Din Eidyn Corpus (Book 2): dEaDINBURGH (Alliances) (7 page)

Interlude

This is how it feels to be Stephanie

My cousin, Alys, and my friend, Joey MacLeod, have returned from the south. They found no cure and almost killed the madman who took my eye.
Almost…
Such a small, limiting word with such infinite potential. Alys, tired from her journey and debriefing, is asleep in another tent. Joey has gone to seek help from a friend. Lying surrounded by dozens of strong, highly-trained women I’ve known my whole life, I’ve never felt so desperately separate. But I feel good too.

I feel alert, clear.

My legs are swift and strong as I slip silently from my tent. My mother lies sleeping soundlessly, confident in the security of her home, The Gardens. These delusions of contentment she taught me, that made me so weak. I’m done with them.

 
I crouch in the darkness of the early winter hours. Closing my eye, I increase my awareness of every little sound in The Gardens. Joey taught me to do this.

Focus on one sense at a time. Close off the others and the one you need amplifies the world.
I’ll never have the innate skill Joey has. He forged his senses over a decade and a half living in the infinite blackness of Mary King’s Close. But I do well enough.

I listen to the guards patrolling their regular routes around the fences and gates. The rattle of the East Gate tells me where Magda is. A crunch at the bottom of the north slope gives Helen away. Five other Ranger guards broadcast their presence to me. I open my eyes and move silently on the balls of my feet, dancing between their sounds in the arms of the winter wind. Slipping through a gap between Helen and Samantha, I spider-crawl, low and quietly, my strong core muscles flexing and stretching, keeping me tight and able to stop on a hair if needed.

As I wait for two Rangers to pass by ten feet below me on the grassy slope, I smile a fraction of a smile, allowing myself to enjoy my hard-earned skills. I close my eye one more time, checking for trace movement or any guards I’ve missed.

All clear
.

I’m entirely certain and infinitely confident in my assessment and use the three seconds I have to vault silently over the spiked iron fences, landing cat-like on Princes Street.

On the street I say a silent prayer of thanks that The Ringed are almost entirely absent, having been drawn farther north by a metallic giant collapsing. I feel smooth, in control, powerful and strong, but I need more. More than I can have here.

Chapter 8

Joey

“Where did you get these, Suzy?” Joey held a Tupperware tub filled with fruit scones up.

Busy working tapping at the keys on the laptop Joey had brought with him, Suzy stole a quick glance towards the kitchen door where he stood.

“Made ‘em,” she said, immediately turning back to the little screen. A beat later, she yelled into the kitchen, “You’ll find some plum jam in the cupboard.”

A few minutes later, Joey placed a faded London 2012 Olympics tray holding scones, a teapot and the jam on top of a little table beside where Suzy sat working.

“How’s it going?” Joey asked.

Suzy had been tinkering with the laptop for around thirty minutes. Joey couldn’t begin to understand what she might be doing. He’d seen the odd television screen, like the ones at The Sick Kids’ place, and obviously there’d been
that
conversation with Fraser, but generally electronics may as well have been a stone from the age of the Pharaohs for all he could relate to their function.

“Getting there,” Suzy muttered.

She’d thrown some words at him shortly after being handed the device but he hadn’t understood. She had now given up trying to explain the processes she was going though after clocking the confusion painted on his face. Exclaiming that it’d “been a while and I wasn’t exactly a whizz-kid in the old days,” Joey assumed it was a sporting reference, Suzy having been an athlete in her youth. Then she’d asked him to be patient whilst she figured out the software. Whatever that was.

Finally the ex-Olympian threw her arms above her head, stretched back and forced a series of cracks from a variety of joints.

“Bingo!” she said.

Joey didn’t get that reference either, but had grown accustomed to the phrases she used, so similar to Jock’s. They really were from a different world to his generation.

Holding her hand out, Suzy clicked her fingers impatiently. “Flash-drive please, Joseph.”

Fetching the little orange blob from the pocket of his black jeans, Joey paused momentarily before handing it to Suzy.

“It’ll be fine, Joseph,” she reassured him. And so he let the only link to a mother he’d never known drop into his friend’s hand.

Whistling as she popped the cap off, Suzy inserted the metal end into a port on the side of the laptop. A little dialogue popped up which Joey leaned in closer to read, keen not to miss anything.

What would you like to do with this device?

Scan and repair (may delete data).

Format.

Open to view files.

Suzy hovered a wee arrow icon over the last suggestion and cut a glance at Joey.

“Ready, son?” she asked, finger hovering over the command button.

Joey gave a single curt nod.

Clicking the command, Suzy moved her eyes closer to the screen as a window opened. Only one folder icon lay within. Suzy double-clicked it. An unfamiliar file type was the only item inside.

Noticing Joey’s questioning look, she shrugged.

“Only one way to find out, kid.”

Suzy double-clicked the file. Joey held his breath.

A video file popped up. Before it could play, Suzy jabbed at the pause button on the video player. Glancing at the battery icon in the lower corner of the screen, she said, “There’s only about eight percent charge left, Joseph. We may only get one chance to see this.”

Eyes wide, Joey nodded that she should begin.

A dark screen appeared. Suzy and Joey held their breath and listened as someone shuffled around off-camera. The sounds of a seat being dragged across the floor screeched through the little speaker. The darkness was suddenly replaced by an image of a bar, the red counter filled with computer equipment, just visible as a result of someone clicking on a light.

A blur passed in front of the screen as a woman sat in front of the waiting aperture.

