by A. L. Knorr
“So, the only way we can use this ledger is as a list of targets? Targets for us, not the police?” said Lowe.
We’d returned to Museum Station after dumping the modified Maserati at Bloomsbury Square car park. Sark had ended our run-down of events by explaining what the ledger was, and, unfortunately, wasn’t.
“Pretty much.” I cradled my head in my hands, my elbows – now covered in a sweatshirt – on a common’s cafe table. “The ledger gives us locations, names, even notes about how to access the people, vulnerable times, and tendencies, but almost nothing we could give to the authorities to start destabilizing Winterthür.”
“I see.” Lowe frowned. “So, it’s a matter of time, then? It will take us longer to collect the evidence, and in that time, Ninurta’s awakening is imminent.”
“And more people will probably die,” I intoned heavily, my shoulders slumped.
“It doesn’t have to be like this,” Sark said flatly, making a point not to look at me. “Not if we are willing to take a few shortcuts.”
In my peripheral vision, I saw Lowe looking at me, but I refused to look away from Sark.
“What’s he on about?” the ghost asked.
Sark sat back and drummed his fingers on the table, still refusing to meet my gaze.
“Go ahead, Sark,” I said in a low, menacing tone. “Explain.”
Sark made a fist, and his eyes shifted to stare off into the middle distance. When he spoke, his voice was cold, robotic.
“There’s potential to leverage several of the targets to force them to give us or law enforcement more information about Winterthür’s dealings, both those which are legitimate and those which are not. If we move quickly, flip enough of them, it will start a cascade effect as rumours circulate that someone with inside information is turning the Group inside out.”
He leaned back in his chair, putting it up on two legs as he crossed his arms over his chest.
“This will not only compromise their ability to awaken Ninurta but puts them in the vulnerable position where their usual agents and catspaws won’t work with them. They’ll have to call on other, less reliable sources. We can then offer ourselves as agents and get inside their operation, and thus get to Ninurta.”
Sark set his chair down on all fours with a thunk and looked directly at me, his expression as icy as his recitation.
“It is quick, effective, and our best shot for taking out Ninurta why he still sleeps. Which makes it the obvious choice.”
I trembled with anger, fighting to form words that weren’t howling denouncements, but Jackie beat me to the punch.
“Except that the leverage you are talking about is people,” she said acidly. “Friends, family, even children, most of whom have no involvement in this. You are talking about kidnapping and threatening to torture or kill innocent people.”
“People are dying already,” Sark replied coolly. “I am trying to make sure we aren’t next while moving to stop an apocalyptic event. How is that a bad thing?”
“Because if you have to hurt kids to do it, it’s not an option anymore,” Marcus rumbled, watching Sark from under furrowed brows.
“I wasn’t asking you, tourist,” Sark spat.
“Marcus is right.” Uncle Iry laid a steadying hand on the porter’s shoulder as he shifted threateningly in his seat. “The fact is that these opportunities for leverage have a high chance of hurting or killing innocent people. There has to be another way.”
“The only other way is slow, inefficient, and liable to get us all killed,” Sark said with a dismissive shake of his head. “None of you are trained in espionage, and long-term surveilling takes skill and time, both things we don’t have. I’m not suggesting this because I like it. I am suggesting it because it is our only option.”
Lowe looked around the table, scrutinizing each expression before settling on me. He studied me intently, and I wanted to look away, to escape the question he was going to ask.
“And what do you think, Ibby?”
I was angry, perhaps angrier than I’ve ever been in my life, but it wasn’t just because of what Sark was suggesting. It galled me that he would suggest such a reprehensible plan, but worse, I had no good alternative. He was right. The plan he offered was better in every aspect except the moral one. The reality of our limited options––and the terrible repercussions if we failed––felt like a web tightening around me. If I turned Sark down, insisted we go another way, I was likely condemning everyone at that table to death, and there was a good chance I was condemning humanity to Ninurta’s tyrannical rule.
