He turned to the Yu twins. ‘I mean, these women could be two of the few still observing the old religion. They could be harmless, kind and deferential. Or, they could be those very bad women with the scars on their faces, “The Wailing Sister” and “The Roaring Sister”, I believe they’ve been nicknamed. It’s not outside the realms of possibility, and if they have the decency to try and take a subtle approach where nobody gets hurt, I for one wouldn’t push them to start hurting people. Just my opinion.’
He turned to Alice and Zeno. ‘And then, of course, there are the children. If we were the terrorists, you’d be forced to either arrest or shoot us. And I imagine that, if pressed, their mother might do something very hasty to stop herself getting arrested and her children being hurt. It’s quite a conundrum. So I suppose the question is, why don’t you try a little less hard to prove that we are the terrorists?’
The three SecForce soldiers were looking at one another now, hoping one of the others would make a decision. While the tinted visors on their helmets gave nothing of their faces away, their body language told the entire apprehensive story. The leader spoke first. ‘The one holding the baby’s the mother, right?’
Serhiy didn’t move or say anything, but the trooper’s confidence in his deduction grew. ‘She and the kids can get out of the way and go. The rest of you will stay where you are.’
Maalik looked back and nodded to Alice. She began to step away. But Serhiy wouldn’t let Ria go. He was holding her even tighter in front of him, blocking the line of fire to his body and most of his face. Ria was crying, but the young man was strong and she couldn’t struggle from his grip.
‘Get your hands off her now!’ yelled Maalik.
Serhiy shook his head. ‘Let us go,’ he said.
‘This is your last chance! The children and their mother can go, the rest of you stay!’ said the SecForce trooper. All eyes were on Serhiy and Ria. No one noticed the Yu sisters fidgeting under their niqabs, or a faint sound of material ripping.
Serhiy slowly released Ria, crouching behind her. As his grip loosened she ran over to Alice, who held her close and began to walk slowly across the road away from the group. Alice set the noise gate for Ria and Zeno’s cochlear bio-augs and braced herself.
There was yelling behind her. The Yu sisters’ sub-machine guns of choice were a bizarre shape, with almost all of the firing mechanism and stock located behind the trigger and handle. They were fast-firing, easy to conceal and deadly at close range. The nearest SecForce officer fell under a blaze of bullets. The other two took shelter behind the squad car. One of them fired blind at where the cacophony of gunfire was coming from. He hit Thana Yu high in the chest. The other opened up his portable terminal.
He’s going to radio for backup, thought Alice. They’re going to catch and kill us.
The call would go through shortly and the message would be brief. Every moment was vital. Alice passed Zeno to Ria, and then reached behind her back and drew her concealed pistol from her waistband. She aimed. The troopers didn’t notice her – they were too occupied by the sub-machine-gun-wielding twins.
Her hand shook.
These people had let her and her children go. None of them wanted to hurt her. She knew this on an intellectual level. She also knew what Jacob would have done. Jacob, who had thought of this cause as important enough to risk his family.
Jacob, who had been gunned down by SecForce troops just like these.
Jacob, who was gone.
He wouldn’t have hesitated.
Her hands steadied. Her knuckles whitened as her grip grew tight. She wanted to do it.
‘Ria, sweetie, cover your eyes now.’
She fired quick bursts of two shots.
The SecForce officers crumpled, blood dripping from under their visors. Not seeing their faces had made it all so much easier. From the far side of the squad car, the other NCLC members looked on in shock. She felt calm, focused. The others were around her now, pulling on her arm and yelling that they needed to go, but it was as if she couldn’t hear them.
It had been a long time.
Chapter 15
COUNCILLOR RYAN GRANIER had concluded that he could feel the individual hairs of his beard growing from his face. It had been almost two weeks since he had last shaved, the longest he had ever gone without doing so, and the tight black bristles rubbed irritatingly against the parts of his face that had swollen up. The painkillers and the lack of sleep, not to mention the delirious, shell-shocked haze which Maalik had left him in, only exacerbated the sensation. He sat in the room he had first woken up in, feeling the weight and tightness of the distended flesh of his face and trying to figure out what of the great bureaucratic machinery he had access to would be the best route to get him and Ava out of here.
