Rise Page 15

  It was Groff who said, “And why did Mother Goose choose to imprison twenty-five? Why that exact number?”

  Clever Groff, wise Groff with his questions about the details of the story, which was, after all, a ruse to disguise their new-born escape plan. “Five a-piece. Five to distract, five to overwhelm, five to steal Mother Goose’s wagon, five to guide it, and five to open the gate and lead the other razingstock to freedom. All healthy, all right-minded, and most importantly, all ready to sacrifice themselves for the survival of the herd.”

  The men had fallen quiet. Mohab imagined he heard a woman’s breath, and, not for the first time, he wondered if Lieutenant Kali Titian would really keep their secrets and her promise to man the gunner? The whole plan rested on her shoulders, which was why he hadn’t shared that particular detail with the other Vary. After all, why sabotage the only escape plan they’d ever had? And hadn’t Kali proven herself already? She had stood up to her father – stood up to the entire Bleek nation, in fact. She had carried Mohab’s father, taking half the weight. And now she was to acquire the gunner’s keycode from the Commandant Superintendent, at great personal risk and with no support system. Kali Titian had worked and suffered and cried like any other. Her face bore the same scars. Her body had the same exaggerated hollows.

  But Kali was still Bleek, and she had still hurt his people more than most. All he could do was join the rest in having hope.

  “Twenty-five then,” said someone, and a murmur of ‘Twenty-five’ went through the ranks. Mohab wanted to tell the men to quiet down even before a blocker appeared in the doorway and demanded they fall silent. In the almost darkness, the men crawled back onto the bunks, interweaving their limbs to all fit in.

  Mohab lay down on the rickety cot and closed his eyes. Hunger and exhaustion clutched at him. He tried to picture a different environment – the cool sheets of his bed back on the farmstead all those years ago. In the saddle and riding across the parched ground on his favourite red racer. Lying between the thighs of Lilith Gutsing in the grain store, basking in body heat…

  When Mohab finally slept, he was dead to the world.

  Twenty-One

  Shola Ricks crouched at the far end of her cell. She looked smaller than ever, a shrinking girl wearing dress-up ears. Only, Groff knew all too acutely that there was nothing make believe about her physical alterations. The ears stuck up from her head, twitching occasionally. A halo of brown fuzz covered the girl’s face and naked body. The grafted tail was painted with bright blue iodine to prevent infection.

  “So there you are, Shola Ricks. I know you heard me coming.” Groff opened the trap at the base of the glass-sheet door and slid a bowl through. “They’ve adjusted your diet. Ask me, they may have improved it. Handful of greens and a couple of hoppers. Not exactly what you’re used to, but plenty of folk would be glad of the protein.”

  He didn’t say any more, just watched as she drove her face into the bowl. She lifted her head, cracking the insect casings between her molars. Hopper juice bled down her chin.

  Groff cocked his head, trying to understand the abomination of a creature which had so recently been a little girl. “What can I tell you, Shola Ricks? Life. It shouldn’t be anything like this. You and me, we’ve got to believe that. Mama Sunstar is wild-hearted, but I do not believe the likes of your alternations are within her philosophy.”

  The fox girl scratched at one of the newly stitched ears and chuntered in discomfort. Groff checked over a shoulder. They were alone momentarily. He had only salve and words with which to soothe her.

  Leaning towards the cage, he smiled his gappy smile. “I am different too, Shola Ricks.” He tapped the neon brand at his cheek – and tried not to think about the pain of receiving it. “Once upon a time, or so history tells us, people believed they were free to love as they wished. I loved a man. I know that is shocking to you. How could any sane individual behave so? By which I mean, choose to put themselves in danger. Except, it isn’t a choice, you’ve got to believe me on that, Shola Ricks. In recent years, Titian’s rule has meant folk like me being tossed out into the shadows.” He nodded. “Yes, you and I, we are outcast. Good job we have each other.”

  On the other side of the glass sheet, Shola Ricks stared back with painted eyeballs, her sore, stitched ears rotating slightly like orbiting satellites.

