Screaming. Constant, high-pitched screaming.
The orange light flared and flickered. Fire. It was all around me.
“Thought I’d lost you there,” yelled a voice, and as the fog cleared, I realized it was Seth.
“You’re okay,” I spluttered through cracked lips. I shook my head, trying to gather my senses. What on earth had just happened? Mum . . . she had been so real.
I reached out and Seth gripped my arm, hauling me to my feet. My knees gave out under the weight, but he held me steady. With his spare hand, he swirled the stick of fire around us.
We were still outside camp, still in the wasteland, but the Darkness wasn’t even trying to get close. On the horizon it raged as strong as ever, but here . . . it had retreated high into the sky.
“A very good question,” he said, and for a second I was sure I saw a smile on his lips. “But I was hoping you’d be able to tell me the answer to that. You’re the one who did it.”
The Darkness was higher than I’d ever seen it. It was like we had an invisible wall above us, stopping it getting closer. In the distance, I could make out Iris and Dillon waving from beside a glowroot meadow. They’d managed to get away. They hadn’t been hurt.
My fear . . . there was so much of it before, but now there was something else where the fear used to be. Before now, I couldn’t handle the bad memories. There were too many of them. But now they were gone. Maybe the Darkness couldn’t handle them either.
For a second I felt elated. I’d bought Iris and Dillon time. They’d made it to safety. Then I remembered the black box, and my stomach plummeted.
“My idea didn’t work,” I said, as the memory of the hill came crashing back. Even chucking the location device in the water didn’t seem to have lured Icarus 1 here. “I’m sorry.”
“You can apologize later,” Seth said. “Let’s get back to camp first.”
He helped me over the rough ground, and we worked our way toward the meadow where Iris and Dillon were standing. Seth ditched the stick before we got too close to the plants.
Iris marched over to me and smacked me on the shoulder. “What was that about?” she shouted. “You could have got yourself killed!”
“I don’t know what you did,” Dillon said, his face pale even in the dark, “but it was brilliant. The Darkness just sort of . . . ran away.”
I looked up at the storm again. It was still there, seething, but it wasn’t coming any closer. “I don’t know what I did either,” I said, which was pretty much the truth. The back of my neck tingled as I thought about that place I went to—its shifting walls, the sheer whiteness.
And Mum . . .
“Come on,” Seth said. “They’ll probably be waiting for us.”
We set off back toward camp. My legs burned as if I’d run a marathon, and I still had the remains of a stitch in my side. My skin prickled where the Darkness had got so close. But we were okay—somehow, all of us had made it.
When I saw the LRP officers lining the edge of the light barrier, I thought they were going to cheer us on. The rest of camp was standing behind them, the timetable forgotten. But they didn’t clap or cry out. They just stood there.
As soon as we made it through the light, they grabbed us.
“You’re coming with us,” they said, “at the express order of the Marshal.”
What?
I tried to fight free, but the grip on my arms was too tight. “Where are we going?” I demanded, kicking up dust as I struggled to match their pace. “Where are you taking us?”
And then I saw.
They marched us through the square, up to the church, where the Marshal had argued with Quinn. Through the curtains they dragged us, and into the building itself. The Marshal was sitting there in his high-backed chair, waiting.
When he saw us, he clapped—loud, echoing in the open space.
“Bravo. A solid effort indeed,” he said, a mad glint in his eyes. “You can chuck your Hunter gear over there. You won’t be needing the packs anymore. Your time in this camp is at an end.”
Seth was breathing heavily, his shoulders rising up and down like a lion. Iris and Dillon huddled together, the same shock I was feeling plastered all over their faces.
After all that, it had all been for nothing?
“You don’t deserve to make that decision,” I spat, sounding loads braver than I felt.
“Oh? And why is that?”
“Tell them,” I said. “Tell them what you’ve been hiding from them.”
“You are a clever one,” the Marshal said, his eyes narrowing to sharp points. “Tell me . . . how do you know? No one knows. No one remembers. No one!”
“I never did like drugs,” I said.
“Hmm. Shame. Well, no drink for you, then. As for you three—” he clicked his fingers, and an LRP officer brought in a tray of drinks; I could smell the lemon balm drifting off them from here—“you can have a choice. But first, I’ll tell you a little story. Leave us,” he added to the LRP officers, before folding his hands on the table, and staring at Iris, Dillon, and Seth in turn.
“The City is dead,” he said. Seth and Dillon gasped. Iris just stood there glaring back at the Marshal. “We found it after our first year at camp. After so long without hearing from them, Quinn suggested we go looking. We didn’t have the airship, so we had to drive. It took three cars to make it to the walls, and over a week to finish the trip. But . . .”
He stopped to clear his throat.
“We were too late. There was nothing left. Nothing but bones and dust. The buildings of London ruined. Buckingham Palace, crumbled and deserted. The dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral crushed. The streets littered with rubble, all the buildings overgrown with ivy. It wasn’t pretty.”
This wasn’t right. It wasn’t supposed to end this way. I was supposed to finish the story and get home, back to the real world, with school and Danny and football and Dad all better.
But Dillon spoke first. “No,” he said.
“No what?” said the Marshal.
“I don’t believe you.”
“It is not a case of whether you believe it or not, boy. This world is dead. We are the last survivors. You should be thanking me! Think of all I have given you. Would you rather live out your days in despair, or enjoy at least an illusion of hope? At least you thought you could do something. At least you thought you were heroes. Better that than sitting around, waiting to die. You can go right back to feeling like that now, if you want. All you have to do is drink.”
