Slowly, by inches, Greyspot Three comes into view. Houses smoulder below, glowing red, a scattered cluster of dying stars. Jem pulls out his old, battered scope. He sees details he could have done without, a high heap of bodies, stacked, blackened limbs rigid. Shattered buildings and bomb-scarred streets.
The Vagrant takes the scope, his jaw clenching as he takes in the details.
Reela’s scope is imaginary, but the grim set to her face is convincing nonetheless.
‘Oh no,’ says Jem, tapping the Vagrant’s shoulder.
He looks over and Jem points, back to the metal snake. ‘Look!’
Delta of The Seven stands between them and the vehicle. She is watching them, her expression unreadable. One of her silvered hands rests on the hilt of her sword.
‘What do we do now?’ asks Jem.
The Vagrant looks over the edge of the cliff. The walkway that leads down the rock face is mostly intact. He runs for the nearest platform, pulling Reela behind him, pulling Jem behind her.
‘But,’ Jem protests, ‘we can’t go down there!’
The Vagrant ignores him, and when Jem gives a second look over his shoulder, he sees that Delta has started to follow them, and his protests die.
Rusted walkways clank with every step. The top layer has disguised the damage further down. The side of the cliff has chunks blown out of it and there is blood caked in the lattice of metal either side of them. There are no bodies here, however. Each has already been taken, fuel for the pyres in the port below. As they pass the worst of the damage the walkway leans out, alarming. Four of the main supports have broken free of their housing, leaving power cables to hold up the structure.
The Vagrant stops.
Reela stops.
‘Go on,’ urges Jem.
The Vagrant looks down, very quickly looks up again, leaning back against the rock.
‘You know what they say, you should never look dow— Wait! Don’t you look, Reela! I said don’t look!’
The girl begins to overbalance, sliding towards the side. Tugging on an arm each, the two men pull her back. There is a long creaking sound as the cables adjust to the shifting weight.
They all freeze until it settles, clinging to the wall, to each other.
Jem is the first to move, pushing the others into action.
They work their way down, zigzagging back and forth along the rock face. About three quarters of the way, a cable twangs loose.
There is a lurch, brief and fast, then the remaining cables catch.
As the three of them ease their way along, the lean of the walkway becomes more pronounced, slowly succumbing to gravity. Like a drunkard falling over, it takes its time.
‘Run!’ shouts Jem.
And they do.
The Vagrant scoops Reela into his arms, head low as he accelerates, Jem at his heels.
Their feet hammer fast, raindrops on a rooftop, echoing loud all around them. Only two levels up now, the Vagrant’s feet start to slip, unable to cope with the acute angle of the floor; he leans back, trying to keep from falling over. Jem, unable to stop, unable to get past the slower man, shouts, ‘Come on—’
Rock groans, final cables come loose. The entire walkway falls away from the cliff, bellyflopping into dirty sand and stone.
The three inside it slam together against the mesh wall, then bounce, to fall again, a tangled heap of arms and legs.
For a while, all is still.
Reela sits up, her younger body managing the impact better than the adults. She holds up a hand and inspects it. The crisscross imprint of the walkway runs up her palm and the outside of her little finger. There is blood where a nail has been torn. At the sight of it she starts to shake. A bottom lip falls from formation, trembles.
Jem springs up, suddenly alert. He presses his face against the mesh trying to see through it, then turns back to the others. ‘Is everyone alright?’
With a sigh, the Vagrant levers himself up onto one elbow.
Reela shows them her hand with a look of infinite woe.
‘Ouch,’ says Jem. ‘That looks painful.’ He goes back to the mesh. ‘I think we’re safe. I can’t see anyone else nearby.’
The Vagrant looks at her hand and, with a flourish, produces his own. Amid the calluses are new bruises, a bleeding knuckle and a thumb twice as big as its counterpart.
Reela nods, impressed. She takes a deep breath and her lip settles again.
Climbing out of the wreckage of the walkway, they see Greyspot Three from ground level. Aerial bombardment has destroyed any sense of landscaping the place might have had. Craters have given buildings new shapes, added ugly valleys. Lumps of churned earth make new hills, some of them still burn, slowly melting into puddles of slag.
It is a dead place but not everyone here is dead. Survivors sit and stand, united in shock, blending with the debris. They barely notice the newcomers, barely even notice their surroundings.
Jem does. He picks up on glints in the rubble, moving from one to the other, searching for treasures amidst the chaos. He finds a few coins, one of them platinum, precious, and a bonding gun with half a cartridge still intact.
While he does this, the Vagrant looks back up to the top of the cliff. Sunslight glints off a silver figure as she steps off the edge. Wings open, dazzling, turning a fall into a dive, then a glide as she swoops low over the ground, heading straight towards them.
The sight of her returns the survivors to life. As one they scream, scattering in all directions.
Jem, Reela and the Vagrant run too, but do not get far before her shadows rush overhead. The three come to a stop as Delta lands in front of them. She looks from left to right, her eyes bleak as she surveys the wreckage, before coming to rest on a nearby corpse pile.
Jem starts to edge away but the Vagrant takes his arm, gripping tight. He drops slowly to one knee, pulling the other two with him.
Delta pulls out a body from the pile. The arms are asymmetrical, one thicker and longer than the other. She pulls out a skull, ordinary, small, and raises it in the palm of her hand. ‘How has it come to this?’
The question is rhetorical but the Vagrant stands, drawing her gaze. He points out to sea, and when she looks, she sees a set of receding specks riding distant waves. A fleet bearing the symbol of the Winged Eye. Above them, ponderous, floats Alpha’s sky palace.
Delta closes her eyes.
One Thousand and Fifty-One Years Ago
Massassi makes the final adjustments to the metal by hand. Somehow, this feels appropriate, as this is to be the most personal of her creations.
The work is a slow race. It does not matter if she finishes today or tomorrow, in a year or three years. The Breach is quiet and her empire is stable. The threat here is internal rather than external: Massassi is racing her own degeneration.
For some, this would lead to depression or collapse but for Massassi it is a spur. There is a clearly defined challenge and a theory on how to meet it. She’ll be damned if something irrelevant like her physical body is going to get in the way.
The main shell that she works on has already been shaped by powerful machines. The form of a man cast in metal. She knows people respond instinctively to height and so she has made him taller than any normal human, imposing, authoritative. The kind of shape