Masked (13 page)

T
here was only
one place I could take them. Just because it happened to be where Shiloh’s mainframe had been hidden was a pure coincidence, that’s all.

It was the explosives Si and Tan had laid after Shiloh had been shut down that I was after.

The explosives and the tripwires.

Getting in would be a problem. But not my problem. These guys had more than enough technology to achieve it. Once inside, that’s when I’d have to test my mettle. That’s when I’d have to face down death and not blink an eye.

If this u-Pol officer suspected a trap, I had nothing. Where else in Wánměi could we go?

Wáikěiton and Little D’awa were too populated. Parnell was definitely out. Mughah Foh and Remoh Ehrah were residential suburbs. I wasn’t going to take them there. Geh Dowee could work at a pinch, and I’d have to consider it if this failed. But no explosives were laid there.

Even the abandoned oil refinery had been emptied of anything remotely combustible.

No. It was the National Museum or failure. And I couldn’t consider failing when Lena’s life was on the line.

He’d go after her. I was sure of it. He already probably had. I had no way of knowing if she was OK, but it was the only thing keeping me going, thinking her safe with Alan and Si and Paul. And fucking Lee Tan. It was all that kept me focused. Knowing taking out this u-Pol officer and his ex-Wánměi drones would give them time. For what, I didn’t know.

But there was only so much I was capable of. For now I’d concentrate on that and say a little prayer for her future.

Lena living, going on to live her life, was all that mattered.

I’d even sell out Wánměi if I thought it would keep her safe. But selling out Wánměi would doom her as well as everyone else.

“An interesting location,” the u-Pol guy suddenly said. We’d been standing in the shadow of a rubber tree in Domain Park. Pookee Kahwah once again paying witness to an historical event. Before it had housed a founding father of Wánměi. Then military bunkers during a forgotten war. Now it would watch the destruction of an invader. Hopefully still standing afterwards to watch over a peaceful Wánměi.

It was a dream. A fantasy. I knew it. But it made answering this prick without giving away my rage that much easier.

“The National Museum was abandoned when sat-loc came online. When our borders were closed,” I added, in case this foreigner didn’t understand the significance of sat-loc.

But of course, he did.

“Your pathetic attempt to forget your history has blinded you,” he remarked. “It is not the first time we have been here.”

We? Wherever he was from, at a guess.

“So, where are you guys from, anyway?” I asked, as the drones continued their reconnaissance and we waited in the lush, wet heat of a summer’s day.

The officer looked down at me; sitting cross-legged on the dirt floor, with my hands tied behind my back in case I thought of head butting him again. I smiled up at him, as though my inferior position didn’t make my skin crawl.

“Does it matter?” he asked. The unsaid being, when I wouldn’t live to see the sun set on today.

“U,” I mused aloud. “For Urip?”

The guy smiled, it was twisted and condescending.

“How many others did your country break contract with? How many more disgruntled trade partners will come after we have left?”

“I guess I won’t be around to know,” I offered, staring off into the distance.

He didn’t confirm or deny that outcome, just stared across the park towards the National Museum.

“The security alone on this building must have made your people wonder.”

“My people,” I said, stressing the word, “weren’t allowed to think for themselves.”

“A sound system that has somehow fractured.”

“And in Urip?” I asked. “What sound system do you have?”

He turned to look down at me again, his face austere.

“One that will never fracture.”

A drone stepped out from behind a tree as though the u-Pol officer’s words were his signal.

“All clear,” it said in a mockery of Shiloh’s voice. Not quite the High-Anglisc we’d been used to, but a mixture of this guy’s accent and something else.

I figured they’d made after market adjustments, and these drones usually spoke in their own language and not ours.

I cocked my head at the drone, wondering just how it functioned without a Cardinal driving it. Or without Shiloh directing it as she’d no doubt tried to do before she went dark. Maybe it was that which had made Urip reconfigure the drones. Turning them into something else, which at a guess, could be potentially unstable.

Shiloh was good at what she did. There’d be no better. Why else would they have purchased their drones from us?

Why else were they here looking for Shiloh?

This could be something I could use.
A small smidgeon of hope blossomed inside.

“You will lead the way,” the guy announced.

“I don’t know how to get in there,” I pointed out with a shrug. “It’s well protected, you said so yourself. Only drones and Overseers knew how to bypass its security features. And one of those is useless and the other all dead.”

The Overseers weren’t all dead, but under house arrest until we could decide what to do with them. We didn’t have a prison system, wiping had solved that indignity for us. So now we just guarded them. With the men and women who had once taken orders from them instead.

It wasn’t ideal, but like most things we were discovering in Free Wánměi, perfection is an illusion. And the dream had cracked.

“Then you will be the first thing the security measures meet,” the u-Pol officer calmly replied.

The drone hauled me up off my butt and held me securely with a cool metal grip on my right arm. My shoulders ached, my wrists were chafed where the zip-ties dug into sensitive flesh. In such a short amount of time I had forgotten what the hallucinated chains had felt like. The reality of too constricting plastic was enough.

