The Wind Merchant (44 page)

“Easy now,” Elias said, “I know it’s a lot of stairs, but you don’t get to take the shortcut.”

“Thanks.”

The goggles confirmed they had many flights to go before reaching the engines. The trek back up didn’t excite him. After half a dozen floors passed, something caught the corner of Ras’ eye.

Movement.

A man in a white lab coat stood on the stairs above them on the other side of the shaft, staring at Ras.

“Anyone else remember passing him?” Ras asked.

“So this is your world?” The scientist asked in a voice just slightly slower than normal. “Marvelous.”

“What do you mean, my world?” Ras asked.

“Ras, we should go,” Elias said, encouraging his son forward with a gentle push.

“This equilibrium. It took us a while to unlock its potential, but here we are.” He bowed slightly. “I thank you.”

Ras quickened his pace. Whatever The Collective had taken from him wouldn’t benefit them if they couldn’t control Time.

With nobody else in the stairwell to oppose them for the next thirty floors, they exited through a door already being held open by an engineer.

Ras shoved the unsuspecting engineer back as they passed through the threshold. The corridor was full of men in jumpsuits, gathered at portholes and staring out at the Time Origin.

Giving everyone in the hallway a wide berth, Ras walked until he spotted the first engine.

The system looked nothing like he expected.

The Helios engine on
The Brass Fox
—what remained of her—was a cheap looking replica of the older Windstrider model, but what he saw looked more like a giant metal sphere with glowing portholes large enough to walk through.

“Is that…?” Callie asked.

The device was three times larger than the one the Elders had placed Callie in.

Something didn’t add up. The KnackVisions told him the sphere fed directly to the encased Helios engine, but nothing fed into the sphere. Ras placed his face up against the porthole to see why.

A Convergence floated inside.

“The gun is useless,” Ras said, pulling Dr. O’s pistol out from his waistband.

“But you’re not,” Elias said. “You can dissipate it.” He looked around at the engineers, who were slowly turning their heads toward the fast-talking trio, and pointed a pistol at them as a warning. “You can’t destroy a convergence with a collection system.”

“What are you talking about?” Callie asked.

“I fed off a Convergence for a while before you were born—”

“Mom told me,” Ras said.

“But what I didn’t tell her was that it didn’t fall apart until I brought her too close to it. Did you get close to the Convergence you destroyed?”

Ras remembered the Convergence in Framer’s, then the one that he and Callie had swung through before it brought down
The Halifax
. It didn’t matter that he’d tried to collect the Convergence at Framer’s. Just being close enough to it did the trick. “I’m the gun.”

Elias nodded.

Ras flipped Dr. O’s gun around and struck the porthole with the handle, cracking the glass.

“Wait!” Elias said. “I can’t be this close to an open Convergence without you by me. Don’t move too quickly.”

“Got it.” Ras swung again, smashing the large pane of glass.

With Callie and Elias clinging tight, Ras entered the sphere to the sound of a screaming choir.

“It’s horrible!” Callie said, burying her head in Ras’ chest.

The green sphere fluctuated, then with a gust, evaporated into invisible Energy. What remained was a man burned head to toe laying strapped to a gurney with wires and tubes feeding out of him. His eyes glowed a radiant green.

“H-h-help me,” the man said, choking. “Let me die, please. They won’t let me.”

“Who?” Callie asked, barely able to look at the marred visage.

“Th-they said I would save Atmo,” he said before beginning to convulse. “Not like this.” His convulsions stopped and klaxons began blaring out in the corridor.

“So this is how they make fuel,” Elias said, pointing to the dead man’s tubes. “They siphon off Knack overload before it can join a Convergence.”

“Helios engines run on pain,” Ras said. He wondered how often The Collective needed to replace Knacks. “How many people do you think know about this?”

“Not enough,” Elias said.

Ras led Callie and Elias out from the sphere. He stared at the engineers in disgust as they began crowding around the formerly operational fuel-making device.

The ship shuddered as one of the engines beneath them ground to a halt.

Seven more.

“Another engine’s down!” a helmsman shouted to Foster Helios III. “We’re losing our fuel supply!”

