The Wandering (The Lux Guardians, #2) (29 page)

My chest becomes
tight, straining my breath “I’m afraid I can’t let that happen.
You’re my closest friend and I won’t allow you to give up. Not
after everything you’ve endured. And certainly not after all the
trouble I went through to stop the disease taking your life.”

“It’d be easier for
you to just let me die.”

“The easiest route is
often the most worthless.” My father recited those words to himself
whenever an invention wasn’t going to plan. It’s surprisingly
comforting to pass them on. “You’re not dying, Honour. So you may
as well get used to life.”

“Stubborn ass,” he
grumbles.

I squeeze his
shoulder. “You have no idea.”

The train jerks and
shudders and stops. Through no small miracle we have travelled a
route that wasn’t destroyed by explosions, to an area that is
unclaimed by fire. I suspect that was more by careful planning on
Kari’s part than any luck favouring us.

I pry myself from the
wall and force my stiff legs to take me off the tram. I don’t know
how long we’ve been travelling but it’s long enough for my body to
have locked and my fear to have woken from slumber. Honour’s fright
is apparently quite contagious.

We gather, my family,
Kari, and her guard, underneath the shadow of a turquoise glass
building. It’s thrice the height of an omnibus, shaped like the
crest of a great wave, and perplexes me. Why might you need a
building shaped like this? What is its purpose?

“Where are the
Officials?” Kari asks nobody in particular. Her voice could easily
slice stone. “Marc must have told them where we’d go.”

“I’m sorry?” I take a
step closer to her and the quiet guard. “Marc? What has he to do
with the Officials?”

Kari’s expression
darkens. “He’s a traitor. He betrayed us, led a fleet of Officials
to Manchester, and abducted our leader.”

“What?
” Dalmar wears a look of
outrage and disbelief. “Dagné’s been kidnapped?”

“Yes.”

A burst of crackling
diverts the conversation and Kari unclips a black box with antennae
from her belt. A voice comes through, in sporadic surges of static,
though I can’t make out a single word. I watch, perplexed, as Kari
speaks into the box in reply. So it is a two-way communication
device? That’s clever.

The conversation lasts
no longer than a minute, but by the end of it the flames of the
town have huddled closer around us and the blanket of smoke and
smog has settled much lower. We wouldn’t be able to see any
Officials now, not even if they came charging at us.

The booms of bombs
smacking the ground get louder—closer.

But
the Manchester guard isn’t beaten. From what I heard, they are
planning something—a counterattack of significant size. I only wish
Kari would tell us what to expect, but she shakes her head at every
question aimed her way. I find myself yearning for the Guardian
council, who give us answers no matter how disheartening they are.
Where
is
the
Guardian council?

Figures begin to drift
through the streets towards us, stumbling and staggering, leaning
on one another for support, each of them shadows in the grey. At
first they are only sinister shapes but eventually they near and
take the definitive outlines of Manchester civilians. What would
have happened if this building had been obliterated? If there was
no safe area in which to convene? I scan the silhouettes for people
I recognise but these are all strangers. No Guardians.

My heart sinks but I
will not accept anyone’s death, not until it is inevitable. There
is still a shard of hope, a chance my friends are alive.

The civilians collapse
onto stone steps a couple of paces away, underneath a mangled steel
sculpture. I see for the first time the children cradled in their
arms. Children who have not seen the end of the last world but may
well see the end of this one.

With every minute that
passes, more blasts send my heart racing and more and more people
arrive. These Manchester folk have a knack for survival, like
Honour and I have. The ground still erupts with trembling every few
minutes and the smoke has become something creeping and malevolent,
but these people are hardy and resilient and they seem, to all
intents and purposes, prepared. To be so calm … how long they have
been planning their defence?

I’m about to mention
this to Honour when figures in mottled white, dirt brown, and dusty
grey appear as one large group, surging towards us.

“Thank the heavens,” I
whisper.

Through the smoke I
spot a cloud of white-blonde hair. Marie—it has to be. When the
Guardians are close enough for me to see their smudged faces, I
spot Priya. She looks small, frightened, and bloody, and I’m
rushing towards her and Marie before I’m aware of it.

