Suited (30 page)

“You think you can use me,” I growled. “You wanted to create a weapon. Well, you have. And I will show you just what your weapon can do!”

I crouched, ready to leap forward, ready to slice through their bizarre wraith-like bodies, their crimson pion bindings, or whatever they were made of. But Aleksey was changing. His suit bands span fast and bright and spread. Legs, arms, torso, and even up to his face the suit grew like a hardened second skin. Only a thin rectangular strip across his eyes remained bare. His suit pulled at me, I felt in it a kindred, a mirror of my strength.

“I’m sorry, Tanyana,” he said. His voice, rather than being muffled by his suit’s mask, was sharp and metallic. It echoed through the basement like the scraping of metal.

“’Leksey?” Lad whimpered behind us.

“But you know I can’t let you to do that.”

Who do you trust
?

I stared at Aleksey – at his suit, his weapon, just like mine – and realised that, yes, I already knew.

“So,” I whispered. “This is who you are.” I glanced at the puppet men behind him. “And this is why you are here.”

But he shook his head, and the strip of his eyes I could still see were sad, disappointed. No smug triumph, no aggression. “You should not have done this, Tanyana. I warned you, again and again.”

“I should have killed you when I had the chance.” But that was the suit talking.

“Why?” His shrug was a ripple, the lancing reflection of light, tinged blue.

“You lied to me!”

“No, I didn’t. I helped you, I warned you. And we are just the same.”

“What’s going on?” Fedor pushed forward. He stared up at Aleksey with a mixture of horror and anger. “Your suit, it’s just like hers.” He glanced down at the rolling symbols on his wrist, tipping his arm. “How did you do that?”

Aleksey’s eyes flickered toward him. “I suggest you stay out of this. You do not understand what’s going on here, and you cannot hope to be compared to us.”

The suit agreed with him. Aleksey was like us; a soldier, a weapon. Far stronger than any of these others, the paltry collectors and soft Unbound.

“Tanyana.” Was that pleading in his suit-strengthened voice? “This is why you are here too, this is your role.” He lifted his arms. “Join us, fight with us.” I could not see his mouth, yet I heard the grin in his voice. He sounded wild, and it spurred on the suit inside me. “We have a war to wage, after all.”

“I might be a weapon,” I said. “And unable to stop the changes wrought within me. But I am not
their
weapon.” I shifted my defiance to the puppet men. “And I will not fight for anyone but myself, and those I must protect. Step aside, Aleksey.”

“You know I can’t.” Resigned, but determined. “I am a veche enforcer and I will remain so, right to the end.” Aleksey leapt from the platform. He landed with a crash that ricocheted through the basement. He left a crater where I had only made cracks. “I only wanted to help you, to work with you, until you joined us. But if you will not, then I must stand in your way.”

So be it. The suit, at least, was pleased. The clash of swords was far more interesting than simple slicing through flesh.

“Move,” I hissed over my shoulder, into silent shock and fear. “Get back.”

“No, Tan!” Kichlan had to be dragged to relative safety among the vats. Fedor took hold of Lad – who wept for ’Leksey’s betrayal – and did the same.

“No, Tan, don’t!” Kichlan shouted. “You’re not a weapon! Remember that, please. You are Tanyana, and not what they made you!”

Aleksey straightened, rubbed his fists, and loosened suited shoulders. “Come.”

The suit enveloped my head. In that dark plane, with doors wrapping curved around the vats, Aleksey was solid and silver. I glanced down at my body. I was too. But I was an architect, for all the weaponry the puppet men had injected into me. Not an enforcer, not Mob. Behind him, the puppet men were easier to see, yet their skin seemed thinner, hatched with seams, and their eyes even darker than the world.

The Keeper huddled beside me, his debris pulse beating frantic and visible beneath his own thin membrane. “What are you doing?” he said into the darkness. “What about the vats, what about the debris?”

“Stand back,” I told him.

“No! I need you to help me, not this! They will kill you, they will tear you like they have torn me–”

Poor, weak debris shade. “Stand back, or you could be hurt.”

Then Aleksey came.

