Chaos (Guards of the Shadowlands Book 3)

  We rumbled along the rough road as the sun finally broke free of the city wall and turned into a circle of fire. As the heat struck me, I lifted my head and let the hood fall away. The air had turned from cool to warm in a matter of a minute, and the temperature just kept rising, drawing tiny beads of sweat along Ana’s temples as she scanned her environment with a predator’s calm. The Mazikin driver shook his big hairy head back and forth, his ears twitching as if trying to toss off the heat. The engine belched, and the cart accelerated sharply, throwing me off balance. Not that it mattered—we were packed in so tightly that I couldn’t have fallen over if I tried.

  I sucked in a breath of scorching air and tugged at the shackles on my wrists. The rusty cuffs were crusted with dried blood, and maroon flecks scraped off with my movements, remnants of someone else’s pain and desperation. On either side of the road were gray concrete buildings, all of the same design. Three stories high, square openings every ten feet or so, windows without panes, dark inside. The only thing that distinguished them were the paintings all over their exteriors. Some of the markings looked like graffiti, black and jagged, and some of them looked more like murals. But all of them were chipped and pockmarked, cracked and faded. Nothing thrived here.

  That thought stamped itself on my brain as we passed by a Mazikin trotting down the street on all fours—walking a woman on a leash. The human was young, but the look on her face reflected a century’s worth of suffering as her captor yanked the leash tight, making her gulp for air. The Mazikin dragged her through the entrance to one of the buildings. All around us, the creatures were fleeing indoors as the temperature rose and the sun’s light was magnified through the dome, pouring over the city with brutal thoroughness.

  “Get your hood up or you’ll burn,” muttered Ana. “God, this is awful.”

  I gave her a sidelong glance. She was twisted into a weird position, with her hips pressed downward and her back bowed. Her fingers stretched and scrabbled . . . She was trying to reach her knives. “I can help,” I whispered. “Stop tugging on those or you’ll hurt yourself.” Unlike me, Ana wasn’t wearing gloves.

  “I’m pretty sure I can pick the lock,” she told me as I leaned down. My hood flopped over my head as I fastened my teeth onto the hilt of one of her double-edged throwing knives. I began to draw it back just as we went over a bump. My forehead smacked the metal edge of the cart, and for a second I saw stars, but then I returned to my task of unsheathing the knife. After a few seconds, I pulled it free, and then bent sharply so she could snatch it from my mouth.

  As I straightened up to give Ana room, I turned to see the woman wedged in next to me watching us carefully. “Are you part of the Resistance?” she asked me, her eyes darting back and forth like she was afraid we’d be overheard despite the roar and cough of the engine, the rumble of the cart along the potholed road, and the sobbing women around us, who were babbling in a dozen different languages.

  My heart skipped. “Resistance?”

  She paled when she saw the clueless look on my face. “No, no,” she stammered. “That’s not what I said.” She ducked her head and pressed her forehead between her hands, her shoulders trembling.

  Next to me, Ana was working on her shackles, her cloak concealing her movements. I shifted onto the balls of my feet and pulled myself forward to get a good look at where we were going. Dozens of blocks ahead was a massive building, partially obscured by greenish-brown smog, through which I could make out the tips of a few smokestacks.

  I could already smell the oily scent of roasting meat.

  I blinked away the image of what awaited us at the meat factory in time to notice a black-cloaked figure disappearing between two buildings a block away. From the shape of the silhouette, I could tell it was a human and not a Mazikin, but he moved with sure-footed confidence rather than the broken, raw fear that bent the backs of the humans I had seen so far. I tingled in anticipation as we drew closer—I wanted to see where he was going, what he was doing. But we ground to a halt behind another mechanized cart, this one carrying a load of concrete blocks. It had hit a huge pothole and canted to one side, spilling several bricks onto the street and sidewalk. The driver was galloping around, prodding at two humans who were trying to push the vehicle’s tire out of the hole.