Ryan turned his head to the right and saw light coming through the cracked black paint over the windows. It was morning. He pushed himself up onto his good leg and grabbed his crutches. The putty Ava had put in the wound in his thigh had stopped the pain completely and was slowly rebuilding his flesh, but it was still heavy to lift and unstable to balance on, factoring in the missing muscle tissue that was no longer pulling weight. His leg would heal with time. It wasn’t the cataclysmic mutilation he had believed it to be in that room, under all that fear and adrenalin. In the meantime, it was another frustrating factor to be accounted for in the escape plan.
The sound of the huge reinforced doors opening in the next room shook the windows. Ryan hopped over to the door, using his crutches to balance; he still had not mastered walking with them. He pulled open the door and poked his head out. There was a group of people standing in the main room, all carrying large bags and pieces of equipment, one cradling a baby and another holding the hand of a young girl. A tall woman with several disfiguring facial scars held a red rag to her shoulder – though from the looks of the edges of the rag it had once been white. All of them seemed exhausted, as if they had been running. Ava came out from the long corridor on Ryan’s right, holding her medicine bag. She fought her way through the crowd and began work on the scarred woman’s shoulder. A red wound revealed itself.
A burning hot knife against flesh.
Ryan looked away. His heart was pounding.
As he looked back, he saw the woman who’d been holding the baby step forward. She had light brown skin, reminiscent of someone born in one of the North or Central American cities, and long dark hair tied in a low ponytail. Of everyone in the group, she seemed the calmest, and where the others were gasping for air she seemed like she’d just strolled through the door. ‘Are you Ava Ferreira?’ she asked.
Ava looked at her and said, ‘Yeah, that’s me. You must be Mrs Amirmoez.’
‘We got ambushed by the SecForce. They knew we were coming. I need to use your communication channel to check that Kahleed’s group are okay.’
Ryan watched as Ava took her over to the desk and Mrs Amirmoez sat down, typing rapidly on the terminal. After a while she let out a deep sigh of relief, looked back up at the group and said, ‘They’re fine.’
Everyone in the large crowd seemed to relax somewhat. Ava came forward again. ‘It’s good to meet you, Mrs Amirmoez.’
‘Call me Alice. Kahleed sent me to run operations out of here.’
Ava nodded. ‘He told us, but this has been a shelter for noncombatants and support staff so far, plus our prisoner, so you’ll have to set it all up yourself. We don’t have anything in place, although we do have an encrypted data line, some decent terminals in the back, and room for more if you’ve got ’em.’
‘Where is the prisoner right now?’
Ava looked over at Ryan, and Alice followed her gaze. She frowned. ‘You’re letting him listen in and you leave his door open?’
Ava shrugged. ‘If the police get him back, they’ll already know more than he’s overheard, and he’s on crutches so he’s not really in any condition to mount a daring escape.’
The frown remained on Alice’s face. ‘What happene
d to him that made him need crutches?’
‘You haven’t seen the video?’
‘I haven’t seen anything, we’ve had a communication shutdown for days.’
‘Well then, your man Maalik can bring you up to speed.’ There was a bitterness in Ava’s voice.
A dark, familiar voice came from the back of the group. ‘I’ll explain later.’
Ryan felt his heart begin to race again. There was a faint smell of cooked meat. He took a few deep breaths and shut the door. He closed his eyes for a moment. The ache in his leg deepened. The cuts on his wrists and ankles stung as though the plastic binds still tied him to the chair. Somewhere far away, he felt as though he were falling, but the knife was hot and his skull rattled and he didn’t really notice.
Then he was back in the real world, being lifted off the floor and into the next room. Strong arms laid him on a sofa. Ava leaned over him and placed a hand on his forehead. ‘It’s not an infection then … You all right? You collapsed in your room. It made a hell of a thud.’
