Divided (28 page)

65

Kayra

I’ve lost Kai in the middle of fire and screaming. I dash forwards, my gun shooting at anything approaching me. Behind us all, the tribe members with any ranged weapons have banded together and in synchronisation, an assortment of bullets, arrows, bolts, and even stones fly past and over me, some hitting the Hunters, others being left abandoned on the earth. The number of Hunters is incredible and we are far too outnumbered. The tribe members with ranged weapons can’t hold the Hunters back long. I stand my ground, cutting through Hunter after Hunter, the years of training paying off. The army doesn’t cease coming through the valley as I run completely out of ammunition. Throwing my gun to the floor, I fall back into the ranks of the second defence, prepared to defend solely with Kai’s knife.

     ‘Kayra!’ someone screams from behind me.

     Turning quickly, Henry stands in front of me, holding me by my shoulders.

     ‘What is it?!’ I cry, shouting over the sounds of battle around us.

     Before he can tell me what he was going to say, the Hunter army hits us head on and we both turn to attack, getting separated by Hunters and tribe members. A swarm of arrows fly towards us, coming from the Hunters. Not only do they have guns, they also have bows! Around me, the people hit collapse to the ground. Dashing forwards again, adrenaline pumping through me, I cut into more Hunters than I can count, their lack of any body armour making them all easy kills, but no matter how many we kill, more still flood through the valley. An arrow hits me in the chest, but ricochets off my armour, bouncing back into the swarm of Hunters. For every Hunter I kill, another is instantly where the body of the last one is, and my arm grows tired as we all defend. Some aren’t wielding any weapons and just approach us with arms flailing, trying to hit anyone they can, almost like suicide, whereas others seem to be in control, picking their targets carefully and taking them on.

     Time drags by slowly, and the Hunters are still approaching. A long cut across my leg, caused by one Hunter as he was dying, has forced me to fall back into the ranks and away from the heat of the battle. At the fire pit, various medical people treat minor injuries next to a line of bodies that didn’t make it after an injury.

     I sit on the ground and roll up the leg of my trousers to inspect the wound. It isn’t as bad as I expected, and a woman approaches me quickly with a makeshift bandage, like nothing we’d ever use at the Compound. After painfully wrapping my leg tightly in the thin cloth and giving me some painkillers, she instructs me to lie down. I laugh coldly.

     ‘There’s a war happening!’ I scream at her. ‘You expect me to lie down while people are dying around me?!’

     She looks scared and I regret snapping at her straight away as she slowly moves to another patient, who looks more grateful for her services. I push her out of my mind as I get back into the battle, my face damp with sweat.

66

Arys

Phillip takes a step away from the computers, his eyes scanning across the room at everyone around him, lingering slightly on me. I don’t look him in the eye as I try to plant the thought into his head again.

    
‘Call it off.’

     His expression changes from one in complete control to one of a young boy who is about to be scolded by his father. Fear fills his eyes and he clears his throat weakly.

     ‘Keep them coming,’ he says, his voice, usually filled with authority, now more like a stubborn child.

     His eyes return to the lights on the screen, his face no longer confident, but somewhat scared. The red lights on the screen are so numerous and close together that they appear to be one light that disintegrates at one end. His eyes are focused on the lights flickering out. I choose to press on, forcing him to feel the guilt.

    
‘All those people. Everyone that you know is innocent. Innocent people mindlessly killing other innocent people. What does it accomplish?!’

    
‘Stop!’ he calls out.

     Everyone looks up from their computers.

     ‘Sir?’ someone asks.

     ‘Nothing,’ he responds, walking to the water cooler and drinking more. ‘As you were.’

     The typing continues as everyone calls in more Hunters from all over the country. The plan is failing; I can’t control Phillip as everyone had planned. Just as I’m giving up hope, there is a commotion outside the door. Various people can be heard shouting, before a thunderous voice commands everyone to step aside. Phillip turns again from the screens and strides to the door.

