Lyn spotted Raleigh, one of the Wraiths, as he lay in wait, across the quarry and camouflaged against three rocks that hid him from the edge of Cerberus. He turned and stretched, talking to the rock next to him. It was very odd until Townes moved his mouth in response. There’s two. They don’t realize we’re here. Janus smiled, they had snuck up on the Wraiths.
All Adepts had a running competition to see which squad was the most silent and stealthy. Of course, the only way to reasonably test it was by the slightly dangerous practice of sneaking and surprising each other. Officially, the practice was frowned upon – getting caught would result in reduced rations and pay. Unofficially, the officers used it as a gauge for the skill of their teams.
Marcus smiled, signaling – We (really) are (that) good.
Janus paused, he had wanted to signal the same thing, but had checked himself – not yet.
Instead, his right hand flashed two quick signs, Fan out. Janus crept forward, his eyes roving for the remaining Wraiths. The team spread out, silently encircling the quarry. Suddenly, Raleigh sat up. Janus froze, staring at the pair and waiting for their next move. Raleigh checked his chronometer and spoke softly. Townes nodded and the pair became absolutely still against the rocks. Janus smiled, creeping forward again, a little late.
Janus performed a swift double tap on his throat into the vibraphone to signal the team. Only silence greeted him. He went still, letting his eyes roam around and listening intently. After another moment, he stretched himself out, focusing on moving one limb at a time, using his still body to shield his movements while he turned slowly to his left.
Townes and Raleigh suddenly leapt up, and Janus followed the pair with his eyes as they ran. It took only a few moments, but the pair raced around the edge and leapt over the lip, disappearing over the other side.
Janus stiffened as the Ghostblade came to rest neatly across his back. “Dead.”
Janus sighed.
“Nice try, Lieutenant. Better luck next time,” Rogers said simply.
Moments later, Janus walked into the waiting and dejected group, who were being talked to by Raleigh and Glory, the pilot.
“Got you too, eh?” Celes asked.
Janus nodded.
“Don’t feel so bad,” a woman named Bravos said, “We never would’ve heard the end of it if a mint had snuck up on us.”
Janus shook his head in frustration, still a mint.
“Too true,” Rogers said. “You were doing well, until you let Raleigh and Townes distract you all.” He pointed at Janus, “You should have kept watching them, and let your team focus on the rest. Instead, you made the mistake of assuming that any one member of your team could outmaneuver the rest of mine. I won’t be insulted – it was a rookie mistake. Just don’t forget that pride can kill you.”
Janus and the rest team nodded solemnly.
“No need to be so down in the dumps. No Captain would ever allow himself to get surprised by a rookie. I would get demoted so fast it would make my head spin. Besides, it’s better to lose to a friend and learn, than lose to an enemy and die. You won’t make the same mistake twice – trust me,” Rogers gave a big smile to the group. “So, Lieutenant, let’s review the plan again.”
The approach into Cerberus was remarkably simple. Cerberus outer defenses were designed to monitor for large groups or armies. The Adepts, dressed in their brown rags over their armor, wouldn’t have warranted a second glance even if they had been spotted.
The edge of the city gave off an aura of decay. The ground was tough, and infertile. Shoots of some sort of tough grass stood in isolated islands in the cracked and dry earth. The appearance of the Adepts did not arouse any particular response in the wasted forms of the slummers who foraged this waste. They were like ghosts, insubstantial in both mind and body, silently wandering. The slummers did not fear them – they had nothing worth taking. But there were so many of them. Here and there, one of the lowered heads would perk up, struck by the oddity of the new group. The Adepts determination, their speed, their strength – the fullness of their faces. Despite the rags they donned, each and every one of them stood out.
What a problem to have… Janus thought ruefully.
