City of Burning Shadows (Apocrypha: The Dying World) (29 page)

“Oh yes, the body is the same.” His eyes went black and a darkness passed over his face. “We have no physical substance of our own. We are beings of thought and shadow, as my father made us.”

“So how are you different? Other than the fact they’re trying to end the world right now and you’re not.”

He sighed, clearly disappointed. I’d failed some test. “Your question is the answer.”

“You’re being cryptic again.”

He tilted his head, acknowledging, if not apologizing. “They are not like me. They are not like you, or Iris, or Spark, or anyone you know. They were not created to be people; they were made to be servants. Servants of my father. They had no minds of their own, no thoughts of their own. They were extensions of his will—his eyes, his hands, his power.”

“Puppets,” I supplied. “Except when their strings got cut, they didn’t lie down.”

“They cannot reason in any way you understand. Their veneer of sentience is driven by the people whose minds they share. They cannot be dissuaded or turned from their path because it is not a decision they made—their actions are driven by their nature, a fundamental instinct to continue doing what they were told.”

“No, wait,” I held up a hand, “that doesn’t make any sense. If they’re against change—if you’re all against change—how can their programming be driving them to do what they’re doing. They’re trying to destroy Miroc—to kill everyone who lives here. How is that not change?”

“They are trying to keep Miroc on the path ordained—as they understand it—by the gods. Miroc is dying, has been dying since the Abandon. Spark’s research in the hands of the Jansynians could have turned it away from that path. Could have kept the city alive.”

“So preserving the city is change and letting it die is stasis.” I shook my head. “That makes no sense.”

“To you,” he countered. “It does not have to make sense to you. I simply explain what drives them.”

I wondered if, deep down, Syed understood them any better than I did. If they were as different from him as he said, it was possible behind those cold eyes he was flailing in the dark as much as I was. “You say you don’t kill, and even if I’m willing to accept your definition of things, they’ve still been doing a lot of killing. Copper, Micah, this thing in the tube station…”

“I heard your description to the others, of the deaths from which you ran.” He said the words with no accusation, stating a simple fact. “That demonstration concerns me more than anything else that has happened in this last week. It seems…it seems they are
changing
.” His voice twisted around the word, as though it were the most distasteful thing he could imagine. If I understood everything he’d told me, it probably was.

“I know it’s offensive to you, but I don’t see how it makes our situation any worse if they’d developed a taste for the murder they’re already committing.”

“Don’t you?” Again, his voice held disappointment. “The fact the city still stands means it has not occurred to them yet, but consider what happens when one of them realizes that display in the underground could be repeated on a larger scale. Once they have embraced the notion of death after death after death, why bother with political machinations when they can simply flow through the city, touch by touch, body by body, until no one is left?”

No one could defend against them. No one would even know what was happening. “Can they do that?”

“It would not be an act of sanity. To go from body to body like that—I can’t imagine how it would break any sense of identity they’ve managed to build.”

“Is it uncomfortable?” I was grasping at straws, anything that might keep this nightmare from happening. Because now Syed had said it, I couldn’t see any other possible outcome. “Is it hard?”

He turned his face away, back to the fire. “I do not know,” he said softly.

“Excuse me?”
 

“I do not know,” he repeated. “I have never….” He sighed. “I have been the same, unchanging, for the whole of my life. I have never taken another. I have never killed.”

“Except for that poor sap whose body you’re walking around in.”

“His life would have been harsh and brief. A struggle for survival with the rest of his primitive tribe. Because of me, his eyes have seen wonders.”

“But he’s not really there. You took his memories, you know who he was, but it isn’t like he’s still in there with you. Right?”

“Are we to debate the nature of the soul?” Syed’s amusement was back. “I can’t explain what it’s like, to become, and it doesn’t affect our situation either way.” He reached out for a chair leg in the pile of broken furniture we’d made and used it to stoke the fire, then threw it on top. “Storytime is over, Joshua Drake. Summon your companions. It is time to discuss what happens next.”

