My instincts screamed at me to shoot her anyway, but I resisted. I wanted answers more than I wanted revenge for last time- and to be honest I wasn’t sure if bullets would work. They hadn’t before.
“Really?” I asked skeptically. “No stabbing?”
“No stabbing. Truly!” She nodded quickly, ash falling from her cigarillo. Her voice was low, just slightly raspy. Its accent certainly wasn’t D-block, though it didn’t sound like Tanje’s or even the Montesquieu’s either. “In fact I’d, ah, like to apologize for last time. I came on a bit strong, didn’t I?”
I let out an incredulous laugh and lowered my gun. “That’s one way of putting it. I’ve still got the scar.” My calf itched where she’d cut me before.
“And so do I,” she said, touching her abdomen where I’d shot her. “Surely that makes us even.” I narrowed my eyes at her and she raised a perfectly sculpted brow. There was no duplicity in her strange eyes, their irises the navy-black of an old gun’s magnetite bluing. She was entirely serious.
I shook my head. Arcadia was already proving to be an odd one. I couldn’t get a read on her just yet. Fuck it. “Fine. Let’s start over, then. I’m Sharkie.” I put out my hand.
Her eyes widened a bit, flicking back and forth from it to my face. Then she smiled again and stepped forward to shake. She was taller than I’d realized- a full six and a half feet from her immaculate dress boots to the messy ink-dark hair she wore pinned back with a couple of long gold pins. Her white suit was incongruously clean amidst the dust and decay. When she took my hand her grip was dry and firm, and she seemed to take a bit too long to let go.
“Sharkie…” she repeated, almost to herself. “I’m Arcadia. It’s good to meet you, I think.”
“Do you have a number, too?” I asked. From my half-remembered dream I knew I was sixty-three: Quietus. I had to assume it was the shadowy Sculptor that decided on that designation, whatever it meant.
She dragged on the cigar before answering, and scowled when she did. “‘Sixty: Venator.’ I much prefer Arcadia.”
“Sure.” There were a million questions I wanted to ask her, but one seemed most immediately pertinent. “You said you aren’t here to stab me, but what about them?” I aimed my red-lensed light at the people on the ground. There were three, all wearing black combat fatigues and balaclavas, all armed with heavy-caliber automatic rifles, and all very, very dead. One corpse had its throat slit. Simple enough. The one next to it had the crown of its skull removed in a manner that made even me a little queasy, though the cut was clean. The last, in contrast, had its chest almost blown open in a welter of blood and ripped flesh. Didn’t look like a gunshot, though.
“Oh. I spotted them when I showed up. They seemed to be lying in wait for someone- an ambush, I suppose. I tried to say hello, but they only fired on me. I retaliated- with predictable results, of course.” Ah. I knew from previous experience how much shooting at her usually did. She didn’t sound too broken up about killing them either. Something else stuck out at me, though.
I crossed my arms. “So you’re telling me you came up on a crew of armed, masked soldiers. In the dark. Way the fuck out here. And you…said hello?”
Arcadia looked puzzled. “Well, yes. It certainly didn’t look good, but there was no need to assume the worst-“
“What the hell wouldn’t be the worst in that situation? Best case is their aim is good and they hit you in the head so you don’t feel it!”
“Ugh- I know that now!” She rolled her eyes, that impeccably disgusted scowl crossing her features once again. She had the sort of face that was made for looking down on people and making them think they deserved it. Her frown wasn’t even directed at me and I still felt a foot shorter. “The Sculptor said this city was uncivilized, but I didn’t know it was this bad. Now I do. I don’t think they were here for me anyway. They were quite surprised when I greeted them.”
‘This city,’ she said. Not ‘this area’ or ‘D-block.’ Just another question added to a very long list. “No, I really doubt anyone around here is expecting you.” That sparked an idea. “Me, though…hm.” I knelt, holstering the coilgun and gripping my light in my teeth.
