“He’s the man who ordered your mother’s death. Now you have a chance to make him pay.”
Make him pay.
Images of my mother flash through my mind again, as I stare out at the square. “This was where it happened,” I whisper.
This is where she was chased down. This was where she died.
Inside me, something stirs. A burning ache in my stomach.
“Yes. But that’s not all. He was responsible for the health and education of Outsiders. For population control. It’s because of his laws that you and so many other people are classed as illegal. That you’re forced to scrape out a life on the streets. He could have done something to change the system. He should have done something.”
“He should have done something,” I repeat, staring at the spot where my mother died. The gathering crowd doesn’t reach back that far. If I blink I can almost picture her crumpled body. Her dark blood staining the cobbles.
My fists ball at my side and the embers burning in my gut spring into flames. They burst the cage door open, releasing years of memories. Memories I had locked away. The cold nights shivering on the street or up on my rooftop. The pain when the kind hobie woman had warmed my wet, frozen feet. The shopkeeper who had turned me away, but pressed food into my hand when he thought no one was looking.
I remember the times I’d got sick, but had to wait it out, not knowing if I’d survive or not, unable to go to a medic for help. Stealing books and trying to remember the letters my mother had taught me. Gazing with envy at the children lined up at the school gate. The children who were allowed to learn.
“It was because of him. All because of him.”
Her words trigger more memories. Begging on the street. The first time I tasted tronk and the man who sowed the seeds of that addiction. The men who raped me. The men who I let rape me because it was that or starve.
The fire rages inside me. It consumes me.
More recent memories. Lily. My beautiful Lily. The Gollin children, huddled over their mother’s body as the Metz officer loomed closer.
Hot tears blur my vision and stream down my cheeks. The fire burns me up inside and drives the water from my body. Something is pressed into my hand. A gun.
A gentle shove from behind causes me to stumble forward. The kneeling man turns to look at me, and as his eyes meet mine my resolution falters. They are not like Trey’s to look at, but there’s the same expression of hurt and resignation that I saw last time we parted. I take a step back and lower my arm.
Can I take away Trey’s father? Because he took away my mother?
“It is your right, Aleesha,” Katya whispers in my ear. “You must avenge your mother’s death. It’s the only way you can be whole. The only way to heal the wound.”
I shake my head and wipe my arm across my eyes. Damn tears. “No. I … it’s not right. It shouldn’t be this way.”
But I don’t know what’s right anymore. Tears cloud my vision and anger clouds my thoughts.
Maybe if he dies, the government will listen. Maybe then things will change.
“Look around. The people are demanding it. They want justice. They trust you to make the right decision.”
I open my mind a crack to let the shouts of the crowd in and take a step back in shock.
“Aleesha! Justice! Aleesha! Justice!”
They’re calling my name. Mine. I scan the faces. I recognize some of them – a lot of them. My people. They don’t deserve to be starved and poisoned. To have their children taken from them. We may not be smart or beautiful, but we deserve better.
“Aleesha!”
They’re looking to me. Not in fear or disgust, but in admiration.
They trust you to make the right decision.
How can I let them down?
I step forward. I’m behind him now, he’s kneeling in front of me. A criminal awaiting execution. I raise the gun and point it at the back of his head.
His blood will be on your hands.
My hand wavers.
They want justice. They trust you.
My finger grips the trigger and a strange feeling passes over me, like I’ve been here before.
You let him go, remember?
But it’s so hard to think over the baying of the crowd.
Why? Why did I let him go?
And then it comes to me. Giles’s words. And Bryn’s. And Trey’s. Revenge is not the answer. Because if I kill him now, how does that make me any better than him? Than them?
I can kill if I have to, if my life depends on it, but not like this. Not when he’s kneeling helplessly in front of me. This isn’t justice.
I lower my arm. The gun drops from my hand and clatters down the steps.
“No,” I whisper.
The crowd falls silent. There’s a murmur of unease.
“What are you doing?” Katya hisses in my ear.
“I-I can’t do it …” I turn to her. The tears on my cheeks feel cold now. “Not like this. This isn’t a trial, it’s a mob.”
Her face hardens. “It’s the only justice there is out here.” She pushes past me and pulls her own weapon from her belt.
“Andrew Goldsmith. You have been judged by your people – the people you were elected to protect – and have been sentenced to death.”
There’s a scatter of cheers from the crowd.
No, this isn’t right.
I turn and reach out for her arm, but I’m pulled backward by two of the guards. My fingers claw at empty air. A movement at the back of the crowd catches my attention. It’s Trey. He’s running toward us, but he’s too slow. He’s not going to make it in time. I redouble my efforts to get free but the men holding me are too strong.
“No!” My cry is lost in the cheering of the crowd.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
Katya lowers her gun until it’s resting against the back of Andrew Goldsmith’s head. His body trembles and his lips move with unspoken words. A prayer perhaps?
“This is their justice.”
The shot rings out and the crowd falls silent.
For a second, Andrew Goldsmith remains kneeling. Then he slowly topples forward and falls face down on the steps. Blood spills from the wound on his head. The noise of the crowd swells. Shouts of anger and jubilation.
