by E. J. Swift
NUNAVUT, ALASKA
From: Commander-in-Chief Katu Ben
To: President Jo Forna
Date of recording: 23.11.2417
This is Ben. What can I tell you, it’s bad here. The white coats have confirmed it’s a Type 9. We’ve informed civilians. Martial law was established within hours of detection and we’ve set up an airtight perimeter around Nunavut. I can assure you nothing’s getting in or out that we don’t see, nothing at all. The drones are on a roving circuit and will pick up anyone who isn’t trying to use the roads. What else? The usual procedures. Medic unit have begun tests and we’ve already evacuated the first group who tested negative. There weren’t many of them, I’m sorry to say. As we anticipated, the virus is moving at significant speed.
I advise keeping our airships grounded. We can’t risk letting anything cross the airspace. And I suggest being frank with our counterparts in Veerdeland and Sino-Siberia. They deserve to be kept in the loop, and besides, we could do with a bailout from the Siberian bank. I heard there was an incident on the Veerdeland west coast but they’ve confirmed it’s a Type 3. Between you and me the Veerdeland security isn’t as tight as it could be, but a 3 is treatable and even the Veerdelanders should have it under control within the week.
From: Commander-in-Chief Katu Ben
To: President Jo Forna
Date of recording: 01.12.2417
This is Ben. Day nine of martial law. I’ve got civilians trying to scale the barricades. It’s extraordinary the lengths they’ll go to to try and get their face in front of an officer and their kids out the city. Even when their kids are infected. Yesterday a man tried to smuggle himself into the compound inside a rice delivery, honestly it’s like the regressed south here. I’ve taken to wearing my hazard suit all the time, even when I’m sleeping. We all have. We had an unfortunate incident with one of the squad in the northern quarter of the city – had his suit ripped open. He was infected and we had to eliminate him directly. He understood, of course. And it goes without saying it’s kinder than the alternative. The troops have been more careful about their suits since then, so at least it’s taught them a valuable lesson.
The other thing. I don’t have much time but you said it was important. You’re certain it’s Antarctican? Who’s the fellow in the hologram, this Taeo Ybanez, are you sure it’s a genuine source? We can’t trust those voracious bastards for a second. If it’s genuine – well – then we have a scenario. A scenario which if you want my opinion is guaranteed to have Tark involvement. Five minutes, soldier, five minutes dammit! Sorry, sir, as you see we’re in the middle of a shitstorm here. My advice – put it out in the open. The Nuuk summit’s coming up, make a statement there. Say, I don’t know, we’ve intercepted their technology, something about evidence. “New evidence suggests that the sea city did survive the Great Storm of sixty-seven.” That sort of thing. Say we’ll get to the bottom of this mysterious disappearance – and I assure you, sir, I will get to the bottom of it. Once we’ve resolved this crisis, that is. We don’t want people thinking we’re abandoning them to go play with the southerners. But let’s make the Tarks sweat.
From: Commander-in-Chief Katu Ben
To: President Jo Forna
Date of recording: 05.12.2417
This is Ben. Day thirteen. The situation’s getting rapidly worse. We’ve evacuated another five clean groups but the last one had to be terminated – too many people trying to get into the airship field, and to be honest with you, sir, it was messy. Regrettably, there were civilian casualties. Although they may be the lucky ones when this is over.
As you can see from my face, I’m exhausted. My troops are exhausted. We’re stretched far too tight. Those in the city are working double and treble shifts – I’ve had to send dispatches into the neighbouring regions to contain the riots.
I’ve got the nukes on standby. I await your jurisdiction of course but I strongly recommend that if we cross the seventy per cent threshold we take immediate action. We have to face the likelihood that Nunavut is lost.
Will you do me a favour and give my love to Ellie? Comms have been patchy and I haven’t managed to see her face in the last two days. I know she’ll be worrying about her dad.
From: Commander-in-Chief Katu Ben
To: President Jo Forna
Date of recording: 12.12.2417
This is Ben. Day – I’m losing track, it’s been so long – day twenty? The threshold is at seventy-five per cent. I see no option but to neutralize the affected zone. So, as per your instructions, we’re pulling out now. Once we’re clear of the fallout zone I’ll issue the strike. I’m sorry it’s come to this. Remember, sir, we don’t have a choice. People will understand that you had to take action.
From: Commander-in-Chief Katu Ben
To: President Jo Forna
Date of recording: 12.12.2417
This is Ben. It’s done. I’m flying out. Most of the troops managed to evacuate in time. We should arrange medals for those who didn’t – something for the families. I’ve sent you my statement for the press.
I realize you asked me previously about Tamaruq and I didn’t reply – you’ll forgive the oversight, I’m sure. My thoughts are this: I know the funding’s been reduced but I’m concerned, very concerned, about this Osiris issue. My advice – let’s deal with that first, and then look at redirecting other streams. I can’t afford to lose any more of my budget. Given the toll of this most recent tragedy, I’m sure you appreciate that.
