by Amy Cross
“He's busy with -”
“Where is he?” I shout. Hurrying forward, I try to force my way through, only to be pushed back until I trip and fall to the ground.
“I tried to stop her,” George Umbolt says as he finally catches up. He's rubbing his jaw, clearly in pain, and he seems a little dazed. “Watch out, she's got a pretty strong right-hook.”
“Where's Harold?” I ask, struggling to my feet. “I want to speak to him now!”
“Harold says that it's best if you leave without any further trouble,” one of the men says calmly. “We don't want any trouble, Asher, but you're out-numbered here.”
“Harold!” I shout, convinced that he'll be able to hear me. “Get out here! Face me!”
I wait, but there's no reply. He's obviously hiding in one of the huts, letting everyone else do his dirty work while he laughs at me. As I stare at the sea of angry faces, I start to realize that I've been played by a master, that in the short period of time since he arrived Harold has managed to push me out of my own town and humiliate me in the process. Sure, my control of Steadfall was hanging by a thread, but I was getting ready to push back. It's hard to believe that I let myself get manipulated so easily.
“This is my town,” I stammer, although I can hear the desperation creeping into my voice. “Steadfall's mine, I started it...”
“We're sorry,” Carly replies, “but this has been building for a while. We're better off without you.”
“Do you really believe that?” I ask her.
She opens her mouth to reply, but then she hesitates. “Well... I mean...”
“Yes,” one of the other men says, and there's a murmur of agreement from several people nearby. “We all know this is for the best. We want you to leave peacefully, Asher, but if you try to force your way back in...”
“Don't make us hurt you,” another voice says. “Just accept that this is over, and walk away.”
Spotting movement at the back of the crowd, I see that Ellis and Joe have returned. I guess they no longer have any reason to stay away, not now that their actions are so well-aligned with the prevailing mood of the town.
“Is it true?” Carly asks, with tears in her eyes. “Asher, did you kill Alison?”
“In self-defence!” I reply.
“Alison was a good person,” Carly continues. “You shouldn't have... I mean... It's kind of hard to believe she'd really want to hurt you.”
“She tried to kill me!”
“Liar!” a voice calls out, and I turn to see Ellis glaring at me. “She's a liar,” he continues. “She attacked Alison for no good reason.”
“It's true,” Joe adds. “I was there.”
“There was talk of letting you stay as an ordinary member of the town,” one of the others tells me, “but we figured you might cause trouble. We've got a lot of plans for how to fortify the town and improve its defenses, so we're going to focus on that and -”
“Defenses against who?” I ask.
“Someone'll attack us eventually,” Carly suggests. “Harold said that the bigger Steadfall gets, the more it'll become a target.”
Staring at her, I realize that they've all fallen for the garbage that Harold has been spewing. I always thought I was pretty good at recognizing people who wanted to manipulate me, but somehow that asshole managed to slip in under the radar and expertly throw me out of my own town. Spotting Leanne and Ben watching from the rear of the crowd, I suddenly feel an overwhelming sense of anger. Finally, unable to hold back any longer, I push past the group and start heading toward town.
“Asher -”
“Steadfall's mine!” I say firmly. “Where's Harold? We'll settle this!”
“Asher!”
I turn as soon as George grabs my shoulder, but this time I'm also grabbed from other directions. I try to fight back, but I'm quickly manhandled away and shoved to the ground. Unable to control myself, I scramble to my feet and try again, only for George to grab my arms and hold me back. When I try to push him away, several other men from the town come and grab my legs, and suddenly something hard hits me on the side of the head. I slump down, slipping quickly into unconsciousness.
When I wake up later, groggy and with a pounding headache, I find that I've been dumped several miles from Steadfall. A small parcel of food has been left next to me, along with an old canopy and a knife, but the message is clear. I've been thrown out of my own town, and I'll be killed if I try to go back.
Chapter Thirty-two
Asher
Rain comes crashing down, filling the evening air with a constant spitting and hissing sound. Having found shelter under a tree, I'm huddled and shivering as I watch the glow of Steadfall just a few hundred meters away. One of the first decisions I made, many years ago, was that a fire should be left burning all night, and that during storms the fire should be protected by a series of canopy-made screens. I thought it was important that the light should keep burning, but now the fire seems to be taunting me, reminding me of the place I've left behind.
Except I haven't left it behind, not really.
I'm going back.
Having spent all day coming up with a plan, and trying to think of alternatives, I've finally faced the truth. I can no more walk away from Steadfall than I can stop breathing.
The key to all of this is Harold, so my next move is obvious. I have to get rid of him, and then I can start to undo all the damage he's caused. He might have isolated me and made the rest of the inhabitants turn against me, but I still have a chance to make them see the truth. People will start to understand that I was right all along, that I had the town's best interests at heart, so long as I'm able to show them that Harold has been manipulating the whole situation. I hate the idea of committing cold-blooded murder, but Harold has to be eliminated. Back in my military training days, I was taught to keep emotion out of decisions, but I'm starting to think that I need to let the emotion flow for a short while, just so I can do what's necessary. Then I'll put my emotional side away again, and focus on moving the town forward.
