by Giselle Ava
Walter tells him the lay of the land. Thomas ponders.
He looks straight at me and says, “This is a suicide mission. Fortescue Plaza is still dark. We’ve been monitoring it but still no word in or out. We don’t know what we’ll come up against there, and that makes me nervous. We have less information than we did before.”
“I agree our odds look scary,” I tell him.
“Would you kindly calm my nerves?” he says, grabbing a tankard of ale and downing it in one gulp. Thunder rumbles and a howl of wind rips through the room.
I let a smirk fly and continue to pace, stopping at the bar where Havelock is wiping glasses dry. I take one of these glasses and glance into it, noticing my reflection. You can see bits of metal glinting behind scratched-off skin. My left eye keeps darting to the side and it takes me immense focus to concentrate it forward. I hardly recognise the man who’s staring back at me. If I’d met him in the street, what would I think of him?
“Thomas, I don’t think I can calm your nerves,” I tell him. I set the glass back down on the tabletop and turn around as Havelock catches it in his towel. I glance around the room and see the faces of men I’ve fought beside, men I trust. “We have to strike the Plaza. It’s no more a matter of do we have enough power or waiting for that perfect opportunity. This is the moment, and if we don’t go now, then God knows if we’ll ever go at all.”
Thomas is nodding. “You’re right.”
“What are we looking like?” I ask him.
Thomas scratches his clean, angular jaw and runs the numbers through his head. “We still have groups scattered over London. I’ve lost contact with a number of them but there are enough to mount somewhat of a force. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it anything formidable. But we do have the Unkindly army. You may want to speak to Montgomery about that.” He says Montgomery’s name with a sneer and a little bit of spit.
“We should take our time, besiege the Plaza,” I say.
“That forfeits the ability to come in with the upper hand,” Thomas says.
“But we avoid catastrophic amount of casualties on both sides.”
“On that I agree with you. There are still innocents.” He stands up and paces across the room, arranging a set of dominoes on one of the tables. I follow him there. Lightning splashes across the room. “Still, how do we win?” is what he says.
Floorboards creak as the others follow us.
I reach the table and find one domino standing upright in the middle of it, the black wood wet with alcohol, stained with various sets of fingerprints.
“It’s simple,” I say. “We kill Fortescue.”
“Great plan.” Thomas swaps out the black domino with a white one. “As we both know, Charles Fortescue resides in his ivory tower in the centre of the Plaza. It is impenetrable with a large force.” He begins setting up other dominoes surrounding the white one.
Those are us.
I sit down, shifting the weight off my leg. “Our best odds are in targeting places of least resistance in and around the Plaza and slowly tightening our grip. Give Fortescue something to think about. So what does he do? Guard the tower or stop our offensive?”
“He has nowhere to fall back to,” Thomas says.
Gradually, there’s a wall of dominoes surrounding the tower. Thomas begins inching them closer and closer towards the tower.
“We have to establish a path to the tower,” I say, leaning in over the table and tapping my fingers against my unruly beard. “Brute force is our only way.”
“When do we incorporate the Unkindly?”
“Let me talk to Montgomery. We should hold them.”
“Agreed. They’re the only thing we have that Fortescue does not. We should only utilise them once we have a clear advantage, use them to make the final push into the tower.” He looks up at me across the table. “I don’t think it’s wise for that to be you.”
“I have to,” I shoot back.
“It doesn’t matter who kills him, Arthur.”
I grab one of the dominoes and scratch it against the table, staring at the white tower. It doesn’t matter who kills him but I won’t be satisfied until I see him dead at my feet. I want to know what it looks like. I want to know what his final words are. I want to be the first person to know a world in which Charles Fortescue doesn’t exist.
But I know he’s right.
I can barely walk, let alone fight. Would I even be able to make it to the tower? We’d have to run through a battlefield, and even with our offensive gradually closing in, we’d have to fight our way there. And then fight our way through.
