The Wandering (The Lux Guardians, #2) (11 page)

Miya is staring
through a window that’s taller than she is and as wide as a ship,
her lips pursed in concentration. I stop beside her, leaning
against the glass. Miya spares me a silent nod of hello then
returns to the staring. Now that I’m closer, her focus looks more
analytical than curious. She’s planning something. Oh God.

I
ignore my face in the window, peering into the room. I don’t have
to look to know my eyes are sunken, my skin pulled tight over my
skull. Every day I look worse. Every day I
feel
worse. Maybe this is what it
means to be States’s tool. Maybe I just destroy everything around
me until eventually I destroy myself.

Inside the Port of
Hull building, I can’t see anything but plastic furniture. Chairs
cling to each other in fours and fives, tripped over when the
flares hit. They look a lot like a drunk gang of friends on a
Friday night. There are no more clues than the chairs to what the
room behind the glass is.

Staring at a twisted chair, I think,
I can’t tell Tia about what might have happened to
her
. She’s not a carrier—The Guardians
know that much—but States could have done God knows what to her,
made her into anything. She doesn’t need that now, not after losing
Marrin.

I
pinch the inside of my elbow.
No
worrying.

“What is this place?”
I ask Miya, pressing my nose to the glass.

“Some kind of waiting
room.” She’s still squinting, calculating.

“Waiting room for
what?”

She
makes a noise like
muh
, which I take to mean ‘How the fuck should I
know?’

I glance at Miya
through the rain and find her watching me. Her black hair is
plastered in slashes to her forehead, her red vest clinging to her
body. She doesn’t wear a jacket, even though it’s raining. She
doesn’t give a crap.

First Hele, now
Miya—am I the only person pissed off with this rain? I shake
droplets from my hair, water sliding inside the collar of my jacket
and down my spine. I just made it worse. Great.

Miya is pointing over
her shoulder. I follow the line of her hand to the boat.

“Oh,” I say. “So there
was a … a station for boats? Like the tube stations?”

“I guess.” She
produces a penknife and a hair slide from her jeans pocket. “Wanna
go in?”

“No,” I say instantly.
“I don’t think we’re meant to go in there.”

“Ha!” She smirks,
kneeling on the wet ground as she jams the hair clip into the lock
on the door. “Says who? The Guardians?” Within half a minute, the
lock clicks open, the door swinging backward. Miya raises an
eyebrow at me. “How many rules have you broken in the last month,
Honour? Five? Ten? You’re a genuine criminal—it’s about time you
started reaping the rewards.”

“I can do without the
reaping,” I say, nervously looking around. Nobody seems to have
noticed that Miya has broken into a building. Nobody’s even near. I
suppose no one would really care, since The Guardians stole an
entire boat, but it still bothers me.

From inside the glass
room Miya shouts, “Holy shit, look at this thing!”

I bolt inside the
building without thinking. “What?”

Miya’s smile is
devilish when I catch up to her. “I’m sorry, Honour, there is no
thing. But you’re in now. Might as well have a look around.”

I groan my annoyance
but follow her through the dishevelled waiting room. In some parts
the glass has been shaken out of window panes, making the carpet a
wicked obstacle course. I step carefully. Miya vaults over the
shattered glass like a wild animal. The glint in her eye suggests
she’s a deadly one.

“You’re terrible,” I
mutter as we emerge into a dark corridor. Tiny beams of light slip
through cracks in the wall. I watch dust float in them, dwelling
again on what happened to me in Underground London Zone.

Miya’s quiet laugh is
pleased. “The worst.”

As
the dust motes spin and fly in their cage of light, I decide
nothing has changed. If the Officials
did
do something to make me a
carrier, they did it years ago. I’ve been living with it all this
time, unknowing. I’m not suddenly dangerous now that I know. I
might be a ticking bomb but I’m not gonna go off right this minute.
I’ve lived through it and I’m still alive.

“What?”

Miya is watching me
curiously. It makes me uncomfortable. “Look what I found,” she
says. “A restricted door.”

