Chapter Eight

Unbuilt and Broken

Ariea opened her eyes between two crushing weights. Thoughtlessly, she pushed down with her legs and levered herself against one of the things on top of her.

More, she thought. But with what strength?

More!

She pushed as if it were the last thing she would ever do. The thing gave way and her thin frame slid into the haze of Wishbone. The land was uneven. It wobbled underfoot and she hop-scotched woundedly between planks and beams. When she breathed, the air was coarser than anything. She coughed and coughed on that wintry smell of ash.

From the bay, Ariea could see she was on the south side of the city, but where there should be a weave of buildings, she now had a clear line of sight all the way up to Riddis’ offices.

She called out.

Nothing answered but blustering wind. She thought she might see bodies, but no. Agloff must have got out. Good, she thought coolly. He was safe. And Lady was a smart kid. She’d have followed the traffic out. Merry and Memphis would have had good sense too. Surely they all got out fine.

Ariea knew it was worth her staying behind for, to help the townspeople. Again, she called. Reason told her she wasn’t the only one left behind. Further along the shore, she could see those strange men in black suits patrolling the broken landscape, looking for survivors perhaps.

She couldn’t help but scowl. Their ship was now humming some way over the bay. Several smaller craft were in orbit, whizzing at impossible speeds across the shoreline.

Then, Ariea heard an answer to her shouts. She skipped over blackened remains. The groaning became louder, and she spied an arm wave through a gap in the wreckage. Mindlessly, Ariea tore back at a panel of corrugated metal, then another.

A girl stared back at her, then groaned at the sun in her eyes. Ariea dragged her free, and she realised immediately why the girl had such trouble in freeing herself. She was a giant, well-built but awkward-looking, with a plait of brown hair that tumbled the length of her back. She looked at Ariea with a geeky smile, then hugged her arms like it were midwinter’s eve.

‘You ‘kay?’ grunted Ariea, careful not to swallow the dust.

The girl’s defences failed her, and her smile turned into a wail of sobs. She threw her head from side to side like a wrecking ball.

‘Are you okay?’ Ariea repeated.

‘Probably fine in a minute. Thank you,’ the giant girl mumbled. ‘’m Eli.’

‘Ariea. Is there anyone else you’re looking for? I can help—’ Ariea didn’t know how to sit there and let this girl cry on her shoulder. Ariea had never done that. She was the one friends came to for advice, not support.

Eli shook her head, swiped her nose by the cuff of her sleeve. ‘That’s the problem, isn’t it? I’ve no one to lose other than a rat bastard of an ex.’

‘If he’s your ex, I’d say you already lost him.’

‘Funny,’ Eli said.

Ariea helped her over the crest of a flattened house and Eli quickly sank to her haunches. ‘He’s a friend, sort of, tries to be. But he’s a prick.’ She wiped her nose again.

‘Then you don’t need to worry.’

‘That’s the thing. It’s sad that I don’t miss anyone. End of the world and it’s like “oh well, I could just go back to bed.”’

Ariea smirked then looked back over the town. ‘It could be a fresh start, a new world,’ she said, fully aware of her naivety.

Eli scoffed, then swatted a hand through the smoke diffusely filling the air. ‘A start so fresh, it’s still cooking,’ she said. Humour was a tool of the broken, thought Ariea. She look tired, aching inside and out.

‘Come on,’ she ordered Eli. ‘We’ll get moving. See if we can’t pick up a trail off the others.’

‘To where? For what? We’d have just as much luck by ourselves. Go live in a cave somewhere and drink sheep’s milk.’ She then dipped her head towards the black suits, breathed slowly. ‘And there’s those.’

‘If they were here for us, we’d be dead,’ Ariea said coolly. She didn’t doubt the power of the Confederacy of Colonies. She thought they might have weapons that would flatten cities far wider and far taller than this in an instant. ‘We’re insects to them.’ Ariea held a hand out and dragged Eli to her feet for the second time.

Before she could let go, something swatted the backs of her legs. Ariea wailed and fell, rolled over to see a black mask stare down at her. It spoke loudly, in garbled tones like radio static. Two more appeared over a crest behind.

