Cyn

by Cari Silverwood

  “Let’s get some food,” Rutger suggested. “Before we strap ourselves in. I need something in my stomach. Hold off on the descent until I get a few snack bars, Mo.”

  “Of course. None of you are adequately restrained in your harnesses anyway. Take as much time as you like. It’s not as if you cannot eat while I drive. Are you sure we are in a hurry?”

  Vargr chortled. “Mo is dissing you. Hey, Mo! Rutger needs to do his manicure first!”

  “Remind me why I helped Cyn fix you again? How am I supposed to eat while we drive straight down? I’d throw up on your pretty seats, Mo!” He opened the door linking the carriages, held it. “Come.”

  He shook his head, looked to where Vincent was laid out. “What if those straps loosen? Is there a seat in here I can use, Mo?”

  “There is.” With a click and a whine, a seat popped and unfolded from the wall opposite Vincent.

  “Then I’m staying.” He untangled the seat harness, hopped into the seat.

  “If anyone stays with him it should be me. You’re recovering.”

  He shrugged and clicked shut the belt. “Too late. I want to be here.”

  He needed some quiet time, needed to think.

  After a slow assessing look, Rutger nodded. “Take care then.” He left, closing the door.

  It wasn’t as if either of them could do much if Vincent did snap the harness ties. He’d weigh a ton and would drop straight down into the bulkhead—or whatever it was called—that the door was set into.

  Mo had descended halfway down the wall when Vincent’s skin flooded with color, and he turned back into being alive. He blinked at Vargr.

  “Don’t wriggle. Don’t move. We’re currently climbing down Maelstrom Tower. Once we level out, I’ll get you loose.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause so much fuss. How long did it take?”

  “For you to change back? I guess the sun truly set about ten minutes ago. We had to head back fast, so we pulled you in.”

  “Okay. Why?”

  “I could ask you the same.” May as well say. “I started bleeding again. The old wounds opened up because my demon nanites dropped too low. We think.”

  The urge to look niggled, and he stared at his arm and his bare chest. No more holes. No blood. Thank god.

  “Okay. You look good from here.” Vincent’s craggy forehead folded into giant wrinkles. “So you healed again?”

  “Cyn fed me blood. Hers, since she has the right nanites. It worked.”

  “You must have been bleeding bad?”

  “I’m always bleedin’ bad.” He chuckled, though curiously he didn’t feel that thriving ferocity as he had last time. It must mean the demon level wasn’t as high. “But to answer your bleeding question… sort of…” he waggled his hand “… to the death. That bad.”

  “Ugh. I see.” Despite the strap across his forehead, Vincent nodded. “You’ll survive.”

  “And you will too. I didn’t do my thing on purpose. Why did you go outside in the daytime? Was it really just an experiment?”

  The straps creaked as he took a huge breath, exhaled, his gaze focused on the wall leading down to the cockpit.

  “It was that,” he said quietly, “and it was because I wanted to see the sun again. You know? I needed to. No matter what happened, I needed to. And I did see it. Just for a few seconds as the full warmth and brightness came over me, I saw the sun as it flooded in, breaking over the top of the tower across the courtyard. So beautiful. It blossomed like a flower of light.”

  A lump had appeared in his throat. Vargr swallowed, blinked. He got it. “I understand.”

  “There are only three of us and I don’t know if there will ever be more. At least I now know I can do my sacrifice to the sun and come out of it, alive.” The gentle smile on his face communicated more than his words.

  There wasn’t much he could add to that. They remained in silence, both of them thinking over what had been said and done, he supposed, until Mo bottomed out and crawled around to be level.

  “You can release all safety harnesses for the time being!” Mo sang out. “This is your captain speaking.”

  “What the…” Grinning, Vargr shook his head at Mo’s emerging humor, then he unstrapped and went over to check on Vincent and help him up. Kiko and Rutger arrived as he was doing so, and they pulled the stone beaster to his feet, tugged his robe into place.

