by K. C. Finn
“When I spoke to him before we let de Reaver have him, I asked if der was anything I could do.” Goddie looks right ahead, his dark eyes flashing with streaks of sunlight. “And he told me: ‘Protect Raja. She’s at the heart of it all.’ Now if dat’s not clear as day, I don’t know what is.”
At the heart of it all. Does he mean the Heart of the System? The One we’re looking for deep in the Reborns’ programming? That would make sense, since the messages are coming to me. But beyond the practical, there’s the way those words tear a new opening in my heart, into a void I keep locking off for a time when the war is over. When I can rebuild and live again, without all of this weight on my shoulders.
“Do you think he had a hunch about why the messages came to me?”
The line stops marching, and we shuffle to a halt. The stretcher lowers in the hubbub and I’m able to get off it at last, touching my feet to the ground. Goddie lets it go and rubs the back of his neck, shrugging.
“Ya know Malcolm better dan me, boss. He had plenty of tricks up his sleeve.”
That is painfully true. As the soldiers wait for orders from ahead, I see a tall figure cutting down the line with that unmistakeable bounce. Stirling catches my eye as he arrives to tower over us. He looks over my legs, then pokes me in the shoulder. I wince, but not too much.
“You look okay,” he says.
“Jesus. Ever de gentleman,” Goddie gripes behind me.
Stirling’s mouth opens just a little, his brow heavy. “I mean-”
“Yeah,” I cut in. “No time for you two to do this again.” I rub my hands together, getting some blood and life back into my limbs. “How long are we stopping? Time for a meeting? I need intel.”
“Twenty minute food and water. Yes please. And yeah, you really do.”
Stirling waves a hand for me to walk in front, but before I can take a step Goddie is with us too. He raises his gun guard-style and takes a place in front of me, with Stirling trailing at the back. We walk along the line, and all the while I see our rebels settling down with water canisters and the Legion’s ration packets. Malcolm’s faithful army, following the two kids whom he picked to share his crown. Some of them nod my way, with smiles or salutes, but the wearier ones only look down, picking dirt off their shoes.
“How’s morale?” I ask, leaning back a little to catch Stirling’s ear with a low voice.
“Shitty,” he replies in that Highland burr that makes any word sound better. “After walking into a trap over in the wasteland and almost being bombed to death, we need a definite victory to boost them. Barely escaping with our lives is not the new normal they’re hoping for.”
“Goddie says we’re headed for…” I pause, thinking hard. Did we develop an AMJ codeword for monorail? If it was on the list, I haven’t used it, and it’s not stuck in my memory like the others.
“The Choo Choo?” Stirling asks.
I can’t help the laugh that bursts through my lips. Goddie shakes his head in front of us. “Did Apryl settle on dat? Dat was a joke suggestion.”
“Well, it stuck,” Stirling replies. “Yeah we’re Choo Choo bound, all right. Andrew’s had a thought that I want you to hear. And Apryl hasn’t stopped thinking out loud since we started the march.”
As we near the top of the line, I find two legionnaires struggling to eat and drink. They have handcuffs on and they’re chained together, fighting over an unopenable packet of crackers rather than coming together to ease the wrapper off. It doesn’t surprise me that I recognise the faces. Cornell and Nema, brought together by convenience, or maybe fate. I pause until they notice me, their squabble ending instantly.
“Goddie, let’s bring these two along.” I point, and Goddie faithfully follows, grabbing the chains of our troublesome prisoners from the nearest rebel. “Nema owes us some information, and Cornell might feel like talking if someone helps him open that packet.”
The young man with the busted face nods ferociously. I can hardly believe how changed he is from the cocky fool who tried to bring me down. Yet beside him is Nema, so much leaner and comparatively weaker, and she’s the one who’s had a gun to my back. The closest to killing me. It goes to show how I judged and mis-judged them, even in the face of how the world looks at me.