“Are you okay?” I
gasp.

Priya’s face is
scraped along one side, blood spotted across her cheek. “I’m fine.
I just had a fall.”

“A fall down a flight
of stairs,” Marie snaps. Her arms are crossed over her chest, the
terror in her eyes barely veiled by anger.

I look Priya over,
despite the fact that my knowledge lies not in medicine. “Be
truthful,” I tell her. “Do you hurt anywhere?”

“Everywhere.” Her
voice is almost lost to the chaos of the night, to the second group
of Guardians and their families rushing to the wave building, to
the roar of confusion building.

“Is anywhere
particularly bad, worse than the rest of your body?”

“My ankle. But I can
walk on it.”

Marie puts an arm
around Priya’s waist, expression crumpling. She leaves a kiss in
Priya’s hair and apologises for an argument I didn’t witness.

“For what it’s worth,”
I say. “I don’t think your injury is fatal. You wouldn’t be able to
walk if it were.”

Marie tears her gaze
from Priya. “Are you a doctor?”

“Biologist.”

“Brilliant.”

Priya shushes her and
thanks me—for what, I’m unsure. I look over the both of them and
decide they will survive and that is what matters. I cross them off
my mental checklist of people to be worried for, catching myself
glancing back at Honour without meaning to. I will always worry for
Honour, no matter what, but I have to remember that he’s capable of
taking care of himself. I’m not going to lose him like I lost
Bennet.

I search the Guardians
who just arrived and am relieved to see Timofei is among them,
along with most of the Guardians’ council. More people alive and
well. I scan the crowd for Miya and Yosiah but they’re still
missing. My stomach drops.

“Alright listen up,”
Kari shouts. “Dagné and Marc are gone, lost in an explosion.”

That’s curious. Has
she kept Marc’s betrayal secret to prevent panic or to protect the
traitor?

Ignoring questions thrown at her, she tells us, “We’re going
to bring down an aircraft.” Kari ignores the questions and angry
shouts as if they are nothing. She gazes at something in the
distance and I follow her line of sight to a cluster of lights. So
that is why I’ve yet to see soldiers or Officials—they’re not on
foot. They’re airborne. “
That
aircraft.”

Cloaked in smoke,
Dalmar yells, “How?”

The wind picks up.

“Watch,” is all Kari
says.

A beam of light cuts
through the sky and illuminates the aircraft. The plane must be at
least the size of a ballroom, though it is hard to tell from this
distance. It’s a black triangle of wings and angles, squat and wide
and foreboding. I am terrified by its size and grandeur.

The smoke thickens. I
cover my mouth, cough through the fabric of my sleeve.

The plane is
immobilised somehow by the light. I watch, fascinated. It cannot be
an ordinary beam—it must be of the advanced, magical technology
this future has invented. It would not be able to stop the aircraft
otherwise.

I watch as the beam of
light withdraws, lowering from the dark sky to the top of a
shadowed building. The aircraft remains within it, drawn to the
rooftop along with the light. It’s aweing; I should be impressed
and amazed but this technology scares me. If this is not beyond
reality, what else can they do?

Within minutes the
aircraft is resting atop a brick tower, deathly still. As small as
ants, Officials exit the plane. They march through the cloud of
smoke that has settled over the plane, as it has settled over the
entire town, but they never make it to the ground. Inside the
churning cloud, they collapse.

Panic ripples through
the civilians and Guardians around me and emerges as a roar of
voices, all of it heightening my confusion. The order of the
Manchester civilians disintegrates. The calm of the Guardian
council becomes agitation. Horatia breaks her silence to ask what
is happening, but not a single person can offer an answer. This is
clearly not the Manchester guard’s plan of defence. I think they
meant only to bring the plane down. This is something entirely
separate.

Whatever has happened to kill those Officials … it is only a
matter of time before it comes to claim
us
.

***

Miya

01:22. 30.10.2040. The
Free Lands, Northlands, Manchester.

