Nights Dawn (№4) - Neutronium Alchemist - Conflict

“Throw the pillows down,” he said.

Tatiana dropped them, peering over the edge of the crater with a highly dubious expression. Dariat shoved the two harnesses into the tubule, and started to worm his way in after them. “When I’m in, you follow me, okay?” He didn’t give her the chance to answer. It was awkward going, pushing the pillows ahead of him as he crawled along. The grey polyp was slippery with water and fecal sludge. Dariat could hear Tatiana grunting and muttering behind him as she discovered the residue smearing the sides.

There were ridges encircling the tubule every four metres, peristaltic muscle bands that assisted the usual water flow. Despite Rubra expanding them wide, they formed awkward constrictions which Dariat had to pull himself through. He had just squeezed past the third when Rubra said: They’ve reached the fiftieth floor. Can you sense them?

Not a chance. So in theory they won’t be able to find me.

They know the general direction, and they’re heading towards the apartment.

Dariat was too intent on inching himself along to review the images. What about the rest?

On their way down. The stairwells are absolutely packed. It’s like a freak-show stampede out there.

He elbowed his way through another muscle band. The light from his hand showed the tubule walls ending two metres ahead. A thick ring of muscle membrane surrounded the rim. Beyond that was a clear empty space. He could hear a steady patter of rain in the darkness.

“We made it,” he shouted.

His only answer was another outbreak of grunted curses.

Dariat pushed the filthy pillows and their tangled cords over the edge, hearing them splash into the water. Then he was sliding himself over.

The main ingestion tract into which the sewer tubule emptied ran vertically up the entire height of the starscraper. It collected the human waste, discarded organic matter, and dirty water from every floor and carried it down to the large purification organs at the base of the starscraper. They filtered out organic compounds which were pumped back to the principal nutrient organs inside the southern endcap via their own web of specialist tubules. Poisons and toxins were disposed of directly into space. Fresh water was recirculated up to the habitat’s storage reservoirs and parkland rivers.

Normally the main ingestion tract was a continual waterfall. Now, though, Rubra had closed the inlet channels and reversed the flow from the purification organs, allowing the water level to rise up the tract until it was level with the fiftieth floor.

The cold surface closed over Dariat’s head, and he felt his feet clear the tubule. A couple of swift kicks and he surfaced, puffing a spray of droplets from his mouth. Thankfully this water was clean—relatively.

He held an arm up in the air, a sharp blue flame flickering up from his fingertips. Its light showed the true extent of the tract: twenty metres in diameter, with walls of neutral grey polyp that had the same crinkly surface texture as granite. Sewer tubule outlets formed black portals all around, their muscle-membrane rims flexing like fish mouths. The pillows were bobbing about a few metres away.

Tatiana had pushed her shoulders past the tubule’s muscle membrane, and was craning her head back to look around. The tract’s height defeated the illumination thrown out by Dariat’s small flame, revealing barely fifteen metres of the walls above the water level. A heavy shower was falling out of the darkness which roofed them, chopping up the water’s surface with small ripples.

“Come on, out you come,” Dariat said. He swam back to her and helped ease her through the opening. She gasped at the water’s chilly grip, arms thrashing about for a moment.

Dariat retrieved the two sets of pillows and strapped himself into the harness. He had to tie Tatiana’s cords for her, the cold had numbed her fingers. When he was finished, the sewer tubules all started to close silently.

“Where are we going now?” Tatiana asked nervously.

“Straight up.” He grinned. “Rubra will pump fresh water back into the base of the tract. It should take about twenty minutes to reach the top. But expect an interruption.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh, yeah.”

Stanyon arrived at the fiftieth floor to find it in turmoil. The vestibule was packed with excitable possessed. None of them seemed to know what was going on.

“Anybody seen him?” Stanyon shouted. Nobody had.

“Search around, there must be some trace. I want the teams that were searching floors thirty-eight and thirty-nine to go down to fifty-one and check it out.”

“What’s happening?” Bonney’s voice asked from the walkie-talkie; there was a lot of crackling interference.

Stanyon held the unit to his face, pulling out more aerial. “He’s dodged us again. But we know he’s here. We’ll have him any minute now.”

