The Cut Out

by Jack Heath

  The racks contained the same fruits and vegetables as Fero’s local supermarket. Unwashed potatoes, punnets of bruised strawberries. He could almost forget that he was in Besmar.

  Cormanenko picked up two green apples and two chocolate bars with the Besmari word for ‘protein’ emblazoned on the wrapping. Fero grabbed two small bottles of water from the fridge.

  ‘Hello, Miss Yordic,’the old man said as they approached. ‘How are you today?’

  ‘Very well, thanks, Hulow,’ she replied. ‘And you?’

  ‘Quiet day,’ Hulow said. ‘But that’s not so bad. Is this your new man?’

  Fero blushed. He wasn’t sure if Hulow was serious – he must be able to tell that Cormanenko was ten years older than him.

  ‘My nephew,’ Cormanenko said. She looked at Fero. ‘Tell your mother he said that! She’ll laugh.’

  Fero smiled uncomfortably as Cormanenko handed a note to Hulow.

  ‘Keep the change,’ she said. ‘See you next week.’

  Hulow smiled, showing sloped teeth. ‘Thank you, Miss Yordic!’

  They emerged into the daylight and Fero took a big bite out of an apple. The cold hurt his teeth, but the juice was delicious. ‘How long have you been shopping here?’ he asked, his mouth full.

  ‘A few months.’ Cormanenko took a swig of water. ‘I pass through the South Tus train station often, and this is the closest greengrocer.’

  ‘Not so long,’ Fero said. ‘Nice of him to remember your name.’

  Cormanenko nodded. ‘There are a lot of nice people here. Come on.’

  She started running again, and Fero followed her.

  ‘Did you ever meet the real Troy Maschenov?’ he asked.

  She nodded.

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘Dangerous.’

  She said nothing more. The silence made Fero uneasy.

  ‘You seem pretty dangerous too,’ he said.

  ‘Not like Maschenov. He was very young when the Bank recruited him. He never learned right from wrong. He only knows loyalty and disloyalty.’

  ‘It sounds like you feel sorry for him.’

  ‘I shot him once,’ Cormanenko said.

  Fero tried to conceal his shock. Cormanenko had tried to kill someone? A teenager?

  She wouldn’t meet his eye. ‘I had no choice,’ she said. ‘A Librarian was undercover in Premiovaya. When his identity was exposed, the Bank sent Maschenov to the Librarian’s apartment to kill him. I got there just in time, and put a bullet through Maschenov’s chest just as he was about to cut the Librarian’s throat. But I missed his heart, and he survived. Since he got locked up in Velechnya I’ve been sleeping better.’

  ‘He escaped from Velechnya this morning,’ Fero said.

  Cormanenko stopped so suddenly that he collided with her.

  ‘That’s impossible,’ she said.

  Fero shook his head. ‘It was the last message I got from the Library before I had to destroy my earpiece.’

  ‘Who sent that message?’

  She sounded so angry that Fero didn’t want to give her Sloth’s name. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Why?’

  Cormanenko stared at him for a long moment. Fero withered under her gaze. Then she turned and started running again.

  Fero followed her, more confused than ever. They didn’t speak again until they reached the South Tus train station.

  Commuters bustled back and forth, heads low under branded hats, hands deep in the pockets of crumpled coats. Trains roared past, wheels thundering and brakes hissing. Fero wondered if he would ever look at a train the same way after his escape from the protest. Strange to think that if he had just stayed home that night he wouldn’t be here in Besmar, bruised and exhausted and frightened. He’d be safe and content—

  Until the bombs went off, nineteen hours from now.

  Cormanenko approached one of the dented, dusty ticket machines. Fero watched the foreign coins disappear as she pushed them into the slot to purchase two return tickets to Premiovaya Station.

  ‘Are we coming back?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘But one-way tickets are suspicious.’

  ‘It must be exhausting,’ Fero said. ‘Living like this.’

  Cormanenko shrugged. ‘You get used to it. This way.’

