The Sightless City

by Noah Lemelson

  “I’ve seen where taking orders leads me,” she said. “Tired of spilling blood for other people.”

  “Better to spill blood for yourself?” Marcel said. “Better to line your own pockets than to help build something like this?” He gestured to the window, where the city sat in a strange vague haze.

  Alba shrugged, not nearly as bothered by Marcel’s accusation as he would have wished. “Better to make my own decision on that front.” She followed Marcel’s arm to the window, staring not at the city, but past it. “I’ll see what’s out there for a free woman, see what the wide world can offer.”

  “And what will you end up with when it’s all said and done?” Marcel asked. “Just some aurem.”

  “A life,” she said simply, before turning back to Marcel. “When it’s time for the skraggers to dine it’ll all be the same either way, it’s the life before that counts. Don’t look only at the end, Mar. If you want to wait around here to make sure it’ll all be okay, well, you’re in for a disappointment. It’s never all okay, it’s never happily ever after. It’s just more life, just more mess, a different mess maybe, if you’re lucky.

  “Then I can, we can, clean the mess.”

  She shook her head. “Nothing you’re going to do here, Marcel, will change what we did. Nothing will clear the bodies from our memories. You want to wash off the Lazacorp gas, you want to clean away the blood.”

  “There’s nothing to wash,” Marcel said, trying not to shout. “We did what we needed to do to secure a future for Huile.”

  “I’m not blaming you either. I’m just saying.” She walked over to his desk. “You want things to be okay, I want thing to be okay. They won't be. So move on. I just worry that you’ll trap yourself here, sitting around, waiting for people to tell you how great it was that we killed thousands of men in their sleep, how heroic. It was suffering. For them and for us. Necessary suffering? Maybe. I can’t judge that, can’t change it. But I can, we can, move on.”

  Marcel held his breath, trying not to explode at the woman he once loved, the woman who took the last moments of their time together to torment him, to try to chip away at wounds that had not yet fully healed.

  “And Desct?” Marcel said. “He seems satisfied to stay here.”

  “He’s working for himself, found his own path,” Alba said. “Not sure how it’ll work out, but at least he’s keeping an eye on the bastards running this place, as opposed to doing their paperwork.”

  “I’m not taking Lambert’s job,” Marcel said. Even if he wanted to, Alba had poisoned that idea, made it sound less like a hero’s just reward and more like a stray dog’s table scraps. That’s what she seemed to think of him now, even after all he had done.

  “So what?” She raised her eyebrow slightly. “You’ll just try to skim by on a military pension?”

  “No, I’ll…” That had been part of the plan, but Alba could make anything sound pathetic. He glanced down to the floor to avoid her gaze. The pulp stared back, a man in a wind-battered trenchcoat, lit by stylized moonlight, a cigarette in one hand, a pistol in the other.

  “I’m going to become a private investigator,” Marcel said.

  Alba raised her eyebrow all the way. “Private investigator.”

  “Yeah,” Marcel stretched back. “Work for myself, won’t be beholden to City Hall or Lazacorp or no one. I’ll clear up the cases that slip through the cracks, help the average Huile citizen, the sort of folk the UCCR stands for.”

  She kept her eyebrow raised.

  “I’ll turn this into my office,” he gestured. “Don’t need a living room anyway. And I got Lambert on board.” Of course Marcel’s friend hadn’t even heard of the plan, but that could be smoothed out with ease. “You can leave this city, I’ll keep watch on Huile, I’ll finish what we started, on my own terms.”

  He waited for the inevitable insults. That he was being a child, playing at some troglyn-headed excuse for game, hiding away in his pitiful little hole. He waited for Alba to walk over, to notice the pulp on the floor, to pick it up and burst into mocking laughter.

  Instead her eyebrows relented, her gaze softened, and she just shook her head. “Okay. Okay then, if that’s what you want, Mar.”

  The hum of an autocar engine rumbled steadily louder. Marcel tried to smirk, but his head hurt too much. It was so cold in the apartment.

  “I need to get going,” Alba said. “I’m glad I saw you. Just… take care of yourself, Talwar.”

