Fall: Cross of the past, key of the future (Numbered Book 4)

by Magus Tor

  “You don't know much about Outliers, do you?” he asked. “Children are sacred out here. We don't have many of our own—we don't have the genetic testing or the medicines that are available in the City. If anyone here found out I let you kidnap a child, they'd lynch me, most likely.”

  “So, what are we to do, then?” asked Nicholas.

  Jak thought for a moment. “Best you stay here for a little while until I can figure things out,” he said. “You look ready to drop anyway. I'll get you some food. Make yourselves comfortable and get some rest. I'll see what I can do.”

  They agreed, having no choice but to do otherwise. And after a hot meal, Jak gave them some blankets and they curled up on the floor.

  “Let's see what he says tomorrow,” Nicholas said sleepily.

  He'd tried to contact Jonathon but hadn't got through.

  They awoke after only an hour or so of rest, hearing movement.

  “Let me go!” Mattias shouted.

  Aurelia turned on the light source and saw that he was tangled in his blanket, obviously thinking he was tied up in some way. His eyes were bright with tears.

  “Let me go. I won't tell anyone who you are or where you are, I swear,” he said, his voice breaking.

  Aurelia reached down and gently pulled the blanket from around him. “You're not restrained,” she said quietly.

  To her astonishment, he began sobbing. Acting purely on instinct, she took him into her arms, feeling the thin bones of his back as he wept raggedly. Nicholas made a move towards her, but she shook her head. Let the boy cry; he needed it.

  When his sobs had faded to sniffles, she stroked his hair and released him.

  “I know this is difficult,” she began. But she didn't know what else to say. She couldn't give him what he wanted, after all.

  “But I think I have a compromise that may work for all of us,” Nicholas said.

  The boy looked at him, his eyes rimmed with red.

  Nicholas came and sat in front of him. “Let's talk, man to man,” he said. The boy nodded. “You and I are both soldiers, both military men.”

  Aurelia smiled as the boy responded to this, sitting a little straighter.

  “Are you aware of the rules of War?”

  Again the boy nodded.

  “Good,” said Nicholas. “In that case, you are now a Prisoner of War, with all the protection that the laws require. You shall be fed, watered, and kept. However, you will not be forced to join our Army, nor will you be subject to our propaganda. You will be released either if your own Army negotiates for your release, or when the War is over. Understood?”

  Mattias bit his lip. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  Aurelia had to smile again. Nicholas had done exactly the right thing. He'd treated Mattias as an adult, as the soldier he thought he was, had saved his honour and made him compliant.

  “Now, is there anything you need?” Nicholas asked.

  “No, sir,” said Mattias.

  “Very good. Then I suggest you get some sleep.”

  Obediently, the boy rolled himself back into his blanket, and Aurelia grinned at Nicholas.

  “Not bad,” she whispered.

  “He'll make a parent of me yet,” Nicholas whispered back.

  The rest of the night passed without incident. Aurelia was grateful for the sleep, although her back hurt from the hard floor. Jak returned while they were still sleeping and woke them with a hot breakfast.

  “Where do you get your food from?” asked Nicholas as he was eating.

  Jak looked shifty. “Here and there,” he said.

  Aurelia took that to mean it was taken rather than grown, and she saw the opportunities the Subway tunnels offered to those living outside the City. They could sneak in and out undetected, taking what they needed when necessary.

  “Now,” said Jak, when they were done eating. “I've done some thinking and some talking with the others. And the conclusion I've come to is that you can't take the boy out of here yet.”

  “What?” said Nicholas, sitting up straight. “You have no idea who we are, how important it is that we get back to the Resistance Army!”

  Jak held up his hand to quieten Nicholas's protests. “I didn't say you couldn't go; I said the boy couldn't. You two are both free to get back in your pod and leave any time you want. We've even recharged your battery for you, as a gesture of goodwill, so to speak. But the boy needs to stay here.”

  Nicholas looked about to protest again.

