by Conner, Jack
“And now you have it.” Avery’s mouth was suddenly very dry. “But I don’t understand. The Starfish could have leveled the coastal powers! Octung and the pirates could have swept in and taken over. That was surely the plan. The Starfish could have won the war for you. What more can the Key do?”
“The Starfish could only have won the war on two or three continents,” Sheridan said. “Apparently they don’t live long enough to do more than that, and no more of them can be made. But by letting them continue on, even after the relic had been found, the R’loth were able to motivate their enemies to do what they couldn’t do themselves. Octunggen scientists are either on the run or locked up in Octung, under siege, without recourse to the broad range of materials needed to find the necessary weakness to the Starfish. And the pirates, of course, have no scientific knowledge. No, only our enemies could have found a substance that would have led us to the Key, and it makes sense that it would be you and your ... Layanna ... that would be the ones to accomplish it. The R’loth didn’t realize that someone with her abilities would be needed at first or they wouldn’t have tried to kill her in Ethali, but I’m sure they’re glad they failed. Anyway, with the resources and security given to you by Denaris you were able to locate the weakness, the ghost flower, and to set out after it. I knew that by following you you’d lead me to the Key or to what the Key is used for.”
Avery took a breath. “And? Now that you have it?”
The Captain turned back to the window. The land scrolled away below, dark and distant. “We have but a narrow window,” he said. “Between the destruction of the Starfish by your ... friends, Doctor ... and the Collossum’s implementation of their next method of destruction. Their Failsafe. Something far more lethal and more devastating. I don’t know what it will be, but I know some of their resources, some of their abilities ...” He had gone even grayer, and his face was tight.
“What can we do in this ... window?” Avery said, wary.
Sheridan touched his arm, and he saw something in her face, some warmth, and it was only then that he realized what he had said. We. He cursed himself for a fool, and yet there it was. Perhaps Sheridan had been right all along.
“That,” said the Captain, “is a very good question. And to answer it is where we’re going now.”
THE END
OF VOLUME EIGHT
OF
THE ATOMIC SEA
FROM THE AUTHOR:
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Turn the page for the first chapter of Nightmare City ...
NIGHTMARE CITY
PART ONE
Jack Conner
Copyright 2014
All rights reserved
Cover image used with permission
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Chapter 1
Katya fled through the streets of Upper Lavorgna, her heart pounding wildly.
Faster, she told herself. Faster.
Shadows and fog swirled around her, and one of the three moons glared down from above. She was more terrified than she could ever remember being.
He was after her.
She’d lost sight of him some time back, but she knew he was there, somewhere. Hunting.
Lightning blasted overhead, startling her, and a deluge began to pound down. Great, just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse.
She had no place to go, not even a damned umbrella. Rain plastered her hair against her scalp, but she pulled her black leather jacket tighter about her, feeling her jagged rings against her fingers, and pushed on, choosing alleys and main roads, never any one for very long. Sedic had an auto.
“Got you, bitch.”
A hand reached from the shadows and grabbed Katya’s shoulder, spinning her around. A narrow, tattooed face peered out at her from the darkness, eyes bloodshot and lips hard, blue and fish-thin; he was infected, then. A victim of the Atomic Sea.
“Thought you could filch and flee, eh?” he said. “Sedic’ll pay good money to see you get yours, girl. Where’s the loot?”
“Had to ditch it.” Damnit.
His fishy lips stretched in a ghastly smile. “Guess I’ll have to search you to find out for sure. Thoroughly—”
Katya punched him in the throat. Her jagged silver rings bit into his flesh, and he gagged and reeled backward, eyes wide. Before he could recover, she turned and ran. Her heart nearly exploded out of her chest. Dear gods. Lucky that idiot had been high and stupid. He’d be after her soon enough, though.
Autos rattled past, then a horse-drawn carriage. A few homunculi stalked the shadows, blackened things in the shapes of men. A great steam-man stomped by, vapor squirting from his upper reaches, but those were relics from another age and there was only the one, dented and rusty though it was.
Bombs dropped during the war (still ongoing in other parts of the world) had cratered some of the roads and collapsed a few of the buildings, largely unrepaired. This was the Uppers, after all. Support the Brotherhood, one scuffed poster read. Good luck, she thought.
Wet and exhausted, she found Aggie at the corner of Navvers and Tril
ston.
