Radicals (Blood & Fire)

by Frankie Rose

  Everybody is moving. Everybody except me. I’m wincing into the sun, watching the almond-sized thing hovering in the sky as it rips toward us at an unimaginable speed. Light glances, amplified, off the vessel’s metallic structure, creating a nimbus of glowing yellow around the strange structure, burning colourful shapes onto my retinas. It looks almost as if it’s hovering in one spot, stationary, but by the way it shifts slightly from side to side, I know that can’t be true. It’s moving. It only appears to be still because it’s coming straight for us. And really, really fast.

  “Kit! C’mon!” I’m suddenly surrounded by a crush of bodies, and I can hear Ryka but I can’t see him. “Kit, over here!”

  The sound of the approaching vessel is a roaring throb in my ears now. I can make out a panel of windows to the very front of it, along with two sleek, drawn-back blades of metal that run down the length of the thing, like wings. In fact, that’s exactly what they are.

  A strong hand grasps hold of my wrist and my body gets tugged sideways, out of the rush of bodies, as people shove their way inside the Det. I look away from the oncoming threat and find myself staring up into dark brown eyes. Ryka stares down at me, expression worried.

  “How many people can fit inside one of those things?” he asks.

  “I don’t—I don’t know! I’ve never seen one before!” Never. Never, not once have I ever seen something like this in the Sanctuary before. This feat of engineering is something entirely new.

  “Is it them, though? Is this thing from the Sanctuary?”

  I shake my head wildly, shrugging my shoulders. “Maybe? I don’t—I don’t know!”

  Whatever it is, it’s getting closer. Bodies are still running, panicked, between the buildings. Fighters are giving up on trying to coerce people by shouting at them and are now physically picking them up and moving them bodily. Wide eyes stare out from within the shadowed rubble of fallen buildings, all searching upward for the threat.

  “Stay inside! Everyone stay down!” Ryka yells. He grabs hold of my arm and drags me forward, charging straight for the entrance of the Det. It’s clear now. We tear through the open doorway just in time to catch the great, protruding nose of the hovering ship appear overhead. A loud, strobing, metallic blast of noise hits the building, like the enraged challenge of some wounded animal, except this sound is wholly unnatural and terrifying. It cuts off just long enough to feel the echo of it still vibrating through my ear drums before it comes again, this time even louder. Plaster rains down from the ceiling over our heads, and it seems as though the very building itself begins to shake.

  James and Caius appear at our sides, holding armfuls of rifles between them. James flashes teeth at us as his mouth makes the shape of words, but his voice is ripped away. He thrusts a rifle into Ryka’s hand, gesturing to the perimeter of the building. Ryka nods. Caius shifts around to my left and hands me a weapon as well. I try to communicate with him through this unbearable sound, to see if he has seen anything like this before either, but he looks just as confused as me.

  “RADICAL FORCES, SURRENDER YOUR ARMS.” The voice sounds distorted, twisted. Not human. It’s almost as loud as the shockwave of noise that just came close to shaking the Det apart. “RADICAL FORCES, SURRENDER YOUR ARMS,” it repeats. “SANCTUARY BREACH CODE 441. ERADICATION ORDER GREEN. LAY DOWN YOUR ARMS.”

  So they are Sanctuary. And eradication order green? That doesn’t sound like something we should be laying down our weapons in preparation for. The words have quite the opposite affect on us, in fact. Ryka places a hand on my arm, his face determination and steel. I nod in response. The look is passed around our small group, and travels even further beyond to the groups of Freetown’s civilians and fighters who have gathered around to pick up a rifle, too.

  Around thirty of us hunker down on the ground floor, holding our breath. Above our heads on the floors above us, people are probably hugging the floor, holding that same breath, trying not to be seen. We’re all waiting. For the tidal wave of sound to no longer be sound anymore, but people, charging out of that metal ship to crash over us like water against rock. Now that the terrible, blaring alarm has ended, the world seems too silent. The lack of sound is stifling.

  “Ready?” Ryka says softly.