  “Shoo there.” Vincent swatted at their hands and grumbled at them to leave him be, before he gathered the three of them into a short but rough, claustrophobic hug. “Thank you for bringing me in.”

  “You’re welcome,” Rutger said, clapping his hands together. “Now we get a real breakfast!”

  Fucking smoked herrings and powdered eggs? Someday, maybe they’d figure out how to farm again. When they lost the Ghoul Lords.

  “Hey.” He looked in the direction of the cockpit. “Where’s Cyn?”

  “She went up top again with instructions that I was to make sure you were okay. She said she needed to see the stars. I think it’s more than that.” He paused and a frown came and went. “I told her I’d bring her some food.” Rutger studied him. “You go up there. I’ll play cook.”

  “Sure.” Something told him Cyn was pining for an emotional thing, same as Vincent. An epiphany maybe? This world would play havoc with anyone’s mind. “I’ll make sure she’s okay then.”

  “Hmmm. I guess that’s what I was trying to say.”

  “I’ll have my herrings microwaved on high with a white sauce and cracked pepper. Medium rare.”

  “Perfect.” Rutger kissed his fingers. “I knew you were a gourmet.”

  “I’m so tired of canned and packet stuff I might even rip up some of the grass outside and eat it. With that white sauce, of course.”

  They headed forward, passing Kiko where he’d sat at a desk, studying a design of an animal on white paper. He waved his pen at them.

  “Breakfast?” Rutger asked.

  “Brupper, you mean. Like my mechacat?” He swiveled the paper. “Mo asked me to design one.”

  A mechacat? Vargr turned his head to see it properly. “Looking good. Size of a tank, I hope?” He was itching to follow Rutger, who’d disappeared through the next door.

  “It’s a cat sort of size.” He scratched the pen through his beard. “So far.”

  “Uh-huh. Keep going.”

  “Of course.” He bowed over it again.

  Mo rumbled and stomped onward, making the passageway shake and rock. They’d passed through the tunnel and just now exited the gate as well. The land spread before them.

  The hatch to the roof was open, and he sprang at it and caught the little railing, hauled himself out into the darkening sky. Stars were showing. Without the glare of civilization they were as startling and pretty as gems.

  The seats had not been unfolded. The hull up here was bare of everything except his demon-girl. She sat, facing away from him, on the black-painted metal at the nose end of the vehicle.

  Thin fire trailed from her hands and from translucent wings that flared into the sky. Her wings weren’t thick with fire, they were nearly invisible, but they did exist. Flame weaved into the night, and some threads reached higher than the aerial above the cockpit that was twice Vargr’s height.

  This was a light display he’d not expected to find.

  After a deep breath, he trudged forward in small steps, careful to keep his footing, though really, he could have flown if he tipped off or slid, and the inward-curving parapet was there too. He could grab that if he had to.

  The steel was cool under his bare soles.

  On his way to her, he contemplated why he’d not even tried to fly at Maelstrom Towers. It wasn’t fear, he simply had not thought to do it. The freedom of flying in a vast open space called to him, now that he bothered to unleash his imagination. They were far from the Ghoul Lords. The Lure would not touch him as it would a human.

  Yet, he hesitated.

  Yes, there was f
ear too. That also was stopping him from launching himself into the air. He’d never had such freedom inside the scrapers.

  He paused a few yards back from Cyn. “Can I come nearer?”

  “Of course you can.” She didn’t turn.

  “You’re on fire.”

  “Oh! Shit!” After a moment where she stared at her hands and turned them over, staring, the flames died down before finally extinguishing. “I didn’t realize. I was thinking.”

  “Not sure you could have hurt me. I have demon in me too. Though I’m not at the burning hands level.”

  “Hah. To level up you need to kill a Ghoul Lord or eat a Pokémon.”

  “I’m on a diet, and I think those are extinct.”

  He sat behind her, sliding his legs to either side of hers before wrapping her in his arms. He felt her breathing slowing, her hands come up to clasp his forearms.

  “Are you okay?”

  She brought his arm higher and nuzzled it before lowering it again to below her breasts.

