by Tom Fletcher
Suddenly I see it.
The chute straightens in front of me, levelling off from vertical to horizontal in a tight bend, at the end of which is another panel of yellow lights, this one circled by green.
Green is good.
Green is my exit!
My heart pounds at the sight, and adrenalin pumps through my veins. I accidentally release some air. Bubbles float away, like tiny life rafts escaping.
I can make it. I must make it. I kick my water-filled boots as hard as I can, smashing the side of the tube with each blow. The sound booms along the chute ahead of me, almost showing me my path to safety, like sonar.
I grab at the walls and try to slide myself along faster but my fingers slip on the ice that has formed on them. I feel my pulse throbbing in my neck as my body aches for oxygen.
As I stare at the beautiful green exit lights illuminating the murky ice water, the edges of my vision begin to darken and blur. I claw at the walls, digging my fingernails into the frozen lining inside the chute. Suddenly everything is glistening, sparkling, as though the water is full of diamonds, or the sort of microscopic life that inhabits deep oceans and emits its own light.
It’s beautiful, losing consciousness. Peaceful.
A block of ice smashes into my head. It burns but it knocks a moment of sense into me. I can see the shape of the exit hatch a few feet out of reach but my legs aren’t cooperating. My body is shutting down, trying to protect itself from the cold. My fingers are useless too.
I’m drifting, like a dead satellite, lost in space.
The green is overpowering. The hatch is close. So very close. I blink and feel ice crystals crack and float away from my eyeballs. There is a small red square of lights in the centre of the circular door in front of me, illuminating a metallic lever. I try to stretch out my arms. They obey but in slow motion. The lights dim, the colour fades. Now it’s just white light on a grey door.
My fingers graze the metal. It sends tingles up my arm. I wiggle my fingers but can’t get a grip – it’s just a few millimetres out of reach. The remaining air in my lungs is burning my throat, desperate for me to release it and replace it with clean, fresh oxygen.
This is the end. My dying moments. My mind is racing now, thoughts travelling at light speed, flashing images into the forefront of whatever remains of my consciousness.
My father.
My mother.
Hartman.
Eve.
The Dome.
A Rubik’s Cube.
Eve.
Dangling my feet off the Drop.
Eve.
Eve.
Eve …
Whatever energy reserves my body was holding release into every muscle. Warmth swells inside me. My vision goes black but then her face appears as I stretch for the last time. My fingers grip the handle and as the air explodes from my mouth in a rush of bubbles I pull hard and lose consciousness.
36
Bram
My lungs burn. I’ve never been able to feel them before, and now I wish I couldn’t. I float across a small courtyard, flowing with the ice water that escaped with me from the chute. I have no energy to fight the current.
It’s dark, black, even, or maybe my vision hasn’t returned. I’m pretty sure I blacked out. Last thing I remember I was under water, reaching for a handle.
I come to a halt lying face up, floating in a foot of water. With every breath of fresh oxygen come equal parts relief and agony. My vision is still blurry and colourless but I can make out the enormity of the EPO Tower standing over me. I’ve not seen it from this angle since I was a boy. When you make it inside the Tower you don’t leave unless you have to. Unless they make you.
I blink and take some deep, burning breaths, putting the pain to one side and enjoying the oxygen soaring around my body. As the colour in my vision begins to return, so does my hearing. The silence is replaced by a high-pitched, constant ringing. It hurts, but before I can shake it off it is replaced by something else, something deeper, with rhythm, something repetitive.
Voices. Chanting voices.
I gather my strength. There’s no time to recover completely. I settle my breathing as best I can but I must get to my feet. I must work out where the hell I am and get as far away from here as possible. Ketch will be on his way down right now and I’ve no doubt surveillance drones will drop through the cloud base at any second to locate me.
I hurl myself on to my side and force myself to my knees as something hooks under my armpits and hoists me into the air, like a doll.
