I didn't bother to close the lids, the less I touched him the better. But I did search his pockets, coming up with a packet of Tyger Menthols, a wallet that identified him as Joseph Ransley, a few dollars, a keycard and various credit cards, and a small vid-screen, that was code locked.

  I threw everything down on his chest in disgust. Nothing. Absolutely nothing on his role here, or how I'd identify the containers with the humans in them.

  I sat back on my haunches and thought for a minute. I could head back inside the ship and try to find where he rested. There might be manifest lists there. A job description wouldn't go astray either. But the further we got from Wánměi, the harder it would be to escape.

  And despite thinking this guard was on his own on-board, the need to jump ship, as Trent had suggested, was too great to be mucking around with finding clues.

  But I did need to be armed. I holstered my pistol and moved over to where my laser gun had fallen. I checked it to make sure it still functioned, and once satisfied slipped that away on my thigh. Then I limped towards the wrench. My left shin throbbed, but I just added it to the plethora of bruises already coating my body. I was alive. That was good enough for now.

  I picked the wrench up and weighed it in my hand. It was heavy. What the guard was using it for, other than trying to kill someone with it, I couldn't fathom. But it looked appropriate for a vessel of this size.

  Which made me realise the enormous task ahead. I tapped the wrench against my palm contemplatively, as I gave the surroundings one last futile look, and then started heading back towards the bow of the ship where the guard had last been.

  The rock of the boat seemed quite significant now; every few steps I lost my balance and slammed a shoulder into a container wall, or an elbow into a container door. No one banged back.

  I avoided the outer edge of the deck, though, fearing I'd topple over into the dark and churning sea. I'd never, ever been this far from Wánměi. Never not been standing on its soil. We were an island. Surrounded by ocean. Yet I had never swum in the sea. If I allowed myself too much time to think about my predicament I would flounder.

  There had to be a way to stop this ship. Turn it back. Get off it and get home.

  Wánměi may not be the perfect city-state it touted itself to be, but it was my home.

  Sea spray started to coat my face and clothing the closer I got to the bow. It took over a minute to make the very end, to see the rise and fall of the front of the vessel, as it breached waves and surged ahead. I felt a little sick at the vision it created. I turned my back on the darkness, knowing it symbolised more than just my fear of the unknown, and looked at a row of containers that stretched across this segment of the ship.

  There were eight and they weren't key-code locked like the containers I'd checked when I first scrambled aboard this boat. I stepped closer, my heart in my throat as I took in the panel that controlled not only the doors of the containers, but everything. From temperature to air flow, to the internal cameras and a way to communicate with those inside.

  These would have been the last containers to be loaded. Which made sense. They'd also be the first to be unloaded. The most perishable of the cargoes on-board being loaded after, and offloaded before, anything else.

  I lifted my hand and rested it against the door of the first container, wanting to knock and let them know I was there, but fearing it would scare the occupants too greatly.

  I eyed the control panel, frustratingly noting the reinforced casing which served two obvious purposes. One: it would keep it safe from external elements, such as the salty sea spray which coated it even now. And two: it couldn't be cracked open, with the tools at my disposal, and then decoded. My hand fisted where it rested against the container door.

  I pulled my glove off and tapped the screen with my index finger, having no plan but to see what instructions the device gave. If it was palm print activated, I'd cut off the guard's hand and use it. I wasn't above mutilation to free innocent people. But all the screen said was "Waiting."

  Waiting for what?

  There was a keypad with digits, labelled with letters of the alphabet, making the code required possibly numerical or alphabetical, or a mixture of both. There was no way of knowing how long the code was. It could have been anything. And now the only person to know for certain was dead.

  I stepped back, glanced to the left to determine all the containers were the same and then swore softly under my breath. My hand twitched above my laser gun.

  I couldn't even communicate with the people inside to warn them of what I intended doing without the key-code. I had to hope they'd hear the laser whine and take cover at the back of the container, away from the doors.

  I glanced at the laser gun in my hand. It was an older version, less powerful than recent ones, minus the drug lacing effect of the current Shiloh drones. I could probably get two of the container doors open before it ran out of power or, God forbid, blew up.

  But what choice did I have?

  I eyed the control panel. I took in each container. There was no way of telling which ones held the children. I closed my eyes and just breathed. Then took a step back and raised the gun.

  God forgive me.

  And fired. The whine of the laser escalated immediately as red light spewed from its tip and hit rapidly scorching steel. Burned paint and the molten metal of the doors met my nose, hazy and toxic fumes wafted up on the air. My feet were braced apart for balance, but with the rock of the ship - which wasn't just up and down, front to back, but side to side and then in a rolling type effect that was difficult to prepare for - I had to stop firing and re-aim, as the laser beam glanced off my target and left scorch marks over the side of the container. Wasting precious laser power where it did me no good.

  It took five torturous minutes to cut out the locking mechanism in the centre of the doors. Smoke floated around the hole that I'd made, a light shining from within, but no noise whatsoever. I bent down and peered inside; had I made a mistake? No red glowing eyes stared back at me, and the smoke made discerning any internal shapes impossible.