  “Look, see things from our point of view. We have no idea who you really are, if you are who you say you are. What we do know is that you've brought a healthy child into our community, one who comes from our City, and we can't let you take him without some kind of proof.”

  Aurelia noticed how he called 01 “our City” although the Outliers didn't live in the City at all. He'd said it with pride in his voice, and she realised he honestly considered it his City, even though he wasn't allowed to live in it.

  “I'll need to talk this over with the President,” Nicholas said.

  “You do what you gotta do,” said Jak, obviously not really believing Nicholas was going to discuss the fate of one child with the President himself. Or that he could contact the President at all. “But in the meantime, the boy needs to stay.”

  Aurelia nodded. “Fine,” she said. “We'll talk to Jonathon and get back to you after.”

  “You might be in a better position to negotiate then,” laughed Jak.

  Aurelia had no choice but to laugh with him. Despite the problems he was giving them, he was friendly and likeable, and his laugh was contagious.

  “You got a com?” he asked them.

  “Sure,” said Nicholas.

  “Alrighty, then. Come with me, and I'll take you up to the top of the building. You'll have a better chance of the call connecting from up there.”

  Nicholas stood up. “Wanna come?” he asked Aurelia and Mattias.

  Aurelia saw that Mattias was still eating and shook her head. “We'll stay here for now, get the grand tour later.”

  Jak was still laughing as he left the room with Nicholas.

  She waited until the boy was done eating. “Can I ask you some questions?”

  “I don't have to tell you anything,” the boy said, looking truculent. “I'm a Prisoner of War, and you're not allowed to torture me for information either.”

  Aurelia smiled at him. “I know,” she said. “And you don't have to answer anything you don't want to. Besides, look at my uniform. I'm not Military. I'm not interested in getting information about how you fight. I just want to know a little more about you, that's all.”

  “I guess it's all right, then,” said the boy, shrugging.

  “How old are you?” She figured she'd start with something easy.

  “Eleven,” he said immediately.

  “Do you remember your parents?”

  He shook his head. “Not really. I've lived in the academy for pretty much as long as I remember. Sometimes I have dreams, but I can't see their faces.”

  Poor kid, she thought. “How long have you been training for?”

  He thought for a second. “Six, no, seven years.”

  “Did you enjoy chem Work?”

  He nodded, then pulled the sleeves of his uniform down over his hands, balling his fists inside. “Yeah, I liked it. Was good at it too.”

  “You were good at it? Not you are good at it?”

  “We haven't done school for a while,” he admitted. “We've been doing military training instead.”

  “I thought you liked being a soldier?”

  “I do—I mean, it's kind of fun. We can fight and stuff. There's other stuff, though, like tactics and history, and that's kind of boring.” He considered for a minute. “But then, some of regular school was boring too, I guess.”

  “How long has it been like this?”

  He shrugged. “A few weeks now.”

  So, if the Elite had turned all the training academies into military academies, h
ow many soldiers did they have now? Aurelia had no idea how many training centres were in 01, nor how many children at each, but it had to be a lot.

  Mattias was wriggling around; he looked bored. Aurelia spotted the corner of Nicholas's chess set sticking out of his pack and grabbed it.

  “Know what this is?” she asked.

  The boy shook his head.

  “It's a game,” she explained. “Come on, I'll show you how to play.”

  They were well into their second game by the time Nicholas returned. He looked serious.

  “What's the news?” she asked as soon as the door opened.

  “There's something up,” he said. “I spoke to Jonathon. Plans have changed, and I'm not sure why. He wouldn't say because the com channel wasn't secure.”

  “And what did he say about all this?” she asked.

  Nicholas gave a bark of laughter. “He yelled and swore for a while and called me an idiot. But then he told us to sit tight.”

  “Sit tight?”

  Nicholas nodded. “Yep. He said we needed to stay here.”

