On the old napkin, drawn in hand in the way only the Artist Laureate ever practiced, was a picture of a girl. A young girl. With dark features, and a haunted look in her bright eyes. A girl he had last seen falling from an orchard tree.
He looked up at the commandant, any mirth he might have felt at her torture instantly replaced by a gaping fear in his chest. “It’s Sarrin.”
The commandant stared, scowling at him, and he realized she hadn’t heard him across the soundproof glassine. But somehow she had, because she flicked the picture over, brushing over it with her thumb.
“I knew her,” she said finally.
Halud’s eyebrows rose, his heart thumping wildly in his chest.
Then, against all odds, the fierce commandant started to cry. “What have I done?” She rested her head against the glassine, staring at the picture. “I loved her. I looked after her. She was so little, and I….”
Halud looked from the picture to the commandant. Was it possible? The commandant had known Sarrin? Even… been her friend?
It struck him, in the weirdest of ways, that this might be an actual sign from the Gods. The strange coincidences and coming togethers that Hap and the other Speakers had valued so much, often manufacturing as proof of their power to the folk, this was one and Half was witnessing it right in front of him.
She looked up at him again. “I killed so many Augments. I hunted them. I…I….”
Halud put his hand against the glassine, opposite hers. He couldn’t say anything. There was nothing to say.
Suddenly, her head twitched to the side, and a hand came up to wipe the tears. “Someone’s coming.” She looked back to him, her eyes intense. “You have to get out of there.”
He pointed at the door.
She reached for the console, punching in a command. But the door stayed closed. “They must have deactivated my access codes.” Fear flashed across her features, and he realized it was not for her but for him. In a flash, she had disappeared, pulling the panelling and slipping into the wall.
He thought maybe he was wrong, and she might leave him, but in another instant, an invisible seam in the back corner of the cell opened and she pulled herself through.
He took a step back. Bedraggled as she was, she still loomed over him, and still looked strong enough to snap his neck.
“We have to go.” She waved towards the open panel.
He knew it. This was the escape he had been looking for, but the commandant looked entirely cracked. Sign from the Gods or not, there was a completely unhinged gleam in her blue eyes. He shook his head, taking another step back. “I’ll take my chances. They brainwashed you, you’re remembering now, but I don’t know how long it will last. You could forget at any time."
“Please,”—she reached for him—“let me make it right.”
The door to the anteroom opened. The commandant pushed him behind her, coiling to spring the way he had seen Sarrin do countless times. He felt a deep pit of fear open within him. Death was coming, either from the guard coming in the door, or from the commandant.
But, at the door stood a short, slightly plump, pleasant looking girl. “Oh, this is convenient,” she said in her usual sing-song voice.
Halls stepped forward in shock. “Joyce?”
She puttered across the room, barely casting a glance at the guard slumped at the ground. She held a laz-gun casually in her one hand, the other pressing a plastic chip against the console. The door popped open, and her eyes lit up with glee.
“What’s going on?” Halud sputtered.
Joyce waved at them. “Well, come on. Both of you.”
Halud glanced at the commandant, who looked possibly more perplexed than he felt.
“What’s going on?” he tried again.
Joyce smiled, the grin making her look like an idiot, but he realized she was nothing of the sort. “This is your rescue, Halud.”
“Joyce?”
She waved him out. “You too, Amelia. Come on. The fighting has already started in the square, and we have work to do.”
TWENTY
GAL'S HEAD THROBBED AS HE started to regain consciousness. Something pulled off his face, and light hit his eyes just before he was struck across the jaw.
He blinked and spat. His hands were tied to the back of a chair, his legs and torso strapped down as well. In the four corners of the large office stood glowing blue orbs, an uncomfortable hum emanating from them.
And Hap Lansford's sneering face loomed over him. This wasn't good.
The Speaker hit him again, his head swinging the other way. As he blinked, he saw Rayne, also tied to a chair, a dark sack over her head. Definitely not good.
