Poison

by Lan Chan

  POISON

  WIND DANCER BOOK 1

  Lan Chan

  Copyright

  Text copyright © 2015 by Lan Chan

  All rights reserved

  Without limiting the rights under copyright, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, (electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher of this book. For more information visit www.thewriteobsession.blogspot.com.

  All names, characters, groups and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and all opinions expressed by the characters, whose preferences and attitudes are entirely their own. Any similarities to real persons or groups, living or dead are coincidental and not intended by the author.

  One

  The Seeders came for my mother in the middle of the night. For months the Wanderer Rebellion had teetered on the edge of my awareness. As a ten-year-old, the notion of war and uprising was a remote construct for me. Besides, Papa was the Citadel’s most prominent genetic surgeon and I was the Wind Dancer. That alone should have protected us from the Citadel’s wrath.

  I jolted awake in my bed screaming for Papa as footsteps thundered against the stone pavement. The scream caught in my throat as I slowly remembered Papa was in the Citadel. Stuck in the barely lucid state between sleep and alertness, I could almost pretend it was just a dream. Then my mother appeared at my bedroom door and her severe expression told me it was all too real.

  Her dark braided hair was tousled and coarse from sleep, but it was the stark whites of her wide eyes that sent waves of terror through me. I threw aside my covers as she came up beside me. She kneeled before me and cupped my face in her rough hands.

  “Mama,” I said through chattering teeth. “Let’s go! We have to find Gideon. This must be some sort of mistake.” I’d known of other families who had been raided by the Seeders and carted off during the night never to be seen again. It just never occurred to me that it could happen to us because my mother relinquished her ties to the Wanderers when she married Papa.

  The sound of splitting wood cut through my disbelief. I wanted us to run or fight, but my mother stayed rooted to the floor. I glanced up at her through misty eyes and saw something behind her terror, something I couldn’t comprehend at the time. Now I know that it was resignation.

  Her dry lips quivered as she brushed a soft kiss to my forehead. Fat tears rolled down my face. She traced the outline of the single leaf tattoo on my left cheek. Her fingers trembled and burned like ice against my skin.

  “Remember the things I’ve taught you,” she said. “No matter what happens remember that Papa and I love you, Rory.”

  Then she swept me up off my feet and pushed me out onto the window ledge. I clung to her sleeve, her skirt, her hair. Anything that would make her stay. But my desperate clawing only served to heighten her urgency.

  “Run!” she said as she shoved me away and slammed the window shut.

  “Mama!” I shouted, beating at the glass with tiny fists. The thin ledge was wet from dew and barely wide enough for my feet. I tried to pretend I was on a balance beam practicing my circus routine, but my pounding fists sent vibrations through my body that made the ledge creak uneasily.

  On the ground, my dog Sully barked in a frenzy. The hairs on her back and neck bristled and she growled her intent. I was contemplating the distance between the ledge and the ground when I heard my mother’s scream.

  I forgot to run, forgot to even breathe.

  My mother was on her knees with a bloody gash across her temple where one of the Seeders must have hit her with the butt of his gun. The Seeders surrounding her were dressed in the full combat fatigues and headgear that designated them as Wanderer hunters. One of them took off his mask. He was a thickset man with a scar over his left eyebrow. He took a piece of parchment from inside his cloak that I recognised as a death certificate. How could this be? Gideon was the only one who could sign a death certificate for a Landing citizen, and he would never do this. Would he? The Seeder’s lips moved as he read it, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. My mother didn’t respond. Instead her head turned towards the window where she knew I was still watching. Her fingers touched the three-leaf tattoo on her left cheek. Aggravated, the Seeder lifted his gun, pointed at my mother and pulled the trigger.

  My world stood still for the longest time. I stared transfixed as her body rocketed backwards from the force of the blast. The image of her lying crumpled as blood pooled around her fractured skull burned into my memory. Something inside me shifted and cracked into a million pointed shards.

