King Ruin: A Thriller (Ruins Sonata Book 2) (15 page)

They are not on a collision course. Neither are they following one after the other. If anything, they seem to be revolving around a common fixed point, like lavic flows in a Molten Core.

"What does it mean?" Ti asks when he tells her.

"No idea," he answers.

They run on. They go past the wrecked helicopter, its smoke flagging now, sending up intermittent puffs like secret messages.

When the hard-pack mud beneath lurches, and the next tsunami tips up the far edge of the world at a concave angle, they are within QC range of the White Tower.

"How long?" Doe asks, and Ray can hear her teeth gritted through the pain of dragging him. It must be hell.

"Perhaps ten minutes," Ti answers. "There's nothing to slow it down, no incline or features. It'll be on us soon."

"And to the Tower?"

"At this pace, perhaps eleven."

Doe swears under her breath and charges ahead harder.

Ray leans up on his elbow, the click has gone now, to study the White Tower wall. It was a stub before, and now it is as big as a whale. Its white blocks seem yellowish, like decaying teeth, and the mortared gaps between them are yellow and green with some kind of pus-like slime.

The bitten-out hole the helicopter's missiles chewed out of the irregular rampart looks to be equally infected, rimmed with green and yellow like marsh moss. A thick dark-brown discharge runs out of it, staining a widening sheen down the wall. At the base where it meets the mud, there are bubbles and steam.

"You think grapnels can reach it?" Doe asks on blood-mic, panting.

"Yes, but we don't know what other defenses it has."

"There's someone up there," says Ray.

"What?"

"On the left side, he's looking at us through an arrow-slit, but he's there."

"Ti, hand me the howitzer."

Ti does.

In the far distance, the thump thump sound of rotors cuts in on the steady grumble of the nearing tsunami.

"Three," barks Ray, spinning to home in on them, looking back. "They're just above the tsunami. No blood this time."

"Then this could be the invasion wave," Doe says. "Ti get the cradle ready for Ray, and give me your grapnel."

Ti unlatches her gun and elasteel reel and hands both to Doe.

"I'll clear the way," Doe says, then unleashes and sprints ahead. She covers half the distance to the Tower wall in moments, then drops to one knee and aims the howitzer.

CRACKACRACKCRACKA

A stream of supersonic bullets tears out of the spinning weapon's barrel, ripping through the cross-hatched THUMP THUMP THUMP of three fused pulses drawing nearer, and raking into the arrow-slit in the Tower.

A scream rings down. Doe shoulders the weapon and runs on, launching her grapnel and taking to the air as it bites into the top of the rampart. Purple fire blazes out from the Tower top but catches only her heels as she fires the second grapnel, which yanks her sharply on a different angle, soaring up toward the wall.

The fire tries to follow but sputters, and Doe is already over the edge and sprinting back along the wall with the howitzer shouting

CRACKACRACKCRACKA

with every step.

Ray turns back to see the helicopters gaining on them, and with them the tsunami wall. The earth is thrumming now with the drumbeat of so many rotor-blade pulses, he can feel it through his re-bonding bones and in his blood.

"Hurry Ti," he calls.

"Lose some weight," she gasps back at him.

At that he unties the clasps holding him to the stretcher-sled, and immediately feels it slide out from underneath.

"What happened?" Ti shouts.

The pain is immediate and intense, crunching through all Ray's budding nerves and bones as his suit drags along the surface of the mud, but there is no other way. "Sled's gone," he grunts back. "It's just you and me, Ti."

"It wasn't even," Ti manages, sucks in a deep breath, "that heavy."

There's another burst of howitzer fire from the wall, then Doe's voice on blood-mic. "You're not going to believe who I'm looking at," she says.

"Cover us," Ti calls, and grunts into a final push, even as the shadow of the tsunami wall eclipses them. A helicopter screams by overhead, launching its rockets, even as both Doe's howitzer fires back, and a jet of purple flame erupts from the rampart.

Rattling along behind Ti, Ray has an unobstructed view as the howitzer bullets shred the missiles and burst them in air, followed by the helicopter frothing into a purple frenzy and fusing.

It drops. At the same moment, Ti hooks Ray into her suit and they rise, soaring up toward the yellow-slimed wall.

