by Daryl Banner
She is completely taken. There’s no hope. I can’t get to her until some stronger Psychist can break the influence somehow. Now he holds a weapon in either hand. A syringe, and a—Rone stares at the dagger. He knows this dagger. “Where’d you get this?”
“Athan Broadmore,” she recites.
Rone lifts his eyes to her. “Athan? H-How’d he get it to you?”
“He was captured by Impis Lockfyre,” she goes on, dead-eyed, “and then I was broken out of Cloud Tower at the same time Athan was. I sabotaged the ensuing pursuit of the Chaots by taking that dagger from Athan and damaging beyond repair the control panel of the only operating lift connecting us to the slums, thereby trapping us all up here. Impis Lockfyre was not happy, but then I fixed the broadcasts, so I think he likes me now. Ruena did this to me,” she volunteers suddenly, lifting her other hand, which is bandaged.
Rone stares at the hand, confused. “How?”
“Accident.”
He probably won’t get much more of an explanation from her. He lifts the dagger. “And … how did Athan get this …?”
“He was given it after Anwick Lesser’s execution at the touch of Metal Hand.”
Rone falls back, all the air taken out of him at those words. Wick. “No, no, no,” he breathes, pushing away from her as if to kick away the words, to kick away the truth. But it is Erana who said it, and she only recites what she knows. Wick, my Wick, my friend, my buddy, my brother. “No, please …”
“Please hand me the dagger back,” Erana politely requests. “If I do not kill you, I may suffer a punishment.”
Too many deaths. Too many lives. His whole family. Everything he has ever come to love. I know now more than ever what I must do. Cintha, Anwick … neither of you will go to the other side unavenged. Wick, I am so sorry for the words I said. I desperately wish I could see you again so that I may take them back. I’ll put an end to the madness.
“You remember things,” says Rone, swallowing all of the pain of what she just said to meet her dull eyes. “So remember this face. And remember these words. I will take care of Impis. I will make sure that everyone is made happy. And you must stay here—safe—because I will be back to this very spot to collect you.”
“I will stay here,” Erana agrees, “and then when you return, I can finish killing you.”
Rone chokes with another sob trying to come out of his chest, and then he gives her a curt nod. “You can kill me then,” he agrees.
He brings his lips to Erana’s to seal the promise he just made her. When they kiss, for one fleeting moment it feels like they are in the half-collapsed mansion once again, and their only worries in the world are what to pick out of the kitchen to eat, and which of them is going to have a turn on Rone’s rock in the bathing pool.
He pulls away from her mouth, and reality is returned to him in the cold image of the Crystal Court around them. “Remember me,” he whispers to Erana, then phases through the glass walls and makes his way to his final destination, the leaning tower in the center of Cloud Keep, the place where it will all, at long last, come to an end.
Cintha’s Promise
Cintha Two’s life has not been a perfect one. She’s made many mistakes. She’s hurt people she loves. She’s abandoned friends in her past. She’s been brave when she should have been careful.
But she must be brave now—and careful. And she refuses to abandon another of her friends.
This isn’t foolishness; this is necessary. If I walk out of here like the red-eyed doctor told me to, I would know that Aryl and Kirin died because I didn’t care enough to save their lives. I would return to the slums as a coward. I would live with the weight of their deaths upon my shoulders forever. Aryl and Kirin deserve to live. They deserve to walk to the slums at my side.
Cintha needs to do this.
Brandishing a needle filled with nightmare serum to her chest, Cintha moves down busy hallways of murderers in masks, doctors who don’t know they’re going to die too, and bewildered patients who are being led to rooms where they will meet their end with a sip from a vial of clear, unassuming liquid.
One tiny window after another passes Cintha’s masked face. She has to stop twice to double-check a room, as it is somewhat a challenge to peer through the oddly-placed eyeholes. Every breath reeks of the blood that’s smeared within the mask.
One breath at a time. She inhales. She exhales. One at a time.
Cintha is strangely calm when she sees Aryl through the tiny window of an exam room. A doctor and another masked man stands near her friend, the doctor with a clipboard, the masked man with a gun. Aryl is studying them dubiously with the clear vial in her hand. She has already changed into the gown.
