by T. C. Edge
Others, perhaps, might be able to do so. The hybrids here who are just discovering or rediscovering their powers. Those who can lend their hands to the war in a direct fashion, taking up arms and pointing them at the enemy.
But, as I’m now well aware, and as most here will be too, victory cannot be achieved through strength of arms alone. We’re not going to be able to march out there with our full force of hybrids, defector Enhanced, and regular Unenhanced who have joined the cause, and win.
No chance.
Do that, and we’ll get completely and utterly annihilated.
Not only does Cromwell command a force of Stalkers that far exceeds our own hybrid numbers, but he’s got thousands of City Guards and Con-Cops to boot. And that’s to say nothing of the rumours of other ‘super-soldiers’ he’s supposedly developing at the REEF.
No. We can’t win by conventional means.
It just isn’t possible.
And walking through the caves right now, that’s starting to properly dawn on me. The hopelessness of what we’re facing. The sheer scale of the task ahead.
And as much as it pains me to even think it, I can see just why the leaders of the Nameless are thinking very seriously about destroying the High Tower.
In the end, there may be no other way.
We don’t get much time to stop as we go. I merely scan the place and take in the surroundings, searching all the while for Sophie or Drum. I see neither of them, and as we venture towards the passages leading up towards the streets above, Rycard takes his leave.
“I’ll see you later, Zander,” he says.
The two young men nod to each other and the half-Hawk sets on his way, moving off into the crowd in search, perhaps, of his wife and baby son.
“He’s not coming with us?” I ask.
“Not now,” I’m told.
“And what are we doing exactly? I thought you said we were all going to the city together?”
“Well, we’ll meet with Rycard later on. First, I thought you needed a break from everything. You’ve had a pretty torrid time of it, sis. I thought it would do you some good to see your friends.”
“I don’t get it. You mean, we’re going to the western quarter? To the academy?”
He nods.
I turn my head up the passage.
“Are you…sure? I mean, is it safe for me…for us? They’ll be looking for me, won’t they?”
It doesn’t ring true. It’s not like him to take such a risk.
“We’ll be careful,” he assures me with a little wry smile. “Honestly, I reckon the academy is the last place they’re going to be looking for you. They know you got away, and they’ll expect you to stay outside of the city from now on. You can be sure of that.”
“Hmmmm…”
“And anyway,” he continues, “you’re not that special. Cromwell caught you. You got away. He’s probably forgotten all about you by now. He’s got bigger fish to fry than my little sister!”
“Um, little? We’re twins, bro.”
“Yeah, but I was born first.”
“How do you know that?”
He shrugs.
“I just…was,” he laughs. “Now stop thinking so much. Kira has been doing some scouting for us, and we have our spies around. The academy is clear, Brie, and we can get there no problem. Just, don’t get comfortable. You can say ‘hi’ and have a quick catch up, but that’s all. We’re not going to hang around.”
“You won’t come in?”
“Ah, I doubt Mrs Carmichael wants to see me. No, I’ll keep watch outside. Now come on, let’s get going.”
I’m still not sure as we continue on up the passage. Frankly, it seems awfully risky and dangerous for us to go sneaking into Outer Haven at a time like this. Then again, I guess we’ve done it plenty of times before, all those weeks ago when we met down in the underlands to train.
And, something tells me there’s more to this than just letting me catch up with my friends. My brother is nothing if not sly, and he’s probably got some secret agenda that he’s not letting me in on.
The idea of seeing them, however, does appeal to me. So risks be damned, let’s go for it!
We creep on up the passage, inching higher through the dim light and moving away from the mobilising men and women under the sanctuary of the Nameless below. Here, there’s a single tunnel I’m aware of, one that leads to a specific exit point to the northern quarter that is so well concealed I’m not surprised the Stalkers and Con-Cops have yet to discover it.
There are several others too, however, that I don’t know about. At certain points, the passage diverges, splitting into several other narrow routes leading left and right and up and down.
Some are merely decoys, a long trip to nowhere. Others provide the first stage to other secret tunnels that, eventually, come out in other hidden spots around the north of Outer Haven.
Zander’s mind is like a map. He knows every inch of this place. He could close his eyes and place his hand to the rock, and know just where he is from its unique touch and shape.
In fact, he’s one of the very few who know of all the secrets the underlands provide, of the entire network that exists here. Very few others are entrusted with that information. Only the most powerful hybrids and leaders of the Nameless are trusted to know of the precise whereabouts of the entrances to these secret caves.
Yet, for all their cunning, they won’t be hidden for long. Above us right now, Cromwell’s cronies are canvassing the streets in an endless bid to find their way in. And at each possible entrance, sentries have now been positioned to give clear warning of when and where a breach might take place.
Above the ground, too, the Nameless have their spies. Those like Kira, blessed with super-senses beyond the capabilities of all but the most powerful, spend their days creeping around in the shadows and keeping watch over all the goings on above ground.
And there are other electronic allies in this fight too. The skies above Outer Haven have always been peppered with the sentry and security drones that keep a watch on the world below. Now, according to my brother, many of these drones have been captured, reprogrammed, and put back into service, surveying the world for the benefit of the Nameless and not those they’re fighting against.
