“Alex, remember what this is for.” He asked, bending lower with his hand.
Heart breaking, she knew what she had to do. Nina would be the last of them to die. Their sacrifice to end this war. Her aching fingers reluctantly clenched his clammy hand.
“I’ll do what you say.”
His hands held hidden strength. She was hoisted from the floor to an unsteady footing at his side. Then nothing more than a resting hand on her shoulder stopped her from running.
“Then we have peace,” the Ambassador said. His voice boomed across the square.
Confused crowds began to clap as they realised - no more fighting and no more fear. It was over.
Something clamped around her arm, tugging her away from the Ambassador. Spinning around, she found herself held fast by Defoe. The Ambassador returned to his glass shield, watching them with his enigmatic stare. A short, hard shake brought her back to Defoe’s contorted face.
“You cannot do this. You stupid bitch,” Defoe growled.
“It’s already done,” she sighed.
“No.” He stepped back, holding his pistol in both hands he aimed at Alex’s heart. “No. You deserve to be punished, but you do not deserve him. Nobody deserves what he offers.”
Alex tripped back, as Defoe cocked the weapon. Two sharp cracks ripped through the air. Defoe thumped forwards, taking Alex to the ground. Cops filled her vision. They were everywhere. Police whistles and screams pierced the air.
Defoe was pulled off her chest, his body limp. Shards of pain sparked from her shoulder. There was blood covering her chest and gut. More ebbed from the growing puddle beneath her shoulder. Defoe’s bullet was off target, punching high and into her left side. Not all the blood was hers.
“Get her to the car!”
Alex’s vision swam. Defoe was tossed about ten feet away. What happened? A sniper? The crowds were pushed away from the stage. Shadows ran across the roofs. Martyn.
Someone pushed down hard on Alex’s wound with a dressing. Light shifted as pain pushed her consciousness backwards. She was in the arms of a burly policeman, running across the stage. The Ambassador was inside the car when she was laid across the backseat of his limousine. The car shunted forwards.
“I’ve got you.”
43 - Next Life
“Get off me!”
The Ambassador batted aside Alex’s feeble hands and pushed down harder on her punctured shoulder. She gasped as the pain forged out into her arm, neck and chest.
Her tormentor relented momentarily, pulling off his jacket and haphazardly flicking his mask away. He ran the back of his wrist across his sweaty brow, leaving a trace of brown-red blood in its wake. The jacket, scrunched up into a ball, was thrust under her shoulder and Simons pinned her flat onto the padded leather seat.
The car shook as it picked up speed on the turn out of the square. Simons wobbled on his knees from where he was balanced in the deep footwell.
“Stop wriggling, girl,” Simons growled.
Alex felt cold creeping through her. “Hospital. I need a hospital.”
“The bullet’s gone straight through,” Simons said, pulling cocktail napkins from a hidden compartment and adding them to the padding on her shoulder. “He didn’t hit a major blood vessel, so we can deal with this quietly.”
“No, I need a hospital,” she said.
Simons slipped sideways as the car spun around another corner. The bliss of a momentary relief of pressure was stifled as Simons threw his body weight back onto her chest, pushing air from her lungs.
“Davies! Davies, take the corners easier.” Simons twisted to look through the tinted divider to where his driver sat beyond.
Simons looked out through a tinted side window. The streets were clear now. The crowds were far behind. The car swung hard around another corner. Simons clung onto Alex to keep himself in place.
“Davies, what are you doing?” Simons snapped.
Silence came from the front seat.
Simons shouted an order again. “Can you hear me, Davies? We need to redirect.”
Something was wrong.
“Ewan!” Alex moaned. It must be Ewan. Their plan was still in motion. “Ewan, stop the car!”
The divider tint faded to clear. There was his red hair. There in the rear-view mirror were his panicked hazel eyes flicking back and forth. The chauffeur’s speaker crackled.
“Alex?” Ewan’s voice boomed. “Alex, what the hell?”
Simons pivoted around, holding firmly to Alex’s wound while glaring at the stranger driving his car. “Stop this car now!”
“What have you done to her? Did you shoot her?” Ewan demanded.
“This car is being escorted by five police vehicles. What do you think you can achieve here?” Simons said.
Ewan pointed behind him with his thumb. “That’s been fixed. We’re alone, look for yourself.”
Simons leaned across Alex to look out through the rear window.
Alex heaved in a sharp breath. “Ewan, stop the car.”
“What? We’ve got him. The plan worked.” A small smirk touched Ewan’s lips.
“You knew about this?” Simons demanded.
“I did. I forgot.” Alex heaved another pained breath. “Ewan, the plan changed. Everything changed on that stage.”
Ewan shook his head and turned back to the road, swinging the car down a small alley and back out into another street. They were heading deep into Fallisans.
“Ewan, he said he’d get rid of the death penalty. That’s all we wanted!” Alex said.
Ewan shook his head.
“Defoe went renegade. He shot me, not the Ambassador.”
Ewan checked his mirrors. “I don’t understand any of this. If that’s right then what are you doing with him?”
Alex said. “I’m his hostage. You don’t have to be an Ackerson anymore. You can go home.”
“Then Defoe shot you?”
“Ewan. Stop the car, get out and run away. If we kidnap the Ambassador now then everything he just promised will be taken away! The Ambassador’s agreement must stand.”
The Ambassador watched Alex, but said nothing.
Ewan said. “You want me to leave him here with the car and run off? How gullible do you think I am?” He shouted at the Ambassador. “Get your hands off her. You can’t trick me like that.”
Alex’s voice cracked, “It’s the truth! If you don’t stop this car then they’ll think the Ambassador has been put at risk and neutralise the agreement! Stop the bloody car!”