  “Yes.” I nod, placing the stock of the rifle against my shoulder the way Foster showed me to. The same question is asked of the others, who all echo my response. No one is lying down to be either taken, or by the sounds of it wiped clean from the face of the earth by these people. We’ll fight. We’ll probably die, but it will be on our own terms. That’s a far better death than any the Sanctuary will deliver us.

  All thoughts of Olivia and Luke are gone from my mind. My brother is probably scared somewhere, up over my head, cowering with the rest of the paralysed civilians of Freetown and the broken fighters we saved from the Sanctuary. Olivia might well be sleeping through this whole thing given the amount of blood she lost. I’ve accepted that fate will take care of them for me at this point, though. I only have the option of focusing on the task at hand, and that is fighting alongside Ryka, James, Cai and the other men who have chosen to stand beside us.

  “SANCTUARY BREACH CODE 441. ERADICATION ORDER GREEN,” the androgynous, monotone warning blares out again. Ryka breathes in, drawing his rifle up against his shoulder, and then he nods.

  “Okay. Let’s do this.”

  We’ve been waiting for those words. As soon as they leave Ryka’s mouth, we are all moving, charging toward the glassless windows and open maw of the Det’s doorway, ready to throw down our lives in defence of the building and all those inside it.

  “Aim for the vents!” James hollers, pulling to the left. He drops to one knee and hoists up his gun, but then suddenly he’s toppling sideways.

  “Whoa!” The cry escapes me before I can rein in my surprise. Under foot, the ground seems to ripple. It takes a moment to realise it’s not actually buckling out from underneath me, but that a tremendous force is rocking the earth, sending wave after wave of vibration through the foundations of the Det. It’s enough to have knocked James to his ass, along with a couple of the other fighters. Ryka reaches out and pulls me to him. Out of the window, across the city, fire explodes skyward, brightening the overcast day.

  “What is that?” Caius yells.

  “Another one,” James replies, now back on one bent knee. “There are more of those things across the other side of the city. They’re blowing up the towers.” The towers that we set up to warn of an approaching attack at night time. They’ve been manned by two or three people thus far, but with the sudden influx of people from Freetown, who knows how many people took cover in those buildings.

  “Gods,” Ryka exhales. In the distance, one of the buildings, tower eleven, I think, seems to sag from the skyline, gracefully descending to the earth. A bone-jarring impact shakes the Det again, forcing me to reach out and steady myself against a pillar.

  This isn’t going to work. I suddenly know that if we open fire on that ship floating above us, we’re signing our own death warrants. I know it with every fibre of my body; the truth of it hits me so hard that I think I might be sick. “Stop,” I whisper.

  Ryka is the only one who hears me. “What?”

  “Don’t let them fire on it.”

  “What? We can’t just let them—”

  “They haven’t seen us. They don’t know we’re inside.” I don’t know how I know this. I just do. The Sanctuary are pragmatists at the end of the day: see a threat; destroy the threat. Don’t see a threat? Don’t waste the munitions. The Det would be in pieces already if they’d even spotted a single person running inside. We’ve gotten lucky. Unbelievably luck—

  The sound of gunfire takes my half-formed thought and burns it to the ground. James. James has opened fire.

  “Stop!” Ryka roars, but it’s already too late for that. The other men have followed his example and even Caius is squinting up into the bright sky, laying his finger to the trigger. “Stop!”r />
  I grab hold of Ryka’s arm. “Too late,” I gasp. “We need…we need to go up!” A loud, deep bass-filled blast of that alarm sounds over the building again. The distant ting, ting, ting of bullets meeting metal mixes in with it—the shots being fired are meeting their mark. A bizarre throbbing fills the air as the ship over our heads begins to turn. “Ryka!” I scream. “We need to move up!”

  “Why?”

  I just shake my head—no time to explain. I let go of his arm, hoping against hope that he’ll trust me and follow, and then I bolt.

  My chest is burning by the time we reach green ten. It only takes forty seconds or so, but that thing can blow us to smithereens at any moment, so each one of those forty seconds feels like an eternity. The question burning in my mind, as I storm out of the stairwell onto the tenth floor, jumping over cowering bodies huddled together, is if I’ve gone high enough. Have I? My question is answered when I race out of the stairwell and onto the level, open to the elements along the entire length of its side, to reveal the lower half of the ship hovering in the void.

