I brace myself against a building, gripping Miya’s hand, thanking every higher power that we’re far enough away from the centre of the explosion that this street is still standing.
“What the fuck was that?” Miya’s eyes are so wide. So scared.
“A bomb.”
“What? No. They can’t—they can’t bomb us.”
“Leah?” Thomas is pointing, his face white and drawn. I’ve never seen this kind of fear on someone so young. “You told me to watch for Officials.”
There are four indistinct shadows five metres away, the tubular shape of their guns identifying them as military. I narrow my eyes, hold up the rifle, and let my instincts carry me back through the years to a day when our station was overtaken with rebels brandishing shotguns and jagged-edged blades. I killed eleven people that day and it haunted me every day for a year. That was the first time I witnessed mass death. I was sixteen.
Now I’m twenty and killing people doesn’t sit any easier, doesn’t weigh any less with experience. I could shoot them in the leg, or the shoulder, somewhere non-lethal—but I can’t risk my mercy bringing death to my family.
The thought of family shocks a reminder through me. I’m not used to Kari being alive, to having to worry about my sister, but all of a sudden I don’t just have Miya and the kids to protect. I have to find Kari—Kari who never stopped looking for me, even years after we were last together, even when every sign pointed to me being dead.
I don’t even know where the strategy teams were stationed. I hesitate on the trigger for a split second, so derailed by my sister, but I’ve been trained too well to hesitate any longer. The gun slams into my chest with every shot sent through the air. The shells rip into each Official’s forehead. They fall instantly.
“We need to find the others,” I say. My voice is hard and cold: a soldier’s voice. Why can I never be both Yosiah and the Official at the same time? It’s one or the other, good or bad, light or dark. A sickening energy wakes up in my veins but I push it to the back of my awareness, scanning the road as we cross it. I guide Miya, Tom, and Olive along the route I picked out earlier.
We have to sacrifice some of the quicker roads because of crevices rent into the ground. It’s so reminiscent of Forgotten London that I have to wonder if this is some kind of upgrade on what was used there, the weapon Branwell blames himself for.
“There.” Olive points down an offshoot of a road where a team of Officials has emerged. Miya and I shoot them down. I do a quick calculation of how many shells I have left—about two in the gun, more in my pocket—and reload while we scurry along another road.
I can hear the rabble of voices now, a couple streets off, and assume that’s the civilians trying to get to the aircrafts. It shouldn’t be more than a minute until we join them. Miya and I share a look, checking we’re both still okay. My heart throbs.
We find the civilians easily enough, though the reason for the noise soon becomes clear. It’s not simple panic like I’d assumed. It’s Officials. Everywhere. Soldiers stand like sentries all down the wide road. A buzzing barrier of electricity—made of the same blue beams that fire from their guns—traps the people in the road, blocking all exits. Others Guardians kill civilians with their electric guns, flashes of blue light cutting through the fog like hellfire. They’ve herded people into a cage and now they’re picking them off with indolent ease. These civilians aren’t armed like us or the Guardians. They don’t have anything to defend themselves. I see a woman cowering, another using her body as a shield to cover a boy no older than nine.
Fury rips through me but this isn’t the place. I quell it with a single bright thought the way Kari taught me.
Revenge, revenge, revenge.
I grab Miya’s jacket and yank her back, the kids moving as if attached to her by string. We take cover behind a building with a crack down the side as big as a person. My eyes dart from Official to Official, assessing, but I don’t see a way out of this. There’s no way to save these people without getting ourselves killed and there’s no way to pass the electric barrier without dying. I remember what Dalmar said about leaving Plymouth residents behind, but these aren’t all from this town. Some I recognise from Leeds, some I know to be Guardian families, and others are Guardians themselves, beaten and vulnerable, forced to kneel before Officials with guns to their skulls.
If we help these people, that will be us. We’ll be kneeling before soldiers, waiting to die.
But we can’t leave.
I want to walk away but I can’t. If I left, I’d be no better than they want me to be. Ruthless killer. Emotionless murderer. Machine.
That’s not what I am.
“Up,” Miya hisses. “We need to go up.”
She shoves Thomas and Olive through the building’s crack, not taking her eyes off me as she steps inside. I know what she’s thinking. I can see it in her hung shoulders, the pain in her deep green eyes. I step through the crack, grab her jacket lapels, and kiss her until I’m breathless with love and fear. I find something close to clarity, to determination. To being good.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say, hoarse. “I’m staying right here. With you.”
She tilts her head to look me in the eyes, unguarded. “We’re gonna die, aren’t we?”
“Possibly.”
Three words break free of my lips when her hands slide into my hair. The second kiss doesn’t last nearly long enough, but it leaves a deep ache in my heart despite its brevity.
Miya takes my hand in hers. “Then let’s take them down with us.”
***
Horatia
14:19. 08.11.2040. The Free Lands, Southlands, Plymouth.
With the second earthquake, terror is practically staining the cobblestones. It’s visible to each Official that hems us into this street, every one of them using our fear as a weapon much deadlier than metal.