  Doctor Harris was an intelligent man, Groff gave him that much. Harris behaved and spoke like a monster, but some small part of him understood that there was a reason to hide what he did from the world at large. What else explained his reluctance to have more than a couple of Gothendore Sisters assist in the medical suite, or his decision to leave the bulk of the nursing to Groff? Somewhere inside that black heart of his, Harris knew his actions would be condemned. Surely that was true?

  Except, as Groff stood feeding sheets stained with every bodily fluid to the medical suite’s incinerator, he found he was not the only one entrusted with Harris’s secrets. A nun entered, her face lost to the unforgiving folds of her wimple, and closed the door.

  Groff didn’t like the idea of being shut in with one of Abbandon’s resident witches. He padded the floor and looked abashed.

  “Can I help you, sister? Are you lost?” He tried to force a smile then remembered his missing teeth. The smile faltered. “This is the medical suite. Could be you are after the infirmary?”

  The sister didn’t reply. Just stood, back to the door, the faint outline of her features becoming more visible as he stared into her dark hood.

  “Sister?” Groff felt a fresh wave of fear. What had he done wrong? Was this his moment of deliverance? Except, he and the sister worshipped very different gods. Lord Gothendore was an armoured warrior, blinding his followers with incandescent light. Mama Sunstar, on the other hand, was all earth and fire. Would that affect his passage to the afterlife?

  The face moved forward very slightly. There was something gut-achingly familiar about the nun’s features…

  “Groff!” The nun gave a little yelp, like a smothered sob, and suddenly threw her arms around him.

  In that moment, nothing made sense to Groff except the nun’s embrace – because of course, he recognised her now as Ju’s younger sister, Lizabeth. Suddenly he was breathing in everything familial, and it hurt so fucking much! “Lil… Lizabeth.” There were more questions, but in that moment, he couldn’t form them.

  Instead, Lizabeth pulled away and held him by his shoulders. “I do not have long. I volunteered to deliver a new child at Doctor Harris’s request, may Mama Sunstar bless and keep that poor creature! But I needed to see you. I needed to see you.” She stroked his face – the spot above his brand – very gently, and Groff couldn’t help it. The tears fell and his bottom lip quivered with the effort to keep all he had endured contained.

  “They took Ju,” he said, the pain of the fact breaking over him anew. “The guards pulled him out into the street. His beautiful face… it was…” He broke off; Lil didn’t need the details. “They dragged him away. He wouldn’t have lasted a month in one of these camps!”

  Lizabeth caught her breath. She forced the emotion back under. “I knew he was gone. I felt it in my bones. There is no record of him at any camp. I found you, though. At last I found you.”

  “But this work you are doing…” Groff looked at the door instinctually. “Any moment you might be discovered. There will be no mercy, Lil. They will drag you out into the sun and they will kill you, and they will throw you into the furnace along with all the others. I do not want that for you, Lil. Ju would not want that for you.”

  “I have come too far on this journey to stop now.” Lilzabeth inhaled raggedy and sighed. “Listen, Groff. I must go. But know this much. I am here. I am working for the Resistance in Ju’s name. The end is coming, Groff. One way or another, the end is coming for you and me, Groff. Stay strong. Know that I love you. And Ju loved you. He loved you so very much.” This time, the sob broke through, and it was Groff who pushed a hand to Lizabeth’s mo
uth and eyed the door in panic.

  But Lizabeth recovered herself.

  “If you see me here, my name is Sister Eva. Remember, Groff.”

  With one last tender brush of fingers down his cheek, she turned, passed through the door once more and left him behind.

  The hole in the hull had closed up, the diamantine skin having melded together without leaving a scar. Kali couldn’t help but experience a pinch of regret. She had enjoyed creeping beneath the skin of the gunner and pretending she was free.

  But now the hull had healed and work had turned to the interior levels. Coming into the holding bay that morning, Kali’s regret was soon replaced with anticipation, reminding her of the very first time she ever set foot inside a gunner. All the plans in the world were meaningless without prior knowledge of this new vessel’s layout.