“What are you doing?” he hissed at Hap.
Hap roared, his face turning an unpleasant red. He reeled back and struck him again.
When his ears stopped ringing, Gal pushed down his instinct to beg for Rayne's life, and forced himself to laugh in the Speaker’s face. “The revolution has begun. You’ll never stop it, not like this.”
“This is the punishment for disobeying the Gods!” Hap yelled. The next impact caused Gal’s chair to teeter on one leg. “They are angry with you!”
Gal spat again, this time mostly blood. He made himself stare defiantly into the eyes of the Speaker, someone he'd once called friend. “The only one angry is you. The only one disobeying the Gods is you.”
Hap’s meaty fist struck him again.
His head spun, and his eyes wouldn't focus anymore, but if there was one thing Gal knew--that John P knew--it was that he was getting to the Speaker. And he had to keep going. “You’re just like your father!” he roared, bracing for another hit. But it didn't come.
Hap yelled out, and stumbled away, leaning on his giant oak desk. Rayne's head was still covered so he couldn't see her expression, but he could see the subtle movements her fingers made as they worked back and forth over the knots.
Hap suddenly turned. “How could you have ever gone so wrong? How could I have ever let you go so wrong?" He placed his hand on his chest. Then he pressed in his five fingertips and started to pray.
“Give it up, Hap," Gal snarled. Maybe he could keep him distracted long enough for Rayne to break free.
The Speaker's eyes flashed open in anger.
“You haven’t believed in the Gods since we were kids," sneered Gal. "I know they don’t speak to you.”
“They do.” His voice was ice.
“You forget we were friends once. You told me they didn’t. Not in the way you wanted, not in the way you thought.”
Hap drew himself up to his full height. “I misjudged you, Galiant. I thought you were a reasonable man, an educated man who thought well. You were never my friend. I pity you, your mind cracked and twisted in a way that it has made your thoughts dark. You see demons everywhere you turn.”
Gal felt a pang — there had been a lot of demons.
Hap stalked back over to him. “The lies you spread are the sins of the Gods.” He struck Gal hard enough to tip his chair and send Gal sliding across the carpeted floor, knocking into the legs of the other chair.
Rayne shouted out in surprise, her voice almost a wail as she yelped his name.
Roughly, Hap grabbed Gal and set him upright again with one arm. With the other, he jerked the mask off Rayne’s head.
"No!" Gal lunged forward, but the restraints held him to the chair.
Rayne sucked in air, her eyes wide as she stared up at the Speaker. Her mouth worked like she was preparing to yell, but Hap stopped her, a hand wrapping around her throat. “How disappointing you must have been, Commander Nairu. Your father had so many hopes for you. Cherished you, taught you. And here you are with this rebel, same as your cracked mother.”
Rayne made a terrible choking sound. “M-mother?”
“How unfortunate for him to lose two of you to this madness.” He laughed once.
Her eyes went wide. And then she jerked up, her head catching him under his massive chin.
Hap staggered back
, blood trickling from his mouth.
“What did you do to my mother?” she shrieked.
“She was a rebel too.” Hap pressed his meaty hand into Rayne’s face, completely covering it, and he pushed.
Her chair teetered on its back legs for an instant, and then toppled over backwards.
“You’re a fool, Hap,” Gal shouted. He stared down at Rayne, terrified as she moaned and lolled her head.
“And you! You were supposed to be my friend!” Hap sprayed him with spittle from his red-purple face. “Instead you're here, trying to turn the folk against me.”
