For a time, he gazed curiously at the center urn. There was something about it that held his attention, something forbidden that he couldn’t quite put a finger on. Why would they go through so much trouble to protect a simple urn? he wondered. Had it been someone important? Important enough to merit months of labor and thousands in coinage?
Or perhaps it was meant to keep something in.
Michael’s mask began to fog. It was growing hot beneath his suit, a sign he was running low on air. He didn’t know whether he would be able to return, so he pushed aside his reservations and lifted the brass urn from its berth.
Strange, he thought as he turned it over in his palms. The metal was light, weighing no more than a handful of sand. A hundred coinage, he guessed, calculating its worth. Maybe even two. But upon closer examination, he noticed fine crystals glittering on its surface.
More meridium! he thought. By the gods, who is in here?
He tried twisting the lid, but the threading had rusted shut. “Come . . . on . . . you bastard!” he growled, twisting harder. The urn slipped from his grasp and crashed onto the floor. When it rolled to a stop, a sliver of black gas began leaking from its lid.
Michael staggered backward, fumbling with the seals on his mask. But it was too late — the smoke had already entered his lungs.
Gasping, he fell to his knees. It felt like a thousand ants were burrowing into his chest. Moments later, a sharp pain shot through his skull, followed by a loud ringing in his ears.
“TAKE US WITH YOU!” a voice screamed.
“PLEASE!” another voice cried. “FOR THE SAKE OF THE GODS, HELP US!”
Michael covered his ears, but the voices only grew louder and more desperate. They were everywhere and in everything, probing his conscience like hungry dogs. “Stop!” Michael cried out. But it was no use. A thousand new voices slammed through his conscience. He saw images of torn faces and blood-soaked fields baking beneath a laughing sun, smelled the rot of a million corpses, and tasted the pleasures of a thousand lives.
“LEAVE ME ALONE!” Michael howled.
Lights erupted before him, a dizzying pallet of colors pulsing with organic life.
“Take us home!” a woman pleaded. “Don’t leave us in this prison!”
Michael felt himself losing consciousness as the voices dug deeper into his mind. What is happening to me? he thought.
But then a single, distinct presence rose above the rest. Neither frightened nor desperate, it came to him welcoming. Relieved.
“By the gods,” it said. “You’ve saved me.”
7
When Waypman found him, Michael lay face down in a pile of ash.
“By the gods!” the Garfaxman said, kneeling down beside him. “Get up, son!”
Michael rolled onto his back. Every muscle ached, every nerve fried. When he opened his eyes, he saw the mural flickering above in the eternalamp’s orange glow.
“What the hell happened?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Waypman replied. “When I found you, you were clutching that . . . thing.” He pointed to the urn lying at Michael’s side. The contents had spilled across the boy’s lap, covering him in black ash.
Michael stared at the ash for some time, a sliver of recognition tickling his mind. “I—I found it there,” he said, pointing toward the center of the chamber.
Waypman cautiously approached the opened chest. “You were careless,” he said. “Anything could have been in here. Garbat trap, acid mist . . . anything.”
Michael closed his eyes, wincing; both his head and lungs still burned. “How long was I out for?”
“I don’t know,” Waypman replied. “I found you only a few minutes ago. I got lost back there. A lot of tunnels and cluttered chambers down here. More than I would have dared believe. Even found some bodies.”
Michael clutched his head. Everything felt numb, scrambled. It was as if a hole had been burrowed into his mind and then filled with somebody else’s thoughts.
“Shut him up,” a voice whispered.
Michael glanced over his shoulder. “What did you say?”
“Nothing,” Waypman replied.
Michael scanned the darkness, his heart racing.
“I’m right here, fool,” said the voice again.
“That!” Michael snapped. “You didn’t just hear that?”
Waypman stared at him, concerned. “I didn’t hear anything, son.”
Michael’s blood went cold. What’s wrong with me?
