“You told me that already. Why are we going back there, when all the action’s at the Station?”
Houjin pushed all his weight into moving the big Vault door, then stepped outside into the main body of the underground. “Because, like you said—all the action’s at the Station. Yaozu just gave the word: His spies are watching the Station and all its entrances, keeping track of the men who are planting the explosives.”
“They ain’t stopping them?”
“No, just watching for now,” he said. From out of his pocket he pulled two scraps of glass the size and shape of spectacle lenses. “Take one of these. They’re polarized. I don’t want to wear those glasses—they look crazy, and they’re too small for me. So I went back down to storage and picked up a different set.”
“Good idea.”
“Thank you.”
Slipping the scrap of glass into his pocket, Rector asked, “Why the tower, though? What are we supposed to do there?”
“Get inside, get a look around, and steal as much dynamite as we can carry. But no more than that,” he added. “We want to leave plenty inside.”
“But why me?”
“Why you?” Huey stopped and turned around, as had become his habit when he wanted to make sure Rector was paying attention. “Because if you get caught, there’s a good chance you can talk your way out of it. You know some of these men, and they know you—they might assume you were sent along by Otis Caplan or one of his people. If I were you, that’s what I’d tell them, anyway. If we get caught, that is.”
“And what would I tell them about you?”
“Tell them…” He thought about it. “Tell them I don’t speak English, but I hate Yaozu and I’m here to kill him. Or something like that.”
“You think they’ll believe it?”
Houjin shrugged and resumed his trek up the underground version of Commercial Street. “Why not? Plenty of people hate Yaozu and want to kill him. Plenty of Chinese, even, because of how he helped Minnericht be so bad to them those first few years he was inside the wall. But we won’t have to worry about it … as long as we don’t get caught.”
Twenty-three
Out in the city proper, Rector and Houjin struggled against the gloomy, curling, coiling air. Rector found that it gave him headaches if he stared too long, his eyes straining to catch every shape, every scrap of light or shadow that made it past the Blight. He grew tired from the stress of being so persistently alert. Then again, how long had it been since he’d had any sap? He’d count the days, if he could only remember them.
Houjin waved a hand in front of his own face. Behind his mask’s visor, his eyes crinkled into a frown. “It’s not always this bad,” he said.
“I know. It wasn’t this bad the other day.”
“I’m not sure what makes the difference. Maybe it’s the temperature, or how much rain we’ve gotten—or haven’t gotten. Or maybe it’s related to the air currents. We know Blight behaves differently from plain old air.”
“I really couldn’t tell you,” Rector muttered.
They stood on a street corner that wasn’t marked, but since Houjin seemed confident of his location, Rector didn’t worry about it. Not very much, anyway. He made a point to stick close, that was all—especially in the dismal not-daylight there in the too-quiet outer blocks. Sticking close was common sense, it wasn’t chicken.
Thoughtfully, Houjin said, “Maybe I should study it.”
“Do it on your own time, buddy. Which way’s the tower again? I can’t see for shit.”
“This way.”
“I don’t see it.”
Houjin’s voice took on the tone of someone who is trying, in a calculated fashion, to keep from yelling. “I know you can’t see it, but I know where it is. Trust me, and be quiet.”
Rector didn’t like being told to be quiet, but he knew it was a good idea, so with a mighty harrumph he managed to keep his mouth shut for another five minutes. At no point during those five minutes did he grab for the back of Houjin’s jacket, strong though the temptation became.
When he feared he was falling behind, he said, “A guy could disappear in this stuff, and nobody’d ever find him,” assuming that Houjin would either stop walking or reply.
Softly, Houjin said, “That’s why people come here, as often as not. To disappear.”
Rector hustled to catch up to the other boy’s voice as it trailed through the gas. “Like that nurse?”
Huey paused, and Rector came up beside him, trying not to wheeze, but glad for the brief break. “What? Miss Mercy? I don’t understand.”
“You and Zeke said something about a train, and everybody disappearing.”
“But all those other people didn’t disappear inside here. They just … disappeared. Except for her. She’s been trying to find them, trying to figure out what happened to everybody.”
“Why?”
“Because there were rotters. Outside Seattle.”
