Legion Lost, page 15
The gunshot rings out in the same moment that the doctor’s words end. Bartlett crumples to the ground, clutching a bleeding wound high on his thigh. Stirling and I are the first to leap over him, then I turn back to help Goddie get Sheila past him too. It’s now that I see the tip of Apryl’s gun smoking. She narrows her eyes at the doctor as he writhes on the floor, giving him a powerful kick to the ribs.
“That was for Lucrece, you bastard,” she seethes.
Panic sets in as I hear the other doctors running toward the compound. They’re going for help, to find someone to stop us from escaping. I know that there’s nothing but wasteland all around us, and the quickest path to cover is straight across the minefield ahead. I rue Stirling for his stupid, reckless plan, running out into the darkness with no hope of freedom. Hot, angry tears threaten to burst from the corners of my eyes as I follow my fellow rejects, the weight of my own hopelessness getting heavier all the time.
That is, until my eyes befall the minefield. Stirling said we had to wait for sundown before we could go, and now I see why. Someone has painted luminous lines across the wasteland. As the plain grows darker ahead, the trail glows brighter, leading us safely between the deadly mines with a clearly marked passageway. It is long and winding, but it will get us to the other side.
“I’ll lead,” Stirling shouts, already advancing on the path. “Goddie, keep Sheila at the back of us so they won’t try to shoot.”
“Got it, boss,” Goddie replies, and suddenly we’re off across the wasteland.
“How did you do this?” I ask as we carefully follow the painted path. “Stirling? When did you get outside to mark this up?”
Stirling turns to me a little, his expression mixed somewhere between pain and apology.
“I didn’t,” he reveals.
“HIGHLANDER!”
Briggs’s voice booms across the wasteland, and I glance back to see the gargantuan man standing at the wasteland’s edge.
“So long, Commander!” Stirling shouts back with a wave. “I wouldn’t try to follow us, if I were you. One shot at any of those mines, and you’re a dead man.”
“Unless we blow you up first!” Briggs retorts. Soldiers are forming a crowd behind him, many of them suited up with guns.
“Go ahead,” Stirling answers, “but you’ll kill Sheila here in the process.”
Sheila is our one bargaining chip. So long as her life is in danger, we can make our way across the wasteland. We move on again, secure in the knowledge that Briggs won’t endanger the Legion’s staff just to get even with a bunch of teenage runaways. He isn’t that petty. He isn’t that foolish. He wouldn’t kill one of his own people for the sake of his pride.
It deafens us all when a mine goes off to our right.
“Ah!”
Goddie cries out, and I spin on the spot to see him suddenly laid out on the ground. Though the blast wasn’t close enough to kill him, its impact has ripped a massive gash into his left leg. The limb is hanging off at an unnatural angle, like the slightest tug would force it to break off altogether. Goddie stares down at the wound with delirious fascination, and I have to hold my stomach to control my reaction to the grim sight. A broken bone juts out of his flesh at a fearful jagged angle.
Stirling grabs a shocked Sheila by the arm, barking at us to drag Goddie along by his shoulders. As I reach down to aid my fellow reject, I can see Briggs fighting with his handgun on the perimeter of the minefield. It looks like he’s jammed it, and I smile with relief as we start gaining ground again. Briggs looks up across the darkening land, and I know by his snarl that he’s spotted me laughing at him. I have made a crucial mistake, to be so complacent so soon.
“After them!” Briggs demands.
I watch for one, horrified moment as he bounds forward along the luminous path. I try to speed up, but Goddie is too heavy, and I fear that Briggs will reach us before we can get to the forest’s edge. These woods are our only chance to hide now, our chance to conceal ourselves from the Legion’s fast-approaching guns. I turn my head, eager to see how close we are to the safety of the woods. As I do, I let loose a sudden, terrified yell.
Dark figures race towards us from the trees, packed with the same ferocity and speed of Briggs and his crew. This new pack of warriors cry out in a furious battle roar, filled with sharp moves and savage expressions that leave me only one conclusion as to who they are. The Highlanders have chosen this moment to make their attack, whilst we are trapped in the middle of the minefield. And leading the wild warriors is a face I know, and sorely wish that I didn’t.
