“Oh, I help out a friend with some important things,” she said, as she reeled off towards the corrugated metal wall of Factor V. “You’ve probably . . . oop.”
Her skinny legs crossed over each other, she put a hand out to steady herself against the wall. “Probably heard of him . . .” she sighed, leaned back on the wall, then laughed up at the grim clouds.
“Why?” I asked, amused and curious, and charmed by this girl. “Why’s that? Who is he? Someone important?”
She swayed back and forth, head still tilted up and resting against the wall, mouth clenched shut in a cheeky I shouldn’t tell face. After a moment she sprung forward, eyes and mouth wide, and whispered, “He’s Andreas!” Then she clamped a hand to her mouth and giggled hysterically.
I was vaguely aware that I shouldn’t take advantage of her drunken state to steal information, but curiosity got the better of me.
“Oh, okay, what’s he like then? As bad as they say?”
“Oh no no no, he’s . . . great! He just wants to help people . . .” she sighed hazily, attention wavering.
“Smart fellow, is he? I bet . . . bet he’s smart. Bet he knows interesting things.”
“Oh, he does. Say, why you asking all these questions?” She exaggeratedly narrowed her eyes through dangling black hair, pursed her lips and pointed an accusing finger. “You’re not going to grass him up are you?”
“I lost my people,” I said, “They were all killed and I want to find out why. And I heard Andreas is very knowledgeable about political matters.”
She folded her arms and shook her head sadly. “He won’t speak to you. But I know a woman who might.”
*
I met the woman behind a collapsing hab-block on the West side of town, within view of the mountains that separated us from Dezkary, the nearest region still free from the Realm. There, people still had a right to freedom of speech. I wondered if the fate of my people would be more widely known, if people in Caldair weren’t so afraid to speak of such things. One day, I would go there, start a new life. But not until I had solved my mystery.
It had taken me all day to walk to the meet point, and I was tired, impatient for answers. For an hour, I stood in the shadow of the monstrous building, shuffling my feet, blowing on my hands, hiding from passersby. The sprawling hab-block had lost its top floor, and claws of stone and tusks of metal tore at the night above.
The woman arrived, moving swiftly and quietly. She wore a black hood and black, form-fitting clothes. She stood with her back to the sunset, and I couldn’t make out much of her face, only her chin and lower lip. She was dark skinned and probably quite beautiful, though she had a broad jaw and her lip moved stiffly. She looked young, but then how could she know about my people?
I tried to get a better look at her, in the dark, under her concealment, but even a brief glance told me she was not one of my kind. My most fanciful hopes were abandoned.
“You wanted to speak to me?” she asked. “Wanted to know what I know?”
“Yes.”
“I know nothing. Nothing of value to you. There’s only one man left who knows the truth, if he still remembers. He was arrested for concocting a conspiracy theory. He is trapped in a very special prison, and he would be very, very old by now.”
She emphasised those last words—“very, very old . . .”—as if to imply something. “Is he . . . Fallen?” I asked. I bit down hard on the end of the sentence, to stop my voice turning into a growl of hate.
“Hell no.”
“How can I break him out?”
“That I can’t tell you.”
“Then at least tell me what’s so special about the place.”
“I can’t tell you that either. You have to learn your limitations and potential. Discover what talents you have. If you fail, you fail yourself. It is of no consequence to us.”
“Us? Who’s us? Do you work with Andreas?”
She raised a finger to her lips. “Do not mention that name. If you speak of him again, I will leave. To find your answers, find this man and release him. His name is Krada. He has a tattoo of a cross on his face. He will tell you what you want to know. Then return to me here, tomorrow night. Bring your new friend.”
“Where can I find this prison? How in the World can I get in?”
She passed me a piece of paper. I unfurled it and saw a map of Llangour, Caldair’s neighbouring city. The mountains were marked to the east of it, with a trail leading through them, ending at a red dot.
