“Within the next fifteen minutes,” Niamh says, the commanding edge back in his voice. “We need her out here and the procedure commenced without any delay.”
* * *
TURNING AROUND, Niamh comes face to face with Anaiya. He looks tense and she wonders whether the burden of his secret sits heavy like hers. “Water Elementals – Impossible,” he says, sidling up to her.
“You’re fast-tracking the Execution?” she asks, shifting her gaze from Niamh to the pillar.
“As a precaution. The weight is heavier than we expected – too many future-searches are identifying flash points.”
Around them, the courtyard begins to simmer with activity as Peacekeepers and Technicians rush through the preparations.
“It shouldn’t be this heavy,” he says, looking out to the crowd with a frown. “They should feel defeated. It should feel light. Pliable. Like last time.”
She had been seated with scores of Water Psychoanalysts, Behavioural Assessors and Conditioning Technicians. They had sat murmuring, debating the intricacies of how an event this big would impact on the conditioning of its audience. She had sat still and stiff, shuddering every time her shoulder grazed another, blinking against the bright lights, shivering in the cool breeze. That breeze…It had awakened every nerve ending in her body, when it should have numbed her.
“It’s so different from last time,” Anaiya murmurs, almost to herself.
Niamh drags his fingers through his hair. “You may be right. Executing a Heterodox Fire Elemental was always going to be easier than dealing with unpredictable Air Elementals…Still, it should be lighter.”
And it would be.
If they were going to Execute the true leader.
She glances out to the Lower Terrace. The crowd lights have been switched on, bathing the masses in harsh white light. From here she can see details of individual faces. She abruptly turns back to Niamh when she realises what she is doing. Searching for Seth.
“How are you holding up?”
She hears the concern in Niamh’s voice, but she knows it is for maintaining their shared pretence and his reputation, rather than for her.
“Nothing to worry about,” she lies.
He nods, satisfied with her answer. “Good. I’ll need you to get into position in the next five minutes. I’ll be standing right next to you, so just follow my lead.”
“As always,” she murmurs.
* * *
THE LIGHTS and early movement have animated the crowd. The massive screens attached to the ends of each colonnade and facing the Lower Terrace flicker on, sending a collective murmur through the Elementals gathered below. Niamh strides to his designated spot in the courtyard, joining the Head Peacekeeper and Fire Commissioner. It is Anaiya’s cue to join them.
Shivering, refusing to look at the Execution pillar as she passes it, she focusses on the patterned marble floor, silently counting the steps until she takes her place with the other Witnesses.
It is meant as an honour. The Witnesses for Kane 148’s Execution had been heralded as heroes, selected for their role in detecting and disabling the Heterodoxy. She tries to remember their names, to no avail.
Only the wicked are remembered.
Jenna strides over with the rest of the Task Force Peacekeepers. This close, Anaiya can sense the energy that rolls off them. She glances surreptitiously at Jenna, surprised to find her staring boldly back.
“Nice work,” she whispers.
Anaiya strains to hear the irony in it, but finds none. For a second she fears that Niamh has confided too much in her, that her secret is in the hands of this hard-hearted Fire Elemental. And then she catches herself, Peacekeepers are not Air Elementals, and Niamh is not Seth. It is a cold comfort.
With everyone in place, Niamh and the senior Fire Elementals briefly acknowledge their presence before turning back to the crowd. Stone-faced and straight-backed, they give no indication of what, if any, emotions are raging inside them.
Anaiya’s entire insides feel like a battleground. Her extremities tingle, her stomach clenches, her throat constricts. She keeps her hands still at her side and her head down to avoid showing the world her inner chaos.
Visual recording drones buzz around her, broadcasting the spectacle to the masses, recording it for future generations. Nearby footsteps announce the arrival of the Pronouncer, immediately silencing the crowd.
At the first sight of movement on the platform, the crowd around her had cheered. The Pronouncer had revelled in it, bowing and flourishing – a garish smile plastered to his too-wide face. The noise had grown louder, the energy reaching climax, the Elementals frenzied. Beside her, the Water Elementals had taken copious notes, their conversations louder, more animated. They watched her with interest, but she had stayed still, petrified of betraying what was really taking place under the silent facade. Her skin had burned, her throat tight, her stomach roiling. Her heart too fast, too loud, too skittish.
