The Forgotten City (35 page)

D
iega panted heavily, staring up at the giant blood-sucking needles stabbing through the mud searching for them, but they were too far down to be touched. Gooey algae gunge held the mud walls of the tunnel together. Globules slopped down on their heads like congealed rain. It looked extremely unstable. Beside her, Shawe was supporting Copernicus. His condition had worsened again. His eyes were horribly sunken and his clothing hung off his wasted body. He wasn’t moving at all. Diega touched his chest, feeling his ribs stretching the skin. His heart was still beating, but barely.

Dizzy specks of light danced before Diega’s eyes. Caesar was staring at her back with a grim expression. She reached behind her and touched the three large stab wounds from the leech’s fangs. The skin felt numb.

“She’s as white as a Midnight Man,” Caesar said to Shawe, talking over her.

“I’m fine,” she said, but knew she’d lost too much blood, and with this mud the wounds would be infected in seconds. She’d used all the coagulator and antiseptic off her belt, so she took Copernicus’ supply from his and squirted it over her shoulder. There weren’t any bandages left in either belt, so Shawe ripped off the tattered remains of his shirt and tied it roughly around the wound. She tried to object, but he shut her down.

“I know you want full access to my body anyway,” he told her.

“I can’t think of anything in this universe I want less than your body,” she returned.

“All lies,” Shawe muttered as he fastened the last knot.

At a gurgling sound beside them they turned to see the Vidris Slimer crouching nearby, staring at them with mud-brown eyes, half-hidden under smooth, green hair. His skin was transparent, showing a network of white veins transporting algae around his body.

“Grateful.” The Slimer spoke in a gurgled dialect of Urigin. “So grateful.”

“Good,” Shawe said. “Then take us to the Eti River and whatever the trutt weed we need to cure this guy here.” He gestured to Copernicus. “He’s been stabbed by an Omarian.”

The Slimer scratched his head for a moment then replied, “The Envader Algae is a very strong medicine. It can be used to cure flesh-rotting diseases – maybe also poison-sickness.”

“Where is it?” Diega asked. “Where can we find it?”

“The Envader grows at the place where the Morak Flow becomes the Eti River.”

“Then take us there now,” Caesar commanded. “You owe us life.”

“I can’t,” the Slimer replied. “Not me. It is far, far away.”

Diega clenched her fists, the nails biting into her palms, but the Slimer continued before she had time to lose herself, “Me, I cannot take you by myself, but I know someone who will help.”

He cupped his hands and sent out a gurgled cry that echoed through the mud tunnel, far into the distance. After a second, the ground beneath them began to tremble, then shake, and they heard a sound like a subterranean train roaring toward them. Diega looked up to see a huge white creature bearing down on them, taking up the whole tunnel. She braced herself for the impact, but the creature came to a sudden stop right in front of them. It lifted a blind worm head and sniffed.

“What is that?” Diega asked the Slimer, staring with caution at the unfortunately phallic-looking creature.

“Caecilian speed worm,” the Slimer said.

“That looks exactly like —” Shawe started.

“We know what it looks exactly like,” Diega cut over him.

“Of course
you
do. It’s not as big as mine, though,” Shawe said with a smirk.

Caesar gave a deep sigh of disgust, then he and Shawe hoisted Copernicus into their arms.

“Follow. This way,” the Slimer beckoned them. He patted the speed worm on its nose and climbed up onto its head. The gangsters followed him up, with Diega behind them. They copied the Slimer’s movements and found themselves lying face-up on the worm’s back, its cool, soft skin creating a protective half-cocoon around them. Diega could feel the worm’s body gurgling under her.

The Slimer called a
coo-ee
and the speed worm reared back and took off. Diega scrunched her eyes shut and gritted her teeth as the tunnel whirred above them at a sickening speed. Over her lifetime she’d flown at some extreme speeds, but nothing came close to this. She felt like she was going to pass out. Finally the creature came to an abrupt halt and the Slimer sat up, pushing through the tunnel roof, opening a trapdoor for them to see out.

“Look there.” He pointed. “Over there is where the Morak meets the Eti. In the border waters you will find the algae you seek. It is the color of mud with blue and pink spots and it is very fast, so you must move quickly.”

Diega nodded her thanks and stood up with difficulty on the speed worm’s balloon-like body. She scrambled through the trapdoor and the others followed, struggling to maneuver Copernicus out together. The sky above had darkened even more. The trapdoor sealed over below them and they felt a momentary rumble as the worm took off. Then it was gone and they stood alone, staring at the Eti. It was a wide, muddy river, its surface a garden of aquatic flowers, moss and algae. Reeds grew thickly along its banks.

“We need to get closer to the water,” Diega said, and two gangsters hoisted Copernicus up, bits of his skin sliding off in their hands. All his teeth and hair had fallen out. He looked nothing like himself and was sinking further as they watched. Out of the three of them, Caesar was the least injured, but he eyed the water with distrust.

