Wiped (11 page)

“We can’t warn them,” Trent said. “Warning them could alert Urip. From here on out, we’re on our own.”

“Defeats the purpose of uniting the world,” Cardinal Beck complained.

I looked up and met the Cardinal’s steady gaze.

“Sometimes you have to hurt to heal,” I said.

Trent made a scoffing sound. Beck just blinked.

And then we heard them.

“They’re coming,” the captain announced. “All lights extinguished. Now!”

One by one the vid-screens and night lights on board the vessel went out, until we were a black shadow of nothingness on a blacker sea.

“I hope you’ve got a plan, Elite,” Trent whispered in my ear. His warm arms wrapping around me, pressing my back against a hard chest.

I let a slow breath of air out, feeling the heat from his body ground me. He’d always ground me. My heart might be battered. My soul hollowed out. But Trent Masters somehow countered all of that.

I clutched the new Calvin unit with one hand, and cupped the other around Trent’s arm, waiting for the fighter jets to find us.

“Get this ship to Hammurg,” I whispered. “And I’ll give you a plan.”

His soft breath ruffled my hair, as his arms tightened around me.

“If we get through this,” he murmured, “I’m going to show you how much I love you every single day for the rest of my life. If we get through this, you’ll never doubt me ever again.” He kissed me tenderly on the side of my neck, and then whispered, “If we get through this, I might just have to marry you, Lena Carr.”

Unsurprisingly, I didn’t feel so hollow anymore.

F
inding Hammurg had never been
the problem. Infiltrating it was. We knew where it lay on the map. We knew from satellite images what it looked like from space. We knew its security would be different from any we’d faced in the past. Breaking into a paranoid and borderline crazy society was going to take stealth and skill.

We’d made it close enough to land, dodging coastguard vessels and fighter jets before the sun rose high enough to blow our cover. A chill breeze wafted off the ocean at our backs, as the remnants of a deserted suburb surrounded us. Unlike Lunnon, this city had been cleaned up before it was forgotten. Strategic piles of debris allowed for road access, and military cover for the outer guard.

Sailing into Hammurg’s harbour had been out. Walking in was looking just as challenging.

“Three u-Pol officers. All alert. All armed to the teeth. All in constant communications with their base via radio,” Alan whispered as soon as he’d returned from recon-ing what we’d found.

“Alternate route around?” I asked.

Beck answered. “There is another road into the city, but my men have found similar opposition there.”

“At a guess,” Si added, “every access way into or out of Hammurg will be the same.”

“We’re close,” I murmured, anger making me fist my hands.

“But not close enough,” Si agreed.

My eyes automatically sought out Lena. She was crouched down some distance away, the Shiloh unit in a satchel across her chest. Dressed in clothes that matched what we’d seen on Mikhail; shiny, skintight, holographic almost, stretchy material that hugged her form and somehow still blended into the shadows. Replicating Mikhail’s clothing had taken every available moment we’d had before we left Wánměi.

We looked the part, save for one vital thing.

I rubbed my forearm, covered with the sleeve of my own freak-show suit, exactly over the area a tattoo should have been.

“We can’t walk past them,” I said. “We can’t kill them; it would raise an alarm. We can’t walk around them.” I shook my head. Yeah, getting in had always been the problem.

“Lena says we just need access to their local Net,” Si offered. “Maybe we don’t have to go in. Maybe the u-Pol here are connected to their internal cyberspace, and connecting that Shiloh unit of hers now will be all that’s needed to flick the switch.”

“We have no idea what that switch will do,” Alan pointed out. “It might close their gates permanently. Making it impossible to rescue our Wiped.”

“Or Lunnon’s Lost,” I added automatically. Lena would settle for nothing less.

Si let out a frustrated sigh. “What other recourse do we have?”

I shook my head again. “No, they know we’re coming. They’re too clever to leave a gaping hole in their security like that. These guys,” I nodded toward the closest debris pile which hid the u-Pol officers guarding this particular entrance into Urip, “will be remote accessed only. The radio isolated from their greater Net.”

“Stands to reason,” Si agreed. “They’re on hyper-alert.”

“Which leaves us with fuck all options,” Alan growled.

We
were
fucked. That was for sure. Hiding outside their gates, with no way to enter. The frustration that gnawed away inside me took a hefty bite. I scrubbed my face, trying to calm my nerves. Not much got me riled when mounting an attack, except dead ends. And we were facing one hell of a mammoth brick wall. And we hadn’t even reached Hammurg’s real one. This was merely an outpost. Not even the main gates to the city.

Satellite images, which weren’t necessarily accurate - Urip had a way of messing with those - showed the heart of Hammurg was surrounded by a moat. So old school we’d had to scour the Global Net for its name. There were exactly two bridges across the swath of water that circumnavigated the city proper. Both heavily guarded with barcode scanners and God knows what else. And the water itself? Laser lights and drone vessels criss-crossed it every second of every day.

