"It was," I replied, "But aren't we supposed to be fugitives wanted for acts of terrorism or something similarly absurd?"
"By the Militia, yes, but they're a bunch of morons who couldn’t see their own faces in a mirror. You four are heroes, not terrorists."
"So you know it was us who took down the Custodians and disarmed the nuke?" I asked.
"The Colonel briefed me on what had happened, and Nanako filled me in on the rest of it while you were sleeping. So yes, I know what you lot did to save Hamamachi, and for that you have my eternal gratitude. Now, eat up and get your strength back so we can take you home. Playing nursemaid is not why I joined the Rangers."
And with that, he was gone.
As I'd been cooped up in the car too long, I got out and stepped into the dilapidated warehouse.
Shorty and David bounded over as soon as they saw me.
"Good to see you up and about again, Jones," David said, smiling broadly.
"And give the poor guy his jacket back, he griped all night about how cold he was," Shorty added.
I laughed, peeled off David's jacket and handed it back to him. He clipped Shorty over the top of the head but put the jacket back on straight away anyway.
Nanako clambered out of the car too but stiffened when Corporal Sato came over and handed me several ration bars. "They taste like seasoned cardboard but they're good for you."
"Joy," I said as I accepted them.
The corporal glanced at Nanako hesitantly and then made her exit.
"There some kind of history between you two?" I asked between mouthfuls of what really was like eating deliciously flavoured cardboard.
Nanako looked up at me from beneath her dark-pink bangs but quickly broke eye contact. "Nope. She's just a jerk, like most of the Rangers."
"I guess you'd expect that from an elitist unit," I said, wondering what Nanako was hiding. I realised I really didn't know a lot about her, but I wasn’t concerned, for she was the most courageous person I'd ever met. She’d been through an unbelievably painful trial but had come through it shining like gold. That a girl such as her should love me boggled my mind.
"I never could work out why you volunteered to join the Rangers," Nanako said suddenly.
"I volunteered? I thought I'd been asked to join them."
"I've no doubt the invitation would have come eventually - you made quite a name for yourself when you saved your Militia squad from a Skel ambush on your first tour - but yeah, you volunteered to join the Rangers out of the blue."
"Weird," I said, for that so didn't sound like the kind of thing I'd do.
"I know, right?" she agreed, sorrow filling her eyes. That decision caused us over two years of terrible grief, not to mention my continuing amnesia and seizures. If only I could go back in time...
For the rest of that day I ate, drank, and, as I felt my strength returning, engaged in light exercises and stretches. Meanwhile, the Rangers paced about like caged lions.
All attempts to get either the sergeant or the corporal to tell us about Hamamachi's agreement with the Skel fell flat. It was all hush-hush and that really worried me. It seemed King was right about the Japanese being behind the Skel attacks on Newhome. But why? What possible reason could the Japanese have for destroying Newhome?
The next morning the corporal declared me fit enough to travel, so the sergeant ordered her to take us back to Newhome. Finally.
* * *
Three hours later, Corporal Reina dropped us off in Kensington just out of view of Newhome's walls. We had spent the three-hour drive going over the story we'd spin to the Custodians, approaching it from all angles.
Reina assured us the Skel besieging Newhome would not hinder our attempt to return home. After that, she had looked at me with a peculiar expression, wished us all good luck, and driven off.
"Let's get out of here," David suggested nervously after she'd gone.
I looked at the hundred-year-old decaying buildings that surrounded us, and the trees, shrubs and wild grass that were attempting to reclaim the sidewalks and cracked asphalt road. I took Nanako's hands in mine and searched her eyes. I found it irresistibly cute the way she didn't lift her head to look up at me, only her eyes.
"You ready for this?" I asked.
"Wherever you go, I go," she said, "Besides, we don't really have a choice, do we?"
I shook my head sadly and kissed her on the forehead. "Not really."
