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Fire and Light

Okay, steampunk story (I don’t care that there is nothing remotely steampunk in the story, I wrote it with steampunk in mind) about two boys and a rooftop.

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Character study: Brax

A character study of Irving Braxiatel, Legion era. Inspired by the comments about Irving disliking Brax, and assuming Brax is future Irving. I don’t know his old headphone wire of a timeline, I’m afraid.

Irving Braxiatel. All screams and confusion. So many levels, he didn’t know who he was. Pain, a history yet to come. The guilt of something that he may never do. But oh, he would. The way Bernice looked at him, he knew he would one day do all that was expected of him.

Alcohol does little to a Time Lord’s physiognomy, and Braxiatel Irving was pretty sure he was still a Time Lord.

People feared him. He counted himself in that number. He saw their fear reflected in his eyes, the fear of those he would one day come to know, long ago.

He didn’t know what was in the glass. It was expensive and all he could taste was the chemicals. Jack was behind the bar, ignoring him, concentrating on the glass, long past polished in his hands.

Jack hadn’t known him before. Jack didn’t have fear in his eyes, at least not of the kind that cut through Irving, wormed in and planted the seeds of his own destruction somewhere deep in his mind. Perhaps in the hole Pandora had left.

No, not his own destruction. The destruction of... self. Of Irving. He was not Irving. The chip of ice in his hand that would not melt. That dripped ice cold blood through his fingers when he squeezed. He felt death, even outside of what he had already brought about. There was pain in his future, that he had known for years.

Benny’s face. Falling and fighting and falling and dying and landing and seeing Benny. You’re definitely going to be my friend. A smile. Anger. Pain. Fear.

Betrayal. Behind it all. Long buried hurt. History that he was yet to make. He could already feel the long fingers of action, reaching back through the past and pulling him into his future. The coldness seeping. Burning cold, thick and red, dripping back through his memories and clouding them all with the knowledge of what he would come to do.

That knowing could only make it inevitable.

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To Carry the Torch

a post apocalyptic short story about book burning

2107 words

Over the floor were scattered piles of books, each tottering stack reaching up through the dusty air to the ceiling above. Pages fell down in a rain of words, a smell of death hinted at the air.

As time passed, the words were collected into buckets. Unnamed faces spent weeks sorting and identifying the pages as people attempted to set name to the type. The pages would either be identified, filed away, given new life; or were unidentifiable, lost, set to the side and forgotten. It was said that They should do something about those pages at the side of the room, but nobody wanted to strike the first match.

She was crying, her eyes streaming from the smoke. The smoky air clawed at the back of her throat, she attempted to cough it out but it had nowhere to go, there was nothing to come up. The sound of feet coming down the stairs, a cacophony of fleeting, fleeing lives. Each crash a burst of thunder unidentifiable in the whole. She felt arms around her and she was pulled upwards into the heat and the smoke and the fear, her lungs giving their last, silent scream of protestation. She felt herself carried in a crowd, a tide of bodies each as desperate to escape. Then pushed against the hot glass, her mind unaware of how she could have got there. The force of all the bodies, the desperation was somehow enough to force the doors open, and her head broke into the air, oxygen trying to force its way into smoke-filled lungs. Her eyes were streaming in the bright sunlight as thick clouds of smoke poured out of smashed windows.

And then time began to work again. Her legs began loudly complaining to her, uncontrollable coughs lodged in her throat. She collapsed on the stairs outside the library, her head screaming and her mind starting to drift.

Concentrate. She concentrated on the bloody scratches up her arms. The blood trickling round in tattoos, telling a story of pain. She concentrated on the burn on her right palm. On the screams of children cutting through the air. The funeral bell coughs.

Bodies still streamed through the glass doors. Friend or foe, the distinction burned with the books. Sirens pulled at the air, the red of a fire engine materialised at the front steps. The bodies sprawled in front of the library attempted to pull themselves to the side as firefighters ran past. Paramedics overwhelmed with their workload.

Time slowed.

A crash broke the silence, a door slamming open as a crush of bodies rushed in. Some carried guns, but most held up flame-licked torches.

Everybody knew there was nothing to fear from those who would carry guns. Cowards. Those who would bring fire into a library, they were to be feared. Those with the steely eye and the wooden smile. Those were the ones to do anything to achieve their ultimate aim.

