“Stay back,” Marrin says in a low voice. “Stay with your brother.”
“No.”
There are four rows of Officials. God knows how many are in each row. Yosiah would know, I think. Yosiah can determine things within a split second. It must be something about growing up on the streets.
Marrin doesn’t turn his back on the Officials in front of him, but he does reach back for Tia’s hand. I have a feeling that he doesn’t expect to make it past this room. I realise, with brutal certainty, that he’ll die for Tia. I don’t know if I can let that happen. Not when he loves her and not when she loves him back.
Bran cuts the power.
The middle aged Guardian who I thought would be in charge of us acts first. He dives right into the line of Officials with a weapon that moves so fast it blurs. A number of black shapes fall to the floor, but so does he. I can’t see if he’s dead from this distance but he doesn’t look to be moving. The other Guardians go in after him and I lose track of them. They must be inhuman. No human could ever move this fast.
Marrin doesn’t join them for a while. He hesitates, with my sister, but after a minute I can tell from the growing tension that he’ll be gone soon.
“This is not looking good,” Branwell says to me. Around half of the Officials have fallen, but so have half of The Guardians. The shy Guardian a few years older than me must be somewhere on the floor because I can’t pick him out among the standing.
A group of Officials breaks away from the rest, surging towards us. Fifteen of them, I think. They’re running at us and fast.
The only thing I know is that being logical won’t solve this. I need to fight.
Marrin attacks.
He arcs his elbow into one Official’s jaw and punches another in the stomach. He doesn’t move as swiftly as The Guardians do, but for a non-Guardian he’s impressive. By the time the Official he caught in the stomach has fallen, Marrin has kicked him in the side and grabbed another by the neck. In a haze of shape and a flash of white the Official sinks to the floor, and Marrin is blazing.
I almost think he’ll be all right, that Bran and I won’t even have to fight, but a black-clothed figure seizes Marrin by his collar and I can see that he’s going to cut his throat. He doesn’t. The Official erupts with a stream of vicious curse words; a dagger attacks his shoulder, his chest, his arm. Horatia is lashing out blindly and her entire frame is shaking with either tears or blind terror. Her blade severs his ear and he sways on his feet. My eyes search for his hands, anticipating them wrapped around Tia’s neck, but they’re held behind his back. Marrin and Tia are fighting together.
The Official jerks, trying to detach himself from Marrin, and Horatia takes the opportunity to rake her knife across his face. My sister is fighting, defending Marrin, and she looks formidable.
Bran hands me my knife back and I decide this is the time to be logical after all. Weaknesses, I need to go for their weaknesses.
I don’t even think.
Another Official is going for my sister from behind. The room falls away from me, and, for a split second, I see the Officials in clarity. I see where I’m going to move and what I need to do.
I move, faster than I knew I could but not fast enough. The Official takes hold of my sister but my fist drives towards her throat. I’m rewarded with a splutter, and a distraction, but she doesn’t let Tia go. Enough is enough. With as much force as I have, I jam the knife into her shoulder—but she tries to deflect the blow and it sinks into her neck.
I stagger back with my sister in my arms. Marrin disposes of the first Official.
I didn’t mean to stab the Official there. I meant to get her shoulder to distract her. I didn’t mean to do that. I think I’ve killed her.
I have killed her.
I stare in horror as she claws at her bleeding neck. First she drops to her knees, then she falls face forward onto the glass floor.
My breathing goes haywire. I clutch Tia to me.
I jolt a few paces to my left when someone pats my shoulder. I turn, expecting Bran but getting Marrin.
“You did what you had to,” he says stiffly, attempting to reassure me. I wonder why he gives a crap about me and what I’m thinking, but he says, “Thank you,” and I understand. This is about Tia. I let her go then, realising I had been squeezing her hard.
I stare at Marrin for several seconds before my mind kicks back in. An Official is near us, but he’s not attacking. There’s another Official at Bran’s feet. The Guardians—the one who I’m sure is called Ross, and Nicky—are stood at opposite sides of the room, an ocean of Officials at their feet. Nicky makes her way towards us.