“You would be better off going directly there, instead of returning home first,” my informant said. “It is closer to here than there, and there is a time limit. The guards have been . . . dealt with. For now.”
“I thought you said you wouldn’t help me.”
“There’s always an exception.” She allowed herself a smile, and it was surprisingly friendly. But as she parted her lips I caught a glimpse of sharp points protruding from her upper teeth.
As I backed off, preparing to run, she grabbed my arm, urgently. “We are not responsible for what happened to your people!”
I pulled away from her, turned, and caught a glimpse of a figure, no more than a shadow, standing in one of the windows of the hab-block, watching through a shattered pane of glass. No telling who, or even what, the figure was, no telling if it was man or woman, but somehow I knew it was Andreas. Observing me. Studying me.
I looked back and saw the woman was leaving, feet splashing in the freshly pooling rain, splintering the reflections of orange light and grey hab-blocks.
***
Every route I tried stretched for miles.
Every time I turned a corner, I hoped it would be the end of my search. I had to feel my way along the walls, into rooms, around the floor and edges of each room I found, constantly fearing what I would touch next, what I would injure myself on.
My whole body ached, my feet and legs most of all. I rested as little as possible, not wanting to waste time, but my muscles kept seizing up.
The feeling of pervasive cold got worse. I started to cough.
I had been there for nearly a whole day, I thought, though it was impossible to tell. Robbed of sight and the sounds of the outside world, time withered. The only possible indication of how much time had passed, was my growing hunger. That alone would have driven me back to Caldair, except I had no more to eat there than I did here. The isolation would have scared me away, except I was no more alone in the maze than I was at home.
My fingers kneaded the drying but still soft guts hung around my neck.
I no longer remembered all the routes I had tried.
I thought of turning back, of giving up, so many times. I thought I could come back later, tomorrow, the next day, with some string, and matches, and maybe food if I could get some.
No, I’d remind myself. That’s not possible. The Woman warned that I had to do this now, that the guards had been taken care of.
That thought evoked fresh fears: what if more Purifiers arrived while I was still here? They would kill me if they caught me, they would burn me alive. They would blame me for the dead guard outside.
Worse, would they even bother, or would they simply seal me in? How long could I survive on the remains of their previous captives? How long would I want to?
Stumbling around in the darkness, my thoughts turned to even darker places. I wondered and worried, why were all those people piled dead in that one room near the entrance? Who had killed them? The Purifier who had been guarding the door, until his head had been torn off? Or the Fallen who had killed him and broken down the door?
I grew jittery. I heard things in the dark, scrape, crash, mutter. The killer, or killers?
What if it was a germ? A disease that had spread among the inmates, compelling the Purifiers to exterminate them all.
Why had the Fallen been so keen to help me rescue this prisoner?
And why was I so naively trusting them?
My mind had wandered too far. And so had I.
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Where was the last length of gut I placed? I dimly remembered leaving it behind and pushing on, thinking, not much further, I’ll just check around a couple more corners, I’ll remember those . . .
Of course.
I panicked—utter, unrestrained, insane terror possessed me like a demon. I ran blindly, hitting the walls, gasping for air, sweating, screaming to the empty corridors and rooms and the phantoms that were waiting to kill me and strip me naked and dump my body in a pile for somebody else to rob me of my innards.
My feet were bleeding. Blisters had formed, and burst and now were open wounds. Every hurried step was torture. I stumbled, I put my hands out to save myself, and one of them landed on something sticky, long and pliable.
The imagined sounds of unseen dangers grew louder as I scrabbled through the maze on hands and knees, clutching for the trail of guts, hoping desperately that I was following them in the right direction.
The sounds grew even louder. Hard, violent voices giving commands. Boots stamping. The shuffle of many men in heavy clothing pushing through the maze. Purifiers. If they found me, I would die. In agony.
Every time I reached the end of an intestine, I panicked again, convinced that it was the last. Every time, my lack of faith was rewarded. Eventually, the darkness receded enough for me to see where my trail was, and know that I was near the edge of the maze.
