by Karen Healey
“She doesn’t want to do that,” I said. “You’ll have to find another way.” I rolled to my knees and headed to the car, where Tegan was sitting up, roused by the sound of her name.
“They’re planning to assassinate the president,” I said, fast and quiet. “Here, tomorrow. They want you to do the talking.”
I saw the knowledge hit home, and then she was on her feet as Lat and Hurfest came striding up behind me.
“I won’t do it,” she said to them. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes bright, and she looked beautiful. Beautiful, and furious.
Lat turned to her. “Tegan, I promise, this will limit the inevitable collateral damage. I can’t promise there won’t be civilian casualties, but it’s the best way to remove this president.”
“Remove who?” Joph said, sitting up. “What’s going on?”
Lat’s tone had been soft and conciliatory, but Hurfest went for arrogant—always a mistake with Tegan Oglietti.
“I thought Joph and Abdi would understand, Tegan, even if you didn’t,” he said. “Politicians have to be practical.”
“My mum wouldn’t do that,” Joph protested, but knowledge of some of my mother’s practical measures saved me the bother of disagreement. You didn’t get to be part of parliament in a small country surrounded by much larger political bodies without making compromises between the right thing to do and the most expedient choice. If Joph’s mother had never made the hard decisions, it was only because she’d never had to.
“This is the kind of decision you can’t make unilaterally, Carl,” Marie said crisply.
“We have to move fast!” he protested. “This is the best chance we’re ever going to get. Lat agrees from a military perspective. I agree from a political perspective—”
“Well, here’s the humanitarian perspective,” Marie said. “It’s not happening. Furthermore, I’m Tegan’s guardian, and you do not have my permission to use my ward in this way.”
“You don’t have my permission, either,” Tegan said. “If you were wondering.”
“Tegan, there are more important things at stake,” Hurfest said.
Tegan’s voice sharpened. “I’ve heard that before.”
“Shut up, Carl,” Lat said, and turned back to Tegan. “Cox has to die, Tegan.” His voice was soft. “This government has to change. It’s the only way you’ll be safe.”
“Safe! Did you forget how I died the first time?”
Lat blinked. “You were shot.”
“I was shot by a sniper who was aiming at the Prime Minister, Lat! How are you planning to take down the guards? That won’t be bloodless. Using the EMP will start fires here, in this tinderbox. There will be cross fire; there will be chaos. I’ve been a civilian casualty. I’ve been inevitable collateral damage. And now you want to use me to justify a plan that will do the same to others? No. I won’t let you.”
Lat looked slightly desperate. “Cox won’t let you go, Tegan! He and his cronies will want you back, and if they can’t have that, they’ll want revenge. If you just speak up, you can make the coup legitimate, make the changeover smooth. If you don’t want to talk again afterward, you won’t have to.”
Hurfest stiffened at that, but Lat kept going. “Tegan, I’ve thought about it a lot. This is the best way to avoid repercussions, so that you can make a new life. One without fear.” He was so sincere, and despite myself, I felt his reasoning tug at me. He was an experienced operative, after all, and Cox really was a threat. If Tegan could be kept safe…
But Tegan would never willingly sacrifice others for her safety. She turned to me, ignoring Lat. “We’re leaving. Right now.”
Oh, great. So much for a careful, sneaking getaway. But now wasn’t the time for dissension in our ranks.
“You got it,” I said. “Bethari, wake up.”
“I’m up.”
“Secure the EMP.”
“On it.” She’d slept in her headscarf this time, and she righted her clothes with precise, controlled gestures as she moved to the back of the car.
Lat’s hands were working, muscles in his jaw jumping. I kept a wary eye on him as I grabbed supplies. Food, a knife. Too bad that Washington had all our empty water bottles; they would have come in very handy.
“That’s enough,” Hurfest said crisply. “Honest opposition is one thing, but walking away is quite another matter. Do you really think that four teenagers and an injured woman, whom the forces of a powerful government are hunting, are going to get as far as whatever imagined safe destination you’ve thought of at random? Do you even have a destination in mind?”
