Wilde Card, page 34
The room was much like a studio; a kitchenette opened into a small lounge area with a TV and a gaming console Tia had only ever heard of. Beyond that was a double bed, the sheets strewn all over the place, the pillows dented. Someone had slept here recently - very recently. But who? And why were they locked in? Tia saw that the door could also only be opened from the inside with an ID card. She headed straight for the metal rail that was bolted onto the wall in front of the bed, the wall that was flush with what looked to be an ensuite bathroom. Hanging from it was an armful of nondescript clothes; black jeans, black shirts, black hoodies. There were no body products, lotions or hair accessories. No clues on what gender then.
“Well...this feels anti-climatic,” Jay said.
Raghida punched him in the arm, “Do you have to be such a dick all the time?”
“You know you want some-”
The bathroom door flew open and a whirl of blackness crashed into him. Raghida and Tia snapped into action, flanking him on either side. They drew their weapons and prepared to use them. It wasn’t necessary - Jay had flattened his assailant against the floor, using his knees alone. They stared down at the squirming, wriggling figure.
A girl, around their age, maybe even younger. Her lack of hair was startling but a light fuzz made it obvious that her head was shaved, not bald. She glared up at them through the clearest, amber eyes - like a gemstone Andy had once brought home for Tia. Her skin was pale, unblemished, smooth. She struggled beneath Jay’s knees but she wasn’t as strong as her attack had assumed.
“What the fuck?” Raghida said, the first time Tia had ever heard her curse.
“Get off me.”
Her voice was light, soft, like feathers although her words were lined with steel. She was scrappy - whoever she was, Tia liked her nerve. She’d been hiding in the bathroom, waiting for a chance to attack. Tia could understand now why the bedsheets were so rumpled; the girl must have heard their approach and bolted. But even that...to hear them in time through the thick door, her hearing would need to be incredible.
“You have some explaining to do,” Tia said, her stance wide.
“From the ground, staring up into your crotch?”
Jay sputtered, the laughter unexpectedly bubbling out of his mouth. The girl was tough and he liked it, obviously. He jumped to his feet, reaching down a hand to help her up. She took it, hesitantly, surprising all of them. She was tall, eye level with Jay, which explained why he went down so easily but she was thin, in a graceful way, so Tia knew he would be annoyed that he had tumbled.
“What’s your name?” Tia asked.
The girl adjusted her night shirt. “Zeta.”
“Greek?” Raghida murmured.
“You could say that.”
The girl glanced at the clock above the door. Her face paled. “You need to leave. I don’t know who you are or how you got in here but you don’t work for the bloc. And they’ll hurt me for this.”
Jay jolted. “Hurt you?”
“Yes. You need to go,” she said, heading for the bed. She climbed in and only as she threw the covers back over her legs did Tia see the monitor beside the bed. Zeta slid a cap over her head, connected by a dozen wires to the monitor. It fit snugly to the shape of her head. Her big eyes peered out from underneath it. The sight was so bizarre that Tia didn’t know what to say. Jay took over.
“What are they doing to you?”
“They monitor my vitals every day. And now they’re going to see a spike in my blood pressure, my heart rate and my synapses. So thank you, for that.”
“Monitoring you for what? Why would they hurt you?”
“Please leave.”
Tia’s mind was in overdrive. She was thinking through Andy’s journal, what he had seen, his suspicions. She hadn’t expected this. Zeta. Something was afoot here. But they couldn’t stand around all day chatting. She finally kicked into action. “Get up. You need to come with us.”
Zeta rolled her eyes to Tia. “They’ll kill me.”
If that was intended to convince Tia, it had the opposite effect. She grabbed jeans from the rail, flung them at the bed. She searched for shoes and found only a pair of thin, silky slippers by the sofa. They would be torn into shreds by the rough terrain within seconds but it was better than nothing. Zeta seemed to have accepted that they were not leaving without her. She dressed, slinging on a hoodie. Tia pulled the hood up over her head and headed for the door, “Let’s go.”
