald head was full of scars, but I didn’t pay attention to the rest of him since I was concentrating on the sawed-off shotgun that was levelled at me. It was an antique, the sort that had to be manually pumped and shot metal bullets. I was not about to find out if it actually worked.
“Where’s your crew, bitch?”
“I … I have no crew, I’m just …”
He raised the shotgun as he walked slowly towards me. From the way he moved, it was obvious he was an experienced warrior.
“This is no-man’s-land. The only creatures here are two-headed lions and Salvationist crews tired of Lizard hunting in the valley. You are no lion, old bag, so I’ll ask this again before I’ll start inflicting pain: tell me where’s your rusting crew, right now.”
“Half a mile behind me,” I answered quickly. There was no point in trying to persuade him otherwise. “We found an old emergency bunker and I was sent to scout.”
He paused. I could see the bowman relaxing a bit. I was not an expert on medieval weaponry but I figured there was only so long you could maintain an aiming position with such a bow before the strain on your arms became a problem.
“You lie, we know this place well. This area has no bunkers.”
“It was well hidden under a large rock.”
The youngest male climbed back down and was heading our way. “I know,” he declared enthusiastically, “let’s fuck her.”
From my peripheral vision I saw the bowman twisting his face in disgust. “Ooh, Malk, look at her …”
“Hey,” the younger man called Malk protested, “when was the last time you had better?”
The bowman seemed to consider this and finally shrugged. “You might have a point.”
“What do you say, Dun?” the enthusiastic rapist asked the shotgun-aiming man, who smiled.
“Yeah, we’ll fuck the bitch some new holes, but first we need to interrogate her.” He moved forward with intent and I backed away, raising my hands.
“No, please—”
“I take dibs,” Malk declared.
“You go last,” the bald man grunted as he stepped towards me.
“Oh man, Dun … I always go last …”
Dun lunged at me and caught my arm, his oversized palm completely enveloping my forearm. He held the shotgun with his other hand, but once he caught me he felt secure enough to raise the muzzle to the sky, probably planning to hand the gun to the younger man.
My vessel was a noncombat type, but every vessel has an ESM—emergency survival mode—when you pump your vessel with enough adrenaline to kill an average elephant. Once it passes, it leaves the vessel in a weakened state, but for just a little while you become a killing machine. I was proficient in three dozen martial arts to a fifth dan or equivalent degree, and the fact that my bones had hardened to metal strength and I moved at nearly double my normal speed made the whole affair almost easy. With my free hand I punched the bald man in the chest and felt, as well as heard, his ribs crack. He was not feeling the damage yet, but his mouth gaped open from the shock of the impact. With all my senses heightened, I heard the stretching sound of the bowstring as the man to my right began to react. Moving the brute once my second punch dislodged his jaw was as easy as throwing a rag doll. My timing was not perfect but I still managed to place him in the path of the incoming arrow. It buried itself in his back with a satisfying thud, causing him to arch backwards with a guttural howl of pain. I plucked the shotgun from his loosened grip and rolled sideways before his collapsing girth buried me.
Kudos to the archer—he had a second arrow already cocked when I rose to my feet, but I pulled the trigger and shot his leg out from under him before he could release it.
He screamed and toppled forward, losing the bow and flailing his arms, then hitting the rock below face-first.
The younger man was already charging at me, sword in hand, as I turned, pumped the gun, and pulled the trigger again. The weapon jammed. Antique or not, poorly maintained weapons are a menace. I only had a split second to raise the shotgun to defend against the coming sword slash. It should have blocked a normal sword. The faint blue colour surrounding the metal told me, too late, that this was a power short sword. I stepped back just as it cut through the barrel of the shotgun, throwing enough sparks for a children’s fireworks display. The ease with which my attacker cut my weapon was also his demise. He overreached and momentarily lost his balance, then tried to recover with a low backhand. I broke his left knee, hand, arm, and nose before he hit the ground.
I stood in the dwindling silence for several heartbeats, trying to figure out if the combat had attracted attention. When no one else came out of the woods I went and looked at the archer. He was still alive, but half his face was broken and his lower leg was almost entirely blown off. He opened his healthy eye, coughed out some broken teeth, and moaned.
I went back and retrieved the power short sword. It was worn, torn, and patched up, but it still was, I must admit, a thing of beauty. I powered on the sword, then bent down and grabbed the bowman’s left leg. He twisted and moaned, then screamed and passed out when I sliced his lower leg off with two bloody hacks. I am not a sword master, but it was close to a clean cut and, basically, a fair deal. There was the smell of meat searing itself shut. The archer might live, and I’d gotten my nourishment. I went and picked up the bow as well but the man’s fall had cracked the wood. I kept it anyway for firewood. There were a few crude looking metal coins in his belt pocket, a water skin filled with the most terrible wine I had ever tasted, and a lethal-looking skinning knife with a chipped blade.
Dun was dying fast, and I made sure he got there by cutting off his head. He had a heftier coin bag. I opened it and spilled some of its contents into my hand. Dark metal coins, mostly half the size of my hand but a few smaller ones. It took me a few seconds to remember what their use was, and if I needed proof of how far humanity had fallen, it was lying in the palm of my hand. You’d have to go to the most remote places in the world to find people who still used paper money, let alone coins, yet here they were in my hand. Each coin had a faded but unmistakable emblem of four towers of Tarkania, which made my heart race again. I closed the pouch and turned to the enthusiastic rapist.
He was conscious. Maybe the bowman’s screams had woken him up. His eyes were still fixated on the severed head of Dun when I approached him, holding the archer’s stump in one hand and the bloodied power sword with the other.
He looked up at me with bloodshot, frightened eyes.
“Please,” he begged.
I waved the stump in my hand in front of him. “I have some questions for you, young man.”
This was how I learned about the Catastrophe, that Dun was an ex-Salvationist from Tarakan Valley who had broken the contract with his guild and fled to make easy pickings in what was now called the Radiated City, one of several cities that were utterly destroyed. With a sinking heart, I learned what had happened to my people and that the once-magnificent Tarkania was now defiled by the remnants of humanity who no longer remembered its name and call it “the City of Towers.”
Several deep roars from the forest proved Dun was at least not lying about the beasts that lurked here. It was time to go.
“Please,” Malk begged when I turned away, “please, mercy.” His broken knee was protruding from his skin.
I don’t know if he wanted me to give him a clean death or carry him across the ruins, but I left him for the two-headed lions and limped away slowly, my new body punishing me severely for the ESM I had put it through.
If what Malk just told me was true, I was not walking in a ruined city, I was walking in a destroyed world. By his body language, I knew Malk believed in what he’d told me, but I still refused to accept it. Perhaps that was why I left him there.
A little while later I heard him scream one last time.
3
Twinkle Eyes
Not withstanding the horrible memories of my demise, waking up from the dead the first time was a pleasant experience, to the point where for a moment I’d wondered if I was in one of those heavenly gardens many of the different religions promised you ended up in if you followed their creed. This time I woke up in a place which was the extreme opposite of paradise.
Various metallic instruments that must have kept my new body alive withdrew into darkness, and the bed simply tilted and I slid down to the metal floor. I lay there, gasping for air, blind and horrified, surrounded by darkness, pierced by the periodic flashing of red lights accompanied by a deafening siren. As I tried to get up, a calm yet loud female voice spoke, informing me that I was in danger and must leave the premises. I did not need her encouragement. My skin stung, not in a certain place or two, but over my entire body, as if the air was on fire. I knew to the core of my new being that whatever I was breathing was killing me. I coughed, sneezed, vomited, and lost control of my bowels in nasty succession, while trying in vain to get hold of something to push myself up with.
Amid all that fun one instinct remained true. I tried to deepen my sight, the curse that touched me in youth and the only edge I had on most of mankind. It didn’t work. Not at first, anyway. When it finally did, it was not as I remembered. My sight flickered through various mediums of vision, a few of which I only knew about from stories. The quick sequence left me completely disoriented. Whatever progress I was making in getting up was lost and I hit the floor again, sitting in my own bile and bodily fluids, covering my eyes with my hands and wishing this life would end faster than my previous death had taken.
The sirens and the urging female voice were too loud for me to hear steps, but I felt their vibration as someone ran towards me. I tried to look around, flailing my arms in the darkness, but my sight was out of control—I was completely blinded by the flashing of various shades of light and darkness.
A hand caught my arm, and as I was hauled to my feet I felt the grasping fingers burn my skin.
“Try not to breathe.” I didn’t recognise the voice, but the accent was familiar.
“I can’t see, I …” Another cough caught me as my body battled whatever I was breathing, and this time my rescuer had to hug me to prevent another collapse.
He was naked. We both were. The strange thing was that I registered that our naked bodies were touching, but it was more a thought in my mind than what I remembered a naked body should feel. The notion was so eerie that for a moment my mind cleared.
“Slow your breathing.” His voice was at my ear as he picked me up with ease in a bear hug. “You can block some of the shit out.”
And lo and behold, there it was. I thought it, and my body slowed its breath. Whatever was coming down my throat was somehow more acceptable, even though I knew it would still kill me—well, us—shortly.
“We need to get out of here,” I croaked.
“Rust, you think so?” The man coughed out a dry chuckle. “There is a ladder here, attached to the wall.”
“I can’t see. Where does it go?”
“It goes somewhere, better up than to stay here.”
“I can’t see.” My hands flailed in the darkness.
“Here, feel this …”
He pretty much slammed me into the metal ladder, the first sign that he was losing the battle against the elements as rapidly as I was.
“I can’t see.” Panic was gripping my throat as painfully as the cursed air I was breathing.
“Climb first. If you fall I might be able to catch you.”
“I can’t, I’m too weak, I can’t see.” I wheezed, gripping a metal rung.
“Well then, been nice knowing ya, even briefly.” His hands began shoving me aside and I felt his leg brush past mine and push against the first rung.
“Wait, no, I can do it.”
The thought of staying down there and dying in agony was enough to charge me with the strength to turn around and begin climbing up the metal ladder.
He ended up carrying me on his shoulder more than half of the way. It was an amazing feat of strength, balance, and single-mindedness, especially when we reached a trap door which he did not manage to open despite several brave attempts. By this time my sight was back and I could cling to the ladder as my rescuer charged up into the metal door shouting colourful obscenities with each failed attempt to pop it open.
With careful concentration, while holding on to the ladder, I enhanced my sight and looked around. The metal lever and the paintings describing the direction in which to pull it were an arm’s length away.
I tried to speak but was too weak to say anything. My throat felt like I had swallowed nails. As sweat rained down on me from above and another loud ding echoed around us, I reached out with an aching hand and pulled the lever. It was surprisingly easy, and immediately there was a hiss from above. The door opened upwards and my rescuer whooped in triumph. A rush of hot, poisonous wind came from below and my knees buckled, but before I passed out and fell to my death my rescuer grabbed me again. I was pulled up and thrown onto cold, wet ground.
It was still unnaturally dark and blissfully cold but the air was as sweet as a woman’s caress. All I wanted to do was cling to the wet earth and keep breathing, but my rescuer had other plans.
“It’s a cave, but I can see light ahead,” he said, helping me to my feet. We waded through a stream, bending every few steps to wash the gunk off our naked bodies. Eventually we emerged into sunlight and collapsed on the bank. For a while all I could do was lie on my back, feet submerged in the water, arm shielding my face from the sun. Then I got thirsty. I turned on my side, came up to my knees, and turned around on all fours. When I lowered my face, the water felt cool on my skin, soothing, and when I opened my mouth it tasted pure and cleansing. I knew it for a fact. I knew it was pure as I tasted it and even knew the temperature of the liquid. I just didn’t know how I knew it. The water was refreshing, but I had the knowledge of its effect more than the actual feeling. It was unnatural. It was strange, but not as strange as my reflection in the water.
The face, the bald head, the eyes, the lips. I was staring into the reflection of someone else’s face. Only at a second glance did I realise what I was not seeing and managed to stifle a yelp with a hand to my mouth. My eyes were clear blue, but the thin black symbols which had appeared overnight during my adolescence were gone.
I sat back, dumbstruck, and looked around. My rescuer must have been going through the same revelation regarding his body. I saw him sitting on his haunches several yards away, staring at the water. Sensing my gaze, he turned his head and looked back at me.
“Maybe you can tell me what this rust bucket is all about?” he called. His voice was unfamiliar, but now that we were out of the deathtrap we awoke in, I recognised the dialect and it warmed my heart. Like me, he was bald—no, completely hairless, loins and all—but that was where the similarities ended. When he stood up I couldn’t help but envy his physique. It was perfection. Strong, long limbs, a lean but muscular body, and his skin as pure as a baby’s—which was more than odd, it was simply impossible. No one could be that strong, carrying me all the way up from the abyss to the surface, without having been touched by the curse and further amplified by a Tarakan device. This was a Tarakan combat vessel—he looked nothing like the man I used to know, but I didn’t care.
“Hello, Galinak,” I said.
“Who are ya?” He eyed me suspiciously as I walked towards him. “And what was that rust below?” He gestured at the cave. “And if you can answer both those questions, how about telling me why we are standing butt naked in the middle of the rusting wilderness?”
“It’s me, Twinkle Eyes,” I said.
“No, you’re not, and that’s far enough.” He took a half step away from me. I stopped.
“It’s me, Twinkle Eyes. We just have different bodies, both of us.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re rusting me, and patience was never one of my virtues. I’ll ask you for the last time. Who are you?”
I sighed. “You have a signature hip throw. You are terrible at cards. The odds in the fight we had in Vincha’s shack was five to two. You and Vincha had a weird sexual tension between you but you never actually got to …”
I watched his suspicion turn into a broad smile with every word I said.
“Well, rip my wires. Is that really you, Twinkle Eyes?” he finally asked.
I nodded and pointed at my eyes. “Just without the marks around the twinkle, I guess.”
“Bukra’s balls.” Before I could react, Galinak stepped forward, grabbed me in a crushing bear hug, and lifted me in the air like a little child.
“Galinak, put me down, you crazy Troll.” I tried to struggle, but it was like pushing against metal.
“It’s rusting Twinkle Eyes,” Galinak called out as he spun me around in his arms.
“Damn it, we’re both naked.”
“Who gives a silver wire?” Galinak shouted but eventually plunked me down on the ground and put a steadying arm on my shoulder. “I thought we were both goners,” he said. “I mean, I heard you over the Comm, negotiating with those Tarakan arse rusts when we were surrounded by those Lizards, and I remember thinking to myself, ‘Twinkles has some Salvationist spirit in him after all.’ But then the Lizards began breaking in, I heard you screaming over the Comm and …” Galinak’s eyes darkened.
“Push those memories back,” I said quickly. “They are not good to dwell on, believe me.”
“Aye, you’re probably right.” Galinak looked at himself again. “This is going to take some getting used to.”
“I know.” I looked, fighting the urge to cover my loins with my hand. “It’s as if this body is not yet my own. I wonder if we’ll sort of settle in with time.”
Galinak turned around in a slow circle, saying, “Right. Care to explain what’s going on?”
“I assume you were not briefed.”
He completed the full circle. “No, last thing I remember was what I am trying not to remember right now. Since then, completely blank. Did they speak to you?”
I nodded.
