I couldn't think which it would be. Wánměi above all others? Right now our hands were stained with blood. We weren’t so grand, were we?
“You know which one?” he asked, voice pitched low, even though the immediate threat had vanished. The skies once again pristine. I shook my head. “For the better of the people. For the future of Wánměi. Your father was right, you know. We can’t go on like this. Living in pockets. Isolated from all threats. Solidarity. That’s what the world needs. You started it in Wánměi.” No I didn’t. “You tore down the walls.” He did. Trent did. “You destroyed Sat-Loc. Said let them come. Let them see.”
“Don’t put this on me,” I argued.
Trent turned towards me, reaching up and tucking a strand of my hair behind my ear tenderly. His hot hand cupped my nape.
“Baby,” he whispered, thumb sweeping. “Sometimes we have to hurt to heal.”
I could feel my eyes tearing, I blinked slowly, willing the moisture away. My heart hurt, all right. My head hurt as well, not knowing what to do now he was gone. Again.
I didn’t think I was strong enough for this type of pain.
I let a slow breath of air out, savouring Trent’s touch and comfort, never taking it for granted again.
“What’s our plan?” I asked, once my heart rate had steadied and my lips could form words.
“You’re not gonna like it,” he admitted, his hold on my nape tightening slightly.
I lifted my eyes to his. “What is there to like about any of this?” I demanded. One more problem to battle was insignificant.
“The flash-drive,” he started. I pulled away.
“I’m not ready.”
“If there was time, I’d give it to you.” He looked up at the sky pointedly. “But they know we’re here. They know we’re coming. How long before they send drones to do the u-Pol officers’ work? We can’t stay, Lena. It’s tonight or never.”
“We have no idea what’s on this drive. This is my father we’re talking about.”
“What are you afraid of?” he demanded. “How much worse could this get?”
“Calvin,” I said, my voice breaking. The last link to my dead father, and I knew, I just knew, that whatever my father had prepared on this flash-drive would mean the end. The final goodbye. I couldn’t do it.
So much unsaid.
“Lena,” Trent said with purpose, just as scratching and shuffling sounded out off to the side.
Both of us jumped, laser guns in our hands, hearts in our mouths. The jets might have flown on, the u-Pol officers might all be dead, but there were still threats in this rotting city.
Nirbhay popped his head out from behind a mound of rubble. Wide grin on his deformed face. Dirt smeared across darkened skin, black hair standing up on end. I doubted it had ever seen a comb. Or soap, for that matter. His grin, though, was infectious. I holstered my weapon and smiled in return.
Trent was slower to holster his own laser gun, his gaze searching the area behind Nirbhay, his body hard and on alert.
“Hello,” I said in their pidgin Anglisc. “What are you doing here?”
“You go?” he asked, moving closer and sitting down crossed legged. His little knobbly knee rested against mine. Comfort in the barest of touches.
I was careful not to move away, but moving closer held its challenges as well. Nirbhay might have taken a shine to us, but he was still inherently skittish. How could he not be when we’d killed his relatives?
My smile fell. So did his. The child was a perfect reflection of the world around him. A mirror that showed where we’d all gone wrong.
Lunnon was wrong. This broken, destroyed city was a representation of a world gone so very, very wrong.
“How do we fix this?” I whispered, the words for me, but Nirbhay had heard them. He cocked his head, his face a mask of puzzlement.
“You spoke in Anglisc,” Trent said softly, his eyes still scanning the environment for danger, but his quiet words letting me know his attention was divided.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Nirhbay in his local tongue. Sorry. It seemed so pitiful. We had so much to atone for, didn’t we?
“No sorry,” Nirbhay said cheerfully. “You killed the bad men. Two days before more come.”
Already they were preparing for the next onslaught. The small reprieve enough to be thankful for.
The depth of my sorrow was astounding. We needed to move now.
“How long will it take us to sail there?” I asked Trent.
