Debris

10.

Dawn, Mornday, with the Tear splitting silent and smooth around the prow of the near-empty ferry. In the raw sunlight on river spray, I thought of the Unbound.

The Unbound were troublemakers, always in the background, always sabotaging the work of good, honest pion-binders. They were the figures in dark cloaks who would not show their face.

My mother had told me few fairy tales when I was a child. "You should learn about real life," she would tell me, "because in real life there are no magic solutions, there are no first sons to sweep you from the arms of dark danger. There is hard work, kopacks, and status. Remember that."

But I knew a few. There was one about a knight and his princess. Rusclan and Ludmilla. On the day they were to marry Ludmilla was carried away by one of Rusclan's rivals. Through many trials Rusclan hunted and found his beloved. But that wasn't the point. The point was his supposedly faithful and Unbound friend, the only man Rusclan would trust with his powerful and pion-strengthened sword. The night after Rusclan had regained his bride his friend broke that trust, and killed the hero with his own weapon.

After which Rusclan was healed by a good binder and went on to save the princess again and probably the day. Something like that. But again, that wasn't the point. It was the Unbound that called to me, skulking from his place in the darkness. What could it have felt like to play shadow to a knight like Rusclan, to care for his pionpowerful sword when all it looked like to you was a hunk of steel? Would you feel used?

The man didn't have a name. He was just Unbound.

So, that's what I was. Untrustworthy, unnamed. Unbound.

I felt dark against the rays of the new sun. But as I disembarked from the Tear and made my way toward Darkwater I realised how wrong the fairy tales were. We did not skulk in the darkness because we belonged there. We stuck to the darkness because that was where we had been pushed. Because of the crowds and the offended looks.

And because that's where the debris was. If debris didn't like the shadows, the crevices, the cracks and the darkness, then we wouldn't have to walk in it.

Debris skulked, we merely followed.

Breakbell had not yet sounded as I reached the door to the sublevel, but it was unlocked – Kichlan had arrived before me. I glanced up before I stepped into the stairwell and caught sight of clouds rushing over the Keeper's Peak, whipped along by a wind as strong as the Tear's current had been. They shaded the promising morning sun.

Sure enough, Kichlan and Lad were alone in the sublevel, and both avidly poking at a young fire.

"Morning," I said, and shrugged off my heavy jacket. It was pleasant in the sublevel, warm and sleep-inducing, far nicer than the outside promised to be. "Clouds are coming." Hands thrust out, I warmed myself by the struggling flames.

"Tan!" Lad leapt to his feet, opened his arms, checked himself visibly and compromised by patting me on the shoulder. "Good morning, Tan."

"Good morning, Lad."

He beamed, and crouched down to the fire.

Kichlan and I shared a raised-eyebrow glance. "He's being good," Kichlan mouthed, before standing up, and passing me something wrapped in linen.

"What's this?" I flipped open the cloth and found a cool pastry, about the size of my hand.

"Eugeny and I have been talking," Kichlan said. "We decided you don't eat enough." He couldn't quite meet my eye.

"Did you now?" I hardened my expression and fixed him with my gaze. I didn't need handouts, least of all from Kichlan, Eugeny or Lad. They who had hardly anything to share.

"Didn't," Lad said, from his position by the fire, leaning so far into the fireplace I expected him to topple at any moment.

"Lad!" Kichlan snapped. "Get your head out of there."

His younger brother sat back, expression puzzled, verging on hurt. "But you didn't, bro. Geny said Tan was hungry and you said she wouldn't want to. You said she's too…" he screwed his face up. "Don't remember."

With a sigh, Kichlan patted his brother. "Ever the diplomat, Lad."

Lad grinned, and returned to his fire.

"Too what?" But I couldn't feel angry, not at the embarrassment colouring Kichlan from neck to forehead. "What am I, exactly?"

"Proud."

I thought of the ball, of sitting alone in the shadows. "Then you don't know me as well as you think you do." I bit into the pastry. Potato, pumpkin, and turnip were soft. I tasted pepper and the faint dripping of lard holding it all altogether. Before leaving I had drunk my usual tea, and scrounged leftovers from a meal Devich had made on Rest: the crusts of bread he hadn't wanted to eat, and browning apple peel.