They made a train; Tia in the front, followed by Raghida, Zeta and Jay bringing up the rear. The corridor was unchanged, empty and eerily silent. They stepped through the second door, leading up to the initial walkway. As they approached the staircase, footsteps rang at the top. They moved quickly. Raghida pushed Zeta behind as Jay came forward so that the three Rebels formed a line of offense. The footsteps seemed to take an age to descend. Tia forced her heart rate to slow, taking deep breaths, steadying her hand. The kunai was in one, the knuckle duster settled across the fingers of the other. Beside her, Raghida was in a crouch, ready to go low whilst Tia and Jay went high - they had settled naturally into the positions. They had the upper hand, the staircase was narrow and winding whereas they had all the space of the corridor to manoeuvre in.
The man who appeared at the bottom of the staircase was not a guard, nor a Bloc 3 scientist. It was Quentin. Tia huffed, her body sagging. “Quentin.” Beside her, everyone else relaxed. Zeta, however, looked confused.
Quentin paused in front of them, his face grave. “Tia, what have you done?”
She felt guilt. But mostly, she felt righteousness. She had a right to avenge her father; a right to know what was going on. “I’m sorry. My father would have wanted me to.”
“You don’t know what you'll set in motion by doing this.”
Tia straightened. “They killed my father. Let them come.”
“I know,” he sighed. “And that’s why I owe you this.” He was resigned but to what, Tia didn't know.
Raghida, confused, stepped forward. Zeta followed her, peering around at him like he was a strange creature. “What’s going on?”
Quentin seemed to remember that there were three other people around him. He held up his new, shiny ID card. Oh. “When you use a card to gain access to a department, it’s registered on the bloc’s system. I have the security clearance to come down here...but that doesn’t mean I should. They know I'm here, or at least, they will. They’ll come for me.”
Tia gasped, “Q, I’m sorry, I didn't know-”
“Why would you? You're just a girl, playing at Rebel.”
She swallowed hard, though he hadn't said it to be cruel. At some point between their meeting and now, he had aged rapidly. His jowls were friendly no longer, his eyes sunken. Was this what death looked like?
His eyes seemed to moisten in the dim glow of the lighting. He looked at Tia, into her, through her. “A year ago, your father thought he had discovered something. An accident, he assured me, but the Rebel in him didn't die like it did within me. He couldn't forget about it. He asked me to come with him. I turned him down, his oldest friend, because I was scared of what these people can do. I have regretted it every day since.”
“Quentin-”
“They killed him, and he deserves justice for that.”
The finality in his tone was like a gong in Tia’s head. She was terrified of what she had done. She hadn’t thought it through, using his ID to get here. She had been - as he said - a girl playing at Rebel. She had let her emotions make her decisions and now they were here, listening to an old man, her friend, taking in air like he was choking on it.
She started towards him and he jolted. For a moment, his eyes were clear and bright as they focused on her. Though he claimed the Rebel within him had been stamped out, Tia saw the truth burning in them. “You need to go now. I don’t know what they’ve been doing with her,” he nodded towards Zeta. “But they won’t be pleased that she’s gone. They’ll be looking for her.”
“Quentin,” she breathed.
He was Andy’s oldest friend, he had always been like an uncle to her. There was a lump in her throat. She didn’t want to leave him behind, knowing that she wouldn’t see him ever again. And there was no doubt in her mind that she would never see him again. Another connection lost, like a bulb in a string of lights. She wanted to hug him, to smell his old, familiar scent. He waved her off, a brave smile wavering on his face. “I should have done this in the first place. I’m only here now because I let him down. He was like a younger brother to me and all he wanted was my support.”
He shrugged off his lab coat and handed it to Zeta. Through watery eyes, Tia pulled off her wig and fixed it over Zeta’s skull, adjusting it so it looked as natural as possible. She shook out her own hair, wavy from the braids, and wiped her cheeks. It was Raghida who led them away and up the stairs. He watched them as they ascended, and Tia paused to look at his face one last time before the door closed behind them.
