by S. C. Green
There was no way I could pull the door open where it was—the hinges were well outside the interior of the pipe. I yanked the torch from my belt, turning it over in my hands. It could burn through the metal of the door, but in this tight space I risked using up all my available air.
I had to be efficient. I wouldn’t be able to work my way around the whole circumference of the pipe, but perhaps I wouldn’t need to. I could free the side of the door, and then simply pull it open. I lifted the handle and jiggled the door. Above my head, the metal groaned. The handle lifted all the way. It looked as though the door was unlocked.
“Sydney, what’s happening?” Cory asked.
I didn’t answer. I needed to conserve my air.
I tore off a strip of fabric and tied it around my face, covering my nose and mouth. I took as deep a breath as I could, pressed the torch to the edge of the door, and flicked it on.
The flame roared to life, lighting up the tunnel. Instantly, my eyes stung as the paint burned away and the metal melted, filling the tunnel with toxic fumes. Luckily, the flame burned hot, and I managed to cut two inches in no time at all.
“Sydney, what the fuck are you doing?” Cory yelled.
Even if I wanted to answer, all I could do was cough.
… Three inches ... five inches ...
Tears streamed down my face. My lungs burned. At this rate, I didn’t have to worry about petrification. I’d be dead from suffocation in a matter of minutes. But I’d come this far and was so close.
… Ten inches … fifteen inches …
“Sydney!”
Nearly there. My hands shook so violently I could barely hold the torch. I thought of Diana’s face, grinning madly from her bed as she sipped at the can of soda Dorien had given her.
Just hang on, Sydney. Just hang on ...
The flame bit through the final section, and the door panel fell away. I flicked off the torch and threw it between my legs, wincing as the hot tip grazed my thigh and skidded away. I pushed myself forward, squeezing through the tiny gap into the car, gasping desperately at the stale air inside the vehicle.
I wriggled across the seats, barely noticing that I was dragging myself through the remains of the husk, and pushed on the other door. It wouldn’t budge. I fumbled for the lock, my breaths coming in loud wheezes. My lungs were on fire. Black dots flitted across my eyes and disappeared into the creeping fog that waited at the edges of my vision like ravens flying into storm clouds. If I didn’t get some air—
I flicked up the lock and pushed again. The door flew open. Not even stopping to look, I pitched myself forward and toppled headfirst onto the ground. I rolled over, gasping for air, sucking in the sweet, beautiful, precious stuff.
As my eyes adjusted to the light and my breathing returned to normal, I sat up and glanced around the inside the Brookfield Hill Cemetery. I’d sat on this very bench several times, reading a book or drinking coffee.
Gravestones stood up from the earth, jutting out at jaunty angles like rows of misshapen teeth. Between them, concrete paths crisscrossed, their surfaces cracked and buckled where the earth had contorted. The light came not from the sky—which was grey and distant, hidden as it was behind the surface of the dome—but from a ring of enormous globular lanterns lining the inside walls, their mysterious bulbs giving off a strange, vibrating heat. Without sunlight, the grass beneath me had died, leaving only dry dirt, the pockmarked remains of a beautiful park. A few feet away, an old hearse sat, the door ripped away.
I was inside the Citadel. Alone except for hundreds, maybe thousands, of wraith. And with no idea what to do next.
8
“Sydney.” That was Cory’s voice in my ear. “This is incredible. You won’t believe the data I’m getting.”
“I’m glad someone’s pleased,” I muttered as I crawled across the dirt toward the hearse.
My eyes stung in the bright light. It was like being snowblind. My parents had taken me to snow once when I was a girl, but I’d hated it. My fingers froze. My face felt numb, and I couldn’t see anything through the haze of white. I’d screamed at their ski instructor and caused a scene, so every year after that, they dumped me with a nanny and hit the slopes by themselves.