“Citizens of Otpor!” The Pronouncer’s voice explodes into the dusk. “Welcome to your Execution.”
The words are the same that were used nine years ago, the same that appear in every high-vis story and docutainment on Kane 148. Nine years ago, the words had swept Anaiya up in a frenzy of crowd ecstasy, even as she sat still and silent. Tonight, there is no crowd response.
She looks up. In the scorching white light, the crowd appears as a photograph – a record preserved for all of time.
Beside her, she senses Niamh stiffening. The rows of Peacekeepers lined along the colonnades shift from their formal stance to a relaxed alertness. Their postures soften, their stance widens. Arms that were held crossed against chests now hang loosely by sides.
“Rehhd 020, Air Elemental of the Visual Advertising Corp, was detained, tried and convicted for the ultimate crime of Heterodoxy.”
As the Pronouncer continues, three Peacekeepers lead a black-clad figure across the courtyard to the pillar.
Anaiya’s gasp burns the back of her throat.
Rehhd, once vibrant and irrepressible, looks utterly defeated. Her head hangs low, swathes of auburn hair falling limply about her face. Her frame is emaciated, her steps unsteady and weak. She has been heavily sedated, but still the Peacekeepers grasp her tightly. They drag her to the pillar, yanking her roughly when her feet tangle beneath her and cause her to stumble.
He stumbled as they reached the pillar. With his face magnified on the massive pillar screens, she had seen his eyes widen. In fear. Feet had scratched and scraped against the floor of the platform, desperate to run from the pillar. From inevitability.
Anaiya looks away.
The sound of manacles clanking against the polyenamaline of the pillar ricochet around her. She hears them fasten in to place. Click, click, click, click, click. Feet shackled. Hands shackled. Neck shackled. Still, she can’t look.
“As mandated by the Otpor Constitution, Rehhd 020 is sentenced to Execution.”
You did this, Anaiya. You did this. You did this. You did this.
The words build to a scream in her brain. She can’t hide from this. She can’t hide from her guilt. Anaiya looks up.
Three Technicians stride across the courtyard.
Rehhd, her head kept erect by the manacle at her throat, ignores them. Her eyes frantically scan the crowd. Seconds tick by, seconds she doesn’t have.
Shackled to the pillar, he had been defeated. But, still, his eyes scanned the crowd. She had stared at him, refusing to blink, willing him to look at her. And then he had – and in that moment, he had found her. His eyes had tried to communicate something to her. His face screwed up in an avalanche of emotion and urgency. He wanted her to know something. Understand something. But all she knew was that her mentor had betrayed the Orthodoxy, had betrayed Otpor. Had betrayed her. He was a Resistor, and there was nothing else she wanted to learn from him.
The Technicians move into place. Rehhd’s eyes continue to flit, searching out something or someone. Blink, scan, blink, b
link, scan.
And then her face relaxes.
Anaiya follows her line of sight, searching the illuminated faces until she sees what Rehhd sees. Ten, maybe twelve, rows deep to her right and almost camouflaged in uncharacteristic black threads – they stand united, set apart by their complete lack of movement. Kaide, Yve, Cress and Seth.
Kaide’s face is stricken. Catching Anaiya’s gaze, it hardens into sharp loathing and hatred. But there is no fire to it – it is underpinned by a deeper sadness, overshadowed by an understanding. A shared guilt. He looks away first, fixing his stare on Rehhd. Anaiya hears his unspoken plea in her mind.
Please forgive me.
Forgiveness is a confusing concept for Anaiya. In her world transgressions are silenced with accountability and punishment. For her, there are no words or sad smiles or comforting touches that will erase her transgressions. The lies she has told, that she will continue to tell. To protect herself. To protect Niamh. To protect Seth.
She finally forces herself to look at him.
Seth stares directly at her, unflinching and uncompromising in his rage.
“She will now be Executed.”
