by E S Richards
The guards all seemed to have boring jobs. One was stationed outside the long building that Zahyra believed to be the dormitory; another sat on a motorcycle amongst all the SUVs watching what Cain had told her was the entrance gate. The other three simply walked around in a clockwise fashion, often stopping when they reached one another to talk or smoke. Watching the guards walk around in circles grew more monotonous as the night went on and Zahyra found herself distracted by other things in the camp. She also stopped keeping time and began simply swinging her legs back and forth for enjoyment, trying to keep herself from falling asleep.
She ultimately failed at this task as a loud clatter of pans awoke her with a start, causing her to nearly slip sideways off the branch. She quickly tensed her legs to grip onto the bark and leant forward to lower her centre of gravity. Once she had recovered from her shock she rubbed her eyes and looked back out at the camp. One of the guards was smacking two metal pans together, creating the ruckus that had awoken her. She watched carefully as boys began to file out of the dormitory and into one of the other buildings, realising that must have been a wake up call of some description.
The first boys to leave the dorms were all much taller and stockier than Asher was so she merely glanced over them as her eyes began to readjust to the twilight surrounding her. The sun would rise in under an hour and she didn’t have long left to stay in the treetops, but she waited with baited breath to see if her little brother would appear. The more boys who left the building the smaller they became so Zahyra was filled with hope that Asher would be one of the last few to exit.
She blinked for a moment and refocused her vision, the pang of sleep still gnawing at her brain. Then she noticed a small boy a few meters away from the building, walking with his chest puffed out and his hands clenched into fists. She blinked again and leaned forward on the branch, stretching to get a closer look.
Zahyra was almost certain that was her little brother; still pretending to be big and strong just like she had told him to on the bus. The more she watched him the more certain she was that it was Asher, his hair bounced up and down on his head and his walk looked extremely familiar to her. She got a closer look at his face when he entered the second building and Zahyra let out a breath she didn’t realise she had been holding. It was definitely Asher, she was certain of it.
Without hesitation she tore off the vine around her body and let it fall to the ground beneath her. As fast as she dared she climbed back down the tree and ran over to the agreed meeting place to wait for Cain.
Excitement was etched over her face as he approached. She had seen her brother. Asher was alive and well and only a few hundred meters away from her. All of a sudden Zahyra wanted to sprint into the camp and wrap her arms around him, promising herself she’d never let him out of her sight again.
Cain could see the exhilaration on her face when he drew close enough and grinned at her in response.
“Found him?” He asked, although he already knew the answer.
Zahyra clapped her hands together in confirmation and almost began jumping in the air for joy. The mere thought of seeing her brother in a matter of days making her giddy and over-enthused. Cain dragged her back to the safe place they’d rested in earlier and she fell down against a tree trunk almost gasping for breath.
The bit of doubt that she’d been keeping hidden in her mind disappeared completely as she pictured her brother’s face and knew she would be with him soon.
Chapter 17
“Right, let’s make a plan.” Cain said after Zahyra had calmed down. The smile on her face remained intact as he spoke, unable to diminish the excitement she was feeling. She looked up at Cain encouraging him to go on, also knowing the plan would be pretty much his entire doing as all the intel she had gathered about the camp she was sure he already knew. Plus she had fallen asleep for a large chunk of the night, although she deemed it sensible to keep this information to herself.
“I think it’s best we go in tonight, as obviously guard activity is much lower. What did you think of their rotations?” He looked at Zahyra expectantly and she was forced to think back to what she’d witnessed through the night.
“Only five guards,” she said confidently, “three of them walking around, two remain in position, by the SUVs and the dorm.”
“Correct,” Cain replied giving her a nod. “Hopefully this means we’ll only have to deal with two of them: the one by the entrance and the one by the dorms, although we would then have to avoid the three on patrol as we made it across the camp.” Cain paused for a moment and thought to himself. “Another option would be to try and enter the camp from nearer to the dormitory, but that would involve scaling the wall somehow – thoughts?”
Zahyra pondered on this for a moment, biting her lip as she thought over both options.
“If we enter nearer the dorms, that’s probably safer from the guards, right? And I mean, if we can find a tree near enough to the wall we can climb up then there should be a way over?”
“It’s a big drop down you know,” Cain frowned, trying to contemplate in his own head which option was safer.
“I think we can do it,” Zahyra continued confidently.
“Alright then. The next problem is the rest of the boys in the dormitory. Many of them will be Gen 3 and above and likely feel happy living in the camp – when I was being trained here I didn’t mind it so much at the beginning, learning to be a warrior is a dream for many of those young boys. That means they may put up a fight if we try and break one of them out. The other issue is the rest of the boys, Gen 1 and 2, they will probably want us to break them out too.”
“Can’t we do that?” Zahyra cut in hopefully. Cain shook is head in response.
“I’m afraid not. It’s going to be hard enough getting one kid out, let alone a group of them. This mission will have to be just for Asher, you understand?”
