The sounds of water running and pots banging came from inside the building across the courtyard. The window open to the early morning air. Steam wafted out around it, and on the clouds of superheated air I smelled it.
Star anise.
Trent moved up beside me, as we watched a young woman stirring something over a small gas hob. We could only see the back of her head. Already dressed in a freak-suit, ready for her day, she used chopsticks to toss noodles in a wok. Her black hair hung straight and limp down between her shoulders, once it would have gleamed. But no more.
She turned sideways to reach for something.
I sucked in a shocked breath of air.
“She’s pregnant,” Trent murmured, the words holding a wealth of agony and angst.
But that wasn’t why I’d gasped. Not the fear that she’d been impregnated by Urip in order to swell their numbers. That alone deserved our shock and rage.
But no. I’d gasped because I recognised her. Despite the change of clothes, the dull hair, the sad eyes, and burgeoning belly. I knew this girl.
I’d known her well.
I’d eaten at her table. I’d purchased services from her father. I’d visited them in their small, off-grid, two room apartment on Olive Grove.
Yeh Zhang Yong had been my IT go-to. When I needed something technical, he’d been my man. I’d paid him well. He’d welcomed my business.
Right up until the day he and his family had been wiped.
The girl’s eyes came up to the window, as if she’d sensed me watching and reminiscing there.
Our gazes met. Trent stiffened. I held my breath.
And she said, softly, clearly… in perfect Wáitaměi, “Papa. We have guests.”
Twenty-Three
This I Understood
Trent
The sound of synchronised boot steps thudded through the still air. The rhythmic beat seeping under the small gap in the open window. Yeh Zhang Yong sat quietly in his armchair across from me, a walking stick leaning tellingly against the wall at his side. He smiled. Took a sip from his steaming tea, and silently waited for the drones to march by.
Lena watched from behind the curtain across the front window; her body tense, her eyes narrowed, her breaths even. It was the second time in the past thirty minutes that drones had walked the Wiped’s streets.
“You have caused quite a stir,” the old man said in Anglisc. I noticed Lena relax visibly, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why. Until then, the man had barely said two words. What he had spoken had been in Wáitaměi. The change in language or the fact he was forming complete sentences meant something to the Elite.
I had to trust her judgement on this; I didn’t know her former IT guru. I just knew he and his family had been wiped moments after Lena had left their home in Muhgah Keekee.
No doubt another guilt she carried with her wherever she went.
“We’ve not exactly been stealthy,” I offered, taking a sip from my own jasmine tea.
“Why are you here?” Yeh asked. He purposely looked down at my bare forearm. “You’ve not been wiped.”
Lena rubbed her wrist under her freak-suit sleeve, but slowly shifted from the window and took a seat beside me. Yeh’s daughter moved around us silently, placing steam filled buns and spicy smelling noodles on the table before us. Lena thanked her in Wáitaměi, serving herself a bun and small portion of noodles.
She didn’t eat.
My eyes met Yeh’s, as he pulled them away from his heavily pregnant daughter. A wealth of sadness and regret flashed briefly in his dark gaze.
“Wánměi is free,” I said. The words seeming more weighty than usual. Maybe because these people had never been free.
Yeh nodded his head, leaning back in his chair contemplatively.
“Your father would have been proud.”
I’m not sure he could have surprised me more. He certainly had surprised Lena. She turned her head to look at me, an expression of wonder in her beautiful eyes.
“You knew him?” I asked, keeping my voice steady. Not easy when my heart had taken a jolt.
Yeh nodded. “I knew them both.”
“Both?” Lena asked.
“Mason Waters and Calvin Carstairs.” Fuck me. Yeh let out a chuckle. His daughter paused in what she was doing, watching her father with shadowed eyes. Eyes that would have shown shock, if they hadn’t been so injured.
Lena leaned forward and placed her uneaten bowl on the table. Her eyes met Yeh’s.