The ferocious figure of Malcolm Stryker is headed straight for me.
Sixteen
“We’re surrounded!” I shout, my arms burning as I try to keep a hold of Goddie’s failing form. “Stirling! What do we do?”
“Keep going,” he replies, and Apryl obeys him at once.
With Goddie now between us, I’m facing the forest, and facing the Highlander whose silver hair glimmers like wolf-hide in the dusk light. Stryker’s cold blue eyes are everywhere at once, glancing down every few seconds toward the painted lines beneath his thundering feet. Stirling said he didn’t paint those lines. Is it possible that Stryker and his warriors did?
We’re closer to the forest than we are to the Legion, but Goddie’s weight has slowed us down considerably. As much as Stryker and his men set my insides shaking with terror, the wild shouts of the Legion behind me are more than enough to spur me forward. Whoever the Highlanders are, they are not the System. What lies ahead of me now is uncertain, but all that turning back would earn me is an unthinkable level of punishment from Briggs. I have made my decision in this moment of terror and hesitation. I gather my strength, tightening my grip on Goddie, and push forward to catch up with Apryl.
Too late.
It’s all too late as a massive hand grabs my upper arm, yanking me back so sharply that I let Goddie go out of sheer surprise. The smell of burning catches in my throat, choking me as I’m pulled close to the seared black flesh of Briggs’s neck. He rips the gun from around my neck and digs it deep under my ribs. My pained cry startles the others, who freeze on the spot, looking back with horror at the position I’m in. Briggs just laughs.
“I figure you care about this hostage a little more than I care about mine,” he chuckles.
Stirling looks livid, but before he can make a move, the whole minefield is bathed in light. Spotlights shine out from the forest, half-concealed by trees, and their bright white glow makes all the mine-markings disappear. Everyone on the wasteland freezes, a deadly silence landing on us all. It is broken only by a few light footsteps as a lithe figure pushes past Stirling and Sheila to come into view.
“Augustus Briggs,” says Malcolm Stryker. “My, my. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? You’re ageing really badly, you know.”
Briggs is heaving out his breaths like a caged bull, but Stryker’s words and movements flow with a cocky kind of grace. The Highlander offers Briggs a beckoning hand.
“Give that boy to us, and we’ll put the lights out for your recruits to return to the Legion safely.”
“What, this?” Briggs says, squeezing hard on my arm and shaking me to my core. “You didn’t come here for this scrawny little thing, Stryker.”
The Highlander spares me a fleeting look.
“No,” he admits, “but I dread to think what’s going to happen if I let you keep him. Hand him over, now.”
Briggs laughs at Stryker’s harsh tone. “Or what?”
The Highland rebel grins, showing his long teeth.
“Or I’ll ask you really, really nicely,” he replies.
It doesn’t sound like much of a threat, but there’s a hint of a cutting malice in the way Stryker rasps out the simple words. Though he veils himself in humour, when the Highlander stands eye to eye with Briggs, I know exactly who I’m rooting for to come out on top. Briggs is twice the breadth of the lithe man before him, but I can still feel him bristling as he jabs the gun harder into my side.
“You try anything, and this kid gets sprayed all over the minefield,” he warns.
My heart beats all the way up to my throat as Stryker gives out another of his nonchalant grins.
“I told you,” he says calmly. “I’m going to ask you nicely.”
He opens his arms wide in a defenceless, unarmed gesture.
“Hand the boy over—”
The head butt is so swift that I’d have missed it in a blink. I hear a horrible cracking sound, and suddenly Briggs is on the ground.
“—please,” Stryker completes, looking thoroughly amused with himself.
The Highlander fishes my gun out of Briggs’s limp hands and throws it back to me. When he meets my eye, he looks like less of a beast and more of a man than I’ve ever seen him.
“Get back to your friends,” he tells me, “and take the injured boy to my medic. Make it fast. He’s losing too much blood.”