Cintha can’t believe her luck. I’m not too late.
She enters the room like she has every business to be there, shutting the door quickly at her back. The masked man and the doctor look at her, the doctor frowning in annoyance. Aryl stares at her too with a mistrustful glint in her eye.
From behind the mask, muffled, Cintha talks at the masked man or woman. “You,” she grunts. “You’re dismissed. Head for the lift at the end of the hall. No questions.” She pushes her voice to its deepest register, channeling a play she performed two years ago in school when she portrayed the role of a past King of Atlas. I am an actor. I am a killer. I am a King. There are small people in this world who will amount to nothing—and there are some who will save it.
“We haven’t completed the procedure,” says the doctor tersely, a woman with a tight bun for hair.
The other masked man is silent, so Cintha turns to him. “To the lift with you,” she grunts. When the man doesn’t move at all, Cintha deepens her voice even more. “Did you not hear me the first time? I will watch over this procedure and see it through. Out.”
The masked man tilts his head. And though his whole face is covered, there is a hard, challenging gleam in his eye. “Tell me your unit number,” he mutters.
Cintha stands her ground. “Why?” she spits back. “Did I not just give you the order?”
“If I don’t know what it is, I’ll have nothing to tell Greymyn,” he explains, and though his tone is patient, it stinks of suspicion.
Cintha is quiet. She has to make a quick reckoning in her head. Can this masked man be silenced? Can all their lives be saved?
When the man suddenly lifts his hands and casts sharp, razor-thin wires from them, Cintha has her answer.
She grabs her gun, ready to fire at him, but his wires wrap tightly around her left thigh, digging deep into it, and then she’s toppled to the ground and being dragged toward him.
Cintha lifts her hands with a shout as the wire-handed man pulls, yanking her across the room. The wires cut deep, and for a moment, Cintha feels like her whole leg has come off. She tries to grab the wires to stop them, but they cut into her fingers, drawing blood right away. The man casts another wire toward her hand, which she deflects by twisting her elbow at it.
She lifts the gun again and aims it at his face, but he gives the wires protruding from his palms another deft yank, sliding Cintha directly under his foot. The dark blood from her thigh has smeared along the tile, creating a path from where she stood a second ago. He presses his boot into her chest as she wrestles with her gun to try and get a bullet into him. When she manages to get it aimed once again, the masked man is quicker, looping wires around the gun and pulling in an attempt to disarm her.
The loops of his wire leap forth, floating.
Cintha seizes an opportunity.
Against her instinct, she lifts her bloodied thigh, around which his wires are still wrapped, and causes the man to lurch forward. In one swift maneuver, Cintha tosses the loop he’d made right around his neck and pulls tight. A horrible gurgling sound issues from his mask, which hovers above her now as she clings to the sharp, deadly wires, pulling them tight and strangling the man in a razor-sharp trap of his own making. Cintha’s hands bleed and sting and hurt, but she holds her grip, pulling
and pulling and pulling and pulling.
The gurgling from the mask and the bloodied throat stops.
When Cintha loosens her grip, the man tumbles lifelessly to the floor beside her.
On the cold tile, all of the pain finally registers in one wave of sharp, body-crippling agony. Her thigh. Her hands. Somewhere near her neck. Gashes along her arm. Cintha screams out from behind her mask, then rips it off and slaps both hands to her thigh.
“Cintha!” shouts Aryl in recognition at last, rushing up to her.
The doctor doesn’t seem to know at all what to make of the gruesome scene before her. Perhaps she is reacting not only to the blood, but also to Cintha’s face, which was already painted in blood from the inside of that grotesque mask.
Cintha silences herself by clenching shut her lips and breathing deeply through flared nostrils. Behind her closed eyes, she whispers, “Aryl, don’t drink the vial. It’s deadly.”
