The Wandering (The Lux Guardians, #2) (43 page)

“But why are Officials
coming here?” Thomas frowns. “It’s not Forgotten London.”

“They’re not just from
Forgotten London,” Olive says nastily. Her arms are crossed over
her chest, her body shaking. Her fear manifests in the same way as
her sister’s—callousness and trembling. Miya takes Olive’s small
hand and they tremor together. “They’re everywhere,” Livy says.
“Don’t you know that, Thomas? Why else do you think we’ve been
running?”

“We’re not … we’re not
running.”

Olive sucks in a breath. “We are now.
Miya.
” Her arm wavers badly when she
extends it, pointing at a figure darting around the corner of the
street.

A handful of Guardians
open fire, shooting the Official down, but even with that threat
gone the message is clear: they’re here.

It starts with a wind
whipped up by aircraft blades, and then a ground-rattling boom
jumps through the town. Cracks open up the road, buildings lean
back and fold in on themselves, their corners standing for a
suspended moment before they fall too. A sinister cloud of smoke
and dust swallows the skyline. Newer buildings careen straight to
the ground in an eruption of dust and screaming glass. The earth
quakes. It doesn’t seem real, that sturdy buildings and solid brick
could be destroyed so easily.

I brace myself against
a building, gripping Miya’s hand, thanking every higher power that
we’re far enough away from the centre of the explosion that this
street is still standing.

“What the fuck was
that?” Miya’s eyes are so wide. So scared.

“A bomb.”

“What?
No. They can’t—they can’t
bomb us.”

“Leah?” Thomas is
pointing, his face white and drawn. I’ve never seen this kind of
fear on someone so young. “You told me to watch for Officials.”

There are four
indistinct shadows five metres away, the tubular shape of their
guns identifying them as military. I narrow my eyes, hold up the
rifle, and let my instincts carry me back through the years to a
day when our station was overtaken with rebels brandishing shotguns
and jagged-edged blades. I killed eleven people that day and it
haunted me every day for a year. That was the first time I
witnessed mass death. I was sixteen.

Now I’m twenty and
killing people doesn’t sit any easier, doesn’t weigh any less with
experience. I could shoot them in the leg, or the shoulder,
somewhere non-lethal—but I can’t risk my mercy bringing death to my
family.

The thought of family
shocks a reminder through me. I’m not used to Kari being alive, to
having to worry about my sister, but all of a sudden I don’t just
have Miya and the kids to protect. I have to find Kari—Kari who
never stopped looking for me, even years after we were last
together, even when every sign pointed to me being dead.

I don’t even know
where the strategy teams were stationed. I hesitate on the trigger
for a split second, so derailed by my sister, but I’ve been trained
too well to hesitate any longer. The gun slams into my chest with
every shot sent through the air. The shells rip into each
Official’s forehead. They fall instantly.

“We need to find the
others,” I say. My voice is hard and cold: a soldier’s voice. Why
can I never be both Yosiah and the Official at the same time? It’s
one or the other, good or bad, light or dark. A sickening energy
wakes up in my veins but I push it to the back of my awareness,
scanning the road as we cross it. I guide Miya, Tom, and Olive
along the route I picked out earlier.

We have to sacrifice
some of the quicker roads because of crevices rent into the ground.
It’s so reminiscent of Forgotten London that I have to wonder if
this is some kind of upgrade on what was used there, the weapon
Branwell blames himself for.

“There.” Olive points
down an offshoot of a road where a team of Officials has emerged.
Miya and I shoot them down. I do a quick calculation of how many
shells I have left—about two in the gun, more in my pocket—and
reload while we scurry along another road.

I can hear the rabble
of voices now, a couple streets off, and assume that’s the
civilians trying to get to the aircrafts. It shouldn’t be more than
a minute until we join them. Miya and I share a look, checking
we’re both still okay. My heart throbs.

