A Latent Dark (38 page)

A city rose from the distance surrounded by a massive copper shell. It had the signature orange-pink walls of a Church domain city-state. It sparkled amidst the surrounding pine trees. At its center was a three-pronged steeple, a thousand feet high at least. A shaft of bright sunlight illuminated the building out of nowhere, like a religious painting.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“That’s where I died,” said the girl. “It’s also where all this nonsense started. But we aren’t going there. Sorry, I sometimes drift there by accident. Force of habit.”

“I don’t understand,” said Dale.

“You will,” she said. “But first we have to go see Walter.”

“Who’s that?”

“He is a friend of mine.”

“What does he do?”

“You sure ask a lot of questions. What are you, five?”

 “Sorry,” he said, taken aback. “I’m new.”

“I know,” she said, sighing. “It’s just that I need to concentrate to get us back, and all the questions don’t help. I’m trying to
navigate
.”

“Get us back where—sorry.”

She gave him a sideways glance. Dale made a motion across his lips and pursed them shut. She looked back in the direction they were headed.

“You’re a funny guy, Dale,” she said. “I can see why Skyla liked and trusted you.”

That hit him like a fist to the stomach. He took a long breath and released it. “Skyla’s not… here is she?”

“Nope,” said the girl. “But I know she’s the reason you’re here. Now shut up and let me concentrate.”

“You never told me your name,” he said as a large mushroom sprouted next to his feet, then wilted in his wake.

“Melissa,” she said as she tested the ground with the tip of a shoe. “This will do…”

The road shifted in front of them like a serpent stretching to the horizon. Dale gave up on the questions once he realized that he was causing a direct impact on the landscape and direction they traveled. Sensing Melissa’s irritation, he shut up and followed.

Chapter 28

Before the hood went over her eyes, Skyla saw the vehicle. She also saw the cage, and the bodies, one of which was Dale’s. He was on his back, his shirt dark with blood. He lay on the flat bed of the vehicle beside a metal cage appropriate for a large dog. The soldiers stacked around Dale looked more like wax figures that had been melted from the inside out. One of them had his arm draped over Dale in a way that, looked almost affectionate to Skyla.

Another man got out of the vehicle, wearing the same black armor as the one holding her by her shoulders. He opened the cage, letting the door bounce off of Dale’s boot before stopping it. He pulled a piece of black cloth from his belt and pulled it over her head, then bound her hands in front of her with rope.

“What about the goggles?” the man holding her said.

“It won’t matter. It’s a short drive.”

She felt herself lifted into the air before sliding along a smooth metal floor. The guards closed the door. There was a pause, before one of them chuckled.

“You know, we could have driven by that same tree a hundred times and I never would have noticed it,” said one of the soldiers. Skyla thought she smelled a hint of cigarette smoke through her hood.

“Good timing that,” said the other. “I think she was sleeping or she would have hidden better. Good thing those goggles were nice and polished eh?”

They had a good laugh and then Skyla heard them walk around the sides of the vehicle, pump the primer, and start up the ancient-sounding engine. It didn’t sound anything like a steam car, and Skyla began to wonder what other things in Rhinewall were completely different, more advanced or downright alien.

The vehicle moved and she slid along the floor of the cage. The corpses beside her rattled against the bars as the shredded armor bounced.

Sounds became different: echoes and footsteps, the rattling of carts, the buzzing of electrical wire. She heard people on a busy street, their voices low and conspiratorial. She could feel them looking at her. The vehicle’s engine coughed and sputtered up a winding road that tossed her against the bars painfully. The air was saltier, with a distinct fishy smell, nothing like the machine oil and coal soot she was used to. The birdcalls were seagulls instead of Bollingbrook pigeons.

There was a series of sharp corners and then the truck slowed again. One of the drivers got out and did something with a gate. It squeaked open and they drove through as it closed behind them.

What little light that leaked through the black fabric before was gone now, and Skyla could only imagine herself in a tunnel. They seemed to be driving down a very long spiraled slope.

When the vehicle finally came to a stop and the doors opened, Skyla cowered into the back corner of the cage. She could tell from the echoes that they were in some kind of cave.

There was a scraping noise from beside her and she realized they were removing the bodies. She heard the ragged strips of armor scrape on the bars.

There was a new voice now, a woman’s. “She did this?”

“To those two, yeah,” said one of her drivers.

There was a pause and the faint sound of a pencil on a clipboard.

“And that one?”

“He was the informant. Idiot got the two of them killed.”

“I see,” she said. “Well, take them all into holding. I’m sure Ostermann will want to study them.”

“What about the third?” asked the soldier.

“He’ll want to have a look at that one as well. How did you find her?”

