Shade's Children Read online

 

  How did I get out of the Dorms?

  I just read that. He held up a sign. Or made one, I suppose. Being a hologram.

 

  Okay. I am going to talk.

  The Overlords took me out of the Dorms when I was eight.

 

  That is how I got out of the Dorms.

 

  I was taken to the Training Grounds. That’s where the big, strong kids go. Lots of exercise, food…and the drugs. Steroids. Shade explained those to me…what they do…what they’ve done to me…. Then when you’re fourteen, they don’t just take your brain, they destring your muscles too. Muscles to put in Myrmidons….

 

  The tracer? That was easy to get rid of.

  I moved it out. If I can see something or I know where it is and how big, I can…think…it somewhere else.

  When it was gone, I strangled the Watchward and left. I was thirteen and ten months old. Sixty days to go.

 

  When? Three years? Five?

 

  I don’t count my birthdays. Not since then.

 

  I don’t want to say any more.

 

  CHAPTER TWO

  There was no time for discussion at the top of the embankment. Gold-Eye was pulled up and over the edge, without apparent effort, by an extremely large, heavily muscled man. Or perhaps a boy—for his face was round and hairless, totally at odds with his mammoth physique.

  The other two were women—or rather a young woman and a girl. It took a second for Gold-Eye to realize they were female, since all three of his rescuers had close-cropped hair and wore baggy green coveralls cinched at the waist with wide leather belts festooned with pouches and equipment. Long, broad-bladed swords hung in scabbards at their hips, and they all wore heavy black boots.

  They looked organized, and Gold-Eye felt suddenly alien in his strange collection of mismatched clothing, with his matted hair showing the dirt of many weeks. He hadn’t really been clean since the harsh washing rituals of the Dorms.

  “Come on!” shouted the woman, grabbing him by the shoulder and starting to run. Gold-Eye stiffened, resisting, then lurched forward as the strongman almost picked him up by one arm. It was either run or have his arm ripped off.

  “I run!” blurted Gold-Eye, picking up the pace. Immediately the others released him, and he almost fell again before matching their stride.

  “I’m Ella,” said the woman, speaking in short bursts as they ran. “That’s Drum.”

  “And I’m Ninde.”

  The girl was small, maybe only as old as Gold-Eye. Fifteen or thereabouts. Ella was much older, older than anyone Gold-Eye had ever seen, except in pictures. She looked as old as the women on the posters that were slowly peeling off the walls and billboards around the city.

  Drum was harder to place, with a face as young as Gold-Eye’s on a body that was easily twice as massive. And he hadn’t said a word.

  “The lane!” Ella called out, and the four of them suddenly changed direction, plunging down steps into a narrow alley where the fog lay even thicker, soaking up the light.

  Halfway along they stopped so suddenly that Gold-Eye would have crashed into Ninde if Drum hadn’t held him with one enormous hand.

  “Ninde?” asked Ella, her breath making the fog eddy around her face.

  Ninde closed her eyes, and her forehead wrinkled. A second later she started chewing slowly on the knuckle of her forefinger, then more quickly, till Gold-Eye thought she was actually going to break the flesh.

  “There are Trackers in Rose Street.” Eyes still closed, she mumbled the words out over her knuckle. “But they have no orders. There is a Winger above the fog, taking messages west. I can’t hear anything else thinking clearly.”

  “Thanks,” said Ella. “We’ll take a quick rest before moving on.”

  She looked at Gold-Eye properly then, and her expression changed, the way it always did when anyone saw his eyes. They weren’t normal human eyes at all, blue or brown or green irises against the white. His pupils and irises were gold, bright gold—and he knew this meant that these people would leave him right away. Or worse…

  “Interesting eyes,” Ella said calmly. “Shade will want to see you! Must have been born right at the time of the Change. What’s your name?”

  Gold-Eye frowned. He hadn’t spoken to anyone for a long time, or even thought in words. But at least she hadn’t hit him or tried to poke his eyes out with a knife, the way other people had.

  “Come on,” said the one called Ninde. “Out with it.”

  Gold-Eye looked at her, startled. All these questions made it hard for him.

  “Your name,” explained Ella, talking more slowly. “Tell us your name.”

  “Gold-Eye,” he muttered. There had been another name in the Dormitory, but no one had ever used it. He pointed at his eyes. “Gold-Eye. Because gold eyes.”

  “Makes sense,” said Ninde. “I wonder what Ninde means? I’ll have to ask Shade.”

  “Enough chat,” said Ella. “Let’s move. We’ll take the Ten West Tunnel at the back of Nancel Street.”

  “Have we got time?”

  Ninde’s eyes flicked up anxiously, as if to pierce the fog. Gold-Eye knew that look, the calculation of how long it would be till darkness. But the fog hid the sun, so there was no way of knowing when the Trackers and Myrmidons would go in and the Ferrets emerge from their dormant day….

