Before the Raging Lion

by Everly Frost

  “Well, he can wait a bit longer.” Turning to the group of watching soldiers, Alexander called for Aaron, who stepped forward, his expression hooded.

  “Go with them. Wait for me at the cells. I’ll meet you there.”

  Aaron obeyed, taking my other arm. He and Mr. Bradley supported me as I tried to find my feet, directing me away from the clearing toward a waiting vehicle parked between the trees.

  The Evereach army had cut down enough of the forest to form roads through the violet mile and there were multiple vehicles parked around the space.

  I glanced at Aaron as we moved. During the battle in Starsgard, I’d told him it was me who killed his brother, Douglas Reid. Before that, Mr. Bradley had told everyone that he was responsible—that he was so angry when Reid allowed me to escape that he’d killed Douglas with a mortality weapon. But I’d told Aaron the truth: that Douglas was trying to kill me and I’d fought back.

  The emptiness in Aaron’s eyes left me cold.

  The vehicle we approached had no windows and was shaped like a streamlined van. The government insignia loomed large, painted across its side, reminding me of the vehicles I’d seen from the top of the Starsgardian mountains. Convoys of those vehicles had been travelling up and down the roads toward the port located on Evereach’s northern coastline.

  Inside, the back of the van was tall enough to stand up in and it contained a pallet bolted to the center and bench seats on either side. The sleek controls at the front—no steering wheel in sight—indicated it was autonomous. But it was the girl pacing back and forth inside it who caught my attention. I frowned as we approached. I knew her somehow…

  Aaron ground to a halt. “Sarah?”

  The girl’s head shot up. Her hair was short, brown, cut at irregular angles like it had been done with a blade rather than scissors. Her eyes were green and her face was so familiar.

  Then it hit me. The last time I’d seen her was near the school gates on the morning of Implosion—the day my brother died. She’d been hanging onto Michael’s arm.

  Her name was Sarah Watson. She was a fast healer, but she was also the third child in her family—a rare and unusual thing. The snide expression she used to wear at school was nowhere to be seen. She cast a quick glance around the side of the vehicle before she reached for me, helping me into the van.

  She said, “Alexander let me out for the day. He thought Ava might like to see a friendly face. Someone who doesn’t want to kill her. And besides…” This time she looked at Aaron, but her expression was flinty. “I’m one of the best pilots he’s got. Which should tell you we’re in for a bumpy ride.”

  I frowned, wondering if I was feverish, given that she’d mentioned being a pilot but I didn’t see an aircraft in sight.

  Behind us, Alexander ordered the other soldiers to evacuate the area. Even the drones were picking up and moving away.

  “She’s right,” Mr. Bradley said. His gaze was pinpointed on a spot over my shoulder inside the vehicle. Again, I wondered if I was burning up, because he was staring very hard at what looked like an ordinary ceiling.

  He shook himself. “Alexander intends to make this as difficult as possible. Quickly now. Help me get Ava onto the pallet. She needs fluids and anti-virals or we’ll lose her.”

  Aaron frowned as I teetered in the opening. “I thought you said she was okay.”

  Mr. Bradley’s voice rose. “Does she look okay to you?”

  My vision blurred again. I dropped to my knees, heaving over the back of the vehicle, surprised there was anything left in my stomach.

  Pain rocketed through my torso, a torturous burn in my spine, my muscles aching so badly that I couldn’t lift myself up. My symptoms were getting worse, not better.

  Aaron and Mr. Bradley grabbed me before I pitched into the dirt, lifting me all the way into the vehicle and lying me down on the pallet.

  Sarah quickly secured straps around my waist, chest, and knees, and I sucked in a sharp breath, hating the feeling of being restrained, wanting to fight it, not sure if I could trust her. Of course I can’t trust her…

  “Stop. Don’t.”

  Her response was gentle. “The straps are to keep you from falling off. See this?” She held up a device and pressed it into my hand. “You can use that to release the straps any time, but do me a favor and don’t press it while we’re going around a corner or if we’re in the air. You’ll slide right off. Go on. Don’t take my word for it. Press away.”