Back in the church, in a room I haven’t yet seen, there’s an entire area of screens and equipment being constantly monitored by a specialist team of intelligence personnel and technicians.
Their remit is simple: watch the skies and watch the streets. And they’ve been doing so diligently, night and day, since all of this began weeks ago.
Now, if an attack comes, they’ll have some warning of it. It might just be enough to save lives.
It’s a staggering operation, and once more brings to my mind the scale of it all. The Nameless, as Rycard once told me on my first visit to Inner Haven, have people ‘everywhere’. And those who were only once considered sympathisers are now having to make a choice: join up, or turn away.
And many are committing.
One of them is an oversized friend of mine. He committed through necessity. He did so to pay his debt to the man he killed in that terrible accident. He joined up to fight and do his part, the clumsy, shy boy I once knew now quickly becoming a man.
I see him sitting at his post, eyes strained and gun gripped to his fingers. He’s with another, a more seasoned soldier, a mentor of sorts to quickly bring him up to speed.
We find him at a quiet crossroad in the passage, a ways down from the more dangerous sentry posts close to the streets above. Hearing us come, his eyes turn and take a moment to take me in.
Then those giant tablet teeth of his appear behind bountiful lips, and without thinking he stands on trunk-like legs and begins bounding like an excited hound towards me.
“Brie!” he calls as his giant frame looms and his equally sized arms engulf my comparatively tiny frame.
The air is momentarily lost from me – a hazard of the trade with Drum – and I struggle to
breathe out a reply.
Only when he lets me go, remembering his own staggering strength, do I get to speak.
“Hey, Drum,” I say with a glowing smile. I can’t help it, not in his presence. There’s something about him that lights my day, however dark it might be. “You’re moving up in the world.”
I nod to the gun now slung over his shoulder, and the guard behind him, watching curiously.
He nods himself, more hurriedly than me.
“It’s a start,” he says. “Maybe I’ll get to fight soon. Properly fight.”
I hope he never has to. I glance at Zander, who knows just what I’m thinking.
“I’ll give you two a few minutes,” says my brother. “Drum, I’ll take your post. Take a break and catch up. But make it quick,” he adds authoritatively.
“Yes, sir,” says Drum, standing to attention as Zander moves up the passage.
“Sir? That sounds weird,” I say.
“Yeah, you see him as your brother. I see him as a warrior. And a leader.”
“I can see that,” I say. I take his hand and pull him to the side to take a seat against the passage wall. He does so, and our very differently shaped bodies come eye to eye. “Now, Drum, tell me what’s been going on.”
“Me? Not much. I’m just down here. It’s you who has the stories, Brie!”
He’s not exactly wrong. Yet, they’re stories I’d rather not relive.
His bright eyes, however, call for me to give him the basics. I do so both to spare myself having to mentally trek through it all again, and to spare Drum the precise details of what’s been happening. Frankly, some of them are horrific. He’s best not knowing.
And I’m best not reliving them.
142
I stay with Drum for an all-too-brief time. So short, in fact, that the brevity of my tale was necessary, for the time Zander allows us.
Which isn’t very long at all.
It is long enough, however, to realise just how committed to all of this Drum actually is. When asked about it all, his words seethe and his nostrils flare, and the tone of his voice turns to little more than a growl.
It’s clear he’s heard numerous stories here of the happenings above ground, both in the city and at places like the REEF. Like me, he’s been getting a condensed education on just what this city is and the reality of life here.
It’s filled him with an added motivation to fight beyond the desire to atone for the life he took. To fight for ‘all of the oppressed’ as he says, a phrase that has probably come from some training commander down in the underlands.
I can’t deny that I don’t like it. I don’t like what war does to people.
Drum, always so innocent, so quiet, a gentle giant in every sense of the word, has matured in his brief time here into a fledgling grunt, a soldier, a rebel.
It’s not what I wanted for him. In fact, if everyone I know and care about could be spared all of this, then that would be just fine by me.
A girl can dream, right?
But, I have to stop trying to control everything. There are times when I hear myself in my head and realise just how insufferable I must be to those around me. When my brother is trying to arrange and manage a war, and I’m there moaning about my friends and morality and all that junk, he must just roll his eyes and wait for me to shut the hell up.
It’s a constant battle I face. Half the time I’m telling myself I’ll commit to Zander and do anything he asks of me. He’s earned that for what he’s done.
The other half, however, is questioning it all once again. As soon as I think I’ll get my head down and do what needs to be done, something else comes up, another moral dilemma, that has me lifting my chin once more and spouting my negative nonsense.
In the end, it would probably be better for everyone if I just leave. Sometimes I truly believe that. The way my mind is so capricious, so prone to hopping from one side of the fence to the other, I might just be doing more harm than good around here, infecting people with my regularly sour mood.
Seeing Drum speak the way he is, that’s how I feel. But who knows, in five minutes time my stupid, fickle brain might have done a U-turn and come to some other conclusion.
I just wish, sometimes, it would shut up and leave me alone.
