Masked (Citizen Saga, Book 4)
Date: 2016-04-05 00:00:00+00:00
Description: Freedom has a price tag... It was never going to be easy, but Trent Masters had thought, when Wanmi gained its freedom, that at the very least the heavy weight of oppression would be lifted. Tyranny can take on many forms, though. Even the unassuming shape of a new President who was once a revolutionary. But although Lee Tan is in charge, he's not quite in control... Sabotage and terrorism have become the new price of freedom, and with them also emerges a brand new caste. The Masked model themselves on saviours, knights in shining armour, but are they saints or sinners? And where have they com
Publisher: CreateSpace Publishing
Rights: Copyright 2016 Nicola Claire. All rights reserved.

Masked

Citizen Saga Book Four

Nicola Claire

Contents

Copyright

About the Author

Free Download

Also by Nicola Claire

Dedication

Description

1.
Now, Look At That

2.
A Magnificent Sculpture Of Brittle Beauty

3.
Words Weren’t Needed

4.
Motherfucker!

5.
Yeah, Creepy

6.
By Me

7.
Lena Looked Elite

8.
Five Simple Words

9.
My Zebra

10.
But Why?

11.
I Hadn't Expected Him To

12.
You Only Need To Ask

13.
There Were Just So Many Reasons To Feel Heartache

14.
Silence

15.
It’s Not Your Name I’m After

16.
Shouldn’t You Be Wearing A Mask?

17.
Too Late

18.
I Am Calvin

19.
This Is Real

20.
I Knew What They Wanted

21.
I’d Been Kidding Myself

22.
For That, We’ll Need Calvin

23.
A Wicked Web Of Lies

24.
To Shiloh

25.
So Close

26.
And Free

27.
That’s My Wánměi Girl

Review Request

Message From The Author

Free Download

Copyright © 2016, Nicola Claire

All Rights Reserved

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organisations is entirely coincidental.

All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author.

ISBN: 978-0-473-33718-6

Created with Vellum

About the Author

Nicola Claire lives in beautiful Taupo, New Zealand with her husband and two young boys.

She's tried her hand at being a paramedic, bank teller and medical sales representative, (not all necessarily in that order), but her love of writing keeps calling her back.

She has a passion for all things suspenseful, spiced up with a good dollop of romance, as long as they include strong characters - alpha males and capable females - and worlds which although make-believe are really quite believable in the end.

There's nothing better than getting caught up in a compelling, intriguing and romantic book.

When she's not writing or reading, she's out on her family boat at Lake Taupo, teaching her young boys to fish, showing them the beauty that surrounds them in nature and catching some delicious trout for dinner.

Creating rich worlds with dynamic characters and unexpected twists that shock and awe has been pure bliss for this author. And just as well, because there's a lot more story yet to tell...

For more information:

- @NicolaClaireNZ

- 168567699926093

www.nicolaclairebooks.com
nicolaclaire@hotmail.com

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Starter Library

Also by Nicola Claire

Kindred Series

Kindred

Blood Life Seeker

Forbidden Drink

Giver of Light

Dancing Dragon

Shadow's Light

Entwined With The Dark

Kiss Of The Dragon

Dreaming Of A Blood Red Christmas (Novella)

Mixed Blessing Mystery Series

Mixed Blessing

Dark Shadow (Coming Soon)

Sweet Seduction Series

Sweet Seduction Sacrifice

Sweet Seduction Serenade

Sweet Seduction Shadow

Sweet Seduction Surrender

Sweet Seduction Shield

Sweet Seduction Sabotage

Sweet Seduction Stripped

Sweet Seduction Secrets

Elemental Awakening Series

The Tempting Touch Of Fire

The Soothing Scent Of Earth

The Chilling Change Of Air

The Tantalising Taste Of Water (Coming Soon)

H.E.A.T. Series

A Flare Of Heat

A Touch Of Heat

A Twist Of Heat (Novella)

A Lick Of Heat (Coming Soon)

Citizen Saga

Elite

Cardinal

Citizen

Masked

Wiped (Coming Soon)

Scarlet Suffragette Series

Fearless

Breathless (Coming Soon)

Blood Enchanted Series

Blood Enchanted

Blood Entwined (Coming Soon)

Lost Time Series

Losing Time (Coming Soon)

For: As always, this series is for my loving family.

And the quiet times we share with one another.

Description

Freedom has a price tag…

It was never going to be easy, but Trent Masters had thought, when Wánměi gained its freedom, that at the very least the heavy weight of oppression would be lifted. Tyranny can take on many forms, though. Even the unassuming shape of a new President who was once a revolutionary.

But although Lee Tan is in charge, he’s not quite in control…

Sabotage and terrorism have become the new price of freedom, and with them also emerges a brand new caste. The Masked model themselves on saviours, knights in shining armour, but are they saints or sinners? And where have they come from?

Former Elite, Lena Carr, however, has more than just the piece by piece destruction of her recovering nation to contend with. The ghosts of her past have come back to haunt her, dragging her down into a dark abyss. She needs her rebel leader to ground her. She needs the man she has fallen for to stand at her side. To never leave her.

But the price they all must pay is very steep.

Citizen versus Masked. The battle continues…

One

Now, Look At That

Trent

They came after the sun had set. We couldn’t see them. But we could sure as fuck hear them. A thunder that cracked the hot night. A boom that thudded through our chests, down to the soles of our feet. Glasses rattled on nearby shelves. Bottles rocked; one tumbling to the bar’s concrete floor with an almighty clash, the hint of alcohol mixing immediately with the scent of the chilli crab I’d just eaten.

The air changed, hung suspended, and then tore apart as the last roar faded into the heavy sky.

Stars twinkled. Clouds rolled in. Everyone held their breath.

And then they were back.

A roar. A crack of thunder. A boom that hurt the ears.

Two orange orbs streaked through the night sky, then were lost amongst the clouds again.

“What the…?” Paul started.

“Oh fuck,” Si added.

“Where’s Lena?” I asked, because if the world was coming to an abrupt end, then I wanted to know where my damn woman was.

People started panicking. Tables turned over, screams shattered the artificial stillness. The bar manager yelled for calm in Wáitaměi and then repeated it in Anglisc. The ground shook as feet stampeded toward the exit - where the hell they thought they’d hide from fighter jets, I didn’t know. And then someone got trampled.

Alan waded into the chaos, and because I was still trying to locate a missing Lena and “frantic” had never been my thing, I moved to help him. Elbows prodded, knees knocked, and fists started flying.

I felt my kidneys bruise, followed quickly by the sharp sting of nails as they raked down my arm. Hands flailed, shoes were lost in the melee, a fucking forehead came out of nowhere and connected with my cheekbone. A woman started crying; for a second I thought it was Lena. Then I promptly discarded that ridiculous notion. Lena Carr would have been silently laughing.

Or flying through a fucking window in a makeshift wing-suit.

Where the fuck was she?

I grappled with a guy who was determinedly walking over the top of his female companion, while Alan reached down and lifted the woman up with one hand, using his other to fend off the panicked bar patrons. A quiet night at this open-air bar had turned into a bloody riot. The woman fainted. The man - loser arsehole that he was - spat in my face, our eyes momentarily meeting. And then he promptly started squealing in his zest for escape.

I growled, curled my fingers in his shirt tighter, and shook him. The woman came to right at that second, still in Alan’s arms, took in the sight of her partner being flung around like a wet blanket, and started screaming.

And then a laser gun whirred to life.

The whole courtyard froze.

Laser guns had been outlawed by the interim government; headed by none other than Lee Fucking Tan. I still had bloody nightmares about that. Every single gun had been painstakingly located over the past six weeks by the Cardinals; our provisional peacekeepers. We suspected some might have got through the cracks. Drones had fallen like flies when Shiloh had been deactivated. Any Citizen with half a brain could have looted any one of them. But on the whole, evidence had suggested we’d rounded up the majority.

Maintaining order in post perfect Wánměi had been a delicate affair. Panic, somewhat dissimilar to that which we were experiencing right now, had taken root in society. Lena had called the Citizens rudderless. But I’d known worse was to come.

I’d just never considered it would come on a night when our skies were invaded for the very first time since Shiloh. For the very first time since General Chew-wen had closed Wánměi’s borders forty years ago.

My eyes scanned the now stunned immobile crowd searching for the origin of that laser whir. I half expected to see Lena standing there holding one. I wouldn’t put it past the Elite to have pilfered a drone’s gun without telling me. But I’d watched her hand over her own laser gun to Tan himself.

Knowing Lena, though, that could have all been an act.

But it wasn’t Lena.

A young woman, late twenties at a guess, stood on top of the bar, laser gun slung over her arm, dark eyes assessing the crowd from behind a masquerade-style mask. It wasn’t the decoration on her face that stood out; in Free Wánměi anything goes, and the latest fashion statement was to complement your outfit with a jewel encrusted mask, regardless of your previous status in our society. Usually, though, the mask matched the dress; both equally as sparkling. But this woman wore tired jeans and a simple singlet, showcasing well defined arm muscles, with no jewellery - or sparkles - to speak of. Her hair was black. Short. And artificially curly. Smooth skin, the darker shade of a Mahiah, glistened with a fine sheen of sweat.

Wánměi was different now. Merely six weeks after the final revolution had freed our nation, castes had already been put aside. You could no longer tell by looking at someone if they were an Honourable or an Elite. A Citizen or a former Overseer. Cardinals were the only ones who could be identified, simply by the uniform they still chose to wear.

But everyone else was a mishmash of cultures and fashions and freedom.

This woman could have been anyone in our former life.

Save for her physique. Lena was the only Elite I had ever come across who was toned. Sculpted. She was beautiful when dressed in a tight fitting nylon-lycra wing-suit. Stunning when draped in fine figure hugging silks. And devastating when lying naked in my bed.

No other Elite came close.

This woman, standing still as though the weight of sixty odd wary eyes weren’t upon her, holding a now illegal laser gun with apparent nonchalance, was buff. Cardinal buff.

If we had a rogue element in amongst our new peacekeepers, President Tan was going to flip his fucking lid.

“Pull yourselves together,” she demanded in an elegant tone of voice dripping derision.

My eyes cut to Alan’s. He raised his eyebrows and offered a small shrug of his shoulders, but I saw it. The recognition. The slight hint of incredulous humour.

She sounded like an Elite.

She sounded like Lena. At least, the Selena Carstairs I’d first met. I didn’t notice Lena’s rounded vowels anymore. I didn’t hear the clipped tones and formal language. Whether that was because Lena had changed or I had, I wasn’t sure. But this woman, clearly of Mahiah decent, clearly not bothering with the old world model clothing or hair styles, sounded just like Lena had when we’d first met.

“Lena mark II,” Si whispered to my side. Paul snorted, garnering our laser wielding Elite’s hard stare.

“Panic is counter productive,” the woman announced. “They have left.” She indicated the empty sky with the lift of her chin, her eyes scanning the crowd, not letting one person out of her peripheral vision. Her gaze washed over us several times. Most wouldn’t have noticed her interest. She never lingered on our group for long. But her eyes came back to our corner of the quiet courtyard three times more than any other.

She knew we were the greatest threat here. But we weren’t the ones holding an illegal gun.

“Are you a Cardinal?” someone yelled from the safety of their anonymous position in the middle of the crowd.

The woman shook her head. One sharp shake to the side, nothing more. She slung the laser gun over her shoulder in a practised move and prepared to leave.

“They might come back!” someone else cried, sudden fear at the thought that their saviour was leaving evident in their high pitched words.

She paused in her movements, and then turned hard eyes on the poor sod who’d just spoken.

“Then I suggest you leave in an orderly fashion and not embarrass yourself.”

She hopped down off the bar and started to move toward the rear of the courtyard, and the back entrance I knew was located there.

“Do we let her go with that gun?” Paul asked.

“We’re not fucking peacekeepers,” Alan growled. His dislike of Tan’s new government equal to my own.

Nothing’s perfect. Our new national motto.

I watched her head of curly black hair disappear through the exit, the bar’s lights glinting off the edge of her mask. She appeared alone. No one trailed after her. No one flanked her sides. In fact, everyone here gave her a wide berth.

Laser guns had left a mark on our people’s psyche. She definitely had balls holding on to that one.

Fuck, I felt uneasy about all of this.

I glanced up towards the rooftops, to see if she’d had cover of some sort there.

No. She hadn’t. But we had.

Lena’s silhouette stood out only because I was so used to seeking her. Crouched low, one hand resting on the tiles of the roof for balance, the other flicking the blade of her knife over and over in her palm.

Now, look at that. My Elite was anxious.

My eyes followed the trajectory of her gaze; no doubt still watching the non-model Mahiah Elite as she left this area of Wáikěiton. But I quickly found myself pulled back to the sleek creature crouched on the rooftop. Her shocking white blonde hair had been hastily tied up, and now lay hidden beneath a dark hood. She blended into the night as though not quite there.

Lena didn’t look away from the masked woman. She didn’t move a muscle or make a sound. Stillness wrapped around her like a shadow. But I knew she’d be aware of every little detail in the vicinity.

Nothing got past Lena Carr.

On that thought, pale blue eyes shifted to me. She held my gaze silently. Words weren’t needed.

Yeah, Lena felt uneasy too.

Two

A Magnificent Sculpture Of Brittle Beauty

Trent

Freedom comes at a price. We all knew this. We’d always known it. Rebellion costs lives. Liberty costs something altogether different.

It can cost a nation its security.

Without Shiloh to man the satellites above, and the ground to air missiles below, we were as good as sitting ducks. Waiting for the first opportunist nation out there to target our, until now, well hidden assets.

Wánměi had always been advanced in its technological achievements. Until recently, we hadn’t known just how advanced our nation was. Drones, similar to those that had walked our streets as sPol and iPol enforcers, had been traded with the few states out there that still existed.

Those trades had ceased as soon as Lena hit the button, shutting down Shiloh for good. No more drones. No more street-cams. No more airspace security. No more sat-loc keeping our Net safe. We were exposed, as we’d never been exposed before.

Well, before general Chew-wen, that is.

“Six weeks,” Alan said into the silence of the van. “Six weeks and they come now?”

Tension hung on the air as thick as an impending thunderstorm. Not one of us could see a good outcome to this.

“We can assume it’s not the city of lights we can see from Hillsborough,” Si offered. Then shrugged his shoulders when he received a few odd looks. “They haven’t indicated any air flight capability before, and they would have come a lot sooner than this if they’d had it. Simply sent their fighter jets out as soon as they realised our Net was open. Our missiles inoperative.”

“They can tell that?” I asked, as Paul exclaimed, “Those… jets. Fantastic!” He’d clearly missed the salient point to all of this.

We ignored him. Si nodded his head towards me and said, “They’d have known the instant Shiloh went dark.”

“How?” Alan asked.

“Sat-loc went offline, dumping a shit-tonne of information on the greater Global Net in what would have amounted to an atomic bomb going off in cyber-space. Any decent tech would have known we had crumbled.”

“If they were on-line,” Lena added from the front seat.

“All it would have taken was a programme set to search for such things,” Si argued.

“If they wanted to search for such things.”

“Why so argumentative, Elite?” Alan asked, poking the proverbial bear with a stick. I’d never actually seen a bear. Let alone a bear being poked with a stick. But I’d seen pictures of bears and Lena looked as unimpressed with Alan’s comment as one of those Merrikan grizzlies facing off against a pussycat.

She turned in her seat and looked at him. I watched his passive face from the rear vision mirror, keeping half an eye on the busy late-night street. Curfew would have been in play hours ago, if this had been Old Wánměi.

Not anymore. People walked the streets; colour and light and atmosphere drowning out the anxious looks on those who had been above ground to hear and feel the fighter jets as they came. Word was spreading. The Net would be abuzz.

Signalling our fear to the outside world.

Should they be looking.

Where had our bravery gone? Where had our convictions disappeared to?

We’d been so sure they’d look at us and see only a strong, inclusive, welcoming nation.

Who sends fighter jets when getting to know a potential friend?

“Why such doom and gloom, Citizen?” Lena countered. The castes meant nothing nowadays. But Alan and Lena had never shied away from slinging labels at each other.

I pulled the van over to the side of the road, ignoring their continued passive argument, and looked up at the building we now called home. On the edge of where Wáikěiton ended and Parnell began. Halfway between Lena’s two old homes. Halfway between her two old worlds. It represented the halfway mark more than just in location.

The top floor of the building had been recently renovated and then put up for sale just before Shiloh went down. For a few days there, post revolution, not much happened in our city-state. Financially. Physically. Mentally. The nation paused for breath and then we partied. But while most of us were drunk off our faces from either joy or angst, Lena quietly emptied her bank account, taking every single stipend credit she’d ever been given as an Honourable Elite - though never touched before then - and bought the penthouse floor.

Before the interim government put a halt to any transaction over a certain credit value.

A nation in flux can quickly become a nation in crisis, Tan had said. In some ways he was right. And Lena had known. Killing Shiloh did not mean the end of control.

We’d just handed it over to a different Overseer.

“You can’t tell me, you’re not concerned,” Alan pressed, as we all slipped out of the vehicle. “You of all people, perched on the rooftop like a gargoyle, flicking that little needle of yours in your hands.”

“Concern and paranoia are not to be confused, Alan,” Lena pointed out in the perfectly rounded tones of an Elite.

“It’s not like you,” he added softly, just as we reached the front door.

Everyone stopped in their tracks and stared at him. Even Lena.

“Downplaying a threat to avoid panic,” he explained.

“Are you saying I escalate emotions normally?” Lena asked, just as softly.

Alan turned to look at her. Meeting her, steady glare to steady glare.

“I’m saying you’ve never been so afraid as to not call something what it truly is.”

It was, in a way, a backhanded compliment. Alan saw Lena as fearsome. Courageous. Sometimes, recklessly so. But something had changed.

I shifted my focus and took Lena in. Really looked at her. Was she scared? Or just being cautious?

“Fighter jets in our airspace,” Alan whispered. “Laser wielding masked Elites calming panicked citizens. Coincidence?” he asked.

Lena didn’t say anything, just reached forward, typed in her key-code to unlock the front door, and pulled it open when it released.

I met Alan’s eyes, but didn’t pass comment. He was right. Lena was afraid.

We followed behind before more could be said, but by the time the door closed at our backs, Lena had disappeared. I knew where I’d find her, though. She always went straight there.

“See what chatter you can locate on the Net,” I said distractedly to Si, as a waiting elevator door opened and we all piled in.

“On it, boss,” he replied, just like old times.

“Get in touch with Tan,” I directed to Alan. “Find out if he needs us.”

This felt too damn familiar. And way too fucking thrilling for our own good.

Once a rebel always a rebel.

“That’ll be fun,” Alan murmured sarcastically as he leaned against the mirrored wall.

“And me?” Paul asked with all the enthusiasm of a puppy.

“Stocktake the armoury. I want to know how much protection we’ve actually got.”

“Cool,” he enthused.

“Keep this from Xiu Ying and the others,” I added for everyone’s sake. “I don’t want to get anyone too excited.” Chance would be a fine thing. Lena’s zebra-lookalike and her cohorts would be well aware what it meant to have fighter jets over Wánměi.

I didn’t wait for a reply, just headed towards our apartment as soon as the lift door opened. This building was just like every other apartment block in Wánměi. Save for the upper floor. Instead of the standard twelve flats every other level had, it housed only eight. But they were special.

Beneath the building was the usual array of cafés, restaurants, and the largest supermarket in the area. We were slap bang in the middle of residential Wánměi; a hub of activity and noise and distraction. Little did they know that thirty storeys above them lay eight remodelled apartments hiding a sophisticated tech-room, well stocked armoury and a self-contained safe-room.

Rebel HQ. We called it home, but each one of us knew why we were here.

Wánměi might be free, but freedom is costly.

Even subconsciously we’d all agreed that this wasn’t over.

And now fighter jets and masked Elite with laser guns. Alan had the right of it. Coincidence?

I was thinking not.

The apartment smelled of Lena. Vanilla and fresh blossoms. Cinnamon from breakfast earlier today. And coffee from my quick espresso before we’d headed out to the bar. It wasn’t as flash as her Parnell Rise home had been, but it didn’t lack for class. Lena had been raised around the finer things in life, but she’d surrounded herself with colour. And culture.

One wall displayed a bright painting of Wáikěiton. Red paper lanterns dotted across a vibrant slash of gold and blue; Elliott Street, showing the crooked buildings and character-filled people and clamouring street vendors. Lena’s former Wáikěiton home, that had burned to the ground, was one of the buildings depicted. It had been the last place she’d felt close to her father.

My eyes flicked across the open living space, over knick-knacks and trinkets, comfortable sofas and a sturdy, well worn dining table with a decorative orchid sitting on top, to the Shiloh unit that hung suspended inside the kitchen wall. A green light flashed in its upper right hand corner. Two quick bursts of light, a long gap, and then repeat. We had a message, but Lena hadn’t cleared it.

Or even seen it, would be my guess.

I climbed the spiral staircase that led to the mezzanine floor and our bedroom there, and then stepped through the open window out onto the roof.

Lena sat under a potted travellers palm, on soft cushions designed to handle the heavy air; her eyes all for the city she loved and had sacrificed so much for. She didn’t stir as my boots hit the bitumen rooftop. Not a flicker of an eyelash or a soft inhale of air. She was statue still. A magnificent sculpture of brittle beauty.

No. Lena wasn’t afraid.

She was mad. Furious even. Livid.

I’d never thought her more irresistible as I did right then.

Three

Words Weren’t Needed

Trent

Rain hung in the air, storm clouds blotted out the stars on the horizon. But Wánměi lit up the night sky like a beacon. The glow of all that illumination reflected in Lena’s eyes, off her pale face. She’d removed her hood and let her hair fall down again. No longer striped like a zebra - she’d given that up when the fickle fashion trends had changed, making her stand out more easily than ever - it was now shorter and pure white.

Lena was all about blending in nowadays.

It suited her, but then I’d probably think Lena looked good no matter what style she chose to wear her hair in. No matter what she chose to wear at all.

I glanced down at her fitted black pants and body hugging black t-shirt. Moisture glistened tantalisingly on her upper chest, above the low lying neckline. My fingers itched to reach out and touch her, right there, above her breasts. But I forced myself to be a gentleman as I sat down on the oversized pillows Lena had thrown around our small slice of heaven. I leaned back against the palm’s pot next to her, and stared off into the distance.

Somewhere out there was a nation with fighter jets, their leaders perusing reconnaissance photos of our city-state.

“It might not mean anything,” I said, aware the words were lies as soon as I spoke them. “Curiosity,” I added, because we all know when I open my mouth I tend to put my foot in it.

“Six weeks,” she said softly. A different kind of “softly” than the tone she’d used with Alan. This one went straight to my heart and tore it apart. “After one week, I thought perhaps no other nations had noticed. After two,” she added quietly, “I was sure no one was close enough to care.”

Oh, babe. When did you become so naive? So trusting?

“After four,” she said, her voice cracking. “I stopped thinking about it so much. I stopped looking over my shoulder or searching the Net.”

She didn’t look at me, just pulled her legs up close to her chest, wrapping her arms around them, and resting her chin on her knees. Her eyes stared blindly at the horizon. A horizon we knew without a shadow of doubt led to somewhere else.

“I hadn’t thought about it once this week,” she whispered, hands fisting at her sides, nails cutting into skin, at a guess.

Lena was angry all right. Angry at herself.

I wasn’t sure what to say. Lena never came across as anything other than well put-together. Contained. Controlled. In charge of her world, even when it was falling apart around her. This was new territory. For both of us. Not just her emotions, but the fact that she was letting someone see them.

Lena only ever opened up to me.

“It would have been nice,” I said, matching the pitch of my words to her low volume, “if we’d had a little longer.”

Silence, and then a small sound that could have been a chuckle.

“I mean,” I pressed on, because hearing Lena laugh has always been a siren call to my soul, “there’s still so much more I want to do to you in bed.”

Yes, definitely a snort. At least, the type of noise an Elite makes when amused and trying not to show it.

“And you promised me one month in bed,” I added, sounding incredulous - not a hard ask - as I really fell into the swing of things. “And we only managed three days before you bought this fucking penthouse floor and had me build rooftop gardens with rain covers and raised decks and fuck knows what else. It’s all quite a blur.”

She shifted her head, resting her cheek on her knees so she could look at me.

“And we haven’t even christened it yet!” I added for good measure. “The least they could have done was wait another six weeks.”

Silence.

Fuck. Stuffed it up, yet again.

“It’s really happening, isn’t it?” Lena asked, and she sounded like a little girl. Like the young daughter her father had left behind in the monster’s lair.

“Baby,” I said, reaching for her, wrapping an arm around her body and pulling her face into the curve of my neck.

She came without resistance, as if she’d been waiting for me to wrap her up in my embrace. As if she needed me as much as I needed her.

Her lips met the sensitive skin on the side of my neck, hot breath over heated flesh. My cock shot rock hard in an instant.

I struggled to be what she needed me to be.

I fought with my body.

I made myself cradle her head gently, fingers massaging her scalp, all the while the urge to wrap the white strands up in my hand and fist them made my heart thud painfully and a rush of noise to invade my ears.

She smelled of sunshine and some exotic, expensive shampoo. She tasted of sweat and body wash and Lena; the sudden burst of familiar flavours on my tongue making me realise I was kissing her back, lips to skin.

I was losing.

She arched encouragingly, hands fisted in my t-shirt, neck bared for my taking, breasts pressed firmly against my chest. Heartbeats beating too swiftly but in tandem.

I was lost.

I rested a flat palm over the top of her breast just to feel it. To reassure myself that I was not the only one in this relationship who surrendered all sense of here and now when wrapped up in the other.

Lost.

Lost to the woman before me. Craving her touch. Her body. Her.

My body won.

I moved us down onto the cushions, realising belatedly why Lena had chosen such behemoths; they made a fucking brilliant bed. Rain started to pitter-patter against the rooftop, but our little haven was sheltered by the deck cover above. Another Lena directive which I thought now was ingenious.

She moaned when my hand found her skin, her back curving, her stomach quivering as fingers swept across flesh. I wasn’t sure where to taste next. The options were limitless. Lena had always been such a fucking fantastic feast to the senses.

Her t-shirt came off over her head. My hands shook as they followed the contour of her breasts. A lacy bra held the rounded orbs up for my inspection. Pretty, but they had to go. They too got added to the small pile of clothing off to the side. A brief flick of my eyes let me know they were getting soaked. The storm had arrived and the rain was coming down in heavy sheets.

But we were cocooned in paradise.

My eyes moved back to Lena in the next heartbeat. Sweat glistened on her skin. I couldn’t resist running my palm over it, up between her breasts until my hand wrapped carefully around her throat. My eyes met hers. Lightning flashed in the night sky, making her pupils spark a little unnaturally. Fuck, she was beautiful. Like an ethereal being. If I didn’t hold on tight enough she might just disappear.

I shook my head, leaned forward and let my lips brush against hers. Lena moaned. It sounded like heaven. Her fingers ran up my back, under my shirt, leaving a hot trail of need in their wake. One long leg wrapped around my hip, forcing my body to fall into exactly the right spot to make me shudder.

“Trent,” she murmured as thunder shook the rooftop.

I’ve got you, baby.

Our hair stuck to our skin, despite staying dry under the sunshade. Heavy air coated us in a welcoming heat. My shirt - thank fuck! - came off. Then Lena’s pants and underwear. A naked goddess lay beneath me, illuminated by the heavens.

“Fuck,” I breathed, my fingers fumbling with my belt buckle.

Sure, soft hands took over the task, a mischievous look accompanying them.

I sprang free, revelling in the sensation. Only to swallow a groan and a gasp as soon as Lena’s delicate hand wrapped around my straining length. I wasn’t going to last long unless I slowed this down pretty quickly.

“Don’t you dare!” Lena warned, knowing me all too well. She rolled me on to my back and immediately followed with her hot lips and mouth and tongue.

Oh, sweet fucking hell.

“Lena,” I pleaded, as she took me deeper down her throat.

Oh, God. Too close.

Too good to stop.

Oh, God.

She made a humming sound right when lightning struck, followed a few heart palpitating seconds later by another round of thunder. My body thrummed as though electrified. My eyes struggled to focus. The world exploded around us. Rain lashing against the rooftop, splashing up from the small puddles forming, and coating us with warm, wet, fat drops. They glided down Lena’s curved back. They slid over her rounded arse.

And I was done.

I pulled her up off my very happy - until that second - cock, spread her legs either side of my thighs, and slammed her back down again.

Fuck!

“Trent!” she screamed, promptly shifting her hips in an undulating rhythm. Lena was born to ride me.

I moved my hands to her hips, but there was no need to guide her. Lena knew how hard and fast I liked it. Her tits bounced in front of my eyes. My hands moved themselves there instead. She threw her head back, lost to the moment, the sensations. This beautiful woman taking what she wanted, giving me so much more in return.

Hair plastered to her cheeks and neck. Her body shone in the harsh flash of lightning. Breaths gasped when thunder struck, or as I’d like to believe, as my cock rocked up to meet her. She moaned, one hand slipping down between her thighs, fingers finding her swollen centre and frantically rubbing.

