The Drowned Cities

  At the sight of the half-man, though, their demeanors changed. One of them whistled in surprise. Another, the oldest of the group, a man with small crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes, ran his hand over the inert monster.

  “Haven’t seen one of these since we fought up north,” he said. “Nice work.”

  Ocho and the rest of the boys straightened at the compliment. The older man motioned to his Eagles.

  “We’ll take it from here.”

  They gathered up the ropes to haul the drugged half-man away. Lieutenant Sayle waved to Ocho. “Get the girl. We’re done here for now.”

  But the Eagle held up a hand. “The girl came with the half-man?” he asked. “They slipped in together?”

  Sayle nodded unwillingly.

  “We’ll take her, too. The Colonel will want her.”

  Ocho could tell that the lieutenant wanted to argue, but he bit it down, and then Ocho caught sight of something more worrying. Ghost was staring at the girl. Ocho could practically see the gears turning in the soldier boy’s head.

  He went over and grabbed the boy. “Outside, soldier,” he said. “We’re all going outside.”

  Ghost resisted. Ocho gave him a shove. One of the Eagles grabbed the castoff girl and hefted her over his shoulder. She flopped limply, drugged and stupid with the opium that Ocho had given her. He couldn’t even tell if she was really there anymore.

  Ocho wondered what would happen to her. Maybe she’d be better off in the Colonel’s hands. At least she was out of the LT’s control. That had to be something, he told himself. As she was carried away, limp like a sack of potatoes, Ocho tried hard to believe it, and then he tried to figure out why he cared.

  41

  A NEEDLE SLID into Tool’s shoulder, flooding him with endorphins and amphetamines. He came alive. Awake and alive. Ready for war.

  Men all around. Many of them. Deep voices, echoing dully against hard marble walls and tile floors. Men. Adults. Not just child soldiers from the swamps. Steel and iron and gunpowder. Tobacco smoke. The smells and sounds of a war machine’s beating heart.

  Tool remembered the darts hitting, thinking for a moment that they were bullets and that it would be difficult to survive so much lead, and then he’d been surprised at how little each bullet hurt… Just before the tranquilizers washed over him like a tidal wave.

  Captured then. But still alive. He listened to their words:

  “K Canal… Angel Company… Lost fifteen at Constitution.”

  The sounds of an army besieged. It had been a long time since Tool stood in the heart of a command center, but all of it was so familiar that it might as well have been yesterday. Their words and movements told him everything he needed to know about their present circumstance.

  “Artillery support… sorties into North Potomac 6.”

  Tension in the adviser’s voices. Worried mutters as they relayed reports from various fronts. Fear. It was rank in the room. They were all going to die, and they knew it. The United Patriot Front found itself hard-pressed. Its Colonel was outmatched, and his soldier boys were inadequate.

  Tool waited until he sensed one of military men coming close, smelled his sweat and fear, and then he opened his eyes and lunged.

  He slammed up against iron shackles.

  The man scuttled back, swearing. “It’s awake!”

  Metal bit into Tool’s arms and ankles. He was still groggy from whatever tranquilizer they’d used on him. He hadn’t even realized he was bound.

  Tool roared and lunged again, testing the chains, tearing at them. Military men flattened themselves against marbled columns and frescoed walls, eyes wide with fear. Tool strained to reach them and they shrank away, but the bonds held.

  Tool lifted his hands to study the inch-thick iron that bound his wrists. More shackles clamped his ankles. All the chains were sunk deep into the floor.

  The floor around him was covered with intricate colored tiles as ancient as the building that housed them, but here at his feet, there was new gray concrete. And his iron shackles were embedded in it.

  Tool could sit or squat, but he could not rise to stand fully erect. He tested the chains again.

  “You cannot escape.”

  Tool recognized the speaker instantly. The man’s face looked down on the canals all across the UPF’s territory. Tool had been forced to salute that face each time he entered the ring fights. How long ago was that? It seemed as if it had been years, and yet it was only weeks since he had fought against men and coywolv and panthers at the behest of the Colonel. Only weeks since he had fought free. And now, he found himself the Colonel’s prisoner once again.

