Work Text:
7 did not mutter to herself. Muttering was not her style; she knew better than anyone that absolute silence could be all that stood between a lone wanderer and a violent, painful demise. 5 looked back at her from his place by the sextant telescope. Though she didn’t say a word, she was as far from peaceful as he had ever seen her. Her face bore the same tense, calm, furious glare she normally reserved for 1 as she paced an hourglass pattern back and forth across the watch tower platform. Four steps, turn; two steps, turn; four steps, turn; two steps, turn – back and forth, back and forth. 5 remembered seeing some kind of large furry animal – a lynx, he had later learned – in a cage once, before the gas. Whatever human it belonged to had forgotten about it, or abandoned it. It had walked constantly, restlessly to and fro in exactly the same manner as 7. 5 sighed and gazed back through the telescope, scanning the grey wasteland for any sign of movement. There was nothing out there – nothing alive, by any definition of the word. Just the occasional collapsing wall in the ruined streets, or a plume of dust drifting on the wind. The only sound was the constant tap of 7’s footsteps.
They stopped. 5 glanced at her again. She was standing with her back to him, staring at the lift with her fists clenched. The new scar on her back was painfully obvious: vibrant red against the pale, faded fabric. 5 opened his mouth, half-intending to make some inane comment about how at least 2 had managed to save part of her numeral, but closed it again with a sigh. 7 had started pacing again; she was not in the mood for small talk.
It was 7 herself who finally broke the silence.
“How can you stand this!?” 5 frowned at her as she strode forwards to stand at the railing, staring out at the smokestacks in the distance. “Locked away in here – are you never curious about what’s out there?” 5 looked doubtfully at the telescope. “And I don’t mean seeing it through that thing, I mean seeing it up close, in person.” She pointed out at the Factory. “Somewhere in that building is the cause of everything that’s happened – the Beast, the War, everything. How can you spend so much time with 2 and not have the slightest interest in that?”
5 picked up a cloth and began to clean the lens. “It’s not safe out there,” he said. 7 made a sound that managed to combine the word ‘safe’ with a snort of utter disdain. “And you out of everyone should know that,” he added, hunching his shoulders a little. “After what happened to your back-”
“I was getting close to something, I know I was!” 7’s hands closed around the railing, bending it out of shape a little. “The Beast could have killed me-”
“It nearly did.”
“-but it locked me up instead. Why? It must have needed me for something – why else would it keep me – but what?” She frowned. “If I’d had just a few more minutes, I could have found out what it wants. Why it tries to hunt us. And why 1’s so afraid of it. There’s something he doesn’t want us to know, and the Beast is just an excuse to keep us in here…”
“1’s kept us safe,” said 5, raising his voice just a little. “Since the war, until you…” he gestured to 7’s scarred back, “…none of us ever got hurt.” 7 looked at him. He focussed a little more intently on the telescope. “He’s kept us safe,” he said, a little too firmly.
“He’s kept us scared,” said 7. “I’ve been out there, 5,” she continued more gently. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”
“The Beast…” said 5, touching his own back as if imagining the huge claws tearing into it.
“Not even the Beast,” insisted 7. “If you’re careful, and you listen hard enough, you can hear it coming every time. Those metal claws don’t make it any stealthier.” She laid a hand lightly on his arm. “I’ve already decided, 5,” she said. “The next time I leave the Cathedral, I’m not coming back. I’m not going to give 1 another chance to lock me up ‘for my own good’. I’ll never be a powerless prisoner again – never.”
5 looked down at the hand on his hessian skin. “What if you get hurt?” he asked softly.
“It doesn’t matter,” said 7, shaking her head. “I’ll fix it myself, if I have to – sew it up, splint it, anything that needs to be done.” She paused, just for the briefest of moments, and took a deep breath. “But I’d prefer it if there was someone around to help.”
5 froze for a second, then stared at 7 over his shoulder. The look on her face was not entirely familiar. It was almost the way she looked whenever she had the idea for some new technique and needed an accomplice to help test it out, but there was something different about her eyes. Something hopeful; something that suggested the possibility of a new life away from authority. For a moment, 5 almost felt the same enthusiasm he could see in her optics.
It faded.
“It’s not safe,” he said again.
7 took both his hands in hers. “What good is safety,” she asked, “if you don’t have freedom?”
A spark of defiance straightened 5’s spine a little. “What good’s freedom if you’re too dead to enjoy it?”
7 sighed. “1’s speeches have got inside your head so much, you-”
“How are you any different to 1?” asked 5. 7 raised her eyebrows. “He wants us to stay in here, you want us to go outside – but you both want people to follow you and do as you say. You’re talking about how his speeches get inside my head, but what have you been trying to do?” His nerve failed him and he folded his arms, his slouch returning. “Some things just aren’t worth it. It, it’s not that I’m a coward –”
“Prove it.”
