Other than answering a few questions about the weapons and the layout beyond the door, I’m not needed. So much for coming in to save the day.
“Davyd’s your brother?” Megs asks.
Asher and Davyd had my attention and I didn’t notice her approach. I turn to face her. “Yes.”
“And Asher?” Her tone’s casual but her arms are folded.
There’s no point in lying. “She was my girlfriend.”
“You couldn’t have mentioned her?”
“No memory, remember?” But the excuse sounds as hollow spoken aloud as it does in my head. When I remembered nothing else, I remembered Asher’s voice. I’ve had plenty of time to tell Megs since my memories returned.
“What is she to you now?”
I glance over at Asher, the girl in the white dress, who hasn’t spoken to me properly since Megs walked through the door.
“She’s an old friend,” I say eventually. It’s the truth, but so inadequate to describe my feelings.
Megs leans closer. I breathe in her scent of open air and fog and freedom.
“What am I?”
“A new friend.”
It’s lame and weak and we both know it. If only there were some way to love them both without hurting them more.
She offers a sad smile and walks over to Toby and starts talking about ships to ferry everyone off the island once we’ve neutralized the waiting Company force.
A hollow feeling takes up residence in my gut.
It’s with relief rather than fear that I stride through the engine room when Asher calls for the attack to begin. She carries a jagged piece of pipe, a twin to the one Elex had in her hand earlier.
We gather at the heavy metal door that leads outside. It’s cramped, dark, and smelly in the small space. Others wait in the engine room to follow us out into the meadow where Elex was killed. I pass my Q from hand to hand. The safety’s off and I’m ready to fire. Davyd carries an identical weapon. I wonder which of the city visitors gave it to him.
Megs wanted to fight but Keane and I agreed she had to stay behind. One Q shot and she’d be like her brother.
Asher pauses and looks at each of us one last time.
“There were about twenty of them. Mother took down two.” She’s so matter of fact it makes me ache more than if she dissolved in tears. “We will do better. Those with the city weapons, fire at will. The rest of you will need to get closer.” She stands straight and tall. “Do not throw your lives away.”
That is all. There is no count, no hesitation. The door’s dragged open.
I move with the others into the open air. My gut cramps at the sight of the row of Company officers. They learned from Elex. In two waves they throw fist-sized rocks. One hits my shoulder but I raise my Q and take the officer down with one press of the switch.
Something moves past me in a white blur.
Asher.
She’s in amongst them before I fire again. Davyd’s close behind. He drops another officer a second later. She swings with madness like her mother. But she’s sane. Deadly. Light on her feet, she dances out of their reach. Fine drops of blood trail down her dress. She takes a blow to the kidneys without flinching and opens up the officer’s neck with a swing of the pipe. He’s on his knees, clutching at flapping skin as she finishes him with another blow to the nose.
A Lifer screams. I drag a woman I’ve never seen before back to the door. Blood streams from a slash to her chest. When she’s being seen to, I return to the fray. Beneath the tall, swaying trees, Asher swirls like an angel of death, uncaring for her own safety.
A flick of the Q I hold brings another officer down.
My ear rings and pain shoots through my head. I turn and raise the weapon but the Company woman’s strong. She holds my wrist in a clawed, desperate grip. Her knee lifts and my balls are on fire.
Eyes watering, I free my hand and swing at her nose. The sound of the impact’s lost in the noise of the fighting around me but I feel the bones give and smell blood. The officer cries out. Both hands clutch at her face and she runs toward the trail.
I hold up the Q but can’t bring myself to shoot her in the back. A scan of the fighting shows a killing field. At least eight officers are motionless and three Lifers too. Asher or Davyd are nowhere to be seen but we’re definitely winning. It’s only a matter of time.
There’s too much death in the air for me to rejoice.
I follow the fleeing Company officer as she weaves down the trail. Her sobs carry behind her. My legs ache. I don’t know what I’ll do if I catch her but I can’t let her bring reinforcements. Twice I fall and scrape my knees on the rock. But I force myself back to my feet.
The shouts and sounds of flesh hitting flesh disappear behind me as I get further away from the killing meadow. I hear wind through the trees and smell the salt from the sea.
The officer turns to face me at the foot of the trail. “Don’t come any closer,” she shouts, her words slurred by the bright red blood pouring into her mouth from her mangled nose. There’s a rock in her hand.
I take three deliberate steps. “Go on.”
I might not be willing to shoot a woman in the back but these people messed with my brain. I’ll take one down in a fight.
She backs into the water. Then her bloody mouth curves into a smile.
My heart stops. Bang. Something hits the back of my head. The pain takes my knees from under me. I bring up the Q but my hands are jelly. A man takes my weapon from my nerveless grasp.
Still, I fight. I didn’t go through everything to die here when victory’s so close.
The man pushes me toward the woman in the water. The rock in her hand becomes a club. My hands come up to protect my face but only momentarily. The man in the Company uniform drags them behind my back and holds them there.
One blow, two. Then I’m under the water. It’s shallow water. My knees hit the sand. But they’re holding me down. I taste salt and try to hold my breath.
And hold my breath.