I turned left and could see the open door leading to the mountainside. Shouts came from the opposite corridor and I ran as fast as I could until the maze and guts and corpses and Purifiers were far behind.
I had been gone for much less time than I thought. For some stupid reason, I was compelled to make my rendezvous with the Fallen woman, even empty handed. It was the same unstoppable momentum that had driven me through the maze for hour after hour, fuelled by hate and grief. I couldn’t let all that be for nothing. I had to find out what had happened to my people. Whether the Purifiers had killed them, or Andreas, or some unknown Fallen, I had to know, and find them, and confront them.
Part of me simply wanted to bargain for another chance. “Keep the place clear of guards,” I would say, “and I’ll try again. I’ll be prepared this time. If you had only warned me what I was up against . . .”
The fact that they hadn’t warned me, had treated this like some kind of test, like I had to earn the right to answers, made me angry, made me all the more convinced that Andreas had something to do with the genocide of the Chlethargan Baneful. But I would not let on. If I could get another chance to go back to the maze and retrieve this man, maybe I could get to Andreas himself.
Then what? Kill him? I didn’t have the means. Silver was expensive, so was fuel to create a fire. The Purifier guard at the maze had already been parted from his weapon. I could fashion a cross . . .
The woman was there, as promised, leaning against the wall of the collapsing hab-block as if propping up the cracked wall. I approached from the east side, with the sun setting behind me. I could hear a fight breaking out on the other side of the building.
The woman looked up, not bothering to hide her face this time. Her eyes glowed red, her dark skin was marred by the dark blotches and slight ruddy tint that marked the Fallen. She had harsh, black spiky hair.
“You’re alone,” she said.
“It was impossible. It was a maze. Did . . . did you know it was a maze? The passages go on for miles and miles . . .”
She nodded, folded her arms, looked me up and down. “And how long did you search for?”
“All this time. I just got back to the city.”
She raised her eyebrows, then thought for a moment, looking off to the side. She licked her thin lips. “How did you guide yourself through the maze? You searched extensively, without anything to mark your route, you’d still be in there . . .”
“There was a pile . . . of bodies . . . they . . . I took their . . .” I couldn’t finish the sentence. The very thought of it made me retch. I could still smell the offal, all over me.
Her eyes narrowed, filling in the blanks. Her nose twitched. For a brief moment she looked astonished and maybe impressed. She quickly glanced up at the hab-block. At one of the windows.
“Who’s up there?” I demanded.
“Nobody you need to be concerned about,” she said, making her voice as close to reassuring as she could manage. It still sounded stern.
“If it’s Andr . . .”
“Don’t. Don’t say it. The Purifiers have spies everywhere.”
The fight that I’d heard out on the street had subsided, quickly and suddenly.
I peered at the Fallen woman, suddenly trusting her again. “Give me another chance.”
“There’s only one way for me to do that,” she said. Then she lifted one arm and slid back her loose black sleeve, uncovered her wrist.
“What . . . ?”
“How far does your grief extend?” she asked, gripping one of my shoulders and brandishing her wrist at me. “Is it a brief, shallow thing, a short blank corridor leading to an unlocked door that you can simply step through if you choose, ignore if you wish to? Or does it lead deep into the very centre of your being? Is it twisted and coiled inside you? Is it a path that you could follow for the rest of your life? Would you explore where your grief leads, forever?”
I knew what she was asking me. It was an option I had never considered, would never have expected myself to consider. But the rage and pain and need for answers wasn’t just what had propelled me through the maze, it was all that propelled me through life. “I’m here aren’t I? I spent a day in that maze and I’m asking to go back. I have nothing else but my search for the bastards that left me alone in this world.”
“Good,” she sneered, then she tore open her wrist with her fangs and rammed it into my mouth.
