Unworthy: Marked to die. Raised to survive.

by Joanne Armstrong

  Chapter Twenty

  The dart leaves the pipe with a puff, and Elyssa’s hand slaps her upper back, between her shoulder blades. She whirls round and raises the knife. She’s quick, but the poison is quicker. As her eyes lock with mine she loses feeling in her legs and sinks to the floor. She releases a strangled gargle of anger.

  I let out a wavering breath and tear around the front of the house. The creaking steps give me away, but it no longer matters. I cross the room to stand over Elyssa’s form, prone on the dusty wooden floorboards. Her eyes are open, mouth opening and closing, fingers twitching. I am guessing that she is still fully aware, just unable to control her muscle movements. I kick her hard, venting all the anger, fear and frustration I have been feeling for the last hour on her unmoving form.

  I am panting more from a release of tension than from exertion when I turn to Hayes, still bound against the post. His arm is streaked with dark red blood which is beginning to drip from his fingers to the floor. He watches me through heavy lids.

  I bend down and take the knife from Elyssa’s fingers. I release his feet first and then my eyes flit over the bindings on his wrists. The point of the knife shakes as it approaches the dripping bonds. There’s a lot of blood. I swallow and steady the blade, then cut through the cords. He slips to the floor, tipping his head back against the post, and grips his shoulder with his other hand.

  I move round to look at his face. “Are you okay?” I breathe.

  “I’ll be fine,” he nods. “A little help though?”

  In the tracker’s backpack I find a first aid kit identical to the one Hayes had, which is now in my bag under the trees. I bring it over and help him to fasten bandages tightly around the gashes on his upper arm.

  “Did you notice that broken car out the front?” he asks me. I nod and he continues, “I left my gear under it. Could you get it?”

  When I return I bring my backpack as well as his. He props his back up against the post while he cleans himself up.

  I sit nearby, watching him, wondering what now. “What about her?” I say. The tracker hasn’t moved since hitting the floor.

  He’s taken his black Polis Tshirt off and is using it to wipe the blood. I can’t help but think that he’s stalling. He takes a drink from his canteen and empties some water into his hand to douse his face. I notice how pale he looks.

  “I can’t kill her,” he finally answers. “Much as I’d like to.” He puts the damp hub shirt back on.

  I nod. It’s what I expected him to say, and I realise that I’m beginning to see a softer side to my soldier. I look over at the prone form lying between the broken floorboards and the gaping hole in the front wall. I shiver at the memory of her toying with the blade in front of my eyes. It’s not one I’ll forget easily.

  “I want to get away from her,” I say.

  “When we get moving we’ll leave her here. What did you do to her?”

  “Poison.” I pat the weapon at my waist. “Blowpipe.”

  Hayes rubs his cheek, the roughness of his stubble making a rasping sound, then rests it in his hand, looking at me evenly. I’m wondering if I’ve told him too much when he asks, “How long before it wears off?”

  “I don’t know for sure. I’ve not used it on a person before. But at least an hour, I think.”

  “Alright then,” he says, standing slowly, the bloodied cord in his hands. He moves carefully when crossing the floor to where she lies. I watch while he ties her hands firmly together.

  “When she comes to, she’ll be able to follow us,” I say in dismay.

  “I know,” he sighs. “But leaving her to the wild animals - I can’t do that. We’ll leave her with no weapons or tools. Just what she needs to get back to the City.”

  Hayes looks round for the tracker’s belongings. We collect together all the equipment that she’d had in her bag when I first found her. He goes through it all, piece by piece. Using her dazer, he directs its beam towards her thermal imaging monitor and it makes a faint crackle. A thin plume of smoke rises from the device and I feel safer knowing that she’ll never be able to see us on it. He takes her other weapons and puts them in his bag, whilst leaving her with the useless ones. His eyes flick towards me as he stows the damaged dazer next to her broken monitor. I was right; he’d known all along that I’d disabled it.

