by K. C. Finn
“Dad, relax with that,” I say. “We’ve got a warzone to get through before we even think about scaling the wall.”
My father looks ahead, dodging bushes and trunks.
“This Legion place… They’re kids. People’s sons. People’s daughters.”
“We’re not here to hurt them, Dad. We’re trying to save them.”
I watch my father’s brown fingers turn pale as he regrips his gun. “All of them, this time. No more loss.”
The sight of Mukesh, a bloodthirsty augmented murderer, still haunts us both. Dad has never spoken about the extreme torture that the System put him under, but I remember the way the boy who was once my brother ripped Sun Lin’s head clean from her body. Too many kids turned into killers. It makes the rifle I’m holding seem heavier too. But the dense trees are thinning in our quick march, the sight of a dusky orange world coming into view in the slices of light between the trees. I fumble for my balaclava, sliding it back down over my face.
Though the baking heat of the summer has been with us all this while, it’s nothing like the lava-hot moment of stepping out into the wasteland. Our boots make dust on the cracked, dry earth until we’re walking in a cloud of terracotta smoke. Ahead, I can just make out the huge, dark grey fortress that is the Legion, its tall towers and sharp corners jutting unnaturally out of the landscape. The West Highland Revolt is coming, and the legionnaires are sure to see the storm cloud we’re making at any moment.
“Company in position. HVPs, prepare to fire!”
We halt, and four figures from the ranks come forward, making their way to the front of the cloud as the dust settles. These are the big guns Apryl was talking about, each one carried by two men. The two guns are to the left and right of me, maybe twelve feet away, and both are trained centrally on the northern wall of the Legion complex. We cover our ears and kneel, heeding the training we’ve been working on these last few days.
“HVP Railgunners…” Malcolm shouts. “FIRE!”
The railguns send their projectiles out. Once the blast is out of our ears we can start to march again, following the missiles as they shoot across the wasteland. I’ve barely taken two steps before the projectiles hit the wall, still a good half-mile ahead of us. The stone cracks, from here it still sounds like it’s in my ears. When the dust clears, there’s a wide, gaping hole in the wall of the Legion, just as we’d hoped. I pocket my grapple, a secondary measure now, and charge forward as the sound of cries within the building catches my ears.
I can’t afford to think about who we might have hurt. Who might have been in the way of the missile we used to make our own back door into the Legion’s unbreakable façade. I can’t afford it, not because of the guilt, but because there is already a figure stepping out of the hole where the HVPs hit. A hulking, dark figure that I know too well. How could he be so close to the blast and still be walking? And yet it is Augustus Briggs, the very person we wanted to see, the dark foreboding man with rippling muscles and eyes like steel.
And a head like steel.
And arms like steel.
And legs like steel.
And, actually, pretty much all of him is made of steel now.
“I’ve had some work done, Stryker.” Briggs’s voice booms from an unseen microphone, ringing out over our march. “How do I look?”
Four
“Holy hell… “Apryl breathes.
I have no words. Briggs is augmented from head to toe, but there’s no semblance of the Reborn in his voice. When his words ring out over us all, the same malicious, low rumble of fury is present. He takes a few heavy steps past the blast crater in the wall, and slowly a trickle of semi-suited soldiers follows him out, guns in hand. Some of them haven’t even had time to get proper armour on, and it makes me think the Legion’s finest are going to seed without Briggs’s constant torture to keep them sharp.
“Spray fire!” Malcolm shouts.
We obey, ripping our bullets into the ground before the spill of junior soldiers. Many of them hang back, scurrying to take cover against the walls or behind their hulking leader. But Briggs keeps coming, and we keep advancing, and even when the bullets rise over his feet and legs, the SC doesn’t stop. At the reload point, my gaze catches his, close enough that I spot the glimmer in his eyes beneath the part of his skull that’s been replaced with a silver, built-in helmet. He doesn’t know it’s me, of course, since all of us are covered by balaclavas, but I feel like the way he locks in, Briggs might know something I don’t.
