by Mark Johnson
Something clattered at her feet, thrown carelessly.
“Inspect it.”
She knelt and gripped the shockpole. A quick test of its power sent a thrill of vibration up her arms, its hum the comforting sound of her identity, the slim metallic rod the touch of security. Gods and Polis Armer protect me, she thought. There was no Seeker strategy for infected taking hostages. Why would there be? What was she supposed to do?
“Use it on me.” Morgenheth sounded tired and smelled of old sweat. She doubted she could subdue him, even without his vile companions looming beyond in the abandoned shelter’s interior. A test, or an excuse to finish her off?
Shaking, she touched the shockpole to the exposed skin above Morgenheth’s low collar and pushed its well-rubbed switch.
The shockpole’s vibration energy was the energy of life itself, found in all things. Chaos energy, which would be coursing through Morgenheth’s body, was of the Enemy, and harmed all that was good on earth. The two energies were opposites and tended to spark when shockpoles made physical contact.
The hum lifted hairs on her neck and arms, clearing her head slightly and returning a welcome boost of energy, which the long night had taken. Morgenheth growled down the back of his throat and swayed backward. A typical uninfected civilian would have staggered and collapsed, and even a Seeker would show pain at such concentrated energy — vibrations or electricity. But shockpoles either gave a spark at first contact with infected, or rebounded off them, which meant…
“You aren’t infected,” she said.
Armer preserve! She’d travelled three months across the globe with a Head’s Complement, chasing nothing. Three months of Pella’s life. Flute lessons, homework, and playtime at the park. Wasted. At least another three months’ journey back across sea and land. Gods, how stupid. The greatest misallocation of Armer Stone’s resources in her fourteen years of service, and she’d led it.
But she, and Holder Moorcam, had been so certain these four were infected!
Yet they clearly weren’t. They couldn’t be, she had to admit, for they hadn’t undergone any noticeable part of the transition to cadverism. They’d been comfortable in the daylight, kept their sanity, and didn’t create an explosive reaction to vibrations. And they’d had, what, over a year to manifest the symptoms.
She said the first thing that came to mind. “Ah, apologies for the inconvenience, citizens, I’ll return —”
Morgenheth’s snarl cut through whatever words might have tumbled from her. “You were in charge at the Immersion Chamber the night we were taken in, Head Saarg. Your face makes my knuckles itch.”
She’d expected threats, but that wasn’t what set her heart racing. Before immersion, each subject had been given one day’s memory wipe with the amnesiac tincture. How had their wipes failed?
“Yes,” she managed. Gods, how much did they know? Though it was morning outside, the shelter grew smaller and darker by the minute.
“Don’t make me ask stupid questions. Talk.”
She dropped the cover story she’d created with Holder Moorcam before setting out for Polis Sumad. The renegades likely knew too much.
“Years ago, the Holder of Armer Stone Chapterhouse was approached with a research proposal to combat cadverism from an institute in Polis Sumad. To prevent it, like a pox vaccine does.” She couldn’t help how quickly she spoke. “A Sumadan specialist team built the Immersion Chamber for us, using methods we still don’t know, which kept it hidden. The Immersion Pods were built to purge latent chaos and store it in specially commissioned chaos batteries we’d filled by siphoning off subjects like you. The theories were good, and there was a lot of cash funding it. Every test we performed worked. Yours was the first failure. After the massacre, we found the Sumadan set-up team had skipped Polis with the chaos batteries we’d filled for them. It turned out the institute here in Sumad doesn’t exist either. It was just an abandoned letter-drop. We were played for fools.”
“Seekers working with chaos energy?” Morgenheth asked, angrily.
If her survival prospects were improving, she couldn’t see it. Perhaps a display of confidence would work.
“The situation isn’t that simple,” she said, managing not to swallow. “Our overriding mandate is to combat chaos and cadverism. Which we did, and it worked. When we released the first subjects, they showed zero chaos energy traces. Morgenheth, there’s no chance those farmers will turn to cadvers for at least a decade. It worked!”
