by Grace Hudson
“But…”
“No, you do not understand! There is no threat from mercenaries!”
“No, this time I know you are wrong, 201. I have seen them, once. They wore cloaks. I know of others who have seen them. FERTS was built to protect…”
“All mercenaries are Officers of FERTS! They are acting under Pinnacle Officer Cerberus’ command, and Wilcox before him. They wear the clothing of mercenaries and take the horses, but they are Officers in disguise. This, this, has been the truth all along.”
“No,” Reno’s voice was small. “No, this cannot be…”
“These attacks were designed to create fear. That is what I have learned. I dreamed of this, Reno. They told me, though I did not understand at the time. The words they spoke to me, they make perfect sense now. Fear is what makes us real.”
“You are senseless, 201. Stop this.”
“Yes!” 201 laughed to herself, her voice trailing off. “Perhaps you are right. But how can one see what I see and remain as before? It is not possible. But what I say is true. The rogues are nothing but a vision, a creation of FERTS itself. A story to scare the Vassals at night, a story of a sworn enemy to keep the Epsilon Fighters dreaming of their most important battle, when all along, they were fighting nothing but a shadow. These rogues, these mercenaries, Reno, are nothing but dust, they are mist, a reflection on the water that ripples and distorts when the wind blows. They are no more real than the idea that you can catch the wind in your hand and hold it forever. You will never catch them. You will never find them because they move among you, you fool, FERTS is the enemy!”
“You have… you have truly lost your senses 201.”
201 chuckled to herself. “Yes, perhaps I have lost my senses after all.”
“But I know... they attacked the townships…”
“The attack was a lie, Reno.”
“I knew of townspeople who were slaughtered. It was no lie. You are mistaken, 201.”
“No! The people were slaughtered, yes that is true, but the lie is that the rogues were responsible. What better way to keep the townspeople in line than to bring to them a threat that they cannot defeat? How clever of Pinnacle Officer Wilcox, how clever to pay the Officers, those who are known to him, to do the deal with rations and the promise of a few Vassals. To think it could create a thing such as this.”
“But FERTS was created to protect the Internees, keep them safe and hidden from the townships in order to ensure the security of…”
“Senseless fool!” shouted 201. “FERTS was built on a lie. A lie that you helped create, whether you were aware of it or not.”
“I didn’t know, 201,” he said. “I would not… it is not right, what has been done.”
“You thought it was right with protection as your excuse! Now you think it is not right? I do not believe you. You only believe the reason is wrong, not the methods. THAT is the problem!”
“No, I didn’t know about Zeta Circuit, about what you may know about Alpha…” he choked on his words.
“But you knew 232 would be expired! You watched her, watched her as she said those words and you did nothing.”
“No! I had to choose a Fighter. I knew, yes, I suspected, maybe I knew that whoever was to fight 299 would not be victorious. But Games Operator Farrenlowe already had someone in mind. Who? You. I had to give him another, you were not ready… I didn’t want…”
“What about what I want, Reno? I want my companion back! You took 232 from me! The only companion I have ever known and all for the entertainment of your precious Officers. Or should I say rogues.”
Reno made a wounded noise, the sound coming from deep within his chest. “This is the worst day of my life,” he said.
“Of your life? Of your life? You did not endure Officer Jorg when you were 12Y. You did not spend every night since then afraid to sleep for fear of what you might see. You were not taken and beaten by Officer Morton and Ryan. You did not watch your companion…” She banged her boots on the floor. “She was important, Reno! We are all important! And you took her from me!” 201 laughed, a chesty, breathy sound. She stared into the blackness, seeing nothing.
“201…”
“But that, that was not the worst day. Not even then. The worst day was after I escaped, I felt what freedom was like, if only for a brief time. I watched the sun rise without regulations and I was real, I was something more than what I am now. The worst day was when you found me… with the fighting creature.” 201 laughed again. “After all I have seen, that was the worst, and it makes no sense, yet it makes perfect sense. Now I have known freedom I know what I do not have. That, that, is worse.”
