by T. C. Edge
He nods silently.
“No wonder they’re signing up then!” I rage. “All this rubbish about wishing to lose their emotions, agreeing with his beliefs…it’s all lies. They’re just signing up to survive, and nothing more.”
“Yes. And those who don’t, or those who can’t, will fall into chaos,” whispers Burns. “However you look at it, Artemis has got the whole of Outer Haven in a corner. They’re too busy being frightened of the Fanatics, or scared they’ll die of thirst, or get sick from drinking toxic water, to expend any energy in battling back against his dogma. Truly, they have no choice.”
“But they do,” I grind. “They just need to be given one.”
“You’re right. They do…”
He steps closer to me, and from his pocket, draws out a tiny vial of clear liquid. Bending a single knee, he drops to my eye-level, and pulls away the cap. Then he reaches forward, ready to tip the contents down my throat.
“Hold on,” I say, leaning back. “What is it?”
My distrust remains intact.
An antidote, comes his voice in my head. Drink it, Brie, and your powers will return…
“An antidote,” I say, my words a little loud.
My eyes flash to the door, worried that I may have been heard. But this time, he appears to have few concerns.
“The guard on duty has no Bat powers,” he tells me. “I’ll check his mind to make sure before I leave.”
I wonder if he did the same with the guard yesterday. For a man like him, all it would take is a quick look to discover if the guard overheard anything. And, if he did, then another flash of his cool blues would serve to erase such memories.
“But…won’t they know? If my powers suddenly return…they’ll know it must have been you?”
“Let me worry about that. And your powers won’t suddenly return. The antidote will take effect over the course of the next 24 hours. Tomorrow morning, you’ll be transported to the REEF. Use the opportunity, Brie, to get away.”
I nod, and immediately he reaches out and pours the vial into my mouth. The droplets dance on my tongue, imbuing me with some new vigour, before sliding down my throat with a slight burning sensation.
And even though the effects won’t come into play for some time, I already feel stronger.
“Thank you for doing this,” I whisper, guiding my eyes back to his. “I don’t know how to repay you.”
“No need, Brie. I’m merely playing my part here. And…it’s your brother who requires your thanks.”
“Zander? Why?”
“Because, sweet girl, it was he who convinced me to help free you. He loves you dearly, that much is clear. And when you get out there, he’ll be waiting.”
A warm smile launches onto my face. Moisture begins gathering in my eyes. I look to the clear wall and out on the bright city, and feel a renewed strength within me.
I knew you wouldn’t let me down…
“And what about Adryan?” I ask, switching my eyes back.
His show some doubt. Their blue light darkens.
“I’m afraid that Mr Shaw was beyond our aid…”
Was.
My heart stops.
“You mean…”
He reads my thoughts, and shakes his head.
And my heart begins to beat again.
“No, he isn’t dead yet. But there’s nothing we can do for him now, Brie. He has been a great servant, but his role is done. I’m sorry…but you have to let him go.”
I can’t. I can’t let him go.
“Is he still here?”
I can’t shield my thoughts from him. He knows everything I’m thinking. I turn my eyes to block the connection, but he’s already seen enough.
“Don’t do anything rash,” he warns. “He isn’t here anymore.”
“Then where? Where is he?!”
He doesn’t answer. I’ve shown my hand too early, my emotions once more my weakness…
“The REEF,” I say, answering for him. “He’s been taken there already, hasn’t he…”
Now, it’s me who searches his eyes. And I don’t need my powers to see the truth. His ability to emote is sufficient for me to read him.
He knows that I know. So he nods.
“Yes. And by the time you leave this place tomorrow, his sentence might already have been carried out. Let him go, Brie. You must let him go.”
He lays an arm on my shoulder, before standing and stepping back.
“Good luck to you. I’m sure we’ll meet again.”
And with an almost natural smile, he disappears, leaving a single thought in my head.
I can’t let him go…
121
Burns doesn’t give me any more than the most basic of instructions and suggestions.
He doesn’t tell me of the exact time of my transportation to the REEF. He doesn’t tell me exactly how I’ll be transferred. He doesn’t tell me what security will be like, or anything that might help me in my escape.
All he tells me, rather cryptically, is that my brother ‘will be waiting’. I assume, from that remark, that Zander has designed some plot to help free me.
However, it’s not something I’m going to count on. Instead, I’ll utilise the many gifts that occupy my body, and will have to think up my own way out of this mess.
I have to rely on myself now, and only myself. I will not place all my faith in others, no matter who they are.
To my surprise, later that afternoon I get another visit. It’s not from Cromwell, and it’s not from Burns. Given the manner of their departures, I assume I’ve seen the last of them.
For now, at least.
Instead, it’s a medical technician of some kind who enters, accompanied by two black-clad Stalkers. The hybrid hunters enter first, standing either side of me, before a light grey-coated woman joins them.
In her hand, she holds a syringe. She might well be the same one who administered the suppressant drug the first time. I never did see their face before my eyes went blank.
