Fuck.
“Calvin,” I whispered, as the tunnels narrowed and the ceiling closed in.
“Yes, Trent,” he said just as quietly, as if his voice could cary farther than my ear.
“Let Carstairs know we’re about to be FUBARed.”
“I’ll advise him, Trent,” the computer said. I had the feeling he’d isolated our conversation. Better to land me in it later with Lena? Without a doubt. But I couldn’t complain. We were heading towards a whole lot of trouble, and I never went into a fucked up situation without a plan.
And the plan? Shoot first, ask questions later, and hope like hell that Carstairs’ Merrikan soldiers could dig us out after the fact.
Ten
What Have You Done?
Lena
This was not good. Even I could see that. And if I could, then Trent sure as hell could, too. Anticipation and anxiety rolled off him in waves. His trigger finger twitching. If I didn’t calm him down, our one chance at reaching these people would be lost to us forever.
But the more wound up he got, the more I did too. I’d told him I trusted the children. It wasn’t entirely the truth. I trusted that this was our only chance at making peace with the Lunnoners. I trusted in our ability to win them over, given that chance. But I did not trust them completely.
Despite that lack of trust, though, I ached for them. So small. So alone. So fragile. And facing up to odds that made my heart weep.
Nirbhay led the way, continually looking over his shoulder at me, as if I might evaporate in the stifling heat down here. Every now and then he’d reached out for my hand. Squeeze my fingers, as though he could see I needed encouragement. Shouldn’t it have been the other way around? He couldn’t have been older than ten.
But as he led us through the dark of The Underground it was the child who consoled the adult.
“Movement at the entrance to your tunnel,” Calvin advised over the earpieces. Trent swore softly. Alan snarled something indecipherable, and Cardinal Beck started issuing orders to his men making up the rearguard.
There was no way we were going to make it to wherever it was the children were leading us. Not now. The thought was sobering. And regretful. How much danger were we bringing to their world? To ours?
“Nirbhay,” I whispered, gaining our guide’s attention. “We’re being followed.”
He nodded his head, but whether he understood what I’d said, or simply wanted to make me feel better by agreeing, I couldn’t say.
The tunnel branched off suddenly. The fork appearing out of nowhere in the gloom. Both avenues looked dark and foreboding. Nirhbay chattered in that pidgin Anglisc to a couple of his friends, and then several split off in one direction, while Nirbhay reached out and tugged my hand in the other.
“Lena,” Trent growled in warning.
“I know, I know,” I mumbled, but what else could I say? I had no idea where we were going, just that we were being followed. If we abandoned Nirbhay and his compatriots now, we’d be blind down here. Worse off than we currently were.
But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to be prepared.
“How many, Calvin?” I whispered into the heavy silence.
“I estimate twenty,” my Shiloh replied. “But that is an estimation. There are simply too many shadows aboveground for me to be certain I didn’t miss any.”
“So, minimum twenty,” Beck muttered.
“Can you at least confirm if they were u-Pol or armed?” Trent demanded.
“Identification was impossible, but none have remained aboveground,” Calvin supplied. “And yes, Trent,” he added. “They were definitely armed.”
“Lasers?”
“It appeared so.”
Trent was silent a moment and then with a sigh he said, “And Carstairs?”
“A contingency of soldiers is on the move from the base as we speak.”
I twisted around to look over my shoulder at Trent, my eyes full of accusation. His met mine, head on, challenge undertaken. Not an ounce of guilt or shame in the blue staring back.
“What did you expect, baby?” he murmured, only loud enough for me to hear. “There is no way I would let you walk alone into a trap. No way.”
I couldn’t argue with him. I didn’t want to anymore. He was right. This was probably a trap. But that didn’t mean I was giving up all hope.
“Translate for me, Calvin,” I announced.
“When you’re ready,” the computer replied.
I tapped Nirbhay on the shoulder, drawing his attention. He looked up at me expectantly as he reached out to grasp my hand, tugging me forward at the same time as he waited for me to speak. The fact that he wasn’t mucking around scared me. The fact that he’d split his team worried me even more. Just what was he up to down here?
I pushed it all aside and said, “Are they u-Pol?” Calvin translated, his voice coming out of the speakers in my wristwatch.
Nirbhay glanced down at the device, his footsteps halting momentarily. Wide eyed, his free hand reached out, then he thought better of it, and started tugging me forward again instead.
“u-Pol,” he said. No translation required.
“What do they want?” Calvin translated again. But Nirbhay just shook his head, frantically pulling me forward with one hand, the other up to his face, finger pressed to his split lip requesting silence.
“I don’t like this,” Alan grumbled over my shoulder.
“You and me both,” Trent agreed.
“Quiet,” Beck hissed, but I couldn’t help feeling it was his way of throwing his vote in with Trent and Alan.
If I could have spoken then, I would have agreed. None of this was good.
We walked on for several more minutes, until we reached a rock fall in the tunnel. God alone knew how long it had been there. It was hard to tell if Nirbhay was surprised. But there was no denying our way forward had been crushed under a roof collapse. Panic started to crawl up my throat as I turned around and looked back down the tunnel that we’d just traversed.