He moved so fast I did not see him. Before I could even think to react he grabbed my shoulders, squeezed and bent me back, forcing me to the ground. I landed hard. The Keeper scrambled away. Aleksey kicked, sharp, controlled movements – stomach, head.

I was not as fast as Aleksey. Yet our suits were the same. Each blow was more than physical; it sent shivers of aggression through me, of force. And I realised that Aleksey and his suit was doing what I had once done to debris, what I had started to do to convince the vats to open. His very consciousness was invading my suit with each touch. Debris to debris.

Tanyana the architect could not compete with Aleksey the enforcer. So the suit decided she was holding us back.

And with a wrench I felt in my body and my mind, the suit put Tanyana aside.

I was the suit.

Aleksey’s foot came down and I grabbed it. A twist, he fell, and I leapt back to my feet.

“Finally!” he said again, and laughed as he pushed himself upright. “You’re ready.”

Blades sprung from his arms and he lashed at me. They met my shields, but instead of knocking his blow aside I wrapped him in bubbles of my own, snapped his blades and kicked him hard in the gut.

The blow was nothing. The blades were not.

With a scream he fell backward, holding shattered arms up before him. I absorbed the pieces I had torn from him, my silver burrowing into his, whispering, coaxing, demanding, until they were a part of me. And I was stronger for his weakness, more for his less.

“First point,” the veche men whispered. “We are pleased.”

I looked at them. “Don’t be. I will come for you next.” They were the true fight, the real challenge, the battle I had waited so long for.

“Don’t turn your back on me.” Aleksey recovered, ploughed forward. His shoulder smashed into my knees and dragged me down. On top of me, he plunged hands into the suit over my chest and dug like a rabid dog, tearing chunks away. I gasped, unable to breathe, as he took back what I had taken and more.

“Second point.”

Spears lanced up from my abdomen. They plunged into him, lifted him off and threw him to the side.

Still gasping, I pushed myself upright. Aleksey was already on his feet. “You should not have made me do this. You are weak.” I could hear his predator’s smile. “And I will make you mine, tear that suit from you, and kill the body that hosted it.” He glanced at the puppet men. “That will make me stronger, won’t it? The strongest weapon ever known.”

“Third.”

Aleksey nodded. “You should have recruited an enforcer from the start. Allow me to correct the mistake.”

I struggled to stand. How had he recovered so quickly? Didn’t he feel the pain, the loss, the ripping of muscle underneath and the hollowing of bones?

Blades again. He jabbed at my head, at my chest, but I knocked each blow aside. Quick steps around each other and I swung for his head, fist extended to a club. But he was too fast as though he could read me, as though he knew how I would move before I did. He dodged, swung around behind me, and stabbed low into my back.

I felt his blade slide in. Through silver, to flesh. No pain. I was already repairing the damage to muscle, organs, nerves, but weakness wracked me as his blade extended, roamed, and began slicing me away.

I struggled, twisted around, gripped Aleksey’s arm and with a grunt forced him out of me. Without his strength holding me up I slumped back. The body was bleeding. I sucked it in, drank up its life, channelled every spare drop into self-repair.

Blades dripping blood and quicksilver, Aleksey stood over me. “I always knew you had some strength. Of mind, of spirit, if not in body. I am honoured to have had you as a test, and regret what you have forced me to do. But it is over.”

I couldn’t move. I ceased healing the body, I gathered all my strength, but it was useless.

“Complete it,” the puppet men said.

“No no no,” the Keeper whimpered somewhere amidst the darkness and doors.

Aleksey lifted his blades. I had no eyes to close.

“Tan, no!” someone shouted. Fast footsteps echoed sharply through the darkness and I turned my head, still watching those blades from the edges of my vision, to see Lad running toward us.

Aleksey struck.

Lad lunged at us.

“Do not harm the programmer!” the puppet men cried.

Aleksey checked himself, but too late. Lad flung himself in front of me and Aleksey’s vicious twin blades plunged into his back.

Stunned eyes stared at me, full of pain and confusion. They were so clear, even in this place, as though Lad belonged here. Like the Keeper did. Like the puppet men.

“Lad?” I whispered.

Aleksey withdrew his blades and stumbled back.

