Wiped (2 page)

I
t was
nothing like the poster. I’m not sure why I thought it would be. There was no crystalline blue waters snaking through the centre. No gleaming structures with sunlight glinting off thousands of window panes. No tree-lined avenues with colonial architecture so similar to that which we had in Wánměi.

No overlarge wheel like our Pherres. But I could see where one had perhaps once been.

I stared out over a landscape that seemed vaguely familiar and yet so very different from what we’d expected. They’d warned us, of course. Their reconnaissance had prepared them for the inevitable. But I’d seen what this world should have looked like. What it
had
looked like once upon a time. I’d seen the wide paths and narrowed alleys. I’d seen the domed churches and ornate cathedrals. I’d seen the incongruous bullet-like glass structure. The tall spires. The bold bridges. The big clock up in its tower.

There’d been so much to see in that poster. So much to hint at. So much promise. It’s what had kept Trent going. It’s what he’d looked at every day. A reminder that there was more outside of our borders. There was
something
out there at all. That poster had been everything.

And I’d fallen for its allure, as well.

I pulled my stunned gaze from the cityscape before me and took in the stoic look on Trent’s face. Hard lines defined an almost otherworldly handsome face. Bright eyes mired in darkness. His mouth was slightly open, as if he wanted to say something, but the words were simply gone. His brow was furrowed, small lines bracketing each corner of his temples. He seemed a shadow of the man I knew.

They’d told us. They’d warned us. But like me, Trent didn’t trust our companions at all.

How could we? Their existence was based on lies. Their presence here based on deception.

I slipped my hand into Trent’s, felt the reassuring warm squeeze of his fingers, then turned back towards the truth, the reality… and wished I had an answer. I didn’t. None of us did, even if Irdina would have us believe they knew things and my father would have us think that he had a plan.

Even if the world wasn’t a broken, desolate, unforgiving wreck of what we once had been.

Wánměi had forgotten its past. Lunnon still lived it.

“Are there people here?” Alan asked off to the side. His gruff voice was subdued, much like the atmosphere on board the boat.

“If there are, they’ll be in hiding,” Irdina advised, as she busied herself with ropes and fender pads and a plethora of other things she’d enjoyed telling us about.

Our ignorance astounded.

“Do we even know where we’re going?” Simon questioned.

“We have an idea,” she replied, jumping over the side of the vessel in an acrobatic movement that would have impressed at any other time. I watched on numbly as she tied off the ropes that would secure our only means of escape from this island.

I knew that now. That Lunnon was on an island. Like Wánměi but so much bigger. My eyes were drawn back to the devastation before me. Like Wánměi could have been.

“We’ll leave a contingency of guards on the boat at all times,” my father suddenly said from behind us. He’d remained below deck most of the journey, his presence now made me stiffen. “From what we’ve seen on surveillance images, this part of the city has been abandoned. Too close to the radiation, I’d hazard a guess.”

“Radiation that we should be avoiding,” Cardinal Beck offered.

“We will,” my father cheerfully advised. I’d come to dislike his optimism.

“Easy,” Trent murmured, only loud enough for me to hear. “We’re here now. One step closer.” The unsaid being we wouldn’t be here at all if not for Calvin Carstairs.

I nodded my head and turned toward what was left of our rebel army. Now reinforced with several trustworthy Cardinals under Beck’s command. The Cardinal met my eyes steadily, his whole demeanour at the ready. Waiting for instructions just like any good soldier.

I found it amusing that he took them from me.

“Are we set?” I asked.

“Yes,” he answered in that clipped way of his.

“All our supplies?” I pressed.

“Si’s got it,” Trent replied, rushing to answer before Beck could, I think.

“Well then,” I said, glancing over my shoulder at what awaited. “Let’s do this.”

“Standard formation,” Beck ordered his team. All of them had abandoned the white pressed uniforms and red flowing cloaks that depicted a Cardinal of Wánměi. Instead they were dressed in black, similar to the Merrikan soldiers who accompanied my father. The tell-tale difference was the Wánměi flag across their breast pocket and the zebra on their right upper arm. The Merrikan’s had a bird, an Eagle they’d told us. And a flag I’d once seen in a book on Trent’s table, as I’d stared up at a poster of a lost city.

Chills skated down my spine as we made our way down the gangplank and onto the wharf. The ropes creaked. The piles sounded wounded. The air had a distinct scent of decay. I didn’t hesitate as my foot found solid ground. The first time in my life that I had stepped on any land other than Wánměi’s. It should have been monumental. It should have meant something.

All I could feel was a depth of loss so unfathomable that I swore my heart had stopped beating.

