Jacobi’s malicious glare burned. “You Ackersons are blind. This is a world of torture, death, slavery. There are kids shipped out of the city every month. What happens to them? The kids go out and food comes in.”
“Nobody knows where the food comes from,” Toby said.
Jacobi watched him. “The food is just the beginning. Now ask yourself, where does the metal and the water and the clothes come from? Where does the waste go? What’s actually beyond the city walls?”
“I’m not dumb enough to believe it’s a wasteland,” Toby said.
Jacobi nodded approvingly. “That’s right.”
“How can you be sure?” Toby insisted.
Tim leaned in to whisper with Jacobi. “Show him?”
Jacobi shook his head. “He doesn’t deserve to see it yet.”
Toby’s interest piqued, but he held back. A trick?
Jacobi said, “There’s a place inside the city where you can see the wasteland. You can see it for miles and miles.”
“What can you see?” Toby asked.
“It depends which way you look. The cops see a different picture. We see the truth. Roads, fields, houses, mountains... the ocean,” Rex said reverently.
“All of which are under the Ambassador’s control,” Toby huffed.
“I think you’re wrong. It’s all within the Tamerian Empire’s control, but each city is different. What if we got out and made it to another city? We could be looking at a whole new way of life,” Rex breathed.
“Now who’s naïve.”
Jacobi growled. “You haven’t seen it. You haven’t seen how free it is out there. Yes, the near spaces are filled with concentration farms, factories and sewage plants... but there’re places on the horizon that are different.”
“Pipe dreams,” Toby muttered.
“Possibilities,” Jacobi said. “And you can help us reach them.”
“Not going to happen,” Toby repeated.
Jacobi stood up and paced. “I’m not asking nicely anymore. I’m not even offering you sanctuary. If you don’t want our help then we’ll happily toss you onto the street after we’re done with you.”
Toby’s skin crawled. Jacobi’s rank breath brushed across his face. Toby knew the rug was being pulled out from under him before the punchline came.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that you’re gonna do what we want.” Jacobi’s lip curled. “You’re going to assassinate Commander Swanson.”
Toby twisted away. “You’re insane! That’s impossible.”
Something bubbled beneath the surface of Jacobi’s façade. They were nearing a final ultimatum. “You’re coming with us. You will or we’ll kill Alex Jenkins.”
“You don’t have her.”
“Don’t we?” Jacobi taunted.
Tim pulled out a phone from his pocket. “You’re working off old news, Toby.”
Tim passed him the phone. The image on the screen was dark, barely light enough to see. There was Tim, sitting on the edge of a bed next to a woman with tightly knotted hair. They both looked into the lens. Behind them, lying down on the bed, was a dark haired late-teen – Alex. She was asleep, or unconscious, or dead. Either way, Tim had been at her side only thirty minutes earlier, according to the time on the phone.
All the while Toby had been locked in the van Tim had been planning something, doing something to get hold of Alex. What did he do to her? Is she hurt?
“She looks so sweet when she’s sleeping,” Tim muttered.
Toby threw down the phone. “Where is she? Is she here?” He demanded.
“She’s in a safehouse. You won’t find her,” Jacobi said.
“Don’t touch her!”
“You know there’s only one way to protect her.”
Toby shook his head manically. “You want to kill Commander Swanson?”
“No,” Jacobi said. “We want you to kill Commander Swanson. Alex only lives if you kill him.”
Toby paused. “If he dies the Ambassador will nuke us.”
“No. Without Swanson the police will fold. The system dies if Swanson dies,” Tim snarled.
“That’s not true at all,” Toby said tentatively.
“We don’t care what you think. You’re not one of us. You’ll shoot the Commander, Alex will go free, the cops with break apart,” Jacobi said.
Toby looked down at the broken phone on the floor. Alex was unconscious and completely defenceless, stored away somewhere in Erikssen hands. She was just a kid.
“I don’t have much choice.”
16 - The Medic
The doors to the new warehouse swung shut behind a scout. Toby was not with him.