He gives orders as though I’m just another one of his men, but he’s saying exactly what I need to hear right now. He’s willing to help Goddie, so I nod and rush to Apryl to help her drag our fellow reject the rest of the way across the floodlit plain. At this close proximity to the woods, we can pass through the clear spot where Lucrece set off numerous mines without the need for the markers. I thank my absent friend silently, hoping that she’s out there somewhere, knowing that she’s still helping us even now.
“This is a warning,” Malcolm Stryker proclaims, his harsh accent carrying over the minefield to the many trapped legionnaires.
“We’re taking your commander as a hostage. Any attempt to recover him will result in execution: his and yours. I will negotiate his release with Governor Prudell, and no one else. These are my terms. Accept them, and retreat, or my men open fire and blow you to pieces right now.”
The floodlight goes out, bathing us all in the moon’s glow once again. At the forest’s edge, I look back at the Legion’s soldiers. With their ruthless commander fallen, I see them for what they really are—a mass of frightened children who are now carefully retreating through the glowing markers. Stryker’s sharp features are silhouetted against the scene as one of his feet rises to rest on Briggs’s massive chest.
*
The Highlanders have a small camp, which is set up only a little way into the tree line. Two large men take over carrying Goddie, who has long since passed out from the blood still seeping from his massive wound. Stirling, Apryl, and I lag behind them, marching wearily through the trees with our eyes fixed on our unconscious ally. Soon, a tall green tent comes into view directly ahead, marked with a black cross that I presume stands for medical aid.
Outside the tent, there stands the strangest woman I have ever seen. Her face is covered almost totally, enshrouded by a striped mask of silver and black. There is a single opening on the left side of her face, where a narrow black eye observes our approach. Though her small shoulders give the impression of a petite frame, she is covered from head to toe in an oversized smock, which is made of thick, black material, cinched in at her waist by the holster and belt that hold her gun. Her hands and arms poke out at either side of the smock, but they are gloved all the way up to where her sleeves begin. Aside from her single watchful eye, the only shred of humanity visible in this woman is her straight, dark hair, which hangs at her shoulders to frame the mask.
“You’ll have to wait whilst we treat him,” she says as Goddie is carried into the tent. “It could be quite some time. Come this way.”
Behind the medical tent, there is a smaller construction in the same leafy green shade of fabric. Even I have to crouch to pass under its little doorway, but inside it, I can stand up straight again. There are two wide bunks lining the tent’s back wall, plus a long rectangular table with four folding chairs. The woman with the covered face crouches in the tent’s doorway, resting her hand on her chest as she speaks.
“I’m Delilah, by the way. You’d be wise to get some rest. I don’t expect we’ll be settled here much longer, now that we’re holding that commander of yours prisoner.”
Delilah motions to leave, but Stirling follows her quickly, and she pauses at the sound of his movements.
“Can I see Malcolm?” he asks.
Delilah surveys him with her single eye, and it seems like an age passes before she blinks.
“Come along then,” she answers.
“Stirling, wait,” I interject. “Should we come with you?”
I look to Apryl, grateful to see that she, for once, is as lost as I am in the situation. Stirling paces back to me, resting his hands on my shoulders for a moment. The solidity of his touch grounds me as he gives me a comforting smile.
“Everything’s all right now,” he assures me. “Just stay here and rest. I’ll be back.”
When he and Delilah have departed, I’m suddenly glad that Stirling made me fill my pockets with supplies. Apryl and I scoff down the snacks I’d stashed, no matter how crushed they have become during the escape. We try to talk about things that don’t involve the possible horror of the situation we’re now in, but every conversation keeps coming back to Goddie’s recovery, and what’s going to happen next. The urge to talk swiftly leaves us, and once my stomach’s full, I find the soft, wide bunk too inviting to resist. Apryl and I take a bunk each, both promising that we’ll just rest, but not actually fall asleep. We can’t afford to be unconscious right now—there’s far too much to worry about. I have to stay awake, even if I can hear Apryl starting to snore a little, and even if my own eyes are fluttering closed against my control.