“Clearly.” His voice dripped contempt. “A splendid success, Saarg.”
Make them believe, Terese.
She crossed her arms and planted her feet. “Morgenheth, our Order existed before the Founding, even if we’ve changed form and name. After the Founding, we were a holy order; two thousand years later, we were militarized. If this process had ended up working, we’d have changed again, becoming like doctors, and cadverism would have passed into legend. Five thousand years, Morgenheth, our mission has been the subjugation and elimination of chaos.”
Morgenheth leaned forward, speaking through clenched teeth. “So what happened?”
Her arms fell, her defiance wilting at that stubborn question. “I have no idea. The Chamber project was confidential, and I hadn’t been there for weeks. We worked it in undercover rotations. The first I knew anything was wrong was a royal hologram sent to the Chapterhouse — with coordinates for the Immersion Chamber. I was just as surprised by what we found as the Investigators.”
He muttered something to himself. “Your best guess, then.”
“I think there was something inside the Sumadan generator. You know, the one the Sumadan team installed on the top floor of the Immersion Chamber. I think something mobile and deadly was inside that box, and that thing was also what generated energy for the Immersion Chamber. I investigated the site with an Inspector after the call out.” She paused to lick her lips. She knew so little that telling the renegades everything was harmless. Who would they tell? “Whatever it was, drew the rune and left you alive. With all the evil that happened down there, and you four the only survivors, you can’t blame us for thinking you were infected.”
Silence.
Then Morgenheth said, “It pulled us out of our pods so we wouldn’t suffocate like the rest, Saarg. It laid us next to one another naked, coated in that preservative, still sleeping.”
She said nothing.
“The farmers said they heard screaming as the thing ran about the countryside. Is that right? But before our sight returned, as we woke from four months of forced coma, we heard something in that chamber with us. It was weeping.”
She swallowed. “I had no idea. Really. I was planning on asking you all these questions.”
Morgenheth tilted his head. It was more of a listening silence than a thinking one. She realized his friends had neither moved nor spoken since her prison door had opened, and she remembered Morgenheth’s strange words before they’d reversed their capture. Several possibilities occurred to her, each more unlikely and unsettling than the last.
Morgenheth shook his head with a loud breath. “You’re a Seeker. What does the Invocation mean?”
A welcome subject change, to something she understood. Within seconds of handing him a copy, the Armer Stone Chapterhouse researcher had recognized the rune from the wall as the Invocation. The opening lines of the Atabham, Polis Sumad’s holy book. It wouldn’t have taken long for the renegades to learn the same.
That would have been what drew them to Polis Sumad, she realized. They’d come in search of whatever had saved them from suffocation within the Immersion Pods, looking for answers. They weren’t following some deep, malign instinct the Enemy had implanted within them, as she and Holder Moorcam had supposed. They wanted the same answers she did — why the Invocation, of all passages, had been printed upon the Immersion Chamber’s walls.
She recited the Invocati
on. “The divine link, comes from nature, to purify and power, in His name.
“Sumadan tradition says the Atabham was written by prophet Shumuel,” she said. “I don’t know about ‘The divine link comes from nature’, but the third line, ‘To purify and power’ refers to the infection and cleansing process. We use vibrations — a form of power — on infected, to purify them.” She rotated her shoulders under the focused attention of the four renegades, whom she had wanted to ‘purify’ not twenty-four hours previously. “The rest could mean anything.”
Fists clenched and shoulders slumped. The figures behind Morgenheth moved.
She continued. “And the fifth line,” she said, “isn’t part of the Invocation. ‘I give the key to many doors’ is probably a metaphor to direct you toward the holy Atabham. It wanted you, or someone, to read the book. Which isn’t what you’d expect from something that just murdered hundreds of people.”
More of that eerie dark communion between the four renegades: so unnatural she had to interrupt it.
“If you gentlemen know more than I do, I’d like to hear it.”