I just had to hold on. Another night like the ball, more of Devich's important friends, and I would make someone listen. I would make someone understand. Or Tsana would wake up to her cowardly self and together, we would open a tribunal. We would tell the truth and the veche would find whoever was behind those pions burning fierce, and with the compensation – surely, I would be compensated – I would have enough kopacks to eat. To keep my home.

Just a little while longer.

"Thank the old man for me, won't you?" I sucked oil from the tips of my fingers.

"I'll tell him you said that with your fingers in your mouth." Kichlan grinned. "Trust me, that will be thanks enough."

As breakbell sounded above us, the rest of the team filtered in. Uzdal and Mizra were wrapped in extra scarves and knitted hats, their pale features nearly lost amidst the clothes. Sofia was so heavily layered she walked like a child dressed for the snow. A few strands of her dull hair escaped a large knitted hat, to stick against her cheek and nose. Natasha followed, brown hair tucked into a tight dark cap pulled down as far as her eyebrows.

"Lovely day outside," Uzdal muttered. Even in the sublevel warmth he kept his layers on.

"If we're really lucky it might snow on us again," Mizra added. "Wouldn't that be nice?"

Kichlan collected metallic jars and filled his brown leather bag. "Then the sooner we fill quota, the better."

"Other's oath," Uzdal muttered.

We left the Darkwater sublevel and entered an outside world growing rapidly dim and cold. I tucked my hands into the pockets of my jacket, tugged my leather-lined cap down to cover my ears. The wind that had whipped the clouds along started whipping us as soon as we stepped into the street. It was funnelled by the buildings and careened down Darkwater with a scared-dog howl. Above us, clouds settled in like hounds for the night, dark fur raised and shaggy.

It was hard to believe I had ridden the Tear in clear sunlight that morning.

"The snow will start any moment," Mizra said as we turned the first corner in what I was beginning to learn was our usual Mornday route. "And then, if Lad finds another sewerage vent, the day will be complete." He clasped his hands behind his back in a fair imitation of Kichlan. "Because if collecting doesn't make us as miserable, as cold, and as dirty as possible, then we're simply not doing it right."

I grinned at him and glanced at Kichlan. He was entertaining Lad that morning who, as usual, led us from the front. Together they were pointing at lampposts, rooftops, effluent vents. But at each one Lad just shook his head. Not a good sign, as far as the quota was concerned.

"What is it with this place and brothers?" I asked, keeping my voice low.

Mizra shrugged. "Don't know about those two, but twins always end up as collectors."

"Really?"

"Truly."

"Other's oath," Uzdal muttered again.

What had started Uzdal's sudden fascination with the phrase? I thought for a moment. "I haven't met many twins like yourselves." Had I met any at all? No binders that I could think of, not at any circle level.

Both made identical faces of disgust. "Sad truth about the world, Tanyana," Mizra said. "Twins aren't particularly, how shall I put it? Desired."

I did my best to appear perplexed, and assumed that it worked when Uzdal gave his head an exasperated shake.

"Most twins end up like us." Uzdal pointed to himself and his brother. "Debris collectors. Fallen. So, most mothers, if they find out they're expecting twins, well, they do something about it."

"They abort the children," Sofia, walking behind us, interrupted. "That's what these two are trying to say, although they obviously don't want to. Of course, if you'd just thought about it for a moment you might have worked that out for yourself."

I ignored the criticism, and stared horrified at Mizra and Uzdal. I had heard that some healers could see a baby as it grows by the flow of pions between mother and child. What did a baby destined to collect debris – an Unbound baby – what did they look like to pion sight? Would the flow be interrupted, the womb dull compared to the rest of her pion-bright body?

"That's horrible," I whispered.

"We know," Mizra said.

"That's real life." Sofia pushed past us, to walk with Kichlan instead.

"Why do they kill them?" I asked the twins. "Why are twins, most twins, why are they like us?"

Uzdal glanced ahead, where Lad walked between Sofia and his brother, laughing. "Why is Lad one of us? Because he is broken, Tanyana."

