The Lumis War

by Lisa Jade

  The screen itself is split into dozens, perhaps hundreds of screens. I step a little closer; each screen seems to be showing some part of the city. The cameras move and shift, some low to the ground as they scuttle over debris, others lifting as they pace through the ruined streets. I realise with a start that the cameras are bots. Their small, red eyes that seem so scary in the dark are actually cameras, and the footage is recorded and shown here. My gut twists, wondering how much was seen.

  “Impressive, isn’t it?”

  Someone steps out of one of the rooms. I jump back, instinctively pulling my gun. They pace slowly, steadily, and come to a stop between me and the screen.

  At this distance, I can see him more clearly. He’s pale and slim, his dark hair slicked back with grease. He has a pointed chin and sharp eyes that sparkle with intelligence – when he moves, it’s slow and intentional, almost feline. He smiles, revealing a set of flawless white teeth.

  “I always thought you might like this place, Ashley.”

  I jump back; but he simply laughs.

  “Don’t panic so much. Of course I know your name. Though I’m not sure what you prefer to be called. Ashley? Ash? Mouse? It’s so hard to keep track.”

  He turns away now, calmly circling me. My fingers clench around the trigger of my gun – he may be acting kind, but there’s something in his movements, something in the sleekness of his smile that sets me on edge. I feel like a surfer being circled by a shark.

  “I’ve been watching you,” he says as he passes behind me, “since you first left your little settlement – and I’ve even had some spies on the inside. Those old security cameras have proven most useful to me.”

  My stomach knots. I think of the battered, powerless cameras that sit in the corners at Fairground. In the infirmary, the council meeting room… the room I’ve slept in the past few weeks. My anger flairs, but I try to calm it. This guy has been through a lot. I shouldn’t be so judgemental. I force myself to lower my gun, hanging it at my side instead.

  “That’s a good girl. You never were one for violence, were you? I should know. You’re a doctor, first and foremost. You care about people.”

  He smiles, but there’s something strange about it. The motion seems fake somehow, forced. He smooths back his hair and suddenly a memory flashes back to me. A photo in Dr Newton’s office. A picture of him and an older man – a man who slicked back his hair just the same. A man with a sharp face and narrow shoulders. Michael Shard.

  I stare back at the man, my mouth falling open, and confusion sets in. The resemblance is uncanny; but Michael Shard was so much older. This man looks thirty, maybe thirty five. It can’t possibly be him.

  He raises an eyebrow and that wry smile plays on his lips again.

  “You’re finally piecing it together, aren’t you?”

  I step back, staggering a little, and he takes a few paces towards me, his arms outstretched in welcome.

  “Come on. You know me. I’m Robert Shard.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The realisation hits me like a ton of bricks. Robert Shard was the son of Michael – who was the leader of Shard Industries, the company who built the dome and monitored the bots. My face grows hot. How did this happen? Of all people, why did only he survive? What happened to the others, the council of men and women who led our city from this tower?

  He shrugs.

  “Maybe you don’t know. I suppose it doesn’t matter. I want to show you something. Follow me.”

  He turns and walks towards the computer at the far end of the room. I hesitate a little, unsure. His attitude leaves me unnerved. He doesn’t seem surprised to see me, or excited to not be alone anymore. He speaks to me like I’m an old friend, or someone he shares a common bond with. But I force the sense of unease down into my stomach, shake it off and follow him. I don’t know what he’s been through. I don’t have the right to judge.

  I step up beside him at the console, and watch as his fingers glide over the keys. He types in codes and passwords much faster than I can see, his hands blurring in front of my eyes. I vaguely register that he’s logging into the system, and wonder why he knows the codes, but then he turns to me and smiles.

  “I hope you don’t think me crazy,” he says, “but I’ve been waiting for you. Well, not so much you. Just… someone. You see, this city is incredible. It is a city of firsts and I hope to carry that on.”

  I must seem confused because he taps at a key and smirks.

