Havoc (25 page)

Dash had gone pale. ‘What did they die of? Not nerve gas, or you'd be dead too.'

‘They died,' said Lanya, ‘of Frieda Kelleran's plan for Moldam.'

Dash turned her back on the window and gave us her full attention. ‘From the top,
please.'

‘But you know this,' I said. ‘You heard Frieda in St John's all of—I don't know—six
hours ago? She said they'd released the virus in Moldam. What did you think she meant?'

‘They what?' said Lanya. ‘They've done it?'

I nodded. ‘Dash?'

‘I don't know!' she said. ‘I heard and didn't hear. I thought she was trying to scare
you. I didn't know what she meant.'

She looked around the room at all the tech, out the window at the cages, and finally
at me. ‘Tell me.'

She listened, grim-faced, until I got to the exodus by Cityside's most powerful,
and the blackmailing of the
Dry-dwellers. She shook her head at that.

‘I don't buy it,' she said. ‘It has to be coincidence, that timing. Who told you?'

‘Someone I believe.'

Dash's eyes narrowed. ‘The Hendrys wouldn't be in on something like that.'

‘Take a look around you!' I said. ‘D'you think Frieda's on a power trip all her
own to end the war? Someone's pulling the strings.'

‘Yes, but not those families—'

‘Why not? She has her own lackeys, the ones who do the poisoned needles into necks
and truncheons smashing knees so that she can claim no knowlege of any of that. But
she's a lackey too, and what she does is another version of the same thing.

‘You want rid of the people who might crowd your space and your comfortable life?
Sure you do, but you're not gonna do it yourself and you're not gonna do it by taking
the long way round—sitting down and talking—because that would mean compromise and
mess and your comfortable life might get fractionally less comfortable at the margins,
and let's face it, you want it all, even at the margins. So you convince yourself
that compromise means defeat, and you tell your lackey to deal with it, but you clear
out while she does that because you can't actually bear to watch what you've set
in train. No, you go off to impose yourself on some other second-class people who
only really exist for your benefit anyway.'

Dash and Lanya were both staring at me.

I shrugged. ‘End of rant. Except that Frieda didn't count on Jono throwing Lanya
in that room.'

‘No,' said Dash. ‘I see that. How long were you in there?'

‘Long enough,' I said.

‘Then you need help,' said Dash, on firm ground now that she had something she could
do. ‘A doctor. We need to find some vaccine for the two of you. To get you out of
danger.' She was at the door in two paces.

‘No,' said Lanya. She'd been looking down into the cages below, listening. Now she
turned round and said, ‘It's not so easy.'

‘I know,' said Dash. ‘I've no idea where to look, but if I find a doctor—'

‘I mean,' said Lanya, and she looked at me, ‘all of Moldam gets the vaccine, or none
of us gets it.'

She held my gaze to see how that settled on me, and I saw where she meant to go,
and where I would have to go if I wanted to be with her.

‘Forget it,' Dash was saying. ‘You don't bargain with Frieda. Do you think she cares
about you dying of some virus?'

‘No,' said Lanya. ‘But she will care about the whole city dying of it.'

‘Which is not about to happen,' said Dash. ‘How
could it?' She looked at me.

‘Weaponised humans,' I said, finding my voice at last. ‘Frieda made the virus into
a weapon. But she thought it would be safely contained in Moldam. She didn't count
on Moldam coming to town.'

Dash's blue eyes got wide. ‘But you're not going into town. No way! I won't let you.
And even if you could, Frieda will hunt you down.'

‘Yes, she will,' I said. ‘But only if she knows where to look.'

Dash shook her head. ‘I can't be a part of this. I'm sworn to protect the city.'

‘The whole city?' I asked.

Her comms unit buzzed.

‘Hold on,' she said. She studied at its message, glanced at us, clipped it back on
her belt.

‘The army's here, upstairs, and—'

But before she could finish, an intercom buzzed and a voice blared in the corridor
ordering everyone who was not authorised to be within the perimeter of the Marsh
to leave now or face immediate arrest.

‘I've been ordered to report for duty,' said Dash. ‘The mob's being rounded up. It's
over.'