"And we are broken, all of us, in some way," Mizra continued. "We're like that crack in the wall that fell on you. Debris likes broken things. It likes us."

Likes? He reminded me of Lad, talking about debris as though it could think, as though it could feel. But I knew what he meant.

Me, with my scars, with the bone Grandeur had knocked into my brain. Lad, with his crooked smile and childish laugh. But the twins?

"Being twins doesn't make you broken. A shattered skull-" I swallowed "-that makes you broken. So I don't understand. And Kichlan isn't broken, Sofia isn't broken."

"Nice of you to say so," Mizra said.

"Yes, terribly nice," Uzdal said. "But we know what we are. And not everyone who is broken has the scars to prove it."

"Although we-"

"-are not among them."

I blinked at them. "You're not one of the ones who don't… what?"

The boys chuckled. "When we're somewhere warmer."

"Less windswept."

"We'll show you what we mean."

Lamps spluttered into life as we walked, and as I tried to work out what under the Keeper they were talking about. Broken was a good word for it. Broken was the bones in my head, the skin on my left side. And Lad, yes, I could see how he could be broken. There was something in him that didn't work the way it should have. But what? I knew what had broken me. What had broken Lad?

Could any of us be fixed?

"Guess it's dark enough to turn the lights on." Kichlan had started to hang back as the twins, evidently tired of confusing me, moved forward to engage Lad.

Thunder rolled above our heads, low and near. Lightning flickered against the dark sky.

"We still collect in the rain, do we?" I glanced up at Kichlan, trying for an innocent and hopeful expression.

He nodded. "Today we do. We just scraped above quota last sixnight, and that was with an emergency. But those are rare, we can't rely on another one and I will not risk something that close again."

Lightning flashed, suddenly bright, suddenly plunging the street into darkness. In the heavy silence that followed Kichlan and I looked to each other and turned to the lamp we had just passed. In a moment it flared, so bright I expected the glass to break with the strain, then it cut off suddenly into the cloud-weary darkness.

"That's not lightning," I whispered. As if on cue, my wrist sprang into brilliant light. "Again?"

As soon as our suits lit up, then Lad, Mizra, Uzdal and Sofia hurried to Kichlan's side. Even Natasha, dragging further behind than I had noticed, ran to join us.

"Where is it?" Uzdal asked. Kichlan drew his sleeve up, exposed his wrist and tilted it at the bare wall of a nearby building. It shone steady, sharp and bright, while down the street the lamps blinked on and off.

"It must be near," Natasha murmured. She stood beside me, watching the lights.

But Sofia shook her head. "No, I don't think so." She pointed at Kichlan's projected map. It was larger than the one Devich had helped me to produce, the ciphers clearer. I found Kichlan's me sign easily. It was solid, bright and purposeful. I remembered my own, lost in the jumble of images, and twitched the sleeve of my jacket to cover my suit. But as my fingers brushed the band, I felt the symbols move in short bursts of pressure and warmth. With a gasp, I flicked the sleeve up again and I saw it. The symbol, my symbol, throbbed beneath my fingers as if I had called it.

"There." Kichlan pointed to his map, and soon the rest of us saw the debris cipher. It flickered in a far corner. Not bright, not steady, not close.

"Why is it so far away?" Mizra asked.

Something large and wet splashed on the top of my head. Then another on my arm. Even as I realised they were raindrops, I felt the symbols move again. They rolled beneath my touch, tugged and pressed, tilted and guided. I followed them, smoothed my fingers to the left and turned my wrist. When they stilled, and I peered beneath my fore and middle finger, the debris cipher was there, ready like my own. Beating. Living.

I considered the path my fingers had followed. The crests, the dips and the corners. I looked at the symbols sprayed on the building wall.

Didn't make any sense to me.

"Why are they calling us?" Mizra continued. "We're too far away! There has to be another team closer than us."

"That's why." Sofia gestured to the flickering lamps.

Kichlan, who had been studying his map, turned to her. "Factory?"

"Has to be." She looked grim.

Kichlan said, "Then we need to hurry. Time to run."

