Renegade (14 page)

I cannot focus on him but then Imrin cuts in, stretching an arm across to me. ‘You’re bleeding.’

I raise my hand to my face, forgetting I am wearing gloves but then I feel a dribble of blood slide across my top lip and drip into my lap.

Surprisingly, it is Reith who reacts. He presses a button on the desk and a drawer slides out underneath him. He reaches in and passes me across a patch of cloth.

‘Keep it,’ he says.

My head feels so muddled that I take it and press the material to my nose. It smells musky and masculine and when I pull it away, there is a wide red spot of blood.

‘You’re not the first,’ he says. ‘It’s the vertigo from being this high as well. It’s an amazing view but it takes some getting used to.’

‘Who are you?’ Imrin asks, removing his hand from my shoulder.

I see the shape of Reith’s head shake. ‘No matter. First, tell me about Windsor. We heard there was a commotion but real information is impossible to come by – even through
alternative
channels.’

Imrin starts to stumble over a reply but I close my eyes and take over. ‘We escaped,’ I say. ‘We would have died there.’

Reith hums but it is hard to tell if it is in approval or surprise. ‘Yes, Victor . . .’ he says knowingly. ‘It sounds as if he is getting more and more erratic. I suppose
Bathix does not help either.’

Bathix is the name of the Minister Prime, the King’s right-hand man. It is no particular surprise that Reith knows this, although he is the first person I have heard use his first name
instead of the title.

Gradually I open my eyes, finding that the haze has cleared. Now I can see him clearly, Reith is tracing a finger along his scar, deep in thought.

‘How did you know it was us?’ I ask.

My question jolts him slightly, as if he had forgotten we were there.

‘Oh, right, yes.’ He spins in his chair, widening his arms to show the bank of screens. ‘It is my job to monitor security in the building. We get Kingsmen in and out all the
time but not many of them spend time walking around the communications floor.’

He presses a button on one of the monitors and the screen changes to show footage of Imrin and me doing just that, eyeing the name plaques on the doors. The camera zooms in at a point where I
raise the helmet slightly to scratch my head, revealing a small flash of silver hair.

‘Not clever,’ Reith concludes, his hands flashing across the control panel. The images disappear, leaving a blank screen. ‘It’s standard that nothing from the past two
hours is allowed to be deleted in our system,’ he adds. ‘It’s for security reasons – but I’m the only person who has seen this. After two hours, anyone can manually
remove footage, so I’ll delete it later. Now, why would you come here?’

I have so many questions but, as the clock above him swirls and fades into his name, at least one of them is answered. ‘You’re Rom?’ I say. His eyes narrow, focusing sharply on
me. ‘Reith Owen Moore,’ I add, nodding to the letters in the glass behind him.

‘How do you know that name?’

I almost tell him about Knave but then remember him saying how none of them know each other’s names. ‘We found a resistance movement not far from Windsor,’ I say. ‘They
said their communications had been down and that their contact was someone named Rom in the North Tower.’

Reith drums his fingers on the desk, peering from Imrin to me. ‘What were their names?’

I shake my head. ‘No names.’

He nods. ‘Right answer. What did they tell you about me?’

‘Not much – they said you helped the resistance groups communicate with each other. I got the feeling they thought you were in charge.’

Reith bursts out laughing unexpectedly. ‘I can assure you I’m not.’

‘I never said you were.’

He nods again. ‘Lots happened after the war. King Victor took the crown and everyone was happy to rally around him. Within a year or so, Middle England had been built. It was intended to
serve as a central location from where we could organise the rest of the country. The aim was to ensure that every individual got what they needed.’

‘With rations?’

‘I suppose. I wasn’t in this job then, of course, but there was a different spirit. At the time we didn’t think we would need rations. We hoped there would be more than enough
for everyone.’

‘What happened?’

Reith squirms in his seat and turns away from me, staring over my shoulder towards the lift. I spin to see if there is anyone there but the floor is clear. ‘Let’s just say some
people are more equal than others.’