– 33 –
Petra looked up at Kap as the raised voices from the cabin reached their position.
“What do you think they are shouting about?” she asked, tucking her bright red hair behind her ear. She looked over at Kap, her blue eyes muted by the dimness of the light. Kap grinned down at her, scratching his dark red beard, a number of recently sprouted white hairs lining either side of his chin.
“I don’t know. I don’t get it,” Kap said. “That’s an Officer and an Internee in there. Every Internee I have met from Zeta Circuit, even after all they have faced in this time, they still feel it.”
“What?”
“The guilt. They still feel it, even though they know they did nothing wrong, they believe that maybe there was something they could have done differently. Maybe thought they could make things right somehow. It makes no sense, knowing what they know, but that’s what they think.”
“Why do they think like that anyway?” asked Petra. She glanced around the camp, watching smoke drifting from the chimneys of the other cabins. “If that was me, I would have said no, I would have fought. Why don’t any of them do this? I don’t get it.” She shook her head, playing with a spare bolt, flipping it over in her fingers. “I would have run, I would have done anything to get out of there, so why? Why do they just accept…”
“I don’t think it’s that easy,” said Kap. Petra shot him a look. “Well, the way I see it, I may be wrong of course, I mean, what do I know? But they were raised in FERTS from birth. This is all they know. They have spent every moment trying to fulfil an ideal, to be something that seems so foreign to you and me. But this is all they know. Their training…”
Petra nodded, running a hand through her hair. “Yeah. You’re right, you’re right. I wasn’t thinking…”
“It’s just they way they’ve always been. It’s their training…”
“No, not their training, Kap,” said Petra. “Their programming. They have been conditioned to think the way they do. I wasn’t thinking straight. They’re conditioned, that’s what it is. I suppose it’s true of many of the Officers as well.”
“Conditioned?” he scratched his beard, leaning against the door of the cabin as the voices began shouting again. “You mean brainwashed.”
“I haven’t heard of that word before.”
“It means the same thing. Conditioned, as you call it. The lies they’re told in there. It’s all they know. They go against that, they not only go against the Officers but their friends in there as well. They really don’t have a choice, in the end.”
“This is no simple thing, is it?”
The shouting started up again, their muffled voices seeping through the cracks in the door.
“No. It’s not.”
“So what about them?” She gestured to the door behind her. “What’s their story?”
“That’s the part I don’t get. They keep yelling at each other, but no Internee I have seen would ever dare yell at an Officer, especially not a higher ranking one, like that one in there. So why? Why this one?” said Kap, his forehead scrunching up in concern.
“This one,” said Petra, turning to the door and listening to the raised voices. “She’s different to the others somehow.”
“Yeah,” Kap said, chuckling to himself. “She’s different all right. Seems like she’s not rig
ht in the mind, hate to say it. Her eyes just don’t look right.” He shook his head. “I don’t know, I’m rambling on. It might have just been the light, I don’t know.” He flipped the saber over in his hand, scratching a mark off the blade. “I just… I knew an old soldier once, Torrel, this was after the war, long time ago, too long for you to remember anyway. I brought him a few things from time to time. He used to just sit there, staring through me. When I talked to him, he looked through me even when he was looking right at me. Like he was seeing something else, something that I couldn’t see. Guess he just saw one too many things and something broke in there.” He tapped his temple. “Never could get it back.” Kap sat down on the chair by the front door, resting his saber on his knee. “That one in there…” He cocked his thumb to the door between them. “Well, she’s got that look in her eyes too.”
– 34 –
“So what’s the plan now?” asked Reno. His voice drifted across the darkness of the cabin to reach 201. He sounded far away, yet the way the sound carried made him seem closer somehow. She lay with her eyes open, seeing nothing, but staring up at the ceiling just the same.