It took Ryan a few moments to grasp what was happening. ‘I’m fine, I just lost my balance.’
Ava helped him to his feet. She gave him an uncertain look as if she knew he had bigger problems than being prone to falling. The other newcomers had gone, leaving just Ryan, Ava, and the apparent new leader, Alice Amirmoez.
Alice looked him up and down, and said, ‘When this is all over, Councillor, and if you make it out alive, you’re going to want to see a shrink.’
Ryan nodded, his face flushed red.
‘Whatever happened to you, it appears to have given you Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. I have a few old work colleagues who got it after bad injuries and the like, and it looks like your case is pretty damn bad. I’m guessing you haven’t been sleeping?’
Ryan shook his head. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ava looking taken aback. ‘I thought that was just the painkillers …’
‘Dose him up and get him some sleep, or we’ll be handing him back to Tau Granier in a straitjacket,’ she said to Ava.
Ava nodded, hesitated a moment, then said, ‘Ma’am? I’d like to request that Maalik receive some kind of formal admonishment. He did far more than he needed to here.’
Alice raised an eyebrow. ‘But this man is the reason that every male over the age of fourteen in this district is liable to be killed as an enemy combatant. This man is why the Security Force is beating civilians in the street. This man is the crown prince of New Cairo, emblematic of the people who have oppressed the most vulnerable in this city for generations, and he hasn’t felt a fraction of the pain that his existence has inflicted on us.’
Despite her venomous words, her composure never faltered for even a second.
Ava struggled to find words that wouldn’t anger her new superior. ‘Except he’s not any of those things. He’s not an archetype for you to pin your resentments to. He’s not a symbol for a greater system. He’s a person and he doesn’t deserve to get used as a way for us to thrash out our political frustrations. I’d appreciate it if you’d remind Maalik of this.’
Alice nodded, but the disdain never left her face. She turned on her heel and left.
‘Don’t worry, she’s leaving in a few days with her kids. She shouldn’t be a problem,’ said Ava.
‘Yeah … and that scarred woman, the wounded one, that’s one of those two twins who’ve been terrorizing the Security Force in Naj-Pur, right?’
‘That’s her,’ said Ava. ‘And the one in the niqab is the other twin. We’ve got some of the biggest guns in the NCLC in this safe house and we’re trying to get out without a fuss.’
Ryan nodded, still groggy with lack of sleep. ‘Listen, if you can stop me dreaming so I can just pass out somewhere for a while, I will honestly do my level best to get a street named after you when we get out of here.’
He thought he remembered another of the rules he’d been taught all those years ago. It was to keep reminding your captor that you exist and have a life outside of the kidnap situation, though considering that Ava was helping him break out she probably didn’t need to be sold on him quite so much any more.
Ava looked round at him. ‘All right,’ she deadpanned, ‘but it had better not be one of those little five-address closes. I want the real deal.’
The two of them made their way over to the medical room, Ryan hobbling inelegantly on his crutches. When they got there they found the scarred woman, the Yu twin, inside, examining herself. ‘Sorry about that, ma’am,’ said Ava. ‘This one had passed out.’
The scarred woman raised her disfigured face, her gaze peering out from jagged, cracked flesh. ‘That’s how you treat such high-class guests, is it?’ she said, in a surprisingly high voice. ‘He looks almost as bad as me.’
Ryan had no idea how to respond to that. This was one of the Yu twins. The newscasts had always reported on them as if they were vengeful spirits sweeping down upon patrols and Security Force missions, leaving only dread in their wake. To see one of them up close, vulnerable and making self-deprecating remarks, rather went against that image, simplistic as it was.
‘I haven’t seen a mirror in days. How swollen up am I?’ he asked.
‘It’s pretty bad,’ said the disfigured woman. ‘It’s going to be a hard sell at election time if it stays like that.’
‘You don’t think I’d get the sympathy vote?’