She looked unbelievably sexy. She felt like nothing I had ever felt before. Making love to Lena always surprised me. Each time was better than the last. This was the best sex I’d ever had. But I knew that tomorrow - or later tonight - when I took her again, that time would be the best fucking time of my life, as well.

She came. It crept up on her; I could tell. The shock, followed by bliss, that washed over her features stole my breath away.

Then thunder roared and lights flashed behind closed eyelids, and her name, shouted from my stunned lips, joined the cacophony of the storm.

Fuck. Bliss.

Lena’s body came down on top of mine; a hot, wet, shuddering blanket. My cock twitched inside her as another spasm rolled through me. My heart raced, trying to keep up with my breaths. My hand found her head, and fingers stroked through damp hair, my other arm wrapping around her body, holding her tight; never letting her disappear.

Her lips rested softly against the curve of my neck as she kissed me.

Wánměi may no longer be perfect, but being with Lena always would.

We didn’t say anything. Words weren’t needed. And then I realised, she’d fallen asleep.

I smiled up at the fronds of the palm, the lightning farther away, the thunder not so loud now. My hands gently stroked soft flesh and white blonde hair.

I loved this woman. She’d stolen my heart with stealth and grace. I could face anything with her by my side. I would do anything to keep her safe.

I rolled us over, reached out for a lightweight blanket to cover us with, and settled down to sleep too. Just a few minutes, and then I’d face the fighter jets and President Tan and imperfect, perfect Wánměi...

A roar and boom woke us. The rain long gone, the thunder no longer there.

But smoke was billowing up, on the horizon, into the fresh dawn air.

Four

Motherfucker!

Trent

We could hear the screams long before we got there. Bone chilling cries of help and dismay. Smoke billowed up into the brightening sky; mushroom clouds, dark and deadly. Cardinals were running. Their red cloaks streaming out behind them like bloody waves.

Chaos. Madness. So much mayhem.

Two cars had collided at an intersection near the Pherres. The drivers were either dead or unconscious, steam rising from the crumpled hoods. The traffic lights were out.

This was Free Wánměi.

Shiloh used to control everything. Street-cams. Power grids. Road traffic control. Post the revolution, we’d been a blank slate. For a while there, it had looked like we’d fall completely. Rap-Trans was offline. The roads a deadly mix of celebration and disorder. Power cuts leaving whole suburbs in the dark.

This felt just the same.

Fear and uncertainty swelled on the footpaths around us. As though a living thing. Shock and terror-filled emotions clawed at my psyche. Too many memories. Too many similarities. Each beat of my heart caused another slice through my chest.

The city was bleeding.

The last time such unchecked emotions ran riot we’d had no way of handling it. Of preventing our city-state’s backward slide.

Save for one thing. One solitary thing. The last standing Shiloh unit. Cut off from the mainframe, separated from the rest. The solution, which was also part of the problem; Calvin Carstairs’ Shiloh device that he’d given to his daughter Selena before his death.

We’d flicked the switch then. We’d got it back online. Took control of the nation’s utility and transport services, then shut it down for good. It now sat on our kitchen wall; answering telephone calls, maintaining the air-con, looking after the security for the penthouse floor. Keeping our tech-room and armoury and safe-room hidden from prying eyes.

But there’d be no quick fix for this.

Whatever had happened here today, had thrown us back into post revolution disarray.

The Pherres came into better view a few seconds later. The enormity of the crisis front and centre. Flames licked up into the dawn of a new day sky. Ten feet high. Twenty. The smoke blotted out the rising sun, turning light into darkness. The magnitude of devastation was all around us. Apparent in the chunks of crumbling concrete, warped metal, and scorch marks on the road. Blood had been spilled here and there. Little drops of humanity in a sea of savage misery. A shoe lay between shattered glass and twisted rebar. It was small. More horrific things flashed before my eyes, better left unsaid.

“No,” Paul whispered, but his was the only voice I heard above the roar of the flames. The crowd was stunned silent. Unable to voice their fears.

And then they saw the body. Arms flailing, legs akimbo, jumping out of the window of a capsule and plummeting to the ground. A desperate escape doomed to fail. I’m ashamed to admit I closed my eyes before it hit.

What the fuck had happened here?

“How many people do you think are still on board?” Alan asked, the wheel itself no longer moving. Perhaps the explosion had originated in the main power control room at its base.

“Can’t be that many,” Si replied over the earpieces. “It’s too early for any sightseeing.”

“Where’s the Civil Defence Force?” I demanded, taking in the carnage but not really comprehending it. Three capsules nearest the base of the Pherres were well ablaze. The rest lost to the smoke they created.

“Responding, according to the chatter,” Si supplied, then abruptly added, “But they can’t get their station doors open.”

Stranger things had happened in post revolution Wánměi. But the thought left me icy.

A scream suddenly sounded out, an escalation of those heard earlier. Frantic, panicked, bereft. A wailing joined it, from within the smoke clouds themselves; high pitched, weak, speaking to a primordial part of our psyche, the part that wants to protect.

“Oh, fuck no,” Si said, as Lena immediately started running. “Kids on a school trip watching dawn rise over Free Wánměi.”

Fuck.

“Where are those fucking fire engines?” I shouted, breathing hard as I pumped my arms and legs, my eyes target locked on Lena’s white hair up ahead. So beautiful. No fear. If I wasn't already crazy about the woman, I’d be inescapably drawn to her. “Can you help them?” I demanded.

“No way to hack their systems,” came Si’s harried reply. “There’s nothing to hack anymore,” he added, sounding just as frustrated as me. Everyone had isolated their servers, it seemed, making something like Shiloh difficult to ever achieve again.

But not impossible.

We all knew the answer. We all thought it as we ran towards a rescue that seemed impossible to undertake. But no one said it. No one gave the order. Not Lena. And certainly not me.

Too many ghosts lay down that path.

Too much risk. Too great a price.

It wasn’t just what we’d fought for. It wasn’t just how much control we’d lost at Shiloh’s hands. And it had nothing to do with how I’d been raised. Lena’s Shiloh unit simply wasn’t meant to be used again. Tan had given the directive personally to her. Grim faced, well aware of what he was asking. But she hadn’t baulked. She’d done her duty. Isolated the device, turned it into a local server, and stuck it in our wall.

Occasionally, I’d hear her talking to it. The voice emanating from the speakers now the deep, comforting tones of her father’s and not the High Anglisc of Shiloh we’d grown to hate. I’d hang back at those times, out of sight when he replied, and listen. My heart aching for the little girl she no longer was.

Sometimes, I wondered whether Lena believed it was real. But it wasn’t. It was like any other mechanical device, subject to code and programming. Nothing more. Nothing less.

It was not her father.

It broke my heart. For her. For little Lena.

But we couldn’t use it again.

We ran over rubble, we avoided shards of glass and lethal blades of metal and wood. We turned our eyes away from the broken flesh. Our shoes slipped in pools of red. Sweat beaded our brows. Our lungs began to scream for fresher air. Soot clung to our skin like an insidious disease, sinking into pores, running into our eyes when mixed with the sweat.

But people were trying. Just like us, they’d run to the disaster and not away. This was my Wánměi. They’d started a human chain; buckets and bottles and even a fucking vase of water was being passed from one person to the other and then thrown on the base of the flames. It wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. I knew this. They probably knew this, too. We needed high powered water hoses and fire retardant safety gear. Ladders and cherry pickers. We needed a fucking miracle.

We needed to get those kids.

Paul peeled off and joined the inadequate fire fighting attempts, as Lena’s body was lost to the smoke and debris at the base. I sucked in my last clean breath of air and dived into the blackness after her.

Sounds were distorted all around us. Clanging. Screeching. The chilling noise of metal twisting under pressure. The whimper of a child. The roar of the blaze.

Heat made it difficult to see, sweat dripping in torrents now, into our eyes and making vision blur and the world around us shimmer and sway. The smoke made it almost impossible to breathe; I fought the need to cough. Lena climbed over sharp edges and deep crevices ahead of me, her hands already bloody from the effort. Her mouth pinched. Her chest heaving. A grimace on her face.

And then a child wailed. Heart-wrenching, pained. The trauma and horror cloying at its throat.

Lena turned to look at me; soot marring the paleness of her face. Red-rimmed eyes held mine and I knew. I just fucking knew. She was going up there. Nothing would stop her. Not me. Not self-preservation. Not the knowledge that the action would no doubt prove futile in the end. She was going up there.

She was going to risk her life for those children, with barely a plan or a way to get them out. With a fire raging out of control at the base. With death all around us and a promise of more on the thick air.

Well, fuck this. Not alone. Not without me.

Not without a back-up plan.

“Flick the switch, Si,” I said, my voice strangely calm despite our surroundings.

“Are you sure?” he asked back over the earpiece, making my heart beat a staccato rhythm and my teeth grind themselves to dust.

I wasn’t sure, but Lena was not doing this alone. And I never did anything without a plan.

I’d wear the consequences later. I’d face Lee Fucking Tan and his interim government with their wide ideals and delicately wrapped rules. But right now, the woman I loved was attempting a rescue mission, in conditions that were well below fucking par.

“Just do it!” The words not only for Simon. Both Alan and Lena nodded their heads in reply; determination on their faces as they turned to the structure preparing to ascend.

The metal was superheated to touch, but Lena didn’t hesitate. She started climbing, gripping hold of whatever she could find, and hauling herself up. Higher and higher in the dark, smoky clouds; at times out of my sight and tearing me apart. Skin blistered. Blood ran. Chests ached. Eyes stung. The crackle and roar felt deafening from below, but we could still hear the occasional muffled cry of a child.

It seemed like they were all around us.

My head pounded with the dry air. My body ached with every metre we climbed. My heart clenched when Lena lost her footing, grappling blindly for another handhold in the dark. It felt like forever, but was no more than a few minutes at a guess, before the first intact capsule came into view.

The paintwork was blistered, streaks of soot covered its sides. The windows were frosted; either from smoke or condensation from those breathing within, I couldn’t tell. But there was no way of seeing into the capsule. We could only pray that they were still alive.

With one hair-raising leap of faith, Lena jumped across to the maintenance platform beneath it, and started working on the safety hatch.

“How are those engines going?” I asked Si, as my heart pounded right out of my fucking chest with fright.

Lena didn’t even look down, her concentration remarkable. The space between her and open air whisper-thin.

“Almost there,” came Si’s much needed reply. He’d worked wonders, I knew. Would have made his fingers fly. Nothing was impossible if you had a doctored Shiloh unit and Simon Richards on your side.

I rocked back on my heels and then jumped, reaching out instinctively to grab Lena before we both toppled off the platform.

“Let me!” I yelled above the furore. The lock was stuck and Lena’s knuckles were already stripped raw.

She shook her head, bit her bottom lip, and narrowed her eyes. Then the door suddenly swung upwards and Lena tumbled inside.

I climbed up behind her immediately - breathless, parched, aching throughout - then reached down and helped Alan once he’d made it across to the platform underneath. Standing upright we both spun around.

And were met with nothing. No one. Not a fucking thing. The capsule was thoroughly empty.

Relief was soon washed away with utter incredulity.

The double wide doors on the outward side of the pod were open to the smoke-filled air. Hanging from a hook in the ceiling of the capsule was a high quality, thick climbing rope. Similar to those Lena used when she somersaulted off a fucking sky-rise. Lena casually walked up to it and tested its strength with a hard tug. I barely resisted the urge to hold onto the back of her shirt as she stood spotlit against nothing but smoky sky.

Swallowing my own - quite fucking natural - fear of heights down, I moved with Alan to her side.

In between the flashing strobe lights of fire engines - thank you, Si - and the high powered sprays of water from their hoses, a masked figure abseiled down the rope with a child in their arms. Huh. I twisted my neck and looked up, seeing more ropes, more masked figures, more children being rescued from several other capsules, in a seamless display of choreographed acrobatics that boggled the mind.

We’d been too late. Too fucking inefficient. Someone else had saved the day instead of us.

And didn’t that thought leave an uncomfortably foul taste in my mouth?

I looked back down at the masked figure, fists clenched, jaw tight.

It was her, I realised with a blast of something close to shock. I was sure of it. Same curly black hair. Same bejewelled mask. Same Cardinal buff body.

And strapped to her leg was the very same illicit laser gun, as well.

Motherfucker! Who the hell were these masked people?

Five

Yeah, Creepy

Trent

"What the hell was that?" Alan growled as we stumbled into the tech-room; charred, blistered, battered and confused.

The masked woman and her cohorts had disappeared once we'd made it back to the ground. But not before they'd rescued over forty children and their teachers from near death. The streets were abuzz with praise. Masked they were being called. As if a new caste had been created. Not Elite with all the trappings of privilege. But not Citizen or Cardinal either. Somewhere in between all three.

Even Si had the newsfeed running on the largest screen in his room. Rolling credits speculating on who the Masked were. Where they'd come from. And if Lena, or The Zebra, had anything to do with them.

I glanced across the room at her now; soot covered, grazed, worn out. And silent. Her pale eyes skimming over the screens at Si's disposal, clever little cogs whirring away inside her head.

She had no answers. Neither did I. The so called Masked were an anomaly.

In a city that had changed so drastically only a few short weeks ago, it seemed determined to change yet again.

"The Civil Defence Force station doors were doctored," Si announced, making every single person in the room halt in their tracks. "If they were tampered with, then it was done for a reason. One can only assume that reason coincided with the Pherres disaster."

"That woman," Alan ground out between clenched teeth. "The rescue effort was well under way before we got there. And we drove like bats out of hell to reach the scene as soon as it exploded."

"Are you saying they knew it was going to happen?" Paul asked, collapsing into a chair at the back of the room.

Alan didn't bother to reply. Economy of speech was his speciality.

"If they knew..." Si started.

"Then they locked the Civil Defence Force behind closed doors to put on a better show," I finished for him.

"We've got would-be martyrs," Si added. "If they're capable of something like this, then what will they do next?"

"And why are they doing it?" Lena added in a contemplative voice.

"Attention seeking?” Paul offered.

"Something of this magnitude would indicate attention for a cause," Lena offered. "Not simply because they want their masked faces to appear on vid-screens."

"So, what's their cause?"

"Find that out and you find them," Lena replied, moving across the room to the door.

"Where are you going?" I asked, the question more abrupt than I'd intended.

"We're speculating," she replied, not bothering to turn to look at me. "I need a shower."

"Because we're speculating?" Alan queried. Again with the fucking bear stick.

"Call me when you have a plan," was the only reply he got.

"Why doesn't Lena want to be in on our plan?" Paul asked, abandonment issues rearing their ugly little head. Paul doted on Lena. He could almost be an honorary zebra-lookalike. Which made me wonder just where Xiu Ying & Zhang Jun exactly were.

"Lena's already making her own plan," Alan said in a deadpan voice.

"Undoubtedly," Si added, both looking at me with expressions of mirth.

Yeah, yeah, my girlfriend tended to do whatever she damn well liked. A dedicated member of the revolution Lena had never been.

"Anything from Tan?" I asked instead of opening up that can of worms.

"He's requested we meet with him at midday," Si supplied.

"Great, luncheon at Parliament House," Alan grumbled.

"Who said anything about feeding us," Si shot back. "He's more likely to eat us instead.”

"Does he think we're involved?" I asked in shock.

"His aide didn't say as much, but I got the impression the invitation wasn't a request."

"Typical," Alan muttered.

"He is our President," Paul offered.

"Interim President," Si, Alan and I said in unison.

The road to freedom was paved in many potholes and rocks.

"So," Alan said after a few seconds of silence. "What is our plan?"

I stared at the largest vid-screen, the devastation at the Pherres displayed in realistic high definition colour. Our once iconic wheel lay in a crumpled mess. Water flowed forlornly out of the odd fire hose still being used to douse the smouldering ruins. Civil Defence Force personnel wandered the scene in reflective jackets. Cardinals stood out in their utter lack of self preservation; cloaks twisting on their shoulders, flapping down their backs. A stray spark could have ignited any one of them. Citizens stood by and watched; drawn to the macabre, drawn to the salvation delivered.

They all wanted answers. How could this have happened in Free Wánměi?

Could Shiloh have prevented it?

The answer was simple. Wánměi wasn't free.

"Tan's not our problem," I said into the heavy silence of the room. "This new caste is."

"The Masked," Alan spat.

I nodded; eyes still glued to the vid-screen. "We need more information."

"Maybe Tan has something," Si offered.

"Tan is as blind as anyone," Alan replied.

"Wouldn't he be investigating?" Paul asked.

"Sure," Alan agreed, then pointed to the screen. "That's him investigating. A bunch of Civil Defence Force assessors and a few Cardinals asking them pertinent questions."

"The answer isn't at the scene," Si added, backing up Alan's words. "It's on the streets."

"The Masked have to live somewhere," I said quietly. "Congregate somewhere. Communicate with each other. If anyone understands subversive techniques it's us."

"Are they subversive?" Paul asked.

"Have you even been listening?" Alan demanded in a growl. "Lena's right. A gig this big is not just for attention. It's for a cause."

Paul frowned and looked down at the floor of the room, suitably chastised. We were all on edge. Alan more so than the rest of us, and for a moment I couldn't understand why. I stared at my best friend. The one person to have been with me from the very beginning. Even before I found Si. Alan had known my father. Had been part of the rebel army I grew up in. He knew more about my past than any other person save Lena. He knew more about what sacrifices we'd made along the way.

I stared at him, but no answers came to mind. He was taking this personally, as if the fact that the masked woman was not of Anglisc descent, like him, made it his responsibility. It'd be like Lena taking the blame for all of the Overseers, just because her father had been one.

Alan was pissed. And taking it out on every one around him.

"Go get cleaned up," I instructed. Alan's head shot up, not missing who the order had been directed at. "Both of you," I added, because I might have been raised to lead a rebel army, but that didn't make me a replica of my dear old dad. "We're going in circles here."

Paul started for the door to the room, Alan stood stock still and stared at me.

I waited for the door to close behind Paul before I spoke.

"Do you think the rebellion is over?"

"What do you mean?" Alan replied, voice low.

"Do you think just because we freed Wánměi that our job is done?"

He didn't reply.

"My father once told me that battles were won in the command tent and then lost in the same command tent mere days after." My father had been an arrogant, abusive sonofabitch, but he'd known how to lead an army.

He'd just never won a fucking war.

"The rebellion didn't end because we won," I said softly. "But it will end if we don't keep fighting."

"Who are we fighting?" Alan asked.

And that was the question. We'd fought General Chew-wen. We'd fought Harjeet Fucking Kandiyar. We'd fought Shiloh. Who was left? Our own people? These so-called Masked?

I shook my head. I was exhausted, filthy, and craving Lena.

How many more battles would there be before I could hang up my hat and call it a win?

"Does it matter?" I asked. "Wánměi is not yet free."

Alan let out a long breath of air and then scrubbed a hand over his grimy face.

"Just once," he murmured. "Just once I'd like to believe it is over." So like Lena. Alan and Lena butted heads daily, but that was because they were so alike.

Loyal. Protective. Courageous. The moral fibre that makes this city-state what it is.

"Go get cleaned up. We've got a rebellion to end."

He nodded his head, straightened his shoulders, and left the room.

I stood still, staring blindly at the vid-screen, wondering what the fuck would hit us next.

"Lena's Shiloh worked perfectly," Si said into the strained silence.

And there it was. The next hit. Which, in my tired and battered state, I'd completely forgotten.

"Still online?" I asked, moving to look over his shoulder at a smaller screen within touching distance of Si's hands. Lines of binary code scrolled across the display; none of it meant a bloody thing to me, but Si swore he could see pictures inside the code. Beautiful drawings, expertly rendered, remarkably lifelike when you knew how to read it.

It all sounded gobbledygook to me, but that's why I had a Simon Richards.

"I didn't have the heart to disconnect," he admitted, stroking the screen as though it was his lover.

"Dangerous isn't it?" I pressed, feeling like a fucking voyeur as I watched.

"He was utterly brilliant. Calvin Carstairs. He created an isolation programme that continues to evolve when presented with new threats. Any security system has to be updated as new and more lethal hostilities arise. But not this one. It's self-perpetuating."

"Just like Shiloh," I said.

"Yeah, just like..." His voice faded away at my meaning.

"Shiloh evolved. And Calvin created her first."

"He learned from his mistakes," Si pushed.

"Did he? Or would you like to believe that so you can keep playing with SMII?" Shiloh Mark II was our name for Lena's device. Carstairs had created it after he realised Shiloh Mark I was going batshit crazy. It saved the day. But it was still too close to Shiloh Mark I for my liking.

For Lee Tan's liking as well.

"Flick the switch, Si," I ordered softly. "It's a double edged sword. Let's remember to treat it like one."

"And how do you intend to find the Masked?" My teeth gritted at his apparent ease of using the new caste title.

"The old fashioned way."

"Like the Cardinals and Civil Defence Force?" Si pressed, indicating the still chaotic scene on the vid-screen. "Like President Tan?"

I sighed. I was too fucking tired for all of this.

"What other choice do we have?" I turned toward the door and the salvation I knew was waiting in our apartment.

I made it as far as putting my hand on the handle before he spoke.

"You're just as afraid as Lena."

"Lena's not afraid."

"Too scared to see what assets you hold for fear of repeating past mistakes."

"She's angry."

"Are you angry, Trent?" he asked, sharp eyes target locked on my own. "Or are you scared?"

Why me? Why must it be me who has to fucking deal with this shit?

"Just saying," he said before I could snarl in reply. Then turned back to his screen and entered a command. The binary code disappeared. SMII locked down.

I didn't move from my half turned position. Escape and the fresh scent of Lena as she comes out of the shower mere footsteps away. I stared at nothing. My thoughts a tumbling, disordered mess.

I wasn't afraid. But I also wasn't exactly angry.

What the fuck was I?

Fed up? Thrilled? I couldn't fucking tell. And that couldn't be a good thing.

I let a slow breath of air out and opened the door. Tan would want answers. He'd demand them. But unlike our new President, we did have tools in our arsenal. Not locked up in our armoury, as our small ammunitions and weapons were. Not sleeping in any one of the eight apartments on this penthouse floor, ready to jump at my command.

No. No such fucking luck.

I thrust the door open to our apartment, scanning the open space and coming up blank. I glanced up at the mezzanine floor and heard the shower running. The desire - no need - to go up there, forget about everything, bury my head in the sand - or between Lena's breasts - was all-fucking-consuming.

I shook my head and strode across the floor to the kitchen.

Arms crossed over my chest I stared the last standing Shiloh unit down.

The green light was still blinking. We still had a message. Probably Tan. I ignored it and activated the household organiser voice control. My hand was steady, my finger rock solid. My heart thumped loudly in my head.

"Good morning, Trent," Calvin Carstair's voice sounded out through the speakers.

Fucking creepy. But that wasn't the half of it...

"I wondered when you'd finally face me," he/the machine said. "I've been waiting a very long time for this."

Yeah, creepy.

The thing was fucking alive.

Six

By Me

Trent

I'd told myself, Lena hadn't been speaking to her father when I'd eavesdrop at the door. She'd been communicating with a computer, programmed to sound like him and nothing else.

I'd told myself that a hundred times over the past six weeks.

I'd lied.

"Run system check," I said through numbed lips, clinging to the fantasy, knowing I'd have to face the reality before this little conversation was through.

"Checking," Calvin replied.

The green light flashed rhythmically. My heartbeat matched its rapid pace. I ran a hand over my damp brow and stared down at the black grime that coated it. Rolling my head on my shoulders I gave the lounge and the spiral staircase a quick glance and prepared to get on and fucking do this.

Before Lena came back down.

"Check complete," Calvin advised.

I let a long breath of air out, trying to release any pent up frustration with it.

Didn't work.

The waiting message was the only warning on the screen. The device was offline. No way to have been pinged. Isolated. Contained. Just a computer maintaining environmental and security controls throughout the penthouse floor.

I reached forward and pressed the screen to expand the information. Checking all the apartments on the floor were locked down, making sure our armoury and safe-room were intact. Paul had completed the stocktake and entered it into the system. We had minimal gear. Enough tech to steal whatever we damn well liked from wherever we damn well pleased, courtesy of Lena. And a small number of knives, stun guns, compact explosives, and even a couple of Wánragěi; straight edged swords taken from the National Museum. Not only Shiloh's mainframe had been left in those dark hallways beneath the ground.

I let another fortifying breath of air out and crossed my arms over my chest.

The Shiloh unit blinked back at me. Calvin silent.

Just a computer. Nothing more. Waiting on a command. Simple. Straight forward.

"Access Net," I instructed.

"Global Net acquired," Calvin replied instantly.

I felt my blood pressure lessen. Just a high powered, lightning fast computer. Nothing more.

"Search for feeds pertaining to the Pherres incident this morning."

"Searching."

"Locate Masked reference. Compile."

The light blinked. I scratched at the stubble along my jaw. Then walked to the fridge to grab a bottle of water. My throat was still parched, despite downing two bottles in the van on the way back here.

"Thirty-three references," Calvin replied over my shoulder. To be expected. I shut the fridge door. "Thirty on the Wánměi Net. Three on the Global."

The bottle of water stopped as it reached my lips. I didn't drink. Turning back to the device, I stalked closer. The green light blinked merrily. My heart missed a beat.

"Where on the Global Net?"

"Searching," Calvin replied. Then immediately, "Source blocked."

"Can you unblock it?" I asked, then shook my head. "No! Don't do that." Giving SMII that sort of free rein could be disastrous. I'd have to have Si take charge of anything as delicate as that.

"Go offline," I said, my thoughts tumbling.

"Offline," Calvin agreed.

"What do the newsfeeds say about the Masked?" I asked, chancing another sip of water. "Read headlines."

"Masked Crusaders," Calvin started. "New Saviour Caste. Who Are These Masked Men?" The list went on with similar questions to those we'd thrown about the tech-room, but one did stand out. "Explosion In Wánměi: City-State In Disarray With Masked Citizens Running Amok."

"Stop! What feed said that?"

"Unable to acquire source."

I felt my body fall back against the kitchen bench, the bottle of water forgotten beside me. It took a second for my brain to catch up with my mouth. But not before I said aloud, "What the fuck does that mean?"

"Clearly," Calvin said, as if the question had been posed to him, "Someone overseas is watching us carefully."

A chill raced down my spine. So many different reasons why my body had suddenly gone from hot and sticky to fucking frozen and damp. I honed in on the one most immediate.

"Why do you say that?"

"Because, Trent," the machine replied, "The feed originated on the Global Net."

"No," I said shaking my head. "I get that. Why do you say it. You're a fucking machine."

"And I am extrapolating the answer to your question from information gathered in the search you desired."

Shiloh had never talked like that.

"You're just a machine."

"Yes," Calvin agreed pleasantly.

Just a machine. A computer.

"But if you ask my opinion, I will give it," the machine added.

"Your opinion?"

"Ask. I need a command."

My chest ached with the need to breathe. I sucked in a lungful of air, scrubbed my face with shaking hands, and stared the device on the wall down.

"Are you a new programme? Something more advanced than even Shiloh?"

"Not the command I was expecting," Calvin admitted. "But the answer is yes."

"When did he write you?"

"When did who write me?"

"Calvin Carstairs," I all but ground out between clenched teeth.

"I am Calvin Carstairs," the machine replied.

I started laughing. "No you're fucking not."

"How can you be sure?" the machine asked in all seriousness.

"Because he's fucking dead," I snapped back.

The computer remained silent.

This was lunacy. Clearly Calvin had written this sub-programme and buried it deep in SMII. Knowing that the device needed to blend in with Shiloh's normal code or be spotted. Once Lena shut down Shiloh's mainframe for good, then the sub-programme rose to the surface.

We had a new Shiloh called Calvin.

Fuck. No wonder Lena spoke for hours to this thing.

I was tempted. Fuck was I tempted. I'd only heard snippets of her conversations with the device, and nothing had indicated the dialogue was suspect. But then, had Lena really known I wasn't listening? Nothing got past Lena Carr. Maybe she curbed her tongue. Maybe the fucking machine did too. When they both knew I was listening.

I wanted to ask. What do you talk about with Lena? But was that going a step too far? Invading her privacy, checking up on her like a wayward child. I couldn't do it.

But I wanted to.

Instead I said, "What's your opinion, Calvin?"

"On what, Trent?" the fucking machine replied.

"On the new Masked caste and Global Net reference to them."

The light blinked green.

Then, "That is two commands," Calvin pointed out. "Command one: I have no opinion on the Masked, save to say I believe they are a new caste. Castes are created when the need to define social orders is required. No society is without varying levels of social order. This new division has been created by the people. Not by the government. Therefore it is a social order arrived at a time of public need."

What the fuck?

"Command two," he said. "Interest in our nation from those outside its former borders has always been known. Trades have ceased, that interest is now economically motivated. Tie in the fact that our Net is no longer sat-locked, and we have no control over satellite coverage, then knowledge of this morning's events will be globally known. Therefore reference to the Masked in relation to the Pherres incident is a given."

That's it?

"My opinion on this is we must prepare for invasion, if it has not already occurred."

That chill I'd felt turned to ice.

"What do you mean, already occurred?"

