The thing that tried to follow her was made entirely of metal. Lacking any tags or annotations, it was all movement and eerily smooth metallic sheen. The absence of any tags made Keir's hackles rise--as if the thing had moved in some perfect silence, as though it had stolen his ability to understand what it was. All knives, saws, and swords, it gripped the doorjamb with three of four bladed limbs and twisted this way and that as if looking for something.
It had struck at the woman's spine but the blow had been absorbed by the battered leather satchel slung over her shoulder.
The others seemed paralyzed at the sight of the dagger-thing, but the sheer terror of seeing an untagged machine moving on its own made Keir pull out the weapon the Edisonians had built. He'd had no time to learn how it worked, but it had been evolved for human use and it felt satisfyingly solid in his arms. His finger found a trigger right where one should be, and he pulled it.
The bang! was deafening. He was suddenly blind in a whole new way. Afterimage lozenges were smeared across his vision and so he groped for the sight of his dragonflies, but they weren't there. Suddenly panicked, he kicked away from the doorway and the thing that had been there.
"Help us!" It was the woman. He heard Harper shout something, then a tumble of motion around him. The shocking report of the new guns crashed and roared through the room--but now, it was coming from beyond the door.
"Are you okay?" Long fingers touched his hand, then his face. He flinched.
"Just the flash. I'll be all right." He blinked at her, saw a jacketed shoulder and pale fingers around the fading afterimage. The smear of light was oddly reassuring; it made her look as if she were tagged in some way that he couldn't quite focus on. "Did I get it?"
She laughed, a bit wildly. "It's not there anymore, if that's what you mean."
Her accent was thick from the centuries of Virga's isolation. She smelled of sweat and leather and lamp oil. "Can you shoot?" she said suddenly. "If not, give me the gun."
He squinted, shook his head, gave up, and handed it to her. "Careful," he said. "It's a lot more powerful than you're probably used to."
"I saw," she said. "Don't worry, I'm experienced with firearms."
He could see well enough to show her its operation and did so; then they pulled themselves through the doorway and into a rapidly subsiding firefight.
Knotted in the center of a long gallery was a large group of Virgans, all dressed in piratical glory compared with Keir's utilitarian coverall. They were firing enthusiastically into a cloud of knife-drones, splintering and exploding them. The drones responded by whirling at high speed and throwing blades at the men; Keir saw that several were pulling shrapnel out of their forearms or hips. Several more were drifting, ominously still.
The leather-clad woman aimed and fired. Keir shut his eyes just in time. She barked in triumph and aimed again. The new guns were making quick work of the drones, and quite suddenly they were all ruined--the last one sparking from multiple gunshots as it tumbled away.
There was silence, then a ragged cheer.
The woman turned to Keir. "Where did you come from? We couldn't get the other door open."
"It was locked on your side," he said. It would just take too long to explain what was beyond it. "But what are you--" He stopped, and so did she, with a laugh: they'd spoken simultaneously.
"--doing here?" he said. "Mine's a long story. What about yours?"
She tilted her head, considering. "Long," she said. "Forget it. Can we go your way?"
"The door won't open again for another hour," he said. "I don't think those drones will leave us alone that long."
A man's voice, clear and sharp, cut through the gabble of voices. "Listen up! Who are we all? There's two groups here. Will somebody from each introduce themselves?"
Everybody looked at the man who'd spoken. He bowed in midair. "I'm Jacoby Sarto of Sacrus. We're docked at the edge of the city. We're here on ... Home Guard business."
Leal moved out of the doorway. "I'm Leal Maspeth of Abyss," she said. "We--"
"Leal?" The huge-eyed woman gave a shriek. "It is you!"
"What--? A-Antaea?"
Suddenly they were hugging, laughing wildly, while the men all looked at one another in confusion. Keir shrugged at the leonine Jacoby Sarto, who scowled in return.
"I got your letter," Antaea was saying. "We came to find you!"
"Among other things," Sarto pointed out.
"But I never in a million years would have expected to find you fighting monsters in a ... a place like this! How did you get here?"
Now Leal's expression became cautious. "It's a very long story," she said. "But what it boils down to is, I'm here with a message for the people of Virga, and these men have risked their lives to help me bring it here."
"I ... see." Antaea and Jacoby Sarto exchanged a look, and then so did Leal and Piero Harper. This bizarre tension was interrupted as someone shouted, "Incoming!"
Flashlights swirled around and their light pinioned a door on the far wall of the gallery. The three men who'd suddenly appeared there blinked at the lights. "Uh ... Captain Sarto?" one of them said hesitantly.
Sarto laughed. "You made it!"
"Yes, but those things're right behind us, sir."
"Then we'd best save the stories for later," said Sarto. "Who's got a clear idea of how to get out of here?"
One of Sarto's men put up his hand. "I do."
"Come on, then. Let's form up. We need one of those special guns you brought," Sarto said to Leal, "aimed at each of the six directions. We'll bunch up so they can't cut us off from each other like last time. Is everybody ready?"
"What about..." Two of Sarto's men were cradling the bodies of their dead comrades.
"Bring them, then," said Sarto brusquely. "But don't fall behind."
Leal Maspeth looked around until she spotted Keir, then she flew over. "Are you sure you want to come?" she asked. "You still have time to turn and go back."
He hesitated. The plan had made so much sense just a few hours ago--but that had been before his dragonflies had died and left him half-blind. "I don't know what to--" He shook himself. "Seems I have no choice but to go with you. If you'll have me."
"Of course, but how are you going to get home again?"
He shuddered. "Brink's not home."
"Let's go!" shouted Sarto. The big-eyed woman--Antaea--was leading an unruly flock toward one of the black entrances. He should really get the weapon back; on the other hand, he'd never fired any sort of gun before today. Maybe it would do more good in her hands.
He and Leal followed the rest. Two of her people took up the rear, one moving forward, the other clutching the back of the first one's belt. He let his comrade tow him while he faced backward. "Pull me like that?" Leal asked Keir.
Keir wanted to say no--he couldn't see properly, freefall was making him nauseous, and there weren't even any scry tags on the people or things here--but in the end he nodded. It would be better to let Leal watch for danger coming up from behind, because he was beginning to doubt whether he would be able to see it if it came. He would just keep his two remaining eyes fixed on the backs of the people ahead of him.
What followed was chaotic and terrifying and seemed to go on forever. They bounced, toppled, and flew up small passages like capillaries, large ones like arteries. Hissing whispering things awoke as they passed, and the darkness behind filled with the angry drone of pursuit. Startled shouts and gunshots erupted at random moments; once, everything dissolved into screaming and orange flashes and bangs for long minutes, and then Leal's hand found Keir's wrist again and pulled him onward.
He did his best. He'd expected to lose his extra senses in Virga; it was just that he hadn't counted on the terrible feeling of helplessness that came with that loss.
His scry had gone out for the first time in his life, and too late he was realizing that he'd relied on it far more than he'd known. Half-blind, half-deaf, he held the hand of a stranger as they fled together through a city of monsters.