The Egg sailed through the air, smacking into the dark mass just a foot above their level to detonate on impact. The Sweepers staggered back into the opposite railing at the light and rush of heat. An unholy scream rent the air. Laura blinked furiously. Even with the goggles, looking directly into an Egg explosion stung.
“Okane, put on your goggles!”
“A little late for that!” he growled, but pulled his green-tinted goggles over closed eyes. “Did it work?”
The pillar had fractured. The Egg had pulverized the side, so a section ten feet across was missing. How deep it was Laura couldn’t guess, owing to the excessive smoke pouring from the hole. Even as she watched, infestations twirled and slid to cover it. Portions of the side, lower down, shrieked and withdrew toward the lower levels. Still more of the creatures released the star and curled down to investigate.
“It worked,” she said. “Can you still see?”
“I’m fine.”
“Good.” Keeping a hand on his arm to steady him if needed, Laura straightened up and bellowed, “Hey, you! Yeah, you, ugly! We’re right here!”
Okane gave a whimpering groan.
The new seeking limbs liquefied. They plunged through the air like viscous rain. They twined back together just under the bridge. A single blow sent a section of grating skyward. The creature surged through the opening like a mess of snakes, but was quickly beaten off by the Bijou. Okane pulled more Bijou from his own bag and tossed them through the sparks, which did a good job of lighting them up; they erupted in midair. Squalling and incensed, the creature retreated. It coiled above and below the bridge, hissing when sparks touched it and roiling as it planned its next attack. Laura pulled out an Egg again, this one still glowing from earlier, and armed it before chucking it at the cloud above them. The Sweepers ducked down, arms over their heads as this one detonated too. The glass didn’t fall on them, instead scattering to sear the monster it had burst upon. This creature wailed too, and from the corner of her eye, Laura saw more peeling away from the star.
“We’ve definitely got their attention.”
“We just have to keep it.” Okane scowled, tossing another Egg at the oncoming reinforcement.
Another explosion and a loud hiss, and Laura felt a tug at her ankle. She looked down, only to find slimy, toothy blackness slithering around her foot. After a moment of disbelief, she gave a shriek of her own and tried to jump away, but the creature held fast. Her foot was stuck. She was stuck. There was no way it would let her go. She clacked another Egg against her amulet and held it overhead, prepared to throw it at her own feet. It could easily hurt her, even take off her legs, but all she could think of was getting rid of the monster before it ate her. Lose a leg, keep a life.
“What are --- doing?” Okane wrenched the Egg away and threw it, to where Laura didn’t know; she was more preoccupied with the infestation writhing its way up her calf.
“Trying to get free!” she screeched at him.
Finally he realized what the problem was and dropped down to grab her knee. “Just give me a second—”
A growling, rumbling sound started behind them. Over by the other walkway, darkness moved. A great wall of it crashed like a wave along the bridge, causing the metal structure to shudder and buckle under the force, and eclipsing all in its path. The Bijou there winked out like vanishing stars, and all the while it approached, fast.
“Forget it, just go,” she hissed, grabbing Okane’s shoulder.
“What?”
“Go! Bijou won’t hold that off!”
“But—”
“I’m stuck, just go!”
Okane snarled and another loud crack split the air. For a moment she thought he’d broken her ankle, but he leapt back up and dragged her with him along the bridge. Somehow she’d been freed.
“How did you do that?” she panted as they ran.
“Don’t really know,” he shot back.
“Well, remember it for later!”
The clamor underfoot changed from clanging to thumping as they reached a large platform along the wall. It was even wider than the shop space, so they had more than enough room to run, now without the grating that had lost them a few Bijou. A total of six remained: these circled at high speed, spouting sparks higher than their heads. Laura and Okane both scrambled for Eggs and threw them at the incoming wave, but the Eggs vanished right into the mass. The attack was nearly upon them when they finally blew. Heat rushed over them, mixed with a swirl of dark smoke that made Laura cough. Glass clattered onto the floor, and soon the darkness burned away in the light of the Bijou. The wave had dissolved entirely. It wasn’t as strong as it seemed: it had picked up the wire-strung Bijou and been eaten away by them as it progressed. Those Bijou sparked near the edge of the platform.