“Huh?”
“Prove it to me.” 7 took his hand again and clasped it tightly, meeting his eyes. “I know you’ve got it in you somewhere. Come with me when I leave.”
“1 won’t let you out of the Cathedral again,” said 5, smiling a little.
7 grinned. “Who said he has to know?”
1 looked up from the chessboard just as 2 moved a knight, neatly putting his king into checkmate. 5, who had just picked up 7’s spear from next to the throne, froze so quickly it almost looked as if someone had sprayed him with liquid nitrogen.
“What are you doing with that?” asked 1, eyeing the weapon in his hands.
“I, I, I, uh, I – 7 asked me to fix it,” he said helplessly.
“7 is confined to the watch tower until further notice,” said 1 pointedly.
“And, and she’s still up there,” said 5, grabbing at a mental safety line. “But once she’s allowed out-”
“She will not be leaving the Cathedral again.” 1 turned back to the chessboard, studied the placement of the pieces, and sighed. 2 allowed himself a small smile and began to move them all back to their starting position. “Let that be the end of it. If she goes looking for the Beast again, I fear she will end up with much worse than a patched back.”
“Such concern,” murmured 2, still smiling.
1 studied the row of pawns, then chose one and moved it two squares forward. “7 and I may not always see eye to eye,” he said wearily, “but I do not wish her dead.”
5 swallowed and tried a different tactic. “If the Beast ever gets inside the Cathedral, she might have to fight – she’ll need her spear then. Just in case.” He gave the spear a shake. The blade wobbled obligingly; it had come loose in her last battle. “If I just take it down to the workshop…”
1 sighed again and waved a hand. “Very well.” 5 fled towards the lift and lowered himself down into the nave as quickly as he could. He hadn’t really lied to 1, he assured himself. He was going to fix the blade back to the haft properly.
Up in the watch tower, 7 linked her fingers and stretched both arms up above her head, then bent down to touch first one ankle with both hands, then the other. She rolled both her shoulders one by one, glanced back at the lift shaft for a second, and vaulted over the railing, grabbing the planking in one hand and swinging herself in against the tiles. She flattened herself against the metal, letting herself slide a foot down the spire before hooking the fingers of both hands into an opening. She hung there for a second to catch her breath, then shifted her weight, finding a tiny ledge with her right toe and slowly, gradually loosening her grip with her fingers. She slid another foot before grabbing another ledge and swinging her weight to one side, catapulting herself towards one of the spire’s corners and the stone nodules that adorned the near-vertical ridge. The stone between the nodules was pitted and scarred from long-ago shrapnel and stray bullets. 7 exhaled gently and began to climb, hand-over-hand, down to the top of the square turret that supported the pointed spire.
This was the tricky part. She crouched on the very edge of the narrow ledge, trying to judge the distance. She couldn’t just let herself fall to the ledge at the base of the clock, she thought; though she was pretty sure she could survive the drop, 1 or 8 might hear the thud – an unacceptable outcome. With a single nod, she lay down on the ledge and carefully moved the lower half of her body out over open space, finding an almost invisible ledge with her left toe and moving both her feet onto it. Flattening herself against the rough stonework, she let herself drop until she felt her toes skim over the mortar-filled gap between two blocks and dug her fingers in. Wincing a little from the sudden wrench on her shoulders, she glanced to the side. She was about a third of the way down the clock face. She swallowed and let herself slide another section, then another until she was crouched on the ledge at the base of the clock. She brushed a few grains of stone off her chest and looked down off the ledge. Now for the belfry.
That was a little more straightforward. The slats closing off the bell tower had taken enough damage over the years to give her plenty of hand- and footholds. She was at the foot of the belfry in less than a minute, and walked out onto the head of a gargoyle to check the length of the drop to the roof. She smiled; she was too far from 1’s throne room for anyone to hear her. She backed up to the wall, then took a running jump off the ledge. For a few seconds, 7 was flying, but then she hit the roof tiles, rolled to soak up the impact, and slid down the steep slope, only just managing to catch hold of a decorative carving and stop herself sliding right out into open space. Without pausing, she swung herself up onto the carving, climbed back onto the roof, and ran along the ridge to the very end of the building, where a flying buttress sloped downwards to where a single large tree had fallen and wedged itself against the building. Within less than a minute, 7 was safely on the ground and running back towards the main door.
5 met her just inside the nave and handed over her spear. 7 closed one hand around the familiar weapon and smiled at him. 5 swallowed hard, gripped the strap of his quiver, and tried to smile back.
“What about the twins?” he asked as they left the ruins. 7 paused at the top of a rise.
“I won’t bring them into danger,” she said after a moment.
“But you’ll bring me?” What happened to ‘there’s nothing to be afraid of’?
“You can take care of yourself,” she said. 5 blinked. 7 sounded as if she really believed that. He wasn’t sure that he did.