I couldn’t see them, but I felt them. The ghosts of this once bustling city.

I couldn’t hear them, but I turned to listen for them. I couldn’t decide if what I was feeling was fanciful or foretelling.

I’ve never believed in the fairytales. Chew-wen made sure of that. But I had hoped, when I’d seen that poster. I had allowed myself to dream.

And with one step onto solid ground, the dream had shattered.

I sucked in a breath of air as Trent came alongside me. If he was feeling as lost as I was, he wasn’t showing it. The rebel leader was here.

I drew on his example and straightened my shoulders, wondering where my Elite armour had fled.

I was no longer Elite nor Citizen. I’d never been an Overseer. I glanced towards Cardinal Beck, but even he was not a reflection of me. Tall and imposing, his dark hair was cut in a military style. His face shaved smooth, his eyes dark chips of alert aggression. He’d kill if he had to. I would too. But he was not me.

He’d been trained to be a Cardinal. Raised to exacting standards, bred, some would say, to fill that lofty height.

I’d just been born Elite. And forged into something else entirely.

I looked to my left and watched Irdina. Gone was the mask that had depicted her as a caste that was not. In its place was someone I couldn’t categorise. Someone neither Elite nor Cardinal nor of Wánměi. She had been once, but she was more Merrikan than Mahiah now.

And yet, I still didn’t know what to make of me.

The sound of my father’s wheelchair turning on the dust strewn concrete of the wharves had me forcing my shoulders to relax. I should have accepted him by now. I should have forgiven him by now, too. There were so many things I should have been able to do.

And now I stood on foreign soil. Looked into the heart of a dead world I had at one time thought might still exist. And wondered where I had been. Who I had been.

Who we would all have to be to see this through to the end.

Because if Lunnon no longer existed. And Urip wouldn’t stop until Shiloh lived. What hope was there for us? The u-Pol officer who had taken Trent had said it.

“
You are adolescents on the road to adulthood. Children with new toys. You neither comprehend what you have nor protect it. When it doesn’t suit your feeble ideals, you throw it out.”

He was right, in a way. We’d been a disposable society. A country that replaced, rather than fixed. We’d even thrown our Citizens away.

And Urip had taken them. As had Merrika, but for far more acceptable reasons my father would have us believe.

I looked out at what lay before us, saw what Urip had taken from this place.

Yes, Wánměi may have been reckless. May have ignored our past and replaced our future. We may be but children in the face of these larger more experienced countries.

But because of that naivety, because of that youthful outlook on life, we
could
change.

We were one step closer to Urip. The closest we could get without being seen. One step closer to change. I glanced up at the sky, wondering if their jets would fly over this broken city at some stage. Wondering if we’d have to start dodging them so soon.

Were we ready?

Lunnon was not our final destination, just a step on the road to redemption. A step closer to changing. We were nowhere near ready.

“Come on!” my father called. “Night’s not far away in this part of the world.”

We moved out, leaving the safety of the ship behind us, and entered the broken heart of a once forgotten city. I shifted away from the others, moved ahead as if to accompany the Merrikan soldiers who led the way. Let Trent and Alan and Simon and my father follow.

Then whispered, for his ears only, “Are we heading the right way?”

“Yes, Lena,” Calvin replied, isolated in my earpiece. “We are heading the right way.”

“Good,” I breathed.

“Are you sure about this?” my Shiloh asked me.

I was more sure about this than I was about Hammurg. More sure about this than I was that we had a hope in hell of saving what was left of Wánměi’s Wiped.

I wasn’t accepting their loss, throwing them out as sacrifices for a bigger theme. Far from it.

No. I grieved them. I’d still fight for them. But Wánměi wasn’t the only one who had to change. We
all
did.

“They’re coming,” Calvin said in my ear a short while later. Just for me, but even though I’d planned it, I couldn’t allow those at my side to not be prepared.

“On guard!” I shouted, pulling a laser gun from its holster and firing it up. The electronic whine of several others automatically followed. Cardinal Beck trusted me, even when he shot me a look of question.

“Lena?” Trent queried, his laser gun in his hand but not powering up.

I looked towards the man who meant everything. I looked towards the person who represented Lunnon - the old poster version of Lunnon - to me.

This was for him.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, and then laser lights were dancing.

“
W
hat the fuck
?” I shouted.
Various sounds of agreement met my words.

They’d come from nowhere. Been waiting all along. No doubt they’d even known we were on our way. I stared across the small space between us and watched Lena fire her laser gun calmly. None of the shock I felt displayed on her serene but determined face.

She’d known. Or suspected. And I suddenly had a fair idea how that had come to be.

