A soft sound of incredulity left me at that thought. There was no need to use this barbaric attack to lure me in and risk the wrath of an awakening nation. Eventually I'd return and see the devastation for myself. Spot the sprays of blood arcing across ceilings. See the cracks in the plasterboard where bodies had been thrown. Feel the humidity of the world outside as the air blew through broken windows, scattering possessions, lifting the feathers of a pillow in swirls and flurries throughout the room.
Hear the ghosts of their screams reverberate inside my head.
Guilt was a heavy coat to wear. I took one last look and turned my back to climb the stairs. My footsteps no longer light, but burdened with culpability. My heart fractured beyond anything my father's death had achieved. My mind insensate from the realisation that teenaged Zhang Jun had been so very right.
This was too big for us to fight. It was too big for anyone to fight. Not even Trent with his endless moral convictions, his certainty that Wánměi could be saved, not even he could fight this battle. And I wondered why I kept going. I wondered why I put one foot in front of the other until I was standing right outside my apartment door.
Six other apartments we'd passed, all quiet within. All mausoleums to their owners, my once upon a time neighbours. The urge to bear witness to their fates was all consuming, but time was not on our side. I forced myself to pass each one, feeling a part of me being left behind at their doors. Feeling like I was unravelling as I climbed higher up the stairs, losing bits of myself, until I was sure nothing would be left.
I stood outside my apartment, staring blindly at the paintwork on the door. No wood shavings. No broken lock.
No keypad to gain access, either. Or eScanner to identify. And definitely no Shiloh unit to greet me. But I knew the second I crossed its threshold, the Overseers would know it was me and would come.
I almost welcomed them. I wanted the screams to stop.
"They're already on the way, Lena," Trent whispered, reiterating what I had just thought.
Could he hear the screams too?
"In and out," he added, almost managing to bring me back from the brink.
The screams were so loud inside my head. So desperate.
"That's all," he encouraged and finally sounds, other than the cries for help, the pleas for their lives, filled my ears.
I took a shattering breath in.
"Let's do this, Zebra."
My hand shook as I lifted it to the handle. My world still a bleak, black void of despair. I searched for some anger to guide me. I tried futilely to push the images of those who'd once been my friends from my mind. I desperately filled my head with Wánměi slogans; so easily remembered, so easily recalled when my body just wanted to shut down.
Wánměi above all others. Wánměi leads the way.
Consume your rations and all is forgiven.
Follow doctrine and all will be rewarded.
Wánměi the provider of all good.
I hesitated, sucked in a deep breath, and said softly, "For the better of the people. For the future of Wánměi," and opened the door.
If I'd expected a drone to rush me, I was sorely disappointed. And as I carefully placed one foot over the threshold and took in my home, there was also no hard faced Wang Chao waiting to greet me.
I could feel Trent's body heat at my back, he wasn't going to let me do this alone. I welcomed his warmth, despite the fact the entire building was hot and humid, just like outside, because a chill had long ago settled in my bones.
My eyes scanned the interior, noting whoever had searched here had tried to return things to where they'd been. Unsuccessfully, but effort had been used to put things back into order. Did Wang Chao believe I'd want to move back in if it didn't look ransacked?
"Not as bad as I'd thought," Trent commented, his alert eyes taking in the clutter free lounge as he strode to the front window and peered through the curtains. "The street looks clear."
"Anything from Si?" I asked as I checked the attached kitchen, finding food I'd left in the refrigerator all gone.
Wang Chao had thrown out my perishables. It felt more invasive than the fact I knew he'd rummaged through my drawers.
"No drones approaching on the street-cams," Trent advised. "And nothing over the airwaves. There's still sightings of you all over the city. The Cardinals appear busy."
It's what we'd been aiming for, but something felt off. I held his steady gaze, seeing his own doubt there. He didn't trust the intel Si was uncovering, either. Not because Si wasn't good, but because Shiloh seemed to be getting better.
