Avishag

“Should we say anything?”

“Oh come on, this kid isn’t hurting anything.”

“You’re just… okay with people messing with the Ultrastructure.”

“It’s a self-contained porous system. We can poke at it, but we can’t change its fundamental nature. The worst thing that could possibly happen is that she gets herself killed.”

“Or gets someone else killed.”

“Potato, potahto.”

“…Okay, fine, but if anything even a little weird happens I’m going to tell the uppers. And I’ll know, because I will be paying attention to these anomalies. No more passing things off as ‘just radio chatter’, alright?”

“Sure. Sure, that’s fine.”

-Heard in the Neo Technica meeting house in z’Ark City

A week later

Badem Teke was moving through the forests now, and surely the others beside him, furtively together as they’d appeared on the last known image of them, Melik’s old sword slung over his back. Badem was a pale green dot against the tangle of even paler lines defined by satellites reaching through the haze and all the way to the distant, unwelcoming earth. Avishag lay on the floor of her and Badem’s apartment, tucked unceremoniously in a corner of the same building where her brother had been killed. Her face a mere foot from the shining terminal of the old machine she’d snuck out of Aleks’ workshop, she watched and waited – and the dot continued to move further and further from the city.

They were inhumanly skilled, thankfully, at avoiding the Invictan patrols around the city. The siege lines kept any major movements in and out of the city from occurring – except for the recent vulnerability at the gates themselves, which was not likely to occur again. Already the gates were once again barred against the mass of soldiers that had gathered outside, and half of the watchers from the wall had been killed during their attempts to pick off the soldiers on the ground from above. More and more Invictan soldiers were arriving every day, the siege was intensifying, and now – most likely – there would be no more movement in or out of the city. With Aleks gone, taken into Invictan custody and probably even now being tortured to death, the more senior Sowers had taken over the task of keeping the gates defending themselves and the guns thwarting any attempts to bomb the city or drop in soldiers from above. It was a constant exercise in precarity, the whole city dancing its way down a burning tightrope, yet – somehow – they were not dead yet.

And neither was Badem, nor Kamila nor Devani – somehow. They’d dodged at least five patrols at this point and were nearing the tighter siege lines around the camp itself. Avishag stared intently at the dot – at least ten blinks of the dot for every blink of her own eyes.

Scan.

Scan.

Again.

“What are you looking for?” She tapped her finger against the rim of the keyboard – untrimmed nails clicking against the old metal. “You’re not stupid enough to be actually trying to get yourselves killed, so what are you doing?”

>Network-vulnerable items:

-Sentry 1

-Sentry 2

-Tower scanner

-Subscanner

-Radio booster

Avishag rolled over onto her back and stretched out her arms, groaning, and then rolled back onto her stomach. “Ridiculous. You idiots really think we’re too backwards to know what computers are?”

Although she balked at how clearly labeled the devices were in their Ultrastructural signatures, breaking into them was a more difficult task than she’d anticipated. The simple functions she’d located on Aleks’ machine had no apparent effect on the machines. Avishag watched the dot approach the lines – and the signatures of those very same machines, she noticed, which were arranged nearby one another – as she watched with bated breath.

The sentries!

Time slowed around her and she leaned into the machine, her fingers dancing across the keys.

The little green dot drew Melik’s sword and stepped into the bushes, surveying the territory beyond. Devani approached close behind, her hands clasped together. Badem turned, the little green dots of his eyes focusing on the strange woman as she stepped – nearly silently – up to him. “They are just beyond the string-fence there. Do you see it?”

“I think he sees it,” Kamila muttered, flexing her fingers. “Can we stop playing footsie with these idiots and just go in there? They have my brother.” She stayed back from where the other two stood, and kept as still as she could, knowing her movements were less likely to go unnoticed – but the plates on her shifting-metal gauntlets were sliding over one another with every motion of her hands and the fingers of her left hand strayed close to the hilt of Wallshaker quite often.

“Your brother will be fine for the time being,” Devani said in that same quiet and calm tone. “He is being held in a tent further inside the encampment. But he is very well guarded, and we will die if we attempt to retrieve him.” She shrugged. “Badem Teke, just before that string-fence there are gun turrets. If we allow them to be activated, they will kill us.”

Badem’s heartbeat sped up at that, and he glanced nervously toward the fence. He could see the shadows of soldiers patrolling slowly beyond it – and one leaned up against a tent-post, smoking a cigar. He lowered his weight toward the ground, till his hand was in the grasses and his sword was almost low enough to be laid quietly against the ground.

Devani was right – there were a number of devices just before the fence – Invictan equipment that could be dangerous, some things Badem didn’t recognize, but also – guns posted on tripods, long-barreled things attached to drums of bullets, angled toward the ground – deactivated. Badem began to creep back away from the line.

