by K. C. Finn
I don’t need this. It’s a tough enough call to make without his voice in my head telling me things I already know and fear about myself.
“I know, I know,” I say, raising my hands. “You want to be democratic, and I’m not listening. I’m just like… Hadrian.”
“No,” Stirling says. He gets to the door, turning back with a gleam in his eyes I haven’t seen in a long time. “You’re just like The Evil One.”
*
Tense hours pass as we draw closer to nightfall. Kip says it’s more likely that the strike will come by night to give less visibility to the planes that deliver it. The less people that see what Prudell is about to do to us, the better. The Legion kids who agreed to stay with us peacefully are putting themselves to bed, rubbing half-empty stomachs and exchanging sleepy looks as they use what few cabins still have furniture in them. The others, those still held in the Bastion, are exchanging shifts as a fresh lot move out to take over at the tunnel. I watch from the corner where the descent begins, muddy boots trawling out of the tent as tired steps lead the workers home. Some look haggard, others more resolute, and some are even chatting pretty happily. But all of them are off to bed, sleeping like there’s nothing wrong with the world outside these walls.
No woman, man or child in my team is asleep. Rest has come in fits and starts during the day, ensuring that we’re ready to move fast during the night. I can’t help the squirm in my belly as I watch the kids making their sleepy way into cabins and corridors, escorted by guards who are wide awake and forever casting an eye to the sky. I am alone here, in my dark corner of the courtyard. We have no floodlights tonight. The sky must be clear and dark to see the planes coming. And the wasteland must be free of glare if the Reavers return in time.
Andrew has appointed a member of his best team to travel inside one of the Reavers and find Malcolm. The soldier chosen for the task is Livitka, a woman of around thirty who already has some augmentations in the back of her skull from a hearing operation when she was a child. We’re hoping it’s enough to pique the interest of the Reavers, and whoever she might meet when she climbs out of the sleek little coffin on the other side. She carries messages and data, cryptic enough that only Malcolm ought to be able to crack it, and one of Kip’s blue discs for tracking and communication.
I can see her up on the battlement, unmistakable because of the three long plaits she wears her hair in. They snap like whips when she moves her head, bouncing in thick strands like something out of a fairy-tale. Except this time around, a princess with long hair is going to save our king, whilst the rest of us peasants set about slaying the dragon. It was earlier in the evening when Malcolm was taken, and the lack of Reaver sightings has my teeth humming and aching. I want word that they’re here, that Apryl’s maths worked out, and so I stay watching the figures up on the wall until everyone else has settled into bed.
The noise comes to my ears gradually, fading out of the background of all the other white noises that make up life in an encampment. Slowly, a rhythmic sniffling and small squeaks break through the ambient sounds of the world. It gets louder, coming closer to me, and eventually a figure steps out of a nearby corridor with a heavy pail of earth. I recognise his mop of curls, though his face is caked in tunnel dirt. He slumps with his bucket at the tent entrance, a full-on sob escaping from his lips.
It’s Boy. The one who wanted to be a rebel and take no orders from anyone. It looks as though my father has him pretty well trained, even if it’s only to come out and dump buckets of earth in a heap in the courtyard. Where he pauses, Boy looks up and towards me, but it’s so dark now that I must be totally encased in shadows. He’s lit by a faint glow from within the tent, his hands reaching up to cover his face as he weeps openly. He clutches his face, perhaps trying to cover the noise he’s making, but the squeaking wrenches my gut harder than his actual sobs do.
“Hey. Come here a sec.”
It takes him a moment. Boy rubs his eyes furiously and looks around. I have to take a couple of steps away from the wall for him to make me out. He leaves his bucket where it is and comes to me. The curve of his shoulders is a tell-tale sign that he’s done a good share of digging and walking the long corridor of earth beneath us. Everyone I knew in the Underground had that stoop.
“Why are you crying, kid?”
I’m surprised by how clipped and harsh I sound. My voice seems to have lost something since this whole siege began. Boy shrugs.
“I wasn’t crying.”