“Make sure you stick with procedure. Remember it’s not just Dariat we’re up against.”

“You’re not the only council member left. I know what I’m doing.”

“I’m a minute away from the lobby. I’ll join you as fast as I can.”

He gave the walkie-talkie a disgusted look and switched it off. “Terrific.”

“Stanyon,” someone called from the other end of the vestibule. “Stanyon, we’ve found something.”

It was the troll, the faerie prince, and both of the cyber-ninjas who had broken into the apartment. They were hanging around the bathroom door when Stanyon arrived. He pushed his way past them impatiently.

The sides of the ruptured toilet sphincter had sagged, squeezing more of the yellow fluid out. It was running down the outside of the cone to smear the surrounding dune of polyp chippings. Water from the fractured pipe was sloshing over the floor.

Stanyon edged forwards, and peered cautiously over the crater’s lip. There was nothing to see, nothing to sense. He pointed at the smaller of the two cyber-ninjas. “You, go see where it leads to.”

The cyber-ninja looked at him. Red LEDs on his visor flashed slowly, an indolent blinking to mirror the thoughts they fronted.

“Go on,” Stanyon said impatiently.

After a brief rebellious moment, the cyber-ninja dematerialized his flak jacket and lowered himself down into the sewer tubule.

Dariat had been worried about the undercurrents. Needlessly, as it turned out. They were rising fast up the giant tract with only the occasional swirl of bubbles twisting around them. It was still raining heavily, but the whole process was eerily silent.

He maintained the small flame burning coldly from his fingers, mainly for Tatiana’s benefit. There was nothing to see above them, only the empty blackness. They slid smoothly past the intermittent circlets of closed tubules with monotonous regularity, their only real measure of progress.

Dariat was warm enough, circulating heat through his skin to hold the water’s numbing encroachment at bay. But he did worry about Tatiana. She’d stopped talking, and her chittering teeth were clearly audible. That left him alone with his own thoughts of what was to come. And the whispers of the damned, they were always there.

Rubra, have you ever heard of someone called Alkad Mzu?he asked.

No. Why?

Capone is very interested in finding her. I think she’s some kind of weapons expert.

How the hell do you know what Capone wants?

I can hear it. The souls in the beyond are calling for her. They’re quite desperate to find her for the Organization.

Affinity suddenly gave him a sense of space opening around him. Then an astonishingly resolute presence emerged from the new distance. Dariat was at once fearful and amazed by its belief in itself, a contentment which was almost the opposite of hubris; it knew and accepted itself too well for arrogance. There was a nobility about it which he had never experienced, certainly not during the life he had led. Yet he knew exactly what it was.

Hello, Dariat,it said.

The Kohistan Consensus. I’m flattered.

It is intriguing for us to communicate with you. It is a rare opportunity to talk to any non-Edenist, and you are a possessor as well.

Make the most of it, I won’t be around for much longer.

The action you and Rubra are undertaking is an honourable one, we applaud your courage. It cannot have been easy for either of you.

It was realistic.

His answer was accompanied by Rubra’s emission of irony.

We would like to ask a question,consensus said. Several, in fact.

On the nature of possession, I assume. Fair enough.

Your current viewpoint is unique, and extremely valuable to us.

It’s going to have to wait a minute,rubra said. They’ve found the toilet.

The cyber-ninja had squeezed down into the sewer tubule and was squirming along on his belly. His mind tone was one of complete disgust. Pale violet light illuminated the lenses on his low-light enhancement goggles, casting a faint glow across the polyp directly in front of him. “They were in here,” he yelled back over his shoulder. “This shit’s all been smeared around.”

“Yes!” Stanyon banged a fist against the muscle-membrane door. “Get down there,” he told the second cyber-ninja. “Help him.”

The cyber-ninja did as he was told, sitting on the edge of the crater and slinging his legs over.

“Anyone know where these pipes lead?” Stanyon asked.

“I’ve never been in one myself,” the faerie prince said airily. “But it’ll empty into the lower floor eventually. You could try searching down there. Unless, of course, he’s simply popped up inside someone else’s john and walked out.”