  Our driver stood up and began to grunt at the other Mazikin, who raised his ugly head and spat at our cart. He rose to his hind legs and brandished a club that looked strikingly like a human femur. Our driver sat back down, growling to himself and pulling his hood up against the sun. My own skin felt like it was slowly cooking, especially now that we didn’t even have the heated air rushing over us as we flew down the road. “How are you doing?” I asked Ana, who had yet to raise her head from her work.

  “Almost there,” she mumbled from beneath her hood. “Why are we stopped?”

  “Broken-down vehicle. They’re clearing the road.” I watched the straining forms of the men struggling with the loaded cart. They were naked from the waist up, and the skin on their backs was blistered, scarred, and oozing with sores. The driver of the concrete cart smacked one of them in the legs with his bone club, but the man didn’t cry out. He merely nodded as his Mazikin master hooted at him.

  “He’s telling them to hurry before the ‘fire hour’ arrives,” Ana said. “No idea what that is, but I think I’d like to be inside when it happens.”

  “Me too.”

  The men, perhaps motivated by the reminder about fire hour, finally shoved the wheel of the cart out of the hole. With near-frantic movements, they tossed the fallen bricks back in the cart and leaped on top of the load, hanging on as the vehicle rolled forward. Our own driver cackled, then gunned the engine of our cart.

  “Got it,” whispered Ana, and by her movements I could tell she was completely free. “Your turn. Hold still or I’ll end up cutting your fingers off.”

  I clutched the edges of the cart and leaned back as she went to work on my shackles. As we bumped down the road, I squinted up the block where I’d seen the black-cloaked figure run, but there was no one in the streets now. At least, not that I could see.

  Some of the women in the cart had noticed our efforts and were watching us with a mixture of curiosity and fear. From behind me, I once again heard the word “resistance,” followed by the soft hiss of whispering in a language I didn’t understand. I tilted my head toward the woman who’d spoken to me initially. Her forehead was still pressed between her hands.

  “What’s the Resistance?” I asked. “If you’re afraid of getting in trouble, don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone.”

  Her knuckles turned white, which stood out in stark contrast to the red skin on the backs of her hands. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, her voice muted by the leather folds of her clothing. “But don’t let them hear you mention it.” She jerked her head toward the front, where the driver had his shoulders hiked nearly to his ears as we raced toward the meat factory. It still loomed far in the distance but was growing closer by the second.

  The cuff around my right wrist clicked and fell away, and Ana pressed the knife into my free hand. “Do the other one yourself. I’d practically have to lie on top of you to do it, and we’re already drawing too much attention.”

  She was right. The low whispers around us were nonstop now. It was only a matter of time before the driver heard them. I grabbed the knife with my right hand and jammed the tip into the keyhole on the underside of the cuff on my left hand, knowing one pothole could cause me to slit my own wrist. My heart pounded as the cart slowed to keep from hitting a massive truck rumbling along in front of us. I didn’t know what was in it, but a thick reddish-brown substance was leaking from beneath its rear door. We almost came to a standstill as it negotiated the deep divots in the road. The gouges were regular, set across the road in a way that made them nearly unavoidable, like speed bumps. It almost looked like someone had created the hole
s with a pickax or something. Next to me, Ana was chanting—hurry, hurry, hurry—like she was about to explode. I couldn’t blame her. The only thing keeping us in this cart was the fact that I wasn’t very good at picking locks.

  I rotated my wrist, trying to slip the blade deeper into the keyhole, then hissed as we hit one of the divots and the knife poked into the fabric of my glove, just missing the skin. I yanked it out and got back to work, raising my head in time to see another dark-cloaked figure standing in the alley between two buildings. The person pressed further into the shadows as we passed. The face was hooded—I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. But it was definitely human; I caught a glimpse of bare skin peeking from beneath the cloak.

  Ana nudged me with her shoulder. “We need to get out before we speed back up. This is our chance.”

  “Doing my best, Captain,” I said from between clenched teeth.