We find the civilians
easily enough, though the reason for the noise soon becomes clear.
It’s not simple panic like I’d assumed. It’s Officials. Everywhere.
Soldiers stand like sentries all down the wide road. A buzzing
barrier of electricity—made of the same blue beams that fire from
their guns—traps the people in the road, blocking all exits. Others
Guardians kill civilians with their electric guns, flashes of blue
light cutting through the fog like hellfire. They’ve herded people
into a cage and now they’re picking them off with indolent ease.
These civilians aren’t armed like us or the Guardians. They don’t
have anything to defend themselves. I see a woman cowering, another
using her body as a shield to cover a boy no older than nine.

Fury rips through me
but this isn’t the place. I quell it with a single bright thought
the way Kari taught me.

Revenge, revenge,
revenge.

I grab Miya’s jacket
and yank her back, the kids moving as if attached to her by string.
We take cover behind a building with a crack down the side as big
as a person. My eyes dart from Official to Official, assessing, but
I don’t see a way out of this. There’s no way to save these people
without getting ourselves killed and there’s no way to pass the
electric barrier without dying. I remember what Dalmar said about
leaving Plymouth residents behind, but these aren’t all from this
town. Some I recognise from Leeds, some I know to be Guardian
families, and others are Guardians themselves, beaten and
vulnerable, forced to kneel before Officials with guns to their
skulls.

If we help these
people, that will be us. We’ll be kneeling before soldiers, waiting
to die.

But we can’t
leave.

I want to walk away
but I can’t. If I left, I’d be no better than they want me to be.
Ruthless killer. Emotionless murderer. Machine.

That’s not what I
am.

“Up,” Miya hisses. “We
need to go up.”

She
shoves Thomas and Olive through the building’s crack, not taking
her eyes off me as she steps inside. I know what she’s thinking. I
can see it in her hung shoulders, the pain in her deep green eyes.
I step through the crack, grab her jacket lapels, and kiss her
until I’m breathless with love and fear. I find something close to
clarity, to determination. To being
good
.

“I’m not going
anywhere,” I say, hoarse. “I’m staying right here. With you.”

She tilts her head to
look me in the eyes, unguarded. “We’re gonna die, aren’t we?”

“Possibly.”

Three words break free
of my lips when her hands slide into my hair. The second kiss
doesn’t last nearly long enough, but it leaves a deep ache in my
heart despite its brevity.

Miya takes my hand in
hers. “Then let’s take them down with us.”

***

Horatia

14:19. 08.11.2040. The
Free Lands, Southlands, Plymouth.

With the second
earthquake, terror is practically staining the cobblestones. It’s
visible to each Official that hems us into this street, every one
of them using our fear as a weapon much deadlier than metal.

I have a knife in my
pocket that’s useless and a brother at my side whose breathing is
out of hand. He’s having a panic attack, I know, but I don’t know
what to do about it.

We’re crouched down, using the standing bodies of those
around us as shields. If someone had taught me how to throw a
knife, I might be able to stop one Official at least. Not that one
of them dying would do much good. But it would be
something
. It would be
better than hiding like cowards.

A girl a few rows
forward is struck down by blue light, her skin becoming craters of
burnt flesh as she hits the tarmac. I see her eyes roll into the
back of her head, her face charred black, her mouth hanging open.
The people around her take a step back, swivelling around in every
direction. Waiting to see if they’ll be the next to die.

There’s no logic to
how the Officials are killing us. The girl, an elderly woman, a boy
around seven, a man in his twenties. None of them raise their
voices. All of them do everything they can not to catch any
attention. Still they die.

I can’t predict it. I
can’t save anyone. I can’t even save me and my brother. Hele is out
there somewhere, with a small number of Guardians. Wes, too. I know
at least three of the Guardians in this crowd have tried to fight,
but rays of cerulean heat cut half of them down before they could
make much difference. The others are knelt in front of Officials as
examples to us all. Examples to sit and wait to die.

Why not just raze the
whole street? Why drag it out with individual deaths?

What is the point?

I grab Honour’s arm in
one hand and wield my pathetic knife with my other. “Honour,” I
hiss, “we’re going to crawl. Can you crawl?”