But for all that, I couldn’t do what Sark was suggesting. Even if it meant Armageddon and the world going up in flames, I wouldn’t walk the path he was offering. I was a guardian, not an assassin.
I couldn’t, and I wouldn’t.
“I don’t know what we are going to do next,” I said slowly, feeling the doleful weight of every word. “But I won’t become a monster to save the world.”
I looked around the gathered faces, meeting each eye, even Sark’s.
“We start acting like them, Winterthür and Ninurta, even for the best of reasons, then each compromise, each shortcut becomes easier. It’s only a matter of time before we can’t tell the difference between ourselves and the people we’re fighting. We’re drawing the line here, this far, no farther.”
Tears stung my eyes, and I saw that all were nodding, their own eyes glistening. Except for Sark, who’d hung his head and refused to look up.
“Well said, my dear.” Lowe beamed. “Very well said.”
Then he froze, and a second later his body flickered like a video buffering. He snapped back in the blink of an eye, but his face was pained, and he was clutching his chest.
“Professor!” I sprang to my feet, knocking my chair over.
A crack like thunder echoed above us, followed by a wave of pressure sweeping down from above. Halfway around the table to Lowe, I had to grab the back of Jackie’s chair to keep from being knocked over.
“What’s going on?”
“What the bloody hell was that?”
“We’re under attack!”
I reached Lowe’s side as a sound like parchment ripping sang through the air and an enormous crack zigzagged across the floor of the commons.
“Professor James!” My gaze was torn between Lowe and the rent through Museum Station. “What’s going on?”
Lowe looked up, his face not just pale but fading to translucent. Thin wisps of ectoplasm shed from his head and shoulders, and as each floated free, he seemed a little less solid.
“She’s here,” he croaked and curled in on himself as another shredding sound heralded the widening of the split into a chasm.
“Who?” I screamed, looking around in vain.
“Daria,” he panted, bent double. “She’s destroying Museum Station.”
He gave a weak cry of pain, and terror gripped me. I could now see through his face.
“And she’s killing me. Permanently.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“She can’t do that,” I cried, staring at him bewildered.
Lowe gave me a strained smile as he staggered up from his seat, still clutching his chest.
“Apparently, she can.” He coughed and took a few halting steps towards the central obelisk. “Quickly, the patient.”
“To hell with Kezsarak!”
A fresh surge of panic washed over me when I put a hand under his arm and felt nothing but icy fog. “How do we save you?”
Lowe stumbled then contorted downward again in agonizing pain. He reached out, stabbing a shivering, translucent finger at the obelisk.
“The cube,” he croaked. “Shelter … inside the … cube.”
“With Kezsarak?”
“NOW!” Lowe screamed hoarsely.
What he was suggesting––placing himself inside a metal box with a demon––seemed mad, but as I watched him fade even more, I realized there wasn’t time to argue. Launching forward, I r
aced along the edge of the widening chasm towards the centre of the commons.
Another thundercrack and I had to zigzag and leap over spider-webbing fractures spreading over the floor. I made the columns just as an incredible shudder ran through the Station, and the floor began to sink. The ground shifted perilously under my feet, and I had to scramble on all fours across shifting sections of tiled floor. Plumes of ectoplasm sprayed up like icy volcanic ash. They clung just long enough to bite my skin with cold and set my teeth chattering before evaporating.
A tremendous shiver ran through the Station, and I was knocked off my feet. A low, grinding groan warned me that the obelisk was cracking apart and would bury everything around it in rubble.
“No!” I yanked on Kezsarak’s cube with all my will.
The first chunks of phantasmic masonry crashed to the ground as the cube came into my grip, and I was running before the rest could land.
Tucking the cube to my chest, I leapt from one island of crumbling tile to another. Gushes of spectral vapour turned sweat into ice, but somehow, I reached the edge of the commons.
Lowe was little more than a humanoid silhouette, worked in shimmering grey, and crouched on the floor.
