Chapter 41
41
As was often the case, Cyn found Willow doing important leader-type stuff. Where the floor had fractured away near a stairwell, she was sighting downward through binoculars and helping direct the route. Her blue hair made the biotechie easy to find, as did the winged Mads beside her, and Toother the faithful nanodog. She’d never ridden Toother and that seemed to suit them both fine. Orm had once dreamed of a cavalry of nanodogs and their riders but with no one else sharing his vision, that was unlikely to ever happen.
Cyn picked her way closer to the trio.
This close to the Rad Zone where a missile had exploded, the buildings were spattered with holes, dust, and debris, and were partially collapsed. There was no real edge here. The Edge where the quarter ended had crumbled. It was an area of devastation, but Ground Floor was within reach. For some, this was a frightening prospect. After surviving in the relatively untouched upper stories of the scrapers, with canned food in most cupboards, clean sheets on a hundred thousand empty beds, and with water to be found in every second apartment along with weapons, books, and a dozen random luxuries, they had a fear of the wilderness.
Down there your boots rested upon concrete that rested on actual soil.
Descending deeper after Ground Floor meant entering the bowels of the world.
What if the rumors of packs of feral nanodogs were true?
What if the Ghoul Lords had spread lies and were waiting for them?
The true ground of Earth had become their boogie man and the place where monsters dwelled. Her friends who made up this convoy would’ve been thought monsters back in the days before the invasion. Friends. Cyn let a smile curve her mouth. After days of travel, when she did nothing terrible most had been reassured. They’d seen her current weakness before the Lure, and of course Vargr and Rutger treated her like she was their sexy goddess.
She’d shaken hands with or listened to more than a few of them, had breakfast chats where they’d apologized for thinking her mad or dangerous. Though mad and dangerous had its plusses. She eyed the minute trail of red scales winding up her arm. Who’d ever heard of a red mermaid?
Maybe mad and dangerous was her destiny? Dealing with evil demanded unconventional actions and doing things in ways that no one else could imagine. These beasters too were unconventional to extremes. They could change this world. She needed posters saying things like Kill a Ghoul Lord, Save the World .
Willow remained at the top of the wrecked stairwell where the pretty glass-and-iron railing guarding the edge was either missing or dangling over the space of the stairwell.
“I have a concern, Willow. Is there time to speak to me?”
“Sure.” She swung, smiling, and held out her hand. “Let’s go over here. Mads will take care of everything for a while.” She tossed her partner the binoculars. “What’s the problem?”
“It’s Maura. I’ve heard that beasters never suffer from radiation sickness?”
“Well, no one has tested that to the fullest by going into the middle of anything like this.” She gestured toward where the destruction was worst, and the scrapers were piles of rubble.
“No, but it’s based on observed fact, right?”
“Yes.”
She kicked a rock out past what was left of a wall, watched it spiral down and out of sight. “Maura is human. How will we protect her?”
“We’ve begun already. She’s taking iodine tablets. I check her daily. I found in the past that I could cure radiation sickness in humans, if it was caught early. We can’t get her a radiation proof suit, but I’m informed that breathing in the dust and eating contaminated food is one of the easiest ways to get high doses, so once we reach Ground, we’ll be fetching her a vehicle, sealing it, and going through the Rad Zone fast. Toother and some of the beasters will tow it if we haven’t a fueled-up functioning engine. She’ll come out once a day only, for a brief period, then back in again.”
“How long will that be?”
“Two days. We hope. Three perhaps.”
“Okay. Good.” There was nothing more that could be done then. She frowned and offered Willow her hand to shake. “I want to say sorry for thinking you a bad person for being my judge that day.”
“I see.” She looked at Cyn’s hand then reached over and shook it firmly. “I think we owe each other an apology.” Then she grinned. “I’m glad you did this. You are so very much a part of this endeavor. We will make it through because of you. I’m certain of it.”
A lump formed in her throat. How had she ever thought this woman awful? Those words had pricked tears to her eyes and made her feel both humble and welcome. “Thanks, Willow.”
She should say more but was lost as to what or how, and she contented herself with just looking happy.
A few hours later, on the way down that staircase, she went blind.
She gasped. Her stomach flip-flopped.