The prisoners walk on, and it’s only a few steps before we’re at the front of the line. Here, Kip is untangling a huge backpack from his lean shoulders, but lowering it carefully to the ground in the centre of a clearing. He’s spaced himself a good ten feet away from the nearest soldiers of the marching line, and in a few strides Apryl joins him. She sits herself in the dusty clearing, crossed-legged in front of the backpack, and begins to unbuckle certain sections. Goddie walks the prisoners into the space, settling them, and I make to take a step to join them.
Stirling catches me by my good shoulder, his breath on my ear.
“I know you went in to save the Bastion kids. Even though it could have meant the end for you.”
I turn to find him fidgeting with a strand from his protective vest. His lashes are cast to the ground, his cheekbones taut.
“I’m sorry I said you were anything like her. You did right. You always do.”
He lets me go, walking by before I can answer in that infuriating way of his. Soon Andrew is with us too, forming a circle around Kip’s huge backpack, and I take my place on the ground for our meeting to begin. The pockets that Apryl has opened have nothing to unpack, but rather they reveal what has been built inside the backpack itself. There are keyboards and number pads sticking out and hanging by their cables, whilst screens and displays are strapped into place.
“Got to love a man who’s willing to carry your computer bank for you,” I say, smiling.
When Apryl looks up from her machines and catches my eye, she suddenly gets onto her hands and knees and crosses the circle. She lands on me, full force, dropping me back on the ground and kissing my cheek.
“Easy! De girl’s got a popped shoulder,” Goddie calls.
None of it stops Apryl from pulling me back up and wrapping both arms around me, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. She warms my soul in a way no-one else can, her brightness burning into me like an open campfire.
“Don’t go rogue like that again, you psycho. We were so worried.”
She beams at me, and I raise a palm solemnly. “I won’t. I literally have no desire to take Grandpa on solo ever again.”
“You might just get that wish granted,” Apryl answers with a grin. “Come see.”
We all scoot closer to her machinery as Apryl returns to the screens. She pulls up a feed I recognise, the System’s news network, and I watch in horror as I see the crater where the Legion used to be. Whilst Nema and I escaped through the forest, the planes returned and razed the building to the ground. Apryl pauses the feed when an aerial camera does a fly-over of the site, then she taps and pinches until the image zooms in. She points to a few silvery objects glinting in the August sunlight, strewn about the patch of ground that used to be the courtyard. They look like arms and legs, made of metal.
“Limb from limb.” Apryl smirks. “Looks like the Evil One doesn’t even care about protecting her own anymore.”
I lean closer to the screen as Apryl zooms it out. The headline reads: LEGION DESTROYED AS REBELS FORCE OUR HAND.
“Do they still think we’re all dead?” I ask.
Kip makes a noise that I don’t find encouraging. “The media is claiming it.”
“But you don’t think the Evil One herself would be convinced?”
“If it were me…” The Westie muses, rubbing his beard. “I’d want proof. I’d be combing the site to find the bodies. And if they do that and find our tunnel, they’ll know. I think we’ve got another day, maybe two before they find it in the wreckage.”
“All the more reason that we find a new base fast,” I reply, nodding.
“Wow. This kit is something else.”
Nema is the one who silences the rest of us. She’s shuffled forw
ard in her chains to see Apryl’s set-up, dragging a reluctant Cornell with her. Apryl gives her the side-eye.
“And who are you exactly, Miss Thing?”
“I’ve got stuff to tell you, in exchange for my survival in this whole mess,” Nema answers. “I didn’t know how much use it would be, considering your boss lady here can’t even bypass a PIN code.”
She shoots me a look, which I shoot right back. I’m not the one in chains right now, and Nema has lost any sympathy I had for her. I stretch my leg out, my boot against her gunshot wound, though not quite touching it.
“Get on with it then.”
“What I heard that got me kicked out of school and into service,” Nema begins. “It was a connection. An online network that was building a resistance.”
Eighteen
“A resistance movement from the old Twenty-One-Hundred gang? I could well believe it.”
