Wiped (7 page)

“Lena,” he warned. I softly shook my head in answer.

Nirbhay ran across the room to a group of women, embracing one as soon as he got there. Her wary eyes watched us, dirt and grime etching the deep lines on her face. I couldn’t tell how old she was, whether she was his mother or sister or even grandmother. Age had not worn well on these people.

My heart ached.

“Hello,” I said, my voice carrying in the stunned silence of the vast room.

Nirbhay wriggled free of the woman’s grasp and sprinted back to my side, then gripped my hand with small, gnarled fingers, tugging me towards the woman he’d just hugged.

“Lena,” Trent warned, his tone more urgent.

“He wants to introduce me,” I said, almost laughing at Nirbhay’s enthusiasm as he dragged me across the surprisingly clean floor. Evidence of where it had been swept was obvious. As were the areas set aside for sleeping, eating, and social living.

This was their home, all right. And Nirbhay had led us directly to it.

That should have been warning enough. I shouldn’t have needed Trent’s concerned words echoing behind me. This was their home. Their safe harbour in a world broken. The one place they could flee to when the aboveground got too dark.

I should have known better.

We reached the little group of stunned immobile women, Nirbhay smiling widely, showing off his missing teeth and that gap in the top of his mouth. I offered a smile of my own. Tentative. Hopeful.

The woman who was his mother-sister-grandmother stared at me for a long moment, and then dark eyes darted to the boy holding my hand.

She said something. Calvin translated.

My gaze drifted over my shoulder to Trent.

He was already running, laser gun raised, panic and dread obvious in his wild blue eyes.

“What have you done?” Calvin’s voice sounded out in our ears. Her words, not his.

Nirbhay blinked. The woman pulled a laser gun from God knows where. And all I could hear was the whine as it charged up and the sound of Trent’s hard footfalls too far away on the swept clean dirt.

T
here was
no way I’d reach her. No way in hell. But I ran, shouting a warning, letting the electronic whine of the gun punctuate the fact.

In moves too quick to assimilate, the woman reached out and grabbed a fistful of Lena’s hair, hauling her against her side, the laser gun’s muzzle under her chin.

Everything stopped.

My heart. The world. Even the air stood still, hanging suspended between us; heavy, thick, threatening.

My eyes sought out Lena’s. So blue. So calm. They stared back.

The sound of my laser gun hitting the dirt at my feet rebounded inside the room, the clatter ricocheting off the high, domed ceiling. My pulse setting up an accompanying beat inside my head.

The woman said something in that fucking pidgin Anglisc.

Calvin oh-so-calmly translated the words inside our ears.

“No one move.”

Standard bad-guy warning. We didn’t need it; our feet might as well have been cemented to the floor. My hands were already up, out to the sides in a show of surrender. I pulled my gaze off Lena - hard though it was - and looked the woman in the eyes.

There was no compassion there. Just hardness. A hardness borne of a life lived in hell.

I spread my fingers, widening my non-threatening stance.

“Easy,” I said softly. She pressed the gun muzzle harder into Lena’s neck. “Is everyone unarmed?” I asked, not looking over my shoulder to Alan and the Cardinals at my back.

“Dropped ours when you did,” Alan supplied.

“No one’s moving, Trent,” Beck offered in a show of solidarity I didn’t, at that moment, have time to appreciate.

I swallowed thickly, my eyes still target-locked on the old woman. What now?

No one moved. Not us. Not them. Not Lena with a fucking laser gun to her chin.

What now?

I scanned the room, as much of it as I could without moving. Assessing the potential threats. No one else had pulled a laser gun - they didn’t need to, one was enough - but that didn’t mean they didn’t have one hidden like the woman had.

They looked old and injured, just as Beck had initially assessed. Those not missing limbs, or wrinkled as if sun damaged, lay out on thin beds, sightlessly staring at the high ceiling, or unconscious and unaware of what was happening all around them.

For that, we could be grateful. But before we could capitalise on their weaknesses, we needed Lena free of Grandma Laser Gun.