*
“Hey now, dem soldiers are sleeping on de job! Fifty laps for bad behaviour!”
Goddie’s booming voice shocks me awake, and I immediately curse myself for falling asleep. Apryl rises groggily from her bunk, and the total darkness outside the tent’s archway tells me that we’ve been out for a couple of hours at least. Goddie is being wheeled into the tent through the arch, his bright eyes wandering to admire the two strapping men that are guiding his wheelchair forward.
“I feel like de Queen of Sheba,” he says with a grin.
“Your friend’s all patched up,” says a voice from the doorway. I refocus to find Delilah’s striped mask peering in at us. “We’ve put him on some pretty strong painkillers, so my apologies if his behaviour’s a little strange for a while.”
Goddie wiggles his eyebrows at Apryl and I suggestively.
“Thanks,” Apryl jibes, “but I doubt if we’ll notice the difference.”
Though her mask remains perfectly still, Delilah laughs behind it. Her laugh is warm and genuine, and her one good eye crinkles as she makes the merry sound. I feel my face stretching into the first proper smile that it has worn for days, my muscles losing their tension as I recline on my bunk.
I should really have learned by now that this kind of happy, relaxed feeling doesn’t last long. Before Goddie can even crack another joke, Delilah recedes from the doorway and a lithe, grey-haired figure steps past her. Malcolm Stryker is easily as tall as Stirling, who stands beside him as they reach Goddie’s chair. Stirling puts one hand on the boy’s forearm, and Goddie gives him a friendly punch, which comes out with all the force of a newborn kitten. The smiles they exchange are brief, and Goddie keeps one eye on Stryker the whole time. The rebel leader is inspecting Goddie’s leg, which is jutting out in front of him on a horizontal platform and enveloped by a thin layer of plaster cast.
“Let me check this wound of yours,” the Highland leader states. Nobody dares to speak against the idea, so Stryker reaches out and pokes the bare, bruised skin just above Goddie’s left knee. “You feel that?” he asks.
Goddie nods. Stryker repeats the process, moving down to the boy’s plaster-coated shin, until Goddie stops nodding. Then, quite unexpectedly, Stryker balls his pale hand into a fist and brings it crashing down on Goddie’s leg. I wince, expecting my friend to give a wild cry of pain, but all I hear is a metallic, reverberating clang. Goddie doesn’t even flinch at the impact, and Stryker gives him a satisfied little nod.
“Titanium underskin,” he explains with clear pride. “This leg’ll be the strongest part of you, as soon as the bone at the core heals.”
Goddie looks down at himself with a wonderstruck grin.
“I guess I should take up football or something,” he remarks.
“I wouldn’t bet against you if you did,” Stryker replies.
The Highlander brings himself level with Goddie’s face, his icy blue eyes observing the boy with interest.
“You’ll get used to the feeling of metal in your skin,” he tells him, “but it takes a while.”
Stryker knocks his fist against his own forehead, and the same metallic clang echoes in the small space.
“I fractured my skull on a mission a couple of years back,” he recalls, “and now the headbutt is my weapon of choice.”
“No wonder Briggs went out cold,” I add.
I hadn’t really meant to speak out loud, and I regret it as soon as Stryker turns his gaze on me. He looks vaguely amused by my remark, but there’s something inquisitive in his look that makes me squirm. He crosses his arms, surveying me side-on, like a bird of prey would.
“I saved you from him,” Stryker states. “A little ‘thank you’ wouldn’t go amiss, whenever you’re ready.”
There’s a lump in my throat that tells me not to give in to his suggestion.
“I might thank you,” I reply, “once I know what you intend to do with us.”
Malcolm Stryker glances at Stirling briefly before he answers me.
“Do?” he begins. “Are you simple, boy?”
The rasp of threat returns to his tone as he stares me down.
“Do you think it was by providence alone that I cornered you that night in these very woods?” he asks. “Do you think it was fate that I was waiting to take hold of the boy you found in the Underground? Do you think I have these by pure coincidence?”