  It’s twilight by the time we can get away, and Elyssa has not moved. There is only an hour or so left before the forest will be in full darkness. As we start the trek down the slope, I know that there are many things to be said. I know that it won’t have escaped his attention I wasn’t following the river to the Polis.

  “How did she know where I was?” I ask him, then I correct myself, “Or where I would be, anyway?”

  “I’m guessing she picked you up on the thermal imager yesterday. Perhaps she has triggers all round here, and was just watching which way you’d go.”

  I was so confident that I had not been seen. It gives me the creeps knowing she’d been watching me. How could she have been behind me and in front of me as well?

  As though reading my thoughts, Hayes adds, “She’ll have a trail bike hidden somewhere nearby. Great for covering distances, even over rough terrain. But not so great when you’re going for stealth. I’d like to find it and take it, but we could waste our advantage searching. Hungry?” he asks.

  The change of subject takes me by surprise. By rights I should be famished. It’s been a long time since breakfast and the forest is now nearly dark around us. However, I shake my head. Maybe it was the sight of the blood, or the fact that I am still alive after giving myself up for dead, but I don’t feel like eating.

  I also know that I feel totally conflicted about what I am going to do. I want us to keep moving so that I can have a chance to think through my options.

  “Do you have the LED light?” he asks. The terrain has flattened out and I can hear the stream on my right.

  Of course I do. I search around in my bag and hand it to him, feeling a little sheepish. He clips it onto the monitor in his hands and it throws a wide beam forward into the area ahead of us.

  “I’m sorry I left you,” I suddenly blurt.

  In the white light from the torch I see him look back at me sharply. “I was incapable of looking after you. It’s understandable that you would leave me.”

  “But you were injured and I left you there…”

  “You did the right thing, Arcadia,” he says slowly, taking a step back towards me. “You needed to keep moving. What I didn’t understand is why you came back for me. It makes more sense now, knowing you had a weapon.” He hitches up the shoulder strap of his rucksack. “Nevertheless, you didn’t have to. And I’m very grateful that you did,” he adds, not looking at me.

  I feel a little abashed, knowing I’d been trying to escape him since day one. But it’s crystal clear to me that unless he had followed me to the house I would now be dead. “Thank you for saving me. For intervening. I’m lucky to still be alive.”

  He starts moving, following the course of the stream. I can tell he’s embarrassed, and unused to being thanked. “Well, I guess we’re even,” he says.

  “How’s the dog bite?” I ask him.

  “Healing,” he replies succinctly. It’s clear he doesn’t want to dwell on it. I can see though that he’s moving more steadily and there are no signs of dizziness.

  The going is slow. We pick our way around fallen trees and brambles near the stream, often having to leave it for many kilometres in order to find a safe path. Hayes studies the monitor constantly and doesn’t seem agitated, so I take some assurance from that. We keep the stream on our right and continue following its course east. I know that it will lead out of the forest and cross the plains to the Polis, where my trip will end. I will need to have decided by then on my course of action.

  The relaxed pace allows my mind to wander. Much as I want to put the tracker and our sick meeting out of my mind, so much of what she said keeps returning to haunt me. The wo
rst part about it is that I know what she said makes sense.

  “Captain Hayes,” I start, when we are negotiating the enormous tree trunk of a pine. “The tracker - Elyssa - said something to me when she was questioning me.”

  He’s obviously paying attention, but doesn’t stop or turn to me. “What about?” he asks sharply.

  “The Festivals. I want to know if it’s true.”

  “It’s true,” he says. He keeps moving.

  My knees have started shaking and I’m feeling light headed. I have to stop. I lean back on the tree, putting my hand on it for balance.

  I can see, a little distance ahead, the light turn and direct its beam on me as he comes back. He angles it to the ground.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s true. I wish I could tell you that it isn’t.”

  “So… Festivals are just another way of… controlling the population?”