Eli raised an eyebrow. ‘You were telling me how they’re not interested in us?’

The faceless one poked a sidearm at them, smaller than the hand holding it, like it were a toy. It then gestured they stand.

Ariea saw a flash of light as the gun discharged. Pain unlike any pain welded her joints stiff. It fizzed through her like burning. When the force compelling the tension in her joints exhausted them, she felt into a state of half-waking.

The world was visible, but she could not think on it.

Nothing could be processed in but the most superficial sense. She noted the passing damages, the lines of blackened men and women, but her brain was incapable of using this information for anything more than sensing. It was less than paralysis. Thoughts chased themselves round her head, but she could hold onto none.

Time passed quickly in this place. She followed her movement down the coast, where she saw a line of others like her. Their weight lumbered foot to foot, as though they were toddlers in an adult’s body.

Something else was happening now.

Ariea felt her body carried, weightless, into another place. Perhaps she was inside. The place churned and growled and Ariea saw patterns of light pass through tinted windows. Her body lurched in bumps, fastened into bindings. Others, the same, were strung out into a horseshoe shape in this narrow, bumpy place.

Movement, she realised simply. They were moving on a road, in something. The word escaped her.

Truck!

Yes. She tried to extend her hand in its binding, but it was more than her body could… Could what? Words kept failing her. So sure and solid they had been, now they were vague, like ghosts in her mind.

It was minutes until her cognitions returned to her.

Or was it days.

Ariea blinked into alertness as the doors to the truck groaned open. A score of them tumbled out, cuffed, into a biting wind. She looked up. It was night, and the stars were split by a ribbon of black where Cerberus hung above their heads.

The land here was flatter than Wishbone and the land was hard, blanketed in thin grasses. About a mile ahead, Ariea saw the pebble-like ship, the outline backlit in the glow of its countless offices and control rooms. Even at that distance, it sat huge.

The prisoners were roped into a line and escorted on foot towards the ship. Ariea heard the rasp of Eli’s breaths behind and reached out a hand to touch her fingertips.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Ariea thought her legs might give way, but she compelled them, for fear of reprisal from their faceless masters. In the gloom of the Confederate ship, Ariea saw towering flood lights erected over a pen of tents and crates. Unmasked soldiers, in khaki uniform, marched up and down and she thought they looked nervous. They chattered quietly in pairs or trios, some even looked giddy.

‘Ariea…’

Ariea looked back as Eli tugged on the rope. In the glare of the lights, she was pale, rings round her eyes.

‘What is it?’

‘Just out of breath. Need a minute.’

Ariea glanced forward. They were on a narrow road marked by spot lamps, with lanes dividing up long, fenced pens on either side. At the back of the encampment was a smattering of tents and several larger buildings made of stacked crates.

‘I think we’re nearly wherever they’re taking us.’

‘These lights don’t help. Head’s spinning,’ Eli panted. ‘You think this is home?’

There were shouts and Ariea saw someone barking orders at a squad of Confederate soldiers who were stapling pylons twice their height into the ground, lashed together by meshing.

Then, a thrum whirled overhead in jets of hot air. A drone blasted past, a crate suspended from its belly, lowered gently at the waving of a group of workers onto a growing stack of mental offices. Beside it, more workers were drilling into the ground, hollowing out tunnels of some sort

‘They’re efficient,’ Ariea observed. She spied a tall tower at the far end of the assembly, which bloomed into a wide dome at its peak. Shadows scurried in its lighthouse gaze.

‘Why wouldn’t they be?’ Eli mumbled. ‘I knew a guy who thought the Departed were a myth. I’d pay two fingers to see his face now.’

At last they were herded into one of the long pens, onto softer ground and a faceless soldier cut them loose. None of the prisoners said anything to each other. Benches on each side were set up for them, and a meshed ceiling was draped in tarpaulin. There was some dignity at least, mused Ariea.

‘Whoever it is,’ Eli said, as she lay down. ‘I’m sure they got out.’

Ariea looked at her, confused.

‘Your head looks elsewhere. Given our situation, that’s saying something. They’ll be fine. At worst, they’d be in with us lot.’ Eli turned and stretched herself out, groaning. ‘Either is a comfort really.’

