“It’ll be dangerous,” Trent pointed out. Zhang Jun stood taller. “You’ll need to be armed. Have you been practising?”

  “Yes, sir,” the boy replied. Even Xiu Ying had stopped dancing around Simon and was focusing harder on her task.

  “Lena and Si’s protection is paramount,” Trent advised, and I felt a heaviness settle on my shoulders, right next to my recently acquired resolve.

  “I understand, sir,” Zhang Jun said seriously.

  “We don’t have anyone else to ask,” Trent went on. “But that does not mean you don’t have a choice. You can opt out. Go with Mr Li and wait out the night in one of the basements.”

  Zhang Jun looked toward his girlfriend, a shared understanding passing between them in the one glance. He turned back to face Trent.

  “We go where The Zebra goes,” he announced. “She saved us.” He looked toward me then. “She’ll save Wánměi.”

  That heaviness became a pile of bricks. But conversely, my desire to keep them safe grew, as well.

  “Good,” Trent said, laying a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Let’s get you geared up, while Xiu Ying finishes here.”

  He gave me a long look, then led the way out of the room, no doubt heading to the armoury.

  I stared at the door for a long time and then looked back at Simon and Xiu Ying. She’d almost completed the haircut. Si looked like a completely different person.

  “What about everything we’ve amassed here?” I said, my eyes drawn to the bright vid-screens.

  “Trent will pack up what he can in one of the vans and hide it,” Si explained, running a hand over his short locks, and then rubbing the back of his neck as if surprised to find he had one. “It’s all easy enough to pull apart and transport if necessary. I made it that way.”

  “In case of something like this?” I asked.

  He turned in his chair, offered a smile to Xiu Ying, who had moved to sweep up the fallen cuts of Si’s hair.

  “Three bases,” he said. “This will be the fourth. I thought it was time I made ourselves mobile.”

  Three bases. The original rebel army base before the Uprising. Tehteh. And Park Road. Now we could add the Domain to the list.

  “Where will we go?” I asked, as Xiu Ying came and sat beside me. I took her hand in mine when she started to fidget. Giving her a reassuring squeeze, I moved to help Si with the containers he’d already packed for our billboard hijacking.

  “Something will turn up,” Si said softly, stacking the large metal suitcases on top of each other. He turned around and picked up Jeffrey Markham’s broken vid-screen, holding it in his two hands for some time.

  “You got the memo open,” I said with surprise, noticing the article was displayed on the vid-screen.

  “Just the front page. The one you read in the suite.”

  “There’s more to it.”

  “I know. And I’ll crack it. But tonight,” he turned to look at me, “we’ve got a nation to wow, Elite.’

  I smiled. Received a crooked one in return.

  “Do I have a speech to read?” I asked, taking one of the cases as he handed it to me. Xiu Ying stepped forward for the next.

  “Nah,” Si said, as Trent and Zhang Jun came back in the room, armed, loaded, prepared. “Just speak from the heart, Lena. And you can’t go wrong.”

  He handed over the last case to Zhang Jun, leaving none for Trent. He wasn’t coming with us, and, I realised, he wasn’t going to see us off, either.

  “Right,” Simon announced. “Operation Zebra Alert has begun.”

  “Zebra Alert!” Xiu Ying cried. “I love it!”

  “You love everything, hái wěi,” Zhang Jun said softly to her as she passed. His term of endearment, sexy girl, making Xiu Ying blush.

  “Life is worth loving,” she declared, recovering nicely I thought, as they disappeared around the edge of the door.

  “Any last directions?” Si asked Trent.

  Trent’s eyes were on me.

  “No,” he said with a shake of his head. “You’ve got this. We’ll see you in Muhgah Keekee later.”

  “Later,” Si said, and I couldn’t quite pick up the tone in his voice. Hope? Fear? Resignation?

  He turned on his heel and followed the teenagers out.

  “Any news of Jared?” I asked, as Trent and I just stood there.

  “None,” he whispered.

