Tim Lebbon - Echo city

When the newborns had finished chewing, they were somewhat calmed, and Nadielle repeated those words. Three more guards walked in, a little slower than the first. They suffered the same fate.

She turned from her new creations and walked toward Gorham, unconcerned, turning her back on monsters that would give him nightmares forever. Just before she reached him, her eyes went wide, her mouth opened, and she collapsed to the floor.

As he rushed to her side, he saw her right eye suddenly flush red with blood. And the new monsters began to howl.

Neph had been sitting for so long, listening to the sounds increasing in volume and frequency, that it could no longer feel its legs. When the time came, it lit its torch and shone it at the wall of water. At the place where the water fell beyond view, a shadow appeared. Neph had seen many shadows already, the dead from a city it would never know. But they were always falling.

This shadow rose.

Neph stood, legs burning as blood circulation returned. It took one step back, and the wounds on its arm began to bleed.

The shadow manifested into a mass of corpses, some quite fresh, others rotting. Chunks of their flesh had been torn away by the powerful flow, leaving only their bones behind. The impact of the falling water was brutalizing, and many of the corpses had flowed into one another, limbs punched through guts and bones embracing another's insides. Punching through the bodies were heavy, thick spines…

Neph flexed its own spines, startled at the familiarity.

The shadow rose higher, pushing against the water. Huge flailing shapes swung into view, thrashing at the water and seeming to grab on to it, hauling the mass of bodies higher, higher…

Neph squatted in a fighting pose.

Beneath the piled bodies, a massive eye opened, regarding Neph without emotion. Water poured around and across it but washed away none of this thing's menace. The thrashing things-arms with massive spade-shaped hands that hauled it upward against the shattering liquid weight-moved faster, lifting the shadow higher above the edge of the chasm.

The water roared, and the rising thing added its own voice.

When Neph found its legs and ran at the abomination, it did not even see the whipping thing that took out its right eye.

Neph fell, legs still pounding into the rock because it did not understand. Something felt wrong with its head. A thick tentacle hovered above it, and Neph lashed out with its right arm. But the arm would not obey its orders, and the tentacle thrashed down, crushing, breaking, spilling Neph across the rock and leaving its few lonely memories to be washed away forever.

"It's risen," she whispered. "It's here."

Gorham knelt, Nadielle's head resting in his lap, and he stroked her cheek. Her eye was bloodshot and blind, but she seemed unconcerned. The other eye stared off past the chopped creations, large and small, that had gathered around them. In the shadows past them, Gorham thought he saw the two remaining Pserans watching quietly, and he almost called to them. But other than Gorham, the Baker was the closest to human here, and even she was far from that.

"What did you see?" he asked.

"The Vex has reached the Echoes, clothed in the city's dead." She struggled into a sitting position, shrugging off Gorham's helping hands. "Tens of thousands since it fell, hundreds of thousands. It fed on them, and it grew so large that they litter its skin. Perhaps they can no longer fall past it. Perhaps it filled the Chasm." The Pserans came, shoving past the splayed blades and limbs of the chopped monsters as though they were tree branches blocking their way. They helped Nadielle stand. She swayed, then gently pushed their hands aside, staring down at the floor. She seemed physically lessened, but there was a strength about her that Gorham had never seen before. Previously she had been superior yet flawed, someone whose confidence went only so deep, he had always felt. He'd tried to touch her, but her front had held firm. Those insecurities had remained buried. Now she was the Baker, completely in control and self-assured, confident in what needed doing and how much she could do herself. When she looked up again, she had changed, in the blood of her dead eye and the power in the other.

"I must leave," she said, and she started for the end of the vat room. She passed the special vat without a glance, walking taller the farther she went, and Gorham ran after her.

"Nadielle! You can't just leave. You have to tell me-"

"There's no time. She's your responsibility." She paused and stood face-to-face with Gorham, almost close enough to kiss. "Water the vat regularly. Pay her attention; be here for her. I've put accelerant into the mix, so she won't be long. Maybe even today." She glanced past him at the vat, then turned quickly away.

"But what about us?" he asked, hating the pleading tone to his voice. He could not let her leave without another word.

"Goodbye, Gorham," the Baker said without even turning around. She left the laboratory, with the Pserans following behind. One of them looked back at him, cold and hard, and in that stare was unveiled threat. The smaller bladed things followed, and those three larger monsters disappeared behind the rows of vats, heading for the wider curtained route he knew existed to the outside. In moments he was alone in the Baker's rooms, left in charge of equipment, words, and deed that he could never hope to understand.

Three years earlier he had sat at a table in a friend's home, knowing that Peer was being taken by the Scarlet Blades. The purge had not yet begun in full, and he and several others were preparing to melt away as Watchers, allowing the Marcellans to think they had shattered the outlawed organization. But for a while he had nursed a bottle of wine, staring into a candle's flame and wishing he could be so consumed. The guilt was a hard thing that weighed him down. There had been a time when he had said goodbye to Peer, knowing that he would never see her again, and he'd done so without giving anything away. A monstrous deception, a brutal betrayal, and yet he'd believed it was all for the best. Every day since then, he'd wished that goodbye had been sweeter.

He wished the same now. But Nadielle had left his life as surely as if the door she'd passed through was a barrier between the living and the dead. She would not survive. And though cold in passing, she had left him with the greatest responsibility.

Soon the new Baker would be born. He would be here to care for her. In the space of a day he had gone from lover to father, and his insides ached as if an age had been impressed upon him.

He wandered the rooms for a time, watching the vat, watering, exploring. There was much about the laboratory that Nadielle had always refused to discuss, but looking on his own seemed an empty affair. He found small rooms he did not understand and corridors that seemingly led nowhere. He always returned to her living rooms, to lie in her bed and try to remember their good times. But already there was a bitterness, and strive though he did to shrug it off, he could not avoid feeling that he had been used.

And he could also not help thinking that he deserved it.

The rooms were silent but for the noises made by the vat. Sometimes he sang, but he could not find a tune to fit. He tried fighting songs from Mino Mont's gangs, but the martial aspects did not seem to fit the shape of these rooms, their echoes sounding all wrong. He tried some love songs that his estranged sister used to write when she was young, but she had grown into a woman whose belief in love was vague, and his own experiences made the lyrics seem naive. So he whistled instead-aimless tunes that matched the path of his wandering around the rooms. Sometimes shadows drew him, sometimes areas lit by the oil lamps. He wondered why the oil never ran out. He wondered why there was always food in the cold store when he wanted it, and where the dried and smoked meats came from, and how he could be sure that the water collected in several sacs lining the wall in one small room could be fresh. It was all Nadielle's mystery. And more and more his attention was taken by the special vat from whence the new Baker would emerge. He spent more time sitting on its rim, watering when the levels fell and watching the thick fluid suck in the stream without a splash. Sometimes he reached out a hand to touch the surface but never quite got there. Fear, and respect for the Baker's talents, kept him away. He had seen but a tenth of them, and the loss he felt at her leaving was amplified so much more.