This Is Our Undoing

by Lorraine Wilson

  ‘It’s okay,’ Lina whispered. ‘It’s just a storm, and this is the worst of it. Soon it will pass.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Genni repeated, her breath audible in the sheltered space between them. ‘It’s okay. It’s okay.’

  ‘I have to go now,’ Lina said, still holding Genni’s depthless gaze. ‘I’ll be back soon with Xander, then we can shout at him for leaving.’

  The shadow of a smile, a deep breath. ‘It’s okay,’ Genni whispered. And pulled away from Lina slowly.

  ‘Lina,’ Thiago said, audible across the room in a pause between the storm’s raging pulse. He was holding a tablet and crossed the room so fast it seemed impossible that he could stop without barrelling into them both. ‘What the fuck?’ he said, making a sweeping gesture to encompass her clothes and the absurdity of what she was about to do. ‘You can’t go. Are you insane?’

  Lina laughed a little, showed him her own tablet. ‘He’s not moving. He might be hurt. I have to go.’

  ‘No, you–’

  ‘I have to, T,’ she repeated. His face was twisted with anger, frustration, fear, and she took his empty hand in hers. ‘You know I do.’

  ‘Have you got a death wish?’

  Did she? Is that what she was doing, tearing out into the maelstrom? Lina shook her head, not because he was wrong necessarily but because she did not think it mattered. She wanted to tell him that he had been right to say that this had begun with her, and so it had to end with her too. Tell him that she didn’t know how to stop any of it, but if she didn’t go after Xander then she would not be worth anything at all. But she could not say those things and still make him release her, so she stood with her hand in his, and waited.

  He stared at her, something large struck the courtyard wall, struck it again further away. Lina thought of the birds again, their tiny hearts and sodden feathers, the dormice in their grassy nests, the fox kits and bear cubs and ancient trees dying. She held Thiago’s furious gaze and his fingers tightened around hers spasmodically before they released her. ‘Fuck,’ he said, and then again, ‘Fuck.’

  She stepped back, resting a hand on Genni’s shoulder. ‘Look after each other, you two,’ she said. Lightning burned through the shutters again, thunder made the room tremble and Thiago flinched, swore again, his eyes on Lina.

  ‘Wait,’ he said, as she turned away. ‘You need to see this.’ He turned so that only he and Lina would see the screen of his tablet. Lina looked at the images he was showing her, recognised the house cams that Xander had connected to earlier, only half her mind on them because lightning struck again, close enough to taste ozone intermingled with rain and enormity. She would be going out into that chasing a boy who wanted to destroy her. It made no sense. Thunder and hail thrummed against the door and she listened helplessly.

  ‘Lina,’ Thiago said. ‘Look.’

  She fought her attention back to him, accumulating dread, but he clicked on one of the vids and Lina saw now. Ice ran along her spine like the lightning falling to earth, and this was why Thiago was looking at her like that. There were shadow figures creep-crawling along the far side of the new house, crouching, one held by another, others made monstrous by the packs on their backs and doing...

  ‘What are–’

  ‘Laying fuses.’

  No. No.

  ‘This house should be safe,’ Thiago said. But he could not be sure and it was not like him to lie.

  Lina met his gaze and realised that someone would be dying soon. And that she did not care so long as it was not Genni, and was not Thiago. She straightened, looked across to where Genni had put headphones over her ears to try to block out the world.

  ‘You’ll stop them,’ she said to Thiago. ‘You and Dev will stop them.’

  Thiago nodded shortly, and she believed him. She would be no use at all, at this, and there was still Xander. Dev appeared at the base of the stairs as if summoned, immediately watchful. Lina pushed her shoulders back, looked again at the hunchbacked figures planting death just metres away, and there was no space in her now for anger, at Thiago for pushing those people to this, or even at them risking their own deaths for vengeance. They were only desperate, she thought, and only as desperate as her, and Thiago, and Xander.