  “It’ll be all right,” I offered, not sure what I was promising would be all right.

  Certain nothing would be.

  Trent reached up and brushed a strand of my hair behind my ear. So gentle. He left his hand resting against the side of my neck; thumb softly stroking.

  “I like your hair,” he whispered.

  I smiled.

  Something flashed in his eyes. Something tormented and heart-aching. Regret mixed with devotion mixed with angst and dread and worry and fear. He didn’t want me to go. He didn’t want to let me go.

  But he was. Because it was the only thing we could do.

  “Find Jared,” I whispered back.

  He nodded.

  “Get the refugees to safety,” I added, pushing my luck with the orders, but he only smiled; small, amused, but there. “Be waiting for me in Muhgah Keekee.”

  “Lena,” he said with such feeling, and before he could stall, unable to say anything else, I kissed him.

  Deep and sweet and heart-wrenchingly desperate. Putting everything we couldn’t say to each other right then into that one kiss.

  Then I spun on my heel and walked through the door. Shoulders back, head held high.

  Leaving, what felt like, the most vital piece of my heart, of me, behind.

  Chapter 36

  This Has To Stop

  Trent

  The last of the gear was packed in the back of the van and I shut the door, banging on the side. Feeling unsettled, and not just because we’d stuffed thousands of dollars worth of equipment in one nondescript vehicle with minimal security features to be left on the side of the road somewhere.

  Jared was still missing.

  Paul stuck his head out the driver’s window, worried eyes finding mine as I stepped out from behind the vehicle.

  “Do you want me to come back and continue with the search?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head, feeling a headache coming on, knowing there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop it.

  Maybe finding Jared would help. But then, we still had Shiloh and Harjeet to deal with.

  “Stay with the gear until I give the all-clear,” I instructed. “It’s all that’s left of our base. We’ll need it.”

  “OK,” he said, clearly not wanting to be left out of the action.

  “Guard it well, Paul,” I said, holding his disgruntled gaze with a hard look of my own. “And keep your wits about you. I’ve got a feeling the shit’s about to hit the fan.”

  “OK,” he repeated, this time the seriousness of the task resounded in his tone.

  I watched him pull out and head down the leafy roadway towards the far side of the Domain Park, avoiding the National Museum completely. We’d be steering clear of that place until the last minute. But the last minute was nowhere near in sight. We still had no idea how to combat Shiloh.

  I started heading back toward the bunker, reaching the door just as Mr Li opened it.

  “Trent,” he said, in way of greeting.

  “How are the refugees going?” I asked.

  “We’ve managed to temporarily house most of them, just my and young Zhang Jun’s family are left.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “I thought perhaps our old apartment building in Muhgah Foh. Xiu Ying and Zhang Jun know the way.” He was wanting to make it easy for them. Wanting desperately for them to be back in the safety of their home ground.

  Little did he know nowhere was safe right now.

  “Take care, then,” I said, and moved to walk past him.

  “One more thing,” Mr Li said, stepping aside and letting me pass through the door, but halting me in the hallway with those carefully spoken words.

  I turned to look at him, expecting to receive last minute highly opinionated instructions of some kind; the man had attempted to interfere at every turn.

  “Thank you. For what you’re doing,” he said. “Wánměi is not the country I love anymore. I thought…” he stopped, shook his head, and peered down despondently at the concrete floor.

  “We all have our roles to play, Mr Li,” I said consolingly, just as the shortwave radio crackled on my belt.

  I pulled it free, turning away from the man, and placed the radio to my lips.

  “Go ahead.”

  “Storeroom,” came Alan’s succinct reply. And anyone overhearing wouldn’t have guessed at the horror I felt in that one word.

  I started jogging towards the storeroom, which we hadn’t bothered to empty, not even for the refugees. Things had progressed too quickly to contemplate taking supplies, other than the electronic equipment that kept our heads barely above Shiloh’s waves, that is. Maybe, if we’d cleared it out sooner…

  I skidded to a stop beside Alan. The door open, his hands on his hips, frown lines marring his face as he stared down at something inside.

