The city’s air was cold and still. Leila took a deep breath and felt its chill touch fill her. She was lying on the floor, gasping. The rotunda had looked like a stable portal into the city, but when she’d stepped into it she’d fallen as she’d fallen down through the black pit at the heart of Mikhail’s chamber. There was the same vast, rushing roar howling in her ears, the same lurch in her deep self as gravity took her and snatched her down. She dry-heaved again, and then rolled on to her back. The coldness of the stone was a mercy, shocking her back into herself. The worst of it seemed to be over. She sat up. She was on her own. Leila queried the cuttlefish. The Caretaker had entered the portal with her, then vanished. Maybe his avatar’s still buffering, she thought. There was no time to worry about him. At worst, he’d have dropped back into his body and would now be lying next to Cassiel, swearing. She told the cuttlefish to locate Dieter. While it rummaged through local log files, looking for traces of her brother, she glanced around.
She stood on a broad, sharply curving boulevard. The white buildings along it were simply styled, emanating an absolute mathematical harmony. The pavements and road were full of sleepers. To her right, a tall, elegant tower lifted up into the darkness with needle sharpness. Deodatus hung before it, his ancient face gazing down on the city. She wondered if the image would have time to react when the servers were turned off. Perhaps he’d flicker and, along with the city, just disappear. Perhaps his dead mouth would open and scream. But for now, he was all serene control. It comforted her profoundly to know that he would soon be shut down.
The cuttlefish was still looking for Dieter. She moved over to inspect one of the sleepers. It was a man. His body was beautifully proportioned. He wore a pastel chiton, identical to the ones the idealised laser workers had. A small blanket covered his head. She lifted it up. A face gazed up, as pale and emptily beautiful as the moon above. She let the blanket fall again. He slept on, his chest rising and falling in the perpetual night.
The cuttlefish nuzzled her. It had found Dieter. It was also flashing confusion, requesting permission to double-check the Shining City’s location. Error codes she didn’t fully understand seemed to hint at some sort of geo-spatial anomaly. Leila agreed, then told it to jump her to her brother.
The world changed and there he was, concentrating hard in his circular workshop.
She’d watched him work so often. For an instant, memories overwhelmed her. She remembered him as a child, infuriating their mother by taking apart every piece of tech they owned to see how it worked, then as a teenager, recreating the same cluttered workspace in squat after squat. She remembered the tools he’d built to heal her. And she saw him as he now was, still beavering away, believing that she’d rejected her afterlife and let herself die a true death. She fingered the locket at her throat. The memories that would restore the true past to him shifted within her.
‘It’ll work,’ she reassured herself. ‘He’ll come back with me.’
Little had changed since her last visit to this space. The two low couches were still in the centre of the room. But the original Deodatus victims were gone. Instead, the rapidly-assembled fetches of his new victims shimmered on them. Each lay still, apparently unconscious. Memories of the Pornomancer’s death agonies and of Kedrov’s desiccated body ran through Leila’s mind. Whatever else was happening, it was a relief to see both of them lying dormant, if not entirely at peace.
Dieter moved between them, blurring between different versions of himself. He was adjusting transparent, flexible pipes that ran into the back of each of their heads. The pipes soared up and disappeared into a globe of dark black-blue liquid. It looked like a drop of deep ocean tossed up by a storm and suspended in midair. It was about the same size as the exercise balls Leila used to bounce around on at the gym. When she focused on it, it seemed to expand, filling her field of vision then stretching into her mind. It was the raw stuff of memory, dense with the life experiences of Kedrov and the Pornomancer. To help Leila heal, Dieter had created a similar ball of his own memories, making it easier for her to draw on them as needed.
But why these two? she wondered. And what for?
Dieter had said he was raising an army for Deodatus. But the pyramid looked like it was already well supplied with workers, and had been for a long time. And in any case, it was difficult to see how memories of vastly acquisitive art collection and production line sex could help create more of them. She thought back to the previous two victims – a professional eater and a military psychiatrist with a developed interest in torture – and wondered about them, too.
But time was pressing. Leila needed to reclaim her brother for herself. She let him see her.
‘Fuck!’ said Dieter. A spanner dropped from his fuzzed hand. It hit the floor and rang out an echoing clatter. ‘Leila. What are you doing here?’ His voice skipped between different versions of itself, as if it had been run through a broken auto tuner.
