Dark Star Page 16

  He pulled her to the opening and in that moment they both heard a sound coming from the depths of the building behind them. Pip let her go, spinning towards it, and Rosie reached for the gun at her hip that wasn’t there.

  Freddie was standing in the doorway, expressionless, considering. His eyes fell on Pip. “You’re the one they’ve been looking for,” he said.

  Rosie’s heart leaped in fear. “Go!” She tried to push Pip outside and lunged for her weapon. But it was on the floor metres away and Pip was slower than he should have been, worried for her safety, she supposed. She fell to her knees, fingers closing on the gun and Freddie’s shot sizzled over her head. Pip grunted. She heard his boots scuffing on the floor, and turned back to see a black mark from the pulse singe his shirt. He fell backwards through the doorway, clutching his side in shock. Another shot took him in the chest before he hit the ground.

  “Pip!”

  Forgetting about Freddie, Rosie bounded from the house and fell to her knees at his side. He was on his back, staring at the sky, fingers clenched in the dirt, his body twitching from the pulse shock. She tried to pick him up, pulling his shoulders onto her lap. “Pip!”

  His eyes rolled to hers, wide and afraid. “Rosie?” It was a rasping whisper.

  “It’s okay.” God, no. She didn’t know what to do. She pressed a hand to where he’d been hit. His skin was hot.

  “Rosie, I can’t …” He was struggling for breath, his chest heaving under her hand.

  “It’s okay. I’ve got you.” But then his eyes rolled back in his head and fluttered closed. He stopped breathing.

  “Pip?” She put a hand to his face. It felt like time had stopped. It was like her dream all over again, but real. Pip was in her arms dying and she could do nothing.

  She sensed Freddie in the house above her. He was standing, watching, gun dangling from his hand and an odd smile on his lips. Like he thought it was funny Pip was dying. Something broke inside her. She aimed her gun at him and pulled the trigger.

  “Rosie, no!” Gillian grabbed her arm from behind and the shot punched harmlessly into the sky.

  “Let go!” Rosie struggled to throw her off. But then more people were there, dragging her away. Operatives in black surrounded Pip. She lunged, desperate to stop them, but was tackled again by someone larger, stronger. A sound tore from her throat like something had come loose inside and then she couldn’t stop screaming. She tried to get to him again, but someone had hold of her, their arms like a vice. Through vision blurred by tears, she watched Pip being lifted up, his head lolling back, eyes closed, one limp hand trailing. A sound came from her that she didn’t understand, high and inhuman. Something cold touched her neck and then, nothing.

  CHAPTER 14

  She woke to darkness. She was lying on something hard, a thin mattress, a pillow. It wasn’t completely dark, but shadowy. She wondered if she’d gone blind again, but couldn’t seem to care.

  Her throat felt scraped raw, her mind groggy. She remembered Pip’s eyes closed, how still he was in her arms. She leaned over the side of the bunk and threw up. Only thin fluid came out, but she kept retching until she was nothing but a husk. Nothing left.

  Her head pounded hard. She fell back against the pillow.

  When she woke again, thin filtered light was seeping into the cell. So she wasn’t blind. The thought barely registered. Someone else was in here with her: Sulawayo standing at the door, arms folded watching. “How are you?”

  Rosie just looked at her.

  “This is an unfortunate turn of events,” Sulawayo continued. “Freddie has been taken for psychiatric analysis. In case you were going to ask.”

  “I don’t care.” Rosie closed her eyes.

  “He made a terrible error. But no one else can know what happened out there. You aren’t to talk about it with the other zeroes. All they have been told is there was an accident, Freddie was involved and you were injured. Pip wasn’t there. Do you understand?”

  “Go away.” Rosie rolled over and faced the wall.

  “If you give up now, they win.”

  “They’ve already won,” Rosie said.

  Sulawayo’s voice hardened. “In three hours you have to be back in your room.”

  The door opened and closed behind her and Rosie kept staring at the wall.

  Some time later she heard the door open again, but she kept facing the wall. Whoever it was hovered, then said softly, “Rosie?”

