by Eliza Green
Dom glanced around. Kaylie was watching their interaction. She lowered her eyes and turned away.
He needed to comfort her, to do something. Taking a step closer to her, he paused when she put a shaky hand up.
‘Please stop. If you don’t I might never stop crying.’
Dom obeyed her command. He’d do anything for her.
Her gaze shifted from her brother to the ground. Dom saw the life in her eyes fade.
He did the only thing he could.
Setting his shoulders back, he said, ‘Everyone back to the camp. I don’t think the Collective will come after us straight away, but we’ll need to leave for the city soon to rescue Jerome and Alex.’ His gaze went to a struggling June. ‘And to get help for Shaw.’ He nodded at the shocked soldiers. ‘Collect our fallen. We will bury them in the camp.’
Imogen and Kaylie organised their teams to pick up the bodies. They included three young soldiers, as well as Jason and Warren. Judging from Thomas’ bloodshot eyes, Jason’s death had hit him hard.
Anya ran off towards the camp.
‘Anya...’ he called after her.
Sheila put a hand on his arm. ‘Let her go. She needs time.’
His energy slumped to an all-time low. All he wanted to do was collapse to the ground. But with too many people watching him, he responded with a nod. If that’s what she needed, that’s what he’d give her.
Dom turned back to see Vanessa by Max’s side, her hand on Charlie’s arm, talking to him, giving him comfort.
It took every ounce of strength to watch Charlie grieve for the man who’d been more of a father to Dom than his own had been. How could he command these people in Max’s absence? He was no leader.
Despite his inner doubts, he joined Charlie and Vanessa and his former mentor. ‘I think we should head back. It’s not safe out here.’
Vanessa looked up at him and nodded. ‘Just give us a minute.’
Dom stood back from them, wanting to shout at the injustice of it all. Itching to drive a digger-shaped hole through the Collective’s plans of reaching the Beyond. He’d make sure they never escaped this region, a place they controlled with the most advanced technology he’d ever seen. Its absence in the towns had forced people to survive in an unfair society, run solely by machine minds. For the first time, he believed this world was not the real one.
Dom ordered three soldiers to wait with Vanessa and Charlie, to help carry their leader home.
June’s cry alerted him to her continuing distress. He ran over to her. An alarmed Jacob propped her up and an anxious Carissa had a hand on her belly.
The Copy looked up at Jacob. ‘We need to help her.’
Jacob nodded. ‘Not out here. We need to get her back to the compound.’
Whatever Jacob could do for June would be beyond Dom’s skills. Carissa and Jacob slipped an arm each around June’s waist and helped her to walk, while Rover dragged one of the decommissioned wolves behind him. Two dead Guardians remained in the battlefield. Dom wondered if the Collective would return for their fallen.
‘Can you manage without me?’ said Dom to Jacob, nodding at the stragglers who had yet to leave the battlefield.
Jacob nodded. ‘Max was your friend. We can manage.’
Dom waited until Jacob reached the safety of the valley before turning back to where Max’s body lay. The soldiers were lifting Max up under a distressed Charlie’s watchful eye. They carried him back to the valley, Charlie barking commands to support his head. Dom followed behind with Vanessa.
She shook her head. ‘It’s up to you now, Dom. You need to get us out of here.’
Why him? He watched his feet. ‘I don’t know what I’m doing.’
‘The soldiers, they listen to you. I know Max would want you as his replacement. Julius betrayed his trust. He always respected you.’
But Max’s posthumous approval of him wasn’t enough. Dom had to believe he could do the job.
They entered the valley, where the two trucks that had followed had gotten stuck. The other trucks must have retreated back to the camp after seeing their attempts. They would need to dig them out of there later.
‘What if I can’t do it?’
Vanessa patted his arm. ‘You have to. There’s nobody else.’
38
Carissa
Carissa helped the Inventor to walk June back to the camp. It was her fault this had happened. Quintus had warned of this exact outcome if she didn’t give herself up. She hadn’t listened to him, and now people she knew were dead. And June, a person Carissa had sworn to protect after her Original had died, struggled to cope with the changes to her body. She would not lose anyone else.