The shards of skin that made up her face shifted into what might once have been a smile. ‘I’d say your best bet is to focus on policy and don’t rely on your looks so much at the next election.’
It was just like talking to any other constituent. Make them sympathize, exchange small talk, convince them to think of you as on their side. It was all about personality. This is how a politician gets elected and how a hostage stays alive, he thought to himself.
Ryan moved over to one of the makeshift hospital beds in the corner, and lay down on top of the sheet. Ava stood beside him, peeling the film off a medication patch. ‘This’ll get into your system nice and quickly; you can get right off to sleep without reliving the experience. And I’ll try and find something for your face, to stop any more swelling.’
Ryan nodded. Off to his right, the Yu twin said, ‘Count your lucky stars, Councillor, that your father’s military police didn’t bludgeon your face half off like they did me and my sister. Some contracting mask will sort you right out.’
She’s still thinking of me as my father’s son, thought Ryan, frustrated. Ava placed the patch on his arm and it began to deflate as the serum was absorbed through his skin.
‘Right,’ said Ava. ‘Give it a minute or two and you’re all right to try and get some sleep.’
Ryan lay on his back, without the energy to move. He thought of his family, and he thought of what lay ahead of him. The light above him turned off and for the first time since fainting in the cell downstairs, he drifted off to sleep.
Chapter 16
NEW CAIRO FIRST Hospital, located on the border of Falkur and Alexandria, was remarkable among hospitals in the city of New Cairo in only two respects. It was the city’s very first operational hospital and, despite there being newer, larger and better-funded hospitals out there, it ran the finest Emergency department that New Cairo had to offer. This was credited largely to the successful direction and management of Dima Farida who, after a long career as an exemplary nurse, had made her way up the ladder to become the department’s Primary Administrator. New Cairo’s citizens used to joke that people with heart attack victims in their vehicles used to drive right past other hospitals on the way. So when the owner of a small business sent out a message to the city’s emergency services that a bloodied and battered young woman had just slumped against his front window, they patched him through to the First.
The two paramedics who loaded her onto a stretcher and into the back of the ambulance were the first people to get a good look at her and were also the first people to realize that she had been shot. They placed a tube down the
woman’s throat to make sure her airways were unobstructed and checked immediately for any bio-augs that could give a vital sign report. To their surprise they found none. They took her pulse and confirmed her shallow, laboured breathing. They continued their initial trauma survey, trying to establish the extent of her injuries. This was when they discovered the wound in her back. Covering it with a plastic dressing, they then began to stem the blood loss. Her heartbeat stammered out a quick, irregular beat as it attempted to keep her blood pressure up, before settling as her one uninjured lung began to get uninterrupted oxygen via the tube.
A scan of her biometric data revealed a name. Selina Mullur. No bio-augs, so the state would cover costs if they were necessary. She was also from Naj-Pur. Her kind always took bio-augs if it was an option, so the go-ahead would probably be given even if she didn’t wake up and give consent herself. The issue was, of course, the overbearing shadow of the Soucouyant virus that was making surgeons less willing to use bio-augs unless absolutely necessary.
The ambulance pulled up and the paramedics wheeled out the stretcher, into the arms of waiting Emergency staff. They pulled her inside, straight into a vacant operating theatre, and made their assessment. Calcium scaffolding would keep the ribs in place while they healed, but she’d need some Vaxibone to fill in gaps. Operating machines, powered by the IntuitivAI protocols, performed expertly, with a degree of precision well beyond that of a human surgeon. The muscle could be reset with artificial tissue which would be fully integrated within hours. The lung was a different story. It was full of blood, and there was a gaping exit wound where the bullet had pushed out through the right lung. There was additional damage where the bullet had ricocheted off one of the front ribs and torn away at some more of the lung. It was a miracle that the young woman had not bled out or asphyxiated. Her right arm was also a mess. The heavy slug had gone right through, shattering bone and pulverizing muscle, and it was close enough to the elbow joint that the arm would never work properly again. Beyond that, the bones of the right forearm were completely shattered.
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