The City's son

CHAPTER 24

Pen shivered in the tower as dawn crept into the nooks and crevices of the building site. She had been longing for sunrise, but it let her down: the daylight failed to banish her nightmare.

Below her, the machines worked on remorselessly. Immobilised as she was, only when the wind tugged the tarpaulin away could she see glimpses of a crane at the top of its arc, or a flash of yellow tape on the flank of a digger. The sources of the screams stayed mercifully out of sight.

Chatter floated up: tourists at the Cathedral. To them, this carnage would sound like any other construction work. It did to her, too. Nothing about the sounds was special; it was her hearing that had changed. She heard the cries of pain from the foundations as they were shredded, and they chilled her.

When the red faded out of the sunrise, the wire decided it was time for her to sleep. Rest, it scratched with her finger in the dust. Then it bent her at the knee and the waist and laid her flat on her back. It was rigid around her, like a wire coffin.

Maybe it’s nocturnal, she thought, or maybe it thinks I am. After all, when it caught me I was stumbling around in the dark like a drunk girl.

The wire had been forcing her into strange poses and stretches, reconfiguring her, like a child trying to learn the limits of a new toy. It ran a barb caressingly over her skin, and left her a few seconds to stare at the drab concrete ceiling before its tendrils reached for her eyelids and pulled them shut.

It was the first time in days it had let her close her eyes, but Pen couldn’t sleep. Her heartbeat went through her skull like nightclub bass. When she was a kid she’d read stories about martyrs under torture who’d dislocated their minds from their bodies. They’d prayed to Allah and transcended their flesh. Inside their minds they had laughed as their tormentors laboured fruitlessly on.

Pen had never believed those stories, but now, with the metal barbs holding her eyes shut, she started to pray.

Over the beat of her heart, she could hear Reach, speaking. He hadn’t stopped repeating the same phrases since she’d arrived here:

‘ I am Reach.

‘ I am Reach.

‘ I will be. ’

Pen tried to pretend her body didn’t matter. Your soul is feather-light, she whispered in her mind. It will peel from your body like lantern-fruit skin. But it was no good; she was panicking again, breathing faster — she couldn’t make herself believe it.

What if the body was all there was? She couldn’t stop herself wondering, what if there wasn’t any soul at all? What if there wasn’t any part of her that the wire hadn’t gripped, torn — stolen. If that was so, then she was entirely its thing.

‘ I am Reach.

‘ I will be. ’ Reach forced his voice over those of the dying. Pen realised it wasn’t English, or Urdu; it was the language of destruction itself. The words vibrated through the barbs in her scalp, as if the wire monster was dripping its consciousness through them and into her.

‘ I. Will. Be. ’

With mounting awe Pen realised she was witnessing a birth. Something was hauling itself into being, stamping itself out, and she shuddered at the will it took.

Reach was carving himself from the living bones of the city.

Eventually exhaustion washed over her and the voice followed her into darkness.

Pen woke as a breeze rippled over her and started to reach for her duvet, only to find she couldn’t move. For some reason she couldn’t open her eyes. She jerked and kicked, or tried to, but her skin tore on things that felt like cold thorns and she remembered where she was.

There was a scratching flick at her eyelids. Instinctively they obeyed and fluttered open. It was night; the moon glimmered sullenly through dirty sepia clouds, far outshone by the brash neon on the sides of the cranes.

The wire creaked her to her feet and bent her head down. A message was scrawled in the dust: sustenance. A rill of outrage ran through her. It had used her body in her sleep without her even knowing.

It’s kidnapped you and skewered you and sleep-deprived you — and you lose your temper over this? But the anger remained. Another boundary had been so casually breached. Her body felt less her own than ever.

Sustenance.

She felt her arm rise of its own accord to point and an instant later her neck twisted the same way. The wire had brought her presents: a Flintstones-iced birthday cake; three halves of assorted sandwiches; a mound that smelled like cat food; a ragged heap of fur with the rotting stench of roadkill; a squat column of soft red clay; and a battery, with live wires hissing and spitting from it. The smells twisted in her stomach; here was all manner of sustenance. The wire didn’t know what she ate.

Her feet scratched the ground as she was walked towards the food.

All the while Reach’s cacophonous monologue went on behind her:

‘ I will be.

‘ I will be.

‘ I am Reach. ’

Flies waltzed in the air over the roadkill, casting fat shadow blots on the wall. She fell to her knees beside it and the smell streaked up her nostrils, down her throat and punched her in the gut. Suddenly the pressure eased in her right arm and she wiggled her fingers. Pins and needles raced down it, but she could flex her hand! She rolled her shoulder and the wire rolled with her, the barbs gently dimpling her skin. Excitement swelled at the bottom of her throat.

She tried her left arm. ‘Ow!’ The barbs bit deep and blood spread immediately. So the cage around her left arm was staying.

But she’d been able to It was true: the wire around her jaw had loosened. ‘I can shout — bloody hell, I can talk!’ Pen laughed, and it echoed back off the concrete, sounding scarily manic.

Her neck was jerked to the side, forcing her to look at the food. Her laughter faded and she understood the reason for her newly granted movement. The wire wanted her to feed. It wanted her to choose.

Her stomach contracted and she felt sick. Why? Why did the wire monster want to feed her? Why had it made her sleep? The questions rattled around her skull: what was this thing keeping her healthy for?

‘ No,’ she whispered and the slack around her head gave her just enough space to shake it, a tiny gesture of defiance.

The coils sighed as they slid over her, almost regretfully tightening up. Pen’s last free breath was cut in half in a silly gulp.

Her eyes kept peeled wide, she watched her hand reach out towards the food. Every fibre of her wanted to turn away, but of course she couldn’t. The rotting roadkill was half an inch from her hand. She knew the wire wouldn’t hesitate to shove it down her throat.

‘ Wait- ’ She subvocalised the word, hoping the wire would understand even through the mangled consonants.

The wire froze, and then relaxed again, and this time Pen slumped forward. The bread of the sandwich felt clammy as her fingers closed around it. A trickle of warmth ran down her cheek: a tear. She couldn’t brush it away. The food tasted of ash and mould. The wire flexed around her jaw, helping her to chew.

Afterwards she lay on the ground and stared out into the night, where the cranes cast their monstrous shadows in the arclights. She could feel herself slipping again. She wondered if she could vanish into herself, forget where she was.

She wondered if she could make herself go mad.

But that would be to totally cede her body to the thing that gripped it.

It needs you, she whispered to herself, you’re its host. It needs your body, and that’s important. That’s a weakness. That’s a weapon. Bide your time, Pen. Bide your time.

A neon lamp revolved and she stared fiercely into its glare. Below her Reach worked. She didn’t even know if he knew she was there.

‘ I am Reach.

‘ I am Reach.

‘ I will be.’

Pen sucked her lip in between her teeth and bit down, hard. It was all she could do with her fraction of an inch of freedom. And it felt good.

Yes, she told herself. I will be.