“There someone called Greg in your building?”
Malcolm took a second. “Not that I know of.”
“Friend of yours?”
He shook his head.
“Does it mean anything to you? Half-remembered from somewhere?”
He shook his head again. “I mean, it might not have been quite Greg, just a noise like that. And it sounded more like...locks? Maybe? But that wouldn’t make sense, would it? Grammatically.”
“Since when did dinosaur speech obey grammar,” Sam replied, knowing all too well the creatures of the Sunken City had a scant disregard for English. She wrote it anyway. Locks, not lost. Hail would’ve let that go.
The details were necessary to understand the Sunken City, but even more necessary to justify her work. She could help the whole organisation run more efficiently if they only listened. That was the great irony of them all thinking she was trying to make life more difficult – her advice, and interference, would reduce work. A misreported audio reading had led to six days of wasted manpower in June when agents were searching for a sickle instead of an effundo porcum, but Management ignored her suggestion of implementing validation checks. Iron out those niggles and they could afford the manpower to do real work, like developing a relationship with the Fae.
“So what’s the deal?” Malcolm interrupted her thoughts. “Is my block safe to go back to? Do I need a check-up or something? Only, I’ve got a presentation on Wednesday, and I’ve already lost half a day here.”
Sam gave him a wan smile. It was impressive, half a day lost before 10am. “You’ll probably be allowed back in by lunchtime. The fire service are still running safety checks. You should rest, though. And I’d recommend you be careful how you talk to people about this. The video, I understand, has already been seen by a few thousand people, and I wouldn’t want any undue embarrassment for you.”
“Seventeen thousand,” Hail said. “Last I checked.”
“Of course,” Malcolm nodded quickly, not questioning why they were monitoring it. “You think I wanted that uploaded? If the press asks, I’ll give it to them straight. Wasn’t thinking. Inhaled gas.”
Sam stood, then paused. “Did you happen to see anything, Mr Joseph?”
“Oh yeah,” he said. “I told you, cracks all up the wall. It was crazy.”
“Anything else?”
“Like the gas?”
He asked like it was a possibility. Had he seen the fumes from a bufo cloaca? The blue glow of the praelucente itself? “Yes, like the gas. A haze in the air, anything near the ground level?”
Malcolm considered it, then flashed a pearly white smile, “I was off my face, I guess – I didn’t notice anything but the sound, and had my eyes on where the door was.”
With the hallucination excuse in place, it was unlikely he’d say anything useful now. That was rather the point for the Ministry, but not overly helpful for Sam. Then, they’d always cared more about keeping the public quiet than doing a good job.
But if the creatures themselves were becoming more noticeable, especially if there was a chance the noise had come from the praelucente, then she could use this. She could break free from the box they’d put her in, and make Management take notice. Today, she told herself, InterSpecies Relations was going to matter. She was going to matter.
5
From the slack expression on his face as Barton wriggled his toes, Pax could see the liquid had started to take effect. Holly was right that it didn’t look safe to drink, but a more natural glow was returning to Barton’s skin. In a matter of minutes, while Rimes rustled up some tea, his bruising had lightened. Pax willed it to work faster, so they could get away. The lab’s ventilation system had quickly cleared the stench, but with animal noises outside and potential Ministry visits, nothing about this place felt safe.
“How much longer?” Pax asked, hopefully. “You’ll be able to walk, right?”
“After that much? No,” Barton said. “But it’ll do for now.”
“It’ll do?” Holly said. “A painkiller won’t stop your foot from needing amputating.”
“It’s not a painkiller,” Barton said. His eyes drifted to Pax and suddenly widened.
Pax tensed, wanting to hide or at least avoid his gaze, but it was too late. He fixed on her with deep creases of concern as she huddled up self-consciously. After the confusion of his pain and all they’d been through, he probably hadn’t remembered exactly who she was yet. He was nothing if not protective of his family, and she was the stranger who’d put them all in danger. Pax cleared her throat and broke his gaze, ready to apologise, but he spoke first. “You touched it? The minotaur?”
