by Nathan Ward
“She will get a proper burial, I swear. You’re an honorable man; you don’t belong with these people,” said Jordan, before starting his tiring journey up the stone stairwell. Enrique watched on, thinking about what Jordan had just said, glaring up at the couple as he ascended in to the moonlit upper level.
'They never did anything wrong,' he thought to himself, in realization of what they had all done: They had become so desperate to help save their own people that they overlooked who else could be hurt by their actions, so much blood had been spilt fighting... They had been fighting against the wrong enemy and in doing so they had begun a new rivalry, one that this time was very much human and out for rightful vengeance....
Captain Jordan carried Alana and led his people who had been in hiding to the drawbridge that had fallen firmly in place; they marched across the moonlit courtyard which remained covered in rubble and debris, making their way towards the UNA vehicles that were parked outside of the fort. Carefully, Jordan positioned his wife inside the back of the first carrier vehicle which was distinctively identified by its matt black appearance. The rest of his people piled in to the back with their children cowered under their arms.
“I’m so sorry, Captain,” said one of the elderly women, placing her hand on Jordan’s arm as she passed by.
He remained stiff, stood firmly to the spot but looking at the back of the lady as she struggled to climb on board the vehicle. It took him a moment, but after it had passed, Jordan approached the elderly lady and gave her a helping hand into the back of the carrier. She got herself comfortable and looked over at Jordan who remained stood at the rear of the vehicle, looking tired and numb.
“You’re all my family now,” said Jordan, in the gaze of a dozen of his people. They left him a warming smile, taking hold of his wife’s body and reassuring him she would be looked after, even when faced with a day of death and destruction he was still their leader, a savior and even with a blinded eye they had complete faith in him, so willingly he began to lift the vehicles ramp and locked it into position, sealing the carrier and his people inside.
With only the sound of crickets chirping from within the nearby grass, Jordan jumped inside the cabin of the truck and ignited its fiery engine, pushing the acceleration pedal to the metal and shifting it in to first gear. The Military vehicle departed the scene, leaving a cloud of dust in its wake as it headed towards the distant tree line illuminated by a bright, peaceful moon.
The glow of the moon was non existent at the bottom of the pit, where Enrique had stood for the past few minutes looking down at his friends, who for all he knew could have been dead. The deep, dark pool at his feet shimmered in the fire light, throwing shadows on to the walls while a gentle breeze circulated the room, invading the silence that had fallen. Crimson droplets dripping from the bodies in to the rippling pools could still be heard, even over the movement of Joy and Connor who were about ready to take their leave, now they had made their way around Enrique and slowly began to climb the stone slabs. He didn’t seem to care, he just let them leave knowing they posed no threat to him, but as they departed up the steps he took a quick short lived glance at Joy, who in the moment looked back to meet his gaze, curious to see if he was watching.
It was then he noticed a symbol on her tatty clothing, a patch held on by a thread. It was a red cross, and even Enrique knew what it meant, so without a second thought he pleaded to Joy who had stopped in her tracks half way up the stairwell with Connor cowering under her arm.
“Please, help them,” he begged, “Please help my friends,” and as he made that plea in desperation, Joy looked down at the wounded casualties, as Enrique stood there looking up at her, desperation plain in his eyes as Murdock and Sasha lay bleeding at his feet.
Chapter 17: Border Control
Thump, clank and splash were the sounds that crept into his awareness as Josh slowly began to regain consciousness, rubbing his grubby hand against his crimson stained eye lid. He carefully pulled himself up off the wet, slippery flooring whilst holding on to the side of the cell.
The vehicle was still in transit and it had been travelling for quite some time with Captain Williams at the wheel - this being the benefit of having a robot as a pilot, robots never tired, robots just kept on working and functioning, without the human condition of exhaustion ever coming into play. She had tirelessly continued to push south west, but the vehicle was still on rural terrain so its prisoners were being jolted as the wheels passed over every bump and imperfection in the road surface, this being felt by the exhausted captives painfully as the motion caused them to be violently thrown about in the back.
Josh suddenly regained his awareness sharply as he was hit with an icy cold thought that momentarily made him forget his discomfort:
Someone had been shot, someone had to be dead, because there had been so much blood...Someone had been murdered...
Josh stared across at the other two prisoners in containment but the bright LED lighting strained his vision and sent a throbbing pain punching through to his cerebral cortex and it felt like needles in his eyes, stuck deep.
As the pain stabbed and made his eyes water, he knew it wasn’t going away any time soon but the need to know cancelled out his urge to shut out the bright light and he continued to stare, shielding his eyes from the worst of the glare by raising his hand to his brow.
