“I know it wasn’t you, Sophia,” the woman cried. “I know you didn’t turn me in. You were waiting for me. You don’t have to wait any more,” the mutant cried.
Marcel heard a click behind him. He turned and saw that a mutant he took for dead was leaning up on a bullet-ridden autocar, a pistol in his hand. Two more clicks, empty.
“It’s me,” Marcel said.
The mutant squinted, bullet holes oozing from his stomach. “Oh, you’re that… you’re one of Desct’s Huilian lackeys.” He groaned. Marcel recognized the extra eyeball that blinked from the side of his head. He didn’t know the mutant’s name, but he had seen him among Celina’s crowd, silently nodding alongside her during the final meeting. “Well, I would have shot you anyways…” the mutant said, waving the gun, “but no bullets. Wasted them all trying to hit that mad bitch.”
“I know you didn’t turn me in,” the woman muttered to the corpse. “I know it wasn’t you, you just didn’t know what happened to me. You didn’t know to look. I’m back, Sophia, I’m back, and it’ll be like it was.”
Kayip and Sylvaine caught up, the former muttering a prayer, the later slowly approaching the woman.
“She shot us in the back, you know,” the slouched mutant said, “I thought she was one of us, but when she noticed that carcass, she started gibbering. After all we had fought for, all we had survived,” he gave a wheezing laugh, which descended into coughs. “A few seconds later, a few quick rifle shots, and we joined the corpses.”
“I’m here, Sophia, I’m finally back.” The woman rocked as she spoke. Sylvaine tried to tenderly touch the woman’s shoulder. She screamed, jumping up and slashing with gnarled claws. Sylvaine fell back on the street, swearing, and the woman glanced around with wide eyes. Her clothes were cut up, light gashes oozing from beneath. She ran suddenly, sprinting down the street. The body she left behind, Sophia’s body presumably, was marred with crimson, and Marcel noticed a knife clutched tight in her pale hand.
The mutant laughed again. “She killed for some bleeding-out Huile idiot, and how did that idiot repay her? Used her last moments alive to try to stab her savior.” He went quiet for a moment, and Marcel though he might have passed, but he coughed again and moaned.
“Why?” Marcel asked, waving to the carnage around him. “You didn’t have to attack Huile, it was your city.”
“Wasn’t my city,” the mutant gestured to the limp figures sprawled around him. “Wasn’t Adalgar’s, or Tatiana’s, or Dien’s either. Slaves of the Wastes, this city’s done nothing but beat us, mutate use, kill us, and then beat again what’s left.”
“They were innocent,” Marcel said.
“They lived in luxury, in ætheric energy that we bled and died to give them.” His lips curled in a snarl, he tried to pull himself up, but gave up after a moment. “I didn’t come here alone. My own son came to Huile with me, my own flesh and blood was sold with me. But he didn’t survive the mutations. He screamed and vomited until there was nothing left inside for him to puke up, and these Huile fuckers didn’t lift a finger.”
This wasn’t what was supposed to happen. Marcel had done the right thing. He had uncovered Roaches lies, struggled, risked his life, sacrificed for the cause, the plan was clear, the return of justice, of a true freedom to the city. Marcel felt his hand on the grip of his pistol. The urge was there, this mutant had destroyed everything he had fought for, everything he had suffered for, had had friends die for. It would be easy to raise the pistol, flick the trigger, and let his fury finish the man off.
“Perhaps we should go,” came Kayip’s voice. He walked up with Sylvaine. Marcel released his held breath, and the pistol, before leaning down to the slumped figure.
“We can clean your wounds, try and dress them, quickly,” he offered.
The mutant stared at him, a dazed half-smile on his face. “Come on, we both now that’s delaying at best. I’m done.” He slapped his chest, and winced. “Blood was long coming, you couldn’t have stopped it before, and you sure as Inferno can’t stop it now. Listen, you can hear it pour.”
It was true, Marcel did hear something. He closed his eyes and listened. Footsteps, dozens, no hundreds. Shouts, a discordant angry wail. All echoing down from Viexus Boulevard.