“Stand up!” The man at the front, the leader as much as there was one, seemed unarmed. Those with torches or guns stood back from him, glanced at him in revery, fright. As if he might order any one of them to burn. He raised his hand.

“Slowly does it... no need to rush.” He seemed calm, an heir of nonchalance. But there was something in his expression, the turn of his face. Nobody could refuse him of anything. He was in possession of total control, he would not be challenged. Because any day could see that finger pointed at you, at somebody you loved.

“One day, you will understand. Everybody will understand, but you just need some help.” His arm dropped from the sky and with it came the torches.

It started immediately. Paper was everywhere, mingling among the people. Within seconds, a hundred torches had been dropped round the library and flame reared up to stand sentinel.  Fire licking at the bookshelves and climbing the walls, gorging on the knowledge within the pages. In the rush of things a single thought managed to slip into Maddy’s head before the adrenaline took centre stage: so quick, so immediate a loss.

The heat in the room should have smashed the glass; she rushed out, half-jumping over the fire into the main library, almost as hot. Everywhere bodies were crashing into each other, faces twisted with the pain and fear and panic which consumed them. Heads spun around, trying to find some glimmer of hope, survival, or a hint that a loved one is not lost. The mind shouting out that they must already be dead. People screaming, children trapped in rooms, bookcases burning, flames reaching high into the smoke-filled sky. Small bodies clinged to unknown legs. Maddy picked up a small child, trying her best to smile through the smoke.

“Hello, have you lost your mummy? Shall we find her?” Probably trapped screaming behind a bookcase, locked in a burning room, already dead. Will you go the same way?

Her arms were already burning from the weight of the child. She was half-running to the stairs, trying to maintain a veneer of calm, hoping that those stairs wouldn’t give way under the weight of so many lives. The child’s cries cut into her ear, her arms and legs threatened to give out, the fire was burning up her back, creeping up her spine and her neck and her head. The crush of bodies stopped halfway down the staircase. There was no way forward, she couldn’t see above the writhing heads for the smoke that filled the air. The screams grew, the child’s cries only adding to them. It was struggling to escape, she placed it down on the step. She could do nothing more for it.

A hundred bodies had crowded into the hall, pushing desperately against the locked doors. She saw the child run through the forest of legs, a futile attempt to reach the exit. She could feel the crush of the bodies behind her, pushing against her back. They mingled with the heat of the flame, the back of her neck scorching, her body carried up on the crush.

She had grown used to the screams, a kind of background noise; she now noticed them only by their absence. A siren rang out to replace them, joining it a gas which mingled with the smoke and left a chemical tang to the burnt air. The people at the front started pushing back against the crowd, towards the carnage.

The middle of the crown was crushed between the two great forces pushing against it, the screaming had returned louder than before. The sounds of horror were amplified in the opaque smog that had formed.

Then everybody understood. There was nothing to say why it happened, but everyone in the crush knew to get away from the ground floor. Shouts and screams announced the fire’s advance to fill the space.

There had been some controversy about the installation of sprinkler systems in libraries. Some argued that it would ruin the books, others that so did fire.

This was the point that that controversial sprinkler system had decided to act, and an artificial rain poured down onto the heads of screaming children and burning books. The gas diluted as moisture filled the air. It was still hard to breathe, fire still surrounded them, but there was air.

The ground floor fire was young and struggled against the water, people began to rush down once more. Maddy was oblivious to all this, she was knocked by the bodies and tumbled down the stairs. Trampled by those desperate to escape.

As Maddy stepped through the library door that pleasant dusty smell came to meet her, not quite noticeable but when you weren’t trying to smell it. Full of warmth, a light nostalgia: every library had its own smell, a different taste on your tongue as you first stepped through the door. She had always visited this library, ever since she was a child. It was here that so many memories had formed, interspersed around the pages of her childhood. The whole library was familiar to her, every shelf on every floor, she knew where she needed to go without even checking. The thick carpet deadened her step, she could hear the creak of a shoe behind a bookcase and the swish as a page was turned. The smallest sound was emphasised in the silence of the library.

She found her book, a comfortable seat at a desk in a room off the main hall. The distinct smell of coffee drifted around the room. She breathed it in, absorbing the atmosphere. She always liked the idea of a library, but rarely the work that it entailed. She found her page within the book, skimmed through it, and froze.