Pax paused. Not what she’d expected. She met his eyes again. His stare was intense, but concerned, not angry. She said, “Well, it touched me.”
He scanned her up and down, like he was able to see into her. Did he know, somehow? About the weird dream? The unsettling feeling? “How do you feel?”
“Fine.” Pax shrugged. “Better than I’ve any right to, actually.”
“Fine? You touched it...no one’s ever touched the minotaur. Never got close enough. Never risked it.”
“Yeah, about that,” Pax hurried on, to shift attention away from her. “It didn’t look like a minotaur. More like an electric kraken. There was a ton of messed-up stuff down there, nothing that looked like a minotaur.”
Barton kept staring. Had he even blinked? “You didn’t have any glo?”
Pax shook her head. “Can’t imagine it would’ve helped.”
“It would. It reveals things...” Barton was high on the stuff. Were his dilated eyes seeing things now?
“And it emits a pheromone,” Rimes elaborated, joining them with a tray of steaming ceramic mugs. “It keeps some creatures away, attracts others.”
Pax took a mug; the tea was two quite different shades of brown. An earthy contrast to the liquid they were discussing. She said, “This magical glo, does it make your farts smell like roses, too?”
“Oh,” Holly joined in, “perhaps it could solve the Israel-Palestine conflict?”
“No,” Rimes said, seriously.
Barton looked unamused, still staring at Pax. “You’re seeing the effects, aren’t you?” He did know, didn’t he? But he lifted his leg, swollen foot on display as it rotated at the ankle. He took a sharp breath, still hurting, but said, “It works. If we had more, I’d be up in hours.”
“You could say the same of opiates,” Holly said.
“It’s not a damn painkiller!”
Grace almost flinched off her perch at the corner of the bed. Barton reached towards her. “I’m sorry – honey –” He lowered his hand when she didn’t come closer. He breathed deeply, calming down. The outburst, at least, had drawn his attention from Pax.
“But the bottom line,” Pax said, “is you’re not going anywhere fast?”
“And your friend,” Holly added hotly to Barton, “is working with the people after us.”
“She turned them away, didn’t she?” Barton replied, his protective streak shining through. “Mandy does what she has to, God knows she has no one else. And the research she offers the MEE can only help open their eyes – it’s not a betrayal.”
“Absolutely not,” Rimes said quickly. “Just – just last month I submitted findings on wading moss that indicate a need for better air circulation around the Tupsom tunnels. The gaseous build-up there could put the city above at risk.”
“There’s a lot more going on in the Sunken City than our problems,” Barton said. “And there is some good in trying to understand it. Glo, for instance, we’ve proven to work, repeatedly.”
“Indeed,” Rimes said. “It’s not my speciality, but the Ministry measure an energy they call novisan – which I believe might be affected by glo. The same energy the minotaur uses. But measuring novisan is complicated. There’s nothing you can see or weigh. It requires systems of deduction – they’ve never given me the means myself.”
“Novisan.”
Pax tested the word. The best she had been given before was Barton’s tales of people getting tired in the Underground. She had seen it herself – heads nodding, briefcases slipping from lifeless hands, as blue light flickered in the dark tunnel outside the train. “That’s the energy this minotaur is draining and manipulating? Some kind of mystical life energy? Paired with a minotaur which doesn’t even look like a minotaur.”
“I’m so glad,” Holly said, “that you’re here to witness this. I’m sure if it was me, on my own, suggesting they were bloody fools, I would be the unreasonable one.”
“Holly,” Barton said, bristling. “I didn’t want to return to all this. It’s what I always tried to protect you from.” He reached out to Grace again, this time squeezing her dainty hand. “But you can be damned sure I’ll kill those monsters once and for all, for all of us.”
“How?” Pax said. She had never learnt what he had been through to get in his current state, but she was fairly sure, from their own experiences, that it hadn’t been especially helpful. “What’ll you do next time, jump in front of a bus?”