Foster kept his gaze out
The Winnower
’s command center window, watching the Illorian ships take diving swipes at the balloons. “Then send a fresh set of Knacks for it,” Foster said, “I won’t have this mission failing because we forgot to swap our batteries.”

“No, sir,” the helmsman said, “We’re losing the Knacks because the Convergences are destabilizing—”

“Convergences don’t destabilize,” Foster said, turning to glare at the officer. It was common knowledge. Of the hundreds of Convergences the diver team had collected from the world below, they had never lost a single one. He walked over to the station showing eight lights with readouts next to each. Six green, two red. “Son of a Remnant.”

“Orders, sir?” A third light on the console flipped from green to red and
The Winnower
began to tilt.

“Release the Lack Squad.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The Fall

Destroying their third Convergence gave Ras hope for the mission. While seeing the aftermath of a Knack perpetually in overload turned his stomach, it gave him new vigor to fight The Collective.

He just wished Callie didn’t need to repeatedly see it.

Ras stepped out of the sphere’s porthole and turned to face the fourth engine on their checklist. The tilting vessel was a good sign their plan was working.

“How many of these do we need to take out before this thing starts falling?” Callie asked.

“This next one might do it,” Elias said. “Losing half your engines is one thing; losing all of them from the same side makes it unstable.”

“Then let’s hope Hal’s doing his part,” Ras said.

A five minute rush got them to the next engine, and
The Winnower
’s staff moved so slowly that Ras assumed they must be directly over the Time Origin by now.

It might take years for
The Winnower
to complete its mission in the eyes of Atmo, even if it was only months to the crew. The absence of
The Winnower
from the Origin of All Energy would likely throw Atmo into chaos. Unless The Collective had a backup plan, fuel reserves would be depleted and sky pirates would be emboldened.

All lovely things for Foster to duck out from.

All lovelier things to save Atmo from upon the triumphant return of Foster Helios III, banisher of Elder and sky pirate alike. They might even make him King of Atmo if such a thing were to exist.

Ras wouldn’t let it.

“Do you hear something?” Elias asked.

As they neared the next engine, Ras heard a fourth set of footfalls rapidly approaching from behind and saw the blur just before it collided with him, flinging him forward and ripping his hand away from Callie’s.

With the wind knocked from his lungs, Ras flailed madly before colliding with the sphere and crumpling to the base of it. His head swam and he sucked for air.

Moments later, Callie overloaded.

One of the half dozen newly materialized soldiers walked up to him at a leisurely pace. Older. Gray hair and wrinkles adorned his crazed face. He grabbed Ras by the throat and lifted.

“Thought you could sink us, huh, Lack?” the soldier said, his black eyes looking manic. He slammed Ras against the sphere, retaining his vise-like grip around Ras’ neck.

With a clamped throat and burning lungs, Ras fought the pain and the blackness that haunted the corners of his vision. He kicked at the soldier to little effect.

“Do you realize how long I’ve been waiting for this moment?” he asked. “Me and my men have had to watch the world inch by just in case you and your girl arrived.” He shook Ras violently. “Look at what your Lack serum did to me! I was twenty-three when we came here!”

From what little Ras’ clouded mind could guess, the squad’s job was to clear out anything that hindered The Collective’s path to the Time Origin. Which meant they would likely kill Callie next.

Ras threw a right hook, which the soldier promptly caught and pinned. Ras would have cried out in pain if he could, but the soldier took the feint, locking up both arms. Ras then swung his left arm with the grapple gun against the porthole glass, cracking it.
 

Again, again. Ras could feel the life being choked out of him.

One last blow smashed the glass and The Convergence’s Energy seeped out into the corridor. The soldier lost his grasp and Ras’ oxygen deprived body fell limp.

The soldier screamed, waving the Energy-thick air away, but he had already taken several deep breaths. He clutched his head as the Lack injection did its job, fighting to reject the intruder, immunizing itself and pulling double duty against Energy and Time, wreaking further havoc on his body.

Ras gulped for air, finally filling his lungs with relief just in time to scream in surprise as an aged corpse collapsed next to him. The black in his eyes returned to a pale green, and the frail body of a man well past a century of life stared at Ras from the floor.

