The Forgotten City (8 page)

*****

Together the trackers walked, each wearing full military garb and body armor, down the Steps of Consequence, to a square landing that led through the Hero’s Walk to Oberon’s Arena where the fight-in would take place. The square was packed to capacity, and their presence drew immediate attention that spread like fueled fire through the masses. Soon everyone had turned to stare. Copernicus scanned over the crowd, over the people who would fight for the title of Boss, standing with their support groups. Most races and sub-races were represented, with the exception of marine-breeds, plant-breeds and spectral-breeds – and there were no machine-breeds of any type.

Copernicus kept the trackers moving, leading them to the edge of the crowd. It shifted and a path opened for them to walk through. It should have felt powerful, stepping up to a crowd of this magnitude and having it roll back and part before him – a sea of flaring body-heat, fear and hope, anxiety and excitement crashing in sparking red-orange waves – but it didn’t. There were too many staring eyes, too many thoughts and feelings and questions pressing in on him, pushing down on him. He hated the attention, but circumstances were what they were and either he had to be here now or somewhere else, hiding – and he didn’t hide. Copernicus knew he was many things – most of them ugly – but he was not a coward. He looked for Santana and his United Resistance soldiers, but couldn’t see or sense any of them. It was strange that they hadn’t arrived yet.

The trackers started through the crowd, which pushed back further to let them through. Everyone avoided Copernicus’ eyes, but stared at his back when he’d passed, staying on him all the way to the front where the gangsters and their animals had assembled. Many of them he recognized. They all glared him down with expressions that said he was a rat and a dog and would never be anything but that. Their hostility rolled off him without leaving a mark.

Each of the gangs were accounted for, except for the Greenway Galleys. Christy Shawe’s absence left a big hole, figuratively and literally. Copernicus had spoken to him just after the Lancaster Square announcement, trying to convince him not to attend. He’d told Shawe the truth – as soon as he and the Galleys got there, Shawe’s ego would make him challenge Caesar, and then he would most definitely lose. His eyesight was poor and he had never been quick. Galleys were made to fight in groups, back to back, relying on their strength and endurance to wear down their enemy. If Christy could land a punch, it would be deadly, but Caesar was too fast for that, and although Christy’s skin was armor-tough, Caesar’s claws were the sharpest of retractile razors and he would keep at Shawe until he hit an artery and bled him out. Christy needed to keep his head down now and challenge later when circumstances were more in his favor. Fortunately, and for the first time ever, Christy Shawe had listened.

Finally the team pushed through to the front of the gangsters, where the Pride, decked out in their gold and purple, stood on the steps leading up to the Hero’s Walk, a long ceilingless hallway that the gladiators used to pass through to get to the amphitheater. At the front of the Pride were Caesar’s eight daughters and his cousin Smudge, with her black panther, Inski, sitting beside her. Woman and cat narrowed their yellow eyes, exactly in sync.

Behind them, the walls of the Walk were hung with the rarest and most valuable art of Scorpia, guarded by statues of all the Ar Antarian kings, the first to the last, from Oberon U to Miron U XI. Half of the statues had been smashed up and replaced with carved lions. The head of one of the stone kings rolled off as they stood there, and fell through a window in the Walk, crashing many stories to Level 2 below. A very distant boom sounded a minute later. Copernicus glanced at Jude. He could see Jude was angered, but on the surface still remained cool and composed. Diega, on the other hand, made no effort at all to hide her contempt, both for the setting and for the gangsters around her. She was keeping her electrifier primed. The colors of her rainbow skin flashed warnings, her eyes blazing with hostility. She was standing nearer to Jude than she had in a long time. Since the bust-up of their relationship, they had been like negatively charged magnets. Eli stood close to Copernicus’ elbow on one side with Silho on the other. The Oscuri Trackers, fractured in places but united in purpose, stepped up to the Pride.