"Run?" Mizra's voice rose, in both tone and volume. "What, no horse?"

"There's no time, Mizra. Shut your mouth and run."

Kichlan grabbed Lad and pushed him forward. The big man easily outpaced us as we struggled to follow Kichlan. My legs and lungs quickly ached. Rain fell in ever larger, ever more frequent drops. The wet pavement was slippery, and in the darkness of the skies and the uncertain light of struggling lamps, I came close to losing my footing and crashing face first to the stones.

Kichlan grabbed my arm and helped keep me steady.

"It's raining!" Mizra yelled, as he ran ahead of us, breath loud and hoarse in the artificial night. "That's even better than snow."

"What's happening?" I gasped to Kichlan as we skidded around a corner. He stopped long enough to flash his map against a nearby wall. My fingers itched to touch my suit, to follow the symbols like he was doing.

"It's probably a factory." We waited as Sofia screamed at Lad, who had continued to run ahead, and the large man returned. "Hub of pions, large amounts of debris can collect unnoticed. If it's left long enough this is what happens." We both glanced at the dancing lights. "Someone hasn't been doing their collecting properly."

I gasped in breaths, sagged against a wall and clutched at my chest. "What has that got to do with us?"

"Problem like this could shut down the city. Imagine no light on the streets when night comes. No light at home. How do other factories work if the lights go out?"

"Quite well, I imagine." I swallowed against a very unladylike urge to spit on the paving stones. "Don't need light to see pions. But I get the idea." And on a day like this, in the storm and the darkness bearing down on Movoc-under-Keeper. I couldn't think of a worse time.

"They call in more than one team for work like this. For factories, construction sites."

I knew too well what he meant.

"Sorry!" Lad, only barely out of breath, ran to Kichlan's side. "Sorry, bro!"

Kichlan shook his head. "Pay attention from now on. This way!" He pointed, and set off again. With a groan, I pushed off the wall and followed.

This time, I gave in and I kept my fingers to the symbols at my wrist. They hummed with the pace of my running, jostling with the stones that threatened to slip me, with the hidden dips and sudden, uneven steps.

That's when I realised that wasn't all they were doing. My fingers were guiding me. A moment before a loose stone came close to tripping me, a cipher pushed up against my touch. I knew a corner was coming before Kichlan took it because my fingers were guided that way first.

When Kichlan stopped again to check his map I realised I wouldn't have had to. My fingers, my suit, already knew the way.

I peered through heavy rain to the symbols he had splashed across a wall, that mesh of unintelligible figures I had been told had no meaning. Beside Kichlan, on his map, was a long, wiggling line. I walked fingers up from my own position, and sure enough, there it was. I scanned the ground. Beside Kichlan, mere inches from his shoe, a gutter had burst. The symbol buzzed like an insect as I saw it. Nearly invisible in the darkness a torrent of water gushed down the edge of the street, weaving its way like an imitation of the figure on the wall. On my wrist.

Realisation was a breathless kick to the gut. The symbols were the map. All of them. They were the streets, the buildings, the dips and bumps in the road. And all we did was follow two of them. What could we do if we understood everything on the map, if we could read the city on the back of our wrists?

But Kichlan and the collectors didn't know about this map. Devich and the technicians didn't either. So who had put it there, who was keeping us all in the dark about the power of the suit on our wrists?

And why?

"This way." Kichlan called against the beat of the downpour and the rush of hidden water. "We're close now!"

"Bro!" Lad, ahead again, straining to be moving like a dog against a leash. He pointed to an alleyway curtained by rain and spray. "Found it, bro! Found it!"

Kichlan flicked his wrist, and the map disappeared. "I'll trust you before any map, Lad."

Grinning so widely his teeth were clear in the muted light, Lad started off down the alleyway. We followed, and my fingers vibrated, suddenly warm. Below them a symbol was growing strong, vibrant. Another dot under a hill, but not me. I was still there, still clearly marked and separate. The hill was crossed by two vertical lines either side of the dot.

It took me a moment to realise what I was seeing, what the suit and my guided fingers were following. This new figure moved along a thin path, a clear patch between the mess of other signs that made up my wrist band. And I was following.

