by J. C. Staudt
Jinks and Mellobar donned their masks and added their fire to Peymer’s. The gangers darted from barricade to barricade, sprinting across rooftops and ducking behind debris. They were outgunned now, but their saws and clubs and cleavers would be more than a match for the Revenants if they got close.
One of the captured gangers bent his legs and plunged his feet into Mellobar’s knee. Merrick heard the snap from several fathoms away. Mellobar cried out and collapsed, dropping his weapon. Another captured ganger reached out to take it, his fingers scrabbling over the stock.
Merrick raced over and snatched away the coilgun just before the ganger could get a grip on it. He kept his distance from the prisoners and examined the weapon. He was no stranger to firearms, but the coilguns were unlike any he had operated before.
Thick and front-heavy, the weapon’s receiver and foregrip were smooth black boxes of fiberglass and metal. Reflective blue panels ran along either side of the sight rail. These, Caliber had told him, absorbed the light-star’s energy and stored it in the weapon’s power cells.
Power cells, Merrick remembered. Caliber had warned him about the risk of electrical shock if any of the coilgun’s internal components became exposed while the weapon was powered on. I’ll get more use out of it right now by leaving the batteries full, Merrick decided.
Peymer and Jinks were having trouble holding off the gangers. Merrick raised the coilgun and began to fire down the wide alley, snapping off shots at everything that moved. The weapon wasn’t as accurate as his old rifle, but it was lighter and simpler to use. There was no recoil when he pulled the trigger; no deafening ballistics explosion. Just the ping of the heavy ball bearing as it zipped through the muzzle at thousands of feet per second, followed by the rapid rising pitch of the capacitors as they charged up for the next shot.
If he pulled the trigger too fast, the subsequent shots seemed weaker, so he fell into a rhythm, using the half second or so between charges to draw a bead on his targets. He tagged ganger after ganger, smiling that for once there was no ammunition inventory to worry about. Fighting beside the Revs was a surreal experience—perhaps because his contact buzz from the zoom hadn’t quite worn off yet.
Merrick put a round through a ganger’s thigh and sent him sprawling to the pavement before he could duck behind a stack of plastic bins. Despite his solid marksmanship, he and his three cohorts would be in trouble soon if the other Revs didn’t emerge from the den to help them. The gangers’ aggressive advance unsettled him, given that most gangers were afraid of the Gray Revenants. This gang appeared desperate, either to free its captives or to save its zoom lab. The incomes from labs like this formed the economic backbone that allowed many souther gangs to survive, Merrick knew.
One of the bound gangers managed to climb to his feet, and began hopping toward his friends. Merrick rushed forward and slammed a shoulder into the man’s back to knock him down. He found himself standing among the captives, and they wasted no time flailing about to try and knock him off his feet. He suffered only a few glancing blows to the legs before he was able to escape their midst, but the damage had been done. Those few precious seconds of distraction had given the advancing gangers the time they needed.
Next he knew, they were dropping off the retaining wall and landing all around him. He backed away firing, but found it hard to space out his trigger pulls so the weapon could recharge. A makeshift hatchet swung in and planted itself in the coilgun’s handguard, half an inch from Merrick’s fingers. The force of it almost tore the weapon from his hands, but he held on and fell back as the gangers rushed in.
Before he could fire another shot, there was a hissing sound from within the coilgun. A thin, pressurized stream of smoke shot from the hatchet gash. An instant later, the side of the gun melted away in a rush of flame, soaking Merrick’s hands and face in a thick, sopping tar. He heard his own scream as if it came from elsewhere. Dropping the weapon, he scrubbed at his face and hands to wipe away the boiling putty, but it stuck to everything he touched in stringy chemical globs.
The gangers were on him, striking him with blade and bludgeon to drive him to the ground, still screaming. I’ll heal, he told himself. I’ll heal just as soon as they stop. This isn’t the end. I won’t die. I can’t die.
Can I?
