The Fearless (30 page)

Inside, Lochie trots over and pushes his nose into my hand. He’s picked up on the tense atmosphere: his tail hangs down and his ears lie flat against his head. I rub them, then go to check on Mara, who’s huddled on her bed with her hands over her face, shivering. They gave her more serum at the Torturehouse, and now her cravings are worse than ever. Someone hit her on the head, too – she has a nasty wound on her scalp, although as expected, it’s healing fast.

She didn’t want to leave. Not even when I’d already shot five Fearless just to get to her, and the Magpies were closing in on us. I still have scratches and bite marks where she attacked me. If Gina hadn’t come after me and helped me restrain her, I would have never managed it. We’d have been caught – or Mara would have killed me. But between us we found a way out through the network of corridors that ran behind the shops. I wanted to find Cy, too, but there wasn’t time. And there wasn’t time to find Tessie either. I have no idea if she even survived the journey to the Torturehouse, and now I’ll never know.

‘How is she?’ Gina says as I shut the door again. I jump and turn round. I was so deep in thought, I didn’t hear her coming.

‘Same,’ I say.

‘We’ll give her some more codeine later.’ Gina puts a hand on my arm. ‘Come on.’

We return to the Comms Hall. When we walk in, Ben walks out. He won’t speak to me, only Gina.

I slump into one of the armchairs. Lochie lies down at my feet with a grunt.

‘Are you still thinking about Cass?’ Gina says softly. ‘Myo, you have to forget her.’

‘I’m trying, OK?’ I say through gritted teeth.

‘And Ben will come round eventually—’

‘He says I’ve put everyone here in danger by getting so close to her. And y’know what? He’s right. All she has to do is tell the Magpies about us and we’re screwed. Finished.’

‘You don’t even know she got caught by them.’

‘You didn’t see her face when she realized what I was. I bet she walked right up to them and begged them to let her join them.’

Gina sighs. ‘I’m going to check if Ben’s OK. I’ll be back in a minute.’

I close my eyes. She’s right. I shouldn’t be feeling like this. OK, Cy’s gone, and I miss the guy so much it
hurts
, but I got my sister back – as much as it’s possible to get her back – and we made it here in one piece. Things will settle down eventually. Ben will speak to me again. I have my dog. I’m
home
.

So why do I still feel like I’ve lost everything?

After I get my uniform, Marissa takes me back to the hospital tent, where Nadine is waiting for me. ‘We don’t want you getting ill again, Cass,’ she says when I protest at being told to go back to bed. ‘It’s important you save your strength.’

‘We’ll meet you in the mess tent for the evening meal,’ Marissa says.

I sigh. ‘Try to make the most of it,’ Nadine says as, reluctantly, I ease off my boots and lie down again. ‘You’ll be desperate for a rest by the time you’ve done your first day’s training.’

When she’s gone, I make myself wait ten minutes. Then I sit up again and put my boots back on. Before I leave the tent, I shove my blankets into a mound, stuffing my pillow underneath them so that it looks like there’s someone in my bed.

Outside, I’m grateful for my uniform; at least I blend in now. I hurry along the rows of tents, switching direction whenever I hear voices. But I can’t find my brother anywhere. Anxiety begins to gnaw inside me. What if something’s already happened to him? Or he got so sick he—

Eventually, I find myself at one end of the row of Portakabins, almost stepping into view of the guard outside the Fearless compound before realizing where I am.

I draw back, pressing myself against the side of the tent nearest to me. I can hear a commotion going on inside the cabin in the compound – shouting, thumps, a cry. The door flies back and two Magpies appear, dragging the limp body of a Fearless with a trank dart sticking out of his neck.

I stare. It’s Cy, the spider-web tattoo across his scalp clearly visible. They carry him out of the compound and over to the tent I’m hiding beside, his feet, which are bare, leaving score marks in the mud. I notice a small tear in the side of the tent, about two feet from the ground, and crouch down to peer through it.

Inside is a rough wooden table a bit like the benches in the mess tent, with leather straps that the Magpies are using to bind Cy’s wrists and ankles. Nearby is another bench loaded with plastic trays and little glass bottles; a third Magpie, wearing a medic’s badge like Nadine’s and a surgical mask over his face, is standing beside it, pulling on a pair of thin rubber gloves. He opens one of the bottles, tips something onto a gauze pad and swabs Cy’s face, paying particular attention to his eyes. Then he picks something up from one of the trays. It isn’t until he crosses back over to Cy that I see what it is: a thin metal spike with a bulbous wooden handle at one end. He’s also carrying a small hammer.