“Leave this place,” the voice said. “Leave here now.”
Michael’s face turned white.
Waypman raised his eternalamp. “You feeling okay?”
Michael hesitantly nodded. “Yeah, I just thought I heard something.”
“You’re young,” the voice said. “Too young. It should have been a man full grown.”
Michael sucked in a nervous breath. It’s not real, he told himself. It’s not real. It’s not real. . . .
Waypman knelt down and checked the gauge on Michael’s tank. “You’re running low. That’s what’s probably messing with your head.” He reached into his pack and withdrew a dented cylinder. “Here . . . take this.”
Michael took the cylinder and quickly swapped it with his own. As fresh, metallic air rushed into his lungs, both his tongue and throat went dry. “I—I can’t breathe in this thing.”
“Just keep it on,” Waypman said. “We don’t need any more mishaps.”
Michael took a few deep breaths to calm himself. It’s probably just a figment of my imagination, he told himself. A hallucination brought on from the filtered air.
“Can you walk?” Waypman asked.
“Yeah, I think so.”
“You sure?”
Michael nodded.
The two marched in silence through the dusty corridors, their boots kicking up small dust clouds as they retraced their way toward the surface. “You see that,” Waypman said, pointing at the ground. “Not a single track aside from ours. No one has been here since they sealed themselves in.”
Sealed themselves in? Michael thought, a chill dancing down his spine.
“Did . . . did you see them?” Michael asked. “The bodies?”
Waypman nodded. “Found ’em not more than half a league from where we entered. We’ll pass ’em on the way out, but I doubt you’ll want to see them.”
When they reached the room, Michael stared wide-eyed at the mess. Over a hundred shriveled, dust-covered bodies lay scattered around a rotten oak barrel in the center of the chamber.
“Suicide,” Waypman said, gesturing to the barrel.
Michael turned away, disgusted. It must have been awful, he thought. Entombed in such a place with nothing but death as an escape. He wondered what those final minutes had been like, watching as their companions succumbed to the same poison they were preparing to drink. Insanity, he thought.
Another ten minutes passed, dust clogging their filters as they wound through the bunker’s labyrinthine sprawl.
“Damn it,” Waypman finally mumbled. “I think we took a wrong turn somehow.”
Michael glanced at their surroundings. The tunnels all looked the same; the only differences were the occasional weapon or scrap of armor scattered across the floor.
Normal men would not part with such finery, Michael thought as he moved past a set of Tritan gauntlets. The pair was inlaid with black pearls and crimson rubies, hundreds upon hundreds of them inset in various, celestial patterns. Michael’s pulse raced at the sight. Just one of those could buy passage beyond the Razor Reef, he told himself. But there was no time for salvage. Not with sunset so near.
After walking another mile or so, they came upon a vast antechamber, which loomed before them like a great, gapping maw.
“By the gods!” Michael breathed.
Unlike the dank, gray granite tunnel system behind them, the chamber was wrought of polished black marble. Everywhere Michael looked, great veins of red and white crisscrossed the rock like
ghostly lightning bolts. This place would be fit for a king, he thought. On the floor, thousands of colored tiles had been laid in interconnecting patterns, each more elaborate than the last. But when he tried to enter, Waypman grabbed his arm.
“Wait!” the Garfaxman hissed. He pointed to a tall shadow looming in the center of the room. “There’s more to this place than meets the eye.” The Garfaxman raised the eternalamp, revealing a strange, metal pillar in the center of the chamber. At first glance, it looked like nothing more than a hodgepodge of scrap, perhaps a statue of some macabre design. But upon closer inspection, the mutant’s eyes widened.
“A Bristle!” Waypman breathed.
Michael felt chill slither down his spine. “What does it do?”
Waypman gestured toward the floor. “You step there, and it sets off those spindles. We’d be riddled with arrows before we even reach the end of the tunnel.”