“Those smart-arse Tarkanians knew better than to wake me up for a chat,” Galinak grumbled. “I would have said several things they would be sorry to hear.”
“My conversation did not take long,” I said carefully. There was no use in agitating my only protection. “We were supposed to get more information and, you know”—I indicated both of us—“clothes and equipment and weapons.”
“Where, down there?” Galinak pointed at the cave.
“Yes, something must have gone unexpectedly wrong, some sort of malfunction or … a sabotage. But we need to get back and retrieve them.”
“That rebirth must have crossed your wires.” Galinak shook his head. “Because this new body of mine told me we were going to die down there, and that a normal human would have already been convulsing on the floor. Whatever was in that air was nasty, rust, I can still feel the sting on my skin.” He made a point of moving his hands around his naked body, brushing the invisible particles away.
“But we are naked, weaponless, in the wilderness,” I protested. “We’re alive, healthy, and there are no Lizards that I can see.”
Galinak raised a hairless eyebrow. “I’ve been in worse situations.” When he saw the look on my face he added, “I would tell you to grow a pair but that would be an inappropriate comment at this time, Twinkle.” His laughter was short-lived. I guess he wasn’t used to the sound of it, either. “You know what they want us to do, right? So just fill me in on that, but first let’s find out where we are.”
He drew my attention to an elevated boulder with a flat top. “You told me your eyes still have that special twinkle in them. I’ll give you a leg up.” He crouched into position and lifted me up with such force I almost missed the boulder and barely stopped myself from falling to the other side.
“Sorry,” Galinak apologised when I peered down at him accusingly. “I guess I am stronger than I look.” He crouched and jumped up, landing next to me in an impossible feat for any nonaugmented human. “I am starting to really like this new body,” he said, grinning.
I shook my head slightly, trying to hide my jealousy, then turned my head and began scanning the horizon. When I’d woken up in the poisonous bunker, I’d tried to use my night sight on reflex and had been unable to control the shifts in perspectives. This time I was more careful, but just to be on the safe side, I steadied myself by grabbing Galinak’s shoulder.
And like magic, it happened. I zoomed. I could see for miles in each direction. “There is a farm. Over there.”
Galinak squinted. “Where?”
“Hard for me to judge, looks like several miles.” I checked the position of the sun. “East … seems deserted. The windows are shut and the barn doors are open.”
“You can see that far?”
I turned to face him and had to steady myself as my sight shifted again. “I guess they gave us abilities that we are familiar with.”
Galinak ignored the bitterness in my voice. “Right,” he said, “we’d better start tracking while the sun’s still up, so we can get a nice tan.”
“I still think we should go back.”
“Look, Twinkle Eyes.” Galinak was starting to lose patience. “If you’re lucky, you’ll have a moment or two down there. Definitely not enough time to listen to your Tarakan friends, so all you can hope for is some gear, and rule one in the unwritten Salvationist rule book says ‘no gear is worth dying for.’ I would have been long dead if I hadn’t obeyed that rule.”
I wanted to protest further, but Galinak simply grabbed me by the waist, lifted me over his shoulder, and jumped down from the high boulder.
4
Peach
I only let myself cry once, that very night. I found a secluded ruin and with a little reverse engineering, managed to spark a fire from the power sword, although it did cost me too many energy cells and I promised myself to try and do it the old-fashioned way the next time around. Then I cleared the bone and skewered the meat on several sticks from the broken bow so the meat would cook faster. I’d only resorted to cannibalism three times before, and it was never a cherished culinary experience. This time was no exception. As the human flesh sizzled and cooked, I moved away from the circle of fire and found a dark corner, where I curled into a ball and sobbed quietly.
I was only a toddler when the Paralytic Plague, known as the Purple Plague, struck our town. Victims lost control of their bodies, then their respiration systems, and they fought to breathe until they died. My father and three brothers were gone in less than forty-eight hours, and I still remembered my little brother’s body being wheeled away to the local crematorium. My mother was not affected, but I was already developing high fever and had lost control of my arms and legs. The doctors moved me to a large hall where many lay waiting to die.
I’ve heard the story from my mother so many times, I’m sure my memory is as false as it is vivid. But I remember a group of men and women walking into the hall. They wore thick bio suits and blue facial masks even inside their helmets. Each carried a temperature-controlled medibag imprinted with the glowing logo of Tarakan. They quickly dispersed among the sick and dying. One of them, the only one who was also wearing old-fashioned spectacles inside the protection of his helmet, came and sat by my bed. He spoke in a soft tone of voice, almost a whisper, to my mother and told her he was from Tarakan University and that he had an experimental vaccine for the plague, but that it was not fully tested yet. The vaccine could kill me or it could cure me, and my mother had less than a minute to decide whether he should administer it to me or move to the next patient.
After watching her three sons and husband die, my mother didn’t hesitate. She told me years later that she had made a pact with herself that if I died, she would take her own life. The Tarakan doctor administered the vaccine by touching the fevered skin of my stomach with a metal object. I remember sweet coolness spreading quickly through my body. The next day I was on my feet. Out of 822 patients who got the vaccine, 645 survived.
My mother, a tax consultant by trade, applied for Tarakan residency the following week. Luckily, Tarakan was still accepting ordinary people back then. We moved to the City of Towers within a year, even though her trade was not needed there. She took any jobs they assigned her to, all below her skill and pay levels, but she never complained. Her sole ambition was for me to become a full Tarakan citizen.
I tried. I really did. But the shock of losing my family was too great. My mother worked hard and tried, without success, to compensate for the trauma we’d both endured. On the brink of adolescence, I became notoriously short-tempered. The puzzles and riddles were especially infuriating to me, and one day I threw a puzzle box at my teacher’s head, and someone came to speak to my mother. I was sure we were going to be sent away, but the Tarakan talent scout had a different idea. I was sent to the newly formed military academy and became a professional Tarakan soldier, eventually rising to the rank of colonel major.
These were pre–Guardian Angel days, when Tarakan still followed the international treaties forbidding them from using clones as soldiers. Keeping Tarakan assets safe meant biological humans had to do the soldiering. That was my job, more or less. I worked my way up the ranks not by solving odd puzzles but the old-fashioned way; killing Tarakan’s enemies.
I watched as Tarakan expanded and flourished, but I also saw the looming shadows and growing threats as other countries’ jealousy turned to fear, which festered to deep loathing and eventually hate. There were terror attacks, acts of sabotage, cybertheft, and even the danger of direct hostilities to many Tarakan assets around the globe.
When the decision was finally made, I helped train the first Guardian Angels. Well, trained is not the right word for it, as they knew how to fight from the moment they were created, but I did make them march in beautiful formations and sent them on countless black ops. It did not take me long to realise they were the future and I was becoming obsolete.
Eventually, it was my time for an early retirement. I never married, never had children—never had the urge, frankly—and was not big on friends, either. I had seen enough of the world to satisfy my need to travel without those endless boring vacations retired people take. So, it was either sit around in an undistinguished two-bedroom flat somewhere in the Eastern Spires till I died, or accept a second offer from the Tarakan security agency and become a hibernating agent, or a sleeper. When the offer came, I didn’t hesitate.
I thought I’d already seen it all, but the training to become a sleeper was a whole different ball game. You left everything and everyone behind, your body included, and uploaded your consciousness into Adam. You would wake up in different vessels, on different continents, countries, and cultures, knowing only who you were, what your alias was, and, most of the time, your mission. Despite what the name suggests, you didn’t actually spend your time there sleeping. The downtime was filled with training and briefings, teaching, virtual vacations, assignment preps, and a few more activities designed to keep you from losing your mind.
Once in the physical world, I could never recall the full details of my past operations, a needed security measure should I have fallen captive, but I did know the missions were getting significantly more aggressive as time passed. From simple data theft or blackmail to high-risk sabotage, kidnappings of major political figures, and high-profile assassinations. I even lit the spark, via a well-placed chemical bomb and several misleading fingerprints, to a major war in the Middle East, causing seven figures in casualties and the breakup of two regional powers.
Was I always on the just side? Hell if I knew. Many of my missions were on the shady side of the moral scale, and in my reports, as I remembered them, I mentioned more than once that aggressive subterfuge and iron-fist diplomacy led only to shortterm gains at best. We were becoming the bad guy for too many global players, and although they were weaker and far behind us on the technology scale, their combined force was a real threat.
Now I sat among the ruins of mankind. From what I gathered, they … well, we, as a species, seemed to have somehow survived Armageddon only to continue to fight and kill each other over and over again. Tarakan, the shining-bright gem of humanity, was destroyed. All I’d worked for and risked was for nothing. Billions of people had died, and those who were spared simply picked up a gun or a sword or even a club and kept at it.
Yet here I was. Someone had downloaded me into this vessel and given me a mission, so there must be some hope. I wiped away the tears and walked back to the fire, where the meat was slowly turning black, then sat down, picked up a stick, blew carefully on the meat, and chewed off a mouthful. The taste matched my mood.
Tomorrow would be a new day. I would find a way to reach the City of Towers and find out what my mission was. Tarakan was defeated, but perhaps it was not dead yet.
5
Twinkle Eyes
It was a much longer trek to the farm than anticipated, even considering our condition. The land was hilly and hard. Only bushes and an occasional low, twisted tree grew. Coming down the hills barefoot left the soles of my feet bleeding from countless cuts. As before, the pains were a little distant, and I stifled the unmanly yelps and cries I made after several amused glances from Galinak, who bore his pain in stoic silence. At some point, he found a hefty chunk of wood which in dire circumstances could perhaps be used as a club.
“You won’t knock out a hungry bear with that,” I half joked, filling the silence.
“No offence, my sharp-eyed friend,” he said, waving the chunk of wood at me, “but if we meet a bear I am planning to knock you out with this and run for it.”
That shut me up for a while. Normally I would have dismissed that kind of talk as Galinak’s rough sense of humour, but he was in a foul mood. I filled him in on the details of our mission as I knew it, and that caused two major tantrums and several more outbursts.
“No wonder everyone hated those rust fuckers,” he exclaimed, his unfamiliar face turning red. “They are playing us again.”
“They kept their word, and kept us alive.” I knew it was a mistake to try this argument as soon as I said the words.
“Did they short-circuit your wires, Twinkle Eyes? Tarakan only brought us back because they need us to do their dirty work.” Galinak waved his finger at me. “I ain’t gonna play their game again. You might have struck a deal with them rusters, but no one asked me to chase no little girl.”
“She’s not a little girl anymore, she’s probably seventeen by now.” If I thought that such a fact would cool Galinak’s temper, I was mistaken.
“I don’t care how old she is,” he bellowed at me. “I ain’t doing this again. They can kiss my naked, hairless arse, if they ever find me.” He began walking faster, leaving me behind.
I stiffened a yelp as I stepped on a sharp stone. “Wait, Galinak.” To my surprise, he actually stopped and turned, and I hopped closer.
“Remember what Rafik said. We’ll die in less then three years, and not in a nice, quick way.”
He looked at me. “Sometimes living a short, free life is better than a lifetime of bowing your head to a master.”
I could sense there was no point in trying to convince him of anything at that point. “Look,” I said, tuning my voice to sound calm and reasonable, “let’s find something to wear, food and water, and perhaps a weapon that is better than a branch. Then we’ll talk about it.”
“Fine.” Galinak nodded. “But there ain’t nothing to talk about. I’m done with those rusters.”
We continued to walk at a slower, careful pace. Galinak brooded in silence while I took my mind off a possible encounter with a bear by playing with my sight. It was similar to the power I had in my old body, but tenfold. It was as if I’d attached a Tarakan artifact to my eyes. I could see ants crawling on the ground or a bird of prey far up in the sky as if it were up close, but despite looking all around us every chance I got, the seemingly abandoned farm remained the only man-made structure I could detect. It was no surprise, really. The Catastrophe had left behind only remnants of the human race and a lot of empty land. Many survivors instinctively congregated in hamlets, villages, or towns, but there were others who moved away, or simply stayed where they survived, choosing to brave the elements on their own.
We reached the farm as the sun disappeared behind the mountains. Despite its abandoned look, we didn’t take any chances. I stayed low outside the premises and Galinak snuck in solo. After a while he came out and waved me over. It was indeed abandoned, from the look of the unkempt vegetable garden. We were in no condition to be picky, and we found several vegetables to nourish us. Eating for the first time in our new bodies was an odd experience. Like before, the feeling was duller than the awareness of the effect. I could tell that my body was being recharged by eating the rotting tomato, but thankfully, the taste was distant enough for me not to gag.
The barn had been emptied out long ago, but Galinak did find a butchering cleaver, which must have fallen when the owners were packing. It was a lucky find, since metal was priceless in these rural parts. It had some spots of rust, but the edge was true. Galinak kept it for himself and gave me the wooden club with a sly smile and a meaningful wink. I chose not to protest.
The living structure was only one story high but spacious enough to contain an extended family, perhaps even several generations, and it was almost completely cleared out. We found a few pieces of wooden cutlery near the cold hearth, too used and chipped to be worth taking. There was no food anywhere, and the wild ferret we discovered in one of the rooms wisely escaped via a hole in the wall before Galinak could make dinner out of him.
“Galinak, I found something,” I cried out. Despite the lack of alarm in my voice he arrived, quickly brandishing the cleaver. I nodded toward the closet.
“The door is stuck.”
He shrugged, lay the cleaver gently on his foot, placed one hand on the handle, and braced the other against the twin door. He looked at me.
“Why the gloomy face?”
“Because I can see what’s inside.”
He considered my words for a few heartbeats before pulling hard enough on the handle to yank it out of the door.
“Rust,” he swore, and without preparation he simply punched through the wood, pulling back to break it into several pieces. Once the dust had settled, we peered inside. There were only two items of clothing hanging from the rack by a wooden hook: a farmer’s blue overalls and a farmer’s wife’s dress.
Galinak looked at me again.
“Oh,” he said. “Now I get it.”
6
Peach
Clearing the ruins of the Radiated City took several days and a third of my nourishment pills. As I walked through the empty streets I realised why, despite the dangers of contamination, the looters still came to plunder. The city was destroyed probably within hours, not weeks or months. Missiles rained from the sky, and power rays carved the ground, destroying everything in their path. The nature of most Tarakan weaponry was such that tens of millions died within hours, but a lot of their items survived. I know this because I had been in charge of security when those weapons were mounted, piece by piece, on the Star Pillar and smuggled up to the hub to be assembled in space, then sent on long orbit so they could not be shot down by antisatellite batteries on Earth. At first, I did not know what we were carrying up. Even with my security clearance, I still shouldn’t have known that we were breaking several international treaties by secretly carrying missile parts up the Pillar, but all the secrecy in the world can’t stop a drunken intelligence officer from blabbing while trying to pick up a woman at a local bar. We had surprisingly good sex that night, but the next morning, I got him fired.
Aside from the awfulness of the world I woke up to, the trek was a long way from the worst situation I’d been through. I remembered having to survive twenty-seven days in a Bangladeshi sewage system while an army of assassins hunted me down. Compared to that, walking in a ruined city, even in the rain, was almost a relaxing affair with the added bonus of casual looting.
