Noble Conflict

by Malorie Blackman

  Except an enormous frackin’ headache.

  Kaspar’s eyes hurt. There was a roaring in his ears and the worst pain in his skull that he had ever known. He blinked a couple of times against the light. He was sitting on the floor? Where? Oh yes. The massage place . . .

  Shit! Where was she? He swung round.

  Rhea was also sitting on the floor, on the opposite side of the room. Her breasts were heaving from exertion under her overall, and she was watching him intently, warily. Her face was flushed and her hair dishevelled. Kaspar couldn’t just see her fear, he could feel it.

  He tried to get to his feet, but he moved too fast, got light-headed and wobbled. In any event, she moved faster, springing to her feet before he was up. She stood for a moment, poised like the fighter she was, ready to move in any direction, attack or defence.

  ‘Do you know your enemy?’ Rhea asked unexpectedly. ‘Because it isn’t me.’

  He tried to speak, but all that came from his battered larynx was a croak. What was she up to? Surely she wasn’t trying to recruit him to her side?

  ‘Kaspar, why are all of you so accepting? Is it because it’s easier to let others do your thinking for you?’

  Kaspar had no idea what Rhea was on about.

  They watched each other silently for a few moments, but when he tried to take a step towards her, she ran from the room. One moment she was there, the next she was gone, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  28

  Two painkillers had taken care of Kaspar’s headache, but had done nothing to dispel his much larger problem. That he had failed to mention Rhea’s help in the desert was bad enough. He didn’t even know why he hadn’t mentioned her. Everyone – except Mac – had just assumed that he had escaped from the hovercar crash on his own and he hadn’t corrected them. Was he suffering from survivor guilt? Or a fear that he would be suspected of something if it were known that he had been helped by the enemy?

  But then he had let her go at the Thirteenth District network sub-node ambush. He justified that one to himself as a quid pro quo, a case of ‘now we’re even’. But he had seen her so often now he could have painted her portrait from memory. He should at least release her description. And for all he knew, the gym was a hotbed of Insurgent activity. Certainly some of the locals would know who worked there. They might’ve seen things, useful things. He should call it in, organize a full-scale raid, interrogate everyone.

  So why was he sitting in a café and agonizing? Why was he protecting an Insurgent who had probably been involved in any number of outrages?

  It came down to one question.

  Why hadn’t Rhea killed him?

  Everything he’d been taught throughout his life told him that she was a vicious terrorist, utterly amoral, who would stop at nothing.

  Except killing him.

  Why did they keep meeting?

  How had he found her again? Coincidence? Hardly.

  He pushed his treasonous behaviour to one side for a moment and thought about the other stuff – the dreams, the hallucinations. He did a datanet search on near-death experiences and found that some of what he had seen was pretty classic. A bright light, the edited highlights of his life flashing by, figures dressed in white, feelings of detachment. The medics said they were symptoms of hypoxia, a lack of oxygen to his brain, and the mystics said they were evidence of an afterlife. But what about the rest? The cottage in a valley by the stream and Grandma weren’t from his memory. And yet they seemed so real.

  Up until very recently, Kaspar had been absolutely clear about what he was doing and why he was doing it. He and the other Guardians were on the side of the angels, and terrorists were pure evil. It was as simple as that. So why the creeping doubts, the sudden capacity for nuance? Why did the Insurgency seem more benign in dreams? Obviously he was grateful to Rhea for saving him, so was this a case of misplaced gratitude? Which led on to the question of why the Insurgents were in long-term medical stasis at the Clinic instead of in prison somewhere? And what the hell was the eyelid thing about?

  Question after question battered at him relentlessly, giving him no peace. Kaspar’s head was spinning. If only Dillon was here to talk to. Even Dillon laughing at his worries would’ve given him some much-needed perspective.

  But Dillon was gone.

  And Kaspar had never before felt so alone.

