by Ian Williams
What happened eighteen months earlier at Sanctuary was supposed to have been the end of it. They were now starting to get back on their feet. Those who had died were slowly being laid to rest, but never forgotten. Things were settling down and had begun to take on a rhythm more suited to everyday life. No more running away, no more hiding their faces while in the city or avoiding violent clashes in the city streets. She had changed her hair colour from red to blonde to make sure. Life had moved on and even the devastated wireless power relay network had slowly started to come back online. Everything was returning to some form of normality, despite so much chaos.
The city had erupted with anger the moment their trusted power network had been brought to its knees. The overload Sanctuary had sent through the country’s relays did more than turn out the lights in the city, it had crippled it entirely, and for many months. The eighteen months since then had seen only a small percentage of the overall number of relays fixed or replaced. The result of this was a spate of rioting so regular that the evening news reports had started listing them like traffic updates. Even after so long, some parts of the city remained like tiny warzones that no authority had yet tried to take back.
With the fall of the Simova Corporation following shortly after Sanctuary was destroyed, the many people brought in to keep things running had quickly lost interest in those who were responsible for the events that led to the overload. They were too busy keeping the city from being torn down by the enraged population stuck living there. If any investigation was still ongoing it had surely come up empty enough times to render the whole endeavour pointless.
That should have been the end of Phoenix’s worries.
The arrival of this mystery man put all of that in jeopardy. If he could find them so easily, then who else could? More importantly, who was left? The sight of Anthony’s face in her mind was one she was not prepared for at all. The last time she saw him was just after Graham had rammed a shard of glass through his face and seconds before she had opened fire with the killer shot – the third person she had killed. He was dead for sure, but others had escaped. Was this man working for one of them? Was he there to help or not?
Jane returned with a green bag in her arms, a white cross decorating it that signified its purpose. She settled down beside Phoenix and rummaged through their small supply of bandages and gauzes. The rattle of half empty tablet bottles only highlighted the frantic search for the Medi-Sealant stored somewhere inside the deep-pocketed bag.
“Where is it?” Jane asked while continuing to search. Finally she found it and removed all that she needed from their supplies too. She placed a handful of the remaining bandages and gauzes neatly on the floor next to her, along with a pair of medical scissors, cloths and wipes, the Medi-Sealant spray, a pair of lime green disposable gloves and a small antiseptic spray.
First to be used were the gloves, which Jane stretched onto her hands with a squeak and a loud slap from the elasticated material. She then unravelled a long strip of thin, cotton dressing, ready to apply at the right moment.
Without a look shared between them at all the operation began.
“The wound needs to be cleaned,” Jane began with. “Pour some water over it. Gently.”
“How much?”
“Just keep going until you’ve removed most of the blood.”
With a handful of the warm water in her hands, Phoenix arched over Ninety-three’s stomach and let the contents fall over the wound. Immediately the blood became diluted and dribbled down the man’s side. After another six or so splashes, it was clear the laceration had slowed its release of blood enough to proceed. Whether the injury had already become infected or not was hard to tell, it was too early to determine that. As far as Phoenix could see there was no obvious sign of swelling, only a large area where the skin no longer matched up, like an incorrect jigsaw.
“What next?” she asked, eager to get the operation over with.
“Move back, let me get in close.”
For the time being she was demoted to observer as Jane once again took the lead. She watched in admiration and appreciation as her friend swiftly dealt with the worst of it. In quick succession, Jane used up almost the entirety of their alcohol wipes and absorbent gauzes, all to remove as much dirt and grit from the wound as possible. When the man landed on the ground in front of them he had unintentionally filled his cut with it – making infection much more likely.
“Pass me the tweezers, they’re in the bag there.”
“Sure,” Phoenix replied hesitantly. She fished the small, green plastic tweezers out of the bag and handed them over like a trained professional. The operating theatre was working well.
The next job was much more than Phoenix could stomach. She looked away just as Jane began to search around between the flaps of skin. It was clear that more than just dirt and grit had invaded this man’s body. Jane announced as much the moment she found something more and yanked it out with another mushy sound. For someone already struggling to cope, this was not good to hear.
“Jesus! He’s been shot,” Jane said.
Phoenix snapped her head back around, managing to ignore the scene right in front of her, and stared at the jagged piece of metal in Jane’s hand. The tweezers were now covered in the same silky and oily red liquid as everything else around them, including a pile of wipes and cloths.
“What the fuck is going on?”
Jane flicked the metal into the bucket of water and went back to finding more. “This isn’t right, Phoenix. Who is this guy, and why would he come here?”
“I can’t think why. What he said about Graham though, he must know more. What if he’s right, what if Graham is still–?”
“He’s not! Graham is dead. We’ve already said our goodbyes. How could he be alive?” Jane dropped her hand by her side and wiped her forehead with the other, spreading a light film of blood across her skin. But it was the water forming in a neat semi-circle beneath her pupils that was most telling. The conversation had reached a point of no return. “He’s dead,” she said before closing her eyes, lowering her face to the floor and then sobbing.