We crossed the street to the main gates, ornate and looming. The midday sun shone through the bars, making a striped pattern of shadows appear across the well trimmed grass. It reminded me of Lena. Black and white. Dark and light. My zebra.

I lifted my chin, sucking in much needed air, and walked through the gate, following a path I remembered as though it was yesterday.

No drones dropped down from hidden balconies. No laser light dots lit up on my chest. And no automatic anti-trespassing weapons popped up out of the grass.

The door stood barred, reinforced and e-scanner locked. The pad to the side indestructible. It required a ten digit code, the retinal scanning of a pre-determined eyeball, and a holographic keycard.

I had two of the three things on me.

“Now what?” I asked, wanting us in there before we were spotted. It wouldn’t do for a well meaning Citizen to alert the Cardinals to us being here.

The u-Pol officer stared at the security lock and then stepped aside for the drone. Who with practised moves, more fluid than I liked to see on a metal machine, fitted a device to the lock and pressed a button.

It cracked the code.

It replicated the keycard.

It couldn’t match the retinal scan, no matter what it attempted to do.

Two out of three ain’t bad, I thought, and then felt the cold press of a metal hand at the back of my neck.

“It seems to me,” the office said in my ear as the drone pushed my face toward the e-scanner, “that the leader of the rebel army who freed Wánměi would have access to its hidden secrets.”

I wanted to deny it, for the mere fact that this guy pissed me off.

I wanted to fight back, but my will was stolen.

He knew. He knew who I was and what I’d done. Not anything I hadn’t thought of already.

But all of a sudden I realised something. If he knew what had happened here in Wánměi, then he would also know why we were no longer meeting our contractual requirements.

Which meant I’d just led the fucking bastard exactly where he wanted to go.

To Shiloh. Even though Shiloh was gone. To the one place where she had controlled everything.

Which meant, what exactly did he think was still here? And how did he plan to use it?

The door clicked open, as soon as my eye was scanned. The dark maw that dawned before me felt like an ominous portent of what was to come.

And the drone simply pushed me forward.

“
S
omeone’s
just accessed the National Museum security system,” Simon announced to the stunned room.

We were sitting in our tech-room. Four rebels. One President. Six Cardinals. And three Masked. The drones had been left - under guard - out in the corridor.

“Fucking hell,” he added. Then spun in his seat to look directly at me. “It’s Trent.”

Everyone started talking at once.

I got up from my seat and walked in a daze towards the vid-screens and Simon.
He was alive!
My eyes hungrily took in the sight of him in the grainy, light-challenged image. The sight of Trent; arms tied securely behind his back, a red-eyed drone, and a man in a tight fitting jumpsuit that reflected what little light was inside the building standing beside him.

“Why has he gone there?” I whispered.

“He must have known it would trigger an alarm,” Paul offered. “That’s why he’s lured them there.”

I stared at the way Trent was trussed up and being roughly handled by the drone. If Trent was luring them anywhere, it was under duress.

“The alarm is usually monitored by Cardinals at Parliament House,” Tan said. “If Trent’s sending a message, he would have thought it wasn’t being watched.”

Parliament House was abandoned, and only Calvin’s abilities had allowed us to gain access to their secured and isolated security systems. An ability Trent didn’t know Calvin had.

If not a message, then what?

“Is that where Shiloh was?” Irdina asked, watching us from her side of the room. Augustine stood on one side of her and a D’awan stood on the other. He’d been introduced as Oja. He never smiled.

I nodded my head, but no one voiced an answer. All of us stunned, watching a scene unfold on the vid-screen that we weren’t meant to witness.

Simon fumbled with some switches, and then the sound of Trent’s voice hit me hard.

“If you think there’s anything left, you’re shit out of luck.”

“Your ignorance astounds me,” the man in the tight suit said. He had a slight accent, one I didn’t recognise. One that I was sure originated in Urip.

“What does it say on his shirt?” Alan asked, leaning closer to the image on the screen.

“U-POL?” Simon said, narrowing his eyes at the screen. He didn’t enlarge it, he wanted to keep Trent in our sights as much as me.

“Urip’s police,” Tan murmured close to my side.

“Did you know they existed?” Cardinal Beck asked Irdina.

“Our intelligence had suggested they would send their best men.”

“And him?” Alan demanded. “You know him?”

“I recognise him from reconnaissance photos. His name is Mikhail.”

I flicked a glance toward the woman, and then immediately back to the screen; I didn’t want to miss a thing. Over my shoulder I said, “The fighter jets were yours?”

“Hell no,” she replied with a sneer. “Our recon is more surreptitious than that.”

Then the jets were from Urip. The vanguard for this u-Pol man. Checking our defences. Making sure we would provide minimal resistance to an invasion.

Albeit a small invasion, but then, maybe he thought we’d be so distracted by the jets, we wouldn’t see him slip inside.

And we hadn’t. Our eyes had been trained on the skies.

My guess, he’d already landed by the time they flew overhead.

I fisted my hands as Trent was roughly pushed down the stairs heading towards the basement of the Museum. Heading towards the explosives and tripwires Simon and Tan had laid there.

I spun toward Tan now, our eyes meeting, words shared but not spoken.

