Rise

by Victoria Powell

  Jen fell in line with Toby. Subtly she glided down the street, watching the side streets without obvious intent, almost like she was dancing around him and his walking stick. The ankle had improved enough to get past Emma, but he knew it would be a complete state at the end of today. His shoulder and chest were wrapped up so tight it was difficult to use one of his arms, but he was grateful.

  “You gonna keep up, old man?” Jen teased. She was five years younger than Toby, but she still had that big sister vibe.

  Toby scowled at her. “I’ll be fine. Just keep to the plan.”

  Jen smirked. “I doubt you’ll keep to the plan.”

  She knew him too well. He rolled his eyes and kept walking.

  “Toby, my little hot head. You’re not a team player. Are you going to stick with us all the way?”

  “Jen,” Toby warned. “We need to just get over to City Square and scope it out. At the moment we are blind to what the cops are doing.”

  Jen kicked the dust at her feet and muttered, “Whatever.”

  Toby was stunned by how easily his scouts relaxed into the street without a care in the world. It was as if they’d forgot the warnings. They stepped into the world and transformed into a sortie of everyday people on their way out for lunch. Sure, they were trained to look like members of the public, but sometimes Toby wondered if they forgot that they weren’t.

  He told them every time, in every briefing, that it was not just the police they had to fear. Any person on the street could recognise them. Any person on the street could be scared of them or angry, even vengeful, towards them. Just one person could call the cops and the whole street would erupt in bullets or bombshells.

  Jen pulled a hand-written map out of her pocket and checked it against the streetscape ahead. Toby grabbed at the paper, but she pulled it away.

  “Jen, you should’ve memorised that. We can’t risk the police finding it and moving all the cameras,” Toby said. She ignored him.

  Jen led them off the main street and across a side intersection into a back lane. They zigzagged across another few main streets, slowly strolling into the centre. Nobody was paying them any attention, despite Mattie laughing loudly as Sam’s dark jokes.

  Toby grabbed Jen by her elbow and pulled her off-course into an alley.

  “Toby,” she hissed.

  “Cops.”

  She feverishly scanned over the map. “We need to cut back onto that street at the next turning.”

  “No, the cops will still be within sight.”

  She stopped to look closer. Mattie and Sam crowded in behind them, laughing suspended. “We’re only three streets out from the Square. If we can’t cut back onto that street we’ll have to divert by another two streets to avoid cameras.”

  “The extra time might cost us our cover,” Mattie said, scanning the map over Jen’s shoulder. She snatched it out of his eyeline.

  “We can cut across the main street. They won’t see us,” Sam insisted.

  Toby tsked at Sam. “I can see why you’ve been caught the most.”

  “Nearly caught. I’ve only had to break out of the cells three times. Alex must have caught up with me,” Sam smirked.

  “At this rate you’ll be back in the cells and your record number of escapes will be safe,” Toby said.

  Jen waved the map under their noses. “Back to business. We’re way too close to those cops now. Let’s take the long route and see if we can get to the Square within the next hour.”

  “An hour if we follow your snaking route, or ten minutes off to our left,” Sam grumbled.

  Toby pushed him to the front. “Shut up and start walking. Keep alert.”

  Mattie tapped Toby on his arm. Snapping his head around, there was a woman scuttling towards them from the opposite side of the road. Her face was creased with grief and it looked like every step she took was part of some internal battle. One thing was certain - she recognised Toby.

  “Please.” She was halfway across the street, her voice carried. The desperation was palpable. “You have to help me.”

  She was drawing attention. Too many people were watching them. Some of these people would soon pass those cops back there.

  “Lady,” Sam said, stepping forward consolingly. “Hey.”

  “Please, they’ve taken my boy!” She said, her voice pitched as she stalled three metres from them.

  “Calm down, lady,” Sam said, leaning towards her to take her hand.

  She sneered at Sam and stepped away. “I know you,” she said, pointing at Toby. “Please help my son.”