  No. No, I haven’t gone high enough. Another four flights should do it.

  “Kit! Kit, what the hell?” Ryka is panting when he catches up with me. His face is pale and drawn, sweat running down his temple.

  “We need to go up another three floors.”

  “Why!” He grabs hold of my arm. Down below the echoing pops of gunfire are increasing in frequency now. A flash of white and a loud pinging sound makes both of us duck instinctively. The bullet that hits the ship ricochets off what I presume would be its hull and buries itself in the concrete pillar right next to my head. There isn’t even a scratch on the ship.

  Ryka’s eyes round with a mix of incredulity and shock.

  “We need to go up another three,” I repeat, pulling at his grip on my arm.

  “Fine. But I really hope you know what you’re doing.”

  I have some idea of what I’m doing. It’s not a good idea, not by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s the only one I’ve got. We press up another four flights of stairs, only pausing once when a loud, jarring rattle rips through the air. The Det shakes in unison with the sounds—they’re firing on the building. The gunfire doesn’t stop. On green fourteen we have to climb over more bodies, people hunkered down with elbows drawn up around their heads. And then Luke is standing right in front of me.

  “Kit! What’s happening?” His voice is strong, although his face is smudged with dirt and he looks so small in his torn shirt.

  “Get back, Luke. Wait with the others.” I gesture to the people behind, crouched in the stairwell, and hurry past him, entering level fourteen proper. This floor isn’t like most of the others. It’s retained its inner structure for the most part, divided into small rooms and protected by an outer wall. It takes me a moment to find a room that has been compromised, providing a clear view out over the city.

  Ryka follows on my heels. And so does my brother; I scowl when I see the boy. “Get back, Luke! What did I tell you?”

  “I’m not leaving you,” he says, lifting his arm so that I can see the gun he holds in his hand. A cold steel has frosted over his eyes, making him look older somehow. I was wrong. He hasn’t been up here cowering at all; he’s been fighting. The thought makes my stomach lurch. I can see it in his face now, though—there’s no sense in me wasting the breath. He’s not going away willingly, and I don’t have time to drag him kicking and screaming to safety. It’s a moot point anyway. If this fails, then there will be no safe place at all. He will die anyway, just like the rest of us.

  “Alright, then. Come on.”

  Relief briefly replaces the determination on his face. I swallow hard—what am I doing, agreeing to this madness?—and then I’m hurrying into the room.

  The ship wavers in the air five feet below us, in between floors rather than directly at our level. It’s huge, thirty feet across and constructed out of some kind of reinforced steel that looks fairly impenetrable. There don’t appear to be any chinks to its armour, any visible weaknesses that I can discern. The guns responsible for peppering the lower floors of the Det with bullet holes are hidden underneath the great machine; the sound of their firing thunders out in an unending mechanical war cry. No guns on top, though. A stroke of luck. Sickeningly, there does appear to be some sort of windowed hatch in the very centre of the bowed expanse of its back, through which the shapes of moving figures are visible inside. I don’t need to see the silver around their necks to know that they’re wearing halos, completely unfeeling as they strafe the building in front of them. They’re undoubtedly very clinical as they go about the task set before them.

  “What now?” Ryka asks.

  “Now we pay them a little visit.”

  He looks at me like I’ve gone absolutely mad. “What?”

  Explaining, convincing him of my sanity, will only take time. Time we don’t have. I grasp hold of my rifle, head back to the other side of the room, and raise my eyebrows at my brother and the boy I’ve fallen in love with. “Feel free to join me whenever you’re ready.”

  I run. And I jump.

  The ship is located a solid eight feet away from the side of the building. As soon as my boots leave the ledge of level fourteen, I’m incredibly grateful that I thought to take that run up. There’s a terrifying moment when I’m weightless, poised, vulnerable out in space, and my heart rises to my mouth as I consider that I might not actually make it. I windmill my arms, hopelessly working to snatch back some semblance of balance, but the movement proves futile, and then I’m falling.

