Crucible Zero

  It was as if something huge had punched a hole into the earth. It was a huge hole with a razor-sharp edge that seemed to fall down and down into eternity.

  The memory of Quinten saying the satellites had been taken out, power grids destroyed, came back to me. The world, this world, had suffered much different disasters from the world I’d lived in. A barrage of meteors had pounded the earth, breaking the progress of civilization.

  This world had died and rebuilt itself. I suppose it made sense that it would carry the scars of survival.

  “How is this going to help us?” I asked.

  “Look.”

  I saw them. Vehicles like ours only twice the size, half a dozen of them, barreling toward us, lit up as bright as Christmas lights.

  Abraham, still up on the roof, let off an earsplitting whistle. It was returned once, twice, three times from the vehicles.

  Ferals surrounded them too. But as I watched, all the vehicles except two went completely dark. The other two were bright as a beacon, and the swarm of beasts shifted to home in on those lights, like moths dive-bombing a fire.

  Foster killed our lights, and I heard Abraham run across the top of the van before swinging down inside and slamming the doors shut behind him.

  Foster slowed the van.

  “What are you doing? You can’t slow down—they’ll bury us.”

  “Wait,” Abraham said from where he lay on his back, panting on the floor. “Give him a minute. He knows what he’s doing.”

  “Oh, God,” I said. Which was stupid, because it wasn’t like Foster or the ferals or the other vehicles out there could hear me.

  The two lit vehicles were also covered with dead ferals that appeared to have been lashed down tight on purpose. It made the vehicles an irresistible combination of food, sound, and light. The other ferals—all the other ferals—went completely mad.

  The wave of bodies smashing into our van rocked us like we were a ship in hard seas, but the impacts became fewer and fewer as the ferals abandoned our dark, quieter vehicle for the two brightly shining, noisy ones ahead.

  And then those shining vehicles drove right over the end of the world and into a darkness even their light couldn’t pierce.

  The ferals followed them down, right over the edge of that fissure.

  “Holy shit,” I breathed, my heart pounding so hard, I was shaking with it. “Holy shit.”

  “That,” Abraham said as he wiped a bloody hand over his bloody face, “is how it’s done.” He pounded his fist twice into the floor of the van.

  He was still breathing hard and hadn’t gotten up.

  “Are we just sitting here?” I asked.

  “Yes.” Foster leaned back and pulled a canteen from the door pocket, took a drink, and handed it to me.

  Okay. I had no idea what was going on.

  “I have no idea what’s going on,” I said. I took a swig of water, which was laced with a hint of fresh mint—a surreal and pleasant luxury, considering our situation and surroundings.

  “Aren’t we going to go help them? Your friends in those vehicles just got chased off a cliff.”

  “They know what they’re doing,” Abraham said. “There’s a road down. It’s hard to see from here. About halfway, there’s a nice, tight left into a tunnel with reinforced-steel doors.”

  “And?”

  “And the ferals never have gotten the hang of that tight left. Pass me the water?”

  I bent and half walked, half crawled back to him. “So they’re fine?”

  He tipped his head so he could watch me making my way back to him. “They’re fine.” He was grinning like a fool. A bloody, sooty, gorgeous fool.

  “You are an idiot.” I knelt next to him and held out the canteen. “The roof, Vail? What devil kind of dumb does a man have to be to do that sort of thing?”

  His grin got even wider, if that was possible.

  “I’m not an idiot,” he said, reaching for the canteen and catching my wrist instead. “I am just a very, very good devil.”

  He drew the canteen toward him, even though he had only propped up on one elbow. But since he hadn’t let go of my wrist, I was bending down toward him. Which was just what he wanted.

  “What about Foster?” I whispered.

  “He’s not invited,” he whispered back.

  He stared straight at me, looking into me. His eyebrow quirked up in a question.

  Everything in me went hot. I knew what he wanted. I wanted it too, had dreamed about it. But I was not going to get naked in front of—well, behind—Foster.

  He drew my arm across his body, and I propped myself over him. He smelled like gasoline and ash and sweat and something with a deep hickory tone.

  He paused, waiting. His gaze drifted to my lips and then back to my eyes.

  “Victory kiss?” he whispered.

  Memories flooded me of the times we had made love, that same look in his eyes as he waited to see what I would do. As he made me wait to see what he would do.

  He released my wrist. I tipped my head as his wide fingers dragged up my arm, sending glorious pulses of pleasure across my skin. The anticipation of him touching me tightened my stomach and turned my mouth hot from the need to feel him in me, everywhere in me.

  His fingers pushed up into my thick, heavy hair, and I tipped my head down, holding his gaze.

  “One,” I mouthed.

  I slowly, slowly pressed my mouth against his. His tongue slid along my bottom lip, and I opened my mouth to feel him. His tongue stroked along my tongue, tangling me in aching heat.

  One kiss. It was all I had agreed to. Even though I wanted more.

  I lowered over him, my breasts pressing against the hard heat of his chest.

