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ALL HUNTER WANTED WAS to sleep, preferably for three to four days. She'd never slept on a real bed, having just moved from one cot to another her entire life, but she thought she'd like to try one. A real meal would have been nice, too. Back when she'd been part of Nightwatch, they'd allowed her access to a magazine once in a while, heavily censored of course—usually a third of the pages had been removed by the time she was allowed to have it—but she had once removed a page on her own, stashing it under her pillow. The guards had found it eventually and taken it away, just like they'd taken away everything that gave her a chance to develop a feeling of self.
The page in question had been a full-page advertisement for a restaurant that probably no longer existed. It showed a beautiful blonde woman biting into a massive, fully loaded hamburger. The look on the woman's face was pure ecstasy and the hamburger looked like the most marvelous meal Hunter—or Quon Li-Chen as she was at the time—could imagine.
She took another mouthful of her cold, canned beans.
"I want a hamburger," she said around the mouthful as Hobson stepped up beside her.
He chuckled, looking up into the night sky. The stars were out, brighter than ever.
"Roast beef with mashed potatoes and gravy, and Yorkshire pudding for me," he said wistfully.
"I've never had a hamburger. Or roast beef or mashed potatoes or Yorkie pudding."
"Yorkshire. Really? None of it?"
"I've only been alive for two years, really," she said. "And I haven't found any good restaurants in that time."
There was a long silence as Hobson continued to stare up at the stars and Hunter finished off her terrible beans.
"The sky was never this clear," said the Corporal. "Between pollution and the lights from all our cities, you could never see the stars like this."
"I have a friend who hopes that out of all of this, we can find some good. As terrible as this is..."
She looked toward Grieve and Hutch, who were cleaning their weapons together, chatting about something that caused them both to laugh. Wiggins stood guard. Ransom and Arthur sat huddled close together in quiet conversation—Hunter hoped the girl was getting through.
"Would any of us even be speaking to each other in the world as it was?" she asked. "A retired Sergeant sharing a joke with a criminal? A member of the royal family spending time with an amateur archer from Canada? A member of the Coldstream Guards talking about the stars with a Soviet weapon?"
Like Hobson, she now looked to the stars.
"And up there, we had Commonwealth, Soviet and icaran forces working together."
"Out of the ashes rises the Phoenix?"
"One can hope."
"One can hope," he said, nodding then sighing. "I'm sorry for the behaviour of the Prince. He's young and he was never expected to ever be in a position of responsibility."
"I was never exposed to young people," she said. "My whole life, I was surrounded by scientists and doctors. My whole frame of reference for how younger people think and act is a young woman from the Vimy Ridge named Cortez—and now Harley Ransom. I should know that not everyone would be like them, but it didn't occur to me that a Prince would be so..."
"Not all Princes are the kind from fairy tales."
Hunter nodded as if she understood. Fairy tales were not something to which she'd been exposed and while she had a general idea of what they entailed, she wasn't sure what they had to do with royalty. But she understood enough to know that Hobson was, in an indirect way, acknowledging that Arthur had failed to live up to the expectations of many, including Hunter and her people. Including Hobson himself.
"Not everyone knows who they should be," she said, still staring into the stars. "Sometimes it takes a long time to discover who you are, and even longer to decide who you are. The Prince has a chance here that everyone deserves. He has a choice."
Though Hobson nodded, when he glanced back to Ransom and Arthur, Hunter was sure she saw disappointment in his eyes, as if he knew that Arthur had already made his choice.
"Get some sleep," she said, as gently as she could figure out how. "The morning will come quickly and we have a long day ahead."
The words still echoed in her head and no matter how Ransom tried to rationalize them, the truth wouldn't go away. Arthur had no desire to fight the invaders and actually felt surrender and even death were the better option.
A two hour march at dawn, softly talking with Arthur the whole way, had done nothing to change the Prince's outlook. So she'd tried another tack and she had no idea how it was working. If it was working.
Tugging off her toque, she stuffed it in her pocket and ran a hand through her unruly mass of red curls. Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes momentarily, enjoying the crispness of the air, the warmth of the early morning sun on her face, the sound of the river passing by far below.
She stood in a small clearing at the edge of a steep cliff, far enough from the rest of the group that she could consider herself alone, but close enough to run back if they or she encountered any ril-galas. Or human traitors.
The encounter at the old castle still made her feel sick. Humans selling out humans. It was disgusting, but the more she thought about it, the less it should have surprised her. Humanity had been selling each other out for centuries or longer—the only difference here was that they were selling each other out to a different species instead of each other. Hunter had spoken several times of a brighter future, but it was so hard to see most times.
And with Arthur, who they had wanted so badly to be a symbol of hope, now seeming to be the exact opposite...
Feeling tears well up in her eyes, she quickly wiped them away as she heard the crunch of footsteps approaching.
"I was wondering where you'd gotten to," said Arthur, his voice still sullen, but a slight smile pricking at one corner of his mouth.
"And here I am," she said in her near-perfect imitation of his voice.
He immediately scowled.
"I told you I don't like it when you do that."
"Sorry," she said, favouring him with her brightest smile. "I just wanted to see if it was good enough. Forgive me?"
After a moment, his scowl disappeared and he nodded.
"So...," he said slowly. "We're alone out here."
She smirked.
"And?"
"And... I know you like me, you made that clear."
She had, hadn't she? Her smile faltered, if only momentarily, and the Prince didn't seem to notice. Or if he did, interpreted it through his own lens. Of course he wouldn't consider that her interest in him was rooted in impressing upon him the importance of what they were trying to do—that would have taken too much self-reflection. Arthur was too busy concentrating on her and specific parts of her rather than what she'd been saying.