‘Hold his head,’ he tells one of the Magpies who brought Cy in.

I watch, frozen with horror, as the medic buries the spike in the tear duct in the corner of Cy’s left eye, aiming it upwards. Despite the trank dart in his neck, Cy screams, straining against the leather straps. The medic holds the hammer against the top of the spike’s handle. ‘Got him steady?’ he asks the Magpie holding Cy’s head. The Magpie nods.

With the brisk
tap-tap
of the hammer ringing in my ears, I straighten up and stumble back through the rows of tents, no longer caring if anyone sees me. I must find my brother. I need to know if he’s OK.

I find him in another hospital tent that’s almost identical to mine. ‘Jori!’ I call softly, and run across to him, wrapping him in my arms.

‘Are you OK?’ I say, trying, in the half-light from the stove, to see his eyes. They look normal, but didn’t that Magpie, Mikael, say something about cloudiness? What if he . . .

‘What’s wrong?’ Jori says. His face is pinched and there are faint shadows under his eyes, but he looks a whole lot better than he did at the Torturehouse.

‘Nothing. I’m just glad to see you, is all.’ I hug him again. ‘Do you feel OK? Are they looking after you?’

A boy in the bed nearby, not much older than Jori, starts coughing, doubling over. I look round for water, but there isn’t any.
Crap
. ‘I’d better go and get someone,’ I tell Jori as the boy’s hacking reverberates around the tent.

‘No, don’t go!’ he cries.

‘I’ll be back in a minute. I’m only going to get Nadine.’

‘You mean that doctor lady? She’s nice.’

‘She is.’
Although I’m not sure how nice she’ll be when she realizes I’m out of my tent again
, I think. I’ve wandered quite a way through the camp, and it’s a while before I find her, checking over medical supplies near the mess tent, a Magpie girl about my age ticking off items on a sheet of paper.

‘Cass, I thought I told you to rest!’ she says, sounding exasperated.

‘There’s a boy in Jori’s tent – he won’t stop coughing.’

‘OK, I’m on my way.’ She grabs a bottle from a table behind her, and I follow her back through the maze of tents. ‘But how do you know that?’

I blush. ‘I had to find him.’

Nadine turns. ‘Look, between you and me, I think your brother’s going to be just fine. You’ve both been here nearly a week, and in my opinion, if he was going to Alter, he would have done so by now. He’s not showing any cravings or aggression. He was lucky – they obviously didn’t give him enough to make him change. So will you
please
go back to your tent and rest? I’ve got enough patients on my hands without you relapsing on me.’

A grin spreads across my face. ‘
Go
,’ Nadine says, waving me away. When I get back to the hospital tent, I lie down again and close my eyes, trying to cling on to the good feeling that Nadine’s words have given me.

And try to push away the thoughts of Cy – and Myo – that threaten to intrude.

That evening, Marissa, Sol and Andrej are waiting for me outside the mess tent like they said they would be. They look exhausted, their clothes smeared with mud, and Andrej has a bruise on his forehead.

‘What have you been doing?’ I ask as we head into the tent. Now it’s dark, the camp is lit by flickering electric lights like the one in the Portakabin where I got my uniform.

‘What
haven’t
we been doing?’ Marissa rolls her shoulders. ‘I am so sore. These guys make the Patrol look like they’re playing toy soldiers.’

‘You’ll be coming with us soon, I bet,’ Andrej says as we join the queue for food. I feel a burst of nerves. But I can hardly go up to whoever’s in charge here and say,
Look, I know you saved my life and all, but actually, my brother and I would quite like to go home now
, can I?

Anyway, I’m not sure I want to go back to Hope. Not now I know about Mr Brightman, and how he’s kept the truth about the Fearless and what happened after the Invasion from us all these years.

Behind us, someone laughs raucously. I look round and see the boy with dark hair, the one who was staring during my first meal in the mess tent, sneering at me.

Sol turns round too. ‘What did you say?’

Even though Sol is a whole head taller than him, the boy stares at him insolently. ‘None of your business.’

‘Oh, I think it is, actually,’ Sol says. ‘Especially if it’s about Cass.’

My stomach gives an unpleasant little lurch, and I tug on Sol’s sleeve. ‘It’s fine, leave it.’

