-Marx
I swiped a tear from below my eye as I shuffled the papers and regarded the last one. It was a hand-drawn music staff with a spattering of notes across it. It was clumsily drawn and inexpertly arranged, but as I looked at it, I hummed it aloud. It was haunting, mournfully sad, and full of longing. Even with my weak, tear-filled voice, the walls of this basement, concrete and bare, echoed it back to me, and with every interaction, my heart was both shattered and built anew. I looked at Etachs.
"This is why I can't let you love me, Ana, not the way you want to, as much as I ache to love you back, to feel what that is truly like. I can't because my heart has broken too far to repair. Not even your gifts can mend it. Perhaps in time, but not today. Maybe not ever. "
I stared at them for a long moment, the papers still held loosely in my hands, then nodded. "Then it shall be put aside, until we have gotten Tatiana and freed my world. Perhaps in completing what Marx started, you can mend your own heart, Etachs. Mine will always be here waiting."
The Next Steps
Tatiana was lost. She knew she was lost. She knew she was alive only because she was still inside the trunk. She did not dare touch her magic, not even just enough to create a Faelight, so she sat in the dark. She had forgotten what it was like to inhabit her body. She did not know what they were doing to it. She had no idea how long she had been inside of herself. She only knew that she must stay— stay until she perished. If she left, they would have her, have Anais. The words of her mother pounded through her head like thunder.
"You must not be caught, Tati, and if you are, you must ensure Anais escapes."
But she had been caught. And now all she could do was hide. Hide, and wait to die.
◆◆◆
Over the next two weeks, we closed in on where they were holding Tatiana. We liberated more Humans and picked up stray groups of Fae and freeborn Humans as we went. We removed the ports from the Humans’ arms but left their implants as they allowed us to share information with them quickly and adapt them to their new surroundings. We pillaged every building we conquered to feed our growing numbers. We always made the same offer to all we found, to stay and help or go and forge their own paths. We never forced anyone, but our numbers always grew; only a few ever chose to go.
As we went, some of the Himlani that we liberated from the defect camp that had initially left wandered their way back to us too. They kept to themselves mostly, but they followed anyway. Tarq told me they had taken to prowling around the camp at night. I thought that perhaps they were scoping us out for weaknesses, but one night while I was up thinking, I saw them scare off a bear from the forest. They weren't probing; they were protecting. After that, I felt my heart grow softer towards them. Himlani, like the Fae, like Humans, were social beasts, and they wanted to keep us safe, to keep themselves safe, and to be accepted by us in the ways that their own kind had rejected them.
The Humans who had been born free had a harder time adjusting to the Himlani and the Fae around camp. They were mistrustful. The Fae had walked among them for as long as their species had existed, but they had never known. Seeing us in our true forms, without glamours for the first time, must have been a jarring experience, especially when it was members of the same group they had been traveling with for a while. When you discovered that a person you trusted to watch your back when you slept was not only not Human but had been lying to your face for the entirety of the time you knew them, it was undoubtedly an unpleasant jolt. We did our best, but I felt that the time for hiding was over. If we were going to do this, we had to do it as authentically as possible.
As we approached our final destination, I slowed our pace so we could begin to scout and develop a plan of attack. This compound was built not from raw materials or cannibalized Human structures, but around one of their ships. The ships that brought them, the invasion ships. Tarq, Cylvre, and Etachs spent a lot of time trying to get as much information as they could from the Himlani networks, but unlike the outposts that held Humans and defects, the ship facilities were much more heavily guarded.
This was where they kept their most valuable asset stolen from the earth. This was where the Fae were taken and processed. I had asked all the Himlani what they did with us, and I knew that they killed us, but didn’t really grasp the details. At first, they all just said that they took our magic, but I wasn't sure how that could be possible. They all got very uncomfortable when I pressed for more details. Etachs finally told me to drop it for now. I reluctantly abandoned the line of questioning but did press Etachs for information once I had some alone time with them. They told me they induced massive pain to trigger the magic and then they drank our blood once it was infused with our lifeforce. I recoiled, unable to care about the hurt expression on Etachs' face.