“You were part of the Uprising,” she said. “That’s how you hurt your legs.” She nodded at his wasted lower limbs; barely strong enough to hold the weight of the man, at a guess.
“Yes,” he said.
“But not part of the revolution,” I countered; I would have remembered him.
“No.”
“Working for Chew-wen?” I concluded.
“It would seem obvious, wouldn’t it? But no,” the old man said. “I only ever had one client. My aspirations not as lofty as some. My debts too… precarious to risk Overseer scrutiny.”
“Your wife,” Lena said, looking around the small hovel they called a home, then settling her gentle gaze back on the man. “Where is she, Citizen Yeh?”
A sense of resignation invaded the old man’s features. His wrinkled façade almost crumbling.
“Serenity was their ace up the sleeve,” he said. “They were so used to its value in trade. They forgot it was essential to some. Not all from Wáitaměi were as addicted as my Chuntao. But none from Urip are.” He smiled sadly. “It is an export only commodity.”
“She succumbed,” Lena whispered. Yeh nodded. The daughter made a soft sound from the kitchen. But that was the extent of their tears.
Yeh’s wife had been an addict, then. An addict without her fix and a husband with no means to get it.
“You traded your skills in Wánměi for Serenity Tabs,” I offered.
“Yes.”
“And who would pay you in like?” I asked.
Lena let out a long breath of air.
“My father.”
My head spun to look at her; she didn’t seem surprised.
“Did he at least offer you replicas?” she asked.
“It was too late by then.” Some addicts couldn’t survive on replicas. They needed the real thing. More expensive than the black market version; a travesty that made little sense. Yeh and his family had been backed into a corner. Serenity or insanity. He’d done what he had to, at a guess.
No one should judge.
I looked across the room to his daughter. She didn’t appear to be suffering from withdrawals. But then, they had been here long enough for her to be impregnated.
A topic we still hadn’t had the courage to broach.
“So you worked with Carstairs,” I said. “And Carstairs played both sides. The question is, which side did he have you play on?”
“I have paid for my sins, Citizen Masters. Have you?”
Well, that put me in my place, didn’t it?
“Citizen Yeh,” Lena said softly. “Where is your younger daughter? Your son?”
He smiled softly at the mention of his children. A father who had done, no doubt, unconscionable things in order to keep them alive. His failure at keeping his eldest daughter safe must have weighed on him. Tremendously.
“Hwei-ru is working a night shift at the Färi. She is a maid. Junjie should be home soon.” He glanced toward the window Lena had stood vigilance at only moments before, a small crease marring his brow.
Lena checked her watch. “Do the u-Pol change shifts at dawn?”
“Yes.” His eyes sharpened. “All shifts rotate every twelve hours. Hwei-ru has worked through the night.”
“And Jungie?” I asked.
“He is thankfully too young to be put to work.”
“And the drones?” Lena pressed. “Do they rotate out?”
“Why would they? They are Füri controlled. Their controllers change, but their drones do not
need to return to base for that to transpire.”
“Then they’ve bypassed the absence of Shiloh,” I deduced.
“They have found a way to patch a leak, no more.”
I held the man’s steady gaze, something clicking into place for me.
“They are not aware of your skills,” I guessed.
He shook his head. “Those who had talents similar to mine were eliminated as soon as we arrived. My legs - or lack of usable legs - saved me. I am but a cripple in their eyes.”
“Shortsighted of them,” I said.
“Indeed. Shiloh had still been functioning when we arrived in Hammurg. They thought themselves rulers of the world.”
Mikhail had been incensed with the loss of Shiloh. Angered in such a way you had to ask, was it just shock or a bitterness that made his search for vengeance so vile? I was guessing Urip hadn’t realised the extent of Shiloh’s control, and when she fell, and their drones followed suit, they would have been riled.
Mikhail had been fucking riled.
