Guardian (28 page)

But at least we were together now.

And together, we shone.

The power inside us swept through the Legate heart—into every last hub, down every last wire—drowning out all of the Legate
’s programmed commands. It fought back instantly, summoning a sudden flash of energy from within the complex and flooding me with garish threads of panicking code.

“
We need to isolate the source of the Legate’s power,” I whispered. My son felt I was wasting time and energy by stating the obvious.

There were two Shards within the steel mountain itself, only two actual sources of power—the rest was borrowed from across Crust. One cocooned the Other, and was not part of the official network. Not a true source of energy. That left the second, half-buried in the earth, peeking out from beneath the incongruous drawbridge. With a thought, my code swarmed like ants around its much larger body and chewed through its connections, isolating it from the rest of the network and containing the power of its Flare within the walls of its clear prison.

Without the most direct source of power the Legate was forced to fall back on its secondary sources—all those Shards across Crust. Weakened, it reached for them, sending warning flares out across the wired world. Rather than try to prevent this, I helped them along. I scooped up all the personalities and the directives that made up the Legate and tossed them out of the heart. Then, with the strength of our shared Flare behind me, I blocked the way back in. I jammed so many lines of nonsense symbols into the wires, the hubs and the light, that nothing could travel in or out. Not even me.

I knew, instantly, that this would not hold long. Every second enabled the Legate to gather its strength, to tap its inexhaustible supply of Flares and funnel them all into sapping my defences and worming their way back in. Already, I could feel them, that massive multifaceted mind flinging itself in programming symbols against me.

But for the meantime, I had control. So I switched on the lights.

“
There are Drones,” I said, and my voice sounded so strange, tiny inside my massive Legate heart body. “In the city and in the corridors above. Coming for us. We have to run.”

I couldn
’t stay connected, and do that at the same time. I had to trust my code-wall to hold. Lad extracted me, picked me up and half-carried me down the corridor. I guided them from memory, but at every major junction we were forced to stop so I could jump back on the network to check.

Every time we stopped to reconnect, I could feel the Legate building. Three Shards were totally engaged in the process of dismantling my code-wall, and more were being brought online. This meant drawing power from other places across Crust. Fulcrum, and other laboratories like it, were running on essential power only. Many of the Core cities below Crust would suddenly find that the Shards they poached didn
’t have any power left to share.

“
Where are you leading us?” Meta cried, as we skidded to a halt at a pair of curving doors. A pod track. Lad tore the cap off the control panel so I could access its wiring. “Where is the Hero?”

I shook my head. The network was so full, too full. It was all so much information and code, and I knew all of it, all at once. Was this what the veil was like? Was this what had driven the Other mad?

“Answer me!” A gun at my temple. Dimly, I was aware of Adrian pointing his weapon at Lad, and Kasen bleeding, gasping for air.

I pointed at the doors.
“Down.”

“
Take us to him!”

I shook my head.
“No. We have to get out. I’m looking for exits—”

“
Like hell you are.”

Meta had to force the pod doors open, because I refused to do it for her. It was not used often. Finally, she resorted to threatening Lad, before I would activate the pod. She and Adrian had to physically force him inside.

The pod dropped, squealing, rattling, before it came to a sudden halt and the doors opened to pitch darkness.

More than just darkness, I realised. There were no cameras down here, no sensors, nothing to feed me information. Compared to the rest of the network it was both a fresh breath and a terrifying plunge.

“Very dark,” Lad murmured, as he helped me establish a fresh link.

I nodded. I closed my eyes, and went searching. Down to the very ends of the wiring, to the most isolated hubs. I felt stretched, thin.

One, two and a third outside Shard switched on in quick succession. I almost lost my grip as they brought their sudden and combined power to bear while I was searching around in the network’s neglected sublevel. I gave up motor control for network control and sagged forward. Lad caught me, carefully.

“
Tan?” he breathed against my ear. “Can you find a way out?”