  Ella glanced at something metallic on her wrist. A watch, Gold-Eye suddenly remembered, long-ago classes in the Dorm coming back to him. Big hand for hours, little for minutes—or the easy ones just with numbers.

  The big man—Drum—was also looking at his watch. He nodded but made a sign with his hand, large fingers scrabbling like a spider over broken ground.

  “Just enough, if we hurry,” translated Ninde. “Come on, Gold-Eye!”

  Then they were off again, jogging rather than running, emerging onto the road, keeping to the middle between the lines of stopped cars. The fog seemed to run with them, layers breaking and reforming, twining in and around the cars, around their legs and pumping arms.

  At a crossroad, the fog gained color from the traffic lights, one of the few sets Gold-Eye had seen that still worked, inexorably changing from red to green to amber and back to red again above the silent cars.

  As the lights turned green, washing the fog and their faces with sickly color, Ella froze. The others stopped too, except for Gold-Eye, whose momentum carried him an extra step. His footfall sounded loud in the sudden silence.

  “What?” he whispered. Ninde covered his mouth with her hand, and he could say no more, struck by the strangeness of someone else’s skin against his mouth. Her hand smelled of soap….

  Then the lights flashed amber, and Ella suddenly leaped forward, with Drum close behind her, their swords out, now streaking lines of red through the mists. Gold-Eye saw their reflections multiplied in the glass windows of the cars…many glaring red Ellas…many scarlet Drums…and then he saw the Trackers who were crouched behind a loaded truck.

  “Shaaaaaaaade!” screamed Ella, and then she was standing over the lead Tracker and the blade screamed too as it cut through the air and into the Tracker’s neck, shearing through leather gorget and the gold service braids of a Senior Tracker.

  It crumpled, head half off, but the bulbous eyes still stared, still followed Ella, as if even now it would report her to some Myrmidon Master or Overlord.

  Gold-Eye stared too, unable to believe what he was seeing. People attacking creatures? You fought when you had to, and
tried to escape, but you never won.

  Movement caught his eye again, and he wished it hadn’t, as Drum’s sword came down and a Tracker’s head flew through the air and bounced off a car roof. The headless body staggered back and started to crawl away, feeling the ground with pallid, spider-like fingers.

  Drum ignored it. Swiveling on his left heel, he cut the remaining Tracker down with his sword. It crumpled where it fell, and bright-blue fluid, too thick to be blood, bubbled out from the stump of its neck.

  Then it was all over—and the traffic lights turned green again.

  “An old one,” said Ninde conversationally, removing her hand from Gold-Eye’s mouth. “They can go for hours without a head when they’re fresh. Mind you, they only crawl home—and I bet they don’t get fixed up. Just used for spare bits and pieces….”

  “Ninde!” shouted Ella, striding back, cleaning her sword at the same time with a strip of cloth. “Bring Gold-Eye! There’ll be Myrmidons here any minute.”

  Gold-Eye didn’t need urging, but as they started down the street again, he stopped and jammed his heels into the tar. Suddenly he saw Myrmidons. Two full maniples of them, all clad in deep-blue armor, a Myrmidon Master at their head. The Master was taller than the others, and his armor had spikes and ripples that moved over his shoulders and arms….

  Ninde tugged at Gold-Eye’s hand, and the vision faded.

  “No!” he yelped as she dragged at him, using his free hand to point ahead. “Myrmidons!”

  “There’s no one there!” exclaimed Ella, looking back angrily. “Drum….”

  “There will be!” Gold-Eye spat urgently as Drum advanced on him. “I see them in the soon-to-be-now.”

  “You what?” exclaimed Ella. “Damn. Okay, Ninde, see if you can pick anything up.”

  Ninde let go of Gold-Eye and started sucking on a knuckle. But this time her eyes flashed open in fright, and she let go immediately.

  “Two maniples…and a Master. They’re already on Nancel Street. The Master knows we’re…ahh—look!”

  The detached head of the Tracker was still staring at them. Its long tongue came out and lashed the road, slowly manuevering around so its bulbous eyes would have a better view.

  “It has a mind-call,” said Ninde, sucking back on her knuckle. “A new one, stuck in its head, not the sort on the neck-chain.”

  “Right!” called Ella, her voice much calmer than Ninde’s. “Follow me! Drum, take care of that!”

  Drum nodded and broke into a trot down the street. As he passed the head, he expertly kicked it up and away over the line of cars, not bothering to look to see where it went.

  A second later Ella overtook him and suddenly turned left into a much narrower road, where there were few cars and little room between them and the tall buildings on either side.

  They were about a block away before they heard the massed roar of the Myrmidons and the frightened bleating of more Trackers.

  Another block later, after more twists and turns, Ella stopped to try the door in a relatively small building—only five floors high, not breaking through the fog into the sun like the others around it.