Barton glowered at her. “You brought those bloody Fae to my home, I could’ve –”
“You could’ve what?” Holly cut in. “Last I checked Pax brought our daughter to our home. Those psychotic fairies already had her! No thanks to you!”
“I was doing –”
“Stop! Stop it!” Grace jumped to her feet, wincing as she did. Her voice was high and desperate. “Stop fighting! We’re alive, aren’t we? I thought you were going to die, Dad! I thought we were all going to die!” She moved closer to Pax in solidarity, squeezing uncomfortably close. “You need to listen to her. Pax knows what she’s doing. She’s smart and she’s quick and she’s tough and she sees things better than the rest of you!”
The expectant gazes of Holly and Barton rested on Pax. Even Rimes’ googly eyes had grown larger with anticipation. Pax wanted to be somewhere else. Grace smiled encouragingly, and Pax quietly told her, “You’re going to break so many hearts when you’re older.”
“Pax,” Barton said, letting out a big breath. “I am grateful for what you’ve done.” But his stare was heavy again. “What did you see? Are you really okay?”
Pax hesitated. It was an invitation to explain the dream. Her burning heart and the electric soldiers and the foreboding feeling she’d had. And then what? Make this family pity her and argue about whose fault it was she’d been electrocuted? No, describing the dream wasn’t going to help. They had bigger concerns. She said, “I saw those blue screens, connected to your minotaur, when I was down there. What Apothel called the Blue Angel – whoever or whatever used those screens to send you messages – it’s the root of all this. How much do you know about it?”
Barton was frowning even harder. “I told you everything, more or less. We shared messages, scratched into the walls on those blue screens. Messages were scratched in return. The screens came out of nowhere and disappeared again. Apothel named the contact the Blue Angel because of this divine bloody intervention. But the Angel sometimes pointed us to glo, sometimes to nothing, wasting our time. Likewise, when we relayed the minotaur’s location, he did something to slow it down. Sometimes he did nothing.”
“He? You had some idea who this was?”
“No,” Barton said. “He, it, they, whatever.”
“Let’s assume nothing then, okay? This Angel, it didn’t give you anything else?”
“Some information. A lot of what we know came from the Blue Angel’s messages.”
“The turnbold’s weakness for zinc,” Rimes offered. “For example. I extrapolated advice about concentrated oyster brine from an Angel message.”
Holly stirred at the idea. “Is that so? That wretched blue square sent us on a wild goose chase! And one underground wiped away my marks on the wall! Your Angel wanted us trapped down there.”
“He – it – wasn’t consistent,” Barton said, “but it helped us stay alive.”
“Because it needed you,” Pax said. “Not for what you thought. It connected to that minotaur somehow, through those blue screens.”
“You’re sure that’s what you saw?” Barton replied warily.
“No minotaur,” Pax said. “No drink-induced illusions. Just an electric monster surrounded by blue screens.” She held Barton’s questioning gaze to drive home her sincerity. “I’m telling you, the Blue Angel is the crux of all this. If we want to figure out the Ministry’s angle and get ahead of it all, we need to figure out the Blue Angel.”
“And how do you expect to do that?” Barton said.
“You tell me,” Pax said. “You must’ve done something to explain who was sending the messages? Where do we start?”
There was silence at the weight of the question. Barton looked like his cogs were turning at half-speed, while Rimes sought distraction around the cluttered room. Grace, bless her, had an expression of tense concentration, doing her best to think of a solution.
Barton spoke first. “Only me and Apothel ever saw the screens, not even the rest of our group. Whenever Rik or Mandy got near, they didn’t show. The Ministry don’t even believe they exist.” He looked at the doctor. “Assuming that’s still true?”
Rimes nodded, replying in a quiet tone, “Yes.”
“You could point me to the blue screens, at least?” Pax asked.
“Yeah,” Barton said. “There’s about a half a dozen locations where they showed. All near Sunken City entrances.”
“We saw one under a bridge,” Holly volunteered.