Morgenheth sighed. “We were on patrol round an abandoned settlement, then your lot jumped us. Next, your subordinates were trying to mindwipe us before shoving us in the pods. Four months later, we’re awake in the dark, shivering on the floor surrounded by dismembered corpses.” His nose wrinkled. “We got out of Polis Armer before the Rune-writer — or you — came for us.”
“I’m not a killer, Morgenheth, even if whatever you are could be worse than a cadver. But you aren’t infected, so far as I’m concerned? You’re free.”
“Free? Saarg, have you noticed where we are?” he shouted. She took an involuntary step back. “Free to go where and do what? We can’t walk away from the mess you’ve set upon us! We’re as stuck as any Cenephan in the Refugee Territories!”
She took a breath, forcing her voice to steady. “You were unjustly treated, Morgenheth. And on behalf of Armer Stone Chapterhouse, I apologize for mistaking your infection. But it was an honest mistake, and one I will gladly correct when I return to Armer.”
“I’d like to believe you, Saarg. I’d like to let you walk away, but let’s not pretend things are that simple.”
Like the glimmers of light glimpsed through the hovel’s wall, she saw a way out.
“The reason I’m here in Sumad, is to make sure our involvement in the Immersion Chamber doesn’t get out. It wouldn’t just be me losing my job; the entire Chapterhouse would be dissolved.”
Morgenheth’s head tilted again. “A truce, Saarg?”
“We have one another over a barrel,” she said, thinking as she spoke. “The mission has eleven months left. If I can keep the other Seekers off your scent — which is easy if you’re not infected — you won’t have to go writing anonymous letters to Sumad Reach Chapterhouse, or the newskeepers, here or back home.”
Morgenheth stroked his hairy chin.
She pressed on. “If we agree to keep away from one another, we both win. I go home, you stay hidden.” She decided to push her luck. “But you lot will have to keep your heads down and not kill anyone.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem.”
“No, I think it might be.” Their pasts were a problem. People had unfortunate accidents; that was the nature of human existence. But their four dark histories were more than coincidence. The Seekers had learned and deduced much about these four in the months before she left home. “You, Morgenheth. Your father’s body turned up in a river after even the Finance Inspectors gave up searching for him. And months earlier your girlfriend died. Both had suffered a nasty fall.” She looked over Morgenheth’s shoulder, not knowing which shadow matched which name, and not caring. “Rortiin, you broke your clan in every way, fully knowing the suicides that would come after the revelations. Dantet, your step-father is still in the asylum. I thought you’d like to know, although your step-brothers have made great progress and have both recently found employment.” She took a breath, steeling herself for the worst. “Lethrien. No one ever found out how you killed your family, but at the time your grief was so believable no one suspected you.
“At the time, no one knew to look deeper into you four, but what a coincidence you all found one another! Even if you aren’t infected with chaos, you certainly create it. Cadvers seek chaos, saints attract angels, and scoundrels summon demons. You four found each other, then something just as awful found you.
“I don’t know how many ‘accidental’ deaths you’ve caused in the Polis’s most lawless area, but that’s not our problem. You aren’t infected with chaos, and that’s all that concerns me. But if you can’t control yourselves for a year, we’re all in trouble.”
She chose not to ask about the distant screaming of multiple voices that had kept her awake all night. Instead, she said, “And keep your howling muffled; it makes you too easy to find.”
Their postures hadn’t changed, but the air tasted different. She’d hit some truth, direct and hard. It took some time for Morgenheth to speak again.
“The rest of your company, Head.” His voice was ice calm. “Do they know what you did? The deaths you’ve caused by looking at outcomes and ignoring methods?”
A fair question, but phrased to misdirect. “Armer Stone’s Holder and I put the company together based on ignorance and inexperience. They know nothing.”
“Do they deserve a leader like you, Saarg? How would they treat you if they knew?”
“Threatening me gets you nothing and costs us both.”
