Chapter Twenty-Five

Eden

The man called Abbadiah Thawn stood in the first light of dawn, staring into the belt of woodland that led onto Eden, his back to the door. He was near twice the size of a normal man and clad in grey armour, adorned in the scars of a thousand battles. Its panels, folds and rivets clicked and slid over each other as he shifted his weight from foot to foot, as though it were an organism unto itself. His head was occluded beneath a glass dome, tinted black.

‘I know you,’ Agloff said from a distance. He walked from the church with a poise in his stride.

‘I know you too.’ Thawn looked at them. ‘I’ve wanted to meet you for so long,’ Thawn raised two hands to either side of his helmet. It clicked and hissed, and the glass unfurled, reclining into his neck.

Agloff studied him. He was a handsome man, strong-jawed and dark-haired. But there was a look in his face like he were tired, but not for lack of sleep.

How Agloff wished it was Marty Naples with them now, and not this pretender. He could ask him what to do. Marty always knew.

Still, Agloff walked towards him, each step incremental. ‘I’m gonna stop you before you say anything else, Thawn.’ Agloff wielded his family name like a knife. ‘My best friend is with Jask, so we’re here for her, not me.’

‘You may not have a choice in that.’ His features conceded nothing, no hint of emotion.

‘Whatever you have to say, I don’t…’ Agloff summoned all strength to hold his stride, to look at this man who fathered him.

‘I’ve waited for you, Ashborne. Me, you, Jask; we’re entwined you see–’

I will not be swayed.

‘We’re here for Ariea.’ Agloff looked down at the grass; his body shook. He suppressed every instinct he had built for fifteen years. Half of him begged truth. It was truth in its truest form. Revelation.

Ask him. Ask him.

Everything he ever needed to know was there. He just had to ask.

But to ask was to betray Ariea. After everything, she still hadn’t given up on him.

He had to let it go, he knew. He deserved more than excuses. Ignorance was a freedom where, here, he could choose his truth. Thawn, Andromeda, Jask; he could let their mistakes die with them. He stared at Thawn with vacant eyes.

‘I don’t want to know where you were or what you did. I’m gonna say that now.’ It took all strength to look through Thawn, to say words, even now, he wasn’t sure he fully believed. But all the while his mind would wind back to Ariea, the image of her trapped, alone, and his convictions returned to him. ‘You’re here to get us in, so get us in.’

‘Understood.’

‘Whatever history you have with Jask, it can’t affect Ariea.’

Thawn’s head dipped. ‘I can’t guarantee that it won’t. You should understand the risk of mine and Jask’s past together.’

Oxford folded his arms and scowled. Before Agloff could think to speak, Oxford did. ‘Then tell us. We deserve to know the risks of what we’re walking into,’ he said. He raked a hand through his greasy mane.

Silently, Thawn looked at Agloff. Agloff flashed his eyebrows as if to say, ‘go on’.

‘Me and Jask were in love, way before Colony Two, before humankind. We were alone with a planet-sized desert to ourselves. Even in exile, we felt like the gods themselves. You can’t know love until you’re alone, truly alone, when they are the only thing holding you together, keeping you this side of crazy. I owe everything to him.’

Oxford’s brow tightened. ‘I’m sensing a “but”.’

‘We tried to escape but ended up coming as close to dying as we could. You see, the thing to know about me, I wasn’t always like this.’

‘Like what?’ Agloff said.

Thawn produced a narrow blade from his hip, and degloved a hand. He pressed the line of steel into his palm, but the flesh was unspoiled. ‘We were made this way as children,’ he said grimly. ‘To live at all costs, without cost, and forever.’ He swallowed. ‘I was rescued from that desert, but Jask.’

Oxford’s eyes narrowed to slits. ‘You don’t know?’

‘Imagine the worst fate you can think of. He was put through worse than hell and he blames me more than anything for that. But it doesn’t excuse him. I can see it in your faces. Don’t worry, my love for him died a long time ago. I’ll kill the bastard. The gods know he deserved it much sooner.’

At once, Merry’s breath blustered. Her chest rose and fell sharply. ‘But that means you’re not… not human.’