  “Do you want the real answer or the nice one?”

  “Real. You never answered my other one—why you were avoiding us. Maura said we are the only reason those demon nanites aren’t completely taking you over.”

  Were avoiding? More like are, up here on the roof.

  “Many reasons. Despair at what’s coming and what’s been. Rage, when I get really crazy. A need for violence. None of those are socially acceptable. It’s me, in a way, who nearly killed you with those nanites, even if they saved you too.”

  This did not make sense. He frowned but let her run on.

  “I feel dry, distant from humanity, from our need to get rid of the Ghoul Lords and save everyone. I want to kill them, yes, but the other seems useless sometimes. Are humans useless?” Her fingernails dug into his arm. “My good, nice emotions are running out like a pot with a hole in it, draining away.”

  The wind created by their passage whistled at his ears and now he saw how much faster Mo was going. It made for a bumpy journey. Was this for his sake?

  “It’s the demon nanites doing that. I feel something lesser than what you do but similar. It sets me on fire on the inside. Makes me want to be more aggressive, and not so… nice.”

  Eating a Pokémon was a hard limit, though.

  “I wonder if I will run out of feelings completely, the good ones anyway.”

  “You saved me, and definitely did not almost kill me. Get that part straight, at least.” He squeezed her closer. “And what has this to do with avoiding sex? You know that helps you defeat the Lure.”

  “Does it though? Or rather is it the best and only way? Maura told me a theory. The more my demon nanites rise, the higher the concentration of them in my blood… she thinks it possible I could become immune to the Lure—more than anyone, except the troll beasters.”

  “Fuck. I don’t like that theory.”

  “I may have to go full demon. It might be what we need. None of you are fully able to resist.”

  “And so—”

  “And so if I don’t have sex with you or Rutger, your nanites decrease in my blood, and my demon ones multiply.”

  It was a theory he didn’t want her to test. “You’re afraid of this?”

  “Who wouldn’t be?”

  No one sane.

  “It’s already affecting you, your mind. I forbid you to do this.” He set his jaw.

  “Think on your words. On the consequences if it becomes necessary. You think you can stop me if I decide this?”

  She had a point, even if he hated it.

  “You have to let me choose, and I will anyway. If I do it, it’s because logically it’s right. Even if I’m losing track of right and wrong. Which is weird.”

  “Cyn… Fuck. Okay.” He calmed himself. Besides, he could say this and still think about it. Maybe even stop her. This was the wildest thing she’d ever suggested. “Promise me, that you’ll at least give us warning.”

  “I will.”

  He inhaled, leaned his chin on her head. “And know this—we will be there for you. If it ever happens, once it is done and over, we will pull you back from Hell itself to make you safe.”

  “That sounds like a prophecy,” she whispered above the breeze. “Except it needs to sound fancier to be one.”

  “Noted. I’ll add a hear ye, and an ominous buzzard can sit on the prophecy letter once I scribe it in blood.”

  “Crow, has to be a crow.”

  “Picky. But also noted.”

  Rutger arrived soon after, bearing gifts. Well, plates of something that was probably fish and pasta and cheesy eggs. They sat on the red seats, and he poked at his plate with a fork.

  It was more a pact than a prophecy, he decided. That made it sound less threatening and less likely to happen. A lot of shit would have to go down to convince him she needed to go full demon.

  He was going to have to tell Rutger about it.

  Damn.

  Later. Eating was his top priority. He scoffed down some fish then pulled a face.

  “If you see any edible berries on any shrubbery...” He waved his fork, with his mouth still partly full of the terrible food. “Tell me. I’m going to leap off and get it. Fuck, I’d die for a brussels sprout even. Or broccoli.”

  Rutger paused in mid-chew. “You are a sick man.”

  “I know.” He stabbed another bit of food.

  Mo hit a huge bump and his butt left the seat and his fork flew into the semi-darkness. Fingers would do the job.

  “When will we reach War Quarter, Mo?”

  “Before dawn as long as we have no setbacks, Vargr,” came the announcement.

  “Okay.”

