Wiped (9 page)

I cleared my throat. Took in the bodies lying out on the floor where they’d fallen, my hand fisting around the flash-drive my father had given me on his deathbed, and said, “We bury our dead. We get what we can to aid us from the u-Pol. And by morning we head out.”

“Head out?” a Merrikan soldier demanded.

I nodded my head, my heart heavy, my mind crystal clear.

We’d finish what my father had started.

But it was Trent who answered for me, slipping into the role with practiced ease. Backing me up, no matter what.

“You heard her,” he snapped commandingly. “Carstairs had a plan. We’re sticking to it.”

“And we should follow
you
now?” the same soldier demanded scathingly.

Trent smiled. It was his you-want-to-fuck-with-me? grin.

“No,” he said softly. Then turned to look at me. “We follow her.”

I could have sworn I felt my father’s smile.

T
hey knew we were coming
. There was no denying that now. As dawn crested the broken horizon, casting shadows across a forgotten landscape, the roar of fighter jets arrived. The ground shook with their ferocity. The air vibrated with utter menace. We weren’t going anywhere without the cover of darkness.

I leaned back against the warehouse wall; at least, I thought it might have been a warehouse. Once upon a time. The sound of the jets covered the fractured beat of my heart. I stared out at the glistening water of the river. Our boat barely visible under the camouflage net that had been used to hide it.

Would they land? Could they? Where was this city’s airport?

We’d scoured the remains of the palace where the u-Pol had set up their base, before we’d moved down to the wharf, making ready to depart Lunnon. There’d been nothing there to help us. And what we’d found on the u-Pol officers was of little use. Currency. Identification cards. Those permanent inked tattoos. Barcodes, the old D’awan had called them.

My fingers found the flash-drive in my pocket that my father had given me, and for the umpteenth time I rubbed my thumb across its surface. As if the contact would bring me closer to my dad.

It wasn’t meant to hurt this much, not when I’d had practice grieving. It wasn’t meant to hollow me out and leave me… wanting.

So much unsaid. My hand fisted around the device. I was too scared, still, to use it.

“They’re flying away,” Trent said softly at my side. I just nodded. “If they saw us, they would have fired. There’s nothing for them here now. They know the Lunnoners have disobeyed them. Their men killed. Their bargaining chip irrelevant now.”

“Will they wipe them?” I asked. Wipe the Wiped. What other use could the Uripeans have for them?

“I’m not sure,” Trent admitted. Never couching his opinion. Always respecting me enough to never lie.

“What are we doing?” I whispered. It suddenly seemed too steep a climb.

“Do you want to go back?” he asked without blinking. As if returning to Wánměi was an option now.

“No.”

“Then we go forward,” he offered simply. “We owe a debt to the Lunnoners. We owe a debt to our Wiped.” He stared off into the distance, the sun creeping closer to our resting place, the higher in the sky it climbed. “There is one Wánměi saying that holds true,” he murmured.

I couldn't think which it would be.
Wánměi above all others?
Right now our hands were stained with blood. We weren’t so grand, were we?

“You know which one?” he asked, voice pitched low, even though the immediate threat had vanished. The skies once again pristine. I shook my head. “
For the better of the people. For the future of Wánměi.
Your father was right, you know. We can’t go on like this. Living in pockets. Isolated from all threats. Solidarity. That’s what the world needs. You started it in Wánměi.” No I didn’t. “You tore down the walls.” He did. Trent did. “You destroyed Sat-Loc. Said let them come. Let them see.”

“Don’t put this on me,” I argued.

Trent turned towards me, reaching up and tucking a strand of my hair behind my ear tenderly. His hot hand cupped my nape.

“Baby,” he whispered, thumb sweeping. “Sometimes we have to hurt to heal.”

I could feel my eyes tearing, I blinked slowly, willing the moisture away. My heart hurt, all right. My head hurt as well, not knowing what to do now he was gone. Again.

I didn’t think I was strong enough for this type of pain.

I let a slow breath of air out, savouring Trent’s touch and comfort, never taking it for granted again.

“What’s our plan?” I asked, once my heart rate had steadied and my lips could form words.

“You’re not gonna like it,” he admitted, his hold on my nape tightening slightly.

I lifted my eyes to his. “What is there to like about any of this?” I demanded. One more problem to battle was insignificant.