We had only one block to navigate to reach the no-man's land surrounding Newhome, but all the same, I shouted out ultrasonically as we went, looking into every shadow and darkened window, illuminating them as though they were in sunlight. It was so good to be able to echolocate again; I had felt so blind and helpless when the headache and fever had prevented me from doing so.
"Can you see any Skel?" Nanako whispered as she walked alongside me.
"No, either they've not here or they're lying low," I whispered back.
"I can't believe the Rangers let us go," she added, speaking normally this time.
"I know, right? Does it make sense to you?" I asked. I had feared the Rangers would betray us at the last moment, so this felt like a dream.
"You were one of them before you were injured, and the Rangers are a tight knit bunch," she replied.
"Tight enough to let a bunch of 'wanted terrorists' go without even questioning them?"
"There's no love lost between the Rangers and the Militia," she explained. "The Militia accuse the Rangers of being a bunch of elitists, and the Rangers say the Militia are nothing but a bunch of weekend warriors. Beside, I'm not really surprised they let us go, since you were you were so close to the colonel and all."
Our conversation petered out when we turned the corner and saw before us Newhome's twelve-foot tall, outwardly curving concrete walls - walls topped with spikes and barbed wire.
"Well, this is it, guys, remember what we discussed, and stick to it no matter what. Don't let the Custodians bully or trick you into saying anything else, ok? If one of us cracks, we all go down," I said sternly.
"Okay," David agreed, his eyes wide with fear.
"Yes, pops," Shorty teased.
"It looks like a prison," Nanako mused as she stared at Newhome's inhospitable walls.
"And yet we're gonna walk back in there like sheep led to the slaughter - how stupid are we?" Shorty asked with a chortle.
"It's our home, and our families are there," I replied, but I knew what he meant. If it wasn't for the stupid conflict between Newhome and Hamamachi, we wouldn't have come back here. Ever.
"Wait!" my wife said suddenly. "Can't have you walking in there with a clean dressing on your head, Ethan, it's not gonna fit our story." She quickly removed the dressing and smudged dirt all around the wound so that the skin there matched the rest of my dishevelled appearance.
We hesitated a moment more and then jogged past the remaining buildings and into no-man's land. Spotting the tall metal gates of Newhome's eastern-gatehouse, we hurried towards them, glancing frequently behind us as though Skel could pop out of the derelict buildings behind us at any moment.
When we got to about a dozen meters out from the twelve-foot high metal doors, the voice of a Custodian boomed out from one of the adjoining guard towers. We couldn't see the Custodian talking to us since the tower was encircled by one-way glass.
"Halt or we will shoot!"
We skidded to a stop and I saw the ugly black muzzle of a machine gun in the guard tower point down at us.
"I am Ethan Jones, Metals-Forager," I shouted up at the tower. "We are the only survivors of the trade expedition send to Hamamachi."
There was a pause, and then a more authoritative voice boomed out. "Where are Lieutenant King and the Custodian squad that accompanied you?"
"We were ambushed by Skel on the way back. The lieutenant, his squad, and two of my foragers were killed," I had to choke back a tear at this admission as memories of Michal's passing flashed through my mind.
The great me
tal doors cracked open and a squad of four Custodians wearing bulletproof armoured vests over their camouflage fatigues rushed out with their assault-rifles aimed at us.
"Put your hands on your heads and walk slowly inside, if you fail to comply with these instructions, you will be shot!" bellowed one of the Custodians.
Chapter Six
That wasn't quite the reception I'd been hoping for, but I quickly put my hands on my head for Custodians were not known for their patience. "Sir, we only just escaped with our lives," I protested as strongly as I dared, "And it's taken us three nights and two days to get back here."
"Until we have verified what has happened to Lieutenant King, you will be detained on the suspicion of being deserters, and will be treated as such." The Custodian strode closer, his weapon still pointed at us. "Now step through the gates - slowly."
"Nice to see you too, boys," Shorty muttered under his breath as we trooped in single file slowly through the doors.
