Page 14

There’s no armoured truck and body armour for us. It’s late afternoon when Tristan, hands cuffed in front of him, and Dirk and Dean on either side, holding each elbow, is shuffled into a sedan parked near the dumpsters. No sign of protestors out the front of the station today. The place instead has that same eerie quiet it had that day we were raided, making me even more impatient to be behind the wheel and getting the hell away as the sun heads for the horizon.

Putting Needler in the middle, Dirk and Dean crowd him in while I pull out, Howie beside me. We’re all plainclothes, though with bulletproof vests hidden under our sweaters, and each with our issued gun on our hip. We’re going into enemy territory, and all we know to expect is that Cassandra won’t be alone.

To no one’s surprise, Needler directs us toward Crennick, and as I follow his instructions, this odd little excursion feels almost like a road trip. The five people in this car are the only ones who know the details of tonight’s mission. To tell anyone else would risk it getting back to Cassandra, or the streets. It’s a job better suited to some kind of special ops riot team, but Tristan informed us in no uncertain manner that she’d never let them near her. So, it can’t be specialists, and we can’t very well send colleagues in our place. It must be us. She knows us, still wants Dirk and probably me too. The ones who got away. So as fucked as it is, we’re the best shot. And we’ve got to make it count.

The car is quiet, even the radio switched off. Outside, the silence extends, the streets apprehensive in their emptiness. What other cars that slink around the city are doing so with a sense of caution, turning into side streets, avoiding the main roads. Almost like the National Guard has already rolled its tanks through, like the city is already dead. But it’s not. Tonight, Tregam is just playing dead. Waiting.

My knuckles whiten on the steering wheel. “It’s too damned quiet. I don’t like it. I can feel them watching.”

“They’re here, alright,” Dirk notes, gazing up towards a skyscraper as I stop for what feels like an eternity at a red light. I don’t know what he sees, and I’m already too unsettled to ask.

“The minute the people get wind of where we're going, they’ll be there in numbers,” Howie reminds us. “We’re not the only ones to know something has to happen tonight.” The last night before Cassandra’s next planned kill. Everyone knows it’s desperate times. They’re waiting for our desperate measures.

And so, through the waiting, tense city, we drive. On one corner, we see the first of them.

A group of men, twenty strong, are clustered around half a dozen cars. Baseball bats dangle from their fingertips as easily as clubs and planks of wood do. They watch our car pass by, wary, not knowing whether we’re with them or against them. Best they don’t know.

“They’re ready,” I say. Ready to be wherever they need to be to take matters into their own hands.

“Tregam doesn’t take well to being held hostage,” Needler quips, to the appreciation of no one. The aim tonight is to avoid violence, to be in and out before any kind of vigilante parade can join in. If we can, we’ll use Tristan to arrest Cassandra. If we can’t… I try not to think about that. About sacrificing Tristan by leaving him with her. Needing to live with the hope that he can control her to some extent. If she doesn’t kill him.

No. It won’t come to that. We arrest her or nothing.

When we reach Crennick, we keep going. All the way to the border of the abandoned zone, to the parts that were dilapidated even before the disaster. We pass slums, crumbling and sunken where the ground has given way to instability. Smoke rises from a few, most likely squatters with cooking fires inside.

"Turn right," Needler instructs. “Stop up here, where that streetlight is.”

The purpose of the building I pull up outside, a hulking dark expanse behind a wire fence that looks newer than the rest of it, has been lost to weather and time.

"What was this place?"

Tristan sits forward, looking out the window, face unreadable inside the shadow of his hood. "A school. Before it was abandoned. It was too close to the bad side," he adds by way of explanation.

"A school you both went to?" Dean asks.

The corner of his mouth twitches, but there's no humour there. "No, we didn't go to school. Slipped through the cracks… but we'd come, listen. Pretend."

That’s… just very sad.

“Why would she be here now?” I ask.

Tristan stares out the window, gaze blank. He might not answer. He doesn’t have to. Turning his head, he meets my eye. “It was the happiest we ever were. Hiding under the classroom windows.” Looking back out the window, he muses, “Imagining a different life.” He pauses. “She used to come back here even when we were taken to another home. It’s where I always found her, even when we were moved far away. That imaginary life was always better than what we went onto.”