  I didn’t look back as I jumped off the ledge. Didn’t need to look back to know that the Wanderer purge had truly reached Gideon’s Landing.

  My feet touched down on damp grass for the barest second before I rolled and pushed myself to a running start. Sully jumped and snapped around me, acting as my warning that the Seeders were giving chase. I opened the back gate and whistled Sully’s signal to run. She sped off in the direction of the forest, where I should have gone too, but as I heard the Seeders’ stomping after me I headed towards Gideon’s mansion, the one other place I had always felt safe.

  Except I never made it to the mansion. My escape route was blocked by a rabble of Landing citizens gathered inside the market square. Their voices filled the air with anger and fear. I weaved ungracefully between them, tripping and catching onto their trousers and shirts for balance.

  There was no way I could pass as a Farmer and lose myself amongst them. I was the Wind Dancer and everybody knew me. Panic began to beat at my chest in earnest as the Seeders shouted for the Farmers to part. Just as I thought the thinning crowd would reveal me, a tiny pair of hands grabbed me around the waist and pulled me deeper into the middle.

  I turned towards my abductor and found myself face to face with the daughter of one of our maids. I was fairly sure her name was Leura, and even in the unearthly glow of the lamps surrounding the square her eyes shone like stars cushioned by short curly hair. Leura pressed a finger to her lips and took my hand, but as she dragged me one way, someone grabbed my other arm. The force of their grip left no mistaking who they were. The Seeders had caught me.

  I snatched myself away from Leura, knowing that if they saw her she would be as good as dead. I barely dared to look my captor in the eye, and I regretted doing so immediately. When I saw the scar across his brow, the image of the crater that was my mother’s head filled me with a terror so blinding, I almost fainted. The Seeder’s pressure on my arm was so immense that I thought it was going to pop in two sections.

  “She’s just a child,” I heard someone say. One of the Farmers, a tall man with sandy blond hair and a rough beard, stepped forward. He wasn’t a big man by Farmer standards, but his limbs were solid and there was a way about him that exuded confidence. “There are people here who are more Wanderer than she is.” Around him others nodded.

  A beautiful boy about my age stood beside the man, and I could tell from the boy’s colouring that the man was his father. The boy scowled at me and tried to yank his father away, but to no avail.

  “What’s your name?” my Seeder captor said to the man.

  “Gregory Casseldon,” the man said. The Seeder let go of me as he reached for his weapon. The Seeder spoke no words. He made no remark as he gunned down the Farmer as he had my mother. My heart froze along with the entire square. Wild panic ignited in the boy’s eyes and then he flew at his father’s fallen body, only to be restrained by the men around him. The boy was flitted away, and he took what remained of my composure with him. I began to sob wildly.

  “All right, you little bitch,” the Seeder said to me. “You started
this. Now you’ll end it,” he spat, his moist lips close to my ear making my skin crawl.

  “Jonah,” one of the other guards warned. “She’s the Wind Dancer…”

  “She’s a Wanderer!” Jonah snapped. He pressed me against the wall of the bakery, the weight of his body holding me down. I blubbered something incoherent about only being half Wanderer.

  “If you’re not a Wanderer then you don’t need this tattoo,” he said. Before I knew what was happening, a searing fire erupted on my left cheek. Jonah had reached in through the bakery window for a fire poker and was using it to brand my face. I wailed with agony as white lights danced across my weeping eyes. I lost sight of everything, sinking to the floor. I vomited from the pain of the pulsing of my wound. Blood pounded in my ears, but I only felt it for a moment before I blacked out.

  ***

  I came to in my dressing room inside the Citadel’s Arts Centre. My eyes peeled open and I found that I’d been laid down on the reclining chair. I gasped as I pushed myself to my feet and saw the mangled remains of my face in the mirror. The Seeders must have been monitoring me through a hidden camera, because they knew the second I was awake. Next thing I knew, I was being forced into my sky blue leotard and marched onto the stage by two heavily armed guards.

