The Nine Read online

  “Score,” Sagum whispered excitedly. “You chose a good door.”

  They shoved their way in and closed it behind them.

  It was not exactly what Teran had pictured. But she was shocked to discover that it wasn’t far off.

  The room was very shallow, but wide. It didn’t hold a bank of monitors, as her imagination had conjured, but there was a good deal of technology crammed into this room, with a lot of little blinking status lights. Sagum’s wet dream.

  “What am I looking at?” she whispered.

  Sagum’s lips quivered. “I think it’s a mainframe.”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “It’s like a brain. Everything in this house, all the technology in it, it all has to communicate. This is the place where all that communication takes place and all the memory is stored.”

  Teran didn’t get it. But she nodded. “Sounds right up your alley.”

  Sagum’s face became uncertain. “Well. Like I said, I’m not exactly great at software stuff. More of hardware and mechanics. This…” he looked up and down the length of the mainframe. “…This might be a little out of my league.”

  Teran’s lips compressed. “Figure something out, Sagum. We need information, and time is short.”

  He held up a finger. “I’m aware. Give me a minute.”

  He began working along the mainframe, his long fingers touching and stroking as he went, like he sought something, but perhaps wasn’t sure what that something was. “There’s gotta be some sort of access. Right?” He stopped, glanced at Teran. “Or, shit…maybe the mechs just plug straight in when they need to access it?”

  “Abbas can’t plug in. What if he needs to access it?”

  Sagum shrugged, and continued on. “He doesn’t strike me as the type to come down and work in maintenance, but who knows.” He stopped, bending at the waist to peer at an object that protruded from the mainframe. “And what might you be?” he murmured to the object. “I think you might be a projector. I see your little module there.” He tapped it, experimentally.

  An image sprang into the air in front of him, causing him to let out a gasp and step back.

  “Scare you?” Teran quizzed him.

  “No,” he said quickly. “It was just very sudden.”

  Teran looked at the projection, trying to make sense of it. There were a series of odd icons, but no words to describe what they were. They were arranged in a circle, about three feet in diameter, hanging in the air and glowing softly.

  “Okay,” Sagum said. “It’s a menu. That’s okay. I can work with this. What should I try?”

  Teran’s eyes coursed around the circle of icons. There were twelve of them in all. Her eyes stopped on one that hung to the left-hand side of the circle. She squinted at it, tilting her head. Two gray lines intersecting in a green square, with a red triangle sitting on one of the lines, pointing straight up.

  “How about this one?” she said, reaching out and pointing to it. Her index finger touched it, and it flashed. The projection changed. Now they stared at a large, circular image. All green. No lines. A few bits and pieces of lettering.

  “It’s a map,” Sagum said, then smiled at Teran. “You’re just making all the good choices today.”

  Teran looked closer at it. Sagum was right. She’d expected to see roads on a map, but there weren’t any roads out here, were there? But there, right in the center of the projection, was a little blue dot, softly pulsing, and the small letters above it read PRAESIDIUM.

  “Okay.” She pointed at Praesidium, but was careful not to touch the projection this time. “We’re here.” She looked to the left of Praesidium, and found a jagged line, running down the image from top to bottom. On the other side of that line were the words THE GLASS FLATS, written vertically. “That line must be the cliffs, then.”

  Sagum stepped up closer to the image and looked to the right side of it. “So that’s east. That’s where we want to go.” He frowned. There was nothing there except for another vertical label. He read it aloud. “The Crooked Hills. That sounds…unpleasant. Where the hell are the East Ruins?”

  “Can you move the map?”

  Sagum lifted a hand and swiped at the projection. The controls were intuitive enough. The map panned with his hand, like he’d put his palm to a huge sheet of paper and shoved it from one side to the other.

  Praesidium was now at the left hand corner of the projection.

  And now there was nothing. Just a bunch of green. And, of course, the very welcoming label of THE CROOKED HILLS.

