Chapter 48-
“How are you doing?”
Gallow didn’t look at Sonsee when he answered.
“I don’t know, I feel gray.”
“Are you hungry?”
“No.”
“Thirsty?”
“Probably.”
“Do you want some water?”
“Yeah.”
Most of their interactions for the past few days had gone something like this. Janna hadn’t spoken to him since the day in Pettma; she felt embarrassed for what she’d said. They had been traveling through the hills that separated his hometown from Hilltop.
The ferry pulled into harbor. It was a small vessel, a cheaper one that was in their budget, little more than a flat piece of wood with a primitive motor strapped to its end. As they boarded, Sonsee realized she could feel the sweat forming on her arms and chest. It gave her pause for a moment, as she removed her coat, how she hadn’t noticed it until now. The sun had been up for a few hours, and it was still early enough in the season that the cold morning could still give way to a temperate noonday.
“I didn’t even realize how hot it was,” she chuckled, fanning herself.
“You don’t need to wear a coat all the time, now that you have it,” Gallow remarked, leaning on the ferry’s railing.
“I like it,” she inspected it as she folded it over her arms. “You bought it for me, anyway.”
Gallow sighed. “Yeah.”
They were the only passengers on the ferry, and they’d made sure to stand on the other side from the driver, so they could speak with some privacy. Still, there was some communication that needed to be done. Once they were clear out of the dock, the driver turned around and asked, “Where are you folks stopping?”
“Hilltop Harbor,” Gallow answered.
The driver’s bushy gray eyebrows raised.
“This your first time?” he prodded.
Gallow looked to the other two and nodded his head.
“Oh…” he smiled. “Have you heard anything about the harbor?”
At this point, the three travellers found themselves peering at him with squinted brows.
“No…?” Gallow replied.
“Well, it’s a real wowzer, you’re in for a treat.”
The leaves were beginning to turn warm colors, the bank of the river was lined with tall oak trees that looked like wooden statues. Sonsee walked to the other end of the ferry and leaned forward on the railing, staring into the wilderness.
“I wonder how long these trees have been standing here?”
Janna watched the leaves fall from the tops of trees and float down to settle in the water. It occurred to her then that they really were almost at their destination. All of a sudden, memories of their journey came rushing back to her, flooding her mind and filling every crevice of her consciousness. It was an almost dizzying feeling, that in just these few months, so much had happened, so much was different. Bleech had left them, they’d brushed with death countless times, their worlds had been turned upside down over and over again.
And then, she remembered why they were here, and she felt a heavy anchor chain itself to her heart.
“Gallow,” she began abruptly. “I’m sorry.” Her voice was timid, like it didn’t want a response, afraid to be challenged.
He turned his head to her with a befuddled expression.
“What?”
“I don’t know…” she mumbled. “I just feel like… I don’t know… This feels stupid to say…”
“No, it’s fine, say it,” he encouraged her.
She had clasped her hands and was rubbing her thumbs together.
“We’re doing all of this for me… and I guess I feel guilty…”
Gallow blinked a few times, processing what she’d said.
“Why?”
Janna finally looked up, surprised at his own surprise.
“W-what…?”
“Why do you feel guilty?”
“Because you- you guys have gotten through so much trouble for me!” She sounded like she was trying to convince him of her own fault. “I mean, it isn’t worth it, not all of this…” Janna gestured around her at the scene.
Gallow looked around.
“You’re doing that like the river proves anything,” he said with a dopish look on his face. “If anything, this place is nice enough to justify the trouble.”
Janna let out a small sigh in frustration.
“You really don’t think that all of this wasn’t worth the effort?”
“Your dream is important.”
“B-but,” she stuttered. “Not this important!”
Gallow finally smiled.
“Janna,” he said. “I hate to say this, but I think you’re a lot like me…”
“What?”
“Or maybe the other way around, I don’t know either.”
“Gallow?” she was puzzled, and got the impression he wasn’t sure he knew what he was talking about either.
“What I’m trying to say, I guess, is that I would have wanted it this way too,” he mused, looking out into the trees. “There’s a lot of people who can do really neat stuff, but they won’t try because they don’t want to be a hassle on other people.” He turned his head down to the wood deck. “I just want to go through the trouble, is all. I think it’s worth it.”
For a few moments, they were very quiet. A leaf was knocked loose by a passing breeze and floated downward, landing flat and making a little ripple in the water.
