Daylight Runner (24 page)

C
LEO DIDN'T KNOW
how long she stood there. It could have been a few minutes or an hour or more. Schaeffer was hunched over the balcony, trembling. The Clockworkers were standing pensively, waiting for orders, nervous that the police would be on their way. The whole place had an expectant air. Cleo's eyes swept back and forth over the darkness. A few remaining gas lamps dotted the streets, offering the only light.

Then, from above, a shaft of sunlight shone down. Still faint, but there nonetheless. Others broke through from different sections of the dome. A watery morning sun reached through the snow-blanketed glass and touched the darkness. The daylighters had started their shifts—either they were unaware that the city was dying beneath
them or they knew and had gone to work anyway. But it made a difference; suddenly there was a break in the gloom overhanging Ash Harbor.

And then Cleo thought she saw a new light ignite in the shadows. And then another. Like dying embers being rekindled, the lights began to come back on. An electrical hum started up from inside the control room, and she heard the controller gasp.

Inside, some of the monitors had activated; lights blinked all over the instrument panels.

“The power's back,” the controller said in disbelief.

On the screens, people were moving. The streets were filled with men, women, and children, walking the routes they had walked all their lives. People had put their shoulders to the trams, and were pushing them along their tracks. Across the cityscape, in pedal and foot stations, dynamos began to turn; everywhere, power was being pumped through the system once more. Painfully slowly, the Machine was resuscitated. Cleo smiled slightly as hundreds of thousands of individual efforts breathed life back into their home.

“You see,” she said quietly to Schaeffer. “They knew what to do. They've
always
known. And they didn't need
you
.”

Schaeffer had the expression of a man who had just learned he was no longer terminally ill. His newfound relief hardened to anger as he took in the room around him. There was still a rebellion to crush.

“Call the mayor in,” he barked. “As soon as the public screens are back online, I want her to stamp on this conspiracy before it grows legs. And find that kid! We have to contain this situation. If he disappears again—”

“
Contain
the situation?” Cleo exclaimed incredulously. “The whole damn city just came to a standstill! Can't you tell when you've lost?”

“And somebody gag this bi—”

“Nobody move!” somebody shouted from behind them.

Smith stood near the ruined doorway, submachine gun in hand. Everyone had been distracted by the events in the city and had not noticed him regain consciousness. The four Clockworkers tightened their grips on their weapons, but he fired a burst over their heads, making them freeze. Cleo walked around to him, scarcely able to believe their luck. They were going to make it.

“The police will be coming,” she said to him. “We only have to hold them until then.”

“I can't hear you,” he said loudly, gesturing with his free hand to his bleeding ears.

“I said—”

But Mercier was already here. His trench coat flapping around him, he strode through the doorway, nodded to Cleo, and put a gun to Smith's head.

“No—!” she had time to gasp.

He pulled the trigger. Cleo screamed, falling backward
with blood on her face as Smith toppled forward onto the floor.

“Two schoolkids and a washed-out engineer,” Mercier spat at the Clockworkers, “and you screw it up! Where's the boy?”

“He got away—pure blind luck,” one of them replied.

“But Janus and Rhymes are on 'im.”

“Imagine my relief.” Mercier snorted. “This has become an absolute fiasco. Get her out of here; I'll tie things up for the cops. Mr. Schaeffer, you shouldn't be here.”

“I was just leaving. Make sure that boy is caught and killed, Inspector. You've let too many things slip lately.”

The four Clockworkers led the way, two of them dragging Cleo with them. She stumbled with them, the shock of what had happened taking her breath away. Mercier was a Clockworker. He was giving
orders
to the Clockworkers. She struggled feebly, her fear overwhelming her. She had been counting on him to get them out of here, and they had played right into his hands. Now the Clockworkers had come for her, and she was all on her own.

The motley group made it as far as the office area. Facing them were a dozen heavily armed ISS troopers, their guns aimed and ready. Mercier's sergeant, Baiev, was lying handcuffed, facedown on the floor. The Clockworkers considered putting up a fight, and
then thought better of it. Their weapons clattered on the tiles.

