"Shit," shouts Ray, over the roar of his rotor blades. "What the hell is that?"
"It's the collapse," Ti shouts.
The sky is falling. The red from the Suns is merging with the black and rushing in on them faster than any tsunami yet. The Sunken World is curling back upon itself, as though sucked inward by some vast gravity. Everything becomes the tsunami, homing in on the one most central point at the heart of it all, the White Tower.
"It's what So predicted," Ti goes on. "The end of this world. Either the Suns have given up, or they can't hold it anymore. Ray, we have to help Doe. She has to get out or it's all for nothing."
"The bridge," says Ray.
"The bridge," Ti answers. She spins her helicopter back to look at the White Tower. It really is tall, taller than she'd ever noticed before, even now reaching above her hover point. Though Ray can't see her, still she points. "There. If it's anywhere, it's got to be there."
"We'll go together," Ray calls back.
"Roger," shouts, then the seat jumps out from underneath her, the windshield smacks up into her face, and then the seat hits her again, lop-sided so she slips and falls out of the open cab-door.
Her foot catches on one of the controls, leaving her dangling upside down from the open cab. There is heat and a screaming in her ears, while below the burning black courtyard spins.
"Ti!" Ray shouts.
Something hit the helicopter. She looks up along her body, to where her leg's wedged into the handle, and then scans back along the hull of her helicopter. There's a great spherical chunk of the cab missing, like a bite-mark, and the whole back is on fire.
"Bail Ti," Ray shouts. "The suit will soften the landing. You'll be alright."
She turns back to look down, and sees tiny figures standing amidst the wreckage of their machines, holding a smoking QC cannon, taking aim.
She wants to bail, but can't. La wouldn't do it. None of the others would do it, not when survival of just one meant survival of them all. Not when Ritry Goligh's life is on the line.
She pulls herself up, back into the seat, even as blood runs down her cheek inside the HUD. It won't take long, as she alters the pitch and yaw to a dive. It won't even matter if she blows before the ground, as long as she hits.
"What are you doing?" Ray shouts. "That's a direct order, dive out of the cab and lock your suit."
Ti smiles to herself, as the wind rushes up past her. She always liked Ray, most of them all. If it wasn't for La, she might have tried to make a go of it, even competing with Doe. But then La always liked So, so…
"You can't order for this, Ray," she tells him, as the wind roars around her, and a second QC volley comes launching toward her. "This is the chord."
The volley strikes, tearing away her bottom chassis, but she hangs on to the controls as hard as she can, steering herself down, down, falling out of the sky like a meteorite to hit the marine who took her out, who would have taken Ray out too, and
BOOM
BATHYSCAPHE E
There's no reason to wait.
Yena and Naji help me up. My hands are gone, I remember that. They stand at my either side, supporting me by the elbows. That I have no hands is sickening, disorienting, so I try not to look. I try not to think about it.
"We'll grow you new ones," Naji says. "Work has begun already."
It makes me angry. It makes me glad, that my mind was the one thing King Ruin wouldn't break, because the one thing he wanted is buried inside.
The bridge.
"I'm ready," I say.
"This way," says Yena, and together, with their support at my either side, they lead me out of the room. We walk slowly down long metal corridors, straighter than any in a subglacic, where every inch of space has to contour to the demands of the hull.
This though is a suprarene tank, a near-impregnable metal castle built on a caterpillar chassis. I've never even seen one before, no more than a picture, and now I'm inside one.
"You've been inside one for days," Naji says. "It's how his Courts always travel, in convoy. It's what we plucked you out of."
I catch an image from Yena, of some of the sickening tortures and experiments she witnessed in the Court.
"You were on the extraction team?" I ask. She nods. We walk on.
The air here smells dry, of burned oil and greasing tar. I imagine the decades of arenes who must have lived in this roving battle-tank, breathed in this place, loved and died for this place. Just like me in my subglacic.
"What nation was this?" I ask. "What coalition?"
"Does it matter now?" asks Naji. "We're all one against the Suns."