---
A few hours later, the ferry broke into a clearing, and for the first time, the city’s namesake came into view. The raised land that Hilltop sat upon was covered in lush grass, dotted with trees wrapped in warm colors. The outer limits of the metropolis looked severe, imposing.
“Huh,” Gallow let out. “There it is.” He could hardly believe it himself, it felt as if the end of the journey was just an idea, and never something he would be able to see.
“Is it bigger than Pettma?” Janna wondered aloud.
“Pettma is more sprawling,” the driver answered from up at the steer. “But Hilltop is a vertical city.”
“Vertical--?”
Janna cocked her head and looked closer at the city, trying to understand what he meant, but couldn’t ascertain anything that explained it.
“You’ll see…” he smiled and looked at Gallow, whom he could tell already knew.
In due time, she would find out what he meant. Approaching from the west, the ferry took a river path that met it with several other boats of various sizes, all traveling toward the city. They snaked their way around the massive hill, which was more like a raised plane, until they rounded a corner to the ravine.
In the center of the hill was Hilltop’s massive ravine, which split the city into two halves. The river extended all the way through and out the other end, creating a lane of water about 100 feet wide, with all sorts of vessels pulling in and taking off; hundreds of people swarmed about, making exchanges and moving cargo.
Janna’s eyes widened.
“Heaven!” she blurted. “I didn’t know that it was-- I didn’t know Hilltop was built into the land!”
She gazed up into the sky, but a thick haze prevented her from seeing so high up.
“Is there a fire…?” she asked.
“A fire?” the driver repeated, making sure to stay in the left lane.
“There’s smoke in the sky…” she explained. “I can’t see very high up.”
“Oh, that’s the smog,” he told her. “Comes from the factories on the lower levels.” He shot a glance upwards as well. “It’s also a bit of a cloudy today, might rain.”
Most of the stops on the right side of the lane were for commercial transport, and had shorter platforms of rock built into the taller wall that made up Level 4’s ground. After waiting for a couple of larger boats to let off their passengers, Gallow, Sonsee, and Janna thanked the driver and stepped onto the platform. The hard rock floor was disorienting after hours of being on the water, but it was a welcome stability. Climbing the short staircase to the harbor’s side proper, they stood for a moment, looking around.
“I just remembered,” Gallow noted. “That I don’t actually know how they get around here.”
All of a sudden, a fishmonger crashed into Gallow carrying a box of trout, knocking both of them to the ground.
“Hey, idiot!” the hefty fishmonger snarled, trying to lift himself up. “Watch where you’re standing around! Do you think I have all day to deal with morons like you?!”
“I-I’m sorry mister,” Gallow apologized. “It was a mistake, really!”
“Stupid mistakes get you killed,” the man growled, picking up his box and scooping the spilled fish back in.
“Mister, we’re new here,” Gallow explained. “How do we get to the surface?”
The man said little more than, “The elevator,” and stomped off, leaving the tourists to glance at each other.
“We really need to find that… that thing, then,” Sonsee stammered.
---
Mello Drameda should not have been alive.
In a little town situated in the middle region, a young woman was set to be married to the son of a wealthy family, bringing her own out of relative obscurity. As was tradition, she didn’t see her husband-to-be and remained in his family’s house in private chambers for the majority of the days leading up to the marriage. Within, she would eat, sleep, and pray largely in solitude. Only a month before the ceremony, a maid discovered during a delivery of dinner that the woman was pregnant, and had been for some time.
Against the mother’s pleading, the maid informed the family, who then told the son. Enraged, they drove her out of the house, striking her over and over again with wooden boards and poles. When she was thrown into the town square, the groom insisted that the child was not his, and the townspeople joined in her punishment.
Eventually, as the sun set and the clouds darkened overhead, the woman was driven to a nearby hill on the edge of the town. Her body was bruised and bloody from the punishment she’d endured, beaten over and over again with sticks and rocks, and struck again and again by hand and boot. As she cowered on the hill that overlooked the town’s lake, she struggled to raise herself up again, but kept falling. Rain began to pour down, and her limbs and face were soon caked in mud. When she believed that it was over, and the mob had left, a child picked a stone from the ground and chucked it in her direction. It crashed into her shoulder blade, knocking her to the mud again.
Unable to lift herself up, and knowing that the child inside of her was without a doubt dead, she rolled herself down the hill and came to rest on the bank of the lake, waiting for the water and mud to swallow her up in the downpour.