  The Arts Centre was empty save for three spectators in the front row. I caught sight of Papa sitting between Sheila Dempsey, the Chief Warden of the Seeders, and her brother Thomas. Papa’s expression turned to one of heartbreak when he saw me being marched onto the ladder of the tightrope. Every fibre in my being wanted to run to him, curl up in his lap and cry until the ache inside me subsided. Instead I climbed the ladder as instructed by the guard with numb routine.

  I felt no sense of anticipation when I reached the top like I usually did when I was up high and preparing for a show. Instead a boulder had taken residence in the pit of my stomach, and I was sure if I stepped out onto the rope my weight would drag the whole thing down.

  “Aurora,” the Chief Warden said. “Walk across the rope, my dear, and all will be forgotten. We will fix your face and you will remain the Wind Dancer.”

  I took a step, but it wasn’t onto the rope. It was into thin air. My arms didn’t reach out and my foot didn’t twist around the tightrope for purchase. Far away I heard shouting, but all I could comprehend was the rushing of the wind around me as it buffeted against my back and limbs. Just before I crashed onto the stage’s wooden floor, movement in the rafters caught my attention. There, crouched between two overhanging beams was Aiden, looking down on me like a tortured angel of death. Where were you? I wanted to accuse him, but then my world went dark.

  Papa told me once that in the moment of death all sense leaves us and we revert to instinct. That was the only reason I didn’t die that day. Years of aerialist training kicked in and though I broke many bones in my body, my neck and skull weren’t among them. What I did break was the Seeders’ faith in my ability to be the headliner in their circus. That was the last day I was the Wind Dancer. It was also the first day I decided all Seeders must die.

  Two

  It’s been six years since Papa performed the life-saving surgery that repaired my broken body. Though I’ve recovered all functionality, there are still times when I swear I can feel the trauma in my bones. Especially on nights like this, when my breath comes out in puffs of condensed air and almost freezes before it can disperse.

  When I arrive in the clearing there’s less than two minutes left to the bomb shelter’s self-destruct sequence. I brace my feet against the right-angle branch of the cedar tree and survey the area through the leaves of the canopy. My mother used to say that there is good in everyone, even the Seeders. It turns out she was right. There is such a thing as a good Seeder. That it happens to be a dead Seeder is irrelevant.

  Less than ten metres away a dead Seeder guard lies on his stomach on the ground. Another guard, a weedy man with dark hair, is mashing buttons on the keypad of the bomb shelter’s airlock hatch. The guard sneezes multiple times and I think he must be allergic to something. The layer of leaf mould and twigs I use as physical camouflage for the shelter has been hastily brushed aside, exposing the circular metal hatch. I grit my teeth as the guard draws his handgun and shoots the keypad twice. The bullets ricochet off the glass and the guard has to dive to avoid being hit.

  Blood rushes to my ears as he beats his fist against the hatch like a drum. No doubt he’s wondering why this post-Famine bomb shelter is still sealed shut. What could a Seeder possibly be so scared of that he doesn’t even care how much noise he’s making? His kind are the danger, so why is he terrified to the point of hysteria?

  Five-inch cactus spines protrude from his back and thighs, but it’s the spreading patch of dark liquid on his stomach that catches my eye. Through my night-vision goggles the patch throws off an eerie green hue that almost blends in with the guard’s regulation camouflage uniform. But I’ve seen enough blood to be able to recognise it for what it is.

  My earpiece, which is connected to the bunker’s computer system, continues to count down. Self-destruct in T-minus thirty seconds, a robotic voice says.

  “Override self-destruct,” I whisper into the mouthpiece.

  Override authorisation code required.

  “Authorise Aurora Gray, three, two, seven, five.” Down below, the Seeder picks up a fist-sized rock and smashes the hatch. Sparks of electricity flare around the hatch’s display unit, and though the screen stays functional, a crack appears in the glass.

  Bunker compromised. Voice override denied. Manual override required.