She stared at Agloff. A shot of adrenaline chilled his spine. His heart pelted in his chest. But he didn’t move. He said nothing, swallowed.

Thawn tilted his head at Agloff. ‘So, you all know?’ He scoffed. ‘You’re right, I’m not human. But that makes Ashborne no less a one than you. He is as human as he chooses to be.’ He paused. ‘He has the right to choose his family. We all do.’ He strained a half-smile and Agloff nodded back. The thought was too big to process right now. The urge to sleep it off pressed down upon Agloff and his legs became heavy.

Thawn said nothing more, then plunged a fist to his belt and returned a handful of silvery beads towards them. ‘Take one,’ he said. ‘Swallow it.’

Merry obeyed and held it between her fingers. ‘What is it?’

‘Ingestible guard-shield. It’ll numb damage from blows and projectiles. But it’ll give you a good kick when you hit back too.’

They said nothing. Almost in unison, they downed their pills and Agloff felt a cold fizz ripple through him. At once, his hands looked out of focus, while the world around him was unimpeded. It was as if his body were warped within a heat haze. The others looked off too. The lines of their faces were faintly distorted, magnified across their heads.

‘Things will look and feel weird at first. But your senses will adjust,’ Thawn announced. ‘We should move.’

He didn’t wait for their reply before he strolled into the woods. Every moment they paused for breath, Agloff could see in Thawn the temptation to apologise and explain. But at every turn, Agloff would look at his shoes, or some bird nestled in a tree and the old man would return his attentions to the path ahead.

*

‘Lore taught you the way in?’ Thawn asked, to break the silence as much as anything.

The Merry girl rushed to his side and explained in haste a new plan to him. She didn’t allow a moment’s pause for his rebuttal. Deliberate, no doubt. Agloff laughed behind them. Thawn disagreed, but what he could do. It sounded thought out enough, and Lore knew Eden better than the pilgrims themselves. If he had agreed, that was enough.

And it wasn’t worth riling Agloff by arguing. His agreement was essential. They didn’t know the full weight of this day, why should they, but Thawn knew that with Agloff Ashborne Winter could fall. He was Jask’s greatest, if only, weakness.

He would go through with their damned plan. After all, thought Thawn, all he needed was the other Ashborne boy and then his debt to the Patents was paid.

Do I need to tell Ashborne that?

No. He said he didn’t wanna know.

He just wanted to explain himself. Jask had taken the boy, bottled him up for eight centuries, on a vain hope Agloff would reappear. Jask’s motivations were perverse, and they were aimed squarely at Thawn, leaving Agloff the victim of it all. It was his brother up there, with the mind of Erebus herself buried deep inside, slowly taking over a body that was wilting under its own mortality.

How many bodies had that machine chewed through and spat out? Eron was the last in a succession since Forlorn. Inartus had been right. The Sign had continued their depraved tradition of sowing minds within minds.

What unsettled Thawn most though, was how the Eron boy had contracted winged fever in the first place. It was a foreign disease, not one found on Earth. Lethal to he, his sons and Jask, but not to humans, or it shouldn’t have been. Now somehow Jask had found a strain Agloff was immune to, but the humans were not. Bizarre.

Thawn snapped his thoughts back.

He didn’t want Agloff’s forgiveness particularly, just for him to understand. And as much as Thawn should care for Agloff (and he should care more than he did), he was well-practiced at caring for nought but himself. He couldn’t care like Agloff or Andromeda could. Everything he was supposed to feel was buried so far deep.

Ultimately, Agloff’s friend, the kids, they were secondary to Eron. But there was no reason to believe he couldn’t pull off all three. After all, the last time he had tried to breach the Cathedral’s gates he didn’t have Ashborne with him, and he had nearly succeeded.

Those three-hundred years ago.

‘Blue, Ashborne and I will head up for the girl then,’ he said after his moment’s thought. ‘Agloff is safer with me. Are you sure you can manage the kids?’ He looked down at Merry.

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‘If you do your part and clear out the pilgrims,’ she said.

The audacity of this girl, Thawn thought.