The Pronouncer’s magnified voice causes her to blink. Having broken eye contact with Seth, she looks over to where the three Technicians have advanced on Rehhd, their syringes flashing in the oppressive light.
Anaiya can no longer hear the growing murmur of the crowd above the pulse of blood in her ears. Her eyes begin to tingle and itch, but she dares not blink.
One by one, the Technicians empty their syringes of neurotoxins into Rehhd’s temple.
It had happened so quickly. Efficiently – as was to be expected from Water Elementals. One minute he was a life force to be reckoned with, the next, defeated and empty. A man who had defined a generation, brought low by three tiny needles.
A shout rings out from the Lower Terrace, but Anaiya is too transfixed by the sight of Rehhd to hear it.
Rehhd is transformed – her neck arching and eyes rolling back in her head. So close to the pillar, Anaiya can see the small tremors that cascade down her bound body. Can see the unnatural swelling of her chest cavity as her heart tries to eliminate the threat to its host’s survival.
Another shout. Louder this time. Its familiar cadence pulls at Anaiya’s focus.
Beside her, Niamh has stepped forwards, his head bent to his wristplate.
“Disable the disruption.”
Anaiya looks out over the Lower Terrace and is immediately confronted with a familiar sight. Fists raised in defiant salutes are scattered throughout the crowd. She locates the small cluster to her right. Seth does not take his eyes off her as he opens his mouth and lets a single word ring out above the rising tide of noise.
“Resistance!”
* * *
THE WEIGHT HAS TIPPED. Jenna and the Task Force Peacekeepers spring into action, pushing through the crowd to restrain troublemakers. Niamh barks orders to the Peacekeepers lined along the colonnade, sending them free-running to the Lower Terrace and into the crowd.
“Anaiya!” he shouts to her.
He doesn’t need to say anything else. The instruction is clear. Yet, Anaiya pauses – her feet unmoving.
Beat. Beat. Beat.
Kane. Rehhd. Seth. Faces, memories, emotions – they all merge into one big tumultuous mess.
Grunting, she pushes past her internal resistance and springs forwards into a jog. Passing the Execution Pillar, she ignores the Neural Technicians performing their final tests on Rehhd’s lifeless body. The courtyard threatens to drop away in five, four, three steps. She pushes off her right foot, twisting her body before tucking it beneath her. She tumbles four metres to the Lower Terrace.
Around her, other Peacekeepers are pushing through the crowd, shoving aside those of little interest, reaching for those who keep their fists defiantly raised. Anaiya doesn’t have to hear the cracks to know that bones are being broken. She ignores it, forcing herself to maintain focus.
Seth is just metres away. The crowd around him is in disarray, making it easy for Anaiya to manoeuvre between the bodies. Yve sees Anaiya first and launches towards her.
“You fucking pu–”
She doesn’t get to finish. Anaiya withdraws her syringe, cradling Yve’s body as the restraint serum renders her lifeless.
Cress cries out, her face stricken in a new kind of terror.
“I’m sorry,” Anaiya says, her voice cracking, pleading for understanding.
Cress and Kaide move forwards to retrieve their friend, but Seth remains as he was, arm raised in the air, lips forming the beginning of another rallying cry. His eyes are dead.
Anaiya drops Yve into Cress’s arms and strides towards Seth. A rough tug threatens to pull her back, but she shoves out of it, evading Kaide’s second attempt to detain her.
“Please,” she says, her eyes searching for some recognition, some emotion, in Seth’s. “You have to go. Please. Just go.” She knows she is begging. She hears the desperation in it. The weakness. She doesn’t care. “Seth. I can’t protect you this time. You have to go.”
It is too reminiscent of that scene in the izakaya basement. She sees his eyes flash with memories of Rehhd and Eamon and a captured Peacekeeper. She hears her own voice floating to her from her memories. Get him out of here. Now.
He doesn’t heed her pleading. Just stands there – defiant, unmoving.
“Seth. You have to go. They will detain you. I’ll have to detain you. And all of this –” she sweeps her hand across the crowd, towards the platform where Rehhd’s body is being removed “– will have been for nothing.”
