The Skids Page 15

  “How long . . . ?” Johnny started to say. “Wait a minute, when did you say you did this—three weeks from your birthday?” He stared at her.

  “It didn’t take three.” Betty smiled grimly. “It took one. I rolled for a week solid, never stopping, never resting. Without any sugar. That’s when I knew: sugar was a lie. And if sugar was a lie, then it probably wasn’t the only one.”

  Her eyes swung forward. “Every single metre I tread, I got angrier. And angrier. And when my clock hit a week, I remember thinking: Go ahead. Put another tree in front of me. I don’t care: I’m not going to stop. I’m going to keep going until you kill me. I’m going to make you create another fourteen days’ worth of trees, you grease-sucking spares. So why don’t you stop wasting everybody’s time and kill me now, because I’m not going to break. And I didn’t.” She took a deep breath. “But the woods did.”

  “The woods . . . broke?” Torg said.

  “The woods broke. There was a sound like thunder, then the ground shook and a tree split open right in front of me. Inside that space—a darkness like night, but instead of stars . . .”

  She let it hang and Johnny completed the thought. “Lines of gold?”

  “I didn’t even think twice. You’d think I would’ve at least paused, but nope. Barely broke rhythm. I thought: Vape it, and plunged right in.”

  “Wow,” Torg said.

  “This wasn’t like what you went through. The edges of the break were clean, the golden lights inside the black were unbroken. There was a flash of pain and a feeling that something was wrong, but nothing like what you all went through. Just a few seconds, then I landed . . . well, it doesn’t matter where I landed, just that it sure the hole wasn’t the Skidsphere.” Her eyes swept over the ghostyard and she shivered.

  “Still,” Torg said, amazed, “you got out. And you survived.”

  “And in the process . . . I broke my home.”

  “What?”

  Betty’s eyes swung. “That feeling of wrong. I can’t be certain, but I’m pretty sure when I broke out . . . I broke a lot more than that. Before me, there were no corpsquakes. None. There wasn’t any black moss.” She hesitated, then glanced at Johnny and added, “There weren’t any disappearances.”

  Johnny’s stripes flinched. “Peg?”

  “She wasn’t the only one,” Betty said grimly. “I know you thought she was unique—sorry, she was unique, that was cruel. But she wasn’t the only skid to disappear. Sixteen have vanished like Peg since I left.”

  “Sixteen?” Johnny and Torg said together, stunned.

  “Sixteen. Nine disappeared in one day alone during Tilt, about twelve years back. That’s when I first started thinking about putting the sphere in stasis.”

  “Impossible,” Johnny said. “We’d know about that.”

  “Would you?” Betty said, her voice getting hard again. “How much do you know about the past, Johnny? How many skids could you name from before you were born?”

  “Uhhh,” he said, stalling as tried to remember all the records he knew. “Twenty? Thirty?”

  “Exactly,” Betty said, her voice filled with bitterness. “We remember the ones on the records until they wipe the records clean and that’s it. Thousands of skids, millions maybe if you count the squids and panzers, since I died and we remember a couple dozen.”

  “And only one we could cite from memory,” Torg added.

  “Right,” Betty said. “Peg wasn’t the only one to fall into the black. And I’m pretty sure I caused the black to happen to the sphere.” She waited for Johnny’s reaction.

  He should have felt furious. Instead, he just felt empty. An eye twitched in Albert’s direction, but Johnny roughly pulled it back. He didn’t care to think about Albert right now and he sure the hole wasn’t about to give him an apology.

  “Do you think . . .” he said. His eyes swung around the ghostyard, staring through the holes in the ceiling. “We made it through. I keep . . . I keep seeing . . .”

  “Johnny . . .”

  And now he got mad. Because in addition to guilt, Betty’s tone contained a resignation that sounded way too much like Torg. “Don’t want to hear it,” he said, popping an arm.

  “Johnny—”

  “Hey! I said no.” He gunned his gears, grinding them. “Forget I asked. Tell me about Wobble. How did you save him?” Vape it, that’s where the conversation had started. The focus was out in his eye again. He corrected it so hard he felt a brief stab of pain as he did.