  Teran brought both her hands up, stretching them wide, and put her fingers on the edges of the projection, and then swept them together. The map zoomed out. Praesidium was there. And now they could see The Glass Flats again, as well as a tiny dot on the far left that read FIENDEVELT.

  “Where’s the East Ruins?” Sagum demanded again.

  Teran’s heart thudded an uncomfortable rhythm in her chest. Maybe it doesn’t exist. Maybe it was all a lie. Maybe this whole quest was bullshit from the start.

  She zoomed the map out again.

  Now she could see things she recognized to the west.

  Lasima. Oksidado. Karapalida. Tiny, scattered waypoints in the vastness of the plains, which were colored the same light green, though Teran didn’t think she’d ever seen anything terribly green growing out there.

  But at the far right hand side of the projection, there was blue.

  “That’s the ocean,” she whispered, feeling a sense of almost-vertigo. She was looking at the edge of the world. The crazy old mech that they’d killed had told them that Fiendevelt meant “the place at the end of the world,” but it hadn’t been the end of the world. She was looking at that right now. And there were a lot of miles between Fiendevelt and the sea. A lot of miles between them and the sea.

  She traced her eyes up the edge of the green land, and stopped, in the upper right corner.

  “Shit,” she spat.

  “Oh gods,” Sagum groaned. “There?”

  The East Ruins. Clearly marked. Right on the edge of where the green met the blue, but farther north. She wanted to feel relief that it actually existed, but all she felt was a deep, sinking dread in the pit of her stomach. Because she was looking at the distance.

  From this vantage point of the map, the section marked as THE GLASS FLATS was a thin ribbon that ran north to south, maybe six inches wide. Six inches. And it had taken them a week to cross it.

  Between the waypoint of Praesidium, and the dot that read THE EAST RUINS, there was a span of about three feet.

  This whole time she’d been thinking of the East Ruins as though they were just beyond this range of mountains. Perhaps right on the other side of the peaks they saw from their suite.

  “That’s gotta be hundreds of miles,” Sagum breathed, coming out muffled behind a hand he’d clasped over his mouth.

  Teran swallowed. “It’s okay.” She tried to sound confident. “We’ll have a skiff. It’ll just…take a bit longer than we thought.”

  Sagum looked at her. “A lot can happen in hundreds of miles, Teran.”

  And that was when the door behind them opened. Venn stood there, flanked by two other mechs in white uniforms, none of them smiling. In fact, all three looked genuinely hostile.

  “Perhaps I was unclear about where you were permitted to be,” Venn remarked. “My apologies. I’m going to have to restrain you now.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  GHOSTS

  Stuber had sunk deep into the chair, regarding the half-empty bottle of whiskey in his hand with a slight frown. “Apparently there is alcohol in this.”

  “Maybe you’ve gone soft,” Perry said from where he lounged on the couch. He brought his hand up to his face and rubbed it. He’d only had a sip of the whiskey, but somehow his face still felt warm. Tingling.

  It wasn’t drunkenness, though. He was well-acquainted with that feeling. Perhaps he was just exhausted, and sitting on these comfortable cushions after
so long with so little sleep and only hard, cold glass to lay on, had caused it all to catch up to him.

  He felt like his muscles were being rendered down.

  Stuber must have been just as tired, as he didn’t even bother responding to the jibe. And questions of Stuber’s ability to consume alcohol were never allowed to go unanswered.

  Stuber leaned forward with great effort, hunched over his legs. He stared across the room, making an odd face. He stretched his eyes wide, and then squinted them down to slits. Shook his head.

  “You alright?” Perry asked. He’d only been poking fun at Stuber, but the man did look drunk. Maybe a couple weeks without a steady diet of whiskey really had softened him up. Or maybe the exhaustion was just getting to him too. Regardless, Perry needed the man in fighting shape. And he looked anything but at the moment.

  Stuber blinked rapidly, eyes still affixed on something across the room, like he saw something there. Then he turned and look at Perry. “Yeah.” He ejected himself out of his seat. “Just gotta take a piss.”

