City of Dust Read online

  ‘It tried,’ I corrected. ‘Maybe it knew a better way.’

  The thought had us scanning the darkness with fresh zeal.

  ‘Which one?’ I breathed, looking up and down the tunnel. One passage led back towards the giant flying insects tunnel; while the other probably led directly back towards the beast itself. And possibly Aelia.

  We stared at one another; sometimes there were no words.

  Chapter 15

  We stole into the darkness. I led the way, with Max at my shoulder, his crossbow primed. We’d already injured and infuriated the animal which, in my experience, meant it would do one of two things: retreat or retaliate.

  Somehow, I had the feeling a horned Minotaurus might not be the retreating type, although this part of the tunnel was empty, and it wasn’t long before we reached another fork.

  I glanced back at Max’s strained face.

  ‘Left?’ I nodded briefly to the turning just ahead.

  The egg timer in the corner of the screen was glowing bright red now, and I could see anticipation written all over the faces of the watching Pantheonites. Briefly I wondered what would happen if we hadn’t reached the centre by the time the sand was through. I was pretty sure an honourable pardon wasn’t in the game plan.

  We crept forward as quickly and silently as we could, pausing every few steps to listen. The Pantheonites on the screens were revelling in our nightmare. And, ironically, their twisted delight quietened my own fear. We had to outplay them and that meant controlling everything we could.

  At first there was nothing but us and the claustrophobic silence, but then slowly, there was something else. A presence more than breathing. It was close now. Up ahead. In the black. I pushed a hand out to stay Max, and we listened intently. The hairs on the backs of my arms rose as though caught by a rare northerly wind. He could feel it too. I could tell by the way he reached out to touch the small of my back.

  I took another few careful paces forward, aware of a strange curtain hanging on the air. Afterwards I realized it was our adrenaline, as perceptible as a light mist. Then there was a pained, grating bellow, and I clenched every muscle I possessed.

  ‘Now!’ I hissed.

  We sprinted forward towards the left turn with all the energy I had remaining. Releasing a furious howl, the creature also started forward, matching my pace with violent, thunderous leaps. And those few seconds running headlong into its path were a test of sheer guttural will over instinct.

  As Max and I rounded the corner first, it released another vicious, angry bellow that caused my head to throb. It was the sort of sound you would expect a monster from hell to make, as though every pain it had ever endured was being poured into that one vibration. And then the terrific pounding was behind us, the entire cage shuddering, as though colossal weights were being thrown repetitively onto a metallic floor.

  We sprinted as though our feet had grown tiny Apollo wings, down the new tunnel, which was long, black and contrast, completely uninviting.

  ‘Maybe we should have turned back!’ Max threw, as we pelted into the darkness.

  ‘And trap ourselves until Cassius chose to make us scara-beetle fodder?’ I scathed. ‘Where’s the fun in that?’

  We were halfway down the corridor, the flickering ceiling screens chasing our flying feet, the crowds going crazy with excitement.

  I gritted my teeth. We were not going to die here, not after everything. It was not the final resting place for two Outsider hearts.

  And then it was there. The faintest of lights, just ahead.

  ‘Max!’ I yelled, screwing up my eyes.

  ‘Aelia!’ Max panted simultaneously.

  A shot of neat adrenaline doused my veins. It was the centre, finally, flickering with hope. And we were within touching distance. We could do it, we could reach her, I was sure of it.

  Together, we flew towards the meshed ball cage, suspended at the end of the corridor, trying not to listen to the terrific pounding behind us. I gasped, as Aelia became clearer. We were so close, but for some reason I could only see the top half of her body. Then I understood. Her meshed ball cage was slowly disappearing into a black pit beneath her.

  ‘Tal!’ she yelled, her voice filled with unusual panic.

  ‘We’re coming,’ I yelled. ‘Hang on.’

  And we were nearly there. Nearly. When it happened. A thick grill dropped just in front of her cage, sealing her off, leaving us in a dead end. With the Minotaur behind.

  ‘No!’ I screamed, running into the metallic curtain and throwing all my weight at it. The collision was so hard, I felt the entire left side of my body shudder, bruising instantly, but I didn’t care.