“What happened to Desct?” Marcel asked, turning back to the mutant, but he was silent. The dead man’s pistol slid from his hand into the pool that drained from his chest.
* * *
Wordlessly, the trio left that massacre grounds and snuck up through side alleys and small streets, cautiously following the voices.
“Mutants?” Marcel asked.
Sylvaine shook her head. “Doesn’t sound like it.”
They crept out from an alley and could see the movement down the wide boulevard. The men and woman of Huile marched in a mob, bearing rifles, shotguns, and blades, path lit by hand torches, lamps, and actual fire. Poking above the mob swung long poles of glinting metal, frames of axles and bound pipes, each one decorated with a mutilated corpse of a mutant.
“Halt!” A large, cracking voice boomed down from the other side of the street. Running down from the direction of City Hall came policemen and mutants. It took Marcel a moment to realize they were one and the same, mutants dressed in riot gear, or even police caps, holding bayonet-heavy rifles or truncheons. Leading them was one of Desct’s comrades. Calix, Marcel remembered his name, his twirled right horn, and sparse blond hair giving him away.
“Do not move a step closer,” Calix shouted through a bullhorn. “By orders of General Heitor Desct.”
General? The absurdity of the title would have been comic to Marcel were the streets not so stained with blood.
The crowd slowed to a standstill, less from the commands and more from the sight of the rifles. Their shouts, however, only increased in ferocity, and Marcel could make out shouts of “skinsick!” “traitors!” “my child, my child!” and “kill the bastards!”
“Hold. Hold!” Calix commanded.
The crowd started to step forward again, in hesitant waves. Calix gestured and the mutants fired, bullets hitting the ground between the two lines, cracking cobblestone and bursting up dust.
“Return home!” shouted Calix. Several mutants reloaded their carbines and pistols, while others held still their heavier repeater-rifles, sights aimed towards the crowd. “Those who need protection hand over your weapons and you will be safe and well-treated within the walls of City Hall.”
Kayip glanced to Marcel, who bit his lip, and stepped out into the light.
“Hey!” he shouted. Immediately a gunshot went off and a clod of cobblestone shards battered his face.
“Hold! I said hold!” Calix said, running up and grabbing the excited mutant’s rifle. Marcel coughed, and patted himself down, relieved to find nothing but muck. “That’s Marcel Talwar.”
“Marcel!” the mutant commander addressed him with a shout, “quickly, get over here!”
The crowd shouted as well, waving their arms and grisly totems, their voices too confused and contradictory to make an argument.
“Everyone calm down,” Marcel shouted back.
“Join us!” said a man from the mob. “These skinsick bastards are trying to murder us all.”
“Celina went off mad!” Calix shouted. “We’re just trying to restore order.”
A woman thrust through the crowd, holding out a bundle of cloth. “They did this to my boy! My child!”
Marcel squinted, and his stomach curled in upon itself. The face of a small child, no more than two, stared back with unfocused eyes, face white, stomach red and open.
The crown started to move forward again, enraged, waving forward their own atrocities, mutant flesh hanging limp above.
“We all need to lower our weapons,” Marcel shouted. “This is… a misunderstanding. It was Roache, Lazacorp that set up everything here. Trust me, I’m a Huile citizen, I fought in the war, if we can just talk we can—”
/> He saw the rifle poke out from behind the weeping woman’s shoulder. Then a blast. The mutant closest to Calix was flung back, head splitting in crimson. Suddenly there was a burst of gunfire, from both sides. Marcel leapt back behind the cover of the street corner, as half the mob ran forward, rifles at the ready, charging at the mutants, while the other half broke and fled back.
Marcel stumbled, catching himself on Kayip, unable to think as gunfire echoed. His metal leg burned, and his vision blurred. He grabbed Sylvaine’s arm, her fur on edge, her eyes distant.
“The rifles,” Marcel said, “use your engineering, melt them down, clog them, something!”
She shook her head, “It’s too late.”
It had finished in seconds. Several of the mutants lay dead; more clutched at their injuries as their comrades rushed over. The ground before them was covered in bodies of Huile citizens, blood mixing on the ground. A few screamed, and others tried to drag themselves away, to join to the fleeing mob.