Stanyon gave the slack cone an irritated look. The prospect of Dariat simply walking through the habitat’s pipes to escape in the throng was intolerable. But with everyone wearing their illusionary form it would be appallingly easy. Why can we never organize ourselves properly?

With extreme reluctance he switched the walkie-talkie back on. “Bonney, come in please.”

Rubra opened the sphincter muscle below every single toilet on the forty-ninth, fiftieth, and fifty-first floor. It was an action which nobody noticed. There were over a hundred and eighty possessed milling around on those three levels, with more still arriving. Some were obediently searching through the rooms; most were now there simply for a piece of the action. As there was no organized plan, none of them were suspicious when all the remaining apartment doors slid open. At the same time, emergency fire-control doors quietly closed off the lift shafts.

Dariat pulled Tatiana to his chest and held her tight, locking his fingers together behind her back. “Stay with it,” he said. The surface of the water was just rising over the sewer tubules of the twenty-first floor.

Bonney reached the twelfth floor well ahead of the five deputies accompanying her. She could hear them clumping down the stairwell above her. They competed against her heart hammering away inside her ribs. So far she didn’t feel any fatigue, but she knew she’d have to slow down soon. It was going to take a good twenty minutes to reach the fiftieth floor.

“Bonney,” her walkie-talkie said. “Come in please.”

She started down the stairs to the thirteenth floor and raised the walkie-talkie to her face. “Yes, Stanyon.”

“He’s vanished into the pipes. I’ve sent some of my people after him; but I don’t know where they all lead to. It’s possible he might have doubled back on us. It might be an idea to leave some guards in the lobby.”

“Fuckhead.” Bonney slowed to a halt as mystification overshadowed her initial anger. “What pipes?”

“The waste pipes. There’s kilometres of them under the floors. We found one of the toilets all smashed up. That’s how he got in there.”

“You mean sewer pipes?”

“Yeah.”

Bonney stared at the wall. She could sense the thought routines gliding through the neural strata a metre or so behind the naked polyp. In his own fashion, Rubra was staring right back at her. He was content.

She didn’t know anything about the sewer pipes, except how obvious they were in hindsight. And Rubra had absolute control over every single environmental aspect of the habitat. Dariat had been spotted for a few brief seconds, which had sent everyone chasing after him. Then he’d vanished. If the sewers could hide him so thoroughly, he should never have been found in the first place.

“Out!” she yelled at the walkie-talkie. “Get out of there! Stanyon, for fuck’s sake, move!”

Rubra opened the muscle-membrane rims of the sewer tubules which served the forty-ninth, fiftieth, and fifty-first floors. The pressure exerted by a thirty-storey-high column of water filling the ingestion tract was a genuinely irresistible force.

Stanyon saw the cyber-ninja bullet out of the cone of ruined muscle to smash against the ceiling. The gust of air which blew him there gave way to a massive fist of water which howled upwards to strike the spread-eagled man full on. Its roar was pitched at roughly the level of a sense-overload sonic. Stanyon’s skin blistered scarlet as his capillaries ruptured. Before he could even scream the bathroom was filled with high-velocity rain which knocked him to his feet as if he were being hammered by a fusillade of rubber bullets. He crashed back into the bath where a slim laser-straight pillar of water had burst out of the plug hole. It might just as well have been a chain saw.

Throughout the three condemned floors, every bathroom, every kitchen, and every public toilet were host to the same lethal eruption of water. The lights had gone out, and into this tormented night came the water itself, icy foaming waves that rushed through rooms and vestibules like a horizontal guillotine.

Tatiana cried out fearfully as the water began to drop. The two of them began to circulate around the edge of the ingestion tract; slowly to start with, then picking up speed. Small waves rippled back and forth, slapping against each other to produce wobbling spires. A loud gurgling sound rose as the water fell faster.

Dariat watched in dismay as the surface tilted. At the centre of the tract it was discernibly lower than it was at the walls. They began to spiral in towards it. The gurgling grew louder still.

Rubra!

Don’t worry. Another thirty seconds, that’s all.