  I did as she said and to my relief the restraints slid off me, retracting into the side of the pallet.

  Sarah did them up again. She busied herself around me, connecting a line to my arm, and hooking me up to a floating monitor. Meanwhile, Aaron perched on the bench beside me and Mr. Bradley hurried to the controls at the front of the vehicle. As soon as the back doors slid closed, the vehicle began moving, slowly at first and then faster.

  I couldn’t see much from my position. Even when I lifted my head, the windscreen was the only opening affording a view to the outside and it was tinted dark purple. The shapes of what might have been trees blurred past us.

  When Mr. Bradley returned, he busied himself alongside Sarah. He said, “We’re going to get you back on your feet as soon as we can. But I have to warn you, once you’re strong again, you’ll have worse to deal with.”

  “What did you do to me?”

  Mr. Bradley was surprisingly forthcoming. “We injected you with a deadly virus. It keeps the nectar busy fighting the virus to keep you alive, to heal you. Basically, the fight with the illness consumes the nectar. It’s sort of like draining a battery. There’s nothing left for you to use.”

  “What virus?”

  “A special strain of Ebola.”

  When Michael had been implanted with an organic electrocution device—a bug attached to his spinal cord—the Starsgardians had talked about trying to eject it out of his body by using a virus to kill it. He’d refused because infecting himself could infect me too.

  “It almost killed you, Ava. You won’t survive another dose.”

  My throat hurt, but I managed to speak. “You’re taking me to the Basher cells.”

  Mr. Bradley grimaced and Sarah winced, her hands jerking.

  She said, “I thought we were going to the Terminal.”

  Mr. Bradley laid a hand on her arm. “I’m sorry, Sarah. Alexander ordered us to the cells.”

  She took a deep breath, suddenly fidgeting, and even Aaron looked unhappy as he watched Sarah’s hands clasp and unclasp over again.

  “Never mind,” she said, her voice tight. “I knew my trip to the outside world would be brief.”

  The lights in the back of the truck suddenly flickered off, then on again, and the space was bathed in iridescent purple light. My ears buzzed as the pressure increased, but stopped before it was too uncomfortable.

  Mr. Bradley turned his attention to me. “When you feel better, you might think about escape. But there are a few things you should know. For starters, the doors of this transporter are armed with explosives. Only basic ones, but they’ll blow you to pieces if you try to exit that way. As an added precaution, the entire space has recorded our weight and body mass and any change before we reach our destination will also trigger an explosion.”

  He peered at me. “I’m telling you this because I want to keep you alive.”

  I glared back at him. “Alexander split your family apart. Why are you helping him?”

  Mr. Bradley froze. Then he resumed his work at the monitor. “I learned a lot from your brother, Ava. One of the things I learned is that sometimes the best thing you can do is … bend. You won’t know what I mean until you’re faced with an impossible choice. That’s what I had: an impossible choice. To protect one thing, I had to risk another.”

  I demanded, “What? What are you protecting?”

  He looked right at me. He didn’t answer my question. “I know it’s the right risk. I know you’re up to the task.”

  Mr. Bradley was
talking in riddles. I didn’t know what he meant and all I craved right then was a simple answer. Somehow, I didn’t think there were any simple answers to anything right then. I eyed Sarah’s lopped hair, remembering her response to Aaron before.

  I kept my voice quiet. “You said Alexander let you out for the day.”

  She gave me a grim smile. “I’m one of his special children. He tells me what to do and I do it. Then, once he’s done with me, I go back…”

  I whispered, “How did this happen? You were one of the most popular girls in school. You had friends…”

  She chewed her lip. “My mom works in the government and Alexander needed … leverage. I’m a fast-healer, but I’m also a third child. He left me alone when he thought Michael and I were dating, because he didn’t want to alienate Michael any more than he already had. But once Michael was gone…”

  She sucked in a breath, visibly shaking, and I was sorry I’d asked. She said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Bradley, I need to take a moment. Can I go up front? I can check that the route to the Terminal is clear.”

