by Joel Ross
Jumping again, I swung across the street and landed on an awning. I scrambled to the roof and spotted the smallest ticktock lurching toward the bridge, while the big one rampaged through houses.
C’mon, c’mon. I jumped closer. Head for the bridge.
For once, I got lucky. The big ticktock’s vents clattered, tendrils of Fog seeped from its nozzles, then it chugged right toward the bridge.
I raced across the roofs, swung down to the street— and almost got flattened by the crowd fleeing from the ticktocks.
The bridge was packed, so I shoved and shouted, trying to keep anyone else from pushing onto it. A skinny lady leading a camel cart elbowed me in the head, right on my wound. Pain flared, and I gasped and leaped high. Then I fell ten feet, straight down onto a corner of her cart.
My boot stomped hard enough to overturn the cart, which slewed to a halt, blocking the path onto the bridge. The skinny lady screamed curses I’d never heard before, but the crowd stopped shoving onto the bridge.
The tick tock tick-tock-tick-tock sounded louder— closer. The lady cut her camels free from their reins, and they clip-clopped away seconds before the gearwork monster smashed through the cart.
Wood and plastic exploded at me. I yelped and scrambled backward onto the bridge. The last trickle of traffic disappeared off the far side of the bridge, and a clubbed chain smashed the planks behind me. I shouted and sprinted away. The smaller ticktock followed on swiveling tripods while the larger one crawled steadily after, carving furrows in the wood.
A bladed claw bit into the bridge beside my foot, and when I glanced over my shoulder, I saw a frayed cable lashing toward my back.
Stop, I screamed inside my mind. Stop—stop!
The frayed cable fell short, and with a spurt of speed I reached the highest point of the bridge and vaulted over the side. My tether tugged me upward, and a roar of cannon fire from the Bottom-Feeder split the world.
The blast swatted me through the air. My ears rung and my eyes watered, and I barely saw the bridge collapse. Just a single glimpse of one ticktock’s antennae groping wildly before they both plunged into the ravine and disappeared in the Fog.
I slumped in the harness as the winch dragged me higher. Columns of black smoke twined in the air, and after what felt like a long time, I climbed the boarding ladder and collapsed on deck.
“You okay?” Swedish asked.
“That,” I panted, “is easier . . . in the Fog.”
A hatch popped open. “Hey!” Bea said, her leather cap askew. “Did you see that?”
“You mean the bit where I blew a bridge out of the sky?” Hazel asked, her eyes sparkling. “Or the bit where I blew a bridge out of the sky?”
“I mean when that ticktock was about to whack Chess, then stopped.”
“I—uh.” I swallowed, suddenly nervous. “I didn’t see that.”
Except I had. That frayed cable had suddenly fallen short when I’d thought Stop! Had I done that? Could I affect ticktocks like I affected driftsharks—by the skin of my teeth, in a desperate panic—even if I wasn’t in the Fog?
“Where’s the other one?” Swedish asked, spinning the wheel. “Where’s Loretta?”
He swung the raft toward the Noza Home, and more cannon fire boomed behind us: Kodoc’s armada battling toward Port Oro. They sounded close. Too close.
Hazel pointed at the mountain and said, “There.”
The third ticktock hunched outside the dirt patch where the Noza kids had played the pebble game. Tentacles swayed from its armored slats, spiked chains rattled, and malformed humps shifted inside its flaking carapace. Farther along, Loretta ushered kids from the factory compound. Actually, she chased them from the compound with a metal pipe in each hand and a scowl on her face.
Still, I couldn’t argue with the results: kids streamed through the gate and bolted away from the ticktock.
“Swing in, Swedish,” Hazel said. “We’ll grab Loretta and warn everyone in that ticktock’s path.”
But when our ship swooped toward Noza House, the ticktock suddenly spurted toward Loretta, spiked tentacles slashing the air.
“Loretta!” Swedish opened the throttle. “Run!”
The Bottom-Feeder jerked forward, and Loretta spun toward the factory gates. One last group of stragglers rushed toward her, skinny kids covered in dust and grime. Too late. They’d never get away before the ticktock cut them off.