  “But you’ve been aboard hundreds of other ships,” Mohab had reasoned earlier when she expressed her concerns.

  “Yes, and the blueprint is probably very similar to what I’m used to. But this is an imperial gunner, barely out of the dock before it got shot up.” Mohab’s tone had irritated her. At first it had been enough that she should pilot the craft. Now she was meant to be an expert on its interior as well!

  Fortunately, Kali’s superior engineering skills meant that she was selected to carry out the majority of the more complicated repairs and upgrades to the gunner.

  “New scanners are to be installed in medical,” said a guard, pointing to several large polythymer boxes and a riser trolley.

  Kali didn’t want to say any more, but if she didn’t, how authentic would her behaviour be? She swallowed and spoke up. “My field of expertise is bio-engineering not hardware. Am I the right person to fit these scanners?”

  The guard struck her hard across the face with his beater. She stumbled back as the world squeezed down to a pinpoint of light. Calling on her military training, she shook off the blow and stood up straight again.

  “The right person? You are a bone bag, a rancid bitch who takes turns at getting fucked by the Commandant Superintendent and the fifty Vary you share a sty with. Traitors don’t get to describe themselves as a person. They’re diseased like Vary.” He jabbed the end of the beater against her cheek and forced her to look at the polythymer boxes. “Fit the fucking scanners.”

  The guard stepped back, twisting his beater in his hands and watching Mohab closely as if deciding whether to strike them both down.

  “Let’s go,” said Mohab softly. He didn’t stop to see if Kali was all right, just kept on walking.

  Twenty-Two

  The smell from the furnaces was stronger than usual. Nothing had ever prepared Mohab for the reality of starving to death alongside the constant stench of roasting flesh. His stomach was a dried-up ball.

  He was glad to leave the stench behind. Entering the gunner at the airlock, he followed three guards through the corridors. Kali walked at his shoulder. Behind came the scanners on a riser trolley, the reactive bio-chord of each pallet tied in to their nicks. Mohab was thankful for small mercies. He wasn’t sure he had strength enough to lift let alone carry the scanners. Working in the quarry had used him up. Likewise, no doubt Kali’s face ached where she had been struck. Mohab understood why she had spoken up. If she felt she had been assigned the wrong role, it would never sit well with her. Bleek were raised that way. To the best of his understanding, they settled into a career in early puberty and tended to stick by that decision. Very rarely, one went against the prescribed path and switched direction. In the case of Lieutenant Kali, they even swapped sides.

  The corridors made an echo chamber around them. Mohab imagined the gunner in flight, the warm pulse of its revolving rings and the banter of its crew. He envied those who manned the gunner. Inside that ship, they could rise above the horrors of the world.

  “This is the first circle level,” said Kali quietly. “Mess hall, sleeping berths, leisure hall, store. Next level up is medical, officers’ quarters, and the Captain’s suite. Third level is the bridge, navigation deck, and weapons systems. Fourth level is the viewing platform. We won’t get that far.” She cocked her head towards a set of smoked glass-sheet doors. “The mess hall.” Further on, she nodded to an open galley fitted with burners, water coolers and manual preparation equipment. “The base kitchen. For the use of crew. Beyond it is the main preparation galley, manned by domestic staff.”

  Mohab dragged a hand under his nose and sniffed. “I’m surprised you know this level so well.” He directed his eyes up. “Officers and captains being housed elsewhere, I mean.”

  “I’ve always taken an interest in all ranks.”

  “But the next level has the officers, you say? They were more your kind, surely.” Mohab heard the bite behind his words.

  The lieutenant gave him a sideways glance. “I’ve dipped in and out of both camps, but it’s less complicated to screw the crew. Less hassle, less gossip. You understand?”

  “I understand that you never fitted in with your own kind.” He stared dead ahead. “Or does it turn you on to rough it?”

  “I think she answered that question the day she hooked up with Vary swine like you,” shot one of the guards. The man double-backed and Mohab felt a wave of nausea. Had the guard overheard everything that he and Kali had discussed? Not everything, he realised as the guard flashed Kali a filthy smile but then turned back around.