And hold my breath.
Images swim in my brain. Asher and Megs. Mother. My favorite apple pie, hot and steaming, on the bench. Green grass soft beneath my feet. Stars. I’ll never see them again. My lungs burn, my head pounds.
Until I can’t hold my breath a second longer.
Chapter Twenty-One
[Asher]
I’m fifty feet down the trail in a skirmish when I glimpse Samuai in trouble. Dodging a kick at my knee, I see him ambushed by a large Company man through a gap in the trees. I turn on my foe with renewed energy, shoving the officer as hard as I can. He stumbles, falling backwards into a crevasse in the rock. I glance over the edge. It’s a long way down. Although he’s moving, he’s not climbing up anytime soon.
I wipe my face and taste sweat mixed with blood. Only some of it’s mine.
I need to help Samuai.
Down by the water, a woman officer joins the man and strikes Samuai’s head with a rock. He sways. They force him face first into the shallows, and then stand over him while he struggles. I hit the trail at a run. My bare feet slip and are sliced on the rocks. Pain stabs at me with every step but I stopped feeling the moment Davyd dragged me away from Mother. All that matters now is the boy in the water.
I’m level with the last trees where rocks mix with sand when he stops moving.
“No,” I cry. “Get up.”
But the boy I loved lies face down in the waves and the Company officers are walking away.
It only takes seconds to reach the water. I wade out, uncaring whether the officers will return for me. I will not let another of those I love die.
Waves lap at the bare skin of my ankles, then my calves. Part of my brain wonders at the sensation of so much water, but Samuai’s my main focus. I drag in a salty breath. He hasn’t moved.
“Duck,” commands a familiar voice. Davyd.
Launch it. I throw myself to my knees.
T
he woman who held Samuai down seconds ago stumbles over my head. Splashing and cursing from behind tells me Davyd’s wrestling with the man who must have returned too. I move forward, prepared to fight the officer for my friend’s body, but she’s motionless. Blood flows from her nose and a wound above her eye where her forehead hit some half-submerged rock.
Free again, I turn Samuai face up. He’s heavy and limp. My muscles protest as I take two fistfuls of his top and yank him over. His skin has a pale blue tinge and his lips are turning gray. I stumble backwards toward the shore, dragging him with me. A few feet feels like forever but I tug on his legs with everything I have. My progress is agonizingly slow. The whole time I watch him for signs of life.
There are none.
Suddenly, Davyd’s at my side. “He was the last of them. No more Company officers will bother us.”
What I couldn’t do alone, I manage with Davyd’s help. We drag Samuai’s unmoving body from the water. Like back on the ship with one of Lady’s attacks, we work together, putting Samuai onto his side and opening his mouth to let the water escape. It floods out on the sand but he doesn’t regain consciousness.
Davyd rocks back onto his heels. “He’s not breathing.”
“He has to.”
A faint memory from the Earth films I used to watch instead of going to the training rooms springs to my mind. “I’ll breathe for him.”
Davyd shakes his head. “It won’t work.”
I don’t want to hear it. With both hands, I push Samuai onto his back and kneel next to him on the wet gritty sand.
More Lifers join on us on the beach. Davyd’s right. The fight’s over, for now. One of the onlookers is Kaih. Blood is smeared across one cheek but she’s still lovely. “How can I help?”
“Stay alive.”
I take a breath, press my lips over Samuai’s, and fight a shudder at how cold they are beneath mine. I cover his nose with my left hand, and exhale into his mouth as hard as I can. My gaze is fixed on Samuai’s chest. It rises. I move back to let the air escape, and then breathe for him again.
Two more times I do it.
And then a splutter. I roll him onto his side. He vomits. Over and over until there’s nothing left and his whole body wracks with the spasms but he’s breathing.
Twice I thought him dead and twice he’s returned.
His eyes open. “Asher—”
I press my fingers to his mouth. “Don’t try to speak.”
The color returns to his lips. They curve. “Thank you.”
***
While the others celebrate our victory over the Company and the sheer thrill of looking up into the sky, I escape to one of the rocks a little way off the trail. Each gust of wind carries the scent of the sea. I imagine the tang of blood. I balance near the edge, over a long drop, and wrap my arms around my knees. Every muscle aches and my left eye’s nearly swollen shut. My tongue darts out to test the split in my lip. It still stings.
I can’t rejoice with the others. Too many lives were lost for me to believe we won anything.
All of the Lifers and most of the Fishies are eager to come with us to the place Keane talks about, beyond the Upheaval Mountains. We know there will be more fighting to come.
Their CEO won’t be pleased to have the private army they were breeding escape. I hope the data Toby takes from the Control Room will answer some of the questions about exactly what’s been done to us, beyond resistance to their Q weapon and the fast healing that Samuai talked about.
Fast healing didn’t save Mother.
As I expected, we found her body in the killing meadow. She died on a bed of yellow bush poppies. I still can’t decide whether she would have loved or hated that. Maybe I’ll never make up my mind. The pain of thinking about it doesn’t let me consider the question for long.
