Unworthy: Marked to die. Raised to survive. (17 page)

What are my options? I have to get out of the five-hundred metre zone before she’s capable of coming after me. But what then?

Slowly my thinking clears, and I realise that I have only one course of action. I was simply too terrified to see it before. I must go back.

I hurriedly stuff the monitor into my bag, and instead take out my blowpipe and pouch of vials. I belt it on, and start back up the hill.

The return climb takes longer than I expect. I must have managed to get further than I thought before falling over. By the time the house comes into view my breath is short and I watch for a moment from behind a tree while I try to get it under control. I can see no movement from my position and can only hear the rustling of the beech forest. I remove the heavy pack from my back and put it on the ground.

My heart starts thudding in my throat as I leave the tree line to approach the side of the house, uphill, from the back. As I get closer to the front room I can hear voices coming from inside.

“I should have known the family by the river was you,” Hayes is saying. His voice is strained and hesitant.

I slowly inch my way down the wall, treading as quietly as possible until I find a broken weatherboard that allows me enough of a view into the room.

Hayes is standing with his back against the same wooden pillar which Elyssa had used for me. His ankles and wrists are bound, arms pulled back tightly around it. The fight mustn’t have lasted long.

“Don’t try to distract me,” she says lightly. “It won’t work.” She raises the knife she has been casually tossing from hand to hand.

His jaw is clenched and I watch in horror as she draws the length of the wickedly sharp blade lightly across the skin on his upper arm. His eyes remain squeezed shut as a ribbon of red begins to course its way down his arm.

“Not a whimper,” she sounds impressed. “At least not for the first one.”

I’ve seen enough. My fingers are shaking as they grope for the pouch on my belt and find the vial of tufted splinters. In my haste though I drop one in the dirt. I take a deep breath in and let it out slowly. I’ll only get one chance.

Inside the house Elyssa leans forward and kisses her prisoner deeply, full on the mouth. My surprise stays my hand on the way to placing the dart inside the blowpipe. When she steps back she slaps him so hard across the cheek that his head whips round and cracks against the post.

The sound focuses me and I lift the blowpipe. I realise that I can’t both place the blowpipe in the crack and see to aim through it. It’s too important for just a guess.

I very carefully slide further down the cladding, following the gap as it widens. I hold my breath, trying to make no sound at all.

“How many stripes can you last? You know how to make this stop.” Her back to me, all of her attention is focussed on Hayes. She leans in close and whispers to him, “Just say the word.” She draws her blade across his arm again as I bring the pipe to my trembling lips. Her hair is still tied back on her head, providing the bare target I aim for. A second red streak grows as if by magic on his arm and the blood courses to his wrists like a river drawn to the sea.

Chapter Twenty

The dart leaves the pipe with a puff, and Elyssa’s hand slaps her upper back, between her shoulder blades. She whirls round and raises the knife. She’s quick, but the poison is quicker. As her eyes lock with mine she loses feeling in her legs and sinks to the floor. She releases a strangled gargle of anger.

I let out a wavering breath and tear around the front of the house. The creaking steps give me away, but it no longer matters. I cross the room to stand over Elyssa’s form, prone on the dusty wooden floorboards. Her eyes are open, mouth opening and closing, fingers twitching. I am guessing that she is still fully aware, just unable to control her muscle movements. I kick her hard, venting all the anger, fear and frustration I have been feeling for the last hour on her unmoving form.

I am panting more from a release of tension than from exertion when I turn to Hayes, still bound against the post. His arm is streaked with dark red blood which is beginning to drip from his fingers to the floor. He watches me through heavy lids.

I bend down and take the knife from Elyssa’s fingers. I release his feet first and then my eyes flit over the bindings on his wrists. The point of the knife shakes as it approaches the dripping bonds. There’s a lot of blood. I swallow and steady the blade, then cut through the cords. He slips to the floor, tipping his head back against the post, and grips his shoulder with his other hand.

I move round to look at his face. “Are you okay?” I breathe.

“I’ll be fine,” he nods. “A little help though?”

In the tracker’s backpack I find a first aid kit identical to the one Hayes had, which is now in my bag under the trees. I bring it over and help him to fasten bandages tightly around the gashes on his upper arm.

“Did you notice that broken car out the front?” he asks me. I nod and he continues, “I left my gear under it. Could you get it?”

When I return I bring my backpack as well as his. He props his back up against the post while he cleans himself up.

I sit nearby, watching him, wondering what now. “What about her?” I say. The tracker hasn’t moved since hitting the floor.

He’s taken his black Polis Tshirt off and is using it to wipe the blood. I can’t help but think that he’s stalling. He takes a drink from his canteen and empties some water into his hand to douse his face. I notice how pale he looks.

“I can’t kill her,” he finally answers. “Much as I’d like to.”
He puts the damp hub shirt back on.

I nod. It’s what I expected him to say, and I realise that I’m beginning to see a softer side to my soldier. I look over at the prone form lying between the broken floorboards and the gaping hole in the front wall. I shiver at the memory of her toying with the blade in front of my eyes. It’s not one I’ll forget easily.

“I want to get away from her,” I say.

“When we get moving we’ll leave her here. What did you do to her?”

“Poison.” I pat the weapon at my waist. “Blowpipe.”

Hayes rubs his cheek, the roughness of his stubble making a rasping sound, then rests it in his hand, looking at me evenly. I’m wondering if I’ve told him too much when he asks, “How long before it wears off?”

“I don’t know for sure. I’ve not used it on a person before. But at least an hour, I think.”

“Alright then,” he says, standing slowly, the bloodied cord in his hands. He moves carefully when crossing the floor to where she lies. I watch while he ties her hands firmly together.

