Disruptor

by Arwen Elys Dayton

  His eyes looked desperately into hers, wanting to believe. She put her hands on his cheeks and kissed him. She was in the grip of adrenaline and hardly aware of his warm lips against hers, of his arms trying to pull her closer, but she could be Quilla for a moment, if it brought him back to her. When she felt him relax against her, she pulled away.

  “Dex,” she whispered, leaning her forehead against his, “take me where the athame went.”

  He nodded against her head. Holding him close to her, Quin untied the focal from his neck and put it on her own head.

  With his hand clamped in hers, she said, “Let’s go.”

  It was happening. Shinobu was taking Maggie and half the Watchers—all armed, all in focals—into the space between. Maggie had ordered him to lead them to the Middle Dread’s secret place, where he kept his weapons. She had a medallion to convince the Watchers to follow her, but she was using Shinobu’s fighting skill to ensure their obedience.

  Shinobu was doing as she’d ordered because he didn’t have a choice. Maggie had allowed him his whipsword, but she held his controller tightly. At the first sign of disobedience, she could turn him into putty at her feet.

  He’d been free of the focal for a time, but now he was chained to it again. The crackle of its electricity encircled Shinobu’s ears, his head; he felt the buzz of its energy leaking into his thoughts and changing him.

  He hated Maggie.

  He followed Maggie.

  He was not a killer.

  He was a killer.

  He couldn’t keep track of which side of his mind was the true Shinobu. But there was one thought that stayed clear—he had left Quin by the Middle Dread’s weapons. With every step, he was leading Maggie directly to her.

  Shinobu counted the paces and watched Maggie. If she showed the slightest hint of distraction, he would attack. And no matter what happened, when they found Quin, he would attack. He would not let any of them hurt Quin.

  He turned right for the final line of paces. Next to him, Maggie switched the controller from one hand to the other, her thumb hovering above the button all the while. Behind him, the Watchers turned to follow.

  After a few dozen steps, their flashlights picked up the shapes of disruptors, glinting dully in a long line. They had reached the Middle Dread’s cache.

  This was where he’d left Quin.

  This was where he would turn and fight for her. He clenched his fists, braced himself.

  But Quin wasn’t here.

  As the Watchers fell on the disruptors like a pack of jackals, Shinobu walked in a circle, looking for her. He’d left her just here, near the row of disruptors, hadn’t he? She had clung to his shirt, asked him not to go. They’d been standing exactly where he stood now.

  And Quin wasn’t here.

  He discreetly shone his light into the blackness, pointing it this way and that, but no silhouette appeared. Quin was not nearby.

  Shinobu had been holding his breath. Now he fell to his knees in relief.

  At once the focal altered the relief into something else. Had he left her here? Had they even come here together? Had he imagined everything? And if it wasn’t imagination, then where was she? Had someone else taken her?

  “What’s the matter with you?” Maggie asked him, turning from the Watchers to look at Shinobu.

  “Nothing, nothing.” He got back to his feet.

  The boys were strapping the weapons to their chests. Shinobu’s gratitude was so great, and his confusion so deep, that it took him some time to understand the horror of eleven Watchers armed with disruptors. He had very deliberately left those disruptors here when he took the boys back into the world.

  “Good,” Maggie said when the weapons were situated. “Now you will search every inch of this place until we’ve found the ones we need to find.”

  Shinobu knew that the Middle Dread had trained his Watchers to scour the hidden dimensions, to search for him if he was ever lost. They’d been taught how to walk in a pattern, which would allow them, as a group, to cover all of the space between. Maggie was putting the Watchers through that same pattern, not to look for the Middle Dread but to find the Seekers she didn’t like, Seekers who’d been left by the Middle to be forgotten.

  She nudged Shinobu forward, and he walked into the darkness, his flashlight shining, the Watchers and his mistress Maggie just behind him.

