Chapter Eight
Young lady.”
She didn’t realize she’d drifted off until someone nudged her shoulder. Ikki’s body sprang alive before her brain did. She swung an arm out in a wild arc.
“Oh, what?” she mumbled. “What do you want?”
“Young lady!” whispered the voice with surprise. Ikki squinted up through the dark. A pair of faint, glowing eyes squinted back. The retrograde. The one with the hairy arms. He and his companion were crouched an arm’s length away from her. The rest of the lamps were all out. “Is it true that you’re the daughter of the Architect?”
Ikki sat up immediately. “Yes. Why?”
“Please excuse us,” said the retrograde’s companion. He turned on his lamp and sat it between them. It lit his face in alarming shadows, but his smile was so bashful it almost made up for how they’d nearly made Ikki jump out of her skin. “Don’t mean anything untoward. Just didn’t think it best to ask while those asshole collaborators were going at it. You said you think there’s probably some supply area near here, yeah?”
That was a complicated question to ask someone as soon as they’d woken up. Ikki rubbed her eyes and thought about it. “Probably,” she said. “You didn’t answer my question. Why is it important that I’m the daughter of the Architect?”
“Because if anyone would know, it would be you. You see, we hate the House of Minos,” said the retrograde. His voice carried with it a faint growl. Only the fact that Ikki knew it was not directed at her kept her from going for the bottles in her pack for defense. “And we want to know if you do as well.”
“I don’t know how those two things are related,” said Ikki, irritably, but she could see she wouldn’t get much farther if she didn’t answer. That was an even more complicated question to ask someone who had just woken up. Ikki bit her lip and considered. If she’d been asked that a day ago, the answer would have been different. “They’re terrible. All of them. But what does this have to do with anything?”
“What you said earlier,” said the retrograde’s friend. “About poking around. That sounds like a damn good idea to me. We want to help you do that.”
“Oh,” said Ikki. She could run through a dozen ways that could go terribly wrong. “Why?”
“Because we will not sit around while they wait for us to die,” said the retrograde, with a great passion. “I do not believe in the judgment of the gods. That is why we are here to begin with.”
“And those bastards shot Sar,” said his friend. “And you were the only one ballsy enough to say anything to that.”
“Okay, okay,” said Ikki, processing this flow of emotion as quickly as she could. She threw her things into her back and rolled off her bedroll, ready to go. “Let’s go do that. But first you’re going to have to tell me your names. I’d like to know who I’m working with before I start.”
The man’s name was Jules. The retrograde was Kraton, and, like Ikki, they weren’t criminals. They were union leaders. Or at least, they’d tried to be. Sar had been best at this leadership business, but he was dead. Now, it was just the two of them. They’d been metalworkers, down (or up, now) in Hephaiston. Their job had been to build platforms and reinforce sections of the tower walls. They’d been very good at their work. So good they’d each been promoted to a team of overseers whose job it was to coordinate all maintenance teams in the tower. The trouble had started two weeks ago, when a group of their best had been requested for a special maintenance run up on level 7. That was Grand Minos, but no one on Hephaiston called it that.
“It’s a level the same as any other. It’s built the same way, what you put on it is all an afterthought,” said Kraton, with a flare of his strange eyes. It was easy to follow him as he took up the lead, holding the lantern high as he examined the twists of the hall. They weren’t too far out from the main chamber, but the darkness made each step seem longer. “But the difference is the men and women we send up there don’t always get sent back.”
“Just like what Tierce set me up for,” said Ikki. “So what did you do?”
“What did Sar do, you mean,” said Kraton, turning another corner. Ikki was so fascinated by his story, it was almost easy to forget to look over her shoulder to make sure she could see the light from Jules’s lamp. The Labyrinth walls didn’t seem all that different from the halls of the temples—just smaller and more bare, facades stripped away to nothing but the supporting metals underneath. “He said we ought to make this union serious. We refused to send anyone unless the House told us what it was they were supposed to be working on. The House said they’d let us know. They let us know with a unit of guards, who called us rebels and packed us up and gave us as offerings. Well, me and Sar. Jules volunteered himself because he goes where I go.”
“Well, yeah,” said Jules, “Seeing as I married you.”
