Tom Pollock - The City's son

She could see the next corner now. The clash and grind of Reach’s machines was growing louder. She gripped her spear tighter as she swung around the bend, and stopped cold.

Ahead, at the far end of the tunnel she saw a chamber. Four walls had collapsed inwards and were taking each other’s weight, forming a kind of pyramid. Pen stood in the centre of the space, in a cat’s-cradle of light shafts. Dust motes spun around her and her wire-skin gleamed.

‘Move,’ Beth muttered to herself, willing her muscles on. ‘ Move.’ She drove herself forwards.

Pen gazed out at her from her between the wires, her eyes wide with fear. Her lips were stitched shut with barbs.

When she was just inches from the opening to the tunnel, Beth saw why Pen looked so scared. A strand of wire, so fine as to be almost invisible, was stretched across the doorway at neck-height, ready to bite hard into Beth’s throat. Arms flailing wildly, she tried desperately to check her charge, but she skidded on loose gravel and she couldn’t stop herself. She swallowed as the barbs tickled her neck.

Pale fingers lashed out and yanked the wire away just as Beth fell into the chamber. She rolled and came up fast, spear ready, eyes twitching for a target but unwilling to throw.

Victor staggered forward and then pulled back. The tendons in his neck stood out. One hand gripped the wire he’d torn from the door, the other was at his throat, where the coils of the mistress bit deep. Beads of blood glimmered on his skin. He was white as death, but he smiled tightly.

‘Not worry, Tsarina.’ His breath escaped in snatched wheezes. He leaned back and hauled on the wire. The muscles in his neck bulged. Veins emerged through his face like cracks in glass. ‘In Moscow was seven times Tug-of-War Champ-’

The wire around his throat stretched taut. There was an organic-sounding crack.

The Wire Mistress flexed her coils and slammed him into the wall with hideous force. He crumpled to the ground, his head a crush of bone, hair and bloody wool.

Beth snarled in grief and fury. She looked at Pen and saw only the monster. She gripped the spear tighter, and charged.

The price of rage was grace, and the mistress easily sidestepped Beth’s clumsy lunge. Needle-pointed wires lashed out and hot pain ran through Beth’s cheek.

She turned fast, raising her spear high, but Pen, in the mistress’ grip, moved with demonic speed. A punch slammed into Beth’s kidney. Pen’s fist twisted as the barbs bit and ripped away the cloth and the flesh underneath.

Beth’s scream echoed up the chamber and she reflexively swung the spear. It crunched meatily into Pen’s ribs.

Unable to cry out, Pen fell in abject silence to one knee.

Blood oozed from Beth’s side. Sickened with pain, she raised the spear over her head, ready to plunge it down into her best friend’s chest. Wires uncoiled swiftly from Pen’s shoulders, lashing and binding Beth’s arms so she couldn’t bring the spear down. Panic bubbled through her, and along with it, a tiny bit of relief.

Pen climbed to her feet, eyeing Beth warily. Skeins waved in the air like floating seaweed, twisting towards her. Time slowed down. The wire tendrils stroked curiously, almost gently, over Beth’s face, as though learning it. They brushed the spearpoint, and then coiled back on themselves.

The spear, Beth thought. The wire’s scared of the spear.

Drawing on all the inhuman strength in her muscles, Beth let the spear go and jumped sideways, dragging the slack out of the wire that bound her. She threw herself at the wall.

Pen’s head snapped to track her, horribly fast.

Beth’s shoulder slammed painfully into the stone, but she’d drawn the wire taut, and a fraction of second later the falling spear slashed through it.

The mistress released Pen’s lips and she screamed.

The bindings fell away from Beth’s shoulders and she snatched up the spear, but even as Pen screamed, the mistress was propelling her fist into Beth’s face.

Beth reeled. Her teeth were cracked, her lips hot and puffy.

The Wire Mistress pressed the assault, raining down punches, forcing incredible power through Pen’s wounded body. Beth gave ground, warding her off with her spear where she could, taking other blows to her forehead, eyes and face. A barb ripped a chunk of one ear away and Beth felt it fall down inside her collar.

Suddenly her right leg went from under her and as she fell onto her back the spear clattered away. Victor’s glassy eyes stared at her. She’d caught her heel in his groin.

The Wire Mistress seethed above her, Pen trapped at its heart. Beth groped for the spear, but it was three or four inches from her hand: much, much too far. She felt the last of her courage bleed out of her. Pen drew a foot back, ready to stamp down on her face.

Beth shut her eyes. ‘This isn’t you, Pen,’ she whispered to herself.

A heartbeat passed, then another, then another. Beth opened her eyes. She snatched up the spear and scrambled to her feet. Pen and the Wire Mistress were simply standing, a couple of feet away. Pen’s left foot was still in the air, not moving.

For a long instant Beth stood there, staring, until she saw why she was still alive.

Pen was gripping the wall. Her fingers had found crevices in the stone and every joint was white with effort. She’d dug her right foot into a hollow in the ground. Through her torn shirt, Beth could see her muscles straining and her veins standing out blue, in stark contrast to the wires which roiled over her. The barbs goaded her, jerking her back and forth horribly, opening ragged new wounds. Blood dripped off Pen like sweat, but she would not move. Her eyes were shut, her lips twitching in that way they did when she was praying. She would not obey. She was refusing to comply.

Suddenly Pen’s eyes snapped open wide. She stared at the tip of the railing-spear, and then looked down, once, to her own chest.

With a jolt of horror, Beth understood. Pen was letting Beth kill her.

Beth drew back the spear.

Pen closed her eyes, her chest heaving.

Beth tensed her shoulder, whispering in her mind, Pen, I’m sor An idea struck her then, with the force of a blow, and she almost fumbled the weapon in her haste. Instead of stabbing forward, she slid the spear flat across Pen’s belly, between the wire and her sweat-sheened skin, and jerked it back.

The wire screamed, and Pen screamed. A tendril fell away in two.

Again and again, faster and faster, Beth wielded the spear, dashing away the tears that blurred her eyes so she could aim, always cutting the wire, never the skin.

The Wire Mistress hissed and thrashed, but still it couldn’t leave its host. Grim-faced with pain, Pen pinned it to the wall even as it tore at her. The last cord stretched out from Pen’s belly button, an umbilical wire.

Beth cut it, and Pen collapsed. For a long time they slumped together on the floor of the chamber, leaning on each other, just breathing. Inch lengths of barbed wire twitched like blind worms around them in the dust.

Eventually Beth spoke. ‘Pen, Pen- I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for you to- I didn’t want you to follow…’ But she tailed, off because that was a lie. She had meant for Pen to follow her: Meet me under broken lights, that’s what she’d written.

Pen laughed, or gurgled, which seemed about as close as she could get. ‘That’s what I do, B,’ she whispered bitterly. ‘I follow you.’

Beth tried to hug Pen, but she recoiled as Beth’s arms closed around her, hissing with pain. Beth sat up and properly took in the extent of her best friend’s cuts. Her own wounds were already knitting, sealed up by that strange mix of oil and cement the Chemical Synod had put in her blood, but Pen Pen wasn’t so lucky. Her slim frame and narrow face were covered in long gashes, not deep, but all of them savage and red. Her left nostril, earlobe and bottom lip weren’t there anymore; the skin where they ought to have been ended short in jagged tears.