by Jay Posey
It might have been a man once, long ago. A man dead of starvation, left exposed in some frozen desert where rot had never touched the corpse. The skin was green-gray in the chemlight, stretched tight like a drum over its skeleton, with hardly enough apparent muscle to animate the bones. Its hands lay curled like dead spiders, each of its knotted fingers sharply tipped with what looked more like talons than nails. The neck ended abruptly just above the shoulders, and seeped a pungent, viscous fluid; the source of the chemical odor. Its head… well, there was no sign of that.
There came the quiet swishing sound of steel drawn across fabric, and Cass realized for the first time that Three had been wielding his short blade, and was only now sheathing it. He hooked his forearms under the Weir’s armpits without any apparent revulsion, and dragged it further down the tunnel, away from the stairs. The scraping sound of the corpse across the concrete grew fainter and fainter, and at last faded to silence. Cass felt fear creeping up on her again, never having noticed its absence in the first place.
“Don’t worry,” she said, after a while. “He’ll be back.”
She told herself she was comforting Wren. The darkness stretched time, made it difficult to judge whether it’d been five minutes or twenty.
“He’ll be back,” she repeated.
“He’s a good guy, right?” Wren whispered.
“What, sweetheart?”
“He’s a good guy? He’s not going to hurt us?”
Cass hesitated for a bare moment, brushed her fingers through Wren’s hair, soothing.
“Don’t worry, baby,” she answered. “I don’t think he’s dangerous.”
“He is dangerous, Mama,” Wren replied, with unusual certainty. “But he’s good, right?”
There was something in the tone, something deeper behind the question, but it was a something Cass couldn’t puzzle out. She put her hand on his cheek. It was cool, clammy; wet with tears. He was trembling.
“What is it? Wren, what’s wrong?”
He didn’t answer, except with a labored sob, one he’d been trying to hold back. Panic surged up in Cass’s chest: a crushing, nameless fear for her child.
“Wren, baby, what’s going on? Just talk to me.”
He struggled to speak, mouth working without words. Finally, he forced a whisper through his constricted throat, reluctant: part confession, part nightmare.
“I can’t feel him, Mama.”
Cass pulled out the chemlight and ignited it to get a good look at her son. Instead, she let out a yelp.
The man was there, crouched at the alcove, looking back at her.
“Sorry,” he said flatly, almost at full voice, which seemed to roll like thunder down the concrete tunnel. If he’d heard what Wren had said, he didn’t make any sign of it. And he didn’t seem that concerned about Wren’s state. Nothing unusual about a child being comforted by his mother in the dark.
“You want to move?” he asked.
It took a moment for Cass to find a reply, there was so much her brain was trying to process.
“What? Oh, uh,” she stammered, and inhaled, drawing in foul fumes that stung her nostrils. “Can we?”
“Yeah,” he said. “There’s another alcove just a little ways down. Come on.”
He reignited the chemlight hooked on his coat, and scooted back, while Wren crawled out, followed closely by Cass. A dark pool of viscous chemical fluid spread from the entry of the alcove, and trailed off in a wide swath further down the storm system.
“Don’t worry,” Three said, seeing Wren’s wet eyes on the streak. “We’ll go down the other side.”
Cass held Wren’s hand tightly as Three led them down the corridor at a confident pace, without any noticeable concern that more of the Weir might be around. Even walking in their little bubble of light, she felt the yawning blackness pressing down on them: weighty, draining. By the time they reached the next alcove, Cass couldn’t have said whether they’d walked for twenty meters or two hundred. And she realized she was weary enough for it to have been ten times as far. Three crouched at the entryway, looking under the stacks of pipes that covered the top half of the niche, and then motioned them in.
Cass nudged Wren in ahead of her, crouched, and followed closely behind. Wren moved to the back while she settled into one corner. Once seated, she motioned to him, and he flopped into her lap, closing her arms around himself, as if wrapping himself up in a blanket. Cass hugged her son close, and extinguished her chemlight.
