Shade's Children Read online

  Garth Nix

  Shade’s Children

  To my family and friends

  Contents

  Video Archive—Interview 1759 • Ella

  Chapter One

  Gold-Eye crouched in a corner under two birdshit-caked blankets, watching…

  Video Archive—Interview 1802 • Drum

  Chapter Two

  There was no time for discussion at the top of…

  Video Archive—Interview 1871 • Ninde

  Chapter Three

  ‘Wake up!”

  Video Archive—Interview 1906 • Gold-Eye

  Chapter Four

  Shade’s secret home was a submarine. Soon after the Change…

  Video Archive—Training Lesson A41

  Chapter Five

  “So you are. I will come down.”

  Video Archive—Secret 2711 Rick *3—Final

  Chapter Six

  Shade didn’t say anything for a moment after Drum left.

  Video Archive—Creature Insight 2703 Myrmidon Battle Poetry #48

  Chapter Seven

  After a single, bewildering night in the Submarine, Gold-Eye found…

  Archive—Mission Orders 3651 • Stelo

  Chapter Eight

  “They’re alive!” said Ninde, sounding very surprised. “I think.”

  Archive—Self-Examination Session #256,328,974

  Chapter Nine

  They didn’t stop running until they were a hundred yards…

  Archive—Training Lesson B34 • New Creature

  Chapter Ten

  “I’m Ella. Who are you?”

  Video Archive—Converted from Disk Store 34–786 to Array 23–56 • Stephen

  Chapter Eleven

  “We have to get out,” said Drum. “There’s an Overlord…

  Database Archive—Dormitory Escapee Trends

  Chapter Twelve

  The far row of cars included several electric runabouts still…

  Archive—Internal Discussion • Radiation Analysis Progress

  Chapter Thirteen

  The sick bay was all gleaming stainless steel. Stainless-steel cabinets…

  Audio Archive—Pickup #277: Torpedo Lock 4 • Sam Allen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Gold-Eye stopped outside the hatch that led to the four-bunk…

  Video Archive—Interview 25371 • Ella

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Overlords started changing the weather on the afternoon before…

  Video Archive—Interview 23489 • Drum

  Chapter Sixteen

  The eastern tower had a riveted steel door leading onto…

  Video Archive—Interview 24118 • Ninde

  Chapter Seventeen

  They heard the grenade explode when the boat was just…

  Video Archive—Interview 24768 • Gold-Eye

  Chapter Eighteen

  The robots had already cleaned and racked their equipment. The…

  Archive—Assessment 2341 • Overlord “Thinker” Device

  Chapter Nineteen

  They never got to manhole twelve on Northwest Eight—because that…

  Archive—Self-Examination/Check Session Post-Rebuild in New Media Session #256,329,005

  Chapter Twenty

  “Gold-Eye, go to the other end of the bus and…

  Archive—Known Overlords and Major Barracks

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Sleep dust!” shouted Gold-Eye, pointing up at the slowly falling…

  Live Transmission—Rat-Eye Delta: Meat Factory Reconnaissance

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Ella had just touched the switch to bring Drum’s shelf…

  Archive—Training Session Emergency—Creature Attack on Submarine

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  They were only a few feet behind the Myrmidon line…

  Archive—Training Session Emergency Supply Caches

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “He’s alive!” cried Ninde. She threw her arms up in…

  Audio Archive—Storeroom #7 Pickup • Sal and Lisa

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The first set of Deceptor batteries ran out as they…

  Archive—Roll of Honor Killed or Captured Fighting the Overlords

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  They had to use the Deceptors only once, in the…

  Archive—Communications Test: First Contact

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The cache was located a hundred yards into a railway…

  Video Archive—Secret 2875 • Stelo and Marg

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  If Shade had been expecting a dramatic response to his…

  Archive—Overlord Communications

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Despite Shade’s assurances that it was unnecessary, they kept a…

  Archive—Self-Examination Session #298, 255, 771

  Chapter Thirty

  Three days after meeting Shade in the Eastern Line tunnel,…

  Archive—Rules of Battle

  Chapter Thirty-One

  A Myrmidon threw itself on the grenade a second before…

  Archive—Overlord Communications

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  It was Drum’s pack that Ella had salvaged. Still done…

  Archive—Unscheduled Self-Examination

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  There was a map in the police car—a paperback road…

  Archive—Internal Discourse

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  There were seven Overlords sitting on seven thrones in the…

  Musing—Robert Ingman

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Ninde and Gold-Eye had no idea how long they’d been…

  Misquotation—Robert Ingman

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The Myrmidons didn’t take them back to the cell. Instead,…

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Gold-Eye was just about to give up and breathe in…

  Gold-Eye’s Vision

  About the Author

  Other Books by Garth Nix

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  VIDEO ARCHIVE—INTERVIEW 1759 • ELLA

  A razor blade gave me freedom from the Dorms. A small rectangle of steel, incredibly sharp on two sides. It came wrapped in paper, with the words NOT FOR USE BY CHILDREN printed on the side.

