Zoe scanned up to the spaces far beyond the Farm. She could just make out the gentle edges of a few apartment blocks standing above the rained out low-rise buildings that sprawled away towards another faint red beacon in the distance, which must be Delta or perhaps Beta Farm, but there were no lights on anywhere. It was a curiously haunting view, utterly still and almost hand drawn behind the constant veil of rain.
“We’ll head down until we reach an old signal point,” Matthew called back. “Once we’re there we’ll wait till it’s dark and drop down off the track. We’ll go the rest of the way through the parks.”
They moved on, the forgotten tracks making a slight shift to the right and leaning forward in a gentle descent. Their talking stopped. As the Metropolis hardened up in their view, its features gradually revealing themselves – clusters of industrial buildings around grand Vac terminals, long strips of drone hangers that fell away into the beautiful savannahs, more and more apartment blocks that rose up into the drooping cloud base – the light-hearted conversations were halted by the inevitable arrival of clarity. As the Metropolis became a real thing again, lifted out of the memories and myths where they had all packed it away so carefully, so too their own flesh and breath became hyper-real and desperately precious. A few stumbled a little or slowed their pace, their legs and bodies making choices their hearts were trying to overrule, before a comradely pat on the back or affectionate squeeze of the hand brought them back in step.
As the trench that sheltered the tracks shallowed, the signal box came into view. To their right, the low, manicured trees and shrubs of AarBee's parks appeared and erased the rocks and ferns of the wild. At this point, they veered into the cover, to travel the final stretch downwards to the Farm out of sight.
In amongst the managed and engineered landscape, the air changed from the earthy, rich and decaying smells of the forest to a vivid perfume that was so intense by comparison it made Zoe feel nauseous. Vanilla and juniper and sweet honeysuckle all assaulted her senses, the result of AarBee's eager to please, never let you down versions of nature that the residents of the Metropolis had come to expect.
Whilst Zoe didn't know all of the group who walked along with her by name, she always remembered faces, and as she looked around she felt sure that some of the Lifers from the start were no longer there. She twisted her head to check behind her, stopping once or twice to let her eyes navigate the trees and shadows and focus right to the ends of the group, but there was no question about it. The man with the long black beard, the two girls with matching headscarves, the older lady with the red crossbow and Jennifer's friend who had carried her on his shoulders on that first night of dancing and laughing. They were all gone, vanished quietly into the undergrowth, when the fear of what might be finally took control of their steps.
When Zoe and those that still remained reached the treeline it was almost dark, but the last sighs of the day still threw a little light on the wide open space between their cover and the walls of Echo Farm, so they crouched down in the shadows and waited till night arrived. The rain had finally stopped and the air now seemed unbearably still and quiet, only the low hum of power that drifted out from the buildings gave her ears something to register. As Zoe sat silently on the ground, propped up slightly on a low and knotted fruit tree, the tension began to prickle across her skin and throb in her head, her body began to shake uncontrollably and, after pushing it away all day, her nerves and excitement finally crystallised into fear. It wrapped itself slowly around her, coils and coils of thoughts and emotions that began to squeeze so tightly that she had to focus hard just to keep breathing.
In the distance, in the small gaps between buildings or the long walkways that stretched through the grounds, figures would snap in and out of her view, illuminated momentarily by an open door or the broad beams of exterior light that fanned out here and there. The sounds of activity echoed confusingly towards her, as much on the left as on the right, as much close as far away and with each sound her fear squeezed just a little tighter until she began to feel light headed and inexplicably cold.
Zoe began to panic, as much for what was to come as her inability to control her feelings, and she scanned up and down the shadows in the trees looking for Jennifer’s familiar shape. She wanted her to put her arms around her and warm her up again, to tell her not to worry. Maybe she would tell her to stay here and wait for them, instead of racing into the unknown with a courage that now seemed impossible. She felt small and helpless all of a sudden. She felt young and stupid, and for the first time since she left the Metropolis, she thought of Sarah. She missed her and wanted desperately to be back in their apartment, talking and laughing as if none of this mattered, like they had on their last day together.
She was about to get up and retreat back to find Jennifer when the figures around her, crouched almost invisibly in the shadows, rose up in unison and began to move out of the trees. She looked around confused, unsure of what she was meant to do, when a hand pressed onto her back and guided her out from her cover.
“Come on, keep together.”