I started on the the guy with the amateur tracheotomy. There were no identifiers on his fatigues and the gun was a generic heavy-cal kalash. It was totally sterile- no serial code or even proofmarks. No surprise there. When I peeled up the corpse’s balaclava I wasn’t surprised either. The face beneath was male, copper-skinned, with blocky features and a smattering of stubble. Most pertinent, though, was the pair of dark-blue triangles tattooed beneath one eye.
“Fuck,” I sighed. Blue Division. I checked the other two- very gingerly, in the case of the one who’d had his lid removed- and they were the same. I looked at the red-litten faces without seeing, gears grinding in my head as I tried to think this out.
So what I had here were a two men and one woman, armed and armored with military uniformity and all part of the Blues. What’s more, they were here in a spot that only a few people knew mattered- the Chasm wasn’t somewhere you came for a casual stroll. And according to Arcadia- an admittedly dubious source- they’d been lying in wait, not exploring or sniffing around. The conclusions were obvious: that they were gunning for me (or whoever else Walker sent) and that they’d known about the strange signal too. As for how they’d found out it seemed to me there were a few possibilities.
First: Blue Div had picked up the signal same as the Bones had, assumed we’d send someone here, and went for an assassination attempt. That seemed like a stretch, though. Why would they assume that the Bones would send someone at all, and that they’d come quick as I had, and that it would be someone important enough to bother knocking off? Hell, I didn’t think I even met that last criterion. Kings knew I wasn’t unique- plenty of other Bones were good at killing.
Second: This was something to do with whatever mysterious connection the Blues had uptown. I had a sneaking suspicion that Admin had something to do with this signal, and if that was the case maybe they’d set Blue Division to guarding their area of operation. That didn’t make sense either, though. If anything I knew about what Admin thought of D-blockers was true, they wouldn’t trust a couple of gangsters to guard their shit, no. They’d have Masks out here with powered armor and thermal optics and sniper rifles- so that didn’t quite fit either.
Third was the one I didn’t really want to consider: the Bones had a mole. Or a leak, at least, which was basically as bad. Someone had ratted to the Blues about the signal and Boss Moses’s response, and they’d done it fast enough for their killteam to beat me out here comfortably. Whoever this spillmouth was, they were highly placed. Only a few people knew about this op in the first place, according to Walker. On the one hand, that meant they’d be easier to catch- fewer places to look. On the other hand, they could do far more damage in the right circumstances. That still left the question of if they were after whoever got sent or me in particular. That could wait until this op was done and I had a very quiet and intense chat with Walker.
“Motherfuck,” I muttered again.
A lump of smoldering ash hit the ground next to me. “Surely you don’t think they were here for you,” Arcadia said, as if that was some kind of ridiculous idea.
I wiped my hands on the cleanest body and stood. “Of course they were,” I told her, voice level.
She squinted at me suspiciously. It was very annoying. “And why do you think that?” Another puff of cherry-scented smoke drifted past me.
I showed her my left hand and waggled the fingers, showing off my gang ink. “Look at the tattoo. Now look at theirs.”
“…And?” One of those perfectly sculpted eyebrows raised dubiously.
“…And there’s a fucking war on?”
She kept giving me the same look.
“For fuck’s sake. I’m a Holy Bone. They’re Blue Division. Of course they’re fucking here for me!”
“Are those…religions, or something?”
I put a hand to my face. “Wow. Alright- what do you know about D-block? About Savlop-2? Anything?”
She broke eye contact, glancing down at the ground. “Well…there’s a lot of people, certainly. And the infrastructure seems to be in poor shape, and, and…it’s a bit of a chaotic place overall. Or at least that’s the impression I get.“
Dead Kings rising. She doesn’t know a fucking thing. That she was from outside of the city was at least semi-believable. Savlop-2 wasn’t the only remnant of civilization around. There was Sovland off to the west somewhere, Nessus even farther to the south, a place called Kibra’s Dam that might just have been a rumor. I’d never met anyone from another civilization. Hell, until recently I’d never met anyone from outside D-block. My dad had met a Sovman, once, born and raised- he was the one who’d taught Sawada the Sistema-4 martial art. However, according to my dad the guy’d dropped off the map not long after they met. Either Admin had disappeared him or he’d disappeared himself before anyone else could.
