Dissolution

Chapter 18 - The Leviathan

I wondered if I was dead.

This couldn't be real. I was walking with three corpless through the twining alleys outside Unilox, and I was alive. Although perhaps walking was the wrong word. Deeka ducked ahead, nose twitching, her knife held low and careful. Then she'd scan the darkness and beckon us along after a short, tense moment. The giant Fayin brought up the rear. Despite the fact he probably weighed twice my size, he slipped through the shadows noiselessly. It added to the feeling of unreality, of impossibility. My brain felt disjointed. Surely they were going to sell me out at any moment. Surely they were taking me back to butcher me.

I tried to keep track of where we were going, but it was useless since I hadn't really known where I'd been in the first place. I hadn't realized how sprawling the corpless' territory was. How Unilox's shadow had spread so far and so thickly.

We eventually came to a building that looked like the rest: sad and sagging, bricks and stone tumbled around it like fallen tears. Cam twisted aside the broken door. It fell into two pieces; he stacked them on the side and walked through. I hesitated for a moment. It looked dark inside, like a trap, like everything I'd ever been warned against.

Oddly enough, that thought was enough to make me set my shoulders and walk through. Nobody had ever warned me against my own city, or against my Corporation's suits showing up in the night. And I was starting to understand the corpless. More than I'd ever wanted to. Enough that when I felt their eyes on me, I recognized the glint of approval. I must have passed some test I hadn't even known I'd been taking. I tried to hold on to that when Fayin pulled the two broken pieces of the door carefully back behind us. I wasn't trapped. I wasn't.

I could barely see inside, but the others seemed to move as if there was a hidden light pulling them all toward the center. It was instinctive enough for them that nobody warned me about the stairs. I almost broke my neck on the first one, catching myself just in time on a rugged outcrop of torn plasterboard. I took each step afterward with gritted teeth, hating the encroaching walls and the feeling of walking down to my grave. The only thing that kept me going was the faint glow at the end. There was light down there.

Halfway down, Cam spread his arms. "Everyone!" he announced. "Deeka found a mech-head!"

There was a chorus of surprised shouts, catcalls, cries. I blinked. Somebody must have tapped into an electric system. Down here, the light was low and warm, scattered around in broken bulbs. As my eyes adjusted I saw people heaped on low nests of blankets or salvaged furniture, all on a surprisingly clean floor. Fayin joined one of the men with a rumbling laugh and they wrapped together like two puzzle halves. Behind them, a young woman nursed a child, humming. Two older men sat in another corner playing some sort of game with pieces of paper. One of them had lost half his arm; it ended in a stump just below his elbow. He was older than my father, but he moved without my father's shaking hands. I had to swallow down the sudden ache in my chest.

A little boy ran past me. "You mean it, Cam? She's gonna fix the Leviathan? You're not just tricking?"

Cam laughed, easy. "Well, she's going to give it a damn good shot, aren't you, Madeline?"

Eyes fell on me and widened. It was only then that I remembered my bare skull and my reddish, blood-spattered skin. The thought suddenly occurred to me that if anyone had peered into this room and picked out a cannibal, it would have been me.

I grinned weakly. "Sure," I said. "Where's your . . . Levithan?"

"Leviathan," the little boy corrected me, bouncing now. "And it's over there. Are you blind?"

My jaw dropped.

I had no excuse for not seeing it before; my human eyes had already adjusted. But I had never expected to see a fourth-generation HARLIN Receiving and Broadcasting system in a corpless den, let alone one tricked out with the latest screen and MERCE sound tech. "How did you . . . how did you even get this?"