This was not from dust or lack of light or anything she could make sense of. A cloud had descended and wiped out her vision. She felt for a wall, found nothing, and had to lower herself to the stairs and pray nobody would knock her over the edge. Vertigo was affecting her too with the unseen world out there swaying, spinning, and making her dizzy.
Little Mo chose that moment to clatter up and touch her arm. “I detect oncoming stinkers, Miss Cyn.”
“Fuck!” She clutched her head and tried to think. “Alert everyone, Mo.” She gulped down nausea. “Stinkers are coming!” Mo ran off saying the warning as loudly as his speakers would accommodate.
People heard him and shouted it too, and ahead she heard curses then the first sounds of guns firing. The shooting came closer, ascending the stairs.
And she was helpless. Without sight she was nothing. Maybe she’d just lost the night vision that beasters had? Maybe if she waited there’d be some light?
“What’s wrong, Cyn?” Vargr asked and she heard him lower himself to her right.
“I can’t see anything .”
“Okay. Okay.” He clasped her shoulder. “Stay there. Everything is in hand. Who’s going ahead, Rutger? She can’t see. You or me?”
She didn’t hear the answer properly, but Vargr clearly stayed and she heard the creak of leather as he unholstered a weapon or two. “It’s all fine. They’re handling this.”
The noises of fighting continued for another minute at least, and it felt like an eternity, even though she’d been counting under her breath.
“Seems to be all done. I can’t see any wounded, just two dead stinkers below us. Here.” He rose and pulled at her arm, hauling her up. “Still nothing?”
“No.” She shook her head, resting her hand on his hip, maybe, some part of him. She wobbled for a second, and again her equilibrium lurched and made it feel as if she were on a storm-tossed ship’s deck. Without any visual clues, balancing was difficult.
They waited awhile longer and shouts came up the stairs announcing that below was safe.
“Let’s go slow… Wait. I’ll fly you down.”
At that he scooped her up, settled her in his arms and launched. The rush of air told her they were moving, though there was no change in shadow or light, even when she fully opened her eyes. That was the scariest. She might be strong and determined, but without eyes she was useless. She shut them again, scared that something would hit her eyes when she couldn’t see it coming.
The voices grew louder and there was a bump or two and a shuffle of boots as Vargr landed. He lowered her to her feet, keeping hold of her waist.
“All good down here?”
“Yes.” That was Rutger’s voice. “How are you, Cyn?”
“Blind.” She frowned, swallowed, hating this. “I don’t know why,” she added, pre-empting any questions about how this had happened. “It just went from one second to the next.”
“I’m going to find Willow. Here, hold Rutger’s hand.”
She heard Vargr walk away. Willow was her best hope, she supposed. Some solution must be possible?
“There’s a seat over here. This used to be an office, but the wall’s been blown apart. Let’s sit.”
With Rutger leading her over, she found the seat. Sitting down again felt so impossibly stupid, so pathetic, so… “I hate this.”
“Open your eyes. Let me look at them.”
She opened them, trying to be nonchalant yet knowing he was looking, and she still saw nothing .
“You can’t see me?”
“No. Nothing.”
Blind in the middle of this upside-down dangerous world. Lord. She had to fix this. Or she’d die, or end up being led around on a rope. Cyn pressed her fingers to her temple and massaged.
“Okay.” The seat creaked. “I’ll tell you what happened. Five stinkers came running in. None of us got a single wound. We killed three and two ran off. Which is unusual. They generally keep attacking for longer. Run off only after they’ve stabbed at a few of us or tried hard to.”
“Hmmm.” She strived to think this through but was too busy worrying about her eyes.
“Willow is talking to Vargr now. She was higher up the stairs than you, only just arrived.”
She knew this.
“It was pretty awesome,” he continued. “Those electric bolts whizzing about from Kiko’s gun as well as bullets, us taking them down like they were mosquitoes. Wing-soldiers taking off and firing from above. Vincent grabbed one that was likely already a goner and smacked it into a wall, then someone blew more holes in it. Perfect pandemonium, but good skills. We killed it. Fucking killed it.”
The satisfaction in his voice was obvious.
“So don’t worry about being absent.”
She made a noise that she hoped showed some appreciation.