  I stepped around him, aware Mr Li had followed; curious as to my speedy escape, at a guess.

  “Ah, fuck it,” I said, the weight of this God awful revolution weighing so heavily on my shoulders. “Emir.”

  “Broken neck,” Alan supplied, glancing up at Mr Li and deciding he wasn’t a security threat. “A silat technique,” he added. “Jared was better trained than he let on.”

  “Son of a bitch!” I exclaimed.

  “We’re definitely compromised,” Mr Li offered, his face whiter than I’d ever seen as he glanced down at Emir’s still form.

  “You need to get your family out of here,” I instructed the older man. “Don’t delay.”

  He nodded, lifted his eyes to both of us, words conveyed in that one long look. Then he turned on his heel and started striding determinedly towards the communal room.

  “They the last of them?” Alan asked.

  “Yeah. Paul’s gone with the gear too.”

  “What do you want me to do with Emir?” What could we do?

  “Cover him with a sheet,” I instructed. “There’s nothing can be done for him now.”

  “We weren’t to know,” Alan offered, stepping forward and grabbing a clean sheet off a nearby shelf. “Jared hid his skills and political affiliations well.”

  “I should have seen it,” I said, chastising myself for not putting it all together. “I knew something was off about the man.”

  “Trent,” Alan scolded. “If you should have, then we all should have. Fuck, I thought it was Li.”

  “Lena thought it was Wang Jie,” I offered.

  Alan chuckled; it was strained. “Wang Jie thought it was Emir.”

  “He told you that?”

  “Yeah, just now, when I saw him in the tech room.”

  I shook my head. “Come on. Let’s go relieve him. It’s time to move out.”

  We both looked down at the covered form of one of our men. I could no longer count on my fingers the number who had died for this revolution since I’d taken over from my father. I’d long ago stopped including the numbers from the Uprising in that figure, as well. But now, it seemed, I was in jeopardy of losing count of those who had perished since.

  “This has to stop,” I declared, unable to turn away from Emir.

  “We’ll stop it,” Alan offered, placing a hand on my shoulder and turning me around. He shut the door, closing Emir in the storeroom. “Should we tell Si and Lena?”

  “Not yet. Let her get the address out of the way first.”

  “I don’t know,” Alan drawled. “Seeing her fuming over the death of a friend might send the right message to the nation.”

  “I am not manipulating my woman like that.”

  “Your woman, is it?” he said softly, just as Wang Jie came tearing out of the tech room as though being chased by demonic hounds.

  “What is it?” I demanded.

  He skidded to a stop before us, eyes wide, mouth open, fear a palpable entity on the air.

  “They’re here,” he finally whispered.

  “Who?” Alan snapped, his hand already holding a laser gun, the whine adding to the tension zinging throughout my frame.

  But Wang Jie didn’t need to answer, the synchronised beat of drone boots on concrete sounded out in the echoing hall.

  Followed by flashing red lights across the walls at the end of the corridor, announcing their impending arrival.

  Chapter 37

  I Smiled; It Was Probably Cunning

  Lena

  I stood in front of the camera, staring at a blinking red light. Broadway mere footsteps away. Thousands of office workers and last minute shoppers and complacent commuters had pulled their faces up from their multiple vid-screens, stopped in their tracks, and were now watching wide eyed, as my image adorned every billboard down the road, and hundreds of others throughout the nation.

  And I had no idea what to say.

  Si moved out from behind the camera on its tripod and looked at me, a question on his pale face. A face that hadn’t walked the streets of Wánměi in daylight for over a decade. But no one knew our city like Simon. He’d taken back roads and short cuts through alleys, hidden in multi-storied garages, blended in with car valet parking lots, while drones patrolled the streets outside. Then somehow managed to bring us here; on the roof of a mall, behind a four metre by three metre buzzing electronic sign.

  Even the traffic had stilled.