  She smiled, despite everything.

  ‘You always were so wild!’ she chastised, as though we were anywhere but here, facing our own gruesome deaths.

  ‘Don’t you dare!’ I yelled, as Max also threw his shoulder into the thick metal, which vibrated but didn’t budge at all.

  ‘OK … I’m sorry then!’ she yelled, climbing higher up the inside of her disappearing ball.

  I nodded once, swallowing past the rock that had somehow lodged in my throat. Her iris-blue eyes were full, their mocking light finally gone as, together, we faced reality. Eyes that were so like her brother’s. August’s face swam in front of mine, and the pain I’d buried for twelve whole months threatened to burst from my chest. This was it. I would never see him again. But it didn’t matter; nothing mattered any more.

  ‘Tal …’

  The defeat in Max’s whisper cut me like a knife as, slowly, I turned around. The Minotaurus now stood barely ten paces from us, its chiselled horns lowered, and dark blood matted around the shoulder wound Max had inflicted. Its eyes glowed with an amber hatred, and its heaving, muscular body was poised for charging. For killing. And we were trapped.

  Max held up his crossbow and levelled it. It looked a pitiful defence now we were so close, and the beast tossed its snorting, hulking head as though it knew it too. It pawed the ground, playing with us, and the crowds in the screens above our heads fell silent, ready to witness a noble death. A game well played, they would say. Worthy combatants. Until the next.

  How long had it taken for this world to descend into hell again? Was this the inevitability? That no matter how much time passed, and how advanced the human race considered itself, there remained, at its core, a primal roar for blood that would never evolve? Was that why August had walked away? Why he didn’t come to find me?

  My chest tightened with each emotional barb, infusing my veins with poison, as the Minotaurus threw its head back once more, celebrating its certain victory. The crowds watched in hushed awe, their faces shining with barely repressed excitement.

  ‘Tal, you have to know …’ Max began, taking my hand.

  ‘No!’ I shook him off violently. ‘You don’t say goodbye! Not now. Not ever!’

  Quick as a flash, I grabbed a poison-tipped dart and loaded my tiny treehouse dart tube. It released within a gnat’s breath, and the tiny arrow flew with perfect precision towards the beast’s thigh.

  But with one agile swing of its thick arm, the beast batted the tiny missile to one side. It fell to the floor with a clatter. A bizarre grimace twisted its thick, steaming, ringed nose before it snorted angrily, and started bearing down on us.

  ‘Always so feckin’ … angry!’ Max seethed, firing another arrow from his crossbow.

  It buried itself in its left foot, making the beast stare downwards in disbelief, before bellowing its fury to the ceiling, fracturing the glass of the screen. Then it broke into a violent lumbering run, directly at us.

  ‘Now?’ Max forced.

  ‘No!’ I yelled, channelling everything for one last fight.

  ‘I’m … not … done!’

  I flew into my own run. Straight towards the huge, terrifying creature. And just as it seemed we must collide, I leapt as though my life depended on it, catching the slim protruding edges of the fractured ceiling screens. My fingers cur
led around the thin rail, giving me just enough leverage to swing through and land the full force of my tree-running legs in the middle of the bull’s forehead. It was enough unexpected impact to make the animal stagger on its plate-like feet. And then I dropped to my feet in front of it.

  ‘It doesn’t matter …’ I yelled, conscious of a sea of aghast expressions through the shattered screens, ‘… how big … how ugly … or how warped!’ I railed, reaching down to swipe the fallen dart lying on the floor, as the bull regained its balance and lowered its frenetic eyes to bellow in my face.

  ‘Tal!’

  I was only dimly aware of Max’s terror as another of his arrows buried itself in the beast’s right shoulder.

  ‘Feral. Means. Free!’

  And with my last yell I rammed the poisoned dart into the beast’s powerful chest, as it simultaneously drove its chiselled horns down and forward in a brutal blow that stole my air.

  I flew backwards as though I was falling, conscious of the world in counter-motion; of the shocked faces of the crowd; of the bull being pulled away by another violent force; and finally of the pudgy, horrified face of an old friend. A gentle giant who gazed at me, before raining his full rage down on the Minotaurus.