An alarm was ringing, cutting through the clean silence. Everybody froze; too afraid to move, too afraid of the consequences. Though they would come anyhow. The tension was building, a child let out a wail only to be quickly shushed, silently by a mother with one hand stroking the child’s hair and the other clamped against his mouth. She begged him silently, desperately to calm, but the child could sense the danger.

As could they all.

One person tried to stand, pulled back into their seat by a neighbour. Maybe they didn’t understand. Maybe they didn’t want to. The whole library seemed to stop as footsteps started echoing through the rooms. Doors were slamming all through the building.

It all started a couple of years ago. Nobody really understood what was happening at the time, people said the government hushed it up. Few people even seemed to remember when the darkness had come.

Power cuts became a regular event. Once a month, a week, a day--especially in rural areas. Soon, villages experienced week long blackouts, then it moved onto towns. There was mass migration into population centres. This formed slums, which became a breeding ground for poverty. Whole neighbourhoods were taken in a wildfire of disease and death and starvation, as the government did everything they could to pretend it wasn’t happening. Power was a luxury to be hoarded by those who already had it.

Then gangs started forming. That culture became the norm; gunfire was the biggest threat to life, even over hunger. Those who could built bunkers, in secret at first. Food became even more sparse as farms began to fail. Even more people came to the cities.

Electricity was rationed; information scarce as newspapers became useless.

Gangs took on “principals”. Started spouting ideas borrowed from others with just as little understanding of them. It was decided that ‘Information Was The Problem’, the cause of the Fall had been the rise of the Internet. We had become too dependant, information was too easily accessed. For that, we had to die. Stacks of newspapers were left burning in the street, as a token gesture. Beside them were the smashed and scorched old husks of ancient computers. They had left pillars of black smoke to hold up the sky.

People said they were harmless, just as doctors failed to save lives and people failed to flourish. At least they weren’t killing anyone. It was ‘All For the Good of the People’.

‘All for the good of the people’. They paraded it, shouted it in the streets as they smashed up homes. They were called ‘protests’. But yes, they stopped killing directly for a time. They burnt libraries to the ground in the dead of night, as everybody ignored the steadily rising bodycount. And then they got more confident, less careful.

‘All for the good of the people’, said as buildings burnt. They ceased to care for human life, not if it should dare seek knowledge. Knowledge was Evil, those who would seek it only deserved punishment, that punishment fire.

They were no longer a gang. More of a cult; they were organised. So many people joined, they became nationwide. Every one ready to carry their flame. Other weapons were banned--guns had to be dismantled, never used. They must maintain the purity of fire.

Libraries were deserted, they resembled ghost towns. Then months went by without reports of an attack and people started to build up courage. They started to trickle back, guards positioned on doors. They were scared, but defiant. And thus libraries began to resurface. Gradually a rebellion formed. They were terrified and attacks carried on.

People died.

People stood up to the terrorists, lived and survived. Knowledge became a thing to collect, people aware it could be gone tomorrow.

Maddy went for her weekly trip to the library.

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The Box

A short story about a world in a box under a bed

2531 words

continuing the trend of uploading old creative writing assignments

From a narrative standpoint there are many things which one might find in a shoebox under a bed. People have many interesting guesses if you ask. Though you have to ask very nicely.

It'll often be something to do with death. A cockroach or a dead bird or a pet lost to the ages. People have an obsession with death. But this is not the sort of story where death lurks under the bed.

She could hear them when she laid down. Scratches from under her bed, tiny muffled footsteps and voices. So many voices. There was something happening down there she knew, but she had told herself that she would never look again, that she would leave it alone. She had promised herself.

She knew that she would always check again.

She was lying there, still, eyes wide open and fixed on the ceiling. A beam of moonlight cut through the darkness like a torch, shining at a point on the wall. Nondescript and grey. Occasionally a tree branch would creak across that beam and create a ripple, a break.

The noises would continue all night.

It was around 3 AM when she gave up, the words flashing bright on the digital clock beside her as she lay on her side, waiting for the minutes to tick over and she could finally wake. Her hand stretched out for a switch and the room flooded. The light trickled down under the bed and the noise stopped, if only for a moment. She pulled out a book and stared at a sentence for ten minutes, begging the words to go in. She dropped the book and stood up, waiting for a second before pulling the box from beneath the bed.

A cloud passed over the sun.

