Immortal Architects

by Paige Orwin

  Just a moment. Just a moment.

  Not a lot of those left to spare.

  He hit the next level down back-first. Wheezed. Checked to make sure the woman was still breathing – she was – and rolled to his feet, trying to shield her from falling debris. The creature lunged over him, snapping at Istvan. Glyphs burned green along its sides. Formless horrors gusted inside its black windows. Oil drooled from its jaws.

  A survivor from the Wizard War. A machine in form only, designed with such a familiar shell only to sow terror. One of Shokat Anoushak’s mockeries.

  It looked… patched. Dented. Like something rescued from a junkyard, like it had been revived from a dead husk…

  Istvan darted deeper into the greenhouse complex. The mockery clawed its way after him, the scythes that replaced its skids shattering the glass walls in glittering cascades. Bits of palm fronds, bark, and shredded banana spattered in every direction.

  Edmund dodged the worst of it – resisting the urge to dodge all of it, spend just a little time to emerge unscathed – and dashed further along the walkway. “Hey!” he called, hoping the thing could hear him. “You wouldn’t happen to have a few moments for little old me, would you?”

  The mockery screamed and wheeled.

  Edmund retrieved his pocket watch, breathing hard. “That so? That much?”

  Another light tube blew like a firecracker. Oil spattered across the walkway. He leapt over it. “The rest of your life? All to chase me?”

  The thing launched itself at him.

  A skeletal horror in a bloodstained First World War uniform dropped on it, the blade of a trench knife flashing, ripping through one of the thing’s spotlight eyes. Vulture’s wings beat at the air with a sound like distant artillery. “Get the woman out,” shouted Istvan, “Something’s going to bloody fall on her!”

  Edmund ducked a claw, holding onto his top hat, cape snapping in the roar from the blades. It wasn’t working. He’d known it wouldn’t. The mockery was a construct, not a living thing. It didn’t understand him. It didn’t truly have time to spend, and it wasn’t self-aware enough to have any potential to refuse.

  He was wasting time that wasn’t his. Time he’d stolen to replace time he didn’t have. Time he’d given up for a noble cause that no one in good conscience could regret.

  He was thirty-five. He’d been thirty-five for seventy years.

  He wanted to yell in frustration. Maybe he did.

  “Edmund!”

  Get the woman out. Should have done that first.

  Couldn’t afford to be this desperate.

  Edmund got his pocket watch open. It was brass, with an etched hourglass on the front that had almost worn off again. He ran through an offering of cartographical calculations based on a planetary model proven false centuries ago, fixing himself as the logical center of the universe: all other things radiated from his location.

  He snapped the watch shut, teleporting past the blades. The woman lay nearby and he crouched next to her. “Istvan, the mockery looks secondhand,” he shouted. “Try to disable it, if you can. I’ll be back!”

  The ghost sputtered. “Disable it? How in God’s name am I supposed to do that?”

  “You’re a doctor, Istvan, you figure it out!”

  “It’s a helicopter!”

  “Improvise!”

  Istvan did something. The mockery roared. Another glass wall exploded, flinging a cornucopia of tree branches, severed water pipes, mulched petals, and pleasant floral scents into the air, the mockery whirling in its midst like a spinning top with teeth, Istvan clinging to one of its clawed skids.

  He’d be fine.

  Edmund pictured the other side of the entrance hatch, estimated the woman’s weight, with apologies, and sped through the required notation. A snap of the watch–

  –and he propped her against a glassy wall, the sound of the fight beyond muffled through steel.

  “Sorry,” he told her. He wiped at his forehead and found blood. He sighed. “You’re in for a hell of a shock when you wake up.”

  No response. She was breathing easily enough but didn’t look to be regaining consciousness soon, no doubt intentional on Istvan’s part. Recovery, for the Shattered, was a long, slow, painful road… and the Twelfth Hour didn’t have the space or expertise for it. Edmund could find them, but couldn’t do anything to help them.

  Only Barrio Libertad could do that.