PART THREE
THE WHITE FLY
OSIRIS
ADELAIDE HAS NEVER been so certain of being recognized as in the moment she and Dien walk into the Silk Vault. She can imagine the cameras swivelling in her direction, honing in upon her face and dispatching a code through the Reef to land screeching in the earpiece of a Rechnov. The thought induces a sick, hollow dread. It’s not only the prospect of being caught. If her family discover she’s alive, she loses the precious fledgling identity which she has barely begun to forge. It’s so fragile, so easily eroded. To go back would bury her.
But as they approach the reception she can almost see the City attendant’s mind working, along with his disdain: he thinks they’re airlifts.
‘Identity?’
She and Dien produce their papers, which declare them to be two cleaners working in the industrial northern quarter. If their IDs are spot checked, Dien has estimated they have around thirty minutes to get out.
A vault guard escorts Adelaide into the lift, and calls an undersea level. This is her first trip City-side since that fatal dash across the border, months ago, and after all the surreal experiences of a journey in reverse, it is this lift that impresses on her the most the gulf between City and west. The hydraulics are silent, the two-metre cube is plush and mirrored. Adelaide avoids her reflection. The luxury of the building feels oppressive, confirming what she already suspected: the City doesn’t fit her any more.
The guard leads Adelaide into a small room with a single work station and an o’screen.
‘The vault is in whose name?’
‘It’s Mikkeli.’
She notes the contraction of the guard’s brow. Her anxiety increases. Mikkeli’s name is all Vikram told her – what if there was a second name, a code, something he forgot in the panic of the moment?
‘Have you accessed the Silk Vault before?’
‘No,’ she manages.
‘Each vault is coded with the DNA of its owner and the individuals permitted to access it. I’ll need a blood sample.’
‘My DNA?’
‘Needless to say, all samples are anonymous, as are their counter matches which we hold on file.’ The guard gives a long-suffering smile. ‘As I’m sure you can imagine, we have some jittery customers. When you’re ready, I just need your finger.’
Adelaide holds out her index finger, pad upwards. She feels a small sharp prick when the tester is applied to her fingertip, and a bead of blood spheres on her skin. It must have been
easy enough for Vikram to obtain a sample of her DNA – a stray hair left on his pillow would have sufficed, or a swab from her toothbrush. Strange to think that those little domesticities, so unthought of at the time, should bring her to this place.
The guard takes the tester over to an o’screen and plugs it into a dock. Adelaide watches nervously as the woman scans the results, trying not to think about all the places that screen might lead, about the checks and spyware which could be running on the software, ready to pick up any anomaly – like a dead woman’s DNA.
The guard frowns. Adelaide feels a trickle of sweat inching down her back, gathering at the base of her spine.
The guard scratches at the skin behind her ear. Her expression clears.
‘Yes, that’s a match. Well, come on through, I’ll show you the vault.’
‘Wait.’ This is the gamble, the real reason she is here. ‘There’s one other.’
‘Another vault?’
‘Yes.’
‘What’s the name?’
‘Axel Rechnov.’
‘Axel Rechnov?’
The guard’s voice lifts with surprise.
‘Yes.’
Her throat is dry. What is the guard thinking? What does that name mean to her, a dead man’s name, a madman’s name, the Architect’s grandson? Can she recognize Adelaide behind what now seems a pitifully thin disguise?
She waits for the guard to react. To shout or sound an alarm. She reminds herself, I’m not a criminal, playing dead is not a crime. Although now there’s the inciting revolution, yes that, that might well be considered a crime. She waits. But the guard returns to the o’screen and dutifully enters the name.
‘Yes,’ she says. Adelaide can sense the struggle as she tries to maintain a neutral expression. ‘That’s a match too. But the vault is located in one of our sister branches. Would you like it brought here?’
‘How long will that take?’
‘As it is a small vault we can transport it here within thirty minutes.’
She fights to keep the dismay from her face. Thirty minutes is far too long. But this may be her only chance.
‘I’ll wait.’
The guard enters further information.
‘I have put in the request. Come with me.’
The guard leads Adelaide further down the empty, white-walled corridor. This is something else she has forgotten: the space, the absence of people. They stop by a numbered door and the guard swipes them into a room that is also empty, except for a single chair and a table.
‘Please wait here. I will return once your second vault is on site.’
‘Thank you.’
The door closes behind the guard. Adelaide sits, then instantly stands again. She can’t shake the feeling that this is a trap. That at any moment the door will burst open and skadi will pin her to the floor, or worse, a member of her family will step through.
It occurs to her that there may be other vaults in her name, in other branches. Her grandfather would be the sort to do that. Heirlooms locked away in boxes, the way he hoarded secrets in the attic of his brain.
Her nervousness increases. She can’t pretend she’s not scared of what she might find here today. She takes out her scarab, prepared to risk a call to Dien, only to find there is no signal this far underwater.
The next thirty minutes are the longest of her life.
At last she hears the door handle turning. She stands, tense, prepared to fight if necessary. But it is the guard, returning as promised with two slender rectangular boxes made of a lightweight steel, featureless except for the names branded into the metal. Adelaide’s relief is crushing.