  I was eleven years old then. Eight years ago, which means I am probably the oldest human alive. Five years past the time when the Overlords would have wrenched my brain out of my skull and used it in one of their creatures.

  Actually, I guess Shade is the oldest human around. If you can call him a human.

  Shade would say that it wasn’t the razor blade that gave me freedom. It was what I did with it. The object is irrelevant; my action is the important part.

  But that blade still seems important to me. It was the first useful object I ever conjured—or created, or whatever it is I do. I remember when I first realized what a razor blade was, staring at that faded page of newspaper I found. The newspaper that had lain in a wall cavity for forty, maybe fifty years, long before the Overlords decided to use the building as a Dormitory.

  And there, in black-turned-gray on white-turned-yellow, an advertisement for razor blades with a picture perfect for me to put in my head.

  It took three months of practice for me to build that picture into something real, a hard, sharp object to hold in my hand. Then one day, it wasn’t just a thought. It was there in my hand. Real. Sharp.

  Sharp enough to cut the tracer out of my wrist. To make escape a possibility…

  Well, I did it. Only one in ten thousand gets out of the Dormitories, according to Shade. Most can’t find anything to cut
the tracer out or don’t have the wits to disable it in some other way.

  Even when they do find something sharp, most don’t have the guts to slice open their own wrist, to reach in and pull the capsule out from where it nestles between veins and bone.

  Even now, when I look at the scar, I wonder how…. But it’s done now. I’ve been free for eight years….

  I don’t know why Shade wants to record this. I mean, who’s going to see it? Who cares how I got out of the Dorms?

  Of course, I really do know why Shade records. And who’s going to see this video.

  I’ve been here with Shade for three years. But he’s been around for nearly fifteen—ever since the Change. There’s been a lot of children in this place since then.

  I’ve seen their videos, but I’ll never see them. You sit in the dark, watching their faces as they talk through their brief lives, and all the time you wonder what got them in the end. Was it a Winger striking out of the sky? Trackers on their heels till they dropped and the Myrmidons came? A Ferret uncoiling in some dark hole where they’d hoped to hide?

  Now you’re watching me…and you’re wondering…what got her?

  CHAPTER ONE

  Gold-Eye crouched in a corner under two birdshit-caked blankets, watching the fog streaming through the windows. Sixteen gray waterfalls of wet air cascading in slow motion. One for each of the windows in the railway carriage.

  But the fog had only a small part of his attention, something his eyes looked at while he strained his ears trying to work out what was happening outside. The carriage was his third hideout that day, and the Trackers had been all too quick to find the other two.

  They were out there now, whistling in the mist; whistling the high-pitched, repetitive notes that meant they’d lost their prey. Temporarily…

  Gold-Eye shivered and ran his finger along the sharpened steel spike resting across his drawn-up knees. Cold steel was the only thing that could kill the Overlords’ creatures—some of the weaker ones, anyway, like Trackers. Not Myrmidons…

  As if on cue, a deeper, booming noise cut through the Trackers’ whistles. Myrmidon battle sound. Either the force behind the Trackers was massing to sweep the area, or they’d encountered the forces of a rival Overlord.

  No, that would be too much to ask for—and the whistles were changing too, showing that the Trackers had found a trail…. His trail…

  With that thought Gold-Eye’s Change Vision suddenly gripped him, showing him a picture of the unpleasantly close future, the soon-to-be-now.

  Doors slid open at each end of the carriage, forced apart by metal-gauntleted hands four times the size of Gold-Eye’s own. Fog no longer fell in lazy swirls, but danced and spiraled crazily as huge shapes lumbered in, moving to the pile of blankets….

  Gold-Eye didn’t wait to see more. He came out of the vision and took the escape route he’d planned months before, when he’d first found the carriage. Lifting a trapdoor in the floor, he dropped down, down to the cold steel rails.

  Back in the carriage, the doors shrieked as they were forced open, and Gold-Eye both heard and felt the drumbeat of Myrmidon hobnails on the steel floor above his head.

  Ignoring the new grazes on his well-scabbed knees, he began to crawl across the concrete ties, keeping well under the train. The Trackers would wait for the Myrmidons now, and Myrmidons were often slow to grasp what had happened. He probably had three or four minutes to make his escape.

  The train was a long one, slowly rusting in place between Central and Redtree stations. Like all the others, it was completely intact, if a little timeworn. It had just stopped where it was, all those years ago.