  It would be meant, she thought, to look like a lightning strike.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, more to herself than anyone, and went to the door, feeling Thiago’s eyes on her unwavering. Genni looked up wide-eyed, hands in fists, but when Lina gave her a fierce, false smile, she managed to return it. Thiago took the door and as he pulled it open and the storm burst inwards, he gripped Lina’s shoulder hard enough to press against her bones even through all her clothes.

  ‘Stay low,’ he shouted, ‘And in the denser growth.’ Then he gave her a push against the wind and she was out, the door was closing behind her, shuddering.

  The meadow would be the worst, the wind unfettered and able to carry its gathered weaponry faster than within the forest. She reached the corner of the old house, breathing into her collar. Xander had already done this, she thought, and braced herself.

  ‘Lina,’ Kai said.

  She realised she had been expecting him. The storm had changed him, made him more solid, his hair dark with rain and his wet skin reflecting the storm ivory and damson.

  ‘Kai,’ she said, rain running into her mouth. ‘Kai, what are you doing?’ What have you done?

  ‘I took them away,’ he said as clear as the aftertones of a bell. ‘I took the monsters away.’

  ‘Yes,’ Lina whispered. Something struck her shoulder and she flinched. Thiago would now be loading guns, arming Dev. How long were the fuses the black figures were laying, how safe was the old house? She wanted to run out into the meadow, and back to Genni, and did neither.

  ‘Are you going to kill him?’

  ‘Oh god,’ Lina said. ‘No. No, Kai. I’m going to bring him back. I have to go now.’ Lightning blazed, burning the world the colour of blood, rain on her cheeks thick and cold.

  ‘We can beat the monsters though,’ Kai said, his cold fingers slipping into her own, his face upturned, water falling into his feral eyes. ‘It’s okay, I’ll help you.’

  ‘No,’ Lina said, but lightning came again and his whole body seemed to come alight, as if the storm were charging him with potency. She tasted metal in the air, scrambling for words that would keep him here. ‘You have to stay, to protect Genni and Thiago. Can you do that for me, Kai?’

  Please, she thought. Please let me go.

  ‘Genni doesn’t love you.’ Kai dropped his hand from hers and frowned.

  ‘But I love her. And I need you to keep her safe.’ She searched his fox’s eyes for the child he had been. ‘Because you are brave and fierce, and we need you. And because,’ taking his icy hand again, ‘because if you are here, then I know you’ll be safe too. And I want you to be safe, Kai. I want you to always be safe from the monsters.’

  He watched her and beyond him the door to the old house opened. ‘Please,’ she said to the lost boy.

  Kai nodded and smiled like the dawn.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Lina slipped quickly around the house, took one great breath and threw herself out into the meadow half-blind, bent low and running, stumbling, her ankle buckling but holding, things hitting her in points of pain. And then the treeline, the immense purple darkness within it, the wind battling the trees louder than the end of the world. Somewhere something roared and fell and her heart constricted, but no, she thought, it was a tree and ahead, and Genni was guarded by Iva’s domovek, by a fox-child and the strongest man she knew.

  Still bent against the wind that bucked between the trees directionless, shoving her forward and then sideways, her muscles cold beyond pain which was a blessing. One step to this tree, another lurching to the next. Remembering to check the map because this place was nowhere she had ever trave
lled.

  Another step. Lightning and thunder and still only darkness behind her. Another step away from Genni and towards Xander, which was so terribly wrong. So terrifyingly dangerous for her and her family, and yet another step, and another. The forest howled and roared, she searched for an unmoving boy while a small voice, quiet beneath the storm but clear as a bird, whispered that if she found only a body would it be so bad? Would it really be so bad?

  Time became each fought-for metre, became two markers on a map converging, became cold and distant pain, thoughts like broken glass. Time passed. And then she found him.

  He was not dead.

  The voice in her head wept sibilantly. Lina wrapped her arm around a tree that flexed against her, looking at the hunched figure on the ground. He had his arms tight around his bent head, knees up, a shoe missing and a great tear in his coat pulling wide, baring a shoulder, part of an arm. He was rocking slowly.