  It really did sound like rain, and Marcel’s vision was fuzzy again. He tried to shout out, “I’ll handle myself fine!” but suddenly he couldn’t get his lips to move. Strangely enough everything else felt like it was already moving, like the world was shaking around him. There were voices, two of them, neither of which were Alba’s nor Desct’s.

  He blinked heavy lids that seemed determined to stay closed, and finally, with great effort, was able to open them. He could make out occasional colors, but it was most often darkness. His head hurt worse than ever. He could breathe, but only with difficulty. His mouth tasted like old laundry. He tried to move his hands but they were stuck together somehow.

  “Turn left here,” came one of the voices, older, gruff, slightly familiar.

  “Hmm?” came another voice, lighter. “But isn’t the drop off point—”

  “Damn it, Hughes, you think I don’t know where we’re going?”

  “Okay! Okay! Apologies, sir.”

  The world shifted, and Marcel found his face pushed against leather. He pulled himself up and felt cold glass. He blinked. It was raining.

  “We’re going back to the place we took Gall,” said the older voice. “You know, that automotor factory.”

  “Sir?” said the second voice. “I wasn’t on the Gall case.”

  “No? Oh, right that was Alson. Mix you two up sometimes.”

  Marcel heard a click and smelled cigarette smoke. He tried to mumble something, but realized his mouth was stuffed with a gag.

  “Alson, sir?” said Hughes. “We look nothing alike.”

  Memories started to flow back in ice-chilled trickles. City Hall. Gall’s notes.

  Lambert.

  After all they had been through, the man was willing to throw a friend under the proverbial autobus that Roache drove. Marcel groaned, though that was more from the pounding in his head.

  “Yeah, because you know,” the older man said, “you’re both into that… backroom stuff. Tyrissian bathhouses and all that. I don’t know, I’ve never been religious.”

  “Sir, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Eh, never mind. Turn right here.”

  The ‘car screeched and made a sharp turn, flinging Marcel back in the other direction. Then it slowed to a stop.

  “Yeah, well, Lambert don’t want this guy saying anything to Verus, and don’t want to let Mr. Roache know there was a breach in his confidential whatever. Politics, that’s how it is. So we’re doing this old style,” the older man said, getting out of the car.

  Hughes opened the door and dragged Marcel out. Marcel tried to struggle, but his body felt as if were filled with iron ball bearings, and when he attempted to head-butt the man it felt like tapping his forehead against stone. Hughes didn’t even notice.

  “Old style?” the young cop asked, dragging Marcel. The lights were dim in the alleyway, and Marcel could see the walls of Blackwood Row above them. He was being pulled into an old factory, a grave of rusting industry, decorated with piles of dead machinery, deep-cut holes in the floor, and crumbling walls that were, in many places, patched with pieces of sheet metal.

  “What do you think it means, Hughes? Just because you’re too young to have worked war days don’t mean you don’t have to get your hands dirty sometime. Put him here. Noise won’t travel far.”

  Marcel tried to think of a meaning of “old style” that didn’t involve a bullet, but the young cop pulled out his pistol and there wasn’t much ambig
uity about that.

  Hughes stared at the weapon in his hand. “Demiurge, I’ve never had to kill a man before.”

  The older cop leaned on a conveyer belt. “But didn’t you… Right, Alson.” He puffed out a cloud into the dim. “It ain’t hard, just pull the trigger. Oh, but place him a bit closer that away. There’s an old sinkhole there, you can just kick the body down.”

  Marcel tried to pull all his rage together in a desperate squirm, his anger at Lambert for choosing comfort over justice, at Roache for betraying Huile, for using Marcel as his weapon. The last of his fury fell upon himself, for being such a damn fool. Despite his efforts, Marcel couldn’t do much, bound as he was, and he couldn’t even raise his anger above his own self-pity. Alba had been right, she had been so damn right. He tried to imagine her face, smiling in the moonlight. He wanted his last image to be of beauty and bliss, but he could only manage to picture her shaking her head as she turned to leave.

  Hughes took some bullets and tried to load them into the revolver. Marcel could hear the clink-clink, as the young cop dropped them.