The Highlander slaps the side of his belt, where I see two familiar objects hanging at his thigh. One is the tablet containing the maps that Goddie thought he’d lost on the hovercraft. The other is his minesweeper.
“That was for Lucrece, you bastard,” she seethes.
Panic sets in as I hear the other doctors running toward the compound. They’re going for help, to find someone to stop us from escaping. I know that there’s nothing but wasteland all around us, and the quickest path to cover is straight across the minefield ahead. I rue Stirling for his stupid, reckless plan, running out into the darkness with no hope of freedom. Hot, angry tears threaten to burst from the corners of my eyes as I follow my fellow rejects, the weight of my own hopelessness getting heavier all the time.
That is, until my eyes befall the minefield. Stirling said we had to wait for sundown before we could go, and now I see why. Someone has painted luminous lines across the wasteland. As the plain grows darker ahead, the trail glows brighter, leading us safely between the deadly mines with a clearly marked passageway. It is long and winding, but it will get us to the other side.
“I’ll lead,” Stirling shouts, already advancing on the path. “Goddie, keep Sheila at the back of us so they won’t try to shoot.”
“Got it, boss,” Goddie replies, and suddenly we’re off across the wasteland.
“How did you do this?” I ask as we carefully follow the painted path. “Stirling? When did you get outside to mark this up?”
Stirling turns to me a little, his expression mixed somewhere between pain and apology.
“I didn’t,” he reveals.
“HIGHLANDER!”
Briggs’s voice booms across the wasteland, and I glance back to see the gargantuan man standing at the wasteland’s edge.
“So long, Commander!” Stirling shouts back with a wave. “I wouldn’t try to follow us, if I were you. One shot at any of those mines, and you’re a dead man.”
“Unless we blow you up first!” Briggs retorts. Soldiers are forming a crowd behind him, many of them suited up with guns.
“Go ahead,” Stirling answers, “but you’ll kill Sheila here in the process.”
Sheila is our one bargaining chip. So long as her life is in danger, we can make our way across the wasteland. We move on again, secure in the knowledge that Briggs won’t endanger the Legion’s staff just to get even with a bunch of teenage runaways. He isn’t that petty. He isn’t that foolish. He wouldn’t kill one of his own people for the sake of his pride.
It deafens us all when a mine goes off to our right.
“Ah!”
Goddie cries out, and I spin on the spot to see him suddenly laid out on the ground. Though the blast wasn’t close enough to kill him, its impact has ripped a massive gash into his left leg. The limb is hanging off at an unnatural angle, like the slightest tug would force it to break off altogether. Goddie stares down at the wound with delirious fascination, and I have to hold my stomach to control my reaction to the grim sight. A broken bone juts out of his flesh at a fearful jagged angle.
Stirling grabs a shocked Sheila by the arm, barking at us to drag Goddie along by his shoulders. As I reach down to aid my fellow reject, I can see Briggs fighting with his handgun on the perimeter of the minefield. It looks like he’s jammed it, and I smile with relief as we start gaining ground again. Briggs looks up across the darkening land, and I know by his snarl that he’s spotted me laughing at him. I have made a crucial mistake, to be so complacent so soon.
“After them!” Briggs demands.
I watch for one, horrified moment as he bounds forward along the luminous path. I try to speed up, but Goddie is too heavy, and I fear that Briggs will reach us before we can get to the forest’s edge. These woods are our only chance to hide now, our chance to conceal ourselves from the Legion’s fast-approaching guns. I turn my head, eager to see how close we are to the safety of the woods. As I do, I let loose a sudden, terrified yell.
Dark figures race towards us from the trees, packed with the same ferocity and speed of Briggs and his crew. This new pack of warriors cry out in a furious battle roar, filled with sharp moves and savage expressions that leave me only one conclusion as to who they are. The Highlanders have chosen this moment to make their attack, whilst we are trapped in the middle of the minefield. And leading the wild warriors is a face I know, and sorely wish that I didn’t.
The ferocious figure of Malcolm Stryker is headed straight for me.
