Dawnbreaker

by Posey, Jay

  I don’t like it when people get hurt, Wren had said.

  Hey. Hey, look at me, Three had answered.

  That’s good. That’s really. Good. OK?

  Wren could still hear his voice. But the words meant so much more to him now than they ever had before. And Wren realized then that his training in House Eight’s ways hadn’t started with Foe, or even with Haiku. It had started long before, all that time ago, with Three. Life, my charge, Wren thought. As it had been Three’s. Tears came to his eyes, welled up from within him, but not from grief. From gratitude. And from an overwhelming sense of belonging. Three was gone, nothing was going to change that, ever. But Wren shared Three’s life now, shared experiences, understood on a far deeper level than he’d imagined possible who Three had been, and why. And though he missed Three with all his heart, he couldn’t help but feel something of the man had transferred to him. Maybe the best parts of who he’d been.

  “Do you have any weapons?” Haiku asked.

  “A few,” Foe said. “We will have to find what suits.”

  “I have one,” Wren said. “I have the one I need.”

  At Foe’s prompting, Wren returned to his room, and withdrew it from his pack. Three’s pistol. It had always seemed a dangerous thing to him before, a wild thing not to be trusted or carelessly handled. Now, he carried it reverently, a sacred instrument, an ancient weapon of legacy.

  Wren laid the gun on the table, and the shells beside it. For a moment, no one said anything. Then, Haiku broke the silence.

  “Well,” he said. “Three never did much like to have to shoot anything more than once.”

  “Have you used it before, boy?” Foe asked.

  Wren shook his head.

  “Then perhaps we should find something more suitable–” Foe said.

  “No,” Wren said, interrupting. “No, Foe. This is the right one.”

  Foe looked to Haiku, who nodded in return.

  “Come with me, Wren,” Haiku said. “Bring the weapon.”

  TWENTY-NINE

  Cass had become a ghost, haunting a necropolis. For weeks she wandered the sprawling boneyard east of the Strand, endlessly cycling between the roles of hunter and hunted. The day after she’d left Orrin behind, she’d thought she had escaped the Weir completely. That night, however, had proved her wrong. They hadn’t tracked her as aggressively as before, not as though they knew exactly where she was, or were following a clear trail. But there was no doubt they were still searching for her. For several days, she’d tried different tactics, sometimes ambushing, sometimes avoiding. She even traveled from sunup to sundown to gain as much distance as she could, and though that did seem to buy her a few hours, inevitably the Weir would increase in number before dawn. No matter what she did, she couldn’t seem to get clear.

  And it was obvious that it had been no coincidence. These weren’t the few roving Weir that commonly wandered the night. The numbers were too great, too consistent. They were searching for her. Asher was searching for her.

  On the one hand, it was exactly what she had been hoping for. Asher had no reason to believe Wren was anywhere besides with her. As long as he was spending his effort on locating her, Wren was safe in Greenstone. Safer now, maybe, than he’d ever been, assuming Gamble and her team had made it there. And she was certain they had.

  On the other hand, she had underestimated just how difficult it was going to be to find the physical location of the node. And there was an added complication that revealed itself after the first few days of wandering. Every time she entered that unseen world, each time she attached to the Weir’s datastream to find the nearest node, she was leaving something of herself behind. She could feel it. Filaments of signal clinging like tendrils, or webs of smoke. It was how they were tracking her. How they knew where to move next. Cass had figured out how to disconnect them, but they seemed more resilient each time, more numerous. As a result, she tried to minimize how often she connected, and she was careful only to access the digital in the early part of the day, hoping that whatever trail she was creating would grow cold and confused over the hours before nightfall.

  But after the first week, she realized that there was more going on. Even when she didn’t connect at all, those digital threads crept up on her. Whatever process she had begun wasn’t one she could stop. And it was accelerating. They were trying to reintegrate her. Her fear was that she was once again racing against time; that Asher was actively seeking to reclaim her before she could reach her goal. It drove her, made her angry at each new delay, threatened to make her impatient.

  Cass had been here before, though. It wasn’t exactly the same, of course, but nor was it entirely different from what she’d faced with her addiction to quint – when her body had burned itself out, and yet demanded more of the poison that was consuming it. An ever-growing, ever-accelerating demand that she’d known she couldn’t sustain. Here, now, though, she could at least actively combat it. She would do so for as long as she had strength; and probably well beyond.

  Ranging through the wastes revealed just how widespread Asher’s ruin had become. Though Cass mostly tried to avoid settlements if she came across them, every once in a while, when her supplies were running low, she had no choice but to enter. She’d scavenged from three separate outposts, none of which had any people left at all. Whether they’d fled or been carried off, Cass didn’t know. The signs were similar either way. People were gone, and they’d gone in a hurry.

  At least she had discovered no more monuments of the dead. She guessed that had been a special desecration reserved for Morningside. Asher’s godly wrath poured out on the city that had defied him. A city whose greatest sin was to elevate Wren to a seat of power. She’d taken what she needed, and moved on as quickly as she could, back out into the wastelands.