“No, Hap. I was your friend, I really was. I tried to open your eyes. You were always so smart, but you could never see the truth. You abused your power, just like your father did. For years I tried to help you, tried to show you the truth so you could see. Your father started the Augment program. You never had to finish it. You had a chance to do good. Real, honest to Gods, good work. Instead, you chose to be blind.” Hap stared at him, murder in his eyes. Gal knew it would be the end of him, but he was too far in to stop now. He reached for whatever part of the young, reasonable, caring boy that Hap had been that might be left. “The Gods may speak to you, as they speak to all of us, but you don’t listen. You are as deaf as you are blind. You’ve chosen your own needs, your own good, over the good of the folk. This isn’t the work of Gods. This is the work of a man afraid, a man looking to save himself over those around him. A man who knows that any change, any shift toward something different will dethrone him and send him spiralling. You don’t listen to the Gods. And now you have to be afraid.”
Hap growled. “I am Hap Lansford, First Speaker and direct descendant of Strength. I have the power of the Gods within me. I hear their words. I speak for them.” He swung his massive arm.
When Gal came to again, he was toppled over on the ground. He couldn’t have been passed out long, his lungs still struggling to catch the breath that had been knocked out of him. “You’ve got it wrong, Hap,” he wheezed. “Strength was never physical. It was mental.”
Hap lunged, pulling something off his desk, thrusting the data tablet into Gal’s face. “It doesn’t matter what you say. You’ve already lost.”
Gal stared, a scene playing out on the data tablet of the Central Square directly below them. The giant vid screens uncharacteristically blank. The rebels, the folk with their defiant swatches of colour, fighting against the overwhelming greyness of soldiers descending upon them.
And yet there was another group. Beaten and bent and brought back from death. “There’s Augments down there, Hap. Your soldiers can’t beat them.”
A sickening grin spread across Hap’s face. “I know this. But the rebels brought everyone to the Central Square. All the rebels. All the Augments. Anyone who might oppose me. All in one convenient location.”
Gal’s blood ran cold. One variable had hadn’t considered, one thing he never would have expected, even from Hap.
“There are detonators surrounding the square, charges built into the cobblestone. A heavenly blow from the Gods to strike down the Augments.”
Perhaps the man did speak with the Gods, how else could he always be one step ahead?
“You’ll kill your soldiers,” Gal tried. “The folk.”
Hap shrugged. “I can’t be selfish. If I remember correctly, it was you who once told me a true Speaker must always consider the needs of the folk first.”
“Hap, no!”
* * *
A laz-bolt bounced off the stone wall a foot from Kieran’s head. “Sarrin!” he called.
She paused a minute before answering. “It wasn’t going to hit you.”
He thought to argue that she couldn’t possibly know that, but then, he supposed she did.
He hauled himself onto the ledge of the window on the sixth floor. Thank Jesus these people valued light so much. He cut a hole through the glassine with his lax-torch, and squeezed through. The broadcast room was just down the hall, the door was open, the room unoccupied.
So, the rebel’s operative had come through. That was lucky.
Sarrin stepped in behind him. Her face was grey and tired. Her eyes swam.
“Thank you,” he said.
She leaned her head against the wall and exhaled.
Kieran set to work, pulling the cables from his pack and lining them up in the massive machine that was the broadcast computer.
“You okay?” he asked.
Sarrin nodded once, crawling over to sit by him. “Tired There's a lot going on below us.”
He patted his hand on her thigh and smiled. “I’m glad you’re here.”
She nodded again.
He finished calibrating the machine, waiting for the inputs to switch over. The screen blinked on. “Let’s see if Gal is ready. He should be set up by now.”
But he wasn’t. Kieran frowned, flicking the switches. But the feed from the camera in the rebels' lair was tipped on its side, looking up at a couple cargo tainers, the room empty.
Sarrin’s eyes had taken on an unsettling glint.
“Maybe they’re still setting up,” he said, but even as the words left this mouth, he knew something was wrong.
“Where’s Gal?” Sarrin asked quietly.
He shook his head, checking the connections again, but it was no use. The problem wasn’t in the wiring. “I dunno. He’s not there.”
“What do we do?”
“Maybe the fight in the square is enough of a distraction. Maybe we just need to go find the Speakers.”
