Debris

18.

As children growing up in Varsnia, we all knew about the Other. He featured in cautionary tales, in myths, in threats about going to bed and staying there. But as I walked through Movoc-under-Keeper, I finally understood him.

This city was his city. Steam billowed stinking and thick from sewerage systems in chaos beneath our feet. Rancid water bubbled up through cracks and backed out of houses. Fires lit themselves and burned untended, leaped building to building, casting a heavy glow on the base of the low clouds. The streets were empty, hollow and ghostly like dried bones.

This was not Movoc-under-Keeper, this was the Other's city. And if I was right, if only half of what I had understood and interpreted beneath Yicor's shop was right, then this could only be the beginning.

We passed quickly through the city, faster than I would have thought possible. There were no ferries, the Tear was dark and flat as a slate. The screaming faded behind us as we ran, to be replaced by wind through empty windows, by the echo of footsteps and the lonely cry of a crow.

"Where are you taking us?" Natasha called from behind.

Neither Kichlan or I could answer, and Lad did not. I wasn't sure he knew he was being spoken to. His head was tipped, one ear facing the street, eyes at an angle. The Keeper called him.

"Where are you?" I whispered.

But only wind answered.

Slowly, the route Lad was following grew clear. As we entered familiar parts of the city, as I knew the empty shops, the swinging signs and houses, my skin prickled.

"Can't be."

Kichlan sent me a questioning glance. But before I could answer Mizra was running forward. "Look!" he cried as he ran, and we saw it. A body, lying in the street, prone.

Before we reached it I knew what the man was. Not who. What. I saw his suit, silver against all the grey. It spun, though his face was as pasty as the grey tiles, and the back of his skull crushed in.

"Other," Sofia hissed.

"He's a collector." Mizra, who had kneeled by the man's head, reared backwards. He stumbled, and only Uzdal's grip kept him from falling. "He's an Other-buggered collector!"

Sofia eyed the body, pointed up at the roof of a tall building close by. "There are more."

I didn't want to see, but could not keep my head from turning. More bodies hung, wrapped around tiles, impaled on the iron railings of a balcony fence. Blood seeped down polished stones and I wondered if it would stain. What was the building made of, was that marble I could see, decorating the stonework? Yes, marble would stain.

"What's happening? Are they all collectors?"

But Lad, having stopped to glance at the body, kept walking. I touched Kichlan's hand, and he jumped beside me. Silent, I tipped my head at Lad.

"We can't leave him here," Natasha murmured, voice like a groan. "Not like this."

"He fell," Sofia said with certainty. "Or was pushed."

"Stay with him if you want," Kichlan told Natasha. She nodded, face pale, lips grey as the death at her feet, and crouched to begin rearranging the man's splayed limbs. I caught a glimpse of his face where it had pressed into the stones. He had not just hit the street, he had been crushed into it. His cheek was ground into wet red mush, flecks of stone like mineral deposits in his flesh.

I glanced over my shoulder as we ran. Natasha watched us go, her gaze focused firmly on me. She spoke, and though I could not hear the words, by the Other it looked like, "It's here for you."

"Where are the planes?" Kichlan murmured as I caught up to his side.

"Planes?"

"Like last time. Something killed that man, so where are they?"

I shook my head. Where was the debris at all? The muck that had clogged streets, the deeper into the city we ran, the thinner it became.

"Not again," Mizra was muttering to himself, a mote at the back of my hearing. "Not again."

"Tan," Lad said as he turned where I knew he was going to turn, against all reason, against all fairness. "He says he's sorry. He can't stop it."

"So am I." And we turned the corner, crossed the street, and entered an empty patch of scarred earth that had once been Grandeur's home.

They had removed her body and shattered bones. Nothing remained but gashes in the ground, but the great indents where her fingers had hit the earth. Thin grass had grown into them. Nothing new had been built.

And yet, the lot wasn't empty.

"Oh, Other." Sofia faltered.

"We have to get out of here!" Mizra squealed behind me. "Now!"