Twelve other Lifers lost their lives in the battle and a Fishie passed away from injuries sustained during the rebellion. None of the Company officers survived to tell their superiors what happened here, but I guess they’ll know soon enough.
The Remote Device still hidden in the folds of my tattered dress pokes into my thigh. I dare not leave it where a Fishie could get hold of it, since their anger at being duped for so long by the Nauts encompasses us Lifers too, for daring to change our status.
A familiar figure sits beside me. Samuai. The boy who died twice.
His friend Megs was the first to his side when we carried him back to the ship. She threw herself into his arms and he held her close. The jealousy I would have felt a few hours ago burns out from inside me. I’m hollow.
Now he stares out over the water, his dark gaze fixed on the blurry shape of the city where the Company rules.
A million questions fight each other in my mind to be asked first. The biggest, impossible one wins.
“Do you think there are aliens?”
He sucks in a breath like my question wasn’t what he expected.
“The memories they gave me when they took away mine tell me there are. It’s the only reason to explain the whole pretense of the ship.”
“To breed people resistant to their weapon?”
He nods. “As well as the fast healing and whatever else they’ve done to us.”
“You think they’ll follow us over the mountain.”
It’s not a question but he answers anyway. “Yes.” He hesitates then blurts out, “Did you know they found Neale dead in the holding cells? His throat was slit.”
The hairs on the back of my neck lift. I shiver despite the mild breeze. Neale, the pretend ringleader of the attempt on Lady. Neale, who Davyd was questioning when the rebellion took place. Neale, who would have preferred to count uniform creases than raise a weapon.
Davyd will have an explanation, I’m sure, but it reminds me that a shared kiss and standing together on a battleground doesn’t make us friends.
I can’t tell friend from foe anymore.
He points to the half-finished blue line on my ankle. “Was that for me?”
Heat flushes my cheeks. “I was interrupted.”
He nods without censure. Now I’ll have Mother’s memory to mark on my skin. Hopefully there will be time when we make it to the other place.
I angle my body toward Samuai’s and wait until he faces me. As usual his eyes are shuttered and I still can’t get used to the shock of orange hair. His mother moans about how her little boy has come back different. She should be so lucky. His hair’s merely the outward difference. Everything between us has changed.
“Why did you leave me?”
It’s come to this. All of Davyd’s snide comments, all the wondering, all the secrets. Piecing together what he’s admitted over the last few hours, one thing becomes clear. He didn’t ask to come to Earth, but he sure as hell chose to leave the ship without even a goodbye.
The silence stretches and an ache cramps my chest. Part of me still hopes he’ll deny it. If he’d loved me as he’d said, he would never have walked away.
“I wanted change,” he says eventually, ducking his head. “The same as you.”
I close my eyes. Not like me. I would have shared the secret conversations he had with Maston. I would never leave him behind.
Maybe Davyd was right. I didn’t know this boy. If I didn’t really know him?
“Was any of us real?” I whisper.
His hand cups my face, rougher than Davyd’s, and I hate that I’m comparing the two of them. I open my eyes and see the pain in his.
“I cared for you…I care for you.”
He’s close enough that his breath tickles my lips. Once this would have led to a kiss. But he’s not the only one who’s changed.
When we’re together there’s rightness to the world, but I know it’s an illusion. Caring means pain. If I let myself feel again, everything will fall apart.
I stand and pull him to his feet. “We have some mountains to cross.”
The killing meadow stretches be
fore us as we return to prepare to leave the ship for the last time. Yellow poppies sway in the breeze and somewhere a bird chirps in a tree. Samuai holds my hand tightly in his as we walk through the tall grass together. We are equals.
THE END
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It takes so many people to take a book from an idea through to completion and then into the hands of readers and I’ve been lucky to share the journey with an amazing group. Many thanks to Georgia McBride for seeing something in Lifer, and to the rest of the team at Month9 books who’ve been so great to work with. Also to Ashlynn Yuhas for helping bring the story to another level.
To Ali McDonald for her continued support despite some difficult real life circumstances.
To the amazing scientists of Lab 220. You guys inspired and awed me all at once. It was a privilege to discover with you and of course to have morning tea.
Writing friends are like gold and I have some who are particularly shiny. Thanks to Rachael Johns for not only reading Lifer but for the million daily emails that keep me sane. To Helen and Sandii for welcoming my adventure into something unlike anything I’d written before. To Maggie Gilbert for feedback on a different story that told me I could write this one. To Ro for your time and support on this, as always. And to Natalie Hatch for your read through and comments. Also thanks to the lovely ladies from SARA and RWAus who have inspired me so much.
To all my family and friends. My sisters are the best. Fi and Kirst, I’m looking at you. Mitch and Chloe, you’re my favourite teens and I appreciate the times you’ve answered a call and my questions. I wouldn’t be who I am without my family including Dad, Lyn, Dick and Shirley. I have some incredible friends who have heard me talk about this book for so long. In particular Caroline, the girls from mum’s group and the school mums. I couldn’t have done this without you and I’m so grateful to you all. Thanks to Mum for always believing in me.
And to Dave and my three amazing children. You guys are my world. I love that you’re my biggest fans. Thank you for everything. Love you.
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