‘I’m building a programme that’ll crack them all. When it finds Penderville it’ll bring him straight to us.’
‘Ready to go?’
‘We need to get to the top. It’ll sink down into the pile from there.’
It was impossible to tell how long it took to clamber up the pile. The higher they went, the more individual blocks retained their integrity, until those at the peak were hard-edged and polished to a high gloss. It was hard to grip them. When Jack finally reached the highest one, he collapsed, panting. Fist scrambled up and sat down next to him.
‘All ready.’
‘Do it, Fist.’
Fist stretched his hand out, palm up. For a moment, it blurred. Jack peered at it, and thought for a second that it was covered in white dust. Then he realised that Fist had summoned hundreds of tiny versions of himself into being. He flicked his hand and the tiny horde dropped away, tumbling across the black surface of the topmost cube. As they touched it, they became so many shimmering flames. A few sank into the surface of the cube. The rest danced across it, flickering towards the others beneath.
‘How long?’ Jack asked him.
‘Here? Who knows?’
‘I wonder when they’ll notice topside.’
Lightning flared in the clouds above the city, then roared down in hard, jagged lines. Bolts ploughed into it, raising gouts of flame and clouds of smoke. There were maybe a dozen impacts.
‘They’ve realised someone’s digging up granny,’ said Fist, his voice full of glee, ‘and they really don’t like it. Pretty impressive diagnostics!’
‘That’s no diagnostic programme,’ replied Jack, sounding worried. ‘It’s an attack.’
Screaming drifted across the necropolis. The flames disappeared. Torn at by the breeze, the pillars of smoke they’d thrown up quickly lost integrity, falling away into nothing.
‘No it wasn’t,’ Fist told him confidently. ‘You’re getting rusty. That was just the insertion.’
‘And that’s what they’ve dropped in.’ Jack pointed at a small, dark mass, floating towards them across distant rooftops. As it came closer, he made out a bulbous head with a tiny body dangling beneath it. There was a single pale spot at the centre of the creature’s forehead.
‘Oh shit.’ Fist sounded genuinely shocked. ‘Fucking no.’
‘What?’
Shock became outrage. ‘It’s a puppet embryo. One of the six that survived. They really do exist. Get the fuck out of here. NOW!’
Jack was already slithering down the hard cubes, half in control, half-falling. Fist followed him, leaping from cube to cube like a small, brightly painted goat.
‘How can they hurt us?’ yelled Jack, surprised and worried by Fist’s reaction.
‘They’re like me before I merged with you. Code looking for content. They eat memories. They’ll suck the identity out of whatever they touch. And we’ve got more identity than anyone here.’
Three or four other figures appeared in the distance as they slid towards the water. ‘Fucking Kingdom!’ screamed Fist. ‘It took us a month to mesh, and the fucking doctors held me back every step of the way. Those things will do it in seconds. The overload’ll kill them, but they’ll eat us first.’
‘How do we stop them?’
They plunged into the water before Fist could answer. Fist grabbed Jack as he started swimming, hard. Holding his head up only slowed him down. Then he was underwater, and memories rushed over him. He felt that he was pushing himself through a thousand different lives. Random moments leapt through him, appearing as a broken kaleidoscope of centuries of Station life. It was impossible to find any coherence in them. He let each one leap up, then drift away.
Every few moments Jack broke out of the water, took a breath of his own coherent self, and plunged back down again. The past roared in his ears. He focused on holding himself together while moving in the right direction. He wondered how Fist was experiencing the waters of the memory hole. Every few seconds the puppet cried out, or his body shook.
At last they reached the dark shore. Jack stood and water fell off him. Memories drained away. Jack took a step and nearly slipped over. It was difficult to maintain balance on the lake’s muddy floor, harder still when the first of the embryos flew at them, screaming. Tiny limbs flapped excitedly. Its child body was a scribble of half-formed lines. The head tipped toward them. The pale dot in its forehead was a round, unclosing mouth, jagged with fractal swirls of teeth.
‘Don’t let it bite you,’ screamed Fist. ‘Get it into the water!’
Jack snatched it out of the air. The mouth grabbed for his hands, all hunger. He plunged the eyeless face down. A splash and it was deep in water. He imagined memories flooding the embryo’s little unanchored self. It quickly stopped struggling. Jack let it float to the surface. It was already losing form, black lines unravelling into dark water.
Fist was sobbing. ‘That’s me,’ he choked out, ‘before I was born.’
‘Are you all right?’
Another embryo appeared.
‘Fuck’s sake. RUN!’ screamed Fist.
They were hurtling towards a tiny alleyway.
‘How do we stop them?’ yelled Jack, staring wildly around. Fist howled as a shack wall dissolved into nothing and a third embryo attacked. Behind it, a shuddering figure collapsed, black liquid memories bleeding away.
‘They’re breaking fetches!’ Fist’s voice was full of grief and rage. He leapt off Jack and charged the embryo. Using a brick as a club, he smashed its body. Scribbles of darkness shimmered, then died away. The ravenous, broken head disappeared last. Fist wouldn’t stop slamming the brick down. Jack tore it out of his hands.
Then there came the sound of music, soft and distant and full of memories. ‘Can you hear that?’ said Jack. Fist didn’t answer, tormented by what he’d just done.
Jack snatched him up and set off again. ‘Where now?’ he asked. Fist didn’t reply. He half-recognised the music and ran towards it. It became louder and louder as they neared it. Fist wept on Jack’s back as he took the next two embryos, stamping one into an explosion of dark lines and smashing the other against a wall. Both were soaked in broken fetch-blood.
‘Why aren’t they hurting us, Fist?’
‘Your hands.’
Jack looked down and saw bruises, leaking black liquid. His fingers were nearly transparent. Fist too was becoming a ghost.
‘The files?’
‘Safe. They’re inert. Not like us.’
Memories bled out of Jack. Time spun and it was hard to know why he was running, what he was running towards. The music was an anchor, holding his identity in place. Andrea burned in his mind, but he often forgot her significance. He feared he was losing himself.
There was more screaming behind them. ‘No,’ Fist moaned, ‘not another.’ It darted forward but Jack ducked and it missed them. It cut through a wall, then a fetch. Memories crumbled instantly to nothing. The embryo fed and died. Jack ran. They burst out of the alleyway, into open space.
‘GO!’ screamed Fist. One final small figure was closing on them. There was a shining light ahead, a self-contained orb. The music throbbed with grief and anger and triumph. Jack felt himself beginning to lose coherence. Sound triggered memory cascades. A voice screamed ‘JUMP!’ He threw himself forwards. A circular jaw ground against his leg. He could barely breathe. Teeth cut into his skin and he felt a great, devouring appetite hammer at the gates of his mind.
Then the light took him, and for a moment nothing existed.
There was a woman in front of him, hanging in midair on wings made of song. They shone like an angel’s, but the feathers they were made of were barbed and spiked like a demon’s.
‘Hello, Jack,’ said Andrea, her voice full of care. ‘And Fist. You’re safe now. Thank you for the present.’