They came across the first body at the stairwell leading up. Torg dragged it away. “The bodies you can touch,” he said, sniffing in disgust. “It’s just the solid grey that’s instant.”
Johnny stared at the thing as Torg and Onna tread up the stairs. It was larger than Krugar, but the same basic shape: two arms, two eyes, two legs. An elongated snout with teeth protruding from the upper jaw and claws instead of fingers. Its skin was pebbly and it was wearing some kind of three-quarter battle suit.
“That’s major snaze, rhi,” Dillac muttered, following Johnny. Treading up the stairs was a little trickier than sliding down, but they managed.
At the top of the stairwell, Shabaz tried to take his hand again, but he gently pushed her away. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’m . . . well, I’m not fine, but I’m not crippled.”
She studied him for a moment, then reached out and gave his hand a squeeze. “Okay,” she said, and rolled out front.
There were hundreds of bodies, every one of them a creature like the one they’d seen downstairs. “Thank goodness the hallways are narrow,” Torg said, eyeing a pile of bodies. “If they’d been able to pack us into a corner . . .”
Like downstairs, Johnny thought. If they hadn’t gotten out quickly, if the fight with Torres had gone wrong or she’d refused to leave . . . he shuddered.
They heard a few more sporadic bursts of fire, but no more screams of rage. Finally, as they mounted the final stairwell, even the gunfire died out. Krugar came running down the corridor, scanning every junction, his rifle pointed down. “I think we got them all. Thank god for Wobble, he stopped the one horde I saw. That machine’s amazing.”
You don’t know the half of it, Johnny thought, as the machine in question came down the hall. His entire body was smoking and covered in grey matter. Now that the battle was over, he moved with his familiar hitch.
“All clear-clear. Wobble.” The machine didn’t look happy. Johnny knew how he felt.
“Boz, you got a little . . .” Dillac said, grimacing. He reached out to flick the biggest piece of grey off Wobble’s shoulder, then shied away. “You know what, it’s a good look, boz.”
“Come on,” Johnny said. “Let’s go see how Torres is doing.”
As they rolled towards the entrance, past the window with its trillion suns—he steadfastly refused to look, he didn’t need the distraction right now—Johnny had a sudden spastic thought: they were going to find Torres, but her purple-orange skin would be grey, her eyes dead, and they would have to kill her too. Then they rounded the final corner and found Torres, alone, sitting by the exit.
Immediately, Johnny’s heart filled with sorrow for the fierce skid. He’d gone a little spare downstairs—hole, he’d gone a lot spare downstairs. And, if anything, Torres had an even greater tie to Albert than Johnny.
Three months ago the thought would have made him laugh—how could anyone be more tied to Albert than Johnny? Half the stories the skids told in the Skidsphere had been about Albert and Johnny, their rivalry and their hate.
But then Albert had stayed in the Thread and the skids stopped telling stories about Albert and Johnny because Albert didn’t exist. Not in the Skidsphere. Only in the Thread, where the first time they’d arrived—falling through a darkness that wanted to kill them—there was only one skid who hadn’t been saved by Johnny.
Torres.
All three of her eyes were on the ground, the light-sword sheathed. Depressed into her treads, her stripe flat orange instead of its usual glossy sheen. “Torres?” Johnny said, stopping a respectful distance away.
Her body didn’t even twitch. “I guess you got what you wanted. He’s dead now.”
He’d half-expected it, but it hurt nonetheless. Sweet snakes, it hurt. Behind him, he saw Shabaz open her mouth and he popped a Hasty-Arm. “It’s okay, I got it,” he said, even as he felt a surge of love for the combative look she wore. What had he done to deserve that support, to deserve what she’d done downstairs?
What he deserved was right here.
“Torres, I am so sorry.”
A half-snarl, half-snort of derision. “Of course you are. Did you finish it? Did you kill him?”
“I didn’t kill him.” He had to stay calm here, but snakes it was hard—he felt like screaming at her or maybe joining her on the floor. “Wobble . . .Wobble finished it.”
“Oh that’s great, Johnny Drop. Blame the machine. You jack—”
“All right, Torres that’s enough,” Shabaz said, rolling forward.
“Shabaz, I said I got this.”
“No you don’t,” she said, two eyes on Torres and one on Johnny. “Not this you don’t. Not after what you had to . . .Torres, I love you like a sister, but you need to back up.”
“Of course you’d defend him.”
“Torres . . .” Torg said.
“And of course you would defend him!” she screamed. “His best friend and his snug-buddy! Aren’t you glad he’s back, Torg? Back with the winning team?”
