New Enemies

  Chapter 15

  “Are you... oh, Sol, I can barely breathe,” Side said after Chain wrapped up the Disciple's crushed remains. His hands shook wildly, and he was pale as a handkerchief.

  Chain put the remains aside, and went to hold him steady. “You're going into shock. It's a common reaction after engaging with a Disciple. Just try and breathe slowly. Deep in,” she said, bringing air into her lungs slowly, “and then deep out.”

  “Fuck, fuck,” Side whispered.

  “That's not breathing, is it?” Chain asked. “Do as I say. Deep in, deep out.”

  “Deep in,” Side said, tears wiping his grime away as he followed her orders. “Deep out.”

  “Good. Concentrate on breathing. This is just your body's reaction to an unnatural fight.”

  Side closed his eyes. His whole body shook until the breathing exercise started to work. Chain stayed there, holding him upright, talking him through his recovery, until he could breathe without his lips quivering.

  “That was embarrassing,” Side said after.

  “Nonsense. It's normal. Well-trained Shields react the same way after their first battles.”

  Side glanced to the Disciple's remains. “Hopefully it'll be my only battle.”

  “Yes, hopefully,” Chain replied, not certain of her words. “You were going to ask something before the shock gripped you?”

  The Miner frowned for a second, and then clicked his fingers. “Yes. You seem certain that... thing... was a Disciple. How do you know?”

  “It's made of metal, and its insides look the same.” Chain looked to the grim package resting on the kitchen floor. “When I fought at the Battle of Aureu, I saw plenty of these innards. I'll never forget them.”

  Side nodded. “Why did it come after me?”

  “I don't know. You seem like an odd target for it. Unless... maybe it's not the only one,” Chain said, the idea that the Disciples were targeting her main witnesses attacking her as suddenly as the 'spider' had. But she couldn't assume this was a targeted assault. “Lun, there could be more out there. We've got to get going. There could be other people in need of help.”

  Fluttering panic taking over, Chain grabbed the bundle of innards and ran into the street. She listened for screams, but found only the sounds of Buckle starting another day under Sol's grace. If there were more of those creatures, they were doing their work in silence.

  Side joined her in the street, looking a state but seemingly willing to follow. “What are you waiting for?”

  “I was listening for signs of a fight. We don't seem to be under attack.”

  “Not on this side of town,” Side said.

  “True,” Chain said, her mouth dry. “We'll circle Buckle first, then I'll take you to Marsh.”

  Side touched the back of his neck and winced. His fingers came away covered in blood. “Let's be quick.”

  Chain jogged towards the outskirts of her town. She heard no screams or fights, no one screeching out of their homes. Searching Buckle in a rough 'z', modifying this pre-prepared route so the final line of the 'z' terminated at Marsh's home, she buzzed around like a panicked fly.

  Buckle was fine, if a little perplexed at its Contegon running through the streets, a bleeding Miner in tow. Side, however, was worn down, panting heavily. Chain considered helping him, carrying the man to his aid, but he seemed too stubborn to accept help. Pride was a powerful thing, something she didn't want to discourage, so she let him stumble to the Doctor's home unaided.

  Marsh's daughter answered the door, a precocious, square-jawed girl training to join her father's Station.

  “Get your father, Riot,” Chain said, pushing past the young girl. “Now! That is an order.”

  “Yes, sire!” Riot replied as she ran into the Doctor's theatre, red hair bouncing.

  Side stumbled inside and fell into the chairs for waiting patients. He closed his eyes and his head lolled forward, giving Chain a good look at his neck: the wound still wasn't clotting properly, which should have been impossible if not for the evil thing she held in her hand.

  “Side?” she asked, kneeling beside him. “Side?”

  “Yes?” he slurred, trying to look up.

  “If you die, I'll be furious with you.”

  He laughed and put a hand on her shoulder. She squeezed it, her panic for Buckle now shifting to the Miner. The pervading thought that this was her fault, that she'd made Side a target by digging into another Station's work, passed through her like a virus. She knew this was stupid, that she was right to investigate the skimming, but the guilt would not be dismissed so easily.

  The door to the theatre that took up two thirds of the Doctors’ home creaked open. Marsh stepped out, his thin hands covered in blood. His short, slight frame and straight, spiked hair made him look like a dignified broom.

  “Contegon, I appreciate you think you have a good reason for demanding to see me,” he said, holding his hands up so the blood would drip onto his red robes, “but I am with a patient.”

