by Patrick Ness
In some ways it was a relief. Having Quill point a gun at him felt like being able to breathe out at last. There it was. As suspected. Yet, at the same time, he felt a twinge of disappointment, regret. As though, maybe, in their time together they’d become . . . well, not fond of each other, no, but still, that they’d developed some sort of bond.
All the same, it wasn’t stopping her from aiming that gun.
‘Yes, I know,’ Quill was pouting sarcastically, ‘how dare I? Quite easily. Now, are you going to beg before I shoot you? I think it would be nice.’
Charlie said nothing.
Quill raised the gun, finger tightening on the firing trigger.
‘Come on, Prince,’ she coaxed, purring. ‘Just a few little last words for your slave.’
Charlie was silent a moment longer. ‘Actually,’ he ventured, ‘I have got something to say.’ And he said two words more.
April burst out laughing. Posh people swearing, there and then, became her favourite thing ever. Quill glared at her.
‘Sorry.’ She cupped a hand over her mouth. ‘Sorry, Miss Quill, you can go ahead and shoot him now.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Surprised you’ve not done it already.’
‘When I need your advice, girl, I’ll ask for it.’
‘Totally. And I wouldn’t dream of offering it.’
‘Oh really?’ Quill paused. ‘You look just the type that loves giving out unwanted advice. Some children think they’re so grown-up and really, they’re not. You know nothing about life.’
‘No,’ admitted April. ‘I don’t. But I do know you won’t kill Charlie.’ Charlie glanced at her, curious.
‘What?’ Quill said.
‘You would have done it already.’ Quill stared at her.
‘You’ve been waiting to kill him for months and yet, there he is still breathing.’
‘So?’ Quill was curious.
‘Go on. Just shoot him,’ April urged. ‘Sorry, Charlie.’
‘No, that’s fair.’ Charlie’s voice was even calmer than usual. His posture shifted, with regal delicacy, and he leaned forward, into Quill. ‘Go on. Do it.’
She stared back at him.
April began to have doubts about how this was going to end. She’d assumed that she was right, that Quill was bluffing—she wouldn’t really, she couldn’t really, could she? She talked all the time about it, but she wasn’t really a cold-blooded killer, was she? But then April remembered the three Skandis exploding on the beach. Maybe she was wrong.
‘One word,’ said Quill, eventually, that little smile back on her face. ‘I just want to hear one word from him about how sorry he is—about what he did to me, about what happened to my people. And then I’ll let him go.’
‘You’ll pull the trigger,’ Charlie corrected. He still seemed icily calm.
‘Well, yes,’ Quill admitted. ‘But you’ll die knowing you’re the better man. That’s what you love, isn’t it?’ She sneered. ‘The moral high ground. Slavery and slaughter that you can feel smug about.’
‘You keep saying that you are my slave.’ Charlie’s calm carried on until even April felt infuriated. ‘You are not my slave. People buy slaves because they want them. I appreciate you, what you do for me. But’—and the calm got a degree chillier—‘I do not want you.’
‘Suppose there was another way?’ began Quill. She seemed to have stopped blinking. April wondered if she actually needed to blink, or if it was just something she did to appear more human that she’d forgotten about. Come to think of it, Charlie wasn’t blinking either. The two were just staring at each other like chess players. With a gun.
Charlie picked up Quill’s sentence. ‘If there was another way to keep me safe? Then yes, I would happily take it. And we would both be free of each other.’ He smiled a very calm smile. ‘I’m afraid that is all you are going to get out of me.’ The two stood there. Quill, pointing the gun. Charlie, head tilted back insolently, eyes daring her to do it.
‘See?’ Quill turned back to April with a helpless shrug.
‘Even at gunpoint, even in the last moments of his life, he cannot say sorry. He is just impossible. And the more human he becomes, the worse he gets. Unbelievable.’ She rolled her eyes, dropped the gun, and walked out.
April let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.
Charlie picked up the gun and looked at it.
‘Are you okay?’ April said to him. ‘After all that? Are you sure you’re okay?’
