The u-Pol had lost us in The Underground. But they learned quickly from their mistakes. The Lunnoners knew the city well below the streets, better than the u-Pol at a guess, because they lived in it. But the u-Pol ruled the streets aboveground. Just like sPol had ruled ours.
I reached for Lena’s hand, giving my fears away. She sucked in a startled breath, just as Carstairs said, “Moved on to here.”
The sound of laser-fire was swallowed by static, and then we were all moving.
Fourteen
You Heard Her
Lena
I realised something, as we ran through what was left of Lunnon's Underground to reach him, there was nothing to forgive. There never had been. He was my father. He was alive. Why hadn’t I seen this?
My pulse thundered in my veins, setting up a beat inside my temples. Sweat coated my skin, a fine layer attracting every particle of dust in the heated underground air. Rocks tumbled ahead of us, as our feet kicked up loose debris and sent it flying. I stumbled more than once in my eagerness to reach our base.
We’d left the children behind some time ago, our pace faster than their little legs and hunched backs could manage. I knew they were still following, despite my efforts to order them to stay where it was safe. But we’d arrive at our temporary base well before them, of that I was certain.
What would greet us, though, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. But still I found the courage to ask.
“Calvin,” I called, my breaths all but panted with exertion. “What’s happening up there?”
“The u-Pol officers are attacking the base,” he replied immediately, in the steady tones of a computerised programme.
“My father?” I all but rasped. “Is my father all right?”
Calvin paused. The hesitation said more than words could ever convey. Computer programmes only pause when they are calculating something that requires heavy RAM usage. But this hesitation spoke volumes in this regard.
Calvin was not just a computer programme. He’d been designed by my father. And his reluctance to answer now broke my heart.
“He is fighting, Lena,” he finally said in my ear.
“Faster,” I whispered, the command for myself, but I was sure Trent had heard it. He made a sound. I didn’t have time to consider what it meant. My heart was fracturing at an alarming speed as it was. I didn’t need his pain on top of my own.
My father had been a guiding light in my childhood. Someone to look up to and respect. He’d been accomplished and well regarded in Overseer circles. Often outspoken, but that had made him seem more omnipotent than rash. I knew my love of Wáikěiton was due to him. I knew my command of all our spoken languages was a result of his insistence that everyone should be considered equal, and therefore one tongue was not superior to another.
He’d had such brave ideals for our city-state. He would have supported Trent’s tagline: One Wánměi. Freedom, perhaps, hadn’t been his ultimate goal, but solidarity certainly had been. He believed in our nation. He believed in our people.
But most of all, he believed in me.
And I’d wasted so much time staying angry at him. For what? For surviving? For taking too long trying to get back to me, when the borders were still closed? For teaming up with other Wiped in those efforts?
For being alive when I’d thought him gone for good.
I’d grieved my father’s death for so long. I’d rebelled against the system the only way I could, in order to feel something other than heartache. I’d endured years living under the same roof as General Chew-wen.
My father had suspected what Chew-wen was becoming, just as he’d suspected what Shiloh would do. Yet he’d still had Chew-wen as my guardian in his will.
I’d had no choice but to move to Ohrikee. My father had planned it that way. But why, when he’d put in place something to counter Shiloh, had he not put in place something to protect me from Chew-wen?
It was a question I should have asked him. And now I was unsure if I’d ever have the chance to.
“Update?” I ordered Calvin.
“The base is taking heavy fire,” he replied steadily. “Some soldiers have succumbed.”
Such a euphemism. I hated it and I needed it. But it didn’t make it any easier to ask about my father.
We climbed out of Lunnon’s Underground into a starry night. The moon was lower in the sky, indicating the passage of time. The notion seemed fitting. If I’d had an hourglass, the sand would almost be out.
Our thundering footsteps sounded out on the quiet night air, but we were still too far away to hear the laser battle at the base. As breathless as I was, I urged my legs to go faster, my lungs to expand, sucking in mouthfuls of air. My muscles ached, my head pounded with every heavy footfall. The skeletal remains of a dead city flashed by my face.