I don’t know exactly what he means but it is obvious from the food I have seen heading into the castle – and the amount of electricity it takes to run the towers of Middle England
– that we are not all treated the same.

‘Who are you?’

The Deputy Minister focuses on me again, waiting until I meet his eyes. ‘Just someone who thinks there has to be a better way. If I had been a year older, I would have been fighting in the
war. Instead, it ended just before I was called up. My brother was eighteen months older than me and never came back. At first, I thought he had at least died for something but after a year or two,
it became obvious things hadn’t really improved. I somehow stumbled into working here and over the years I moved up.’ He stretches his arms out to indicate the floor we are on.
‘Literally, I suppose.’

‘But you’re part of the resistance?’

He breathes out heavily. ‘There
is
no resistance, not really. Just small groups talking to each other without anything ever happening.’

‘Isn’t that better than nothing?’

He rubs his eyes wearily. ‘I know it seems that I’m up here above everyone else and that I’ve got it easy. I suppose I can’t deny that – I’ve got food, my
wife and children are looked after but you . . .’

I’m not sure what he means and suddenly feel self-conscious, pushing my loose hair behind my ear.

‘When we heard something had happened at the castle, it brought my brother’s sacrifice back to me. I suppose I thought something might actually be changing.’ He opens his arms
to indicate the room. ‘None of this really matters to me but I’ve always told myself it is easier to work from within to make a difference than it is to alter things from outside. After
your
incident
, it was a day until we heard any more news. All anyone was talking about here was whether the King had been killed and who the girl with the strange hair was . . .’

‘Thanks.’

He smiles. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. Anyway, Victor was on the screen again, still alive, and since then – aside from the fact your face is everywhere – it is as if
none of it happened.’

There it is again, the same sense I felt from Knave and Vez – plus the two Kingsmen outside our hideout: change. Somehow, accidentally, the King and Minister Prime have set me up as a
figurehead. Anyone who is hungry, anyone who has been abused by the Kingsmen, the mistreated Trogs and so many others are now somehow seeing me as more than just the girl I am.

It is terrifying.

‘How did you come to work with the rebel groups?’ Imrin asks.

He looks away from me and I can tell he feels embarrassed. ‘I’ve worked in security most of my time here. This is the easy bit, with a few monitors to watch. I used to work in
enforcement which is more . . . hands on.’

I get the implication: he was more of a traditional Kingsman than he is now.

‘There was a bit of a disturbance on the edge of the city,’ he continues. ‘Some of my men and I went in to investigate and it was a group of male citizens. They were angry
because rations were short that week. One of their wives had just had a child and he said he needed more for her.’

‘What did you do?’

He pauses, breathing deeply through his nose. ‘Rebellion is not tolerated.’

I want to push him, feeling the hairs prickling on the back of my neck but the way his voice tails away makes it clear this isn’t something of which he is proud.

‘My men weren’t known for being particularly gentle,’ he adds. ‘There are cells under the ground floor of this tower and the Kingsmen were bringing the prisoners back. I
stayed on the fringes of the city to oversee things but we made a mistake by underestimating them. The disturbance wasn’t what we thought – they wanted to draw us out. As soon as I was
alone, four men came out of nowhere. Each of them had knives and I didn’t even have time to get my sword out of my belt before one of them had a blade up against my throat.’

He breathes out heavily and scratches underneath his chin, remembering. ‘I thought I was dead. It’s not as if I could have blamed them, not after what my men had just done. They took
me out to a building in the middle of nowhere and all I could think was that no one would ever find me.’

‘How did you get away?’

‘They let me go the next morning. They didn’t even touch me. The man in charge said he wanted to show me that he was better than I was and then he sent me on my way.’

I feel another chill as the image of the two Kingsmen we captured drifts through my mind.