“You think I’d tell you, that is, if I had one?” She smiled in the dark.
“You mean you didn’t have a plan, after all this?”
“I had a plan, but you and the fighting creature destroyed it. Now I can do nothing but take what little choice I have been given. No, this is not freedom for me, but compared to FERTS, it is better. And now you must endure, just as I do. Still, I care for you, Reno, even if you are a fool.”
Reno let out a nervous laugh, the straw rustling beneath him.
“That’s the first time I have heard you laugh, Reno.”
“Hm,” he muttered. “But surely you have thought about this, what you will do. Perhaps you dreamed something?”
“I cannot will a dream into existence, Reno. They come when they come, I see only what I am allowed to see.”
“What does that mean?”
“Sometimes… well, it doesn’t matter now if I tell you. When I expired Pinnacle Officer Wilcox he became bound to me. I do not profess to understand how it works. Perhaps those who expire others are not aware of this when it happens. But I am aware, and it frightens me.”
“You mean Wilcox, he’s…”
“In my head, yes. He speaks to me, tries to confuse me, blocks me from seeing what it is I need to see.”
“But how?”
“I don’t know. But understand this. I carry the weight of expiring the Pinnacle Officer within me. It is always there, in one form or another. But Wilcox…” She lowered her voice to a whisper, turning her head in the straw. “The number bound to him is beyond my comprehension. There are so many, Reno. So many. I hear them crying in my dreams and I can do nothing to help them. The first… Beth, the one he knew before he began his plan. It is her voice I hear the loudest.”
“But can’t you do something? Can’t you stop them?”
“I can shut them out… sometimes. Sometimes they are too loud.” She adjusted her head in the straw, fatigue creeping in.
“What will you do?”
“What I do doesn’t matter. Not at this moment, anyway. What matters is what Pinnacle Officer Cerberus will do.”
“You’re talking about the plan, the backup plan you mentioned.”
“Did you ever wonder what his plan would be if your attack failed? What are your thoughts on this?”
“I… I suppose I did not consider the possibility that we could fail.”
“After all you have taught me?” 201 rubbed her wrists together to relieve the itch of the ropes. “Well it seems that Pinnacle Officer Cerberus did consider this possibility. His plan was simple. If you fail in your attack, he destroys it.”
“What?” Reno sucked in a breath.
“You know now they have a backup plan, and you are a part of that plan, but fear not, Reno, you will not see it coming. They will burn this camp, with you in it!”
“He wouldn’t. I have known Cerberus for a long time, you are mistaken again, it would seem.”
“He would, and he will. This is not for protection, for your rescue, this is to tie off any loose threads. You, Reno. You are the loose thread, as am I. For now we are both rogues, it would seem.” She chuckled. “You are a rogue for following orders. I am a rogue for disobeying regulation. It is strange, is it not?”
“So we are the only rogues, it would seem.”
“Yes. The only ones.”
– 35 –
Caltha lay on a bed by the fire, her skin pale and covered with sweat. Rafaella felt her neck, finding a pulse so faint that she had to close her eyes to feel the feeble rhythm.
“Come back to me, Cal,” she whispered.
Caltha did not move. Her eyes were still beneath her eyelids. Rafaella checked her breathing, holding her hand above Caltha’s mouth. Satisfied, she sat back in her chair, wiping her sweating palms on her tunic.
“Come on, Cal.”
Caltha floated in darkness, hearing the faint voice in the distance. She could barely make out the sound. It sounded like Rafaella, but she could not make her way towards the voice, she could only float. She listened again.
Nothing, nothing, only darkness, feeling nothing.
Her mind flashed, pictures forming in front of her eyes, too quick to recognize or understand. They were faces, things that she had seen, perhaps things that she knew, it went by too quickly to make any sense.
One face became clear, the unruly black beard that always felt softer than it looked, the sweep of hair above his forehead, his skin, darkened by the sun, his dark eyes squinting at her. She remembered everything down to the veins in his neck, the way they stood out while he was chopping wood.