The way the vehicle jumped and jolted about made it incredibly difficult to identify who was sat across from him until finally Josh could feel the land underneath them change from rural to urban. The carrier vehicle made one final maneuver, launching itself up and over a ridge so it could enter what felt like a tarmac motorway, the ride suddenly felt so smooth, so blissfully smooth after all the painful bumps and jolts, this allowed Williams to accelerate to a much higher speed. Joshes vision was no longer a blur, now he could make out who was sat across from him and he had never felt so relieved in his life:
Thomas had a tight grip on Steph who seemed to of managed to slide off to sleep, perhaps due to the fact none of them had drank in forty eight hours and their bodies were slowly shutting down. Thomas had just about enough energy to raise his head and give Josh acknowledgement, he returned the gracious nod then turned to look out of the small dirty window beside him, the glass was covered in sand and specks of crimson, but he could still make out the pattern of a road passing by at the foot of the wheels, which led to many questions and theories - clearly, they were being taken to somewhere of great importance, a place where their lives seemed to be considered to have high value, but the reason for that was a question yet to find an answer...
The UNA vehicle sped off in to the distance, fixed to the centre of a long, empty motorway with only its bright headlights illuminating the path ahead, but as they travelled, as miles passed, slowly but surely the luminosity of the bright neon sky up ahead became more and more intense. Now there was a vibrant blue glow dominating the skies just beyond the hills.
Josh and Thomas had at once seen this unearthly glow, as their sights set towards the front windscreen where the moon had settled perfectly aligned with their vision. The truck stormed the final mile, tearing up the motorway and passing by the hundreds of abandoned cars and bikes left at the sides of the road making this stretch of motorway look like some kind of graveyard to a past when before, what used to be normal life would have seen this road filled with traffic and teeming with life.
The motorway was rising up a particularly hilly part of land, Josh could feel his balance being thrown as they thundered to the top, it felt like they were going to take off but as they got to the very top, with a sharp downward turn that flipped their stomachs they quickly began to descend down the opposite side of the motorway, revealing their destination which had now come clearly into view. Even Steph had begun to awake to cast her eyes over the breathtaking sight up ahead, Joshes jaw slowly dropped and Thomas couldn’t open his eyes any wider, his bright green gaze glistened as the neon blue sky reflected in his sights:
/> Stood central was an extremely tall building surrounded by much smaller structures, but what made it so visually spectacular was the fact it had a pulsating beam of constant blue energy emitting from its spire that seemed to go up in to the clouds, expanding into a frosty glow that had lit the path for the past few miles.
Even Williams found it difficult not to be amazed at the sight of it, for it was something that registered in her electronic mind as a beautiful sight and she was not alone with that opinion, as none of them had seen anything like it before.
“That’s London!” Thomas pointed out, glaring out at the city in the distance.
“It was.” Josh replied in a state of awe. “And now it’s something else,” he added.
The grand structure began to draw closer as the carrier neared the city - the sheer size of it couldn’t be truly appreciated until it was seen at such a distance. As it slowly towered over them they realized how far they had come and knew at once that the next chapter of their story was about to be unraveled.
Up ahead was a small bridge that seemed to lead over to the border where a tall metal gate stood firmly shut. Williams continued to accelerate suspended over the water until they finally came to a halt with their path shut off momentarily.
Josh tried to get a clear look ahead but the walls were built too high, from this view there was just darkness at the foot of the vehicles bonnet.
“What do you think they're going to do with us?” asked Thomas, staring over at Josh who still hadn’t moved, with his sights still set to the front of the cabin.
“Please remain silent, you’ll thank me later I promise” Stated Williams as she sat with her hands gripped firmly in place around the leather bound steering wheel. Her mechanically augmented eyes ticked from left to right as she waited, trying to register the cause of the delay.
“Williams…what’s happening?” asked Thomas, keeping his voice down low.
She turned her head to look back at the captives through the glass window behind her as she gave a brief explanation.
“We are being analyzed and approved for entry - if they catch you talking to me then they may identify me as an enemy, which wouldn’t end well for any of us. So do remain silent!”
As she turned her head back to face front, a thought ran through her mind, a thought that begged an answer to a question that seemed to have no solution:
'Why do I feel compassion for these humans, I was never programmed with such equations. Should this be an issue that I must arise with my superiors? Or perhaps it is something I must work out myself, independently?'
Williams turned those musings silently over in her electronic mind while the vehicle sat still outside the gates, waiting for its return to be approved by border control.
Josh slumped back against the vehicle wall, meeting the gaze of his wife Steph who had begun to wipe the dirt from her eyes.
“It’s good to see you,” he told her, as emotion flickered somewhere in the roughness of his tone.
“You didn’t think I bit the bullet did you?” muttered Steph, still trying to adjust to the light.
“I didn’t know, I couldn’t see…”
“She shot Henry, but credit where it’s due, he was suffering anyway so she probably saved him,” Steph said.
“He could have saved himself if he knew when to shut up. Maybe he’d be sat with us now if he'd had a shred of common sense.”
“Maybe he wouldn’t want to be sat right here, we don't know what’s on the other side of those gates,” Steph added.
Then she pointed towards the tall standing gates casting a long, dark shadow over them and while she took a glance she noticed a twinkle of light, a white piercing glow emitting from somewhere high up. It expanded into many beams of light and started to pass through the vehicle in a scanning motion.