“You should stay here,” Lat said, taking a step toward Tegan. His eyes were trained on hers. “Tegan, we can talk about it. We can come up with a better plan.”
“You promised that last time,” I said. “But you came up with this one and slotted Tegan into it, without even asking. Because you knew that if you asked, she’d say no.”
“I thought I could trust you,” Tegan said. I wasn’t sure if she’d even heard me. Her hands were trembling as she met Lat’s gaze. “I thought you were my friend. That’s what I told myself, when you hurt me. He has to. He’s your friend.”
“Tegan,” he said heavily. “I’m sorry. But for your own safety, I can’t let you leave like this. Carl’s right. You have to stay.”
My whole body tightened. Tegan, Bethari and I might be able to take Lat down, if we moved fast and moved together. Hurfest wasn’t a physical man; he probably wouldn’t interfere. The fighting would draw attention. We’d need an explanation. Perhaps forcing some of Joph’s pain meds into Lat would make him docile enough to go along with whatever we told anyone nosy. I glanced at Tegan, and she nodded slightly. The hand at her waist, no longer trembling, extended three fingers. She tucked in the first. Two—
“What’s happening here?” Washington asked.
I froze, defeat sour in my mouth.
In her right hand, she held a bag, heavy with our refilled water bottles. In her left, she carried a sonic pistol, concealed from the rest of the rugby grounds by her body.
It was pointed at me.
Then, with a smooth pivot of her hips, it was pointed at Lat.
“Tegan?” Washington said. “You want to get out of here?”
“Yes,” Tegan said, the word bursting out of her. “Zaneisha, I don’t want to be a puppet anymore. I can’t do it, and Carl said he would make me and—”
“And they’re planning to assassinate the president when he visits this site,” I said. “It’s going to be a war zone.”
Washington’s eyes flickered. “All right. Let’s go.”
Marie, to my surprise, frowned.
Lat looked stunned, but Hurfest had adopted a sneer. “Sergeant, I thought I could depend on you to see sense.”
“I do,” she said.
“Sergeant,” Lat said, inching closer to her. “I just want to—”
“Stay still,” she suggested, keeping her weapon aimed on him. “You’re right. They’re not likely to make it alone. So I’ll escort them. And you will do… whatever you do. But my parents escaped one civil war, Lat. I don’t plan to participate in another.”
“This won’t go down that way,” Hurfest said. “It’ll be a peaceful process.”
“A peaceful coup? Whatever you want to believe, Hurfest. Bethari, Joph get in the car. Abdi, take the wheel.”
I slid into the driver’s seat, staring doubtfully at the controls. My mother’s driver had given me a few lessons, but those were in a much nicer car, and I wasn’t sure what processes would be manual instead of automatic. I’d have been a lot happier if the car were a ship.
Bethari climbed into the passenger seat and settled a black box the size of a clenched fist in her lap.
“Is that the EMP?” It looked far too small to be responsible for so much damage.
“The control unit; the actual EMP is in the trunk.” She peered over my shoulder. “The start is the one with the lightning symbol,” she said helpful
ly.
“I knew that,” I said, annoyed. I just wasn’t positive where the brakes were.
“I’ll lay out a course for Crib Point,” she said, and started playing with the car computer.
I started to snap something about not giving away our plans in front of the enemy and then stopped. Bethari was too smart for that kind of mistake, and even if she weren’t, I was trying to be nicer to her.
Outside, Zaneisha was having a conversation with Lat that appeared to be conducted entirely in minute adjustments of their facial muscles. Her sonic pistol was still in her hand, and though it would attract too much attention to our departure, part of me hoped she’d shoot him with it. The sonic wave would rupture his eardrums, disturb his equilibrium. Let Lat be the one who was unsteady and uncertain, let he be the one who tasted vomit on his tongue and felt his feet go out from under him, the way I’d suffered so many times.