Grandeur's body was gone, but others took her place. They were small compared to the statue in my mind, to the memory of a woman greater than her name. Small, human and broken, they were scattered about the lot. Two dozen, perhaps, maybe a few more. And all, I knew instantly, debris collectors. Like we were now, they had followed the debris to Grandeur's birthing place and her grave.

To the place where I had fallen.

But where was the debris?

"Don't move!" Kichlan snapped as Mizra tried to stumble from the yard. He dragged Mizra close, wrapped a large hand over his mouth. "Can you see it, Tanyana?" he whispered. "By the beam."

I had been wrong. Grandeur was not completely gone. A single steel bone arched up from where it had fallen and impaled the earth. I had missed it, in the shadow. The shadow that fell from nowhere in the middle of an open space.

"Says we should get away," Lad whimpered. "Says this is the bad stuff, right here."

"Don't need any voices to tell us that," Sofia whispered.

I didn't know what it was, plane or grains, it didn't even look like debris. It was darkness flittering like shadows on water, and it was, I realised with increasing horror, steadily stripping a body that lay propped against the steel beam.

"It's flaying her," I choked on the words. "Why is it doing that?" Let alone how, or how we could stop it. How we could collect, control, where the dead around us had failed.

"Get away," Lad groaned.

"If we move, it will see us." Kichlan caught my eye with his steady gaze.

I clamped down on my panic. "It will notice us soon, whether we move or not."

"So what do we do?" Mizra asked, muffled behind Kichlan's hand. Gradually, Kichlan released his grip.

"We contain it," I replied. This was like the other times, wasn't it? The mass of grains and planes clinging like a parasite to the building's wall. The surging muck that had shut down a factory. The mad planes that had destroyed the technicians' offices and nearly killed Devich. This was another form, another surprise, just another test.

"Any ideas on how we would do that?" Sofia asked and edged closer, Uzdal at her side.

We stood in a line, a team, missing one.

"Can't," Lad jittered. "Should run."

I looked at him. The Keeper was being less than helpful. "Can you tell him something for me, Lad?"

Lad looked at me, surprised, and his shaking arms stilled. "He can hear you, Tan. Told me to say he can hear you."

"Right." Where do you look to talk to the invisible? "Well, then." I drew a breath and focused on a spot beside Lad's ear. "If you're going to stay here and talk you might as well help. Dire warnings aren't going to make us run. So stop it."

"Speak for yourself," Mizra muttered as wind blew and Lad listened.

I realised, with a low sickness in my gut, that I could hear the collector's skin being torn away.

Lad said, "Says you should have run, but if it's too late, he will try."

"Right," I murmured. What exactly was I supposed to be asking?

"How do we collect it?" Kichlan asked for me.

"Says you can't," Lad said. "Says it's not normal, won't go into the jars like normal."

"Other's balls," Uzdal growled.

I said, "Why is it different? Why have we been able to-"

A terrible scream sliced through my words. Lad added a scream of his own, wrapped his hands around his head and sank to his knees. Kichlan dropped to his side. Mizra and Uzdal stood to the spot like the steel beam rammed into the earth.

"It's seen us!" Sofia yelled. She grabbed at Kichlan's elbow. But Lad was sinking lower, and I knew Kichlan wouldn't move unless he did. We had to hold it off.

"Come on!" I yelled at Mizra and his brother. "A shield!"

The debris shifted. It didn't float like grains or lance through the sky like planes. It compressed, became thin, transparent, and disappeared. The body against the beam sagged into a shapeless mess of blood and skin.

"It's gone," Mizra whispered. But he knew, I knew, we all could feel it like taint in the air. The debris was here, somewhere.

"Shield them!" I screamed at him. "Quickly!" I spread my suit out over Kichlan, Lad and Sofia like a ceiling of silver. Uzdal joined me a moment later. Mizra stared at the body, lips moving silently.

"Mizra!" Uzdal yelled at his brother.

Then the debris attacked. It slammed itself against the shield and Uzdal fell, a gurgled cry on his lips. I gritted my teeth as shock travelled through the suit and into my bones, but held steady.