‘I’ve come to get you out of here. And sort this mess out.’
‘But you’re dead.’ He looked flabbergasted.
Leila stepped forwards and put a hand on his shoulder. Her other hand gripped the locket at her throat. She tugged and it came away. She held it tight in her fist. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You’ve been lied to. Deodatus rewrote your memories of me. I didn’t kill myself. We were together in the same flat for two years. Until that fucking box screwed you up.’
Disbelief and shock rang through him. ‘No,’ he said.
‘You succeeded, Dieter. You healed me and you helped me live.’ She thought of her own experience of being rewritten. ‘Look back into your past. There’ll be discontinuities. Jagged edges, where memories are missing.’
‘It’s so painful,’ he said softly, to himself as much as her. He put his hand on hers and let it rest there for a moment. Then he pulled it away from his shoulder and stepped back. ‘Gods,’ he said, and his voice had a torn quality to it. ‘Deodatus told me the Pantheon might construct a version of you to use against me. I never thought they’d stoop that low.’ He stumbled back, resting against the end of Kedrov’s bench. He couldn’t look at Leila. ‘Please, go. Just go.’
‘Dieter, it’s me. I’m real. Far more real than anything in this bloody place. You must remember what they did to people, how they rewrote them.’ She wanted to grab him and shake him. ‘That’s what this place – what Deodatus – has done to you. All this – it’s just a Kneale Pit. A broken bit of history that’s still screwing people over. Nothing more.’
To Leila’s surprise, Dieter laughed. ‘Kneale Pit?’ His unfocused face smiled, and an entire history of his joy raced past her. The smile held the innocent joy of a ten-year-old, then the focused confidence of a brilliant twenty-something, then the stoned bliss of a teenager experimenting with his first high. ‘Oh, this isn’t a Kneale Pit, Leila. This is the real deal.’
Her timer pinged. Time was running out. ‘It’s destroying you.’ She shifted the pendant in her hands. Its dense weight reassured her. ‘And it’s going to destroy Station. When the laser fires, it’ll crack the Wart open. And that’ll be the end of everything.’
‘Bless you, Leila,’ said Dieter gently. ‘I always had to explain things to you, didn’t I? It’s not that at all.’
‘Oh for gods’ sake, Dieter. Don’t be so bloody patronising. I’m not a little girl anymore. I’m here to save you.’
He smiled. ‘You’re not rescuing me. I’m rescuing everyone on Station. From the Pantheon. From a past that’s a lie and a failure. And from a society that kills the dead.’ He smiled again, this time so very sadly. ‘That’s why they’ve sent you to try and stop me. My weakest link. Here you are, and it’s working. I can’t even bring myself to call security on you.’
That last comment heartened Leila. Perhaps she was getting through to him. ‘I’m your strongest link,’ she replied gently. ‘I’m not a lie. I’m the way things really were.’ She wondered exactly how much memory they’d taken. ‘Do you remember the last time I saw you?’
‘Just before you – my sister – chose a true death?’ Pain leapt across his face. ‘Of course I do. Don’t talk to me about that.’
Now it was Leila’s turn to smile sadly. ‘No. In this room. A few days ago. Ambrose and I came to find you.’ She wondered whether to mention Ambrose’s death. But Dieter might refuse to believe her. ‘Deodatus wiped it out of your memory. He’s taken so much from you.’ She held up the pendant. ‘I’ve come to give it all back. This’ll transfer the last two years to you. Highlights of our lives together.’
‘And where did you get these memories from?’
‘Dit.’
‘So you’ve even found him? The gods must have turned my life upside down. No wonder you’re so well briefed.’ Cynicism infected his smile. ‘I hope he put up a fight.’
The timer pinged again, more urgently.
‘Dieter. IT’S ME. I am Leila, I am your sister, I have always been your sister and I always will be. And we have to get you out of here.’ She threw caution to the winds. ‘A couple more minutes and we’re turning off the servers. The ones that hold this place. We’re deactivating the Shining City.’
‘That won’t touch the Shining City. The server henge is a gateway. A portal. Nothing else.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘You’ve got all the way down here – and that’s a long, long way from Station. You say it’s your second visit. And you’re telling me you don’t know where you really are? What this place really is?’ His voice became hard, dismissive. ‘You’re working the naivety thing too hard. Even my sister would have got that by now.’