She didn't lift the lid but there was still light drifting down the sides like wisps of light blue smoke. Pale, but cloudy as though the sky, or what a child might imagine the sky to be. She could just brush the lid of the box and the noises would stop. Complete silence would fall, gradually to be replaced by barking. Small little sounds. She felt lost looking at this box. She just stared, occasionally stroking the lid; she saw how gradually the light dimmed, it got heavier or colder or just seemed to blend into the gloom of the room. She knew it was there, but it was no longer that sky blue.

It was dark grey smoke leaking from the lid now, rolling over her fingers in waves. She fiddled with the edges of the box and the smoke felt cold against her hands. She was ready to lift the lid, eager almost to look inside. She could feel the rough cardboard against her fingers, as well as the smooth glazed top that you were meant to see. Her fingers got colder and colder as the grey continued to leak, and she pushed the box with one movement, back under the bed and out of sight. She was back in bed in an instant, curled up tight under the covers and hugging her fingers in an attempt to keep them warm.

Life went on.

The storm had been brief. There had been thunder but no rain. She had sat there staring at the sky, waiting for the clouds to clear. Watching the grey sky.

It was still warm, and the humid air hadn't been cleared by that short storm. She had wished for rain. It felt as if the world was going mouldy at the edges. And then the clouds had cleared; she saw them part to reveal the clear blue sky and the dull yellow sun. It was a nice day, like all of them.

"But so close to over." They had used to say that. The day was always over before it had begun.

She went inside, dragging the wooden chair in behind her. The sound of the legs scraping against the almost-rotting beams of the decking. The door slammed, 'what they used to say' was left out to bleach on the porch. Anne had no interest in the length of the day. Sure, when she was a child it had seemed irregular. She would get up as the sun was setting, itching for an adventure. She always was back then.

She had been young.

She had grown up. She'd pushed the box back under her bed, sworn that she would never look at it. Not till she was old enough to laugh. If she looked at it now she would fall straight back into childhood, loose everything.

She thought about all she had put into that box, the memories and scraps and little lives she almost lived. Things that she couldn't place, that looked as though they had come directly from her mind. A pipeline to a half-forgotten youth. She had lost those things, lost the memories of why she cared. She would be better without them, she knew. She would always be better, she could work at it, work at moving forwards.

The scratches seemed louder with the lights off, as though they were having a party. A festival or a carnival, stretching across the city, dancing and celebrating her sleeplessness. She would not open the box.

She had no time.

The carnival was moving at an impossibly slow pace, almost oblivious to the crowds of people on the street. The floats just carried on, the dancers flanked them half oblivious to the people cheering. Their music penetrated the whole city, enticing those few dissenters from their darkened homes. He felt like people on the next planet over must be able to hear that music.

Clive was lying in such a darkened room, hunched up in bed and staring at the ceiling. His curtains were drawn close against the clear sunlight that was trying so eagerly to force its way in. Through those curtains lay a different world. The carnival; bright colours, dancers and fire. Even now it was as though they were in the room with him. His eyes were clamped shut against the noise and he had a pillow pulled tight over his head. The light and the sound were overpowering, they tied him down to his bed and paralysed him. Cut him off from the life outside his window.

He felt as though he could see every person in the crowds, feel every life. And they were alive. So alive. He could feel their life trickle slow over his cold skin, burning.

He climbed from his bed, almost tripping over his blankets as he stomped across his floor and pulled open the window.

"Will you keep it down!" He shouted, his voice lost in the sea of music and laughter. He slammed the window and the panes rattled in their frames. He almost ripped the curtains in pulling them back in place and was then curled up on the carpet crying. Crying as though he didn't know. It was the first time in a long time that he had really cried; he cried as if he had lost something vital, as though he had lost his life.

This was the only way to live. She’d been told, day after day, this was it. Anybody else was merely existing in a cycle of immaturity. You had to leave that all behind and grow up. There is a life out there and you must work for it/ Her life was out there.

Or it wasn’t. Maybe it was in sleep. She didn’t know where it was, but it wasn’t lying in bed staring at the ceiling. It wasn’t in the box under the bed. It wasn’t in the shadows of the tree branches which stretched over the ceiling. She rolled over, eyes shut, trying to block out the music. Eyes then open, staring blankly at the grey wall. Through just closed eyelids, only half seeing it in the darkness. The music wasn’t there.