“Funny story, that,” said one of the men. “She was asleep, of all things. Had the goggles right on her head. Glinted in the sunlight and
Verant
saw ‘
em
. If it had still been foggy we probably would have driven right by her, but
Verant
has a good eye on him…”

“That’s fine,” she said, scribbling with a pencil again. “Good work, both of you. The Guild owes you for your service.” There was an awkward pause. “I can take it from here.”

“We had orders—”

“You are under Guild Authority in here,” said the woman, her voice suddenly stern. “Thank you again.”

Skyla could hear the men leave as the woman spoke into the back of the truck.

“Are you Skyla?” she asked.

Her voice had that same tone that Skyla always hated. It was that insincere who’s-a-good-little-girl tone. She nodded, sniffling.

“My name is Dr. Stintwell,” she said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

Skyla shrugged.

“Can you crawl out of the van?” she said. “Slide toward my voice and I’ll get that hood off.”

Skyla paused for a minute and then slid herself across the slick metal floor. When she reached the ledge she dropped her legs over and sat. There was a tug from the top of her head and the hood went up like the curtain of a stage. She expected to squint at the sunlight, but there was none. The dim chemical lighting from the walls didn’t hurt her eyes.

The woman was thin, pretty, her blond hair in a bun. She wore glasses and a white lab coat. She smiled at Skyla as the hood came off.

“There we go,” she said. “Let me get your hands now.”

She pulled a small pocket knife from her pocket and carefully cut the bonds on Skyla’s wrists. She reached for the chinstrap of the goggles and Skyla’s hand stopped her.

“I just need to check your head,” she said. “I promise you can have these back.”

Skyla let her remove the leather cap, slipping the strap out from the tiny buckle with thin fingers. Stintwell even went so far as to place them in her backpack for her, only regarding them for a moment.

“Now,” said Stintwell. “Would you mind following me?”

Skyla followed the woman past a darkened garage and through a metal door underneath a dim red light. Once in the hallway, Skyla winced at how bright everything became. The corridor was blinding compared to the cave she had just emerged from.

“I can’t even see any shadows,” said Skyla.

“That’s the idea,” said the woman as she led her down the corridor.

“Where are we?”

“This is where the Tinkerer’s Guild has been doing some very important work for The Church, work I hope you’ll find interesting enough to help us with.”

“Why should I?”

Stintwell looked at her. “We aren’t all soldiers. I’m sorry if they scared you.”

“How am I supposed to help you?” Skyla asked, still squinting in the white light that seemed to come from everywhere.

“Because you have a talent none of us have.”

They walked a little further and arrived at a plain white door. There was no window, only a handle that stuck out from the painted surface. Stintwell opened the door and showed Skyla inside.

There was a white table and two white chairs, all of it bathed in that same brilliant light. At the far end of the room was a long flat examination table that was raised from the floor.

“Why don’t you have a seat on that bed back there,” she told Skyla.

Skyla went to the exam table and hoisted herself onto the edge. Stintwell felt her head with delicate hands as she studied the girl’s scalp.

“You got a bit of a bang in the van,” she said.

“I hit my head.”

The woman pulled on a handle that had been hidden in the wall. It unfolded into a narrow drawer, from which she plucked a small mallet. She tapped under each of Skyla’s kneecaps, which to her amazement caused her feet to jerk upward. Skyla looked at her legs as if they were separate living entities, then giggled.

“You’ve never been to a doctor?”

“No,” she said. “I’ve never been anywhere.”

“Until now,” Stintwell added with a smile. “Quite a journey.”

Skyla only nodded. It was true. Everything felt alien and strange. She could have been dreaming.

After the examination, Skyla was taken to the table in the middle of the room where she sat at a chair. Stintwell went to the wall and pulled out another hidden drawer.

“Why are the lights so bright?” asked Skyla.

“You said so yourself,” said Stintwell, returning with a stack of cards. “So you can’t see any shadows.”

“Why don’t you want to see the shadows?”

“We can talk about that after I do some tests,” said Stintwell, taping the stack of cards on the table to make them even. “First, I want you to tell me what you see.”

The woman held up a card and to Skyla it looked like a crudely drawn bat made of ink splotches. She said so and Stintwell wrote the answer down in her clipboard. She did the same thing with all the other cards until they were done with the stack.

“Are you hungry?”

Skyla was always hungry. The loud grumble from her stomach made her blush. Stintwell smiled.

“Let’s go to your room and we’ll get you something to eat.”

Skyla’s room was as white as everything else in the lab. The bed was a raised square with a cushion on the top. There was a small alcove with bathroom facilities. All of it was as white and sterile as a sheet. The thing that Skyla found odd was that the corners of the floor, ceiling and walls were rounded. There were no straight edges and even her bed was slightly rounded and very soft.