“When she comes to, she’ll be able to follow us,” I say in dismay.

“I know,” he sighs. “But leaving her to the wild animals - I can’t do that. We’ll leave her with no weapons or tools. Just what she needs to get back to the City.”

Hayes looks round for the tracker’s belongings. We collect together all the equipment that she’d had in her bag when I first found her. He goes through it all, piece by piece. Using her dazer, he directs its beam towards her thermal imaging monitor and it makes a faint crackle. A thin plume of smoke rises from the device and I feel safer knowing that she’ll never be able to see us on it. He takes her other weapons and puts them in his bag, whilst leaving her with the useless ones. His eyes flick towards me as he stows the damaged dazer next to her broken monitor. I was right; he’d known all along that I’d disabled it.

It’s twilight by the time we can get away, and Elyssa has not moved. There is only an hour or so left before the forest will be in full darkness. As we start the trek down the slope, I know that there are many things to be said. I know that it won’t have escaped his attention I wasn’t following the river to the Polis.

“How did she know where I was?” I ask him, then I correct myself, “Or where I would be, anyway?”

“I’m guessing she picked you up on the thermal imager yesterday. Perhaps she has triggers all round here, and was just watching which way you’d go.”

I was so confident that I had not been seen. It gives me the creeps knowing she’d been watching me. How could she have been behind me and in front of me as well?

As though reading my thoughts, Hayes adds, “She’ll have a trail bike hidden somewhere nearby. Great for covering distances, even over rough terrain. But not so great when you’re going for stealth. I’d like to find it and take it, but we could waste our advantage searching. Hungry?” he asks.

The change of subject takes me by surprise. By rights I should be famished. It’s been a long time since breakfast and the forest is now nearly dark around us. However, I shake my head. Maybe it was the sight of the blood, or the fact that I am still alive after giving myself up for dead, but I don’t feel like eating.

I also know that I feel totally conflicted about what I am going to do. I want us to keep moving so that I can have a chance to think through my options.

“Do you have the LED light?” he asks. The terrain has flattened out and I can hear the stream on my right.

Of course I do. I search around in my bag and hand it to him, feeling a little sheepish. He clips it onto the monitor in his hands and it throws a wide beam forward into the area ahead of us.

“I’m sorry I left you,” I suddenly blurt.

In the white light from the torch I see him look back at me sharply. “I was incapable of looking after you. It’s understandable that you would leave me.”

“But you were injured and I left you there…”

“You did the right thing, Arcadia,” he says slowly, taking a step back towards me. “You needed to keep moving. What I didn’t understand is why you came back for me. It makes more sense now, knowing you had a weapon.” He hitches up the shoulder strap of his rucksack. “Nevertheless, you didn’t have to. And I’m very grateful that you did,” he adds, not looking at me.

I feel a little abashed, knowing I’d been trying to escape him since day one. But it’s crystal clear to me that unless he had followed me to the house I would now be dead. “Thank you for saving me. For intervening. I’m lucky to still be alive.”

He starts moving, following the course of the stream. I can tell he’s embarrassed, and unused to being thanked. “Well, I guess we’re even,” he says.

“How’s the dog bite?” I ask him.

“Healing,” he replies succinctly. It’s clear he doesn’t want to dwell on it. I can see though that he’s moving more steadily and there are no signs of dizziness.

The going is slow. We pick our way around fallen trees and brambles near the stream, often having to leave it for many kilometres in order to find a safe path. Hayes studies the monitor constantly and doesn’t seem agitated, so I take some assurance from that. We keep the stream on our right and continue following its course east. I know that it will lead out of the forest and cross the plains to the Polis, where my trip will end. I will need to have decided by then on my course of action.

The relaxed pace allows my mind to wander. Much as I want to put the tracker and our sick meeting out of my mind, so much of what she said keeps returning to haunt me. The worst part about it is that I know what she said makes sense.

“Captain Hayes,” I start, when we are negotiating the enormous tree trunk of a pine. “The tracker - Elyssa - said something to me when she was questioning me.”

He’s obviously paying attention, but doesn’t stop or turn to me. “What about?” he asks sharply.

“The Festivals. I want to know if it’s true.”

“It’s true,” he says. He keeps moving.

My knees have started shaking and I’m feeling light headed. I have to stop. I lean back on the tree, putting my hand on it for balance.

I can see, a little distance ahead, the light turn and direct its beam on me as he comes back. He angles it to the ground.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “It’s true. I wish I could tell you that it isn’t.”

“So… Festivals are just another way of… controlling the population?”

He leans on the trunk of the pine, next to me. He looks away when he says, “Yes. It’s put in the food.”

“What is?”

“Some pathogen that will make the weakest people sick. I think it’s different every time.”

I try to take this in. The Polis are purposely infecting hubbites twice a year. “And they make a big party of it!”

He shrugs. “At least you get the party. In the Polis we’re injected every six months too.”

I hadn’t considered this. “With the same sicknesses?” He nods. “Cotton wool,” I murmur. “Do many of you get sick?”

“That’s one of the ways we differ. In the Polis we might get sick, but few people die. In the hubs you’re not as lucky.”

Not as lucky. That’s an understatement.

“Come on, eat this,” he says, handing me a packet of biscuits. I still don’t feel hungry, but he makes me eat them. With some food in my stomach, I have to admit that I do feel better, although nothing can take away the impact of the shock that I have just suffered.

We keep moving through the thinning forest. The ground slopes and we work our way up a steep incline, leaving the stream to make its way through the gorge below. As the trees become more sparse, the terrain is easier to manage, but still it’s all I can do to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I’m exhausted, but my mind is whirring. I’m trying to rethink what I know about my hub and my way of life, trying to work out the truth from the fabrication.