by T. C. Edge
“Evolution!” I snicker. “You - the Savants - are not a product of evolution. You were created. The only natural people are over in Outer Haven. They’re the very people you want to destroy and enslave.”
“On the contrary,” surges Cromwell’s voice, “evolution shows its hand in many forms. Evolution gave rise to an anomaly in the natural world: the Homo sapien. Humans are a miss-step, Brie, and human consciousness and the development of complex emotions are nothing but a tool for evil. However, you are right, humans did give rise to us. And yet, I consider that to be evolution too, a speeding of the process that has led us here, to this place, and this time. Evolution created a creature with the ability to direct its own future, to change its own fate. It gave humans the tools to advance their own cause. And that cause was the creation of us, a superior being. I consider that as part of the evolutionary process.”
“But it’s not natural!” I shout. “None of this is natural…killing innocent people, cutting out all emotion! How can you say complex emotions are a tool for evil?! They give us love, and joy, and laughter, and everything else you don’t understand…”
“And what of hate, and jealousy, and lust, and greed? What about envy, and pride, and wrath? Every evil in human history has been committed on the back of emotion, Brie. I see a more prosperous, safe world without it. And that’s what I mean to achieve.”
I stare at him, his words settling. My head aches as I think of some response, some riposte. But somehow, I can’t deny it, can’t deny his assertion.
With my voice calming now, a hum escapes me.
“But that’s what being human is, Director Cromwell,” I whisper. “To be human is to have emotion. All the evil things you mention are the price we pay. But there’s so much good too that you don’t understand.”
“I know,” he says, conceding. “I don’t truly understand love, or see its merits. That wasn’t how I was made, Brie,” he says. “We have our roles here, each of us have our functions. Perhaps this is yours, to question and fight against my doctrines and the policies of my people. That is the part you play. But my part is different. My part is to repopulate this world with my people, and do so without all the terrible sins of the past. And, if people need to die, or be reconditioned to suit that purpose, then I’m afraid that is how it must be done.”
“And you think that’s OK?” I ask him. “You think that causing panic, and war, and letting people die in the tens of thousands is right?”
He moves towards the wall, and then turns to me again.
“This isn’t about right or wrong. This is about function. My function is to see our species proliferate. I do so by taking the most logical path. If that path involves genocide, as you put it, then so be it. The meaning of life, Brie, is to expand, to dominate. And that is what we will do.”
He lifts his right hand and places it on the wall, and from his lips a new order comes.
“Full transparency,” he says.
The wall fades, and immediately the natural light of the world begins to spill into the room, bringing a warming flow along with it. The sun is only just rising, casting the lands in the beautiful, warm colours of dawn.
It’s a sight that Cromwell can’t appreciate like I can. A sight from the top of the High Tower, the view far more staggering than what I enjoyed in my own apartment on level 51. And looking out, he speaks once more.
“This world is going to be ours again, Brie,” he says. “One of peace and prosperity. One of law and order. Our species have been a blight on this planet for far too long. But no longer. We will see it restored, and renewed.”
His eyes flow to the northern quarter, visible immediately ahead. And looking down upon it, he turns to me.
“You have knowledge that will help us achieve our goals. That is why you are here, Brie. Now sit tight, and try to relax. Someone will be here to see you very shortly.”
He turns back to me, and drifts forward, opening up the card and revealing the image of my parents once more. He reaches out and lays it down on my lap.
“You’re strong, Brie,” he says, “and gifted too. Whoever your parents were, I’m sure they would have been proud of what you’ve achieved.”
I frown at him, his manner so odd. Why say such things?
“I’ve achieved nothing,” I say. “If I had, you’d be dead.”
“Yes, but I don’t blame you for that. For those who set you on this path, it was the reasonable, logical thing to do. Perhaps, in the end, your fate was to help us destroy those who would oppose us. And soon, maybe you’ll even begin to see the merits of what we’re trying to do…”
“I’ll never agree with you,” I growl. “Never.”
His lips part in a thin smile, and his eyes catch the light of the sun, giving them a strange ethereal glow.
And as he moves towards the door, he does so with some parting words.
“Oh…I think you just might.”
3
Cromwell’s departure leaves a fresh silence in the room. The boiling in my blood works to send a pulse of adrenaline through me, dousing to some extent the ache in my head.
I shut my eyes once again and picture my brother’s face, and attempt to project some words to him once more.
Zander, can you hear me? Zander?
There’s no link, my powers inhibited by the drugs. I know immediately that I have no way of contacting him. And I know, too, that I’ll probably never see or speak to him again.
Opening my eyes, I see my parents once more. The picture has, for so long, given me strength, led to so many questions about who they were and what they did. Now, a lot of that mystery has been unravelled, but some still remains that I’ll probably never discover.
But right now, it isn’t strength that they give me. It’s grief that their faces send around my body, the same grief that you can see hidden behind their eyes. Grief for them that they know they’re going to have to give me up. That they’ll need to spend their lives in secret, running and hiding from the truth.