#

We were all of us still moving through something of a state of shock, which probably contributed to the fact that, after I’d introduced Syed and proclaimed him on our side, no one objected to his presence. Although Iris pointedly sat as far away from him as she could and still be in on the conversation, and Vogg kept a suspicious eye on him. I couldn’t fault either one of them.

The five of us were all that stood between Miroc and utter destruction. And what was more—

“Things may be worse than we thought,” Iris said once everyone had settled.

“How is that even possible?” I asked. I shouldn’t have asked. I didn’t truly want to know.

Iris had returned to a more natural color, but her appearance was still terribly subdued. Her hair was short and lay flat against her head; the clothing she’d created was a single shade of navy and neither it nor her soft ebony skin held any ornament. “We know now that his people,” she flicked her fingers at Syed, “have been in Miroc for a while. That until Spark messed everything up, their plans were to basically keep the city pointed in the direction it wanted to go. A passive approach, rather than an active one.”

I nodded. Not that the shadow’s actions had been anything I’d describe as passive.
 

“Well now we’ve fucked that up for them. They’re on the attack and they’ve got Amelia.” Iris waited, staring at me.

“I still don’t get it.”

Her skin flushed a frustrated red. “The riots, remember? The protests? The bombs? Amelia’s been in charge of security around the reservoir. With the reservoir intact, Miroc still had months, maybe, if nothing else drastic changed. Without it…”

This time I was able to finish her thought. “The end. Just like that. No more water. No more city.”

Vogg swore under his breath.
 

Spark was still calm. “If we can bring the rain, it won’t matter.”

“And how are we supposed to do that?” Iris snapped.
 

“Iris—” I began.

She kept talking over me. “I’m serious. How? Should we invade the Crescent? That plan was suicidal back when we thought they were on our side.”

“My sister’s plans—”
 

I cut Spark off. “Were never going to work. I’m sorry, but I saw what Copper meant to do. She never understood how the Jansynians work, and that’s not even taking into account the added difficulty the shadows present.”

Vogg’s ears flapped open and closed, a sure sign of agitation. “To even have a chance of getting into the Crescent, we would need time to organize and to gather more resources. We won’t have that if the reservoir is destroyed.”

“Can we protect it?” Spark directed her question at Vogg.
 

Vogg’s answer was honest. “There are five of us. Between Director Seana and Ms. Price, they control most of the power in this city.”

“They couldn’t have chosen better targets.” I heard the bitterness in my voice. One of those targets, at least, we’d handed them. I was the one who suggested Amelia and Seana work together. Oh, and I couldn’t forget the fact Seana had been taken by a shadow only because I’d done the magic to drive it out of Eddis. If only I’d known—

Spark reached over to rest her tiny hand on my knee. “It isn’t your fault.”

“It’s
their
fault,” Vogg said. “Everything that has happened is their fault.”

I shook my head. “Not just their fault. The shadows are taking advantage, but they didn’t create this situation. They didn’t abandon the world they created and leave their children scrabbling in the sand.”

“This is what we have,” Spark said softly. “We can’t make it any better by wishing or arguing.”

“We won’t make it better by dying, either,” Iris pointed out. “We keep rushing unprepared and uninformed and look where that’s gotten us.”

Not that there was any forward left to rush to. As Vogg had pointed out, there were five of us against the only organized powers left in Miroc. Amelia and Seana knew what we could do, and they had the resources to see us coming. And as if that weren’t enough, there was still one more shadow out there who, since I’d lost track of it in the tube station, could be anyone.

I had to be honest. “I don’t know what to do from here. I don’t know if there’s anything we can do. There may not be anything we can do. From here, our only two choices may be dying quickly or dying slowly. Except for you.” I directed that last line at Iris. “Of all of us, you’re the only one who can actually get out of the city any time you want. If you left now, I can’t imagine any of us would hold it against you.”

For once, Iris’s response was no more dramatic than a simple shake of her head. “I stayed in this dying city for her. I won’t leave while one of those creatures still wears her face.”