  He’d have to take her there when this was over. Turn her in. Do his moral duty. Pretend that the “neighborhood-fortress” wasn’t his least favorite place that wasn’t underwater or made of bone.

  Of course Barrio Libertad would get itself involved somehow. It didn’t matter what he did: they were always there, waiting, trying to “help.”

  As if they could help him.

  He stood. “Right,” he muttered. “Stay put.”

  The Shattered woman stayed.

  He went. The greenhouse he returned to was a sap-spattered shambles, a tale of wild trajectories and explosive munitions smashed into the sides of cubes four and five rows out. Sparks sputtered from broken light tubes. Sprinklers hissed over the metallic shrieks of the mockery and Istvan’s own accompaniment of ghostly bombardment, thuds and booms that always sounded as though they came from the far horizon. A burning pungency to the air suggested that at some point the battle had mowed down a field of onions.

  Edmund picked his way down from the walkway, more grateful than usual for the seals on his goggles. Glass crunched beneath his boots, glistening and uneven and slick with water and oil. He could barely see, save for the reflections.

  Just one mockery, to do all that.

  How had the cult revived it? Who had they killed? There were more of the things all over Big East, wrecked and dead. If word got out that they could be rebuilt – not revived, the things weren’t really alive in the first place – everyone was in for a world of trouble.

  He’d known asking it for time wouldn’t work. It didn’t have time to take. Asking for its whole life was a fool’s errand, impossible and pointless.

  He shouldn’t have done it. Even in frustration, even knowing that it wouldn’t matter, he still shouldn’t have done it. Only a few innocent words to rip away an entire lifetime. As simple as a marriage proposal. As easy as he was willing to make it. One con, and he’d be set for the next sixty years.

  Edmund swallowed. That was how it started. That was the slope.

  Shouldn’t have done it.

  He edged into a stand of shredded palm trees, squinting at the flash and whirl of headlights in the darkness, and he thought of the fishermen on their boat. What they wouldn’t have given to secure a place like this intact.

  A floating sphere darted past him, disappearing into the foliage. He waited a moment, but it didn’t come back. Another mockery?

  He moved forward again, stepping from one pool of light to the next. Some of the glowing tubes remained, spun out at right angles to the battle’s passage. The floor shook below him. The smell of chlorine joined the onion. Water ran from broken pipes, an oily river to navigate towards cornstalks that shredded and flew. Helicopter blades roared.

  “Istvan,” he called.

  “Wait!” came the response, “I haven’t–”

  A spark of red. A whistling, the rustle of feathers, the serrated tip of what he knew all too well wasn’t an arrow–

  Edmund couldn’t dodge it.

  He reached for it, instead – just enough time, taken from the meager supply he’d stolen – fingers brushing the obsidian point, barely touching–

  He teleported behind the mockery. The missile came with him, still set on its course.

  He left it there.

  He was far enough away by the time the cube exploded into a searing inferno that it didn’t deafen him too much, and wet enough that his cape only smoked a little.

  Very wet.

  Something brushed against his cheek. He yelped and scrambled away, thrashing at whatever it was with one free han
d. No, no. Not this again. Not this.

  Underwater. Underwater. Couldn’t breathe.

  He clawed his way to shore, half-ran up it, tripped on a fallen piece of walkway, and landed hard on his side before he realized what had happened.

  Fish pond. He’d landed in a fish pond.

  A skid-claw whirled through the air and embedded itself into a tangle of tubing beside him, scorched and twitching. A headlight bounced into the pond. Bits of arcane etching sputtered out around him, their energies broken and dissipating.

  He let out a breath and shook out his goggles.

  “You could have bloody warned me,” said a sour voice behind him.

  Edmund rubbed at his temples, wishing the ringing would stop. “Sorry.”

  Istvan crouched beside him, uniform charred, bones blackened, wings stripped bare of feathers and disintegrating into ash as they folded. Smoke curled from him, wisps of his substance not yet resettled. “Sorry, indeed,” he muttered. He held out a hand and stared at it as ghostly flesh re-coalesced over bare phalanges, burn scarring running into his sleeve. “I know what you were bloody thinking. Oh, it’s just Istvan, he’ll be fine.”

