by Emma Newman
It was dark when they assembled: the children, Luthor, and Jay. They met at the end of the street in which Shannon had been found, the end farthest from the heart of Jay’s territory but still within sight of it.
Both Jay and Luthor arrived prepared for conflict, the Hunter in full armour. Erin was also armoured, on her father’s insistence. They were very close to true no man’s land, where no protection whatsoever existed against wild beasts and scavengers, some of the human variety.
They waited in an uncomfortable silence, the moon only partially full. It cast enough light in the breaks between clouds to outline in silver Jay’s thumbs, hooked over the handles of his twin blades, and the tight grip of Luthor’s fist around the riser of his longbow.
The creak of un-oiled hinges alerted them to the doctor’s arrival. Before any misunderstandings could occur, Zane rushed to his father when he emerged from the shadows down the street. He was relieved to see how much better his father looked than the night they were last together. Their embrace was brief and tight as Shannon was clearly pressed for time once more.
“How long do you have?” Zane asked as he drew his father into the circle.
“A few minutes.”
“Then tell us sommat first,” Jay said in that voice, the one that always made Zane nervous. “Why should we trust you? What’s in this for you?”
“I can’t make you trust me,” Shannon replied. “That’s impossible in the time we have now. But I can tell you that I have everything to gain from the end of Hex. My freedom, my life, and the same for Miri and my son.”
Luthor snorted. “You walked out just now freely enough.”
“Not without huge risk,” Shannon said patiently. “If they realise I’m gone, there will be repercussions.”
“We don’t have time to debate whether he’s trustworthy or not,” Titus spoke up. “I know he’s sincere and that’s enough for me.”
“It may be enough for you,” Luthor began but Erin touched his arm to interrupt him.
“Titus is good at this sort of thing,” she said quietly. Seeing Luthor’s anger at Erin’s intervention, Titus spoke quickly to divert his attention. “Where is Hex based and how do we get in?”
Shannon’s eyebrows shot up. “You want to get into Hex?”
Jay, Luthor, and Titus nodded in synchrony. “It’s the only way to be sure we got ’em,” Jay explained. “Gotta get right in their patch and trash it. If we don’t, they’ll just keep doing what they’re doin’ to the other kids down there. How many other kids are there?”
“How many Guardians are there?” Luthor asked before Shannon could reply.
“Wait,” he held up his hands. “Too many questions. Let’s look at this in some kind of order.”
Titus nodded at that. “Tell us where they are, that’s a good place to start.”
“Hex is contained in several old underground tunnels, predominantly the Piccadilly and Jubilee Lines,” Shannon replied. “They’re the deepest lines and the easiest to defend. The government was building underground bunkers extending from Westminster adjacent to the Jubilee Line for a long time before It happened.”
“Them funny clothes they wear,” Jay spoke up, “That’s to stop ’em dyin’, right?” Shannon nodded. “So do they wear ’em all the time?”
“No,” Shannon replied. “All entrances to Hex are hermetically sealed, with rigorous decontamination procedures for any Guardians or scientists who come up to the surface.”
“What does that mean?” Erin asked.
“That the doors are sealed so tight that air can’t get through,” Shannon explained. “When people come up here, they get washed lots so the bad stuff in the air doesn’t stick to them.”
“They do that to you?” Luthor asked but Shannon shook his head.
“No, I don’t get to go into Hex proper. They keep me in the same spoke as the children. We all have an immunity to the virus, so they don’t have to follow such strict measures for us, and that saves a lot of electricity, water, and chemicals.”
“To keep the air clean, supply their suits with oxygen, those guns they use, that all takes electricity,” Luthor commented. “Where do they get it from?”
“Green Park,” Shannon replied. “It’s been cleared in the centre and is full of solar panels and wind turbines. All renewable sources, all out of sight from the streets around it. I know where the back-up generators are too.”