With the softest voice he added, almost as if to himself, “They know not the power in their hands. Are these the new gods we were looking for?”
She lowered her head as if to look at her hands. Rutger was Worshipper Quarter, but she’d never thought him serious about that Doctrine of Logical Gods. What he’d said was sacrilegious, surely, and presumptuous but also strangely… logical.
A few minutes later, a whole lot of people were assembling around her, discussing her, asking her questions then deferring to Rutger or Vargr or Willow.
“I’m not brainless!” she snapped after trying to not be affected by being turned into an object so readily. “I can’t see, that’s all. What can we do about it, and who is here?”
Rutger was still beside her. “There’s Willow, me, Vargr, and a few others like Maura, who are concerned about what has happened to you.” He clicked his fingers, and she heard movement. “Most are going to step away now to give you some privacy.” He waited a moment then continued, “Everyone else is off doing other things. Checking the perimeter and so on. This area is secure, Cyn. And so, people, what are we doing?”
“I am…” Willow spoke up, calmly, from very nearby, and she put her hand on Cyn’s arm, “I’m going to examine you again. I’ll sit on the other side of you. I want to see what those little red nanomachines of yours are up to.”
Nothing good, she guessed. “Sure.” She rested her back against the seat and told herself to calm down, to let Willow do her biotechie thing.
Willow’s cool hands and the close-to-inaudible whispering she did was oddly comforting, as was the settling of a heavy stillness about them, with the only other sounds being distant and in the background.
She said nothing and mentally counted out the seconds. The unbending precision of numbers helped her to stop worrying, and soon her heartbeat slowed and thudded less emphatically.
“Okay. I’m done,” Willow told her, lifting away her hands. “I’ve done as thorough an examination as I can. This time I was really careful, and I found a few nanites in your head area. They might be new, even. Mostly in your eyes, but that’s to be expected with the red in them. The problem is, I’m not medically trained.”
“And?” That had not sounded as if Willow was sure of any diagnosis. “Can you see why I’ve lost my sight?”
She sighed. “No. Once again I can’t detect anything wrong, apart from the low nanites up top.”
Fuck.
“What I am going to do is talk to as many as I can who have some medical training.”
“There’s Vincent. The rockman. He was a paramedic or a nurse,” Vargr suggested.
She should’ve thought of him herself, although… “What could he tell us, when he doesn’t have anything to go on? No facts.”
“I don’t know, Cyn.” Willow patted her hand. “But I will ask him. Sometimes you don’t know, what you don’t know.”
“I’ll go with you to talk.” Again that was Vargr.
She was feeling left out and needed to contribute something . Cyn caught her lip in her teeth and thought. “What about Maura? If this is the nanites misbehaving, might she know something?”
“Yes. That’s also a good idea.” From the sounds Willow had moved away. “I want to make it clear that you are very important to me, and to us. To all of us. And I may not have any training, but there have been too many problems. To me, you seem ill, even if I don’t know why or how.”
“And yet Cyn can heal anything?” Vincent was here. He sounded puzzled, which didn’t surprise her.
She raised her head, trying to track where he was. “I had thought so, yes.” Wrong, however.
“Okay. I’m going to talk this through with Vincent and whoever comes forward, see if there is anyone else with ideas. We will camp here and start looking for a car to put Maura in. Rutger, you can take care of Cyn?”
So this was Ground Floor? She’d not realized with all the fuss.
And there was Willow doing her organizing, only this time she, herself, was a cog in the wheel and could do nothing. She stood and waited for Rutger to find her and guide her.
She must get better. Had to.
Blessedly, she did improve. By the time camp was set up and a car had been pulled in from a roadway, she could see light and movement. An hour later she was even better.
She stayed awake while others slept, with Rutger and Vargr to either side among the sleeping bags they’d laid out. By dusk her vision was perfect.
The relief was such that she’d cried lying there, staring up at the stairwell they’d descended, watching the dust materialize and float down through the muted sunlight. Light that’d dared to find a way in through the punctured walls.
“I can see,” she told Vargr when he stirred, and he smiled and hugged her.
Rutger woke and joined him, slapping both her and Vargr on the back. “Hell, yeah.”
“Now we just have to figure out why it happened.” Vargr wriggled out from the embrace and stood. “I know Willow has been racking her brains. She’s like a terrier.”