Renn?
He smiled that familiar smile. She remembered the way he used to watch her with an amused smile when he thought she wasn’t looking. She remembered how he smelt of cut grass and wood shavings, and sometimes his hands smelt like the leather he wove and shaped into belts. She remembered the first time he gave her one of his woven bracelets, the way he acted as though it was nothing special.
Renn? It can’t be you. You’re…
Dead?
Yes. Then I’m…
Don’t worry Cal, I’ll stay with you while you figure it out. You won’t be alone in here, I promise. I’m sorry you have to go through this, I really am. I wish there was something I could do.
Don’t make me remember, Renn. I don’t want to remember. Renn?
There was no answer.
The memories of that day came to Caltha’s mind, much as they had in the past when she was conscious and able to push them aside. She could feel them coming, swarming throughout her being, filling her mind until she was there, living and breathing in those awful moments before everything changed, the day where her life ended and another, darker one began. This time she knew, once the memories started, they would not relent. This time there would be no escape.
The bone whistle pierced the silence of the evening, shrill and jarring. Symon had been keeping watch that night, a night that was uneventful, until now. Symon was shouting something but Caltha could not make out the words. Rafaella was up and heading for the weapons store before the second whistle had a chance to ring out.
Caltha looked at Renn. They locked eyes for a long moment, Caltha seeing something in his eyes that she had not seen before.
“Cal,” he whispered. “Get Adira. Hide her in the closet. Try not to wake her. Keep her quiet somehow.”
Caltha rushed to the bedroom, bundling Adira in her arms. Adira stirred, her little fists bunched in balls by her cheeks. Her eyes were heavy as she looked around at her surroundings. Caltha rocked her from side to side, humming a lullaby. If she could just get her to the closet she could arm herself and stand with the others. She tucked Adira in the bottom of the closet, swaddled in blankets. She closed the door, making sure the bottom of the door was letting in enough air. She scrambled for her bone dagger, tu
cking it in her boot. Rafaella would bring her spatha, she was sure of it, providing she and Renn could get back from the weapons store in time. The bone dagger would have to do for now. Her hand closed on the carved wooden handle as Symon’s voice rang out through the camp, the words she hoped she would never hear reaching her ears.
“Incoming!” The whistle sounded, shorter this time, squeaking at the end. Caltha gripped her bone dagger tighter.
“Mercenaries! Incoming!” The whistle sounded again. Adira’s cry rang out from the closet. The sound of hoofbeats filled the camp.
“Incoming!” Symon’s voice was cut off, leaving only the sounds of cheers and cries as metal clashed against metal.
They had made it inside the camp.
Caltha opened the closet, grabbing Adira’s doll. She placed it in Adira’s hands, touching her cheek.
“Adira.” She crouched down beside her. “I need you to be quiet for me.” She stroked her forehead, listening to the sounds of hoofbeats approaching. “I’m going outside for a little while. I need you to keep quiet until I come back.” She looked around the darkened hallway, hearing the hoofbeats closing in. “You probably don’t understand a word I’m saying but please, Adira. Please. Keep quiet. I love you.” She kissed her cheek and closed the closet door.
Caltha stepped outside to find Rafaella, Bonni, Renn and Jotha lined up outside the main cabin. She could not see Symon anywhere and the lookout tower appeared empty.
The leader sat on horseback, surveying the group assembled before the cabin. The other four gathered the weapons, tucking them into saddlebags. Caltha watched her own spatha join them in the haul.
“I want that one. The tall one,” said one of the mercenaries, pointing at Rafaella. The leader nodded, gesturing for him to go ahead. The mercenary closed in on Rafaella, struggling with her while the others laughed.
“Do you need some help, Jorg?”
Jorg glared, holding a knife to Rafaella’s throat. “I’ve got it under control.”