‘It’s one of them !’ a gruff voice booms. As he yanks hard on my soaked uniform, I see the outline of a surging crowd. I get my first distorted look at who he’s speaking to, who the chanting voices belong to.
Freevers.
The raging crowd of protesters seems to multiply and the men in my immediate range hoist me above their heads, cheering, shouting, passing me around, parading me. I swing a punch and hit air. I swing again and get laughs in return. Fists pound my ribs from below – one connects with my stomach, knocking the wind out of me.
‘EPO scum!’
‘Criminal!’
‘Free Eve! Free Eve!’
‘Kill him!’
‘Free Eve!’
The men’s voices chant all around me. I’m completely at their mercy. All at once the hands that are lifting me into the air are gripping me, pulling at my clothes, tugging me in different directions. Hands are everywhere, stretching my limbs, ripping at my skin. I’ve been fed to the lions. No, I fed myself to them.
Suddenly the hands around my wet boot slip and I see the filthy man stumble to the ground. Mid-fifties, judging by the wrinkles on his skin.
Wrinkles? My vision’s returned!
I swing my free leg around, driving the steel toecap of my boot hard into the jaw of the muscular Freever pulling at my other leg. Teeth fly through the air, and in the sudden commotion caused by my attack, I know I have a window of opportunity. This is my only chance. I must fight.
My legs are free and I don’t hesitate to use them. I wrap them around a young Freever’s head – he’s around my age but twice my size. As the crowd tries to pull me away I use their momentum to bring him forward, driving him face first into the water. The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
The crowd surrounding me loses its collective balance and falls back, releasing its grip on me. My body hits the water but I’m back on my feet in a split second, fists ready for whoever gets up first.
The surrounding men stand slowly and I see their faces up close for the first time. This isn’t like watching them on realiTV monitors, zooming in from my dorm as they protest outside. This is real. I can smell their matted beards, their sweat-soaked clothes. I can see the passion in their bloodshot eyes, their hate for me and everything I represent. No, everything I used to represent.
As I stare back at the ten or so men who front the hundred-strong crowd, I see the Tower behind them. Its sleek metal frame, its impenetrable concrete walls. It is ugly, inside and out. Impressive, but ugly. Here in front of me, for the first time, I’m seeing something real. Men who stand for something they believe in, something I’m only just starting to understand. The truth.
‘Wait,’ I say, holding up my hands. ‘I’m not what you think I am. I’m not one of them.’
I point to the Tower looming over all of us. Suddenly I see the damage on my chute. Water is pouring out of holes from an explosion. I’m lucky I made it.
‘Your uniform says you are,’ a gritty voice grumbles back at me.
I look down at my jumpsuit. My name badge and the mission patches sewn on to my chest and arms give me away.
‘I know what this looks like, but it’s not what you think. I’m not one of them any more.’ I try to sound genuine, which is always harder when you’re actually being honest.
‘Don’t listen to this shit-stain. He’s like every one of those bastards keeping her locked up in there,’ the heavy younger Freever says.
‘Wait, look!’ one of the oldest says, through his grey, soggy beard. His deep brown, heavily scarred face glares menacingly across the flooded courtyard at my uniform. ‘Look at his patch … He’s a pilot.’
Whispers and gasps ripple back into the crowd and they fall silent around me. I stay quiet. My heart races.
‘Is it true?’ the gritty voice asks, his hard black eyes piercing into my own. ‘You’ve met Eve?’
Do I tell them? Would they even believe me? Can I trust them?
I nod, and as my mouth opens something falls from the sky above, dropping through the purple clouds, buzzing like wasps from hell. Drones.
‘Run!’ the man orders. ‘Retreat!’
It’s like someone has dropped a bomb of chaos on the protesters. A human stampede erupts in my direction as the sleek black craft scan the hundreds of faces, dropping Fear Gas canisters on particular areas once they’ve established I’m not there.
I get body-slammed to the ground. My head slips below the surface of the water where the booted feet of Freevers stomp any serenity to death.