  He tightened at the hot, instant sensation. He lifted and rolled, pulling me gently beneath him and lying across my body so that I could feel every hard inch of him.

  I shifted to wrap one leg around the back of his thigh and tug him closer.

  That had exactly the results I expected. He grinned at me and held very still. Then he gently lowered himself and pressed his mouth against the sensitive line of stitches at my neck. Teeth and tongue teased the threads that held me together, threatening to undo me in every way.

  I caught my breath and couldn’t breathe again, every nerve in my body paused upon the play of his tongue, lips, and teeth working across my skin.

  He had never done that before. Not like that.

  My lungs were still, my body unwilling to accept air, filling instead with the need for him. He shifted his mouth to my collarbone.

  His mouth worked its maddening magic along the bare bits of me; then he lifted away.

  “Matilda,” he said, gently. “Breathe.”

  I opened my eyes, saw him grinning above me in the darkness. Remembered where we were.

  One kiss.

  I exhaled while he sweetly stroked his thumb along the underside of my jaw.

  Inhaled while he kissed my forehead, then gently pressed his forehead against mine.

  “As much as I would like to finish this,” he said, “and the need for that is immense.” He shifted his hips slightly, away from me. “We need to be moving. Before the next wave of ferals hit.”

  “I know,” I said, trying to untangle my needs and wants and crazy cravings I couldn’t seem to breathe my body out of. “Right. I know. I brought you water.”

  “Thank you.” He hesitated, and I knew that if he did anything—if he kissed me, if he said any sweet thing—I would take his clothes off and bed the man, right here in the back of the dark van with Foster just two seats away. Ferals or no ferals.

  Maybe he saw that in my expression; I didn’t know. But he pulled away, my leg unwrapping from the back of his thigh as he shifted and finally sat next to me.

  I sat too, avoiding his gaze while
I did so.

  If we were ever going to be together, this Abraham and me, it wasn’t going to be in the back of a stolen van, covered in blood and guts, while we were on the run for our lives.

  I pictured my bed at home in the farmhouse. Lace quilt; soft mattress. I pictured the Abraham I’d seen in the hall, happy, tattooed, naked, his body warm and clean from a hot shower, smelling of soap and sex.

  That’s what I wanted. Even if I couldn’t have that Abraham, who had called me love.

  I wanted the chance at even a portion of that dream life, that fleeting timeway.

  As for his part, Abraham leaned back against the side of the van and took a long, long drink out of the canteen. I followed his lead and leaned against the other side of the van, facing him in the shared darkness, but as far away from him as I could get.

  “Ready?” he called out to Foster.

  Foster answered by starting the engine. That was enough to strip away any romantic feelings I was entertaining. Engines brought ferals, and we were out of ammunition.

  “We’re out of ammunition,” I said.

  Abraham nodded. “We’ll go underground for the next few hours. By the time we’re through the tunnels, it will be dawn.”

  “The tunnel over the cliff?”

  “Not the same one, no. There are others.”

  “Does everyone know about these?”

  “Only the sort of people no one wants to associate with.”

  “Mercenaries?”

  He nodded and took another drink as the van bumped along the road, then took a tight, slow left and began an unmistakable downward descent.

  “Is that who answered your flare?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you’re telling me there are mercenaries just sitting around in vehicles, waiting to see random flares go off so they can drive a bunch of ferals off the cliff?”

  “Would you believe me if I said it were true?”

  “No.”

  “But there are always a few people camped out near the tunnel entrances.”

  “And?”

  “And some might have been expecting us.”

  “How?”

  “While you were sleeping, Foster and I made ourselves useful.”

  “You radioed ahead that we were coming, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “And where are we going, exactly? I’m assuming the cache of weapons line you fed me was just a bunch of bullshit?”

  He scrunched his face up in what almost looked like a wince. “No. Well, yes, but no. There will be weapons where we’re going.”

  “Where are we going?”

  He tipped the canteen up, swallowed, then tipped it down again. “Coal and Ice.”

  16

  Two pieces! That’s what I was missing. There might be more than one thing needed to kill Slater. Unfortunately, I have no idea what either thing could be.

  —W.Y.

  I spent the rest of the drive through the tunnel peppering Abraham with questions about Coal and Ice. There was no counterpart to it in my world, unless I counted Sallyo’s underground black market and smuggling ring.

  But Coal and Ice wasn’t just a black market for goods, though Abraham cheerfully informed me that smuggling made decent money. It was primarily a loose collective of spies, thieves, and assassins looking for jobs that all funneled through one man: Binek.

  I didn’t know why talking about a crime lord made Abraham feel so relaxed, but I supposed it was because Coal and Ice was his home ground. It was where people like him, and even those unlike him—galvanized or not—had a common goal.

  Kill or be killed, and remember to factor a ten percent profit for Coal and Ice’s coffers.

  The other thing Abraham seemed more than willing to share was that Binek had his ear to the ground and would have the information we needed to get into House Fire and stop Slater. If we played our hand right, he might even kick in the weapons and other equipment for free.

  “Warlords don’t do anything for free,” I said.