  29

  When Kaspar returned to barracks the recreation room was deserted and there was nobody on the accommodation floor. He had to go down to the Comms Centre to find anyone. Janna was working a shift on the Liaison desk. Kas wandered over.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ he asked.

  ‘There was a major incident while you were out,’ she replied sombrely. ‘The chemical plant on Radial Four got hit at 1100 hours. They got clean away with a tank of luxothane gas.’

  ‘Was anyone at the factory hurt?’

  ‘No. They sneaked in, grabbed the gas and were gone before we could respond.’ Janna spoke in a low monotone.

  ‘Well, at least they can’t do much damage with that.’ Janna’s deep frown told Kaspar he was missing something. ‘Luxothane is the stuff we use for crowd control and hostage situations, right?’

  Janna nodded.

  ‘So what’s the problem? The stuff is non-lethal and non-toxic, and you can’t even use it unless you have an ultrasonic dispersal unit. It’s useless to them.’

  ‘’Fraid not, genius,’ she replied. ‘The non-lethal stuff we use is luxothane-G. You get that by diluting pure luxothane a million times and adding the ultrasonic inhibitor.’

  Now it was Kaspar’s turn to frown. ‘So that means . . . ?’

  ‘If you have a tank of the raw, concentrated form, it’s absolutely lethal, and it only takes a few minutes to weaponize it.’

  ‘Oh my God . . . so they have a serious weapon.’

  ‘It’s more than serious, Kas. We’re talking about a weapon of mass destruction.’

  ‘Yes, but how the hell—’

  The comms board made a muted bleep. Janna held up one hand for quiet while using the other to press her headset to her ear. As she listened, the colour drained from her face.

  ‘What is it?’ Kaspar asked.

  She didn’t reply. She just sat looking stunned.

  ‘Janna? What is it? What did the report say?’ That pricking sensation that Kaspar knew so well and dreaded so much was back.

  Janna turned, her movements halting and jerky, like those of a puppet. ‘The tank of gas . . . they don’t have it any more.’ She was on the verge of tears.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘They’ve already used it.’

  ‘Shit. Where?’

  ‘A school. Loring Primary School. Ten minutes ago. Oh, Kas, the bastards have killed over two hundred children and teachers.’

  30

  Kaspar was so angry. Even angrier than when Dillon died. He was furious at the Insurgents and at Rhea for making him question what was right, and most of all furious with himself for letting some ridiculous notion of chivalry and respect between enemies turn him into an idiot and, worse than that, a traitor.

  He went straight to his room, logged onto the datanet and dictated a full After-Action report on his latest encounter with Rhea. He was thorough, even including the exact time and the address where he bought the mellisse croissant. The massage he explained as allowing him to observe his suspect surreptitiously. Kaspar read through what he’d just written. The truth in certain places had been bent, but not to the point of breaking.

  Massage as covert surveillance? Was anyone going to believe that?

  Kaspar needed to write about when Rhea had carried him to safety, but now was not the time. A message came through general comms that all unassigned Guardians were to report to ground zero. He was needed on the front line. But he vowed to submit a full report including his first encounter with Rhea the moment he got back – and to take whatever punishment Voss threw at him. He deserved whatever was coming to him,
and worse. The only thing Kaspar regretted was that his parents’ reputations could possibly be tarnished along with his. But Kaspar’s personal reputation and his exposure to contempt and mockery weren’t exactly the highest priority right now.

  He tapped ‘SAVE’ on his half-completed report and headed out to join his colleagues at Loring School. There would be nothing to do except help put little bodies in body bags and run crowd control on grieving parents. But at least he would be doing something. Loring School was one of the schools that Kaspar had visited on his public relations stint. He remembered the five-year-old girl he’d met.

  ‘My name is Gnea – with a G. It’s pronounced Ni-ah! Everybody always gets that wrong.’

  He still remembered her smile and the way she’d hugged him and thanked him for protecting her.

  Protecting her . . .

  Kaspar felt heartsick. He’d let an Insurgent go free when he had the chance to stop her in her tracks. Kaspar wondered in despair if Gnea-with-a-G was still alive.

