by Stacey Mac
“Tilly’s sister is out there, somewhere. By herself,” I tell Dean, quietly. He already knows it. We’ve discussed it briefly before, in the small moments we’ve had in front of company.
Now he nods. “It isn’t right.”
Now I nod. “If you find a way to get out of here without anyone seeing, we need to check on her, make sure she is okay. I know where her house is.”
“If I find a way to get you out, we might as well keep going.”
I smile and pinch his leg. “Don’t push your luck.”
We stay there until my fingers are too blue for good sense. We stay and look out into the places where stars should be. I don’t have the guts, or the necessity to leave Galore with Dean, or without him either. I know that I haven’t got what it takes to be a jumper or a vagrant or a soldier. I am the definition of purgatory; moving in an unmoveable state. Wouldn’t it be perfect, though, if I was the type? The type that Dean wanted? The type who could move in unmoveable circumstances. I sit on that roof unmoving, though, and imagine the places I would go, should I become badass enough to change my mind.
Chapter Seventeen
The Arena surrounds us the following morning, just as Dean had promised. He had also promised an announcement that was supposed to change my mind and this comes, too.
Apparently, this announcement is to be so astounding that Commander Snare himself is here to deliver it. His smile is genuine, of course, and his concern for us as individuals is evident, of course, and his words are so saturated with regret that an army stronger than ours might just fall to their knees with the weight of his grief. “Initiates, it is with true remorse that I bring you this update. After desperately searching for another means of continuing the defence of our sector, we are left with no other option than a restructure of rank. As of the end of your course, in four weeks time, any person the age of fourteen or above will be considered formally initiated into the militia of Galore, and will therefore be eligible for deployment.”
There is a collective silence. Not a continuation of the pre-existing silence, but a definitive, reinstated silence.
“While some of you may find this decision exciting, I understand that your parents or guardians may become distressed. It is however, necessary, due to our increasing need for man power in our war against Scarce. And so I must bring you news that is equally regretful,” and here, his eyes move carefully to the Resolutes. “I’m afraid that our brothers and sisters of Resolute, who so generously offered their service men and women to us for Mission Retrieve, were ambushed in an attack several days ago. From what correspondence we have managed to receive from our own Galore messengers, no Resolute survivors were found.”
The silence breaks. From the rear of the Arena, where the Resolutes have congregated in their usual haphazard fashion, an uproar begins. It starts first with gasps, small cries of shock, and then grows swiftly into an all-out screaming match, wherein the initiates shout unintelligibly at Snare, and the Resolute Trainers (Dean included) shout above them, trying to regain some order. I shouldn’t be watching, but we all do. I watch Dean, and Nora, consoling their initiates. Their faces are unconcerned, unmoved. They either do not care about this news, or they already knew it was coming.
Trey gives one sharp bark which successfully turns every Galore head back to front and centre. Snare’s expression has changed drastically – from fatherly to murderous – and he stares directly into the Resolute heap. “We offer our thanks for their honourable sacrifice, and take comfort in reminding you that they died as true warriors, heroes,” he says, his voice turning to ice.
At this, Adriel, who’s shoulder Dean already restrains, launches forwards, “You PIG! You sadistic, hypocritical – !” Dean’s arms lock over Adriel’s chest and one hand clasps over his mouth. In one quick movement, Dean throws him sideways, shoving him back among the others, and Adriel is swallowed before he can say something that might get him anymore dead than he already is.
Snare shakes his head with disbelief, shaking out his formal jacket. He turns on his heel and stalks towards the exit, followed closely by his convoy. Thy council commeth, and then they run away.
*
The novices and seniors are pumped. Not the ‘yay, I get my own gun’ pumped, but the ‘I can’t wait to slit the throats of every Scarcinian I find’ pumped. With each new wave of casualties, the mood around the compound becomes increasingly edgy, and I wonder if this isn’t the exact purpose of the ‘free information act’, to inflame the homicidal tendencies of caged teenagers. Honestly, most of my friends are all for the slaughter of our fourteen-and-over’s. Although initially taken-aback, the news of one-hundred or so Resolute deaths has made them agreeable. It is a hot topic for debate at our lunch table.