"Uz!" Mizra snapped from his distraction and wrapped his own suit over Uzdal's as the debris attacked again.

"Not Lad." I ground my teeth, spat blood and saliva at a flitter of shadow. "You can't have him."

…you soon. Careful…

As suddenly as I heard him the Keeper was gone.

"Hold it up!" I told Uzdal and Mizra. "Can you?"

Pale faces nodded. They could, yes, but not for long.

I withdrew my suit from the shield and began stalking, ringing a wide circle around them. "Where are you? Come on, you dirty Other-skinned bastard! I'm here, try it."

Darkness on my left. I spun, suit up and still oval, and the debris glanced against me. A sword on a shield.

I chuckled. "This is old. I've been here before!"

Something crashed into my lower back. I waited for skin to peel, for bones to crush like all the bodies I had seen. But my suit was too fast. It shot out from neck and waist, and wrapped my torso in silver that knocked the debris aside. Still, I was thrown into the air. Even as I realised I was alive, and whole, I shot stilts into the ground and held myself up.

You are the biggest threat. It hasn't realised that yet. It is still going for the Half.

I replied, "You could tell me something I can't see for myself and that would be more useful."

It is coming for you.

Heat around my thigh. I withdrew one arm, lowered the other and swiped at the apparently thin air with a sharp suit. Something screamed, then crashed against my supporting arm. I folded with a cry, fell to the earth. Stone cut into my cheeks.

Roll.

I coughed out dust, saw tiny splotches of red wet the grass.

Left.

I rolled.

Wait. Right. Again. Faster.

Not fast enough. Slices in my arms, over my neck and down to my back.

Suit! Quickly!

I didn't know what that meant. My suit did. It wrapped me again in silver, fingertips to toes to jaw. Where it touched my open skin metal seeped into my wounds, into muscle and nerve. I screamed my throat raw, kicked against the ground, but could not shake the invasion of my body.

Head!

I saw the flicker this time, rolled of my own volition. But something heavy and solid smacked into my temple. A different darkness spotted against the ruddy, dull sky, lit by pinpricks of stars.

The suit moved. It crawled over my jaw, up over the back of my head like creeping hands. Dazed, I couldn't stop it. I was hit again, this time something sharp. It cut my ear, tore hair and grazed scalp. Then my suit was there. It soaked into my ear, into the spaces between my skin and skull. I clamped my lips closed, it sealed them. I squeezed my eyes shut and it was a heavy blindfold. Over my nose, it grew, into my nostrils.

I couldn't breathe. Something was hitting me, clashing with my suit in a sound like a battle of silverware and crockery. But I couldn't breathe. Nothing else mattered, I fought my body, struggled with my addled mind for control.

Just to breathe.

I only wanted to breathe!

Be still.

Sounds in my ears, clamouring and rushing, a cacophony. A smell like burning flesh. Great exhaustion pressed down until I couldn't move anything any more, even if I'd wanted to. My chest burned fit to burst, I was seeing colours on the back of my eyes.

It has gone for the Half. You can breathe now.

Breathe? With silver shoved up my nose?

Listen to me, Tanyana, and breathe. I have waited this long to meet you. If you die now, you will make me mad.

I laughed despite myself and in that involuntary explosion of air discovered I could suck it in as well. Suit or none.

I breathed so deeply it rushed to my head like wine. I wanted to laugh long, loud and hard.

Lie still, catch your breath. Don't let it think you're alive.

The air smelled stale, like body odour and humidity.

And when you're ready, open your eyes.

No point arguing. I could breathe, why not see. Why not talk.

I opened my eyes to a very different world. Gone was Grandeur's graveyard. Gone were the bodies, the chaos. It was a dark world of empty planes and doors. Nothing but doors.

Well, nothing but doors and a man.

He was bent over me, concerned face close to mine.

Pale as limestone, skin translucent, eyes dark and seeming to float in his face. There was nothing inside him one would normally associate with a man, no bones or pumping blood. Just thin veins of darkness like patterns in marble.