  His pulse settled as the man joined the others leading the way again through the corridors. Behind him and Kali, the riser trolley gave off its percussive buzz.

  “I will show you what I can,” said Kali under her breath. “Stay close. Listen hard.”

  Mohab gave the slightest dip of the head.

  In Groff’s mind, he had murdered Doctor Harris a thousand times. He liked to imagine Harris’ blood as a red slick across the tiled floor. He found the idea beautiful. Today though, he pushed the fantasy aside to reach into the cabinet and pick up the concentrate bottle. He froze just short of slipping the concentrate into the hole in his waistband. Had he heard something? At his back, the cells were in darkness. Carefully he hid the bottle and closed the wire-mesh across the medical cabinet.

  “Got any poison for me?”

  A phantom solidified at the front of the cell opposite. Shola Ricks pressed her newly aquiline face to the glass sheet and stared out at him. One of her grotesquely stretched ears twitched; she squatted down and used a back foot to scratch at it. In doing so, she revealed her inner workings, those soft whorls of flesh between her legs.

  “I didn’t know you spoke still, Shola Ricks. It’s nice to hear your voice. Nice to have company. Your friends here have given up using words.” Groff held his hands out to the other cells.

  “Poison. Can I have some?” Oranged eyes shone out of the darkness.

  “You mean the medicine I just collected?” Groff patted the waistband of his pyjama pants, checking on his contraband. “I’m not sure a dose of this would do you much good. Plus, I have been tasked with keeping you alive. Keeping you alive keeps me alive.” He swallowed. “The Vary need me, at least for now.”

  “Kill me with your hands then. Please, nurse. Do what they won’t yet.”

  Her pleading tore at him. Shola Ricks had been made monstrous by Harris and his butchers. The stitches were exceptionally neat, but where the ears had been stretched and further modifications grafted, the skin was inflamed. Shola blinked repeatedly. The needle marks were visible where the ink had been pumped into her eyeballs.

  “Shola Ricks,” he said quietly to himself. The girl who had forced her name upon him. Reduced to this living patchwork. This un-thing.

  “Do it now, Mister Groff. Before they come back.”

  He heard the desperation in her voice.

  “I can’t do it, Shola Ricks,” he said, staring above her head into the darkness. “Too many lives depend on me.” Approaching the glass sheet, he peered in at the wretched girl. No one should have to endure Harris’s foul practices, let alone Shola Ri
cks.

  “You will save everyone else, but you will not save me?” A sob broke from Shola’s lips and she squatted on her heels, open to the world. Tears gave way to pitiful mews. Cries of a cub separated from its mother.

  “Now, now, Shola Ricks. Hush now. You’ll bring them running.”

  He said it too late. The sound of heavy footfall rang out from the corridor.

  “Do not betray me now,” he told the fox girl. “I am needed and, time allowing, will soon be fixed to save you.”

  “There’s nothing left of me to save.” Shola faded back into the shadows as a pair of doctors strode into the room. Harris followed them in, scratching notes into a handheld.

  He glanced up to see Groff step away from Shola’s cell and he smiled.

  “Well now, subject three. You are quite the chatterbox. Isn’t she, Groff?” Harris peeped in at Shola’s cell. When Groff didn’t respond, the surgeon turned to him in expectation.

  “I don’t like the look of those stitches,” said Groff. The hidden vial of concentrate felt too light. Had it started to leak? Paranoia made him sweat.

  “It is a delicate procedure, Groff. How are we meant to advance these paranimal trials if we do not take risks, hmm? But I am sorry to hear you are concerned.”

  Groff kept his back to Shola’s cell. Harris’s tone was faintly mocking. The doctors with him stayed aloof.

  “There is inflammation, at the sites of the ear grafts in particular.” Groff tongued the gap between his teeth.

  “You have applied iodine soak and salt salve?”

  Groff nodded. He was remembering Shola’s muffled whimpers as her wounds were bathed. The salt salve had burnt up her nerves, an agonising process he was sure of it. The iodine soak had made the seams in her skin look mouldy.

  “Bring her out.”