“You okay?” She looks between the four of us. I nod vacantly. I’m still trying to get my head around Tia fighting someone. I never thought I’d see that, that I’d have to see that, but now there’s a completely new side to my sister. A side where she fights and defends the people she loves. No, that’s not right. She has always defended us and cared for her family, but now it’s like … she does it without fear, without anything holding her back. Hele said that I was free but she was wrong. I’m restrained, I’m a caged bird, but Tia—Tia is flying in the open.
I allow myself a moment to stop seeing—to stop seeing the bodies, dead or alive. To stop seeing the scared look on Bran’s face and the daunted one on Nicky’s. To stop seeing the smears of blood on the glass, and the knives and batons that glitter with blood like the stars when the sky is clear enough to glimpse them. To stop seeing the way Tia’s shoulders tremble and Ross’s legs are unable to support him without the wall. To stop seeing the pathway that has been created by kicking bodies out of the way. To stop seeing the way this could have played out if the Officials had stopped doing what States told them to and joined The Guardians.
To stop seeing the life in everything that has none.
I allow myself to stop, and I fall into my sister’s open arms. I cradle her and she cradles me. I wanted to comfort her, to tell her that she’s okay and everything will be fine, but she’s the one comforting me.
“I thought I was going to lose you,” I rasp.
I feel her words on my skin. “Honour, I’m your sister. You won’t lose me.” When I don’t reply, she says, “It’d take much more than that to kill me, you know?”
I’m starting to realise that.
This is my sister, the one I knew, who cared for people and would help anyone in need, but this is also the Tia that jumped over the fence at Victory Day and into Marrin’s arms. This is the Tia that made a new life for herself. I might have gone into the free lands, but she is so much braver than me and I can feel it now. I can feel it as my hands ball themselves into fists of her jacket and I can feel it in Tia’s gentle hand on my hair. It doesn’t last long, the hug, but it means so much.
Tia has grown, has lived, has changed. And maybe I have too but I haven’t changed enough—not for this new life, not yet. If anyone was born into the rebellion, it’s Horatia.
I kiss her temple and let her go. We walk side by side into the next room—the control room—and I feel at peace with everything. Marrin was right about the room being on this floor. Marrin was right about a lot of things; that thought makes me uneasy. I still think he’s playing us and he’s going to turn at the last minute, but now I hope he’s not.
The Officials that stand among us, Nicky explains, are their allies. I wonder if she recognised their faces or if there was a hidden sign that the rest of us missed. It makes me question the Official I killed, but no—she was going for Horatia. None of the Guardian allies attempted to hurt us.
In the control room are three Officials but no guards.
The far wall of the room is hidden behind computer screens like the ones that line the halls of The Guardians’ base. There are three sets of controls, some like the circuit board inside the electric box near the border fences and some like the keyboard of Dalmar’s computer back home. Some I don’t even know what to call—thousands of buttons and f
lips and switches and lights and foreign symbols.
In the time it takes The Guardians and Marrin to make the Officials unconscious I still haven’t finished staring at all of the controls. Bran, beside me, is talking in incomplete, awed rambles. I tap his shoulder to get him to stop talking. Doesn’t work.
He gapes, mumbling, “I … I cannot wrap my head around it. These devices—”
“Computers,” I supply.
“They’re magnificent.” He edges around the chairs of unconscious Officials with a wide eyed, absent expression. His hands are out in front of him, reaching for a lever, but Marrin sidesteps a Guardian and takes hold of his shoulders.
“They’re dangerous,” he says to Bran, not unkindly. “If you press the wrong button the whole town could blow up.”
Bran shakes himself out of it. “I’m sorry. I did not mean to … I was wondering how this whole thing functions. How does it function exactly?” He looks at Marrin with eyes that are overflowing with curiosity and enthusiasm.