  “Side was attacked by a Disciple,” Chain said, squeezing his hand again.

  The Doctor gasped. “Are you... well, you must be certain, but I can't believe...” Marsh swallowed and composed himself. “I'll have to finish with my current patient first: I'm afraid she doesn't have long left. Riot will look Side over in the meantime.” He turned to the door. “Riot! Come through and see to Side for me.”

  The young girl ran out, her hands damp from washing, and went to Side. Around her waist was a Field Doctor's kit, from which she extracted bandages and alcohol.

  “Who is your other patient?” Chain asked, stepping away from Side. It was always a concern when one of her charges was ill or dying, and she needed to be appraised to run the subsequent Pyre. “How can they be more important than the victim of a Disciple attack?”

  Marsh shook his head and went back into his theatre. “It'll be a sad day for Par,” he shouted back. “It's another of his Miners: Tissue. She came in suffering from—”

  That name fell on Chain from a tremendous height, dropped by Lun from the cloud-line onto her heart and soul. Nothing he said afterwards made sense. Tissue, the other witness to the skimming, was now dying? She shook herself, instigated her battlemind, and followed Marsh into his theatre.

  Tissue lay on his operating table. An incision in her stomach was held open by clamps and forceps. The air smelled of alcohol, blood, and rot. This old Miner was barely breathing, her ragged attempts showing she would not do so for much longer. Marsh bowed and sunk his hands back in to her.

  “What is the cause of her illness?” Chain managed to say.

  “I don't know,” Marsh spat. “It's the worst thing I've ever seen, the most vile and cruel condition. Her organs are shutting down. It's a rapid wasting disease, and it's tearing through her.”

  “Could it be... poison?” Chain asked, stepping forward.

  Marsh shook his head. “What could do this to a person?”

  “A Disciple poison.”

  Chain walked over, wanting to get a better view of Tissue's final moments. Peering inside, she saw that Marsh was manually pumping her heart to keep her going. She was already a corpse: Marsh was delaying the inevitable in the hope of a sudden change.

  “Could this sudden disease not be the result of a Disciple poison?” she asked again.

  “If I hadn't seen this for myself, I'd have thought it a slow illness that simply burst forth, like a pustule. I mean, I examined Tissue last week, a routine check.” The Doctor squeezed as he considered Tissue's sunken face. “I suppose nothing is impossible with the Disciples. Are you sure that it was a Disciple?”

  “Should you still be doing that?” Chain asked of his manipulation of Tissue's heart. “Isn't she too gone?”

  Marsh hissed at her. “I'm not losing someone this suddenly, not when it's impossible.”

  “I have the Disciple that attacked Side with me. Its corpse,” Chain said, shaking the bundle. “If I show you, will you accept Tissue's death
is something you couldn't prevent, allow her to join Sol?”

  He watched her for a few seconds, hands pumping Tissue's blood, and then nodded.

  Chain knelt and spread the blanket on the floor. Within were the still remains of the Disciple spider. Its insides were leaking heavily now, though the clear viscera had not yet soaked through the wool.

  “This thing was scrabbling in Side's kitchen,” Chain said. “Side surprised it, and it launched itself at him, tried to claw into the back of his neck. I killed it with my axes.”

  Marsh sobbed once, a horrible and heartbreaking sound that pierced Chain's battlemind, and took his hands from Tissue's chest. She stopped breathing a moment later, passing into Sol. Chain prayed to Tissue, as part of Sol, for the strength to face this crisis.

  “How is Side?” Chain shouted, allowing Marsh a moment to himself.

  “I'm bandaging him up,” Riot replied. “His blood has thinned, but I think he'll be fine.”

  “You're sure?” Marsh asked.

  “I am, sire.”

  Marsh coughed, breaking from his brief torpor, and washed his hands. Every movement was careful, controlled. When clean, he squatted by the Disciple's remains. “I trust her analysis for the meantime. I'll check him further in a moment. For now, we need to cautiously consider these remains. It's possible that this leaking fluid is the poison administered to Tissue,” he said.

  “That's possible, yes,” Chain said. “Do you have anything to hold the creature in?”

  “I can give you a jar?”

  “That'll do.”

  Marsh found an empty medicine jar. Together, wearing thick leather gloves, they transferred the Disciple's remains into it. She felt bad for leaving Side alone, but she trusted Riot if her father had faith in her.