Figuring that there's no point waiting any longer, I start making my way through the forest. The rain has soaked me before I've managed more than a few steps, but that's fine. If anything, the constant hiss of the storm provides a little extra cover as I creep forward with the knife in my right hand.
Stopping next to another tree, I realize I can just about make out the silhouette of a figure up ahead, although the low evening lift makes it difficult to see properly. Someone has been left on guard duty, no doubt to make sure that I don't try to sneak my way back into town. I wouldn't be surprised if Harold has given orders to kill me on sight, as a means of underlining his power, but there's not a person in Steadfall who I can't take down. Heading between the trees, I start to approach the town from the south, creeping closer and closer to whoever is -
Suddenly a hand grabs me from behind, pulling me back through the darkness.
***
“You're an idiot!” Deckard hisses, as the pitiful fire flickers nearby and casts lights and shadows across his face. “Don't you think they were expecting you to go back? If I hadn't stopped you, you'd be dead by now!”
“Don't underestimate me,” I reply. “You know I can handle myself!”
“You'd be dead!”
I can't help sighing. “I'd have managed!”
He shakes his head, as if he finds me exasperating.
Opening my mouth, I'm about to tell him he's wrong when I realize that he might actually have a point. After all, I didn't actually have a plan. All I had was anger, and maybe a little humiliation too.
“I had to try something,” I mutter finally. “Was I supposed to just walk away?”
We're in a small cave just a mile or so from the town, overlooking the barren and deserted beach. A little further off, a band of bright light burns beneath the rain-lashed sea, serving as a reminder of the vast electrical barrier that keeps us all from trying to leave the island. Beyond that, there's nothing but
darkness, since the island is several hundred miles from the mainland, maybe even further.
“Going back tonight would have been suicide,” Deckard tells me, “and you know it.”
“What would you have done?” I ask.
“You never cease to surprise me,” he continues, crouching down to set more twigs on the fire, which is already better than my effort from last night. “Just when I think you're done making mistakes, you go and find new ones.”
“They threw me out of my own town!”
“You walked right into a trap.”
“Harold manipulated me!”
“I saw that coming from a mile off,” he mutters, before sighing as the fire conspicuously fails to get any stronger. “I don't know if I can keep this going all night.”
“Here,” I reply, kneeling next to him and grabbing a handful of twigs. They're damp, so I squeeze them tight in my fist until they've been broken down and then I toss them into the meager flames. “An increase in the dry surface area should help. They'll burn away faster, but at least they're not damp all the way through.”
He opens his mouth to reply, but the fire is already starting to build just a little.
“Where did you learn that?” he asks cautiously.
“I had some training once,” I reply, “but...”
For a moment, I can't help feeling as if something has changed in my head. Last night I couldn't get a fire burning properly at all, yet now I seem to be an expert. It's as if more and more memories from my time in the military are starting to come back.
“I was trained,” I continue, still trying to make sense of it all. “I was a... From a really early age.”
“So you keep saying,” he continues, “but you never actually admit to the details. Who trained you? Where? Why?” He waits for an answer. “Obviously it was something military. You try to hide it sometimes but -”
“I'm not hiding anything!” I snap, although I immediately regret losing my temper.
“I've seen you in fights,” he adds. “You use just enough skill and precision to win, but no more. You hold back. The other week, when Tomball attacked you, you spent several minutes subduing him but I think you could've dropped him in about two seconds if you'd wanted.” Again he waits for me to say something. “What were you before you came to the island, Asher? Clearly it was something more than the regular military.”
“It's something I don't want to talk about,” I reply. “I think I've opened up enough to people over the past twenty-four hours.”
As I crush more twigs and add them to the fire, I can tell Deckard is still watching me.
“You have walls around your soul,” he says finally, “but Harold was able to get through them. How?”
“It doesn't matter.”
“Of course it does. He obviously pinpointed your weakness.”
Glancing at him, I realize that he's not going to give up until I tell him something. “He has a military background too,” I tell him after a moment. “I guess that might be how he got under my skin so quickly. Even though our minds were routinely wiped when we returned from war, there are things...” I pause as I try to make sense of it all. “There are just things, even forgotten things, that we have in common. We understand each other.”
“Did you fight on the front-line?”
I turn to him.
“I don't know,” I admit finally. “I think so. I mean... Probably.”
“I can see it in your eyes,” he continues. “I've met soldiers before, but none like you. You were trained, and you...” He pauses, watching me as if he's trying to tease the truth from my expression. “I remember hearing about soldiers being sent to fight in the war. I'm talking about the ones who really fought now, the ones who went beyond the frontier, out into the lands that were lost. The government wouldn't even tell the general public who the war was against, they said that information was classified and -”
“They wiped our minds at the end,” I tell him.
