Radicals (Blood & Fire)

by Frankie Rose

  My ears work overtime for hours, straining to hear anything over the sound of my own footfall, and I freeze every time I sense movement close by. I see another pair of reflective eyes watching me at one point; they’re at head height so I know the creature is big. Not a deer this time. I don’t have a clue what it is, can’t make out anything other than its slowly blinking gaze. It doesn’t seem even marginally scared of me, which probably means it has teeth the size of my knives. I don’t stick around to find out.

  I eventually break through the trees to find myself standing on the top of a steep scree slope. At the base of the slope, a hundred metres below, a circular lake pools. Unlike the river, this water is deadly calm. It looks like a beaten silver penny, carelessly dropped and forgotten. The moon is reflected in its surface, eerily beautiful, fat and round. I should maintain the higher ground in case the Sanctuary’s men have somehow managed to follow me, but there’s no way for me to cross the pass before me without losing the tactical advantage. I decide that crossing my fingers and hoping for the best is all I can do about the situation, and I begin to make my way down.

  Scree slopes are hard to navigate, I learn. After falling a few times and sliding down the loose shale on my back, I realise that it’s quicker and easier to run down, digging the heels of my boots in for purchase. I grip hold of the straps on my rucksack, like the mere action alone is going to hold me upright. Sweat is pouring down my back when I reach the bottom, and by the bright stinging sensation across my lower back, I have a few new injuries. They feel minor enough, though. My head is swimming when I reach the pebbly shore of the water. Even in the dark I can see it’s crystal clear. I cup my sore hands into it and sigh at the chilled bite against my skin. I dump the contents of my cupped hands over my head, hissing as the freezing cold fingers of water race down the back of my shirt.

  I sit for a while, trying to work out how the hell I’m going to find Ryka and Luke. Maybe it’s because I’ve stopped moving, or maybe it’s due to the cold water, but I start shivering not long after. It’s a strange kind of shivering, though, a convulsing of my entire body that I can’t seem to control no matter how badly I try to relax my muscles. My teeth chatter so loudly in the profound silence that I’m worried they’ll give me away. I take out a sweatshirt from my rucksack—one of Olivia’s many gifts to me—and slip it on over my head, growling when I have to bend my arm up to put it on. The extra heat from the sweatshirt is welcome, but it doesn’t seem to take the shivering away. I should really move. I need to keep moving so that I don’t get caught. Only, when I try to stand, the stars overhead pitch to a very odd angle and the ground and the sky are tilting, moving, whirling. The lake starts to rise up, which is immediately confusing because the water is still totally still. I reach out to hold it back, but my hand smashes into the smooth round pebbles, and then everything is black.

  ******

  “She’s fine. She’s just lost a bit of blood by the looks of things. I’m bringing her in now.”

  My body is moving. An urgent side-to-side motion that makes my head pound. I swat away the hand on my stomach, rocking me, shaking me, annoying the hell out of me. I can smell cooking meat. Wait…

  My senses come alive. I remember everything—the attack on Freetown; James disappearing with Ryka and my brother; Lowrence, and my new injury. A wave of adrenalin punches me full on in the gut and I’m rolling, reaching for my blades, spinning them over the backs of my hands. I’ve been found. I won’t be taken without a fight. Without dying first.

  The world is far too bright—too blue, too green, too stark. There’s a guy kneeling in front of me. He doesn’t move; he’s frozen solid, staring at the viciously sharp dagger I’m gripping in my outstretched hand. I suck in a deep breath and everything pulls into focus, tight and sharp. I finally look at the stranger properly, and I don’t recognise him. He’s around my age, his hair that in-between shade of blond and brown. His eyes are blue and steady. Realistically, I shouldn’t waste any time. I should punch him in his face and run like hell, but I don’t. It’s his clothes that stop me from reacting. Yes, they mark him as a member of the Sanctuary, but not as a guard. He’s an Elin, one of the members of the general populous.