Bonney was helpless against the torrent of anguish rushing around her; the flock of souls arising from those trapped below to depart the universe, their sobs of bitterness and fright striking her harder than any physical blow. They were too near, too strong, to avoid; raw emotion amplified to insufferable levels.

She fell to her knees, muscles knotted. Tears dripped steadily from her eyes. Her own soul was in danger of being pulled along with them, a migration which commanded attendance. She fisted her hands and punched the polyp step. The pain was no more than a gentle tweak against the compulsion to join the damned once more. So she punched again, harder. Again.

Finally the carnage was over, the three floors filled to capacity with water. Narrow fan-sprays of water squirted out from the rim seals on several of the lift fire-control doors, filling the empty shafts with a fine drizzle, but the doors themselves held against the pressure. As did the stairwell muscle-membrane doors on the fifty-second floor, preventing the lower half of the starscraper from flooding. Pulverised bodies that had pressed against the ceiling were sinking slowly as pockets of air leaked out of their wounds, trailing ribbons of blood as they went.

The starscraper’s ingestion tract did strange things to the gurgling sound produced by the frothing water, channelling it into an organlike harmonic that rattled Tatiana’s bones. She was inordinately glad when it began to subside. Dariat was moaning feebly in her embrace as if he were in great pain. The flame he’d produced had snuffed out, leaving them in absolute blackness. Although she couldn’t see anything, she knew the water was slowing, its surface levelling out. The cold was giving her a pounding headache.

Dariat started coughing. “Bloody hell.”

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“I’ll survive.”

“What happened?”

“We’re not being chased anymore,” he said flatly.

“So what’s next?”

“Rubra is going to start pumping water back into the tract. We should reach the top in about fifteen minutes.” He held up his hand and rekindled the little blue flame. “Think you can last that long?”

“I can last.”

Bonney walked slowly out of the starscraper lobby, still shivering despite the balmy parkland air ruffling her khaki jacket. Nearly a dozen possessed were loitering outside on the grass. They were gathered together in small clusters, talking quietly in worried tones. When she appeared, all conversation ended. They stared at her, thoughts dominated by resentment, their expressions hard, unforgiving. It was the germ of the revolution.

She gazed back at them, coldly defiant. But she knew they would never take orders from her again. The authority of Kiera’s council had drowned back there in the starscraper. If she wanted to go up against Dariat and Rubra now, it would be on her own. One on one, the best kind of hunt there was. She brought a hand up to her face, licking the bloody grazes which scarred each knuckle. Her smile made those possessed closest to her back away.

There were several trucks parked beside the lobby. She chose the nearest and twisted the accelerator hard. Spinning tyres tore up long scars of grass as she tugged the steering wheel around. Then the truck was speeding away from the lobby, heading for the northern endcap.

Her walkie-talkie gave a bleep. “Now what?” Rubra asked. “Come on, it was a grand hunt, but you lost. Drive over to a decent bar, have a drink. My treat.”

“I haven’t lost yet,” she said. “He’s still out there. That means I can win.”

“You’ve lost everything. Your so-called colleagues are evacuating the starscrapers. Your council is busted. There’s going to be nothing left of Kiera’s little empire with this lot running around out of control.”

“That’s right, there’s nothing left. Nothing except me and the boyo. I’m going to catch him before he can escape. I worked that one out already. You’re helping him reach the spaceport. Lord knows why, but I can still spoil your game, just as you did mine. That’s justice. It’s also fun.”

One wacko lady,dariat commented.

She’s genuine trouble, though. Always has been,rubra said.

And continues to be so by the look of it. Especially if she gets to the spindle before me. Which is a good possibility.the water was now up to the second floor. Dariat could see the top of the ingestion tract now, the black tube puncturing a bubble of hazy pink light.

Another ninety seconds brought him level with the floor of the cistern chamber. He had emerged into the centre of a big hemispherical cavern whose walls were pierced by six huge water pipe outlets. Ribbons of water were still trickling across the sloping floor to the lip of the tract.

He struck out for the edge with a strong sidestroke, towing Tatiana along. She was almost unconscious; the cold had penetrated her body to the core. Even with his energistic strength, hauling her out of the water was tough going. Once she was clear he flopped down beside her, wishing himself warm and dry. Steam began to pour out of their clothes.

