Truthseer Page 3

  From Beau; I’m at the north-central clinic. One of our transporters was taking a whole bunch of plague victims who died back to their homes so their families could officially de-register them. Staz patrol intercepted it and took it away. And it’s just disappeared.

  Lizzie’s reply; A whole bunch of victims? How many?

  Beau; Twenty-three. I’m going back out again, see if I can track them down.

  5

  Fin’s wrinkled features etched into lines of concern as she watched Bel driving carefully round multiple potholes in the dusk, mindful of their cargo. Four years of mentoring the girl’s leader-training had given her enough insight to sense the tension her talented young protégé was trying to hide.

  ‘Bel, you have to talk about it sometime. That rescue mission was your responsibility but Greg’s death wasn’t your fault. You have to work through it. Deal with it.’

  Bel’s knuckles whitened as she gripped the wheel tighter. ‘I know. I’ve already had Raine on my case. I just can’t. Not yet.’

  ‘That’s okay for most people. But you’re not most people. You’re our best gestalt-analyst and that pushes you into the front line of whatever’s happening––and right now the front line’s volatile. If your concentration’s off you won’t survive long.’ Fin avoided mentioning Bel’s powerful fight-skills and her additional responsibility as Raine’s second in command. Piling on the pressure wasn’t going to help at this point.

  Bel glanced in the rear view mirror as lights pulled out of a turning behind them, filling the interior of the jeep with a dull yellow glow. ‘I know. But I can still focus. I swear I won’t put anyone at risk. Just don’t ask me to lead for a while.’

  ‘If you’re sure.’ Fin felt partly responsible for what had happened. During the Warren attack she had seen the chance to kidnap Parry, hoping he might become the vital contact inside the system that Raine had been searching for. Now they would never know if that decision had made the difference between life and death for Greg. But if Bel couldn’t come through what had happened she’d likely be the next casualty.

  ‘Bel, everyone goes through a phase of heightened sensitivity after second-level training and you shouldn’t have been in that situation so soon. I should have protected you. I just want to make sure you get past this and survive.’

  Bel didn’t reply. She checked the mirror again and slowed down. ‘Staz patrol transporter. If I pull over, they have to go past. Or they stop behind us and we have to deal with it. How far to the checkpoint?’

  Fin glanced at the map tablet. ‘About fifteen minutes.’

  The transporter behind flashed its lights. Bel pulled over onto the tangle of brambles and heather encroaching onto the overgrown road.

  ‘That’s it. We have to deal with it.’ She reached for the handgun in the glove box and counted rounds for it. ‘Three. I’ll be lucky to get two off if it’s staz on high alert.’

  Fin was out of the jeep and into the shadow as the armoured vehicle closed in behind them. She stayed hidden by the rear wheel, watching for movement as the transporter’s door opened and a dark figure jumped down onto the road.

  Fin drew a deep breath of relief, feeling the tension ease from her limbs as she stepped forward into the light. ‘Razz! Am I glad to see you. Why didn’t you warn us? Bel was getting ready to put a bullet in you.’ She signalled Bel to move out of the shadows and lower her weapon.

  Razz gripped her forearm in the rangers’ customary greeting. ‘Last minute change of plan. We dare not use the airwaves. Every frequency scanner they have is over this side, still frantically screening for fugitives from the Warren. At least it means they still think everyone headed for the city instead of going north to the Tarn, but it’s left us with a hornet’s nest of patrols to deal with at this end.’

  Fin raised an eyebrow. ‘Not the best time to be trying to get a medical shipment through?’

  ‘Probably the worst. Anyhow, I need to get moving. Lizzie’s coming with you.’ He headed back to the parked transporter while Lizzie scrambled out of the passenger side and squeezed into the cramped space on the back seat of the jeep. She had abandoned her clinic scrubs for black jeans and sweater, her frizzy mane of sandy hair tied back with a rubber band.

