A Fractured World: A Post Apocalyptic Adventure (Gallen Book 1) (18 page)

Mason paced the detention room. He felt suffocated by the lack of fresh air. He kept his back to her, hands on his hips. “Yes, I do,” he said, deep regret in his tone. He faced her once again. “Though I agree with your motives, just not your methods and actions. I think Gozan truly loved our city and I think you do as well. We both know there are things wrong here. These people have nothing.” He gestured at the closed door. “What is their life? To work hard and watch the convoys cycle over to Hamble Towers? Have you ever been inside Hamble Towers, Nuria? They serve real food there. Sliced halk. And gleff. Have you ever tasted gleff? They cook gleff in a kitchen. A kitchen. And where does that come from? There are no pastures here where animals graze.”

“The Supply Expeditions,” she said. “I know. We range a long way to hunt them.”

“Do you think any of those luxuries are found inside a Citizen Parcel? Exactly, you and I both know the answer to that question.”

“Then you agree with the SOT? These are the topics were argue and protest over, Mason. We want to be heard. We need to be heard.”

“But they are dissidents, separatists …”

She stood, hurling down her canteen.

“Can we stop painting each other with names? Mason, you have an opportunity to take Chett into a new age. Can you understand what is happening? We are stagnant. It’s the same day over and over again for so many years. Nothing is ever different. Gozan said Chett keeps turning. Maybe it needs to stop. The deaths today, the murders at the House, yes they are truly awful, but with Gozan and the ministers gone, there is an open door for a different way. Sit down with the SOT. Listen to them. Are you going to run this city alone? If you don’t trust me, fine, but sit down with the SOT. They have good ideas. We have good ideas. I am a loyal officer, Mason, and I would never betray the city. I just don’t agree with the way we run it.”

Mason absorbed her words, rubbed his unshaven chin, thought for a moment.

“Captain Andozini mentioned a third conspirator, what happened to him?”

She sank back onto the bunk and sighed heavily.

“He was killed. Outside. By raiders. A tribe called the Blood Sun. A man named the Cleric killed him.”

“So these men were part of a tribe? Are they planning to attack again? Because we are being pulled …”

Nuria raised her hands, cutting him short. She began to explain how the three of them had attacked the House, finding an unknown route into the building, from the lower level, killing anyone who had stood in their way, until they had reached the Chancellor. She told him that the bearded one was called Stone, also known as the Tongueless Man. She had no idea why. The Cleric had called him this. She asked him if he recalled the conversation with Chancellor Gozan, concerning the raids he had carried out years before, wiping out settlements and camps.

“Stone suggested he was a child from one of these camps and witnessed the slaughter of his family.”

She continued, telling Mason how they had used her as a shield to escape back through the underground tunnels.

“But you left with them?”

“I wanted to run.”

“All what you just told me about how much you care about this city, why would you run?”

“What are you planning to do with them both?” asked Nuria.

“The man and the
freak
will hang.”

“Gozan committed some very terrible crimes, Mason. Please don’t make the same mistakes.”

“I have over twenty murders, Nuria. What do you suggest, I reward them?”

“No, use him.”

“Who?”

“Stone.”

Twenty Five

The cells were located in the basement beneath the detention rooms.

The military compound at the south gate was bustling with prisoners. A never ending stream of citizens were being marched or dragged inside by Red Guard soldiers and processed. Names and crimes were listed and then they were bundled into already cramped cells. There had never been a day like it. Not for decades. The Corporal in charge, although in control of the situation, was struggling to fit them all in and had serious concerns over safety as fights broke out over nothing. They would have to be transported to another compound or he would have to begin releasing the citizens charged with lesser offences.

Mason had placed Nuria with a two man escort. They had been instructed to return her to the House of Leadership once she had concluded her interviews with the prisoners. They led her from the detention rooms and into a noisy lobby, crammed with soldiers and citizens protesting innocence. She felt eyes burning into her back. Whispers were rampant; she had been labelled a traitor. She reached the stairwell and was taken to the lower level where the smell of sweat filled her nostrils. Men and women of all ages were packed into cells, shouting and banging on the bars, yelling at the guards, arguing with each other. She had never seen a cell block under such strain.