Something flickers in his eyes. A hint of emotion. A hint of understanding.
“Her death will have been for nothing.”
His death will have been for nothing.
She holds her breath. If he doesn’t drop his arm, she will have to detain him. Already she has stalled too long. If another Peacekeeper sees her…If Jenna or Niamh sees her…
Taking a hesitant step forwards, fingers curl around a syringe linked in her belt. “Please.”
A movement to her left puts Kaide into view. He reaches for Seth, pulling his arm down and tugging him back away from the view of other Peacekeepers. “She’s right, Seth.” He doesn’t look at Anaiya, his voice low and urgent. “We’ve done what we came here to do. Now we have to leave.”
Anaiya glances around her, looking to see if searching eyes have uncovered this traitorous negotiation. The Trocadero is still in chaos, the full Peacekeeper contingent deployed into the crowds. Her eyes strain against the bright floodlights, looking for Niamh, but he is nowhere to be seen. A few rows away, she spies a cadre of Peacekeepers fanning out towards her, Jenna at the lead.
“You have to go now.”
Blessedly, Seth’s arm falls.
“Two people died here tonight,” he says, his eyes again devoid of life. “Rehhd is dead and so are you. You are dead to me, Anaiya.”
He strides roughly past her, stopping only to help Cress with Yve. And then he is gone. Swallowed by the crowd that continues to swell around her.
Beat. Beat. Beat.
She feels her chest tighten. The razors she had wrapped and buried deep within her mind unravel their bindings. Gouge their way along her neural pathways. There is no controlling this. No fighting it. The darkness takes her.
THIRTY-THREE
“THE LAST DELIVERY is at 0330 – there are no more authorised entries after that. Morning shift will come to relieve you at 0800. The alarm code is 161115.”
The Warehouse Manager’s voice is grating, but Anaiya keeps her face passive. This is her third week as an Infrastructure Protector. She knows the routine. She has memorised the alarm code. It’s not as if she is brain dead.
Well. Not quite.
It is not his fault. As far as the Manager is concerned, he has inherited a hypoxic Fire Elemental, demoted from elite Peacekeeper to competent Infrastructure Protector. Repeating basic commands and chec
king for lucidity is all part of the deal.
Still, she would like to wipe the smug, condescending, infuriating smirk off his face with a full roundhouse kick. It is clear that upper-class Earth Elementals get a kick out of seeing Fire Elementals brought low.
She nods her head in understanding, not trusting her voice.
“And keep alert for any hint of Heterodox activity – I do not want another contingent of Forensics here tomorrow morning interfering with business.”
As if he would know the first thing about business. It was all processes and ticking boxes and signing orders for him. But, even then, it was more complex, more worthy than her new role.
“Yes, yes,” she replies. “No Forensics.”
They had appeared three times already in the last week, each time to wipe a Heterodox mural off the side of the warehouse. The murals had been crude, stencilled imitations of the arresting versions she had seen as a Peacekeeper – smaller, harsher. It explained how the offenders were able to plant the Heterodoxy without detection, despite the regular patrols of Peacekeepers canvassing the nearby streets.
The Manager exhales an exaggerated sigh, breaking her out of the endless cycle of her thoughts. “Yes. No Forensics.”
Thoughts of roundhouse kicks come floating back to her, but he turns on his heel before the thought can grow wings. She watches him exit the warehouse, throwing silent, deadly thoughts at his back.
As silence settles, Anaiya’s anxiety makes her itch, flaring ever so subtly into pain. The silence is the catalyst. The thing that will kickstart the memories, release her inner demons and let them roam free of their cages.
It starts with memories of pool games, of red and yellow balls spinning and colliding. And then of green eyes and intricate black lines snaking up –
No.
She reaches for the metal flask at her hip, the movement faintly reminiscent of –
No. Not tonight.
The cheap, unenhanced alcohol blasts a fiery trail down her throat. It is a risky game – some nights it whitewashes the memories, settling like an opaque barrier over their vibrant colours and jagged edges. But other nights…Other nights, it magnifies them.
Resistance: Divided Elements (Book 1) Page 28