The liquid spilling downward from the fountain shimmered, but it still seemed useless against the infestations. Laura let out a shaky sigh at the sight.
“Are we sure the fountain is set up right?” she asked as she pulled out another Egg. She didn’t have many left at this point. She missed Clae and his briefcase.
“As far as I know,” Okane rasped. He tugged his bandana over his face, glancing up at the thinner pillar. “Like I said before, it’ll probably take forever to make.”
Laura squinted up, running the plan over in her head again. The fountain was the glass tub, the amulets were the Kin.… Realization hit like cold water.
“Okane,” she said, too evenly. “How long is the water staying in the fountain?”
“I don’t know. It’s constantly overflowing.”
“So we might be pumping in too much water for the process to keep up?”
Kin had to stay in its glass-and-tubing system for an extended period to properly burn out water and other particles. It needed to be isolated after the water stages. She’d been so determined to find an answer that she’d skipped entire steps, and now the whole operation was useless. Comprehension dawned on Okane’s face, switching fast to fear and then to tense resolve.
“The amulets are still powering up,” he said. “The water’s getting darker the longer they go.”
“What if this is as far as its power goes? What if it’s too diluted?”
“We gave those amulets the order to burn, not boil. If --- give them clear enough orders, they don’t fail. They might have a power surge, and some of them might go completely dry, but they’ll do it.”
Laura took a deep breath, tried to inhale whatever confidence he’d found, and forced a smile. “I saw a few Niveus amulets go in. I suppose we’ve got that working in our favor; they’ll streamline the rest.”
“It’ll work.”
“Then we just have to keep holding the monsters here.” She gripped the Egg tighter as the infestations before them roiled, sifted toward them like a black ocean tipping its axis. “What should we do when our supplies run out?”
His breathing was fast. “Rely on the Bijou?”
“How long is that going to work?”
“Can we just focus on staying alive, please?”
“I’m trying to figure out how to stay alive!”
A chorus of shrill sounds started up. The lighted levels flickered as a sea of creatures boiled up, clawed hands and tendrils squirming up the walls. The lights on the Fourth Quarter level popped and smashed, demolished by the onslaught as monsters clawed through them. Jutting buildings, wheels, elevator shafts, and machines bent and snapped under the force, sending up their own clouds of wreckage and the groaning and wailing of mutilated metal.
Were they going after the Sweepers or the star?
Laura swore under her breath as she sprinted to the edge of the platform and slung another Egg. It burst on the mass below but didn’t slow it. The majority surged up, though some broke away; they arched over Laura’s head like myriad skeletal arms twisting in and around each other. She scrambled for another Egg, but this monster moved much faster. The sounds of Okane’s footsteps and the hiss of Bijou were cut off as it swoop
ed around her back, swelling to a solid, slimy wall and curving to isolate her. It had almost completely closed around her when something whistled past Laura’s nose. She squeaked and clapped her free hand to her face before casting around for the culprit: a stick embedded in the monster to her right, thin, perfectly straight, and colored like bronze, the end decorated with creamy white feathers. She barely had time to wonder what it was before the blackness around it bulged. Like a rash, bubbles spread across its surface, accompanied by muffled gurgling. The creature squirmed, then burst apart. Out of the bubbles ripped a hail of pale yellow sparks, whose lights sang as they leapt out to infect the rest of the creature. The remnant of the monster slid to the ground, ignoring Laura as it squirmed across the platform in a vain attempt to rid itself of what she finally recognized as an arrow. Where had that come from?
She looked up to the left, scanning for whatever shot it, and spotted movement in one of the enclosed stairways. Another arrow peeked through the latticework, and after a moment, Melody Dearborn shot this one into the fray.