Sheila is heading up B company, which is filled with medical supplies, canteen stuff and utensils, and our non-combat crew. I have to speak to her on Goddie’s radio so that A company can maintain our quick march to the target ahead: the above ground monorail tracks which mark the border of the System’s city network. Nema hasn’t given us a lot of detail about the people who seem to be running the network, but she reckons she can hack into it if we give her access to our computers.
“I don’t know if this kid just wants to signal home, wherever that is, and get rescued,” I say, my breath heavier with every step. The sun is at its hottest at this time of the afternoon, and beads of sweat run from my palm to pool around the radio receiver. “I can’t make her out. One second she’s with you, the next she’s for herself.”
“Hmmm. Funny how that happens with selfish teens.”
Sheila’s answer isn’t any help, but I don’t have time to get into another of her weird passive-aggressive moments.
“You know the TOH better than anyone in this company. You worked for them, like Malcolm and Delilah did. If they were still around, who would we be looking for?”
“A few names spring to mind, but I’ve no idea if they’re dead or alive these days. You could look for Desiree Hunter, or maybe the Eatons.”
“Ah. Match name.” Goddie says. He marches beside me, pointing with a grin. “Dat’s Cornell’s parents. His real name is Corey Eaton.”
“So it’s possible that the group which Malcolm was taken to in the Reaver is this same group?” My heart lifts at the thought. “Maybe he was already in contact with them?”
“I doubt it.” Sheila’s cutting voice deflates me again. “I’m sorry, Raja, but if Malcolm went to the Eatons, there’s no hope for him. The last I heard of him communicating with them, they were dead set against his militant revolt. They want a fair and balanced political overturn.”
Goddie leans in, and I hold the radio up for him to speak.
“Surely if he turned up der half dead in a Reaver, dey wouldn’t turn him away?”
Sheila gives no answer. Goddie and I share a look, but he shakes his head with another grin. He flips a button and flaps his hand at me.
“Pay her no mind. Ya know Sheila. She prefers to think de worst.”
He flips the button again, and the radio crackle returns.
“So do you think they’d speak to us now, Sheila?” I bring the radio close again. “Or are we still too militant for them?”
“It’s been a long while since political peace was possible. And desperate times turn people desperate,” comes the reply. “I’d try it. And I’d give you my voice too, if it means anything to them.”
Her offer makes my brows rise. Goddie purses his lips with a considered nod. But then there’s a shout up ahead that makes us both look up. The march is halting, fanning out.
“Thanks Sheila. Over and out.”
I give the radio back to Goddie as one of our fellow rebels jogs along the line. When the woman catches sight of us, she beckons. We follow in silence, and the rest of the line has not been given any order to be at ease or break for rest. It must mean that we have reached our destination. Sure enough, the closer we get to the front of the march, the thinner the trees become. Soon, at the very edge of full forest cover, we find Andrew pointing at something ahead, with Kip nodding along beside him.
“I thought I remembered it,” the Highlander says, “though it’s been years. You see that big silvery shed over the tracks?”
As I march up to join the two men, they part to let me in. Towering either side of me, Andrew and Kip both shield their eyes against the powerful sun. I’m lower, shaded by the very edge of the trees, and I can see clear as day what Andrew’s pointing at. Ahead of us, the pure white perimeter of the System glows in the sunlight, rays bouncing from its perfect surface. This is the border wall, and atop it is the high monorail interlink that allows System dwellers to travel from city to city without having to interact with the outer world and the Unfortunate Few. Safe in their pentagon at the centre of the nation, but connected only by these regulated trains. The silver shed is a bit of an eyesore, perched out over the wall on our side, with some of the high white tracks going off into it, then back out again.
“So this is an offshoot of the monorail?” I offer.
Andrew nods. “It’s a maintenance shed, boss. The trains come in here every so often for a tune-up, and if I remember correctly, there are technical offices here that run the network announcements, schedules and so on.” He scratches his beard, tipping his head at an angle. “Some of it’s automated, like the paint machines that re-spray the trains, and the servers pretty much run themselves unless someone has to come out and check them. The last time I was here, there were only three actual staff members running the place.”