“Lena?” I asked, checking she was still with us.

“It’s OK,” she whispered. Like I had to her in the tunnel. But it wasn’t to me, I realised. And it wasn’t in Anglisc.

She was looking up at the woman, her voice pitched low and non-threatening. Her words, as they tumbled from her beautiful lips, reassuring. Caring. Compassionate.

Lena
. Always so understanding.

“It’s OK,” she repeated. D’maru, my traumatised mind provided for me. “We understand,” she added.

The woman looked down at her. Gun muzzle still pressed to the tender skin under her jaw. A big, ugly thing. Handmade. Cobbled together with spare parts. Likely to explode if she so much as twitched.

Fucking hell.

“This is your home,” Lena was saying. “We mean you no harm. This is your safe place and we have invaded. I’m sorry,” she said, still in D’maru, and God knows why she’d chosen that language. The pidgin Anglisc the Lunnoners used was more Anglisc than D’maru, with a confusing mix of Teiamanisch thrown in for good measure.

But as we didn’t speak Urip’s language, I would have thought she’d settle on Anglisc. But this was Lena. And sometimes Lena saw things we didn’t.

“We mean you no harm,” she repeated.

It wasn’t working. The woman was looking at her, for sure, and so were several others in the room, but no one replied. No one shifted. And that fucking laser gun did not move an inch.

“We come from an island far away,” Lena said. “We didn’t know anyone still lived in Lunnon. We’re trying to get to Hammurg.”

And
there
was a reaction. One that sent chills down my spine. Someone hissed. Someone spat on the ground. But most of the people in the room just started to yell.

“Calvin?” I queried quietly. They were speaking in that pidgin language again. We couldn’t understand a thing they said. But the intent? Hell yes. They were not happy we were heading towards Urip.

Why?

“Kill them,” Calvin translated softly in our ears. “Hand them over,” he added, his words carefully delivered as if he could soften the blow. “You know the penalty should we not.”

Interesting. But not exactly promising intel. The Lunnoners had an agreement with Urip, then. And from what we already knew, anybody trading with Urip, be it goods, services or information, could expect it to backfire monumentally.

It had for us.

Things were escalating, and still I was too far away to make them stop. I don’t think I’ve ever known fear as I did right then. Watching Lena plead for her life in the arms of a fucked off super-gran.

“They have our people too,” she said, her voice raised above the shouts of the Lunnoners. Raised enough for everyone to hear.

The shouting ceased. The woman frowned. Nirbhay jabbered away frantically beside them, trying to get his mother - if that was what she was - to unhand Lena. It didn’t work.

But Lena’s words had an effect.

“They have our people too,” she repeated, again in D’maru. “We’re going to rescue them.”

Holy shit the explosion of noise was deafening. And confusing. Even Calvin couldn’t translate what they were shouting. And then a bent figure came out from the shadows, over by the electrical light in the corner. He shuffled forward as the shouts and cries increased. No one noticed him, but I couldn’t look away from this new threat. Not exactly physically imposing, but I wasn’t taking any of these crazies at face value. Not now. Not ever again.

The woman shouted for silence, or at least that’s what it looked like she’d done. Because all the yelling stopped and everyone stared at her expectantly.

“We cannot trust them,” Calvin translated in our earpieces as she spoke each word. “They lie. They are a threat. To us. To our
h’verlorst
- I do not know this word,” he added. “Lost perhaps. Yes, lost.”

Or Wiped, I’d hazard a guess.

I lowered my arms. The movement was registered by the woman, but I still did it. These people were trapped, I could see that now. Cornered in a part of the world left forgotten; broken. We’d killed what was left of their most healthy. An action that should have meant our deaths upon sight. I couldn’t blame them. I would want revenge as well. But there was more going on here than we could see.

And as the old man came abreast of the woman holding Lena, he said, in D’maru, yet another shock to the solar plexus, “They speak the old tongue, Nagma. They are different from the rest.”