“Why shouldn’t Galore start pulling in all of their resources? Clearly we have underestimated how powerful Scarce really is. They are gunning us down faster than we can deploy,” Delilah says, twirling hair between her fingers.
“Yeah, but fourteen-year-olds? Don’t you think that will create a bit of a liability? I mean, I’m all for ‘no man left behind’ and all, but there are only so many kids I can drag back to safety at a time, and I don’t want to be shot in the back of the head while I’m trying to protect the children,” Vincent counters.
“Please,” Mia rolls her eyes. She holds Vincent’s hand under the table. “Those children learnt to shoot before they learnt to tie their shoes. We can’t just let Scarce kill our entire militia. We have to pull out all the stops. I mean, have you seen this place?” She looks around the cafeteria, and all of our eyes follow. “It has been crawling with fronters for weeks, and they’re still coming, none of them with good news. Hasn’t anyone noticed? The amount of Galores dying in the campaign is, like, way higher than before.”
Given that I have only just smoothed things over with Mia, I am hesitant to rock the boat, so I direct my words at Dean, who sits beside me, when I say, “You’re right, the casualties must be getting too high. In which case, Galore should retreat.”
Dean is looking at his plate, but as I finish my statement, he looks up from underneath his lashes. Not at me, but at my friends, like he had already thought of this, and now wants to see what everyone’s reaction will be.
“Retreat?” Delilah jeers, “Like, surrender? They never would.”
“Not surrender, just come home. If Scarce are ambushing us while we try to collect our own dead, then why send even more soldiers in? Pull them back, stop throwing more into the blood bath. Whatever it is that this campaign is trying to achieve, it’s failing. They were sent to collect bodies, and now there are too many bodies to bring back.” Even with Dean stomping on my foot, I realise too late that one of those bodies is Tilly’s Aunt Romelda. I look at her now and see that while her face is ashen-white, she continues to move her stew around the plate, not eating.
Vincent interjects, “Tess, the mission was to get some revenge as well, remember? Now, I guess, we have an even better reason to go over those hills and end those sons-a-bitches,” He says, smiling cruelly.
The bench slides back from underneath me. Dean rises abruptly and leaves us, without looking back. I watch him, confused, as he walks brusquely through the cafeteria and out the door.
“What’s his problem?” Says Mia. She looks at Vincent, who shrugs. Delilah looks at me, and I shrug. I’m not sure what Dean’s reason was for the abrupt departure, although It might have something to do with the fact that, while we sit here arguing casually, no one has bothered to mention Adriel, who is out of the argument, and in isolation.
I look at the empty chair sticking out like a beacon. Adriel was, predictably, hauled away under protest shortly after Snare’s departure. Dean spent a good ten minutes trying to reason with Trey, to no avail. Trey is maddened. His position in the compound is dependent on how well he keeps us fearful and compliant.
So, this leaves Dean in a powerless position, and it leaves Adriel in a freezing bunker in the ground for a week.
&
nbsp; “Um, I’m done. I think I might turn in early,” I say quickly. I push my untouched plate away and stand.
It doesn’t take long to catch up to Dean, who has only just made it to the door of the Resolute dorm when I come barrelling up the stairs and onto the landing. “Dean! Jesus, wait!”
He stops with his hand on the doorknob and frowns. “What are you doing up here?”
I stop a few paces away, huffing, “I – I wanted to see if you were alright.”
“Tess, you just ran up four flights of stairs and started shouting my name. Do you realise that we ain’t supposed to be seeing each other?” He asks cuttingly, like he’s the grown-up explaining something obvious to a child.
I take the hit as if it’s a real one. Sarcasm flows thick and fast, “Sorry, trainer. May I speak to you for a few moments?”
Annoyed, he takes my wrist and pulls me further down the hall, rounding me into the open doorway of a ‘meeting room’, which is the same as a small empty room, but with chairs. “What do you want?” Dean asks, not coldly, but again, like he is speaking to a kid who doesn’t know better. Like an initiate.