“Fuck,” Trent muttered.
“Trap,” I think I heard Cardinal Beck say.
But all I could do was look at the men I’d brought down here, at their faces as realisation hit. I’d brought them here. Trapped them in a no-win situation. Took a gamble and now they’d pay the price. This was all my fault.
My heart beat a frantic rhythm in the centre of my chest. Sweat beaded my brow. An ache had started up deep down inside; guilt, shame, desolation taking up residence.
I pulled my laser gun from its holster and powered it up. Beck looked across the small space toward me and nodded, firing up his as well. My eyes found Trent’s.
“It’s OK,” he whispered and for a moment I couldn’t breathe. “It’s OK.”
It wasn’t, but he was doing his best to reassure me. Forgive me. I held his gaze, saw the conviction in his eyes. Saw more than I had any right to claim. I’d wondered if he did in fact love me recently, what with the over-protective way he’d been behaving. But there was no doubt now. Love, so deep, so consuming, shone back at me. Lighting up the dark tunnel as if it blazed with the power of a million lights. Dear God, no matter what, he loved me.
And I’d done this.
“This is not how we go,” he said, stepping closer, his lips brushing against the shell of my ear. “This is not the end.”
“Then what is it?”
He huffed out a breath of air. I would have said it was amused, if not for the fucked up situation.
“They want us? Then they’re just gonna have to fight to get to us.” He lifted his laser gun as if to punctuate that point.
Fighting words from a man who had spent the better part of his life fighting. And it would all end in a dark underground tunnel in a forgotten city that was meant to have been our hope.
Pain like I had never experienced coursed through me, centring in my heart. I lifted a numbed hand to rub at my chest, but nothing alleviated it.
“It’s OK,” Trent repeated and
then with one last kiss to my temple, turned to face what was coming.
It took so long my fingers had started to cramp around the laser gun’s grip. I flexed them as sweat ran over my cheek and down my neck. My heart pounded against my ribs. My lips felt dry and cracked. The air stuck to everything with a soot filled stench that clogged our lungs. I couldn’t fathom how anyone could live down here.
I couldn’t fathom that this would be where it ended.
In that second before they came I thought of Wánměi. I thought of the difference in the dense air between here and there. I thought of the clean rain and the heavily scented flowers. The lush greens and the vibrant colours. Wánměi was life. Lunnon was death.
How had we ever thought it held the answers?
Someone shuffled on their feet, getting better footing on the uneven rail ties. I could hear the laboured breathing of someone else. No one spoke. What was there to say? With our backs to a wall of debris, and our eyes trained for any sign of movement ahead, we waited.
And then a rumble sounded out.
For a second or two I couldn’t decipher what it was. A collapsing tunnel? Some sort of weapon Calvin and failed to see?
And then recognition flared, along with several synapses. My mind whirring, my heart thumping, my emotions in a tumult of hope and despair.
“Is that coming towards us?” Cardinal Beck asked. He’d crouched down as soon as the sound had started, just like the rest of his team of men. Ready, but not really prepared.
“The tracks were damaged farther back,” a Cardinal advised, his voice full of misguided hope.
“Won’t stop it if it’s going fast enough,” Alan offered. He’d recognised the sound too, it seemed.
“Nirbhay?” I whispered, then felt him step up to my side.
“Not… long,” he said, in relatively good Anglisc. “Wait,” he added, making the moment stretch.
“Well, that covers the whole understanding us part,” Trent offered, his eyes toward the end of the tunnel, where we’d come from, and where the sound of the oncoming train roared from now.
“What are we waiting for?” a Cardinal said, fear coating every syllable.
“Steady,” Beck ordered, not moving a muscle, laser gun raised, but what he thought he could do against a fifty ton train engine with that, I couldn’t guess.
The walls started to rattle, bits of broken brick and dust raining down on the gravel floor. A howling wind blew down the tunnel towards us; superheated, heavy, grim. The sound became deafening, as if the train was on top of us, but still we could see no movement ahead. And then mortar coated us, as a couple of tunnel wall bricks clattered to the ground, and the vibration started sending shockwaves up our shins.
Within a second or two it passed. The walls slowing down in their rattle and shake, the floor undulating more gently, the dust a light coating not a full-on powder shower. Through out it all I’d held my breath. I let it out slowly now.
“Time to go,” Nirbhay said carefully. His command of Anglisc was rusty, taking all his effort not to slip back into the pidgin language they all preferred.
I stared down at the dirt smeared child, my eyes no doubt as big as saucers inside my head.
“What the hell?” Alan said, voicing what was on all our tongues.
“Distraction,” Trent replied. “The kids in that other tunnel. The ones who split off. How the fuck they managed to get a locomotive engine going, though, is anyone’s guess.”
“I think there might be more to the Lunnoners’ survival than meets the eye,” Calvin offered in our ears.
“Come,” Nirbhay encouraged. “Come now.”
I raised my eyebrow at Trent. He shrugged his shoulders back.
We’d come this far, we might as well go the rest.
Because there was clearly more to see, and as the u-Pol who followed us were busy chasing that train, it was now or never that we make our escape.
