Shade's Children

by Garth Nix

  Looking closer, Gold-Eye saw that it read, ADIT 10 EAST. PCW.

  “Ten East is what we call the Main Drain,” explained Ella. “It leads to the Main Junction—which we’ll pass through—and becomes Ten West. For all the other drains, we use the exact names on these bronze plates—which are always this high and located about this far in from any junction or outfall. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” confirmed Gold-Eye, with a noticeable rise in confidence. He’d thought they all just memorized the entire storm-water drain grid and had extraordinary senses of direction—even down here in the dark, watery corridors.

  “Okay. Check swords,” said Ella, drawing hers half out of the sheath to make sure it ran free. The others copied her action, Gold-Eye somewhat nervously. He’d been given it the night before by Sim, the cheerful older boy who seemed to look after an awful lot on the Sub, not just new arrivals.

  Gold-Eye had had half an hour of practice with the sword the night before, but it was still the sharpest, heaviest weapon he’d ever handled. The steel blade was etched with gold in swirly lines that Sim had said “disrupt the creatures’ electromagnetic nervous systems.” He’d laughed and nodded when Gold-Eye had asked, “Does that help kill them?”

  “Everybody ready?” asked Ella as Gold-Eye finally managed to put his sword back into the sheath. “Okay. I’ll go first—then Ninde—then Gold-Eye. Drum, you take rear guard. Let’s go!”

  Her words echoed into the dark tunnel ahead and were lost in the soft burble of the descending waters. The four followed the echo, the gold pool of witchlight, and the harsh white beams of the flashlights bobbing and spinning as they jumped from side to side along the tunnel, seeking the best and fastest footing.

  An hour later Ella called the first rest break. It was hard work walking in the tunnel, with one foot always higher up the curve and many patches of slime to jump over. Then there were the junctions with lesser tunnels, to be waded across using ropes or linked arms. Always there was the oppressive darkness, the sudden heat as hot water flowed in from a side tunnel—and the fear when the burbling water rose to a roar, fear subsiding as the water returned to its steady flow.

  They rested in a small chamber above the tunnel, reached by a rusty steel ladder that rose up through the ceiling of the tunnel and on up another twenty feet. Remnants of pre-Change times filled it, arcane objects known to them from videos and training lessons: a mildewed map of the drains on the wall, next to a pictorial calendar of naked women, now clothed in mold; two hard hats on hooks; an open tool kit on the floor, filled with rusted objects.

  “We’re pretty close to the Main Junction,” Ella said as she handed out bars of chocolate. These were still pristine in their foil wrappers, despite a fifteen-year wait on supermarket shelves, a wait broken only when they were retrieved by the teams Shade sent scavenging.

  “There are two upper walkways well above the water—in addition to the walkways around the sides, which tend to be a bit submerged. We’ll be taking those. So we’ll stop a bit short to listen for Myrmidons, let Ninde concentrate, and so on. If you have any of your visions, Gold-Eye, speak up.”

  They ate in silence after Ella spoke, sipping from their water bottles. It was hot and airless in the room, and Gold-Eye felt himself drifting off into sleep. As his head nodded forward, he felt the familiar grip of the soon-to-be-now—but just as the vision was about to come to him, Ninde shook him and it was lost.

  “Come on!” said Ninde, switching on her flashlight. “We’re going.”

  Gold-Eye followed her with the pressure of an unrealized vision throbbing at his temples and a sick swirling emptiness in his stomach. His glimpses of the soon-to-be-now were nearly always warnings of something bad about to happen—but not always. For a moment he considered telling Ella, but decided against it. Maybe he had felt like he was about to have a vision only because Ella had mentioned it….

  But when they started walking along the drain again, the vision did come back. Gold-Eye let out a yelp and nearly fell against Ninde, who just managed to hold him up.

  In his head, Gold-Eye saw water rushing along two tunnels, filling them both completely, speeding along in a frenzy of white froth—then cascading out into an enormous pool where many tunnels met. Trapped in his vision, Gold-Eye still realized that this was the Main Junction and the great rush of water was filling it. In moments it would begin a mad, headlong rush toward the sea. Along Ten East. The Main Drain.

