by Natasha Ngan
‘No, sir.’ Cobe felt sweat beading across his forehead, but he resisted the urge to wipe it away. ‘Unless …’
‘Unless?’
‘Perhaps it has something to do with Silver’s parents?’ Cobe didn’t think he was giving anything away by telling the truth about that part. After all, the Council must have realised that was the triggering factor in her and Butterfly’s disappearance.
Senior Surrey stared at him as if deep in thought. When he next spoke, his voice was low and dangerous. ‘They won’t be coming back.’
Cobe felt fear like a knife-twist in the heart. ‘What … what do you mean, sir?’ he asked, trying to keep his voice steady.
‘They can’t leave and expect to come back,’ said Senior Surrey coldly. He walked back to the desk and sat on its edge, looking down at Cobe. His smile didn’t reach his eyes.
‘But, sir –’
Senior Surrey raised a hand to quieten Cobe. ‘I have a theory. See, we have been experiencing energy leeching from somewhere beyond the city walls for some time now. No need to act so surprised. I am telling you this, Cobe, as you are an Elite, and you have proved yourself worthy of the information. Alongside this, there have been concerning developments as anti-birthchip groups grow stronger, gaining more information. My thought is the two are related, and that there is an anti-birthchip movement outside Neo as well as within it, and that this is who is leeching our energy.’
Cobe felt his heart thudding. He’d never heard anyone talk so confidently about the Outside, especially someone within the Council. He clenched his hands under the desk to stop them shaking. Something bad was coming, he could tell.
‘I believe that Silver and Butterfly may have found the anti-birthchip group’s settlement,’ continued Senior Surrey. ‘Maybe that was the reason they left, and they have been working for the anti-birthchip cause for a while. I do not know. But what I do know is if that is where they are, then we must take advantage of this opportunity.’
Cobe swallowed. ‘What do you mean, sir?’ he said, barely able to get the words out.
Senior Surrey smiled. His handsome face was friendly, and he looked as though he was considering something very pleasant, but there was a biting edge to his voice as he answered. ‘I mean to follow Butterfly and Silver to the anti-birthchip resistance outside the city, and destroy them all.’
It had taken everything Cobe had in him not to run out of Senior Surrey’s office right then. He’d forced himself to walk calmly away after being dismissed, then up through the Stacks back to his bedroom. But all the while, it’d felt as though his chest was exploding.
Now, two days later, as he glared at the red light of the birthchip charm on the table in front of him, Cobe felt that same chaotic surge of despair and unease rising inside him. How could he have objected to Senior Surrey’s plan? His hatred of anti-birthchip groups was as strong as any Council member’s. But his feelings for his Elite junior were stronger. He’d known the second the words had left Senior Surrey’s mouth he wouldn’t let Butterfly and Silver get killed. To ensure their safety he had to find a way to turn their birthchip blockers on.
The opportunity had arisen yesterday evening, when Senior Surrey sent him on assignment to oversee the delivery of explosives to the Pigeons and follow it to where the group were based. Cobe’s luck had been in. Not only did he find that Limpets rat Akhezo skulking in the stairwell and managed to negotiate for him to turn Butterfly and Silver’s birthchip blockers on, but he’d also had the location of the Pigeons’ hideout to bring back to Senior Surrey. He hoped that would take Senior Surrey’s attention away from Butterfly and Silver for a little while.
Still, he couldn’t rely on that. Senior Surrey was a man who saw his decisions through with a steady, fierce determination, so ever since the previous evening, Cobe had been waiting anxiously for Akhezo to turn on Butterfly and Silver’s blockers. As long as the red light was still lit in the birthchip charm, it meant they were still not safe.
‘Come on, Akhezo!’ he growled, slamming his hand on the table. He got up and paced in front of the glass wall, trying to ignore the glowing red dot. Then, on the sixth or seventh lap of the window –
The light was off.
Cobe didn’t dare believe it. He ran over to the birthchip charm, picking it up. No red eye nestled at its heart. The light was really gone. He fell to his knees, clutching the birthchip charm with shaking hands. He couldn’t believe it. He’d done it. His Elite junior was safe.