“But they’re a threat,” she insisted. This time in D’maru, matching the old man.

“They are as trapped by circumstances as we are,” the old man said. He turned to look directly at me; dark eyes so ancient stared me down without an ounce of frailty to be seen.

He might be fragile physically, but this old man was not weak of mind, it seemed.

“You killed our men,” he said.

I nodded. “It was not our intent.” I spoke in D’maru too; clearly Lena had been on to something there.

“They would not have stopped,” the man agreed. “We are watched all the time. One misstep and it costs lives.”

“But not necessarily theirs,” I guessed. “Or yours,” I added.

The man smiled, displaying a mouthful of missing teeth.

“You understand.”

“We call ours Wiped,” I offered.

“Ours are the Lost.”

We stared at each other; the woman still doggedly holding on to Lena, but at least the gun had been lowered slightly. Lena would only receive a chest wound now, not a lobotomy.

“Why are you here?” I finally asked. It seemed the most pertinent question. We understood now, why they attacked the way they did. The threat of death to their Wiped was too great. They valued them. They mourned them. Staying somewhere they shouldn’t in order to be close to them.

Calvin had been right. They could have left Lunnon if they’d wanted to. But they didn’t want to leave their Wiped.

I could understand, even though in Wánměi we’d chosen to forget ours. To cast them from our minds. Serenity Tabs had helped. But complacency was to blame.

Not anymore. We were here to rescue them. We were here to right a wrong.

But why were they?

“We have no home,” the old man said. “We have nowhere left to go,” he added. “Why not here? They promised they’d let them go if we kept Lunnon clean.”

Clean?

“Get rid of any invading armies,” Beck said softly at our backs. Prevent them from reaching Hammurg.

Lunnon was a call not many could deny. Just one look to see what was left. A chance to regroup before mounting the final advance on Urip. The ideal place to stage an ambush.

And we’d walked right into it.

“They know we’re here,” I said softly.

“From the moment you arrived,” the man agreed.

“And those u-Pol officers your kids tricked with the engine?”

“Our keepers,” the man said. “Our jailers,” he added. “Our tormentors.”

Checking up on the Lunnoners to make sure they met their end of the bargain they’d set.

“What now?” I asked, because I couldn’t see this ending any other way. They’d done everything until now as demanded by their captors. They’d followed the rules. The payoff too great. I couldn’t see a conversation in an old language changing things.

But then, I’ve never had the type of optimism Lena has.

“We could save your Lost too,“ she whispered.

The man turned to look at her. His eyes meeting the woman’s first; just briefly, but enough to convey a command.

She released Lena and stepped back, the laser gun again out of sight in the folds of her skirt.

For the first time in what felt like hours, I took a breath.

“Lena,” I said. What was she offering? We could barely save our own Wiped, I doubted we’d fare better with theirs.

“There is a world outside these borders,” she said, standing to full height, glancing at each and every person who watched. I saw the Elite in her. I saw the sky-rise somersaulting Citizen. I saw our future.

So calm. So collected. So promising.

With Lena anything was possible.

I looked toward the old man, saw he saw it too.

“Let us help you,“ she whispered in D’maru. “Let us tear down your walls and give you a home again.”

“A home,” the old man said. The hope in his tone was unmistakable.

Maybe there was a chance we’d get out of this alive.

Of course, there was still the u-Pol to deal with. Not to mention Hammurg and saving the Wiped.

T
here was no trust
. I doubted there ever could be. We’d been forced to kill some of their men; the strongest of them. Trust was not something that would ever come easily.

And yet they allowed us ingress into their home. Wary eyes watching. Fingers twitching. Laser guns, although out of sight, within reach should they need them. The standoff was tense. In no way natural. We’d killed some of their number. How could they forget?

How could we?

We sat in the corner, out of the way of their day to day tasks, beside the work bench. The heat of an open fire warming our fingers. The welcoming glow of its flickering flame accompanied by the harsher brightness of electrical light.