His words close into a heavy silence within the car. That’s what we’re dealing with. The same upbringing that made him, made Cocooner.

We all step out of the car onto a wide and empty street, the white lines of the road long since faded. The cracked expanse of tarmac is broken up only by wet-looking piles of rubbish. Any snow that’s tried to dust the curbs or the sunken roofs has given up and turned to sludgy brown water instead. The place is eerily, suspiciously still.

As Dirk pulls him out of the car, Tristan nods towards the stone arch that probably used to be a grand entrance leading into the school grounds. There’s a slight hill angling down behind the high red brick wall, masking the buildings in long shadows from the setting sun. “They’re here, watching.”

“I can’t see anything,” Dean comments, coming up alongside him.

“No, that’s the point. They know you’re coming.”

We had figured that much. Howie is still in the passenger seat, murmuring into the radio. There are about twenty cop cars ready to swarm the place on our signal. He’s telling them our location, for them to be near and out of sight, and to wait. I lean in, eyeing the empty street, suspecting it might not stay that way for long. “How far back are they staying?”

“Scattered, between two and ten blocks,” Howie tells me, gazing at the buildings facing the school. “There’s going to be eyes about, though. We won’t fool the vigilantes for long.”

My jaw tightens. Having come face-to-face with angry protestors once, I’m not dying to do it again. Almost as much as I’m not dying to look into the crazy eyes of Cassandra again.

We need to know where in this place she is, how to get her out with the least loss of life, and to scoop up enough of her followers in the process that they’re not going to take up her mantel in any real way.

Sure, we could call down helicopters, riot squads, all of it. But in the end, if she runs, has some kind of escape plan, she’ll be lost again. And she won’t give us a second chance.

She’s feeling invulnerable behind her army right now. We need to keep letting her think that. Until we can act.

“Okay. Let’s go,” I make myself say. The five of us move towards that wide stone arch.

Passing through it, I feel a heavy unease settle on my back, cold and feverish.

Tristan bumps into me, brushing my side, his attention too fixed up on the dark internals of the building beyond the wall. Maybe seeing, maybe remembering. Howie tugs him back into step.

Cassandra’s followers indeed knew we were coming.

Two men step up. Their self-elected gate leaders, I guess. A half-dozen others are waiting just beyond sight of the gate. From their bulky shapes, these guards appear to be mostly men. And they all carry high-volume guns; ugly hard things in the hands of people who might never have been to a firing range in their lives. Even though they’re probably the types to have owned guns long before Cassandra gave them something to do with them.

I find my eyes drawn to those guns more than to the shadowed faces inside their hoods.

Six here. How many more inside? How many more with Cassandra? Our only hope is Tristan managing to separate her, get her somewhere we can snatch her.

Then, we never let her see the light of day again.

With the firepower in here, casualties are all but guaranteed if a squad has to come in.

The two leaders eye all of us, then nod to me and Dirk where we stand on either side of Needler. "You two. No others. No guns."

My shoulders tense. We’d discussed the possibility that not all of us would be allowed through. But that it’s me and Dirk, and the man recognised us so easily... Part of my brain is telling me to turn and run now, before it’s too late.

I turn to Howie. "There’s no point reasoning,” he tells me quickly. “We’ll just piss them off.” Eyeing the weapons, having known plenty of trigger-happy types, he adds, “But you don’t have to go on, either. We can still back out.”

I glance at Tristan, though his face is impassive. And Dirk, who gives me a small nod. We go on, then.

Howie knows my answer already, and he straightens, stepping back.

Tugging Dean’s sleeve, he puts his hands up, and Dean follows suit as they back towards the arch. I’m tense watching the men follow them with guns they wield like toys. Only one of them needs to fright for this to end horribly.

I release a breath when they’re beyond the line of the school grounds, disappearing around the fence. Now, back to our own lives.

It’s to be me, Dirk, Cassandra and Tristan. Like last time. "We have to," I murmur to myself.

