Din Eidyn Corpus (Book 2): dEaDINBURGH (Alliances) (10 page)

The Hub
seemed to have been installed primarily as a relay station, and as such hadn’t been designed as a communication centre, despite the thousands of cables, fibres and feeds flowing into and out of the facility. Information and data, images and footage flowed in, were sorted and collated, then flowed back out again. The Hub’s computers weren’t enabled for internet access. They had, it seemed, been specifically designed to not be able to communicate with the outside world.

The technicians who, according to Michelle’s message, occupied the centre were clearly unable to communicate with that outside world during their stay. Tricia grinned as Michelle passed on this information.

“
We’ll see about that.” Another ruffle of his hair.

Both agreed that it looked like The Hub hadn’t been visited in a long time. Tricia guessed that a newer bank of equipment near the old bar had made the system checks more automated and that now technicians were probably only dispatched to it when something physical needed attending to.

They spent the rest of the day, and part of the night, discovering, talking, reading and exploring. They also formed the beginnings of a plan.

Strolling along Princes Street once again, Joey replayed that morning’s conversation with Tricia

They’d agreed that she would stay at
The Hub
. “Try dragging me out of here, pal,” she’d told him. She was making a final assessment of the technology’s capabilities and potential to deliver what they had in mind. Tricia reckoned that some adaptation to the hardware may be needed to enable their plan. Joey had nodded along, perfectly happy to leave her safe in The Hub and happily at work with her long-lost artificial companions.

On reaching the North Gate of The Gardens, Joey shouted over the fence to attract one of the guards. When none came after four calls, Joey felt dread begin to pull at his guts. The guards never left their posts.

What the hell is going on?

Always a believer in seeking forgiveness afterwards rather than permission beforehand, Joey leapt over the spiked fence, executing a tight mid-air cartwheel that brought his feet a whisper away from snagging on the spear-headed fence-posts. Landing surely, Joey drew a blade and jogged lightly but quickly to the top of the north slope.

A crowd had gathered around a practice pit, and even the guards stood watching, their posts at the perimeter temporarily forgotten. In the centre-left of the pit, Jennifer Shephard was on her hands and knees.

From his vantage point, Joey scanned the crowd for Alys and caught her walking slowly away from the fighting arena, just outside her mother’s tent. She stopped in her tracks and eventually looked up at him as he made his way down the slope towards her, puzzlement and a trace of amusement on his face.

Entering the tent, Joey found his friend sitting in the centre of the floor on a large rug, a small table in front of her.

“The hell, Alys?” Joey jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the pit outside.

Alys placed a finger to her nose.

“Shoosh,” she said.

Pointing to a bench at the left of the tent, Alys indicated that Joey should sit and be quiet. Joey shrugged.

Dumping his backpack and weapons on the floor a little more noisily than was required, he watched Alys for a response and rubbed subconsciously at his arm. The muscle there had been twitching, perhaps missing the impact of her customary greeting which she, for once, hadn’t delivered. Deciding that the reaction he’d sought wasn’t coming, Joey leaned back against the bench and watched his friend.

Alys’s face looked different. Traces of happiness tugged at it, but determination and pride blazed from her like light splitting the clouds. Joey narrowed his eyes. Something else was lingering there in her own steely eyes.
Sadness?
 

Before he had a chance to ask, the tent door flapped open and slapped hard against the interior wall. Jennifer stormed through. She was controlled, deliberate in her movement, but her posture was entirely aggressive… violent. She was furious.

Involuntarily, Joey’s eyebrows raised. He was impressed. He’d thought that he was the only person capable of inducing this level of anger in Alys’s mum.

Joey restrained himself from sitting forward, worried that Jennifer’s anger may turn on him. Forcing a relaxed, passive pose, he took up more space on the bench and watched the exchange.

Instead of violence ensuing, Jennifer surprised him by taking a second to compose herself. The fury on her face ebbed more than a little as she forced herself to breathe deeply. Sitting across the little table from Alys, Jennifer crossed her legs, Buddha-style, and spoke gruffly.

“Let’s get on with it, then.”

Alys gave her mother a fraction of a nod.

“Why did you force the men to leave?” Alys asked simply.

Jennifer allowed a long sigh to pass from her. Unlocking the heavy, rusted fences she’d erected around those memories, she spoke plainly and told her daughter what she needed to know.

Banishment

“I met your dad… Cameron, around ten years after the city was quarantined. I’d been living all over, moving from church to house, art studio to warehouse, and had been here, in The Gardens, for maybe a week. It was just an overgrown former garden and park in those days. Although a few groups of people had used its perimeter to take refuge, there was no structure, no crops, no guards and no real community. As a refuge, it was only marginally safer than a shop up there on Princes Street.