She was perhaps thirty years old. With her clean appearance, smooth hair and blemish-free skin contrasting so starkly with the clothes, the pain in her eyes and the fear she radiated, she looked like a woman between two worlds.

She looked deeply into the camera rubbing her hand tenderly across her baby bump. With long, blonde hair, very green eyes and a copy of Joseph MacLeod’s face, she smiled his own smile at him across the years.

Suzy gasped at the likeness.

The woman on the screen parted her lips and said two words, her eyes no longer reflecting fear, but pure, unconditional love.

“Hello, Joseph.”

Joseph felt a punch to his heart and jabbed a finger out to pause the image.

“She can’t see me, can she?” He was staring intently at the frozen image of his mother’s face and trying desperately to hold his emotions back.

“No. It’s just a recording. But it’s clearly for you.” Reaching out, Suzy gently pulled his hand away from the laptop and clicked the button.

Michelle MacLeod continued talking to her son.

“I’m choosing to believe that you will see this video one day. Will we be together? Will you be alone, or with The Brotherhood? Wherever you are, however you are…”

She stopped rubbing at her bump and splayed her fingers out across some part of the baby within – of Joseph – that she recognised by touch.

“Whoever you are now, if you’re not with me, there’s things I need you to know about.”

As the woman on the computer screen with his face returned to absent-mindedly rubbing her bump, the realisation that he was looking at his mother with himself still there, developing inside her body, hit him. Hard. Choking back his tears once again, he forced composure and concentrated.

“The most important thing is that you know how very much I love you, Joseph. I’ve seen your face in my womb. They have… had? Whatever.”

She smiled at her own confusion and when she did, her face lit the screen, sending another jolt to his already badly bruised heart.

“They have machines on the outside world that can look right into the uterus and show a parent their unborn child’s face. I love you, Joseph. I love your little nose and your strong heartbeat. I love your lips and your yawns and your kicks inside my body. I can’t express how much I’m looking forward to holding you in my arms.”

Stark, raw sadness crossed her face, but only for a second. Blinking her darkest fears away, she composed herself again. To Joey she looked like a woman desperately trying to pour love through a lens over time to her unborn son, terrified the whole time that he’d most likely never find her message.

“If I’m gone, always carry my love with you. You are the love of my life, son, and I’d do anything to be with you now. Nothing… nothing and no-one on this earth could take me willingly from you. If you’re alone, it’s because I didn’t have any other choice.”

Michelle suddenly tensed and breathed hard through a moment of pain. Her eyes flicked to something off-screen. Concern flashed once more.

“The people I’ve left you with, The Brotherhood. If I can convince them to take us in, they will care for you if anything happens to me. They’re essentially good people who have made the best sense of the world they live in that they can. But you must never believe that their views, their dogma, are the only way. If you choose to stay there, Joseph, that’s fine. Deep underground, you’ll survive, but try to imagine a larger world, even within these fences. It exists and is right there waiting for you to discover. People who choose a different way of life, good people. People I can’t reach. I’m not made to survive this city, Joseph. I don’t have the physical skills or the instincts, but many others do. Find them and learn from them.”

As Michelle paused for breath, Suzy tapped at the corner of the screen. Four percent of the charge remained.

“I wasn’t born in this place, Joseph, and I wasn’t here when the city was sealed. I’ve lived here for around five months in an underground bunker set up and maintained by the company I work for. I was placed here by… someone I thought respected me. Someone with immense corporate and political power whom I trusted when I shouldn’t have. This person didn’t know that you were growing in me, Joseph. If he had, I think… I hope he’d have made a different choice.”

Suzy glanced at Joey. He could feel her watching him, assessing his mental state. Joey ignored her and kept his eyes fixed on his mother’s face.

“I was placed here because I hated the mere existence of this city. I’d worked for years within the corporation to help the survivors. I discovered that the company were placing people, criminals, the homeless, troublemakers into the city illegally. I went to someone I trusted with my discovery and I woke up in here.
 
What is this company I tried to change from within? It’s called the UKBC and it uses footage from within the city… for entertainment.”

Michelle went on to describe the history of the corporation. How the show was filmed and who watched it. Joey ground his teeth, caught between joy at seeing his mother and the horror of her fate.

He listened as she described her location and how to gain access to the resources still sealed there. He wept as he realised that this underground haven she’d concealed herself in to allow him to grow was barely two hundred meters away from where he’d lived as a child. She gave him the code to access the dungeon chamber and told him of her hopes and fears for their future. She told him of her own father, for whom he’d been named, and lit up his world once again when she smiled at her own memories of the man.

Finally she stared once more deeply into the camera and named the monster who’d taken everything from her.

His name jolted Joey.

“Don’t be angry, Joseph. Be strong, be brave, be a good man. If you’re able, help other people who aren’t as strong as you are and carry forever the mark of my love for you in your heart.”

 
Michelle reached out to press something but stopped short as a final thought crossed her mind. She looked right at him.

“I love you, son.”

The screen clicked to black. She’d ended the recording. A few seconds later, the laptop’s busy fan whined and its screen went dark as all life left it.

Suzy had reached for his hand and given it a little squeeze of reassurance but Joey pushed all thought of her away.

He felt so many things – too many – and all in an unstoppable hurricane. Choosing to ignore every emotion that clawed at his consciousness for attention, he closed his eyes and pushed his fear, his anger, worry and each and every burning question away. He put his shock at hearing Fraser named as his mother’s jailer in a blood-filled mist of hate in the deepest recess of his conscious brain.