Kirk didn't want to look.
He really, really did not want to turn around and face the thing, but he knew had to.
With aching slowness, as though a sudden movement might trigger the codewraith to come and tear him to pieces, he started to turn around. He pivoted to stand alongside Arden, taking great care not to make a sound as he looked down the narrow alleyway.
The codewraith skulked there, framed by the dull building walls, the leaking neon glow from the city skyline giving it an eerie aura. This one looked very different to the crazed creature that had chased him and Piper through the streets – humanoid, but skinny, almost like a metal skeleton.
Right now it's three bulbous yellow eye-lights were level with him, but Kirk could see the hunch of its spine, bent over like an animal. If it uncurled it would have towered over him. Its limbs were like blades, thin and gleaming in the gloom. Misfiring sparks crackled through its chest cavity and another undulating shriek of corrupted code ripped through the alley.
A glint of metal caught the corner of his eye and he glanced to his left. Arden had her gun out now, levelled at the thing. It started prowling towards them, those horrible long limbs flicking and probing like a spider.
"Kirk," Arden whispered. "What do we do?"
Kirk shook his head. His heart was slamming against his ribcage and he could feel his breath quickening. Last time the wraith had just attacked, and he had just reacted. It had been easier – instinctive. Now the thing was creeping towards them, forcing him to confront the twisted reality of what was happening.
"I don't think it's after us," he answered, speaking as quietly as he could, certain that the smallest hint of attention would bring the wraith crashing down on them.
"You can't know that!"
Kirk gulped down the lump of fear in his throat and glanced back. The Russell home was just visible in the tangle of houses, marked out by the glow of the repair-works sign.
"I think it's heading for your house."
"Why?"
"Last place they saw Piper." He gave her a nervous glance. "And if they really are after her...?"
"Oh my God." Arden exhaled, her finger tightening around the trigger. "S-so what now?"
"Move slow," Kirk told her, trying not to let it show just how terrified he was. "There's a gap in the buildings a few meters back. We can slip in there, and we'll be out of the way."
The wraith scuttled a few steps forward, its thin head twitching and cocking to one side. The yellow lenses swivelled and whirred. Kirk swallowed hard. Even without pupils he felt the thing staring right at him. Something analogous to a jaw gnashed beneath the eyes, creating a horrible grind of metal on metal.
With a gentle grip on Arden's shoulder, he started edging backwards. She shuffled awkwardly with him, still keeping the gun trained on the wraith. Kirk just hoped, if it came to that, that she knew what she was doing.
Then her heel struck a glass bottle.
It wasn't even that loud. Just a faint tinkle as at spun across the concrete of the alley.
The wraith's head section snapped towards her. The strange metal mouth opened and a shriek erupted with enough volume to shatter the nearby windows. Then it charged.
Arden screamed and squeezed the trigger.
The bang of the gun was deafening in such close quarters, and he heard the sharp clang of the bullet striking the wraith. Something in its upper torso sparked and fizzled but it didn't slow down.
Another gunshot rang out, then he grabbed Arden and yanked her to the ground, just as a bladed arm scythed through the space they'd been standing in. He felt the woosh of air overhead – a blow that would have cut them both in half.
Legs churning, he half-crawled, half-ran to drag her out of the way of the wraith's follow up swing, one huge blade punching into the ground and driving deep into the concrete. Kirk kept a hold of Arden's hoodie, hauling her upright as he scrambled to his feet. Eyes wide with terror, she planted her feet and fire again.
One of the codewraith's yellow eye-sensors exploded.
Its binary howl of anger stung his ears, and the machine stumbled drunkenly, lashing out left and right – carving open walls, ripping through shutters and smashing windows. Cries of alarm began to rise from the surrounding structures.
"Let's get out of here!" Arden blurted, stumbling backwards.
Kirk didn't need to be told twice, and they both hurled themselves into the dark space between two buildings, frantically wriggling their way through. Another crackling howl echoed into the air again, and the sound of crunching metal steps started up.
His brow furrowed and he stopped.
"Kirk, what the fuck?!" Arden hissed, reaching back to grab his arm. "C'mon!"
"Wait, just wait," he whispered harshly.
She stared at him as though he'd completely lost his mind, but she stopped, chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath again. Then she listened, and her expression changed from one of fear to one of bafflement.
The footsteps were receding.
Pressing a finger to his lips, Kirk began shuffling back towards the alley. When he reached the aperture, it took a few breaths to psyche himself up before he peeked out.
He saw the wraith, coiling its body away from him, so smooth and lifelike you could almost forget it was made of circuits and metal. Blurts of code rattled the air and even from behind he could see its head still sparking from where Arden's bullet had blown one of its optical sensors. It writhed its way towards the wreckage of the house.
He saw a couple of other terrified heads poke out of smashed windows, only to disappear again in an instant when they saw what had invaded their lives. Probably sending out alarm calls for the police, for all the good that would do.
"Arden." He kept his voice low, beckoning her. "It's okay."
She looked far from convinced, hefting the gun meaningfully as she slithered back out into the alley after him. Seeing the codewraith heading for her home she raised the pistol again, but Kirk grabbed her wrist.
"Don't," he warned. "You'll just piss it off."
"So what do we do?"
He let go of her and looked at the wraith again, watching that writhing sinuous form moving away, exuding a singular sense of purpose. Its back arched and it began circling the house, its head section lowered to the ground like a dog sniffing for a scent. Watching it, an idea occurred to him. One he had a feeling Arden wouldn't like.