“I’d spent most of the preceding years learning and fighting to survive. I latched onto anyone who could teach me anything useful, mostly because of the people I met on the night The Ringed tore free from Mary King’s Close.”

Jennifer cricked her neck left and right, loosening the vertebrae but not managing to remove the tension.

“I was almost eighteen years old when the plague broke and was lucky enough to be in the Canongate area of the city when the streets became chaos. A tall young minister dragged a group of us into the Canongate Kirk.”

In anticipation, Jennifer looked over at Joey and then back to Alys.

“Padre Jock Stevenson saved hundreds of people that first night and many other afterwards, mine included. Part way through the night, ignoring pleading from those gathered inside to keep the doors safely closed, Jock opened the Kirk doors to save the lives of three soldiers who’d been surrounded right outside the main fence.”

Jennifer’s face softened slightly as she looked into her daughter’s unwavering eyes.

“Captain Cameron Shephard and Lieutenant James Kelly, along with Captain Harry Wales, fell into the safety of our sanctuary and saved our lives in return.

“Watching, assisting these men, these trained soldiers, clear the Kirk courtyard and secure the perimeter, I understood that if I were to survive I needed to learn from people like them. I managed a few questions to Cameron and James. I never spoke to their friend, Harry, but he fought like the devil himself, a courageous man. Proper hero, that one. The three men left us once we were secure to continue their mission, before dawn.

“Padre Jock was another matter.”

Once again Jennifer looked to Joey, her eyes almost seeking permission to go on. Joey was desperate to hear more, as was Alys. Joey’s face was alight, Alys’s face held passive. Jennifer nodded and continued.

“For almost six months, our little band of survivors held that Kirk. We foraged, scavenged, healed each other and became a family. Not one of us died after that first night. Not one.

“We were still waiting to be rescued, most of us. I pestered Jock to teach me survival skills, combat technique, weapons… anything I could use to prevent myself from becoming another victim. When our time in the Kirk came to an end, most of our new family died when a horde of The Ringed collapsed its gates.

“I didn’t know then that Jock had survived. I came across him almost ten years later, working for The Brotherhood, who were one of the few established communities at that time. By that point we – your dad and James and I – had been reunited by chance and had begun securing and colonising The Gardens.

“We were growing crops and building a community of our own. Jock was a slender shadow of the man I’d met at the outbreak. He ghosted his way through the world, dispatching Ringed for Father Grayson. He lived an echo of a life. I was devastated to find him living this way and asked him to join us. He refused and I began sending daily baskets up the Playfair Stairs to The Brotherhood. Initially they lay there to rot, but eventually they accepted our tribute… my tribute to the man who saved me.”

Alys allowed warm pride to show on her face, which Jennifer ignored completely, shifting her attention back to Joey as she spoke.

“He had a wife and two sons with him when the plague broke. Did you know that, boy?”

Joey nodded. He had known. He’d found the photograph in Jock’s satchel after Bracha had killed his mentor.

“Jock told me that they’d all been killed and that he felt to blame. He had no reason to continue. But he was a soldier. He didn’t have a ‘stop’ button. He didn’t know how to quit and lived on dogged determination for two decades, until he found you.”

Joey looked at the floor and nodded his thanks. Lifting her chin, Jennifer stared at the back wall of the tent.

“He was a different man then: we were all different people after ten years here. Before this place, I was carefree, truly carefree, looking forward to becoming a doctor like my father, and enjoying life in one of the most beautiful and lively cities in the world.

 
“After a decade of abandonment, of hunting and scavenging, I was a hardened dispatcher of The Ringed. Most of us who’d survived to that point had been forced to become efficient killers, but I was determined to become ever more skilled. I detested being at anyone’s mercy and that’s exactly how we lived – at the mercy of mindless monsters and a callous government who decided where we lived, what we ate… when we died. I wanted more.

“We had moved around, Fiona and I, following the food, joining with other groups of people who had skills I wanted or who simply could offer a safe environment for a spell, but that couldn’t continue indefinitely. Sooner or later, we’d starve, or freeze, or be infected.

“When Cameron and James arrived in The Gardens and joined our fledging community, I knew that these men would add value. That they would bring us skills we lacked and help establish our new way of life.”

Jennifer stopped talking and sagged a little. Joey had never seen her posture anything other than rigid. Her softening was as startling as her honesty. Alys was working hard to stay calm, but she was visibly struggling.

“We secured The Gardens, planned for the future, started training the people who lived here in combat, survival… fell in love, got married, y’know, the usual.”