I shook my head.
“All those machines, the ones we saw, they’re coming for us. Surrounding the building, scratching at the doors I refuse to open. I can’t hold the Legate out for long. And I don’t control anything outside of the heart. We won’t get far, if we run outside. The Other’s a bastard, but even dead and locked in silex he’s stronger than he should be. The only way we’ll get out of this is if we can find a way to block the Legate’s control not only of this complex, but the Drones too. He’s the only one with the experience and strength to help me to do that. Just promise you’ll look out for me. Promise you won’t let me—” I swallowed hard, rattled silex “—make another stupid mistake.”

He held me tightly. It was all the answer I needed.

When I finally found the lights and managed to switch them on they were so faint they did not make much of a difference. Small patches of silex hung like fungi on the walls. The corridor here was rusted and too tight even for the youngest of Drones. It was a path meant for humans. We struggled through it, Lad holding my arms delicately, afraid of my Flare and the fragility of my silex but all too keenly aware that without his support, I would fall.

We found the Other in a cave, surrounded by the foundations of the Legate
’s heart. Great iron supports protruded from the rock to tower like the bars of a cage around his Shard. His prism was small compared to the others I had seen on Crust. Three times as high as a man, maybe twice as wide. It was roughly hewn, none of the sleek lines and sheer planes of pristine crystal I was used to. This made it difficult to see into, and the light of the Flare it contained was dim and fitful.

Lad hung back, with Adrian
’s gun still pointed at his head. I gathered my strength and approached it, slowly.

“
This is the Hero?” Meta whispered, her voice breaking. I glanced over my shoulder. She was holding Kasen, who’d fallen to his knees.

“
What is left of him,” Lad said. His face was carefully blank.

I held my son tighter, stepped up to the Shard, and placed my free hand on its rough surface. It was warm, and it throbbed, the dull pulse of a slow and ancient heart.

Silex wept from the crack in my wrist. It did not need me to guide it, but slid down across the surface, dipped into nooks and followed the cracks deeper, deeper, toward the faint outline of a body that I could barely see.

Until we connected.

And the Flare inside the Other’s Shard burned suddenly sharp, suddenly bright. I squinted against it. Behind me, Lad cursed and I heard them shuffling back.

With the light, the body in the crystal clarified. I gasped. The Other was little more than bones and strips of long-dried flesh. He really was dead, so long dead, decayed as his mind travelled the veil. But he moved, though only a little and only as his Shard allowed. His skull tipped slightly toward me, and one bone-clawed hand lifted, fingers opening.

I realised, with a rapidly growing horror, that my future was in that body. We were, in a way, so much the same. Living in a body that should have died long ago, sustained by the particles that crossed the veil while our flesh dissolved around us, and the Shards, the hubs and the network were all that remained to support us.

“
Tanyana?” the Other asked. His voice echoed through my silex. “Is that you?” Of course, he could not speak. Not without his artificial, composite mouth to do it for him. So all I heard was his presence in the silex that connected us.

“
Yes.”

“
You’re the one blocking the Legate’s network, aren’t you?” The Other sounded shocked, hardly as grateful as I would have liked. “You realise you trapped me here too, when you did that?”

“
I’ve come,” I said, voice a rasp of cracked mineral. “Like you wanted. I completed your impossible task. Now I need your help. The Legate knows we’re here. Give me your strength, help me stop them, or they’ll crawl all the way down here and take us away and then who will help you?”

The Other did not reply.

“What’s happening?” Lad hissed.

I shook my head.
“Answer me!”

The Other sighed. His unreal breath rippled through me.
“You have not, strictly speaking, done as I have asked. I summoned you here to free me from this place. You tried to betray me, forcing me to drag you here kicking and screaming. And now you’ve brought the Legate with you.”

I held my ground.
“What did you expect?”

“
But I am a fair and reasonable Hero, Tanyana. Far more so than you deserve. I will strike a new deal with you.”