Carissa supported June’s side while the soldiers carried the dead back to camp. She glanced down at June’s belly, which had swelled out since earlier that day. The growth repressor that Jacob had injected into June’s belly must have stopped working. They needed a more permanent solution to stop Praesidium’s creation from growing. But without the city’s intervention, Carissa was at a loss as to how they could do that.
An out-of-breath Inventor helped June through the gates and to the medical bay. The bloodied medics wearing soldier uniforms swapped their guns for gauze and antiseptic as they tended to the wounded. The soldiers carrying the dead lay Jason and Warren beside the three dead soldiers and fetched sheets from the medical bay to cover them.
Carissa looked around for Anya. There was no sign of her.
June yowled with pain. Carissa shook away her distractions, determined to do something good today.
Together, she and the Inventor got June to a bed and placed her down gently. The old man collapsed on a spare bed. Carissa glanced between him, June and the female medic who had come round to the side of the bed.
‘Help her, Jacob.’
She had just watched him singlehandedly decommission three of the Collective’s beasts. He could do this.
He ruffled his grey hair, but Carissa couldn’t tell if her demands had worked. Vanessa rushed into the room and came to one side of the bed.
Her expression was dark, like a thundercloud. ‘This is a disaster, Jacob.’ She waved her hand at June. ‘Let something good come out of this.’
With sad eyes, the Inventor looked up at her. ‘I’m trying my best.’
Carissa’s nervous energy set her pacing the area in front of June’s bed. The Inventor’s lack of ideas worried her.
‘There must be something, Inventor.’ She stopped pacing. ‘We need to use more of my growth repressors.’
He nodded slowly. ‘I was hoping for a more permanent solution.’
She would do anything to help June. She stuck her arm out. ‘Take what you need.’
‘The foetus has grown and there’s not much space in there, but it’s all we can do.’ The Inventor turned to the medic. ‘I need a sterilised syringe, and the ultrasound wand.’
The medic nodded and hurried away. She returned with both items and handed the needle to Jacob. Jacob swabbed Carissa’s arm and pricked it with the needle. She flinched at the pain. He drew out a sample of clear biogel from her arm, as he’d done once before. Then the Inventor swabbed June’s distended belly and used the glitchy ultrasound to locate the creation inside her. He poked the needle through the skin and injected the biogel into the cavity around the foetus.
The activity in June’s belly died down. With a deep sigh, June curled up on her side and went to sleep.
Jacob sat back and huffed out a breath. ‘We’re on borrowed time with this solution. We’ll need to get her to the city as soon as possible. The repressors aren’t lasting long enough.’
‘Is that the only way we can help her?’ said Vanessa.
Jacob nodded. ‘The equipment we need to remove the baby is there.’
Carissa sat on the bed next to June while the others discussed her future. She got a cloth and dried the sweat on June’s brow. When June stirred suddenly, Carissa snatched the cloth away. Her Original’s sister looked up
at her, her fine, blonde hair stuck to her face.
‘Thank you,’ she said with a sleepy smile.
Carissa didn’t want thanks. ‘I’m the cause of all of this. I let this happen to you. Jason, Warren and Max are dead because of me.’
A hand on her arm alarmed her. She spun round to see it was Vanessa.
‘Don’t blame yourself for the Collective’s actions.’
How could she not? They’d attacked the rebels because they wanted her.
She looked up into her dark brown eyes. ‘I should have given Quintus what he wanted. He told me to return home. If I had, none of this would have happened.’
‘And if you had, we couldn’t have halted the baby’s growth with your growth repressors.’ Vanessa shook her arm. ‘Remember your value here today when you doubt yourself again.’
The Inventor pulled the orb from his pocket. ‘Also, if you hadn’t been here, I wouldn’t have this.’
He threw it up into the air and caught it.
‘What do you think is on it?’ said a tired June.
