Chasm Walkers Page 2

  And for now, the only safe haven I knew.

  “They will fade,” Dr. Lilah Bartlet’s cultured voice drifted from the door. “The nightmares.” Catching my look of disbelief, she nodded. “I promise, Charlotte.”

  “I believe you.” Turning, I hugged myself. “I slept, at least.”

  The familiar sight of electric-etched print caught my eye. I noticed the corner of an aether bulletin from the News Bureau sitting on her desk, and I moved the papers covering it, frowning at my likeness on the sepia page. The Peaceful Union had not used a recent depiction of me. The print of the photo did not show the mechanica now fused to my temples and hands. Instead it was the one they had used back when they first called me Lady Blackburn. My own government had believed the lies perpetuated by Defiance and branded me a traitor and rebel leader. I looked angry, murderous even—long, black locks flaring out as I swung beneath a crashing dirigible, tracer gun in hand. Pale blue and piercing, my gaze bored from the page. I was depicted mid-shout as I fired on some unsuspecting victim somewhere off the page.

  Charlotte Blackburn; enemy of the Peaceful Union. Armed and dangerous. Report at Once.

  I traced my fingers beneath those words. Strange how much like that girl in the picture I had become. The rage, the dark intent. It had not fit me then, back when I was a naïve debutante desperate to save her father. It did now. I gathered the missive in my hand, crumpling it.

  “Come rest, Charlotte. Let me take another look at those devices.” Lilah motioned from the center of the room, breaking through my thoughts. She held up a few tinkering tools. “I have an idea.” Patting the chair next to a small table, she smiled, waiting. Pale skinned with long, auburn locks, Lilah Bartlet was not only brilliant, she was beautiful. The simple shift dress she wore did nothing to lessen her lithe beauty.

  Her young son sat quietly near her feet playing. It was the first time I had seen him since arriving. The last time I had seen Lilah, she’d been with child. Of all the things that drove home to me how much time I’d lost in captivity, the fact that Lilah’s unborn child was now two years old was what hit me hardest. The Order and Arecibo had tortured and experimented on me, but the loss of living my life for that long was the deepest injury.

  “You must be Jack,” I whispered, walking over.

  He looked up, fixing me with stark black irises, unblinking. The gaze of a Trembler.

  “He is…” Lilah’s voice broke. “Jack cannot hear.”

  I glanced down at him noticing that his small arms twitched with minute tremors as he maneuvered the wood blocks with his tiny hands.

  Lilah had been terrified, her husband having been infected with the Trembling Sickness not long before she discovered her pregnancy. As a doctor, she knew she was possibly carrying a very sick child.

  “Nice to meet you,” I whispered to him anyway. Reaching out, I touched the pads of my fingers to his cool, pale forehead.

  Closing his eyes, he put his chubby fingers over mine squeezing gently before letting go and returning to his toy.

  Taking a seat opposite Lilah, I extended my arm across the work surface.

  She stared at me, a strange look on her face.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked, instantly uncomfortable.

  “Nothing,” she said, clearing her throat. “He just…responds to you.” Her voice trailed off, and I knew she was thinking that I heard the victims of the monstrous infirmity. Could feel their need. My connection to them and to her son meant a lot more than what she was saying.

  “People turn in days, Lilah,” I offered. “Jack is two years old.”

  She looked at me for a moment, blinking back tears. “I am afraid that…” Her voice quavered and she leaned in, whispering. “He was not exposed after birth, Charlotte. He did not breathe in the sickness as others do. The affliction is knitted within his being.”

  “So are you, Lilah.” I placed my hand over her frantically fidgeting fingers, willing my own demons to fade as I assured her. “You and your husband and all the hope you had for Jack to live. That is what he is. Answered prayer.”

  A shaking sigh escaped her lips, and she held my gaze with her own, her expression desperately hopeful.

  I nodded resolutely.