‘You feel better for lying down?’

‘Middling.’

Parcels of food were left for them at the pen gate which their cohort divvied up silently. Ariea didn’t recognise any of the others. They were a curious bunch. Most young or old. As Eli slept on the bench, Ariea took to observing the humans assemble their castle of barbed wire and steel. Machines did most of the work. Ariea presumed there were machines for everything she could imagine these days. And machines for everything she could not.

She thought on this rabbit hole. She supposed that these humans didn’t fit her understanding of the term. To her, humans lived in Colony Two. These were something far beyond that.

‘Hey,’ Ariea whispered, nudging Eli some hours of thought later. The hauling and labouring of the encampment had dulled into almost-silence.

‘Are you serious? This better be important,’ Eli murmured.

‘I have a plan.’

‘Oh, good, it’s not. I can go back to sleep.’

‘No! Listen,’ Ariea said urgently.

‘Ariea. Hear that?’

‘No.’

‘It’s the sound of me not giving a flying fuck whatever your stupidly stupid plan is because they have literal lasers.’

Ariea grumbled. ‘They’ve left the way clear mostly. We can slip out the way we came.’

‘Mostly,’ said Eli.

‘You think they’d care enough if we escaped to chase us?’

‘I think they cared enough to put us here. Stands to reason they want us to stay here.’ Eli turned over and her glazed, grey eyes looked at Ariea. Colour sapped from her face and heavy rings tugged her eyes towards her cheeks.

‘We have to try,’ Ariea said then.

‘Do we? I’m tired Ariea. I’m just, tired. You look like you could use the rest. You don’t have to escape today. Not like this lot are going anywhere.’ Eli panted. ‘You’d stand a better chance waiting.’

Ariea shuffled to the benches and pulled her knees to her chest.

‘I’d heard about you,’ Eli said. ‘People talk about Ariea. I’m not in with your saviour bullshit. I’m not your type. Whatever you did at Eden, this is different. You should learn that quickly, and you’ll make all our lives easier.’ She rolled back to the fence. ‘Not that I don’t respect you. But don’t try this one. They’re gods. We’re women.’

‘And that’s enough. It will be.’

Eli scoffed. ‘Okay.’

Ariea gripped her knees in furious thought. Maybe she couldn’t leave now or even tomorrow. But it had to be soon. She wanted to survey and plan, to do something that felt productive to that end. She stood and paced the pen. She counted the structures struck in the shadowed lines of searchlights at the edge of the encampment. She counted the silhouettes gliding atop the domed watchtower. She measured the distance to main gate in her mind’s eye. She noted the routes of the soldiers on their patrols, some in zig-zag, some in large loops.

The wind bit and Ariea scarpered to the edge of the pen. She gazed blankly through the mesh and stared at a pair of troopers passing by.

They whispered in frantic chatter then looked in Ariea’s direction. They sounded almost excited. The torchlight that guided them flashed at Ariea’s eyes.

She scowled. ‘Hey!’

Again, they whispered, then shuttled across the gravel path and met Ariea’s eyes. They were not much older than she. A boy and a girl. Giggling and starry-eyed, with slick helmets parcelling their faces.

‘You going to stop staring?’ Ariea snapped.

They laughed again. ‘Sorry,’ the girl said. ‘We were interested. Curious.’

‘In what?’

She sniggered. ‘You. We hadn’t seen a local yet, but you hear all sorts of stuff shipping. What’s it like?’

‘What’s what like?’

‘Earth. The world.’

Ariea scowled. Then thought a long time. She wondered if they thought she was stupid. ‘Unbuilt,’ she said then. ‘And broken.’ Her voice was a fractured whisper. ‘But it’s kinder than yours.’

They stepped back a fraction. She seemed to unsettle them.

‘You have towns? Cities?’

Ariea pressed her face closer to the mesh and felt the cold on her cheeks. ‘Yeah. We have that. You flew over one… until you burned it.’ She looked at them through dead, unblinking eyes.

The girl laughed nervously as the boy held his silence. ‘We wondered if it would be like the stone age.’