"Did you ever—" I choked on the question, unable to finish it.
"No," Etachs said simply, without additional explanation. I didn't inquire further after that, but the revulsion roiling around my gut didn't take long to ferment into righteous fury.
Our scouting missions did not reveal good news. We were extremely limited in what we could do, the security around this facility was more than just Sentinels. There were roving bands of Hunters, so we were forced to stay much further away than I had anticipated. The Himlani cleared out almost two full miles of ground around their ship and spent the time since its landing constructing a massive structure around its perimeter from glass and concrete. This was not a reclaimed and expanded-upon Human building as the others had been. This was all Himlani craftsmanship. Looking at it made me sick.
I knew Tatiana was alive, but no other information. Our bond was intact. I could feel it still connected, but there was nothing when I sent things down it, no response, no indication that she felt me there. I felt my heart sink with worry and apprehension. What were they doing to her? I had been stuck all day inside myself, looking over the information Tarq had sent to me. Both Tarq and Etachs had been teaching me to use the portable Himlani terminals so that they didn't have to come find me every time they got something new to share. The fact that I could read and speak Himlani helped, but there were still functions of the terminal I struggled with. Tarq sent me blueprints of the original ship layout, but we couldn't be sure if it was still accurate. I was poring over it, trying to find any points that may be weaker, when Twyla and Kai approached me.
They had been out scouring the area where we were hunkered down for better solutions to the challenge of keeping nearly 10,000 bodies safe from both the Himlani and the elements. For the last couple days, they had also been trying to help me find an ingress point where we would face the least amount of resistance. It would need to allow us to keep up our element of surprise for as long as possible. The longer we could be inside the facility without the facility as a whole knowing about it the better. The two had always been rather shy around me, but Twyla's eyes were alight with excitement as they approached me. Kai was reluctant and holding back, but Twyla turned to them and pushed them towards me urgently, but not unkindly.
"What is it?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. Twyla reached their hand out and nudged Kai again, who turned and snarled at Twyla before returning to face me. They looked at the ground then tentatively back up to me.
"You know Twyla likes puzzles... they, well, they think they found something, but I didn't let them explore it without you..." Kai trailed off.
"Explore what?" I asked.
Kai turned back to Twyla, with an exasperated long-suffering look on their face. Twyla, for their part, was still grinning at me. Kai looked at me over their shoulder with brows raised and inclined their head forward.
"It would really just be easier if we showed you," they said before turning away. I got to my feet and followed. We walked for what felt to me like a long time in silence. I asked Kai where we were going several times, but they just urged me forward. Until, abruptly, Twyla held out a hand and halted me, pointing excitedly with their other hand at a spray of tangled vines and underg
rowth. I frowned at the snarled mess and then looked at Twyla again. They rolled their eyes at me and took my hand, pulling me forward. Kai just shook their head and fell into step behind us.
Twyla released my hand and began to push the underbrush aside, using their claws to snap through vines until they at last stepped back and I saw what they were so excited about. It was a metal wheel, dull with age, affixed to a round, half dome also made of metal, also dull, but neither was rusted. The dome was in the middle of a four-foot-wide cylinder of concrete.
"Did you open it?" I asked as I knelt beside it to inspect it more closely.
"No," Kai answered. "Once Twyla found it we came back to get you to see if you knew what it was. Twyla seems to think it is something useful and, in general, I trust their instincts." I paced around the cylinder.
"We have no idea what is in there. I don't know if this is a good idea," I said pensively after a moment of contemplation.
Twyla grabbed at Kai and looked at them pleadingly. Kai sighed and closed their eyes in thought for a moment, before setting their jaw and turning their eyes up to me. "Twyla thinks this is a Human structure that no one knew about because it was supposed to be a secret place. They used one of the converted Sentinels we had with us to scan the earth and it looks like it burrows more than 50 feet down."
