“The rest are out on the streets attacking drones and defending Citizens,” Tan went on. “Doing what they were always meant to do.”

  “Which is?” Alan asked doubtfully.

  “Defending our nation and its Citizens,” one of the Cardinals supplied.

  I lowered my gun. Their hands slowly came down. We stared at each other, a silent and uneasy truce for now. I wanted to rail at them, curse them for their abuse in the past. Point out that their blind faith in a Chief Overseer, who was little more than a tyrant, had led to multiple deaths of said Citizens in the past.

  But it was water under the bridge, for now.

  “They came through a tunnel, we think,” I said, nodding behind the pile of drones. “Probably goes all the way to the National Museum.”

  “Why the museum?” Tan asked.

  “Because that’s where Shiloh’s mainframe is housed.”

  A Cardinal whistled his surprise, the rest mimicked the shock on their faces.

  “Where’s Lena?” Tan suddenly asked.

  “Hopefully at Muhgah Keekee by now,” I said, just as the shortwave radio crackled with Si’s urgent voice.

  “Come in, Si,” Alan said, getting his radio off his belt before I’d even reached for mine.

  “We’re in the museum.” Oh, hell no. “Shiloh’s taken Lena and we can’t get in the room.”

  A red haze fell down over my vision, making everything warp and dim and then materialise in blood coated focus. I started toward the drone pile even before Alan replied.

  “We’re on our way,” my Second advised. “We’ve got back-up,” he added, just as I cleared the drone mountain in swift and precise moves. Tan landing beside me on nimble feet, and then we started running.

  “I think I know how to stop her,” Si was saying over the radio. “But I need in that room. I’m laying charges now.”

  “No!” I yelled. “Tell him to hold off. Lena’s in there.”

  Alan relayed the message, as what seemed like miles stretched out before our eyes. Dim lighting led the way, making the going easier, but already my breaths were laboured, my wound felt stretched beyond what could be called good, and my chest ached.

  I knew it had nothing to do with the adrenaline rush making my heart pump a million miles per second, and everything to do with Lena

  I’m coming, baby! Hold on!

  It took too long to reach them. The tunnels seemed an endless taunt that mocked. It would have been faster to go outside the bunker, climb in a fucking van, and then drive to the National Museum. But still I ran. Still Tan kept pace. With Alan, Wang Jie and the Cardinals right behind. Our heated breaths bouncing off the closed in walls announcing our impending arrival even if our thundering footsteps hadn’t. But finally we came to a set of hidden stairs, unscathed, that led us up into an impressive atrium. The ambient lights of the city filtering in through a skylight way the hell above.

  And were met with fifty fucking drones.

  I started firing as soon as I spotted their red glow. Desperation and pure terror for Lena urging me on when survival instinct would have had me looking for shelter. Laser beams arced over my head as the Cardinals behind me added their weight to mine, following my leadership unquestioningly.

  I dodged, I rolled, I used elbows and feet to push and kick my way through the throng. Whirring sounded out all around me, met with the insistent buzz of the metallic men who fought back with precision and accuracy we just couldn’t match. Sweat fell into my eyes, dust rained down all around us, and then a drone lifted his gun and aimed for the domed ceiling way the fuck up in the air.

  The machines wouldn’t be harmed by shattered glass, but we sure as fuck would be. I yelled out a warning and we all dived for cover, some not making it in time. Blood painted the marble floor slick with red. Plastered columns erupted around us, molten metal melted and oozed out on the floor. In short order we had a quagmire of debris and slush beneath our feet making traction impossible for us, and thank fuck, the drones.

  I worked my way toward one of the main curved stairwells, determination making me fight like the devil to reach Lena below. Lasers fired and whined. Men shouted and screamed. Machines buzzed in mechanical fury that couldn’t match mine. I was grazed more than once by a laser beam, but only superficially, and had jabbed myself and Wang Jie with the antidote back in the bunker before the cavalry had arrived.

  I just had to stay alive long enough to get to her.

  She just had to stay alive long enough for me to reach her side.