  ‘Stop it, Kas,’ he berated himself. ‘If you dwell on their faces, you’re going to lose it.’

  He forced himself to think of the terrorists instead. What kind of soulless evil would target a primary school? It was highly unlikely he’d ever see Rhea again – the last couple of times had been coincidences. But if he did see her again, he would zap her evil terrorist arse without hesitation, and take pleasure in doing it. And if the people at the Clinic mistreated her a bit, then so be it. Nobody could say that she didn’t deserve it.

  Gnea-with-a-G and her friends had got a lot worse.

  Kaspar made it to the school, and the horrors painted in his mind by his imagination throughout the journey there were as nothing compared to the real horrors that lacerated his eyes and seared his mind on arrival. Kaspar knew that even if he lived to be one hundred and fifty, the images he saw that day would never leave him. Never in a million years could his imagination have conjured up anything like this.

  Reality was more cruel.

  It took every gram of control he had, and more he didn’t even know he possessed, to keep it together. He and the other Guardians moved like automatons, gathering bodies and placing them in body bags. No one spoke. What words would be adequate?

  Kaspar would wait till he was alone to shed tears for the fallen.

  And the bitterest tears would fall for Gnea-with-a-G.

  31

  It was over a week since the attack on the school and Kaspar was still having trouble sleeping. The carnage at Loring School was something he didn’t even need to close his eyes to see. Row upon row of tiny bodies laid out on the lawn. Grim-faced Guardians and medics bringing out more and more to join the ranks. It was the unreality of it that got him most, the eerie silence broken only by the sobs of the medics and the gasps of the Guardians who struggled to keep it together. Because it was gas and not a bomb, there was no damage. The victims had all just stopped and dropped. The décor of the classrooms was still bright and cheerful, and the contrast between the effects of the attack and its setting somehow made it that much worse. Some of the children had died painting pictures of their pets. Some had been eating break-time snacks. Some had been playing musical games or reading. The school looked like a playroom after a birthday party, full of books and toys and assorted bric-a-brac.

  And dolls.

  Discarded dolls lying crumpled on the floor, slouched over the tables, lying back in the chairs.

  He had thought the tears would arrive the moment he was alone and able to take in the enormity of just what had happened, but he hadn’t managed a shed a single tear. It was as if his mind was frozen. Thinking about the school, not thinking about the school; it made no difference. He’d had to submit to a compulsory psych evaluation along with all the other Guardians the day after the atrocity, but the answers required to pass weren’t hard to figure out. It was merely a question of telling the psych evaluator what he or she wanted to hear. He’d passed with flying colours.

  Faked it. Aced it.

  But he couldn’t get any respite from what had happened.

  He felt each and every death as if it was one of his own. He eyed his stun rifle with distaste each time he had to clean it and check it. He longed for something more powerful, not to mention more permanent, to tackle the Insurgents. They didn’t deserve the humanity the High Council still insisted they be shown. Kaspar’s hatred of the Insurgents was nurtured and grew tall and strong with each remembered child’s face.

  And yet he couldn’t cry.

  After submitting his report about his run-in with Rhea, the gym had been raided of course, but to no avail. The receptionist was exactly what she claimed to be. No weapons, literature, plans, or secrets were found. Apparently Rhea had provided good references as a qualified masseuse and physiotherapist, using the name of Leah Mettiána, and had worked there for about six months. Of course she hadn’t been seen since Kaspar’s visit. And as for the delay in submitting his report . . . Kaspar still winced as he remembered how Voss had ripped into him.

  ‘I don’t care if she tied your windpipe into a pretzel. If you have any contact with a terrorist suspect, you call it in immediately. You do not go to a café for a sodding milkshake before strolling back to report.’

  Kaspar’s report had also contained a severely edited version of his encounter with Rhea in the desert. He had put down his reticence to report their meeting to his shock over Dillon’s death and the fact that he kept drifting in and out of consciousness and so wasn’t sure if the meeting had been real or just a figment of his imagination.