“Head charge! Tactical!”
Another command, different from what I’d expected. But it makes perfect sense to disperse around Briggs, our front lines charging past him to chase the unequipped kids back into the Legion with another soft spray of fire. It seems wasteful of the precious bullets we have, but we’re not here to kill. Not unless things go really south.
We came here to capture Briggs and lure a Reborn to the Legion for his rescue, but now our targets are one and the same. As I follow my orders and shoot around the hulking commander, my fast feet take me on towards the hole, back into the world I knew for a while. Malcolm’s cries are still carrying, and Briggs rings in my ears even as I get through the crater and study the layout either side of me.
“Rear charge! Ballistic and tether. Get going!”
“You think they’re gonna get to me before I get to you, Stryker?”
Thuds hit the earth behind me. Shots clang from metal and there are black figures running in all directions. We know the kids from our kind by the balaclavas, but I don’t recognise the build of my own team nearby. Did they stay to take on Briggs, or help Malcolm? Should I have done the same? No time. No time to go back or dither. I shout into the nearest pack of running children, my gun trained on them hard.
“Bastion if you want to live, legionnaires! Drop your weapons and retreat.”
They’re kids, at the end of the day. One tall figure turns and charges for me, even though he doesn’t have a gun. I know his face, he’s that jerk who Lucrece attacked so long ago, when he tried to touch her up in the canteen. Berkeley. I shove the butt of my rifle deep into his gut with a swift duck, and as the young man chokes out a lungful of sudden air, I sweep the gun up and smack him in the chin with it. His head reels and Berkeley falls, drool and blood at the corner of his mouth. Heat rises in every fibre of my muscles, and I shoot two rounds into the air to make the others glance back with wide eyes.
“You three! Drop your weapons and take this one to the Bastion. Go! Go before I knock your arses out cold too.”
They’re my age, maybe even a year or so older, but no more suited to the life of a soldier than Lucrece was. They have to drag Berkeley’s big body through the yard and into the corridor. Here, we find more kids hiding, clinging to guns. A girl with arms like iron rises, pointing her automatic at me. I freeze, stepping behind one of the kids for cover. The girl aims for the kid covering me anyway.
But it’s then that a set of swift blades whooshes by. No balaclava would ever be able to hide Stirling’s new gait from me, that bounce as he appears as if from nowhere. It frightens the girl and she fumbles the gun, so Stirling bounds up and grabs it. He gives her a hard kick in the back with one of his blades until she falls in line with my little tribe, and the kids who were hiding behind her are forced to follow suit.
“Nobody has to die here, kiddos.” Stirling’s burr echoes in the halls we once walked together. The one I carried him down, late at night, when the monster in the wasteland beat him to a pulp. “We just need you contained whilst we give old Briggs a good kicking.”
Two or three of the captives smile at that, and it sparks something deep in my heart. Like Reagan and Boy, the dissension in the ranks is clear as day when the SC isn’t around. We could use it. There’s hope against Prudell. But for now, fear is the only way forward. Stirling and I find another group of rebels with another corral of kids on their way to the Bastion, and soon we have twenty or so contained within the lecture hall, its only doors se
cured. Stirling raids the cupboards where we used to kit up, but finds no weapons, nothing the legionnaires could fight back with. As I keep a gun trained on the captives, I watch him bounce to and fro. The thrill of the mission is as bright within him as his blazing hair. I wish I could see it, and see his face properly whilst he’s in his element. Working. Thriving. Not thinking of those numbers on his neck.
But soon Stirling and a couple of the Highlanders have the Bastion locked down. More kids are being bundled in and it’s my turn to go back out and apprehend another batch. Judging by the scenes of fear, the cringing faux soldiers and the ones that lie unconscious on the ground with emptied guns beside them, the number of recruits hasn’t yet recovered from the mass raid that turned into a mass grave, when Reece was one of the dead. Picking my way back up the empty corridor, I find a few girls running straight at me.
“Hands up, ladies. Prisoners in the Bastion. Let’s go.”
