Wiped (4 page)

Cold air rushed in invading my side where he’d only just kept me heated, as I stared down at the object in my palm. I sucked in a breath of air, felt the burn as it filled my aching lungs. My hand shaking, body quaking, as I stroked it with my thumb.

I snapped the lock on the side and opened the locket, knowing what I’d see. On one side was a picture of Aiko and Tan, and on the other side was me.

This had been hers; my best friend’s. She’d worn it every single day until the day she’d died. Until the day General Chew-wen ordered her death.

Death by drone.

Death by a corrupt regime.

Wánměi was meant to be perfect, as long as you fitted in perfectly. Aiko had been a shooting star, burning too hot, falling too swiftly. She’d been wiped, in its most basic sense. Not sent to Merrika or Urip, but wiped from existence most brutally.

We’d thought all our Wiped had been. Tan’s heart bled for his sister. Mine wept, a crack so wide I’d always known it would never be whole again. Never be smooth. Complete. Forever a jagged gap in my psyche.

Wánměi was no different. We were as broken as Lunnon. As cut-off as Merrika. As isolated as Urip. The crack that made us what we currently were was wide, but Tan wanted us to bridge it.

Wanted
me
to bridge it.

Change the world
the locket’s engraving said.
Make it whole again
.

I lifted the locket up and held it securely, flush against my heart.

I couldn’t bring Aiko back. I couldn’t change what had happened to the Wiped simply by rescuing them. I couldn’t mend the world alone.

But I had Cardinal Beck, even if I had no one else.

My eyes searched out Trent, one last attempt to reach him.

His back was to me. And he was talking to my father.

I might not be alone, but I had never felt as lonely as I did right then. Never felt… so on my own.

I
t was almost
time to leave. The new base was secured and no sign of any more Lunnoners had been seen. It was as if they’d melted into the wreck that was Lunnon, licking their wounds. Or preparing for their next attack.

We were pretty sure our new found digs were safe. But we’d been pretty sure we were alone in Lunnon too.

I looked toward Lena, felt that hole in my chest get bigger, and shook my head. She’d been speaking more and more to Beck as she’d been speaking less and less to me.

Fuck it! I wasn’t the one who’d kept the Lunnoners a secret.

“I should bend her over my knee and spank her hard,” I muttered to myself, forgetting that a certain sentient computer was listening. And why I was fixating on Lena’s butt and spanking it was anyone’s guess. Lena Carr was no one’s sex slave.

More’s the pity.

“The longer you neglect her the harder it will be,” Calvin helpfully supplied.

“What would you know, you’re a computer,” I snapped, trying futilely to find his off switch.

“Ask yourself this, Trent,” the doctored Shiloh unit said, “Why do you think she kept the attack a secret?”

“That’s a question only Lena can answer,” I ground out.

“Then have you asked her?”

I shook my head. I was not having a therapy session with a fucking computer.

“Has it not occurred to you that your behaviour has been as bad as her father’s?”

“
You
are her father.”

“I am Calvin,” the computer agreed. “But I am not her father.”

Wonders never ceased. Sometimes the Shiloh unit seemed more alive than the real Calvin Carstairs. His failed attempts to reach his daughter was sending the man into a deep depression. Even Irdina couldn’t reach him.

I sat back with a disgruntled sigh and dropped the vid-screen I’d been attempting to use to access Calvin’s programme. It was a dead-end street. He was more tightly contained than Orhikee. Even Cal had said it was beyond him.

And didn’t that just make me angrier? I’d never trusted the fucking thing, and now it had evolved to a point where its maker couldn’t even touch it.

Just like Shiloh.

“I am not Shiloh, you know,” the machine advised, as if it could read my mind or something.

“Never said you were,” I snapped.

“You were thinking it.”

“Fuck off.”

“Talking to yourself again?” Alan asked, as he slid into the seat beside me. We’d salvaged quite a little pile of ancient luxury. God knows what building this had once been, but I was thinking perhaps a palace or maybe the seat of parliament. Something grand and imposing.

I was sure the chair I was sitting on was older than Wánměi. Than whatever Wánměi had once been.

“Fucking Calvin,” I griped.

