Mark Newton - The Book of Transformations

A stone spiral staircase lined the way down, and as they moved past various rooms — cells — Lan peered in to check for other victims or survivors, but there were none. Just what was this place? It was cell after cell, not exactly a prison, but it was no place of freedom.

Heading down the stairs, they all drifted away from the heat. She couldn’t see Vuldon any more, but trusted he would have the skills to survive. Finally, she guided the remaining survivors out through the smashed main door, a sign of Vuldon’s work. She heaved in the sharp air, and then realized that she had been crying — either from the smoke or the intensity of the incident, she didn’t know which. She composed herself.

Twenty-four survivors shivered in the cold. Each of them was wearing an identical, shapeless pale gown. They trudged around in circles, always looking down to the ground, never at each other. Two of them vomited against the wall, three sat down cross-legged in a vaguely child-like gesture. She checked some of them for injuries, and each bore strange markings around their heads. Scar tissue blossomed visibly on at least half of them. Whenever she looked in their eyes she saw only distance, or vacancy, or a disturbed mind.

A few minutes later, Vuldon exited the building, caked in black dust, carrying a large book under one arm. He brushed himself down as he approached her, the picture of nonchalance.

Lan said, ‘Are they-?’

‘That was fucking awful, Lan,’ he snapped. ‘You should be fucking ashamed of yourself, just standing there like that while everything was burning.’

Lan stopped herself from replying angrily, and considered what he was saying whilst she recalled her embarrassing slowness.

She had failed.

‘I’m sorry, Vuldon. There’s just no excuse. I messed up.’ She knew he was right, but he had a special way of making her feel insecure again. His presence was intimidating, and she didn’t know how she was going to continue.

‘Least you admit it.’ Surprisingly he simmered and walked away. He addressed the survivors individually, examining what was going on, checking everyone was fine.

Soon Vuldon returned to show her the book he was carrying and in one large hand offered it to her. ‘What do you reckon of this then?’ His tone suggested he already knew the answer.

She opened up the tome, a heavy leather object, frayed around the edges, clearly something that had seen better days. Inside was a list of names with descriptions of behaviour and treatments. ‘Is it some kind of patient record? Maybe this place was a hospital.’

‘Not quite. It housed the mentally ill-’

There was a boom above as the fire began to move down the building, collapsing floor after floor. Vuldon looked back at her and continued, ‘And even with that in mind, something’s not right. There were relics in there — the kind you used to see back in my day. Diagrams on the wall suggesting there was research going on. If I didn’t know better…’

Vuldon marched over to one of the male patients and nonchalantly gripped his head. The man’s body became utterly limp in his hands, and Vuldon examined the scars around his head before releasing him.

‘It’s a fucking research centre!’ Vuldon shouted, returning to her.

‘Research — for what?’ Lan asked.

‘Cultists literally poking around in people’s heads. I haven’t seen one of these places for decades. Fucking disgusting.’

‘What shall we do with them?’ Lan tilted her head at the patients.

‘We’ll lead them to the Inquisition headquarters. Other than that, there’s nothing else we can do. They’re helpless. They were made to be helpless. Transformed into a bunch of walking experiments. Cultists often use humans for research purposes, testing out the technology of the ancients to further their knowledge.’

Lan asked, ‘But who do they get to work on?’

Vuldon replied, ‘Those at the edge of society, mainly, so long as they’re all quite healthy specimens. Usually not even from Caveside, because not everyone there eats well. No, they used to take those who committed petty crimes, or who were creating a bother for the Council, or openly rejected the will of Bohr, or they were queers, whatever was flavour of the day.’

Lan cringed at Vuldon’s coarseness, and the fact that homosexuals were also abused here. How could a city act in such a way towards its inhabitants simply because of their private lives?

‘Come on,’ Vuldon said. ‘We’ll round this lot up and march them somewhere less cold than out here. That’s all we can do for the poor shits.’

‘OK,’ Lan replied. ‘I left a woman on a bridge and I need to bring her here, with the others. I made a promise.’

‘Well hurry up then,’ Vuldon sighed. ‘We’ve not got all night.’

The barracks hadn’t been used for years. It was a conclave of abandoned, ex-military shacks — seven, in all, and surrounded by a tall wooden fence. These basic structures were set up in a line in the far east of the underground, in a district that, on new Imperial maps, was now declared unimaginatively as Underground South Three, but which was named, according to the Cavesiders, ‘Freetown’. The cavern that formed one half of Villjamur was enormous, stretching across for miles, like the stomach of a stone god. The plates of glass that lined the cavern ceiling like a sparkling, monstrous ribcage, brought some elements of reflected daylight into the caves, but only stretched so far. Freetown was spawned in one of the many regions of gloom.

Here, Shalev promised, there would eventually be light.

Due to the crime levels in the outer city, such ‘dark’ zones were now patrolled by a cursory guard unit of just one old-timer, who spent more time sat in his little shed catching up on sleep, possibly dreaming of the military glories of his youth, than engaging in genuine surveillance work. And these days the army was out mounting big operations across the Boreal Archipelago, freeing the locals from oppression in the name of the Empire. Shalev had explained that, in reality, this meant clearing islands of tribes, shattering communities, and forcing open trade and slave labour markets in order to fuel Villjamur. On islands where the Empire could not go, Maour, Dockull, even the Varltung Nations, Villjamur armed and funded tribal warlords to slaughter the resistant locals so that trade routes could, at the very least, become established.

That was why barracks like this, which could be found in several districts of Caveside, stood empty: the soldiers were out preparing the roads where industries would travel.

All these buildings did now was emit putrid smells and spawn urban stories. But they could be more than this. The Cavesiders needed to make a statement, something that would add to the frustrations of the ruling elite. Here, in these abandoned barracks, was shelter and relative warmth and hope for the refugees camped outside the city’s walls.

That was where Shalev was now, outside, smuggling in dozens over one of the walls at a location known by only a handful of Cavesiders. Caley had heard there were to be ropes, ladders, subterfuge and decoys, but most of all there were to be relics. Shalev had enlisted the help of other cultists and they were erecting a momentary wall of invisibility to hide the refugees’ movements. It was incredible what Shalev had done for these people — for Caley. She had given him a will to exist. His life suddenly had purpose. For a few years he had lived with an unemployed uncle who practically scavenged and begged to get by. Caley would willingly have worked for a living, if there were any jobs to be found, but as there weren’t he instead chose more illicit paths. But now, thieving had become his work. He was making a contribution with it.