Sixteen
“We’re surrounded!” I shout, my arms burning as I try to keep a hold of Goddie’s failing form. “Stirling! What do we do?”
“Keep going,” he replies, and Apryl obeys him at once.
With Goddie now between us, I’m facing the forest, and facing the Highlander whose silver hair glimmers like wolf-hide in the dusk light. Stryker’s cold blue eyes are everywhere at once, glancing down every few seconds toward the painted lines beneath his thundering feet. Stirling said he didn’t paint those lines. Is it possible that Stryker and his warriors did?
We’re closer to the forest than we are to the Legion, but Goddie’s weight has slowed us down considerably. As much as Stryker and his men set my insides shaking with terror, the wild shouts of the Legion behind me are more than enough to spur me forward. Whoever the Highlanders are, they are not the System. What lies ahead of me now is uncertain, but all that turning back would earn me is an unthinkable level of punishment from Briggs. I have made my decision in this moment of terror and hesitation. I gather my strength, tightening my grip on Goddie, and push forward to catch up with Apryl.
Too late.
It’s all too late as a massive hand grabs my upper arm, yanking me back so sharply that I let Goddie go out of sheer surprise. The smell of burning catches in my throat, choking me as I’m pulled close to the seared black flesh of Briggs’s neck. He rips the gun from around my neck and digs it deep under my ribs. My pained cry startles the others, who freeze on the spot, looking back with horror at the position I’m in. Briggs just laughs.
“I figure you care about this hostage a little more than I care about mine,” he chuckles.
Stirling looks livid, but before he can make a move, the whole minefield is bathed in light. Spotlights shine out from the forest, half-concealed by trees, and their bright white glow makes all the mine-markings disappear. Everyone on the wasteland freezes, a deadly silence landing on us all. It is broken only by a few light footsteps as a lithe figure pushes past Stirling and Sheila to come into view.
“Augustus Briggs,” says Malcolm Stryker. “My, my. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? You’re ageing really badly, you know.”
Briggs is heaving out his breaths like a caged bull, but Stryker’s words and movements flow with a cocky kind of grace. The Highlander offers Briggs a beckoning hand.
“Give that boy to us, and we’ll put the lights out for your recruits to return to the Legion safely.”
“What, this?” Briggs says, squeezing hard on my arm and shaking me to my core. “You didn’t come here for this scrawny little thing, Stryker.”
The Highlander spares me a fleeting look.
“No,” he admits, “but I dread to think what’s going to happen if I let you keep him. Hand him over, now.”
Briggs laughs at Stryker’s harsh tone. “Or what?”
The Highland rebel grins, showing his long teeth.
“Or I’ll ask you really, really nicely,” he replies.
It doesn’t sound like much of a threat, but there’s a hint of a cutting malice in the way Stryker rasps out the simple words. Though he veils himself in humour, when the Highlander stands eye to eye with Briggs, I know exactly who I’m rooting for to come out on top. Briggs is twice the breadth of the lithe man before him, but I can still feel him bristling as he jabs the gun harder into my side.
“You try anything, and this kid gets sprayed all over the minefield,” he warns.
My heart beats all the way up to my throat as Stryker gives out another of his nonchalant grins.
“I told you,” he says calmly. “I’m going to ask you nicely.”
He opens his arms wide in a defenceless, unarmed gesture.
“Hand the boy over—”
The head butt is so swift that I’d have missed it in a blink. I hear a horrible cracking sound, and suddenly Briggs is on the ground.
“—please,” Stryker completes, looking thoroughly amused with himself.
The Highlander fishes my gun out of Briggs’s limp hands and throws it back to me. When he meets my eye, he looks like less of a beast and more of a man than I’ve ever seen him.
“Get back to your friends,” he tells me, “and take the injured boy to my medic. Make it fast. He’s losing too much blood.”