‘An aerial shot of the city, I hope,’ he said. ‘A snapshot of their activities since we left. They’ve lost key personnel. I’m praying that will give us an advantage.’
Vanessa frowned at the orb in the old man’s hand. ‘No better time than the present to check out what’s on it.’
The Inventor cast a glance June’s way.
With a nod she said, ‘Go. I need to sleep for a bit. Find a way to get Jerome and Alex back.’
Vanessa and the Inventor left the medical bay. A curious Carissa followed after them. Without Jerome and Alex, she was the only one left to decipher the plans of the Collective.
They arrived at the workshop, which had a different feel to it without Jason. Thomas was there, plodding aimlessly around the space. He jerked his head up when they burst into the room.
‘What’s wrong?’ he said, looking close to tears, like he couldn’t bear any more bad news.
Jacob showed him the reprogrammed orb. ‘I need to see what this thing has recorded.’
Thomas looked relieved to have a job. He took a seat at the table. Carissa sat next to him; she had more experience with the orbs than he did. Although, he better understood how his equipment worked.
‘The recordings are stored in the grey sphere,’ she said, clicking the orb open at the connection point to reveal two halves. ‘Normally, the orb plugs into a special charging station that transmits the data to the receiver. But in this instance, you can use any energy source to make the transfer.’
Thomas hooked the orb up to the machine. The orb’s last twenty-four hours passed to his machine in the format of a file. He clicked on the file and pulled up the recording. He played it for all four of them.
The orb had zipped across a stony landscape for a while before it came across the city. It flew overhead and recorded the chaos their escape had created. Copies were hastily being gathered into armies. The courtyard to the front of the Learning Centre was a mess, littered with bricks from the entrance to the underground where the Inventor’s workshop had been. Carissa assumed rolling diggers had damaged the construction to reveal the workshop buried below. The orb had flown over the heads of the army before joining a litany of other orbs that awaited further instructions. Unlike the ordered Copies and beasts, the orbs zipped about in a nervous pattern.
The Inventor jabbed at the screen. ‘Do you see that?’
Carissa followed the Inventor’s finger, resting on the edge of the business district where they’d barely escaped with their lives.
She saw one of the beasts, two of its spindly legs planted inside the city. The other two were outside in the stony landscape.
Carissa looked up at him and whispered, ‘The city’s force field is down.’
39
Dom
A hectic afternoon turned into a subdued evening, leaving Dom with too much on his mind. The mood in the camp remained bleak, filled with dazed and shocked soldiers. He sat in the dining hall amid a slew of supplies they’d unpacked after hastily packing them that morning in preparation for their departure. The report from the military medics was that June was stable again, for now.
He stared down at his food, appetite gone. Rebel soldiers milled around him but he didn’t see them. Someone sat opposite him.
He looked up to see it was Sheila. She had that look in her eye, the one that said someone would pay.
‘Jesus,’ she muttered.
She stuffed a bread roll filled with potted meat into her mouth. Restrictions would be paramount now. Dom had to look at what they had left and balance it with what they’d need for their journey to the city. But not tonight. He had no stomach for leadership.
‘It’s a fustercluck,’ she continued with an outward breath.
He didn’t disagree.
She looked up at him, her eyes glistening with unshed tears and an anger to which he could relate. ‘Warren and Jason are dead. One of the soldiers from Kaylie’s team, a young woman I’d never spoken to, two men from ours. And Max. Double cluck.’
Dom stared at her. ‘I was there, Sheila. What’s your point?’
She met his glare, her pupils contracting to two fine points. ‘No need to get snippy with me. I’m just summarising.’
He was on edge; he didn’t mean to take it out on her. ‘I’m sorry. I just... Everyone’s looking to me to fix this. What the hell do I know about battles?’
Sheila made a noise. ‘Uh, everything? Haven’t you been in one since age seven? Not to mention your experience with the Collective in the city. What they did to you was horrible.’