“Rotters on a train?”
Houjin’s words took on that tense, impatient quality again. “No, not rotters on a train. But rotters outside the city—all the way out in the Utah Territory, up in the mountains. Miss Mercy thinks they were made when an airship crashed down in Texas.”
Rector had no idea how far away Texas was from Utah, or how far Utah was from Seattle. Quite a ways, he suspected, but he didn’t want to sound dumb, so he didn’t ask.
Houjin resumed walking. Rector kept pace this time, since the way was wide enough to accommodate them both. The streets were not clean, but they lacked the usual thick, wind-heaped detritus of the busier blocks, so the boys’ boots made less noise than their chatter as they crept up the hill.
“How does that work?” Rector asked. “How does an airship in Texas make rotters in Utah?” He was almost proud of himself for how un-dumb that sounded.
“The airship was carrying Blight concentrate for processing down in Mexico. It crashed right on top of people, and turned them. Just like that. Just like the sap does, if you use it too long…”
“Hey!”
“What? I’m not accusing you of anything—only pointing out the connection. The sap kills people the same way as the gas, but it takes a lot longer. And Miss Mercy’s seen lots of drug users at the end of their lives, on the battlefields and in the hospitals. She probably knows more about it, from more angles, than anyone in the world. But when she tried to reach the people from the Dreadnought … it was like they’d never existed.”
Rector didn’t like the sound of that, and he wasn’t entirely sure why. “Or like someone took them away?”
“That’s one theory. That’s her theory, anyway. She thinks somebody important wants to keep the sap running, and keep the soldiers stocked up.”
“Why the hell would anybody want to do that?”
Houjin shrugged. “It usually comes down to money.”
“Money,” Rector echoed thoughtfully.
His companion drew up to a sudden stop, smacking him across the chest with his arm to get his attention.
A faint hum rumbled overhead. Nothing too loud, nothing too close.
Rector guessed, “Is that one of the pump rooms?”
“No, look higher. It’s the Naamah Darling, see?”
He couldn’t see a damn thing, so he grunted noncommittally.
Huey continued, “I bet they’re testing out the steering repairs. That’s why they’re out here, so they can take the ship low without hitting anything.”
“Except the wall.”
“Captain Cly won’t hit the wall.”
“Even if Zeke’s on board, getting in the way?”
With a snort, Houjin said, “Probably not even then.” He might’ve added something else, but the noise up above changed suddenly, slightly. A loud clapping sound. An engine revving higher. A twist in the ship’s direction that brought it almost immediately overhead.
“Is something happening?” Rector wanted to know, primarily because an airship falling on his head wasn’t high on his wish list of afternoon activities.
“I don’t … I don’t know.”
They both listened hard and wondered what was going on, without being able to see it. Everything beyond a few feet was yellow or gray, so they used their ears to track the big ship, neither of them admitting to themselves or to each other that the craft sounded distressed.
“I’m sure it’s fine,” Houjin lied outright as the engine noise dipped closer.
“I don’t even know where we’d run to. Should we … look for shelter?”
The response was firm. “No. They’re not crashing, they’ve just—”
With a whir and the hiss of hydrogen, the ship leaped upward, taking on another hundred feet in altitude—or so Rector guessed, as if he had any real idea. “You think it could’ve been snagged on something, then got itself free?”
“That seems unlikely.”
“But that’s what it sounds like.”
Huey kept his voice level, but it was tighter than a drum when he said, “I’ll ask when I get back to Fort Decatur. Come on, let’s keep moving.”
“How do you even know it was the Naamah Dar…” Rector lost track of his question, which trailed off and dissolved into the gas. “Huey?”
Before Houjin could reply, something heavy shot down from above—not a ship, and not a pump tube … in fact, nothing man-made. It was something screaming, something plummeting with a roar and a crash, landing against something half crumbled, and crashing through it with a symphony of splinters, cracking timbers, and toppling masonry.
And whatever it was, it kept moving.
It thrashed and writhed, climbing steadily out of the house or shop or hotel in which it’d landed. Rector started to run. Houjin grabbed him by the arm but didn’t stop him; he ran with him, keeping Rector’s wrist clenched tight so they didn’t lose each other.