  She tensed and rolled over. Dalton stood there, awkward, one arm crossed over his middle holding onto his other elbow, too tall for the cell. He was pale, tired. His golden brown hair was unwashed and pushed back in stiff waves from his face and he couldn’t seem to keep a steady gaze on her. But he was here, and seeing him cut a little way through the numbness. “Dalton.” She sat up and he came and sat on the edge of her bed.

  “Hey, my dad let me come see you. Can’t stay long though.”

  He was still not meeting her gaze. Rosie touched his hand, searching his face. He curled his fingers around hers and looked down at their hands. His expression was bland, like he wasn’t quite there. Then she saw them and her heart clenched. Burn marks from the manacle on his temples. There would be more under his hair.

  “I heard you got injured on a training run,” he said. “You okay?”

  Tears filled Rosie’s eyes. He didn’t know about Pip. Something felt like it was working its way out of her chest. She put her free hand over her face and tried to keep it together. Don’t cry.

  “Yeah, um, I’ll be all right.” She took in a shaky breath. “So when did you get here?”

  “Few days ago … I think.” He frowned. He didn’t seem to have noticed how upset she was.

  “And, do you–” How could she ask this? “You know your dad’s Pantheon, right?”

  “Yeah, I know. That’s why I came. He’s going to change things. He’s leading the rebellion you’ve joined.”

  Oh, God. Rosie tried to see past the strange vagueness in his eyes. “No, Dalton. He’s lying to you. There is no rebellion. He’s trying to take all the power, him and Alpha.”

  He studied her a moment. “No, I don’t think that’s right.” But he seemed confused and she pressed him, leaning in close, desperate to break through. “It is right. I know it. You trust me, don’t you?”

  “Of course.” Dalton’s hand tightened briefly in hers. “But I think you’ve got it wrong.”

  Rosie despaired. “Dalton,” she whispered, “Pip, he came to get me out, he–” Her throat threatened to close and she struggled to speak. “They killed him, Dalton. He’s gone.”

  “Pip? With the cure?”

  “Yes.” She stared at the floor, unable to breathe. “Did you really come here because you wanted to? Can you remember?”

  His eyebrows drew together as if he wasn’t sure what she was asking. “I think so.”

  “But do you remember?”

  Doubt flickered across his face. He blinked. “I don’t know.”

  Rosie reached up to touch the wounds on his temples and he flinched. She pushed back her hair showing him her burns. “Do you see these?” she said. “You have them as well. They’ve done something to you, Dalton.”

  He seemed disturbed by her claim and she saw him struggling to think, to remember if what she said was true. But then like a switch had been flicked, the confusion cleared from his face and he suddenly let go of her hand and got up. “I have to go.”

  “Dalton–”

  “No.” He headed for the door. “Dad’s waiting for me.” He turned and smiled at her before he left, but it was only an imitation of how he used to smile: pale, insubstantial and it broke her heart.

  Dalton walked into Alpha’s office. It was spartan, merely a large holo desk, a chair and a small shelf stacked with digi books. A single artwork of flowing digital images decorated one wall. The faint aroma of spices wafted from a steaming cup of tea on the desk. Dalton stood in the centre of the room, hands behind his back while Alpha stud
ied him from his chair.

  He was unsettled from seeing Rosie. She’d been so sad. What was it she’d said? All those things about his dad. He struggled to reconcile it with what his father had told him, but it was hard to hang onto Rosie’s words, they kept slipping away. Should he ask his dad about it?

  Thinking of his father made him realise his dad wasn’t in Alpha’s office. He thought he was going to be here as well, but maybe he was busy doing all those things he said needed to be done to fix Helios.

  “Where’s Dad?” he asked.

  “He’s a busy man,” Alpha said. “I must admit you are very like him, watching me like that, though you are taller. Few powerful men let their children outgrow them in stature.”

  “My father doesn’t believe in genetic manipulation,” Dalton said.

  Alpha’s smile was mild. “No, he does not.” He paused. “And what do you believe?”

  “That’s too broad a question to answer.”