  He nodded. “Yes, Sarah, that would be helpful. Please monitor the channels as best you can. The soldiers are bound to leak Ava’s whereabouts and then we’ll have trouble.”

  Sarah made her way to the front of the vehicle, working the screen in front of her and not looking back. I watched her go, realizing that the world I’d left behind—the Evereach that I’d left behind—didn’t exist anymore.

  While I was in Starsgard, President Olander had come to power, ousting the former leader by inciting the threat of a civil war. He’d worked the population into a frenzy using the fear of mortality, blaming the government for it. But soon after he became President, it came to light that Olander himself was a Basher and was working with Alexander. Together, they’d pardoned all the Bashers and formed a new army, combining the government’s Hazard Officers with the fast healing Bashers. Now, it was with a sinking feeling that I realized I had no idea what I was heading into. If teenagers like Sarah were being held in the cells and nobody was trying to stop their imprisonment, Evereach was far from the country I’d grown up in.

  Mr. Bradley sighed. “I thought that Sarah was Michael’s girlfriend, but it turns out he was trying to keep her out of the cells. He and I didn’t talk much in the last few years. But he did eventually tell me that Sarah was threatened. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much I could do for her after Olander took control.”

  The vehicle turned a corner and the straps on the pallet bed hugged my skin. Olander’s ascent to power had clearly taken a toll on the people around me. Mr. Bradley looked beaten and even Aaron seemed deflated as he watched Sarah at the controls.

  Mr. Bradley’s expression became even more serious. “Right now, we need to focus on keeping you safe. There are ten transporters identical to this one travelling different routes into Dell city. Alexander’s making a show of having decoys, but the chances of an attack are high.”

  “I don’t understand…”

  He took my hand and for some reason, I didn’t feel the need to pull away. “Ava, since you left, Evereach has been on the verge of imploding. Olander built his platform on fear: fear that mortality was more than one girl—that there were other mortals just waiting kill us. More than half the population is jumping at shadows. As soon as word about you gets out, any number of people will come after you. Many want you dead.”

  I twitched, but his hand squeezed mine, oddly comforting.

  “There’s more. Olander passed laws that require all children to be tested for mortality. But of course, you and I know that Olander is a Basher and the Bashers aren’t intent on protecting anyone. Their whole ethos is the superiority of fast healers. Every day, slow healer children are ripped from their families and entombed underground to die a long death. Anyone who speaks out against Olander meets the same fate. Anyone who…”

  He paused, again starting at the same spot on the ceiling he’d stared at before and I followed his gaze. I still couldn’t see anything.

  He continued. “Anyone who had the means to go up against him, people like Sarah’s mother, found their loved ones suddenly—”

  “Mr. Bradley!” Sarah swiveled in the front seat, shouting. “Dead ahead!”

  Mr. Bradley raced to the front of the transporter and I strained to see. The windscreen was bathed in purple light from inside the truck. For a moment there was nothing and then…

  Crack.

  A flash and an explosion rocked the vehicle as it sped along the road. The light turned brown as flames washed across the air in front of us. My stomach clenched, but to my relief the dizziness wasn’t so bad as before.

  Michael’s dad cried, “Sarah, hit the thrusters!”

  And to me: “Brace yourself, we’re going airborne.”

  I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to brace. The line and floating monitor were already clipped safely into position against the side of the pallet so they wouldn’t fly around. I gripped the sides, grateful for the straps as the vehicle careered wildly from side to side.

  Sarah punched at the screen in front of her. Steering gear emerged from the paneling. “Hold on, I’m going manual.”

  The pressure inside the vehicle increased and so did its speed. I’d never been on an airplane but I guessed it felt something like that. As the transporter tilted, the pallet righted itself, keeping me horizontal. My stomach remained behind me as we lifted off the ground. There was a moment of floating, a pause, and then my whole body slammed backward as we soared into the sky.

  I was incredibly grateful for the tilting pallet or I would have slid directly backward into the doors Mr. Bradley had warned me would explode if I tried to open them.

  “At least we’ll get there faster this way,” Sarah said with an unhappy laugh, tapping at the control screen.