‘Butterfly,’ he whispered. ‘I –’
The sharp sound of knuckles on the bedroom door made him look up. He heard a voice murmuring behind it. Blinking back the tears that had come to his eyes, Cobe brushed down his clothes, stuffed the birthchip charm in his pocket, and went to open the door.
‘Cobe!’ Taiyo exclaimed as he opened it. She was standing next to Allum, the top of her head only reaching his waist. She swayed her hips, swinging her hoop-hemmed dress, and smiled tentatively. ‘We were wondering whether you wanted to get lunch with us. We haven’t spent much time together since … since, you know, because someone thought you might want space.’ She shot a dark look upwards at Allum, who rolled his eyes. ‘But I think it’s about time we start hanging out together. Otherwise, when Butterfly and Silver come home, they’ll be angry with us for not staying friends!’
‘Great idea!’ Cobe said, with so much enthusiasm Taiyo raised one eyebrow. ‘Let me just change and then I’ll come along.’
‘Really? I thought you were going to turn us away and carry on sulki—’
Allum laughed quickly, ruffling her hair. ‘Come now, baby girl. He said yes, didn’t you hear? Now, what do you fancy, Cobe? We were thinking the Dumpling Bar in Chinatown.’
‘Sounds perfect.’ Cobe grinned, and he truly meant it.
It was bright outside. Cobe felt giddy under the heat of the sun as they walked down Noda Parkway, flushed with relief at the thought that he might just have saved Butterfly and Silver. Of course, he couldn’t be sure, but he’d given them a way to evade Senior Surrey’s plans now, and he had this strange sense that it would work. Perhaps it was the warmth of the springtime day, or perhaps it was just the buoyancy of being in his friends’ company, but something told Cobe that Butterfly and Silver would be safe now.
‘I’m going to get those giant dumplings,’ said Taiyo. ‘You know the ones – pork and honey. They’re so big even you couldn’t fit one in your mouth whole, Allum!’
Allum glanced over at Cobe and winked. ‘Oh, is that so, baby girl? Well, I think that sounds like a bet.’
Cobe laughed, but was cut short as he stumbled into someone.
‘Watch it!’ a voice hissed.
It was Ember. She looked striking, her hair a flaming red under the sun. She was dressed in a colourful scaled cape, her eyebrows decorated with the thick brushstroke pattern popular among Neo-Babel’s fashionable women.
‘Sorry, Ember,’ he muttered.
Taiyo danced forward. ‘We’re just off to the Dumpling Bar. Do you want to come?’
Ember brushed the girl aside, grabbing Cobe’s hand and pulling him away. ‘I was just coming to find you,’ she said. ‘I have good news about our juniors.’
He nodded. So she knows about Butterfly and Silver’s birthchip blockers activating too, he thought.
‘I’ve just come back from Central Police Command,’ she continued. ‘Surrey let me oversee the dispatch of the special team of police soldiers he sent to the location outside Neo where our idiot juniors are. They’ve been scoping the place out for the past half-hour. Apparently, there is a village. A village! Probably full of anti-birthchip sympathisers and escaped criminals. So Surrey ordered the soldiers to kill the lot of them. They’re doing it right now.’ She laughed coldly. ‘How incredible is that?’
Cobe stared at her. The ground beneath his feet seemed to have dropped away.
‘I came here because I wanted to thank you,’ said Ember.
He made a choking sound. ‘Thank me?�
��
‘Indeed. You conducted the information exchange with that anti-birthchip scum. Without his information, we wouldn’t have known Butterfly and Silver were outside, and Surrey might not have decided to track their birthchips. It’s all thanks to you. I assumed you were as weak as the rest of them, but maybe not. Well done.’
With that, Ember shot one scathing look at Taiyo and Allum behind them before stalking off, her scaled cape flashing in the sun.
Taiyo reached out to grab his hand. ‘What’s wrong, Cobe?’ she asked, but he staggered away from her.
It can’t be, he thought. It just can’t. Blindly, he spun round and began to run. Allum’s voice boomed at his back but Cobe ignored him, running faster, down the broad sweep of Noda Parkway, clipping past people who jumped out of his way. As he ran, he bit back the tears that were filling his eyes.