She didn't see who it was, they were already ahead of her and her feet were already running to keep up. They were out of the shadows now, she could see all of them stretching out in silhouette far along the dark line of trees, and they ran silently forwards towards the nearest walls. Zoe felt like she would be sick, but an energy also gripped her and a desperate desire to get to the shelter of the approaching wall. The open space seemed to go on forever so she picked up her pace, still a little behind the others, and when she reached the wall slammed up against it with such eagerness that she cracked her head against the white slab.
She had no time to get her breath back before the group began to move again, splitting in two and snaking left and right around the building, heading for the doors at the far end of its perfect U-shape. Zoe crept low along the wall, not knowing what she was meant to be doing other than following the person in front of her. She kept looking desperately up and down the line for Jennifer, she wanted so much to be with her, to feel safe with her.
When they reached the door it slid open silently and one by one the Lifers slipped into the bright light inside. When Zoe went in there were just a dozen people waiting for her. The first through the door had already split up and headed to different parts of the complex, her group were to check down the long service corridors towards the entrance atrium on the other side of the building. As they began to edge along the narrow route, Zoe drew in the familiar smell of Metropolis buildings, dragging breath into her chest to relieve her persistent dizziness. Her mouth was dry and she craved a moment’s rest and a gulp of cool water.
Their corridor ran dead straight, with two rooms at regular intervals followed by a sharp turn either left or right. They zigzagged their way along, stopping at each door before a wave of a hand triggered it to open, at which point the first few in her group would swing into the room with their weapons raised and ready. Each time, Zoe felt her jaw clench and her teeth ground nervously together, dreading the moment they found an occupied room, but the raiders returned in silence every time and moved swiftly on to the next.
Eventually, after more rooms than Zoe had counted, the corridor divided into left and right, with identical, duplicate pathways heading off in opposite directions.
“We’ll split up here,” the girl at the very front whispered back along the line. “Calum, you take your six to the right.”
Calum had been just behind Zoe, the last one in the line, checking over his shoulder as they moved along the corridor and occasionally tapping her on the arm when the group started abruptly forwards after checking each door. Now he darted in front of her and up to the junction. Once the first six had passed him he set off to the right with the rest in tow. Zoe was at the back now and kept looking nervously over her shoulder, feeling uncomfortably exposed all of a sudden. She watched the other group head further away in the opposite direction, moving quietly down the straight, bright white space and as she did, caught the briefest glimpse of someone at the very far end, moving quickly from her left to her right. She stopped dead, a sharp intake of air catching in her throat with the surprise. She turned to call ahead to the group in front of her, but at that moment the silent, sleeping corridor erupted into an explosion of chaos.
Zoe stood frozen to the spot as the walls of the corridor began to explode around her. The intense silence from moments before was shattered, and in an instant transformed to its absolute opposite. Bullets darted past like firecrackers and massive thumps and deep thuds hammered so loud into her ears that she instinctively put her hands to her head to protect them.
She was mesmerised by the group in the distance. Clouds of dust and debris immediately rained around them and a few fell immediately, unnaturally, to the ground. As she stared, the whole scene seemed to break and fracture, with shapes and colours splintering and interchanging like she was watching the whole thing through a kaleidoscope. The dust thickened into an almost impenetrable fog and each time her view cleared with great swirls and flashes, she would see more shapes on the ground.
Zoe heard shouts and another barrage of explosions behind her, and as her instincts finally took charge, she dropped hard to the ground. The gun slung across her chest banged sharply into her chin and she rolled backwards in pain, with a momentary thought of how ridiculous it would be to shoot herself before firing one shot anywhere else. The clouds of dust were so thick now that she couldn’t see more than her arm’s length in any direction and her eyes stung with each gritty blink. She lay as close to the ground as she could, not wanting to shoot for fear that she’d shoot her own group, with an awful feeling that their attackers could be right next to her. She heard the heavy thud of a person falling to the ground just in front of her, and as they did so a door slid automatically open. She could feel the clear air from inside reach out and touch her and without a thought scrambled into the room with a low, beetle crawl. Once inside, Zoe could see the body on the floor was Calum, his jaw and neck opened up in a grotesque wound. Feeling a rush of revenge and survival instinct, she raised her gun and leant out of the door, staying low and holding her breath, but the corridor was still so choked with dust and debris there was nothing for her to aim her revenge at.
Zoe glanced back down in the other direction and saw the almost disappeared outlines of the zigzag corridor they had come from. She had to get back there, it was hopeless here and the understanding grew in her mind that she would almost certainly die if she stayed where she was. She glanced back into the dust, over Calum’s body for someone to take with her, but there was nothing to see other than the irregular flashes and choking swirls that still blinded her. Clutching her gun she darted towards the exit, expecting any moment to feel the blast that would knock her down or encounter a Drone that would block her path, but nothing came. In another second Zoe was into clearer air, and she ran as hard as she could away from the chaos. As the sounds of explosions, guns and cries faded they were replaced by the solitary rhythm of her feet squeaking on the polished floors and her heart pounding sickeningly in her ears.