Charlie turned to her, baffled for a moment, and then smiled the dazed smile he used for trying to understand a joke.
‘Ah,’ he said, and pointed the gun at his head. It clicked. Nothing happened.
He passed it back to April.
‘It’s genome-locked,’ he said. ‘It’s set to kill only one species—the Skandis.’
‘You knew?’ She was incredulous.
Charlie was nonplussed. ‘It was a reasonable surmise. Humans are, forgive me, violent. Genome-locking the guns is a safety precaution to prevent the soldiers here turning on one another or on whoever runs this facility.’
‘But you were absolutely certain?’ April continued, amazed. ‘You knew that she’d not be able to use the gun, that she’d not found a way round that. Did she know that you knew too?’
‘Oh, she may have guessed. She may even have disabled the lock, but, there’s one thing you have to remember.’ He looked up at April and his eyes were sad and serious. ‘Ever since she was assigned to me, I knew that sooner or later she would point a gun at me. From day one, I have been rehearsing what to say.’
FORTY-THREE
PEOPLE ARE TWEETING THEIR WORST BATTLES AND IT IS CRINGINGLY HILARIOUS
April’s hopes of escaping were fading fast. Instead, her friends (and Miss Quill) had fallen in line with the place.
Is it just me? she thought. Am I the only one who doesn’t want to fight these things? Am I being incredibly dense?
She wondered if she was just being stubborn. But then she figured, what did it matter? Surely they’d get tired of it in an afternoon or so, and, as long as she kept a low profile, she’d not get into any trouble. Once they realised how serious the battle really was, they’d come up with some way to get out of here.
Ram hurled himself across the battlefield.
Three Skandis? Fine. Bit of a challenge, but nothing he couldn’t handle. He was loving shooting at them. Okay, he made sure that he downplayed how much fun it was to April, but the whole soldiering thing kept on giving him a kick. Especially when they played footage from his headcam on the big screen. He couldn’t help it. He felt proud.
‘Is it wrong to feel so pumped?’ he asked Tanya over the evening meal.
‘Pumped?’ She shook her head. ‘Next thing you’ll be saying this food is nutritionally amazing.’
‘Well,’ he had to admit, ‘my stomach is looking pretty flat.’ He spooned down some more of the weird porridge gloop. ‘Probably a mixture of no sugar and all the running.’ The running was the best bit. For some reason, out here, wherever they were, his leg had shut up. It just did what he asked, and tried not to get in the way. It was like having his old leg back, only it glowed in the dark slightly.
‘The running.’ Tanya gave a sudden smile. ‘It is pretty awesome. This is like the best game ever.’
‘Totally,’ Ram agreed. ‘Actually being in the Combat Chambers—it’s amazing. And the way that the force field setup prevents some of the damage. That’s great.’
‘What?’ Tanya asked.
‘On Level Four. You get a force field. Oh’—his face fell comically—‘are you not on Level Four yet?’
‘Tomorrow,’ Tanya mumbled the lie. ‘I’m levelling up tomorrow.’ She watched Ram chewing his slurry and tried not to resent his success. ‘Wow. Level Four already, that’s great.’ It sounded hollow as soon as she said it, but Ram didn’t seem to care. He just nodded and started scraping his spoon around his bowl.
The envy she felt w
as blocking her head from focusing. Why did you only get a force field on Level Four? Surely that would make more sense for the new recruits, progressing through the training assignments?
Then Tanya realised. Whoever was running the experiment had some limit on their resources. They only protected the more advanced soldiers because they were actually protecting their investment.
‘Wow, that’s cynical,’ she gasped. Ram put down his bowl.
‘What?’ he said.
She told him. He looked nonplussed. ‘It sort of makes sense,’ he argued. ‘In a way. Like it’s only worth getting a proper football kit if you’re playing for the team.’
Tanya stared at him. ‘This place is changing you,’ she said.
Again, he looked slightly baffled. ‘It’s an experience. Experiences change us. It’s how you grow up.’ Gawd, he could sound so dull. He lowered his voice, speaking out of the side of his mouth as he chewed. ‘You shouldn’t be talking to me here, Tanya.’