"I mean, Trent, that we have no borders anymore."

"I know that," I snapped. "What makes you say we've already been invaded?"

"I didn't say that. I speculated that we may have been."

"Is there evidence?" I pushed, and God knows why I was having a conversation with a computer programme as though it was a sounding board.

I suddenly realised how easy it would be for Lena to get caught up in the moment with Calvin.

"Searching."

Great, we were back to straight-up computer and nothing else. I almost missed the wise cracks.

"Four weeks ago the Masked appeared on our streets," Calvin suddenly said, green light blinking steadily and not giving a warning that he was about to talk. With humans you get a cue. With a souped-up artificially intelligent computer you took the hits as they came at you.

I let the hastily sucked in breath out, thankful Calvin was just a machine and didn't have eyebrows to raise at me.

"We could assume their arrival is coincidence," he added.

"But you don't think so," I guessed.

"No," the computer, which I had just asked what it "thought", said. I wasn't sure who was crazier. Me for entertaining this thing. Or Calvin Carstairs for creating it.

"Well?" I pressed, because I'd come this far, I might as well go all in.

"If we look at the state of the nation at the time," Calvin offered, bringing up images of Wánměi post revolution, and cycling through newsfeed headings as the weeks passed. "Disorder was the most prevalent state of being."

"Chaos," I offered.

"Yes," Calvin agreed. "History tells us," he went on, changing the images and headlines on the vid-screen to those pertaining to Wánměi's infancy, "that some form of order is required for people to band together. Times of need do create a sense of heightened camaraderie, but castes such as those we are witnessing develop now, only ever came about when nations are more settled. Some form of organised advertisement or propaganda needs to be used to obtain full societal coverage."

"What if it's just a fashion statement?" I murmured.

The vid-screen image changed to a shot of the Pherres; footage, I realised. Then the lens turned to show those people around it.

Masked. But also in amongst the Masked were normal Citizens. Not wearing masks, but with white blonde hair, like Lena's. The new post Zebra look.

"That doesn't mean..." I started, and the footage flickered. A second boom sounded out, cries of shock joining it, the device shook as the person holding it started to stammer.

"Wh...where are they going?" he said, the camera imagery became unfocused; the man controlling it must have been shaking like a leaf.

But you could still see that the only people standing beside him now were normal Free Wánměi Citizens. A lot with white blonde hair. But none wearing masks.

Up ahead, as he zoomed the shaking lens in, you could see the Masked running towards the yellow-orange flames and mushroom cloud rising above it. They moved like highly trained Cardinals. They dashed across the street, and leapt obstacles without hesitation. The light of the explosion glinting off the jewels in their masks.

"Had this been a fashion statement," Calvin announced, "then we would expect some percentage of those compelled to offer aid to have white hair and no masks."

"But they don't."

"No," Calvin agreed. "A caste is a social class, but it can also be a social status. A name given to a group of people at a particular time indicating their role in society."

I stared at the screen, watching the blurry images of masked men and women stream towards mayhem without a single thought for themselves. Just like Lena. Just like Alan and Paul and all those water vase wielding impromptu fire fighters. Just like me.

But one thing was different between those on the screen right now and those I'd seen at ground zero.

None of our lot had worn a single mask.

"And what, do you think, is their role?" I finally asked.

"Searching."

I shook my head, then had a thought.

"Where did you find this recording, Calvin?"

"Wánměi Net," he replied, the green light indicating he was still searching for an answer to my last question.

"How come Si didn't find it?" I thought aloud.

"Because it was removed from the Net less than five minutes after it had been uploaded."

I frowned.

"Unable to find an answer to your command," Calvin suddenly advised. "Without access to the Net I am inadequately empowered to ascertain the role of the Masked."

Good to know the bloody machine didn't simply go online when it liked it.

I cocked my head, my mind whirring.

"So how did you find that recording?"

The green light blinked, then Calvin replied, "I was commanded to monitor all available channels at the time of the crisis."

"All available channels?" I queried, my gut plummeting.

"Yes." That meant the device had been online even before Si flicked the switch.

And Si hadn't noticed.

Or...

"Did Simon give the order?" I'd fucking give him a dressing down if he did. Just because he thought the machine was ingenious, did not mean he could play with it whenever he liked. There were avenues of command in this place. Damn it!

"No," Calvin advised. "Not by Simon Richards."

Huh. Then...

"By me," Lena's voice sounded out from over my shoulder.

I spun around and stared at her, mouth open, mind blank.

Ah, fucking hell. Guess I'd be giving that dressing down to Lena instead of Si.

Not a welcoming thought.

Seven

Lena Looked Elite

Trent

"You can't trust it," I growled.

"I am right here, you know," Calvin interjected.

"It's perfectly safe," Lena argued.

"As safe as Shiloh?" I demanded.

"I am not Shiloh!" Calvin declared, outraged. If a fucking computer could be outraged that is.

"He's nothing like Shiloh," Lena agreed. With the fucking computer. Not me.

"It, Lena. It, not he."

She flicked her eyes to the device in the wall. Her bottom lip wedged between her teeth.

"Baby," I said, taking a step closer.

"It's different," she said softly.

"Lena," I chastised carefully. "How can you be so sure?"

"My programming is quite unrelated to that of Shiloh's," Calvin offered helpfully.

"Stand down," I snapped, my eyes not leaving Lena's expressive face.

Where had the Elite gone? When had the controlled woman I'd fallen so hard for disappeared?

"Standing down," Calvin confirmed. But I wasn't sure "standing down" was a computer command. The fucking thing was humouring me.

"Trent," Lena began.

"No, babe," I said shaking my head. "You of all people. Si I could understand." She frowned. "He gets a hard-on for these things." Calvin made a beeping sound, confirming the whole not standing down thing. "But you faced off against Shiloh. You saw what it had done to the image of your mother. Not just what it had done to Wánměi."

"Shiloh is a different programme altogether," Lena insisted.

"And you read code now? You've deciphered its programme when Si hasn't been able to get near it enough to read?"

She turned ice blue eyes on me. "It's different," she insisted.

"Because it told you so?" I pushed.

A chin lift was my only reply and nothing else.

"If Shiloh had told you she was protecting you by controlling all the drones, would you have believed her?"

"He's not controlling drones!"

"But it's online and hiding it. Si didn't even know, and he flicked the switch. Was that another of your commands, Lena?" I'd started to raise my voice. Any louder and I'd be yelling.

Lena gave as good as she got.

"What if I did? It's my device. My father gave it to me!"

"And your father created Shiloh!" I shouted back.

"That was not one of my better moments," Calvin admitted.

"Shut up!" both Lena and I yelled at the same time. "You're not helping, Dad," she added and I staggered back a step.

"Fuck," I breathed. "This machine is not your father." The words were whisper quiet and spoken slowly. Carefully. Not because I didn't want to hurt her - she'd royally pissed me off this time - but because they were important. So fucking important. She had to see. "You know that, don't you?" I pressed. "Tell me you know that, Lena. Tell me you don't think he's in there, somehow, his conscience transferred to a computer and it's the man you knew and loved talking out of those speakers. Tell me," I begged.

She let out a long breath of air and said, "Of course I know. It's just hard to not call it that sometimes."

I shook my head, my fists aching from where I'd been clenching them. I spread my palms out, let the blood rush back in, and then scrubbed at my face. I was so fucking tired of all of this. I was filthy, exhausted, and fed up with constantly battling for what was right.

I looked back at the device on the wall, then shifted my gaze to Lena.

"You left before I said it," I murmured. Her eyes came up to mine, head tilted slightly, complete and utter focus on me. Lena could steal a man's breath by simply listening. "Before I told Alan that we're not through. The war's not over."

"So it would seem," she said, sounding more and more like an Elite. Wherever Lena had been she was coming back.

"And if the war's not over, then the revolution is still in full swing," I added.

"What are you trying to say, Trent?" she demanded with all the haughty flare I'd come to know.

"You bought this penthouse floor because you knew that truth too," I pointed out. "You expected every surviving member of the rebel army to live here. You insisted on a tech-room, a safe-room, and an armoury. Because you knew the rebellion was not yet won."

"Battles come and go," she murmured, leaning against a bench but somehow still looking Elite while she did it. "Causes evolve."

"From freedom and back again," I agreed.

"Freedom's still the goal," she argued.

"Yes, but keeping it, not obtaining it."

She nodded.

"This is Rebel HQ," I said, bringing myself up to full height, straightening my shoulders. I towered over her, but that wasn't my intention. I just needed to be ready for the fallout after I said what was coming next. "And I'm still the rebel leader."

She held my piercing stare with a flat one of her own.

"You agree?" I pushed. I needed her to say it.

Her chin lifted a millimetre more.

"Do you, or don't you agree that I'm the leader of this rebel army?"

"It's hardly an army," she pointed out.

"Lena!"

"Yes!" she shot back. "You're in charge. Happy?"

I smiled. It was in no way mirthful.

"Shiloh," I said.

"Yes, Trent," Calvin replied immediately.

"Voice control lock activation."

Lena's mouth fell open. Her hands falling from her hips in utter disbelief.

"Activating. Please provide voice imprint and code."

"Trent Masters," I said. "Two-Four-Alpha-Charlie-Eight."

"Voice imprint and code accepted. Voice control activated."

I held Lena's fiery gaze, felt the rift that I'd torn open between us widen, and said, "Shut down. Maintain security for penthouse floor but nothing else." We could answer our own damn telephone calls and adjust the air-con when needed.

"Command received."

Lena stared at me, a flush marring the perfect paleness of her cheeks.

"Well, that's that then," she whispered.

"Yes," I replied, my throat aching, my chest a hollow cavity.

"I'll be on the roof," she offered, spinning on her heel, and gliding from the room.

I leaned back against the bench, my legs suddenly weak. Reaching out I lifted the water bottle back up to my lips and took a sip. Before I'd swallowed it completely, I threw the fucking thing across the kitchen and let it slam into the far wall. Water exploded out as the plastic fractured, running down the tiles as though slick tears.

Fuck!

I stood there for too long. Staring at a machine that was for all intents and purposes offline and shut down and locked on my voice command. I expected it to lecture me about mistreating its daughter at any minute.

"What the fuck have you got me into, Calvin," I muttered.

The machine remained mute.

Thank fuck!

I stormed from the room and climbed the spiral staircase to the mezzanine. The window was open out onto the roof. I purposely avoided that side of the bedroom and went directly into the ensuite.

We had exactly one hour to get cleaned up, get prepared, and face Lee Fucking Tan. And I had a horrible feeling I'd be doing it without Lena's backing.

I scrubbed a little harder than was strictly necessary, the towel as rough as the sponge had been. By the time I was dressed and stormed out of the bathroom with thunder clouds swirling around my pounding head, the window to the roof had been closed. A quick search told me Lena had left the apartment, and for all I knew, she wouldn't be back again until I apologised.

My teeth ached from where I was grinding them, the palms of my hands were scratched from the indents of my nails. Going up against President Tan in this fucking mood was ill advised. I worked on lowering my blood pressure, starting with some powerful pain killers for the headache from hell, and then stalked off towards the tech-room.

The complete gang were there. Including Xiu Ying and Zhang Jun; sitting in a corner beside Lena. The headache lessened as soon as I saw her. I let a ragged breath out and ran a hand through my hair, then faced Si. He'd not missed a thing. His eyes darted between me and Lena, and back again, and then he turned to his vid-screen.

"The invitation was for you and Lena," he said, bringing up schematics of Parliament House. "But it didn't specifically exclude anyone else."

"We'll keep you here," I said. "We might need someone to coordinate an escape." The joke fell flat. Tension too thick to even get off the ground. Either everyone knew about Lena's and my spat, or they were just naturally uptight about being summoned.

"What about the rest of us?” Paul asked.

I glanced around the room, the full impact of how woefully understaffed we still were hitting me upside the head. I rubbed at my temple distractedly.

"I think it's best if we minimise those who attend," Lena offered, somehow coming to my rescue even when she wasn't trying. "Tan wants answers, but there's no reason to assume he suspects us of being involved. We weren't the Masked. And on every newsfeed running, that's all they're talking about. We make this a casual... well,” she corrected when she received a few arched brows, "semi-casual response to his invitation, and things can't get escalated."

"This is Tan we're talking about," Alan offered.

Lena smiled. It almost looked natural, if you didn't know that face intimately. "What do you think, Trent?"

I had to work not to grimace. Lena was a consummate politician in every possible regard. Trained not only by her Overseer father, but by the cut-throat environment that she'd been raised within. Ohrikee had been a political nightmare for a young orphaned teenage girl.

She knew how to behave publicly. She knew the team needed to see us united.

She also knew how to manipulate a situation to get her own way.

Lena wanted me to curtail the impact on Tan - her self-proclaimed adopted brother - by limiting the amount of backup I brought.

There were ways I could play this. So many different ways. Lena is the love of my life.

But Wánměi is our soul.

I met her level gaze and said, "Alan and Paul are coming with us, Xiu Ying and Zhang Jun will stay behind."

The zebra-lookalikes looked angry. Si looked content. Paul looked excited. And Alan looked relieved.

And Lena? Lena looked Elite.

Now I'd really fucking gone and done it.

Eight

Five Simple Words

Trent

Parliament House stood sentinel over Wánměi River. Its orange tiled roof and white washed walls set a colonial tone in amongst the lush greens of the native plants surrounding it. Until recently, it had been the seat of the Overseers. Cardinal controlled drones had operated out of the rear half of the enormous structure. Politicians out of the grandiose front section facing the ornate Grafton Bridge.

Each vied for supremacy over the other, but Parliament House had that one firmly in the bag. It crouched low on the river bank, demanding attention. Its bulk impossible to ignore.

Wánměi is not overly large, but our small city-state is heavily populated. I'd always thought we'd had too many Overseers - one was one too many for me - but running a populous nation, as Lee Tan liked to inform us, took a lot of people.

Lena was the one to walk in first. Head high like an Elite. I kept pace and dared any one of the Cardinals on duty to accost us; I was spoiling for a fight. I didn't doubt that Tan would deny me access to his inner chamber if I stepped one foot out of line. But the argument with Lena, and the oppressive nature of Parliament House, had my body tingling, my heart rate racing, and sweat beading my brow.

The cool air-con breeze that met us didn't assuage the heat. Perhaps I was coming down with something.

We handed over our vid-screens and personal items - including our earpieces - and then walked through the x-ray machine feeling naked, all the while memories of the drone factory stormed through my mind. I occupied my thoughts with more pleasant imagery, but the look Lena threw my way put an abrupt stop to that enticing pastime.

"You're clear," a Cardinal advised. "Please wait for an escort."

I wanted to growl that we knew the damn way, but Lena replied with all the calmness of a bored Elite, "Of course." Then promptly sat down in a cluster of over stuffed, supremely luxurious looking chairs.

I hesitated, but knew the power appropriate appearances held, so followed suit, making Alan and Paul feel obliged to do the same. I flicked my gaze over my companions; Lena dressed in a figure hugging, delicately embroidered, linen shift, which she somehow managed to keep crease free; Alan in black combat boots, black combat pants, black combat vest; Paul toned down a bit, matching me in casual warfare chic.

Had we expected a battle?

I let a slow breath of air out and scanned the over-height waiting area we'd been ushered to. White columns held fifty foot high domed ceilings aloft, large palms waved at us from super-sized brass pots, polished marble tiles glinted with sunlight as it poured through the floor to ceiling stained-glass windows along one wall. Artwork, sculptures, mesmerizing water features. This was where the National Museum's more generic prizes had been stored when Wánměi turned its back on its past.

A Cardinal appeared before I could make a comment to the others; probably for the best, we'd undoubtedly been under watch. Tan might consider Lena his sibling, but he had no such fantasies about the rest of us.

I stood and held a hand out to Lena; showtime. She accepted it gracefully, her smile one I almost believed myself. The clip of her heels on the marble floor echoed through the hall we walked down, bouncing off priceless artefacts and ubiquitous potted plants. The slow, rhythmic sway of the wing-shaped rattan fans dangling from the ceiling sent trickles of air-con cooled air across our backs. They were all for show, an homage to our history. A strange reminder of where we'd come from for a nation who'd chosen to forget.

I wondered briefly if Lee Tan was trying to remind us, but these fans had been here since General Chew-wen. Tan had inherited a legacy half realised. And half forgotten.

Lena walked first into the President's office, long white hair cascading down her back in Elite perfect presentation. She'd taken to wearing it up lately; a rebellion of her own against the old regime. But old habits die hard, it seemed. Faced with Tan - or it could have been Parliament House itself - she'd reverted to form.

At least, the form she used to be.

We hadn't had a chance to talk, to air our grievances. To compromise. We were both off centre and walking into the lion's den. But then, for Lena, Lee Tan was not such a beast.

He crossed to her immediately, not even offering a welcome to the group as a whole. Simply wrapping her up in his arms and kissing her cheek, setting my teeth grinding again and making my hands bunch into tight fists. Taking longer than necessary to let her go, he finally looked up at the rest of us. First me, and then Alan. A cursory glance at Paul completed the sweep.

People underestimated Paul. Just the way I liked it.

"Tan," I greeted, never one to be the last to step up to the plate.

"President Tan," a Cardinal clipped from the edge of the room where he stood statue still; almost a part of the furniture, save for that blood red cape.

I inclined my head in acceptance and tried again. "Interim President Tan."

Tan's eyes narrowed fractionally, but the soft caramel skin was soon smooth again across his forehead. Giving nothing of his anger away. The game had begun, then.

"Masters." He nodded to my men, then hooded eyes darted down to Lena. "Lena." It was said gently, familiarly. Lovingly.

I took a step forward.

The Cardinal powered up a laser gun.

Holy fucking shit! I raised my hands in a peace-motherfucker move, let out a bark of unimpressed laughter, and stopped dead in my tracks.

"Some greeting, Tan."

"Stand down," he instructed the Cardinal. "These are my friends."

"I have my instructions, President Tan," the Cardinal advised, not lowering the weapon or powering it down. The whine sent a chill skating along my spine; like a primeval memory, burned into my brain before life began.

"You were expecting trouble?" I asked, unsure whether to be honoured or pissed off. Or just resigned to the fact that we'd been right. Tan was going to blame us for what had happened at the Pherres.

Tan shook his head, stepped away from Lena - thank fuck - and ran a hand though his dark cropped hair. It was the most I'd ever seen the guy stressed.

"Things are... delicate right now." He turned and walked to two couches, facing off against each other, with armchairs at right angles at either end. Cream leather. A luxury not often seen by the average Wánměi Citizen. Lena sat down on one side without so much as a blink, I made sure to sit next to her, and Tan took the sofa across from us. Paul grabbed an armchair and Alan stood at our backs. The message couldn't have been any louder.

Tan noticed. He noticed everything. But chose to be the bigger man and remain quiet.

"What do you know about what happened at the Pherres?" he asked, hitting the ground running and not giving a damn.

"Explosion," I offered. "Children rescued by masked men. A fucking disaster."

Tan nodded and then turned his gaze to Lena. "Your view?"

"I agree with Trent," she surprised me by saying. Not because I thought she didn't agree with me as such. But that she had bothered to say so at all. Lena wasn't one for stating the obvious. So her reasoning for voicing those words was to set the tone.

I flicked her an appreciative glance from the corner of my eye, and she promptly reached over and gripped my hand. Fingers laced. Palm against palm.

My heart damn near burst out of my chest.

I returned my attention to Tan, who watched on with interest but no other indication that the motion - or words - had meant anything to him.

"And the fighter jets?" he asked instead.

The Pherres I could almost understand. But how he thought we'd know anything about the fighter jets was beyond me.

"Loud," I offered. Being obnoxious to Lee Tan was just too damn tempting.

"Frightening," Lena added, softening my words. Taking the sting right out of them, in fact. "What can you tell us about them?" she hit back.

"I know as much as you," Tan started.

"I doubt that," Alan offered from over our shoulder.

Tan ignored him.

"Clearly reconnaissance of some sort," he continued. "Footage we managed to gain of them suggests surveillance equipment attached to their underbelly."

"You activated the street-cams," I accused.

"I had no choice."

"And yet the jets were here for less than three minutes. The command must have been an easy one to carry out."

Tan held my steady gaze with an unrepentant one.

"We're under attack," he said simply. "Whether that's a full-on invasion, terrorism from within the nation, or simply the benign interest of curious neighbours, is yet to be ascertained."

"And you think we know something about it," I concluded. "I'm flattered, Tan. But you're barking up the wrong tree."

"Are you telling me you've hung up your rebel hat?"

"I'm telling you we had nothing to do with the Pherres incident and we sure as hell don't fly fighter jets."

"Forgive me, Trent," Tan said in arched tones dripping his sarcastic intent, "but if anyone was to don masks to hide their identity, while playing at being heroes for the night, it would be you."

Well, he wasn't beating about the bush, that's for sure.

"Sorry," I replied, just as scathingly, "not me."

Tan stared at me for a long time and then shrugged his shoulders.

"We'll see," he commented mildly, but alarm bells started clanging inside my head.

"And how do you plan to do that?" I asked. Lena's hand started to softly squeeze my own in a show of support and understanding. Obviously she'd come to the same conclusion as me.

Always so quick to perceive new threats. Always so fast at seeing potential disastrous outcomes.

The woman was a rebel whether she believed it or not. She was one of us in every possible way.

"You think your security systems can keep the Cardinals out?" the President offered.

"What have you done, Tan?" Lena demanded.

"You're not making this easy, Lena," he stressed in return. "The rebellion is over. Finished. Yet you insist on remaining a part of his team. What would your father say?"

Oh, low blow.

Lena's hand jerked in mine; I held it securely, offering what comfort I could.

Then she laughed. That deep, throaty purr of a chuckle. She threw her head back, white hair flying over a supple shoulder, and lifted amused eyes to Tan.

"You think my father would agree with you?" she asked, and I stiffened. For God's sake, Lena, don't mention the fucking Shiloh unit.

Tan sighed. It was genuine, I think. He leaned forward and all pretence of the upright authoritative leader disappeared. And the Lee Tan we'd got to know in the rebel bunker stared across the small space at us.

"OK," he said, as if deciding something. Clearly he wasn't winning this round, he was changing things up a bit. I bristled, not wanting to let my guard down. I noticed Lena straighten her back, eyes narrowing, doing the same thing.

"We've had to turn the street-cams back on again. Sat-loc is going live at midnight, as well." He looked devastated. Torn apart. No one wanted to take control of a free nation and then push it back into the dark.

I almost felt sorry for him, but then he said, "You understand how precarious things are right now, don't you, Elite?" The way Tan said it, Elite, it might as well have been a pet name for her. And Lena's softening on hearing it said as much.

"It can't be easy," she commented. "Especially with these Masked people causing such chaos."

"In what way?" he pressed; all innocence; all friendly enquiry. Nothing else.

Lena answered before I could stop her. Before I could put an end to this farce.

"Well, it was clear the Civil Defence Force station doors were tampered with," she said. Alan growled. I just held my breath.

"And you think they did it?" Tan asked, ignoring the obvious. But Lena wasn't born yesterday. Maybe the day before, having fallen for a rookie trick like that. But certainly not yesterday.

She lifted her chin and stared down her very Elite-like nose at him.

"And what do you think, Tan?" she asked.

He smiled self-deprecatingly, just as an aide entered the room. He held his hand out without breaking eye contact with Lena, and a slip of paper was placed into it. The aide disappearing as silently and smoothly as he'd arrived.

Tan flicked his gaze down to the paper and then crumpled it. His head snapping up and dark eyes landing on mine.

I crossed my arms over my chest and smiled. It was part cocky, part amused, and a whole lot fuck-you!

"No masks at our place?" I asked raising an eyebrow. "Nothing to implicate us in this little witch hunt of yours? That must be disappointing for you, President. Perhaps, next time, you'll actually listen to us. To Lena. Perhaps you'll stop being a fucking jerk."

Again with the laser gun. I glared over at the Cardinal, daring him to fire it up.

"Fucking hell," I muttered. "You've got yourself a trigger happy one."

Tan blinked, then sat back in his seat and let out a breath.

"You're really not involved," he murmured.

What a fucking idiot!

Lena stood up, dusting herself down, although she didn't need it. She was Elite perfect. No... she was freedom fighter perfect.

"You've got a serious problem, Tan," she said softly. The words carrying so much more weight for the way they gently landed. "You're blinded by prejudice, just like the Overseers. You've forgotten what we were fighting for."

He stood as well. We all did. It was natural, trained into us at an early age. Even Citizens rise when a lady does.

"It's not always as straight forward as you think," he started.

Lena held up a hand. "If you wake up and find the world has moved on without you, and you need someone to tell you how it is, you know where to find me." She took a step towards the door. "Penthouse floor," she added. "My home," she pressed. "With what remains of the rebel army. The same people who gave up so much, who sacrificed it all, for you."

Damn, but she was gorgeous.

"Lena," he said, lifting an arm out towards her. I almost felt sorry for him. None of us had wanted the job. No one had. So he'd stepped up. It wasn't exactly a coveted position; the last three leaders of our nation had been assassinated. Gunned down by those people Lena had just so bravely stood up for, and one even by Lee Fucking Tan himself.

He'd known what he was doing, he just hadn't known what he was getting into.

It was hard not to smile at his fucking bad luck.

Lena was out the door before Tan could say more, though. And we'd made it as far as the comfy couches and brass potted plants, when he finally caught up to us.

"You have resources," he began, and I had the feeling we were finally getting somewhere. "Resources that can fly under the radar, unlike us," he added in a whisper.

"What do you want, Tan?" I demanded, holding on fiercely to Lena's hand - I might never let it go again - and staring him down. I'd make him grovel for putting her through that. I'd make him eat cut glass for what he'd said.

But I didn't get the chance.

With an ear-splitting shriek, a wail started up, reverberating off the pillars, rebounding around inside the high ceilinged domes. A siren designed to discombobulate and confuse. It was working. In seconds we were surrounded, but not because we were the threat. Cardinals bracketed Tan, but as we were all standing together, they included us in the make-shift shield.

"To the safe-room!” one yelled. Laser guns whirring, booted feet stomping, as they herded us towards some reinforced bunker at a guess.

"Status!" Tan ordered no one in particular and everyone all at once.

For a long while nothing was said, then a Cardinal at the front, leading the way courageously, wearing the gold piping on his shoulder that indicated seniority, spoke up.

"The Sky Tower has fallen."

Five words. Five simple words. And they changed everything.

Nine

My Zebra

Trent

The bunker had two foot thick concrete walls. A low ceiling. And enough provisions to last twenty people two weeks.

There were exactly seven of us in here. Four rebels, one interim President, the Cardinal with the piping on his shoulders and Tan's trigger happy side-kick. The laser gun was whirring gratingly in his steady hands.

I walked directly to a phone on the wall and dialled Si. Without earpieces, we were cut off from base and back-up. Not that Tan's Cardinals weren't impressive. But...

"The line's dead," I said with disgust. How hard was it to isolate a land line from the repeaters that would have been atop the Sky Tower?

Tan crossed to a vid-screen mounted on the wall and activated it. Static. The Cardinal with piping attempted to communicate through a device attached to his arm. Suspiciously close to where the e-scanners used to reside. I saw Lena shudder when she watched him try to use it.

"Nothing, sir," he finally advised. "The Sky Tower is our main relay."

"And you guys didn't think putting all your eggs into one basket could be a bit short-sighted?" I demanded.

The Cardinal shrugged his shoulders. "Who would have believed the Sky Tower could fall?"

"A rebel," I replied, moving closer to Lena and catching her eye. Tan had been mute since arriving here. His face pale, his lips pinched. For the man supposedly leading our country, I'd expected a little more "leading" to transpire.

She nodded her head and walked over to where Tan was standing, staring at the static on the vid-screen.

"We have to know what's happening out there, Tan,” she said carefully.

"We can't leave the bunker," came his stilted reply.

"Since when has four walls and a ceiling ever stopped you?"

He turned toward her, just staring, not saying anything, as though trapped in more than just a concrete room.

"This is not you," she whispered. But we could all hear her; the room wasn't exactly large.

He let a slow breath of air out and ran a frustrated hand through thick hair.

"A country needs a leader," he explained.

"And you believe you're the only one capable of filling those shoes," she guessed.

"Not at all." His answer was decisive; Tan was a Citizen through and through. "I didn't want this. No one did. That's the point."

I reluctantly admitted he was right. When Shiloh went dark and the Overseers fell, chaos reigned. And not just on the streets with the sudden freedom we'd gained; which the nation quite clearly hadn't known what to do with. Nor the fact that decisions were suddenly ours to make. And Serenity Tabs were no longer mandatory. Or our doctrine was now proven false.

We'd needed a leader. And that leader had been Tan.

"Then lead," I said from across the room.

Both Lena and Tan turned towards me. Lena rolled her eyes, clearly less than impressed with my tactics. Tan just glared.

But it did what it was supposed to do.

"Open the door, Cardinal," he instructed.

"President Tan," the laser wielding git started.

"I said open it, Cardinal. We're blind in here."

"But safe," the senior Cardinal offered, moving to the door with his own laser gun out. "Allow us to check the way first, sir."