‘No, I won’t
leave it
.’ Anger burns dully in his eyes. My unease deepens. I’ve seen him look like this before – when he asked me to go out with him and I said no.

Sol grabs the boy by the collar. ‘Tell me what you said,’ he spits through clenched teeth.

‘You really wanna know?’ A flush steals up the boy’s neck and into his cheeks. ‘I was just wondering what it must have been like for your girlfriend, getting it on with a Fearless. D’you think they’ll send her in as bait and try to trap them?’

Sol lets go of his collar and punches the boy on the jaw so hard he actually lifts into the air, people dodging out of the way as he sprawls onto the muddy ground.

‘
Sol!
’ Marissa shrieks, her hands flying to her mouth.

‘Speak about Cass like that again, and I will kill you,’ Sol tells the boy. The icy calm in his voice scares me even more than the look on his face. ‘I won’t have anyone saying stuff like that about her.’

‘What is going on?’ a voice barks. Shock prickles through me. It’s the guy I saw when Myo and I were hiding in that wood, the one with the scar on his face who was driving the second jeep. Up close, he’s even more imposing. His neck and arms, which are bare despite the cold, bulge with ropes of muscle, and the jagged mark down his cheek looks like it came from a bite.

‘He hit me, sir!’ the boy says, pointing at Sol, as someone helps him up.

The man regards Sol through narrowed eyes. ‘Is that correct?’

‘Sir! Yes, sir!’ Sol says.

‘Both of you get to my office now.’

The dark-haired boy scowls, holding his jaw, but Sol’s expression is triumphant. Shame pours hotly through me. What would he do if he knew that what the boy had said was very nearly the truth? He must have drawn those conclusions when he was listening to me talk to Marissa, Sol and Andrej.

That night, I’m moved out of the hospital tent and into one of the new recruits’ tents. Marissa’s there too, and convinces the girl beside her to swap bunks with me so we’re next to each other. This part of the camp is much busier, and there are more of the Fearless – the cured Fearless – about, doing menial tasks. I keep an eye out for Myo, just in case he is here, but I never see him, so I assume he made it back to the bunker. Half of me is relieved, and half of me is . . . well, I don’t know what it is.

A few days later, Cy is helping to serve breakfast. I know it’s him because of the spider-web tattoo. His eyes are so swollen and bruised, I have no idea how he can see out of them, and more than once, as he’s serving the porridge, he fumbles with the ladle and drops it, making the Magpie standing nearby snap at him. Cy doesn’t react, just picks the spoon up again and carries on serving. As I hold out my bowl, the image of the medic pushing the spike into his eye flashes into my head, and I hear the tap of the hammer as he knocks the spike through Cy’s skull. My stomach clenches. When I sit down with Marissa, Andrej and Sol, I leave my porridge and sip my coffee instead.

‘Why were you staring at that Fearless guy serving the food?’ Marissa asks in a low voice. ‘Was he one of the ones who tried to Alter you?’

I shake my head, staring into my mug. ‘He was one of the guys from the bunker.’

When I look up again, Marissa’s mouth is an ‘O’.

‘You need to tell them about that place,’ Sol says. It’s the first time I’ve seen him since last night. The boy he punched is sitting at a different table, glowering at us. I ignore him.

‘Yeah, what if they’re all Fearless?’ Andrej says. ‘They need rounding up too.’

‘Can you remember where it is?’ Sol asks.

In my head, I try to retrace my and Myo’s journey from Hope Island. ‘It was on a moor up north. There were a lot of high hills around it.’

‘Was it an ex-military bunker?’ Andrej asks.

I nod.

‘They have maps here – it might be on one of them,’ Sol says. ‘I’ll take you to Colonel Brett’s office after breakfast.’

When I’ve finished my coffee, we head over there. The Colonel’s office is in the largest of the Portakabins. Sol knocks, and we wait.

And wait.

‘Shouldn’t we go through one of his people?’ I say nervously. ‘I mean, he’s in charge of this whole place.’

‘I know what I’m doing, Cass,’ Sol says. ‘Don’t you want those freaks rounded up?’

At last, the door opens, and I see the guy with the scar on his face again. So this is Colonel Brett.

‘What do you want, Brightman?’ he says.

Sol salutes. ‘Cass has some important information she wishes to share, sir.’

‘Um, yes, um, sir,’ I stammer. ‘It’s – it’s about a group of Fearless.’