He’d been a part of the forest back home for nearly three decades, but it’d been so long since he’d simply stopped in the middle of it all. It was hard to appreciate the beauty, to revel in being part of something bigger than a single man, when his arms were laden with firewood logs or when he crept silently along, trailing game to feed hungry mouths.
Cray took a deep breath, inhaling the dampness of the leafy floor: an earthy hint of rotting wood and the distinct stench of some unfamiliar plant that smelled like a corpse. He scrunched up his nose and moved, then dropped to the ground in a panic, rolling into a small patch of rhododendrons.
Up ahead, a single flashlight swept through the trees. It was hard to tell in the darkness, but Cray could make out the dark uniform with green stripes, the ones he remembered from his youth.
A perimeter patrolman.
Life within the forest sensed the unwelcome intrusion as well. The owl fluttered away. The wind died down. The ambient hum of nature quieted. The only sound remaining was the booming heartbeat in his ears.
Cray’s chest tightened. He risked lifting his head to gauge the distance between them. Thirty yards or less. To his right, twenty feet away, the forest floor dropped into an open crevice, carved by the stream over time. If he could just get to it, quickly, silently, he could crawl down, duck low, and slip by unseen.
The patrolman strolled along, coming directly at him. He whistled, unconcerned, unsuspicious, as the flashlight swept from left to right. Left to right.
Cray watched as the man stopped, trained the beam up the eastern hillside, and then broke into a run. “You there,” he shouted. “Stop!”
Giggling. Laughter. It sounded like a group of young girls and boys, caught sneaking into the woods. Teens daring to be caught.
Unless the Consulate had changed the laws, climbing under the wall and entering the perimeter without the proper certifications was a crime punishable by death. Mother had told him that once, long ago, but in words that a child could understand. He couldn’t recall what she’d said exactly, yet it was enough to keep him from allowing his curiosity to take over if he was ever permitted outdoors.
The night when Rowan led him to a spot covered by a thick cluster of pine saplings and shoved him underneath the scraping concrete, shaking, terrified of what lay on the other side, he’d nearly wet himself in fearful anticipation.
That same urge returned as the patrolman chased his quarry. He’d been so close that Cray could hear the fading sounds of the knee and ankle gears of his mechanical leg as he scrambled up and over the hillside.
Cray rolled onto his back. He swallowed hard and stared at the winking specks of light peeking through the canopy. If he’d been so frantic over a single patrolman, miles away from the nearest section of the wall, how would he ever manage to sneak back into Tritan and plant a bomb somewhere within the Consulate?
Old fears, he thought. You’ve seen worse.
Trying to reassure himself had little effect, but just as he’d done in the days, weeks, and months after Eryn’s death, he got up, brushed himself off, and pressed onward. There was work to be done.
For an extra measure of security, he climbed down the stream’s embankment and crept along, crouching low so that only the top of his skull was visible; any lower and he would be crawling. The water was cool as it swirled around his boots, seeping inside, soaking his feet. He walked with precision—yet another luxury—careful not to slip on a slimy rock, or roll an ankle. Rowan’s crutches dangled from the straps across his back, providing a small measure of security in the event of an injury, and he was glad that Rowan had forced him to take them.
He walked stealthily, concealed by the high banks, until his back ached from stooping and the stream ended, emptying itself into the sluggish Tritania River. The water was low, revealing dried layers of dirt and roots along its banks, and it flowed lazily along. It’d been a dry summer, thank the Gods, which was a rarity that gave him easy passage across.
Cray held the pack high above his head, protecting the bomb inside, as the river pushed around his shins. It seemed silly, holding it so far away from the water, but he couldn’t afford the risk. If he happened to slip and go down on his back, his mission would drown along with the contents inside.
As if merely thinking about it could bring happenstance to life, Cray slipped, struggled to regain his balance, and plopped hard into the river. The water was cool, even in late summer, soaking his legs and his shirt so that it clung to his skin. He cursed, climbed back to unsteady feet, and kept going. The bomb was safe, but he shivered so much that his muscles cramped whenever an errant breeze skittered past.
He reached the northern wall unhindered, the great behemoth looming high above as he craned his neck to see the top. If what Rowan had said was true, there would be bored wall guards with vision magnifiers strolling along the soldier course, looking for anything out of the ordinary a hundred feet down.
Over his years of living in the forest, Cray had developed incomparable night vision, and on his approach, he’d timed their passes so that he arrived at the wall with the area unguarded. Two minutes and thirty seconds. Plenty of time.
He took one last look above, saw no minuscule outlines of men, high enough overhead that they were no larger than the silhouette of a hawk hunting its prey, and ran.
The spot where he and Rowan had exited thirty years ago was exactly as he remembered it—the images of that terrifying crawl under the wall seared into his mind—but now, it showed signs of repeated fillings and excavations. Dry, crumbling earth in piles. Fresh, brown dirt that had been recently tossed to the side, possibly by the gaggle of teens back in the forest. According to Rowan, it was the only place along the northern wall, for miles, where the structure was built on top of loose topsoil rather than a layer of impenetrable bedrock.