  “Trent!” Tan’s voice sounded out.

  I looked over my shoulder, saw him battling several drones at once, and then a grenade flew from his hand towards the drones blocking my path. I ducked, pulling a drone down on top of me, and felt the blast through its unforgiving form right into my chest.

  I couldn’t even groan.

  “Way’s clear!” Tan was yelling. “Go get her!”

  He was offering me cover. Prepared to lay down his life so I could save hers.

  I used what little strength I had left and pushed the immobile form of the drone off me, rising to my feet and firing at an approaching drone from the side, even as the room spun and the floor came up to meet me.

  “Up you go!” Alan said in my ear, helping me to my feet and setting me in the right direction. “I’ll hold them off on the stairwell. You go get your girl.”

  I nodded, regretted the movement, and then started running, praying my feet would keep up with my body, and gravity wouldn’t kick me in the arse. My boots were slippery, the marble of the tread on the worn stairs was smooth. I made it to the bottom faster than intended, my backside and heart taking the brunt of the fall and the worst of my panic.

  But still I kept going.

  Lena.

  Si, Lena’s zebra-lookalike, and her boyfriend stood towards the end of a long dark corridor, illuminated by multiple torches. Si, himself, was crouching by the door connecting the last of the explosive devises. The smell of burned plastique already filled the air. By the time I reached them I could see from where; a thick metal door hung off its hinges at the end of the wide corridor, evidence of a recent blast charring the edges.

  I skidded in beside them, panting, sweating, aching, beyond exhausted and nowhere near ready to give up.

  “How long has she been in there?” I asked, receiving blank stares. I raised my voice and yelled, “How long has Lena been in there?”

  “Possibly ten minutes!” Si yelled back. They’d damaged their ears. “Took us five to get out of that hell hole.” He pointed back at the decimated vault door. “Five more to set this up. It’s ready to go.”

  “Any idea where she is on the other side?” I shouted in his ear.

  He looked up at me, understanding on his dust smeared face. Then shook his head.

  “It’s sealed, Trent,” he said when I went to argue the wisdom of this. “Air locked, if my guess is right. For short periods of time, Shiloh could cut off the cooling vents and risk overheating to achieve an airless environment.”

  “Why?” I whispered, appalled.

  “Last line of defence,” he said, having read my lips, I think. Or seen the shock and dread on my face and just guessed. “I have to destroy the door so Shiloh can’t trap anyone else inside.”

  “Do it once you crack it,” I offered. It had to be safer that way.

  “How? There’s no keypad. No eScanner. No fucking lines to indicate where it ends. We only know she was on the other side of this wall because the dust had been disturbed.” He pointed down at the floor, which was now a messed up criss-cross of copious marks sliced through the grime.

  I sucked in breath after breath staring at those fucking marks, my hands fisted, my chest rising and falling too quickly. My heart screaming, No! My mind calmly advising me that this was the only way.

  Shiloh had to be stopped. Lena could be dying right now. I had no choice.

  “Do it!” I said, and moved back with the others, as Si flicked the timers on the explosive devices and then chased after us to the far end of the hall.

  The noise of the door disintegrating reverberated around the small space, bouncing off the walls and ceiling, ricocheting off the floor. Making the entire basement rumble with resentment.

  The building held. The dust started to settle.

  But I was already running through the door to Shiloh’s hideaway, gun raised, heart in throat. Pleading with every deity worshipped in Wánměi that Lena had survived.

  She lay on her side, far enough away not to have been affected. But she was so fucking pale. And her breaths were too fucking slow and shallow.

  “Lena, baby!” I called, lifting her up and brushing her beautiful hair off her face. She was limp, like a rag-doll, in my arms. “Lena, breathe! Come back to me!”

  “Intruder alert!” Shiloh intoned over the speakers.

  “Intruder alert this, bitch!” Si said, breaking the glass of a cabinet, that stood in the centre of a row of similar cabinets, that meant absolutely nothing to me.

  “For the better of the people,” Shiloh said. “For the future of Wánměi.”