Tatiana tossed her head about, moaning as if she were caught in a nightmare. She sat up with a spasm of muscle, her few remaining bangles chiming loudly. Vapour was still effervescing out of her dress and dreadlocks. She blinked at it in amazement. “I’m warm,” she said in astonishment. “I didn’t think I would ever be warm again.”

“The least I could do.”

“Is it over now?”

The wishful childlike tone made him press his lips together in regret. “Not quite. We still have to get up to the spaceport; there’s a route through these water pipes which will eventually take us to a tube tunnel, we don’t have to go up to the surface. But Bonney survived. She’ll try to stop us.”

Tatiana rested her chin in her hands. “Lord Thoale is testing us more than most. I’m sure he has his reasons.”

“I’m not.” Dariat lumbered to his feet and untied the pillow harness. “I’m sorry, but we have to get going.”

She nodded miserably. “I’m coming.”

The search teams which Bonney and her deputies had organized were wending their way out of Valisk’s starscrapers. Shock from the flooding was evident in their shuffling footsteps and tragic eyes. They emerged from the lobbies, consoling each other as best they could.

It shouldn’t have happened, was the thought which rang among them like an Edenist Consensus. They’d made it back to the salvation of reality. They were the chosen ones, the lucky ones, the blessed. Eternal life, and the precious congruent gift of sensation, had been within their grasp. Now Rubra had shown them how tenuous that claim was.

He was able to do that because they remained in a universe where his power was a match to theirs. It shouldn’t be like that. Whole planets had escaped from open skies and Confederation retribution, while they stayed to entrap new bodies. Kiera’s idea—and it had been a good one, bold and vigorous. Eternity spent within the confines of a single habitat would be a difficult prospect, and she had seen a way forwards.

That was why they’d acquiesced to her rule and that of the council, because she’d been right. At the start. Now though, they had increased their numbers, Kiera had flown off to negotiate their admission to a dangerous war, and Bonney committed them against Rubra to satisfy her personal vendettas.

No more. No more risks. No more foolhardy adventures. No more sick savagery of hunting. The time had come to leave it all behind.

The truck raced along the hardened track which countless wheels had compacted across the semi-arid plain surrounding Valisk’s northern endcap. Bonney had the throttle at maximum, the axial motors complemented by her energistic power. Small flattened stones and cracked ridges which lay along the track sent the vehicle flying through the air in long shallow hops.

Bonney didn’t even notice the jouncing, which would have caused whiplash injuries to any non-possessed riding beside her. Her mind was focused entirely on the endcap whose base was five kilometres in front of her. She imagined her beefy old vehicle beating the sleek tube capsule slicing along its magnetic rail in the tunnel below her. The one she knew he would be riding.

Up ahead she could just make out the dark line of the switchback road which wound up to the small plateau two kilometres above the plain. If she could only reach the passageway entrance before Dariat got out of the sewer tunnels and into a tube carriage she might conceivably reach the axis chamber before him.

A feeling of contentment began to seep into her mind. An insidious infiltration which called on her to respond, to generate her own dreamy satisfaction, to pledge it to the whole.

“Bastards!” She slapped furiously at the steering wheel, anger insulating her from the loving embrace which was rising up all around her. They had begun it, the gathering of power, the sharing, linking their wills. They’d submitted, capitulated , to their craven fear. Valisk would soon sail calmly out of this universe, sheltering them from any conceivable threat, committing them to a life of eternal boredom.

Well not for her. One of the hellhawks could take her off, away where there was struggle and excitement. Only after she’d dealt with Dariat, though. There would be time. There had to be.

The truck’s speed began to pick up. Her stubborn insistence was diverting a fraction of the prodigious reality dysfunction which was coalescing around the habitat. The utterly implausible was becoming hard fact.

Bonney laughed gleefully as the truck shot along the track, ripping up a churning cloud of thick ochre dust behind it. While all around her, the tiny clumps of scrub grass, cacti, and lichen sprawls were sprouting big adventitious flower buds. The bland desert was quietly and miraculously transforming itself into a rich colour-riot garden as Valisk’s new masters prepared to enact their vision of paradise.

