by Seth Rain
More gunfire.
Cries of pain.
Shouting.
The fountain started up.
Gabriel lay on the ground beside him, blood spurting from his mouth.
The burning in Scott’s chest made it impossible to breathe.
‘Dead…’ Gabriel choked, trying to speak. Blood rose up and out of his mouth. ‘Dead…’ He stared straight up, a faint smile curling his lips. ‘Too close,’ Gabriel said.
Scott followed Gabriel’s line of sight. There was an aeroplane in the clear sky: distant, droning, travelling at speed.
‘Too close to the sun,’ Gabriel said. ‘We fall.’
One last gunshot.
And then Gabriel was dead, blood covering the right side of his face, his eyes fixed on Scott, unblinking.
Scott laid a hand on his own chest.
Numb.
Warm blood.
The weight of his body was immense, pulling him down through the ground to something deeper, something elemental.
Next to Scott’s face, on his hand, half covered in blood, he could read his date.
Fifty-Six
Scott poured another whisky and downed it. He rose to his feet, unlocked the door and opened the window. There was no sign of any Watchers. He switched on the TV and cycled through the three channels, each of which reported news through the night. More fighting between Christian and Islamic groups. Disagreements between France and Belgium on the disbandment of the European Union. The dollar in crisis again. Thirty-eight more deaths that day, in accordance with predictions.
He poured another whisky.
Under the table was a box filled with photographs. Before the internet was dismantled, Rebecca had taken every one of her photos offline and printed them. There were thousands. Fifteen years’ worth of Rebecca’s selfies. Every morning she’d take a selfie to check her clothes, make-up and hair. In them, Scott could see her age through the years. But her expression was always the same. Now and then her smile wasn’t on her lips, though it could be seen behind her eyes, waiting to surface. The shape of her body changed through the years – or maybe it was the clothes she wore, depending on the seasons. The summer dresses changed to suits, to jumpers, to cardigans and cotton, then to summer dresses again. He stopped at one photograph. It had been taken the year before – the day after his date had passed. They were smiling, drunk, both holding a finger up to the camera. One more year. At least. Since then, Rebecca had been killed. Her date must have been there all along, unknown to either of them.
He walked to the hall outside his flat to the stairs up to the roof. Then he held on to the banister with one hand, his whisky in the other, and made his way up to the rooftop.
It was a warm April evening. It was the way things were going to be. All around, white fusion lights fizzed across the city. On the hills to the east, the huge wind turbines turned lazily. He checked his watch. The day was already half an hour old. What would he do with another year, anyway?
He walked to the edge of the roof and stared at the road beneath. A self-driver made its way around the bend at the top of the road and whispered past. Above, three aeroplanes were in line, each one gliding across the sky to the west. He closed his eyes and tried to listen to their engines. A breeze climbed the building and brushed past him. He swirled the whisky in the glass then finished it. It was smooth. To not drink whisky, to not feel cotton sheets move over his shoulder, to not yawn, to not feel cold water against his face … what would that be like?
He took half a step closer to the edge of the roof and his eyes flickered open. To tip forward and fall. That was something he could only do once. He drew breath, before stepping away from the edge.
Every minute, every second of that day, he chose to stay alive. Why he chose to do so was beyond him. But he had chosen all the same.
Fifty-Seven
Sirens.
Behind that, a stillness. A shocked quiet.
‘Scott?’ Freya’s voice. ‘Scott. You’re okay.’
There was a machine beside him, its arms raised. Wires were attached to his arm, threaded into his skin.
‘Where are we?’
‘We stopped the bleeding,’ she said, pointing to the surgical-machine. ‘You’re going to be okay.’
‘No,’ Scott said. ‘But—’
‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Not now. There was nothing you could do.’
‘Where’s Noah?’
‘I don’t know. After Mathew killed Gabriel, everything was a blur. There was a Watcher – he helped me get you into a self-driver and bring you here.’
‘I should have done it.’
‘You did – you tried. It wasn’t your time. That’s all.’
‘Only because I didn’t pull the trigger again. I should have—’
‘Scott, don’t. It’s too late.’
‘Too late?’
Freya walked over to the window.
Something wasn’t right. Apart from sirens blaring now and then, there was no traffic, no other sounds of life.
‘Freya,’ he said, ‘what’s happening? Tell me.’
Freya laid a hand on the bed next to his arm.
