Arcene: The Island (34 page)

The world solidified and Arcene became herself once more. She felt like a new woman, like she'd just had a dip in a hot spring followed by a cool shower and somehow there was even a hint of roses. She sniffed. No, not roses, the smell of rotten vegetation.

Back to reality then.

Arcene stood in the middle of the road, in the same spot where it all began. Was it only yesterday? She stared at the pile of items left for her the day before — still as useless.

"Okay, Leel, now we have to sort this mess out. They'll be after us, at least some of them will, and we have to be sure we do the right thing. Hmm, what do you think that is?" She turned to Leel, stared into those beautiful hazel eyes, and smiled.
Stupid dog. Haha.
How she loved Leel, silly thing that she was.

Woof!

"Well, that's one idea. Or, um, we could, er..." Arcene chewed on her lip, then realized what she was doing. Moment's later she was poking her tongue out like she needed to taste the air, but it got her brain working.

"Turn the tables, that's what we have to do, Leel. Gosh, I've been so silly. I have the perfect plan."

Arcene let everything fade once more. Deep, deeper still, at one with The Noise, going far into the truth behind all things, where everything was the same and everything was different.

She was atoms, dust, nothing. Everything. Arcene turned with eyes ablaze with colors so intense it hurt to see, but she looked, and she knew the nature of all things.

Focus. Vision narrowing, searching out the memories of what once was.

Data.

0s and 1s half-bitten, information crunched and chewed, corrupted. Arcene saw the colors, the fractal shards of partial knowledge. Computer knowledge, virtual information that meant nothing, still hanging on.

Memories.

Ghosts in the machine.

Her mind swept down the street, wind blowing leaves, trash, plastic, tickling the grass into patterns more complex than the largest processors. Her knowledge, her truth, swept up the front of the building and into the room where the last camera to be turned off still sat, watching with a dead eye.

It pointed directly at her.

Pieces were reconfigured, joined together, the data collecting capabilities restored.

Through The Noise, Arcene followed the flow of light waves, sped down power cables, witnessed the memories of electricity, the whispers of information traveling as On-Off signals flowing down hair-thin glass tubes that came back from the dead and rejoiced in their virtual existence once more.

Resurrected. Back from digital hell. Whole.

Further, deeper, from junction to junction, camera to camera, restoring the mangled processors, manipulating the complex world, gathering loose strands and weaving them together to become whole, digital eyesight restored.

She branched off. Up, down, side to side, faster and faster, speed increasing as pathways returned to wholeness, flowing with the information. Almost as fast as the speed of light, her mind danced along fiber optic cables, conversing with the data, becoming the data.

She split at junctions, parts of her meeting, becoming something else, becoming the computers, bundling and regrouping, breaking off, fixing missed packets, returning to join the others so she remained intact and wasn't lost forever in the invisible world.

She was fat.

A bundle of blobs of diverse information, all vying for space as she sped along the tunnel under the sea, a submarine cable that ran out farther and farther, then up.

Stop. Split.

Feed into the towers that remained, the backup devices and the uncorrupted processors, drawing power from The Noise, sending it where it needed to go.

All together now, fed into one machine.

A once-dead black plastic iris opens then sends the information it receives out into three dimensions.

Arcene retreats.

"How did I get down here?" Arcene is prone on her back, staring up at the cloudless sky. Then the world is obscured and a smiling face looms over her. A tongue sticks out, impossibly large, and Arcene watches in horror as a glistening tear of spittle extends then drips from the lolling tongue.

She watches in slow motion as it descends.

"Ugh, Leel, that is so—"

It's no use, Leel goes in for her favorite move — the full face lick. After all, why else would Arcene be lying down in the middle of a deserted street for so long?

Leel always did have a sense of timing.

Tsccccccccccccch

Tsccccccccccccch.

Two thousand, three hundred and seventeen pairs of eyes stared at the screen, captivated.

"Hello, it's me again. I think you might want to watch this."

The image zoomed. A close up of her face. She smiled.

Static.

Tsccccccccccccch.

Closer still. A luminous blue eye.

Arcene winked.

The screen turned to black.

The crowd erupted into loud chatter. They'd been sat there, waiting, not knowing what to do for a a day and a night now.

There was a gasp as the screen blinked back to life. From left to right, scrolling across then down, a series of images sprang to life.

The Hunt was back.

The crowd sighed in relief. Then cheered.

Gone again.

Tsccccccccccccch.

A close up of full lips, murder red. "Remember, I said watch."

The feeds return.

Every corner of the arena is now live.

Feeling Scared

Cashae was out of her depth. Far removed from her comfort zone. Why had she ever agreed to come in the first place? This wasn't her, she was no Hunter.

She felt foolish and she felt scared. More, she was downright terrified. She sat in the shell of a building and looked at herself, legs stretched out in front of her. She wiped a tear and sniveled like a baby. How pathetic. If they could see her on The Island what would they think of her?

That this is scary as hell, that's what.
Cashae looked around the room, noted the silent camera in the corner above the door frame. Well, nobody was watching, Arcene had seen to that. But still, she couldn't shake the feeling she wasn't alone.

Did it just move? No, don't be silly.

It was precisely because she was alone though — her mind was playing tricks on her, making her jump at the slightest noise, raise her short sword and dagger, feeling useless, like she hadn't been trained for this and didn't know what to do. This was the reality though, wasn't it? You could have all the experience in the world via training, but when it came to real life and death it meant nothing. It was scary. Absolutely terrifying.