  Out there in the open on her own there was no one else to worry about, no one to distract her from herself, no noise to cover over the storm that raged inside her. She hadn’t even realized just how much chaos there was in her heart and mind until she was forced to spend so much time alone. As she wandered the broken world, Cass began to make discoveries about herself.

  The first started with an obvious observation: she missed her youngest son. She missed him deeply, with a dull ache that lived like ice in the center of her heart. But as much as she thought about him and wondered about him, she noticed her feelings had taken on a different dimension. She missed him, but she didn’t long for him the way she once had. She didn’t feel that blood-deep need for him. The need to have him close by, to have him in her view. Under her control.

  She wrestled with the implication. From the day of his birth, Wren had become her primary concern, to the expense of all else. Everything she’d done, she had done for him. To protect him, to care for him, to do what she believed was best for him. She had never before recognized how much of herself she had poured into her role as his mother. How much of her identity she had placed there. Now, with the separation, forced to live life on her own terms and hers alone, she discovered just how much she had needed him to be that little boy. How much she had required him to need her, how jealous she had been whenever he’d started to pull away.

  The decision to send him to Greenstone while she stayed behind had seemed like an impulse decision, one made in the heat of the moment, when running back into the fire to pull out whoever she could felt like the only real choice she’d had. Later, it had begun to seem like a mistake.

  Now Cass wondered if there had been more to it. If something in her subconscious had recognized her need to let go, lest she lose herself completely. She felt vaguely guilty, then, as if what she’d thought of as perhaps the most noble gesture of her life had in fact been selfish. Or perhaps she felt guilty that she didn’t feel more guilty. As much as she missed her son, if she was honest with herself, she was actually enjoying the distance. Having been robbed of the power to do anything for him, by her own hand no less, she felt free for... perhaps for the first time ever.

>   She would never reveal the thought to Wren of course, would never speak of it to anyone, even if she had the opportunity. Which she wasn’t counting on. The thing that had torn at her most was that Wren had gone so long thinking she was dead. But surely Gamble had communicated the news to him, and though he might have been upset at her absence, at least he knew she was alive. Or, had been when Gamble had last seen her. It would give him hope. And Cass decided then, at the very end, if it came, when it came, that she would risk a message to Gamble. She would send final word of her death, a final goodbye, so that Wren wouldn’t go through life wondering.

  She cried a little when she thought of that moment, when she thought of her son facing another death. Her death, again. But he had proved himself resilient beyond all her imagining, and he was amongst family now. jCharles and Mol, Able, Mouse, Gamble, all of them... they’d look after him as their own. Cass realized just how blessed she’d been to have found such people. How undeserved those relationships were, and how rich. The thought led her inevitably to Three. The first one in her life to look at her not as something to be taken from, but as someone worth giving to.

  And she wept for him again. For the gift he’d given her, and for how he’d been rewarded. The weight bore down on her then, a weight she had never been able to let herself accept or acknowledge. A weight that had been hanging over her ever since she’d met the man Chapel. A truth she had been running from.

  All of this could have been avoided. All of it.

  If she’d been stronger, somehow. Like Chapel. Chapel had freed himself from the chains of the Weir. Maybe if she had fought harder, if she had been faster, or smarter, and had broken her own bonds, she could have ended Asher’s life then and there. A simple swipe of the hand and she could have wiped him from the world. Asher would be gone. And Three would still be alive.

  And beyond that, she’d given birth to Asher. Raised Asher. How many ways had she gone wrong to unleash such a man on the world?

  That was the darkest time for her, then, confronting that reality. The guilt haunted her for three days and nights, hung on her and pulled at her, whispered to her that she should allow herself to succumb to the process of reintegration. That she deserved it. That it was justice.

  And in a way, it was wrestling with those dark thoughts that opened her eyes to what she’d really been seeking out here in the open. The node was her goal, yes, her target. But it was her own judgment she was after. A chance to face the consequences of all her failures. She’d managed to escape them until now. But now, she was looking for that place where she could come face to face with them, and accept her doom. It was what she deserved.

  She almost believed it.

  Almost.

  But in the midst of that turmoil, her thoughts broke open. Memories stirred that she had long suppressed. Memories of Asher as a boy, a young boy. Of how she had loved him, and how she had fought for him. How she had done as much to protect him as she had for Wren. And how he had ultimately rejected her. How he had resisted her pleas, had struggled against her. She had poured herself out for him, and in response he had denied her.

  She let go then, let go of a deep-seated grief she hadn’t even known she was harboring. A grief for the little boy she had lost long ago. And more significantly, she let go of the idea that the consequences of his actions were her fault. It was another aspect of her desire for control, and now that it had been revealed to her, it was almost embarrassing to consider, as though she alone were powerful enough to shape the course the world took. As though her actions, her successes or her mistakes, were all that mattered in the determination of the future’s outcome. Even if she could change one thing about the past, that was no guarantee that anything that followed would match her vision of what might have been.

  Asher, and Asher alone, was responsible for his actions.

  Three’s death wasn’t her fault. It was a choice he had made. And not a coward’s choice, not an easy escape from the suffering of the world; he had given his life to hold true to himself.