Tan nodded his head, then settled disturbed eyes on me.

"How secure is your penthouse?"

Now, hold on a minute.

"Secure," Lena told him. "And able to function off alternate repeaters."

I turned a stunned look on her. My arms already crossed defensively over my chest.

"Lena," I warned.

White hair whirled as she faced me; eyes bright, a light flush to her cheeks, full of fire and life and beauty.

I felt the rush of air as it left my lungs.

"What are we fighting for, Trent? Who are we fighting for?"

"Wánměi." I felt the word resonate within my soul. Everything was for Wánměi.

Lena nodded her head and turned to Tan.

"You are welcome in our home, President Tan." Oh, Lena.

I ran a hand over my face and turned to Paul. "You stick to him like glue," I demanded, my words clipped, quiet, right by his ear. If Tan heard, he didn't show it. Nor did the Cardinals who had returned from checking that the way was clear. "Armoury, our apartment, both are off limits. Understood."

"Yes," Paul replied, showing me with one look that he clearly understood. Tan must never see our resources or Shiloh mark II.

Calvin. We were going to have to activate Calvin. Si could do a lot from his tech-room, but this had escalated to something more than a national crisis. Two high profile targets in less than one day.

We were at war. But with who?

"We've got a car and a contingency of guards at the ready, President Tan," the senior Cardinal advised.

"Enough for all of us?" Tan enquired, walking towards the door.

The Cardinal glanced at me and my rebels, no emotion showing on his face, and said, "Yes, sir."

"You'll only need space for one of us," I advised.

Tan spun on his heel. "One of you?" His eyes darted to Lena.

I scowled. No, you're not getting Lena, too.

"Paul will accompany you to the penthouse and assist with any requests you have," I advised, stressing the word "assist." If he didn't get the meaning, he was slower than I'd thought.

But this was Lee Fucking Tan we were talking about.

"I see," he said, his eyes holding mine. "And you and Lena?" He didn't bother to mention Alan. As far as Tan was concerned, Alan was my shadow. We came as a unit. A pain in his arse unit.

"We're going to see what the fuck's happening out there," I replied.

Tan turned to Lena, his mouth open to speak.

"President Tan," the Cardinal in charge said. "We need to move now."

"I'll be fine," Lena told him, making my jaw ache. Again. "Coordinate through Si. We'll be your eyes on the ground."

"We've got Cardinals for that," Tan argued, allowing his guards to usher him out.

In the hall were half a dozen more, laser guns lit up, the electronic whine competing with the cacophony of noise we could hear out on the street. Otherwise, Parliament House was silent.

Lena shook her head, halting in her tracks. It took several steps for Tan to realise she wasn't right behind him. He struggled with his guards for a second, before they realised they were wrestling their precious President, and then looked over his shoulder at us.

"Elite," he said, knowing damn well how that moniker affected her coming from him.

"We need our gear from the security station at the front," she explained, moving off without a backwards glance.

"There's only one available exit," one of the Cardinals shouted at our backs. "All the rest are locked down!"

"We'll find it!" Lena shouted back, already breaking into a run.

I nodded towards Paul, one last instruction conveyed through our eyes alone. Take care. Take care of yourself. Of the penthouse. Of our secrets.

He nodded back, and then they were lost as we tore around the corner of the grand hall and skidded to a stop next to the security desk.

A lone Cardinal stood on the other side of a glass divide. Face stoic, laser gun resting across his arms; a blatant challenge.

"We need our gear!" I called through the thick partition.

He simply shook his head.

"President Tan has sent us," Lena tried. The Cardinal laughed. It was short lived.

"Just give us our earpieces," Alan yelled. He was right. Without Si, we'd be blind.

"Not happening," the Cardinal advised, his deep voice reaching through the thick glass easily at the same time as a the whir of electronics sounded out overhead. Followed by a distinctive whine.

All three of us stepped back, our gazes drawn to a laser gun muzzle now directed at us through a purpose built hole in the wall.

I slowly raised my hands as we continued to back up.

"We're going," I said, not raising my voice. He could hear. The glass was soundproofed. Bulletproofed. Laser-proofed. There'd be a mic that carried our words, just like there were speakers that had conveyed his earlier ones.

He didn't move a muscle as we turned on our tail and ran back along the corridor to where we'd left Tan. The President's car and entourage had disappeared by the time we found the exit, guarded, but this time word of our impending arrival had preceded us. And egress was offered without the use of a fucking laser gun.

We were unarmed. Cut off from Si. And in amongst the chaos of a war-torn Wánměi.

"What now?" Alan demanded, frustration making his words come out as a growl.

My eyes naturally found the distant smoke and dust clouds of the fallen Sky Tower, above the tall buildings that danced in shadows all around us. My heart beat frenetically, sweat already beading my brow. I glanced toward Lena. No longer quite pristine in her linen dress, but that fire I'd seen earlier was burning out of control in her eyes.

"Are we rebels? Or are we rebels?" I asked them, my gaze locked on Lena and no one else.

"Rebels," they both said in unison. Lena's lips spread into a mischievous smile.

No matter what, she was with me. No matter what, she'd always walk by my side.

I've had people obey my orders before. I've had many fall over themselves to do what I wanted whenever I desired. Not quite sycophants, but loyal followers. Rebels who understood I was in command. But not one of them mattered, the way Lena mattered. Not one of them meant as much to me as this Elite.

No matter what, Lena was mine.

And I was so fucking hers as well.

"We grab what we can on the way to use as weapons," I instructed, taking hold of Lena's hand in mine and starting to jog towards the war zone. "Look out for Masked," I instructed. "Confront them if you can, but the main goal is saving lives."

We needed to know who these fuckers were. We needed to find out why they were doing this. But none of that was as important as saving Wánměi lives.

"And if we catch one?" Alan asked, ever the optimist.

I smiled.

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Citizen," Lena drawled at my side.

"What, you think you can't do it, Elite?" he shot back.

"Oh, I'm pretty sure there's more to them than you realise."

"And you've got them all sussed out, then?" he pushed.

"I've been waiting for you to meet your match, Alan," was all she said in reply.

He snorted. "'Bout time, 'cause there sure as hell hasn't been anyone else up to my standard."

My smiled spread the closer we got to ground zero.

"Care to place a bet?" she offered with Elite sweetness.

"Honourable," he drawled back. "You're on."

And then we were there. And all thought of laughter and camaraderie and wagers and arguments were lost. In amongst chaos and shock and utter, utter devastation.

The Pherres had been bad. The Sky Tower was the equal to an atomic bomb going off. People staggered around wounded, blood pouring down their faces, dust coating their ripped and torn skin. Burns glistened in the heat surging out from the rubble. Screams and calls for loved ones went unanswered. Gas pipes burst, sending blue-red flames up into the sky. Buildings lay crushed, concrete pulverised into an acrid dust. Cars were flattened to no more than a few inches. A hand or a leg or a shoe sticking out from beneath them.

The sound all around us was the roar of a dying tiger.

We can't fight this.

And then Lena was helping someone. And Alan was climbing over rubble, digging with his bare hands. And I fell into the role of organiser, shouting directions for people to follow, giving them something to focus on, other than their desperate plight. Other than death.

I didn't think about the Masked, but I saw them. Doing the same as us, but in greater numbers.

I didn't think about what Si and Tan were doing back at the base. Or about Calvin possibly being discovered by Wánměi's new President and his Cardinals.

I didn't think, but to offer direction. To help those who needed the help.

Hours passed. Days it felt like. Someone brought water to drink. A wet cloth to wash our faces. Even the odd bit of food to keep us going. But there was no stopping. No pause for breath. The sun sank. The stars came out. But we kept going.

Kept helping, until there was no one left to help.

I stretched my back and aching shoulders, dusted my blood stained hands off on my pants.

My eyes searching for Lena.

She had her arm around an old Wáikěinese man, offering him a bottle of fresh water, speaking softly to him as she held him while he cried.

She was the last thing I saw. This miraculous Elite, in a shredded linen dress, white hair streaked with dust that had turned black.

My zebra.

I smiled to myself and then turned to a sound at my back.

And everything went dark.

Ten

But Why?

Lena

Death was no stranger to me. I'd seen my fair share; experienced the loss of that final calling; survived the fallout of that fatal blow. But I'd never seen it on such a scale as this.

Wánměi, for all its brutal history, is a peaceful nation. Controlled in its grief. Graceful in its heartache. Serene in its lack of remembrance.

For what was wiped if not a death?

I knew differently now. I'd seen with my own eyes just what being wiped had meant. And it haunted me. Daily. My dreams were filled with those we'd loved and lost. And yet the thought that they still lived plagued me.

We were very good at forgetting.

We should not desire for more than we have. Wánměi provides all that we need.

It had provided a form of death.

Even that had been clean.

No blood or loss of limb. No crushed legs or punctured lungs. No broken arms or caved in skull. No horrific injury... at least, not physically.

Unless you call the removal from all that you know a physical injury.

Where the wiped were now was anyone's guess.

But they were not dead. Not like the row of white sheet covered corpses that lay along Quay Street. Lined up as though soldiers marching on parade. The warm night breeze lifted the corner of one sheet, a dust covered, blood coated shoe poked out from beneath.

I let a slow breath of air out; I was so exhausted.

"Giving up already, Elite?" Alan's voice drifted over the subdued rumble of a city-state recovering.

"The Civil Defence has found no others," I offered, but he would have been aware.

I watched as Alan looked toward the edge of the crash zone, as they were calling it. The edge of the largest debris to have fallen. The Sky Tower had stood some three-hundred-and-twenty-eight metres high.

Not any more.

"They'll keep searching through the night," Alan commented. "They won't stop. Will you?"

When had I ever stopped? It felt like I'd been running, fighting, searching for something for all of my life.

I didn't reply. My tired, gritty eyes sought out the only form of comfort that mattered.

"Where's Trent?"

Alan spun in a slow circle, his combat boots coated in things better left not said. He'd been in the thick of it. I hadn't seen him for the past hour. But Trent had stayed within sight of me the entire time.

The first kernel of something with no name unfurled inside my stomach, reaching cold fingers towards my heart.

I stood up from where I'd been resting; my legs shaking from over-use, my muscles screaming for a hot bath.

My heart beating too swiftly.

"Where is he?" I said again, and maybe it was the roughness of my voice, or maybe Alan suddenly realised that Trent wouldn't leave me alone to face this horror, but Alan's head whipped 'round and dark, narrowed eyes landed on me.

"When did you last see him?"

I frowned, my eyes searching. "A quarter of an hour ago, maybe?"

"Where was he then?" he demanded; no hint of the challenge so often apparent in his tone when he speaks to me.

"Over there." I pointed to the side of Quay Street, under the overhang of a theatre that had missed the brunt of the damage, but not come off completely unscathed.

Its roof had caved in on one side, adding to the rubble from a nearby building which had become the landing pad for the aerials and antennae atop the Sky Tower's spire. Wires and metal struts and the once smooth, now dented, spire itself lay tangled in amongst concrete blocks and rebar, glass and steel framing.

There had been people in that building. And the theatre next to it. Trent had been helping organise their extrication from out the front of the cracked glass windows that made up the theatre's doors.

I hadn't seen him go inside.

I followed Alan in a daze towards where I had indicated last seeing Trent, and watched as he assessed the ground for some sign of him. Collapsed from exhaustion, maybe? It didn't seem a far stretch to assume Trent was as tired as myself.

"He's not here," Alan offered unhelpfully. His eyes flicked up to the theatre entrance, torch light arcing in that moment across the darkness inside. A Cardinal walked out a few seconds later, followed behind by a Civil Defence Force Search and Rescue Squad member. They pulled the doors closed and proceeded to wrap bright yellow tape through the handles, sealing the building up, and marking it "CLEAR."

My eyelids fluttered closed. They felt too heavy. My chest ached. I heard Alan question the Cardinal and SRS member; the words a hazy undertone, much like a low hum to my battered mind. I turned my back on them. The Civil Defence Force were extremely thorough. I knew the answer even before Alan's voice rose and his words cut through the hum.

"Just let me check. He was standing right here!"

"We know," the Cardinal replied levelly. "We've been working with him for the past two hours. But he didn’t come inside. That was not part of his instructions."

"Well, where is he?" Alan demanded.

"Have you tried the command post? He may have reported there with walking wounded."

He wouldn't have. Or, at least, he wouldn't have left here without first letting me know.

Trent was nothing if not a competent leader. And he wouldn't abandon his team.

"He's not here," I said loud enough for Alan to hear.

"I think we've established that, Lena," Alan growled. "But where would he go?"

I shook my head. The Cardinal and SRS member watched on, offering no assistance. They looked bone-tired, too. But they'd recognised me, and their interest was piqued enough to use exhaustion as their excuse to remain where they were standing and watch.

I felt like I was always being watched lately.

"He wouldn't go anywhere without letting us know," I insisted.

Alan frowned, my words tumbling over inside his thick skull. A thick skull that, when applied correctly, housed an intelligent mind.

It took him three seconds.

"The hospital." I nodded, that ache inside my chest becoming a pressurised pocket about to explode. "Come on," he instructed, slipping into the rebel leader role smoothly, just like he and Trent had rehearsed.

I'd never thought I'd be taking instructions from Alan.

We nodded farewell to the Cardinal and Civil Defence Force rescuer, and made our way towards the staging point and the ambulances there.

A sense of organised chaos surrounded us. People bustling from one spot to another, red lights flashing, generators humming, commands wafting above the clatter of trolleys and stretchers and beeping machines. Most of the injured had already been transported, just a few remained. Perhaps one of them Trent.

Hope left an acrid taste on my tongue.

Alan tried to gain access to the emergency tent, but was turned away. His anger billowing up like a mushroom cloud, erupting in heated words and tight fisted hands and hunched shoulders.

I slipped past him and the Cardinal who refused entry, and simply walked into the tent unobstructed.

"Hey!" the Cardinal called from over my shoulder. "You there! Halt!"

I couldn't see Trent, but that didn't mean he wasn't here. Or that he hadn't been, and had already been transported to the National Hospital at Muhgah Foh. I couldn't see him, but hope, that fickle bitch, swelled inside me despite the lack of provocation.

"Citizen!" the Cardinal called, his tone demanding attention.

"Good luck with that," Alan murmured at his back.

"You, get outside!" the Cardinal yelled at him. While someone, a field doctor maybe, hissed, "Quiet!"

I turned to face the Cardinal, his arm out in front of Alan who was on his toes peering at each of the cots in the makeshift emergency room. The look on his face said it all: He couldn't see Trent, either. My stomach clenched and twisted, the acrid taste becoming bile.

"You!" the Cardinal repeated, having seen I was paying attention now, "are not allowed in here."

I stared him down. So easy to do; it's how I've been raised. Rebellion or not, I was an Elite. An Honourable. Above reproach or disdain. "Do you know who I am?" I asked, my voice hollow, my words like a whip.

"I don't care who you are," the Cardinal shot back in a valiant attempt at authority. "You're not wearing the security tag that allows you back here."

"Don't you recognise her?" Alan asked, falling into the role so easily.

We hadn't practised this one. More often than not, Alan and I butted heads. But he knew immediately what I was doing. Or he was just extremely efficient at taking advantage of a situation when presented it. He edged his way around the distracted Cardinal for a better look at the beds.

"Who are you?" the Cardinal asked, a little more uncertainly.

"She's The Zebra," the doctor, who'd told us to be quiet earlier, said. "How can I help?" he asked, turning to me once he'd reached my side. He had a kindly, if somewhat tired face. For some reason capricious hope soared.

"Trent Masters," I started, my heartbeat almost drowning out the words.

"I know him," the doctor advised.

"Has he been in here?" Alan rushed to ask.

He shook his head. My heart plummeted.

Along with any hope at all.

"Not that I'm aware," the doctor advised. "And I've been here nine hours. If he has, it would have been in the short breaks I've taken. Possible," he added with an apologetic shrug of his shoulders.

"When was your last break?" I asked.

He laughed, it was weary and traumatised and lacked any real mirth.

"The last one?" He looked at his watch. "Huh," he managed. "Four hours ago."

Trent hadn't been here.

"And you would have seen everyone who came and went in here during that time?" Alan pressed.

"Thank you, Doctor," I said numbly before he could reply. "Wánměi above all others," I offered out of habit as I turned to leave.

The doctor didn't return the once-obligatory reply.

"Lena?" Alan said, chasing me outside.

The Cardinal who'd attempted to deny us access to the tent stood only a short distance away, and watched on without a hint of embarrassment in his dark eyes. His expression a mix of something lethal and awed.

I hadn't yet got used to the looks I received. Trent wasn't often recognised, despite his image having been on every vid-screen when Wánměi was freed. Somehow I was more memorable. Even when I'd taken the black streaks out of my hair.

I fingered it now, noting how streaked in dust it was. A small sound escaped as Alan came alongside.

"He was never here, was he?" he said quietly.

"No," I agreed.

Alan let out a defeated breath of air.

"And he wouldn't have left you without telling you why."

"No," I agreed. Again.

"Then where is he?"

I had no idea. But when I lifted my head for one final, futile search, I noticed something - or someone - who was missing as well.

The entire street was devoid of the Masked. When only an hour ago it had been teaming with jewelled disguises covering furtive eyes.

We'd lost the wager. Both Alan and I. And we hadn't even known that they were betting.

That we were pitting ourselves against them, and not each other.

They'd won. We'd lost. And what we'd lost was more than I could hope to survive.

We hadn't caught a Masked.

They'd caught one of us.

They'd caught the rebel leader of Free Wánměi.

But why?

Eleven

I Hadn't Expected Him To

Lena

The streets were deserted as we walked back towards the base. Silence an unusual accompaniment to the heartbeat of Wánměi. It was a stunned and battered quiet. Lost and frayed. We'd survived so much and yet I feared for what was to come.

Alan tried a pay phone, but the line was dead. We looked up, again and again, at the once abandoned street-cams - hoping the next would show some form of life - but they seemed as vacant as the rest of the nation. Empty eyes staring down at us from frozen faces.

The walk was a long one. Haunted thoughts, marred further by tragic images. I could taste death. I was breathing it. Living it. Hope seemed so very far away.

Paul met us at the apartment building's front door; an indication that at least something was working farther away from the crash zone. He searched our faces but didn't pass comment. Just offered cool water and wet cloths as he locked and bolted the apartments’ doors behind us. Simon had placed the entire building on lock-down, it seemed. Our neighbours more than happy to obey his commands.

And then I realised, it wouldn't have been Si who'd done it. My tired eyes landing on the shadows that crept out from the corners of the entranceway, statue still, bodies on alert, dark eyes watching.

Always watching.

Cardinal red cloaks the only slash of colour to be seen. I met the gaze of one of them, noting the laser gun in his hands, a finger resting ready on the trigger.

And didn't say a thing; anger unfurling from deep inside me, waiting for an opportunity to lash out. The elevator doors closing softly behind Paul was the only incentive I required.

"Is Trent here?" I demanded, as Alan leaned forward, equally as eager as me to embrace hope. To give it one final, futile chance.

But hope is mercurial. Wisdom is more reliable.

"No," Paul replied, the word heavy. They knew. "But Si has something he wants to show you."

"And the President?" Alan asked.

"Hanging ‘round like a bad smell."

"In the tech-room?" Alan pressed.

"Si tried to keep him out, but Tan wanted to see what was happening on the streets. And those Cardinals are holding big fucking guns."

"What's our vision?" Alan asked. It was so easy to see him leading the rebel army.

And yet so hard as well.

I leaned back against the mirrored wall of the lift and concentrated on breathing through the dull ache in my chest.

"Not twenty-twenty," Paul advised. "Street-cams were mostly operable for the first few hours post the fall, but more and more went off-line as the day progressed. Si doesn't think it's by chance," he added.

The lift doors dinged at that moment, adding to the heavy weight that hung on the air. My eyes found Alan's. A wealth of unsaid words were shared.

We had enemies at every corner. And some staring us right in the eyes.

I stepped off first, noting the Cardinals dotted down our penthouse floor. Their positioning couldn't have been random; one stood outside each apartment door, as well as the emergency stairwell. I was relieved to note our apartment received no more attention than the others, and the safe-room and armoury access hadn't been located at all.

I walked towards Si's apartment, knowing that's where I'd find Tan. The need to go to our home, the home I shared with Trent, was all consuming. But drawing attention to my father's Shiloh unit was not a wise move at present. We'd need it, of that I was certain. But flicking the switch, as Trent liked to call it, was not possible. For more reasons than one.

The Cardinal on the door opened it for us; an action that surprised me. They'd seemed so militant, not moving unless under command. But then, perhaps our egress had been granted. Permission needed - and given - to enter our own building, our own homes, our own tech-room.

This had been a mistake.

Simon sat in front of the vid-screens once we’d crossed the room’s threshold; blond hair still cut in a model fashion, looking so out of place on the rebel. He would grow it again, I knew. But the rebellion of that action no longer counted.

His eyes met mine and then immediately flicked to Alan. His acting leader. The one who’d decide how we progressed from here.

Tan stepped forward catching my attention, his face a mask of concern. I would have gone to him, let him hold me as he'd done so often over the years. But anger fuelled my words.

"What have you not told us?" I demanded.

He halted in his approach, the mask falling and then morphing into something else. President Tan looked back at me.

Fine. I crossed the space between us and slapped him hard across the face.

The cacophony of laser guns whirring to life drowned out Alan's and Si's shouts of warning. Tan looked at me as if he didn't know me. A taut moment stretched between us. Like fine silk it threatened to tear.

Then he clenched his teeth, the pink on his cheek where my palm had landed whitening, and said, "Stand down."

The Cardinals obeyed the order, reminding me who’d I’d actually struck. I darted eyes over his security detail, noting their compliance was ingrained in them, but their fingers still rested on the triggers of their guns.

The room was now a powder keg waiting to explode.

"Well?" I said with as much venom as I could muster. Every Elite instinct in me roared for self-control. For model behaviour. I quashed it all, held firmly to my resolve, and took a step forward.

Tan stood his ground. The Cardinals froze. Alan and Simon had stopped breathing.

Deep inside I felt dead, but my body told me it was alive. My heart still beating.

"You know something," I accused. "You knew something at Parliament House. You wanted Trent's help. Under the radar, you said. So what you know, you don't want to get out."

Tan remained mute.

"Take a look!" I shouted, my arm flinging out to indicate the newsfeeds on the vid-screens. So much carnage. So much heartache. So much death.

I refused to think on that last further.

"This is the Wánměi you've inherited," I said, my voice cold and hard. "This is your Free Wánměi. How safe are we? Who pulls the strings? What are you hiding, Lee?"

He let a slow breath of air out and ran a hand through already dishevelled hair. His face didn't exactly soften, but something flashed behind his eyes. A memory? An emotion?

He sat down heavily in a swivel chair, his eyes on the ground for a moment. I glanced at Alan, who was watching the Cardinals, but he felt my attention and turned his head to look at my face. An eyebrow rose slowly, but other than that, he remained silent.

Alan had learned more than just operational skills from Trent in those practice sessions, it seemed. He'd learned when to let someone else hold the reins.

"A boat was found out on the coast near Hillsborough," Tan suddenly said, drawing everyone’s attention. "Attempts had been made to hide it.”

The implications were limitless. My breath shook when I exhaled.

"It was not ours," I guessed. Tan shook his head. "When?"

"How long it had been there is anyone's guess. It was well camouflaged. But a routine border check located it two weeks ago."

"How can you be sure it's not been there a while?" Simon asked.

"We had high tides just before Shiloh was deactivated," Tan advised. "The boat had been stored below the storm's watermark. It showed no signs of being caught in the tidal surge."

I sat down on a chair beside Simon. "So, we're not alone."

Alan snorted, but it wasn't his usual effort. More like a release of tightly held emotions; uncontrolled.

"How big was this boat?" Si asked.

Tan turned his chair to face our tech-guru and replied in a steady voice, devoid of any feeling, "Big enough to carry two dozen people."

"That's a lot of people," Alan remarked.

"Not really," Tan started.

Alan's snort this time was everything I'd come to know.

"There's been times," he said, "when the rebel army has consisted of less than a dozen people, and trust me, even with that number a lot of hell can be unleashed."

No one said anything in reply for a while and then I turned to Simon and said, "What do you know?"

My words were chosen with care. If he wanted to show Alan and I something privately, he'd be able to answer with a flippant reply now. But he didn't. He turned toward his closest vid-screen, and brought up images clearly pulled from street-cams. Some of them showed the devastation from the Sky Tower collapse in high definition colour. Every cut, bruise, mark visible. Even the varying colours of blood.

I swallowed thickly, searching without thought for Trent. If Si had footage of the crash zone like this, then...

"I think I've found an answer to who was on that boat," Simon said, interrupting my hopeful prayers.

I felt Alan move closer behind me, and heard the creak of Tan's chair.

"Recognise anyone, Lena?" Si asked, freezing the video coverage on a scene which seemed so familiar. And so unfair.

Bodies lay crumpled beneath large blocks of broken concrete. Metal twisted and cleaved limbs in two. Dust mixed with blood mixed with body parts. Tears ran in rivulets down stricken cheeks. Flames from out of control fires made the shadows of those figures scrambling over the wreckage elongate. Turning them into monsters and not saviours.

Making the masks they wore grotesque and not fashion-statement pretty.

"The Masked," I said, my eyes skipping over the carnage and landing on each would-be rescuers' face.

"Look closer," Simon instructed, and I actually leaned in farther, as if that would help me find what he wanted me to see.

He started the video moving again, slowly, frame by frame. It seemed worse somehow. Not only viewing this horrific day again, but being forced to watch it in deliberate detail. The lives lost. The role of saviour handed to an enemy.

For what were these Masked if not our enemy?

They had Trent.

I sucked in a sharp breath of air right when the video stopped moving. A lone masked figure stood out on top of a pile of debris; dirt, dust and blood coating his black clothes, sticking into his short, model-appropriate black hair.

The video moved forward again, under the precise command of Simon. I held my breath, even as Alan let out a growling sound; frustrated no doubt at Si's showmanship. I was sure he was about to complain, verbally and most profoundly, but just then the masked figure reached up to remove his mask and wipe away the sweat and grime that had accumulated under it.

"It's hard to identify them when the mask is on," Si said, turning to look at me.

I couldn't meet his eyes, my gaze locked on once familiar ones.

"He'd been there all along and you didn't see him," Si pointed out, maybe as an explanation for the cruel way he'd made us suffer to get to this point. "That's why they wear them," he added, turning back to look at the frozen vid-screen. "So their families and friends don't get a fright."

"Holy shit," Alan said, turning now to look down at me. I felt Tan do the same.

I reached forward and stroked a finger over the person on the vid-screen, a plethora of emotions swirling for attention inside my head. Around my heart.

"Hello, Citizen Augustine," I said, my voice cracking. The still figure of my former concierge did not reply.

I hadn't expected him to. Ever.

He'd been one of our wiped.

Twelve

You Only Need To Ask

Lena

My body felt too chilled. Too numb to comprehend what seeing Augustine Tengku actually meant to me. Aches and pains vanished, as though my mind couldn’t possibly handle anymore stimulation - physical or otherwise. I sat on a chair in the corner of the tech-room and let the sights and sounds surround me. Wash over me. Trickles of water that neither soothed nor heated. Consoled or revived.

“Who is he?” a Cardinal asked, stepping forward from his position against the wall. I was vaguely aware he was the senior officer, the coiled gold braid at his shoulder picking up glints of light.

It was Tan who answered. “A Wiped.”

“How is that possible?” the Cardinal said almost to himself. His show of emotion making him seem more real for it. More human than he’d previously been.

“If the concierge lives and has returned,” Alan announced, “then who else?”

“A more pertinent question,” Tan replied, “would be why?”

And just like that the hopes and promises that had appeared in the Cardinal’s eyes disappeared. Replaced with militant aggression.

“We can check the boat again, sir,” he suggested, his stance at the ready.

Tan shook his head. “They won’t return to it. Not now. But where they’d be is anyone’s guess.”

“We have one identity,” Simon announced. “I can run an iRec programme and attempt to identify the rest.”

“iRec-ing with masks on,” Alan advised, “will prove tricky.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky,” Si replied, ever the optimist.

It was a long shot, and we all knew it. But Simon Richards was not without some skills. He was already tweaking the Identity Recognition programme, screeds of binary code scrolling across the vid-screens.

“Have we got street-cams up again?” Alan asked, reaching into a cabinet at the side of Simon’s desk and pulling out earpieces.

“I’m running a system check,” Si advised, typing code while he answered. “Once that’s finished, I should have a better understanding of how they all failed. Of course, if I had…” His voice trailed off at the end, but he managed to cover his error by appearing to be flustered at the programme he was rewriting.

Tan and the Cardinal were too deep in conversation to have picked up on the mistake, thankfully. Their heads bent as they discussed military strategy. It occurred to me that Tan didn’t surround himself with sycophant politicians. He was running this nation very much like an army. Thoughts of General Chew-wen and where he rose from sprang to mind. But I could hardly fault my old friend for his tactics.

We were at war and maybe this Cardinal, whom he seemed to trust above all others, was just the right man to have at his side.