He gives orders as though I’m just another one of his men, but he’s saying exactly what I need to hear right now. He’s willing to help Goddie, so I nod and rush to Apryl to help her drag our fellow reject the rest of the way across the floodlit plain. At this close proximity to the woods, we can pass through the clear spot where Lucrece set off numerous mines without the need for the markers. I thank my absent friend silently, hoping that she’s out there somewhere, knowing that she’s still helping us even now.
“This is a warning,” Malcolm Stryker proclaims, his harsh accent carrying over the minefield to the many trapped legionnaires.
“We’re taking your commander as a hostage. Any attempt to recover him will result in execution: his and yours. I will negotiate his release with Governor Prudell, and no one else. These are my terms. Accept them, and retreat, or my men open fire and blow you to pieces right now.”
The floodlight goes out, bathing us all in the moon’s glow once again. At the forest’s edge, I look back at the Legion’s soldiers. With their ruthless commander fallen, I see them for what they really are—a mass of frightened children who are now carefully retreating through the glowing markers. Stryker’s sharp features are silhouetted against the scene as one of his feet rises to rest on Briggs’s massive chest.
*
The Highlanders have a small camp, which is set up only a little way into the tree line. Two large men take over carrying Goddie, who has long since passed out from the blood still seeping from his massive wound. Stirling, Apryl, and I lag behind them, marching wearily through the trees with our eyes fixed on our unconscious ally. Soon, a tall green tent comes into view directly ahead, marked with a black cross that I presume stands for medical aid.
Outside the tent, there stands the strangest woman I have ever seen. Her face is covered almost totally, enshrouded by a striped mask of silver and black. There is a single opening on the left side of her face, where a narrow black eye observes our approach. Though her small shoulders give the impression of a petite frame, she is covered from head to toe in an oversized smock, which is made of thick, black material, cinched in at her waist by the holster and belt that hold her gun. Her hands and arms poke out at either side of the smock, but they are gloved all the way up to where her sleeves begin. Aside from her single watchful eye, the only shred of humanity visible in this woman is her straight, dark hair, which hangs at her shoulders to frame the mask.
“You’ll have to wait whilst we treat him,” she says as Goddie is carried into the tent. “It could be quite some time. Come this way.”
Behind the medical tent, there is a smaller construction in the same leafy green shade of fabric. Even I have to crouch to pass under its little doorway, but inside it, I can stand up straight again. There are two wide bunks lining the tent’s back wall, plus a long rectangular table with four folding chairs. The woman with the covered face crouches in the tent’s doorway, resting her hand on her chest as she speaks.
“I’m Delilah, by the way. You’d be wise to get some rest. I don’t expect we’ll be settled here much longer, now that we’re holding that commander of yours prisoner.”
Delilah motions to leave, but Stirling follows her quickly, and she pauses at the sound of his movements.
“Can I see Malcolm?” he asks.
Delilah surveys him with her single eye, and it seems like an age passes before she blinks.
“Come along then,” she answers.
“Stirling, wait,” I interject. “Should we come with you?”
I look to Apryl, grateful to see that she, for once, is as lost as I am in the situation. Stirling paces back to me, resting his hands on my shoulders for a moment. The solidity of his touch grounds me as he gives me a comforting smile.
“Everything’s all right now,” he assures me. “Just stay here and rest. I’ll be back.”
When he and Delilah have departed, I’m suddenly glad that Stirling made me fill my pockets with supplies. Apryl and I scoff down the snacks I’d stashed, no matter how crushed they have become during the escape. We try to talk about things that don’t involve the possible horror of the situation we’re now in, but every conversation keeps coming back to Goddie’s recovery, and what’s going to happen next. The urge to talk swiftly leaves us, and once my stomach’s full, I find the soft, wide bunk too inviting to resist. Apryl and I take a bunk each, both promising that we’ll just rest, but not actually fall asleep. We can’t afford to be unconscious right now—there’s far too much to worry about. I have to stay awake, even if I can hear Apryl starting to snore a little, and even if my own eyes are fluttering closed against my control.
*
“Hey now, dem soldiers are sleeping on de job! Fifty laps for bad behaviour!”