Three watched them from the entryway, noted the almost ritualistic nature of their movements, their postures. The way Wren nestled into Cass, how she rested her cheek atop his head. Three guessed the woman and child had spent many nights just this way, sleeping in some abandoned building or alley.
“Will you sleep?” Cass asked, raising her head slightly.
Three shook his head.
“You go ahead and rest, ma’am. I’ll keep an eye out.”
Cass nodded slightly, and resumed her posture, closing her eyes. Three watched her for a moment. Ragged, weary, she looked suddenly vulnerable. Fragile. And the boy. Three looked to him, and glimpsed the boy’s eyes shutting suddenly. The eyelids fluttered. Pretending to be asleep. Three smirked at that.
He turned his back to them, and sat cross-legged at the mouth of the alcove. He drew a deep breath, then switched off his chemlight; allowed himself to be swallowed by darkness. Silently, so as not to disturb the woman and child, he drew his pistol and laid it in his lap. Three didn’t expect anyone, or anything, to find them down here, but the familiar weight of the gun was reassuring. He reached back, unsheathed his blade, rested it over the top of the pistol. His own ritual. He steeled himself, set his mind and will to staying awake in the long and silent darkness.
After a moment, a breathy whisper sounded behind him. The boy.
“What’s your–?” he started, then caught himself. “My name’s Wren. What’s yours?”
“Three,” whispered Three over his shoulder.
There was a long pause, almost long enough for Three to think Wren had gone on to sleep. He hadn’t.
“Should I call you Mister Three?”
Three smiled to himself.
“Just Three,” he answered. Then almost as an afterthought, added, “Should I call you Mister Wren?”
Three could hear a hint of smile in the boy’s reply.
“Just Wren.”
After that, it was quiet for a long time.
Cass stirred awake, felt the dull ache of a night’s sleep on a marble-hard floor, let her eyes float open. Expecting the total darkness of the storm-water system, she jolted when she realized she was outside. The sun was a sliver of fiery orange on the horizon, dawn breaking under a mercury sky. She took groggy stock of her surroundings, blinking heavy eyelids. A courtyard. Brick. Squat buildings, three or five stories high, crumbled around her. Heavy mist the color of concrete swirled off the ground at knee-level. Sleep fell away, and a realization broke over her like an arctic squall.
Wren was gone.
Cass exploded to her feet, and whipped around to get her bearings, looking for any sign or trace of her boy, finding none. She stood frozen, panicked, afraid to call out. Afraid not to.
Then, a voice sounded behind her.
“It’s alright,” a man called. “He’s with me.”
Cass recognized that voice. She spun.
“Asher!”
There, leaning against a wall across the courtyard, was her nightmare incarnate. Tall, lithe, wearing his wolfish grin, Asher’s stillness coiled with menace. He was shaggy-haired and sharply handsome, with young, smooth features, and a boyish charm that could put almost anyone at ease. But not Cass. She knew what he was, and what he could do. She’d seen it for herself. Her hands balled into knuckle-cracking fists.
“Where is my son?”
“Don’t worry about little Spinner,” Asher said. “Ran and Jez are watching him.”
Rage boiled up within Cass; rage, and an ice-cold fea
r. She had sworn to Wren she would never let them take him back. Her heart broke at what he must be going through now, alone, without her.
Asher scanned her up and down with a brief, casual amusement, then turned his interest to picking the lint from his long black coat. She judged the distance. The courtyard was maybe twenty meters wide. Too far. She’d never cross it fast enough.
“It’s not too late for you, you know,” he offered, not looking up. “All could be forgiven.”
His eyes flicked up to her then, over her body, predatory. Hungry.
“For the right price.”
A wave of revulsion crashed through her, and Cass fought to still herself. It wasn’t enough. Asher caught the flicker of disgust on her face. She might as well have said it aloud.
“Not even for a chance to be with your own kid?” said Asher, with a humorless laugh. “Same as always – too stubborn for your own good.”
“I swear to you, if you so much as think about hurting Wren–”
“Spare me the cliché,” he interrupted, flicking a speck of dust. “It bores me.”
