She hugged him. His big arms encircled her shoulders carefully, ever so carefully, as if she were made of Lucastan china or crystal, which he, the unnatural that he was, was careful not to break.
Then he handed her two items. The first was a round, wooden pendant, the rough wood smoothed by many hours of chiseling. Two entwined snakes biting their tales were engraved on it. Her father never made decorations. He only made furniture, bowls and plates, useful things. Meliora put the pendant on and looked aside, blinking quickly. It was beautiful.
The second item was the Book of the Gods that he'd given her earlier. She put it in her pocket.
She walked out of the door. The moon shone high and bright, though a part of it was eaten.
A few steps away stood Nicolas.
"I'd better tell him something, too. Wait here for a moment."
She waited. Then they went up the hill.
***
The glass keys fit into the locks. The door emitted a screeching sound.
Then, suddenly, an enormous barrel of a gun—a cannon—was sticking from where the locks had been. Nicolas grabbed her, shoved her, threw her to the ground, and rolled away with her towards the wall.
The cannon shot. It was so loud that her ears screamed. She was in so much pain that she could not move, could not shout, could not think.
A shove again. Nicolas was moving her somewhere else—how was he not dizzy like her? The ground was shaking. Really shaking, it wasn't only in her mind. The explosion had been strong. Her ears were bleeding, and so were Nic's.
He shoved her again, then he dragged her. He thought he could take her away, save her—he really did. She almost smiled.
Then she saw something. She still could not talk, but at least she could hold Nic's hand and signal for him to remain in one place. How long could you run from cannon balls, anyway?
The cannon was still shooting. It wasn't as loud any more. There weren't any cannon balls. It was shooting confetti and artificial flowers—like it had from the very start.
The door was opening.
Part III: City of Death
Train
They would pay for this. Meliora and Nicolas might not agree on much, but they agreed on this. Whoever had done this to them would pay.
They still got on the train waiting behind the door. Where else could they go? Oh, they could go back, perhaps. Perhaps even the cannon would still shoot confetti and flowers and not real cannon balls when they passed by it again. And then where would they go?
They exchanged a look. There was no need for words.
The train had only one wagon, but the seats were as soft and the pictures as bright and cheery as on any city train.
But they weren't advertisements. They were just...pictures. Beautiful city buildings stood side by side with village cottages that looked just a tiny bit off, as if made from different stones, different wood, different thatch for the roofs. There were trees, and deer between the trees, and ponds and a big river. There was something bigger, too—water, enormous water that seemed to have no end.
"The lake," Nicolas said. He'd been there a few times, hunting. He said there were more ducks and geese there than by the river.
Something screeched softly, the floor shook slightly, and the wheels started clattering. Mel leaned back, breathing more heavily than she wished. Her ears didn't bleed any more, but they hurt, and the motion was nauseating. She'd become unused to fast speeds.
Nicolas leaned back beside her. He didn't look well, either. One of his arms was bleeding after all the shoving and rolling he'd done. A moment. Just a moment to take another breath or two, and she'd check on him, patch him up. The seats had nice, soft and clean covers. They should do for bandages.
A medstat rolled towards them. It must be a newer model. It didn't look entirely familiar. It stopped a human step away from her and blinked.
It was waiting for permission.
"Only if you let me look into your computer," Meliora whispered. "And let me see what medicine you have brought."
The medstat obeyed. She waved it forward. The train rolled on as the medstat administered to them and she and Nic felt physically better than they must have felt in months—or years.
She fingered the snakes pendant hanging from her neck. Nic was typing madly on his computer.
"Got network," he said. "Not the interweb—but big. And I can't stop it. Neither can I read any of their feeds."
"Yet," she said. She grabbed his hand and squeezed until it hurt. "You just can't take it down yet."
He squeezed back.
***
The train stopped, and the doors opened. They climbed the stairs to the surface and heard the train take off down there in the tunnel. The air smelled of the lake, Nicolas said, and not just of that.
There were other trains out here. Instead of inside tunnels, they stood under the hissing wind and the glaring light of the sun. Trains with one wagon or many, trains on tracks and trains with their wheels sunk deep into the dirt and sand. Grass was growing beside them and under them, reaching up, hugging them, swallowing them. There was peeling paint, rusty metal, pieces of pictures peeking from inside broken walls. There were wagons piled on top of each other. Some were even partly in the water—in that endless water that she'd never seen before—as if reaching inside something clean and pure with crooked, dirty fingers, poisoning it.
Meliora realized that she hadn't let go of Nicolas' hand. She was squeezing it again, and he wasn't protesting.
There were hundreds of trains. Thousands, perhaps. They went on as far as eyes could see. Closest to Mel and Nic was the skeleton of a one-wagonner, with only shards of rust and ancient red paint denoting where the walls had once been. It still had some of its seats, though. Some were just skeletons of seats, but one seat kept a piece of cloth that must have been rained on a thousand times and taken scorching sunlight a thousand times more. It looked like something a fairytale dragon had chewed and spit out. It flapped in the wind, as if waving at them.