The prisoners scrambled against the sides in fear that perhaps it was a weapon - Josh hardly wanted to find his balls dropping from his body, so he held tight to his limbs, watching the beams of light pass over the cell until it began to head back towards the cabin. Then the light passed by William’s eye and climbed its way back up the gates, shrinking back to where it had first extended outwards.
They once again fell into a cloud of darkness before finally the sound of gears started to churn, echoing clonks and clanks as they turned slowly, releasing the gates from their position, allowing them to pivot open unleashing the powerful energy of the city, casting a path of light for the vehicle to follow. Slowly the heavy gates locked into place, leaving enough room for the carrier to accelerate past entering the shining bright new land of the UNA.
The group couldn’t refrain from pushing their faces against the filthy windows, wanting to catch a glimpse of what the UNA had built over their capital.
The streets were filled with brand new structures and every building seemed to have a brand new form of technology welded into it, extruding out of the side and pulsating in a similar manor to the gigantic skyscraper that sat in the heart of the city. The bright pulsating beam of light had now begun to look almost white, being a lot closer to the prime article but the clouds were still filled with a neon blue glow, fluctuating like a glass of soda being poured in to a glass but in this scenario the energy was being poured in to the skies, and the glow from it reflected off the top of the high silver structures with metal spires that seemed so tall they kissed the clouds above.
Josh couldn’t help but remain fixated on the light, his mind alight with possibilities:
What could it possibly be? It was highly likely to be something they already did before the UNA took over the country, probably just a more glamorous way of making a statement of power...Was that what it was? Or perhaps a new form of transport, or a way of communicating with their soldiers? Whatever it was, it had to be something of great importance to the UNA …
As Williams drove the vehicle down a winding complex of dark back alleys and streets, slowly making an approach towards the main complex, Thomas couldn’t help but notice while the other two were distracted, there were hundreds of large steel cages placed along the sides of the road. Most were empty but occasionally he had begun to spot the shocking sight of people encased inside, cowering away as the vehicles headlights shone in their direction.
Thomas tried to get a better look with each passing cage, but the streets were so dark and cast in gloom, so extremely difficult so see clearly. Then he wondered why they were heading towards the main tower in the sky and not been dragged out and slung inside a cage already - ever since they had been picked up on the railroad he had questioned why they weren’t just shot and left to die...
Clearly, there was something being kept from them, perhaps because the truth was horrible, but for now they could only speculate as Josh continued to gaze up at the spire of energy not giving a damn at what may be waiting for them, instead he had begun to plot, his mind shifting gear as he planned his next step of action – something which he had to initiate soon, because he knew they had to be ahead of the enemy and now that need had never been so desperate because it seemed the enemy had them in the palm of their hand.
Chapter 18: The Tower of Light
The Military truck made its final approach, thundering down the last stretch of road where the glorious tower command had been waiting patiently for them.
As they pulled in to the nearest parking slot, Thomas couldn’t help but notice UNA soldiers had already begun to close in around them like sharks slipping through dark water and circling their prey, emerging silently from shadows that they had never even noticed – they could just hear the stomps and thuds of their military grade boots as they closed in, surrounding the humanoid infested vehicle with their automatic rifles drawn and micro sights set.
Williams didn’t waste any time; she swung open her drivers’ door and removed herself from the equation, casting her sights over each and every soldier as she made her way to the back of the carrier.
“I am now releasing the prisoners, stand down,” she ordered
.
She reached the rear of the vehicle cell then took a brief moment just to be certain that there wasn’t going to be a problem with any of the guardsmen, because she knew the current state of the prisoners and what they had been through – her prime directive had been to bring Josh in and she knew she couldn’t place his life at risk any more than it already had been.
“Lower your weapons,” she commanded.
The soldiers reactions were slightly delayed but after a pause of seconds they obeyed, allowing Williams a sense of what registered in her mind as danger averted - which translated into the word relief, knowing now there would be less of a risk of them stepping out of line.
Being unsure in her calculations how the prisoners were going to react, Williams raised her flesh-coated mechanical limb to the high prime lever on the back of the vehicle ramp, she clenched her fingers around it and yanked it to the ground revealing the bloody interior and occupants, who to her surprise, remained calm but observant, slowly crawling in to the light rays being shone from spot lights positioned along the nearby rooftops. Williams leant inside the back of the vehicle ever so slightly, looking Josh directly in the eye - everything about Williams had begun to intrigue him and he almost felt safe around her now as she looked deep beyond what she knew to be the three layers of tissue that made up the human eye - the fibrous tunic, the vascular tunic and the retina, all the way down his optic nerve and into his brain - to Josh, she was staring right through him, all the way through his eyes and then through his head and out of the back of his skull as if he had turned transparent, or so it felt.
“Do as I say, please. I promise, no harm will come to you,” Williams whispered, making the assumption she had still probably been heard by the UNA soldiers who, like herself, were still linked to the great hive mind.
“Why should we trust you?” Josh asked, and he sounded as exhausted as he felt.