Ink and Bone

Wolfe was a dim shadow on his left. He found his door and slammed it open, and broke into uncontrollable coughing. ‘Morgan!’ he shouted. ‘Morgan—’ He couldn’t see her. There was smoke here too, a thick, reeking darkness. He scrambled over fallen bedclothes and felt on the bed, all the way to the corner. Then the floor. He yanked open the small bathroom door.

Morgan was on the floor. He picked her up, and she lay limp in his arms. His lungs were screaming for air, shuddering for it, and he had to breathe, but when he did it was like breathing in flames. Jesse coughed and gagged and struggled to find some clear air in the miasma. I can’t leave her, he thought. She was heavy in his arms, and he needed air, but he couldn’t leave her.

Somehow, he was kneeling on the floor, with Morgan cradled against him. He didn’t know if she was even breathing. The fire was a roar now, and it seemed to him as though the metal of the far wall was soft and sagging in. A silvery tear ran down, and caught bright-green fire.

Someone grabbed his head from behind, and before he could resist, he felt a suffocating pressure over his face, and then a sudden cold rush of air. He breathed, coughed, breathed again sweet, clean air. Someone had put a mask on his face. It clicked and hissed and glowed with a soft amber light, but all he saw was a thick, blinding cloud of greyish-green smoke beyond the glass.

He could breathe. God, he could breathe.

‘Go!’ That was Wolfe’s voice. ‘Go!’

Jess struggled up to his feet. He felt sick and dizzy, and the floor beneath him seemed soft and muddy. He got Morgan into the corridor. One direction was blocked by an eerie, dripping curtain of green flame, melting and burning everything it touched. He went the other way, step after step, breath after breath, and his head began to clear.

Wolfe, he thought, and turned. Wolfe was behind him, but he was failing, and as Jess watched, he slid weakly down the wall, and stopped moving. He had no mask. How he’d made it so far, Jess couldn’t imagine, but his strength was gone.

Jess put Morgan down and ran back. He gasped in as deep a breath as he could from the mask, then ripped it loose and pressed it to Wolfe’s face. He grabbed him under the arms and dragged.

The rest of it came in flashes, like a dream … a weirdly beautiful eddy of green smoke, drifting past his face. The shock from the handle of the baggage car door. Holding Wolfe’s wrist to the seal.

Dragging Morgan, then Wolfe, across the threshold and sealing the door against the roar and smoke and flame.

I can rest now, he thought. Just a little. It’s all right if I rest. His lungs felt thick and heavy, and he couldn’t seem to clear them.

He tried to close his eyes, but there was shouting, and Captain Santi’s face. Glain, bloody and firing a gun. Someone was pulling him along by an arm. Then he was on his feet, ru

He was ru

There was an indescribably huge noise, a wave of heat, and as he spun Jess saw the Alexandrian Express bloom into a poisonous flower of metal and fire. He was flung backward hard enough to stun him, but as he opened his eyes again he saw the huge bloom of flame and smoke rising up towards the black sky. Twisted metal sped overhead; some embedded itself in tree trunks. Smaller trees had been torn to shreds, and some toppled in eerie silence. The whole world went almost silent, with a high, thin ringing on top.

Jess managed to push himself up on an elbow, and by the confusing flicker of the fire, he saw Morgan beside him. He reached over to stroke a hand through her hair, then turned away to cough and retch. Everything came out green.

Someone stumbled over him, a blond giant half-carrying a girl with a cut on her head … it was Thomas, and the girl was Glain, he was starting to put it back together now. Thomas sat Glain down against an undamaged tree root and went to roll Wolfe and Santi over on their backs. Santi was moving weakly, and tried to push himself up. Dario was there. Khalila.

Wolfe lay where he’d fallen, very still.

Jess crawled up to his knees. His hearing cracked and popped, and he thought that might have been the fire, but he couldn’t be sure. Nothing seemed to match up to what he was seeing, and even that didn’t make much sense at the moment. His lungs were still burning, and his eyes blurred every time he blinked. His head ached.

With the help of a tree trunk, he got to his feet, and found himself staring at a piece of thick metal as big as his arm that had buried itself edge-on in the wood. It was still smoking and black on the edges. Jess took a step and almost went down. Someone caught him, he couldn’t see who it was until his helper had moved past him – one of Santi’s soldiers.

As the group slowly re-formed around Wolfe’s still body, the man opened his eyes suddenly, blinked, and raised his head to look at the inferno of the train. Then his chest rose and fell a few times before he accepted Santi’s offered hand to help him to his feet. He bent over to retch up green bile.

Alive. Jess couldn’t believe it. He felt a sudden rush of giddiness, and then something else, something acidic boiling in his stomach, and he stumbled into the firelit darkness to bend over and cough more of the poison out of his lungs. Too dark to see if he’d thrown up blood. All too possible, considering the stains on his shirt and the disco

He was still on his knees when the Burners found him, put a knife to his throat, and dragged him off into the darkness.

They didn’t take him far. He could still see the carnival glow of the burning train through the trees, hear the groans and snaps and hisses as it fell to pieces.

He was too weak to fight, and truthfully, too tired. His lungs burnt, and he ached in every muscle. When they finally let him fall, he was strangely grateful.

Dragging him even this far seemed a lot of trouble, if they were going to kill him.

‘Which one are you?’

Jess tried to focus. There were three men, two of them standing behind him; one was a burly man in a thick slouch coat who smelt of stale sweat and vinegar, and the other was older, shorter, wearing a knitted cap. He’d tried to remember their faces, on the unlikely chance that he survived.

The third man, the one who’d spoken, he couldn’t see very well, until the man crouched down and looked him right in the face. Even then, it was hard to bring him into focus; the smoke had left Jess’s eyes blurred and watery, and it took a lot of blinking to make out details.

He had a moment of confusion, because it seemed like he knew this man … and then he didn’t. The man had thi

Then Jess made out the light grey of the man’s eyes, and put it together. ‘Jess Brightwell,’ he said. His voice sounded thick and hoarse, and he coughed. ‘I knew your son. Guillaume Danton.’

‘Brightwell. He said you were quick,’ the man said. ‘My son liked you. You and the Arab girl, what was her name? Khalila. He said you were the best. He wanted to save you.’

‘Save us,’ Jess repeated. ‘Save us from what?’

‘From yourselves. From selling your soul to the devil.’

Jess sighed. ‘If you’re going to try to convert me to Burner ways, just kill me and get it over with,’ he said. ‘We’d both be happier.’

‘I won’t waste my breath. You have to learn how to listen before you will hear.’

‘They’ll be looking for me. Is this all you have left? Three of you? Didn’t go the way you pla

Danton reached over and took a handful of Jess’s hair. It hurt when he yanked and forced Jess’s chin higher. ‘I want you to tell me who killed my son.’

Jess swallowed hard. ‘He died in an accident. Nobody killed him. It just happened.’