Marcel, Sylvaine, and Kayip stepped out slowly. Calix waved them over, embracing each in turn, before tossing out more orders to his band of “police.” They ran to tend to the injured, mutants first, but also to those men and women who willingly tossed away their rifles. One elderly man still fought on, turning and firing suddenly as a mutant approached, arm out. The shot missed, and the mutant then unloaded his rifle into the quivering figure.
“Demiurge,” Marcel said, watching the scene. “Merciful Demiurge.”
Calix’s face was as grim. “To be thrust into this, just after victory, after freedom… Come, you’ll want to speak with Desct.”
Chapter 44
The Banner of the Phoenix lay crumpled on the marble floor, cut by bullet holes. As the city outside screamed, its bird of eternal fire fluttered anemically, caught by drafts of wind from the open doors of the atrium, lit by an erratic arrangement of handtorches. It seemed almost to inflate with slow breaths, each one weaker, collapsing down onto a floor marred by blood and what appeared to be a large, smashed, multi-tiered cake. Party streamers hung limp in the vast hall, a few unpopped balloons wandered aimlessly, as the Phoenix took its last gasps.
The atrium itself was full, throngs of harried mutants ran this way and that. Some seemed to be organizing munitions, others barricading the windows. In the back several guarded a cordoned off area where a few dozen Huile folk sat. Marcel wondered if they were prisoners, but none were chained. A mutant came by with a smile and some shouted words, and a family of four stood still with shock, before running up and embracing him. It seemed at least a few reunions were bloodless.
It was the only sign of joy in the place, more bitter-looking was the line of UCCR bureaucrats led down towards a side hallway. These battered men were held together by handcuffs, bike chains, and ropes, their visages downcast and hateful. Marcel caught the glance of a rotund face through the dim, Lambert’s bitter eyes staring towards him. He whispered something, too quiet and distant to hear for sure, but Marcel found himself reading the lips as mouthing “traitor.”
Marcel turned his gaze and found Desct, towards whom Calix and Kayip were already marching. The man had changed in the few hours of fighting, out of his workers rags and into an ornate, though ill-fitting, military uniform.
“…remind them that we are the new Resurgence government,” he said to another armed mutant, “if they are willing to work with us, or at least stand down, then accommodate as best you can.”
“And if not?” his soldier asked.
“It is a bloody night,” Desct replied grimly.
“General Desct!” shouted Calix. “I found him.”
The man turned, weary face lighting up a bit as he caught sight of Marcel. “You survived!”
“Desct, what in Inferno happened here?” Marcel shouted as he walked over.
The mutant sighed. “The situation had progressed a shit ton further than I anticipated.”
“Progressed? Things have gone mad! Have you seen the city? It’s worse than the war.”
“Let’s not spit taur-fucking hyperboles,” Desct snapped. “We’ve been maintaining peace as best as we can. There was always a risk of the Huile police getting involved.”
“This is more than a police scuffle,” Marcel said.
Desct shook his head. “Celina cared less about emancipation and more for revenge. I knew that from the beginning, but this… I lacked the imagination for this.”
“She was supposed to be by the south gate,” Kayip said. “Now Roache is gone and free.”
“I sent her where I thought she could manufacture the least trouble,” Desct said. “I didn’t predict she would simply abandon her post and expand the revolution before we even took Blackwood Row.”
“Expand the revolution?” Marcel said. “Desct, this isn’t a revolution, it’s slaughter. Where in our plans did we agree to attack City Hall?”
“Plans change, Marcel,” Desct said, thrusting his fingers into Marcel’s chest. “What would you expect to happen once the wall was demolished? I desired peace just as much as you, but once blood had been spilled in Huile, I had no alternative. Celina’s bands were looting and killing, and we were viewed as no different, trying to reason gets us fucking gunshots nine times out of ten. If we did not assert control, we would have been shoved back into our cages, or onto the gallows, Marcel, whether by Lazacorp’s hand’s or Huile’s.”