I screwed my eyes up, but all I could make out were the edges of the first row of tombstones and the path leading off into white nothingness. I collapsed against the back of the car, looking at the high wall through which I’d come. The white-grey surface shone in the bright light, the only dark spot the car window through which I’d crawled. I hoped I’d be able to find it again.
Were there any wraith nearby? Had they sensed my presence? I’d never be able to see their translucent bodies in this light. I ripped the particle gun from my belt and held it to my cheek.
“Can you scan for wraith nearby?” I asked Cory.
“Sure.” The earpiece crackled for a few moments. “Shit, Sydney. There are hundreds of them.”
“Where?” My stomach twisted. “I can’t see them. I can’t see anything.”
“It’s dark?”
“No. Bright. Like staring into the sun. Are they near me?”
“They seem to be concentrated at the epicentre. That’s about eight hundred metres from your current position. There aren’t any closer than that, as far as I can tell. If they’ve sensed your presence, they aren’t making a move. It looks like the phase regulator worked.”
“Can you pat yourself on the back later? I need you to guide me.”
“Where?”
I gulped. “To the epicentre.”
“You’re kidding, right? You’ll never be able to defend yourself against all those wraith—”
“I’m not going to find the Mimir out here amongst the graves. They’ll have it under tight surveillance. You said I could get close to them without being seen if I have this scanner, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Wherever I find the wraith, I’ll find what we came for. Now”--I got to my feet, keeping low as I squinted over the bonnet of the hearse, my gun trained on the white void in front of me--“tell me where to go. I have no sense of direction in this place.”
“You want to head … northwest. You can use the scanner to map your route.”
“No, I can’t. I need both my hands free. Give me directions.”
Cory sighed. “Fine. Head about ten o’clock from your current position.”
“Thanks. Cory?”
“Yeah?”
“Has Alain reached you yet?”
Cory paused. “He’s here. He’s in bad shape, though. He’s stuck halfway between his bird and human forms. The wraith really have made certain Reapers aren’t able to last long inside the Citadel.”
“But he’s okay?”
“He will be. Don’t worry about him right now, Syd. Just focus on the wraith.”
In the background, I thought I heard a faint croak. The sound tightened my chest.
My eyes seemed to be adjusting since my furious squinting produced a faint shape in front of me. A large mausoleum at the edge of the path in the direction I was heading. Taking a deep breath, I listened for movement—and for the familiar hissing that signalled a wraith’s presence. Hearing nothing but my own blood pulsing between my ears, I bent my head down and sprinted from behind the hearse toward the faint shape.
My feet skidded across the bare earth. My breath came out in short, ragged gasps. At any moment, I expected something to rush from the whiteness and attack me. But nothing came. I crashed against the side of the mausoleum, feeling the same warm, lumpy petrified stone beneath my fingers.
I crouched low, listening again. Nothing. I was safe, for now.
“Sydney—”
“Shh,” I snapped into the mouthpiece, my heart knocking into my chest.
Cory fell silent. I waited for several moments but heard nothing. Time to move again.
I crept along the path, staying low and ducking behind monuments and pillars, making progress into the white void. It wasn’t long before I came to a c
rossroads.
“Which way?” I whispered to Cory from behind a stone angel. “Am I still on the right track?”
“You’ve gone too far north. You want to head east right now. Two o’clock from your current position.” Cory’s voice sounded hollow, filled with static.
Whatever energy existed inside the Citadel was messing with his communication device. I had a sinking feeling it wouldn’t be much longer until I was cut off.
I pulled the scanner off my belt and checked the reading. The particle density was now forty-three. So I was doomed, whatever I did. When I turned around to glance behind me, the path seemed to disappear off the edge of a cliff, leading off into the white abyss. At this rate, even if I didn’t succumb to a husking or other grisly death, I’d never find my way back.
I shrugged off the fear, forcing myself to take another step forward, then another. Only one way to go now.