  Perry watched him as he walked to the bathroom. To Stuber’s credit, his stride was steady. No stumbling. No listing. He barged through the bathroom door and swung it shut behind him.

  ***

  Stuber posted his hands on the marble countertop and stared at the mirror. He was not a man prone to gaze at his own reflection. Mirrors were for shaving, something he hadn’t done in four years. But he had to stare at some fixed point, because everything else was shifting.

  It wasn’t the alcohol. Sure, he was probably getting a little drunker than intended—that single-malt was a sneaky bastard—but this wasn’t the same. This wasn’t how your eyes struggled to focus when you’d had one too many. The walls were moving. Melting, it seemed. And he’d…seen something. Across the room. Near the corner of the window.

  He blinked, and she was there again. Standing to his left, and slightly behind him. Just as he’d seen her standing near the window.

  His forehead flushed, hot and feverish.

  “Petra,” he groaned.

  Tall, and beautiful, and stately with her mane of auburn hair. Far above him. Inaccessible. Like a demigod that had come down to grace him. That had somehow decided to love him, despite the fact that he’d never deserved it.

  He knew she was not really there, and yet it was like his ability to disbelieve what he saw had been dulled. This was a hallucination, and yet he felt unable to ignore it.

  Had they put something in the whiskey? But no, the bottle had been sealed. And besides, the concern about whether or not he’d been drugged felt dim. Far away. Like someone else’s problem.

  “Franklin,” she said, her voice as soft and sweet as the skin of her neck. “Where did you run off to this time?”

  “I’m here,” he said, apologetically. “In a place I don’t want to be in. I’m very far away from you now, my love. And I wish that wasn’t so.”

  “Then come back to me.” As though it could ever be so simple.

  His heart ached. Which was bullshit. Proof that the single-malt wasn’t as good as straight millet whiskey. What was the point in drinking it if it didn’t kill your ability to hurt?

  He wanted to turn towards her, to grab her up. But he somehow knew that if he moved, she would vanish.

  “I will come back to you,” he sighed. “But not yet.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m a wanted man. Because I’m a fugitive. I’m a deserter. And every time I come back to you, I put you in danger. And that’s not what I want.”

  She cocked her eyebrow at him. “And what is it that you want?”

  He felt his stiff shoulders sag. “I just want to be with you. Left alone. Finally.” He shook his head, but slowly, so as not to scare away this ghost. “But I can’t. Not yet. Not until I do this thing.”

  “Then when?”

  His lips pulled back, flashing his teeth. “When I’ve pulled the whole godsdamned thing down on their heads. Then I’ll be free, Petra. That’s the only way I’ll ever be free again. And then I’ll come back to you. And I won’t go away again.”

  “Do you promise?”

  Only a great fool ever made a promise they knew they couldn’t keep. That was for young pups in love. Not for the honesty between a man and his wife.

  But there was a promise he could make, and still be an honest man.

  “I promise that I’ll destroy them. Or die trying.”

  ***

  With Stuber mumbling to himself in the bathroom, Perry swayed to his feet, feeling his blood moving through him like sludge. He managed to reach the window and steadied himself by shoving his grubby palm against the pristine glass.

  Something was wrong. The walls were water. The stone was flowing. Undulating.

  He should have been alarmed. But it was very difficult to care. And he kept telling himself, you’re just very tired.

  Gods, but he was tired. More tired than he’d ever been in his life. So tired he thought he could just lay down in the bed and never give shit about anything ever again. All this caring had wrung him out.

  A figure appeared, and for a moment, he thought that it was a ghost, floating outside of the window. But then he realized it was just a reflection. A reflection of the man standing behind him. Tall and noble, and glowing, because the only clear image he had of Cato McGown was the one he’d seen in the message embedded in his clasp.

  Because this was his imagination. It had to be. Cato McGown was dead.

  “Father…” Perry’s breath fogged the glass. “Do I call you father?”

  “Yes,” Cato said. “That is what I am. And you are my son.”