Nic's computer beeped. There was a message.
Welcome, children, to the City of Death, it said.
A moment later, what looked like an enormous bird made of metal landed quietly before them. A door opened, and a man beckoned them from the inside. This was enclosed air transportation. Something that flew much higher and faster than a bicycle. Mel remembered things like this, though they weren't even in the feeds. They were only in the wonderful experiences, under airtrain crash and bombing.
Silently, Meliora and Nicolas got in, and the airtrain took off. It flew for miles over broken trains, boats and four-wheeled contraptions that had once run on streets. It flew over piles of metal, glass, and plastic, whose purpose was no longer clear, whose shape had long ago been beaten out by rain and wind, bleached by the sun, broken by ice and snow.
There were many miles of debris. Once it ended, the buildings began. Windowless, empty-eyed towers made of stone and metal, the glass piled below them in shards so small and fine that it had almost become sand again. There were even buildings made entirely of glass, which nature hadn't been able to shatter despite its best efforts—glass marred by bird droppings and the sand and dirt the winds had been shoving at it—for how long?
"Centuries," the pilot said. This was the first word he'd spoken to them. "And no need to panic. We don't read minds—yet. Not in the way you must be thinking."
"Oh, but you do read minds." Meliora shifted her eyes away from the view and fixed them on Nicolas' computer. It was more important than a city that was already broken. Besides, they wanted her and Nicolas to look at the city. They must have a purpose for flaunting something that could take your breath away and leave you struggling. She wouldn't give them the pleasure.
"You have access to all databases for the hummie and thoughtmotion interfaces, don't you?" she said. The pilot smiled at her noncommittally. Let him. She knew. If a fifteen-year-old boy could connect to computers illegally and wreak havoc with connections, what could t
hey do?
Nicolas was silent. She looked down again when suddenly, convulsively, he squeezed her hand. They were flying lower now. Details were visible in the streets. There were computers down there now. Medstats, cleaningstats, musicstats, little computers of all fruit-shapes and sizes, some partly smashed, others looking as if they could still work.
Devils, all of them—all those who would heap the machines like this and let them rot.
"Most of those clunkers are not centuries old. Did not have many of them centuries ago." The pilot grinned at them. Was he young or was he old? She could not quite tell. "And now, here we go."
Three white towers, windowed and scraped clean, rose on a clean green hill behind the computer debris. The airtrain hovered above one of those, then shot down and landed on the roof smoothly.
"Welcome," the pilot said, "to the palace within the City of Death where life is watched and kept."
Other people met them and took them inside, with elevators faster than those in Lucasta, to a comfortable apartment they were told was now theirs. She found it hard to guess the ages of these people, too. Their skin was smooth, yet they looked tired, and she could tell nothing by their eyes. When Nicolas got angry, his eyes sometimes became expressionless. These people had expressionless eyes but didn't seem angry. Or happy. Or anything. They didn't talk as much as the pilot, either.
"Please look at me," she said when Nicolas and she were alone. "Please. I want to see eyes that have something in them."
Then she hated herself for asking this. Was she so weak as to already be unable to take it? She had a village to save. Besides, she'd told him that she hated him. She did hate him, no matter any cannons, artificial flowers, trains, and broken ancient computers.
He did look at her. He even smiled at her. "Cheer up, Mel. We are almost at the butcher's."
Great. Exactly what she needed to hear. But she returned his smile.
Then she tried the door and discovered it wasn't locked.
There was a woman at the end of the corridor before the elevator's door.
"I am sure you want to get in and explore, and there are people who'd like to meet you," she said, "but there is a condition. You can't go together. Each of you must go alone."
"And if we don't?" Nicolas said.
The woman shrugged. "You're free to remain in your apartment. It is equipped with a cookingstat, medstat, and other city conveniences for the duration of your stay. You may remain there for as long as you wish."
"At what price?" Meliora said.
The woman shrugged again. "Price? We, of all people in the world, don't require payment for anything."
"And what if we want to leave this place entirely?" Nicolas said.
The woman shrugged again. "You may. But you may not come back ever again."
It was like the Academy. Only, Meliora didn't expect to find Eryn here, or Adelaide, Ivan, or Theodore.
However, one person she expected.
"So where is he? Where is the old bastard? Oh, don't look at me as if you don't understand! Where is Jerome?"
"So you figured it out. I knew you would." She'd recognize that wheezing everywhere.
"Took me some time, Doctor."
He laughed, that annoying laughter of his that told you he'd looked inside you and saw everything there was—everything worth it—and found just enough to entertain him. "But here you both are, the sweet unnatural doctor, and the boy who stops networks. Tried to stop ours already?" He winked.
Nicolas looked at him with the coldest glare he had. "Don't you know already? That would be disappointing, Jerome34523."
"Ah, so you remember the address of an old man you met only once. How cute. How rancorous." The wheezing again. "I like it. And yes, I do know everything you have tried so far, Nic. I was trying to make smalltalk. Polite, civilized conversation. Can't an old man try to be pleasant?"