She shook her head, staring desperately at the feed. “Gal was going to explain it. That was the plan. He was going to stop the fighting, and make them see. Without him, they won’t know the truth. They won’t see we’re not monsters.”
Kieran pressed his lips together. He looked at the sideways room in the view screen. “You’ll have to do it.”
Shocked, she turned to him. Her pupils were too far dilated, a bead of sweat breaking out on her forehead.
“What? I can’t."
“You have to. He was going to tell your story. But who better to tell it than you?”
She swallowed heavily. “How?”
He pointed at all the wires and transmitter. “There’s a comm channel. And a security camera. We’ll use that.”
She glanced up at the micro-lens in the ceiling, pressing her mouth into a thin line.
He pulled the lens down and dug into the computer’s programming, while Sarrin sat quietly, unmoving. She looked close to cracking when he finally held up the lens and pointed it in her direction.
“Are you okay?”
Her blue eyes pleaded with him. “You do it.”
“I’m sorry.” He shook his head. “It will be better from you. I’m just an Observer, some guy who got caught in all this.”
“They hate me. They’re afraid of me.”
He shook his head. “They don’t know you. This is your chance.”
She stared at the floor.
“Sarrin?”
“What should I say?”
“I don’t know. Just tell them the truth, right. Make them see.” He tapped the controls on the computer, sending the feed from the little security camera to every view screen in the city, and every messenger ship in the system. “Go ahead,” he told her gently, "like it's just you and me."
She stared at the floor, unmoving for a long time. He thought maybe it was too much, that she’d finally broken, she was so still, and then she lifted her head and started: “My name is Sarrin DeGazo. I’ve been a prisoner since I was three years old.”
She stripped off her cloak, revealing the lines of scars and the UEC barcodes burned into her skin. And haltingly, piece by piece, she told her story from the beginning through to the end.
Kieran fought to keep the camera steady, even as his pulse pounded in his veins. He loved her, he really did, for the person she was under everything that had happened to her. He hoped one day she would see it too, all the incredible things that were S
arrin, that had had the strength to resist everything they tried to make her.
Finally, she looked up, meeting his eyes, and nodded to tell him it was done.
He pressed the button to transmit the whole of General Nairu’s database to every ship and computer under the stars, then let the camera fall. Heard it smash into the ground, and caught the flicker of the feed shorting out on the little screen. He took a step forward and wrapped her in his arms.
She didn’t pull away, and he pressed himself into her. The hug was nothing like his mothers, but it didn’t have to be. He was home.
“Let’s go find the others,” he murmured.
She nodded against his chest.
The floor shook under their feet.
“What was that?”
Her face paled, her tiny body shaking in his arms. “Omega.”
* * *
The ground shook under Halud’s feet, and he reached out, grabbing Joyce to steady himself.
“Explosion,” muttered Amelia, looking around, her face hard. “A big one. No survivors.”
“How do you know?” asked Halud.
“I could feel them. Now I can’t.”
Joyce’s wide eyes blinked furiously. “This wasn’t the rebels.”
“It must have been Hap,” Halud surmised. “He’s been more and more cracked. We have to get to Sarrin. Is she okay?”
Amelia nodded. “Yes, I think so.”
He pushed toward the main corridor from the narrow one they were in, but Joyce put a hand on his arm. “We have to get to the top of the tower. Who knows what happened to the others. We have to take down the Speakers, if we can.”
Halud paled.
“I’ll help,” said Amelia.
Joyce spun abruptly, her skirt flaring out so it hit him in the knees. “This way.”
They climbed narrow service stairs, Joyce riffling through her over-stuffed ring of plastic keycards. She seemed to know the warren of service tunnels like the back of her hand, pulling out card after card to open the locked doors in their path.
“You’ve done this before?” he asked.
She pulled out a keycard and opened the door in front of them. “Yep.”
“I never suspected,” he said apologetically.
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