With a flat expression, she comes straight towards me and, without even speaking, begins to roll up the dirty sleeve of my right arm. During my several day incarceration here, locked to this horrid metal chair, I haven’t had a chance to wash.
I can’t deny that I smell rotten, and thus her nose twitches as she goes to work.
I can’t help but ask what exactly she’s doing. I already know, but want confirmation. I’m just like that I guess.
“I’m administering a drug to make you compliant,” she drones. “Your body needs a top-up.”
A brief bout of concern hits me, one centred on whether or not Commander Burns knew this was going to take place. If he didn’t, the drug about to be sent through my vascular system might just counteract the antidote he poured down my throat.
“I don’t feel like I need a top up,” I counter. “My powers aren’t working at all.”
“Yes, well this isn’t just about your powers. This is about making sure you’re more docile for your transfer to the REEF.”
Docile? OK, now I’m getting worried.
The needle pricks my arm, and I feel the drug enter my body. The effect is quite immediate, my eyesight starting to blur and a blackness closing in from the sides.
When the woman speaks again, her voice is strange and distorted, as though she’s speaking in slow motion.
“Good,” she says. “Now just relax…you’ll be on your way before you know it…”
Through the blurring shroud before my eyes, she retracts the needle and stands. Her blurred figure starts moving to the door, followed quickly behind by the Stalkers.
“Wait…” I say, my own voice similarly odd and slow.
She doesn’t. All three of them leave, the door shuts, and then the lights go out in my head.
And a blackness swamps me.
It happens so fast that, when my eyes open again, I find that the following morning has rushed up upon me. Raising my eyelids, and with a new ache in my head, I see
a muted sunrise creeping over the horizon, this time hidden behind a thick fog and the low bands of cloud that whip past the lofty reaches of the High Tower.
My mouth feels dry, my stomach grumbling with hunger. I’ve been given such sparse rations here that the feeling of wooziness in my brain could just as well be down to dehydration and malnutrition, as the drugs they’ve given me.
The mixture of all three, as well as a lack of proper sleep, has turned me into some sort of semi-comatose zombie, my state of health hardly in a position to fight my way free from the Stalkers who’ll no doubt see to my transition to the REEF.
I also hoped I’d have some more time to think, to mentally prepare to get myself ready for battle. I’ve been given no such benefit, my dizzy mind just waking as I hear the sound of heavy footsteps clattering down the corridor.
Turning to the door, I see it open suddenly, and several bodies pile in. My wrist and ankle restraints are quickly removed, my tired body lifted to its feet as fresh restraints are set to my wrists again, this time binding them together in front of me.
I can hardly keep up as the men rush, their bodies covered in black cloaks, their eyes keen and piercing and fingers working with the relentless efficiently that all Stalkers seem to share.
There are two of them, and two others, regular members of the City Guard if my weary eyes aren’t deceiving me. The City Guards stand to the side, armed to the teeth as they watch the Stalkers work, my body quickly aimed at the door and marched straight out into the corridor.
They move with such speed that my waking legs can’t keep up. I stumble and nearly fall, caught by the Stalkers to my side, who set about dragging me unceremoniously along towards a door ahead.
The City Guards open it, and through we go into a meeting space that looks familiar, the very room I entered into several days ago when I arrived here. The lift that transported me up here opens as we go, and we all step inside, my little, shivering, frame surrounded by four strong men.
A growl comes from behind me.
“Atrium,” rumbles the voice.
The lift immediately begins to drop, plummeting down through the building. In a mere minute it’s slowing and opening, and the atrium appears before me.
I’m marched straight out, the foyer almost empty. Turning to the desk, I don’t see Rebecca on duty, her shift only having ended hours ago. Instead, two other receptionists watch the commotion with blank eyes, as if it happens every day.
I suspect it doesn’t. And yet, perhaps an event like this isn’t entirely unheard of. Crime may never occur here, but occasionally hybrids will be caught or discovered.
Hybrids like Amelia, Adryan’s first wife, dragged from her home in much the same manner as I’m being now. Hybrids like poor W. Malcolm, not a hybrid at all, who most likely suffered the same fate.
Most of the time, they probably don’t even know they’re hybrids. And yet, they’ll still suffer the ignominy of being so callously cast out and killed, or reconditioned and turned into slaves if they’re thought to have some worth.
Right now, that’s what’s happening to me. And I can’t help but feel a growing fear that Commander Burns has miscalculated, that he wasn’t aware that a fresh shot of suppressor drugs would be injected into my blood. That the antidote he gave me is going to have no impact after all.
The thought helps to bring my mind to life.
So far, it’s all happened in such a rush that I’ve barely had a second to catch up. It seems like only moments ago that I was being injected the previous night. Now, within the blink of an eye, I’m being dragged through the atrium and out of the High Tower, drawing the attention of any of the Savants nearby.
It’s still so early when I taste fresh air for the first time in days, smell that disinfectant surging up my nostrils. The sky remains hidden under a blanket of heavy grey clouds, a mist hanging on the streets as ghostly Savants begin to move towards the building.
Most will only just be waking, yet to start their day of work. I guess that was probably the plan, to drag me out without too many witnesses.