  “Water!” he shrieked, coming out of the vision. “Flood!”

  Even as he cried out, a rumbling, deep roar vibrated through the tunnel, displaced air rushed past their faces—and the first small wave heralded the smashing waters to come.

  “Back!” shouted Ella. “Back to the ladder!”

  The others had already turned and in a second were running, dancing, slipping back along the tunnel. The sound of the water behind them rose as they ran, and the waves were soon slapping the backs of their knees and then their backs—and still the main flood was building in the surge reservoir they knew as the Main Junction.

  “Up! Up!” Drum called as Gold-Eye arrived panting at the ladder. Holding the steel upright with one hand, he picked Gold-Eye up with the other and practically hurled him through the hole in the ceiling, and Ninde after him.

  Then, with a ferocious, frothing howl, the flood hit.

  Water geysered up the ladder shaft, exploding around Gold-Eye and Ninde as they desperately climbed higher. For a second, both were nearly plucked away, nostrils, mouth, and lungs filled with forced water. Then, as quickly as it came, the water disappeared, leaving them coughing and crying on the ladder.

  Ninde’s flashlight still hung on its cord around her wrist. She fumbled her light downward, but it illuminated only the subsiding waters. There was no sign of Ella or Drum.

  “They’re gone,” she sobbed. “Gone.”

  Gold-Eye heard her faintly, the words fuzzy in his water-logged ears. He felt weak, unable to speak, barely capable of holding on. His hands hurt, the knuckles cracking, unable to relax his deathly grip on the worn steel rungs.

  “We shouldn’t have come out,” Ninde sobbed. “I knew it was wrong….”

  “Ninde…” Gold-Eye said, suddenly less worried about himself as her muttering and crying rose in intensity and volume. “Ninde!”

  She stopped in mid breath, choked, and broke into a fit of coughing. When it stopped, she seemed calmer. Gold-Eye felt calmer too, as if his state of mind was directly dependent upon hers.

  “Ninde,” he said again. “Can you do…mind-listen…people?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Ninde said, half coughing the words. “They’re drowned. I can’t hear what dead people think!”

  Gold-Eye said nothing. Ninde coughed a few more times, then said, “I suppose I could try. Not from here, though.”

  “Safe to go down?” asked Gold-Eye. He couldn’t see past Ninde.

  “Yeah,” replied Ninde, shining her flashlight down again. “I guess…I guess it was a quick one. The water looks about w-waist high.”

  “We go then?” asked Gold-Eye. “Look for Ella and Drum?”

  “I suppose,” said Ninde doubtfully. She withdrew her elbows, which had been locked around the rungs. “I guess if it was the other way around, they’d look for us. And Drum is very strong. If they hung on to the ladder for long enough…”

  She started climbing down, Gold-Eye following close behind—and then suddenly stopped, just at the top of the tunnel.

  “What?” asked Gold-Eye anxiously.

  “The last part of the ladder’s missing,” Ninde replied, her voice flat. “It’s just broken off. We’ll have to hang and drop.”

  “Wait!” cried Gold-Eye as Ninde prepared to lower herself from the last rung. “Rope! We use rope!”

  ARCHIVE—MISSION ORDERS 3651 • STELO

  Stelo: You want us to what?

  Shade: Capture a Winger.

  Stelo: How?

  Shade: The tethered goat.

&
nbsp; Stelo: What?

  Shade: It’s an old trick, used for capturing wild carnivores. Tigers, for example. You tether a goat to a stake. When the animal comes to eat the defenseless goat, you kill or capture it.

  Stelo: We haven’t got a goat.

  Shade: No. It’ll have to be one of your team. Pretending to be hurt or unconscious—to attract a Winger.

  Stelo: Great…. How do we stop the rest of the flight dropping in?

  Shade: Simple. Have the decoy lie somewhere only one can land. In between a fence and a building, perhaps…

  Stelo: I don’t like it.

