Way Down Dark

by J. P. Smythe

  I manage to turn my head enough to look around. We’re not where we landed anymore. We’re inside a building, all of us, heads and bodies and feet bound, attached to a wall. People—guards, whatever they are—patrol the room, coming up to us, pulling on the straps to check that they’re secure. I play dead. No sense letting them know I’ve come around.

  “What did they do?” asks one as they tighten straps.

  “They’re from the Australia.”

  “Can’t be.”

  “Like cockroaches.”

  “They should all be dead by now.”

  “Like I say, they’re roaches. Somebody must have been watching them, just not telling the rest of us.”

  “Jesus. So they’ve been up there this whole time?”

  “Yeah. No wonder they’re monsters.” Their voices are stilted, not quite pronouncing the words in ways that I understand easily. They come to me and check my straps, tightening them, step close enough that I can feel their breath on my skin, and then walk on. I flex my hands once they’re gone. They don’t see.

  I look for Mae, but she’s not here. There are no children here. I flex my hands again. My strength is returning, and it feels good. I flex because I can. Why do we do anything? I know now: because we can.

  A guard stands at the front and shouts to the others. “Ready for transport?” They shout their replies, and he looks down the rows of us all. “You lucky lot,” he says. He laughs. “You’re headed for the Firmament.” And then he turns and leaves. I watch him heading down a ramp, through a door, back into the city. I can see that it’s raining out there, real rain.

  I flex my hands, opening and closing them. I am trying to move my arm at the wrist, the elbow. I can feel it coming. I just need to work it more. I thought that I was saving everyone, but I didn’t. So now I have a second chance. I tell myself that, and I feel the blood running through my body—strong, healthy blood—and I feel my ankles start to twinge. It’s like pins and needles: when you have been sitting on your leg and then you stand and it falls apart, and you can’t walk for a few minutes, and then it comes back. That is how this feels.

  I can move my neck, so I do. I move my hips. I crick my back. I don’t know how many of my muscles work, and I don’t have time to find out. I know that I have only one chance to escape.

  I cough. I cough, and I make out that I’m choking, that the bracer on my neck is too tight. I’m dying, I pretend. I’ve heard dying sounds enough to do a pretty good impression of them, and the guards who checked me have run over, and they’re loosening the straps to make sure that I’m all right. They’re not inhuman.

  While one unties the bindings around my wrists, the other removes the collar on my neck. This is my chance. I open my mouth, snap my head down, and bite down as hard as I can on the guard’s hand. He takes a second to work out what’s going on and then screams, falls backward. I can taste his blood.

  My hands are free. I lash out with them, getting the other guard in the face, and then they’re both on the floor, panicking. I reach down and yank the bindings on my ankles free.

  “Lock her down!” the guard I punched shouts, so I kick him in the face as I climb off the table. That shuts him up. I step over to the other guard, who’s cradling his hand, sobbing beneath his helmet.

  “Where are the children?” I ask. My mouth hurts to speak, my throat burning. “Where did they go?” He doesn’t answer and looks away from me. I slam my forearm into his throat, and he gurgles. I haven’t done any real damage; I’ve hurt him just enough. “Where?” I ask again.

  “The Services!” he says. “The bloody Services took them!”

  He’s panicking. I don’t know if this is true or what the Services are, but I’ll find out. I stand up, and he tries to scream, so I drive my knee down and into the side of his head, knocking him out.

  An alarm sounds. The exit starts to close, the ramp pulling upward. The lights dim. There are more guards coming; I can see them in the distance, rushing toward the transport. I don’t have any weapons—they’ve taken everything—but my body is feeling better. Every moment I’m moving, it feels better.

  I run to the ramp, reaching the door the first guard passed through just before it closes, and I drop and roll through the space, tumbling out onto the ground below. Behind me, the door slams shut. No changing my mind now.

  I face the guards who have come toward me, weapons out. They slow down, taking stances that I recognize, that show they’re gearing up for a fight. One of them fires something into the sky, a glowing red light that arcs up into the clouds. In the distance, an alarm sounds, a shrill scream of a noise. These guards walk toward me, all barking orders, telling me to come quietly, to lie down, to put my hands on my head, to give up.

  But Mae is still alive. I promised her that I would keep her safe, and I haven’t broken a promise yet.

  “Surrender!” I hear one of the guards say as he steps forward, his striker extending into that whip, ready to attack me. Ready to take me down.

  “No,” I say.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My agent, Sam Copeland, and all at RCW; my amazing and insightful and just thoroughly brilliant editor, Anne Perry, along with the similarly skilled wider team at Hodder; the team at Quercus US, who have been superb; my wonderful friends who read this and told me where it was very likely broken and where maybe it possibly wasn’t; everybody who has worked so hard on getting my books into the hands of readers—booksellers and reviewers and bloggers alike; and then the readers themselves, without whom I am basically nothing.