  Quin ran down the new anomaly tunnel ahead of Dex. He was not bringing them through the world this time, but through no-space itself, because that was where Shinobu had gone. There were no streaks of gray on the sides of this black tunnel. Instead there was a different sensation of motion, as if they were in an underwater vessel, piloting through dark waters.

  Quin wore Dex’s focal—not needed in the anomaly tunnel, but needed quite desperately in no-space itself—and she felt its hum blending with her own thoughts as its electricity crawled across the skin of her forehead and through her hair.

  “We’ve gone too far,” she said to Dex. “Shouldn’t we have seen him already? We were just behind them!”

  “I do see him,” Dex told her quietly.

  He was looking ahead, his eyes so much more sensitive to light than hers would ever be.

  “Where?” She fell back to walk beside him.

  “We’ve been following them for a while. They can’t see us yet. Our tunnel keeps a piece of the world along with a piece of no-space, so we’re not fully where they are yet.”

  She peered into the blackness but saw nothing. “Are you sure?”

  “They’ve found the disruptors.” He shivered at the word. “Those boys, using those weapons. An unholy combination. The sort of thing Matheus would love. Can you see now?”

  He made a minute adjustment to his medallion, and Quin began to see flickers of light ahead. The flickers became more steady, grew brighter. Dex was altering the tunnel, letting it combine itself into no-space.

  By degrees she began to discern the shapes of the Watchers, in a group ahead of her. A dozen flashlights shone, and as the lights grew brighter, their bodies became dark and shifting silhouettes. She was moving toward them.

  “Wait,” Dex said.

  She turned to find him far behind her. He hadn’t followed her when the tunnel changed.

  “How will you fight them if you have to fight?” he asked her.

  “With you.” She jogged back to him. “I can’t do it alone. Of course I need you.”

  Dex backed away as she approached. She could see his tunnel, distinct from the space she was in, with him retreating slowly down it.

  “She’s there,” he called back to her. “I’m not ready.”

  “Dex, please!” Quin took a few steps toward him, but she didn’t want to be drawn with him back to the world; she might never convince him to find Shinobu again. Now that she was here, she had to stay.

  “Come with me now and we’ll try again later,” he told her, still walking backward. “I’m useful when I’m myself. I’ll help you later.” His shoulders were hunched and he wore the inward look of fear that meant a fit of insanity was coming on.

  “Dex, without you I have no way to get back into the world when I find him!” Quin knew yelling at him would do nothing, and yet she couldn’t stop herself. He had said he would help.

  “He has an athame,” Dex pointed out as he continued to retreat. He would not meet her eyes. “You can use his athame, if you insist on going. Or come back with me.”

  She was too dumbfounded to say anything else. In another few steps, Dex turned around, and as soon as he did, he was far away, hard for her to see.

  Quin bit back her fury because there was no time for it. She was in the focal, she had to make use of it, and quickly. She brought her mind back to the task at hand—Shinobu. He was here, and she would find him. As soon as she focused, she felt her own energy joined to the helmet’s. Beyond the focal was the sense of the infinite, a lake of timelessness waiting to enfold her if she would only give it the chance.

  She dr
ew out the impellor, which she’d taken from Dex without his knowledge on their journey to Dun Tarm. With the ease of long practice, she prepared it to fire. She could do this, even without Dex’s help.

  Far ahead were the Watchers with their flashlights. The air in no-space swallowed light, made distance impossible to judge. She moved silently toward them for a very long time. She couldn’t have said how far she walked nor how much time she’d spent in the interim tunnel with Dex. The focal kept her thoughts steady, but still the weight of infinity played with her sense of time.

  She knew by the terrible smell that she was finally getting close. When she caught up with them, they stood in a group around the old woman. There were so many. More than the eleven she’d seen. Or was she seeing other figures beyond the Watchers?

  She searched their silhouettes for the one that would be familiar. There. Shinobu was there. When she saw him, she lifted the impellor, felt the already heavy air become heavier, and fired.

  “Check their wrists,” Maggie ordered Shinobu.