Tossing down the domino piece, I stand up and grab my walking stick, admiring the rough battle map from a distance. Thomas also steps back.
“Send out a message,” I say.
“Are you sure about this?” Thomas responds.
There’s no going back from this. I find myself standing in that room again, in that town house, the room where it happened. Mildred Piper in the light. Charles Fortescue in the dark. They negotiated peace. I told her to fight and the revolution died.
This was all my fault.
I’m back there again, and I’m once again saying we should fight. What makes this any different, I ask myself. What makes me think this time we’ll win? We don’t have a plan. Our plan is to fight like hell and hope we come out on top. What makes me think, when I’m standing face-to-face with Fortescue, I’ll be able to kill him?
Have I done everything I can?
The question is, what else can I do?
I can’t do anything more than what I’ve already done. We’re in position. Thomas Cobbe is here beside me. There’s Walter Milne. There’s Redvers Lennox. We’ve got enough cells and enough people willing to fight. We’ve got Montgomery and his Unkindly army—that’s our secret weapon. We’re on the ropes, and the only thing left to do is kill Fortescue.
I look at Thomas and I nod.
“We approach the tower at dawn.”
The Siege of Fortescue Plaza
Somewhere within Fortescue Plaza, four men in extravagant yet simple suits sit around a table in a restaurant. Quiet piano music plays. The décor is red—some might call it romantic, others might only be reminded of the way blood looks.
One of these men is Charles Fortescue, the one who’s not saying anything, the one who has come there to eat and only eat, a knife cutting into tender venison, blood dribbling out of the dead animal. The revolution is moving but they’re not sure what exactly they’re planning, so Charles needs to start thinking about mounting a counterattack, but—
All Charles wants is to kill Arthur.
The men can go on about strategizing all they want, but unless Arthur is going to be there, all Charles does is keep eating and not saying a word.
He knows it’s going to end soon. When the revolution moves in to attack the tower, he’ll have no choice but to retaliate violently. Thousands are going to die. Tens of thousands. You’ll sleep to the sounds of screams and when the sun rises in the morning, you’ll still hear them. Screams and gunfire, the splatter of blood on the streets.
Thunder bellows in the sky.
What is your advice, they ask him, and Charles responds that his advice would be to destroy them once and for all, that this has all gotten out of hand. He doesn’t mention Arthur. He doesn’t mention names. He just says to eliminate them, and he’s sure the rest will handle itself. This dance has gone on far too long, is what Charles thinks.
After dinner, he’s walking the streets of Fortescue Plaza with his coat done up to the top and an umbrella clutched in one gloved hand. The similarly-tall and stocky Horace Grenfell, with his flat haircut and moustache, walks beside him. Their knee-high boots splash through puddles. Red flags fly across the Plaza. Loudspeakers announce a lockdown period. All residents must remain inside their houses until further notice. Fortescue Plaza is shutting down. And when it opens up again, Charles thinks, the war will finally be over.
“Are you feeling alri
ght, sir,” says Grenfell in a firm voice.
“I feel as though we’re on the eve of a great battle,” Charles responds, his breath expelling mist in the dark air. Rain falls heavy. The streets are empty except for police officers, armed. He nods to them and they salute as they pass. To know that men would die for you is a powerful feeling, one that Charles Fortescue has never taken lightly. He didn’t ask for this war, he tells himself. He would have had peace. They could have had peace.
Or would he have done as Arthur suspected?
Would he have made the same choice?
“A great battle indeed,” says Grenfell.
They stop at the edge of the road as a procession of vehicles slowly move past, their headlights illuminating tiny drops of rain. On the other side of the road, two police officers with rifles watch them. As Charles looks left along the sidewalk, he sees makeshift bunkers and tents, each one filled with a soft yellow glow.