  Mr. Bradley didn’t appear convinced. “We aren’t out of the clear yet. All it takes is a rogue officer with a drone…”

  Sarah groaned. “You had to say it.”

  There was another explosion and the vehicle rocked wildly as new flames spread across the windscreen again. Drones zoomed to and fro across the windscreen, in and out of view as smoke and flame battered the transporter.

  I clutched the sides of the pallet, even though everything in me wanted to get up and fight. If I could only will myself to be well, to not be sick right then, to be strong like I was just that morning… I hated feeling so helpless.

  Aaron had been quiet the whole time, unmoving, but he didn’t stop watching me. I found his guard over me unnerving, but then I realized it gave me something to focus on.

  For all I knew, the next explosion could be my last. A drone could blow us from the sky and it would all be over. I kept my focus on Aaron’s boots, knowing there was no way he was going to let me leave the vehicle—and that was somehow comforting. Because not leaving the vehicle meant being safe right then.

  Mr. Bradley and Sarah spent the next twenty minutes deflecting and evading, spinning the craft so violently at times that I could only cling and hope. Finally, the air cleared, the craft stopped shaking, and they turned to me, exhausted.

  Mr. Bradley said, “We’re a few minutes away from the cells. Alexander’s finally issuing a protection order: it’s going across the airways now. There won’t be any more attacks.”

  “He took his time.” Sarah pulled her hair back, breathing hard. “It was deliberate, though, right? An air fight is all the publicity he needs to stir people up about Ava being back in Evereach.”

  Mr. Bradley shot her a warning glance and she pressed her lips together. “Yeah, not supposed to say things like that.”

  He patted her on the back. “You did well, Sarah. We wouldn’t have made it through without you.”

  As Sarah sat back, the windscreen suddenly turned completely opaque. There was no way to see out. The controls flashed. Words slid across the windscreen in a long stream: Your vehicle is now on autopilot. Destination confidential.

  The vehicle turned.
/>   Sarah murmured. “Destination: hell.”

  Then, Mr. Bradley came back to check on me. “How are you doing, Ava?”

  His demeanor in that moment reminded me so much of the footage I’d seen of him, leaning down to Josh for the first time after my brother took nectar. He’d asked Josh the same thing.

  “I feel stronger. Much stronger.”

  “Good. You need to be standing tall for the next bit. Let’s help you up and see how your legs hold.”

  I clambered to my feet, finding it easier than expected, and glanced gratefully at the line still attached to my arm. “That must be something really special if I’m feeling better so fast.”

  “It’s a combination of potent anti-virals and adrenaline. A concoction I developed as soon as I found out about Josh.”

  I frowned, but he shrugged. “I was only able to bring a few vials of raw nectar back from Starsgard and I wasn’t sure if I could synthesize it to make more, so I looked for other ways to keep him … alive.”

  He swallowed. “Which I clearly failed to do.”

  I cleared my throat and pointed to the blank windscreen. “What’s that about?”

  “Nobody knows the location of the cells except a limited few. These vehicles are coded with the information in a way that can’t be retrieved. Also, the vehicles follow random paths each time so there’s no way to trace a pattern. Unfortunately, a very clever young lady designed this system.”

  “Arachne?” I remembered the stubborn, smart, IT genius I’d met in Starsgard. From what I’d heard, she’d hacked into a lot of systems for Alexander. Hacked and created. Josh had helped her escape from the Basher cells and seek refuge in Starsgard. He’d loved her—and she’d loved him. She’d blamed me for his death, so my friendship with her had been rocky to say the least.

  Mr. Bradley turned away and that was when the vehicle began to slow down.

  I shuddered as I realized we’d arrived at the Basher cells.

  Chapter Five

  Josh, 3 years ago

  IT’S MY JOB to break them.

  I move my facemask away from my lips, but only enough to sip from the cup of water I’m holding. I slosh it a little to accentuate the sound. I always keep my identity hidden behind the Basher uniform: motley-brown, full body camouflage complete with a voice modulator so nobody can recognize me.