Of Metal and Wishes (26 page)

They didn’t frame Melik.

Bo did. He kept his promise; he didn’t hurt Melik. He set it up so others would do it for him. Just another of his traps.

Rage roars through me, destroying all my fear. “Did you come to watch him die?” I shout above the crowd, but my words are nothing compared with the chanting from the men, who all want to see Melik swing.

Bo seems to hear me, though. His lips become a tight white line, and he shakes his head. He presses a button on the forearm of his machine self, and the buzz of electricity streaks along his hand and flashes between his fingers in a sudden, popping spark.

Then two things happen at the exact same time.

Someone kicks Melik forward, so that he falls off the conveyor belt, his legs jerking three feet above the ground.

And the Ghost of Gochan One brings his spider army to life.

THE CREATURES EMERGE
from the machines with a clicking, clattering sound that is loud enough to draw people’s attention away from Melik, who is dying right in front of them. It becomes so quiet that all I hear is the sound of spider feet and Melik’s legs flapping against the side of the conveyor belt. Iyzu breaks the silence first, screaming like a girl when he sees the melon-size spider crawl out from under the slurry machine, followed by three others, their fangs slashing. And then they are everywhere, swarming over the hook system, unfolding from their spots between conveyor belts, along the wall, among the wires . . . the floor is a roiling chaos of panic in no time.

Iyzu releases me so he can run toward the exit, but his way is blocked by at least fifty men who are trying to do the same thing. Now that I’m free, I could run too. Or I could wait for Bo to help me. But I won’t. I am the only person who can save Melik now, and I cannot wait for someone else to come to my aid. I have to be enough. I shove around men as they scramble past, pulling the scalpel from my dressing gown pocket. I lift my skirts, skipping over two plum-size spiders scuttling across the floor, and plant my foot on the gears under the conveyor belt. Clumsily I heave myself onto the belt, yanking my nightgown when it snags on a crank. Then, with a strength I did not have before I watched Melik start to die, I lunge and grab the rope, hacking at it furiously with my tiny blade, until Melik’s weight takes over and it snaps, sending him to the floor, purple faced and choking. Choking. Which means he is breathing. Alive.

But he’s not safe, nor am I. A few machines away blood soaks the floor as two of the largest spiders I’ve yet seen gnaw their way through the spines of two of the slaughterhouse workers, who drop like beef carcasses onto the conveyor belts, their eyes glazed with horror.

Men are clogging the exits, knocking one another down, and when the ones at the back fall, their Achilles tendons cut away by spider fangs, they cling to the clothes of the ones in front as they scream.

“Wen!” Bo shouts, and I reel around to see an enormous spider climbing down the central column, where Melik got caught by the hook. “You’re on its path!”

I jump from the conveyor belt right as the stabbing spider feet step off the column and march my way. I land in a heap right next to Melik and cut through the rope that binds his hands, almost slashing his scrabbling fingers in the process. With a wrenching tug I pull the noose off his neck, wincing at the bloody, bruised, torn mess of his throat.

“What’s happening?” he rasps. The whites of his eyes are bright red with the blood of burst vessels.

“We have to get out. Now. Can you get up?”

“I don’t know,” he mouths, then coughs and coughs and coughs, curling into himself.

Over the broad span of his back I see a spider approaching, the size of a kitten, on delicate legs, fangs raised and ready to kill. I throw myself over Melik’s body and bat at it with the noose. It leaps onto the rope and clamps down with its fangs, and I sling it away. It hits the stone column with a crunch.

Melik gets to his hands and knees, but he’s struggling. His face is a deep red, and it’s like he’s trying to lure thoughts back into his brain with every breath. He raises his head and looks around, because the sounds of slaughter surround us. Men are lying dead or dying just a few feet away, spiders digging into their guts or spines or heads or chests. One man streaks by with a spider clinging to each arm. His shirtsleeves are soaked in blood.

As I put my arm around Melik’s waist and help him to his feet, I glance around me, seeking an exit. But everywhere I look, the spiders are marching across the floor, searching for prey. They keep coming from every conceivable crevice, and I know that Bo has been sneaking in here night after night during the quiet season, setting up these self-winding killers so they could hibernate in the vibrating machines until he chose the perfect moment to wake them and wreak havoc.

Bleeding workers are piled against the metal doors of the main exit. Some of the men beat feebly against them, but their friends, in a frenzied panic, have slammed the doors shut and left the rest of us to die. I start to lead Melik toward the plastic flaps that will take us through the passage to the cafeteria, but stop dead as no less than six spiders traipse down the metal doorframe and form a line in front of the archway, blocking our escape. My shoes are too soft to kick them without having my toes detached, and Melik is in no shape to jump over them, seeing as they are as large as lapdogs.