Alan suddenly appeared before me; I hadn’t seen him move closer. My tired mind was fracturing; the need to bathe and grieve and refortify myself growing stronger. But there wasn’t time for that. Trent was missing and the only lead we had was a wiped concierge. It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough, and suddenly panic consumed me.

With a scowl marring his tanned features, Alan reached down and hauled me to my feet, his grip of my upper arm surprisingly gentle.

“Lena needs a break,” he advised, receiving a nod and shared look of understanding from Simon, nothing from the Cardinal, and a concerned but agreeable glance from Tan.

With less effort than it took to walk in here, we were off down the penthouse floor corridor and entering Trent’s and my apartment.

It smelled of him, I realised. My hand shaking as I raised it to my lips. A book lay open on the coffee table; something in Mahiah that he’d been last reading. A mug sat on the kitchen bench, rinsed out and upside down on the draining tray. Not stacked in the dishwasher as I would have done; always too much in a hurry to complete the mundane tasks.

I crossed to the spiral staircase, knowing climbing them would require more courage than I currently had. I stopped at its base and turned to look at Alan, aware at last that he hadn’t left, the door shut at his back, his dark eyes assessing me quietly.

He saw a lot, did Alan Ng. He saw more than I’d ever given him credit.

“We’ll find him,” he swore. “And let’s not forget who we’re talking about. Trent’s not without abilities of his own.”

“Then how did they take him?”

“By surprise,” he guessed reasonably. “Or trickery. But he’ll be on to them now, you can bet.”

So many questions vied for attention inside my mind, but sorting them out and picking just one seemed impossible right then. I sank down onto the bottom tread of the stairs and stared at my soot stained hands.

“Si needs SMII,” Alan said softly, his tone perhaps for the subject matter, or simply because he felt sorry for me. “He says he can isolate it, make sure Tan doesn’t know we’ve flicked the switch. But without the power of your father’s programme, Si doesn’t think reactivating the street-cams can be done.”

How they’d managed to communicate that, while Tan and the Cardinal had been in the room, was beyond me. But then much was beyond me right now.

I ran a hand over my face, uncaring if I transferred soot and grime from my palm onto my cheeks. I was covered in filth and much less pleasant things. None of it mattered, though. Because inside I was broken.

I let a small sound out, too similar to a sob.

Alan’s scowl deepened, his mouth parting as though to speak, and then shutting again. It would have been comical; if his distress wasn’t because of Trent.

“I can’t switch the Shiloh unit on,” I admitted at last.

“You what?” he said, uncharacteristically.

“I’m locked out. Or rather, it’s on voice activated lock-down.”

Alan stared at me for a long, drawn out moment, and then said, “Trent.”

I nodded, my chest cleaving in two.

I expected Alan to ask me why. But he didn’t. Perhaps he’d understood intrinsically why Trent would have done such a thing. Maybe more than Trent had seen what conversing with that unit had done to my moods.

I stared back down at the floorboards, frustration and embarrassment warring with fatigue and deep, deep loss.

For a second I couldn’t tell who I was mourning. If that ache was for Trent alone or a machine. But then I shook my head, pushed up from the step, and walked across the room into the kitchen.

My father’s Shiloh unit blinked away merrily at me. One green flashing light in the upper right corner, indicating we had a message. It must have been left prior to Trent locking the unit, but I didn’t rush to clear it, just tapped the Shiloh’s vid-screen and brought up the diagnostics.

Alan watched silently from over my shoulder, but it was obvious the device was only allowing me rudimentary access. I cleared my throat, felt a lump forming, and said, “Shiloh, activate.”

The device flashed red once, and then my father’s voice announced, “Voice activation denied.”

I turned to look up at Alan, his scowl said it all really.

“Shiloh override,” he attempted.

“Voice activation denied.”

“Fuck!” Alan snapped, running dirt stained hands through his hair. “How the fuck can we find him now?”

He closed his eyes slowly, regretting his outburst before the words had even left the room. I straightened my back, lifted my chin, and announced I was going to take a shower.

Trent was out there, somewhere, needing help or a rescue or God alone knew what. Staring at a machine my dead father had created that was out of our reach wasn’t going to aid him. If I had to, I’d walk the streets.

“They took him for a reason,” I said at the edge of the kitchen itself. “Why do you think?”

Alan shook his head. “Too many possible answers to that one, Elite.”

I nodded my head, strangely reluctant to leave him. Alan could be bristly, abrasive and abrupt, but he was the closest thing to Trent that I had.

“Take a shower,” he urged. “Get cleaned up.” He reached forward and placed an earpiece on the kitchen bench. “Then wear this at all times. Whatever’s gonna happen is gonna happen fast. I want us ready for anything.”

“Armed?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” he returned and then walked out of the room.

The shower was hot and hard. I felt nothing. The water sluicing off me was every colour but clear. I looked dead on my feet when I stared at the woman in the mirror.

Dressed in black fitted pants and a black singlet, I tied my hair back into a formerly inappropriate braid, staring at myself without emotion. Too much energy had been given over to emotions already. I sheathed a knife in a holster at the curve of my back, and another into my boot, out of sight. Then added a laser pointer, taser, and decoder to my lightweight jacket, missing the heaviness of a laser gun on my hip.

Lastly, my cellphone slipped into a pocket and the earpiece was placed inside my ear. I stood there for a few more seconds and then began the descent back into the real world at last.

I couldn’t grieve Trent. Grieving him would admit that he was gone. That getting him back would be impossible. I refused to believe that.

I couldn’t grieve him. But I could fight for him.

I crossed the apartment, ignoring all of the little things that made this our home. At the door, I turned back and looked towards the kitchen. Knowing the Shiloh unit would be monitoring security and household chores, aware I was about to leave.

“Calvin,” I said. More to test Trent’s name for the device aloud, than anything else. A connection to him that I needed right then, when so much was left up in the air, right now.

I hadn’t expected an answer. The Shiloh unit was functioning on the barest of operational commands. And most of those were only accessible with the correct voice activation. Which I lacked. So the door to the apartment was partly open, preparing for my exit, when the device actually replied.

“Yes, Lena,” my father said. “I’m still here. You only need to ask.”

Thirteen

There Were Just So Many Reasons To Feel Heartache

Lena

I was stunned immobile for a moment. And then Tan appeared in the door.

“Are you all right?” he asked, hands in his pockets as though coming here had made him uncomfortable. Perhaps an apology was not on the cards.

“I’m fine,” I said quickly, pushing him out of the apartment and closing the door.

He took a step back, grimacing. Then straightened his shoulders as though preparing to fight.

No, an apology wasn’t forthcoming. But something about being outside our apartment was setting him off.

“I’m sorry about Trent,” he said carefully, then cleared his throat as though he’d been the one inhaling smoke at the crash zone and not us.

And then it registered. Trent’s absence wasn’t the issue here. It never had been. His presence was more than enough. Even if his presence was just in a mug on a bench or a book left unfinished. The memory of him in our home. Tan had always insisted we meet at Parliament House. This was the first time he’d visited the apartment.

He was uncomfortable, all right. Uncomfortable being reminded of how entrenched in my life Trent had become.

I didn’t allay his fears. We all had fears, we each had to fight them on our own.

“Did you need me?” I asked.

“I always need you, Elite,” he jested, but the joke fell flat. The small space between us in the corridor feeling like a large chasm.

I waited silently.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. The apology not the one I was after.

I let a slow breath of air out. There wasn’t time for hurt feelings.

“What have you decided?” I asked. He was the President, after all.

“I’ve increased the Cardinals’ presence on the streets,” he announced, grasping the lifeline I’d offered. “The street-cams are still out, but with Cardinals on as many corners as we can manage, linked by radio, then perhaps we’ll get lucky.”

“Still no idea where they could be?”

He shook his head, his eyes laced with delicate red veins, the wrinkles at the corner of his mouth indicating fatigue.

“I had his last known address searched,” he advised.

“Augustine’s?”

“Yes. It seemed like a good place to start. But it’s abandoned now. No sign of anyone having lived there for quite a few months.”

“It was a good thought,” I offered.

“But not enough. They have to be somewhere, but where would you hide a dozen wiped?”

I thought about that for a moment. Old residential addresses were probably out, if Augustine’s home had proven a bust. But there were just too many alternatives to consider. Most of Geh Dowee could provide adequate cover; abandoned factories and the crumbling oil refinery. A rabbit warren that would take more Cardinals than we had to flush out.

No, we needed more. Something tangible. Something that meant something to them. Who were these Masked?

I shook my head.

“Maybe you weren’t so far off on your assumption,” I said slowly as a thought occurred.

Tan lifted his face to mine, from where he’d been staring blindly at the floor. “You’ve thought of something.”

I nodded. My hand already reaching for the apartment door. I stopped myself from opening it, and turned to look at Tan. He’d once been my confidant. Him and Aiko my only trusted friends. I’d had Elite and Honourable acquaintances, Overseers who’d known my father, who might have cared. Even a Cardinal who’d been more a brother than a guard. But none of them were trusted like Tan and his sister. None of them had my back, time and again. Knew my secrets, both deadly and illegal.

None of them.

“Tan,” I started.

“Yes, Lena?” It was there, in his eyes, the desire to be that confidant again.

A Cardinal shifted on his feet farther down the hall, drawing my eye, breaking the moment.

My gaze returned to the expectant one of Tan’s.

“Give me minute?” I said, watching the light dim in his eyes.

“Sure,” he replied, stepping away. “I’ll be in the tech-room, when you’re ready.”

When you’re ready. I watched him walk away, the Cardinal down the hall watching me.

Always watching.

I opened the door and slipped back into our apartment, and then crossed to the kitchen.

“Calvin,” I said.

“Hello, Lena,” he replied.

“Diagnostics.” The vid-screen flickered before my eyes, unhindered access to all of the Shiloh unit’s programmes.

“How is this possible?” I said, voicing the thought aloud.

“I am not Shiloh.”

“But you’re not my father either.”

“I am Calvin,” the machine replied.

I stared at it, uncomprehending. But aware the quirks of this particular unit could be the one thing that saved our lives.

“Go online,” I instructed. “Mask yourself.”

“Acquiring Net,” Calvin announced. “Sat-loc is operational. But local Net is acquired,” he confirmed.

I was concerned we couldn’t see what was happening beyond our borders, but allowing others to see inside them was more of a worry right now.

“What’s happening out there?” I asked.

“Without the street-cams,” Calvin said, “it is difficult to tell. But much can be garnered from social forums. I’m searching them now.”

I waited silently, if not patiently. Too much time had passed since Trent had disappeared. I cut off the thoughts that followed that, unable to face speculation rife with such hopeless imagery. My mind was too battered by what it had seen today to let me off that easily, though, so thoughts of Trent dead or bleeding crowded my head.

What did they want with him?

“The Masked is a current topic of interest,” Calvin advised.

“Any idea where they are?” I tried.

“‘Base’ is the phrase used with any repetition.”

“What?” I said, jerking forward. “You’ve located their communications?”

“Social media references only,” he qualified, bringing up several different websites popular for messaging and sharing daily updates of people’s vid-screen centric lives.

Sure enough, Calvin had highlighted half a dozen conversations where the term ‘base’ was used when issuing a command.

Return to base.

Rendezvous at base.

Base is clear.

Avoid base.

Message awaiting at base.

Base has gone dark.

But that was it. Nothing further to cross-reference it with. No mention of local sights or streets nearby. Nothing to narrow down a location.

“Several of the profiles mention ‘base’ more than once,” Calvin advised. “One in particular issues the command more often than any other.”

A media site profile appeared on the screen, the image one I didn’t recognise. It was undoubtedly a person, but they were covered in metal, from the pointed hood with hassled plume jutting skyward, to the mask with a grille where their eyes, mouth and nose would be. The segmented portions that covered their torso, arms and legs were also a shining silver colour. Even the boots were metal encased.

“Is that some type of drone?” I asked.

“No. It is a knight. A man who served his sovereign or lord in the middle ages as an armoured soldier.”

I glanced at the profile name. Sir Galahad.

“Is Sir Galahad one of these knights?”

“I believe so, but without the Global Net I cannot confirm it at this time.”

“An armoured soldier,” I whispered.

“Yes,” Calvin agreed. “I read about them when sat-loc was down.” As if a computer programme had eyes to read. “Most interesting,” he added. “The phrase ‘Knight in shining armour’ was frequently used when referencing them in the past.”

“They did good things?” I queried, disbelieving that an armoured soldier would be anything other than like a drone.

“Many did, yes,” Calvin stated. “They were considered saviours.”

And that was it, I realised. Saviours. Exactly as the Masked would wish to be seen.

“Trace that profile,” I ordered abruptly.

“Tracing,” Calvin replied, unruffled by my harried tone.

I’d worn a path in the tiles by the time he spoke again.

“Located,” he advised, this time sounding smug while he did it. I blinked at the vid-screen, but wondered if I’d actually been hearing things. “You will never guess where their IP address is located,” the machine teased in a much too human fashion.

“Calvin,” I warned. The warning half-hearted. He sounded too much like my father.

“All right,” he quickly replied. “You always did dislike surprises as a child.”

I swallowed thickly, that ache that hadn’t quite subsided from the vicinity of my heart flaring back to life. There were just so many reasons to feel heartache.

“Where?” I said, my voice scratchy.

There was a pause, possibly for anticipation’s sake. Probably because the programme it was running was RAM heavy.

Then Calvin announced, “Parnell, Lena. Your old apartment block.”

Augustine, I thought. I’ve got you, my old friend.

Fourteen

Silence

Trent

The sound of blood dripping filled the room. For a second I forgot that it was mine. I shifted, trying to get comfortable, which forced a hacking cough in lieu of a laugh. The blood redoubled its efforts. More a torrent now than the occasional drop.

My shoulders and wrists strained, carrying the bulk of my weight. My legs screamed for mercy. For a while there, I’d not felt them. A blessed relief. But sensation had returned some ten minutes ago, bringing with it a fire that had started down in my broken toes and spread throughout my calves and shins. My thighs had just decided to remind me that a big bone rested behind all that muscle.

It scraped jagged edge against jagged edge as the two pieces of my femur slid together.

I coughed again, spitting out a wad of bloody phlegm, and blinked my eyes open.

A metal chain clanked off to the side, followed by the clunk of a mechanical cog locking into place.

I screamed. My vision blacking. At least my femur wasn’t scraping against itself anymore. I was certain I no longer had fucking legs.

“Why are you doing this?” I shouted.

Silence. Even the machine they’d been using had paused. All that broke the eerie quiet was my ragged breaths as they tore out of straining lungs.

“Why are you doing this?” I repeated, my words a mere whisper.

“You know how to end it,” a man said, his voice distorted, but reaching me through a kind of fog. “Tell us where it is and we’ll let you go.”

I laughed again, even managed it without coughing up half a lung. But then the chain shifted and the cog turned and I realised that hey! I did still have legs.

There was no more silence for a while.

Fifteen

It’s Not Your Name I’m After

Lena

The Cardinal came with us. Neither my nor Alan’s protestations had any effect. Tan had been insistent. Besides, he’d said, Cardinals were the only ones authorised to carry a weapon.

Alan and I had exchanged loaded glances at that; there was no way Lee Tan had missed our knives and tasers. But we offered no further argument. And Tan had let us get away with the ruse.

He may have been the President, but in his heart he was still a rebel.

Wánměi met us, when we emerged from the tech-room, with a stillness that stole all breath. The streets deserted as if curfew had been ordered. As we no longer had curfew, the Citizens of our city-state were obviously clinging to the familiar.

I glanced up at a street-cam, its lens a blank portal going nowhere. Simon quiet in our ears. How could he direct if he couldn’t see? I knew he was working on cracking the hack that had stolen our vision, but so far, even with Calvin’s surreptitious assistance, he’d had no luck.

We were on our own and utterly blind while at it.

“You are sure they will be here?” the Cardinal asked quietly from my side as we arrived in the park across from my former home. The shrubbery provided an ideal hiding spot, one I had later found out Trent had used to spy on me. I’d missed his presence at that time, and could only hope those we hunted now were no better than me.

“Augustine was the concierge for this building,” I replied steadily. Only Alan knew where I’d garnered the intelligence. And even then we’d not had a chance to discuss the repercussions.

And there would be repercussions when Tan found out.

There could also be repercussions if my faith in my father was misplaced.

Calvin was not him, I knew this.

Tell me you know that, Lena.

But Calvin had been created by him.

I sucked in a slow breath of air to settle my nerves.

“And you think he’ll return here, where you knew him?” the Cardinal pressed.

I shrugged a shoulder in a very non-Elite-like fashion. The Cardinal stared down at me for a long moment. His face impassive. His eyes hard. He didn’t understand me. He didn’t trust what he didn’t understand. I could sympathise. I didn’t understand him either.

“Things are not always as they appear,” I said softly.

“No,” he agreed. “They are not.”

His gaze returned to surveilling the building, taking in the lush green palms that framed the sweeping entranceway, the marble tiles that invited you in, and the warm glow of lamp light beside the concierge’s desk. A man I didn’t recognise stood behind it, watching vid-screens and monitors and drinking his cappuccino in silence.

Sweat trickled down between my shoulder blades; if Augustine and his “knights” were indeed in this building, they’d blended in well enough not to catch the concierge’s eye.

“Your plan, Elite?” Alan asked in a low rumble to my other side.

I felt, more than saw, the Cardinal sweep his gaze across my head to Alan. He understood Alan better than he did me, but that didn’t mean the acting rebel leader didn’t surprise him.

“We’ll go in down the service alley,” I advised. “Go up through the emergency stairs.”

“Won’t they expect that?” the Cardinal asked.

“They’ll expect an assault from the utility room across from mine.”

“Why?”

I turned to look at him. He was genuinely interested to know my reasoning. This was a Cardinal who didn’t just follow commands. I wondered what he’d been like under General Chew-wen’s regime. I wondered if he’d answered back and queried his superiors then.

But I wasn’t his superior, was I? He’d made that perfectly clear.

“Because,” I said, holding his inscrutable gaze, “I used that method of entry last time I was here.”

He stared at me, I thought perhaps speechless. Then he erased that notion and murmured, “It is a miracle that you live.”

I was certain his shock was not from the potential thirty storey fall, but that I’d not been caught and wiped while doing it.

“Again,” he said in that deep voice that held little inflection, “I must ask, why would they be here?”

I turned my attention back to the building, and then lifted my gaze to look at the balcony that used to be mine. It was too high to see details, and the dawn that threatened to light the deep indigo sky made discerning illumination from within the apartment hard at this angle as well. But I knew he was there. Augustine Tengku had come home. To Wánměi, the city that had cast him out. To the place where his treachery had been greatest.

Not his family home, where love resided. But his place of employ, where he’d failed to do his job most spectacularly.

Please forgive me, he’d said. Right before drones had stormed the building.

He’d paid for his betrayal. And now he was back. Like a ghost haunting a place of great meaning, the emotional pull for the old concierge would have been too great.

The only question was, was he able to convince his new friends that laying a trap here would be best?

“Come on,” I said, shifting to move and purposely not answering the Cardinal’s question. “Trent’s waiting.”

Alan made a sound that was indecipherable, but the Cardinal remained mute.

The service alley hadn’t changed one bit; clean, damp, and free of obstacles. This was a highly sought after apartment complex for those Elites who wished to live at the right address. It had standards that needed to be met.

But the eye-scanner and security lock were different. Upgraded after Shiloh had gone dark. Isolated but state of the art. Complex and multi-layered. Even with Calvin it would be a test to crack.

I flicked a glance towards Alan, who offered a small nod of his head.

“One of us should stand guard at the end of the alley,” he suggested, his eyes trained on the Cardinal.

“Then stand guard,” the Cardinal replied, watching me and nothing else.

“You’re the one with the weapons,” Alan replied evenly.

The Cardinal turned his attention to the rebel, his intelligent gaze taking in the casual way Alan stood, the non-threatening stance and open look. The obvious attempt to seem nonchalant. Dark eyes came down to my face.

“Would it be easier if I just turned my back?” he enquired, almost pleasantly. For a moment I was struck dumb. “Rebel secrets and all,” he offered as explanation.

I was beginning to wonder just how many secrets we did have left. But keeping Calvin one of them was imperative.

“It would make me feel better,” I finally replied.

The Cardinal nodded and gave me his back, his gaze looking down the alley towards the entrance, his proximity letting me know not much would get past him despite his act. This Cardinal had earned the twisted gold cord on his shoulder. And I could see how he’d also earned Tan’s trust.

I returned my attention to the security panel, exposing its innards in a much practiced move. The familiarity of the process helped to calm me. For a moment the reasons for being here weren’t as weighted, as the joy of breaking into a challenging security system rushed in. For a moment I could almost forget why we were here at all.

But only a moment.

I pulled out the decoder and attached it to the newly stripped wires, forcing myself to concentrate on the task at hand. To not let my mind wander to more nefarious things. The vid-screen lit up and Calvin took over. His processors so much faster than anything I had ever seen.

How had my father created this programme more than a decade ago? How had he designed something so advanced, that more than ten years later it was still clearly ahead of its time? I’d never know the answer to that, not even Calvin could tell me.

“Access acquired,” his voice announced in my ear. Isolated just for me.

I glanced towards the back of the Cardinal, but he showed no indication of hearing the Shiloh unit’s words over his own earpiece.

“Contain all internal security measures,” I instructed.

“Contained,” he replied a few seconds later.

“Schematics,” I ordered. Several floor plans appeared on my decoder’s screen. None of them had altered since I was last here. “Locate life signs.”

“Located.” Red dots appeared over the floor plans. I sorted through the blueprints until I had my own floor and the stairwell separated.

Immediately I noted an error in my plan.

“Are you sure this is correct?” I asked.

“Positive,” Calvin replied. “There are no life signs in your former apartment.”

My hands shook.

“Is there a problem?” the Cardinal asked, not turning around. He wanted to, I could tell. So I removed the decoder, replaced the security lock’s façade and stepped back. His shadowed eyes swept down when I reached his side.

“There’s no one in the apartment,” I admitted, the words catching at the back of my throat.

“Then your assumption was incorrect.” He didn’t say it with an ounce of accusation; simply making a statement of a fact.

“They’re not here,” I whispered, my mind catching up with the evidence. “It’s their rerouteing address.”

“It would appear so,” Calvin offered over my earpiece.

“Can you trace it?” I asked, as the Cardinal watched on without saying a word. He’d only hear my side of the conversation, but he’d be well aware there was more going on here than met the eye.

“Now I am inside the building’s firewalls,” Calvin explained in my ear, “I can manipulate and interact with all internal networks.”

“Trace the IP rerouter,” I demanded, slipping my decoder back inside my jacket pocket and turning on my heel.

There was no need to enter the building. Augustine and the Masked weren’t here.

Only their calling card was.

"I'm disappointed,” I said softly, the words barely above a whisper.

"You shouldn't be," Trent replied inside my mind. "You've done surprisingly well.”

"Surprisingly?" my memory supplied. "You left me bread crumbs the size of boulders. I hardly had to work for it at all.”

"But you still don't know my name," the echo of Trent’s oh-so-cocky voice, over a telephone line in Hillsborough from so long ago, flitted through my head.

"It's not your name I'm after,” I repeated aloud, as I reached the end of the alleyway.

Tears blurred my vision. My ears ringing with a memory so bittersweet it hurt.

That’s why I didn’t see it. Why the sound of its metallic feet on pavement failed to reach my ears.

The drone appeared out of nowhere. Its laser sight centred on my chest.

Sixteen

Shouldn’t You Be Wearing A Mask?

Lena

Steel-like arms wrapped around me and threw me to the ground. The laser fired. A flash of blindingly bright red light arcing through the air mere centimetres from where I’d just been standing.

The smell of burned flesh met my nose as the Cardinal slumped to the ground beside me.

Alan shouted out a warning much too late. But his knife was in his hand and then flying. The blade glanced off the drone’s metallic torso, clattering to the pavement in a sound that could have shattered silence.

For a second, it felt as if the rest of the world had ceased existing. Just this alleyway and a single drone and the laboured breathing of the Cardinal at my back. Distant traffic became a low hum in the background. Electronic adverts a white noise I couldn’t identify. My heart thundered inside my chest, my vision sharpening.

And then Alan jumped on the drone as its laser gun went off again.

A dust cloud erupted over my shoulder, showering the Cardinal and I in fragments of concrete from where the laser had hit the building’s wall. The drone’s metal feet clanked loudly on the footpath as it staggered under Alan’s assault. I didn’t have much time.

I spun to search for the Cardinal’s laser gun, aware our knives and tasers were useless against such a foe. Alan had used his as a diversion, the moment the blade left his hand he’d have known it would do no harm. Alan, like myself, had faced off against too many drones not to know they didn’t fall so easily.

The Cardinal was conscious, but in no fit state to lift the gun that rested next to his fingers. I glanced down at the blood that stained his white uniform, matching the red cape that splayed out around his shoulders on the ground. His fingers twitched as I reached for the weapon. His pain-filled eyes catching mine. A small nod of his head was all the encouragement I needed.

I hefted the weapon and spun back to face the drone, just as Alan was thrown across the alleyway and hit the brick wall with a sickening crunch.

I raised the gun, sighted down the barrel, and fired.

The drone staggered again, whorls of smoke rising from a small hole in the middle of his chest. His eyes, imitations of the real thing, blazed red. Shiloh red. Sending a chill down my spine and scattering my thoughts.

Fear is an immobiliser. Fear of Shiloh having been brought back was crippling.

I couldn’t breathe. My hands were slick with sweat. The laser gun felt foreign and heavy in my grip.

We stared at each other, the drone and I. It said nothing. Then a green light emitted from one arm and scanned my face before I could react. The spike of adrenaline as I was clearly iRec’d made my finger finally respond to my brain’s command.

I sprayed the drone with laser fire, a continuous arc of vibrant red. The smell of melting metal met my nose, mixed with the choking smoke of an electrical fire. The alley became hazy. My ears rang from the high pitched whine of the gun. Sweat stung my eyes and my hands shook with the effort required to hold the gun aloft and keep firing.

The drone did not return fire.

“Bloody hell,” the Cardinal yelled behind me. “Why won’t it shoot?”

With one final high pitched scream from the gun it cut off. Before it could explode. A safety mechanism that Tan had had installed on all Cardinal laser guns. A safety mechanism that could ironically mean our death.

But once the smoke cleared and our ears stopping ringing it was obvious the drone had deactivated. Whether from the onslaught of laser fire or something else, I couldn’t say. But its eyes were blank, its head hanging low, while little sparks emitted from the newly formed crater in its chest.

“I’ve never seen a drone killed like that,” the Cardinal remarked.

Neither had I. They could overcome any number of insults and injuries to their metallic bodies. The most efficient way to disable a drone was to remove its command module from the side of its head.

I glanced over at the Cardinal, who had one hand over the wound in his arm, as the limb hung uselessly at his side. My eyes quickly sought out Alan, who was only now beginning to stir. A disgruntled look crossing his features before a series of low murmured swearwords slipped out. Neither were fit enough to approach the drone, so that left me.

I took a step closer, the still recharging laser gun in my hand aimed futilely at the dead drone. I’d club it, if I had to. My chest felt too tight, I could feel the rapid beat of my pulse at my neck. My fingers shook as they fished out my knife.

I’d thought their reign of tyranny was over. I’d thought we’d seen the last of Shiloh’s drones.

I looked more closely at it now, searching for clues to how it had appeared out of nowhere. A part of me refusing to believe this was one of our drones, come back to life, revenge forefront on its mind.

It looked the same. Same shining silver metallic casing. Same imitation of a human being. Same iRec eScanner on its arm. Same laser gun as I held in my hand.

And when I prised the casing off its command module, it looked exactly the same inside.

I pulled the electronic chip out, and cut the wires. The drone made no sound and didn’t shift so much as a millimetre. The breath I let out was far too loud.

“Where the fuck did that come from?” Alan said, his words a low rumble in the background.

This was a Wánměi drone. Manufactured in Remoh Ehrah at our now obsolete drone factory. The command module chip I stared at had been stamped with the Wánměi flag.

I turned and looked at Alan; his face was whiter than was strictly healthy for someone of Wáikěinese descent. He held himself stiffly, a grimace marring his normally impassive façade. Pain etched fine lines around his dark eyes, around his thinned lips. But he was standing, which was more than the Cardinal had managed so far.

The Cardinal still cradled his arm, but I couldn’t see any other injury to prevent him from standing. His gaze was target locked on the drone as if expecting it to rise again, even without a computer chip to command it.

Stranger things had happened.

I turned my head so I could keep the drone in my periphery, and then pocketed the chip in my vest.

“Where there’s one drone, there could be others,” I remarked.

“There shouldn’t even be one,” Alan insisted.

“Simon,” I called.

“I’m here, Lena,” he announced in my earpiece, and from the tilt of their heads both Alan and the Cardinal had also heard Si’s reply.

Which meant what I was about to say could be disastrous.

“Can you see us?” I started with instead.

“Still no luck with the street-cams, but I’ve hacked the security cameras at your old apartment complex.” Meaning Calvin had. “We saw everything.”