“Kitty can’t swim, so I’ll go find it,” Shawe said and started lowering Copernicus.

“No, I’ll go, just keep him breathing,” Diega said. She couldn’t deal with standing there and waiting.

She trudged fast to the river’s edge and pushed through the reeds, scanning the murky waters for brown algae, but it was a swamp and everything was trutting brown. Desperation kept both her fatigue and fear at bay and she swam further out, dragging herself through the clogged plant life. Her heart, thudding like strikes of a hammer, skipped suddenly as she spotted a speckled brown plant. It was lolling on the edge of a lily pad, half in and half out of the water. Diega slowed her gasping breaths, forcing herself to calm. She sank low in the water and stalked silently toward it. When she was close enough, she lunged, just managing to grab one end of the algae clot as it tried to escape. It emitted a high-pitched squeal, struggling violently, trying to ooze through her fingers. Diega kept a tight grip on it and started back to the bank.

She made it almost to the water’s edge, then a whisper drew her attention back to the river. Something was moving out near the center. It was a ripple in the air, a gliding transparent form. The more Diega stared at it, the more it looked like her little sister.
Impossible.
Diega shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. The form twirled closer, with mesmerizing movements. Something cold and wet wrapped around Diega’s neck. It yanked her forward out of the shallows and into the deep water. She heard Shawe yell as it dragged her beneath the surface, further and further down.

Diega fought as she sank, but she couldn’t see anything actually holding her, just felt the grip tightening the more she struggled. Finally she came to a stop, her foot clipping something. She stared down through the murk, and gave a gurgling yell. Her foot had touched the head of a corpse. Lining the bottom of the river were thousands of bloated, half-eaten bodies. Some stared with dead eyes, the hands of others brushed slimy fingers against her. It was an underwater graveyard, a garden of the dead, tied to the bottom of the river, swaying silently in the current, like strands of decaying seaweed.

Diega almost lost her grip on the Envader Algae, but squeezed her hand closed just in time. Tiring fast, she stopped kicking just for a moment to gather her strength. As she did, the grip on her body released. A thought came to her. She cupped her hands around the algae to hide its struggling, then relaxed all her muscles. Immediately she was freed and started to float upward. A mat of lily pads prevented her from breaking through the surface, so she had to kick and use one hand to drag herself up. She gasped in air, but then the cold grasp seized her ankle and hauled her back under. It happened again, then a third and fourth time. Diega gagged, unable to get any air, drowning so close to the surface. Then, through the thrashing of her struggles, she saw a dark form approaching rapidly, until it was right in front of her – a monstrous crocodilian face. The predator, enormous beyond belief, struck, snapping massive jaws an inch from Diega’s face. She thought somehow it had missed her, then a creature became visible, trapped in the mouth of the monster crocodile. The natural form of the shape-shifter who had attacked her was a gangling goblin creature. Its arms flailed for a second and then the monster crocodile sank back down into the swamp. Diega burst up into the air, nearby to Shawe, who was scouring the waters for her. He lunged at her.

“I’ve found it,” she gasped and retched as he dragged her back through the reeds. Caesar helped them scramble up the slippery mud bank. She dropped down beside Copernicus and held the squirming algae above his face. He looked a thousand year-cycles old.
Not him, not him …

“What do we do with it?” she panted, struggling to catch her breath.

The plant had stopped wriggling and was now hanging limp and silent. Diega loosened her grip slightly. As she did, the algae slipped out onto Copernicus’ face, and in an instant spread to form a cocoon all around him. Diega and Shawe fought to drag the sludge out of his mouth and nose but they clogged back up straight away. His body started to convulse and Diega felt choked with terror. She’d grabbed the wrong plant, and it was strangling the last gasps of life out of him.

The air shivered around them, and a blinding square of light flared from nowhere. Forms leaped from the light and landed in the mud all around them.
Omarians
. Caesar reacted first, slashing up with his claws and opening one of the fire-wielders’ necks. Boiling blood sprayed over Diega and Shawe and over the algae cocoon trapping Copernicus. Before they could move again, the Omarians caught them all in light-form and started draining their strength.

They fell to their knees, and Diega watched in mute horror as the algae cocoon suddenly shot past the Omarians, right to the river’s edge. Before they could blink, it was gone. He was gone. Copernicus Kane.
Gone …

I
smail dragged Eli up onto a ledge, one hand pressed over his mouth. Eli grabbed for his night-vision specs and shoved them onto his face. He saw Ismail, his eyes shining red. He was pointing downward to the bottom of the well below them. There the most monstrous viper Eli had ever imagined to see lay coiled around itself, sleeping soundly. It was the width of a large mass-mover craft and the height, Eli estimated, of a building. Not a hut, either – more like a tower. This thing could accidently swallow him whole and never feel him going down. Eli had never been afraid of snakes before, he’d always been fascinated by reptiles of all kinds, but he thought he felt a snake phobia now brewing inside him, threatening to manifest into hysterical laughter. The only thing that stopped him was the sight of the viper’s diamond pattern. It reminded him of the commander’s bloodline marks and brought him to sharp control as he focused on why they were there.