  I slipped my glove back on and worked at the lock, having to reach through the hole to jostle the latch inside the door itself. The material on my glove started to melt, heat burning into the flesh of my wrist where it rested on the melted metal of the container door.

  I hissed as I pulled my hand back when it got unbearable, and the door slowly creaked open as the ship dipped forward down a wave.

  I caught a glimpse of about a dozen people, huddled together at the back of the room. In front of them was a pile of ragged looking mattresses; used to cower behind when I started to fire my laser at their door.

  I smiled. They blinked. And then they started rapidly talking at once in several different languages.

  "Easy!" I ordered, as I pinned back first one door and then the next. "I'm here to help."

  "You're her," a middle aged woman said softly. "You're The Zebra," she added, and a hush fell over the rest of the people inside.

  I stood still and warily watched them. But the need to determine their situation and therefore my danger right now won out.

  "Are you here against your will?" I asked, baldly.

  They blinked, almost in unison, again.

  "Because if you're trying to escape Wánměi, then I'll leave you to it," I offered, when no one spoke. "But there's seven more containers and I need to know if they want out or not, before I fry the last of my laser."

  I lifted up my laser gun and waved it around for emphasis. One man stepped forward from behind the woman. Wáikěinese, kind face which could have been misleading, rips in his once appropriate Citizen suit.

  "They will want releasing," he advised. "I'll help," he added. "My wife can get everyone out of here and somewhere safe on-board. Where do you suggest?"

  I think he was asking if the ship was safe. I couldn't categorically say yes. I only assumed the guard was on his own because I hadn't seen evidence of anyone else working on-board. But that wasn't to say he actually was.

  "I've taken out one man," I admitted. "He appears the only guard aboard the ship, but there may be more."

  "The bridge?" the man asked.

  I shrugged, which earned a small smile from the man, well aware I was Elite and shrugging should have been beneath me.

  "The ship is under automatic pilot."

  He nodded, as though this didn't surprise him. Turning to his wife, he spoke in Wáitaměi. Maybe suspecting I couldn't understand him. But I heard every tightly spoken word, every argument she gave for not leaving him. Every heart-wrenching detail that filled in some of the gaps.

  They had children. Two daughters, whom they suspected were in one of the other containers, even as they tried desperately to believe they weren't already dead.

  Not only had families been taken, forced into these abysmal living conditions on the deck of a sea faring vessel that none of them would have ever seen before, let alone travelled upon. But the families had been separated, to further weaken them.

  I blinked a couple of times to ward off the emotional response I had at those thoughts. Then moved to the next container, allowing the man and his wife some much needed privacy.

  I gripped my laser gun firmly, staring at the lock and knowing once I cut this one out, chances were I wouldn't have enough power to do the rest. We'd find something to open them with, I was sure. Maybe there was an arms locker on-board. The guard would need to be armed when he reached the next port. I couldn't imagine a servant of Wánměi not being prepared to defend what was ours.

  This ship represented everything that was wrong in our society, but it was still Wánměi's property. The Overseers would see it as that.

  "All right," the man said at my shoulder. I'd heard him approach, he was hardly stealthy. But I couldn't look him in the eye, knowing his daughters may not be in the next container I opened. "What do you need?" he asked.

  "Just stand to the side," I offered. "And watch my back."

  "You have a spare gun." He'd seen that, had he? "My wife has moved the people we were with to behind these containers, but they are weaponless should anyone approach."

  I did turn to look at him then, and I'm not sure what he saw on my face, but he took a step backwards, raising his hands in a placating manner.

  "You've seen a lot, haven't you?" he remarked carefully. "A lot of bad things."

  I nodded.

  "You don't trust easily."

  I shook my head.

  "The wrench then," he suggested, nodding to where I had left the wrench leaning up against the container I was about to blast. Out of his reach, but within mine.

  I let a slow breath of air out and stepped up to get it, not putting my back to the man once. He watched me with a kind of fascination that bordered on respect, but had too much weariness to it to truly offer that effect. He'd seen a lot too.

  I handed him the wrench.

  He took it as though I was giving him a priceless gift, and in a way I was. I was giving him the chance to fight back, fight me, fight for his and his wife's freedom. There could be no more priceless gift than that.

  "I'll be back," he said with a nod of his head and then he was off around the container to the others.

  I turned back to the door and rolled my shoulders, then started firing the laser.

  By the time the man came back the whine had grown so high in pitch it was clear I was pushing the device to its upper limits. But I didn't stop, other than to make sure the man was standing well enough away so as not to be caught in any possible explosion.

  Finally the lock fell into the container, and the hole in the door smoldered and smoked. Flickering lights and murmuring voices could be heard on the inside. I reached through and fumbled with the latch, managing to slip it out without burning skin through the glove this time.

  The door slowly swung open, the man beside me stepping up and pinning it back with the type of urgency that told me what he'd hoped to find inside.

  "Li Xiu Ying!" he shouted. "Li Juan!" he added. Then a flurry of Wáitaměi that clawed at my heart.

  I stumbled back, my eyes darting between him and the container of people, awareness and dread consuming me. They cautiously walked out of their prison onto the moving deck, immediately being coated in sea spray. But no Li Xiu Ying or Li Juan emerged.