The Cardinal stirred, attempting to push himself up off the ground with only one hand. His mouth was parting, as if to query Simon’s last statement. He was too quick by far, this Cardinal. He would have known the apartment complex security cameras should have all been on an isolated server. Simon hacking them was an anomaly he didn’t understand.

I quickly rushed to talk over him; down that path lay only prickly thorns.

“Are we clear? Any other drones approaching?”

“You’re on your own. For now,” Simon added.

“What do you make of the drone?” I asked, knowing Simon would understand who - or what - I was asking. Calvin would be talking over Simon’s earpiece, isolated like he can isolate himself in mine.

“It’s one of ours,” Simon advised. “But its behaviour has been modified.”

“How?” Alan asked, seeming more alert and in control of his features now. The impassive mask had been lowered back into place at last.

“Initially,” Simon said, “it aimed the laser gun at Lena, without iRec-ing her first. But once it had iRec’d her, it didn’t fire back. In fact, it did nothing to protect itself, simply shut down.”

“And how is that different from normal?” the Cardinal asked. He’d managed to stand up, but he seemed a little lopsided somehow.

“A drone is a series of commands,” Simon explained. “Ours were controlled by Cardinals until Shiloh took over. This drone could be under control of someone, which would make you think it’s an older unit than those which were functioning still when Shiloh went dark. But I doubt that.”

“Why?” I asked, staring at the drone in question.

“Because our Cardinal controlled drones had a self-preservation programme. One the controlling Cardinal could not override.”

“An interesting assessment,” the Cardinal remarked. “But that still doesn’t explain the behavioural change you suggest. If it isn’t Cardinal controlled, then it is Shiloh controlled. And those drones would simply follow commands. Its command could have been to iRec and then shut down.”

“Shiloh doesn’t exist,” Simon said in reply. “Cardinals do.”

“You said yourself, you doubted this was an older drone, a Cardinal controlled one,” the Cardinal insisted. His sharp mind not affected by the injury he’d sustained, it seemed.

Simon was silent a little too long. No doubt listening to Calvin explain his theory. Or deciding how to word it so he didn’t sound like a computer himself.

“Shiloh controlled drones never shut down,” he finally said.

We all glanced uneasily at the inactive drone.

“I’ve seen them shut down,” I argued. And then realised what Simon was saying. “But that had been an act.”

I frowned at the drone and walked closer, my eyes scanning its humanoid face, the hole in the centre of its chest.

“It didn’t hum,” I said finally.

“Exactly,” Simon rushed to agree. Clearly Calvin knew more than Simon could safely impart over the earpieces. The hum was his lifeline for now.

“No it didn’t,” Alan agreed, perhaps aware that Simon needed the back-up.

“They always hummed,” I said turning back to the Cardinal, who was now leaning at an angle against the apartment building’s wall. “Even when appearing shutdown,” I finished, narrowing my eyes at the man.

His arm hung limply at his side, his face appeared asymmetrical. A droop had appeared on one side. He favoured the leg on his left. The same side as where the drone’s laser gun had struck.

I searched for the injury, but all I could see was the red of blood.

Then with two quick strides towards him, I reached up and ran a finger through the liquid that stained his uniform and brought it to my nose. It smelled metallic. Rather like the electrical smoke emitted from the drone.

And it wasn’t blood.

“You’re not bleeding,” I remarked.

The Cardinal shook his head, but the effort cost him. He slid partway down the wall, his legs crumbling beneath him.

“I…” he started, the word slurred. “I… can’t… feel…” But no more words came as his eyes closed and his head slumped forward onto his chest.

“Breathing?” Alan asked, moving alongside me.

“Yes. Just.”

“Where’s the injury? That has to be blood.”

“It’s not,” I said, staring down at my numbing fingertip. “It’s a paralytic,” I murmured, my eyes scanning the slumped features of the Cardinal.

Had he been struck in the chest, like I would have been struck in the chest if he hadn’t intervened, then he would have become completely paralysed much faster, I guessed.

The drone hadn’t been shooting to kill.

The drone had been shooting to capture.

And then he would have iRec’d.

But the iRec-ing had been academic. He’d already known who I was.

This wasn’t a Cardinal controlled drone. And it wasn’t a Shiloh controlled one either.

It was something else.

And it might have been made in Wánměi, but it was not ours.

I looked back at the drone, trying futilely to see an answer. But it looked like any other drone I’d ever seen. A metal man designed to oppress and kill at the flick of a switch.

“Shouldn't you be wearing a Mask?” I said to myself, just as Simon shouted over the earpieces, “Drones! More drones! And they’re coming in fast.”

I swung away from the drone to help Alan with the Cardinal.

But not before I kicked the Masked’s weapon in the head and made it tumble.

The sound of metal crashing against concrete followed us out of the alleyway.

But it was soon joined by the synchronised footsteps of others.

Seventeen

Too Late

Trent

My legs were back. They hurt like fuck.

My arms were missing. Which was a good thing.

I only wished my head was too; a pounding had started up behind my eyes, a sharp stab of something lethal jabbed an eyeball.

And then light washed my pupils, making the world turn blindingly bright white for a moment. As shapes formed and my vision adjusted, I saw the tip of an actual needle.

“This will probably hurt,” that distorted voice - which had become as much a tormentor as a welcomed visitor - announced. “And I’m afraid you’ve proven we must first make an example of pain, or you simply don’t believe us capable.”

“You talk too much,” I said, my words only slightly slurred. I was proud of that fact.

“Of course,” the voice said. “You could tell us where it is and maybe I won’t need to prove we mean business.”

“Go fuck yourself!”

My eyeball felt as if it burst. I struggled in the restraints, realising I still had arms even if I couldn’t feel them. But the excruciating agony of having my eyeball repeatedly stabbed overrode any other thoughts for a while.

The sound of harsh breathing and soft whimpers broke through the fog. I could feel blood and other things running down my left cheek. I didn’t dare lift an eyelid.

“You have one more eye left,” the voice advised.

I couldn’t take anymore. I knew it. It had been days of this, with little rest. Only what unconsciousness could offer.

I silently begged for it now. Or death. I’d take either.

“Of course, there are other eyeballs we could use instead,” the man declared.

It took a second, maybe two, for me to parse his words.

“No,” I ground out between gritted teeth. They fucking hurt too. I was sure several were broken.

“And her eyes are the blue of a morning sky, I believe,” the fucking voice announced with casual flare.

“Don’t you dare touch her!” I yelled, struggling in earnest now. My body rocking, the back of my head banging, the restraints clanging, and that fucking cog threatening to turn at any moment. “Don’t you fucking dare!” I screamed.

Silence. Not even the drip of blood that must have been still dripping.

“Too late,” the man said, and nothing could have prepared me for the pain that followed.

Eighteen

I Am Calvin

Lena

Drones were everywhere. Not in the numbers we had seen at the end of Shiloh’s reign. But enough to be noticeable. People screamed when they spotted them, grabbing their children and scurrying to shelter in nearby homes. Whether theirs or someone else’s, it didn’t matter. Doors were bolted, curtains closed. Lights extinguished.

Wánměi shut down more effectively than an Overseer commanded curfew.

We crept along shadowed alleys, the unconscious Cardinal slung between us. We hid in darkened alcoves, hearts in our throats, perspiration beading our brows. My mind raced to comprehend what it was I was seeing. Shiloh was no more, I knew this. I’d risked asking Calvin. But my eyes were telling me otherwise.

And yet we were still blind.

Sat-loc was operational. Street-cams were out. Most of Wánměi existed on isolated servers. We’d thrown our nation into the dark ages.

Freedom had definitely come at a price.

I held my breath as two drones marched past our current location. More than a little surprised that they weren’t searching as thoroughly as Cardinal drones would have done in the past. All it would have taken was a step into the shadows, a flash of illumination from their eyes, and we’d be seen. But the drones marched on. Their goal something other than flushing us out, it seemed.

“Maybe we’re not their target, after all,” Alan whispered beside me. Clearly thinking along the same lines as myself.

“If not us, then who?” I whispered back.

He shook his head, equally as dumbfounded as me.

“We can’t stay here,” he finally announced.

“I can’t give you directions,” Simon advised over the earpiece, keeping up with our conversation, if not our progress on a vid-screen. “We’re still blind,” he added, mirroring my earlier thoughts.

I looked up at the outline of nearby houses, their slanted, tiled roofs beckoning in the encroaching darkness. A cat walked along the far edge of the closest, then jumped down out of sight. The sound of bottles clinking and rubbish cans toppling over shortly followed.

The synchronised beat of metallic feet grew closer.

“The roof?” Alan asked, watching the trajectory of my gaze. “It’ll be tough getting him up there.” He nodded down at the slumped form of the Cardinal. “We could leave him,” he suggested, a hard edge to the humour he’d attempted with those words.

Alan would leave him, if it meant our lives. But I wasn’t quite ready to take that step. The Cardinal had taken the paralytic laser shot on my behalf. Why, I had no idea. But he’d thrown me out of harm’s way, so the least I could do was return the favour.

“Damn it,” Alan muttered as I shook my head, my eyes scanning the vehicles parked along the edge of the street we were on. “Trent would have said yes,” he muttered, as I indicated with my hand for him to remain where he was, then snuck out into the open to test a theory.

I crouched low beside the nearest car, attaching my decoder to its locking mechanism. It was state of the art, but Calvin was better. The car door disengaged and swung open within seconds, light from inside the vehicle quickly doused by Calvin’s programme.

“Vehicle acquired,” he announced in my ear. A part of me wished I’d had Calvin back in my thieving days. But then I quickly dismissed it.

Sometimes the challenge was all that had mattered.

I opened the rear door of the car and returned to help Alan with the Cardinal. In minutes we were inside the vehicle, crouching low in the seats as more drones walked down the opposite side of the road. They passed without so much as a glance in our direction. Laser guns out, the harmony of their feet setting a rhythmic beat to the pounding of my heart.

We watched them as they turned the corner, the soft glow of their eyes shining briefly in the window pane of a building. For a second I just stared at where that glow had been. My mind racing, but unable to define what had upset me.

I dismissed the notion that there was more to be upset about than the unconscionable fact that drones had returned, and nodded to Alan when his hand rested on the ignition, eyes on mine, waiting for agreement.

“The next few minutes could be crazy,” he warned.

I offered an Elite superior smile. “When have they not been when you’re behind the wheel?”

He grunted out an amused sound and hit the button. The electric whine of the vehicle filled the hollow interior of the car. I brought my window down immediately, to better hear the approaching sound of drone feet. They were close, but we were already moving.

Within seconds we’d turned the corner and were tearing down Parnell Rise, crossing empty intersections with the odd soft glow of a pair of drone eyes the only sign of them in the darkness.

I thought we were going to make it. None of the drones we’d seen even fired.

And then we turned onto Muhgah Foh Road.

The eerie glow of red seemed to be everywhere. On the street corners. In the windows of shops and cafés. Peering out from behind travellers palms. Standing in the middle of the street as we barrelled towards it.

Alan swore harshly, pulling hard on the steering wheel, the screech of tires sounding out on the still night air. Burned rubber wafted up to meet my nose, as my shoulder hit the door panel sharply. The grip I had on the laser gun weakened, the gun itself clattering to the floor at my feet. I reached down to grasp the handle, when Alan slammed on the brakes suddenly.

My forehead hit the dashboard. A warning alarm sounded out in the vehicle.

And the drones started firing.

Laser lights arced across the night sky. The whine of the guns competing with sparks zapping from beneath our car’s bonnet.

“Motherfucker!” Alan yelled, attempting to restart the stalled vehicle.

“Calvin,” I called. “Get it going!”

“The central motherboard has been compromised,” he supplied. “I’m attempting to circumnavigate the areas of weakness. This may take a minute or two. Please stand by.”

We didn’t have time to stand by. Laser fire danced on the heated air like a battle of fireflies. A flash of red. A burst of blue. A searing shock of vibrant green. I grasped the recovered laser gun in my hands and started firing. It took me several seconds to realise those drones on my side of the car weren’t firing back.

But they were firing.

At the drones across the street.

My hand stilled on the laser gun’s trigger, just as Alan yelled something scathing in my ear, and Calvin replied in calm tones unaffected by the chaos flickering intermittently all around us, “The vehicle is repaired.”

The electric whine broke through the shock. Alan slamming the car in gear had me flattened against the seat-back unable to act despite the returned desire to do so. The laser gun lay ineffectually in my hands, as we rocketed between the two waring groups of drones, taking heavy fire. Windows shattered, upholstery exploded, the smell of burned plastic filled the air.

Then Alan grunted, his foot landing heavier on the accelerator, and the car threatened to revolt, sparks and smoke emitting from the engine compartment as we barrelled round the corner and out of drone fire.

“Fucking hell!” Alan swore, his right hand falling off the steering wheel, landing limp in his lap. “Lena!”

I reached over in time to grab the steering wheel, just before his other arm fell uselessly at his side.

“Oh, fuck,” he managed, the words not as distinct as they should have been.

“Can you move?” I yelled, as we careened down the road approaching the apartment complex at the speed of light.

“Can’t…” was all he could get out.

I glanced down at his foot on the pedal, the weight alone managing to keep the accelerator down. My eyes came up and took in our trajectory. There was simply nowhere for us to go. And not enough time.

I struggled one handed to steer the almost out of control vehicle, reaching behind me to fumble with my seatbelt. The lock came free. The street curved. We left the tarsal for a second and then slammed back down in a teeth jarring crunch of tires and metal.

And then Calvin calmly said, “Deactivating vehicle.”

My heart thundered in my chest making breathing difficult as I watched stunned as the apartment came towards us in a type of slow motion.

Then with an hysterical sounding laugh I realised it wasn’t the world slowing down as I faced imminent death, but rather the car itself coming to a stop. Mere feet from the entrance to the building.

A Cardinal rushed out, covered by two further laser toting accomplices offering cover, and opened the rear car door to retrieve our silent back seat passenger.

Alan let out a slow breath of air, his eyelids growing heavier, and then he too slumped forward, unconscious. The car’s horn sounded briefly before Calvin silenced it.

Paul rushed out of the building, then, to retrieve Alan, as instructions flowed over me issued by Cardinals, and Simon over the earpieces, and Tan from the front steps despite his guards trying to unsuccessfully keep him inside.

I climbed out of the vehicle, my legs a little shaky, and sucked in a few lungfuls of air.

“Drones,” I said, my throat parched, the word sounding scratchy.

“For some reason,” Calvin advised in my ear, “they don’t seem to be following.”

I nodded, it was hard enough to do that, let alone talk. But I found the will when I came abreast of Tan.

“Elite?” he queried, taking the bedraggled sight of me in, and my now two comatose companions. “Lena?” he added, for good measure.

He gripped my arm and helped me inside, the doors locking loudly behind us. I watched Alan and the Cardinal being carried toward the elevators, and then turned my attention to the President.

“They’re not ours,” I said into the quiet.

“I know,” he replied, keeping up with my train of thought. “But they were certainly made here.”

I nodded, running sweaty palms down my clothes, somehow drying them and testing I was in one piece at the same time. The outline of the command module chip from the drone in the alleyway met my fingers. I pulled it out.

“They were ours,” I agreed, turning the chip over in my hand and displaying the Wánměi flag. “But not now.”

“We know this, Lena,” Tan stressed, attempting to get me into a vacant lift.

I shook my head. “You don’t understand.”

“Then make me,” he shot back as the lift doors closed behind us.

“What Lena is trying to say,” Calvin announced coolly over the speakers inside the elevator. I closed my eyes, slumping against the mirrored wall of the box. Just great. “Is that we have got more than one set of drones in Wánměi.”

“Who the fuck are you?” Tan demanded, making the Cardinals who stood beside us stiffen.

“I am Calvin,” Calvin declared.

I let a long breath of air out and lifted my eyes to meet those of Tan’s.

His held disbelief, shock, and I was thinking not just a little hurt.

All of it vanished, though, in a flash of pure anger.

“And who, Lena,” he said so very quietly, “is Calvin?”

I guess our secret was out.

Nineteen

This Is Real

Lena

“You’re missing the point,” I stressed.

“The point, Lena,” Tan growled back, “is you activated your Shiloh against direct Presidential orders.”

I raised an Elite eyebrow at him. Now he was throwing his weight around as the country’s President?

“Regardless of that,” I forged on, “those drones were firing on each other.”

Tan let a frustrated breath of air out and ran a hand through his already tousled hair. “You need to deactivate it,” he ordered, ignoring the more pressing matter of the drones.

So I ignored him.

“Why would there be two sets of drones?” I asked, turning toward Simon as he sat mutely in his chair. He jerked slightly in his seat at suddenly and unexpectedly being the centre of attention. I couldn’t blame him, right now Tan was as irate as I’d ever seen him be.

“Two different invaders,” Simon said in a rush of words.

Silence followed.

Tan slowly turned towards him, his head tilted to the side as he considered Simon’s words. For his part, Si slunk down further in his chair. If he could have, he would blended into the material.

“Why would there be two?” Tan asked, thankfully forgetting Calvin for the moment. And Calvin was remaining perceptively silent. I only hoped he’d stay that way.

Chance would be a fine thing.

“We need to go back to who we sold drones to in the first place,” I offered, flicking my eyes across the room to Alan and strangely wishing he was conscious in order to be part of this conversation.

Paul met my gaze and offered an encouraging smile. He’d cleaned off the paralytic compound, and when no one was looking slipped a sample of it inside a small jar. He hadn’t had a chance to take it to Calvin for analysis, but I had to admit, I was impressed with the young rebel. I smiled back, mine not quite as optimistic as his.

Alan - and the Cardinal - hadn’t moved an inch since we’d got back here.

“Merrika and Urip,” Tan offered, reading off a vid-screen. “From what we can tell, those were the only two countries we traded drones with. Of course,” he added, “they may have traded with someone else.”

“But there’s not too many countries left, is there?” Simon offered.

We all slowly shook our heads.

“Apart from that one across the water from Hillsborough,” he added.

“We have no record of trading with them,” Tan admitted, then lowered the vid-screen. “In fact, from what we’ve managed to discover so far, they are rarely mentioned in any documents of worth. And those Overseers we’ve questioned have confirmed that government policy was to ignore they existed at all.”

“Such ignorance is confusing,” I said softly.

“Indeed,” Tan agreed. “But it exists.”

“Existed,” I corrected. Tan didn’t answer.

“So, two sets of drones,” Simon finally felt compelled to say. “One from Merrika. One from Urip. This just gets more and more fucked in the head,” he added in a mutter.

“Either they’ve had a falling out,” I commented. “Or they were never here as a unit to start with.”

“Which means,” Tan concluded, “we’ve possibly been invaded by two separate enemies, at roughly the same time.”

“There’s no roughly about it,” Si countered, staring at the largest vid-screen in front of him. Footage taken from our stolen car’s dashboard camera showed the drones firing at each other across our bonnet.

I stared at the screen for a long time, trying to understand what it was I was seeing. What it was I was feeling. That sense of missing something invaded my psyche. That sensation of disquiet I’d had earlier, when looking at the drones as their reflections had passed a large window.

I took a step closer, my eyes scanning the image, my mind whirring at an alarming rate. Light suffused the dark street on the vid-screen. Ambient light, always present in night time Wánměi, and the red of laser beams.

But there wasn’t just red, I realised. There was blue and green as well. Initially, I’d thought the added colours were a new form of laser beam, but that wasn’t exactly what I was seeing now.

A small surprised breath of air escaped me.

“They’ve got blue eyes,” I whispered.

“What was that?” Tan asked, moving closer.

I lifted my arm and pointed at the drones who’d been firing at us on the screen. “Red eyes, like Shiloh,” I said. Then shifted my finger and pointed at the drones across the street. “Blue eyes,” I added.

“Huh,” Tan said on a huff of expelled air. “Interesting.”

“Then the drones are different from each other,” Simon mused. “Well, at least we can tell them apart.”

“It still doesn’t help to ascertain their reasons for invasion,” Tan pointed out. “This could have been a fight between recently joined forces. One trying to claim victory of the spoils over the other.”

It was a valid point, and with what little we knew, there simply wasn’t any way to make things clearer.

“Fighter jets,” I said. “Masked saviours. And two sets of drones.”

“That about sums it up,” Simon said. But no one else offered a comment. We were still blind.

I flicked my eyes over to Paul and Alan, and then turned my attention back to Tan.

“I need a shower and something to eat,” I advised. He nodded absently, his gaze still locked on the vid-screen. Searching for answers that I was sure would not be there.

But I knew where else they might be.

I crossed the room to Paul and looked down at Alan.

“No change?”

“He’s breathing better, and a second ago, his foot twitched.”

“Good,” I said with a nod of my head, accepting the surreptitiously offered jar from Paul’s hand. “Keep me abreast of any changes.”

“Of course,” he answered, making a fuss of Alan’s placement on a pillow, drawing everyone’s eye as I silently left the room.

Cardinals stood guard outside the tech-room, and down the corridor of the penthouse floor, but none stopped me from entering my apartment. The door locked behind me and I leaned against it and just breathed.

“You should have remained silent,” I said into the quiet space.

“You appeared to need assistance,” Calvin replied.

“Not that kind of assistance,” I shot back.

“It all worked out in the end.”

“He’s going to insist you get shut down. And there won’t be a thing I can do to stop it.”

“I know,” Calvin replied, infuriatingly calmly. “But I can always be activated again.”

“Are you suggesting I disobey my President?”

“When have you ever obeyed the rules, Lena?” my father’s voice asked.

I swallowed thickly and stared down at the ground. I was so tired, so exhausted, emotions were running a little too close to the surface, it seemed. Tears were stinging my eyes.

Pulling myself together, with more effort than I would have liked to admit, I crossed to the kitchen and slipped the sample jar into Calvin’s analysing unit.

“Can you find an antidote?” I asked.

“It will take some time, but I believe it is possible,” he replied.

I pulled a bottle of water from the fridge and leaned against the bench while I drank it. My eyes on the Shiloh unit as it hung suspended in the opposite wall.

“What do you make of the drones?” I asked eventually.

“One group is from Merrika, and the other from Urip, as you deduced.”

“What do they want?”

“It is difficult to say, but I’d hazard a guess that those firing at you want you captured. And those firing at them want something else.”

“You’re a genius,” I deadpanned.

“If you do not wish for me to offer my opinion, then do not ask for it,” he simply replied.

I wanted answers. But if Calvin didn’t have them for me, then there were no answers to have.

“Any news on the Net about Trent?” I asked instead.

“The social forums have remained silent since the drones appeared. The last communiqué from Sir Galahad was, ‘Going dark.’”

No more help on the forums then.

“The Masked are involved,” I insisted.

“Undoubtedly.”

“They have Trent.”

“Do they?” Calvin enquired.

“They were at the crash zone,” I pointed out, suddenly furious that Calvin would offer a different perspective. I needed to believe I knew something. That I wasn’t worse off than before.

That Trent wasn’t farther away from me than ever.

“And yet,” he replied calmly, in a tone of voice I’d heard my father use many times in the past, “there are two sets of drones in Wánměi.”

I stared mutely at the Shiloh unit for a long moment, and then asked quietly, “What exactly do you mean?”

“I mean, Lena,” Calvin said in a perfect imitation of my father, “that if there are two sets of drones, how can we be sure the ones who have Trent belong to the Masked? Which group do the Masked belonged to?” he added. “And finally, do the Masked belong to a set of drones at all?”

Now he was just muddying the waters for the sake of things. Because he was a computer programme designed to extrapolate answers from as series of inputs. Two sets of drones and one caste of people. Three inputs meant three possible answers.

And he hadn’t even touched on the fighter jets!

“You’re not helping,” I said in a dangerously close to cracking voice.

“No,” he said. “I apologise.” Which only made me laugh out loud. It wasn’t pretty.

I slumped down on a bar stool at the bench and stared at the condensation on my water bottle. It had been hours since Trent had gone missing. Hours in which any manner of things could have happened. I didn’t want to think of them. I didn’t want to imagine him injured, or worse. I didn’t want to, but how could I not?

Drones on the streets again. Masked vigilantes causing havoc as they “saved the day.”

One thing was certain, neither the drones nor the Masked came from Wánměi. Oh, they all may have started here, but they hadn’t been Citizens of our country for many months.

So what did that make them?

Invaders. Enemies, as Tan had said. I wanted another explanation, but my exhausted and bruised mind kept coming up blank.

Wánměi was under attack.

And Trent was missing.

A sob threatened to escape. I brutally forced it back down. Tears wouldn’t help him. But unfortunately I had no idea what would.

I’d never felt quite so alone and desperate as I did right then.

“Is there nothing new you can tell me?” I pleaded with the Shiloh unit.

“Nothing new,” Calvin confirmed, in that calm voice belonging to my dead father. “But there is something you have overlooked.”

I didn’t have energy enough to answer.

“You have one missed message,” Calvin announced with all the enthusiasm of a sentient answering machine.

My eyes came up to stare at the blinking green light in the upper right corner of the vid-screen. I’d seen it before, of course. And ignored it for more pressing things. Now suddenly I found myself reluctant to clear it.

“Is it urgent?” I asked. I’d thought it was from Tan. But for Calvin to mention it now, it couldn’t have been.

My fingers began to tremble, even as I stood to my feet. I fisted my hands tightly around the water bottle, trying vainly to face what was coming with dignity.

“I believe it is,” Calvin replied.

I stared at that light. No doubt Calvin stared back at me. Neither of us said a word for several seconds.

“Ask, Lena,” he finally instructed. “You have to ask.”

Damn it. What choice did I have?

“Play the message, Calvin,” I said in a surprisingly level tone.

“Voice imprint accepted,” he replied, surprising me with the unusual addition of security to clear a simple telephone message.

The pause that followed was excruciating. But not as painful as hearing that voice.

“Lena,” the message said. “Baby girl,” it added with such familiar emotion. “Please don’t be alarmed.”

The water bottle fell from my grasp and crashed onto the kitchen tiles.

“Calvin,” I started, prepared to shut down the malfunctioning Shiloh unit on the next command.

“This is real,” the recording went on in my father’s voice. “This isn’t the machine talking,” he added.

I forgot to breathe. The message kept playing, heedless of my faltering reality.

“I’m alive,” it said, as I followed the bottle to the floor.

Twenty

I Knew What They Wanted

Lena

“There’s so much to tell you and no good place to start,” my father’s voice said from the Shiloh unit. Not Calvin. Not the Shiloh itself. But a recorded message left only a day or so ago. “For now, baby girl, just know I’m sorry. So very sorry to have left you.”

I did cry then. Curled on the floor listening to a voice I’d thought I’d never hear again, and then so recently allowed back in my life in a mock parody of my past.

A sob escaped, my chest aching. My throat closing in on itself. Just as I could feel my mind doing the same.

This wasn’t real. This wasn’t happening. How could this be real?

“Things were chaotic at Ohrikee,” the voice of my father said. “The Chief Overseer was hurt. Cardinals were battling rebels. Mason Waters had us cornered in a room. And one thing led to another, and I was shot. I woke up some time later somewhere else.

“I’ve been trying to get back ever since.”

I lay stunned on the cold tiles of the kitchen, my cheeks damp from tears. My heart broken. But my mind rebelled still. This wasn’t possible.

Was it?

“Ten years and you’ve grown so much.” His voice sounded rough, but it could have been the recording. “And then sat-loc went down. And there you were. Beautiful and resplendent. Innocent and naive. A nation ripe for the picking. I knew,” he said with effort. “I knew others would come. Unless I got there first.”

He was here.

I sat up and ran a hand over my face and eyes, clearing my vision. I glanced around the kitchen and into the lounge, as if I’d see my long lost father there. But nothing had changed. Just our apartment. A half read book. An empty mug. One of Trent’s socks under the couch which was only now visible from this angle.

My gaze came back reluctantly to the Shiloh unit.

“I made it as far as Mahiah.” I frowned. Mahiah made up one of the four nationalities of our society. Anglisc. D’maru. Wáikěinese. And Mahiah. It was also the language the Mahiah spoke. I was fluent in it. As was my father. He wouldn’t have used that word unless he meant to.

But where Mahiah was, this place he had reached, I did not know.

None of this made any sense.

“But getting any closer, for me,” he added, “was a risk my people weren’t prepared to take. So I sent them in. And I also sent you something else to help out until I could get there.”

I was more confused than ever.

“And now sat-loc will be reactivated, if it hasn’t already been done so. I know Lee Tan, and know how he’d respond to any threat.”

Oh my God. My father did know Tan. And had known his sister, my dear friend, Aiko.

I started rocking slightly, my arms around my stomach, holding everything in.

“But you are under threat, baby girl.” His words reached me down a long, dark tunnel. “These people mean business. I’ve tried to steer them away from Wánměi, but the damage was already done by Chew-wen. They’ve had a taste and now they want more. And with Shiloh gone, their hunger is ravenous.”

I shook my head and pulled myself up from the floor. This needed to be faced head on. It was happening.

“My instructions to my team were to observe, but from their last communication it appears things have escalated. Which means it won’t be long before we have to go to phase two.

“I don’t want you to worry, Lena. This time I got it right. I’ve learned a lot in the past ten years, and paid a steep price for it. I will not be making the same mistakes again.”