Leaving Drum isn’t so hard this time. I’m sure I’ll be seeing him again soon, although there’s never a guarantee of that at times like this. I wrap my arms around his wide waist and tell him I’ll send his love to Mrs Carmichael and Tess, assuming, of course, that they’re present at the academy if and when we get there.
“You’re going to see them?!” he asks.
“Just popping in to say ‘hi’.”
“Well, bring them down here with you. It’s not safe up there anymore.”
“It’s not that safe down here either, Drum.”
He grips the handle of his weapon tighter, and narrows his gaze.
“I’ll protect them,” he mutters, trying to be defiant.
I fail to realise how condescending I sound when I pat him on the arm and say: “I know you will.”
In the past, he might not have excavated the insult, even though that’s not how it was intended. He does now.
“I will,” he grunts, standing up taller. “I can fight.”
I’m about to patronise him again. Not on purpose, of course. It’s just the way we’ve grown up. Drum’s always been that boy you pat on the head and say ‘well done’ to when he’s completed the most simple of tasks.
Perhaps that, like so many other things, is changing too.
So, I just leave him with a nod, and a promise that I’ll pass on his love. And with a slight frost filling the passage, my brother and I set on our way once more.
We take a new route that I’ve never travelled. I could walk these tunnels and passages, and pass through these caves and caverns, for weeks and never retrace my steps. Such is their enormity, the place a maze of a million possible routes.
As we go, we pass other sentries. Zander gathers what intel he can from each, although the theme is generally the same.
“All quiet, sir,” they say. “We hear rumblings up above but nothing more.”
Those rumblings will be the sounds of vehicles, carting Con-Cops and Stalkers around the streets above. And perhaps drilling too, and occasionally explosions, as new areas are found and excavated, like anteaters clawing at the labyrinthine homes of their favoured prey.
This is a similar story. We are the ants to the Consortium’s eater, and it’s only a matter of time before we’re all gobbled up.
We eventually reach the streets after being given the assurance that it’s safe from the guards posted at one of the many exits. They’re more seasoned, and clearly hybrids by the manner in which they carry themselves. Obviously, the more powerful among us are being used on the frontline.
Coordinating with our spies out in the city, as well as the technicians back at base looking at the security feeds, we’re given the all clear to creep up to the dark world of the northern quarter, exiting from a typically well-concealed tunnel.
I have no bearing on exactly where we are, the journey beneath the earth sufficient to scramble my sense of direction. Yet the sound in the air suggests we’re not as far north as usual, the buzz of far off voices, cars, and the hum of activity telling me we’re closer to the inner districts of the north.
Zander confirms it, telling me we’re not too far from the Conveyor Line. Then he reaches into one of his many pockets and draws out a hat and pair of contact lenses. He’s tells me to put them on.
The hat I find easy enough. The lenses, however, are quite uncomfortable.
“They’re to shield your eyes from facial recognition tech,” my brother tells me. “Generally, it focuses on the eyes, so those should keep any prying drones at bay. The hat will help too.”
“And what about you?”
“I’m not on any database.”
“You’re sure about that?”
He nods.
“Anyway, it’s just precautionary. Keep your head low and things should be fine. Green eyes suit you, by the way…” he chuckles.
“Green?!”
I turn to a puddle on the floor and kneel down to check out my reflection. It’s a stark change, from glowing hazel to a muted green. And no, it doesn’t suit me. It just reminds me of the sickly fog that I’ve encountered far too many times before.
With my hair bunched up and hidden in my cap, and my rugged outfit more befitting of a man than a woman, I do rather resemble a boy rather than a girl. I even set a different look to my face to finish the image, drawing on the acting practice I got in the High Tower when trying to imitate the Savants.
It might be necessary. Let’s not forget that, across these streets, I’ve achieved partial celebrity status ever since appearing at the ceremony in Inner Haven not too long ago. By now, most will have forgotten me, but all it takes is one keen-eyed local to spot me, and my cover might just be blown.
So, yeah, the hat and contact lenses are certainly useful, and with the scowl I add to my face, I should be incognito. Certainly, Zander thinks it’s a good enough job, unable to stifle a laugh at my appearance.
It’s strange being back in Outer Haven. Yet, as we draw nearer to the inner districts of the north, it begins to become evident that the place isn’t like it was. Here, where the population was always thin, there’s barely a person in sight. When we climb onto the Conveyor Line and work our way to the west, I notice the same thing.
The place is quiet. Even now, during the mid morning when the streets would usually be busy, there’s a lack of footfall. Some will be staying in, too afraid to go out and clinging on to the rations of clean water they have. Others will already have given themselves up willingly for reconditioning.
Down several streets, I see cordons of City Guards and Con-Cops set up, security barriers intended to ‘keep the peace’. At certain places, aid stations are also available, passing out limited supplies of water to give the illusion that they’re actually here to help.
The truth is very different. And as we go, Zander informs me that the promise of more rations and greater security is guaranteed for those who sign up for reconditioning. That these aid stations are little more than a tease designed to lure people into the trap, and turn them to Cromwell’s cause.