  “I suppose it is.” Alpha’s gaze was bright with interest. “You’re aware, no doubt, of your older brother’s disregard for our cause.”

  Dalton frowned. Why was he talking about Chris? “I loved my brother,” he said. “But he’s dead.”

  “Of course, a regrettable loss.” Alpha’s expression became momentarily sympathetic and for some reason Dalton was suddenly furious and felt an intense dislike for this man. He wanted to punch him, beat him to the ground. But just as suddenly as it had come, the impulse went.

  “What do you want?” Dalton asked.

  “Only to welcome you officially to our Enclave and introduce you to Hanto, who you can count on for any information you might need.” He touched a finger to the desk. “Hanto, you may enter.”

  The door behind Dalton opened and a black-clad operative with an overly muscular neck came in. Hanto put out a hand. “Welcome.”

  Dalton shook it firmly. “Hanto is one of our top operatives,” Alpha said. “He will ensure you find your way around, escort you anywhere you need to be.”

  Dalton nodded. That sounded useful.

  “Hanto, show our new recruit to his room and help him settle in, then take him to the cafeteria. I’m sure he will be hungry.”

  “Thank you.” Dalton turned to Alpha who said, “No, thank you. May you do your father proud.”

  Dalton followed Hanto from the room and felt an unfamiliar twist of apprehension for no reason he could discern. Something Rosie had said came back to him. Her question about how he’d arrived here. He didn’t remember and it bothered him. Why didn’t he? And there was another thing he was supposed to remember. Something important about an object his dad had. He could almost picture it, but it kept slipping away whenever he tried to focus. It was shining, silver, of that he was certain. And his family’s crest was on it, the curling Cs, but other than that he couldn’t recall what it was.

  He followed Hanto along the hallways, trying and failing to get past the strange block in his memory.

  CHAPTER 15

  It was hard to understand how the room could be the same. Her bed made, clothes folded neatly at its end. Nothing should be the same. How could she go on existing like this, how could anything exist any more? The world should be different with him gone.

  At the thought, the gaping hole inside her yawned wider and she had to sit down on the bed, the clothes crumpling beneath her.

  “You going to puke?” Gillian hovered, worried.

  Rosie shook her head. She couldn’t feel anything. She was numb, nothing seemed solid. She saw Pip again as if he was right there in the room, as if she could touch him. Saw him fall. A breath caught in her chest, constricted.

  “Drink this.” Gillian thrust a glass of something under her nose. “It will help.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’ll help settle your stomach.” Gillian sounded stressed and gestured at the surveillance audio. Come on, she mouthed, her eyebrows raised.

  Rosie took it and sipped. It tasted like sour lemon but something gritty was in it, a kind of powder. Had Gillian been instructed to drug her? She studied the girl. She’d been there; she’d stopped her shooting Freddie. Had she been attempting to help or hinder? Rosie held the glass out and deliberately tipped its contents onto the floor.

  Gillian swore and grabbed it before it emptied. “What’re you doing?”

  “It was an accident.”

  Gillian’s lips tightened with frustration, then with an exhalation of breath, she went to her bed and fetched her study tablet. She spent a few furious seconds etching a message on it then shoved it in Rosie’s face so she could read it.

  I’m trying to help you!

  Rosie shrugged. Gillian wrote something else.

  That drink wasn’t drugged. It had a stim in it; I thought you could use it, for your headaches.

  Rosie shifted herself back to lie down on the bed and look at the ceiling.

  Gillian stared at her for a moment then threw the tablet down. “Rosie, please, I know what happened in training was … God, terrible, but I was coming to help you when I heard your com cut off. If I’d got there sooner, you might not have got hurt. Don’t shut me out.” Rosie closed her eyes but Gillian sat on the bed and shook her, seeming not to care what the surveillance picked up. “I’m sorry.” Her expression was contrite, desperate. “Really, I am. We were a team; I’m on your side.”

  But Rosie pushed her away. “Leave me alone.”

  “Okay. I get it. I know how it feels to lose–” She stopped, but Rosie knew what she was going to say: people you love. Gillian had lost her entire family and that was awful, worse than awful, a tragedy, but it didn’t change that Pip was gone.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Rosie,” Gillian said. “Things happen.”

