A Brotherhood of Crows.

“How does it look?” Zularna hissed, and shifted the stock of her crossbow against her shoulder.

They were hunkered in a ditch less than a click from the where the dome rose from the earth. Between them and its walls, a barren expanse of sand and rock. The walls were sheer, rising several hundred feet into the air. It’s curvature meant that any sight of its upper limits were lost.

“Not good,” muttered Tobias back. His eyes were glued to his binoculars, a pair of ancient army issue lens. “Not seeing any entrances from the ground...look, there’s another one!”

About two thirds of the way up the dome, a hatchway, indiscernible when shut, slide open. From inside, a large, bulky skyskimmer emerged, like a laden bee, and began to rise. Zularna watched its ascent, into the brilliantly clear sky, until there came the thundering sonic boom as it Shocked away to an unknown destination.

“They come out every five minutes or so,” she observed. “Reckon we could get through that hatch when one comes out?”

Tobias shook his head. “Nah. Even if we got up there, that hatch only stays open for a few seconds. You saw the size of those craft though? Look like troop transports.”

“Not sure about that,” replied Zularna. Before they’d left the skimmer, Tobias had handed her a wrist unit (“Never go anywhere without this thing,”) and she was tapping on it now, “I’ve been looking at a thermal scan. There’s no living heat signatures coming from those ships,”

“So...what, it’s all automated?”

“Either that, or everything on those ships is dead,” she said, grimly.

Tobias glanced at her quizzically, as if she was joking. She wasn’t. He handed her the lens. “Wanna take a look?”

They handed landed a kilometre from the dome, after Tobias had spotted, at the last minute, the hidden railgun placements. They had continued on foot, with Zularna taking point, crossbow in hand, duffel bag of bolts, grenades slung over her back; Tobias came after, his gaze swapping from his wrist unit to the path ahead. They climbed down the steep steppes, and crept closer to the structure. They’d passed the gun emplacements, roadie running around each one, in case they had been equipped to fire on ground targets and had, eventually, reached the ditch, the last clear cover before the wall. The air was dry, and as the passage of the transport skimmers, with their cold cargo, sent plumes of dust into the air, that settled on them like a dusting of coarse snow.

Zularna raised the lens to her eyes, and surveyed the structure. It was smooth, almost featureless, and vast. At a guess, she reckoned it must have been several hundred acres across. Building it must have been a gargantuan task, especially without being noticed.

But then again who was here to notice? This is a dead land.

She caught a glimpse of something near the top of the structure. “Look, there!” she pointed and handed Tobias the lens. “Just around the top, you see?”

Tobias peered through the glass. “Looks like a walkway,”

“Can we get up there?”

“Think I have a thing we can use,”

Zularna began to move, but Tobias caught her arm. “Err, Zu? We don’t know what’s in there, do we?”

“No, we don’t.”

“So...what’s the plan once we get inside?”

Zularna rocked her head from side to side, “Get in, find Elijah, get out.”

“Okay...what’s the more nuanced plan?”

“Get in, find Elijah, kill any Crows we find, then get out.”

Tobias shrugged. “It’ll have to do,”

Zularna vaulted out of the ditch, and began to jog forward, keeping low, crossbow at the ready, with Tobias hot on her heels. As she closed the distance between the ditch and the dome, another heavy skimmer exited, and flew flew low over her head, before banking for open sky. As she ran, she thought briefly about the lifeless vessels, flying mechanically away, and of what she knew of the Brotherhood of Crows, and their penchant for dead things. The chilling image of an automated vessel, stuffed full of corpses, entered her mind and she shivered in spite of the desert heat.

She just hoped Elijah wasn’t one of them.

They reached the side of the dome, and there, Tobias began rummaging in his duffel bag. Zularna, out of curiosity, pressed a hand against the structure. It was cold, cold enough to be painful to the touch.

A cold dome full of dead men.

“Here we go,” Tobias yanked out from his duffel bag a long cylindrical device, with hand holds on either side. “Grab a hold,”

“...And this is?” Zularna frowned that the object.