  Fero followed her to one of the platforms. They sat on a long bench between an old man and a young girl. Cormanenko’s right sleeve rode up far enough to reveal a pink, hairless forearm. The skin was oddly dimpled. By the time Fero realised he was looking at scar tissue from severe burns, Cormanenko had noticed him staring. She pulled her sleeve back down and glared at him.

  Fero cleared his throat. ‘So, uh, you live in Premiovaya?’ Neither the man nor the girl was close enough to overhear, but he spoke in Besmari anyway.

  ‘I live – I lived – in Tus. But they already found my apartment. It’s not safe to go back there.’

  ‘So where are we headed?’

  ‘I borrowed a driver’s license and rented a storage locker in Premiovaya under another name. The Tellers won’t have found it yet, and we’ll need some things to cross the border.’

  A train hooted as it approached the platform. Fero rubbed his aching thighs and stood up. Cormanenko followed suit.

  The train groaned to a halt, and the doors hissed open. Fero lurched towards one of them, but Cormanenko pulled him away.

  ‘Not that carriage,’ she said. ‘The empty one.’

  They clomped into her preferred carriage and collapsed onto the rubbery seats. Fero fought to hold back a yawn.

  ‘Who’s Gear Eruz?’ he asked.

  Cormanenko gave him a sharp look. ‘Where did you hear that name?’

  ‘He’s one of the terrorists in Melzen Hospital.’

  Her gaze darkened. ‘That’s not good.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘He’s some kind of freak. He’s in the ninety-ninth percentile for strength, endurance, agility and flexibility. Before the Besmari army recruited him, he worked in the train yards, dragging shipping containers around. By himself. He could tear you in half with his bare hands.’

  ‘Oh.’ Fero felt a little sick.

  ‘They use him when the target has six or more bodyguards – and when they don’t need it to look like an accident. He could outrun you barefoot, even if you were wearing those spring-loaded shoes. That giant steel door I blew up? He would have just lifted it. They call him “Silverback”.’

  ‘What does he look like?’ Fero asked.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So I can avoid him.’

  ‘He’s huge. As tall as a basketball player and as wide as a weightlifter.’ Cormanenko chewed her lip. ‘Which makes him a very strange choice for a stealth mission.’

  ‘Maybe they needed someone to carry all their supplies,’ Fero said.

  ‘Maybe.’ Cormanenko didn’t sound convinced.

  They rode in silence for a moment.

  ‘You said you were out,’ he said.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘When you came into the interview room, you said, “I was out, for good.” But aren’t you here on a mission?’

  Cormanenko sighed. ‘Never mind about that. I was just angry.’

  ‘Noelein didn’t know where to find you, but Vartaniev did,’ Fero said. ‘When you disappeared, you weren’t hiding from the Bank. You were hiding from the Library. You switched sides. You’re a . . .’

  The word traitor tasted too bad to say aloud. Nevertheless, Cormanenko heard it.

  ‘I’m no traitor,’ she said. ‘I’m here, aren’t I? I saved your life and now I’m taking you back. Just like Noelein wants.’

  Fero wouldn’t let her make him feel guilty. ‘A deserter, then. You abandoned your mission. You’ve been hanging out in an apartment in Tus with your feet up—’

  ‘I’ve been a Librarian for eight years,’ Cormanenko snarled. ‘You’ve been doing it for one day. Don’t pretend you understand what it’s like, distrusting everyone you meet. Forgetting your
own name because you can’t say it out loud. Hiding behind triple-locked doors. You know what’s worse than life in a cage?’

  ‘You chose—’

  ‘Having the key and being too scared to use it.’

  ‘You chose that life.’

  Cormanenko ignored him. ‘Yes, I abandoned my mission. I volunteered for it so I could abandon it. I only joined the Library in the first place so I’d be able to escape from Kamau someday.’

  ‘And live here?’ Fero pointed out the window at the field dotted with patchy grass. In the distance a nickel refinery belched black smoke, blocking out the afternoon sun. ‘Why?’

  He wasn’t sure how, but he’d gone too far. The fury hadn’t disappeared from her face, but now her eyes were wet. She looked away.

  ‘Tell me about the bio-bomb,’ she said.

  Fero’s shoulders slumped. ‘Three backpacks filled with hexogen. Noelein says it’s enough to scatter bits of the hospital all over Stolkalny, which will infect a million people with the coronavirus.’

