by Frankie Rose
I’m falling.
And then the ship starts firing.
******
Sky, window, concrete, blood…my heart beating furiously in my ears. Dum, dum, dum, dum, dum! When small puffs of dust begin to explode from the wall in front of me as fall, it becomes clear that it’s not my heart after all. It’s a gun firing multiple rounds, so fast I can barely differentiate between the impact sounds.
“Ah! Ahh!” I can’t pull my hands down to cover my head. The bullets continue to rain down, zipping closer and closer as I descend. Sparks in yellow and orange spit furiously from the guide rail, the friction causing the metal to glow.
Sky, window, concrete, blood.
Another three seconds. I can make it another three seconds. I have to. The hum of the Sanctuary’s ship turns to a growl as the vessel drops after me, guns still trained on me. Trained to kill. My father wanted me back, to fight for him in the arena again, but now it seems as though he’ll be content with wiping me off the face of the planet. My legs scissor and kick wildly; the ground must be coming up soon.
Sky, window, concrete, blood…
And then it happens. My body slows so quickly that it feels like I’m being jerked upwards, back the way I came. The compression in the hydraulics may as well be non-existent. The force of the slowing measure is so powerful that it feels like I just hit the concrete anyway. I didn’t, though. The bracket on the guide rail squeals in protest as metal grinds against metal, and then my feet are hitting the ground so hard that my shinbones feel like they have exploded. I collapse, gasping in an agonised breath.
Thuk, thuk, thuk.
Bullets plummet into the rotten blacktop around me, sending sprays of black debris up in their wake. One lands a mere two inches from my face.
“Damn it!” I’ve got to move. And quickly. I untangle my arms from the strapping—my wrists are bleeding—and I roll just in time to avoid another hail of gunfire. I send the bracket shooting back up the guide rail, and then I’m weaving my way toward my goal; not the Det, but the building that stands next to it. The one that Luke entered in order to watch the blood ceremonies.
People are pouring from the ground floor, panic stricken and screaming. Luke isn’t among them. I can’t see him anywhere.
“Kit! Kit, wait!” Ryka’s running toward me, and over his shoulder the blurred figure of Caius is tumbling down the guide rail. Ryka hunkers down as the ship fires again. It pivots twenty feet off the ground and faces toward us, the sweeping windows angled so that the sun glances off them, reflecting the pure white glare. Ryka reaches me, holding out a hand.
“Come with me.” He starts leading me away from the building, dragging me away from the roiling mass of bodies, all running in confusion.
“Wait! I need to find Luke!” I dragged him away from the Sanctuary. I put him in this position. I’ll be damned if I’m going to abandon him now.
Ryka shakes his head. “No good, Kit. You didn’t see…you were already falling. The other ships…” He looks up, still pulling me away, pulling me past the carcass of the ship we brought down yesterday and further out into the city. “They’re taking people,” he pants, pointing just as the shadow of one of the ships passes over us. The grey, hulking body of the vessel momentarily eclipses the sun, to reveal the yawning mouth of open hold doors, and the black bulk of the writhing shape below that is being hauled inside. “Nets,” says Ryka. “Massive nets. They hit the other rooftops with them. The material…the material’s charged with something. The people couldn’t…” He trails off, shaking his head even harder now. “Luke probably made it out, but we need to check first.”
This is all too much. They’re kidnapping people? The Sanctuary has never brought Radicals into the city before. No, surely the Trues and the Elin would have talked about it, mentioned the capture of what they consider barbarous heathens, especially if they were brought into the confines of the Sanctuary. And yet…a worried voice nags at me. Maybe they have. Maybe they’ve been doing this for years, and who would be any the wiser? The people of the Sanctuary don’t even know who their own leader is. And they certainly aren’t likely to know what goes on behind the closed doors of the technicians’ compound. I didn’t even realise they had the kind of technology required to build ships like this.
“Luke was on the rooftop that the first ship took people from. And it landed over here. Come on!” Ryka urges me forward again, and this time I respond. I thought he was drawing me away, to keep me safe. But he does know me better than that. Caius and Foster are right on our tails as we run through streets piled high with stacks of rusted cars and piles of twisted rebar.