“You apply enough pressure to something, it will inevitably explode,” says Charles Fortescue as the ground rumbles under the weight of the passing vehicles. “You hurt a man long enough, he’ll wake up and realise he’s got nothing left to lose. You destroy a man’s perception, you make him do something dangerous. We all have the capacity to do terrible things, given the right circumstances. This is what created Arthur.”
“Who is he?” says Grenfell.
The vehicles pass and they begin to cross the road.
Charles avoids the question, nodding to the two police officers as they pass halfway across the road. “Did you see what they did to the prisoners at that outpost?”
Grenfell nods.
“We can’t afford to give them any more opportunities like that.” The two men stop on the other side of the road, a block or less from that beautiful, ivory tower. “Craxton’s death camps. I want all the prisoners dead by dawn, the camps shut down.”
Grenfell gives another nod. “It will be done.”
“Get some rest,” Charles tells him.
“Of course,” Grenfell responds.
So with that, Grenfell walks off and Charles Fortescue remains standing in the rain, alone in the place called Fortescue Plaza, the centre of his reign across London.
#
We hit a guard station on the edge of Fortescue Plaza shortly before the crack of dawn. Explosives are ignited in the dead of night and I stand among the wreckage, Walter Milne at my side. Rain pours relentlessly. Lightning flashes in the sky.
We have a couple vehicles and a lot of men with firepower. They’re occupying the destroyed guard post and the surrounding buildings. A pub on the corner of the street, a laundromat. There are loudspeakers resounding through the city and there’s a lockdown in the Plaza. Revolutionaries are pillaging the mob’s equipment, arming up. There are probably a few dozen of us here. There are others converging on the area.
I stride through the group and find Roy Stirling.
Stirling nods as I arrive. “Arthur.” He’s suited up in a combat vest and there’s a rifle in his arms. He glances at Walter and similarly greets him. “Are we pushing?”
“You’re under Cobbe’s orders as of now,” I say. “He’ll tell you when to push.” It’s at this moment Thomas Cobbe pulls up in a van and throws open the door. Two soldiers sprint for it, grabbing the back doors and tossing them open. They exit with more supplies and ammunition. Explosives, too. We’re going to blow up their communication towers.
“Gentlemen,” Thomas says splendidly.
“Good to see you,” I say. “Take the lead here. I’m taking Walter west to rendezvous with Montgomery and have that army sorted. We’ve got men refitting the copper lines so we can communicate. Until then, hold the position.”
Thomas grabs my shoulder as I begin to leave, his grip tight. He pulls me in close and says, “Be careful, Arthur. They’re all over the place.”
“I know,” I tell him, then look to Walter and motion him to follow me. We jump into the van as the back doors slam shut. Walter leaps into the driver’s seat. The headlights flash, illuminating the dark Plaza in the early hours of dawn.
Neither of us speak as we drive.
Rain smashes against the windscreen of the van. Revolutionaries move through the streets. Fortescue’s patrol officers drift about but nobody fires a weapon. London is as tense as I’ve ever seen it, knowing something is about to happen, something big.
We reach a checkpoint in the outer west of Fortescue Plaza and I step out of the van with difficulty. My walking stick cracks against the gravel, causing me to stumble. The wood holds. I slam the door shut and rain splatters off it, to the puddles on the ground. Tents lit up in yellow light are scattered across the road. Lights reflect off the rain.
A man in a red coat watches us approach.
“Where’s Montgomery?” I ask him.
The man gestures for us to follow him, and we do. The air is thick with the smell of smoke and something’s on fire in the distance. Revolutionary soldiers move about without saying much. Occasionally, you hear the crack of a gunshot. You hear a shout. You imagine hearing a body slump to the ground. How many people will die in the coming days, because of me, because we didn’t lie down like they wanted us to?
We arrive at a white tent and I throw open the flaps, entering the warm ambit produced by a lantern. It’s roughly a dozen paces from end to end and there’s a table in the middle with papers on it. In the corner is the hulking figure of Vanessa, her dark afro well clear from her broad, powerful shoulders. She catches my eye and we nod to each other.