  Betty watched him for a moment, then her stripe tilted. “I didn’t do much,” she said. “Not nearly what he’s done for me. I found him about fifteen years after I entered the Thread. He’d been left for dead. I managed to drag him to a safehouse and get his self-repair systems online. He did the rest.”

  Nearby, Wobble’s head spun. “Magnum came back, sir. Teddy Bears and lights in the distance. Wobble.”

  “Who tried to kill him?” Johnny asked.

  “SecCore. Wobble’s an Anti.”

  “He doesn’t look like them.”

  “He does sometimes,” Torg said.

  “He does,” Betty agreed. “Somewhere along the line, when the Thread hit a critical point, SecCore started developing different types of Antis to deal with different things. It was a brilliant move and may have actually saved the Thread. Wobble’s type was the most sophisticated.”

  “Okay,” Johnny said. “So why’d he try to kill him?”

  “Not him. Them.” Betty’s stripe darkened almost down to red. “There were thousands of Wobbles. Maybe more. But they got too sophisticated. When they became sentient, some disagreed with a few of SecCore’s methods. So SecCore had them destroyed. All of them.”

  “I’m beginning to develop a serious dislike for this guy,” Torg murmured. In the distance, a long, glowing light appeared in the haze, cutting across the thoroughfare.

  “You and me both,” Betty said grimly. “Had that kind of development continued, maybe they would’ve eventually evolved into something that did more than just kill Vies. They might have fixed the Thread. Apparently, that was the direction Wobble and his kind wanted to go. But SecCore was in charge. His ideas. No one else.”

  Wobble had paused at a mechanical arm like his, but thirty times his size. The former Anti was trying to line up his arm with the mechanical one. He appeared to be humming.

  “I’ve never found another Wobble,” Betty said, watching her friend. “Not in thirty-five years. I don’t know what they did to him, but I know it hurts, and it hurts me that I can’t stop it. As I said, without Wobble, I might not have stayed sane. I wasn’t in much better shape when I found him.”

  Satisfied that he’d matched the arm-angles just right, Wobble hooted, spun his head, then beamed a broken grin as he sped to the front of the pack. “Pings from the probe. I-We are here. Wobble.”

  The far end of the ghostyard appeared no closer than when they’d started. Nonetheless, cutting across the causeway was a translucent tube, ten metres tall, pulsing softly with golden light. It looked completely out of place with the rest of the ghostyard. Without pausing, Wobble tread right though the walls of the tube and stopped inside.

  “What’s he doing?” Bian said, eyeing the tube skeptically.

  “Calling a pulse,” Betty said.

  “What’s a—?”

  The whole ghostyard boomed and washed gold with light. When the glare cleared, Wobble stood inside a ball of luminescence that pulsed in time with the tube.

  “That’s a pulse,” Betty said, grinning as Wobble waved. “It’s the fastest way around the Thread. As far as I can tell, in real time it’s near instantaneous, although time is slower inside the pulse. We’ll have about fifteen minutes to get ready before we arrive.”

  “Arrive where?” Bian said. Beside her, Brolin lay on his treads breathing heavily, black spores bloom
ing and fading on his skin. “We can’t keep bouncing around like this.”

  “Brolin and Shabaz made it this far. This is the last trip; my safehouse is near where we’ll arrive.” She held Bian’s gaze. “This is the fastest way there, Bian. And we need that time to scan ahead and see what we’re getting into.”

  “And if there are Antis there?” Shabaz asked nervously. She looked better than Brolin, but she didn’t look great.

  “That may not be likely. I left very little to indicate that this safehouse was more important than my others. I haven’t been back in ten years. There’s really no reason for SecCore to be there.”

  “Unless he planted Antis at all your safehouses,” Albert said.

  “I got your back,” Brolin rasped, lifting one of his eyes.

  “That’s my brave boy,” Betty said, placing a hand on Brolin’s skin. “Even if there are Antis, Wobble and I can handle anything short of an army. Once we’re inside, SecCore will find it difficult to breach the house. You’ll be safe, at least in the short term, and Brolin and Shabaz can get some care. When the boys and I leave, we shouldn’t be gone for long.”