One of them has skin the colour of my own. She looks Indian, with sharp eyes almost black. She has no weapon, but her eyes don’t turn wide like the rest of the girls. They turn to the side instead, then all around, looking for somewhere to run. Her boots twitch, and I cock my gun a little higher.
“You think you’re faster than a bullet?” I ask.
She narrows her eyes. “Try me.”
The girl bolts. Straight down the corridor with a strong line of sight. It’s not smart to do it, leaving me a clear line of fire, but I get it. She’s calling my bluff. The other girls are frozen, just in that second as the escapee takes off. I raise my gun at once, eyes narrowed over the sight. Take it easy. Aim safe. Finger tense. Trigger pulled.
She falls. The girl clutches her leg about twenty feet ahead of me. I point the gun at her comrades.
“Go get her. Bastion, now.”
They obey, and she’s brought screaming to my feet. Her long black hair drifts back and forth as her head wrenches against the girls who are carrying her, and she clings to the place where I’ve shot a deliberate hole into the back of her calf. My aim has improved, and I’m glad she didn’t duck out anywhere, or drop down at the wrong moment. We walk in silence, the sounds of carnage echoing from the yard beyond the corridor. Some of the girls are crying, and it’s only when that awful sound hits me that my stomach suddenly lurches with the urge to spew. I swallow it back, vile acid coating my throat. It comes again, and again I resist.
Is this the first time I’ve really, deliberately shot someone? It has to be, save for the time I pulled that empty trigger on Prudell’s golden crown of hair back at the base. She’s the one who really deserves my bullets, not this poor cocky kid who’s just trying to survive. She’s me, not so long ago. When the System’s soldiers raided my home and I ran from the guy in the security room, scurrying up the tunnel to freedom. He didn’t shoot. He could have. But I don’t take chances like he did. No room for hesitation.
This girl is not the only trail of blood going into the Bastion now. Some of the Highlanders bear glancing wounds and cut up faces as they throw the more belligerent enemies in through the double doors. Stirling and seven others form the guard now, containing what must be most of the Legion in the one place large enough to hold them all. When my girl is rushed in by her friends, Stirling watches her go. His ocean eyes shine, then pour themselves out to me.
“She gave you trouble?”
I nod. “Too bad she’s not on our side.”
We look into the room where we spent so much time preparing missions for the System that wanted to kill us off, or use us as expendable weapons. Stirling nudges my shoulder.
“Give her time. Give them all time.”
I turn to him, opening my mouth, but two boys go by kicking and screaming under the arms of a hairy Highlander. His name is Andrew, and he’s one of the largest, so big that his balaclava doesn’t even begin to hide his huge red beard. He grunts a ‘hullo’, throwing the lads, and when one comes back at him he kicks the young man sharply in the chest. I hear a crack, and it brings the sick raging up my throat again. This time, the heat and the acid are too much.
I throw myself aside, ripping the balaclava from my head. My guts spill into the corridor, my body convulsing like an electric pulse has hit it. In the corner of my vision, a blade leg steps up. He offers me a hand, but I shake my head. A second wave comes up, making me shake. I should have guessed that coming here would do this. We’re being as kind as we can, but carnage still reigns everywhere. There will be bodies out there, perhaps some of ours but likely more of theirs. Maybe those within the Bastion will add to the count, if sepsis or shock sets in. At the second proffer of Stirling’s hand, I let him pull me up, and his momentum shakes my world into a blur.
“They need doctors, some of them.”
Stirling’s stare is blank. “Oh don’t worry, Raja. They’ve got one.”
When my vision comes back, I find Stirling turning me towards the doors again. The Highlanders have closed them now, barricading the space with rods of steel and heavy iron wedges that must belong to the Legion itself. But inside, I see what Stirling means. There’s a figure not dressed in black, climbing onto the table where Sheila used to put her laptop. His climb is clumsy, and one of his legs looks wrongly placed. Something falls from his beige trouser leg as he makes it onto the table, and one of the nearest kids catches it. It’s a leg. A long, wooden leg right up to the thigh. The kid who has it doesn’t pass it back. It starts to do a Mexican wave around the room.