Of course, by now, clothes and delicate items were long gone, but I still managed to find neo-flex plastic material, and with the help of my power sword, I cut and wrapped it around the soles of my shoes and made a cover for my head. There was also enough material for a crude sack. Remembering Malk’s debriefing on currency, I filled it with pieces of junk, mostly metal. I even found a cracked porcelain cup, which somehow had survived all this time. I wrapped it carefully in the last remaining piece of neo-flex plastic and walked away, feeling somehow more optimistic than before. The sword belt was too large for me to tie around my waist, so I threw it over my shoulder and under my armpit, bandolier style, making sure the hilt behind my back was within easy reach.
Aside from the great destruction, the second noticeable thing about the place was how empty it was. There were endless rows of buildings and not a single soul. If what I’d heard about the war was true, and the weaponry Tarakan possessed had been used to their full potential, billions had died in a very short amount of time. I found myself contemplating survival rates. Was the entire planet completely destroyed?
Two days later I spotted another looting party treading through the ruins, but this time I kept my distance. There were five of them, all more or less the same make and creed as the three I left behind. Since they were all heading into the city, I followed their tracks in the opposite direction until I eventually found their camp. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been surprised. There was always a camp, even in the most remote of places. If there was business to be made, merchants came to trade. Bring enough people together and someone would eventually bring a cart and begin trading. Soon enough women would appear, either of their own free will or, more likely, under coercion. In time, the camp grows to a small hamlet, then someone usually takes control of it by force.
Until the moment I saw the camp I hadn’t fully comprehended what had happened to us as a species. The vast city behind me was in ruins, true, and a man had aimed and shot an arrow at me, but I still somehow expected to encounter modern life on the outskirts of the city. Seeing a horse and cart travel the unpaved road towards a camp surrounded by a medieval wooden wall turned my stomach. It was as if I’d stepped out of a time machine.
I sat down amid the tall grass and watched the camp until nightfall, noting the two hanging corpses outside the gate, the smoke coming out of the wooden houses, the water well and the people coming to use it. It could have been a scene from a period virtual flick, but for the large truck parked in the middle of the camp, and even that vehicle was antique, the sort that drove on cooking oil and coal. All but the poorest countries of the world had shied away from the use of such polluting trucks, but right then, to me, that truck was a beacon of modernity. It became my mark. I had to get into that truck.
With the poor zooming ability of my vessel, it was too far off for me to see any details, and parts of the truck were obscured by what looked like poorly erected wooden buildings. After changing position several times, I managed to watch it being loaded with what seemed to be metal junk. The truck owner’s face was hidden inside a grey cowl but he had an obvious limp. The men helping load the truck were armed to the teeth with a mixture of antique twentieth-century weapons and more medieval-looking ones. They were a rough enough bunch, but the man wearing the cowl seemed to control them. They dispersed as night came.
The prudent thing to do was to wait at least another day, gather intelligence and figure out the best way to act. Special hibernating agent Vera Geer, or even Colonel Major Vera Geer, would have strongly suggested such caution, especially when operating in a noncombat vessel. But I was afraid the truck would leave at first light, or even before, and I would be left behind in the Middle Ages. Besides, the night’s darkness provided an opening. It was true darkness, the sort you rarely experienced in the world I used to live in. The cold temperature was another consideration, and it was taking its toll on my vessel, which was shaking and consuming a lot of energy to continue functioning. There was danger I would damage the vessel or even freeze to death. Or perhaps these were just excuses. I was tired, hungry, cold, wet, and still emotionally in shock. I wanted heat, and light, and food, and perhaps even a conversation. I wanted to get away from this place, which looked and felt like a bad hallucination. I also needed a good night’s sleep. I needed to dream. Operational directions might be received via dreams, but I had to find a safe place to fall into a deep sleep, enough to open my mind up to such transmissions. That could not be done in the field.
I unwrapped the neo-flex from my shoes and made sure everything was tied, secured, and as jingle free as possible, although with the coin bag and a sack filled with metal loot that task was bordering on the impossible.
The camp had four crude guard towers, but for some reason only two were manned and their only light sources were torches. Reaching the outer perimeter was an easy enough task and I didn’t even need to crawl, a blessing since after the few days of light drizzle, the ground close to the wall was awfully muddy. There were wooden stakes in the ground, as if the people in the camp were afraid of a cavalry charge. I slipped past them and reached the wall.
I aimed to reach the part of the wall that was closest to the truck, but that part was impossible to climb. Primitive or not, whoever had built the wall had done a fine job. Moving a little farther, I managed to find a part where I could get in at least two handholds. They were impossibly far apart, but that was all I needed.
Before climbing, I stayed still and tried to deepen my hearing. My vessel’s senses were only one notch above biological human level, but it was enough for me to hear the stutter of a small engine, the steps of three people walking away from me, coarse singing, and the snorting of pigs. That last one came with a stench as well. I took a deep breath, entered ESM, feeling adrenaline rush once again through my body, and quickly climbed the wall, my fingers digging into the wood like an alley cat. I found myself on a narrow parapet, from which I quickly jumped down to the other side, landing behind a hut and huddling down. It took me a few minutes to recover from the disorientation and nausea of the ESM.
The stench of livestock mixed with rotting garbage and human excrement was apparent. This place was the graveyard of hygiene. I leaned and peeked around. Apart from four guards standing around a small bonfire behind a gate, the dark streets were deserted. I sneaked away from them, passed the central well, and headed towards the truck. It was parked next to a second gate, effectively blocking it. Years of usage and crude patch jobs were apparent, as well as bullet holes and scorch marks, but the makers of the EverTyre company would have been proud to know that their product, worn and battle scarred, was still functioning even after a nuclear holocaust. I still toyed with the idea of stealing the truck, smashing through the gate, and driving away into the sunset, but the motion sensor lock on the truck’s doors made me change my plans. Actually, the placement of a modern gadget such as the motion sensor was uplifting. It meant there was still hope …
With the right tools, I could have bypassed the lock, but the risk of attracting attention and turning this into a massacre was too great. Besides, even if I got into the truck and managed to drive it, I hadn’t a clue where to go. I needed information and, if possible, assistance.
A dog began to bark and I retreated back to the central well. I followed my ears to the back of the biggest wooden shack of this sorry little settlement. The engine noise came from a small generator, which, by the smell of the black smoke it was exhaling, was fuelled by a mixture of cooking oil, fat, and perhaps even manure. As I watched, the back door opened and a middle-aged man, dressed in disgustingly stained clothes, poured a bucket of such slop into the open tank. I waited for him to go back into the hut and headed towards the front entrance.
Generator or not, the main light source of this small tavern was a central fire under a large iron pot, a serious fire hazard under any modern law anywhere in the old world. The stench almost made me walk back out, but once the door opened, enough people turned their heads at me to make a retreat dangerously noticeable, so I walked into the gloomy shadows of the room and closed the door behind me.
7
Twinkle Eyes
Anyone watching the two figures from afar would have thought them a farmer and his wife tottering along on a dirt road, though on closer inspection the watcher would have realised something was certainly amiss. Galinak had torn the bottom of his overalls, from the knees down, and tied the material around his feet. The farmer’s wife was a hefty lass, so the corset fit, just barely, across my ribs. I’d tried Galinak’s trick with the hem of the dress but a miscalculation on my part now meant the dress was indecently short. On the bright side, I had enough material left to tie around my bald head to protect my cranium from the unforgiving sun. Actually, come morning, we discovered hair was beginning to grow on both of our bodies. Mine was a shade between white and golden; Galinak’s was ginger brown.
We had resumed our journey after a relatively comfortable night in front of the hearth, which by another stroke of luck featured an old built-in flint, now safely in Galinak’s pocket. He had suggested we simply stay on the farm and “start our own family” but by midday the stream of jokes died to a mere trickle.
We found some berries on the side of the road that tasted awful but were nourishing enough. Water was a concern, but our bodies proved to be incredibly resilient, taking on way more than what I would guess my previous one could have endured.
A little after midday we passed another abandoned farm, but this one was completely ruined. Worse, there were obvious marks of violence, including the bones of several livestock, fire damage, and enough signs to indicate that, in Galinak’s words “something really big blew up this rusting hut.” He was the first to spot the deep imprints on the ground where the garden must have been—two parallel chain lines, twice a man’s height in distance from each other.
“Some kind of a machine.” I pointed out the obvious but Galinak was not in the mood. He tested the ground with his fingers.
“Deep on dry earth. Means this thing was heavy, huge. It takes a lot of energy clips to move such a vehicle.”
We exchanged glances. “A kind of war machine then,” I said. “Nothing else is worth such energy.”
“A war machine?” Gailnak looked around. “We only had light dusters in the Hive, and that was Tarakan Valley we’re talking about.”
Rafik said that the City of Towers was preoccupied with a conflict, but this area is far from the city. Could there be a connection?
“I know these machines existed before the Catastrophe,” I said, the memory flashing through my mind. “They were called Tanks. I heard they found a field with those things far to the west. The machines were smashed and burned, but the metal was so thick they couldn’t even salvage it, so they just stand there in rows now.”
“So, a local gang gets its hands on a working war machine with enough energy clips to operate it and runs around destroying small farms?” Galinak shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“An advancing army, then,” I said quietly.
“Makes more sense with the other farm being abandoned,” Galinak agreed. “They knew about the threat. The first family ran away, these ones chose to stay and protect their land.” He shook his head again. “Poor sods, must have been like kicking a puppy.”
“Yes, but whose army?” I asked.
Galinak shrugged. “We can’t connect the wires on this one.”
“We should have tried to go back to the bunker.” I gestured toward the destruction around us. “This would have surely been part of what Rafik would have briefed us about.”
“Well, if I wasn’t sure before, now I know for a fact it’s you, Twinkle Eyes.” Galinak chuckled. “Ready to die just so you could learn something you didn’t know before. We’ll find out soon enough what’s going on, so let’s look around a little more and move out of here.”
Galinak’s remark might just have been a barbed jest, but he was right. I was already feeling the familiar tingling sensation growing in my mind; curiosity. I might have been coerced into this mission by the Tarkanians, but I also wanted to know—hell, I needed to know—what was going on, and it was worth risking my new life to find out.
There was nothing worth looting except a few pieces of wood we collected for a future bonfire and several rusty nails. I tied the nails with the frills from my dress and decided to find a way to add them to my crude club at the first opportunity. Not the greatest upgrade to my fire power, but every little thing helps.
“We should follow the imprints.” Galinak pointed at the deep grooves leading northeast.
“No, we should go northwest,” I said. “Following a war machine and armed troops with a club and a dress may leave the wrong impression.” That one rewarded me with another chuckle from Galinak. “The farmers who ran must have tried to reach some kind of a safe haven. I think there’s a large village a day or two from here.”
Galinak looked skeptical. “You deduced all of that from a set of imprints?”
“No,” I admitted. “Something has been bothering me for a while now. This area is familiar. I think I’ve passed through it.”
“Not surprising.” Galinak dusted himself off. “You chased Vincha all over the place.”
“No. Vincha never went rural on me,” I said. “I think I passed through here when I was younger, with LoreMaster Harim.” The mention of my mentor’s name brought up a rush of emotions. He was the one who took me from my family home to the upper towers of the City of Towers and made me the flawed man I was now.
“Fine, lad.” Galinak walked to me. “We’ll do it your way.”
We kept on walking, finding a wider road and following it till night fell, but we did not stop. My sight made the night as clear as the day, and although we only ate a handful of berries we picked up on the side of the road, our new bodies did not show any sign of fatigue. Even the soles of our feet hardened enough to make walking more comfortable, and we were able to move faster.
By midday the dirt trail merged into what was once a paved road, now with only patches of dark material remaining as a testimony to its former glory. This was where we found another unmistakable track of the war machine, and this time we had to follow it. Since we were now on lower ground, there were many more trees and tall bushes, and they hid the village until we came upon it. For some childish reason I took pride in spotting it first.
It was certainly a place I had visited before. It used to have a protective wall and the houses within climbed up the steep hill. The hill must have kept the villagers in shape while acting as a natural defence from three sides, but that natural defence and the high walls and guard towers did not stand a chance against a war machine.
We waited for what felt like a long time, hidden among the vegetation, noting the enormous gaps in the reinforced wooden wall, the remains of three guard towers, and the lack of what was once an impressive front gate.
“Well, at least they did not burn the place down,” Galinak whispered next to me. “Any ideas why?”
I shrugged. “I have no clue.”
He shrugged back and spat at the ground. “Let’s find out.”
I stopped him with a touch, scanning for heat signatures. “There are no humans that I can see, but there are some animals roaming around in there.”
“You can see all the way inside?”
I nodded. “Just be ready for a fight.”
Galinak’s smile was full of bad intentions. “I’m always ready for a fight.” He waved his cleaver to emphasise his point, then surprised me by ripping a nail from my dress and ramming it halfway into my club. “Now you’re ready too.”
8
Peach
People were still glaring at me when I sat myself down on a wooden stool next to a tiny table that, by the look of it, had not been cleaned for a long time. With a sinking feeling in my stomach, I realised that there were about twenty men around me, and the only females were two tired-looking prostitutes entertaining four uniformed men in the far corner of the room. I was a woman, in perhaps not the most attractive vessel, but this felt like a remote place, the sort in which men hold the bar just a notch above “breathing,” and sometimes not even that high. With those ladies entertaining the guards in full view of the rest of the men, and the alcohol flowing, sooner or later I would get unwanted attention.
I lay the neo-flex plastic sack on the sticky floor and placed the power sword in my lap. There was no music, just the soft murmuring of conversation and the loud and lewd chatter of the drunken guards. The rest of the men kept openly staring at me, some of them with disconcerting approval. I was careful not to make eye contact with any of them, although it dawned on me that soon I would have to choose a companion or have the most aggressive of the men make an approach.
One of them was downing his drink quickly, his body language betraying his immediate intention of trying his luck with me. It was right then that I spotted the figure I had seen near the truck when I was surveying the place. His cowl was off but I recognised him by the limp. He had a lean, rugged face and a greying ginger beard.
My profession is an odd one. It involves meticulous planning, but no matter how careful you are, many times the plan fails and you find yourself in the midst of deadly chaos. In moments like these, you have to learn to trust your instincts. I was up and walking even before I had made a conscious decision to do so, slinging the power sword over my back as I rose from the table. It was easy to follow the limping man to the table, as people moved aside respectfully when he passed them. I guessed that like myself, the man knew to trust his own instincts, because he whirled around just as I approached. My size, sex, or appearance did not make him less wary. I noted that one hand was holding both cups while the other went to the butt of an old-looking revolver stuck in his belt. There was another figure sitting near a table behind him. That one’s face was still hidden inside his cowl.
“Hello,” I said in a cheery voice, “I wonder if I may share your table for a bit.”
The man looked down at me, noting the sack I was holding in one hand and the sword on my back, then he lifted his gaze and studied the faces of the men staring at me. He must have concluded I was seeking protection rather than company because he turned his green eyes back at me and simply said, “No,” in a quiet but resolute voice. I didn’t blame him for not wanting to play the role of a gallant knight.
“Oh, c’mon Trev,” the man sitting at the table said cheerfully, “give a lady a break and pull a stool for yourself. Your leg’s too stiff to be under this low table anyways.”