“Miya,” I warn. The
door is metal and armoured. I don’t think a hair pin is going to
open it. She doesn’t look any less determined, though.

“Honour, come over
here for a minute.”

I
cross the corridor, frowning. I open my mouth to ask what she’s
planning to do, but my words are cut off by a burst of crackling
noise and then a massive
bang
. I flinch.

I run a hand over my
face. “Where did you get explosives?”

“I might have swiped a
few things from the Guardians’ stores when they weren’t looking.”
Miya edges the door open with her boot. The room is pitch black
until Miya switches on a torch and a narrow beam of light is thrown
from her hand.

“What kind of
things?”

“Batteries,
explosives, water purification tablets. I might have also taken
seven knives.”

I
turn in a circle, taking in the storage room. Shelves bisect the
walls, running around the small square of lino on the floor. Half
of the shelves are empty, but the others are cluttered with
guns—not small hand guns like the Guardians have or the nimble
electric guns the Officials carry. These guns are long and bulky
and look like they could do a lot of damage. I let out a colourful
word and run my hands through my hair. I
hate
guns. I can’t explain why I
like them any less than knives or explosives or the Weapon, but I
do.

“Why would they have
needed this many guns?” I look at them with disgust. “They weren’t
surrounded by Officials. They didn’t have to live with States.
Their world was—”

“Sunshine and fucking
daisies, I know.” Miya turns her glare around the room. “Go get
Alba.”

I hurry back through
the waiting room, being less careful of the glass now, and burst
out onto the rain-slick hill, half sliding down the grass.

The Guardians are
still bustling around the ship at the port, unloading cardboard
boxes and big bits of machinery. They’re scavenging, I realise,
taking apart the boat.

When I tell Alba what
Miya and I found, she folds away the old map of The United Kingdom
she’s been using to navigate our journey and becomes a hurricane of
action. Commands get shouted, Guardians spurred into movement.
Dalmar asks me question after question about the weapons, filing
every bit of information away before running off to join Alba
inside the blue building. I’m not sure if it’s his knowledge of
weaponry from working in the munitions factory back in F.L. that
makes him curious or whether he senses how uneasy the guns have
made me. My hands are shaking.

I find Tia, hoping for
the millionth time that she’ll speak, that she’ll settle my nerves.
“You okay?” I ask. She just nods, her attention on the flow of
Guardians heading up the road.

Furious muttering
alerts me to Miya’s presence before I spot her—I’m pretty sure
she’s the only person inventive enough to come up with the words
I’m hearing. Her curses die on her tongue when her little sister
sprints to Miya and demands to know where she’s been.

“Why, did something
happen?” Miya’s eyes survey the area. They settle on Yosiah and her
brother. “Olive?”

Olive sounds exactly
like Miya when she’s angry. “You disappeared. Yosiah was
worried.”

Yosiah joins them, a
flash of frustration crossing his face when he stumbles. “I
actually said Miya would be fine because she can look after
herself.” He adds, “You were the one who was worried.”

“I
was not.
” Olive scowls mutinously at
Yosiah. She huffs dramatically and stomps off, dropping onto the
road a few metres away.

Miya explains to
Yosiah what we found in the Port of Hull, her brother’s face hidden
by her stomach, tanned arms clinging to her. She flattens his hair
absentmindedly.

Yosiah passes Miya her
jacket. “What were you doing in there?” he asks.

“It was Honour’s
idea.”

“What? I didn’t—I
said—”

Miya smirks. She was
right—she really is the worst.

Miya’s mouth opens to
speak, and I ready myself with a quick rapport—

But everything stops,
tips on its side, hushes.

The next thing I know,
my face is pressed into the road, my arm throbbing violently. I can
hear nothing but a shrill ringing that’s getting steadily louder. A
solid weight is pressing me into the ground.

I can’t move.

I don’t
understand.

A prolonged second
passes before the weight lifts from my back. I sit up, rubbing the
ache in my elbow. Horatia staring at me with huge, frightened eyes.
My body moves without my mind, pulling my twin into my arms. Her
fear is my fear, and mine passes between us, multiplying.