  Aurelia was a little confused by this. Maybe Jonathon wanted to keep her out of trouble, or out of danger, which she could understand. But in that case, why make Nicholas stay here too? Nicholas was an important member of Jonathon's logistics team. There was no way Jonathon would be able to do without him for long. The longer she thought about it, the more she came to only one conclusion: Jonathon must be preparing to come here to them. But for the life of her, she couldn't figure out why.

  The day passed slowly. Mattias grew tired of chess, and Jak took them on a tour of the surrounding area. Many of the buildings in this section had been fixed up, and Aurelia saw people going back and forth for all the world like a regular City. If you ignored the towering ruins around them, that was. Seeing the number of buildings around, she thought that there had to be a fair amount of people here. From what she could see, there was electricity, but she didn't know where it came from.

  To her joy, when they got back, she also found that there was running water. Jak showed them a bathing room and told them they were free to use it.

  “The water's not safe for drinking, though,” he warned. “So keep your mouth shut under the shower.”

  She felt immensely better after a shower, and sat, combing her long hair with her fingers while she waited for Nicholas and Mattias to finish.

  “Do you think he's coming here?” she asked Nicholas when he came in.

  “Must be,” said Nicholas, closing the door. “I can't think of another reason why he'd tell us to stay.”

  So they waited, both on edge, anxious to see what was going to happen. What Nicholas had said about Jonathon refusing to talk over the com disturbed Aurelia. If their plans had changed, there had to be a very serious reason.

  He arrived close to midnight. Mattias was already sleeping, and Jak came to find them, dragging them out of their blankets and taking them to a small office where Jonathon sat waiting for them.

  The first thing he did was to scoop Aurelia up and kiss her soundly. She smelled his scent, overlaid by sweat and dirt. His eyes were red, black circles outlining them. He looked exhausted.

  “I don't even want to hear about what you've been doing here,” he said, stopping Nicholas's explanation before he'd even started. “There are more important things to discuss right now, and there's a reason I'm here.”

  Aurelia pulled up a chair, waiting for Nicholas to do the same, before asking: “What's going on?”

  Jonathon shook his head. “I'm not sure yet. But there's worrying news coming from Lunar City. Tara has been keeping me as informed as possible. It seems that more people are coming in through the tunnels under the City. Bryn has been keeping a tally of them, and Tara says that the numbers just don't add up.”

  “Settlers?” Aurelia suggested.

  Jonathon pressed his lips together. “Too many,” he said. “I don't know where they're coming from....”

  “But it sounds like there's something odd going on,” Nicholas finished. “An invading force being snuck in? An army?”

  “Could be,” admitted Jonathon. “That's what's worrying me. I have to defend Lunar City above all, but I'm at a loss as to how to do that.”

  “To protect Lunar now, we'll need to take 01,” said Nicholas. “Otherwise we won't be able to move men quickly back and forth to Lunar.”

  “That's why I'm here,” Jonathon said. “I need to know what you've found out and to see it for myself. Is it possible?”

  Nicholas was back in his element. He closed his eyes to think, making them wait until he had the details worked out, the gears in his brain churning. Then he nodded.

  “Yes,” he said. “Maybe better, even. 02 is already in our hands, so we leave 03, 04, and 05 to the Elite for now.”

  “05 is already ours,” Jonathon broke in. “As of this afternoon.”

  Aurelia smiled. That was her mother's work, she was sure.

  “Fine, so we leave 03 and 04. We should be able to take those with minimal force once we hold 01 anyway,” said Nicholas. “But if we're going to take 01, it's got to be fast and by surprise.”

  “And can we do that?”

  A slow smile spread over Nicholas's face. “Oh yes,” he said. “Most definitely.”

  Chapter Ten

  Nicholas told Jonathon all he knew about the tunnels running under City 01.

  “It's the only chance we have of not making this a complete bloodbath,” he finished. “Take them fast, by surprise, and we might get away with it.”