The soldiers led her by the cells and through a gated entrance into another corridor at the far end. It turned left and reached a locked door where two guards sat behind a broad desk. Keys and weapons dangled from hooks on the plain brick wall behind them. A thick set man, shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows, took down a bunch of keys and led them through into a narrow and much gloomier cell block. The lighting was dim and the right hand wall was lined with heavy doors. She was taken to the third cell. The jailer unlocked it and the heavy door swung outward. A locked iron gate behind it allowed her to see inside. She dismissed her two man escort and the jailer. At first, they were reluctant to leave until she reminded them that she still held the rank of General, even though Gozan had demoted her.

Stone was on a wooden bench, at the back of a damp, poky cell. There was a bucket in the corner. There was no window and no light. They had stripped him, shaved his beard and cut off his hair. His bare skin showed fresh bruises and a number of older scars. His back was against the wall, a towering man even seated. Strong arms. Strong legs. His hands clutched his thighs. She watched him slowly open his eyes. She stared at him for a long time, saying nothing.

“They’re going to hang you,” she said, finally, leaning against the gate. “You and the girl.”

Stone met her eyes.

“Was Gozan responsible for the deaths of your family?”

She wet her lips, waited.

“You addressed him as a Captain. This must have happened a very long time ago. Before I was born. Is that what you meant when you said
I kept your name
?”

Stone nodded.

“I’m sorry for what happened to you.”

She glanced around the cell.

“I can get you out of here. You and the girl.”

She leaned against the barred gate.

“Is this why they call you the Tongueless Man? The silence you keep? Let me tell you that after tomorrow it won’t matter either way. They’ll hang you both and burn your bodies.”

She shook her head.

“I kept his name,” croaked Stone.

He rose from the bench and she eased away from the gate. The jailer looked down at her, curiously.

“It means I never forgot,” said Stone, his bare feet padding across the cold floor. “I was eight years old he came.”

Nuria stared at his bald head and roughly shaved face. He looked a completely different man, more menacing, savage.

“General Jorann, Captain Gozan,” he said, voice low. “I had a father, a mother, a sister.”

Stone gripped the bars, his knuckles whitened.

“He butchered them all.”

“… we rode out into the wastelands and hunted them down, every last one of them. Jorann was my General and I was his Captain. We had horses then … we found their villages and settlements and burnt them to the ground. We killed them. The men, the women, the children … we spared no one.”

She lightly brushed his fingers.

“I am so very sorry.”

“Why?”

“For what he took from you.”

Stone released his grip on the bars.

“I’m not afraid to die.”

“You look cold,” she said.

He sat back on the bench. She couldn’t help but stare at him.

“They burnt your friend.”

Silence.

“Put him with all the other bodies.”

Silence.

“I saw how much he meant to you.

Silence.

“I don’t want them to hang you,” said Nuria. “I can make a deal to get you both out of these cells and out of the city.”

Silence.

“Well, shall I make the deal?”

Silence.

“I’m not going to let either of you die. You achieved more in a few hours than years of sitting around a table talking.”

She marched from his cell.

“Do you want to see the other one?” asked the jailer.

“No,” she said. “And get him some clothes.”

There was chaos. A mob of disgruntled men and women had run amok through the Trader Zone, tipping over rickety wooden stalls and smashing anything to hand. A few stall holders had resisted but they had been pushed aside and beaten. The Red Guard, hopelessly outnumbered, had drawn clear from the area. A fire was started and boxes of passes were burnt. The rampage spilled onto the derelict waterfront and made its way towards the recycling plants. School children had been evacuated. Progress Square had been sealed. Protestors knelt on the paved stone, hands tied behind their backs. Soldiers patrolled, waiting for instructions of where to escort them. It seemed a lifetime ago that the city had pulled together in the wake of Chancellor Jorann’s assassination. Families barricaded apartment doors. Worried faces peered through the windows.

Nuria watched from Gozan’s office. His body had been removed but a large patch of blood stained the carpet.