Suddenly I’m pulled up. I can breathe again.
‘If you’re a pilot, you’re coming with us.’ The scarred man’s breath stinks as he spits his words at me, an inch from my face.
I look into his eyes. ‘Get me as far away from here as you can and I swear I’ll help you get what you want.’
He looks back up to the Tower with a smirk. ‘You know how many of you “insiders” have said that? How many times we’ve paid for knowledge, put our trust in men of your kind and got nowhere?’
‘You’ve never had anyone like me before.’ I grab his arm. ‘I promise you that.’
He takes in my words. Then he nods, drops of water falling from his matted grey hair, a few wild dreadlocks whipping around as he stands to command his team. ‘Let’s go,’ he orders. His men reach down into the water, pull out homemade riot shields and lift them over their heads. As we hunch together beneath them and march out through a hole blown into the perimeter fence I steal a final look up through a gap in our protection at the Tower, and although I can’t see the Dome through the clouds, I stare in its direction and make her a promise.
I’m coming back for you.
37
Bram
The wind pushes my cheeks back as we speed through what were once the streets of this enormous city in what I heard one of the Freevers call a pod. It’s a homemade boat, its curved-glass bottom allowing us to sail silently and speedily away. The makeshift engine strapped to the back is pretty impressive for tech they’ve botched together out of whatever they could find or steal.
‘When we get closer, blindfold the pilot,’ I hear the scarred man bark. I assume he’s their leader. The younger, larger one nods and picks up a length of black material.
‘Two more of ’em coming in!’ cries a Freever from the pod sailing to our left, as it weaves between the rooftops of two sunken buildings.
The seven men in my pod look in the direction he’s pointing, as do I, and see the two remaining drones following us. I’d watched them take down five in our escape through the perimeter wall so these two shouldn’t be a problem.
‘Down ’em,’ the leader orders.
The pod beside us immediately slows and falls back. It pulls up next to a flat rooftop that sits a metre above flood level. Two men climb up, silhouetted in the light emitted by the enormous Tower in the distance. Although we’re a few miles clear of the perimeter, the Tower doesn’t seem any smaller. In fact, against these sunken relics of Central’s ancient landmarks, it seems even more colossal.
Two rockets blast into the sky illuminating the floodwater as they explode, like violent fireworks. Instead of pretty little sparks twinkling like starlight, sharp lightning bolts zap in every direction, electrifying anything they connect with: clouds, buildings, water – drones.
Both drones fizz and fry in the bolts, then drop out of the sky, making huge waves that rock our pod as they hit the water.
‘Salvage!’ the scarred man calls. The two men drop back into their pod, head to the crash site and begin pulling the smoking drones out of the water. So that’s how they get their tech. Smart.
The scarred man nods and our pod picks up speed, throwing cold, salty water into my face. I swallow a mouthful and cough it back out. The men laugh but I don’t mind: it’s refreshing to feel something real. If my life weren’t in some serious danger right now I might even be enjoying myself.
The buildings get taller as we head into the heart of Central, once called London, following the sunken streets below us where the roots of these buildings now lie untouched at the bottom of this ever-growing ocean.
Light from our pod streaks down into the watery ghost world below. My heart leaps as I see a face staring up from near street level, but it’s nothing more than a statue reaching up at us as if begging to be rescued. We turn a corner, floating above a wider sunken street, and I see more statues observing us from the depths, as if our presence is interrupting their peaceful sleep.
I’ve seen photos of these statues, of when they stood gracefully in this glorious city, before the storms claimed it. Just like every other city, or so we’re told.
I remind myself that I used to live out here, and as I take in the sights the city once had to offer, I can’t believe people still do.
‘Enjoying the view, are ya?’ the fat one says, kneeing me in the back.
‘Just reminiscing, that’s all,’ I say. ‘I lived here once.’
‘Really?’ He whips the black material around my head and yanks me backwards, slamming me on to the glass floor of the pod. ‘Welcome home.’