"How did you get to that conclusion?" I asked Twyla. Twyla inclined their head to the vault door and Kai rolled their eyes.
"The sensors go down 50 feet and, aside from the shaft this thing is affixed to, there isn't anything else around it."
"We should get Etachs and come back," I said, getting to my feet.
"Do you know what this is?" Kai asked.
"I think so, and I also think if it is what I think it is, we just got very, very lucky."
"Lucky?"
"Luckier than anyone has a right to be. Come on, let's get Etachs." We started walking back to camp, but soon the energy had infected all of us and we were running. Twyla kept shooting looks at me and grinning when I caught their eye. I couldn't help it; I grinned back. We reentered the camp and started searching for Etachs. We found them finally, hunched over a terminal with Ozwa. I knelt beside them, curling my fingers around the back of their neck, giving it a gentle squeeze.
"I need you to come with us," I said low against their ear. Etachs turned to look at me, stopping what they were saying to Ozwa mid-sentence.
"You what?" they said.
"Right now," I said and got to my feet. I turned before they could ask me any more questions, but I felt them rise and begin to follow. Once we were out of the camp, we all began to run back to the hatch. The weeks of navigating the woods had made all of us near silent as we ran, the only noise the sounds of our exhales and the thin rustling of our feet on the leaves. As we approached, I slowed down and started talking.
"So, Humans... you know the Fae didn't always value them as I do, some of the things were harmless, stuff they wrote legends about, deals we made that were tricky and always ended badly for the Humans.
"The Grand Fae Councils of old put a stop to that kind of behavior and let us slip from Human consciousness, to preserve our influence. However, not all of the Fae wanted to stop teasing Humans. The Fae have always lived among Humans, but we keep ourselves apart. Some had huge floating cities camouflaged by the glamours and magics of all their residents. Others built their cities below the cities of the Humans, deep in the underground. However, when the Humans started to overpopulate, they always sought new places to go, and the underground seemed like a better idea than the sky, less trouble logistically, obviously, to keep themselves on their own planet. As I have told you, they couldn't cooperate back then enough to get more than probes into the deep space. As for Humans actually leaving the planet, they never made it truly past the moon.
"Some of the governments started these projects earlier than others, but ultimately what it came down to was creating large, cavernous spaces underground that could hold things, or keep things secret, and eventually could house people. A sort of subterranean colony. There used to be all kinds of stories about them, that they housed aliens, or government secrets, long-dead musicians and leaders, that sort of thing.
“Some of the more mischievous Fae folk started to mess with them, showing themselves as their idea of aliens and goblins and showing up inside the bunkers. The idea got so pervasive that people wrote books about it. They used to have some kind of silly acronym for this type of place, but ultimately the idea was to hide people or secrets in these spaces. I think this is an entrance to one and, if I am right about the size of what is on the other end of this, this might be our ticket into the ship without being detected. At the very least, it could help us house everyone more safely."
"I don't understand," said Etachs, regarding the wheel dubiously.
"It's a door, Etachs," I said, and Twyla nodded enthusiastically. "It's a door into a space that, depending on how far it goes and how deep down it is, might not have yet been discovered by the Himlani."
"It would have to go on for miles if that was the case," Kai said quietly.
"It just might," I said back. "But we're never going to find out if we just keep sitting up here talking about it.”
"Wait," Etachs said as I reached forward to grasp the wheel. "We need to tell someone where we went. If we get into trouble down, there someone has to know where to look for us."
I pulled my terminal from my bag and started tapping at the screen. "There, I just sent what we are doing, briefly, and our coordinates to Cylvre. They will know, and I also told them I would send back data."
"You don't know that the terminals will work in there," Etachs shot back.
"I don't need them to," I said as the items I requested from Cylvre came whizzing over to us. The two converted Sentinels looked pitiful, to say the least. They were patchwork at best. We had taken all but one Rounder off them and affixed patchwork nodes for data collection to them instead, and the result was less than elegant, but it suited our purposes just fine. I grinned as Kai, Twyla, and Etachs all raised their eyebrows at me simultaneously.