‘I suppose, to you, and your world I imagine moves so fast, anything less than the present is ancient history. So, I guess it is, in its way.’

Ariea leaned back and wiped the condensation from her lips.

‘Seems calm,’ the girl said. ‘More peaceful than us.’

‘Peaceful.’ Ariea scoffed. ‘If only you knew. I’ve seen more history than you ever will.’ She leaned back forwards, and pursed her lips across the wires, tilted her head and resumed her blank stare.

She enjoyed playing with these ignorants. What were they to know of anything? Her haunting tone weirded them, she knew. But it captivated them all the same. She held them in a trance of curiosity. It gave her a kind of power.

‘History? Like what?’

If Ariea gave them the truth, her power would break. They would not believe that she was eight-hundred and twenty-seven years old. Nor that she killed the ruler of Colony Two. But hints could tease and control them. To them, she was a stranger. And strangeness fascinated as it disgusted.

‘The regime of Arval-Harra fell not even a year back, after its leader was assassinated. The Colony is in a time of upheaval and uncertainty.’

‘So is the Confederacy.’ The boy spoke for the first time and Ariea feigned interested looks. ‘The Feng-Hal are blockading the unoccupied regions. This operation to Colony Two is an expensive distraction, to deflect. While war gets closer daily.’

Maybe it was interesting, thought Ariea. Could it be so easy to goad trust from them? Did outsourcing their knowledge to technology also make them stupid? She wondered if her weird way would work on the older ones.

‘You seem perceptive,’ Ariea said. ‘What’s going to happen to us?’ She tilted her head the other way and her captors stared.

‘Far as I know,’ said the girl, ‘not much. Information. They want to assess the threat, capability, knowledge of Colony Two.’

Ariea smiled wildly, mouth gaping. Again, the troopers looked weirded but enthralled. Ariea was so mysterious to them. ‘And who’s they? Who’s they who we have to thank?’

‘Comm— Erm, Commander Vitor Tovey.’

‘You like him?’

They laughed at each other. ‘Actually never met the guy.’

‘Surely you should call him Sir, or Commander. ‘The guy’ doesn’t seem very professional.’ Ariea lowered her head then looked at them. They stepped back. ‘You are professionals of course. I mean, you’re on duty.’

They stood unsettled. Ariea had got what she needed: the reasons they were there, assuming that’s all there was to it.

She looked back to Eli’s bench to see she had skulked off to another corner of the pen, then turned back to the girl and her companion. ‘You should go back to your patrols, shouldn’t you?’

At once, they did as she said, passing on through the rows of lights along the dirt path. Both stared back at her with captivity.

Once they filtered behind a tent and out of sight, Ariea sighed, and headed down the pen after Eli. Her bulging shape was hunkered over in the corner, in a line of shadow, whimpering.

‘Eli, hey.’ Ariea knelt down after her, held a gentle arm round her back. ‘You’re not alright, are you?’

‘It look like it?’ Eli’s back convulsed and she gagged violently. Fluid flushed from her mouth. She had those imposing rings round her eyes. Her face paled and winced. ‘I said I’m just tired.’

‘If I had known you were like this, I—’

‘Wouldn’t have got your dick hard thinking to escape?’ Eli groaned. ‘I get it. I’m just not like you.’ She belched and vomited into her patch of dirt. ‘Don’t let me stop you, Slayer.’

Ariea bit her lip. ‘That’s not fair.’

‘I’m a distraction to you. I was from the minute you found me.’

‘Hey!’ Ariea was threatened by anger. ‘I will help you until you’re better. You are not a distraction from anything. I’m not going to run out on you.’

Eli vomited again. ‘You’re moral, that’s your problem. I saw you helping those people in the street before it blew up. Leaving here is righteous. You can help your cause, the people, your boyfriend. You can think about fighting back. But you don’t want to help me, I mean it. Because if you do, you’ll be stuck with me. You’ll owe yourself to me. I see how you are.’

‘What do you mean?’

Eli panted. It turned to almost-laughter. She reached down and held her gut.

‘Ariea, I think I’m pregnant.’

‘What?’

‘And how moral and right do all those escape plans seem now? What’s the right thing to do now?’