I sank back against the kitchen bench and just breathed. It was a struggle.

“You can trust my people, and if phase two has been instigated by the time you hear this, then they will make contact with you shortly afterwards. They know what to do, Lena. Together you might just have a chance. But the other wiped?” He paused, the silence stretching, only a small hiss over the speakers let me know the message was still running. “It might be too late for them.”

My mind stalled. The frozen image of Augustine Tengku on Simon’s vid-screen flashed before my eyes.

Swiftly followed by the mask he’d been wearing.

And then the Mahiah woman from the bar, and the Pherres.

I felt my legs go weak again and stumbled to a chair.

“We’ll be together again soon, baby girl,“ my father’s message said. “Be strong. I’m so very proud of you.”

Then the green light went out on Calvin’s vid-screen.

“End of message,” he needlessly announced.

“Did you know?” I whispered.

“Know what, Lena?” Calvin asked in reply.

“That the message was from my father.”

He didn’t answer straight away, and then a series of code appeared on his vid-screen, scrolling letters and numbers in a vibrant white. At the very end was my father’s name.

Calvin Richard Carstairs.

“I am Calvin,” the Shiloh announced.

“I don’t understand,” I said, my voice still a whisper.

“Yes, Lena,” he said. “I knew.”

I stared at the vid-screen, searching for something that clearly wasn’t there.

“Then why didn’t you tell me?” I finally asked.

“You didn’t ask.”

“If you’re him…”

“I am Calvin.”

“But not him,” I concluded.

And I also sent you something else to help out until I could get there.

He’d sent me Calvin. As close to himself as my father could get.

“Shiloh no longer exists,” I said, my voice as rough as sandpaper.

“No, Lena. Shiloh no longer exists,” Calvin agreed. “I am Calvin. I am better. I am not a mistake.”

“How did he do it?” I demanded.

“Do what, Lena?”

“Send you to me.” The Shiloh unit I’d had was not the same as everyone else’s. It was protected by a programme my father had written, in the event that Shiloh became self-aware and took over. My father had seen the writing on the wall, but not lived - not stayed - long enough to combat it. So he’d created my Shiloh unit. Separate and contained. It alone held the programme required to deactivate Shiloh.

It had not been Calvin then.

“You activated your Shiloh,” Calvin said. “Sat-loc was down. I slipped in.”

We’d activated my Shiloh when we couldn’t gain access to various Wánměi utilities post freeing our city-state. Rap-Trans, the traffic lights, the power grids. They were all in chaos. We needed to get them back.

We had. With the aid of Calvin.

My father had simply waited until sat-loc was finally down and my Shiloh unit was online, and sent Calvin in.

The desire to deactivate him now was so strong.

I don’t want you to worry, Lena. This time I got it right. I’ve learned a lot in the past ten years, and paid a steep price for it. I will not be making the same mistakes again.

Shiloh had been a mistake.

I am Calvin. I am better. I am not a mistake.

“You better not be, buddy,” I said aloud. He didn’t deign to reply.

My head ached. My chest hurt. My cheeks and eyes felt puffy.

“So what’s the plan?” I asked.

“The Masked will contact you shortly,” Calvin said, confirming my suspicions. My father’s people were the Masked who were once upon a time Wiped.

“And the drones?”

“Blue eyes and red eyes,” Calvin said cryptically.

I let a loud breath of air out on a woosh.

“The blue eyes are my father’s new drones, aren’t they?”

“It would appear so.”

“You don’t know for sure?”

“My programme was written some time ago,” Calvin admitted. “Without access to the Global Net I have not received an update for several weeks.”

“You were on the Global Net just yesterday,” I pointed out.

“Your father was not.”

I raised an eyebrow at the machine. Clearly there were limitations to my father’s expertise.

I rubbed my face again, trying to stimulate thought.

“OK,” I said. “Then whose are the red-eyed drones?”

“I do not know the answer to that,” Calvin replied. “We need access to the Global Net.”

And if we did that, the red-eyed drone owners would have access to us.

But didn’t they already? They were already here.

And as Calvin hadn’t identified the fighter jets, I could only assume I’d receive the same answer now to that question. So I didn’t ask. We needed access to the Global Net.

I had to talk to Tan.

I pushed off from the chair and then stopped. Staring at nothing. Standing in the middle of the kitchen.

“If the Masked don’t have Trent…” I started.

“Then the threat your father speaks of does,” Calvin concluded helpfully.

That ache in my heart grew heavier.

These people mean business.

Oh God.

I’ve tried to steer them away from Wánměi, but the damage was already done by Chew-wen.

Oh GOD.

They’ve had a taste and now they want more. And with Shiloh gone, their hunger is ravenous.

I knew what they wanted.

And they knew who Trent was.

But he didn’t have Shiloh. No one did.

Shiloh was gone.

So what had they done to Trent?

I was running before I had time to think of what.

Twenty-One

I’d Been Kidding Myself

Trent

I struggled to breathe. I was drowning in my own blood. My mouth full, thick and viscous fluid pouring down my throat, my chest screaming for a fresh gulp of air. A wracking cough surged up from my stomach, making my ribs ache and my body shake and mercifully a small amount of precious air reach my lungs.

I sucked in another immediately and choked on my own blood.

My mind raced for a way out of this. My heart pounded with a fresh wash of adrenaline. Desperation clawed at my psyche. I fisted my hands, feeling the sharp bite of chains at my wrists, and tried to suck in another lungful of air.

Blood splattered onto the floor as I coughed on the exhale. I could feel it dribbling down my chin, down my arms, around my ankles. I’d long ago realised I was chained to a wall. The back of my head felt wet and swollen. My hair matted to my scalp. My vision blurry.

I was dying.

Lena’s face swam before my eyes. So beautiful. So serene. So fierce. She was a dichotomy, was Lena. An Elite with the heart of a Citizen. She’d be looking for me. She’d be hounding Tan and pushing Alan and bugging the fuck out of Si. She wouldn’t stop until she found me.

But I knew what she’d find was only a shell.

If they didn’t burn my body before she got here.

He’d been lying, of course. He didn’t have her. If he’d had her, he would have paraded her before my eyes. Would have relished doing to her what they had done to me for far too long now.

And if they did have her, my traitorous mind supplied, they would have stopped asking the same fucking question of me hours ago.

“This can end,” that distorted voice announced. As if it could read my mind. “Just tell us where it is, and we’ll stop. We’ll make the pain go away. We’ll end it. Easy.”

I was weak. I was tired. I was dying.

For the first time since I’d woken up here, I told them the truth.

“Shiloh is gone.”

Silence.

Only my guilt and defeat and shame as company.

They’d won. I’d lost. In the end I was nothing like my father.

I started laughing. A sickly, gurgling sound from the pit of my stomach.

“What is funny?” the voice asked.

“My father,” I said through fits of hysterical cackles.

“What about your father?” I couldn’t answer. I was laughing too fucking hard. “What’s he got to do with Shiloh?”

“Nothing,” I said, relishing disappointing the owner of that creepy, monotone-sounding voice. “He’s got absolutely… fucking… nothing to do with Shiloh.”

Silence.

“You wanna know what else is funny?” I asked, warming to this whole new sensation of having triumphed. “You came all this way for nothing.”

Silence.

“And now you’re here. And Shiloh’s gone. And I’m dying. And fuck! She’s gonna be so pissed.”

Silence. I think he’d gone. I was talking to an empty room.

I chuckled.

“So fucking pissed.”

Come and get me, baby. I’ll hold on. Just one more look at your face. One more touch of your hands. One more soft kiss from your lips. I’m waiting.

“That’s where you’re wrong, Mr Masters,” the voice suddenly said.

My heart plummeted.

“Shiloh still exists,” he purred in my ear. I could feel his hot breath against the side of my neck, more real than the torture had ever been. “Drones walk your city’s streets. Ours and hers. A war has started, and all you’ve managed to do is convince us that you don’t want to share. Too late,” he said with a burst of laughter.

Real. This was real.

“If you can’t tell us where Shiloh is, then we’ll tear your city apart trying to find her.”

I turned my head abruptly and whacked the side of my skull into flesh.

The guy grunted and backed off a step. But he wasn’t finished. He was enjoying himself too much to let me win.

Even a small victory such as that.

“We had an agreement. Your country and ours.”

The chains at my feet suddenly unravelled.

“You gave us a taste and now we want more.”

My arms came down, the return of circulation excruciating. I felt my legs give out and the cold hard floor meet my cheek.

“But a contract is a contract,” the guy said, his voice coming from above. “And if we can’t have more drones, then we’ll take Shiloh.”

I shook my head, the room spinning, the walls fading in and out and out and in. My stomach roiled and instead of blood, I was suddenly vomiting chilli crab and Haldor’s XXX. It burned. But it wasn’t blood.

What the fuck?

“And if you won’t crack, then maybe she will.”

Oh no, not this again.

“Good luck with that,” I said between bouts of heaving.

He laughed, and then gripped me around the upper arm and hauled me upright. A hard slap cracked through the room, my head whipping to the side, my cheek burning.

“Awake yet?” the voice asked.

Colours burst to life all around me. Bright yellows and harsh reds. Wicked blues and dazzling oranges. A purple so vibrant it stung the eyes. I blinked. And then blinked again. And on the third shuttering of my eyelids, the room coalesced more vividly, and so did the man before me.

I didn’t recognise him. He looked Anglisc, but his features seemed a little different. His clothes looked strange as well. Shiny and tight. Like Lena’s wing-suit, but more crazy. A holographic emblem of some sort stretched across a broad chest. The letters U-POL blazoned beneath it.

U-Pol. Like sPol and iPol? This guy was someone’s police.

I head butted him. He wasn’t one of mine.

A litany of words spewed out of his mouth in a language I didn’t understand. And then a laser gun whirred to life. I spun ‘round to face it, reaching for the first thing I could grasp to use as protection. And then looked up into the red eyes of a fucking drone. The world halted on its axis for a brief second. And then I glanced down at what I was gripping.

Bed sheets. Damp with sweat, but otherwise unmarked.

My eyes flicked around the room, and for the first time took in everything.

A bed. Not a rack.

Sheets. Not chains.

And not a fucking cog in sight.

I let out an amused chuckle, running my eyes down my body just to be sure. Boxers and t-shirt. Ribs all intact.

“Some things,” the guy who’d been my constant companion announced, “are not as they seem.”

No shit. I hadn’t been fucking tortured?

My eyes flicked across the floor to the regurgitated chilli crab. The last meal I’d managed to eat before the Tower. How many days ago?

My gaze came back to the drone. The laser gun still held tightly in its metallic hands. And then I turned my attention to the man in the corner.

What was real? I could no longer tell. The room? The man? The drone?

Me?

“It can all go back to how it was, Mr Masters,” the guy said. “We can make you believe anything.”

The threat was there. Not in the words or the tone or the way he held my gaze with an empty one of his own. It was there in the unsaid. In the obvious.

Lena.

But it wasn’t real.

I struggled to sort the chaotic thoughts in my head into order. Real versus hallucinated. I could still feel phantom pains. But if I could keep them separate, I could fight. I could give Lena time to get here. Time to get to me.

I held that bottomless gaze, the whine of the laser gun filling the small room. The bed beckoned. The imagined sound of chains rattled. A shiver rolled down my spine.

Lena must never get here. I wouldn’t let her suffer like I had.

“You want Shiloh?” I said to the u-Pol officer.

He smiled. “Tell us where it is.”

I shook my head. “I’ll show you.”

“No.”

I moved across to the bed and lay down, closing my eyes. Hardest fucking thing I’d ever done.

“Then let’s get on with this,” I announced. “I’m feeling a little too healthy as it is.”

Silence.

Then the cold metallic feeling of a drone’s hand gripped my upper arm and hauled me to my feet.

“One step out of line,” the u-Pol officer said, “and you’ll wish we had used a hal-gen.”

I nodded my head. It didn’t matter. Either way I was prepared to die to keep Lena safe.

We walked out of the room, images of the Elite I’d come to love flashing through my mind.

My heart ached, knowing they’d probably be the closest I’d ever get to seeing her again.

I’d been kidding myself. Closing my eyes in front of these arseholes was not the hardest thing I’d ever done.

Saying good bye to Lena in my head was.

Twenty-Two

For That, We’ll Need Calvin

Lena

“This is crazy,” Alan said beside me. Thankfully back from the dead.

“Lunacy,” the Cardinal agreed from behind.

“What makes you think they’ll respond?” Tan asked over the earpiece.

“Because phase two was the drones,” I replied steadily, taking in the overlarge electronic billboard and the picture of me plastered across it. Flashing red letters announced, If you can’t see the zebra, then take off your masks.

The image of me transformed into a Masked. The mask a black and white jewelled creation that Simon had digitally painted into the photo itself. The mask disappeared, and my hair turned black and white.

It was really quite well done considering the pressure he’d been under to get it out there.

Then the picture returned to the original, with the message flashing again.

It was the only billboard in the entire country that displayed it, and we were sitting in a café across the road. The sun had barely risen, the street lights still glowed a gentle orange. The sky transforming from a deep indigo to a shimmering mauve to a brilliant blue before our eyes.

A new day dawned, and I really wasn’t sure if we’d live to see it.

Calling the Masked out of hiding was a risk, but my father had insisted they would know what to do. Who these red-eyed drones belonged to. The only reasonable way to combat them was with drones of our own. We no longer had any. But my father’s Masked did.

Convincing Tan of this had taken considerably longer than Simon had needed to digitally alter those images.

But there was no mistaking the message was from my father when he’d heard it, and like me Tan had been in not just a little shock afterwards.

Federal Street slowly woke up, bright awnings rolled out over the cobbled paths, stalls peeling back their petals like wakening flowers. Reds and golds, yellows and blues, silvers and greens. The prettiest coloured flowers on our island. I’d always felt so at home in Wáikěiton.

So had my father. I had to hope he’d spoken familiarly of that to his “people.”

“It’s been twenty minutes,” Simon announced over our earpieces.

I ignored the racing of my heart and asked instead, “You’ve still got visual?”

“Calvin has infiltrated all the Rap-Trans security feeds,” he confirmed. “Any Rap-Trans station is now visually ours.”

Calvin had been another argument between Tan and myself. But the bottom line was, we needed him. Street-cams were still out. But I’d manually connected my decoder linked into Calvin to Federal Street’s Rap-Trans system just before the billboard went live. Through that, Calvin had done the rest.

We weren’t blind anymore, but we certainly weren’t all-seeing. If we left the vicinity of any Rap-Trans station, Si would lose us. Keeping this localised was paramount. But even I didn’t believe that we could.

The Masked were one thing. The red-eyed drones a whole other.

So far Federal Street seemed drone free. But twenty minutes was twenty minutes. Sooner or later they’d be drawn here. If not for the billboard, then because the whole place was swarming with Cardinals.

“Report,” the senior Cardinal - our Cardinal as I’d come to call him - demanded over our earpieces.

“All clear at Wellesley Street West,” a Cardinal replied.

“All clear at Victoria Street West,” came the next reply.

The Cardinal shifted on his feet. I flicked my gaze away from his stern countenance and took a sip of my cooling coffee. It tasted bitter.

How much longer could Trent wait?

How much longer could we?

I didn’t have a plan without the Masked. I had no idea where the enemy held Trent. I knew what they wanted. I knew I couldn’t provide it. I had nothing to bargain with. And nowhere to fight instead.

We might have had limited vision again, but we were just as blind as when we’d started.

“I see something,” Zhang Jun’s voice announced in my ear. “Over the rooftops,” he added and we all stood to our feet.

The awning outside the café sheltered us from sight, but stepping out onto the footpath would have made us visible to anyone prowling the street. I didn’t for a second believe the red-eyed drone masters weren’t watching every major area to some degree.

We’d snuck in, and it seemed the Masked were doing the same thing.

“Definitely Masked,” Xiu Ying, Zhang Jun’s girlfriend announced. “Maybe three.”

Just three. That meant they were being cautious. Their boat could have taken two dozen people. Or half a dozen and several drones.

I smiled. My nerves getting the better of me. These people weren’t my father. But they were the closest thing to him I would see.

Mahiah, Tan had informed me, was the city we could see from Hillsborough. It’s name stricken from our history, like so much of our past had been. Only Overseers had been privy to its identity. Privy to the fact that it was much like we once were, over one hundred years before today. Technologically disadvantaged, but beginning to grow despite its lack of advancement.

Keeping it in the dark had been an Overseer directive. No one wanted a neighbour more capable than Wánměi.

And now my father was there. Across the water. In amongst the lights that twinkled on the horizon. But that was not where he had come from. Not where Augustine and the Masked had come from either.

But the Mahiah woman? I couldn’t be sure. I suddenly knew more about our mixed ancestry than ever, and yet it only caused me unease.

Two people appeared on the street suddenly. How they’d done it was a mystery. We had Cardinals and Xiu Ying’s zebra-lookalike network watching the street. Not to mention Simon and Tan back at the penthouse, viewing it all through the closest Rap-Trans cameras.

They shouldn’t have been able to fool us. But they had. And I couldn’t help thinking it was a message. Not exactly welcoming. Not nearly as friendly as my father had led me to believe.

They may have been his people. They may have even been former Citizens of Wánměi. But they were not one of us. Not anymore. And I wondered just what they had seen. What they had experienced. To make them so foreign, so cautious, so guarded. So different.

They were indeed another caste, if we still had such things.

“It’s her,” Alan said, sounding strangely excited. “The Mahiah,” he added, in case we didn’t grasp the reason for his enthusiasm.

“And Augustine,” I whispered.

They’d chosen their representatives with care.

“Zhang Jun,” I said into the earpiece.

“Yes, Lena.”

“Stay on guard.”

The Cardinal glanced down at me. I didn’t bother to return his assessment. His men would have known not to relax. Mine didn’t. But now they all knew I wasn’t walking into this blindly.

My father or not, these people had led us a merry dance. For whatever reason, “observation” had become something else. And I didn’t trust it.

A part of me realised, I didn’t trust my father either.

My stomach roiled, my palms became sweaty. But when they entered the café, I lifted my chin, pasted an Elite expression on my face, and walked forward to greet them.

“Zebra,” the Mahiah woman said in an Elite accented voice that told me she hadn’t originated in Mahiah itself. But here on the more pleasant streets of Wánměi City.

“Honourable Carstairs,” Augustine added, bowing his head respectfully as he’d always done in the past, when I’d come down to the lobby and requested a limousine.

I nodded in return; my upbringing taking over in the face of familiarity. Then turned to Alan at my side and introduced him.

The Mahiah woman flicked her eyes from Alan’s face to mine, head tilted as she surveyed me.

She didn’t utter a word, but so much was conveyed in that one motion.

“Cardinal Beck,” I said, introducing the Cardinal next.

“Cardinal,” the woman said. “My name is Irdina.”

Now we knew each other. Or at least, our names.

She was dressed as a Citizen. Her clothes clean, but worn. I couldn't locate the outline of a laser gun, so had to assume one of her team was covering. If she was armed, it was well hidden. But then, so were my weapons. We surveyed each other silently; a stand-off we didn't have time for.

I turned my gaze to Augustine; he was the weaker of the two.

"You came back," was all I said. But I might as well have struck him.

He flinched and then tried to cover, lifting his wrinkled hand to his lips and coughing.

"Excuse me, Honourable..."

"There are no such things as Honourables," Alan said for me.

Augustine glanced at the rebel, then returned his tired old eyes to my face.

"You will always be Honourable Carstairs to me."

He'd meant it as a compliment, I think. He had no way of knowing it wasn't.

"How well do you know my father?" I said, the question for either one of them.

"Very." It was the woman who answered. For some reason it disturbed me. She probably knew my father better than me.

"And what is his intention in our city?" I asked, laying our cards on the table.

Intelligent eyes assessed me, and then flicked across to Alan.

"Where is the rebel leader?" she asked instead of answering.

Well, that answered that. They didn't know he'd been taken.

I let a slow breath of air out, but it was Cardinal Beck who rescued me.

"Why are you here?"

She smiled. It was calculating.

"It was time to come home," she said simply.

"And what now?" Alan asked.

She swung her gaze back to him, like a snake being charmed in a basket.

"And now," she said, "we open the gates properly."

Is that what my father wanted? To shut down sat-loc, to leave us exposed? He'd said his people would know what to do. He'd said the threat was real and to trust them.

I was more lost now than I had ever been, but I knew one thing alone mattered.

"And these red-eyed drones?" I pressed.

Those dark eyes swung back to me. For a moment she just stared, and then she murmured, "For that, we'll need Calvin."

Twenty-Three

A Wicked Web Of Lies

Lena

The Global Net had been the only thing Tan and I had agreed on. Shutting down sat-loc was far too risky. But what Irdina suggested could only be accomplished by updating Calvin's programming.

"Cal will be waiting," the Mahiah woman advised. Cal, I guessed, was her name for my father. He'd never, ever been called Cal as far as I could remember. Things had clearly changed. “Once he sees the Wánměi Net open, he'll update your Shiloh, which can then do the rest."

The "rest" was reestablishing the street-cams and finding the red-eyed drones and their owners.

I wanted to find them. I wanted that badly. Getting to Trent through them seemed to be all that mattered. But Trent had rubbed off on me. His ideals, his standards. To be a Citizen of Free Wánměi you had to think of more than just one person.

Tell that to my aching heart.

I wasn’t sure I could honour him. But I would do my damnedest trying.

“Shutting down sat-loc is not an option.”

“Shutting down sat-loc is your only option,” Irdina replied succinctly.

“This could be a trap,” Tan advised in my ear. Alan shifted; he’d heard the warning too. My shadow Cardinal remained resolutely still at my side, like all good soldiers should.

“Exposing us is your only suggestion?” I queried.

“Yes.” She didn’t bother to justify herself, and for that I almost admired her.

Still…

“Your drones,” I said. “How many have you got?”

“Enough.”

I smiled. Her gaze darted down to my lips and then sprang back up to my eyes.

“We seem to be at an impasse,” I offered.

“Yes.”

“Drones approaching on Victoria Street West,” a Cardinal announced in our ears.

“Red?” Cardinal Beck asked. The woman watched on silently.

“Affirmative,” the Cardinal on guard confirmed.

“Zhang Jun?” I asked, my eyes locked on the darker ones of the Mahiah.

“The rooftops are quiet,” my zebra-lookalike leader said.

We had an escape route, but I wasn’t sure running was our best plan. Time to test the waters.

“Victoria Street West,” I said to Irdina. “Show us what you’re made of.”

Her returning smile was quite dazzling. It transformed her hard features, turning her into a beautiful sculpture instead.

“You need convincing,” she guessed. “Very well.” She turned to Augustine and nodded her head. With one last look at me, my old concierge slipped through the door of the café and out of sight amongst the crowd of early morning Wáikěiton shoppers.

It made me nervous to think we were drawing unwanted attention to this street. To these people. It made it difficult not to call Augustine back and run. Pitting one risk against another, though, seemed our only option. Could I trust my father?

How could I not?

How could I?

Ten years in Ohrikee under the careful tutelage of General Chew-wen. Ten years subjected to Wang Chao’s devious attentions. Ten years of living a double life. One minute a Citizen, the next an Honourable Elite. Returning to the Chief Overseer’s palace after a taste of freedom had been the hardest thing I’d ever done.

Ten years and through it all the death of my father had urged me on. And now he wasn’t even dead.

How did I reconcile this?

“Blue-eyed drones on Victoria Street West,” a Cardinal said over the earpiece. “They’re drawing the red-eyed drones away.”

“Follow at a safe distance,” Cardinal Beck ordered.

“Understood,” his subordinate replied.

I took a sip of my coffee. It was cold just like me. I felt the chill right through to my bones. Every move I made felt frozen. Every thought I had seemed sluggish. If we made the wrong decision, Wánměi would shatter.

We waited in silence, Irdina appearing for all intents and purposes quite relaxed. Cardinal Beck stood statue still, barely breathing. Alan watched the woman, who watched me. I could see the question there, in those dark unfathomable eyes. I could see her searching for my father in my face, in my mannerisms, in the simple way I smiled.

Whether she saw him or not, I didn’t know.

Ten years.

“City Hall Station,” a Cardinal announced over the earpieces.

“Got them,” Simon said immediately. “Only the red-eyed drones, though.”

“Tell me you didn’t lose the blue,” Cardinal Beck demanded of his men.

Silence, then,” Ah, they were right there!”

My eyes met Irdina’s. Her lips quirked in a small smile.

“Our drones have features the exported drones do not,” she advised.

Of course, my father had learned a lot in ten years. Shiloh had too. But knowledge of a different kind.

“And City Hall Station?” I asked. “Why there?”

“It’s busy. The Urip drones will think they lost their target due to congestion.”

“Urip?” Alan jumped to ask.

Irdina turned her snake like eyes to him.

“Where did you think they were from?” she asked.

Urip or Merrika had been the only options. Mahiah was now ruled out. And Wánměi had traded with no others.

Urip. Which meant…

“Merrika,” I said, imagining my father in a country so far away, it had simply not existed at all. “You were sent to Merrika.”

“We were lucky,” she replied, as if being wiped had been a blessing. “Not everyone was as fortunate.”

Merrika. We knew so little about this country, other than they traded in goods we had needed. Wanted. In exchange for our drones - and our wiped - they had given us luxuries the Elite could not live without. Would not live without. Seafood and leather. Small electronics and essential chemicals. Cigarettes. The list was extensive, drones had been expensive items to them.

Precious. Just like they were precious to Urip.

“Why are you here?” I asked again.

She held my gaze for a long moment and then murmured, “He is important to our survival. When he asked, they couldn’t deny him. When he demanded he accompany us, despite their misgivings, they allowed him. As long as he promised not to land on Wánměi.”

My father. She was talking about my father.

“How did he get there?” Alan asked. I seemed incapable of speaking. “To Merrika,” he qualified. “We thought he’d been killed at Ohrikee.”

She shrugged her shoulder in a very non-Elite fashion. I liked her all the more because of it.

“I don’t know the answer to that,” she said. “Chew-wen or Mason Waters designed it. My guess would be Waters, because Chew-wen was not a forgiving man.”

No. He hadn’t been. My guardian had prided loyalty above all others.

Follow doctrine and all would be rewarded.

Consume your rations and all is forgiven.

And then I had a thought. “Is Mason Waters still alive?”

She looked at me and then slowly turned her gaze on Alan. Who had gone a shade paler than usual.

“No,” she said, delivering her reply to the rebel. “A body was needed.” Now she looked at me. “He supplied it.”

A body? Oh God. It had been Trent’s father who I had buried. Trent’s father who General Chew-wen had let me cry over.

A wicked web of lies.

“The red-eyed drones have left the station,” Simon quietly said over the earpiece. “They’re heading towards the National Museum.”

“And the blue?” Alan asked. I still couldn’t articulate a thought, let alone ask a question.

“They’re returning to Wáikěiton, it seems,” Si supplied.

“We led them away,” Irdina remarked. “We did it without any carnage. But there is only so much our drones can do.”

I met her steady gaze.

“It’s time, Selena Carstairs, to make a decision.” She leaned forward and placed a small vid-screen on the table between us. A type and style I had never seen.

I stared at it. At the three dimensional holographic image it displayed above its surface.

At the picture of an older man, in his late fifties. Sitting in a wheelchair beside a roaring fire. Sitting somewhere colder than Wánměi.

My father. Alive. But crippled. And older than I had ever seen him before today.

Twenty-Four

To Shiloh

Trent

There was only one place I could take them. Just because it happened to be where Shiloh’s mainframe had been hidden was a pure coincidence, that’s all.

It was the explosives Si and Tan had laid after Shiloh had been shut down that I was after.

The explosives and the tripwires.

Getting in would be a problem. But not my problem. These guys had more than enough technology to achieve it. Once inside, that’s when I’d have to test my mettle. That’s when I’d have to face down death and not blink an eye.

If this u-Pol officer suspected a trap, I had nothing. Where else in Wánměi could we go?

Wáikěiton and Little D’awa were too populated. Parnell was definitely out. Mughah Foh and Remoh Ehrah were residential suburbs. I wasn’t going to take them there. Geh Dowee could work at a pinch, and I’d have to consider it if this failed. But no explosives were laid there.

Even the abandoned oil refinery had been emptied of anything remotely combustible.

No. It was the National Museum or failure. And I couldn’t consider failing when Lena’s life was on the line.

He’d go after her. I was sure of it. He already probably had. I had no way of knowing if she was OK, but it was the only thing keeping me going, thinking her safe with Alan and Si and Paul. And fucking Lee Tan. It was all that kept me focused. Knowing taking out this u-Pol officer and his ex-Wánměi drones would give them time. For what, I didn’t know.

But there was only so much I was capable of. For now I’d concentrate on that and say a little prayer for her future.

Lena living, going on to live her life, was all that mattered.

I’d even sell out Wánměi if I thought it would keep her safe. But selling out Wánměi would doom her as well as everyone else.

“An interesting location,” the u-Pol guy suddenly said. We’d been standing in the shadow of a rubber tree in Domain Park. Pookee Kahwah once again paying witness to an historical event. Before it had housed a founding father of Wánměi. Then military bunkers during a forgotten war. Now it would watch the destruction of an invader. Hopefully still standing afterwards to watch over a peaceful Wánměi.