"Let's go," I said impatiently and grasped the wheel again.
It took three of us to get the thing open and when it finally was, it was a dark descent into nothing. I peered down into the shaft with the ladder bolted to the wall. The dark was inky and complete and even with my superior Fae vision in the darkness, I could not see its ending. We all sat around looking inside for a moment and then I swung my leg over the side. Etachs gripped my arm.
"Are you sure?" they asked apprehensively.
"What's the worst thing that could happen?" I asked. They grimaced and I laughed. "Yes, I am sure," I said more seriously.
"Keep the bond open. I won't send anyone else down until you're at the bottom." I nodded and swung the other leg onto the ladder, gripping the edge of the concrete ring. I winked and started my descent.
I lost count of how many rungs there were after 150, each spaced about a foot apart. As I climbed, my skin began to glisten with sweat even though I had done nothing but run since I was a child. I wondered idly about how the Himlani would manage this ladder. I found my thoughts were wandering through the mechanics of navigating a world where everything was made to accommodate a species that had knees inverted to your own anatomy when my boot struck a concrete floor. I looked up. There was a dim circle of light above me, I would guess I was down nearly half a mile. Shaking my head, a bemused smile upon my face, I sent a feeling of safety to Etachs through our bond, but also told them to stay put for now. I cast a bubble of my magic around myself and then lit my Faelight. I had discovered that as long as what I was doing with my regular Fae magic wasn't too big, my Manuhiri magic could hide it. Faelights were such a minimal thing that I could go undetected by anything that might be down here, except, of course, other Fae.
I was faced with a tunnel about 300 feet long, and I began to walk down towards the steel door at the other end. As I approached, I inspected the door. No acce
ss panel, just a door. I extended a hand out to the knob, but paused. Humans were so suspicious I worried there might be something that I was missing. I pushed my magic out from me, sliding it through the seams of the door and around the other side, looking for any long-abandoned tick-tock or traps. I found nothing, just a door, with three locks. I pulled my magic back into myself and took my backpack off. I tugged the drawstring loose with deft fingers and rooted around until I found my lock pick set, setting to work on the door.
I smiled as I worked the picks. I had learned to use them early so I was pretty quick at it. Tatiana insisted it was a vital skill. When we had first been on the run, we often took refuge in abandoned Human structures. Humans always fascinated me. They would ransack their own house making frantic decisions about what was vital and what wasn't and then, as if in prayer, they would lock their doors behind them as if they would ever get to return. I wondered if they did ever get the chance to come back to their abandoned structures if what they found there, covered in dust and half reclaimed by nature, would be anything that made sense to them in their new life. The final pin slid behind the shear line and I turned the picks and grinned.
I tucked my tools back into my kit and stuffed the whole thing back into my bag. I got to my feet and slung my bag back over both shoulders and grasped the cool metal of the doorknob. The knob turned easily, but the door was heavy. It took more effort than I was expecting to swing it into what lie beyond. Which turned out to be more hallway. However, as soon as the door started pushing into the room, there was a sound, like the plinking of a fingernail on a full glass of water. Then a faint humming or buzzing sound and a single row of harsh, sterile feeling lights came to life illuminating the hallway, which terminated with another door. There were doors lining the hallway on either side. I stepped into the space, letting the door close behind me. I started opening doors, my smile growing wider by the moment.
I walked back through the heavy door and to the bottom of the ladder, sending Etachs the all-clear through our bond. I found that my worrying about the Himlani's descent down the ladder with their inverted knees was unfounded. I quickly discovered that it was actually much more efficient for them than it had been for me, their legs didn't interfere with their progress. I was still smiling when Kai, Twyla, and Etachs dropped to the floor. I dropped my Manuhiri magic and floated my Faelights down the hall.
Anais Eternal Page 21