For a moment Michael forgot about the voices in his head and marveled at the mechanism’s craftsmanship. It stood ten footfalls tall and consisted of three separate, steel spindles, each rotating on a single, vertical axle. Inside the spindles were dozens of miniature crossbow bolts, all tipped with razor-sharp heads.
“She could fetch a fortune,” Michael breathed.
Waypman huffed. “Yeah, just try getting it out of here, though.” He raised the eternalamp and stared into the gloom. “There should be a release switch hidden somewhere nearby.”
Michael turned and searched the immediate tunnel. But there was nothing but smooth brick walls.
“I suppose whoever built this never intended to return,” Waypman said.
“Should we just set it off ourselves?”
Waypman laughed. “If suicide is your wish. Look at the tunnel we just walked down.”
Michael glanced behind him. The tunnel was straight and narrow and not a single barrier to hide behind.
“We trigger that, and we’re both dead men.”
“What about those shields back there?” Michael said. “We could use them for cover.”
Waypman grunted. “They’re probably riddled with worm holes and dry rot. No. We’ll have to come back later with something stronger.”
Michael feigned disappointment. But deep down, he breathed a sigh of relief.
“We can salvage for something up top if we have time tomorrow,” Waypman said. “Until then, not a word of this place to anyone.”
Michael nodded.
For a time, the Garfaxman stood silent, his eyes glinting with excitement as he stared at the device. “There’s something important here. I can feel it. No one would have left such a thing without a reason.”
A gust of air rushed into the antechamber, spinning the deadly mechanism on its axle. Both men tensed.
“You know . . . I bet I know what it is,” Michael said.
Waypman cocked an eyebrow. “Yeah? What’s that?”
Michael swallowed, eyeing the creaking Bristle. “Death.”
It was still raining on the surface, an endless curtain of black slop that pooled at their feet like coagulating oil.
“This is a blessing, you know,” Waypman said as he slapped a shovel full of mud atop the entranceway. “The run off . . . it’ll hide any sign that we were here.”
Michael slowly scooped up an armful of muck and tossed it onto the doors. He was exhausted. Since leaving the chamber, the voices had dimmed, but every now and then one rose to the surface, stirring his fear. It’s just the poison, he told himself. It was weak, and you were lucky. Deal with it until it wears off.
When the hole was finally covered, Waypman marked the spot with a gnarled branch. “Well that’s that,” he said. The two then slogged back to camp in silence. Michael stared at the surrounding dunes as his footfalls beat out a steady din. It was hypnotic, endless, and before he knew it, he was drifting into the land of waking unconsciousness. He had discovered it long ago, during the many calls of meaningless labor endured alongside the lines.
My sanctuary, he thought. My home.
He stared across the sea of hovels that made up his hometown, gold morning dew shimmering atop their slate rooftops. In the hazy gray sky, draba birds slowly circled the refuse heaps in the distance, occasionally crashing into one in search of prey.
In his mind, Michael wandered familiar streets and alleyways, passed friends and neighbors long since dead. And at last, when he finally found his home — that slanted, ramshackle shed he and his father had built — a voice said, “Makes a man outa ya, boyo. Oh it certainly does.”
Desperate, Michael tried thinking of something else — the taste of one of his mother’s meals, the smell of winter air — but there was nothing. Only the body remained, that purple, bloated shell that had been his father. Defiant, he tried conjuring his mother’s face to mind. But only dreamlike snatches remained, a shade of the woman she once was.
She’s slipping away. It’s all slipping away.
A hundred footfalls to the north, Waypman crested a small hill. “Watch your step up here!” the Garfaxman shouted over his shoulder.
Michael plodded on, barely registering his words. Something was moving inside him now, an electrical current tingling every nerve to heightened awareness. What is happening to me? he thought as his stomach began to turn.
And then he heard it again.
“Who are you?” the voice asked.
Michael froze, his heart skipping a beat. “W—what?”