“For me?”
“Of course for you.” Rutger edged her top higher up her shoulders, readjusted the fall of the long shirt where it reached her butt. “You’re the star of this show. Don’t you know?”
She grimaced. Her? She’d brought them reasons to come here, to seek out the Big Daddy vehicle but the star was a stretch.
They were all stars, she decided later, while watching everyone who’d been called by Willow gather around, after they broke their fast. This first meal at dusk should not get the breakfast label. It irked her and needed a new name like brupper or dinfast.
Willow clapped her hands together. “Time for a small meeting. Sit please, my chosen ones.” They laughed at that. She waited until everyone found a chair and sat. This area must have been a waiting area of sorts, as there were innumerable soft sofas and pretty wrought iron chairs, though all of them suffered from layers of dirt and mold. There was even hair on one sofa. Long fair, zigzag hair that she saw Vincent brush away. As it fell, she saw that it was clearly over a foot long. Nanodogs? What else.
This wide thoroughfare had once been a sheltered arcade. Shops to one side, these seats, bus stops. Past the kerb was a roadway bare of vehicles, spotted with chunks of concrete that’d dropped from above, long ago when the buildings shook. A few desiccated bodies. Nothing dangerous, though any Safety and Health organization would be frowning and writing out citations by the dozens.
Nothing dangerous, yet.
Nanodogs were possible here.
Oops. Everyone waited for her. She plonked her butt between Rutger and Vargr on a blue floral couch, completing the circle.
“I aim to get to the bottom of this, Cyn.” Their leader leaned forward with her hands clasped between her knees while she eyed each of them, one after the other, before circling back to Cyn. “Imagine this as an episode of House and that you have the most unimaginable disease.”
She squinted at Willow. A joke? House would discover she had an allergy to the apocalypse or something and prescribe ten ccs of mouse bites, or werewolf blood, or something equally bizarre.
“Me? My sight returned. I am well.”
“I know. But you were not for a while. You’ve been lame, had headaches, all sorts of odd things, then you recover. Vincent was the one who came up with the best theory.”
Vincent opened his mouth to speak.
Oh ye gods. She almost facepalmed and definitely groaned softly.
“Cyn,” Willow began sternly, “I may have almost had you executed. You may be a dangerous loose cannon, at times, however, you are also the reason we are here. None of us can forget that. You will sit still and listen.”
“Not really. Big Daddy is why we are here, the research vehicle?—”
“You will sit still and listen .”
Her eyebrows shot up. Rutger chuckled, and Vargr snorted, obviously delighted by her being chastised. She tamped down her normal ornery response and swallowed. “Yes ma’am. I will shut up now.”
“Good.” Willow sent her an almost straight-lipped smile that barely reached her eyes. “I was truthful. You are the only one who has escaped from the Top, or who has killed a Ghoul Lord, and the only one who has ever shown any ability to manipulate the Lure. Little Mo followed you for a reason, and we will get to Big Daddy and find out the whys to all of this, as well as hopefully find out a lot more about the nanite experiment we were subjected to. However, now…”
Well, that was what she’d been telling herself all this time. Just, she guessed she’d had her own doubts. Still did.
Willow slapped her thighs. “Keep going, Vincent.”
“I talked to several people after Willow asked me this. I’m no doctor either, but when someone’s body can heal anything…” He stared straight at Cyn. “I get itchy when I hear they’ve gone lame and blind for no reason and then healed. Blind for no visible reason? When a biotechie feels nothing wrong inside you, to me it says that maybe whatever is injuring you is invisible to her, maybe it’s hurting you over and over, and then you’re healing that damage. Yes?”
Her mouth fell slightly open. “Keep going.” Her mind was trying to dig up possibilities.
“Vargr and Rutger said the headaches began after you killed the Ghoul Lord. One of those who guarded you back then said you had what seemed to be many wounds, tiny ones, for a short time after they arrested you that day.”
She felt a chill run down her, the blood leaving her face, as she realized where this was heading.
“I think maybe you have bits of Ghoul Lord inside you, and that is why Willow cannot see them. She can’t test this on anyone else. It’s just a theory.”
A terrible, horrible dark theory. Yeah, one of those.