And then, should you manage to get past all of that, there was a wall. A big fucking brick wall. Tall. Barbed wire topped. Dotted with guard towers and high-powered spotlights and laser wielding u-Pol officers, all of which would no doubt shoot first and ask questions later.

Yeah. Finding Hammurg had never been the problem. Infiltrating it had. But we needed in. We needed to connect Calvin up to their Net, and flick the metaphorical switch.

Carstairs had given us a weapon. He hadn’t given us a plan.

My eyes found Lena again. She was talking to Irdina. Heads bent, quiet words spoken, half an eye on each other, the rest of their focus on the environment. It was a little eerie how similar they were. Not to look at. They couldn’t have looked more different. Lena with her cream skin and blonde hair, and the biggest blue eyes I’d ever seen, which I constantly got lost in. And Irdina with her dark tones and short curly hair, and angled, slanted pools of brown that doubted everything.

No. To look at, they were chalk and cheese. But their mannerisms? Almost identical. It didn’t help that they’d both been raised Elite. It sure as shit didn’t help that they’d both been forced to move past that socialist disadvantage and now looked at the world with much fairer eyes. But the real clincher was deeper than that.

They were similar because they’d both been influenced by Calvin Carstairs. There was a lot I was still angry about as far at that man went, but the outlook he’d given Lena in life was not one of them.

Irdina had the same philosophical mind. The same desire for oneness. Solidarity. She was tough and any smooth edges had long been cut too sharply, and she had her own issues with Carstairs’ daughter and being wiped. But she understood Lena’s mind, even if she didn’t want to. She understood Lena, because they were so alike.

I was sure a grudging friendship could develop there if given half the chance. But considering we were about to break into a fortress, one that was ready and waiting for such an attack, I thought perhaps that hope was futile.

There was a fucking good chance we were all about to die.

I let out an angry huff of breath and then moved. Sliding over the ground in a quiet crawl, keeping my profile low, any noise I made to a minimum, and blending into what was left of the low light. Twilight in Urip was different to what we experienced in Wánměi. Cooler. Bluer. A little more bitter. That could have been my imagination playing tricks on me, but in Wánměi when the sun set, the sky glowed. Like a warm fire or welcoming candlelight. It was romantic and cozy; my favourite time to lay Lena out on the deck above our home.

I couldn’t imagine laying Lena out in this sharp light.

But one good thing about the freak-suits we were wearing, they were made for bluer skies.

I slithered over the surprisingly - and disconcertingly - clean ground. In a broken world such order was out of place, making the hackles along my spine rise. Perspiration started to bead on my brow; not because it was hot, but because I knew this landscape was contrived.

Yes, whatever this outer suburb of Hammurg had been, it had certainly been destroyed. But despite it appearing to look like a clean-up job on uppers, I was beginning to wonder if in fact it was more like a disguise. I wouldn’t put it past the Uripeans to have manufactured this broken cityscape. What better way to create a buffer around your home than to destroy it? No Man’s Land. Enter at your own risk.

Had they simply killed the inhabitants as well?

We hadn’t even made it into their city and already their culture was fucking with my mind.

I made Lena’s and Irdina’s sides, settling into a more comfortable position once I’d reached the safety of their hide. I could see Alan and Beck watching from across the open space I’d just crawled. I could make out the odd shape of a Merrikan soldier or a Cardinal hiding out. Well camouflaged, but I knew where to look. I only prayed the u-Pol officers standing no more than ten metres away hadn’t figured that out.

“Ladies,” I said in way of greeting.

Irdina snorted, unimpressed. Lena just arched a brow.

“Going forward might be a problem,” I offered.

“We could kill them,” Irdina supplied. Blunt force. That was the Mahiah.

Lena and I both shook our heads at the same time. I smirked at her as she said, “It would raise an alarm. We don’t speak Teiamanisch; we couldn’t mimic their security reports.”

“No security report,” I added. “No chance at stealth.”

“And we need stealth to make it inside,” Lena finished.

“Why?” the Mahiah woman asked. “There is another way.”

I just knew this was going to be bad.

“What way?” Lena asked.

“We need inside that city. We can’t storm it. We obviously can’t sneak in. So that leaves going in by legitimate means.”

“Oh, hell no,” I muttered.

“Getting captured?” Lena asked, sounding like she was considering the boneheaded move.

“No way, babe,” I started, only to have Lena hold up an imperious Elite hand as if to shut me the fuck up. She should have known better. “Tell me this?” I demanded of both of them. They were both riling me up, right now. “How do we get Calvin past the strip-search those fuckers are gonna do? That’s if they don’t just shoot us first.”