I caught Lad as he fell. Blood washed too red, too real over my hands, my chest and arms. It ran the along the smooth contours of my suit and drained into the gashes Aleksey had made, the gaps he had torn into me. Fire spread from those holes, fire through my bones and across my skin, fire to my head where it roared in my ears and clouded my vision. My suit felt heavy, and tingled with each drop of Lad’s blood.

Tan?
Lad seemed to whisper, right against my ear. I couldn’t tell if his mouth was moving. The world was red, and unreal.
You okay, Tan?
He sounded so close.
I look after you. From anyone. Bro said... bro said I had to look after you...

He slumped forward, as the Keeper howled. My vision cleared and the suit retracted. It slid away from my face, my hands, and Lad’s blood was warm and his skin was soft and he was gone. Lying on me, bloodied and gone.

“–waste,” the puppet men were saying. “That was an unnecessary waste.”

Aleksey shook, still wrapped in his suit, and stared at the crimson dripping thick down his arms. “No,” he whispered. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Lad!” Kichlan scrambled out from behind the vats on his hands and knees. Like an animal he crawled, slipping, scratching, across the cement. Then he rolled his brother’s body off me, held him close, buried his face in those unruly curls and screamed. He screamed until I thought he would tear with it, until I thought I would break under the weight of such loss.

I couldn’t feel. There was something wrong with my back. I knew it hurt, but couldn’t actually feel the pain and nothing below my waist would move. I felt so heavy with blood. And still above me, above us, Aleksey stood. Bladed, suited, bloody and murderous.

“Finish it,” I hissed. “Shouldn’t you just finish it?”

The skin around his eyes was white. “I didn’t mean to,” he whispered. “Not him.”

“Only me.” And suddenly it wasn’t enough to lie here waiting for death. Because Lad had, Lad had–

The suit was moving again, I could feel its pressure, its pulling. But the thrill was muted, the need weak. Beneath the weight of Lad’s death, such things were meaningless. And Aleksey had torn so much of it from me – suit, silver, debris – that it simply could not rise up and take over its fragile flesh host. Part of me wanted to give into it, to let it coat me in that emotionless, invulnerable shell. Because the suit did not grieve, the suit did not understand loss or self-loathing. Beneath it, I would not have to listen to Kichlan, to what I had done to him. But I was not a weapon, not of any kind, not for anyone. I was Tan.

I closed my eyes, bent my head a little. “Heal me,” I whispered to something deep inside, to the struggling ruins of a presence. “Hurry, or he will kill us.” The suit had to obey.

I screamed as it knitted the wound in my back, as feeling rushed down my hips and legs and my entire body flared with pain. But I could move again.

“You have not completed your test!” the puppet men cried, and it seemed they had discovered emotion. Was I that terrifying, as I laboured onto weak legs, covered in blood? I couldn’t imagine so.

Aleksey jolted at the panic in their voice. He focused on me, and flicked the blood away. “Yes,” he whispered. “The test.” But his voice quavered and he did not attack.

Behind me, Kichlan’s screams had dissolved into sobbing, wracking cries.

How much of the suit’s strength had Aleksey torn away? Enough, perhaps, to allow me to regain control, but what good would I be against him now? Aleksey was still an enforcer, and he not only knew how to fight while I was struggling simply remain upright, but he was stronger than me. Far stronger.

He crouched, stalked tentatively forward. I stepped back – how it hurt – away from Kichlan and Lad. “Get them out of the way,” I hissed, to whoever listened and cared. “Move them!”

Mizra and Volski broke from behind the vats. I caught a glimpse of Mizra’s face, red and wet with weeping, then they were struggling to convince Kichlan to stand, to carry his brother’s body to the negligible safety of the vats. Kichlan fought them, and Uzdal ran to their aid, then Sofia was there, and between them all they got Kichlan standing, Lad in his arms, half-dragging his precious broken cargo. I continued to draw Aleksey away. He was fixed on my face, almost as though he could not stand to watch the damage he had done.

I could not defeat him. I knew that with utter certainty. In fact, it was ridiculous to try. Even if I had the skills to fight him off, to knock him down, I could do nothing against the suit he wore. Or the suit, perhaps, that rode him.