The taller man shut his eyes briefly, nodded, and moved aside. He laid two cups carefully on the table, then went to retrieve another stool. I sat myself in front of the other man. His round face smiled at me from inside the cowl he was wearing as he extended his hand.
“Brak’s my name, and this pile of scowls is Trevil, my cousin.”
I took his hand. It had calluses, and his grip was strong. “I’m Peach.” I said the first name that came to my mind.
“Now that’s an interesting name, Lady Peach.” Brak pulled one cup from the edge of the table and nursed it. “And quite a foreign accent.” His eyes were shrewd and calculating. “You’re not from here.”
“This doesn’t seem to be a place that people come from,” I answered, making a show of glancing around.
Brak chuckled as he sipped his brew. “Phew.” He shook his head at the taste, spit the liquid in his mouth back into the cup, and spilled the entire contents to the dark, muddy floor. “That barkeep is pissing in his own brew. Trevil, go frighten the bastard enough for him to pour us something decent, and get a fresh cup for Lady Peach as well.”
Trevil, who had just sat down next to us, stared at Brak with a discontented scowl.
“Yes, that’s just the right face.” Brak indicated his cousin. “Now aim it at Rikus and get clean cups as well.”
Trevil rose without a word and made his way back to the bar.
“Don’t mind him,” Brak said cheerfully, “he’s the brooding, silent type. Sometimes when we’re on the road, he just sits there for days without saying so much as a word to me.”
I had the feeling those days were filled with Brak’s own words.
“Are you the owners of the truck outside?”
“Indeed, we are. And my guess is”—this time Brak made a show of turning his head around—“that you are looking for a fast way out of this heavenly retreat.”
I couldn’t hide my smile. “Is it that obvious?”
“It’s all over on your face, and it’s only reasonable. Even I hate this mudhole, and this is where Trev and I trade plenty of metal. Where do you need to go?”
“Tarka—” I remembered Malk’s reaction when I first said the name of the city. He did not recognise it, and I’d had to show him the emblem on the coins for him to understand. “The City of Towers.”
Brak whistled softly. “That’s a bit of a trek, Lady Peach, but my guess is your immediate concern is to get out of here before they realise you snuck in. Climbed the walls, did you? That’s an impressive feat, especially for a lady your size.”
“How did you—”
Brak leaned forward on the wooden table, which creaked under his weight. “There are two gates in and out of this place, and if you were to try and come in by yourself through either of them, you’d be spread on a guard’s mat right now, excuse my language. You are in the wrong place and need to get out of here.” Brak leaned a little closer and lowered his voice. “Now, we’re willing to help you out, but I’m afraid it will cost you metal.” He tilted his head inside the grey cowl. “I’ll say the contents of your coin bag and what’s in your little sack. No exceptions.”
“How do you know I have anything of value in the sack? Maybe it’s filled with old clothes.”
“Oh, I have a keen sense of hearing, Lady Peach, and I heard the tinkling of metal when you placed it on the floor.”
My heart sank. Losing all of the currency I had in this world was not a good plan. But I was desperate, and this Brak was shrewd enough to sense it. For all his gallantry and pleasant chatter, this man was not one to be letting go of a business advantage.
“I have fighting skills, and I’m good with my sword,” I said. “I can buy passage by helping you protect the truck, standing guard at night and such.”
Brak shook his head. “I’m sure you can swing that sword of yours just fine, Lady Peach, but we have no need for extra guards. Trevil might not be much of a talker, but he sleeps very lightly and can shoot a flying bird’s head off with his pistol. We’ve been travelling this route for three years now. We have our resting spots; friendly farms and places along the road we know are safe. Passengers cost us in fuel and speed, so if you want to travel with us out of here, you need to pay.”
Trevil came back with only two cups. He laid one at his cousin’s place and kept one to himself.
“Oh Trevil,” Brak admonished in a light-hearted tone, “that was a little unkind. And we were about to seal a deal here, weren’t we, Lady Peach?”
He tipped the cup in my direction.
I bent down and fished out the porcelain cup from the sack. “Nice find,” commented Brak. He poured me a measure from his cup and added, in a matter-of-fact tone, “It came out of the sack, so it is a part of your payment.”
I sniffed the liquid and the stench of the badly fermented alcohol hit my nose like a fist. Ignoring the data streaming through my mind, I let some of the contaminated drink pass my lips.
“Not a lady’s drink,” remarked Brak with a wry smile. He pointed at the other patrons. “The bartender here brews a mean one, meant to knock them out before they get sozzled enough to try and knock each other out and ruin the furniture. But if you travel with us, you won’t have to get used to the brew, the occasional hound stew, or the company some of the lads here are planning to give you.” Brak raised his cup. “Do we have a deal?”
I didn’t have a choice. But on the other hand, I’d found a ride out of this place and some company to gain information from. Not a bad deal, especially since I knew that if I had to, I could always rob them later. In my peripheral vision I saw Trevil glaring at me and guessed he was hoping I would refuse Brak’s deal.
I raised my cup, clinked it softly with Brak’s, and drained it in one go. Rising to my feet I said, “Your cup, your sack, you carry it all. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to rest in your truck’s cabin.”
9
Twinkle Eyes
We found the dead bodies halfway up the hill. They were probably laid in a neater file before animals had dragged some of them aside. The smell was strong, but our bodies immediately reacted by reducing our sensitivity to it. Still, it was not a pretty sight.
“Between forty or fifty of them,” Galinak said. “A slaughter, yes, but where’re the rest of them?”
“Taken?” I said, then added, “Slaves?”
Galinak shrugged and we moved on.
We ended up spending the night in the highest house on top of the hill.
Looters had done a thorough job of going through the village, but still they left plenty of stuff behind for us to use. I found a pair of worn boots that fit. One even had real leather lining. In a different house I got a cloak and some clothes, old and torn but definitely a step up from what I’d been wearing.
On the downside, I was attacked by a dog who was either protecting its turf or had grown a taste for feeding off the remains of the slain. Galinak reacted fast, but not fast enough. The bite I received wasn’t painful—my skin healed surprisingly fast—and we did end up having dog stew for dinner. So I wasn’t complaining.
It was Galinak who found the three moonshine bottles in the cellar. He insisted I rub some of it over my rapidly healing wound. It stung a bit, and I used the cloth of the farmer wife’s dress to bandage my arm. The rest we drank.
“Are you going to do things different?” Galinak asked me unexpectedly. We were sitting around the burning hearth, trying to consume enough moonshine to be able to eat Galinak’s dog stew. My body resisted the first few mouthfuls, but with enough resolve, mind always triumphs over matter.
“What do you mean?” I took another swig from the bottle.
“Some Trolls I used to know, when they had a close call, a brush with death, they swore they’d do things different for the rest of their lives. A few of them actually changed their ways, but most of ’em couldn’t shake the habits.” Galinak drank some more. “You and I didn’t just have a brush with the grim reaper, we grabbed his bony arse and gave him a wet smacker on his lipless mouth, but now we’re alive again. That sort of thing changes your outlook on life.”
I did not know what to answer, so I reversed the question. “What are you going to do differently?”
Galinak shrugged and filled his mouth again, then passed the bottle. “Not sure. Guess I won’t take orders from nobody no more.”
“Was there ever a time when you did?”
He chuckled. “You only know the old, wise, and tender me, Twinkles. I used to be obedient, a little more respectful to authority, but now—” He sighed. “What about you?”
“I remember promising myself in the City Within the Mountain, just before we went on the mission, that if I ever got out of there alive, I’d find a nice lady and have a family of my own.” I gestured at my body. “Not going to happen with this body now.”
“You said you were from around here. Maybe go see your folks, visit your family?”
I took another deep pull from the bottle and shook my head. Things were starting to get misty in my peripheral vision. “My story is not so different from Rafik’s, you know. One day you’re living happily in some remote little village, the next day you wake up with these.” I pointed at my eyes, momentarily forgetting this was not my old body. “My dad had coin and influence where we lived, and the people there were not as zealous as in Rafik’s village, so no ax or hot pokers for me. But a marked son was a major blow to the family. I was locked in a room for a whole month before LoreMaster Harim came to our house. Then I was whisked away. I know now that this was the right thing to do for all involved, but for a thirteen-year-old boy who loses his family in the blink of an eye …” I took another pull from the moonshine. “I was … crying every night for a long time, then I got angry for a while, then I got over it. Years later I got word my dad had passed away—they didn’t even tell me how. My older sister was already married, and my mother and two younger sisters moved to another part of the land for some reason. That’s the last I’d heard.”
“Still. Family,” Galinak said. “Maybe once we figure out what to do and”—he wiggled his finger unsteadily at me—“what not to do. We could track them down, have a meet, you know …”
Even in my state I registered Galinak said we when talking about tracking down my long-lost family.
“I never got to thank you, Twinkle Eyes,” he suddenly said. “You saved my life, twice.”
“What are you talking about?” I swallowed another mouthful of the bitter drink, ignoring my body’s warning regarding my current condition.
“Back in the City Within the Mountain. If it wasn’t for you, negotiating like that, we would have just ended up Lizard chowder.”
“Ah, that, but we did end up as Lizard chowder.” I passed the bottle back, and Galinak drank some more before continuing.
“Yea, but they extracted our minds.” He pointed at his head. “That’s because of you. And now, here I am back in the living, again because of you.” He passed the bottle back.
“To be honest, Rafik told me you were coming with me before I managed to ask,” I said, and checked the bottle I was holding. It was empty.
“I’m sure that those rust-fucker Tarkanians wouldn’t have just sent me alone on this mission.” Galinak opened the second bottle. “Nah, I know why I’m here, Twinkle Eyes. Here’s to you, and here’s to life.” He raised the bottle and drank deeply.
I vaguely remember slurring words of infinite wisdom as we went through our second bottle. The rest of the night was a bit of a blur, containing many old stories, tales of Salvationist adventures, more than a few lurid songs, then smashing through a wooden door and eventually passing out blissfully on the stairs to the cellar.
Waking up in a bunker filled with poisoned air was worse than what I felt the following morning, but not by much. Galinak was nowhere to be seen, so after washing my face and drinking boiled well water, I slowly began exploring the rest of the house. On the second floor I found an old hunting rifle under a pile of debris. There were no bullets, so it was probably more useful as a club, but I kept it anyway.
The makeshift ladder leading to the attic creaked, but bore my weight. The roof tiles had several bullet holes, and rays of light penetrated the gloom. Still, without my enhanced sight I would not have noticed the footsteps marking the dusty floor and the fact that one of the floorboards was slightly cleaner than others. Moving it earned me a splinter but was absolutely worth it. As if the bag of fifty metal coins I found, the two water skins, and the steel hunting knife were not enough, I carefully pulled out two other items of interest. The first one was a live snap, not a drawing, of a family of seven who hugged and smiled happily at me despite the creases. I guessed the snap had sentimental value to whoever hid it here or whoever was meant to find it. I kept it without really knowing why. And there was a map. This, too, was not a crude hand drawing, but rather a pre-Catastrophe-era, fully detailed folding map.
Memories surfaced and flooded my consciousness as I spread it on the floor. I knew maps like this. My LoreMaster was an avid collector and used to spend hours in his tower, bent over with his nose stuck in them. I heard his voice lecturing in my ear, “Great cities fall into great ruins in a matter of years and towns or villages vanish into the woods in even less time, but mountains, rivers, and lakes remain, more or less, in the same place. With enough attention to detail, old pre-Catastrophe maps could prove extremely valuable.”
Before we parted ways, LoreMaster Harim gave me a map and list of his hideouts, telling me to use whatever I found to keep the Guild of Historians alive, but I had failed both him and the Guild by being torn apart by Lizards in the City Within the Mountain.
I turned my attention to the map I was holding and magnified it tenfold with my sight. This newly awakened memory gave me an idea of where we were, and I marked the village on the thin paper with a circle made by a piece of coal I found on the floor. Now I just had to figure out where we needed to go.
I looked up and examined the roof of the attic, and I spotted a trapdoor. There was no ladder in sight, but a successful, and quite daring, balancing act over several pieces of piled-up furniture meant I could open the trapdoor and stick my head through. Getting my body up there required a bit more work, especially when Galinak still hadn’t shown up, but I didn’t care—I was acting like a man possessed. When I finally made it to the top of the roof I was in a kind of euphoric ecstasy. Childish. Stupid. I know. But it felt good to seek a solution to a mystery and then solve it. I desperately needed to know why I’d been given my life back, and walking away without finding a way to answer this question was not an option for me. I began experimenting with my vision, zooming in and out, trying to see as far as I could and to memorize the topography.
At the edge of my enhanced vision I saw the distinct silhouette of the City of Towers, my old home.
“Hey!”
I stopped zooming and turned my head down.
“Look what I found.” Galinak was sitting bareback on a horse. “Took me ages to tempt him to come over, but once I got my hands on him, he became very obedient.” If Galinak was suffering any setbacks because of last night, it didn’t show.
This was definitely the best day of our new lives, so far.
“Well done,” I shouted in reply. “Now let’s gather what we can carry. I know where we can go and gear up.”
“Really?” He danced the horse in a circle. “And where is that?”
I didn’t bother to shout back. Instead, I turned to study the hills to our north.
“We are going to visit an old friend,” I whispered to no one in particular.
10
Peach
Wake up, Lady Peach. We’re making a tinkle stop.”
I opened my eyes and had to blink several times before I could focus. I’d dozed off simply to gather some strength, but the conditions inside the truck’s cabin were far from ideal. I was jammed in the backseat among heaps of junk, dried meat, a keg of beer, and several primitive guns that looked as if they were taken from the museum of historical armaments.
To make matters worse, suspended above my head by chains and ropes was an old, heavy machine gun. It swayed dangerously with the rocking of the truck. If that thing fell on my head it would be the short end of this vessel. The old truck was jerking sideways as much as it was moving forward on the broken road, and it made me nauseous and weak. Having to duck every so often so as not to get hit by the machine gun wasn’t helping things.
“Sure,” I said weakly, the taste of dust in my mouth. I’d already lost the contents of my stomach three times in the last five days and was down to my last five nourishment pills.
Brak was the driver. I didn’t know why he kept a cowl over his head during the entire journey, even in the oppressing heat of the truck’s cabin, but other than that he was still the chatty, glass-half-full kind of guy I’d met in the looter’s camp. In fact, I believed the reason Brak agreed to take me along was less about the contents of my sack and more about companionship.
Trevil kept to his silent brooding and spoke to me only when it was necessary. He also kept his revolver on his person at all times, remained vigilant throughout most of the journey, and took the entire night-watch duty, refusing even when I offered to relieve him for a few hours. He’d never expressed his consent to taking me along, and my educated guess was that he was not happy about it but had given in to Brak’s whim.
Brak had introduced Trevil as his cousin, but I had my doubts they were blood related. It wasn’t just that their physiques and demeanours were extremely different; there was something in the way they related to each other that spoke of a different sort of familiarity. There were other signs; my womanly instincts told me neither of them ever looked at me like the men at the bar had. Yet they refrained from touching each other, or expressing their intimacy in any obvious way. I spent time during the journey wondering why they kept their relationship a secret. The world I came from had long accepted same-sex relationships, and Tarakan society was even coming to terms with human-Angel relationships. Sadly, it seemed like the world I’d woken up to might have fallen back to its old inhibitions.