“We need to make this fast. Someone might recognise her,” Jay said somberly.
They fanned out so that it looked less like they were protecting human cargo and more like they actually worked in the building. Zeta’s head was moving on a swivel, taking in her surroundings like a school kid on a trip. Once in the foyer, Tia told her to duck her head and avoid eye contact with anyone. She said this with a smile on her face so that it appeared as though they were having a normal conversation. Zeta obeyed, her feet skidding slightly in her silk slippers. She giggled and Raghida cut her eyes to Tia; ‘what the fuck?’ it seemed to say. There was a lot of that going around today.
It was easier to get out than it was to get in. The barricade swung outward without prompt and they split into two by two to get through the revolving door. “This is a door?” Zeta asked, apparently amazed. No one answered as they bolted it towards the gate. Jay had wrapped his hand around her wrist lest she get distracted by anything else. They were so close to freedom, it hurt to slow down for anything. The guards barely glanced towards them as they were buzzed out - they were obviously more worried about who got in then who got out.
Merely minutes after they began heading back to the truck, Zeta was whimpering. Tia became aware of the noise through the sound of her own pulse ringing in her ears. They had been powering down the road, just glad to be out of the bloc. She stopped and turned to see Zeta hobbling behind them, her slippers in strips - as Tia had predicted. She swore and called out to the others. Tia was impressed that Zeta hadn’t complained or cried out, even though her feet must have been cut to shreds.
“You should have said something,” Tia muttered as she kicked off her shoes.
“Would it have changed anything?”
“Sit down.”
Zeta sat down on the roadside and stretched out her long legs. There was an intake of breath behind Tia as she took Zeta’s feet in her hands. The skin was red raw, cracked and bleeding. The skin was incredibly soft, like baby feet, and therefore the rough ground had completely ruined it. Tia slid her boots onto Zeta’s feet, throwing the slippers aside. She was the closest to her in terms of feet size.
“Thank you,” Zeta said.
But Tia had sprung up already. They made it to the truck in good time, even though Tia stepped on several stones and barely avoided slicing herself open on a large shard of glass. Jay was to drive, and Tia and Raghida were on watch with Zeta in the back of the truck. Tia didn’t let herself breathe properly until the doors of the truck were closed and it was on the move. Their guest seemed fascinated by the vehicle, and spent a few moments touching the walls, feeling the benches, pulling on the velcro straps. She became entertained by the way velcro worked and pulled at it repeatedly, grinning at the friction in that innocent way only a child usually could.
Tia felt utterly, utterly drained. Her heart had sped so much that she almost couldn’t believe it was still inside her chest. Adrenaline had been powering her, along with the knowledge that this was the moment that had changed Andy’s destiny forever - but now she was out of adrenaline and filled with sadness. Raghida, too, appeared to have deflated. She yawned into her hand, one eye following Zeta around. “We have so much to talk about when we get back.”
Understatement of the year. For now, the rocking of the truck was lulling Tia into a haze and she couldn’t make herself focus on anything else. For the second time in a week, Tia fell asleep in the back of a truck.
22 - All Warfare Is Based On Deception
They couldn't make Tia walk that whole way in her socks. Jay dropped the three of them as close to the Tunnels as he dared before driving the truck back to its hiding place. They had abandoned the lab coats and the disguises, snacked on leftover crackers and napped so that they were awake enough to protect Zeta. She would need it. Everything they passed was a point of interest to her; the gravel, the signposts, the abandoned buildings. She touched everything, not giving a second thought to dirt or bacteria.
When they ducked into the Tunnels, she gasped in the filtered air and smiled. Raghida found it all very amusing and kept meeting Tia’s eyes to make exaggerated faces. It was the only thing stopping Tia from yanking Zeta by her hood, if she was being honest. Her head covered, they led the girl to the infirmary, avoiding eye contact - or any kind of contact - with others. Their first point of action was to look at Zeta’s wounds. Then try to figure out what the hell was going on.