*

Thawn kept them to the roads by day, before peeling off each night for a place to hide. Lore had mentioned the land Edenward had been blighted with snow, and Agloff saw blotches of white painted over the fields carpeting the land. These were farmers’ fields, raising Winter’s flag. Every so often they would pass a clutch of barns or a farmhouse and Agloff felt unease that someone was staring at them through the frosted windows.

But for a patrol of horses in Winter’s colours, crossing the other side of a hedgerow, they had seen no one. But that was to be expected, he supposed. Colony Two was a large place. Every now and then Agloff heard the others mutter their directions- door markings, staircases and step numbers as they walked, and he was reminded to do the same. He and Oxford had the benefit of Thawn’s guidance in and out of Eden but, for Merry and Memphis, Lore had prescribed a route out that was deliberately vexing. It was designed to confuse any pursuers.

The closer they got, the more they found themselves entangled in nature’s sprawl. Once neat hedges were overcome by rampant growth. Matted vines and loose spokes jutted out at all angles, to near twice their height. They cast a long shadow over the fields, now blanketed in thick grasses. One farmhouse sat in the shade of a fir tree, larger than any Agloff had seen. It keeled over to one side under the strain of its own weight. Some of the more distant hedges were replaced by lines of dense trees, bolstered by brightly-coloured fruits. But they weren’t in season, Agloff thought.

This was a twisted place.

It had a perverse beauty. Fatigue set into his legs and Agloff paused for a moment’s breath and watched over the stillness of the valley. Strokes of green and white. He absorbed the scene like a tonic for his senses. It would have been good to hike here in another time; the kind of place one could easily get lost, but in a good way.

Before they left, Lore had saddled them with food for three days: breads, fruits and biscuits, and on the third, the pattern of rolling fields flattened and Agloff could see the smear of Eden several miles hence.

Fear struck him in the gut. Not that he ever considered turning back, but he was beyond the point of return now. His life had built to this moment in fits and starts. He couldn’t turn back.

By mid-morning, Agloff thought they reached the last of the fields. An old fence line, bordered by a ribbon of asphalt, split them from the land beyond. Down the road, Agloff spied an assembly of motor carriages, half a dozen or more. Workers were loading crates into their backs. The air shook with a throaty growl, and one carriage rocked on its axle. An overseer shouted then it chattered off to deliver something to somewhere, likely the Blocks, thought Agloff.

The overseer looked down the path and Agloff felt the weight of his gaze.

‘Don’t look,’ Thawn said. ‘Don’t look, and walk through this place like you’ve seen it a hundred times or more and people won’t look twice.’

They moved towards the fencing. Agloff passed a glance down the road, like the man was still watching him.

He thought he heard something.

Louder.

‘Hey!’

The overseer cantered down the road, arm outstretched. Then a sprint.

‘Hey!’

‘Go. Move!’ Thawn pulled back a cut of wire mesh from the fence post. He hustled them inside, but Lady tripped over a knot of weeds. Her leg caught sideways in the gap.

‘Stop there! Trespassers!’ The overseer downed a hand to his hip. A moment later, the barrel of his gun was angled down the lane. A warning shot split the air with a thunderous crack.

Thawn moved across them, guarded them behind his armour. ‘Stay still,’ he growled. Merry dropped to Lady’s side at once, cradled her ankle in her hands. The girl wailed but Merry told her it would be alright.

Thawn and the stranger walked forwards. Folds of glass spread over Thawn’s head into a domed helmet. One arm guarded his helmet, the other was drawn into his chest.

‘Halt, or I’ll shoot! Y-You are s-suspected fugitives of W-Winter.’ The overseer tripped over his words, hurling through the air. He fired again, and there was a second sound. The bullet pinged off Thawn’s armour. Sparks spilled onto the ground.

The man came to a halt in Thawn’s shadow, his body occluded by the giant. Agloff saw Thawn’s arm reach into the sky. It fell, then came a boom and the overseer’s body flew sideways into the field, buried in a hedgerow. Thawn’s body shimmered, the trace of his guard shield.

He did not stop to admire his work. He turned back down the lane, growled at them. ‘We need to ditch the girl,’ he said. ‘She gives us away too easily.’