  ‘I’ll guide you to our storage drop, then I have to get back to the clinic. Message from Raine that he wants you to go with the city tigers on this surveillance op, soon as you’ve delivered the meds––Razz will give you details when he catches up with us. We’ve fixed a couple of diversions to give you a clear run from here to the checkpoint.’

  Fin frowned. ‘Diversions?’

  ‘A few innocent people trying to act suspiciously as a distraction.’

  ‘What about the checkpoint itself?’

  Lizzie gave a huff that betrayed her impatience. ‘We’ve contacts with a few checkpoint guards and for a price, quite a big price, they let us through. But I can’t always fit with their shifts at short notice. We just got set up and they pulled our guy off to do perimeter patrol.’

  ‘So now?’

  ‘So it’s desperate measures now, though I think Razz does rather enjoy things that go flash and bang.’

  Fin felt a wave of disappointment. She’d known Razz for a while. ‘That feels ominous. We’re supposed to be saving lives, not blowing people up while they queue at a checkpoint.’

  ‘Don’t worry. It’s only a smoke bomb and he’s careful where he puts things. Raine sent us coordinates for that military transporter.’

  ‘Hmm. I was wondering how you acquired one of those.’

  ‘Raine found it on his way back from the city a couple of weeks ago, but he didn’t go into details. He left it in a barn not far from here, thought we might have a use for it. So we suddenly found a use for it, though I doubt it’ll be much use once Razz has finished with it.’ Lizzie fell silent as the jeep slowed, approaching the checkpoint.

  They looked for signs of the transporter as Bel drove cautiously into the inspection bay. Suddenly, just as Lizzie had said, there was a blinding flash and bang and the whole checkpoint filled with black billowing smoke. Lizzie leaned forward and pointed.

  ‘Go! Drive straight through now, while they’re all in shock and panicking. Just go with the whole stampede.’

  Bel peered into the heavy black cloud. ‘Can’t see anything! Which direction is out?’

  ‘Straight ahead. Get as much speed as you can and smash through the barrier!’ Lizzie pointed again but the swirling fog obscured any guiding landmarks. Bel gunned the electric drive to max and threw the jeep into the smoke. Fin reached up and grabbed the roll bar, expecting them to hit a concrete bollard any second.

  The enforcer who had been on barrier guard duty suddenly loomed out of the murk, waving his automatic in an unmistakable command to stop. Bel kept going, flashing past him before he could complete his aim at the centre of the windshield.

  No need to smash through the barrier. The terrified driver the vehicle in front did it for them. They were through, but it was too soon to relax as Lizzie guided Bel through the narrow back streets of the northwest quadrant. With an unregistered jeep they had to avoid the cameras or the auto-recognition would bring a city-patrol on them within minutes.

  They reached a shabby workshop on the city’s north side and drove in, the graffiti-covered steel doors closing behind them with a metallic thud.

  Fin scrambled out into the bare-walled space. It was occupied by a row of rough tables where a dozen volunteers were sorting through boxes of medicines. Lizzie followed, visibly relieved that the rather crude ‘desperate measures’ had actually worked.

  ‘Well, we made it, but I have to get back to the clinic. The volunteer team will unload and divide up the supplies. I’ll see you later.’

  Razz arrived, in excellent spirits. ‘Did you see that go? What a beauty! Right across the whole checkpoint––’

  He caught Fin’s disapproving frown and hastened to reassure her. ‘Believe me Fin! It was just a super-size smoke bomb, re
al messy but no one got hurt beyond a few frazzled nerves. But it was so funny watching those guards running everywhere...’

  Fin found it difficult to maintain the severity. ‘Remind me to keep you and Karim well apart. I dread to think what the two of you might cook up together.’

  Razz laughed, remorseful expression vanishing instantly. ‘Too late––the kid’s been in the city long enough, we’ve already planned a few disruptive ideas for the future. With my street-knowledge and his tech wizardry––’

  Fin waved a hand for silence. ‘I don’t want to hear about it! I’ll just start worrying about all the trouble you’ll be getting yourselves into. You can brief me on today’s surveillance plans as we head over to the security building. When do we have to be there?’