  “You are fine.”

  “It still hurts, you know!”

  Edmund sighed. “I said I was sorry.”

  “I thought you wanted the mockery alive, anyhow. That’s what you told me, before you hared off. Now look at it.” The specter traced a hand across the scarred half of his face, still burnt disconcertingly down to bone. “A wonderful maneuver, though,” he added. “Have I ever seen you do that before?”

  Edmund shrugged.

  “You caught it, didn’t you? The missile?”

  “Not exactly.”

  Istvan chuckled, looking away at the still-burning corn stalks behind them. “Very good.”

  Edmund wrung water out of his cape.

  Istvan sat, drawing his hands around one knee. He was close enough for the cold to be noticeable but not so close to be chilling; a fine balance he didn’t always meet. “I suppose we ought to be worried,” he said after a moment.

  “Probably.”

  “Another site overrun, mockeries in the ranks, likely dozens of other cultists about.” He sighed, casting a nervous glance beyond the broken glass. “I suppose I ought to go search for them.”

  Edmund looked around for his hat and found it floating in the pond. He picked up a length of fallen railing and prodded at it. “If you like.”

  Istvan stood. “I could get that for you.”

  “I’ve got it.”

  The specter peered at him, worrying at his wedding ring. “Edmund, you do realize that you’re bleeding.”

  Edmund grimaced. His hat bobbed just beyond reach. “I know.”

  “Ah.” A pause. “Ah, mind if I…?”

  “I’m fine. It’s just a few cuts, Istvan.” The tip of the railing caught his hat brim and sent it spinning further away. He cursed under his breath.

  “Edmund.”

  “Fine. All right.” Edmund drew the railing back and tossed it down on the artificial bank, near the still-twitching skid. “I didn’t have time to get out of the way,” he added before he could stop himself.

  No time. No time for anything but existing. Only one way to get it back…

  He closed his eyes as Istvan gripped his shoulder, the bitter chill a welcome distraction from the blind and fluttering panic that fought to claw its way up his throat. Not now. That wouldn’t help anything. It never did.

  The sting of the cuts on his face and forehead eased and then faded.

  So did the terrors.

  The chill receded, phantom pressure released, and when he opened his eyes again a skeletal terror alighted before him, holding out his somewhat sodden top hat.

  Edmund took it. “Thanks.”

  “Of course,” said Istvan.

  The specter seemed chipper than the situation merited, but that was typical: he was what he was, and at least he’d put his penchant for feeding on pain and suffering to good use. Despite it all he still thought of himself as a surgeon first.

  Important, how a ghost thought of himself.

  “Shall I search, then?” Istvan asked.

  Edmund shook out his top hat, moved to put it on… and paused. Something was moving beyond the glass.

  “I don’t think that will be necessary,” he said.

  A procession filed out across the blasted garden. At least two dozen men and women. They moved in eerie synchrony, just short of lockstep, and fanned out in silence, avoiding still-burning fires. One stopped short of the gutted helicopter hulk, shaking his head as though mourning a murder.

  Edmund put on his top hat.

  Shattered.

  “We can’t leave them here,” he said, half to himself.

  Istvan was already recoiling. “That’s easy for you to say, now, isn’t it? God knows what else they’ve pieced together, and you’ve no way to defend yourself, and you know that you’ll have to go to Barrio Libertad, now, after all this.”

  Edmund eyed the nearest. “One step at a time.”

  “Oh? What will you be doing?”

  “Moral support.”

  “Edmund!”

  He tensed. If he could break them up – distract them enough for Istvan to take them down one by one…

  The sphere from before came back. It darted across the field, a mechanical construct the size of a soccer ball with bright blue lenses that spun and whirled on its face. It paused in front of the Shattered cultists, who stared at it in naked confusion.

  “Wait for assistance, please,” it said. It spoke with a heavy Spanish accent, stuttered, shot through with static.

  “What?” said Edmund.

