Debris (48 page)

  Kichlan, bent over backwards and struggling for breaths of his own, patted Lad's shoulder awkwardly. "Calm... fine..." he laboured to be heard.

  "We go now, bro. Bro, go downstairs. Stay there, shut the door. Wait. Can we do that? Can we do that?"

  
Fear for everything.

  A terrible premonition settled over me, pricking my scalp with a breath of ice. I wasn't going to wait to be told what to do, no matter how low I had supposedly fallen. Even in this bright world debris collectors could be strong. Especially in this bright world, that could create so much, but understood so little.

  "Lad." I stepped toward him, shook off Sofia as she scrabbled to hold me back. Mizra and Uzdal watched me like a snake, or an untrustworthy dog. "Lad." I touched his shoulder, drew his gaze and loosened his grip on his brother. "What is it, Lad? What have you heard?"

  For a moment he stared at me, blank. Then Lad said, "You know, Tan. I know you do."

  "Know what?" Mizra asked, voice high and cracked.

  Footsteps. We turned and watched as a man bolted down the empty street. He ran in silence, the only sound his rasping breath and the beating of his feet. They were bare, I realised with horrible curiosity, skin smacking the stones.

  "Other's balls," Uzdal breathed.

  "Know what?" his brother croaked again.

  "Why don't you tell us?" I tried to soothe Lad. The muscles in his forearm shook beneath my hand. "For the others."

  Lad released his brother and straightened. "Bad things," he whispered. "He said there would be bad things."

  "Lad–" Kichlan started. But his brother pointed at me, and if anything grew paler.

  "They are real!" he screamed into the empty street. "Tan hears them too!"

  I could truly lose the team, in this moment, if I wasn't careful. I could become another Lad to them, one they weren't too interested in protecting.

  "I can hear the voices too," I said, softly. "Because they are real."

  Lad nodded, his face a mixture painful to watch. Desperate fear and desperate hope, added to a childish excitement.

  "This is what I tried to tell you, Kichlan." I turned to him, not letting the mouths around me speak, battering against arguments and hoping I could wear them all down. "What I meant. Lad's voices are real, he's not the first to hear them and he will not be the last. And I have heard them too."

  "Are they speaking to you now?" Sofia asked, tone condescending.

  I turned on her. "No. I cannot hear them all the time, only–" when I was wearing my suit. It hit home with a force that made my head ring.

  "Only when?" She blinked, face falsely patient and lips pursed.

  "Lad can hear them all the time." I ignored her. "That's what makes him so special, so good at what he does. He follows the voices when we use only our eyes. And that's why he knows something is going wrong."

  "Follows the voices?" Mizra was leaning forward, his expression animated by morbid curiosity. "How does that help him collect?"

  "The voices are the debris." I looked at Kichlan as I said this. "And that is why some things should not be changed."

  His face was blank, a badly painted mask.

  "That's ridiculous," Sofia snapped.

  In the distance, another explosion sent flames into the sky. Heating units overloading? Or cooking benches, perhaps. This was the greatest fear of a nine point circle society. This was debris overrunning the city, turning all its complicated systems into chaos, its life into death. What would happen if it was left unchecked?

  Kichlan's mask didn't matter. Sofia's acid or Mizra's panic, both were irrelevant.

  "Lad." I held his hands in mine, drew his focus. "Do you know what's happening?"

  Lad shook his head. "He says this is the end. He says we can't go backwards."

  The Keeper. The debris. I didn't understand it, but I had heard it with my own ears, seen it limp in my own hands. The Keeper, the debris. They were the same thing and they were talking to Lad.

  
Fear for everything.

  I shivered. "Where is he, Lad? Do you know?"

  Lad nodded.

  "Take me there."

  "Stop this!" Sofia lunged for Lad's hands. "Where are you going? We haven't been called anywhere!"

  But Lad jerked away from her, and still holding my hands nearly lifted me from the ground. "No!" he screamed at Sofia and she stumbled away in shock. "No! Tan believes me, Tan is my friend. It's true. Never lied!"