Lena bit her bottom lip and then lifted her gaze to mine. I raised my eyebrows at her; this was her call. I didn’t think we had much choice in trusting the man, but I didn’t know him. And the fact that’d he’d worked with her duplicitous father made the waters a hell of a lot more murkier. But this was her call. She knew him. His children. His dead wife.
She turned her attention back to the man, holding his steady gaze for a long while.
“Citizen Yeh, are you happy?” It seemed a strange question, but really, it was all that mattered. The man was capable of playing hardball, even I could see that. And not afraid to get dirty doing it, either. But had he been beaten down too far? Or did he still have a rebel bone in that broken old body?
“What is happiness, Lena?” he asked in turn. “A roof over our head. Food in our stomachs.”
“That’s not an answer, Zhang Yong,” she shot back, taking the hand he’d given her and relaxing the formality in titles.
“No. It’s not.” His gaze shifted to his silent daughter, standing in the kitchen, hands clasped before her bulging belly, face tilted to the floor in submission.
“No,” he repeated. Stronger. Harder. “I am not happy.”
Lena reached into the pocket of her freak-suit and pulled out the vid-screen she’d stolen from one of the downed u-Pol officers back in the prison cells. She leaned forward slowly and placed it on the table between us. It was switched off, but a red light blinked rapidly in the corner of the device; indicating it was active.
“What have you done, little Lena?” Yeh said.
Fuck.
“Liling!” he said quickly. “Send the signal and bring me my bag.” His daughter rushed from the room as Yeh leaned forward and picked the vid-screen up. He pulled something out from beneath his armchair, flipped it open and then switched on both devices. His looked battered and chipped, the screen cracked, the casing scratched to hell. But it was obviously a vid-screen similar to the u-Pol’s. Maybe last year’s line?
Liling came back in the room carrying a small toolkit.
“It is done,” she whispered in Wáitaměi. The old man just grunted. He flipped the toolkit open, rummaged around inside, then pulled out a small, thin screwdriver. Somehow I thought even that innocuous tool was not allowed.
He broke the case open on the new vid-screen, did the same to the back of the old one, then connected them via wires. The screens lit up, scrolls and scrolls of code flashing before our eyes.
He’d started to sweat.
I wasn’t feeling much better. I looked toward Lena, a question in my eyes. She shrugged, her own eyes looking a little too large for her face just then. Something was happening and it didn’t take a genius to work it out.
We had unfortunately caused it. And I had a very bad feeling about that. I stood up and went to the window, not even realising I’d pulled my laser gun out. Liling’s eyes grew round, but she remained silent. I thought perhaps that was her go-to default setting. Not such a bad idea in fucked up Hammurg.
The door suddenly crashed open at the back of the house. I swung around with my laser gun up, the whine accentuating the tense silence of the house. Liling stepped in front of whomever had entered. Her hands up, placatingly.
I lowered the gun. But not my blood pressure.
We were up shit creek and it was about to get real fast.
Lena stood up and peered around Liling’s oversized body. A smile broke out on her face.
“Jungie,” she said in way of greeting.
A young Wáikěinese boy stepped out from behind his sister and smiled a gapped-tooth smile up at Lena.
“Quick,” Zhang Yong said, interrupting the reunion. The boy scampered to his father’s side. Yeh lifted up the u-Pol officer’s vid-screen and handed it to his boy. He looked into the child’s eyes for a suspended moment, something deep and meaningful and crazy heavy with love shared between them. “You know what to do.”
“Papa,” Liling protested. Yeh just clasped a hand on his son’s shoulder and whispered, “I wish you good luck,” in Wáitaměi. A saying I had heard spoken often in Wáikěiton. It carried new meaning here.
It meant so much more than just words. The boy wasn’t even ten, I’d guess. So young and about to lead the u-Pol on a merry chase around Hammurg.
I watched on silently as the child slipped the device into his shirt and ran out of the room. Swiftly. Quietly. A breeze in the air and nothing more. He’d rival Lena in stealth.