  “What if the Antis do get in?” Aaliyah said quietly. “How are we supposed to fight them?” She glanced at Albert’s scar.

  “I left a few hidden goodies behind.” Betty grinned. “Hole, there might even be some sugar.”

  Bian rolled her eyes. “Do we at least get to find out what you’re going to do?”

  “We’ll have time inside the pulse. My hollas should work again; I’ll show you everything. It won’t take long.” She smiled, as if at a private joke.

  Torg glanced at Johnny, his stripes tilted. “Ride the lightning?”

  “Live fast,” Johnny murmured, looking down the tube. He followed Torg through the translucent walls. The seemingly large pulse was cramped once nine skids and a turbo-charged Anti fit inside.

  “All right,” Betty said, bringing her hollas up, “Wobble, let’s go.”

  “Fire in the hole-hole.” Wobble grinned and, instantly, the ghostyard stretched out in a stream of golden light, like a picture pulled apart from the sides.

  The world outside went black.

  Immediately, Wobble screeched: “ALARM! ALARM! They bombed the bridge, this worm is dead!”

  All three of Betty’s eyes opened to the max and spread like she was trying to read every holla at once. “Oh no. Oh no.”

  “What’s going on?” Bian said.

  “The pulse is a dead end.” The hollas flew around Betty’s head like a storm. “We’re running through the black.”

  “Then why did we take this thing?” Bian demanded, her voice rising with fear.

  “Because it was fine last time. Wobble, we need an exit. Now.”

  “That might not be a problem,” Torg murmured, staring at the walls. Blooming along the pulse like spores, black fissures met and formed.

  The walls were being eaten.

  “Everyone hold hands!” Betty bellowed, grabbing Brolin and Torg. “Focus on that contact and think of your colours. Wobble, find us a path and clear.”

  As Johnny took Bian in one hand and Aaliyah in the other, Wobble rose into the centre of the sphere and spun. His body flared out and took on his sleek knife-like form. Spinning like a gyroscope, his nose stopped abruptly, pointing down at an angle.

  “Hold on,” Betty whispered. “Colour.”

  As the pulse in front of Wobble’s nose evaporated, the machine lit up like a flare and plunged into the darkness. Thinking of colour, Johnny and the others plunged after him as the last fragments of the pulse fizzled into the black.

  Chapter Nineteen

  It wasn’t as bad as when they’d fallen from the Pipe.

  For one thing, this time they had Wobble. Johnny wasn’t sure what the machine did but there was a white light ahead—a beacon in the black—burning a space for them to follow. And this time he knew what was coming. Hole, he even had a little warning. Not much, but enough to focus: on his colours and the colours of those around him. Plus, he wasn’t alone. Through the line, he could feel Betty anchoring them like a stone. Albert too: struggling along with Johnny to help as many as he could. So, no, it wasn’t as bad.

  But that didn’t mean it was good.

  The pulse died and instantly Johnny felt the empty darkness of the broken Thread tearing at him from the sides. A heartbeat, maybe two, and spores began to flurry across the light ahead—black on white—like a snow-storm in negative.

  Hold on, Johnny sent along the line, as the sides of his skin began to fail. It was inside him, he could feel it—burrowing inside, eating away at his colour, at his name. Aaliyah’s hand started to slip; it felt like it was growing thinner . . .

  Hold on, he thought, clapping down, sending her name—so new, so newly named—time and time and time again.

  The black snowstorm began to blot out the light.

  Hold . . .

  They broke through, hitting the ground hard. The air was crushed from Johnny’s lungs and he had a visceral memory of the end of the Slope. Sucking in air, he smelled burnt metal. His cells were on fire, parts of him felt hollow; he was going to throw up—nearby, someone was retching air. None of his eyes were clear.

  I’m getting sick of doing this, he thought bitterly, attacking the hollow sensation inside, pulling his eyes into focus, one-by-one. His third fought him, staring up at a blurry darkness until his anger surged and his vision snapped into clear. Then again, he thought, looking up, maybe it was in focus.