‘We’re still not friends?’
‘Yeah, there’s that, sure.’ Ram looked at her seriously. ‘But also, remember—people don’t really talk here. It would look . . . strange. For us to be seen chatting together. They might check the camera feeds.’
‘And deduct points?’ Tanya was starting to feel cross. The kind of cross that even though a bit of her head was saying ‘Whoa, hold on, he’s maybe got a point’, the rest was steaming.
‘No, no.’ Ram hadn’t even noticed. ‘I mean, a bit, yeah, but they might crack onto us. Currently you’re showing up as NORMAL. I’d hate for that to become ABNORMAL.’
‘Whoa.’
‘Anyway.’ Ram shrugged. ‘Are you going to finish that food?’
‘You’re welcome to it,’ said Tanya as she stood up and walked away.
Ram slid her bowl over, and started to eat happily.
There was one combatant who had entered the system recently and had already reached Level Six.
She did not fit the typical profile of the Skandis Recruitment Programme.
She did not fit it at all.
Yet she was here. A little older. A little taciturn. Maybe she didn’t come to the Big White Room to watch the inspirational videos. But she had come through the system and she was turning out to be the best recruit they had.
When they’d initially processed her, they’d considered her a statistical oddity. So much so that they’d come to her room at night, stepping through the walls to question her in her sleep.
‘Name?’ they’d asked her.
‘Quill,’ she’d said.
‘First name or surname?’
‘Just Quill,’ she’d insisted.
She was certainly a blip. But a blip could be useful, if she lasted a few rounds. As it was, she’d lasted rather more than a few rounds. Her progress was faster than anyone else in the challenge, and she was accounting for more kills than many of their other combatants put together.
They came for her at night again.
‘Why are you so good at this?’
‘I like killing.’
‘But what are your allegiances?’
Quill snorted, or it may have been a laugh.
‘You fight as though you really believe in the cause.’
‘No,’ Quill mumbled absently through the dream shield. ‘As I said, I really like killing.’ She smiled in her sleep. ‘Oh, how I’ve missed it.’
That gave them pause for thought. They’d somehow accidentally inducted someone entirely outside the programme’s remit, someone they’d normally have discounted entirely. And yet, she was proving to be their best asset. Perhaps they’d need to revise their recruitment parameters.
‘We were never here,’ they told her. Then they went away.
‘That’s got you puzzled,’ muttered Miss Quill as they left.
Ram saw Charlie coming out of a combat chamber and rushed up to him, punching him on the shoulder.
‘Look at you, Princeton! You’ve settled into fighting after all.’
‘Yes,’ said Charlie without any hesitation.
Ram chuckled. ‘Knew it, knew it.’ He laughed. ‘Once you start playing, you can’t stop. What level are you on? Have they given you a force field?’
‘No,’ Charlie considered. ‘Why, have you got one?’
Ram leaned forward. ‘Course I have. Anyway, catch you later!’ He aimed a couple of practise shots at Charlie and then bounded off down the corridor.
Charlie watched him go without blinking.
When he told her later, April laughed. ‘He really thinks you’re fighting?’
‘Well, at least someone does,’ Charlie said.
‘And, just checking, you’re okay that you’re not?’
‘Yes,’ said Charlie. ‘Sure. Absolutely.’
He settled down at the edge of her bed. ‘Definitely.’ They’d had to reach a compromise. One of the problems was that Quill didn’t want Charlie going off into combat without her, just in case her brain exploded. Charlie did not fancy going into combat with Quill, just in case she managed to carefully, accidentally, catch him in a ricochet. April didn’t want anyone going into combat, but especially not Charlie. (‘If I’m right,’ she argued, ‘you could start some kind of interstellar war.’) So Charlie had quietly agreed to fluff his Level One assignments. He’d fluffed them so spectacularly that footage from them had made it into a vlog called ‘Soldiers Do the Funniest Things’.