Sleep came, so slightly and lightly that she couldn’t remember it the next morning. She lived the life that she barely noticed anymore; just the hard smell of cheap coffee, clouds of steam from the bathroom, the drips of her hair onto the newspaper of the next passenger on the train on the way to work. She apologised and tucked the strand behind her ear. They dropped back in front of her eyes.

This was her life, her world.

She smiled at the thought.

That night she fell asleep at once. Last night had been a fluke, she was fine.

But when she woke up, two am, the music was louder than ever. It had woken her, she pulled a pillow over her head and thought. She thought about her life, and there was so little she could list it on five fingers.

The music was still there.

Clive could feel the life around him. It dripped onto the ground, down the walls, discarded. He didn’t understand how anybody could be so oblivious to what they were wasting. If he closed his eyes he could almost feel it, almost had it, the warmth against his hands and the light wind blowing his hair into the air in strands. A single clear voice cut through the bustle of every other, was all he could hear. He couldn’t make out the words. When he opened his eyes, the sound came crashing in and the world returned to normal.

He breathed in, the air rushing through his mouth and down into his lungs. He blinked, looked around. Life surrounded him, he was unable to touch it.

He had lost his life.

She slept fitfully. She never became conscious, but she could always feel it trying to sneak in, she was always fighting it. It would take possession when she was paying too much attention. It would raise its head in the darkness, wait to jolt her back into the reality she needed so desperately to avoid. And her mind did fight, it delved deeper into the strange dreams, desperate to escape the stranger mundanity as it tried to sneak back in. She could hear the music and could not remember where it came from. She didn’t want to think; every possibility as bad as the others. When her alarm rang at seven am she attempted to pull herself from that waking dreamscape, but the dreams hung on too tight.

The box was quiet that night. She was pleased, she told herself. She would be able to sleep. She turned out the light. The silence was disconcerting.

When she pulled the box out the box the sky was dark blue, so close to black. It flowed out in wisps like steam over her fingers. When she lifted the lid it billowed out like a cloud, a night that could not be contained by cardboard.

Yet it was not meant to be night. It was never night at this time. It was always day, alive and keeping her awake. But there was no life in this box. A lit up window, evidence of a nocturnal or an insomniac. She was unsure which described her better. She could see a solitary man walking through the street and she recognised him like looking in the mirror, as he kicked the stones under his feet and stared up at the starless night sky. She flapped her hands in the night air, tried to disperse the darkness but it would not clear. Her hands cut through the mist like plane winds, the air always desperate to get back. She stared at the small world in the darkness, wondering how she could wake it up. Perhaps it wanted the night, perhaps it liked it.

It had never been night during the night. It was meant to be alive, ready to keep her up. But there was no life here.

She didn't replace the lid when she got back into bed. She had left the box in the centre of the room, let the night sky wade through her bedroom sky in wisps. Blackness vivid against the true grey of night. The imaginary seemed so real against the reality of the bedroom. And the feel of the night air in her throat; occasionally, lying in bed, she would breathe in a wisp. It was cold and clean in her lungs.

She slept better that night than she had done in weeks, as though the cool unreality was helping. As though it tapped directly into her dreams, which were comfortingly dark. She woke at nine that morning, plagued by the black rings under her eyes - the signal of a good night's sleep. She felt a grogginess in life, but a further life on top of that.

There was no coffee smell that morning, she was not in the mood for coffee. It was a weekend, there was no need for coffee. She stood in the kitchen and fiddled with the empty cup, far more interested in it than its potential contents. It was so cold in her hands. The tiles were colder against the balls of her feet and she sat down on a hard wooden chair, wishing everything wasn't so damn cold. The clouds were grey in the sky and didn't drift into the kitchen in wafts but she didn't mind.

The box was alive again, people were bustling noisily through the streets. There was no music but there was laughter. Loud but light, drifting out with the sky. She wouldn't have heard it through the lid. She lifted up her hand to touch the dull sun and it was cool to the touch. She plucked it from the air as though it was a thing, solid but floating on the clear blue sky. An inflatable sun in a lukewarm bathtub. She wondered how it was so warm.

Anne was staring at the sky. It seemed wider today, and cooler. It wasn't usually this cool.

And fresh air, at last a slight breeze. She no longer felt as though she might moulder away in this chair as she stared up at the unchanging sky. She went to look up at the sun, but it was not there. She was idly curious about this, but didn't wonder for much more than a second. It was not a thinking day. Then a lone cloud drifted over where she knew the sun should be, and it was back. She told herself she had imagined it.