  “Maybe this will explain it better.”

  On the screen is a map. A map I’ve never seen before. It’s not like the layout of Lumis, the city in a perfect circle – it’s made up of lots of blue and green. The green patches form shapes in the blue, and the shapes are malformed and uneven. Robert brandishes a hand at it and sighs.

  “This is the world beyond Lumis, Ashley. This is the world we used to be a part of.”

  I stare. I’d never given much thought to what was outside the dome; the passion to survive seemed more important, so I always dismissed it. But these… lands in front of me seem so strange, so diverse. There’s something tempting about them, something that makes me want to explore the whole damn thing.

  “Lumis was always a step ahead. We excelled at politics, art, law… but more than anything, we excelled at technology. While other places were stuck in the dark ages, using fossil fuels and crappy computers, we had intelligent bots and solar power. Lumis was labelled the neon city because of its countless solar lights that made the place look like a haven in the darkness.”

  His description is somehow beautiful to me. It brings back vague, dusty memories of times spent wandering the darkening streets, seeing the lights spring to life and illuminate the evening.

  But then his face grows dark.

  “Such a haven could never last. It wasn’t long before people began to want our technology. The leaders a century ago – my ancestors – knew that they had no choice but to protect the secrets of the city. If our technology became commonplace, there would be nothing special about Lumis. The carefully crafted society they had built would crumble and fall.”

  As he speaks, he glides his hands over the console in front of him, his eyes wistful.

  “It all came to a head when they caught someone trying to break into the network tower,” he says, his voice sad, “the Shards realised they had no choice but to block Lumis off, separating it from the rest of the world forever. So they built the dome, and for a while, peace reigned.”

  His face twists now, changing into something cruel.

  “I never really liked peace. We had a hundred years of it. Light and peace and music in the night. Something about it made me sick. But I could see it. I could see the appeal, and I could tell it was right. So I put up with it. Until one night, when I found someone sneaking around up here. Someone had broken into the tower from the outskirts of the city. One of those radicals who wanted to be run by humans, who broke in here to shut it down. They had a disc with some software – they wanted to turn the security bots against us and force us from the tower.”

  He eyes me carefully now, and my hand tightens around the gun.

  “That was when I realised that just as Lumis had been too good for the world, I was too good for Lumis. People would always break in, try to destroy that which made others happy and safe. I knew that history had to repeat itself… but how?”

  The hairs stand up on the back of my neck. He reaches into his pocket and shows me a crumpled scrap of paper.

  “So I stole my father’s codes. I came in here one night, into the penthouse protected by that wave, and hacked the system. I used the disc from that radical and uploaded the virus into the heart of the city, turning every good-natured bot hostile to all humans.”

  Anger flicks through me, and I can feel my muscles tensing. I had tried to reign my worries back, tried to tell myself I could be kind and understanding – but this is the man who turned Lumis into a battleground. This is the man who killed thousands. My parents
. My neighbours. Sparrow’s smile echoes in my mind and something snaps.

  I raise the gun, but it’s too late. He lashes out, knocking it from my hand and sending it across the floor. I turn for it but he blocks me, raising a finger and waggling it at me.

  “Ah ah. I’ll get that.”

  He scoops the gun from the floor and holds it, and in his eyes I see something that scares me. More than the city, more than a mecha. I see in him the pleasure it takes to hold a gun, the power he feels with its weight in its hands. He raises his head and fixes his gaze on me; and suddenly I know he’s going to kill me.

  “You see now? The Shards a hundred years ago locked out the outside world to protect us. And I, twelve years ago, locked out Lumis to protect myself. I reduced the heart of Lumis to these very rooms, and I live that heart every day!”

  His voice is higher now, more strained, and I can feel something akin to madness beginning to seep through. I step back, terror coursing through me.