Brak parked the truck and turned to me, sweat glistening under his cowl. “This spot is really beautiful, Lady Peach. We should go to the ridge and look down at the valley.”
The look Trevil shot his companion was so apparent I almost laughed.
“Oh, come on, Trev.” Brak gestured at me. “Look at her. Lady Peach needs a bit of fresh air, and you need some peace and quiet from my chattering.”
Trevil shrugged but leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes as we climbed down. It was a short trek through rich, tall grass, and we had to climb down a bit till we got to the ledge, but Brak was not exaggerating. It was an odd sight that filled me with mixed emotions. The vast lowland below was filled with destroyed buildings, roads, and bridges, but it was also rich with vegetation. I even spotted several small fields with clear signs of cultivation.
“This is where we’re going”—Brak pointed in the distance—“Lakewood Hope. It’s a new settlement built over ruins. They named it Lakewood because it’s between a lake—”
“—and a wood,” I said, finishing his sentence.
“Yeah, Lady Peach, that’s right. My grandad came here after the breaking of the world. He was one of the founders of Lakewood Hope and my father lives there, and my older brother. My sister got married seven seasons ago and moved away, but she moved back when her man went foraging too deep and too long in the contaminated cities and died of sickness.”
“So, it’s just you and your cousin on the road, then?”
The look of momentary vagueness in Brak’s eyes was all the proof I needed.
“Yeah … just me and Trev on the road, looking out for each other.” He changed topics. “You never told me where you’re from, Lady Peach.”
A part of me was listening to Brak while another was trying to figure where I was, but I was never strong in topography. “I am from very far away,” I answered.
“I gathered that—your accent is not from these parts—but how far?”
I levelled a stare at him. “Where I come from people do not need to hide who they love.”
Brak quickly turned his head to watch the land below. “That’s far away indeed then,” he said quietly. “So, what brings you here?”
There was no reason to lie. “I don’t know yet, but I need to get to the City of Towers.”
“That’s quite a ramble, Lady Peach. Your best course would be the town of Newport and to buy a ride with a SuperTruck driver to Regeneration, but I hear the Tarakan highway is blocked nowadays.”
There was so much information crammed into Brak’s last sentence I had to figure out which question to ask first. “The Tarakan highway network? It still functions?”
“Oh yeah, Lady Peach, there’s a lot of it that’s still intact, but you need a SuperTruck to ride it proper, not our kind. You know of SuperTrucks?”
I nodded. The toll-operated highways and the selling of what were fondly called T trucks were one of the most lucrative side businesses of Tarakan. SuperTruck was definitely a good name for those machines, and I was happy to find out some had survived. It meant my trip to the City of Towers could theoretically become much shorter.
“But you say the road is blocked?”
“That’s what I hear, Lady Peach. Some warlord took a part of it for himself, made a roadblock, and is taxing the SuperTruck drivers. They say this warlord has some kind of heavy cannons on carts that can blow you away from a mile’s distance, and that a few truckers who tried to break through died along with their trucks. So now the only way to get from Newport would be the back roads on trucks like ours.” Brak pointed in the direction we came from for emphasis. “And that could take you several weeks, maybe a whole season. And I hear Regeneration is under siege, too, although it could be just a rumour.”
I did not recognize the places Brak mentioned, but it seemed that violence never ceased for a moment, even after Armageddon.
We both heard the very long honk of the truck’s horn. “Oh, Trev is getting impatient with us.” Brak smiled, but when two more short honks followed his smile faded and he began running back, pulling out a gun from his belt. “It’s our signal for trouble,” he shouted as I ran after him. “Hold on Trev, I’m coming.”
I hadn’t touched any of the guns in the truck, assuming such an action would not be appreciated, but I still had my sword. I pulled it out and went after Brak. My vessel’s shape and size meant I could easily blend into a market crowd in a reconnaissance mission, but it had short legs and was not built for speed, so I was trailing behind when I cleared the small hill. It turned out Trevil was travelling towards us. The truck cut through the tall grass, swaying dramatically, and I could count three figures holding on to the top of the truck, slowly progressing to the cabin. They were dressed in a mixture of rags and animal skin. A little behind them was a cloud of dust made by more men on horses galloping towards us. There was no time to zoom in or count them as we ran towards the truck.
There was a shot and a body dropped from the passenger side. I could see that Trevil was still in the driver’s seat but I guess Brak was too battle nervous to have a clear grasp of the situation because he screamed, “Trev, no,” stood his ground, aimed and shot wildly at the men on top of the truck. All three men ducked, but one of them shot back just as Trevil managed to steady the vehicle. I heard Brak shout and saw him fall into the tall grass just as the truck pulled over. One of the men on top skidded forward and fell in front of the cabin; another used the momentum to jump down, roll in the soft grass, and come up pointing the gun at the prone Brak. He did not pay attention to me, a middle-aged woman barely taller than the grass, until the moment I cut his arm off with the power sword.
Trevil climbed out of the driver seat. There was blood on his shirt. He shot the man who fell in front of the truck and began running towards us, unaware that the third man on top of the truck had gotten up on his feet and was aiming his gun at Trevil’s back. ESM kicked in. I grabbed the severed arm before it hit the ground, turned it and pressed the finger on the trigger, shooting above Trevil’s head. It was an old gun, and I think I missed, or maybe grazed the man, but it made him lose his balance and fall from the top of the truck. I ran and stabbed him with the sword as Trevil bent down and picked up the groaning Brak, put his arm around him and began carrying him back to the truck. The men on horseback were a moment from catching up with us, and there was no way we could push Brak into the cabin and drive away on time. I sheathed the sword, bent down and picked up the other gun. “Start moving,” I shouted at Trevil. “I’ll stall them.”
I ran as fast as I could while crouching low in the tall grass, and I heard the thunder of hooves approaching. My personal, inner briefing was short and bitter. I had a pair of unchecked, old guns with only the element of surprise on my side and short-spanned ESM facing an untold number of armed riders. Those were not odds I wanted to work with. Three horses passed me, and their riders noticed me too late to react. The fourth one almost trampled me and I had to roll sideways. I emerged from the tall grass shooting with both hands. All around me men and horses screamed and fell. My left-hand gun emptied after five shots, and I figured I had one or two more shots in my right. I ran to where a rider fell as bullets began whizzing around me, and an arrow struck the ground in front of me. A rider was lying on the ground, still breathing, but nursing a gunshot wound, his pump-action shotgun at arm’s length. When he saw me he tried to reach it. I shot him twice, dropped the handguns, and went to retrieve the shotgun. I was in the midst of a fog of war, the sort that gets you killed quickly. Somewhere behind me I heard the truck’s engine roar. I rolled again, picking up the shotgun with both hands, turned, shot a charging woman off her horse, ducked, and ran fast along the tall grass as bullets chased me. Without the ESM I would have been dead already, but my body was beginning to weaken. The truck was already moving away as I began racing after it. I knew that this action would be the last physical exertion I could muster before I collapsed from exhaustion. Already my sight was beginning to get blurry.
I saw a lone horse and went for it. He might have been docile, in shock, or too slow to react to my ESM speed, but I managed to reach him and jump-mount. I had never been a horse person, but I had put in my fair share of saddle miles during various assignments which had brought me to the farthest corners of the world. The saddle was makeshift, leather and animal skin, but was surprisingly soft—not that I had time to enjoy the sensation.
My attack had momentarily disoriented the riders, but they were circling for another charge at the truck. I estimated there were more than a dozen left. I ducked my head low and urged the horse forward. Hitting a moving target from horseback was a very difficult task, but it didn’t stop my pursuers from trying. Bullets and arrows flew past me with enough density to pose a threat. I kept my head down and urged the beast forward with my heels. The truck was built for endurance but not for speed, even on a paved road. Reaching it on the back of a galloping horse took only a moment. I manoeuvred to the right side of the truck, then grasped the first thing I could reach, a rusty ladder. My horse suddenly veered away and I was left dangling, holding onto the ladder with one hand, my feet almost touching the ground. The shotgun dropped to the ground and a second later I saw the truck roll over it. Normally climbing to relative safety would have been easy enough, but after ESM, my vessel was reaching the end of its physical ability. Through desperation alone I managed to get a foothold on the ladder, but all I could do was cling to it and watch as the first rider reached the truck. He was a burly man with a wild beard, dressed in a bearskin and high fur boots. In his hand he held a long spear with a wicked-looking metal spike on the end of it. I didn’t need to use my imagination to guess what he would be trying to do first. He aimed the spear at me as he got closer. Trying to climb up would just expose my back to him, and besides, my arms and legs felt like they were made of stone. I managed to draw the sword with my left hand as the rider closed in on me, but as I pressed the power button, nothing happened. It was either broken or depleted of energy cells. The rider lunged with his spear and I barely managed to deflect it. Two other riders were close behind him. One had long, braided hair and was holding a gun in her free hand. The rider with the spear tried again. This time the tip of the spear missed me but the sharp metal brushed against my skin and without registering the pain yet, I felt the skin on my thigh open. I willed my legs to climb up the ladder but his companions got within shooting distance and were just taking their time to get closer so they wouldn’t miss. I was going to be shot, and then the vessel’s strength would not be able to hold on to the ladder and I would fall down to the ground. If I was lucky I would get run over by the truck and be done for the fast way.
The burly rider aimed his spear again just as his chest exploded and he flew backwards from the saddle. I turned my head to see Brak, white as death, leaning from the roof hatch, aiming the truck’s heavy gun. He shot three more times, single cannon-like bullets that flew above my head and missed, but they were enough of a threat to make the riders veer away and hide behind the bulk of the moving truck.
Trevil manoeuvred the truck to a road close enough to a mountain ridge to make it hard for riders to pass us. When I looked up the machine gun was still there but Brak was gone from the hatch, and it was up to me to decide whether to climb up and try to get inside the cabin through the open hatch or inch my way back to the passenger’s door, open it slightly, and get in. I chose the scenic route, finding out on the way that we were driving down the mountain to the valley below, moving between a mountainside and a deadly drop. The riders were still behind the truck, and they were nothing if not persistent. I turned to lower myself into the cabin. My feet were just touching the top of the seat when two raiders, a man and a woman, managed to climb on top of the truck. With only my toes touching, I balanced myself on the seat and grasped the machine gun. It was very heavy, held down by chains, and clumsy to wield. The recoil from the first shot almost threw me off balance, but it blew the leg off one of the climbers. The other one could have rushed me then, but she panicked and retreated to the back of the truck, climbing down. There was a loud banging noise as they tried to open the truck’s haul doors while riding behind us.
My legs were trembling. I looked down at the cabin. Trevil was still behind the wheel, his shirt crimson with blood, but Brak was worse. He was lying underneath me with his eyes closed. Right then we were relatively safe, but once we were back on open ground things would change.
“Trevil, is there a way to open your haul door?” I shouted.
He shook his head stubbornly. “No way,” he shouted back. “Fuck those naturalists.”
“I can’t treat Brak and hold the machine gun.”
Trevil glanced back at Brak and swore loudly. He reached down and pulled a lever, and I immediately felt the truck tremble as the haul’s doors folded upwards. A moment later the entire haul tilted upwards and I heard the noise of metal sliding down and spilling onto the road behind us.
When we moved a little farther away I saw that the riders had stopped pursuing us and were gathering around the metal we dropped. It was useless and stupid to shoot at them anymore, but I can’t say I wasn’t tempted to do just that. I lowered myself down carefully and Trevil pulled another lever, causing the chains all around us to move as the heavy gun was pulled back into the cabin. I was already next to Brak when the hatch closed. His breathing was shallow, and the wound on his pelvic bone was a mess. I’d seen worse—hell, I’d been wounded worse—but I knew that these kinds of wounds in the field were either treated immediately and by sophisticated medicine or the person died.
I looked around. “Trevil, do you have anything I could help him with? This does not look good.”
“There’s a medicine bag in the back of the truck under those blankets.” He guided me as I moved about the shaking cabin until I found a large satchel and rummaged through it. I did not expect to find a cell regenerator, but I was hoping to find a skin patcher, or at the very least an antibleeding salve, the sort almost every human soldier used to carry. All I found were some brown cloth bandages, an alarmingly thick needle and thread, and a bunch of leaves.
“I can’t do anything with this!” I said to Trevil. “He’s going to die if we don’t stop the bleeding.”
“Can you drive the truck?” he shouted back.
I looked at the wheel, pedals, and levers and said, “I could try.”
“Then take the wheel from me.” He pointed at the pedal below. “Here you accelerate, not that it will go any faster, and here, the other one is the brake. Push it too hard and we will skid and probably roll off this mountain, so just try to steer it steady.”
We quickly changed places and Trevil disappeared behind the front seat. I had to fold one leg underneath myself to be able to see through the front windshield and quickly discovered the steering wheel had at least a two-second delay, but it was better than trying to patch a hole in a human being with only a broken needle while inside a rocking cabin. I heard Brak moan behind me, then shout in agony as Trevil tried to stop the bleeding and stitch the wound closed under less than ideal circumstances. Eventually Brak fell silent, and I was hoping he just passed out.
By the time we reached the plains I was barely holding myself awake and had been suffering from tunnel vision. Trevil’s head popped up from behind the seat.
“How’s he doing?” I asked, but Trevil did not answer. His expression betrayed desperate resolution.
“Let me drive again. No, don’t stop, we need the truck’s momentum, we’ll change places the way we did before.”
When the manoeuvre was complete I looked at Brak lying behind us. His pelvis wound was wrapped in cloth, and I could see some dried leaves sticking out from beneath it.
I turned back and inspected Trevil’s arm wound. “This needs treatment, too.”
With his teeth and my help Trevil ripped the bloodied cloth of his sleeve and I wrapped it around the wound, then I collapsed back onto my seat. The pounding in my head grew and fog surrounded my vision. I had exerted my vessel to its limit and possibly beyond. It was time to pay the price.
I heard Trevil ask me something but his words didn’t register. “I’m sorry,” I said, or mumbled, or whispered, “I need to rest.”
And then the world went dark.
11
Twinkle Eyes
Riding double bareback on a horse trying to hold on to Galinak began as an unpleasant experience and quickly went downhill from there. At least the animal was docile enough, and we had water and a few supplies to get us to where we wanted to go. Or more truthfully, where I wanted us to go. I kept our destination from Galinak despite the periodic bouts of questions from him, mainly because I wasn’t sure what we’d find when we got there but also, I admit, because I wanted to keep some cards close to my chest.
What I couldn’t hide was the fact that we were riding away from the City of Towers, the place Galinak was eager to travel to once I foolishly admitted it was within my sight. I was surprised to find out how quickly the warrior accepted the fact that we were resurrected and simply saw it as a chance for a new life—or, to be more precise, a dramatic comeback to his old life and damn the consequences. This led to several heated arguments between us, but for some reason he still humoured me instead of doing what I would have done, which was to simply throw me off the horse and ride away. I knew that Galinak felt he owed me—he’d told me that himself—but I was not about to trust words or promises uttered while we were finishing our second bottle of moonshine. Three years was not a long time, but Galinak could suddenly decide to live the rest of his short life as a free man. This very concern led me to volunteer for long watch shifts at night, with the perfect excuse that my sight would make me better suited for the job.