  It was hot, too. Not unusual for this late in the afternoon. The sun still hung determinedly in the sky; not low enough for any relief to have occurred. The urge to swipe at a trickle of sweat down the side of my neck was overpowering. It was only my Elite upbringing that prevented the act.

  I smiled at that thought. No doubt a self-deprecating one.

  Elite. Where it all began.

  “My name is Selena Carstairs,” I said at last. Si let out a slow breath of air and returned to his position behind the camera lens. “I am a Citizen of Wánměi. But I wasn’t born one. I chose to be one. A choice that the Overseers did not want me to make.

  “I have eaten at the Chief Overseer’s table. I have slept under his roof. I have attended his parties. Sipped his champagne. And I have watched the country I love slowly suffocate beneath his reign.

  “I have slowly suffocated with you.”

  I looked down at my hands, marshaling my thoughts. Sucking in a breath or two of air as though I was being smothered right then.

  My eyes came back up to the camera and I said, “But no more!”

  I could hear the gasps - at my obvious non-model declaration - down on the street from where I stood. Above them, but right by their sides. Unbeknown to them; right there.

  “Chew-wen Wang Chao is dead,” I announced. More shocked intakes of air. Some murmurs. “The Overseers would have you believe he lives on. But I watched him die. I saw it. And I know the man who directs our nation now is doing so from the Chief Overseer’s chair. But he is not in control.”

  Drones were moving in waves down the street, I could hear them. Shiloh’s voice commanding those Citizens still watching to move on. I had to hurry.

  “Where are the Cardinals?” I demanded, receiving a low hum of agreement. “Why so many drones? Are we to stand by and watch our world disintegrate because it is appropriate to not want for more? They say Wánměi is above all others. But what are we above? Ourselves? Or our compatriots?

  “Or, is the Wánměi they speak of not even us?”

  Simon nodded his head to indicate he was running the footage of the drone reactivation in Harjeet’s quarters at the factory.

  “The drones walk our streets in great numbers,” I said, as confusion sounded out on the street below at what they were seeing. “We trust them. We rely on them to keep us safe. But what happens when those in charge can’t even control them? What happens when the man playing our Chief Overseer can’t even command a drone to deactivate?

  “This is what happens.”

  Harjeet’s voice sounded out over the speakers, taken from my make-up case as the cameras in the room had not had microphones. Simon had synced the image and sound together, making a striking video of what had transpired that night.

  “Shut down,” came his imitated High-Anglisc voice. I watched on a small screen beside Simon as the drone stood upright in Harjeet’s office, facing forward, hands at its sides, red glow in its eyes fading.

  “See?” Harjeet said on the recording. The flash of my laser gun streaked across the screen, landing right between the drone’s eyes.

  The crowd below yelped, some started crying. Shiloh kept demanding they move on. Not one of them left Broadway. Not one of them obediently acted model and behaved.

  “That was uncalled for!” Harjeet in the recording declared.

  “No one coming?” my voice asked, when pressing his panic alarm elicited little result.

  “Where are they?” Harjeet demanded.

  “Stop! Or did you miss the part where I just shot your drone?”

  The billboards had become their vid-screens, the Citizens of Wánměi glued to them as they had only moments before been glued to their own. Watching a movie play out that sent chills through their bodies. That spoke to them on an intimate level.

  Their world.

  “You won’t shoot,” Harjeet in the recording insisted.

  “You really have the wrong idea about me, Citizen,” my voice replied.

  The crowd below watched on transfixed. Ignorant of the increase of drone activity on the street. Some were being herded away. Some had their views blocked by metallic bodies. Some only registered their plight when a drone’s laser gun whined as it fired up right by their heads.

  “No. It’s not how you work.,” Harjeet on the video countered. “It’s not how you think. You’re much too noble for that.”

  “I’m leaving,” my voice advised. A pause as I moved toward the shattered window. “What are you doing with the Citizens on the container ship?”

  Grumbled questions sounded out on the street. What container ship? What Citizens?