The Suns.
With each step forward, I try to work through the memories Yena shared with me, of Memphen and all that followed, of Naji watching it happen. I can't help imagining what death in one of King Ruin's skyscrapers would be like, locked in tight together with a thousand other bodies, all sweating and screaming and waiting to starve, or worse.
I try to blink the memories away.
"It's horrible," Yena says. "I know that. Use it."
A new smell wafts through the smell of sand and polished steel- the acrid waft of CSF.
"You're smelling the Wall," Yena says. "It takes up a whole deck. It's where we'll dive too."
We turn a corner, and the floor underfoot becomes metal grille, with a lift-bay ahead.
"The Wall is up one deck," Naji says. "Within it is the dive hub we'll be using. Here."
He pulls open the concertina metal fence across the old-style industrial lift, and we shuffle in. Yena picks up a thick cable box with red and green buttons, holds down the green, and we begin to rise.
Tinny elevator music chimes around us. It feels utterly surreal, above the low groan of old hydraulics.
"We tried to cut it, but it's hard-coded into the tank," Yena says. "The music, I mean. We're mostly used to it now."
I watch a thick deck of black metal plating pass as we rise up. It reminds me of a dive I once made, perhaps into the Solid Core, but my memory is foggy now. A death gate.
One floor up the lift halts, and we exit. Spreading before me lies a bare-metal hall that seems to take the entire footprint of the tank, perhaps as big as three subglacics laid side by side, stretching out to a long open wall around the edges, filled with more golden light.
The hall is full of people in thumping EMR machines, perhaps fifty of them in all, arrayed in neat rows and lines, and above them rises a morass of rising bonds so tightly woven they feel like the King's mind again.
"It's alright," says Naji, his steadying, wrinkled hand on my shoulder. "It's the Wall."
I reach out tentatively, and begin to feel what this strange weave is. These minds are not focused on aggression or on draining anything. Rather they are all reaching upward, and building a protective barrier.
A wall.
"It's how we've survived this long," Naji says. "I taught them what I always used to do, the same way I managed to survive the King's Court in my city. They fold themselves up in their Cores, and then they project that sense outward. It forms a bubble around us that the King's mind can't break through."
I reach out and feel my thoughts rebuffed. The Wall is dense and fibrous. Within it I catch hints of memory, brief visions of the strands that weave this barrier together like elasteel, and wonder briefly if I could unpick them. Perhaps if I knew more about the minds that built it? Maybe then I could unravel them one by one. I wonder that King Ruin has not done so yet.
"It's a kind of sentry duty," Naji says, ignoring the thought. "It's how we managed to approach his Court-tank carrying you, without them seeing us. We're small, but with this we are invisible."
I almost challenge him, explain how I can see the weave and the pieces its made of, but do not. This is not my place, and it clearly is effective. These people are serious about fighting, they saved my life and my mind, and I owe them everything.
"We take it in shifts," Yena goes on. "It's really the most important du
ty on the tank. The Wall will shield you too, in your approach on the Suns. It will hide your location when you dive the aetheric bridge too, at least we believe so. None of the others will be able to find you. You can burn the Suns down with impunity."
"I'm ready," I tell them. "I want to try."
"Thank you Mr. Goligh," Naji says. I feel his genuine gratitude. He hopes this is the beginning of a new age. He hopes finally he can lay so many old memories to rest. "Here."
They lead me to an EMR in the center of the hall. There are two machines either side of it, all unoccupied. Here the tangle of bonds is so dense it is hard to think clearly. I couldn't dive out through them if I tried.
But I'm not going to dive out. I'm going to dive in.
"We'll go with you," Yena says, "as far as we can. We'll support you in any way possible."
I slip into the EMR, holding my weight on my elbows and the stubs of my wrists. Shuffling into the claustrophobic halo of the machine, I feel like going back into my own past. I have memories of doing this so many times, back when I lived day to day in the shadow of the Calico tsunami-wall.
I take one more glance across the hall, to the long windows at its edges, where the strip of golden sand briefly breaks and I glimpse blue sky.