Zoe pushed the scout hard against a corrugated wall. “Why didn’t you wait?”
He panted. Something had chased him hard. “I stayed longer than I should. Toby knew the rules. He was late. He’d run somewhere else.”
Marcus gently pulled Zoe away. “Zoe, Mattie’s right.”
Zoe cringed. “What if he’s not? Toby knows so much about us.”
Marcus waved off the scout. “Does he really know more than Hywel?” He pulled Zoe close. “Don’t worry, I’ll send scouts into the city. They’ll find Toby.”
Mattie hobbled away to the medic station. Emma was floating around, setting up the medical kits and linens in fleeting spare moments. A handful of scouts were slumped in corners with bandages or dressing patches smothering their minor wounds.
Emma’s hands busied around a storage box. “Hi Mattie. What happened to your foot?”
Mattie threw himself down into a vacant chair. “It’s just a sprain. I hopped a roof, trying to take a shortcut past a patrol. The roof wasn’t as solid as I thought. Fell through and landed in an office on a mezzanine. Cops heard it. I was lucky they were looking in the wrong building. Flaming hurt.”
Emma cautiously probed up the purpling ankle. “You are lucky. It’s just a sprain. Ted broke his arm when he jumped over a wall earlier. Another two were roughed up on the corner of Lewis and Tenth.”
“Roughed up? By who?”
Emma scoffed. “Street thugs. We worry so much about the cops, the Erikssens, whoever, but it was just random robbers this time.”
Mattie nodded. “And Toby’s AWOL.”
“Toby can handle himself,” Emma said.
“So could Hywel and Alex.”
Emma tied off the bandage. “Any news?”
Mattie shrugged. “I’m out of the loop. My job is to watch the base.”
Emma nodded. “Ok. Go rest up. Keep your ankle elevated. Make sure you get plenty of fluids today.”
The medic watched Mattie hobble away. The new warehouse thrummed with nervous activity. Yammering kids were corralled into one corner, apparently helping to set up sleeping mats. Weapons, food and supplies were being unloaded from the car. That would disappear into the streets at nightfall. Everyone was occupied.
Nobody was paying her any attention.
Emma slipped away. Down behind a pile of left-over crates and machinery. Emma entered a vacant bathroom and carefully locked the door.
Tucked safely in her sock was a Nokia 3300, a basic model mobile phone that predated touch screens and location services. Larton Logistics reproduced them for a while.
She waited. Slowly the phone woke up after weeks of sleep. She punched in a number that sat easy in her memory. The phone rang.
She waited.
The ringing stopped and a bass voice answered. “Doctor Paynton speaking?”
“Dad?” She almost laughed. “It’s good to hear your voice.”
The receiver muffled the microphone and she could hear footsteps. “One second,” he said.
She waited.
“Sorry,” her Dad came back on the phone. “I was in the surgery foyer. Too many people about. I’m in my office now. Emma, we’ve been so worried.”
“I’m Ok,” Emma cooed.
“We wondered. Your face hasn’t been shown,” he said.
Emma clutched hard to the phone.
“I don’t know anything. What’s happened?”
There was a pause. “Hywel Jenkins was caught. He’s released a list of Ackerson names. There are kids on the list. They’re hunting dozens of people now. They’ve got photos.”
“Hywel? No way,” Emma gasped.
“He did,” her Dad said. “They’re going to execute him.”
Emma couldn’t speak. She tried to keep herself breathing steady, her father couldn’t know how much this hurt.
He continued. “The police are all over the place. They’re shooting. We’re so scared for you.”
Emma said, “I’m safe. It’s Ok.”
He coughed violently before continuing. “You should come home. That’s why you called, isn’t it?”
“I call you for medical advice. Sometimes I really need it,” she complained.
“No no,” he countered. “You call because you want to speak to a normal person, someone connected to your old life. You don’t need my medical advice anymore.”
Emma sighed a stubborn sob and shifted the phone to her other ear.