  In front of us, the massive truck, now leaking the reddish-brown fluid in a steady stream, slowed further and began to pull over to the side of the road. Up ahead, the smokestacks of the meat factory were easily visible, and the odor of cooking flesh hung heavy in the air, a stench that made me very glad my stomach was empty. “Jump,” I said. “I’ll catch up with you.”

  “Shut up and work. That’s an order,” Ana snapped.

  I’d never stopped trying the lock, but it wasn’t getting me anywhere. Still wriggling the tip of the knife in the keyhole, I turned to her. “Go, Ana. Before it’s too late.”

  She shook her head. “Not without you.”

  “You said you wouldn’t take care of me. So don’t,” I whispered, glaring at her. Sweat tickled the back of my neck as I bent over my shackled wrist again, wanting to scream in frustration.

  Our driver yanked the steering wheel sharply as he started to pull around the now-stopped vehicle. Right before we passed the cab of the truck, I felt a breeze and heard the lightest of footfalls on the road behind us, and I knew Ana had jumped. The women around us grew silent; I was sure they were watching her. I closed my eyes and hoped against hope they wouldn’t alert our driver to her escape. But as the seconds ticked by and they stayed quiet, I realized they weren’t going to betray us.

  It was in that moment I understood how many people must be trapped in this city. How many good people who didn’t deserve this hellish fate. I’d known it before, but only at a brain kind of level. Now I felt it in my gut—the agony, the suffering, the sweat and blood in the air. The horror rolled over me, sending a chill up my spine despite the sweltering heat. I’d come to rescue Malachi. Ana had come for Takeshi. No one would ever come for the others.

  Our vehicle picked up speed as we passed the enormous truck, and I made one last frantic twist of the knife—click. The shackle at my wrist fell open. Feeling victorious, I pulled my left hand free.

  And saw that we were now going at least twenty miles an hour.

  Well, shit.

  Staying low, I held on to the edge of the cart and threw my leg over the back, then clung to the closed tailgate as the buildings zipped by. The hot wind blew my hair around my face, leaving strands of it sticking in the sweat on my forehead and neck. Let go, I coached myself. You have to let go.

  Then I made the mistake of looking down. When I saw the road passing under me in a blur of rocky asphalt, my fingers wouldn’t obey me. The woman I’d been chained next to turned her head. Her startling blue eyes met mine, full of pleading—and hope. She knew I was different. She wondered if I would help her. She nodded at me, urging me to go on.

  My fingers straightened, and I let go.

  My boots hit the blacktop, and I pitched forward into a roll as the air was driven out of my lungs. My shoulders and hips cracked against the uneven pavement. Sick-hot agony zapped along my bones as I came to a stop along the side of the road. The vehicle was disappearing into the distance, but that woman’s eyes were still clear in my mind. Hands closed around my arms and tugged at me. “Get up,” Ana said. “We have to get off the street.”

  With her help, I staggered to my feet. Though every part of me hurt, no part of me seemed broken, miraculously. I pulled my hood over my head and followed Ana into the nearest alley. She whirled around to face me, her eyes bright and intense.

  “Hey, I’m okay,” I said to her, eager to show her that I could hold my own, that she could be my Captain and not my babysitter.

  She shook her head dismissively. My welfare wasn’t what was on her mind. “You have to see this,” she said, grabbing my sleeve and pulling me back along the alley that ran parallel to the main road. The buildings sheltered us from the brutal sunlight as our boots squelched through sludgy garbage.

  “I can’t believe it,” Ana muttered as she finally came to a halt at the mouth of an alley. “You won’t believe it.” She threw her arm in front of me to keep me from blundering onto another road that ran off at an angle to the city wall. “Look.” She pointed across the street.

  In front of us, riveted to the side of a concrete building, was a metal billboard. Painted across its surface was the face of a man. Below it were words, in all different languages. My eyes searched for ones I could understand and found them in the bottom row. Wanted, it said, for crimes against the true citizens.