  And then finally I was conscious of Max, cradling me, as the world around us fell apart.

  ‘Now?’ he whispered.

  There was such pain in his eyes, veiling them like the mist through the trees in Arafel. His forest-green eyes. Instant balm to the hurricane tearing up my chest. I tried to smile as it all shrank to a dot, no bigger than the wingspan of my distorted butterfly. It was like looking down my father’s microscope, the one he’d kept in his study, salvaged from the old-world days. He called it his insect eye, a technological instrument to see the world as tiny life might.

  ‘Nature and technology can have a healthy symbiotic relationship, Talia.’

  His voice echoed as clearly as though it were him cradling me instead. I teetered at the edge, looking down into the black underwater tunnel. I always detested this bit. The dark before the light. I was conscious of his warm breath next to my cheek, whispering how the wild orchids were just in bloom; how the Arafel fields were gleaming gold and that the trees were whispering and waiting. Waiting and whispering.

  ‘A harmonious balance can be struck, if science is a friend to nature.’

  I exhaled, aware it was getting dark. That his words were fading, because that was in the before, when he was alive. When all I knew was the sweet lullaby of the breeze through the baobab leaves.

  Chapter 16

  ‘Keep it in the flame – it needs to be totally sterilized. And rip this up – I have to stem the bleeding … OK, penetrating chest wound, thorax, fractured sternum, superficial and deep fascia, intercostal muscles …’

  I knew the voice, but it was so distant, like Arafel. I couldn’t work out why. Then there was another.

  ‘She was unstoppable, like wildfire! And she wouldn’t … let me …’

  There was a poignant pause, and then a wry chuckle.

  ‘She does have spirit. And something more besides. Like all the forces of nature somehow got wrapped up in her small body.

  ‘A real feral cat!’

  There was a short, dry laugh.

  ‘It was one of things that fascinated him. August always said there was intrinsic coding in Outsider DNA that the vaccine to suppress independent will had mostly eradicated. Free will or a feral instinct. Call it what you will. It’s why we’ve had such problems motivating the older Prolets.’

  ‘Don’t say that name! If he’d kept his promise, we wouldn’t have ended up inside Pantheon, inside that Ludi hell-cage in the first place! He’s dead as far as I’m concerned, or will be if I ever see him again.’

  There was a heavy silence, filled only with the distant harmony. Like the softest lullaby. Was I dying? Or already dead?

  ‘I’m still his sister, Max … but as far as the feral thing goes, well, it’s not every girl who will run headlong into combat against a Minotaurus. Can you pass me that tube? Did you clean it? And one of your arrow points, nothing you’ve laced with that bat poison. I need to find the second intercostal space mid-clavicular line. Then this needs to stay in until the air is released.

  ‘Of course, the downside is she does have an annoying tendency to rush headlong into every situation like it’s some personal crusade.’

  ‘It is,’ Max confirmed quietly. ‘It couldn’t be more personal for Tal. And she’d rather die fighting, than spend one moment doubting what being an Outsider represents. That’s the real legacy she’s protecting. As she said, feral means free.’

  ‘And you’ll always be there … at her back? If you can’t be at her side?’

  The voices faded.

  ***

  I was vaguely aware of the cavern walls, of the red-streaked rock, shiny with damp and blackened where the lanterns hung. The pungent scent was familiar, and a rumble filled the air occasionally. Then there was a sharp pain in my chest, followed by a cool hand.

  ‘All done.’

  It was the whisper of an angel in my feverish darkness, between the clattering echo of long-hooked claws. It was the same clattering from my nightmares, but I knew this pain-imbued hell didn’t belong to the realm of dreams. Despite the snatches of distant harmonies. I knew that much. But as for the rest …

  ***

  It was tepid water that welcomed me back to the claustrophobic, underground world. And I wished immediately to leave it again.

  My head pounded, while my chest felt as though the swarm of the giant, pincer-snapping insects were clawing to get out. Quite apart from the entire weight of a Cyclops balancing on top of it. Cyclops. I had to be slipping in and out of a fevered dream world again because there was a Cyclops staring down at me. Holding me. Rocking me?