The pain was so intense Merrick could think of nothing else until he heard the Unimart’s rear door scrape open. The gangers dispersed like cockroaches in the daylight, leaving him to groan over his wounds. He could hear the click-zip of a dozen coilguns, see the projectiles chasing the gangers away, bouncing off the asphalt, burying themselves in flesh.
The Revs crowded around Merrick to subdue the gangers left behind and cull the ones near death. Here was his deliverance; the superior numbers sufficient to break their enemies’ resolve. Merrick could feel the gift’s heat rising in his chest as they hauled him up and retreated toward the fire station with their prizes in tow.
A burning smell was in his nostrils, and Merrick did not delude himself about what it was or where it was coming from. It was skin and hair and flesh; his skin and hair and flesh. When he looked down, his hands were already whole again, the scar tissue twisting like worms across his knuckles. Surely these were burns from some long-ago accident, and not the one he’d experienced just now.
After a few blocks, the air took on the tinge of a different sort of burning. Merrick saw distant flames rising from the Unimart’s windows, licking its plywood boards with black tongues. Amid the smells of charred wood and scorched brick lay the faint purple stench of zoom.
The Revenants didn’t stop at the fire station. They continued on into the blue city morning until they came to the Ministerial History Museum, the faction’s current headquarters. Hidden watchers atop the building’s roof gave bird calls to herald their arrival. A columned entrance of rain-eaten limestone ushered them into a grand lobby connected by corridors to its various exhibits. Shattered glass cases, toppled statues and empty mounting hooks adorned the spray-painted hallways, leavings of countless looters spanning decades of dereliction.
Merrick stopped at an empty display case from whose demolished panes only a few shards of glass remained. There he crouched to study his reflection in a single thin, grimy sliver. The burns had healed, same as his hands, but the face that remained was a less-than-pleasant sight. A great pink mass of scar tissue crawled from the top of his right cheekbone across his eye socket and forehead, mangling his hairline and right eyebrow, which would never grow back.
If people didn’t think I was a mutant before… he lamented. Merrick was beginning to feel as though he could’ve died a thousand times over. Physical pain was now more a trifle than a thing to fear—an inconvenience in an otherwise uncanny life.
Living against the odds felt like cheating, somehow. Anyone else might’ve taken it as a sign that they still had something left to accomplish; some destined purpose yet to fulfill. But Merrick didn’t believe in the fates. Not anymore. He didn’t believe destiny had a will of its own, or that certain things were meant to occur and others weren’t. Things just happened. Things just were. And since the moment I discovered it, this gift has been anything but what it portends to be.
Out of nowhere, the ganger who’d broken Mellobar’s knee grunted at Merrick and said, “Hey, porky. You stink like shate. What happened… you eat so much you shate yourself?”
Merrick didn’t dignify the question with a response.
The ganger didn’t let up. When he sneered, the piercings on his lips fanned out like a second row of teeth. “How long since you started goin’ mutie? I know all kind of muties who get by pullin’ stunts for the Ghosts. That how you get so fat? Selling us down for a warm meal?”
Rhetton struck the ganger on the head to shut him up.
A mounted sign greeted them at the entrance to the museum’s east wing. Forging a Path to the Future, it read, its shiny brass letters dark beneath broken overhead lighting. The exhibit was large, but it was impossible to tell what artif
acts it had once contained without reading the faded text on the plaques that still hung beneath the ransacked displays.
A few of the Revs corralled the gangers into another room while Peymer and the others brought Merrick and Mellobar to see Arbal the medic. It was dark and cool so deep inside the museum. Other Revs whom Merrick had never met before were standing around talking in small groups, taking a rest from the heat of the day.
When Arbal examined Mellobar’s leg, he found both the tibia and the fibula broken below the kneecap. “You won’t walk easy for a long time,” he said. “Probably won’t ever run like you used to.”
“Where’s that piece of shit who did this to me?” Mellobar said, flying into a rage. “I swear, I’ll hack his leg off at the knee for this, see how he likes it.”
It took Peymer and Oban a few minutes to calm Mellobar down and convince him the ganger would be worth more if they sold him to the nomads unharmed. Meanwhile, Peymer insisted that Merrick allow Arbal to examine his injuries. Merrick refused at first, but finally relented.
