City of the Falling Sky

by Joseph Evans

  “What?” Eiya said quietly, her expression held firm.

  “It is believed that helitonium, in extremely concentrated conditions, can create matter,” Sanfarrow said. “I have never seen it happen, and neither has anyone since the twelfth century, I imagine. But it is chronicled. It is also chronicled that during the creation process, the object emits high levels of radiation, which is what would have caused that film footage to pick up a bright light.”

  “I was created that night?” Eiya said, to herself more than anyone. “I don’t understand.”

  “There was an unbelievably high concentration of helitonic particles amidst that mud in the cultivation unit. The worms, luckily, were eating up most of the toxic, modified ones that the Divinita machine was spewing out, that’s why the worms were there, to neutralise the toxicity. When Seckry arrived and started overturning all that mud, he was exposed to pure helitonium. Whatever was in his mind at that moment would have affected the particles around him. Whatever Seckry’s mind was looking for, whatever he wanted right then, whatever he needed, could have translated into the morphing and modelling of something just a little distance away from him.

  “Wait,” Seckry said, “I was looking for the worms at that moment. That’s what I wanted.”

  Sanfarrow smiled briefly. “Ostensibly, yes. But let’s not forget the power of the subconscious. Something inside of you, something a lot deeper than the want for those worms, wanted this girl right here.”

  Seckry’s face exploded with prickles of embarrassment.

  “You mean . . . I was created out of Seckry’s imagination?” said Eiya.

  “That’s right,” Sanfarrow replied. “Which is why you can speak fluent Unilan. Your vocabulary has been taken directly from Seckry’s own.”

  Eiya’s wide eyes met Seckry’s and she opened her mouth to speak a few times, but nothing came out.

  Seckry was trying to deny that he had been imagining anyone like Eiya when he was digging for those worms, but . . . it made sense. He hadn’t realised it at first, but from the moment he saw her he had begun to fall in love with her. Had she really been formed by his own desires?

  “There is one, very important thing that I have to tell you both before we continue discussing this,” Sanfarrow said, his voice suddenly grave. “The reason why Eiya showed up as invisible on the innoya detection device is because matter formed by helitonic particles doesn’t exist in the same way that everything else does.”

  Seckry and Eiya were both silent, waiting for Sanfarrow to continue.

  “It only exists temporarily,” he said. “It is constantly being fed life by its original source. If the helitonic power that created it is extinguished, then it will simply . . . dissipate.”

  Seckry’s body felt as though it suddenly weighed seven ton. “Wait a minute,” he said, swallowing hard. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m sorry,” Sanfarrow said, looking towards the ground. “But once Darklight has completely drained the innoya of their helitonium, Eiya will cease to exist.”

  Seckry’s mind wouldn’t accept what he was hearing.

  “Eiya’s not going anywhere,” he said. “We’re going to stop Darklight tonight. No one is going to kill the innoya.”

  Sanfarrow shook his head, defeated.

  “The extraction has already begun. Darklight will have opened up a wound in each of the innoya months ago and there is no way to heal it. Even if there were a way to destroy the Divinita machine, the innoya would still die. They have been reduced to a vegetated state. They are no longer conscious and they never will be again. The brain damage they will have suffered from Darklight’s extraction is irreversible and if Darklight doesn’t murder them with the Divinita machine, then they will die from their wounds.”

  Eiya was staring into space.

  “I’m sorry . . . I truly am,” Sanfarrow said quietly.

  The following hour for Seckry was like watching his own body from a distance. Nothing felt real anymore, nothing felt grounded. His mind couldn’t seem to comprehend all of the things that Sanfarrow had told them, and he didn’t know whether he was dreaming or awake.

  It was only when he closed the door behind himself in Sanfarrow’s makeshift bathroom that his legs gave way and he slumped down the wall, his eyes streaming hot tears uncontrollably.

  He didn’t know how long he was in there for but at some point he heard light footsteps outside and Eiya’s small, pink hand reached slowly out to him underneath the door.

  Seckry squeezed her index finger and smiled through his tears.

