“They are not going to be the only people that we lose. There is a transmission supposedly from the north.”
“Yes, we have heard it, too.”
“Well, so has Omega Tower. They don’t want to sit back and wait. There is an assault on the south underway. Everything will be destroyed. Brighton has already fallen.” Jackson looked to Street, who for the first time let her guard down. She slipped to the ground. “They are making plans to leave Omega Tower and go to a place called Canvey Island.” Millward took a sip of the hot tea. Something caught Street’s attention outside and Jackson closed the laptops to kill the light. They sat in silence until Street gave them the all-clear that the danger had passed. Millward continued his story but spoke in hushed tones. “They are planning to ship everybody in Omega Tower to this place called Canvey Island in the next three days. But they are planning to destroy the other towers.”
“Why would they do that?” Street asked as she arrived at their side. “Why not just leave and let them go free?”
“Because if the north survived the war, anything in those towers is evidence of what our good President has done,” said Jackson. “If anybody survives in any tower outside of Omega then he is a war criminal. But if everybody is dead with the exception of a select few who tell the president’s version of the truth, he manages to look like a hero who saved a group of important types from the nuclear war.”
“Exactly. Emily sent me here in the hope that with your RUSE program we could move back into New Omega and try to free the other towers before it’s too late.”
“It’s already too late,” said Street.
“What she means is that we don’t have RUSE anymore,” said Jackson. “In order for RUSE to be effective the connection has to be maintained. The SSP was only down for a matter of minutes, as long as it took them to initiate their defences. We had connections in Alpha, but not the whole team. As soon as somebody in Alpha realised that the programming had been interrupted they used a worm to eat the bandwidth. They must have used some kind of zero-day attack to get past our kit, and before we knew what was happening we lost RUSE. Backups were in Brighton. I’ve been trying to contact them,” he said as he cast his hand in the direction of the laptops and radios.
Street smiled as she slapped Millward on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, I don’t know what he’s talking about half the time either. They deleted RUSE. That’s all you need to know.”
“It means that we don’t have anything to use against the other towers. Now I understand why they are not answering.”
“Dover,” said Street. “We have to go to Dover.”
Jackson looked as if he could bite at that idea, but Millward was quick to shake his head. “Dover has sided with Omega. There’s no point you going there.”
Millward could tell that neither of the two rebels that sat beside him had ever felt so helplessly alone. They now knew that everything north of them was set to be destroyed, and that everything south and to the east was already being destroyed. It was the darkest moment since the sun had risen.
“We can’t free any of the closed towers on the basis that we don’t have RUSE anymore. We can’t go south to Brighton because it doesn’t exist. We can’t go east because Dover is working for the Republic.” Jackson opened up the laptop as they all heard the rumble of a Red Eye. Street was quick to her feet as she glanced over the edge of the broken door.
Once the sounds died down she announced, “They are heading away from us.” It left them in silence.
For a while nobody spoke as they contemplated their lack of options. “They will be heading north,” said Millward, breaking the tension. The smell of burning wood filled the air and smoke drifted across the open roof of their shelter. “They think their work in the south is done,” said Millward.
“I’d say they are pretty much correct,” replied Street mournfully. “We can’t go north either.”
“That only leaves west,” said Jackson.
“What are we supposed to find there?” asked Street. “We know that the west was destroyed when the bombs first fell. Where are we supposed to run to?”
“Were not supposed to run anywhere. We didn’t run for the last ten years, so we are sure as hell not about to do it now. They are changing the game plan, but we haven’t stopped playing yet. As long as there are people in those towers there is still hope.”
“But we don’t have RUSE anymore, Jackson. What we supposed to do?”
Jackson stood up tall and breathed in the smoke, the smell of a log fire, remembering what it meant to have a family. He looked down at Street and knew there was still something worth trying for.
“RUSE was always about ending the simulation. It was always about freeing the towers that we saw to be held captive. But we never gave any thought to Omega Tower.” Jackson swivelled the laptop around to they could both see and then pointed to a black line on screen. “We’ve been using the Northern line for years to move north and south, even while it was supposedly protected. But now Alpha has gone, why would they bother to protect it anymore?”
“I don’t know whether that line is abandoned,” added Millward.
“I don’t know either but if they think they’re fighting a new war in the north why would they waste troops by defending an old Tube line going nowhere? Because that’s where we are right now. Even the Red Eyes are leaving, which means they think the job has been done. That gives us access to their southern borders. The Northern line goes directly to Omega and I know where their switches are from the schematics we used for Alpha,” he said to Street. He stood up and played out his plan as he spoke. “Maybe if we just mess with their systems long enough it will make things harder for them.” Jackson tapped his finger on the edge of the screen. “Maybe I can even play the transmission across the speakers and let everybody know that there are a bunch of survivors in the north. Maybe then they wouldn’t be so keen to ship out to Canvey Island. Just maybe the people in Omega Tower might start a revolt all on their own.”