  I watched their father's shoulders slump, then determination set them rigid again. He turned and eyed my laser gun. No doubt aware it wouldn't last for another lock blasting.

  "I'll do it," he said, stepping forward and holding out his hand.

  I stared at him. My lips numb. My heart racing.

  "Tell me," I said. "Why are you here?"

  His soft brown eyes lifted to mine, a shadow of something hateful and accusatory briefly washed through them.

  Oh, God.

  My throat went dry.

  "No," I said. "I'll do it." And stepped up to the next container door.

  "She wouldn't stop talking about you," the man said. "She told anyone who would listen."

  My eyes closed, my chin dropped to my chest.

  "She dyed her hair like yours." I nodded. Xiu Ying had been the first zebra-lookalike I'd met. In the basement of her apartment building in Muhgah Foh.

  "You were set for wiping, weren't you?" I said, voice hoarse.

  "Yes. We have been wiped."

  It took a second for his words to make any sense, and then I was spinning towards him. He took a step back, still uncertain of what I would do.

  "What do you mean, you have been wiped?" I demanded.

  He looked at me and then purposely looked at the containers. And a sick kind of understanding set in.

  "How do you know this?" I whispered.

  "There are etchings on the walls inside the containers."

  Oh, God.

  Wiped didn't mean dead.

  Wiped still meant erased, but not as we'd known it.

  My mind went to Yeh Zhang Yong and his family. To Augustine Tengku and his. To the rebels lost but their bodies never found at Tehteh. To all the people who had been wiped because of the Uprising, and the many more since. To this man before me and his two daughters full of hope and courage.

  To what could be worse than death.

  "You have to stop them," Li Xiu Ying's father said, the hatred and accusation I'd seen flash in his eyes before, now replaced with determination and a hard-earned knowledge.

  "I can't do it alone," I admitted, holding my breath.

  He lifted his hand, offering to shake mine, and then we heard the screams.

  Chapter 5

  She Said You’d Come

  Lena

  Li Xiu Ying's father didn't wait to arm himself with my laser gun, he just spun on his heel and ran toward the sound of his wife's, and the other people from the container's, screams. Those people who had just exited the second container crouched to the floor where they were and huddled, much like they had huddled in the vid-screen images I'd seen on the bridge.

  I feared a lot of their strength and courage had been worn down. The fact that Mr Li was so quick on his feet was from pure desperation, I was sure. He'd lost his daughters already, he would not lose his wife.

  He made the far corner of the long container before I did. A war cry emitting from his lips as he launched himself off the deck and into the air. I couldn't see what he was throwing himself at, my shin kept my speed down. Not a hobble, but definitely a limp.

  I gritted my teeth, gripped my laser gun and pushed forward. There may not have been enough power in the gun to open another container, but there'd be enough to take out another guard.

  If the Lis didn't get there first with the wrench.

  I slid around the corner, panting and sweating, brushing moisture from my face and raising my laser blindly at the same time. Shouts and screams and the odd sob could be heard above the rumble of the ship's engine and splash of the waves across the bow. People were everywhere, some trying to run, some trying to duck, some just tripping over where bodies huddled too exhausted and afraid to do more than cower.

  I lost my balance, came down in an undignified heap on a wet spot on the slippery deck, and banged my elbow into a container wall. The immediate need to vomit let me know I'd bruised the bone deeply, but I struggled to quell the nausea and right myself, whilst trying futilely to see who Mr Li had attacked.

  "Stand back!" I ordered some of the people who had not vacated the area and run full tilt towards parts unknown on the ship. I repeated my instruction in Wáitaměi, receiving more compliance with the change of language.

  I stepped forward to see who Mr Li held restrained, only to find the situation not quite what I had expected. I lowered the laser gun and let out a long breath of air. The nausea and agony in my elbow making my head feel light and my balance to fail me. I leaned against a container and tried to look unaffected.

  "You can let him go," I instructed.

  "If I let him go, Elite, he'll try to knock my block off with that wrench."

  I glanced down at where Tan held Mr Li in a headlock and saw the wrench beside his thigh, well within reach. If he wasn't so focused on trying to pry Tan's arm from around his neck right in that instant he could have been using it.

  I limped forward and bent down to pick the wrench up, removing the weapon from the scene. Tan narrowed his gaze at my gait, sweeping an assessing look over my body and then up to my face. An obvious question lay in amongst his startling blue eyes, but he didn't voice it. Showing weakness was not something Lee Tan would think wise right then.

  "Let him go," I semi-repeated.

  Tan tightened his hold and leaned his mouth down to Mr Li's ear, then said, "Easy," in Wáitaměi. "I'm one of the good guys." Then released him and sprang back out of Li's reach in one swift roll, landing in a crouch some distance away.

  Tan had always been light on his feet. I took a moment to check his wellbeing out, as well. To get on-board a moving ship couldn't have been easy, but he looked exactly as he did when we'd left our new base this afternoon. Black cargo pants, tight black t-shirt under a black stab-proof vest, fitted with any number of weapons and tools. Black smudge of some description on his chiselled cheekbones. His angular features looking quite striking under all that disguise.