  When he eventually let himself out, Eiya wrapped her arms around him and squeezed him as tight as she could.

  “I’m scared, Seck,” she said, in barely more than a whisper. “I’m scared of never seeing you again.”

  Seckry swallowed the lump in his throat.

  “I’m gonna find a way to fix this,” he said, and he had never meant anything so much in all his life. He was going to do everything he could to save Eiya, even if it meant he would die trying.

  “We need to act tonight,” Seckry said determinedly, after another hour of discussing practicalities.

  Sanfarrow averted his gaze.

  “You know there’s no way–”

  “I don’t care what’s supposed to happen,” Seckry cut in. “I’m going to find a way to save those innoya. There has to be a way.”

  Sanfarrow seemed to debate something in his own head for a long time, before saying, “Look . . . the only thing that could even come close to being able to heal a wound like that is the blood of this special animal over in Phary.”

  “What?” Eiya asked desperately.

  “There’s no physical way we could get the stuff onto these shores in time, never mind into our hands. It’s impossible. And the samples haven't even had proper testing.” He paced around the room. “Across the Phary Ocean they have a species of gimmypug unheard of over here, the long eared gimmypug . . . It’s blood . . . It has very strong healing powers. I mean in theory, if some of that were to be injected into a wounded innoya . . . It’s not for certain, who knows? But it’s madness. There is no way of getting any of that blood. Only a few long eared gimmypugs still remain alive over there, and it would take weeks for the stuff to arrive here, even if they’d accept payment for it. Why are you looking at me like that?”

  Seckry and Eiya were both gaping at him like goldfish.

  “Would the blood of a cross breed between a short eared and a long eared gimmypug do?” said Seckry.

  “I . . . didn’t know a cross breed existed,” said Sanfarrow. “I would imagine some of the healing properties would have been carried through the DNA, yes.”

  Seckry didn’t even have time to appreciate the wave of hope that flooded his body right then.

  “We have to get back to Butterkins’ sanctuary,” he said to Eiya, and she nodded quickly.

  “There’s a cross breed? Here in the city?” Sanfarrow asked, fascinated.

  “Yeah,” Seckry said. “And when we get some of its blood, all we need to do is get inside the Divinita chamber. Jenniver said you had a key, right?”

  “Not exactly,” Sanfarrow said. “It’s still under construction.”

  “Under construction?” Eiya asked.

  “This is my key,” Sanfarrow said, and pointed towards the elevator he had come down in.

  Seckry and Eiya’s confused expressions prompted Sanfarrow to explain.

  “Do you know where we are, geographically?” he said.

  Seckry glanced all around him.

  “When you followed the tunnel to this place,” Sanfarrow continued, “did you notice the direction you were headed in?”

  “I guess we didn’t think about it,” Seckry said.

  “Well you were headed towards Endrin. And you found it.”

  “You mean–” Eiya said, pointing upwards.

  “Yes,” said Sanfarrow, “the Divinita chamber is directly above us.”

  “All this time that Dark
light has been looking for you, you were right beneath him,” Seckry said, shocked.

  “I had to be,” Sanfarrow said. “I knew I had to stop the Divinita Project myself and I knew the only way to access the chamber was from below. I just didn’t expect that the time to do it would be now. I thought maybe I had a few more months left before activation. From what you’ve told me, evidently I was wrong. But that leaves us with one huge problem. The passageway isn’t complete. You see, I installed the elevator recently to replace the makeshift ladder I had been using, but it still only travels halfway up to where we need to be. The rest is solid earth. It’ll take months to chip away. If we use explosives, the whole place might collapse. I don’t know how we’ll get rid of it.”

  “What if we had more people,” Seckry said. “Could we all hack away at it?”

  “There’s enough room up there for a team of about seven, I’d say. It certainly would speed the process up, but still there’d never be enough–”

  “What if one of those people had some kind of very powerfully charged glove that could crumble fragments of rock within seconds,” Seckry said.

  Sanfarrow raised his eyebrows. “Do you have somebody in mind?”

  Chapter Thirty Two

  The Power of the Glove