“Not our best move,” Alan agreed. Meaning allowing the Shiloh to go global, thereby accompanying us on this mission.

Mission! Fuck! So far it had been one cock-up after another, and now Lena wasn’t talking to me.

I
was the one who was meant to be pissed off. Not fucking her!

“You’re doing it again,” Alan said calmly, handing me a water bottle. I snatched it from his outstretched hand, making the plastic buckle. “Growling,” he added, for good measure.

“He should just go talk to her,” Calvin offered, as if he was somehow part of this conversation.

“Nah,” Alan said, answering as though the fucking thing was real. “He should spank her arse.”

Thank you! Finally someone who thinks like me.

And then my eyes found her again; like they always seemed to do. Naturally. Automatically. Inexplicably. Her head was bent over a map Beck’s Cardinals had drawn of the surrounding city. It wouldn’t tell her anything, other than a vague impression of the streets that had at one time been here. We’d found nothing to indicate life. No u-Pol and no Lunnoners.

It meant something. And I was concerned that we didn’t know what.

I watched on silently as Beck pointed out something on the map and another Cardinal added his latest intel. As Lena listened intently, attention riveted to the Cardinal. And as Beck’s attention was riveted to Lena.

My fists bunched. A noise somewhat similar to a growl, I admit, sounded out. I knew it was me. I couldn’t stop it. I wanted to hit something. Preferably starting with a C.

“If they weren’t Lunnoners,” Alan said, disregarding my meltdown, “and they weren’t u-Pol, then what does that leave?”

“We’ve been over this,” I complained, settling back into my chair and trying to ignore how Beck’s shoulder rubbed against Lena’s. “There’s been no evidence of Lunnoners surviving whatever happened here. They were wiped out or rounded up by u-Pol; the nearest surviving metropolis.”

“Exactly.”

“Still doesn’t help us identify who attacked us when we arrived,” I pointed out.

“They had laser guns. Modern tech. Not ours, not Merrika’s so…”

“Urip’s.”

Alan shrugged a shoulder. “Could be.”

“But you don’t think they’re from there.”

“I don’t know,” he mused. “Just… the guns that Mikhail dude had were like ours. Not the same, but close enough. The guns we found on the Lunnoners were different. Strange. Almost hobbled together from bits and pieces. None of them matched.”

“Still lethal.”

“Yeah, but different.” I couldn’t argue with that.

“So… what exactly?” I pressed. I’d already thought of this, I needed someone else to say it and prove I wasn’t crazy.

“What if there’s another settlement?” Alan asked, eyes staring off across the room unseeing. Or maybe not. When I saw where exactly he was staring - right at Irdina - I was thinking he was seeing everything. “What if Urip, Merrika and Wánměi are not alone.”

I crossed my arms over my chest and rocked back on the spindly-arse chair.

“Calvin has advised there are settlements all over the globe, some small, some large,” I said.

“Oztrala has a relatively large group of survivors,” Calvin added.

“You said that was a long way away,” I argued.

“Indeed,” the computer programme agreed.

“Then where, Calvin?” I asked. “If we’re dealing with a fourth settlement possibly on a par with Urip, Merrika and Wánměi, where would they have come from?”

“I do knot know, Trent,” the Shiloh said.

“They looked like us,” Alan offered. “Well, like the D’awans.” His gaze found Irdina again. I stared at the woman who had caught my best friend’s eye, took in the dark caramel skin, the short, thick black hair, the round pools of chocolate that stared back. Irdina had no issues with giving what she got. The woman was a force of nature. Disgruntled. Wild. Violent.

Once Mahiah. Once of Wánměi. Similar skin tone to a D’awan.

“Cal said the Mahiah originated in that city across the water from Hillsborough,” I mused. “If the Mahiah came from there and the Anglisc came from here, where did the D’awans come from?”

“Or the Wáikěinese?” Alan added.

“Our nation is a multicultural one,” I agreed. “We all originated elsewhere.”

“So those Lunnoners we fought originated elsewhere too?”

“They weren’t Anglisc. They weren’t even Uripean, and Mikhail looked a lot like Lena, and you don’t get much more Anglisc than her pale skin and fair hair. So…”

“So,” Alan agreed.