“I don’t—” He breaks
off, takes a wheezing breath, trying to get his words out. Failing,
he shakes his head. I huddle closer to him, heat leeching through
my thin jacket when I wrap a protective arm around his shoulders. I
touch his forehead, frowning at his temperature.

I say in his ear, “You
can do this. We need to get closer to the edge.”

He
shakes his head again. I put the knife in my pocket so I can frame
my brother’s face with my hands. I say sternly, “You can do this,
Honour.
You have to.
We’ll die if you don’t. I know you don’t want to die.” I beg
him with my eyes, praying that I’m getting through to him. “I just
need you to follow me.”

He closes his eyes,
nodding okay.

We
crawl between people’s feet, ignoring every muffled scream and
thump of bodies hitting the ground. I force my knees to move
forward, to drag my body, claw at the smooth stones of the floor to
keep moving,
keep
moving
. The air is hot and dense, too
dense. I take big desperate breaths of rank air and push forward,
looking to Honour every half second. His eyes are open now, so
dark, his pupils invisible—but as long as he’s pushing forward I
won’t let myself question what that means for his health. Normal
fear doesn’t do that to your eyes.

“Tia,” he gasps after
two minutes.

I stop, ignoring the
sting of my palms, the way the ground bites my knees through my
jeans. Honour’s expression pleads with me to stop moving. I cast a
look around, see the vague shadow of buildings through legs and
over corpses. There are less people standing now, and so many more
on the ground. I swallow the bile that rises without warning. I’ve
been followed by the ghost of death for so long now that it’s
become familiar—but this closeness is overwhelming. It’s too real.
Death could reach out and grip us now, it’s that close.

We’re going to
die.

I grab Honour’s arm,
listing to the side and coming up against him. Seven breaths later
I’ve found control again, but my arms are shaking, too tired to
keep pulling me forward. I feel … weak. I’m made of air instead of
blood and bone. I want to sleep.

We’re going to
die.

I snap awake. “Stay
down,” I tell my brother, pushing myself up on my knees. I strain
to see over a group of teenagers huddled in front of us. I must be
heartless because in this moment I can’t find the will to care
about these kids. I only care about myself and Honour.

I get my feet beneath
me and stand unsteadily, making sure I’m hidden by the kids in
front of me.

The street has been
decimated, the buildings around us with big lines of brick gouged
out, burned away by Official guns. They look like scratches, like
God has raked his fingers across the street in anger. The ground is
covered with husks of people, dark lumps that used to be alive now
burnt and dead. Only fifty or so people are left standing, staring,
horrified, at their fallen families, their lifeless neighbours. I
don’t see Hele. I don’t see any Guardians.

Honour pulls on my
leg, I drop back to the cobbles—but Honour wasn’t telling me to
hide. He was trying to warn me. I ignore the rising urge to be sick
and brandish the knife in front of me, remembering what Marrin
taught me, what the Guardians taught me, traitor instructor or
not.

The Official is a man,
a head taller than me and double my width. I don’t stand a
chance.

I
remember Marrin.
“What are you? You can’t
be human—you’re so much more.”

I
leap forward, using speed as an advantage. I remember darting
around Marrin’s glass home as he taught me how to fight in the
short time we had together. I flinch at the memory of him
flushed,
alive
,
and in that second the Official knocks the blade from my hand and
grabs me by the neck.

This man isn’t like
the other Officials I’ve met. The others were killers because it
was all they knew. But this man … I can see it in his eye, the
gleam of enjoyment and wicked thrill as he squeezes my throat.

I gasp, choke. Tears
spring to my eyes. My hands scratch skin from his knuckles but he
doesn’t let me go. He lifts me off the ground. I throw my dangling
legs into his knees but he doesn’t drop me.

We’re going to
die.

I’m going to die.

I won’t get justice
for Marrin, won’t get my revenge. But I’ll be with him again, and
maybe this time we’ll have a love that lives longer than a month.
Maybe this time we’ll know what it’s like to be together. That
thought takes the frantic edge off my fighting. I drop my
hands.