Morgenheth took a loud breath. “Whatever you think of us, we are not so different, Saarg. Everyone in this room made mistakes and tried to cover up. We all have something to hide.” He locked eyes with her. “We all want to keep this quiet.”
Terese’s jaw fell open. “We are not on the same level, Morgenheth! We do not even exist in the same world. You have nothing except each other. I have a family, a reason to live, and a home to return to. You’re here because you had nowhere else to go. Your own families wouldn’t have you back. Don’t even pretend you can play the moral equivalence game with me. There was a monster in the Immersion Chamber, and monsters took your families.”
Faster than her eye could follow he lunged, grabbing her by the cuff of her plate armor, and lifted, leaving her feet dangling. Their eyes were level.
She stared into furious blue whirlpools, dark as sin at the core.
“Are you superior, Saarg? Does the magic Seeker tattoo on your back really make the Gods think you’re better?” Inches from her face, his hot breath reeked.
“Even if I tried, I couldn’t defend myself against you, Morgenheth. I’m sure the Gods won’t blame you for hitting me, considering we’re clearly so similar.”
She fell because she was dropped, not pushed, and lay on the ground staring up at her captor. He spat, the spittle hitting her face and running down her cheek. “Get out. Go find your chapterhouse. One year. We’ll disappear. And try not to abduct anyone. I hear that’s illegal.”
Terese wiped her cheek slowly, not allowing herself to look away. She stood, ignoring her thumping heart. Whatever these four had become, it was stranger than myth, darker than cadver.
She spread her arms to indicate the broken shelter and landscape outside it. “Enjoy Polis Sumad.” She turned and strode past Morgenheth. The three shaggy outlines watched as she walked past them and out through the shelter’s shattered door.
Another hot Sumadan morning had begun. She started to sweat the moment she emerged from the shelter — one of an ancient cluster resting in a large clay hollow. None would have heard her, had she called for help last night. Save lions or cadvers. Or both.
If the sun was rising there, then that way was north. Further in, toward the Center. She would find some running water pipes along the way, and her shockpole functioned perfectly.
“Everything will be fine,” s
he declared to the universe, refusing to look back at the shelter’s gaping entry.
She kicked a nearby stone. The impact sounded dull and unsatisfying, and the stone bounced off to one side and rolled in a circle before collapsing. Heading home, over the bumpy clay ridges that Cenephans called hills, and around ancient ruined settlements that made her feel watched, Terese Saarg left the Refugee Territories.
3
“My name is Farrah,” Miss Harient lied, putting frailty and age into her voice. The old woman was making her hands wobble as she presented a stone. “We need a room for the night. I can pay with vibrations.”
The gate guard’s clothes were gray from months of wear and little washing. He pointed to a battered mechanism near the arched gate. Miss Harient placed a small stone atop its metal tray, then retrieved it after it clicked twice.
Sarra tipped back her head, pushing up her scarf to get a look at the Wall. MarverWall was five storeys high, vaguely circular and over three hundred feet thick. The Wall’s face was dull beige, flaked and stained by wind-blown dirt, and pockmarked by rough, cross-barred windows. Laughter and voices drifted down from MarverWall’s roof, some of its inhabitants probably playing ball games, eating and relaxing at day’s end. Roofs were the only — mostly — guaranteed safe places in Polis Sumad’s Refugee Territories. Cadvers sometimes climbed.
Sarra supposed there’d be a lot of cadvers in isolated areas like this, but new walls like MarverWall usually had good fortifications. Nowhere was as secure as HopeWall, but this Wall’s defenses meant she’d sleep easy that night.
“Guest rooms at the back, past the farm,” said the guard.
Inside the gate, out of the glare, they removed their headscarves. Miss’s blonde and white hair tumbled free and straight, framing her lined face. Sarra shook out her own dark hair and turned to Miss with an arched eyebrow.
“I thought we weren’t supposed to lie, Miss.”
“I never lie, Sarra. Mother Farrah was the first TowerMiss; now I am TowerMiss. I might as well call myself by her name, seeing as I do her job so well.”