A secret that, in the end, they couldn’t conceal.
A truth that they couldn’t outrun.
My grief is different. It’s a grief that I’ll never know who they really were. Beyond knowledge of my father’s name and occupation, and what details I’ve deduced of their fate, I know so little. And I’ll never know more.
I don’t want them on my lap, looking up at me like that. I don’t want the reminder of them in my head, a reminder of what they went through, what I’m about to go through.
If I believed in some afterlife, perhaps I’d feel some solace right now. I’d have the comfort of knowing that, soon enough, I’ll meet them for the first time on another plane of existence.
But I believe in no such thing. I am merely my physical existence here and nothing else. When I die, my body will be burned and turned to ash, leaving nothing of me behind. No soul. No ghostly spirit to haunt those I care about, or those who have wronged me.
So looking at them, all I’m reminded of is my failure. My failure to find out the truth about them. My failure to kill the man who has me chained up in this room. My failure to save all those outside, the teeming masses down below who don’t know what’s coming.
I turn my eyes from my parents now and look to the view, to the streets below. I try to engage my Hawk abilities, to send my vision forward and examine it all in greater clarity and depth. But I can’t do that either.
Now, here in this lofty cell, I’m just a normal girl once more, shorn of her powers.
I wish they’d never manifested in the first place.
I wish I’d never been set on this path.
I have nothing to do but stew on it all. Await the person who’ll enter to explore my memories, to discover the information that might just doom us all.
Now, I’m beginning to understand why I was kept out of the loop, why Lady Orlando and Zander saw fit to feed me only the most essential information to use for my mission. They did it, not to protect me, but to protec
t themselves, protect their cause.
If I knew it all, then it would all be excavated from my mind. If I knew of the many secret passages into the underlands in the north, then the inevitable attack would come from all angles. If I knew just what the grand plan was, beyond my role within it, then Cromwell would gather up all the cards for himself.
But I don’t know. I wasn’t told. And now I know just why.
It was the smart move, and yet I continued to question it. Adryan found himself in the same boat for the same reason, kept in the dark about so many things that could, should we fail, be used by the enemy.
In some ways, it gives me comfort that they had the forethought to behave as such. Perhaps they really will have a plan B brewing, and several others after that to be implemented in this very situation. I can only imagine that Lady Orlando made sure of such a thing.
I suppose I was never more than just a part of the plan, of the bigger picture. And while I’ve failed, I can only hope that it doesn’t mean the end for all. To put all of that on my narrow shoulders would have been foolhardy to say the least.
I dearly hope the Nameless are smarter than that.
I wonder too, as I sit there gazing outside at the city, about Mrs Carmichael and Tess, and Abby and Nate, and all the rest of the residents of the academy. I wonder how they’re coping right now as the city gets paralysed by fear and panic. I wonder how long their own clean water stores will last before they find themselves in a scrap for survival.
I have faith in my guardian to see them safe. To look after them all at this time of crisis and ensure that they’re well catered to. The markets, no doubt, will be running a busy trade as all remaining water stocks are snapped up. And after they run dry, the black market will be where the people will turn.
Mrs Carmichael knows the tricks of the trade. She knows how to get things that other people can’t. She has contacts and friends all over the city who she can call upon to help, to fulfil favours of the past that she’s long held over them.
And she’s smart too, and capable of making what money she has stretch far. For decades she’s learned to budget, to feed and water dozens of children and give them sanctuary.
Truly, there’s no one better qualified in this city to make sure that the orphans of Carmichael’s Academy are guided through this difficult time.
In any case, all her efforts might just be for nothing. Cromwell made it very clear how he looks upon the world. How he considers regular humans, the Unenhanced, to be the inferior species. How evolution has sped us to the point where him and his army of emotionless Savants can spread their bloodlines and prosper.
I wonder, in this new world of his, whether the rest of the Enhanced have their place too. Most likely, they’ll be used for their abilities, just as they have been for so many years, conditioned to work under the leadership of the Savants and never properly question their place.
And the Unenhanced will too, willingly giving themselves over for reconditioning to make sure they’re fully compliant. They’ll break their backs working for the ‘superior race’, and will be phased out of existence when their use has all dried up.
I know that Cromwell will never see the merits of the Outer Haveners, beyond their value as a workforce to aid in the redevelopment of our world. He’ll never consider how emotion can be a tool for good as well as evil, how the very nature of mankind is to tow that line and embrace both the good and the bad.
All he sees are the sins of the past, born from the weakness he considers emotion and feeling to be. And perhaps, in a way, he’s right. Right that all our problems stem from our nature, and that a more ordered world can be developed through its elimination.
But to eliminate emotion is to eliminate the essence of what it means to be human. It will be a cold world without joy or expression or art or culture. Nothing but a giant colony of drones performing their duties and functions.
To him, the meaning of life is merely to survive and thrive. To me, it’s to live, and love, and find happiness in experience and interaction and the development of bonds and relationships.
