by Lucy Saxon
Alice and Mary were waiting at the gate, ready to greet the children. Matt and Ben had yet to return, but Cat doubted they would be much longer.
‘James, go with them,’ Fox urged, turning serious eyes on the younger boy. James opened his mouth to protest, but Fox cut him off. ‘Now isn’t the time to play hero. Go with your mother and Alice and get the children to safety.’
James nodded reluctantly. Cat let the little girl down to the ground, where she was immediately transferred on to James’s back. She curled both arms around the prince’s neck, burying her face in his shoulder. Fox and Cat watched as the group met up with Alice and Mary, who began to group them together, then turned to each other.
‘We’re not done yet,’ Fox said, grabbing Cat’s hand.
Together the two of them sprinted around the side of the building towards the newscast centre, remembering the route from Harry’s map. When they got there, the building wasn’t guarded. Bursting through the unlocked door, Cat let out a choked noise, seeing a group of government workers chained together in a huddle in the corner of the building. Some of them were obviously unconscious, but the few who were awake looked furiously angry, their shouts muffled by the fact that their shirts had been removed and stuffed in their mouths as makeshift gags.
‘Well, Matt and Ben have been busy,’ Fox remarked. Ignoring the struggling workers they headed up the staircase, shoving open the door at the top. The newscast centre wasn’t nearly as excitingly technical as Cat had thought it would be; it was a dingy room with a short bench in the centre, and several steadily clicking machines that Cat didn’t recognise. There was a large newscast screen in the middle, currently running one of the recruitment casts that Cat was sick of seeing. Especially now; she didn’t want to hear about how Collection was a good thing, and families shouldn’t fear it.
Harry was hard at work, fiddling with the mechanism of the broadcasting station, barely looking up when they entered. Cat sank down on to the bench, shoulders slumping in exhaustion, and Fox eased down beside her with an arm around her back. Storms, she felt like she hadn’t slept in a week.
They were startled by the sound of footsteps on the stairs, and Fox instantly drew his gun, positioning himself protectively in front of Cat.
‘Easy, lad, it’s just us,’ Matt called as he came into view, holding up his hands in a gesture of peace. Ben followed behind him, pulling the door shut. ‘Our lot of kids are off with Alice. The only people left alive in that building are government workers,’ Matt said, slightly breathless. ‘It’s ready to blow whenever we’re done here.’
‘Brilliant. Fox, give me a hand, I can’t quite figure out this worldwide broadcasting system.’ Harry pointed to an open panel of the machine, where several gears were missing from their plates and half the chains led to nowhere. Fox nodded, rifling through his bag to find his tool kit and immediately getting to work.
‘Right, while he’s doing that, lass, you come here.’
Cat obeyed, moving to Harry’s side in front of the main machine panels.
The newscast screen had changed to show a fake war report.
Harry tutted under his breath.
‘What you’re going to do, lass, is shake things up a little. I can separate out all the newscast screens outside of government. With all the commotion, there’ll hardly be any government types out of their district. What I want you to do is interrupt the public’s evening news report with a little real news.’
Cat stared at the man, eyes wide.
‘You want me to do it?’ she asked in surprise, and he shrugged.
‘It was your idea, wasn’t it? Besides, people are more likely to believe a sweet-sounding wee lass like you,’ he added, winking.
She paused, thinking about it. On the one hand, she would get to speak to the whole of Anglya about what was going on underneath the government’s peaceful facade. On the other hand, she would have to speak to the whole of Anglya.
‘All right,’ she agreed reluctantly. ‘What do I have to do?’
She waited for Harry to set up the video footage. Eventually, he turned and gave her a thumbs up, nudging her forward towards a microphone set in the front panel, just beneath the newscast screen. As the screen went black, she took a deep breath, and turned on the microphone.