“We’ve got a new nationality,” Calvin concluded cheerfully. “I’ll begin a search based on your hypothesis,” he added. “The D’awan of our nation came from somewhere, and wherever that is will undoubtedly be where we’ll find these Lunnoners too.”

“Good,” I said, standing up in order to stretch. “But it still doesn’t answer the question of whether there are more out there on Lunnon’s streets or not.”

“Would it matter if there are?” Alan queried, coming to his feet beside me. “The base is well protected. Cal has seen to that.”

We watched the Merrikan soldiers reporting to Lena’s father, as he sat at the head of a long table issuing commands.

My eyes found Lena’s. She was watching me. As soon as our gazes locked, she looked away.

She was also dressed as though she was about to head out with a Cardinal scout team.

Motherfucker!

“Care to test the waters?” I asked Alan without removing my eyes from Lena’s Cardinal team. Alan’s gaze swung across the room to where I was looking and he chuckled.

“Who’re we testing, Trent? Cal’s defences? Or Lena’s?”

Good question. But as I couldn’t spank her arse, I’d sure as hell ride it. One way or the other.

Lena thought she could forget me? Not a chance, baby.

Time to remind the Elite.

T
he streets were silent
. Like death. As if the scars they wore were the city’s soul. Forever irreparably damaged. Whatever had happened here had been catastrophic. But it was clear it hadn’t happened all at once.

Towards the west we knew the damage had been grievous. Not much existed beyond a twenty kilometre radius of where we stood. We’d come in via the river, seen what was left of a once proud civilisation. This city was enormous. The trip to where we docked took hours.

Dodging debris, crawling past skeletal remains of a once strong industry. Silently paying our respects to a fallen nation. Lunnon was the capital city of a country once called Anglan. The nation our Anglisc came from.

I am Anglisc. My ancestors once lived here. I wanted to ask my father so many questions about them, about us, about a world before Wánměi, but even if I could allow him in to that degree, there was no guarantee he would remember.

Chew-wen’s Serenity Tabs had seen to that. Complacency at the price of erasure. We threw away so much. Even our history.

I stared up at a crumbling structure, took in the intricate details carved into pale stone. Sharp edges and hard angles. Pointed arches and tall spires. Tiny spikes and curved gargoyles. A hint of what it had been, but enough to know it had been… breathtaking.

Some of what lay in ruins was familiar. A dome here. A colonnaded entranceway there. Broken windows that had at one time been so much like those of Ohrikee. I saw our history. I saw our past. And it was shattered.

How did we recover from this?

Wánměi had survived. Why? Hammurg, just a short distance away from Lunnon, had survived too. Why? Had we been the aggressors as we’d been led to believe the Uripeans had? Were we as bad as the u-Pol?

And where did that leave Merrika? Good or bad? Survivor or victor?

I had so many questions and there was no one who I could ask.

Chew-wen had not so much changed our history, but removed it. Would returning it solve a thing?

I rubbed at my forehead as we continued to walk down rubble strewn streets, climbed over fallen masonry, crawled through broken windows and abandoned buildings, and dirt filled alleyways. There was no sign of life anywhere, but those Lunnoners had to have come from somewhere.

“Our scouts managed to follow their trail to here,” Cardinal Beck advised quietly to my side. “It is hard to say which direction they came from, as their tracks have been washed clean in recent rainfall.”

I stared at the crossroads we stood at, if you could call the open space an intersection. Several buildings lay across it, the remains of vehicles crushed in the middle. Wide pathways covered in dust and debris. Plant life making a valiant attempt at replacing what had at one time been mere concrete. How our scouts had tracked the Lunnoners this far was a miracle alone. But the options for where they would have come from were still limitless.

“Where have we covered so far?” I asked, shifting in my crouch to allow blood flow to my feet. We were hidden, in case we could be seen. But whether or not there were survivors to see us, remained a mystery.

I hoped so. Everything hinged on finding them. Whether our reception would be just as lethal as that given us by their counterparts was debatable. Had that been their only security?