"What happened to innocent until proven guilty?" Nanako whispered to me.
I risked a glance behind. "It's guilty until proven innocent here."
"Silence!" bellowed the Custodian.
The metal doors closed behind us with an ominous boom and I wondered if I'd ever see them open again. I looked into Nanako's deep brown eyes and saw the worry in them, and tried to give her a reassuring smile, but the attempt fell flat. If the Custodians didn't buy our cock-and-bull story of what went down in Hamamachi and charged us with being deserters, we'd never see the light of day again. This was the one scenario I hadn't seen coming.
"Stand apart and do not move!" the Custodian sergeant shouted. We did so and two privates patted us down thoroughly, which turned out to be a pointless exercise, for all of our pockets were empty.
The sergeant stepped aside and reported the situation to Custodian Command, who told him to keep us where we were and that a vehicle would be sent to pick us up.
We didn't have to wait long either - a Bushmaster Armoured Mobility Vehicle roared up to the gates ten minutes later and we were bundled inside.
* * *
An hour later I was taken from the solitary cell in Custodian Headquarters to which I had been unceremoniously shoved into upon being brought here, and was taken to an interrogation room on the third floor. We had been split up upon arrival, so I didn't know where they had taken Nanako and they refused to answer any of my questions about her. The only humane thing they did was to treat my wound, washing it and applying a new bandage.
I sat behind a wide plastic table in the interrogation room. Two windows with partially shuttered venetian blinds were to my left, though conspicuously absent was the mandatory one-way observation window found in most interrogation rooms.
The door swept open and two people strode in and sat stiffly in the seats on the other side of the table. The first was a Custodian colonel, an Asian man with a full head of greying hair and an extremely angular face. That they had sent such a high-ranking officer to interview and interrogate me was enough to set my nerves on edge, but it was his companion that sent my pulse racing. She was a young woman around my age! She wore a Custodian uniform, though with an ankle length skirt in place of trousers. Her skin was quite dark and I guessed her to be of Indian heritage.
I had never, ever heard of female Custodians - for one thing, women were not permitted to work in Newhome - so why was this girl an exception to the rules? She wasn't carrying any writing implements so she wasn't here to record the conversation. And her face - I had never seen such a deadpan, expressionless face in my life. She appeared to be looking right through me with her eyes focused on the wall behind me.
"Ethan Jones," the colonel began, speaking with a deep, baritone voice, "I am Colonel Kim. You are suspected of having deserted Lieutenant King and abandoning your responsibilities in regards to leading the trade delegation to Hamamachi and back. But before we begin, Mr. Jones, may I introduce you to my associate, Custodian Consultant Singhe. She is here due to her unique ability of being able to detect whether someone is telling the truth or lying - with one hundred percent accuracy."
I think my heart missed a beat in response to that statement - we were undone! Everything I had planned to say was a lie, for there was no way I could tell the colonel what had actually gone down - they'd lock us away in solitary confinement for the rest of our lives to stop the rest of the populace learning the truth.
"Do you understand what I just said, Mr. Jones?" the colonel said when I failed to respond to his previous statement.
"Yes sir," I replied, glancing quickly at the Indian girl, who continued to ignore me.
"Right, let us begin," the colonel said. "Mr. Jones, did you and your team of foragers accompany the trade delegation that was sent to Hamamachi last Friday, under the command of Custodian Lieutenant King?"
I opened my mouth to reply but had to fake a coughing fit to cover the massive shock that permeated every fibre of my being when the Custodian Consultant, Ms. Singhe, fixed her eyes on me and began singing at an ultrasonic pitch. Well, perhaps singing wasn't quite accurate, but instead of shouting ultrasonically like I did, she was projecting her voice in short, ultrasonically pitched, musical notes.