‘Hello, I’m sorry for the interruption. Um, my name is Cat, and there are … a lot of things I need to tell you.’ She cringed at how awkward she sounded, but carried on regardless. ‘That war report you were just watching? It was a fake – old recycled footage edited by someone to make it look like an Erovan battlefield. The truth is that there is no war in Erova. There hasn’t been for over seven years. The government’s been lying to us, faking newscasts and stopping travel between countries to make sure none of you learn the truth. They’re keeping the country on rations to hoard food for themselves and their families, to starve the commoners into extinction so they can make the Anglyan people a purer race. And the children …’ She swallowed hard. ‘The children aren’t being sent off to war. They’re being Collected and held in the government compound. The government doctors have been experimenting on them, “enhancing” them with mechanical limbs and brains and torsos, trying to turn them into the perfect mecha soldiers with no emotions or pain to cloud their judgement, but enough intelligence to make decisions themselves.’
With perfect timing, Harry started the video feed, showing the footage from the room with all the failed experiments, and the footage recorded through windows of the men working on children.
‘I’m sorry for the … the graphic images. But my friends and I thought it was the best way to get our point across. This is what has been happening to your children for the past seven years. Every time there’s a Collection day, every time you promise your son or daughter that they’ll be safe, and they’ll see you again, this is what our government has been doing to them.’
Fox glanced up from the panel, giving her an encouraging smile, and she continued.
‘We’re working to bring the government down, this being our first step. But I don’t know how long it’s going to take us. All I can promise is that we won’t stop until your children are safe, and Anglya is returned to its rightful rulers; our monarch, Queen Mary Latham, and her son, Prince James. They are not dead as you have been told. They are still alive, held captive in the government compound, secluded from society, unable to rule their country the way they should. We’ll sort that out, but for now … get your children to safety. Take them to trade ships, merchant ships, anything you can find. I hope it’s only temporary, but in case anything happens to us, get them hidden. We’ll broadcast and alert the rest of the world right after this, and hope that help will come. We still have work to do – there are still more children to find. Be safe, people of Anglya, and be vigilant.’
As Cat finished speaking, she looked over at Fox, who had finished whatever he was doing with the worldwide broadcasting system, and gave Harry a thumbs up.
‘In about twenty minutes you’ll hear explosions, and see a lot of smoke coming from the government district. Don’t be alarmed, we’re responsible. Good luck to all of you. And to the foreign authorities, if this broadcast reaches you – please, we need reinforcements. We’re taking our ship, the Stormdancer, to find the finished experiments. If you can spare anyone … we can’t do this alone.’ She cut the microphone, allowing Harry to feed in the footage with audio recordings at the same time as Fox turned on the worldwide broadcast system, sending the broadcast they’d just made out to the rest of Tellus. She crossed her fingers, praying they hadn’t just made things worse.
Chapter 23
As they watched the footage Harry’s friend had pieced together, Cat’s stomach churned. She was reliving every moment, astonished that all the evidence had been gathered over two days – it felt like she’d been living in that horror for a lifetime.
Her heart pounded as she watched the new footage Harry had added on; her conversation with Andrew, and the final confrontation wit
h her father. Thankfully, Harry had cut it after Fox had pulled Nathaniel’s body off Cat; she didn’t think she wanted her first kiss to be shown all over the world. She hoped Andrew’s mother was watching, though, to see her son being so very brave. Eventually, the screen went black and Harry shut the machine down, removing the film casings.
‘We should get going,’ Ben murmured, interrupting the sombre atmosphere in the room. Cat nodded, getting to her feet. The five of them left the room, ignoring the group of workers still chained together in the entrance.
They exited the building and ran towards the open gate. Just as they were leaving, Matt turned and drew his pistol. Cat panicked, thinking there were more guards, until she saw what he was aiming at – a canister, sitting outside the broken door into the government building.
Fox wrapped an arm around her protectively, running with her away from the gate. Cat brought her hands up to cover her ears as she heard the gun go off. Almost instantly there was an earth-shattering explosion, then a series of huge bangs going off inside the building, making her ears ring. When they thought they were at a safe distance, all five of them turned, staring in awe at the enormous pillar of smoke billowing from what was now a pile of rubble; the newscast building was gone, and even parts of the wall had crumbled. There couldn’t be any survivors in a blast like that. Matt grimaced, shaking his head and sticking his fingers in his ears.
