Resolution Read Online Free Page A

snip him in half without noticing.
     
    Quickly.
     
    There. A jagged entrance to ... something. Tom pushed away from the buttress, ducked beneath a protrusion which could have taken out his eye, and was into the tunnel.
     
    Things clacked behind him.
     
    Not in Nulapeiron. This was not his world.
     
    There was a jutting sheet of dull metal which formed a natural hiding place, and he sank down, breathing hard.
     
    ‘Where?’ he whispered.
     
    As a boy, Tom had dreamed of leaving the marketplace, perhaps to visit the merchants’ homes in the stratum above ... and now this: another world.
     
    This may be Siganth. Tom, I’m sorry. I followed the link...
     
    Siganth?
     
    ‘Don’t be insane.’
     
    I’ve made a mistake, but you have to —
     
    ‘Chaos, Eemur. I believe you.’
     
    Siganth was a distant hellworld out of legend and he could not be here, not in any rational universe. Yet Eemur’s silent words rang with truth as well as fear.
     
    ‘Eemur? Can you bring me b—?’
     
    The metallic ceiling hinged open, extended black and copper claws, and reached down.
     
    Run, Tom.
     
    He lunged to his feet.
     
    Run fast.
     
    Blades snicked behind him.
     
    ~ * ~
     
    4

    SIGANTH AD 3423

     
     
    Scrapes followed him. Clattering filled the air as Tom squeezed between thin flanges which sliced his tunic, drew a dozen scarlet creases along his torso - Chaos! - as a series of serrated blades skimmed past his ear. Tom slid through a sharp-edged slot, hauling himself into open air—
     
    No. It can’t be.
     
    —where he hung, blood dripping, fingers hooked onto a corroded flange, and stared down at the streaked metallic cliff-face plunging below. It spread many kilometres to either side, and reared high above. The sky shone purple, streaked with starless black.
     
    A different world.
     
    Or nightmare. But his cuts ached, and they were real.
     
    It was a vast canyon, and the distant opposite wall was chalky and bone-grey, slashed with dull bronze slanted sheets and vanes, each too big to contemplate. In the intervening air, strange, pulsing vortices whirled and broke apart. The breeze which slid across his skin was slick and cold, like frostsnail slime.
     
    Snick-snack sounded from the shaft behind him.
     
    Time to move.
     
    Changing his grip, crimping hard, Tom swung out onto the exposed metallic cliff-face, squatted into a climber’s frog-position, and boosted himself up.
     

     
    Movement was odd. Lighter gravity but viscous air ... perhaps. Everything was off-kilter, but there was no time to stop and analyse the differences; he had to keep going.
     
    Tom worked for the climbing moves, used bolt-like protuberances on the metallic cliff to spider his way up. The surface felt rough-smooth, as though covered in fine rust, and when he came to a jutting ledge he stopped, unable to climb further along the blank, sheer face.
     
    Below, a black stalk extended from the shaft he had used, and Tom pulled himself onto the ledge, out of sight.
     
    Did it see me?
     
    There was a steel eye at the stalk’s end. He was almost sure of it.
     
    Eemur. Get me out of this place.
     
    Primeval wails of fear sounded in his mind.
     

     
    Tom lay shivering on the hard ledge, trying to control his breathing. Inside his lungs, the air felt different from the cold gelatinous atmosphere pressing against his skin. Could he somehow be breathing Nulapeiron’s air, though his body was on a distant world? Was Eemur maintaining some kind of connection across the light-years?
     
    It gave Tom the tiniest hope that she was working to drag him back.
     
    Then he twitched as down below, inside the abyss, something dark and massive began to ascend. It was metallic, formed in overlapping armoured sections, bristling with antennae.
     
    A vessel? A creature?
     
    Tom suddenly felt that in this place there was little difference between construct and organism, between machinery and life. Either one could kill him.
     
    It was rising