“We’ve covered the east along our entry point and to the west, farther along this thoroughfare, but nothing stood out.”

“So we go north?”

“There is a large structure to the north, undoubtedly a palace of some description,” Beck advised. “Satellite imagery shows it is utterly destroyed, but the footprint would indicate it had at one time been impressive. The land surrounding it is vast, and for a city of this size, land would have been at a premium.”

“Destroyed enough to not provide a possible haven?”

“It is hard to say, but south of here has also been heavily ruined. In all honesty, I don’t think there is anywhere suitable for a permanent settlement.”

“We found somewhere.”

“Our current base is heavily guarded. Your father’s soldiers are stretched to their limit to protect it and yet it is still out in the open. It is an obvious choice for us,” the Cardinal hurried on to explain. “As falling back to the river is possible. But we have a means to navigate the shipping lane, with a boat lying out off shore waiting to back us up. Those who have chosen to stay here do not. We have seen no evidence of a vessel, small or otherwise, which could offer that kind of cover.”

“Your suggestion then?”

“Would they have had a Rap-Trans?”

A rapid transit system like Wánměi’s. My eyes darted down to the dirt strewn ground at my feet and I smiled. Of course they would have had a way to navigate their streets. Or more precisely, a way to avoid the crush that would have existed
on
their streets.

“Calvin,” I said into my earpiece.

“Searching now, Lena,” my Shiloh replied. “Underground,” he said after a few minutes. “Not very original, and quite frankly more of a direction than a name, but the Lunnoners did call their rapid transit system The Underground.”

“You know, Beck,” I said, preparing to move out, “you’re more clever than you look.”

“I don’t look clever?” he asked, voice deadpan. I could have almost thought it was a tease, but for the tone. Cardinal Beck did not have a playful bone in his body.

“I’m not answering that,” I said on a smile and surprisingly received one in return.

Beck didn’t smile often, but if he did, he’d be a hell of a lot more relaxed than he appeared. The female attention he’d receive alone would see to that.

I offered a very un-Elite-like snort and began to move.

“You are a strange woman, Selena,” Beck murmured behind me.

He understood Elites. He understood the Zebra. But he did not understand me.

I liked that. I liked being a mystery. At one stage Trent had thought the same. Not anymore. Not now. He saw me. Which is why I was disappointed that he hadn’t
seen
why I had kept the attack a secret.

Trent was a born leader. He could classify a person’s character and figure out how to use it within minutes of meeting. He knew who should go where and what they should do to get the best results in any given situation. He understood motivation and how to manipulate it to get what he needed. He could cajole, encourage, threaten and lead. I might have been a challenge from time to time, but I was not a mystery. Not anymore.

Trent knew me.

So why was he still so angry?

I knew he’d sulk for a while. I knew the dominant side of him would baulk at having been sideswiped. But eventually Trent would see through his fury. See through his hurt. And realise my actions were for the greater good.

Realise that my actions had meaning.

Trent understood altruism. He was the epitome of self-sacrifice. He understood how sometimes you had to take a step backward in order to go forward. Keeping the ambush secret had been a calculated risk. One I had inherently known would backfire. I’d ignored the warnings. Dismissed the possible outcomes.

Because I was sure attacking first, attacking as soon as we landed, was our only way to capture.

Evidence of this was in the difficulty we were having locating the Lunnon survivors.

Trent should have figured all this out by now. Should have seen what the move could have accomplished. Instead he was still nursing his wounds, fuming and brooding. Not planning and reasoning things out.

I needed to kick start him. But that would have to wait until we returned to our base tonight. For now, I needed to locate a Rap-Trans - or Underground - access. And if Lunnon’s rapid transit system was anything like ours, then there’d be one near a major intersection such as this.

I turned in a full circle and got my bearings. It was hard to tell, but I’d hazard a guess this was a business district in its former life. The buildings not as old as those we’d passed walking here. More glass and steel, than brick and mortar. There would be an entrance to the Underground here, I knew it. But finding it in amongst the debris was close to impossible. The buildings I could see or, at least, see where they had once been. But the streets were clogged with the remnants of a shattered city and nothing was signposted.