“To Hammurg?” I nodded my head, my eyes on Nirbhay, a soft smile of reassurance all I could give. “A day, Si reckons. Why?”
“By the time we get there, reinforcements will have already arrived here.”
Trent leaned back against the wall, appearing to give up on the vigilant assessment of our environment. Perhaps he thought if the Lunnoners were going to attack, they would have by now.
“What do you suggest, Lena? We leave now and risk detection by those fighter jets? And even if we manage to make it to the ship offshore, what then? We make a blind run for Hammurg, we infiltrate their security measures, somehow mimicking those barcode tattoos to get inside their walls, and then what? We don’t have a plan. Even if we could think one up, we’d still be too late for Lunnon.” He ran a frustrated hand through his hair, messing it up even further. Lately he’d let it grow out, a luxury not possible in Old Wánměi.
I liked his hair longer. I liked running my fingers through it. Fisting my hand in the strands when he kissed me. Trent made the world disappear with his lips, his tongue, his hot breath against my skin. For a moment, I wanted that oblivion.
But how could I succumb to such bliss when death surrounded us?
“The Lunnoners are on their own,” he said finally, the words wrenched from deep within. “We fight for a greater cause. The endgame is all that matters.”
I started shaking my head.
“Lena,” he said so softly I felt every syllable, “do you think I don’t know what sacrifice is?”
I wanted to scream. I wanted to rage. Hadn’t we all sacrificed enough? The Lunnoners their Lost, and the men who had followed commands and died trying to capture us. Wánměi its Wiped. My father. Trent’s. Aiko. So many. Too many to count.
The world was a broken, bitter place.
Nirbhay watched us silently. Whether he understood our Anglisc or not, I couldn’t tell. Large round dark brown eyes stared solemnly at us. His stillness a testament to his life.
“I can’t do this anymore,” I whispered. “I can’t watch the world shatter and stand by and do nothing.”
“You’re not doing nothing,” Trent argued. “You’re rescuing the Wiped. Theirs and ours. You’re setting about containing a problem.”
“You call Urip a problem,” I said scathingly.
“You’re right,” he said with a nod of his head. “They’re not a problem. They’re a scourge. They’re a representation of what is wrong with this world. Might is not right. But they think they can win by strength alone.” His hand came out and wrapped around my wrist. The wrist leading to the fingers stroking my father’s flash-drive. He tugged softly, pulling my hand and the drive out of the pocket.
Slowly he unwrapped my stiff fingers, letting the flash-drive lie in my palm, washed in daylight.
“We’re not as strong as them,” he said quietly. “We don’t even have the element of surprise. What we do have is desperation. Conviction. More than just a will to survive. We want to make this right. Not just Wánměi. It’s not just about us anymore. We might not be able to help the Lunnoners now, but we can give them a fighting chance. We can end Urip’s reign. We can help the world start anew. Merrika. Mahiah. Oztrala. Any other nations that have survived. We can unite them. But not before we cure the world of the scourge.
“And to do that,” he said softly, lowering his voice again after it had crescendoed with his passionate outburst, “we need an edge. Just one small thing that tips the scale.” His finger ran down the length of m
y father’s flash-drive. “Calvin’s doing all that he can, but you know it’s not enough. Hammurg is Wánměi on steroids. Contained. Isolated. Hidden behind not just metaphorical walls, but real ones. We need something more, Lena. We need what your father had planned.”
I stared down at the flash-drive sitting innocuously in my hand, my chest tight, my head pounding. Even Irdina hadn’t been able to tell us what this flash-drive might do. If we uploaded the programme to Calvin, would he even be Calvin anymore?
Would he even sound like my father?
I felt so lost and yet I was surrounded. Pressure on all sides. Trent wanted us to move forward. The Lunnoners wanted more reprieves just to survive. Irdina wanted freedom. I wasn’t sure yet what the Merrikans wanted, but so far they’d been right by our sides.