Janus saw Celes grimace as she looked at the struggling people. Lyn and Ramirez would often shake their heads and exchange knowing glances. Marcus was the hardest to read, as he remained mostly impassive, but would sometimes display a look of disgust whenever they passed close to a group of slummers. It was impossible to tell whether he was disgusted by Cerberus or its people.
Roger’s Wraiths displayed no emotion, but kept moving forward, slowly adopting the characteristic stoops and coughs of the slummers, yet never slowing their pace. Janus realized he had been away from the slums for too long – he had always been confident, but now the characteristics of an Adept made him stand out like a sore thumb. He focused on the example set by the Wraiths, and soon everyone had adopted some characteristic of the slummers. Supporting one another, and occasionally stopping to examine some potential valuable, the group crossed the threshold of the city, passing into the broken and decaying buildings. Janus tilted his head back as they passed, his eyes watering as the city soon disappeared into the clouds. In the shade of the city, the air became still and the familiar smell of rotting garbage filled his nostrils. He took a deep breath. At first, he wanted to gag, but then he could feel himself reacclimatize to the smell, to the dark – to the slums. A rush of emotions washed over him – each smell, sight, and sound brought back a memory. The sun disappeared completely, quickly, and the surroundings took on the quality of twilight. The city lights twinkled high above, like the heavens of stars. Small fires burned everywhere, occasionally surrounded by a small group of slummers seeking warmth. They scurried away at the groups approach.
“If we can locate a lift station, I can get us to the East-2 lift and from there–” Janus hesitated, ashamed, “I can take us…home.”
Celes watched him as he said it, and he quickly looked away, towards the dimly lit alleys of Cerberus. Without another word, he moved deeper into the shadows, the two teams just behind him.
Janus was unfamiliar with the outskirts of Cerberus, and it took the party several hours to trek deep enough into the city for Janus to get his bearings. They moved swiftly and silently, the well-trained adepts melting into the shadows at the slightest signal from Janus. Before long, Janus recognized the telltale signs of a lift station: The angry whirr of carrion eater hovercrafts, and their gang rat pilots. Long forgotten lampposts and wires, crackling with the electrical power that flowed from the station. And the garbage – the piles became immense. They were monuments and guardians to the beating heart of the city just beyond them.
Finally, they came upon the lift, its black obsidian exterior reflecting just as darkly and strangely as Janus remembered it. He studied the S.T.s guarding it from a raised platform, strung out like a wire along the edge of a building – its purpose long forgotten. He was invisible, melding with the dark, no more than the garbage around him. His voice echoed strangely to the party from amongst the waste, “South-West from here will be the East-2 lift. At a steady pace, and assuming no delays, it will take about three hours to reach it. From there it is another hour at least, moving quickly.”
The others nodded in understanding and slunk after him, skirting the station and the STs.
Deeper in the slums, Janus was forced to slow. The others could not match his speed or agility through the wet and slippery garbage. Speed was important, but stealth was key, and Janus assured the team that it was better for them to move silently than risk discovery by the gang rats.
Celes pointed out two crumbling buildings butted up against one of the superscrapers, “Janus, what are those?” The first building was an old apartment that leaned perilously against the second, as brick and mortar strained to keep it upright. The second had a gaping hole along its front, the second and third floors spilling down and out from it, like the guts of an old animal. On t
he sides of each were murals depicting people, letters, and numbers.
“Remnants of the old city,” Janus said, “from before Cerberus took over and rebuilt everything. A few old buildings like this dot the city and serve as some of the main communities of the slummers. I recognize this area, we call those the sisters.”
“But they look as if they are about to fall over,” Marcus said crisply.
Janus turned to Marcus and shrugged his shoulders, “Pathetic shelter is better than no shelter. Weather really doesn’t change much down here, although it can become substantially colder. The buildings serve more as protection from the rampant gangs than anything else.”
“But wouldn’t the gangs want the buildings for themselves?” Celes asked.