When she reached the outside door she flew out without a thought and crashed face first onto the wet grass. She looked left and right to confirm that she was alone, a useless afterthought, before ripping the pack off her back to find her water. She twisted the top off with frantic and shaking fingers and glugged the water down her dry and clinging throat. She vomited immediately, tasting the bitter and stinging bile that churned from her stomach to her chest and felt an unstoppable wave of pain and fear that raced out of her with every retch. On all fours, leaning low into the fresh grass she let out a helpless, heartbroken cry for her mother that echoed hopelessly around the high walls of the Farm and into the dark. She began to sob silently, the chugging of her shoulders and twisted muscles on her face spilling her grief in rhythm, when the hard tip of a gun barrel touched softly on the top of her head and she froze.
Two Drones stood tall and silent behind her and beckoned her to stand with the twitch of a gun. She stood up slowly, leaving her pack, gun and bottle on the ground, the water spilling in glugs onto the grass. Their utility suits were clean, they couldn't have come from the chaos Zoe had just stepped out from and, through the small gap between them, she spied an open door on an adjacent building.
The Drone nearest to her kept his gun pointed squarely at her head, twitching again to start her walking towards the open door. Their silence was punctuated once or twice by the crackle of gunfire from inside the Farm, the shots accompanied by the low boom of explosions that vibrated into the soles of her feet. As she walked Zoe threw up again. The impulse came from nowhere and caught her and the Drones by surprise. They sprung around her with guns gripped tightly as the warmed water splattered from her mouth onto her clothes and the grass, and she held up her hand to demonstrate her helplessness. They stood coiled and wordless until she was done, marching her forward as soon as she had recovered.
Inside, the white light of the Farm was strong and unaffected. She walked slowly down identical corridors, occasionally glancing back to her captors for instructions each time they reached a junction. After a few turns, they came to a door with two more Drones standing sentry outside. It opened with a faint hum as she approached making her pause her step, before another twitch from her speechless escort instructed her to enter. She glanced at each of the Drones in turn, unsure of what was about to happen, her heart rising again to drum in her ears.
Stepping inside, Zoe saw that the room was half full of Lifers from the raiding party, perhaps thirty of them. A few lay wounded on the floor as others tended to them whilst the rest stood around the walls, staring forlornly at her as she entered. She smiled a weak smile towards them all, relieved that she was no longer alone but lost as to how to greet them in such circumstance. As she scanned each face she heard her name called out from her left side and turned to see Jennifer rushing towards her with her arms open. She grabbed her roughly in a firm embrace, almost knocking her over, and held her there for a second before pushing her back by the shoulders and checking her up and down.
“You OK?” she asked as she scanned her body.
“Yes I'm fine,” Zoe replied, a brief feeling of guilt passing through her as she recalled her race from the chaos and her dead friends a few moments before. “Calum, though…”
“It's OK,” Jennifer squeezed her shoulders a little. “You're OK. Come and sit down over here.”
She led her by the hand to the empty space in the far corner where she had sat moments earlier. They sat down in silence and stared briefly into each other's eyes, a short moment to share their grief, fear and relief at finding each other, before Zoe looked down towards her hands fidgeting in her lap.
“I ran,” she said quietly. “I was so afraid and confused, I didn't know what else to do.”
Jennifer placed her hand gently on hers to calm them.
“It's OK,” she said again softly. “It was chaos. Everybody freaked. You did the right thing, you'd be dead otherwise.”
She brushed a tangled lock of hair from her face.
“How’d you think we all ended up here?”
Zoe smiled gratefully back at her.
“Everybody ran. It was a mess. They knew we were coming.”
“How?” Zoe looked at her with surprise, a tear forming in the corner of her left eye as her adrenalin began to fade and the trauma slowly crept up on her.
“I don't know, but they did. There's no question. There were too many of them. Too well-prepared. They were on us as soon as we walked in. No alarms. No Migrants. Just Drones everywhere.” Jennifer's voice cracked a little as she said this and her eyes glazed in a way that told Zoe she was replaying some terror from before in her mind.
“Where's Matthew?”
Jennifer didn't answer. She refocused on Zoe briefly before scanning once around the room and disappearing again into her thoughts.
“Is he dead?” Zoe asked bluntly, immediately wishing she’d phrased it better.