‘I can’t hear anything!’ he told them loudly, and Ben tugged on his arm.
‘You’ll get your hearing back in about ten minutes,’ he said slowly, making sure Matt was watching his lips as he spoke. He held up ten fingers, just to be clear.
‘We need to get back to the ship,’ Harry told them, beckoning them all to the nearest side street.
As they neared the city centre, Cat saw people were moving with a sense of urgency, despite the late hour. A woman with two young children was walking, flanked by three burly men, in the direction of the shipyard. Cat hoped that at least one trade ship would risk defying the government and take some children to safety. She saw a blank newscast screen in the centre of a small park and found it hard to believe that mere minutes ago her voice and face had been on it.
Cat kept her head down as they walked, suddenly very aware that her image had just been broadcast all over the country – all over the world. Fox pulled a brown knitted cap over his distinctive red hair, and they quickened their pace, sticking to the shadows, trying to reach the shipyard in safety. They had only dealt with a fraction of the government’s forces, and it wouldn’t be long before someone came looking for the culprits.
When they reached the shipyard itself, they paused, stunned – everything was chaos.
The shipyard was a riot of activity; people were herding confused-looking children, some still in sleepwear, up a gangplank on to one of the trade ships, helped by the ship’s crew in their dark purple uniforms and the dockyard workers. Regaining their urgency, they ducked and weaved through the crowd, and Fox cheered loudly as he saw a guard being tied up and gagged with what appeared to be someone’s grubby sock.
They managed to reach the Stormdancer without anyone realising who they were, and Cat sprinted nimbly up the gangplank, smiling as she slid through the trap, landing with a soft thud in the familiar shabby hallway.
She was home!
The noise of chatter floated up from the floor below, and they followed the noise to the galley and stopped in the doorway, stunned. The room was full, the children crammed together on the benches and the floor, sharing bowls of hot porridge, eating ravenously as they talked with each other, easily bonding over their shared trauma.
Alice was in her element, a large tureen of porridge in front of her, Mary assisting her in spooning it into bowls. Cat hadn’t known they even owned that many bowls. James was helping a boy with a broken wrist eat his meal, and he looked up when he saw them.
‘It’s about time!’ the prince called.
Several of the children cheered when they recognised Cat and Fox, and Alice immediately dropped her ladle, rushing over to hug them both at the same time.
‘Oh, I was so worried!’ she exclaimed, clasping them so tightly Cat wasn’t sure she could breathe. Alice released them, only to kiss them both on the foreheads, then moved to accost the rest of the crew, saving her husband for last and kissing him firmly as he stroked her hair.
‘We’re fine, Alice,’ Fox insisted, laughing. ‘I promise we’ll tell you all about it later. But I think we could do with some rest for now, and something hot to eat. It’s been a long day.’
Cat shot him a grateful look as Alice turned on the spot, hurrying back over to the porridge and grabbing another stack of bowls.
‘I … I want to wash my hands first,’ Cat stuttered, staring down at her bloodied palms. That drew Alice’s gaze to her hands, and the woman flinched.
‘Right, of course. Fox, dear, you’d better go with her, and change your shirt while you’re at it.’
Cat glanced up, wincing at the hand-shaped bloodstains on the fabric covering his chest. She’d forgotten about those. She and Fox doubled back out of the galley, crossing to the washroom further down the hall. Fox turned the tap on, and she stuck her hands under the hot spray, not wanting to watch as the pink-tinged water swirled down the drain.
‘Here,’ he murmured, holding her hands between his and scrubbing gently with a bar of soap. She stood frozen, letting Fox wash away the blood until her hands were finally clean. Even when it was gone, she still felt it on her skin, and wished she could keep scrubbing.
‘Thanks,’ she said quietly.