All the assembled, save Luthor, and to a lesser extent Titus, looked somewhat blank at this discussion.
“The power from Green Park also runs Hex, I take it?” Luthor continued and Shannon nodded again.
“Air filtration, purification and recycling, waste disposal, door seals, everything,” he elaborated. “It’s an amazing system. Entirely self-sufficient and sealed from the outside world.”
“The people in Hex,” Titus was frowning, “They can’t live up here because the virus would kill them … and the electricity from Green Park stops the bad air getting in … so it seems there’s only one thing to do.”
Luthor was nodding as he spoke, having come to the same conclusion. “Destroy the power supply so the door seals will fail and the rest takes care of itself.”
Shannon nodded slowly. “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”
“Hang on, them Giants–I mean the Guardians–they’ll still be able to breathe up ’ere,” Jay interjected.
“We pick them off with arrows,” Luthor replied. “The suits only need to be pierced once for them to die quickly.”
“If you want to do this, tonight is perfect,” Shannon advised. “Radley is collecting supplies and samples from St Mary’s hospital and they’ve doubled the Guardians looking after her because of what happened with Lyssa.”
“Excellent, then it should be tonight,” Luthor said. “The Red Lady is keen for the Unders to be removed as a threat and has placed all of our Hunters under my command. I will post our best archers at various high points, and when the seals fail –”
“Wait!” Zane cried, and the group turned to him, noticing for the first time the look of total horror on his face. “If we break the door seals, won’t everyone in Hex die?”
Titus blinked at him. “Yes. That’s the point.”
Zane’s jaw was slack. “But … but that’s terrible. How many people live there?”
When his son’s eyes fell on him, Shannon’s face showed the first signs of guilt. “About forty or so.”
“Zane, they’re monsters!” Erin exclaimed. “They took Lyssa, and they put horrible black stuff in children and cut them and –”
“Do all of the people in Hex do that?” Zane pressed his father, and watched him shake his head. “Then we can’t do this. We can’t kill them all. In fact, we shouldn’t try to kill anyone–we should try to talk to them.”
“Are you mad?” Jay snorted. “They don’t talk, they shoot lightning! Remember?” He lifted his shirt to reveal the lurid scarring left by the burn on his torso. “They didn’t talk when they did this. They just shot me, killed my Boys and nicked Titus’ sister. You forgot all that?!”
“No, of course not,” Zane sighed. “But can’t we find a way to try to talk to them? Dr Radley–the one that Titus swapped for Lyssa–she didn’t seem horrible or violent. How do we know that there aren’t other nice people down there too?”
“We do not have time for this,” Luthor growled. “It’s irrelevant.”
“It’s not!” Zane retorted. “Titus, when we first met, you thought that me and Mum were bad people–you thought everyone was bad. But now you have us as friends, and you know people in gangs and that they aren’t as bad as you thought either.”
“So what?” Erin asked, before Titus could reply.
“So, it could be the same with the Unders!” Zane exclaimed.
Titus stared down at the ground, considering his argument. He was swayed by it for a few moments, but the doubts slowly crept back in.
“Zane, you cannot pick and choose who of them will live an
d who will die,” Luthor stated. “This is a war.”
“I see where you’re coming from, son,” Shannon said softly, “But if you want to stop what they are doing to the children, what they are forcing me to do, then you have to accept that others will die. To shut them down, we have to shut all of it down. All of it.”
“But why do they do those things to the boys?” Zane asked, shaking with tension.
“Cos they’re sick in the ’ead,” Jay muttered.
“They’re trying to find a cure,” Shannon replied. “And they think that it’s right to get that cure, no matter what the cost.”
“But … but what if we found that cure!” Zane exclaimed. “What if they didn’t have to do that anymore? Then they could be our friends!”