When the man turns, his face is a picture of horror. He flaps and waves, shouting, but no-one seems keen to hear him out. I know his ashy beard and the lines around his face, carved from the years of false smiles and even falser promises he’s practised. He is Doctor Bartlett, the Legion’s would-be leader when Briggs is not around. And some bright spark has thrown him right into the den of his wolves.
Maybe it shouldn’t give me a tingle to know that when Apryl shot him, he lost his leg, but it does. Bartlett’s frantic, unbalanced hopping gives him even less credit than his scrawny frame and his white lab coat. He is haggard and old, not like the cocksure man I once met. Not the man who forced Lucrece to abort, and killed her in the end. Now, his wolves are baying at the edges of the table, shouting and pointing to the rebels who watch them from the doors. They blame him for their captivity, as well they should. Someone throws the leg at him. It arcs through the air, spinning like a club, and whacks him in the middle.
Bartlett falls back into the crowd, lost.
“Jesus…” I murmur. “I hope we can get Briggs subdued. We can’t hold these kids here forever.”
Stirling nods. He pulls off his balaclava too, reaching over to wipe my lips with it. A flush rushes into my hollow cheeks, my stomach shaking again. I grab his mask and rub it all over my face, desperate to erase any sign of weakness. Stirling just grins. His hair is stuck in ugly clumps from sweat, his cheeks rosy but his pallor grim. He has bruises already shining on his cheekbones and forehead, but even in that moment I’m glad to see his face. Perfect, because it’s still living.
We breathe together, one long breath, but before either of us can turn away from the mob we’re guarding, the radio in my pocket crackles to life. The override is back, the one that breaks all silencing tech to give emergency commands. A woman screams for her life on the line. I scramble for the radio and Stirling wrestles it from my grip, pulling it desperately to his ear.
“Please! Alert! ALERT! Hands to the gap in the wall! All hands, repeat. ALERT! Oh God… He’s dying. He’s dying.”
“Mum?” Stirling asks, though the override can’t reply.
It is Sheila on the line, her strong voice raging and strained. She’s in pieces. Grieving almost. And if Stirling is here with me, alive and well, then there’s only one ‘he’ she can be talking about.
Five
They haven’t dared to move Malcolm from the hole in the wall. He is just outside the Legion itself, on the ground of the wasteland before the crater begins. When Stirling and I get there, Apryl
is on the scene with no mask to her face, and she and Sheila are stemming blood from every angle on the body of the lithe, silver-haired man on the ground. Malcolm coughs, a violent jerk of his chest, and blood sprays over Apryl’s face. She works on like she doesn’t even feel it, handing sutures and needles to Sheila from a Legion-regulated med kit. Goddie is on his knees, Malcolm’s head elevated a little to rest in his lap.
“What happened?” Stirling stammers. “What? How? Is he-?”
“Briggs,” Goddie answers. “Full body slam. He’s crushed.”
Malcolm’s middle looks all right, until he coughs again. I see something sticking out under his black jersey where it shouldn’t be, maybe a rib that’s been twisted totally out of place. The bile rises in me again, but there’s nothing to throw up this time. I look around and there’s no sign of Briggs anywhere, only another handful of Highlanders answering Sheila’s wild alert. None of us can do anything, except watch the blood trickle from Malcolm’s lips. His eyes shoot open, frosted like snow.
They find me.
I have never felt such a shake in my soul, a shiver that travels down into my boots then snaps back into my brain. Malcolm’s hand clutches, and I see his fingers are snapped. Though his lips are twisted in pain, he’s trying to speak. His eyes don’t leave me, they don’t seek anyone else. I rush in, dodging Sheila and her emergency treatment. I throw my ear to Malcolm’s blood red lips, the scent of it all filling my head.
“Stronghold.” His words are barely audible. “Keep… here. Me… out. Wall… closed. Raja… Raja…”