I stared at the naked bulb hanging directly above the table. Its presence a reminder of what this city had once been.

“How is it you have electricity?” Cardinal Beck asked the old man.

He was bent almost double, stirring something that looked like tea, but smelled anything but. I was hoping he wouldn’t offer us any, but D’awan etiquette demanded that he serve us
something
. He’d invited us in, he had to now follow through with custom. Their life, though, was nothing like the lives of those D’awans who lived in Wánměi. Of the many who owned stalls in Little D’awa. Vibrant silks and lush colours. Pungent scents and loud vocals. Stalls like that which Harjeet Kandiyar had owned.

“Solar panels,” the man grumbled in D’maru. Then finding what he was after, he spun around - somewhat nimbly - and placed several mugs of steaming liquid before us on the table. “They aren’t as efficient as they once were; we’re limited to one single light bulb now.” He shrugged his shoulders, as if the restriction was understandable. Then sat himself down on a well worn chair, indicating with gnarled fingers for us to drink.

My eyes met Cardinal Beck’s across the table; he offered a raised eyebrow but reached for his mug without comment. We all mimicked him. Silence engulfed our little corner, as the rest of the Lunnoners went about their business, throwing the odd disgruntled look our way while they were at it.

We wouldn’t be sleeping here tonight.

“Why run the bulb at all?” Alan asked, staring up at the bright light through narrowed eyes.

The old man blew across the top of his mug, rocking slightly in his seat, ancient hands cupped protectively around his drink.

“The day the light goes out,” he murmured in his heavily accented D’maru, “will be the day we admit defeat.”

Trent cleared his throat.

“Why Lunnon?” he said. “Why did you come here of all places?”

From what Calvin had told us, D’awa was not that far from Wánměi. Had they gone east instead of west, they would have found us. Or Mahiah; the city of lights across the water from Hillsborough, where my father had been staying.

“We followed a signal,” the old man said. “There was only silence for so long, and then a beacon sounded. We followed it as if it was a guiding star.”

The beacon was not ours. Wánměi had kept her borders closed for many years. Our Net had been contained by Sat-Loc. Our skies monitored but quiet. We’d hidden in plain sight. We had not welcomed visitors.

And Mahiah simply lacked the technology.

“Urip,” I said.

“Yes,” the old man agreed calmly. “This was long ago. I was a young man then. Hammurg needed a workforce. They merely called one to them.”

“But you didn’t make it that far,” Trent guessed.

“The beacon was based here in Lunnon.”

It made sense. Lunnon was the Uripean holding tank. A natural quarantine.

“And when you got here?” I asked softly. Old eyes met mine; full of heartache and loss and fatigue.

“They rounded up our leaders. They took those of our young who showed most strength.” He looked down into his near empty mug, the weight of the broken world on his bent shoulders. “We bargained with what we had. Occasionally we have to renegotiate.”

No one had a consoling word to say to that. What had been done, had been done. For a long moment we pretended to drink, staring into the dancing flames of the fire, feeling the heat on our skins, but inside we were shivering.

They had come looking for salvation. They had found only loss and death. Urip took what it wanted, believing it had that right. Mikhail would have taken Shiloh if she’d still existed. Instead he took Trent.

Mikhail had paid for his sins, but Urip had not. I suddenly felt an undeniable urge to rectify that.

But I knew our limitations. I knew our lack of knowledge left us unprepared. We were armed, certainly. We had Simon’s technical know-how and Calvin’s computerised brain. We had Cardinals and Merrikan soldiers and, if I was honest with myself, we also had my father.

Calvin Carstairs was not a man to be discounted. I huffed out a breath at that notion. I’d thought him dead and look where that had got me.

I lifted my head and met the knowing eyes of the D’awan elder. I held his steady gaze.

I’m not sure how I did it. How the words formed and I let them fly free. For so long we had buried our head in the sand. Pretended our world was perfect and that nothing existed beyond our city-state’s borders. For so long we had forgotten.

