by Jane Higgins
‘So stay.’ She put a hand on my arm. ‘Stay.’
I picked up her hand and held it in my unbandaged one. ‘You’re the one who wants to go over the bridge.’
‘I was.’
‘…And fight the city. We’re at war, remember? You and me.’ Her fingers were long and black, light on my palm. Her braids fell over her eyes. The beads clacked as she shook her head. And then I couldn’t look at her because my heart was beating so loud I was sure she could hear it.
‘Nik?’
‘What?’
She put her hands on my shoulders and I bent my head and kissed her.
And she kissed me back.
She smiled. ‘Don’t tell Coly.’
‘No. Do you have a whole lot of brothers who’ll have to kill me now?’
Her smile got wider. ‘I dare you to risk it.’
I picked up one of her braids and ran it through my fingers. ‘I think I could risk that.’
We stayed a while.
Until it got dark and very cold.
Lanya said, ‘It’s late.’
‘Come on. I’ll walk you back to base.’
‘Just like that? I was busy thinking up arguments about Sol and your father to get you to come back.’
‘You’ve got a funny way of thinking up arguments.’
She punched my arm. ‘Are you truly coming back?’
‘I guess. I can’t let it go at one meeting. Maybe he was having a bad day.’
Maybe.
CHAPTER 37
‘Tasia, I want you to look at this.’ It was him, my father, striding into Levkova’s kitchen, holding a piece of paper. He saw me and stopped.
‘Of course,’ said Levkova. She took the paper and headed out the door.
‘Don’t go,’ he said. ‘I need an answer straightaway.’
‘And you shall have one. I won’t be long.’ She closed the door behind her.
He went to the fire and stood staring down at it. I picked at the bandage on my hand. Silence for a while, then he said, ‘What happened to your hand?’
‘I met Fyffe’s kidnappers.’
‘Damage?’
‘I don’t know. My index finger doesn’t move very well, and there’s parts with no feeling. The doc says nerve and tendon damage, wait and see.’
‘You came a long way for this Hendry boy.’
‘Yeah, well, he matters to me.’ Like family, I almost said, but didn’t. I watched his back, his head bent to the fire. I couldn’t read what he was thinking, but all that compressed energy of the day before had gone. I said, ‘If ISIS had sent me, don’t you think I’d have done something by now – tried to go back over the river to report that you’re alive, or had a go at killing you?’
Silence.
‘Or do you think they’re playing a really long game where even I don’t know I’m a spy?’
He turned around at that and I thought he might leave but he just looked at me like he had no idea what to do with me. He was probably a man who was used to knowing what to do with people. ‘You have questions,’ he said. ‘Ask them.’
Just that. Questions. Ask them. I could hear Lou saying, Jump! He had a deadly imitation of Gorton: My boy, when the freight train of opportunity speeds by, you gotta jump. I looked at my father, and thought, yeah, sure – on it, or under it?
‘Well?’ he said.
I sucked in a breath. ‘Did you know about me?’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘And that I was in that school?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why was I in that school?’
‘I don’t know. I was in the Marsh. When I came out, Elena was dead and you were gone. I found out later where you were.’
‘Why did you leave me there?’
‘It was logistically impossible to do anything else.’
‘But isn’t that your job? To do the logistically impossible?’
Silence at that. Maybe rhetorical questions weren’t part of the deal. Then he said, ‘Tornmoor wasn’t a school. It was an ISIS training facility.’
‘Well, it seemed like a school to me. We did calculus and algebra and geometry and physics and chemistry and…’
‘History? Social analysis? Languages? Any of that?’
‘It was a science school.’
‘Where ISIS trained recruits – why else the assault course on the back field, the training in ciphers and electronics, the laboratories and computer systems beyond anything a school would need, Scripture indoctrination to keep you all in line, and the selection, every year, of an elite to join the Service?’