Torg stared at her, his expression filled with sympathy and pain. “There are no teams, Torres. Just us.”
“Just you!” She rose on her treads. “Admit it, none of you ever liked him. None of you ever listened to him, not you, not Betty, no one . . . ever . . . listened to him.” She popped a light-sword. “No one cared about—”
A gunshot echoed down the hall. Johnny’s trail-eye went wide as he realized it wasn’t Krugar holding the gun.
It was Dillac.
“This is grease, squi,” he said, his voice remarkably calm as he handed the gun back to Krugar. “You think boz don’t care? Torres, what happened to you ain’t right, but you ain’t close to round on this. Boz don’t care? Rhi, panzer went spare downstairs. I thought he was going to blow sug for sure.”
“What’s he talking about?” Torres muttered, staring at Dillac like he was mad.
“It’s not important,” Johnny said. “This isn’t about me—”
“No, it is important,” Onna said, coming around Shabaz. “Crisp, Torres, I can’t begin to understand how you feel, but Johnny doesn’t care any less.”
“The hole he doesn’t.”
“Yes, he does. This guy was important to both—”
“This guy? This guy?!” Torres cried. “His name was Albert!” Her whole body went still, and then she wailed: “HE WAS MY ONLY FRIEND!”
The last word echoed down the hall, filled with loss and shame. As the echo died away, Kesi rolled forward.
“Sometimes your friends die,” she said. “Sometimes when they shouldn’t. Sometimes in ways . . . in ways they shouldn’t.” She looked at Torres and, for the first time, Johnny saw sympathy for another skid in her eyes. “We don’t have to die with them.”
Torres stared at her, then past her to Krugar and Zen. “Everyone else had their say, you two want in?”
“Just . . . I’m sorry about your friend,” Zen said, blinking rapidly.
Krugar looked down at him, then nodded. “Yeah,” he said, looking back at Torres. “That’ll do for me too.”
The silence stretched out, then the light-sword extinguished. “There’ll be a hub somewhere nearby that will take us back to the base. Betty’s probably waiting for us there, but I don’t care anymore.” She turned on her treads and rolled out the door.
“Give her some time,” Krugar said. “She’s tough, she’ll come around.”
“I hope so,” Johnny said. “We need her.”
“Well, we’re due a win.”
Johnny chuckled, although it was devoid of humour. “I thought we were already due a win before.”
Krugar shrugged. “Then we’re due two. Come on.”
Torres was waiting for them in the hall. When they all emerged from the sim, she turned without speaking.
“I-We will find us a hub-hub,” Wobble said, catching up with Torres.
They rolled in silence. Everyone gave Johnny space, although Shabaz kept glancing in his direction even as she went from skid to skid, checking in. The sight brought a brief smile to his lips. They’d had a fight over that. A stupid one. Then again, maybe all their fights had been stupid.
Then he thought about Peg and Bian. Okay, maybe that one wasn’t stupid—he could understand why she was upset about that. He was upset about that. They were just one more thing that didn’t make sense in a world that no longer made sense.
Albert was dead. Albert. And Betty had killed him, or least put him a place where he would die. A place where they might follow him and die as well.
Johnny had a real nasty suspicion about how they’d found Al. About how that red light indicating him had gone out when it did. Sure, maybe he’d been alive until then; maybe that was the moment Albert had turned grey. But there hadn’t been any of those grey things in his cell. Maybe there had been some of the solid grey, but the rest of it had been on the other side of the prison.
They’d gone to the Core to steal information about Albert from Betty. What if Betty had given it to them?
He remembered wondering why she didn’t catch them when they were on the plain, why she wasn’t using her jets. How Krugar had taken her out with a grenade—come to think of it, how the hole did she miss Krugar being there in the first place? There’s no way she should have missed that.
What if the whole thing had been a play to get rid of them all? If Torres fought him down in those cells for one minute longer, if those things trapped them down there, with one side of the prison gone to grey . . .
She regrets this most of all.
Peg had said that. He’d thought she’d been talking about Shabaz—he’d just said something about her—but they’d been just outside the sim. What if she was talking about Betty?
Of course, Bian had also said something about how he was waiting but didn’t know how long he could, so maybe Albert had been alive at that moment. Of course, if Al was in a prison, he wasn’t exactly waiting, so why would Bian use that particular . . . ?
“Ugh,” he groaned.
“Everything okay?” Shabaz said, dropping back.
“What? Oh, yeah, I was . . .” He did not want to start a fight again. Then again, not talking about it hadn’t helped before. “Vape it, I was thinking about Peg. And Bian.”