  My heart lodges in my throat as I contemplate my choices. If I do nothing, then the bomb shelter will blow and six years of painstaking seed collecting and propagation will be for nothing. I picture the emerging seedlings of Micah’s Rose that I’ve been nursing for three months and want to lash out at something.

  The obvious choice is to kill the guard and deactivate the self-destruct. From this vantage point it would be too easy. My fingers run across the dozen throwing knives secured to my utility belt. My palm grazes against rough bark as I reposition a branch for better aim.

  T-minus ten seconds till self-destruct. I pull the throwing knife from my belt.

  Suddenly the forest comes alive with a shrill whistle that courses up my spine and rattles my molars. I lose grip of the knife and it clatters to the ground. Please, don’t let that be what I imagine it is. Only one animal can make that kind of noise.

  Displaced air whips through the canopy, parting branches and tossing leaves. I wrap my arms around the cedar’s trunk for balance. I know better than to look up, but I feel compelled to. What I see makes my gut try to leap out of my mouth. There, circling just above are a pair of blood furies.

  I’ve seen one picture of a blood fury my entire life, and it doesn’t do justice to these creatures. Somewhere along the line our ancestors thought it would be fun to mess with evolution. You can see the membranous wings and fanged jaws reminiscent of bat DNA in the blood fury’s genetic cocktail. It’s anybody’s guess what other birds of prey have been thrown into the mix. Each creature is big enough to carry a person on its back, though I don’t know how they would sit, because blood fury hair is meant to be razor sharp.

  One opens its mouth and whistles away every ounce of my courage. I shrink back onto the intersection of the branch and try to make myself as small as possible.

  Initiating self-destruct.

  The explosion is barely audible against the blood fury’s whistling. The earth rocks sideways, but I hardly feel the tremor through my boots. The bomb is self-containing. Micah designed it that way so everything inside the bunker would be destroyed, but the earth would remain intact.

  Unshed tears blur my vision. I bite down on a fist to stop from crying out loud. Just like that, everything I’ve worked for is destroyed. A well-executed bomb shelter design is cold comfort when the sum of my research, my mother’s research in the notes she left me, is reduced to ashes within s
econds.

  Four shadows descend around the Seeder. He looks up and my heart lurches because I can see my own terror reflected in his face. The Seeder’s head turns from side to side, taking in the humanoid figures that seemed to melt from the undergrowth. I can’t tell if he stops struggling because of his fear or the cactus poison coursing through his veins.

  Each of the shadowy figures is draped in black, from their combat boots to the balaclavas on their heads. Only their eyes are visible, and in this darkness they appear devoid of emotion. Who are they? At this point I know I should turn tail and run. But my body is glued to the tree and refuses to budge. A pulse pounds in my ears, drowning out the blood furies calls.

  Pieces of a horrific puzzle slot into place in my mind. It can’t be. They’re not supposed to be real. Just as I dismiss the notion as too wild, the goggles zoom in on an object gripped in one of the shadow’s hands. A gun. Etched into the dull metal is a symbol that turns my insides to ice.

  A double helix. The insignia of the Reapers.

  All I know of the Reapers is what little I’ve gleaned from conversations in town. That and the occasional body missing vital organs and bearing their mark. Rumour has it that once upon a time the Reapers were a Seeder experiment in creating super soldiers. Until they turned on their masters and escaped the Citadel.

  Faster than I can register, one of the Reapers hauls the Seeder up by his wrist. The injured man’s features twist into a mask of such unguarded fear that I consider reaching for another knife to end his suffering.

  “No… please,” he says. He sneezes again, uncontrollably, and the Reapers turn their heads away as though they don’t want him to pass germs to them.

  The Seeder’s pleas fall on deaf ears. Without ceremony, the Reaper with the gun takes aim and shoots. The blast is quiet thanks to the gun’s silencer. Death should never be this quiet. I’ve seen plenty of dead bodies before. It’s impossible to live this close to the forest and not experience death. But only one other time, on the night my mother died, has it been this raw. Seeing an animal’s mauled carcass rotting in the midday sun after the kill is so different from witnessing a murder.