      ‘What is this?‘ he begins, but the door flies open, banging against the wall and echoing throughout the room.

     All the typing stops and everyone turns to the doorway. Framed in the doorway is the person on posters all over the Compound. The person who is on the screens, offering inspirational speeches. For perhaps the first time in my life, I’m seeing the leader of Unity in person; my birthfather.

     ‘Stop this at once!’ he roars, throwing Phillip to the ground.

     He doesn’t look in my direction as he picks Phillip up and pushes him against one of the screens.

     ‘Those lights represent living people!’ he shouts, pointing to individual miniscule lights, one for every syllable he speaks. ‘They are
not
toys!’

     Nobody dares to breathe as he turns on the room at large, staring at individual people.

     ‘Didn’t you hear me?’ he snarls. ‘Stop!’

     People rush to begin typing again, and all eyes turn to the screens as the lights begin slowing down and retreating back in the direction of the Compound. Some continue to turn off as they retreat, but the whole army displayed by red lights are shown to be leaving. Releasing Phillip, Thorne turns on me, his cold dark eyes staring into mine.

     ‘And you,’ he begins, approaching me. ‘Had better start talking right now.’

67

Kai

     ‘They’re going home!’ Holly shouts, her legs wrapped around the branch firmly while she hangs upside-down watching the battle below us.

     ‘What do you mean?!’ I demand.

     She swings effortlessly into an upright position, now holding the branch with her hands.

     ‘They’re going home!’ she squeals. ‘The Hunters are going home!’

     Painfully, I climb higher into the tree, my leg protesting in waves of agony. She wasn’t lying, and the Hunters are retreating. Many tribe members are chasing them as a weakened Henry tries to take control. No Hunters are retaliating as their fellow Hunters around them are dying, they are all moving as one back through the valley.

     ‘Did we do it?’ Holly begs. ‘Did we win?’

     ‘I... I think we did!’ I gasp.

     Holly hugs me really quickly and hands me the gun.

     ‘You were really brave,’ she says, pointing to my leg.

     I laugh, the joy of the end of the battle filling me with excitement. She’s the five year old who has been killing Hunters; if anyone is brave, it’s her!

     ‘Come on,’ she says, climbing down. ‘Kayra will be waiting for us!’

     I delicately put weight onto my leg to test it, and agony shoots through my body. Instead, I carefully climb down the tree, avoiding putting any weight on my temporarily useless leg. The joy at the end of the battle evaporates as soon as my good leg hits the floor next to Holly. The destruction is a thousand times worse this close. While the majority of the tribe members didn’t die, many still did.  Bodies of Hunters and tribe members lie everywhere, the ground red with blood. I move slowly through the valley, back towards the tents in the distance, some of which are now burning. On account of my leg, Holly restrains from rushing ahead, and gives me a stick to help me walk. We pass many other survivors as we walk hand in hand. Some are in tears over a body, others walking towards the tents, their faces ranging from joy, to horror, to mourning. Now the joy has faded, the only thought in my mind is at how meaningless the battle was. It was innocents fighting innocents. Even if we killed all of the Hunters and every tribe member survived, it still would have accomplished nothing. The Hunters aren’t who we’ve been running from all our lives. It’s the people controlling them, and they are not hurt in the slightest tonight. I search, slightly panicked for Kayra. I shouldn’t have left her there on her own, and I anxiously can’t help myself looking at the bodies on the ground, praying that Kayra isn’t amongst them.

     ‘Help!’ someone calls weakly from the floor.

     Searching through the bodies for the person who called, I find him. He’s an older man, perhaps in his late fifties and his right leg is twisted at a horrible angle. He’s moaning in pain and with my own leg like this, there’s nothing I can do for him. Holly instructs me to wait with him as she runs towards the tents as fast as she can.

     ‘What’s she doing here?’ he asks feebly. ‘The kids are supposed to be safe.’

     ‘She is safe now,’ I assure him.

     He rests his head on the ground, clutching his leg with both hands.