A small thud and telltale clicking on my back has me twisting frantically. It’s on me, one of the spiders, and any second it will snap its legs around my head and cut through my skull. I hear my own gasps and shrieks as Melik stumbles away and crashes into the conveyor belt, still weak and off-balance. And then . . . my head is lighter, and on the concrete floor is a spider feasting on what’s left of my braid. My hair has saved me, but now most of it is gone. The rest of it flies around my face as I grab for Melik, right as a spider scuttles across the belt toward him.

Everywhere I look, there are killers, large and small, digging their metal teeth into flesh and bone and brain and guts. The killing floor is exactly that today, and Melik and I are about to become part of the carnage.

Bo lands with a crash on the conveyor belt. “Here,” he says, pressing a cattle prod into my hands. His arm is bleeding and torn, and there’s a wound on his thigh as well. His pants are a bloody, shredded mess. He’s been attacked by his own creations. “If you shock them, it triggers the kill switch.”

Melik looks up at Bo, at his half-machine face, at his mechanical wonder of an arm. He doesn’t look scared or awed, perhaps because of the oxygen deprivation of the last few minutes. “You must be the Ghost,” he comments hoarsely.

Bo’s expression turns rigid and he looks away.

“I owe you a thank-you,” Melik says.

Bo gazes at Melik, at his rust-colored hair and torn neck, and at his arm, which rests heavily around my shoulders as he leans on me for support. “Trust me, Noor, you don’t.”

He twists in place and jams his metal index finger into the back of a spider that is less than a second from leaping onto my dressing gown. It vibrates and shakes itself into a pile of metal shavings. “Come on. There’s another way out.”

Melik and I follow him as quickly as we can. I have to keep stopping to shock the spiders that come at us. A few of them manage to leap onto the hem of my nightgown, but the cattle prod is amazingly effective. They flop onto their backs, spindly legs stabbing at the air, and we move on before they fall apart. Bo leads us past the refrigerator chamber, through the grinding room, to a locked door at the very rear of the killing floor. “I know you have the key,” he says to me.

I do. But as much as I don’t want to be here, I’m not sure I want to go with Bo. He is a master of death, and he’s already tried to kill Melik twice. And now Melik is pale and weak, at his most vulnerable. I won’t survive watching him die again.

Over Bo’s shoulder something catches my eye—a spark. No, a flame. The bitter smell of burning rubber is filling the air, which grows hazier each second. The spiders are chewing through the wires, and I can hear the pops and sputters of electrical fires breaking out. Bo glances behind him, and then he looks at Melik, who is leaning against the wall with his eyes closed, focused on drawing breath into his lungs.

“I can keep you safe, Wen,” Bo says. “I can keep you both safe.”

I look into his brown eye, into his human, warm, kinder self, and I nod. He takes the key from me, unlocks the door, flings it wide, and shoves Melik through it. The last thing I see before he yanks me through the doorway and slams the door behind us is the killing floor erupting in flames.

BO LEADS US
down four flights of steep metal steps. I anchor my arm around Melik’s waist and descend slowly, focusing on moving my body and not on the horrifying images in my head. My heart beats like a caged bird. All those men. All that pain. All that blood. So far beyond what my father could ever fix. And yes, I am glad Melik was spared. But I can still hear the screams, the pleas for mercy and help. Some of those men had families. Some of them had daughters. Did they deserve this kind of end?

My fingers curl into Melik’s side. Maybe they did, if they were so eager to kill him. If I had had the power, maybe I would have crushed them just as mercilessly, if it meant saving Melik. I’ll never feel good about it, but if this is the cost of protecting someone I care about . . . Melik’s steps falter and I hold him tight. “You’re doing well,” I say to him.

He doesn’t answer. He is intent on breathing and putting one foot in front of the other, and that is as it should be. Bo is impatient and agitated. He keeps turning around, watching us while he grinds his teeth. I want to snap at him, to scream at him. We wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t been so vicious, if he hadn’t been determined to destroy the boy next to me.

We also wouldn’t be here if he didn’t have a conscience. If Bo were all machine, if his heart were made of cogs and springs, Melik would be dead now, strangled by the noose, and I would probably be standing on the conveyor belt, awaiting my turn to die.

I have never been so confused, and now is the time to be certain, because I have to get Melik out of this alive. His brother needs him. His people need him.

I need him too.

“Where are we going?” Melik asks me in a raspy whisper.

“My home,” Bo answers.

Melik tenses. “I don’t suppose there are more of those spiders down here.”

“Of course there are,” Bo snaps. “But they sleep until they are awakened, and we won’t do that.”

I bow my head so Bo cannot see my angry expression, and that’s when I notice the bloody footprints he leaves with each of his steps, the streaks of wine red against the walls. He is very hurt, and no doubt in terrible pain. But he is not complaining, and so I won’t either.