  He leans on the trunk of the pine, next to me. He looks away when he says, “Yes. It’s put in the food.”

  “What is?”

  “Some pathogen that will make the weakest people sick. I think it’s different every time.”

  I try to take this in. The Polis are purposely infecting hubbites twice a year. “And they make a big party of it!”

  He shrugs. “At least you get the party. In the Polis we’re injected every six months too.”

  I hadn’t considered this. “With the same sicknesses?” He nods. “Cotton wool,” I murmur. “Do many of you get sick?”

  “That’s one of the ways we differ. In the Polis we might get sick, but few people die. In the hubs you’re not as lucky.”

  Not as lucky. That’s an understatement.

  “Come on, eat this,” he says, handing me a packet of biscuits. I still don’t feel hungry, but he makes me eat them. With some food in my stomach, I have to admit that I do feel better, although nothing can take away the impact of the shock that I have just suffered.

  We keep moving through the thinning forest. The ground slopes and we work our way up a steep incline, leaving the stream to make its way through the gorge below. As the trees become more sparse, the terrain is easier to manage, but still it’s all I can do to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I’m exhausted, but my mind is whirring. I’m trying to rethink what I know about my hub and my way of life, trying to work out the truth from the fabrication.

  I have so many questions. What do I really know about my world? How much of the history I learned in school is true? The Isolation and the reasons for it; how much of all that was fabricated, and fed to us as a fairy story?

  I wonder how much Bastian knows. As Firstborn, I realise already that he has a different picture of the political status of my country from mine. But what about the Festivals, and the germ spreading? A thought stops me in my tracks, then I have to hurry to catch up with Hayes while I mull it over. Bastian came back from his first visit to the City so upset, and was reluctant to enjoy the Festivals after that. Had he discovered the truth about their purpose?

  What about my Grandfather? How much did he know? If he was Firstborn he might have known about the Festivals too, but he never discouraged me from attending them. I think back, trying to remember tiny details in nuances and conversations which would have seemed unimportant at the time. The way he spoke, you’d think he looked forward to them as much as I did. Perhaps my enthusiasm was simply a reflection of his own.

  It feels like such an immense betrayal. The man I trusted above all others. What else had he been keeping from me for the last seventeen years?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  At the top of the hill Hayes calls a halt. We’re out in the open and have left the forest behind us. The darkness has a vastness to it, and I sense rather than see that we must be on the edge of the plains.

  The sky above is dark, the stars pinpoints of light scattered across the sea of black. He gets a fire going on the ashes of an old one, and since we’ve seen so few people out here, I can’t help wondering if it’s a favourite spot of his.

  I’m relieved he wants to stop; I’m so tired I feel like I’ve been walking through a haze. I wrap a blanket round myself and it’s not long before a dreamless sleep takes me.

  When I wake, it’s still dark. The first thing I notice is the smell of cooked meat, and I’m so famished that I eat what Hayes passes me without really noticing what it is. Outside the ring of light cast by the flames, I can see nothing. From the void, a warm breeze rustles the tussock grasses.

  After tending the fire, Hayes comes to sit near me. In its flickering light I see him gingerly stretch his wounded arm, and begin to peel the bandages back.

  “How is it?” I ask.

  “Healing well, thanks,” he answers. Almost as an afterthought, he adds, “How are you?”

  I start to answer by reflex, but then pause, thinking. The honest answer is that I’m not sure. “I’m… alright. Physically, I mean. But I have a lot of questions.”

  He doesn’t look at me while he applies a salve to the cuts, but says, “Okay, what do you want to know?”

  I take a deep breath while I mentally flick through them. It’s like taking a tangled ball of wool and trying to tease out the loose end. I swallow. “The Isolation… what really happened?”

  He blinks, as if surprised that I want to start with history, but he answers readily enough. “You will have been taught the truth in school; the Polis has never tried to hide how it came to be in a position of power. The Sweeping Sickness began to spread around the globe, so our military protected itself by declaring the Isolation. Any craft that attempted to land on our shores was destroyed, so the Sickness was never allowed to arrive here.” I let out the breath I was holding. That at least I knew.