The streets are so swamped in mist that I can barely see the features of the road ahead. It’s not a toxic fog, though, just a heavy precipitation hanging in the air, peppered with shadows that appear from the gloom as people gravitate to the High Tower.
But not us. We’re going in the opposite direction, marching straight across the platform and down the streets, where an armoured van awaits. The rear is opened up, and I’m thrown inside, my legs scraping on the metal floor as I go.
Two men step inside with me, the City Guards who continue to keep a close watch. The Stalkers move around to the front, stepping into the front seat of the man-driven vehicle. Unlike most vehicles here, this one isn’t self-drive, the journey to the outerlands requiring a human touch.
My view to the front is blocked, a small window to the front seat quickly shut off. Huddled in the corner, the back of the van goes almost pitch dark, the two City Guards taking seats on benches either side of me, their eyes refusing to move from my form.
Trapped in my new cell, I open my eyes wide to try to let in as much light as I can. Only the odd sliver of light penetrates the hull of the van as its engine begins to rumble, and I feel its motion turning off to the right, heading west.
My eyes fix to the two men with me, and in the darkness I see little discs of light staring at me from the silhouettes of their faces. They must be Hawks, their eyes capable of seeing through this black shroud, aiming their weapons right at me as they sit and watch, rigid as rock.
I quickly calculate the time it might take to get outside of the city. It’s early enough now that traffic in Outer Haven will be minimal, and non-existent here. We’ll cut straight for the western gate and pass straight through the central districts of the western quarter. Then, out of the boundary gate along the perimeter wall, through the woods and marshes and whatever else lies beyond.
And then, to the facility that no one ever wants to go to. The place where criminals are turned to slaves, Con-Cops created and hybrids slaughtered. Where so many thousands who don’t fit Cromwell’s needs have been exterminated, or rehabilitated in some terrible fashion, their minds distorted and twisted into those of total and utter compliance.
And now, I’m thinking that exactly that will happen to me…
Still, as we rumble along, cutting a direct path through Inner Haven, I feel that Burns must have got this wrong.
That he himself has been found out, his own treachery discovered.
That the fresh dose of drugs was squirted into my blood to combat the antidote he gave me.
That his own part in this façade is up, and mine is too.
The thought ensures that my heart rate climbs to an unprecedented rate. That my mind wakes more quickly, tossing aside the murky shroud, and my breathing begins to quicken and judder, my own existence in utter peril.
I’ll live on, of course, but not as me. My cup will be emptied out and refilled with Cromwell’s own potion. I’ll become an unthinking android, a tool of death to be directed at whatever enemy he wishes me to kill.
I shake my head in the dark and press my eyelids together, scrunching them tight and balling my fists as hard as I can to try to purge the agitation from my body.
My limbs begin to shiver and shudder, the fog in my head clearing further as the winds of my fear and rage flow through, scattering the mist.
I think of Adryan, locked in chains.
I think of Mrs Carmichael, protecting the kids to the last, and Tess, doing her best to help.
I think of Drum, begging to fight.
I think of Zander, trying to hold it all together.
I think of them all, and others, and know that they’ll all die, sooner or later. Maybe Adryan has already been tortured and killed. Maybe Mrs Carmichael, complicit in my deceit, has been discovered and sentenced. Maybe Drum has got his way and become a soldier, and found himself face to face with a Stalker, a foe he could never contend with.
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Maybe they’re all dead, or are about to die.
Or maybe, just maybe, after my mind has been turned upside down, Cromwell will order me to do it all myself.
A final revenge for my treason.
A final victory for him.
All such thoughts flow with such ferocity through my mind that I feel a surging energy filling my fingers. I feel my limbs shaken free of the lethargy that subdued them. I feel my determination to survive fermenting and seeping through every fibre within me.
And as the van continues to rumble, I feel my eyes opening once more in the darkness.
Only now, it’s no longer dark.
The interior has grown clear. The two Hawks watching me are no longer silhouettes. I can make out the smallest of details as I look at my hands, still balled, my knuckles white.
And as I stare down, a defiant smile swarms all over my face.
Burns hasn’t failed. He hasn’t been discovered.
My powers are returning…
122
The smile on my face doesn’t last, stripped away as a voice sounds in front of me.
“What the hell are you smiling at?” it bites.
My grin plummets immediately, and I don’t raise my eyes. If I do, they might see that my Hawk-vision is returning. Right now, I shouldn’t be able to see anything in this darkness. If I look them right in the eye, they might just smell a rat.
I don’t answer the question.
Instead, I allow the smile to fade and evolve into something else, turning it upside down and then sniffing. Lifting my hands up, my wrists still bound by cuffs, I set about wiping my eyes and planting a grimace across my features.
“Oh, not another crier,” grumbles the Hawk. “You’d think this one would be tougher than that. You know why she was up there on level 99, right?”
“Yeah, treason,” says the other man. “She tried to kill the Director. Would you believe that!”
The way they’re speaking suggests that my mission isn’t that well known. Perhaps only among higher ranked City Guards has my notoriety been spread.