We make our clumsy way through a wide corridor with doors every few feet. This place reminds me of a giant catacomb, a huge hive of the dead, and I fight the feeling that the walls are closing in on me, that I will be buried here forever, that I will never see the sky again. Melik’s arm is tightening around my shoulders, and at first I think he needs more support to walk, but when I look up at him, I see his bloodred gaze has sharpened. He is recovering, quickly, but still weak and torn.

The air here is dank and cold. Even in my dressing gown, I shiver as goose bumps ridge my skin. Water trickles in green black rivulets down the walls, upon which grow patches of fuzzy brown moss. The emergency lighting glints off spider bodies nestled in corners and crannies, but they remain still and silent. Every once in a while Bo tells us to step over a trip wire, or to avoid a square depression cut into a step, or to tuck our arms against our bodies and walk single file to keep from brushing the walls. He is harsh with his words, but he does not fail to help Melik when I am not strong enough.

Finally we get so deep that there are very few traps, because the only person who comes here is Bo himself. He leads us to a steel door and flicks at the fingers of his metal hand, but his other hand is fumbling and uncoordinated, probably because of the deep wound in his forearm. He leans back against the wall and stares at the ceiling. “Wen . . .”

I step forward as Melik’s arms become steel at my waist. I squeeze his hand in reassurance, then let it go. “You need help,” I say to Bo.

He nods. “There’s a key built into the hand, but I can’t . . . I can’t . . .” There is the slightest tremble in his voice. He is scared. If he loses his other arm, he will lose himself. He has already been torn apart, and he cannot afford to lose the pieces of him he has left. I take his injured forearm in my hands and gaze down at it. “I’ll help fix this. All I need is needle and thread.” I sound more confident than I am. “Now show me what to do.”

“The ring finger. There’s a catch at the base of it.”

With his help I hold his hand up to the light, the metal veins, tendons, muscles, threads of brilliance, woven through this dangerous weapon, this human-shaped war machine. I flick the tiny, delicate catch like he told me, and a jagged key unfolds from the center of his metal ring finger. I guide his hand and insert the key into the lock, which comes undone with a deep, echoing click.

In front of us is Bo’s bright metal world, his family of statues awash in lantern light. We walk through a gleaming archway and into the massive chamber, and Melik’s eyes grow wide with fear, but also with admiration. He mutters something in Noor and then asks, “How long have you been here?”

“Seven years.” Bo limps along a metal walkway and nudges a small, broom-pushing spider off the path. It falls on its side, legs scrabbling.

“You did all this in seven years,” Melik says in a flat voice.

Bo turns around slowly. “I wonder what you would do if you had seven years in solitude, Noor. Would you break? Or would you build?”

Melik stares at him. “I honestly don’t know.”

Bo pivots on his heel and keeps walking. I shuffle past Melik and catch up with him. “I need to look at your wounds.”

He shrugs me off and waves his hand back at Melik. “Look at his first. I need to check the . . .” He stumbles, and I steady him, wrapping my arms around his waist as he sags.

He bows his head, and his lips are against my ear. “I have failed you in so many ways today.”

He is so close, half man, half machine, and I think about what could have been for him. All that brilliance, shredded by the harshness of the factory, warped by loneliness. Underneath he is still a boy, one who craves a touch, a smile. So I smile. “You also saved me.”

In his eye there is so much emotion that it is painful to watch. He blinks away the shine of it. “Help me get to my room?”

Melik walks quietly behind us. His footsteps are steady and solid, and I know if I looked back to see him, his shoulders would be straight and his head would be high. Because that is how he is, how he should be, what is right. I duck my head and breathe my relief.

I lower Bo onto his sleeping pallet while Melik waits outside the room. Bo reassures him that nothing will kill him as long as he doesn’t go snooping around. From the tension in Melik’s posture I can tell he doesn’t want to be here, that half his mind is with his brother and the Noor, wherever they are, but judging by the way he looks at me, I know the other half is here and unwilling to leave my side.

Bo’s skin is pale, and he is shivering. He has lost too much blood. It’s oozing from his wounds, the ones in his left leg and right arm. He glances down at himself and rolls his eye. “Serves me right, doesn’t it? I turn them loose and they feed on me.”

“You just got in their way,” I say as I examine his arm. “They’re only machines, right?”

He nods, and shifts his machine arm, wincing. It is strapped over his shirt, like a vest, and I want to take the whole thing off so I can see Bo, the person, not the machine. But also because he needs to rest, and lying down with all this metal attached to his body must be uncomfortable. “Can I take this off?” I ask him.

He tenses, and his eye searches mine. “You don’t . . . I don’t want you to. . . .”

I touch the side of his face. He looks so young right now, so scared. “Bo, you need to rest. How can you do that like this?”

He grimaces, and I know he is in pain inside and outside, facing demons I will never understand. “All right. Just . . . all right.”

