The Fearless (34 page)

Out on the hillside, I collapse onto the scree, gasping for breath. Tana goes back inside to help Neil and Ben.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t believe you,’ Gina says, her voice shaky and thin.

‘It’s OK,’ I say. I don’t know what else
to
say. ‘I don’t blame you for thinking I was trying to trick you. I would have thought the same.’

‘Myo’s been lost without you,’ she says, and my pulse quickens as I remember her words earlier:
you break Myo’s heart
 . . .

Then I hear shouts. ‘
Cass! Sol!
’ and see lights in the distance, bright blobs amongst the green of my night-vision.

‘Who’s that?’ Gina sounds wary.

‘The rest of my group.’

‘Crap. We have to get out of here.’

‘No! One of them’s a medic. We have all sorts of supplies down at the camp. She might be able to help us.’

‘Are you
crazy
? They’re Magpies. You said yourself that they were here to round us up.’

Ben appears out of the hatchway, his hands hooked under Myo’s armpits. A couple of people go over to help him, and they lay him down beside me. Neil and Tana follow with Lochie, and then Neil climbs back inside, reappearing with Mara. Her wrists and ankles are bound with strips of cloth, a piece of fabric tied between her ankles to allow her to take small, hobbling steps. She looks a lot cleaner than she did last time I saw her – her hair is washed and tied back, her scrappy blue dress replaced by trousers, boots and a warm jacket – and she seems quite docile. I wonder if they’ve drugged her.

‘Is that everyone?’ a woman with dark hair asks Ben, her tone frantic. He nods, and the woman’s face crumples.

I look at Myo again. His face is waxy, just like Danny’s was after the Fearless shot him.
You are NOT going to die, dammit
, I tell Myo inside my head. But I know he’s slipping away from me.

‘Please,’ I say fiercely to Gina. ‘He needs help.’

Gina looks at Myo, then turns towards Ben. The shouts drift towards us again, nearer this time.

‘Cass says her group had a medic with them,’ she tells Ben.

‘The Magpies?’ he says.

‘You have to let them help Myo,’ I say.

Ben closes his eyes, opens them again. Then he nods. ‘But let us get away first.’

‘What about you?’ I ask Gina. ‘Will you be OK?’

She gets unsteadily to her feet, biting her lip. ‘I think so.’ She squeezes my arm. ‘Take care of yourself, OK?’

‘Where will you go?’

‘Don’t worry about us,’ Ben says, and for the first time since I’ve known him his voice sounds almost kind. ‘Just look after Myo, yeah?’

‘We need to get the horses, Ben,’ Gina says.

‘We’ll collect them on our way.’

I watch the group disappear round the hill. Everyone’s moving slowly, as if they’re in shock. A few are limping badly, and one man has to be held up by the people either side of him, but I don’t blame them for wanting to get away. If Myo survives, the Magpies will stick spikes in his brain and he’ll be a zombie for ever. But if I don’t get Nadine to help him, he’ll die.

‘
Cass! Sol!
’ It sounds like Mikael; the others must have come after me when they realized I’d gone, and found him.

‘
Over here!
’ I yell.

They reach us a few minutes later. ‘Oh my God,’ Marissa says. ‘Are you OK? We heard an explosion—’

Then she sees Myo and Lochie. Under her night vision goggles, her eyebrows shoot up.

I explain what happened, being as vague about the others as I can. Nadine bends over Myo. ‘We have to get him back down to the camp,’ she says. ‘I need to try and get a drip in.’

Butterflies flip and twist in my stomach. ‘Will he be OK?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Is Sol . . . dead?’ Andrej says as we make our way back down the hill, Mikael carrying Myo in a fireman’s lift across his shoulders and Lochie trotting alongside them.

I nod.

‘Christ. Why would he do something like that?’

Marissa looks over at me, and I’m relieved we both have our goggles on so I can’t read her expression.

Back at the camp, Nadine splints Myo’s legs, injects him with painkillers and hooks him up to a saline drip. She gives me some painkillers too, enough to send me drifting away so that next thing I know, it’s light, and I’m lying in one of the tents with my wrist encased in a bulky bandage. It hurts, but not as badly, probably because I still have the drugs Nadine gave me buzzing around my system. She reckons it’s not broken, just badly sprained, but she can’t be sure, so I have to keep it still.