Eli felt Ismail taking the Morsus Ictus out of his grasp and he blinked to access the navigation map through his front-core. Their current location was not far from the x-point of the portal on the map. Eli pointed upward and Ismail nodded. They started to climb the wall, which was slimy with black gunk oozing out of every crack. Their progress was agonizingly slow, but finally they made it to a ledge above, where they found a hole just big enough to squeeze through. The navigation indicated for them to take it. Eli’s rational mind rejected the idea, but it was the fastest path to the portal and, in reality, they’d abandoned rationality a long while back. Ismail crawled through first and Eli followed, the pair of them squirming through the suffocatingly small tunnel until Ismail suddenly stopped, slumped down to his stomach, gasping, “She can see me!”

“The snake?” Eli whispered, panic rising to his throat.

“No,” Ismail managed through gritted teeth and Eli realized he meant the witch. His panic doubled. He didn’t have his electrifier or any of his weapons. His hand found a rock and he grasped onto it, expecting to feel claws against his throat any moment.

“Block her out! Your mind is so strong,” he said to Ismail. “Fight her to the end!”

He placed a hand on Ismail’s back so he knew he wasn’t alone, and pushed thoughts of Ev’r to the front of his mind so that the scullion would see them.

After a few moments, Ismail’s shaking lessened and he managed to lift up to his hands and knees. When he spoke his voice was back to military.

“Proceed on objective: obtaining the portal.”

He started to move again and Eli followed, relieved Ismail was up and also terrified that anything could be stalking them through the tunnel darkness. He would never have imagined that terror and relief could occur simultaneously, but somehow his brain was managing it. They passed through onto a narrow bridge that led over another well where something foul-smelling scuttled around in the dark. This place reminded him of the walks he used to take with his gran’pa down the Wintress River boardwalk. He used to peer into all the concrete blocks they passed. The blocks had small holes where creatures – frogs and crabs, spiders and other random, leggy things – would hide, except now he felt like an insect trapped down inside the blocks with all the creepy-crawlies hunting him.

They went through another tunnel and came out onto a third ledge. Eli’s navigation beeped in his ear – they were almost at the spot.

Ismail nudged him and pointed down. Some distance below them, large wrapped cocoons hung in various places around a net-like lair. Eli saw some of the cocoons were squirming and it gave him a sickening feeling of being shrunken in significance, shunted down the food chain. Beyond the cocoons, a towering pile of treasures had been hoarded on a platform. According to the navigation, the painting was there.

The walls of the well trembled, and a croaking-growling sound echoed from beneath them. Ismail and Eli hunched lower as a set of meaty, multi-jointed arms and legs pushed out from a hole in the wall, dragging through a bulbous sack body. At first Eli thought the creature was an arachnid, but then it stood up on two of its limbs and climbed along the lines of its net lair, carrying the bulk of its weight at the front. Wriggling things seemed to be constantly hatching out of its stretched skin and it used a clawed hand to rake them off and stuff them into its mouth. Black mucus dribbled down its chin. He’d never seen a predator like it, not even in his nightmares. The crimson glow of its eyes fell on the closest cocoon and it scuttled forward and ripped it open. Eli flinched at the piercing scream that exploded into the silence, cut off to a gurgle. The creature fed with a noisy guzzling and crunching of bones.

“I’ll draw it away. You retrieve the portal and evacuate,” Ismail whispered to Eli.

“No, it’s too dangerous. It’ll catch you,” Eli murmured back. “We’ll wait for it to leave again.”

“There’s no time for that,” Ismail insisted. “I can out-move it.”

“I’m not leaving here without you,” Eli said, looking the scullion in the eye.

Ismail clenched his jaw with frustration. “Just focus on the mission – get the portal and keep running. I’ll find you. I can hear your thoughts.”

Ismail climbed further up the well to a higher ledge. He glanced down at Eli, who tensed, readying himself, then the scullion stood and Eli’s stomach sunk to his toes.

“Hey!” Ismail shouted.