“Did Jack and James get down okay?” I call to Caius.
He nods, yelling to Ryka. “They’ve gone to protect your sister and the rest like you asked.”
Two men can’t protect all of those people, though. And definitely not an old man and a fighter with a knife still sticking out of his back. The black ship that fired on me as I fell was big; it was bristling with weaponry. It could easily have blown up the Det while we were all still inside it, and yet it hadn’t. It still hasn’t. I look behind as we run, and the ship is hovering, maintaining its position in front of the Det. It’s facing us, not a machine but a wild, dangerous predator, its single eye watching us as we flee.
“They’re not following,” Foster yells. “Why? Why aren’t they following?”
“The buildings are too close together,” Ryka replies. And they are. A short twelve feet or so is all that stands between them on either side now. “Plus we’re headed straight for the third ship. They think we don’t know. They think the others will deal with us.”
My stomach feels like it’s filled with ice water. We turn a corner, and I cast a final look behind me. The black ship is shrouded in clouds of dust as it sets down with a heavy grinding noise at the base of the Det. They’ve landed. Which means ground forces—halo’d soldiers, who will follow orders to the letter with no thought or concern for their own safety, against the terrified people of Freetown and the traumatised ex-fighters of the Sanctuary. They don’t stand a chance.
Ryka pulls me to the left, ducking into the shadow of the building beside us. The others follow suit. Ahead of us now, the other ship—smaller, able to fit in between the buildings—has landed too, and a group of guards have poured out onto the street, guns aimed at a thrashing black mass. It’s a huge net, bound up tight, and inside it a mess of limbs pull and kick and scramble, all trying to get free. A bright blue jolt of light shivers over the webbing of net, making a fierce snapping, crackling sound, and the bodies inside the net momentarily stop struggling. As we get closer, doubled over low, I can make out the faces of some of the people inside the net; their eyes are rolled back into their heads, and their jaws are all clenched tightly closed.
“An electric current. They’re electrocuting them!” I hiss.
Ryka nods, scowling darkly. “Don’t worry. They won’t be for long. Caius, you and Foster wait here. Kit and I will cross.” He jerks his chin across the other side of the street, toward a narrow opening between the buildings opposite. “We’ll come at them from both sides. They won’t know which way to turn.”
The frown on Caius’ face deepens. “Okay. Don’t get her killed, though. You won’t survive long after if she’s hurt.”
“She’s my responsibility, Cai.”
She. They’re talking about me. I blow out an exasperated breath and grab hold of my throwing knives. “I don’t need either of you to protect me, you idiots. And I’m nobody’s responsibility but my own.”
I look left—the guards have their backs turned to us. The strange blue filaments of energy are still biting away at the black straps of the net, stunning the people inside. They look like they’re in agony. No more time for standing around. I squat as low as I can, and then I run.
My legs tremble with adrenalin as I hurry to the other side of the street. My feet just can’t seem to move fast enough. As soon as I reach my goal, I turn to see Ryka
only a few feet behind me, scowling. He’s panting when he slips into the alley beside me.
“That was pretty stupid,” he growls.
“Whatever. We don’t have time. The—”
Crack!
Our heads spin back to the ship. One of the guards stands over the sprawled figure of a body lying face down in the dirt. The body of a woman. The net is now open, and the people that were inside are being pulled free from one another; it’s clear that whatever that energy was, it’s still affecting them, even though it appears to have stopped. The men and women are boneless and limp as they’re dragged or rolled out of their prison and arranged in a neat line in front of the ship. One man seems more lucid than the others. A guard yanks him to his feet, only to shove him back down again a few steps later, so that he sinks to his knees in front of a woman in a white coat. I recognise her straight away, even though her hair is shorter.