The tsunami is a bank of brown he can almost reach out and touch. One of the helicopters swerves to avoid Doe's rain of fire, and is caught by the tide and crumpled at once. The one remaining machine yaws up and away, its front guns hammering off the wall and into the gray sky, and for a moment seems to have escaped.

Then a vast white shape, as big as the Bathyscaphe and ringed with creamy-brown lines, bursts out of the frothing tsunami crest and clamps down on the helicopter's cab. A missile releases and explodes from its belly, and the two burst together in a spray of white meat and black metal, falling to be swallowed by the surging tide.

"A worm," Ray murmurs under his breath.

Then they hit the wall's peak hard, his vision darkens with dislocating pain in his shoulder and hip, and scant meters below the tsunami strikes, trembling everything.

"I've got you," Ti shouts, and he's in strong arms being guided down to a stone parapet covered in dark brown stains and fresh blood. She sets him against the wall and runs off clattering shouting for Doe. 

Beneath him the flood hammers away, and through the gray buzz of pain he looks to either side, to see dead figures lying all around. They are wearing torn blue tunics with tarnished brass buttons, filthy once-white pantaloons, and scattered in their flaccid hands are ancient muskets.

He remembers this, from another place and another time.

"Mr. Ruins," he whispers through blood-mic, before the pain swallows him under.

MOVEMENT 2. WHITE TOWER

I am me.

I move in darkness, in light. I dream of a hurricane come to sweep me away, within which are things I remember the shapes of, the foggy feelings of, but nothing else.

There are no names, no sharp details. I don't know these people, or these places, but they are all mine. They make me up, but what does that mean, when I don't know what they are?

I don't know what I am. I know my name, perhaps, but who am I? What do these feelings mean without anchors to root them in?

I am anger. I am love, somewhere, deep beneath the rage, and defiance. I am ready to die.

I am me, and I am Ritry Goligh, and I am some kind of hollow.

I roll into light, and open my eyes. It is a white space, and the walls are so thick I cannot reach through them. My own thoughts bounce back to me. Thee walls are white all round, as is the floor, as is the ceiling. There are no doors or windows, only a slow effulgent bath of white light.

Curled up in a ball, I begin to sob. I don't know why. I feel empty inside. I feel hollowed out, and it hurts so badly. I want to cry for my mother, but I never had one. Didn't I used to drink? There is nothing to drink here.

Instead I bite into my fist and moan. I do it until I taste blood, sharp and tangy on my tongue, and the hollow flood fades.

I am Ritry Goligh, I say to myself. I am from Calico. I am from proto-Calico. I fought in the skirmishes. I loved someone. I am worth something. Someone loved me.

They are platitudes without root, but I believe them. They are blobs in my Molten Core, soon to dissipate without roots, so I invent roots for them. I massage myself, as I have massage a thousand minds before. I use the trick of skinship upon myself.

My wife is called Fara, and we have three daughters. We go to the park every weekend, in Tenbridge Wulls. We watch television shows and laugh. I have a best friend called Yale, and we sometimes drink and hit golf balls off the wall, over the skulks down below, where we both once lived.

It helps, and I repeat it until the memories start to bed in. Every second that passes I'm losing something, and I backfill as much as I can. I create my job and our life together, all the things we used to do. I fill out the world with inventions to keep from going mad, and I repeat them like a mantra.

There's drool running down my cheek when I emerge. It wasn't a dive, not any kind of dive I've done before, because this white room forbids it. The walls bounce me back at myself, reflecting only me. Without something concrete to hold onto I'd go mad.

I feel the ache for Fara deep inside me, though Fara is not her name. I long for my three daughters harder than anything. I revel in it.

For a time I just lie there, staring up at the ceiling. There are some details I remember. The worst things. I remember a man called Mr. Ruins, who tried to steal everything. I remember the sea-fort filled with bodies, and the rock filled with tortured souls. I remember helping them, and striving to fight this thing that hurt them, and finding there was no way.

Now the thing that hurt them has me. King Ruin. He's going to carve out the pieces of my mind to get at what he wants, and there's nothing I can do.

I am not up to it. I can't face it. But that doesn't matter, because it is going to happen anyway. I will face it, and there will be no way to win. There will be no dignity for me. There will be no way to control what I become.