He had no hair, I realised, and was naked. Naked and anatomically accurate.

"Are you the Keeper?" I whispered, half expecting my mouth to fill with silver. It did not.

He smiled. The inside of his mouth was black. "I have more than one name. But yes, that is one of them."

I tried to sit up, but he placed a hand on my chest and kept me down.

"Do not move until you are ready to fight it."

That made sense, I supposed. I looked around. Doors for a sky, for the ground, doors instead of buildings and mountain. "What is this place?"

"Again, it has had many names. The Dark World, perhaps, you might have heard. The place that is not."

I peered at his head. The veins were moving, pumping their own blackness as ours would pump scarlet blood. "The hands that are not." What was that? I frowned, looking closer.

"Yes. This, all you see, this is-"

"-debris." I was sure of it. Grains in his body, planes surging them along.

His smile broadened, his eyes shone like beetle wings. "Yes. Oh, Tanyana, I was so glad to welcome you."

Welcome? "That was you, in the beginning? When I fell from Grandeur?"

He nodded.

Was I supposed to understand any of this? "So this world is made of debris? Like you?"

"It is debris. Like me. We are one and the same. Your world is made of layers, and particles, of different pieces running in hectic chaos. I am only one. All this-" he swept his arms wide "-is me. It is also debris. I am the door, the guardian, the sign."

"Right." No sense at all. "What are the doors?"

His face settled into seriousness, into sadness in transparency and black. "Joins between our worlds."

"Lots of them."

"Yes, too many. It is all I can do to guard them and keep them closed."

"Closed." I frowned, brain still sluggish. I blamed the blows, the silver and the whole bizarre situation. "If they opened, that wouldn't be good, would it?"

He shook his head. "Should they open, the Dark World and the Light World, my world and your world, they will blend. The Dark World will destroy you. The Light World will destroy me. Everything is changing. Soon, I am not sure I will be able to hold the doors closed."

"Fear for everything," I murmured, and thought of Lad who had done his role as a Half so well, and warned us. Lad.

Lad!

I jerked upright. The Keeper didn't hold me down. "The debris! Is it… is Lad…?"

"Can you see? We are connected, all worlds. If you know how, you can see both."

Like pions, just with an added helping of scary and a little too weird. A frown, a moment of concentration, and shapes emerged from the doors. My collecting team cast thin and insubstantial in wood and shadow. Mizra and Uzdal had fallen, their shield cast down, suits weak. They lay on either side of the empty site, limp and unconscious.

"Not dead," Keeper told me. How did he know?

Sofia was wrapped around Lad who still rocked, hands to head, crying. She shielded him completely, exposing her back, and watched as Kichlan stood against the debris-thing. She knew, I could see it in her face, that if Kichlan fell – then she would die before she surrendered Lad. Sofia knew it, accepted it, and thought it rather likely.

"You said it is going for Lad. Why?"

"It knows the most powerful of you, those who threaten it." He shook his pale head. "Do not let it kill the Half. There are so few like him left in this world, and they are so precious. I need them. You need them. To help me keep these doors closed."

I could see all this, but no more of the real world. Kichlan stood – one arm hanging by his side, the other raised with a jagged blade of suit guarding his face – his image mottled with wood grain, in a world of darkness and doors.

The debris-thing was something else entirely. The Keeper's terrible twin. A pale body with dark grains running through it, but twisted. Scarred. Dark ridges ran from fingers to shoulder, torso to leg. Its head sagged to the side. Its legs shuffled. Its skin rippled, new ridges forming, old ones dying, scarring over and over again.

It looked to me, for all I did not want to see it, like it had fallen. And landed on glass.

"What is it?" I whispered.

"Debris. Like me."

"Make it stop." I stood, no longer feeling the dizziness in my head or the cuts to my body. I felt whole, strong. I flexed a silver-coated hand. Very strong. "If you are it and it is you, make it stop."