“Emma, you chose to join the resistance because you saw a good cause. Well, you’ve done enough. Come home. Come home before it’s too late,” he begged.
“It’s already too late.”
“It’s not!” Her Dad said. “Your photo is not on the boards. They don’t know what you’ve done. Your Mam and I need you to come home.”
“Dad, I’ve seen too much. It’s too late for me to walk away from this. I know too much about how the world works to stand back. I can’t do it.” She tried to make him understand. “I can’t watch them die.”
Neither spoke, the pause stretched out.
“Emma....”
“I know.”
She couldn’t go back.
“Emma, I’ve got to go. Someone’s at the door.”
“I love you Dad.”
He choked back his breath. “I love you too, Sweetie. Call me back later?”
“Yes. Bye Dad.”
Emma turned off the phone and shoved it back in her sock. She’d been carrying it around like this for so long that her foot felt strange without the comfort of the solid five by two by half inch phone digging into its side. She stepped out of the bathroom and returned to the medic station to unpack her supplies, as if nothing had happened.
An hour or so passed and Emma was frustrated by the interruptions her lovely fellows put in her way. The supplies would not be unpacked today. Instead she assisted with the cooking and cleaning and childminding that the Ackersons needed to keep it ticking over. Those poor kids needed stability.
Whoever scoped this building out had done a terrible job. The walls weren’t sound, abandoned rubbish suggested someone else had recently lived here and the basement was a major security hazard. Marcus was piling the rubbish in the basement in a slim hope that the racket of it all falling over would alert them to any police entering through that route.
Emma hated this building. Even the roof access was rickety. Earlier one of the guards cut his hand on the railing. How could Zoe lead them here?
Covered in grit, wood chippings and dust, Emma was glad when the last crate was safely in the basement. Someone found a padlock and attached it to the basement door into the sewer network. They hung the key up on a big nail next to it. You never knew when you needed to use your worst possible escape route.
She rubbed her dirty hands down across her trousers as Marcus called her name. Not more crates! “Down here!” She shouted, exhausted.
“Emma, get to the medic station!” Marcus yelled.
Six scouts were waiting for her. Two men sitting up, nursing scratches and banged heads. Emma ignored them. Debbie was pressing down on a bloody leg. That guy was unconscious. His trousers were dripping. On the rug next to that, Mattie was pressing down on the gut of a screaming man. A slightly built teen was gripping her own forearm. The final scout lay still on the floor, lifeless.
Emma was at Debbie’s side in a flash. She shouted at Marcus. “Get me something to wash my hands in, and some gloves.” She shouted over her shoulder, “Get me a surgery kit!”
Debbie released the wound for Emma to see. Blood was seeping steadily from a bullet wound high on the thigh. The exit wound on the back of the leg bled less heavily.
“The bullet hit a vein. We can tidy up the back easily enough. I need to bind off the vein,” she explained to Debbie. “Matt, keep that pressure on. I’ll be with you soon.”
She scrubbed her hands, slipped on the gloves and prepared the cut. The guy was out cold, so she made the incision. Debbie stepped away as Emma applied clamps to the vein and made short work of the bleed. With quick stitches to the bullet wound, she had it under control in only a few short minutes. “Debbie, dress that quick.”
Even in the short time she spent with the first patient, her second patient had deteriorated. A bullet was trapped in his abdomen and something was bleeding inside. In a hospital this patient might have had a chance.
The bullet had punctured the lower intestine and a kidney, making the blood black. She worked on him for twenty minutes, but the blood obscured everything with its thick veil. The sedatives took too long to kick in. His heart stopped.
The walking wounded waited. It was only after washing the last person’s blood from her forearms that Emma let the grief take her. She returned to her third patient, a guy cradling his wounded arm.
“Greg?”
Greg nodded. “You saved my arm.” He was calmer now. The morphine had kicked in.
“What happened?” Emma asked.
Greg’s forehead creased. “Zoe sent us out to scout into Central.”