“I can name Chancellor Jorann’s killer,” she said. “But I want you to release both the prisoners to me. I will take them from the city. Myself as well.”

“No,” said Mason. “No, that is not a deal I will make with you.”

She turned from the window. Went to the Chancellor’s desk and took his bottle of drink from the bottom drawer.

“We know two masked men were involved.”

She spat the cork from the bottle, swigged hard.

“Search Gozan’s private rooms. You should find the weapons there. He was one of the gunman.”

“And the other?”

She drank some more, and shook her head.

“I don’t know.”

Mason stamped to the office door to close it but hesitated as he saw smears of dried blood along the empty corridor.

There was no one left to listen.

“It was you,” he said, lingering in the doorway. “Wasn’t it?”

It was early evening and the sky was darkening. Reports had reached Mason that crowd trouble was subsiding and the mobs were dispersing. Whatever burning fury they had felt seemed already to be gradually extinguishing. Large groups had gathered at Progress Square, since the soldiers and prisoners had left, and chose to sit and wait and hope. Several vocal men and women moved amongst them and their words called for calm and peaceful protest, openness and honesty, truth and fairness. Fires were lit and citizens huddled to keep warm as the cold night descended. No one wanted to go home.

“When I was assigned to head up the Chancellor’s fake organisation, I hand picked my team, personnel that I could trust. At first, we created minor rumblings within the city, distributing literature, small acts of vandalism, heckling at assemblies. We would then arrest citizens who were poor workers or had health problems or leanings towards violence. They would be exiled or placed in cells for a period of time, punished for the crimes we had committed. Sometimes they were hanged. People grew to hate the unrest the SOT caused, the distress, and the imbalance. Gozan was pleased. Chancellor Jorann became gravely concerned and instructed him to hunt them down and dismantle this rebellious network. He tasked the man responsible for creating the SOT with destroying them.”

The bottle went to her lips.

“But it soured. It had changed us. The rebellion we spoke of, we began to talk at length about it. And so we formed the
real
SOT
.
Not all of us were part of this second organisation. And now we intended to cause real unrest. We wanted citizens to stop and think and look at how little freedom they had. Ministers told them what to think and feel … why are you smiling?”

“Something Gozan said,” said Mason, quietly. “He told me we should always tell our citizens what to think and feel.”

“Our numbers grew,” continued Nuria. “Minister Pondly was our most prominent member.” She saw the shock on Mason’s face. “It’s a shame he died today. He helped engineer the work withdrawals. We became a group no longer made up of disillusioned military. So it was agreed, sometime ago, that I should work much more closely to Gozan. Follow in his corrupt footsteps. The goal was to expose him but he was a very clever man, Mason, you have to understand how hard it was to break him open. I had to become his shadow. I had to prove myself as evil as he was.”

“So you agreed to kill Chancellor Jorann to convince him of your loyalty?”

“Yes.

“You were the second assassin?”

“Yes.”

Her face went pale, her eyes began to water. She doubled over and threw up, the vomit loudly spattering the floor. Mason took the bottle from her, set in down on the desk and offered her a handkerchief. She mumbled as she accepted it from him, wiped her mouth and then threw up a second time. Mason grimaced at the smell as she retched and walked to the window. He pushed it open. Gusts of cold air flowed in. It was dark outside. The city seemed calmer. He could see fires glowing from Progress Square. He would soon go down and address the people once he had finished here.

“I understand why you went ahead with his plans, but it doesn’t take away that you help assassinate our Chancellor.”

Nuria joined him at the window. She closed her eyes as the air blasted her skin. Mason looked at her blonde hair, cut short at her neck, shaved at the sides. Her skin seemed very smooth and clean. He cleared his throat and moved away from her.

“I don’t think you need to tell me anything more, Nuria. Tonight, I will go into Progress Square and offer myself as the new Chancellor. If the people want me.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Then tomorrow we enter a new age,” he said. “Just as you said.”

He stopped at the door.

“I want a deal.”

He shook his head.

“The prisoners hang in the morning,” said Mason. “Nothing will change my mind on that.”