Steven Santos - The Culling

The Lady still brandishes her torch high, about one hundred and fifty feet into the sky. But there’s something different about her that shakes me out of my momentary insanity. No longer standing on a pedestal, she’s partially submerged in the waters that lap against the lower part of her gown. Her towering form lists to one side, as if standing has become a great burden. The spires of her crown are missing parts or are broken off. Her entire body’s riddled with welts and holes in the stone, like gaping wounds.

My eyes track her gaze across the sea. There are no sparkling lights, no shimmering buildings for her to stand sentinel over. Only a thick mist that hovers over mounds of crumpled ruins.

Despite her battered state, and everything she must have been through, the Lady still endures … standing strong, regal, and fearless, clutching her book, daring anyone to try and take it from her.

Never give up .

A tiny figure crawls out of the water and scales a stone fold of the Lady’s gown, disappearing inside one of the craggy openings.

Ophelia.

She may have gotten a head start. But she’s not as fast a swimmer as I am. I can narrow the gap.

Attention!

Slade’s voice cuts through the wail of the wind and echoes across the sea.

Congratulations Recruit Spark. You have made it to your final Trial. Your task is simple. The first Recruit to find his or her respective Incentive in the ruin shall earn a place as a trainee in the Imposer Task Force. All previous restrictions, regarding the infliction of lethal force against your fellow Recruits, have been rescinded. You are free to use any means at your disposal to accomplish this task. Good luck.

Even though the Lady’s torch is unlit, it’s a beacon that lights the way to my brother, at long last. A soothing calm comes over me. I can do this. Without Cassius’s interference, without cheating. I can do this.

For Cole.

For Digory.

I dive into the cold water and swim toward whatever fate awaits me.

I can’t feel my body.

It’s as if I’m a spirit, gliding through the ice-cold waters. But not feeling anything is freeing. It allows me to concentrate on staying afloat, and freezes out every other thought except for my immediate goals.

Reach the Lady. Rescue Cole.

My arms hack their way through the water. In minutes, I’m bobbing on the surface and clinging to one of the giant stone shackles broken open at the Lady’s feet.

Guess she doesn’t take too kindly to being anyone’s slave either.

I spit out a mouthful of freezing water. My breath comes in short, quick bursts. I can barely feel the stone links as I grasp them and haul myself out of the sea, rolling onto my back.

Goal One accomplished.

But there’s no time to rest. Ophelia’s still in the lead in a trial where mere seconds will mean the difference between Cole’s life or death.

Hauling myself to my feet, I grope the huge crumbling manacles, trying to find purchase so I can climb. A couple of times my feet dislodge weak rock and I almost topple back into the ocean. But I clutch the stone with an iron grip, wincing as it tears through the flesh of my palms.

Just a foot or two above me looms one of the jagged holes in the stone I spotted when I exited the Skein. Trying to balance myself against a layer of the statue’s robes, I lift a trembling arm and hook it over the bottom edge, dragging myself upward until I’m scuttling through it.

I find myself wedged in a narrow steel staircase that spirals upward like a twisted spine to dizzying heights. Handrails coil up this spine, resembling thin nerve fibers. Steel girders crisscross all around; some are torn and curled, trapping me inside a huge fractured rib cage. Everything seems held together by enormous bolts and rivets, like the ball-bearings and joints of a giant. Stale dust wafts through the dimness, clogging my nostrils with dank decay.

I cup my hands around my mouth. “Cole, can you hear me? Where are you? It’s me, Lucky!”

My only response is the clatter of booted heels echoing from the top of the stairs.

Ophelia.

Squirming out of the cramped space, I dash up the narrow, rickety stairs feeling more claustrophobic the higher I go. Below me, the hole I first crawled through is already half-submerged in the swirling waters created by the incoming storm.

Don’t give up.

I take a few slow, deep breaths and continue my climb.

Creak!

The staircase shudders. My fingers dig into the rails.

No need to panic. These stairs have stood for hundreds of years and will probably be around for hundreds more.

Pop! Pop! Pop!

Several of the steel pins holding the staircase in place rip free with a terrible clang that ricochets like the sound of gunfire. The entire column of steps lists sharply. I’m thrown against the rails. My upper body sails over the edge and I dig my booted toes into the skeletal framework to prevent myself from toppling completely over.

A nut and bolt the size of my head crash through the handrail, inches from my head.

I glance at the obliterated railing, now a clump of twisted metal.

That was no accident.

“ Stay away, Spark! ” Ophelia’s shrill cry reverberates through the Lady’s innards.

Trying to hold my balance on the tilted stairs, I stretch my neck out and over the remaining part of the banister, centimeter by centimeter, and peer up.

There she is, maybe seventy-five feet above me, awash in flashes of lightning that dissect her body into slivers of light and shadow.

“There’s no way you can beat me,” she trills. “And I’ll hurt you if you try.”

A blast of thunder rattles the staircase.

Anger flares through me. “You mean like you tried to hurt me back at the lab by destroying Cole’s antivirus?”

Ophelia slithers away from the railing and out of sight.

My eyes dart from the railing to the stairs’ supports.

Time to do a little destabilizing of my own.

Gripping the stairs above me, I leap onto the railing. A deep groan reverberates through the murk, as if the Lady’s in pain. I rock back and forth as hard as I can, gaining speed and momentum. Years of exposure to the elements has rendered the structure unsound. Ophelia and I are probably the first people to put weight on these steps in ages.

“Spark!” Ophelia shrieks from somewhere above. “What are you doing? You’ll kill us both! ”

The entire staircase teeters for a moment-

Crack!

The whole structure lurches forward, collapsing into the dangling network of steel support girders.

A dense haze of dislodged grit veils everything.

The impact sends violent shudders through my body as I struggle to hold on. But these are minor compared to the spasms that rock the Lady to her very foundations. A cacophony of screeching metal, buckling walls, and exploding bolts fills the air.

I lose my grip and dangle from the twisted metal railing by one hand. Below me, a fresh surge of seawater crashes through a new gash in the thin copper of the Lady’s skin, chilling my flesh with its icy spray.

My slick hand slips-

I plunge, regaining my grip on the gnarled handrail at the last moment and stopping myself from being impaled on a protruding rivet. Then I’m penduluming back and forth on protesting metal, one second over freezing ocean, the next over jagged steel, over and over, as if it’s fate that’s lost its Trial and now has to decide which manner of death I deserve.

At least I’ve bought some time, and maybe even narrowed the gap between Ophelia and myself.

Snap!

The bar I’m clinging to breaks free of its fasteners.