I haven't seen blue sky forever it seems.
I close my eyes. Yena and Naji are there. Together we link minds, and dive into my Molten Core.
The Bathyscaphe comes to me easily, plunging into the turning floes of magma. Red and orange superheated patterns coruscate around my ship like reflections of light in water, dappling my sides, stroking me with their touch.
I stand at the conning tower and give orders to the sublavic's automated systems. As before, there is some kind of hollow sense in the ship, like an emptiness that should not be there.
"It's what King Ruin took," comes a crackling voice in my head-mic. "The memories he stole, it's why you feel that way. It'll pass." I touch my head, look down, and see I'm wearing a full black sublavic suit and HUD. I pull up the signal on the inner-display, and recognize Yena's ident.
I'm not alone. Through the periscope I sight on both of their ships, flanking me at either side, Yena and Naji. They glide through the lava in machines very different to my own. Where mine is sleek and shark-like, modeled on the subglacics I fought from for so long, Yena's is much bigger and blockier, like her suprarene tank-crawlers. Naji's is smaller, a single-man craft like a torpedo, fit for only one.
This is how they have lived their lives, I think. This is what we all are. Why then do I feel so alone?
"It will come back," Naji's voice rings in my head. "Whatever King Ruin took from you, we'll return it."
I am not sure that what he's saying is even possible, but I say thank you. Memories and bonds, once consumed, are gone.
The Lag rears up behind us, stalking us.
"This is for me," says Naji, and veers off to meet it. I feel the pulse of his torpedo-sized ship's torpedoes loose through the magma, and wonder what memories he is sacrificing now, to win us some time. We race on unperturbed, with the Lag falling behind as it gives chase to Naji.
"He's an old hand at this," comes Yena's voice. "He'll be fine. Focus on the Solid Core."
We plunge deeper into the magma. In places there is turbulence, the pitted remnants of memories King Ruin took. I bore through them grimly, the screw propelling me hard forward. Deeper we press, until I feel somewhere far off that Naji has already left.
The Lag is far, and we are already growing close to the inner moat. It is familiar, to come this way, though I do not remember doing it. I only know I did, and with Yena's great ship at my side, I feel stronger.
We broach the inner moat in an eruption of fiery metal and stone. The screw churns me aloft, holding the Bathyscaphe's position in the fire. Together we exit and grapnel to the Solid Core. As the Lag finally rears its head through the concave orb of burning thought below, we blast into the black iron mass of the Core, and grapnel up through.
Into the maze.
Yena is at my side.
"Lead on," comes her staticky voice over the HUD.
I do. We run down metal-walled corridors that gradually morph into cavern-like walls, beaten steel to stone. The Lag rumbles hungrily like an earthquake behind us, but we can't be stopped. I take turns by instinct, following my sense of what is right, driven on by the righteous fury locked in Yena's mind.
The suffering of so many thousands makes me strong, in seeking revenge. The balance must be redressed, and I know that I can dive the bridge. I can blast through it, now if not ever again. For this, it is worth it.
The caverns become walls of flesh, the Lag appears like a duodenal worm behind us, but we run on. Through hollowed-out spaces filled with giant books and down spongy passages we race on. Time becomes unimportant, the sweat running my cheeks becomes familiar, until finally we emerge from the last trickle of labyrinth and stand gasping before the blast door to my aetheric bridge.
Yena swears. I am awed. It is bigger than I imagined, a great wooden castle-door bolted with black iron. And as we watch, it opens.
CRACK
Bluish smoke rises from the bayoneted muzzle of a musket, emerging through the gap in the door. At my side, Yena lets out a strangled gasp and drops to the fleshy floor.
I stare in disbelief. The door continues to open, and I wonder if the King has already beaten us. Have we already lost everything? I pull out my QC parabolic and train it on the door.
A boy emerges.
He has tousled brown hair, wears filthy ragged clothes, with numerous scars and weals rising up from his neck. The dark eye of his musket points directly at me.
