by S. C. Green
“I’ll talk to him.” Alain balled his hands into fists. His tone clearly implied not much talking would get done.
“I can look after myself around men like Malcolm. I just wish I had more time to practice.” I held up the particle gun. “Cory has made some adjustments to these, but I still don’t think they’re going to help much.”
“They’re going to have to do.” His face looked grave. “Hopefully, we won’t even need them. I’m hoping you can slip in and out, unnoticed.”
“Do you think that’s possible?”
“For you, I think it’s possible.” He lifted his head, his gaze flicking over my face as if searching for a hint of doubt, of which I was sure there was plenty. “We’re going to head into the Hub now. Are you ready?”
I gulped. It was time to face the wraith for real once more. “Not even close. But I’m going to do it anyway. Lead the way.”
7
The last time I’d stepped foot outside the Rim, it had been the day of my arrest.
The job was a simple heist—lift ten bottles of alcohol from an apartment in Stockside, one of the poshest high rise residences in the Hub. All the info had been legit. The access codes had worked, the doorman waved me through, and the security camera was a cinch to deactivate. I’d been in the middle of strapping bottles of hooch to the inside of my coat—one hand on the wall facing the hall, watching for the apartment’s owner—when a security force burst in from the balcony. They’d been hiding on the balcony of the adjacent room, waiting for me, where I wouldn’t be able to see them with my power. Alain’s doing, I’d now learned.
Fucker.
It was odd, then, to now be walking the Hub streets in broad daylight with a much larger and more dangerous heist on my mind. Flanked by Alain and Cory, I moved through the streets with a growing unease swelling in my gut. Even though we’d gone over the plan on the walk over—even Reapers, with their reserves of petrol, walked or flew everywhere—I still wasn’t sure what exactly I was doing. I had no idea I would ever locate May and the Mimir inside the towering edifice of the Citadel.
Here, where only a few hundred people remained in a cityscape built for twentyfold more, Hub citizens lived in relative splendour. They occupied whole floors of the abandoned apartment buildings, creating real estate empires of empty walls and broken dreams. Here, people still cared about the money you had, and what it could buy you. They still believed that one day we’d be free of the dome, and they’d be able to make their fortune in the real world once more. They saw the here and now as a holiday of debauchery. What went on in Petrified City stayed in Petrified City. Fancy food, bottled soda, booze, sex, guns … it was all within reach, as long as you had the right currency. Many of the crooks in the Rim made a living here in the Hub, pulling security detail on some of the larger residences or trafficking their wares into the hands of eager buyers.
And over them all loomed the Citadel, that gleaming beacon of terror on the horizon. It glowed faintly as we approached, casting a pale grey aura over the city’s horizon. We were only a block away from my first apartment, but I didn’t want to stop to look. I wouldn’t give up my flea-infested bed in the Rim for a palace that stood in the shadow of that thing.
Cory tapped my shoulder. “This is where I leave you.”
He had a laptop under one arm. With his free hand, he adjusted the portable mic I was wearing on the back of my collar. I touched the glasses that covered my eyes, making sure for the umpteenth time that the zoom function on the camera inside was in working order.
“You’ll be sweet.” He smiled at me warmly. “I’ll be in contact with you every step of the way. I’ve activated your scanner’s phase converter.”
“Give it to me in English, Spock.”
“The wraith don’t have functional eyes. They don’t see their surroundings in the same sense that you or I do. Instead, they read the world in terms of the energy signature’s living creatures and machines emit. The scanner gives a signal on a low frequency. It will effectively hide your own body’s energy signature from the wraith. You could walk right up to them, and they shouldn’t be able to see you, unless they know what they’re looking for.” Cory tilted his head to the side. “And bonus points for the Star Trek reference.”
“It fills me with great confidence to know my life is in the hands of a Trekkie,” I said, sarcasm dripping from my voice.
“And I’ll be right behind you,” Alain said.
“Fine, yes. I know.” I turned away from them. The concern on their faces was making my nerves jangle.