They’d split us up on purpose, I realised. The age old adage of divide and conquer. The Merrikan soldiers who ran beside us remained silent, their booted feet barely making a sound as their lethal eyes darted ahead of our progress. Scanning the environment for threats. I was sure they wouldn’t find any. The u-Pol had one goal in mind. Destroy our base, and in the process lure us to them.
How long could those soldiers who’d remained with my father survive?
We heard the laser-fire before we could see the dust rising. We heard the shouts of men as they died. My legs slowed down, even as my heart rate sped up. Cardinal Beck passed me on one side. Irdina on the other. The Merrikan soldiers who accompanied us swarmed around my body, as they too overtook my slower strides.
“Lena?” Trent asked, as Alan swept past on the tail of the Mahiah woman. “What is it?” He thought I saw a threat.
I only saw the breaking of my heart.
“I can’t…” I’d never been a coward. But so much had been left unsaid, and I was too late now to even try.
“Baby,” Trent murmured, slipping his hand into mine. “You don’t know…”
“They’re outnumbered. Out gunned. He’s in a wheelchair, Trent. I know.”
Trent stopped completely, stepping into my path and cupping my cheeks, lifting my gaze to his. Steel blue stared down at me as the street we were on became quiet. Gunfire could be heard up ahead, Beck and his Cardinals, the soldiers who’d accompanied Irdina, all joining my father’s fight.
I couldn’t move.
I couldn’t breathe.
Why had I not forgiven him before now?
“Lena,” Trent snapped. I blinked up at him, feeling the wetness of tears on my cheeks. “He needs you. Now.” I stared at him. “Wake up, baby,” he murmured. “This is war. I know it hurts, but you’re a fighter. I know you are. You can do this.”
I slowly nodded my head, sucking in lungfuls of agony-filled air.
“I’m right beside you,” Trent said softly. “I’ll be right there.”
I nodded again, this time more convincingly. And then started running.
The scene was a nightmare. I knew it would be, but somehow it was unexpected. Who is prepared for war? And this was a war. Merrikan soldiers were shouting orders. Beck was following them, as if he’d done so a thousand times before. I couldn’t see Irdina or my father. But I saw death.
Everywhere. Scattered. Irreverently discarded. Life thrown away with nothing more than a careless thought.
Kill or be killed. It seemed so simple. But it wasn’t.
I started returning fire immediately. Trent slipping in behind the cover I’d commandeered. Our laser lights lit up the night sky, joining the dozens of others, streaking across the street outside the base.
They’d breached the building. What remained of it. The most solid structure we’d been able to find, and it was as if it had been mere paper. Tears and rips in its hide. Blood seeping out of its windows. Screams and cries sounding out on the air. Ours and theirs.
At least they weren’t metallic.
As soon as the thought reached me through the numb haze of warfare, I realised how awful it sounded. If the u-Pol had been dron
es, killing them would have been easier.
But they were humans. Like us. From a different part of the world. But flesh and blood, just the same.
The small consolation of them being Uripean did not assuage the guilt I felt. Enough men had died on Lunnon’s soil already. I still felt shamed by my part in the Lunnoners’ deaths.
But these men… these men were the enemy. There was no question of that.
I lifted my laser gun back up and sighted down the barrel. For the next ten minutes I became a killing machine. Bile coated my tongue, but I kept on firing. Shakes racked my body, but I squeezed the trigger again and again. Nausea competed with saliva, so close to winning. And through it all, I pretended my father still lived.
By the time we made it into the building itself, the street was awash in blood and coated in the dead. We’d brought twenty Merrikan soldiers with us. Half a dozen Cardinals. Four rebels. And three Wiped.
They’d had a squadron of u-Pol. Twenty men. It should have been easy.
War is not logical in the slightest.