  Wasn’t it? He’d come here to save her. At least Gillian hadn’t brought the gangs to her parents’ farm, that had been all Helios’s greed, but Rosie knew it was her being here that had led to Pip’s death. If she hadn’t thought she could save everybody, he might still be alive. And what had she achieved? She hadn’t stopped anything; she couldn’t even save herself.

  Gillian was glaring at her in frustration. “Come on, you can’t just lie there. We have to go to the caf for the lunch service and you can’t not go. There’s training this afternoon, and they’ll expect you there. You’ve got to get up.”

  But Rosie didn’t move. Couldn’t. She just wanted to go to sleep. “I feel sick,” she said.

  “Rosie?” Gillian whispered.

  She squeezed her eyes shut.

  “Tell them I was too sick.”

  She felt Gillian behind her, her breathing harsh. But then she moved away and, a moment later, the door shut behind her. Rosie pulled her knees up to her chest and pushed her throbbing head against her hands.

  Gillian could have been gone an hour or ten, Rosie couldn’t tell and didn’t care. She didn’t move from her bed. She fell asleep for a while but her dreams had been full of blood and death and her running endlessly after Pip, never catching him.

  Gillian came back and put a tray of food on the floor by her bed.

  “Have some water at least,” she said. But Rosie remained curled up facing the wall and eventually Gillian switched off the lights. So the day became night and it was more than twenty-four hours now that Pip no longer existed in her world.

  Rosie didn’t sleep. Gillian tossed and turned as if bothered by nightmares. Rosie curled tighter trying to ease the emptiness inside. Pip’s last words, his last kiss, kept replaying in her mind. She couldn’t make it stop. And then would come the end. The sound of the shot. It was so real, too real. She wanted to shut it out, to make it belong to someone else. She wanted him to still be here, to wake up and for it all to be different. Pip would be alive. Freddie would be dead instead. She imagined getting the gun first, training it on the small boy. Him falling. Tears came in the dark, hot and salty, filling her nose and mouth. She remembered Pip comforting her when she’d cried. Never again.

  Then she heard Gil
lian getting up, a humming sound, and a click in the dark.

  “Rosie?” Gillian whispered. Her hand was on her shoulder and she stilled.

  “I got another stylus, from Sulawayo; the surveillance is off.”

  Rosie rolled over. Gillian’s eyes shone in the darkness. “You have to come with me, quick.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I need to show you something. I know you won’t believe me so you’ve got to see this. It’s the only way.” She wasn’t making much sense and Rosie was so weary. “What do you want, Gillian?”

  “Just come with me. I know you don’t trust me now, but you will – and maybe Sulawayo as well.”

  “Sulawayo?” Rosie sat up, wincing at the sharp pains that went off all over her body. “What’s she got to do with this?”

  “You’ll understand when you see,” Gillian said. “If I tell you, you won’t believe me, but–”

  Rosie cut her off. “You’re right – I don’t believe you.”

  Gillian grabbed her hand. “Rosie, things aren’t what you think.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Please come with me.” Her eyes were wide with urgency, with hope.

  Rosie pushed back the covers. What more could she lose?

  They crept down the corridor, Gillian leading and suspending the surveillance as they went. It was past two and there was no one about as they jogged quietly past the empty chairs and tables in the caf.

  Rosie had thought they might be going to Sulawayo’s or Alpha’s rooms, but instead Gillian led her outside across the hard dirt of the yard and to the underground training lift.

  The night was cool and smelled of dust and damp and, somewhere beyond, insects kept up a rhythmic chirping. Gillian swiped the stylus over the pillar and the platform opened with a slight hiss. They stepped onto it and dropped fast down the chute. Rosie squinted at the sudden light of the shielding that sprang up around them and watched the floor counter. Instead of stopping at level sixteen, where the games room was, they kept going down and down all the way to twenty-two. Gillian was tense as they came to a halt and they stepped out into an identical vestibule to the one on sixteen.