  He would not, she thought, last until the end of the storm. Unprotected and hypothermic, crushed by the galactic, relentless noise. The forest was full of monsters and this one was outmatched.

  A tree nearby screamed, exploded, and Lina braced herself for the fall. But it did not come, and when she looked back to Xander he was staring at her. His mouth was open and moving but she did not think he was speaking. Blood was running down his face, black in the storm-light, and she thought he was crying or somewhere beyond crying.

  ‘Lina?’ he said.

  Pushing away from the tree, Lina bent and moved to his side, crouching against a small boulder, moss covered and slick. ‘Are you hurt?’

  He was still staring at her, and was not shivering, she realised. Beyond shivering like he was beyond crying. He would not last the storm.

  ‘Your boyfriend killed my dad,’ he said eventually. The words misshapen and blurred. ‘Your mum bombed parliament.’

  No he did not, Lina thought automatically, and yes, she did, but the building was empty. Her hair whipped across her face, she fought it back with nerveless fingers and leaned close. ‘Your dad killed children,’ she said into his ear. ‘He killed a boy called Kai. He killed James, he killed my mother.’ Or his predecessor had, or his subordinate. It made no difference.

  ‘Why did you come?’

  The rain could not wash away the blood flowing down his face. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. She didn’t. She did not care for him. She cared for her father weighing his own life quietly, for Genni, who had surely lost enough. Every one of the ghosts whose deaths diminished her, who had not deserved death the way Christopher Wiley had deserved his.

  ‘I’m going to destroy you.’ Slurring again, his head tipping and straightening drowsily. ‘I said that. I said that to you.’

  He had. Lina rubbed rain and gritty dirt from her face. ‘I know,’ she said.

  ‘They’ll kill your dad. And you. And Genni’ll go back to the camps.’

  Lina closed her eyes. She felt the pressure of Genni’s head resting against her as if she were here now, in the noise and the chaos. Her mother had screamed when they had taken her, and in Lina’s memory, she had screamed Lina’s name. Her old name, her first. What had she been thinking when they walked her out into daylight and that wide expanse of concrete, chains around her wrists and a blindfold waiting? Lina had never known before, but she did now.

  Guilt and love and fierceness, tracking the choices that had led to abandonment.

  How had Lina ever doubted it?

  Her mother had died thinking of her child.

  Lina rose to her feet. Xander tipped his drooping head sideways, eyes unfocused then finding her.

  ‘No-one is taking Genni away from me,’ she shouted over the roar. ‘Not because of me. Not because of you.’

  She stepped backward, the wind unbalancing her, and grasping for support her hand scraped broken wood. Heat on her palm and salt and earth in her mouth. This was for Genni. It was the choice her mother had not made. It was because love is the greatest thing we have. It was because nothing must ever matter more than the heart of a child.

  Xander watched her, exposed skin white as bone, blood forming maps on his cheek. Lina turned away.

  One step into the wind for Genni. Another for her father.

  Hail tore through the canopy, leaves and ice lashing her blind. One step for her mother. Another because no-one deserved to die for someone else’s sins. Or for someone else’s hates.

  Another. No-one should ever die for someone else’s love.

  Wind shoved her against a tree, branches moaning, her ankle a lightning rod of pain. Pressing her palms against the bark she laid her cheek between them, closing her eyes, the tree shuddering beneath her touch.

  ‘Lina.’

  How had she possibly heard him over the storm? Perhaps she hadn’t, and it had been only her mind. Perhaps she would always hear him saying her name the way she always heard her mother screaming it.

  The terrible thing was that he had not yet done anything wrong. If he had, then this would at least be vengeance.

  Turning her head against the wood she blinked her eyes briefly clear, lightning blasting the forest a chiaroscuro then darkness again and Xander’s slumped figure. One heartbeat, two, three, thunder growling.