  She did the same. Taking in a calming breath, she picked up her tools again. “Let…let us see what we can do about these,” she said finally and busied herself with the magnifying lens. Adjusting the stand, she squinted at the metal and glass disc embedded in the back of my hand. The illuminating flame flickered behind the lens with her exhaled breath.

  “Any news?”

  She had been checking and rechecking the aether’s coded oscillation; an emergency channel Outer City used to relay information on a repetitive loop. No word on his arrival.

  “Not yet, but Riley’s ship did leave from Europe the moment he received word of your discovery.”

  “That was not necessary.” A deep whir sounded from the device at my hand. “I am fine, as you can see.”

  “I do not think a hurricane would keep him from returning,” Lilah said softly. “Every day you were missing was torture to Sebastian…I mean, Sheriff Riley. He searched everywhere. Followed every whisper of a lead. He was relentless.”

  I let my head fall against the back of the chair and closed my eyes as she adjusted my arm gently.

  “I know that he was,” I said to the ceiling, not wanting to see the hurt or worry in her eyes again. I knew what Riley, what Lilah and Mara, had risked to rescue me. I knew they had lost friends.

  “Did not matter to him if the city-state was overrun with Reaper hordes or taken over by gangs and criminals. He went anyway. Riley searched every abandoned building. Every hovel. And then the one time he is called away, you are found.”

  “I owe all of you my life.”

  A sharp current sizzled up my arm from the device embedded in the back of my hand, and I hissed with the pain.

  “Sorry…I am sorry,” she murmured.

  “It will not come off, Lilah.” I let my head loll to the side and took in the intensity of her gaze. “I tried with a knife on the way back, if you recall. I only managed to bleed all over the floor and paralyze my arm for a couple of days.”

  “I fear the bone has grafted with the metal and wires. The devices must have been placed nearly as soon as you were taken.” Her delicate hands worked the specialized tinkering tools she’d procured from Mara for the purpose. “I see evidence of at least a year’s worth of healing around this…mechanica.” A spark flashed, nearly singeing her eyebrows, and she yelped and leaned backward. Her gaze snapped to mine, mortified. “Did that hurt?”

  “I am fine.” I tried to smile, feeling as if the muscles to do so were atrophied. “Let it be, Lilah. They are as permanent now as my own skin.”

  “But I am sure that—”

  “Ma’am,” a voice at the door called out. Kiril, Riley’s second in command, poked his head in her doorway. “You said to give word.” Stepping further into the room, he removed his hat, fiddled with the wide brim, and cast an uneasy glance at Jack who did not seem to take note of Kiril’s presence at all.

  “He is here?” Lilah asked, standing too quickly and adjusted her skirts absently. “Now?”

  “His ship sent word. They are nearly to port.” Kiril’s gaze ran over my exposed arm, pausing for a moment on the devices at my elbow and hand, but he said nothing. Looking back at Lilah, he continued. “He said he will come straight away.”

  “Thank you, Kiril,” Lilah answered, her voice laced with excitement.

  Kiril nodded and left.

  “All right.” Lilah smoothed the elegant chignon twisting her red tresses atop her head and rested her fingers at her pinking cheek. Hurrying over to the desk, she straightened the papers and picked up her dirty tea cup. She walked aimlessly about the room as if looking for something. “We will be ready.”

  Slow dawning came over me as I watched her flutter about. She was behaving like a woman expecting a suitor to call. I
stood slowly, quietly, heading behind the changing screen. I pulled on my skirt and blouse, peering at her through the break in the screen as she scurried around the office tidying. The buckles of my bodice gave my stiff fingers trouble. I almost asked for help, but she knelt next to Jack, smoothing his auburn locks.

  Riley had searched for me for two years, yes. But it was Lilah who had been here with him in Outer City during that time. The beautiful widow with the sweet young boy. The healer, so caring and able, whose face bloomed at the mention of the sheriff’s name. I glanced at the mirror mounted at the door and stepped outside onto the suspended planks. Lilah deserved to welcome Riley home after his long trek across the Atlantic, not the strange, altered creature that stared back at me from my reflection.