“Okay, okay,” I finally said. “How about this: if you aren’t from Savlop, where the fuck are you from, Arcadia?”
She scowled. “I…I’m not from anywhere, I suppose. I came here from the Sculptor’s tower. That’s my home, I guess. But it’s not a country or a city or anything like that. Just her and me and a bunch of servitors. And Aleph, when they bother to show their face.”
If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
Every answer just raised more questions. It was an effort to focus on the more basic information. “And where’s this tower at?”
Arcadia stuck out a thumb. “East. About a three-hour trip in the buggy. I’m not sure of the distance, exactly.”
A three hour walk east would take you into the glasslands, let alone in a vehicle. Even rock raiders stayed within ten miles of the city or so, I’d been told. Conventional wisdom said there was nothing out that far but darkness and radioactive sand. Now that I thought about it, Northmarch had told me there were burnouts living out there. Somehow I didn’t think he was talking about Arcadia and the Sculptor and- what had she said?
“And what the hell’s a servitor?”
She looked taken aback. “You don’t have them here?”
“No. Really, we don’t.” I added when her eyebrow rose again.
“Ah. They’re, well, they’re a kind of utility construct. Mecha-organic, like most of the things the Sculptor makes. Sort of like a big spider but with more limbs, and they’re more like tentacles, or sometimes they have tools attached- you’re looking very confused.”
I sighed. “…I am. Forget I asked for now. And what about Aleph?”
“Aleph’s a Woven. Maybe the last one. They don’t talk to me much.” By the look on her face, there was some resentment there. But she said ‘Woven,’ didn’t she? The same sort of cyborg or construct or whatever that our mysterious arm belonged to- and also the same sort of creature that Dezhda found mentioned in the ancient Book of Kest. Just more evidence that Arcadia’s ‘Sculptor’ was the same entity as showed up in the literal history books.
What in the fuck is going on? “But other than that, you’re alone?” I tried to imagine what it would be like growing up with no-one but people who measured their age in millennia and couldn’t.
“Always have been.” She tossed her burner to the ground and crushed it. “I’m doing quite well, aren’t I? Considering the circumstances.”
I had no idea how to begin to understand her ‘circumstances,’ but whatever. “You aren’t trying to kill me out of nowhere, so I guess it’s an improvement over the first time.”
She winced and brushed a stray lock of dark hair out of her face. “I hope I didn’t sound too glib before. I really am sorry about that. I…well, I had some mistaken impressions about the city. The Sculptor told me it’s a very violent place-“ I snorted, but she kept going- “and I sort of took that too far in my head. And I also had to see if it was really you.”
“If I was really your sister, you mean.”
“Right. Though that’s not the best word for it. We’re not really related, at least in that sense.”
I realized I was drumming my hurt fingers along the grip of the saw and made an effort to stop. “In what sense, then?”
She reached into her suit jacket and came back with a gold-plated case. She took out another cigarillo and put the case away, but just twirled the smoke nervously in her hand rather than light it. “The Sculptor made us both. We’re sisters in the metaphorical sense. Or existential, or allegorical, or something-“
“Made? What do you mean, made?” My heart beat slow but hard, and though my breath came evenly my mind was whirling. The original reason I’d come seemed very distant. I was finally getting some fucking answers.
Arcadia hesitated, that scowl returning to her face. It seemed less self-possessed than it had before. I was reminded that if her story was true, she’d had next to no normal human interaction in her life. At least twenty years of isolation- or at least ten if she could only remember as far back as I could.
“I don’t know if there’s a word for what exactly she does. Grow is close, maybe, but that doesn’t cover it completely. And she won’t explain when I ask. ‘Not for you to see how the sausage is made,’” she mocks, imitating a voice low as her own but oddly accented. “’You wouldn’t understand anyway.’”
“S-so, what? We came out of fucking tubes or something? Glass tanks on a wall?” It doesn’t matter, I told myself, trying to stay calm. You know who you are. Ellery Sawada, not number Sixty-Three Quietus.