“Who are you? And why have you come for me?”
Michael tried to swallow, but his throat was bone-dry. “M—Michael.”
“Michael? Where are you from?”
“Th—the Downs. I’m f—from the D—Downs.”
“Michael from the Downs. Go back to the bunker, Michael from the Downs. Go now, and leave no trail.”
Waypman vanished over the rise. Michael opened his mouth to cry for help, but nothing came out.
“He can’t help you now,” the voice said. “Go! Go before the rains wash away your pathetic little marker.”
In a panic, Michael thought of racing up the hill. But a sudden impulse overpowered him, and he kept his feet rooted in place.
What do you want from me? Michael thought.
The voice replied with one simple word.
“Freedom.”
Waypman sloshed through ashy runoff, his rod slung lazily over his shoulder. It had been almost a call since they had left the bunker, and his legs were beginning to ache.
To the north, a small fire danced atop a rise. Camp, Waypman thought, picking up his pace. Thank the gods.
“The boy’s gone astray?” a voice asked.
Waypman froze, his heart in his throat. When he turned, he saw the gob leaning against his driver rod, a nefarious grin upon his blackened face.
“Fall prey to a trap, did he?”
“He’s right behi—” But when he turned, the boy was gone.
Drexil laughed. “Didn’t even realize you lost him, eh? Forgot to look over your shoulder, right?”
Waypman threw down his rod and tightened his pack. “I’ll go get him,” he said. As he turned to leave, the gob laughed. “What the hell is so funny?”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Drexil said. “Look . . ." He pointed to the east, where a fog bank was crawling through the gnarled forest. Like a great white tide, it flowed toward them, drowning the world beneath its ghostly current.
“Just leave him be,” Drexil went on. “We’ll take in a higher rate without him.”
Waypman shook his head. “Tell the mystic I went back to the base of the Hill. A league southeast of here.” And with that, Waypman turned and hurried off into the smog.
Drexil grinned as the Garfaxman vanished into the white void.
“Most certainly, squiddy,” he called after him. “Wouldn’t want anyone to get left behind, now would we?”
8
Stop, Michael told himself. But it made no difference. He was a puppet now. A lost and frightened puppet.
He’d been walking for almost a call, drifting like a ghost through the sea of dense fog. Black rain continued to pound the ground, the slap-slap drowning out his footfalls. Every so often, thunder rumbled in the distance, followed by white flashes that lit up the fog.
“What do you want from me?” Michael asked.
“I want what every prisoner wants,” the voice replied. “Freedom. Life.”
“And how can I give you that?”
“You already have, Michael. Freedom, anyway. But I still need your body.”
In the distance, the patch of freshly turned earth materialized in the fog. As Michael drew closer, the presence finally released him from its grip.
“Get to work,” it said as Michael collapsed onto the ground.
For the next call, Michael scratched and clawed at the slushy sand, tossing countless handfuls of slop over his shoulder. It was hard work, and his head pounded mercilessly. But he dared not stop.
“Michael?” a voice shouted in the distance.
Michael looked up, but the presence quickly thrust his head down into the mud.
“Keep going!”
“Michael?” It was the Garfaxman. And he was getting closer.
Michael dug more frantically, the sand shredding the tips of his laptane gloves. He wanted to cry out to the mutant, but no matter how hard he tried, his lips remained shut.
“Faster!” the voice shouted.
Something struck Michael in the back, snapping him out of his trance. When he turned, a familiar shape loomed above him.
“What happened to you?” the Garfaxman asked, panting.
“I—I wanted to be s—sure we had covered it," Michael lied.
Waypman gripped Michael’s arm and pulled him onto his feet. “You could have gotten yourself killed.”
“Tell him nothing of me,” the voice warned.
Michael sagged in Waypman’s grip. Just leave him alone, he thought.
“Come on and help me cover this up,” the Garfaxman said. “And hurry. The sun will be down within the call.”
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