I glanced between Lad's back, half obscured, and the cipher tugging on my arm.

He had his own symbol.

Kichlan didn't exist on my wristband. Neither did Sofia, Natasha and the twins. Only Lad. What was special about Lad? Why did he have a symbol all of his own?

Then the alleyway ended, and my hand slipped from my wrist unnoticed.

A fat, squat building sat like an ill toad on the other side of a wide street. The lights were dark here, no longer even flickering, and figures ran, frantic and hard to see, in front of the monstrous work of architectural torture.

Debris leaked from its every pore.

"Hurry!" Kichlan drove us forward.

The debris was watery this time, like the rain had diluted it. No sails arched darkly, no growths bulged from the side of the building. It ran instead, oozing from windows, from doors, from the gaps between brickwork and cracks in cement. There was something sickening about its liquidity, its runny porridge texture. It looked fetid, like it should stink.

"Other," Mizra hissed.

Kichlan rushed forward. The rest of us crossed the street hesitantly. Even Lad eyed the debris with a squeamish expression.

"Who's in charge?" Kichlan called. Fingers pointed, curious faces met ours in the unnatural dark. But even in the cloud cover, even with the rain, I could see their exhaustion, their horror.

Judging by the rough numbers I could see, there were at least two other debris teams here. Possibly more. How long had they been fighting, to look so tired? And yet the muck kept coming, kept rolling out of windows, through the cracks of doors. Was anyone trapped inside, a factory worker who could not know what was happening? Could it hurt, to be covered in debris like this? To breathe it in, unknown? Would it undo the pion systems within a body, unravel blood from muscle, muscle from bone?

We had to stop it. I didn't want to find out.

"Eighth Keepersrill, Section ten," Kichlan was telling a man with greying hair and defeated, sagging shoulders as we reluctantly caught up.

The man nodded. "Don't know how much of a difference you'll make, but it's good to have help." The sound of his voice, the shake and the fatigue, made my bones ache.

"Have the veche sent more jars?" Kichlan asked, his face set in a convincing show of determination.

"On their way."

"Good." Kichlan slipped the bag from his shoulder and tossed it to Uzdal. "We'll do what we can with ours to begin with."

"Can't imagine you'll be much use." The collector gave a weary shrug. "But feel free. "

"They're a pleasant lot," Mizra murmured as we moved away.

"They've been here a long time," Kichlan told him. "Can you blame them?"

"And we've had a nice little jog in the rain, have we?"

"Not now, Miz," Kichlan said, voice firm. "Now, we need to do what we can to help these teams. They're exhausted, and could do with some relieving." His eyes flickered to mine. "I think we should follow Tanyana's advice."

"You do?" I asked, before I could stop myself.

"Well, you managed to control the outbreak last time." He nodded. "Yes, we're going to do this your way."

Sofia rubbed her upper arm and shoulder, pointedly, but Kichlan pushed on regardless.

"Everyone spread out. Let's see if we can scoop this up and start pushing it back. I'm willing to lay kopacks down that there's a main body mass inside the factory, somewhere this is all coming from. And I think if we collect that, we'll have this place clean in no time. Tanyana, come with me. The rest of you, see what you can do."

I followed Kichlan as he ran to the front of the building. A large, slatted wooden door was rolled up and debris surged from the entrance in thick waves. Most of the collectors were concentrated before it. Their suits shone like dull silver as they caught the debris in great shovels, then passed it back, where it was dispersed and sealed away in jars. But the debris kept rolling, and the collectors kept shovelling, and I realised they could end up in those spots, collecting, forever.

"This is not working," I murmured to Kichlan.

"My point exactly." He glanced around at the sorry lines, the slushing dark muck, and the ever-growing pile of full jars. "We need to get closer. Right to the front."

I kept close as Kichlan pushed his way through. "So, this happens a lot, doesn't it?"

"What does?" he asked.

"Emergencies." I waved my hand. "Buildings and factories under attack. Like this."

"Actually, no." Kichlan gave me a sorry expression over his shoulder. "You've had an unlucky run."

"So two in a row like this is a bit strange?"