Ikki considered this information.
“If they said you were rebels,” she began, “Then why didn’t the House …”
“Make examples of us? They would have, but we were well known among the workers in Hephaiston. Hephaiston has a big population.”
“Biggest in Minos,” said Ikki. “My mother told me it was the first residential level. Before they built up.”
“Yes,” Kraton seemed to vibrate with pride as he lowered the lantern to examine a small compartment close to the floor. “Does this look loose to you?”
Ikki bent to have a look. “Doesn’t seem to be reinforced.”
“Step back,” said Kraton, who slammed his large boot into the door. It fell open, revealing a fire extinguisher and a small white box.
“A tool kit! About time!” cried Ikki. It was just a wrench, two types of screwdrivers, and a coil of zip line, but it was a start. Ikki eagerly stuffed these things into her pockets. “They had to put these everywhere. There’s probably a maintenance closet if we go further—what they did to you and your friends sounds just like what they did to me. It’s about what they see up in the dome. What I saw.”
“About the sky?” murmured Kraton.
Ikki nodded, sure Kraton could see her. He understated his night-vision, probably for her own peace of mind. Retrogrades were used to regular citizens finding them unnerving. “Yes. About it being blue. You believe me, right? That I saw it.”
Kraton considered. Halfway down the hallway the walls began to groan. Ikki froze, trying to determine the source of the noise: it sounded close, and vibrated the walls, but it came with a noise like moving parts. There was some form of machinery in the walls.
“I do believe you,” said Kraton at last, looking up at the Labyrinth’s darkened ceilings, “that that is what you saw. But if it is true, I understand why Minos has sent you and my workers here.”
“And why’s that?” Ikki looked up from counting the steps to the next bend.
“Your mother never told you?” Ikki shook her head. “Perhaps you were too young. I have never seen it myself, but in Hephaiston workers who move deep in the walls, where it comes close to the outside, have found messages written on the walls. Carved. By the workers who came centuries before them. Up until five years ago we called the Royal Architect when these messages were found. It was said that she was the only one who had the resources to know what they said, but she gave a copy of the translations to us, the overseers, before the walls were replaced.”
“Five years ago was close to when she … when she died,” said Ikki. She only swallowed a little when she thought about it. “There was an accident on the stairs. But it wasn’t in Hephaiston. It must have been right before. She must not have had a chance to tell me. What did it say? I have to know.”
“Blue skies meant the end of everything,” said Kraton, simply.
Ikki stared at him. Kraton didn’t move. He didn’t blink. He worked his jaw quietly from side to side. The groaning in the walls got louder. She believed, completely, that he had read these words himself. She believed he’d thought about them for a long time.
“Why?” asked Ikki, after a time.
“They did not say that. Only that it would happen. The Architect told us to keep these documents with our expense sheets, where Minos’s officials would never look.”
“That sounds like my mother,” Ikki laughed, in spite of the ache of knowing she hadn’t been trusted with this. She’d only been eleven, but still. Mother had always trusted Ikki with her most special files. If only she’d known! “But why would it be the end? It’s not toxic out there. I got a real lung full of it when I flew past it. I don’t even have a cough from it.”
“I do not know,” said Kraton. “Things like this have been whispered before. About the tower’s end. It’s why those people fear you saying it. It’s why it’s easier for them to believe that you are mad, rather than it being true.”
“But it is true!”
“Yes, but—”
The groaning came again. This time Ikki felt it in the floors; she threw her arm up against the wall. The world around her shook, and then stopped.
From down the hall, they heard Jules shout: “Ah, Kraton? You still over there? The hall just did something real weird—”
His voice came too clearly. The light from his lamp suddenly shone at their backs. At first, Ikki assumed he’d run after them, but as she looked over her shoulder she started: she could see the chamber where the elevator was! That wasn’t right. They’d turned at least two corners to get to where they were, but it looked only two blocks away, down a straight hall Ikki couldn’t remember walking down.
From the chamber, she heard the oracle screech: “Fools! Fools! What have you done?”
And then, in the chamber, the lights came on.
