Soul Patrol: Badge of the Forgotten

The Forge

 

The Forge was under the train station, and it took eleven flights of stairs to reach it, all of them going down.

"Bad knees," Boone said cheerfully. "Good thing I'm dead, or these fucking stairs would've killed me."

Elias had two mismatched shoes and a lab coat over his jeans, and he was starting to feel like he'd shown up to the wrong funeral.

Vega led the way, her cigarette glowing in the dark. Every few landings, the walls got warmer. The air smelled like hot metal and burnt sugar. By the bottom, Elias was sweating through his hoodie.

"Rules of the Forge," Vega called over her shoulder, not slowing down. "One. It only takes what you can spare. Scraps and Fragments. Never Cores, never Anchors, not at the forging. Two. The badge runs on what it takes, so get used to missing things. Three. Don't touch anything that glows."

"Everything down here glows," said Elias.

"Then don't touch a goddamn thing."

Elias fell into step beside Boone. "Why are you helping me?"

Boone kept his eyes on the stairs. "Last stamped kid I met, I got there too fucking late. Just about kills a man. Well. Kills him again."

The stairs ended at a round iron door. Vega shoved it open with her shoulder.

Heat rolled out like the breath of a dragon.

The cavern beyond was huge, ribbed with black stone, lit by a single furnace in the center that burned in colors he had no names for. Blue where it should have been orange. Violet where it should have been white. Above it, thousands of tiny lights drifted through the air like fireflies, and each one flickered with a picture. A face. A room. A day.

"Those are the burned ones," Boone said quietly. "Memories that got spent. They drift a while, then they're gone."

Elias watched one float past. A little girl blowing out birthday candles. Somebody's. Gone.

"Hattie!" Vega called. "New recruit!"

Something big stood up behind the anvil.

She was six feet of shoulders and forearms, with a leather apron, a shaved head, and a grin that had clearly won a lot of bar fights. Old burn scars crawled up both arms like vines.

"That him? The living one?" she boomed. "Skinny as a fucking fence post!" She grabbed his hand and shook it hard enough to rattle his teeth. "Hattie Marsh. Blacksmith. Died of the plague in 1665, and I've been in a better fucking mood ever since. Hand on the anvil, love. It'll pinch."

"Pinch how?"

"Just a little."

"That's exactly what people say right before a needle."

"Yeah, well." Her grin widened. "It's a big fucking needle. Last fella I forged for lost his taste for strawberries. Never noticed till the funeral."

"That's not comforting."

"Wasn't meant to be, love. Death's a bitch."

Elias looked at the anvil. He thought of the eleven missed calls. He thought of a smooth blank patch where his sister's face used to be.

He put his palm down.

The iron was warm, then hot, and then it wasn't iron anymore. Something reached into him, right behind his eyes, and pulled. It didn't hurt exactly. It felt like being emptied out by a very polite vacuum.

Threads of light slid out of his head, hundreds of them, shimmering as they twisted toward the furnace. In the smoke above him, pictures flickered. A bike with a busted chain. A kitchen with yellow curtains. His mother laughing with flour on her cheek.

Then a little girl holding up a crayon drawing of a horse.

Her face was a smooth gray patch. Nothing there at all.

Elias's chest hurt.

"Steady, love," Hattie said, watching the smoke. "It's taking the small ones. See? Bike, curtains. Nothing that'll fuck you up too bad."

The threads dropped into the fire, and the furnace roared. Hattie plucked a brass star out of the flames with tongs and hammered it on the anvil, sparks flying, steam screaming. She dunked it in a barrel of something that hissed like a living thing.

Then she wiped it on her apron and set it in his palm.

It was warm. Heavier than it looked. A five-pointed star, slightly crooked, with THORNE engraved across the center, and it hummed against his skin like it recognized him.

On the back, a tiny picture had been etched into the brass. A yellow kitchen curtain.