He folds his arms and looks at the ground, but then he has to sniff up a noseful of snot that rather ruins the tough guy impression.
“Are you hurting from digging?” I ask, trying to force something compassionate into my tone. “We’re not evil, you know. If the strain is too much, you can rest.”
Boy remains still. “It’s not that.”
“So tell me what it is. It beats lugging earth buckets for a minute, doesn’t it?”
A considered silence passes, but it doesn’t take long for another sniffle to break it. Boy takes a few steps back to the wall where I was loitering. I follow and we both lean against it, side by side, looking up at the battlements. Here his face is totally shrouded in the black, and when he sighs his breath is uneven and quivering again. I watch the figure of Livitka, pacing between the other guards up on the wall. She’s watching the empty wasteland with the same fear as me, I’d wager.
“I met him once.” Boy speaks suddenly, his voice gentle and quiet. “And he hated me. And then he was just… dead. I didn’t get a chance. He really was my hero.”
I’ve seen Malcolm go hard on plenty of kids that have come to his door, and most of the adults in our little world too. He was never that way with me. From the moment he took me on, he showed me nothing but promise and potential. I was his assassin, then his bargaining chip. His poster girl, his spy and his junior leader. But I do remember what it was like to have that silver pistol pointed at my neck, back when I was just any other boy at the Legion. His eyes like frost, chilling into my soul and my nightmares.
“He challenged you, Boy. He wanted you to work for your name. That’s not nothing, and it’s certainly not hatred. If he’d hated you, you wouldn’t be alive right now.”
Boy offers his palms to me, though it’s too dark here to make them out properly. “I am working. But what does it matter? He’s not here to see it. They put him in the ground, and now it’s only a matter of time before this revolution is over.”
It shocks me that I’m not offended by the kid’s summary. Even though I’ve stepped in to coordinate in Malcolm’s absence, I know I’m pinning a lot on the copycat Reavers and the thought of getting him back. I want him to be alive so badly that it might be the only thing keeping me going right now. I wish it was me, not Livitka, that could go and fetch him. That I didn’t have to lead an assault on Tania that we have no idea how to face.
Boy is crying again, and now it’s noisy. I don’t reach for him in the dark, because it almost feels like it might be catching. If I touch him and feel the judder of his shoulders, I could break too, and I’m broken enough right now.
“Sit down, kid. Come on.”
I slide my back down the wall until I’m crouching on the courtyard’s worn grass. Boy slunks down beside me, his head lolling forward until he catches it with his hands. He’s still shaking. My lips itch to move. I know his pain and grief so terribly well, and though it’s wildly off protocol, I can’t help the decision I’m making.
“I think you ought to know something, Boy.”
“What?”
I pause, but it’s too late now. I’ve started and I’ll finish.
“Malcolm might still be alive.”
It quells the kid’s tears as I speak. I tell him about the Reavers and Cornell, though I don’t use the boy’s name. I skip over the fight, Goddie and the torture for my own sake, but I do point up to Livitka’s silhouette against the dark sky. It is full night now, her shape fading against the purple hue of the living sky of
night. But as Boy listens to the possibilities and to Livitka’s mission to return Malcolm to us, he stops crying altogether and shuffles closer to my knees.
“Can I watch with them?” he asks. “For the Reavers coming tonight?”
“You can fetch for them if they need food and water,” I counter. “If they let you stay that’s their business. Call the Reavers Beetles and call Malcolm Hadrian. They’ll know you came direct from me that way.”
He hugs me. The cocky little sod reaches out and gives me a squeeze, then runs off in the darkness. His feet make such a clatter that I’m sure he’ll wake up most of the occupied cabins on his way to the far side battlements. I don’t wait for his shape to appear up on the wall, but I do recover his bucket and empty it on the ever-increasing dirt layer that now covers part of the training field. Dad’s probably waiting on the kid to return and clear more earth, and I wonder if it wouldn’t be some kind of therapy for me to do a little digging and emptying for a while.