Merry shot to her feet and craned her neck to Thawn by her tip-toes. ‘Absolutely not!’

‘I ain’t going nowhere,’ Lady protested. The girl struggled to her feet, a redness round her ankle. ‘We all go, or none go.’ She looked to Agloff who nodded with a half-smile.

Thawn’s shoulders slumped. ‘Count yourselves lucky there was just one of them.’ He moved back to the fencing and peeled the opening once more. On the other side, dense reeds pushed towards them and Agloff saw they had unearthed another post some way down the road, and tall grasses were spilling up through cracks in the asphalt.

‘This ain’t the main road, is it, big guy?’ Oxford said.

‘There’s more fields on the other side of this marshland, manned by the kids. I know an outflow that can get us below the city.’

One-by-one, they slipped into the reeds. The land was heavy and Agloff’s boots sank into the earth, like he might have drowned in its clutches if he stood still too long. He saw puddled patches every so often where something had cut away at the grasses. Upturned shards of jagged metal poked through the water in these places, some tangled in wires and heavy fabrics. They told a tale.

‘You won’t be the first to try and kill Jask,’ Thawn shouted. He pointed out a plate of armour that had sunk in a knot of reeds, bending the bases of their stalks. Further up, they passed a line of spikes at wayward angles poking from the ground, topped by human skulls. The birds had long picked them clean. But if it were a threat, it was a poor one. They were long hidden by nature. Rather, Agloff assumed whoever put them here as a token of their victory had forgotten they ever did.

His eyes tracked Thawn through the reeds. He bobbed in and out of sight through the sparse puddles. ‘Watch your step,’ the stranger said. ‘There’s traps about.’ The way was waterlogged in places too.

‘How many are there?’ Merry said, wincing as she hopscotched her way through the swamp. Lady moved closer to her. Her coat tails buoyed on the surface while the water rippled around her waist. The girl had to wade through it, weaving from side to side with giant strides.

‘Enough,’ replied Thawn and Agloff could sense none of them were reassured. ‘Mines, tripwires.’

Memphis rolled his eyes. ‘Oh, joy.’

Agloff looked at the patchy sky. The sun’s edge was carved by the silhouette of Cerberus. It left its mark, even behind the clouds.

‘You never got used to it?’ Thawn said, noting Agloff’s eyes.

‘I’ve not known different,’ he said.

‘Hold up.’ Thawn raised a fist back to his followers. The grasses bowed to a metal fence that had been haphazardly erected some time ago, stretching into obscurity in both directions. Winter must have left its defences to the traps or were arrogant as to assume no one would ever come here. Agloff noticed it was tacked onto a thick, jagged ridge of broken glass. It was taller in places, poking out from above the top of the reeds.

‘We gotta be extra careful,’ Thawn announced. ‘Step where I step.’

‘And we weren’t being already? It’s hard to trust you, you know.’ Memphis muttered.

Thawn ignored him. He raised his firearm to poke at the reeds and pulled them back to clear the way to the gate. ‘This is Eden’s border. We’re at the edge of the dome.’

‘What in hell are you on about?’ Oxford said.

Thawn gestured the base of shattered glass each way. ‘That’s just the foundation of the dome. Most of it were never finished, but Winter must have smashed it in.’ Agloff looked at the gate that split the fence in front of them. A sign was emblazoned onto its bars.

Welcome to Eden Colony. Two. The new Green Earth is ours.

All rights reserved. The One World Archive

‘I don’t understand,’ said Merry. ‘What is this place?’

Next to the sign, Agloff saw the image of a handsome, blonde man, staring regally behind mould and time into his eyes. It identified him as Mats Zander.

‘Way back when,’ said Thawn, shepherding them through the gate and into Eden’s domain, ‘before humanity left, this rich man had plans to save this planet. Temperatures were rising; sea levels rising.’

‘I’ve read about it,’ said Agloff.

‘Well, he had an archive of genetic material, thousands of species. Birds, insects, elephants, lions.’ Agloff thought of the animal he had seen at March Town. ‘They set up hubs like this one. The Eden Colonies. There were three of them. One up north, Two here, Three out far east. Plan was to terraform and repopulate the land with wildlife. But only One was ever operational.’