“Mr. Schaeffer, Inspector Mercier,” Ponderosa greeted them with barely contained smugness. “You're under arrest for…Well, where should I start?”

 

Sol watched his five hunters struggle up the hill. A glance at the readout on his smart-lens told him the temperature outside his suit was –67
^º
C. He no longer felt the pain in his hands, or his backside. Savoring the weight of the ice axes, he waited patiently for the Clockworkers to reach him. They were not finding the climb easy. Without the power units on their suits, their masks were not heating up the air they were breathing; the freezing air would be burning their windpipes and chilling their blood—and they would be breathing too hard because of their hurried climb. Long exposure would cause hemorrhage in their lungs. The smart-lenses of their masks would not work either; without the tinting, the glare of the sun off the snow would be blinding them.

Their guns too were of no use to them. The fingerless mittens prevented them from pulling any triggers, and nobody who wanted to keep their fingers took off their gloves in these temperatures.

The first Clockworker stumbled up the shallower part of the slope toward him, holding a hand up to shade his eyes against the dazzling light. His chest was heaving in
short, shallow gasps. Not having to look in their faces would make this easier; Sol couldn't even tell if they were men or women. Sol stepped toward the man and swung the ax in his left hand at the Clockworker's head. The man blocked it, leaving himself open to the right, and Sol caught him square across the side of the face. The ice ax smashed the edge of the mask free of the suit. The shock stunned the man, and Sol kicked him hard in the chest, pitching him over. He had time for one more blow before the next Clockworker was upon him.

He managed to deflect the first strike with his right arm, but the ax was knocked from his hand. The masked figure brought his own ice ax down hard, twice, three times, each time Sol just barely blocking the blows, almost kneeling under the force of the impacts. A third Clockworker was staggering toward them. Sol kicked out at his opponent's knee, taking the leg out from under him. As the man fell, Sol punched him with his free hand, then he swiped him across the shoulder with the ax in his left hand. The third charged him before he could finish off the second. Sol fell back, got his feet against the second man's chest, and shoved him into the path of the new assailant.

They fell together in a tangle of limbs. Sol was up like a shot, screaming venom through his mask, lunging at them, the first man taking the full force of the ax against the top of the head. The other two had caught up now, and he stumbled back as he found himself facing three of
them. They edged around him, encircling him. He was breathing hard, but they were too, and every breath was damaging their lungs. One of them was already unsteady on his feet, panting like an exhausted dog.

With another roar, Sol hurled himself at the weak one, and the others lumbered forward to tackle him, moving clumsily in their constricting suits. As the full force of his weight collided with the Clockworker, they hit the ground hard, and something gave way beneath them. The snow-drift, nearly two meters deep, collapsed inward, and they tumbled into a hollow in the snow, landing awkwardly on the concraglass of the dome beneath them. Sol's body came down solidly on top of the Clockworker, and the man gave a stifled shriek. Sol was already struggling to his feet; there was a creaking, crunching sound seeping from the drift around him. Scrambling up the bank of freshly broken snow, he frantically hauled himself over the top and started running up the slope. He knew that sound: Gregor had once played him a recording of it.

The two remaining Clockworkers hesitated for a moment and then gave chase. They were too slow, and too late. A massive crack appeared from the point where Sol and his opponent had fallen through the drift. Ponderously at first, and then with irresistible force, the drift of snow started to slide down the dome. A stretch fifty meters wide cracked, tore from its anchors, and tumbled in a thunderous avalanche toward the edge of the mountaintop. The snow
fell away behind Sol's feet and he dived forward, jamming his ax into the ground in front of him. But the ground disintegrated under him, carrying him backward, rolling him over and enveloping him in a crushing, frozen white grip.

It took him a minute to realize where he was. He must have been knocked unconscious. He could move one arm, but that was all. It was dark gray beyond the mask, and he was finding it difficult to breathe. Shoveling snow away from his face, he found daylight, and after some more digging, he was able to get his shoulders out of the snow. There was no sign of the Clockworkers below him, just the remains of the avalanche piled near the edge. Five complete strangers who had tried to kill him. He was glad they were dead.