The monster spun around, head first and then body, and its eyes fell like spotlights on Ismail. It opened a mouth with many rows of razor teeth and released a scream that sounded like a cyclone blasting through the well. Ismail turned and darted through a hole in the wall. The creature bounded up after him, passing within inches of Eli, who shrank back with his arms over his head. It vanished, and Eli didn’t let a second pass. He whirred his wings and flew over the net lair to the platform behind the cocoons. He ran to the treasure stash and climbed into it, flinging handfuls of gold and jewels aside searching for the painting. His hands closed over something wooden and he dragged out a frame. He stared at the picture inside it and his heart leaped – tiny pictures making up a whole – Englan Chrisholm’s style. Grasping the frame against him, he ran to the edge of the platform and started to fly off, but then he doubled back. He couldn’t leave people trapped in these cocoons. Using a gold-handled blade he found in the stash, he cut open the first squirming cocoon. Unfortunately the creature inside was a monstrous mutant, who instantly tried to strangle him – his act of kindness backfiring in a major way.

A terrible scream from above distracted the mutant – Eli looked up to see the monster had returned and its gleaming red eyes were set on him. He let out a shriek of hysterical laughter and beat his wings frantically, ripping out of the mutant’s grasp and crashing over to the ledge on the wall. He scuttled into the first hole he saw. It was extremely cramped and he had to drag himself along, pushing the frame in front of him. He felt the ground shaking and looked back to see the creatures eye-lights beaming in at him. Eli felt sure that something that big couldn’t follow him in there, but then he cursed as it started to compact its disjointed body and squeeze itself inside. The small space did, however, drastically reduce its speed and Eli managed to keep ahead of it. Then the tunnel started to widen out, until he could run hunched over and then straighten up, clutching the frame to his chest. The deft creature began to gain as Eli barged through the darkness, smashing through thick webs and stumbling over fallen rocks and hoarded bones. He felt it closing in fast, and a thought came to him – was it better to keep running and get attacked from the back or turn and land the first blow? He skidded to a stop and swung around.

Strangely, the monster had already stopped some way behind him and stood there rocking backward and forward on its haunches as though it wanted to come after him, but something was preventing it. It gave a sudden shriek and tried to go back the way they’d come, but then changed its mind and charged at him instead. Eli gasped, stabbing at it with the gold-handled blade that he’d taken with him, but the monster completely bypassed him and kept going. Eli realized then that it was frightened, and that whatever this creature – the most terrifying creature he’d ever seen – was afraid of was now chasing him too.

He took off after the monster, hearing a sound start up in the air behind them – a frenzied, high-pitched squealing, mixed with a chattering and a whirr of so many wings that it sounded like a stampede of hooves. It echoed everywhere, making it impossible to know where it was coming from. They came to a split in the tunnel where it veered off into two. The monster hesitated and lunged one way, then it released a horrendous, blood-curdling scream. Eli lunged away from it and saw a swarm of glowing bugs with pixie faces, large bulging eyes, sharp fangs and scorpion tails engulfing the creature. Eli had seen pictures of them before. They were Hiltees – piranha pixie-breeds. They reduced the monster to dust in seconds.

Eli didn’t wait for them to start on him. He took off sprinting, crashing through the other tunnel, hearing them flying right behind him. He stared at the navigation in front of his eyes and saw the end of the tunnel was coming up fast. He didn’t slow, barging out of the tunnel and into a much wider corridor, similar to where he had first landed. Eli spotted a large stone statue standing nearby and, using all his adrenalin-enhanced strength, knocked it over and dragged it across to block the hole he’d come through. Moments later, he heard the Hiltees hit it and start drilling.

“Imp-breed!”

He turned and saw Ismail hunched at the end of the corridor. He snatched up the portal and raced toward the scullion, whose leg was badly ripped up and gushing blood.

“Hiltees. They’re coming,” Eli gasped.

“Leave me! Get to the elevator!” Ismail shouted.

“No!” He grabbed hold of Ismail and forced the scullion to move. Together they staggered in the direction of the elevator, following the route Diamond had mapped out for them.

Finally they saw the elevator up ahead. The rusted doors were hanging open. Eli could have literally screamed with joy, except that he was terrified it would bring some kind of horrendous mutant smashing up out of the ground to stop them. The gnashing whirr of the Hiltees echoed close behind them. They raced forward and crashed into the elevator. Eli threw open the control panel and connected it to his external computer system. He started typing override codes, reconnecting the elevator to Scorpia’s power core. When nothing seemed to be working, a terrible thought occurred to him – maybe an ebomb had already taken out the power core. The swarm of Hiltees appeared at the end of the corridor ahead of them.

“Get us moving, soldier!” Ismail yelled.

Eli’s hands flew over the keypad as he hit it with everything he had. He almost passed out with relief when the lights of the elevator flickered on and the doors screeched shut.
Now to get it moving.
The Hiltees hit the elevator hard, rattling it violently as they started to eat their way through. Ismail slammed his boot against a hole as it opened up. He yelled, the ferocious little creatures biting through into his foot. Eli smashed in the last code and the elevator gave a shake and a shudder, then started moving. At first it crawled, then gathered momentum, and soon they were rocketing out of control. Before Eli could even muster a scream, the elevator collided with a ceiling and the doors blasted open.