I stared at the back of Nirbhay’s head as we followed him along the tunnel the way we’d come, taking the branch that the others had split off down not ten minutes earlier. If he was leading us to the u-Pol, then he wasn’t doing it the easy way. Bait and switch involving trains was not exactly straight forward, was it? I couldn’t help feeling that the longer we spent in his company, the more obvious it was that he didn’t want to hand us over to the enemy.
But Trent had been right when he’d said the children had been our enemies too at first. Part of me wanted to trust Nirbhay. But part of me had seen too much, been through too much, lost too much to ever be so complacent again.
“Where’s my father?” I said to Calvin.
“Back at the base,” he replied immediately. “The Merrikan soldiers have entered The Underground now and are following your trail.”
“Here’s hoping they don’t come face to face with retreating u-Pol officers,” Trent said, but he didn’t sound convincing.
“I have warned them,” Calvin advised, making Trent puff out an annoyed breath.
It’s not that he didn’t want the soldiers’ assistance, I was sure. It was more to do with the fact that they were controlled by my father.
Trust had never been an easy thing for Trent. And in that, I’d have to agree. My father wanted something. What? I didn’t know. Just like the rebels did. But the rebels I understood. The rebels I’d learned to trust.
My father had been dead to me for ten long years. Him being alive should have been a blessing; one I should have accepted readily. But for some reason it felt like a betrayal.
“Light ahead,” Cardinal Beck called out, his laser gun glinting in the soft illumination that sprayed back towards us.
The children started running, some using their hands to speed them along, some limping and hopping in their enthusiasm to reach wherever the light came from.
“Get ready,” Trent murmured.
“Always ready,” Alan replied.
And then we were there. In a vast room with vaulted ceilings, candlelight flickering here and there, the smell of food cooking wafting up to meet us, and evidence that they had access to power over in the corner; electrical light shining down on a work desk. My eyes scanned the room for danger, but danger lurked everywhere I looked.
“They’re all women, elderly, or very young,” Beck murmured. But the observation was correct. And not all there was to see, either.
“And those that aren’t,” I said, “are injured or infirm.”
“Is this all there is left?” Trent asked, his voice hinting at devastation.
Even knowing what we now knew, he’d still held out hope. Hope that Lunnon would hold answers. But with the mere fifty people that we could see before us, and the men we’d killed amounting to only twenty or so more, it was obvious that survival in this forgotten city was not a given. I felt his desolation along with him.
“Bloody hell,” Alan murmured, his laser gun still held high enough to use should he need it. The Cardinals all held theirs up as well.
Even Trent. Even disappointed to such a degree, he maintained the rebel leader.
I lowered mine and took a slow step into the room. Trent stiffened.
“Lena,” he warned. I softly shook my head in answer.
Nirbhay ran across the room to a group of women, embracing one as soon as he got there. Her wary eyes watched us, dirt and grime etching the deep lines on her face. I couldn’t tell how old she was, whether she was his mother or sister or even grandmother. Age had not worn well on these people.
My heart ached.
“Hello,” I said, my voice carrying in the stunned silence of the vast room.
Nirbhay wriggled free of the woman’s grasp and sprinted back to my side, then gripped my hand with small, gnarled fingers, tugging me towards the woman he’d just hugged.
“Lena,” Trent warned, his tone more urgent.
“He wants to introduce me,” I said, almost laughing at Nirbhay’s enthusiasm as he dragged me across the surprisingly clean floor. Evidence of where it had been sw
ept was obvious. As were the areas set aside for sleeping, eating, and social living.
This was their home, all right. And Nirbhay had led us directly to it.
That should have been warning enough. I shouldn’t have needed Trent’s concerned words echoing behind me. This was their home. Their safe harbour in a world broken. The one place they could flee to when the aboveground got too dark.
I should have known better.
We reached the little group of stunned immobile women, Nirbhay smiling widely, showing off his missing teeth and that gap in the top of his mouth. I offered a smile of my own. Tentative. Hopeful.
The woman who was his mother-sister-grandmother stared at me for a long moment, and then dark eyes darted to the boy holding my hand.
She said something. Calvin translated.
My gaze drifted over my shoulder to Trent.
He was already running, laser gun raised, panic and dread obvious in his wild blue eyes.
“What have you done?” Calvin’s voice sounded out in our ears. Her words, not his.
Nirbhay blinked. The woman pulled a laser gun from God knows where. And all I could hear was the whine as it charged up and the sound of Trent’s hard footfalls too far away on the swept clean dirt.
Eleven
Let Us Help You
Trent
There was no way I’d reach her. No way in hell. But I ran, shouting a warning, letting the electronic whine of the gun punctuate the fact.
In moves too quick to assimilate, the woman reached out and grabbed a fistful of Lena’s hair, hauling her against her side, the laser gun’s muzzle under her chin.
Everything stopped.
My heart. The world. Even the air stood still, hanging suspended between us; heavy, thick, threatening.
My eyes sought out Lena’s. So blue. So calm. They stared back.
The sound of my laser gun hitting the dirt at my feet rebounded inside the room, the clatter ricocheting off the high, domed ceiling. My pulse setting up an accompanying beat inside my head.
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