Scavenger Alliance

by Janet Edwards

  “I don’t think they do,” I said vaguely. “Wall threw himself to the ground too, which meant he didn’t recognize what type of grenade it was either.”

  “That’s interesting. Cage must have found a cache of gas grenades somewhere and …” Donnell’s voice trailed off and he frowned at me. “You aren’t listening to me, are you?”

  “I’m worried about the off-worlders,” I said. “Can we check on them now?”

  “What about the gas in the corridor?”

  “Most of it was at this end, and it seems to have cleared now. I can hold my breath going through, and take a gulp of air when I’m at the far end to make sure it’s safe. If it’s all right, then you can come and join me.”

  He nodded. “And if you have problems, I can run in and carry you out.”

  Donnell waited outside the fire doors while I sprinted along the corridor and stopped outside the door of the off-worlders’ room. I took several cautious breaths before beckoning to Donnell to join me.

  As soon as Donnell was at my side, I opened the door and we both went in. As I closed the door behind me, there was a soft sigh by my left ear. I turned and saw Nadira dropping a heavy metal bar onto the empty bed next to her.

  “The sound of gunshots woke me up, Blaze,” she said. “What’s been happening out there, and why have you been gone so long?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Cage came to attack us. He’s gone now, but there was gas in the corridor so I had to wait for it to clear.”

  I hurried across to Tad, and groaned as I saw his flushed face. His breathing had already worsened in the short time I’d been away. A quick look at Phoenix, still valiantly fighting for her life but losing the battle, decided me. Tad was solidly unconscious, but I had to find a way to get through to him. Nadira didn’t know who Tad was, or that he was webbed, and she might try to stop me doing this, so …

  “Nadira, where did you put the new medicine list?” I asked.

  “The original is in the hospital office,” she said, “but we’ve made ten copies and one of them is here in the …”

  “I need the original for this,” I interrupted. “Can you get it for me please? It’s perfectly safe outside now, though you’d better hold your breath until you’re through the fire doors.”

  Nadira gave a last anxious look at Phoenix before going out of the door. I instantly leant over Tad.

  “Tad! Wake up! I have to talk to you.”

  There was no response at all.

  “He looks too far gone to talk, Blaze,” said Donnell, in a gentle, sympathetic voice. “I’m afraid we won’t be trading either him or Phoenix for safe passage past Fence. I don’t know how the citizens will react to us just returning Braden, but …”

  His sentence trailed off into nothing, because I’d just grabbed both of Tad’s shoulders and was shaking him. “Tad, wake up!” I yelled.

  “I haven’t done any nursing myself,” said Donnell, “but I don’t think that’s going to help the boy.”

  I ignored him. “Tad, if you don’t wake up right now then you and Phoenix are both going to die.”

  There was a faint movement of Tad’s lips, but it stopped again. I dropped him back on the pillows and slapped his face. Donnell started saying something, but stopped when I slapped Tad for the second time. Tad’s eyes finally opened, and he looked at me with a bewildered, reproachful face.

  “Wha …?” he gasped.

  “Tad, you and Phoenix are dying,” I said urgently. “You have to contact the doctor at America Off-world again. Tell her some people have breathing complications with winter fever. It begins with a whistling sound when they breathe, then they start struggling for air and finally die. Send her the list of medicines we brought back from the storage facility. Ask her what we should use.”

  I waited. Tad wasn’t saying anything. His eyes were still open but had a vacant look to them.

  “Tad, have you contacted the doctor?” I demanded.

  “Ye …”

  “Tell her that Phoenix will be dead within the next four hours,” I said. “You’ll die within eight hours.”

  There was a long wait. I reminded myself that the doctor had to read the message and decide what to do before replying. Tad’s eyelids drooped closed, but I shook his shoulders and they opened again.

  More waiting. Had the doctor read the message? Was she still asleep or did an incoming urgent message have a way of waking her up? Had Tad actually managed to send a message at all in his current state?

  “Mir …” Tad gasped.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Mir … ror.”