“No. No,” each word sounded different. The first answered Zoe with clarity, the second was more of an inward sigh, soundtracking the slight fall in her shoulders that Zoe noticed.
“He ran off.”
Zoe knew from her tone that whilst it might have been OK for her to run, whilst Jennifer could wrap her arms around Zoe and reassure her that to survive was enough, she didn't feel the same for Matthew. There was a long silence between them, which brought the hushed conversations and moans of pain from around the room to the foreground of Zoe’s attention.
The door hissed open and two large Drones strode in and grabbed the nearest person to them, a young man with a shaved head who Zoe didn’t recognise. There was a brief moment of panic and indecision as he glanced around the room for assistance, but there were two more Drones stood in plain sight just outside the door, their guns sweeping the room from left to right almost begging for an invitation to fire and their presence kept everybody backed against the walls. The young man’s colleague who he’d been talking to moments before stepped forward slightly and tried to hold onto his shoulder, but a swift kick sent him to the ground easily enough and a crack on his skull from a rifle butt made sure he stayed down. He froze motionless in a half crouch on the floor, dark red blood seeping between his fingers where his hand had rushed to inspect the impact and dropping in large sticky globules onto the white floor.
The Drones turned around and yanked the young man out of the room. Zoe watched them push him away down the corridor for a moment before the doors slid shut and cut him out of the moment. There was silence in the room whilst everybody exchanged nervous glances.
“What do you think they’ll do?” Zoe whispered to Jennifer.
“I don’t know, but that’s the third they’ve taken.”
Zoe waited for her to continue, but she didn’t.
“Did they bring them back?” Zoe asked, breaking the silence.
Jennifer looked intently at her, unblinking as if she was waiting for something. Her eyes looked incredibly sad Zoe thought, not crying, but glassy, as if they had been emptied out and only the surface remained. As they stared at each other Zoe heard it. A single shot. Far off, but unmistakable. She hadn’t noticed how quiet the room had become until that sound punctuated the hush with its dull beat. Jennifer blinked and Zoe understood that none of them came back.
“I’m so sorry,” Jennifer said unexpectedly, her gaze still fixed on Zoe. “I should have sent you off with Max. He’d have looked after you.”
“No, don’t,” Zoe took her hand and smiled at her, although tears began to roll down her cheeks at the same time. “I’d rather be here with you. I’d rather be here than anywhere else.”
Jennifer smiled and chuckled a little.
“Crazy kid.”
She let go of her hand and wiped the tears from her cheek with her thumb, making black streaks across her face from the soot, which made a rough barrier between their skin.
The door hissed open again, making them both jump and Jennifer drop her hand down. The two Drones entered again and scanned around the room, eyeing the wounded on the floor and the faces around the walls that stared silently back at them. Their gaze eventually locked onto Zoe and Jennifer sat on the floor, making Zoe’s heart skip a beat and her breathing stop dead.
“Jennifer,” the nearest Drone called out.
The sound of her name coming from them felt bizarre. A strangely intimate address in this cold, blood traced room. How did they even know it, Zoe wondered.
Jennifer stood up and took a step towards them.
“No!” Zoe jumped up and grabbed her arm. “No you can’t go!”
Zoe went to put herself between Jennifer and the Drones, her fist raised hopelessly, but Jennifer pulled her back before the Drones could get at her and raised her hand to calm them.
“It’s OK Zoe, it’s OK,” she pushed her firmly back towards the wall. “I’ll be OK.”
She took two more steps towards the Drones, and as one took her roughly by the arm turned back towards Zoe.
“Be safe,” she said, and with one more step she was in the hallway and then gone. The doors closed and Zoe stood staring at them in horror.
To her surprise, they opened again almost immediately. Two more Drones walked in and this time walked straight up to Zoe. She almost felt relieved. Perhaps they would be taking her away with Jennifer. Perhaps they were all being released? They took hold of her and marched her out. She didn’t make eye contact with the rest of the room, she didn’t want to see their faces, didn't want to see their thoughts. Instead, she focused on the corridor outside and noticed with sadness that they were leading her in the opposite direction.
They walked without instruction through the network of corridors, turning sharply every once in a while as they headed to their destination. Most of the corridors were clean and uninhabited, but once or twice they turned a corner into the pockets of death and destruction she had been part of earlier, stepping unceremoniously over the broken and exploded bodies of Drones and Lifers.
