Tim Lebbon - Echo city

Peer sagged as realization struck her: It would take Penler.

"Gorham!" she called. "I've got an idea. I'm going to find-"

"Penler," he said again, nodding. "And I'm coming with you." He said something else to Rose and Alexia, then trotted over to Peer. "Better to split up anyway. Spread the bloodfly love."

"That's why you're coming?" she asked, smiling.

"Of course. Why else?" His feigned innocence made her chuckle, and she could not recall the last time that had happened.

"Welcome to my home," she said, indicating the first line of Skulk buildings not far away, and part of her enjoyed the flash of guilt in Gorham's eyes.

They waited until they'd crossed the Levels before pricking the final bags. Many of those crossing had been bitten already or were being bitten as the plague of flies followed the general direction of travel. But there would be people in Skulk who had yet to be exposed, and Peer wanted to give them as good a chance as any.

She kept glancing back toward Marcellan Canton. She reckoned that the area that had been swallowed down into the Echoes was five miles distant, and a pall of smoke and dust still hung over the whole site, obscuring the view. The glow of fires burned through here and there, and they must have been voracious to be visible from this far away. She tried to resist the feeling that they were relatively safe here in Skulk. Though the destruction seemed to be behind them, she could still feel the ground beneath her shaking. The Echoes below this place were fewer, the buildings here older than almost any in Echo City, but that did not mean they were safe. Whatever was rising-Rose had called it the Vex, muttered in hushed tones of abject terror-would have the whole city as its playground.

Nowhere was safe. The city was finished. She felt sick but also a barely veiled excitement at that. Everything she had always believed as a Watcher was about to be explored for real. In a matter of days, everyone in Echo City might be dead… or some of them could be somewhere else.

They ran where possible, and where there were too many people, they pushed through the crowds. Reaching the first of the buildings, Peer drew her knife and pricked the last bag, agitating it with both hands until the flies started pouring from the tear. Gorham did the same.

The streets of Skulk were awash with thousands of people who had never considered that they would be here. Some wandered in confused groups, aimless and seeking something more, casting fearful looks at their surroundings. Others were sitting along sidewalks or in the street, on fallen ruins or in the windows of the taverns and cafes that had been set up here over the years. Whole families sat together in protective huddles, and here and there single people roamed, lost and alone. Peer felt the urge to tell them what was happening-but if she stopped for one, she would have to stop for them all.

The crowds parted as she and Gorham rushed through the dilapidated streets, flies spewing from the shrinking bags. They left behind the familiar yelps of people being bitten. When Peer felt that her bag was almost empty, she pinched the slit shut and tucked it beneath her arm. These are for Penler.

"Done," Gorham said behind her. "Peer, wait."

"No time," she said, and Gorham cursed as he struggled to keep up with her.

The confusion was palpable. Encouraged to flee to this prison district by urges they could not identify, everyone was now waiting for whatever came next. Marcellan Canton was visible from most places, and where it was not, the people still seemed aware of what had happened there-what was still happening. The fear showed in their eyes.

This is not the place I lived in for three years, Peer thought, and she was glad for that. Skulk had never seen so many people, and even when she passed a small cafe where she sometimes drank five-bean while reading one of the books collected in a central library, it no longer seemed familiar. Only now did she realize that it was people who shaped the face of a place, not the place itself.

"How far?" Gorham asked.

"What's wrong with you?"

"Nothing," he said, panting hard. They paused on a street corner, leaning against a wall.

"You've let yourself go since I left," she said, offering a smile to show she was joking.

Gorham shrugged, looking around nervously. She felt protective of this place and what had been done here. The Marcellans sent those they thought were the worst of the city this way, and most of them had made a go of forming a functioning society.

"I used to live over there," she said pointing along a street. "Half a mile away. Small house, nice. Still had pictures on the wall."

"You don't need to tell me this," Gorham said.

"It's no problem," she said, looking back along another street at the imposing mount of Marcellan. Smoke hung heavy over that canton now, drifting west across Course. "We're becoming strangers to the whole city, and…" She trailed off. Gorham said something to her, but she could not hear. Blood thrummed in her ears, her heartbeat increasing, breath raking at her throat. She felt a fly land on the bridge of her nose and bite, and she welcomed the brief spike of pain, because it was the only hope she had.

Gorham grabbed her arm and shook it, and she raised one hand to point. Around them, the sound of panicked flight and frightened conversation subdued.

Something was rising out of Marcellan. Blurred and disfigured by the smoke and dust still hanging above the collapsed area, the shape was gigantic, pushing through the pale clouds and glittering as though wet. It was difficult to judge size from this distance, and Peer did not want to. She could not. It was unbelievable, terrible, and to try to judge the magnitude of the thing wavering above that hole…

"Oh," Gorham said, and it broke through her muffled terror. He held her hand and squeezed.

Now people were screaming and running. Some fell, others trampled them. Peer and Gorham just stood. They'd been expecting something, but nothing could have prepared them for this.

The thing protruded above the city, shifting back and forth in the dust and smoke cloud, fires erupting around its base, a great column of flame spewing up and out from the hole in the shoulder of Marcellan Canton, and nothing of it was identifiable. For that, Peer was glad. It was a gray, glittering edifice, larger than any building, taller than Marcellan Canton's tallest spires, and if a great eye, or a mouth, had opened somewhere across its girth, she thought perhaps she would never recover from the madness that would bring.

"We need to find Penler," she said, amazed at how calm her voice sounded. Perhaps grabbing on to something rooted and certain was all she had.

Just before she turned to drag Gorham away, the thing tilted sideways. It fell with surprising slowness, but when it struck the ground, the violence was terrible. Buildings shattered, fire billowed, dust exploded in pressurized twisting torrents, and then the sound rolled in across the Levels, testament to the terrible destruction.

The shock wave came next. It knocked them off balance, and Gorham went down. Peer knelt next to him and covered her head with her hands. People cried, buildings fell, some screaming ceased.

As the rumble lessened, Peer said, "Gorham."

"Yeah. Penler."

They entered the rush of panicked humanity. Penler's home lay to the south, so they let the tide take them. But it was not long before Peer realized that they were just another part of the tide.

Nophel had watched them for as long as he could-as long as the Scope could extend itself that far, and the smoke did not obscure his view, and the rush of fleeing humanity did not swallow them. But then, inevitably, they were lost to him. And his last sight of the small girl who had once been his mother was as she leaned on the man's arm and let him help her along.