"What now?" he said, making me realise we had a choice.
Leave and escape undetected. Go on and activate the trap.
My eyes strayed to the bedroom, as my chest rose and fell too sharply. So close, and yet I knew what would happen if I kept going. Not exactly how it would happen, but what would transpire.
I returned my attention to Trent.
"Forward or back?" I whispered.
He stood motionless for a second or two, then said, "You are reckless and impulsive, and you stop now to gain direction from me?"
I smiled. I guessed it was what he'd been aiming for. He gave a shrug, smiled back, and said, "In there?" nodding towards my bedroom.
"Yeah," I shot back, taking the first step towards where I could access my stash.
Just as Trent muttered, "Of course, it's in there," in a completely put-upon tone.
I ignored him, aware he was taking in every inch of my most private space. Despite the fact that Wang Chao and multiple drones had probably scoured the room, I felt more naked with Trent looking at it, cataloguing it, filing and labelling it, than I had with the knowledge a platoon had been in here.
I slipped my hand around the back of my dresser and depressed a button hidden under the bottom edge. It was difficult to reach, making the tendons in my shoulder stretch almost too far; my face pressing hard against the side of the unit at an angle that let me know Trent was watching my arse. I pretended not to have noticed that too. The dresser was bolted to the floor, so as I pulled my arm out of the tiny gap I checked to make sure it hadn't been disturbed. There were no new scuff marks or upset dust bunnies to indicate anything had been touched.
But still I hesitated before going to the door that led to my stash itself.
"Something wrong?" Trent asked softly, sensing my trepidation.
I shook my head, frown in place, but walked the short distance to the wall behind my bed. I checked the skirting boards. I checked the bed legs, again to make sure no scuff marks appeared on the wooden floor slats. I checked the bedside table, noting the lamp had a crack in the enamel of its base that hadn't been there before.
"You know this is probably a trap, right?" I said into the strained silence.
"You backing out?"
"Streets still clear?" I countered.
A pause, while Si checked, having heard our conversation.
"Clear."
Then there was still time to get out if an alarm was triggered, I told myself.
Sucking in a fortifying breath of air I kicked the baseboard next to the bedside table in exactly the right spot. In the past I'd always rubbed it clean of marks afterwards. I figured I wouldn't have time to now.
A seamless door appeared in the plasterboard and I heard Trent suck in a surprised breath. The apartment, for all intents and purposes, had appeared off-grid. Basic electricity and air-con, that was it. But as the wall became a sunken door, that silently moved back the necessary space to slide to the side out of view, it became obvious I had hidden assets in this house. Things even Shiloh couldn't do.
"I did warn you it was unique," I muttered crossing into a pristine, insulated, soundproofed, and metal encased room.
Trent stepped in behind me and whistled low.
"Impressive," he announced, staring at the shelves of supplies and tech gear I'd amassed.
I opened my mouth to say something clever when the door behind us swished closed with an audible whum
p. We both spun towards it.
"Was it supposed to do that?" Trent asked.
Just as Wang Chao's voice sounded out welcoming me home.
Chapter 11
Have You Been A Model Citizen Today?
Trent
"Toétèi, I knew you'd come home." Cardinal Chew-wen's voice sounded creepy in the now too small space of Lena's secret stash room.
I searched for the speakers, but couldn't see where they were hidden. It seemed as though he was everywhere, making the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
Lena didn't muck about. Recovering quickly from her initial shock, she tested the door, pressing on hidden pressure points, running her fingers along the edge of the seamless frame as the Cardinal continued his speech unperturbed.
I wondered if he had installed cameras, but like the speakers I couldn't pick them out.
"This is your home, isn't it, Selena?" he asked, not waiting for an answer.
Selena pulled out a knife and started slicing through the metal sheet that made the wall beside the space where the door had been moments before. Going for the interface, no doubt. I couldn't help her, so I turned my attention to the room and its treasures. And, fuck me, they were treasures. Decoders, old school PDA's and tablets, modern vid-screens and high end tech gear that even we'd not had before the base at Tehteh had been destroyed. The woman was a walking, talking anomaly. How did an Elite even know what this equipment was used for?