After a short while, the path forked again. This time, I continued straight ahead, no longer bothering to hide behind the graves. The wraith didn’t need to see me to know I was there. I fingered the trigger on the particle gun, my body tensed for action.
“—Sydney … you … way—” Cory’s voice crackled in my ear before succumbing completely to static.
Shit. I’d lost him. I pulled the piece out of my ear and tucked it into my collar. I’d be able to listen better to the cemetery without it. I checked the scanner—it read forty-six. I must’ve been getting closer. Thankfully, I didn’t seem to be feeling any effects from the concentrated air particles. Yet.
Up ahead, I could just make out the edges of a grey rectangle towering over the other graves. I recognised it well, for I’d walked past it many times when I used to cut through the cemetery. It was the mausoleum of John Webster, the city’s first mayor, and a Victorian man-about-town. He had commissioned an opulent two-storeyed monstrosity to house his eternal remains. The upper storey consisted of a balcony and drawing room where Victorian ladies liked to take their tea amongst the remains of the dead, because apparently Victorians were messed up in the head.
Behind Webster’s mausoleum, two avenues of catacombs followed the slope of the hill down toward an ornamental pond, surrounded by two-hundred-year-old oaks imported from England by Webster at great personal cost. The whole thing seemed pretty disgusting to me. Why did the dead need a garden and an ornamental pond when many of the living went without food or shelter or medical care?
I crept closer. Inside the white haze, something moved. The faintest outline of a figure darting inside the mausoleum.
The wraith. Of course the wraith had chosen Webster’s mausoleum as their headquarters. The ornate building dominated the entire cemetery, its towering gothic spires reaching up toward the glowing orbs that throbbed with their warm energy.
I raced across the dirt and ducked behind the low wall that surrounded the mausoleum. Several wraith floated up the path from the direction of the pond and headed inside, hissing at each other in their incomprehensible tongue.
What were they doing in there?
My heart pounded. I dived toward the mausoleum and hid myself behind one of the relief friezes depicting Webster as a medieval knight slaying his enemies. I pressed my hand against the smooth stone of the mausoleum. My mind went to work, digging through the stone, giving me a view of the room beyond.
I yanked back my hand in fright. I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my palm to the wall again, hardly wanting to see.
The entire room was filled with wraith. There must have been hundreds of them squeezed into a tiny space. There were so many, they overlapped each other, their bodies folding in on themselves, squeezed into frightful shapes. They hissed and gibbered to each other, their open, blackened mouths like floating polka dots decorating the air.
There was one other thing that chilled my blood cold. Every wraith inside wore a red scarf or handkerchief. Like tiny flames dancing in the air, these red symbols clearly indicated that the wraith were changing, and that the city was in far greater danger than it knew.
“Attention,” a voice hissed through the air. The word reverberated off the stone walls. “Attention, my brothers and sisters.”
The hissing died away. All the wraith turned their heads toward Webster’s sarcophagus, which stood on a stone plinth in the centre of the room. A single wraith stood on the carved head of Webster, his arms raised toward the vaulted ceiling. Unlike the others, he did not wear a scarf, but a large, wide-brimmed hat pulled so low over his eyes that it shadowed his translucent face. The hat was dark crimson—the colour of blood.
“We have won our second victory against the Reaperrssssss,” the wraith hissed. “Now we have possession of their two most precioussss items.”
He spoke. He was speaking. The wraith had never spoken before. They couldn’t; they didn’t have vocal chords. The hissing sound they made was air being sucked through what remained of their internal structure. What was going on?
“Their retaliation will come shhhortly, but they are no match for us now that we have the Mimir.” The wraith pressed his hands together in front of his body, knitting his fingers in a gesture that could only be described as gleeful. “You have all done your work admirably, and we nearly have all the energy we need. You can see the orbs are close to capacity. But we need more. So much more if we want to fill the Mimir. And so I ask you, once more, to go out into the city and to collect what we need. If you each husk twenty lives, then we shall have ample energy for our goal.”