  They’d come upon a group of people, frozen in the darkness. There were men and women and one child. They were grouped together, but their body positions told of separate histories leading each of them to this place. Some were grievously injured and clutching their wounds; others looked as if they were mid-conversation, or mid-plea. The child had been crying when he froze here, and a tear was still balanced on the swell of his cheek.

  Oh, God, she’s going to kill them. The focal twisted this to: It’s good to kill. You’re a killer, aren’t you? Shinobu knocked a fist against the helmet to make that thought leave.

  “What are you doing?” Maggie asked him. “Check their wrists.”

  Shinobu pulled up the sleeves of the first man’s shirt, revealing an athame scar on the left wrist and a scar in the shape of a fox on the right. His breath came out in a sigh of relief. Though Shinobu didn’t have a brand of his own house, Seekers of previous generations had usually marked themselves in this way.

  “Fox,” he told Maggie. She liked foxes; he knew that much.

  “And the rest?” she asked.

  Shinobu checked another and another and found the same set of brands on each. He allowed himself to touch the shoulder of the frozen little boy and give it a little squeeze. The boy would be all right.

  “All foxes,” he told Maggie.

  “I might know them, then,” she whispered as she studied a woman’s face in the beam of her flashlight. She examined their injuries, shook her head in bewilderment. “Why would he damage foxes?” she muttered, addressing the question to no one but herself. “Someone else must have done this. Maybe he brought them here to save them from death.”

  Shinobu was fairly certain Maggie was speaking about the Middle Dread, but he doubted that the Middle had brought anyone here for altruistic reasons. She was speaking of the Middle with unexpected familiarity. Surely that was an important piece of information, but he was unable to keep it in his mind long enough to figure out what it meant. The focal was carrying his thoughts back to Quin, again and again. Had she been here with him? Had she tricked him? Had he left her, or had she left him?

  The Watchers were gazing at Maggie’s lined face intently, their knives in their hands, ready for her order. Shinobu could feel their eagerness to do violence.

  You like violence too, half of his mind told him. He looked at the frozen Seekers and shook his head. Not against them.

  “Not these Seekers,” Maggie said to the boys, her voice quivering with emotion. “No one touches these. We will come back and take them away, carefully, when we’re done. Pass by.”

  —

  Hundreds of paces later, they came to another band of Seekers. This was a younger group, with more children and teens. The oldest was a man with an impressive silver beard and shock of gray hair. Shinobu had the vague sense he’d seen an image of the man before, perhaps in an old box of photographs on the Scottish estate.

  What are the chances she spares this group as well?

  Why should she? Sometimes you have to hurt people.

  You don’t.

  You’ll like it.

  I won’t.

  “Look at their wrists, Shinobu.”

  He stepped closer to the gray-haired man, moving as slowly as he could reasonably go without angering Maggie. As he reached for the man’s sleeve, he experienced a sense of dread so great it exceeded even his dread of Maggie paralyzing him. He would not like what he found here; he knew that already.

  “Shinobu?” Maggie queried.

  Shinobu folded up the man’s sleeve. There on his rigid forearm was the symbol Shinobu had guessed he would see: a ram. Quin was a ram. These were her ancestors.

  “Well?” Maggie pressed.

  He stalled by checking the wrists of the other adults. All rams. He looked over the many young faces.

  “What are they?” she asked.

  Shinobu turned to her. The Watchers stood ready in a loose cluster around their mistress. Could he fight off all of them? The immobilized Seekers behind him were lost in time, but given half a chance in the world outside, their hearts would beat again, their lungs would breathe, they would live. His whipsword was inches from his hand, ready to be pulled.

  He would make his stand here.

  “Why?” he asked.

  Maggie strode forward and angrily lifted the gray-haired man’s sleeve. She saw the ram scar.

  “It’s not your family,” she said. “Why do you care?”