“Shit, Zane, not everyone in the world can be your friend!” Jay yelled and the boy fell silent. “We gotta go in and take ’em down. Else we’ll never be safe. Never. I gotta protect my Boys, and I gotta get the others that are down there out, and if some people die, well then fine. If they’re the kind of people that let that kind of thing happen and don’t say nuffin’ against it, then they deserve it anyway.”
“They’ve kept us apart all your life, Zane,” Shannon urged. “They said they would kill you and Miri if I didn’t do what I was told. These aren’t the kind of people that care about making friends.”
Zane turned to Titus, searching his friend’s face for any signs of solidarity. Titus looked up from the ground, feeling that gaze, as a flash of Squeak’s memories pulsed through him. In the next moment a flash of Lyssa’s scarred body, the way she could barely walk, and the doubts were swept away like leaves by winter gales. His thumb traced the cut in his palm. He pressed it, feeling the sting.
“This is the only way,” he stated coldly.
Crushed, Zane looked from Titus to his father and back again. “I can’t do this,” he said, eyes brimming with tears. “I swore an oath to save people, not kill them.”
He spun on his heels and ran back towards Jay’s territory, the group watching him go. Shannon took a step after him but Luthor grabbed his shoulder. “Let him run back to his mother,” he said. “We need to plan and move tonight.”
Titus watched Zane run around the corner. “I’m sorry, Zane,” he whispered beneath his breath. “But I swore an oath too.”
Chapter 32
THE EXPERIMENT
Three streets away, halfway between Jay’s territory and the garden, Zane stopped and slumped against a wall, shaking.
“This is wrong, this is wrong,” he muttered, covering his face with grimy hands and crying into them. He felt helpless and distraught; one moment he resolved to run to his mother and ask her for help, the next he almost went back to the others to try once more to persuade them to find another way.
Another way.
A thought struck him, one of those thoughts that is so big, so life-changing that even though it’s terrifying it won’t let go. It was so big that it filled him, making him drop his hands to his sides and his heart thud deep in him like a pestle against the mortar of his chest. He tried to forget it, but that was impossible. He tried to change it, to wriggle away from it, but he knew there was only one thing to do.
“I’ll show the Unders there’s another way,” he whispered to the moon. “I’ll show them why they don’t need to hurt the children any more. Then no-one else will have to die.”
Then he was running, his body moving faster than his fear could catch up. He knew where Radley was, he’d heard his father say it. If he could find her and show her that he could heal people, then maybe together they could find a cure to the disease. If they could find a cure, then the experiments would stop and the threat would be gone. His imagination laid tracks into the future that carried him towards a peace for everyone that would begin tonight: Radley would tell Hex to stop the experiments and release the children, and he would find the others and stop them before they got to Green Park. It would take time for Luthor to gather the Hunters and get them into position, plenty of time for him to convince Radley and stop all of this.
The hospital wasn’t far out of Jay’s territory, and he had seen it marked on the map that tracked all of the Giant sightings. Zane had never been out at night alone, yet his mind didn’t have time to be frightened.
As he sprinted down shadow-filled alleyways, he remembered how frightened he’d been that night at the hospital with Dev. How he’d thought it was a terrible Giant with huge metal feet that would crush him. And all along it had been a woman in strange clothes, just as frightened as he had been.
The hospital came into sight and he slowed down, the fear now slamming into him from behind and making him shiver. He almost turned back, but then he thought of all of the people in the Unders dying and it kept him moving forward. He crouched down and kept in the shadows, watching for any signs of the scientist.
He saw a flash of light from a second floor window that was instantly recognisable: Radley’s torch. From the way it moved, it looked like she was coming down a stairwell with long windows. He stopped and hunkered down, waiting for her to emerge, biting his teeth hard together to stop them chattering.
It seemed like an eternity until she came out, the familiar metal clang of her boots ricocheting off the nearby buildings. She had a case in her hand, like before, and he could hear the wheeze and click of the oxygen being drawn in.
