The Retreat (The After Trilogy Book 1) (27 page)

Romy widened her eyes. It wasn’t hard—fear gripped her tightly in its claws. “Wh-what do you mean?”

Lucas turned away and she blindly searched behind her for the weight, brushing over papers. Her breath halted in her throat as her fingers closed on the cool surface. Romy brought it behind her back, wrist brushing against the hilt of the knife there.

The Mandate’s spy faced her.

She met his gaze. “I’ll do anything to save my knot.”

He circled towards her slowly. Nearly close enough. “Yes. You will.” Lucas wet his lips without breaking his stare for a second. “A virgin, I bet.”

He spoke from behind her. “I want payment now. The first payment. I can assure you there will have to be many to keep a secret of this size.”

Phobos and Deimos should have returned by now. She hoped they guessed she was in here. Though if Romy screamed for help, they were all dead anyway.

Just one more step.

She turned her face away, adopting a scared voice. “Okay. B-but you won’t tell anyone? You won’t tell the Mandate?”

It was a slip. And she saw his eyes flash. Horror froze her on the spot. He hadn’t known she’d guessed who he worked for! Lucas rushed her, and without thinking, she brought the weight in her hand around, throwing her entire body into the blow.

There was a crunch as it connected with his mouth. The spy staggered back, clutching at his face before falling to the ground with a soft thud. His fall was softened by the dirty clothing littering the floor.

Romy stood for a few precious seconds, her whole body trembling. The knife! She grabbed it and skirted around him for the door. Lucas wasn’t unconscious. She needed the twins.

An arm jerked her back, and she was whirled back the way she came. The back of a hand met her face in a strike so hard Romy was blinded as she fell to the floor with a small cry, the knife hitting the ground with a clatter.

She could barely see through the pain.

By the time she blinked the hurt away, he was astride her.

Her T-shirt tore in two as his hands clawed at her.

Next was the front of her shorts.

The knife lay to her right. She had to get the knife.

“I’m sorry!” she sobbed without tears.

“How did you know who I work for?” He gripped her throat and she choked, scratching at his hand.

“You . . . you said you were above the law,” she gasped. “I g-guessed.”

He pulled her up to sitting so they were eye to eye. Romy had both hands at her neck, pulling at his fingers. Black dotted her vision as Lucas’s eyes filled the space in front of her.

It was the unhinged streak in them that told Romy he didn’t intend to stop.

And she couldn’t let him continue.

Lolling her head to the side, she let her right arm hang limply. His hands didn’t abate their cruel pressure.

She inched her hand outwards, desperately reaching for the knife. Her fingertips touch polished wood and she fumbled to grip the weapon, terrified it might slip, terrified because even if she wanted to scream for the twins, she no longer had the breath to do it.

If she couldn’t reach the knife, she would die.

Romy twisted and stretched her arm forwards, enclosing the knife in her grip. With the last of her strength, she threw herself to one side, dragging the knife across his throat.

A pain thrust through her mind. So sharply, she forgot all about Lucas, about the room, about her knot as she writhed, clutching at her head. There was only white. Nothing. She clawed at her scalp trying to get to the source of the agony inside her skull.

What was happening?

Moaning, Romy cracked her eyes open, realising she’d fallen to the ground. Lucas was swaying above her. Blood poured out in a sheet down his throat and onto his naked chest. But it was as though once his body registered the mortal wound, a dam burst: blood spurted, covering the ground, covering him, and covering her.

Romy lay on the floor, too weak to move, gasping as the red wave poured over her. She couldn’t shift her eyes from his widened gaze.

For the first time he looked afraid. He’d intended to rape her. Had made her weeks in Jimboomba hell. But it didn’t mean she couldn’t see his humanity when all else was stripped away.

The soldier toppled forwards, no longer in control of his actions. She spat his blood out of her mouth, struggling for air as he slid his hands over her in desperate movements, still trying to kill her in the time he had left.

The slippery movement of his hands became weaker.

And weaker.

Until his death rattled within him like a loose bolt in a broken engine.

A high-pitched noise rang in her head, a tinnitus of excruciating levels. She pushed the heels of her palms into her temples as the ringing intensified, building to overwhelming degrees within seconds. Had Lucas damaged her brain when he choked her?

Someone was shaking the door. The edges of Romy’s sight began to blur as she stared at the dead officer on top of her.

Knocking.

The twins, she realised in a daze. Pulling herself from underneath the dead man, Romy approached the door, slipping twice in the large puddle of blood.

Phobos and Deimos gasped when they saw her.

Anger stirred deep inside her, a defensive mechanism at what she’d done, but she could barely feel it through the thick numbness encasing her.

Deimos gripped her arm as she swayed. “Where did he get you?”

Romy looked down.
Blood.
The ringing sound restarted with resounding force. Nausea swam upwards at the thought of how Lucas’s blood was covering her. “Not mine,” she choked out. “Not mine. Not mine. Not mine.”

Her voice was high-pitched. Hysterical. She knew it, but couldn’t stop. She wasn’t in control anymore.

Phobos pushed past her as Deimos remained where he was—glued to her side.

Phobos returned with the keycard. The reason she’d killed a man. "A rapist," she corrected herself. She didn’t mean to kill him. Kill him. Kill him.

Deimos looked at her strangely. “Who was a rapist, Ro?”

Romy stumbled out of the bungalow and into the tree line, emptying the contents of her stomach. Every time she thought of the blood on her hands she was wracked with another bout of gagging. Why wouldn’t the ringing stop?
The blood was red.
Bright red
.