  Not that Gold-Eye knew it as a form of transport. It was just part of the fixed landscape to him, one of the many hiding places he moved among. Gold-Eye didn’t have memories of a different time, except for the hazy recollection of life in the Dorms—and his escape with two older children. Both of them long since taken…

  At the end of the train, he got down on his belly under the locomotive, steel spike clutched in his fist, white knuckles showing through the ingrained dirt.

  Peep, peep, peep, peep, peep, peep…

  The Trackers were on the move again, spreading out to search. It sounded like a trio on each side of the train, coming toward him.

  Gold-Eye pictured them in his head, trying to get his Change Vision to show him exactly where they were.

  But the Change Vision came and went when it chose, and couldn’t be controlled. This time it didn’t show him anything—but a memory arose unbidden, a super-fast slide show of Trackers flashing through his mind.

  Thin, spindly stick-humans that looked like half-melted plastic soldiers. Bright, bulbous eyes, too large for their almost-human eye sockets. Long pointed noses that were almost all red-flared nostril…

  They could smell a human out with those noses, Gold-Eye knew. No matter where he hid.

  That thought was foremost as Gold-Eye listened again. But he couldn’t work out where the Trackers were, so he edged forward till he was almost out from under the train and could get his knees and feet up like a sprinter on the starting blocks. It was about thirty yards to the embankment wall. If he could cross that open space and get up it, the Trackers would go past to look for an easier way up—and Myrmidons were very slow climbers.

  At this time of day that left only Wingers to worry about, and they would be roosting in City Tower, avoiding the fog.

  Then the Trackers whistled again, giving their found signal—and Myrmidons boomed in answer, frighteningly close.

  With that boom, Gold-Eye shot out like a rabbit, jinking and zigzagging over the railway lines, frantic with a terrible realization.

  The Myrmidons had crept through the train!

  He could hear their boots crashing onto the gravel around the tracks as the huge creatures jumped down from the lead carriage, the bass shouts of their battle cries joining the frenzied whistles of the Trackers.

  Heart pounding, face white with sudden exertion, Gold-Eye hit the embankment at speed, reaching head height before he even needed to take his first hold. Then, as his feet scrabbled to take him higher, he reached out…and slipped.

  The fog had laid a film of moisture on the old stones of the embankment, and in his panic Gold-Eye had run to one of the hardest spots to climb. His fingers couldn’t find any cracks between the stones….

  Slipping, his feet touched bottom, and he added his own wail of despair to the awful noise of the creatures behind him.

  Soon the Myrmidons would surround him, silver nets shooting out to catch him in their sticky tracery. Then a Winger would come to take him away. Back to the Dorms. Or if he was old enough…straight to the Meat Factory.

  As Gold-Eye thought of that, bile filled his mouth. Then he turned to face the Myrmidons and hefted his steel spike.

  “Kill me!” he screamed at the tall shapes approaching through the fog. “Kill me!”

  The Myrmidons stopped ten yards away. Seven of them—a full maniple. Seven-foot-tall, barrel-chested monsters with long arms ending in spade-shaped hands. Six-fingered hands, with thick, oversized thumbs.

  These Myrmidons wore gold-and-green metal-cloth armor that was all spikes and flanges, heavily decorated with battle charms and medals, sparkling even through the fog. Crested helmets enclosed their heads, and black glass visors hid their faces.

  If they had faces. They certainly had mouths, but they were silent, now that their target was trapped. The Trackers were quiet too, clustering in their trios behind the line of Myrmidons. Their work was done.

  I’ll make them kill me, Gold-Eye thought desperately as the Myrmidons—toying with him now—raised their net guns. He tensed himself, ready to lunge, hoping to strike one behind the knee, to irritate it enough that it would kill unthinking….

  “Hey, you! Shut your eyes and duck!”

  It was so long since Gold-Eye had heard a human voice that he almost didn’t understand, till a fizzing, sparking object sailed past his head a
nd bounced toward the Myrmidons.

  He ducked, curling himself into the embankment, face pressed against the wet stone. For a second nothing happened save the massed growl of the Myrmidons’ surprise.

  Then there was a brilliant flash, smacking his eyes with red even through closed eyelids, and his bare neck with sudden heat.

  At the same time something hit his back, and he flinched.

  “Grab the rope!” called the voice again. “Hurry up! The flash will only hold them for a few seconds.”

  A rope! Gold-Eye uncurled and saw the knotted end hanging above him. His eye followed the rope up the embankment, up to the fog-wreathed figures on the road above the railway.

  Humans. Three of them. All older and larger than he.

  For a moment he hesitated, glancing back at the blindly groping Myrmidons. Then he started to climb.

  VIDEO ARCHIVE—INTERVIEW 1802 • DRUM

  Shade made me do this. He’s watching now, flapping his arms like a Winger.

  I suppose that means I should say something.