  Razz glanced at his watch. ‘We’ve got less than twenty minutes. Better hurry.’

  Fin followed him, making a mental note to check up on Karim’s situation as soon as she had a few spare seconds between crises. The seventeen year old tech genius did have an unnerving talent for finding trouble.

  6

  Jac connected the borrowed legal handset to the wall screen in the office-and-storage room next to the clinic. Boxes of meds and piles of folded blankets were stacked between plastic crates marked ‘first aid’. She drew up one of them to sit on.

  Kit limped in to watch the TV broadcast with her, his bloodstained jeans roughly patched over the bandage covering the stitches. ‘Anything new?’

  ‘Not yet.’ She waved the silver device resignedly. ‘Just repeat screenings of the interview I’ve already seen. How’s the leg?’

  ‘Mending.’ Kit pulled up a crate and eased tense shoulders against the wall.

  Jac saw how exhausted he looked. He’d been dealing with a lot of responsibility for someone not long turned twenty. ‘Kit? You all right? Or just finally allowing yourself a few minutes rest?’

  He managed a self-conscious grin. ‘The problem of having someone in my team with your perceptive talent... Makes it impossible to hide the tiredness and uncertainty when I’m supposed to be the reliable leader keeping up everyone’s morale.’

  During the time they had been thrown together in their escape to the city, Jac had sensed the strain Kit managed to hide beneath his dark good looks and air of quiet confidence, but until now she hadn’t seen the extent of it. She tried to reassure him.

  ‘I don’t go round snooping in everyone’s head if that’s what you mean! Anyhow, you’d notice straight away like you did that first time. But I still can’t control it. I mean, I always pick up what people are feeling––then sometimes I get unexpected glimpses of what they’re thinking as well. But I can’t see how I’d ever be able to do it to order. It seems to either happen or it doesn’t.’

  She pushed the handset aside. ‘Look, why not make the most of having someone to talk to? I’m not going to undermine your leadership by gossiping with the others.’

  He seemed to relax a little. ‘Thanks. It’s not easy to admit I’ve found this unplanned operation in the city difficult. Too many unpredictable new things happening one after the other. And I’m worried about Luc and Karim. It felt wrong leaving them on their own in the metro station. With this new surveillance crisis keeping everyone busy, I couldn’t find out if anyone managed to get down there to keep an eye on them. They do have a habit of going for things and then thinking it through afterwards. Which doesn’t usually work out too well.’

  ‘Raine’s orders. You only had one choice. And they should be safe if they stay down there. I think Razz said the whole place had been sealed off and forgotten about except for the car rental franchise on the top level.’

  ‘I still feel responsible for them, that’s all.’

  Jac noticed him moving the blue phoenix leader-medallion through his fingers, as if constantly reminding himself of the responsibility it carried.

  ‘Did you and Bel start leader training at the same time?’

  ‘Two years ago. It’s hard, but I can’t imagine living any other way now.’

  ‘Don’t understand.’

  ‘It’s not easy to explain. It’s...’ Kit scrolled through his handset archive to a teaching video. ‘Look. This explains it better than I can.’

  The vid started with Raine, training new recruits in the forest clearing near the Warren, his voice clear and compelling even through the handset’s tiny speaker:

  ‘When you can really lieth-focus, your communication becomes instant and intuitive, and you can have total trust in your team. You move as one. Watch.’ He tied on a grey harness and joined a group of rangers with dark camouflage clothing and arrows. Six others in thick body armour and face masks carried training guns. Communicating with eye contact and hand signals, Raine’s team moved as if choreographed, skilfully avoiding being marked by a hit and outmanoeuvring the team with guns until they had scored on each of them.

  The defeated team pulled the training arrows from the armour and removed their protective masks. It was obviously hot in there. The students congratulated each other, laughing.

  Jac watched in disbelief. ‘They’re all communicating beyond those physical signals they’re using. You can see from the coordinated way they move together.’

  Kit stopped the sequence in surprise. ‘You figured that just from watching the vid?’