Thick-headed and dry-mouthed, I push myself up onto my elbow. Myo is lying on the other side of the tent. I’m startled to see Lochie stretched out between us too. Did he sneak in here, or did someone bring him in? Myo looks exactly the same as he did last night. I will him to open his eyes. He doesn’t move.

Nadine ducks into the tent.

‘How is he?’ I croak.

‘His blood pressure’s OK,’ she says, ‘and his pulse is stronger. He hasn’t woken up yet, though, and I don’t like the look of those legs. The right is broken in several places. Is this the boy you were telling me about when you first came to the camp?’

I nod.

Nadine checks Myo’s drip. ‘What happens now?’ I ask.

‘Mikael’s just come back from checking the bunker.’

‘Did he find any more survivors?’

She shakes her head.

‘What – what about Sol?’

She shakes her head again. ‘I’m sorry. Once we’ve packed up, we’ll head back. Myo needs an operation on those legs, and I can only do that back at the main camp.’

An hour later, we’re all in the truck, jolting along with Myo and Lochie lying in the cage. Andrej keeps looking at the empty seat beside him with a faintly disbelieving expression on his face. I can’t take it in, either. This time yesterday, Sol was there. And now he’s nothing but dust and vapour and the memory of a person I still can’t quite match up to the boy I thought I knew.

We reach the Magpies’ camp just before nightfall. Myo and I are whisked off to the hospital tent, where Lochie stations himself beside Myo’s bed, refusing to move. Dosed up with more painkillers, I drift in and out of sleep until Myo’s taken away to have his legs operated on. I don’t sleep again until he comes back. His face is clean, the blood and dust washed away. To my intense relief, his eyes don’t appear bruised or swollen, and there’s no sign he’s undergone the procedure. Yet.

I wonder when he’ll wake up.
If
he’ll wake up. And how long it will be before they put him through it.

The only thing I’m sure of is that this time, there’s nothing I can do to save him.

The first thing I see when I open my eyes is Lochie. I’m lying in a bed in a tent, with no idea where I am or how I got there, and he’s standing beside me, wagging his tail.

‘Good lad,’ I say. My voice is scratchy and thin. I reach out to stroke his head, dismayed at how weak I am. My legs hurt like hell, and when I pull my blanket back, I get a shock. Both of them are covered with wooden splints and bandages.

What happened? I can’t remember. The last thing I recall clearly is being at the bunker, in the Comms Hall. Gina was there – she was agitated about something, and . . .

‘Myo?’ someone says.

I look round. It’s Cass, sitting in a bed opposite. Her face is bruised and her left wrist is in a bandage. A hundred different emotions go flooding through me – relief and happiness and longing and anger and confusion and everything in between. I tried to forget her, I really did. But I couldn’t.

‘Where am I?’ I say.

‘We’re at the Magpies’ camp,’ she says. ‘You’ve been unconscious for three days.’

Terror zigzags through me. I throw back the blanket and try to climb off the bed, but the pain in my legs stops me dead. I fall back, gasping.

‘How did I get here?’ I ask when I’ve got my breath back. ‘What happened to me? Is Mara here too?’

As she tells me, I feel myself sinking into despair. That’s it, then. I can’t get away. I can’t even stand up. I’m screwed.

Lochie whines again, and licks my fingers. I look over at Cass again. ‘So what changed?’

‘What do you mean?’ she says.

‘Last time I saw you, you hated my guts. But you got me out of the bunker – got your pals here to help me instead of leaving me up on the moors to die—’

‘I’m sorry I said those things to you,’ she says, her voice formal and stiff. ‘I know you’re not Fearless.’

‘I was trying to find Mara,’ I say. ‘That’s why I was on the island. I had no idea she and that guy would take your brother, I promise.’

‘I know. And I’m grateful. Thank you for helping us.’ Before I can say anything else, she turns over, leaving me to frown at the back of her head. She doesn’t
sound
grateful at all.

A little while later, a guy walks into the tent carrying a bucket and some cloths. I sit up with a gasp. ‘Cy!’

He doesn’t answer me.

‘Over here, please,’ the woman who’s come in with him says. They’re followed by a guy with two missing fingers. As Cy hands the bucket and cloths to them, I see both his eyes are silver. But he’s not acting like a Fearless. He looks half asleep. Lochie presses himself against my bed, his tail between his legs.