“Wait,” Devani said. “They won’t activate unless the soldiers turn them on. We just have to stay out of sight.”

“Those other things though… they could be, I don’t know, scanners?” Already he had been whispering, but now he hissed so quietly he could barely hear himself.

And then one of the turrets chirped and began to raise its barrel.

Badem scrambled back, his sword still in his hand, raised up with the blade between the barrel and his face as though he could reliably block a hail of bullets. Devani, however, stood still and calm. Kamila dashed forward, drawing her sword and taking a low-to-the-ground stance with her gauntlets covering most of her body.

The noise of the movement – or perhaps the noise of the turret waking up, followed a few seconds later by the next – must have roused a few of the soldiers just beyond the fence.

It did not rouse them as much as the metal scraping as the turret whirled back around and began to fire into the Invictan camp.

“Run!” hissed Devani, but Kamila was already dashing forward – her sword in one hand, her gauntlet tight around the other. She ran between the machines – not the turrets but the others – smashing them with her gauntlet while the Invictan soldiers ran for cover. And then when the three small metal pillars had been reduced to scrap, she turned and ran.

“Come on!” she shouted. “Let’s get back!”

“Patrols will be converging,” Badem said. “Right? We have to – I mean –“

“We’re going to have to be quick,” Kamila said. “But I think one of those things was a radio booster.”

“No matter how confused they may be,” Devani shouted, her face suddenly red with exertion and anger, “They will converge here soon.”

“Then let’s get back –“

“You two have been a sore disappointment,” Devani said over the rush of the underbrush in front of their feet as the three ran. “But at least you did not run headlong into the camp.”

“I don’t know what happened!” Badem half-shouted. And then he tripped over a rock and stumbled.

And when he did, something fell off of his clothes and onto the ground.

He picked it up before running to catch up to the others, and took a look at the small metal ring in his hands. It blinked – green. A rhythmic blink.

“…Damn it, Avishag,” Badem muttered. “You didn’t. You couldn’t have.” But he slipped the ring into his pocket and picked up the pace.

And the little green dot reversed course and began to head back to the city. Avishag smiled, although she did not know why the other three devices had stopped responding to her signals. At least her interference had gotten Badem to turn his back before he tried to do something truly idiotic.

And she tracked the pulses of the scan that showed her that green dot all the way back from that blinking green tracer of Badem heading quickly back to the city walls and their temporary, relative safety. The pulse came from the east – and from downward, something buried deep beneath the stones and the earth of the Invictan siege camp. Had the Invictan army brought along its most gifted scientists, perhaps they would have discovered the node before Avishag had – but their attention was not on the land they tromped through without regard, only on the people they thought they could cleanse out of it.

The green dot scrambled over loose rocks and almost dropped Melik’s sword, sweeping his hair out of his eyes with a spare hand and struggling to force himself to breathe steady so that his lungs would not burn with pain. Kamila continued dashing along beside him, breaths coming quick and even from long practice. And Devani – she practically glid near them, otherworldly. Though most of his attention was on the Invictan patrol trying to converge on the point they were fleeing from – and hoping that the patrol hadn’t noticed him as readily as he’d noticed them – Badem still found himself watching Devani out of the corner of his eye. She ran, but she did not breathe heavy – rather, the air breathed heavy around her.

He kept running, but kept his weight low to the ground, kept his balance as he stepped over rocks – and the boots laced up high supported his ankles so that he would not slip and fall.

Yet his boots failed him when he stepped too hard on a sharp rock, tripped, and fell to his hands and knees after another ten paces of off-balanced steps. Devani glanced at him for half a second, but did not stop. As Badem started to push himself up, groaning, he felt a hand grab him from behind, and by instinct he tensed. Lowered his chin to cover his neck. Shrugged his shoulders up. The hand did not let go – and when Badem turned to look, he saw Kamila pulling him up to his feet, looking him straight in the eye. “Come on, don’t hold us up,” she said, and they continued to run.

The city was close now – the secret exit opened in a side of the wall that the siege had not yet covered, although despite everyone’s efforts the army seemed to grow each day and soon the city would be at risk of being overwhelmed entirely. He did not stop running. Not until he was safe inside the walls.

When the secret exit was closed off again and they were sure that the Invictans had passed them all by, Devani turned to Badem and Kamila. “What was that?” she stage-whispered, eyes narrowed angrily. She glanced to Kamila. “You could have gotten all of us killed, and more importantly, you completely ruined whatever chance we might have had of finding out a way into the camp. Now they’ll be on high alert, and they’ll know that someone almost made it past their siege lines. They’ll be desperate. Maybe they’ll even launch another direct assault, and who knows how many people will die because of that?”

Kamila scoffed and held her arms out at her sides. “You think I did this?”

