Seeker

  “He wouldn’t finish my training,” John went on, “but you can.” He was looking at her in that way ordinary people did, as though she would suddenly feel what he was feeling and understand what was important to him, just by looking into his eyes.

  But she could not feel what John was feeling. She was the Young Dread. She had existed for hundreds of years in her fifteen-year life, and her duties were far different than his. She and the other Dreads took turns stretching out through time, waking to oversee the oaths of new Seekers, holding themselves apart from humanity, making just decisions. This apprentice was as new as a fresh shoot of grass. He could not possibly understand.

  Except … her mind had responded. Except many decisions were not just. Justice has become a shadowy thing, and so many things were done while I was asleep.

  She had moved away from John then and stood staring into the fire. Eventually he’d left.

  After the apprentice had gone, she’d had one thought for a very long time: What am I?

  Now, all alone on the estate, the Young Dread entered the workshop with her pail of milk. She had stopped thinking of ways to kill the Middle Dread and was thinking instead of what John had said. And when she had her small meal that afternoon, the thought in her mind was this: I wonder if John will come back. What will I do if he does?

  CHAPTER 35

  QUIN

  Quin hit the bystander on the Bridge so hard they were both thrown to the pavement. She continued moving, rolling over his body and into the legs of several other pedestrians. John was in the doorway of her house, just yards away, and somewhere in the house behind him was that stone dagger. She’d left that dagger and most of her memory in the past, and she’d sworn they would stay there.

  She pulled herself up to her knees but found she couldn’t stand. Her head was pounding from slamming it into John’s forehead a few moments ago, and it took her a second to realize that the Asian boy she’d knocked over was, in fact, holding on to her.

  “Hey!” he said, clutching her more tightly. “What are you doing?”

  Quin realized he was a boy only if by “boy” one meant “very tall teenager with scary clothing.” She tried to pull herself free but only succeeded in pulling him closer. One of her shirtsleeves had gotten pushed up in her fall, and the sharp metal studs of the boy’s bracelet were cutting into her left wrist. She was starting to bleed, and the pain made her look down at her arm. Next to her own wrist, she could see the boy’s wrist, with its thick bracelet, and beneath the bracelet, on the underside of his arm, was a dagger-shaped scar imprinted on his flesh. With a sick jolt, Quin noticed the identical scar on her own wrist, in the spot she tried very hard never to see.

  She stopped struggling finally and looked at the boy’s face. He had jewelry in his nose and through his eyebrow, and his hair was dyed to look like a leopard. But none of these surface details mattered. He was …

  He was looking at her as well.

  “Quin,” he breathed. His hands released her.

  From the corner of her eye, Quin saw John in the doorway of her house. And there were other men in the shadows nearby. She untangled herself from the Asian boy whose name she did not actually know, and got back to her feet, pulling her sleeve back into place as she did so. She was already moving, her hands automatically feeling at her waist, as though expecting to find weapons there. No weapons allowed on the Bridge, her mind chattered. You know this. So why did it feel like part of her arm was missing?

  Quin glanced back to see John and those other men moving through the crowds. The next few minutes were a blur. A herd of Western tourists was choking traffic on the thoroughfare. She pushed her way through them, sensing every moment that John’s men were getting closer. Then she was falling down an airlift, moving so quickly the lift hardly had time to catch her before she moved out onto a lower level, where there was loud music and denser crowds. She caught glimpses of her pursuers, farther behind her now.

  Another airlift down, then out into more frightening swarms of visitors outside the cheap drug bars. She kept turning to the right, realizing too late that her pursuers were herding her in that direction.

  She moved frantically down another airlift, this one smaller and open only to Bridge residents. When she stepped off this time, she was in an empty passage and a man was running toward her from a stairway. She ran left—the only direction available to her—and found herself moving down a wide, dark corridor.

  This was a part of the Bridge she had never seen before. It was empty of humans, inhabited only by huge pieces of mechanical equipment that filled the space with a rhythmic vibration and the hiss of steam. The man’s footsteps were behind her, getting closer, the sound of his shoes combining with the pulse of the machinery. He would catch her, the past would catch her, and it was happening so easily. She hadn’t even cried out for help.

  Quin’s eyes shut without her realizing. Even running for her life, she lost herself for a moment, or perhaps it was many moments. When she forced her eyes open, she was at the very end of the hall, among huge air-conditioning units giving off a heat that smelled of engine oil. She wasn’t running anymore. She turned slowly, discovering there were men all around her. She was cornered.

  There were five of them. A few were young, but all were much older and larger than she was. She recognized the one closest to her—she had glimpsed his face, with its growth of dark stubble, during the chase.

  Her back was against one of the giant air-conditioning units. The men were in a loose semicircle around her. A few had knives at their waists, even though the screeners at the Bridge entrances were supposed to catch anything dangerous before it entered the Transit Bridge. Quin sensed herself preparing for a fight, as though instinct were taking over.

  The one with the stubbly chin threw something to her. On reflex, she caught it. The moment her hand touched it in that dim light, she realized she was now holding the stone dagger. She threw it away as though it had burned her. The man intercepted it before it hit the floor, and he shoved the dagger back into her hand.