Blood. Always blood.
I tear my eyes away and search the crowd for Trey. He’s staring blankly at the place his father had been kneeling, his mouth open. If he’s screaming, I can’t hear it over the cheers and shouts of the crowd. He strains against Bryn, who’s holding him back, his arms wrapped tightly around Trey’s thin body. As I watch, he pulls Trey’s head into his shoulder, as if by doing so he can hide him from the horror of what’s just happened.
His eyes flick from Trey to Katya and a look of revulsion passes across his face. Then he turns and begins to pull Trey away, the two of them stumbling together from Rose Square.
My legs finally give way and I fall to my knees. When I close my eyes, all I see is Trey’s face, ravaged with grief and horror. And in the ashes of my heart, I know that I have lost him.
My only friend.
I slump with my head in my hands on the steps at the base of the statue. Trey’s face is frozen in my mind, overlain on a sequence of images that replays again and again. The shot. Andrew Goldsmith falling to the ground. The blood. Except in the image, it’s me holding the gun. Me shooting him.
Someone sits down beside me and there’s a light touch on my shoulder.
“Hey.”
Katya. I jerk my head up and pull away.
“What now?”
“Nothing. Just thought you might want to talk.” She rests her elbows on her knees and looks out at the square. The crowd have dispersed. The spectacle is over.
“What will happen to …” I can’t finish the sentence.
“The body?” She glances at me. “We’ll make sure it’s returned to his family. Milicent will help with that.”
Of course. Milicent.
<
br /> “I’m not a monster, you know,” Katya says, staring out. “I don’t like killing people and I don’t do it needlessly.”
Even now, she can’t leave me alone.
“Really.” She begins to pick at an invisible thread on her sleeve. “I was like you once, you know.”
I snort. “I doubt that!”
There’s an awkward silence. I wish she would just go away. I’m barely able to move; all the energy has drained from my body. But she seems determined to talk.
“I was born in Moscow.” She gives me a sideways glance. “That’s in Russia. My father was an important man. Like here, genetic enhancements for embryos are reserved for the rich and powerful. My sister and I were given everything. Beauty, brains, athleticism. The full package. When I was eight, my father was assassinated.”
She glances at me again, but I keep looking straight ahead.
“A friend of my father’s smuggled me, my sister and my mother out of the city. He took us to a secret cabin in the wilderness. He was the only person we saw for three years. My mother was an amazing woman. She kept us alive and taught us so much. Our society at the time was dominated by men. But you could succeed as a woman if you picked the right men to approach … if you knew how to use them. Perhaps the same skills you learned growing up here.”
I swallow hard. Like the gangs. We rise and fall with our men. Or because of them.
“One day, when I was eleven and my sister, Anya, fifteen, a group of soldiers stormed the cabin and arrested us. They offered no explanation, but they must have caught Stavros and tortured him into revealing our existence. He didn’t care for us kids much, but he loved my mother. Self-interest all the way. That’s men for you. We were taken to a Gulag. It’s where they send people who don’t fit into the society the government want. You have to be strong to survive the Gulags and most people give up. In Russia, our winters are harsh. Many freeze and starve.”
A shiver runs down my back and I wrap my arms around my knees. The memories of cold nights and frozen feet play through my mind.
“It doesn’t get that cold here, does it? You don’t even get snow. In the Gulags, it buried the ground for half the year. But worse than the snow was the wind. It blew from the north, cutting through you as if you were made of paper and whistling through the gaps in the hut where moss wouldn’t stick. Even today, the whistling of wind through a crack takes me back.
“My mother caught the attention of the camp commander on the first day. She was so beautiful. He invited her to dinner, but of course, it wasn’t just dinner.” Her fingers play with the loose thread, tugging it from her sleeve. “Every night she came back broken, until one day something in her snapped. We knew when she went to him that night that she wouldn’t be coming back. She was too spirited – it wasn’t in her nature to be submissive. The next day, they made us watch as her body was fed to the camp dogs.”
My stomach turns, sending a rush of nausea up my throat. I close my eyes, but it doesn’t help.
“Anya also got singled out,” Katya continues, as calmly as if she were discussing the weather. “I was still plain, skinny and flat-chested, but she was beautiful. Like a china doll. The camp guards weren’t supposed to interfere with the occupants, but it didn’t stop them. One Christmas Eve, the guards were having a party. They came and took her away. They were drunk on vodka, but not drunk enough.” Her tone turns bitter and she spits out each word in turn. “They raped her. Again, and again, and again. Sometimes more than one at a time. She was thrown back into our hut in the early hours of the morning and died later the same day. I held her in my arms and promised I would avenge her. Avenge them both.”
I swallow. “So how did you escape?” I just want this to be over.
Katya jerks out of her daze. Tears shimmer in her eyes. “I was lucky. The women in my building looked after me. Made sure I was kept as grubby and ugly as possible. One day, a few years after Anya died, a man was brought in with the latest batch of workers. He was different to other people in the Gulag. Intelligent. A fighter. And handsome – he must have come from a wealthy family. At first, he ignored the scruffy kid who latched onto him, but I was the only person who could remember Moscow – if only faintly at that point – and have a proper conversation with him. He taught me how to fight and together, we figured out a way to escape.