I look outside the
bubble of fear and family we’ve made and now I understand. I know
what happened. People lay on the floor, some conscious but others
not. Others possibly dead. My stomach turns over.

I gather myself
together and find my legs, helping Tia up with me. Most people
clamber to their feet like my sister and I, gaping at the
collapsed, fiery structure that was, minutes ago, the Port of Hull
building. Other people never get up. Smoke filters into the sky,
light grey against charcoal. Orange tinges the air around the blue
wreckage, unseen flames devouring.

I can’t breathe.

I start forward,
forgetting my arms are around Tia. She holds me back by the collar
of my shirt. I’m gasping, guttering, falling apart.

Alba was in that
building! Guardians were in—

My next thought is
wrenched from my mouth. I don’t recognise the scream that rips the
air in two.

“Dalmar!
”

Horatia can’t restrain
me any longer. I’m fighting too hard, too desperate, too scared,
too frantic. I lurch in a thousand directions because I don’t know
what to do, where to go, how to do anything ever again. My breaths
wheeze from my lungs and my head starts to spin as I start up the
base of the hill, my whole body shaking.

I only stop when I’m
held back by someone too strong to fight. Cold hands frame my face.
I can’t see through the film of my tears to who they belong to.

“I’m
here.” That voice reduces my gasping cries to shattering sobs.
“
I’m here.
”

My fingers become
claws that grip and tear at his shirt and Dalmar talks to me in
hushed tones as he crushes me against his body.

Gradually, I regain my
senses, my vision clearing.

Eventually, I accept
that Dalmar is here, that he’s alive, nowhere near the building
that exploded.

I blink until my eyes
clear and look him over. He has a scratch above his eyebrow but
he’s in one piece. “God,” I rasp, stepping back. “I thought—”

Dal
grabs my chin, forcing me to look him in the eye, steady blue-green
on panicked brown. “I am
here
, Honour. I’m okay.”

I nod and nod and nod.
He’s okay.

A gentle hand brushes
over my hair. I don’t have to look to know it’s Hele.

“Dal? Is Alba—?”

“She was inside.” His
mouth is a thin line. “She’s gone.”

I drop my eyes to the
floor. “Sorry.”

Tia finds me, an arm
snaking around my waist to comfort me even though I have no right
to be upset. I barely knew Alba. I only met her days ago. If I were
thinking with logic, I might worry what will happen to The
Guardians now that Alba is dead, but logic might as well not exist
right now. All I’m worried about is Dalmar.

Hele holds out a hand
to him and he stumbles into her arms, his eyes holding more fear
than pain. Hurt and grief, I know, will come later.

Tia and I huddle
around him until the four of us are all parts of the same creature.
I rest my forehead against Dal’s shoulder and decide that enough is
enough. We have all hurt too much, grieved too much. I tighten my
grip. I refuse to let anything else hurt my family.

***

Miya

22:42. 14.10.2040. The
Free Lands, Northlands.

The building we’re
sleeping in tonight is a million miles from both the ship and the
green house in Harwich. The grey brick of it rises into the dark
clouds, decorative metalwork running up the side in an attempt to
cover up the fact that it’s a great eyesore. If the green house was
neat and pretty, this place is a clumsy mess.

My
legs barely carry me into the lobby, tired feet slapping on white
floor tiles. The walls are painted white to match them. The
Guardians ought to love this place—aside from the odd flash of
purple and the beige of a wooden counter, it’s as blank as their
base was. A purple sign hanging crookedly from the wall over the
counter reads
Premr Inn
. Some of the letters must have fallen off because there are
irregular gaps between them. Like everything else in the diseased
lands, this building is only half of what it once was.

Before we came in some
guy in a dress assigned us all to a room and explained that
although the furniture may be upside down and the rooms untidy, the
beds should still be useable. The building itself seems to
agree—the basic shape of it stands as it must have when it was a
hotel, but the top floors have slipped off and crumpled on the
ground. It’s the same with most of the tall buildings we see. Solar
flares, I guess, melted them right off.