Janus smiled, “Like most thugs, they aren’t so tough when facing large numbers of cornered slummers, determined to protect the only thing they have. The gangs rule the streets, not the people.” He nodded to the sisters, “But those are unoccupied, used only as a landmark now. The murals act as a giant traveler’s sign. The Styx slummer community is to the North-West. The lift is just ahead and slightly East. We’re close now.”
They skirted the edge of the East-2 lift and Janus, for the first time in a long while, felt he was truly on familiar territory. The trash piles had shifted again in his long absence, but the alleyways and corridors remained the same, and familiar sights and sounds greeted him as he journeyed through the wastes.
His heart soared as the final sight came into view: the old run-down building, that took a tiny parcel of land for itself amongst looming giants.
Chapter 22: The Locket
Janus stopped dead as he entered the run-down hallway from the top of the collapsed stair. The old broken door swayed on shattered hinges. He sprinted ahead, leapt over the giant hole in the floor and yelled, “Clara!” He skidded to a halt in the door – the room was a mess. The books were gone, the makeshift shelf smashed and broken upon the ground. His mattress was ripped apart and the old armchair was toppled over, one of its legs shattered. The broken end-table lay across it helplessly. He fumbled with the light switch – the bulb was broken.
“CLARA!”
The rotting wood quickly stifled his echo, leaving the hovel as silent as a tomb. A surge of anger came over him, “No!” He shook his head in denial. He grabbed the fallen end-table, “NO!”, and smashed it into the wall. Holding its broken legs in his hands and ready to beat them against the wall, he glanced up. Celes was watching him mournfully from the door. He sank to his knees, taking in the room. A fine layer of dirt and dust covered everything – it had been this way for some time. “Clara…” he whispered, his heart sinking deep into his chest. He sat heavily upon the ripped mattress, burying his head in his hands.
Celes hand came to rest on his shoulder, “I’m sorry, Janus.”
“I shouldn’t have left her. I knew that she couldn’t survive forever on her own. I shouldn’t—” he turned away from her.
Celes sat down next to him, her hand squeezing his shoulder gently, “But she wanted you with us. She wanted the best for you. Would she have really have let you stay?”
Janus looked at Celes, his eyes red, “No. And there would have been no use arguing with her, either.”
“The place is destroyed, but there aren’t any signs of her. Which may be a good thing,” Celes said gently. Janus nodded, he looked around. Lyn, Ramirez, and Marcus stood there, watching him. Rogers and his Wraiths watched from door. Marcus nodded to him in understanding.
“Now, with that in mind – Do you think she would want you moping around?” Celes asked firmly but kindly.
“Actually, she would probably berate me for letting my guard down, not stopping to listen to make sure everything was…” He paused, listening.
He could hear the whistling of the winds, the whirr of hovercycles, acknowledged the muted stillness of the trash – but something was missing. The light was out, its constant buzz silent, but another familiar sound was gone. His mind churned frantically, what was it?
“The faucet–” Janus said, “is it – fixed?”
He stood up, “But that doesn’t make any sense.”
“Why wouldn’t you want to fix a faucet?” Marcus asked.
Janus shook his head, “When I was younger, I spent nearly three weeks figuring out how to do it and then another two months searching for the right washer for it. I thought I would surprise Clara by fixing it for her, and one day, I finally did. I waited at home, proud of my accomplishment. But when she came home, she nearly panicked.”
“Why is that, Lieutenant?” Rogers asked.
“She thought the water had stopped. That our supply was gone.”
A look of understanding passed between Lyn and Ramirez, and comprehension dawned upon Rogers face. Celes grimaced.
Janus smiled, a look of nostalgia upon his features, “Clara loved the sound of it, because it granted her peace of mind. No matter how rough things got, Clara could come home and know that she still had running water – a rare and precious thing.’
“When I finally calmed her down to explain what I had done, she smiled and told me how proud she was – and then she made me put it back. I threw out the piece I used to fix it the next day. She never would have fixed the faucet, and if anyone else had bothered to fix it, they would be living here right now.”