  Tool growled. “You think these small chains will hold me, Colonel?” He set his feet and leaned against his bonds. His muscles bulged.

  The concrete began to crack around his feet. Everyone stepped back, horrified. A few of the soldiers pulled out pistols and pointed them, but Glenn Stern just smiled and waved them off.

  Tool bared his teeth and pulled harder, every tendon straining, muscles tearing. Concrete popped and cracked and turned to dust around the chains. Tool’s skin began to shred, but the manacles neither broke nor slipped.

  “You’ll rip your hands off if you keep doing that,” Stern said.

  Tool let himself relax and studied his bonds again. The chains weren’t only embedded in concrete; they seemed to be connected to something larger below, something stronger than stone.

  “They’re looped around the steel beams of the basement supports,” the Colonel explained. “It took quite a lot of work to dig up all that stone and marble, but it seems that I anticipated you adequately.”

  “You planned to capture me?”

  “If you recall, I already did capture you. I’d hoped to speak with you weeks and weeks ago, but then you escaped.”

  “How inconvenient for you.”

  The Colonel shrugged. “I suppose. But I have you now, and apparently I judged your capacity correctly.”

  As they spoke, the rest of the Colonel’s staff began daring to move. The bustle of the command center slowly resumed, hushed conversations as they leaned over desks and discussed their maps and troops. But Tool noticed how they all looked to the Colonel with increased respect. He hadn’t flinched in the face of Tool’s threat, while everyone around him ducked for safety.

  Colonel Glenn Stern might not have been the finest tactician, but he was a leader. It was no surprise that people followed. He had a faith in himself that appeared unshakeable. People would follow him, even when he was wrong or foolish.

  Tool had met similar leaders in his time. Men and women who commanded through the force of their personality and whose words drove their followers forward in frenzied waves. In Tool’s experience, they created armies with a great deal of passion, and very little competence.

  Tool settled back, accepting that he could not escape by brute force. He surveyed the command bunker, parsing it for clues that would help him survive this new challenge, seeking the cracks in Glenn Stern’s army.

  The room was ancient. A chamber filled with marble columns and fading frescoes on the vaulted ceilings. Statues lined the walls, men and women cast in marble and bronze, but they had been pushed aside to accommodate the war room and its functionaries.

  “Pardon the accommodations,” the Colonel said. “We’ve found it expedient to decamp from the upper chambers.” An explosion echoed above. The entire building seemed to shake, and the bare electric bulbs strung across the ceiling flickered. “The crypt is stable,” the Colonel explained. “Now that they’ve dropped so much rubble down on top, it will be difficult for them to reach us, but it’s not an ideal location.”

  Tool assessed the group’s assets. A few computer screens flickered and glowed, most likely charged by the same solar systems that kept the lightbulbs glowing, and that hadn’t yet been bombed out of existence. The computers would likely be gathering information from the Colonel’s battlefields and providing connection to the outside world wher
e he traded his scavenge for the bullets and explosives that kept him in the war.

  When Tool had still warred on behalf of his patron, tablets and computers had connected them to ancient satellites hurtling overhead, to gliders and drones that described the tactical realm, and allowed them to rain fire down from above. Here, there were only a few electronic devices. The rest of the place was dominated by dozens of chalkboards hanging on the walls or set up on stands, scratched with numbers. Other parts of the room were papered with maps of the Drowned Cities, its coastline and jungles, hand-inked by soldier surveyors, and tacked with small nails, each painted red or green or blue, to describe the larger battlefield and the UPF’s many enemies.

  A quick glance at the boards reinforced what Tool already suspected about the Colonel’s position and chances for survival. The number of inexperienced child soldiers that the UPF was using only served to confirm it. Some of the children even stood in the command center itself, gawky and thin in comparison to their larger and better-fed leaders.

