Liora
Maybe She is exhausted. Or has taken damage. The walls feel less alive as I descend a primitive staircase. Uneven, randomly placed steps, often too high for a single stride. I feel like a child in a giant’s house. There is no water in this downward shaft. The floor is only slightly wet, that’s all. Dresses dripping drops? She’s a sponge, porous as a coral reef. Were they even porous?
I hear screaming.
A single girl, at the top of her considerable lungs. Adding a new level to the hysteria department. She is using words, but I don’t think anyone can understand that high-pitched scramble. I want to plug my ears.
It’s weird: I first hear the sound. Only when I turn the corner and see the huddled group is the gentle cocktail of empathy, hate, and a sprinkle of hot confusion handed to me. Is it that shallow?
Now the fire is down to sobbing. Embedded in tasteless sweet-nothings. Attempts to hush and console. A group hug with no touching.
I wish to sneak by, but the sodding one spots me. She escapes the living shields and torpedoes toward me. The demon is all hair and wild yellow dress. One of the knife girls.
I am not a fighter, but I know to step aside with good timing. Glad she forgot to bring her tool. Her claws grab nothing; she falls and slides, then explodes like a firecracker of frustration. I don’t think she liked how the rooftop party turned out.
I don’t have time for this. I get a handful of free angry looks before the solace squad walks over and tries again. Why is she mad at me?
I don’t think I want to know.
I am back at ground level, where the basilica’s growth has merged with the offices and houses. A bit of street now inside. Thick veins absorb stone and steel into the jungle of pillars—supporting each other, merging and splitting, forming natural gothic arches. Some rounded, some sharp. Creating a ceiling that varies in height from just above my head to crevices that could hide a nuclear submarine hanging from its rear end.
This assimilated alley opens up to the town square. More women in groups. One of the sewing-station canopies is swept to the side; the other furniture and piles of clothing are gone.
The Kemushi digger stands undisturbed.
I am spotted. Being gawked at. Each faction with its own variation of contempt. Very nuanced. Bloody hens.
Anyone here willing and able to talk me through the minefield?
I didn’t consciously broadcast that message, but a little further down my lateral escape route, I’m being hissed at.
“Hey, psst,” from a narrow passage a girl beckons me. The cable girl with the fanatic gene, whom I made head of electrics. In charge of truck four. She’s lost her baseball cap. Now wearing red overalls—one of Auryn’s—and a ponytail. Hers. They’re both dry.
I suppress the need to look around and just take the turn, slip between the house and the girl.
“Hey Cap, playing hide and seek?”
“That’s not funny,” she says. “She’ll scalp me if she knew.” And pulls me deeper in.
Initiative.
Points for that.
“Who’s the she?” I ask.
“The cockroach,” she says. “Cockroach Khan.”
Obviously. Why even ask?
Do I smell a mutineer? The musky armpit of an upriser? Or maybe she’s just nervous.
“That way she can’t smell me,” Cap says. “I’m sorry. It’s aftershave. An old bottle.”
“It aged well, considering the second world skirmish is at least a hundred years ago.”
She’s had enough of my smart mouth and has just developed a mean look of creative planning. I don’t want to wait for the outcome.
I allow her to speak.
“There was an agent in the machine.”
It takes me a second to get she means Aph in the digger. Swallow remark. She has the talking stick.
“Khan made me reboot that thing. Put it back to its factory settings. I think I killed the smooth-talker—the voice, the entity in there.”
That’s not funny. My temperature drops.
She takes a second to check if she’s good to go. There’s more.
“I am not like them,” head-jerk toward the square. “I want nothing to do with reckonings, or being unified with morons and marshmallows. I can think stupid things all on my own.”
A shaky breath. She still holds my arm. Looks at the wall behind me for a second or two.
“I was with them,” she then says, “capturing the man.”
Now she has me by the ears. My heart stampedes toward my lips. But I keep them tightly glued. Just nod with encouragement. She looks at her feet.
“I’d found this batch. Of blue netting. We took it. To where we’d located him. Stunned him collectively.”
She cuts her sentences into phrases of four or five. I keep the tape ready for re-assembly into full sentences with meaning. Not lines of prayer flags, but blue netting?
“We rolled him in it. It was symbolic, the roach said. It felt like a prank. Like, not too serious. We sang while carrying him. And it felt somewhat right to do that, seeing what he’s done. But then they dropped him down the stairs, and I was forced to carry him away. He was much heavier with just the six of us. And Khan didn’t help. She led the way. Knew where she wanted to hide him until the sacrifice. It wouldn’t be long. But he must have been hurt. I had blood on my leg.”
I need to come up for air.
Wha… duhh… fuhh?
I grab her arm and shake.
“You know where Eldon is?”
She looks confused.
“Eldon, the man,” I say, a bit too loud. “The caught fish, the fucking whale you hid in a closet!”
“Eldon,” she says. “Yes, I can show you. But he’s dead now. They killed him in the ritual. Stabbed him to death. They told me. Stark raving mad they are.”
“No, no—no, no,” I say, to be clear. “That wasn’t him. It was just an empty piñata for the pestering party. It wasn’t real, Cap. It really was symbolic!”
She struggles to believe me. Considers putting me with the marshmallows permanently.
“Really,” she says, processing. “Then he—Eldon—must still be down there.”
“Down where?” I ask. This kind of impatience surfaces on one’s skin if not careful, bursting like bubonic boils.
“It’s on the desert side,” she says. “We have to go around.”
Yeah. Clearly. Always the long way.
“I have the keys,” she says. “Of the excavator.”
Now there’s a plan with potential.
I want to take off vertically, head straight for the big digger, but she holds me back, pulls me the other way. Deeper into the alley.