I bristle, lifting my chin. “I told you, I was just seeing if you were okay. You stormed off pretty abruptly, earlier. If you want to be alone, then I’ll leave.”
He shakes his head, and drops my wrist, cursing under his breath. “If they catch us, Trey will throw you in that hole with Adriel, and send the rest of the Resolutes packing. You know that, right?”
“What’s your problem? I just wanted to talk to you.”
“I’m trying to protect you. Same thing I’ve been trying to do since I got here, but you’ve got a bad habit of making it difficult. We need to be careful.” He wears the expression and posture of someone who has been thoroughly inconvenienced, except for the way his hand is lingering near mine. His hand is in no-man’s-land. He doesn’t want to retreat completely.
“Done,” I say, harshly. “Let me know when it’s safe to talk to you again.” I storm away, trying to be obvious about it, but I end up feeling ridiculous. I make it to the stairwell before I lose my grasp on the fight, and my shoulders and chest deflate.
*
I end up retreating downstairs, back to my own dorm. Fuck Galore. Screw Dean. Screw Mia as well, for good measure, why not? Fuck Snare and his agenda, whatever it is. I’m too busy damning everyone on my hit-list to notice a wilted, shaking Tilly on my cot. I’m almost on top of her before I hear the sniffling.
“Tilly?”
More sniffling. Her back faces me. Her head in her hands, she bows into herself, a flower in reverse. She’s tiny. God, she’s so small.
We’re not alone. We are not surrounded either. A few seniors linger around the lockers, a couple are already in their beds, but no one is close enough to pay attention. “Tilly? Hey, talk to me, junior.”
Junior. The word makes me cringe. My father calls me junior. I sit beside her on the cot. I sit down on the opposite side, so that we overlap, and I see her face more clearly. Tear-streaked; the way it was days before. I catch myself wishing, praying I am not in for another night of watching her break. That’s how selfish I can be; I’m thinking about how Tilly’s appearance on my cot will implicate me. I’m thinking about how I really just want to lie here and sulk. In my defence, I have no idea just how badly she is, in fact, implicating me, not yet. I don’t know yet just how much I’ll wish this moment hadn’t occurred. Or the next.
“Will you help me?” She asks, and her voice is dead, like she knows my answer.
“Of course, what do you need?” I ask, backing myself into a promise I won’t deliver on.
Her eyes glisten for a moment, they hope. “My sister. I have to go and get her, she’s all alone. Will you help me?”
I stare her down, wait for her to disappear in her well of tears, wait for her to realise that she can’t possibly.
She doesn’t, though. Tilly is deadly serious.
I rush to placate her, “Dean is going to help Julie. He promised me he would try to find a way out. He’ll find her, make sure she’s okay for you. You don’t need to worry, okay?”
Her eyes become wider, more hopeful. “Dean? But…he’s – ”
“A trainer, I know. But he is also my friend, Tilly, and he promised to do this for you.”
“Will he take me with him?” She asks, turning to face me completely. Her tears have stopped.
“Tilly, no! You can’t leave the compound. We can’t risk you getting caught.”
“But I have to. Tessa, I have to go and get my sister! I have to look after her. She’s too little to look after herself!”
“I know,” I say, placing my hand on her shoulder. The seniors by the lockers are starting to frown at us. “I know, relax. You have to be smart, Tilly. You can’t leave here. Dean will find a way out, I’ll take him to your house, and we will make sure Julie is okay.”
“And then you’ll leave her there,” Tilly says, her voice becoming dead again, her eyes vacant, “and my sister will be alone again, if she’s not already dead.”
I don’t know what to say. It will always be one of my biggest faults: having nothing good to say in the space where something should be said. I pat her hair for a while, watching her eyes well over again. I watch her dead eyes turn determined, and still I say nothing. I watch as she stands, thanks me, leaves.
I think to myself: she might actually do it. And still, I let her go.
This is what I should have said: Don’t. I’ll help you. Stay.
Remember when I told you that ‘this is the worst of it’? I was wrong. Tomorrow will be.
