Storm of Ash

by Michelle Kenney

  ‘MMDCL!’

  ‘MMDCL!’ he bellowed again.

  It was my number. I liked it. But there was no mistaking he was eyeballing me.

  I shuffled forward, bare feet, dirt-brown, shackled. I frowned. Something was wrong.

  ‘Were you smirking?’ the tall one leered.

  His pea-head was even smaller up close, and the feather was still dancing. Peacock. A bubble of hysteria threatened to reach up my throat, to betray me. I sank my head lower, staring at my wrong feet.

  ‘Look at me!’

  My head was yanked upwards, and a pain jack-knifed through my body as I struggled to retain my balance. My body felt awkward, stiff like sandpaper. The rough grating of sandpaper. The thought was oddly comforting.

  ‘Did … you … smirk?’

  I looked into his yellow eyes, flecked with scorching-hot, dust-choked red. Like blood. A river of blood beneath my feet. The shudder in my heart fanned out to my face. He saw.

  Then came the violent blow, like all the weight being pulled from my body at once, leaving just a shadow to fly across the tunnel. Red ravined rock reached out to meet me, to catch and cradle me with its bony fingers. There was a crack, and I was dimly aware of another pain towards the back of my head.

  The peacock was towering above me, a sickening grin spreading across his sallow face. Then more faces all around, their bodies pressed back against the rock face. Different ones, some animal, some more like me. But all pale, thin, and scared, looking at me. Nothing written there, except defeat.

  ‘Not so funny now, eh? They said you needed two batches. Seems like a waste to me. Some things the chemicals never fix, so what’s wrong with a bit of old-fashioned persuasion … Seems like fair play after all the trouble you’ve caused!’

  The walls twisted to the side as I was yanked from the floor, and I was conscious of something wet running down my neck.

  It made a tiny hollow dripping noise as it hit the floor.

  ‘She’s cut, Dimiti!’ a gruff voice interrupted.

  It was another one of them, with a huge muscular hound standing beside him. Disinterested.

  The peacock flicked me a hard look, a metallic nosepiece trying to conceal his broad nose, dusted in dirt.

  ‘Orders were to treat her the same as the rest, but no injuries. There’ll be hell to pay now,’ the gruff one complained. ‘He wants her alive in case they need more of that stuff you’re so keen to spill. I ain’t having no part of it. Livia will …’

  ‘Livia ain’t gonna find out,’ the peacock snarled. ‘Is she? I was just having a bit of fun. Can’t a soldier have any fun any more?’

  He looked down at me, and something in the glint in his eye made me tighten every muscle I possessed. Then he craned further, and all I could see was the bobbing feather.

  And I shouldn’t have smirked, I really shouldn’t have smirked.

  The ravined walls lurched again as he threw out a lightning blow that made me double over. My shackled feet staggered backwards, trying in vain to maintain balance before I hit the floor again, and this time I was racked with pain.

  ‘Perhaps a night in the sweatbox will make you rethink, eh? No room for any of your tricks in there either … You’re one of them now, d’ya hear me? … Prolet scum!’

  He dragged me up and shoved me again, in the direction of a dark recess in the wall. There was something familiar about it, but my throbbing limbs were too consumed to do anything but comply.

  He pushed past me into the snug entrance, his strutting walk matching his dancing feather. My veins clouded, and I held my breath, willing myself to float away.

  ‘You are numero MMDCL. Your purpose is to obey. Your allegiance is to the Emperor Cassius. All hail the Holy Emperor and Imperator Cassius. All hail the Empress Livia.’

  I felt sure the words must be imprinted on the backs of my gritty eyeballs, and I exhaled with relief. I could remember them. So long as I could remember the words, the pain would be short-lived.

  I shuffled inside the recess, barely daring to lift my gaze. The small space was lined with stained hammocks, while a yellow guttering lamp, suspended from the middle of the low rock ceiling, creaked as the peacock picked his way through dirty, abandoned metal mugs. The air reeked of putrid vegetables, stale breath and something else I couldn’t quite identify. It was rank, and I held my breath. I didn’t want to be in this place.