It’s something that the two sides will never agree on, the Nameless and the Consortium fighting for the future of this world, for its very soul.
And right now, it’s Cromwell who’s leading that charge. The momentum has swung in his favour.
In my moments of clarity, I feel so empty with such thoughts. Knowing that I won’t be able to continue the fight, battle for what I believe in, save those I love.
I’ll never be able to share a joke with Tess again, or share a whiskey with Mrs Carmichael. I’ll never be able to spend more time with my brother, learn more about my twin. I’ll never be able to wrap my arms around Drum’s giant trunk, and giggle at his clumsiness.
I’ll never be able to kiss Adryan again, and feel that swell of bliss and longing in my heart.
I can’t help but think of what I’ll miss out on. And I can’t help but cry as the memories come, weakening me in my solitude. The tears slip from my eyes and down my cheeks as I gaze through the growing blur upon the city. The salty brine gathers in the corners of my downturned mouth, pooling and falling further until they drip down onto the laminated surface of the picture of my parents.
And as they drip and splash, a fresh assault of pain swamps me as I remember what Tess did. As I recall how she got the picture restored for me, and gave it to me as a gift when I left the academy little more than a week ago.
The pain is excruciating, and I wish I had my powers so that I could set a veil over my memories, hide them somewhere deeper in my consciousness so they weren’t so raw.
But I can’t. Not here. Here I can only think of the joy in my life, joy that now turns to ash in my mouth as I realise that I’ll never taste it again.
And sitting there in such agony, I consider again Cromwell’s assertions about emotion, and wish for a moment that I was as cold as him. That I could just sit here and await my fate without this pain and heartache.
And therein lies the foundation of their plot. They understand emotion all too well, even though they can’t feel it. They know that the people across Outer Haven will be feeling just as I am here. They know that they’ll do anything to have their pain eased, their fear eliminated, their terrible memories of loss muted.
People will flock to them in their tens of thousands, and come out the other side as little more than slaves to their rule. Slaves who will refuse to lift a finger in their own defence. Slaves who will, when the time comes, do whatever they’re ordered to do without any manner of question or disagreement.
It’s something that, right now, I understand. If someone could flick a switch, and take this pain away, I might just let it happen.
And that exact thought, that emotion, is exactly what will cause our downfall.
The thought causes a change. I grit my teeth once more, and squeeze the final tears from my eyes, sniffing my last.
I refuse to show such weakness here.
And just as I do, I hear more tapping beyond the door. And then, once again, it opens up, and a new form appears on the threshold. The man who will extract the information from my head. A man I know well.
The new Commander of the City Guard stands before me with a smile.
“Good morning, Brie,” says Commander Burns. “We do meet in the strangest of places…”
4
I snap myself straight out of my stupor as Burns steps into the room and shuts the door, dressed now in pure white to signify his new position.
On his chest, I see the badge of Haven, the three circles to denote the three major ranks of people in this city. Before, when he was merely Deputy, the innermost circle was coloured white to show him as a Savant, a member of the Court.
Now, within the inner circle, a little ‘C’ is written, telling of his membership of the Consortium. Telling of his social upgrade.
I sniff as he enters, sucking away my grief. If my wrists were free, I’d wipe my cheeks clean of the glistening tea
rs that soak them. As it is, I’ll just have to let them air dry.
Burns is quick to notice. That smile of his - a decent impression of a real expression, but still clearly false - fades. A little frown takes its place.
“Oh dear, Brie. You look upset.”
I glare at him, blinking away the final tears.
“I should have known it would be you,” I growl.
He wanders in, reaching for his pocket, and pulls out a handkerchief. He immediately sets it to my face, wiping away the brine. I lean back and recoil, turning my head from him.
“Leave me alone,” I snap.
His hand withdraws. He takes a step back to get a better look at me.
“You should be thankful it’s me,” he says coolly. “Were it not for your quick thinking a couple of days ago, it might have been Romelia Woolf instead. I’m sure you’ll find me more agreeable.”
I shake my head.
“I don’t care who does it. The result will be the same.”
“Perhaps,” he says quietly. “Perhaps not…”
He drifts to the clear wall to my right, and looks out upon the city. His eyes seem to stick to the northern quarter, working their way deeper towards the far boundary walls before returning to me as he swivels around on his heels.
He steps towards me and looks intently into my eyes.
“A Hawk, a Dasher, a Mind-Manipulator,” he says. “You are truly gifted, Brie.”
Then his eyes drop to my lap and loop upon my parents’ picture, several small teardrops still gathered on its laminated surface.
He reaches down.
“Do you mind?” he asks me.
I shake my head, and he lifts the picture up and looks upon it closely, before gently placing it back on my lap.
The way he does so makes me wonder what he knows. He is, after all, the new Commander of the City Guard, and has been Deputy for many years. Perhaps he knows my father.
So I ask, with no hope or expectation.