Moments later, the shadows of the Hero’s Walk stirred and Caesar K-Ruz appeared, flanked by his great lions, his young son at his side, looking like a miniature version of his father. At the sight of the Pride King, sound just evaporated. Copernicus completely blanked his expression and straightened his form. He could see Eli’s wings trembling under his shirt, where he kept them bound with bandages to stop himself spontaneously taking flight during moments of stress. Caesar came to the front of the Walk where he stood, unnaturally still, casting a huge lion shadow over the wall behind him. The very tip of the shadow lion’s tail twitched and Caesar narrowed his darkly-rimmed golden eyes. Copernicus wasn’t swayed by his theatrics and mind games. To him Caesar still looked like he had when they were kids – except now he’d grown a beard and a massive ego. On either side of where the Pride King stood, two gigantic holograms of Caesar sparked to life. Copernicus could see the gangsters had set up a city-wide feedback system that would project holograms of the event down through all the levels.

Caesar spoke with his smooth Crook’d Town accent. Without raising his voice, his words carried easily across the entire square.

“You, who have come here today, believe yourselves worthy to be the bosses of your people. You will fight for this honor and you will fight for your land. Every level of Scorpia 650 and above will today be allocated. All major skyways and mass-transfer elevators are neutral territory. No fighting shall take place in neutral territory. This is the gangster way and it will be respected or the gangs will punish you. Every level below 650 is no man’s land – enter at your own risk – as is the Matadori Desert from the city wall to the boundary wall.

“I will lay the first claim to land – the Crook’d Town Pride claims Level 1 Sirenseron, Level 2 Standingbar and Level 3 Sejon – and all of Crook’d Town will remain ours from Oldfield to the Greenway borderline. Is there anyone here who wishes to challenge me on this?”

Copernicus sensed the heat of each of his team members flare, but he felt calm. The moment had come.

He stepped forward and said, “I challenge you.”

Even the silence fell silent as though everyone was not only holding their tongues, but now also their breath. A hologram of Copernicus opened up beside that of Caesar.

“But not for land. I challenge you for rights over the machine-breeds. I make claim to their race, and I will fight for them. It is the gangster way.”

Caesar’s eyebrows flickered with surprise. He hadn’t expected this, and if he refused it would look as though he didn’t believe in his own law. Copernicus could see Caesar was thinking fast, but not fast enough. He met Copernicus’ eyes and started to accept.

“I challenge you for Level 1, 2, 3 –
and
Crook’d Town!” Another voice boomed out over the crowd. Copernicus turned to see Christy Shawe and what remained of the Greenway Galleys stomping toward them. Immediately all the gathered gangsters raised their voices, yelling their calls and holding up their hand signs, their animals growling, shrieking and snapping. It would be a rumble of the biggest Bosses of their time.

“I accept,” Caesar snarled.

Copernicus cursed. He felt like shooting Shawe dead on the spot. He was sabotaging their one chance to save the machine-breeds without resorting to all-out battle. The former gangster king was closing in fast on Caesar, making it clear this wouldn’t be going down in the arena. It was happening right here, right now and there would be nothing civilized about it. Shawe would die.

Caesar gestured his son aside and backed further into the Hero’s Walk, getting one of the walls behind him – smart compared to Shawe, whose only strategy was to clench his fists. In response, Caesar flicked out his claws with the sound of ten blades being drawn from their sheaths. He lowered his stance, ready to lunge.

Copernicus turned to the trackers and said, “Go to Plan B. We hit the machine-breed prison camps while the Pride is occupied. Move out! Go!”

They started to press back through the surging crowd, but then something in the wall behind K-Ruz seized Copernicus’ enhanced sense of heat. It looked as though a fire had blazed to life inside the actual rock. The intensity grew until the painting hanging in front of the inferno exploded out, taking half the brickwork with it, and leaving a crater rift and sheer drop to Level 2 below. Both Christy and Caesar were blasted sideways, with burning debris crashing down on the Pride and other gangs inciting a howling, panicking stampede.

Amidst the chaos, Copernicus saw Caesar’s little son with his clothes ablaze. He was running, screaming, fueling the flames – heading toward the broken wall and the drop. His mother chased behind him, but she was too slow, one leg smashed up by the fallout.

Copernicus took off, leaping up the stairs, ripping his jacket free as he ran. He caught the kid on the edge of the rift and threw the jacket over him, tackling him to the ground – rolling him over and over until he’d smothered the fire. Half a second later Caesar was there, grabbing the boy out of his arms, terror in his eyes. He dragged back the jacket. His son was sobbing, his clothes scorched and back burned, but he was alive. Caesar’s eyes lifted to Copernicus, then the shrieking mother struck and threw herself down on top of her boy. The general crowd had dispersed, everyone yelling and fleeing. Those who had not escaped lay twisted, burning. The gangsters were starting to regather and return, not strangers to violence and death.