Trust had to start somewhere. With the other nations we intended to unite.
With my father. He’d broken that trust once, but not intentionally. I had to move on. I had to let go of the past. But how could I do that when he was already gone?
My eyes came up and met the patient brown pools of Nirbhay’s. He was waiting for something. Like they all were waiting for something. Something they seemed to think I could give.
Peace. Freedom. Unity. I was just one person, and I’d made so many mistakes already.
If I made one more, I was sure I wouldn’t survive.
Guilt has a way of corroding everything. I was already hollow. Now the guilt had a hole to burrow inside.
“Lena?” Trent pressed, his whole demeanour letting me know he was worried. For me. For the war. For the world and our combined futures.
How did he stay so strong?
My stomach chose that inappropriate moment to rumble, signalling the fact we hadn’t eaten for some time. Nirbhay giggled. Just like any child. The sound of bodily functions always an occasion for laughter.
I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let these people die.
I’d already killed too many of them.
“They come with us,” I said. Nirbhay’s smile widened. “No one gets left behind.”
I expected him to argue. I expected Trent to offer up reasonable and well thought out reasons why taking a bunch of refugees closer to danger was worse than leaving them to fight a battle they might just survive. Trent was a rebel leader. A visionary whose experience had been honed by fire.
Taking these people with us was insanity. They didn’t trust us. They didn’t want to work with us. They sure as hell wouldn’t help us. So why did I feel like this was our only chance at making the world right?
Trent rubbed a hand over the stubble along his chin, his eyes looking out into the distance, but seeing nothing. His gaze was snagged by Nirbhay, who was imitating Trent’s every move. But where Trent had a square jaw, hard earned lines, and rough whiskers from not having shaved for several days, Nirbhay had young skin, filthy and marked by disease, yet somehow the embodiment of our future.
Trent leaned forward and ruffled the child’s hair. Nirbhay didn’t jump back in fright. He just smiled. Gap-toothed, broken upper lip. But there was no denying it was a smile.
“We take them with us,” Trent said, stilling my heart. Making me for some strange reason want to cry. “No one gets left behind.”
Sixteen
Explain!
Trent
Perhaps the most surprising thing wasn’t that the Lunnoners accepted our offer. It was that we’d made it at all. The Merrikan soldiers watched on with unconcealed looks of incredulity. Irdina and what was left of her Masked remained impassive. And Beck and his Cardinals simply accepted the order as soon as they knew it had come from Lena herself.
Alan raised an eyebrow, but he didn’t question my decision. He knew me too well. I didn’t particularly think having the Lunnoners along was a good idea. Fuck, I knew it wasn’t. But this was Lena. This was my Lena. And, damn it all, I was determined she’d get the support she desperately needed. And she’d get it from me before anyone else.
But once a rebel leader, always a rebel leader. I knew giving her this would make it easier to get what I wanted.
And what I wanted was an edge on a more powerful opponent.
Urip was too strong, too populous, too advanced to combat with rebel-like warfare. We needed the big guns. And as Hammurg was defended with the same drones we had at our command, the same laser guns we touted, and jet fighters beyond even our technological advancement, we were at a major disadvantage.
We needed an edge.
I would be the last person to trust Calvin Carstairs. The man had created Shiloh. We were still paying for that. But his mistake was a hard earned lesson. He’d told us, he had learned from it. He wouldn’t repeat it. He’d been more careful this time. And there was no denying that the new and improved version of Shiloh, SMIII or Calvin as we called it, was better. More stable. Less genocidal. More inclined to save the world instead of dominate it.
But once that flash-drive uploaded to his programme all bets would be off.
Carstairs knew we were staring down the barrel of a gun. He knew we were outnumbered. Out gunned. And expected. We didn’t just have our backs against a wall, we had blindfolds on, flashing lights above our heads shouting “aim here” and our hands tied.
But Calvin could change all that.