  Tool’s eyes fell on a lump of a person, lying chained to one of the columns in the room.

  Mahlia.

  The Colonel followed his gaze. “You seem to have fared better than your compatriot.”

  “What do you want, Colonel?”

  “You’re quite a puzzle. It took a long time for us to discover what you were, and how you survived so long. Questions we had to ask.” The Colonel nodded at Tool’s neck, where a code was stamped. “We had to go all the way back to your country of origin, and then trace forward. Quite a lot of effort.”

  “You know nothing about me.”

  Stern wasn’t deterred. “I’ve only seen an augment throw off its conditioning once. It was one of those beasts that the peacekeepers used. A common breed, not like you. It lost its entire platoon, then turned coward and ran from battle. It harried us for a little while, but even that one only survived another year. Suicidal, it seemed. It lost all its tactical sense. It couldn’t die on its own, but it wanted to die, I think.

  “It could have escaped us entirely, if it chose, but instead it lingered here, returning again and again to the site of its last battle. We gunned it down in the end. When your kind becomes masterless, you have a difficult time surviving. And yet here you are, years past your expiration date.”

  “What do you want?” Tool asked.

  “I want to win a war.”

  Tool said nothing, waiting. The man wanted to talk. Powerful men enjoyed their power. Tool had known generals who liked to talk for hours. Colonel Glenn Stern didn’t disappoint.

  “I want the 999s shut down.”

  Tool bared his fangs. “Send a strike team.”

  “Ah. Yes,” Stern said. “Actually, I’ve sent three. The Army of God has been good enough to return my soldiers to me, but without their hands or feet. We know where the guns are, generally. We think there are two. But they’re determined to protect them.”

  “You want me to go,” Tool said. It wasn’t a question. It was obvious.

  “For starters, yes. Lead a strike team.”

  “What makes you think I can succeed where your soldiers have failed?”

  “Come, now. We’re both professionals.”

  The Colonel came closer to Tool, squatting so they could speak closely. Tool measured the distance between them, but Stern remained just out of reach.

  “I do what I can with the clay I have,” the Colonel said. “But this is very rough clay. Children? Farmers from the jungles? We can mold them, but they are weak material. Fired by war, to be sure, and clever enough, but they are small and they have fought on only one battlefield in their entire lives. We both know that nothing in the Drowned Cities compares to you. I am at war, and you are one of the finest war machines that mankind has ever devised.” He leaned forward. “I propose an alliance between us; I want your expertise to bolster my patriotic effort.”

  “And for myself?”

  “Let’s be honest, half-man. You need a patron. Alone and independent as you are, it’s only a matter of time before a cleanup squad catches wind of you and puts you down for good. You need protection as much as I need a war leader.”

  “I’ve had enough of patrons.”

  “Don’t misunderstand me. I propose to hire you, proper. You will forge my war effort into something more than this wasteful detente. Something that can cleanse the Drowned Cities. With your help, I smash the Army of God, and Taylor’s Wolves and all the rest of the traitors. I can cleanse this place, and rebuild.”

  “And then?”

  Glenn Stern smiled. “And then, we march. We reunite this country. Make it stand tall once again. We march from sea to shining sea.”

  “The savior and his war beast,” Tool said. “The obedient pet.”

  “My strong right fist,” Stern replied. “My brother in arms.”

  “Let the girl go.”

  The Colonel glanced over at Mahlia. “Why would you want her to leave? This friend of yours? This girl who you feel some loyalty to? I think it better if we keep her as an honored guest.”

  “A hostage.”

  “I am not a fool, augment. As soon as you are released, you are dangerous. I do not pretend to know why you work on this girl’s behalf, but I am more than happy to have leverage in our bargaining. Her life is, without question, the cost of your good behavior.”

  The building shook with another explosion. Dust rained down.

  The Colonel looked up at the ceiling with a grimace. “General Sachs seems to have decided that he’d rather see me dead than preserve the capitol building.”