40
“RUN,” SWEDISH BREATHED. “Run, run, run.”
Loretta didn’t run. Instead, she turned to face the ticktock and raised the pipes in her hands.
Flame spat from the ticktock and singed a clump of weeds. Tentacles scraped at the plaster-and-Styrofoam fence, and three bladed tubes slid from the ticktock’s head, jerking and chopping. Loretta stepped forward, putting herself between the gearwork monster and the kids scrambling away behind her.
The ticktock slashed at Loretta, and she knocked the blade away with her pipe. Another tube slashed, and she knocked that away, too.
I raced to the plank. “I’ll get her!”
“Bea, unbolt the cannon!” Hazel screamed, ignoring me. “Go!”
I didn’t know what she was talking about: the cannon couldn’t stop a ticktock. It couldn’t even fire if it was unbolted.
“Let me get her!” I shouted again.
“You stay!” Hazel snapped at me.
So I just stood there and stared at the Noza kids running to safety behind Loretta. But she couldn’t follow; she couldn’t turn her back on the ticktock. She dodged the bladed tubes slashing at her; she ducked and backpedaled—and stumbled when a razor tip slashed her leg.
She deflected two slices, then a third slashed her forearm. She parried a fourth, then a chain coiled around her ankles and dragged her to the ground.
Swedish made an anguished sound. He spun the prow toward the ticktock and opened the throttle. The Bottom-Feeder dove, wind screaming through the rigging, the engine howling, and the deck cutting downward.
“Two wisps higher!” Hazel shouted, grabbing her strap. “Stay on target!”
Swedish grunted, gritting his teeth.
Hazel spun to Bea, who was crouched beside the cannon, tugging with her wrench. “Faster, Bea! How long?”
“Five seconds.” She rammed a bolt free. “Four . . .”
Except we didn’t have four seconds. Loretta didn’t have four seconds.
In the street below, the ticktock shuddered, its blades rising above Loretta. She looked so small. An undersized gang girl with tattoos and burn-scarred arms, facing down a ticktock to save a bunch of kids she didn’t even know. Armed with two pipes and a gap-toothed smile.
A blade stabbed toward her stomach—
“Chess!” Hazel screamed, raw and terrified. “Please!”
I knew what she wanted, because I always knew what Hazel wanted—and her desperation sparked a firestorm in my mind. I gathered my terror and despair and launched them at the ticktock like a harpoon: Stop. Freeze. Not another inch.
The blade paused a foot from Loretta. The jagged tip jerked and twitched.
“Three seconds!” Bea counted, ratcheting another bolt free. “Two!”
The world shrank into a wavering tunnel between me and the ticktock. My heart stopped beating, my blood stopped flowing. Freeze. No more. The raft plummeted toward the street. Do not move.
Bea popped the last bolt free. “Done!” she yelled.
My focus slipped, the blade sliced at Loretta, and Hazel screamed, “Now-now-now!”
Swedish slammed a lever, and the raft turned sideways.
The deck jerked under me, and I slid into the forward mast and grabbed tight. The cannon, the half-ton cannon that Bea had just unbolted, thundered off the deck— plummeted downward—tumbled through the air—and smashed into the ticktock.
Gears and scales exploded across the street. The ticktock’s carapace crumpled like an empty alumina can, and a cloud of Fog belched from its broken slats.
With a heav
e, the airship straightened above the rooftops, the fans groaning and the vent hissing.
“Retta!” Swedish bellowed. “Retta!?”
I staggered to the railing and stared at the street. A haze of Fog faded from over a mound of ticktock rubble . . . and a hand emerged from the wreckage and weakly waved a pipe.
“She’s okay,” I called to Swedish. “She’s alive!”
He brushed away tears of relief. “I’m going to kill her.”
“Oh, thank fog.” Hazel slumped in the crow’s nest. “Take us down, Swede.”
“Stupid bravery,” he muttered, tapping the organ keyboard.
The airship swept lower, and Bea grabbed my arm. “They’re full of Fog. The ticktocks are full of Fog.”
“Yeah.”
“You—you stopped it.”
I rubbed my face. “For a second.”
“Outside the Fog.” She chewed her lower lip. “Maybe they really are following you.”