Elias tried to remember whose kitchen it was. Nothing came. Just the picture now. Whatever it had felt like to stand there was gone.

"Pin it on," said Vega.

He did.

Light bloomed in front of him, a floating window of gold letters hanging in the air.

BADGE BOUND Officer: Elias Thorne Rank: Blank Memory Reserve: 96% Burn Tier Unlocked: Scrap

"It talks?" Elias whispered.

"It listens," said Hattie. "Reading's free. Burning costs."

"Ninety-six percent. So I lost four."

"Four is cheap," Vega said. "Most rookies lose ten."

"Time for the fun part," said Boone, grinning like a kid at a fireworks store. He pointed at a stone pillar thirty feet away. "Burn a Scrap. Just think the word and reach for that pillar."

"What's it gonna take?"

"Something small. Trust me."

"That's what everybody keeps saying."

"Scraps are pocket change," Boone said. "Fragments are rent. Cores are your whole paycheck. And Anchors..." He stopped, and for a second the humor left his face. "Don't worry about Anchors."

Elias took a breath. He thought, burn.

A new window flashed.

BURN SCRAP? Power: Shadowstep (12 seconds) Cost: One small memory Confirm?

"Yes," he said, and felt a tiny tug in his skull, like a hair being plucked.

His shadow peeled off the floor. It stretched toward the pillar, long and black. Without thinking, Elias stepped into it, and the world folded.

He came out the other side going full speed and hit the pillar face first.

"Ow!" he yelled. "Fuck! Fucking shit!"

"You gotta stop, you dumb bastard!" Boone shouted, doubled over. "Nobody told you to stop!"

"Nobody told me shit!"

Across the cavern, Hattie was laughing so hard she had to lean on the anvil. Even Vega's mouth twitched.

Elias peeled himself off the stone. A message hung in the air.

BURNED: Lunch, last Tuesday. Memory Reserve: 95%

He tried to remember what he'd eaten. Nothing came up. Just a shrug of empty space.

Honestly? Fine. He'd lose lunch every day if it meant zipping through a shadow.

"Lunch is a good one," Vega said. "Lunch is always a good one."

It should have scared him more than it did. It was the first time all night he'd felt anything like power.

"Does it get easier?" he asked.

"No," said Vega. "You just get better at choosing." Then she folded her arms, and the room's mood shifted. "All right. Now we work. Thorne, I need everything you remember about the night on the bridge. Every fucking detail. Start at the crash."

"Sure. Yeah. There was rain, and headlights, and..."

He stopped.

He reached for it. The rain on the windshield. The headlights swinging across his face. The sound like the world folding in half. He'd remembered it in the morgue. He'd stood there shivering, remembering it.

There was nothing.

"I know I died on Corliss bridge," he said slowly. "Because Boone told me. But I don't remember it. Not the car. Not why I was there. Not where I was going." His voice went thin. "The whole last hour of my life is just fucking gone."

Nobody moved.

Boone crossed the floor and set a heavy hand on his shoulder. He didn't say a word. For a man who never shut up, it was the kindest thing he could have done.

"That's not possible," Hattie said, and all the laughter was gone from her face. "The forge only takes the small ones, the spare ones. That's the whole fucking law of it! That memory wasn't spare."

"It was the only memory that could've named who killed him," Vega said, very quietly.

"Forge don't fucking pick," said Boone.

"No. It doesn't."

Vega's cigarette flared bright red, the only sign she was furious. Hattie stared at her furnace like it had spat in her coffee. "Three hundred years," she muttered. "This forge has never done that shit. Not once."

Above them, a single light drifted down from the cloud of burned memories. Elias knew it the second he saw it. Rain streaking across a windshield.

It hovered near his face. Then, slowly, deliberately, it rose toward a crack in the ceiling, slipped through, and was gone.

"Boone," Elias said. "You said burned memories just fade."

"They do."

"Then why," Elias said, "did mine just leave?"