The Kohistan Consensus had a thousand and one questions on the nature of possession and the beyond. Dariat sat quietly in the tube carriage taking him to the axis chamber and tried to supply answers for as many as he could. He even let them hear the terrible cries of the lost souls that infested his every thought. So that they’d know, so they’d understand the dreadful compulsion driving each possessor.

I feel strange,rubra announced. It’s like being drunk, or light-headed. I think they’re starting to penetrate my thought routines.

No,dariat said. he was aware of it himself now, the reality dysfunction starting to pervade the polyp of the shell. In the distance, a chorus of minds were singing a joyous hymn of ascension. They’re getting ready to leave the universe. We don’t have much time.

We can confirm that,the consensus said. Our voidhawks on observation duty are reporting large squalls of red light appearing on your shell, Rubra. The hellhawks appear most agitated. They are leaving their docking pedestals.

Don’t let it happen, boy,rubra said. Come into me, please, transfer over now. We can win, we can stop them taking Valisk to their bloody haven. We can screw them yet.

Not with Tatiana here. I won’t condemn her to that. We’ve still got time.

Bonney’s almost at the plateau.

And we’re almost at the base of the endcap. This carriage can go straight up to the axis chamber. She’s got to climb three kilometres of stairs. We’ll make it easily.

Blue smoke spouted out of the truck’s tyres as Bonney skid-braked the vehicle outside the passageway’s dark entrance. When she jumped down from the driver’s seat her sharp upper teeth were protruding over her lower lip, producing a permanent feral grin. Her painfully red-rimmed eyes narrowed to lethargic slits as she gazed up at the steepening cliff of grey polyp in front of her, as if puzzled by its appearance. Every movement took on a dullard’s slowness. Breath wheezed heavily out of her nostrils.

She ignored the passageway and stood perfectly still, bringing her arms to rest in front of her so her hands crossed above her crotch. Her head drooped, bowing deeply, the eyes closing completely.

What the hell is she doing now?dariat asked. She was frantic to get up there.

It looks like she’s praying.

Somehow, I really doubt that.

The tube carriage reached the base of the endcap and started to sweep up the slope towards the hub. An urgent whining sound permeated the inside. Dariat could feel it slowing, then it accelerated again.

Damn it, I’m getting power dropouts right across the habitat. That’s in the sections of myself I can still perceive. I’m shrinking, boy, there are places where my thoughts have ceased. Help me!

The reality dysfunction is strengthening. Five minutes. Hang on for five more minutes.

Bonney’s khaki suit was darkening, at the same time its texture changed to a glossier aspect. She was starting to hunch up, her legs bowing out and becoming spindly. Pointed ears emerged from a shortening crop of hair. There was no suit anymore, only a black pelt.

She suddenly raised her rodent head and emitted an ear-piercing screech through a circular mouth caged by fangs. Eyes glittered a devilish red. She opened what had been her arms to spread her new wings wide. The leathery membrane was thin enough to be translucent, revealing a lacework of minute black veins beneath the dark amber surface.

Oh, fuck,rubra exclaimed. No bloody way! I don’t care what she looks like, she weighs too much to fly.

That won’t matter anymore,dariat said. The reality dysfunction is powerful enough to sustain her; we’re in the universe of fables, now. If she wants to fly, she will.

Bonney ran a couple of paces across the plateau, then her wings gave a fast downwards sweep, and she was airborne. She beat her wings steadily, rising quickly, her triumphant screeching echoing over the blank polyp. Her flight curved around sharply as she gained altitude, evolving into a spiral as the beats became smoother, more insistent.

She’ll catch me,a stricken dariat said. She’s going to reach the axis chamber before me. I’ll never get Tatiana out.“anastasia!” he cried. “My love, it can’t end like this. Not again. I can’t fail you again.”

Tatiana stared at him in fright, not understanding.

Do something,he begged.

Like what?rubra’s mental voice was faint, lacking interest.

Remember your classics,the kohistan consensus said. Before today, Icarus and Daedalus were the only people ever to fly with their own wings. Only one survived. Think what happened to Icarus.