  ‘That virus is long dead.’

  ‘That’s what I thought. But apparently it can survive for years without a living host, and we don’t have any stockpiles of the cure left.’

  ‘The cure.’ Cormanenko snorted. ‘Okay. How many people inside Melzen?’

  ‘Five terrorists, including Gear Eruz.’

  ‘How did Noelein know I wasn’t dead?’

  ‘She said she’d seen you cheat death too many times.’ Suddenly Fero wondered about those other times. Had Cormanenko been trying to fake her own death? How would that help her get away from Kamau?

  She ran a hand through her hair. ‘I should have known she’d never believe it without a witness. But I never would have guessed that she would send someone over here to blow my cover.’

  ‘If you spent your whole life trying to escape from Kamau,’ Fero asked, ‘why are you going back? You’ll never get another chance to leave.’

  ‘Gear Eruz is about to murder a million people,’ Cormanenko said. Her eyes were dry now. ‘What kind of person would I be if I didn’t try to stop him?’

  Fero looked away. That had been his reasoning, too. Maybe he and Cormanenko weren’t so different.

  ‘You could tell me how to get into Melzen,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell the Library, and they’ll send someone else in. You don’t have to cross the Dead Zone with me.’

  ‘It’s not that simple.’

  The train started to slow down. A recorded voice said, ‘Now arriving at Premiovaya.’

  Cormanenko stood up. ‘This is us,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

  The storage locker was in a fenced-off complex on the outskirts of Premiovaya. Cormanenko told Fero that the Kamauan border was only twenty kilometres away. On the track at school he could run that distance in less than ninety minutes. His mission was nearly over.

  Cormanenko punched in a code on the keypad beside the massive gate. It clanked and swung open on fat hinges.

  She led Fero through into the cracked alleyways of the complex, past dozens of identical rolling doors with numbers painted above them. Her locker was number 4090, which Fero recognised as the first four digits of the nine-digit code she had used to open the gate.

  Cormanenko slid a key into the lock and twisted it. The door was weighted, so it rolled upwards as soon as it was unlocked. A cloud of dust cascaded to the floor.

  ‘You haven’t been here in a while,’ Fero said.

  ‘I had hoped never to be here again.’

  The walls were lined with canned food, climbing tools, guns and ammunition, but none of that caught Fero’s eye. He couldn’t look away from the hulking machine in the centre of the room.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘It’s a motorcycle,’ Cormanenko said.

  ‘Yeah, but—’

  ‘Technically, it’s an armoured turbofan vehicle, or ATFV. I never finished it – as you can see, there’s no shield for the driver – because the auto shop didn’t have all the parts.’

  Fero recognised the term ‘turbofan’. This was the top-secret Besmari project Cormanenko had been sent to spy on.

  ‘You built this?’ He boggled at the thick wheels, the giant fans and the chrome plates. It did look like a motorcycle, but fatter and longer, with stubby wings protruding from the sides. It wasn’t painted and was made from a patchwork of different kinds of metal. Fero had once heard a metaphor about the likelihood of a tornado sweeping through a junkyard and assembling an aeroplane. Now he felt as if he’d found the aeroplane.

  ‘It deflects bullets like a tank and drives like a jet,’ Cormanenko said. ‘Up to four hundred kilometres per hour, which is more than twice as fast as a civilian motorbike. When I found out what they were building, I thought, hey, I could use one of those. So I copied the plans and started building one. It’s a shame I couldn’t finish it. I took some other Besmari tech as well.’

  She picked up a nylon harness. It looked a lot like the one she was wearing, but with four laser diodes and a camera lens mounted on the front. A battery and another camera were fixed to the back. ‘This could come in handy,’ she said.

  She dropped it into a bag, along with a packet of dried fruit, a pair of boltcutters, a gun and a first-aid kit. ‘Grab an extra water bottle from behind you,’ she said. ‘It’s not a long walk to the border, but it might take a while. We have to avoid the patrols, and it’s pretty hot out there.’