“Good luck, Sydney.” Cory ducked behind a building, leaving Alain and I alone in the street.
The air felt hot, cloying. I sucked in a breath. Alain grabbed my shoulders.
“For the last time, you don’t have to do this,” he said, leaning in so his forehead pressed against mine. “I coerced you into coming here. Malcolm is trying to do the same. If you back out now, I promise I understand, and I’ll make sure Diana gets the medicine she needs, Malcolm be damned.” He rubbed his finger over my jaw.
My heart fluttered against my chest. Damnit, why did he have to go and do that, right before I leapt into the unknown?
“Now is a fine time to get your morals in a knot,” I snapped. “I said I’d do it, and I’m doing it. Lead the way.”
We turned down Peach Street—the familiar street corner that had once housed my favourite cafe. The store had long since been closed, the windows smashed, the kitchen looted. Now the facade was petrified, crumbling away into dust as the Citadel across the street sucked away the minuscule tremors of energy that existed within its walls.
The whole of Peach Street had been attacked by petrification. The buildings had turned to stone that flaked off and collected on the street below. Without rain to wash it away, it collected in dust dunes across the pavement, so we moved into the centre of the street to avoid them. As we walked, our boots crunched against brittle, rocky ground.
Up close, the walls of the Citadel were even more imposing than they looked from far away. They towered over the pavement, shading the street from the sun. I could make out the shapes of scrapped cars, pieces of building, metal bins, and industrial machinery stacked haphazardly on top of each other. The mess was glued together by the creeping ossification that had infected the whole city. The petrification seeped into the stacked objects, turning them to stone. Lumps of dusty rock stuck out from the surface like the burrs on a thorn bush. Stone stalagmites dripped down the wall, cascading over metal rims and old tires like ancient calcium terraces.
Curiosity got the better of me, and I glanced back across the street to the opposite corner, back at the building I’d once occupied, the grimy flat that had been my first real home before everything had fallen apart. I counted the fifth story window facing the road. I’d stood behind that glass when the wraith first emerged from the cemetery, and I’d wondered what would become of the world, and of me. Now the glass was broken and smudged with dust, just like me.
“Sydney.” Alain’s voice broke through my thoughts. “We need to begin.”
Nodding, I turned toward the wall. I didn’t want to touch it. Every ounce of my body screamed at me to turn back, to run away from this place and return to the Rim.
But if I did that, nothing would change. The city would keep on collapsing in on itself, as the Hub poured more and more money into gaining more resources, and the people of the Rim grew more and more desperate, succumbing to hunger or dome sickness or worse things. The innocent girl trapped inside would surely die. And Diana wouldn’t get the medicine she desperately needed. Right now, that was all that mattered to me.
Wincing with anticipation, I pressed my hand against the surface of the wall. Oddly, it felt warm, not the way I’d expect stone to feel at all. I peeled back the layers in my mind, searching through the thick walls of petrified scrap for a weakness, a hole large enough to squeeze through.
Nothing. The walls were packed tight with debris, and the petrification had filled in all the
gaps. I could see a few tiny paths forged by enterprising rodents, but nothing wide enough for a raven, let alone a human, to pass through. Beyond the wall, all I could see was a blinding white. Was it another wall? A light source? I didn’t know.
“This is insane,” I said.
“Now you see why I needed you,” he replied. “What do you see?”
I moved along the wall, searching, hoping, for that weakness. Two hundred metres from where I started, almost directly opposite my old apartment, I found it.
It was a concrete conduit, the kind used to direct water under roads. It had probably been dug up by the authorities when they’d come in to erect the first wall around the cemetery. The conduit had been laid into the wall of the Citadel in such a way that it led straight inward. Even with my sense, I couldn’t tell if the pipe came out on the other side of the wall, but it was at least fifteen metres long. Surely the walls couldn’t be much thicker than that?
“In here.” I tapped the petrified casing of the pipe. It made a solid sound. It was impossible to tell there was any kind of passage behind it. I suspected that was exactly what the wraith wanted.