If Galinak realised my fear, he did not bother to reassure me. He used his extended rest time to carefully trim his growing beard and to shave both sides of his skull with a thin folding blade he found at the village. It left him with only a thin strip of hair on the top of his skull—a strange look, yet one that nevertheless felt comfortably appropriate.
We crossed several roads and two streams without meeting a living soul. It was not unusual: most of humanity clustered around the Tarakan freeway or roads, and what was once a land full of towns and fields quickly became wilderness. Animals were certainly roaming about, though, and Galinak managed to kill a rabbit with a well-aimed—or, if you ask me, a lucky throw of—a fist-sized stone. We avoided a lightly wooded area after finding still-steamy signs of bear activity and camped one night in the remains of a tall building made of stone and warped metal. I could not have guessed its use, but it was the only man-made structure still standing amid the mounds of rubble.
My sleep was shallow, and the last moment of my previous life was the only surviving memory from my fleeting dreams. Still, I kept our course, riding in the opposite direction of the City of Towers.
On the fourth day we reached our destination, a wire gate no one had bothered to loot with three metal signs so faded one could barely recognise the skull signs on them. If there ever was a wall or a fence on both sides of the gate, it was long gone. The fields in front of us were filled with metal debris. In the distance a tower loomed, surrounded by several large buildings.
Galinak whistled. “Look at that little treasure trove.” He urged the horse forward.
“Stop.” There was enough alarm in my voice to make the horse halt by itself.
Galinak managed not to fall off the horse’s back but he was not happy. “Bukra’s balls, what are you doing?”
“Don’t cross the gate.”
Galinak glared back at me, waiting for me to explain myself.
“Look there, and there …” I pointed. “See the large holes in the ground?”
He followed my finger and nodded.
“It’s an old minefield, pre-Catastrophe.”
“Rust. We found some of those in some deep runs back in the day.” Galinak’s expression betrayed the surprise of a surfacing memory. He shook it away and said, “So, what now, use your eyes to cross it?”
I shook my head. “Now we build up a fire, a big one. There’s plenty of dry wood around.”
We dismounted and Galinak gave me the reins to the horse. “Okay, we build a fire, then what?”
“We wait, someone will come.”
He looked at me long enough for me to feel uncomfortable.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” he finally asked.
“Yeah,” I lied, but it came out convincingly enough.
“Good. Don’t get us killed. I’m starting to like this new body.”
We camped and waited. I stopped Galinak from exploring the grounds, so there was no food. We sat in silence, feeding the flames until darkness set, then we let the fire die and let the darkness and the cold slowly envelop us.
I saw them first, of course. Four men, armed with power rifles and wearing night-seeing devices over their eyes, and a dog so large it might have been a wolf.
“They’re coming,” I said in the most casual tone I could muster. “Get ready, but don’t do anything stupid, even if they are aggressive.”
Galinak got up and stood behind me and we both laid our weapons on the ground and at my instruction, proceeded to wrap strips of my old dress around our eyes. The darkness, the real darkness of the blind, made my heart race.
“You’d better be rusting sure about this,” Galinak whispered. I felt the horse’s breath on my neck.
“You there, who are you?” came a shout, not too far, but still a distance away.
“We are here to talk to Old Dwaine,” I shouted back.
“Are you merchants?”
There was no point in lying, “No, we just need to talk to Old Dw—”
“Old Dwaine’s dead’n buried with the mines.” There was the distinct sound of a power weapon charging.
“Oh, rust,” Galinak breathed.
“Don’t take your blindfold down, don’t move,” I whispered through tight lips.
“Then I need to talk to his … son,” I shouted back, my mind racing. What did my LoreMaster tell me? The memory was there, a conversation, before we parted, but I couldn’t remember all of it.
“Oh yeah? What’s his name?”
I swallowed. “Look … our weapons are on the ground … we came to parley … we knew Old Dwaine,” I tried.
“Then what’s his son’s name?” I could feel the muzzle of the weapon training itself on me.
What did I know about them? One extended family. Holed up. Secluders. Firstborn son’s name would be …
“His name is … Dwaine Junior?”
I hoped the question in my sentence was not apparent but I distinctly heard Galinak curse under his breath again.
There was a brief pause, then a voice from a different direction spoke.
“Someone will come pick up your weapons and check the blindfolds, then he will give you a rope. Hold on to the rope and don’t let go if you want to live. You with the horse, if the beast runs away don’t go chasing after it, this whole area is full of explosives and only we know the way.”
They took us in a roundabout way, that was for sure, and I breathed an audible sigh of relief when I felt man-made, solid ground under my feet. As we were led farther on, still blindfolded, I used the time to dig into my foggy memory for my LoreMaster’s words of caution that all secluders were self-sufficient and hostile to outsiders. I was beginning to doubt that my idea was a good one.
When rough hands took my blindfold off my doubts grew to near certainty. Both Galinak and I instinctively raised our hands in the air. We were in a huge indoor building, surrounded by almost two dozen men and several women dressed in tattered grey uniforms. Several generations of low hygiene and probably inbreeding were showing. Most of them had one deformity or another, but that did not stop them from pointing a rich array of firearms at us. The weapons seemed like top-notch, pre-Catastrophe stuff, but that was not what made Galinak whistle softly. Just behind the circle of hostile secluders stood a dozen metal vehicles, shaped roughly like birds with rigid wings spread wide, their metal gleaming and spotless. There was no mistake that these were Sky Birds. In the old days people ruled the skies, and sometimes each other, by flying them.
“You two.”
A voice caused me to turn my head and face the elevated dais. A man was sitting on a throne of some sort, but it was not made of gold or any kind of metal I recognised. The man, who I assumed was Dwaine Junior, was wearing a large helmet on his head which covered most of his face except his mouth and jawline. When he stood up I saw he was clad in some kind of body suit. Standing on either side of him were a wizened old woman and a young man, just out of adolescence. The woman was leaning heavily on a cane while the boy was having difficulty standing because he was holding too many weapons for me to count.
“You two,” the man on the dais bellowed dramatically for the second time, gesturing with his gloved hands, “have intruded on Skygate. Be judged by Dwaine, son of Dwaine.”
“Let them walk the field,” someone shouted from behind us, and there were several murmurs of approval. “Yeah, trespassers be gone, let them be judged.”
I bowed deeply to the man on the dais as the noise around us subsided.
“Dwaine, son of Dwaine,” I began slowly, articulating every word. “I was sent here by LoreMaster Harim. He and your father were bonded in friendship and blood.” I waited for some response but Dwaine Junior’s face was blank. “Like I said,” I added, trying to fill the dangerous silence, “my master left something for me here … in the safekeeping of your father … for me to …”
“He lies.” The boy by the dais stepped forward and pointed a shoulder missile launcher at us. “I say we let the trespassers walk the field.”
There was a quick cheer, so I couldn’t hear what the woman whispered to Dwaine, but the boy was waved by his father to step back. When the noise subsided Dwaine said, “You step on the holy grounds of Skygate, claiming a blood bond between your master and my father, Dwaine, son of Dwaine the guardian, father of us all. The traveller Harim is known to us, and was allowed to pass, guided through the fields, but how do we know your words are true? Tell us, what did this master of yours leave here for you?”
The dismayed look on my face must have been plain to see as I stuttered my reply. “I do not know precisely oh … Dwaine … son of Dwaine … but I know they are essential to my mission, and that my master—”
During the commotion that erupted a stone was thrown and hit my back. Galinak was wise enough to stay still. But shortly after, he swore and threw a man who tried to seize him. The man hit the ground far enough from where we stood for people to withdraw. Things cooled down a bit after that, but weapons were still raised and people still took aim. It was then the old woman banged her walking stick on the dais. In the silence that followed the woman gave a short speech. I recognised only a few words; the rest was a mixture of piercing wails and dialect. When it was over I looked at Dwaine. “I’m sorry, I didn’t manage to get all of that.”
Dwaine’s mouth twisted in a knowing smile. “What Nana Dwaine is saying, is that we’ll very soon know the truth.”
12
Peach
Wake up, Peach.” The splash of water hit my face a moment later and I was up, breathing hard and trying to stop the world from spinning.
It was pitch-dark outside but for the truck’s floodlights. The cabin itself was lit only by a dim red lamp. I turned my head to look at Trevil, then looked in the opposite direction. Brak was in the shadows, perched against the cabin’s wall and the backseat. His head was slumped backwards.
“Is he alive?” It wasn’t the most sensitive of questions, but it needed to be asked.
“Brak’s a warrior. He’ll pull through.” I couldn’t see his expression but there was desperation in Trevil’s voice, as if he was trying to convince himself. “He woke up for a while but now you see him … You’ll need to change his bandage and put on some fresh leaves.”
I turned around to climb over the seat but he stopped me with a thrust of his hand, holding a water skin. “Drink first,” he said. The water was warm and slightly contaminated, but my vessel needed the nourishment.
“Thanks,” I said.
“You saved us back there,” Trevil said. “The way you moved could only be one thing.” He nodded at me.
I did not know what he meant so I simply nodded back and climbed over to Brak.
“Give him some water, too,” Trevil called after me. I managed to put the water skin into Brak’s mouth, but a lot of the water I pumped with my hands spilled out. Brak was barely conscious, and Trevil had tied a rope under his armpits and secured it to a hook so he would not fall over during the drive. He was running a high fever, and I placed a wet cloth on his brow. Changing the bandages was a messy ordeal, but at least we were driving on even ground. I got a good look at the wound and grimaced. I was no field medic, but by my estimate, Brak was not going to make it without serious surgery and some modern treatment.
“Trevil,” I said, as kindly as I could. “We need to get Brak some help or he’ll die.”
“I know, we’re almost there.” Trevil leaned a little into the steering wheel, as if that would make the truck drive faster.
Looking out for the first time I realised we were no longer in the fields but driving through a ruined city.
“Where are we?”
“Changed course. There is a Mender here, one of your kind.”
“My kind?” I was careful with my tone of voice.
Trevil turned his head to me slightly. “I saw you move when we fought them naturalists. No ordinary man or woman moves like that. You are marked, tattooed, cursed, whatever they call you. That’s why you want to go to the City of Towers, to be with your kind.”
There was nothing I could say further that would not betray my ignorance, so I turned my head and watched us drive through what were once wide streets filled with people, now empty and ruined.
“This place is … unclean,” I said, using terms I was hoping Trevil could understand. “There is poison in the air. If we stay here too long, we would get sick.”
“I know.” Trevil turned the truck around a corner, and Brak moaned as his body leaned heavily against the rope. “But the Healer lives here, in the middle of the city.”
“That’s … illogical.”
Trevil shook his head slightly but said nothing else. In the silence that followed I drew my power sword and pushed the button. Nothing happened.
“You’ll need a new power clip for that thing,” Trevil said.
“It’s powered by the sun, but it died on me during the fight. Maybe something got damaged.” I tried to pry the hilt guard free so I could see inside but it didn’t budge.
“Better find a Gadgetier in the City of Towers,” Trevil suggested, then added, “Surely you’ve heard of one of those, they are also of your kind. Where do you come from, Peach?”
I sighed. “From too far away, it seems.”
“Gadgetiers are marked who can work with Tarakan technology. You could bring it to a Tinker—they are the unmarked but they deal with Tarakan stuff, too. They’ll be cheaper but some of them are hacks.”
Hacks, I thought to myself, that’s an old word. Amazing what is gone and what lingers. “And where can I find this Gadgetier?”
“Regeneration, City of Towers, or, if you’re lucky, you’ll run into one in one of the surrounding villages, those which are friendly to the marked, and not a lot of them are. There used to be a lot of Gadgetiers in Tarakan Valley, but no one goes there anymore.”
Brak groaned softly. I put a steadying hand on his middle, but there was nothing I could do anymore. “Why is that?” I asked out loud.
Trevil shrugged. “Dunno, heard there was trouble and now the place is filled with Lizardmen.”
“Lizardmen?”
“Yeah, I know, the guy who told me this was solid, though. I’ve never seen a Lizardman myself. I’ll believe it when I see it.” He pulled over and stopped the truck next to a high wall.
“We’re here. Leave your metal here. I mean all of it, even the sword. Don’t worry, no one steals in this place.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, looking around. The street was dark, full of ruined buildings and a few warped trees. Instead of answering, Trevil shoved his gun under his seat, removed his belt and knife, and even took out several bullets from his pocket. I followed his example.
Once we managed to get Brak out of the truck I noticed the wall we parked next to was made of a mixture of piled stone and wooden planks. We carried Brak to a small door with a bell hanging next to it. There were three simple stretchers leaning against the wall, just two pieces of wood and rough ropes tied among them. We lowered Brak onto a stretcher and Trevil pulled the bell until a spyhole latch opened and someone asked, “Yay? Whose in’it?”
“It’s an emergency, a bullet wound.” Trevil pointed at his own pelvis to emphasize where the bullet hit Brak. “We need the Healer.”
The eye looked down at the stretcher and the latch closed. A moment later the door opened and four men came out, all naked but for a loincloth and a wide leather belt. The first man had a torch in his hand, and on a closer examination I could see he wore a pair of odd earrings made of what seemed to be small human bones.
“Please, hurry,” Trevil pleaded.
The man inspected Trevil, then me. “Would ya be pay da price given?” His accent was thick and I could not place it, but Trevil seemed to understand him.
“Aye,” he answered as two men lifted the stretcher. “I will, whatever the Healer would ask for.”
“Ney be coin, only kind,” the man insisted. “Price be steep, but fair.”
Trevil bowed slightly. “Whatever the Healer wishes, on my word.”
“Take da Patshin to the third hut,” the man ordered, and his subordinates quickly moved through the door.
Trevil began walking after them but the man blocked our way. “You be carry gun or coin? Nay metal in’ere is Healer’s law.”
“We carry no metal,” Trevil turned his head and looked at me, searching for a sign that his words were true and when I blinked and nodded at him, he added, “We left it all in the truck.”
The man nodded. “Then you be follow me, wash and change ya wear before ya stand with da Healer.”
Trevil looked as if he was going to argue but thought better of it. We followed the man inside to a small brick building, where we removed our clothes and washed ourselves with a rough brush and a bucket of water. There was no separation between the sexes and we both had to change and wash together with only an oil lamp lighting the centre of the room. I got a glimpse of Trevil’s body. I am an older woman by any account, but I had to admit I was impressed. He was tall, lean, and muscular, not a gram of fat on him, the sort of body chiseled by harsh living. In Tarakan people only bought or medicined such a body.
He did not bother to glance at me, though, which was lucky because he would have noticed I had no markings of any kind on my skin. The man came back, removed his own clothes, and led us, naked, through a long steam room so hot it was hard to breathe. Trevil walked before me, too anxious and preoccupied to notice me at all.
At the end of the steam bath another bucket of cold water waited for us together with clothes made of blue canvas, which felt rough on my vessel’s skin. I only had a rope belt to tie around the waist. The clothes were the same size for myself and Trevil, so mine almost touched the floor and Trevil’s were almost indecently short.
“We stabilized da Patshin,” the man intoned. “He be ready, and you be too. Da Healer be coming to treat soon, and you be ready to pay.”
