Niah

In the moments before really coming awake, my heart starts racing as if it senses danger. I thrash at the shadows behind my eyes. My hands slam against the cold iron floor and wall of the cell. Startled, I blink, open my eyes, and glance around at the soft lit room.

Not far from where I slept, Hart still lays dormant and dark. The chill of the cell seems cooler than I remember. I glance down at where Wish had been when I had closed my eyes. She isn't there.

"Wish?" I cry, glancing up. I peer into every shadow of the cell. "Wish!"

She's not here.

I push up from the wall and stalk around, searching, but there are only a handful of feet from wall to wall and door to window. It's not like there is anywhere she could hide. "Wish! Where are you?"

When she doesn't reply I lean against the iron bars and shout into the hall beyond. "Wish! Where is my sister?"

The guards grunt a muttered, "Shu'p!"

"Chortessa's guts you baull-scat void-scum! Where in the nine-voids is my sister? You bring her back, you hear? Bring her back, right now!"

I reach over to Hart, shaking him. When he doesn't power up, I trigger his reset. He blusters slightly, his eye orbs flickering until a stream of text starts scrolling down his face. The lines of code don't make much sense.

"Hart?" He doesn't respond. His hover-jets remain silent and the text just scrolls over his screen in a loop. "Hart! Wake up you cross-wired bolt trap. We have to find Wish."

I turn, searching the cell for its weakest point. The door is secure, and leads to the greater danger of the well-armed guards. The walls are solid and probably lead to neighbouring cells. But light streams through the window, casting back the darkness. I lean close to the glass and realise it sits bedded in the warped and rusting metal of the structure.

"Maybe," I whisper, leaning against a piece of the metal. It gives, just barely, but enough to know that with time and effort I could probably unseat the glass panel enough for us to fit through. I dig into Hart's chest cavity which is mostly a cavern of wires, switches, and ports. But hidden deep is the rotor tool used to perform routine maintenance. I pull it free and use it to jimmy at the joins between the glass and the metal of the cell window. It makes a mild scratching noise and I glance back at the door, wondering if it will alert the guards.

By now, however, Hart's odd bootup sequence is causing him to make some strange noises of his own. With any luck, the guards will assume the droid is just blustering like the emotional wreck he is rather than effecting any kind of rescue or escape. I keep grinding at the join of glass and metal. Behind me, the robot continues to get louder and more disruptive. Eventually an alarm beeps from him in staccato bursts of ear-splitting pitch.

As the lock jangles on the cell door I shove the rotor-tool up the sleeve of my sleeper suit and turn to watch it open. A large, surly Stalker glares at the droid. In his hand, he holds a tray of food. "Shut that rust bucket up, would you?"

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I shake my head and hold up my empty hands. "I don't know what's wrong with him. What did you do to him when you took my sister away?"

"Don't know what you're talking about, moon-skitter."

"My sister! She was with us. Where have you taken her?"

He raises an eyebrow. "You mean the guy in the coat? Bellamy? He's been taken before the Lord, he has. I 'magine the good ol' Lord of Light has some questions for him."

I feel a queasy swell in my stomach and bite back my tongue. I force myself to swallow before speaking. "You took the wrong person! She's not Bellamy. We've been trying to tell you people. This is all just one big mistake. You have to let us go."

The guard shakes his head and bends low, laying the tray on the floor. With a foot he sends the tray sliding across the distance between us. "Here, better eat up, last meal and all." He laughs, then turns and marches out through the door. He slams it closed and I shudder at the sound of heavy iron clanking into place. I glare at the food, push the tray aside, and turn back to the window. I'm going to get Wish back myself, even if I have to tear through all of Nar to find her.

I spend what is probably a factor digging away at the groove between metal and glass. My hands feel raw. All this effort and I've hardly made a gap. I grimace and drop my forehead against the window. This is never going to work. "Wish," I whisper, and gaze out through the glass.

From a distance, the settlement looks like a giant dome surrounded by a series of raised spheres. The spheres track a line along the outer rim between darkness and light. We're probably half a furlong off the ground. My eyes blur, either with tears or with trying to gaze into the distance.

Suddenly, a face pops into view. I stumble back, startled. I trip over my own feet, landing hard against the metal floor. The rotor tool falls from my hand and clangs on the ground beside me.

"Eagrim's beak! What was that?"

***

Wish

My cheek throbs and I lift my hand to it as my eyes adjust to the dim light. I remember pain. I remember rough hands gripping me. I remember thick, meaty fingers covering my mouth when I tried to scream. When I bit down on my captor's hand it snapped back, slamming into the side of my face so hard that I must have passed out. I lift my head, cautiously. Then move to sit up inside the small carriage.

"Woah, big fella," says a large man wearing a dark hooded cloak of rough animal hide. His hand clenches on my shoulder, shoving me back. His dark skin and white eyes cast sharp contrast.

"Let me up. I'm fine." The hand eases, but doesn't lift. I move more carefully, pushing myself upright until I'm leaning back against the cushioned seat. When it's clear I'm stable the hand falls away. "Where am I? Where are Niah and Hart?"

"Quiet, Bellamy."

Bellamy? He thinks… oh. It all begins to make sense now. They thought Niah was Bellamy, too. It must be her coat. I finger the lines on the sleeves, feeling the material heavy around me.

"Will you at least tell me where we are going?" I ask.

The guy watches me a long decca and I try not to squirm under his gaze. What would Niah do? Would she pretend to be Bellamy? Remembering the way his calm, haunted face stared down the lens of the holo-projector, I fix the guard with that same detached stare. He swallows, then says, "You're on your way to the Palace, Captain. Lord Oliver wants to be talking with you."

I furrow my brow, trying to work out the edges of the almost-familiar name. "Oliver?" It reminds me of hints of a childhood I never had.

"That's right, Captain. He wants to be having words."

I blink back the haze still lingering in my eyes. Around me, the dark walls of the carriage sway. I glance out the glass windows and blink in surprise to see streets lined in light and tall buildings. Everything seems crisp, and clean, and new.

"Where are we?"

The man blinks as if I'm both daft and stupid. Then a light dawns in his eyes and he nods. "Oh, right! I guess you ain't never seen the city. Left before the Lord created it. We're in the city. The great Lord's City of Light, that is. The only civilised place there is left on all of Nar."

I bite my lip, feeling like that's probably something significant, but even in my before memories I can't find a sense of what existed in the past. Instead, I gaze out at the strange, pale beauty of it all. Columns rise up, soaring into the sky. A zip-liner skims past on a hover rail overhead. Giant holo-screen billboards flash with the latest drinks or snacks or furnishings. Buildings of white, gold, and silver stand tall along the streets. And high beyond the reach of the tallest spires, a wash of midnight blue with wisps of white foam, a sprinkle of starlight, and the glow of three pale moons arch above us. A sky.

As we continue to weave our way through the traffic, I feel the awe of the place filling me. I lean my head against the glass, eyes fixed on the strange wonder outside. "Wow!" I sigh.

Across from me the guard grins. "Yep, she's something. Ain't she?"

I lift an eyebrow. "Yep, she's something."

In the maze of all this, how on Nar will I find Niah, or will Niah find me?