I have a knife in my pocket that’s useless and a brother at my side whose breathing is out of hand. He’s having a panic attack, I know, but I don’t know what to do about it.
We’re crouched down, using the standing bodies of those around us as shields. If someone had taught me how to throw a knife, I might be able to stop one Official at least. Not that one of them dying would do much good. But it would be something. It would be better than hiding like cowards.
A girl a few rows forward is struck down by blue light, her skin becoming craters of burnt flesh as she hits the tarmac. I see her eyes roll into the back of her head, her face charred black, her mouth hanging open. The people around her take a step back, swivelling around in every direction. Waiting to see if they’ll be the next to die.
There’s no logic to how the Officials are killing us. The girl, an elderly woman, a boy around seven, a man in his twenties. None of them raise their voices. All of them do everything they can not to catch any attention. Still they die.
I can’t predict it. I can’t save anyone. I can’t even save me and my brother. Hele is out there somewhere, with a small number of Guardians. Wes, too. I know at least three of the Guardians in this crowd have tried to fight, but rays of cerulean heat cut half of them down before they could make much difference. The others are knelt in front of Officials as examples to us all. Examples to sit and wait to die.
Why not just raze the whole street? Why drag it out with individual deaths?
What is the point?
I grab Honour’s arm in one hand and wield my pathetic knife with my other. “Honour,” I hiss, “we’re going to crawl. Can you crawl?”
“I don’t—” He breaks off, takes a wheezing breath, trying to get his words out. Failing, he shakes his head. I huddle closer to him, heat leeching through my thin jacket when I wrap a protective arm around his shoulders. I touch his forehead, frowning at his temperature.
I say in his ear, “You can do this. We need to get closer to the edge.”
He shakes his head again. I put the knife in my pocket so I can frame my brother’s face with my hands. I
say sternly, “You can do this, Honour. You have to. We’ll die if you don’t. I know you don’t want to die.” I beg him with my eyes, praying that I’m getting through to him. “I just need you to follow me.”
He closes his eyes, nodding okay.
We crawl between people’s feet, ignoring every muffled scream and thump of bodies hitting the ground. I force my knees to move forward, to drag my body, claw at the smooth stones of the floor to keep moving, keep moving. The air is hot and dense, too dense. I take big desperate breaths of rank air and push forward, looking to Honour every half second. His eyes are open now, so dark, his pupils invisible—but as long as he’s pushing forward I won’t let myself question what that means for his health. Normal fear doesn’t do that to your eyes.
“Tia,” he gasps after two minutes.
I stop, ignoring the sting of my palms, the way the ground bites my knees through my jeans. Honour’s expression pleads with me to stop moving. I cast a look around, see the vague shadow of buildings through legs and over corpses. There are less people standing now, and so many more on the ground. I swallow the bile that rises without warning. I’ve been followed by the ghost of death for so long now that it’s become familiar—but this closeness is overwhelming. It’s too real. Death could reach out and grip us now, it’s that close.
We’re going to die.
I grab Honour’s arm, listing to the side and coming up against him. Seven breaths later I’ve found control again, but my arms are shaking, too tired to keep pulling me forward. I feel … weak. I’m made of air instead of blood and bone. I want to sleep.
We’re going to die.
I snap awake. “Stay down,” I tell my brother, pushing myself up on my knees. I strain to see over a group of teenagers huddled in front of us. I must be heartless because in this moment I can’t find the will to care about these kids. I only care about myself and Honour.
I get my feet beneath me and stand unsteadily, making sure I’m hidden by the kids in front of me.
The street has been decimated, the buildings around us with big lines of brick gouged out, burned away by Official guns. They look like scratches, like God has raked his fingers across the street in anger. The ground is covered with husks of people, dark lumps that used to be alive now burnt and dead. Only fifty or so people are left standing, staring, horrified, at their fallen families, their lifeless neighbours. I don’t see Hele. I don’t see any Guardians.
Honour pulls on my leg, I drop back to the cobbles—but Honour wasn’t telling me to hide. He was trying to warn me. I ignore the rising urge to be sick and brandish the knife in front of me, remembering what Marrin taught me, what the Guardians taught me, traitor instructor or not.
The Official is a man, a head taller than me and double my width. I don’t stand a chance.
I remember Marrin. “What are you? You can’t be human—you’re so much more.”
I leap forward, using speed as an advantage. I remember darting around Marrin’s glass home as he taught me how to fight in the short time we had together. I flinch at the memory of him flushed, alive, and in that second the Official knocks the blade from my hand and grabs me by the neck.
This man isn’t like the other Officials I’ve met. The others were killers because it was all they knew. But this man … I can see it in his eye, the gleam of enjoyment and wicked thrill as he squeezes my throat.
I gasp, choke. Tears spring to my eyes. My hands scratch skin from his knuckles but he doesn’t let me go. He lifts me off the ground. I throw my dangling legs into his knees but he doesn’t drop me.