  It was possible that what she did next did not matter at all. If her father had chosen not to wait, if Iva had been wrong and Thiago too slow and he and Genni were dead then why would she care about anything at all, her life or her honour? Better to sink to her knees right here and wait five paces from a dying boy.

  But if they were not dead then she might still lose them, and she would lose them because of that fallen figure impossibly fragile on the forest floor. She breathed rain and wet earth and endings, and pushed from the tree.

  Turned away.

  Stood watching the heaving canopy above, awaiting doom. Almost hoping for it. Beginning to cry.

  Mum, she thought. Oh god, Mum, I can’t. Leaning into the wind but unmoving.

  Oh god, I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.

  She turned around.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The journey back to the station was a nightmare of suspended death, furious noise, despair and despair and despair. Xander limp, slipping in and out of awareness, hanging on her heavy as shame. At the edge of the meadow, she let him fall and crouched into the flattened grass. You have to look, she told herself. You have to look, you have to know. It seemed impossible.

  The meadow was oceanic and purple movement cut with rain, and beyond it was the station. The station whole, unshattered.

  She lowered her face against her knees and shook and shook and shook.

  Xander stirred and suddenly the open sea of the meadow did not seem daunting at all. ‘Come on,’ she said into his ear. ‘Nearly there. Come on now.’

  He moaned wordlessly and she pulled him upright, pain electric beneath a cold gone far beyond physical. ‘Nearly there,’ she repeated. ‘It’s okay. It’s okay, Xander. You’ll be okay.’ Mindlessly repeating herself and hating herself, the wind trying to tear them apart, her clinging on. And was it that the station was whole or that she had chosen so terribly but the meadow felt less deathly than before, as if the storm was relenting, as if it had done all the damage it had sought.

  It was only the wind and Xander’s weight that made her open the door, but then Thiago was there, taking Xander and leaving her suddenly weightless, adrift. Someone closed the door and Genni was against her, pressing into Lina’s icy coat, and Lina held her. She held her and every single gram of her failure pressed down on her until she thought she might shatter there against the sister she had condemned.

  No, she thought. I can’t bear it. I can’t live with this. She wouldn’t have to, of course, but that made it worse. That she would escape penance.

  It took an age before anything else reached her past Genni’s arms and the cold occupying
her bones. Silene was in the corner wrapped in blankets, her hair straggling around her face. How was she here? Dev and Thiago had taken Xander out of the room. They would undress him, Lina thought distantly, warm him up then feed him. Genni pulled away enough to look up at her.

  ‘You’re soaking,’ she said, and Lina grimaced, lifted her hands to undo her coat and saw that she had left a bloody handprint on Genni’s cheek.

  Kai was standing beside Silene, his hand on her shoulder and his smile to Lina across the room was victorious and sad. ‘She came back,’ he said. ‘But it doesn’t matter.’

  Her coat fell to the floor and Genni handed her a towel, pushed her onto a stool, crouched to undo her boots. Silene looked up, her gaze slipping over Lina and Genni without recognition but settling on Kai.

  ‘No. It doesn’t matter,’ she said. ‘My boy is gone so it was all for nothing. It was all for nothing.’

  ‘Your boy is gone,’ Kai repeated. Silene nodded, ragdoll-like.

  ‘You know why I did it? It was only for Xander, because what Christof did ... they were going to tear us down and then they’d have taken him away...’ she swayed and smiled up at Kai brokenly. ‘It was so easy, wasn’t it? You saw. It would have worked even without you but you helped. They were going to blame those people and Xander would be safe and I didn’t hurt him. I didn’t make him bleed.’

  Lina stared, aware that Genni had paused after pulling one boot off. Kai’s fiery gaze was on Silene.

  ‘You made the monster sleep,’ he said. ‘And I made him bleed.’

  ‘Yes,’ Silene murmured. The storm was surely passing, Lina thought, because even with it, she heard her. ‘We killed the monster, didn’t we? But it doesn’t matter now because my boy is...’ She stared at Kai, almost begging, ‘Where’s my boy?’