  A shape shifted in the corner. It was another one of them, sleeping, his shadowed face relaxed and carefree. My eyes fixed, though I knew I shouldn’t be looking. The hilt of his Diasord glinted when the lamp was knocked by the peacock’s helmet. It continued to rock awhile on its rusted nail, throwing a strange jaded light around the small space. Its creaking protest disturbed him. He inched open one eye. One green eye, which shone like the sun through the branches of a willow tree. Why weren’t there any trees?

  He opened his other eye, and I dragged my gaze away. I didn’t need any more trouble. No more looking – it only ended in trouble. And more pain. He was on his feet now. And he was staring back. Don’t look, don’t look. He was taller than the peacock. My eyes dropped to his feet, feet as brown as my own, enclosed in gladiatorial sandals, not Roman boots.

  ‘Remember this?’

  The peacock’s face loomed large in front of my own, a large rusted iron key dangling.

  ‘Now … move! Maybe a couple of days in the sweatbox will help you remember you’re nothing but Prolet scum.’

  Then they were gone. And I was in hell again.

  ***

  There was a rhythm to it, the regular thump of the laundry drum, announcing its benign interest in the world. And there were six of us, closely guarded by a satyr, emptying the laundry trucks and reloading again. I knew it was bedding, though it wasn’t mine, and the guards occasionally barked a reminder. It was always this routine for me, laundry followed by the medical research unit. A little different to everyone else. I’d learned not to ask why.

  ‘It’s falling!’

  A young girl with white hair and a hunched back cried out as one of the overladen laundry baskets tipped over, emptying its soiled contents onto the floor. The satyr growled and stepped forward, his Diasord high and ready to strike.

  Her muffled shriek filled the air as it brought three heavy thrashes down on her head and shoulders, the force of his blows moving closer and closer to the floor. He drew back, and she tried to climb back onto her feet. We all knew lying on the floor brought only further, unwanted attention. I took another load of washing in my blistered hands. Nobody wanted the sweatbox either.

  White to white, detergent, dial, red button.

  I glanced back at the cowering girl, her dress split across her shoulders revealing unusually dark, pitted flesh. A sickly grin spread across the satyr’s face, before I looked back at my half-loaded laundry.

  White to white, detergent, dial, red button.

  I’d seen similar skin before, just couldn’t remember where. Not here. Somewhere else.

  I started unloading another truck before the attention turned to the rest of us. The girl stumbled as she tried to lift the fallen laundry cart, and the satyr let out another roar of rage. I gritted my teeth as he bent down, muscles rippling, and lifted her up by the scruff of her neck, as lightly as though she were a feather. Then he smiled. It was a slow smile of sadistic pleasure, while she hung there, white and shaking. Then he pushed the tip of one of his black pointed nails into a tear in the back of her thin tunic. The split revealed the extent of her leather back. It was scaled into thin hard points like a desert lizard – while her long white hair hung around her pale face like a midnight waterfall. What waterfall?

  He smiled again before turning and lumbering from the room, the girl clamped to him like a weak fallow deer. I frowned. There were no deer.

  The five of us remaining turned back to our duties, knowing we wouldn’t see her again. This happened to the ones who disappointed the Imperator. They were fed. To the big, clawed birds. After the satyrs h
ad their fun. An odd feeling flitted down my spine and across my aching back. Strix. I’d heard the name somewhere once, but though I could picture one perfectly in my head I was sure I’d never actually seen one. Except perhaps in my dreams.

  I turned back to the laundry, and the girl’s leather back floated to the forefront of my mind again. I tried to push it back. This was what they warned us against – thinking too much. Conscious thought was prohibited they said, against the laws of Pantheon. Disloyal to the Emperor Cassius and Empress Livia.

  But of who or what did she remind me? Her image was stuck, like a determined flame on a dark night. And I couldn’t move it, despite the fear flooding my head and threatening to extinguish the thought for ever. It was the glimpse of her back. And now there was something else: a word. Or was it a name? Now the need was so intense I could barely control my breathing. I closed my eyes and the throbbing sharpened while snatches of forgotten conversations whispered through the void.