  “You know he was a war hero?” the old cop said.

  “Him?” the young cop replied, scrambling to pick up the bullets.

  “Yeah. You never heard of Marcel Talwar?”

  Marcel could hear the man’s coat rustle as he shook his head.

  “Eh, you greenhorns have no head for history. I remember. We spent a week digging mass graves for the soldiers he killed. Not himself, of course, with gas. Disgusting, heads turned to mush, was worse than shoveling taur shit.”

  Now the only image Marcel could imagine was the bleeding, melting face of Principate soldiers. The price necessary to save Huile, only for Roache to rot the city from the inside. The faces glared at him from memory, agony written clear even as flesh turned to liquid. He tried to vomit, but it didn’t escape the rag.

  “We had to add a few bodies of course. Old style. Principate bureaucrats and the like. I had to shoot Mr. Legros. Not a bad man, actually, ran a good bakery. I used to get cheese tarts there, but then he went and married a Principate officer. Dumb. Best to be apolitical, but now I’m just rambling. Hughes, you going to shoot the bastard or what?”

  “Do you have to keep using my name?” said Hughes.

  “Who’s gonna hear? This bastard? Yeah I’m sure he’ll bitch you out to the Lords of Inferno.”

  The pistol shook in the cop’s hand. Marcel could not help but wonder if the young man knew what he had signed up for when he joined the force. Did he know he’d be murdering for cash, or did that only come up later?

  Hughes muttered some curse and pushed the pistol deeper into Marcel’s neck. “Any last words?” he asked

  Marcel tried to reason with him, tried to reach whatever inkling of humanity was clearly left in the man. Of course with his mouth bound, all that came out was: “Mmmmhrpgmmllm.”

  “Right,” said the cop, as he pulled back the hammer. Panic shimmered through Marcel’s body, it felt like a static buzz. He heard a strange sound and then:

  A click.

  It took Marcel an entirety of a second to realize that he wasn’t dead.

  “Inferno was that?” said Hughes. He fiddled with the pistol. Marcel bent over, wanting to vomit, tears wetting his gag.

  “Demiurge Hughes, you couldn’t shoot spikefowl with a shotgun.”

  “It’s not my fault,” muttered Hughes, “something went wild with this, looked like a photo-camera flash or something. Now the chamber’s fused tight.”

  “Here,” said the old cop, “if you can’t handle it.”

  Another click of a hammer.

  Then a sudden shout. Not one of frustration or fear, but a battle cry.

  Kayip.

  Marcel kicked himself back, away onto the floor. He watched the old cop turn, as Kayip ran from behind a wall of junk, sword already swinging. The cop tried to fire, but he was far too slow. His scream was cut short as Kayip sliced his torso in two.

  The pistol bounced on the floor. Hughes shrieked, and then jumped towards it, grabbing the gun as it bounced. A spark flew from the dark. The pistol exploded into molten metal, burning the man’s hands. He screamed ear-splitting pain, his fingers now more molten metal than burning flesh. Kayip turned and silenced the man with a slash.

  Then, for a moment, silence.

  Kayip shook the blood off his blade, and with a word it reformed and spun around his wrist into his simple bracelet.

  Sylvaine walked out, hand shaking. “Shit,” she said.

  Marcel could echo her sentiment. Kayip helped him up, removed his gag, and unlocked his cuffs. Marcel shook with nausea. He felt the twin emotions of utter euphoria at his sudden deliverance, and guilt-twisting disgust at the bodies on the floor.

  Kayip pulled out his Cracked-Disc, whispering some strange prayer, before turning to Marcel. “For the dead. It is never a holy act, nor a pleasant act, even if it was a necessary one.”

  Marcel just nodded, keeping his gaze from Hughes’s expression. “Thank you,” he said.

  Sylvaine shook her head as she walked over. “Yeah. Well, we’re lucky we found you.”

  “There are only a few good places for them hide a body in this city,” Kayip said.

  “You knew they would try to kill me,” Marcel said.

  “It was possible they might mutate you instead,” Kayip said. “But I had to guess, and death is, I think, worse than mutation.”