  Three horn blasts from the harbor slips spurred me to move. Striding down the walkway, I headed for the rotor towers. To the high place that offered safety and solitude—something I needed desperately since I’d returned. Suddenly, the idea of facing Riley struck fear in my heart. I did not want to glimpse his face when he recognized that the girl he waited so long to see again was not who came back. There was barely any of her left at all.

  Glancing over my shoulder, I chanced a peek at the stream of people disembarking the large air ship, and my breath caught. Ahead of the crowd, a tall man strode with purpose, his head down, hands in his trouser pockets. Long duster flaring out behind him in the wind, Riley’s large hat hid his face in shadows as he approached. He stopped at the rise leading to the string of buildings and stared, motionless.

  Melting into the milling crowd near the food stalls, I watched with bated breath.

  Hands balled at his sides, he took a step backward, then another, shaking his head.

  The door to the doctor’s office flung open and Jack ran squealing towards Riley. Arms out, little hands grasping, he giggled.

  Riley’s stance changed, his shoulders releasing tension. He peeled his hat off and smiled, scooping the child up in his arms and flying him overhead, both of them laughing. Bringing Jack down into a hug, he waved at Lilah standing in the doorway.

  She beamed, pure adoration on her face.

  The picture of family bliss. My heart stuttered. Swallowing against the ache in my throat, I turned for the tower. The truth I had been pushing from my mind for days rose once more as I walked against the cold wind.

  I had to leave. I had to get as far away from Outer City as possible. For everyone’s sake.

  2

  I did not belong here. I was dangerous to those who cared for me.

  Standing on the massive south tower’s overlook, I let the thrum from the enormous rotors whip my hair against my face. In the week since Lilah and Mara found me floating in a holding tank like some bizarre experiment, I was still no closer to knowing what had happened to me while in captivity. The only clues I had were the loss of time and the strange devices now fused with my body. Removing the ones at my temples had nearly killed me, and I struggled to make peace with them as permanent evidence of what I had endured. If only I could remember what that was.

  The Order had ripped precious years away from me, and the injustice of it burned in my core. To me, the passage of time had been mere hours at first, yet as the drugs Arecibo pumped into my veins to keep me immobilized in the liquid tank wore away, flashes of my imprisonment seared behind my eyes or came to me in nightmares. Still unable to snag any coherent memories, I lived in a twilight of unknown anguish and loss that I felt but did not understand.

  Pain and fear. Anger and power.

  A wrenching wave of sorrow crashed over me and I gritted my teeth, refusing to let The Order rent any more tears from me.

  The railing beneath my palms creaked with the force of my grip. A minute tinge of pain shot from the mechanica fused to the backs of my hands, and a soft whir shifted the tendons of my fingers with tiny bursts of corrective shocks. I reacted immediately, releasing my hold and staring at the dents I left behind. The flat metal rods that bored into bone emerged from my skin in five points just below my knuckles and met in the center of my wrist at a hardened glass and steel disc. A flash of silver chemical flared within the circle and my muscles eased, numbing.

  Where I expected the violent quakes of my affliction, the bone breaking spasms of the Trembling Sickness to overtake me, I found stillness and a frigid power winding through my veins instead. The urge to lash out, to move, the ramping up of my pulse, all put me on high alert.

  It had happened before, I think. During my transportation up to Outer City. Drug hazed, I fought to control the need to run. Lilah, though a gifted physician, had not known if these physical manifestations were from the implanted hardware or my reaction to the obvious torture I underwent. I wondered if I would ever know, and if I even wanted to.

  Taking a breath, I peered down at the vast drop to the Atlantic from Outer City’s Port Hayden. Massive dirigibles lumbered into the harbor’s loading docks, their bulbous air bladders glistening in the afternoon sun like giant June bugs. Outer City had grown since I’d last been up here in the sky territory. The merchants and customers swarming along the swaying plank walkways and lighter-than-air shop stalls had tripled in number. Many displaced by the Reaper invasion took to the air to escape the ruin of the city-states and found themselves among the ports and outposts of the sky settlers.