‘When I came here the next day, we were going to release the prisoners anyway – sometimes that’s the best message to send because they have stories to tell about what happens
if you get caught. I don’t know what came over me but, for some reason, I told one of them he should return if he ever needed anything and to tell his boss that he was right. Nothing happened
for ages, maybe a year or so, and then I got this job. There was a big deal about it on the news, so I suppose one of them saw it. The next day, the man who let me go was waiting outside the doors
of the North Tower. He told me his address and I went to see him that night. He asked if I knew about any cells of resistance around the country. I didn’t but I managed to set up a secure
channel for him to communicate on. The rest has grown from there.’

‘But the communications aren’t working any longer?’

He shakes his head. ‘I’m not sure what happened. It was easier a few years ago and technology has begun to get away from me. The higher you get, the less you have to do. The
authorities did some sort of software upgrade to our thinkwatches around a month ago and whatever they did took the system I’d set up offline. The problem is that, because it isn’t
working, I’ve not been able to tell anyone what the issue is. I thought someone might come looking for me – but I didn’t think it would be you.’

It seems clear that ‘Rom’ isn’t the person Knave and Vez thought he was. They set him up as some sort of leader but all he does is allow groups to talk to each other. He
doesn’t even understand the technology.

‘I might be able to fix it,’ I say.

Reith tilts his head and looks at me quizzically but doesn’t query what I have said. He stands and leads us towards the lift. I assume he is going to take us to a different floor but
instead he crouches, wedging his fingers into a thin gap between the door and the frame. With a hiss, the door slides open revealing a space that is dark and empty except for some thick cables
hanging vertically.

‘If you get vertigo, this is not the place to be,’ he says with a thin smile before lying flat on his front and reaching down into the shaft. He scrabbles around for a few seconds
before pulling himself up with a grunt. In his hand is a grey metal box, which he hands to me.

I am expecting it to be heavy but the container must be made of borodron or something similar as it weighs next to nothing. Inside, there is a mishmash of wires, sensors and various parts that
are very similar to the bits and pieces I am used to tinkering with at the back of my thinkwatch and inside various thinkpads, not to mention the time I spent working with Head Kingsman Porter in
Windsor.

‘Did you make this?’ I ask.

Reith shakes his head. ‘It came from the man I told you about. He said it needed to be somewhere in the tower for it to work. I looked inside, obviously, but the technology comes from
before the war and doesn’t mean much to me.’

‘What’s in the lift shaft?’

Reith looks behind him. ‘All of the cables – power, communications – run the full height of the various lift shafts. We have antennas on top of the building and huge generators
underneath. There is only one lift that will get you up to this height, so that’s why this particular shaft has everything packed into it. When I first moved up here, there were all sorts of
technical issues and one time the doors of the lift popped open on their own. There are little cubby holes in there and when the man who spared my life told me the box needed to be somewhere close
to the communication cables, I figured this would be as good a place as any to conceal it.’

I return to his desk, pulling the various pieces out of the grey box and placing them in front of me. ‘I’ll need your thinkwatch,’ I say.

He sits behind his desk and looks to Imrin, as if wanting reassurance that I know what I’m doing. When Imrin nods gently, he unclips it from his wrist and hands it over.

The box has a keypad on the front and a sliding button on the side. I check a few obvious things and then begin to dig properly into the underside of the box. Within a couple of minutes, I know
what the problem is.

‘It’s to do with frequencies,’ I say. ‘Let’s say this building is number one. All communications go in and out of here by using that number. Your thinkwatch is also
set to number one, allowing you to get in. For whatever reason, when the authorities upgraded the software, they put you onto number five – except this box is still trying to connect to
number one. All I need to do is get the new code for number five from your watch and it will start working again.’

I only know this because I encountered a similar issue when I was working with Head Kingsman Porter at Windsor. He tutted but then showed me what the problem was. Much of the technology used
throughout the Kingdom seems to be very similar, an odd mishmash of bits and pieces from before the war combined with brand-new inventions. It’s a wonder anything works.

Reith sounds unconvinced. ‘It’s that simple?’

I can’t help but laugh. ‘No – I made it sound that easy just for you.’