When Arbal had surveyed the scars on Merrick’s face, hands and chest, the medic sat back in a contemplative pose. “Those scars look like they’ve been there awhile,” he said, puzzled. “You sure you just got them today?”
“I’ve been trying to tell Peymer, they have been there awhile.”
Peymer wasn’t fooled this time. “Oh, no. No. Nope. That thing on your face… I heard you scream. I looked over, and you were burning. He was burning, Arbal. All on fire, face melting, hands melting. Power cell on his coilgun ruptured, spewed hot battery goop all over him. Saw it with my own eyes. Few minutes before that, a ganger got him with his spikes. Nails poking clear through those circles in his chest. Watched them close up in seconds. This one’s like some kind of sand-licker, only different.”
“Why don’t you let the man speak for himself?” Arbal suggested. “Are you being straight with us, Merrick?”
Merrick dug the toe of his boot into the cracked marble floor, trying to come up with a lie. There’s nothing I can say to get myself out of this one, he knew. He would have to tell them; he’d have to forget about finding notoriety without the crutch of his gift. There was no choice but to put his future in the hands of the only friends he had.
Although the Revs weren’t Merrick’s friends, exactly. More like the only southers who knew he’d been a Scarred man and hadn’t tried to kill him on principle. Even that wasn’t quite true; Merrick suspected the only reason Caliber and Leuk had spared his life at first was to get information about Wax. “I found out pretty recently that my mother was from a place called Decylum. I never knew her growing up. Turns out there’s something… different about the people who live there.”
Peymer was incredulous. “The zoom’s gone to your head, comrade. Decylum is no more. It died when the Ministry did.”
“That’s what everyone thinks. But it’s not true. They have people there who can… I don’t know… it’s like I can control the temperature inside me, and somehow… manipulate it.”
“And this just happened to you?” asked Arbal.
“It’s been with me since birth—or so I’m told. I only discovered it recently.”
“So anytime you get hurt, you just… get better?”
“I can cure people’s ailments with a touch, but only while I’m warm inside. It hurts, and it doesn’t last long. Saps every bit of energy I’ve got. The healing, too… it leaves scars behind. Worse than any normal scars I’ve seen. What happened today, though, that was new. It’s never happened that fast before.” Merrick realized he was getting tired, as if the mention alone had brought it about. The zoom high and the adrenaline of the fight were both wearing off, and his body had done enough self-healing to render him exhausted. The stimulants in the zoom, he wondered. Is that what’s kept me awake?
“A fitting trick for a former Scarred Comrade,” said Peymer.
“Scars are just reminders,” Merrick said. “In my case, they’re reminders of this curse I have to live with every day.”
Arbal disagreed. “This is an amazing boon you have, Merrick. A gift.”
Merrick grunted a scornful laugh. “A gift. That’s what the Decylumites call it, too. A gift that’s ruined my life. A gift that seems to have a will of its own—one I can barely control.”
“If you learned to control it, you could be a huge help to the Revenants,” said Arbal.
“If I knew how to do everything the Decylumites can do, I wouldn’t stop at the Revenants.”
“Your ability to heal could prove useful on its own. I could teach you a few things about medicine, if you’re interested.”
“Sorry, Doc. I’m no rear-line nurse. I’m a fighter. I belong in the front. It’s where I’ve always belonged.”
“You say these Decylumites have the same capabilities as you?”
“They can do things I can’t, and I can do things they can’t. They tell me none of them can heal like I can, though.”
“And they’re somewhere in Belmond?”
“Not the important ones. The dways who matter went to Sai Calgoar with the nomads. That’s why I climb the Armitage Building every day—to look out for them.”
“And when they return, what will you do?”
“Learn. If I can. Then I’ll carry on toward the dream Caliber and Leuk set in motion. A free city, from north to south. Open borders. Open trade. Peace and law and safety for every man and woman, aion and nomad alike.”
Away in the distance, quick footsteps echoed in the museum lobby. Soon they could hear the sounds of a disturbance down the corridor. Merrick stopped to listen, fearing the gangers had escaped, or that someone else was coming to take them unawares. That couldn’t be; the rooftop guards would’ve alerted Peymer to an intruder.