“Okay.” She reached out to either side, and both her males held a hand. Then she took that deep breath she needed before trying to think up answers to what he’d said. There was nothing sensible, though. How did you pull something from her that no one could feel or see? Was he right?
“If it’s unfeelable… and we know of no drugs to use…” She frowned. Why didn’t her nanites kill it off?
“Wait. Before you go off worrying, Maura has an idea also. Maura?” Willow turned to her.
“Hi, Cyn.”
“Hi. You look good, girl.” Calling her girl was kinda silly, but she did look good. She smiled wryly. Maura was probably healthier than she was.
Her white hair had been neatly cropped since they’d last spoken. She and Locke had been off doing the dirty far more than necessary, but that was all fine and fun. It wasn’t that she’d neglected her human, as if she could own Maura, but she did feel wrong for not seeking her out.
“So, do you think I have GL in me?” Tentacles in me. Ugh. The fuckers. She’d kill it with fire if she had to. “Do you have a solution?”
“I think you do have something from it inside you, yes. It’s the one solution that makes sense. I’m sorry, Cyn.” She clasped her hands together before her and rested her chin on them. “A solution though? I don’t have an exact one. A precise one. I have worked on nanites a lot in the past, and I’m not sure it is they that cure you. Rather it’s more likely whatever DNA you were given is boosting your immune system. That genetic material however is not inside your head anymore, according to Willow. Or very little of it is. That makes me go ah-hah.”
“A good ah-hah ?”
“Sort of.”
Both her guys tensed, and Vargr sat forward. “Go on.”
Maura straightened. “ If we can get the nanites and the genetic material they carry into your head area, they might augment your healing there. Assuming the symptoms and nanite scarcity mean the GL has migrated there. Your blindness, according to Vincent, makes it sound as if you suffered from some brain or optic nerve damage?”
“Yes.” He agreed. “The limping and the headaches could also be purely from neurological damage. It ties together.”
Tentacles were in her head. Fuuuuck. “So you can do this? Inject more of them up here?” She freed her hand from Rutger and tapped her head.
“No.” Maura twisted her mouth. “Not here, anyway, but get me to Big Daddy, and maybe we can grow some new nanites from your blood. Maybe we can inject them into your CNS. Or, and this is a bigger maybe, I might be able to get some chemical indicators that Willow can detect to stick to the GL material that has probably migrated to your brain? And then she might be able to destroy it.”
“Lots of ifs and maybes.”
“Yes.” Maura nodded. “But as long as you keep healing the damage, we have a good chance. It gives us time.”
The alleged damage. They didn’t know for sure.
“Time.” As long as this was all correct, she had a chance.
As long as they even found Big Daddy. And so she likely had GL tentacles, or fragments of them, growing in her brain… wriggling. She shivered. If they were wrong about this, she might be doomed? Worry about what is in front of you, remember? She pushed to her feet, bringing Rutger and Vargr with her.
“I feel this is a good time to say thank you, to all of you.” Because I might not be around much longer. However I will be nauseatingly positive and cheerful. “We’re going to get to this Big Daddy, you know. With people like you, that is a given. We will succeed.”
They had risen along with her, and she let her gaze drift around the circle. “You’re all fucking awesome.”
They didn’t cheer or carry on as if this were a celebratory party after a sports match, but they did approach her to say a few words. The first one to offer their hand was Vincent, and she moved to take it, then hesitated. Tentacle wrigglers, what if…
He zeroed in on his hand where it almost touched hers and she withdrew a smidgen then looked at him. He’d think she was rejecting him, maybe, but she was torn by the revelation that she might infect others.
She’d held his hand before so he’d get the message, wouldn’t he? It’s not you, it’s me.
“I’m sorry…” she began. “What if I?—”
He grabbed her hand and shook it. “If you were going to do that, you would’ve already. I’ve got worse things to think about than that, anyway. So shut up and shake hands.”
“Oh.”
Though the others had observed the exchange, none of them stepped away. They hugged her or shook her hand. It was strange to feel this almost daring inclusiveness, but she’d take it any day over being alone—with tentacle wrigglers inside her brain or without.
Yay team.
Go to Big Daddy. Grow nanites. Fix me. All the ducks were in a row.
Nothing was ever this simple.