  “Do you know whether many tried?”

  “Actually, yes. By air and by sea, at least fifty-seven craft were neutralised.” Wow. The calm way he says this shocks me. He’s talking about the deaths of hundreds of people, all trying to flee from the blanket of death that was devastating the globe. Refugees.

  I switch to something more personal, something I’ve privately denounced all my life. “What about the baby testing, and the marking? What is it for?”

  Hayes takes a breath and lets it out. His eyes roam to the fire, as though he is preparing a long answer, then return to me. “In the first fifty years following the Isolation, there was anarchy. Law and order broke down, violence ruled and chaos reigned. As well as the deaths caused by panic, there were innumerable other deaths too. Even though the Sweeping Sickness never arrived, many died due to illness. There was no medical care or sanitation control. When the Polis was finally able to turn their attention to the rest of the country, they realised that they had been presented with an opportunity. The First Council decided to continue the work which nature had started. At first they chose to mark those who fell ill through natural causes. And later, when a semblance of order returned and the birth rate began to rise, they wanted to find a way of identifying the weaker ones early on. Hence the infant testing. The marking is an easy way to identify a person with a weaker immunity, who is basically seen as a waste of medical resources.”

  “But when Elyssa mentioned my first exposure, she meant…”

  “The nano-patch,” he shrugs simply, almost apologetically. “The germs that babies are given before their scrutiny. If immunity is low and an infection takes hold, symptoms will show within twenty-four hours.”

  I stare at him, unmoving for a moment, while I try to process what he’s telling me. “You’re talking about… the vaccine,” I say slowly.

  “The vaccine, yes,” he sighs.

  They actively encouraged weak infants to die early on. As much as it appals me, I can’t deny that it makes sense. Survivors in a world decimated by disease, making their future generations stronger to resist it. Logical, reasonable… and deeply callous. My mouth is dry and I have to swallow before I can speak.

  “It’s not life-giving. It doesn’t equip us for survival. The vaccin
e is death,” I whisper.

  “Potentially,” he agrees. “The theory is that parents pass on their immunities to their children. And the first exposure - the vaccine - tests that. If it’s all gone well, the children show no symptoms, and the baby is safe and well. As you know, some children don’t pass the test. They are born with weak immune systems, and the first exposure is pretty much the end for them.”

  “Within a week they die,” I finish flatly.

  It’s a new version of the truth which I thought I knew. What I didn’t know was that the Polis were purposely injecting newborns with diseases.

  “Not all, but as you know, after falling ill from the first exposure, survival is unlikely. The few who do survive are outcasts. They’ve been marked, which will always make them unattractive as a mate.”

  I nod. He doesn’t have to spell this out for me; it’s clear as crystal. I’m marked so that I’m on my own. And therefore so much less likely to pass on the weaknesses I inherited.

  “Why are you telling me all this?” I ask slowly. I have an uncomfortable thought forming.

  “You asked. Don’t ask if you’re not prepared for an answer.” Direct. I guess I should have seen that coming.

  “No, that’s not what I meant. I mean, all this isn’t common knowledge in the hubs. You must have Polis rules that keep you from allowing us to learn the truth. How come you’re telling me so much?”

  He nods, understanding my intent. He winds a fresh bandage in place before answering.

  “You’re right. Hubbites are to be kept in the dark at all cost. However, when I was given my orders, the General told me that if you asked me any questions, I was to answer with the truth.”

  With most of the population believing in a rosier picture of their world, why would I be afforded this rare courtesy? Why would I be any different?

  Hayes continues, “He said that you would need to be told sooner or later.”

  “He said that?” I can feel a realisation creeping in. Much as I’d hardly fitted in at Greytown before, I’d certainly never fit in now.