Tia left Raghida to tend to their guest. She had to find Natalia and tell her what had happened; out of respect for her as a leader...but also because Tia just really wanted to be in her presence right now. The sensation was new to her, and she was willing to pander to it just this once. She found her not in her office, nor in the council room as Tia had expected, but in her bedroom. Natalia opened the door and Tia was inside before she even had a chance to invite her in.
“Whaa-”
“So you're gonna be mad and that's okay, I get that, you know? We infiltrated Bloc 3 today, where my father did recon before the government began watching him. We found a girl. Zeta. And my uncle - well he's not really my uncle but anyway - Quentin is going to die because of me, because I was selfish and I didn't think it through, didn't think about him in the midst of all this. We brought her back with us and we had to use weapons but we didn't take gear. So yes, you're gonna be mad but I had to. Talia, I had to.”
She had blurred everything in a rush of sentences and syllables and sounds, her words slipping and sliding over each other. She wasn't looking at Talia as she rambled, instead pacing back and forth, tugging at her frizzed up hair. They had only just begun to understand each other and she was worried that this might cause them to backtrack.
“Tia.”
She was forced to look at Talia. She was wearing soft pants, a shirt and was barefoot - Tia was surprised to see that she had a birthmark on the top of her foot. It wasn’t shaped like anything, just a splodge, but she found it interesting anyway. Admittedly, she was stalling. When she finally looked up at Talia’s face, she had expected to see rage set into the fine features. Instead, she saw concern.
Talia approached her, reaching. “You're limping.”
She had completely forgotten about that. Tia suddenly felt weak as she coerced her into sitting on the bed. It was perfectly made, the corners tucked and all creases smoothed. “You make your bed better than I do.”
Her comment made Talia’s brow cease further and she paused, confused. It was irrelevant. Tia thought that maybe the pain was finally catching up to her. Talia laughed once, humourlessly. “Matthew was an army brat.”
Ah.
“Did he teach you?”
“He didn't. He hit me until I learned.”
“I'm sorry.”
Talia waved it off. “Why are you only wearing socks?” Her frown was so precious that Tia’s chest twisted. It was weird to see her care. She felt woozy and braced herself on the edge of the bed.
“I gave my boots to Zeta, she was bleeding.”
“Okay, we'll get to that later. Now you're bleeding.”
Her feet were tender, bleeding and swollen. But she knew she could handle the pain, whereas Zeta had obviously never known hardship in her entire life - her skin was just too soft - and had needed the boots. She didn't regret her decision, though she felt blisters developing on her heels. Natalia looked up into her eyes, scrutinising.
“You're pale.”
For the first time during the whole day, she felt her pulse slow down. She could measure her heart rate against every blink of Talia’s beautiful, blue eyes. She felt like safety. Tia found herself looking away to avoid giving it all away - Tia didn't think she would appreciate knowing that she could breathe again just because Talia had looked at her. That would be getting ahead of herself.
“It's been a very eventful day,” she croaked.
Talia reached up and laid a hand against her cheek. It was warm, the long fingers curving around her cheekbone. She couldn't resist; she closed her eyes and leaned into it. And then the door burst open and Raghida skidded in.
“Tia!”
She paused when she realised what she had interrupted. She only took enough time to note that Natalia was kneeling at Tia’s feet, gazing into her eyes, one hand cupping her face. Like a professional, she snapped it and filed it away for future discussion. “Tia! You're going to want to see this!”
Natalia came too, pausing only to kick some battered shoes on. They hurried to the infirmary where Raghida had left Zeta, hoping she would stay and not try to make her own way around the Tunnels. “Remember the state of her feet outside the bloc?”
Tia nodded as they burst into the room, a long row of beds stretching before them. Zeta sat on the nearest one, Tia’s boots on the floor. She saw it straight away. She halted, confusion trickling through her slowly.