Instead, Zaneisha tucked the pistol into her skirt pocket and backed toward us. This would be the time for Lat to move, but he stared in the back window, eyes pleading. I wanted to see if Tegan was looking back at him but forced myself to start the car moving forward as Zaneisha got in.
“Bethari, are we really going to Crib Point?” she asked.
“No,” Bethari said. “I’m not stupid. But maybe Lat and Carl will send people to look for us there.”
“Maybe,” Zaneisha said. “They’re not stupid, either.”
As I negotiated our route through the still-crowded rugby grounds, my attention was focused on the people around us, alert to the possibility of an escaping toddler running right under the wheels. That was probably the only reason I spotted Pink Dress—Eliza—talking to a police officer, her face thoughtful as she gazed around the grounds.
“Oh no.”
“What?” Zaneisha asked.
“That woman in the pink dress. Do you see her?”
“Yes,” Zaneisha said, almost immediately, which meant that she’d taken barely a second to find the woman in a huge space filled with over four thousand people. If I’d been less terrified and guilty, I might have had time to be impressed.
“I think she knows who I am. And she’s talking to the police.”
“What do we do?” Tegan asked.
“We drive,” Zaneisha said, the calm of her voice barely wavering. “And as soon as we’re out of the grounds, I take the wheel. And while I put as much distance between us and these people as possible, Abdi will tell us why he thinks that woman might know him and why he failed to mention this before.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Furioso
I spotted the flier first.
I’d been banished to the backseat while we drove to Wilsons Promontory, where my evil deceiving ways couldn’t offend Zaneisha’s tender sensibilities. Marie took up most of the space, sitting sideways with her legs laid out along the seat, but there was enough room if I crammed myself against the side window, which is how I saw the flier crest the scrubby treetops.
The sleek gray shape slid through the air as deftly as a dolphin did through the water. Like a dolphin, it was fitted exactly to its environment, so as to use as little fuel as possible
“Flier,” I reported. “On the left.”
Zaneisha kept driving at the same unexceptionable speed, five kilometers over the limit—just like every other car on the road. “Bethari?” she said crisply.
“Standard patrol patterns,” Bethari reported, scowling ferociously at her computer. “I could try to intercept their transmissions?”
“No. Too risky.”
“Is that it there?” Tegan asked, peering out through the back window. They were opaque to people looking in, but we could see out easily enough, through a thin gray haze.
“Yes. You hadn’t seen a flier before?” Marie asked.
“No. The plane we used on tour was more like the ones from my time.”
“Fliers aren’t really planes,” Bethari said. “They’re like… flying robots. They have surveillance equipment and sometimes weapons. They’re controlled by people, but there’s no one actually inside.”
“Drones,” Tegan said. “Got it. We had those in my time. Yours are probably more fancy.”
“What was it like back then?” I asked. “To have so many planes in the sky?”
“Noisy,” Tegan said thoughtfully. “But kind of nice. I’d hear the roar, and look up, and think about those people. Where they were going, where they’d come from. What their stories were.”
“Very kooshy,” Joph murmured.
“My grandfather lived in London when he was a boy, near their big airport,” I said. “I forget the name.”
“Heathrow,” Tegan said, smiling. She was always pleased when she knew something we didn’t, since she was so far behind on so many things.
“He said that over a thousand planes had landed and taken off from the airport there every day.” I couldn’t quite keep the tinge of horror out of my voice. So much fuel.
“That would be too noisy for me,” Tegan conceded.
“Have we stopped being angry at Abdi?” Joph asked hopefully.
“No,” Zaneisha said.
“No, but we’re thinking about it,” Tegan countered. “He could sing, if he wanted to. That might make us think harder.” For a moment, she almost looked shy, which was so impossible I immediately put it out of my mind.
I hadn’t sung for nearly three days now. I missed it, like a deep ache in my bones. I’d gotten my student visa on the strength of my singing, but in order to smuggle medicines effectively, I’d had to avoid singing, so that I could avoid publicity. After my capture, SADU had made me sing, had made my performance an imperative, not a choice. I hated them for that, but the singing itself—that I loved.