"More so than your Parnell home," Chew-wen droned on. I offered a finger flip-off over my shoulder, but he didn't make a comment. My guess, no cameras. But as Lena hadn't spoken yet, I wasn't ruling out microphones.
I found a black, multi-purpose duffel bag at the side of the room and started throwing in items randomly, stopping briefly to admire one or another of Lena's little magical toys, and then hurriedly grabbing the next shining object further along. I had the bag full of gadgets and several stacks of her credit horde by the time Lena realised she couldn't hack us out of here.
I watched as her shoulders drooped and she let a little sigh out and then turned to look at me.
"I always wondered where you went all those late nights at the Palace. I tried to follow you once," Chew-wen said. "I fell off the side of the building into a topiary tree, cursing your adventurous streak and inhuman balance from here to kingdom come."
"Override, Lena Carr, 241386," she said aloud, not looking hopeful her command would work. She held my gaze, as her chest rose and fell too quickly, hands fisted at her sides. She was beautiful standing there, defiance and anger across her pale face.
Lena was no princess despite sometimes acting like one.
"You always managed to slip from my grasp though," Chew-wen doggedly went on. And Lena made a cute growling sound, turning and kicking the now invisible door hard. "But I'm a patient man. I knew my time would come."
"Fuck you," she hissed, in a very un-Elite-like fashion. Bravo!
"What now?" I whispered, despite evidence suggesting no microphones had been placed in here.
"We're trapped. This is a sealed room," she advised.
"I hope you don't mind if I take my time getting to you, Selena," Chew-wen said. "Give you a moment or two to think of all the punishments the Overseers have in store."
"He's on his way," she said, biting her bottom lip and scanning the room for God knows what. "He's lying."
About his delay in retrieving her, yes. I wasn't so sure of the punishments, though. Discipline can be achieved in more ways than just wiping.
"Any weapons in here?" I asked, pulling my cellphone out. The earpiece had gone silent as soon as the door closed, but the cell still had a weak signal. Using it, though, would place me here, in this exact location, if the Overseers cared to check. And considering the street-cams had been angling their way towards us outside, I was guessing they were watching my identity closely by now.
"Some," she said, moving to a part of the room I'd passed over because the boxes were key-code locked.
"Great, blast our way out," I quipped, putting the phone to my ear.
"What's up?" Si said when the line was answered.
"Burn this when I finish," I announced. "We're trapped. No way out. Hidden space off Lena's bedroom. You know what to do." I hung up before he could reply, not that he would have. He'd have been too busy burning the signal, hiding his end of the call. Securing our tech links. I hoped it worked. We'd lost one base already, I wasn't sure we'd survive losing this one.
Even if I despised staying anywhere near Harjeet Kandiyar.
I checked my own weapons. Two knives strapped to my thighs. One gun down the small of my back. And a laser pointer. Surprising what that little bugger can do. The screwdriver and spike were still in the drone outside. I looked up at Lena, noticing a sheen of perspiration across her brow. Her face was paler than it had been before.
"What have you got?" I asked, shouldering the duffel bag, turning it into a makeshift backpack so my arms were free. When I came along side her I noticed her hands were trembling. Like a Serenity dose hit or maybe a withdrawal.
I reached up and cupped her chin, turning her face up to me. Pupils normal and reactive. Not laser beam dosing crash. Then why was she shaking, sweating and breathing like she was running out of air?
Oh.
"Hey. We'll get out of here," I offered. "Just take it easy. He's sure as hell not gonna leave us here forever."
"I'm fine," she managed, anything but fine right now. Who knew? The sky-high somersaulting cat-burglar had a fear of closed spaces.
I smiled.
"You know, I could take your mind off things. If you'd like," I offered, quite chivalrously, I thought.