He indicated the three glasses, before him on the table. Somehow, he must have found a way to work his lemon balm medicine into the liquid.
“Don’t drink it!” I yelled. “Don’t drink it. You’ll just go round and round like this forever.”
I thought of Dad, back home, never able to throw Mum’s ashes out to sea. And me . . . I was just the same, wasn’t I? Hiding from the Longest Day. Hiding from Mum’s leukemia.
“You can’t hide from the truth,” I said. “All it ever does is make things worse.”
“Drink,” the Marshal cooed. “Drink it, and you can leave. Drink it, and all this will be gone. You can live a life full of hope once more.”
“You’re a liar,” I spat. Something had flickered inside me when the cylinder hadn’t worked. It burned hotter and hotter, fueled by the anger and the frustration. It had been replaced by the cold certainty that I was going to die as the storm closed in. But now that I was still here, I was determined to put up a fight. “Tell them. Tell them what you’ve been hiding.”
The Marshal’s eyes reduced to sharp points. His nostrils flared, but when he spoke, his voice was calm and measured. “You really do remember, don’t you?”
“I remember all of it. How you turned Quinn Dreamless. How you covered up the plane, just so no one found out about Icarus 1. How you hid the radio call from the whole camp . . .”
“Hmm. Well, it was a shame to have to exile Quinn. He was tremendously useful. Took a great deal of persuading to follow my plan too. He was desperate to get through to the City. I, on the other hand, couldn’t allow us to reunite with them. It was easy enough to influence the memories of such a small camp, but the whole City? No, no, no. Far better to stay hidden. Isolated. Free from their filthy ideals.
“I don’t expect you to understand. How could you? You’re a boy, a duplicate. You couldn’t possibly understand the stresses of managing so many lives. I wasn’t supposed to be here at all, you know. I would much rather have been back in the City. I had a plan, a perfect plan, to cull the population, but Quinn, your father and the other Marshals put a stop to it. If they’d let me have my way, maybe the City would still be alive. But now look at me. I’m here! And they are not.”
“Quinn?” Iris said. “What do you mean, Quinn and the other Marshals?”
“He was a Marshal, back in the City. He was supposed to lead Icarus 3. How different things would have been, eh? If little old me hadn’t snuck aboard and crashed the ship. I couldn’t exactly stay, could I? Not after my plans had been exposed. He tried to fight me at first, but everyone has a weakness, if you’re clever enough to find it. He was very fond of you,” he added, glaring at me. “After I forced his best friend onto Icarus 1, all I had to do was hint at your untimely demise, and he would do whatever I asked of him.”
“The other camps will stop you,” I said. He was sounding more and more mad with every second, but I couldn’t think of anything to do apart from talk. “They’ll put an end to all this.”
“Ah, yes, the others,” he said. “You’re quite right, they’ll certainly try. If they can find us.”
Dillon was staring at the Marshal, his mouth hanging open. He tried to interrupt him, but all that came out was a strangled squeak.
“What is it, boy? Speak up.”
“You . . . you said we’d never heard from them. You said they must be dead.”
“Of course I did. I couldn’t have anyone interfering, could I? We picked up their frequency within weeks. Icarus 2 was transmitting a distress signal. It ended soon enough, as, I’m sure, did they. Shame. As for Icarus 1, they were most persistent. At first I thought they wanted to steal our glory, but after we found the City dead, I realized they wanted more than that: they wanted to steal our land. So I thwarted their efforts to communicate. With Quinn’s help, I kept us isolated, and thanks to my medicine, no one suspected a thing. Until you,” he said, glaring at me again.
“I heard the radio call from Icarus 1,” I told him. “They said something about Operation Phoenix. That doesn’t sound like they want to steal our land. It sounds like they want to team up.”
“It’s the same thing,” the Marshal spat. “I didn’t know how close they were to finding us until that plane crash. Your father will want to dispose of me, I’m sure, but he’ll never locate our camp.”
“You’re insane!” I said, my mind racing. I looked quickly around for something, anything that could help, but there was no way out. All I could think to do was keep him talking, keep Iris and the others from drinking that lemon balm.
“Very likely, yes,” the Marshal said, the ghost of a grin playing on his thin lips. “Only a madman would have left the City on one of these Icarus projects in the first place.”
I chanced a glance at the others. All this time they’d been thinking they were saving their families, but they were all gone. It had all been for nothing. I knew how much they wanted to forget it. Until today that was what I’d have done too. But I had to stop them. I had to do something . . .
The Marshal stood up and stalked back and forth behind the table. “Now, enough talking. The time has come for you to choose your fate. It will be a shame to get rid of such good Stormwalkers, but everyone is disposable if they are a threat to my camp.”
He advanced on us, eyes flashing.
“Do it. Take the drink, or join your friend Quinn. One little sip is all it takes . . .”
I glanced nervously at Iris. Her eyes were wet. She’d watched her parents become Dreamless, and now she knew her brother and auntie were both dead too. Dillon, Seth—they both had family in the City as well. One little slurp, and it would all be gone.
“I’ve got the black box,” I said quickly.
I knew it was a lie. The cylinder was floating somewhere in the river. But maybe the shock of it would buy us more time.
The Marshal’s mouth opened in surprise, but he quickly covered it up. “No matter,” he said. “The radio transmitter is useless in the Darkness. The only way it could work is if—”
He stopped, mouth working silently.
“Is if—” he said again, but still the words didn’t come out.
And then I realized why.
Because somewhere high above us, there came a deep rumbling sound.
The thrum-thrum-thrum-thrum-thrum of airship propellers.