There had been Helios lights in the Labyrinth. They came on all at once. Ikki’s eyes ached with the strength of the sudden brightness of it all. She didn’t have much time to congratulate herself, because behind her she heard a great rumbling. This time just the floor shook. And shook in a way that didn’t feel like the halls moving. It shook in a way that meant something else was moving.
Something big.
Kraton ran toward Ikki. Ikki jolted, not because a very large retrograde was charging at her, but because that very large retrograde was being chased by a hot red light. It towered over him. It poured down the hall, spraying his shadow ahead of him. It moved much too fast. Kraton bent as he moved, grabbing Ikki around the waist. He threw her quickly over one shoulder. Ikki had to clutch at the side of her coat to keep the tools from jouncing free.
“What is that?” cried Ikki, the light hot on their heels. Despite everything, Kraton lowered his head and managed to get some distance between him and…whatever it was, rumbling up the hall behind them.
“Jules,” called Kraton. “Jules, tell the others to run! It’s the Minotaur, the Minotaur is coming!”
Ikki jounced so much her teeth clacked together, but she managed to look up, into that blazing light. It shone from two fierce points set in a wall of pure black. That wall shifted, and separated itself, and suddenly the hall was filled from wall to wall.
It looked like a bull. At least, its outline did. Ikki couldn’t see much under the amount of steam pouring from its head, set low on a hulking body. She heard the great drumming of hooves. She could see the rise of its horns, curved in a way that nearly scraped the walls on either side.
“That’s not right,” said Ikki, in spite of herself. Her voice felt like it came from someone else entirely. “It should fall over!”
And then, as though someone had heard her, the hall began to move again. It didn’t move to the side, as it must have before, this time it tipped. The sound of hooves came from much nearer, improbably steady even as Kraton began to skid. They stumbled back into the elevator chamber. Ikki tumbled off his shoulder. She winced as she rolled. She lay on her side. She stumbled up onto one knee.
The bull burst into the chamber.
Then the lights went dark again. Ikki caught little more than the rise of its back and a long, long tail before it blurred back into the blackness and its own steam. It shook its head. Sparks crackled from its long, ragged mane. It growled. The sound of hooves got slower and more purposeful, as it stalked toward the center of the large room. The ring of lights at the top of the chamber shut down one after the other with each step it took. The ground remained ghostly still with its movement, in spite of its massive size.
Then it stopped. The gleam of its eyes flashed back and forth, as though in consideration. The lights flickered over the pile of abandoned supplies in the center of the room. No one had had time to grab much. They huddled on the far side of the room, frozen in awe of the creature and in confusion at the sudden flow of light.
“Oh heavens above,” Ikki could hear Agnan cry. “Spare us. We came only seeking your judgement!”
Followed by Akadden’s considerably less composed: “We’re all going to die!”
Ikki watched Kraton and Jules stumble back to their feet. Jules gripped Kraton’s arm for support. The bull was only a few steps away from them. Kraton stood perfectly still. There was blood on his nose from where he’d fallen, but his face was a picture of calm, in spite of its natural wildness.
“How much do you think it can see?” Ikki asked him.
Then the red lights focused on Ikki. It charged. Kraton and Jules moved first, Kraton leapt to grab its left horn, while Jules leapt to grab its right. Despite its size, the bull ground to a halt. The smoke around it swept over Ikki, and she could barely see the two workmen through the mist, their heavy boots digging into the floors as hard as they could. She heard a large, metallic whine.
“What are you doing?” yelled Ikki, but whether Kraton and Jules had intended to hold it off while she ran or just wanted their revenge against all the House of Minos, she got no answer. The bull whipped its head back and forth, and they were lost in the whirl of steam and blackness. Ikki coughed and stumbled to get clear.
“That way,” she called to the others. “The door’s right there!”
She needn’t have bothered. Akadden had already run for it. Ikki ran after them, as the bull thrashed and roared behind them. One of Lila’s brothers fell. Lila shoved him to his feet as they plunged through the opening, Agnan wheezing close by.
She passed the prone form of the old oracle. She knelt over him, taking his arm. “Are you okay? We have to go!”
But the oracle only drew away from her in disgust. “Do not touch me, girl. Allow me to seek judgement.”