‘Freya?’
‘The dates,’ she said. ‘It’s done. They’ve been broadcast.’
‘How many?’
She waited, then said, ‘All of them.’
‘Everyone?’ Scott asked, his voice catching. ‘Do people know?’
‘Some. They’re being released all the time.’
Scott tried to sit up but flinched, wincing in pain.
‘Don’t try to move yet,’ she said. ‘Give it a while.’
He couldn’t have moved if he’d wanted to. The pain running down one side of his body was unbearable. He felt a cold thread of liquid run through his forearm.
‘You require painkillers,’ the surgical-machine said. ‘Please lie back and relax.’
Scott grimaced at the machine as if it was the AI itself, as though this machine was to blame for everything.
‘You were right,’ Freya said. ‘About everything.’
In the short time he’d known her, Scott saw Freya as strong, almost impenetrable. But now her eyes were wide, glassy with tears. Her shoulders were slumped, her arms wrapped protectively around her chest. He wanted to hold her.
‘Your date,’ she said. ‘It’s right. They all are.’
Scott didn’t know what to say.
‘We’re machines,’ she said. ‘Like you said.’
He didn’t want it to be true, because he hated seeing her this way: lost, hopeless. It was the same expression that Rebecca had worn moments before she was killed. A look of surrender. Scott hated it because it mirrored his own thoughts. More than ever, he wanted to see the Freya she had been when he first met her: full of hope and purpose. But now he saw his own bitterness in her eyes.
He stared at her. ‘What about your date? Do you know it?’
Freya nodded and glanced at his hand.
Scott followed her line of sight; he twisted his arm so the palm and his date faced the ceiling. He didn’t want to look at Freya. He knew her date, and it hurt more than knowing his own. ‘It’s the same, isn’t it?’
‘The same as nearly everyone else on the planet,’ she said.
Outside, a gust of wind blew a row of trees. Scott’s attention was caught by the sound of the trees bending, their leaves rustling. Then the wind eased and the trees stood upright again.
‘What are we going to do?’ Freya asked.
Scott waited for the wind to blow again but the air outside remained still, the trees frozen.
‘We’re going to stop him,’ he said. ‘We’re going to stop Mathew.’
‘It’s too late,’ she said.
‘No. He’s the one that will cause the Rapture – I know it. We’ve got it all the wrong way around.’
‘How?’
Scott clenched his fists. ‘I don’t know. Not yet. But we’re going to find out.’
Something shifted behi
nd Freya’s eyes, as if she was convinced. Scott wasn’t sure he believed what he was saying himself, but he wanted the words to be true, and that was all that mattered.
The machine beside the bed beeped. He ignored it and stared out of the window instead, waiting for an aeroplane to move across the sky. In London, they were constant, and only now did he realise he wanted them there: the reassurance of machines. Defying gravity in the way humanity had – it meant so much. There were no drones either. They were gone, all of them, and the sky was empty.
‘We need to leave,’ he said to Freya. ‘Will you come with me?’
She waited, staring at the bandages on his chest. ‘You can’t ever do that again.’
Scott read her expression, not understanding at first, but then realised she was talking about him trying to kill himself.
‘It wasn’t like that,’ he said. ‘I had to.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Promise me. You can never do that again.’
Her stare was too strong and he had to look away.
‘Promise me,’ she said. ‘Whatever happens, you’ll never do it again.’
‘I promise.’
She was about to speak when Scott moved suddenly. ‘Where are my things? My wallet?’
Freya searched through his trouser pockets, took out his wallet and handed it over. Scott’s fingers trembled as he opened the wallet and reached inside, taking out two tattered train tickets. The lettering was no longer legible. Freya eyed the tickets, her forehead creased.
‘What are they?’ she asked.
‘Train tickets.’ He placed them on the table beside the bed and laid his hand on them. He didn’t want to keep them any longer. ‘Will you come with me?’ he asked again.
‘Where?’ she asked.
Scott shifted his legs across the bed to stand. When he stood, his legs shook and he felt weak. He fell against Freya, who stumbled then recovered, helping him stand. Scott kissed her. He held her and she held him back. He’d not held anyone so closely for a long time, and already he felt part of himself healing, something inside his chest repairing.
‘Come with me?’ he asked her.
Freya kissed him. ‘I don’t have a choice.’
The end of Book One
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