“I didn’t,” returns Aryl. “Cintha. Let go of your leg. I need to get these—oh, they’re so deep—these wires …”
But Cintha needs to secure their escape. The doctor here can help them. Ignoring the searing pain in her leg, Cintha lifts her face to the doctor. “Listen to me. You have been deceived,” she tells her through a pained voice. “You and the masked men are not on the same side. They are using you to get rid of all evidence, including the patients and all the serums and the research. Once you’ve served your purpose, they will get rid of you too. I’ve seen it.”
The doctor doesn’t move at all, staring blankly. Cintha isn’t sure she heard her.
“We need your help,” Cintha begs, pressing on. “We need to disguise our escape and get out of here. There’s two masks here and three of us, so we need to figure it out. I have an idea. Where were you instructed to take the bodies once they’ve swallowed the vial and … died?”
The doctor seems to stammer and splutter stupidly twenty-eight times before finally producing a word. “They are covered with white tarp and rolled down the hall to the Incinerator Unit.”
Cintha glances at the other table in the room and for the first time sees the old man upon its cold surface. Kirin, she realizes with a start. I’m too late for him. A pang chases through her body at the sight, and she thinks on his words to her, long ago. ‘We grow up feeling like our lives are going to amount to a great and wonderful thing … that we will accomplish the impossible and … save the world.’
Aryl holds hands to Cintha’s thigh in an attempt to suppress the bleeding. “The wires are too deep, Cintha.”
“I came back for you and Kirin,” says Cintha. “I may be too late for Kirin, but not for you.”
“We’ll leave together. You and I.”
“Yes,” she agrees. The pain in her leg is ringing and throbbing with her every heartbeat, yet she bares her teeth and tries to look brave in front of the girl. “We will leave together.”
The next instant, the doctor kicks over the dead body of the man, wires still wrapped about his throat. She pulls the mask off his face and fixes it over her own, then makes for the door.
“Wait!” calls out Aryl. “You need to help my friend! Please!”
The doctor grunts at them from behind the mask, then says in muffled words, “You’re surrounded by medicine and doctor’s tools. Help her yourself.”
The door shuts at her back. The doctor’s gone.
Aryl panics at once. “What do we do??”
“Calm,” Cintha tries to reassure her. “Look for bandages. Some sort of dressing. Something to apply pressure. And something to cut these wires with. Clippers. Anything. Quick.”
Aryl dashes to the cabinets, tearing them open and rummaging through the items. She returns with a tool and three rolls of soft white linen, then goes to work clipping the wires and wrapping Cintha’s thigh. The white linens quickly darken with Cintha’s blood.
“It’s not good bandaging,” complains Aryl.
“It’ll have to do.” Cintha is thinking fast. They only have one mask between them now, since the selfish doctor took off with the other. “Aryl, get on the rolling table. I’m going to cover you with a tarp and roll you out of here, as if you’re a body I’m disposing of. I’ll wear the mask.”
“But you can’t walk! Cintha, you get on the table and be the body. I’ll wear the mask.”
Cintha winces at a sudden cramp. Her thigh is tingling and cold suddenly. “No, Aryl,” she wheezes. It’s too dangerous.
And Aryl is too stubborn. “Yes,” she spits back. The girl supports Cintha by her shoulder, lifting her off the ground. It is a struggle, but Cintha pushes her weight on her good leg. She groans with agony at the fiery pain in her thigh. “Get on the table. They can come in at any moment. We have to hurry.”
After barely trying any weight on her wounded leg, Cintha is quick to accept Aryl’s plan, slipping onto the rolling table herself with a grunt and a long moan of pain. Aryl fetches one of the tarps and throws it over Cintha’s body.
“Be silent,” whispers Aryl before pulling the mask over her own small face. Then she casts the rest of the tarp over Cintha’s, turning her whole world white.
Cintha feels the table move easily as Aryl directs it to the door. A door opens. Cintha moves again. Then there is the noise of people in the hall. Beneath the tarp, Cintha winces and bares her teeth, yet keeps her body perfectly still. It is the worst agony, to have such pain in one’s body, and yet not being allowed to move a muscle to grant a speck of comfort to one’s pain.
She takes a sharp turn. Cintha grunts, her weight jostled by the sudden shift in direction. The world keeps rolling beneath her.