“Calvin,” I shouted above the sound of lasers firing and concrete shattering and Cardinal orders overriding Merrikan soldier commands. “What the hell is going on?”

“You are fighting the indigenous of this city, Trent,” the Shiloh unit replied in my ear.

“Somehow I doubt that,” I muttered, as I returned fire at a target I couldn’t see for the dust and light bursts. “Override Trent Masters, Two-Four-Alpha-Charlie-Eight.”

“That won’t work,” Calvin calmly advised me.

“Of course, it’ll work!” I argued back. “You’re still a fucking computer programme.”

“I shan’t deny it,” he replied casually, as if we were having a conversation over tea and crumpets and not in the middle of a shoot out.

“What did you tell Lena?” I demanded.

“Can you be more specific?” came his computerised reply.

“She knew this would happen. How?”

“Satellite imaging.”

What? We’d seen the satellite imaging of Lunnon. Wanted to disbelieve it; nothing can prepare you for that. I’d had to see it for my own eyes. Lunnon had meant so much and yet everything we’d been told, everything we’d seen in reconnaissance pictures, had been the truth.

Well, almost, it seemed.

I ground out a sound which could have been mistaken for a growl, and made my way towards where Lena used a piece of fallen wall as cover. If the u-Pol officers firing at us didn’t fucking shoot her, I would.

Laser light whizzed past my head, singeing a lock of hair and making the air smell like burnt plastic. I grimaced, ducked, and watched as Cardinal Beck fired a single shot back at my attacker, taking him out with one practiced - and deadly accurate - blast. His eyes met mine, but only briefly. He saw too much of my aggression there to hang around eyeballing me.

I would have smirked, but right then I’d reached Lena.

“What the fuck, Lena?” I exclaimed in what had to have been the worst attempt at leadership control that I’d ever seen.

“We need them,” she said with a shrug of her shoulders. “We’re well rested. Fresh off an uneventful boat trip across the sea. There is no better time than now to attack.”

“You call this attacking?”

“I call it not allowing the enemy to have a chance to expect us.”

“Oh, they were expecting us, baby. And you led us right into a trap.”

She smiled. It was Elite perfection in the middle of a shit storm. I’d always admired her ability to do that; to switch off from the crap all around her and rise above it like cream.

“Oh, it’s a trap, Trent,” she purred. “And now we close it.”

She was up and moving before I could fashion a reply. And I was scampering after her before I could stop myself.

“Lena!” I hissed. “Care to let us in on your plan?”

She skidded to a stop several heart palpitating seconds later. A spot that amusingly placed us behind the advancing u-Pol team. Clever. But she’d had help. And the moment this situation was contained, Calvin would be shitting computer chips when I got to him.

“My father would have insisted on waiting until we had a better lay of the land,” Lena advised, watching for something, God alone knew what. Or Calvin, the traitorous computer programme, did.

“Not a bad idea,” I said in argument, just for the sake of arguing. Lena and her father had issues. Me siding with him would rile the Elite.

Riling Lena right now seemed only fair. She was fucking riling me!

She didn’t even spare me a glance.

“You would have agreed with him, merely to keep me out of harm’s way a little longer.”

“I resent that,” I snapped. When had I ever held Lena back? I loved her for who she was. Although, right now, I wasn’t entirely sure if it was love I felt for the woman or not. “And this could have cost us lives. Are we that disposable to you?”

And OK, I had snarled that last comment rather vehemently. The woman was pissing me the fuck off right then. But the look on her face made my heart break. Made breathing suddenly difficult.

“Lena,” I whispered. “Baby,” I added, reaching for her, but she was gone. Up and moving, continuing to flank the advancing u-Pol officers, ready to draw that trap closed she’d been talking about.

And, yeah, I know it had been harsh, but there was more to Lena’s reaction than just hurt. There’d been fear, as well.

What would scare my Elite? If planning an ambush, while keeping the salient points of that plan a secret from the rest of us, didn’t scare Lena, then how come that statement did?

I chased after her, an action I was not too happy with. But this was Lena; I’d long ago realised I’d chase after her anywhere. Even when she concocted hair-brain ideas such as this.

And didn’t that make me stop and think, because Lena usually had better control over her scheming than this. Was usually more subtle. Had the reappearance of her father thrown her that much?

No, I realised. His reappearance, as such, wasn’t the issue. The fact that he was trying to father her, ten years too late, was.

She was right. Cal would have forbade this attack so soon. Would have wanted copious surveillance pictures taken. Scouting by Irdina and her merry bunch of fucked-in-the-head men. Ex-Wánměi Citizens who resented being Wiped but thought of themselves as superior, because they had been Wiped to Merrika, of all places.