He led us out of the building, picking up a fresh torch from a designated holder. Even in the middle of the night, everything felt in order, like a well-run hospital. The main building was imposing even though it was only two floors high. I figured by the old, grand architecture that it was probably much bigger once, maybe used as a life centre, filled with gaming rooms, bars, and music clubs, which was what buildings like this usually turned into long ago, when shopping malls became obsolete. A lot of it was now patched up, though a bit more carefully than the outer wall.
The outer area was dotted with large huts, each clearly marked with a number painted in red on all walls. The ground itself was soft cut grass and there were even flowers and cultivated bushes everywhere. As the wind changed, my vessel’s heightened senses detected the noise and faint stench of livestock, and there was also what looked like a large greenhouse on one side of the grounds. It felt like civilisation here was desperately holding on to the corpse that was postwar humanity. Somehow it made me feel better.
When we reached the hut marked three, it was bustling with activity. Two women came out, one holding Brak’s torn clothes and another a pile of his bloodied bandages. Two torches were burning on each side of the door, and four seminaked men were busy lighting small candles on each side of the road, all the way back to the main building.
A man dressed in a white sheet, a cap, and a face mask came out of the hut. His attire was stained red as well. He took his face mask off, leaned over, and whispered something in our guide’s ear. The man nodded and turned to us.
“Da Patshin lives, but just so,” he said in the same accent as the torch-bearing man. “We stop da blood coming but bones are broken and blood seeps inside. He be weak now. Only Healer could help or he be gone to the great dark by morning, no later.”
So this was it? No modern medical treatment, emergency medifield equipment, or even real doctors, just voodoo nonsense. Brak was done for. I kept my mouth shut though, there was no point in commenting, criticizing or drawing attention to myself. Maybe I could convince Trevil to drive me to the City of Towers once Brak died. Worst case, I’d have to steal the truck, or kidnap and use Trevil as an unwilling guide.
The torch-bearing man nodded to his colleague, who bowed and departed quickly, then led us into the hut.
It was lit by several dozen thick candles. Brak was laid on a table and was covered by a canvas blanket. He looked no better than when we moved him out of the truck.
“Brak.” Trevil tried to walk towards the table, his hand outstretched, but the man grasped Trevil by the arm as two others moved quickly to block his way.
“No touching da Patshin,” he ordered. “You stand in da far place.” He pointed at the corner. “No touching da Healer too, understand?”
Trevil took a steadying breath and nodded, visibly controlling his frustration as we walked to our designated place. Excluding Brak and us, there were four other men and three women in the hut, which made it crowded. I touched Trevil’s arm for reassurance, and he looked down at me for the first time since we entered the premises. His face was flushed with anxiety. He loves him, I thought as I stroked his arm, a show of compassion meant to establish an emotional bond between us—or at least that was what my training told me was the right thing to do.
“Don’t worry.” I said the words that Trevil had said to me back in the truck. “Brak’s a warrior, he’ll pull through.”
Trevil smiled weakly and patted my hand gently.
Good. Trust will make things easier later.
A slow drum beat began, and everyone in the room went down on their knees and faced the door. Trevil and I quickly did the same. The sound of singing came from outside, male and female voices in beautiful harmony, changing chords with the slow beat. At first, it was just a hymn I recognised, an old melody with certain religious roots. If my vessel had a brain amp I could have known its exact origins. As the choir walked closer to the door, words were added and the volume of their singing gradually increased with every sentence.
Praise da Healer, Praise da Healer
Praise him so, for he is no darkness
Praise him so for he brings light
Pay the Healer with your love
Pay da Healer with your life
The chorus repeated the words several times, and the song crescendoed as the door opened. A dark-skinned man wearing a thin white robe stood at the door. Everyone in the hut bowed deeply, touching their foreheads to the floor, and we followed their example. When I rose back to my knees I saw that the man’s face and legs were covered in black spots, which on second glance proved to be something more than sunspots or some kind of skin disease. There was something a bit too orderly about them. The shapes were unnatural, almost geometrical, meaning this voodoo healer must have tattooed his entire body. Behind him, outside the hut, stood the choir, each man and woman holding a candle in both hands. Many of them bore the mark of long exposure to a contaminated environment. Some even had peeling skin, exposed raw flesh, the sort of damage that would normally cause excruciating pain, but they all stood there, singing.
The effect of the torches and candles was like a halo of light coming from behind the man, and that, I had to admit, was quite impressive. The man opened his robe and let it fall behind him, leaving him completely naked and unashamed. I noticed that his testicles were either missing or too small to detect. He was otherwise whole, with those strange black marks covering the entirety of his incredibly thin body.
Everyone rose to their feet and bowed again as the naked man walked to the table. Two men took the canvas covering off Brak’s body and I saw Trevil grimace. The wound, although clean, was ugly, and blood was dripping from it.
The naked man bowed his head and touched Brak’s body with both hands. He grimaced in a show of pain.
Nothing more than an act, I thought. What did I get myself involved in?
“Da man bears metal in his flesh and poison in his blood. He is close to darkness,” the naked man intoned in a croak. “Darkness wants him, he belongs to it now. Who wants me to bring this man to da light?”
“I wish so, Healer,” Trevil bowed stiffly as the naked man turned his attention to us.
The naked Healer turned and walked towards Trevil. “And who might you be to the man to bring him back from darkness? Who begs me to take upon me another’s pain?”
“His name is Brak, and I’m his cousin,” Trevil said.
But the naked man shook his head. “You are no blood of his blood. Your words not ring true. Lies lie in darkness. Only truth brings back to life.”
“We are not blood,” Trevil admitted, and immediately the attitude in the room changed. My guess was that lying to the man calling himself Healer was not a light offence. Perhaps that was his way out of curing the incurable, to save face in front of his fanatical followers, and if that was the case, my own troubles just got worse.
The torch-bearing man stepped forward to intervene. “No lie brings life,” he said in a harsh voice. “Da Healer shall not—”
But the naked Healer silenced him with a hand gesture; his brown and almost freakishly large eyes were on me.
“And who ya be?” he said.
“A traveller, from afar,” I answered as vaguely as I could. This was not technically a lie. The naked man seemed to forget Brak altogether. He stepped closer to me, and I fought the urge to enter a battle stance. I let him get close until he reached out and touched my chin, his hand uncomfortably warm. I stood motionless as he manipulated my head right and left, standing so close to me I could smell the stench of his breath.
“Your clothes be off,” he ordered. I saw several of his men tense in anticipation of a refusal. This is just a vessel, I reminded myself as I undid the rope belt and let the crude material slip off my shoulders, but the next thought that flashed through my mind was, But it’s the only one I’ve got.
This time Trevil did notice I was unmarked. I saw him register it, but he was too worried about Brak to react.
The naked man scrutinized me. Strangely enough, I interpreted the expression on his face as a mixture of curiosity, disbelief, and even fear, not lust.
“You are a woman from a different life?” There was a question in his tone of voice, as if he was trying to confirm something.
I nodded, trying to hide my surprise.
“You are a woman of many skins?”
I looked around the room. Naked and weaponless, my chances were slim even with ESM. I could take their Healer prisoner, but I’d need Trevil to cooperate and leave Brak to die. That was not going to happen.
I nodded again, and watched the naked man take a hasty step back, his expression betraying shock, even fear. One of his men took a protective step forward but the Healer motioned him to stand and turned to Brak.
“I take this Patshin back to light, if he be willin,” he said, “but you shall both pay steep”—he motioned to Brak—“for he be close to darkness.”
Trevil stood stiffly, but he might as well have been on his knees again. “I can’t speak for her, but you can take everything I have, the truck, my weapons …”
The naked Healer shook his head once. “No metal, it is forbidden, you pay with kind and service, and I tell ya what price by the morrow.”
Behind the Healer’s shoulder I saw the man with the bone earrings looking surprised at this. My guess was this was not the way things were normally handled. Two things I knew for sure: I was not going to agree to serve this strange naked man and his cult for any length of time, but I was not about to declare my intentions at this particular moment. If Brak would die, as he surely would, I would most likely be free to go. If he somehow survived the night, I would make sure to be dressed and armed before I’d deal with the situation. The best course of action at that moment was just to stand there and let things play out.
Trevil looked at me briefly and I shrugged my consent. “I agree,” he said, and the Healer turned and walked to Brak’s body.
The choir outside was humming as we gathered around the body and placed our arms on one another’s shoulders. I had no time to retrieve my clothes, but no one paid any attention to my nakedness.
The Healer touched Brak’s body and a moan came out of him, echoed by the Healer’s own moan of mock pain.
“He be far gone into darkness,” he said as the men and women began to hum in unison, “far from where pain be. I must take his burden.” The Healer began rubbing Brak’s body with his hands. “I must take his pain.” His hands touched the open wound and Brak arched himself up off the table suddenly, crying with pain. The Healer joined the cry with his own and arched his back as the hum grew louder. I turned my head and saw Trevil’s eyes widen with fear.
“I must take his wound.” The Healer placed both hands right on the wound, and Brak’s body began to convulse so violently two men had to rush forward and hold him down. Two others grasped the Healer, who imitated Brak’s movement while screaming in pain as he maintained pressure on the wound with both hands.
Suddenly something small fell from Brak’s wound to the floor, and both Brak and the Healer screamed and arched their backs in unison once more. The Healer collapsed back into the arms of his followers while Brak’s body lay still on the table. The chorus began singing loudly as the Healer’s body was carried out by his followers. Trevil rushed to Brak’s side, crying his name, and I was left standing alone, naked and bewildered as the people around me rushed to leave the hut. I took a step forward for a better look, and there was no denial of what I saw. Brak’s wound was gone, not even a scar. I bent down and picked up what had fallen from the wound. It was covered with blood and distorted, but I had seen enough of them in my life as a soldier to recognise I was holding part of a bullet in my hand.
13
Twinkle Eyes
It was not a long walk, distance-wise, but surrounded by the hostile Dwaine clan, it took us a long time to reach the Sky Bird. Like the other machines, it was gleaming and spotless. My guess was that taking care of Sky Birds together with shooting trespassers were the Dwaine clan’s favourite pastime.
This particular Sky Bird was huge—it dwarfed all the others by far—and I could not contain the awe it inspired as we stood next to its belly.
“Behold the holy Sky Bird,” said Dwaine, son of Dwaine, waving his arms dramatically as Nana Dwaine limped closer to the metal body. “This is the Leviathan. Your LoreMaster came here, and he and my da walked into the belly of the Leviathan, so he must have left whatever you are looking for right inside.”
Nana Dwaine wailed something unrecognisable as she uncovered a keypad at the lower side of the Sky Bird. “All you need to do is to know the password for the door,” Dwaine said as he ushered me forward. “If you type in the right numbers, the door shall be opened. If you type wrong …” Suddenly there was a handgun aiming at my head. Dwaine, son of Dwaine, looked at me from behind the muzzle. “I will give you one try.”
I glanced at Galinak, but there were too many weapons trained on us for him to be able to do anything that would not result in our certain death. I turned my head back, fighting the rising panic, and a bowel-loosening feeling in my stomach. The numbers on the keypad flashed green. There were eight empty slots sketched above them. I remembered reading somewhere, in my past life, that there were a hundred million possibilities for such a code, and now I had to guess the right code the first time, or die.
I closed my eyes and tried to block out the situation we were in. What would be a code that LoreMaster Harim would have chosen? The eight digits hinted it was a specific date, as was counted by humans in the pre-Catastrophe era. Two for month, two for days, four for a year. The counting of the years was forgotten by many after the Catastrophe, but the Guild of Historians kept the old tradition. The big question was which date my LoreMaster would choose as a code. A birthday? A death day? Or maybe it was just a random combination of numbers, in which case my brain would soon be decorating the shining metal side of the Sky Bird.
As if on cue, Dwaine, son of Dwaine, pushed the muzzle of his gun into the back of my skull. I opened my eyes and exhaled. With a trembling hand I reached the keypad. If LoreMaster Harim truly meant for this place to be visited only by other members of the Guild of Historians, then the code should be somehow known to them. I could think of only one such date. I entered two digits, 12, then the next two, 11, and committed to the decision I had made, punched 2247.
There was a loud buzzing sound and the belly of the Leviathan lowered its hatch down towards us. The demeanour of the Dwaine clan changed immediately. Nana Dwaine clapped her hands together and shrieked in approval and her son holstered the gun, although he did not look pleased about it. All around us weapons were lowered and even stowed back in their holsters, and Galinak was allowed to join me.
“I thought we were goners,” he muttered out of the corner of his mouth.
“Yeah, lucky I remembered the exact date of the Catastrophe.”
“A bad day for humanity, but as it turns out, a good day for us.”
I glanced at him as the door of the Sky Bird touched the ground next to our feet. He looked relieved, and I guess I was showing it as well.
Dwaine, son of Dwaine, stood next to me on my other side but to my surprise he did not step forward with us. I turned to him in question, but he shook his head in regret. “Da said not to go inside them Sky Birds until Grandpa Dwaine comes back from sky.”
Galinak and I walked forward and into the belly of the Leviathan. When we cleared the landing, I found a lever with a drawing which clearly indicated its purpose, and turned it. The door began moving up. Galinak turned back, waved his hand and shouted, “We’ll be back for dinner, hope you have stew.” A few heartbeats later, we found ourselves in complete darkness, sealed within the belly of the Leviathan.
If I were to believe legends, long ago the metal Sky Birds ruled the skies, moving people and goods across the globe. It was hard to believe that a huge machine such as the Leviathan could reach the heavens, but whatever its original purpose, my LoreMaster Harim changed it into his personal haven. There was a cushy-looking reclining chair and a whole sitting corner with several oil lamps, which I found and lit for Galinak’s sake, and a heavy wooden reading table. Books, scrolls, and pre-Catastrophe think pads were stored neatly in rows upon rows. I examined a few of the books briefly and found they were mostly copies made by scribes such as myself in the City of Towers. All my hours of copying manuscripts in the high towers suddenly made sense. LoreMaster Harim had taken measures to ensure that should the Guild of Historians’ extensive library be destroyed, at least some of the knowledge it contained would survive. Yet we soon found out that books were not the only thing my LoreMaster stored in the Leviathan.
“Would you look at that!” Galinak exclaimed, waving the black garment in front of my face.
“SmartLeather. Adjusts itself to your body, complete with a torso brace, too. A power knife, and this …” He bent down and straightened back up, beaming with joy, holding a massive silver-coloured power machine gun.
“Old Harim knew his weapons, and there are at least ten power clips, three of them renewable.” Galinak turned the weapon back and forth in front of his eyes, mesmerized.
“And look, SmartGlasses, what a classic.” Galinak put the dark glasses over his eyes and looked around. “Yeah!”
I walked past him to the reading table, where a wooden box lay. It was not locked. Inside was a heavy coin bag, a letter, a pipe case with several vacuum-sealed tobacco cases, and an old-fashioned golden revolver complete with a leather hip holster and a clip belt.
“That’s a nice peacemaker,” Galinak said. “A little old-fashioned for my taste.”
I waved the gun around, its heaviness and balance oddly reassuring. It was made to look antique, and it was certainly not the most efficient weapon, but it was actual Tarakan steel and gleamed in my hand with a power clip that fired power shots. I was never a weapons kind of guy—actually, I was the opposite—but the moment I saw it, I knew I was going to keep that gun.