“This is what is going to get us up to that walkway.”

She took hold of the handholds, slinging her crossbow over her back. “Have you tested this?”

Tobias tapped a few buttons on the side. “Of course I have.”

“And when was that?”

“In...about three seconds,”

With a jolt so powerful she was sure it would pull her arm out from its socket, Zularna was suddenly catapulted up into the air. There must have been a small thauma drive built into the cylinder. For a moment there was nothing but dizzying speed and then a solid clunk as they came down onto the gantry.

“Hmm, well, that worked,” Tobias let go of the device. His hair was standing on end, as if shot through with static electricity. “You okay?”

“Grand,” Zularna reached up and felt her own hair standing vertical. Her fingers felt warm and buzzing, as if sparks would fly between them. She unholstered her crossbow. “This way.”

A few dozen paces on, they reached a heavy door, airlock like. Zularna motioned for Tobias to stop. She held up her wrist unit:

“Two heat signatures,” she said, softly. “You got anything from Eli’s tracker?”

“Nope,” Tobias checked his own wrist unit. “It’s not him in there…”

“Sure?”

“Certain,” Tobias nodded. “Breach and clear?”

“What?”

“What do you mean what? Don’t you play CoD?”

“What have cod got to do with anything?”

“Nevermind. How about, let’s blow that door, go in and shoot everyone?”

“Plan,”

Tobias scuttled past her, digging charges out of his duffel bag. He began to plant them on the outside of the door, setting timers. She shifted her grip on the crossbow, checked her notched bolt, and the two more in the clip. Her wrist unit showed two people, both towards the back of whatever space was behind the door. As Tobias finished laying the breaching charges, a small part of her mind was counting hours. It had been six hours since she’d last seen Elijah, laying down cover fire as she’d climbed up bookcases in the Archives of the Ministry of Theological Justice. From the gloom there to the blazing sun and dry wind on the other side of the earth, six hours. By now, in England, evening would be drawing in, the Ministry would be pounding with a thousand calls to prayer. As she stood, armed and ready to burst into an alien structure, it occurred to her, absurdly, that right now she was supposed to be having a dissertation meeting with Dr Aster, in his office overlooking George Square. She’d promised him five thousand words on schema based cognitive behavioural therapy. Almost without thinking, she checked her phone. She had fourteen unread messages and six missed calls, all from Johanna. All variations on where are you?? Shit.

Tobias ducked back from the door. He drew his jo staff with his right hand; his left burst into pyromancy flame. He looked at Zularna, “Ready?”

“Ready,” she said grimly.

“The charges’ll blow inwards. On three...two...one…”

There was a dull thud, and the door blew inwards, wrenched clean from its hinges by the breaching charges. Zularna took a deep breath, steeled herself, and then threw herself inside.

It took a fraction of a second for her eyes to adjust after being outside for so long. She took in the scene. The room was long, narrow. One wall was taken up with a series of computer banks beneath metal shutters, pulled down to obscure what lay beyond. Against the other wall, a series of tall lockers. And at a desk before the computer banks, two startled figures rising to their feet wearing -

Masks.

Crows.

Zularna brought her crossbow to bear on the closest figure. His mask was a polygonal skull, all angles and cuboid blocks. She saw his hand snaking out for a handgun lying on the desk, and she fired twice just as his fingers brushed the weapon’s butt. The first bolt caught him in the shoulder, knocking him off balance. He howled and tried to recover, as the second bolt buried itself in his neck.

The second Crow - his mask the cruel, curved beak of a plague doctor - was quicker and his submachine gun was already in hand. He fired off a burst, and Zularna ducked under the fire, cranked the reloading mechanism of her bow, her hands frantic. There was a loud whoomph and a ball of flame soared over her head. It engulfed the second Crow, as he tried to bring his fire round to Tobias, who had darted past Zularna to get a clear shot. The crow simply vanished into the flames, leaving behind nothing but a pair of smoking shoes.