“The flash-drive,” he started. I pulled away.

“I’m not ready.”

“If there was time, I’d give it to you.” He looked up at the sky pointedly. “But they know we’re here. They know we’re coming. How long before they send drones to do the u-Pol officers’ work? We can’t stay, Lena. It’s tonight or never.”

“We have no idea what’s on this drive. This
is
my father we’re talking about.”

“What are you afraid of?” he demanded. “How much worse could this get?”

“Calvin,” I said, my voice breaking. The last link to my dead father, and I knew, I just
knew
, that whatever my father had prepared on this flash-drive would mean the end. The final goodbye. I couldn’t do it.

So much unsaid.

“Lena,” Trent said with purpose, just as scratching and shuffling sounded out off to the side.

Both of us jumped, laser guns in our hands, hearts in our mouths. The jets might have flown on, the u-Pol officers might all be dead, but there were still threats in this rotting city.

Nirbhay popped his head out from behind a mound of rubble. Wide grin on his deformed face. Dirt smeared across darkened skin, black hair standing up on end. I doubted it had ever seen a comb. Or soap, for that matter. His grin, though, was infectious. I holstered my weapon and smiled in return.

Trent was slower to holster his own laser gun, his gaze searching the area behind Nirbhay, his body hard and on alert.

“Hello,” I said in their pidgin Anglisc. “What are you doing here?”

“You go?” he asked, moving closer and sitting down crossed legged. His little knobbly knee rested against mine. Comfort in the barest of touches.

I was careful not to move away, but moving closer held its challenges as well. Nirbhay might have taken a shine to us, but he was still inherently skittish. How could he not be when we’d killed his relatives?

My smile fell. So did his. The child was a perfect reflection of the world around him. A mirror that showed where we’d all gone wrong.

Lunnon was wrong. This broken, destroyed city was a representation of a world gone so very, very wrong.

“How do we fix this?” I whispered, the words for me, but Nirbhay had heard them. He cocked his head, his face a mask of puzzlement.

“You spoke in Anglisc,” Trent said softly, his eyes still scanning the environment for danger, but his quiet words letting me know his attention was divided.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Nirhbay in his local tongue. Sorry. It seemed so pitiful. We had so much to atone for, didn’t we?

“No sorry,” Nirbhay said cheerfully. “You killed the bad men. Two days before more come.”

Already they were preparing for the next onslaught. The small reprieve enough to be thankful for.

The depth of my sorrow was astounding. We needed to move now.

“How long will it take us to sail there?” I asked Trent.

“To Hammurg?” I nodded my head, my eyes on Nirbhay, a soft smile of reassurance all I could give. “A day, Si reckons. Why?”

“By the time we get there, reinforcements will have already arrived here.”

Trent leaned back against the wall, appearing to give up on the vigilant assessment of our environment. Perhaps he thought if the Lunnoners were going to attack, they would have by now.

“What do you suggest, Lena? We leave now and risk detection by those fighter jets? And even if we manage to make it to the ship offshore, what then? We make a blind run for Hammurg, we infiltrate their security measures, somehow mimicking those barcode tattoos to get inside their walls, and then what? We don’t have a plan. Even if we could think one up, we’d still be too late for Lunnon.” He ran a frustrated hand through his hair, messing it up even further. Lately he’d let it grow out, a luxury not possible in Old Wánměi.

I liked his hair longer. I liked running my fingers through it. Fisting my hand in the strands when he kissed me. Trent made the world disappear with his lips, his tongue, his hot breath against my skin. For a moment, I wanted that oblivion.

But how could I succumb to such bliss when death surrounded us?

“The Lunnoners are on their own,” he said finally, the words wrenched from deep within. “We fight for a greater cause. The endgame is all that matters.”

I started shaking my head.

“Lena,” he said so softly I felt every syllable, “do you think I don’t know what sacrifice is?”

I wanted to scream. I wanted to rage. Hadn’t we all sacrificed enough? The Lunnoners their Lost, and the men who had followed commands and died trying to capture us. Wánměi its Wiped. My father. Trent’s. Aiko. So many. Too many to count.

The world was a broken, bitter place.

Nirbhay watched us silently. Whether he understood our Anglisc or not, I couldn’t tell. Large round dark brown eyes stared solemnly at us. His stillness a testament to his life.