Zahyra nodded reluctantly in agreement. She didn’t like the rest of the boys being kept in that camp. There were likely a few more from the bus in there still and she knew at least two of them by name. But Asher was her main priority and she hadn’t come this far just to leave him behind. Maybe they could come back another time and rescue some of the others, but for now she was more than happy with just saving her brother.
“So the issue remains,” Cain continued, “how do we get Asher out of the dorm without alerting any of the other boys?”
“Can’t we just be quiet?” Zahyra said innocently, thinking that was surely the obvious response.
“In a dorm of over fifty boys?” Cain laughed, “You can almost guarantee at least one of them will wake up. And once one of them is up the rest won’t be far behind.”
Zahyra furrowed her brow trying to think of the best way to get Asher out. Waking up the rest of the boys wasn’t a good idea: that was clear to her. But they would have to get Asher out of the dorm somehow. The two sat in silence for a while longer, both running ideas and questions through their heads. Often opening their mouths to suggest something but then stopping, realising the fault within the idea.
“What if we got to him before he went into the dorm at night?” Zahyra asked as she twirled a broken stick between her forefingers.
“That would reduce the chance of the other boys waking up,” Cain pondered for a moment, a thoughtful look on his face, “but then… No it wouldn’t work, we’d have to deal with a much higher guard presence.” Cain finished, shaking his head.
Zahyra frowned. There had to be some sort of easy solution. As they thought the sun began to rise above them and soon they were sweating where they sat.
“Let’s get to some shade,” Cain said, “and try and find something to eat.”
They moved deeper into the forest. Zahyra dragged her heels behind her as she walked, unhappy with them moving further away from her brother and the reality that they hadn’t come up with a plan for breaking him out. She hoped some food would inspire her, a portion of wild dog right now would really go down a treat.
>
There of course was no wild dog, but Cain managed to kill a bird that was hopping around on the forest floor with his knife. They moved even further into the forest in order to build a fire. The smoke from a campfire very likely to get them caught if any of the guards noticed. As a result they kept the flames small and it took a long time for the meat to cook, both their mouths salivating by the time it was ready. The two of them ate quickly and continued to bounce ideas off one another regarding how to break Asher out, but nothing seemed to strike gold and they were left uninspired by the plans each other had.
When the heat from the sun subsided and midday dusk finally arrived they were just making their way back towards the camp walls when a loud gong sounded from within.
“What was that?” Zahyra asked Cain, whose face had just turned a pale green colour. The gong sounded horribly familiar to her and she begged Cain internally to annihilate what she was thinking. He didn’t say anything for a second and Zahyra had to push him again for an answer.
“They’re holding a Turning Age Ceremony,” he replied eventually and Zahyra’s skin turned equally pale in response, her fears being realised.
“But, he’s not ten for another few days!” She exclaimed, “It has to be for someone else, right?”
“I don’t know,” Cain said, but the tone of his voice did nothing to reassure Zahyra. Together they ran as fast as they dared through the trees and climbed up into position so they could witness what was occurring inside the camp.
As Zahyra climbed she kept repeating to herself that it was too early. The Ceremony wouldn’t be for Asher. They still had time. Reaching the top of her tree her heart sank when she saw a mutant standing in front of the troop of boys, holding in his hand an Identifier – the piece of equipment used for discovering what mutation everyone carried.
Identifier’s were one of the few pieces of high-tech equipment everyone still had access to in a world mostly devoid of fancy paraphernalia. Every camp had at least one of them and it was possibly the only law all mutants continued to abide by. It was enforced, of course, by the more developed mutants. They thought it was necessary for everyone to know what rank of mutant everyone else was, hence why branded numbers were also enforced onto everyone’s right arms once their mutation level was identified.
The device was a small handheld scanner, which apparently scanned someone’s internal organs and brain waves to determine what level of mutation they carried – although in reality Zahyra had no clue how it worked. A number would then flash up on the screen, which the ten year old would be branded with. The result of an Identifier was law. Everyone was only scanned once when they were as close to ten years old as possible, then stuck with their ranking for life.
Some rumours sometimes circulated that mutations could continue to evolve and advance as the child grew up, but the Identifier’s only worked a month either side of a child’s tenth birthday, based on something to do with the genetic material inside a child’s body at that age.
This meant no one knew whether the rumours of later developing mutations were true. As Zahyra was aware there had never been any confirmed stories, so she believed the same as everyone – that mutations were developed by the age of ten. Besides, whether mutations developed later or not was irrelevant for the most part, if you were a Zero you were doomed from the off and no one tended to contest their rankings beyond that.
Furthermore, by the time a child was eight or nine their mutation would be pretty obvious, with those destined to become Gen 3 and above exhibiting signs from earlier ages. Zahyra had once heard a story of a child who was only four years old being able to control the wind and air around him. He had then grown up to be a Gen 5 and ranked with the most dangerous mutants. This had only been meant as a ghost story when she’d heard it, but for some reason it had stuck with her.