We do nothing
, his eyes said,
and the problem is solved for us.

We do nothing
, mine replied,
and it won’t just be Trent who dies
.

He let out a long breath of air, as though accepting something, and said, “The tunnels. It’s our only way in without being discovered.”

The tunnels were in worse condition than the Museum itself. Booby trapped and rigged to blow. And in some places, completely collapsed.

I was already walking toward the door.

“Lena,” Tan called.

I stopped only because it was Tan.

“What?” I demanded, because Tan or not, I wasn’t backing down.

“Take all the weapons you need,” he said. “We’ll guide you as best as we can from here.”

“Sir,” Beck suddenly said. “Permission to accompany Citizen Carr.”

My eyes met the Cardinal’s. His were shuttered.

“Take whomever you need,” Tan said and turned to the screens.

Trent had made it halfway down the stairs already. Two more turns and the first tripwire would appear.

“We’re not gonna make it,” Paul said as we raced down the penthouse corridor, Irdina and her team hot on our tails.

I slammed my hand into the lift’s down button and offered him a glare.

“Not helping,” Alan rumbled, watching the floors light up as we descended.

I held it together, only because I had no choice. Believing that Trent would sacrifice himself for the good of Wánměi was a path I couldn’t allow my mind to tread.

“Calvin,” I said into the strained silence of the packed elevator.

“Yes, Lena,” he replied over the speakers and in our ears.

“Cut the power to the National Museum.”

Cardinal Beck stiffened. Irdina snorted. When my eyes found hers they merely looked bored.

“The National Museum has its own power supply,” Calvin informed me, making it harder to breathe for a little while.

“Can you hack it?” Alan asked, as always offering support when I least expected it.

“Not indirectly,” Calvin advised. “It is also isolated.”

So much of our country’s security was now isolated.

So much of our fear would now cause our heartache.

“What does my father say?” I said into the now subdued silence.

A pause and then Calvin replied, in a voice so like my father’s it left chills in its wake, “‘Be strong, Lena,’ he says.”

He was so close now. Closer than he’d been in ten long years. Across the water in Mahiah, yes, but also on the other end of a telephone line, watching, listening, guiding when he was able.

But he couldn’t guide us through this.

“The drones?” Alan asked after some time. “How’s it going with the drones, Calvin?”

Our last hope. Tracing the source of the drones’ command. We knew it was in Urip. We knew it was on the Global Net. My father hadn’t been able to find it, but Calvin was so much faster, so much more powerful, so much more efficient than a man.

But a man had written his code. And all men are fallible.

We should know. We were the adopted children of Shiloh.

“I have not had any luck, as yet,” Calvin confirmed what I’d already known in my heart.

I began to pray.

The roads were deserted around the Domain Park. The narrow lane at the very top of the hill to the bunker had become overgrown in the few short weeks since we’d last been here. Hiding the entrance from curious Citizen eyes. No one knew this was where the rebels had based themselves. Where the once wiped had returned to our land. No one knew this was where Harjeet Kandiyar had met his end. Where Emir had been killed. And the Cardinals had fought back under Lee Tan. And Shiloh had been reached and shut down at last.

No one knew but us. And we’d thought we’d never have reason to be here again.

We clambered out of the vans and ran to the entrance. Cardinals cutting back vines and branches, as Irdina’s drones crashed through the doorway into the dust filled corridor beyond. The eerie blue glow of their eyes illuminated the zebra painted on the floor of the common room, and then shone on the blood that stained the exit toward the back.

I crossed the space, those with me standing aside as though a sea parted, and stood where once Harjeet had stood, drones piled at his feet, his laser sights on Trent and the rebels. I could almost hear the whine now, smell the electrical burn as they overheated. The metallic scent of the Cardinals’ blood as they came to the rebels’ aid and took on fire.

I could almost hear Trent yelling commands.

I walked carefully to the end of the hallway, and peered into the gloom that led towards the Museum.

“Irdina,” I called.

“I’m here,” she said at my shoulder.

“I need your drones to go ahead.”

“What will they meet?” she asked without hesitation.

“Rubble at first, and then… more tricky things.”

“Explosives?” she enquired pleasantly.

I glanced at her, saw the spark of intrigue light her eyes as she stared off down the shadowed tunnel. She was enjoying this, which was more than I could say for Oja. He still hadn’t cracked a smile.

“More like booby traps,” I advised. “Falling masonry. Yawning pits covered in holographics that look like a continuation of the floor. That sort of thing.”

“Brilliant,” she chirped and ordered a drone to head out.

We followed behind, the clock ticking, my heart racing, sweat coating my skin and dripping into my eyes. It was hard to breathe, under the ground, surrounded by brick walls, and knowing any second now we’d feel the pressure wave of the National Museum exploding into a million tiny pieces.

Every step we took felt weighted. Every breath we released hurt. So close, but too far away.

Just like my father. Just like our freedom. One outstretched hand fools you into thinking you could grasp it, and then coming up woefully short.

Trent was just there. At the end of the tunnel. So close.

And then the walls shook and the ground heaved, and the lights in the tunnel went out.