She arched her eyebrow, pulled out a laser gun that had to be latest issue and fired it up. The sound of the electronic buzz and whine getting higher in pitch made me sweat a little. Not that she was pointing it at me, but her hands were fucking shaking.
"You OK with that?" I asked, taking a pansy-arsed step backwards. There was just something about the drone laser guns that left me feeling panicked. I'd never admit it to anyone. Not even Si. But those things were designed to cause maximum harm in the most coldly efficient manner. A gun firing a bullet makes you feel. The loud bang, the recoil of the weapon, the smell of burned primer.
A laser is just a light. That can sever a head from your shoulders with a simple flick of a mechanical wrist.
"Yeah," she said, smiling for the first time since we'd been trapped in here. It was entirely too wicked. I liked it. "You?"
"Yeah," I managed. "Peachy." Her smile widened.
And then she turned to the space in the wall where the door had been.
"Ready?" she asked, like some gun-slinging gangster on a vid-screen.
"Fire away," I offered, discretely covering my ears when she wasn't looking.
She fired once. Nothing but a smoky mark on the shining metal encased door.
She fired again. The smell of burned wood and melting metal met my nose, hazy tendrils of smoke twirled up towards the ceiling. I glanced around; was there any ventilation in here?
A third fire and this time she held the trigger down, blasting the fuck out of the door and making the entire room a toxic cesspit of fumes. I choked back a cough, crouched down to try and find cleaner air, and waited for the laser to stop.
The sound was deafening. The whine of the electrics inside the gun, the crackle of wood burning, the sizzle of metal melting. Laser guns weren't meant to be fired in this manner. Visions of Zikri doing something similar to this at the Palace flitted through my mind. That hadn't ended well at all.
I swallowed, tasted charred chemicals, then started coughing while trying not to breathe, and not making a very good job of either.
The room spun, my head felt like it was about to explode, and then the entire wall of Lena's safe room crumbled to the ground.
We both stumbled out, gasping for fresher air, legs weak and wobbly, chests heaving and hacking up our lungs onto the
wooden floor. My hand landed on her bed as my knees hit the hard boards and the distant sounds of sirens drifted in from outside.
Fire engines, not the drones. The Cardinals always moved more silently than that. But Lena's little Wáikěiton haven must have had automatic smoke detectors, and the Wánměi Civil Defence Force had been alerted.
Fuck!
"Come on," I said, reaching over and gripping her arm. "Gotta go."
She nodded, but didn't chance speaking, just let me drag her back into the main room.
The smoke was thinner here, but more and more was drifting in from the bedroom, making shadows exist where they wouldn't normally have been. For a second I thought I saw something move, but the swirls of hazy gasses simply shifted and nothing was there.
"You got a back way out?" I said through a bout of coughing.
"Yeah, this way," Lena offered, sounding just as choked up as me. She pulled away, heading towards the kitchen.
And then she screamed.
I ran into the back of her, where she'd come to an abrupt halt, lifting my head to peer over her shoulder with growing dread. The drone from out on the street stood there. Screwdriver gone, but spike still embedded in its head.
No fucking way.
And then it spoke.
"Have you been a model Citizen today?"
Chapter 12
And Then I Saw Him
Lena
For a second I froze. Part of me had expected the drone to appear again, that buzzing that wouldn't quit out on the street, despite Trent having spiked its Shiloh interface, had made me nervous. But still. Coming face to face with a Cardinal drone that should have been, for all intents and purposes, out of action left a chill down my spine.
And then it spoke.
"Have you been a model Citizen today?"
Shiloh. Not the drone's electronic voice. Not even a Cardinal through its speakers. How the hell had its interface survived - recovered? - from that?
"No," Trent replied over my shoulder, gripping my arm and raising the laser gun, his finger over mine on the trigger.
The drone dodged the laser beam and lifted his own and returned fire.
Cardinal, (Citizen Saga, Book 2) Page 7