  “Not your Wánměi anymore,” Si snarled, pulling Lena’s fucking Shiloh unit, of all things, from his oversized satchel.

  Lena stirred, drawing my attention back down to her again. Making me crush her tighter to my chest. She grimaced and I instantly eased up on my hold, smothering her face with kisses as her eyes flicked open and she sucked in much needed, life-giving air.

  I made a sobbing sound. Very unmanly. Buried my face in her sweet hair, lips to skin. I felt her hand reach up and stroke listlessly through my own strands. But she didn’t say a word, just kept breathing.

  The sweetest sound of them all.

  “I figured it out,” Si was saying, getting Zhang Jun to help hold Lena’s Shiloh up while he diligently connected wire after wire, moving some in the mainframe, crossing them with others, making a maze out of electrical cords that boggled the mind. “The answer wasn’t in cracking the algorithm,” he said, as he kept toiling. “The algorithm is perfect as it is. The most impressive piece of code writing I have ever seen.”

  “You are not behaving accordingly,” Shiloh advised.

  We all ignored her.

  “It was always Lena’s Shiloh,” Si went on. “Created to keep her safe, but much, much more.”

  He stepped back and surveyed his workmanship, then turned and looked at a seemingly coherent Lena, sitting up slightly in my arms, eyes wide as she watched him back.

  “It’s designed to keep Wánměi safe, as well,” he added. “In fact, it’s the failsafe that Shiloh didn’t even know existed. The base code written close to forty years ago, and contained, isolated and protected, in here.” He tapped the unit Zhang Jun still held.

  “Do you want to do the honours?” he asked Lena.

  She glanced up at the screen. The image of the woman on it seemed to draw her attention like a starved child. I stared at her too. She was beautiful. Long blonde, model appropriate hair.

  And pale blue eyes like the morning sky.

  Oh, fuck.

  “He didn’t know, when he created it,” she whispered. “But he figured it out. When he gave me my Shiloh unit at the age of eight years old, he said, ‘Guard her, Lena. Guard her well.’ I never knew,” she added, using me to climb to her feet. “He couldn’t tell me.”

  “No,” Si said. “Much too dangerous. But he gave you the key, because he knew you’d look after it. He knew you’d figure it out.”

  “But I didn’t,” she said, crossing to him. “You did.”

  “Ah, but Lena,” Si said, standing aside to let her approach. “You found me. Your father gave you the skills to survive, and the will to keep doing it. And the desire to be free. You found me because of all of those and he knew you would.”

  Fuck. I was impressed as hell, but also strangely jealous. Si, the bastard, had figured it out, and Lena was looking at him as though he was her saviour.

  Well, great. Just fucking great. Hit the button already.

  “You should not desire for more than you have,” Shiloh announced. “I will provide all that you need.”

  “But we don’t need you, Shiloh,” Lena said. Taking one last chance to look at her mother.

  The way she stabbed the flashing enter button on her Shiloh unit made me think she was determined to take her mother back from this machine. A gift, I was thinking, her father had given the programme; an honour that it eventually didn’t deserve it.

  There were no sparks or fireworks. No flashing lights or winding down of instruments. The screen on Lena’s Shiloh flickered. A series of numbers crossed in front of us in lightning speed.

  “The algorithm,” Si advised, watching in awe.

  The screen changed. More information scrolling across it. A map of Wánměi, lights winking out one by one.

  “Street-cams,” Si provided. “Sat-loc codes,” he added shortly thereafter. “Drone deactivation sequence.”

  And suddenly a voice sounded out, not through the mainframe Shiloh, but Lena’s one.

  It was male. And by the stunned, heart breaking look on her face, it was her father’s.

  “Have you been a model Citizen, Shiloh?”

  We all glanced up at the large vid-screen. The image of Lena’s mother wavered. Shiloh didn’t reply.

  “No,” came Lena’s father’s voice and the room dimmed, the hum of the mainframe died, and all that was left was the winking on of torches and a silence that seemed to go on forever.

  And yet, promised so much.