  Sofia fell hard against the stones and this, at least, dragged Kichlan from his distraction.

  "Lad." He didn't shout, but his tone cut through the building tears and anger blotching his brother's face. "Don't shout at Sofia and put Tanyana down."

  I found the flagstones again gratefully.

  "Say sorry to Sofia."

  "Bro, I didn't lie! Not ever."

  "Say sorry to Sofia."

  A hiccup, and a squeeze of my hands so painful I was certain I heard something snap. Lad turned his head to Sofia but tucked his chin in low, and couldn't meet her eyes. "Sorry, Sofia. That I hurt you."

  Sofia said, "That– that's okay, Lad." Uzdal helped Sofia stand. She ran a hand over a large wet patch that went down the back of her dress. I realised the stones were damp. It was on everything, buildings, road, skin. Condensation? So much heat from so much debris.

  "That's better. Now–" Kichlan worked his fingers around Lad's and gradually pried up his grip "–will you take us there, Lad? Will you take us to him?"

  "But Kichlan, we–" Sofia tried again.

  "Don't need to be called." Kichlan straightened, firmed his mouth into a thin line. "It is all around us, obvious that this is an emergency. And we have a duty."

  My stomach quivered in triumph. Lad was less optimistic. "Believe me, bro? I didn't lie. Not ever."

  "I know, Lad." Kichlan glanced at me. His eyes seemed so open, so full of regret, of gratitude and suspicion, it was overwhelming. "Can you show us the way?"

  Lad nodded, grinned wide.

  "Then we'd better hurry. Before this gets any worse."

  Lad set off at his great pace. I hurried to stay close, with Kichlan at my side. I didn't see the hesitation, nor the fearful looks the rest must have exchanged, but at least the rest of the team followed. Although hunched in a group and well behind.

  We headed for the Tear.

 
 
 
 

As children growing up in Varsnia, we all knew about the Other. He featured in cautionary tales, in myths, in threats about going to bed and staying there. But as I walked through Movoc-under-Keeper, I finally understood him.

  This city was his city. Steam billowed stinking and thick from sewerage systems in chaos beneath our feet. Rancid water bubbled up through cracks and backed out of houses. Fires lit themselves and burned untended, leaped building to building, casting a heavy glow on the base of the low clouds. The streets were empty, hollow and ghostly like dried bones.

  This was not Movoc-under-Keeper, this was the Other's city. And if I was right, if only half of what I had understood and interpreted beneath Yicor's shop was right, then this could only be the beginning.

  We passed quickly through the city, faster than I would have thought possible. There were no ferries, the Tear was dark and flat as a slate. The screaming faded behind us as we ran, to be replaced by wind through empty windows, by the echo of footsteps and the lonely cry of a crow.

  "Where are you taking us?" Natasha called from behind.

  Neither Kichlan or I could answer, and Lad did not. I wasn't sure he knew he was being spoken to. His head was tipped, one ear facing the street, eyes at an angle. The Keeper called him.

  "Where are you?" I whispered.

  But only wind answered.

  Slowly, the route Lad was following grew clear. As we entered familiar parts of the city, as I knew the empty shops, the swinging signs and houses, my skin prickled.

  "Can't be."

  Kichlan sent me a questioning glance. But before I could answer Mizra was running forward. "Look!" he cried as he ran, and we saw it. A body, lying in the street, prone.

  Before we reached it I knew what the man was. Not who. What. I saw his suit, silver against all the grey. It spun, though his face was as pasty as the grey tiles, and the back of his skull crushed in.

  "Other," Sofia hissed.

  "He's a collector." Mizra, who had kneeled by the man's head, reared backwards. He stumbled, and only Uzdal's grip kept him from falling. "He's an Other-buggered collector!"

  Sofia eyed the body, pointed up at the roof of a tall building close by. "There are more."

  I didn't want to see, but could not keep my head from turning. More bodies hung, wrapped around tiles, impaled on the iron railings of a balcony fence. Blood seeped down polished stones and I wondered if it would stain. What was the building made of, was that marble I could see, decorating the stonework? Yes, marble would stain.