I open my mouth, but Kip asks the question I was going to before I get a chance to speak.
“How is it that you know so much about this place?”
“My mother was a train driver, when they first built it,” Andrew explains. “I ran around this facility as a kid, whenever her train went in for a check over. It’s an unmanned paradise for a twelve year old, and now it’s our gateway into the System.”
I slap the huge guy on the shoulder, and to my surprise he grins at me. Andrew slings an arm around my neck, pulling me in for just a moment.
“We’re doing all right without him, boss. When he comes back, he’s going to be proud of us all.”
There’s that lump in my throat again, and a swirl of bitterness in the pit of my guts. Sheila’s words about the Eatons are not far from my mind, but Goddie and I know better than to let everyone’s hopes die based on a rumour. Andrew is banking on Malcolm’s clever plan leading to his safe return: it’s all over his ruddy face and the gleam in his bright blue eyes. When he lets me out of the manly hug, I step forward a little to inspect the maintenance building more.
The facility is basically a series of corrugated iron crates bolted together, like they’ve been repurposed from cargo ships in the days when our nation still traded with others. The white tracks split into three lines, perhaps so that three trains at once could be worked on, but the main line carries right on past the closed, windowless wall of the building. Even as I watch, a sleek bullet-style train comes hurtling by, there for only a second or two before making its way around to the most westerly of the System’s cities: Fordhere. I can’t see either Fordhere or Mancunia at this distance, but perhaps their spires would be visible from the top of the tracks.
“Do you see the legs of the building?” Andrew says, pointing. “Those are emergency exit stairs.”
It’s a heck of a height to climb, perhaps a dozen flights or more, but sure enough there are convenient staircases built in square spirals in the legs of each pillar.
“I’ll bet they’re locked at the top.” I rub my chin.
Kip waves a finger. “If they’re emergency doors then there has to be an alarm system in place that would trip and open them. All we need is a panel that Apryl can get into, and she can set off an alarm.”
“And t
hat takes care of the staff, too,” I add, starting to smile.
Andrew and Kip both turn to me.
“What do you mean?” Andrew asks.
My chest swells as I glance back to the maintenance shed. I can’t wait to be up there, finally infiltrating and taking back a little piece of Prudell’s world.
*
By that same night, I am fifty feet off the ground with only a spiral of iron to hold me up. I haven’t felt such a dreadful shake in my stomach since I rode in the helicopter to Valkyrie, and in all honesty I’d forgotten my fear of heights until I was about halfway up the stairs to the maintenance building. From here, the forest we’ve been waiting in looks like a child’s toy farm, and I am a giant at the top of a beanstalk, shaking like one of its leaves. But it’s me who has to lead the charge from this angle. There are four emergency doors, one for each staircase, and we have no idea which set the meagre staff of the facility might try to use until Apryl flares the alarms.
Stirling commands the north-east stairs, Andrew takes the south-east, Kip has the south-west, and I have what remains. Beneath me, a small crew waits to help me take down anyone and anything we see on the way in. I don’t have Goddie, or anyone I usually work with, but Dad and Livitka are here and loaded up with guns. About ten steps down, taking the rear guard position on the stairs, I can see the top of my father’s greying head as he surveys the ground below.
We have left our captives and a few guards in the wood camp, awaiting the arrival of the other two companies. If all goes well, this little silver factory would make a decent encampment. Stealth is the prime objective here, to get in and get control before the System realises there’s anything wrong with the facility. If we give anything away that it’s been breached, I’ve no doubt that Prudell’s airstrikes will return to finish us off for good.
“Got it.” Apryl’s voice comes crackling over the radio. “We’re patched in and ready to sound the alarm. Everyone in position?”
I look up at the doors. The last part of the staircase is a drop ladder, leading with ten vertical steps to the doors in the floor above our heads. It looks like they’ll drop straight towards us. I test my feet on the first rung, then give a nod back to my crew. Livitka radios us in, and two more replies swiftly follow.