"I can't." The Keeper stood beside me. He was tall, but thin as a willow branch and as delicate. "They are changing us. Changing me. I am losing control."

"They?"

The Keeper lifted a fine hand and pointed with pale fingers. "Can you see them? They hide in your world, scurry like rats behind walls. But they are always there, behind you. Following."

Where the remnants of a wall from Grandeur's old site would have hidden them in the real world, in the Keeper's home of doors and shadows the puppet men were starkly clear. Three of them stood in a line, watching Kichlan and the debris-thing.

"They see too much," Keeper whispered. "They touch both worlds. I fear them. Their touch burns, and each part of me they scar unlocks another door."

As one, their pale faces and mouldy eyes turned toward me.

Kichlan roared. I spun to see him slash at the debristhing and miss widely. It flickered around him, dancing like a cruel partner. A warped hand flashed out, struck his shoulder, and sent him spinning.

"Bro!" Lad leapt to his feet, throwing Sofia off like she was a doll. "No!"

"Not the Half!" Keeper shouted, but I was already moving. I ran over to the doors. They were hard, like concrete. Kichlan landed on his injured side. The debristhing scuttled forward. Lad extended his suit into clubs and lunged.

But I got there first. I held Lad back with a hand, catching his club in its downward swing, lifting him from his feet and pushing him at Sofia.

"Hold him!" I shouted at her.

She and Lad stared at me like I was the debris-thing, like I was a ghost or a creature worse than any imagination could make me. But I didn't care. It was Kichlan I had come to save. I would not let the scarred thing hurt him any more.

The Keeper appeared behind Kichlan as the debris-thing hesitated. It flickered itself around, head twisting like a doll. I realised it had no face; at least, it had none left. There had been a nose, eyes, a mouth. Only ridges, shifting and solidifying, remained. The scars on my own cheeks seemed to tighten in response.

Kichlan looked up, pale and strained. "Tanyana?" he whispered.

The debris-thing lashed at me. I caught it as I had the planes, locking my suit to its arm like weapons crossed.

"Tame it!" Keeper cried.

"Miss Vladha."

As one we stopped. Kichlan, Sofia, Lad, even the debris-thing, the Keeper and I, as the puppet men entered the abandoned construction site.

"What are they doing?" Keeper hissed.

"You?" Kichlan spat the word at them. "What is going on?"

But the puppet men held their attention firmly on me. "We suggest you do not listen to the advice of weaklings not long for either world. We suggest you listen to us, Miss Vladha, and do exactly as we say."

The Keeper placed himself between Lad and the puppet men. He wavered, like a wind was battering the branches of his limbs and the thin trunk of his body. But still, that stance, legs wide and shoulders broad, was defensive and strong. "You know I am here, don't you?" His dark eyes danced between the three identical faces. "You can see me. Hear me."

How was that possible? Even Lad, a Half, only heard the Keeper.

The puppet men turned simultaneous heads, lifted the corners of their mouths, and sneered together. "You should flee. Your time is limited. Run, if you want to make the most of it."

Kichlan rolled to unsteady feet. "Leave him alone!" He didn't know Keeper was there. All he could see was the sight he dreaded most, the puppet men threatening his brother.

But they paid Kichlan no heed. Sneers fell away as they looked back at me. "Destroy it, Miss Vladha. Quickly."

"No," Keeper whispered.

The debris-thing folded, and vanished from my hand.

"Behind the Half." The Keeper vanished with it.

I plunged my suit into the ground. It threw me up and over Lad and Sofia's heads. The debris-thing re-emerged and I crashed right into it.

"It's going to keep doing that." The Keeper reappeared. "You have to calm it."

"I don't know what you mean!" I shouted back.

"That debris is more powerful than anything you have fought before." The puppet men started again. "It will kill your team."

"It will ravage every pion system in the city."

"Will you let that happen?"

"Destroy it, Miss Vladha."

"Destroy it."

"No!" the Keeper cried. "All these doors, Tanyana, they are pieces of me. Like this one below you – broken, twisted, and scarred – is a piece of me. They have all been torn from my body. If you destroy it, you will create another door. Didn't you hear me? If you don't return it to me, I won't be able to keep the doors closed!"