He didn’t disagree, but it hadn’t felt like he’d won that battle. And he’d allowed his father to ruin his life, until the fateful day he’d stumbled, hit his head and died.
Dom held up his arm, the one with the tech in it, bruised and dotted with puncture marks. His miracle limb had stopped him from becoming a Guardian’s chew toy.
‘I suppose one good thing came out of my surgeries.’
He flexed his hand, which hadn’t suffered any damage.
Sheila nodded, her eyes fixed on his limb. ‘Maybe we’d all be better off with robotic arms, at least until we find the Beyond.’
He kept his thoughts to himself that finding it was a long shot. Anya’s recollection had only produced a vague idea of where the coordinates might be. Nothing concrete.
‘Maybe.’
All around him, soldiers whispered about the events that had just occurred in the flatlands. His skin crawled at the furtive glances sent his way, looking at him like he was their last hope. Dom was no Saviour.
Vanessa walked into the dining hall with Jacob and Charlie. From Charlie’s despondent mood and his red, raw eyes, it was clear he had been crying. When the old man neared, Dom stood and wrapped his arms around his friend.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he whispered into his ear.
Charlie nodded. Vanessa and Jacob sat down next to Sheila. Sheila stood up and followed with a hug of her own. Charlie patted her on the back, but pushed her away when she lingered too long.
Dom returned to his seat amid the scrutinising gazes of his peers.
Their attention on him made his skin itch. ‘What?’
Vanessa leaned forward, her expression serious. ‘In Max’s absence, you’re the leader now. Get used to people looking at you.’
‘Who says?’
Vanessa had already told him there was no one else. He didn’t believe that.
Charlie patted his hand once. ‘My son would have wanted it this way.’
Jacob added, ‘It’s more imperative than ever that we find the coordinates to the Beyond. We don’t have enough supplies to survive in this region.’
‘What makes you think it exists?’ said Dom.
‘Because we all need hope,’ said Jacob. ‘Without it, the Collective has won.’
His brain couldn’t handle the pressure. Maybe tomorrow, after a good night’s sleep...
‘Can I at least
have tonight off? I’m not ready to be anyone’s leader.’
He knew they would return to the city soon to rescue Jerome and Alex, and fix June.
Vanessa looked at the others, who nodded. ‘Of course, but first we should bury our dead.’
He caught Charlie’s shudder.
‘Of course, I wasn’t thinking...’
Charlie pinned his watery gaze on him. ‘My son would be proud of you, Dominic Pavesi. So would your mother.’
A lump rose in Dom’s throat. He hoped so, because right now, he felt like a fraud.
Ω
There wasn’t a dry eye in the camp as the brawny soldiers dug six shallow graves in the soft, grassy patch where the trucks were parked. Some of the dead were younger than Dom. The soldiers had used bed sheets from the hospital to cover their dead. He could barely watch as Max was lowered into the ground, amid sniffles from a distraught Charlie. He was reminded of his own father’s death, an event that had given him mixed feelings. He and his mother had buried him in the woods away from prying eyes. He’d even shed a few tears, although Dom was sure it had been relief he’d felt.
This was ten times worse than burying his father. Max had been his family.
He looked around at the gathered soldiers’ faces when the bodies of their comrades were lowered into the graves. Warren was next. Dom hadn’t thought much of him during Arcis, and even less after, but in the end he’d done something worthwhile. If Dom ever met his parents, he’d be sure to tell them that. Everyone needed someone to care about them in this world.
His gaze found Anya next. Sheila stood beside her. He’d wanted to be the one to comfort her, but his new rise into the ranks separated them again. All he could do was watch from the other side of the grave as her last family member was lowered into the ground.
Anya wore a despondent expression and her eyes remained dry as a bone. In contrast, Dom battled against a lump in his throat. Kaylie and Imogen watched him, both leaders of their respective teams. Their stance hinted at unwavering loyalty, a pair who would do whatever he asked. But what if he got everyone killed? He wasn’t ready for this role, despite what both Vanessa and Charlie believed.