“Look! It’s the technician.” I point and Ryka sees. It’s the woman who tested my halo all those weeks ago, before any of this. Before my fight with Caius and escaping the Sanctuary. Ryka and I had to choke her unconscious in order to get Luke out of the arena when he was injured. She doesn’t look like she suffered any permanent damage from the ordeal. In fact…she’s not wearing a halo. The fitted black shirt she’s wearing under her white jacket is low enough to flash the healthy pink of bare skin, without a single glimmer of silver. She lifts her arm, and for the first time I see the mark of emotion on her face. Anger. In her hand, she holds a gun.
Crack!
The sound echoes off the high buildings around us. “Gods!” I clap my hand over my mouth as the body of the man that was on his knees jerks backward and falls to the ground, legs twitching.
“Make sure there are no others!” the technician shouts. “I don’t want them waking up in transit.”
Four other guards do as she asks, kicking the prone bodies with the toes of their boots. Across the other side of the street, Caius and Foster look ready to run out in their defence.
“I thought she was controlled,” Ryka whispers. “I thought—”
“Me too. She was definitely wearing a halo when we saw her the last time.” I duck down again as the guards, finished with their job having found no more able-bodied captives, return for further orders from the technician. Ryka is pressed close, curved around me, as though he is instinctively shielding me with his own body. A sudden sense of dread falls over me. It’s so powerful I feel sick, and it comes out of nowhere.
“We can’t let them take those people onto that ship.”
“I know,” Ryka says grimly, placing a hand on my hip and drawing me even closer.
Flashes of white lance through my head, striking me off balance. My head swims, blurring the sky into the city, turning up into down. I press my hand flat against the side of the wall, trying to steady myself.
“Are you okay?” Ryka sounds remote, somehow really far away. I nod, swallowing hard.
“Yeah. I just…I just feel like this has happened before. We need to…we need to act fast. We need to save them.” My vision is back to normal, but everything seems tinged with red. The churning sensation in my stomach is only getting worse.
“You sure you can do this?” he asks.
“Yeah. I have to.”
“Okay. Alright, then. Let’s do this.” He doesn’t sound all that sure, but he still nods his head. Turning, he signals Caius and Foster, who have both grown flushed in the face from waiting so long. Time to move. “Okay, ready? Now!”
A wave of dizziness punches through me as I charge forward alongside Ryka. There’s only a short distance between us and the guards, maybe fifteen feet, and yet it feels like forever. I see a hundred things happening as I run: Foster, no knives at his hips, dropped to one knee behind an open and severely rusted car door; the black outline of a long, narrow muzzle propped against the door through the glassless window; Caius’ arms raised above his head, daggers gripped in both hands, face contorted in effort; on the other side of me, Ryka, lunging forward, hand outstretched, eyes wide.
Ryka, lunging forward, hand outstretched, eyes wide...
Oh, Gods. The look on his face is one I know intimately. One I will remember for the rest of my life. One I’ve been seeing for weeks now. My body goes into shock even as I’m moving, recognising the things happening around me. How can this be? How? The infinitely small details of my dreams seem to be popping up like weeds around me, like they’ve been waiting here for me all along, and all it took was for me to show up to make them grow into reality. It’s all happening. It’s all happening now.
“Kit, look out!” Ryka hollers.
But I’m already reacting. I’ve already started to drop and roll, my body pre-empting and taking care of the situation it’s already lived through at least three times before. It won’t hit me this time. I won’t get shot. I won’t. As if bending to my will, the bullet whips over my head, exploding in a shower of white concrete as it hits rubble behind me.
I leap to my feet. I run faster. Ahead, the woman in the white jacket has turned to face us…and the wind blows her hair in ink-black tendrils across her face, momentarily obscuring her features. Backlit with the bright flare of the ship’s search lights, her outline is distorted and softened, giving her a ghostly glow. The image is like a punch to the gut.
This is her. This is the woman I have been dreaming of.
We lock eyes just as two guards, one on either side of her, rock backward, silver handles suddenly springing from their chests. Knives. Caius’ knives. Gunfire rattles through the air, and I’m brought back to the situation at hand. No time to wonder at the coincidence of everything happening around me. We’re being shot at.