“Any chance you’ve located maps to this area of the city?” I asked Calvin quietly.

“Better,” he replied immediately. “I have located a map to the Underground system. Although aligning your current location with topographical maps is tricky, I think I know which station is closest.”

“Well?” I said when the computer programme paused dramatically. My father had clearly written code that mimicked human behaviour when he’d created Calvin. One which mirrored himself, it seemed. Dad had always had a flare for the dramatic.

It made me smile, even though I wasn’t happy. Memories were always the hardest to reconcile.

“Victoria Station,” Calvin supplied. “And from archived records, you’re looking for an orange and cream brick building, late nineteenth century, at one time five or six storeys high.”

“Large debris field then,” I said, watching as Beck scanned the area and then pointed.

“Down that street,” he said. “The rubble is older, more worn, less steel.”

Lunnon had been a dichotomy. Old with the new, but living side by side in harmony. Wánměi was a city much like it, but where our old meant Elite, Lunnon’s meant history.

There was a place inside me that felt empty. A place where I was sure something should be. Our past. Our history. Staring at the rising pile of broken buildings before me, I mourned the loss of this city. Lunnon could have filled those gaps. Lunnon still remembered.

But there was no one here with a memory. Just broken bricks and shattered windows. Hearts and souls in ruin.

I followed behind Beck and two of his Cardinals as he led the way toward what remained of Victoria Station. From my vantage point it was clear that not much aboveground had survived. I could only hope that more was intact beneath it. If the Lunnoners had chosen to live underground, we needed to reach them. And from the size of this destroyed city, there were just too many points on the map to attempt that. And too little time before my father called us back and ordered us towards Urip.

Hammurg was still his foremost goal. Rescuing the Wiped his sole focus. He’d dismissed the usefulness of the Lunnoners. Calling them nothing but savage survivors better left to their misery. Interfering, he’d said, would only delay us, and there was no guarantee that they’d want our assistance.

I didn’t see it that way. I saw them as part of the bigger picture. If we needed to change the path of our history, then we needed to include all those who walked upon it. Anglisc, Merrikan, Uripean, Mahiah, Wáikěinese and D’awan. The Lunnoners fit in there somewhere, and from what we’d seen I’d say they were D’awan.

I already felt like they were family.

“You do realise,” Cardinal Beck said as we climbed over crumpled walls and slid down broken roof tiles, “that they won’t welcome us with open arms. We killed their people.”

“We defended ourselves against an attack,” I corrected.

“Do you really believe they’ll see it like that?”

No, I didn’t. But try as we had, there’d been no way to halt what had transpired. The Lunnoners had behaved as though compelled to kill us. There’d been no opportunity for discourse. No chance for a truce to be brokered.

I wasn’t sure what we’d face when we found them. But I was sure I couldn’t leave this city without trying.

“What is your goal here, Selena?” Beck said, coming to a stop a few paces ahead of me. He was staring down at something on the ground. When I came abreast of him I could see it was a well worn street sign.

At one time it would have been white. Now it was cracked and peeling and more a cream, sun bleached colour. But the outline of a circle could still be seen. Faded, barely there, but perhaps once red. A line bisected it, cutting the circle in half. Blue, I think.

And on it, just visible if you guessed a few of the letters… UNDERGROUND.

Next to the sign was another. I could see the V and at the end an R, I and A.

We’d found it.

“My goal,” I said, taking in the rubble covered stairwell off to the side. “Simple,” I murmured. “I’m chasing history.”

“Chasing history?”

I pulled my gaze from the task ahead. Going down there wasn’t going to be easy. This was clearly not one of their more utilised access ways.

I let a breath of air out and said softly, “We can’t change it, if we can’t find it, Cardinal.”

He stared at me for a long moment and then nodded his head.

“Form up!” he instructed the Cardinals. “Steady.” He looked down at me, cool calm and collected, waiting for my nod. For my command to proceed. This was it. My chance to correct a mistake and make things better. I only wished Trent was here with me.

I nodded my head and Beck ordered quietly, “Go, go, go.”

We moved out in unison, a synchronised wave of Wánměi’s military. And then the darkness of Lunnon’s Underground swallowed us up completely.