The towers of the Factory were always in view in front of them. Now and then it seemed as if they were going to disappear behind a rise in the land or some ruined War Machine, but the top of the highest chimney always remained in sight. They crossed a plank over an ancient trench, supported at one end by the bullet-perforated corpse of an Empire soldier. 7 led the way across a minefield, weaving a path through the low mounds concealing the buried explosives, and clambered over the dragon’s teeth that had been built across the Factory’s access road. A car had crashed into them and overturned at some point during the war; its crumpled remains had never been cleared off the road.
5 froze. Somewhere off to their right came the soft, rhythmic creak of metal. He lurched forwards and grabbed 7’s shoulder.
“I heard it,” she said before he opened his mouth. “This way.” She took his hand and led him into another trench, where they hid among a pile of sandbags. The creaking got louder, and stopped. A low growl from right above them reached their hearing sensors. 5 did his best to blend in – easier for him than for 7, who was forced to duck out of sight – and slowly tipped his head back to see a set of steel claws gripping the edge of the trench. The Beast was leaning out over the edge. Slowly, it lowered one forefoot onto the top rung of an old ladder, turning its metal-spiked skull left and right, and hopped down into the trench with far more grace than its skeletal build should have allowed. 5 tried to melt into the sandbags, but the Beast didn’t seem particularly interested. It stalked right past his hiding place and dug its front claws into a wooden crate, hauling the box out of its place and spilling the contents over the dusty ground. They were spray cans, though the label had worn off long ago. The Beast dragged one of the cans across the ground and punctured it with the tip of its claw, letting the dark, viscous liquid leak onto the ground. 5’s eye widened as the Beast tore open a few more cans until there was a pool of lubricating oil on the ground. It dipped each of its feet into the oil one by one, then flopped onto its front and rolled about to get as much as possible into its joints.
When it got back to its feet, the distinctive metal creaking had disappeared. Then, and only then, it looked directly at 5. The skeletal fangs looked far too much like an evil grin.
7 darted from her hiding place and grabbed 5’s hand, dragging him out of the creature’s path and shoving him away down the trench. He started running, outstripping 7 when she slowed and turned to face the Beast.
“Keep going!” she shouted when he looked back. “I know what I’m doing!”
5 didn’t need to be told again. He ran straight down the trench, as fast as he could. Behind him, 7 broke into a brisk jog; slower than her top speed, and certainly slower than the Beast. 5 passed a junction with another trench. Only when he was twenty feet past it did he realise that 7 was not following; both she and the Beast had taken a sharp right into the other trench. He scrabbled frantically for his crossbow and managed to load it, running back to the junction as he went.
The Beast had run into a dead end. As 5 watched, 7 took a running jump and vaulted over its head, sliding between the spines on its back to the ground and snatching up a stone, all without stopping once. The Beast managed to turn itself around at the exact moment 7 threw the stone at the old but armed grenade lying at the foot of the wall support.
5 might have shouted; he couldn’t hear himself over the explosion that hurled him back against the trench wall. When his hearing had stopped buzzing, he got unsteadily to his feet. His crossbow was lying close to hand, only a couple of inches away. The side-trench, however, was blocked off by a landslide of dry earth and old shrapnel. 5 cleaned the dust from his optic with his arm, coughing.
“7?” There was no answer. 5 swallowed and called again, a little louder. “Where are you?” Still no answer from 7, but from the other side of the landslide came a rough, angry growl and a scratching sound.
5 began to shake. Perhaps it was fear, or perhaps it was grief; all he knew was that this had been a bad idea from the start, and that he had to get away from this place. His courage failed him altogether and he ran away, back along the trench and across the old battlefield to the safety of the Cathedral.
1 listened to 5’s sobbed, halting story in silence. When he was finished, he still said nothing; he just sighed. The silence was almost worse than being shouted at; 5 hunched in on himself with 2’s arm around his shoulder, unable to look at 1 as the older ragdoll took a burning match from the thurible fireplace and blew it out, waiting for the glow to fade before he crossed the number 7 off the calendar and bowed his head.
“This is what comes of rebellion,” he said, as much to himself as anyone else, and turned to face the rest of them. 6, who had been watching from his shadowy alcove, silently backed away into the dark and returned to his drawing. The twins leant heavily on each other, their optics closed. 8 stopped polishing his knife. “This will not happen again,” said 1. “See to him, 2 – I don’t want anyone else going down 7’s path.”
Despite his words, 3 and 4 disappeared without a trace five days later. Two more numbers were crossed off.
5 sat in his place by the telescope, watching the grey wasteland beyond. Every day, he kept a lookout for anything moving out there: a patch of blue, or a flash of white. Any sign that someone was still out there. Now and then he sighted the Beast making its rounds, patrolling the streets below.
He never saw anything else.