The Wind Merchant (31 page)

“Can we at least check inside one of the huts?”

Ras took a deep breath. “Real quick.” He drew his wrench from his holster as they approached one of the small buildings. The cottages pocked the land in no particular pattern, and looked unkempt as far as Ras could discern.

Callie stepped up to the door and raised her hand to knock before looking at Ras, then the wrench. “Let’s not scare them.”

“I think strangers talking outside their front door already takes care of that,” Ras said. He holstered the wrench and gestured for Callie to continue.

Upon Callie’s first knock, the flimsy wooden door creaked open. Callie peeked her head in, then recoiled back with a retch before falling to her hands and knees away from the door.

“What is it?” Ras asked before he saw the remains inside. “Oh.” With a foot, he pushed the door further open, shining daylight on a family of skeletons in tattered clothing.

“I’m sorry,” Callie said, reaching for Ras to help her up.

Ras held her close and quickly walked away from the cottage. “I’m no doctor, but I’m going to say they’re dead.”

She pulled away, “Ras, those were people with family, and stories, and…” She sighed. “And now they’re going to be in my nightmares, and I’m never going to find out why the Overload happened.” She fought her irregular breathing with a quick inhale. “Let’s just get the parts.”

Standing under the shadow of the crashed city’s lip, Ras estimated the crater left at least thirty sub-levels exposed. A shelf eight feet above them held an open door that looked promising.

“I’ll give you a leg up,” Ras said, squatting down for Callie to step on his thigh. She steadied herself on some exposed pipe and as soon as she no longer needed his support, he climbed up the wrecked machinery to the ledge.

Pulling himself up next to Callie, he rested for a moment. “Are you all right to go in?” Ras asked.

“As I’ll ever be,” she said before disappearing into the black maw of the doorway.

The light only reached so far in, and after a minute they needed to open their eyes as much as possible to see anything.

“New rule: always bring a flashlight,” said Callie.

“Good rule,” Ras said, using the wall to half support himself along the angled hallway.

“So where’s the most likely place to find what we need? Up top in the abandoned city?” Callie asked hopefully.

“I wish. Any engine parts are going to be salvaged from below.” He patted the wall, causing a metallic echo. In the distance, a small green light grew, illuminating the long corridor. They froze. It faded, then pulsed back, continually repeating the pattern.

“Emergency system. We must have tripped a sensor,” said Ras.

“You say that like it’s a good thing.”

“Seeing our way around is usually a positive.” The dead city unnerved Ras more than he was willing to admit. It was one thing to compare the fallen city to
Verdant
from the outside, but another thing entirely to have an identical interior. For all the familiarity of The Engine garnered from his short stint in
Verdant
’s underbelly, he might as well have been walking the dead halls of his hometown. “But if this place still has emergency systems, it still has scoops.”

They came to a fork in the corridor and Ras instinctively chose the left path, which pointed slightly downward. “So if
The Demons of Bogues
didn’t have Elders in it, what did it have?”

“The usual. The boogeyman under the bed with green eyes that ate children if they didn’t sing the right song,” Callie said.

“How did the song go?”

“I didn’t memorize it.”

“Don’t give me that,” Ras said with a chuckle, “You memorize practically everything.”

“I really don’t feel like singing right now.”

They approached an old elevator shaft. Green lights blinked down it, lighting it enough to show that if it had been vertical, it would have been a good three-hundred foot drop. Thankfully, it sat at an angle that would have made for the biggest playground slide ever.

Ras swapped out the grapple spike with a magnet charge on his grapple gun, then placed the magnet against the wall next to the elevator entrance instead of firing a charge. He spooled out some thick cable and tested his weight against it. The quality was far superior to anything he had ever stocked the grappler with before. “Mr. Helios didn’t skimp on his displays,” he muttered to himself. He looked up at Callie. “Climb onto my back.”

“It’ll hold two of us?”

“More than that. Not all wind merchants make exercise a priority.” He turned for her to ease onto his back.
 

She stood on her tiptoes and wrapped her arms tightly around his neck, her breath warm against his skin. “Ready.”