  The full story would have to wait. It wasn’t that Kaspar was a coward, it wasn’t that. But he was desperate not to be bounced out of the Academy before he could make amends for what he’d done. He needed to confront Rhea again, and this time there’d be no more mistakes. He’d make sure she paid – her and every other Insurgent who crossed his path.

  Kaspar replumped his pillow for the umpteenth time and tried to get to sleep. His gaze fell on the empty bed that had once been Dillon’s. Not for the first time, he wished his friend was still around. He turned to check the clock. Two-ten in the morning.

  ‘Kaspar, go to sleep,’ he told himself.

  He closed his eyes, determined not to open them again until morning, even if it meant viewing the back of his eyelids all night.

  Kaspar awoke slowly again after less than half an hour, but it wasn’t from a nightmare or a hallucination this time. He opened his eyes and was instantly awake, his mind alert. Why was he so cold? Freezing, in fact. The environmental controls had obviously packed up. Hang on . . . that smell . . . that wasn’t air conditioning. That was night-time air. He rolled over to look towards the window. The curtains were billowing slightly.

  I don’t remember opening—

  That was all he had time to think before the muzzle of a gun was pressed firmly under his chin. He froze.

  ‘Don’t move and don’t speak.’ The voice was calm – and female.

  Looking at the side of his bed, he could see nothing but a shadow seated on his bed and an arm holding the gun, but he recognized the voice.

  ‘Rhea?’ he whispered.

  ‘Turn on the light,’ she ordered. ‘Slowly.’

  Kaspar groped behind him for the switch and did as he was told. ‘How did you get in here?’

  ‘I can get in anywhere at any time. You should know that by now,’ said Rhea.

  ‘I want to know how you got past the Academy’s security.’

  ‘I turned into a bird and flew over the electrified fence,’ Rhea replied. ‘Then I used my invisibility shield to sneak past the guards.’

  Kaspar glared at her. Did she think she was funny?

  ‘You people of the Alliance love to tell all kinds of ridiculous tales about us Crusaders,’ said Rhea. ‘D’you think we haven’t read some of the stories you record about us on your datanet? They’re laughable, and yet you all choose to believe them.’

  ‘Our datanet? The Crusaders have co
mputers and access to the datanet too,’ said Kaspar. ‘It’s not exclusively ours.’

  ‘We may have computers, but your High Council makes damned sure that the data we can access out in the Badlands is strictly limited,’ said Rhea.

  Was she telling the truth? It would certainly explain why the Insurgents were so hot on accessing data nodes from within Capital City.

  ‘Are you saying the records about your lot aren’t accurate?’ said Kaspar.

  Rhea’s lips thinned. ‘I’m saying we were left to rot in the Badlands and had no choice but to develop new skills to survive. And for that we are hated. But I guess I’m just wasting my breath trying to get you to see things from our side.’

  Kaspar shook his head. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Was she really seeking to justify what she and the other Insurgents did? ‘You must be crazy to break in here.’

  ‘Be quiet.’ She glided to her feet like a dancer, but the gun didn’t waver. Rhea took a step back as he sat up, putting a safe distance between them so he couldn’t grab for the gun, and fished a small packet out of her black form-fitting outfit. He tore his eyes away from hers for long enough to look at the packet that she was now ripping open with her teeth. For one ludicrous second, he thought it was a condom, but it was a transdermal patch – a measured dose of some pharmaceutical on a flexible, adhesive plastic backing. A neat way of delivering all sorts of drugs into the bloodstream.

  ‘Put it on,’ she ordered, placing the thing face up on the bed.

  It could be any number of toxins, but why would she bother? The silenced pistol would do the trick just as quietly and much more quickly. Unless, of course, she wanted to pass off his death as natural causes?

  ‘What’s the drug?’ Kaspar asked.

  ‘That’s not important.’