He smiled back reassuringly, passing her a towel.
‘No problem. Wait here, I’ll just go and grab a clean shirt. Won’t be a moment,’ he promised, ducking out of the room.
Cat looked down at herself; there was blood on her clothes too, but she didn’t think she could bring herself to move. All she could see in her mind was blood dripping from her fingers.
When Fox returned, he was only in his undershirt, a clean blue shirt slung over his arm. He led her by the arm out of the washroom, shrugging on the shirt as he did so. He was still buttoning it when they entered the galley. The rest of the crew were sitting with Alice, eating ravenously.
‘Sit, both of you,’ she urged.
Cat sank down on to the bench between Fox and Matt, leaning her elbows on the table. She stared at the children gathered in the room. The situation felt bitter-sweet; she was glad to have saved them, but her mind dwelled on all the kids they were too late to save. By the look on Ben’s face he was having similar thoughts, though she expected that these were focused on one child in particular. Harry began to explain to his wife what had gone on at the compound after she’d left, only to be interrupted when Matt let out a triumphant noise.
‘I can hear again!’ he exclaimed happily, making Ben snort.
‘Damn, I was enjoying your silence.’
Cat smiled at the pair, setting her spoon down in her empty bowl and wearily leaning against Fox’s shoulder. He slid an arm around her so she was less likely to fall off the bench.
‘And when did that happen, then?’ Alice asked, eyeing them pointedly.
Cat blushed, but didn’t move. ‘Earlier today, actually. After … after the talk with my father.’
Alice’s smile faltered at that, but she recovered quickly, grinning.
‘Well, it’s about time! I thought I was going to have to watch you two sniffing around each other for months.’
Cat’s blush darkened, and Fox chuckled, sheepish.
‘Yeah, well, no worries. You don’t have to knock our heads together,’ he assured the older woman, his hand comfortably on Cat’s waist.
Harry cut in, bringing them back on topic. ‘We need to figure out where to start looking for this government skyship. Flying in circles over every inch of Anglyan airspace will take weeks. And that’s assuming they’re even in Anglyan airspace,’
‘Any information was probably destroyed in the blas
t, though,’ Matt pointed out with a frown.
Cat’s expression grew thoughtful, and Fox raised an eyebrow at her.
‘Oh, I know that face – that’s your thinking face. What is it?’ he asked.
She looked at the rest of the table.
‘Well …’ she began, ‘the files in the government compound might have been destroyed, but the files in my father’s office at home are perfectly fine. And now he’s gone, there’s no one stopping me from going back to the house for a visit. I mean, I’m the sole heir so that makes it my house, doesn’t it?’ she pointed out with a smile.
Fox stared at her for several beats.
‘You genius!’ He leaned forward, kissing her.
James grumbled under his breath about overt displays of affection, which Cat and Fox both ignored, too busy grinning shyly at each other.
‘You’re still in the same house? The Hunter house?’ Mary asked. ‘You never moved to the Ingate house?’
‘No, Nathaniel refused, even if it was bigger. I think it went to a second cousin or something. Why?’ Cat queried, not sure why that mattered.
‘If I remember correctly, the Hunter house is big enough to accommodate all of these children. If you’re going after this skyship, you can’t take them with you – it’s far too dangerous. So, you could take them to the house, and keep them there while you finish things,’ Mary suggested, looking at the children filling the galley. Cat did a quick headcount.
‘Will we be able to get that many kids into the government district without anyone noticing?’ Matt asked.
‘Have a little faith, Mattie,’ remarked Cat with a grin. ‘I’ve been sneaking around government since I was old enough to reach the door handle. I’ll manage it.’The tree was the easiest way to get in, but it wasn’t the only way.
‘That sounds like a plan, then. Now, the sprogs look a little sleepy. What say we herd them downstairs for the night? We’ve got plenty of space in the storage rooms, and I’m sure we can rustle up some blankets for them,’ Alice suggested. At her prompting, the group stood up and collected the empty bowls from the children.