Taunting him, aren't you. He's been in an impolite, primitive, cruel place for so long.
"An old man? Perhaps." Meliora said. "But not you."
Jerome smiled at her. "So don't you want to see? Both of you? Don't you want to know where you have brought yourselves—where the journey truly ends?"
"Where it ends? Somehow," Meliora whispered, "I don't believe that my mom is here. Or old Nicolas, or Melanie and her brother, or Arisa's baby."
"Heh, girl, what you're talking about is called dying. If it's a journey"—he shrugged—"who knows. We haven't gotten there yet. Here is just the place where the highest of the high of living humans get. Humans like you, Mel. It was high time you came." He wheezed again. "I was getting worried that you'd get stuck in a village forever. You had options, you know. If only you'd climbed to the ceiling of the dark room in the Academy—there were airtrains on that roof. If only you'd seen a witch's cave behind a waterfall. But I suppose a train still works."
A village, he'd said.
"So why don't you, my girl, come with me now? Boy Nic—well, he can go, too. He can go with Susie here."
He hadn't included Nic in the highest humans.
You know, Nic, don't you? He's trying to make you angry. Or—do you know? Do men do the same to other men in the village?
No, they didn't. They were too busy hunting, cutting wood and sowing seeds. Too busy surviving. If one had an account to settle with another, he'd go at him straight with fists or a knife.
"Can't deal with two of us at once, can you, Jerome?" She smiled. "Have you lost shape? Once you could deal with Eryn herself. Let's go then, you and I. I'll try to be easy on you. See you later, Nic." She didn't look at Nicolas. Why should she? To give Jerome the pleasure? Or Nicolas himself?
We only ended up in the same pot of soup by chance. The boy who stops networks, the girl who breaks computers and fixes humans. He hates me, and I'll never forgive him for what he did in the village. He's not better than Jerome, all right? I don't want to deal with the two of them at once.
Not that she'd have to deal with Jerome. He brought her to a room full of screens and unfamiliar people and left.
She was used to screens. She'd grown up with them; they had been everywhere.
She wasn't used to seeing herself on screens—and she wasn't used to others watching her on screens, their eyes focused and cold.
Clouds being torn apart slowly, gently, by the suddenly calm winds in the aftermath of a storm. A medstat's stiff body lying by a boulder. A waterfall, rushing, sparkling, laughing as if nothing at all has happened—or as if a good thing has happened. A girl, wet and miserable, searching for food for her mother and finding an old witch.
The girl does not look up. This day she has learned that it is of no use to admonish nature. The girl does not yet know that there might be other things in the sky worth admonishing.
Spy satellites. Meliora remembered them from old feeds. They had been like fairytales. Until now.
The screen flickered.
Lucasta, city of happiness and light, of pretty pictures and beautiful fashions. A little girl exchanging pills for candy in a doctor's office.
Flicker. So this wasn't even going to be sequential.
The girl and the mother are walking on a path. They are using a path made by animals, but they don't yet know that nearby there are monsters.
The watchers in the sky know. The mother wavers and the girl holds her up, then gives her their last food and water.
The mother doesn't recognize the danger when a monster comes.
The watchers in the sky do—but they do nothing.
Flicker.
The chief of the Village of Life is alone in the temple. A little boy rushes in—and this time is excused for interruption without permission, because he is bringing urgent news. It is not every day that refugees arrive from one of the decayed cities.
"Two women, both look young, but one says she is the daughter of the other! Their names are Meliora and Erika! the boy shouts."
The boy's eyes are full of wonder at what, to those in the Village of Life, is a discrepancy
in appearances. The chief's eyes, on the other hand, are for a moment—just for a moment, before he puts them under control—full of such wild hope, happiness, and fear that if a look were a punch, it would break a girl.
Flicker.
The chief of the Village of Life has just beaten his daughter. Inside his cottage, the chief steps on a chair. A boy—the future chief—rushes inside and drags him down, then drags the noose away from his neck. Other men come. They tie the chief to the bed.
Flicker.
The girl Meliora is sitting in a room full of screens and cold-eyed strangers who watch them. She is watching one of the screens herself. Her eyes are dry, her face is still.
The girl Meliora slowly stands up and slowly lifts her chair in her hands—then she smashes the screens into pieces.
Wonderful Experiences
Of course, no one beat her. This wasn't the Village of Life. This was the City of Death, and it was so worn-down and broken that death must have leaked through the holes in whatever crooked parts still held together, and spread.
"Broken?" Nicolas said back in their apartment, where her custodians had simply brought her, without even bothering to lock her up. "Mel, what is down there is broken"—he waved towards the window and the jagged, empty-eyed ancient buildings outside—"but the towers up here are more alive than anything you and I have ever seen. The technology they possess is mind-blowing. Space travel, spy satellites—I have always known that they are possible because I have long ago invented them in my own mind—but it is different to see them implemented."
They had shown him the same as her. Oh, not literally the same—what would the use of that be? They had shown him train crashes and old Nicolas dying.
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