Tim Lebbon - Echo city

Next time, Gorham caught the bag. He tweaked the drawstring and gasped as several small shapes flew from the bag's mouth, circling in tight circles before fluttering off into the darkness.

"What are they?" he asked.

"Bloodflies," Rose said. "Another." Alexia lobbed the bags up to her, Rose filled them, and when she dropped them someone was always there to catch.

"Do you really think these will work?" Peer asked.

"It's the best I could do," Rose said. She grunted each time she reached down into the vat now, and each time Gorham thought she was going to fall.

But he caught and tied the bags, and realization hit him-release the flies, hope they bite, and in their bites would be traces of Rufus's chopped blood. There was a terrible randomness to it and a reliance on the untested idea that Rufus survived the Bonelands because of something that ran in his veins. But Gorham also knew that Rose was right. It really was the best she could have done.

"Is this like the moths, bats, and lizards?" Gorham asked.

"They were proven," Rose said. "Used before, though on a much smaller scale. These…" She grunted, dropped another bag. "Bakers have tried things like this before, to spread cures in time of plague. But I have no firm memory of something like this ever working."

"Marvelous," Alexia said.

The sounds resonating through the Echoes were now constant. They were accompanied by those staggering impacts, and Gorham feared that the ceilings would fall and crush them flat. He heard what might have been distant cave-ins, but he could not let them concern him. Their route was set, they were on their way, and it would take death to stop them.

They stacked the filled bags away from the vat. There were twenty in all, and they writhed and flexed with their insectile contents.

"So that's it?" Peer asked. "That's the hope of Echo City?"

"If Nadielle was right about Rufus's blood," Gorham said.

"She was right," Rose said, as she climbed back down the wooden ladder. "She made him, after all. She'd have known."

"But it was still a guess!" Gorham said, frustrated by Rose's pronouncements. "Nothing more."

"Lots of what the Bakers do is derived from best guesses," Rose replied, shrugging. "That's the basis of experimentation. It's all theory. We're just good at putting it into practice." She walked toward the main doors leading out into the Echoes, and when she turned and saw them standing there, she seemed surprised. "It's time to leave."

"Right now?" Peer asked.

"The Vex won't wait for us," Rose said. She looked like a corpse. Her eyes were sunken, her cheeks hollowed, and the shattering idea hit Gorham that she was only temporary. Nadielle hadn't had long, and she had chopped Rose to serve a purpose, nothing more. Where will the next Baker originate? he wondered. It was not something he wanted to dwell upon.

So they followed her from the womb-vat hall, each of them carrying several of the light, flexing bags. Gorham left last, and Rose was waiting for him outside the doors. She smiled softly and looked back into the rooms.

Leftover flies were rising from the vat in a swirling cloud, moving in beautiful synchronicity.

"We'll never return," Gorham said. This is the first of many places I'll be leaving forever, he thought, and he was as scared and excited as a little boy on his first trip out of his canton.

"No," Rose said. "But we'll leave the doors open for anyone else who might." She scratched at her arm, and he suddenly noticed the fresh blood speckled there. He grabbed her hand and twisted-the knife cuts were plain, on both underarms, and he had seen their like before.

"Nophel?" he asked.

"Yes. The city streets will be dangerous."

Gorham understood. "And who better to guide our way than the keeper of the Scopes."

Rose nodded, smiled, and seemed to be about to say something about the disfigured man. But Gorham guessed there was nothing left to be said.

They set off through the Echo, heading for the closest door that would take them to the surface. Their world shook around them, flinching away from the terrible roars and rumbles that echoed through the darkness.

And Gorham thought, There's no way we can win.

They looked at him strangely, almost as if they knew. Perhaps they do, he thought. Perhaps they were there. There's no telling how old they are.

She'd called them the Pserans, and they were guiding him across the Echoes. He'd only recently come this way with Peer and Alexia, but he'd been spitting blood then, in terrible pain and hovering on the boundaries of consciousness. Now he felt stronger, buoyed by the Baker's medicines, though he knew that he was dying. His senses were sharper and his purpose more defined, yet his breathing bubbled and he tasted blood when he coughed.

He'd be returning to Hanharan Heights a new man.

Nophel's arms stung where Rose had pricked them, but the pains had been offset by the touch he had been granted of her mind. The depth of that place had shocked him, the shattering extent of her knowledge exposed to him in a flash faster than thought, and he'd been left reeling. But then Rose had held his face in her hands and looked him in the eye, and he had seen the pain that went with such knowledge. She is never a child, never carefree, and can never truly love. In that, he found a closer tie to his mother than he had ever believed possible.

The two Pserans moved quickly, checking frequently to make sure he was keeping pace. They seemed unafraid but sad, and he guessed it was because this was the last task they would perform for the Baker. They passed a small group of Garthans, but the subterranean dwellers pulled back at the sight of the Pserans. Other things large and small approached in the darkness, fleeing the sounds reverberating through the Echoes rather than stalking prey, and the Pserans were always there to ensure his safety. At last they watched him up into daylight, holding back in the shadows, and retreating without a sound when he turned to give them thanks.

Nophel, Scope keeper for the Marcellans, bastard son of the Baker and Dane Marcellan, rose from the shaking Echoes of the past into a chaotic present.

Four people walked quickly through the Echo. Peer, feeling more fragile with every step they took, remained close to Gorham. Gorham, the leader of an organization whose worst fears were coming true, felt more lost than ever. Alexia, raised a Hanharan but whose beliefs had been taken advantage of, was now bitter and adrift. And Rose, who was mere days in this world but nonetheless possessed a mind almost as old as Echo City itself. They walked in silence because there was little left to be said. They walked with purpose. And, in all of them, doubt worried and bit, closing gentle fingers around their hearts and threatening to crush.

Peer had never been afraid of feeling insignificant. Even when she worked with the Watchers' political arm, she'd believed that most of what she did was trivial. It had implications, she knew, but hers was not a name that would ever be remembered. Then, in Skulk, banished and in pain, she had existed day by day on her own. Penler had been there, and his guidance, help, and support had seen her through many lonely times. But she had been one of many sent to that ruined place.

Now she was afraid, and some of that stemmed from loss of control. She had spent days doing everything she could to help a city unaware of its impending doom, but whatever might happen was out of her hands. She walked toward the culmination not only of the last few days but of everything. The city had been here for longer than anyone knew, and it was all about to change.

The ground shook. The air vibrated with potential. Something roared. Rose gave nothing away, and in that Peer recognized their true danger.

All she wanted to do was sit with Gorham and talk about old times, because events were far outpacing the differences between them. Though she still felt the physical pains of his betrayal, he was the last solid rock she thought she could hold on to, a love from her past who was so much more now. There was desire, but that was a gentle feeling compared to the depth of connection she felt to him. And it was in the intensity of his obvious guilt that she found her own capacity for forgiveness.