The woman said something in that fucking pidgin Anglisc.
Calvin oh-so-calmly translated the words inside our ears.
“No one move.”
Standard bad-guy warning. We didn’t need it; our feet might as well have been cemented to the floor. My hands were already up, out to the sides in a show of surrender. I pulled my gaze off Lena - hard though it was - and looked the woman in the eyes.
There was no compassion there. Just hardness. A hardness borne of a life lived in hell.
I spread my fingers, widening my non-threatening stance.
“Easy,” I said softly. She pressed the gun muzzle harder into Lena’s neck. “Is everyone unarmed?” I asked, not looking over my shoulder to Alan and the Cardinals at my back.
“Dropped ours when you did,” Alan supplied.
“No one’s moving, Trent,” Beck offered in a show of solidarity I didn’t, at that moment, have time to appreciate.
I swallowed thickly, my eyes still target-locked on the old woman. What now?
No one moved. Not us. Not them. Not Lena with a fucking laser gun to her chin.
What now?
I scanned the room, as much of it as I could without moving. Assessing the potential threats. No one else had pulled a laser gun - they didn’t need to, one was enough - but that didn’t mean they didn’t have one hidden like the woman had.
They looked old and injured, just as Beck had initially assessed. Those not missing limbs, or wrinkled as if sun damaged, lay out on thin beds, sightlessly staring at the high ceiling, or unconscious and unaware of what was happening all around them.
For that, we could be grateful. But before we could capitalise on their weaknesses, we needed Lena free of Grandma Laser Gun.
“Lena?” I asked, checking she was still with us.
“It’s OK,” she whispered. Like I had to her in the tunnel. But it wasn’t to me, I realised. And it wasn’t in Anglisc.
She was looking up at the woman, her voice pitched low and non-threatening. Her words, as they tumbled from her beautiful lips, reassuring. Caring. Compassionate.
Lena. Always so understanding.
“It’s OK,” she repeated. D’maru, my traumatised mind provided for me. “We understand,” she added.
The woman looked down at her. Gun muzzle still pressed to the tender skin under her jaw. A big, ugly thing. Handmade. Cobbled together with spare parts. Likely to explode if she so much as twitched.
Fucking hell.
“This is your home,” Lena was saying. “We mean you no harm. This is your safe place and we have invaded. I’m sorry,” she said, still in D’maru, and God knows why she’d chosen that language. The pidgin Anglisc the Lunnoners used was more Anglisc than D’maru, with a confusing mix of Teiamanisch thrown in for good measure.
But as we didn’t speak Urip’s language, I would have thought she’d settle on Anglisc. But this was Lena. And sometimes Lena saw things we didn’t.
“We mean you no harm,” she repeated.
It wasn’t working. The woman was looking at her, for sure, and so were several others in the room, but no one replied. No one shifted. And that fucking laser gun did not move an inch.
“We come from an island far away,” Lena said. “We didn’t know anyone still lived in Lunnon. We’re trying to get to Hammurg.”
And there was a reaction. One that sent chills down my spine. Someone hissed. Someone spat on the ground. But most of the people in the room just started to yell.
“Calvin?” I queried quietly. They were speaking in that pidgin language again. We couldn’t understand a thing they said. But the intent? Hell yes. They were not happy we were heading towards Urip.
Why?
“Kill them,” Calvin translated softly in our ears. “Hand them over,” he added, his words carefully delivered as if he could soften the blow. “You know the penalty should we not.”
Interesting. But not exactly promising intel. The Lunnoners had an agreement with Urip, then. And from what we already knew, anybody trading with Urip, be it goods, services or information, could expect it to backfire monumentally.
It had for us.
Things were escalating, and still I was too far away to make them stop. I don’t think I’ve ever known fear as I did right then. Watching Lena plead for her life in the arms of a fucked off super-gran.
“They have our people too,” she said, her voice raised above the shouts of the Lunnoners. Raised enough for everyone to hear.