The outfit made her feel like a fraud. She stared at her legs in the thick new material, black boots up to her calves. She wasn't a fighter, she was an impostor in an assassin's outfit playing a real game of life and death. She brushed ineffectively at the dusty material, but what was the point?

The camera swiveled as she moved, black eye zooming for a closeup on her tear-stained face as she stood.

Cashae wiped away the pity, the dust making it worse. She sneezed and rubbed her nose. "This is wrong. I don't want to kill people. I want to go home." She moved from her hiding place and stepped out the doorway into the street. She had to find Arcene, tell her to get away.

To never come back.

Where should she start? Where would she be? Cashae was certain Arcene was back in the city — disturbances in The Noise hinted at it but revealed nothing. Should she shout, get her attention? Or was that silly?

She didn't know, had nothing and nobody to guide her.

She was alone.

Creeping around the side of a hulk of a truck, brushing past the trees growing out of the rusted trailer, Cashae nearly dropped down dead as she felt a hand on her shoulder when she emerged from the half-light into the strong afternoon sunshine.

"Ssh, stay quiet," warned Erato. Talia was next to him. They both looked sorry, but it was too little, too late. Wasn't it?

"We're sorry," whispered Talia. "You were right, we were wrong. We have to help. But we can never go back now, Cashae. If we help we can never go back."

"I know, but we have to anyway. I knew once we agreed to try to stop this that we could never return home. It was one crappy plan." She smiled through the tears and her friends laughed.

"Yeah, I suppose it was. We didn't exactly think it through, did we?"

"No. But I never thought you would change your minds about helping Arcene, and decide to elope together," accused Cashae.

"We're sorry, all right? It's just all a bit much. What shall we do?" Talia hugged her friend, then pulled her back into the shelter of the truck and the greenery. "I missed you."

"Missed you too."

"Hey, don't forget about me. I want in on this." Erato hugged them both. They were back. A team. Just not Hunters any longer. Friends, with a plan.

Sort of.

After whispered conversations, all of them not quite sure why they spoke so quietly but feeling it was the right thing to do until they had a proper goal, they decided they would stick together no matter what. Find Arcene, persuade her to leave, and then take their chances with Vorce and Elder Janean. They would try to convince them they had come back alone to finish the job but had failed, and that they should return to The Island.

It was a desperate act, and they knew the chances of being believed were slim, but they had to try. They had to attempt to warn everyone else, and tell the truth about The Hunt. Why had nobody ever said anything before?

Did this explain the occasions when Judges never returned? Had something gone wrong and Vorce knew how they really felt? Eliminated them before they could spread dissent?

Horror shook Cashae's world as their speculation revealed itself for what it was — the truth. It must be. There was no way that no other person had ever had second doubts once they found out the truth and were confronted with the reality of life and death.

It was true. Vorce had eliminated anyone he felt would try to stop The Hunt. She knew it, Talia and Erato knew it.

What now? Try to bluff their way through?

What should they do? He would know, and he would kill them.

"We have to warn everyone. Vorce is a disease. He's made us into something we were never meant to be," said Talia.

"But how?"

"I don't know. Come on, let's find Arcene."

Once more, Cashae emerged from the shelter of the truck. This time she had her friends with her.

Follow that Wire

After cleaning her face from the congealing slobber of an over-enthusiastic Leel, Arcene stayed put, right there in the middle of the street. It wasn't so much that she didn't have things to do, she certainly did, it was merely that she was exhausted — shutting down the feeds had been one thing, reactivating them another entirely. Arcene was close to the edge, and too much time immersed so deeply in The Noise had serious consequences.

Her body clock told her she had been doing it for hours, something she hadn't counted on and was a very amateur move. Anything could have happened. Ah, no, she wasn't that silly — she had Leel, and nobody would have got close with her standing her salivating guard.

She was exhausted though, and sat for a while, resting and recuperating. Hunters would come soon, she was well aware of this, and she had to be prepared. There was no way to know what would happen, or whose side they would all be on. All she could hope for was that Talia and her friends were rather less inclined to kill her than they had been.

After their conversation, Arcene was sure Talia would try to put an end to the madness. But Vorce, his companion, and Talia's friends, they were all unknowns.

Woof, woof.

Leel's hackles were as sharp as knives. She stared down the street as three black-clad figures emerged from an alley.

"It's okay, Leel. I think." Arcene ignored the odd sensation of being watched remotely and then put it out of her mind. This was her reality, not some show, and she had to remain focused on the here and now.

She snapped to attention, squared her shoulders, pulled her sword from its scabbard and angled her left leg forward, bending imperceptibly at the knee — a pose she had mastered that gave away nothing.

"What do you want?" Arcene shouted, as Leel growled and her muscles bunched. "Stay here, Leel. For now. But be alert." Leel glanced quickly at Arcene, moving her head as if nodding, before directing her attention back to the three cautiously approaching figures.

"We just want to talk. To help," shouted Talia.

"We already talked," replied Arcene. "There's not a lot else left to say. You should leave, or you should help stop this. The choice is yours."

They kept walking. The woman, Cashae, looked nervous yet determined at the same time. Arcene liked that. She was overcoming her fears, which showed integrity.

"We want to help," Cashae stammered. "We were wrong, this is wrong, all of it. You should leave, go home. Let us convince Vorce this needs to stop."