I lie back down, my heart thudding. What have they done to him? I think about asking Cass, but she’s still lying on her side, facing away from me.

The woman and the other Magpie come over to my bed.

‘How are his legs?’ the man asks the woman.

‘Healing well,’ she says. ‘Faster than usual, but of course, with him being half-Fearless, that’s to be expected.’

Hey, I’m right here!
I want to shout at her, but both of them have guns on their belts, so I keep quiet.

The man pulls back my blanket and frowns at my splinted legs. Then he takes a torch out of his pocket and shines it into my eyes. The light’s so bright it gives me a headache. I turn my head away, but he grabs my jaw and turns it back.

‘How long before he’s ready?’ The woman still looks worried.

‘Sometime in the next few days. It’ll be easier if we do it before his legs have mended.’

The woman frowns. ‘Really? Weren’t we going to study—’

‘Brett’s changed his mind. We have more and more of them coming in, Nadine. We don’t want to be in a situation where there are so many of them needing the procedure that we can’t cope.’

‘What procedure? What are you gonna do to me?’ I ask them, but they both ignore me, and leave. I stare up at the canvas above me, my heart thumping, my mouth dry.

The next morning, Cass is moved out of the tent, and I don’t see her again. Without her there, the hours crawl by. I can’t get anyone to tell me what the
procedure
is. I need to figure out a way to get Lochie and me out of here. But how – by crawling? How will I defend myself? And where will I go? How will I get food?

Face it, you’re screwed
, I tell myself, and I start wishing that they’d do whatever they’re gonna do to me right now, so it’s over.

Later, the man with the missing fingers comes back. The woman’s already here.

‘Nadine, hold his head,’ the man says tersely. He shines the torch into my eyes again.

‘How are his legs today?’ he asks as I try to blink the after-image away.

‘A little better, but he still can’t stand,’ she says.

The man nods. ‘I think it’s time.’

‘What, now?’

The man shakes his head. ‘We’ve a few waiting to go in already today. We’ll do it first thing tomorrow morning.’

There’s a clatter, and I see Cass at the entrance to the tent, the contents of the tray she was carrying scattered all over the ground. She turns and runs. Lochie barks and tries to go after her, but I put a hand on his neck and stop him.

‘What’s that dog still doing in here?’ the man says. ‘Get rid of it. And restrain the boy. I don’t want him even
trying
to escape.’

‘I don’t think he’ll be able to—’ Nadine begins.

‘
Restrain him
.’

The man stuffs his torch back in his belt, and leaves.

I run back to my tent, where I sit on the edge of my bunk and hug my arms around myself, guilt surging through me. I should have been back to see him. Instead, I’ve avoided him. I should have fought for him. Instead, I’m letting them do the procedure on him without so much as a whimper. What sort of person am I?

But what was the point in getting close to him again when I knew that, at any moment, he would be taken away from me? The thought of seeing him emptying the latrines or serving the food, blank-faced and slack-jawed, gives me a pain in my chest like someone’s stuck me with a knife. So instead of facing up to it and trying to do something, I’ve tried not to think about it at all. Too much has happened since that night Jori was taken; I want it all to go away.

And anyway, what can I do against people like Colonel Brett? We’re all just cogs in his machine. If I try to defend Myo, he’ll probably lock me up for insubordination.

‘Are you OK?’

I look up. Nadine’s standing there with Lochie.

Yes, I’m fine
, I want to say, but the words won’t come. Instead, I say, ‘I thought they were going to study him before they did the procedure.’

Nadine presses her lips together.

‘
Why?
’

‘He means a lot to you, doesn’t he?’

I look away again, staring at the ground.

‘You probably don’t remember this, but when we got back to the tents on the moors and you were doped up, you kept asking if he was OK. You were frantic.’

I shake my head. I have no memory of it at all. ‘Does he know what’s going to happen?’

‘No. And I won’t tell him, either.’

‘But why do they even want to do it in the first place? He’s not Fearless. They don’t
need
to operate on him.’

‘I know. And I’ve tried to tell them that, but . . .’

‘Maybe
I
could tell them – talk to Colonel Brett—’

She gives me a small, sad smile. ‘I doubt he’ll listen. He’s decided to accelerate the reconstruction programme. All he wants is for the Fearless to be neutralized so he can put them to work. Myo included.’