He’d never considered that the birthchip charm might have turned off because Butterfly was dead.
24
Fire and Ice
Back in the broken house. The smell of burnt things, and heavy smoke thickening the air. Rain drumming the roof.
Butterfly wasn’t dead, but his mother and sister were. Kneeling on the floor, he cradled Emeli in his arms. He’d not moved since he’d first found her and picked her up. Like Emeli, Leanor had been flung from the bed where she had been sleeping. She lay face down on the floor. She could have just been sleeping, but her body was shaped wrong. She was too still.
Minutes had stretched by after Silver left. Though half the house had been blown apart, there were no flames feeding on the part that still stood, and so Butterfly hadn’t needed to move. A small miracle, or perhaps an apology. The smoke that filled the room kept him and his mother and sister hidden from the rest of the world. Huddled in its cloudy arms, he’d almost forgotten that there was a rest of the world when the gunfire began.
Unlike Silver, there was no rage. No anger accompanied the realisation of what was happening, no hard, hot fire. Instead, a coldness spread through him. He hadn’t heard Yasir’s story, but he’d had his own suspicions about the Council’s actions in the Outside from what his mother and sister had told him. After all, the Council had tried to kill his family. They clearly had no reservations or loyalties, even for their own.
Butterfly placed Emeli gently on the floor beside Leanor. ‘I’ll be back soon,’ he whispered.
As he turned to leave, he stepped on his backpack lying in the doorway. Silver had been wearing hers that morning, but he’d followed her without his. Of all the things not to have been damaged, he thought, and he almost broke down again right there in the doorway. But instead he forced himself to remain calm. He opened the bag and pulled out his stungun.
From the corridor came the sound of hurried footsteps. Butterfly looked up see a masked soldier scrambling into the house. For a split second, they stared at each other. Then –
Butterfly dived forward as bullets flicked over his head. He collided with the soldier and they fell onto the floor in a tumble of thuds, bodies crashing. Butterfly scrambled up. The soldier still had his gun, and was starting to raise it, but Butterfly was quicker. He lunged forward with his stungun. Immediately, the soldier’s body turned rigid. Then he slumped down, unconscious, the gun falling from his hand.
Butterfly stared at it. An N70 pistol, just like the ones they practised with at the shooting range. He tucked the stungun into the waistband of his trousers and bent down to pick up the real gun.
Outside, in the world of fire and rain. Crushed primroses underfoot. Birds screaming high overhead. Huge, engorged clouds emptying and emptying on the pitiful landscape as though trying to wash the world away.
Silver ran towards the soldier. He hadn’t spotted her, and she slammed into him from behind, sending his gun flying. They smashed into the ground. Digging her fingers into the mud-slicked earth, she brought her knee up to meet with the soldier’s stomach. Then she scrambled past him, reaching for his gun.
She had forgotten about the bag on her back. The stungun inside it.
Silver grabbed the soldier’s gun, feeling the familiar shape of the N70 in her hands. She spun round. Aimed it at the soldier. He was back on his feet and turning to look at her. Her hand trembled slightly but she held it still enough, and when his masked face lifted –
You’re going to pay for this.
She pulled the trigger.
The bullet hit the soldier in the forehead. He spun. Fell to the ground. Lay still.
Silver stared at his body. It was the first time she had killed someone. She was surprised at how natural it felt, as if the bullet was just all the anger inside her hardened into a tiny shell and expelled from her fingertips. Expelled from her heart. She felt nothing at all for the soldier. Turning away, she scanned the village for more soldiers. The red fire still burned inside her. In her mind bullets clustered, clamouring to be let free.
Holding the soldier’s gun tight in one hand, Butterfly stepped out of Leanor and Emeli’s house. Rain rushed to meet him, but he barely noticed it as he picked his way across the rubble, his ears pricking at every gunshot. He followed the sounds further into the village. Immediately he spotted soldiers darting from house to house. A spattering of gunfire rose and fell as they found survivors then moved on. It was quick. Clinical. Still Butterfly felt only coldness, and an itch in his trigger finger.