“Allow me.” Alain nudged me aside. He cracked his knuckles, swinging his shoulders around.
I leaned forward, eagerly anticipating a show of Reaper prowess. Perhaps he would turn to fire again and burn a hole in the wall, or he would punch a hole straight through that solid stone—
Alain opened the flap of his coat and withdrew a long-handled sledgehammer. “It’s amazing what you can carry when your clothes don’t obey the laws of physics.” He grinned.
“Is that part of the grand plan?’
“What did you expect?” Grunting, he swung it at the slab of stone.
I decided not to tell him about my fantasy of watching him punch through stone. Chunks of rock flew off, coating me in dust and chips.
Two more swings, and he’d broken through. He dropped the sledgehammer against the wall and leaned forward. “Help me here.”
Together we dug our fingers into the hole, pulling out chunks of soft rock to make a space large enough for me to fit through.
“This is my cue.” Alain stepped back. It was part of the plan for him to follow me into the Citadel in his raven form as far as he could go. The Reapers had tried to fly over the wall and into the Citadel once before, and discovered the wraith had some kind of energy field in place. It was like getting a dose of radiation – take in enough and it would kill you. Cory had been studying it and learned that a human could withstand a lot more than a Reaper.
“Wait.” I grabbed his shoulder. “I’m not sure I can do this.”
“You can, Syd. I’ll be right here.”
“Yeah, with feathers and a beak. Forgive me, but that doesn’t really fill me with confidence. You said before that I could back out if I didn’t want to do it.”
“And I meant it. But you don’t really want to back out, do you?”
Fuck. Even after only two days, he could read me like a book. Even though I was scared, adrenaline surged in my veins. I wanted to do this. I was going where no other human or Reaper had ever been. Even if I died in there, at least I’d die knowing the truth about Petrified City.
“No. You’re right, damn you. I’m going in.”
Alain cupped his hands and knelt down. “I thought so. Ladies first.”
Sighing, I adjusted my belt, which was stuffed with pockets and pouches containing tools and weapons we might possibly need—including three grenades Cory had attached there with wire—and placed my foot on his hands. Alain stood up, boosting me upward into the hole. I scrambled inside, ripping holes in my jeans on the jagged edge of the stone. My right knee stung, and I had a feeling it was bleeding. I didn’t stop to check, but shuffled forward to give Alain some room to shift.
The pipe was smaller than it appeared on the outside. I crouched on my hands and knees, my arms bent awkwardly to fit my body inside the space, and the top of the tunnel fit snugly across my back. The small space cramped the air from my lungs, but I tried to breathe through it with long, slow inhales. It didn’t really help. We didn’t have time for a little claustrophobia freak-out, though.
I tried to turn my head to watch Alain change but couldn’t turn my neck that far. I wondered for the first time how the shift actually worked. The Reapers always shifted in their long coats, their pockets stuffed with weapons, but in their bird form none of these things were present.
If you survive this, you can ask Alain later.
Something fluttered between my legs. A black raven pushed its head between my elbows, staring up at me with beady, inquisitive eyes.
“I’m fine, Alain.” I gulped back my fear. “Let’s go.”
We followed the conduit deep into the wall, me crawling on my hands and knees, and Alain hopping along in front of me, his wedge-shaped tail brushing against my arm. As we drew away from the outer wall, the darkness consumed us. There was no other source of light inside the pipe, and my body blocked most of the light from the street behind. I concentrated on breathing and reminded myself that air could still exist without light. My lungs disagreed, constricting so my breaths became faster, shallower. But I kept moving.
As I crawled along, my mind sorted through all the layers that fell away below me. I saw hundreds of cars, crushed and twisted together, the gaps between them packed tightly with stone or petrified trees or other debris. Some vehicles contained skeletons or husks of their drivers, still trapped inside.