"Very strange, more like it. Usually you'd go more than thirteen moons and a day without a crisis half the size of these two." He grinned. "But then, you haven't been having the best luck, have you?"

Luck. Was that what it was? "You could say that."

We came to the front line of collectors. A middle-aged man, with thick hair plastered to his skull and neck, blinked at us through the rain.

"Here to help?" he asked. He scooped as he spoke, the motion automatic, and twisted at the waist to pass the debris he had collected to the line waiting behind him.

When Kichlan didn't answer, I said, "Yes." Kichlan was staring at the debris, his hands loose by his sides, suit retracted.

"Well, we could use the help. First call came at breakbell and I've been here since. They've been calling other teams all morning. Not that you'd know it was morning… hey!"

Kichlan had stepped past the front line. Debris surged over his feet like mud.

"What's he doing?" The collector paused in his shovelling. "We need to hold the line!"

"Tanyana," Kichlan said, ignoring the collector. "Shall we?"

I nodded, and waded through the debris to stand at his side. It was warm, where it brushed over me. The strangest feeling. Touching but not touching, like wind if it had weight and heat.

"Hey!" More collectors were shouting at us now. "What's going on?"

Behind us, the lines faltered.

"Can you mesh our suits together, the way you did with Lad?" Kichlan asked.

"Don't see why not." Except I had no idea how I'd done that, and less of an idea if I could do it again.

"Let's try, then."

Together, Kichlan and I raised our hands and spread our suits out like a shield. The edges of silver touched at first with a screeching, metal scraping against metal. But then they softened, grew pliable, and sank into each other.

A strange shiver rattled through Kichlan as the same thing passed through me. I remembered Lad's hand on my arm, the connection between us, the whispers I had heard. Kichlan felt entirely different. Where Lad had been open, too open perhaps, Kichlan was closed. His suit became mine, but there were no whispers, no hints of the voices in his head. Did I feel the same, or could he hear my doubts clear as if I was shouting them?

"Lower!"

I glanced down. Debris was oozing from a gap between our suits and the ground. We grew them until only a trickle remained.

"They can collect that." Kichlan clenched his teeth; his eyes were hard and focused. "Let's start moving."

Feeling oddly light compared to the weight Kichlan seemed to be carrying, I walked beside him and helped force the debris back into the factory. It pushed against us as we advanced, but had none of the energy of last time. It did not crash like lightning against us, but merely tried to ease itself past us, like cupping a gentle trickle of water.

"Come on," I thought to it, I whispered in my own head and hoped Kichlan truly couldn't hear. I was wet, already tired, and shaken. All I wanted was for the debris to move easily, to retreat to its source and wait for us to collect it.

Murmurs behind us.

We came to the rolled-up door and were forced to pinch our suits in to fit through. I waited for the explosion, for the debris to roll through the gaps we made, for it to surge to sudden life as it sensed weakness, and carry us along with it.

Nothing happened.

"What's going on?" I whispered to Kichlan.

"Kichlan!" a voice called, echoing.

With a quick glance between us, Kichlan and I lowered the shield so we could see over the top. The factory was almost empty. Debris lay in patches of the floor, puddles after a storm. But of the fountain that had spewed forth from the doors, windows and cracks, there was no sign.

"What did you do?" Uzdal was clambering in through a window. He clung to the steel bones of the building and peered down at us. "Where did it go?"

Kichlan was just as shocked. "I have no idea."

Uzdal surveyed the cement walls and steel structures around him and began gradually climbing down. "I just got up here, was about to try and squeeze the debris and-" he mimed an explosion motion with his free hand. His right arm was wrapped tightly around a thick, loadbearing shaft "-it was gone."

"We walked inside…" Kichlan raised his eyebrows at me.

I replied, "Don't ask me. I've got less idea than you do."

"Kichlan? Tanyana?" Sofia called from the other end of the factory. She was crouched behind another wooden door, only rolled a few feet up. "What happened?" With a wince, she crawled her way through.

"Trying to work that out." Uzdal finally made it to the factory floor. He patted rust and dirt from the front of his jacket. They turned to mud on his wet clothes and hands.