  Toby pulled Sam back away from the woman and motioned for her to come closer. “You need to be more cautious. You’re gonna get yourself on a watch list if you’re not careful.”

  “I don’t care about me.” She lowered her tone, but her body, shaking like a leaf, was still drawing attention.

  “Lady, you should care,” Sam said. “Your son has got himself in a lot of trouble. He’s probably strung up in some...”

  “Enough,” Toby cut Sam off. “Jen, we’re running out of time. Take Sam and get going.”

  Jen shook her head. “You won’t know the safe routes.”

  Mattie said, “I’ll stay with Toby. I know the routes.”

  “He did his homework,” Toby growled.

  “Please,” The woman begged.

  Toby gave Jen a pleading look. “We’ll meet you back at base. Get going before we all get caught.”

  Jen pulled Sam away, calling back. “Be back on time.”

  With Jen moving safely away from them and onward to the Square, Toby coaxed the woman off the road and onto the pavement.

  “He wasn’t a sympathiser. He’s only sixteen. What would a boy that age be doing with illegals?” She said.

  “Boys are boys,” Toby said.

  “Not my boy,” she said sternly. “He was a good boy. I made sure he only had the best friends. They were all dreaming of grouping together to rent a flat in Middle Meadston. They were on track to get good government jobs.”

  Mattie asked, “What’s his name?”

  “Terry Asher,” She said, holding back tears.

  “Mrs Asher, are you sure the cops took him?” Mattie asked.

  “Of course, I’m sure! Do you think I’m mad?”

  Toby said, “When, where, how? Can you give us more details?”

  She took a deep breath. “Ok. Yes, it was yesterday morning at about 10am. Terry was still in bed. Four police officers wearing blue jackets came to the house and took him away.”

  “Did they say what he’d done or where they were taking him?”

  “They didn’t say anything,” she whimpered.

  People were still watching them. Toby shrugged off a sense of dread. “We’ll follow it up.”

  “Has he appeared on the news yet?” Mattie asked.

  “No. I’ve heard nothing.”

  Mattie pulled Toby to one side. “Do you know what time of year it is?”

  Toby shook his head. “Don’t be cryptic, Matt.”

  “Last week they ran the sixteen plus exams. At this time every year a load of kids go missing,” Mattie said.

  Then it dawned on Toby. “She said he was on course for a government job. They’d been training him up to be some sort of techy or scientist. Then he failed his exams.”

  “Exactly,” Mattie said. “He’s not helping illegals. He’s not locked up in the police cells. Those blue coats belong to the border security, those guys guard the wall. The boy has been shipped out to work on the fields outside the city.”

  Mattie’s voice had carried, the woman came in close to listen. “Outside? They’ve sent him outside the walls?”

  Toby nodded. “It’s very likely.”

  “Can you bring him back?” She begged.

  “We’ve never even seen over the walls,” Mattie said. “Once you’re outside you never come back.”

  “I’ll never see my boy again? He’s still a baby.”

  Toby squared her up and gentl
y squeezed her shoulders. “It’ll be Ok. He will be fine.”

  Something drew his attention away, a sudden burst of movement across the street. A man was running. He’d seen them. He was running in the direction of the cops around the corner.

  “Look,” Toby said, bustling the woman away in the opposite direction. “Run. Run down that street. Run to the next junction then throw away your coat. Then walk home and burn the clothes you’re wearing.”

  “Forget about us. You never saw us,” Mattie insisted. “Your boy will be fine, but you need to run!”

  She turned down the street, hobbling at a skip away. The two Ackersons couldn’t worry about her now. They had their own skins to save. If she was lucky then the cops would pick the lads’ street and be led away from her.