For the first time, it occurred to me that someone had to have moved all these cars here and piled them up to create the wall. It couldn’t have been the wraith because the wraith have never been able to manipulate objects before. The only thing they could take was life energy, and an automobile had none of that. So who built the walls? And why? Did the authorities create them when the wraith first appeared—a last-ditch effort to trap them inside? I’d never been able to see what happened after the army moved out, as all the residents in the nearby streets had been forced from their apartment and out into what would become the Rim by then.
I shuffled my arm forward and brushed against Alain again. He squawked in protest, but his cry sounded strained.
“Alain?” I bent down to cradle his body.
Something was wrong. He panted, his feathers drooping. He squirmed beneath my fingers, as though my touch pained him. As I picked him up, he tried to wriggle away, but he was so weak, he could barely flap his wings.
“Cory,” I spoke as quietly as I could into the mic clipped on my collar. “Something is wrong with Alain. He’s weak and in pain. I think.”
At the sound of my voice, Alain reared to life, flapping his wings and jumping up and down. If I hadn’t been stuck in a claustrophobic concrete pipe, I might’ve found his protests funny.
“He might be having a reaction to the air. Can you get a reading on the scanner?”
I unclipped the old silver smartphone from my belt and held it up to my face. “The residual energy reading is at 7.6. Particle density is thirty-two.”
“What did you say? Three point two?”
“No. Thirty-two. Is that high?”
“Shit. Alain, you have to get out of there,” Cory yelled into my earpiece.
I winced at his high-pitched voice.
Alain croaked in protest.
“Don’t fuck about, man. The air is poisonous to you in your raven form. It will be turning your lungs to stone. Sydney, are you okay to go on alone?”
No, absolutely not. My stomach tightened. “Yes. I’ll go on.”
“‘Atta girl. Is Alain heading toward the exit?”
He dragged his limp body along with his wings, his eyes rolling in his head.
“Yeah, he’s going.”
“Good. Now, you’re much larger, so you have some time before you’re going to start to feel the effects. You’re basically breathing in petrified particles. The air is choked with tiny particles of husk. If you breathe too much of it, your lungs will turn to stone
if it doesn’t get into your bloodstream and petrify your veins.”
Inhale. Exhale. I squeezed my eyes closed. “Sounds delightful.”
“You have fifteen minutes to get in and out, okay? And keep an eye on the scanner. If the particle density goes about thirty-five, I need to know.”
I nodded, then realised that was stupid. “Yeah, sure. I’ll watch it.”
“I don’t care where you are or what you see. When I tell you to get out of there, you get out, do you understand me?”
“I understand.” Fear twisted my stomach. As if I needed something else to worry about.
“Good. Okay. Keep going. I think you’re nearly inside. I’m reading some massive spikes in the energy frequencies. There are wraith nearby.”
“Wonderful.” I moved forward again, shuffling down the passage with as much speed as I could muster and drawing in only a sliver of air, not enough to turn my lungs to stone. I hoped.
The conduit sloped gently downwards. A few more metres, and my fingers scraped against something solid. My forehead hit something hard and warm and smooth. Whatever it was, it wasn’t stone or concrete. I felt around the circumference of the tunnel, but it was completely blocked, only a thin gap along the bottom where the object bulged inward and the gap had been plugged with stone.
My breath came out in short rasps. The air seemed thinner. Was I imagining this lightheadedness? I needed a way out and fast.
I rapped my knuckles against the object. It rang with a metallic clang. I ran my fingers over its entire surface, trying to discern what it could be. A thin gap ran vertically along the edge, and just below my nose, my fingers brushed a metal handle. It was a car door.
I pressed my hand against the metal, expecting to see only darkness beyond, but a beam of bright light shone from a window on the other side, illuminating the mangled interior of the old jeep. The seat covers had long since rotted away, and the floor was dusted with a pile of petrified remains – the husk of the driver. I hoped I wouldn’t share his fate.
I couldn’t see what lay beyond the car, but whatever it was, it was made of white, pure light. If I could get inside that car, I’d be able to escape from the wall. And right now, as the concrete walls pressed against me and stole my air, however deadly it was, that seemed like the preferable option.