     ‘Never broken a bone in my body,’ he laughs slightly. ‘I survived the earthquake, plus fifteen years in the wilderness with barely a scratch. Always thought I was invincible, I did.’

     ‘You’re alive, aren’t you?’ I smile.

     ‘Aye. I have that to be thankful for.’

     Holly returns with two men. They both proceed to lift the old man up and start carrying him slowly towards the tents. Looking up, Holly has brought Kayra with her. Rushing to me, Kayra embraces me tightly.

     ‘I thought you might have died,’ she sobs. ‘I promised Arys you’d be safe and I’m so sorry!’

     ‘I’m fine, it’s okay!’ I assure her, returning the hug as Holly watches us. ‘It’s because of Holly that I am!’

     ‘Your leg!’ Kayra cries, bending down and examining the bloody jacket wrapped tightly around it.

     ‘It will be okay.’

     Holly takes Kayra’s hand and together they lead me back towards the tents, knowing that we’re walking right into the mourning and horror that awaits us.

68

Arys

Victor Thorne towers over me. The power and respect he demands is unwillingly given to him as I cower slightly by his image.

     ‘So there are two,’ he states, watching me carefully. ‘How could I have been fooled so easily?!’

     ‘You have no idea-‘ I attempt.

     ‘
I
have no idea, girl?!’ he roars. ‘
You
have no idea what you’ve got yourself into!’

     He looks at everyone in the room, his eyes stopping on Phillip.

     ‘I want you all out of here at once. Phillip, I want you in my office, the rest of you go back to whatever the hell you’d normally be doing. Except you.’

     He points right at me from his position above me. Phillip doesn’t look at either of us as he leaves the room followed by everyone else here. Only Lee remains.

     ‘And who are you to undermine my orders?’ Thorne demands, turning on Lee.

     Lee remains silent and confidently holds Thorne’s glare. I try to make eye contact with him to somehow signal for him to leave, and even attempt communicating with him through my mind, but he doesn’t look at me, nor does he hear me.

     Thorne steps forward, withdrawing his gun from its holster and pointing it at Lee’s head.

     ‘No!’ I cry, rushing forward and trying to wrestle the gun from his hands. He holds me back easily with one hand.

     ‘You don’t want to do that,’ Lee says calmly.

     ‘And why not?’ Thorne snarls.

     Lee turns his laptop around, showing us both all the red dots on the map moving as one unit towards the Compound. I continue pushing against Thorne’s iron grip on my shoulder.

     ‘I alone am now in control of every one of these people. I alone control the satellite feeding their chips their orders and if you don’t let both me and Arys go, then their orders will be changed. Their free will shall be returned to them and personally, I’m quite certain they won’t be too happy with you. Now let us go.’

     Thorne laughs, uncertainly. ‘And how do I know you aren’t just making this up now? The command needs to be sent from every computer, not just one.’

     ‘And you solved that problem by sending everyone else out of here. Now this is the only one in control.’

     Lee smiles and presses a key on the keyboard. Within seconds, over a quarter of the red lights change to green, and they stop moving towards the Compound.

     ‘You do not understand!’ Thorne roars, throwing a chair away from him as he rounds on Lee. ‘You think all of this was an accident?! The earthquake?! I planned everything and you cannot take this from me now!’

     I can’t contain the shock, and feel faint at how he planned and ordered the death of millions of people. Lee’s face remains unchanging.

     ‘I know,’ he says bluntly. ‘And I can.’

     Thorne raises his gun again, but Lee is too fast for him. He throws the gun out of his hand and pushes him to the ground. Pressing another key, all of the lights change to green, before he seizes the laptop, the wires ripping from the wall. Lee runs, pulling me alongside him out of the door and into the hallway. He presses his hand against the panel, temporarily locking the door on Thorne. Instantly, alarms sound everywhere, echoing outside, all over the Compound.

     ‘Where are we going?’ I ask urgently, my head still pounding with the headache, made worse by the deafening alarms.