Cray lowered himself, bent forward, and dived into the hole.
Ten feet later, in a pitch-blackness so thick that no amount of heightened vision would help, his forehead smacked into something cold, hard, and thin. He reached out, hands clawing in the blindness, and found another, then another.
Metal bars. At some point, the wall engineers had wised up to the hole’s location and tried a halfhearted measure at prevention. The bars were close enough together to hinder a normal-sized man’s passage, but not so close that a daring, skinny teenager couldn’t slip through. Cray’s breathing quickened, and the thought of being stopped after having come all this way sat deep and heavy in his belly. It was the conjoined feeling of disappointment and loss. He hadn’t felt it since Eryn died.
He briefly thought about retreating, finding another way in somewhere along the wall, but decided that no, it was too dangerous. He couldn’t risk being spotted. The perimeter patrolmen were on familiar territory, while he’d have to scramble along, ignorant of what lay ahead. Even if he managed to find another spot where the dirt was loose, there would be no time to dig a new tunnel.
Cray wriggled free of the rucksack and Rowan’s crutches. It wasn’t easy in the confined space, and he dared not think about the hundreds of thousands of pounds of concrete and metal above him.
He shoved his things through the bars, turned on his side, and stuck his arms through first. Kicking with his legs, clawing at the dirt with his fingers, he pulled and forced himself between two bars, exhaling deeply, making his body as small as he could, wondering how a weak, one-legged teenager could manage such a task.
Risk. Motivation. Bragging rights.
They were powerful factors.
Desperation, stronger than all three, saw him through, bruised, aching, and feeling as if his insides had been smashed like corn kernels into fine meal dust.
Cray smelled the permeating scent of damp earth, and then wiped the sweat from his forehead. He was one step closer to his target, and his mother, on the other side.
His mother. Caran.
As he crawled forward, toward the far opening, Cray realized that Ollen had been right in more ways than
one—there was no possibility of getting her through the tunnel underneath the wall, not with the bars blocking the path.
Caran would be too old, too slow, and too weak to even attempt an escape through this route. Cray knew that bombing the Consulate and freeing the citizens of Tritan from the tyrannical rule, at least temporarily, was the right, and only, thing to do. Yet he’d harbored some small bit of hope that it wouldn’t come to that. Slip in undetected, grab Caran, and slip out.
But now, living up to the flimsy promise he’d made to Ollen—and himself—was the only viable option. He had to blow up the Consulate. By creating a diversion of such magnitude, every available soldier, patrolman, and guard would be focused on the city center, likely sprinting on one good leg and one mechanical, toward the flames, dust, and rubble. The supply gate would be left unguarded, and they could escape amid the chaos.
He’d lift Caran onto his shoulders and carry her if he had to.
Was it worth it, destroying the building where evil men ordered evil things? Would the citizens of Tritan appreciate their freedom, or would they be wary of the lack of security, forgetting that it had been lorded over them in every possible way? If you kept the people suppressed long enough, they would lose sight of what mattered: their individuality. In the absence of someone to tell them where to go and what to do, would chaos ensue, or would they band together and rediscover themselves?
Was it pointless to eliminate the government of Tritan? Would it matter? Would someone else rise to power and rule the populace under the same traditions and laws?
Cray shook his head and kept crawling. What came after wasn’t his concern. He and his mother would be hundreds of miles away, hidden in the forest of his home. He would give them their freedom, and it would be up to them to choose what to do with it in the weeks and months to come.
He could see the dim light of the opening ahead, the dull gray seeping into the mouth of the tunnel where the orifice would empty him from its gullet.
Cray picked up his pace, scrambling forward, shoving the crutches and delicately nudging the bomb. Five feet from the exit, he stopped, frozen in an awkward position; afraid to move, afraid to make a sound.
Afraid that his raspy breathing, his dust-filled lungs, would reveal him.
The legs of a sentry, one real, one a conglomeration of pistons, rods, and bearings, stood guard. The man lifted his good leg, twisted the ankle, working the stiffness out of it, then planted it firmly on the ground beside the other.
What now? Obstacles he hadn’t expected at every turn.
Rowan’s words—It’s suicide—rattled around inside his head.
Could he inch forward close enough to grab the man’s ankles and yank, pulling him down so that he could clamber out of the tunnel and overtake him? Maybe. Would it work? Would his screams alert others? Would Cray be able to knock him unconscious, or even kill him, and get away in time? So much risk, too many unaccounted-for variables. What if there were others stationed beside him, out of sight?
Cray needed to see, to be sure. If he could get to the hole’s edge, maybe he could risk a look to either side undetected. He crawled forward another six inches.
A hand grabbed his right leg. Startled, he sprang up and knocked the back of his head against the concrete above, and managed not to scream. Instead, he winced and groaned quietly.
A whisper came next. “Lome, is that you?” The fingers patted their way down his leg, felt his foot. “Oh my God, what is that? Is that a right f—”
He wrenched free and looked back over his shoulder. “Quiet,” he hissed. “There’s a guard.”