As if it sensed that its mother was about to die, the still-living child seemed to force its way out of the womb, and hours later, it landed in the mud in a puddle of blood. No one from the town was there to witness the birth, and so the exact manner in which it happened was never recorded. Somehow, despite the death of its mother, the newborn refused to follow her. In the days that followed, it remained by its mother, until a hunter from the town discovered it after hearing its cries.
Unable to believe that the child was able to survive seemingly going without food, water, or protection for days on end in the wilderness, together with the strange nature of the pregnancy, the hunter concluded that it was the spawn of the devil, and was overcome by the urge to kill it. Readying his knife, he got to his knees and prepared himself.
After a few moments of deliberation, he decided that he couldn’t bring himself to take the life of a newborn, and instead picked it up and took it out deeper into the woods, laying it in the hollow mouth of an ancient tree, where no one would be able to find it. Surely there, it would be lost to the elements, or eaten by wolves. When the hunter returned to the lake’s shore, he found the mother’s body again; her hair was pasted over her face by mud, obscuring her features. If it weren’t for her human shape, he would have figured she was a ruined clay statue which someone had thrown a horribly torn, barely covering dress over. He picked her corpse up and threw her into the lake, telling himself that this whole ordeal was best forgotten about; let them both return to the Earth.
Twelve years passed, and the incident was largely forgotten about. On the anniversary of the twelfth year, however, the hunter was out yet again, this time with his son, who was now a man himself. As they stalked the woods, the father heard a rustling from behind them, and before either of them could react, something moved through the air.
A short scream, more of a grunt, rang out, and when he looked to his son in a panic, he saw that his son’s own knife was buried into his skull.
Unable to comprehend what had happened, the hunter screamed a prayer to God before whipping around to see a boy, dressed in tattered rags, staring at him from the trees. His hair was an unnatural shade of lilac, and his eyes were a similarly uncanny red. The first thought that ran through the hunter’s mind set off a chain of realizations.
“The Devil!”
And then, he knew who this boy was. The boy didn’t move from his place in the trees, his gaze said everything for him. He meant the hunter no harm, he only wanted to kill the son. There was another message implicit in his eyes: This was a warning.
Taking one last look at his son’s face, now streaming with blood, the hunter took off running towards the town at breakneck speeds. When he returned, his neighbors asked him what was wrong, but he was unable to answer. He only asked those who were around is age or older about one thing: the incident with the woman and her bastard child. His heart sank as he learned that it had happened exactly twelve years before, to the day.
The hunter’s hand shook as he told them what he had done, and what had just transpired in the woods.
That night, the townspeople went to their beds uneasy, unsure what to do. The next morning, not one of their hearts beat.
That morning, Mello Drameda returned to society.
Myst stared up at the sky, at the clouds that looked like sheets of metal sliding overhead.
“You know, when the clouds look all blotchy like that, it means it’s going to rain.”
Mello looked at him side-eyed.
“Are you really sure about that?”
“No,” Myst sighed, staring at his shoes. “It’s just something I heard growing up, it could be true, I guess.”
They were sat in an alleyway behind an apartment building in one of Hilltop’s lower-income neighborhoods on the surface. Myst made sure to stay beneath the landing of the back staircase, just in case it started coming down.
“I like this kind of weather, though,” Myst insisted. “It makes me feel thoughtful. What about you?”
“It reminds me of where I was born,” Mello stated without any real intent to elaborate. Myst knew very little about where his boss had been born. He knew, at least, that he’d spent some years of his youth in the cities, picking fights with gang members against any good judgement. In any event, he hadn’t lost a single one of these bouts, even when he was horribly outnumbered, even when his opponents were armed. In fact, the many scars that covered his body were mostly proof of the battles he’d fought on the streets, a man so unbelievable as to take on multiple knife-wielding thugs barehanded and still win. It was that unbelievability, that larger-than-life, larger-than-fiction quality that had drawn many of the Fang Team to follow him.
When the Andeidra-Demeena War ended, Myst was one of the few founding members of the team to be by Mello’s side in the aftermath. He could recall vividly the day, when he sat back in his chair at camp and mused about the end of the conflict, and the relatively easy job they’d have from that point forward. That was when Mello stood next to him and put his hand on his shoulder.