King Ruin will turn me inside out. All I can do, all I will ever be able to do, is resist. I will fail. I already know I will fail. And knowing that, that madness will inevitably come, is a balm. I only need hold out for as long as I can.

So my breathing calms. The sobs that shake my frame slowly cease. I sit up, and look out to the wall, and wait for it to begin.

Hours pass. I stop thinking of my fantasy family, and think instead of the horrors I saw in King Ruin's Court. I play them out in my mind, to bleach some of the shock away. The pain will always be there, the horror, but at least the shock will be gone. I attempt to inure myself.

At some point, a seamless door in the wall opens. A man steps through, and the door closes behind him. He is wearing white clothes like me, but otherwise he is a splash of dark, exotic color against the white. His skin is a deep copper-brown, and his long black hair is tied back in a glossy ponytail. He is stunningly handsome, with a sharp black goatee beard framing perfect dark lips, shining blue eyes, imperious cheekbones, and dark thick brows. There is a golden circlet worked across his temple, and a flat wooden sheath at his belt.

He stands before me and looks down. I am lying on the floor still, looking up. I am utterly vulnerable. I think that at any moment he might stamp on my exposed stomach, and a stream of reflex impulses urge me to flinch and curl up.

I resist. That would be far too soon.

Instead I look up, and he looks down. I try to reach out to feel his mind, but can go no further than the border of my own thoughts. Something has been altered. He stands long enough for this to become abundantly clear.

At last he speaks, in a languid bass voice reminiscent of the old More republic.

"Ritry Goligh. The man who walked the aetheric bridge."

There is little to say to this.

"And you are King Ruin?" I ask.

"I am one hand in a thousand," he answers, the words practiced and smooth. "Part of the one you call King Ruin."

"Then where's your EMR helmet?" I ask. "I don't hear any buzzing."

He smiles. "You don't feel my thoughts either, do you Mr. Goligh? It must be disconcerting. But then there are other ways beside a field of electromagnets to cut someone from the bonds, and other ways to connect."

He taps the top of his own head softly, twice, for left and right hemispheres. The meaning is clear.

"You took out my transponders," I say. I hadn't expected it, but it is no surprise. It amounts to the same thing as an EMR wall.

"We did. You will not use the bonds again, except at my request. You will not do a thing that is not by my request."

I push myself to my feet. He's no taller than me, but that does not make me feel strong. If anything I feel weaker for standing, because it is a futile gesture and both of us know it. This is his cell, not mine.

"You are right," he says, answering my unspoken thoughts. "It is futile. Everything you do from now on is futile."

He's diving me. I can't feel it, but I know he's reading every thought I have. So I stop myself from thinking. It's a graysmith's trick to evade the Lag, achieved by subvocalizing a circular repetitive loop. I start saying Fara's name, my daughters' names, our address, to the distraction of all else.

He smiles as he notices.

"Simple, but effective," he says. "Sadly it does nothing to mask your emotional state. You're afraid, Mr. Goligh."

He's right. Fuck him that he's right.

In place of the fear I force a surge of adrenaline. It's no easy feat without the transponders, but I know my own mind too well. I imagine myself lashing out with a right cross, breaking his jaw and dropping him to the floor. A kick to his belly flips him wheezing on his back, and a stamp across his neck kills him.

CRACK 

The thought floods my system with aggression, dwarfing the fear.

He studies me with interest. "Would you care to try that?"

"If I did, you wouldn't see it coming."

"Please," he says, gesturing with a hand.

I do nothing. There is nothing to be gained here. He can halt me with a thought at any second.

"You want the bridge," I say. "I don't have it. Do what you're going to do."

He gives a puzzled smile. "Are you giving me permission? So kind, Mr. Goligh. Yet I did not ask for the bridge. I will not ask for anything from you for a long, long time, and by the time I do ask, if that day ever comes, you will be so keen to please that you'll crawl over your own steaming entrails to give it to me, in whatever way you can."

That bloody image hangs in the air before us.

Fara, I think, my daughters Sal, Keryn, Brienne, my friend Levi, a home in Tenbridge Wulls, a life in Calico, back to Fara...