“Thank Magnar!” Katya panted. “I was afraid you’d be out on a date.”
“Damn, look at you, hon.”
Aggie pulled her under the overhang, where several other prostitutes lounged, stinking of cheap perfume. One was blatantly infected, and she resembled a living anemone, orange tendrils waving in defiance of gravity.
The corner they’d picked was one of the busiest in the Fifth Ward, but at this time of day and in this weather only a trickle of traffic rumbled by. Two homunculi listed against the wall, seemingly lifeless. Only their eyes moved, rolling in their black sockets. Their eyes were the only things human on them, and they creeped Kat out. Still, she knew the creatures provided protection for the girls. And me, hopefully. They were one of the reasons she’d come here.
“H-have a cigarette?” she asked, teeth chattering.
Aggie unslung her tiny purse with the red frills and dug out a pack of smokes. Menthols, but Katya didn’t complain as Aggie put one to her lips and sparked it for her.
“What happened?” Aggie said. “Don’t tell me you got the law after you.”
“Worse. Sedic.”
“The loan shark? He’s bad news. Hear he crippled Cinda last week.”
“Paralyzed her. Thought I’d get him back. Use the loot to pay her bills. Didn’t work out so well, though. He got sick at dinner—bad clams or something—and doubled back. Caught me right in the act of finding his stash.”
“Rotten luck, girl.”
“Now I’ve got him and his pack on my trail.”
“He’s killed, like, nine people this year that I know of. And what he does to girls like me ...” Aggie shook her head. “How can I help?”
“Just give me cover till I can think my way out of this.”
The other prostitutes glared at Katya. Likely they didn’t appreciate the thought of more competition. As if.
“More bad news,” Aggie said. “Mala saw a haunt earlier.”
“Not another one,” Katya said.
“She was goin’ down an alley after a job and saw this--well, shadow, I guess--fly up into the sky. She heard a scream and went ahead. Found an old lady kneeling over some bodies. Mala said their skulls were smoking.”
“Shit.”
The haunts had been terrorizing Lavorgna for months, and no one even had a guess at what they were.
“Just be careful out there,” Aggie said.
Katya sucked in a hit and shivered as the nicotine fired her bloodstream. The menthol tasted terrible, but it was worth it. She blew out the smoke and stared up into the storm-tossed night. Here and there between the clouds scudded two of the three moons, one pale and white, one greenish and misshapen.
“Hey, look what crawled in,” Aggie said.
A long black limo squealed up to the corner, sloughing water. A dirty spray splashed Katya’s legs.
“Watch it!” Aggie called, approaching the vehicle. “Look where you’re goin’. Can’t you see it’s rainin’ out here?”
Sudden fear for Aggie made Katya call out, but the redhead ignored her. Four homunculi stood on the limo’s running boards, two on each side, chains linked to spiked collars around their necks. The creatures’ gangly black frames glistened in the rain. Like guard dogs, Katya thought. Except that they looked like blackened human corpses, only their eyes undamaged.
The limo’s chrome grill shone like silver teeth, and its bulbous headlights stabbed into the darkness like swords. A Boss’s car, or one of his lieutenant’s.
As Aggie sashayed toward the limo like she was the Empress of Qar, Kat felt a swell of admiration for her. She should’ve been a thief like me, not a whore.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doin’?” Aggie asked whoever was in the limo. “Sprayin’ water all over my girls? We ain’t made of sugar but that don’t mean we like gettin’ gutter water hosed all over us.”
The back window rolled down. Darkness gaped.
Aggie ducked her head into the interior, and Katya half expected black hands to grab her and haul her inside, for the auto to roar off and vanish into the night, Aggie’s screams on the air. Instead Aggie laughed and fingered her wet clothes.
“Naw, it’s slower than a Returner’s come,” she said, and continued talking to the occupant of the limo’s cabin in low tones. Her pimp?
Sudden movement down the street. Katya snapped her head to see the low, curving lines of Sedic’s auto, prowling like a tiger in the shadows. One of his goons drove, and she thought she saw Sedic himself in the passenger seat, a terrifying waste of a man whose addiction to alchemical substances had turned his veins yellow and caused most of his hair to fall out. A chill swept her. She looked back to the limo.
This is my chance. She moved toward the vehicle.
“I think I’d like an introduction,” she said.
