The stairs down to the basement were narrow, pitch-black, and briskly cold. Our breath trailed around us like wisps of smoke, barely visible in the dim lamplight.
“What was this room originally?” Croix asked as Axton opened a heavy wooden door. We entered a small chamber with doors on two walls. Wooden crates were piled around us, and the room smelled like mildew and rats, quickly overwhelmed by the reek of smoke and blood we brought in with us.
“Food storage, Your Eminence,” Axton said. “When Blackstone expanded, a larger cellar was built under the new kitchens. These rooms were used to hold old records, and then they were enlarged and turned into secure work areas.”
“These the old records?” Lorencz asked, tapping one of the boxes with her knuckles.
“What’s left of them, yes.”
“You should move ’em to the Hall of Records. Elliot — you remember the head librarian there, Elliot Chime? — he loves digging through old shit like this. He’ll get ’em all organized and shelved.”
“I shall suggest it to the hospital board, Captain. Thank you.”
“I didn’t know your boyfriend’s been cleared to read confidential files,” I said as Axton led us to the door on the left. Lorencz grinned.
“Elliot knows you from immigration status to income tax, pal.”
“How much does he tell you?”
“Nothing he shouldn’t, if that’s what you mean,” she said, sounding offended. Axton pulled a ring of keys from his pocket and then paused.
“I wasn’t insinuating anything,” I said, pleased to have needled her. “I was just making conversation.”
“Better polish your small-talk skills.” Lorencz scowled. “Y’know, when the bonus from today’s firefight comes in, I’ll have enough to buy that ring I been eyeing.”
“Is the door safe to unlock, my liege?” Axton asked. Croix brought Michael forward.
“Congratulations.” I looked forward to not hearing her talk about it all the time — should she, shouldn’t she, was it too forward, would he care. I’d finally told her to shut up and stop being such a coward.
“Don’t congratulate me ’til I find out if he wants it.” She looked pleased with herself, though, despite her words.
“The door is warded against forcible entry,” Michael said, at the front of our little group. “Lorencz, take a look at this.”
My partner turned and gave a low whistle.
“Nice work.” Her eyes moved as she examined something invisible to me. “Fixed. Seamless. Yeah, that’s gotta be Carel’s work.”
“Can we get in or not?” I asked.
“Keep your pants on, pal. We’re doing recon,” Lorencz growled.
“The ward has tendrils running all across the hospital,” Michael said, “but I can’t read their purpose.”
“Shite, you’re right. I can barely see ‘em. You think they’re monitors?”
“That would explain how Carel knew there was a break in the Line. If she set them up to alert her….”
“But the amount of secondhand focus that would take —”
“Interdicting the building would have broken her contact with the wards. She may not have any way of telling whether the breach was a disaster-related transient attack or a lab crisis.”
“Which means she’s gonna be careful. We could be stuck here for a while.” Lorencz blew out smoke and I coughed.
“Would you put that damn thing out?” I snapped. “I’ve breathed enough ash today.”
“Stop whining.”
Might pulsed, sending a hair-raising burst of fury through me. I leaped to my feet, ready to yank the cigar from Lorencz’s mouth and break her fingers to keep her from lighting another.
“Shite!” Lorencz swore, staring at the door and ignoring me. “Did you see that?”
“Axton!” Michael’s hand stretched out, grasping air. “What’s behind these barriers?”
I forced myself to stop and lower my hands. Was this really my anger? No. No — smoking disgusted me, but not enough to cripple my partner when a simple punch in the face would do. Was it Might’s anger? No…. the sensation was already ebbing, a mere artefact of something else, something happening on the Line that only the two sentinels could see.
“The five children,” Axton said. “And perhaps Milka. She has a key.”
“No twelve-year-old did that,” Lorencz snapped. “Someone else is back there. Someone, or something.”
“Make up your mind.” I laid a hand on Might’s hilt and then yanked it away again, feeling my skin burn as it nearly adhered to the thirsty metal. “Are we going in?”