     ‘Through here,’ Lee says, turning a corner into a small room.

     He locks the door and starts speaking into his watch.

     ‘Red, things are getting critical. We’ve stopped the Hunters, but we need an extraction now!’

     ‘What’s going on?!’ I demand.

     Lee turns to me quickly, speaking as fast as he can, loudly over the alarms. ‘I couldn’t do any of that at North Bridge. Our only option over the Chipped at North Bridge was to disable the chips entirely. We needed all the Compound computers together to change the orders. During the attack, I managed to take control over the majority of the computers and link them to my own. I changed the satellite to one North Bridge controls, meaning that all the Chipped are now safely in North Bridge’s hands. The signal being sent to their Chips is now blank. They have their free will again.’

     The technical details go over my head, but I understand that the Chipped are supposedly free.

     ‘And what was he saying about the earthquake?!’ I ask, also shouting.

     ‘I can explain everything once we get out of here!’

     He grabs a chair from the corner of the room and throws it through the window, smashing it. Glass rains down several storeys and wind blows wildly through the smashed window. He peers out of the window quickly.

     ‘We’re ready,’ he says. ‘You’re going to have to jump into the hovercraft. We only have a few seconds to do it, but I promise you that we’ll be safe!’

     Suddenly, the door is being hammered on.

     ‘They’re in here!’ someone shouts, and gunshots sound from behind the door, hitting what seems to be the metal door itself.

     ‘Hurry!’ urges Lee, pointing ahead.

     Quickly approaching is a large dark object flying towards us. It has the general shape of a bird in flight, but where a bird is elegant, the hovercraft has sharper edges and flies almost unnaturally. It reaches us and the side opens to reveal a lit entrance. Lana reaches out, ready to catch us.

     ‘You go first, Arys!’ Lee shouts, aiming his gun at the door in case they break through.

     ‘But Lee!’ I protest, but he pushes me towards the window.

    ‘No arguing! Jump!’ he commands.

     I step backwards, before running out of the window. Lana catches my hand and pulls me into it. I turn and face Lee through the window. The door is bent awkwardly and Lee is already shooting.

     ‘Come on, Lee!’ I shout, but he doesn’t move. ‘Alaoden!’

     He turns towards me, smiles sadly and throws the computer through the window. I catch it and look back at him to see him already shooting at the enemies through the door. He wants revenge for Christina.

     ‘No! Don’t do this, Lee! We have to help him!’ I beg Lana.

     Four North Bridge agents jump through the window to join Lee, but the Unity soldier’s aim is no longer only Lee, and they begin shooting at us too.

     ‘I’m sorry, Arys,’ Lana says.

     The hovercraft gains height and I no longer see Lee or the agents with him. We pick up speed as we fly away from the building, the alarms still sounding below us.

     ‘We have to go back!’ I demand. ‘We have to save him!’

     ‘If we do, we’re putting you in even greater danger than you are already in!’ she replies. ‘It was his own choice.’

     I sit down against the cold, metal floor of the hovercraft and begin crying uncontrollably. Everyone I care for is potentially dead right now. Kayra, Kai, Lee... I even miss Zeke. As I think upon everything that’s happened, anger burns through me. Not only for Unity, but for North Bridge.

     ‘You knew?!’ I demand, standing up and facing Lana. ‘You knew that inhumane bastard murdered millions of people and for what?! This world of his?!’

     ‘I knew,’ she says sadly, looking at the floor, in what appears to be shame.

     ‘How?!’ I demand. ‘Why?!’

     ‘I can explain when we arrive at-‘

     ‘No!’ I scream at her, banging my hand on the wall of the hovercraft. The sound is louder than I imagined and Lana flinches. ‘I’m sick of waiting for answers. Tell me now!’

     ‘This isn’t how I wanted you to find out,’ she says, withdrawing a crumpled paper from her inside pocket and handing it to me.

