The Fall (28 page)
Sandra had debriefed their group and confirmed the Wardens’ retreat from around the Project walls. They were now heading back to the settlement, to baths and proper food and sleep. Blaize should have felt happy about returning – each team had kept watch on their segment of the wall non-stop for the last three days, sleeping and guarding in twelve-hour relays – but instead he was ill at ease. There hadn’t been a war. There hadn’t even been a battle. Had the Writings got it wrong?
They cut through the courgette and tomato field, joining up with the path that circled the bottom of the settlement. Smoke drifted up behind the trees. Smells of cooked meat, spices and potato wafted on the breeze. The group’s banter grew louder as they wound through the longhouse alleys, headed for the main square.
Eighty-six of them gathered outside the meeting building. The atmosphere was worse than the festive season. Everywhere he looked he saw exhausted, relieved and ecstatic faces. Guards laughed and joked with bubbly enthusiasm. Despite the gnawing hunger in his stomach, Blaize left the square and skulked back to his longhouse. He grabbed himself a change of clothes from his chest of drawers and a book, planning to bathe before anyone else thought of it, then he’d go and eat. Though no one had been taking care of the tanks in the last couple of days, he was certain several of them would still have water.
Down near the huts at the bottom of the village, he passed the Chief.
‘All right?’ Tobias asked.
Blaize halted. Tobias had trained Blaize for four years, and ordered him about as one of his guards for the last six. He’d never once asked Blaize if he was ‘all right’. Grinning, Tobias slapped him on the shoulder then continued strolling up the hill.
Blaize watched him for a moment, before continuing to the wooden stake fencing which encircled the baths. The stone baths were sectioned off from each other into rooms with grass floors and roofs of sky. Each chamber had its own water tank, standing high above it on metal stilts.
Choosing the fullest tank – a good three inches lay at the bottom – he entered the palisade and climbed a fifteen-foot ladder to the platform. He filled his flask with water using one of the rain catchers on the side, then poured the rest of the rain water into the tank. As he tipped back his head and took a long drink, a movement caught his eye. Beyond the salad fields, in the nut and fruit orchard, something shimmered between the trees. A brown form slithered forward and divided into six.
‘What?’ Blaize said, lowering his flask. Six men in brown attire headed across the field in echelon formation – weapons raised, the unit arranged diagonally. Blaize tried to duck. His legs didn’t respond. As the intruders came closer, he found he couldn’t even refocus his eyes.
We’re being attacked!
He was high up. There was no reason for the men to spy him. But everyone else in the settlement would be easy targets. True, there were only six men, it wasn’t an army. But of all the places in the Project the unit could have entered, they’d climbed over at the shortest distance between the wall and the settlement, and they’d chosen the first moment when everyone from the Project was gathered in one place. The assailants were well informed. And they had Paralysers – the one thing the Project couldn’t fight against.
Blaize seemed to be breathing, but he had no idea how. He’d lost control. He couldn’t even wiggle his fingers. The men passed below the tank, close to one of the fences. He strained to watch them, but their blurry forms moved out of his field of vision.
Below him something creaked.
‘Wait,’ a voice said – one of the intruders who had passed the baths and was now a short distance away. A hazy outline moved into Blaize’s line of vision. Green combats and a black T-shirt. It was one of the Project’s guards.
Hide!
If the guy could still move, why was he just standing there?
‘Try it,’ the first man said – the unit’s leader. His voice was closer now, only a couple of metres from the legs of Blaize’s platform.
The Project guard patted his hand over his shoulder, dreamily pulling an arrow from his canvas back quiver. ‘Who are you?’ he murmured.
If Blaize’s muscles had been responding, they might have turned limp and dropped him, because that voice was Mikey’s.
He tried to shout. It was useless. He couldn’t even swallow.
‘What’s your name, boy?’ the unit leader said.
‘Mikey.’
‘Who’s that?’ The intruder pointed off to Mikey’s right, out of Blaize’s field of view.
‘My brother.’
‘No,’ a second man said, stepping forward. ‘He’s your enemy. He’s going to kill you. Defend yourself, Mikey.’
Blaize scrambled as if he was being buried alive; struggling worse than he’d ever struggled. He had to break through the Paralyser. It could be done. He was sure it could be done!
Fight. Fight
. But the harder he pushed, the harder it pushed back.
Mikey raised his arrow.
