by P. S. Lurie
The boy and I stare at one another in a stand-off whilst we figure out what we should do. At once, both of us sprint out of the bedrooms.
A flashback, but a happy one for once, of Henry and me racing against one another during the Surge practices, checking everything was charging around our houses. He would always win until the night of the great cull. I need to win one more time.
I’m down the stairs with no time to check out where Ronan is and can only glance at Leda’s closed door and hope that she’s alright for now. I carry on across the hallway, back room and through the sliding doors into the garden. The low visibility doesn’t help but I spot the thing Melissa threw in the middle of the garden. I’m almost there when the boy jumps the fence and he’s face to face with me.
I pick up the device and hold it behind my back as he points his gun at me. “Don’t,” I say, as I wedge it into the top of my pants and thrust my hands in the air.
“Drop it.”
“Get out of my garden.”
“I will shoot you.”
“I didn’t break any rules. I’m sure President Callister would like to know you’re the one who killed me.”
The soldier looks uncomfortable, working out what he should do, and for once President Callister’s fixation on me works for my benefit. He withdraws the weapon – I consider fighting him for it but I don’t want to push my luck – and retreats back over the fence. I don’t have a chance to admonish him for killing Melissa.
Once he has left me alone I look at what my friend gave up her life for. It’s a communication device, much more advanced than the walkie-talkie that is built into the sleeve of the soldiers’ uniforms. “Ruskin? Jack? Selene?” There’s no reply.
Before I can figure out what Melissa wanted me to do with it I hear a tapping from above. Ronan stands in my window holding Leda and beckoning for me to join them.
I hide the device in a drawer in the kitchen and then gingerly head upstairs, presuming that Ronan has decided it’s time for me to align myself with or against him. He has already placed Leda on a chair in the corner for her to watch on; once more an umpire in an unwanted contest of testing my loyalty, to my friends or to my brother.
“Where were you?” I ask.
“Their room. I don’t remember. Did grandma and grandpa want you to live too?” He’s trying to work through that night, putting pieces together as he makes sense of who died and whether they gave up on him.
“It wasn’t like that.”
“What was it like?”
“You really want to know? Grandpa brought you a present. A yo-yo.” I see recognition flicker through his eyes, remembering the gift, confused as it doesn’t fit with the narrative of a family that disowned him long before the great cull. “Don’t do this Ronan. We can fight them together.”
“You let them take me,” he says, convincing himself that I can’t be right.
“That’s what they told you but it’s not true. I went with you.”
“No. At the arena. The night we arrived. You kept Leda and didn’t save me.”
“What could I do? They split us up. They would have killed us if we’d resisted. I didn’t know what they were going to do to you.”
Ronan firms up. “They saved me. I’ve had a great life since then.” He’s confusing himself, throwing out rehearsed lines that shows how messed up his mind is.
“They made you kill. They’re destroying you.”
“For Utopia. I’m part of the new world. Everything will be perfect.”
“Perfect? This isn’t perfect. You can’t force people into peace. Please, just listen to me.”
He ponders on it and I begin to suspect that I am convincing him, breaking him free from whatever delusions they have enforced on him but then something in his face snaps. His conviction in the Upperlands grows stronger, remembering something they must have told him but he doesn’t share it and instead charges at me with a deadly drive.
7 P.M. – 8 P.M.
Theia
Ronan has me in a headlock and drags me to the ground. I do everything I can to struggle against him and break free without retaliating but he’s trying to kill me and if I don’t fight back then I’m dead.
“Stop,” I whisper, choking to death; for all the different ways I’ve been in danger over my life I never thought it would be at the hands of my younger brother with our baby sister watching on.
I manage to break free but he’s in the way of the door so I back up towards the bed. He gets to his feet, not out of breath at all because he’s trained for a situation like this. Not just physically but mentally.
I clear some distance between us and I look around for a weapon to wave as a deterrent, anything to stop him from getting to me.
“I’ll kill them all after I kill you.”
“Please Ronan, listen to me. You’ve been lied to.”
“I was abandoned. They rescued me.”
“None of this needed to happen. There was no flood. They killed our family. They killed everyone.”
He circles around me, both hands curled into fists. “The Middlelanders were weak.”
“President Callister killed her own people on the Utopia. Is that better?”
“Ronan,” Leda says, scared because she doesn’t understand what’s happening.
“Not now.”
“I’d never do anything to hurt you,” I say. “I did everything for you.”
I see the recollection in his eyes. Can I break the spell or is it too strong?
“President Callister...”
“Is a murderer,” I interrupt. “You can’t believe anything she says.”
“We can both be saved. Kill them with me and we’ll have everything we’ve ever wanted.”
“No,” I say, defiantly. “Not like that.”
Ronan slams into me and we fly onto the mattress. He punches me in the face and I swipe his other hand away so that he loses his balance and falls over but he’s swift and picks up the pillow which he then pushes towards my face. “Leda doesn’t need to see you die,” I hear, as the breath drains away from me.