The debris-thing fought, lurched and tipped beneath me. Its faceless visage strained, not to the Keeper, not to attack me, but toward the puppet men. Whimpering, snuffling, a desperate and beaten dog.

"You created this?" I asked them, gasping as I fought to hold on.

"This is the final test."

My hands slipped. The debris-thing skittered toward the puppet men. As one they opened their jackets, together they drew out something bright, sharp, and terrifying. I flinched, and the scuttling debris-thing did the same. Smaller, but still arms – like the ones that had fitted me with my suit. Needled, thick with wires, slightly curved and altogether cruel. The puppet men lifted the devices, pointed them, flipped buttons to start the cords moving and fluids churning. And the debris-thing screamed, flickered in and out of existence, before twisting back toward Lad. It pushed the Keeper aside and I leapt to my feet, but not before catching the triumphant grins on the puppet men's faces.

The only emotion I had ever seen them express and it was horrifying. Lines rose all over their pale skin. Seams of darkness, jagged, covering foreheads, cheeks, and necks. Their mouths opened widely, too widely, their eyes darkened over and they weren't human. No expressionless faces and stilted movements, not any more, just ridges and vast grins and dark, bottomless eyes.

In an instant, it was gone, and the puppet men were pale and wooden again.

I jumped at the debris-thing, plunging my suit into its pale shoulders, pushing the creature down against the doors. The Keeper gasped, faded further, and staggered. They were one and the same. Joined. The Keeper and this manic thing beneath me. Knowing that, could I fight it, cut it into pieces and force it into jars?

"How is this a door?" I panted.

"We told you not to listen to it," the puppet men sneered.

"The doors connect us, Tanyana. They connect the Dark World and the Light World. I am that connection. Debris is that connection. When they rip a part of me away, when they twist it to their own ends, they are tearing the doors from my control!" Keeper straightened, though he still shook. "If the doors open, the worlds merge. If I can't close them, we will lose them both. Both worlds."

"It lies," the puppet men leered, mechanical and unemotional.

"That is why my Halves exist. They alone will hear me should a door open, they alone can help me close it. That is why they are precious. And that is why you cannot do what these men are telling you to do!"

"Superstitious nonsense."

"You must choose. What do you believe?" Keeper asked.

"There is but one choice, Miss Vladha," the puppet men said. "If you do not destroy the debris now, it will kill your team. One by one."

"No," the Keeper whispered. "I cannot take much more. If you do not tame it, the doors will open, and this world will be lost."

"That is ridiculous. Use the weapon we have created in you, and finish this test."

My head reeled. Weapon? I looked down to my silver-wrapped wrists and thought about everything I had done and all that had been done to me. The suit had protected me so many times, caught me when I had been thrown, shielded me from the planes of debris that had killed so many and from threats so mundane as a rotten and falling wall. I remembered Comedian and Barbarian, and what I had done to them. Was that what I was, what the veche had made me? A weapon that could withstand any debris storm, that could break any pion-made bond, that could maim or kill without thought?

"Is that what this is all about?" I asked. Suddenly, it all made sense. "This is why you have used me, all this time." What greater weapon could there be? What pionpowered weapon could fight against an army with suits like mine?

I added, "I'm doing this for our future. My life, for a stronger Varsnia." Dina's funding complaints, rumours of weapons and war, and the obsessive attention of the old veche men.

"You understand." As one, the three puppet men pretended a smile.

This was why I had been thrown from Grandeur's palm.

"I have one problem with it, though." I shook my head. "I am not a weapon." I was an architect. I had worked hard to make my life what it was. And suit or no suit, Grandeur or no Grandeur, tests or Keepers or doors or debris, it didn't matter. Even Devich. None of them could make me anything other than who I was.

And I was no one's weapon.

"Then you will die, like the others who have been suited, tested and failed before you."

"Others?" Kichlan whispered, his voice cracking.