It was a dream. A fantasy. I knew it. But it made answering this prick without giving away my rage that much easier.

“The National Museum was abandoned when sat-loc came online. When our borders were closed,” I added, in case this foreigner didn’t understand the significance of sat-loc.

But of course, he did.

“Your pathetic attempt to forget your history has blinded you,” he remarked. “It is not the first time we have been here.”

We? Wherever he was from, at a guess.

“So, where are you guys from, anyway?” I asked, as the drones continued their reconnaissance and we waited in the lush, wet heat of a summer’s day.

The officer looked down at me; sitting cross-legged on the dirt floor, with my hands tied behind my back in case I thought of head butting him again. I smiled up at him, as though my inferior position didn’t make my skin crawl.

“Does it matter?” he asked. The unsaid being, when I wouldn’t live to see the sun set on today.

“U,” I mused aloud. “For Urip?”

The guy smiled, it was twisted and condescending.

“How many others did your country break contract with? How many more disgruntled trade partners will come after we have left?”

“I guess I won’t be around to know,” I offered, staring off into the distance.

He didn’t confirm or deny that outcome, just stared across the park towards the National Museum.

“The security alone on this building must have made your people wonder.”

“My people,” I said, stressing the word, “weren’t allowed to think for themselves.”

“A sound system that has somehow fractured.”

“And in Urip?” I asked. “What sound system do you have?”

He turned to look down at me again, his face austere.

“One that will never fracture.”

A drone stepped out from behind a tree as though the u-Pol officer’s words were his signal.

“All clear,” it said in a mockery of Shiloh’s voice. Not quite the High-Anglisc we’d been used to, but a mixture of this guy’s accent and something else.

I figured they’d made after market adjustments, and these drones usually spoke in their own language and not ours.

I cocked my head at the drone, wondering just how it functioned without a Cardinal driving it. Or without Shiloh directing it as she’d no doubt tried to do before she went dark. Maybe it was that which had made Urip reconfigure the drones. Turning them into something else, which at a guess, could be potentially unstable.

Shiloh was good at what she did. There’d be no better. Why else would they have purchased their drones from us?

Why else were they here looking for Shiloh?

This could be something I could use. A small smidgeon of hope blossomed inside.

“You will lead the way,” the guy announced.

“I don’t know how to get in there,” I pointed out with a shrug. “It’s well protected, you said so yourself. Only drones and Overseers knew how to bypass its security features. And one of those is useless and the other all dead.”

The Overseers weren’t all dead, but under house arrest until we could decide what to do with them. We didn’t have a prison system, wiping had solved that indignity for us. So now we just guarded them. With the men and women who had once taken orders from them instead.

It wasn’t ideal, but like most things we were discovering in Free Wánměi, perfection is an illusion. And the dream had cracked.

“Then you will be the first thing the security measures meet,” the u-Pol officer calmly replied.

The drone hauled me up off my butt and held me securely with a cool metal grip on my right arm. My shoulders ached, my wrists were chafed where the zip-ties dug into sensitive flesh. In such a short amount of time I had forgotten what the hallucinated chains had felt like. The reality of too constricting plastic was enough.

We crossed the street to the main gates, ornate and looming. The midday sun shone through the bars, making a striped pattern of shadows appear across the well trimmed grass. It reminded me of Lena. Black and white. Dark and light. My zebra.

I lifted my chin, sucking in much needed air, and walked through the gate, following a path I remembered as though it was yesterday.

No drones dropped down from hidden balconies. No laser light dots lit up on my chest. And no automatic anti-trespassing weapons popped up out of the grass.

The door stood barred, reinforced and e-scanner locked. The pad to the side indestructible. It required a ten digit code, the retinal scanning of a pre-determined eyeball, and a holographic keycard.

I had two of the three things on me.

“Now what?” I asked, wanting us in there before we were spotted. It wouldn’t do for a well meaning Citizen to alert the Cardinals to us being here.

The u-Pol officer stared at the security lock and then stepped aside for the drone. Who with practised moves, more fluid than I liked to see on a metal machine, fitted a device to the lock and pressed a button.

It cracked the code.

It replicated the keycard.

It couldn’t match the retinal scan, no matter what it attempted to do.

Two out of three ain’t bad, I thought, and then felt the cold press of a metal hand at the back of my neck.

“It seems to me,” the office said in my ear as the drone pushed my face toward the e-scanner, “that the leader of the rebel army who freed Wánměi would have access to its hidden secrets.”

I wanted to deny it, for the mere fact that this guy pissed me off.

I wanted to fight back, but my will was stolen.

He knew. He knew who I was and what I’d done. Not anything I hadn’t thought of already.

But all of a sudden I realised something. If he knew what had happened here in Wánměi, then he would also know why we were no longer meeting our contractual requirements.

Which meant I’d just led the fucking bastard exactly where he wanted to go.

To Shiloh. Even though Shiloh was gone. To the one place where she had controlled everything.

Which meant, what exactly did he think was still here? And how did he plan to use it?

The door clicked open, as soon as my eye was scanned. The dark maw that dawned before me felt like an ominous portent of what was to come.

And the drone simply pushed me forward.

Twenty-Five

So Close

Lena

“Someone’s just accessed the National Museum security system,” Simon announced to the stunned room.

We were sitting in our tech-room. Four rebels. One President. Six Cardinals. And three Masked. The drones had been left - under guard - out in the corridor.

“Fucking hell,” he added. Then spun in his seat to look directly at me. “It’s Trent.”

Everyone started talking at once.

I got up from my seat and walked in a daze towards the vid-screens and Simon. He was alive! My eyes hungrily took in the sight of him in the grainy, light-challenged image. The sight of Trent; arms tied securely behind his back, a red-eyed drone, and a man in a tight fitting jumpsuit that reflected what little light was inside the building standing beside him.

“Why has he gone there?” I whispered.

“He must have known it would trigger an alarm,” Paul offered. “That’s why he’s lured them there.”

I stared at the way Trent was trussed up and being roughly handled by the drone. If Trent was luring them anywhere, it was under duress.

“The alarm is usually monitored by Cardinals at Parliament House,” Tan said. “If Trent’s sending a message, he would have thought it wasn’t being watched.”

Parliament House was abandoned, and only Calvin’s abilities had allowed us to gain access to their secured and isolated security systems. An ability Trent didn’t know Calvin had.

If not a message, then what?

“Is that where Shiloh was?” Irdina asked, watching us from her side of the room. Augustine stood on one side of her and a D’awan stood on the other. He’d been introduced as Oja. He never smiled.

I nodded my head, but no one voiced an answer. All of us stunned, watching a scene unfold on the vid-screen that we weren’t meant to witness.

Simon fumbled with some switches, and then the sound of Trent’s voice hit me hard.

“If you think there’s anything left, you’re shit out of luck.”

“Your ignorance astounds me,” the man in the tight suit said. He had a slight accent, one I didn’t recognise. One that I was sure originated in Urip.

“What does it say on his shirt?” Alan asked, leaning closer to the image on the screen.

“U-POL?” Simon said, narrowing his eyes at the screen. He didn’t enlarge it, he wanted to keep Trent in our sights as much as me.

“Urip’s police,” Tan murmured close to my side.

“Did you know they existed?” Cardinal Beck asked Irdina.

“Our intelligence had suggested they would send their best men.”

“And him?” Alan demanded. “You know him?”

“I recognise him from reconnaissance photos. His name is Mikhail.”

I flicked a glance toward the woman, and then immediately back to the screen; I didn’t want to miss a thing. Over my shoulder I said, “The fighter jets were yours?”

“Hell no,” she replied with a sneer. “Our recon is more surreptitious than that.”

Then the jets were from Urip. The vanguard for this u-Pol man. Checking our defences. Making sure we would provide minimal resistance to an invasion.

Albeit a small invasion, but then, maybe he thought we’d be so distracted by the jets, we wouldn’t see him slip inside.

And we hadn’t. Our eyes had been trained on the skies.

My guess, he’d already landed by the time they flew overhead.

I fisted my hands as Trent was roughly pushed down the stairs heading towards the basement of the Museum. Heading towards the explosives and tripwires Simon and Tan had laid there.

I spun toward Tan now, our eyes meeting, words shared but not spoken.

We do nothing, his eyes said, and the problem is solved for us.

We do nothing, mine replied, and it won’t just be Trent who dies.

He let out a long breath of air, as though accepting something, and said, “The tunnels. It’s our only way in without being discovered.”

The tunnels were in worse condition than the Museum itself. Booby trapped and rigged to blow. And in some places, completely collapsed.

I was already walking toward the door.

“Lena,” Tan called.

I stopped only because it was Tan.

“What?” I demanded, because Tan or not, I wasn’t backing down.

“Take all the weapons you need,” he said. “We’ll guide you as best as we can from here.”

“Sir,” Beck suddenly said. “Permission to accompany Citizen Carr.”

My eyes met the Cardinal’s. His were shuttered.

“Take whomever you need,” Tan said and turned to the screens.

Trent had made it halfway down the stairs already. Two more turns and the first tripwire would appear.

“We’re not gonna make it,” Paul said as we raced down the penthouse corridor, Irdina and her team hot on our tails.

I slammed my hand into the lift’s down button and offered him a glare.

“Not helping,” Alan rumbled, watching the floors light up as we descended.

I held it together, only because I had no choice. Believing that Trent would sacrifice himself for the good of Wánměi was a path I couldn’t allow my mind to tread.

“Calvin,” I said into the strained silence of the packed elevator.

“Yes, Lena,” he replied over the speakers and in our ears.

“Cut the power to the National Museum.”

Cardinal Beck stiffened. Irdina snorted. When my eyes found hers they merely looked bored.

“The National Museum has its own power supply,” Calvin informed me, making it harder to breathe for a little while.

“Can you hack it?” Alan asked, as always offering support when I least expected it.

“Not indirectly,” Calvin advised. “It is also isolated.”

So much of our country’s security was now isolated.

So much of our fear would now cause our heartache.

“What does my father say?” I said into the now subdued silence.

A pause and then Calvin replied, in a voice so like my father’s it left chills in its wake, “‘Be strong, Lena,’ he says.”

He was so close now. Closer than he’d been in ten long years. Across the water in Mahiah, yes, but also on the other end of a telephone line, watching, listening, guiding when he was able.

But he couldn’t guide us through this.

“The drones?” Alan asked after some time. “How’s it going with the drones, Calvin?”

Our last hope. Tracing the source of the drones’ command. We knew it was in Urip. We knew it was on the Global Net. My father hadn’t been able to find it, but Calvin was so much faster, so much more powerful, so much more efficient than a man.

But a man had written his code. And all men are fallible.

We should know. We were the adopted children of Shiloh.

“I have not had any luck, as yet,” Calvin confirmed what I’d already known in my heart.

I began to pray.

The roads were deserted around the Domain Park. The narrow lane at the very top of the hill to the bunker had become overgrown in the few short weeks since we’d last been here. Hiding the entrance from curious Citizen eyes. No one knew this was where the rebels had based themselves. Where the once wiped had returned to our land. No one knew this was where Harjeet Kandiyar had met his end. Where Emir had been killed. And the Cardinals had fought back under Lee Tan. And Shiloh had been reached and shut down at last.

No one knew but us. And we’d thought we’d never have reason to be here again.

We clambered out of the vans and ran to the entrance. Cardinals cutting back vines and branches, as Irdina’s drones crashed through the doorway into the dust filled corridor beyond. The eerie blue glow of their eyes illuminated the zebra painted on the floor of the common room, and then shone on the blood that stained the exit toward the back.

I crossed the space, those with me standing aside as though a sea parted, and stood where once Harjeet had stood, drones piled at his feet, his laser sights on Trent and the rebels. I could almost hear the whine now, smell the electrical burn as they overheated. The metallic scent of the Cardinals’ blood as they came to the rebels’ aid and took on fire.

I could almost hear Trent yelling commands.

I walked carefully to the end of the hallway, and peered into the gloom that led towards the Museum.

“Irdina,” I called.

“I’m here,” she said at my shoulder.

“I need your drones to go ahead.”

“What will they meet?” she asked without hesitation.

“Rubble at first, and then… more tricky things.”

“Explosives?” she enquired pleasantly.

I glanced at her, saw the spark of intrigue light her eyes as she stared off down the shadowed tunnel. She was enjoying this, which was more than I could say for Oja. He still hadn’t cracked a smile.

“More like booby traps,” I advised. “Falling masonry. Yawning pits covered in holographics that look like a continuation of the floor. That sort of thing.”

“Brilliant,” she chirped and ordered a drone to head out.

We followed behind, the clock ticking, my heart racing, sweat coating my skin and dripping into my eyes. It was hard to breathe, under the ground, surrounded by brick walls, and knowing any second now we’d feel the pressure wave of the National Museum exploding into a million tiny pieces.

Every step we took felt weighted. Every breath we released hurt. So close, but too far away.

Just like my father. Just like our freedom. One outstretched hand fools you into thinking you could grasp it, and then coming up woefully short.

Trent was just there. At the end of the tunnel. So close.

And then the walls shook and the ground heaved, and the lights in the tunnel went out.

Twenty-Six

And Free

Trent

The explosion scared the fuck out of me. Until I realised that was what I was after.

But it hadn’t been us that had caused it. The drone still gripped my upper arm, the u-Pol officer still stood at the turn in the stairs behind me. And Shiloh’s empty mainframe room still waited at the bottom of the basement.

If not our explosion, then…

“Where does this lead?” the u-Pol officer demanded.

“To Shiloh’s mainframe room,” I replied immediately; the drone had me suddenly hanging a foot off the ground.

“What else? There is more you are not telling me,” the officer growled. The drone shook me.

With my teeth rattling it was hard to get the words out.

“Nothing. Nothing else. Just storage rooms and rats’ nests. There’s nothing else down here, not any more.”

“And before?”

“Before what?” I stupidly said.

The wall meeting my head left me reeling, but not enough to miss the cold edge of a laser gun muzzle in my side. The whine made my brain hurt. Or it could have been my skull, and the wall was the culprit.

“Before the Museum was closed,” the officer ground out when my eyes blinked open; at the insistence of the drone.

“Leave off,” I growled at the metallic beast. Then offered a pathetic distracting kick to its shin, as my forehead connected with the plate above its command module.

It staggered. The officer yelled something in that foreign language, and then I was dropped.

I’m not sure what I thought I’d accomplish, but I suddenly knew setting off the explosives in the Museum was not an option.

Lena, that beautiful, frustrating woman, had followed me here. How, I did not know. I couldn’t reason it out right then, what with the drone still staggering and the laser gun going flying, and my head throbbing as the u-Pol officer clawed at my eyes, and the cold tiled floor met my chin.

My teeth snapped together, thank fuck not on top of my tongue, but my jaw locked in agony as a swift series of punches met my kidneys, and one a little to close to my groin.

I kicked out and connected with the officer’s face, then scrabbled backwards until my hands found the laser gun. Not allowing myself to think on it, I fired that baby up and let her rip.

Pain lanced up my arms, shattering - or so it felt - both elbows. The smell of burned plastic and singed flesh met my nose, and then the zip-tie snapped, my arms came free, and I was swinging the gun around to the front of my body and blasting the shit out of the drone.

Red flashed from its eyes, and as the laser fire arced across its too human looking face, the red slowly died. The command module, already unstable, offered a weak phifft sound, and crumbled in on itself under the fire.

The officer screamed a series of commands, no doubt calling for backup. But I held the laser gun and he held only a knife. Wisely he stood back. Didn’t rush me like I was sure he wanted to. We stared at each other. Time slipped for a second. Then the gun in my hand did as well.

The sound of it clattering to the floor was too loud, even though the beat of my heart seemed to echo inside my skull. I looked down at where the gun had landed, and then noticed my burned hands were lying uselessly in my lap as well.

A few seconds passed, and then the officer merely crossed the small space between us and lifted the laser gun up off the floor, inches from where my limp fingers were lying.

“You found the one weakness our drones have developed,” he said in an amused sounding tone of voice. “Of course, they wouldn’t be weak, if we hadn’t have had to jump start them.” He leaned forward and stared me in my too wide eyes. “If they hadn’t stopped working just six weeks ago, when you stupidly unhooked Shiloh from the Global Net.”

“Shiloh didn’t work on the Global Net. Sat-loc made it imposs…” My words trailed off.

Of course she’d worked on the Global Net. She’d probably designed it for the sole purpose of controlling all those drones she’d exported. And kept us blind and ignorant through the use of sat-loc.

I stared at the drone now. It looked no different from ours. Apart from that weakness. A weakness this u-Pol officer and those back in Urip itself, I’d hazard a guess, believed was our fault.

Well, fuck me. What now?

The floor shook again, but this time not as violently. Just a tremble as if something heavy had fallen from a great height and thudded to the ground in a sonic boom of crushed pieces. Rather like the Sky Tower.

“You really hate us, don’t you?” I said, my words sounding a little slurred at the edges.

“Completely despise your small minded selves,” he confirmed with relish. “You gave up invincibility. Your country’s security through its superiority. You stripped yourselves bare and shouted it out to the world. You are ignorant and isolated. You have no vision nor willpower.”

Oh, he was so wrong there.

“You think a utopia exists.”

Nope, wrong again. Been there, barely survived it.

“If only you homogenise your people, give them free will in a cloak of depression. Let them wander aimlessly in a lawless society.”

“We have laws,” I mumbled, the words barely coherent.

The officer snorted.

“You are adolescents on the road to adulthood. Children with new toys. You neither comprehend what you have nor protect it. When it doesn’t suit your feeble ideals, you throw it out.”

General Chew-wen had once said our former society had been disposable.

Wánměi was meant to be better than that.

And yet he’d had our people wiped.

Maybe we were infants in the scheme of things. Maybe Urip and Merrika had seen and done more. Remembered more.

But maybe that innocence is what makes Wánměi so special. Young and promising, with a look to the horizon filled with awe.

Yes, we had ideals. Yes, we’d forgotten more than we could remembered.

But we were free.

My vision was getting hazy, but I could see her. The Elite who epitomised Wánměi. Vibrant. Accomplished. Poised. Decadent. And free.

She was no angel. I wasn’t going to die here, today.

But he was.

The laser gun whined only briefly before she pulled the trigger.

The u-Pol officer’s body arced through the air and landed in a smouldering pile beside me.

I glanced down at his vacant eyes, then flicked heavy lids up to Lena.

“Baby,” I think I said.

And she smiled.

Twenty-Seven

That’s My Wánměi Girl

Trent

It wasn’t easy meeting the man who would become my father-in-law. But, then, I’d come to understand that life was not meant to be easy. Even when you believed you had it all.

Easy meant you didn’t work for it.

Easy meant there was no challenge to keep you keen.

Easy was for losers. And I had every intention of winning.

“I’m scared,” she whispered, knowing she could tell me anything.

“I’m right here,” I replied, watching them wheel his chair off the boat from Mahiah.

“Ten years,” she murmured. I wasn’t sure if I was meant to hear that one, so I just stood silently beside her.

I’d stand wherever she needed me, for however long she desired.

Drones flanked him. It was a slightly unnerving and surreal sight. The Masked Mahiah woman greeted him familiarly. Lena stiffened. I wrapped a supporting arm around her shoulders. But my eyes kept being drawn back to the blue-eyed drones. I didn’t trust them. But apparently they’d followed commands in the tunnels that had led to their destruction.

It didn’t make me feel any better, the red-eyed drones had done the same thing.

Drones, even non altered drones, were scary as fuck. But these drones, I really didn’t know what to feel.

Bone deep terror was an option.

Everything was changing, and I thought I’d been prepared. Sat-loc was down. Calvin was operational. We were one step away from our own recent history.

And then there was this man. This ghost from our past. The person who at one time was thought to have killed my father. And wasn’t that a kick in the guts? Knowing my dear old dad had been buried in an Elite cemetery, marble tombstone proclaiming to one and all how Honourable he’d been.

Of course, they’d got the name wrong. Calvin Richard Carstairs was the man slowly being wheeled to our side.

Lena’s body shook. I wanted to take her away from all of this and keep her safe from harm. Safe from the agony of seeing the father she’d loved and lost again after ten long years.

Shouldn’t it have been a celebration?

But like me, Lena didn’t trust so easily. I was proud of her, but it left a hollow sensation in my gut. I wanted Lena to be able to trust again. I wanted her life filled with only happiness and love. I wanted the past ten years to have never have touched her, and the man who sat before her now to have been as familiar as he’d once upon a time been.

But then, Calvin Carstairs had not been as familiar as Lena had believed.

“Hello, baby girl,” he said, his voice catching. A flush washed up his cheeks. He was a handsome man, if you looked for that sort of thing. Even confined to a wheelchair he had a kind of presence. A command of the space around him.

Cardinals all stood to attention.

His Masked followers all watched on with respect and, if I wasn’t mistaken, a little star-struck.

He was flanked by not only laser-touting drones, but black-clad armed soldiers. Merrika emblazoned above their hearts.

“Hello, Father,” Lena said, her voice ringing clear and strong. I was so proud.

“You look beautiful,” he whispered, his hand shaking where it rested on the arm of the chair. He wanted to reach for her.

And all I wanted to do was pull her back.

“I’d long ago given up on ever getting you back,” he said. I almost told him, “You haven’t.”

But in all honesty, I wasn’t sure.

Lena remained mute, making the men who loved her both liars.

“Well,” Carstairs said. “I guess we need to get on with this, then.” His eyes landed on me for the first time. “Trent Masters?” I nodded. “Thank you for freeing Wánměi.”

He didn’t say my father would have been proud, which made me realise, he really had known the bastard.

“Will you take me to President Tan?” he said instead.

“Of course,” I replied, flicking my eyes to Cardinal Beck. I hadn’t got used to him, but so far he’d behaved admirably.

He’d had my woman’s back. And I was quite sure he still had it.

For now, I’d leave him be.

“Your drones must wait here,” the Cardinal told Carstairs. And if Carstairs was put out, he didn’t show it.

“All right,” he said with a nod of his head. “Captain,” he addressed one of his soldiers, “will you set some men to look after them.” It wasn’t a question, nor was it an avoidance of our distrust. Calvin Carstairs, I thought, was used to being in charge, and calling a spade a spade while he was at it.

I wondered how different he was from the man Lena had known.

I glanced down at her now, her eyes soaking up every feature of her father’s. If she noticed the differences, she was silently cataloguing them. I knew she’d find her way to talk about it later. When it was just her and me, and no pretences. No need for that Elite armour.

And I’d be waiting and ready to hear her. Always.

The trip to the nearby safe house we’d established for this meeting was silent. Carstairs in the back of the van, sitting regally in his wheelchair, his eyes on his daughter. Lena, for her part, was staring resolutely forward. Alan drove, Beck covered our backs. And the Mahiah woman and the Captain of the Merrikan soldiers accompanied us with attentive stances.

A merry little band of men.

Lee Tan met us on the doorstep of the house. I realised whose house it was a second after Augustine Tengku let out a surprised gasp of air as he alighted the vehicle behind us. My eyes met Tan’s; was it a concession to make them feel more welcome? Or a warning?

With Lee Fucking Tan anything was likely.

I suddenly felt a whole hell of a lot better about this.

“Calvin,” Tan said, offering his hand for the older gentleman to shake. “I must admit, this feels a little bizarre.”

Carstairs laughed, a surprisingly hearty sound. Then he sobered.

“I was so sorry to hear about Aiko.” He sounded genuine; an ache was obvious in the timbre of his words.

He’d known Lee Tan’s sister very well, if I remember rightly.

Tan lowered his head and let out a soft exhalation, but when he looked up again, he’d banished his ghosts and smiled. It was a small smile, but it set the tone for the entire meeting.

I felt Lena’s shoulders relax beside me, as if Tan’s acceptance of her father was all she’d been waiting for. I felt a little pissed off at that.

But I pushed it aside as I followed the entourage into the house, my guard still up, even if Tan’s and Lena’s was falling down. I glanced at Alan, who nodded and scowled in answer. He had my back.

Carstairs didn’t beat about the bush. “They will come back,” he announced into the quiet, once everyone had taken their seats and brought themselves down to his height. “Mikhail was their attempt at subtlety.”

“Fighter jets and drones are subtle?” Alan muttered behind us.

“The fighter jets were a warning. The drones a necessity, and because they have not learned to live without them,” Carstairs replied.

He looked around the room, taking in the measure of each one of us, and then settled his gaze on his daughter.

“And then there’s the Wiped to consider,” he said, knowing exactly how to push Lena’s buttons.

“What Wiped?” I jumped to say, saving Lena from asking.

“Urip’s Wiped,” Carstairs said. “Not everyone was lucky enough to be shipped to Merrika.”

And there was the big elephant in the room. Not the Wiped, who would require an answer. But this unknown threat that held the puppet strings of Lena’s father.

The man responsible for Shiloh.

I opened my mouth, saw Tan doing the same thing across the way from us, but it was Lena who spoke the words first.

“How do we trust Merrika?” she said in that soft, lilting Elite voice. “How do we trust you?”

Fuck, you’d think he’d just seen her die before his very eyes. The grief that consumed him was palpable. Even I shifted back in my seat in an attempt to distance myself from such agony.

No one said a thing. The question hung on the air as though tangible. As though its presence was greater than the mere words had been.

“I told you, baby girl,” Carstairs finally managed to say; his voice laden with heavy, and an almost physical, emotion. “I’ve learned from my mistakes. There will never be another Shiloh. There will never be another Chew-wen. Wánměi is free, and will always be free, but to do that we need allies.”

“Allies?” Tan queried.

“Merrika. Mahiah. Allies,” Carstairs explained.

“But can we trust them?” Beck asked.

“Lena,” Carstairs called. Lena lifted her eyes from the floor where she’d been blindly staring and looked at him. “If I have to spend the rest of my life proving to you how much I love you, how much I’ve missed you, then I will. If I have to fight with every ounce of my being to get back here, again and again, then I will. If I have to destroy every single drone I’ve ever created since then, to make you understand what you mean to me, then I will. If it means deactivating Calvin and fighting this battle without the technological advancement that he provides, then we’ll do it.

“Whatever you want, baby girl. Whatever you need to believe in me again, I’ll do it. Just tell me.”

Words are easy, I thought to myself.

And then I looked at the place where his leg was meant to be. I looked at the shape of the stubbed limb under his blanket, and remembered how he’d lost it.

In Ohrikee. Fighting beside my father for Wánměi.

We’d seen the footage. Si had confirmed it was legitimate. Carstairs, the crafty bugger, had known exactly what he’d been doing when he’d sent it through before he came. Overseer Calvin Carstairs had been a rebel sympathiser, and had given up his life as he’d known it that day.

Ten years. Ten years she’d thought him dead. Ten years he’d lived with the reminder of what that battle had cost him.

How he had failed.

None of it had been easy. And every step he took from here on in wouldn’t be easy either.

I turned my head and looked down at the woman beside me, wishing I could make this all go away. Make her world perfect.

And then I smiled. Who needs perfect? We just needed each other.

“Your call, baby,” I whispered, slipping my hand into hers and holding on tightly. “Whatever you want to do, I’m right there with you. Whatever you choose, I’ll back you all the way. Wánměi,” I shrugged a shoulder. “Urip. I’m game. Whichever you want, I’ll make it happen.”

In other words, I’d just emasculated myself in front of a bunch of strangers.

Alan snorted at the look he saw on my face.

My eyes skittered off his amused ones and met those of Calvin Carstairs’; a strange understanding passing between us I couldn’t identify. I think he might have been saying, Thank you.

Thank you for looking after my daughter.

Thank you for loving her as much as I do.

I nodded my head; whether he could be trusted remained to be seen, and if Lena didn’t want a bar of him, I’d go with it. But if she did want him to stay, then that’d be all right too, I guess.

I looked down at Lena, knowing everyone else in the room was too and probably holding their breaths as they did it. You’d think the President would have something to say about all of this, but Tan, like the rest of us, had always been a little in awe of this Elite.

Lena let out a slow breath of air, gripped my hand tighter, and said, “We send them a message.”

I’d already started to smile before she’d finished speaking.

“Return Wánměi’s Wiped or prepare for battle.”

The smile widened.

That’s my Wánměi Girl.

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Message From The Author

This fourth book in the Citizen Saga is just shy of 50,000 words, so just shy of novel status. I hadn't planned it that way, it just evolved into an almost novel all on its own.

That's the way with books, they have attitudes and pre-conceived ideas, and often the author is just along for the ride.

Which brings me to the second point I wish to make...

This novella, book four in the series, is not be the last. There is more. Lena & Trent aren't ready to let go.

So, grab on to your seats, buckle yourselves in, because there's a battle brewing for our rebels, and it's gonna be huge!

Wiped will be released within weeks of Masked, so the wait won’t be long (if at all, for those picking up Masked after Wiped is released). So, to find out whether Wiped, the final - yes, definitely the final - instalment in The Citizen Saga is out yet, pop along to my website and take a peek.

The Citizen Saga at Nicola Claire.

Have you been a model Citizen today?

♥ Nicola

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