CHAPTER 34

Lanya bowed her head to her knees, took a deep breath and came upright with a long
breath out and a look on her face that I knew well—that blaze of energy she found
when she was in the heart of a Pathmaker dance, all of her focused and burning bright.
‘We're leaving,' she said.

Dash moved to the doorway. ‘I won't let you do that.'

She unclipped her gun and hefted it in her palm.

‘Then shoot us,' said Lanya. ‘The Kelleran woman will, when she finds us here.'

‘She won't find you,' said Dash. ‘Let me hide you here while I go and find the vaccine.'

The corridor intercom blared again and made us all jump. It repeated the order for
people to leave or be arrested. Any minute now the army would be charging down to
this level searching for troublemakers.

I shook my head. ‘They'll find us. You have to take us into town or hand us over.'

‘You'll be putting the whole city at risk,' she said. ‘I can't let you do that.'

‘The whole city is already at risk,' I said. ‘And Moldam's well past risk. The virus
is there, Dash. Thousands of people are about to get sick and die!'

‘But—'

‘There is no but,' said Lanya. ‘There is mass death of people who have done nothing
to deserve it except be born on the wrong side of the river, or there is all of Cityside
in fear for their lives crying at the Kelleran woman to release the Havoc vaccine
for Moldam. Those are your choices.'

Long pause. Long, long pause.

Dash said, to me, ‘You'd actually do this? Kill people?'

I said, ‘We have to put pressure on Frieda to vaccinate Moldam. What do you suggest?
We ask nicely? Or we make people realise that the quarantine on Moldam won't hold,
because, look: here we are, from Moldam, infected, and in Cityside.'

Dash shook her head. ‘But why do you have to be infected—just the rumour should be
enough.'

‘Do you know where the vaccines are?'

‘No.'

‘I was in Moldam yesterday and Lanya's been in that room down there. Chances are,
we're infected.'

Another long pause.

‘I'll take you to a med centre,' she said. ‘It's that or nothing. Frieda won't find
you, I promise. I'll give her a message from you—you can make it as threatening as
you like, because, God knows, what she's done is so wrong, but I'm not taking you
anywhere populated.'

Lanya and I looked at each other. I said, ‘Deal.'

The intercom warning rattled us again; it wouldn't be long before this whole discussion
became irrelevant. I grabbed back the pen, tore a page out of the notepad and wrote
an ultimatum to Frieda. I showed it to Lanya who nodded and held it out to Dash.

‘Wait,' I said. ‘You've been vaccinated, right?'

Dash nodded. ‘Routine protection against bio-terrorism. Which is what this is, by
the way.'

‘Tell that to Frieda,' I said.

Dash frowned at the message. ‘This is in Breken.'

‘I'm fairly sure Frieda can read Breken,' I said.

Dash shot me a glance. ‘Yeah, that's not what I meant. You really are gone, aren't
you.'

‘Will you give it to her?'

She nodded, eyeing the signature at the bottom. ‘Nikolai Stais. She won't know if
it's you or your father.'

‘Good. She's a lot more scared of him.'

‘Maybe,' said Dash. ‘How do I explain why I didn't shoot you on the spot?'

‘Tell her we were gone by the time you got here.'

She thought about that, then hefted her gun again. ‘Let's go.'

‘Hold on,' I said. I scrawled another note, folded it and handed it to Dash. ‘For
Fyffe,' I said.

‘What is it?'

‘The whole point of this is no one dies, right? On her own, Frieda would do a deal
with us on the quiet and then backtrack and we're dead. Simple. We need maximum exposure
so that she can't finesse her way out. That means the whole of Cityside watching.
Fyffe can make that happen.'

Dash shook her head. ‘Two things. First, Frieda has the news channels under her thumb.
They won't go near this without instructions from her. And secondly, Fyffe? Are you
serious?'

‘There you go, just like Jono. Give her the note, stand back and watch what happens.'

She shook her head again and pocketed the paper.

‘You were never so organised in the old days.' She motioned us to the door. ‘Don't
breathe on anyone. Don't touch anything. And pray that we don't meet Frieda on the
way out.'