“Cai!” I scream his name as he races toward the technician. “Take her down!”
She needs to die. I know it deep within my bones. It’s vitally important that she doesn’t live past today. I realise now that I haven’t been trying to save her in my dreams. I’ve been trying to kill her. I’m not the person that’s meant to deliver that blow, though. More guards are pouring out of the ship; it’s on Ryka and me to deal with them. A burst of red mist detonates from one of the guard’s white uniforms as we run forward. He tumbles in front of the stream of soldiers trying to respond to the sudden attack, causing another two to trip. I risk a glance over my shoulder and see Foster re-aiming his gun. It’s not just on Ryka and me, then. Foster, too. He’s got our back. Two more guards slump to the ground, but there are more still coming. Ryka and I meet them like two tidal forces colliding.
A thrust upward.
Steel on bone.
My boot connecting squarely with a guard’s chest.
Ryka’s hands on me, pulling me backward.
Him standing over me, lunging, slashing.
Another fine red mist that bursts overhead; I cover my face to shield it. The backs of my hands come away crimson.
“Kit! Over here!”
I clamber to my feet, swinging my head wildly, searching for the voice that called me. Ryka’s fighting two guards, one of which is about to deal him a blow to the side of the head with the butt of his rifle. I react. One step, two steps, drop to my knees; I’m sliding under my momentum. My boots connect with the guard’s legs, bringing them out from underneath him. He goes down, and I’m on top of him, wrapping my legs around his neck. He tries to slip free, jabs with a clenched fist at my side. Pain hurtles through my ribcage, but I don’t give in to it. I drag oxygen into my lungs, even though my body doesn’t want it. Even though it wants to curl itself around the echo of the blow and pretend none of this is happening. I’m on my knees. The guard’s hands snatch at my clothing, trying to grasp hold of enough material to throw me off. The guy is huge. If he knew his own strength properly, he would have tossed me aside twenty seconds ago. Since he hasn’t, I don’t aim on giving him time to right his mistake. His gun is already rising. My hand finds my Balisong, and I flick it open. It finds its mark in his neck, just above his halo.
&nbs
p; Blood sprays upward in a powerful arc, and then…the frenetic action of the past few moments suddenly dies. The guard falls totally still. He gurgles up at me, his blood slowly filling his lungs as he drowns in it, and our eyes meet. The look he gives me is blank and devoid of anything bar a little surprise, and yet his hands grasp hold of my arms. As though he’s searching for comfort as his life pours out of him. His blood has wet my hair; it runs down into my face, dripping into my eyes. Like before, my vision turns red, and then pink as I blink rapidly, trying to clear my eyes.
The horror of the moment hits me then. I grab up the Balisong, rubbing it onto my pants, but there’s too much blood everywhere else to successfully clean it. I topple sideways, freeing myself from the guard’s grasp. My heart…my heart won’t stop pounding. I am…I’m…I can’t breathe.
“Kit!” Ryka’s face appears in front of me, hands working their way over my arms and torso, checking me for injuries. “Are you okay? Where are you hurt?”
“I’m okay, I’m okay.” Just having him with me is enough to slow down my pulse, but I feel wretched. I’ve killed since Sam and it hasn’t affected me as badly, but watching the guard, watching the light fading from his eyes while he gripped hold of me, somehow communicating through the blood choking his throat and the halo choking his emotions that he didn’t want me to leave him…he didn’t want to die alone…
“You’re shaking.” Ryka lifts me to my feet, brown eyes still scanning me over. I’m going to cry if I keep on staring back at him. I look away and the breath catches in my throat all over again when I see the carnage that lies around us. The guards’ pristinely white uniforms are now all slick and red. And they are all dead.
Foster, rifle slung over his shoulder again, is on his feet with Caius, towering over the female technician. Sheer panic paralyses me when I see she’s not dead. I told Cai to kill her, but instead her hands are bound behind her back and she is staring defiantly up at him. Her pale blue eyes are filled with hate. I forget the death that I held in my hands only a second ago and rush across to them, ready to deliver some more.