“Back in Moscow, I chose the highest profile gang, walked up to its leader and persuaded him to take me as his companion.” She smiles across at me. “My mother taught me well. Three years later, I hunted down and killed the camp commander and guards from the Gulag. I built connections in the government, kept digging until I found out who had arranged for my father’s death. Then I killed her too.”
She turns and takes my hands in hers. Her skin is smooth and soft, unlike my cracked hands and torn fingernails. “We have both had to fight for survival, you and I. We have both lost our parents. And I can see it inside of you – the need to avenge your mother’s death. Only then will you be able to move on. To accept what has happened and build your own life.”
Her gaze locks me in, but for once, I don’t feel threatened. I understand now, why she is the way she is. Why she placed that gun in my hand.
But she is wrong.
When you let revenge define you, all you have is bitterness and regret.
Giles was right, even if I didn’t want to listen to him.
I pull my hands away gently. “I’m sorry, but I’m not that person. I can’t do it. I’m not as strong as you … I can’t kill someone in cold blood, even if they hurt me. There has to be another way.”
“There is no other way, Aleesha,” Katya says softly. “At least, not in this society as it is now.” She pats me on the knee and gets to her feet. “Think about it. And when the time comes – when you’re ready – I will help you face your demons.”
She says something to one of the other men and they walk away, leaving me alone. I stare down at my feet.
Justice and revenge. I had thought they were two words for the same thing. But I was wrong.
24
Trey
The world spins. I push against the arms that hold me. Whose are they? It doesn’t matter.
Nothing matters.
I let myself be carried away, my feet stumbling obediently along the rough street. There’s a thick fog in my head that stops me thinking. Something bad’s happened. But my brain has shut down.
I feel like that time I got lost in the snow in Wales and lay down to sleep. It was cold, so cold, but after a while the cold went away and I just felt numb. Like I was floating on air.
The arms push me down. My knees bend and I half fall onto a stone step.
“Trey?”
Trey. That’s me.
I’m shaking, so hard that my teeth rattle in my jaw.
“Trey! Talk to me!”
The voice cuts through the fog in my head. I shake my head. My ears clear and I flinch as I’m suddenly assaulted by noise.
“W-what?”
I look around. A narrow street. People walking by. Bryn knelt in front of me.
Bryn.
I focus on him. There are deep creases on his forehead and his eyebrows have moved so close together that they look like one. He mouths some words that I don’t catch.
“I-I …”
But I don’t know what to say. Something bad has happened. I can feel it. Something b—
It comes back to me, slamming into the forefront of my thoughts like a sledgehammer.
Father.
The gun.
The shot.
An image appears in my head. He’s kneeling at the top of the steps surrounding the statue, his hands cupped together in front of him. His face is pale but his eyes, when they meet mine, are not fearful but resigned. He opens his mouth to speak, and somehow I know his words are addressed to me. That he had something he wanted to say to me. But at that moment, the gun fires and his face freezes.
I was too late.
I didn’t see wh
ere he fell. The baying crowd blocked my vision. I wonder if anyone reached out an arm to catch him. Or if they just let him fall, face down, on the ground.
Was it quick? It looked quick.
I shake my head, trying to rid myself of the thought. But the sequence replays itself, again and again.
“Trey, please talk to me! We need to get out of here.” Bryn’s voice is anxious. Afraid.
Bryn, afraid?
I force myself to focus on what’s here, what’s happening now. Bryn’s tugging at my arm. But my limbs are so heavy.
“Go away,” I mumble, leaning back against the wall.
“Trey, I know you’ve had a shock and I’m sorry. But we have to go now.” Bryn leans closer and I can smell the mint on his breath as he whispers to me. “They know you’re his son.”
“What?”
I force myself to sit up and look around. A small group of people stand in a huddle a little further up the street. They’re muttering to each other and occasionally one of them looks in our direction. The man nearest us holds a serrated knife down by his thigh. He strokes the blade with one finger.
Do they want to hurt us?
It’s so hard to think. I look the other way. Two guys my own age are walking up the alley. They each have a snake tattoo that encircles their necks, choking them.
They’re coming for us.
Bryn pulls me to my feet. But it’s too late.
“Yer that boy on the screens, aren’t you? His son.” The guy jerks his head back up the street. “An Insider.”
“We’re just going,” Bryn says, pushing past him.
But his friend steps forward to block our path. “Don’t think I know you. Yer not from around ’ere, are you?”
“I’d suggest letting us past.” Bryn’s voice is low and dangerous. “You’ll regret it if you don’t.”
The first guy chuckles. “Are you threatening us, old man?”
Bryn takes a step back toward me. Without taking his eyes off the guys with the snake tattoos, he mutters under his breath, “When you see a break, run for it, okay? I’ll hold them off as long as possible.”
Infiltrators (The Wall Series Book 2) Page 24