  "What's happening? Are they all collectors?"

  But Lad, having stopped to glance at the body, kept walking. I touched Kichlan's hand, and he jumped beside me. Silent, I tipped my head at Lad.

  "We can't leave him here," Natasha murmured, voice like a groan. "Not like this."

  "He fell," Sofia said with certainty. "Or was pushed."

  "Stay with him if you want," Kichlan told Natasha. She nodded, face pale, lips grey as the death at her feet, and crouched to begin rearranging the man's splayed limbs. I caught a glimpse of his face where it had pressed into the stones. He had not just hit the street, he had been crushed into it. His cheek was ground into wet red mush, flecks of stone like mineral deposits in his flesh.

  I glanced over my shoulder as we ran. Natasha watched us go, her gaze focused firmly on me. She spoke, and though I could not hear the words, by the Other it looked like, "It's here for you."

  "Where are the planes?" Kichlan murmured as I caught up to his side.

  "Planes?"

  "Like last time. Something killed that man, so where are they?"

  I shook my head. Where was the debris at all? The muck that had clogged streets, the deeper into the city we ran, the thinner it became.

  "Not again," Mizra was muttering to himself, a mote at the back of my hearing. "Not again."

  "Tan," Lad said as he turned where I knew he was going to turn, against all reason, against all fairness. "He says he's sorry. He can't stop it."

  "So am I." And we turned the corner, crossed the street, and entered an empty patch of scarred earth that had once been Grandeur's home.

  They had removed her body and shattered bones. Nothing remained but gashes in the ground, but the great indents where her fingers had hit the earth. Thin grass had grown into them. Nothing new had been built.

  And yet, the lot wasn't empty.

  "Oh, Other." Sofia faltered.

  "We have to get out of here!" Mizra squealed behind me. "Now!"

  Grandeur's body was gone, but others took her place. They were small compared to the statue in my mind, to the memory of a woman greater than her name. Small, human and broken, they were scattered about the lot. Two dozen, perhaps, maybe a few more. And all, I knew instantly, debris collectors. Like we were now, they had followed the debris to Grandeur's birthing place and her grave.

  To the place where I had fallen.

  But where was the debris?

  "Don't move!" Kichlan snapped as Mizra tried to stumble from the yard. He dragged Mizra close, wrapped a large hand over his mouth. "Can you see it, Tanyana?" he whispered. "By the beam."

  I had been wrong. Grandeur was not completely gone. A single steel bone arched up from where it had fallen and impaled the earth. I had missed it, in the shadow. The shadow that fell from nowhere in the middle of an open space.

  "Says we should get away," Lad whimpered. "Says this is the bad stuff, right here."

  "Don't need any voices to tell us that," Sofia whispered.

  I didn't know what it was, plane or grains, it didn't even look like debris. It was darkness flittering like shadows on water, and it was, I realised with increasing horror, steadily stripping a body that lay propped against the steel beam.

  "It's flaying her," I choked on the words. "Why is it doing that?" Let alone how, or how we could stop it. How we could collect, control, where the dead around us had failed.

  "Get away," Lad groaned.

  "If we move, it will see us." Kichlan caught my eye with his steady gaze.

  I clamped down on my panic. "It will notice us soon, whether we move or not."

  "So what do we do?" Mizra asked, muffled behind Kichlan's hand. Gradually, Kichlan released his grip.

  "We contain it," I replied. This was like the other times, wasn't it? The mass of grains and planes clinging like a parasite to the building's wall. The surging muck that had shut down a factory. The mad planes that had destroyed the technicians' offices and nearly killed Devich. This was another form, another surprise, just another test.

  "Any ideas on how we would do that?" Sofia asked and edged closer, Uzdal at her side.

  We stood in a line, a team, missing one.

  "Can't," Lad jittered. "Should run."

  I looked at him. The Keeper was being less than helpful. "Can you tell him something for me, Lad?"

  Lad looked at me, surprised, and his shaking arms stilled. "He can hear you, Tan. Told me to say he can hear you."