  “You should be thanking me!” he cries, “I alone have protected our secrets, at any cost! I alone have made Lumis the great city it could be! And you, waltzing in here like that radical all those years go, think you can undo all my hard work and simply switch the bots off? No. I’m sorry, but when that happened I made the mistake of letting that radical go. A madman he was. Kept talking about his sons – appealed to my better nature, I suppose. But I paid for that. And trust me, I won’t make that mistake again.”

  He raises the gun but I lunge at him, rushing in and pushing my head into his ribs. He releases the weapon and I reach out, grabbing and throwing it. It lands just out of his reach and he groans; but I’m on him, wrestling him, pinning him. He fights a little, but I’m stronger than him, and he simply gasps at me.

  “Well done, you’ve won. What now, girlie? Are you going to kill me? That’s the only way to get me to stop. You can’t shut that thing off and hold me down at the same time.”

  His eyes meet mine, and he knows he’s got me. However much I hate this man, however much I want to choke him right here and now, I can’t just kill him. Killing someone would make me no better than a bot, a blind, stupid machine that knows no better. I get off him and stand up, picking the gun up. He sits up now, still on the ground, that infuriating smirk playing on his lips.

  “Alright. Now’s your chance. I’m defenseless. The system’s set up. The codes are in my pocket. You could shut them down easily if you just shot me.”

  I meet his eyes, and he dips his head a little, perhaps proud of what he’s doing to me.

  “But if you killed me, do you think you could live with yourself? Could you look at yourself every day in the mirror and be proud of what you did?”

  My stomach twists. Of course not. Of course I couldn’t live with myself if I killed him. Though nobody would blame me, I can’t. I won’t. When I first left Fairground with the Scouts, I thought it was about proving I was strong. Strong enough to do anything – anything at all – if I had to. But now, as I point the gun at him, I feel my hand shaking. I could never.

  I lower the gun a little, and he smirks.

  “Good choice. I knew you couldn’t do it.”

  In a flash I’ve raised the gun. I aim it at his leg and fire – the shot rings out across the city, nearly deafening me. I see blood; he clutches at the wound and wails. Some small part of me wants to undo it, or go to him and grovel, but I know better. He was never going to let me shut this off. This way he won’t die, but… I did something. I was strong enough to do something.

  He rolls on the floor, screeching, but I turn away. A part of me feels pity for him, and guilt for what I just did, but I pretend to feel nothing. I lean over the console, tracing the buttons and the screen for something that looks promising. I spy something called ‘KILL CODE’ and press it – it comes up with a box and I wonder what the number could be.

  I walk back over to Robert where he lies weeping on the ground and yank his jacket off him. He yells profanities at me as I do so, and I return with a swift kick to his back. He groans, and it’s my turn to smirk. That’s a little trick Minni taught me.

  I search in the pockets of the jacket and find a piece of paper. It’s screwed up and looks half-chewed, but I can read it. I dial the code into the console, taking time to check it’s right – and an arm finds my throat.

  Robert pulls me away, yanking me down to the floor by the back of my hair. I kick out wildly but my feet connect with nothing; somehow, the pain has made him stronger, like a wild animal becomes that much more vicious when scared. He pulls at my hair and I push him off, trying to stagger to my feet to send the code to the tower.

  But he’s on me again, and this time I can hear him. Muttering nonsense in my ear, talking about Lumis and the legend and the importance of it. I shake my head hard, butting it into his nose, but he holds tightly to me. I throw him off and he flips – I hear the sound of glass shattering and try to move back from the broken window. But he finds me, and my hands slip, and his fingers wrap around my ankle as we both slide across the floor and out of the window.

  It’s never been so hard to breathe before.

  My fingers somehow find a grip on the small rim of the window sill. The edge is still packed with broken glass and I can feel the palm of my hand growing wet with blood – limiting the time I can hang here. Below me is Robert, his hands clutched around my leg. The knee seems to pull and stretch, and I bite back on the pain. He yells profanities again, breaking that cool exterior he tried so hard to show me earlier. I reach up, try to pull myself into the building, but the weight is too much and I slip, losing the grip entirely from one hand.