“Maybe you can make them follow you,” Hazel said from the crow’s nest. “Swedish! Belay that—stay in the air.”
“No way,” he growled. “I’m getting Loretta.”
“People are trapped,” Hazel said, gesturing with her spyglass toward the Port. “They’re dying. We need to lead these things away before—”
“She’s crew.”
Hazel pointed past him. “They’ll get her.”
A rickety salvage raft flew toward us from the south, with a guy I didn’t recognize at the wheel. But Jada and Mochi stood behind him, in harnesses and goggles, looking toward Hazel like they were waiting for orders.
Hazel cupped her mouth. “Bring Loretta to the medics!”
Jada gave a quick salute.
“Ticktocks! Ticktocks!” Mochi shouted, her eyes wide and her frizzy hair bobbing. “Can you believe it? They’re ticking and tocking and— Look! Look at them!”
Jada nudged her, and she quieted down.
“They’ve got her,” Hazel told Swedish. “We need Chess to—”
An explosion roared behind us, and I turned to find Kodoc’s armada looming just past the skyscraper, with the Port Oro defenders broken and fleeing before it.
Flames flickered on a fishing trawler with a tattered balloon. A gawky boy threw sand on the fire . . . until the trawler spiraled down into the Fog. I stared in horror, watching the Rooftop armada driving forward, cannons flashing and battle chains whipping into balloons and masts.
The Night Tide and Anvil Rose and two other mutineer warships fought bravely—and didn’t stand a chance.
I glanced at the Rose before the sight of limp bodies on deck made me turn away, just in time to see a cannonball shoot the old, fancy-dressed couple in the antique thopper from the sky.
Then the Bottom-Feeder veered off, and I realized that Hazel had been calling my name. “Chess. Chess!”
I wiped tears from eyes. “Yeah?”
“Call the ticktocks. Make them follow us.” She turned to the wheel. “Swedish, sweep past every ticktock, and once Chess grabs them all, head for the Fog.”
“What about Kodoc?” Swedish asked.
“He won,” she said. “He’ll take the Port; he’ll rule us forever. But we can still save lives.”
We swooped toward the center of Port Oro, with Kodoc and the mutineers burning up the sky behind us. I scanned the hills and bridges but couldn’t make sense of what I saw. Too much smoke and noise, too much fear and rubble.
“You can do this,” Hazel said, swinging down beside me.
“Um,” I said. “How?”
She brushed my hair behind my ear. “Bring the Fog into both your eyes.”
“Will that work?”
“When you’re out of ideas,” she said, “all that’s left is trying.”
So I closed my eyes and imagined Fog blooming behind my eyelids. Nothing felt different, though. How did you force nanites to swirl through your brain? How did you attract trash-monsters from the Fog? How did you make them follow you like a pack of dogs following a trail?
A story from my dad’s scrapbook sprang to mind. The tale of the Pie Diaper, who lured children with the scent of delicious pies . . . though I’d never understood the “diaper” part. As the ship swerved and the battle raged, I focused on wafting a delicious mental scent toward the ticktocks. So sweet, so tasty. Follow me. I imagined the ticktocks swiveling toward me, rumbling lower on the mountain, disappearing into the—
“No!” Hazel gasped.
My eyes flicked open. “What?”
“They boarded the Night Tide. . . .”
I thought “they” meant Kodoc’s airsoldiers until I saw Vidious’s warship hanging low over a smoldering building, caught by a handful of ticktock cables. One of the gearwork monsters strained at the warship, tugging the hull lower, while another lashed and shuddered on the quarterdeck. Through the smoke, I caught a glimpse of a mad-eyed Vidious attacking the ticktock on a deck slippery with blood and oil.
The Bottom-Feeder angled toward the Anvil Rose, where Nisha shouted orders, her blond hair whirling in the wind. Her gunners fired volley after volley toward Kodoc’s armada, while the broken husk of a ticktock smoked and sparked below her.
Kodoc ignored the ticktocks and focused on the mutineers. He blasted through the Port navy, his armada closing around them like a pincer. Damaged ships spun from the sky, crashing into factories and gardens.