  He shrugged, and I noted his left shoulder looked like it still wasn’t hinging quite right. I should probably offer to look at it, but after the last time I’d gotten too close to him and ended up kissing him, I decided it could wait.

  If it was hurting him, he couldn’t feel it anyway.

  “I’m sure he’ll cover his interests in the deal,” Abraham said.

  And, frustratingly, that was all he said. He spent the rest of the ride staring out at the darkness and nothing, until he finally closed his eyes and fell asleep, knees bent and arms resting across them like a soldier accustomed to catching z’s before a mission.

  The back of the van was not a comfortable place to ride. Even though the tunnel road seemed smoother than cross-country, I thought cushions and springs might be nicer for my bruised butt. So I crawled back around the bench seat and sat up by Foster.

  “Hello, Matilda,” he said.

  “Hi,” I said. “Nice driving back there, by the way.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Abraham’s sleeping.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want me to drive? He said neither of you slept much.”

  “No. Rest. I will drive.”

  I glanced out the windows, which were filthy with blood and fluids I didn’t want to think about. We were inside a tunnel. I thought it could have once been a subway line, but it wasn’t any I was familiar with. For all I knew, it could also have been an underground access for bomb shelters or a throughway between shopping centers.

  Whatever it had been built for originally, it made for a fairly smooth roadway. There were no lights, but the headlamps on the van were more than enough to light the road ahead of us and also the walls, which were set far enough to our side that I could tell this was a two-lane tunnel.

  I heard the echo of at least one other engine besides ours out there. The mercenaries, or at least some of them, were following us.

  “How much longer until we get there?” I asked.

  “An hour. Rest. Daylight will come soon.”

  But I was still a little too restless to try shut-eye. “You know I lived a life in a different time than this, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were there too in that time. You had a very dear friend. His name was Welton Yellow. You helped raise him when he was a child, and you became more than just his bodyguard. You were family to him, his best friend.”

  Foster remained silent. He didn’t even glance my way. I didn’t know if he believed me or even wanted to hear about this. But I had promised Welton I’d let Foster know he loved him. And I followed through on my promises.

  “In that time, my original time, you and Welton were very close. Are you friends with Custodian Welton in this time?”

  “No,” he said after a moment’s pause.

  “The Welton I knew, Welton Yellow, was a good man. Clever. Too curious for his own good, but he wanted what was best for people. He wanted what was best for you and did what he could to make your life better. I saw him recently. I . . . um . . . slipped over to that timeway, and he was there.”

  “When?”

  “In the apple orchard. What I want to tell you, what he asked me to tell you, is that he loves you. Still. Even though you’re not alive in that timeway. He wants what’s best for you. In this timeway. I promised him I’d tell you that. Even though you’re not the you you were then now.”

  Foster still didn’t say anything.

  “Did that make sense? Does any of this make sense?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Good, because it confuses the hell out of me.” I leaned my head against the window. “I can’t kill Slater until I destroy some piece of the Wings of Mercury machine Alveré Case built. That machine didn’t survive in this time, did it?” r />
  “No,” he said. “Broken, burned, buried. Nothing but ashes, like all dreams become.”

  I rubbed my eyes, which stung from sweat and soot.

  “Well, I wish something out of that time and experiment had survived. Something of Alveré’s. It’d make my life easier.”

  “We survived,” he said.

  “Yes. But we’re not things. We’re breathing, living people.” I yawned, the events of the night finally catching up to me. “Maybe I should go rest.”

  “Yes,” Foster said. “Rest. I will think on this.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Let me know if you come up with anything.”

  I stepped back to the bench seat, pushed the coil of rope to the floor, tucked one of the knives into my belt, and pulled the blanket that had held all the weapons over me as I lay on my side, half curled.

  I slept fitfully, waking up in a series of panicked starts as nightmares pressed bloody fingers around my sleeping mind.

  After the third or fourth time, I decided I’d had enough not-sleep and kept my eyes open, listening to the echo of engines passing to our left and the hum of the tires against the road.

  Also, Abraham’s snoring.

  Man was loud.

  Finally, finally, Foster tapped the brakes, slowed, and then took a sharp turn to the right. The incline was pretty steep and pushed me into my seat.

  It must have pushed Abraham too. I heard a clunk, a curse, and then there was no more snoring.

  “Warning, next time?” he demanded sleepily.

  “We are climbing,” Foster said. “Abruptly.”

  Abraham just grunted.

  The van finally leveled out, and I squinted in the pale light of morning. I didn’t even think the sun was up yet, but after the thick darkness of night, and the thicker darkness of the tunnel, the predawn lightening of the sky seemed intense.

  My eyes quickly adjusted, and I sat, pushing the blanket off to one side. Abraham made his way up to the front of the van, sliding around to where I sat with a quick nod to me before he settled into the front seat.

  “Morning, sunshine,” I said. “Sleep well?”

  He gave me a grin. “Good enough. Are you ready to meet the man?”

  “If meeting him will get me closer to killing Slater, then I can’t wait.”