by Joe Ducie
The car idling by the side of the road was more of a van, dark blue with tinted windows. The driver’s door swung open as they approached, and a man the size of a small mountain stepped out and crossed his arms over his chest.
‘Apparently we should not be concerned about the drone,’ Noemi said to the man.
‘Three, Noemi?’ he asked. A severe furrow cut his brow in half below a shaven head of what looked like black stubble, in the poor light. His skin was tanned, and his eyes, as severe as his frown, were blue. He pointed at Drake. ‘We only came for him.’
‘He will not leave his friends,’ Noemi said. ‘Nor should he have to, Takeo. Think on the path, brother.’
Drake realised after a moment that Takeo wasn’t so much frowning as his face naturally formed a series of disappointed angles. His arms were about the width of tree trunks, and his chest, under a tight-fitting white shirt, bulged with muscle. He carried no sword, but a holster on his waist held a sleek black pistol that probably wasn’t loaded with anything so kind as stunning darts.
‘Nice car,’ Drake said.
‘Get in,’ Takeo said as he got back behind the wheel. ‘The Alliance will be patrolling this road soon, if they’re not already. But luck is with us this night, it would seem. There was some sort of train derailment nearby, which means we may have a chance to slip through unnoticed.’
Noemi slid open the side door to reveal a spacious cabin, with seats enough for six. She stepped up into the vehicle. Drake looked at his friends and shrugged. He got into the van and buckled up his seat belt.
Five minutes later, they were zipping by white trees illuminated only briefly from the van’s headlights, as a fresh light snowfall coated the world.
‘How far are we from Argentia?’ Drake asked.
‘About forty-five minutes,’ Takeo answered from the front.
‘You mind cranking the heat up a bit?’ Drake rubbed his hands together and breathed warm air into his palms. The heat didn’t touch his crystal hand, but it helped with the flesh of his right. ‘It was nippy out there.’
‘I am glad you agreed to join us, William,’ Noemi said. ‘There’s a lot you need to learn, and only Haven can teach it to you.’
‘Yeah, we’re not going to Japan,’ Drake said as a blast of warm air came out of the heating vents near his feet. ‘Oh, that’s good. Isn’t that good?’
Irene chuckled. ‘It’s the little things.’
Tristan had powered down his drone and settled the device on his lap. He was staring at a screen of numbers and data on his phone. ‘The readings from that portal are amazing. I … don’t know what it all means, but it’s amazing. Any chance of burgers and milkshakes in Argentia?’
‘Forgive me,’ Noemi said, ‘but you do not wish to come with me to Japan? To Haven? William, you know what will happen to you without the guidance of the Path of Yūgen. Madness and pain. You must choose a discipline and devote your life to maintaining the balance. For you, more than any who have sipped from the crystal waters, to ignore this calling will spell catastrophic disaster.’
‘Crystal waters now, is it?’ Drake muttered. ‘Quarter of an hour ago you were telling me I’d bathed in the blood of Cthulhu or something.’
‘Ca-two-what?’ Irene asked.
Tristan snorted. ‘You’ve read Lovecraft, Will?’
‘I’ve spent the better part of the last year and a half incarcerated by the Alliance. When I wasn’t escaping, I was reading. The prison at Cedarwood had a pretty cool library.’
Noemi seemed a touch perturbed by their banter. Drake grinned. ‘I’ll come with you,’ he said. ‘All the way to Japan, if that’s what gets me on your plane, but if you want me to play along, then we’re going to have to make a slight detour.’
‘A detour?’ Noemi’s sharp eyes glinted in the half-light. ‘Where?’
‘London.’
Noemi shook her head slowly. ‘William –’
‘Call me Drake.’
‘Drake,’ she said. ‘London is not on any convenient flight path between here and Japan.’
‘Sure it is,’ Irene said. ‘Just gotta go round the long way.’
‘The Alliance control the majority of the world’s airspace,’ Noemi whispered, as if explaining herself to a group of five-year-olds. ‘It will take them mere hours, perhaps less, to learn you are aboard one of our jets. Once they do – once the betrayer Lucien Whitmore knows where you’re going, Drake – he will do everything in his considerable power to stop us. We’re going to have to outrun the devil as it is, and I cannot guarantee we will make it to Tokyo.’