And I wasn't the only one to be shocked, for she immediately 'saw' the biologically engineered abnormalities in my throat that allowed me to echolocate as well, since echolocation not only allowed us to see in the dark, but also see into or through many materials to some degree. For example, I could see someone’s heart beating in their chest if I shouted loudly enough. Her eyes opened so wide I thought they'd pop out of her head.
I held up my hand in apology and tried to get the coughing fit under control, my mind swamped with a myriad of thoughts. The Indian girl was an echolocator like me! But how could that be possible - that strange old Chinese man who accosted me at the age of five told me that echolocators who were caught were dissected.
My next thought, though, was one of absolute terror - she was going to tell the colonel what I was, and that would be the end of me.
"If you're quite finished, Mr Jones?" the colonel prompted, somewhat irritated.
"Sorry about that, sir. To answer your question, yes, my foragers and I joined the delegation sent to Hamamachi. King requested us personally due to our knowledge of the eastern suburbs," I answered as I glanced at Consultant Singhe. For some inexplicable reason, she continued to sing ultrasonically but didn't turn me in. Maybe the Custodians didn't know she was an echolocator either.
"Did you and your foragers accompany the convoy all the way to Hamamachi?" the colonel queried.
"Yes sir. We got to Hamamachi without incident, and then unloaded the trade goods we had brought with us and loaded up the goods Hamamachi had prepared for us to bring back," I replied.
And to my astonishment, while the colonel jotted notes in a small book he brought, Consultant Singhe whispered to me beneath her breath with an absolute minimum of lip movement. "You are wondering why I did not turn you in, are you not?" she asked.
"The thought crossed my mind," I breath-whispered back.
Completely oblivious to this secret conversation occurring under his nose, the colonel leaned forward. "Were there any problems with the unloading of our trade samples?"
What, like, did the Japanese realise the refrigeration-maturation device you sent them was actually a hydrogen bomb in disguise? That's what I wanted to answer, but I shook my head instead and said, "No, sir."
"What happened after you loaded Hamamachi's trade goods onto your vehicles?" the colonel asked, leaning forward to hear my answer.
"It was very late afternoon by this time, sir, and the Japanese invited us to remain for the night and set off in the morning. But King refused their invitation and insisted we leave at once, even though I strongly advised against it." Man, it was hard to concentrate with Consultant Singhe echolocating every time I spoke.
"I have not turned you in because I am not the loyal little Custodian they think I am," Consultant Singh
e informed me as the colonel jotted down more notes.
"How come they haven't realised you can echolocate?" I asked.
"Oh, they know," she whispered back. "I was caught echolocating when I was five and taken to the genetic-engineering facility in North End."
"And they didn't dissect or kill you?" I asked.
"They only dissected the boys they caught, and only at first. They euthanized the ones they caught later," she said, her face as impassive.
"Why?" I asked, stricken by this horrific testament to wanton murder of children.
"The geneticist who created us destroyed his work and committed suicide, and the other geneticists were desperate to reverse engineer his work so they could duplicate it and control who received it."
"That doesn't answer my question - why did they kill the male echolocators but not the females?"
"The male echolocators were considered uncontrollable and a threat. Female echolocators were considered malleable so were put to use as spies and whatnot."
"Did you leave at once as Lieutenant King insisted?" the colonel asked, interrupting our near silent conversation.
"Yes sir. As soon as we loaded the Japanese trade goods we bade them farewell and set off."
"Did you witness anything strange or out of the ordinary on your return journey, Mr. Jones?"
"Sir?" He was trying to find out if we noticed a nuclear explosion. Maybe Newhome was too far away from Hamamachi to have been able to see the mushroom cloud.
"Never mind. Tell me what happened next."
"When we reached Mitcham, sir, Lieutenant King told us to pull off the road and rest for the rest of the night. I advised against it but he overruled me again."
"You're lying," Consultant Singhe whispered, interrupting her ultrasonic song.
"I have to," I replied, trusting she wouldn't report it.
Forager - the Complete Six Book Series (A Post Apocalyptic/Dystopian Series) Page 26