Dirk hands over his handgun with a blank, somewhat angry stare, and I reach for mine.

My holster is empty.

I frown a moment, hand lingering. I manage to stop myself from glancing at Needler. Because I know I holstered my gun, and I know he's got sticky fingers. But at the same time, these men are only going to check the cops, not the prisoner, probably knowing we’d never give Needler a gun on purpose.

Either way, I have a split second to decide whether I’m more comfortable knowing Needler has a gun, or that none of us has a gun.

"Hand it," one of them, the one with the longer beard, prompts me, his hand out.

I manage to meet his eye. "I didn't bring it."

Brow drawing down, he nods to the other. "Frisk her."

The hands feel fat and rough, bruising their way up my legs, a little too thorough around my ass, and by the time he's up towards my armpits, Dirk grabs the guy’s upper arm and bodily hauls his hands off me. "Think you've checked well enough, buddy." His voice is low but reasonable, and I watch the men stare each other down, wondering if this is over before it begins. The guy is thicker, but Dirk is taller, and he tugs his arm sharply back, eyes me one more time, and steps back. "She's clear."

That’s it, we're through. Dirk keeps the guy locked with his eyes while he takes Needler’s arm and pulls him towards the hill.

The sun has sunken lower now, and where the pathway leads under the supports of a raised brick building, it’s almost black in the shadows. We’re being watched, for sure. The darkness is almost a comfort as we sink into it. The ground evens out towards a brown, barren school oval ahead.

"Dirk?” My voice feels small in the dark, Needler marching ahead of us.

"Yeah?"

"After this, I want to do it. Move in together."

Dirk’s eyes glint at me, and I see his soft smile as the light falls across his mouth. “Well, it only took us walking into the viper’s den for you to agree.”

I don’t know if I’ll get to agree later, is what I don’t say. “Only that,” I agree, managing to return his smile.

Then, we’re out on the other side, crossing the central sports oval. Everything feels exposed and open here in the last light of the day. Spotlights that used to illuminate this stretch are either smashed or tilted over, having crashed into the buildings years ago. The sound of tyres reaches us, crunching over the poor condition of the roads. Dirk tilts his head in the direction of the noise. “That didn’t take long,” he comments.

“You think it’s civilians?” I ask, eyeing the crumbling school buildings that separate us from a view of the street.

“Our backup wouldn’t be coming that close, not yet.”

My throat feels dry. If they get in the way, they’ll either be collateral or the reason we don’t catch Cassandra tonight. “How many, do you think?”

Dirk focusses back on the edge of the oval ahead of us. “Could be half of Tregam at this point.”

We reach the other side, and a long building with a row of crumbled metal lockers. I lean back to take in the facade of the building—what’s left of it, at least. Just a typical brick schoolhouse. At some point in its history, it was full enough to need an additional three storeys added, that brick lighter and in worse shape than the bottom half. And now… there’s been no children here in a very long time.

Tristan nods towards a dark doorway leading in.

“This building is half-gone,” I comment.

“But it’s the one,” Tristan says quietly.

Inside, the walls look like they used to be painted blue, now discoloured and cracked. The hall is all but impassable with rubble where the street-facing side of the building has collapsed, but the stairwell is accessible.

I stare up towards the first landing, where a studio light has been left on a pile of rubble, casting harsh shadows and blinding light against the steps. What lies up there feels as claustrophobic as a coffin. I long for the openness of the oval again. Or absolutely anywhere but here. When we take those stairs up, I fear we’ll never take them back down.

We go up. Five flights to where the steadily degrading staircase gives way completely, leading nowhere but a hole in the floor. The darkening sky peeks through the missing roof as we step onto a level missing most of its walls. Bare cement stretches out under our boots, cracked right across the wide-open room to the other side. The rubble from what had once been the highest level is pushed off to the sides with a dozen old, splintered school desks. Pillars and sections of wall darken the space to the left and right, and an old blackboard fixed to the wall has enough holes in it to suggest it was used as target practice.

Ahead, facing out towards the city, the side of the building is gone. I don’t know how. The way the metal support bars are bent indicates someone was playing with explosives. The cement gives way in a sharp, jagged drop to the street.