Clive could feel the air, the ground, even his clothes were there. He was slightly annoyed at that. At that moment he understood why some people treated life as an endless resource, because right now it felt like it was. He tried to hold onto that feeling, tried so hard not to think of it dripping away.

She picked up the box, emptied it out onto her bed. Out of it fell a few papers and a stone. A drawing from childhood, all thick crayon lines and over-bright colours. She put them carefully back into the box but left the lid behind, slid it under her bed and did not try not to think about it.

She didn't think about it. She went on living.

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Underground

fantasy novel extract

2793 words 

The time was running out, she had a job to do and she could feel the clock ticking down. And now it all relied on Grimwich, there was nothing left to do.

The man in the tavern had given her a map, his identity hidden behind a cloud of sweet smelling smoke. The screen was scratched and cobwebbed with cracks, would fade and glitch and flash. But it was really more of a formality. She knew where she needed to go, the map would be more of a liability. She glanced at it, saw the outline of the temple, then clicked the screen off. Placed it back on the table, watched as the man blew smoke over it. The map was gone by the time it dispersed.

Leaving the tavern she could feel the cold wind of Above cut into her sin. Dark bodies ducked into doorways against the all-consuming fog. Her eyes stung against the light and she blinked furiously in the cold.

There was no time for waiting around. Walking fast through the streets, but always walking. Calm, always calm. Do not attract attention. She knew where she had to go, but it would take time to get there. Maybe too much time. Still, she mustn’t run.

But in the tunnels it didn’t matter. Jogging through the Below, she passed more people who were in that same rush. But it was warmer down here, subterranean tunnels clogged with the heat of too many bodies. She almost tripped next to the sign that reminded passengers not to run, stumbled onto the train, clung onto a pole that supported her in the mass of bodies.

People left at every stop, nobody seemed to get on. But she was too wrapped up in herself to notice, too focussed on the job to pay attention. She hardly even noticed when a black-clad figure stepped forward, hood hanging low over the face. She knew who was under the face, wasn't interested in what would happen next. There were probably other hooded figures in what remained of the crowd but she didn’t wait to see. Elbowing somebody in her rush to escape, she slammed into the door. But the train was still moving, emergency stop would be no good. A second after the door had failed to open, she was pulling at the door to the next carriage. Once on the other side she pulled out a metal prism and twisted it, hearing the slight click as the magic took hold. Threw it through the tiny window and was already running through the next carriage by the time it exploded. But it was little more than a bang, she was sure everybody would be fine.

She didn’t stop running until she had reached the last carriage, eyes pinned on the door she had run through. But there were far more people here, the crowds shielded her from the hooded figures, were they ever to come.

When the doors finally opened she had shoved herself to the front, left as soon as she could. It was the wrong stop, she ran up the stairs to the Above and walked fast through the backstreets. She didn’t see any sign of the hooded figures, she may have lost them. But she didn’t take the chance, stuck to the outside, a slightly less direct route to the temple. And then it was in front of her, totally unguarded.

What could possibly happen at the temple that it would need to be guarded?

As she walked up the steps to the temple she pulled down her hood. Then unzipped her coat, stuck her hands in its pockets. She was calm as she strolled up the steps, ignored her heart as it beat fast after the panic. It was in her throat as she asked where the exhibit was, she was careful not to open her mouth too much for fear that it might escape. But she was just a visitor, nothing interesting. Countless others traced these steps every day. As she turned round the corner she imagined the sound of her pursuers crashing after her. But there was no sign of the police, of anybody. It was deserted.

Grimwich was in the Egypt exhibit. A tiny little office with his name on the door. He seemed harmless, but that was not her job to work out. She dug around in her pocket for a death spell, pulled out the little black heart. She didn’t bother to knock on his door, it wouldn’t bother him in the long run. The heart cracked easily, the man was confused and didn't even struggle as she pushed the splinters into the bare skin at his neck. It would be a painless death, on the whole. He was gone in seconds.

From the temple, she had returned to the run down tavern where she had first met the man hooded in smoke. Proof of Grimwich’s death in exchange for payment. Sufficient credits for the job, apparently. She wasn’t so sure, but any negotiations were futile. He was hidden, protected by a pervasive darkness that shrouded all around him, even started to creep across the table towards her. She left in a hurry after that, chip of fifty credits in hand. A small profit, not enough.