‘So they came recruiting, okay. But it’s not like they were in the classroom every day—’
‘No?’ He ticked names off on his fingers. ‘Stapleton, Tremewan, Lewis – all senior ISIS agents; Gorton was retired, Williams was in the Marsh and Burton—’
‘Wait! Dr Williams was in the Marsh?’
‘Before my time, and not in any senior capacity, but yes. He trained there. All their medics do their psych training there.’ He looked at me. ‘You know what the Marsh is, don’t you? It’s where ISIS turns thinking, questioning, rebellious individuals into compliant drones. They do it with drugs in what they like to call therapeutic interrogation. They’ve been doing it for years. We’ve lost some of our best people in the Marsh.’
I stared at him. I didn’t dare ask what had happened to him in there, but I was starting to think that the reasons he hadn’t come for me weren’t simple.
‘I’m not surprised you didn’t know,’ he said. ‘ISIS prides itself on its control of information, particularly when it comes to indoctrinating potential recruits.’
‘And now you think I’m one of them – a city kid, a fascist-in-training?’
He didn’t answer.
‘Do you?’ I demanded.
Finally, like it was wrenched out of him, he said, ‘Tasia thinks highly of you. So does Sim. They don’t bestow that judgment lightly.’ He glanced at his watch and moved towards the door.
I said, ‘One more! One more question.’
‘Well?’
‘Why did you change your mind?’
‘About what?’
‘About telling me all this.’
He hesitated in the doorway, then he looked straight at me. ‘You look like your mother.’
And that was that. Question time was over and he was gone.
I shut my eyes and pressed on them hard with the heels of my hands, and I hurt with an old ache that I’d thought I was done with a long time ago.
A while later Levkova stuck her head through the door. ‘Come into the study.’
Commander Vega was there, and my father, and the rest of the CFM leadership who’d been there the day before. Levkova closed the door. ‘We’re coordinating an operation to retrieve the Hendry boy. He’s in Blackbyre. We’ve learned that much. DeFaux was eager to help, you’ll be glad to know. We’re sending a squad…’
At last, I thought. He’s alive. This will work. ‘Can I go with them?’ I asked.
‘Yes. We want someone who knows him.’
‘Then Fyffe can take him home.’ Looks were exchanged. ‘What?’ I said. ‘Why not?’
‘We can’t just let him go,’ said my father. ‘He’s too valuable. We’ll set up a prisoner exchange.’
‘No!’ I looked at Vega but he was staring out the window. ‘He’s eight years old!’ I said.
My father said, ‘He’s valuable however old he is. We have someone over there we need to get back.’
I said to Vega, ‘An exchange. Like with Kasimir? A suicide switch?’
‘We can’t let an opportunity like this go,’ said my father.
‘Yes, you can,’ I said. ‘You can decide that he’s only eight and just let him go home.’
‘Enough,’ he said.
‘Is this what you want?’ I said to Vega.
‘That’s enough,’ said my father. ‘You can go. Now.’
Okay. So I blew that. If I’d shut up and gone along w
ith them and their stupid plan, they’d have taken me to Blackbyre and I might’ve been able to get Sol away from them and back over the river without going through with the switch. As it was, I shot my mouth off and they shut me out of the whole deal.
CHAPTER 38
Next day, a hand-picked squad set off to snatch Sol from under Blackbyre noses. They were ultra-confident of their ability to do this, and that confidence bled through into a staunch belief that they were good enough not only to snatch him but also to make a switch work – never mind what had happened to Vega’s son.
They didn’t let me near the op. I tried the ‘you need someone to ID him’ line and they said, ‘yes, we do,’ and took Fyffe instead. Which left me behind, kicking the doors like a two-year-old.
I sat in Levkova’s kitchen, inscribing the top of the table – an old school table – with a blunt army knife, tracing years of grafitti left by bored kids (Deter ♥ Chara. Chara is easi as π…). I scrubbed out π and scratched 3.14159265358979323… to one hundred places exactly, then started to do it all again in binary. Levkova came and went, and Lanya made flatbread with Max. By midnight Lanya had finished the bread and was so fed up with me she went to bed. Around 2am Levkova came to the table and said, ‘I take it you intend to sit there defacing the furniture all night?’