“Ro . . . we need to get the weapons.” Deimos stroked her hair back, whispering. “No one’s gotten up, but we can’t be sure they didn’t hear. There was a bit of noise.”

The weapons. More killing. The thought echoed to her through a long, dark tunnel. “Y-yes.” Her lips formed the word. She heard the sound from spectator seats.

Phobos shrugged out of his shirt and pulled it over her numb body. “She’s in shock,” he said to Deimos.

This wasn’t shock. Romy felt like she was hovering outside of herself. This had never happened when she killed the Critamal. What was it? Because she’d killed with her own hands?

“Maybe we should take her back first?” Deimos said to Phobos.

A fresh shot of adrenaline helped to push the blurriness back. Her friends needed her. They didn’t have time for her to freak out. The clanging in her mind didn’t recede, and she had to work to move her mouth around it.

“No.” Romy managed to speak. “N-no. I’m okay.” She lifted wooden arms and pushed her hair back, wet with Lucas’s blood. She looked up at the doubtful members of her knot. “Let’s do this,” she repeated in a hollow voice.

Not waiting for an answer, she led the way. Her feet dragging with each step, she retreated behind a couple of rows of houses as they moved around the clearing. Atlas couldn’t find them. Not when they were so close to escape. She wondered if he was sitting in his office. Or laying awake in his bed. The bed they’d
shared
as he plotted to betray everyone she loved.

It was easy to move around the camp. No patrols worked within the settlement. She crept up to the storage building steps, Phobos and Deimos behind her.

The e-storage screen was shining in the room to the left, and the keypad to the weapons room, a tiny red flashing circle at its base, was to their right. Phobos passed the keycard into her outstretched hand and Romy waved it under the keypad.

The red light flashed green and the door clicked open.

She waved the twins through. “Go, get the . . . the supplies. I n-need something from the e-scanner.”

Her grip on the keycard was slippery. She staggered under the weight of the ringing in her head to the illuminated machine in the far corner.

Rocking with pain, it took her three attempts to push the keycard through.

Red files loaded on the screen in front of her disjointed vision. They needed to put as much ground between themselves and this camp by the first siren tomorrow morning.

Romy scrolled through the documents, blinking often to refocus. Rosters, incident reports, weapons registry.

One section caught her eye: HIGHLY CLASSIFIED.

She clicked on the heading.

Nothing happened. Lucas worked for the Mandate, but clearly wasn’t high in the ranks. Not like Atlas. That she’d been worried about telling Atlas about Lucas in case he got hurt made her want to pull her hair out in handfuls.

Deimos and Phobos approached behind her, five large stuffed packs in tow and arms full of weapons.

“We found camp gear in there.” Phobos grinned in the dark.

It was a good find, she knew that. She just couldn’t bring herself to care.

Romy’s eyes flicked across the screen. So much of this could be useful: Long-term settlement forecast, transmission codes. But there was one thing they needed.

New World: Australia (Settlements: 2148 census)

Got it.

She clicked on the heading, and held her breath as the file opened. A map was loading.

“Where’s the map I gave you?” she ordered.

Phobos swung his backpack to the ground and rifled through the contents.

The screen loaded in front of them. And for the first time, the knot saw where on Earth they were.

“Jimboomba” was spelled out in red capitals halfway up the Queensland state, inland. Elara was right. They weren’t as close to the beach as the old map told them. This settlement was entirely different from the old Jimboomba.

Deimos and Phobos flattened the 2017 map on the floor. They needed to mark the other settlements on the page. They needed to avoid them. Romy pulled up short. They had nothing to mark the page with.

Blood dropped from her hair to the ground. The red on her hand caught her eye in front of the shining screen. The bells in her head started afresh … but … there was nothing else.

Romy squeezed her hand in her hair, looked at the screen and pressed her forefinger onto the map. A bloody fingerprint was left north-west of Jimboomba over another settlement’s location.

“That is—”

“Shut it, Pho.”

Romy worked quickly, translating the locations. She ignored the little island below the main island of Australia, expecting there was no way they would ever get there with the strip of sea in between.

Nine of the locations had thick red rings around them. Romy took that to mean they were major bases. Wetting her forefinger, she made the circles over these locations bigger. Two of them, New Brisbane and New Cairns, were close to Jimboomba.

Job done, she returned to the screen, scrolling.

“We’ve gotta go, Ro. It’s midnight. We have six hours to get a safe distance away from here.”

The words “Mandate Operatives” blared at her from the e-storage screen.

“You know we need that time,” Phobos insisted.

With an aggravated growl, Romy turned from the screen and glared up at her friends.

Deimos was tucking the map back inside the rucksack. “We have plenty of information for now.”

She nodded stiffly.

Phobos pocketed the keycard. He eyed the others, taking two packs and swinging three guns over his shoulder.

She reached for a bag, but Deimos tugged it from her, eyeing her with concern. He already had a heavy pack on each shoulder and carried her one in his arms.

“Let’s go,” he said softly. “Ellie and Thrym will be waiting.”

* * *

K
not 27 sat waiting in the shadows of the short alleyway. Five bulging packs were arranged in a row, the objects within them the only chance they had to survive the wilderness.

Ellie and Thrym had managed to get basic medicine, but none of the anti-venom and antibiotics they’d planned to steal.

Her heart thumped wildly in her chest as they waited for the patrol to pass.

The ringing was still there, lessened, but not gone; muted enough to allow Romy to think coherently for the time being. She should be entirely focused on the escape, but something happened to her when she killed Lucas.

Something terrible. Something felt off, as though she were a shadow of herself.