Mutants had stopped or slowed to stare. Marcel simply stepped back and crossed his arms, his head lowered. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”
“No shit, Marcel. When was it ever?” Desct said. “Huile should never have fallen under a coup, but we kicked out the Principate, using whatever means necessary. Blackwood Row should never have been the slave-harvesting Inferno-pit that it was, but we did what was needed to end it. This is war, Marcel, just like it was before.”
Marcel shook his head, trying to put to words thoughts that refused to cohere. Rage and guilt swirled around and into each other, until he could be sure where one ended and the other began. He didn’t know whether to shout, or weep, or vomit, so instead he just kept his silence.
Desct glanced around and waved his soldiers on. “Calix take command. Marcel, Kayip, Sylvaine, let’s talk some things over in my office.”
* * *
His office was what had once been Mayor Durand’s, though all decoration had been pushed to the side in a pile, leaving only the desk, some chairs, a few handtorches, and a voxbox jury-rigged to life with an autocar engine.
Desct sat and explained the situation in cold detail. Most of the city was in utter chaos, his forces against Celina’s against Huile’s militia crowds and the remnants of the police. “Celina preys on them, and they prey on us. We’ve tried to make peace, and have talked down a few, but most prefer to speak with their rifles,” Desct said.
Marcel could only sit and stare at the blank wall behind Desct. They had done everything right, they had won, and yet still the city burned.
“Have you tried contacting other Border State cities?” Sylvaine offered. “Someone Resurgence friendly?”
Desct nodded. “We caught some of the old government officials making frantic calls as we took City Hall. They told their story well enough, barbaric mutant insurgents out for blood. We’ve tried to clear the air, but to no avail. No one wants to speak with us.”
It was Marcel’s city; he had chosen to protect it. He had sacrificed his leg for it, he had sacrificed his years, his happiness, because he knew in the end it was the right thing. And now the city burned.
“So you’re on your own,” Sylvaine said.
“At best.” Desct lifted up a steaming mug and drank from it. “Demiurge, I missed coffee. Don’t think I’ll be sleeping for a good while.”
“How are your forces compared to Celina’s?” Kayip sat crossed-legged on the floor, one hand to his chin, the other massaging his Disc.
“Hard to say for certain,” Desct said. “I have a majorit
y, I think, and we’re comparatively organized. But I also have people to fucking safeguard. Celina can retreat to any corner of this city without consequence. There are a good number of our brothers and sisters who are not engaged in fighting on any side, simply hiding until this is over, or just fleeing the city. In my heart, I cannot condemn them.”
Marcel had been advised to sacrifice, extolled on his nobility, told that he had the power to save the city. All by a man who knew the truth from the beginning.
Sylvaine shook her head. “If you can hold out… I guess it’s still a victory. You’re free.”
“Thrust from chains into the mayor’s chair.” Desct shook his head and sipped. “Holding out remains a big if. Considering the value of the sangleum fields, I wouldn’t be surprised if a Resurgence army comes knocking soon. I just don’t know whose story they will give credence to.”
A man who had used all the ideals of the United Confederacy as mere tools, a man who transformed every just punishment into a personal execution, every freedom earned into more bondage. A man who now walked free from a city he had drained and discarded.
“Who’s around?” Desct asked. “As you can imagine I haven’t much been following politics. Marcel?”
“Hmm?” Marcel replied.
“Do you know if General Melias’s army is still stationed by Quorgon?”
“Oh uh.” Marcel shook his head. “I think he moved south for… something. I’m not sure.”
“His forces moved to Fim-Niuex, to handle a raider threat,” Kayip replied. Desct glanced at him. “I keep my ear to the ground; it is a habit. Though I heard the man had been replaced by General Levair.”
“Ah shit,” Desct said, slamming the table. “There was a Levair on staff here.”
“Was?” Sylvaine asked.
“Worked accounting.” Desct wiped off some of the coffee he spilled. “Most of them were keen to hide behind their police force, to give themselves up when the shooting died down. Levair decided to make a last stand with the mayor. Imbecile.”
The Sightless City Page 40