John Montgomery stands up as we enter.
“Sit down, John,” I say, motioning him back down. Montgomery sits back down in his seat. There are two other guys in the room besides Vanessa, and I tell them to leave. I wait until it’s just myself and Walter, Vanessa and Montgomery.
Montgomery stares at me as I carefully lower myself into a foldable chair and rest my walking stick against my leg. I look up as the flaps at the tent entrance fly open with the wind and you see people moving past in the rain.
“What do we have?” I say.
“Sir, there are a total of three hundred and six active Unkindly we have at our disposal,” Montgomery says in a monotone, efficient voice.
“And they’ll fight?”
“They’ll fight for you.”
I give a thoughtful hum and clasp my hands together, lowering my head. Soaking hair falls across my face and I close my eyes, letting out a deep breath. I can see myself when I was younger and they stole me away from my family, turned the world against me and forced me to fight in their war. They’ve taken so much away from me. I gaze down at my hands, which tremble. Pieces of metal stare back at me and I think about what they did to me.
But if we want to kill Fortescue and reclaim London, we have to utilise everything we have. We have to send an army of our own kind to war.
I hear an explosion in the distance and instinctively grab my walking stick. I look across the table to Montgomery. He’s looking back at me.
“Where are they positioned?” I ask him.
“There are four points,” he tells me, “roughly seventy soldiers each. During the war, I was part of a team developing a drug that’s designed to contain and control the Unkindly gene as much as possible, preventing an overload, the kind that results in destructive effects. It’s a trade-off of less power and less destruction internally. I have sent for vials of this drug to the four camps and I’m sure they’re being administered now.”
I nod, taking in the information.
Montgomery points at the communicator on the table, several antennae pointing upwards from it, a bronze speaker, copper wires. “That’s hooked up to the locations of the Unkindly swarms. You give me the word and we’ll send them in.”
“What do you advise?” I ask him.
“In terms of what, sir?” he says.
“What are the long-term effects of this?”
“Hm.” He sits up straight in his chair with his hands clasped on his lap.
He would not look out-of-place sitting in the offices of the monarch. “They know what they’re fighting for. They know the alternative. Their purpose here is of no question. But, even with the drug doing its best to suppress the Unkindly gene to non-destructive levels, it isn’t perfect. We’re still dealing with unnatural power that has only one objective, and that’s to destroy. The battle won’t be long but it will be aggressive. Aside from the casualties and the stress that comes from fighting a battle like this, I’m sure you’re aware of the more...long-term effects.”
A generation made of clockwork. A society that fears them.
We must prevent this from happening again.
But is that even possible, Arthur, if all they remember is how you rose up and toppled the administration, leaving millions dead or homeless? How your path to power is paved in blood?
If Mildred couldn’t even do it, how can you?
Let’s deal with that later, I tell the whine and then block it out. I can’t be doubting myself now. We have no other option. We have to kill Fortescue and this is what it’s going to take.
You’ll become Fortescue, says the whine.
I stand back up and tell Vanessa to keep watch over Montgomery. I tell Walter to relay the message to advance the south-western front and start making ground on the tower. Then I walk back out into the rain alone and exhale sharply, letting out a shiver.
“Sir!”
I look sidelong to see another communications outpost underneath an umbrella, which sways violently in the winds. I stride over there and step over the tangle of copper wires. The man there holds out a communicator to me and I grab it.
“Arthur speaking,” I respond.
“Arthur, it’s Leslie Barrow,” comes the crackling voice on the other side. Copper wires tend to do well in stormy weather, but there’s significant interference.
“What is it, Leslie?” I ask.
“I’ve mapped the best route to the tower.”
I feel a spike of heat inside me, and I hear Thomas’s voice telling me I shouldn’t do it myself, and I feel the weight of my walking stick as I grip the pommel.