Pax gave her a conciliatory smile, then flashed on the images from her dream. The bridge, the body of water, the fountain. Pointless coincidence, she told herself. The city was full of bridges. “The Angel didn’t give you a clue to where it was writing from? Something in the way it wrote?”
“The messages were simple,” Barton said. “Not even full sentences.”
“Could Apothel have known more that he didn’t tell you?” Pax turned to Rimes. “He double-crossed the Fae; was he talking with his Blue Angel when that happened?”
“I don’t know,” Rimes said. “We lost touch.”
“We all lost touch,” Barton clarified. “If he’d told me, I could’ve helped.”
“But Rufaizu...” Rimes said, but stalled.
“He said something?” Pax pressed, hopefully. The doctor shrank with nerves.
“He said he had help. He came back to kill the minotaur, he was excited, and he said he had new help. Someone who would fight with him. That and – and he thought he had a solution. That was all he said.”
The solution Pax already knew about; Rufaizu’s return, drawing her into all this, spiralled around the discovery of the Dispenser, the Fae weapon that could injure the minotaur. The new help, she suspected, was a reference to Letty.
Holly, apparently, made the connection, too: “It was the fairies, isn’t that right, Diz? The Layer Fae. You told me all about them, without telling me a damned thing. Fairies. They killed your friend Apothel and they” – she spun a hand in the air – “dragged us into all this!”
Barton didn’t answer. Rimes replied mournfully, “If that’s true then no wonder Rufaizu got caught. The Fae can’t ever be trusted.”
Pax said, “What makes you say that?”
“The Blue Angel, of course,” Barton said. “But you’ve had first-hand experience of the Fae, haven’t you? Where is she?”
Pax felt Rimes’ curious eyes on her, and gave Barton a warning look. “She’s exploring our options elsewhere. Can we stay focused? The blue screens.”
“I can give you their locations,” Barton said, “but I wouldn’t bank on them showing, especially not if you think you’ve rumbled the Blue Angel. You might as well watch our videos and get the same experience of not seeing them.”
“Videos of what?” Pax said. “The Sunken City?”
“Yeah.” Barton gestured to some of the stacked boxes. “They’re in here somewhere, shot by a real pro. Experience the Sunken City
without ever having to go down there.”
Pax scanned the clutter around them. Footage of their experiences, she realised, was preferable to actually encountering that dangerous world. “Show me.”
6
Most Mondays, Sam Ward came to work feeling reinvigorated. She was rested, freshly reminded of the banality of home life, and ready to make a difference. Some people hated coming to the Ministry of Environmental Energy’s offices at 14 Greek Street, with its jutting buttresses and narrow slits of windows. Sam saw it as a place of opportunity and brought a new Big Idea every Monday. By Wednesday or Thursday, it would hit a wall of some sort and she’d start to slump. By Friday she’d have another new Big Idea, which she’d refine over the short break, ready for Monday.
She’d engaged in this cycle for three years, since the Ministry’s governing board, the Raleigh Commission, had accepted her proposals to establish an InterSpecies Relations initiative, to (quote) create understanding of and foster dialogue between those creatures that demonstrate communicative capabilities. She’d been taken off the streets and given her own office and two members of staff. Then she had been more or less cut off from the rest of the Ministry, and she slowly realised the appointment was designed to keep her from creating ripples.
Before she’d started, it was clear the Raleigh Commission had already had contact with the Fae Transitional City. The Ministry had made peace with Valoria, the Fae leader, and her council a decade ago, though it hadn’t led to open communication. The MEE knew roughly where the FTC was located and mostly left its inhabitants alone. Some field agents still believed the Fae were a threat, and there was a plan – Protocol 21 – to eliminate them, but it wasn’t something they discussed seriously. The Fae hadn’t interfered with any MEE business in years. Given their reputation for disruption, that proved the existence of a mutual understanding between the two governments.
Sam imagined herself codifying that understanding, laying out regulations and proposing diplomatic missions, encouraging new levels of co-operation. The technology swaps and cultural exchanges could hugely improve efficiency and decrease MEE patrols, to say nothing of the wider effects these learnings could have.
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