Eventually, they came to a small antechamber where five corridors intersected and the Drones stood her in the middle. There was a skylight overhead and Zoe looked up to see the half moon glowing softly above. Her heart was pounding so hard it was painful. She gazed at the moon refusing to look away. If this was the moment they put a bullet in her head, she wanted to die staring at the moon instead of the stark featureless spaces of AarBee’s Farm. She heard footsteps to her left side and held her gaze, her teeth clenched down tight together.
“Where is she?”
Zoe recognised the voice at once, it was Matthew. She dropped her gaze and looked across the room to see him standing in the entrance. His clothes were clean, he had no blood or wounds on him.
“Matthew,” she exclaimed. “You’re alive!”
“Where is she?” he repeated again, he sounded stern. His voice was different somehow. The tenderness and calm that was so characteristic to his tone was gone.
“Jennifer?” she asked cautiously.
“Rachael.”
Zoe looked at him blankly. “I don’t know who that is.”
Matthew stepped closer to her and Zoe stared hard into his face, trying to read him. He seemed so different.
“I know AarBee passed her across, now where is she?”
His eyes flicked briefly towards one of the Drones who raised his gun to her head. She felt it pushing eagerly against her hair and scalp.
“Matthew, I don’t understand,” she pleaded, and after searching for something else to say said it again, “I don’t understand.”
Nobody answered. They stood in silence staring at her. It felt immeasurably cruel to keep her suspended on the edge of her fate for so long, but then, as the moment hung longer she noticed the Drone next to her was making a strange clicking sound. It was almost imperceptible, like he was shivering or stifling a yawn.
“Glitch.” She said it aloud, not meaning to.
Realising with a terrifying awareness that this moment might be over before she could react, that this freak of AarBee’s make-up was without doubt her only chance to escape before the trigger was pulled, Zoe sprung towards the nearest corridor, knocking the gun from the stuttering Drones hands as she did. She heard it smash onto the ground as she ran but didn’t look back. She had to move and she had to move fast. With no idea of which direction to head in, she made random choices left or right at various junctions, pushing her legs as fast as they would pound and almost falling forwards from her speed. As she turned a corner, Zoe found herself in a long corridor that blurred past her without definition. There was a door at the end. She had no idea if it would lead her back to where she had started or into an army of Drones, but she knew it was the door she had to take and drove towards it with un-retractable force. As she reached it, the door began to open but her speed was too great and she smashed through the half opening, feeling her shoulder crunch from the impact before she fell face first onto the ground outside. She looked up briefly, before scrabbling on all fours into a large bush that grew a few paces in front of her. She curled up inside it, feeling the branches and thorns that lay beneath the green leaves scratch and puncture her skin, before lying motionless and feeling the air rip into her gasping lungs.
She lay there in silence for a long time, letting her body recover and watching the door, almost certain that more Drones or Matthew would emerge from it at any second. When no one came she wondered if she should make a break for the darkness of the forest, to head back to the train tracks and the Clearing. She could feel her new life there pulling at her, the roaring fires and smoky air, the quiet of the sleeping chambers and the comfort of her blankets, the beautiful silence of the pool and the role call of names just like hers scratched in the wooden door. But she knew she couldn’t leave Jennifer. Without her none of it would be the same, it would be corrupted and spoiled just like before. Just like always.
She had found a family in the Clearing. She hadn’t expected to, but she had anyway and she couldn’t let it slip through her fingers again. Not this time. She couldn't leave Jennifer here in all the death and madness. Zoe looked back at the trees where they had come from, smiled resignedly towards her future that would have to wait, and crawled slowly out from her hide.
After ducking passed a few lights and doors, Zoe moved into the patchwork of bushes and small trees that tracked the footprint of the building and worked her way around to the opposite side. At the corner, the great white walls fell away and Zoe could see the tall, glass entrance doors of the Atrium. The place looked deserted and she edged closer and closer, taking cover by a low wall and peering over the top towards the vast, eerily still hanger. She could see bullet holes in the walls, long and glinting cracks in the glass, upturned furniture strewn all over the floor. She moved silently inside, placing her feet gently between dark patches of old blood and scattered fragments of debris and spotted the bodies of two Lifers lying next to the welcome desk that sat unattended in the middle of the space. One was still clutching his gun and she moved cautiously forward to take it. As she reached them and went to grab it, she spotted a figure on the far side of the Atrium, the unmistakable black uniform of a Drone. She froze, standing silently with her weight leaning awkwardly on her front foot, not daring to move an inch in case some stray piece of glass gave her away. She bent her knees slowly, praying that they wouldn’t crack, and lifted the gun slowly, checking that no straps or debris would drop noisily onto the floor before raising it to her chin and raising herself up in one silent movement.