Her head is reeling. Everything is dizzy. Keep awake, Cintha.
There is a door that opens. Then when it shuts, the noise of the hallway vanishes. The table comes to a stop.
Cintha blinks, waiting for her friend’s voice. When it doesn’t come, she whispers, “Aryl?”
“Quiet,” her friend returns in a hushed whisper. “We have to make a different plan.”
“There is no other way out. The lift at the end of the hall, Aryl. We have to get to the—”
“They’re scanning eyes,” Aryl explains in a hush. “I saw it. They must know that other men in the masks have died. Or maybe the doctor betrayed us. If they scan my eyes, we’ll both be found out.”
Cintha clenches shut her eyes, cursing to herself. We must hide until the masked men are gone. We must hide and survive.
“Find us somewhere to hide, Aryl. We need to hide in a secure place until there’s a clearing that we can use to—”
“I know,” she breathes back. “That’s why I stopped here. There’s a vault or something. And this room looks like it’s been cleared out, so they’re not likely to be back.”
“Can you open it?”
Cintha listens to the noise of Aryl messing with something. She hears metal tapping. She hears a few digital beeps. Then there is a sigh. “I don’t know. I need a key or something.”
Of course. Keys and unit numbers. Then the idea hits Cintha. “The mask. Look at the mask. Take it off and look at it.”
She listens to a shuffle from her friend. She shifts her weight. There is a soft beeping sound, and then a click. “It opened! The inside of the mask made the thingy light up! It opened the vault! Oh. But it’s cold inside there. It’s very cold.”
“Can we hide in it?”
Cintha’s question is answered as Aryl pulls the rolling table. The wave of cold air rushes over Cintha and reminds her instantly of the feeling she used to get when she went to the basement of the Noodle Shop to feed Kendil, the Weapon of Sanctum, when he was prisoner of Rain. That feels like ages ago …
The heavy sound of a door shutting causes Cintha to flinch. Her teeth are already clattering. “Where … W-W-Where are we?”
Aryl pulls the tarp from Cintha’s face. “Blue,” she murmurs with wide eyes.
Cintha clings to the tarp, holding it like a blanket as she looks up at Aryl. “It’s fucking col
d in here.”
“Big Blue,” the girl says. “I found it. I found Big Blue.”
When Aryl’s eyes move to something across the room, Cintha turns her head. The room they are in is large and stark, all its walls made of a bluish metal lit by four sputtering lights, and the air is frigid. Cintha wonders if it is a cold store room to preserve food and medicine, like an enormous freezer or refrigerator. There are large crates all around its perimeter and one table in its center. It’s toward that center table that Aryl is completely transfixed.
“What is it?” whispers Cintha, her breath coming out in a misty cloud before her face.
“Big Blue,” Aryl answers. “The very cold thing I have seen.” She leaves Cintha’s side and, with her arms folded tightly over her body, approaches the table in the center of the room. She comes to a stop at its foot, staring at whatever is atop it. “Well. Maybe not.”
Cintha can’t stop shivering. She feels like she could pass out at any second, her consciousness drifting in and out, as if taunting her. Keep awake. Keep alive. Keep aware.
“Subject Meta,” mutters Aryl.
Cintha lifts her eyes. The red-eyed doctor told her about that. Meta. Cintha manages to sit up and gently slip off the table and onto her good leg. Carefully, she limps across the floor, coming up to Aryl, who issues a word of protest at her having gotten up, but the protest is ignored as Cintha looks down upon the table.
There’s a frozen woman lying there. A grey label pressed into the table next to her head reads: Subject Meta.
Cintha leans against the table, the ache in her thigh so dull and numbed by the cold, she hardly feels it. “This is the Meta …”
Aryl lifts an eyebrow. “The what?”
Cintha’s eyes draw down the length of the woman’s body. She notices that there’s a piece missing: her hand. Why does she not have one of her hands? Was it removed to study from it?
Aryl takes another step closer, then gasps. “Cintha!”
“What?”
“She’s red suddenly!”