“That doesn’t matter now,” Marrin says. I think I see amusement in his eyes but his face is so stern that I can’t tell if it’s genuine. “What matters is me stopping the Strain that’s scheduled.”
He guides Bran to the middle of the room—safely away from the computers—and pushes the Official in the middle chair onto the floor. With a practised movement, he seats himself in front of the controls and slips his hands into a pair of rubber gloves. Plastic straps snap around his wrist and I jump at the sudden movement. Marrin doesn’t react. He takes a deep breath, then enters a series of numbers into the computer. The screens blink once and fill the room with a brilliant blue light.
Horatia glides past me to stand behind Marrin’s chair. She rests her hand on his shoulder and he smiles. It’s doesn’t last a second but it was there. Tia doesn’t just love him, I think; she makes him happy. I need to stop wasting time trying to understand them. They just are.
Marrin types another string of numbers and another until one of the screens goes black. On the black background is a jumble of letters and numbers that Marrin studies closely. We’re all watching to see what he does.
He sighs impatiently and his fingers tap away at the keyboard.
“They know we’re here,” he says, “and they’ve sent another rotation of Officials. They’ll be here in fifteen minutes.”
“So be quick,” Nicky says. She turns her back to us and guards the door. The other Guardians do the same.
“What do you think I’m doing?” Marrin mutters as two other screens change. Unlike the black screen, they provide a view of two streets that I don’t recognise. I think one of them might be the one out front. The Officials have cameras on the streets. The thought shudders through me. Do they have cameras in our homes too?
Marrin’s fingers press keys frantically and he growls under his breath for some reason or other. After a minute or two something pops up on the main screen in front of us. I try to read it but it’s all in a specific language and I can’t make sense of it. Marrin nods, though, and I’m glad he at least understands it.
He shifts from one chair to another, shoving the limp Official out of it without blinking. The tapping rhythm of the keys scratches at my ears. For a moment, the screens go dark but they come back on after three seconds. Marrin doesn’t stop typing.
“They’re resisting me,” he explains. “In the main military base. They know I’m here and what I’m trying to do. They can’t get into the controls to stop what I’m doing, but they can shut the whole system down.”
Horatia asks gently, “What can you do?” Her fingers rub the pulse in Marrin’s neck and the comforting gesture stabs my heart. What is she going to do if she loses him? The tension, yet again, drops from Marrin at my sister’s touch. What is he going to do if he loses her?
“Stop the release and then let them shut it down. I’ll have to be fast, though, and make sure they don’t realise what I’m doing. I need them to think they’ve stopped me.”
“Can you do it?”
His voice comes out uneven, unsure, “I don’t know.”
Tia drops her voice. Her words are meant for Marrin alone but the room is so quiet it carries “Is that you talking, or your father?”
His fingers still on the keys.
“Because,” she goes on, “from what I’ve seen of you, there isn’t anything you can’t do. You’re amazing, Marrin—breath-taking. I know you can do this, I really do. I believe in you. Can you do it?”
“Yes,” he breathes.
He flicks on buttons and turns off lights and shifts levers so fast that his fingers are movement with no clear shape. He types seven keys on the keypad, presses three more buttons, and stops.
“Amazing,” Bran murmurs. I shake my head.
Marrin spins in his chair to face Tia and takes her hand. “You,” he whispers fiercely, and the adoration in his eyes is overflowing. “Are. Wonderful.”
Tia rolls her eyes but her cheeks are dark and a smile curls her lips.
The screens die with a whirr and the lights fade from the controls.
“Done,” Marrin declares to Bran and I. “They’ll think they’ve stopped me. You have ten minutes to get out of here.”
“But …” Bran frowns. “Officials are on their way here. Won’t they destroy the computer or restore it to its original purpose?”
“Yes.”
“Surely we can’t allow that to happen?”
“No.”
The smile falls from Horatia’s face. She wrenches her hand from Marrin’s and turns on him. “Don’t you dare.”
“Oh,” Bran murmurs. “I see.”