The shouting ceased. The woman frowned. Nirbhay jabbered away frantically beside them, trying to get his mother - if that was what she was - to unhand Lena. It didn’t work.
But Lena’s words had an effect.
“They have our people too,” she repeated, again in D’maru. “We’re going to rescue them.”
Holy shit the explosion of noise was deafening. And confusing. Even Calvin couldn’t translate what they were shouting. And then a bent figure came out from the shadows, over by the electrical light in the corner. He shuffled forward as the shouts and cries increased. No one noticed him, but I couldn’t look away from this new threat. Not exactly physically imposing, but I wasn’t taking any of these crazies at face value. Not now. Not ever again.
The woman shouted for silence, or at least that’s what it looked like she’d done. Because all the yelling stopped and everyone stared at her expectantly.
“We cannot trust them,” Calvin translated in our earpieces as she spoke each word. “They lie. They are a threat. To us. To our h’verlorst - I do not know this word,” he added. “Lost perhaps. Yes, lost.”
Or Wiped, I’d hazard a guess.
I lowered my arms. The movement was registered by the woman, but I still did it. These people were trapped, I could see that now. Cornered in a part of the world left forgotten; broken. We’d killed what was left of their most healthy. An action that should have meant our deaths upon sight. I couldn’t blame them. I would want revenge as well. But there was more going on here than we could see.
And as the old man came abreast of the woman holding Lena, he said, in D’maru, yet another shock to the solar plexus, “They speak the old tongue, Nagma. They are different from the rest.”
“But they’re a threat,” she insisted. This time in D’maru, matching the old man.
“They are as trapped by circumstances as we are,” the old man said. He turned to look directly at me; dark eyes so ancient stared me down without an ounce of frailty to be seen.
He might be fragile physically, but this old man was not weak of mind, it seemed.
“You killed our men,” he said.
I nodded. “It was not our intent.” I spoke in D’maru too; clearly Lena had been on to something there.
“They would not have stopped,” the man agreed. “We are watched all the time. One misstep and it costs lives.”
“But not necessarily theirs,” I guessed. “Or yours,” I added.
The man smiled, displaying a mouthful of missing teeth.
“You understand.”
“We call ours Wiped,” I offered.
“Ours are the Lost.”
We stared at each other; the woman still doggedly holding on to Lena, but at least the gun had been lowered slightly. Lena would only receive a chest wound now, not a lobotomy.
“Why are you here?” I finally asked. It seemed the most pertinent question. We understood now, why they attacked the way they did. The threat of death to their Wiped was too great. They valued them. They mourned them. Staying somewhere they shouldn’t in order to be close to them.
Calvin had been right. They could have left Lunnon if they’d wanted to. But they didn’t want to leave their Wiped.
I could understand, even though in Wánměi we’d chosen to forget ours. To cast them from our minds. Serenity Tabs had helped. But complacency was to blame.
Not anymore. We were here to rescue them. We were here to right a wrong.
But why were they?
“We have no home,” th
e old man said. “We have nowhere left to go,” he added. “Why not here? They promised they’d let them go if we kept Lunnon clean.”
Clean?
“Get rid of any invading armies,” Beck said softly at our backs. Prevent them from reaching Hammurg.
Lunnon was a call not many could deny. Just one look to see what was left. A chance to regroup before mounting the final advance on Urip. The ideal place to stage an ambush.
And we’d walked right into it.
“They know we’re here,” I said softly.
“From the moment you arrived,” the man agreed.
“And those u-Pol officers your kids tricked with the engine?”
“Our keepers,” the man said. “Our jailers,” he added. “Our tormentors.”
Checking up on the Lunnoners to make sure they met their end of the bargain they’d set.
“What now?” I asked, because I couldn’t see this ending any other way. They’d done everything until now as demanded by their captors. They’d followed the rules. The payoff too great. I couldn’t see a conversation in an old language changing things.