  “Who are you? Who were you talking to just now?”

  Despite being obviously wary of my knife, he remains calm. “I’m Foster. I was talking to James. He sent me out to get you.” Foster reaches down slowly and unhooks a radio from the belt he wears around his waist. He carries no knives, no weapons at all as far as I can see. The radio isn’t Sanctuary issue; in fact it looks cobbled together and held in one piece with a red and green wire wrapped around its casing. A burst of static rattles out of the speaker as he shows it to me.

  “Make sure you come straight in. Don’t let her out of your sight.” The bossy, flat tone undeniably belongs to James. I glare at the radio as though smashing my fist into it would be the same as smashing my fist into James’ face. Foster doesn’t move a muscle when I stalk forward and snatch the equipment out of his hands. I hold the radio up to my mouth and press the button, but then I suddenly don’t know what to say. I open and close my mouth a few times before growling and handing it back. Foster raises his eyebrow at me, completely deadpan.

  “So you know James well, then?” he says.

  “Well enough,” I snap. “Where are they? Did they make it away alright? Are Ryka and my brother okay?”

  Foster pulls one shoulder up, half a shrug. “James arrived in the middle of the night. He had three new people with him, I didn’t catch any of their names. One of them was just a kid. He sent me out first thing to look for you.”

  My heart contracts in my chest. “Was the unconscious one okay? Was he alive?”

  Foster shakes his head. “None of them were unconscious.”

  Relief is a living, breathing thing inside me. “So they all walked in under their own power?”

  He nods. “James had one of the medics look the younger one over, but he was fine.” Pointing back over his shoulder, Foster indicates over his shoulder with a nod of his head. “We’re about four hours that way. I made some breakfast if you think you can manage it.”

  A small fire burns at the edge of the lake, built up on a bed of the smooth, pebbled rocks. Over the fire, a pan sizzles. Bacon—that’s what I could smell when I woke up. My stomach suddenly tightens, and I realise I’m so hungry I feel nauseous. I nod, cautiously sheathing my knives. Foster’s mouth pulls up to one side, an almost smile.

  “They warned me you’d be jumpy,” he tells me. “I would have demanded some kind of compensation if I knew there was a possibility I was gonna get stabbed, though.” He fixes me some of the bacon in a bread roll. I shoot him a vaguely apologetic look as he hands it over.

  “Sorry. Long night.”

  Foster remains enigmatically quiet, but gives me a look that says he knows all about those. If he escaped the Sanctuary with James and the others, then he undoubtedly does. He sits with his back to me, watching the lake in silence, but it’s not awkward. He’s just thinking, taking everything in, and I’m grateful for it. I’d be embarrassed if he saw me stuffing the food into my face, anyway. When I’m done, I dust my hands off on my pants and fish through my bag for the water I brought with me. In the space of ten minutes I feel like a different person. My head hardly stops pounding, but the throbbing in my arm dulls a little. I must be massively dehydrated. I drink more water and repack my bag, and then hook my thumbs over my knife hilts. Time to go.

  I clear my throat. Foster looks up at me and his eyes widen, showing surprise. If I didn’t know any better, I would think he’d forgotten I was even there. We clean and pack up his cooking implements, which takes forever. There’s no rushing him, apparently. This is highlighted further when we finally head out into the forest and I start jogging. I stop when I realise Foster’s not with me. He’s twenty feet behind me, walking.

  “Come on! A four hour run will take us forever at this pace.”

  He shakes his hea
d. “It’s a four hour walk.”

  It takes a lot of cajoling to get Foster moving, but when he does start running I almost wish I’d left him be. Momentum is key with him, I think, and once he gets going I can barely keep up.

  “Did you escape with James?” I call out. “I thought Opa’s people were all Theron and Falin.”

  He grunts. “Opa isn’t Theron or Falin.”

  “True.”

  “He’s my father,” Foster tells me.

  “So you helped him plan all of this?”

  “Didn’t have much choice.”

