The City's son

CHAPTER 13

It was morning: the daylamp’s rays pouring into the bulb fell in rainbows, refracted by the glass. Voltaia shifted, the glow of her blood washed out by the surfeit of light. Day. Her eyes stung in the light. Why am I awake? The world outside was a seamless wall of glare. Too early. She shook herself and settled her head back onto her arms, feeling her consciousness ebb away.

The lamppost shook and her eyes snapped open again. It was too bright; she couldn’t see anything, but she could feel vibrations coming through the metal. The filaments in her bones trembled. She started twitching and shifting, moving just enough to build up some magnetism, until she could stretch her fingers forward, and push the field out, teasing the air.

Voltaia recoiled in horror; something was crawling up her lamppost. Her heart began to trip, faster and faster, until it was so beating quickly that even through the light of the daylamp she could see the yellow glow reflecting off the glass.

Lec! she strobed, but her elder sister had run away in disgust at the street-boy’s behaviour and hadn’t come back.

Galva! Faradi!

It was too bright, and she was blind. The daylamp was like a thousand furious Whities, battering on the glass. The lamppost jerked again, as though in the grip of a fit, and she flared off another distress call. Useless, she cursed herself; her sisters would be blind too. She could feel the tremors of the thing, whatever it was, dragging itself up the lamppost towards her. She shrank into the back of her shelter; wires pricked her skin.

A black shape smacked hard against the glass: a long, thin shadow studded with thorns. The whole bulb shuddered. The thing receded, moving nightmarishly slowly, vanishing into the blur of light like ink being sucked out of water…

— and smacked in again…

Voltaia tumbled backwards at the impact. The thin barbed shape vanished behind cracked glass and she braced herself, her lungs burning as she held her breath.

The thing struck again, and the lamp shattered.

Voltaia leapt from her home, falling for an instant, surrounded by a glittering rain of glass. Concrete drove the breath from her. She shoved herself to her feet, shaking off the impact and casting about. Everything was indistinct dark lines, swamped by the glaring sun; everything looked like a monster, reaching for her. She fled to her left, towards Galvanica’s lamp, probing through her fields, but she couldn’t feel them. She couldn’t feel them.

Calm down, she told herself, calm down. Her heart was beating so fast she was scared it might start to smoke.

Galva! Faradi! She knew they wouldn’t see her cries in the light, but she couldn’t stop herself calling for them. She reached into the space where Galvanica’s post should have been and her fingertips groped empty air. She stumbled and fell onto something metal. Her hands trembled as she felt her way along it. It was twisted, pockmarked with dozens of tiny holes.

A cloud passed in front of the daylamp and suddenly she could see: she was holding Galvanica’s post. It had been torn from the ground, leaving just a stump. The broken-off end was jagged and sharp. A glass girl was lying halfunfolded from the broken bulb, her light extinguished. Her nose and kneecaps were shattered and her skin was frosted with tiny cracks.

Voltaia stumbled towards her, barely noticing the pain as the shards of metal and broken bulb cut her feet. Her powdered blood spilled on the ground.

Galv As Voltaia approached, her sister’s hair started to sway in the magnetic breeze she carried. It was a mean mockery of life.

Through her fields, she felt the metal of the thing behind her brush her field and she turned. Its coils flew in fast, extinguishing the light.