“Myst,” he’d said. “You know this can never last, right?” His voice was stoic and sure.
“Whaddya’ mean?”
Mello looked out into the darkening horizon and told him.
“People like us can’t live in peace. It’s not in our nature.”
Myst had not revealed what he was feeling in his expression.
“You say that like it’s our destiny to kill or something.”
Mello gazed at him with dead-serious eyes.
“I don’t believe in destiny, Myst. I believe in our nature.”
Myst admired that in him, how he was able to know things without understanding them, it was something that gave him hope that he too could be like that.
Soon after, Mello told Susarion and Noire, the other founding members, and they agreed. Mello killed their government contact and they disappeared into the shadows for years to come.
A drop fell, soaked up by the dirt alleyway.
“Oh,” Myst commented. “Here it comes.”
A hail of droplets followed, picking up in moments.
From their place on the Second Level of Hilltop, Gruse and Noire watched the rain pour down through the ravine from the dryness of the decrepit building they were taking shelter in. Noire’s legs were pulled up to his chest, on the edge of the open windowsill, while Gruse laid against it.
“Aren’t you worried about someone on the other side of the ravine seeing up your skirt if you sit like that?” she asked.
“Not really,” he replied in a moody tone.
Gruse let out a barely audible chuckle.
Raindrops smacked the glass of Angelique’s window. He got up from the chair in his study and looked outside to the sea, judging the severity of the weather.
“I hope they aren’t having trouble getting here…”
Before he could think any further, he heard a knock at the door.
Graciously, he welcomed Gideon and Isaiah into his office.
“Did you have trouble with the rain?” he checked in.
“Nothing bad,” Gideon replied, removing his coat and placing it on the nearby rack. “It only really picked up right as we got here.”
Angelique sat down again and gestured for them to join him.
“I’m glad!”
“I don’t think it would have been an issue, anyway,” Isaiah remarked in a jolly voice. “I’ve had a few colds in my life, after all.”
“Well,” Angelique clasped his hands together, looking very scholarly. “You wanted me to probe your memories?”
Isaiah sat up straighter, suddenly.
“Yeah, Gideon has already given a description to the police of who he saw, but every time I try to remember the two of them who attacked me, I can’t remember their faces.”
Angelique’s brow furrowed.
“You can’t remember them?”
“No,” Isaiah insisted. “It’s like, I can remember it happening, I remember one of them snapping his hand in front of my face, but what they look like just doesn’t register. They look-- in my mind-- they look blurred out, or like an overexposed photo.”
Angelique stroked his chin.
“To tell you the truth, I don’t completely understand how Chemicals works, it’s not entirely something I can control, and I haven’t been able to use it intentionally.”
Isaiah slumped and Gideon brought his arms tighter together.
“You really don’t think you can do it?” Gideon asked, almost challenging him. “If we could identify two more of them, it would give us a huge advantage in protecting the president.”
“I understand, Gideon, I really wish that I was able to do something about it, but this is something that’s beyond science-- at least for now. I don’t have any idea--”
Angelique’s long, winding apology was cut off by the clicking of his telegram. Startled, he excused himself and grabbed the message.
“‘Professor Blackwell,’” he read aloud. “‘You have visitors in the lobby’?” He looked a little further. “‘Friends of Captain Jepta’s’?”
He and Isaiah both shot Gideon questioning glances.
“Oh, right!” Gideon snapped his fingers. “Angel, you remember that girl I told you about, right?”
Angelique’s face lit up.
“Oh, yes! I do! I was pretty interested in meeting her!”
Gideon smiled, recalling his meeting with his friend those months ago, until he suddenly took pause.
“Did it say… friend-s?”
---
Gideon opened the door to look upon the three weary travellers. The instant he and Gallow locked eyes, he felt the familiar dread bubble up in his stomach, the dread of having to deal with him.
“Captain!” Gallow put on a smug smirk. “It’s so good to see you again, we weren’t expecting you!”
“Same to you… Clarke…” Gideon just about spat.
“Hey, it’s-” Gallow’s voice dropped in pitch before he caught himself. The last thing he wanted to do was start an argument.
“Well, it’s good to see you as well, little lady,” Gideon looked down at Janna. “And… Sonsee…(?)” He sounded both glad and confused. “You’re still with-” he nodded his head at Gallow to avoid having to say his name. “Still?”
“It’s good company, these two,” she answered with a hint of sarcasm.