“I can’t do this anymore,” I whispered. “I can’t watch the world shatter and stand by and do nothing.”

“You’re not doing nothing,” Trent argued. “You’re rescuing the Wiped. Theirs and ours. You’re setting about containing a problem.”

“You call Urip a problem,” I said scathingly.

“You’re right,” he said with a nod of his head. “They’re not a problem. They’re a scourge. They’re a representation of what is wrong with this world. Might is not right. But they think they can win by strength alone.” His hand came out and wrapped around my wrist. The wrist leading to the fingers stroking my father’s flash-drive. He tugged softly, pulling my hand and the drive out of the pocket.

Slowly he unwrapped my stiff fingers, letting the flash-drive lie in my palm, washed in daylight.

“We’re not as strong as them,” he said quietly. “We don’t even have the element of surprise. What we do have is desperation. Conviction. More than just a will to survive. We want to make this right. Not just Wánměi. It’s not just about us anymore. We might not be able to help the Lunnoners now, but we can give them a fighting chance. We can end Urip’s reign. We can help the world start anew. Merrika. Mahiah. Oztrala. Any other nations that have survived. We can unite them. But not before we cure the world of the scourge.

“And to do that,” he said softly, lowering his voice again after it had crescendoed with his passionate outburst, “we need an edge. Just one small thing that tips the scale.” His finger ran down the length of my father’s flash-drive. “Calvin’s doing all that he can, but you know it’s not enough. Hammurg is Wánměi on steroids. Contained. Isolated. Hidden behind not just metaphorical walls, but real ones. We need something more, Lena. We need what your father had planned.”

I stared down at the flash-drive sitting innocuously in my hand, my chest tight, my head pounding. Even Irdina hadn’t been able to tell us what this flash-drive might do. If we uploaded the programme to Calvin, would he even be Calvin anymore?

Would he even sound like my father?

I felt so lost and yet I was surrounded. Pressure on all sides. Trent wanted us to move forward. The Lunnoners wanted more reprieves just to survive. Irdina wanted freedom. I wasn’t sure yet what the Merrikans wanted, but so far they’d been right by our sides.

Trust had to start somewhere. With the other nations we intended to unite.

With my father. He’d broken that trust once, but not intentionally. I had to move on. I had to let go of the past. But how could I do that when he was already gone?

My eyes came up and met the patient brown pools of Nirbhay’s. He was waiting for something. Like they all were waiting for something. Something they seemed to think I could give.

Peace. Freedom. Unity. I was just one person, and I’d made so many mistakes already.

If I made one more, I was sure I wouldn’t survive.

Guilt has a way of corroding everything. I was already hollow. Now the guilt had a hole to burrow inside.

“Lena?” Trent pressed, his whole demeanour letting me know he was worried. For me. For the war. For the world and our combined futures.

How did he stay so strong?

My stomach chose that inappropriate moment to rumble, signalling the fact we hadn’t eaten for some time. Nirbhay giggled. Just like any child. The sound of bodily functions always an occasion for laughter.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t let these people die.

I’d already killed too many of them.

“They come with us,” I said. Nirbhay’s smile widened. “No one gets left behind.”

I expected him to argue. I expected Trent to offer up reasonable and well thought out reasons why taking a bunch of refugees closer to danger was worse than leaving them to fight a battle they might just survive. Trent was a rebel leader. A visionary whose experience had been honed by fire.

Taking these people with us was insanity. They didn’t trust us. They didn’t want to work with us. They sure as hell wouldn’t help us. So why did I feel like this was our only chance at making the world right?

Trent rubbed a hand over the stubble along his chin, his eyes looking out into the distance, but seeing nothing. His gaze was snagged by Nirbhay, who was imitating Trent’s every move. But where Trent had a square jaw, hard earned lines, and rough whiskers from not having shaved for several days, Nirbhay had young skin, filthy and marked by disease, yet somehow the embodiment of our future.

Trent leaned forward and ruffled the child’s hair. Nirbhay didn’t jump back in fright. He just smiled. Gap-toothed, broken upper lip. But there was no denying it was a smile.

“We take them with us,” Trent said, stilling my heart. Making me for some strange reason want to cry. “No one gets left behind.”