Scrambling up against the engine, Ras watched the other five soldiers, all staring wide-eyed at their fallen leader. None dared to step forward to challenge Ras in his fog of death.

Ras stood, his chest flooding with pain as he learned what a broken rib felt like. “Run,” he coughed as he walked toward them, his bubble pushing Energy away. He unholstered his wrench and strode toward his opponents.

The soldiers backpedaled down the corridor, and Ras gave chase until they disappeared around the corner.

Turning on his heel, Ras still struggled to catch his breath when the usual operational sounds of a flying city returned to his ears. “Callie?” He jogged past the damaged Engine and spotted his father with his hands held high at the prompting of a handful of armed men.

A few feet in front of Elias, the scientist from the stairwell cradled Callie in his arms as he finished depressing the plunger on the syringe into her neck. He clicked his tongue at Ras in disappointment. “You really shouldn’t leave this one alone.” He spoke in a normal tone while the guards by Elias still moved at a slowed pace.

“Ras, how are you over there?” Callie asked, then reached up to feel the needle in her neck.

The scientist shushed her like a young daughter. “Now, now, you mustn’t get worked up. I just saved your life.”

“What did you do to her?” Ras walked toward the scientist with wrench at the ready. The guards moved their guns from Elias to Ras, stopping him.

The scientist released her and she struggled to find her footing as she ran to Ras, burying herself in his embrace. “I don’t want either one of you to get damaged,” he said. “You both have years and years of valuable research left in you.”

“I feel funny,” Callie said, “like I brushed my teeth for too long, but all over.” She looked over Ras’ shoulder at another set of guards joining the standoff. “What did they do to me?”

“I think they stopped you from being a Knack,” Ras said, holding her.

“Very perceptive, Mr. Veir,” the scientist said, offering a polite clap. “We’re branding it as ‘Void,’ but yes, this newest batch has proven most effective. Your weapons, please.” The scientist motioned for several of the guards to relieve Ras of his wrench, pistols, and grapple gun. “Mr. Helios has a very strict no weapons policy in his lab.”

“The soldiers,” Ras nodded to the corpse on the floor. “Did they get the same injection?”

“Them?” the scientist asked. “Oh no, no. We hadn’t perfected the serum yet.” He smiled. “We shall be spending quite a bit of time together in the future, Mr. Veir. My name is Dr. Lupava.”

Elias was corralled in with Ras and Callie. His hands shook and his breathing was labored as the three were bound with handcuffs.

“You all right, dad?”

“Just a lot of Energy in here,” he said, strained. “I’m fine near you.”

Half a dozen men in engineer garb approached the engine sphere, wheeling in a sedated man on a gurney and lifting him in through the open porthole. The tubes and wires from the dead Knack were transferred to the new recruit.

A second team of engineers arrived, quickly replacing the broken porthole glass and sealing the first team in. A hissing noise preceded one of the engineers’ overloading and taking the rest of the men up in a blaze, birthing a new mini-Convergence.

Beneath, one of
The Winnower
’s engines roared back to life.

“There we are, good as new,” Lupava said. “Shall we to the elevators, then?” He offered a sweeping gesture.

“How many times does that trick work?” Elias asked.

“We get plenty of headstrong new recruits all the time,” said Lupava. “But to think, they would still be alive if you hadn’t destroyed our Convergences in the first place. Pity.”

The group began their walk to the elevators. The soldiers jogged in order to keep up with Lupava, Ras, Elias, and Callie until the group reached the wide double doors.

“I know this will be a terribly long ride for us,” Lupava said as he pressed the button to go up, “but please, do try to have some patience.”

The doors slowly opened, revealing a large, circular transport with a single person standing in the middle.

Dixie Piper.

“Ah, glad I caught you before you made it to the lab,” Dixie said slowly. “Foster wants to see the prisoners before you begin your experiments.” She had a black left eye and scrapes on her right arm where her jacket sleeve had been ripped away.

“I was informed of no such thing,” Lupava said, stepping into the elevator with a few guards. “He can see them in the lab.”