Not wanting to press further for now, Phoenix placed a hand on Jane’s shoulder and squeezed. The gesture was returned immediately with a hand placed atop. For a short time they stayed like this, until Jane had swallowed back her grief and managed somehow to compose herself. Phoenix was again finding herself feeling an immense sensation of pride toward her friend. They had all been through so much, yet stayed so strong.
“I’m OK,” Jane said with a final sniffle.
“Do you want me to carry on with that?”
“No, I’ve got it. Once I’ve got everything I can out we’ll need to use the Medi-Sealant spray to seal the wound. We’ll need to heat treat it with the hairdryer too, that should shrink and pull the skin together.”
“How do you know to do all this?”
Jane pushed the tweezers back into Ninety-three’s wound, then replied while she worked, “I did a couple of years in a trauma centre when I was young. This is nothing compared to–”
Neither of them had noticed any sign that the man was about to wake up. But he did, and suddenly. Like a panther launching its attack on an unsuspecting prey, he leapt up into a sitting position and began his frantic clawing. He had no idea where the pain he was feeling was coming from, had no idea Jane had three fingers and plastic tweezers inside his abdomen.
“Get off me. Get off me. Where am I? Please, stop, I don’t want this anymore,” he said, his arms swinging around like a crazed animal’s.
“Shit! Calm him down, quickly,” Jane called.
“My head, he’s in my fucking head,” the man continued to rant. “The man from the tower’s trying to kill me.”
In an instant the operating theatre atmosphere had broken, the patient had awoken during the operation. He kicked his legs out while screaming to the rooftop in pain. He had already given up on trying to speak coherently. His left leg swung up and became h
ooked over the back of the chair, threatening to topple him out and onto the floor.
Pinning the man down now became their only concern, before he tore the wound open even further. It had not taken much to do that earlier while carrying him in, this would do far worse. His violent convulsions were only getting stronger with time.
“Stephen, get in here and hold him down with me,” Phoenix ordered. Using her entire body weight to subdue the man appeared to make him even angrier.
Stephen arrived as he always did, with a blank look on his face. It always took him three times longer to get his head around things than most others, today was no different. Rather than jump aboard and keep the man’s body in place, he stood staring at the scene, unable to make head nor tales of things. Only shouted orders worked in situations such as this.
“Hold his legs down, now.” Before Phoenix could check whether Stephen was complying she was hit in the face by a loose knee. She felt her nose crunch during the impact and a sharp, lightning fast flash of pain shoot through her head. The hit had her reeling and quickly becoming dizzy. She was losing consciousness.
The man’s screams became nothing more than echoes around her; disembodied cries from a distant world. Everything passed by in a blur. Stephen was doing as he had been told and was holding the man’s legs down with both hands, while Jane was doing the same at the other end. The scene continued in front of Phoenix like a play. The muffled sounds and hazy lighting made it appear like she watched the story unfold from the back of a theatre, as if it went on just out of her reach. Except this play lacked any director or stage hands, it was chaos.
“Phoenix! Phoenix, are you OK?” Jane shouted through the fog.
Thankfully the dizziness began to pass and slowly Phoenix could feel herself returning to the world as one. Her mind refocused just in time to see Ruth entering the room with a frying pan in hand. Seeing such a thing so unexpectedly made her doubt it at first. What was Ruth doing, making lunch or trying to help?
“Let him up,” Ruth said.
Whatever the plan was, Jane had understood it straight away. She let the man sit up and stepped back. Then, just as he was about to begin lashing out in a blind panic once more, Ruth swung the pan into the side of his head, knocking him out instantly. Everyone breathed a huge – and shared – sigh of relief.
“What the hell is going on in here?” Ruth asked, as if her pan attack had not been as preposterous as it had appeared to the rest of them. She evidently failed to see how odd it looked for a pregnant woman, with a frying pan in hand, to storm into a room and knock out a screaming man.
Phoenix touched her nose and recoiled in pain; it was bleeding a little. She was sure it had not been broken. She was also sure the resulting bruise would be a sight to behold. With any luck it would not spread too far over her face, perhaps some purple rings to frame her eyes? It would negate her habitual use of thick, black eyeliner at least, she conceded with a giggle.
* * *
Two hours later and the Sun had almost disappeared behind the skyscrapers of the city in the distance. A light breeze kicked up the occasional dust cloud out in the field, which swirled around before settling back down again. The weather had been good the previous few days, even calm – albeit hotter than usual. No cloud producing particles had been sent up for weeks due to the major repair effort still ongoing in the city. This was taking over everything, even weather management.
Phoenix sat on the wooden fence that lined her parents’ old farm, a clump of tissues held gently to her nose and a deep red stain on her purple top. Even though it was a farm, no animals had been kept there by her family. Of course no-one would have guessed that. Everything needed to keep animals was still present from when she and her family had moved in; pens, chicken hatches, even a couple of barns – one for a long dismantled tractor. Now it served as just a home, a home rocked by a recent arrival.