There are sounds coming from beyond; the hum of cars and voices. Our support cars haven’t gone unnoticed then. Tregam has figured out, if not exactly where, the vague area of our interest, and so theirs. They’re gathering.

And we’re not alone inside, either.

Guns in the hands of men glint from the shadows. The hair on the back of my neck rises.

Then. Her.

I want nothing more than to take Dirk’s hand, to pull him away from here and hold him until someone else deals with her. She’s just there, sitting precariously close to the edge and the five-storey drop, the feet of her school chair uneven over debris and crumpled cement.

While her face is turned away, I take in her profile, the lines sharp and hollow. Somehow, she seems even less than when I knew her, like she’s given up eating entirely, her bones stark and the rounds of her joints protruding. Her cheeks and jaw stand out against skin turned softly yellow in the last of the day’s light. Her blond regrowth is cutting through the thin brown all the way to her ears. As she turns and stands, the jeans she’s wearing hang off emancipated hips. I almost think she'll breeze away herself without our help. But then I remind myself she’s killed a man—albeit a young one—quite recently. Maybe she had help stringing him up, maybe chloroform and the surprising strength of being absolutely bat-shit is enough. I don’t know.

Her eyes, big and ogling, remind me of a fish in a tank. They lock on Tristan for several beats before she takes us in, and when she moves on to us, lingering on Dirk in a way that makes my skin crawl, her thin lips draw back in a kind of smile.

"We brought him," I say, breaking whatever hold she's trying to get him in. "Now call off your basement dwellers."

Her head tilts to me, her huge eyes glinting in the spear of light falling across the side of her face. "I'm so glad you came,” she says, apparently forgetting that she told her people not to let anyone but us through. Her voice is airy, reminding me of the people who believe they’ve reached enlightenment, except with a low croak of dryness to it.

"We're not here to chat,” I say flatly. We’ve sighted her, now we need to get her the hell away from her army. Without her at their lead, our men with guns can come in. Before Tregam gets other ideas.

"Tris." Cassandra smiles at Tristan, but he's as silent now as he has been this whole walk. "We didn't part as family last time. That made me… upset. To get you back and lose you so quickly."

Needler’s voice is small, barely there. "We can catch up, Cass, as long as you want. I'll stay with you. But send them back out, you don’t need them here." He’s going off-script already. I can’t blame him. None of this feels predictable.

Outside, a first shout is quickly followed up by others, loud enough even for us up here to pick it. They’ve spotted Dean and Howie. Recognised them as Cocooner case detectives. I hope those two are safer out there than I feel in here.

Whoever is down on the streets sounds angry. I picture those men as we drove in, with their homemade weapons. The people can't take much more, more losing their brothers, mothers, sons, friends. They won’t take any more loss. Like Tristan said, Tregam doesn’t like to be held hostage, and that’s exactly what Cassandra has done. With her dates, her promise of death. More than that, it won’t take much to figure out we’re bending to her demands, that if we’re here, so is Needler. And there’s every chance they’ll believe what I believe—that she's going to kill him. Or at the very least, she’ll see to it that no one will ever hear of him again.

Cassandra pouts. "But I've been waiting to see them both again for so long." Tilting her gaze to Dirk, her smile is a rictus, thin lips pulling too far back from teeth started to rot. " Especially you."

I see him want to reach for the gun that isn't there. Something pops outside, and again. Fuck . A glow erupts from the direction of the street. Like a fire bloomed from pure gas and burned out just as fast. Cassandra seems not to notice any of this, only waiting, watching us all.

We’re too high up for anyone at ground level to hear us or be aware of us unless someone inside screams or fires a shot. Hopefully, it won’t come to that. Especially since we’re not the ones with the guns.

"Don't, Cass," Tristan says, with some degree of pleading.

"Have they come to mean something to you? Have you caught Stockholm Syndrome?" Cassandra asks, giggling. Then her face changes, hollows sinking deeper. "Like He was precious to me. And you took him away." Caleb. Needler killed him back when Caleb was the Cocooner and Cassandra was some kind of protégé.