Ewan was silent, eyes switching between Alex and the road ahead. He slammed on the brakes and stopped the car. “Ok. Maybe I believe you. Me and you are going to get out of the car and he’ll drive away.”
The Ambassador said, “No. She’s not leaving.”
Ewan shrugged. “That’s the deal.”
“I’ve already made my deal. You get back your courts, I get peace and her. I think we both benefit,” he growled.
Ewan dithered. “I don’t know what to do.”
The Ambassador said, “Get out of the car and start running now!”
Ewan opened the door and looked intently at Alex. “Good luck.” Then he disappeared.
The Ambassador pulled a radio from the back of his trousers. “Ralph!”
The radio crackled to life. “Yes, sir. Situation under control at the square. We’re dispersing the crowds. There’ll need to be a public broadcast this evening.”
“Forget that,” the Ambassador snapped. “I’m on my way to the T15 base. Get a med team there ASAP.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then continue with the clean-up and I’ll be ready for an 8pm broadcast,” he said as an afterthought.
“Yes, sir.”
“Get Taylor to T15 with a clean car.”
“Yes, sir.”
He clipped the radio back onto his belt. He looked down at Alex. “I’ve got to drive this tank of a car now. You need to keep some pressure on your shoulder.”
&nb
sp; She nodded weakly. “Where are we going?”
“It’s not far. Maybe a five-minute drive. Hold on,” he said.
He lifted his bloody hands from her shoulder and slipped out of the car. The front door slammed shut, the engine roared to life again and the car was thrown into reverse. Alex rocked as the car nipped through the streets. She heard car horns blaring as people exiting the city centre tried to avoid the Ambassador’s reckless driving.
When they finally came to a stop Alex was half aware that she was lying in a puddle of her own blood. The smell of it was putrid and the city air outside barely cut the edge as the door opened above her head.
“Get her on the trolley quick,” a young female voice said.
A girl of about twenty-five clambered into the footwell of the car. Someone grabbed Alex underneath her shoulders and she moaned. The person in the footwell lifted her by her hips and she was pulled out into a bright courtyard. More hands grabbed at her and she was thrown onto a trolley bed and strapped down.
Four men and women ran alongside the trolley, pushing her through a concrete courtyard and into a red brick building through a set of double doors. Pressure returned to her wounded shoulder with a cotton pad. They entered a grey bare room lit by sunlight streaming through large, high windows.
Someone pulled up a wheeled table covered in medical sharps. Something tweaked inside her as she remembered seeing the torture implements in police cells. Panic set in. She strained against the straps holding her down and fought the person pressing on her shoulder.
Held tight by two medics, a third pulled a syringe off the table and poised over Alex. “It’s just morphine. This op is gonna hurt like hell; you need pain relief.”
She kept fighting. “Get off me. Get off.”
They held her down tighter.
“Attach a drip and put it in that way.”
“No!” she yelled.
She turned her head and the Ambassador came into view. In her stupor she stilled. Is this what he wanted? To torture her? She promised she would not run away. She could not fight back.
The medic slipped in the needle, the force of it making her arm suddenly burst into pressure pain. She screamed and tried to pull her arm away, the drip needle resting in place. The medics were waiting for something to happen.
Alex turned to the Ambassador. “Please, what’s happening? What are they doing?”
One of the medics answered. “We’ve got to get this sewn up, but we need to do a scan first. We need to see the damage. We don’t want to sedate you until just before the operation. It’ll be better for you that way.”
Alex looked around the room. “Where is this place? Why didn’t you take me to the hospital?”
“You don’t need to know where this is. Calm down now,” the Ambassador said.
Alex glared at him. “Take me to a hospital.”
The Ambassador turned away from her. “Can you please sedate her now?”
The medic made calming hand gestures. “Shock is confusing her. The pain relief is kicking in now. We have a couple of minutes before the portable scanner will arrive. There’s no need to sedate her yet.”
The Ambassador’s radio buzzed and he stepped to one side to answer it.
“Ralph?”
The radio buzzed to life. “Yes sir, the security team and Kelly, the Embassy representative, are on their way to your location. Three minutes out.”
“Thank you, Ralph.”
“Sir. I recommend you remove yourself from the location on their arrival and return to H71 for debriefing,” Ralph said.
The Ambassador paused and walked back to the medical team, who had finished attaching monitors to Alex’s chest. “Is everything going smoothly here?”
A middle-aged blond woman approached the Ambassador. “From first inspection of the wound, I am eighty percent certain that the wound is clean, that blood loss is not life threatening and that the bullet has not caused lasting damage. In my experience, this is not life threatening.”
“Give us some space,” the Ambassador ordered. The medics stepped reluctantly away and out of earshot, impatient to get back to work.
Alex could feel the suffocation of the morphine ebbing through her. “Hospital,” she gasped.
He was judging her, weighing her up as she lay on the table. “No. I have plans for you, girl, and your light-fingered friends are not ruining this for me. I’ve promised this city something that I cannot give. When we get on the plane back to Tameri the next Ambassador can flip this city whichever way he wants. I can’t change that... not by myself.”
“I can’t leave them,” she gasped.
“You will. You promised,” the Ambassador said, checking his watch. “I need you there. Together... well, I can keep my promise to your people.”
“What about your people?”
The Ambassador backed away and spoke into his radio. “Confirmed Ralph. The situation here is sustainable without my presence.”
Alex’s head swam as a large metal machine was set up around her head and torso. A bright light flashed around her, then the machine was dismantled and taken away. The Ambassador was gone.
The medics came back into view. She felt another sting to her arm. The lights began to fade.
Rise Page 36