  ‘Unus?’ I croaked in disbelief.

  Surely, he should have disappeared now my lips had shaped his name, the way August used to fade from my dreams. Although once I had hung on long enough to glimpse a different outside reflected in his iris-blues. Two lives entwined in a parallel world. His skin next to mine every night, and a need so real it suffocated every logical thought.

  ‘The whole damned world is waiting.’

  His words were burned into my memory, as though he had engraved them with his own bare hands, but what use was a whole damned world stripped back to shadows?

  ‘Because of this, and the new investigation required, I would recommend a temporary suspension of all new Prolet privileges and reinstatement of the existing Pantheonite system.’

  My muscles tightened in protest, dragging me back to grim reality.

  ‘Unus,’ I tried again.

  Even my voice sounded different, like an imposter had swallowed it.

  I coughed and spluttered, and some of the liquid ran down my chin as I willed my eyelids to respond. There was a sliver of light, and I nearly choked again.

  ‘Is that … really …?’ I gasped, the irony of having passed through a painful death to find a mammoth pudgy Cyclops clutching me in the afterlife not entirely lost.

  ‘Unus here. Unus friend.’

  His stilted voice clarified the rhythmic swaying, and my shattered body filled with weak relief.

  ‘Unus,’ I managed again, brokenly.

  I rested my heavy head against his warmth as fragmented memories, like falling snowflakes, threatened to make everything white again. A wave of grief welled up, and for a second struggled to spill over.

  Had any of it been worth it?

  ‘Max?’ I struggled to force his name over my cracked lips. ‘Ae-lia?’

  ‘We’re all here, Tal.’ Max’s low tone soothed.

  I winced as I relaxed – the pain inside was still hot and raw.

  ‘Well, all except the Minotaurus … You and Unus kind of ensured his was a one-off Ludi performance.’

  Guilt and relief swelled my veins like flood water.

  ‘How did we get here?’ I asked, peeling my eye
s back so I could make better sense of my surroundings.

  We were moving down a tunnel. And there was no Minotaur, no Ludi Labyrinth – only Unus, Aelia, Max and me.

  ‘How did we? What happened …?’

  My chest felt like a hundred hot knives were being slowly inserted and twisted. Unus’s ponderous walk, though his natural gait, was rhythmic agony to endure.

  ‘Can … can I walk?’ I gasped.

  ‘No,’ came Aelia’s non-negotiable response, ‘not yet anyway. We only just made it out. If Unus hadn’t found us when he did, the Minotaurus would have finished what he started with the two of you, and I would have been a strix appetizer.

  ‘As it is, Livia made her biggest Ludi mistake in putting you in there with us, didn’t she, big man?’

  I squinted up to see a shy grin spread across Unus’s wide milky face.

  ‘You should have seen it, Tal,’ Max interjected in an awed voice. ‘Unus used the Minotaurus as a battering ram against the iron door. We got to Aelia just after she dropped into the strix pit.’

  ‘Yeah, that part was fun,’ she quipped drily. ‘Waiting for Boudica and her tribe to rescue my arse from a pack of hungry rat-owls!’

  I scowled.

  ‘But,’ she teased, ‘your timing was pretty good actually.’

  ‘The grill gave way just as Aelia’s cage touched down inside the strix pit,’ Max explained. ‘They surrounded her, but the keeping pen fell apart as Unus jumped in! I’ve never heard a crash like it. I thought the entire maze was going to collapse. And the strix couldn’t shift fast enough. They’d been penned in, half-starved. Of course, they didn’t dare take on Unus, even for fresh meat. They’re now running amok through the maze of tunnels beneath the Flavium. It’s enough to distract Cassius’s guards for a while anyway.’

  ‘And Livia?’ I forced through my fog of pain.

  ‘Livia couldn’t get the labyrinth doors open quickly enough for the guards. She must be livid! She’s not exactly used to losing,’ Aelia scorned.

  I didn’t miss the hollow note in her voice, and wondered if she was thinking about the Book of Arafel. My head felt so woolly.