I couldn’t deny how glad it made me to hear that. “Spark, Vogg, if you stay here in the church, you’d be safe from the shadows, and possibly even from any riots—”

“No,” Spark said. “Whatever happens, we’ll help. I’m tired of hiding while my friends and my family die around me.”

I looked at Vogg. His job, even before it was mine, was to keep her safe. He smiled, an unnerving, sharp-toothed smile. “If we are to die either way, better to die taking action.”

The situation was just as impossible as it had been five minutes ago, but I felt better all the same. Vogg was right. We were dead either way. We might as well die trying. This was the truth I’d known after the Abandon, the truth that had driven me out into the riots, the truth that had gotten me nearly killed once already. I’d been hiding from it ever since.
 

This was better. I was still afraid—I wasn’t sure I’d ever not be afraid from now until my inevitable death—but this was a fear I could face. To do anything less would be to let down my friends. To let down myself.

“So we have two impossible tasks before us. We have to figure out how the five of us can a) keep the reservoir from being sabotaged by the security team protecting it and b) break into the Crescent’s impenetrable security to reach the lab that hopefully will have the tools Spark needs to fix the satellite.”

“No,” Syed said. He’d been quiet all this time. I’d almost forgotten he was there.

“Excuse me?” Iris asked, annoyed again.

“Now you’ve wasted this time talking yourselves into taking the actions you knew you had to take from the start, I will not suggest we not waste anything further. The reservoir is a distraction. The satellite is a distraction. If we do not, first and foremost, find and kill the children of my father, none of the rest will matter.”

Iris opened her mouth to argue, but I spoke faster. “First of all, you’re not in charge here, so don’t think you get to decide anything for the rest of us. Second of all, you’re going to have to accept that
our
goal is Miroc. If the city goes up in flames, I don’t give a shit what happens to you and the rest of your kind.”

“Why are you even here?” Iris demanded. “Why should we trust you?”

I was beginning to understand. At least I thought. “You’re just as locked into your path as they are. You can’t let them live because they’ve become something they shouldn’t be. The only problem is, there are three of them and only one of you.”

He glared at me and I met his eyes, unblinking. “You need us. The fact you’re still sitting here proves that’s true. And don’t get me wrong, we probably need you too. But that doesn’t mean you get to call the shots.”

“So I am to follow your lead?” He barked a laugh. “Your plans have gone so well thus far.”

“And yours have gone so much better,” I snapped back. “You know, if you’d just come to us at the start, while the shadow was still in Eddis, we could have stopped
all
of this—”

“Ash.” Spark’s soft voice cut me off. I’d been yelling.
 

And it wasn’t even true. I knew that. If Syed had tried to talk to me before I’d done the magic that had driven the shadow from Eddis into Seana, I would have been useless to him. I probably wouldn’t even have believed him.
 

It felt like forever ago, the time before I’d known about the shadows.
 

Vogg’s voice broke the silence that had descended. “What was wrong with Copper’s plan?”

The change of subject threw me. “What?”

“You said it wouldn’t work. What were the failure points? What was she doing wrong?”

I pushed a hand back through my hair, trying to organize my exhausted mind. “Jansynian security doesn’t exist at a single point. Copper had found what she thought was a weak point where she could sneak in, and that’s fine, but the problem is, once you’re in, there’s more.”

“What sort of more?” Vogg pressed.

I peeled my security tab off my collarbone. Not like it was of any use now. “This, for one. Even after they let me into Desavris, I was given very specific instructions about the areas I could and couldn’t go into. They track where people are and what clearance they have.”

Spark held out her hand. “May I see that?”
 

I passed it to her. From a pocket in her tunic, she pulled out what resembled a jeweler’s loupe, except with blinking lights and a lens that turned on its own. She squinted through the device at the tab. “Hmmm.”

I left her to that and turned back to Vogg. “Plus there’s simple visual confirmation. Only Jansynians in the Crescent. There’s no way to hide the fact we don’t belong.”