Alan killed the last u-Pol officer. None of us had the desire to keep one alive to question. His knife entered his chest, directly above his heart. He died instantly. Not so some of the others.
Death is not always kind.
I broke rank as soon as the last u-Pol fell. Running through the detritus of a dead city. Dodging the new blood it had sacrificed. Not daring to count our losses. It didn’t matter. It was over. They knew we were here. We’d already failed.
Irdina was with him. In that moment I hated the Mahiah. She’d reached him first. She hadn’t faltered. She’d blazed a trail through the u-Pol men, cutting a swathe of laser light fury to get to his side. Her dark accusing eyes met mine. I could have gouged them.
But then he shifted. An agony-filled movement. But he was still alive.
I skidded to my knees next to him. For a moment, I thought Irdina was going to reach out and stop me from touching my own father. I growled something at her; I don’t know what. She hissed something back.
It was Trent who pushed her aside. And Alan who lifted her up off the floor, while she kicked and screamed, and pulled her out of sight.
I knew it was wrong. She obviously loved him. He’d become a parent to her too, it seemed.
But he was my father first. And I couldn’t do this with an audience. I wasn’t sure I could do this at all.
Because he was dying. No question. Not with a wound that size in the centre of his chest.
“Daddy,” I said on a sob. Oh no. Why now? It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. I’d just found him again. “I’m sorry,” I managed, but my words were barely audible. I was crying too hard for my lips to form the right sounds.
“Baby girl,” he said, whisper thin, coated in pain, blood pooling in his mouth.
“No.” It was all I could think. All I could say. All that mattered. NO! Not now.
“I love you,” he gasped, struggling to manage the pain. “Don’t ever doubt that. So proud. You’ve been… the light… in the… dark.” It was getting harder for him to speak. I wanted to reassure him. To tell him to save his strength.
I wanted so much right then, that I couldn’t find the correct words.
His blood stained hand reached out to mine. I grasped it immediately. It was large and calloused, just as I remembered. So much bigger than mine. So safe and secure.
And cold.
And weak.
“Daddy,” I said, pulling on every last ounce of strength I had to say the words aloud. “I don’t wan’t to lose you again.”
His eyelids fluttered. Then with Herculean effort he opened them, searching the air around him as though blind. Perhaps he was. But then they locked on someone. I followed his gaze to Trent.
“Take care… of her,” he said on panted breaths.
“Yes, sir. Always,” Trent replied without pause.
My father’s eyes found mine again, as if called there by a powerful magnetic force.
He’d been such a force of nature in my life. So vibrant and capable. So intelligent and all-knowing. So determined to do right.
Right by his daughter.
Right by his fellow countrymen.
Right by those we’d thrown away. The Wiped.
“Don’t go,” I begged, even though I knew he couldn’t give me what I wanted this time. “Please.” Logic doesn’t have a place in saying goodbye. I knew I was saying it. I knew. But I still asked for the impossible. I still pleaded with God and life.
“My baby girl,” he whispered, lifting his free hand slowly, laboriously. It had to have hurt.
“Stay still,” I admonished, because it wasn’t enough to have not forgiven him until it was too late, I had to order him about when he was dying.
His hand fell down across his stomach, the weight of it causing immeasurable pain. His face was already pale, but it became ghostly. Greyish. His lips thinned. His eyelids shut tight. But he fought it; the call to succumb. To let go. He fought, like he fought everything.
Stoically. Determinedly. Bravely.
His fingers fluttered. I reached for his free hand, holding both, connected the only way I could now.
And felt something in his palm. He opened his fingers and let the small object fall into mine, his eyes on me, already clouding.
“Daddy?”
“For… Calvin,” he said, so softly I had to lower my head, turn my face, place my ear near his pale lips in order to hear each sound. “For… you,” he added, a rattle starting up inside his lungs. “For… Wánměi.”
It was always for Wánměi. Everything he did. Everything he lost. Everything he sacrificed.