Holy shit. If each of the wraith crushed into the mausoleum husked twenty people … there would hardly be any people left living in the city. A shiver chased down my spine. This was big, so much bigger than the Reapers had thought.
“You’ve been ssssssoo patient, bringing back the energy to supply our stores instead of using it yourselves. We have endured a hard ration, existing on the brink of starvation, taking only enough to keep us alive, while we focused our minds on achieving our goal. Know now that all your hard work has not been in vain. Soon, we will have all the energy we can consume!”
In response, the wraith—unable to cheer without the vocal chords of the living—hissed, the sound like a pit of snakes awaiting their next meal.
The wraith with the hat leaned back, his arms spread wide, basking in the admiration of his followers. His blackened mouth twisted up into a grin. He lifted his head toward the ceiling, and as he did, his hat slid back, and I caught a glimpse of his face.
It was John Webster, the first city Mayor.
My hand dropped from the wall again. Air scraped into my lungs with loud inhales. It made sense. After all, the wraith were originally the dead who’d resided in the cemetery. And John Webster had been a leader in real life. It made sense he’d become a leader now that he was a ghoul.
I had to get back to Alain. He needed to know all this. He’d figure out a way to stop Webster. I pressed my hand back against the wall again, and something banged on the lid of the coffin from the inside. A female voice, muffled, cried out.
I could see no sign of the wooden box containing the Mimir. But I didn’t need to see inside the coffin to know what I would find. Alain’s daughter, May. They’d trapped her right there in the room with them.
But how to get her out?
Think, Sydney, think. There was no way I could take out all those wraith with the weapons I had. I needed to get them out of the mausoleum somehow. A distraction. But what?
I glanced down at the useless mic clipped to my collar, wishing Alain were here. He could just fly past. Seeing a Reaper here in the Citadel would give the wraith a mighty shock.
If only Alain were here ...
But maybe …
I crept back from the mausoleum and crouched down behind the wall. I pulled the portable device from my belt. Flicking away from the readout screen where the particle readout was blinking rapidly, I pulled up the menu for the simulations. I remembered the instructions Cory had shown me. I had no idea if a simulation would even work in the stra
nge energy of the Citadel, but I had to try.
I found the program for Reapers and chose the biggest, meanest-looking bird on the list. When I clicked the button, a black shape appeared in front of me, perched on the end of the device and staring up at me with black piercing eyes. The projection appeared so real, I reached out to touch the bird’s wing, only to find my hands moving through thin air. So I couldn’t make a solid projection, but that was okay. If I kept the bird flying high enough, the wraith wouldn’t need to know that.
Cory, if I get out of here alive, I will kiss you.
I pointed the device at the bird and moved my finger across the screen. The bird unfurled its wings and soared up toward the balcony. I executed a few turns in the air, then programmed a repeating course for the projection, ensuring it flew with enough random variation to fool the wraith into thinking it real, while not flying lower than the giant glowing orbs in case they snatched it from the air. That done, I pressed my hand against the building to watch. The bird ducked down under the lintel of the open door, straight into the middle of the wraith.
The Mayor stopped talking as soon as he saw the bird. His transparent eyelids blinked once, twice, as though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. His surprise lasted only a moment, and then he thrust a bony finger at the circling raven and hissed, “Destroy it!”
The wraith circled, hissing, floating up toward the ceiling, stretching their long fingers toward my decoy. But I knew my wraith physiology well. They were tethered to the earth by the same gravity that held all matter—which is really just energy on steroids—down. They could float a few feet in the air and glide across the ground, but they couldn’t reach the bird flapping around on the ceiling any more than I could.
I swirled my finger around the screen, spinning the bird faster and faster. The wraith’s hissing intensified as they whipped into a frenzy, fingers grabbing madly and missing every time. I made the bird swoop low, darting right in front of the Mayor’s face, then back up out of reach once more.