I fall limp, no longer able to fight him off me and think of the last time I was in here with him, tucking him into bed, hoping that he could sleep through the cull and mistakenly shielding him from a world that he should have been privy to. It’s impossible to gasp for air and I remember the stories I used to tell him to send him to sleep. Fantastical adventures about pirates and mermaids, always revolving around the ocean.
I can feel the pillow slack and I have one final push in me to break free, gasp for air and just as he is about to smother me I stop him in his tracks. “You’re the captain.”
He falters, finding something familiar in those words and I garble more words at him. “I used to tuck you in but we were pirates. This is a pirate ship.”
“Theia?” I hear the emotion in his throat as his voice croaks.
“You remember, don’t you? Ro, it’s me.”
“Ro?” He remembers my nickname for him. “She said you gave up on me.”
“Never.”
Ronan looks at me and then around the room, as if he’s just waking up to the truth that this was his rightful home after all and I wasn’t the one to drag him away from it. I let him take on board the memory, mistakenly, because he throws himself into my body once more... but this time he nestles his head into my neck. My brother once more.
I put my arms around him and squeeze tight.
Ruskin
All we can hear is fighting from behind the door to the bathroom. It’s locked and throwing my body into it doesn’t help.
“Stand back,” Jack says, as he swings the machete into the wood. It lodges into the panelling and isn’t easily retrieved. Jack wiggles the handle and the blade frees itself. Selene screams from inside and I know we’re running out of time before Nathaniel kills her.
Jack sweeps again and I watch as the door budges against its hinges but it’s still immovable.
“Keep trying.”
He pants and swings three more times but to no avail. A fourth and he connects with the handle which seems to dislodge the lock.
It may be too late because everything goes silent from behind the door and after Jack forces out the machete I kick the centre of the panelling and it smashes apart. The force snaps the lock out of place and the door falls open, revealing a grim scene.
Selene
I’m broken and almost destroyed, with Nathaniel on top having slammed me into the side of the bath, hearing something in my back shatter and thinking it’s one more injury to add to my hip. It won’t matter soon because I won’t feel anything in a few minutes at most. Then Nathaniel stops as he works out that I’m not able to fight him anymore and leans into me.
“You are so beautiful when you’re beaten up.”
He lowers his head to mine and, against my silent pleads, kisses me hard, biting my lower lip and connecting us in a way that he hasn’t since I left him for dead. I taste his breath on mine, remembering how I lusted after him in the Upperlands, buying into the belief he was mine and I was his. Now his taste is nothing but revolting.
“What did happen to that wedding dress?”
“I burned it.” It’s a memory I haven’t shared with anyone and I know he won’t be entertained by it but a snapshot of the day I destroyed the dress at the sea floods my minds. A few months after rejoining the Middlelanders and in the midst of my rehab I took myself on the hours-long journey to the ocean through the wasted Lowerlands and other parts of the world I’d never known. Melissa wanted to accompany me but I told her to tend to other people’s ailments.
My whole body was aching by the time I made it to the shore, around the midday sun that felt warmer farther south, ignoring the fact that I would have to cover the same ground on my return. During the great cull I sprinted from the sea but this time around it was a challenge to walk at even a snail’s pace.
I had only one thing with me, the tattered bridal gown that I had salvaged from the day I wore it. The dress survived through a war but I felt no sympathy for it, blood-stained before the Utopia exploded and then torn almost into two and completely dyed red by the time Melissa, Ruskin and Jack had rushed me to the hospital. They cut it off me so the middle portion was hanging by a thread but still it was just about intact.
I hear a banging from outside the bathroom but my mind is still transfixed on that dress, a reminder of the horrors I had been through, that I had survived through, of a fake life forced on me that I had veered away from.
Another hammering, almost breaking me from my vision.
I stood in the water watching the fabric floating farther out, the tide doing nothing to cleanse the red stains before I wrung the dress out and let it dry. That was the only day I felt any freedom because Nathaniel’s voice called to me every day before that and each one leading up to the present. As the sun started to descend, I burned the dress, standing close to the water’s edge but not submerging myself farther than my feet, knowing that freedom was something I still hadn’t earned.
Until now.
I reach my hand out and grab the metal pole that is just within arm’s reach. Nathaniel watches as I feebly pick it up and mockingly holds his hand in front of his face, knowing full well that I won’t have any strength behind the attack.
It’s not what I intend to do and the surprise catches him off guard. Instead, I thrust the pole upwards towards the mirror above the sink. It connects and a shower of glass rains down over us. I close my eyes as shards fall on my face but my body is so numb that I don’t know if any have penetrated my skin. I wriggle free in the surprise manoeuvre as Nathaniel is stunned and turns his head away to avoid the glass, which gives me the opportunity to pick up a piece and swipe his neck with it.
He catches my gaze, horrified that I have somehow betrayed him, as if he believed I couldn’t leave his side. “We should have died together,” he manages to gurgle but that’s all he can say as blood rushes from below his chin and he drops to the ground, with no fanfare.