‘Why here? What’s special about this land?’

‘It wasn’t populated.

As they walked, Agloff saw the more remains of a bygone age. A billboard was wedged into the ground at a right angle. He tilted his neck to look. Mats Zander stood with his arms outstretched like some saviour at the centre. All the animals Agloff could imagine stood at his side. It was a plea for the people to come and live among nature, as equals.

‘They wanted to regenerate the land. Everything had died off. So, they built domes to terraform it, and revive all the species they had saved. They even sold off living space to rich people to fund it. ‘Eden’ was meant to be an ultra-sustainable city at the heart of the Colony. It was meant to be a paradise.’

‘Guessing that ended up in the mud then?’ said Oxford. ‘Bastards.’

Agloff listened to the air in hopes of catching the song of some exotic bird. But it was only the trill of the wind.

‘The money ran out and Colony Two was never finished… But they had started the terraforming. It’s why everything’s so goddamn overgrown here!’ he groaned, batting away more reeds with a fisted hand. ‘It’s artificial. Super nutrients or some such. It’s the only reason any of the land here is fertile. It was meant to stay inside the dome, but they never finished it. Colony Three was never even started.’

Amusing, thought Agloff, that everything he had ever known was because one guy went broke, though he wasn’t sure why he found it funny though.

‘And everything in the Colony, the proper Colony, in the dome, was just left empty?’ he said.

Thawn nodded. ‘That’s why it’s more arid the further from Eden you get. It’s no accident Jask chose this place to hide away. Winter’s conquest has a natural advantage here. It is well-resourced and defended, more so than near enough anywhere in the Colony, except perhaps Fort Lake, or Ithma.’ Thawn said. ‘And they hang it over their victims’ heads during fallow years. All the crop of the North comes from those fields. It’s why Fort Wishbone and Spear dare not move against Winter, yet.’

‘How did Colony Two end up a prison?’ Merry said.

Thawn shrugged. ‘It was cheap. The Government saw an opportunity to buy the land and dump its shit here. Nice spot of fertile land for people to live out their miserable lives.’

Agloff saw a tremor of rage in Oxford. This was the mercy he had been shown when the trucks came that day at his home, Post 474 on Mars, he had said. By the lottery of his postcode, they were already full when they got to him, and those in power showed his family this place as their mercy. Life imprisonment, confined to one planet, while the rest of the Confederacy laughed and loved in ignorance. Agloff had always looked at Oxford and seen a star-borne soul. He belonged up there. Thawn’s words hurt him.

‘How’d you even know all this? This was hundreds of years ago,’ said Memphis.

‘And I’m thousands of years old,’ Thawn said matter-of-factly. ‘I’ve watched humankind a long time.’

They reached the end of the reeds, and another slate of fields marked the way up to Eden. Agloff felt a chill in the grey light of the day. Each step into this place was the sum of all decisions he had taken before. Each felt novel, heavy. It took all his will to shift his weight from foot to foot. Were he alone, he thought, he might have collapsed into the grass and clenched his knees, to await an imaginary saviour to do the job that needed doing for him.

He was out of his depth.

He wanted to cry, he did. He felt the welling of tears stream up through his insides. It knocked against his gut and threatened to snatch the last sinew of strength from under him. It was then Agloff realised he never could come this far for himself. Erobo was right.

He was always destined to fail, but for Ariea. She commanded the strength to bring him there. Her will was greater than his. It was always her.

The Red Cathedral was a silhouette touching the sky above the rows of flat stacks and plump chimneys of Winter’s industry. The city was smouldered in fumes. Agloff fixed his stare on the top of the tallest spire. It was destiny, he supposed. He looked from Thawn, down to the shimmer of his hands beneath his guard-shield and rolled his fingers into a fist.

He called for Thawn to stop as they reached the boundary of the city; a low wall of sand-coloured bricks that peeled off around them. The two fields hence were split by a shallow irrigation channel and, beside it, a pipeline that ran straight to the city centre, to Ariea.

Agloff looked at Thawn. ‘Do we get a weapon, sir?'