  A mirror? Why would he want a mirror? I looked round, saw a small mirror hanging on the wall, went to grab it and held it in front of Tad. “This?”

  Tad managed a faint nod. “Doctor see patient.”

  Now I understood. Tad was looking in the mirror, seeing his own face, and sending that image to the doctor. Was he sending sound too, so she could hear his breathing?

  Tad started talking again, but I couldn’t make any sense of the mangled syllables. He must be trying to say the name of a medicine. I dropped the mirror, snatched a pencil and paper from the top of the cupboard, and thrust them into his hands.

  “Write it down.”

  He was trying to sit up. I put my arm round him to help, and watched anxiously as he wrote an unintelligibly technical word, followed by something I did understand. I frowned. “Why does Phoenix get more tablets than you?”

  “Kill or cure.” Tad let go of the pencil and paper, then flopped back onto his pillow. “My fault.”

  The door opened, and Nadira brought a sheaf of papers across to me. I searched through them, looking for the medicine name that Tad had written down. I was panicking, thinking it wasn’t there and Tad had been lost in winter fever dreams when he wrote it, then I found it on the last page. The notes against it said it was for breathing problems. The dose there was lower than Tad had written, but he’d already explained why the doctor had suggested higher doses. This was kill or cure for both him and Phoenix.

  “We need this one.” I stabbed a finger at the name on the list. “Is it on the top floor of the Resistance wing?”

  “We’ve kept one box of each medicine locked up here in Sanctuary,” said Nadira. “I’ll get it.”

  She hurried off again, and there was a moment of silence before Donnell spoke. “I realize this isn’t a good time for questions, but … Tad just exchanged messages with a doctor at America Off-world?”

  “Yes,” I said, “but don’t worry. Tad hasn’t said anything to the people at America Off-world about the Resistance or the divisions. He’s been letting them think he’s with a group of stubborn citizens who stayed in New York.”

  “That’s nice of him,” said Donnell, in a strained voice.

  I rubbed my forehead. “I only found out he could send messages when we were going to the storage facility. Tad was exchanging messages with the doctor then, getting her to help fix my arm. I meant to tell you about it earlier, but I completely forgot. I know that sounds ridiculous, but what with Cage, and the gun, and the off-worlders being so sick …”

  Donnell nodded. “I know you’ve been frantic with worry about the boy.”

  We sat in silence until Nadira came back, and then I had to shake Tad awake again to give him the new tablets. Getting the medicine into Phoenix was harder. She was much too far gone to swallow tablets, so we had to grind them into a powder and mix them with water for her to drink.

  After that was done, I went back to the routine of bathing hot flushed faces and listening to struggling breaths. There was nothing else I could do to help Tad or Phoenix now.

  As I moved between the beds, I was aware of the sun rising outside the window, its brightness lifting above the skyline of abandoned New York. This treatment would either kill or cure Tad and Phoenix. I would find out which by the time the sun set again tonight.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Four hours later, I was alone in the hospital
room with the three off-worlders. Nadira had been called away to help with an emergency, which was a good thing in the circumstances. Tad had just gasped out the doctor’s instructions to me, and I’d written them down so I couldn’t make a mistake. I had the scalpel and the piece of tubing lying ready on the cupboard next to Phoenix’s bed. Now I stared into the mirror, and tried to ignore the sound of agonized breathing coming from beside me as I studied my own neck.

  I prodded my windpipe cautiously. I could feel the indentation between two bulges that had to be the right spot. I just had to find exactly the same spot on Phoenix’s neck, make a small horizontal cut, and insert the tube so she could keep breathing until the medicine had time to help her.

  This is perfectly simple, I told myself, but my hand was still shaking as I picked up the scalpel. Phoenix was dying anyway, and the doctor said this was the last hope of saving her life, but I was still terrified of making a mistake and killing her.

  “You’re sure I have to do this, Tad?” I asked.

  There was no reply. I turned to look at him and saw his eyes were closed. “Tad?” I called in a louder voice.