  After that days-long process of coming face-to-face with herself and confronting her own demons, Cass emerged transformed. Whatever she had thought she’d been looking for out there on her own, she knew now she’d found what she’d needed. What she had truly needed.

  And her objective transformed as well. She wasn’t out here searching for death. She was fighting for life, both for her own and for those she loved. She didn’t fear death, if that’s what she was facing, but neither did she accept it or embrace it. It took patience and courage to be willing to suffer. She had both. The image of that lone star, shining in all its brilliance even amidst the empty blackness of the night sky came back to her then, and gave her strength.

  In that new strength, Cass devised a different approach. Rather than trying her usual direct method, she embraced the slow advance; she began to circle the node. To stalk it. If Asher were analyzing her pattern of movement, she knew it might be possible that he would discover her intent. But she also knew her son. He most likely wouldn’t give her the credit of having a plan, and would instead assume he was driving her in a panicked spiral. It occurred to her that such an assumption would work to her advantage; the more Asher thought he was in control of the situation, the more likely he was to let it linger, to toy with her.

  It took several days but the new pattern paid off, and enabled her to spend even less time connected to the Weir’s stream. The search had led her west; a few times she even lapsed over into the fringe of the Strand. Gradually the distance closed, her loops shrank.

  And then one morning, she found it.

  Or, rather, she found where it was buried. She stood on a dust-coated street a mile or two from the border of the Strand. Based on everything she could discern, she was standing right on top of whatever it was that was creating the node. But it was underneath her. Way, way, underneath her.

  For an hour she searched for some tunnel or access to no avail. And then, just as she was sitting down to take a break, she saw an unassuming cinder-block shelter with a heavy steel door. It was barely seven feet tall and almost a perfect square, four feet to a side, with a slanted roof. A chainlink fence surrounded it, topped with razor wire. Behind it, a slender pole stretched up thirty feet into the air. There may have been a light on top of it, though it was impossible to see in the daytime.

  It was the razor wire that caught Cass’s attention. The little building was too small to hold anything particularly valuable. And the fence itself only protected a patch of ground that was maybe ten by ten feet. She approached the gate of the fence and found that it was unlocked.

  The steel door of the shelter too wasn’t secured. She pulled it open, and the hinges squealed as they awoke to their long-forgotten purpose. The only thing the building contained was a damp, cool darkness. No, there was more. Stairs. Concrete stairs leading down into the emptiness.

  Cass stood at the door for a few minutes, sipping water and taking some food. She wasn’t particularly hungry, but she wasn’t quite ready to see where those stairs led, either. The last time she had seen a place like that had been a storm water system. The memories it stirred weren’t pleasant.

  Still. She was a different woman than she’d been back then. A new creation. Darkness held no power over her now. It was just the fear of the unknown that was resisting her now, and the easiest way to slay that beast was to gain its knowledge. She capped her water and started her descent.

  The walls of the stairwell were smooth concrete, as were the stairs themselves. A sturdy railing separated one half-flight of stairs from its counterpart further below. Cass leaned over the rail and looked down into that depthless blackness. It was like staring down into a chimney, or a fathomless tomb. Concrete as far down as she could see, stairs winding around and around on themselves. As much as she dreaded the walk down, she despised the thought of the walk back up.

  Even though she had no problem seeing in the total darkness, Cass took it slow, careful of her steps, minimiz
ing her noise level. She counted flights as she descended, but lost track somewhere in the sixties. It was around that time that she became aware of a faint hum, one that at first she couldn’t be sure she was actually hearing. Trying to determine its source was what caused her to lose her count of the stairs, but she made a best guess and continued on. Sometime later as she approached the bottom, she was in the low one hundreds, give or take a few. The count might not have been perfectly accurate, but it was close enough to make the point. Cass was deep, deep underground. A thousand feet or more, by her estimate. Though marginally warmer than the temperature above ground, it was still surprisingly cool and here the air was very dry. The hum had grown quite distinct; a resonant drone, mildly soothing. And Cass knew she was reaching the end because she could see a doorframe outlined in a moonlight blue. Her first instinct was to freeze, fearing that she was seeing the light from a Weir. But after a few moments she realized something else was shining mutedly below her.

  Cass followed the final set of stairs, and stepped up to the sliding door. It beeped and clicked, and opened to a small chamber. There was another door at the other end, and when she went to it, it behaved exactly as the first. When it opened, however, Cass stepped out and then stopped short.

  Whatever she’d been expecting, this wasn’t it.

  The chamber opened out to a cavernous room, with a ceiling that stretched easily twenty-five feet above her. It was hung with an enormous steel grid laden with huge stacks of pipes. No, not pipes. Bundles of cables. The room was filled with rows of machines, laid out in uniform aisles. Stacks and stacks, for dozens of yards in both directions. Each one hummed softly, but taken all together in that huge room they joined in a droning chorus that filled the emptiness. And each had a tiny light of familiar hue, undoubtedly reporting its status. Cass walked among them as if in a dream, awed by the immensity of the system, and by its perfect order. This was surely a relic of the old world, something left by the people lost to time. And yet, though its creators were dust and ash, this technology remained. More than remained. Persisted. It continued on in its purpose. And Cass knew that purpose.