“But Emily is there,” said Street. “Zack, too.” Millward stood up at the mention of Emily’s name. He was ready for action.
“Which is exactly why we should try and do something. We will send Stoat northeast towards Canvey Island with the survivors from Alpha Tower. It’s the safest place as far as I can see. We’ll head north and try and get underneath Omega Tower.” He looked at Millward as if to ask if he was in or not. Millward nodded to show he was on board. There was nothing else left to try now. He had no way back, and nothing left to return to.
“To do what exactly?” Street asked.
Jackson closed the laptop and took a moment to look at them both before he said, “Anything we can.”
Chapter Sixty Four
After the Guardians closed the door Emily grabbed one of the occasional chairs. She propped it up on the back legs and wedged it underneath the door handle. Zack watched her jimmy it into place, her bobbed hair sashaying with every movement she made. She stood back to appraise its capability to withstand the force of a Guardian from the other side, but was less than hopeful. When she turned around Zack was standing at the other side of the bed watching her. His hand was clamped over his ribs, his breathing still laboured, even though he wasn’t doing anything. The desperation to ask him how he really felt about her was choking her, but whatever it was that was collecting in her throat, she swallowed it back down. Now was not the time to pander to her selfish whims.
She helped him to the bed and he sat down. She slipped off his shoes and he felt a sudden embarrassment for the unsightly nature of his under-cared-for feet. Even several weeks of the hygienist visits in Omega Tower hadn’t quite got them back into good condition. She stood up and moved away to the bathroom where he could hear her rummaging in cupboards. Before long she returned with a large glass of water and a couple of tablets.
“They keep a stock of what they see as essentials in these rooms,” she said as she handed him the two white tablets. He seemed hesitant. “It’
s a pain killer. I thought it might help.”
“Thank you, Emily,” he said after swallowing them down with a large gulp of ice cold water. It burned his insides but felt like a luxury after his time in captivity. Isolation this time really had meant isolation, and there had been no friendly visitors from the kitchens. She took the glass from him and set it down on the bedside table. He reached up and took her hand, pulling her so that she sat down next to him on the edge of the bed. “Not just for the tablets. For everything.”
Emily averted her eyes, tried to hide the smile. “It’s nothing.”
“Emily, without the things you have done, I would be dead twice over. I owe you my life. Whoever’s baby you are carrying, I will do the right thing.” He reached up and caressed her cheek and she responded by nuzzling into it. She pulled away, realising that she was getting carried away, and that Zack didn’t know the truth.
“What did Josh tell you?”
“He said that you were pregnant and needed my help and that I should do whatever is required to help you.”
“That was it?” Zack nodded. “I’m not pregnant, Zack. I have never even.....” She trailed off, abashed to tell him that she had never before been in such close proximity to a man as she was right now. He smiled and she did the same, and as he let his fingers slip away her face flushed hot and red. He moved his fingers to the wig and she chewed on her lips to remove any traces of Margareta’s lipstick.
“Your hair looks so different,” he said.
She reached up and pulled his hand away. “It’s not my hair. When you left I decided that I had to leave as well. I planned to get out. I knew they would be looking for me, so I did this.” She pulled the wig away to reveal the clipped hair. She had expected him to be horrified, laugh, be shocked. Anything. But he remained still, just looking at the short spikes as they sat jaggedly alongside the untouched strands. “They caught me half way through.” He reached up and fiddled his fingers through her mismatched hair, catching the same smell of jasmine and sage that he remembered from the sublevels of Delta Tower.
“That’s better,” he said. “Now you look like you.” The half shaved head of hair stirred memories of Samantha. It had been so easy to hurt her, certain he could get away with it, or that if he couldn’t, that it didn’t really matter. How he had learned to take the person that mattered the most for granted. “Why were you going to leave?” he said, trying to push away the thoughts of his past mistakes. But it was hard to do because they left a sense that he didn’t deserve this chance with Emily, as if he had been handed something that didn’t belong to him.
She wanted to tell him that she planned to leave in order to be with him, to find him so that he could make her feel safe. But to say that sounded ridiculous, even in her head. How could she have been safer outside Omega Tower? She bought herself some time by locating the control panel and programming the vision of the nuclear winter. It was habit, but when she looked round she could tell that it made Zack uncomfortable. “I like to watch it. It always reminded me that the other towers didn’t have a choice.” She paused, but knew she still hadn’t answered his question. “I just had to get out. After you left I just felt that it was unsafe to stay.”
“And yet you are still here. As am I because you are still saving me, handing me extra chances.” He sounded so disappointed when he said it. She just wanted to curl up in a ball and not see his face. But the hardest thing for her to face was not to admit that she wanted to leave to find him, but to say that staying here now that he was back no longer seemed so bad.
“I’m sorry that you are still stuck here,” she said instead, not meaning a word of it. She looked at the black sky and wondered if she should change it.