  The door opened, and she led them into a chill, dark foyer. Ninde and Gold-Eye stumbled in; then Drum closed the door, shutting out the fog and the distant noise of the Overlord’s hunting creatures.

  “Rest for a few minutes,” ordered Ella. “Then we’d better figure out how to get back home. I guess it’s too late for the Ten West Tunnel—and Nine West is too dry.”

  “Ferrets will be stirring now.”

  The voice was so high and whispery that it took Gold-Eye a second to realize it was Drum who had spoken.

  “Yeah,” answered Ella. “I think we’d better hole up here for the night. But not on the ground level. Let’s find the stairs.”

  She reached into one of the belt’s pouches and drew out a round ball smaller than her fist. She squeezed the ball, and it suddenly shed a soft, golden light.

  Myrmidon witchlight, thought Gold-Eye. On the extremely rare occasions that Myrmidons walked after dusk, they carried tree branches hung with the small globes. Myrmidons must have died for Ella to hold that light….

  His amazement must have shown, for Ella came and stood over him, the light held high in her hand. Tall and dangerous she looked, her stubbled blond scalp gleaming in the light. Gold-Eye felt an almost overpowering urge to bow, as he had done on the Sad Birthdays at the Dorm, when the Overlords came….

  “Yeah, we killed a Myrmidon,” Ella said softly, and there was a light in her eyes that was no reflection. “Drum held it, just for a moment, and I—”

  “Ella,” interrupted the strange, reedy voice of Drum. “He is only a youngster….”

  “That’s all any of us are,” Ella said, but the light was gone from her eyes and with it the sudden fear that had come over Gold-Eye. He realized then that he’d ducked his head. Hiding his eyes from the knife, or the hot wire…

  “Myrmidons can be killed,” Ella continued. “So can Ferrets, and Wingers. And Trackers. As you have seen.”

  “And Overlords?” whispered Gold-Eye, looking up again. This time it was Ella who lowered her eyes.

  “One day…” she said. “We will find out. But now let’s find the stairs.”

  “I’ve found them,” called Ninde from one of the dark corners. “The fire escape, anyway. But the door’s locked.”

  “Ninde!” exclaimed Ella, moving quickly to the door, the witchlight held high. “I’ve told you a hundred times. There could be a Ferret…”

  “There will be many in a few minutes,” whispered Drum, moving his bulk between Ninde and Ella to grip the handle of the fire door. He didn’t try to force it, but just ran his hand over it as if feeling the smoothness of the metal. There was a click from inside the door, and it swung open.

  Far away across the city, a fire alarm sounded in a security company’s control center. No humans were there to see it, but a vaguely human thing sat in the master chair, watching the panels. It noted the address, then used the device around its neck to notify its master.

  VIDEO ARCHIVE—INTERVIEW 1871 • NINDE

  I’m Ninde. I’ve been waiting for ages to do this video, but Shade won’t let anyone record anything till they’ve been here for three months. He says it takes that long for us to get our thoughts together and sometimes even to remember who we are and where we came from.

  Of course, I had no problems remembering any of that. I think it’s just laziness when you get people…like Nik when he came here…who’ve forgotten how to talk and wash and everything. You just have to practice thinking every day.

  Oh, I’m supposed to say how I got out of the Dorms. That’s what this first video is always about. “How I got out of the Dorms.”

  You’d think Shade would let us talk about something more interesting. I’ve watched heaps of these videos, and really everyone just does whatever they can do with whatever they have, whether it’s finding something useful or using a Change Talent. Of course, hardly anyone has a really useful and powerful Talent like mine….

  Which is lucky, because I’d hate to have had to cut my tracer out like Ella did, because her scar is really ugly and it must have bled heaps. Ella doesn’t care about blood, but I don’t like it. It’s so unfair that we women have to bleed once a month anyway. You shouldn’t have to cut yourself open as well.

  I am getting to the point, Shade. I was going to say that since I reached puberty…did I say that right? Pew-berty. Stupid word. We never said that in the Dorms. We just called it bleeding and hoped it wouldn’t come too much before thirteen at least. I mean it’s bad enough having your brain ripped out at fourteen without having to have babies first. Of course, some people used to say the girls that got taken away for breeding got an extension to sixteen…or even eighteen….

  It is connected, and I am getting to the point. When I reached puberty, somehow I started hearing what the creatures were thinking. Which is not much for most of them, but the Myrmidon Ma
ster who was in charge of my Dorm used to think a lot. And one of the things he thought when I was listening was about deactivating the Tracer when you get taken away on your Sad Birthday.

  So I learned where the Tracer Key was, and then I sneaked in one night and used it. That was a bit hard, but I did know where everyone was, and I’d overheard the Master thinking about the access codes for the doors and gates….

  The only thing was, I hadn’t heard him thinking about an alarm that’s connected to the Key, so when it went off, I had to leave a bit more suddenly than I expected.

  So that’s how I got out of the Dorm. Straight after that, I was—