     Still fuming, I unfold the paper. Instantly, I recognise Papa’s handwriting and I almost collapse with shock. This is it! These are his next instructions! Shaking, like I was with his last letter, I read:

Dear Arys,

I had your father, Henry, get this sent to Lana, the woman who hopefully gave it to you. I am writing this at the Festival with the eleven year old version of you asleep besides me. I do not know when you’ll be reading this, but consider this my final letter, and final instructions to you.

Arys, before I go into everything technical, I must warn you that what you are about to read may cause pain to you. It is with deep regret that I must be the one to deliver this pain, but it has to come from someone that you know loves you.

I need you to know the truth about your family. Your real family, before me. As you may have already discovered, I am your true grandfather. Your birthfather is Unity’s leader, Victor Thorne, my son. I want you to know that I always loved him. Even when he pushed me away in his strive for power, I loved him and I regret not investing more time into his life while I still had a voice. But he is the one who brought the destruction to this country. The one who personally destroyed everything. His plan worked; the stupid plan that he’d always talked about actually worked. Once higher up in the government, he saw it as a game. He perfectly placed charges that he designed himself in precise underwater locations, set to go off at the perfect time, causing what we refer to as ‘the earthquake’. After I heard predictions of it happening going public, I knew he had to be involved. There was no way of finding him or contacting him; he avoided everyone in the time just before it happened. The various planes and ships sent across from countries who tried to help with the destruction were shot down by his missiles. Before long, people gave up. With his group of followers, Unity, he created what is now the Compound. The radars remain, stopping anyone entering or leaving the country.

My advice is for you is to not let any of this ever affect you. What I have learnt over this painful ten years is that your families’ sins are not your own. You must never blame yourself for any of this destruction. That blame lies solely with your birthfather.

If this has gone according to plan, you have reached North Bridge by now, and have found Kayra. I don’t know what the next part of the plan involves, but I ask you to trust Lana. I should let her explain the rest of it to you, as it’s not my place. But know that I am already so proud of what you’ve accomplished. Seeing you lying here in front of me and knowing what you will do amazes me.

My final instructions to you are to trust these people here at North Bridge. Their plans will forever stop us from running, allowing us to live peacefully in the broken world we live in. I love you Arys, and know that whatever happens to me, that will never change.

All of my love,

Your Papa.

Looking up from the letter, Lana is watching me reading. She gives me an odd look that I can’t quite understand, and I quickly brush away the tears that I didn’t realise were still falling, staining the paper. I quickly scan through it again, before holding it close to my heart, knowing that this is the last piece of Papa that I can hold on to.

     ‘What does he mean by you explaining the rest to me?’ I ask in between sobs.

     She turns around, pulling her hair towards her front, revealing the back of her neck. Her tattoo stands out prominently on her pale skin and she points to it.

     ‘It’s like a distorted mirror,’ she explains in a whisper. ‘The first half is you, the second is Kayra. To me, it brings hope that despite the broken world and everything you’ve been through, you both remain undivided.’

     ‘And the four dots?’ I ask quietly.

     She faces me again, tears silently falling from her cheeks. ‘They represent the people who love you.’

     She pulls me close to her and her tears join mine as they fall to the floor, the letter pressed between us. I feel that I know the answer before she speaks, confirming it.

      ‘I’m your mother, Arys.’

We step into North Bridge, my birthmother leading the way. I’m congratulated by various people, but I can’t concentrate on that now. My mother proceeds to lead me through the various hallways until we reach the central room, the walls lined with screens showing various displays of places in the Compound, and also cameras showing the tribes. Lana sits at a computer and types something quickly. A display appears in the middle of the screen and she begins speaking with authority.

     ‘Agent Williams, what’s the situation with Alaoden?’

     There is a short silence before I hear her reply.

     ‘We picked them all up just after we got you. ETA seven minutes. Agent Price is injured, but not critically.’

     ‘Thank you,’ Lana says, before hanging up.

     Relief floods through me and I sit down on one of the office chairs and put my head in my hands. Lee is okay.