“
What is he saying?” Lad asked. I translated electrical pulse and code for him. “Don’t trust him, Tan. Be careful, remember what he is and what he’s done!”

As Adrian bristled, I turned my attention back to the Other.

“What do you want this time?” I asked, trying to keep myself steady. Even though Lad was right, I also knew it wouldn’t be long before the Drones found us. We were running out of time.

“
What I have always wanted, Tanyana. Freedom.”

“
But isn’t that why you brought me here?”

“
Real
freedom. From this body, from this dead fucking world. Take me back to the veil, and I will give you her secrets. Together, we will remove the false, Guardian program and restore me to my rightful place as protector of your world. Do that, and I will help you. If you don’t, then you can all just die here.”

“
What do they mean
thank you
?” Kichlan looked down at Devich.

The once-man cowered, slobbered, his too-long arms wrapped around his head and his eyes closed.
“No no no no,” he whimpered, over and over.

“
Devich, you didn’t—?” Why was he so surprised? Devich had betrayed Tanyana once, why had Kichlan allowed himself to believe the man wouldn’t do it to him too?

Muffled on the other side of the doors and the darkness, Kichlan could hear shouting, and running, all of it in panic and fear. The puppet men were watching him, smiling.

“Perhaps you should explain to your friends,” one said.

“
That nothing they do can stop us,” the other continued.

“
Though, if they are so inclined, we always welcome help,” the third finished, and pointed at Kichlan’s head.

Kichlan
’s suit began to retreat. But why? Why was it listening to the puppet men again?

<
Access to simulated Flare has bolstered the strength of the invading signal. Protocol override in progress
> The answer came quietly, as though distant.

“
How do I stop them?” he whispered back.

<
Recommend system reset
>

“
Reset?”

The suit slid from his eyes, revealing chaos in the ancient Unbound street.

Lev was restraining Valya, who had lifted a large chunk of rubble above her head and appeared to be trying to attack the puppet men with it. She was screaming, “You killed them! You bastards!” with a viciousness Kichlan had never imagined the old woman could produce. Even Lev looked shocked.

Fedor and his Unbound had retreated a little, and were huddling around the small debris screen. Kichlan couldn
’t see what they were doing to the wall above Uzdal’s coffin—all he could see were doors. Natasha, weighed down by her ungainly crystals and weakened by her injuries, had still managed to find something to arm herself with. A large shard of crystal with a sharp point, like the ones that had grown from the walls on the long pathway down.

Volksi and Zecholas stood right beside Kichlan. They were staring at the puppet men, entranced.

“What are you doing?” Kichlan snapped at them. “Why isn’t anybody running away?”

“
They’re back,” Volski whispered.

“
She was right.” Zecholas lifted his free hand and twitched his fingers. “You too, Vol. I didn’t notice them last time.” Kichlan felt a change in the air, like a warm breeze had just brushed around his head. “The crimson pions.”

What were they doing?
“Stop standing there and run, you foolish binders!” Kichlan tried to push Zecholas away. But, with a strangely twisted smile, the man just flicked his fingers and the ground beneath Kichlan’s feet rolled.

“
They’re responsive,” Zecholas turned to Volksi. “Were they responsive last time?”

“
No idea.” The older man straightened. He ran a hand through his hair, pushing its silver strands out of his eyes, and his face set into determination. Even anger. “But be careful. These things pushed lady Tanyana from
Grandeur
’s palm. We should not take them lightly.”

They shared a glance and some apparently inaudible communication, nodded, and split up, circling around the puppet men, twitching fingers, whispering words.

“What are you doing?” Kichlan called to them.

Zecholas flashed him a grin.
“That suit anything like Tanyana’s was?” he asked, looking at the silver extending from Kichlan’s left elbow.

Volski lifted an arm, and a great wall of earth rose around the puppet men.
“I’ll hold them, you slice them!”