But then, I’ve never had the type of optimism Lena has.
“We could save your Lost too,“ she whispered.
The man turned to look at her. His eyes meeting the woman’s first; just briefly, but enough to convey a command.
She released Lena and stepped back, the laser gun again out of sight in the folds of her skirt.
For the first time in what felt like hours, I took a breath.
“Lena,” I said. What was she offering? We could barely save our own Wiped, I doubted we’d fare better with theirs.
“There is a world outside these borders,” she said, standing to full height, glancing at each and every person who watched. I saw the Elite in her. I saw the sky-rise somersaulting Citizen. I saw our future.
So calm. So collected. So promising.
With Lena anything was possible.
I looked toward the old man, saw he saw it too.
“Let us help you,“ she whispered in D’maru. “Let us tear down your walls and give you a home again.”
“A home,” the old man said. The hope in his tone was unmistakable.
Maybe there was a chance we’d get out of this alive.
Of course, there was still the u-Pol to deal with. Not to mention Hammurg and saving the Wiped.
Twelve
What Now?
Lena
There was no trust. I doubted there ever could be. We’d been forced to kill some of their men; the strongest of them. Trust was not something that would ever come easily.
And yet they allowed us ingress into their home. Wary eyes watching. Fingers twitching. Laser guns, although out of sight, within reach should they need them. The standoff was tense. In no way natural. We’d killed some of their number. How could they forget?
How could we?
We sat in the corner, out of the way of their day to day tasks, beside the work bench. The heat of an open fire warming our fingers. The welcoming glow of its flickering flame accompanied by the harsher brightness of electrical light.
I stared at the naked bulb hanging directly above the table. Its presence a reminder of what this city had once been.
“How is it you have electricity?” Cardinal Beck asked the old man.
He was bent almost double, stirring something that looked like tea, but smelled anything but. I was hoping he wouldn’t offer us any, but D’awan etiquette demanded that he serve us something. He’d invited us in, he had to now follow through with custom. Their life, though, was nothing like the lives of those D’awans who lived in Wánměi. Of the many who owned stalls in Little D’awa. Vibrant silks and lush colours. Pungent scents and loud vocals. Stalls like that which Harjeet Kandiyar had owned.
“Solar panels,” the man grumbled in D’maru. Then finding what he was after, he spun around - somewhat nimbly - and placed several mugs of steaming liquid before us on the table. “They aren’t as efficient as they once were; we’re limited to one single light bulb now.” He shrugged his shoulders, as if the restriction was understandable. Then sat himself down on a well worn chair, indicating with gnarled fingers for us to drink.
My eyes met Cardinal Beck’s across the table; he offered a raised eyebrow but reached for his mug without comment. We all mimicked him. Silence engulfed our little corner, as the rest of the Lunnoners went about their business, throwing the odd disgruntled look our way while they were at it.
We wouldn’t be sleeping here tonight.
“Why run the bulb at all?” Alan asked, staring up at the bright light through narrowed eyes.
The old man blew across the top of his mug, rocking slightly in his seat, ancient hands cupped protectively around his drink.
“The day the light goes out,” he murmured in his heavily accented D’maru, “will be the day we admit defeat.”
Trent cleared his throat.
“Why Lunnon?” he said. “Why did you come here of all places?”
From what Calvin had told us, D’awa was not that far from Wánměi. Had they gone east instead of west, they would have found us. Or Mahiah; the city of lights across the water from Hillsborough, where my father had been staying.
“We followed a signal,” the old man said. “There was only silence for so long, and then a beacon sounded. We followed it as if it was a guiding star.”
The beacon was not ours. Wánměi had kept her borders closed for many years. Our Net had been contained by Sat-Loc. Our skies monitored but quiet. We’d hidden in plain sight. We had not welcomed visitors.
And Mahiah simply lacked the technology.
“Urip,” I said.
“Yes,” the old man agreed calmly. “This was long ago. I was a young man then. Hammurg needed a workforce. They merely called one to them.”