She moved down the street, walking slowly and carefully around the rusting wrecks, taking care not to get snagged on anything. Zane stayed down as long as he could bear, listening carefully for Guardians, but none could be seen. He waited until she was a matter of metres away, took a deep breath, and stepped out into her path.
She yelped in surprise, dropping the case, and in moments black-clad figures materialised as if from the night air itself. They closed around Zane as he spread his hands in front of himself, trying to appear as non-threatening as he could.
“Dr Radley!” he said hurriedly, the fear making his voice crack. “I’m Zane. I want to talk. I won’t hurt you.”
He could hear the wheeze and click more rapidly now, her eyes wide as they peered through the glass visor at him.
“Down on the ground!” one of the Guardians yelled. “Down on the ground now!”
“Please, let me talk to you!” Zane begged, painfully aware of the guns being pointed at him.
Radley studied him for a moment and then said, “Hold on, hold on, don’t shoot him. He’s not here for a fight.”
“Check the area, secure it,” said the one who had yelled at Zane, and half of the Guardians broke away, fanning out with bright torches. Never taking his eyes off Zane, he said, “Keep your hands out in front of you, don’t move.”
“I’m by myself,” Zane said in a quavering voice. “I wanted to speak to you.”
“How did you know I was here?” she asked, beginning to look more intrigued than terrified.
“It doesn’t matter,” Zane answered, looking at the lightning guns trained on him. “What matters is that I think I can help you to find a cure to the disease that killed everyone.”
Her surprise was evident, even though he couldn’t see all of her face. “Well, I wasn’t expecting that,” she commented.
“I know about the experiments you do on the children, and I thought that if we found a cure, you wouldn’t have to do that anymore, and then we could stop being afraid of each other.”
There was an awkward pause. “Children?” Radley finally asked, and then smiled and said, “Oh! You mean the orphans! The carriers. You must mean the children who are carriers that they take care of in one of the spokes.”
Zane swallowed, his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth. “You don’t know about what they do to them?”
Radley frowned. “You make it sound like they do something sinister there. I’m sure they don’t.” Zane didn’t argue. “Did you say your name was Zane?”
Zane nodded.
“Look, Zane, I don’t have a long time on my air left. T
ell me something I can take back to Hex, something I can use to discuss this with them.”
“We can take him with us,” the Guardian said. “Secure him outside of the clean area, in the spoke with the carriers.”
“No!” Zane and Radley said in unison.
“No,” repeated Radley. “He came here to talk, he hasn’t threatened me or any of you, so back off. He’s just a boy for God’s sake.”
Zane chewed his lip, watching the exchange. He couldn’t think of anything that he could tell her that she would believe, let alone anyone in Hex. Now he was here, talking to her, the idea he’d had before seemed significantly less plausible. But now he was committed.
She looked back at him. “Well? What can you tell me that Hex won’t know about the virus already?”
“It isn’t about the virus,” Zane began, desperately trying to think of how to say what he needed to. “It’s … it’s about me. I can heal people, I can make them better, and maybe, I could heal people with the virus.”
She rolled her eyes. “Look, this isn’t wrapping a doc leaf on a sting. What do you know about medicine?”
“Um, quite a bit actually,” he replied in a small voice. “More than you might think. And I didn’t mean that I do first aid. I mean that I heal people … in a …” Erin suddenly came to his mind and he said, “In a weird way.”
She sighed and looked at the guardian. “Let’s go.”
“Wait!” Zane shouted. “I’ll prove it! Shine the light onto my hand.” When a torch was trained on his hand, he moved it slowly towards the nearest car. With a swift downwards thrust, he sliced his palm open on a jagged piece of metal, making Radley gasp. “I know this looks weird,” Zane said, wincing, “But please, please let me show you why I’m doing this.”
He held his bleeding hand in front of him, and in the yellow light of the torch they all watched as Zane dabbed away some of the blood with his sleeve to reveal the wound. More blood began to seep out, but then the gashed skin began to close and seal itself in an impossible way.