  Shade: I need a Winger to examine. Theoretically they’re too heavy to fly. I need to find out how they do…. It’s very important to the struggle, Stelo. And the tethered goat will work.

  Stelo: Have you used it before?

  Shade: Yes.

  Stelo: Did it work?

  Shade: Oh, yes. Not with a Winger, but we got a Tracker once.

  Stelo: Whose team did it?

  Shade: No one you know, Stelo. Long before your time, my boy. Now, I want you to get started tomorrow….

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “They’re alive!” said Ninde, sounding very surprised. “I think.”

  “Where?” asked Gold-Eye nervously. The feeling of security he’d had with Ella and Drum was significantly lacking with just Ninde.

  “I can’t tell,” replied Ninde, letting her tooth-marked knuckles fall away from her mouth. “It’s really hard trying to connect with them at the moment. And people are always much more difficult than creatures. People think too many thoughts at the same time.”

  “Must be back there,” Gold-Eye reasoned aloud, pointing back toward the sea. “We wait for them?”

  “I don’t see why we should,” said Ninde. With the realization that Ella and Drum were around somewhere, she seemed to have come back to her normal, dangerously impetuous self. “We know where we’re supposed to go. Manhole twenty-five on South Drain Twelve.”

  “Manhole twenty-seven,” said Gold-Eye firmly. “Better wait.”

  “Whatever manhole it is,” said Ninde. “We’ll waste time if we just wait here. The others could have been washed miles away or into a side drain. They can meet us there.”

  “No. Better wait.”

  “You can wait if you want,” said Ninde. Turning away from him, she started chewing on her knuckle again, forehead deeply creased in concentration.

  Thirty seconds later, her forehead smoothed out and she stopped chewing.

  “There’s nothing between here and there anyway,” she announced confidently. “So I’m going. It’s what Shade calls initiative, Gold-Eye. If you’d been around longer, you’d understand.”

  She started walking away—and the light went with her. Gold-Eye looked at the flashlight hanging from his own wrist and saw only the faintest red glow across the filament of the bulb.

  When he looked back up, Ninde was invisible in the darkness, the beam from her flashlight reflecting from the water in front of her. He could hear her splashing though—growing fainter as the distance increased. Then she stopped, and the light wavered back toward him.

  Gold-Eye hesitated, knowing deep inside that it was more sensible to wait for Ella and Drum. But the dark pressed against him, the noise of the flowing water seemed louder…and the light was turning away again….

  He took a step forward, forcing his legs against the current.

  “Wait!” he called, and the blessed light swung around toward him, reflecting in glittering patches of gold across the water.

  “Looks like they both survived,” said Ella, crouching over the patch of slime underneath the broken ladder. “There’s two sets of fresh bootprints here, where they must have slid down using a doubled-over rope. One standard—Ninde’s. And Gold-Eye’s runners. He didn’t have time to wear in new boots.”

  “So where did they go?” piped Drum. He was leaning against the side of the tunnel, obviously weary. Blood still trickled from scratches on his hands and head, and like Ella, he was wet from head to foot.

  “Good question,” said Ella. She got up and waded toward the Main Junction, holding the witchlight to light up slime patches farther up the walls. Like Drum, she’d held on to the ladder for long enough to survive the first shock of the flood, and then managed to keep her head clear of the secondary rush that carried them down the tunnel.

  Ten feet on, she stopped and moved the witchlight closer to the wall. “Yeah—fresh handprints here. They’re headed toward the Main Junction. Probably planning to go on to South Drain Twelve. That’ll be Ninde’s idea, no doubt.”

  “Will they wait?”

  “I doubt it,” replied Ella. “Gold-Eye might, but Ninde is just too curious—and she never seems to believe anything bad is really going to happen. Depends too much on her Change Talent for warning.”

  “Water,” commented Drum.

  “Yeah,” said Ella. “I don’t think she really believes water dulls her Talent, either. But it will be particularly bad in the Main Junction…. I doubt she could sense four maniples of Myrmidons in there. We’d better get a move on…if you can.”