  “What are you doing?” he screams, “pull me up, now!”

  I try, but my body simply isn’t strong enough to lift us both. I can feel the muscles in my left arm stretching and burning, like it’s slipping from its joint, and I know we won’t last long.

  I look down, and meet Robert’s eyes. There’s no getting out of this. Circumstance and selfishness have us hanging off the tower, and no amount of suave talk or brute force can get us back to safety. His eyes fill with fear, and I realise this is perhaps the first time he’s ever had to fear for his life. His face pleads with me, begging me to do something, anything, and I shake my head. I wish I could explain – I don’t want to be the person who kills. I would save him if I could. I just… can’t.

  I turn back to the building, and my eyes catch sight of the screen. It’s how I left it, the kill code entered. All that needs to be done is a simple push of a button. Something clenches in my chest. The sadness, perhaps, at being so very close and failing. But I choose to replace the feeling with joy, instead. Look. Look how much closer we are than before. We just need one more person, one more idiot with too much to prove, and we can end this.

  Or rather, they can. I glance across the city.

  I’ve faced death before. Lots of times. I’ve faced bots of every size, risked starvation, dehydration. I’ve sunk into a place so low I thought I’d die there. But somehow I was able to fight through all that. Somehow, I was able to get here. My lips curl, and I’m surprised to find I’m smiling. For someone so useless, for someone so dull and scared and weak, I’ve done pretty well.

  Suddenly my breathing calms, and the terror of the moment is gone. I can no longer feel my arms. Robert releases me, and I can hear his screams as he plummets, but they barely register. I no longer have the strength to pull myself up, and I have no time left. My smile widens. Somehow… I’m okay with this. I think I can accept this.

  My fingers slip and I close my eyes. I don’t want to see what comes next.

  I jolt; my weight falls a little, a few feet, but then I stop. Something has me. Something around my hand, tight like an iron vice. So tight it hurts. I recognise the grip. Adam.

  “I can’t… leave you alone for two minutes, can I?”

  He sounds angry, but I smile at him. It’s a knowing smile, a sad smile, and I fight back the tears. Because his grip is strong but the blood
is still on my hands, still running over my fingers and down my wrist. I can feel his hand slipping.

  “Hold on, I’ve got you.”

  His words sound sure, but his eyes don’t. I stare at him, and in his eyes I see all his fears coming true. Letting someone slip through his fingers – literally – because he couldn’t save them. I smile again, trying to calm him. There’s nothing he can do. Anymore and he’ll fall, as well.

  His grip loosens, but another finds me. This one locks around my wrist, and the touch is so familiar that it gives me the strength to grab theirs. Relief floods through me, safety and warmth and home rushing through my chest. Max.

  He’s beside Adam, his hair unkempt, that lopsided smile on his face. He seems unhurt – thank goodness, thank goodness.

  “You alright?” he asks me, and I find the energy to nod.

  The two heave, and it takes a surprising amount of strength to heave me up and into the building. The moment my knees hit the floor I collapse, falling into someone and knocking them both to the ground. Relief floods through me, joy and shock and fascination. I bury my face in someone’s chest and sigh. Somehow, somehow, I was given one more chance.

  Epilogue

  “It seems to be getting a bit better. But that’s a big strain on a dislocated shoulder, so be careful, okay?”

  I nod; the infirmary seems so different today. Everything seems to buzz, the air full of excitement. Dr Newton pulls back a little, refastening my sling. I look down at it and frown. I hate this thing. It’s so limiting to not be able to lift anything.

  But then his hand lingers on my arm, and I look up, meeting the eyes of my beloved mentor. He still demands my respect, still inspires admiration with his wise eyes and intelligent demeanour – but now, for the first time ever, I can see something mirrored back at me. That same respect, that same admiration, only intended for me this time. He smiles.

  “Are you excited for today?”