My wishes are seldom granted. When I reach the entrance to the tent, one hand has barely touched the entryway before the noise begins. It’s not the hum of the airstrike and its planes, but a feral roar from a deep, cracked voice. At the same time there are shouts on the battlements. My head snaps one way to where Livitka and her guard should be, but I can’t make anything out in the pitch black sky now. The roar rumbles again, and this time there’s a smash from my left. There’s light now, a sudden burst of colour from inside one of the towers.
Because there’s a hole in the wall where the tower window used to be.
Barrelling out of the first floor window, and taking the frame with him, is a hulking mass of strength that wails like a banshee with every movement. He smashes down into the courtyard and gets back up without even a flicker of injury. The light behind him from the broken room shines off the steely dome atop his head. He flexes his muscles and his metals, wires and cables sticking out of open panels. He stamps a foot, and the shudder of the ground reaches me, even at my considerable distance.
Briggs is out of his bonds. He takes off at a pace across the courtyard, coming straight for me.
Fourteen
I don’t know if his night vision is human-honed or augmented, but even as I swerve to evade him, Briggs knows where I am. I duck behind cabins and run a gambit through them, and the hulking mass of metal and terror matches me step for step. It’s no wonder Malcolm couldn’t get away. Kids are bursting out of some of the nearby doors, but Briggs smashes them aside like a bear swatting fish out of the river. Their little bodies fly off through doorways and slam against walls, and I have no time to see whether he’s knocked them out, or even killed them in a single blow.
“How clever are you now, Bullet Girl?”
Briggs roars, the echoing sound bringing thunders of footfalls to the courtyard. The floodlights click to life somewhere overhead. Maybe they think they’re helping me by lighting him up, but the sudden whiteness of the world makes me cry out with pain. I see only a block of blurry black, flashing in my eyes as I fumble to remember where I was. I find a wall, my palms against it, then feel my way to run along it. It’s a cabin wall, and when it ends I hook around it, blinking furiously to try and clear my vision.
It’s no use. Getting my sight back is going to take longer than I’ve got, and I can’t keep running circles around this cabin. All I can do is fumble for the doorway and throw myself inside. I roll to the ground, hitting feet and chatter. Legionnaires surround me, and the dim light in here helps me see their shapes running for the door.
“What the hell?
“Shit! It’s Briggs!”
“He’s insane.”
“He’s gonna-”
An almighty smash rocks the cabin. The wooden floor splits, the crack echoing into my ear where I lie flat with my eyes streaming water.
“REJECT!”
He’s here. The world is only shapes to me in my sudden stupor. I scramble to turn to the sound of his cry, and there’s no mistaking the massive blur of silver and black that walks towards me. He takes his time, because I have nowhere to go, and the skinny shadows of the legionnaires run around him like fleeing ants. He lets them go. That’s something I suppose. Briggs was always more concerned with his personal vendettas than the grander scheme of things, and here it’s a weakness that allows the other kids to flee. Here in the semi-dark, with the great white rectangle of floodlights behind him, I start to see Briggs’s hideous face take shape again. He is smiling at me, those metallic teeth glinting. Boxy little blurs to my blinded eyes.
In one step he’s upon me, and his human hands are rough where they grip me by the scruff of my jumper. I have wriggled from this grip before, and we both know the trick now. Briggs takes hold of one of my legs with his other hand, turning me upside down and holding me hard enough to crush the muscles. Please, not my legs. Not my speed. The blood pulses into my head, my eyes flashing and blurring as I scream for anyone to hear me and help. Briggs laughs, the barking sound echoing around the cabin, and squeezes harder still.
It’s going to snap. The pressure is wildly painful, burning wave after wave of sudden heat into my nerves. Flashes of agony see me twisting and jolting in the grip, the bile rising hot in the back of my throat. I scream myself dry but there’s no sound, except Briggs talking down to me. When I stop crying out and gasp for breath, it forces me to hear his cruel words.
“That’s right. Cry for him, Bullet Girl. Bring Stryker here to save his precious surrogate. The son and daughter he never had. Call him! Call him now!”