Gradually, the other team members appeared. Lad and Mizra came together, descending from the second floor on metal stairs that rang loudly in the empty, cavernous room. Natasha ambled in through the front door.

"The teams outside are looking spooked," she drawled. "They really want to know what you've done, and why it worked so well."

Kichlan, apparently sick of the same question, rounded on her. "For the last, the final, the absolutely I will not repeat myself ever again time, I do not know!"

Her face set into a sullen cloud, the same colour as the sky outside. "First time you told me, you know."

I approached one of the larger debris puddles. It bubbled as I crouched beside it. How long before it started growing again?

"You might as well tell them to come and collect this mess up," Kichlan said.

"Your messenger now, am I?" Natasha grumbled, but still turned to leave the building.

Gingerly, I extended a thin dirk of my sharpened suit toward a particularly large bubble.

"Still need to find where all the debris came from," Kichlan said.

I popped the bubble.

Are you pleased?

I snatched my suit back so quickly it slammed into my wrist and pushed me to the floor.

"Watch yourself." Mizra chuckled.

But I didn't respond. Instead, I turned my head until I could see Lad. He was smiling, a happy, contented smile that widened when he caught my eye.

"Likes you," he said. "Listens to you."

I gaped at him.

"That's lovely, Lad." Kichlan dismissed his brother's rambling. "Now where do you think we should go?"

His younger brother pointed to the floor. "Down."

I returned to the bubbles. Underground made sense, yes. It was all bubbling up from underneath.

"Right, down we go. Anyone see some stairs on their way here?"

I sat up. Again, I carefully extended my suit, this time as the usual tweezers. My hand shook as I pried a slightly more solid selection of debris from the puddle. I brought it close to my face, frowned at it.

It remained quiet.

A breath I hadn't realised I was holding eased from me in a sigh. The debris rippled.

"Come on, Tanyana!" Kichlan called. He was helping Lad squeeze under the door Sofia had come through by holding it further from the ground. "Sofia's found our way down."

I stood, holding the debris, and hurried to his side. I slipped beneath the door – with far greater ease than Lad – and helped Kichlan do the same. The debris sagged from my suit. It felt warm, wet, and wiggled weakly.

"Where to?" I asked Sofia, once Kichlan was through.

But I didn't hear her reply.

Are you coming to see me?

I nearly dropped the debris. Sofia had already started leading the way and no one seemed to notice me standing there, white by the bloodless feeling in my cheeks, staring at a small, wiggly piece of debris.

No one, apart from Lad.

Still smiling, he nodded. "We should go," he said. "He is waiting."

"He?" I whispered.

I am.

Lad turned, and I caught up to him. "You can hear him, can't you?"

Lad followed the team into a narrow, dark hallway. Without the pion systems in place to keep the lights working, the way downstairs was perilous. I clung to a railing with my free hand and sought each step with a fumbling foot.

"Can you smell that?" Uzdal's voice echoed up from the darkness below.

"Smells like a sewer," Mizra answered. "I knew we'd end up in a sewer today, somehow."

I ran into Lad's back as the stairs ended and the ground levelled out. He steadied me with a large hand in the dark.

"This is no good," Kichlan whispered. "I can't see a thing."

I agreed with him, silently, and the light from my suit strengthened, deepened into a stark, silvery blue. The symbols rolled, pressed together, and became a thickened mess of colour and shape.

"Tanyana?" Kichlan turned, shocked. "What-?" He looked down at his own suit, glowing only the usual soft light. "How are you doing that?"

I shook my head. "I don't know," I whispered. Somehow, it felt right to whisper at the bottom of these dark stairs. "I really don't know."

"We should use it while we have it," Sofia said, ever practical.

"Yes. Tanyana, could you?" Still frowning, Kichlan stepped aside so I could lead the way.

Lad kept close to me as we walked. I couldn't help but glance at the symbols, hard to read in the light and in their bloated closeness. Sure enough, there was Lad, his hill with a dot close to mine. And there was debris, right in front of me, the lightning strike sharply detailed amidst ill-defined lines. But as I lowered my wrist I saw it. A cipher I hadn't noticed before, not while the rest of the figures were spaced out. Made of the map itself, yet brighter, sharper, very much a symbol in its own right. Another debris sign. One that encompassed all of us, one made up of us. It was everywhere, it was everything.