  His tone of voice is hard, and I find myself wondering whether he resents the chain of events his father set in motion. “Did you want to stay behind?”

  He slows a little, glances over his shoulder. “Of course not.” His eyes are hard. I don’t get another word out of him. After that, there’s no room for words or half panted conversation, just the steady rhythm of our feet and the inhale, exhale of our lungs. It’s an exhausting task to turn Foster’s four-hour walk into a two-and-a-half-hour marathon. And by the time we arrive at our destination, I’m too shattered to be surprised by where I find myself.

  Ryka took me to train in a city once. We fought in a crumbling colosseum filled with rusting, red plastic chairs and overgrown grass that brushed our hips. It was the first time I showed him the holostick—the first time he met Caius. The city standing before me now is infinitely bigger than that one. Tall spires of concrete bristle on the horizon, impossibly high, impossibly tall. It seems to go on and on forever. As we draw closer, I see that some of the towers have fallen, lying in ruins at the feet of other buildings that inexplicably escaped the same fate. Rubble encases warped, twisted prongs of rusted steel that emerge from the carnage like outstretched hands reaching for salvation.

  Unlike the other city, concrete still reigns supreme here. No plant life infiltrates the cracks of the shattered roadways, no vines creeping up the walls or choking the crooked street lamps. The place feels empty. Strangely hollow. I don’t even have that odd sensation that I’m being watched. The silence that hangs over the place feels like a heavy cloak that mutes everything, even the sound of our boots tromping over broken glass and debris.

  Foster points at a slate-coloured building that leans at a slight angle in the distance. It’s a little higher than the ones surrounding it, a little more precarious. “That’s home.”

  I don’t say anything, but I can’t help but think it: the place looks seconds from tumbling down. Metre-long iron pinions protrude from the very top of the building, from which three black symbols remain erected. It takes a good squint to make out what they are: letters, a D, an E and a T. Down one side of the building, a thick metal rail, almost like a girder, has been fastened to the side of the building. Bright slashes of silver cut through the burnt orange of the rust that thickly coats the rail, as though something sharp has cut its way across the metal, exposing layers beneath. Foster guides me through a narrow pathway that travels directly over a fallen building. We have to climb hand over hand up vertical sections of wall in places, using window frames and bolted metal staircases as leverage. The way down is easier, and my arms and legs don’t shake as badly. Foster doesn’t seem fazed. He’s had a couple of weeks to get used to this place, I reason, but I get the feeling that there isn’t much that really does faze him, anyway.

  We arrive at the base of the building, and I see that the bottom three floors are gutted. The windows are smashed, and black dirt marks stain the window frames and the brickwork above each empty rectangular hole.

  “There was a fire at some point,” Foster tells me. We walk inside through a gaping doorway and a faint, charred smell assaults my senses, the ghost of the violent presence that ravaged this place. The smell isn’t the only thing that remains, either; I have no idea what half destroyed machinery and computer equipment on this level could have been used for, but the sheer size of some of it—great pistons and boxy, twisted units complete with melted plastic buttons—is definitely intriguing. It has the feel of a control room of some description. Every once in a while a scrap of dusty grey paper pokes out of the wreckage but none of it contains any markings. The elements must have worn them away long ago.

  “Kit!” I start at the voice. Luke charges out of an open doorway and runs at me full tilt, smashing into my body.

  “Ahhh! Luke!” Every single one of the nerve endings in my arm flares up into bright sparks of agony. Luke lets go immediately, his eyes roving over my body. He finally catches sight of my arm and lifts my torn shirt back, revealing the angry wound beneath. It’s just a graze, but all the clotted blood, turned black, makes it look so much worse than it is.

  “What happened?”

  “I—” I manage to bite back my words before I tell him about our father. Letting Luke know that Lowrence is out there looking for us can do him no good. “A guard shot at me. Clipped me is all.” He pokes at the wound, morbidly fascinated, and I slap his hand away. “Ow! Are you alright? Where’s Ryka?”