  Fero picked up the water. There was no more room in the bag Sloth had given him, but his coat pockets were big enough for the bottles. It was lucky Vartaniev had returned the coat.

  ‘Hey, Cormanenko,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I gave Vartaniev your name before he swept me for listening devices.’

  She sighed. ‘You were only doing what you were told.’

  ‘That’s not what I mean. Shouldn’t he have swept me before asking me anything at all? So that if there had been any bugs, the Librarians wouldn’t know what I’d told him?’

  Cormanenko chewed her lip. ‘Hmm. He must not have thought of that.’

  Fero’s blood ran cold. ‘But he asked me questions before that,’ he said. ‘He pointed out the security doors, and asked me if I remembered the boom gates.’

  ‘There never were any boom—’

  They looked at each other. Fero saw the horror in her eyes.

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ she said. ‘It’s probably nothing.’

  ‘But—’

  She put a finger to her lips, cutting him off. A plastic wand hung on the wall behind her. She picked it up, flicked a switch on the handle, and waved it over Fero’s body.

  Three red lights lit up along its length. Fero’s eyes widened.

  ‘Could you pass me those keys?’ she asked, and then shook her head. Fero didn’t move.

  Cormanenko pulled a pocketknife out of her pocket and motioned for Fero to turn around. When he did, he felt momentary pressure on his back as she slit open the lining of his coat. Cormanenko cursed.

  Fero turned around. A tiny battery and a long wire were bundled up in Cormanenko’s hand.

  EXFILTRATION

  Fero stared at Cormanenko in panicked silence. Cormanenko cracked open the battery compartment and examined the contents.

  ‘They can’t hear us,’ she said. ‘It’s just a tracker. But we have to get rid of it.’

  A framing hammer hung from the wall. Fero reached for it.

  ‘No,’ Cormanenko said. ‘We can’t destroy it. If the signal drops out, they’ll know we’re onto them.’

  ‘Do you have a spoofer?’ Fero wasn’t sure where he had heard the term, but he knew it was a device which broadcast a fake satellite signal. The tracker would pick up the signal and broadcast the wrong location to the Bank.

  ‘It wouldn’t help. This tracker uses antenna towers, not GPS. We should hide it on a bus, to lead them as far away from us as possible.’

  The massive gate creaked. Fero’s heart leapt into his mouth.

  �
��Too late,’ Cormanenko whispered. ‘They’re already here.’

  Fero hit the light switch. Shadows enveloped the storage locker. He pressed his ear against the door. He heard lots of quiet footsteps – it sounded like fifteen or twenty people – but no voices. The soldiers were probably communicating in sign language.

  ‘How precise is the tracker?’ he asked.

  ‘They probably know we’re within fifty metres of here,’ Cormanenko replied. ‘But not which locker we’re in.’

  There was a sound like splintering metal. A shutter rolled up somewhere. The Bank was breaking the locks, one by one.

  ‘How can we get out without them seeing us?’ Fero hissed.

  ‘I don’t know. I’m thinking.’ Cormanenko was motionless except for her eyes, which darted left to right and back as though she were memorising page after page of text.

  The footsteps were getting closer. ‘Think quickly.’

  ‘That’s not helping.’

  Fero pointed at the ATFV. ‘Does that thing work?’

  Cormanenko clenched her teeth. ‘It drives, but like I said, there’s no shield for the driver.’

  ‘Do you have bulletproof vests?’

  ‘Just one.’

  They stared at each other in the semi-darkness.

  ‘Put it on,’ Fero said.

  She looked startled. ‘No,’ she said finally. ‘I’ll be riding in front. You’re more likely to get hit.’

  ‘You’re the only person alive who knows how to get into Melzen Hospital,’ Fero said. ‘You have to wear the vest. I’ll . . . I’ll take my chances.’

  ‘Wait.’ Cormanenko rummaged around in some cupboards. ‘Come on, come on!’

  When she turned back around, she had a roll of duct tape in one hand and a phone book in the other. She stuck the end of the tape to the phone book, pressed the book against her chest and handed the roll to Fero. ‘Hold on to this.’

  Fero gripped it as she spun several times, winding the tape around her torso and strapping the phone book to her body.