“Oh,” she said warily, her stripes tightening.
“Listen,” he said, “I know this bothers you, I get it, I’m not mad that it does. I don’t know why I keep seeing Peg—I have no idea why Bian started to show up and spout nonsense—but I swear, I’m not creating them myself.”
“Okay . . .”
“I mean it, Shabaz. I miss Peg, sure, I always will. And yeah, the last time we were all here, I was probably still a little nuts about her. But I’m not with her now. It’s like you said back in the prison: I’m here. With you. I don’t want to be with anyone else.”
The edge of her lips quirked. “You know, I know I said I wanted to talk about this, but I wasn’t really serious.”
He laughed. “Sure you weren’t.”
“Not to be caught eavesdropping,” Torg drawled, dropping back, “but did I hear you say that you’re still seeing Peg? And now Bian?”
“Uhh . . .” Johnny said, eyeing Shabaz. This was already a touchy subject; he didn’t want to make it worse.
Shabaz tilted her stripes. “It’s Torg, we’re here.”
Johnny sighed. “Yeah, I’m seeing Peg. And sometimes Bian.”
“And they’re talking to you? As in, you’re having conversations? I thought Betty said that wouldn’t happen.”
“Betty said lots,” Shabaz muttered.
“True,” Torg said. A sadness crossed his face. “It has occurred to me that she might have led us into that prison.”
“I was just thinking that a minute ago,” Johnny said grimly.
“You mean so that we ended up like . . .” Shabaz’s voice trailed off, her eyes going wide. “That’s horrible.”
“One of the things Peg said right before we went inside was: she regrets this most of all.”
“Peg said that?” Torg said. “That’s rather cryptic.”
“It’s not like we have a normal conversation,” Johnny said. “They show up, say something weird, then disappear. They don’t talk like skids; they talk like Wobble. It’s all: She regrets this most of all, and: He’s waiting, but he doesn’t know how long.”
“Who’s waiting?”
“I don’t know, Torg!” Johnny protested. “I don’t understand anything they’re talking about, except the bit about how to fight the grey.”
“Peg told you how to fight the grey?”
“Uhh, no,” Johnny said, glancing at Shabaz. “Bian did. She, uh . . . she told me the grey wasn’t like the black, and that I had to fight slower.”
Shabaz’s gaze narrowed suspiciously. “Just when was this?”
“When we fell through the grey the first time. It was the first time Bian showed up. Well, just her voice, really. It was the only time she made any sense at all.” His voice trailed off as he saw the look in his girlfriend’s face.
“You said you thought that up.”
“I, uhh . . . I don’t think those were my exact words.”
An awkward silence, then Torg coughed. “Wow,” he said. “You’re really not getting any better at this, are you?”
Thankfully, that got a smile from Shabaz, even as she glared at Johnny. He looked back at her with what he hoped was the appropriate amount of innocence and shame.
It must have been close, because she did laugh. “Fine,” she said. “Here’s the deal, sir. The next time your friends show up, you tell me.” When he started to protest, she added, “I’m serious, Johnny. No more secrets. I won’t be mad at you, unless you keep hiding this from me. Either of those two show up, you let me know.”
“I don’t suppose there’s any chance you won’t want to talk to them.”
“You don’t suppose right,” she snapped. “Seriously, if she’s got some message for us, she can share it with the group.”
“What else exactly did she tell you?” Torg said thoughtfully, looking up ahead.
Johnny sighed. “I don’t know, Torg. Like I said, except the bit about fighting the grey, it was all one liners and cryptic grease. Someone’s waiting. Something about something coming. That’s helpful.”
“You said they sounded like Wobble,” Torg said. “We know that he’s tied into the Thread in ways we can’t even comprehend. There are times when he sounds like he knows everything that’s ever happened to the Thread. Including the future.”
“Okay, that’s a little . . .” Johnny stopped. Wobble did sound like that sometimes.
“What if Peg and Bian aren’t Peg and Bian, but they’re some part of the Thread?” Torg said.
“You think the Thread’s trying to talk to me?” Johnny said. “To me directly—’cause let’s face it, no one else is seeing them. So it’s got to be me it’s talking to.” He laughed. “Crisp, Torg, I’ve got an ego but that sounds like something Betty might have thought.”
“Maybe you’re just the messenger.”
“If that’s the case,” Shabaz said coldly, “then the Thread can vaping pick someone other than Johnny’s ex-girlfriends to do it.”
Johnny considered pointing out that he’d never been with Bian, saw the look, and decided to keep his mouth shut.
Torg’s stripes tilted. “Got our attention, didn’t it?”