The timer pinged a final warning. Thirty seconds left. ‘Fuck it,’ said Leila. She jumped, appearing right next to him. ‘You can finish patronising me later,’ she said, then raised her hand. ‘Once you’ve remembered who I really am.’ Then she pushed the pendant against his forehead, triggering the memory injection.
‘No!’ he howled.
Memories exploded out towards him. Leila wasn’t quite sure what she expected to happen next – the brief disorientation that Dit had predicted, a sudden transformation, Dieter turning to her and at last acknowledging the truth of his situation. And then they would flee together.
Instead, defences leapt into being.
‘Oh no,’ she breathed.
The link between them vanished and the data transfer slammed to a halt. Leila felt the memory block Dit had given her shatter as a cold, hard, alien presence smashed through it and tried to push into her mind. Her own shields snapped into place and the counter-attack bounced off them, but not before it had stabbed out and erased her copy of Dit’s memories. Then, there was nothing but chaos.
‘FUCK!’ yelled Dieter.
He strobed through multiple versions of himself, static glitching his whole body. His image generators crashed and rebooted, pulling him out of then back into existence. ‘UCKUCKUCKUFFFFF,’ he howled, his voice a series of cracked, broken repetitions. As his avatar broke down the artificial in him overwhelmed all else, and his living self was lost.
‘NO!’ screamed Leila. She tried to pull her brother to her but her arms went through him. ‘Shit,’ she said, looking around desperately. ‘Shit, shit, shit.’ Dieter’s voice had become an abstract digital howl. She remembered the last time she’d been here – pressure men bursting through the door, surfing a wave of flies. Soon they’d come again.
But someone else arrived first.
‘Hey there,’ drawled the Caretaker, dropping into being. ‘Here you are.’
‘I’ve broken Dieter,’ she gasped, panicked.
Dieter gave one last howl and winked out of existence.
‘Gods. He’s dead.’
‘No, that just looked like an emergency shut down. No biggie.’
Leila’s alarm hit zero and howled.
‘Oh, and don’t worry about Cassiel crashing the city,’ he reassured her as she hushed the alarm. ‘I don’t think she can. Turns out Cormac Redonda don’t know shit about this place.’
Leila noticed a gentle buzzing. Dark insects orbited him.
‘No.’ She started backing away. ‘You’ve fallen. You’re one of them.’
‘What? Oh, the little guys.’ He chuckled. ‘No way, Leila. These aren’t flies. They’re bees.’ A huge, confident smile. ‘Much more my scene.’
‘What are you?’ breathed Leila.
‘Still working that one out.’ The Caretaker looked up, as if listening. ‘Shit. Cassiel’s got problems. Here…’ He held his hand out. ‘Come with me.’
‘We can’t leave without Dieter.’
‘We’ll find another way to reach him. And without us, Cassiel’s in deep shit.’ Yellow-black insects buzzed lazily around them. One of them was perched on his shoulder. Another nestled by his ear. He saw her looking at them. ‘You see? Bees. They’re pretty cool. But we really need to go. If Cassiel goes down and we get caught, you won’t be able to do shit for your brother.’
One last glance around the room. No sign of Dieter. The Caretaker was right. There was no other choice. She took his hand. The Shining City vanished.
They were in the store room again. ‘Welcome back,’ said Cassiel. ‘About bloody time. I cut the power cables to the servers, but they have an internal back-up. I was getting ready to blow them up.’
‘That won’t make any difference,’ replied Leila. ‘They don’t hold the Shining City. Dieter said they were just a gateway. To somewhere very far from here.’
‘Then we’re screwed.’
And then there was a buzzing roar and a storm of flies burst through the arch. Fallen minds were just visible behind them, hurtling in to attack. Leila felt fear explode out of Cassiel. There was a vast shame, too, and a deep, anguished sense of loss. Leila felt empathy fill her. She understood the mind’s despair. She’d failed to rescue Dieter and lost the key that would unlock his true past.
‘Yeah, whatever,’ said the Caretaker. ‘I’ve got this.’ He reached a hand out. The flies stopped and hung in the air for a second, and then gravity took them and they were a thousand black raindrops pattering to the floor.
Cassiel tossed Leila’s disc to him. Lightning filled her. She howled with savage joy and was on the fallen minds like a weaponised demon.