  Drum nodded and pushed himself fully upright, flexing his arms and legs so the muscles rippled from top to bottom under the cloth.

  Ella hadn’t waited. She was already wading steadily up the tunnel, as high up the curve as she could go to avoid the slime. Drum sighed and launched himself after her, noting where she slipped and trying the other side.

  “Sure nothing there?” Gold-Eye whispered, crouching close to Ninde just back from where the Main Drain opened out into the Main Junction. Water lapped at his knees, back to the steady trickle it had been before the flood. “How big is it?”

  “Yes, I’m sure,” Ninde snapped, her voice loud enough to echo out, making Gold-Eye wince. “And it’s just a big pool, about as big as a football field.”

  “A what?” asked Gold-Eye.

  “You really need to watch some videos back at the Sub.” Ninde sighed, confusing Gold-Eye even more.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “all we have to do is go out, turn left, and keep close to the wall. There’s a walkway on the edge. It might be underwater a bit. And it’s not very wide.”

  She indicated an armspan, flashlight flickering across the ceiling and, for a moment, out into the Main Junction.

  “If you fall off,” she added, “swim. It’s very deep. You ready?”

  Gold-Eye nodded, thinking of long-ago swimming lessons in the Dorms. Which were more about developing muscles than really learning how to swim…

  Ninde stood up and stepped out diagonally from the tunnel to hug the wall of the Main Junction pool. Gold-Eye followed quickly, anxious not to lose the light.

  It was much cooler here than in the tunnel, cold radiating off the deep water only one false step away.

  Ninde shone her flashlight ahead, and Gold-Eye saw the steel mesh of the walkway just underwater, following the wall. Then Ninde shone it up and the beam vanished into blackness without lighting up anything. Similarly, when directed out across the water, it caught ripples for only ten or twenty feet before drowning in darkness.

  “Come on,” said Ninde, unnecessarily, since Gold-Eye was so close behind he was practically her Siamese twin.

  They moved into the vast, watery chamber cautiously. After a few yards, they started passing other tunnels coming in from the east, so there wasn’t even a wall to lean against. Gold-Eye, whose balance had always been perfect, found himself mistrusting it, and a litany began to run through his mind: “If you’re going to fall, fall in a tunnel, not on the deep side…. If you’re going to fall, fall in a tunnel, not on the deep side….”

  He was so busy thinking this, he ran into Ninde when she stopped, almost causing them both to fall in the deep side. Surprisingly, she didn’t cry out or swear at him—instead she half turned and whispered, “Did you hear something then?”

  “Did you hear something then?” Ella whispered to Drum as they stood at th
e entrance to the Main Junction.

  “Two things,” whispered Drum, his voice clear as a bell even when he whispered. “Someone moving on the lower walkway…and someone or something…on the higher crosswalk. Just shifting position, I think.”

  “Do we rush? Or creep?”

  “Hard to…” Drum began. Then two screams suddenly pierced the lapping of the water. “Rush!”

  Both jumped easily around the corner, running along the walkway with the ease of long familiarity, water spraying as they ran.

  Gold-Eye and Ninde screamed as Myrmidon witchlight suddenly flared above them and the creatures’ silver nets came floating down….

  Desperately Gold-Eye flung himself backward—into the water. Strong currents dragged at him, trying to take him down to deeper tunnels. But he held on to the walkway.

  Ninde threw herself forward, and the falling mesh took her around the feet, its strands melting together instantly to form a solid mass of sticky plastic.

  She rolled onto her back and tried to draw her sword to cut the catch rope that would drag her up…up to the higher crosswalk she’d forgotten about.

  Gold-Eye looked up too, trying to locate the enemy as he dragged himself hand over hand along the walkway. Myrmidon battle sound boomed everywhere, echoing, multiplying, and confusing him. A harsh, discordant mixture of shouts and growls, of deep and terrifying noise.

  Then he saw them—a full maniple, stretched out along the crosswalk above him like shooters on a range. The three net throwers were already winding in—and Gold-Eye realized that one of them was winding in Ninde.