  Why are you talking to it? You shouldn’t talk to hallucinations. That makes you crazy.

  But again, it was hard to be concerned with such trivialities when you struggled just to stay standing.

  “Can I tell you something?” Perry whispered.

  “Of course you can. I’m only a hallucination.”

  “I’m fucking terrified.”

  “Why?”

  “I think I’m going to fail you. I don’t think I’m up to the task that you’ve given me. Every time I turn around, I’m fucking something up. I don’t know how to do this. I’m going to betray your trust in me. Just like Uncle Sergio did.”

  “You’ve gotten this far, haven’t you?” The reflection of Cato’s ghost smiled. “And as for your Uncle Sergio, he kept you alive. That is what I needed him to do, and he succeeded.”

  “But he couldn’t save me from Selos.”

  “My son,” Cato sighed. “I don’t believe that you needed saving from Selos. After all, he is dead, and you are still alive. Still fighting.”

  “Did you know I was going to be a runt when you made that message and put all your hopes in me?”

  “It is immaterial.” Cato reached up and tapped his finger to the side of his head. “What did I tell you was your greatest weapon, Percival?”

  “My mind.”

  “And was I wrong? Do you not bear the ability to use the god-tech? Has your mind not become your greatest weapon?”

  Perry nodded once.

  “You question my faith in you, Percival. But perhaps it is you that lacks faith in me. Perhaps that is the source of your fear. And the fear will only do one thing: It will rob you of your greatest weapon. Fear is the enemy of the gift that you bear.”

  “I know. I’m trying.”

  “Perhaps what you should truly be concerned about is the fact that you and your friend Stuber have been drugged.”

  Perry jerked like he’d been stung. He spun around, frowning, but the ghost of Cato McGown was no longer there. All around Perry the walls melted, and surrealism dripped off of them.

  Far away, his sense of alarm screamed at him, like a man trapped on the other side of those thick stone walls. Trying to get him to snap out of it.

  Drugged? The concept was hard to grasp. It tried to wriggle out of his grip. But his blood moved quicker than before, and he didn’t feel qui
te so much like lying down and sleeping for a week straight.

  Drugged. The whiskey? But no. He’d only had one sip. And Stuber had drank nearly the whole damn thing. If you could drink an entire bottle of it, and still be standing in the bathroom murmuring to yourself, then it wasn’t a very powerful drug, was it?

  Stuber. Stuber was in the bathroom. Talking to himself. Or hallucinating.

  Your friend, the alarm screamed. Your friend is drugged, and you’re both in trouble!

  “Shit.” Perry hauled himself away from the window, finding that his balance was not so much an issue. More just the ability to make himself move. “Stuber!” he called, his voice thick. “Stuber, open the fucking door!”

  Perry angled himself around the sitting area. He felt like he was moving at a normal pace, so why was it taking so long to get from one side of this room to where his longstaff lay? Why did a distance of fifteen feet seem to stretch before him like the Glass Flats?

  The bathroom door burst open. Stuber stood, holding himself up by the doorframe, his face flushed. His eyes swam around in his skull and eventually found Perry. Who was pulling himself along the back of the couch.

  “Oh,” Stuber growled. “You’re high as fuck too. That’s a bad sign.”

  Perry reached his longstaff and gripped it. Warm metal. The flow. Could he still access it? His question was immediately answered. The weapon hummed. His mind went into it, fitting like a glove.

  Perry looked to the door to the room, intending to make a break for it. And that was when he perceived the tiny puff of mist, issuing from a small tube that protruded from under the door.

  They were being gassed.

  Perry didn’t think. His heart lurched in his chest, and at first it was a panic to get out and get away from whatever was messing with his mind, the alarm that he’d heard so distantly now blaring in his head like a klaxon. But then he became incredibly pissed that someone was gassing them.

  And from there, he slipped into the red. The Calm.

  Almost before he registered that the command had come from his own mind, the muzzle of the longstaff flared a wicked green. The doorway burst into cinders and toothpicks, carving out a chunk of the stone walls with it.