"You're a sick fuck," I say.

His frown becomes a pained smile. "You take great liberties with your speech. There is much you do not realize."

"Enlighten me."

"I will."

My feet root to the spot. My arms pin at my sides. His hand drops to his waist, and from the flat wooden sheath on his belt, he draws a flat wooden club. He turns it so I can see it clearly. He draws it back.

Then he hits me in the left hand, crushing it against my thigh.

The pain smacks into me like the percussive roar of the Calico Helter line. I hear my fingers break. I try to scream but my jaw is locked tight. He hits me again in the hand, there are more snaps as the bones in my palm twist, and the pain becomes the searing hot center of my world.

I can't trick my way out of it. Saying made-up names doesn't help. I only need to endure.

"You will endure," says the man. Two blows have not ruffled him at all. He looks exactly as calm as when he came in. I try to look away, down to my crumpled hand, but I can't even move my eyes. I grit my teeth against the swelling throb pulsing from my mangled hand. Blood drips to the floor where his bat has broken the skin, where my own bones have burst through.

"You will endure until madness comes, but it will be no relief, because I will bring you back. I have done this a thousand times, Mr. Goligh. Do you not remember my Court? Did you not see the men therein, who have given everything for me, again and again? And what are you?"

He sheathes the bat. He reaches down, and takes my wounded hand in his own. It moves for him, and screams with the pain.

"You think you are special," he says, as he runs a perfectly manicured finger over a shard of white bone sticking up through the back of my hand. The serrated pain of it makes me want to vomit. The way it looks makes me want to curl up and cry. "All of you are the same, believing you are the first. Do you know how many souls have breached the aetheric bridge, in all the time I have been King, Mr. Goligh? It is not only you and I. Perhaps ten then, a hundred?"

He smiles. He takes hold of my little finger, and yanks.

The finger tears out of the socket with a wrench. It feels like my stomach is being pulled out of my gut. I scream inside. There is a hole where it had been, and blood gushes out to splash on the plain white floor. He tosses the lump of torn meat on the floor. The pain is indescribable.

"It is thousands," he says. "Can you imagine that? Thousands of men and women who saw the aetheric soul before you. All so special, such graceful beings, and every last one of them is here. Can you comprehend this? None of them die, none of them go mad, there is no relief, because this is a very special Court, Mr. Goligh. This is the world's crucifix, where I string up my cautionary tales. You are just the last in a long line of martyrs who will bleed as an example to the rest."

I get a grip on my self. I stop the screaming. I start saying the mantra again.

His brows knead together. He takes hold of my ring finger, and pulls. His words still come clearly through the dizzy fog of pain, as a second finger crunches out of my hand and drops to the floor.

So much blood pours out of me.

Fara, I think, my daughters Sal, Keryn, Brienne, my friend-

"Stop that," he says, and cuts the thoughts short. Abruptly, I cannot think. I cannot breathe. I cannot move. I am just eyes in the white, a body that is bleeding, and a mind locked up and frozen like never before. 

"I'll show you depths you hadn't thought possible," he says. "For your arrogance. For your defiance. You will mulch in the swill like the rest. You will serve me as a warning, strung up on a pike with the pole in your guts, dancing a jig while everybody in the Court laughs. It is the role you were born to play. And do you know why they'll laugh at you, Mr. Goligh? It's because they're terrified. It's because they see the terror in you, and they learn to stay well away from the aetheric bridge because of it. They don't want a pole in their guts, so they don't dream of going near it. It's trespassing, and they don't want to become a message. Am I making myself clear?"

He lets go of my thoughts, and a flood of them burst out of me like a swollen tide. Terror, horror, disgust, fear, all blurring together after only five minutes in his presence.

He is repulsive. If I could dive him I would rip out his Solid Core.

"But you can't, can you?" he asks.

He takes a step back. "Still, why don't you try?"

I feel the lock on my feet and arms fall away. I try to leap forward and drive an elbow into his throat, but instead I fall to my knees and vomit. I puke into the blood, shivering with shock.

"Was that your plan, Mr. Goligh?" he asks. "Or did your body let you down?"

I hawk and spit. I try to push myself to stand, but the pain in my left hand is too strong, and I fall onto it, into the vomit.