‘Yes.’
‘You won’t mind if I go to bed then?’
‘No.’
She sat down. ‘Nik.’
‘What?’ I stabbed the table. ‘You have to stop the switch.’
She unstuck the knife, folded it closed, and laid it down between us. ‘It’s a joint decision, not mine alone.’
‘It’s barbaric.’
‘It’s war. And… they started it.’
‘They started it? The suicide switch was their idea? That’s your excuse?’
‘Don’t call it that. Things escalate. It’s hard to stop.’
‘What about Fyffe?’
‘She’ll go too.’
‘Will she be wired up?’
‘I don’t know. Probably. The Hendry boy is worth a fortune. City want him back – they’ll make damn sure he’s safe.’
‘Will they? What if Remnant decide that if they can’t have him, CFM can’t either? It wouldn’t take much to get at the triggers – it only needs the right frequency in the wrong hands. He’d better be worth it, whoever you’re getting back.’
‘She. And yes, she is. Suzannah Montier. She’s our heart and our future. Her father led the uprising in ‘87 and brokered the cease-fire. But on the brink of signing a peace agreement, we were betrayed. We think, by DeFaux. Daniel Montier was assassinated; your father was captured and sent to the Marsh. It all came to nothing.
‘Suzannah took on Daniel’s work, bringing the people together. She is much loved up and down the river. People listen to her, and they will follow her. She’s our hope for a united Southside and a just peace. Our leader-in-waiting. We need her back.’ Levkova stood up. ‘The exchange will go smoothly, you’ll see.’
She was standing there, not leaving, so I said, ‘What?’
‘Your father—’
‘What about him?’
‘You should understand what it means for him – you coming here.’
‘I know what it ought to mean.’
‘He’s afraid. Do you know that?’
‘Of what? Not of me.’
‘Of grief, I think.’
I thought about that. ‘Because I look like her?’
‘Partly. But also, he’s lost all the years of your growing up. That’s so much to lose. And now here you are, and to look at you is to see all that loss.’
‘But that’s not fair.’ Me being a two-year-old again. ‘I’m here now.’
‘You are. And the worst of it is you can’t help him. Except by being you, and waiting. If you have enough patience to do that. He has to work it out.’
‘But what if he never…’
‘Never comes round? I can’t tell you. I don’t know.’ She left.
I picked up the knife again and scratched Sol’s name, and Fyffe’s, into the table.
Sometime later I must have put my head down and gone to sleep because then it was daylight and Lanya was shaking me awake. ‘They’re back! Wake up! They’re back!’
CHAPTER 39
Sol was unhurt, outwardly at least. I’d forgotten how small he was – just a scrap of a kid with straggly fair hair, deep shadows under his eyes, and no meat on his bones at all. He marched up the road, hand in hand with Fyffe, in a well guarded retinue like the prize that he was, and people watched as they went by. But he didn’t care because when he saw me he charged away from them yelling, ‘Nik! Nik!’
He arrived with a thump and burst into tears on my shoulder. I held him tight and when I could speak, I said, ‘Hey! Look at you! Survive anything, yeah?’ When he’d calmed down, I stood him at arm’s length. ‘They didn’t feed you much. You okay?’
He wiped his eyes. ‘I guess.’
‘You’re hungry, right?’
He nodded.
‘Let’s find some food.’ I turned to see Lanya looking at me sideways, and I realized I’d been jabbering away in Anglo. ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘This is Sol. Sol, this is Lanya.’
She bowed and murmured a formal greeting. He sniffed tearily and she smiled at me. ‘I keep forgetting.’
‘What?’
‘That you’re… you know…’
‘The enemy?’
‘Well, yes. You’re not living up to expectations at all.’