Takeo grunted from the driver’s seat. ‘Grace and Toby won’t fly to London,’ he said.
‘Your pilots?’ Tristan asked.
Noemi nodded. ‘Prepping the jet as we speak. Why do you want to go to London?’
Drake rubbed at the wiry stubble coating his cheeks. At fifteen and a half, he didn’t need to shave properly yet, but two weeks of fuzzy growth had him itching his chin. ‘I’ve been gone nearly two years, and I’m feeling a touch homesick. Also I promised Irene and Tristan the best fish and chips with mushy peas and curry sauce they’ll ever find.’
‘The Alliance’s influence in the United Kingdom is … considerable,’ Noemi said.
‘That it is,’ Drake agreed. ‘I still need to go to London.’
Noemi sighed. ‘We will need to discuss this once we’re on board.’
Drake folded his arms and nodded once.
The drive into Argentia was uneventful, for which Drake and his friends could only be thankful. After the best part of two weeks on the run – not to mention the madness involved in actually escaping the malevolent Rig – he wanted nothing more than to sleep and forget everything for a while, to bury his head in the sand and pretend everything was OK.
But sleep was hard to come by, these days. As Takeo drove past a strip of fast food restaurants, the roads practically empty, Drake made him pull over to the drive-thru and order a bag of cheeseburgers. Back on the road, he immediately devoured half a dozen of the greasy burgers, feeding the monster blood flowing through his veins and turning him, at least in part, to crystal.
‘Without the proper guidance,’ Noemi said, watching him eat, ‘you will burn yourself away.’
‘Stop being so cheerful,’ Drake muttered, as they headed through the town of Argentia. Signs on the roadside told Drake they were about five kilometres away from the airport. He lay back in his seat and rested his head on his normal hand, eyes closed, and tried not to think about how things were going to work out in the end.
Just follow the web, he thought and yawned. There’s always a way out …
Takeo hit a bump in the road, and when Drake snapped his eyes open, he was no longer in the car. He stood on a crest above a vast plain under a burnt orange sky, looking down at what had once been a vibrant city. A violent wind whirled pockets of ash and dust all around him, and the acrid stench of smoke hung on the air, with a taste that was almost stale.
‘OK …’ Drake said. ‘This is … something.’ His voice echoed in his ears, but it was no more than a whisper stolen by the hot wind.
Ruins of once mighty skyscrapers marred the landscape, fallen and decayed like the rotten teeth of some massive skull buried in the earth. In the heart of the ruined city – which Drake knew was London as sure as he knew his reflection in the mirror – a great spire of pulsating blue crystal pierced the clouds. Bands of thick grey cloud swirled around the summit of the spire, and crimson veins ran within the crystal.
And if that wasn’t awful enough, Drake felt more than saw a pair of cruel eyes staring down at him from the top of the spire.
An awful, high-pitched laughter seemed to echo in his head and shake the whole world. In the distance, crystal towers toppled, and roiling storm clouds struck red lightning upon the ruins. Creatures that looked an awful lot like monstrous crystal spiders covered the ruins. Hundreds – no, thousands of the beasts.
Well, this is shit, Drake though
t, holding his head as the calamity vibrated through his mind and into his bones. I don’t –
Someone was shaking him. He leant forward, startled, as his vision wavered. He blinked, frightened and confused, until he saw Irene’s kind eyes looking down at him. He was back in the van, the world wasn’t ashes, and no crystal demon spire marred the horizon.
‘You nodded off for a few minutes there,’ Irene said. ‘We’re here at the airport. You OK?’
Drake took a deep breath, considered, then shook his head. Cool sweat clung to his skin. ‘No, Irene, I’m not sure that I am.’ He caught Noemi watching him carefully from the taxiway, her green eyes all too knowing.
‘Bad dreams, William Drake?’ she asked.
Drake stepped out of the car and stretched his tired limbs. The scent of aviation fuel hung in the air, sweet and nauseating. Some snowflakes landed on his shoulders, and the lights of the small airport and on the underside of the private jet parked twenty metres away were enough to ward away the dark – but not the memory of what Drake had seen in his dreams.