The machine
disappears. One second I hear it slicing through the air, and the
next it’s not there. It doesn’t fly away, doesn’t fall to the
ground. It just … vanishes. It’s done its job I guess. Dust rains
down on us. I cling to my family and they cling back. I don’t know
if Thomas or Olive understand what’s happening but it’s obvious.
The dust—we’re being poisoned.

So this is how we die?
Not shot by Officials, not on the run, not in the coming war, but
choking on the bitter ash of poison snow. Now that all my choices
have been stolen from me, I realise I want to be part of the
revolution. I want to see the President’s power dismantled. I want
to see the world remade. I want to watch my brother and sister grow
up, want to find a proper house and live with Siah. I want to
live.

But I’m dying.

I sit there,
rigid-backed between a freezing bin and a brick wall, and I wait to
die. But nothing happens. Yosiah doesn’t move from where he rests
against me, his face pressed to my neck. Tom and Livy are
unmoving.

Slowly the thought
seeps in, a more fatal poison.

I’m alive but my
family is dead.

I daren’t move,
daren’t check them. If I don’t move or breathe or speak, I’ll never
have to find out that everyone I love is dead. I shut my eyes and
fight tears.

Yosiah’s grip on me
tightens.

I choke on a breath.
“Siah?”

He lifts his head. I
lose the battle between me and my tears.

“Miya.” His fingers are gentle on my cheeks, brushing tears
away. “
Miya.
”

I tangle my fingers in
his hair and bring his forehead to mine. My heart pounds a frantic
beat. “You alive?” I ask. I feel delirious.

“As alive as you.”

Siah’s alive.
Siah’s alive.
But Olive, Thomas?

My
shaking hands move over my brother and sister. I pray they’re alive
but I’m terrified they’re not. Tom groans and Olive swears at me
and my tears come faster, burning down my cheeks. They’re
okay
. We’re alive. I
lean my head back against the wall. They’re fine. I can stop crying
now.

Except the tears
refuse to stop coming.

I hardly ever cry. I
do everything not to—not because it’s a sign of weakness but
because it’s impossible for me to stop once I’ve started. It’s
always been that way for me. If I cry for a minute, I’ll cry for an
hour.

“You can’t break
down,” Siah says, right by my ear. “Not now. Not here. We need to
get away from here.” When I don’t respond, his voice hardens.
“Miya. We’re not safe. We have to get out of this town. Do you need
me to carry you?”

Yes
, is my first thought.
I need you to carry me.
But if he carries me, Livy and Tom will have to walk and they
can’t run fast enough. I slide my eyes slowly to Yosiah. His face
is a white smear in the darkness, every part of him coated in pale
grey ash. He swallows once, twice. His eyes sweep every inch of my
face. I can’t keep sitting here crying, half a person. My family
needs me to be whole, to be Miya, not Leah Vanella.

“I can walk just
fine,” I say. My voice is hoarse but strong.

I scrub my cheeks dry
and help my brother and sister to stand, checking them over.
They’re scared but unhurt. Gradually, we pull ourselves together,
brush the dust from our hair, and tumble out of our sanctuary into
the unknown danger of the town. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever
had to do.

The
need to cry has left me but a deep, raw ache makes its home in my
chest. Siah must be able to see the pain beyond the thickest,
fiercest mask over my features because he takes my hand. Not my
wrist—my
hand
. My
palm flat against the scorching comfort of his callused own. It
soothes the ache.

“Just hold on a bit
longer,” he says.

So I do.

A bright light slices
the sky. We don’t know what it is, but we have nothing else to aim
for, no idea which roads lead to safety and which roads lead to
Officials. We walk past rubble and glass, past gruesome bodies and
torn limbs, blood and bone and ash. I try to shield my brother and
sister from the worst parts of it but the carnage is everywhere.
Olive’s eyes shine with fear. Tom cries silently.

We walk until the beam
of light hangs over us, a silver dagger in the gloom. I look to
Yosiah—he’s the only one of us who’s ever calm when things go
wrong—but he’s squinting at the sky and doesn’t see my unspoken
questions. His expression is guarded, half his face completely
shadowed.