Waybound (29 page)

Back in the dying light of dusk, Rhom had ignored the kids' demands to catch Gabby, instead leading them to the eastern edge of the Talons with her tentacles. There, she dredged up a half-digested mehkan boat carved from a giant seed husk for them to use. The tentacles pointed them toward their destination—a cluster of dark buildings atop a cliff in the hazy distance. Then Rhom sank into the flux.

Now, after hours of rowing, the kids were spent and frozen from the wind. They tumbled among the silvery waves, gobs of the toxic liquid metal splashing into their boat. Phoebe's head felt like a rock that had been split open with a pickax, and blood kept oozing into her eye. Her grip on the oars was slipping, but she kept on rowing because the heat of exhaustion kept the cold from drilling down into her bones.

The sky was black and cracked with interwoven stars. Looming darkly on the horizon was a titanic mountain range. Beyond that, a breathtaking and infinite wall of gray, like a curtain drawn across the world.

The Shroud—the boundary between this life and the next.

The thought of what lay beyond it chilled Phoebe even more. A vast unknown swirling with…what? Spirits? Embers?

Flux waves shattered across breakers just ahead. The sea had pushed them down the coast, so they were a ways off course when a dark green beach came into view.

Their boat ground ashore. Phoebe was thrown forward, and Micah was nearly tossed over the prow. They steadied their ringing heads and towed their sad vessel onto the ore. Micah pointed inland to an outcropping where they might take shelter from the wind. They stumbled up the rocky beach and collapsed into the cranny, away from the brutal, biting cold.

They ripped their masks aside and heaved for air.

“That…totally…sucked,” Micah huffed.

Phoebe confirmed his observation with her panting breath.

He looked over at her and blanched. “Holy crap, Plumm!”

“What?” she gasped, trying to sit up.

“Your face. You're bleeding, like…everywhere.”

She wiped her forehead, and pain screamed back at her.

“Just lay back, okay?” he said, wadding his gloves under her head like a pillow. He pulled off his hard-shelled field bag and withdrew the Med-i-Pak. “Hope you don't need stitches. I ain't so good with a needle.”

The thought of Micah sewing her up made Phoebe nauseous.

He dug out a Wackers bar. “Take it.”

“Ugh. I can't eat another one,” she said weakly.

“You gotta,” he said and pulled out a packet of antiseptic wipes. “You lost a lotta blood. You're gonna need energy.”

“You don't have a clue what you're talking about.”

“Nope. But it sounded good.”

Phoebe nibbled the candy bar as Micah dabbed at her wound. It hurt, but he was being gentle so there wasn't much to complain about—other than the fact that it was Micah doing it.

His mouth moved, then closed, then opened again as if he had something he wanted to say.

She looked at him. “What?”

“Nothin',” he said defensively. “It's just…I just…”

“Spit it out.”

Micah avoided her eyes. “Margie basically raised me,” he mumbled. “She took care of me when I was sick and stuff, fed me off her plate. She always protected me from Pa. Margie was the only one who…who ever fought back.”

His eyes were distant.

“She pulled his own gun on him a coupla times. That usually shut him up. That's why she taught me how to shoot. He didn't stick around long enough for me to ever draw on him, though.” Micah chuckled morbidly to himself. “Too bad.”

He squeezed ointment on a bandage.

“So when Gabby said she knew Margie, trained her and stuff…I couldn't take the idea that my sis might be working for the Foundry too. Just like…just like your dad. The only two people who were ever good to me.”

Micah looked at Phoebe, his eyes foggy. He eased the bandage onto her forehead, careful not to touch the wound. She studied him, a lump forming in her throat.

“It's not an excuse,” he said. “Just a reason. That stuff I said to you, it wasn't right. I'm sorry, Phoebe. I can't take it back, but I can promise that it ain't gonna happen again.”

She nodded.

He closed up the Med-i-Pak. “Is that any better?”

“Yes,” she rasped. “Thank you.”

He looked at the half-eaten Wackers bar in her hand.

“You gonna finish that?”

Phoebe and Micah rested for a spell, drank some water from the SCM case, then bundled up and headed out. Micah used his rifle light to guide the way as they mounted the ridge toward the cluster of buildings that Rhom had indicated.

The smoky green beach was like raw quartz crystal, patches of rough ground interspersed with sheer planes as slick as ice. The kids struggled to climb these, scraping a few feet up only to squeak and slide back down again. Coarse white trunks sprouted in clumps, their skeletal branches bearing bronze knitting-needle leaves and seed cones like threaded screws.

Bit by bit, Phoebe and Micah ascended the shore. With the mountains and Shroud at their backs, they found themselves on a peninsula surrounded by the vast Mirroring Sea. A hundred yards ahead loomed their destination.

But as they drew near, their hearts sank. They could see through toppled walls and gaps in fractured buildings. Smoke sputtered out of it like the heart of a volcano. The structures were pitch black, not from shadows but from scorch marks.

The Foundry had already been here.

Phoebe followed Micah's lead. They stepped over the rubble of blasted black gates to find dozens of collapsed buildings. A single tower stood at the center of the wreckage, like a monument to the fallen. The courtyard was crisscrossed with tank tread tracks and scattered with pale statues.

Micah shined his light on the white shapes.

The kids felt sick.

These were not sculptures. They were mehkan corpses.

Dollop stumbled into the jungle clearing. He struck his salathyl prong on a fallen tahnik tendril. The white spike resonated, and he plunged it into the ore muck.