  Bracing his shoulder and tossing his stick, Toby started running. Mattie’s solid footfalls were next to his in moments and then took the lead. The ex-cop dived through a gateway that Toby had not even seen. The gate rattled shut when Toby was halfway down the side of the house. The passage opened into a small yard where a bike shed and some bins backed onto a brick wall. Mattie leapt onto the shed and dived over the wall. Toby stalled, then used the shorter bin as a steppingstone to lift his broken body high enough to scrambled over.

  Mattie caught him as Toby landed badly in the alley. “Steady.”

  “Alright,” Toby muttered, before stumbling away through the maze of passages. “I’ll keep up, Ok.”

  Mattie pulled him into a narrower passageway. “Then pay attention and let me lead.”

  Toby ran at the gruelling pace, pushing himself to keep up as they twisted and turned over slippery green-slimed concrete, dodging bags of rubbish and crumbling walls. The path split and split again. It seemed like they were spiralling in circles around some unseen pivot point. If Mattie was not lost then any chasing police behind them would be.

  The sound of traffic came from ahead of them. Mattie slowed as the sound of a car horn rang out. If Toby strained he could just about make out voices, giggling and chatting, somewhere out of sight.

  Mattie looked back at Toby as he steadied his breath. “We’re coming out near Emery Place. Just act normal. Get your breath back and wipe your face before we step out.”

  Toby wiped his sweaty face with his cuff. “We’re only two streets from the Square. How did we get so close?”

  He didn’t get an answer, Mattie stepped out into a crowded street in the middle of the retail district. Toby was right at his side, both strolling in between high-class government workers and their designer wives. This was the wrong side of town to be in.

  There was something about the people who shopped here. They worked all day for a fair, not great, salary and then went out and spent over half of it on clothes to wear at work. It was as if they lived at work and just went home to recharge.

  “Do you think that woman got away?” Mattie asked.

  Toby shrugged. “She put a target on her back by approaching us. I think that boy was all she had. Terry Asher, I’ll look into him when everything calms down.”

  “Stupid woman,” Mattie shook his head.

  “Just get us to the north side of the police compound,” Toby said.

  “Not the Square side?”

  Toby said, “You wouldn’t have a good view of the cells from there.”

  “I knew you were coming to find Alex,” Mattie laughed, then angled Toby towards the northern suburbs. “I know, I know - just get us there.”

  “And out of this crowd. We’re drawing attention,” Toby muttered.

  A lad of maybe nineteen stared at Toby, then shoulder bumped a suited woman with silvery hair. Toby walked on. Don’t look back.

  Mattie really knew the streets. They veered off to the left behind a row of market stalls. Their exits were limited, but the red and white awnings shielded them from the overhead cameras mounted on the opposite wall. Mattie slowed his pace imperceptibly, the black Gortex of police jackets flashed through the gap in the awning’s tarpaulin. That was close.

  A glimpse down a side street confirmed that they were now passing in parallel to the Square. It felt like they were fighting the tide of people moving in the Square’s vortex. They still had fifty metres to travel before rotating north of Central.

  The smells of fresh apples and cut grapefruit was overpowered as they passed stalls selling succulent spit roast pork and deep-fried chicken. It was a long time since breakfast. They passed between thin, polyester shirts and cotton blend trousers that hung from racks just above their heads. The smells of cooked meats faded as rapid trance music mixed with fairy tale sing-alongs and classical jazz inside a stall selling retro stereos.

  Swapping one distraction after another, they held their cover until the corner of Smith Avenue where they turned away from the market. Ahead of them stood the ominous rippling shell of Central. From this direction Central’s tower was annexed by armoured black steel that glistened in the sun, the roof curving like the hardened shell of a woodlouse looking down on the ants below.

  This part of town narrowed suddenly. The buildings were old, dating back to the beginning of the city as they knew it. These little buildings used to be hotels, back when people could move between one city and another. Now they were used for short-term housing for people who had been bombed out or for kids who had fallen out with their parents. All in all, the houses were not in good condition and suddenly Toby and Mattie’s rough working clothes blended in with the people around them.

