by T. C. Edge
I begin to mumble incoherently, my eyes blinking wildly, my head shaking from side to side. My breathing becomes so fast I think I might hyperventilate, a panic attack settling itself loose on my lungs.
I don’t try to breathe through it, or stop it. I hope, I pray, that it somehow grows so furious that I have a heart attack, or go into shock, or fall into a coma that I’ll never awake from.
I’d rather die than be subjected to what Cromwell has in store. I’d sooner die a hundred terrible deaths than end up his slave.
And in my panic, I feel Commander Burns moving towards me. I see through my blurring eyes his fingers work to release my wrists from their shackles, to allow my hands to be set free.
Immediately, they clatter towards my mouth, covering my face, as his digits come down on my shoulders.
“Breathe, Brie, just breathe,” he says smoothly. “One breath at a time, nice and deep. Come on, breathe along with me.”
He begins taking deep breaths, and despite my desire to die, my natural survival instincts take over, and I start to follow his motion. Breath by breath, I feel my body beginning to calm, the shaking in my limbs starting to lessen.
And then, from behind my hands and through my fingers, I open my eyes and see Burns right before me, still calmly coaxing me back to health.
“Good, that’s it,” he says, raising his best version of a comforting smile. “It’s OK, Brie, you’ll be fine…”
Gradually, the ferocity of my breathing subsides, leaving a residue of pain and desperation behind. And as my eyes begin to water, and the tears I promised myself I wouldn’t shed start to collect, I throw my arms forward and around Burns’ body.
Needing some comfort, some contact, someone to make things OK. And despite it all, he’s all I have here, the only person with a shred of emotion, a shred of humanity.
And holding him tight, I feel his form turn suddenly rigid. And then, slowly, it relaxes just a little, and his arms come forward and start to tap my back.
“You can’t,” I pant through my broken breaths. “You can’t let this happen. You…you have to help me,” I cry.
His hands withdraw from my back, his fingers sliding away. And mine do the same as he leans away from me, cutting off that contact I so crave.
My body hangs low, my chin descending to my neck. Then a single finger touches it, pressing slowly to lift my eyes. And there, ahead of me, I see his, blue and yet warm, more welcoming than I’ve ever seen them.
And with the lightest of whispers, his lips part and two words fall out. Words I don’t understand.
“I will,” he says.
8
Burns’ words halt my breathing. The air is lost from my lungs for what seems like an age. And then, they begin to fill again, my body suddenly calm.
The Commander of the City Guard remains ahead of me, bent down onto one knee, his eyes turning to nowhere but mine. I watch them, and then see the movement of his lips once more.
“We have to talk very quietly, Brie,” he whispers. “The Stalker on duty is part Bat. He will hear any raised voices. Do you understand?”
I nod silently, still trying to catch up.
And then, I begin to mumble my confusion.
“I…don’t understand. What’s…what’s going on?”
His index finger darts straight for my lips, hushing me.
“Keep your voice down,” he whispers. “You have to be sensible now, you have to stay strong. You’ve come a long way, Brie, and your journey isn’t quite over yet.”
His finger retracts. I continue to stare at him, open-eyed.
A new silence falls as he tests me, making sure I won’t turn back to my hysterics. I won’t. I’m done. Now I can think of nothing but who he really is…
And in my head, as I question that very thing, I see him looking upon me and reading my thoughts. A small, narrow smile occupies his face, and without moving his lips, I hear him answer, his words projected into my mind.
I’m a friend, Brie, he says. And I’m going to help you escape…
Despite having had people in my head, and entering others myself, hearing his voice inside me makes me recoil.
I recoil because of the suddenness of it all. I recoil because of the words he uses, the promise he makes. And I recoil because, somewhere in the depths, I recognise that voice in my head. I’ve heard it before.
“It was you,” I whisper. “It was you guiding me. It was your voice in my head…”
He nods, arching his eyes quickly to the door. Then they come back to me.
“I didn’t know if you’d heard me,” he says. “I tried many times. The connection was weak.”
“Connection,” I say. “But how…how do we have a connection? I only have one with my brother.”
“Because I’ve been in your head before, Brie, back after the attack at Culture Corner. I know more than others do. I formed a link to you then. It was weak, but I hoped that you’d hear something, get some aid along your path.”
“Rebecca,” I whisper. “You told me about her. To use her to find Cromwell’s schedule…”
He nods.
“And you…you’re with the…with the…”
The Nameless, comes his voice in my head again, echoing loudly from the darkness.
And then his words come again for real, barely a whisper, so quiet now that no one, not even the most powerful of Bats, could hear.
“I am,” he says. “It was always me, Brie, who was to take Artemis’ place in the Director’s chair. I was intended to be his replacement.”
The revelation dawns, and my lips move, but no words come. A hundred questions lie on the top of my tongue, all fighting to be delivered. They battle so hard that all I can do is shake my head and mumble once more, trying to work back through it all in my mind.
It was always him.
Cromwell needed to be killed for him to take his place. A member of the Nameless, someone sympathetic to the plight of the people. Someone, perhaps, who can understand emotion like Cromwell can’t.