He swung out into the empty shaft, and one foot after the other, slowly began his descent alongside a long set of metal rungs. They looked to be a feasible alternative to the grapple gun, but Ras preferred to have the cable as a lifeline and a means to haul up parts.

A few odd noises clanked about high above them. Ras glanced up to see that the shaft went up at least another fifty stories.

“Emergency system, right?” Callie asked, tightening her grip ever so slightly.

“Yeah.” They came to another open elevator doorway one floor down. “Hang on.” Ras swung to the side a little, walking alongside the open entrance. In the corner of his eye he saw a blur of motion in the corridor as they descended. He decided it was just his fear playing tricks on his eyes and put it out of his mind until Callie’s arms tightened to a chokehold.

“Ras!”

“I saw it,” he said.

“It? Them!” She pointed upward. Pairs of glowing green eyes stared down from the open elevator shaft doors, including the one they had entered. There were dozens of glowing sets of eyes, with more appearing by the moment from above and below.

“P-please, don’t hurt us,” Callie said.

The eyes merely watched.

The cable began vibrating, alerting Ras to a creature above them that was starting to use some sort of tool on their cable.

“No, no, no let’s talk this out, huh?” Ras called up. It continued hacking at the cable. “Callie, I’m going to swing us over to the rungs—”

The cable snapped, sending them sliding down the wall of the shaft at an alarming rate. Callie’s screams pierced Ras’ ears, making it difficult to focus. The rungs along the wall of the shaft sped by, and he made a grab for one but accomplished little more than repeatedly bashing his hand.

Ras passed by a dozen or so elevator entrances before he looked down to see less than a dozen left before they would meet some nasty looking machinery waiting to stop their fall.

He tried to maneuver his right hand over to load another grapple charge, but in the process accidentally knocked his elbow on another set of rungs. The continuing slide caused his stomach and thighs to burn madly from the friction.
 

Another doorway flew by.
 

Seconds left.

Ras twisted his body, pulling Callie above him to shield her from the machinery awaiting them below.

“What are you doing?” she said.

“Just close your eyes,” Ras said, embracing her. He didn’t know if she would survive either, but he would give her the best possible chance.

Something pried his left arm off of her, slamming it against the metal shaft so that it screeched a horrific symphony as sparks showered down the hole. His arm and shoulder burned as they dragged along the rough wall. Ras squinted to see what had happened.

The placeholders for extra magnets atop the grapple gun, which Ras had never been able to afford to fill, had drawn close enough to the wall to pin his arm against the shaft.

The quick shift in momentum left Callie dangling from around his neck, facing him as they continued to careen down level after level. The magnet holder eroded away, slowing their descent until they stopped with just one elevator entrance above the floor.

“You’re smoking,” Callie said, arms trembling but still holding tight.

Before he could address his friction-burns, Ras swung his body as best he could, reaching his right arm over to the set of metal rungs. “I think this is your stop,” he said.

Callie reached over, taking the pressure off of Ras, who focused on prying his arm free from the grapple gun without falling the remainder of the way.

“I think I’m stuck,” Ras said. He noticed a couple of silhouetted figures climbing up from the bottom level to grab Callie. She screamed in surprise and began kicking down, striking one of the figures in the face. One of the glowing green eyes cracked and winked out.

“Leave her alone!” Ras shouted.

More green-eyed figures appeared at the open elevator doors above her. Ras worked his wrench free from the holster, tossed it to her, then returned to untying the grapple gun straps.

Callie climbed above him. Suddenly the half dozen straps that ensured his safety were his prison. Two down, four to go.

A loud beeping noise began emanating through the shaft as machinery whirred to life all around. The express-elevator cables began moving at a rapid rate. Pairs of green eyes disappeared as the hot, dank air moved through the shaft.

“What is that?” Callie asked, watching her pursuers flee back through the open doorway.

“They’re trying to crush us!” Ras had the third strap undone and began jerking his arm to save time. He offered his right arm to Callie. “Pull me free!”

She looped an arm through a rung and clasped his hand, then pulled with everything in her. Ras was slowly coming loose from the straps around his elbow when he saw the elevator screaming down at them. They had moments left.