A pale glow filled the room as a viscous light began to ooze around the edges of the door, between the cracks of the stone wall. I’d seen a pall twice before. Once during a long, deadly night in the Donweyr Waste, and once about two months ago in a basement like this one.
“Kyrchye save us,” Croix said, staring. Lorencz grabbed the key from Axton.
“Take Aronson and back up. Droit, we’re going in first.”
Might pulsed against my leg in time to the rhythmic surges of bale from the warded door. I didn’t trust it, not when it was this eager. Instead, I pulled my Watch-issue mundane blade from its awkward back sheath and shifted it into my left hand.
Axton guided Michael backward and Croix fell in behind the two of us, his stern face burning with the same fearful anticipation he’d shown two months ago. Lorencz threw the door open, holding up one hand to shield her eyes from a glare I couldn’t see until the door opened.
Something had torn a hole in reality. The shining wound pulsed open in front of us where the far wall of the laboratory should be. The five beds lined up in a row in front of it were all empty, their leather restraining straps hanging loosely from their sides.
Four adults stood in front of the gap. They turned to look at us as we opened the door. Or, rather, at me. Two wore familiar brands on their face, barely visible in the unsteady glow.
“So, he did come,” said a man in a crimson chiurgeon’s gown. “Rosian, I owe you ten sterling.”
The woman beside him gave a cold smile.
“All you had to do was ask.” I stepped forward. The foul air that whistled from the Line smelled like a three-day-old battlefield. I recognized one of the men as Aidan Miller of Red Rock, still dressed in his firefighting gear, like me. The woman, Rosian, was also freedom-branded. Probably a favor for one of my officers. The man who wasn’t dressed like a hospital employee wore a silver Vigilance pin on his lapel. “Who’s the prentice madman, Lorencz?”
“Ethan Hargrave,” Lorencz said, her voice drawn and tight. “Working on a project for Carel, Hargrave?”
“He’s not one of mine,” I said, inspecting him.
“No, I missed meeting you on the field, General,” he said, his tone crisp and unafraid. “Although I did fight.”
“Hargrave?” Michael’s voice rose from behind me. “What are you doing here? The board never sanctioned any experiments with these children!”
“What makes you think I asked for the board’s sanction, Aronson? You’re so soft — you’ll be swept away by the coming storm along with everyone else too weak to stand up for themselves.”
“He must be Banishat,” Axton said, quietly. “The other man is a Blackstone Hospital orderly. I don’t know his name.”
“Banishat … good.” I grinned. “Nobody will care if I kill you.”
“You can try.” Hargraves grinned back. A surge of bale gushed through the hole in the Line like the amniotic fluid that precedes a birth. Behind me, Lorencz turned and began retching. Croix started to pray.
“Bale can’t kill me,” I said, unimpressed. “And I don’t think any of you can, either. Come on.” I took a step closer to the gap and raised my sword. “Let’s find out.”
Aidan, Rosian, and the orderly in the smock glared at me, their hatred as raw as the bale that surged and pulsed around our feet. I kept my eyes fixed on them so they wouldn’t glance behind them, where a dark shape pushed more raw bale through the hole as it groped toward our reality.
“Come on,” I taunted. “What are you waiting for? How many years have you wretched whiners been planning for this moment? Don’t tell me you’re going to let it slip away now?”
They shuffled and glanced at each other. Behind their backs, balewalls rose for a split-second, then softened and collapsed like rancid fat.
“I can’t plug it,” Michael choked. “The Line’s too frayed —”
“Better stand back, Droit.” Lorencz’s hand touched my shoulder. I shook it off.
“You disgust me,” I said, sneering at my opponents. “I gave you your freedom and this is what you do with it? You don’t deserve to be free.”
Aidan lunged. I knocked his blade aside.
“Were you trying to lead me here?” I taunted. “What happened? Lose your nerve?”
“I thought you’d chase me,” Aidan growled.
“Stupid plan. I didn’t care enough about you to give chase.” I smiled coldly at him. “You’re nothing to me.”
The physician behind him turned and began to fumble with a ceramic flask.