Lena was right. Cal would have stalled the attack. Possibly ruined the element of surprise. But that still didn’t explain why she’d not involved me in her plan.

I noticed as I skidded to a bruised and battered halt beside a stationary Lena that not ten feet away hid Cardinal Fucking Beck. Positioned in such a fashion as to back up Lena’s trap scenario. As though the fucker had known about it from the outset.

Well, didn’t that just put the fucking icing on the cake? Anger like I’d never felt before consumed me. Blinding, frustrated, self-righteous fury coursed through my veins.

Lena trusted Beck enough to involve him… but not me.

“Lena Carr,” I growled in her ear. “You tell me right now what the fuck is going on!”

She stared at me as if I’d grown two heads, then calmly advised, “It’s a trap. I thought we’d established that already.”

“A trap you told
him
about,” I said, with a purposeful nod of my head towards Beck.

Lena glanced over at where the Cardinal was waiting for her signal and paused. Then she shook her head and offered an Elite-like sigh.

“No, Trent,” she said with meaning. “He just doesn’t fight a good plan when he sees it.”

Meaning I did. Well, hell. Fuck that.

“It’s a good plan, baby,” I crooned. One that was going to get her very fine arse spanked when I got her alone after this.

She snorted. This Elite that meant everything. I loved it when she snorted; it was always so unexpected and yet so very welcome.

And she thought I’d prevent her from doing what she does best?

The woman didn’t know me at all.

And OK, I had been a bit overprotective lately. But her father had been a jerk. Rushing her when she wasn’t ready to be rushed. Insisting on making up for ten lost years. Someone had to protect her. And that someone would be me.

I took in a deep breath, let the smells of burning chemicals and electrical fire from the laser guns settle me. Then surveyed the ruined piece of paradise that we’d stumbled into. We still couldn’t see the u-Pol officers, only the red flash of their laser guns. But the fact that they were here at all meant something.

Why Lena had insisted on leaving me out of her plans wasn’t really important. Not in the scheme of things. And I always tried to look at things with the greater good in mind. It’s how I’d been raised. Even if this Elite had come along and destroyed that foundation completely, I pulled on those rebel leader skills now.

Urip knew we were coming. This vanguard had been waiting for us to arrive.

Delaying the inevitable was fruitless, and like Lena had suspected, could have ruined the rescue mission of the Wiped.

No, Lena’s reasons weren’t important. Not to the war. Not to the promise of peace.

I flicked a glance towards her, noted her singular focus on what she had to do next, and cursed myself for not believing a word of what I’d just reasoned.

With one look toward Cardinal Beck - and not me - they were up and over their makeshift hides, guns firing, laser lights flashing, the noose tightening.

It took seconds which seemed like hours, but eventually the u-Pol attack had been quashed under the Zebra’s hoof.

I stood back and let her take all the glory. I stood back and watched as Cardinal Beck offered a nod of his head in congratulations and then rounded up his men to check the perimeter for any we might have missed.

I stood back as her father approached, the wheels of his chair rolling through mud, muck and blood.

“Well done, baby girl,” he announced. “How did you know they were there?”

Lena’s shoulders stiffened, but I didn’t go to her. Her back ramrod straight, she faced the man who she’d thought had been dead. Instinct had me clenching my fists. Desire had me taking a step towards them.

I turned away… and walked towards a body that lay half in and half out of a window, little droplets of its blood dripping into a puddle beneath an outstretched hand. I stared at the growing pool. Could have sworn the
plunk
of blood overrode everything else I could hear right then.

And noticed something. Something that didn’t make any sense.

Something that had my heart racing, my hands fisted, and sweat to bead on skin.

I reached out and rolled the body over. Definitely not ours.

But also not theirs.

“Fuck,” I whispered as Alan came alongside. He stared down at the corpse too.

“Are you gonna tell her or should we wait for Beck to do the honours?” he asked.

My head came up and my eyes searched out Beck. He stood over another body, his frame immobile, his lips in a thin line.

“Fuck,” I swore softly, but vehemently.

And then I went to my woman. Because pissed off or not. Hurt or fucking not. I would not let her hear this from Cardinal Fucking Beck.

Fuck. They weren’t u-Pol. They didn’t look like they’d come from Urip either. Not from Hammurg City where our surveillance had shown us they all wore clothes like Mikhail the hal-gen torturer had.

Fuck. If they weren’t Uripean, and they weren’t from Merrika or Wánměi, then they were something else.

And I had a sinking feeling that all they’d been doing was defending themselves.

Lena. Fuck. She was not going to take this well.