“I’m such a fool,” Devani spat. “Trusting you –“

“Using us!”

Badem shook his head quietly as the two continued to argue, glancing down at the device in his hand. The little blinking green ring. He went to check the security of the exit again, and then turned around, his back to the wall of the city, to the corner where two walls met. “Will the two of you shut up and listen to me?”

Perhaps neither had heard Badem raise his voice like that before. Even Devani seemed taken aback.

“Avishag snuck a tracking device onto me. I don’t know what she did, but somehow I think that she took control of those turrets. She’s the one who sabotaged the machines.”

“Except for the ones that Kamila broke, physically,” Devani said. “They will figure out that someone was there. And even if they didn’t, security will have to be redoubled – they won’t let the same thing happen again – our window of opportunity has passed!” She paced, hands gesticulating at her sides, and each time she passed Kamila, Badem noted that Kamila’s hair seemed to stand on end for a moment.

“There’s not much else we could have done in that situation,” Badem said. “And they didn’t see us. We made it back alive. We’ll fight another day.”

“No,” Devani said, quitting her pacing and walking straight up to Badem. She was shorter than him, but he felt towered over when she came closer – till there was no more than a couple of inches’ space between them. He tried to draw back, but she would not let him, though she did not touch him at all. “You will not. I will.”

Badem scoffed to hide the dread and pushed past Devani.

When he got back to the apartment, Avishag was there, sitting on the floor in front of him when he opened the door. He stepped into the doorway and held up the ring. Still blinking green. Avishag glanced up and looked over her shoulder. Badem saw in front of her the terminal screen of a computer – how did she get one? She must have taken it from Aleks’ workshop. Badem wanted to question why or how she’d still had access even after Aleks was captured, but that wasn’t the most pressing question. He slipped the ring between his fingers, let it dance its way to his index finger and thumb, and then tossed it at Avishag.

“What were you thinking?” he said, one hand resting just behind him on the inside of the doorframe, holding the door open slightly. “You could have gotten us killed. That was a covert task.”

Avishag blinked, confusedly. Her mouth curled downward, and she sat up, stirring the dust on the apartment floor. One hand reached idly behind her to shut the lid of the computer. Perhaps thirty seconds passed before she spoke.

“You didn’t tell me where you were going, but I knew you were doing something dangerous – like leaving the city while there’s an army outside waiting to kill all of us? I couldn’t just wait around for that to happen.”

“I didn’t tell you where I was going because it was a covert task.”

She snorted. “What did you think I was going to do, follow you? I’m stuck here. I’m not going to go out and tell the Invictans what you’re doing –“

Badem’s fist slammed into the doorway, sending a shockwave of pain up his arm. He gritted his teeth, eyes narrow and down, suppressing a shout of pain. “Except you did follow me! Did you stop to think for one second that maybe just because you can try to ‘help’ doesn’t mean you should?”

“I saved your life!” Avishag stood up, nearly losing her footing as she did so, bracing against the wall while she raised her center of gravity. “You think those turrets just decided to turn back at the camp because they felt like it?”

“Do you think the Invictan soldiers guarding that camp just decided it was a fucking software glitch, Avishag? By now they probably know you did it, probably know what you’re capable of, and might even be planning to kill you specifically!”

“They’re going to kill all of us!” She swung her arm as though to pound her fist on the wall, caught a glimpse of the thick, heavy stone just before her hand would have struck, and stopped short. “And what does it matter? You’re alive now, they could have killed you then, but now you’re here, you’re –“

Badem took a step into the room just before a shadow stepped in behind him, holding the door open. “We were there to scout the place out, Avishag. So that we could rescue Aleks. So that we could save him. For all we know, they’ve executed him by now. Maybe they even think he’s the one who made the guns turn on them –“

“Exactly!” Avishag grinned. “Maybe they think Aleks did it. They still won’t kill him because he’s too valuable of a prisoner, but it means they would have no reason to assume that we were responsible. They didn’t see you, did they? So we’re fine!”

“That’s…” Badem paused. His face must have been red with the heat of anger, and his fingers itched to move – he had a flash of a memory of a dream, his fingertips around Melik’s throat. He shook his head to clear it away. “That’s a possibility, but it’s not the most likely possibility. Besides, we still didn’t get the information we need –“

“And who’s we, Badem?” Avishag started walking toward him, finger pointed accusingly, eyes narrowed. “Who’s we? Is it you and that goddamn ghost of death over your shoulder? Is it Devani, that old hag who saw my brother’s death as a fucking opportunity to manipulate the both of us? You know she talked to me too, saying all kinds of creepy things about revenge and its true purpose. About how stopping the Invictans was just a stepping stone to something greater. But you know what I saw that you didn’t, Badem, because you’re too much of a goofy, trusting fool?” Now she was close to him, her feet apart and squarely pointed as though she were ready for a fight, her stance leaned in. Scolding a child, only she was little more than half his height. “That woman smells of death, reeks of it. And not the way you or I do, more like the way –“ she scoffed and lowered her arms, just as Badem began to nervously glance over his shoulder for the ‘ghost of death’ she had named.

