The Malice. Peter Newman

She does not try a third time, instead leaning into the hole and flipping the catch. The lid creaks as it opens, protesting. A cloud of dust puffs out, demanding its tribute of coughs. Vesper obliges, once, twice, thrice.

      An old coat has been used to pack the box. Vesper takes it out. The fabric is worn but tough, reassuring. The coat has been stitched together in places. Lower down, scorch marks and bite marks decorate, left by tainted dogs and unearthly fires. She puts the coat on. It is too big for her, almost a robe. The reality of how she looks in it makes no impact on Vesper’s imagination and she keeps it on, grinning.

      Only then does she look down.

      The humming has quietened, softening into contentment. At the bottom of the box lies a sword. Sheathed. Silvered wings wrapping the hilt unfurl, reach up to her. Open, they reveal an eye set in the crosspiece, staring, waiting.

       One Thousand, One Hundred and Thirty-Seven Years Ago

      In a storm of purple lighting where clouds look like egg sacs and the sky like a cavernous throat, a baby is born. Only the baby can see the storm, however. To the others the sky appears as it always does, a haze of light pollution and smog.

      They wonder why the newborn is showing signs of distress. Experts circle her glassy pod, examining. She seems healthy, a good strong set of lungs, a decent heart. All limbs appear in working order. The experts shake their heads, concluding it is just a temperamental issue, merely emotional. They dose the baby with calming drugs and, as expected, it settles down.

      Years pass and the baby is given a name, a gender and a social class. The baby becomes a girl, Massassi, and she is put into the lower middle echelons. Her supervisor is warned of her predisposition to irrational outbursts and authorised to medicate where necessary.

      The girl becomes an apprentice mechanic and proves skilful. At the tender age of eight, she is assigned work on the great construction mechs, crawling into nooks and crannies, repairing. It is dangerous work. The mechs are automated and held to rigid schedules. They pause rarely and never for very long. The girl must be quick or dead. She darts between pistons, removing blockages, replacing worn parts, squeezing into spaces too tight for adult bodies. For the first year, she is quick enough.

      Perhaps it is a mark of respect that she is trusted with such deadly work, or perhaps it is because she does not get on with her peers or her supervisor, or anyone else. Massassi is a brooding, angry girl. Too clever for her age but not clever enough, not yet.

      She enjoys the thrill of her work, finds the thought-invading anger that haunts her nights is sated by daily brushes with death.

      There is no time off, no holiday to take, but all workers have enforced downtime, carefully scheduled activity changes to maximise efficiency. More than anything else, she dreads the mandatory social gatherings. One day, after three consecutive events, the anger grows so strong that she starts to break things. Immediately, an alarm sounds on her supervisor’s HUD and he whispers an order.

      Implanted dispensers in Massassi’s spine go to work and anger fades, humbled.

      She remembers little of these times but doesn’t complain, even prefers it that way. When she requests dangerous levels of overtime, her supervisor doesn’t check too closely.

      Massassi is ten when she has the accident.

      Her thoughts are elsewhere, cloudy with free-floating emotion. She is supposed to be fixing the shoulder motors of Superior Class Harvester 4879-84/14 but all she wants to do is tear them apart. For the first time, she wonders why she is different, and if perhaps everyone else is not at fault after all.

      Preoccupation, however slight, is dangerous. Massassi combines hers with fatigue and a self-destructive streak. Too late, she realises the Harvester is reactivating. Massassi tries to throw herself clear but her sleeve catches on a piece of wiring, wiring she would normally have secured.

      She cannot free her arm.

      Engines roar with power, blades spin, lights flash.

      The Harvester moves.

      Massassi screams.

      Blood smears between metal plates, bones grind to chalky powder.

      On her supervisor’s HUD, an alarm sounds.

       CHAPTER TWO

      Thoughts come like the tide from a distant shore. They get closer, louder, more insistent. Gradually, they gain form, lifting through the fog, breaking the spell.

      As awareness returns, Vesper finds herself leaning into the hole, hands hovering inches from a feathered hilt, perfectly aligned with the upturned wings, like partners before a dance.

      The girl blinks, the sword does not.

      It glares at her for a few moments, judgemental, then the eye closes with sudden disinterest. Apparently, she is not the one it wants.

      She thinks of her father, standing in the same spot earlier that day, and she begins to understand why he was afraid.

      It is tempting to repack the room and turn her back on it but she knows that won’t work. The sword will keep calling and wearing her father down. He is already tired, it will only be matter of time before he succumbs.

      Something must be done.

      She swallows, realising that she has come to a decision.

      The sword has to go. She resolves to take it to Genner and let him deal with it. There are many knights after all. They will find one and give the sword to them. Afterwards she will come home and it will be safe again. Her father will be free.

      She removes the sword from the storeroom to the kitchen and returns its box to the hole, covering it with floorboards. Then she replaces all of the boxes, trying her best to match their original positions. Finished, she shuts the door and blocks it as her father had earlier.

      With luck, she thinks, he’ll never know what’s happened.

      Only after she’s finished does she realise she’s still wearing the old coat. She gives a shrug, happy, deciding to keep it.

      Vesper creeps back to her room and dresses in silence, quickly. She collects the sword last, wrapping it in an old plastic sheet. Scared it might wake again, she tries to make as little contact with it as possible, being especially careful to avoid the hilt and the eye twitching within.

      When she opens the door a cold breeze touches her cheeks. She shivers and sets off, not noticing the small body curled by the front door. At the sound of her passing, the kid blinks awake, springing up. He looks round, sleep forgotten at the sight of his good mother, and follows.

      Both forms are quickly swallowed by the night.

      The sword is lighter than it looks, but still heavy for a young girl to carry. In the dark, familiar ground becomes strange, and Vesper stumbles down the hill, jolting her legs, the bundle bouncing in her arms. Despite plastic wrapping, its edge digs into forearms, painful.

      She pauses halfway down, looks at the sword again, sure that under the four layers of plastic, it is looking back. She swallows, sniffs. Dust tickles nostrils and she wipes her nose on her sleeve, only to discover her new coat is filthy. Sneezes come.

      Paranoia makes her look back towards the house. But instead of her father, watching from a window, she finds the kid at her heels.

      Shifting the weight of the sword onto one arm, she points back up the hill with the other. ‘Go, off you go. You can’t come with me. Go home.’

      A warm head butts against her hand.

      ‘No. You need to go back. You need to …’ Vesper trails off, finds herself stroking the kid. ‘I suppose we won’t be gone long, are