  “Key component,” he muttered. “She’s the key component, but I can’t get her to Zeus.”

  I stared at him in bewilderment, trying to make sense of that, before realizing he was lost in the delirium of winter fever. That meant he couldn’t relay messages from the doctor any longer. I’d have to do this alone.

  A horrible thought occurred to me. Tad was definitely delirious now. Had he been delirious fifteen minutes ago too? Were the instructions he’d gasped out, and I’d painstakingly written down, really coming from a doctor at America Off-world, or were they just fever inspired ramblings?

  I went over to where Braden was tossing and turning in his sleep, knelt beside him, and called into his ear. “Braden! Wake up.”

  His eyes flickered open.

  “Tad says I have to give Phoenix an emergency trache … something. Cut into her neck to help her breathe. Do you know how to do this operation?”

  Braden looked appalled and shook his head. “I’m a pilot, not a doctor.”

  I sighed and stood up. I’d nothing but instinct to help me decide what to do here. I’d happily gamble my own life on Tad being right, but this was Phoenix’s life not mine. On the other hand, my bitter experience of the winter fever told me that Phoenix’s life probably only had minutes to run.

  I was doing the same thing as Luther had done on the roof. Standing in helpless indecision while a life was being taken away. I took a tighter grip on the scalpel with my right hand, marched up to Phoenix’s bedside, and used the fingers of my left hand to search for the right spot on her windpipe.

  Then I realized I couldn’t hear her breathing any longer. For a dreadful moment, I thought I’d left things too late, and Phoenix was already dead, then I saw her chest was still rising and falling. She was getting air without the desperate struggle now.

  The medicine had started to work! I watched Phoenix closely, counting each breath she took. One. Two. Ten. Twenty. When I reached a hundred, I put the scalpel back on the cupboard, sat on the chair next to it, and let my head fall into my hands. This time my shaking wasn’t from panic, but relief at my last minute reprieve.

  I might have sat there for as long as an hour, watching Phoenix breathe, listening to the occasional meaningless fragments of sentences from Tad, and noting the way Braden’s restless turning in his sleep grew gradually quieter. Finally, Donnell and Nadira came into the room. Nadira hurried to look at Phoenix and gave a nod of satisfaction, while Donnell just glanced at the off-worlders before beckoning to me.

  “I need you for a moment, Blaze.”

  I frowned, stood up, and followed him out of the door. “What’s wrong?”

  He closed the door behind us before speaking. “Cage killed someone on his way out of the building. I thought I’d wait and see if Nadira could save her life before telling you, but the wound was too deep and too close to the heart.”

  It was a woman that had died, but Donnell hadn’t said her name yet. I forced out a single word question. “Hannah?”

  “No. Hannah was safe in the Manhattan wing, but Marsha was asleep in the bow and knife storage room off Reception. Cage must have gone in there to get a bow and some arrows, and stabbed Marsha when she tried to stop him. The door wasn’t forced, and I can’t believe Marsha let Cage in, so he must have somehow got hold of a key.”

  Marsha was dead. I felt the same shocked disbelief as when Kasim had died. I’d admired Marsha more than liked her, but she’d been one of the central figures in the alliance, and now she was gone. “Can I see her?”

  Donnell led the way down the corridor and along to another hospital room. It was empty apart from the body lying on the bed. In death, Marsha seemed somehow much smaller, her face unfamiliar without its habitual smile.

  I looked down at her in mournful silence. The door to her room had been reinforced. Marsha had trusted in its strength to keep her safe, and it had. It was the lock that had failed to protect her. If she’d had eight bolts on that door as well as the lock, she’d be alive now.

  I was so focused on Marsha that it was a minute or two before I saw the knife lying on the nearby cupboard. I noticed the grim red stains on the blade first – Marsha’s blood – and then the tag painted on the knife hilt.