‘Mikey?’ Ed’s voice floated on the air. Whatever was making Mikey wander about in a daze, it was happening to Ed too.
‘Shoot him, before he kills you,’ a voice ordered.
Mikey’s hands shook on his flexed bow. Though Blaize couldn’t see Ed, from the placement of their voices, he knew there could only be a couple of metres between the brothers. Mikey was a good shot. He would go for the heart, as they’d been trained in a life and death situation.
‘But he’s my brother,’ Mikey whimpered.
‘Shoot him now.’
Sweat trickled down Blaize’s back and the sides of his face. His skin tingled as the drops cooled in the breeze. This was like being frozen alive; watching the world through an icy strait-jacket. He waited for the familiar stretch and ping of Mikey’s bow, the sound of an arrow whipping through the air. The deadly impact.
‘No.’ Mikey’s arms trembled. ‘He’s my brother.’
There was a pause. The air grew as heavy as water at the bottom of the ocean. Mikey lowered the bow and arrow. Blaize heard a ruffle then a click that sounded like a safety lock being released on a revolver. The shapes and colours before him merged. He couldn’t blink and the wind was getting up making his eyes water. His body showed only faint signs of the panic he felt. No breathlessness or shaking.
‘No,’ the leader said. ‘We weren’t supposed to do it ourselves.’
‘Try the other one. He might be more responsive. Maybe the kid is like the ones that don’t react.’
‘Look at him,’ the leader said. ‘He’s showing all the symptoms. We’ve got a problem.’ When he spoke again, the man’s voice altered, addressing someone long distance on an interface or a headset. ‘They’re not as receptive as they should be,’ he said. A lengthy silence followed. ‘A guard shows all the symptoms, but he has refused to hurt another guard.’ More silence. Then the leader’s voice changed. ‘We’ve been asked to bring them in,’ he announced.
‘What?’
‘They’re sending the vans.’
‘Well how many are we supposed to take?’
‘As many as we can.’
Smouldering, Blaize writhed against the invisible ties that restrained him. He wanted to do some damage. He wanted a chance to beat the living crap out of a couple of them.
He watched Mikey and Ed obediently follow the Special Ops towards the settlement.
The time had come, and none of them had heeded the Writings.
*
Dombrant scanned the Warden and Psych Watch Communications. Cole and Ana sat in the back of the car, able to hear the buzz of voices on the Warden’s earpiece as he surfed for information. Cole jiggled his knee, fingers interlocked and palms pressing down against his forehead.
‘We should just go there and see what’s happening,’ he said.
‘And walk straight into an ambush?’ Dombrant countered. ‘No. We need information.’
Ana leaned over and grabbed Dombrant’s holdall. There were tranquilisers, blow tubes with darts, Paralyser headsets, Stingers, even a couple of Paralysers. But no medical supplies. She hopped into the front seat and checked the glove compartment. Aspirin. She held the silver pack out to Cole and felt relieved when he accepted two.
They were parked on a hill leading down to the south-east Project wall, two minutes from the registration building and the Project’s hidden entrance. But Dombrant was right. They needed a better idea of what was going on before they barrelled onto the Heath.
‘I can’t pick up anything,’ Dombrant said. ‘The Psych Watch and the Wardens aren’t involved. There’s no way they could be keeping it this quiet. Maybe the Chairman’s assistant was trying to distract you.’ He turned to Ana. ‘Send you off so that they could deal quietly with your father’s autopsy.’
She thought of the girl in her dreams with the scratched-out face. She couldn’t explain it to them, but she trusted Tabitha. ‘Can you access the Board’s Special Ops’ Communications?’ she asked.
‘No.’ Dombrant gripped the stirring wheel for a minute. ‘Evelyn Knight has gone insane.’
‘Maybe she was always insane.’
The Warden shifted sideways to look at her again. Then he glanced in the rear-mirror at Cole, whose eyes were squeezed shut, head resting on the back of the seat.
‘Is he all right?’
‘He’ll be fine,’ she answered, defensively. She climbed over the handbrake and returned to the backseat. As she settled beside Cole, Dombrant raised a finger, indicating for them to keep quiet as he listened to his earpiece.
‘There’s just been a request to send four Psych Watch vans to Millfield Lane, N6,’ he said.
‘That’s at the bottom of this road.’ Cole jerked upright. ‘It’s a minute away.’