I recoiled, by reflex, but it rapidly became pleasant. Within a minute, maybe two, I was slurping her blood like it was the most delicious thing I’d ever tasted.
My knees buckled as all the strength fled from me, as I lost the will to do anything other than drink. I gripped her arm in both hands and she easily supported my weight. Her other arm reached round and clasped my head, pushing my mouth more firmly against her gushing vein.
*
This time, I marked my trail by untangling the insides of my mind. Neurons and electrical impulses and billions upon billions of nerves stretched out behind me. I formed a map out of all the irrational, useless parts of my consciousness. At the first crossroads, I marked my chosen path with my self doubt. What a useless thing. When I returned that way, I would briefly recall it, but I would not take it with me when I left.
The guards at the entrance, a heavy iron vault door that only opened from outside, had been no trouble. I’d killed them easily, and they had nourished me. There were more Purifiers within the maze. I could hear their voices, their movements, their heartbeats and breathing. I could smell their sweat, their blood, the powder of their guns. The air wafted gently through the maze and clearly had more than one source. There were very likely other entrances and exits, perhaps on the other side of the mountain. The direction of the air flow would help to guide me.
I signposted the next junction with a memory of being beaten up by an older boy. The experience had taught me nothing but fear and timidity. I no longer needed those qualities. Such reticence would only hold me back.
Now that I could see the maze clearly, its incredible age was made apparent by the look of the rough stone, the crude way the doorframes had been installed into doorways not designed for them, and the simplistic wall drawings I occasionally glimpsed, glyphs of predatory animals and fire birds. The masonry was crumbling. I wondered if the maze was stable.
At the tenth turning, I signposted my mind map with my hatred of the Fallen. It was irrational, giving my lack of knowledge, and masochistic in light of my new existence.
There were only a few prisoners left, and they were all close to each other. I turned one way, then another, following the smells of stal
e sweat, dead skin, and human waste. The sound of whimpering and muttering, chains clinking.
The fiftieth turning was marked by my belief in the Exalted. Baseless, pointless, blind faith, in a deity that seemed to want me to suffer. I was embarrassed that I’d ever believed in him at all.
The Purifiers were around the next corner. They could only walk single file, because of the narrowness of the corridors. Now that I was thinking more clearly, it was obviously built that way in order to fit more turnings into the available space.
There were half a dozen of them, and they came at me one at a time from out of the murk. Strong, tough men charged at me, in grey and black speckled uniforms and lizard skin face masks. The goggles embedded in those masks had built in night vision, but still I could see them better than they could see me. I could see the heat of their blood.
Within a minute, they were a pile of corpses under my feet.
There were more in the distance, fanning out and exploring other corridors, in search of other prisoners to interrogate and exterminate.
My own target was much closer. At the sixtieth turning, I tried to leave behind my grief over my people, my family who I couldn’t even remember. Perhaps, now that I was Fallen, I would finally be able to do that.
I found I could not. It would take a further step before I could free myself from that nightmare. I would have to find Krada, find the truth.
I came to the occupied cells, now miring myself in their stench and despair. This was the centre of the maze, I deduced, and therefore where the most dangerous or valuable prisoners were likely kept. Their cell doors were still locked tight and, unlike the others I’d seen, these were made of thicker wood and reinforced with silver crosses, which were densely arranged, leaving almost no wood bare.
There was a window in each door. They were barred, with each bar only half an inch apart, and each one engraved with tiny, ornately detailed silver crosses.
None of the occupants matched the description I had been given. One was a young woman, whose hair was falling out. Her head lolled against the wall of her cell as she sat slumped on her bench.
I wished I could help her, but could see no way through the door. The lock mechanism was operated by a small combination dial. More tiny crosses covered the grip of it. I experimented with stretching my sleeve over my hand and gripping the dial with the fabric over my fingers. It burned instantly, with the heat of sun. I snatched my hand away as soon as it touched the metal but still my fingers came away smoking. I moved on.