Was this even Aleksey I was facing? The man who had collected with us, who had helped us flee the Mob, with his easy smile and the rueful way he rubbed the scar on his nose? Or was he more suit than human, just like I had been? Pushed to the side, carried on a body that was no longer his, unable to stop what was happening.

Could I really fight someone like that? I understood what it meant to have the suit infuse your body and take it as its own. He was just like me, here through an accident of fate and the machinations of the puppet men.

Not that any of this helped me.

Aleksey’s blades grew. He ran at me, slashed widely. I lifted a thin shield and rolled, pressing against the floor with my suit to fling myself away.

He scowled, turned his head to watch me and did not hurry to follow. After all, where was I going to go? And we all knew how this was going to end.

“Tanyana!” Zecholas shouted. “Step back!”

I flung myself backwards as the ground rocked. Great pillars of stone shot up from the cement, violently jagged and cruelly sharp, they speared at Aleksey.

“Yes!” Volski cried.

But Aleksey simply held out a hand. As the stone rammed into him it shattered, and fell like sand around the strength of his suit.

“What?”

And he turned toward them.

“No!” I grabbed a loose rock from the littered remnants of Zecholas’s powerful binding, and threw it at Alseksey’s head. It crumbled on him. He did not even seem to feel it. “I’m the test, right? I’m the one you want to fight!”

He paused.

“My lady?” Zecholas dropped to his knees.

“It won’t work,” I called to them as Aleksey returned his regard to me. “Nothing is stronger than the suit. Nothing pion made, not even debris.” Not even debris twisted into a manic weapon capable of incapacitating an entire city. The puppet men had seen to that. The only thing strong enough to fight a suit was another suit. And the only way I could weaken him would be to absorb his suit into mine.

But how long could I maintain control over my own body if I did that?

Death was better, wasn’t it, than a kind of half-existence lost somewhere in my own head? But then I thought of Lad, of his confusion and fear as Aleksey’s blades slid into him, and I wasn’t so sure.

“Fight then!” Aleksey tensed. The suit around his legs began to move, ripple and bunch like muscle. “Complete the test!” He jumped, and his suit sent him so high, so fast, that I could not move in time and he crashed into me. We fell onto rubble, each rock bruising and cutting. As the suit rushed to slide back over my soft and useless flesh, I realised this wouldn’t last very long.

“Pathetic.” Aleksey punched down, I caught his fist with both hands. Our suits clashed, metal to metal.

Tanyana
.

Aleksey did not pause. He had not heard that voice, dim and impossible in this world of light, and yet, right beside my ear.

Come back to me
.

I twisted his arm, slid to the side as he toppled, pushed myself to my feet. It was impossible. Only with my head encased in the suit, or holding debris in silver hands, had I been able to hear the Keeper. I spun, staring wildly for something, anything that might explain it.

Please
.

Aleksey rolled and stood slowly, watching me wearily.

I released the locks on the suit at my neck and allowed it to smother me. The Keeper knelt where the rubble was, his face streaked with black, skin so transparent he hardly seemed to exist. He lifted a hand; it fluttered like cloth in the wind. I bent to help him up and to my absolute horror he passed through me.

“My Half,” was all he said. His voice was as full of grief as Kichlan’s, and flipped something over inside me. Grief. I wished I could sit here and bury my face in my hands and cry and cry until I was empty.

“Lad,” I whispered.

“What are you doing?” Aleksey circled us. “Who are you talking to? The Keeper, is that it? Is he here?”

“Ignore it!” The puppet men commanded. “Complete your test.”

Aleksey stilled. He pressed a hand to the side of his head. “Yes, of course.”

Behind him, the door that curved around a vat full of debris shuddered on its hinges. And I realised there was, in fact, a way to defeat Aleksey. If I dared to try.

“Enough.” He rolled his shoulders, shook his head. “Enough. I will end this.”

But I could not do it alone.

I grabbed the Keeper – it took three attempts to find something solid – and hauled him to his feet.

Blades and implacable silver, Aleksey advanced. No threats, no grand theatrics or aerobic feats this time. Nothing but his sharpness and the steady tread of his feet.