‘I saw something,’ he said. ‘Something that didn’t feel like it belonged in my head.’
‘We are all of us susceptible to the balance in the ether,’ Noemi said. ‘The soothsayers and prophets at Haven have shared their visions of the world to come, should the Alliance be left unopposed to carry out its work. Perhaps you glimpsed something of the same.’
‘What I saw …’ Drake shook his head. The finer details of his dream – nightmare – were already fading, as was the way of most dreams, but he recalled enough to know there was trouble ahead. ‘Let’s just say I’m not sure what the hell is going on.’
Tristan laughed. ‘You only just figured that out?’
‘There’s more,’ Drake insisted. How can I explain the spire, or the … presence at the top of it? ‘But let’s get out of here, eh? Somewhere … heh … somewhere safe.’
The stairs up to the jet were deployed, and a small square of red carpet, bearing the crest of SkyWest Airlines, had been laid out on the ground. Takeo stood on guard at the base of the stairs as Noemi boarded, followed swiftly by Drake, Irene, and Tristan.
The jet wasn’t big, but what it lacked in size – it only seated about eight – it made up for in luxury. Drake had flown little in his life, but he knew most commercial airliners didn’t offer their passengers such comforts as reclining leather seats, stocked kitchens, widescreen televisions, and video game consoles – save, perhaps, in first class.
Drake marvelled at how quickly his fortune could change. Sure, he was being hunted by men and monsters, his arm had turned to dark crystal, and the Alliance had his mother under their ‘care’, but right now he had video games and fizzy pop.
Given the ups and downs – mostly downs – of the past two years, he took time to appreciate the small things whenever he could.
More importantly, he was making progress towards home.
‘Ready for departure,’ said one of the few grown-ups Drake had met recently that either didn’t know him or didn’t want to slap him in handcuffs. He was dressed in black trousers and a white shirt, with three of those yellow stripes pilots wore on their shoulders, and he sported a scruffy beard that made him look a touch older than he probably was. Drake put him in his mid-twenties.
‘Thank you, Toby,’ Noemi said as she took a seat on the left-hand side of the plane down the front, near the small kitchen, which followed the single aisle to the cockpit. ‘Could you source fuel?’
‘Negative,’ Toby said. ‘Not without the Alliance knowing about it. They own this airport. We’ll have to land somewhere privately owned on the way. Grace suggested the airstrip just outside of Niagara Falls, on the Canadian side. Only about ninety minutes away.’
Noemi looked troubled. ‘Very well.’
‘How long is the flight to London?’ Drake asked, letting the Japanese girl know he hadn’t forgotten.
Toby blinked and shook his head. ‘Flight time to Tokyo, after we refuel, is thirteen hours, give or take half an hour for the weather.’
Takeo stomped up the stairs, ducking his head to squeeze onto the plane. He retracted the stairs and pulled the door closed, sealing them all aboard. ‘We cannot afford a detour to London,’ he said, with a certain edge to his voice Drake had heard before – from the bullies and guards in the Alliance prisons.
‘What are you going to do?’ Noemi asked. ‘Are you and your friends going to abandon this plane and spend the next few days running around this small town, hiding from the Alliance and getting absolutely nowhere?’ She smiled. ‘This is better. We can talk about your reasons for wanting to go to London once we’re away from here.’
Drake felt a shiver run down his crystal arm, and he clenched his fist to stop whatever was about to happen. His palm burnt as if he was holding his hand over an open flame. As he took measured, controlled breaths, the heat subsided. What the hell was that?
‘What do you think, guys?’ he asked Irene and Tristan. They had taken seats together on the opposite side of the aisle to Noemi, while Drake stood at the edge of the kitchen, overlooking the cabin.
‘I think you should buckle up,’ Tristan said. ‘Will, what were the odds of an opportunity like this one? We might actually get away!’
Irene tightened her seat belt and shrugged. ‘Better than the cold and trying to cross on the ferry, isn’t it?’
Drake cursed and glared at Noemi and Takeo. ‘Fine. But don’t think for a moment you’re locking me away in this compound of yours in Japan.’
‘Haven is a safe place, William Drake. Secure.’