  ‘I thought you said she was batch 3,067.’

  It was a name.

  ‘Is she still fighting it?’

  Just a short name.

  ‘This should be enough to dissolve every last synapse in her cerebral hemisphere.’

  And then a break in the fog, just enough for a glimpse of the letters.

  … L … a … k … e …

  I sucked in a breath, and it felt as though the room was being shaken by the most violent earthquake.

  Lake?

  And in a blinding flash I was back there, standing on the crumbling mountain shelf, staring up at Cassius’s most volatile of ancient re-creations: Hominum chimera.

  I gasped again as a volcanic pain erupted in my head, claiming my nerves and trying to block the synapses. It hurt so much my heart was hammering like a trapped leveret, sending shock waves through my heaving body.

  The others were looking at me now. Blank faces, frowning. Had I made a noise? I forced my gaze down. Breath shaking. Bare feet. There was another flash, and they were leather-soled.

  Running beneath the sun, leaves in my hair and a shadow at my back …

  Arafel …?

  The whisper was so loud it could have been uttered by one of the pale faces staring at me.

  Frightened leveret faces, watching and waiting for the hunters with their bloodied knives. Who was next? Arafel?

  I staggered and collapsed to my knees, my head in my hands. The pain was coming in intense waves now, fighting to stop the memories that had been severed into raw, quivering parts from firing with life. I moaned and squeezed my temples, trying to make it stop and go away.

  ‘What are you doing? MMDCL!’ one of the laundry operatives next to me hissed.

  He grabbed my arm and tried to pull me to my feet. I looked up into his small angular face, his dark hollowed eyes pleading with me to get up while the rest stood around gaping. Pale hollow-eyed faces, devoid of all conscious thought. Weren’t they? I gripped his forearm, pulling him closer. He was familiar, I was sure of it.

  Then a scurry of panic around us. There were footsteps coming down the corridor. Louder. Closer. The satyr was returning, and all the while I was trying to complete the memory. To force the spark across the void. I gripped harder as he yanked back in terror, trying to loosen himself before it was too late and then I saw them. Feathers. Barely visible above the collar of his laundry tunic.

  There was a flash of colour behind my eyes, before a pressure around my crown as though I’d just fallen from the top of the world. I shook my head, trying to clear the nausea.

  ‘Therry?’ I whispered, just as the doorway darkened with a broad shadow.

  He blinked, wresting his arm away as he schooled his face back into the mask they all wore. Dead eyes. Workers.

  ‘You are numero MMDCL. Your purpose is to obey. Your allegiance is to the Emperor Cassius. All hail Emperor Cassius and the Empress Livia.’

  The words echoed in my head as, second by second, my thoughts crystallized. How often had I said them? What had happened to me? And under what veil of a black moon had he crowned himself Emperor?

  I blinked up at the looming satyr, my raw gaze taking in his narrowing red eyes, and that slow malicious smile. Shakily, I clambered to my feet, trying to hide it all. But every cell of my body shook with fresh knowledge, old voices and painful memories, all clamouring to be set free. Nothing and everything was wrong. It was as though I’d just awaken from a nightmare, to find myself in a worse reality, and I had no idea what my next move should be.

  Therry shot me a darting, terrified glance. His was the one other heart beating faster than the rest in this deafening room. I could feel it – he knew too. Somehow, the young Prolet rebel I’d last seen in the Dead City, had survived the mind-numbing effects of the vaccine. But it didn’t matter. It was too late for masks or questions now.

  The satyr peeled its thick black lips back in a hideous grimace of delight as it reached towards me, and all I could think as his malicious fingers closed like a vice was that I’d committed the most heinous crime of all.

  I’d forgotten Mum.

  Chapter 11

  It was odd. Firstly, I was free. Sort of. At least, I wasn’t shackled to anything – machinery, bleeping medical equipment or line of shuffling Prolet slaves.

  I was just me. Inside a white room that was completely empty save for a bed and a waste pan. I was certain because as soon as I regained consciousness, I searched the room, inch by clinical inch. And I knew I was being watched too, from the other side of the wall. I couldn’t see them, but I hadn’t grown up in a forest without developing an innate sixth sense for all life around me – through trees thicker than walls.