Just death, finally.
The bathroom door bursts open and I lift my head up to see Ruskin and Jack crash through. This time, despite my injuries, I don’t see a flood all around me but I do feel free.
Theia
I’m in Selene’s garden, heading to help her when my three friends make their way out of Henry’s house and join me in the now dark night. I’m too late but it doesn’t seem to matter from what I can figure out. Selene walks unaided but is a mess; I imagine the others have offered to help her but she refused. She’s covered in blood but it doesn’t seem to be hers. Stubborn as ever and, for the first time, I am glad that death has come to Henry’s house.
“Ronan?” she asks.
“He’s... my brother again.”
“How did you manage that?” Jack asks.
“He remembered the past. Memories of growing up broke whatever hypnosis the Upperlands placed on him.”
“Do you think just going back to their houses might help them remember?” Jack asks.
“Worth trying. A chance to turn President Callister’s army against her and to stop any farther battles with children from our community.”
“There are soldiers all around us but there must be hundreds more even if we could persuade the nearest ones,” Selene says.
“I have some good and bad news,” I say.
“The bad news,” says Jack.
“Melissa died.”
Selene shakes her head then lowers it.
“The good news?” Ruskin asks.
“Follow me,” I say, knowing what we have to do within the next thirty minutes if we don’t want the army killing us all first.
Jack
We’re inside Theia’s kitchen when Ronan comes down. “Hi,” he says, abashedly.
I grab Ruskin’s hand to stop him from lurching for the boy but something feels different; Ruskin’s pulse is down, no longer angry. “It’s fine,” my boyfriend says to me.
“I’m sorry about before. I wish I could say it wasn’t my fault.”
“It wasn’t,” Selene says. “They did the same to me.”
“Me too,” Theia says.
Ronan doesn’t seem convinced; it’s hard enough for any of us to justify all the pain we’ve caused others, even when we’ve been forced into it in self defence and I can’t begin to imagine the ongoing damage it will do to a boy not yet in double digits of age.
“Leda’s asleep.”
Theia smiles. “We have a lot to do before I can say she’s safe.” She pulls something out of a drawer, hidden behind a few utensils that for an instant resemble weapons but I know that there’s no fight left for us; either we convince an army to abort their mission or we’re dead without a chance. “Melissa exchanged her life for it.”
Whether a consequence of the adrenaline leaving her body or finally being free of Nathaniel or Melissa’s death, and likely a combination of all of them, Selene does the rare thing and breaks down.
Theia consoles her. “Let’s make sure she didn’t die in vain.”
Selene
Melissa was my closest friend, the person who meant the most to me since Henry died and I am reignited with a new desire to end the Upperlanders’ reign over us. From Theia’s explanation, she braved entering her own house, somewhere she swore she’d never return, to give us the communication device.
A sudden thought. “She could still be alive.”
Theia shakes her head. “It’s unlikely.”
“I could...”
Jack stops me. “It’s not safe. Not until we try this. Then you can go.”
“Ok, so what do we do?”
“Give it to me,” Ronan says to his sister and he deftly turns it on. From what I remember about the uniform the night I wore it, there were several gadgets attached but not one of these. Nathaniel had a bullet-proof version so I assume they’ve continued to be improved over time.
Ronan enters some numbers but there’s only static.
&nbs
p; “What are you doing?” Ruskin asks.
“Dialling Cal. He’s the only number I know now that Francine died.”
“If he’s dead too?” Jack asks.
“A little patience.” Ronan pushes some buttons.
After a pause the noise filters to silence and then a voice comes through but it’s not Cal. A woman’s voice. “Hello?”
“Maddie?” Theia asks.
“You’re alive! Who’s there with you?”
“Ruskin, Jack, Selene and Ronan. Leda too.”
“Wow. So many of you aren’t dead.”
“Hey Ronan,” Cal says.
“Hi.”
“Where’s Francine? I’ve been calling both of you.”
“She died. I’m sorry.”
A long pause, until Maddie continues. “We heard the announcement. That’s fucked up.”
“We’re not going to kill one another. We have less than thirty minutes before we’re dead though. Where are you?”
“We made it into the fortress but we’re avoiding being detected for now. There aren’t many guards. I guess they’re all down in the Middlelands watching you or ready to kill everyone at the sea.”
“There’s a central channel,” I say. “Can you find the mainframe?”
“If only Zeke was there he’d know,” Theia says, and I know she’s mentioned his name but I don’t know the relevance. “There must be a central engineering point. Cal, any chance they taught you communications?”
“Some.”
“The control panel in the hub,” Ronan interrupts. “Get there and you might be able to wire this into every device.”
“We’re close,” Cal says. “What do you want me to say?”
“Nothing,” Theia replies. “I’ll do that part if you can set it up to this number. If not, then tell all the guards to return to their homes. I don’t think they’ll listen to you but I have a feeling that I can convince them.”
“We’re going to go silent,” Cal says. “If it’s possible, we’ll be in touch. Give us ten minutes.”