Copernicus heard Eli’s sudden shout for him and spun around. His first thought on the explosion had been
bomb
, but now he saw they were actually under attack. Foreign soldiers stood among them, throwing flames and breathing fire, reducing people to piles of ash. Copernicus’ eyes zeroed in on their firebird dragon bloodline marks.
Omarian.
But how could it be? The Wraith had said Silho was the last Omarian left. Clearly she was in error and now they were here with the intention to harm.

Copernicus scanned the confusion for Silho. He spotted Christy Shawe pinned under a fallen column but fighting to free himself. Diega stood close by, in the middle of the battle, trading electrifier shots for fire blasts with one of the Omarian attackers. Further behind her, on the other side of the platform, Eli, Jude and Silho had retreated behind a lion statue. He could see the main bulk of Omarians, directed by their commander, closing fast around them. The leader’s eyes were fixed on Silho and he was moving in from the side, keeping in her blind spot. Copernicus sensed in that moment that they were there for Silho and everyone else was just white noise.

Bands of fear and fury tightened across his chest. He grabbed his electrifier and opened fire, blasting two of the enemy in the back. Others turned, coming at him, sending burning missiles roaring his way. He lunged sideways and rolled back to his feet, catching sight of the Omarian leader barging faster toward Silho. She was distracted by the forward-pressing attack, but SevenM, now perched on Jude’s shoulder, saw him coming from behind.

The robot alerted Jude and he whipped around and ran forward to intercept the leader’s path. The Omarian sidestepped his attack, then raised his hand, driving a dagger deep into Jude’s chest, cutting straight through the heavy-duty armor. The Ar Antarian instantly fell. Eli saw him go down and tried to run to him, but the leader smashed him aside, ramming him face-first into the rock wall. Eli folded in on himself and lay where he fell.

The Omarian reached Silho and grabbed her from behind, his arm tight around her neck. She struggled violently, changing to light-form vision, but she couldn’t shake him. Something was wrong with her skills. They weren’t working and he was overwhelming her, a disturbing look of savage ecstasy on his face. Every instinct and emotion drove Copernicus forward. He flew toward them, boots crashing over rubble and bodies alike. The battle fell silent around him and all he heard was his own heart thudding. He leaped over a fallen column and saw, from the corner of his eye, Caesar jumping beside him. They landed without breaking their stride, closing the distance fast.

The Omarian leader turned and saw them coming. He hurled a fireball into their faces. It knocked them back, but Copernicus rolled immediately to his feet, numb to the pain, his eyes on Silho. He ducked beneath another blast and surged forward. A droning sound vibrated through the air, and all Copernicus’ strength rushed from his body. He slumped to his knees, too weak even to stand. He’d experienced this before with Silho – light-form vision – but not like this, never this strong. Caesar thudded down incapacitated beside him.

The enemy leader gestured to his men to finish them and two Omarian warriors closed in, draining their life-force. Copernicus heard Silho scream for him, the sound echoing and fading, as the Omarian stopped in front of him, spitting sparks from his mouth, ready to exhale Copernicus’ life-force when it surged through him and out. The warrior looked him right in the eyes and sneered, then the Omarian’s face exploded as Christy Shawe’s fist punched through his head. Gore splattered down on Copernicus. The Omarian draining Caesar lashed out and stabbed Shawe in the back with a dagger that looked as though it was attached to his arm. Shawe whirled around, smashed him to the ground and stomped him dead.

Free from the light-form, Copernicus staggered to his feet. He spotted the Omarian leader on the move, dragging Silho toward the shattered wall, toward the edge of the drop. He shoved through the mass of gangsters battling Omarians and ran toward them, but he was moving so slowly, his body weakened. He grunted, digging deeply into the reserves of his mental strength, pushing every last ounce of his remaining physical power into getting to Silho. He could see the leader’s arm tightening around her neck, choking the life out of her. Copernicus’ own throat constricted in response.