  Shinobu made a last attempt at reason. “You could take them back to the world. Question them—”

  “Hesitation only makes it worse.” She spoke in her most grandmotherly voice, which was so inappropriate to her subject that Shinobu’s stomach turned. She fixed her gaze on the Watchers. “Your master created you to get rid of those he needed gone,” she said, her words soft and trembling. “I imagine you’ve been waiting a long time to do it.” She gestured at the Seekers, and as she did, Shinobu read bloodlust on the face of every boy. Maggie ordered, “Make an end to them.”

  In a mass, the boys lurched forward, weapons out. Shinobu’s mind emptied of everything but one clear thought. He cracked out his whipsword and leapt in front of Quin’s ancestors. The Watchers would kill him too, eventually, but that was all right. He would fight them as long as he could.

  Just kill the Seekers, half his mind told him. You’ll enjoy it.

  Shut up!

  Before their weapons clashed, Shinobu received a tremendous blow to the chest. The air was knocked from his lungs and he flew backward. The Watchers were flying too, in a mess of whipswords and limbs. He collided with the frozen Seekers behind him, felt them topple. Maggie too had been knocked off her feet. All of their flashlights were tumbling, turning Shinobu’s fall into a silent film of disjointed flashes.

  Then someone was there, helping him up. Hands gripped his shirtfront, his arms.

  “I’ve got you,” a voice whispered into his ear. “I’ve got you.” He stumbled to his feet as his abductor pulled him along.

  Not daring to believe what he’d heard, Shinobu whispered, “Quin, is it you?”

  “It’s me,” Quin told him, hooking an arm through one of his and dragging him along with her. “I’ve got you. But can you walk faster?”

  They were away from the Watchers and the old woman, but she wanted to be out of sight and out of earshot before she used the athame, so that no one could follow.

  Shinobu found his footing, grabbed her arms, and forced her to stop.

  “Wait.”

  The lights were far away, which made it difficult to see him, but she could make out his familiar face, looking at her in disbelief. He drew her to him, crushed her into his chest, kissed her cheeks and her lips and her forehead desperately.

  “I left you, I left you.”

  She said, “I’m a bit angry about that, but we’ll have to fight later—”

  “It’s the focal. I thought I was saving you. I’m wearing it again—”

&nb
sp; “It doesn’t matter right now—”

  “We have to go back.”

  “We’re going back. You have an athame.” She reached for the pocket of his cloak.

  “No,” he said, clearly struggling with competing thoughts. His face was anguished and desperate. “We have to go back for the Seekers. She’s here to kill them.”

  Quin looked toward the mess of flashlights in the distance. The Watchers were getting to their feet, retrieving their fallen weapons.

  “We can stop her,” he told her urgently. “They’re ram Seekers, your own ancestors.”

  It took Quin a moment to grasp what he was telling her. Then she understood: the other figures she’d seen beyond the Watchers, they were Seekers who’d lost themselves here.

  Shinobu had taken hold of her arm and was pulling her back toward the boys. She ran with him.

  When they got close, the Watchers were still regrouping, gathering their flashlights, cracking out their whipswords. The frozen Seekers lay scattered about the ground. Quin saw young faces, frozen in time, helpless. Maggie was ordering the boys to close in. In a ragged group, the boys advanced.

  Shinobu screamed next to Quin, trying to call the Watchers’ attention away from their victims. Several of the boys turned. Shinobu cracked out his whipsword and leapt at them.

  Quin shook the impellor, twisted it to full power, and fired. The closest Watcher fell to his knees, but no one else was affected. She fired again, and this time nothing at all happened. Panicked, Quin cracked out her whipsword and engaged, killing one of the Watchers before he could even swing at her. Others were coming. She and Shinobu were distracting them from their Seeker victims—

  Beside her, Shinobu collapsed like a marionette whose strings had been cut. More Watchers came at Quin, and she tried to draw them away from Shinobu too. Except she was not drawing them; someone was drawing her. She was farther from the boys than she should have been. Her whipsword could no longer reach them. They were looking for her as though they couldn’t see her. And they were below her now; she’d floated upward in the darkness.