The soldiers hadn’t seen him yet. They were busy with their work, and the rain cloaked him, blurring him into the landscape so he was nothing more than a shadow against the smoke and fire. He approached the building where one soldier had disappeared inside, flattened himself against the wall, and waited. When the soldier ran back out less than a minute later, he darted out.
Butterfly aimed low. The bullet glanced off the soldier’s leg and the man turned, his masked face swinging towards him, an arm raising his gun –
A clean, crisp gunshot ripped through the air.
The soldier jerked forward. His gun went off – the bullet went wide of Butterfly – then he fell to the ground, still. Behind him stood Silver. Her face was so cold and hard that Butterfly didn’t recognise her at first. She lowered her gun, running over and dragging him round the corner of the building. They slammed back against the wall, panting.
‘You shot …’ he breathed.
Silver didn’t seem to hear him. ‘Emeli? Leanor?’
Butterfly shook his head.
‘Oh,’ she whispered. Her face softened for a moment before hardening again. She nodded to his gun. ‘Let’s go.’ She made to move out onto the street but Butterfly grabbed her.
‘What are you doing?’
‘They’re killing everyone,’ said Silver, her voice breaking. ‘We need to stop them.’
‘Where’s your stungun?’ Butterfly demanded.
She shook her head. ‘There’s no time for this.’ She tried to twist out of his grip but he held onto her, fingers digging into her skin.
‘You’ll get killed running around like this, Silver. We need to get away. We need to move … move my mother and sister.’ His voice caught on the last few words.
But Silver wrenched herself free from him, and after a final look – her eyes burned like the buildings around them – she ran back out into the street.
Butterfly cursed, kicking his heels into the ground to run after her. There were a group of soldiers up ahead. He knew that if Silver charged straight at them she wouldn’t stand a chance. She might take a few down, but they were outnumbered, and they weren’t using the measured efficiency the Council had taught them to on assignments. Her reckless anger was going to get her killed. He had to stop her.
Moving the gun to his left hand, Butterfly pulled out his stungun and gave one final burst of speed, pulling the trigger. A shock of blue-white leapt ahead. It caught Silver in the back. She straightened suddenly, falling to the ground. Before the soldiers could notice them, he scooped her up and, clutching her in his arms, ran back towards the other end of the village. The sporadic stutter of g
unfire laughed at his retreating back.
‘Sorry,’ Butterfly whispered, holding Silver tightly to his chest. ‘I’m sorry.’
He didn’t know who he was apologising to.
25
Down the River and Away
First there was grief. Acceptance, and the full, hard blow of it, crippling Butterfly to his knees. The questions, the anger, came later.
Four hours since the explosion. Butterfly stood in the shallows of the river, a few metres away from where he’d left Silver under a willow near the bank. He’d rolled up the bottoms of his trousers and taken his boots off, letting the water rush around his legs, cleaning the ash-grime and mud from his skin and carrying it downriver in dirty brown rivulets. There was some blood too; red curls, fragile and quickly disappearing into the blue.
Butterfly held his mother and sister in his arms. Their bodies were inside a small funeral boat he’d made from tree branches tied together by the ropey leaves of the willow. In Neo-Babel, the custom for many Western Mainland cultures was to float the bodies of the deceased down the river on a wicker-reed boat, handmade by their living relatives, with the funeral procession following behind in a black wind-boat. Out here, he wouldn’t be able to follow Leanor and Emeli, but he could at least send their bodies down the river and away.
The first time Butterfly had been to his family’s funeral, he’d thought they’d been killed in a different explosion. Two boxes, his mother and baby sister in one, his father the other. Now he knew that all they’d contained was air and dust. But this funeral was real. He had to get it right.
He’d found the perfect place for it. A quiet, secret part of the river, sheltered on either side by gorse bushes and small trees. A large willow clung to the bank, brushing the tips of its long arms across the water’s surface. When Butterfly had first found it, the afternoon had still been wreathed in grey light, a drizzle falling that rustled the grass and pattered off the leaves of bushes and trees. But as he waded into the river, the heavy bulks of the clouds rolled away. They left behind the startled face of the sun amid a gleaming, spotless sky. Sunlight swept across the land, a kiss upon his forehead.