Silence fell, with the only sound being the aftershocks of the breaching charges. The air was filled with acrid smell of burning. Zularna glanced from the smoking remains of the second Crow to Tobias. “Bit much?” she said.

“Bit much. Nice shot.”

“Thanks. Nice...um...fireball.”

“Cheers,” he grinned. “Well they do say that...some like it hot.”

He waited patiently for a reaction that amounted to more than a raised eyebrow.

“Your timing was a bit off there.”

“Yeah, sorry, need to work on that. How about, ‘ooh, burn’?”

“No,”

“‘You’re fired’?”

“No.”

“How about ‘He just got medium rare...er’?”

“Doesn’t even make sense,”

“Only if you don’t have a steak in the joke…”

“Stop. For the Love of Christ. Stop. Can you hack into those computers?”

“If the Pope shits on a bear in the woods, does that make it a catholic?”

“Um...does it?”

“Let’s find out, shall we?”

Tobias scuttled over to the computer banks, with one hand pulling away the first Crow’s corpse. He settled down and began tapping away at a keyboard, muttering as he did so. Zularna shouldered her crossbow and surveyed the room, coming down off the adrenaline that had pounded through her during the right, and of which she had only just become aware. Beyond the computer banks and the lockers, the room was relatively bare. A sealed hatchway, next to the computer banks and shutters, led to parts unknown. Beyond that, there was nothing. No bed, no chairs, no furniture. No sign of habitation. Nothing, save for the corpse of the Crow she had skewered with two bolts.

Zularna moved over to the body and dropped to one knee. It lay face up, the polygonal mask staring sightlessly into nothing. In death, the cuboid shapes that make up a human skull were like gravestones. Without thinking, Zularna reached down and found the clasps that held the mask into place, and flipped them off.

She gasped.

“What?” said Tobias, without turning round, his fingers dancing across the keyboard.

“Jesus...oh my God...I know him!”

Tobias spun around and stared at the unmasked, dead Crow.

“Who is he?”

“He’s...he’s a lecturer. At my Uni. Teaches Economics, I think...I’ve seen him around campus...he…” Zularna trailed off, gazing with horror at the frozen face.

Tobias’ brow furrowed. “Fuck,” he muttered. “What’s a lecturer from Edinburgh University doing in Kazakhstan?”

Who are the Brotherhood of Crows? The question came to her mind again, the one Elijah had told her had started all of this. She heard it in Dr Crucius’ clipped tones, echoing to the across spaces and places. And as she looked down on the dead face of the Crow, a face she’d seen in Old College, spotted with mild recognition on South Bridge, a face which had smiled at friends of hers as they’d left the School of Economics, that question suddenly filled her with fear and unease.

Tobias had done back to his hacking. “Got it!” he cried, with satisfaction, and as he did so, the shutters before the computer banks suddenly began to retract, letting in a bright burst of light. Zularna got to her feet, and squinted into the glare, and after a second, saw -

Trees.

The room they were in was an observation base. It looked out over a vast forest, which stretched as far as the eye could see. The canopy of the forest fell just below line of sight, and the roof of the trees lay like a great, leafy carpet before them. Above the treeline, long metal gantries ran in a criss cross, lattice pattern. The hatch she had seen earlier opened out into one of these gantries, which erupted from the room like a straight dart, vanishing into the distance.

“That…” said Tobias, “That was not what I was expecting.”

“What the hell is this place?” breathed Zularna.

“I don’t know,” Tobias kept typing, eyes darting between his wrist unit, and the various screens on the computer bank. “I’m trying to bring up a schematic...scanning for heat signatures, ah! There we go -”

In front of Tobias, a holo image burst into life. Zularna moved in closer to get a better look: she saw a projection of the forest, broken down into layers of terrain. Beneath the canopy were clearings, rivers, lakes, a whole ecosystem. An artificial world, built in a dead land.

“Jesus,” muttered Tobias.

“What?”