“I don’t know! Void, I’m fucking sick of her!” The cigarillo in her hand snapped as she tossed her head back in frustration. As absolutely desperate as I was for information, I had to remember there was a person- a very strange person- on the other end.
With an effort of will I ended that line of questioning. “Okay, okay. I got a different question, though. You said you had to see if I was really Quietus- how’d you know? I mean, I don’t look like most people, but neither do you.”
“Oh?” She seemed to have calmed a little. “What do you mean?”
“We’re both stupid tall, for one thing.” And you’re kingsdamn stunning, I thought but didn’t say. Arcadia would give uptown fashion-ad models a run for their money, I had to admit- though the thought made me feel a little guilty.
She shrugged broad shoulders. “Ah. Not just that. What I was looking for was- can I touch your hand?”
I gave her a sidelong look as I held it out. “Sure…”
“Watch.” Meeting my eyes, she held half her cigarillo in one hand and moved the other toward it. Her fingers got closer, closer, closer- and passed straight through, like the burner was a hologram. I stared as she did it again.
“This is what I can do,” she said, grinning despite her earlier outburst. “And this is what you can do.” Her fingers got closer, closer, closer- and stopped when they touched my hand. I felt a familiar tingle of cold shoot up my arm, but that was it. I was confused at first, but then I got it.
“I stop it from working?”
Arcadia nodded. “Yes. The Sculptor said you had, what was it…’quantum inertia.’ But then she said that very term was utterly idiotic, and I’d have to sit through years of lectures if I wanted to really get it. And when she gives you an answer like that, what she really means is she thinks you’re too stupid to ever understand.” She sneered again. “But in short, yes. You stop my translation from working. You stop, potentially, anything from working.”
“I see…” I murmured, reeling. A lot of things made sense now. Maybe it wasn’t just my bones which had kept the Winnower from taking my limbs off. “Is that why you came? Just to find me?”
She looked at the ground again and paced, boots crunching on the crumbled pavement. “She told me there was another like me, and I had to see if she was telling the truth. That’s why I came the first time.” She looked back up at me, eyes unreadable. “This time, though…well, I wanted to leave anyway, but the Sculptor told me about some kind of odd signal she’d picked up, so I used it as an excuse to come back.”
“She call it anything other than odd?” That she was here for the same reason as I was was a little comforting. At least she wasn’t just stalking me.
“Just that it ought not to have been possible.” Her lip curled. “I think she gets off on being obtuse.”
“She sounds like a real piece of work.”
“She’s an utter bitch, Sharkie. That she knows what she’s talking about just makes it worse.” Arcadia sounded like she meant every word. I’d wondered if the Sculptor had been a parental figure like Sawada was for me, but evidently not.
“…So you’re here for the signal. That’s why my boss sent me way the fuck out here, too.” I said.
“Your boss?”
“Yeah. Like I said, I’m in a gang.”
You mean, like…a gang of criminals?”
“Yes, a gang of criminals. I’m a criminal, Arcadia.”
I watched her, but she just shrugged. “Understandable. Based on what I’ve seen of your city so far, there’s not much incentive to obey the law.” A milder reaction than I’d expected, but then she didn’t seem averse to violence herself. “Do you have any more information, then?”
“Hell, no. I just know it’s coming from somewhere around here.”
“Ah. I may be able to- let’s see…” She pulled something out of her pocket that looked a lot like a comslab, but was made out of a single flat chunk of glass. After a brief glance she put it away and pointed towards the Chasm. “Over there.”
I gave her a dubious look. “By the edge? You’re sure that thing’s accurate?”
“Mm.” She nodded and started over there, and after a moment I followed. The edge was a jagged lip of crumbly stone and just being close made me nervous. I got on the ground, wincing at the weight on my arm, and slid up to the precipice on my belly. Arcadia seemed to have no such qualms, striding right up to the lip and peering over.
“See anything?” I asked. I saw nothing but dark, friable rock plummeting down into tar-thick blackness.
