Isolated as it was, the extermination of the infected at Seagirt had been a simple, if arduous process. An oneiric event in the middle of the densely-packed city-even a small event like the one she’d just heard-could be infinitely more dangerous.
She was on her feet at once, and had pulled on her heavy coat and gloves before she recalled that she had no professional interest in the matter. She was an ordinary citizen, now-in fact, according to the Empire, somewhat less than an ordinary citizen. She was now prohibited from involvement both by her dismissal from the Coroners, and the purported delicacy of her natural condition.
Screw it, she thought, defiantly. “Roger!”
“Yes, mum?” The boy responded from nearby. He must have been in the kitchen.
“Roger, come with me, I need you to help me hail a coach.”
“Yes, mum. Only, ladies aren’t s’posed to be alone.”
“That’s why I’ve got you.”
They called a coach, and then Skinner found herself having a startlingly similar conversation with the coachman:
“Can’t let you ride with just the boy-”
“The boy’s not coming.”
“Well, I can’t let you ride alone, neither.”
“I won’t be alone, you’ll be driving me.”
“Well…”
“Do you know what the word ‘emergency’ means?”
Skinner finally promised to pay him double his usual fare if he could get her to Red Lanes at once, and the coach began clattering and creaking through the streets, while the driver shouted out people to clear the way, furiously threatening them with all manner of bodily and psychological harm in order to secure his passage. The heater inside the coach was on the fritz, and an icy breeze squirming into the cab and playing across Skinner’s face.
She ignored it, and projected her hearing to its greatest distance. It was not extensive-certainly, she couldn’t project across the city. But it did give her some early warning about what was happening before they arrived. Red Lanes had become noisy; men were shouting, screaming at each other, running back and forth with heavy boot-steps and rustling coats. Below it all was an eerie ululation, a strange gabbling that seemed almost a kind of harmony-the symptom of shatterbrain.
Skinner cast her ears around until she found a familiar voice, gruff but calm, shouting orders insistently but not hysterically. Beckett. He was trying to establish some kind of perimeter, to keep something contained-the mad voices at the epicenter of the event. Each one had become its own weapon, a ticking bomb ready to escape into the city and bring devastation in its wake. She rapped on the ground at his feet in a clean, precise way that the old coroner recognized at once.
“Skinner?” He said. “Where are you?”
Hundred yards. Approaching.
“Word and fuck. Good. Can you hear them, in there? It’s the gendarmerie headquarters in Red Lanes.”
Yes.
“I’m going to have to go in-”
No.
“I have to, Skinner. They’re poisoned. If I don’t take them down now, they could get out, and start infecting others.”
Wait.
“No time. How far-wait, is that you? There’s a cab coming down Augre Street.” There was a sudden knocking on the door at her side; it startled Skinner’s senses back to her. “Skinner?” Beckett said, opening the door.
“Beckett, you can’t go in there by yourself,” she said, climbing out of the cab and accepting the hand that she knew he’d offered. “You don’t know-”
“I’m not going by myself. I’ve got men.”
Skinner paused.
“Who?”
“Men. Never mind, come up to the line, I need you to keep track-”
“Who?”
“Gorud. He’s a therian. Attached to the coroners. Skinner, we haven’t got time for this. Whatever happens to me in there, it’s going to be worse if we let the men in there get out. Now. Start listening.”
She pursed her lips, irritation giving way to the particular satisfaction to be had by returning to old routines. Skinner pressed her hearing outwards, tracking down the street and into the hollowed-out gendarmerie, setting her shoulders and steeling herself against the eerie wail of gibbering shatterbrained men, using her preternaturally refined senses to extract voices from each other, following echoes down ruined halls, up and down stairways, sorting out the shape of the building, prying the collage of noise apart until it became a map in her mind.
She heard Beckett’s footsteps, as familiar to her ears as her own-though slower today than she was used to-make their way towards the building, followed by the peculiar four-footed lope of the therian.
Five, she rattled to Beckett. There were bodies…she shook her head. There was organic matter in the hallways, absorbing the echoes. A substantial amount. The men…the targets had been fighting each other. Five would be easy to handle. This was good news; she could feel sorry for the dead men and their families when she and Beckett were done.
Five
There was comfort in the knowledge that Skinner was back with him. Beckett picked his way around the debris in the doorway of the blasted-out gendarmerie headquarters, and drew his revolver. The revolver was also comforting; a good, solid weight in his hand. He’d been carrying the weapon for so long it was practically an antique. He flexed his free hand, wincing as his knuckles popped, and stepped inside.
The lights had been the first things to break when the bomb had gone off. There was a little daylight that had found its way in from cracked walls and deep crevices, light already weakened from the struggle to break Trowth’s omnipresent cover of fog and pollution. The gloom inside was thick and almost palpable, barely disrupted by the narrow shafts of pale sun.
“Can you see anything?” Beckett whispered to Gorud.
The therian snorted. “No. Am not a cat,” he muttered. There was a faint rustling, and the hall was suddenly awash in blue light, as the simian creature produced a small phlogiston lantern. Gorud narrowed the beam, slightly, shining it on the black stone and charred wood that littered the floor, letting it play about the walls.
They were in a relatively large receiving room; its function in a slaughterhouse was obscure to Beckett, but as offices for the gendarmerie, its purpose was relatively clear. There was an upturned desk, splintered and broken in half, where the citizenry might have come if they had a complaint, or to make a report. There were overturned benches where people could wait, torn scraps of paper fluttering in a faint breeze, the remnants of broadsheets that had served as entertainment in idle minutes.
There were bodies scattered across the floor. Half a dozen at least, and most twisted and sprawled away from the center of the room. Beckett surmised that they had died in the initial blast, dying mercifully as a result of physical trauma, instead of the unbearably painful psychic damage of the munition. The throbbing pulse of freed-up psychic energy beat around them; surfaces, even under the dim glow of Gorud’s lamp, took on peculiar textures and characteristics, impressing colors into Beckett’s mind. Stone suggested it might be sticky to the touch, wood seemed like paper, about to be snatched away by an unseen hand. The floor…the floor was wet, damp, brackish water over dark brass…
Skinner rapped on the floor at his feet. Five. Beckett sighed with relief as he realized that the coding of her telerhythmia was perfectly clear to him-as easy to understand as any conversation. He had not been losing his mind; the new knocker really just was unintelligible. She relayed the positions of the men still in the building. Two on his level, three more on the floor above. This was a small blessing; at least the three men on the second floor would be unlikely to escape.