He had emerged from the flux tide pools before sunfall and fled back into the jungle. All he could think to do was keep trying the salathyl prong, and he had been at it for clicks.

But he was not afraid. After his encounter with Amalgam, he felt whole. He was his own mehkan, and Makina was with him.

He poked around at a lump in the mud.

“Ko-kolchi nuts!”

Dollop dug out a coarse little nugget and bit through the shell. The tender morsel within was wonderfully sweet. He got on his hands and knees and foraged for more. They were everywhere, a trove probably stashed here by a wandering flyntl.

As he dug, he felt the mud slosh and tremble.

Dollop got to his feet, confused.

Then he understood. He leapt out of the way just as the ore exploded in a splatter of muck.

A massive white drill breached the surface. Coiling, striated tentacles spewed out of the hole as a salathyl hauled itself above ground. Trailing behind the ghostly mehkan was a giant black capsule. With a screech, the back hatch twisted open, and a lumbering gohr stepped out, his huge clamp claws clinched.

It took Dollop a second to recognize the mehkan, but when he did, he squealed with delight. “Overguard Tr-Treth!”

“Dent my hide!” Treth rumbled, holding a fist over his blood-red dynamo. “Our little acolyte. Never thought I'd see you this side of the Shroud. How can it be?”

“Her ge-gears turn in mysterious ways,” Dollop said simply.

Treth's black eyes twinkled deep beneath wiry brows. “That they do,” he chuckled. “Well, are you primed?”

“Um, pr-pr-primed for what, Overguard?”

“You haven't heard?” Treth boomed. He blew out a jet of steam from the vents in his neck and hunkered down, eye to eye with Dollop. “We fight,” he said with a hungry growl.

Dollop looked behind Treth to see two dozen armed Covenant warriors gathered inside the capsule.

“The Ona has decreed,” Overguard Treth said. “No more shall the Children of Ore sit idle. We will make the Foundry bleed.”

“Wh-what about Loaii? And—and Micah?” Dollop asked. “Please. Tell me they have been fo-found.”

“The children are lost,” Treth grumbled, “but hope is not.”

The Overguard placed a massive claw on Dollop's shoulder.

“It is time to take back what is ours—to return Mehk to our Mother. Will you forfeit your span to save Her sacred machine?”

“I will.” Dollop bowed his head.

Treth growled in approval. “Then come.”

As the Overguard returned to the capsule, Dollop called out.

“Wh-where?” he asked. “Where are we go-going?”

“To where this all began,” Treth barked over his shoulder. “To send the bleeders back from where they came.”

P
hoebe and Micah felt the eyes of a hundred dead mehkans upon them. The bodies in the courtyard were plastered with bonding rounds and crystallized in agony, arms outstretched.

The kids shivered as they scanned the grounds. The buildings that hadn't been leveled were blackened, bombed-out husks. What remained looked ancient, built from large blocks of rough-hewn ore and splintered metal beams, their corners worn smooth by the persistent coastal wind.

Rising above the ruins was a weathered tower, bruised but still intact. It was as good a place to start looking as any.

There was no clear way to reach it, so they looked for a route through the collapsed structures, entering the nearest one through a ragged wound in its side. Though they could not see any flames, it was hot inside and reeked of smoldering iron. Smoke curled around Micah's rifle light.

“So what are we supposed to be doin' here anyway?” Micah sighed. “Does ‘join the Broken' mean anything to you?”

Phoebe shook her head as she looked around.

“I mean this place definitely qualifies as broken,” he huffed. “Maybe Rhom's just askin' us to fix up the joint.”

Phoebe smiled.

“And ‘only your father can show you the way'? Seriously? It's a load of hooey is what it is, and I'll tell you what—”

Rubble shifted nearby. Micah spun sharply, his light illuminating a heap of wreckage.

He and Phoebe exchanged a nervous look.

“We gotta work fast,” he whispered. “Don't forget Gabby.”

“I haven't,” she muttered.

“It ain't gonna be long—”

“Before they come looking for us,” Phoebe finished, stumbling over loose wreckage. “I know.”

The passage ahead had collapsed, and the debris was too unstable to climb. They turned around and headed back.

“I tell you what, though,” Micah mused. “Between the Ona and Rhom, I've just about had it up to here with riddles.”

Another scuffle.

Twisted figures lurked at the edge of darkness. Eyes glittered from behind toppled columns and rubble. When Micah tried to frame them in the beam of light, they shrank away.

“Come on outta there!” Micah barked, readying his rifle.

For a moment, everything was still. Then a lone figure shuffled forward, a mehkan who barely came up to their chests. He looked like a skeleton shrink-wrapped in gray foil, a squashed face and sunken eyes on either side of his head. His digits were arranged in circles around his feet and hands, and they looked too stubby to be of much use. As he crept into the light, Phoebe's instinct was to look away—his body was checkered with seeping, rust-colored sores.

“It you. Loaii. You Loaii?” he creaked. His jaw dangled on a rusty hinge, revealing more sores pocking his mouth and tongue.

He limped closer, his bowed legs groaning like tired bedsprings. “We hear you talk of Broken, talk of Ona. We hear rumor. Little bleeder Loaii, sent by Engineer. Please. It you?”

Phoebe nodded cautiously. “Yes, I am Loaii.”

“Oh, praise,” rasped the mehkan. “She answer us.”

“Please,” she said, “what does ‘the Broken' mean?”