  “Please don’t throw it again,” Stubble Chin told her.

  Quin felt the cool stone as her fingers wrapped around the dagger’s handgrip.

  “Tell me you understand,” he said.

  Quin nodded.

  “Very good. You will demonstrate,” he ordered.

  “Demonstrate?” she asked.

  He gestured to the dagger.

  “Demonstrate what? I don’t know how. Does—does John know what you’re doing?”

  Despite the obvious fact that these men worked for John, some part of her mind told her that everything would be all right if she could only put down the dagger and find him. John was desperate—she’d seen that in his eyes—but he didn’t want to hurt her. He loved her.

  The men parted slightly to allow her a view behind them. John was there, crouched against a wall. He was staring at her, his eyes tortured.

  “John …” She took a step toward him, but the men held her back.

  “Please, Quin,” he said. “I need you to do this. I need you to help me. Don’t say no.”

  She was shaking her head. “I can’t … I don’t know how …”

  “You can remember, like you remembered me.” His voice was pleading. “You can show me. Just show me.”

  She could feel herself growing hysterical. “John, please! That’s not me anymore.”

  “Quin, I need this.”

  “I can’t!” she said, hearing how wild her voice sounded but helpless to change it. “I just can’t.”

  John forced his eyes away from her. Staring at the floor, he nodded slightly. Then his head was falling into his hands as his men closed in, hiding him from view as before. Quin was dizzy again.

  “Demonstrate,” Stubble Chin ordered.

  “I can’t!” she screamed.

  He swung his fist at her. Automatically Quin ducked to the side. His arm crashed into the metal of the air-conditioning unit behind her, making a tremendo
us noise. He roared with pain, and one of the other men grabbed her from behind, pinning her arms at her back.

  Stubble Chin swung at her with his other arm. She was unable to pull free, and this time his fist connected with her stomach, doubling her over in a burst of pain. She couldn’t breathe. He had knocked the air out of her. The past can stay in the past. Master Tan had promised her. She did not have to remember.

  The man standing behind her released her arms, sending her crashing to the floor. There was another jolt of pain from the old wound in her shoulder, and her forehead was throbbing where she had smashed it into John’s head. And the floor—it was touching her skin. Dirt, germs, all of it. Panic was taking hold.

  “I’m just a healer,” she managed to say. “Why—”

  “Show us,” the man said again.

  She stared up at him, the dagger still in her hand. The thought came to her suddenly: There’s something missing!

  “I can’t,” she gasped.

  Above the rumble of the machines around them, she heard a high-pitched noise. The fifth man, who’d been standing behind the others, stepped forward. Across his chest was strapped a large, ugly object that looked something like a small cannon. It was made of an iridescent metal that sparkled faintly, even in the dim ambient light. As the high squeal coming out of it grew louder, there was a crackle of electricity around its barrel.

  “You don’t want to use that,” Quin said, the words coming on reflex. She had promised herself she would never hold this stone dagger again. She had also promised, she was quite sure, never again to lay eyes on that weapon across the man’s chest. She felt her terror rising. Colored sparks …

  On the concrete floor, Quin gripped the dagger. I could use this to get out of here. If only … If only …

  The man ran his hand along the side of the weapon, and its hum intensified. There were dozens of tiny openings across the face of the thing. She saw a fork of electricity crawl over the man’s fingers as they hovered near the trigger.

  “I’ll show you,” she whispered. “I’ll show you.”

  Two men helped her to her feet. There was a movement among the other men. John was edging closer to listen. His face was ashen, wounded, as though the men had beaten him instead of her.

  “These dials,” she said, touching the stone rings in the handgrip with the symbols carved into them. There were six rings, with a different set of symbols around each. “You turn them. They are your … coordinates.” She said the words without planning them. It was like tapping into a script that existed only subconsciously. Fear of death—not death, something worse! her mind told her—was bringing the explanation to the surface. “First, like this”—she lined up a set of symbols along the dials, somehow knowing they were correct—“which will take you There.”

  “What do you mean, ‘There’?” the man closest to her asked.

  “Shh,” said John. His eyes met hers, and she saw shame in them, but something else as well: he looked immensely grateful. He seemed again like a drowning man, one who had just been thrown a life vest. “Let her finish. That symbol on all dials, to go There. Please continue, Quin.”

  She looked at the dagger and the dials, but her explanation had dried up. All eyes were on her, waiting for her to go on, but there was something else she needed if she were going to show them anything more. Something for my other hand, she thought. He doesn’t want to hurt me; I can see he doesn’t want to hurt me. I could help him … For a moment, she was frozen as she stood there holding the stone dagger. If I help him, I will become whatever I was before. And John, he will become …

  I’m thinking! she scolded herself. It’s going to make me fail. She forced her mind to clear, and all at once saw a course of action. She was still free to choose what she wanted.