From there to the below, her own hood up and head bowed against the cold. Perhaps she could feel people staring, maybe she was imagining it. The fog was still quite thick, she let it swallow her up.

She did not reappear until the tunnels. An entrance to Below, a chance to blend in. The crowds were as thin down here as they were above, but the wind was weaker and the temperatures more mild. It was calmer here. The outer tunnels had a life about them, a warmth that wasn’t just the natural light of the above.

Her home was small, a couple of rooms in a converted tunnel with a front door that was little more than a plank resting against the entrance. She turned on the light and remembered exactly how small it was. Somehow she always forgot. It seemed so much bigger in the dark.

She pulled an old shoebox from under the bed. In it were spells. She really should sort them out at some point. Finding a new End spell was almost impossible http://archiveofourown.org/users/HariSlate/profileamong all the Unlocks and Bangs. But maybe that was for the best. After she had found another heart she took a few more Bangs and then just grabbed a handful. Pocketed them all. She slid the box back under the bed, hid it behind a blanket and some old clothes.

The next morning she headed back for the Above. Walking through the old tunnels, she passe people who she had been seeing for years but never spoken to. Like her they were hunched in their clothes, walking like they had somewhere to be. The elderly were sprinkled along the path to the centre, seated behind rickety tables that held all that they belonged. Teapots and plates, boxes of antique tokens that they promised worked like the best new spells, threadbare clothes, and the hopes of their children’s futures. A cloud of smoke floated along the top of the tunnel, constantly replenished by the cigarettes of those on the ground and in their homes. Chimneys all led into that main tunnel, it was a blessing that so few had fires.

It was so different Above. People had that sense of pride, as though they deserved to be there. Standing up straight, their lungs not trapped by the smoke and grime of the below. But it was colder too, up Above. The sky was bright and stung her eyes, unnatural light against which she held no control. She pulled her hood back up, ignored the glances that she could still feel against the back of her head.

Her next employer was in a bar in one of the nicer parts of Above. Wooden floors and large windows, everything unnaturally clear and clean. Everybody chatted openly over their drinks, apparently happy. She knew who she was there to see from the moment she stepped in.

The client was young, seated at the bar with a too bright drink in a too bright glass and a too wide smile. Another drink was already waiting for her by the time she’d got to it. The employer took a sip from the tall glass, she mirrored the movement but didn't let the glass touch her mouth. When she put the glass back down, it sat next to a photo of someone she recognised.

“I wouldn’t say kill them, necessarily. Too much bother, too much attention. But I do not want to hear about them. I do not want the to exist. Split them up, disband them. Destroy them.” That too wide smile again. “Whatever it takes.”

She was afraid she would slip and fall into that mouth, catch herself on those too white teeth.

A chip of credit was next to the photo. No contract, no names, no paper. Just a choice. Accept or refuse.

“You’ll get the other half when they’re gone.”

As she walked out of the bar, a newspaper seller called out about a Thaumivore march or a protest. Maybe a rally. She didn’t care, they were all the same.

The chip felt unnaturally heavy in her pocket on the way back Below. It would be sufficient money, she knew. That’s why she had taken it. But there was no going back, no room for failure. The other half of the pay was not the real incentive for succeeding, there would be nowhere to go if the Thaumivores continued their ‘trouble’.

But then again, it was a challenge, it would be fun. She could feel a kind of sick smile spread across her face, creeping up like a death wish. She hadn’t had a proper job like this in a while. She just had to take it easy and it would be fine. They were politicals, they had morals and ideals, she could sneak in and take them by surprise.

The entrance to Below was a welcome pit of warmth. She hurried down the stairs into its embrace, breathing in the hot smoky air as deep as she could bear. That 'clean air' was too cold, burnt through her lungs.

   She smiled into the darkness.

There was nowhere she could go from here. Lying in a boarded hole in the wall, listening to the cries and shouts of the crowd below her. She had been careful to get here, listened to all the right people, made her interest known, shouldered into the kind of groups that knew where these rallies took place. Arrived far too early, hidden before they would think to check.

But it was not a secure space. She could feel her balance slip every time she breathed too deep, could hear the creak of rotten wood even over the shouts of those below her.

And then silence.