  My eyes traveled back up to the man’s face. It was crudely rendered, but I was almost sure I knew who it was, because I’d seen a painting of him before. One glance at Ana told me I was right. She stared at that picture like it was her salvation.

  Takeshi.

  FIVE

  “I GUESS THAT’S OUR confirmation that he’s here,” I said.

  Ana smiled, blinking away tears. “Yeah.” She swiped her sleeve over her cheeks and cleared her throat. “Sorry. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen his face.”

  “It’s all right. It looks pretty recent, doesn’t it?” The paint was shiny, not chipped or cracked. Compared with the other signs I’d seen so far in the city, this one was much newer. “What do you think it means?”

  Her look was all grim satisfaction. “I think it means he’s on the loose, and they’re not happy about it.”

  “When we were on that cart, I heard the others talking about some sort of resistance movement. Do you think—?”

  “I think, if there actually is one, he’d be at the heart of it.” Ana was still staring hungrily at his face, at the rough sweeps of paint forming high cheekbones, a wide forehead, sharp brown eyes, and a shock of black hair. “He would never be satisfied with hiding out. He’d want to destroy the Mazikin.” The pride in her voice was evident—as was the hope.

  And it was contagious. “Do you think . . . do you think maybe Malachi could get away from them too?”

  She gave me a smile that was meant to be reassuring but didn’t reach her eyes. “Maybe. Takeshi taught him well.”

  Wishing hard, I imagined Malachi’s face on a billboard like this, his defiant, angular features rendered in shades of brown and tan, his dark eyes almost as black as his hair. If anyone could get away, it would be him. And we would find each other, and find a way out of here. I couldn’t contemplate any other alternative.

  I peered up the street. The glare of the sun was blinding, warping the air with heat. “I don’t blame the Mazikin for hating the sun. I’m starting to hate it, too. But it gives us a chance to get deeper into the city.”

  The quiet, garbage-strewn streets were bounded by dark-gray buildings, stolid cubes of thick concrete squatting beneath the dome, sheltering the monsters. The only sound was the distant crash of machinery. Factory noises. Not everyone was sleeping.

  “Which direction should we go?” I asked.

  Ana reluctantly tore her eyes from the Takeshi billboard and pointed up the road that would lead us away from the wall and straight to the center of the Mazikin realm. “We have to find the Queen. If we find her, we find the portal.”

  “How are we going to find Malachi and Take
shi, though?”

  “It won’t matter if we can’t complete our mission.” She glanced back at the rendering of Takeshi’s face. “Come on.” We pulled our hoods over our heads and walked up the road, looking for danger. Thick poles were sunk into the roadside every twenty feet or so, a few feet from every building, holding up bare wires that glinted in the sunlight.

  “There’s more technology here than I thought there would be.”

  “That’s for sure,” said Ana. “I don’t know exactly what I was expecting, but it wasn’t trucks and roads. I mean, I saw the smokestacks . . .”

  “They have oil. Gas. Metal. Electricity. Raphael said they were only given what they needed to survive.”

  “Yeah, but think about how many bodies they’ve possessed, and how much knowledge they’ve stolen. The people who knew all that stuff are also here in the city. Somewhere along the way, the Mazikin must have learned how to mine for what they need. And the more people they possessed, the more free labor they had.”

  We reached an intersection where a mechanized cart had crashed into the side of a building, leaving a pile of twisted metal. Wisps of black smoke still rose from the engine, like the wreck had happened pretty recently. A smear of red against the concrete wall told me the driver probably hadn’t walked away, but there were no bodies in sight. Ana and I peeked into the building it had collided with, which looked the same as every other we’d seen so far. Even though there was electricity in the city, the insides of the buildings were dark, like maybe it was turned off during the day. There were no doors on the buildings, only wide openings, letting us see the empty spaces inside. No furniture, no people, no Mazikin. The living creatures were all tucked below or above, leaving the street level deserted as the sun beat down.