“That thing will probably step on you,” said Ikki.
The oracle to his credit, blanched only slightly. “If that is the god’s choice, so be it.”
“But that’s stupid!”
“You are a fine one to decide what’s foolish, Child of the Architect,” spat the oracle.
“Ikki,” shouted Lila.
The bull’s roars and the shouts from Kraton and Jules subsided. Ikki looked up, afraid she’d find the two workmen impaled on its horns. What she saw was an oncoming cloud of blackness, the lights switching off one after the other as it drew nearer.
Ikki grabbed Lila’s brother’s other arm and ran through into the opposite hall. She expected darkness ahead of her, but here the lights had also snapped on. After a minute a crash behind her signaled the slamming of the second warehouse door. There would be no return.
“Don’t stay in the main hall!” called Ikki. “Everyone! Move into the side areas! There won’t be room for it to get in with us!”
It was easier said than done. The main hall seemed to shudder ahead of them. That was because it was. The halls were moving again! Ikki watched as it happened, swinging a block ahead of Akadden. Akadden froze, arms peddling. Agnan fell almost against his back.
“To the right! To the right!” called Ikki. There was a turn-off just ahead.
It was Theoldus who heard her. He sprinted for the side hall, and Ikki helped Lila and her brothers follow. Agnan and Akadden turned, much too late. The floor tipped them forward. Akadden yelled.
“Don’t let it—don’t let it—”
Ikki reached as far as she could, but Agnan had grabbed Akadden’s arm. The scholar’s extra weight held him back. His hand passed through empty air. She could see his face, a mix of hatred, fear, and pure confusion, as he lost his footing and fell away, the great mechanical creature passing after them. The halls went dark with its passing. For a brief moment she could hear Akadden’s vicious swears, fading away as though he had fallen a long distance in a short period of time. She never heard him strike bottom.
Ikki covered her mouth and got to her feet.
“It’s trying to herd us,” she said, removing her hand when she was sure she wouldn’t gag. She tried not to let her voice shake. She didn’t have time to think about the look on Akadden’s face. Or the fact that he wasn’t much older than her. “I think it wants us to go somewhere.”
“Like a sheep dog!” said Lila. “But where’s it taking us?”
“Away from the elevator,” said Theoldus, quietly. “We should try to get back there.”
“How?” asked one of Lila’s brothers. “I can’t see a thing—”
The light at the far end of the narrow hall flipped on.
“Helios will show us the way,” said Theoldus, with great certainty. He moved toward the lights.
“Wait—” said Ikki, but it was no use. Theoldus took off at a jog. Lila and the others followed close behind him. Ikki looked back over her shoulder, but there was no sign of Agnan or Akadden. Of course not. No one bothered to ask after them. Ikki swallowed, pushed off the wall, trying to run to keep pace with Theoldus in the lead. She reached into her pockets and pulled out the zip line, wrapping it firmly around her arm.
“It isn’t alive,” said Ikki, huffing. Her leg hurt. “It’s a machine. Those hoofbeats aren’t real. There’s some kind of sound system in it. The pace would have changed on those slopes if they were real.”
“Then it’s an instrument of the gods,” said Theoldus. The lights came from a set of stairs at the end of the hall, they went upwards. Theoldus charged up with little effort, pausing every few steps to wait for the others to come along.
“Not necessarily,” said Ikki, panting. “Helios doesn’t control machines like that. And if it were Zeus, it would have wanted to kill us. It didn’t. It’s staying behind us. It could easily run us over.”
Theoldus stopped at the top step. He looked down at her, his dark hair had fallen out of his guard’s ponytail. “Who else, if not the gods?”
“Ancient times,” said Ikki. “People used machines. To work in the city. Oh, I’m dizzy.…”
To her surprise, he put a hand on her shoulder until she was steady.
“You think too much,” he said, not unkindly.
“You think we deserve to be down here?” asked Ikki.
“I want to know if what I have done is right or wrong,” said Theoldus. “If it’s the Minotaur who will show me, so be it.”
“Then why didn’t you stay with that old oracle?” asked Ikki. “He just let the Minotaur …”
Theoldus’s eyes flashed with a deep, strange pain.
“Because that would be too easy,” he said.