The guard holds aloft the DNA sample she took from Adelaide before.
‘This is your key. You hold it against the activator, here. Push the buzzer by the door when you are done and I’ll come and collect you.’
‘Thank you.’
The guard nods and departs once again.
Left alone, Adelaide is reluctant to open either box; she looks from one to the other, torn. But she doesn’t have the leisure of time. Dien is up there in the foyer, counting the minutes. Alone and exposed. Dien put herself on the line to get them in here, based on nothing but a hunch, a feeling that there is something Adelaide needs to see; and she’s already exceeded their agreed time limit.
She opens the box in Mikkeli’s name first. It is empty except for a folded piece of paper and a necklace. She recognizes the necklace at once: a shark tooth strung on a single cord. The last time she saw it, the necklace was around her twin’s neck.
The letter is a copy. Her brother’s handwriting leaps from the page, blotched here and there with frenzied splatters of ink. She already knows what the letter says: Vikram recited it to her word for word. It is Axel’s goodbye note.
She folds the letter back and slips it into her pocket. As she activates the key on the second box, she notices her hands are trembling.
What the hell did you find, Axel…
Inside is a sheaf of papers, each stamped with a familiar motif. She has seen this symbol before. Six-legged. Translucent-winged.
Operation Whitefly.
She spreads the papers over the table and begins to read.
The papers are in no particular order. They date sporadically from the past fifty years. There are logs of ships approaching the city. Ships from other places. Ships from land. There are execution orders for the crews of those ships. She reads through the list, disbelieving.
Polaris, 14
Cepheus Blue, 11
Svetlana, 7
Draconis V, 21—
It goes on.
Some of the names have scribbled notes against them. Some resistance encountered. We had to weight them… There are references to meetings. Payments made to certain members of the skadi. Records of Osirians who tried to leave the city, but were incarcerated or removed. There are documents signed by the founding family elders.
The names include Leonid Rechnov, Adelaide’s grandfather.
She stops reading, overcome with nausea. Panicking, she looks around the room again. There are no receptacles, nothing but the chair she is sitting on and the table in front of her and the two vaults. She clamps her hand over her mouth, trying to swallow down the rising bile, but her stomach heaves irrepressibly. She grabs Axel’s empty vault and vomits into it.
She slams the lid of the box shut and pushes it away from her. Sweat prickles her skin. She feels contaminated, unclean. It isn’t just the shock, or even the mounting sense of horror over what she has discovered. Worse than that, she can’t ignore the idea that some part of her already knew – or could have known, if she’d only thought to follow the signs.
And now she knows the truth she wishes she had stayed in the west, anonymous, that she had never met Dien, never got sucked into playing at revolution, because that’s what it feels like compared to this: a game.
She thinks of her grandfather, slowly ageing in a brocaded room, a glass of octopya clutched in his trembling fingers. She remembers the intensity in Leonid’s voice as he muttered something she did not, at the time, understand.
Nothing but the white fly.
And then he said something else.
Don’t be too quick to judge me.
He knew, she thinks. He knew I’d find out. Perhaps he knew Axel already had.
The contents of Axel’s vault could bring down the city’s entire infrastructure. The founding families. Adelaide’s family. Regardless of which individuals know what, all of the lines would be discredited. The elders would be stripped of their privileges, put on trial, perhaps even executed under Osirian law.
Her grandfather, who she loves, has signed off on these despicable acts. He’s lied to her. He’s lied to everyone.
Once again the nausea threatens to overcome her. She presses her hands to her mouth, swallowing.
And yet he’s so old now. So frail. She would be surprised if he lived out the year. Does he deserve this exposure, at this stage in his lif
e? Even knowing what he has done, the idea of him being dragged from the Domain and drowned in an execution tank is repellent. Surely he must have believed he was acting out of necessity?
But if Whitefly is still in enforcement, then there must be others who condone it. Her father, Feodor, for certain. Linus? Does Linus know about Whitefly? Linus, who said quite clearly on the o’dio we must expect the unexpected?
Linus knows.
The taste of bile lingers on her tongue and at the back of her throat. She is trapped in this room, trapped between the truth and the outside world. What in stars’ names is she supposed to do now?
And yet, at the very edge of her fear, barely in focus, there is something else. She felt it before, watching the expedition boat leave. She feels it now. Hope. That because of this – because of this terrible and terrifying truth – there might be something else out there.
There might be land. There might be people.
I wish you could have seen this, Vikram. I wish you could have known.
The minutes count down too quickly as she sits in the white-walled room, wondering what to do.
If she leaves the documents here, and remains silent, she is complicit in a conspiracy that affects every soul in the city.
If she takes them out of this room, the documents will be in Dien’s hands, for Dien to do whatever Dien thinks is right.
She knows the western woman won’t hesitate to use them.
Finally she takes Axel’s necklace and pulls it over her head, tucking the cord under her clothes. The shark tooth nestles against her sternum. Then she stuffs the Whitefly papers back into Mikkeli’s vault and calls the guard.