Lena opened her mouth to argue; when had Lena not had a good argument to give? But I beat her to it. No. If I was anything, I was a fucking rebel leader. Risks are necessary; I know this. But sacrifices with little chance of benefit. Nah-uh. No way.

“There has to be another way,” I ground out.

“Like what?” Lena demanded. “There’s no elevation high enough to wing-suit ourselves over that river and wall.” Huh, hadn’t thought of that. And
that
would be why they’ve got a fucking big stretch of land squished into a piece of debris-flatbread.

“You’ve already dismissed killing the outer guard,” Irdina offered.

“Surrendering ourselves
is
a last resort,” Lena agreed, most magnanimously, then added for good measure, “As we can’t go around them.”

“And we can’t go past them,” Irdina tag-teamed.

“And we can’t go over them.” Lena again. It was like getting ganged up on by a couple of pissed off parrots. Beautiful to look at, frightening to hear. “There is no other way.”

Fuck. I refused to believe this.

“We download Calvin into a remote device,” I said in a rush of heated air. “Have him communicate with the security posts via the radio in Teiamanisch after we’ve killed the u-Pol here.” Desperation was making me think up more and more wilder ideas. “Then we walk up to the gate…”

“And what?” Lena asked pleasantly. “Do the same under the eyes of those guard towers?”

Fuck!

“Trent,” she said. “It’s not all bad.” I frowned. “Your idea has merit too.”

“I particularly like the part where we get to kill them,” Irdina offered with an unapologetic shrug.

I glared at the Mahiah and then turned the glare on Lena as well, just because.

Lena was looking off into the distance. Towards Hammurg itself. The sun had lowered enough that the blue in the sky had turned to a deep purple, making her eyes shine in an unnatural light. Mauve. Indigo. Sapphire. She was a rare jewel.

Something in me clenched. Despairing. Hopeless.

“We do both,” she murmured.

That something became downright suicidal.

“We get captured. We gain access to Urip through legitimate means.”

“I’m not hearing any killing,” Irdina growled.

Lena turned to her and smiled; it was completely Elite and utterly terrifying. “If you’re so set on killing, then you get to stay behind.”

“Behind?” I asked, thinking if anyone was staying behind it would be Lena.

Lena’s steady gaze met mine, and for a moment I was lost again. Gladly. Then her next words reached me through that warm and fuzzy fog.

“Irdina and her team take out the u-Pol officers once we’ve been captured. They use Calvin to communicate with the security force, thereby not raising any alarms. And then the rest of our army marches as close as they can to the wall without hindrance.”

I stared at her for a long second. Then decided to point out the error in her plan.

“We’ll be inside” - because, yeah, she wasn’t getting captured without me - “without the reason we need to be inside with us.”

She nodded her head. “You were right. They’ll search us. We can’t take Calvin.”

“So why go at all?” I pressed.

“Because once inside we find the Wiped and the Lost, and then we mount the attack with them.”

“The attack?”

She reached up and cupped my cheek. Her hand was cool against the blazing heat of mine. I was clearly riled. Not good when attempting a suicide mission.

“Two prongs,” she whispered. “We work the inside. Those waiting for our signal work the outside. We meet up in the middle and deploy Calvin.” She let out a measured breath. “We might be outnumbered and outgunned.”

“And expected,” Irdina helpfully supplied.

Lena ignored her, as only an Elite could. “But we are not without a measure of prowess.”

“Prowess?” I repeated. That seemed to be all I was good for, right now. Repeating the obvious.

Lena’s smile was wicked. It did things to me it really shouldn’t have, considering the discussion we were having. I shifted in my seat. Her brow arched.
Knowing temptress.

A long finger came out and ran down the centre of my chest. Nothing between her nail and my skin except the thin freak-suit. I suddenly had a new appreciation for the foreign material and its finer qualities.

Irdina made some sort of highly amused sound. I ignored her. Nothing Elite in my demeanour at all right then.

“Prowess, Trent,” Lena purred. “This is nothing,” she added, laying her palm flat against my chest, above my rapidly beating heart.

She paused, as if sensing my heartbeat. As if savouring it.

Then passionate eyes lifted to mine.

I was a goner.

“I’ve been training for this for a decade,” she said. “This is my skill. This is what I do.”

Breaking and entering. Pitting herself against a more superior opponent. The best security she could find.

Fuck. She was right. This is what she’d been doing for the past ten years. Right under the nose of her guardian. Under the nose of Wánměi’s Chief Overseer. General Chew-wen had no idea that his ward had sneaked out of Ohrikee each night, slipped across rooftops, and broke into high tech buildings. Scaling walls and somersaulting off high-rises. This was Lena Carr. This is what she did.