We can all see where this is going. I take a step back, but the exit is barred. Men and their toys close in behind us.

"I didn't know what he meant to you," Tristan assures her, his voice soft, like someone talking another down from an edge.

She shakes her head, and keeps shaking. Oily locks of her hair whip from side to side. "I love you, you’re Tris! But I loved him… We were always equals, weren’t we? Let me make it equal again." Then her face stops contorting, calming. "So, choose."

My heart leaps into my throat at her words. It’s all I can do to stay where I am as the sharp wave of terror washes over me. Me and Dirk. That’s what she’s asking. Which of us .

Tristan just stares back at her. Cassandra’s men are closing in. Dirk has stepped behind Needler, reaching and pulling me to his side.

Cassandra smiles. Somewhere below, another fire flares, and this time, stays. I can smell the gas, rich and toxic. The shouts are a backdrop now, as constant as the rubble under screeching tyres, as the growing hum of voices. I don’t know how many are out there, if they’ve surrounding the building. There could be hundreds, staking out Crennick, determined to take matters into their own hands where we’ve failed them.

"You know what I mean, Tris."

"I won’t.” Tristan’s voice chokes. For all that he knows, even he didn’t think she’d be so far gone. He didn’t believe it would go this way, else he’d not have brought us. He still thinks she’s capable of being saved. “This isn't a game anymore."

"No! It’s very serious. Like I am. So, choose! Which of them stays, and which goes."

Tristan only shakes his head.

Cassandra looks at Dirk again. "I thought it was so… romantic last time when you offered your life for hers. Will you do it again?" She asks the last like a child asks for candy, excited and hopeful.

Sirens blare somewhere nearby, then die,. There’s no point in our backup hiding anymore. Tregam has found us. A shot is fired close by enough to make me and Dirk jump, only serving to increase the tension. A warning shot by one of Cassandra’s people down at the school entrance? Or something more direct?

"Cass, you’ve got me.” Tristan stumbles over his words. “You’ve got everything you wanted…"

"I'll choose then!" Her eyes freeze my heart when her gaze locks straight on me. " Her ."

The hands are on me in an instant, rough, pulling me back. I cry out in shock as fingers dig into my flesh. Dirk shouts, lunging. Someone punches him in the stomach when he won't let go of the tether of my hand.

It all happens so fast, the struggle brief, then we’re being dragged separately towards Cassandra’s side of the room. Dirk off towards the left, spitting out curses and threats. And me, silent, gasping, to the right, to her.

I see what I’m being taken to then. There are binds; leather clasps dangling from a metal frame set up to be shaped like a cross. The edges of my vision blur, then sharpen. Dirk’s voice is a roar in my ears.

I see myself there, the next hour or more of hell now behind me and myself a drowned, dead husk like so many bodies I’ve looked upon. I see my own sightless gaze in the pictures taken by forensics, glossy and empty.

Dragged within a bare foot of the floor’s edge, I suddenly have a view out over Tregam, the first since stepping into the school.

Crennick stretches, grey and hulking, butting up against the distant towers of Downtown. Darkness is closing in, a tainted purple veil. But Crennick isn’t dark.

It’s lit up.

Even the big man handling me, directing me by my arms awkwardly cranked behind my back, falters in surprise. And the sound. Not the crunching of tyres, the hum of voices, but the crackling, roaring of flame.

Crennick is burning.

The glow was never lights or sunset. The smell of gas never a burst and then gone. It was fire . As near as the opposite edge of the school’s street, a building, rotted and wooden, is alight. Smoke billows from further back, acrid black and pure white lifting together towards the dark sky.

How quickly it all goes up.

Lower, on the streets, I can barely comprehend the amount of people. Where did they all come from? They’re disordered but they’re here. They crowd the roads and smash what’s left of the glass in nearby windows. I see someone toss a bottle through, followed shortly by a burst of fire from within. There are no banners, no placards, no demands. Tregam isn’t here to ask for what it wants tonight.

Across the street, on buildings that aren’t yet alight, people are climbing. Soon they’ll have a vantage upwards into this room. Will that save us? Or will it merely mean more die when Cassandra’s men start shooting?

"Stop!"