There was no one to notice me now, no one I had to perform for but these five women, my friends.
Well. Two friends, one friend-of-friends, one sort-of-mother-of-a-friend, and one not-really-friend who was armed to the teeth.
What would they like? Well, that was easy.
I got two lines into “The Ballad of John and Yoko” before I looked at Tegan to judge my performance and realized my mistake.
Tegan had gone absolutely still. Her eyes looked like bruises in the dead white of her face, and her hands were clenched together so tightly I knew it had to hurt. I stopped immediately, the last word hanging in the air.
“Why’d you stop?” Bethari asked, twisting. “… Oh.”
“No Beatles,” Tegan said, in a voice as sharp and lifeless as an obsidian shard.
Thick gray despair rushed through my veins and settled solidly in my stomach. I struggled for breath, for control, against the urge to scream. This wasn’t about me; it was about Tegan. I couldn’t lose it now.
But I so desperately wanted to kill Diane. Shoot her, stab her, or better yet, strangle her with my own two hands. I wanted to squeeze the life out of the woman who had made the Beatles a reminder of torture and captivity for Tegan, who had loved their music more than anyone I’d ever met.
The Beatles had meant hope to Tegan, once. Now they meant pain.
Tegan was still staring straight ahead, her breath coming in little pants.
“Marie, can we give her something?” Joph said. “Tegan, what can I do? What do you need?” Her hands fluttered with her distress.
“Give her space,” Marie said. “You’re here, Tegan. You’re in a car. We’re driving to a cove on Wilsons Promontory. I’m here and Bethari and Joph and Zaneisha and Abdi. Can you breathe with me? In, and out.” She demonstrated, her voice rising and falling. “In, and out. Breathe with me. That’s it, very good. In, and out.”
Tegan’s chest rose and fell, her breath easing from those tight bursts of air. She closed her eyes, and her hands loosened a little, no longer bone-crackingly tight.
“Oh, that’s wonderful; you’re doing so well,” Marie told her. “How do you say it? You say awesome. You’re doing awesome, Tegan. Just breathe. In, and out. In, and—”
“I know how to breathe,” she said, and tossed her head. The motion didn’t conceal that she was swallowing hard, but there was some pink in her cheeks now. “Abdi, are you all right?”
Joph was biting her lips. Bethari was darting looks at Tegan and at me, and I realized Tegan must have told her something about the torture. I waited to feel angry about that, but the rage didn’t come. Instead I was relieved—while I hadn’t been able to talk to Tegan about it, at least she’d had someone to listen.
“I’m fine. I’m so sorry,” I said. “I didn’t think. I should have thought.”
“It’s okay.” She laughed, a little shakily. “It’s almost nice to see you do something without thinking about it. Sing me something else?”
Joph exhaled and leaned against the headrest. “We should get you therapy when we get to New Zealand,” she said, her voice limp with relief.
“Ugh,” Tegan said. “No, thank you. I got enough therapy for a lifetime when I woke up. I hated it, all those people picking at my head. It was so gross.”
I was almost used to Tegan dropping her past-timer slang into conversation now. Gross meant bad, disgusting. “I could use some therapy when I get home,” I said. “My brother probably knows someone.”
Tegan opened her eyes. “Your brother? You mean… when you said you were going back to Djibouti, you meant right away?”
“Well, obviously we have to get to New Zealand first, and then find a ship bound for the Horn, or one going to a port where I could find one. But Djibouti City’s a shipping hub. It shouldn’t take too long to find a suitable vessel.” I sounded apologetic, and that was wrong. I’d wanted to go home for eighteen months, almost since the second I’d set foot in Australia. I didn’t want to feel guilty about my need to return there.
Bethari, of course, was frowning at me. “You’re not going to help the Save Tegan campaign from New Zealand? Or whatever we call it, once we get organized again?”