“But you didn’t make it that far,” Trent guessed.
“The beacon was based here in Lunnon.”
It made sense. Lunnon was the Uripean holding tank. A natural quarantine.
“And when you got here?” I asked softly. Old eyes met mine; full of heartache and loss and fatigue.
“They rounded up our leaders. They took those of our young who showed most strength.” He looked down into his near empty mug, the weight of the broken world on his bent shoulders. “We bargained with what we had. Occasionally we have to renegotiate.”
No one had a consoling word to say to that. What had been done, had been done. For a long moment we pretended to drink, staring into the dancing flames of the fire, feeling the heat on our skins, but inside we were shivering.
They had come looking for salvation. They had found only loss and death. Urip took what it wanted, believing it had that right. Mikhail would have taken Shiloh if she’d still existed. Instead he took Trent.
Mikhail had paid for his sins, but Urip had not. I suddenly felt an undeniable urge to rectify that.
But I knew our limitations. I knew our lack of knowledge left us unprepared. We were armed, certainly. We had Simon’s technical know-how and Calvin’s computerised brain. We had Cardinals and Merrikan soldiers and, if I was honest with myself, we also had my father.
Calvin Carstairs was not a man to be discounted. I huffed out a breath at that notion. I’d thought him dead and look where that had got me.
I lifted my head and met the knowing eyes of the D’awan elder. I held his steady gaze.
I’m not sure how I did it. How the words formed and I let them fly free. For so long we had buried our head in the sand. Pretended our world was perfect and that nothing existed beyond our city-state’s borders. For so long we had forgotten.
My lips parted. His eyes held true; waiting patiently for me to speak.
Trent’s hand inched over towards me and then warm fingers slipped into my palm. I gripped them tightly, my gaze pulled from the old D’awan and meeting Trent’s. He smiled, tilting his head to the side as if in question. Unlike me, Trent had been raised to ask the difficult questi
ons.
But right then he was allowing me to lead.
I turned back to the old man and said, voice steady even if my heart rate was not, “Will you tell us what happened to D’awa?”
The old man sat silent and still for a long moment and then leaned forward in his chair, back bowed, wrinkled face illuminated in the light from the bulb hanging above.
“You do not know your history?” he queried. I shook my head. He nodded, as if our shortcoming was understandable. “It will be better, I think,” he said, standing laboriously from his seat, bones creaking, legs wobbling, and then shuffling towards a large crate in the corner, “if I show you instead.”
I looked toward Trent. He squeezed my fingers again. My gaze snagged on Cardinal Beck. He sat straight backed, eyes forward, a stoic and hard look on his face. He did not acknowledge me. Neither did Alan, whose gaze was riveted to the flames in the nearby fire. Those Cardinals with us edged closer, but one stern glance from Beck’s eyes had them stilling like good little soldiers.
We all feared what we’d see. What we’d learn. What it was that Chew-wen had ensured we’d forget. Chew-wen had made many mistakes, all in the name of keeping Wánměi safe. Keeping what he perceived as a perfect city-state intact. He’d lied to us. He’d drugged us. He’d ruled us with a hard hand and a harder regime.
But he’d done it all because the past was damaging. Because to know it, in his eyes, was to relive it. And he did not want the same mistakes for Wánměi.
No, we’d made new ones. But we’d come full circle again.
Chew-wen was dead. Wánměi was free. And none of us had consumed our rations in several long weeks.
The old man returned to his seat and the table, laying out a series of magazines and news articles; the paper was yellowed with time, the photos curled at the edges, spots of wear dotted here and there, a rip across a headline, words in Old Anglisc sprawled over the lot.
I recognised the river. Like ours but not. I saw the large wheel. Like ours but not. The cathedrals and domed churches. The tree lined avenues and deep window ledges. I recognised them even though they were not whole. And as the pictures progressed and the headings became bigger, bolder, more frantic, a story was told.
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