Chapter 19
The swarm of jaggs had been gone before the lights came on. She’d never heard of one being underground and that perhaps was why no one figured out what Sawyer had seen. He’d not been impressed by her insistence he’d seen nothing more than her humming to herself. She wore the marks of yet another belting, though he’d stopped after only ten.
She could take more. They both knew that.
He’d stopped because, she thought, he’d realized how much it turned her on. If he’d hit harder, he could’ve bypassed that reaction.
He hadn’t.
It’d been dark, and the Scavs were packing up and getting ready to move on. He’d found a clear area where he could swing the belt.
Then he’d stopped.
Sawyer had stood beside her, breathing loudly enough that she heard every inhalation and exhalation. Peeking back past her arm had let her see the deforming lump of an erection in his pants. He hadn’t fucked her and she was dying for it.
He hadn’t because...he thought it a worse punishment to let her suffer arousal and not be satisfied? That didn’t seem him. Neither did not hitting her harder.
The day had started badly, except that she’d possibly bonded with a jagg. The theory was that blood sealed a bond. She’d fed one or two of them blood.
Possibilities – she was setting up possibilities. Their carnivorous phase should be next.
Past a right angle kink in the passage ahead, clearing two was revealed. She stared upward despite the jingle of the leash as Sawyer encouraged her to move past the doorway out. Knowing they’d almost reached the exit, he’d clipped it to her collar, as if he thought she might sprint to freedom.
If only.
“Sky again. Thank the gods,” she whispered.
“Yes. I agree. Fucking sky.” He stretched and muscles or joints in his back popped. “You okay?”
The question stunned her. He’d never asked... “Yes. I am.”
“Good.”
What was happening? Had the darkness driven him crazy, like it seemed to have done to poor JI?
As they walked further into the clearing she sneaked more glances at the sky. This clearing was smaller, hemmed in by straighter buildings that’d toppled less and sat like artificial cliffs over the slot of a sky and the small amount of open land at the bottom. Dirt and rocks cascaded through the thin openings between them.
“Half a football field,” Sawyer muttered.
“Foot ball?” She kinked an eyebrow.
“From my world.” He shook his head. “How is your ass?”
“Sore.” What else would it be?
“Good. JI is going to need you.” He nodded toward where the mech kneeled at the base of the straightest building. The dark eyeholes of a thousand, thousand shattered windows climbed above JI. If those were intact buildings, mostly, what might hide inside them?
“This place could be dangerous,” she murmured.
“My thoughts also.” He hefted his weapon. New color grew there. Black thorns curling? And were those spots of blood dotting the thorns? The days of sleeping with it and meditating had accelerated the weapon’s changes. “Come. Let’s go to JI.”
Blood and sharp things. How typical of this man’s gun to adopt that pattern.
People were gathered near JI, talking loudly and gesticulating at the sky.
When she ascended the mound to where they stood, it took a moment to understand what they’d found.
Mechlings, ten or fifteen of them, lay scattered but partly heaped. The scratches and dents on their armored outsides spoke of some great trauma. They should be as difficult to crack as JI, or close to it. She too looked up. They’d fallen in. It had to be the explanation.
JI seemed oblivious. With his great head in his hands, he made a plethora of noises – mutters, squeals, droning.
“Can you help him?” The frown on Sawyer’s face deepened.
Empathy or self-interest? The deal he’d made with Zarr would be at risk.
“If he dies, both of us might be in trouble. You need to do what you can.”
His thoughts paralleled hers, and he was right. If Sawyer didn’t own her, someone else here would. A pity, but if she helped JI, she would also be helping Sawyer.
The mechlings might be a gift from the stars if any of them worked. Her method that JI had rejected could still work. He surely wasn’t attached to these like the ones he wore on his back?
She meandered among the mechlings, kneeled to touch a few and moved on. Dead, dead, dead.
Then one was barely alive, then another. Two among them all – maybe the last to fall since they were on the top – what brain they had was barely alive. Every other mechling had nothing inside she could detect. Whatever JI had as a brain was at least partly organic, she’d guessed, like people brains. Else her physician’s ability would have failed.
“What are you looking for?” Sawyer reached in and unclipped her leash.
“Live ones. I think I can get JI to connect to them.” She screwed up her mouth. The ugly side of this... “It might make him worse if they’re too far gone. I just don’t know enough. We should ask Largo to help too.”
“Largo?” Zarr had walked up to stand next to Sawyer. His blue facial tattoos writhed with the movements of his jaw and mouth, as he surveyed the little scene of death. “You need him, why?”
There seemed no point in dithering so she said it. “To heal JI.”
“Yesss.” Zarr stared at the mech. “Useless thing. What did you deliver me again, Sawyer? Don’t answer that. I will send Largo. We leave tomorrow morning for the waik crystals. The yeger says they are a day away in the next part of the Undercity. You will come.” He pointed at Sawyer. “And she can stay and fix this mech. If he is not fixed and war ready when we return... Pffft!” He threw up his hands then stalked off.
“Not sure what pfft means, girl, but it ain’t likely to be good.”
“No. It would not be.” Which meant she’d try her best for JI, but she had to figure out a way to escape. What better time than with Sawyer away and only her and JI here...maybe Largo too?
“There could be animals about.” Sawyer nodded. “I’ll find a man or woman warrior to stay guard you.” He smiled down at her. “Just in case you get ideas too.”