Of course, she'd done nothing to discourage it and even gone so far as to pop a couple of the buttons on her shirt when going to speak with him. It had seemed at the time like the easiest way to get his attention and hopefully get him to start listening.
But he hadn't listened.
And so there they were.
"Are you saying, Your Highness, that we should...?"
"Yeah, I mean why not? We're probably going to be dead soon, may as well enjoy ourselves."
"So get naked then."
Dropping her jacket onto the ground, Ransom moved toward the edge of the cliff and began undressing, setting her clothes gently on a large boulder at her side. She could hear Arthur behind her, taking off his clothes with almost manic speed. Coming up behind her, the Prince pressed himself against her and she turned to face him, pushing him away gently. He looked her up and down twice.
"Don't get ahead of yourself," she said. "Turn around."
Reluctant to give up the view, he hesitated for a moment before following her instruction. Once he had, she stepped up and pressed herself into his back in much the same way he had done to her. They were nearly the same height, her mouth brushing against the back of his neck. Reaching around, she laid her right hand flat against his belly and slowly slid it upward to his chest, feeling his breath quicken, and then up to his neck and then over his mouth.
And then reached around with her left hand a slid the knife between his ribs, angled upward, the tip of the blade piercing Prince Arthur's heart.
He twitched, but she held him tightly, silently, as he died. When she felt his body begin to go slack, Ransom withdrew the knife and shoved, and the last surviving member of the British Monarchy tumbled forward over the cliff. When his body hit the rocks below with a crunch, Ransom flung the knife away, over the cliff and as far down the river as she could manage, wiped the blood from her hand and quickly dressed.
Running back through the woods, she stumbled out where the rest of the party was resting and rehydrating, and she put on a mask of shock and horror.
"He jumped."
Everyone turned toward her. Hobson shot to his feet.
"What?"
"He jumped," she said breathlessly. "Arthur, he... he just jumped."
When they all ran through the trees and toward the cliff, Ransom ran with them, though a slight step behind.
When they arrived at the edge and looked down and saw Arthur's broken body, she didn't stand with them. She sunk to the ground, her back against the boulder.
When they asked her what had happened, she told them.
"He wanted us to... He came and found me and took off all his clothes. I told him no. That I wasn't interested. And he... took it badly," she said, drawing a shaky breath. "So he said fine, but he said it like it was an insult—'fine.' And he said we're all dead anyway and he just fucking jumped."
Some people were sad, some were angry, some were both. But under a lot of it, Ransom could sense a current of guilty relief—or she thought she could. Hutch had been right all along, that Arthur was never going to be what they needed him to be. Now they wouldn't have to go back to Edinburgh with that disappointment. Now someone else could step up and be the symbol they needed. Be the leader they needed.
Ransom looked up at Hunter, who had stepped over to her and squatted at her side.
"Are you all right?"
"More or less," said Ransom, shrugging.
"He didn't... do anything?"
"To me? No," she said, shaking her head. "It wasn't like that. He just..."
Trailing off, Ransom rubbed both hands over her face. There was a faint smell of blood on her left hand.
"I guess it's like we said the other night," she said quickly as Hobson joined them. "Some people can't handle the new normal. Those people who attacked us couldn't. Maybe... I dunno, maybe he—Arthur—maybe knowing his old life, which was pretty fucking cushy, was never coming back... maybe it broke him?"
Hobson nodded, sadly. He looked older than he had an hour ago.
"Arthur...," he said, pausing and clearing his throat. "Arthur was the youngest of the Royal Family and the most sheltered. His brother went to the Commonwealth Military College in Dover, but Arthur had no desire to do anything like that."
The Corporal seemed very uncomfortable speaking of the recently-deceased in negative terms.
"He wasn't cut out to be a leader," he said.
"Or a survivor," added Hunter.
Hobson shot her a disapproving look and she shrugged.
"He wasn't," she said. "I wish it were otherwise, but it's the truth—he said himself several times that we'd be better off dead. That he decided to make that decision for himself shouldn't have surprised any of us."
"I just... I have a lot of guilt," said Hobson.
The way he said it made Ransom's heart break a little.
"This isn't your fault," she said emphatically.
"I know. My guilt isn't... It's because all along, ever since I took up the lead in protecting Arthur, I kept wishing, kept thinking how much better things would have been if it had been Edward—his brother—who had survived rather than him."
Hunter smiled sympathetically. To Ransom, though, it looked more like someone faking an emotion she didn't quite feel. Not that she thought Hunter uncaring, but knowing—now—the woman's background, there were other things that made sense. Her stand-offish nature, her awkwardness in more delicate conversation. Hunter probably didn't feel things in quite the same way as those with a 'normal' upbringing, whatever that might have been. And Ransom certainly couldn't be one to judge another for putting on a mask for people.
"Never feel guilty for thinking of the bigger picture," said the psychic weapon.
"I'm sorry he couldn't be what you... what we all hoped he would be."
"What matters now is how we move forward," said Hunter, standing.
Ransom stood as well and a second later Hobson followed suit, wincing as one of his knees made a popping sound.
"I'd like to retrieve the body," he said.
Feeling a wave of panic rise in her gut, it was only through sheer willpower that Ransom kept her face neutral. The odds that the fall had broken Arthur enough to disguise a stab wound were astronomical. If they retrieved the body, someone would surely notice... but Hunter was shaking her head.
"We don't have the equipment to climb down, nor do we have the luxury of time to find another way to the bottom," she said. "I'm sorry, we have to leave him."
There was a pause where Ransom was sure Hobson was going to protest, but instead he just nodded.
Ransom tried not to breathe a sigh of relief.