“Slow him down,” I whispered to the Keeper.

He blinked at me. His flickering eyelids were a thin and ghostly haze. “Slow?”

“He is debris, like I am debris. We are both part of you. Surely, you can affect him, alter him, control him, even in some small way! So do what I ask for once and slow him down!”

“I–”

But the Keeper was not the only one who heard me. “Yes, my lady!” Volski, his cry so distant, like an echo or a memory. And then the earth was rocking again, and I could hear crashing and someone screaming, although all I saw was black.

Aleksey stopped in his tracks and was knocked to the side. As I watched, he lifted an arm and buried his blade in something. He began sawing away.

“Your binder has collapsed the ceiling.” The Keeper glanced around him. I wished I could see, I wished the debris and the suit hadn’t dragged me so deeply into this world of darkness and doors.

“It will not hold the enforcer for long.” He ran a transparent hand over his face and smeared his tears. “And it has damaged one of the vats.”

I nodded. “Good. If any debris escapes, take it. Take whatever you can. Then help me.”

The Keeper disappeared. I struggled to the closest door. Rubble I could not see tripped me up, something knocked then seemed to slip through my head – I tried not to think what that meant. As I came to the door Aleksey freed himself. He stood, shook, spotted me and continued his advance.

“Get back!” I cried.

He shook his head. “I do not have that choice.”

But my words were not for him. “Get back, get as far as you can. Now!” I hoped my circle, my collecting teams, and the Unbound could hear. I hoped they did what they were told.

I turned my back on the advancing enforcer. I stared at the door, at its handle, at its slight and almost imperceptible shaking. Like every door in this city, it was weakening. I hoped it was weak enough.

I grabbed the handle. My hand passed right through it. Again, I tried. Again, I could not touch it. Aleksey was closing, his footsteps echoed. Maybe I was not enough suit, not enough debris, to touch the doors. Not any more. Still, I tried.

The Keeper reappeared beside me. “What are you doing?” He hissed, and was more solid, his skin white where it had been transparent, his debris pulse firmer though still visible in his veins.

“This is the only way.” I remembered how that emptiness had wound itself into my suit, how it had torn metal from my body and tried to draw it back through the door.

What else could defeat one of the puppet men’s suit-weapons, their creatures of debris and bone, if not nothingness itself?

“No.” But the Keeper did not sound sure of himself.

“It’s the only–”

Then Aleksey stabbed me again, high, so his blades plunged through my chest to emerge terribly bloodless on the other side.

And as his suit sunk into mine, into flesh and bone and silver, we took from him what strength we needed. We drew him in deeper, and I grabbed the door’s handle, turned it, and pulled it wide open.

“Help me,” I gasped to the Keeper, where he stood staring at the open door with his horrors for eyes, his death mask of a face. Moving hurt, breathing hurt, and all through me was a sense of wrong – the wrongness of Aleksey’s blades inside me, the struggle between our suits being fought out in my body.

Emptiness spread through the open door. It rushed over me like a scathing wind, like ice and heat and sand and fire, and I did not know how long I could stand in its storm before I too collapsed into dust.

I called to the Keeper, “Help me!” And he wrapped his pale hands around Aleksey’s shoulders, and I gripped the blades that protruded from my chest and together we spun. Stunned by the open door, rocking with the battle playing out beneath our skin, Aleksey did not fight us. Only when he felt the rush of nothingness on his own back, only when his suit began to ripple and retreat did he tense and struggle. But the Keeper grabbed my wrists and pulled me free of Aleksey’s long knives.

I cried out weakly, and slumped against the Keeper’s pale body. Blood and silver fought over the wounds in my chest. He held me upright, and I lifted my head to see Aleksey, frozen in the black curve of the open doorway.

Black? It wasn’t black. Behind him, there was nothing. Emptiness beyond colour, beyond my understanding. And Aleksey wavered in front of it. His suit rippled like grains, like tidal shifting sands, and retreated to its five bands so quickly he stumbled with the force of their movement. He tried to step forward; his leg collapsed beneath him, and disintegrated into something like bloodied dirt littered with flecks of chrome.