  Jac closed her eyes, trying to imagine how it would feel to bond so intuitively with a whole group. ‘I’ll never be able to do anything like that.’

  ‘That’s what those students were saying. But they did. With time.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I was one of them.’

  ‘But if it’s only like that when you’re fighting someone?’

  ‘No. It’s the same helping Fin with a medical emergency. That all-encompassing, synchronized focus on saving a patient... You end up totally exhausted, drained, but the intensity of it draws you back, over and over again. It’s when things are comfortable it gets hard. Easy to get lazy, scrap self-discipline... Feels good at the time, but not for long.’

  ‘How do you hang on to that focus?’

  ‘Pendrac.’

  ‘Oh.’ Jac had never met the legendary Resistance leader rumoured to be coordinating a hidden base somewhere in the western mountains. The old maps had labelled that region as ‘Wales’, but as it was now illegal to mention the old place names most people had forgotten them along with the country’s history. Comparison with life before the crash was a recipe for discontent and even the old-timers who remembered often chose to say nothing.

  Jac was curious about Pendrac. ‘Raine said he really looks up to him, gets encouraged by his ideas. But Pendrac is based so far west––I didn’t know other people had formed that kind of inspirational relationship with him.’

  ‘When I start to feel it’s all hopeless I study his training vids or his writing. His ideas keep us all going.’

  There was something about the way Kit said it...

  Jac stared at him. ‘It’s just a story isn’t it? An ideal. To keep up everyone’s morale. He is dead...’

  Kit hesitated. ‘When we’re through this, you’ll go there. The western mountains. Then it won’t matter if you find a person or a story.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘If it keeps us together, focused on what we have to do, does it matter what it is?’ He could see she wasn’t convinced. ‘I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be evasive. Everyone who goes to the mountains swears never to speak about what we’ve seen. As you will.’

  Jac knew she’d have to accept it for now, although it left her feeling curious about Kit, something missing in her understanding of him, something she couldn’t put into words. Her new relationship with Raine had changed the way she could relate to other men without becoming restless every time someone new and attractive came along.

  Raine’s wiry strength and rugged looks weren’t handsome in a conventional way, but reflected his concern and skill in dealing with those under his command. It had touched a chord within her, a
connection with the care she felt for her patients. The uncomplicated friendship she had been able to form with Kit was something new, and she was curious to explore.

  ‘Why did you choose this life?’

  He shrugged, as if searching for a simple answer. ‘I think it chose me. Most refugees are running from debt-slavery or worse, but my family’s wealthy. I was being groomed for a glossy political-corporate career within the Avarit faction. And I didn’t want it.’

  ‘So you came to the Warren?’

  ‘Soon as I turned sixteen I joined the military and my father was furious.’

  ‘You wanted to be with them?’ He was a skilled fighter but it hadn’t occurred to her he’d been part of a military machine that habitually abused its power.

  ‘I wanted to protect people. Then I learned what my privileged life hadn’t shown me. Instead of protecting, I was half the time pointing a gun at them.’

  ‘Couldn’t you leave?’

  ‘No. You have to sign for a fixed contract.’ He didn’t meet her eyes. ‘After a year I was transferred to sanitizer support force. Helping them poison outlanders’ food crops.’

  Jac’s heightened senses could feel the shame Kit still felt even though he’d left that life behind. She made an effort to keep her voice neutral, concealing her lifelong fear of the hunger and hardship the sanitizers inflicted on the outland farmers they raided.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Deserters who are caught are shot. If they’re not caught their families are sanctioned. I started to understand why there are so many suicides in the security forces.’

  ‘How did you get out?’

  ‘A few weeks after my transfer we were in a fight with a family of outlanders who didn’t want us spraying defoliant on their land. They’d made the mistake of trying to resist––and even though they didn’t have weapons to match ours, the unexpected battle separated me and my friend Daniel from the rest of our unit. Daniel knew I was desperate to get out of the military any way I could without harming my family and he suddenly saw an opportunity to do it. He told me to run, said he’d report me missing in action.’