  Cage hadn’t gone into that room just to get a bow and arrows, but to take revenge on Marsha as well. He must have got a key to her room long ago. He’d probably been carrying it round with him for years, trying to work out a way to kill her without bringing suspicion down on himself.

  He’d never managed to do that, never come up with a convincing accident that could happen to her locked up alone in her room, but today he’d been fleeing the building with nothing left to lose except his life. He’d stopped to kill Marsha, and he’d savoured his vengeance to the full. He could have used a random knife to kill Marsha in her sleep, but he’d spent valuable extra seconds finding his own knife belt on her shelves so he could stab her with this specific knife.

  “Cage did this because of the tag Marsha painted on his knife belt,” I said. “The tag that showed the scar my teeth left on his arm.”

  “I expect that’s true,” said Donnell. “People have been laughing at Cage for years because of that tag. He likes laughing at other people, but he doesn’t like being targeted himself.”

  While I’d been hesitating to help Phoenix, panicking that I might cause her death, another person had been dying because of me. For six years, I’d been agonizingly careful not to say this word to Donnell, but now it slipped out. “This is my fault, Father.”

  “This was Marsha’s fault,” said Donnell. “She liked the power the knife tags gave her, and chose to humiliate some dangerous people. Someone was bound to hit back in the end.”

  “It’s my fault,” I repeated. “If I’d shot Cage the second he was in range, if I’d got through that fire door faster, or followed him myself instead of calling for help, then Marsha could still be alive.”

  “If you’d done things differently, Blaze, then Marsha might have lived but other people could have died instead. You, me, Wall, Tad, Hannah.”

  Donnell hugged me close to him. “I know this is hard, because I’ve been through it a dozen times myself, but you can’t let yourself obsess over what happened to Marsha. As my deputy and the future leader of this alliance, you have to do the best you can for your people, while accepting that your decisions won’t be perfect because no human being is infallible.”

  I took a step backwards and stared at him. “You can’t make me your deputy. There’s a big difference between getting two division leaders to accept your daughter as a token female officer, and getting three division leaders to agree to her being the future alliance leader.”

  “I’ve been planning to give you that gun for over six years,” said Donnell. “I’d no idea what would happen after that. I certainly never expected us to be in the situation where you
were already an officer when I gave it to you.”

  He paused. “For eighteen years, only myself and my deputy have had Armed Agent weapons. Now you’re an officer and the deputy position is vacant. The minute my officers saw you with that gun on your arm, they assumed I’d chosen you as my deputy. As soon as the rest of the alliance find out you’re Armed, they’ll be thinking the same thing.”

  “Then you have to reassure them by making one of your other officers your deputy, at least for a while.”

  “Who should I choose? Machico refuses the job. Everyone has watched Weston and Vijay doing their comedy routines for nearly two decades now, so they won’t take either of them seriously as my deputy. Julien claims to be a reformed character, but I won’t be able to trust him with anything important until he proves he’s overcome his problems with alcohol. As for Luther, I just had to physically drag the boy out of Reception because he was throwing a tantrum in front of half the alliance.”

  “You choose Aaron, of course.”

  Donnell smiled. “Aaron wants you to be my deputy and future leader, not him. He talked to me about this when we were heading upriver on the Spirit of New York. He’s worried about what sort of future his daughter will have, and eager to get the leadership succession settled. He thinks he could make you a reliable deputy at some time in the future, but he wouldn’t be a good leader himself.”

  “You can’t afford to stir up trouble now. You need to focus all your efforts on persuading people to leave New York.”

  Donnell shrugged. “I don’t think suggesting you as deputy leader will cause as much trouble as you think. Aaron, Julien and Luther all suffered a testing period of ritual ridicule from the division men when they became officers, but you’ve barely had an out of place comment.”

  “The division men haven’t had the chance to say anything to me since I became an officer.”

  “They didn’t have a chance to say anything before you went upriver, but you’ve walked through Reception a dozen times in the last two days. There’ve been no insults, not even a joking question about why you’re continually carrying a blanket or coat over your arm. Haven’t you noticed that and worked out why?”