My lips parted. His eyes held true; waiting patiently for me to speak.

Trent’s hand inched over towards me and then warm fingers slipped into my palm. I gripped them tightly, my gaze pulled from the old D’awan and meeting Trent’s. He smiled, tilting his head to the side as if in question. Unlike me, Trent had been raised to ask the difficult questions.

But right then he was allowing me to lead.

I turned back to the old man and said, voice steady even if my heart rate was not, “Will you tell us what happened to D’awa?”

The old man sat silent and still for a long moment and then leaned forward in his chair, back bowed, wrinkled face illuminated in the light from the bulb hanging above.

“You do not know your history?” he queried. I shook my head. He nodded, as if our shortcoming was understandable. “It will be better, I think,” he said, standing laboriously from his seat, bones creaking, legs wobbling, and then shuffling towards a large crate in the corner, “if I show you instead.”

I looked toward Trent. He squeezed my fingers again. My gaze snagged on Cardinal Beck. He sat straight backed, eyes forward, a stoic and hard look on his face. He did not acknowledge me. Neither did Alan, whose gaze was riveted to the flames in the nearby fire. Those Cardinals with us edged closer, but one stern glance from Beck’s eyes had them stilling like good little soldiers.

We all feared what we’d see. What we’d learn. What it was that Chew-wen had ensured we’d forget. Chew-wen had made many mistakes, all in the name of keeping Wánměi safe. Keeping what he perceived as a perfect city-state intact. He’d lied to us. He’d drugged us. He’d ruled us with a hard hand and a harder regime.

But he’d done it all because the past was damaging. Because to know it, in his eyes, was to relive it. And he did not want the same mistakes for Wánměi.

No, we’d made new ones. But we’d come full circle again.

Chew-wen was dead. Wánměi was free. And none of us had consumed our rations in several long weeks.

The old man returned to his seat and the table, laying out a series of magazines and news articles; the paper was yellowed with time, the photos curled at the edges, spots of wear dotted here and there, a rip across a headline, words in Old Anglisc sprawled over the lot.

I recognised the river. Like ours but not. I saw the large wheel. Like ours but not. The cathedrals and domed churches. The tree lined avenues and deep window ledges. I recognised them even though they were not whole. And as the pictures progressed and the headings became bigger, bolder, more frantic, a story was told.

“Some say Angland started it,” the old man said, voice soft. “Some say Merrika. Some say smaller nations in the middle east. Desert nations like D’awa. It is irrelevant. Because only one nation stopped it.”

“Urip,” I whispered.

“For a while, we kept on fighting,” he went on in a dream-like tone. “Fighting for our right to survive. But nature wasn’t on our side. We’d hurt her. We’d poisoned the groundwater with bombs. We’d polluted the ozone layer with bombs. We’d disrupted the tectonic plates with bombs. Earthquakes followed. The ocean rose. Drinkable water became an expensive commodity.

“D’awa died slowly. We didn’t see it coming, although we’d heard the bombs. First M’byh. Then M’duryh. Then later D’elhi. When nothing was left… we left. But the world outside our nation was already dead.

“We followed the beacon. If someone had set it, then there were survivors. We had not realised that those who survived would be the victors. The dead world their spoils. Scraping together their plunder wherever they could find it.

“The u-Pol we met in Lunnon are not the same u-Pol we face now. Their technology has advanced. Their ruthlessness along with it. They have taken for so many years now, they know no different. It is their right. Or so they say. We are mere goods stolen by the stronger fighter.”

He turned his attention back to the room, away from a history that still managed to inflict heartache. His eyes scanned out across the vast space the remaining D’awan had made their home. Their last chance at a place to call their own.

But it wasn’t. Not if the Uripeans kept stealing their strongest. Not if they stayed, waiting for a miracle that wouldn’t happen.

“They won’t return your Lost,” I said carefully. “You know this, yet you stay.”

His eyes found mine again; such depth of sorrow. Right there. For all to see. Wánměi may not remember, but one look in this man’s eyes and we’d never forget again.