26
THUNDER UNDERGROUND
Okane grabbed Laura and heaved her away as another roaring wave of infestation crashed onto the platform, seething over the place she’d just been.
“Thanks,” she breathed. She glanced back at the stairway and saw more movement reaching the walkways. “I think the cavalry is here.”
“The what?” Okane sounded baffled as they backed up to avoid the writhing mess in front of them.
“More Sweepers!”
“But—”
He stopped short as the monsters consolidated and grew tendrils to lash at them. Most of these were deflected by the Bijou, but they still had to duck under a flailing limb. Okane spoke again as he armed an Egg and scuttled back.
“But we don’t have more Sweepers!”
“The SOS must’ve gotten to someone!”
The Egg went off at the same time as the second arrow, though the arrow struck an infestation off to the side. The Egg blast chased this one off the platform, sending it and the first sparking arrow into the depths of the interior. The Sweepers on the other side scattered, some going straight on the warped walkways, others taking a more roundabout way by the walls, and within a minute more grenades were glowing and being dropped. Colors in varying shades of yellow and even green-tinged erupted on the mass of monsters. They halted their advance to mill in confusion.
“Helen, Michael, get on those bridges! Joan, cover Melody! Diana, Seamus, with me!” For such a reedy man Joseph Blair had a loud voice, directing the Sweepers behind him, gesturing with a hand that already held a gun; his tone left no doubt that he was the one in charge. More groups split up, spreading the damage.
“Who are these people?” said Okane.
“Puer Sweepers Guild,” Laura replied.
The fastest of the other Sweepers reached them: a young woman with short black hair and blue eyes who dashed across the damaged bridges with a staff bumping against her back. All the way over she strung a wire of her own along the railing, and when she stopped she jerked it. The wire came to life with a rattle and glowed gold.
“You doing okay?” she panted, swinging the staff off her back and into her hands.
“I think?”
“You’re not dead, that’s what counts.” The woman bared her teeth in a grin.
A middle-aged man ran up and past them. He breathed hard as he knelt and took a machine off of his own back, hands flying to set it up. He didn’t bother to acknowledge them, but Joseph did when he arrived. He shot at the pillar as he passed it but otherwise conserved his ammunition.
“There you are. You had us worried!” There wasn’t much time to say anything else, but he added, “I got worried when Mr. Sinclair mentioned multiple infestations, so I gathered a crew and took the train after yours. These two are Diana Kimball and Seamus Benham. They’re with the Terrae Sweepers; we ran into them on the way here.”
“Where is Sinclair, anyway?” asked Diana, looking around.
“He died a couple of hours ago,” said Okane, and she froze.
“Diana,” Seamus growled. “You want to mourn, do it later. I don’t want to be mourning you, too.”
“Right, no time,” Joseph agreed. “You two, Laura and—I’m sorry, Money?”
“Okane.” He looked offended, and Laura didn’t blame him for it.
“Can you circle around to that side? There’s another platform like this if I saw correctly. Let’s hit it from all directions.”
“Sounds good to me.” Laura nodded, and Okane copied her motion.
“Let’s show this kaibutsu why they called this place the Sweeper city.” Joseph gave them an encouraging smile, then turned and ran back onto the bridge, into shooting range.
“Here.” The next thing Laura knew, Diana was pressing another length of wire into her hands. “This repels the monsters. Run it along the railing so they don’t destroy the bridges entirely.”
“Okay.”
“Go for it.” Diana grinned again, though this time it didn’t have the same feral quality. “I know Clae didn’t teach any pushovers.”
She knew Clae, then? Laura smiled back at her before Seamus’s machine—a grenade launcher—fired a green-tinted cylinder at the monster pillar. It let out a sharp retort as it did, cutting the conversation short.
“Get going!” he snarled, and Laura didn’t need telling twice. She and Okane tore off toward the next walkway.