I hear him spit and feel it land on my face. I crawl back to the side of the pod, irritated that I can’t see anything through the blindfold.
Our boat makes multiple turns for the next ten minutes. I try to trace its movement in my mind. I’ve looked down on these streets from the Tower for most of my life and can recall them, like reading a map. If my senses are correct, I think we’re about to enter the area where the gaps between the rooftops widen, where the spires and towers of wrecked buildings don’t meet, where the old river used to wind through them, like a snake.
Wind rushes over my face and I sense more space around us. I’m right. We’re sailing down the old Thames route.
There is a click, and even though I thought I couldn’t see, everything somehow gets darker. The lights of the pod have been switched off. We’re sailing in darkness now.
‘Dock them both and we’ll take the dinghy across,’ the scarred man orders. No one replies but I sense their compliance as our pod turns to the right and crosses the river.
We slow, and through the gauze of my blindfold, I see torchlight shining from somewhere outside our boat.
‘How many souls?’ a young voice calls from alongside us.
‘All accounted for, plus one,’ someone beside me replies.
‘Who the hell is he ?’
‘Pilot.’
There’s a silence and I sense people staring at me.
‘Say that again? I thought you said you’d picked up a pilot.’
Someone grabs my arm and makes me stand. I feel his torch beam blast on to my chest, lighting up my mission patches.
‘Not here, you idiots,’ the leader barks. ‘Get him to Ben, then you kids can gossip all you want.’
‘Yes, Frost. I mean, sir. Sorry, sir,’ the young voice stutters.
Our pod hits something metallic and I lurch forward as the entire boat is hoisted out of the water. We come to a complete stop. No motion at all.
In the slight pause in our journey my head fills with questions. Where are we going? Have we arrived? Can I escape? Who is Ben?
Suddenly I’m lifted from the curved glass deck and my stomach hits my throat as I fall.
The water pierces my skin as I sink into it, the cold gripping my bones, like the icy hands of the Grim Reaper pulling me down. They’ve thrown me overboard. I splash with
my arms and feel the cold grip me tighter. Suddenly they pull me up and out of the water.
I flop into a dinghy, still blindfolded. Voices laugh and argue around me as I cough up salt water into the boat.
‘Jesus, if you’re gonna spew, do it over the side,’ a new voice, with a hint of the north, says, as a nudge with his foot shows me where the side of the rubber boat is.
I haul myself up on to it and feel the vessel speed off. I take the opportunity to adjust my blindfold minutely, giving me the thinnest sliver of a view down the crack between my cheek and the material.
As we cross to the other side of the river I see the glass pod we travelled in resting in its dock, suspended in a giant circular metal frame, half of which is submerged beneath the water. Freevers making good use of Central’s history.
Resourceful bunch!
As the small boat bounces across the open stretch of water I tilt my head to see where we’re headed and realize I know where we’re going. I know exactly who Ben is.
38
Eve
Hours pass, with us women cooped up in the safe room, wondering what’s going on outside as we potter around aimlessly. There’s no way out: they’ve locked us in.
Drinks are poured, more food is eaten, card games are played and naps taken – all while we wait for the phone to ring so that we can know more of the incident that has disrupted our daily routine and removed Bram.
I lie on the bed, monotonously playing with my Rubik’s Cube while my head becomes a little less giddy, thanks to the food I’ve been eating. I wonder what Bram could possibly have done to spark such a panic. The realization that they haven’t sent a Holly to me keeps playing on my mind. I shouldn’t be surprised, given that it was one of the Holly team who caused the lockdown, but the significance of me being put into a room that I didn’t even know about is telling. If I didn’t know about it, I can only assume the Hollys didn’t either. And that must be what they want – to put me somewhere he can’t find me. The thought sends a chill up my spine and makes me shudder. I don’t want to think of us no longer being allowed that connection, or of him not being here. He’s been the sparkle in my day for as long as I can remember.