"Well," he began, "us and that wraith do have one thing in common."
"We do?" A moment later she realised what he meant and her face fell. "Oh, no, no, no. Kirk, you've got to be kidding me."
He shrugged apologetically. "You got a better idea?"
"Any idea would be better than this."
"Look, Arden, I know how it sounds, but it's not looking for us. So long as we keep our distance we should be okay."
"You want to try and tail that thing through the city?!" She thumped him on the chest with her free hand. "And what if it notices us? What if it doesn't want to be followed?"
Kirk looked at the wraith again; looked at that undulating, bladed body. Fear jolted him afresh, but he kept watching, steeling himself. It circled the house, those yellow lights searing in the murk of Hadrian's slums. It disappeared for a moment, sliding and clanking through the house before re-emerging, a crackling grunt of errant code echoing through the streets. Then it slouched off, nose to the ground, following a scent.
He knew he had to do this. With or without Arden, if need be.
"I'm not gonna to make you come with me," Kirk said. "But I'm going after it."
"Fucking hell, Kirk." Arden checked the revolver and swallowed hard. Then she opened it, refilled the empty chambers and snapped the drum back into place. "Let's go then. But if that thing cuts us to pieces I'll haunt your stupid ass in heaven or hell."
"Sounds fair." Gulping in a deep breath, he motioned with his head towards the receding form of the codewraith. "Let's go."
*
The thing wound its way through the dockside slums like an animal on the hunt, sticking to the shadows. Despite its size, he almost lost sight of it more than once, those thrashing limbs folding and sliding through gaps it shouldn't have been able to fit through.
With Arden close on his heels, Kirk scurried along in its wake. Night swallowed the dock district, and even with the bloodbath of a few nights ago, he could hear the endless pulse of life as bars and clubs threw open their doors. It would take more than a little death and destruction to deprive Hadrian's residents of the only vices that got them through the day.
He could feel the incline underfoot as they climbed, streets sloping away from the corrosive chasm of the Hadrian river. The glint of the wraith's eye-lights led them on as it skulked through the detritus of the back alleys.
"This one's different," he said as he hurdled an overturned trash can, taking care to land as lightly as he could.
Arden hopped over after him. "Well, yeah, it looks different to the one I saw."
"No, I don't mean that. I mean, what it's doing."
"You mean all the sneaking about?"
He nodded.
"What about it?"
"Well, the first one just ran through the city and killed anyone who got in the way." Kirk nodded to the machine. "This one's avoiding everybody. It's only got one thing in mind."
"Yeah, killing my sister." Arden's voice was bitter; he could feel the tension pulsing off of her, but there was nothing to say right now that would make it any better.
They just needed to get to Piper before the wraith did – wherever she was.
The codewraith led them on a not-so-scenic tour of the slum districts, through scrapyards and garbage disposal units; through maintenance pipe-ways and the skeletons of abandoned construction yards. Its head regularly sank to the ground, as though it was sniffing for something, blurts of code rattling off the walls around it.
Only a handful of people saw it, mostly homeless no-hopers scavenging the dead fringes. They scurried off at the sight of the killing machine, and since they stayed out of its way, the wraith paid them no mind.
Then their surroundings started to change. Kirk knew they were moving north-west-ish, but they'd coiled through so many tiny warrens, back roads and tunnels that he was pretty turned around. He had no idea what part of the city they'd washed up in, and could see that Arden felt the same. Her brow furrowed in confusion as they emerged from a dried up overflow canal, only to find themselves in a clustered thicket of concrete buildings.
The structures loomed in from all sides, looming like sentinels. Corporate adverts scrolled along the dark-painted exterior walls, and the wraith brushed against them, letting out a low, burbling growl of broken binary. Its bladed limps scraped against the surface and Kirk winced.
"Where the hell are we?" he muttered.
"Some corp housing block I think," Arden replied, examining one of the nearby ads. "Looks like a Landstore residential. Can't keep themselves away from a nice matte black finish."
"Didn't realise you were an expert."
"They had me on the Infrastructure Apprentice track at school." She shrugged, pointing to her temple. "Got a lot of shitty corp designs rattling around up here."
The wraith was off again before he could reply, squirming its way through the narrow spaces. They scampered off after it, pin-balling around the right angle corners of the corporate block. Bursts of light cut between the buildings like the sun through half open blinds.
He lost sight of it and his breath snatched in panic. Kirk sped up, willing to risk running straight into the wraith rather than lose it altogether. He slipped his knife from his pocket, its dull grey blade sporting a sharper edge than appearances would suggest. His foot struck an empty can in his haste, sending it clattering through the narrow space with agonizing volume.
"Slow down," Arden hissed, grabbing his jacket. "Unless you want that thing to turn you into a human fucking kebab."
Kirk bristled, but did as she asked, feeling his cheeks redden. She kept a hold of him as they finally slunk out from between the buildings. Light flooded over them with such suddenness that he had to squint, shielding his eyes with one hand.
"Kirk," Arden murmured, slowly turning him.
He rotated under her guidance and then stopped dead. His limbs tensed and he thumbed the handle of his knife nervously.
The wraith was barely a dozen metes away, its back to them, still as a statue. It's hunched back formed a bristling arch like some kind of ancient dinosaur, but that wasn't what drew his attention.
The head section rose, staring at the blazing spires of Hadrian's central district.
He felt a lead weight settle in the base of his stomach.
"The heart," Arden whispered. "That's where it's going. That's where Piper is."
||