“You don't remember the war?”
“All I know is that I survived.”
“But you don't remember any of it?”
“Judging by the dates,” I continue, “I spent a little over three years away on the battlefield. What I did during that time, what I saw, who I fought... It's all gone.” I pause for a moment. “There are little clues, though. Here and there. I find it hard to sleep. Loud noises unsettle me. I have this simmering resentment and anger that just seems to be in my chest for no reason, and...” Another pause, and for a few seconds I feel as if there are tears in my eyes. “I had this friend during training. Her name was Mads. We got on really well, we basically teamed up to make sure we both made it through. For a while, we were inseparable, and we swore we'd stay in touch when it was all over. We were even in the same unit, so we were set to fight shoulder-to-shoulder. Somehow that made the whole thing seem a little less terrifying. After I came back from the war, there was no sign of her. She doesn't exist anymore, and that can only mean one thing. She didn't make it.”
“And you don't remember what might have happened to her?”
I shake my head.
“But?” he adds.
“But what?”
“But there's a reason you're telling me about her now.”
I take a deep breath. “But every time I see someone in pain, someone really suffering, I start thinking about Mads. Something kicks in, deep in my guts. They might have wiped my memory of what happened, but my body somehow has this visceral reaction that it can't forget.”
“So you think you were with her when she died?”
“Of course I was,” I tell him, as I feel tears welling in my eyes. “If I could get just one memory back from my time in the war, I'd want to know what happened to her.”
“Even if -”
“Yes,” I say firmly, before he can finish that sentence. “Whatever it was, I want to know.”
“And is that why you came to the island?” he asks. “Because you couldn't handle the uncertainty?”
“I came to the island to die,” I reply. “The same as most people, I guess. I heard that no-one lasts very long here, and I was too much of a coward to die any other way. Besides, I had no family, no friends, nowhere else to go. But here I am, several years later, somehow surviving. Ironic, huh? I came to the island because I was done with the world, and I ended up establishing and running a small town. I wasn't built for this, I was built for war.” Looking down at the knife on the floor, I can't help imagining how it would feel to slice the blade through Harold's throat. Even if it was the last act of my life, I'd know I was ridding the island of a dangerous man.
“You were engineered, weren't you?” Deckard says after a moment. “I heard rumors about the soldiers they sent to the war. I heard they -”
“Why are you still here?” I ask, interrupting him.
“Don't change the subject.”
“I'm changing it,” I say firmly. “I thought you were going to look for your wife.”
“I am,” he replies, “but not while Steadfall is being run by a maniac. When I left the other day, it was because I wanted to observe from a distance, to see what Harold and his friends are really up to. I was also worried about that sickness that had started to spread.”
“You don't think it's a coincidence that it showed up just as they arrived?”
He shakes his head. “There's something else, too, something about Harold and his friends. I've noticed one particular thing they do every morning, as soon as the sun comes up.”
“What?”
“I'll show you at sunrise,” he continues. “I should warn you, though. Whatever's going on with Harold and the others, I think it's much about much more than just Steadfall.”
Chapter Thirty-three
Asher
“There he is,” Deckard whispers as Ben comes into view up ahead. “Right on cue, just like I promised.”
We're crouched low in the soggy leaves, keeping out of sight as Ben hurries away from Steadfall.
He glances over his shoulder several times, as if he's worried about being followed, before heading over the next ridge. Wherever he's going, he seems to be in a hurry.
“And this happens every morning?” I whisper.
“Every morning. It's not always Ben, sometimes it's Leanne, but one of them always rushes off into the forest.”
“And where do they go?”
He nudges my shoulder. “Follow me. You're in for a shock.”
“Can't you just tell me?”
“I don't think you'd believe me.”
Keeping low as we make our way to the ridge, we quickly see Ben up ahead, getting further and further away. Still making sure we're not spotted, we hurry through the forest until finally Ben stops in the distance. Crouching down behind another ridge of mud, I peer around the side and see that Ben has begun to pull something out of a small gap beneath a tree-root.
“What is it?” I whisper.
“Wait and see,” Deckard replies darkly.
I watch, and after a moment I see that Ben is holding some kind of communication device.
“Where the hell did he get that?” I ask, shocked as I turn to Deckard. “No-one's allowed to bring anything to the island!”
“Unless the rules are different for them.”
I watch for a moment as Ben continues to set up the device.
“Harold, Ben and Leanne aren't like us,” Deckard continues. “I think they're agents of some kind, sent to keep an eye on what's happening here.”
“That's against the rules!”
“So? Did you really think the government would leave the island alone?”
“But they -”
I stop myself just in time. There's no point protesting about the unfairness of the situation, not when it's so clear that Deckard is right. Deep in my gut, however, I feel a grinding sense of anger as I realize that everything I was told about the island has turned out to be a lie. We haven't been left alone out here at all.