  Off to his left, he heard Bian call, “Everyone here?” her voice ragged and raw. In his left hand, Aaliyah’s twitched; he hoped that was a good sign. Above them, black on black.

  And some of the black . . . moved.

  “ALERT!” Wobble cried. “Incoming!” Every part of his surface had been scored with acid and smoke; despite this, a dozen fire-wheels spun into the dark. From his sides, two gun emplacements of four barrels each appeared, rotated upwards with a high-pitched whine, and began to fire. The sound of pounding artillery filled the air.

  “Vies,” Betty said grimly. “They follow the breaks.” Her upper eye stared into the falling sky, filled with rage. “Get everyone together; wounded and kids in the middle. You’ll need to take out anything that gets past Wobble and me.”

  “What are you going to do?” Torg breathed, an awe-filled eye on Wobble.

  “The two of us?” A black splotch on her stripe evaporated. Her left Hasty-Arm disappeared, replaced with a gun that made Wobble’s look like a toy. “We’re going to bring the grease-sucking end.”

  Her treads transformed into cylinders, ignited, and she roared into the sky like a rocket. Wobble’s guns folded back into his body and he followed, his white surface beginning to glow like a star.

  “A little higher than Ten,” Torg murmured, watching Betty as her gun shattered the air.

  “Maybe we should . . .” Johnny started to say.

  “Johnny!” Bian screamed. “Albert, somebody get over here!”

  They all were in bad shape. Torres had spots appearing and disappearing across her stripe like some horrific version of a pond splattered by rain. A hitch had developed in Torg’s treads like Wobble’s; his magenta skin was washed pale. One of Bian’s arms drooped. Albert’s scar looked like it might crack open.

  But Brolin and Shabaz . . .

  Spores criss-crossed Shabaz’s body and the two eyes that still worked were tearing up with fear and pain. And Brolin . . . Brolin resembled a deflating balloon, his brown skin almost completely black.

  Johnny couldn’t see his stripes.

  “They’re dying,” Bian cried, tears streaming down her face. “Help them.”

  But Johnny had already tried to save a dying skid. And failed. He couldn’t . . .

  He couldn’t do it alone.

  The thought struck like a
tuning fork through every cell in his body. He couldn’t do it alone.

  But that didn’t mean it couldn’t be done.

  Swallowing his pride, Johnny kept one eye on Brolin and turned the other two on Albert. “You got skids through the dark. You took out Vies and took a hit from an Anti. I need . . .” He took a deep breath. “I need your help. I can’t do this on my own.”

  Albert didn’t even smirk. “Now or never,” he said, placing a hand on Brolin. The skid seemed to be shrinking before their eyes.

  “We can help too,” Bian said, rolling up with Torg.

  “No,” Johnny said. “You both need to get your own systems clear.” When she started to protest, he barked: “I can’t have you dying too. Besides, someone needs to help Aaliyah and Torres.” Although, remarkably, Aaliyah looked clear of spores. Summoning a cockiness that he didn’t really feel, he winked at the cream-green skid. “Get fixed, get focused. Try to help Torres do the same. Then protect Shabaz and watch our backs.”

  “Johnny, I think we need to do this,” Albert said quietly.

  Torg bobbed an eye, but Johnny was already turning back to Brolin.

  He put both hands on the dying skid; Albert did the same. “Brolin,” Johnny said, “hold on, sport.” He tried to coat his thoughts in the colour of Brolin at his best: light, sandy brown, like the dust they scattered across the Slope to make it look good. He thought the Seven’s name, sending it through his hands.

  Then he closed his eyes and drove his thoughts into the black. He heard Albert whisper, “Stay together, Brolin, stay strong.” Then the silver skid followed him in.

  With Daytona, Johnny had tried to connect the healthy with the unhealthy, grafting the one over the other. But he’d concentrated too much on Daytona’s skin—too much on the surface. If he just went after the virus . . .

  Diving into the black, hard and deep, Johnny attacked it with the colour of sand and that single, all important word: Brolin. From somewhere outside his body, he thought he heard someone shout in fear. Focus on the race you’re running, he thought grimly.