And he can. All Mind-Manipulators can. Some, like Woolf, will see it as weakness. But most see the good in people, the need for joy and love and happiness. See that we all have our part to play in this world, and that it’s not the sole dominion of the higher race of Savants.
And as I stare into his eyes, I begin to understand that the plot against Cromwell involved more than just his death. That the assassination of Commander Fenby was as necessary as Zander made out.
The Director can only be chosen from within the Consortium’s ranks. Burns needed to become a member before Cromwell’s death…
As my thoughts rush along, the new Commander of the City Guard watches me closely, inspecting me as the truth dawns.
I look into his eyes again and see that he knows everything I’m thinking. And then he whispers once more.
“Yes, that’s right, Brie,” he says. “But now, things have changed. And we need to get you out…”
“But…why you? Why would you become the new Director?”
My voice is a little too loud, enough to have him turning to the door once more. The slight glare to his eyes has me sinking a little deeper into my chair.
He answers inside my mind.
I’ve been working on this for years, Brie, comes his voice, louder and clearer in the safety of my head. My powers have allowed me to gently influence the Consortium over the years, to put the pieces in place for when Commander Fenby, and then Director Cromwell, were killed. Were it not for Agent Woolf’s interference, I’d be confirmed as Director in a matter of days.
My chin drops and eyes close at his final mental remark. My failure has cost us dear. My inability to see what Woolf was up to has doomed us all.
Again, my chin is lifted by his finger.
“Don’t blame yourself,” he says softly. “You did everything you could. No one saw this coming.”
His words help soothe me a little. But my mind continues to work at a furious pace, drawing a new quest
ion to my lips.
“Why me?” I ask. “If you’re...who you say you are…then why didn’t you kill him? Why am I here at all?”
“Because you’re expendable,” comes his swift reply.
I’m slightly taken aback, my pride hurt. But after a moment I know he’s right. I am expendable. He’s not.
My failure has put the Nameless on the back foot, but it hasn’t yet doomed them. Were Burns to attempt to kill Cromwell himself, however, and his treachery be discovered, then they’d have no one on the inside. No one of his considerable power and ability to try to fashion a new path.
In the end, he’s completely right. My life means very little in the grand scheme of things. But his means everything. And it needs to be protected.
I’m not so naïve to not realise that. To not see that I am just a soldier, and he’s a leader. That getting him onto the throne of this building, of this city, of this world, is what will make real change.
But now that I’ve failed, perhaps that option is done for. Even in his new position as Commander, I doubt that Burns can take out Cromwell without anyone uncovering the truth.
So when he tells me I’m expendable, I merely nod and understand. And as those thoughts flow about in my mind, he reads them for himself, satisfied that I’m able to see the bigger picture.
“Good, Brie,” he whispers. “Very good.”
It’s still all so confusing, but yet that hope that had faded now begins to bloom.
“You didn’t tell him, did you?” I ask. “Cromwell I mean. You didn’t tell him about the secret passage to the underlands?”
He shakes his head.
“So they’re safe,” I ask, my hammering heart filling with a new determination to live.
“For now. But Artemis won’t rest until he’s rid this city of all who’ll stand in his way. His beliefs, his programming, make him rigid and immovable. He can’t be bargained with or swayed. Until he’s gone, no one is safe.”
“Then what do we do? How do we kill him?”
He shakes his head.
“There’s no we,” he whispers. “Your role here is over.”
“But I can still do it,” I say, my words just starting to lift. His glare stifles them, calms them. “I can,” I continue, barely audible now, “with your help. Use your powers…get me alone with him…and I’ll do it. I swear I will.”
He stands up, his head still turning left and right and denying me.
But why? Why not?! I shout in my head, staring right at him.
Because, he answers in my mind, it will all come back to me in the end. You had your chance, Brie, but now it’s gone. Your part is done.
He moves to the door, and then turns to me before leaving.
And through his bright blue eyes, he projects some final words for my to hear.
Don’t lose faith, Brie, he says. I’ll get you out of here, I promise. Your part here is over, but there’s more to be done out there…
He turns his eyes to the clear wall, and mine follow out towards the northern quarter of the city. And when I turn back to look at him, to force him to read another question in my mind, all I see is the door closing.
And the tail of his white jacket flowing out into the corridor.
9
I’m left with so many questions that I have no means of answering. More than ever I wish that my powers would return and I could speak with my brother, learn the truth of all of this mess, all of these secrets that have been kept from me.
I always wondered just who it was that the Nameless had in mind, who the mystery replacement for Cromwell was going to be. Not once did Leyton Burns enter my thoughts as an option, so complicit in the plot as he seemed to be.
It was him, after all, who first made mention of the Stalkers back during the ceremony to honour us after the attack at Culture Corner. When the Nameless took over the video feed, he’d told that technician to ‘send out the Stalkers’, sending the hybrid hunters out to do what they do best.
I saw him, too, after the attack in the marketplace, the attack that saw Fred and Ziggy lose their lives, and Rycard lose his right eye and handsome looks. The attack that led to Drum’s terrible crime, and his new life down with the Nameless in the underlands.