"Hello Me," he says.
Something jolts in my mind, but I don't know what it is. For a moment it's enough to prevent me from squeezing the QC trigger and disassembling this boy to bits.
"My name is Ritry Goligh," I say. "Why did you shoot her?"
The boy smiles. He takes a step forward, nearly clear of the door, though he keeps one foot wedged in the jamb.
"You're not Ritry," he says. "You're Me, just one part of Ritry Goligh's mind. I'm another part, and the rest of us are diving in Mr. Ruins mind even now, looking for a way to save you."
I gawk at him. From behind comes the burping wet scream of the Lag. I dare not turn and take my eyes off this boy, but I'll die if I don't. I hear it rushing wetly closer, and chew my HUD to electrocute my suit. It might buy me moments.
"It's alright," says the boy. He holds up a hand, and the Lag's snarling calms. The boy points, like a master directing his dog, and in my peripheral vision I watch the lipless pink head of the Lag snap down on Yena's body.
"No!" I shout, but I can't stop it. She may already be dead. The Lag drags her backwards out of sight.
"An offering," the boy says. "So we can talk."
I squeeze the QC tighter, trying to hold my head together. "Start talking," I say.
"Alright," he says. "Me, you've been lied to. You think you're diving to attack King Ruin, but you're not. You're diving for King Ruin."
"What? That doesn't make any sense. That woman, her name was Yena, she's part of an arene army, they rescued me from King Ruin. They're trying to kill him."
The boy smiles.
not that
he says. The words ring from deep within my own mind, as they have for days, a memory I couldn't shake. My eyes open wider, my grip on the QC slackens, and my legs begin to shake.
"He lied to you," the boy goes on, and I can almost remember now. His name is…
"Far," he says.
I drop to my knees. The QC falls at my side.
Me. I am Me. I am only one part of Ritry Goligh.
Where are the others?
"You can't come through the bridge, Me," he says. "Not with the twin suns watching. I'll kill you before I let that happen. I'll kill myself to fuse the door."
Shuddering, I begin to understand that everything was a lie. They broke me out of nothing. I am still in
the Court. This boy is part of me, standing in the aetheric bridge, waiting.
"I didn't," I begin, but he shakes his head.
"There isn't time. Others are coming already, following this trail you've blazed. It isn't over yet, Me. You have to endure more yet. I'm sorry. But remember, I'll be there. I'll be with you throughout. Can you remember that?"
I start to weep, and I barely know why. Perhaps because I truly am not alone. Because this boy is part of me.
"That's all I can let you remember," says Far. "Now stand up. This is not going to be comfortable."
I stand up. I look at Far's burning blue eyes and the glowing weals on his neck, and I nod.
"For the chord," I say.
Far waves a hand, the Lag's jaws stretch open around me, and I am engulfed. Even as it begins to race backwards, traveling the Solid Core at speeds I can't even imagine, the memories of seeing him slowly peel back from my mind. Was there a chord, or a boy? Was there something about Mr. Ruins?
I don't remember. All I remember is the certainty that I am not alone. That in my suffering, I will not be alone. Someone is watching over me still.
In the outer ring of the Solid Core, the Lag spits me out. I stagger the last stretch of the maze, its viscous fluids dripping off me to sizzle on the RG-initialed flooring, and grapnel out of the hole Yena and I blasted.
There are ships surfacing in the Molten Core, waiting for me. I sink down towards them, and into their clutches.
I surface in the EMR, but now the tangled bonds of the Wall are gone. Instead I am almost alone on the open deck, with just my machine's steady thump slowly winding down. Yena and Naji are standing before me, but something is very different about them. In Yena's hand is a long, serrated blade.
They feel differently. I reach out and find Yena's mind a blank, which rebuffs me easily.
"You refused to go through," says Yena. "Why?"
I don't know. I stare at her.
"What's going on?" I ask. I remember something happened to her, but I don't know what. "Where is everyone?"
King Ruin: A Thriller (Ruins Sonata Book 2) Page 21