  He looked at Tool. “You see the sorts of barbarians I fight? They care nothing for this place or what it once was. They care nothing for its history. I seek to rebuild, and all they seek to do is to tear down and scavenge.”

  “I’ve spent time in your arenas,” Tool said dryly. “Your patriotic talk rings hollow.”

  Stern grinned, unapologetic. “I didn’t know you had value then. By the time I discovered what you truly were, you were effecting a rather daring escape. Now I know. And now I offer you a bargain.”

  Tool looked over at Mahlia. She lay bloodied and bruised, almost lifeless. Stern waited. Tool could feel his eagerness. All Tool’s life, men like Stern had found a use for him. The half-man was, as his name implied, useful. Something men sought to wield, again and again.

  Another explosion echoed down from above. Stern didn’t move, waiting.

  “Don’t bother,” Mahlia croaked suddenly, breaking Tool’s thoughts. “He’ll just kill us later.”

  Stern frowned. “Be quiet, castoff. This is a discussion for adults.”

  “He’ll just kill me when you’re dead,” she said. “He’ll use us up, just like they use everyone up.”

  “Not so different from any other leader,” Tool said. “Generals are in the habit of using up all the people around them. It’s their job. It’s what they do best.”

  Stern nodded seriously. “We’ve both walked those paths.”

  “I never turned children to war,” Tool said.

  “Only because you fought on the side of wealth,” Stern retorted. “You think I want to fight with children? This was not my preference. The Army of God started the practice. Or else it was the Revolution Riders, or perhaps it was the Blackwater Alliance. It’s hard to remember where these things began, but I assure you, it was not my choice. But I’ll be damned if I’ll let our effort die because I failed to use every tool at my disposal. And any general worth his rank would do the same. If all you are given is a rock, you still must strike with it.”

  “I thought you were a colonel.”

  “Don’t split hairs with me. If you don’t like the ugly cast of this war, then help me end it. With your help, the war ends, and the children go back to innocence and toys. What say you? I offer you an honorable fight, and a rank that befits your considerable skill, and your friend lives in safety. With me, you are no longer a fugitive, but the commander of an army. What say you to that??
??

  Tool studied the man, considering his options, but again Mahlia’s voice interrupted his thoughts.

  “Ask him if he wants to give me back my fingers, too,” she slurred. “As long as he’s making promises, ask him if he’s got my fingers.”

  42

  MAHLIA HAD BEEN watching the conversation for some time. Through the haze of opiates and her own pain, she watched them, faced off against each other. Two monsters. Two killing creatures, bargaining and testing each other.

  As the two of them bargained, Mahlia felt an increasing anger. They weren’t talking about saving Tool and Mahlia—not really. They were talking about more war and more killing. Changing the tide of blood so that it would swamp the Army of God, instead of the UPF. And if she and Tool wanted to survive, they had to help. Tool would slaughter and leave bodies in his wake, just as he was designed to do.

  She remembered how Tool moved through jungles and tore apart coywolv. A monster. A killing creature. A slaughter demon. She remembered Doctor Mahfouz, what seemed like a million years before, urging her to let Tool die.

  If you heal this thing, you bring war into your house.

  At the time, she’d thought Mahfouz only meant that the soldiers would come looking for her, that she was putting herself in danger.

  But now, as she watched the half-man and the leader of the UPF barter, she thought she saw what Mahfouz had been trying to tell her. She wasn’t just bringing war into her house—her house was becoming a house of war. Mouse was recruited, full-bar-branded, a soldier boy now, no different from any other UPF killer, and if she and Tool wanted to survive, they would join as well.

  If men like Glenn Stern and the rest of the grown-ups in this room had a use for you, you could live a little while. But you were just a pawn. Her. Mouse. All those soldier boys who’d been hand-raised to shoot and knife and bleed out there in the Drowned Cities.

  Mahlia leaned against the pillar, watching the Colonel and his advisers, and finally, she thought she understood Doctor Mahfouz and his blind rush into the village.