“Hurry, Ibby!” Jackie’s cry turned to a sob as Lowe grew less distinct.
I felt the cube in my hands, the binding of sacred metals made from the very body of Kezsarak himself. I should have had the rings fused together to ensure I had the control necessary to open the cube without letting Kezsarak out, but I didn’t have time. In seconds Professor James Lowe, my friend, would be gone forever.
I pressed my hands and will into the cube as I ran the last few strides to Lowe. With an odd familiarity, the metals responded to my commands, and the bands slid apart. A pale, red light flowed from the seams.
The potent presence of Kezsarak stirred, sending out unseen ripples of power. He wasn’t pressing against his bindings, but he was very much awake and alert. His awareness felt like the heat of a forge. I muttered a silent prayer that Lowe knew what he was doing.
“Come on, Lowe!”
With a shuddering lurch, Lowe slid forward, and his form became liquid, sliding into the cube’s light like water sliding down a drain. The light flickered for an instant, the two wills inhabiting the same space pressing and grappling against each other, not fighting, just trying to find room for themselves. The cube trembled, and I focused all my attention on sealing it.
“Ibby! Look out!”
I didn’t know who yelled, but it was too late. I looked up to see a brass-coated fist as it smashed into my face. Pain exploded. The blow to my cheek split the skin, and my head snapped backwards, followed by my body. The cube tumbled from my hands, and my body hit the quaking floor, but I struggled to make sense of what had happened.
I saw Sark snatch up the cube. Was he about to unleash Kezsarak again?
But he didn’t call the demon out; instead, he drove one brass coated hand into the cube.
The world was a fuzzy, discombobulated place, but I heard Sark scream as the scent of burning hair and cooking meat filled the air. Sark drew his smouldering arm out, and I winced at the damage done, but Sark’s scream of pain turned into a shriek of triumph as the light was drawn up from the cube as a pulsing fistful of molten metal.
Voices.
Screams.
Then Sark smashed the glowing metal into his chest.
There was a flare of brilliant red light so intense that tears sprang to my eyes.
The fuzzy edges of the world became sharper, and I reached out with my metallic sense. Three separate wills, bound within the flesh and fused metal that was Sark, warred for control. My head still ringing from Sark’s sucker-punch, I couldn’t tell which was which, but for a single, breathless second, all three seemed in an interwoven triple deadlock. Then one will emerged on a surge of desperate energy and with a roar, the world exploded.
I had a fleeting sense of falling, of cold, before an impact rocked my body, and I knew nothing.
---
A hand shook my shoulder.
“Ibby,” a voice hissed in my ear. “Ibby, please wake up.”
I started to rise, disoriented.
“No stay down,” the voice hissed, and I recognized Jackie’s voice. “They still haven’t found us.”
I looked around, eyes adjusting to a deep gloom. I was lying on the ground under what looked like a rust-speckled I-beam ceiling just a few feet above me. My senses confirmed many huge metal girders overhead, stretching for several metres in all directions. If I’d managed to actually sit-up, I would’ve brained myself on them.
I turned towards Jackie’s voice and saw she was on her belly next to me.
“What happened?” I croaked in a hoarse whisper.
“Shhh,” she pressed a finger I could barely see to her lips. “We need to move, quietly.”
I wasn’t happy about my question not being answered, but I didn’t argue. As carefully and quietly as I could, I rolled on to my belly. Following her lead, we slithered under the I-beams. Slivers of crisp, pale light shone through the gaps above us, but these were so narrow and Jackie moved so quickly I didn’t get a chance to see what might lie beyond.
Jackie wound a twisting route until we came to the edge of the I-beam ceiling and a broad patch of daylight, almost blinding after crawling in the dark; beyond that was more gloom where I could just make out piles of pipe and wire peeking out from under plastic tarps.
I moved alongside Jackie as she hung at the edge of the light.
I opened my mouth to ask her, again, what was going on, but she clapped a hand over it.