“Ideas?” Oh she had plenty of those. Such as how she might be able to scale the one fairly tilted building – the one behind them. It was only fifty tiers up. A long way, and she’d have less than a day to do it. Nighttime might be suicidal, if there were predators up there. She had to get out and be gone before the Scavs returned or somehow keep climbing without being seen. They’d assume she’d escaped into the Undercity, surely.
A tap on her head made her jerk around. Sawyer was on one knee behind her. “I don’t like how quiet you got. Here’s Largo. Get to work.”
“Yes, Sawyer.” Step one, see what he could do. She pointed at the two live mechlings. “Those. Tell me if you can feel them, their life.”
“Mechlings?” He toggled his eyebrows up then down but kneeled next to her and laid both hands on one then thought for a while. “I feel nothing.”
No? “This one?”
Again he tried. “No. Nothing there. You can feel mechlings?”
Admitting this might get her seen as an oddity, but what did that matter when all she was to most of them was Sawyer’s slave and toy for fucking.
“Yes.”
“Interesting. Well, miss.” He inclined his head toward her. “Good luck with this. You have a unique ability. I will tell Zarr.”
“Wait.” She caught his arm, then let go, flustered...not sure if it was permitted. “Please, don’t tell him that. Not yet.” Zarr must suspect something of what she could do, but he didn’t appear to truly understand.
“Soon though. I will. When we return tomorrow. I’ll leave you undisturbed until then.”
“Thank you.”
“Of course.” Largo walked away.
Why had she said that? Because Zarr seemed unbalanced? It’d been instinctive. He might do something she didn’t want to happen. Exactly what, she wasn’t sure.
“It’s late, almost dusk, and it’s raining.” Sawyer twirled the end of the leash, as he looked to JI. “Do what you can, Ari. In the morning, we’ll be leaving. You’ll have a day of quiet to get this done. Does that suit?”
She swallowed. Unprecedented was how she’d describe his words. As if he respected her. She was his only way to fix JI.
“Yes, it suits, Sawyer.”
He nodded. “Good. I’ll be chaining and locking you to something far too big to move, tomorrow. So don’t get ideas.”
Ah. There went the respect. He needed her though and being left mostly alone would be her best-ever opportunity. If only she didn’t want to help JI. Both, both were possible. She’d push herself. Surely it wouldn’t take long to see if this could be done?
Though spits of moisture had been dotting her arms, she hadn’t registered them as rain. Above, the visible piece of sky was darkening rapidly, and clouds were whisking across.
Soon it’d be time to test her idea.
With a mechling under one arm, and Sawyer carrying the other for her, she approached JI. Where he’d sat himself was beneath an overhang, a large slab projected from the building.
Bent over as he was, with his head low, she could see the mechlings on his back. Bluish mist rose from them tickling the air with a fine array of tendrils.
“I don’t know what that is,” she whispered.
“I haven’t seen it myself.” Sawyer placed the mechling on the ground among the grass. “I think they’re recharging him and themselves. I was told they do it on the top hull of the swathe landships.”
“So...” Hand on hip she ran down her logic. “So maybe he’s bad partly because he’s low on power after being underground.”
“Maybe. That’d be good.” Sawyer smiled. “Good thinking. There is hope then.”
“Yes.” She almost smiled back. Not to him though, she’d not smile at him – Mister Asshole himself. There was more hope than she’d expected. “I need...I need both these up on his shoulders. Unless we can attach them however the others stick up there, you’ll need rope.”
“Rope? I’m good with that.”
He would be. Ari rolled her eyes.
If the mechlings detached and fell while JI was inside them, she figured it’d snap off a part of his mind. Bad. Very bad.
If. If she could even get them connected. The leads he’d plugged into the other mechling transferred data but they needed more than that. This needed intimacy. Inches at most of distance. She’d reduced the swelling in his brain before, made it weave back into the dead space, this was just a hundred times more difficult.
“I heard two men went missing on the journey through the Undercity. Vanished. Dragged away? No one said until we were out.”
She didn’t know how to answer that. His statement lay like an ominous rumble making the day feel heavy. The things that might’ve happened...and they had to leave by doing it all again.
Then she figured it – this was a warning. Run and the monsters will get you.
He’d forgotten he was a monster too.
It took Sawyer a long time to get the mechlings up to where she needed them, and she sat crosslegged watching him work, lashing them there with rope. Though she hated him, as a person, he was a fine specimen of a man with all those muscles. If only he were nice.
He managed to snug them directly up to JI’s head at points where there were lead connection points. Bonus. How fine a piece of his neural tissue could she weave? The mechlings had connection points also. Then she’d have raw neural tissue crossing from one to the other.
This could go so terribly wrong.
Then the blue mist began to rise from these two new leeches on JI’s back. They were powering up. To what end? When she climbed up JI, using his arms as ladders, she felt their brains stirring. Parts were livening.
Ari stuck the knuckle of her finger in her mouth and bit down. If they became aware again and JI knew, he might refuse them. Whoever had told this mech to have morals?
“What’s wrong?” Sawyer called up to her.
“I’m worried these will become too aware, but on the other hand if we leave them to power down, they will be too dead to use.”
“It’s late. Let fate do what she will. Come eat. That’s a command.”
Sighing, she climbed down. The only lights were JI’s eyes and the blue lightsticks at a camp further along beneath this overhang. Tomorrow she would do what she could for him.