He straightened to his full height, brushing one sleeve lightly with the back of his hand, and then tugging its cuff down past his wrist. Cass’s mind raced. She might as well try for it. Maybe she’d catch him off guard.
“Fedor said you’d be like this,” Asher sighed. He fidgeted with his other sleeve, glanced off at the horizon. “I wanted to argue, but… I guess I can’t force you to make good decisions.”
Asher seemed briefly lost in thought. This was her only moment. Cass rerouted synapses, flooded herself with adrenaline, readied to pounce.
“Besides,” he added with a scoff. “Someone else has been missing you far more than I have.”
Cass tipped forward to launch herself at him.
Her toes never even left the ground. Steel fingers seized her shoulder from behind, paralyzing her.
The scream died in her throat.
Six
Cass opened blind eyes to the nothingness that surrounded her, stifled a gasp, tried to get her bearings. For a moment, her last memory of Asher lingered, sharp, as real as the flight from the city wall, the Weir, the man. But in a flash, it was fleeting, fading, replaced by the reality pressing down around her. The damp blackness, the weight and warmth of Wren sleeping in her lap, the stone floor beneath her. Still, wakefulness didn’t rid her of the intense grip she felt on her shoulder. The whole train of thought took only a fraction of a second, and in the next instant she realized the man was by her side, hand on her shoulder, lips pressed to her ear, his growling whisper hot on her face.
“We’re in trouble.”
Her instincts snapped alive, sudden clarity and focus even in the darkness.
“Wake the boy,” he said. “But keep him quiet.”
Before she could ask, he evaporated into the darkness, leaving only a release of pressure on her shoulder, a trace of warmth and wetness like a passionless kiss on her ear. Cass bent gently, pressed her cheek to Wren’s, nuzzled him awake. He stirred in her lap, inhaled sleepily, but didn’t speak, wouldn’t until she said it was alright. She had taught him that long ago. She helped him to unsteady feet, and then rolled up to her knees, tried to work the hard knots out of her back and thighs. There was a dryness in her mouth, a stretching feeling at the back of her throat almost like the need to yawn, a certain restlessness deep in her lungs. The quint was getting low. Already. That much had used to last her days. Now, her body seemed to be burning through it faster than she could find it.
The man rematerialized.
“Do you remember the way to the stairs?” he whispered.
Cass nodded, forgetting he couldn’t see her.
“Good,” he said, before she had a chance to speak. “We’re leaving.”
Cass checked her internal clock. 06:17 GST. Sun wouldn’t be up for another half hour, at least.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
A distant, digital croak answered for him. Cass stiffened, felt the hairs rise on her neck.
“There was another one,” Three said. “It brought help.”
Another croak echoed down the tunnel, eerie in its origin, otherworldly with its reverberation.
“Let’s move,” said Three. Cass actually heard him shuffle backwards this time, presumably out of the alcove. She took Wren’s hand in one of her own, and used the other to feel her way out, leading him along behind. The barest movement of air, a trace of coolness, signaled when she’d reentered the cavernous tunnel. Back to her right, towards the stairs, the endless blackness continued. Off to the left, however, a faint twinkle of blue glowed at her, bobbed, a wisp in the willows. It was joined by a second. Then a third.
Cass felt Wren pull away from her, and instinctively her hand clenched tight.
“It’s alright,” Three whispered, barely letting the air escape through his lips. “I’ve got him.”
Cass reluctantly let Wren go. From the rustling, she gathered that the man had slung Wren up on his back.
“Hold on, and stay close.”
Cass slipped her fingers through Wren’s belt, and bumped up tight against him.
“Here we go.”
Like a gentle tide, Cass felt Wren receding from her, so smoothly and silently, at first she thought she was falling backwards. She caught herself, and stepped forward, feeling clumsy and jostling in her gait compared to the flowing pace of the man in front of her. After a few steps, however, she found a rhythm that, if not matched, at least complemented his, and together they slipped off in the darkness.