Chapter Eighteen
This is the worst of it.
It is an unknown hour of the night, but not long before dawn. The night outside is at its darkest, sitting on the precipice of grey. The air in the vastness of the Arena is so cold it might kill you. Or, at least, it will kill someone. This is the more likely possibility as to why we are assembled in the pit of night: either someone is going to die, or a lot of them already did.
And I already know. I knew hours ago.
And here they are, Trey with his lackey: Jiyah, and they have Tilly with them. There she is, swinging from Jiyah’s grasp, her small body not long enough to touch the floor. They drag her to stand in front of us, where Felix stood before her, and the sentencing begins, the outcome already determined, of course.
Should I live for a hundred years, I will live every single day with this face in my mind: this terrified, paralysed, face. Struggling to find stable footing, her arm turned at a grotesque angle, Jiyah’s dark, strained fingers overlapping as they encase her upper arm. That manic smile is there, daring the child to kick, scream, throw a tantrum, and just watch how quickly he will snap you in two. That glare almost makes me believe I am back in the firing range, holding my rifle in line with his head, counting the seconds like heartbeats, flirting with the idea of murder.
This is the part of the story where I break ranks. I run towards the fray and scoop that little girl up into my capable arms and run full pelt for the exit, dodging bullets and simultaneously coming into the actualisation that I am, and we are, beyond the control of Galore.
And don’t think that this wasn’t on my mind. My fingers twitch, and my body moves forward without my permission, my hands reaching out. Vincent side-steps, blocks my path. I stop. I look around frantically. I look at the number of steps it will take to get from here to there. I count the armed men, versus me. I try to remember – something vital – the solar plexis, the jugular, the temple, the kidneys. Wait. WAIT!
They drag Tilly to the back door, like they had Felix. They push her onto her knees on the cold, hard ground, no longer covered in snow to cushion her fall.
My forehead becomes buried between Vincent’s shoulder blades before it can happen.
A heart-splitting bang.
That’s the worst of it.
*
She did it. She did it, even when I told her not to. That is what I should focus on,
that I tried to talk her out of it. Of course, that is not how the human psyche works. Instead, my brain beats out a slow, continuous, torturous drum: Should have done something. Should have stopped her. Should have stopped them. Should have. Should have. Should have.
If I thought that Felix’s execution was a conversation starter, it is nothing in comparison to Tilly’s. Her name is everywhere. Spoken in every corner of the Compound, just like Trey would have wanted.
Just like before, the initiates wonder what exactly happened – why did she try to escape? What was she doing beyond the fence? The rumours are lame, predictable, and inaccurate: that Tilly was a jumper, or a vagrant. Some people know the truth: that she was trying to get to the only family she had left. That she wouldn’t have risked her life for anything less, that she wasn’t a traitor. That she wasn’t stupid. That she didn’t deserve to die.
That it seems she wasn’t questioned before she was executed.
I had always wondered – what would it feel like when. The great When. Not if, because, as I’ve explained, there is only so much luck a girl can get in this world. What would it feel like when I lost someone I love? Before, I thought the ‘Someone I Love’ bag consisted only of Mum and Dad. Wrong.
This is what it feels like: like a hole has been carved out of your gut. The empty void sits right where your diaphragm once was. It makes it hard to breathe, hard to stand or walk. But here is the truly shitty part: that hole that aches and burns and swallows you, it can disappear. Every morning you wake up, and there is a moment of wholeness, just a few sweet seconds of ignorance right before you remember. But then it replays, the whole thing, and you have to sit nicely as the hole is cut out again. And after this, after the hole is complete, there is training to attend to. The seniors have proceeded to survival training. Tilly had been so good in her survival course. My Snow White.
I am about as competent in survival as I was at the beginning of combat training. It is shameful, because I am a grazer, and survival is the one thing we can be counted upon to excel at. I bodge everything – rope-tying, fire-building, skinning and rendering rabbits, cooking, first aid. Vincent tries to help. In fact, the majority of my tasks are actually performed by him, when the trainer, Reeves, has his back turned.