“Well, come in,” he motioned for them to enter.
When Gallow saw Isaiah, both men’s memories itched at their brains.
“Clarke?” Isaiah asked. “Is that the one I remember?”
“Lieutenant?” Gallow was as dumbfounded as he was.
“Professor Blackwell, I’d like you to meet Janna…?” Gideon trailed off.
“Halloway,” she finished, extending her hand over Angelique’s desk. “Janna Halloway.”
“Ah, Ms Halloway,” the doctor grinned earnestly. “It’s great to finally meet you. Gideon’s told me a lot about your passion for medicine.”
Janna felt her heart flutter. The real Professor Blackwell, world-renowned doctor of medicine and medical researcher, was welcoming her with such a friendly smile, it seemed almost too good to be true. She noticed a plaque on his desk that read “E gondona fora gon senta, en timé, fora medinos.” She giggled at the inscription, which translated to “The well need common sense; those without, need doctors.”
“Hm?” Angelique followed her eyes to the plaque. “Oh!” he said with a pleasant surprise. “You know Yorsjan?”
Janna’s stomach turned again; now she was impressing him?
“Mayor Junda taught me some in Sigrit…” she explained.
“Junda!” he cried. “That’s a Yorsjan name if I ever heard one!”
They began going back and forth in the language; because Angelique rarely met someone from his family’s home country, he was delighted to find someone who was somewhat proficient with the language.
The four other watched them get along merrily, and turned away to let them do their thing. Gallow motioned to Gideon.
“Hey,” he said in a low tone. “I want to talk to you about something.” When he saw Gideon’s alarmed expression, he tagged his request, “I don’t want to fight, or anything, this is actually important.”
He led Gideon to the hall, where he produced a newspaper from his coat.
“I want you to see this,” he unrolled it to the front page, where a monochrome image of Eroh behind the bars of the police wagon was printed front-and-center. When he saw it, Gideon couldn’t stop his face from revealing his surprise and disdain, which Gallow picked up on.
“Do you know who this is?!” he cut straight to the chase.
“Does it matter?” Gideon replied curtly. “Of course I know who it is, he’s on the front page of the news.”
“No, you don’t get it,” Gallow insisted. “This is really important, I mean it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Because this guy tried to kill us.”
Gideon’s face froze. If he didn’t know any better, he would have sworn it was quiet enough for him to hear the blood rushing through his veins.
“He- he-” he stuttered. “You... know him?”
“Look, Gideon,” Gallow used his first name to make clear how serious he was. “On our trip from coast to coast, we had run-ins with no less than four hitmen, sent specifically to kill us.”
“What are you-?”
“First, the train from Fenway, Sonsee was attacked on the train. We ditched the train and spent the night at a woodcutter’s house-- nice guy-- but that was when we met-” he pointed at Eroh’s picture. “-This guy. Then we ran into these two guys, one old, one young, and that was pretty crazy, and then there was this guy in the mountains-- honestly, I don’t know if he has anything to do with them, but it was pretty strange, all things considered--”
“C-Gallow,” Gideon admitted to him. “Slow down, for one second, please.” He held his hands up, begging him to stop the onslaught of information. “Okay, all I need to know is that you met this person,” he pointed to the image. “And it was, for a fact, this man?”
“Yes,” Gallow answered with all the resolve he could muster.
“And where was this?”
“Still in the Southwest, by the Jameson River.”
Gideon’s brow furrowed in concern.
“That’s… troubling…” he said slowly, most of his brain power going into processing. “Did any of them mention any names? Anything to identify themselves?”
“No,” Gallow replied. “But,” he perked up, remembering suddenly. “A few of them said something about somebody or something they called ‘The Tiger’? I’m not sure if it was a person, it sounded like a title, the way they said it, but I don’t know.”
Gideon put his hand on his hip and looked at the ground.
“Well, I hate to say it,” he couldn’t even bring himself to look at Gallow as he spoke. “But you might have come at the perfect time. We were just discussing clues to-- well, I’ll fill you in later.”
Gallow looked confused.
“‘Fill me in’?”
“Yeah,” Gideon chuckled. “It’s technically some top-secret government stuff, but I think you’ll need to know about it, if you’re so important.” He looked through the crack in the door to Sonsee and Janna. “And they will too.”
“I’m not following.”
“All that I’m saying is, we have a new ‘in’ to the suspect.”