I looked up into the darkness, to the grey shapes of a curved roof and snake-twisted pipes.

"What is that?" I whispered to myself.

I am here.

And sure enough, my suit-light fell on a crack in the floor. A pipe ran beneath it and we could hear the sound of water rushing through iron. But from the gap, the dark corners between pipe and cement, debris grew like a fungus. Bulbous, patchy, and swaying as though in a breeze.

"That's it." Kichlan crouched beside the crevice. "Oh, very well done."

I said nothing. Something was tickling my stomach, something like the first buds of laughter. If I opened my mouth nothing but giggling, inane chuckling, would burst out. Beside me, Lad let out a little laugh, and was ignored.

"Uzdal, the jars." Kichlan held out his hand, and Uzdal slung the bag's strap into his palm. "Let's work, shall we."

I have been waiting. I am glad you came.

As the others set to scooping, prying and pinching the debris from its hold beneath the building, I lifted my hand and stared at the scrap I held between my fingers.

"Why are you talking to me?" I breathed over it, and it jiggled.

They are here, did you see them? Watching you like they watch me. Together we can fight them. Together, we are strong.

Then something touched my shoulder. A hand, light, warm. It brushed my neck with soft fingers and a warm breath.

I am sorry for you, Tanyana. Truly, I am. But I cannot be sorry you are here.

I spun. The room behind me was empty, save for storage crates and shards from broken ceramic loops.

"Tanyana?" Kichlan looked up from his work. "What's the matter?"

"He scared her and now he's gone," Lad answered for me, his words nonsense. "He didn't mean to."

"You didn't scare her, Lad," Kichlan said, full of patience.

I stared between them. The phantom memory of the hand on my skin was warm, and everything jumbled together in that heat. Eugeny's warning, Kichlan's explanation. Lad, with his inexplicable connection to debris and the voices within his head. The voices he had always heard and sometimes, the voices he obeyed.

And I had no idea which one of them was right, if anyone understood anything properly, if I had any idea what was going on.

"Tanyana?" Kichlan stood. Concerned, he approached me, a half-filled jar held in front of him. "It's been a strange morning, hasn't it? Are you all right?"

I nodded. A lie, if ever there was one.

He held out the jar. "Drop that grain in here and take a moment to rest. We've almost got this finished."

I held the debris over the open jar. It felt like a chasm, the lip a gaping mouth.

"Go on." Kichlan smiled.

Goodbye. For the moment.

I dropped the debris and watched Kichlan seal the lid. "Where do the jars go when they are full?" I asked him. I had to concentrate to retract my suit, and my hand shook.

"To the technicians. From there, I don't know."

"Oh." The technicians. Devich.

"Come and give us light. We're nearly done."

Leaning over the rest of the team I watched them collect. Sure enough, the fissure was close to empty. What had caused the debris to rise, to swallow the factory whole?

Lights started to reignite in the factory above us. Voices echoed down from the stairwell.

"It's come up from the old city, hasn't it?" I whispered. The Movoc-under-Keeper built long before Novski's revolution, and the small patches of it that still remained. Like the wall that had fallen on me on my first day as a collector. I squinted hard into the tiny gap between pipe and cement, but try as I might I couldn't see deeper. No ruins, no hand-laid stonework, and not the wellspring I believed had to be there, the untapped oceans of debris.

"No," Sofia answered. "Debris like this is created by the new world, by massive levels of pion manipulation." She hesitated. "But I know what you mean. It likes old places, doesn't it?"

Lights flickered on in the basement, drowning out my suit. In the crevice, no shadow of debris remained. Not even a grain.

When we climbed out of the basement to a world lit again by steady, strong lamplight, I saw them. At the edge of the crowd of surprised but grateful debris collectors, half hidden by the rain and the shadow of a building, stood two of the puppet men. Their faces pale, expressionless, bodies wooden and unmoving, they watched me.