The Revs raised their coilguns and took up positions behind the wrecked display cases, waiting for whoever might come around the corner. When the distant commotion finally materialized into a trio of bodies, Merrick saw they were only Revs, gray-cloaked and masked. They were frantic, covered in blood and dragging the body of a screaming man behind them.
Merrick recognized the faces painted on their filtermasks at once; a hollow-eyed ghoul, an orange-bearded wind gargant, and a spike-toothed cotterphage. It was Swydiger, Cluspith, and Eldridge, the two brothers and their cousin. The one in the middle, covered in blood and screaming like a deldrake, was Cluspith.
“Arbal,” Swydiger yelled. “Arbal, we need you. Clus is… the rooftop gardens, they’re overrun. Gangers. We don’t know from where. They hit us before we knew what was happening. He’s hurt bad. Please, you’ve got to do something.”
Arbal crouched beside Cluspith as they laid him on one of the benches at the center of the room. When they peeled back the flaps of his jacket, Merrick couldn’t believe the carnage. Viscera, like pink, knotted roots, coiled, pulsing, in a lake of red. Arbal was in disbelief, shaking his head, unsure where to start. There is no place to start, Merrick thought. The others knew it too.
Cluspith had stopped screaming. He stared, unblinking, repeating himself over and over again. “Don’t stand in the daylight, Clus,” he said. “Don’t stand in the daylight. You’ll get burned. Don’t stand in the daylight. You’ll burn. Don’t stand…” He gave a wet belch. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. He was still trying to speak, trying to say the words that would make him forget.
Merrick put a hand behind Cluspith’s neck, resting the other on his clavicle, while Arbal tried to determine whether any of the dozen bleeding abrasions could be closed. Swydiger’s sweat-stained face was streaming with tears, his hand gripping Cluspith’s palm to palm, his mouth moving without words. Cluspith convulsed, spine stiffening.
Don’t fail me now, Merrick pleaded silently, waiting for the heat to come. But the heat was fading, and the sweet taste of his drug-induced euphoria with it. Cluspith wasn’t talking anymore. He wasn’t breathing anymore. Just seizing up. Dying.
Somewhere in the chaos, Merrick was sure
he heard Peymer talking about him, or talking to him—urging him to do something.
“Hand me your coilgun,” Merrick said.
Peymer gave him a belligerent look. “I didn’t mean that. I meant use your thing. Heal him like you did yourself.”
Merrick stared at him. “Give me your gun.”
“He ain’t gonna die by your hand, comrade.”
“I’m not going to kill him, now give it here.”
Peymer hesitated, then handed him the gun. Merrick slid his fingers along the handguard until he found the latch. He removed the hard rubber grip to reveal the cavity beneath, where the power cells stood round and shiny within. The first cell came free with a gentle tug. Its metal prongs were shielded in a hard plastic sheath.
Merrick knew their supply of coilguns was finite, as were their batteries. Desperate times, he told himself, ripping off the plastic sheath to expose the bare metal. He heard Peymer try to warn him, but he was already licking his fingers and pinching them tight to the thin copper prongs. Electricity streaked up his arm and woke his heart like an alarm bell. The power cell was dead in seconds, but Merrick was alive.
A fire ignited inside him. He let the coilgun and the power cell drop, touching his fingers to Cluspith’s neck and chest once more. He became aware that everyone around had fallen silent. The Revs were huddled close, solemn and saddened, some unable to look at the man they assumed to be dead. Is he dead? Merrick wondered. Cluspith was not talking, not breathing, not moving.
The warmth began to flow outward. Merrick listened; felt for a heartbeat. His fingers lit up, growing hotter and hotter, but the body in his hands was cold.
Cluspith lay still. No. No, no, this can’t be failing. This can’t be… how can this not be working? I’m losing it. This was the one thing I had to fall back on, and now even this is gone. There would’ve been a certain measure of relief in the thought, but not while Cluspith lay dead in his hands.