“Do you remember when my brother snuck out of the house, back in Oxdal, to try and find out who injured dad? The night we met you.”

“Of course I remember.” Badem’s hands hung at his side, even as he turned his head. And then he saw Kamila, leaning in the doorway, eyes wild, staring into his, as though to warn him to choose his next words carefully, lest they be his last.

“After you two came in smelling like sweat and piss, Melik said some things that I hoped you would remember. And he talked about the guy who ran that whole sordid business, the fighting ring and everything it meant – he said that guy smelled of death. Reeked of it. That when he looked at Melik it was with the friendly grin of a wolf looking for more lambs to slaughter. Finally finding one. Well Devani’s a wolf, and you’re a lamb – and you too, Kamila, you’re a lamb no matter how much of a wolf you think you are.” Avishag pointed up accusingly at Kamila, with Badem in between the two of them, and everything inside Badem told him to step aside. But he turned and faced Kamila.

“No one asked you to be here, Zelenko.”

“I don’t care. This is about saving my brother.” Kamila took a step into the room, closing the door behind her. “And I don’t like what I’m hearing. You think you’re going to chicken out of this now, Badem? We still haven’t gotten my brother free yet.”

Badem shook his head. “I want to free him too, and I know it’s partially my responsibility. But you can’t just expect –“

“I can expect whatever I please!” Kamila screamed, lunging forward and grabbing Badem by the shoulders, near his neck. He instinctively shrugged his shoulders and lowered his chin, backing away – the shock of it overpowering whatever fighting instincts he might have had. Kamila caught him completely by surprise, pushed him aside, and stalked toward Avishag. “And if you think you’re going to turn your back on all this after you interfered…”

Avishag scoffed. “When did I said I was going to turn my back? I’m trapped in the same goddamn city as you, Kamila! I’m just not so stupid as to think that Devani woman can be trusted!”

Kamila shrugged off Badem’s attempt to grab onto her shoulder and hold her back, reaching out toward Avishag. The smaller girl stepped back, hands stretched out to ward away Kamila. She nearly tripped over the computer, and Kamila pushed it aside – delicately – with one foot. “I don’t care if she can be trusted,” Kamila said. “I care if she can be used.”

“She’s using you. She’s using both of you.” Avishag cast an angry glance at Badem, who was still trying to step in between the two of them. “There’s something wrong with Devani. Haven’t you felt it? She’s… not right, somehow.”

“You sound like my sister,” Kamila spat. “Sentimental fool.”

“You should listen to your sister instead of brushing her off like that, you might learn something.” Avishag flashed a brief smirk, but didn’t anticipate Kamila’s reaction – the older, taller girl dropped her hands to her sides and stepped back, nearly tripping over the crack in the floor.

“What do you know?” Kamila muttered.

But, without another word, she left, and slammed the door behind herself.

Badem turned to Avishag in the silence afterward. “What on earth was that?” he asked quietly, slipping down into a seated position, hands wrapped over the fronts of his knees. “I’ve never seen her back down like that.”

“Guess I hit a nerve.” Avishag’s face was wrinkled in disgust, her hands fidgeting rapidly as she moved to crouch down by the computer, making sure it wasn’t damaged. She lifted it up to the light, turned it over. When she was satisfied, she set it down gingerly in the corner of the room. “Good thing, too. Who does she think she is?”

“Only one of the most dangerous people in Kivv, and one of the militia’s strongest fighters.” Badem shrugged. “And with Devani…” He stretched his legs out forward, dragged himself closer to Avishag, with his hands still over his knees. “I don’t know what it is about her, but the more time we spend with her, listening to her advice –“ he stopped, bit his lip, shook his head. “She knows things, Avishag. She knew where the Invictan patrols were, and there’s no way she came by that knowledge naturally. I mean, you could tell because of…” he gestured at the computer. “I don’t understand any of that stuff, but it’s incredible! But Devnai, I don’t know what her deal is.”

“Maybe you should ask Hilda. Or the Graoungers prophet-man, the one who’s always talking with her…”

“Oscar?” Badem pushed the heel of his hand against the floor and stood up slowly. “Maybe I will talk to them.” He took a few steps toward the door, stopped, looked over his shoulder. “But… Avishag. You’re going to help us get Aleks back, right?”

“I’ll do anything I can,” Avishag said. “Just as long as Kamila doesn’t try to slit my throat for helping.”

Badem grunted. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t.”

“That’s not reassuring. I… just be careful, okay? Be careful.”

“Right.”