Marrin says, “I’ll guard the computer and stop anyone who tries to get through that door. I’m not letting this go to waste.”
“We can do that.” Nicky sounds offended.
“You could, but there are people outside this building that will need your help—people that will die without your help. Your purpose is to save lives, isn’t it?”
She nods slowly.
“So you’ll be more effective with the rest of your Guardians than in here with me. I can defend the computer on my own.”
She thinks about it for a minute and then sighs. “We’ll be waiting near the stairs,” she tells me, Bran, and Tia.
“I’m not leaving you here,” Tia says, her quiet voice powerful. “If you think I’m going to leave this town without you, you are wrong.”
“I don’t think that.” He rises from the chair. His hands might be shaking. “I know you too well to think you’ll do what I want you to.”
She crosses her arms over her chest; her eyes are glossy with tears. “I’m staying here.”
Marrin kisses Tia. He whispers something to her that I can’t hear, that I was never meant to hear, and I open my mouth to speak. Tia can’t stay here. She has to leave Forgotten London. She has to be safe.
“Don’t,” Bran whispers, his hand on my arm. I look at him, silently questioning why he’s stopped me. “That’s a goodbye,” he explains, nodding subtly towards Marrin.
I return my attention to the Official and my sister, watching as Marrin touches the back of Tia’s neck with his palm—something he did earlier that made Officials unconscious. I see a flash of white in his palm.
For a split second I think that I had been right about Marrin—that he had been on the side of the Officials and the President—but he catches Tia before she can fall, murmuring over and over again that he’s sorry.
He looks at her for a moment, as he holds her. “Goodbye, Hora,” he whispers and then he’s putting her into my arms.
“Take her,” he forces out, “and go.”
“Why did you—”
“She wouldn’t let me stay here. She wouldn’t leave this building. I have to stay here, though, and you know it.”
He does—someone has to protect the computer and he’s the one who knows how to control it. “But … they’re destroying Forgotten London. You’re going to get caught up in
all that.”
“I know,” he replies, “and I don’t care. I’ll stay here, and I’ll do this, but you take her now and get her far away from here.”
“You’re … sacrificing yourself for us?”
“No.” He chuckles. It’s an empty, horrible sound. “I’m sacrificing myself for Horatia. Now go.”
“You really do love her, don’t you?” I ask. He nods stiffly. With uncertain movements, he returns to the switchboard as if he’s waiting for it to come back to life. “Wait,” he says abruptly and he spins to face me.
“What?”
“You aren’t the only Forgotten Town to be targeted. Forgotten Paris has already been destroyed, and so has Forgotten Cairo and Forgotten Dhaka. They’re working their way through all of The Forgotten Lands.”
The news leaves me both shocked and unsurprised. I expected States to start targeting other Forgotten Lands, but I didn’t realise they already had.
“These places,” Bran interrupts. “Have they all been ruined by a device called The Weapon?”
“I don’t know. The things they use don’t have a name.”
“But they refer to them as weapons, am I correct?”
Marrin nods. “Why? Is that important?”
“To me, yes. Thank you.”
“There’s something else,” Marrin speaks, locked on me. “Colorado Town has been eradicated.”
“I’ve … never heard of it.”
“It’s a town in States.”
I inhale sharply. “That’s … that means they’ve killed their own people. That’s not … that doesn’t make sense. Why would they—”
“Because they were resisting,” Marrin explains with a smirk. His eyes flit to my sister, lingering before he tears them away. “States isn’t completely under my father’s thumb. The people in Colorado Town were protesting. They might live in States but their lives are restricted the same way they are in The Forgotten Lands. They want more than they have—a lot like you here in Forgotten London. Other towns in States are resisting too, not as loudly or violently as Colorado but they are troubling the Officials. That’s not good news for States, but it is for you, and for The Guardians. If you could somehow get into States and organise the resistance into a full rebellion … I’m sure you can guess where I’m going with this.”
The Forgotten Page 34