“So now the question is – why is the faucet fixed?” Lyn asked.
“Indeed,” Janus said, walked over to the faucet and stared at it. After a few moments, he carefully unscrewed the base, and peered inside. He slipped his hand into a small hole and pulled it out a moment later, holding a jeweled locket.
“That’s not something you find in a faucet every day,” Lyn said knowingly.
“It’s Clara’s locket. There’s a note attached!” Janus said excitedly. He quickly skimmed the note, “It’s from Norm!” Janus read the note aloud:
Janus,
Hope this letter finds you well. I assumed that someday you would make it back here, and something tells me sooner, rather than later.
To answer your first question - Clara is fine. Miss Middleton moved her recently to quarters in E level. Middleton still doesn’t treat her particularly well, but she seems to be determined to make sure that nothing happens to Clara as a result of some negligence on her part Unfortunately, since Clara’s move, I have had to limit my contact with her, but she passed this locket along to me before she left so that you might know she is safe.
Middleton has been increasingly agitated recently, and I suspect that if you have returned here, you may have something to do with it. No doubt you have many questions to ask, so come visit me. Either meet me at East-2 at 0500 hours (before my shift begins), or visit me directly in the Styx community. I live at the West end – just ask around and they will know me.
By the way, Clara wanted you to keep her locket. She says it belongs to you anyway, and she thinks it is time for you to have it.
I expect you will have many interesting stories to tell me when we next meet.
Regards,
Norm
Janus held the locket up in front of his face. It was a red and gold bird. “Belongs to me…?” He pulled the locket closer to read the inscription:
To Natalie, From Magnus
Eternal Love
He flipped the locket over and examined the scrawled writing on the back:
may Janus remind you
He stared at the writing and then opened up the locket: a beautiful young woman stared back at him from the left picture. On the right, a smudged picture looked as though it had been waterlogged or wet. He studied the latter portrait – mostly a white blob. Whatever had ruined the picture had mixed the colors, making the identity of the person impossible to determine.
“What’s our next move, Lieutenant?” Rogers asked.
Janus looked up at the Captain, still focused on the locket as he considered the question.
Flipping the locket closed, he said, “We’ll hea
d for Styx. It isn’t far. I’ve been there more than a few times in my life. I never realized Norm lived there,” he paused, looking through a hole in the ceiling. “Let’s get moving, we need to be in Styx before dark.”
Janus led the team through the alleyways once more, keeping the group moving faster than he normally would have liked. Dark was fast approaching, and the gang rats would be out in full force. There were no complaints from the Adepts, but Janus knew that they were all out of their element, and he wanted to avoid any unnecessary encounters.
“Make sure you hide your weapons well,” Janus said, “sub-communities like Styx frown upon weapons.”
“What is Styx, exactly?” Rogers asked.
“It is one of many ‘towns’ found throughout the Cerberus slums. Styx is one of the largest in East Cerberus. It’s home to hundreds, maybe thousands, of slummers.” He paused for a moment, peering at a particularly fetid trash pile. He shook his head and kept moving, not noticing the skeptical glance Marcus and Rogers exchanged. “Think of it as a city within a city. Styx is one of many communities that sprang up around a still-functioning water supply station. It protects the slummers in that area. It is slightly safer and slightly better than living in the open alleys. Life is still poor, but it acts as a place where slummers can raise families without immediate fear of Security Patrols. Of course, communities like Styx are under the control of individuals known as the ‘Dons’,” Janus spit the word out. “The Dons act like one large organization, allied together to maintain their power. And they guard it jealously – hence their issue with our weapons. The Dons control every aspect of the communities, both the good and the bad, but their personal agreements – or disagreements,” Janus stressed the last word, “with the Sergeants keep the communities safe from the Security Patrols.”
The Phoenix Fallacy_Book II_Norm Page 14