I didn’t truly think Carstairs would sink us in it just to save the world. He loved Lena. Hell, the man had been beside himself with regret and guilt and heartache at the end. A bit like his daughter right now. Carstairs would have done anything to keep Lena safe, so no, I didn’t think he’d drop us in it to save the world and rid it of Urip.
But I did think he’d operate outside any known parameters to achieve that goal.
What would Calvin, SMIII, become?
We needed to know.
We had no choice in the matter.
The water lapped around the small boat as it slowly made its way under a thankfully cloudy night sky towards our main vessel. We were overloaded, but thought it best to make only one trip, than risk being spotted twice. The jets hadn’t been back, but the threat of their return was ever present. Everyone was on edge. Me included.
And not just because I was about to force Lena to do something I didn’t think she was ready for.
I took one last look around the crowded deck, taking in the nervous faces of the Lunnoners, the determined look of Beck’s men, the stoic façades of the Merrikan soldiers dotted here and there, as if their presence was only to witness how this went.
We still didn’t know why they were here at all. Sure, they owed a lot to Carstairs, by all accounts he’d brought their nation out of the past. Given them technologies that had changed their lives forever. Their debt was great. But was it great enough to unite a fractured world?
So many unknowns and we were heading into the worst of them.
Urip was like us. But not. In so many ways, I knew they’d be foreign. And yet they’d traded with us. Purchased our drones and laser guns. Sold us Serenity Tabs and cigarettes. We knew them. But we also didn’t know them enough.
Tattoos. I rubbed my forearm as I made my way inside the cabin, bracing for impact.
Si was working on the Net with Calvin. What they’d see there was anyone’s guess. Satellite images weren’t reliable, we knew this. And even if they were, Hammurg was in darkness. Corrupting any visual we could possibly get. Alan was talking to Irdina. I was sure his intention wasn’t to contain the Masked woman and her men, but it was good enough for now.
That left Lena. The object of my desires. And, right now, the reason for my heartache.
I wanted to make the world right for her. I wanted to take all the threats away and pulverise them to dust. I wanted to see her on our deck again, lying back in the heat of Wánměi. I wanted to hear her laugh. To make her moan. To let her fly free on the breeze of my love.
I wanted so much for Lena. But most of all I wanted her to survive. To live. To get to the other side of this… minefield in one piece.
God help
me, but if anything happened to Lena, I’d destroy what was left of the world.
I hadn’t realised I was a bomb waiting to go off. But there you have it. Deep inside me was a trigger I prayed would never get pulled.
I sat down beside her, dread making my stomach churn. Desperation making me taste bile.
Lena.
“I understand, you know,” she whispered softly after some time. “I realise we’ve got no choice.”
So perceptive. Such a dichotomy when you considered she was born Elite.
“If there was another way…”
“I know,” she said quietly. “But there isn’t.”
“There’s still a day of sailing before we get there,” I hedged. Even though I knew delaying would cause her more pain. Logic had no reason when it came to my feelings for Lena. I wanted to protect her. I’d do anything to protect her. Even suffer through her pain.
“No,” she said. The word strong but almost soundless. Just a breath of determined air. “Let me say goodbye.”
If I could have, I would have saved her from this. I could already see the crack in her façade. The pain of her heart breaking seeping out from deep within. I longed to reach out and hold her, as if somehow holding her would stop all that agony from spilling out.
But the pain was on the inside, already there, and there was nothing I could do to reach it. Stop this.
“You want me to give you some space?” I asked, feeling the knife twist in my gut as I said it.
“Stay with me,” she whispered. Three words that meant so much.
I wrapped an arm around her shoulders, turned her into my chest, blocking her from anyone else’s sight. She reached up a shaking hand to her earpiece and turned it on. The trembling started migrating to her arm, and then her torso, and soon her entire frame was shivering. I held her. I kept her close. I brushed a reassuring hand down her side, offering what little comfort I could.
Wiped Page 11