My heart ached for him. For them. For the men we’d killed on arrival. I wanted to apologise again. But forgiveness, even if given, would not bring them back. Would not absolve our sins.

“We have been waiting,” the old man said. “The wait is over.”

I held his steady gaze, forcing myself to face that ancient knowledge. The memories that still held him fast with barbed wire. I knew their technology was limited; only what they could piece together out of a broken city. I knew their ability to see the wider world was non-existent. They had no Net that I could see. There was no way these people could have known we were coming.

And yet they’d stayed.

I didn’t understand that kind of faith in the face of such devastation. I didn’t understand that kind of blind hope, when all else was long lost but not forgotten.

I didn’t understand these people.

But then, I didn’t need to, in order to help. In order to seek forgiveness.

“Getting into Hammurg will prove difficult,” Trent said, leaning forward and meeting the old man’s gaze. “We have manpower and skills, but we lack knowledge. Our own databases have been wiped clean.” Like so much of our history. “The Global Net is severely lacking. We think the Uripeans have seen to that. Satellite imagery has provided an overall layout, but detail is lacking. They’re blocking that too. We’ve managed to gain some intel from container ships we’ve sent to their port in the past. But the view is limited. Just what the cameras on board recorded while docked.” Trent took a breath, ran a hand through messed up hair. “Past their harbour we’re basically blind,” he finally admitted.

“And yet you are here,” the old man said. Too astute by far.

“What can you tell us of the u-Pol who patrol Lunnon?” Cardinal Beck asked.

The old man sat back in his chair. “They are not always the same men, but from what we’ve observed three different squadrons. All are equally as unemotional. Equally as detached. They have no conscience. They cannot be pleaded with. If we fail them. We die. Or they deliver the head of one of our men.”

“Immediately?” Trent asked. “Upon discovering your failure?”

“Within a day, maybe two. The wait is excruciating.”

“Hammurg is close, then.”

“A day’s sail,” the old man agreed.

“Or their vessels are fast,” Beck offered.

The old man shook his head. “Their vessel would be no faster than the one you arrived on. Their technology lies in laser guns and code scanners. Satellite imagery and drones.” Our drones.

“Wait,” I said. “Code scanners?” Just as Cardinal Beck demanded, “Satellite imagery?”

“How else do they restrict our view of their city or keep an eye on the Lunnoners?” Alan directed at Beck. “I saw no street-cams here, did you?” Beck shook his head.

“Code scanners,” I repeated, drawing the old man’s attention again.

He nodded.

“Like eye scanners?” I queried.

“I am not familiar with eye scanners,” the D’awan replied, then pulled up the sleeve of his ragged shirt.

We all leaned forward, gazes focused, breaths held. And stared at a series of lines etched into the wrinkled, dark skin on his forearm. No, not etched, I decided, moving closer, reaching out a finger and then pausing with it hanging in the air.

I looked up into his face. He nodded for me to continue. Then my finger touched down on warm skin.

The marking was not raised. But appeared more like black ink drawn on his flesh instead. I rubbed at it. It didn’t smudge. Permanent, then.

Leaning back, I lifted stunned eyes to his old face.

“What is that?”

“This is my barcode,” he said, staring at the offending lines for a suspended second. “When the u-Pol come, they scan the barcode and identify us.”

“Why doesn’t it come off?” Alan asked.

“It is a tattoo,” the man explained, then raised his brow in surprise. “You do not have tattoos?”

We all shook our heads, mortified that someone would be permanently marked in this way. Marring the perfection of their skin.

“Until recently,” I said, still staring rudely at the markings, “we had to wear our hair a certain way. Having anything that marked us as individuals was not an accepted policy.”

“This is not unique,” the man said, covering the mark again. “Well, it is, but it isn’t. Mine identifies me personally. But we all have one. Even the u-Pol officers.”

Trent exhaled loudly. “Fuck,” he muttered. “I’m guessing you can’t get near Hammurg without one.”