The letter I found on the desk was written in LoreMaster Harim’s hand. Despite having been duped by him to go on a dangerous mission while unknowingly being used as a decoy, I felt a pang of loss in my heart. My old mentor gave up his life so we could escape to the Tarakan Valley and eventually venture deep into the City Within the Mountain. He would have loved every moment of it.
The letter simply said:
Dear guild brother,
Take what you need from here as you see fit, but do your best to keep the knowledge stored here away from harm. The future of mankind lies within its past.
LoreMaster Harim
It wasn’t much, but it was precise, just the way my LoreMaster liked it. I was momentarily flooded with memories of the man—how he took me from my family home, raised me in the towers to be a scribe, only to send me on a dangerous fool’s errand to find Vincha and discover Rafik’s fate. The last time we saw each other, LoreMaster Harim had elevated me to the rank of Associate LoreMaster of the Guild of Historians. The vivid memories stirred strong emotions, and by the time I came back to my senses, Galinak had finished looting the place.
There were other travelling garments hanging neatly in a corner, and I rummaged through them until I found the clothes which fit me best.
“Not bad.” Galinak nodded his approval as he zipped up the SmartLeather suit. “But you’d better learn how to shoot with your new toy. It gives a mighty kick.”
I tried to fast-draw from the hip and managed to tangle the gun in its holster. It dropped to the floor with a heavy clank and skidded towards Galinak, who bent over and retrieved it for me. I was hoping the darkness masked the redness on my face.
“Okay,” he said as I shoved the gun back in its holster a bit too forcefully. “What now?”
I turned and walked deeper into the belly of the Leviathan, found a ladder and a hatch, and climbed up. Galinak followed me silently, hefting his new weapon onto his back and shoving a bag of nourishment pills into his belt. It didn’t take us long to find the place where the drivers of the Sky Birds must have sat. There were two chairs that resembled Dwaine, son of Dwaine’s throne. On top of them lay two bulky helmets. From the front windows I could see several of the other Sky Birds and a few of the Dwaine clan milling about. We sat down and I took the helmet in my hands, testing its weight.
“Are you gonna fly this thing?” Galinak placed his helmet on the floor and flapped his hands, mimicking a bird.
I looked at the vast array of darkened screens surrounding us.
“Rust no,” I grunted. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“So, what are we doing here then? We got weapons, pills, clothes, and some metal, I say we split before the Dwaines change their hospitality rules.”
I shook my head. “There’s one more thing I want to try. It is only logical that these machines have strong communication devices. Maybe we could reach out to the Tarkanians and get the briefing we missed.”
Galinak did not look pleased. “Why the rust would we do that?”
I had no simple answer, so I simply gave him a meaningful glare. Surprisingly, it worked. Galinak shrugged and leaned back in his seat. “Suit yourself, but I ain’t sure I want to follow orders no more. Last time I did they got me killed.”
I had no argument against his logic, so I simply turned my attention back to the screens. They were more than an arm’s reach away. I wondered how the driver could use them from so far back. I got up and walked towards the screens, eventually touching them. Nothing happened. There were no other levers or buttons to pull or push. I sat back down and tried the helmet on. It didn’t fit immediately, but there was a complicated set of pulls and slides to adjust it. As soon as I managed to fasten it on my head there was a soft click and a hundred things happened all at once. The Sky Bird hummed to life, my seat expanded and fitted itself snuggly around my body, the screens around us lit up and projected themselves into arm’s reach, and a semitransparent steering wheel materialised in front of me.
“Whoa.” Galinak straightened up in his seat. “What’s going on?”
“Put on the helmet,” I said, gingerly touching the steering wheel. It felt solid in my hands.
The helmet’s inner screen was disorienting as well. On the left side a constant stream of numbers and letters ran in front of my eyes, changing colours and speed as I moved my head around. On the right side I could see through the material of the Sky Bird. I knew it was not my own gift that allowed me to zoom in through the metal walls.
“Bukra’s balls.” Galinak somehow managed to deal with the helmet faster than I had. His hands moved around in the air, touching the screens hovering around him.
“Galinak, don’t—” I said.
“Armed,” a voice rang out in my head.
I turned my head sharply. On the left side of the screen a picture of the Leviathan’s wing tip blinked red while on the right side I zoomed in on another Sky Bird on the far side of the tarmac.
“Locked.” A red rectangle surrounded the Sky Bird I was looking at.
“—touch anything,” I finished, but it was too late.
There was a swooshing sound in my ear and a heartbeat later the other Sky Bird blew up in a mushroom of fire.
We sat in silence for a while, not daring to move our heads or even blink. I reached under my chin and slowly unfastened the helmet. My surroundings winked out of existence.
“Rust,” Galinak said, still wearing his. “The Dwaines ain’t looking happy.”
I closed my eyes and leaned back in my seat, which, surprisingly, reclined itself back so I was facing the ceiling.
“I have a feeling they won’t give us some of their stew when we try to leave.”
“You don’t say,” I murmured and shut my eyes, feeling suddenly overwhelmed and tired.
Galinak freed himself from his helmet. “What now?”
I kicked my new boots off my feet. “I need to rest a bit. I haven’t slept right since, well, since I was born. The Dwaines are not going to shoot at us and they can’t get in. I’m almost positive Dwaine is illiterate.”
“And if he’s not?”
I turned my head and looked meaningfully at Galinak’s new machine gun. Taking the hint, he smiled back at me, picked up the heavy gun and turned his seat to face the doors behind us. “I’ll take first watch, then?”
I didn’t answer. A little later I was fast asleep.
14
Peach
A dream, but not a normal one, I knew. Finally, Command was reaching out to me, but I knew instinctively that this dream briefing was different than usual. An image of a woman came into view. She was a warrior by the way she stood, not young but still powerful. Red hair, and black markings around her neck and ears. She turned to me, drew a power gun, aimed, and fired. But as I flung myself to the side she changed into a young woman in her teens, dressed in a simple brown linen dress. Her hair was voluminous and red, and she had grey eyes, fair skin, and a strong body. She could have been stunning if it were not for a slightly wide chin. The warrior’s younger self … no … her child … the warrior’s child. The younger woman was my target, Emilija, and the mother was her protector.
I was lying in the mud and saw a name written, Vincha, before I rose slowly and realised I was standing in a field. From afar I could see the familiar silhouette of the City of Towers and my heart skipped a beat. Then a splash of muck stained my clothes as someone stepped over a puddle and walked past me. It was Vincha again, gun in hand, looking with open suspicion in all directions, but not seeing me or the shadows that surrounded her. I felt the urge to follow, saw her walking towards her daughter, who was standing with her back to us, oblivious, as shadows grew around her. The dream was telling me that there were others looking for the girl … but who? Before I could find out the answer the warrior jumped into the shadows and disappeared. The daughter remained, although she began to fade into the distance as bells began to ring. The image changed again into a fountain I recognised, and lastly into a bird which landed on a wide straw hat. It was a rendezvous point, a place where I would make contact.
I woke up to the sound of chimes, curled up on a thin rug that was spread on the floor. The dark chamber had no door, and I saw three people slowly passing the entrance as they walked the lit corridor, one holding a pot filled with burning incense and the two others playing delicate chimes. Turning on the rug, I surveyed the room. There was no one with me in the small, windowless chamber, empty of furniture save for several other hand-stitched rugs, a candle holder with a short stump of a candle in it, and a knee-high wooden table. As soon as I rose to a sitting position, three more men came in. Since I did not believe in coincidence, it was logical they were standing outside, waiting for me to wake up. One was carrying a bucket of water with one hand and a smaller, empty bucket in the other, another lit the candle in its holder and the third man was carrying a tray, which he placed on the small table. It contained a loaf of freshly baked bread, hard cheese, several vegetables and a covered plastic cup.
“Wash, use the empty bucket for yar needs, and eat,” one of the men ordered, but not unkindly. “Then you shall cleanse and see da Healer.” His accent did not come out as natural as the others’, a little distorted, like he forced it upon himself. I made a mental note of this, even though it seemed to be of no importance.
“How is Brak doing? And Trevil, my companion?”
“See da Healer, then all will clear,” the man said.
Both men stayed in the room as I took care of my vessel’s bodily needs, and other people who passed the room could see me as well. Despite occupying a vessel, I had to remind myself of my time in the military in order to relax enough to relieve myself in front of strangers, a sign I was slowly merging with my new body. As soon as I was done one of the men carried the bucket away without a word. The food was simple, but after surviving on a severed leg, nourishment pills, and food scraps, it felt incredibly good. I took my time eating, savouring each and every bite. The vegetables looked fresh and the cup contained boiled water, still warm. Like everything else in this area, it was contaminated, but with a surprisingly low dosage considering where I was located.
As I ate I thought about the dream briefing I’d received. My mission was clear and the dream came exactly on time, a week after awakening, once my brain waves completely merged with the vessel, making deep sleep a possibility. Yet something felt wrong. On the one hand, only Tarakan Central Command had my unique brain patterns and the ability to send me dream sequences, which was good news. That meant that contrary to what I had heard so far, Tarakan had survived. Someone had woken me up, given me a body, and ordered me on a “find and retrieve” mission. It would have been a laughably easy assignment under normal circumstances, way under the level of my expertise or my rank, but in this new, broken world, without the help of satellites, global communication, facial and body recognition scanners, and the ability to reach any point on the globe within an hour, this simple mission felt like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
There were other things in the dream sequence that worried me. By my last few missions, a few of Tarakan’s more advanced foes were already suspected of having the technology to pick up dream sequences, and as a result the dream should have been a little vaguer. This mission briefing felt like a parent pointing a child to a task, a gross breach of protocol, which could also be the result of all of Tarakan’s enemies having been wiped out. The dream world should have also been richer, more immersive. This one lacked complexity and depth, reminding me of an old virtual reality game I had once tried in a museum, when you had to put a mask on your face in order to play instead of immersing your consciousness into the machine. Something was amiss. That I knew for sure.
Since there was no way I could solve my concerns regarding Central Command, I forced them aside and my thoughts shifted to last night’s events as I chewed on a bitter radish. It was unlikely that the man calling himself “the Healer” had managed to hide a cell regenerator in his palm. Even the emergency combat version of it, used on the fields of battle, was the size of a human arm and took some time to function. Technology could have advanced forward as I hibernated, but it seemed improbable that Tarakan managed to minimize the size and accelerate the speed of the cell regenerator to such a degree. I went as far as considering that he was an Angel who had replaced his arms with medibot arms, but that was going too far.
Finally, I accepted the facts as I saw them; that this man somehow healed Brak, that he was worshipped by the men and women here, and that he had some kind of interest in me. His speech about the steep price was a matter of concern. Now that the orders of my mission were clear, I was not about to waste time or risk myself unnecessarily. I finished my meal with a drink from the cup, feeling its warmth course through my body. It was time to get some answers.
I rose and indicated to my guardian that I was ready. He led me through a short corridor dotted with doors leading into small side rooms, very much the same as the room I’d slept in. Most of them were empty; a few had groups of people sitting on floor mats, listening to preachers or meditating. We passed a chamber where a large group of people were busy having slow, ritualistic sex. There was a supervisor, or a teacher of some sort, standing above them as couples of both sexes copulated in a deliberately slow rhythm. My vessel was created with all the anatomical features of a human female and was able to have sex, of course, and I admit that walking among the writhing bodies did wake up some long-hibernated desires. Instead, I was steered towards a larger corridor leading outside, where I was taken again to the steam room and went through another process of cleansing. A pair of rope sandals and a long grey dress awaited me as I emerged. This time the clothing was made of linen, still a little rough on the skin, but a great improvement.
I was taken back to the main building and led up to the second floor. Surprisingly, there was no large hall, no high dais, or an adoring crowd. The only person in the medium-sized room was the man with the bone earrings. He bowed a little as a form of acknowledgement and gestured towards a rug. As in all the chambers I had seen in the building, this one had almost no furniture, with only a few comfortable cushions on the floor. I sat down on one of them, but before I got too comfortable the Healer came in and I rose to my feet. Instinctively, I decided not to bow this time.
The Healer was naked except for what looked like a bandage surrounding his pelvis, in the same place where Brak was wounded. He held a walking stick made of gnarled wood and limped slowly into the room, assisted by one of his four guards. What a show, I thought as I scrutinized his markings.
The Healer motioned for me to sit down, and he positioned himself slowly and with a theatrical grimace on a cushion next to me.
“How are you?” There was no better way to begin the conversation.
The Healer handed his walking stick to his aide and turned to me.
“Da Patshin is back in the light. My burden is a shadow of his. I heal by morrow.” The Healer’s eyes were large and brown, full of kindness, warmth, intelligence, and openness, tempting me to trust him. I was immediately on my guard.
“You mean you took Brak’s wound upon yourself?”
“I see your eyes not believing.” The Healer shook his head and gestured at his bandaged side. “I can show you his wound but you’d say I harmed myself.”
“I just don’t believe in miracles,” I said in an even tone. “What I saw definitely falls under that term, so I am looking for a logical explanation.”
He smiled knowingly. “What is a miracle for one, is natural for another. The man called Trevil swears you move and fight like the marked”—he indicated the markings on his own body—“but we see no markings on you, and the man called Brak says so, too. Maybe you can do miracles, too?”
This time I found myself nodding in acknowledgement. The man had a point. There were many things I did not know.
“You are from far away, a different land and time. You do know of the marked, for you it is a miracle, but you were born not from a woman’s womb, how that is not a miracle? The world is a miraculous place.”
How did he know that? Despite my training I tensed on my seat.
The Healer held his marked hands up in a sign of peace. “Worry not, Miss Peach, I am here for da helping. Say what you need and if this is in my power, I will make it happen.”
Things which were too good to be true were usually a lie, but if this man was willing to help me …
“I need to get to the City of Towers,” I said, unwilling to expose the rest of my mission.
“Then da man called Trevil will pay da price of taking you there.”
“And my own price? You said yesterday that the price is always steep.”
“There is always a price,” the Healer agreed, “but by helping you I pay a debt.” The Healer put both of his hands on his heart. “My own debt.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Hear my story, then.” The man straightened on his pillow. “My first mark appeared when I was already seventeen, and it was not in an obvious place …” The Healer smiled for the first time, but it wasn’t a pleasant smile. “It was actually discovered by someone else, the girl I was going to marry. I was twice a fool, to think our love would endure and to believe she would not betray me. I was seized the very next day and taken to the elder and he who put the knife to me.” The Healer pointed at his crotch. “He cut the essence of my manhood. I was put in a cage and left outside da village, to heal or die. I wanted to die, but my body be strong even when my spirit be broken and the mark tainted my skin. On the fifth night, a man came and saved me, a special man. I be marked on my body, but he be marked on his soul. This man helped me heal, and his price was that I would help whenever you showed up at my door. He described you to me, said you will be moving like the marked and that you would bring death wherever you go.”
“That is … impossible.”
“Only for those who do not accept truth.” The Healer indicated himself. “I can cure people and take their wounds on me. You can move like the wind without having a mark on your body, and the man who saved me foresaw that you would come here and ask me to help you. He told me that this would be the best of the foreseeable futures.”
“Who was this prophet?” I asked.
The healer leaned over and whispered, “His name … was Nakamura.”
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