“No, but…” She got out her device again and peered at it, suit jacket rustling slightly in the humid breeze. “The origin’s down there for sure. Not all the way, I think, but somewhere on the wall-“ She cut off and looked at the sky quick as a cybird, eyebrows pushing together in consternation. A moment later I realized why and clambered to my feet. Engines screamed in the sky, quiet now but rapidly approaching. Their sound was loud and harsh, far different from the normal VTOLs you heard occasionally- and it sounded like there was more than one craft.
“Is that normal?” asked Arcadia, the red of my flashlight liquid in her dark eyes.
“Fuck no. We gotta find cover-“ The shrieking jets were suddenly deafening. Purple-indigo flame flickered above, and I glanced up to see a pair of barely-visible aircraft swing into a tight turn that looked like it ought to crush their airframes. They peeled out over the Chasm, aiming right at us. Here for us? It seemed ridiculous, but whether or not it was true those things carried the kind of weapons that didn’t care about collateral damage. “Oh, fuck me running-“
A hand grabbed my shoulder and a chill tingle shot through me. “Can you turn it off?” Arcadia yelled in my ear over screeching jets. “Let me translate you!” My eyes bounced from her face to the VTOLs. They were hard to make out in the dark, but it looked like they were lining up for an attack run. I had no idea what I was doing, but I focused on the cold and tried to quash it. The PIN vibrated but I ignored it. It was getting far too fucking crowded in here for my taste. Up above the two VTOLs lined up.
“Come on!” Arcadia insisted, strain in her voice. I snarled and grit my teeth, feeling utterly ridiculous. Fuck! Off! I thought at myself, thinking hot angry thoughts at the cold prickles- and slowly, shakily, they lessened. Then a very, very weird feeling slid through me. It was slick and frictionless, without temperature or texture. Gravity seemed to waver and my stomach flopped.
“Is that it?” I shouted at Arcadia as I yanked her flat.
“Yes! I can’t hold it for long, though-“ A shattering bang sounded, lights rippling from the wings of the aircraft ahead. An instant later missiles streaked in to the wall of the chasm below. Explosions shredded the air and the ground beneath our feet shook. The path of the missiles angled upwards, ripping into the parking lot around us with a fusillade of blinding flashes. I felt a series of weird nudges against my back and legs and realized shrapnel was tearing through me- literally through me, striking the pavement below without hurting me. Fuck if it wasn’t the strangest thing I’d ever felt. Pressure waves rattled through us, would have blasted us right over the edge if we were tangible. The shaking ground pushed half-real against my chest. I squeezed my eyes shut and screamed, my voice unheard beneath the blinding, deafening barrage. Any fight I’d been in, any gun battle- it was bullshit compared to this level of industrialized violence.
After a minute or a year the explosions stopped, though the earth continued to reverberate. A glance upward showed the VTOLs streaking off into the abyss of the night. I heard a thunderclap from somewhere below- a secondary explosion? Arcadia let go of my shoulder and the weird, slick feeling left immediately. I was glad it was gone, and evidently the PIN was too by the way it felt. I ignored it and turned to her.
“Holy…holy fuck, we’re alive. Thanks for that, Arc.”
“Arc?” She looked confused for a moment, then grinned. “You’re welcome. I-“ There was a wrenching crack from below us, and we staggered as the ground shifted. Dropped. “Oh, my.”
“Shit! Come on!” I grabbed her arm and started running, yanking her away from the edge- but it was too late. With a report louder than any gunshot the ground beneath our feet dropped a foot or more. We fell in a tangle of limbs and I tried to reach my feet- but then the city block-sized slab we stood on grated towards the Chasm and tipped. Arcadia scrabbled away from the edge, but to no avail. The chunk of ground tipped farther, and like a vic cornered just a bit too fast it went past the point of no return. I lost my footing as the ground approached vertical and grated downward toward the precipice.
Oh, my, my my-!” Arcadia spat again, grabbing frantically at the ground which had become a cliff.
I wasn’t much more articulate, reaching out and managing to snag her wrist- though I was sliding too. “Motherfucker! Oh, kingsdammit-“
The cracked-off slab on which we rested ground its way down off the edge of the cliff and fell, taking us with it. A second of freefall, two, three, and then-
Impact.