Zahyra had witnessed several Turning Age Ceremonies in her camp growing up, as even the lower-ranked elders believed it important to hold them regularly. They claimed it was for protection, meaning no advanced mutants could slip under the radar and end up terrorising their home.
Before Zahyra’s tenth birthday her mother had had suspicions she would be a Zero and so stole the Identifer from the hut of one of their camp elders. Scanning Zahyra herself her suspicions were confirmed and that luckily gave her mother enough time to hatch a plan for keeping Zahyra’s lack of mutation a secret.
Thinking back to the events Zahyra had endured over the last few weeks or so she realised this act by her mother had undoubtedly saved her life. If any of the mutants she had come into contact with had known she was a Zero they would have stopped at nothing to kill her there and then. Her fake Gen 1 branding appeared to offer her more protection than she gave it credit for.
She snapped back to reality as the mutant holding the Identifier reached forward and grabbed hold of a little boy within the crowd. It wasn’t Asher. She breathed a sigh of relief and desperately looked around the camp to try and ascertain where he was. Eventually she found him, standing alarmingly close to the front of the crowd and watching intently as the mutant guard scanned the little boy he’d pulled from the crowd.
Despite how far away she was Zahyra thought it looked like Asher was shaking and she bit her lip as nerves shook through her body telling her that he would be scanned next. The process of scanning the first boy seemed to last a lifetime, the boy stood stock still at the front of the camp his arms firmly by his side. He seemed calm enough considering his entire life hung in the balance of the result the Identifier gave to him – but then perhaps he already knew he had a fine mutation and would be kept safe afterwards.
Sure enough a few minutes later the mutant holding the Identifier looked up from the screen and said something to the boy. Zahyra could see the boy exhale with what looked like relief but she couldn’t be sure. He was then escorted into one of the other buildings in the camp to be branded.
Zahyra held her breath as she waited to see whether Asher would be called up next.
Chapter 18
Zahyra could feel her body physically shaking as she balanced on a tree branch high in the air, waiting to see if her little brother was about to have his Turning Age Ceremony. Every fibre in her being was screaming that it was too soon; that they had to wait so she and Cain could get him out first. In reality this was a truth she’d been hoping she wouldn’t have to deal with. Turning Age Ceremonies could occur a month either side of the child’s tenth birthday, she had just prayed they would wait until a bit later, not do it before.
Sure enough her worst fears were realised when the mutant called something out and then stepped forward to grab Asher from the crowd. For a moment everything stopped around Zahyra and time seemed to stand still. She could feel her heart beating in her chest and watched almost in slow motion as Asher was made to stand at the front of the group of boys. His arms were by his sides like the boy before him and he stared dead ahead, straight down the barrel of the Identifier in front of him.
Seconds turned into minutes as Zahyra watched and waited for his result. Finally the Identifier stopped scanning and revealed Asher’s ranking. The mutant holding it said something to him and a murmur ran through the crowd of boys, then Asher was whisked off into same building as the boy before him. Zahyra remained glued to her branch in the tree. Staring at the space where her little brother had just been stood.
She hadn’t been able to hear what the mutant had said so she didn’t know what to think or how to react. Then Cain’s voice pulled her out of her trance as he called through the treetops towards her. Looking around she met his gaze and realised he had begun to climb down. Zahyra began to follow. Her mind working instinctively as she moved as in reality it was clouded over with the events she’d just witnessed.
“Did you hear?” Cain asked her as soon as her feet hit the forest floor. Zahyra shook her head still in a trance over what had just happened. A bewildered look was present on Cain’s face, “Me neither,” he continued, “but we need to act, now.”
“We need to wait until it’s dark,” Cain said eventually, clenching and unclenching his fists as he spoke. Zahyra watched him for a moment not saying anything, there was a vein on his neck that she could see pulsating to the rhythm of his heartbeat.
“Are you okay?”
Cain shook his head, “I er, just need a moment, sorry.”
He turned away from her and rested both his palms against a tree in front of himself, bending over so he was staring at the ground. Zahyra watched closely as he began to take long, deep breaths in and out of his mouth. His legs were shaking where he stood, creating a rattling sound as the knife in his boot clattered against it. After a few minutes he calmed down and turned back to face Zahyra, his face was red from the event and he was still breathing heavily.
“I’m sorry,” he started, but was cut off by Zahyra.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” She asked anxiously. Cain took another deep breath and looked at her.
“Yeah, it’s just… stressful situations like I told you… they make it a bit harder to keep control. I’m okay though, promise.”
Zahyra looked warily at Cain. The idea that he’d nearly just had another mutant breakdown in front of her frightened her to her very core. But she also trusted Cain, and he seemed to be perfectly fine now so she nodded, eager to get back to discussing how they were going to rescue Asher.
“What goes on in that building they took him into?” She asked after a while, making sure Cain was definitely okay before she returned to the issue at hand. He paused for a moment and thought.
“I would guess that’s where the branding takes place, so whatever rank he was given will be put to him forever now.”