Putting his feet up against the wall, he gave one last ditch yank to pull free. Slipping out of the grapple gun, he swung tenuously on Callie’s grip as the elevator neared.

“Ras!”

He fell the last ten feet, landing hard on his back next to some of the sharp bits of metal. He watched Callie barely dive out of the way of the rushing machine and into the open doors of the bottom floor entrance.

As the elevator came down upon him, all went black.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The Doctor

The worst part for Ras wasn’t being trapped in a small, greasy encasement with a burned arm, nor was it being alone. No, the worst part was not knowing where Callie was, and there was precious little he could do.

Ras ran his hands in front of him, feeling a metal ceiling several inches from his nose, then a sharp tug of metal caught his hand. He felt the warmth of blood in his palm, causing him to recoil and knock his begoggled forehead against the elevator with a thud.

“I think he survived!” an old voice said. “Young man, did you survive?”

Ras almost demanded where Callie was, but he still held out hope they might leave him for dead, giving him an opportunity to escape.

“Young sir, I am leaving this machine here until you’re ready to speak.” A pause. “I can wait. I even have a comfy chair!”

The musty air tickled Ras’ nose, and he fought valiantly to suppress a sneeze. He failed. The sneeze shook his body, and his forehead once again struck the elevator.

“Bless you!” the old voice said. “Would you be in need of a kerchief?” The voice seemed willing enough to please.

“Wouldn’t you need to lift the elevator?” Ras asked.

“He speaks!” A panel opened in front of Ras’ face and a white kerchief floated down, obscuring Ras’ view before he could see who dropped it. “And no, I don’t.”

“Thank you, I think.”

“You are most welcome,” the man said, his voice once again muffled, “Now, what are you doing in my city?”

“Right now I’m lying underneath an elevator, wondering if my friend is all right.” He wondered how one could own a fallen city.

“The girl? She took a spill but is being seen to, I’m told.”

“Who am I speaking with?” Ras asked.

“I’m afraid it is ‘with whom am I speaking?’ You mustn’t end a sentence with a preposition. That is something up with which I shall not put.” He giggled.

“The elevator must have knocked the grammar straight out of me,” Ras said, rolling his eyes.

“Quite. You are addressing Dr. Bernard O’Reisenbraun, proprietor and repossessor of what once was referred to as
Solaria
,”
he said.

“May I call you Dr. O?”

“You wouldn’t be the first. My minions tell me you are called Ras. Is that short for Raziel or Rastiban?”

“Your
minions
?”

“You can’t have missed them,” he said with a scoff. “Minion number sixteen received a kick to the face from your friend. He was only trying to save her from the elevator.”

“After trying to drop us down the shaft.”

“You’ll have to forgive minion number eight. He took my order to make sure you drop by my office a touch literally,” Dr. O said sympathetically.

“Is there any chance we could continue this conversation elsewhere?”

“Oh, there is an excellent chance. All you have to do is tell me where you crashed your ship.”

“Who says I have a ship?”

“Tut tut, Mr. Rastiban, please do not insult my intelligence. No Remnant would dare pass through the fence. Now please, the location of your vessel.”

“Why do you need to know that?”

“Well, to be perfectly forthright, repairing a flying city takes an awful lot of spare parts.”

The irony of Ras’ purpose in the fallen city was not lost on him, but to be fair, he didn’t know anyone had been planning on using these parts. “Funny, that’s what I came down here for.”

“Most do.”

“My ship’s engines are broken; I doubt they would be of use to you.”

The elevator floor panel lifted again, revealing a balding, white-haired, bespectacled man leaning over from a wheelchair. “Not broken, I just disabled them.” He grinned. The elevator lifted and two young, white-haired men clad with green glowing goggles stood at the entrance with rifles pointed at Ras.

Given that he was constantly moving from one dark place to another, Ras started to get used to functional blindness. The guards shoved him roughly into a pitch black room, causing him to trip and tumble over something that gave a guttural grunt as the door slammed shut. He scurried away, knocking into one of the walls before falling back to the floor. A decidedly masculine groan emanated from the unknown source. Not Callie.