Through the soft glow of external light, Cray watched as a young girl, pretty, who maybe had sixteen winters behind her, scooted forward. Eyes wide. Face and neck peppered with dirt and cobwebs. She brushed a loose strand of hair from her face and said, “Who’re you? Where’s Lome and the others?”
“Shut up,” Cray said, punching each word through his teeth. He stabbed a finger toward the guard’s legs, then put it to his lips.
She grinned. “He can’t hear us. That’s Sarlen. He’s deaf.”
“Deaf?”
“Yeah, that’s why he’s guarding the hole…because he can’t do anything else. So who are you? And by the gods, why do you have two legs?”
The girl nudged up closer to him. Cray could smell her breath. It was sweet, but with an undertone of pungency from exertion. She was probably from the group in the woods, retreating back to the safety of the other side. She’d crawled a long way and wiggled through the bars, just as he had.
“I’m—” he said, hesitating. “My name is Cray. I left here a long time ago.”
“But—but you’re whole.”
“I am.”
“How? Why?”
He ignored her questions, largely because he wasn’t entirely sure himself, and even if he did know, it was too much to explain. “What were you doing in the woods?” he asked, relying on the easily distracted nature of young minds, prompting her bravado, giving her room to boast.
“Having fun,” she said.
“You can’t have fun inside?”
“There’s a bigger world out there, and we go a little further each time.”
“Won’t they execute you if you’re caught?”
She offered a cute, girlish giggle. “Me? No. Not while Papa is the head of Security.”
Cray kept his face as flat and unmoved as possible, but on the inside, his stomach churned. Could the fates have delivered anything more deliberate than this, anything that would beat more firmly at his chest, telling him that he was making a mistake? Not that he’d intended to anyway, but now he certainly couldn’t mention anything of his plans to this girl, not even a hint, because she could easily become the enemy.
And how suspicious was he, a two-legged man, a whole person, sneaking into a city of one-legged people held up by their crutches? What would stop her from informing her father that he was somewhere within Tritan? She’d seen his face, she could identify him.
For a moment longer than he was comfortable with, he briefly considered—no, he couldn’t do it. The madmen inside the Consulate deserved what he was about to bring down upon them. Not her. Too young. Innocent, daring, with a life yet to live.
He swallowed it all, and relied on hope. “What’s your name?”
“Meredith,” she answered.
“That’s…”
“Unusual? Yeah. Papa saw it in a book one time.”
“I was going to say pretty.”
“No, it’s ancient.”
Cray took a chance. “How are we getting past—what’s his name—Sarlen?”
Meredith squirmed around, brought her arms underneath her chin, rested it on her hands. “We wait.”
“How long?”
“Not long. In a few minutes, a nightwoman will be by. She’ll lead him into that alley across the street, and show him what she can do with her crutches.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because we pay her, and because he falls for it every time.”
“Smart,” Cray said, thankful that, so far, she’d been distracted enough to forget about his leg. “Aren’t you worried about your friends?”
“If they haven’t made it back by now, they’ll get a free ride through the main gate on the back of a patrol bike. It’s not as fun and they’ll get a reprimand, but at least they’re safe.” She rolled her head to the side, facing him. “Can I ask you something?”
Cray said no, but knew it wouldn’t stop her. And how strange was it to be lying underneath the northern wall, hours from detonating a bomb inside Tritan and destroying the government, having a conversation with a girl half his age as if they were old friends? She was too young, by many winters, but it reminded him of the easy conversation he’d had with Eryn.
Meredith asked, “Why’re you trying to get inside?”
Cray looked at her. The naïve expression on her face. No underlying motives hiding behind her eyes. Nothing but pure, sim
ple curiosity. He told her the truth.
Part of it.
“I want to get my mother out.”
She smiled. “That’s nice of you.” Trusting. Accepting. Not asking for more detail than he was prepared to give.
Silently, he thanked her, then asked, “Do you like living here?”
“Gods, no. It’s horrible. Everyone hobbling around, miserable, thinking that this is all there is. They don’t understand that they have a choice. They’d rather prop themselves up and go to the factories every day, living in this blissful ignorance, rather than daring to hope for something better. It’s…heartbreaking.”
Cray watched her. She was wise beyond her winters. It flashed across his mind that he could use her. She could be an ally.
He shook his head. No. She was only an adolescent. He couldn’t get her involved.
She saw him do it, and asked, “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Tell me,” she begged.
“No.”
“Tell me or I’ll scream for help.” The impertinence of youth.
Meredith had grinned when she’d said it, but Cray couldn’t be certain that she wasn’t telling the truth. Her father was in a powerful position—she’d get nothing more than a good scolding for being underneath the wall. It didn’t matter if the sentry in front of them was deaf. Others would hear, they’d alert him, and for Cray that meant capture, imprisonment, and possibly even death.
Forward through the tunnel, or back out through the rear, he would be trapped.
The timing, the circumstances, the unfortunate luck of getting stuck inside the tunnel at the same time as this young girl—you can make plans, but chance has other ideas.
One barely perceptible flick of his head, one random thought, had opened an unavoidable crevice beneath him. Cray groaned and beat his forehead against the cool dirt.
From the Indie Side Page 10