It was that very breakout, in fact, that led the Woolf to my door, the freeing of Drum from that prisoner convoy sending all of this in motion. Had we not done that, then Woolf may never have seen this coming, and Cromwell would now be dead, and Burns would be stepping up to the Director’s chair, ready to draw back the awful doctrine that will inevitably lead to war.
I wonder how much involvement Burns really had in it all. In the end, perhaps it’s his own fault that Woolf came after me. Had that attack never occurred, then Fred and Ziggy wouldn’t have died, and Drum wouldn’t have killed that man, and Zander and I would never have had to free him.
Maybe Burns himself is to blame for the failure of this entire mission.
But then again, surely he can’t have been complicit in such an atrocity. Surely a man like Cromwell would have selected the next target. Perhaps Burns never even knew about it, or at least didn’t know just when and where the attack would come. If he did, and yet he allowed his own men, his own City Guards, to be killed in the blast, then perhaps he’s no better than the man I was sent here to kill…
I won’t get the answer to that question until I next see him. And even then, who knows if he’ll be honest. My gut suggests that he remains mostly innocent, aware of the locations of the attacks but unable to influence them for fear of revealing himself to his superiors.
I guess, like so many of us, he merely needed to keep up appearances.
For the greater good…
That seems to be the way of the world. People do terrible things in order to achieve positive ends. And, I suppose, I can’t blame Burns, or anyone else, for that. After all, I’m guilty of exactly the same.
The name W. Malcolm once more springs to mind, the poor soul I swapped my vial of blood with. I knew just what I was doing when I manipulated Doctor Friel into performing the swap. I knew it would mean death, or worse, for them, a fate that should have been mine.
In the end, I suppose it wasn’t worth it. Woolf knew about me all along, haunting my step, luring me up here to fall straight into Cromwell’s trap. All changing that vial got me was an extra couple of days of belief and hope that my mission would succeed.
It hasn’t. And W. Malcolm has probably died for it.
And yet, here I am, now being offered the chance of redemption. A chance to escape this place and continue the fight down below. I relish the idea, relish getting a weapon in my hand and facing my enemy head on.
Not creeping around here in the High Tower, all dressed up in blue, surrounded by these dead-eyed, detached, swarm of drones.
I want to taste fresh air again, suck in the smells of Outer Haven and the underlands, feel the embrace of my friends and family. And if what Commander Burns promised me is true, I might just get that chance after all.
I just have to hope that whatever means of escape he devises works. He’ll have to do it without revealing himself, or incriminating himself in any way. After all, as he so rightly told me, I am expendable, and he is not.
But, sitting there as the day passes by and another night falls, I wonder about Adryan. Will he be joining me? Does Burns’ desire to see me out of here trickle down to him as well?
Somehow, given what Lady Orlando said, I doubt it. He is loyal to this cause, and has done a great deal for it, but his worth was necessitated on secrecy, on his ability to operate in the shadows as a spy here in the High Tower. And, above all, as a simple facilitator for my part in the mission.
Now, none of that applies. Were he to escape to the underlands, and join up with the Nameless, he’d be of no more use than any other regular person. He has no specific physical enhancements beyond his superior intellect. He isn’t a scientist, or an engineer, or someone who might offer some tactical cunning in the war to come.
No. He is just a man whose worth has been expended. And as Lady Orlando made very clear, he is now superfluous to their cause.
But not me, I suppose. Not to the same degree. I have a number of powers that might prove useful in battle. Superior eyesight and speed that will present me with an advantage, and the ability to manipulate the weak-minded with little more than a thought and a flash of the eyes.
And I, too, have a twin brother down there who, I hope, won’t rest until I’m freed. Who will be desperately seeking to save me from this terrible place.
I am, it pains me to say, more useful than Adryan. And so, I will live, and he will die.
That is how it goes.
But not for me.
“If they won’t save you, I will,” I whisper, turning my eyes to the door, imagining that my husband’s being kept somewhere beyond it, on the other side of the building. “I won’t let you die, Adryan. I promise.”
I make the silent vow to myself, and then allow the depths of night to take me. Let myself fall into uncomfortable dreams as the lingering hours pass by.
I wake constantly, my eyes flashing open to find that I’m breathing heavily, beads of sweat trickling down my forehead. I want to wipe them away as they tickle along the side of my nose, but can’t, my hands once more locked tight to the arms of the chair.
I drift away again, and the same happens, over and over until the first signs of light start to gather against the horizon. Exhausted and with aching limbs, I meet the dawn with my gaze and allow myself the smallest of smiles as I marvel at its beauty.
Even in such a place, and at such a time, small moments can give you some relief. The sight before me is mesmerising, the scope of the sunrise staggering as it lifts and gives shape to the lands.
It all starts back on the mountains, the peaks first to catch the light long before the base, where the deep valleys, all sprinkled with woods and tinged in toxic mist, stay hidden in shadow. Then, gradually, the light creeps down, bringing more of the world to life, sending more of its stunning beauty to my regular, human eyes.