  Marcel nodded. “Well... thanks.”

  Sylvaine glanced around at the police corpses staining the concrete floor.

  “We should probably go,” she said.

  Chapter 28

  Marcel followed Sylvaine down to their rendezvous spot in an abandoned underrail station. Kayip had stayed behind, to remove the bodies.

  “I do not think we can hide your escape,” he had said, “but perhaps disposing their corpses might buy us a few hours.”

  As they had descended into dark of the Underway Kayip promised that he would join them after he’d “prepared some things.” Marcel knew he should have asked the monk what he meant to “prepare” for exactly, Kayip was not exactly an easy man to read, but in that moment Marcel had just been eager to leave. Now he rested on a sleeping mat, while Sylvaine spread Gall’s papers out over a tarp and examined her prize in exacting focus by the light of her handtorch.

  Marcel’s head still hurt, but less so now. He had led Sylvaine through the checklist of symptoms of brain injury he memorized at university. There was no evidence of severe damage, though the exact list of symptoms was blurry to Marcel, and he was faintly sure memory loss was on there somewhere. Still, he had survived the night, and though the world had turned upside down, though who he had thought were his friends had betrayed him and Huile, though innocent workers were being tortured and enslaved, and though Marcel no longer even had a safe place to call home, at least that was one thing to be thankful for.

  Also it had stopped raining. So two things.

  Kayip took his time. More than an hour passed, at least by Marcel’s vague reckoning. Sylvaine had been not much for conversation, enraptured by the notes. As Marcel’s worries about his head lessened, anxieties about his surroundings increased, the odd noises, the shifting shadows, the stuffy air, the smell of ambiguous rot and oil.

  “Found anything interesting?” Marcel asked, if for no other reason than to break the silence.

  Sylvaine didn’t respond. Marcel asked again. And then after a few minutes, a third time.

  “Hmm?” she said. “Oh, uh maybe? I’m not sure.”

  Marcel walked over and squatted. Lines and scribbled words covered the pages, diagrams that looked more like abstract art than any machinery Marcel could visualize. One or two pages exhibited some resemblance of a shared reality, cylinders and lines that might have represented some sort of piping. Maybe.

  “We got a good map of the central compound here.” Sylvaine pointed. “If the mutants can get some
one inside here, they could easily shut down the whole grid, but Kayip said security is tight, so I’m not sure there’s any easy way to make that happen. Unfortunately the sketch here is pretty vague, so I don’t know if there are any pipes wide enough to sneak a man through, or sections of flooring that might be dug through. Maybe further details were in those notes somewhere, but I don’t have them.”

  “Sorry,” Marcel mumbled.

  She shrugged. “It might not even have been written down. These diagrams aren’t even from Gall’s work, just general building plans.” She pointed to another stack of sheets. “This is his work. Are you interested in water treatment?”

  “Not particularly,” Marcel said.

  “Well then these won’t be particularly fascinating. What is useful is to see this ætherwire setup here.” She pointed towards a bunch of lines. “Sever that with, say, a hand-drill, or if you’re short on time, explosives, and that could shut down all power to the neighborhood.”

  Marcel slapped Sylvaine on the back. “Damn good work!”

  The engineer flinched, then stared back at Marcel, and gave a confused nod. “Thanks, I guess.”

  “I just mean, well, you figured all that out in just an hour,” Marcel said. “Impressive.”

  Sylvaine laughed. “Oh? That’s just from a cursory glance. Is it not obvious?”

  Marcel slunk back. He had never taken even a theoretical engineering class at University and was feeling an illiterate fool staring at the esoteric mess in front of him.

  “So why is it so important, then?’ Marcel said, “Why would Verus and Roache be fighting over these notes?” And why was Desct so convinced it was something more?

  Sylvaine scratched her chin and moved a few pages around. “Not sure. But they are unusual.”

  “How so?”

  She tapped her finger on a mess of pipes and boxes jutting off the side of the big cylinder, and then towards another page that might as well have been a sketch of a spider’s web for all Marcel could make of it.

  “This seems to be the focus of his work,” she said. “As far as I can tell, it’s used to infuse something into the water.”