In the corridor everything was blue lit, in power-saving mode, but ready to blaze
up at any moment once the place was back under Frieda's control. We retraced our
way along corridors and up stairs until we reached the door that we'd come through
so very long ago.

So far, so deserted.

Outside it was dusk, still hot as hell, and the air was full of fury. In the grounds
to the left of our building a battle surged and roared: lines of army in riot shields
and gas masks were marching step by step into the swirling crowd, halting as volleys
of stones clanged off their shields then advancing again. Tear gas canisters shot
into the crowd and a water cannon arced through the billowing clouds of gas. The
crowd was driven back and back. Then it surged forward again, charging in, hurling
stuff and darting away.

They weren't your average Joe and Jo Public come to look for the vaccine. These people
were dressed for battle in helmets and goggles, scarves wrapped round faces, and
homemade shields cut from rubbish bins. Some of them picked up gas canisters with
gloved hands and lobbed them back into the army ranks. Fires burned across the grounds
adding smoke to the gas. Shouted orders came from both sides, as well as yells of
outrage and abuse from the crowd. A megaphone blared at people to
Move Out, Move
Out
and we heard shots fired—in the air, you hoped, but maybe not: we saw people
with blood-streaked faces being dragged semi-conscious towards army trucks. By the
time we'd gone a dozen paces our eyes were streaming and our lungs were burning.

‘Be cool,' said Dash above the din. ‘They want people to leave and we're leaving.'

Above us, above the smoke, the sky was glowing in the last light of a huge red sunset.
Behind us the air rang with the echo of the megaphone, the explosion of gas canisters,
the roar of the crowd and the clash of stone on riot shield. We reached the parking
building where the vehicle fleet was kept. Dash waggled Jono's swipe card with a
grin and used to it get us inside.

‘Wait here,' she said. ‘I'll get a car.'

Lanya and I retreated into the shadows of a stairwell. She leaned back on the wall
and closed her eyes.

‘Hey,' I said. ‘How are you?'

‘I am dead tired. And I stink.'

She plucked at her T-shirt in disgust. She was still wearing the black jeans and
white T-shirt that Fyffe had given her but they were all kinds of filthy now.

‘What's today?' she said. ‘Friday? I haven't had a change of clothes in three days.
Four! Nearly four days!'

She shivered and I wished I had a jacket to give her—I was in jeans and a T-shirt
too and couldn't even remember what had happened to the jacket of Lou's that Fyffe
had given me.

The minutes ticked by. Lanya said, ‘I hope your friend hasn't changed her mind. Do
you trust her?'

‘I used to.'

‘You were together, weren't you?' said Lanya. ‘Once.'

‘Yeah. There were six of us and we kind of paired up. People said we were good together.'

‘Were you?'

‘Mostly. Not always.'

‘And now?'

‘Now I don't know if I trust her at all, not after she landed me in this place. She
said she was rescuing me. She's so sure of herself and her ideas about what's the
right thing to do, it's pretty hard to convince her otherwise.'

Dash went everywhere with truckloads of confidence—always had. And that was great
when you wanted to bask in the warm glow of infallibility while demolishing your
opposition. Not so great when you were the opposition.

Lanya was quiet for a while but she shivered in little starts every half minute or
so.

‘Are you okay?' I asked.

‘Are you going to ask me that every five minutes?'

‘Probably.'

‘Once every half hour, no more.'

‘Raffael took my watch,' I said. ‘I'll have to guess.'

A moment later Dash pulled up at the exit in a car with tinted windows. Lanya and
I piled in the back.

Dash locked the doors. She was grim faced and unspeaking as she sped us towards the
city, and I wondered what news she'd picked up when she went to get the car.

When we got to the parks and tree-lined streets of Bethun she said, ‘There'll probably
be roadblocks so keep quiet and let me do the talking.'

‘Roadblocks?' I said. ‘Why?'

‘The unrest is spreading. People are ransacking warehouses in search of the vaccine,
and One City has grabbed the chance to tip the whole city towards chaos. They've
reoccupied Sentian, they're threatening to occupy Watch Hill and you've seen what
they're doing at the Marsh. I guess they want a strong place to bargain from. And
they hate the Marsh. Anyway, it means that the army will be stretched to get the
city under control any time soon.'