  “I turn the dials,” she said, gripping the dagger harder, “and then I take it in both hands and lift it above my head.” John was watching her raptly. “I swing it, like this—”

  She brought the stone dagger down as hard as she could, straight toward Stubble Chin’s neck. His arms came up to protect himself too late. The butt of the weapon crashed into his throat.

  Quin found her hands moving to the man’s waistband on reflex, and then his knife was in her right hand. She kicked his body toward the other men. A second man dodged around Stubble Chin’s flailing form and grabbed for Quin’s arm. She whipped her right hand up, slashing him across the throat with the first man’s knife.

  There was a high whine, hurting her ears, and then sparks fired from the weapon attached to the fifth man’s chest.

  Disruptor! her mind screamed.

  She dropped down onto the floor crawling on hands and knees. Someone was grabbing her, trying to pull her to her feet. A weight collapsed onto her, then rolled away. A man’s arms and legs were thrashing on the floor as rainbow-colored electric sparks danced around his head and shoulders.

  John was yelling at them not to hurt her. Another man was grabbing her and she was lifted off the ground. She slashed with her knife, but someone else caught her arm. She kicked, and the man dropped her. Then someone was kneeling on her back, pressing her face against the floor. She was getting dizzy again. She stabbed out with the knife, felt it sink into a shoe. A man screamed, but still she couldn’t move.

  The fight was going on without her somehow. Blows were being exchanged. The man pinning her down put a wet cloth to her face. A smell hit her, like medicine and gasoline mixed together. She held her breath and struggled, fighting a wave of dizziness. The knife had been ripped out of her hand. She was trying to push the man off her. She was desperate to take in a breath. She began to inhale. Whatever was on the cloth was entering her lungs—

  Then the weight was lifted. She was on her feet, and someone’s arm was around her waist. She shook her head, breathed deeply.

  “Come on,” the person holding her whispered.

  It was the boy with leopard hair. He broke into a run, pulling her along. It took a moment for her to get her legs to work, but then she was running beside him. The sounds continued behind them as they sprinted down the dark corridor, toward a lighted area ahead.

  “Who are they fighting?” she asked.

  “My friend Brian. Probably chasing him now. But he’s faster than he looks and knows the Bridge much better than they do.”

  He pulled her past the airlifts and into the corridor stretching along the opposite side of the Bridge.

  “They were going to, you know, sparks …” Quin said as he pushed her to the right, into a small alley.

  They were walking now, through a space too narrow to move any faster. They dodged right again, then squeezed through a tiny opening between a huge gas tank and a concrete wall. He pulled her to a stop and edged past her. At the base of the wall there was a large patch of darker black, which looked like an opening of some sort.

  “Here,” he said, still quietly. “This shaft goes down. There’s a ladder inside. Grab hold after me.”

  He ducked, and a moment later disappeared through the tunnel. Quin followed, feeling her way into the darkness and onto a metal ladder. As she began to climb down the rungs, she could just make out his shape below her, moving quickly. She tried to keep up with him. At one point there was a chink of light across the rungs, a crack in the wall. Looking through it, she could see water. They were moving along the inside of the Bridge’s skin.

  The ladder shifted right and left a few times, and after they had gone a very long way, Quin saw open air below. They were coming out the bottom of the Bridge.

  “Careful,” he told her. “The last part is tricky.”

  Beneath her, he reached out of the ladder shaft, caught hold of something, and hoisted himself out of sight. Quin crawled down more rungs and found a break in the casing of the shaft, opening onto daylight. Leaning her head through, she saw him perched inside a framework of metal rafters. He grabbed her hand and pulled her up next to him. They were standing together among the rafters, Victoria Harbor a hundred and fifty
feet below, the bulk of the Transit Bridge above.

  He led her along a narrow metal beam. As he walked in front of her, Quin distracted herself from the drop beneath them by studying his clothing. He was dressed like a member of one of the gangs that bought drugs legally from Bridge suppliers and sold them illegally on the streets of the city outside.

  “How did you know this was here?” she asked.

  “I jump off things,” he said without turning around, “and I climb around inside them, and sometimes I swim under them. I have lots of hiding places in Hong Kong.”

  He led her through the rafters to a place where sheets of plastic had been lashed to metal crossbeams to make a kind of bird’s nest perch where someone could sit almost comfortably.

  “Will someone else find us here?” Quin asked him. “I mean, people you … work with?” After escaping one gang, she was not eager to encounter another.

  “No one else likes it here,” he answered. “They’re worried about falling to their death or something.” He glanced down at the water of the harbor. One wrong step, and either of them would be tumbling into oblivion. He smiled. “Personally, I find it relaxing.”

  Quin climbed onto the plastic nest, noticing as she did that both of her hands were covered in blood. And there was filth all over her body. Now that she was safe for a few moments, she could sense the microbes on her skin.

  “I need to wash,” she whispered to herself, “I need to wash.” She took a deep breath. She would not let herself panic again.

  The boy was studying her, running one of his hands through that short and strange hair. She noticed his knuckles were torn in several places.

  “You’re different, aren’t you?” he asked her.

  “I’m so sorry to ask you this,” she said, “but can you tell me your name?”

  CHAPTER 36