She looked out to where another barn had once sat. Now only the charred remains lay in a roughly rectangular shape. Enough time had passed to allow the grass to begin its job of reclaiming the area. Thankfully, the gang that had tried to make her home their own had failed to destroy everything. Only the one barn had been needed to run their nefarious schemes out of. She guessed they had torched it to cover their tracks.
Removing the tissue and trying to sniff proved to her that the swelling had yet to go down. The bleeding had stopped at least. With a loud exhalation through her mouth, she gazed at the faint yellow glow that always hovered above the city, like a halo of civilisation only visible at night.
“Phoenix?” a quiet voice said through the rustling of the nearby tree.
Turning slowly in her perched position, Phoenix saw that Alex had left the house and was standing a few feet away. She had a sheepish look on her face, as though concerned she interrupted something important.
“Hey, buddy,” Phoenix replied, her voice far more nasally sounding than usual. “Wanna sit with me?”
Alex nodded and climbed the fence, swinging her leg over the top and letting them hang. “Are you OK?”
“Sure. This is nothing,” she said, gesturing to her own nose. “Shouldn’t ruin the look.”
“Nope,” Alex said with a nervous laugh. She seemed hesitant to go on. “What are you and Mummy going to do with that man?”
The question had been rattling around inside Phoenix’s head for a little while already. She had now made a decision about what happened next and it was way beyond simply caring for the mystery man. The moment he was well enough she planned on squeezing him dry of everything he knew, like juice from an orange. Finding Graham, if he was even alive still, would eventually mean retracing his steps, whether he wanted to or not.
“We need to get him better, then he can tell us who he is,” she replied, keeping her thoughts to herself for now.
The truth was she had something important to do alone first. The others would have to tend to the man for a while. She had to see something with her own eyes, and then she would know whether to trust him or not.
“I hope he doesn’t die, like…” Alex stopped short of saying it outright. The wound was still fresh enough to hold her tongue from speaking his name again.
“He won’t, buddy. We’ll make sure he doesn’t.”
A car horn sounded out from the direction of the front gate, sending a rush of adrenaline though Phoenix’s body. Now that Elliot and Sean were home she could go off on her little investigative trip. Her destination was far enough away that their shared electric car would have to be pushed quite a bit further than normal today. The days continued charging should have filled the batteries. Whatever power remained would simply have to suffice.
“Why don’t you go say hello to your uncle? I need to go out for a bit.”
“Where are you going?” Alex asked. “Can I come?”
“I need to go back to Sanctuary, see what’s left of it. And no you can’t come, you need to go to bed soon. Your mum would kill me if I took you along.”
“Fine. Don’t stay out too late,” Alex said cheekily as she dismounted the fence and headed for the front of the house.
Moments later she was gone and the sound of car doors shutting echoed around. Elliot and Sean would be seeking out food first and foremost, as they always did after a busy day working on repairing the crumbling power relay network. It was a routine she had first-hand experience of too, having tagged along with them both to lend a hand on occasion – and earn a nice day’s pay of course.
Phoenix knew that if she could sneak away unnoticed she could be back before any of them realised. Alex would not tell, she had enough sense to keep quiet for the time being. But she needed some things first.
No more than five minutes later and Phoenix had changed her top and packed for a short trip. She now wore a black t-shirt emblazoned with the name of a band she was certain had split up years before she was born; it had been one of her father’s, left hiding at the back of an old cabinet. The small rucksack she used was filled with anyt
hing she thought she might need for the evening ahead: a torch, wire cutters, gloves and even a small pair of binoculars she found in Elliot and Ruth’s room. Plus a beaten-up old red jumper she sometimes liked to sleep in, just in case her short trip turned into an overnighter.
A quick glance at her watch – an old analogue one with a crack across the glass – revealed that the time had just ticked past seven-thirty in the evening. It would be at least an hour’s drive. A last minute decision to take some snacks for the journey led her on a quick detour to the kitchen. Unfortunately, the second she entered the room she regretted it. Standing over the sink, drinking a glass of water as fast as he could, was Elliot. He looked at the bag over her shoulder. It was clear she aimed to go on some kind of mission, not a simple trip out to the shops.
“What’s with the bag?” he asked, handing his suspicion to her like an unwanted gift. What are you up to? he seemed to say.
“I’m just going out for a bit.”
His suspicions were only made worse by the fidgety state she was in – and the dried blood around her nose. She wanted to get out quickly and it was clear to see.
“Where?”
Just drop it, dude! she thought to herself. This was not the first time she had been forced to explain herself to Elliot. The eighteen months since losing Graham had been hard. Tensions had been running high for a long time, until he finally began to see sense. She knew she had hurt him and his family, but she was doing her best to make up for it. Of course he sometimes struggled to see it that way. He could probably still see her fist swinging into his face during his interrogation at Anthony’s warehouse. It had taken a while to prove to him that she was not really like the version of her he saw that day.