Fyffe and the squad arrived. I hugged Fyffe and we grinned at each other. Mission accomplished. Almost. But I couldn’t help seeing us through Southside eyes – happy families, City-style, courtesy of Breken risk and hardship once again. ‘You did great,’ I said. ‘Tell me everything. And let’s find some food for this kid.’ I put Sol on my back where he weighed nothing and clung like a limpet, and we headed off to Levkova’s.
‘Now what?’ said Fyffe when we’d put bread and sausages in front of Sol.
I shrugged. ‘They’re gonna tell you before they tell me.’
‘An exchange, they said.’
‘Yeah. They tell you any more about it?’
She shook her head. ‘Home. At last.’ But she sounded more exhausted than excited.
Sol finished his food and we got him cleaned up and then, because he was sleeping where he stood, I put him to bed in an upstairs room. They’d given it over especially for him and Fyffe as valuable soon-to-be-exchanged prisoners, and there was a guard on the door. Sol gripped my sleeve. ‘Stay!’
I sat down. ‘I’m not going anywhere. You go to sleep.’
‘Are we going home soon?’
‘Yeah. Soon. In a day or so.’
‘Were you kidnapped too?’
‘No. We came over to look for you, Fy and me.’
Long pause. ‘I want to go home.’
‘I know. And you will.’
He drifted off to sleep.
Fyffe came in after a while to sit with him. ‘It’s over,’ she said to me. ‘We did it.’
‘Nearly over,’ I said. ‘This exchange. I have to tell you what it is.’
She was white-faced by the time I’d finished.
‘And you?’ she said. ‘Will you be wired up too?’
‘I don’t know. It’s you and Sol who are valuable. No one over there wants me back the way they want you back.’
‘I don’t understand. I thought they were friendly, Levkova and Vega?’
‘They are. To a point.’
She looked exhausted and she was trying not to cry. ‘I won’t let them put explosives on Sol.’
‘No. Fy, they’re sure they can do this safely, or they wouldn’t be doing it. They want their person back safely too.’
‘Can’t you talk to them? You helped save the Commander’s life. They owe you.’
‘I’ve tried. And I’ll try again. You get some sleep.’
As I was leaving, Jeitan peered through the doorway
and crooked a finger at me.
I followed him back to the room where I’d first met my father. I looked round when I went in, just in case, but there was only Vega. He saw me looking and frowned. Then he cleared his throat. ‘The prisoner exchange—’
‘You can’t wire them up, Fyffe and Sol. You’ll have a hysterical eight-year-old wrapped in explosives on your hands.’
‘They won’t wire him. It’s not my call, but I’m told they’ll only wire the girl.’
‘Oh, well that’s all right then. We can all relax. Can’t you stop it? You have to try!’
‘I can’t.’ He looked out the window and I think he sighed. ‘They’re not the problem. The problem is you. We can’t risk you falling into ISIS hands. You know too much.’
I sank onto the arm of a chair. ‘And so?’
He shook his head. ‘Opinion is divided.’
‘Do I get a say?’ He didn’t answer. I said, ‘Is that a No?’
‘We’re at war. We must ensure our security.’
‘And I’m a security threat?’
He turned round to look at me. ‘You know you are.’
‘I should have stayed a scavenger from Gilgate, shouldn’t I?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t think so.’ He nodded at the door. ‘Is anyone outside?’
I peered out. ‘No.’
He beckoned me over, rubbed a hand over his face and said quietly, ‘The triggers that detonate the switch explosives…’
‘What about them?’ I said.
‘They can be remotely disarmed.’
‘How?’
‘There are jamming devices.’
‘But?’
‘They’re locked away.’
‘Can you get one?’
‘I can. But, there’s a problem. Their range is poor – to be effective, they’d have to be used on the bridge.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yes. The triggermen get searched for jammers and the like, but I think I can get you on the bridge as a calming influence on the boy. And I think I can manage to forget to search you. Do you know how to operate a jammer?’
‘Yeah. The fascist-in-training, remember?’ He ignored that, so I said, ‘Do you know what the frequency range will be?’