Then he’d gone to see a soldier who he’d assumed was in charge of the Combat Bay. ‘Look,’ he’d said, ‘it turns out I’m useless in battle. Really. It’s so frustrating. Is there anything else I can do?’
When Quill found out she’d laughed herself sick for a minute.
‘You’re a cleaner?’ she’d roared.
‘It is a practical and necessary function,’ Charlie reasoned. ‘There is no disgrace in it.’
‘Oh, of course not, your majesty,’ Quill had hooted.
When he’d scrubbed out her chamber that night, he found the walls elaborately painted with entrails. He spent several hours scrubbing off an intricate and ancient Rhodian curse word.
FORTY-FOUR
SHE DROPPED A TRUTH BOMB BUT WASN’T EXPECTING WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
They were eating their evening meal when April walked into the Big White Room.
‘Hey!’ she called, and her voice shook. ‘Me again.’
On screen, Seraphin carried on talking. He was wearing an old rabbit onesie, strumming away on a guitar and listing troop manoeuvres.
She walked into the centre of the Big White Room.
‘I know you can’t see me but I ask you to hear me.’
The scraping of spoons around bowls became louder, the heads more bowed.
‘I’ve come to open up, to bear my soul, to confess.’ She shouted the last words, feeling her throat rasp. She had to carry over all those spoons.
She glanced at the screen. One square was her. It dipped and wobbled. Tanya. Another square sprang up. Charlie.
‘We cannot fight these aliens. Not until we have more information.’
A third square. Miss Quill. She was sat just over from her and was looking disapproving. If a facial expression could convey ‘I am only doing this because I was told to’ then hers did so most clearly.
‘I repeat. I cannot kill these creatures. It’s insane. We’re being sent out to fight a war and we’re just not up to it. We’re kids.’
The moment she said it, she knew she’d got the wrong word. She’d wondered about ‘children’, she’d spent about a second on ‘teenagers’. Quill had suggested ‘cattle’. That would have been better than hearing ‘kids’ echo back off that great big wall.
With only three squares on it. Ram.
Where was Ram?
She spoke again, and there was a quiver to it. ‘I’m not killing these creatures, and neither should you.’
‘Really?’
Above her, Seraphin put down his guitar, pulled up his droopy bunny, and leaned into the screen. He
stared down at her and his expression was strange. There was no smile, no glint in his eye. He was pissed off. Worse.
April’s father had read a book about parenting. Ironic. The thing he’d learned from it was to say, ‘April, I’m not angry with you. I’m disappointed’. Apparently it was a ‘coping response’ for when situations got heated. Another coping response was to drive your family into a tree. April hadn’t been disappointed with him about that. She’d been very angry.
Seraphin looked disappointed. His face was a master class in disappointment. It was a glorious manga doodle.
His expression stopped April in her tracks.
‘I thought you were different.’ His voice was very quiet, flat. ‘I thought you were someone to watch.’ He exhaled, a little puff of air that pushed against a strand of his perfect hair. ‘You came here to tell us you wouldn’t kill these monsters?’ He was sneering. ‘That’s not what your helmet cam says.’
The screen filled. Shaky footage of April running and stumbling along the shore, the three Skandis throwing themselves howling towards her. Her recorded breathing echoed around the White Room, along with her whimpering. Surely she’d not made that much noise? Surely she’d not been that loud? Surely she’d been calmer.
The Skandis lunged at her, tentacles snapping open to devour her.
Screen April brought up her gun.
The three creatures exploded.
Screen April lowered her gun.
‘Looks like you were happy enough to kill three of them,’ said Seraphin. And his lips were twisted with bitterness.
‘No!’ shouted April. ‘It wasn’t like that. I’ve been edited!’
‘Puhlease’—Seraphin sighed— ‘you’re not on Big Brother.’
April turned back to the room, desperate. ‘I didn’t shoot them. I didn’t. You have to believe me.’ A spoon scraped in an empty bowl. Another spoon.
Then more. An echo of spoons and bowls.
April carried on shouting over the clattering. She was desperate, angry, seeking out the faces of Tanya and Charlie. But she still couldn’t find Ram. Where was he?