  I knew it was vital not to let them glimpse my fear; but the memories had returned so fast, fragment by fragment, breaking and mending me simultaneously. And I struggled for breath every time I recalled the moment Eli and I had arrived back at Arafel, its razing seared into my head.

  Then there was Mum, taken by the Eagle Sweeper aircraft, despite my best efforts to save her. Her bewildered face turning to me in the next canister, relief in her grey-blue eyes before oblivion stole her away. Where was she now? Had I played into Cassius’s hands by giving up the keyword? Would the world now pay for my failure?

  Were any of the others still alive? Max, Lake, August …

  Our parting had returned with crystal clarity, together with so much shame. I’d denied there was anything left for us, because ignoring his pain ignored mine too. Yet somehow, my slow recovery from the vaccine had unfrozen other feelings too, feelings I’d convinced myself we’d traded with the Oceanids – now I wasn’t so sure.

  Had he returned from the legatio? Was he even alive?

  My inner fear tolled as clearly as the old bell above Arafel’s peace hut. The only time it ever sounded was to herald the onward journey of another soul, and the thought that small sanctuary might no longer exist carved a chasm the size of the North Mountains in my chest.

  But I knew better than to let them see – it would simply make me less interesting. They’d vaccinate again, and who knew what long-lasting effect or damage it would have this time. Or whether I’d survive at all. I surveyed my scarred arms and legs, an impressive tribute to the torture I’d endured, and swallowed the ready bile in my throat.

  I needed to stay focused, especially now I remembered giving up the keyword.

  The realization had felt like the slow descent into a nightmare. I’d given up the final piece of information Cassius needed to operate the Vigenère cipher encrypting the Voynich. And if that wasn’t enough, Max’s tiny treehouse dart tube no longer hung around my neck, which meant he also had Thomas’s coding for Hominum chimera. Now he had everything he needed to decode every hellish creature within the Voynich, for his grand purpose. To redesign the living world. And all because I thought I could fight every last Insider to rescue Mum. A lone feral girl.

  I fought the heat behind my eyes. I’d betrayed everyone, brought death and destruction to Arafel, and n
ow I’d handed Cassius the key to re-creating every mythological creature described in the Voynich. I’d failed in the most epic way possible, except perhaps at surviving. It seemed I was adept at that.

  I gritted my teeth. The bright, dazzling walls were moving again. I could tell even though the movement was soundless. The fourth wall slowly faded away to reveal a view of Pantheon’s main dome floor. It was one of his games. Only the beasts unleashed were all inside my own head this time.

  I stepped across to the fortified glass, the view reaching up to taunt me the way it always did. It was Cassius’s ego breathed into life, the tiny marble heart of Isca Pantheon, its Romanesque streets stretching out and converging like the picture of a perfect classical city. It had been Octavia’s dream, yet Cassius had proven more than ready to step into her vacant throne, adding his signature with more lavish temples, state buildings, amphitheatres, and rising up to the north of it all, the oppressive Flavium.

  I rested my forehead against the cool glass, and stared down at the pristine lines, bustling with life – happy, ignorant life without a care for anyone else. It hardly seemed possible after the chaos Max, August and I had delivered right into its heart, little more than a year before. But now it seemed as though that day had never been.

  I wanted to smash my fists though its neat streets, to unleash turmoil through its streets and finish what we’d started. To reaffirm what it meant to be feral and free.

  But right now I had only one weapon left against the iron throne of Pantheon.

  ‘Who are you?’

  I fixed my gaze on the sky train. There were more stations under construction serving a new domestic tower, thanks to a small army of Prolets. Clearly the re-established autocracy was burgeoning with health. The sky train pulled into a station opposite my glass wall, and three carriages of smiling Pantheonites disembarked, completely oblivious to my presence.

  I’d given up trying to attract any attention. My cell had to be completely insulated and invisible to all except those watching me. I focused on the train instead. The carriage shells were alive with bright moving pictures, and this one flickered with Cassius’s arrogant face and two-metre-high words: