Boneshaker

This was a man accustomed to being obeyed, and Zeke was not a boy accustomed to obeying.

But his queasy-stomached nervousness did not want to know what would happen if he fought, or ran — and his chest was aching from the struggle of simply breathing. He could figure out the details later. He could plot and plan and escape later, but for now, he could remove his mask. And that was enough.

The itching, burning, rubbed-raw spots around the mask’s straps burned like pepper on his skin, but then, with a buckle and a clip, the visor and filters came falling off his face. Zeke dropped the mask on the floor and tore at the red places with his fingernails.

Yaozu grabbed the boy’s forearm firmly and pulled it away. “Do not scratch. It will only make it worse. The doctor will give you an ointment, and the sting will ebb in time. This was your first time in a mask?”

“For longer than a few minutes, yeah,” he admitted, lowering his hands and struggling to keep them still.

“I see.” He picked up Zeke’s mask and examined it, turning it over and picking at the filter locks, and the visor. “This is an older model,” he observed. “And it needs to be cleaned.”

Zeke cringed. “Tell me about it.” Then he asked, “Where are we going?”

“Down. Underneath the old station that never was.” He gave Zeke an appraising sort of stare, taking in the boy’s battered clothes and uncut hair. “I think you’ll find the accommodations quite exceptional.”

“Exceptional?”

“Indeed. We’ve created a home down here. Perhaps you’ll be surprised.”

Zeke said, “Most of what I’ve seen down here looked pretty rundown and crummy.”

“Ah, but you haven’t yet been to the station, have you?”

“No, sir.”

“Well then. Let me be the first to welcome you.” He went to the wall, where he pulled another lever.

Off in some place Zeke couldn’t see, chains rattled and gears turned. And right in front of him, the wall slid along a track, revealing a glorious room on the other side, filled with light.

It was also filled with marble and brass, and polished wood seats with velveteen cushions. The floor was a mosaic of tiles and metal. It shined a reflection off every corner, every crystal and candle. But the longer Zeke looked at the lights the longer he thought that maybe they weren’t flames at all; that maybe they were something else. After all, the lovely curved ceiling was not burned or smudged with soot.

Once he’d caught his breath, and once the wall had resumed its seamless position behind him, Zeke asked, “What are those lights up there? What powers them? I don’t smell gas, and I don’t see smoke.”

“They are powered by the future.” It was a cryptic answer, but it was not offered with any flair or tease. “This way. I’ll arrange a room for you, and a bath. I’ll ask the doctor if we can scare up any clothes, and perhaps some food and water. You’ve had a long set of days, and they haven’t treated you kindly.”

“Thanks,” he said without meaning it. But he liked the idea of food, and he was thirstier than he’d ever been before in his life — though he hadn’t noticed until the mention of water. “This place is beautiful,” he added. “You’re right. I’m surprised. I’m… impressed.”

“It is easy for it to be beautiful. No one ever treated it like a train station. It was not finished when the Blight came. The doctor and I finished small parts of it, like this waiting area, with the materials that had already been brought for its construction. It was almost perfect, but it needed some alterations.” He pointed at the ceiling, where three giant pipes with fans were installed in a row. They were not turning at that moment, but Zeke thought that the noise of them must have been amazing when they were active.

“Is that for air?”

“Very good, yes. It’s for air. The fans only run a few hours a day, for that is all they’re needed. We bring it in from above the Blight, above the city. We run pipes and hoses up over the wall’s edge,” he said. “That’s why you can breathe in here. But we do not treat this as a living area. The rooms, kitchens, and wash areas are this way.”

Zeke followed almost eagerly, wanting to see what was next. But he noticed before he was ushered out of the gleaming room with its high ceiling and padded chairs that there was a door at the room’s far end. This door was sealed like the others, but it was also barricaded with iron crossbeams and heavy locks.

Yaozu led Zeke to a platform the size of an outhouse and pulled a low gate shut, then tugged at a handle on a chain. Again the sound of metal unfurling clanked and clicked in some echoing distance.

The platform dropped, not like the broken airship but like a gentle machine with a job to do.

Zeke grabbed the gate and held onto it.

When the platform stopped, Yaozu retracted the gate and put a hand on Zeke’s shoulder, guiding him to the right down a hallway lined with four doors on alternating sides. All of the doors were painted red, and all had a lens as big as a pe

The door on the end opened without being unlocked first, a fact that Zeke noted with some confusion. Was it comforting, the impression that they did not mean to lock him in? Or was it unsettling, for he would have no assurance of privacy?

But the room itself was nicer than any he’d ever visited before, plush with thick blankets on a bed with a fat mattress, and bright from lamps that hung from the ceiling and sat on the tables beside the bed. Curtains hung long and thick from a rod on the far end of the room, which struck Zeke as strange.

He stared at them until Yaozu said, “No, of course there’s no window there. We’re now two floors underground. The doctor just likes the look of curtains. Now. Make yourself comfortable. There’s a washbasin in the corner. Make use of it. I’ll tell the doctor you’re here, and I’m sure he’ll see to your wound himself.”

Zeke washed his face in the basin, which nearly turned the water to sooty mud. When he was as clean as he was going to get, he wandered the room and touched all the pretty things he saw, which took a while. Yaozu was right; there was no window, not even a bricked-up place, on the other side of the curtains. It was merely a bare patch of wall covered in the same wallpaper as everything else.

He checked the doorknob.

It turned easily. The door opened, and Zeke poked his head out into the corridor, where he saw nothing and no one except for a few stray bits of furniture against the wall, and a carpeted ru

The message was clear: He was free to leave if he could figure out how, and if he wanted to. Or that’s how they wanted it to look, anyway. For all Zeke knew, once he got to the lift an alarm might sound and poisoned arrows might fire from a dozen directions at once.

He doubted it, but he didn’t doubt it enough to try anything.

And then he noticed that Yaozu had taken his mask, and he understood the situation a little bit better.

Zeke sat on the edge of the bed. It felt like something smoother and thicker than a feather mattress, and it bounced under his body when he moved. He was still very thirsty, but he’d dirtied the only water in the room. His head hurt, but he didn’t know what to do about it. He was still hungry, but he didn’t see any food handy, and when it came down to it, he was more exhausted than famished.

He pulled his feet up onto the bed without removing his shoes. He curled his knees up and hugged at the nearest pillow, and he closed his eyes.