  “Kit!” The sound of Ryka’s shout is whipped away by the wind roaring in my ears. My heart pounds, lurching drunkenly in my chest. And then my feet make contact. My legs buckle hard underneath me, sending darts of lancing pain up my shins. The fall wasn’t that far but the fear of leaping has turned my limbs to mush. I sag to my knees, splaying my palms flat against the rough metal of the Sanctuary’s craft.

  It’s okay. I’m alive. I’m alive. I take a moment to breathe, marvelling at the fact that I didn’t drop my rifle, and then turn to look over my shoulder. Ryka and Luke are both standing on the lip of the building, eyes wide and unblinking, mouths open. Ryka’s hand is gripping hold of the back of Luke’s shirt like he’s had to stop him from leaping straight after me.

  Will the people inside the ship hear me if I shout? I don’t know. I can barely hear myself think over the furious snarl of the guns below, and the roar of the engines keeping the thing stationary. I can’t take the chance, though. I wave, gesturing them down. One gun probably isn’t going to do it; I’ll need them to fire with me if I’m to have any effect here. Luke doesn’t need any encouragement. He wrestles free of Ryka’s grasp and vanishes, while Ryka eyes the gap between the building and ship with what looks like mild panic. He’s afraid of heights? Surely not? I try to communicate my disbelief through my curved eyebrow, and he pulls a sardonic face back at me. If you can do it, I can do it, the look says.

  My returned look says, well come on and try.

  A hurtling brown object breaks my gaze from Ryka’s as something quickly flashes in front of his face: my brother. His body is a steady blur in my eyes as he hurls himself from the ledge without a moment’s pause. He lands with a weighty thud, legs tucked up underneath him. Two skittering steps forward, knees still bent, and he comes to a stop barely three feet from my side. He shoots me a reckless grin that stretches from ear to ear.

  He’s not taking this seriously. There are people below us being shot at by the Sanctuary and he’s treating it like a game. There’s no time to try and make him see this. There’s only time to send him a desultory glance, and then Ryka is sailing through the air. My heart stutters as the ship pivots on an invisible axis just as his feet leave the security of level fourteen.

  “Ryka!” The scream tears from my lips before I can even suck in a startled breath. The look on his face burns its way into my mind, forever to be remembered, as he sees the machine slip a
way from him. He’s not going to make it. He’s not going to make it. Both Luke and I drop into crouched positions to retain our balance as the ship dips in the air, coming about by a couple of degrees. Every single hair on my body rises in absolute and sheer terror as time seems to slow, and Ryka falls through the air. I’m moving before I even realise my brain has sent the command to my body. Scrambling forward, it takes me all of a millisecond to realise I have no hope of getting to him in time. He’s going to fall. He’s going to fall, and he’s going to die, and it will all be my fault.

  The ship continues to pivot, dropping at the same time, everything happening way too slowly. I slide with the motion, suddenly tumbling downwards as it rocks sideways. I can barely tell which way is up. I’m slipping, sliding, falling then, scrambling against the slick, seamless surface of the ship as I begin to fall, too. I close my eyes.

  And the loud thud of an impact close to my head nearly causes me to lose my grip on the still-moving machine. I open my eyes, and the soles of a pair of boots are hurtling toward me, sliding down the curved bow of the ship. In a split second, I see Luke, one arm linked through a loop of metal piping protruding from the ship, his body hanging out into the void, and I realise it’s not him falling. It is Ryka. He landed. He actually hit the ship! A faint sense of relief surges through me, until I foresee that his luck is about to run out, and so is mine. The boots are headed straight for me. He’s going to slide off the ship, but first he’s going to hit me and take me with him. It plays out in my head…

  And then it happens.

  Burning hot pain lances through my shoulder as his body collides with mine, and then I’m tumbling, rolling down the great body of the ship all over again. The edge races up to meet me, sky—metal, sky, metal, sky, metal—as I spin over and over.

  And then my legs are protruding into space.

  This is it. This is it. No time to grab hold of anything. No time to save myself. No time to even think. I’m—