Aggie looked surprised. “Alright, then. Jack, Katya Ivreski. Katya, meet Death’s Head Jack.”
“Come in if you want to talk,” said a dry, crackly voice from the car. “I always have time for pretty young women in need. But I’m kind of in a hurry and don’t have time to sit here and chat all night.”
With a rueful smile, Aggie opened the limo door for Katya. The darkness inside looked very dark.
Katya hesitated as her eyes fell on the homunculi. Suck it up, Kat.
She cringed at the proximity of the creatures, which leered down at her from either side (Aggie patted her on the back and said “Good luck”) and ducked into the interior of the limousine. It smelled of incense smoke and chemicals and was so dark she couldn’t see. A hand guided her, and she fell back into plush leather. It was more comfortable than anything she’d ever known. She hoped she didn’t ruin it with her wet clothes.
The car doors slammed shut, locking her in darkness. Tires squealed, and the limo shot off.
Someone lit a match, and light flared across the face of the only other occupant of the cab, the man who must be Death’s Head Jack.
Katya opened her mouth and screamed.
When the thing sitting across from her didn’t lunge for her and tear out her throat, Kat forced herself to stop screaming. Courage, girl.
It wasn’t easy. The thing was quite literally named. Death-black eyes glittered out of a decayed, withered face. The head had to belong to a corpse—yet when he spoke the flesh bunched and moved, surprisingly mobile.
At her fear and fascination, Jack laughed.
She tucked her legs under her and crawled as far away from him as she could get. She understood what the smoke was for now—to hide the stench of rot. And the chemicals must issue from Jack himself.
“Are you a Returner?” she asked.
Amused, he shook his head. He put his cigarette to his lips, and as he did she saw—her eyes adjusting to the dimness—that his hand was normal. That is, he had the hands of a living man, while his head was undeniably that of a dead one. And that just couldn’t be, not if he was a Returner. Returners were all corpse—in fact, they were usually composed of pieces of several. Besides, Returners were normally just mindless slaves. Reanimating the dead was a tricky process and mostly the brain was too far gone by the time it was brought back to life. It was said that only the mysterious and reclusive Dr. Reynalt could perform the procedure successfully.
“No,” Jack said, his withered lips curling around his cigarette. “I’m not a Returner, not precisely. But let’s leave that for now. I know my story. I don’t know yours. Do you want to join our little family—start working for me?”
Katya stared at his rotting head. She knew Jack could, if he wanted, slit her throat and throw her corpse from the car, and even if it landed at the feet of the most honest cop in Upper Lavorgna no one would lay a hand on him. Bosses’ men, especially the high ones, could get away with anything.
“We’ll see,” Katya said.
Smoke curled up from his cigarette. “You are pretty, I’ll give you that—wet and bedraggled and all.”
“I don’t need to be pretty.”
“No?”
She bit the inside of her cheek. “Listen, Jack. It’s been a rough night. It’s just, that’s not why I’m here. I didn’t want to meet with you to become, you know, a working girl.”
“Why then?”
She made herself sit up straight. “I want to meet with Boss Ravic.”
His eyebrows, what he had of them, shot up. “Oh?”
“Yep.”
“Well, as it happens, I was just on the way to the Factory to pay him a visit.”
She kept quiet for the rest of the trip. They moved east, away from the sea; Lavorgna was a port city, sprawling like a smoking, cancerous mass along this section of the Atomic Sea, but the Fifth Ward was deep inland, far from the water. When Katya was feeling bold sometimes she would climb a skyscraper and stare out toward the mad, boiling sea with its lightning erupting upward and noxious fumes oozing from its crashing waves.
Soon enough, more normal lightning flickered across the night, silhouetting the three thick towers of the Factory that jutted up proudly, belching smoke into the black sky. Katya knew the smoke was red, not black, and that it was just for looks, a constant symbol of Ravic’s power.
“Ever been inside?” Jack said.
She shook her head.
It wasn’t a real factory, of course, she knew, not since the fighting. A great hulking monstrosity, the building stood in a wasteland surrounded on all sides by bombed-out buildings. It too had been bombed, reduced to rubble, but Ravic had taken it over and rebuilt it to his own specifications. Now it was more castle than anything else, a huge mountain of metal and stone, and the hairs prickled on the nape of her neck as she approached it.