With careful, steady fingers I unbuckle the leather straps that hold the machine arm to his body. I tug gently at the whole thing, and there is a slight pop as the cuff pulls loose from his skin. Bo’s breathing becomes rapid and shallow as I pull the arm away from his body and finally see what is left of him. Just a withered stump of flesh-covered bone, extending from his shoulder socket, all that remains of his left arm. I don’t stop there. I don’t ask permission this time, I simply act. I find the thread-thin strap that holds the metal mask on his face, and I undo that, too.

From Bo’s chest comes a whimper, like that of a child, full of pleading and fear. But I am merciless. I pull the metal mask away from his face to see what he hides behind the beautiful steel skin, the dead black eye.

He is a living skeleton, a living scar. Ruined skin taut over broken bone. He has no left eye, only a weeping, empty socket and a limp eyelid. He hasn’t been glaring at me at all; he is half blind. I see
him
, the parts that are whole and the parts that are shattered. He is human, he is a boy, he is evil and good fused together. My Ghost. My rescuer. My enemy, my friend.

“It’s bad, I know,” he whispers.

“No, it’s all of you, and I’m glad I can see it,” I reply, stroking his hair.

His good eye searches me, looking for the fear, the repulsion, but he won’t see it. There is a beauty in Bo that is not just in spite of his wounds, but because of them.

“I only wanted to know you, Wen. I’ve wanted to know you for so long. Ever since your father talked about you, I’ve been living on that wish, that one day you would come to me, and you would see me for what I am, and still you would not leave.”

“I’m here now.”

“Only part of you. Part of you is outside the door, watching over the Noor. Wanting him.”

I cannot lie to him. “That’s true. But part of him is elsewhere too, with the other people he loves. We cannot own each other, Bo. We can only offer what is ours to give.”

“I wanted to give you everything,” he says. “I wanted to build a world where you and I could play and live and where no one else would harm us, ever.”

“You build amazing things, but I need the sky and the sun.”

He closes his eyes. “I’m sorry for everything I did. For Mugo, for framing your red Noor.”

“His name is Melik,” I say gently.

“I know that. Will you forgive me if I don’t want to say it out loud?”

I will.

Bo’s hand, loose and uncoordinated but warm nevertheless, closes over mine. “When I saw how you screamed for him, how you fought for him, how it was killing you to lose him . . . I realized what a horrible mistake I’d made.”

He would never have been rid of Melik like that. I would have carried my red Noor in my heart forever. “I’m glad you came to help us. You saved our lives.”

I look around the room for anything that might help me care for Bo right now. I crawl over to the heavy jug on a table in the corner and pour him a cup of water. He needs fluids and food to rebuild his strength. He manages to sit up, but without the metal hand and with his remaining arm so weak, he needs my help getting the cup to his lips.

“There are preserved plum cakes, many of them,” he tells me, pointing to a small cabinet beside the table. “You and the Noor should eat too. I’m sure you’re hungry.”

I get him a plum cake and take one to Melik, who tears into it with real desperation and thanks me with a full mouth.

By the time I return to Bo’s room, he is leaning against the wall. He is brave now and lets me take off his shirt so I can see his wounds, old and new. The burn scarring covers his neck, his shoulder, and the left side of his ribs, and it looks like the fiery beast grabbed him in its clawed hand and left its ugly fingerprints all over his otherwise beautiful body. Bo turns away like he doesn’t want to see how I’ll react. He is naked for me now; everything he ever tried to hide is laid out in front of me. And . . . it doesn’t seem worth concealing. I think I might have loved him if he hadn’t. I can’t tell him that, how I wish he had not left the world to hide down here—because really, what else could he have done if he wanted to survive? But now, now he is strong and smart and can offer the world so many things. He should want more than me, than to hide down here with a stupid girl who knows nothing of the world.

Well, he’s not strong
now
. He’s actually very weak. His fingers tremble as he places the paper wrapping of the plum cake at the side of his pallet. He looks down at his forearm, where the muscle and flesh are torn to the bone. “I’m not sure I have the things you need to put me back together,” he says. “The other half of me, easy. Metal threading, screws, cogs, winding mechanism, activating circuitry. This half?” He chuckles. “I don’t envy you.”

“I can bandage it,” I say.

There is a distant slamming noise, and I jump. Bo gives me a tired smile. “Your father has come to see us.”

His footsteps tap down the stone staircase, and I hear Melik stand up to greet him. They talk for a few seconds in low tones, but I can hear enough to know my father is examining Melik’s neck and face, which makes my heart heavy with gratitude. Then my father is in Bo’s chamber, staring at Bo’s hand over mine. His expression is impossible to read. “I’ve been trying to reach you for the last half hour,” he says to Bo.

Bo points to a chair in the corner, inviting my father to sit. “I told you I would get them, and I did. She is unharmed. The Noor . . . well, he will recover. And I . . . I got what I very much deserved.”