  Mattie watched all the doors for movement. “So, we’re here now,” he said. “What do you expect to find when we get to the other end of the street?”

  “I hoped you’d tell me,” Toby smirked. “You worked here for years.”

  “Toby. You could have asked me about this when we were safely back at base.” Mattie pulled something small from his pocket, which fitted perfectly into the palm of his hand. “I still have my old service radio. Before we get too close we need to know what’s going on inside that building.”

  Toby looked nervously at the radio. “You’ve had that hidden away all this time?”

  “It was turned off,” Mattie said. “They’re not like mobile phones - the cops can’t turn them on remotely.”

  “Can’t we just scout out the area for possible weak spots? I know the cells are accessed through this side of the building,” Toby said, squinting towards the end of the street.

  Mattie barked out a laugh. “Be real. The entrance on this side has three gated barriers between the exterior door and the cell block.”

  “But we’ve broken people out before.”

  Mattie shrugged. “Security gets improved after a breakout. If she’s inside those cells then she’ll be in the lower levels in max security. On a quiet day there’d be twenty guards to pass before reaching her cell,” Mattie said.

  They paused on the edge of a large porch.

  “The radio might tell us about the patrols outside,” Mattie said. “I doubt you’re going to let us hang around long enough to find out if the Commander or any other senior staff are inside. That would increase the staff on guard.”

  The radio crackled to life. They waited.

  Two high pitch bleeps sounded. “Base this is ten-fifteen, over.”

  “Ten-fifteen this is base, go ahead, over.”

  Toby watched the radio eagerly.

  “Base, on route south along Roman Way. Reporting a code five-five-zero in Stadler’s jewellers, over.”

  “Ten-fifteen, please hold your position. Ambulance on route, out.”

  Mattie shook his head. “Someone’s had a medical emergency, probably a heart attack.”

  Ten long and tense minutes passed. Only four reports came through - all from police out on the streets. No information at all coming out from the station.

  “Four-nine-nine to base, over.”

  “Go ahead, four-nine-nine, over.”

  “We’re bringing in a perp from Falisans. Five minutes out, over.”

  “Please pr
oceed to Central, four-nine-nine. Assistance will be waiting for you at the north entrance.”

  Mattie’s head tilted up to rest on the doorframe. “Toby, we can’t stay here all day. That exit is going to be sealed up for the next half an hour in response to prisoner transit. We can’t go near it.”

  “Damn it,” Toby growled. “We can’t leave. We need to get sight of that exit.”

  “Not happening. Maybe in ninety minutes if another prisoner transit doesn’t come in. By then we’ll be late back to the warehouse,” Mattie said.

  Somewhere down the end of that street police would be pouring out of the station, lining the way to protect the prisoner transit from any potential attacks. Mattie was right, they couldn’t get through now. They’d draw attention even if they stayed on this porch.

  Mattie jumped, the door to the neighbouring house creaked open. They needed to move. They both pulled themselves back into the recess of the doorway and watched as a woman with tightly pulled back hair stepped tentatively onto the step outside her house. The door clicked shut and Toby caught a glance at her face. He couldn’t stop himself. Toby stepped out; the woman pulled back towards her door as she immediately recognised him.

  “Penny Mitchell. The last of the Erikssens,” Toby spat.

  She watched him, terror all over her face. “You found me?”

  “We’re good like that,” Toby bluffed.

  Mattie stepped alongside Toby and analysed the stringy middle-aged woman in front of him.

  “What do you want?” She asked.

  The radio crackled; Mattie thumbed it off but Penny had seen it.

  “You’re not here for me, are you? You’ve come to get her,” Penny said. The corner of her lip twitched.

  Toby said, “You’re an added bonus.”

  “She’s not in there,” Penny stepped down onto the street.

  “How would you know?” Mattie asked.

  She came close to Mattie. He bristled at the acrid smell of her perfume. She gently tapped the tip of her index finger on Mattie’s radio-holding hand. “You’re not the only one with a police radio.”