Above him, there was a cleared stretch of glass. From off to one side, he could see a team of daylighters hurrying toward him, carrying shovels, pickaxes, and heat-hoses. At least he hoped they were daylighters.

Digging his legs free, he crawled up to the cleared glass and cupped his hands around his face to block out the glare of the sunlight as he lowered his mask to the surface. There were lights in the darkness below. He could see movement on the streets: the trams were running; people were working the Machine once more. He had been wrong; the city wasn't dead. He broke into shaky, exhausted, hysterical laughter. It wasn't over. Life went on.

 

Cleo sat out on the fire escape of the condemned warehouse building that was being used to temporarily house all of the people made homeless by the fire in her apartment block. Wrapped in a blanket, she was savoring a well-earned smoke as she gazed up at the pink evening light cascading in wispy shafts from the dome above. Putting her fingers to her cheek, she found tears there. Here was her grief, making its presence felt at last.

Ana Kiroa was dead. The woman posing as a doctor had killed her with an injection of morphine as she lay helpless in her hospital bed while Sol and Cleo stood there, right there in the doorway. In truth, Cleo had known it even as they had fled from the hospital. But she hadn't wanted to face it—
couldn't
face it—until now. The police were holding an investigation, but Cleo doubted Ana's killer would ever be found. It was what the Clockworkers did, after all: murdered and then disappeared without a trace.

It had been the first recycling ceremony that Cleo had ever stuck with to the end. Sitting between Sol and Julio, she had watched Ana's body being given back to the city, and she had felt nothing but an aching numbness. Sol had not said a word, avoiding eye contact by keeping his hood up. Ana's boyfriend, Julio, had cried like a little kid.

Cleo shivered miserably, wiping the tears from her face, and pulled the blanket up to her chin, drawing on
the pungent joint. A rustle of fabric made her look off to one side in time to see Sol dropping down from the walkway above her. He landed lightly, wincing as he flexed his bandaged hands. She smiled slightly and then went back to staring up at the dome.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey,” he replied.

He sat down beside her and they huddled up to share warmth; Cleo threw her blanket over his legs.

“Don't get the wrong idea,” she muttered.

“I know; I'm not your type.”

They said nothing for a while. Cleo knew that Sol had taken his father's death hard. He had no family at all; he'd lost everyone he loved. He'd had a crush on Ana—their whole class had known that—and he'd lost her too. Now he had taken to spending days out, wandering the city alone. He seemed to be getting money from somewhere, and she suspected he was spending time with the daylighters and maybe even the Dark-Day Fatalists. That was something, at least. All this being alone couldn't be good for him, though. He needed to be among friends. She sniffed. He needed to
make
some friends.

“When you going to come back to school?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Still don't feel right,” he said.

“You never will,” Cleo told him. “Not after all this. But you've still got to live. I mean, what are you going to do
when you finish school? I was always putting off thinking about it, but now…now I feel like I should be
doing
something, y'know?”

Sol nodded.

“Have you noticed the city's colder lately?” he asked her.

“With Schaeffer gone, they have to fix up a lot of stuff,” she said, speaking around the joint in her mouth. “Julio said they've shut down some of the ventilation heaters so they can rebuild them. There's a lot of that happening now. They have to pull things apart to put them back together properly. He said it'll take time.”

There was a quiet pause again.

“I've been thinking of joining the police,” Sol said abruptly. “Maybe even try to get into the ISS.”

“Jesus! Really?” Cleo coughed out some smoke. “You serious?”

“Yeah. I want to help sort things out. And I want to learn more about the engineering too, get my head around how the whole system works, y'know? The guys in the DDF think we've got to come up with more ways to survive outside the dome—stop relying so much on the Machine. They've loads of ideas for adapting to the whole deal; they say the Neanderthals survived the Ice Age, so we should be able to go one better. But I figure the Machine's all we've got for the moment. Things're going to go a bit mad for a while, and I think we need to get on with doing something practical.”