Kichlan staggered back, shocked.
“But I thought—”

“
There are pions here! Strange looking ones, maybe, but pions all the same.” Zecholas grew steel out of the ground, honed it into spears and launched them at the puppet men like a thick wall of dark and terrible rain. “We are not weak here, anymore!”

Kichlan threw himself to the ground. Volski
’s wall dropped just in time and the spears sliced through the puppet men. Their fake skin was torn away, their mist of bodiless faces and shadows dispersed. Devich screamed and scrambled as rubble fell on him.

“
Yes!” Volski grunted, and the earth moved again.

Kichlan pushed himself upright, kicking at Devich as he crawled close—sobbing and drooling, bleeding from cuts to the flesh patches in his head and hands.

Then the puppet men reformed. Their mist coalesced, their skin regrew, and all the scars and spears the binders had created were flattened, smoothed, with nothing more than the gesture of a false hand. One of them turned his unemotional eyes to Volski, “Care to try that again?”

“
Bastards!” Zecholas spat to the side. “Other’s oath we will!”

“
No,” Kichlan cried. “Stop it! Every time you manipulate one of those pions you’re weakening the veil!”

But the binders didn
’t listen to him. So he focused again on his silver arm, the intense focus that had worked last time, that had convinced the suit to move for him. But nothing happened. He was coated with silver up to his neck, his hand was heavy and unresponsive, and he couldn’t do anything about it.

<
Emergency protocols triggered. Anti-hacking failsafe is in effect. Host-body has been designated a threat, and locked out of control functions
>

“
But I can still hear you. Why can I still hear you if I can’t control you?”

<
Physical connection to host-body nervous system has not been compromised. Communication therefore still possible. Suggest system reboot to reestablish control
>

“
But how do I do that?”

Then Fedor pushed him aside, and he would have fallen again if Devich hadn
’t caught him.

“
Veche scum,” Fedor spat at the puppet men. “I’m glad you came.” He lifted the debris panel and jerked the symbols across its surface, his expression terrible in its triumph and his hands hooked into furious claws. Still, Kichlan couldn’t see what was happening. But Volski and Zecholas shouted, raising shields of stone to protect themselves, and Lev forced Valya down against the floor, covering her with his body even as she swore at him, loudly.

<
Hard reboot can be achieved by overloading the system. External power source needed. Suggest artificial Flare
>

The silver in Kichlan
’s left elbow suddenly liquefied, and spread out in front of him, wide and flat. He gripped his arm and pain speared up to his shoulder, setting his back and neck spasming. Light swelled—but he couldn’t see where it was coming from—and loud cracking sounds echoed through the underground rooms.

“
No!” he heard Mizra scream. “You’ll hurt him!”

Then lightning ached above him, racing along the ceiling, dipping to shatter Volski
’s stone shield before crawling across the floor towards the puppet men like the bright feet of a terrible spider.

<
Artificial Flare now in existence
>

Despite the wall of silver extending from his arm, Kichlan struggled forward. His back cramped and with a hiss he fell to one knee. But he kept going, crawling, slipping, silver scraping great tears in the stone floor. Then Fedor
’s lightning—the suit had called it a Flare—wrapped itself around his shield.

And he screamed as
it surged through him, following all his deep silver. Something was burning—like leather, like skin—but he couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

<
Maintain contact to reboot
>

But this wasn
’t power. This was pain, this was frying him inside out.

<
Five…four…three
>

Somehow, Kichlan tore his mind away from the pain, from the desire to curl around himself and let the lightning kill him. Just finish it. He gritted his teeth, he focused on his ungainly silver shield. And again, he felt a surge. Not the lightning, this time, it came from him. Silver shuddered within him, rolling, tingling. He pulled his shield back into a hand. He unwrapped his chest and neck. He stood.

His vision cleared enough to watch as the puppet men were dispersed again. But they reformed as soon as the light died, and chuckled softly, the sound filling the underground street in a creeping tide.

Kichlan flexed his hand.
“It worked,” he whispered. “How?”