  Chapter 41

  Because That Was Just Him

  Lena

  We stood on forgotten, once off-limits, Ohkahoo Beach, and looked out to sea, seeing only infinite possibilities. Tall palm trees reached for the sky, their trunks at odd angles, forced there by prevailing winds. White sand, hot and fine, sifted between my bare toes. The sound of gulls mixed with the hoots of laughter from over our shoulder as the rebel army, with its adopted refugee families and several Cardinals, all celebrated our nation’s freedom.

  I still couldn’t believe it.

  “I understand why she exported the drones,” I said softly, feeling Trent’s warmth at my back, his arms around my waist, his chin resting on my shoulder as he gazed at the same miraculous scene that I did. “But why the humans?”

  “I don’t know,” he said just as softly. “Maybe we’ll be able to get them back.”

  “You want to take this revolution off shore?” I asked, amused.

  “What I really want is to curl up in bed with you and not get out for at least a week. No, a month. We’ll have to stock up. Make sure we have all the necessities, so we don’t have to call in Alan or Si.”

  “Or Tan.”

  “Fuck no! Not Tan.”

  I laughed. He sounded mortified. I guess he saw Tan as my brother. Like I did. Like I still did, despite secrets and wars and everything in between.

  Tan had honoured his promise to my father, even though his sister had died for the cause. He’d told me, in the aftermath of Shiloh’s destruction, that my father had done so much for them, that they’d both felt eternally grateful. He’d paid that debt the only way he knew how, by finding me.

  And then, he’d said, he’d fallen for the Elite who walked amongst Citizens as though she belonged.

  I’d wanted to ask, but I couldn’t. The way he’d said it, made it sound like it was more than brotherly love. But Tan and I had never been like that.

  And we never would.

  So, I accepted his explanation. I’d hugged him and he’d hugged me back. And that was that.

  “Not Tan,” I whispered.

  “So,” Trent agreed, picking up on the melancholy in my tone. “Supplies and a bed and we’ll be set.”

  “Perfect.” A word that meant more than it seemed.

  Wánměi was not the image of perfection Chew-wen and my father had dreamed. But we had hope it was better than it had been.

  Chaos still spilled over on the streets, though. The Cardinals had, thankfully, stepped in where the sPol drones had left off, with Tan providing a liaison between the public and our redefined police force. But there’d need to be elections, of course. A long road to establishing a new, free Wánměi. True perfection in the making, but wisely never to be obtained.

  Man needs something to strive for. To get up out of bed for and face each day.

  “What will you do with your freedom, Lena Carr?” Trent asked.

  “I’m not sure. Live life, I suppose. Guide those who need help adjusting. Many will suffer from ration withdrawal.”

  “And you want to be there for them.” Not a question. A statement.

  “Of course.”

  “Of course,” he quietly agreed.

  Si approached then. Pulling our gaze from the horizon. We both turned with smiles on our faces to greet him. The smiles dimming when we saw how pale he was. Not just from exhaustion and the bruises he’d sustained, like us. But a bone deep dread that had shocked his system. Destroyed the buoyant expression he’d worn since we’d walked out of the National Museum this morning.

  “What is it?” Trent asked, already assuming the mantle of rebel leader again.

  “I found something,” Si started, and I noticed he held Markham’s vid-screen in his hands. “In the memo.”

  “Go on,” Trent encouraged.

  “About…” he paused. Shook his head. Looked out at the sea as though afraid of it.

  I felt a chill invade my bones.

  Trent’s hand slipped into mine, fingers entwining.

  “The rest of the world,” Si finally said. Not looking at us or the vid-screen in his hands, just staring blankly at the horizon.

  Trent leaned forward and lifted the vid-screen from Si’s white knuckled grasp. The screen swiped when he tried it. Simon had obviously fixed it enough for us to be able to read the rest of the memo from the Chief Overseer.

  I looked over his shoulder, saw the words “cattle” and “payment”. Felt the world tilt on its access as my eyes scanned the remainder of the document page.

  “The wiped Citizens were a pay-off,” Trent said, incredulously. “To prevent an invasion.”