This wasn’t about a case. This wasn’t about a mystery. This wasn’t about questions. He couldn’t stop. He couldn’t afford to stop. If he did, life ended. He fought with grenade, bullet, and steel. He fought as the sword, put where it needed to be. For all he hated that it was necessary.
Finally — trailed by the mist, trailing death — he reached the top. The end of the stairwell. There didn’t appear to be a way up to the roof from here, but he’d reached the top floor. Breathing heavily, he glanced down through the center of the stairwell — flickering electric lights illuminating broken, crumbling concrete, ripped apart as if by cannonballs. Railings twisted and covered in wreckage.
Groans, like the hollow moans of the damned, echoed up from below. Wayne’s head popped out to look up at him from one floor down; he was covered in dust and chips from the broken steps.
“Did you know this was coming?” Wax whispered to Harmony. “Is this ultimately why you brought me back to Elendel? Was this why you had Lessie watch me? Did you always know?”
There was no answer, of course. Wax wasn’t pierced by the right metal currently, and couldn’t commune with God. Still, he felt as if he could feel Harmony trying to push through, trying to see. Fighting Trell’s influence.
“Don’t ask me to do this again,” Wax whispered, turning away from the carnage below. “This wasn’t an adventure. It was a massacre. I’ll finish the job, but don’t ask me again. Find yourself another sword. You don’t know how this feels.”
In reply, he was given a distinct impression. Almost like a memory implanted directly into his mind: an exhausted, overwhelmed man lying broken on an ashen street, in front of a shattered city gate. Surrounded by death.
Wayne arrived a moment later, scrambling up the last cracked steps. “Mate,” he said softly, looking back down the stairs. “I ain’t … I mean … Wow.”
“It isn’t over yet,” Wax said, easing open the door to the top floor. The two of them slipped into a large marble hallway, with fine pillars and lush red carpet. Another force was gathering at the far side, before a broad set of double doors. Wax and Wayne took cover behind a large pillar, but they’d be flanked as soon as the troops moved forward.
Fortunately, this final group seemed to be the dregs of the enemy forces. Steelsight showed him few, if any, aluminum guns. Indeed it revealed metal weapons, zippers on clothing, keys in pockets. These people wore uniforms, but not like the others — more security officer, less soldier.
Wax downed another metal vial and quickly reloaded, then … Rusts. Those cuts along his arm were throbbing. He pulled a self-clinging bandage from his pocket and wrapped it around his arm, best he could. Hopefully the damage wasn’t too bad. His hand still worked fine.
“They aren’t well armed,” he whispered to Wayne, “but there are a lot of them. Building security, I’d guess. I’ll go—”
“Stop,” Wayne said, holding his arm.
“What?” Wax whispered.
“These ones ain’t into it,” he said. Then as Wax frowned, he continued, “Those other ones, the ones who came down first? They wanted us dead. They wanted to prove themselves. They wanted the fight. These poor sods? These are the last defense. And they ain’t into it.”
“You might be right,” Wax said. “But we have to keep moving. Telsin could initiate the launch at any moment.”
Wayne nodded.
Then he started shouting.
63
“Hey,” Wayne called loudly, his voice echoing in the marble room. “You all, out there? I know you!”
Wax gave him a glare, but Wayne ignored him. Wax knew a lotta things. But tonight the fellow had become Ruin incarnate. Wax wasn’t wrong. But he didn’t have to be right neither.
“I know you!” Wayne shouted, louder.
The hall fell quiet save for the clinking of weapons and the shuffling of feet. Wax glanced out from the side of the stone pillar, perhaps thinking he might use Wayne’s voice as a distraction. Wayne grabbed his friend’s arm, then shook his head.
“I know you,” Wayne continued loudly, looking up toward the ceiling. “Yeah. I know how you feel. You’re guards. Watchmen. Fellows what was hired to protect the building. You don’t know about this nonsense — about cities being destroyed, about dark gods. Sure, you seen creepy stuff, but you ain’t here for that. You’re here to put coin in your pocket the honest way.
“You were supposed to go home tonight. Hug your kids. Have a meal — maybe cold, but filling. You were supposed to go drinkin’ with buddies, or get a good night’s sleep for once.
“But now, here you are. Gun in hand. Wonderin’ how you got where you are. Sure, you’re only facin’ down two blokes. But you heard what happened below. Maybe just rumbles, but you heard. And you know there used to be a hundred or two actual soldiers between those two blokes and you. Now there aren’t any of them left.”
Wayne let that thought linger. The room had gone so quiet you could have heard a man cock a pistol from a hundred paces. Wayne squeezed his eyes shut, remembering. Feeling. Then he continued, softer.
“Yeah, here you are,” he said. “Your hand is slick on the grip of your gun. Your heart, it feels like it’s tryin’ to rip outta your chest and run away. But you think, ‘I ain’t got no choice. I signed up for this. I gotta shoot.’
“You’re wrong. You don’t hafta do this, mate. To hell with what you said you’d do. To hell with it all. You’re in the wrong spot, and you know it.
“There’s a door to your right. I don’t know where it goes, but at least it ain’t in here. In a moment, Dawnshot and I, we’re gonna come out killin’. If you stay and fight, maybe you’ll get lucky. Maybe we’ll kill you, and you won’t hafta spend the rest of your days feeling crushed on account of what you’ve done this night. Shootin’ lawmen, then hearin’ about an entire city bein’ destroyed — full of kids, and families, and men what just wanna live like you do.
“But maybe you won’t get lucky. Maybe you’ll actually pull that trigger and hit one of us. And if you do, it’s gonna be bad. Worse than bad. It will follow you your whole damn life.” He paused. “Anyway, I just wanted to say my piece. I hope there’s one that listened. When we come out, if you got your gun holstered and you’re makin’ for that escape route in the chaos … well, we ain’t gonna aim for you first.”
He looked at Wax, who pulled his bandage tight, then nodded back. He’d dropped the Big Gun; it was out of ammo. But he raised his regular revolver, armed and ready.
Sometimes you needed what he’d done. You needed a sword. But Wayne figured sometimes you needed something else. A shield? Or maybe that was too poetic. He didn’t know much about poetry.
Sometimes what you needed was a guy who had been there before.
The two ducked out from behind the pillar, weapons out, and saw a whole host of people pushing and scrambling to get through that exit. Wax lowered his gun, dumbfounded, and Wayne grinned as every damn person left. Sure, a few at the tail end glanced back — with concern, like maybe they were the guys in charge of this bunch and didn’t want to leave their posts. But when the army left you alone facing two trained Twinborn with notches in their stocks running to three digits …