‘Right.’ Dombrant retrieved the holdall. ‘’Fraid we’ll have to go on foot. The car would stick out like a fluorescent cow in a barn.’
Out on the street, Ana slipped her hand through Cole’s, gripping him fiercely. Tengeri hadn’t shown her a bloodbath inside the Project, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen.
Four black vans cruised to the bottom of Merton Lane and turned right, heading north along Millfield Lane where the Project wall stretched high on one side, and lower walls and dense bushes closed the road in on the other.
‘It’s a dead end,’ Cole said. They were hiding behind a wall at the crossroads between Merton and Millfield. Ana’s back was being prodded by brambles and her pumps were sinking into the mud. ‘If we follow, they’ll see us. We need to get to the opening in the wall, go through the registration building and start warning the guards.’
Dombrant shook his head. ‘It’ll take too long.’
A hundred and fifty metres along the dead-end road, the vans pulled over. Eight men in black Psych Watch uniforms jumped out. One man from each vehicle unbolted the double doors at the back, while the other stood guard. Each of them wore Stingers and batons, and the Paralyser deflectors on their heads. Their communication devices were invisible, but they worked in unison, clearly receiving instructions.
‘You two stay here,’ Dombrant ordered. ‘I’m going for a closer look.’
‘We’re wasting time,’ Cole objected. ‘We need to get into the Project and warn everyone.’
Dombrant handed Ana the holdall with the spare weapons, then glided up the road like a shadow. She squeezed her fingers against Cole’s, as much to stop him from going anywhere as anything else.
‘The Psych Watch are all wearing the Paralyser deflectors,’ she said.
‘So are we,’ he countered. They were both wearing the silver headbands and Dombrant had one, but there’d only been four to begin with. She could resist the vibrations for five to ten minutes, but after that her focus slipped and the pressure in her head became unbearable. Even if she gave hers up, they could only recover and recruit two of the Project guards to help them.
‘If they’re using Paralysers,’ she said, ‘warning everyone won’t make any difference.’
‘I’ve got to get in there.’ He stood up, exposing himself.
‘Cole,’ she hissed. She crushed his hand, trying to hurt him back to reason. ‘The Chairman’s assistant said it was supposed to be an inside attack. People in the Project all fighting each other. Something’s gone wrong. Let Dombrant find out what they’re doing.’ She tugged him back down.
‘If something happens to Nate or Rachel . . .’
The pain in his eyes made her chest burn with anger and defiance.
Evelyn Knight will pay for all this.
She would find the boy, just as Tengeri had shown her. The Chairman’s crimes would be exposed.
‘What are they doing?’ he asked. She peered over him and followed his gaze up the road. The Psych Watch patrol were hauling huge ladders from the vans. They leaned them up against the ten-foot tall concrete barrier, then two men climbed a ladder one after the other. When they reached the top, others passed them a second ladder to lower over the opposite side.
Moments after the second ladder was fixed in place, a figure appeared up it. He heaved himself over the rampart and began down the nearest side. Ana held Cole’s arm with her free hand. She couldn’t see the man’s face. She didn’t need to. He was wearing the combat trousers and black T-shirt of the Project guards.
Cole turned to her. ‘I think it’s Ed.’ His voice sounded small and injured; his eyes dulled. She wanted to comfort him, tell him it was going to be OK. But it wasn’t.
Ed finished his descent, his movements rhythmic and unhurried. Like a clockwork soldier. Before he reached the bottom, another Project guard swung his legs over the top of the wall and obediently descended. A member of the Psych Watch patrol directed Ed to the first van, a smile plastered on his face, as though to say, ‘
the easiest job I’ve ever done
.’
Ana gritted her teeth. When she found the boy, she would enjoy watching Evelyn Knight and all those who worked for her shatter and vanish like dust in the wind. She suddenly thought of the woman in the grey suit, who’d appeared in her dream with Tengeri. A grey suit with gold stripes – the uniform of the Board. Could the Chairman be stupid and conceited enough to experiment on the Arashan children inside the Board’s Headquarters?
A steady line of Project guards filed down the ladder and into the vans. Beside Ana, Cole was wound so tightly, he looked ready to spring. If Dombrant didn’t get back to them soon, she worried he would do something they’d all regret. These were his people. This was his family. They’d been turned into ghosts of themselves. The walking dead.