A thought strikes me. Briggs is holding me in his left hand. The hand that drew those maps. And he wants me to call for my leader. Call him by name.
“Malcolm.” I say it loud and clear, but not as a scream or a wail. “Malcolm Stryker. This is Raja. Do you hear me? System. Prudell. Reaver. Stryker. Stryker!”
Every word I can think of. Every banned expression we’ve replaced with the AMJ code. Briggs is rambling over me, mocking my nonsense, but I know it’s anything but. His fingers are twitching around my leg, but the crushing grip is no worse than before. Soon, it’s less.
Then I drop.
Briggs yells out, a wordless shout because he has no idea what to ask. Whether it’s a how or a why, his hand has let me go against his will. I land and roll as Briggs continues to shout, and by the time I’m right side up his shouts are muffled. The phantom hand that he doesn’t control is covering his face, sticking its digits into his eyes and blocking off his mouth. Briggs hulks his body around, crashing into lockers and knocking them over. At last, my eyes are back in focus with light. His knuckles are white where the hand is straining, the circuitry uncovered on the left side sparking and lighting up like a beacon. Sending signals and receiving them.
The One at the centre can hear me right now.
“Help us! I say. Raja. Raja. Are you still receiving? We want to find you, but it’s too guarded. Too deep within the System.”
“What are you raving about, freak? Come here! I’ll kill you! I’ll-”
Briggs reaches out with his good hand, knocking over a bedside table. His feet fumble in the spilled contents and he falls to the ground face first. It’s tough on his heavy frame to get up with only one hand co-operating, so I grab for my radio and make the signal whilst I can.
“Grandpa got loose! Repeat, Grandpa is loose and in the mid-tier cabin section. Straps and weights needed whilst he’s down.”
“You dare…” Briggs snarls the words out. “I won’t be tied like an animal again.”
He stops struggling to get up, tossing himself onto his back like the great metal tortoise that he has become. Briggs takes his right hand to his left, prizing away the fingers one by one. To my horror, I see that it’s working. I look around, but there’s no-one outside the cabin’s open door, not even a figure running by. No-one has answered my call or my radio. I send the signal again, one eye trained on Briggs, but there’s no reply. The hand is coming away, Briggs’s dark fingers pure white with
the strain of holding the last one in place. His eyes are free. Trained on me. Dark and ringed red as blood.
I run. Bursting out of the cabin I scan the scene, taking off in the empty courtyard towards the northern walls. But even as I run, I look up into the brightly lit space, and there are no figures on the battlements. No-one is around, no sound, nothing. The place may as well be left for the ghosts.
And that’s when I hear it. The sound that I’d drowned out with my own screams and Briggs’s violent crashing. Again it comes slowly, out of the white noise, a hum that’s growing with every second I stand there. A constant drone alongside the hammering of my heart and the heave of my lungs. The sound is that of planes approaching, but I can’t see the sky. The floodlights are far too bright to make out how near they are, and the sound of the approach increases with every second.
“You won’t get away this time! I’m gonna break every bone in your sorry little body!”
There’s a thud and a crash as Briggs’s words echo across the yard. The tent is behind him now, leading to the tunnel where everyone else must be. It looks like the kids in the cabins have evacuated along with my troops. If I run now and do the same, Briggs is going to barrel right down that tunnel with us, maybe even collapse the whole thing. I can’t let him in on the plan, it would risk everything. But the drone is loud in my head and I have no idea how long I have before the strike rains down. If I don’t run for the tent, I could die.
I’d be gone from all of this pain and toil. Fast as you like.
“If I’m dying!” I shout back. “I’m taking you with me.”
I run for the place where we blasted the wall open, as far from the entrance to the tent as possible. Ducking into the half-open wall of the corridor I snake around, listening for the thump of heavy feet behind me. If there was ever a man with the muscles to carry a shell of metal at speed, I’ve met him. My lame leg wobbles every time I land on it, the muscles screaming with fire and shock. He’s damaged me, that much I know. I can feel my gait thrown off with every wide, sprinting stride, slowing my pace and fumbling the next move.