There was hope.
My eyes came back to Yeh’s. His looked heavy with worry.
He lifted the older vid-screen up, the one he’d just transferred screeds of written code to from the u-Pol device. And stared at us both; Lena and me. No one said a word.
And then a gong sounded out; in the distance, but close enough to indicated it had originated in this part of the city. On the streets of the Wiped.
“It has begun,” Yeh said.
“What has begun?” I asked.
His eyes swept off mine and landed on Lena.
“Revolution,” she whispered. Yeh nodded.
They’d been waiting for this. For a way in. For a way to fight back.
And we’d just handed it to them.
I looked at the vid-screen. I listened to the muted cries and rhymthic beat of drone feet out on the streets. A laser gun firing made me smile.
Revolution. This I understood. This I was good at.
I reached for Lena’s hand, squeezing her fingers tightly.
We had a battle to fight.
About fucking time.
Twenty-Four
Let’s Go Crash The Party
Lena
There’s something invigorating about a city coming together to fight. I understood what drove Trent now. Not just the reason behind rebellion. But the surge of adrenaline and the crescendo of hope. The chance at surviving.
The Wiped fought back. Not all of them armed with laser guns, but some of them were. And those who weren’t used whatever weapons they could cobble together. Clearly stashed away for just such a moment. Saved for the day the gong rang and Yeh Zhang Yong called for them to fight.
But fighting alone would never have been enough. They’d needed an edge. Like we’d needed an edge. They’d had the numbers, and God knew they’d been clearly training for this at night, but how did you fight drones and an army of u-Pol?
A loud clap of a jet flying overhead - supersonic sound - added to the cacophony of noise down on the streets. I feared they’d just fire on the section of the city that housed the Wiped. Erase them for good. Decimate them once and for all. But within minutes of the first jet flying overhead, the lights went out. The houses and roadways fell into darkness. A few precious minutes before the sun rose for us all to get out of the danger zone.
We took it. We ran with the Wiped beside us. Those armed leading the way. Others helping the infirm. Zhang Yong was shuttled in a large cart along with several women and babies picked up from the nursery. T
he drone guarding there already a smouldering heap when we’d arrived.
They had a plan. We were just along for the ride. For now, all we could do was fire when the Wiped fired. Run when they ran. Hide when they chose to hide. It was chaotic, but beautiful. The light that shone from their eyes so very different for what we had witnessed on the faces of the group of Wiped we’d first followed past the graffiti signs.
There was hope, but an equally as stunning, awe-inspiring look of power. They’d taken something back today. They were riding a wave. They were flying as high as a kite.
But the u-Pol fought back. The drones were relentless. Even as we left the streets of the Wiped neighbourhood, into an area that looked much better kept. Shutters were closed over well maintained buildings. Doors locked tight behind bars. The odd flash of drone eyes peeking out from behind shadows. Some fired. Some simply kept to their station, followed their commands to the letter.
These people had protection, but not all wars needed to be battled with guns.
“I’ve accessed their mainframe,” Zhang Yong called from his seat in the cart at Trent’s and my sides. “I can make it harder for them to navigate the city. Give them false signals. Disrupt their surveillance through various street-cams.”
“Can you access the drones?” Trent asked, barely puffed as he jogged beside the cart, offering the odd shot of laser light from his gun, here and there. We’d chosen to stick close to Zhang Yong and his daughters, Hwei-ru thankfully returning before we’d moved out. But little Jungie was still missing. A gaping hole in the family’s side, right next to the loss of their mother.
“They are more tricky,” Zhang Yong replied. “There are failsafes that even I cannot bypass.”
“But we can,” I said, meeting Trent’s eyes.
“How?” Yeh demanded.
“We need to get to the main gate,” Trent advised, firing a round of laser light at a drone on the roofline across from us. The drone fell forward, arcing slowly through the air, and landing in a crumpled heap at the base of a three storey building.
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