“I’m not.” He winced as he shuffled in closer to her. She almost gasped as she heard his words. How could he possibly mean that? “I was trying to get back.”
“Why would you have done that?”
“For you. When Jackson explained the plan to take out Alpha Tower I knew I had to be involved. Your dad was right when he said I cracked a few skulls. Guardian skulls, of course.” They both laughed and he took her hand. She looked to the door to make sure the chair was still wedged in place. “But it wasn’t just that. I found the photograph. My old girlfriend. You put it in the bag, didn’t you?”
“I don’t know where my father got it from. I saw it in his office with some paperwork about you. He was distracted by the plans for an Adoration of Life Ceremony and I took it. I knew it must be yours if it was in with your file. I did try to tell you that I had it at the ceremony, but you didn’t understand.” She reached for the Control Panel and ended the Scenic Simulation Programming. When the day’s dying sun began to shine on the screen she saw his shoulders drop into a more relaxed position.
“You mouthed something to me,” he said as he remembered standing in the crowd trying to understand what she was telling him.
“Yes, but you were distracted by Sarah.”
“She is going to be very angry with me when she sees me.” Emily pulled away, realising that she hadn’t even considered Sarah. She had spent so much time deliberating about what Zack might or might not feel for her, lost in her own selfish feelings. She hadn’t even considered what telling him about Sarah might make him feel like. It wasn’t about telling him she was dead. She could cope with that. It was the fact that had to tell him that she was responsible for it by rigging the vote. That she was no better than her father, trading one life for another. How could she admit that and expect him to love her? Wait a minute. Love her? Was that what she wanted from him? Was that what this was about, and why staying in Omega Tower no longer felt so hopeless? Perhaps her father was right all along, and that the only thing people really need to accept anything is unity to another person.
She was losing track of her aims. She jumped up from the bed and unzipped her dress. Underneath she was wearing white cotton pants and bra, sheer to the point that they were almost see-through, but she felt no sense of modesty as she stepped out of it and kicked it to the floor. She told herself that even if she was embarrassed it was good to feel that way so that she could start to focus on what they were really doing here. This wasn’t supposed to be some childish date.
“You won’t see Sarah because she is dead.” She strutted across the room and rifled in the cupboards for an Omega Regulation dress. She wished she had her tartan bag with the Delta-issue overalls in but that would have been too big a luxury. “I killed her. Not myself, but I arranged it. There was a Denunciation Ceremony and Simon would have died. I organised it so that she died instead.” As she pulled the dress over her head she felt his eyes upon her. She turned until she could just see him in the corner of her eye. “I used her, Zack. I had to show my father than he cannot control everything. And it worked, but not necessarily for the best.”
Once she was dressed she sat back down on the bed, fearful of his judgement, but not enough to let the cowardice surface. She explained everything, from how Zack was chosen for the lottery based on the fact that he had seen her in the basement of Delta, to how she had waited with her fingers crossed that the vote for the Denunciation Ceremony would go as she had planned. She was forced to recap several elements of the story, especially when it came to explaining her father’s plan to bomb their own country was an excuse for a war with the Middle East. The current state of what was once Europe seemed to trouble him the most.
“So they really did do it themselves. That’s what Street told me.” When he saw that Emily wasn’t following he clarified further. “Street is one of the Drifters. She told me that we did it to ourselves.”
“Short of us dropping the bombs, she was right.” Emily felt a pang of anger towards the ‘she’ element of the story but couldn’t understand why and so changed the focus. “Anyway, a lot has changed since you left. My father is planning to ship us all out to an island in the east.”
“Canvey Island? Duke told me about that place.” She was tempted to ask what it was like, th
at same emotional wrestle between staying here in the relative safety of Omega Tower and doing the right thing. She had never felt this way before. She was always so determined and immovable in her beliefs that Omega should be ruined and the people freed. But something had changed as she was starting to understand that Zack was the difference. Maybe that was what true love really was. The ability to bear the unbearable when the person that you love was at your side.
She focussed on the negatives. “When the population of Omega Tower leaves for Canvey Island, he plans to destroy all the other towers, Zack. Delta included. They already blew up Alpha. The explosives were already built into the structure of the building. Lots of people died.” For the first time Zack let go of his side and clutched at his aching head with both hands. The painkiller that Emily had given him had helped his ribs, but it hadn’t much helped his headache, the one that had been there ever since he woke up a few days ago.
“When I left Jackson I thought he was planning to use RUSE on all of the towers. I expected it to be over by now. Even when I woke up here I still hoped that somehow they had succeeded. But if the other towers are still intact then everybody is still trapped.” The idea of Leonard looking for his lights in a computerised sky without any clue that death was coming for him sent a shiver of anger and fear across his skin. Her hair brushed against him as she leaned in close and in that moment it felt like thousands of needles stabbing at him in torment. Then he remembered something. “From the north,” he said as he sat up straight. “I remember a transmission.”
The Dawn: Omnibus edition (box set books 1-5) Page 62