Drake took a seat and snapped his seat belt into place with a grunt. ‘Ask the Alliance what happens when they put me in secure places, Noemi. I won’t be caged – just you remember that.’
Chapter Nine
The Fine Balance
The plane departed Argentia without incident, for which Drake was supremely grateful. Images of attack helicopters and supercharged soldiers wrenching their plane from the sky during take-off had settled in his mind as soon as the engines whirred to life. For a moment, he’d been certain the Alliance would blow them out of the sky.
But as they climbed through ten thousand feet, according to the display on the screen in front of him, he allowed himself to relax as his ears popped from the change in pressure.
Sitting by himself near the rear of the plane in a wide, comfortable leather chair that had a drinks cabinet built into the arm, Drake helped himself to another bottle of fizzy cola, pouring it into a glass tumbler. He was tempted to pour one of the mini bottles of vodka or scotch into his drink, but his one and only real experience with alcohol over two years ago, just before he burnt down Alliance warehouses and landed in his first prison, made him think better of it. Drinking a cheap ‘champagne’, two quid a bottle, in the park with his mates and going on the merry-go-round had resulted in a dizzy kind of vomiting in the sandpit.
Drake snorted at the memory. He missed his old mates, Gaz and Jordan and Owen. He wondered, as he sipped his soda and sighed, what they thought of all the stories about him on the news. The terrorist William Drake.
‘Using fear to control people …’ Drake muttered. ‘Rule one in the Alliance playbook.’
He finished his drink and removed the leather glove from his left hand. He stared at the dark crystal and tried to swallow his fear. He tapped his fingers against the arm of the chair, striking delicate chimes from the crystal digits … and igniting a few sparks of blue light from deep within his palm. With his good hand, Drake ran his soft fingers over the hard crystal, feeling for imperfections or defects.
The hand was as smooth as polished glass, as cold as the Rig in winter, and he couldn’t feel anything. He tickled the back of his crystal hand and felt nothing. He clenched and unclenched his fist and got no sensation in return. The limb still worked like a limb, but for all he could feel, someone might as well have lopped the whole arm away at his shoulder.
‘You’d do best to keep th
at a secret at Haven,’ Noemi said, claiming the seat next to him and pulling her legs up under her. She leant in close, and Drake caught a scent of something like pear and blackberries that made him think of Christmas morning, of all things. ‘For as long as you can, at least. There will be many who resent your inclusion within the academy, as well as your strength. The Path of Yūgen is a subtle discipline, a devotion to something close to the divine. We’re supposed to worship the power of the gods and accept a small boon of that power – not possess an ocean of it.’
Drake slipped his leather glove back on and pulled his sleeve down over his wrist, concealing his crystal limb. ‘I felt something,’ he said. ‘Well, I had a dream and … I’ve no other word for it, Noemi, but it felt alien. Not at all how I imagined a god would feel.’
‘We sometimes can feel a … presence,’ Noemi said, hugging her legs and smiling fondly. ‘From the Silver Tree. A source of warmth and kindness buried within its heart. Members of Haven have spent decades in quiet contemplation, hoping to converse with the force within the tree.’
‘Yeah, I didn’t feel that, but I kind of … heard something laughing,’ Drake said. ‘When I dozed off in the car back there. But the one in the ocean, the creature under the Rig, it’s pissed off and screaming. No warmth. No kindness. I think I annoyed it when I dropped a supertanker on it.’ Drake shivered and scratched at the back of his neck. ‘Noemi, whatever’s down there in the crystal … it’s not our friend.’
She nodded and released his hands. ‘This we have known for many centuries. There is a balance to the world, Drake, and the creature buried in the cold waters of the Arctic Ocean violates that balance. The scales tip towards darkness.’
Drake licked his lips. ‘OK … is this what they teach you at Haven? Blimey. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m getting a rather strong cult vibe from you at the moment.’
Noemi ignored him. ‘For centuries it has slept undisturbed, menacing but silent, and then the Alliance started drilling. Worse, they started experimenting with its essence, forcing rapid change in you and the other inmates that should’ve happened over time. The creature in the crystal has awoken.’ She tapped the hilt of her sword, which poked out into the aisle in its sheath. ‘And it has had centuries to grow old in its hate. We must be ready.’