“But here you are, anyway,” Aidan retorted. “We figured you and the bright-haired bitch would show up if there was another breach.”
Rosian raised a pistol and fired. A balewall snapped in front of me, stopping the bullet. I glanced at Lorencz, who looked pale and sick.
“You owe me for that one,” she choked.
Aidan swung again. I parried, then twisted out of the way as Rosian tried to duck around Lorencz’s wall. I hoped the woman’s pistol wasn’t a repeater. Might pulsed at my side, demanding attention.
“Are you all from Red Banks?” I inquired.
“Jackscrag,” Rosian hissed.
“Carnutum,” the physician said.
“I really hate your fan club, Droit.” Lorencz’s face was white as she moved up to stand next to me, her sword in hand. Something dark and glistening probed at the edges of the wound in the Line. I pressed against Lorencz’s shoulder to force her to shift position, so she wasn’t facing the break. I didn’t need her puking instead of fighting.
The edges of the gap stretched as something pushed against them.
“I’ve got it!” Michael cried out. For a moment the bale on the edges of the gap reached out and tried to knit, and then the flimsy web fell apart again.
“All right,” I said, watching the breach. “Lorencz, you chose a bad time to join the fight.”
I slid Might from its scabbard. The hilt radiated heat, and as it swung free, bale parted around the blade like mist. But something was wrong. Instead of the surge of bloodlust I had expected, Might was filling me with cold, prickling anger and an eager sense of anticipation.
“Dammit, Droit, can’t you keep that thing in your pants?” Lorencz scrambled back toward the door. “Cardinal — get everyone out of here!”
The straps on the empty beds started to swing back and forth as the rotting balewind grew stronger. I dropped the mundane sword and kicked it to one side. My opponents faltered, feeling the hellish breeze on their backs, and turned toward the gap.
“Just remember,” I said, “this was your idea.”
A thin, chitinous spear thrust forward out of the swollen edges of the gap and buried itself in Aidan’s torso. He screamed as the spear plunged through him, tearing through the leather of his jacket as though it were water. His hand closed around the barbed limb that jutted out of his chest as if he planned to pull it through and out. Rosian spun and backed away from Aidan’s convulsing body.
“Hargrave! What is it?” She raised the pistol and fired the second barrel. The chitinous appendage jerked, its barbs slashing through Aidan’s fingers and chest. He howled with horror as the limb hoisted him into the air and pulled him back across the Line.
The orderly was shaking, the flask of whatever-it-was forgotten in his hands. Several of Aidan’s fingers rolled at his feet.
“Close it,” he gasped. “Close the breach!”
Hargrave beamed.
“It’s coming. You didn’t kill Droit fast enough.”
“It killed Aidan!” the physician wailed.
“Oh, he’s not dead yet,” I observed, listening to the young man’s screams carried on the balewind. Lorencz wiped her pale face with the back of her hand.
“I hope whatever that was, it’s satisfied,” she said with a strained voice.
“It won’t be,” I predicted. “You should get out of here. All of you.”
Croix was still praying, but his voice didn’t have the resonance it had had the last time he’d faced a breach, two months ago. Instead, it sounded as though he were shouting into a void.
“That thing is too big for even your swollen ego, pal.” Lorencz’s voice was shaking. “We should all get outta here.”
Next to us, Rosian shrieked. I glanced over and saw Hargrave grasping her arm, his eyes alight with anticipation. She struggled.
“Let me go!”
“Don’t you want to see Droit die?” he asked.
“No! Let me go!”
“Lorencz.” I summoned all my self-discipline, fighting Might’s corrosive influence. “If you ever want to see Elliot again, run. Now.”
She turned toward me, her expression dark, and then the wound in the Line split and tore, spraying bale everywhere. Barbed legs and snapping teeth and clattering pincers thrust into our world, dragging a glistening, suety, gelatinous body through behind them.
“Yzyrchye!” Hargrave shouted with triumph. “Welcome, Yzyrchye, Sovereign of Hell!”