Greenish grenade light spilled across the bridge as Laura started to lay the wire. It stuck to the railing easily, so she could run without worrying about it falling off. While she concentrated on that, Okane threw another Egg at an incoming monster. Between that Egg and the five Bijou following them, they made it across two bridges and onto the platform Joseph had pointed out. The wire wasn’t long enough to reach the whole way, so Laura got it going and left it behind.
By this time the infestation was balking.
The various weapons had agitated the monsters. The bulk swirled fast, churning about in a kind of inky whirlpool with the pillar at the center. They dipped down unexpectedly, sinking two, three levels deeper to simmer and gurgle. But this respite didn’t last long. They surged again like a sharpened geyser, ripping what infrastructure had escaped their last assault. The wires on the rails glowed brighter and gave off an electric hum, crackling and casting eerie light that burned away any infestation that grew near, but the infestation didn’t seem to care. It swarmed onto unprotected platforms in a massive black swell. Its waves were topped with everything it knew could strike fear into them: bones, warped claws, spidery limbs, cascading tarry skulls with jagged teeth that turned completely inside out. The noise was everything bloodcurdling, a perfect blend of dying animal and fast-incoming footfalls and nails on a chalkboard. Two Sweepers vanished under the assault, and those were just the ones Laura glimpsed. She and Okane used more Eggs to drive off the waves charging for them, and similar flashes could be sighted at other Sweeper locations. Arrows and grenades were still being launched at the pillar.
“Where’s Clae’s gun when --- need it?” Okane puffed, kicking a Bijou at a slimy black arm—it evaporated almost immediately and the Bijou whistled victoriously. “We’re close enough. A gun could hit it.”
“Probably on the Third level, still,” Laura replied, dodging behind a Bijou’s stream of light. “You want to try another Egg?”
Okane scanned the area and shook his head. “There’s no railing, and I’m almost out.”
“Me too.”
Laura hadn’t been counting how many Eggs he used, but she knew all she had was one Egg, some more Bijou, and a handful of flash-bomb pellets. She rolled a pellet between her fingers, then decided she might as well try it. They typically went off upon hitting the ground, but she was going to throw them at the monsters and wasn’t sure if their sliminess was firm enough. She copied Okane’s actions and tossed one through the Bijou’s sparks. The pellet caught fire and fell soundlessly until five
feet below the platform, and then it went off. These flashes made no noise, but the whiteness could be blinding. Laura didn’t get a direct look, but the light danced across the forms of the infestation and prompted alarmed screeching.
“Nice,” Okane chuckled, pulling pellets out of his own bag.
They took turns flicking flash bombs over the side. These did absolutely nothing to harm the creatures, not being kin-based, but they did startle and get some attention. Laura threw another bomb, free hand digging in the pockets of the big coat to check if Clae had left any equipment. More Bijou, more wire, packs of bullets.… Her fingers closed on something oddly shaped and she pulled it out. The object in her hand looked like a tiny Egg, as long as her thumb and colored pale blue instead of gold inside.
“What’s that?” Okane glanced over, more preoccupied with the bombs and the quickly angering infestations near them.
“I don’t know. It’s blue.” Laura rolled it between her fingers, but whatever this object was it stayed just as strange. “Should we use it like an Egg?”
“Will it blow up as soon as it touches an amulet?”
“You think I know?”
“It would be a big drawback.”
“I don’t think it would be in the pocket if it did. I mean, that’s kind of close to the amulet and you wouldn’t want that happening by accident, right?” Laura eyed it some more, then held it out. “You can throw farther than I can. See if you can hit the pillar.”
“I just told ---, no railing!”
“I can tie you down?”
He rolled his eyes and took the blue object. After checking the distance, he ran forward, smacking it against his amulet, and hurled it into the air. Laura lurched forward and grabbed him by the vest. He teetered on the edge of the platform for a moment, but she managed to haul him back, and he stumbled into her with a delayed squeak of terror.
The blue liquid glowed as its container flipped through the air. It rose in an arch, but halfway through its progress it dropped as if pulled by a magnet, and plummeted down into the black.
City of Broken Magic Page 40