  “Green seventeen,” he says, pulling me along behind him. “He doesn’t know you’re here yet. I saw you coming and raced down to meet you. I manned your station all morning, Foster.”

  “Thanks.” Foster smiles at my brother and bumps him with his shoulder. “Shoot anything?”

  “Nope. There’s nothing out here.”

  We meet the bottom of a staircase that seems unaffected by the fire damage. Luke lets me go and starts jogging up the steps. I raise my eyebrows at Foster. “People are shooting things? With guns?”

  Luke laughs at this, the way an adult might laugh to accommodate an ignorant child—it’s very annoying. “Foster and his brother are deadly shots, Kit. They’re stationed on the top floor so they can keep an eye out for any guards. With both of them gone, I got to take Foster’s place. I got to hold his rifle!”

  Even though my brother has six deadly weapons strapped around his waist, the idea of him handling a rifle makes me break out into a cold sweat. I glare at Foster. “My dad said he’d stay with him,” he tells me, like that makes it okay.

  We hike up the never-ending stairway, passing hastily swabbed red circles that mark the walls, until we hit the eighth floor and we start hearing people. I tense, but Luke charges ahead, babbling about the people here and how Penny is due back from a scouting mission later in the day.

  “I haven’t seen her yet. She’s going to be so surprised, she doesn’t know we’re here,” he says. People at each floor stop what they’re doing to watch us pass them by. Recognition flashes over nearly every face, and the name Kitsch is on the tip of everybody’s tongue. There are no halos in sight, yet a lot of them have scarred hands, scarred arms. They used to be Falin, like me. The walls, now marked with swatches of orange paint, disappear at the twelfth floor, a huge hole rented into the side of the building, and wind teases the open stairs, promising to push us straight over the edge if we venture too close. Luke skirts this part gingerly, looking up and mumbling softly under his breath—an action that tells me the drop makes him nervous. I make a point of looking down to see how it makes me feel. I’ve never been up this high before, so I have no idea how my body will react. Seventy feet of emptiness stares back up at me, the ground far below, and my legs tingle. Other than that I am fine.

  “Got a head for heights? That’ll come in handy,” Foster says. He smirks like he knows something I don’t, and then gestures to the closed doorway on the next floor. “Thirteen. My stop.” The walls are intact here, bright green runnels of spray paint crosshatched at the foot of the new level, and Luke relaxes. He grins at Foster, and I offer him a small smile of my own as he tips his head to us and then makes his way onto the floor.

  “Foster?”

  He turns. “Yeah?”

  “Thanks for coming to get me. And I’m sorry I nearly stabbed you.”

  The first real smile breaks on Foster’s face. His eyes are still cautious though. “S’okay. I’m sure it’s not the worst thing that’ll happen to m
e today.” He disappears as the door closes behind him, and Luke tugs on my arm.

  “Four more flights, Kit. Come on. These are the green floors. That means it’s safe for everyone to be here. It’s only the very top and bottom floors that are red. I’m still allowed to go through them so long as I’m with an adult, but…”

  My brother waffles on about the safety warnings for each floor, telling me how only a select few are supposed to pass through the high-risk areas of the building, but I’m not really listening. I’ve realised that I’m about to see Ryka, and my heart has started skipping uncomfortably in my chest. Is he okay? Foster said he walked into the city last night. Does that mean the effects of the Haze have completely worn off?

  I’m breathing heavily by the time we hit the seventeenth floor. Luke doesn’t need to drag me anymore. I’m hurrying, anxiety flooding me with each step. On the other side of the battered entry door, a narrow corridor leads both left and right before turning corners and disappearing on either side. Doors hang off hinges or have been propped up against the walls, revealing rooms of varying sizes behind them. Loose sheafs of paper line the floor like a carpet, covered in boot marks and black streaks. We head right and Luke stops in front of the first door that’s actually where it’s supposed to be—in its frame. He lifts his fist to knock, but I stop him.