"Do as we tell you and you will live. Fail, and you will die. You and your team."

The debris-thing struggled, and the Keeper winced. "Please," he groaned. "Calm us. Rejoin us. It hurts, Tanyana. It hurts."

"Destroy it, Miss Vladha. Destroy it before you are destroyed."

The debris-thing thrashed again, kicking my gut, whacking fists against my head and neck. I felt each blow through the silver. How long could I withstand that? How many more times would it have to vanish and reappear before I was too tired to follow? Would Lad be the first to go, when that happened? The first to be flayed alive, to be stripped of skin and life. Then who? Kichlan?

I couldn't let it happen. Not Lad. Not Kichlan. Not another debris collector, not while I had the strength to stop it.

I would have to destroy it. I withdrew a hand from the debris-thing's shoulder. It shivered beneath me and the Keeper cried out, weakly. I lifted the hand above my head, sharpened and curled my suit into a great, shining arc.

"Hurry," said the puppet men.

"No, please," the Keeper whispered.

I was not a weapon. "But I don't know what else to do!" I looked into the Keeper's dark eyes, to the debris that surged through transparent veins and skin across his face, and realised how much the puppet men had looked like him. Just for that instant.

"You do know," Lad said, his quiet voice nearly lost behind them all. "You did it before. Remember, Tan? When you told the debris to go backward, and it did. When you asked it to stop turning all the lights off, and it did. When you told it to stop hurting people, so you could save that man. Can't keep hurting it. That's what he means. Stop the hurting."

How do you stop a scarred mirror-image from hurting? How do you give peace to untouchable sails, to bubbling grains? To waste?

The same way you convince pions to build a building for you.

I eased my cruel suit back, and relaxed my shoulders. I closed my eyes. As the debris-thing bucked under me, thrashed and flickered in and out of solidity, I slowed my breathing.

"Shh," I whispered to it. "It doesn't hurt any more, you know that? Feel it, it doesn't hurt." And I sank deeper. I gave the debris-thing everything I had. No enthusiasm, no wild desire to weave lights and patterns into the world. I gave it peace. I gave it calm.

"Miss Vladha? What are you doing?"

I gave it standing in the cemetery with Kichlan, as Lad placed rosemary at his mother's grave.

I gave it Mizra's wild stories.

I gave it Lad's smile.

And the bucking stopped, the tension eased, the screaming dwindled into a soft sobbing and the body dissolved away.

"Ah," the Keeper whispered. "It hurts."

I couldn't move. I felt empty, brittle. All my strength exhausted, all my knowledge jumbled. The Keeper was on his knees. The debris-thing, as it dissolved, rushed into him like a current of dust mites in the sun. Tears ran down his pale cheeks, great lashings of black liquid.

"They hurt us, Tanyana." He implored me to understand, to correct it. To help him. "They tortured me, to create that thing. I can still feel it! I can still see it. Horrible light, cruel faces, all around me. All playing with me, hurting me, twisting me and changing me, all for this."

The doors around me wavered. My suit was retreating. Perhaps I no longer had the strength to sustain it.

"They made you, Tanyana. And they tried to break you. Don't let them. For me, for everyone. Don't let them."

A cool breeze on my face.

Through the slits of my eyes I saw Lad on the ground, Sofia collapsed beside him.

I couldn't see Kichlan.

Then I heard footsteps over the earth, and the voices of the puppet men above me, "This is unexpected."

"Unexpected."

The footsteps were so close. Shadows blocked the sun. The puppet men. I had to get up, I had to stop them doing whatever it was they wanted to do to me next. Because the Keeper was right. I would not let them break me and I would not let them turn me into a weapon. No matter what they injected beneath my skin and between my bones. I was me, not the suit. Me.

"Disobedience is as bad as failure. The subject should die here."

But my empty, brittle body would not respond. I couldn't move.

"And yet, the survival of the subject can create a new test."

"Further experiments are needed."

"Agreed."

The footsteps faded. I allowed my eyes to close, and fell into darkness.