I stood, legs shaking. My thigh ached where the debris had touched me, like a bruise throbbing deep.
"Tanyana?" called voices from the other side of the hissing steam.
Where was I?
I turned, prickling dread. A tangle of bricks, of cement and steel frames surrounded me like corpses. Caustic smoke oozed from gashes in the ground. Water rushed in a putrid waterfall from the end of a shattered pipe. I was in the hole. The debris had not pushed me away this time. It had trapped me.
"Tanyana!" Kichlan called, his voice so far away.
I ran to the wall of rubble. I hooked fingers around stone and found it sharp and jagged. But I knew with some hunted-animal panic that I had to get out. That this had been no accident.
"Tanyana?"
"I'm coming," I whispered an answer. "Fast as I can."
"Tanyana?" But the voice, though it came from above, was closer. Not screaming, not panicking. I looked up.
Devich watched me from a small gap in rubble. My stomach clenched.
"Other, why are you here? Get away, Tanyana. Run. Please."
But I couldn't run. I could barely climb. "Devich?" I ignored the cuts, the pain in my fingers and palms, and pulled myself up. Suit-enclosed feet fought for purchase, slipped on smooth rock. Hand by hand, foot by painfully slow foot I dragged myself toward Devich.
Where was the debris? It was there, I could feel it like a threat at the back of my neck.
"What are you doing?" Devich gasped. He coughed wetly, and my stomach flipped again.
"Wait," I said to the stones against my face. "Wait for me."
"I'm so sorry, Tanyana. I can't believe it was you. It shouldn't have been you." His voice trailed into exhaustion. Into silence.
Something told me to keep him talking. "What happened here? Devich? Tell me what happened."
Darkness skittered over the rubble close to my left foot. It sent small stones trickling down. I watched them fall, and realised I hadn't climbed very far at all.
"The storage." He coughed again. "Below us, there was storage. For the debris."
"Yes? Keep going." Rubble fell against my face and I blinked sand out of my eyes.
"There was a blast from below. An explosion. Then fire, and smoke, and everything collapsed."
I didn't understand it. Of all the debris I'd seen none of it had managed to move rocks, let alone blow a hole in the ground. It floated in the air, passed through cement and stone. Only certain kinds of poly, and our suits, could touch it, could hold it.
Why had it changed?
"Are you all right, Devich?" My shoulder screamed as I hauled myself up the final stretch, overextending my arm and taking all my weight on one hand. But none of it mattered, because I was close to him. Close enough to fit my fingers through the crack and touch his face. He was very hot.
Devich said, "Something fell on me." He held my eyes with a fearful expression, and something deeper I could only describe as courage. The will to stay awake, to keep talking. "I can't move." He even smiled, small and wry. "But I'd like to get out, if I could."
"I'll get you out." How did I expect to do that? "We're here to clean up. We'll fix it, and we'll get you out."
"I knew they would send a team. But I didn't want it to be you." Devich grunted, shifted slightly.
"Don't move!"
He wiggled enough to drag a hand out from beneath him. I could reach in, far enough, to wrap the tips of my fingers against his.
Devich said, "This isn't right. This is dangerous. Other, I didn't want it to be you."
A scream, and the mountain of rubble rocked. Stones and shattered bricks cascaded down on Devich and me. I hunched forward, let my suit extend two metallic semicircles, great hybrids of mirrors and wings. Rubble crashed against them, I bore each hit with a grunt, and held on to Devich's fingers. When silence returned I folded my suit inside and whispered, "I'll get you out." And the planes attacked me again.
I gripped Devich's fingers hard as debris wrapped hot and painful around my legs, but couldn't hold on. I heard him scream as I was lifted into the air.
I reacted this time, determined to be more than some passive body inhabited by a proactive suit. Spikes arched from my hands to catch in the sides of the rubble. No longer flying, I withdrew them enough to skid down to the ground, sending clouds of dust to join the smoke and setting off avalanches of my own.
"I know you're there," I spoke to the clouds, to the grit clogging my throat.
Movement behind me. I spun and lifted an arm as a plane lanced out of obscurity. It smacked against my forearm, slid around the metal and unable to get purchase, glanced off into the air beside my right ear.
The suit. Of course. It had tried to tell me already, if I had only known to listen. The debris couldn't hold my suit. Couldn't hook it, couldn't scratch or pound it. "All right, then. If I must."
Kichlan had warned me against this. But Kichlan believed debris didn't think for itself, that it wasn't vicious, wasn't vindictive. And look where that philosophy had got us.
Something dark glanced against my head, knocking me forward. As I fell I let down the guards on my suit, loosened muscles from the bonds of thought. Silver slicked over my fingers, my palms. It was cool as it shot up to my shoulder, as it spread over my chest and down to cover pelvis and thighs.
I stood to meet the next plane that launched at me, coated neck to toes in silver. I reached for it with my own hands, not extending, not scooping it or collecting it with tweezers' precision. I grabbed debris, wrapped silver fingers around it. And when I held it in a hand encased in the suit, it was no longer the light reflected on stone as Kichlan had described it. This debris was not the unearthly sails I had seen, the shadows with nothing to cast them. It was solid, it was catchable. It was real.
I understood how that kind of solidity could wreak the damage it had done. How it could knock me, break me, bruise me. But I couldn't understand why I had never felt it before, why none of the team had done this most simple thing and gripped debris with suit, with hand, with everything.
I knew you were strong.
I stared at the debris in my grip. Planes still hit at me, smacked against my calves, my back, my shoulders. But these were insects flying, soft, barely felt through the silver.
Something glanced across my ear, cutting a line of blood that splattered wide against the ground. I swiped with my free hand and knocked the plane back. I would not be battered around any longer. Not by pions, not by debris.
"Did you?" I spoke to the debris in my hand.
Yes, and that is why I am glad you are here.
"So I can help you, is that it?" Like Valya had said?
Yes. But for now, will you just end it? Will you give me peace?
"You want to be collected?" To be controlled, crammed in small jars and sent into storage to rot. What was all this about, if not escape?
Peace.
Peace? This thing that attacked me, this unknown voice. How could it hurl me across a room, throw me like a doll, and then demand I give it peace?
I can't stop it doing those things. And the longer I am here, the more danger I am in.
The dragonfly wings quivered, fast and flickering as though prepared for flight.
"Danger? From whom?"
Look up. They are always here.
The puppet men. Pale figures at a broken window, watching from a building beside the ruin.
If I stay, they will attack me too. But if I go, that which you hold will run wild, and wreak more destruction than you can imagine. So bring it peace.
I tried to imagine it. The wings receding, the shadows drawing back, until all that remained was a small, wiggling lump.
They will try to stop you.
The puppet men disappeared. A moment later they were at another window, closer to the ground. They pressed hands to the glass and cracked it, the lines of fracture caught bright in the ruddy firelight.