The trio floated down the tunnel towards the stairs, haunted by the occasional squelch of white-noise echoing from the Weir behind them. Though they weren’t sounding any closer, Cass was unnerved to notice they weren’t sounding any farther away either. The squawks and croaks usually came in clusters, almost as if it were a conversation composed entirely of static. And now that she was paying more attention, she could pick out peculiarities in the sounds, or voices, if she dared call them that. One was thinner, drier; somehow more brittle. The others were fuller-throated, less harsh in aural frequency, but more fierce and guttural in tone.
Cass felt lost in the swimming darkness, her only anchors to any sort of concrete reality the floor under her feet and her hand on Wren. He was being awfully brave, she thought. She wondered how far they had left to go. It certainly felt like they should’ve made it by now.
She pinged the nearest satellite, located their position in the schematic she’d downloaded from before, ran an internal app to measure the distance. Eighty-three meters to go.
Suddenly, an electric shriek shattered the tunnel, ricocheted like sonic shrapnel; pierced her ears. Reflexively she clapped her hands over them and glanced behind. The blue orbs were there, now closing fast.
“What’d you do?” Three barked, snatching her around to face him.
“What?” she stammered. “No, nothing. I–”
He ignited the chemlight on his vest, and the ferocity on his face frightened her. He growled a wordless curse, and slid his hand down to her wrist, gripping it. Hard.
“Come on.”
He jerked her to a run. All grace and fluidity disappeared. The three of them crashed headlong into the darkness, seeing no more than five steps ahead of themselves. Wren clung desperately to Three’s back. Cass struggled to keep pace while being towed along.
She chanced a glance over her shoulder, caught a fleeting glimpse. Not three orbs now. Six pinpoints. Eyes.
The Weir were gaining.
Her heart pounded in her chest, she felt like she was falling behind, could feel Three straining to hold himself back so she could keep up. Cass wasn’t going to be the one to get them killed. She proc’d more of the quint, overdrove her adrenals, felt her nerves electrify with the surge. In two bounding steps, she was dead-even with Three, jerking her arm away from him with strength renewed.
He didn’t seem to notice or care. They sped down the tunnel. Three pointed ahead t
o their left.
“There!”
She cut that way, found the base of the stairs, launched up them. But Three snatched her arm again, stopping her mid-stride, spinning her back towards him. In a fluid motion, he had Wren off his back and into her arms, so quickly she barely had time to grab her son. Three wrenched the chemlight off his vest, and shoved it between her fingers.
“Go. Climb.”
He pushed her on up a stair, and from the look in his eye, she knew better than to hesitate. She took them two at a time. Two flights, three flights, she put everything she had into every step, trying to remember just how many flights she’d come down. Somewhere between the fifth and sixth flights, she heard an impact on the stairs. The Weir were climbing.
Cass pressed on, thighs burning with the effort, breath coming in great gulps. She threw a glance over the rail, saw them a few flights below, the two in front like wild dogs bounding over each other to be the first to the kill. Their blue eyes streaked in the blackness around them, dancing as they vaulted up the steps.
Wren squeezed tight on her back. She felt him bury his face to her neck, almost sensed him willing her faster, or perhaps wishing he could wake from the nightmare. His weight dragged at her. Shifting on her shoulders, it made her next step tough to judge. Her toe caught, just barely. Just enough. She went sprawling with a cry.
Cass’s chin hit hard on the metal-grated stair above her, as she rolled reflexively to her left, throwing Wren towards the wall, away from the edge. Dazed, stunned for a moment, she caught a view of the Weir circling the flights behind her. Not quite three flights now, one outpacing the other by several steps. She launched herself to her feet, and yanked Wren up on to her back. As she fled higher, the image flashed again in her mind. The Weir racing up the stairs. Two of them. Only two? Or had she missed the third?
Her foot slipped again, though she caught herself this time with a hand on the rail. She’d lost count of flights by now, and her mind was set on nothing more than reaching the top. Spots floated through her vision, and she blinked them away, terrified that another misstep would be the end of them both.
