The platform moaned as old winches betrayed themselves, and rust eroded away. Black water sucked on the edges, eager and patient. Malik, Aya, and the convoy gathered upon a diminishing island of scrap metal and the submerged city came up to greet them.
Jun would fling both hands to his temples, crimson streams streaming down his nose. His eyes were closed up tight, yet the tears streaming down them were no tears of pain. they are screaming--they are screaming, he whispered. They are all screaming, they don't know how to get quiet.
One of his hands was brought even with her neck by Nari as she drew him against herself. Don't listen, Jun. Don't listen. And he was not able to stop. The Echo Breath didn't come with an off switch.
They appeared without any noise.
Flood had been touching the dead, Ruin was over, and the water had toxicated and cured them, making them dark. Not zombies zombies were daffy, slow-witted forgetful. These things remembered. Jacking motion was broken into the perfect martial postures and positions infected by drowning and then refused to be forgotten. One of the Crane Style brethren began to fall forward, one arm chaining backward behind the elbow, all in an endeavor to compose a befitting guard. The legs of a Muay Thai fighter spasmed, his memory of muscle lasted longer than his life.
Dozens of them. Perhaps hundreds, up of the depths like a congregation to prayer.
Aya moved first.
Crimson Drizzle Step was floated across the creaking platform by waters oozing over the blades like slow, smooth, inevitable. She glided over a drowned fighter, and his gripping hands, and swung Venom Whisper Palm into its solar plexus on one heel. Floods of ruin poured into the lungs of the corpse, geysered out of its mouth. It convulsed, drowning a second time, and collapsed.
She didn't stop. Red Rain Wire vibrated, grabbed another one about the neck and pulled it into her upwards knee. Cartilage crunched. In her free hand a short blade came out and impaled itself through its temple, bursting in a stream of black ichor.
Her jacket was open all the way now. The black tank top was wet, and the complete lines of her breasts showed upward as she lay with her sweat gleaming on the hard ridges of her abs. The green, blue, red bioluminescent lines of her Venom Mark marked down her collarbone in a line between the breasts, and flickered, each pulse, with her breathing. She was beautiful. She was lethal. She was wholly and totally survival oriented.
Malik followed her and studied.
Her stream was water, his rock. Stone had the ability to bend water, and water had the ability to carve stone. And as one of the drowned fighters caught her ankle fingers clinging desperately with the drowning victims lathe Malik broke free and snapped his chain in two. Aya, hooking one of them with a wire as it went round his throat, pulled it into his ready palm blow, when three set on him, and he had no opportunity to move. Span Breaker Force sank down its breast.
They didn't speak. They didn't need to. Their bodies were speaking a language of violence and it was the most sincere conversation Malik had had in many years.
One of the refugee children that a girl had not attained the age of seven, all ribs and wide eyes in terror as the platform tilted. What wet metal her foot slipped on. With a scream she fell toward the black water and the hands that were in the way.
Nari dove.
Ambulance Step made her body a pendulum, and danced through the tumult with a grace as of patient. She just caught the wrist of the girl at the very time when possible, both she and the girl were hurled outwardly in a sweeping circle to a longer part of the platform. The collar of her white haori was ripped open, and it tore on an jagged edge, starting from the collar to the waist.
The black tactical bodysuit, underneath it, stuck to all the scarring, every curve of the rows of stitches along her collarbones, the needle burn constellations on her cleavage, the map of survival on her skin. She was unaware of the exposure. She was glimpsing into the pulse of the child, already tallying breaths, already the task of keeping a person alive in a world which wanted to kill us all.
One of the fighters, drowned, had the rear bumper of the truck in his fingers, and he broke it through rusted metal. Old Jina was leaned out of the window of the driver, with her chain hook swinging.
Come here baby, come here baby, she crooned. Mama's got you something.
She swung. The hook tore up the shoulder of the thing wet and ripping, and it was all over and pulled it under the wheels. It was crushed under the wheels of the truck with a snapping-kindling-wet-leather sound. Jina sputum phlegm of rust out of the window. It lay on the convulsing body.
"Everything breaks eventually."
Jun was cornered.
One of the drowned boy fighters, crawled up through a hole in the platform, his face swelled well beyond the recognition of any boy of his age, his eyes cloudy and opaque. It still had shoes of a school uniform which had been worn prior to the flood. There was still movement in the novice positions of a pupil who never completed his training.
Jun didn't run.
He pressed his palm to the thing's chest. So high above where its heart once was. And he listened.
Echo Breath swamped him with the death of the boy the water up, the screaming and the lungs filled with black and the horrors of death in the lonely darkness with the city falling down around him. The soot and dried blood tracks were interrupted by the tears streaming down the face of Jun.
I am sorry, said he. Pardon, you may cease. you may rest.
The drowned lad stood dead still. Its milky eyes spied Juns face it liked Juns face found it, the first time it had seen it since it died. Something had come between them. A recognition. An absolution.
It collapsed.
Jun grabbed him, body to body, and dropped him tenderly into the black water. His nose bled the more. His hands shook. And yet he was smiling at the shame, and the tears through which he said that he had just heard that even the dead might be shown mercy.
There!"
The screaming noise was interrupted by the voice of Aya. She was indicating a rusted, though sound, maintenance ladder, running up the side of the nearest tower. Malik all cheered her up, putting his hands on her hips and hoisting. She took the nearest rung and scrambled on, and hooked a line. The convoy went up Nari by passing kids, hand over hand, Jina cursing and painting on the boat, Malik, the last to get the rear with his chain singing.
The platform gave up at last at the back of them, to the water. and the water froth-ed. Sour infinitely of forgotten dead, hundreds of all manner of pale figures swirled beneath an entire city, brimmed with hunger at the commotion.
They didn't surface. Not yet. But they were waiting.
Aya hit the rooftop and collapsed.
Convulsing her body, her veins became a glowing green through her skin. A mouthful of poisonous water, she had swallowed in the fight, but in Aqua Spire to eat a mouthful was to die. Before Malik could act, Nari was beside her, fingers at the pressure points, Triage Hand holding her as she could.
I have been poisoned, she said, in an even, clinical tone of voice. I can take my time. But she must have solid medicine in a dozen hours. Antibiotics. Antivenin. Clean fluids. Her hazel eyes fell on Malik. The type of medicine Lady Shou keeps in her tower-like room.
Malik gazed over the flooded city. In the dimness of the distance Shou was still shone upon by the neon necropolis pink and green and dying away on the black water.
then we steal it off her.
The city in drowned condition had taken its toll.
The time was to take something back.