“We lost the Port,” Hazel whispered. “And we can’t stop the ticktocks.”
A cold fist squeezed my heart. “This is my fault. All that destruction, all that death.” I took a shuddering breath. “Get closer.”
Hazel inhaled sharply, and I saw in her face that the Fog now swirled across both my eyes. “Swede!” she called. “Take us down, just outside ticktock range.”
“What’re we doing?” Bea asked.
“Going fishing,” Hazel told her. “And Chess is the bait.”
41
SWEDISH FLEW THE Bottom-Feeder like a racing ship, swooping through the air battle. Thirty feet below the deck, I swung wildly on my tether. Explosions burst around me. A cannonball clipped our carburetor, and harpoons speared our sails. While Bea patched the carb, the ship spun and swerved—bringing me closer to the ticktocks.
And they answered my call. Come, come, follow me, this way. One dropped from the Night Tide, two crawled from the husks of ruined buildings, and more clattered after us from marketplaces and neighborhoods.
“It’s working!” Hazel called, far above me. “Keep going, Chess! Swedish, head for the Fog.”
Swedish mumbled a question I didn’t hear.
“Then Chess tells them to get lost,” Hazel told him. “But first we have to get away from the Port—”
“There’s one more!” Bea cried from the engine. “Past that factory.”
Rudders swiveled and props spun. The raft banked into the wind, and my tether swirled over a handful of old people stumbling from a gutted house. The last ticktock, a stubby one with jagged antlers, clambered along a concrete pipe behind a smokestack.
Swedish brought me lower, and I swung past, thinking, Come, follow, this way . . . and the ticktock aimed a turret at me.
No! I thought at it. Don’t shoot!
It didn’t listen. Instead, it fired. A cable flashed past me and wrapped a cargo bracket, a metal hook jutting from the underside of the Bottom-Feeder. The airship jolted as she took the ticktock’s weight. The rudders shifted and the propellers strained, but after a precarious moment, the Bottom-Feeder steadied.
Then she rose, lifting the ticktock up into the air. A moment later, we were flying toward the Fog with me dangling below the hull . . . and the ticktock dangling below me.
I glanced to Bea, who was poking upside down through a hatch in the deck.
“Can it board us?” I asked as she winched me upward.
She eyed the ticktock. “Nah, its cable won’t retract.” She wiped her face. “You did it, Chess. They’re leaving the Port.”
I grabbed the board
ing ladder and looked behind us. Sure enough, a nightmare squad of ticktocks rumbled after the Bottom-Feeder, while the one with antlers hung below. We’d saved Port Oro from the ticktocks—for now. But beyond the smokestack, Kodoc’s armada surrounded the defeated mutineer fleet. White flags of surrender rose on the mutineer warships. First on the Night Tide and Anvil Rose, then on all the others—and on dozens of buildings across Port Oro.
Kodoc had conquered the Port.
I clung to the ladder, my eyes stinging from smoke and tears. The Bottom-Feeder swooped away, and I rubbed my face before climbing on deck.
“Stay close to the Fog,” Hazel was telling Swedish. “We need to keep the ticktocks following Chess.”
“How far are we going?” I asked her, with part of my mind still saying, Follow me, keep coming, you can’t resist the Pie Diaper.
“We’ll see. We can’t go back now.”
“Loretta’s still there.”
“And Mrs. E,” Bea said, her voice trembling.
“You think I don’t know that?” Hazel snapped.
A breeze strained through the rigging. I ignored the jerks of the ticktock dangling below the ship and watched the last mutineer ships being forced to land on Port Oro as Kodoc’s armada formed a circle around them.
Nobody came after us except ticktocks. Nobody spotted us amid the smoke and the chaos. After a long, hopeless silence, Hazel swung down from the crow’s nest and stood with Swedish at the wheel. Bea and I joined them, and we looked toward the silver-gray smoke hanging over the distant Port, with a red halo from the sun.
“From this far away,” Bea said, “it looks almost purple.”
“Something’s not right,” Hazel said.
“Nothing’s right,” Swedish said.
“What are we missing?” Hazel asked.
“Loretta,” I said. “And Mrs. E.”