<
Hard reboot reset access protocols
>

“
Will it last?”

<
Not without reprogramming
>

“
So, we can’t give them the chance to take control again.”

<
Affirmative
>

Fedor, with a growl, lifted his hand above the panel yet again.

“Wait!” Kichlan cried, and strode towards Fedor. “That’s enough!”

Fedor ignored him.

“Just look at them, will you?” Kichlan stopped, close enough to snatch the panel from Fedor’s hands if necessary. “They’re not afraid of you, of any of you.” He glanced back at Zecholas and Volski. “They want you to fight. They want you to use both pions and debris—as much as you can, with all your strength. Can’t you see that? Just look at their faces! They want this. They might even be counting on it.”

The puppet men didn
’t refute him. Their skin stretched into an unnatural twist as they grinned, all three of them, all identical. Together, they turned and began to walk toward the mass of doors. A slow walk, calm.

Volski and Zecholas hesitated, but Fedor only shook his head.
“Get out of my way.”

So Kichlan sent his silver reaching, perfectly accurate and too fast for Fedor. He took the panel right out of the man
’s clutching fingers. Three of the Unbound men broke away from the group and headed towards him, expressions angry. But they didn’t even get close. Devich leapt in front of them, snarling and howling, a madman on all fours.

“
Kichlan?” Natasha, hindered by her injuries, backed away from the puppet men as they passed her. “Why are you protecting these veche bastards?”

“
Lovely to see you again, Miss Illosky,” one of the puppet men said, his voice low and amused, “though you do look a little worse for wear.” He even nodded, almost politely. “Revolution is harder than it sounds, isn’t it? It’s taken us thousands of years, after all, to get this far. And our revolution, Miss Illoksy, is far more successful than yours. If you don’t mind us saying.”

Natasha stared at them, face pale and mouth agape.
“What?” she whispered, stunned.

“
Give it back!” Fedor hesitated at the sight of Devich. “These are the creatures that killed your brother, don’t you remember?”

“
They did more than that,” Kichlan said. “They killed the Keeper, and then they killed Tan. But that doesn’t change anything. The puppet men are here to destroy the veil. What you’ve been doing here, that panel, those crystals, that strange wall, is only helping them! You won’t hurt them, because they’re not even real. At least, not in this world. But you will weaken the veil, and that will destroy us all!”

Fedor, eyes wide, shook his head.
“What are you talking about?”

“
We can’t kill the puppet men, not with pions and not with debris. But you should at least stop helping them.”

“
Kichlan!” Mizra shouted, his voice high and panicked. “They’re hurting my brother!”

Kichlan spun. The three puppet men were crouched around Uzdal in his coffin, their long, fake fingers dipping into the ice, unfeeling of the cold. Mizra, who had held back, cowering and afraid, lifted a large and loose chunk of rubble above his head and ran at the puppet men, screaming.

“No!” Kichlan dropped the debris panel at his feet and leapt forward. But despite the quickness of his silver, despite the control he had regained, he was just too slow to catch Mizra, too late to stop him.

One of the puppet men simply glanced over his shoulder, face flat and inexpressive, and lifted a hand. Doors flickered, imposing themselves on Kichlan
’s vision and Mizra was knocked aside. He was flung back, into the sharp crystal-riddled and power-buzzing wall. So Kichlan changed track. Hooks in the ceiling, spikes from his feet, he flung himself forward even as he reached, extending as quickly and as far as his silver would go. And caught Mizra, just before he hit, wrapped him in silver and lowered him, gently, to the floor.

“
Mizra!” Natasha cried.

Footsteps running towards him. Zecholas on one side and Devich on the other.

“They used the pions,” Zecholas hissed. “Tore them right out of our hands, attacked Mizra, then gave them back.” He met Kichlan’s gaze, horrified. Devich danced and skittered around them both. “I think—hell—I think you might be right. We could only use those pions because they let us.”