"To rise up and grasp magic," zir voice was light, soft, loud. Unnatural. "We must take what you cannot deny is ours, take control of our lives and of what freedom we pretend to possess." It was as though zi was shouting, but zir voice was never stronger than a speaking tone. The tunnels shook in the impact of such a tone, like air rising up from a freshly felled avalanche. Light and freezing and so very strong. Like you would grasp at it for a fresh chance at life.

Ze was eloquent, she couldn’t help listening. Her mind even began to slip towards understanding, belief, something strange and exciting in the pit of her stomach and the front of her mind. There was a rhythm about the sensed motion below her, hundreds of bodies moving as one, thinking as one. It was scary but enticing, horrible but impossible to resist. Her concentration lapsed and she felt the boards begin to crack beneath her. She tried to grab onto the side of the wall but she was too slow, all her movements and reactions dulled by whatever Vic had done to the crowd. Whatever ze had done to her. She saw the bodies move away from her as she fell, hurry apart to form a great scar in the crowd. As soon as she fell she was swallowed up by them, lost to the Thaumivores.

People were everywhere. Looking around she couldn't see a face she recognised. Strangers at every corner, screams and shouts for loved ones. Everybody wanting the same thing, nobody quite able to reach. A tide of people, streaming from the train, shouting and screaming and crying. Everybody without help, nobody sure what had happened. People were scared, nobody thinking straight. Especially her.

She turned round and ran. Pushed people. Headed against the crowd. Back towards the train. Somebody shouted after her, a voice she didn't recognise. All the voices blended into one, she didn't see any faces. She ran. Ran as far as she could go. Until she reached the train.

Mangled, destroyed. Nothing left, a wall of bodies surrounding it. Guarding it like something sacred. She tried to push past but they pushed back, and harder. Somebody grabbed her arm, pulled her in the direction of the sea. She didn't struggle.

People were everywhere. Curious faces peering down at her. She had fallen on her leg, a blinding chasm of pain that had no dimensions, just unerringly deep. Somebody tried to poll her up and knocked her leg, somebody else. She slipped in and out of consciousness.

Somebody stood her up and she leant too heavily on them, so afraid of falling into the pain and not coming out again. Then something was pulled over her eyes and she lost track of everything.

The pain had reduced somewhat when she woke up. It looked like her leg had been set while she was unconscious, but now she was sitting in a wooden chair in an otherwise empty room. There was a painkiller on the floor, just out of her reach. She tried to get up but then there were footsteps and the door opened.

It was Vic and somebody that she didn’t recognise. Ze was smiling, like ze was pleased to see her. Strange. Zir clothes had changed, and zir hair was now down.

“You’ve been unconscious for a few hours. Sedated, of course.” she smiled again. “We didn’t have the time to deal with you, I’m afraid.” she gestured and the other person, a small man, brought forward a tray of food. Legs came out from somewhere and a table was put in front of her. The food didn't look particularly appetising, but it was only once she saw it that she realised how hungry she was.

“Now, you see that painkiller?” she nodded. “In order to earn it, you have to answer a few questions. Nothing difficult.” Ze smiled again. Cold but certain, perfectly calculated. Reminding her that that mouth would speak her fate, when it had the time.

The questions were simple. Ze started with her name, about which she lied. Then who sent her, when she told the truth--she had never gotten a name. But she had failed, she would be in more trouble from her employer as from any petty little Thaumivore. So she gave as good a description as she could, told Vic why. Told Vic that she honestly didn’t care about the politics, that she was there for the money. Maybe she told Vic a little too much, the painkiller always just in sight, just out of reach. The promise of release enough to loosen her tongue.

When she had answered the questions, ze picked up the token and placed it on the table. She didn’t move until Vic had left the room, then almost dropped it as she unscrewed it with shaking fingers and pressed it into her neck. It was instant and overtaking. Over the course of the questions, the chasm had gradually got deeper. So slowly he had hardly noticed, one minute to the next. Now it was overtaking her again, and then gone. Little more than a crack in the pavement.

Vic had more questions for her the next day, and the next. For a week, Vic had questions. Like the chasm, they never seemed much bigger than the last.

By the end of the week, she had said too much. The promise of painkillers then food then fixing her leg and then freedom. Always something bigger she wanted. Always something for her greed to reach for. She watched as Vic’s smile grew larger each day, as her heart plummeted to her stomach.