Or so they believed. Trampe denied the deal. He was confident in his ability to slowly take Innréttingarnar over completely and attribute all of Perlan’s energy output to war. He held all the cards.
The press exploded with the news, leading Trampe to issue a temporary law censoring all publications. But it was too late. Resentment towards Kalmar spiked. The politicians in the Citizens’ Party tried to save their political careers by denying the allegations of trying to profit by selling a national energy resource to the military, but confirmed that Trampe was moving to completely militarise Perlan. Trampe put out the fires before they got out of hand by claiming that the Crown had no intentions of so condemning Reykjavík, and further solidified it by swearing that all deals regarding Perlan were off the table indefinitely. To Garún’s immense disappointment, the people decided to let the whole matter go without any major repercussions. But the resentment towards both governments still remained, and the Crown’s intention of fully weaponising Perlan was stopped.
For now.
It would only be a matter of time until another plan to weaponise Perlan would surface. That didn’t change the fact that Katrín had put everything on the line to stand up to the powers that be and send them a message that enough was enough. Perlan was supposed to belong to the people, not capitalist leeches and the military lackeys of the Commonwealth. Katrín had betrayed her own father for the cause. That had been good enough for Garún. Or so she’d thought at the time.
The audioskull improvised brooding tones as Garún moved through the city. She had the feeling she couldn’t keep wandering for much longer on the streets of Reykjavík, looking for Katrín. If she hadn’t been arrested she could be anywhere. Perhaps in Sæbúavogur or Elliðabær, maybe Starholt. Garún couldn’t risk going there. The Forgotten Downtown was only connected to Reykjavík’s city centre, not the other neighbourhoods. Going out of the central area meant losing her method of escape.
She started looking for the unique static of the audioskull and let it lead her back towards a crossing to the Forgotten Downtown.
* * *
Garún was heading towards the fishermen’s workshops when she suddenly stopped. Unfamiliar tones sounded in her headphones, rapid staccato notes that she hadn’t heard before. This hadn’t happened before, the noisefiend didn’t work in Rökkurvík as it did in Reykjavík. The music sounded faint, distant. At first she thought she was imagining it. The electronic music swung up and down the scales in sync with a frantic heartbeat rhythm. The streets were empty. She waited, apprehensive, but nothing happened. As she started walking again the new sound stopped. It was a warning, but different than usual. She felt that the alarm wasn’t exactly aimed at her. It was more like a call for help. She turned around and listened. The music started again and led her towards the backwater.
Unlike its twin in Reykjavík, which was almost completely man-made at this point, with clouded, grey water, the situation was quite different in the Forgotten Downtown. A muddy mire stretched over a large area, all the way up to the edges of the dirt tracks that more or less lay parallel to the streets of Reykjavík. Maybe this is what the pond had originally looked like, some centuries ago. In the middle of the mire was the backwater, a murky and stagnant lake. Hrævareldar floated lazily over the dark waters. Garún avoided looking straight at them, but some part of her wanted nothing more than to stare into their seductive lights. In the pale gloom cast by the enthralling lights she saw a person in the mire, trudging her way towards the lake like a zombie. It was a woman, covered in mud and her skirts torn, her dark hair dishevelled.
It was Katrín.
Garún called her name as loudly she dared, but it accomplished nothing. In front of Katrín a swarm of hrævareldar floated and Garún felt as if she heard voices in the distance, cheerful and alluring, calling her to them. Without being aware of it, she had taken off her headphones so she could better hear them. She put them back on and held them tight, so nothing but the pounding music could reach her ears. Katrín was close to the ditch and stumbled in the mud. The hrævareldar swarmed around them, circling like carrion birds around a carcass, always closing in. Garún closed her eyes and blindly walked into the mire.
She listened for the tune that would lead her towards Katrín. It was drowned by the warning alarms caused by the hrævareldar and the mire itself, but she could still faintly detect it. Garún knew how to listen for the hrævareldar and avoid them, as she was dead-set on never falling for their lethal charm again. The mud gripped her feet tightly, making it a great effort to pull herself out of the muck and take another step closer. Slowly she made her way forward, hoping that the noisefiend would lead her from the fires and towards Katrín. The pale glow of the hrævareldar flashed through her shut eyelids. Her instinct was always to open her eyes, to see and recognise the danger, but she steeled her resolve and held her eyes shut, taking another step, contrary to what her instincts of self-preservation told her to do.
The water reached above her knees. Her thighs hurt from the effort of wading through the mud and she had no idea where she was. Had the hrævareldar already got to Katrín? If she opened her