We’re going to die.
I’m going to die.
I won’t get justice for Marrin, won’t get my revenge. But I’ll be with him again, and maybe this time we’ll have a love that lives longer than a month. Maybe this time we’ll know what it’s like to be together. That thought takes the frantic edge off my fighting. I drop my hands.
A dark blur comes hurtling into the Official, knocking me out of his grip. I hit the ground on my side, my hip slamming into the bricks. I scream. Pain builds upon pain upon pain until I’m crying and screaming with it.
“Tia!” Honour yells.
I try to claw my way out of the pain but I’d really like to sleep.
“You know I’ll keep you safe. Anything else can happen and I won’t care, but I won’t let a single thing happen to you.”
“That sounds dangerously close to a promise.”
“It is a promise, but don’t get used to me making them. That’s the one and only thing I’ll promise anyone, ever.”
I drag myself onto my hands and knees.
Anything else can happen and I won’t care.
I struggle to my feet, grabbing my knife in the process. Marrin wouldn’t want me to stop fighting just to be with him. I’m not honouring him by dying. I’m insulting him, insulting this life he gave me by sacrificing myself.
Alright, Marrin, I think, you win. I’ll fight to live. But I won’t forget you and I won’t move on. Not in a hundred years.
With the Official paying no attention to me, I’m able to jam the bony edge of my knee into his crotch. And thrust my blade into his stomach. He lets out a roar that is nowhere near human. I scramble out of his reach, my heart tripping over itself.
The Official charges—not at me, but at Honour. No! No, no, no, no, no. I tighten my grasp on the knife, stabbing any area of the hulking man I can reach, but I might as well be stabbing him with a toothpick. He doesn’t wince once, not even when I thrust the blade under his ribs. There’s something protecting him, some technology, something States. I cry and curse at the same time.
He howled, I remember. When I kicked him. So whatever protects him is only on his chest! As the man closes his fists around my brother’s throat—this brute’s signature move—I hold my knife in both hands and sink the metal into his leg. I throw all my weight onto it, feeling it hit bone.
He drops Honour, who stumbles back, wheezing for air, clutching his neck.
Panicking as the Official faces me, I release the knife, leaving it sunk into his leg. My hands are shaking now. I’m not sure if my whole body isn’t shaking.
We’re going to die.
Anything else can happen and I won’t care.
No knife, no defensive skills against a man this big, I back away with my hands up.
The Official wrenches the dagger from his leg with a grunt. At the sight of the blood, he goes mad. His eyes bulge. He abandons all joy of killing us. His hand reaches for the gun that will burn us to blackened nothing, the disc of twinkling glass on the end of the barrel a pretty threat.
I run for Honour, dragging him away by the collar of his coat. We need to get to the buildings. If we can just get to the buildings, we’ll be able to hide. The leather is slippery, though, and Honour evades me. He runs right for the Official, no doubt thinking something about being selfless and saving me.
My eyes burn with tears. I hate him in that moment. Doesn’t he know the only reason I’ve been able to stay alive, the only reason I’ve wanted to, is him? What do I have without Honour?
The Official raises his gun. Honour skids to a stop.
There’s no use begging. Not with this Official.
There’s only one thing I can do: I have to use the power dormant in my veins. The power waiting for me to call it to life. But I know the price of using that, what it will do to me. But what choice do I have?
Morality or my brother’s life—it’s an easy choice.
For the first time since we left Underground London Zone I find myself grateful for what they did, how they twisted me.
I close my hand around the Official’s bicep and allow my senses to awaken. I open myself up to it and draw everything into me. The street becomes brighter, sharper around the edges. There is energy thrumming in every tiny thing.
Anything else can happen and I won’t care.
I hope you don’t care about me becoming a monster, Marrin. Because that’s what I am now.
>
I find the Official’s energy, locate everything that makes him who he is—atoms and blood and DNA, training and brutality and slaughter, fears and desires and hungers and thoughts—and I willingly do what those men forced me to do for so many days, months, years.
I tear his being apart.
Gunfire explodes through the street and though I’m aware enough to distinguish it from the whirr of Official weapons, though I hear bodies dropping at an alarmingly fast rate, I’m singularly focussed on the man in front of me. The Official’s energy scatters. A rush like a drug high courses through me. I shudder. The Official collapses into dust.
I shield my eyes as the ash that once was a person is blown away on the sea wind, and I know this is a turning point. This will change me. This will change everything.
Honour will know, everyone will know, what I’ve been hiding:
I know what happened to us in Underground London Zone.
They made us powerful beyond all belief.
They made us killers.
~*~
Thank you for reading!
I hope you enjoyed The Wandering. Book three in the Lux Guardians series will be released in 2015. Keep up to date with Saruuh Kelsey’s new releases by joining her mailing list at http://bit.ly/1sDAugj
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Find these other books by Saruuh Kelsey:
The Lux Guardians series
The Wandering (The Lux Guardians, #2) Page 32