  “We’ll be coming in at a different angle until we get through the gap between the missile strike area and the partly collapsed quarter, and so I’m expecting to run closer to that unknown quarter. Be prepared for the unexpected.”

  It would take many hours of travel, and they didn’t stay outside Mo for the whole time. When an opportunity rose, he walked away to the rear of Mo with Rutger and told him about Maura’s full-demon theory, and how Cyn was thinking of acting on it.

  Rutger looked noncommittal, as he often did, giving away little, then he said they needed to wait and see, and that it was possible she might be right, if the situation turned bad.

  Possible.

  He hadn’t thought the beaster would ever come down on that side of the equation.

  Dawn was only an hour away when Mo approached the home stretch, where they’d change direction to drive through the gap between the destruction wrought by the missile and the partially destroyed quarter.

  The three of them climbed out onto the hull again.

  Mo ran the length of the unnamed quarter, beside an immensely long heap of rubble created by the upper stories that had sheared away and fallen.

  There was a presence at the false and ragged Top. No geometrically perfect skyline existed—it was no longer miles high, poking past the clouds and into the upper stratosphere, but the Ghoul Lords had taken it over anyway. Some part of what they’d fashioned had congealed and flowed over the edge, ominously coating the façade of the scrapers and dripping like creamy gray frosting on a lop-sided cake.

  “Fuck,” he said quietly.

  “I advise quick ingress into my interior before we draw closer,” said Mo. “It is possible snipers could reach you. I’m lowering the nose shield.”

  Chapter 15

  “I know what that is,” Cyn said, dread softly whispering through her. She could feel the alien presence up there, though the word for what it was took a few seconds to permeate through her brain. She translated what it was into human. “It’s a queen. A rogue queen that’s growing where it shouldn’t be. Queens are how the Ghoul Lords launch into space again, how they reproduce, though the exact details of that I don’t understand. It’s possibly too low and too immature to reach escape velocity.”

  She massaged her temples. All that from reading a single burst of directed tho
ught? It had cut off now. Maybe the queen sensed her thievery?

  “A queen?” Rutger tipped his head. “Looks like a failed quiche that’s been out in the sun for days.”

  “Too rounded for that. A failed plum pudding? It goes up into a humongous lump at the very top.”

  “That lump is where she keeps the…” Cyn screwed up her mouth, tasting for the right words, “I don’t know. Genetic beings? Biological engines? Lots of stuff. Come on. Stop with the food metaphors. Let’s do as Mo said.”

  “Wait.” Vargr poked a finger toward the queen. “Is that what we have to kill to get rid of them for good?”

  “Yes.”

  After they killed the Ghoul Lords and their human co-opted ghoul guards, the queens would be sitting ducks.

  What her males hadn’t seen were the corpses of those who’d either failed to reach the top or had been thrown off for some reason. They lay scattered here and there. Dark lumps. Dead people. Long dead.

  This war needed ending.

  They slipped into the hatch and locked it closed.

  Mo crawled through the gap between the buildings and the destruction, then up War Quarter to enter via the same hole he’d created last time. A few beasters waved to them on the roadway, and they seemed expected, but from the gestures she saw through the grimy windscreen, they were to keep going. She caught sight of Little Mo on the ceiling, waving his limbs, and waved back, smiling as they passed beneath him. No doubt he was on skinsuit detection duty.

  “No signs of Maura or Worshippers?” She leaned into the creaking red upholstery, curiously sad at the splotches in the dust on the windscreen glass. There’d been some rain while they were outside. This was the evidence.

  She recalled the feel of the water on her upturned face when the raindrops splashed on her cheeks and lips. So fresh and cool. People needed rain and wind to remember what it was like to be alive.

  A beaster in the roadway yelled something she managed to lipread. Drummer. He pointed again, insisting.

  “Vargr, are you holding up? It looks as if we have to see mister assface first.”

  “I’m doing good.” He gave her a thumbs up.

  “Okay.” If he showed the smallest hint of bleeding, she was finding Maura, no matter what else was happening.