Too surprised to protest, I stared at her for a long moment before I saw her finger pointing upward. I heard the dull clang of several feet walking across the girders. They moved in the direction from which we’d come, growing distant. Once they sounded faint enough that I had to strain to hear them over my own thudding heart, Jackie released my mouth and led me wordlessly across the light to the gloomy piles beyond.
Jackie moved quickly, doubled over, between the piles of forgotten construction supplies. I had to stay right on her heels to keep from losing her in the darkness, so when she finally came to a stop, I nearly collided with her. We crouched behind a stack of disassembled scaffolding taller than I was. I wondered what we were waiting for, straining my ears to hear more footsteps, but only heard the sound of laboured breathing in front of me.
Squinting into the dark, I made out two tall shapes in front of Jackie, one much thicker than the other. The thinner silhouette, Uncle Iry, sat with his back against the scaffolding with his legs out in front of him, but only the left one stretched out straight. The right leg twisted at a nauseatingly sharp angle just above the knee. The heavy breaths I heard were from him.
“Ibby’s here, now,” Marcus whispered, and I could just make out the porter gripping my uncle’s hand in quiet, unrelenting support. “We’re going to get you somewhere safe.”
Jackie shifted so I could move to Uncle Iry’s other side, being careful of his fractured leg.
“I’m here, a’am,” I whispered, taking his free hand and pressing my face against his. His skin was cold and damp.
“I … I’m-m,” he began, hissing through gritted teeth, but I bid him be quiet with a gentle shush and a squeeze of my hand.
“Quiet now,” I breathed in his ear, fighting to keep the tears in my eyes from breaking my voice. “We’ll get you some help, very soon.”
Uncle Iry nodded and took another deep, shivering breath.
Still holding his hand, I turned to look at Jackie. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Jackie said, her hushed voice starting to tremble. “Sark attacked you, did something to the cube; there was some kind of explosion, and then we were falling in the dark. When I pulled myself together, I realized we were inside the real Museum Station.”
I looked up and saw the dilapidated building around us. Only the barest hint of what it had once been remained, the w
alls nothing but support beams and crumbling concrete and plaster. At the centre of the station was a pile of rubble, including a layer of I-beams. Above that, daylight poured in from gaping holes in the ceiling, the upper levels just fringes of flooring surrounding the pit that plunged to the bottom level.
Moving amidst the rubble in small groups were men, their movements stiff and ungainly as they picked among the rubble. Clubs, batons, and axe handles were in their fists.
Remembering the information I’d pulled up last year, I realized that the I-beam ceiling Jackie and I had been crawling under was over the old track. That meant there were several floors above us, although the space felt airy so some of the floors had to be missing.
Jackie continued, “We’ve heard several groups of men or creatures, and I saw one group armed with clubs and axes.”
“Who are they?”
“Don’t know.” Jackie pointed up, and I realized I was right about the missing floors. “But I imagine they work for her.”
I followed her finger, craning my neck to see beyond the scaffolding, and my heart stopped.
Suspended by a roiling web of shadow near what remained of the top floor, Daria watched over her minions with cold dispassion.
A growl rose in my throat, and every muscle was rigid with tension. I might have sprung out right then, screaming bloody murder, but Iry’s fingers clutched tightly to my hand.
Daria deserved far worse than anything I could do to her, and right now, vengeance wasn’t an option. Uncle Iry was badly hurt, Jackie and Marcus couldn’t hold their own against that many men, and all the fury in the world didn’t change the fact that I was coming off an all-nighter where I’d already gone toe-to-toe with an edimmu.
We needed out, not another fight.
I went on full alert, hoping that I’d hear them before they found us.
“What are we going to do?” Marcus asked, his voice low and soft. “We can’t stay here.”
I nodded, my gaze sweeping around. I considered finding a way to the upper levels and the street but doubted it was possible given the abysmal state of the place. We needed to move Uncle Iry without hurting him more.