  A far-off craft listed in the growing winds and I squinted, tugging on an inner muscle out of instinct. The ocular lens within my left eye adjusted and the ship snapped into focus, many times larger. I jerked, unprepared for the new ability and noted the dizzying effect of each eye having a different magnification of the same ship.

  Out of nowhere, the wisp of a memory floated to me; the view of a building from an air ship at night. I tracked it as we’d soared lower, shouting out information to someone behind me. Heaviness in my hand, my fingers wrapped around cold metal. And then the surge of strength from the implant at the top of my spine moments before I leapt from a dirigible to the flaming rooftop.

  I blinked rapidly, and my vision evened out again. Something about the incoming vessel ticked at my brain, but a change in the vibrations of the platform pulled my gaze.

  Riley stepped onto the rotor tower from a maintenance blimp, tied the vessel to the nearest support beam, and strode toward me. His dark auburn hair ruffled in the shifting winds when he pulled off his wide brimmed hat and partially hid the deep green gaze he fixed me with.

  My breath caught, and I fought to speak through the lump in my throat. “Riley,” I rasped.

  “Charlotte,” his voice broke. “You…I can’t believe it’s really you.” He paused, his expression unsure as he took in the devices at my hands and temples.

  I guessed Lilah had not told him about me after all. I shifted and the chainmail on my bodice rattled. Long ocean-blue skirts whipped about my boots as I strode to meet him. “I’m still me, just a little more…magnetic.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” he drawled and let out a nervous chuckle. The scar at his hairline and along his jaw were white against the tan of his face, but he was just as handsome as I remembered, and I flashed back to an image of his lips on mine. A stolen moment as the world whirled and burned around us. Sheriff Sebastian Riley was still as wild as the settlers he protected and led up here in the clouds.

  Riley pulled me into a hug and enveloped me in his strong arms and, for a moment, he held me close until his palm swept the device at the base of my neck. Then he froze again.

  I pulled away, disappointment pooling in my chest.

  Riley met my gaze, a mix of confusion and concern playing across his features.

  “Do they hurt you?” Riley asked as he stepped back a bit, rubbed a hand across his chin stubble, and sighed. “I know that you were hurt, but do these…things…do they hurt you still?”

  Shaking my head, I ran my thumb across the smooth glass convex circle covering the metal works beneath.

  He startled at the whir that emanated from within my hand.

  “N
o,” I said as his gaze flitted to the smaller glass discs at my temples. “No pain.” I nodded to my fingertips. “No more blue either.”

  “Except for your eyes, they went back to pale blue.” He reached up and brushed a lock of hair from my forehead.

  I had not expected that. Not after what I’d witnessed before with Jack and Lilah. Confusion whirled in my mind at his intimate touch. It was akin to guilt, and something much, much more destructive to my own heart. Hope. “Yes, I noticed that,” I said, “I do not understand it. The Trembling Sickness made them pitch black, but now…”

  “How?” Riley shook his head, his gaze intense as relief mingled with uncertainty behind his eyes. “How have you not turned completely like the others?”

  “I do not know. I cannot remember. But that is probably for the best, correct?” I tried to shrug nonchalantly but the quiver in my lip gave me away. I was lost. In time. In my own mind. Lost.

  Riley shifted from foot to foot, his gaze downcast. “Charlotte, I promise you that we tracked down every rumor, every bit of information about where they might have been hiding you. I wish…”

  “I know.”

  The clearing of his throat, the tension in his shoulders, all spoke of shame at failing me somehow.

  “Riley, I do not blame—”

  “They just kept moving you. We almost had you once, a year ago. We thought you were in Europe, but by the time I got there…” He met my gaze, his eyes lined with regret. “I was too late.”