I pulled back, already lost and unsure. The words on my tongue, the taste of them rolling across my lips.
What do I do? Where do I go now? How do I be the person you think I can be?
But he was gone. Face serene in death. His hand cooling in mine. His place in my heart assured forever.
Everything he did, he did for Wánměi.
Everything he did, he did for a better world for his daughter.
I’d done my crying. I’d grieved him once already, but this time it scoured me out and left me hollow. I stared down at the man who had made me who I was today, for better or worse, and I silently promised him that I wouldn’t stop trying.
That I wouldn’t stop fighting for Wánměi. For the world. For the solidarity he’d believed so much in.
And I’d start with Urip.
I leaned forward and laid a soft kiss on his forehead, forcing myself to pull away and stand to my feet. When I turned to face those of us who had survived the u-Pol attack, I noticed the sad, shock-filled faces, bleak eyes watching and waiting.
Trent moved closer. Cardinal Beck shifted to back him up. Simon followed suit automatically. And Irdina stood quietly to the side, Alan right there with her.
I cleared my throat. Took in the bodies lying out on the floor where they’d fallen, my hand fisting around the flash-drive my father had given me on his deathbed, and said, “We bury our dead. We get what we can to aid us from the u-Pol. And by morning we head out.”
“Head out?” a Merrikan soldier demanded.
I nodded my head, my heart heavy, my mind crystal clear.
We’d finish what my father had started.
But it was Trent who answered for me, slipping into the role with practiced ease. Backing me up, no matter what.
“You heard her,” he snapped commandingly. “Carstairs had a plan. We’re sticking to it.”
“And we should follow you now?” the same soldier demanded scathingly.
Trent smiled. It was his you-want-to-fuck-with-me? grin.
“No,” he said softly. Then turned to look at me. “We follow her.”
I could have sworn I felt my father’s smile.
Fifteen
No One Gets Left Behind
Lena
They knew we were coming. There was no denying that now. As dawn crested the broken horizon, cas
ting shadows across a forgotten landscape, the roar of fighter jets arrived. The ground shook with their ferocity. The air vibrated with utter menace. We weren’t going anywhere without the cover of darkness.
I leaned back against the warehouse wall; at least, I thought it might have been a warehouse. Once upon a time. The sound of the jets covered the fractured beat of my heart. I stared out at the glistening water of the river. Our boat barely visible under the camouflage net that had been used to hide it.
Would they land? Could they? Where was this city’s airport?
We’d scoured the remains of the palace where the u-Pol had set up their base, before we’d moved down to the wharf, making ready to depart Lunnon. There’d been nothing there to help us. And what we’d found on the u-Pol officers was of little use. Currency. Identification cards. Those permanent inked tattoos. Barcodes, the old D’awan had called them.
My fingers found the flash-drive in my pocket that my father had given me, and for the umpteenth time I rubbed my thumb across its surface. As if the contact would bring me closer to my dad.
It wasn’t meant to hurt this much, not when I’d had practice grieving. It wasn’t meant to hollow me out and leave me… wanting.
So much unsaid. My hand fisted around the device. I was too scared, still, to use it.
“They’re flying away,” Trent said softly at my side. I just nodded. “If they saw us, they would have fired. There’s nothing for them here now. They know the Lunnoners have disobeyed them. Their men killed. Their bargaining chip irrelevant now.”
“Will they wipe them?” I asked. Wipe the Wiped. What other use could the Uripeans have for them?
“I’m not sure,” Trent admitted. Never couching his opinion. Always respecting me enough to never lie.
“What are we doing?” I whispered. It suddenly seemed too steep a climb.
“Do you want to go back?” he asked without blinking. As if returning to Wánměi was an option now.
“No.”
“Then we go forward,” he offered simply. “We owe a debt to the Lunnoners. We owe a debt to our Wiped.” He stared off into the distance, the sun creeping closer to our resting place, the higher in the sky it climbed. “There is one Wánměi saying that holds true,” he murmured.
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