He turned and marched down the hall. It was just wide enough to fit two of them side by side. The lights snapped on a block ahead of them. They kept switching on, the further they moved down the hall.
“Helios at least cares enough to give us that,” breathed Lila, at one point.
“I don’t think it’s Helios,” said Ikki, “The lights shut off again after the Minotaur came through.”
“Well, you can believe that if you’d like,” said Lila, reasonably. “Some of us are going to try to be positive.”
The narrow hall led into a second chamber, not unlike the one that had held the elevator.
Theoldus stood with his legs firmly apart and his arms folded as he surveyed the room. “No doors big enough for the beast,” he decided. His arms fell to his side. Ikki could see the muscles in the back of his shoulders relax.
It looked like he was right: the only doors in the room were person-sized, and located on either side of the room. The chamber was full of a row of large water tanks, with clear cylinders marked by the symbols of Poseidon. Pipes led from each, moving up into the ceiling.
“A water treatment center?” Ikki turned in a circle to get the full breadth of the room. She could hear the hiss of steam and water banging through the pipes. She could also see the great machines above them. They were shaped like shells, and made for making water drinkable. “It’s active. This can’t be all to move the rooms. They wouldn’t bother to filter it. Someone must be around to drink it.”
“That’d be us,” said Lila. “There’s a fountain over there.”
They’d left their canteens with their abandoned food packs up in the elevator chamber. The large silver fountain that made up the center of the room was a relief. A typical fountain of Poseidon: a metal, bearded face spouting water out of his mouth. Monitors in the eyes snapped alive as it sensed living people in the room. The water poured more into the basin below. Parched and exhausted, even Ikki forgot to be cautious as she joined the others in collapsing against the basin. The water was very cold and tasted strongly of treatments, but it was a great improvement to tepid water and warm, cheap wine. Ikki took a handful and poured it over her head.
Then she saw the row of lockers next to the lowest tank.
“Where’s she going now?” called one of Lila’s brothers. Ikki crouched across from the door. It was a very basic utility locker, with an old fashion mechanical lock. Ikki fished the screwdriver out of her pockets and felt along the door until she found the knobs where it was screwed in place.
“Aw, let her be,” said Lila, in a kind tone that sounded suspiciously like it should have been followed by “it’s for our own good.”
The door began to slide away. Ikki stood on her toes and felt around for the top screws. She was so eager to find what was inside, so eager to actually have something she could really actively work at, she barely noticed Theoldus’s shadow as it passed her to inspect the large set of closed doors on the opposite end of the chamber. The floor began to hum under her feet. Ikki paid this only the most cursory of thoughts. There must have been pipes under the floor. They must have brought water to lower levels of the labyrinth.
The door to the locker fell open with a clang. Ikki found a rubber suit and a metal maintenance pole. She could have cried.
“Oh, mother. I saw these in books!” she said. Lila gave her an odd look from across the room.
Ikki didn’t bother with the suit: it was much too large for her, though she grabbed the gloves that hung from the inside of the door. It was the pole that really got her. It was a true, old-fashioned extension pole, the sort ancient workers used for bracing automatic doors while they worked. According to how a worker applied pressure to the rubbery grip along the center, it could be adjusted to the appropriate length required. A tiny set of numbers written on the grip told her this particular model would extend to a maximum of seven feet up and down. A dull little light next to this number told her the power in it had probably been dead for years, but that didn’t matter to Ikki. It was the real deal, and more importantly, it came to just the right height of her chest to act as a walking stick. Her sore leg could have sung its praises to the very top of the dome.
Then she heard a whir ahead of her. The far door had slid open. Theoldus stood in front of it, frozen in surprise.
“Aw heck, keep it closed.” said Lila.
“I hadn’t intended …” said Theoldus, holding his arm up helplessly, then he saw what was on the other side, and left the sentence to dangle.
It was the elevator chamber.
The floor was level. The Helios lights were on, hung from the top ring of the elevator cradle. It looked different in the light, made up of silver and white paneling. Ikki could make out her pack laid out by the crates. The rest lay scattered about the center of the room. The Minotaur hadn’t been too interested in their food. Only some of the packs had been crushed. Dried food and meats were smeared into the stainless steel floors. Some of the wine canisters had broken, spilling blood-colored liquid everywhere.