  The sphere skipped backwards. There was a clanging, a rushing and roar like a train passing–

  –and then five people in riot gear folded out of the air before it. In the lead charged a figure of gold and scarlet.

  Edmund wished he felt surprised.

  Great. Just great.

  * * *

  An armored fist drove into one of the Shattered with a crack and flash; the man jerked and staggered, muscles seizing, and then fell.

  “This was ours!” Istvan shouted the first thing that came to mind. “We bloody got here first!”

  Grace Wu, so-called “state hero” of Barrio Libertad, whirled about and knocked a second cultist off his feet. She was built like a boxer, clad in thick-soled boots, loose pants and armored top anchored by a broad belt about her midriff. A thin band of silver encircled her cowled head, eyes just visible behind tinted goggles. Outlandish, it was… a “uniform” like Edmund’s hat and cape, one that carried its own name with it, brilliant colors and instant recognition. The product of a culture Istvan still struggled to understand.

  Sparks sizzled on impact.

  “Yeah?” she called. “We noticed!”

  “You beat us once,” shouted one cultist, “but we will never falter! We are free! Our Lady will reward us, and we–”

  Grace hit him in the spine. He toppled.

  Her cohorts dashed after her, wielding batons that stunned. Istvan hung back, wincing at each strike, savoring the pain he knew he oughtn’t, barely able to follow the dizzying multiplicity of each foe. Even their hurts were strange, split and muted. They were like human shapes mimicked by a school of fish, sides flashing almost solid, darting in a great whirl and becoming something else each moment.

  He couldn’t take part. He would hurt someone. One of them had been difficult enough. All he had was his knife, and…

  “Bring your horsemen and your prophet,” shouted another. “I am eternal! I will–”

  Grace hit her, too, then spun, boots skidding through spilled water. “What’s the matter, Doc?” she called, her distinctive New York accent distorting vowels in ways that Edmund had never tried to correct. “They got you spooked, or did you grow a conscience?”

  Istvan bristled. “I never–!”

  “Lay off,” said Edmund, suddenly pre
sent again though Istvan didn’t remember him leaving, evading reaching hands with cat-like ease, eerily fluid. A sign of yet more time spent that he couldn’t afford. Not after…

  Oh, Edmund couldn’t be doing that.

  Oh, it was wonderful when he did.

  Istvan steeled himself – don’t think about that, don’t dwell on dust clinging to wet fabric, the way the wizard danced along a precipice of dread worn smooth – and turned on the nearest cultist.

  “Abomination,” the man hissed.

  Istvan’s fingers bit into his chest. The scrape of bone and the hot rush of living blood were both familiar sensations; he focused on them, the thud-thud of a racing heart, impulses firing along straining nerves. Solid. Real.

  As he wasn’t. As he hadn’t been, since–

  Istvan faltered. His vision doubled. Ghost-sheen flickered across the man’s face, and Istvan saw his own in return, colorless, left side a twisted ruin, eyes wild. He sucked in a breath and his chest expanded, an unpleasant ballooning he barely remembered.

  Muscle twisted in his back – or was it his own fingers, through them, a caress to reach bone? – and then a twinge of pain shot up his spine. He gasped. Words bubbled in his throat, a language he didn’t know on a tongue that fluttered, and a hate that wasn’t his curdled in his stomach.

  How dare he.

  How dare–

  He was too close. He shouldn’t have – oh, he couldn’t – there were the right nerves, along the neck, slick and taut, and the sweet agony…

  He collapsed.

  No, the other man collapsed. Istvan wasn’t him. Istvan was still standing, shaking, drawing too-quick breaths he couldn’t feel, not anymore, and he stumbled backwards to put more distance between himself and flesh.

  Oh, he hated possession. Even briefly. Even in part. Blood ran much hotter than anyone knew, and it was obscene to seek it where it dwelled without the assurance that it was necessary – he was a surgeon, this would help, this would save a life.

  It thundered with each heartbeat, and he hated it.

  Hated it.

  “All right?” asked one of the Barrio Libertad contingent, tone a mixture of curiosity and wariness. The helmet tilted.