“When I opened the schematic, I found this briefing document. This place...it’s been designed to scare people. The forest is purposefully hard to navigate, the terrain changes...fuck, the whole structure rotates in itself to confuse anyone inside it...this observation post is holo-shielded as is the gantry...anyone down there would have no idea we’re up here. Shit...there’s some data readings here, measuring serotonin uptake, stress levels, elevated heart rates….”

“Have you ever seen something like this before?”

“Once,” he replied, grimly, “At a place called Yarls Wood. You heard of it?”

“Yeah, I have.”

“Few years ago, just after I’d met Eli, we went there. He needed to get in, didn’t tell me why. Said it was personal. So I hack into the security mainframe, and I disable the drones patrolling the perimeter. Eli goes in there with nowt but a tonfa and a bunch of neurotoxin grenades - as he does - and while he’s doing his thing I had a poke around the files. I found this scheme, called Project Silverback. Funded by the Ministry of Speculation, if I recall. They were subjecting inmates to extreme stress induction. People were being forced into stress positions for up to twenty hours a day; prolonged hooding, sleep deprivation, some people were locked in cells with the temperature cranked up or turned right down. The inmates were linked up to a central programme which monitored their stress levels, pain thresholds...it was meant to be a way to determining the limits of the human body, so the military could brief its soldiers on how to withstand enhanced interrogation in the event of capture by the Severance. The women...they were refugees mostly. Illegal immigrants, asylum seekers. No access to legal aid, no citizenship, nothing. Most folk probably don’t even know they exist. It was vile. One of the only times I’ve ever been angry at Eli was when he came out of there and we didn’t then bomb the place to the ground…” he paused, turning his gaze back to the monitor, “This place...it’s similar. Fuck, man...who’d build a place like this?”

His wrist unit began to beep insistently.

“I’m picking up a heat signature...it’s about half a click out from here,” Tobias reported, his face set with grim determinism as he delved deeper into the computer’s files. “And I’m getting something from Elijah’s tracker!”

“Is is definitely him?”

“Unless he’s traded bone marrow with someone in the last six hours, then yes.”

“Well, let’s go!”

Zularna started towards the hatchway which led out into the gantry, but Tobias’ arm shot out and seized her.

“Woah, woah, you do not want to go out there.”

“Why not? Eli is out there -”

“Because the air out there is would fuck with your head,” Tobias gestured towards his screen, “Whatever this place is, it’s pumping vaporized hallucinogens into the air - phencyclidine, diphenhydramine…you walk out there, it’s going to be like walking straight into a panic attack.”

“We can’t just leave him!” snapped Zularna.

Tobias started up and began to rifle through the lockers. “These guys must have gone out there sometimes...they have to have some sort of breathing apparatus...oh, hello,” he threw something at Zularna, which she caught, clumsily. “Gasmasks. Knew it.”

Zularna strapped the gasmask around her face, and clipped the oxygen canister to her belt. Tobias did the same, masking his features. “You okay?”

“Fine. Let’s get out there.”

Tobias’ wrist unit began to bleep urgently.

“Shit,”

“What?”

“That tracker I put it Elijah...it’s linked to his heart rate. It just skyrocketed. And he’s not alone out there anymore….someone else is with him.”

“Where is he?”

“About half a click out -”

Zularna was already moving. She hit the door controls and the door slid open, with a hiss of decompression. Her crossbow was already in her hands, cocked and ready, as she ran, her feet pounding the metal gantry. The forest flashed below her as she ran.

“Slow down!” Tobias’s voice rang in her mask as she ran. There must have been a radio in the mask.

She didn’t “How far?”

“He’s near a lake, and - fuck, his readings are going mad he -”

She look out over the gantry. Every hundred yards or so, she saw an elevator attached to the gantry, a way, presumably, of getting down to ground level. The lake emerged from the forest like a gash, a sudden burst of blue in a sea of green. The trees ended a few dozen yards from the shore of the lake, and the saw two figures at the water’s edge - one in a familiar long coat, and a flat cap.

The other wore a mask.

Zularna didn’t hesitate. She vaulted over the gantry, and threw herself into oblivion.