  When done, Chain sealed the jar. “What should I do about the blanket?”

  “Leave it with me?” Marsh asked, picking the blanket up by its dry edges. “I'd like to examine it, see what I can figure out about this potential poison. It could be helpful. And it could prove what killed Tissue.”

  Chain nodded and her battlemind crumbled, a single sob escaping her.

  “Were you close to Tissue?” Marsh asked.

  “No. It's what her death means that concerns me,” Chain said.

  With the witnesses to the skimming attacked by Disciples within days of being named, Chain now worried about Heresy. Grain was the most likely suspect, but it wasn't impossible that Par or his underlings had lifted Tissue and Side's names from Grain's private papers. Either way, someone sent monsters after these suspects to administer poison that would have been mistaken for a disease, leaving Chain nowhere to go in her investigations. Anger tried to strangle her sense, but she couldn't leap to any conclusions.

  Marsh snapped his fingers before Chain's face. “Contegon?”

  Chain rattled her head. “I'm sorry, Marsh, I was far away.”

  “I can see. I asked what these deaths mean?”

  “Another Disciple incursion,” Chain said. “And one with human operatives,” she didn’t say.

  The Doctor looked at her for a while before saying, “Shit.”

  “Exactly.”

  An idea struck Chain. “Tissue and Side were specifically targeted: after all, no one else in Buckle has been attacked yet. I patrolled the town before bringing Side here, so I'm confident in saying this.”

  “Seems like a fair assumption,” Marsh said, crossing his arms. “I get the feeling that I'm not going to like the favour you're about to ask for.”

  “Can you hide Side and fill out paperwork as though he died?”

  Marsh sucked air in and laughed, a sound dark and bitter as death. “I thought that was going to be it. Do you appreciate what you're asking?”

  Chain gripped him by the shoulders. “I know I can't order you to do this, but consider your patient's safety: his life is still at risk. Don't submit the papers and you won't compromise your integrity: just keep him in your private quarters for sixty hours. Look after him, tell anyone who asks that he didn't survive.”

  “That's a specific length of time, Contegon. Where will you be through this?”

  “Looking after my own family,” Chain said. “And then bringing Sol's justice.”

  Her gut told her Buckle was too small a prize for the Disciples to aim a conspiracy at: something must be happening across Geos that she was glimpsing the very tip of. If so, an easy way to move Disciple contraband such as those vicious spiders was mixing them with deliveries to Aureu, like Buckle’s gem loads... and that the best way to make room for them was skimming from the Mine.

  The length of the favour she'd asked March was on purpose: this month's shipment was in two days' time.

  “Won't this make my family a target?” Marsh asked.

  “Not if you're a good liar.”

  He ran his hands through his spiked hair. The product he used was flexible enough to move with his fingers, flop back into place. “Fine. Sixty hours. I will keep him upstairs, and tell people he's dying rather than dead, but that he will not recover. Is that a good compromise?”

  “That'll work, especially after people saw him jogging after me this morning,” Chain said, nodding. “Make sure you say he had an accident. And thank you, Marsh. When I understand this more, I'll explain it to you. I hope it goes without saying that I want you to keep this all to yourself.”

  “It did. But you said it anyway.”

  “My apologies. I just needed to be clear.”

  Marsh acquiesced. “Which is fine. And you don't have to explain anything to me, Chain. You are a Contegon. You know what you're doing.”

  He was right, Chain did know what she was doing: chasing Heretics and Disciples. The mounting evidence and body-count proved this wasn't like with her misplaced hatred of Maya. This time, she was following real, true Heresy.

  “You'll want to cover that,” Marsh said, pointing at the jar. “Take one of my spare robes.”

  “Thank you,” she said, before wrapping the Disciple's remains in the red material.

  Side slept on the waiting room sofa. Bloody bandages rested beside him, and the spot he had sat on was soaked with alcohol. Riot had removed his top and wrapped tight bandages under his armpits and around his neck. She was just returning her equipment to her kit when Chain and her father stepped out.

  “Tissue?” Riot asked.

  Marsh shook his head slowly, and the child lowered her head in prayer.

  “I will be back the evening of the day after tomorrow,” she said, leaving before the Doctor could reply.

  It was early enough that Chain returned home before Carmen left for school. Running into her home, the Contegon grabbed her daughter, held her tight. She didn't know, after the couple of hours she'd had, whether she could let her girl go.