Ikki peered under Theoldus’s arm, walking stick in hand. She held her breath, certain she’d see the bodies of Kraton and Jules amongst the wreck, or at least the poor old stubborn oracle. There was no sign of Kraton or Jules.
“The doors are sealed,” said Lila. “It can’t come back here, right?”
“I don’t know,” said Ikki. “We must have run at least ten flights down when it was chasing us. I don’t think we walked ten flights back up …”
“Miracle of the gods,” murmured Theoldus.
Ikki grabbed his hand without thinking. “Wait,” she said. “The halls move. Maybe we moved. And the lights are back on. Why would they be back on? The Minotaur shut them off behind us.”
It hadn’t been the pipes rumbling, after all.
Ikki might as well have been trying to stop the lift itself. Theoldus shook her off. He marched into the room with a strange sort of purpose. “We need food,” he declared. “Everyone, gather as much as you can.”
“Right,” said Lila. She ushered her brothers ahead of her, keeping close to the one who had tripped.
Ikki hung back. The wine across the floor was fresh and sticky “There aren’t stairs. We shouldn’t be back here.”
She inspected the door. It was possible that she had missed it the night before, in the dark. It looked enough like the rest of the wall.
“Did it come down, or did we come up? The Minotaur can’t turn around in the halls, his horns would gash up all the walls.…”
“Oh gods, what is wrong with you?”
Lila’s voice echoed like a gunshot off the high walls. Ikki blinked. The farmer stared at her, her arms full of the remains of a set of cured meats. Her broad shoulders shook.
“I’m sorry?” asked Ikki. “I’m just wondering—”
“You keep saying that. But are you going to just keep talking or are you actually going to help us? You just keep asking questions that don’t have any answers! Unless you’re just asking them to make us so scared that we just give up!”
“That isn’t—”
“Then help,” said Lila.
Ikki looked around. Lila’s brothers were currently occupied with trying to determine what on the floor was edible. Theoldus toed the remains of a lamp.
Ikki walked into the room and knelt next to one of the heaps. This section had been flattened by the Minotaur. The bread had been smashed to little more than tiny crumbs. Ikki picked up the bits that seemed edible, but she couldn’t help but notice the way they’d been smeared into the floor, in tracks, which ran in a straight line.…
“Oh!” said Ikki.
She saw Lila go tense with dread.
Ikki dusted up more crumbs and kept her thoughts to herself. The crumbs must have stuck to the Minotaur, and been shaken off as it had moved forward.
The trail of crumbs followed a straight line which led directly to the far door. Ikki followed it, scooping up the biggest pieces she could. There weren’t many large pieces; the beast’s immense weight had crushed the bread into fine dust. At the door, she stopped. The crumbs vanished directly under the tight seal of the warehouse.
Ikki touched the door and looked up, checking for any monitors. She longed to ask Theoldus if he spotted any on his end of the room, but Lila’s words still burned.
I am trying to help, thought Ikki, bitterly. I just wish I could get them to believe me.
But Kraton and Jules had believed her. She supposed if her only two supporters had also been the monster’s first victims, it wasn’t really that encouraging. Ikki went back to examining the crumbs. The trails moved in two even lines with a spare space between. She turned and watched it extend back toward the center of the room. Some streaks of wine had come with it.
She crouched to have a better look at the steel floor. There were faint streaks in what should have been carefully buffed floors. They matched the lines of the crumbs, as though something very heavy had been dragged across the polish.
“Treads,” muttered Ikki. She touched the warehouse door. “You move on treads. Of course you do. You need grip when you tip the halls like that.”
Her hand froze on the door. It hadn’t been completely sealed when it had shut behind the Minotaur; the remains of one of the canisters held it open an inch above the steel floors. Through this gap, Ikki saw a curl of smoke and a faint red glow.
Ikki sprang to her feet. “Everyone,” she shouted. “Everyone back through the door!”
But the side door shut the same time the warehouse door opened, and Ikki didn’t get far before the Minotaur roared, lowered its horns, and rammed into her from behind.