“I thought that’s what Toby was doing?”
“Zoe sent us out after him. When we got there our faces were everywhere. We’re all there. Even the kids,” Greg said.
All of us? “They recognised you?”
“We’ve been sold out.”
“Did you see my photo?” The phone dug into her foot.
She felt herself drift away, almost running down the corridor. She locked herself back in the bathroom and felt every second while the phone slowly powered up in her hand. Dialling the number she knew so well, she waited and waited for it to start ringing.
“I’m sorry, but this person is not available to take your call. Please try again later.”
She dialled again.
“I’m sorry, but...”
She dialled again.
“I’m sorry...”
His phone was off. It’s never off. That’s their rule. She stared angrily at her phone. It pinged. She had a voicemail. She dialled it.
Pause.
“Emma!” It was her Dad. “Emma, your photo is everywhere! They know who you are, don’t come home. You can’t come back. Stay safe. Call me later.”
“End of message one. Message two.”
“Emma!” It was her Dad again. “They’re here. It’s too late. We can’t run.” She heard banging noises in the background. “They’re shooting. Emma, find a way out. Get out of the city.” Shots sounded close by and the line went dead.
“End of message two. End of messages.”
She dropped the phone. Somehow now it felt evil. It felt wrong. She was staring at it as if the phone had created the message itself. She knew what it would bring next if she didn’t destroy it. She smashed the phone. The screen broke under her heel, then the front plastic surround, then as her heel hit again and again the number pad flew off and the battery cover and finally the chip cracked in half. She left the phone carcass on the floor and returned to the medic station, knowing that there was nothing and nobody left to fight for except the Ackersons.
17 - The Daughter
It was the silence that woke her. In the warehouse there would be snores, rustling sleeping sacks and cries of restless children. Nothing could muffle the creaks of the warehouse roof or the soft footfalls of the guards. Silence was an aberration. It meant she wasn’t at home. It meant she was exposed.
&n
bsp; Her eyes snapped open; every sinew responded instantly. She felt on fire as her tortured muscles stretched. Alex twisted out of a bed, barrelling over the woman sat at her bedside. Alex struggled to keep the woman down, sprawled on the floor. A quick flick around the room. It was just one opponent.
Alex’s wrists were ripped off the floor as the woman took over. Pulled sideways, the woman rose off the floor like Alex was just a kitten. Flailing helplessly, Alex screamed.
Suddenly legs were wrapped around Alex’s waist. She was thrown onto the rough concrete floor and weight fell onto her chest.
“No,” she grunted.
The woman above her panted heavily. Penny. She wasn’t wearing a uniform or holding a weapon. Just a woman in her late forties with straggly hair tied haphazardly into a knot at the back of her head.
“Stop fighting me!” Penny said. “I’m on your side.”
Alex knew her, didn’t she? Penny was a friend. “Where am I?”
“Don’t you remember? My name is Penny Mitchell. I was part of Larton Logistics.” Penny sat up on Alex’s stomach. “You’re in our safehouse.”
“Larton Logistics?” Alex asked suspiciously.
“Sometimes called the Chameleons. You know?” Penny asked tentatively.
Nodding, Alex relaxed a little. “The prison. The cop got me out. Where’s Sergeant Willis?”
Penny stood up and walked over to a small kitchenette hidden in a shadow across from the bed. “He’s gone his own way.”
Alex perched on the bed, still not quite owning her own legs. “Where are we?”
“Not far from Central.”
“Central? That’s mad. Why travel so far?”
“This is where we want to be,” Penny said, distracted.
“Where’s the other guy?”
“Tim? He’ll be back soon. He’s gone out to find some food,” she smiled.
Penny brought over a cup of steaming spiced tea. It smelled of lemon, cinnamon and cloves. Alex wrinkled her nose at it, but took it politely. “Thank you.”
“Drink it up and have some rest. You’ve had a big shock,” Penny said sweetly.
Alex took a sip. “How long was I out for?”
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