  Jonathon pursed his lips in thought. “All right,” he said finally. “What we need is some kind of map of these tunnels, find out how far they go, where they come out, that sort of thing. We need to know what we're dealing with before we make any decisions.”

  “Hold on a second,” Aurelia said, getting up.

  She opened the door, and as she'd suspected, a small crowd was innocently gathered in the corridor. At the sound of the door clicking, everyone tried to look busy and failed miserably. She grinned, knowing that the Outliers were desperate for information, and even more desperate to know what exactly the President was doing here. Looking around, she saw Jak and beckoned him over.

  “Question,” she said. “Are there any maps of those Subway tunnels?”

  Jak thought for a minute. “Hmmm, we've never made any. We know which tunnels go where and which exits are safe, so we've never needed a map. But...I might be able to help you.”

  “Then come in here,” Aurelia said, opening the door to the office again.

  She performed a brief round of introductions and was surprised to see that Jak didn't look at all overwhelmed by the fact that he was meeting the President. In fact, he looked like this was his due. Well, thought Aurelia, he’s been waiting long enough for someone to come and rescue his City. He must have known that we'd get here one day.

  Jak asked to borrow a screen, taking out his own at the same time. Aurelia quickly handed hers over. Tapping into a public database, Jak pulled up a strange-looking diagram and then beamed it onto the back wall of the office.

  “What's that?” asked Aurelia, looking at the twisting multi-coloured lines that seemed to form some kind of pattern.

  “That,” said Jak, “is a very old schematic of the Subway system. It shows which lines stop where and how they're connected to each other. This is simply an easy way to navigate the Subway, though there's little relation between this and the real geography of the City. Now, look at this....”

  He pulled up something else on Aurelia's screen and projected it onto the wall next to the schematic.

  “That's City 01,” said Nicholas immediately.

  Aurelia and Jonathon looked at him in surprise. The map looked nothing like City 01. But Jak nodded.

  “Very good,” he said. “This is the Old Empire City, which originally stood here before the Great War. City 01 is constructed on some of this old city.”

  He took a plastic tube out of his pocket and
walked to the wall.

  “This,” he said, drawing a circle around a large section of the old map with the ink tube, “is the main central part of City 01. Of course, 01 is far, far bigger than this older city, but the central section remains the same.”

  “And that's where the important things are,” Nicholas noted. “The Council buildings, entertainment broadcast centres, Military garrisons, everything that we need to take in order to hold the City.”

  “Now, all we need to do,” said Jak, “is to figure out which of these stations on the Subway schematic correspond to places on the map of the Old Empire City, and therefore to places we need to go in 01. And we've got a map.” He shrugged. “Seems simple enough to me.”

  Aurelia's head was spinning. It didn't sound simple to her at all. But Nicholas was nodding.

  “That should work fine,” he said. “Can you do that? And then give us a simplified version of the Subway schematic?”

  “No problem,” said Jak. “I can do it in a couple of hours or so.”

  Not wanting to disturb him, or to make him move his projections, Nicholas, Aurelia, and Jonathon left the small office and went back to the room that Nicholas and Aurelia had been sharing. A loud snore greeted them as they opened the door.

  “That's him?” Jonathon whispered.

  Nicholas nodded. “He sleeps like a log; don't worry about waking him.”

  “I wish I could do that,” Jonathon said wearily but at regular volume. “Now, tell me what you're planning.”

  Nicholas's plan was relatively simple. All they needed to do was to bring the Resistance forces into the Outliers territory. There were plenty of ruined buildings that could provide some form of shelter if necessary, but Nicholas didn't plan on keeping them there for long. What he wanted to do was to split the forces into groups and send them into the Subway tunnels. At a pre-arranged time, the forces would exit the tunnels, suddenly appearing in various areas of 01.

  “They won't see us coming, though they'll obviously know that we've moved troops into the area. They just won't know when we plan on attacking. And even then, they'll be expecting a traditional attack and will probably move the majority of their forces to the outskirts of the City to try and prevent us from penetrating the City perimeter.”