Goddie’s booming voice shocks me awake, and I immediately curse myself for falling asleep. Apryl rises groggily from her bunk, and the total darkness outside the tent’s archway tells me that we’ve been out for a couple of hours at least. Goddie is being wheeled into the tent through the arch, his bright eyes wandering to admire the two strapping men that are guiding his wheelchair forward.
“I feel like de Queen of Sheba,” he says with a grin.
“Your friend’s all patched up,” says a voice from the doorway. I refocus to find Delilah’s striped mask peering in at us. “We’ve put him on some pretty strong painkillers, so my apologies if his behaviour’s a little strange for a while.”
Goddie wiggles his eyebrows at Apryl and I suggestively.
“Thanks,” Apryl jibes, “but I doubt if we’ll notice the difference.”
Though her mask remains perfectly still, Delilah laughs behind it. Her laugh is warm and genuine, and her one good eye crinkles as she makes the merry sound. I feel my face stretching into the first proper smile that it has worn for days, my muscles losing their tension as I recline on my bunk.
I should really have learned by now that this kind of happy, relaxed feeling doesn’t last long. Before Goddie can even crack another joke, Delilah recedes from the doorway and a lithe, grey-haired figure steps past her. Malcolm Stryker is easily as tall as Stirling, who stands beside him as they reach Goddie’s chair. Stirling puts one hand on the boy’s forearm, and Goddie gives him a friendly punch, which comes out with all the force of a newborn kitten. The smiles they exchange are brief, and Goddie keeps one eye on Stryker the whole time. The rebel leader is inspecting Goddie’s leg, which is jutting out in front of him on a horizontal platform and enveloped by a thin layer of plaster cast.
“Let me check this wound of yours,” the Highland leader states. Nobody dares to speak against the idea, so Stryker reaches out and pokes the bare, bruised skin just above Goddie’s left knee. “You feel that?” he asks.
Goddie nods. Stryker repeats the process, moving down to the boy’s plaster-coated shin, until Goddie stops nodding. Then, quite unexpectedly, Stryker balls his pale hand into a fist and brings it crashing down on Goddie’s leg. I wince, expecting my friend to give a wild cry of pain, but all I hear is a metallic, reverberating clang. Goddie doesn’t even flinch at the impact, and Stryker gives him a satisfied little nod.
“Titanium underskin,” he explains with clear pride. “This leg’ll be the strongest part of you, as soon as the bone at the core heals.”
Goddie looks down at himself with a wonderstruck grin.
“I guess I should take up football or something,” he remarks.
“I wouldn’t bet against you if you did,” Stryker replies.
The Highlander brings himself level with Goddie’s face, his icy blue eyes observing the boy with interest.
“You’ll get used to the feeling of metal in your skin,” he tells him, “but it takes a while.”
Stryker knocks his fist against his own forehead, and the same metallic clang echoes in the small space.
“I fractured my skull on a mission a couple of years back,” he recalls, “and now the headbutt is my weapon of choice.”
“No wonder Briggs went out cold,” I add.
I hadn’t really meant to speak out loud, and I regret it as soon as Stryker turns his gaze on me. He looks vaguely amused by my remark, but there’s something inquisitive in his look that makes me squirm. He crosses his arms, surveying me side-on, like a bird of prey would.
“I saved you from him,” Stryker states. “A little ‘thank you’ wouldn’t go amiss, whenever you’re ready.”
There’s a lump in my throat that tells me not to give in to his suggestion.
“I might thank you,” I reply, “once I know what you intend to do with us.”
Malcolm Stryker glances at Stirling briefly before he answers me.
“Do?” he begins. “Are you simple, boy?”
The rasp of threat returns to his tone as he stares me down.
“Do you think it was by providence alone that I cornered you that night in these very woods?” he asks. “Do you think it was fate that I was waiting to take hold of the boy you found in the Underground? Do you think I have these by pure coincidence?”
The Highlander slaps the side of his belt, where I see two familiar objects hanging at his thigh. One is the tablet containing the maps that Goddie thought he’d lost on the hovercraft. The other is his minesweeper.
